When I tell people I’m involved with online marketing, their eyes immediately widen and they start visualizing space-age computer code and Facebook icons. In reality, it isn’t that glamorous, and list management is one of those non-glamorous tasks. Much like getting a yearly physical or balancing a checkbook, managing a contact list isn’t something that anyone really wants to do, but it’s something that needs to get done, regardless.

A well-maintained contact list is one of the more important end results of your marketing activities (sales being the most important, of course). This is the data that you will use to grow a business, sell products and services, and otherwise move a business forward. These people are your market (or at least they should be). Not managing a list well means you are working with bad information, which is not good in a sales setting.

Clean House

Working with current information means greater efficiency and less embarrassment. Routinely updating your contact list will help you avoid marketing to people whose information is no longer accurate.

• Remove bad information like bounced or inactive emails after each campaign
• Clear out people who have opted not to receive emails from you
• Update contacts that have changed roles in a company
• Move contacts to different market segments when they change (i.e. prospect to current customer)
• Add information when you receive it. For instance, more phone numbers, alternate emails or additional addresses.
• Add notes about your contacts that could be relevant for future communications. For instance, maybe you received a response to an email campaign or a sales call from a contact that contained important information for sales down the road.

If you don’t perform any of the other tasks featured in this post for managing your contact list, you should at the very least keep your data current. When you have good information about your market, then you look like you know what you’re talking about in your marketing. 

Use a CRM

Nothing makes cleaning your data easier than a Customer Relationship Management system. It used to be that these systems just helped you organize data, but they do a lot more than that now. On the data cleansing side, though, CRMs can help you:

• Easily update basic information
• Integrate customer information into your marketing activities
• Categorize data and otherwise organize it in a way that is best for your workflow

Although it may not seem like much, a huge benefit of CRM software is that all of your customer and prospect information is in one central location. Rules and processes that can be used on one contact can be used for all others.

Conversely, if you store your contacts in an Excel spreadsheet, it’s much more tedious and time consuming to go through and manage them. It will also drive you nuts. 

Use Email Marketing Software to Manage Lists

CRMs can be overkill if all you want to do is manage some opt-ins or perform other simple tasks. Look into using an email marketing program instead. The following platforms are great for managing contacts in terms of maintaining a good list of active and willing email marketing participants.

• Mail Chimp
• Constant Contact
• iContact
• Marketo
• HubSpot

There are a ton of other choices, as well. Search for email marketing programs on the web and you will instantly numerous options to sift through. The programs named above (especially the first three) are inexpensive, easy to use and great for managing contact information. 

Segment Your Email Lists

Just getting good information into a list can be daunting enough, so make sure you have that down before you move on to organizing everything. Once you’re there, though, segment your email list according to who your market is and how your business operates.

For example, if your business sells different products or services to people with different buying interests, those contacts should be in separate lists because they should be receiving different messaging.

When you segment your lists, it makes marketing easier and more effective. People who are interested in a particular product or service won’t be receiving messages that aren’t relevant to them, and therefore will be less likely to opt out of receiving communications from you.

What tips do you have for managing a contact list? Join in the conversation by commenting below.

It’s great that you have a steady stream of eyeballs on your content, but what’s that really worth if readers aren’t performing some sort of action? After all, you’re not spending precious marketing dollars on content creation for nothing. Whether you’re producing blog posts, articles, white papers, eBooks, or other types of content, there should be several points of interaction—elements that persuade your audience to complete tasks that inevitably result in leads, revenue, and advocacy.

Besides producing impactful content filled with tips, advice, and ideas your readers can practically implement in the real world, here are nine more ways to create opportunities for action on your written content.

1. Create a Comment Section

Astonishingly, many business sites still lack comment sections. The writing simply draws to its conclusion with no place for readers to contribute their ideas. Besides being bizarre in an age when generating online conversation is crucial for brands, it can be highly frustrating for readers who want to make their voices heard. If you’re developing stimulating content (which you should be), be sure to provide a space where people can leave their opinions without having to publish an article of their own.

When you enable public comments, keep in mind that there are those who will want to submit their thoughts privately. Make certain you provide that option, even if it’s through your contact page or social media properties.

2. Include an Actionable Summary

Tell your readers what the next steps are. Identity specific behaviors you’ve outlined in your post—the ones your audience should carry out in order to achieve the goal of your article—and then list them in a bulleted or numbered format.

Sarah Arrow does a great job of this at the end of her SteamFeed blog post on the connection between blogging and Kindle. Not only did she follow on with a brief list of links to resources (another point of interaction), but she also included a call to action for comments. Note how she slips in a bullet point that tells readers to subscribe.

3. Incorporate Powerful Calls to Action

Actionable content drives a response. It’s your job to engage readers and move them further down the conversion funnel with a compelling call to action (CTA) that consists of a short, explicit instruction. Whether that actionable step is clicking, downloading, commenting, taking a tour, starting a trial, or signing up depends on your agenda.

HubSpot excels in this area, placing a relevant lead-capturing CTA at the end of each blog post. The beautifully designed, clickable image contains a persuasive message to take action. It’s always related to the topic the author has covered in the post, and it always leads to a gorgeous landing page where a reader’s email address and other details are captured.

