Part 4 of 4: Promote Your Holiday Offer!

Now that you have set your holiday goals, defined your audience and created your offer, it’s time to talk about marketing!

So where to start? You can promote in so many ways: online posts, a community newspaper, by partnering with neighboring businesses, via print advertising, big banners, banner ads, direct mail, online ads, email marketing and yes, even personal invitations! We’ll cover a few of these options below, be sure to take some time and think creatively. How does your audience expect to hear from you? What would represent a pleasant, unexpected surprise? In today’s busy world, what would make them stop and take action?

Marketing Events: Is your offer is in conjunction with an event, such as Small Business Saturday, or an event of your own creation? If so, be sure to start promoting your event with both in-store signs and on social media well before your event. When it comes to social, customers love behind the scenes content. You can even build and...

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Does the Placement of Your Call-to-Action Matter?

In part 3 of my Design and Layout series, I’ll share my personal thoughts on where your call-to-action (CTA) should be placed within your email campaign. Let me preface my opinion with a statement. “Sometimes I don’t believe in best practices.”

There, I said it! Having created email campaigns for several years, for a wide range of clients, using various layouts, I can honestly say it does not matter. I know you will find A LOT of marketers who disagree with this statement, so perhaps I should clarify my opinion.

The placement of your call-to-action does matter. However, I do not believe a single ‘best practice’ recommendation can be made that works for everyone in every situation.

You can have great results with a call-to-action just about anywhere in your email. It can be above the fold, below the fold, as a huge button, as a text link, as an image, bright and bold, soft and subtle, within a caption to an image or video, and yes, even as an extra...

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Boost Customer Engagement & Loyalty with Interactive Email Elements

In my last blog, I talked about the importance of using a mobile responsive template to ensure the best experience for your readers. Having a mobile responsive template that looks great across all types of devices is the first step to designing an email that encourages engagement. Now, let's look at ways you can increase customer engagement WITHIN the email itself. We’ll start with interactive email elements.

What are Interactive Email Elements

Features that allow your readers to take action within your email are referred to interactive email elements. They include polls, videos, shopping cart integrations and forms. Interactive email elements act much in the same way as elements on a website. They allow readers to actions without ever leaving your email.

Why Use Interactive Email Elements

There are so many reasons to use interactive elements! Interactive elements provide convenience to your readers, improve engagement and ultimately help increase your revenue. Too...

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How Your Email Design Impacts Engagement

If your email marketing is falling short of your goals or expectations, perhaps it’s time to step back and look at your email design. Let’s look at everything from your template, use of interactive elements, placement of your call-to-action, to your colors and images. Let’s jump right in!

Is your Email Marketing Template Mobile Responsive?

This one may seem obvious, but if you haven’t heard of mobile responsive templates, please allow me to shed some light on why they are SO IMPORTANT!

Think about all the different devices you, your friends, your colleagues, and anyone else you know use to access digital information. Desktops, tablets, smart phones… Now consider that on each device information can be viewed differently. On a desktop, you can minimize your screen size to only display on a portion of your screen, small or large. Tablets and phones can be viewed holding the device upright (vertical) or by rotating the device sideways (horizontal). Then...

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Why Email Marketing Will Continue to be Relevant

Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, you could market to, engage with and simply update most of your Facebook fans simply by posting an update to your business Facebook page. It was easy and quite a few of your fans even took the time to engage with your post! And... other than your time, it was FREE! 

Seems like a long time ago! We all know that in order to reach any significant portion of your Facebook audience now, you need to pay-to-play, just to even get your message to the audience base YOU built over time. Have you noticed that the cost to reach your own fans on Facebook, let alone new prospects, is ever-increasing? 

If we want to take this story one step further, let's remember that you do not own the social media platforms that you post on. Platforms come and go, rules change, and all your hard work building your audience can be gone along with a platform... remember Myspace?

Don't get me wrong, I 100% support engagement and advertising through...

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