After two tumultuous years of the pandemic impacting everything from digital marketing to supply chains, it’s an important year to strategize how to reach your marketing goals for 2022. Having a sound marketing strategy will allow you to build in flexibility, plan for the unexpected, and tackle what might be yet another turbulent year. 

Planning is key for handling both the known and the unknown – and as you begin to tackle your 2022 planning, we suggest you leave yourself a discretionary marketing budget and build in additional time to tweak customer-facing collateral. Leaving yourself more timeline flexibility than usual will allow your team to do their best work even in the face of employee shortages, changing COVID event guidelines, and more. 

To kick off the planning process for 2022, we suggest you start gathering key information about your marketing performance in the last year. Gather key stats on social reach, conversion rates, best-selling products, sales metrics email opens, contact list growth, and web traffic.   

Once you’ve gathered your key statistics and have a holistic overview of the past year, it’s time to start defining where you want to go in 2022. Looking back at last year’s goals is a great starting point. If you set goals for 2021, did you reach them? If so, how much did you exceed them? Were your goals set too low or high? Or did they feel just right?   

Armed with the knowledge of what worked in 2021 -- and what didn’t -- it’s time to dive into planning for the future. These 5 questions will help you guide your planning for campaigns, budget, and timeline. 

1. How do my high-level marketing objectives fit in with the rest of the organization? 

When it comes to your goals for 2021, what were you trying to achieve beyond specific click rates or open rates? Were your goals tied to sales, reach, brand awareness, or something else altogether? Let the bottom line, sales teams, and business objectives help guide the goals you set. Ultimately, this will lead to more strategic marketing – and cooperation between different arms of the business is what leads to a high-quality customer experience. 

If your marketing department has been operating in a silo, it’s time to invite other team members to the table to start learning from each other. 

2. What return am I seeing on my current marketing efforts? 

Going back to the information you gathered, it’s time to examine what channels and campaigns have given you the best return on investment in the last year. Should you shift the budget to another channel? Are these mediums or campaigns things you should consider retiring? 

Ask yourself what you want to maintain in the next year and what needs to be reworked or eliminated. Are there certain social media channels you feel like you have to maintain… but that aren’t getting any traction? Your time and budget are limited, and if something truly isn’t working, don’t be afraid to walk away or pare down your efforts. For example, if your Instagram posts aren’t showing any results, we encourage you to consider cutting back from 3-4 posts/week to once a week. 

In addition to examining the channels themselves, this is also a great opportunity to examine the content you’re posting on them. Having clarity around the messaging and campaigns you want to use again, or refresh, will keep your team on the same page and ensure that there’s no confusion when everyone hits the ground running post-holidays. 

3. When will I check in on my marketing plan?        

As important as setting goals, checking in on your goals to track progress is a key component of a successful strategy. We suggest setting short, quarterly check-ins to assess your 2022 goals and their progress.  

Use these check-ins as an opportunity to help you stay on track, as a chance to retool if something isn’t working, or as a time to modify goals if the organization’s objectives have shifted. We suggest scheduling out all four (or more) of these check-ins by January so your team can schedule around them and ensure they’re in the office on those days. Make these check-ins non-negotiable and don’t push them down the calendar if you run into a busy week.

4. What sales and specials will I offer throughout the year?

Pivoting from budget and big picture messaging, it’s also important to use your 2022 planning session as an opportunity to properly plan your marketing timeline. Think through what sales and campaigns you want to offer throughout the year – and then plan backward to determine when the development needs to start for each. 

Planning properly means having time to make extra revisions, strategize on copy, and hire outside parties as needed – all while still completing a project on time. Building in wiggle room and having a big picture timeline will lead to less stress for your team and a higher-quality product. 

5. What contractors or outside vendors do I plan to work with? 

Tip: Make sure your existing contractors have shared their updated yearly rates and that you’ve updated your database to reflect these changes.

What’s your yearly budget for paying contractors or outside vendors? Are there new projects you’ll be needing help with this year? In 2021, did you get in a pinch because of inadequate planning and blow this line item of your budget completely? Look at the role of outside vendors in your marketing strategy and examine how you want things to go in 2022.

We suggest having a database of go-to contractors you can reach out too. The database should include details on their services, average turnaround time, rates, their strengths and any issues you’ve run into in the past with each person. 

If your database is looking a little thin, now is the time to start looking for new partners and interviewing potential candidates. Don’t wait until a project is due to start initiating a new relationship with someone.

Those are our top 5 tips to help kickstart your 2022 marketing! For more helpful resources, we would suggest these posts:  

• The 6-step content calendar

• Holiday Campaign Planning

• 6 steps for building a strong referral program

---

HUE & TONE CREATIVE: YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING PARTNER

Need a partner to help you set milestones for 2022 and beyond? We’ll help you develop a plan with a clear structure, sound business goals, and beautiful graphics. Ready to get started? Let’s set up a free 20 minute consultation to get to know each other. Make an appointment here.

It’s that time of year again: holiday campaign season! Most customers don’t realize it, but the heavy lifting for small business holiday campaigns is typically completed sometime in August through October. Larger businesses might even be planning their holiday marketing out as early as spring or summer. But, if you’re just starting to think about holiday marketing for this year, there’s nothing to fear – you still have plenty of time to get caught up to have a successful winter season. 

There are a lot of ways to capitalize on the holidays, but this post is specifically geared toward small businesses. Whether you have a brick & mortar store or are primarily operating through e-commerce, you can find a way to adapt these tips to your business model! 

Email Campaigns: 

• Start marketing early! Now is the time to start marketing to your customers – while many people wait until the last minute to shop, others get started far ahead of schedule. With shipping delays and product shortages in several industries, we suggest you encourage customers to start shopping even earlier than usual. Motivate shoppers to get started ahead of schedule by offering exclusive pre-season discounts! 

• Include a gift guide: To help streamline online shopping and reduce decision making, give customers a quick and simple way to find gifts for their loved ones. Consider categorizing these guides by personality, relationship, or demographic. This will allow people to quickly locate (and purchase) an appropriate gift without endless scrolling. 

• Don’t forget to include the gift giver: You know the customer you’re emailing loves your brand. However, you don’t know if your products are a good fit for the customers family and friends. Capitalize on your existing relationship by targeting the customer themselves! Even when they’re shopping for other people, people will be drawn to the idea of rewarding themselves. Promote special coupons and play around with a “treat yourself” message. 

Website: 

• Consider a flash sale: Use limited time offers to spike sales and offload slow moving products. Putting the pressure on to buy is a great way to motivate people to make a purchase. You can host a flash sale for a few hours – or an entire week. In general, the shorter the sale the higher the chance that people will jump on making a purchase. 

• Make shipping deadlines clear:  Don’t risk having to deal with a disgruntled customer because their order arrived late – feature any key shipping deadlines on your website to set expectations for when orders need to be placed. Update your messaging to let people know if they need to select ground, two-day, or one-day shipping to get their items on time. 

Offline: 

• Create a special unboxing or gift-wrapping option: Enhance a great product by creating a special unboxing experience – you’ll take some of the work off the customer by pre-wrapping their gift and you’ll enhance their brand experience. Utilize high quality materials and remember that no detail is too small. Color coordinate everything and brand wherever possible with stickers, packaging, and handwritten or branded notes. An added bonus? A beautifully packaged gift might just land you a tag on social media! 

General tips: 

• Holiday Bundles: Whether online or in person, consider offering holiday gift bundles to your customers. This is a great way to move more products without offering incredibly deep discounts. Bundle like products together for a small discount and package them well. This kind of collection is great for hard-to-buy-for individuals or last minute gifts — it also gives the customer the impression that they’re getting a great deal.

• Holiday return policy: With many people shopping early for the holidays, a 30-day return period is often inefficient. We suggest considering offering free returns throughout the month of January -- but no matter what your policy is, make sure it’s clear to the customer and gift recipient. Offering a gift receipt with a purchase is a great way to clearly communicate your policy. 

• Don’t just think about holiday campaigns for Christmas: Educate yourself on other culturally important holidays and tailor your message to fit a wider range of customers. For reference, here are some key dates to consider: 

  • Diwali – 11/4

  • Thanksgiving Day – 11/25

  • Black Friday – 11/26

  • Small Business Saturday – 11/27

  • Hanukkah – 11/28-12/6

  • Cyber Monday – 11/29

  • Giving Tuesday – 11/30

  • First day of Winter – 12/21

  • Christmas Day – 12/25

  • Kwanzaa – 12/26 – 1/1

  • New Year’s Eve – 12/31

Our last tip? No matter what medium you are utilizing, keep a positive customer experience front and center. Do what you can to alleviate the stress of your customers – this might mean providing free wrapping or flexible delivery options. Or maybe it comes in the form of producing content that takes the guesswork out of the shopping experience (think gift guides or recipe suggestions). 

Now, go get started on prepping your holiday cards, planning customer loyalty events, rolling out gift lists, and putting the final touches on your annual giving campaigns!

A few weeks ago, we tackled some general content ideas for kitchen and bath designers. In that post, we mentioned our belief that it’s impossible to run out of content ideas! We’re here to continue to prove that theory right by sharing a handful of outside the box social media ideas for residential realtors. 

As a realtor, it’s important to post about more than just new listings. Social media is a great place to show off what you know about the home buying and selling process – and it helps to give potential prospects an idea of what it would be like if they work with you. By offering up content of value, you raise the chances of engaging a potential client. 

Once you start posting high-quality content, it’s also crucial to engage with a wide and diverse audience. Don’t just chat with other realtors, connect with potential prospects, community figures, and other businesses.

