5 Tips to Help You Write a Great Subject Line

By: Irangi Gamage

How often have you received emails that you immediately deleted? The subject line is your reader’s first impression and has the ability to persuade them to open the email. Consider the following tips to help you write a great subject line.

When deciding on a subject line, it is important to know your audience and the tone you want to convey. This will aid you in coming up with a great subject line that is as specific as possible, which in turn will increase both open and click through rates.

Having a great title for your content is crucial. However, when the content is being sent via email, a great subject line might be even more important than the title.

1. Personalization

A more personalized subject line could encourage the reader to open the email since they are being addressed directly. Including the addressee's name on the subject line for certain types of communications can work well as part of your strategy. Even having a simple “you” will make the email more personal.

Some examples:

• John, look what we found for you!
• Your personal promotion code ends this Saturday!

2. Short and Simple

It’s usually a good idea to keep your subject line as concise as possible.

Let the reader know what the article or communication is about. Create some curiosity, while keeping it brief. A subject line should typically be no more than 50 characters. These 50 characters should be simple, descriptive, and straightforward. This will avoid the frustration faced by readers who come across emails with long non-descriptive subject lines (Wordstream).

Short and simple subject lines:

• (Company name): Our next steps
• Monthly News and Events
• Your order has been received (which sounds a lot better than: 'order number 5379580138470238 has been received and is being processed’)

3. Clever and Clear

Sometimes when trying to be clever, the message loses clarity. A case study by AWeber Communications in 2011 found that a clear subject line gets 541% more clicks than a clever one. This is because not all clever lines are relevant to everyone, and the meaning is lost on some readers.

Clever subject lines:

• Don’t open this email
• It’s finally here!

A great subject line needs to be something that would give the reader a clear understanding of the contents of the email. At times, being as simple as possible will lead to positive results (Aabaco Small Business).

Clear subject lines:

• Please review us on Google
• 3 new products we are giving away!
• Grow your client list faster

4. Timing and Urgency

If your timing is right, then you have done half of your marketing right. Readers usually only read about things they are in need of at that moment.

Perfectly timed subject lines:

• Uh oh! Your subscription just ended
• Where to drink beer right now (sent at 6:30 pm on a Friday evening)

Creating a sense of urgency is extremely important, as this will encourage readers to read the contents when they receive the email. If there’s an offer time period or a limited supply, this will create a sense of urgency with customers (Hubspot).

Creating a sense of urgency:

• Save 50% if you purchase by tonight
• Buy one and get one free: limited supply

5. Words to Omit

There are certain words that should be avoided when writing a subject line, as certain words might place your email directly in the spam folder.

Omit words similar to these:

- Reminder	- Help	- Earn $	- Buy	- Cash	- Urgent	- Free
- Claim	- Clearance	- Prescriptions	- Biz	- Income	- Millions	- Collect

UpOnline Examples

Here are some great subject lines we have used in our UpOnline newsletters in the past:

• Are your patients satisfied?
• What are your business goals for 2016?
• Looking to increase practice reviews and referrals?
• We want to hear from you!

Take these into consideration when writing a subject line for your emails to increase the appeal of your emails to your clients. It is also extremely important that the content within the email is relevant and is consistent with the subject line. Finally, having a call to action in the email is equally important as this will encourage customers to take action right away!

For example: You can subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date with everything you need to know about improving your business’s marketing.

What You Need to Know About Google's Penguin 4.0 Update

    By: Mahnoor Awan

On September 23, 2016, Google announced Penguin’s 7th and final update, calling it Penguin 4.0. Penguin is a filter that captures websites who use black hat webspam practices to boost their ranking on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Black hat webspam practices are aggressive SEO tactics that include techniques like keyword stuffing, invisible text, and paid links, among others. Once the Penguin filter catches it, Google then penalizes those sites by lowering their rankings.

With this new update, Penguin is now part of Google’s core algorithm, along with 200 other unique signals or clues it relies on to rank websites on SERPs.

Penguin 4.0’s two major changes:

Real-time Changes

Previously, if sites were blacklisted by Penguin, they remained penalized even if site owners corrected issues and the sites were recrawled and reindexed, until Google resynchronized its Penguin data with the other algorithms, at intervals.

With this update, now as soon as the robots crawl, they will see if a web page is using link schemes or keyword stuffing, or if they have good quality content and good user experience, and ranking results will be updated in realtime.

This is also why Google no longer feels the need to announce Penguin updates.



How often does Google's Robot Spiders crawl web content to update SERPs?

According to Google Webmaster blog, the robots crawl based on an algorithm - so it’s computers controlling, not humans. This algorithm that takes robots to websites, is based on many variables like number of visitors, PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as number of parameters in a URL.



