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Newsletter:  March 2012

How To Tackle Your 5 Toughest Email Marketing Challenges

Email is a powerful marketing channel, but it’s also one that presents many questions and difficulties. In its 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, MarketingSherpa surveyed 2,735 companies and asked them to rank the significance of 12 common email marketing challenges. In this blog post, we will focus on the top five challenges and suggest some ideas through which you can address these issues.

The best inbound marketers like to amass valuable data across their different channels. For instance, they might like to see the possible relationships between landing pages and emails or track the sales process of an email conversion. In addition to the obvious reporting benefits such integrations provide, they also open the door to a much more enjoyable experience for email subscribers.

Just think about it: if you could bridge the gap between email marketing performance and social media activities, landing page conversions, or new customer acquisitions, you are that much closer to improving your sales funnel and delivering content that your community loves.

‘Other data,’ including form submissions and activities on site, can point you to the resources your recipients are truly interested in. In that way, you have a clear understanding of how to further engage them through careful targeting and segmentation.

Solution: Integrate Your Data Systems

In order to integrate your email marketing with your other data systems, you need to use marketing software that allows for that integration to take place. In fact, integration is the foundation on which HubSpot’s software was built as it connects SEO, blogging, social media, lead management, and reporting with email marketing and lead nurturing.

Combining your different marketing databases allows for clear segmentation and the ability to better target your customers and prospects with relevant email messages. Once you have access to an integrated marketing system, keep your buyer persona in mind and focus on the opportunity to target the right audience with the right message.

The more targeted your email campaigns, the more content you’ll need. The key to promoting relevant content in email is to provide an offer that is connected to the initial request. What action have your contacts taken on (or even off) your website? Offer them content that fits with their intent and their needs.

Deliverability rate is the percentage of email messages delivered to your recipients’ inboxes versus the total number of messages sent. It tells you how many of the emails bounced back, and it’s a sure sign of inactivity. The two factors that influence deliverability rate are soft bounces and hard bounces. The soft bounce is temporary and occurs when an email server rejects an incoming message (for instance, when your recipients’ inboxes are full). A hard bounce, on the other hand, is less benign and represents a permanent error to deliver an email. This generally occurs when the addresses you send to are bad or don’t exist.

A low deliverability rate might get you blocked by ISPs (internet service providers). If your list is full of inactive emails, you don’t really know what your complaint rate is. Sure, you probably look at the total complaints over total list size, but ISPs are actually registering the total number of complaints over the number of active email users.

In addition, ISPs can mark abandoned email addresses as spam traps. So even if you have acquired emails legitimately, the abandoned addresses may have turned into spam traps. Aside from all the ISP problems, low deliverability rate also means you are wasting money sending messages to nonexistent addresses.

Solution: Practice Good Email Hygiene

Start by cleaning up your email list by removing the unengaged addresses. (You can identify these addresses with metrics such as opens, clicks, or website activity.) If you have a really serious problem with deliverability, you might want to redefine your opt-in process to prevent invalid emails from getting on your list. Either ask people to enter their email twice or experiment with double opt-in. Lastly, make sure your recipients have an opportunity to update their email addresses. Invite them to your preference center from every email you send. That might also help you with segmentation and achieving higher engagement overall.

In MarketingSherpa’s survey, marketing professionals shared that their third most serious challenge in respect to email marketing is growing and retaining subscribers. No wonder! Increasing the size of your email list and keeping your contacts engaged in your messages is no easy task. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa, the average email list depreciates by 25% every year.

Unfortunately, companies often battle this problem by purchasing lists. This practice will surely get you into trouble: it might add invalid addresses to your list, and thus, pollute your entire database. Even if the addresses you acquired are valid, the new recipients will most likely not be interested in your content and either unsubscribe or not engage with your emails altogether.

To retain subscribers, a lot of companies also send fewer emails, thinking that the communication frequency might in some way define engagement. A few emails means they are more special, right? Wrong. Frequency of emailing, as we have established in our Science of Email Marketing research, doesn’t necessarily negatively impact subscriber retention.

Solution: Earn Your Email Subscribers

Don’t purchase email lists; instead, earn your subscribers. Be clear to your target audience about what they will get out of subscribing to your emails. Give them a clear description of what the value proposition is. For example, will your emails offer: (1) tips and tools on how to run their business more efficiently, (2) product updates from your company, or (3) special offers via email? Your audience will want to know “why” they should subscribe before they decide to clutter their inbox with even more emails.

Are you concerned that you are emailing your subscribers too often? Give this thought a break and instead ask yourself if you are emailing the right people with the right message. In order to retain your email subscribers, you’ll need to provide them with ongoing value that is targeted to their needs. Make sure you are segmenting based on knowledge you have about your recipients.

Don’t limit your email testing to subject lines. Embrace testing of various elements in your email marketing efforts to optimize email performance. For instance, you can do A/B testing of the landing pages you’re promoting in your emails.

Achieving measurable ROI (return on investment) is another challenge that marketing professionals face in the land of email marketing. It’s difficult for them to connect the dots between the messages they send out to prospective customers and the moment when these subscribers get further engaged and turn into customers.

Interestingly enough, this problem is tightly connected to challenge number one — integrating email marketing with other data systems. When your marketing channels are not speaking to one another, it’s hard to identify how they affect conversions. For instance, you might see that your email blast got a 3.4% click-through rate (CTR), but can you also see if that communication contributed to generating new leads? What is more, do you see if it resulted in any new customers?