1. Break down different neighborhood personalities: A series of posts with details about different neighborhoods is sure to engage people that are new to the area. Break down the personality and reputation of each neighborhood, but also include hard data like average home price, amount of available stock, school system data, and average commute times. For an added bonus, highlight a few key landmarks in each neighborhood – this could be restaurants, local art, parks, or trails. This is the perfect way to establish yourself as a local guide! 

2. Break down terminology: APR, ARM, appraisals, equity, escrow, FMV, MLS, trust sales, and seller disclosures… the list of confusing terms goes on and on. Help new buyers (or even seasoned pros) expand their knowledge of the market by breaking down common or confusing terms. This shows off how knowledgeable you are and shows you want potential buyers to be empowered… whether they work with you or not! 

3. Show us your style: Have a style of home you love? See a beautiful wallpaper or garden that you idolize? Take us on a visual journey by sharing photos that show off your personal taste. This could be décor you see out at a showing or inspiration that you’ve been coveting on Pinterest. This helps create a visually appealing feed and is a fun way to break up more factual posts. 

4. Community Events: Demonstrate that you’re plugged into the community by sharing local events or updates from community organizations. Bonus points for attending the events you promote and sharing behind-the scenes updates!

5. DIY Tips: New homeowners often need all the help they can get – especially when it comes to DIY projects and getting acquainted with regular home maintenance. Show them that your relationship with buyers doesn’t end when your check clears by providing useful resources for new and current homeowners. 

6. Inspection Preparation: The home inspection can be one of the most stressful steps in buying a new home. Help potential buyers get a better idea of what to expect by breaking down the process, explaining potential resolutions for any repairs, and sharing how to find a good inspector. This is a great time to highlight the home inspectors you often work with…because who doesn’t love some good cross promotion?

7. Buying Anniversary: Posting when a client first closes on a house makes them feel special – but take it a step further by also remembering their buying anniversary. This is a wonderful way to pop up on people’s timelines a year (or more) after you’ve worked with them. Chances are they’ll share your post, giving you the opportunity to get in front of their connections as well. This is a positive way to keep your feed house-centric even when sales are slow, or you’re stuck on what to post. 

8. Community Service: Sharing about causes and local organizations that you support is a great way to show people that you’re invested in the community. This works best (and feels most genuine) if you focus on an indirect sell – instead of making the post about you and your philanthropy, keep the attention on the cause or organization. Be sure to include a link for people to learn more, donate, or get involved. 

9. Dream Listing: People love looking at crazy-expensive listings, even if they’ll never be close to able to afford them. Share some of your most expensive or luxury listings – just be sure to link them to your website. The idea here is to get people browsing the photos so that they end up looking at homes they can actually afford! 

10. What sets you apart: In a competitive market, it’s important to have a highly qualified and dedicated realtor. Show off the accomplishments of your team by sharing some statistics on how you’ve helped sellers and buyers. This could be average selling times, negotiating for perks, or helping people close quickly. Avoid bragging and let the numbers (or testimonials) speak for themselves! 

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Looking to reach a new audience?

Let us help you create a social media that shows off your brand and lets you reach new contacts. Whether you’re looking to increase your views or simply need a break from handling your account, Hue & Tone Creative has you covered for all things social.

It might take a little creative brainstorming, but we’re here to tell you that there’s always something else to blog about. Here at Hue & Tone, we work with a number of residential building and design pros – including kitchen designers, cabinet reps, general contractors, realtors, and lighting companies – and hear concern from these folks in particular that they have nothing to talk about on their blog. 

Content creation is a common concern – and worries range from being stumped in the initial brainstorming session to long-term stress about running out of things to post about. No matter what industry you’re in, we promise that there’s plenty to post about! 

But don’t just take our word for it, let us demonstrate and help you brainstorm some new ideas. We’re going to start by focusing on generating ideas for our kitchen and bath creatives – but if you’re stumped, we’re here to help! Drop us a comment at the bottom of this post if you want to see us do a brainstorming session for your industry. 

Building + Design Practices

1. Designing a family (and kid) friendly kitchen: What tips can you provide to make the kitchen a more inclusive space for the whole family? 

2. Stain, paint, or replace? What time, budget, and design factors should someone consider when they’re making a decision about a cabinet upgrade? 

3. How to set a remodeling budget: What should clients consider when outlining everything they want in their new dream kitchen? What expenses might they not be thinking about? How much wiggle room should they leave to account for fluctuating expenses and ensure they don’t blow the budget? Pose and answer all these questions for prospective clients to start building trust before you even begin working together.

4. Choosing the right appliances: Introduce people to your favorite appliance brands and let us know what products you would recommend for a variety of budgets. 

5. Biggest renovation mistakes to avoid: What missteps do you see most often? Which design decisions have you been brought back in to correct? 

6. Checklist for your bathroom renovation: Create a free downloadable that homeowners can use to get everything organized for a bathroom renovation. 

7. Finding the right designer: We all have an idea of who our ideal clients is – use this knowledge to write a post explaining who you love to work with. In turn, this will help homeowners determine if you’re the design pro they’re looking for!   

8. Granite vs Quartz: Walk us through the pro and cons of each popular countertop material. Are there less common materials (like butcher block) that a homeowner should consider?

Trends

9. Building Sustainably: What’s the latest in renewable building technology? What should clients consider when aiming for a more sustainable and eco-friendly design? 

10. What do you see as the latest trend in smart technology? What’s the next big thing? Our client, Dream Kitchen Builders, does a great job making these predictions – check out their blog here.

11. How to create a timeless look: Instead of talking about what’s trendy, talk about what will never go out of style. This could be a design feature, paint colors, or fixtures. 

12. Where to splurge vs where to save: Would you suggest spending big money on fixtures or appliances? Cabinets or countertops? Lay out your top tips and suggestions in a post! 

Inspiration 

13. What trends do you see emerging in flooring? Don’t just tell us – show us examples of the latest tile, vinyl, and wood trends. Incorporating visual blogs cuts down on the writing you have to do and can convert to great social media content. 

14. Advise on selecting just the right shade: Picking paint colors is no easy decision, so give clients some guidance on what shades work best. Bonus points for breaking swatch options down by color, mood, or room.

15. Lighting trends: Curate lists of great lighting fixtures for bathrooms, kitchens, hallways, outdoors, and more. 

16. Out of the box design details: Have a wallpaper, light fixture, or unique detail that you’ve been dying to incorporate in a design? Compile these into a blog post and see if you can snag a prospective client that shares your unique design sensibilities. 

17. Small space inspiration: Show and tell us how homeowners can increase the functionality and appearance of a small space. 

Evergreen ideas 

18. Recent jobs: Don’t forget to show off your own work on your blog! Share pictures, quotes, and the story behind your latest renovation or design jobs. This will help prospects get a better idea of your style and how you like to work. 

19. Business updates: Forming a new partnership? Working with a big name client? Attending a kitchen & bath tradeshow? Share updates about your business on the blog to give people an inside look at what’s going on behind the scenes. These posts help build a relationship and your credibility. 

20.  Fun (but related) bonus content: Don’t just stop at designing the kitchen and bathroom – expand your blog topics to include relevant information like hosting tips, recipes, and home organization.  

---

Hue & Tone Creative

If you’re stumped during the brainstorming process, we’re here to help. From your very first blog post to learning the latest social platform, we’ll help you with your marketing so you can get back to doing what you do best: running your business. Contact us today to learn more.

In the competitive world of digital marketing and web-based sales, customer reviews are a powerful tool. They’re easy to solicit, low or no cost to acquire, and they do the selling for you! What’s more is that reviews offer a genuine perspective that no direct to consumer marketing can provide. 

Seeing a friend review a product online is a powerful form of personal recommendation. These reviews help consumers find new products and help businesses find qualified leads. 

A few benefits to consider: 

• They can serve multiple purposes -- positive reviews get visitors to your website, help you attract potential new leads, and can be used to market to your existing customers. 

• Reviews can be embedded on your website or used on print materials to up the exposure of your brand.

• They’re especially helpful for new businesses who are looking to establish credibility in the marketplace.  

Many customers are willing to provide a review, but you have to make the process easy and be sure to ask your customers at the right time. You’ll want to watch out for signs that your customer is happy with their experience so far. A few tip offs that might write a good review? They’ve referred someone else to you, they’ve repurchased a product, they’ve tagged you on social media, or they’ve spent a lot of time browsing on your website.

To make sure you get it right, here’s four ideas to help you gather more online reviews: 

1.     Leverage social media. Social capital is a powerful tool – if your friends or acquaintances are using a product you’re more likely to give it a try. In addition to the built in referral network social media provides, most platforms provide a great channel for soliciting and sharing reviews. Don’t just ask for new reviews, be sure to share the positive ones you’ve already received! In addition to providing free promotion, they’ll also help give your customers ideas on what to post in their own reviews.

People who have purchased or repurchased products are the perfect target for reviews. Tailor an email or social media campaign directly to these customers so you can don’t miss out on the chance to collect high-quality reviews.  

 2.     Ask more than once. Asking for a review once isn’t always enough – you don’t want to bug people, but you do want to give them ample opportunity to share their thoughts. Different people will want to share their reviews on different platforms and at different times, so be equipped to ask for reviews in a number of ways. Train your team to solicit reviews, add a link into your email campaigns, and incorporate review options into your website pop-ups and landing pages.

3.     Make a direct appeal. If you work as an account manager, are a B2B sales rep, or have a one-on-one relationship, ask your customers directly for a review. Keep it conversational, but inquire how they’re enjoying their experience with your product or service so far. If the response is positive, see if they wouldn’t mind sharing their feedback online. If they have a negative response, see what you can do to fix the problem before inquiring about them giving public feedback. 

