Why Your Employees Leave And How to Stop Them |  |
- Why Your Employees Leave And How to Stop Them
- 12 Tips: Stay Out of Spam Filters, Run a Successful Email Marketing Campaign
- 4 Ways to Conduct Market Research with Google
- EU Cookie Laws: Why You Will Be Seeing More Cookie Consent Messages
| Why Your Employees Leave And How to Stop Them Posted: 30 May 2012 11:00 AM PDT Did you know that almost one-fourth of all new hires leave their companies within one year of coming on board? A new study of 500 HR professionals by Allied Van Lines, reported in Business News Daily, found that the blame for this high turnover can't be blamed solely on the economy or demographics. Instead, Allied found that failure to properly train, mentor and acclimate new employees to the workplace was a key reason behind their moving on.
Employee turnover costs companies substantially, the survey found. The average cost for filling one position was $10,731. But despite the financial hit from high turnover, the majority of companies still spend far more on recruiting and advertising for new employees than they do ensuring that the employees receive proper training. Allied Van Lines found that the average company spends just $67 per employee on "onboarding." Companies considered "best-in-class," however, spent nearly twice that amount, and their employees were far more likely than those at the average company to stay with the business for at least one year, become leaders within the business, and meet or surpass productivity goals. The survey also found that although fewer than one in five companies has a dedicated budget for onboarding new employees, those that did have dedicated budgets were nearly twice as likely to be successful at retaining new workers. Survey respondents said the three most common reasons new employees leave within a year are:
Despite these issues, few companies in the survey were taking steps to deal with these problems. Only 66 percent of companies in the survey train new employees. Fewer than half (44 percent) have coaching or mentoring programs. Some 42 percent fail to clearly identify performance expectations or even job titles; just 32 percent set goals for employees to follow to advance in their careers. How can your business avoid rapid turnover?
Don't wait until it's too late to find out if your new hires are unhappy. Although 54 percent of respondents in the Allied survey say they conduct exit interviews, just 13 percent interview employees to gauge their satisfaction while they still work for the company. Keeping communication channels open goes a long way toward keeping employees happy.
From Small Business Trends |
| 12 Tips: Stay Out of Spam Filters, Run a Successful Email Marketing Campaign Posted: 30 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT In today’s digital age, an email marketing campaign is necessary to every business model, equivalent to — if not more important than — a social media strategy and your company website’s mobile compatibility. It’s an evolved version of direct mailing and cold calling, but despite the many email marketing management options available, the concept still remains an unsuccessful mystery to many small business owners.
But some entrepreneurs figured out the formula. Their emails collect clicks, replies and forwards, and spark action among potential customers and loyal clients. And they aren’t adding any kind of external expert to their payroll in order to do so. We asked members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invitation only nonprofit organization comprised of the country's most promising young entrepreneurs, the following question to find out what their secrets are regarding email marketing:
Here's what YEC community members had to say: 1. Timing Is Everything! “We recently rebranded our email newsletter as a nightly “Study Break” for our female college student audience, timing it to hit inboxes when the need for a fun distraction is at an all-time high. This, along with our strategy of sticking to a specific theme for each day of the week, allows us to establish our emails as a consistent part of our readers’ daily routine.” ~ Annie Wang, Her Campus Media 2. Provide Additional Value “Too many businesses fill their newsletters with nothing but regurgitated blog content and entreaties to buy. Ask yourself how you can use your email campaign to provide added value to your clients, at no extra cost. When they’re shown you have something of value to share, they’ll be more willing to pay for even more.” ~ Steph Auteri, Word Nerd Pro 3. Keep It Short “One huge mistake that businesses make is sending long emails full of news that doesn’t interest subscribers. To keep subscribers hooked, it’s crucial to send short emails that only contain interesting content.” ~ Ben Lang, EpicLaunch 4. Ditch the Bells and Whistles “Consider sending plain text emails to your list — the kind you would type to a friend, free of graphics and other distractions. Simple text emails are surprisingly effective, as recipients feel you’re writing directly to them rather than blindly firing off a fancy newsletter in their direction. If you personalize the message with a “Hi, ____” at the beginning, you’ll get even more engagement.” ~ Amanda