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How To Use Storytelling Marketing
Emailing your guests is a great way to keep them involved with your brand, but problems arise if you are continuously sending guests similar messages with bland content. This can cause your emails to be ignored and lead to a decrease in your open and click rates. Start spicing up your emails! Use your creativity to start sending more engaging content to your guests. One way to show off your creativity and put something new in your guest’s inbox is through storytelling marketing. Our whole world is a narrative and your business should be as well. Storytelling marketing gives your business a character and a memorable personality. Your guests are more likely to remember your promotion when you tell an engaging story in your email. Try telling a story about your business to make the guest read your entire email and retain more information. Keep your story concise and avoid making your email so text heavy that your guest loses interest. How to begin telling your story To have a good story you need: a character, a problem or obstacle, and a final solution. The character could be your store in general, or you could choose an employee that is […]
Raise Your Revenue This Holiday Shopping Season
The season for holiday shopping is here! With the challenges and upheavals of 2020, the holidays are a great opportunity for businesses to win back customers and increase spending with current customers who are checking off their holiday gift lists. Advertise through the holiday shopping season For the holidays, the average consumer will have $821 to spend on gifts, 25% of which is spent on personal care gifts. Advertise your inventory so your guests know that they can use your salon or store as a one stop shop to get some of their holiday shopping done during their next visit. Offer gift card deals, product incentives, or curated product gift bags to show guests that pampering is an excellent gift to give! Don’t forget to advertise to younger consumers. 18-24-year-olds spend 32% of their holiday funds on giving the gift of pampering. Gift cards are a great way to get guests in now and encourages them to bring a friend. This will help expand your loyal customer base. Post on your social media platforms to reach the younger crowds and remind them that your products and services will make fantastic gifts for their friends and family. Keep your inventory stocked […]
Employee Engagement in a Remote Work Environment
The workplace environment continues to drastically change, as social distancing and safety concerns are still a reality. A lot of companies are realizing that remote work can work. For example, take a look at REI, who recently completed an 8-acre corporate campus outside of Seattle. Despite this lofty investment, they have decided that the status quo work environment is no longer the best fit for our new reality. They are now looking to sell their headquarters and will instead have satellite campuses throughout the metro. Although your business may not be an REI, the reality still may hold true that a remote working culture needs to be seriously considered as potentially the new norm. For this new reality, how do you keep a team attitude and engagement with your employees? Thankfully there are many ways but you may need to start “thinking out of the box.” At SmartBase, we have largely been a remote work environment, however when Covid-19 hit in March, we have been exclusively working from home. It was always at the top of our list to make sure we did our part to support our employee’s engagement, mental health and ease in communication. We have included some […]
Security Considerations with a Remote Workforce
Like many other businesses, SmartBase quickly shifted to a 100% remote workforce this spring when the pandemic was picking up steam and remains primarily remote at this time. We already had a very extensive work from home policy and were very well prepared to make the shift to 100% remote, utilizing our secure private cloud and current policies and procedures. One of the greatest concerns for any business when making that shift to a remote workforce is security. What controls do I need to put into place for my team and their devices to ensure that my environment is as secure as possible for a remote workforce? A good way to look at this is, all of your policies and procedures should account for remote team members and apply no matter where the individual is working. The biggest risk in any network is people, not someone being malicious, but making a mistake such as browsing to a dangerous website, clicking on a dangerous link, opening a dangerous attachment, or responding to a phishing email while believing they’re conversing with someone on your leadership team; these are the things that keep your IT team awake at night. Some best practices you […]
Re-Opening during Covid-19
States are slowly starting to reopen after months of a stay at home order. There is a buzz of excitement as people are allowed to get outside again after a long, mandatory shutdown of many small and large businesses. As the world starts to reopen, it is critical to be aware the best approach in communicating to your guests to get them to return to your business and make up for months of lost revenue. When reaching out to your guests, it’s important to be authentic and empathetic. It’s key to have an understanding tone in your communications since this pandemic has affected everyone in one way or another. It is also just as important to be aware of things to avoid when reaching out to your guests. COVID19 pandemic should not be used as a marketing tool. Stay away from having a “COVID Sale” or using COVID as any sort of code in a coupon. As states reopen, guests are getting a plethora of emails. When conducting an email blast for your guests, keep in mind how much of that email your guests will read. While all the information is important, make sure to highlight what they need to […]
Engaging with Clients during Covid-19