4. Add Subscription Options

There are two ways visitors can subscribe to your content: RSS and email. Both can drive tons of traffic to your blog each day—traffic you can potentially nurture through a well organized marketing funnel. In the image on the left, you’ll notice that HubSpot offers both methods. Their CTA is prominently placed on the right-hand side of the blog, ensuring all new visitors have easy access to it.

The inbound marketing experts also place a CTA for blog subscription at the bottom of each post. While the CTA in the right-hand panel can be completed without leaving the page, the CTA at the end of the post leads to a landing page that allows readers to enter their email address, set the frequency of email notifications, or subscribe to their RSS feed.

Alternatively, you can go for something simple and effective like this signup form Derek Halpern at Social Triggers uses.

Besides blog posts, subscribers regularly receive helpful content, advice, and updates right to their email box. It’s all part of a wonderful content marketing machine.

5. Include Internal Links to Related Content

Internal links carry a bevy of benefits, ranging from an improvement in user-friendliness and a reduction in bounce rate to an increase in page views and a boost in link juice. Readers know you’ve put a link within your text for a reason. That link acts as a CTA, telling them you want them to click on it because there’s something relevant on the other end. Get wise about your linking strategy and use internal links within an article sparingly, but strategically.

6. Make Suggestions for Other Relevant Content

Every clickable link presents the potential for an action to take place. There’s no better way to keep readers on your site and engaged than with a list of relevant content suggestions. “Most Popular Posts,” “Related Posts,” and “Other Posts You Might Like” are just few common examples you’ll see on sites optimized for action. Available plugins and built-in options will vary depending on the content management system you use, so be sure to check them out and choose one that suits your web design needs.

7. Integrate the “Send to Kindle Button” Into Your Site or Blog

In early 2013, Amazon.com released a “Send to Kindle” Button for publishers. For content marketers, this is a great way to offer an audience convenient reading anytime, anywhere. Rushed readers who can’t enjoy your content right then and there can simply send the article directly to their Kindle for reading on the go.

If you’re a website owner, you can visit www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/developers/button to generate a widget code. If you’re a WordPress blogger, you can visit http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/send-to-kindle/ to install the button.

8. Use the “Click to Tweet” Plugin or Similar Tools

“Click to Tweet” serves as a fabulous little CTA all on its own. When you have valuable insights, original data, or interesting facts scattered throughout your text, they offer an ideal opportunity to encourage promotion of your content on Twitter. Readers can quickly and easily Tweet the info to their followers, along with a link to your post.

9. Invite Readers to Share

Many readers barely take cognizance of social sharing widgets when their focus is solely on consuming information. They forget you’d like them to spread the word; share a link. Therefore, you have to remind them by inviting them to make use of those powerful little buttons. Ask people to share your post with their networks if they believe others will find it helpful.

As a final note on actionable content, users must understand the points of interaction in order to complete the task. Therefore, navigation and functionality are essential. Spend time evaluating your content for interaction points, make sure they’re clear and understandable, and then check that they work correctly. If you want readers to click on a link, subscribe, share your content, or leave a comment, then they shouldn’t have a hassle performing the task. Most importantly, ask yourself whether you’ve written something that will make people want to take action.

How do you ensure your content is actionable? Is there anything you’d add to our list? Share your thoughts in a comment.

Recently, we published a piece about content readability and its importance as a content marketing success factor. Equally important is understandability as it can be a barrier to accessibility and usability. After all, if your target audience can’t read or understand the information you publish then why bother creating it?

The last thing you need is poorly conceived and poorly crafted content that leaves readers wondering what you wanted them to learn. While everyone differs in their cognitive abilities, there are ways to improve text so that it’s understood by as many people as possible the first time they read it.

Follow along as we look at eight questions every writer should ask when developing content that doesn’t cause cognitive overload or understandability issues.

1. Have You Used Plain Language?

Plain language contributes to an accessible user experience. It’s clear, it’s easy to read, it’s easy to understand, and it’s inherently usable. These qualities relate to effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Unfortunately, information doesn’t automatically conform to these characteristics. It’s your job as a content creator or publisher to make that happen.

How do you ensure your language is simple and easy to understand?

• Proofread your text for misspellings and commonly confused words. While a spellchecker can help you identify the former, it won’t always identify words that are spelled correctly, but used incorrectly (E.g. “weary” vs. “wary,” “discreet” vs. “discrete,” “for” vs. “fore”). When in doubt, use a dictionary

• Use active voice rather than passive voice to strengthen your writing. With active voice, you directly link the subject of your sentence with the action, which makes it clear about who is doing what

• Be concise

• Avoid long, run-on sentences to help readers remain focused. Short sentences that are no more than 25 words in length are best for readability

• Eliminate unnecessary adjectives

• Articulate existing ideas in a new, easy-to-understand way

• Use conversational language when appropriate

• Use metaphors and analogies to improve comprehension. Many people understand ideas better when you explain them in everyday terms

• Don’t oversimplify things. You don’t want to give readers a false sense of understanding what you mean when they really don’t