Aitken, The Girl’s Guide to Web Design 5. Equip With a Strong Headline “I know it’s simple advice that you probably hear all of the time, but it is really that important. My email campaigns that have strong headlines (i.e. witty, intriguing, straight to the point, or features a celebrity name) have much better end conversion rates.” ~ Lawrence Watkins, Great Black Speakers 6. Is It Mobile-Friendly? “We’ve found that many of our customers read emails on their smartphones, so fancy images and layouts made the emails unreadable. When we switched to a text-based, mobile-friendly format, we nearly doubled our click-through rate.” ~ Bhavin Parikh, Magoosh, Inc. 7. Be Positive, Practical and Personal “Focus on being positive, practical and personal. This approach makes your email marketing into something that recipients really value receiving. By taking this approach, I have subscribers regularly sending me thank you emails and even thank you cards for my email marketing.” ~ Elizabeth Saunders, Real Life E® 8. Match the Marketing “The great thing about email is that you can track nearly every action, and that should tell you what kind of messages to send to your clients and prospects. If someone responds to a certain type of message, segment your list so they get more of those messages. Make sure you segment your prospects from buyers so they get different messaging. It’s all about market-to-message match!” ~ Greg Rollett, The ProductPros 9. Two-Way Street “Too many newsletters are only updates about your business and the focus is only on you. Share something with them and get personal. Share a cool app you came across that they might benefit from. If you have a blog, then do a post where they can contribute to it and give their input. The more you involve your audience, the more they will want to read every newsletter you send — and it’s more fun.” ~ Ashley Bodi, Business Beware 10. Write Infrequently! “Asking a customer to read an email is a more personal ask, and thus has a higher barrier. Also, very few companies have enough interesting news to send a weekly email. For daily and weekly communication, use Facebook and Twitter. If you reserve your newsletter for only big news and send it monthly, you will have more useful things to say and your customer will be more interested in reading.” ~ Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches 11. Tag Your Subject Line “One of the easiest ways is to ‘tag’ your subject line so your readers will start looking out for your message. For example, [underground] [maverick] are ones we use for different lists. Of course, you still have to include some reason for people to read and click, but they have to recognize you first.” ~ Yanik Silver, Maverick1000.com 12. Share Your Story “Don’t create just another marketing newsletter; your customers already get 3,203 of those. Instead, share your real story with your customers. Write in a personable voice, as if you’re just writing to a really good friend of yours. Be honest and don’t try to sound formal. Make it a narrative that draws your readers in.” ~ Tim Jahn, Entrepreneurs Unpluggd
From Small Business Trends |
| 4 Ways to Conduct Market Research with Google Posted: 30 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT Let's face it – we're all on a quest to learn more about our customers' needs. Consumer surveys, mailers, in-face talks, online customer stalking (what?) – you've done it all. And with good reason. The more you know about your customers, the more you're able to create better user personas, more targeted marketing copy, and to, ultimately, deliver a better product or service. Our businesses are built on good market research – so who wouldn't be looking for new ways to uncover more about your audience? Especially if they're all free (or mostly free) from Google.
Below are four ways to conduct market research using the world's largest search engine: 1. Keyword Searches Your customers perform searches related to your business every day – after all, that's how they find you on the Web. But are you conducting the same searches on your hunt for customer intel? If you're not, you should be! Simply performing real-time keyword searches related to your brand can help you uncover new terms or phrases to target, content pages to develop, features or new services to create, or additional insight into how a customer wants to interact with a company like you. For example, if you sell dishwashers, maybe noticing the search results for this term may encourage you to highlight your add-on dishwasher repair service or to create a page dedicated to ratings and reviews of certain brands. If you want to one-up these simple keyword searches, use a tool like Google's Keyword Research Tool to get a more competitive view at what the search traffic looks like for particular terms and how competitive the market is. This may help you find new advertising opportunities or generate ideas for content marketing. 2. Google Crowdsourcing (aka Google+) Regardless of the social platform, I'm a huge fan of using my follower base as a living focus group. If you've shied away from Google+ because you weren't sure how to use it, why not get your feet wet by posting some questions and encouraging consumer feedback?
