Kristen Dunleavy says, “Emma Johnson’s blog, Wealthy Single Mommy, is more than practical dating and finance advice for single moms. It’s a support community for women everywhere. “Nobody was speaking to me or my peers,” Emma said. “We have our own stories, challenges. I started a blog and I didn’t know what I was doing. It was a personal project. I thought I’d talk about money, but it went way beyond money.” Today, Emma has a loyal fanbase (an email list of 6,000 and 50K monthly website visitors) and makes regular appearances on CNN, NBC’s Today Show, and NPR, just to name... [...]

Emmas Snider says, “Even if you have a steady stream of inbound sales leads surging into the pipeline, odds are, salespeople will have to supplement their funnel from time to time with outbound prospecting. And that’s totally fine … if they go about it in the right way, that is. Sales emails, when written well and sent to the right people, can be incredibly effective tools to generate new customers. But when they’re written poorly and devoid of value, nothing prompts recipients to flag a message as spam faster. One definition of spam is “Unwanted email, usually advertisements.”... [...]

Kelly Sullivan says, “Who are you? What influences your emotions, actions, and decisions? There are no simple answers to these questions. Yet marketers tragically try to pigeonhole people into them with retargeting ads. But people are complex. Marketers and brands know this but most don’t like to admit it. We prefer to believe our ads are the best in the business. We think they’ll immediately get the attention of our intended audience, and will solve all their problems. The unfortunate reality is no one cares about our ads or us. Why? Life is chaotic. Life is full of distractions... [...]

Julie Ask says, “Your customers are inundated with messages every day from friends or family, work colleagues, and marketers among others. Notifications from their banks, news organizations and fitness bands also land on their mobile phones. Let me show you the home screen of my iPhone. A summary of my communication (or lack thereof) shows: 24,998 unread personal emails (okay, mostly from marketers) 4,937 unopened work emails 272 unopened SMS messages 45 unopened/read messages on WeChat (these are from marketers) 0 unread notifications from Facebook (and I average 23 per day) 0 unread notifications... [...]

Brian Balfour says, “There’s one word that never escapes us in the business world, no matter how hard we try: networking. I work in the world of growth, marketing, and software. Over time, I’ve received hundreds of emails for advice on how others can adopt the growth framework. Most of these emails look like this: Hi Brian, I’m Joe Schmo from X Startup. We are in the Y industry. Our problem is we aren’t growing as fast as we’d like to“. How to write networking emails that won’t wind up in the trash Mashable  [...]

Andrew King says, “The email design and coding process is broken for many companies. Email marketers are spending a disproportionate amount of their lives trying to figure out why Gmail has absolutely destroyed their HTML, rather than working on the things that can actually make a measurable impact on the performance of their email program. This is what the traditional email design and coding process looks like for many companies: Gather images and copy for your campaign. Add your text and images directly to your HTML template through one of the various email-friendly editors”. Why... [...]

Daniel Beulah says, “One of the most difficult aspects of list cleansing isn’t always the drop in numbers — it’s convincing senior leadership why it’s necessary. During MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015, Courtney Eckerle, Manager of Editorial Content, MarketingSherpa, sat down in the Media Center with Jeffrey Anderson, Digital Marketing Manager, A Place For Mom. The company is a for-profit senior care referral service. Anderson explained why it’s important to cleanse your list of inactive users and how you can convince the senior leadership of your organization that list cleansing... [...]

Olivia Dello Buono says, “If you haven’t heard, AWeber is back for round two of ASCEND Digital Marketing Summit. We couldn’t wait to introduce you to our incredible lineup of industry experts and thought leaders – so we won’t. We’re hosting three special #AWeberHour Twitter chats, so you can get to know our roster before all of the magic happens this October. Our second chat will take place Wednesday, August 5th from 2-3 p.m. EDT. You’ll hear from two content experts who will share the ways that you can create content that converts your readers into loyal customers. And if this... [...]

Niti Shah says, “In the world of email marketing, opens and clicks are everything, which means email marketers are always testing ways to improve these metrics. We’ll tweak subject lines, calls-to-action, images, headers, layout, link positioning, copy, length, tone, content … the list goes on and on. Through all of this testing, there’s one hard truth we’ve discovered: Aside from proper list segmentation, nothing boosts opens and clicks as well as an old school, plain-text email.  Here’s how we came to that conclusion. Beyond Deliverability The (relatively)... [...]

Mashable team says, “Well, maybe not your life. But certainly your reputation with people of good taste. Helvetica, the hip font of choice for brands and typeface nerds, is the default font setting for Apple Mail. Gmail defaults to Arial, a font one designer called Helvetica’s “ugly bastard son.” If the browser doesn’t support Arial, Gmail will use Helvetica instead. While Helvetica is beloved by design nerds for its neutrality, its uniformity and lack of consistent spacing make it hard to read in large chunks of text. “The letters are too close together,”... [...]