Can you explain to our readers what GetResponse is all about – and how it might benefit them?
GetResponse is an all-in-one online marketing platform that helps companies of all sizes grow their business.
It offers a suite of tools to run and manage their online campaigns using email marketing, marketing automation, landing pages, webinars, forms, surveys, and more.
Since you’re in charge of content marketing projects at GetResponse, can you recommend some useful content for our audience and web rookies to check out?
Sure! We believe content can provide great value to our users and anyone else interested in online marketing. Whether you’re a web rookie or have already cut your teeth on online campaigns, I’ll happily recommend our blog and resources page. You’ll find plenty of articles, webinars, and reports there. For instance, we just published a brand new Email Marketing Benchmarks report.
You’ve been a blogging fan for a long time. What are your top three blogging secrets?
I’m not sure if they’re exactly secrets, but my top three blogging tips are:
Understand that blogging isn’t just writing. If you want to be good at it, you’ll want to learn the analytics and some SEO basics as soon possible. Keywords, content structure, and linking are just as important as a being a good writer.
Have a plan and analyze your existing content. Use tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console to check that your content clearly answers your audience’s questions. This will help you decide whether to create something new, or simply update existing content.
Think like your audience and see things from their perspective. This can be tricky if you’ve been at it for a long time. But to reach your audience, you need to see the content through their eyes. Try searching the web (such as forums, social media and other blogs), checking your own analytics dashboards, or talking to your audience – either directly or through your Customer Success and Sales teams. This should help you get into their mindset and produce content that’s most valuable to them.
What would you say are the three biggest mistakes people make with their email marketing campaigns?
1. Spending too little time on email campaigns – and doing them ad hoc. It’s very important to plan your campaigns, and ensure both the copy and design suit the emails. After running the campaign, take time to evaluate it – and optimize it for future sends.
2. Holding on to subscribers. Building an email list is hard, but just because you get permission to email someone doesn’t mean you should hold on to them forever. People change and so do their preferences. If they’re no longer interested in your content or services, just let them go. You’ll soon see your email deliverability and performance improve!
3. Sending the same thing to everyone. Marketers keep saying that targeting is important, but we still see few people making the effort to adjust email content to their recipients. Give it a go – alter the copy, images, or overall offer. You’ll soon learn what your audience really likes and responds to.
What advice would you give to someone struggling with email marketing campaigns? Where should they start and what should they focus on?
Take a step back and try to fix one problem at a time. If it’s related to a low subscription rate, work on your lead magnets, test your forms, or run a webinar to attract more prospects.
If the issue is low engagement, use an onboarding email series to start communicating with new subscribers – and analyze what content got better results. Then focus your attention on that.
And don’t forget to test your campaigns – whether it’s to improve open rates or click-through rates, or reduce unsubscribes. Make optimization part of your regular process, always testing different subject lines or changing the deployment time.
We always wrap up with a bit of fun. So, if you could have anyone (living, dead or fictional) contribute to the GetResponse blog, who would it be?
Donna Paulsen, a character from the TV series Suits. She always seems to know what’s going on – often before anyone else. I think she could help us foresee future trends, and get to know our audience and their needs better 
Photos ©: GetResponse.com