Post some interesting (or functional) questions and see what your community responds with? Or optimize your Google+ circles by creating specific user buckets and then target questions specific to certain customer segments. While I'm not an avid Google+ user (yet), I do enjoy using the site for this type of crowdsourcing. I seem to get more responses on Google+ than I do on Facebook or even Twitter. 3. Online Surveys One of the most tried and true ways of gathering customer insight comes from creating online surveys and offering customers a small incentive for filling them out. SMBs can use surveys to update demographic information, collect opinions on new and existing products, get answers to open-ended questions, or to probe overall customer satisfaction. While business owners have been conducting customer surveys via telephone and mail for years, now we can add online surveys to the mix. To create free and simple online survey using Google, simply chose the option to build a new form in Google Docs. From there, small business owners can easily create an online market research form that they can use to poll their customers on various aspects related to their business. Google allows for text, paragraph text, multiple choice, checkboxes, scale, list or grid answering to make the form as useful as possible. Once the form is created, you can embed it directly on your blog/Web site or send users the link to fill it out online. When they do, Google will record the answers and graph the responses for you. You'll also, of course, have access to the raw data. 4. Google Consumer Surveys Google Consumer Surveys are a relatively new offering from Google and take the free online surveys one step further by giving you access to not just your audience, but Google's complete publisher network! With Google Consumer Surveys, site owners create online surveys to be shared with Google's publisher network and pay as little as $.10 per response. While the online surveys mentioned earlier are perfect for polling your audience, these types of consumer surveys are better suited for identifying interest in service areas, questions about a new logo/site design, or evaluating your overall brand, as you'll have the option to target the entire US, a certain age group, interest or type of buyer. In addition to just getting back the raw data, Google will also provide charts summarizing responses and insights highlight interesting differences, which can be segmented age, gender, location and more. Above are four ways to use Google to learn about your customer. Which tools are you currently using for your market research needs? Google Photo via Shutterstock From Small Business Trends |
| EU Cookie Laws: Why You Will Be Seeing More Cookie Consent Messages Posted: 30 May 2012 02:30 AM PDT Privacy advocates in the European Union insist they serve the public interest, but critics say Internet cookie laws that became enforceable over the weekend will make things tougher for website operators and users alike. The laws require websites owned by European companies and accessible to European audiences to provide information about the use of tracking technology on the site and the purpose of that technology. Websites also must allow visitors to choose whether or not to be tracked. Sites are starting to add pop-up messages asking visitors to opt in or specifically consent to cookies. The laws apply to European companies and their websites (and arguably some large multi-national corporations). If yours is a small business in the United States, your site probably is NOT subject to the cookie law. Still you should be aware of the issue. Let’s take a deeper dive to sort out what this issue is all about — who it impacts and who it doesn’t: What’s It All About?Is your site illegal in Europe? As of May 26, 2012 every Website available to European visitors and owned by European companies must follow the EU E-Privacy Directive passed in 2011. This means sites must notify users that tracking technology is being used, the reason for that technology, and must allow visitors to give their consent before the technology is used. Sitepoint The problem with the new cookie laws. If you want to know how difficult the new EU tracking regulations are to follow, you should be aware that not even big EU institutions like the European Parliament and the European Commission can get it right. While all other Website owners are expected to sit up and take notice, these institutions aren’t even in compliance. ZDNet What Britons need to know. Each of the EU’s member states has the responsibility of implementing its own version of the legislation upholding the EU’s E-Privacy Directive. In the UK, Website owners were required to be in compliance with the new law by last Saturday, but many are not. If you are among them, here’s what you should know. CNet Reality CheckThe average UK site does plenty of tracking. About a month before so-called UK cookie laws were scheduled to be enforceable, research showed the average UK site uses 14 tracking devices to collect user data, and about 68 percent of that data is being sent to a third party. News.com.au Some British startups say they won’t comply. An interview with some UK startups just ahead of the weekend activation of the UK’s version of the EU E-Privacy Directive indicates many plan to ignore the new law. Startups believe the new legislation will cost them revenue, sales, and resources, putting them at a disadvantage against competitors outside the European Union. Gigaom What You Can Do?Advice for small-business website owners. Focusing on the UK version of the “cookies” law, business consultant Megan Heaney shares some thoughts on what the law could really mean to small businesses and what she and her clients are doing to comply with the new regulations. Twiggal A peek at one disclosure page. With the new EU “cookie” regulations coming up to strength, here’s a look at one way to clearly stipulate how site owners are tracking data from visitors, and what is being done with that data. Will this kind of disclosure page keep your business out of trouble? SportsMole Could it mean the death of the Web? Well, there might not be a reason to get that dramatic, but Shaina Boon argues the new rules won’t be good for anyone. They will make it harder for Website owners to improve their products and services by not allowing the collection of data necessary for innovation. And on behalf of companies in the United States she poses the question: will the U.S. follow suit and implement a similar law? Ad Age Digital All About Cookies. For more information about cookies, visit All About Cookies. From Small Business Trends |
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