Solution: Closed-Loop Marketing

The solution to achieving measurable ROI from your email marketing campaigns is to practice closed-loop marketing. Follow a contact from the point of visiting your website through further engagement (viewing other web pages, downloading resources, clicking on your emails), to her final conversion into a customer. Implementing closed-loop marketing empowers you to track leads from their initial channel through a first conversion all the way to becoming customers. Such intelligence, in turn, enables you to identify your most powerful marketing channels and assign clear value to each of them. In this way, you will be able to measure the ROI not only of your emails, but also of your other efforts, which might include social media marketing and blogging.

Your email campaigns should only be a part of your holistic marketing approach. The real power comes from achieving a strong marketing mix. Email cannot be truly as fruitful just by itself; rather, it should also strengthen your other initiatives, just like you shouldn’t use social media in a vacuum, only rely on blogging, or trust that search engine optimization is enough to meet your goals. This, however, seems to be a challenge for marketers. How do you optimize your sales and marketing funnel with emails?

Most marketing professionals are accustomed to sending one-time email blasts that are not necessarily related to the actions of their email subscribers, their interests, or needs. Such a practice doesn’t help push leads down the sales funnel, and it can actually alienate them.

Solution: Nurture Your Leads

Lead nurturing sometimes goes by other names: marketing automation, drip marketing, auto-responders, etc. Simply put, lead nurturing is a system that allows you to send an automated series of emails to an early stage lead in order to better qualify them before handing them over to your sales team.

If it typically takes your leads a month to make a purchasing decision, then make sure you’re spreading out your communications to keep them engaged throughout the month. By taking this approach, you save your sales organization time because you educate and qualify the lead overtime.

Among some of the key benefits of lead nurturing is that it enables marketers to establish contact with their fresh leads fast and stay top of mind for potential, and even current, customers. In comparison to email marketing, lead nurturing is also relatively easy to set up because it is automated and doesn’t need a ton of maintenance over time.

What are some of your top email marketing challenges? Do you have any to add to this list?

Posted by Magdalena Georgieva

Newsletter: February 2012

Mobile Apps Usage Trumps Web Browsing at 94 Minutes a Day

Those fingers are flying over mobile keyboards with people now spending, on average, 94 minutes per day using mobile applications, according to analytics firm Flurry. Meanwhile, web consumption, on both desktop and mobile devices, has started to show a slight decrease.

The interesting thing about this data is that the most recent growth in mobile apps usage hasn’t really been at the expense of browsing the everyday, traditional web. People have just been using mobile apps more. Take a look for yourself.

Flurry tracked anonymous sessions across more than 140,000 applications and compared that data against web data from comScore and Alexa. Since the firm’s initial report in June, mobile app usage has increased by 13 minutes a day, while web consumption dipped slightly from 74 minutes/day in June 2011 to 72 minutes/day in December 2011.

What Are Mobile App Users Doing?

Gaming and Facebooking, of course. Games (49 percent) and social networking apps (30 percent) combined to account for almost 80 percent of all time spent in mobile applications, according to Flurry’s analysis. Entertainment and news followed with 7% and 6%, respectively.

“The growing chasm between mobile app usage and web consumption will only be exacerbated by mobile device purchases in 2012. We estimate that the cumulative number of iOS and Android devices activated will surge past 1 billion,” Flurry senior marketing manager Charles Newark-French said. “According to IDC, over 800 million PCs were sold between 1981 and 2000, making the rate of iOS and Android smart device adoption more than four times faster than that of personal computers.”

Marketing Takeaway

The growth in mobile apps usage is not coming at the expense of web browsing, which means people are doing everything they always did on mobile phones — text, check their email, look up websites — and still finding enough value in apps that they opt to use them on top of their regular browsing activity. So it makes sense that you would capitalize on this growth by creating a mobile app for your business, right?

Not necessarily. To justify the cost of creating a mobile app, you need to ensure it’s sticky. After all, what’s the point of creating a mobile app that nobody uses? So if you have limited time, resources, or ideas for a valuable mobile app, the best thing you can focus on is optimizing your website for mobile web browsing. Again, the rise of mobile app usage does not come at the expense of web browsing, which is taking place on desktops and mobile devices alike. Failing to mobile optimize your website can hurt your bottom line; but if your site is mobile optimized, the absence of a mobile app won’t damage your business if site activities can still be easily performed via mobile web browsing.

If you’ve mastered optimization of your website and emails, you should certainly put time into considering how your business can provide value via a mobile app. Consult this list of B2B mobile app ideas for some inspiration, and remember that if you jump on the mobile app bandwagon now, you will likely be ahead of the curve in your industry. With that timing and a quality app that people will actually use, you can enjoy quick adoption rates and increased brand engagement. Just make sure you don’t rush a subpar app to market; provide a great user experience so your customers don’t download your app, use it once, and abandon it to return to their regular mobile browsing activities.

POSTED BY: Jeanne Hopkins

Newsletter: January 2012

7 Signs That Your Mobile Marketing Sucks

"Marketers: Start your engines." That's the call many marketing professionals have taken to heart in the past several months or so as they add a mobile component to their marketing mix. That being said, some have been more successful than others at taking their marketing show "on the road" and leveraging all that mobile marketing has to offer.