More Granular

Through this update, the robots will now monitor the content within the websites, and individual webpages. If it finds an issue with a certain page, the SERPs will adjust ranks based on offending pages, and not the whole site.

So, for example, given Webpages A and B within the same site. If page A has good quality content and page B has keyword stuffing, when the robots crawl the website, page A won’t be affected in the ranks but page B will be blacklisted. If corrective measures are taken for page B, the next time robots crawl the website, page B will be removed from the blacklist.

How Does this update affects your SEO practices?

This update shouldn’t really affect your SEO practices as such. However, if through some error, one of your web pages are deemed as using black hat practices, it won’t necessarily affect your whole website. Further, even after you correct those mistakes, you won’t remain penalized until the next Penguin synchronization event. Instead, as soon as you make those changes, and the robot spiders crawl your page, the change will be seen immediately.

The best practices to follow here would be:

• Constantly audit your links by checking for broken links
• Perform clean-up where necessary
• Create quality website content, focusing on brand building and great user experience

To learn more about building a brand, click here to read our blog.

Need help in creating quality web content? Contact UpOnline to learn more about our Custom Website Design services.

5 Ways to Publicly Respond to a Bad Online Review

By: Mahnoor Awan

In this digital age, an online review can spread like wildfire. According to 2015 survey findings by a UK based search company, 92% of consumers read online reviews and 40% of them base their opinions by reading the first few reviews. This means, if a bad review is up in the top three, it could have a negative impact on your company. One way to combat a negative review is to respond to it.

The way you respond to a bad review will directly affect your business’ reputation. So, it’s important that your message is informative rather than reactionary.

Do you remember Amy’s Baking Company who appeared on Kitchen Nightmares? Instead of responding to bad reviews with a level head, they ended up arguing and threatening customers online.

Well, don’t worry, they’re closed now! Just so you don’t end up like them, we have put together a few guiding points for you to consider before you respond to your customers’ negative comments.

1. Don’t be Defensive

   If you read a bad review for your company, naturally you will be upset or even angry. Your first response could possibly be to justify the situation and state all the reasons why the upset customer is wrong. This may lead to an online argument, and could eventually turn ugly, in turn making your company look bad for potential customers.
   
   So, the very first thing you can do is to cool down and be calm, instead of responding immediately with the first thing that comes to your head. (Especially with the way the Twitter community doesn’t waste a minute to call a company out for their bad behavior, it is really important to stay calm and collected.)
   
   Don’t be defensive, but tackle the situation with a level-headed attitude and an open mind because this could be an opportunity for your company to better itself. This leads to our next point.



2. Take Negative Comments Seriously

   Another important thing that you shouldn’t be doing is ignoring a bad review. It is already unfortunate enough that someone had a bad experience with your company. Most of the customers are not out there to ruin the reputation of your company. They genuinely want to express their concerns or opinions about their experience.
   
   Investigate the situation the customer is talking about. Give merit to your customer’s experience. This could actually be an opportunity for the company to treat it as a learning experience. The negative comment could actually shed light to a particular problem in an area of your company that you may not be aware of, and because of that comment, now you can make some changes.
   
   
Here is an example of a customer experiencing a technical issue with Zipcar and how they responded:


3. Be Polite and Professional

   When responding to the customer, make sure your tone is polite and professional. It is important to be emotionally intelligent and not take the comments personally.
   
   Respond in such a way that makes you look in control and not shaken by what people have to say (even if you are and you feel like screaming and crying!). Start with thanking them for taking out the time to provide you with valuable feedback for the product/service they received. State the company’s broad goals and objectives, and how you will take the customer’s feedback into consideration, to try and improve to avoid such situations in the future.
   
   Here is an example of how a restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana, responded to a customer’s review by stating the company’s mission statement, while also sincerely apologizing.
   

4. Empathize

   When a customer writes a bad review, quite often they just want to express all the hardships they had to go through, when they were actually expecting something completely different. Instead of just stating facts of what went wrong with the situation, try to understand the customer’s point of view.
   
   Empathize with them or their situation, responding with phrases like, “that would make me really upset too” or “I would be frustrated too.” And definitely apologize. Be sincere with your apologies. Sometimes all a customer needs is understanding and apology and it will make them happy.

5. Offer An Incentive

In the end of your response, if possible, offer a recourse action or incentive that the company could offer to the dissatisfied customer. It could include a refund, a discount, or coupon for future purchases. Here is an example of how Jet Blue Airways responded to a customer’s negative review with a free upgrade.



@kricketchirps We hope you decide to fly with us again. We'd like to upgrade you to Even More Space seats as a gesture of good will... 1/2

— JetBlue Airways (@JetBlue) October 20, 2016

All in all, receiving a bad review isn’t the end of the world. A bad review won’t make or break your business but it’s important to respond and show that you are paying attention to the customer’s wants and needs.

