Chuck Malcomson says, “Inbound marketing is designed to help members of your target market find you, as opposed to cold-calling or interruption-based marketing. The inbound sales process generates more qualified leads, but not all of those leads are sales ready. Some of those early-stage leads will be filtered into a nurturing campaign. However, a prospect’s readiness isn’t always clear based on his initial contact. So, your sales team reaches out by telephone and email to every prospect who has requested further information about your product. Some of those prospects respond and... [...]

Carol Stott says, “HTML… I have a confession: I don’t even know what it stands for. But do marketers need to speak geek? Do you know your DKIM from your Kim Dotcom? Does thinking about SPF give you ADD? Surely email marketing is like driving a car: You don’t need to know how it all works, you just use it. It’s simple: Choose your list, craft your message, send it into the world, and track the results. Except when it breaks down and then you wish you knew a bit more than the basics! And email marketing can break down, including at delivery, when your beloved newsletter... [...]

Christina Warren says, “Google announced on Tuesday that it has added new spam filtering support to Gmail to help crack down on phishing attacks. Last week, Gmail added support for non-Latin characters as a first step in helping email become more global. This is good news for countries where users speak and write in non-Latin languages, but it can also present potential security challenges”. Google Introduces Better Spam Filters to Combat Gmail Phishing Mashable  [...]

This is a reminder for Business 2 Community’ webinar on email marketing. Business 2 Community is hosting a webinar with Aaron Bolshaw on Thursday, August 14 at 2.00 pm ET. The topic of the webinar is “Using Data and Design to Create a Knockout Email Nurture Program”. The ‘Business 2 Community’ team says, “This session will cover: Batch-n-blast vs lead nurturing Lead nurturing 101 The building blocks of a successful campaign: data + design = results How to develop lead profiles Design trends: responsive design, animated gifs, and other ways to break through the attention... [...]

Courtney Eckerle says, ““Most of our lives we spend not as marketers, but as recipients of marketing,” said John Lavey, President and Chief Operating Officer, Hammock. As consumers, his team was experiencing email fatigue, and knew their newsletter was part of the problem. Read on to learn how they combated this by simplifying email content and design, and renamed the newsletter to represent a refocus on idea cultivation and problem-solving“. Email Marketing: Simplifying email content increases open rates 48% for B2B company MarketingSherpa  [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “When writing an email message, it’s easy to break the goal down to one thing – just trying to write compelling enough copy to get a click. But how do you actually earn that click? If you really want to optimize your email marketing, you have to think like the customer and walk through the cognitive process that potential customers subconsciously go through when interacting with your email. To achieve that click, your email copy must accomplish these six key objectives”. Email Marketing: Does your copywriting accomplish these 6 key objectives? MarketingExperiments... [...]

Kristen Dunleavy says, “Are your customers happy? As a small business owner, you know how complicated this question can be. You also know that happy customers drive referrals, and that referrals are the lifeblood of your business. Before your customers can begin singing your praises to others, you need to give those existing business relationships a little TLC. Here’s how to cultivate healthy business relationships that drive referrals. Get to Know Your Customers Healthy, sustained business relationships don’t happen overnight. They take time, effort and a whole lot of nurturing. Going the... [...]

Pamella Neely says, “Headlines make or break a piece of content. They are so critical to the success of a piece that it is common for master copywriters to spend as much time on their headline and opening paragraph as they do on the rest of their copy. Why do they do this? Because if the headline doesn’t grab your audience, nothing else about your content ever will. Without a strong headline, your readers will never see the rest of your content. No matter how good it is. The news and culture site Upworthy.com has reported swings of up to 500 percent in traffic based on tweaking the words... [...]

Joe Forte says, “Email marketers understand that the subject line, including key words within it, are vital to obtaining higher open and click-through rates, but what is just as important is a clear call to action. It could be a phrase or sentence, a video, or a single word, but a clear call to action is the primary determinant of whether the email recipient will click on your email or delete it forever (and possibly block others you may send in the future). I would argue that email marketers who want to improve their click-through rates should use video. If content is king, then your video... [...]

Lindsey Gusenburg says, “Lead nurturing is a critical part of a marketer’s job, especially in the B2B space. Forrester suggested that a B2B buyer’s journey could be anywhere from 65-90% complete by the time he or she contacts the vendor to move forward with a sale. This reality of a modern buyer’s behavior has added a layer of complexity to both the strategy and technology we use to guide leads through the sales funnel. Marketers have approached this challenge primarily through email marketing — and more recently through marketing automation. However, even with significant... [...]