The key, experts say, is in understanding the fundamental differences between your inbound marketing program for the desktop environment and reaching those consumers that have been set free by taking their devices with them everywhere.

Here are 7 indications your mobile marketing program may suck (and what you can do to fix it):

1. Your Marketing Approach Isn't Local

Whether your business has one location or five -- or 500 -- you can't fail to understand that despite being able to hold the entire world in the palms of their hands, mobile consumers are by and large concerned with the here—right here—and the now—right now. They want a latte, a haircut, or some sushi, but they only care about what’s nearby. Where the nearest café resides is important, not where there are 500 stores in the entire chain. If your mobile marketing isn’t taking into account the importance of location ("We have a latte with your name on it just two blocks from here”), your mobile strategy is falling short of what it could be.

2. Your Mobile Efforts Are Not Sociable

As important as social media activities are for your regular inbound marketing efforts, they are even more critical in your mobile marketing program. For mobile consumers, it’s not just what they’re doing that’s important, but where, with whom, and when. If your mobile presence isn’t set up to make it easy for them to share their experience with friends via Facebook, Twitter, or location-based services such as Foursquare, your mobile strategy is flagging.

Make sure your mobile presence is optimized for social media; claim your business’ locations where appropriate, and monitor the conversations to be able to quickly address negative comments while rewarding those evangelizing your brand.

3. You Don't Give Your Customers What They Want

You give your customers what YOU want. A mobile consumer is a breed apart. True, they share needs and wants with their office- or home-based counterparts, or even themselves, but when they are in 'mobile mode,' those needs and wants change. As a marketer, it’s up to you to understand them in the context of a mobile experience.

Your customer has different wants coming from, or going to, a client meeting at 10 a.m. than if they were deskbound at the same time of day.

By taking the time to understand how your customers operate in mobile mode—whether that’s by thinking it through from their perspective or, better yet, conducting research and surveys—you ensure your mobile strategy is properly focused.

4. You're Looking at the Wrong Metrics

One of the biggest boons for marketers in the mobile space is the abundance of metrics available for analysis. The other side of the coin is that there are so many metrics to choose from, and it’s easy to focus on the wrong ones when analyzing how effectively your mobile strategy is performing.

In a desktop setting, for example, just tracking how many visitors your inbound marketing is attracting and where they go once there is important in and of itself. In a mobile environment, you have to track not only how many visitors come to the mobile site, but also how many leave it and go to your desktop site, indicating something is lacking in the mobile version.

5. Your Team Doesn't "Get It"

It’s challenging enough that many of your customers need education on your mobile offerings; if your staff isn't properly trained and well-versed, they are unable to explain the benefits of your mobile channel to customers and will consequently prevent you from maximizing your investment in mobile marketing.

With mobile phone market penetration at nearly 100 percent, and smartphone marketing penetration rapidly approaching 50 percent, virtually everyone is a potential beneficiary of your mobile marketing. That means everyone in your organization should understand your mobile marketing offerings and strategy so they can share it with everyone in their life—friends, family, business associates—anyone who could use your goods and services.

6. Your Website Is Not Mobile-Optimized

If you have never viewed a desktop website on a smartphone, try it; it can be excruciating.

Pages load slowly, once-familiar buttons are now off-page and out of sight, and copy needed to intelligently and coherently comprehend the message are off-screen. Is that what you want for your customers, especially after making the effort to entice them to visit you via mobile? Not likely.

If your website is not optimized for mobile users, your mobile strategy is seriously failing. Be sure your web pages are designed for a small screen, images render quickly on the devices your customers use most, buttons for buying and/or sharing are easily found, and landing pages are quickly filled out with minimal typing.

7. You're App-solutely Wrong!

Mobile apps are all the rage. There are a more than 1 million apps now, which (in 2011) were downloaded about 18 billion times. Still, marketers must ask themselves, “Do we need an app?” and if so, “Which type of app is best for us?”

Not every business needs an app. Just ask the 80 percent of companies whose apps were downloaded less than 1,000 times, regardless of how much money they spent on development. The most successful apps let your customers do something more easily or effectively.

If you’ve determined your customers will benefit from an app, make sure your app does what they want and need it to do in a mobile context. Make sure your app works on the devices your customers are most likely to use, and it remains compatible as the devices evolve over time.

Main Mobile Marketing Takeaway

Many great innovators believe that if you’re not failing from time to time, then you’re not trying hard enough. This is fair, but as rapidly as mobile technologies evolve, mobile marketers can’t afford to fail often; the collateral damage accumulates quickly, and it’s often impossible to undo it.

Yes, a car and an airplane are both means of motorized transportation. But a plane is not simply a car with wings. Likewise, desktop marketing and mobile marketing, while they serve similar purposes, each require a different approach based on how your customers will use them.

Posted by Jeanne Hopkins

Newsletter: December 2011

9 B2B Mobile Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

"We're in the early innings of a massive phenomenon," said Mary Meeker recently in regard to the mobile revolution. Mary has been dubbed "Queen of the Net" by Barron's Magazine and is a well-known venture capitalist.

That said, B2B companies have been slow to move into mobile, which is concerning since mobile is especially pervasive in this market segment. The mental block that B2B marketers have revolved around is the perception that mobile is purely a consumer play.