However, before responding to a review, make sure you know the guidelines for the online review site. Quite often, if the review does not meet the proper guidelines, like for instance it has profane language, they delete it themselves.

If you feel like the review is not written by a customer themselves, or is defamatory, you can contact the online review site to get it removed. Keep in mind that this does take time.

Interested in how you can create and manage reviews for your business? We can help. Contact Uponline about our Reputation Management Services.

Best Question Types to Ask on a Survey

We have all been asked to participate in a survey at one time or another, whether it was when you went to a restaurant, visited a website, or bought a product. When asked to participate in a survey, initial reactions vary depending on a number of factors, we’re often always in a rush, someone had a rough day, or you’re just enjoying some free time with your friends and don’t want to be disturbed. But when asked properly and weigh the balances of time and feedback, successfully completing a survey gives useful insight into the mind of the customer. White it usually only takes a couple of minutes to fill out a survey, hours of thought have gone into perfecting the questions included in it.

Most information collected through a survey is extremely important to a business as surveys are used to collect data on customer wants and needs.

Surveys help answer the questions businesses have by encouraging discussion and feedback with customers. This in turn allows businesses stay competitive by adapting to the ever changing customer tastes and lifestyles. (SnapSurvey)

Surveys are usually not composed of just one type of question. Usually, a survey will have multiple types of questions and answers. Whether you’re planning your own survey or just want to understand the thinking behind most survey questions, the 4 types of questions that are most effective and commonly used in surveys are explained below.

1. Open-Ended Questions

If you have ever filled out a survey after dining at a restaurant, you are probably familiar with questions like "What did you enjoy the most about our restaurant?". You have likely come across questions such as “What products would you like to see on our website?” when you are shopping online. Then there are the general question we ask each other like “Why did you decide to buy X?” that would lead to a more in-depth conversation that offers to pull more information from the respondent.

These types of questions are open-ended questions and allow the participant to elaborate on their answer. They are typically used when a fixed set of answers can not commonly include all the acceptable alternatives. Open ended questions are best when used at the beginning, as surveys are most effective starting from general questions that would lead up to more specific ones.

Asking open-ended questions will increase the time it takes to complete the survey, so keep in mind that while you may be able to capture more detail, you are creating a more taxing experience for the respondent and might reduce the number of surveys completed. Likewise, it can be extremely difficult to analyze the data collected from open-ended questions since the answers will vary immensely.

2. Multiple-Choice Questions

A multiple-choice question has fixed-alternatives for the participant to choose from. Some examples of these types of questions are:

Why Uber Is Successful

Uber has quickly become one of the most recognizable and controversial brands in the world. Originating in 2009, the San Francisco ride sharing service connects riders and drivers with its easy to use app, making it simple to grab a ride without the indignity of trying to find a cab in the middle of the night. Catering to the tech savvy crowd, it quickly gained early adopters who spread the word of a new and better way to travel through online blogs and publications. News outlets soon caught wind. Gone was the era of overpriced cabs, replaced by it was a sleek black sedan, discreetly greeting the designated traveler at the side of the curb.

Uber is impressive not because it hasn’t experienced any missteps during its nearly seven year reign as the go to ride sharing service (it has been accused of surge prices during crisis situations, and drivers have been charged for sexually attacking female passengers, cities have banned the service, criticizing it for being “illegal” not to mention its many contentious battles with the taxi industry.) Uber is impressive because of the way it managed to challenge the status quo and still come out on top despite an increasingly crowded and competitive space. Don’t want to grab an Uber? How about a Lyft instead? BTW Google wants in on the whole ride-sharing thing too. A huge amount of Uber’s capital goes directly to setting up a local presence in many cities and arming a fleet (mind the pun) of lawyers to do battle with one municipality at a time. They have managed to set themselves apart from the pack, cultivating a brand that is deemed cool, giving its drivers decent cash flow so they can ‘pursue their dreams’ and providing riders with a superior ride sharing experience.

Below are just a few ways Uber has been successful in growing and expanding its business

1. Identifying a need and providing a stellar experience

Great businesses are able to identify a customer need and form an agile solution. Uber was able to recognize how customers felt cabs were over-priced, and not only that, didn’t do a good job of creating a solid customer service. With Uber, integrated with Google Maps, a rider was able to see, in real-time, how many Uber drivers were nearby, how long they would take to get to the rider’s destination, and even chose what type of vehicle they wanted for a far more reasonable price. This app allowed riders to customize their transportation experience and was incredibly efficient for those in a hurry. And to make things even better and really provide that ‘wow’ factor that encourages repeat business, Uber also implemented a review system that made riders and drivers accountable for creating a solid transportation experience. Hate having to fiddle around for change at the end of a ride? No problem. Uber’s default payment method is online payment after you link your credit card information to their app.