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Sunday, April 2, 2017

Translating Website Visits Into Quality Leads

Back in the day -- like, 1993 -- every company had to have a website because it was the thing you did! A website was something new, fresh and shiny, and it allowed the marketing team to reach more people than ever before. It was on the Internet, which automatically made your company seem cool. It was totally rad!

13 Pokémon Who Burst Out Of Pokémon GO And Into The Real World

Oh no. Either something is seriously wrong with the servers or this is the work of some Team Rocket-level hackers. Pokémon are escaping from augmented reality and entering reality reality. And my guess is they're not happy.

Five Minutes With: EJ McGowan, General Manager at Campaigner

1) What's a common mistake that you see email marketers make, and how can other marketers avoid it?

Many email marketers are still challenged with using segmentation and personalization to target their messages better. I often see marketers speaking too generally to their audience and not taking advantage of the ability to tailor messages in simple ways to better reach the different segments within their audience. Marketers should always think about their audience as groups of people–not as one single entity. They should use the data they have about their subscriber base–including demographics, geolocation, and purchase behavior–to segment them into several groups. Each group, or segment, should receive different messages and content depending on the specific goals marketers are trying to achieve.

2) What kind of challenges or opportunities will email marketers face in the coming year?

While this is nothing new, a challenge email marketers continue to face is the expanding ways that people consume information. It's no longer good enough to get an email into a customer's desktop Outlook client; subscribers are now looking at mail on mobile devices, through Facebook messages and posts, on Twitter feeds, and many more places. Marketers need to develop a broad-based strategy to get messages into consumable formats that customers want to see. This challenge will only get harder in time as more methods of consuming data continue to emerge. Email on desktop should still be an important part of marketers' strategy, but it can no longer be the only channel they use.

On the other hand, as marketers are able to collect more and more data points about customers, they have a growing opportunity to use this data to their advantage. It's steadily becoming easier to integrate purchasing data into email marketing systems and then segment the subscriber base using purchasing data or geographical information for more effective targeting. Marketers can augment this data with CRM data from partner companies to help further refine and understand who their customers are. Marketers used to target people as anonymous subscribers, but they can now build a much better picture of who their customers are and what they're interested in.

3) If you had to describe the perfect email, what would it look like?

The perfect email would start off with an interesting subject line that reminds me that I know the sender and had a previous relationship with this vendor. Something up front that indicates the sender is trustworthy will make me far more likely to open that email and click through to more content. Next, the body of the email would add additional context about my established relationship with that vendor and content tailored specifically to me. Visually, there would be a well laid-out mix of text and graphics with a clear call-to-action. Finally, I would look for handy links to share the email with friends or colleagues who might also be interested–whether that's social media buttons or a forward link to easily share this with a friend.

4) What was the best piece of email marketing advice that you've ever received?

I recently found myself interacting with a piece of email that ultimately lent some helpful marketing advice. I had cruised with Royal Caribbean once before and had been thinking about vacation ideas when I received their message with a promotion for a future cruise. The offer was compelling and only available for a limited time, creating a sense of urgency for my action. I decided to click through and explore Royal Caribbean's website because their message was timely and the offer resonated with my needs at that moment in time. This experience taught me that email marketers should try to anticipate their customers' wants and needs and make a compelling offer with a sense of urgency to successfully drive interactions and conversions.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Handicapping the GOP Email Race

Trump, an email laggard, sits atop the polls. Carson, an email pioneer, is falling like a stone. Is this not the same channel that delivered Obama a second term?

We all know how rich Donald Trump is cash-wise. He avoids no occasion to tell us about it. But here's how rich he is marketing-wise: While most of his rivals have been forced to feed at the RNC trough for names of likely voters to pad their email lists, Trump's campaign managers have been able to build a sterling list of voters and donors from the thousands of people who have packed stadiums and auditoriums on the Earned Media Candidate's nationwide tour. Funny thing is, the campaign has barely started tapping into this singular asset.

SEO Everything you need to know about SEO, published jointly with Search Engine Land every Thursday. No-Hype SEO: A Realistic Formula To Making SEO Work For Your Business, Part 1

SEO (search engine optimization) has come a long way.
After experiencing the “wrath of Google” years ago, some marketers have exited the SEO game and opted instead to use paid traffic to generate their leads and prospects. However, when done correctly (and ethically), there is no match for the longevity, consistency and quality of the lead flow you’ll experience from SEO. Today, I want to offer you an insider’s view of how to do this well.
All of my businesses are built entirely on organic SEO, and if I were to stop doing everything today, they would continue to experience high-quality lead flow consistently for many months to come. This just isn’t the case with paid traffic. Of course, the best marketing systems utilize both organic and paid traffic.
In this article, I’ll give you my thoughts on a time-tested and proven strategy for creating your SEO regimen.

Zuckerberg Defends Downsized Internet for Developing World

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday defended his company's downsized version of the Internet, called "Free Basics," which is offered in developing nations around the world.

"In every society, there are certain basic services that are so important for people's wellbeing that we expect everyone to be able to access them freely," he wrote in the Times of India, citing public libraries, hospitals and schools as examples.
"That's why everyone also deserves access to free basic Internet services," Zuckerberg added.