Webinar: 5 Marketing Trends That Could Grow Your Business
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I’m happy to share news that interlinkONE and Grow Socially are hosting a pre-Graph Expo webinar on September 7th.
The theme is “5 Marketing Trends That Could Grow Your Business“.
During the webinar, we will cover items such as:
- Mobile Marketing — including QR Codes, mobile websites, mobile payments, mobile commerce, and more
- EMail Marketing — how strategies are changing in terms of content, layout, and frequency
- Social Networks — advice and commentary on whether you should be paying attention to Google+, Tumblr, and other sites
- Automation & Cross-Media — examples of how companies can improve their sales and marketing processes by integrating marketing and fulfillment
- And more!
If you are interested in attending, simply click here to register >>
Tags Three Trends That Will Affect Your Email Marketing Strategy
Are you looking to improve the effectiveness of your email marketing program?
If so, there are always different things that we can look at — this might include content, deliverability rates, Subject Line testing, and more. Along with those items, I wanted to share three trends that may help companies to experience more success in their email efforts.
P.S. These trends are not necessarily new. But even though people may have been aware of them for a little while, many of us have still not taken any action.
Mobile Devices and Reading
As the number of smartphone owners continues to rise, more and more people will become quite acquainted (and addicted) to having the ability to check their email at any time, wherever they may go.
This will mean that marketers will need to invest time and effort in doing the following:
- Testing how their current emails appear on various mobile devices
- Finding ways to tinker with their content, layout, and underlying HTML/CSS to ensure their email looks good across as many devices as possible
Of course, many will acknowledge that designing emails for typical desktop and laptop viewing was already a challenge, due to the fact that various email clients render the code differently!
However, there are various resources popping up that do provide some help on how you can design your emails for mobile devices. Here’s a great one from Smashing Magazine.
Social Networks and Sharing
We all know the power of word-of-mouth marketing. We want our content to go viral. But do we make it easy for people to start sharing and spreading our messages?
When it comes to creating and designing emails, we often spend most of our time worrying about the content and layout. And while that is important, we certainly do not want to overlook adding features that might encourage people to share our content. This may include:
- Adding a “Tell-a-Friend” link or button
- Displaying icons and links for sharing specific articles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
- Dropping subtle hints that might remind someone to pass along an article to someone else
Personalization
Technology has made it easier than ever before for marketers to build & manage databases. It has also made it easier for people to create emails that will have variable content based on the data that you may have.
However, this is an option that is often ignored. Many marketers feel the pressure to simply “get the email out the door”. Thus, taking the time to plan and create multiple versions that will offer up unique content might seem like a tactic that could stall a project.
But it may be worth investing the time to try and test out some form of personalization in your next email. Whether it’s simply serving up an article that might appear to specific industry that is represented in your list, or customizing your wording based on the types of products & services that your subscribers may offer, you may be able to increase the effectiveness of your emails.
Is There an Easy Button?
Jennifer Matt recently wrote an excellent post on The Web and Print blog titled “How Easy is Printing?”
If you haven’t read it, I’d definitely encourage you to take a moment to do so. Not only is it entertaining, but it’s inspiring as well.
The main point of the post is that to encourage people to print more things, companies need to make it easy for them to do so. While this certainly includes external processes (how hard is it for someone to order printing from your company), it also applies to internal processes.
Jennifer asks this question: “Do your systems require you to piece together data from various systems to give the customer a complete picture?”
Yes, if a printer needs to log-in and pull data from multiple systems in order to give timely answers and reports to a client, then that can certainly be considered a hassle among the printer’s staff. If it’s not easy for them to do their job, most likely the customer will not think that it’s not easy to do business with that printer.
The Sales Hat is Coming On
If that’s the situation that you find your print shop in today, here comes a sales pitch.
interlinkONE’s integrated, multi-channel marketing software is designed to eliminate the need for a printer to invest in multiple point solutions. Our ilinkONE Version 8 software is designed to allow you to build, manage, execute, and measure marketing efforts across a variety of channels — including print, email, web, social networks, mobile, and more.
It enables printers to easily generate and provide reports to clients that give them a full report on their activity — from landing page hits, to leads, to inventory counts, to popular products ordered, and more.
Time for a Demo
If you’re interested in learning more, I’d love for you take a moment and register for a demo of our solutions.
Five Must-Haves for Your Corporate Website
Your corporate website is the ultimate tool to get all of your company’s information out to your prospects. This is a long standing idea, and it has become an essential part of what your company offers, in terms of marketing.
But you need more than just information. There are five elements that every successful website should have. And I am going to tell you what they are.
1. Blogs
Having a blog is like killing multiple birds with the same stone. First, it is a great avenue for your business to create content and push it out through your site. You can give practical applications to your services and products, or you can use it to give a voice to your employees to talk about industry trends or topical news stories. This increases search engine optimization. Google loves well-written, relevant content. Blogs are a necessity for your website.
2. Email Sign Up
Your website can be a tool for you to compile a loyal following of your content. Create a way for people to sign up and offer their email to your company. You can compile a database of email addresses, and send out a monthly eNewsletter, which can be made from the most important recycled blog posts from the past month. This way, you can be absolutely sure that you are reaching a consistent audience, and you can tailor your content to effectively connect with your email database.
3. Calls To Action
A call to action is basically a request to “do something” on your website. It could be a button asking to donate, register, click for information or whatever you might want a reader to do. These can be incredibly powerful tools for you to harness. Having a concise number of calls to action can amplify their importance. Offering freebies or incentives in exchange for your audience clicking on your calls to action can increase the amount of information you can give out, and it can also be a gauge for the amount of interest generated by those calls.
4. Social Media Friendly
Link your website to all of your social networks. Integrate your various online platforms, and have all of the social media badges in one place. Make it easy for users to follow you on Twitter and like you on Facebook. Use every available channel to promote yourself, and provide those channels for your audience. Let your message resonate on more than one site that your followers spend time on. They should see posts from you on Facebook, read tweets, see links to YouTube videos, and all of these should drive traffic back to your site.
5. Easily Updated
There is no sense in making a fantastic website if it is too difficult to make changes. Odds are that you will be changing around content on your website on a somewhat regular basis. Using user-friendly web platforms, like WordPress, make website management easy for all of your staff members to use. The easier it is to maintain, the better off you are. Team members can participate in blog efforts, make sure to update information on services and more.
They are five simple tips, but your website quality will improve and so will your search results. Your site will become a more comprehensive reflection of your business.
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Connect with me online!
Twitter – Twitter.com/JohnFoleyJr
Facebook – Facebook.com/JohnFoleyJr
YouTube _ YouTube.com/JohnFoleyJr
LinkedIn – LinkedIn.com/in/JohnFoleyJr
The Benefits of Integrated Marketing
When it comes to creating multi-channel marketing efforts, companies certainly need to have the right technology and tools. For example, they need a solution for doing things such as
- Creating personalized URLs
- Sending emails
- Sending and managing SMS/Text-messages
- Building landing pages
- Entering leads from a Business Reply Card, a trade show, or another event
- And more…
To do that, some companies do by separate point solutions for each channel that they are trying to use. However, this approach often leads to headaches and trouble when it’s time to train employees, compile reports, maintain branding and consistency, and export & import data.
In this video, interlinkONE’s CEO John Foley, Jr. discusses the benefits that companies can receive by taking an integrated marketing approach to their activities. We hope that you enjoy John’s tips!