 4.     Create Incentives. Offer a future discount, add a bonus product to their order or enter them in a drawing in exchange for their feedback. Be careful you don’t compromise the integrity of the review – you shouldn’t force people to leave a positive review, rather an honest review. 

A few additional tips:

• Accept reviews on multiple platforms like Yelp, Facebook, Google Business, Zillow and more. Everyone has a favorite method of reviewing, so don’t loose out on a good review by limiting people’s platform options. But keep in mind that people tend to trust Facebook reviews more because they’re connected to individual profiles that people can verify the legitimacy of. 

Further Reading: Want to learn more about how to handle a bad review? We’ve got a separate post that goes in-depth on the topic. Check it out here.

• Be sure to respond to all reviews – especially the negative ones! Respond thoughtfully (without getting defensive). In addition to improving the relationship with that individual customer, you’ll also be demonstrating good customer service that shows potential buyers you care and are willing to listen. 

• Make it easy! Cut out additional steps wherever possible and it will up the chances that your customers will take the time to leave a review. Include a direct link so they can head straight to the product page, make login seamless, and provide them with sample writing prompts. 

Have a tip that we should have included? Drop us a comment below – we’d love to learn more about what’s worked for you in the past (and what hasn’t). 

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Social Media + Graphic Design

Need someone to take the headaches out of your automated emailing and social media planning? We’re here to help. Whether you’re looking to increase your views or simply need a break from handling your account, Hue & Tone Creative has you covered for all things social. 

If you have a great product, your customers will help do the marketing for you – but often you have to provide them with an incentive program to help compensate for their time. A referral program is a deliberate, systematic way of getting people to make referrals to your business. Having a clearly outlined program will help consistency and tact take center stage – and ensure no current customers are turned off by your ask for their help. 

Referrals can come from just about anywhere – existing customers, friends and family, or even a social media testimonial. Having an established system to help you harness the power of these referrals is key to building word of mouth and customer loyalty. 

Decide how much a customer is worth 

Not sure what kind of metric you should be looking for from a referral program? Start by aiming for a 10% conversion rate.

Before you start developing the specifics of your referral program, it’s important to identify what you hope to get out of it. First, figure out what a typical customer is worth. Your referral program should help you build a continual pipeline of new customers – each of which you’ll be obtaining at a lower cost than a traditional customer acquisition.  

Having a concrete figure for customer acquisition costs allows you to determine how much money to sink into building a referral program – as well as how much to spend marketing it. 

Establish your incentive structure

Now that you’ve identified the cost of acquiring a typical customer, it’s time to do a little math on incentives. Don’t limit yourself to just cash incentives – studies actually show that non-cash incentives are 24% more effective at boosting effectiveness (source).

In addition to a typical cash incentive system, consider offering coupons, service upgrades, free swag, gift cards, donations to charities, or access to exclusive products. 

Pinpoint what you’ll be offering to both the referrer and referral – this should be a mutually beneficial ask to ensure everyone walks away with an even more positive view of your brand.  

Develop quality collateral 

Putting time into developing quality referral materials and messaging around your new program is a must. Your messaging should: 

• Feel Personal 

• Cleary explain the benefit to the customer and their friend

• Have easy to understand directions

• Offer a clear explanation of the steps

The easier you make it to refer people the better. Give your customer multiple options for how to share – Facebook, Twitter, email, or a direct link. Offer a pre-filled message to them so they don’t have to do anything but click a button.  

It’s also important to ensure that your referral program is being consistently marketed among your different platforms. Use consistent language across your CTAs, blogs, emails, newsletters, and product updates. 

Track what’s working

Once you’ve got your messaging and incentive structure in place, it’s time to integrate analytics and tracking to monitor its effectiveness. If you’re shopping around for referral program software, this is definitely something you’ll want to dive into before purchasing. At a minimum, you’ll want to track: 

• Who referred who

• When they were referred 

• Whether they were converted or not

• How many links get shared 

• How many links get clicked 

• A/B testing effectiveness

• Where customers tend to drop off in the referral program 

Make sure your whole team is up to date 

Now that you’ve put time into developing a quality referral program, it’s time to make sure everyone is on the same page. Sit down with sales, marketing, and support staff and make sure the whole team is aligned around the goals and vision for your referral program. 

Can they clearly explain incentives? Have they been well trained on any new software? Do they have leeway to offer additional benefits to top referrers? Get everyone up to speed so they can answer questions in real time. 

Don’t forget to say “thank you!” 

Once your program has launched, be sure to take the time to thank your referrers for helping you out! Even though you’re providing them with an incentive already, it never hurts to personally thank them for their support. 

Avoid stagnation 

Once your regular customer incentive program is up and running, consider future ways to keep things fresh or to expand your program. Here’s a few special promotions to consider or incorporate in the months and years to come: 

• Customer Tiers: Now that you have a strong plan in place for one-time referrals, it’s time to start thinking about how to harness the power of regular or high-value customers. Creating tiers is a way to offer continual incentives as customers continue to offer you valuable leads. Each tier can have its own unique benefits so that customers stay motivated. 

• Seasonal Campaigns: Holiday discounts and annual sales can provide a special way to draw in new consumers. 

• Contests: Host a giveaway where customers are entered only after providing a certain number of referrals. To ensure you maintain a high quality of leads, we suggest leads have to signup instead of just provide an email. This means your success will based on conversions rather than just random referrals. 

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Digital Marketing for the Triad and beyond

Want to take the guesswork out of developing your referral program? We’ll help you develop a program with a clear structure, sound business goals, and beautiful graphics. Ready to get started? Let’s set up a free 20 minute consultation to get to know each other. Make an appointment here.

Cultivating an email list is an important element of any cohesive digital marketing plan. It’s fast, flexible, and cost effective. It allows you to directly connect with past, current, and future customers in a tailored and carefully targeted way. 

Like all digital marketing, email marketing has undergone changes in past years – but it’s as relevant in 2020 as it’s ever been. Reasonably priced and highly flexible, email marketing shows a great return on investment:

• Emails are 6x more likely than tweets to get higher click-through rates (source)

• Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter (source)

• 81% of online shoppers who receive emails based on previous shopping habits were at least somewhat likely to make a purchase as a result of targeted email (source)

• 72% people prefer to receive promotional content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media (source)

• Email marketing has an ROI of 3800% (source)

Who should be on your list 

Avoid spamming people – don’t send emails to people who haven’t actively signed up for your email communications. 

How you organize your email lists will vary greatly based on your goals, but we encourage you to gather every email you can (even if it’s someone you are not ready to market to just yet). Your email list should consist of email addresses from past/current customers and qualified leads. You can use email to communicate everything from company information and product updates to discounts and exclusive content. 

 In order to derive the maximum benefit from your email list, it’s important that you continue building your list over time. The more subscribers you gain, the more valuable your email list becomes – and the more potential revenue you can gain from utilizing it. 

Places to build your email list

• Call to Action (CTA) buttons/links: Every landing page and blog page on your website should have a CTA for your email list. Embed them in the text of the page and be sure to add a sign-up at the bottom of every post.

• Gather sign-ups through social media: No matter the size of your budget, Facebook is a great place to capture new leads. The advanced targeting allows you to connect with fairly qualified leads and cultivate them over time through email. 

• Cart opt-in: Someone who is already checking out on your website is clearly interested in your product – making it a perfect time to ask them to opt into emails. When a customer places an order and gives you their information, you’ll want to capitalize on the opportunity by asking them if they want to receive promotional emails. 

• Contact forms: Similar to the cart opt-in strategy, allow people who are sending a general inquiry to opt into your email list. 

• Integrate with your CRM: Do you utilize an existing customer relationship management tool like Hubspot? Using an integration with your existing CRM can be a great way to automatically add new contacts to your email database.  

• Free Content Offers: Have gated content or a freebie you could use to drive email sign-ups? Share it on social media! If you have a free printout or digital download you want to offer people, make it an exclusive for new email subscribers and deliver it directly to their inbox (which means you’ll capture their email address in the meantime). 

• Referral Programs: Someone who loves your product is the best ambassador for it – get existing customers to refer folks to your brand. Offer cash rewards, discounts, or points and build a full-on loyalty program that will keep the referrals rolling in. 

• Exit intent pop-ups: This is a pop up that appears right when you’re about to click to a new page or ex out of the tab. As visitors are about to leave, offer them something that will make them become an email subscriber. This will allow you to continue to engage with them. Just make sure to use cookies to track returning visitors so that you don’t repeatedly show them the same pop-up.
  
  

Tailor for maximum benefit 

No matter what stage of the buying process a lead is in, you can create a targeted email that appeals to them. 

Automations that are triggered by a specific action can save you time and allow you to have a more personalized interaction with a customer. Automated triggers also allow you to respond to your customers interest in real-time. Did they abandon a shopping cart full of goods? Send them an email reminding them to check out… or, enticing them with a discount for completing the purchase!

Other Benefits

• Measurable: Tracking the success of a promotion is easy with the built-in analytics that email software offers. Track delivery rates, bounce rates, click through, and open rates easily and effectively.

• A/B Testing: Testing the effectiveness of different elements of your email (like photos, copy, colors, or calls to action) will ensure your email is as effective as possible. 

• Targeted messaging: We’ve already touched on this a bit, but the ability to highly tailor and nurture a lead is a capability almost no other type of marketing can offer. 

• Everyone uses it: Almost 91% of all consumers use email, which gives email marketing widespread appeal. 

• Environmentally friendly: In addition to being cheaper, digital mailings save trees. A huge bonus if your business is sustainably minded! 

One last tip: Do you have a list of older or less interested contacts? Reinvigorate it by sending a message to re-engage these contacts. Let them know you’ll be removing anyone who doesn’t respond – and you’ll be pleasantly surprised how many people choose to opt in and stick around. 