On the contrary, 72% of the U.S. workforce is mobile according to IDC, and Forbes tells us that more than 70% of executives under age 40 classify mobile as their primary communications tool, with 50% of all execs preferring business purchases on mobile web vs. phone.

So what does this mean for your B2B marketing strategy? To ensure that you aren't focusing your B2B marketing efforts exclusively on vehicles or channels whose influence is gradually declining, you'll need to consider taking steps toward developing a mobile marketing strategy. When doing so, consider these 9 B2B mobile marketing mistakes to avoid.

Mistake #1: Relying on Your Traditional PC-Based Website for Marketing Efforts

Instead, design a mobile website that exploits the numerous capabilities of a mobile device. Unlike the PC, a mobile device functions as a phone, a camera, a video camera, and a text messaging device. The use of all of these features can be incorporated into your B2B campaign and your mobile website. Use Website Grader to determine if your current website is mobile-optimized.

Mistake #2: Misunderstanding the Personal Nature of Mobile Devices

Mobile devices are always on, always at hand, and -- unlike computers -- are rarely shared. With this in mind, sending text messages to your B2B customers can create a more personalized approach, reinforcing your personal relationship and increasing customer loyalty. The best text message campaigns include a call-to-action and are clear to the customer. However, do not bombard your customers with daily text messages. Your messages should seem more like subtle reminders with incentives to act rather than nuisance communications providing little to no value.

Mistake #3: Treating Mobile Users Like PC Users

Unlike communication via your PC, which is designed for lengthy communications with attachments, hyperlinks, and limitless details, mobile users prefer short messages that allow for equally short responses. Your mobile marketing campaign should be designed to accommodate recipients who are constantly on the move.

Mistake #4: Being Unaware of Mobile Device Limitations

Compared to a PC, a phone's screen is much smaller, there's no printer or traditional keyboard, there's no mouse, and there's less bandwidth. In that regard, it is counterproductive to approach your mobile B2B customers with a campaign that includes forms requiring extensive typing, printing of documents, or large downloads.

Mistake #5: Failing to Use Your Mobile Marketing Campaign to Collect Additional Data About Your Audience

This data collection can be done via "text-to-win" campaigns and other promotional offers, leading to more detailed customer information. If you have extensive information about your prospects and customers, you will be able to tailor a marketing program specifically for their needs.

Mistake #6: Not Optimizing Mobile Content for Different Mobile Devices

The PC web is different from the mobile web in that the PC web is largely a Windows-based universe where everything looks about the same on any computer. Conversely, mobile web is not nearly as generic. What appears to be perfect on one mobile device can be a jumble of unrecognizable characters on another. Have your technical team explore options for optimizing content so your mobile website works well all the time, no matter what device your customers and prospects use.

Mistake #7: Not Utilizing Social Media in Mobile Marketing Campaigns

Referencing Facebook posts, tweets, and blog articles in your mobile marketing campaign will allow you to reinforce your brand through multiple marketing channels.

Mistake #8: Being Unaware of the Short-Term, Instantaneous Nature of Mobile Device Responses, and Not Taking Advantage of This Distinction

Studies show that most text messages are read within 15 minutes, and most recipients respond within 60 minutes. With this in mind, you can design B2B marketing campaigns that are area-specific, time-specific, and incentive based.

Mistake #9: Failing to Use Your Website & Ongoing Promotional Campaigns to Attract Mobile Clients

Most of your B2B clients will still use their PCs regularly, especially when they are in the office. However, trends show that use of mobile devices will continue to increase at a rapid pace. If your B2B clients are already in the habit of communicating with you via both methods, this will lessen the need to convert them to the mobile method later on. In addition, if you include your mobile website in your print and television advertising, more existing and potential clients will access it. Coupling your mobile marketing with other forms of advertising may have a multiplier effect on your sales results.

Newsletter:  November 2011

8 Key Mobile Marketing Trends

Newsletter: October 2011

What incentives do your email subscribers respond positively to? If they
ignore your emails about product discounts and free shipping, it is time to try
something different.

“I don’t think that is really what people are really looking for,” says David
Meerman Scott about product incentives in email marketing.

What Are People Looking For?

If people won’t subscribe to your email list because of product incentives,
what are they looking for? People are eager to hear what you have to say, says
David. “What they are looking for is interesting and valuable information that
helps them,” he adds. People will sign up to receive your emails (or stay on
your email list) because you offer them information that prepares them to make
better decisions, educates them or entertains them.

What Should You Focus On?

What companies should focus on is creating helpful content and allowing
people to receive updates about this content. For instance, if you launch a
video channel and post interesting videos once a week, you should email people
when there is a new episode up. That is the sort of information they will
anticipate and spread around. The email newsletter, David notes, should link to
other sources of information, not to product incentives. While there might be
room for the latter, it should be used carefully.

Next Steps for Your Business

The major takeaway here is to design your email around valuable content and
make it easy to share. For instance, start by building your blog email
subscribers and nurture these relationships with helpful information such as
industry reports, interesting pieces of data and how-to videos.

What types of incentives have you experimented with in your email
marketing?

