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Email Marketing
5 Clever Email Innovations for 2015 and Beyond
January 9, 2015 • Pamella Neely
Email marketing has a reputation for being dull. When someone says "innovation" we're more likely to think social media or mobile or video. Not email. But email marketing is evolving, and evolving fast. In just the last year or two there are several advances that can take any "dull" email message and make it cutting edge.
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Conversion
11 Ways to Make Visual Content More Effective
January 5, 2015 • Pamella Neely
Images are an integral part of the Internet, and they’re getting more important all the time. That’s mostly because images are a key part of human consciousness. Our brains process visual information much faster than text.
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Email Marketing
7 Tips for a Powerful Email Call to Action
December 23, 2014 • Pamella Neely
If you could only have two things in an email, they would the subject line and the call to action. I wrote about subject lines a few months back, in "7 Ways to Improve Email Subject Lines (and a Sneaky Way to Test)." But the call to action has been left unexamined until now. So here are seven of the best ways to nail the call to action in your next email campaign, and in all your email campaigns to come.
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Content Marketing
7 Ways to Get People to Share Your Content
December 3, 2014 • Pamella Neely
People who are new to content marketing sometimes say, “I want my post to go viral.” Or, “We want content guaranteed to go viral.” It’s a great goal, but even the best marketers in the business don’t go viral every time they publish. Getting a post to go viral requires a mix of first-rate content, a responsive audience, and serious content promotion skills.
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Email Marketing
21 Ways to Improve Email Deliverability
October 27, 2014 • Pamella Neely
Most of us have had at least one experience of losing something in the postal mail. Hopefully yours was something small, like a postcard, not something like a mortgage payment or a rent check. But despite how much we all complain about the post office, its delivery rates positively sparkle compared to email messages. Just last week, Return Path, the email certification service, reported that one in six emails never makes it to the inbox.
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Social Media
8 Ways to Turn Facebook Likes into Email Subscribers
October 13, 2014 • Pamella Neely
Could Facebook be gone next year, or bigger than ever? Despite all the predictions about Facebook, there are two things that are definitely true about it. First, Facebook's organic reach has dropped to single digits for most pages. Second, organic reach is never coming back to its earlier levels.
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Email Marketing
13 Awesome ‘Welcome’ Email Ideas
September 1, 2014 • Pamella Neely
Welcome emails are one of the first key steps to long-term success with email marketing. They build trust, reduce opt-outs, and get sales upfront. Welcome emails typically get three times the clicks and sales as a standard promotional email. They’re also a terrific way to get ready for Christmas, which will be only 114 days away as of September 1.
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Conversion
7 Storytelling Techniques and How To Apply Them
August 25, 2014 • Pamella Neely
Storytelling is one of the marketing world’s new darlings. It’s a marketing strategy that has made it’s way into everywhere from board rooms to mom and pop stores. Storytelling is even being hailed as the single most powerful business skill for the next decade.
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Marketing & Advertising
11 Free Ways to Track your Competitors
June 4, 2014 • Pamella Neely
Spying on the competition may not be the most highbrow thing to do, but it’s extremely effective. Think of it this way: There are several companies that do what you ...
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Email Marketing
7 Ways to Improve Email Subject Lines (and a Sneaky Way to Test)
April 1, 2014 • Pamella Neely
Subject lines are powerful elements of email campaigns. But that's not really surprising. Subject lines are basically the headlines of an email message. Headlines are something writers and editors agonize over, and for good reason. Copywriter coach Chris Marlow writes “tests have proven many times that the headline is responsible for at least 50 percent and as much as 75 percent of an ad’s success.”
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Email Marketing
Beginner’s Guide to Email Re-engagement Campaigns
February 1, 2014 • Pamella Neely
“Practice good list hygiene.” That’s common email marketing advice many of us hear regularly. It means to do things like: Remove hard bounces after one try; Remove soft bounces after several tries; Remove subscribers who have been inactive for 12 months.
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Email Marketing
11 Ways to Improve Email Open Rates
January 13, 2014 • Pamella Neely
"Open rate" is one of the most telling email marketing metrics. Open rates determine click rates, conversion rates, and the overall performance of an entire email-marketing program. Even deliverability can be affected by open rate.
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Email Marketing
Email Spam Traps and How to Avoid Them
November 25, 2013 • Pamella Neely
Spam traps regularly catch well-meaning email marketers who would never think of themselves as spammers. Don’t let yourself be one of the marketers who will get stung by a spam trap this year, or in 2014. They can hurt your deliverability statistics badly.
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Content Marketing
Gated vs. Ungated Content
November 22, 2013 • Pamella Neely
Imagine you are finishing up your latest content marketing project. Let's say you have a terrific new ebook, video, or recorded webinar that you know your prospects will love. You upload this content to your site. You set up the landing page. Now you add the form to the landing page so you can build your list and follow up with people who downloaded this content.
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Email Marketing
Special Characters in Email Subject Lines: Good or Bad?
October 13, 2013 • Pamella Neely
You've probably seen special characters in email subject lines before — those interesting little symbols that show up now and again in your email inbox. They look like this.
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Marketing & Advertising
21 Ways to Integrate Email Marketing and Social Media
October 1, 2013 • Pamella Neely
There has been conflict between social media and email marketing over the last few years. Some observers believe email is dead. Others cite stats refuting the rumor. Wired magazine reported earlier this year “email is crushing Twitter and Facebook for selling stuff online.” And ExactTarget’s Channel Preferences survey found 77 percent of people prefer to get marketing retailed messages through email.
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Email Marketing
When Is the Best Time to Send an Email?
September 17, 2013 • Pamella Neely
"When is the best time to send an email?" is one of the most frequently asked questions about email marketing. After all the work of building a list, crafting a message, and designing the email, everybody wants to get the best results possible. Nobody wants to mail at the wrong time.
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Email Marketing
How to Write an Email Newsletter in 90 Minutes
July 29, 2013 • Pamella Neely
Writing a newsletter is one of the most difficult marketing stumbling blocks for a small business owner. You know it’s a task worth doing, but every week or month the email newsletter deadline rolls around and you think, “What I am going to say in the newsletter?”