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Your partner in email marketing

Completely overwhelmed by all the emails you have to send out? Outsource the work to an expert and get the full return on investment that email marketing has to offer. We’re here to help you develop a strategy for your digital marketing: from identifying target demographics to crafting emails and targeting social media ads. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help.

Quick tip: Brand guidelines coming in at over 50 pages? Consider creating an abbreviated version that can serve as a quick reference guide.

Brand guides are essentially an instruction manual for how to communicate both your visual and written brand. Depending on the size of your organization, your brand guide may come in at 100+ pages, or you may decide to utilize a more simplified sheet style. No matter how complex your brand guidelines are, we advocate for making them as clear and easy to understand as possible. 

Remember, branding is the personality of a commodity and your brand guide serves to translate that brand to outside parties. You want to include everything needed to communicate the feelings and expectations that are connected to the goods, services and even people your brand represents (read more on that here). 

Further reading: If you want to learn more about all the marketing collateral your new business should consider, check out this post.

If you’re unsure what you should include, we’ve put together the reference guide below. If you’re hiring an outside agency or freelancer to compile your brand elements, this quick reference guide will help you determine everything you should expect to be included. 

The basics:

Brand Story/Mission/Vision: First up, you’ll want to tell people what your brand is all about. This might come in the form of a vision statement, positioning statement, elevator pitch – or, maybe it’s a more fully formed brand story. No matter the form, it’s important to give people background information about your company.  

Quick tip: Always include a table of contents in your brand guide. Trust us, every agency or freelancer that has to use your brand guide will thank you. 

Key messaging: Have a tagline or key message you repeat over and over? This can be word for word phrases or simply big picture ideas you want to see repeated.

Personality: List out all the characteristics of your brand by describing the feeling and impression people will have when they interact with you. One way to do this is to make a list of things that your brand is, and a list of things that it is not. These words will help set the tone for your copy writing and guide the written communication of your brand.

All logo variations: Once you’ve carefully outlined the personality and verbal tone of your brand, it’s time to move on to the visuals. The first (and most obvious) thing you’ll want to include is your logo. But, don’t stop there, be sure to include every version of your logo including horizontal uses, vertical, watermarks, and special stamp versions. 

Logo usage: Once you’ve outlined the logo variations you have, you’ll want to give guidance on how to use them. How close can your logo be to other elements? Is there a minimum size it should be printed in? What version of your logo do you use where? Are there limits on what colors it can be printed in? Think through all the digital and print uses of your logo and do your best to carefully outline the rules for each potential use. 

Color Palette: Outline all the colors that can be used in your brand – this includes your primary and secondary color palettes. Be sure to include guidance on how/when to use each color. For easy reference, include the Pantone, RGB, CMYK, and Hex codes for each color. 

Font Palette (for web and print): Once you’re done with colors, outline which fonts should be used where. We suggest including an example of the fonts in use, details on where people can get the fonts, and any restrictions on kerning, alignment, leading, and color usage. If your fonts are expensive and you don’t plan to provide a license to every external party, we suggest including easily accessible open source alternatives. This will up the chances that your brand guidelines are followed and increase the ease of use.  

Image Guidelines: Whether you purchase stock photos or have your own brand photography, it’s important to include visual examples of acceptable and unacceptable photography. How should photos be edited? How should your staff or customers be represented? What kind of office environment do you want to portray? 

Sample collateral: Even after you’ve outlined all these basic elements, it’s important to show examples of your visual brand in action. The interaction of all these elements together will be valuable samples that designers will need if you want them to emulate your brand closely. The more collateral examples you can include, the better idea they will have of how your brand should look. We suggest including a letterhead, business card, sample ads, website screenshots, vehicle wraps, promotional swag, and social media ads or posts.  

Include point of sales and packaging examples in your brand guide.

Suggested inclusions

Now that we’ve covered the basics, we want to point out a handful of other items you should consider including in your brand guide. Here’s a list of our suggested inclusions:  

Target Audience: This is a valuable inclusion if you ever plan to outsource your marketing. Don’t be afraid to dive into nitty gritty information about your target demographics – this will be invaluable for anyone targeting ads or creating a media plan.

Additional graphic elements: Do you have additional graphic elements besides your logo? For example, do you have an iconic swoosh or divider bar? Include additional guidance on how to use each of these supplementary elements. 

Icon sets: Have a standardized set of icons you use on print or social media collateral? Include the full set of vectorized icons so designers can easily grab and use them. Include usage guidelines and make it clear whether it’s okay for people to create additional icons or not. 

Campaign graphics: Does your business have spinoff brands, specific subsidiaries, holiday campaigns, or additional product lines? Including a snapshot of any ancillary brands will give designers or agencies a more holistic picture of your entire brand.  

Packaging/Store Signage: Do you sell a physical product? Include samples of the packaging, as well as examples of point of sale signage, sample displays and sample promotions. 

Sample social media posts: Including more in-depth illustrations of how your visuals and verbiage are paired together on social media can provide valuable guidance on how you like to communicate with your audience. 

Video/Motion Graphics: If video – prerecorded or live – is a major part of your marketing plan, you’ll want to create some guidelines for how and where it should be shot. Talk about content, tone, guidelines for overlaying text, backgrounds, and filters.

Customer Service Examples: Your brand is a conversation, and your customers need to get to know you as a brand. Including examples of your outward facing dialogue can help get your whole company on the same page about how they should be communicating. 

Website: Is there a phrase or product you never want to see featured on your homepage? Do you have a specific plan for what first time visitors need on your website? Consider getting into more detail about what you should and shouldn’t include on your website. 

This list is by no means exhaustive, but we hope it provides a solid jumping off point for brainstorming your brand guide. See something we should include on this list but didn’t? Drop us a comment and let us know what you think is crucial for a comprehensive brand guide.

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Your branding partner

Completely overwhelmed by this list? We get it. We’ve worked with numerous businesses to establish clear branding and brand guidelines – and we’d like you to be the next business we support. We can help you get all your visual brand elements organized and easy to use – whether you’re starting from scratch or want to build around an existing brand. 

A NOTE FROM HANNAH POMPHREY, OWNER OF HUE & TONE CREATIVE 

Anyone who has started a small business has probably heard a lot of scary statistics about the chance of their business’s survival. 

20% of small businesses fail in their first year, 30% of small business fail in their second year, and 50% of small businesses fail after five years in business. Businesses fail for a lot of different reasons including lack of demand, limited financial resources, and being outpaced by the competition. 

After five years of owning Hue & Tone, I feel like I’ve learned a lot of dos and don’ts about how to grow revenue and thrive as a small business. Growth doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s important to build connections with your community and nurture yourself as your business expands. 

One of my strongest values as a business owner is the importance of reaching out a hand to those on the same path. If I could give a few pieces of advice to other entrepreneurs – or to myself five years ago! – here’s what I’d share. 

Network, network, network. Even in the digital age, small businesses thrive on word of mouth. Taking the time to build strong connections will form the foundation of your success.  

Never hesitate to set up a coffee or grab a drink with someone (even if it’s digital). It might be a bit awkward at first, but the only way to learn more about someone’s business is to talk to them about it. Start by learning more about what they do… and then let things develop naturally from there! 

Focus on your strengths. Don’t feel you have to offer the same services as your competitors or fit within the mold of other businesses around you. Play to your strengths, and don’t offer a service or product if you can’t add value and ensure quality.

Your unique service offerings are what make your business distinctive to you. While it’s smart to take a strategic look at your competition, don’t be swayed what you see. Offer the services you can really deliver on – and, if you hate doing something, don’t advertise it heavily. Leave services you could offer (but don’t want too) off of your website – if someone inquires, offer them then, but don’t lead with something you aren’t passionate about. 

Don’t be afraid to take the lead. Whether it’s teaching a course, serving on a board, or lending your expertise to a local non-profit, the opportunity to lead in your community is one of the best perks of running a local business. 

Don’t hesitate to build some flexibility into your schedule so you have time to partake in things you’re really passionate about. Volunteering is a great way to give back – but also a great way to make new connections with industries or organizations you’re passionate about. 

Keep seeking inspiration. Working 24/7 without taking time to nurture your personal life drains you of the inspiration that led you to start your business in the first place, especially if you’re a creative entrepreneur. No matter what fuels you, be sure to set time aside for yourself. 

Keep taking time to travel, cook, create – whatever fuels your ingenuity and imagination! Block off time or days on your calendar to do the things that inspire you and you’ll come back to the office even more productive than if you never left. 

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Your partner is business and marketing 

Overwhelmed with all the functions of owning a business? Let us take the marketing off of your hands. Outsource your creative work and get more time back to do what you really love. We’re here to help you get your time back, help you maximize your bottom line, and increase your reach. Let’s connect and work out the specifics of how we can help.

The internet is a crowded space and it can be hard to make your brand stand out. But one of the best ways to stand out is to create authentic connections on social media. 

A key element in forging these genuine connections is establishing your brand voice. Your brand voice makes your brand feel like a person that your customers can connect with and allows you to build a deeper relationship with your audience. No one likes to feel like their favorite company thinks of them as just a dollar sign – and when people feel valued by your brand, they tend to spend more and be more loyal.  

Formalizing this brand voice in a set of guidelines ensures everyone posting from your account is using a consistent tone to communicate with the audience. This ensures that you stay on brand in even the stickiest customer service situations… and they can even help you turn an aggrieved customer into a loyal follower. 

Finding your social media voice is not one thing, but rather a set of defined characteristics that come together to establish your overall brand voice. 

• Character: Who does your brand sound or talk like? Are you an expert informing a customer, or do you talk to a client like they are your friend? 