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/11822/Top-Incentives-for-Driving-Email-Subscribers-Marketing-Cast.aspx#ixzz1Z4hDz8aK

Newsletter: September 2011

This 10 Step Email Newsletter Guide will help you create informative newsletters that will allow you to regularly communicate with your leads and customers. On average, you should send one email newsletter per month, to help you interact and build relationships with your leads and customers. Email newsletters should be summaries of recent content you created. You should start creating your monthly newsletter a week before the day you’re going to send it.

Goal: To share content with subscribers so they take action.

Step 1: Gather Your Content

Use the content you published that month as the content for the newsletter. You want to get as many people in front of your content and newsletters are one of best tactics you could use.

Step 2: Determine the Goal

You understand the overarching goal of email newsletters, but each newsletter you create and should have a primary objective. For example, do you want your customers to take a survey or read this blog article on the latest industry trends?

Make sure you place the content that is the most important at the top of the email and in a second spot in the email for maximum exposure.

Step 3: Design Newsletter

Have a consistent newsletter template throughout the year. Only change the template design once per year. Most businesses change their templates at the beginning of the New Year.

What you can change on a monthly basis are headline colors and images to ensure the newsletter doesn’t get stale. Make sure you keep your business andproduct brand in mind when design the email and always remember that less is more with email marketing.

White space is your friend when you design your HTML template. It helps readers find and read the content and makes calls to action stand out. Always be thinking “less is more” when you create your newsletter template.

“From” Name and Address

The “from” name and email address should be consistent. For example, the “from” name could be setup like this, “HubSpot Monthly Newsletter”. You should then match the email address with their “from” name, e.g. newsletter@hubspot.com.

You should not send the newsletter from an address like noreply@, sales@, marketing@, etc. These email addresses commonly get picked up by spam filters and are far less personal than a real person, and usually have lower engagement.

Plain Text

You should create a plain text version of the email for email clients that only accept plain text emails. HubSpot’s email marketing and lead nurturing applications allow you to create both an HTML and plain text version.

Step 4: Create Subject Line

There are a few options when it comes to subject lines and you should test each option to see what works best for your audience. You should have a compelling subject line for each email you send. However, put into brackets something that will allow the receipt to know that it’s your email newsletter.

You could also have a generic subject that will be recognized by everyone who has received your email. This way you can set the expectation that the emails you send your list are going to have the following subject line.

Step 5: Email Body and Content

Every newsletter you create should include the following:

• Include your business social media links at the top or bottom of the email.
• Include a table of contents at the top of the email. Link each item in the table of contents to the corresponding page on your website.
• Make sure you upload the newsletter to a website page and include a link at the very top of the email that says “View in Browser.” This is very beneficial for people that don’t accept cookies

Youshould limit the amount of primary content to no more than five different content pieces. Examples of content you could have in your newsletter include:

• Blog articles
• Whitepapers, guides, checklists,
• Case studies, video testimonials
• Special deals, coupons
• Company announcements
• Upcoming events, upcoming webinars

Thecontent should direct people back your website and have them take some type of action. Each piece of content should have a call to action and link that sends the recipient back to your website. You should limit the amount of non-educational content in your newsletter. A good place for non-educational content is in the sidebar or at the bottom of the email.

Links

You should include a link in the first one or two sentences in the newsletter. The table of contents should also be linked to the content that’s on your website. You should bold some of the links in the newsletter, which will help increase your click-through rate.

Every link in the email should be a tracking URL so you can understand how many people clicked-through to your website and converted on your landing page.
Images

Make sure you have less than ten images in the email to prevent the email from getting caught in a firewall or spam folder. Newsletters with fewer images have a better chance of not getting flagged as spam. Create links for all the images that are associated with a call to action, so people can click on the image and go to your website.

Each image should include a descriptive alt text phrase, so if recipients don’t accept images, the alt text will convey what the image is about.

Personalize

You could start email by adding the receipt’s first name in the email body or the subject line; you can also experiment with adding the company name in the subject line.

CAN-SPAM

By law, you must include your company name, address and an unsubscribe link in your email to comply with the CAN-SPAM law.

Step 6: Email Signature/Footer

Your email signature should be consistent with the “from” name in the email. You should sign the email and include any other information you think the recipient’s may find useful.

This is a great place to add social media icons, your blog URL, or announcement s for upcoming events or products.

Step 7: Testing Your Email

To ensure the best results, you should send the email to employees at your company to make sure the newsletter doesn’t get caught by their spam filters. You should have someone else proofread the email and click on every link in the email. Have them communicate back to you if there are grammar mistakes, something that confuses them, a misaligned offer, etc.

We recommend you send the email to 10% of your list to ensure everything is set up properly. Then send it to the remaining 90%. You don’t want to send an email to thousands of people that might contain broken links or missing images.

Step 8: Send the Email

Double-check all of the links in the emails and make sure both the HTML and text based version are set up properly.

Step 9: Listen and Respond

The work does not end once you send them email. The other goal of email marketing is to build relationships with your list and subscribers. You need to be sure someone is responding to replies; preferably the person the email came from. Any questions or comments need to be handled in a timely manner.

Step 10: Measure

Measuring how people respond and act after you send your newsletter is very important. Things you should measure include:

• Total click throughs received
• Total clicks each link received
• Which piece of content was most popular
• Total number of unsubscribes
• Spikes in website traffic
• Spikes in social media activity
• Increase in followers on social media

Written by Mark Kilens

(hubspot)

Newsletter: August 2011

76% of consumers say the most important factor in a website's design is "the website makes it easy for me to find what I want."