As the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to spread, it’s necessary that store owners are prepared to proactively and properly communicate to customers and the public. In many cities and states, governments have banned gatherings of over 50, and in some cases 10 people. Many have also required most “non-essential” service businesses like restaurants, bars, hair salons, etc. to close temporarily. Under these circumstances, the tone of communications to clientele is imperative to make sure you get your customers back in the door. Additionally, with constantly evolving regulations, it is a great way to continue a relationship with your clients and keep them aware of your status as a business. To help our customers and brands think about how and what to communicate during these times, we want to provide a few key points to consider for future COVID-19 communications. 1. Review All Current Client Communications Scheduled E-mails Automated E-mails SMS Communications Social Media Make sure the subject matter is not inappropriate or irrelevant for the current health emergency. Pause any campaigns that may not be relevant during the crisis. 2. When Should You Communicate? If your company has already sent a COVID-19 update to your customers, you’ll likely need to provide […]
Get the Most Out of Your E-mail Marketing
Effective E-mail Marketing Retailers, service providers, and others are constantly trying to balance staying relevant in consumers’ inboxes but not over-saturating them. Although there has been an increase in the ability to market to individuals via text messaging, E-mail is still an effective marketing channel because of its ease of use and low cost. That being said, there are some best practices that will help you avoid going straight into the junk folder or getting deleted. Best Practices for E-mail Marketing Subject Lines Given the volume of E-mails the average consumer receives, it is more critical than ever to have differentiating subject lines. Avoid all uppercase, emoji’s, or other extreme measures as a means to catch the eye of the reader. Those methods can make your E-mails more susceptible to getting flagged as spam. Keep E-mails short whenever possible. If there is a promotion or offer inside the E-mail, that should be noted in the subject line. Content Now that you have caught the eye of the reader, it is just as important to retain their engagement with a strong message in the body of the E-mail. In today’s environment, you have a very short window to draw the […]
Big News: SmartBase Solutions Acquired Group 3 Marketing
SmartBase Solutions is excited to announce an acquisition of assets from Group 3 Marketing (G3M), a database marketing agency based in Minnesota. G3M provides a suite of marketing, database management, and fulfillment services for national brands by deploying loyalty programs on their database marketing platform. They focus on building customer loyalty for specialty retailers, internet retailers, and B2B marketers. [View the full press release here.] 2016 has been a year for growth at SmartBase. We’ve invested heavily in technology, people and strategy to create stronger solutions, provide better support for our clients and ultimately grow our business. Several weeks ago, we came upon an opportunity that we knew would be a perfect fit for mutual growth. We saw the potential in G3M’s talented staff as well as their strong technology platform. Powered by our SmartBase IQ data platform, G3M’s database marketing technology will be supercharged, enabling more opportunities for innovation and data-driven results for our clients. “As SmartBase Solutions continues to meet the changing needs of our clients, the addition of Group 3 Marketing capabilities and expertise aligns well with our growth strategy centered on data analytics and personalized marketing communications,” said Kris Lynch, SmartBase’s CEO. As we bring the G3M technology under our roof, we are doing our best to […]
More Big Data Analytics Events That You Shouldn’t Miss in 2016
Last November, we created a list of the Top 10 Big Data Analytics Conferences You Need To Know About in 2016 and it became a helpful guide for professionals wanting to navigate to the right analytics events this year. That list focused on the first half of 2016, so we’ve returned to finish what we’ve started. Here are our top picks for Data Analytics Events for 2016: June Big Data Tech 2016 When: June 7th 2016 Where: Bloomington, MN -> See more analytics events in the Twin Cities. Speakers: TBA Hashtag: #BigDataTech Tickets: Free, not yet up for grabs! Marketing Analytics Conference When: June 23-24th 2016 Where: Austin, TX Speakers: American Express, Prudential, Kellogg’s, Zappos.com, Facebook, Forbes Hashtag: #MAC2016 HURRY – May 3rd is the Early-Bird pricing cutoff! August Sports Analytics Innovation Summit When: August 23-24th 2016 Where: San Francisco, CA Speakers: US Soccer WNT, Gatorade, Oakland Raiders, Utah Jazz, Colorado Rapids Hashtag: #SportsSF September Healthcare Analytics Summit When: September 6-8th 2016 Where: Salt Lake City, UT Speakers: Allina Health, Health Catalyst, Stanford Health, Multi-Care Health System, John Hopkins Hashtag: #HAS16 October Chief Analytics Officer Fall Forum When: October 4-6th 2016 Where: New York, NY Speakers: State Farm, Mount […]
Upcoming Data Analytics Events in the Twin Cities
The Twin Cities have become a hub for awesome data analytics events, in large part due to user groups like Minneanalytics, but also because MN organizations have realized the value of data analytics and are trying to figure out how to make it work for them. A few of us from SmartBase attended the People Analytics Conference [PACON] last week, organized by Minneanalytics. While our team often helps clients use their data to streamline business processes and make business decisions, it was interesting to hear the specifics of how Human Resource departments from around the US are leveraging people data. PACON gave us the opportunity to geek out about data but also learn from our peers – something that we find extremely valuable. We want to share that value with you! We’ve compiled a list of upcoming analytics events in the Minneapolis/St Paul area – some that we’ll attend and others we only wish we could. [Has anyone invented a way to add more hours to the day?] Here they are: Big Data and Analytics University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis Campus: Terrence Hall #252 Wednesday, April 13, 2016 from 5:30 – 7:30 PM (CDT) 1000 LaSalle Avenue Terrence Murphy Hall: Room 252, Minneapolis, MN 55403 The Details: ACHE-MN Chapter has […]