• Tone: What is the general vibe of your brand? How does your voice change based on audience, situation, and channel?  Are you fluffy or direct, personal or professional? 

• Language: What kind of words do you use often? What kind of words do you try to avoid? Do you speak in a complex and jargon-filled way or do you like to keep things more simple? 

• Purpose: Why are you on social media? Do you want to engage, inform, sell… or something else altogether? 

Why social media voice matters 

Creating a consistent tone lets people get to know your brand and allows you to build a strong relationship with customers and clients. Delighted customers talk positively about your brand, which means them creating new content, driving leads your way, and spreading your brand message. 

Establishing your voice can be complicated and require some trial-and-error. Unlike tracking your web analytics, this marketing project won’t be a one and done task. If something isn’t connecting with people, don’t be afraid to do more research and reorient your tactics. 

Steps to get started 

Stumped on where to get started? Here are a few simple steps to get you going when developing your brand guidelines. 

1. Research your audience’s habits online. What platforms do they use, what words do you see often, and what do they seem to value? 

2. Examine your existing brand guidelines. What brand resources do you have to work with? Do your guidelines for print work for social media? Do these words fit with what you’re seeing from your audience?

3. Determine your purpose. What do you want to do for your audience online? How will you achieve these goals? 

4. Brainstorm words you want your audience to associate with your company. Make a list of adjectives you want your audience to use – and then words that you think will help elicit those feelings.

A few tips as you develop your voice 

Now that you’ve got a jumping off point, here’s a few additional tips to keep in mind as you put your brand voice to work online. 

• Define your audience. It’s important to keep in mind that certain types of messaging resonate with certain audiences. Taking your audiences communication style, interests, and online behavior into account will help you better connect with them. Be sure to explore how your customers act online before solidifying your brand voice. 

• Be transparent and admit mistakes. Instead of trying to hide mistakes, use transparency and openness to your benefit. Admitting when you make mistakes and letting people see behind the scenes at your business will build trust and loyalty from your customers. 

• Trust your customers. Whatever you do, don’t delete comments from people who are criticizing you – this will just make them angrier and may push them to launch a full-scale campaign against your brand. Instead, comment on their posts and show your other customers how reasonable and responsive you are. Your customers are smart enough to distinguish between a rightfully aggrieved customer and a lunatic. 

• Keep it consistent. If your brand voice isn’t usually funny, don’t suddenly try to make a joke. Trust is built through keeping a consistently high-quality presence. Think of your brand like a person – you don’t want to leave users feeling like your personality is anxiety inducing or erratic. 

• Be clever with purpose. It’s okay to be clever or sassy with your social media voice, but only if it fits your brand. Don’t try to emulate Wendy’s unless there’s a well rationalized reason for it. Use funny or clever responses sparingly – and be aware that they may fall flat (and create a secondary issue). 

• Don’t forget it’s a conversation. Social media shouldn’t be used to talk at your audience – it should be used to communicate directly with them. Authentic interactions can create lifelong loyal customers – and ignored messages can lose them. 

• Take customer service seriously. Put time into developing a plan for customer service and responding to inquiries. Ensure consistency and timeliness by creating sample responses for your team and empowering them to take action when there is a valid complaint. 

• No platform is exempt from your brand voice. Your brand voice isn’t just important in your posts – it should be consistent across every element of social media. This includes Facebook message replies (including the automated ones), calls to action, Instagram captions, direct messages, cover photos, bios, and post graphics/visuals. 

• Keep responses usable. Responses to people’s questions or inquiries shouldn’t be long or overly complex – keep in mind that users are most likely responding from their mobile device. Answers or responses to people should be short, to the point, and easily accessible. 

---

 Hue & Tone Creative: Social Media in Greensboro, NC

Completely stumped about how to connect with your audience? Let us take the work out of it. We can help you put a social media strategy in place – or we can take over the posting and day-to-day management of your channels. Reach out to learn more about what kind of plans we offer. 

The difference between a successful app design and a failure isn’t just an app that looks sleek and well-designed. When it comes down to it what makes an effective app is user experience.  

Before we get into specific design tips, it’s worth sharing our biggest development tip of all: focus your app on doing one thing well. Overloading your app with features makes it hard to market to potential users. Home in on the one thing you want your app to do really well, and once you’ve achieved success there you can begin to add on additional features. 

Once you’ve determined the sole focus of your app, you’ll be able to determine who your audience is and design for them. But no matter what your target demographic, there’s a few design considerations you’ll want to keep in mind during the development process. 

1. Keep navigation simple 

If your app has a narrow focus, this tip will be easy to execute. You want to keep your app navigation streamlined and intuitive for users. Limit the number of options people have available and use common terms and design elements. Avoid thinking outside of the box on your navigation design – you want to stick to easily recognizable symbols.   

Most importantly, navigation should be available at ALL times, not just when you think the user might need it. 

2. Accessibility is important 

Designing an accessible interface means thinking about how people with vision loss, hearing loss, and other disabilities will use your app.  

For example, don’t make red and green the only indicator of a successfully filled out form. Add an “x” next to incorrect fields and a check mark by correct fields to serve as additional visual indicator so that people with red/green color blindness can still easily and successfully use your app. Similarly, consider adding transcripts to video or sound clips to aid those with hearing loss. 

3. Use familiar icons

Familiar icons work best when designing an app with widespread use. Use a magnifying glass to represent your search feature, a house to represent your home page, a printer to represent printing. Whatever you’re trying to communicate, your icons should have universal recognition from users – icon design is simply not the place to get creative. 

In addition to familiar visual icons, stick with simple text labels. Use intuitive terms like “Home, Search, and Back” to avoid confusing users.  

 4. Minimize user input and error

No one would willing choose to write a novel on their phone – it’s hard to see, hard to type and people typically end up misspelling a lot of words. 

If your app includes a form or survey element, be sure to keep it as short as possible. Think hard about what fields you really need to include and ask the bare minimum you can without losing effectiveness.

Make sure you use smart features (like autocomplete) to help reduce user error and ensure accuracy. You’ll also want to make sure the correct keyboard type will pop up when a user goes to fill out a form – they shouldn’t have to navigate to their number keyboard when filling out a phone number, the numeric keyboard should just automatically pop up.

5. Respect platform guidelines 

Each mobile operating system has a set of standard guidelines to help you provide a high-quality app. Your app users are already familiar with the standard operating guidelines of each system, so it’s important to keep your design in line with customary procedures. 

Keep in mind that these guidelines constantly evolve – it’s important to stay on top of the ever-changing trends and guidelines for mobile app design.  

• Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines

• Google’s Material Design Guidelines

6. Include screen titles

 Users often forget what page they’re on, or they might just not have a good sense of where they’re at in the app. Including a simple title at the top of the page is a great way for users to get a better sense of the app and helps avoid them repeatedly navigating to the same page. 

And as an added bonus, screen titles often give a page design a polished look! 

7.  Keep branding consistent 

Your mobile app should share similar characteristics with your main website. In addition to being an important extension of your branding, visual inconsistency may lead users to be suspicious of your app or cause them confusion. 

You not only want to match the look of your app to the rest of your branding, but you also want to keep elements in the app cohesive throughout your interface. For example, typefaces, buttons, and colors should be consistent on every page of the app. Every element should have both a native and branded feel to encourage user trust. 

---

About Hue & Tone Creative

Hue & Tone helps businesses of all sizes build credibility and connection with intentional design. Whether you’re looking to create a mobile app or a traditional website, we’re here to help your business grow through thoughtful design. Contact us to get started. 

Negative social media reviews can feel like a nuisance – but if they’re mishandled they can turn into a much bigger problem. But, handle them properly and you can even turn a doubter into a return customer. With the right response, you’ll have the opportunity to turn a bad situation into an opportunity – and you’ll be able to keep negative reviews from harming both your reputation and bottom line.  

It can be easy to get emotional when your business is being slammed online, but these days it is just part of doing business. Ghosting negative reviews or retaliating with something less-than-business-like just won’t do, and here’s why:

• 97% of customers read reviews before buying

• 89% see them as an essential pre-purchase resource

• 85% of all consumers actively look for negative reviews

• And 91% of consumers 18 to 29-year-olds look for negative reviews 

1. Take the emotion out of it

The bad review isn’t a personal attack on you and thinking that it is will only rile you up further.  So, put on your business cap and get in a good frame of mind before you start typing. 

We suggest thinking of online interactions just like you would in-person customer service interactions. Just because you’re not face-to-face with a customer, doesn’t mean you should treat it as any less important of interaction. In fact, your digital comments have much more potential to amplify than your in-person discussions, making it that much more important to treat them carefully. It’s not just the customer who sees your response, it’s their friends, your friends, and people who like your page. 

2. Act promptly

Want to take your good reviews one step further? Here’s how to create a killer case study.

We get everyone is busy, but it’s crucial that you make time to respond to your negative reviews -- and the sooner the better. This is important for a couple of reasons: 

1. It gives the customer less time to stew on their complaint and get even more worked up

2. Fewer people will come onto your page and see just their side of the story

3. It shows that you’re responsive and invested in their thoughts 

Don’t replace quality with speed of response though: It’s better to take 10 minutes to put together a well-thought-out message then it is to publish the first thing you think of. 

3. Restate the complaint

One of the first things the reviewer wants to know is they’ve been heard, so be sure to rephrase their complaint in your response. For example, if their review was something along the lines of “I was really unhappy with how long it took for my package to arrive.”

You could start yours with “Hi [name], We’re sorry to hear you weren’t happy with the delivery time for your package…”

4. Don’t play the blame game

It’s natural for your first instinct to be to give a reason behind why. Avoid responses like this:  

• “We were short-staffed because John was feeling poorly.”

