Ending a marriage is never an easy decision to make. The mental, emotional, and financial damage that it leaves spouses and their children can take many years to heal. One of the messier aspects of separation involves dividing the family assets between separating spouses. Regardless of whether exes end a marriage amicably or not, getting the help of a family attorney is strongly recommended especially if they share a business together. [Read more…] about The Impacts of Divorce on a Family Business
4 Different Kinds of Business Insurance
Running a business comes with a host of responsibilities and challenges. Whether you are the CEO of a huge corporation or the owner of a small business, you know how important it is to keep operations running smoothly and protect yourself from liability while doing so. The best protection against liability is being informed and cautious of certain risks, but even the most careful business owner cannot completely eradicate liability. Business insurance fills the gaps and ensures that you will not be derailed if a risk comes to fruition. There are several kinds of business insurance you should know about.
The following are perhaps the four most important types of insurance for a business, so familiarizing yourself with them is the first step to finding the right policy for your company. Consider your company’s needs carefully and take the time to find the Baltimore business insurance policies that are right for you. Insurance is an investment, and you should be confident in your choice.
Property Insurance
You might think that property insurance is only a necessity if you own the space that you use for business. On the contrary, whether you lease or own, you should have insurance protecting you from the many liabilities of working on a given property. A good business property insurance will cover any potential damage that is done to the property as well as the value of the furniture, stock, equipment and tools that are housed in the building. Without this coverage, you could be liable for costly damages, and the expenses add up quickly.
Workers’ Comp Insurance
Many business owners consider their line of work to be minimally risky and do not consider the possibility that employees could, in fact, be injured on the job. If you manage an office, for example, you might disregard the potential for injuries such as carpal tunnel. In reality, there is potential for injury in every industry, which is why companies need to invest in worker’s compensation insurance. Workers’ comp claims can be expensive for employers, but you can mitigate the potential cost of such a situation by finding a policy to cover your liability in the event of a claim.
Professional Liability Insurance
Professional liability insurance is also called errors and omissions coverage. It typically protects a business from the liability of general mistakes and failure to perform at an established standard. This is a very generalized form of insurance that is typically tailored to the specific industry and type of business you manage. It is intended to protect businesses from the expense of a negligence claim or civil suit brought by a client. It is one of the most important kinds of Baltimore business insurance your company can invest in, and it can save you from the expense of an unhappy client.
Business Interruption Insurance
It is every business owners’ worst nightmare to have disaster strike and find yourself unable to sustain operations. Disaster may come in the form of an extreme weather event or some other incident that interrupts the normal flow of business. In such cases, this form of insurance protects you from the loss of income that would result. In addition to covering lost income, this type of policy will typically cover the expenses associated with recovering from the incident, too. Needless to say, it is an important policy to have on your side if disaster were to strike.
Your business is important, and you do not want to see it derailed by the expenses of various liabilities. In addition to general carefulness, investing in a robust insurance policy is the best way to keep your company safe from the financial risks of doing business.
Email Marketing For Small Business in 2018: What You Need to Know
According to Statista, there are 3.7 billion email users in 2018, and Optinmonster’s research shows that 85% of people (both young and the mature) use email.
Image Credit: Optinmonster
So despite some marketer predictions, email marketing still trumps.
And will continue to for many years.
Besides, it is the only current medium to tie all lead generation tactics together.
Why email marketing still trumps (on condition…)
Even after 23 years from it’s inception, email marketing remains the number #1 lead generation method. Smart Insights states that, “email receives 30 times return on investment on averageâ€.
Email may still achieve results after 23 years, but outdated email marketing tactics will not; competition is too fierce and people already suffer from information overload.
For example, the average office worker receives 121 emails every day, and many of those remain unopened or trashed. Bearing this in mind, to be effective, your email strategy needs careful planning to:
- Get people to even open them
- Keep people engaged enough to read the content of the email
- Make sure they remember why they put their trust in you in the first place
- Keep them opening and reading your emails every time they are received
Having said that email marketing remains the best lead generation tactic in 2018, it is only effective with a well thought out strategy that leads readers through the sales funnel to purchase.
