Bob Murphy says, “Loyal customers can account for up to 84% of total site visits and spend 10 times more with your business than new ones. What’s more, acquiring new customers can cost up to five times more than generating new business from someone with whom you’ve already worked. With those statistics in mind, are you doing enough to both inspire loyalty among your customers and harness that loyalty? By ensuring that your marketing encourages repeat business, brand loyalty, and customer referrals, you’re giving your business the kind of boost that can’t come from... [...]

Pamela Wilson says, “On the snowy, northeastern Christmas of my 11th year, our parents gathered all five kids around the kitchen table to deliver the news. We were moving to San Antonio, Texas. I was devastated. Texas? I imagined what our new home would look like. We’d be miles from any neighbors — who would all look like they walked straight off the “Hee Haw” set — with a dusty, rock-filled front yard punctuated by the occasional tumbleweed rolling by. If only I had access to online content back in those days, I wouldn’t have been terrified at all by the silly stereotypes I believed... [...]

Tim Peterson says, “On a day that one high-profile tech company that, for years, had notoriously struggled to define itself gave up its independence — and soon its brand — another is trying to reassert itself. Twitter debuted a new ad campaign on Monday that attempts to define the former social network and now news company. “Twitter is where you go to see what’s happening everywhere in the world right now,” Twitter CMO Leslie Berland wrote in a company blog post — titled “See What’s Happening” — announcing the campaign. The campaign may be new, but the tagline isn’t.... [...]

Kevin Donnelly says, “Your store needs to be designed with your customers in mind. While boosting your traffic can generate more sales, it’s just as important to focus on turning your current traffic into paying customers. At every step of your customers’ purchasing journeys, there are new opportunities for you to make their paths shorter, easier, and more enjoyable. Through rigorous experimentation and analysis, you can fine-tune your website to push people closer to making a purchase. This process is called Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO. Conversion Rate Optimization is a technique... [...]

Tom Tate says, “The movement is REAL. On July 6th, we set up shop at Podcast Movement in Chicago. At AWeber, we’re total fans of the medium; we recently started our own show, and we know that many of our customers are successful or emerging podcasters. We’re also confident that all podcasters could benefit from email marketing, so we proudly sponsored and attended the event for our second year. I was tasked with writing a recap for our awesome blog readers, and when I sat down to pen (err… type) a draft, I couldn’t articulate the experience in words, other than, “The movement is... [...]

Aqib Nazir says, “Guest blogging is one of the most recommended strategies on building and growing a blog. It is one of the best ways to secure your blog’s future. Just one guest post on a very influential blog can significantly boost your blog’s brand and traffic which can eventually grow your audience. You won’t simply receive these benefits on the day your guest post was published, but will help you gradually and continuously in the coming weeks, months, and even years. This is how beneficial guest posting can be. It makes your blog exposed to a much wider and a greater number of... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “Following several rounds of bidding and rumors this weekend, it was confirmed this morning that Yahoo is being acquired by Verizon for $4.83 billion. In 2015, Verizon acquired AOL for roughly $4.4 billion. Effectively, AOL and Yahoo will be merging, a deal once proposed by AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong but rejected by Yahoo. Here’s what the combination offers Verizon: The addition of Yahoo to Verizon and AOL will create one of the largest portfolios of owned and partnered global brands with extensive distribution capabilities. Combined, AOL and Yahoo will have more than... [...]

Daniel Sayer says, “Influencers can inspire social communities around a brand – but only when those influencers’ personalities authentically match the brand’s persona. What’s a great match look like? Consider Tyson Foods’ campaign, Why Should Cookies Have All the Fun? To spice up holiday sales of its chicken nuggets, Tyson invited mom bloggers to decorate the pint-sized poultry snacks. Soon, chicken-nugget reindeer and Santa Claus figures were popping up all over the web, and family shoppers were making their lists (and checking them twice) with Tyson in mind”. Struggling... [...]

Jeffrey L. Cohen says, “The roller coaster ride of social media is starting to make me sick to my stomach. Keep your hands and arms inside the car, as we are about to bank hard right into a rant. First, there was the promise of changing how we communicate with our customers. Social media was going to finally help us achieve one-to-one marketing. Before we reached that nirvana, content marketing suddenly dominated marketing, and social media became a distribution channel. I’m going to avoid the obvious benefits of social media for customer service, because Jay has research to back that up.... [...]

Mimi An says, “It’s no secret that internet users are no strangers to seeking out the information they need online — in fact, Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second. And as the volume of search queries continues to climb, advertisers are recognizing an opportunity to introduce a number of different types of ads. (Think: pop-up ads, autoplaying video ads, and the dreaded mobile ad that takes up the entire phone screen.) As a reaction to some of these disruptive online ads, internet users have started installing ad blocking extensions by the millions. In case... [...]