• “One of our vans broke down so we were playing catch-up.” 

• “It was an unexpectedly busy period for us.” 

The reality is people don’t usually care why it happened and if you go down this road, they might think you’re just making up excuses. Instead, counter with something like: “This isn’t the standard of service we’re known for and we’d like to do everything we can to make up for it.”

5. Weave in some positives

It’ll give onlookers a reason to still choose you. Sticking with the delivery issue, this could be something like “We pride ourselves on timeline delivery – in fact, we delivered over 100,000,000 packages on time last year. We’re sorry to hear you didn’t receive the same punctual service we’re known for and we hope it won’t stop you from trying out our service again.” 

6. Offer a solution 

Tip: So that people don’t think you’ve gone silent, reply in the thread saying “We’ve heard your complaint and are going to send you a private message so that we can collaborate on a solution for this issue.”

Take the discussion offline to work out a resolution -- you don’t want to air it in public and for everyone to think that your answer is standard. And, if you say you’re going to do something, do it, otherwise, you’ll just end up with another angry review.

7. Ask them to edit it

If you’ve worked the situation out with your customer, it may be worth the risk of asking them to edit or update their review. We don’t suggest asking them to remove it completely, because you run into the risk of them broadcasting that you tried to keep them quiet. 

Also, remember to make this kind of request in private too, it’s not necessarily the type of thing you want either existing or prospective customers to see.

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Partners in social, design, and marketing

Need some social support? Just can’t handle one more bad review? You can count on us. From planning out your content to boosting your online presence, we’ll get your social media pages back on track. Get in touch at (336) 365-8559 or hannah@hueandtonecreative.com to figure out how we can partner together.

Don’t let your website slow down because of incorrectly sized images!

Sizing images incorrectly for your website can have a number of negative ramifications. Size them too small and they might look pixelated, but size them too large and they might impact the SEO for your site. Images that are too large can lead to slow load times, a higher bounce rate, and a lower SEO ranking.  

Putting time into figuring out the correct image resolution is worth your time, because high-quality visuals and a high-ranking site can say a lot about your brand. 

The trickiest part is there’s no such thing as a set size. Your feature images won’t necessarily match the dimensions of your homepage banner, full-width visuals won’t mirror blog post images, carousels will differ from collages...and so on.

 So, here are a few helpful hacks to help you figure out just what size your images need to be:

Use an extension

Tip: Chrome’s favored by most web developers and designers – if it’s not already your default browser, we suggest giving it a try! It’s especially handy if you’re in the process of building a new website.

For this trick, you’ll have to download and utilize Chrome as your Internet browser. If you don’t already use Chrome, you can download it here!

Once Chrome is downloaded and installed, you’ll also need to download Chrome’s image size extension. Once installed, you’ll be able to find out the size needed for every single element of your site.

Use the inspector tool

Another way to determine image size using Chrome is the inspector tool. This tool is built in, no extension or download needed. 

Step 1: Hit F12 or right click your mouse and go to “Inspect Element.”  

Step 2: Click on the image you’re looking to determine dimensions for, and you’ll be shown the information you need. Note that the first number is always the width.

 If you’re using another browser, you can still use this method, the process might just vary slightly -- here are a couple of video tutorials for Safari and Firefox users.

Bigger isn’t always better

 New to resolution? Read up on it in this blog.

Not sure which file format to use? Get the lowdown here.

In the world of print, the higher the image resolution the better. It results in a high-quality end product and has zero negative implications. When it comes to web that philosophy is flipped on its head. 

In the online world, large file sizes can hurt you --  they can slow your page load speed down, interfere with your visitors’ user experience and even damage your organic SEO rankings. You’ll want to use an image size that still appears crisp and clear – but isn’t so large that it negatively impacts your site. Here’s a few tips for striking that balance: 

• Find out the exact dimensions you need, and resize your images in Photoshop or Canva for a tailored photo size. 

• Try not to let large images or full-screen backgrounds exceed 1MB -- if it does, it could be a sign your dimensions or resolution are unnecessarily high.

• The recommended width for full-screen backgrounds is 2000px.

• Smaller images around your site - like thumbnails, blog headers and in-content pictures, should be no more than 300MB.

• If you’ve got the option in Adobe Suite, always ‘Save for web’ -- this will ensure your image’s saved at a web-friendly resolution by default. 

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Websites for Greensboro and beyond

Already feeling overwhelmed? Let us handle your web design for you. Whether you want support finding the right photography for your site, resizing what you’ve already got, or building your website from the ground up, we’ve got the solution. Reach out at (336) 365-8559 or hannah@hueandtonecreative.com to get the process started!

Google My Business is a super useful (and free!) tool which helps build credibility and visibility in organic search results by pulling your organization’s name, address, number, hours, and reviews when searchers are looking for your business – or a business in your category. 

Are you a Google My Business newbie? Then you might find this back to basics blog helpful first.

Given 50% of smartphone consumers visit a store within a day of their local search (and 18% of them make a purchase) Google Business is not a sales tool you want to miss out on. Having a Google Business account and updating it effectively is a low investment, effective way to leverage technology to your advantage. 

There’s no use having an account just for the sake of it though. If you want to get results you need to optimize it as best you can so we’ve come armed with tips to help you do just that.

1. Make sure all your info is complete

That includes your location, opening hours, business category and contact details. If you don’t have your location set-up, you’ll be harder for local searchers to stumble across. And, remember absent or incorrect business categories can hinder your ranking opportunities. 

Although a lack of hours and contact details won’t impact your visibility, they will make it more difficult for people to take that next step — and even small typos or minor missing information could equate to a potential lost customer.

2. Act on your reviews

Along with your location, reviews are a key ranking factor that help Google understand how people rate your business. So, make a point of asking customers to leave a review and respond when they do — whether it’s good or bad.

Don’t worry, leaving a review is incredibly easy, all people have to do is:

• Google your business

• Tap on your Google My Business listing

• Click the ‘write a review’ button

• Write the review

3. Answer questions - promptly

People can now ask questions on your listing for either you or members of the public to answer, and unanswered queries don’t exactly look great. Make a point of regularly checking in to see if any new questions have popped up and if they have, use it as an opportunity to really show off your expertise. 

Added bonus: Answering questions will help keep your profile active which can help improve your listing rank.

4. Use Google posts

Google posts let you highlight extra information (like upcoming events and special offers) and will redirect people directly to your website — which could help give your click-through rate a boost.

A few things worth noting:

• These posts pop-up immediately in your listing

• They’re removed from the default view after seven days or after the event date has passed

• You can’t schedule or bulk upload posts

5. Invest in your images

According to Google, businesses whose listings have photos receive 42% more requests for driving directions and 35% more clicks through to their site.

The moral of the story? Add high-quality, relevant images. We suggest uploading a mix of photos — for example, if you’re a bakery, you might want to add images of your:

• Storefront/seating areas

• Products

• Kitchen

• Customers 

Worried your photos look lackluster? Here are 10 tips on how to take professional-looking photos on your iPhone.

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Your Strategic Business Partners

Whether you need help with your words or your images we’re here to assist you. To see how we can help take your Google My Business listing to the next level (or just get it set up) get in touch at hannah@hueandtonecreative.com or (336) 365-8559.

In every city there are tons of realtors vying for the same business and that makes getting customers to seal the deal that much harder -- so don’t put yourself at a disadvantage by missing prime marketing opportunities.

For example, listings with high quality photos sell at or above their listed price 44% of the time? And, that 70% of homeowners prefer to list with someone who uses video marketing?

These five simple but seriously effective tips you could start sticking it to your competitors and winning more business right now.

1. Make your properties easy to share

New to social? Here are a whole load of real estate-specific tips.

By adding social sharing buttons (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram) to all your listings. Even if only a handful of searchers go ahead and share you’ll potentially open yourself up to 100s, if not 1,000s, of new prospects -- for free. 

Remember to make your sharing buttons super easy to see and use, because the harder you make it to find them the more chance people will click away from your site without taking action. 

2. Set up a referral program

Let past customers market for you by incentivizing them to recommend you to their friends with something like a $200 referral fee. If you decide to start a referral program remember to:

• Make it clear the fee’s only applicable if the person they referred actually buys or sells with you

• Promote your scheme across your email, social media and website campaigns, as well as on-site and in-person too
  

3. Support the community

Whether it’s a local athletics club, school or charity, get your name out there and support the community with some good old-fashioned sponsorship. 

Not only will you boost your brand’s awareness, but you’ll show people you’re a company who cares too -- and that can do wonders for your reputation, putting you a cut above your competition.

 

4. Don’t just use images

Not sure where to start? Check out part one, two and three of how to make professional videos on your iPhone.

With the starting stat in mind, think about branching out into the video world for your listings. It’ll:

•  Give you a chance to show your personality

• Cater to what you know people want

• Better showcase your listings

• Give you a competitive advantage (if your competition’s not already taking the lead)

5. Partner with a local organization

If you don’t ask you don’t get. So, see if you can open yourself up to new audiences by teaming up with, say, your local coffee shop and asking if you can buy them a new set of takeout containers with your branding on the front.

They’ll benefit from the free supplies and you’ll benefit from more exposure. Just remember to include key information like your:

• Name

• Logo

• Contact details 

And make sure the end finish looks top-notch -- after all, the quality of your marketing materials says an awful lot about your business, so if you’re going to do something (and want awesome results), do it properly. 

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Your Marketing Partners

The problem with all of the above? It requires time, resources, and expertise you might not have in-house. But don’t worry, we can fill those gaps for you. Get in touch at hannah@hueandtonecreative.com or (336) 365-8559 to see how.

