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Earlier this month, the author offered five ideas for getting ahead in an economy that's got us down. As promised, here are five more inexpensive (yet powerful!) ideas that can help you and your business come out on top. more
Some businesses opting for digital instead of print do it because they've gone green. Others want to harness the internet's speed, reach, and other capabilities. The rest like the convenience of online or have some other strategic purpose that points them that way. But it might pay to slow down and ... more
When the spiders come crawling through your Web pages, will they find what they need to index the pages properly? They will if you're using meta commands, or tags, correctly. Meta commands are used on individual Web pages to "modify how search engine spiders behave," says Medium Blue's Scott Buresh ... more
Few of us have kind words for the Fortune 500 CEOs who lived it up while the value of their companies, and our 401(k)s, imploded. And with a trio of videos dripping with schadenfreude, JetBlue proposes to help disgraced executives adjust to life without a private jet. Each episode at ... more
Smith-Harmon just released its Retail Welcome Email Benchmark Study, which examines best practices at 112 of the Internet's largest retailers. And in a recent post at the Email Karma blog, Matt Vernhout highlights some of the study's key takeaways: Text-only Welcome messages are becoming a thing of ... more
Given the recent Facebook redesign, you're probably hearing a lot of yammer about Twitter. If by now you're not familiar with how Twitter can benefit your brand, walk with us as we cut through the noise and break it all down. In a recent article at the MarketingProfs site, Jim ... more
Even a small company can benefit from email messages tailored to a recipient's specific wants and needs. "Using segmentation," says Michael Clark in an article at MarketingProfs, "customers only get notified of new products, specials, and offers based on past buying patterns, knowledge of the customer and what they've clicked ... more
We may be in a recession, but that isn't stopping marketers from spending on search. According to the new 2008 annual survey and forecast from the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO), spending on search engine marketing in North America is expected to hit $26 billion by 2013, up from $13.5 ... more
When you read about spam in email marketing blog posts and articles, you probably notice writers rarely pause to define industry-specific lingo. While you undoubtedly know what block, bounce and tag mean, less common words and phrases might leave you scratching your head. Fortunately, Spamhaus fills in the blanks with ... more
As marketers continue to see good ROI from finely tuned mobile strategies, the humble text message has acquired newfound cachet. And in a recent video posted at the CenterNetworks blog, Allen Stern interviews Tatango CEO Derek Johnson, whose one-to-many SMS service enables instant mobile communication with an entire list of ... more
Shrinking economy? Time to shrink that ad budget. That's the knee-jerk reaction being witnessed at quite a few B2B companies these days. And it may be the exact wrong thing to be doing. In a recent blog post, Justin Hitt makes a compelling case for not only maintaining your ad ... more
Your e-newsletter is an excellent tool for maintaining customer relationships. But it can also generate income if you offer cool ad space in it. In a recent article at MarketingProfs, Drew Adams explains how to make it more appealing to select advertisers: Make it relevant. Adams offers an example: "For a newsletter ... more
How do companies reap solid advertising ROI from email newsletters? They incorporate four key marketing tactics into their campaigns: relevancy, list quality, design, and tactical landing pages. And then they apply them, like this.... more
A new trend uncovered by Hitwise reveals that search queries on all major search engines are starting to get longer and longer. In a recent study, the measurement firm found that searchers are typing four or more words at an increasing rate to find what they're looking for. Searches using ... more
If you're new to digital marketing, you're not alone—and it's never too late to start making an online impact. This especially holds true with email—which, for many marketers, has proved to be the Golden Channel. Case in point: Seiko. "Two years ago," writes Dianna Dilworth in an article at DM ... more
On Friday 2/27, Skittles surrendered itself to the Zeitgeist. Visits to Skittles.com led users directly to Wikipedia (later changed to a Twitter search for "skittles," then to the official Facebook fan page), and attempts to explore the site navigation—little more than a pop-up—guided users elsewhere still: flickr, YouTube, Summize. The ... more
Under normal circumstances, Dylan Boyd believes email copy should be clear and concise. He explains his straightforward rationale in a post at the Email Wars blog: "[I]f I get 500-700 emails a day in my inbox, then I need to know WHO, WHAT, WHY and What's in it for me. ... more
One of the most dangerous trends emerging is that B2B marketers, and their extended search-marketing resources, are regularly making bad decisions based on "solid analytics data." All too often, marketers are deciding to spend either more or less money based solely on the conversion rate of how a certain search phrase, ... more
Every day we are bombarded with bad news about the economy: dismal corporate earnings, budget cuts, advertising gone dark, clients and agencies and people coming and going, and a sense of turbulence, malaise, and timidity. What can marketing do? Today's brand leaders should follow these 7 Ps of branding as ... more
In search, you have a very short window of opportunity for engaging your prospect. The key to ensure you get seen through that tiny window: give searchers exactly what they're looking for. One way of doing this, says Medium Blue's CEO Scott Buresh in a MarketingProfs article, is to use ... more
It's refreshing when a company seems to get it right, and DJ Waldow uses a post at the Bronto blog to explain why email messages from US Airways impress him on a regular basis. Why, it's like they're singing "Come Fly With Me!" Here's what sets them apart, according to ... more
Dylan Boyd, who blogs at The Email Wars, tells the story of an email with the subject line: "Limited time only: save up to 25%! Plus get free shipping." Within, he discovered more action verbs than you could shake a stick at. At the top of the email there's a ... more
Lingerie label Agent Provocateur is characterized by its risqué unmentionables and the naughty ladies that grace its adverts. So when it announced plans to explore social media earlier this year, we thought we knew what to expect: simpering femmes fatales that appeal more to men than women. We scoped out ... more
As a busy blogger, Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports often receives questions from his readers. And in a recent post at his blog, he lists a number of typical queries, to give us a sense of what marketers are pondering these days. ... more
There are some great free resources to help with keyword research. Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool, for example, can provide useful insight. But as Keyword Research Analysis expert Valerie DiCarlo points out in a recent online article, these types of tools should just be a starting point. "The free tools ... more
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