• Avoid redundancy

• Don’t use more than two conjunctions in a sentence

• Avoid double negatives as they cause confusion and inhibit comprehension

• Limit your use of jargon, idioms, acronyms, abbreviations, and complex words or phrases. As long as it doesn’t affect the precision of your communication or change its meaning, replace technical or high-level terminology with common terms whenever possible

• Provide the pronunciation of a word when the meaning of a word is ambiguous without knowing the correct pronunciation

• Be literal. Some readers have difficulty distinguishing between implied and literal meanings

• Include the definition of a word or phrase when necessary

• Avoid using unusual or foreign words

• Don’t use showy or unfamiliar word combinations to impress readers. Clear communication is essential for full understanding

• Make sentences easy to process by applying parallel sentence structure conventions

How simply and concisely you write will depend on a range of factors. Most importantly, it depends on your intended reader. Keep in mind that your text should not only be read by humans, but by assistive technology, too.

2. Did You Write For Your Target Audience?

While language might seem plain to one group of readers, it might not seem plain to another. Therefore, you must consider your target audience when writing. Characteristics such as level of education, intelligence, familiarity with the subject matter, motivation to learn, and gender and cultural differences all play a role in your choice of words and writing style.

Map your user personas to ensure you’re writing for the right people at the right reading level.

A knowledgeable, highly motivated, and educated reader could sweep through a lengthy, intellectually challenging article with ease, understanding every word and concept. An average reader, however, might find the task more taxing. Ultimately, you want to ensure that you write according to your target reader’s level of comprehension. If you’ve already defined your user personas, you should be able to develop content around a topic that your ideal reader will feel comfortable reading and understanding.

3. Are Your Ideas Presented In A Logical Order?

A crucial cognitive process happens during natural language understanding: the formulation of coherence. For readers to interpret a piece of text correctly, they must link its meaning to the prior context. A reader already assumes that you’ve written with an intention and that each new sentence is relevant to the one before it. Therefore, you should help readers establish relationships between the ideas presented in your paragraphs by writing clear sentences in a rational sequence.

Before you can write in a clear style, you must arrange your thoughts in an orderly manner. This ensures your ideas will flow smoothly and build logical bridges to help readers make sense of your text. Be sure to evaluate your piece for coherence before you publish it.

4. Did You Provide Context?

Context, which refers to the circumstances that establish the setting for your idea or statement, has an influence on the way readers understand what you’re attempting to convey. This relies heavily on the coherent relationship between your sentences. As a result, you should provide sufficient context for even the simplest of thoughts so that readers can fully understand your meaning.

5. Are You Using The Right Content Type?

A moment of comprehension doesn’t always stem from a clearly written text-based piece. Your target readers might have a better understanding of your content if you present it in audio or visual formats. Consider videos, infographics, images, podcasts, slideshows, and similar content types when deciding on presentation mediums. Depending on your subject matter, you might want to try a combination of media to ensure the widest possible audience understands the message you’re trying to convey.

6. Did You Provide Practical Examples Where Applicable?

Articles based on complex or technical subject matter are often abstract, making them difficult to read and understand. To avoid confusing readers further, you should provide practical examples to help them conceptualize an idea, process, event, or problem.

For example, in this piece about writing a job description for a social media manager, the position summary was not only explained, but a solid example was provided so that readers can see what a typical summary for this position looks like.

7. Did You Use Alternative Representations To Clarify Meaning Where Applicable?

In addition to practical examples, supplementing your text with visual or audio aids can help clarify the meaning of your content. Diagrams, illustrations, animations, images, symbols, video, and other visual depictions enable people to learn faster and more effectively because the message is communicated in a more concise and simplified way. Make sure you enhance your complicated textual content with formats that improve comprehension.

8. Is The Reading Level Of Your Content Appropriate?

Although you may believe you’ve created simple, clear, and understandable content, the chances are that some readers will still have trouble perceiving the meaning of your text. That’s where readability tests like the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level index can help.

The algorithms of these tests use mathematical formulas to evaluate a piece of text for reading ease and reading level. The only downside is that they focus mainly on quantitative metrics. Therefore, you can’t rely on a formulaic process alone in order to understand the simplicity and clarity of your content. You must consider all factors as outlined by the eight questions in this blog post.

Even though the results are only superficial measurements of readability, you can use them to gain insight into how readable and understandable your content is. Most experts recommend a 7^th-8^th grade reading level for general content. Based on your result, you can adjust your writing so that it aligns with the comprehension skills of your target readers. Keep in mind that a lower grade level increases the accessibility of content since a wider audience is likely to understand it.

Conclusion

Writing understandable content for a large audience isn’t always easy. This is especially true for niche topics. While one reader feels you’re writing for first graders, another might feel you’re writing for postgraduate students. The key is to keep the reader, purpose, and context in mind when crafting content. Always aim for simplicity and clarity if you want your content to be accessible and useable. There’s no place for convoluted content when it comes to simple, concise, and understandable text.

What steps do you take to ensure your content is understandable? Share your tips and thoughts with us in the comment section below. Don’t forget to share this post with authors and web content writers who might find it useful.