The right font can work wonders for your brand by helping you connect with potential customers, hold peoples’ attention, and convey the right mood or feeling. But the wrong font can do quite the opposite -- allowing letters to get lost, making words difficult to digest, and alienating your artwork from your brand.

First off, What is Adobe Fonts?

In a nutshell, Adobe Fonts (previously Adobe Typekit) is a library of 1,000s of free and paid-for fonts for people to use directly on their website, sync with their Creative Cloud subscription, or both.

If Adobe’s your go-to for design work you’re probably already familiar with Fonts, but are you getting the most out of what it has to offer? Whether you’re a newbie or not, it’s got lots of features to help you save time and personalize your fonts -- and we’ll be covering our favorite features in this post.

Top tip: if you’re after even more recommendations, here are some of our favorites too.

1. Get a headstart with recommendations

If you’re a beginner at type design, Adobe has a recommendation tool to help you decide on fonts that are best suited for paragraphs or headings.

For those that are new to the font-selection world, you need something that’s easily legible across various mediums at a small size for paragraph copy, and for headings you can be more adventurous with bigger, bolder and more decorative styles -- that are still readable, of course.

2. Save time and filter fonts 

With so much choice at your fingertips scrolling through endless styles can be a pretty tedious and time-consuming task.,If you’ve got a good idea of what you’re after, cut out what you don’t want by filtering specific properties, like: 

• Weight - the thickness of the stroke

• Width - the width of the actual letters

• X-height - the ratio of lowercase letter height to uppercase letter height

• Contrast - the ratio of thick and thin strokes

• Standard or caps only - i.e. fonts that use lower and uppercase letters, or fonts that only use capital letters

• Default figure style - choose between Oldstyle (more old-fashioned) or Lining (more modern) for your numbers

3. Use the right font availability

What’s the difference? Web fonts are used directly on your site, and synced fonts are imported to your Typekit for in-program use on things like Photoshop and Illustrator. Discover how to install fonts here.

Whether your artwork’s for print or web should determine the font you use, which means it’s important you’re clear on the end-use from the outset.

To make choosing the right font easy Adobe differentiates between web fonts and synced fonts, so make sure you pick one from the right category.

4. Test your chosen font

Adobe’s ‘type tester’ feature allows you to see how your chosen font(s) look online before you add them to your kit and invest time into updating your design work.

To put this feature into practice, just head to the main browsing page where it says “Use fonts” and then click the “Web” tab when a pop-up appears. If you like what you see all that’s left to do is to add the font to your Typekit.

5. Use contextual alternates

Sometimes, certain glyphs can be a bit intrusive or distracting and the last thing you want is to jar readers as they’re scanning your copy -- but Adobe’s contextual alternates (calt) feature can help you overcome this.

It’s particularly useful when using script typefaces and it works by replacing default glyphs with better-performing alternatives.

Need help? You can find more about line and character spacing here.

6. Experiment with your spaces

If you’ve selected your font but you’re not 100% happy with the spaces between characters, lines and paragraphs, remember, you don’t have to settle with what you’re given as standard. To create something that gels perfectly with your page experiment with your gaps by opening the ‘Text properties’ box and playing around with the spacing options.

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Your partners in design

Still confused about what font to pick? If some (or all) of this post went over your head, we can help! Design is our forte and we’re known for helping organizations find their perfect font -- without fail. Drop us a line on hannah@hueandtonecreative.com to find out more.

More than 500 million people use LinkedIn every single day. On average, two professionals join the platform every second. Two-fifths of B2B social media leads come from LinkedIn. And 91 percent of executives rate it as their first choice for professionally relevant insights. 

What does all that mean? It means that there are a whole lot of people and organizations who are thirsty for your content and ready to connect.

But too often, LinkedIn users prioritize quantity over quality. Here’s one common misconception:

More posts = more visibility = more leads.

 Wrong. 

Your mindset should alwaysbe quality over quantity. After all, you’d rather have one post a week that generates 15 leads than seven a week that return nothing, right?

Here are some pointers to help you create lead-winning LinkedIn posts.

Tip 1: Don’t always include links

They take people away from the platform and LinkedIn doesn’t like that, and if LinkedIn doesn’t like something their algorithm is more likely to penalize your post. 

Remember, this also applies to videos. Instead of pointing people to your YouTube page upload it as a native video to please the platform you’re publishing on. 

New to videos? Here’s how to get started on your smartphone.

Tip 2: Focus on your length

The general consensus among users and LinkedIn professionals is that longer posts tend to perform better, so don’t be afraid of using your full 1,300 character limit. 

Not sure what to talk about? Steal some ideas here.

Tip 3: Use emojis

They stand out from the rest of your text and catch people’s attention as they’re scrolling down. But remember, moderation is key. Going emoji crazy every other word will just a) make your post hard to read, b) turn people off, and c) look a little childish.

Tip 4: Like what you post 

Of course you like it, that’s why you published it! But that’s not the reason. Liking your own comments and posts can help spread your content further around the platform.

Tip 5: Give a little, get a lot

Don’t expect an encore of engagement if you don’t ever do the same to others. Like and comment on other people’s posts and they’ll be more likely to return the favor.

Tip 6: Stick to text-only

Keep it simple with text-only posts. On average, they earn more comments and views than their image and video counterparts. 

Tip 7: Speak directly to your audience

Refrain from starting your post with words like “we” and “I”. Some better alternatives include:

• You

• Your

• How to

They put the focus onto the reader and show it’s all about helping them.

Tip 8: People do business with people

Give your audience a bit of insight into who you are and what you’re about - just be careful not to let these posts overpower your lead-generating ones.

Tip 9: Pick the right time

Sprout Social says the best time to post on LinkedIn is either between 9-10am or at 12pm on Wednesday...but don’t get too derailed by that. Different audiences have different behaviors, so before you get too stuck in a routine that may or may not be working do a bit of trial and error to see what works best for you.

---

 Hue & Tone: Social Media and Graphic Design

Whatever stage of social experience you have, whichever platform’s you are on and no matter what your goals may be, we’ve got the ingredients you need for social media success. Drop us a line on hannah@hueandtonecreative.com or give us a call on (336) 365-8559 to start improving your engagement today.

Be bold and stand out from the crowd with a good meta description.

When you’re creating an email campaign you probably put a lot of thought into your subject lines, right? Because you want as many people as possible to open them.

Well, when you write a blog post or product page, do you put just as much effort into your meta description?

No? Then you might as well just tell organic visitors to check out the next search result down.

What’s a meta description?

A meta description is a snippet of text (usually around 155 characters) that appears below your page’s title in search results. It advertises the content on that page and it’s your chance to tell people why they need to click through to your site - and not your competitors. 

Time and time again though, people leave their meta descriptions down to chance, banking on Google picking a killer excerpt from their page. But, if you want to smash your SEO targets, that just won’t do. 

A properly put together meta description can:

• Improve organic click-through rates

• Increase SEO-lead visits

• Reduce bounce rates

• Support conversion targets

How to write a click-worthy meta description

1. Keep an eye on your length: Make sure all your important information is in the first 155 characters. After that, there’s a good chance whatever you write will get truncated and no-one will see it. As with any type of writing, short, snappy and to-the-point wins every time.

2. Inspire action: Let searchers know what they’ll walk away with if they enter your site by clearly communicating key benefits and inducing a sense of urgency. 

For example, if it’s a blog on ‘Why meta descriptions are important’ don’t just start summarizing the page’s content, dive straight in with the benefits, a bit like this:

Increase your organic traffic, leads and conversions today by understanding and implementing the power of your page’s meta descriptions.

3. Include a call-to-action (CTA): Remember, your meta description is your sales pitch for the page it’s linked to, so make use of CTAs like you would with any other type of advert. Phrases like ‘learn more’, ‘get it now, ‘come on in’, and ‘try for free’ ought to do the trick.

4. Use relevant keywords: Don’t go keyword crazy by adding keywords into every other word because you think keywords are the answer to your keyword problems. See what we did there? Keep it natural. 

Generally speaking, Google’s more likely to use a meta description that includes text that matches all or part of a searcher’s query. 

As an added bonus, they’ll also highlight corresponding keywords making your listing even more compelling, like this:

 5. Make sure it matches your content: Luring people into your site with misleading meta descriptions won’t work; Google’s smarter than that and they’ve been known to penalize people for it.

It’s not just for Google’s sake though. Enticing visitors in under false pretences will just irritate them and result in more bounces straight back out as soon as they realize they’ve been taken for a ride, and that won’t do your reputation any favors.

---

Hue & Tone Creative: greensboro graphic design

If you know what you need to do but you don’t have the manpower to do it, we can help. We’re pros when it comes to creating copy and design that converts. Get in touch with the team at (336) 365-8559 or hannah@hueandtonecreative.com to take the first step.

Don’t let people say “peace” to your web page.

Your website traffic isn’t quite where you hoped it would be. You were way off last month’s email sign-up target. Your conversion rates are looking a little lackluster. And your blogroll of posts just isn’t getting read. Sound familiar?

When numbers aren’t being met most people jump straight to loading more money into PPC or churning out an extra email campaign a week. But have you ever tried putting the spotlight on your bounce rate? 

Get this metric right and you’ll set yourself up for the ultimate business journey: more traffic > more conversions > more money. Get it wrong though, and you may as well just point your visitors to your competitor’s site.

What does bounce rate mean?

The term bounce rate refers to the number of people who enter your site - either from Google, a social media ad, email campaign or otherwise, and exit before exploring any of your website’s other content. 

For example, someone types “real estate advice Greensboro” into Google. They land on a blog about house-hunting tips. After they’ve finished reading it, they hit the back button or close out of the browser without clicking through to any others pages. They’ve ‘bounced’ right back out.

