Christopher Lester says, “In marketing, we’re on a constant quest to connect with new prospects, new customers, and new email subscribers. So cultivating a high-performing email contact list should be a top priority for all marketing professionals, no matter what their core business. Why? Well, the average email list churns about 30% every year. A successful email marketing strategy should include a whole slew of activities to keep that list lively and growing. Here are four easy steps to help build your list—and boost your business. 1. Make it insanely easy to join your mailing... [...]

Derek S. says, “As technology rapidly changes one common communication tool has stayed consistent throughout, email. Email is one of the greatest tools that marketers have when trying to communicate with their consumers. However, to fully leverage the power that email provides them, marketers must understand how their campaigns are connecting with consumers. StreamSend, an email marketing service provider, has announced that it is now offering campaign analysis services to email marketers that leverage its service”. How’s Your Email Campaign Connecting? Website Magazine  [...]

Pamella Neely says, “Nobody wants to be a spammer. But it’s surprisingly common for otherwise well-meaning marketers to be fuzzy about what’s okay and what’s not okay in email marketing. It’s also surprising how wide the gap is between the legal definition of spam and a subscriber’s definition. Spam in a legal context is loosely defined as bulk commercial email sent without the permission of the sender. I say “loosely” because there are nearly a dozen different anti-spam acts across the world. Every country defines spam just a shade differently”. 9 Reasons Email Subscribers... [...]

Kristen Dunleavy says, “Autoresponder emails (sometimes called autoresponder follow up emails or just follow up emails) have a ton of time-saving and business-growing benefits – and yet 75 percent of businesses aren’t using them. What does that mean for you? Add a follow up series to your email marketing strategy today, and BAM! You’re already ahead of the curve. Why are follow ups important? Follow up emails let you schedule an entire series of emails ahead of time for your new subscribers. Unlike broadcast emails, which are one-time emails with time-sensitive content (think emails promoting... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Which words in subject lines significantly increase consumer opens of marketing emails, and which words significantly decrease opens? To find out, Alchemy Worx used the Touchstone platform to analyze data from 21 billion marketing emails sent by 2,500 brands. The research included an examination of thousands of subject lines, word by word, to determine their influence on open rates. The words in subject lines that increase open rates most, on average, are upgrade (+65.7% compared with average open rate), just (+64.8%), content (+59%), go (+55.8%), and wonderful (+55.1%),... [...]

Kristen Dunleavy says, “When’s the last time you updated your blog? Posted on social media? Sent your customers an email? Optimized your website content? If the answer to any of these is, “It’s been a while,” it’s okay. Follow these quick tips to get your content back on track. Email If you haven’t shown your email subscribers some love in a while, you may want to consider a reactivation campaign. People who haven’t heard from you need a little refresher on your business. When you reach out to them again, show your value. Give them some useful tips or a checklist, tell them about... [...]

Jeanne Jennings says, “What’s the argument for using a double opt-in email marketing campaign as opposed to a single opt-in one? Read on to find out. It’s been a long time since the phrase “double opt-in” has crossed my lips, but it came up in not just one but two different conversations in the past few weeks. Both were friends that work in the digital marketing and product development world and they’re really good at what they do. But email isn’t their primary wheelhouse, like it is mine. So it was interesting that both considered double opt-in the way that email marketing... [...]

Todd McCormick says, “If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know I’m a huge Alabama Crimson Tide fan. College football is my true love, but I always tune in to the Super Bowl. As I’m both a sports fan and a marketing expert, watching the big game is practically required. This year’s game was an exciting one, complete with a bad play call, a big brawl, a last-minute win and a poorly timed commercial. Here are some highlights — and the digital marketing lessons we can learn from them: 1) It’s Not Over Until It’s Over The game didn’t pick... [...]

Andrea Carter says, “In his book How to Get PR for Your Startup: Traction, author and expert Murray Newlands offers these words of advice for today’s business owner: “The business that can influence the media will win the trust of the people – simply because consumers typically decide to purchase from brands they trust and are familiar with.” As someone who works in public relations, I confess, this statement gave me goosebumps. If ever there was a case for the value of public relations (PR), Murray nailed it. My own interests aside, Murray’s point is especially relevant to small business... [...]

Ginny Soskey says, “It’s only natural for people to want to compare themselves to others. Benchmarks give you a reference for how well you’re doing — and some indication of how to improve. In marketing, some benchmarks are easier to find than others. If you want to see how many social media followers another company has, you can just visit their profiles. If you want to see how their overall marketing is performing, you can plug in their URL into Marketing Grader and compare their score to yours. If you want to see their most popular blog posts, you can quickly and easily... [...]