Liz Willits says, “By the end of 2016, it’s predicted that there will be 4.6 billion email accounts. Wow. That’s a huge audience! As more people embrace email, you need to change the way you engage with your subscribers to keep up with their changing needs. To stay relevant, your email marketing best practices need to adapt to your audience. To help you into the New Year, we have four email marketing best practices for 2016 to make your emails the coolest and most relevant in the inbox. Keep reading to learn how you can win with email marketing in 2016. 1. Contextual Emails In 2016,... [...]

Paul Cheney says, “Writing a value proposition is a lot like drawing a jellyfish in a game of Pictionary. Let me explain. I was at a party recently where several people were playing a fiery game of Pictionary. One person who was particularly bad at the game started drawing a cylinder with a label on it. Thick befuddlement settled on the guessing team. After several wild guesses, the team rightly guessed that it was a jar of jelly. Then, much to the team’s dismay, the artist began to draw another picture. This time, luckily, his drawing clearly depicted a standard fish. The word he held... [...]

Khalid Saleh says, “It’s frustrating, isn’t it? You keep hearing stories of bloggers and marketers crushing it with hundreds and thousands of email opt-ins every month. Yet, your own opt-in conversion rates hovers at a measly 0.5 percent. How would your business change if you could pump that conversion rate to 2 percent? Or perhaps even 4 percent? Or even more. The truth is that it is surprisingly easy to increase email opt-in conversion rates. With a few quick tweaks, you can capture thousands of more emails and grow your business exponentially. In fact, using some of the strategies... [...]

Nathan Chan says, “Instagram is a platform that has demonstrated tremendous growth. In fact, the Instagram community grew to over 400 million users this past year. Despite its impressive reach, many business owners are still overlooking its marketing potential. As a result, they’re leaving high levels of engagement, brand awareness, and even profit on the table. But why? In just 12 months, we used Instagram to gain 400,000 followers for Foundr — which translated to over 70,000 email subscribers. At the end of that period, we were averaging 30,000 call-to-action clicks per... [...]

James Parsons says, “Finding a regular blog content writer can be tough, despite the fact that there are thousands of freelancers out there ready and willing to write content for you. Having hired many writers myself, I like to think I’ve perfected the process of locating the talented ones. 1. Know what you need. The first thing you need to do is determine exactly what you need a writer for. With a blog, you essentially have two options — a regular contributor under their own name, or a ghostwriter selling you content. Finding a ghostwriter is a lot easier and certainly more... [...]

Pamela Wilson says, “Starting a week from today, the Copyblogger team is doing something we’ve never done before … and we want you to join us. We’re hosting our first three-week Copyblogger Content Challenge. These brand-new challenges are designed to give you in-depth education around key content marketing topics. The goal of our challenges is simple: We help you master each topic — and you put that information directly to use to grow your business”. Join the Copyblogger Team for Our First Content Challenge ‘Copyblogger’ Blog  [...]

Kelsey Reaves says, “The link building world is in a constant state of evolution. New tools are continually introduced to the market, with SEOs ready to discover what works best. Our outreach team at Modernize recently found ourselves in this position. In need of a new email automation service, we were eager to explore and test out new tools to see what improved our overall outreach system. Modernize is in the home improvement space, and we focus heavily on energy efficiency and green living — thus, we target lots of green blogs, solar websites, etc. Our aim at Modernize is to be a resource... [...]

Rieva Lesonsky says, “One of the hottest marketing trends for the coming year is something called “influencer marketing.” Basically, influencer marketing means working with influencers — people who have a large social media and/or real-life following and are able to influence their followers’ purchasing decisions. If you’ve ever bought something as a result of seeing a blogger wear it, use it or review it, influencer marketing has worked on you. How can influence or marketing work for a retail business? Here’s a guide to getting started. Set Goals As with any type of marketing... [...]

Pamela Parker says, “You can spend millions on paid media or search engine optimization, but if your website and landing pages aren’t up to snuff, you might as well be throwing that investment away. These critical on-page elements were addressed by Marketing Land’s contributing experts on user experience (UX) and conversion optimization in 2015, and their advice will be valuable in 2016 and in years to come. Shari Thurow’s columns on information architecture and website taxonomy — both addressing fundamental issues of web design — were the two most popular columns in this category... [...]

Megan Conley says, “The arrival of a new year is a time for fresh beginnings. Although we may not all admit to resolutions of healthier lifestyles or less Netflix binges, it is hard to ignore the cultural push to re-evaluate your goals for a more successful year. Likewise, with the close of Q4, now is the time to identify the focus of your marketing team for 2016 and brainstorm fresh ideas for your campaigns. But with the infinite number of approaches and ever-increasing creative standards, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the possibilities. To help get your inspiration flowing,... [...]