Now you know what it is, to help you keep your bounce rate low and conversions high, we’ll be looking at:

• How it’s calculated

• How to find it

• Analyzing your data

• What a high and low bounce rate means

• How to improve your numbers

• Tracking your progress

So, let’s get started.

How is bounce rate calculated? 

The formula’s simple: the number of one-page visits on your site divided by the total number of visitors.

For Example: Yesterday, 2,000 people landed on your website’s homepage. Of those visitors, 700 left without interacting with any other of your site’s pages. Your homepage’s bounce rate would be 35%.

How to find your bounce rate

You can quickly and easily access the bounce rate of any or all of your site’s page on Google Analytics. Here’s how:

1. Sign-in to your account and select the site you want to look at.

2. From the homepage, you’ll see your site-wide bounce rate straight away:

3. To delve deeper and see your bounce rate for individual pages, head to the menu down the left of the screen and go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages / Content Drilldown / Landing Pages. Once you’ve done that, you should see a screen a bit like this: 

 More insights: 7 other metrics you should be looking at and the ultimate Google Analytics guide.

Within here you can start to get specific and fiddle with things like the date range, acquisition type, URLs, device, browser, location, gender, age, and more.

For a really detailed look at all the ways you can slice up your data, check out this in-depth guide.

Diving into the stats

Numbers are only the start of what you need to know — once you’ve located your bounce rate data, you need to root around to discover some trends and see what is and isn’t working for you. When you’re investigating your page numbers, ask yourself things like:

• Does the time of day impact bounce rates?

• Do certain sections of the site receive higher bounce rates than others?

• Does social media traffic receive higher bounce rates than organic?

• Are there any on-page patterns across low-performing pages?

After you’ve armed yourself with this type of intel you’ll be ready to start putting plans in place to boost your numbers - but we’ll talk about that in more detail a little later on.

What does a high or low bounce rate mean?

What constitutes a ‘good’ bounce rate varies from industry-to-industry and site-to-site. Here’s a rough guideline of what’s accepted as the norm though:

Type of website: Benchmark average bounce rate %

• Content websites: 40 - 60%

• Lead Generation: 30 - 50%

• Blogs: 70 - 98%

• Retail Sites: 20 - 40%

• Service Sites: 10 - 30%

• Landing Pages: 70 - 90%

And here are some figures by industry:

High bounce rates

Generally speaking, high bounce rates aren’t great. Think about it, if you were consumed by something you’d seen or read on someone’s site, you’d probably poke your nose around a few more pages, right? Well, that should be the aim of every single page of your site, and a high bounce rate could be a sign you’re not delivering. 

If you’re not sure where to start looking, here are a few things that could be contributing to your numbers:

1. Slow page load times - according to research, a two-second delay can equate to a 100%+ increase in bounce rate.
   

2. You’ve provided the visitor with everything they could possibly want and need on that one page alone. To see if this is likely to be true, check out the ‘Average time on page’ stats.
   
   If visitors have spent a decent amount of time on the page (say a couple of minutes) then they probably did spend the time needed to digest everything and get what they need. If it’s low though, say 10 - 15 seconds, they probably didn’t get past the first paragraph.
   

3. Luring people in with misleading title tags and/or meta descriptions and not giving them what they’re actually looking for.
   

4. Technical errors. If a visitor lands on a 404 page, for example, there’s not much encouraging them to stick around.
   

5. If the content on your page(s) is weak people will bounce straight back out and look for a stronger alternative - which is why quality is so important.
   

6. Poor user experiences (UX) can also be a deterrent. Whether you’re bombarding visitors with adverts, pop-up surveys, and/or subscription options, or your navigation set-up isn’t intuitive, both will make it harder to keep people on your site.
   
   

Low bounce rates

While low bounce rates on the whole are a good indicator your page(s) are performing well, if it’s suspiciously low (say 10%) it could be a sign there’s a technical error - usually, duplicate analytic codes are the cause.

What are duplicate analytic codes? 

Basically, this just means you have two sets of the same code on your site which results in two page view requests. The effect is Google Analytics then thinks two separate actions took place, disqualifying it from being called a bounce. 

Of course, you should celebrate successes and take credit where credit’s due, but just remember, if something looks too good to be true, it usually is.

How to improve your bounce rate

If you’ve identified a site-wide or specific-page problem with your bounce rate, here are 10 tips to give it a nudge in the right direction.

1.  Make your content more readable by looking at things like your font, paragraphs, and quantity of text.

2. Don’t bombard people with interstitials. They’re irritating.

3. Make your next desired action glaringly obvious. If visitors can’t see your call-to-action, they’re unlikely to click it.

4. Take a look at your design and branding. If your site looks naff, people might assume your brand’s naff.

5. Target the right keywords and write compelling - and accurate - meta descriptions. If you’re enticing the wrong type of organic traffic to your site, it’ll instantly impact your bounce rate.

6. Revisit your email, social, referral etc. databases, and make sure you’re attracting the right visitors. You can have the best website in the world, but if you’re not reaching your target market it won’t work.

7. Take whatever steps are required to reduce your page load speed; people don’t have time to sit around and wait.

8. Make sure every single element of your website oozes quality. If it’s not adding value, get rid of it.

9. Set any external links to open in new windows to minimize the risk of visitors not returning to your content.

10. Invest in a mobile-friendly site. Desktop versions can be a pain in the ass to navigate around on mobile, and that’s a one-way ticket to losing visitors. 

11. Introduce relevant landing pages that target high volume keywords. According to a study by HubSpot, companies with 40+ landing pages earn 12x more leads than those with five or less.

Track your progress 

Last but by no means least, don’t forget to track and analyze any changes you make. This will help you further hone in on what does and doesn’t work – then you can harness what you learn to improve other pages of your site.

 To keep your analysis orderly, it might be worth setting up a spreadsheet and recording things like:

• The URL of the page(s) you’re working on

• Bounce rates before any on or off-page modifications

• The date any changes were made

• What changes were made

• The bounce rate after your tweaks - just make sure you leave yourself a meaningful amount of time to get a true picture of whether or not it’s helped

 Try not to get too caught up on industry averages either. When determining what success means for you, keep on top of peaks and troughs and focus on your trends over time.

---

Hue & Tone Creative: Marketing for Greensboro and Beyond

Need some support with your site’s bounce rate? We’ve got you covered from every angle. Get in touch with the team at (336) 365-8559 or hannah@hueandtonecreative.com to see how our design, content, and campaign services could help. 

Picture this: you head to your local sports store to grab a new pair of sneakers. One of the assistants comes over and asks if you need help. You accept. While showing you the shoes, they point out their range of high-performance socks, insoles, and foam rollers. 

You walk out of the shop with the shoes you originally came for…and a three-pack of new socks too.

You probably didn’t realize it at the time, but you were just the subject of up-selling and cross-selling in person.

This tactic works well in person, but it works just as well online. There’s endless potential sales out there to seize -- but if you’re not grabbing these cross-sell opportunites with both hands, your business’ bottom line could be missing out.

To help improve the chance of upselling, we’ve compiled three proven cross-sell templates for you to tweak and use.

Opportunity #1: Right after a sale

Your very first cross-sell opportunity comes right after a new customer has made a purchase. We recommend sending out a thank you email — while you’re still fresh in the customer’s mind, offer them some complementary products.

For example, if you’re a DIY company and someone’s just bought a gallon of paint, why not highlight your paint brush, roller, and trays range? If they don’t already have them, odds are they’ll need them very soon… 

Sticking with the paint example, here’s some sample copy:

Hi [insert name],

Thanks a bunch for choosing us for your next DIY project. 

Your order’s been sent to the warehouse and should be on your doorstep in the next 2-3 business days.

If you need some more tools for the job, check out our range of [paint brushes, paint rollers, and paint trays]. 

If there’s anything else we can help you with, get in touch with our customer service team on [insert number].

Thanks again,

[Company X] team

Opportunity #2: when asking for a review

It’s good practice to check in with customers down the line and ask for a review. The review itself will not only help you attract more new customers, but it could help you improve your product or service too.

So, if you’re already doing this, take the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and steer them towards some more of your offerings. Here’s how you could do it:

Hi [insert name], 

Thanks for shopping with us recently. 

Here at [company name] we take what you think to heart, and we’re always looking for ways to build on what we’ve got. If you have just a minute to spare, we’d love to hear what you thought about your recent purchase. 

>LEAVE A REVIEW< 

If you liked what you got, these might just be up your street too:

[Reel of relevant product names and images]

We look forward to hopefully seeing what you say soon.

Thanks,

[Company X] team

Opportunity #3: promotional pitch

Your cross-sell efforts don’t always have to piggyback onto another of your email activities. You can also send emails when you have a sale happening, you want to promote a new product, or offer a discount on a certain service. You can send cross-sell pitches whenever you want, just make sure you don’t bombard your database with emails — and be sure to keep the products or service offers relevant.

Here’s an example to steal some inspiration from:

Hi [insert name], 

So, you’ve taken out our [insert service name] service, but have you ever considered our [insert service name] offering too?

If the answer’s yes then now’s the time to make your move, because we’re exclusively offering 15% off to existing customers!

By taking out our [insert service name]service, you’ll benefit from:

• Benefit #1

• Benefit #2

• Benefit #3

• Benefit #4

To claim your discount today, just use the code SUMMER2019 at checkout.

Thanks,

[Company X] team 

---

Hue & Tone: Email Design and Marketing

So, you’ve got the words, but do you have the design? Don’t worry if not, we can help you create kickass email templates that complement your content and encourage customers to re-convert. Interested? Then get in touch at (336) 365-8559 or hannah@hueandtonecreative.com.