Image Credit: Chatbot News Daily
The prospect comes into the email marketing system from the awareness stage of the sales funnel. The email marketing strategy has to gently push him through to the stage of action.
It’s important to understand that:
- It takes on average between one and three months to close a sale, so your email marketing strategy needs to cater to that.
54% of marketers say that their number one priority is to keep people on their email list engaged, which shows that it’s easier to get people on your email list, but difficult to keep them engaged with your email content.
The effectiveness of email marketing is dependent on an effective strategy.
Most profound email marketing trends in 2018
Subject headers
This was thrown in because although it’s not a trend per se, if you want people to open your emails in 2018, the subject header needs to earn its keep.
People check their email about 20 times a day, so that’s no problem. The problem is getting your content read, and the only thing stopping it is the subject header.
Neglect this and your email is headed for the trash.
Data enrichment
Cold emailing campaigns have an overall response rate of 15.22% and 28.46%, so are considered a good lead generation method, depending on industry.
When cold emails are personalized with data enrichment (i.e. emails include snippets beyond the most basic ones like “first name†or “companyâ€), response rate can increase by 10%, as Woodpecker found.
Mobile optimization
If your emails are not optimized for mobile, 80% of readers will delete them. In addition, 63% of people are willing to act and make a purchase via mobile, but it has to be easy to do so. (Source)
Buckle found a 146% increase in email campaign conversion after switching to mobile responsive email designs.
Make sure the email template you are using is optimized for mobile, and that the page URL where users are directed to from emails, is also mobile optimized.
Value-add content
When companies first started email marketing in the 90’s, people were still fairly fascinated by email.
And so you would think that email response rates would have been higher then.
However, the average response rate in the 1990’s was actually less than the average response rate in 2018, so it could be assumed that due to low competition and traditional sales techniques, the content of sales and marketing emails provided relatively low value and included messages that were purely sales-focused.
Today, marketers have a greater understanding of the value of content and their emails reflect this.
But since 54% of email marketers report that engagement is a key concern for them, the majority may still need to ramp up the value of their content.
Knowing your audience intimately is vital to understanding their needs and therefore the kind of content you should be providing by email to warm up prospects and build trust.
Take this into account when preparing your email marketing strategy.
List segmentation
When you narrow your focus and send emails that are relevant for the right people, you’ll see an increase in response rate.
Zapier describes list segmentation as, “Personalization is the purpose of list segmentation: you slice your email list into segments based on what you know about each user—like their buying habits, familiarity with your company, and professional background—then you send each segment of people personalized information.â€
Mailchimp conducted a study of more than 2000 of their users, and found that segmented campaigns achieved a 14.1% increase in response rate, and a 100.95% higher click rate.
Conclusion
Although some marketers have predicted that email marketing will die, it’s still very much alive.
However, for email marketing to be effective in 2018, it has to be carefully strategized and based on user needs and desires. To this effect, these 5 elements are of utmost importance:
- Catchy subject headers
- Emails should be personalized with data enrichment
- Emails must be optimized for mobile
- Email content must provide value
- Email lists should be segmented into groups
Which careers benefit the world around you most?
When it comes to choosing a career to move into, you may feel that you want to work in a job that benefits society as a whole. Luckily, this is not hard as roles such as this come in many shapes and sizes. For society to work across the globe, these types of jobs that helps others are vital and the people who choose to do them indispensable.
But why are they so important? Careers in this mould are essential for looking after everyone’s health and preserving life in some cases. They keep us fit and healthy in order to live a longer, happier life. Other careers that help people are based around education to impart knowledge to the next generation or services that help people in times of personal need. [Read more…] about Which careers benefit the world around you most?