What does this mean for marketers?

• Don't obsess over the visual design of your website
• Do obsess over the usability by your customers and prospects
• Don't worry if you or the CEO think your website design does not look pretty
• Do worry about the conversion rate of your website (Are people finding what they need and completing their tasks?)
• Don't use flash, heavy graphics, or tons of video
• Do use these things if it helps your customers get what they want from your website
• Don't reinvent the wheel when it comes to design and layout
• Do use a basic layout that will be familiar to your customers
• Don't differentiate with the design/functionality of your website
• Do differentiate your company by making it really easy for your customers to find what they want on your website
• Test, test, test! The only thing that matters is what your customers do on your website. Sit down with a potential customer, and watch them use your website. See if they can figure out how to get what they want; see if they can easily do the tasks you want your consumers to do. (e.g. "Show me how you would register for our free demo.")

I'll be covering this data as well as tons more tips, tricks, and new data about website design and website redesign projects in the Science of Website Redesign webinar. (So join me... I promise it will be fun!)

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/14953/What-Do-76-of-Consumers-Want-From-Your-Website-New-Data.aspx#ixzz1TKUn4x2e

Newsletter: July 2011

How To Monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day

Monitoring your business’ social media presence is incredibly important. You need to respond to people talking about your brand and understand how people view your company. However, a common concern is that it takes up too much time.

The team at HubSpot spreads out the responsibilities, but it’s entirely possible for one person to keep an eye on things. If you set up a solid routine, monitoring your online presence doesn’t have to be a hassle at all.

Here are five free, easy steps you can take to get things started. Do each task in the morning when you start work, and you should be good to go. (If you want to further automate this sort of work, checkout HubFeed, a monitoring service built into all HubSpot software packages.)

1) Check Twitter for chatter about your company (2 minutes): Use tools like TweetDeck or Twitter Search to monitor conversations about your company in real-time. To check once a day, set up an RSS feed for a specific Twitter Search to go straight to your Google Reader. Do this by clicking the little RSS icon after you complete a search. Now, ongoing search results will be sent to your reader.

2) Scan Google Alerts (1.5 minutes): Check your Google Alerts for your company name, products, executives or brand terms. To set this up, enter your search terms and select to receive updates as they happen or once daily. Now, when people blog about your products, an alert will be sent to your inbox. You can read the articles and respond right away!

3) Check Facebook stats (1 minute): Visit your Company Page’s Facebook Insights. This can be found by clicking “more” under the page’s main photo. Scan your fans and page views count. If you are a member of a group, check to see if any new discussions started.

4) Answer Industry-related LinkedIn questions (3 minutes): Search for questions on LinkedIn that you or members of your company can answer. You can set up an RSS feed for specific question categories to go to your Google Reader as well. When you find a relevant question, respond and include a link to your website.

5) Use Google Reader to check Flickr, Delicious, Digg and others (2.5 minutes): Also set up RSS feeds for searches on your company name and industry terms in other social media sites. Similar to monitoring LinkedIn and Twitter, your Reader will serve as a great place to centralize your other searches too!

So what do you think? Would these tips save you time? What other tricks have you heard to monitor your social media presence more efficiently?

Newsletter: June 2011

In 2011, 60% of Mobile Web Traffic Will Be Video

New research conducted by video traffic management firm Bytemobile has uncovered some surprising data savvy marketers need to be aware of.

Bytemobile has found that in 2011, 60 percent of all traffic on mobile Web devices will be for video. The study also shows that 10 percent of mobile Web users account for 90 percent of mobile Web traffic. This staggering fact means that a relatively small group of mobile Internet users are doing the vast majority of mobile bandwidth consumption.

This data highlights some critical elements in the evolution of the mobile Web. Streaming or downloading large video files over a wireless network can put a major strain on the network and impact performance for users. According to the Telegraph, many wireless data service providers cannot keep up with the demand of consumers. Companies like T-Mobile are, in turn, increasing prices and lowering the amount of mobile bandwidth included in each package.

Marketing Takeaway

This data offers important lessons for savvy marketers, the first being that mobile Internet users are looking to be entertained on the go. With video being such a large source of mobile Web traffic, it is likely that Netflix, iTunes and YouTube represent a large portion of that 60 percent. As a marketer, you should be sharing your video in a mobile-friendly player that uses HTML5 instead of Adobe’s Flash. If you are trying to market on the mobile Web, you need to consider the importance of entertaining and quality content that can be consumed on mobile devices.

With indications that mobile bandwidth cost may be on the rise, it is important for marketers to develop lightweight ways to engage mobile users. Don’t ask a user to stream a 10-minute video. Instead, provide a clean text summary of the video if they are using a cellular data connection. Give them an opportunity to watch the video if they are on a WiFi connection, in an effort to help them conserve mobile bandwidth.

Does this new mobile web data surprise you?

By Kipp Bodnar

Newsletter: May 2011

How to Use Online Video for Business

Posted by David Wells

Why would companies want to do online video?

 Video is the best way to tell a story.

"You capture the emotion of people. Companies are made up of people, and people have stories. Video is the best way to tell a story."

You can give a behind the scene look into your company and humanize your business. Robert Scoble is a prime example of how he took a video camera behind the scenes in Microsoft.

Where to start?

Start with what you have. Do you have a smart phone? Record a simple video and upload it.

The barriers of entry to online video have never been lower.

If you don't have a decent camera on your phone, Steve suggests using the basic webcam on your computer! The key is to start small and work your way up to fancier equipment.

Do Casual Video

Every video you create doesn't need to be polished and edited to the max. You can shoot simple one take videos of you talking with your customers, answering questions, or sharing some interesting industry information.

Chevrolet has a great Posterous blog as an example of this casual video mentality. "If you go to the Chevrolet website and it’s these multimillion dollar TV commercials that look gorgeous. They also have a blog, a media blog. It’s Chevrolet.Posterous.com.

Over there, they just throw up YouTube videos, little Flip videos and things. They have the Volt car, the Chevy Volt, the electric car. People drive it, and then they get out of the car, and some marketing person with a Flip cam says, “What did you think about the car?” And they’ll say it in like six seconds something like, “It was great. I really like the ride, and it’s a lot bigger than I thought.”

They’ll take that video and put it up on the Posterous blog. No editing, no titles, no credits, no music, nothing, but it’s this real and authentic moment that they captured and put up. And the thing that’s cool about it that this is the distinction, if you go to Chevrolet.com, you’re expecting highly produced videos. You go to Chevrolet.Posterous.com, you’re like, “Okay. It’s a blog. I’ll be getting these random videos and things.” So it’s setting the expectation of what the visitor to the site is going to get. So it’s a fine place to put casual videos like this."

Set Videos Free

Keeping your video content locked up on your own domain won't cut it anymore. Post your videos on a number of different video channels and leverage the power of the search capabilities of these video platforms.

Steve recommends using good titles and descriptions on every video you post. Video SEO is a critical component that most companies overlook. People are using YouTube as a search engine (it's actually the 2nd largest search engine in the world).

Leverage Transcriptions

All those magical search engine friendly words you speak deserve to be indexed.

Get your content transcribed, this will enable search engines to find and index the content within the video and help pull in that organic search.

Find a transcriber via Craigslist or use a professional service. I utilize Speechpad for all the Inbound Now Shows.

Syndicate Videos

Steve recommends using video aggregators like a Tubemogul to put your videos in various online video locations. He (and I) also recommend using Blip.tv as a platform is you are running a series.

The Biggest Mistakes to Avoid in Video

The cardinal sin of video is having bad audio. People can stomach slightly blurry cameras or bad lighting but if the audio is bad, ringing and/or grating it can give your audience a headache and turn them off.

Get a decent microphone for videos. I personally use the AT2020 USB Mic for my interviews. It's around 100$ and will give you great audio on any recording from your computer.

LiveStreaming

"Live streaming is so easy. A number of ways that companies can do live stream, two of the most popular, well three I’ll say, Ustream, Livestream, Justin.tv are just on the top of my mind."

LiveSteaming is a great way to tap into live events and connect with your audience in real time.

Wine Library TV

Gary Vaynerchuk is an excellent example of how someone took online video and completed revolutionized their business with it. Gary worked with his father at a wine shop in N.J. Using the power of online video he transformed the company from a $4 million-a-year business to a $50 million-a-year enterprise with his daily show Wine Library TV.

Content and Passion are What Matter

The bottom line: Worrying about your equipment is simply an excuse!

You should be spending a majority of your time focused on the content.

If you are not passionate about the videos and subject matter you are producing this will be painfully obvious to viewers (they can see you).

"Just be authentic and real" and share your knowledge with the world.

Newsletter: April 2011

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

Posted by Brian Halligan

When I talk with most marketers today about how they generate leads and fill the top of their sales funnel, most say trade shows, seminar series, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and advertising. I call these methods "outbound marketing" where a marketer pushes his message out far and wide hoping that it resonates with that needle in the haystack.

I think outbound marketing techniques are getting less and less effective over time for two reasons. First, your average human today is inundated with over 2000 outbound marketing interruptions per day and is figuring out more and more creative ways to block them out, including caller id, spam filtering, Tivo, and Sirius satellite radio. Second, the cost of coordination around learning about something new or shopping for something new using the internet (search engines, blogs, and social media sites) is now much lower than going to a seminar at the Marriott or flying to a trade show in Las Vegas.

Rather than do outbound marketing to the masses of people who are trying to block you out, I advocate doing "inbound marketing" where you help yourself "get found" by people already learning about and shopping in your industry. In order to do this, you need to set your website up like a "hub" for your industry that attracts visitors naturally through the search engines, through the blogosphere, and through the social media sites. I believe most marketers today spend 90% of their efforts on outbound marketing and 10% on inbound marketing and I advocate that those ratios flip.

Newsletter:  March 2011

7 Money-Saving Reasons to Use Video Email

We all know marketing is expensive. TV, radio and print ads cost hundreds or thousands of dollars for limited, host-controlled exposure. The greater the exposure, the higher the cost. Annual budgets can easily be blown on campaigns that deliver little ROI to support the expenditure-leaving businesses without the capital to launch other marketing efforts.

Fortunately, there is an alternative to expensive, traditional marketing methods. Video email offers a big bang for a small buck and here’s a few reasons why:

1) Let’s Face it, it’s Cheap. Have you spent a night at the movies with popcorn and soda for two? You probably paid the equivalent of a month of video email marketing service!

2) Unlimited Usage. Send video emails as often as you want throughout the month with no extra fees.

3) No ‘per campaign’ costs. Unlike traditional advertising where each campaign is billed separately, video email frees you to push out multiple campaigns all for one flat fee.

4) ‘Round the clock marketing. Video emails can be viewed anytime, multiple times, and then forwarded for viral 24/7 viewing.

5) You’re not lazy, you’re productive. Why waste time and energy at the print shop or on the phone with sales reps. Create and send videos at your desk and have more time for other projects.

6) Recycle, reuse. Create video emails that have a shelf life and reuse them over and over. The more you automate, the more efficient and cost effective your business becomes.

7) Plug up the money drain. Drastically reduce time, effort and money expended on converting the masses. Video emails can do much of the legwork, freeing you to concentrate on the most promising prospects.

All businesses, regardless of size or budget, can benefit from the cost-savings and success rate of video email marketing. Whether used exclusively or in conjuction with traditional marketing efforts, video email is a powerful, value-add to your overall marketing strategy.

Newsletter: February 2011

Video Email Equals Savvy Marketing

A recent webinar on video email marketing (or video commerce) turned up some interesting information. Nearly 300 participants in a video marketing seminar were asked their level of video email expertise. 10% considered themselves clueless, 50% called themselves novices and 25% claimed intermediate status. Only 15% identified themselves as either advanced or expert. Experience also played a role in participants attitude toward video email with only 25% optimizing video marketing opportunities. In other words, the vast majority of businesses are not using or effectively using video email to market their products and services.

 Studies have shown that consumers are trending heavily to video content online. Savvy business owners are recognizing videos increase viewer engagement, heighten loyalty and effectively build brands. Text emails have become common place. Marketers need to differentiate themselves in the inbox by using creative strategies and video adds the extra dimension needed to spur viewings. (A CoVideo customer recently told us his emails had an open rate of 22% on average. When he included video the open rate immediately increased to 50%).

 Create the optimal experience for your subscribers and increase your email marketing performance by adding video email from CoVideo to your marketing strategy.

Newsletter: January 2011

5 Steps to Overcoming Camera Anxiety

At one time or another nearly everyone has felt uncomfortable in front of a video camera. You know how it goes, the record light comes on and you freeze up, break out in a sweat or stumble over simple words. With time and some familiarity with the technology, many people overcome their initial butterflies and start to develop a level of comfort during a recording. Others continue finding it difficult to relax in front of the camera and their discomfort can lead to frustrating video sessions followed by overly critical reviews of their work. Anyone experiencing camera anxiety knows it hampers their ability to create effective videos. In fact, most of these people become so frustrated they give up altogether. In a world where video has become the preferred method of communicating, conquering camera anxiety is not only a good idea , it’s essential to compete effectively in the marketplace. Try implementing some or all of the ideas below and start enjoying the process of creating and sending videos!

1. Put on Your Public Appearance. We face other people everyday in the course of doing business. Whether it’s across a desk, over a partition or around a table, we speak in public situations all the time. If your appearance is acceptable for face-to-face business interaction, relax…you will look fine in front of a video camera.

2. Make the Camera Your Friend. Many people have difficulty talking to an inanimate object (camera). The lack of awareness, normally provided by another person, can make it difficult to speak with warmth and focus. Tape a picture of someone you know to the side of the camera and speak directly to them. After a few takes you’ll be comfortable enough to visualize a face in your mind and can take the picture down.

3. Put Your Best Light Forward. Even the best hair, outfit or makeup won’t offset a dark background and shadows across your face. Make sure to have sufficient and well placed lighting to showcase yourself and/or your products.

4. Speak From Your Comfort Zone. It’s always easier to speak when you have personal knowledge, and are passionate, about your topic. Let your natural enthusiasm for the subject take the lead and you’ll find yourself more relaxed and at ease.

5. Mute Your Inner Critic. No video is perfect. So relax, set reasonable expectations and realize most people will focus on your message- not your striped shirt.

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Newsletter

December 2010

5 Ways a Video Marketing Strategy Can Build Sales

Video is a powerful Internet marketing tool, and today more than 52% of all Internet communications contain video.

Our new Video Marketing Strategy Model lets you leverage video for maximum focus and effectiveness to improve your marketing results. You get the benefits of a carefully structured process that uses the right video in the right way at the right time to support your marketing objectives.

The Model is based on four integrated components that provide a flexible framework for optimizing your video marketing:

1.  Well-defined Video Production component of Marketing Plan based on promotional video, testimonials, and               topical videos;

2.  Video Email Platform to embed video in video email, website, and social media sites;

3.  Video Email to maintain awareness, educate clients and prospects, and drive traffic to your website;

4.  Distribution of video to video sites, social networks, and video blogs to establish expertise in market, lead traffic         directly to your website, and improve search engine page rank; and

5.  Video-optimized website to gain "stickiness", add testimonials, tell your story, build site value, capture more               visitor information, and present new products and services.

We will work with your marketing team to develop and implement a Video Marketing Strategy that adds value to your marketing communications and improves business results. Call us today at 866-758-6689 for informed answers to your questions, and click on this link to download the model.

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We are committed to finding powerful tools and technology that help your business increase sales, improve customer service, and become more efficient and profitable.