By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President Themes and Ideas for September Email Marketing CampaignsWe know it may sound a little crazy, but it's time to start thinking about the holidays and your holiday-related events and promotions. No really. According to the National Retail Federation, "each year about 40 percent of consumers begin their holiday shopping before Halloween." Now that's scary.
But while it's time to start planning your Holiday promotions, it's also time to continue executing on your email campaigns. And to that end Constant Contact has come out with a short list of themes and ideas to keep you engaged with your customers throughout the month of September. We also offer some additional tips and ideas about each theme below the infographic.
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By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President
There are some amazing new features for small business users in Constant Contact.
Back in April, Constant Contact announced a set of new features that make emailing your customers and contacts easier and faster. The new features also allow your templates and content to be more powerful and provide more value to your recipients. Check out this overview video:
By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President
Get Inspired and Then Inspire Your Users to Generate Content
Brands of all sizes and stripes are finding that they can achieve better brand engagement and greater marketing success with peer-generated, authentic content than they can with more conventional, multimillion dollar campaigns.
There are a couple of reasons for the fun phenomenon. According to a 2016 survey conducted by Olapic, a visual content strategy agency, 76 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations over ads. Also, user-generated content (UGC) is much less expensive to produce and a much more efficient way of reaching customers today where they live and play - online and on social media. UGC marketing strategies rely on visual content that consumers create themselves – a much more affordable option than traditional advertising. Well, if you can inspire them to create it that is. So let's get to it. Here are some great examples of brands inspiring fun and engaging user-generated content:
By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President
12 Key Elements Your Website Homepage Should Include
A great website homepage is built with intent and designed to serve different audiences. Think about how and why visitors may come to your website. There will be those seeking to find a solution to their problem, hoping your product or service does the trick. But there will be visitors who are still researching and gathering information as well. Your homepage will also need to help job seekers, vendors, and potential business partners find their way around, too.
A great homepage incorporates elements that will attract traffic, educate a variety of visitors, and invite conversions. These elements move visitors from "just looking" to completing their desired task and submitting a contact form and becoming a lead. Or if you're selling online, these elements will help shoppers with completing a sale and becoming a customer.
By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President
If you have a small business website, you should be using Google Analytics.
Your website is not just a digital billboard for your business, nor is it simply your online calling card. It can be an amazingly nimble marketing tool for discovering key insights about your prospects, leads, customers and can be leveraged to attract, retain, and delight visitors at every stage of the buyer's journey. But how do you begin to gain important insights about your website content? We've found a great infographic guide for that.
By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President
10 Do's and Don'ts for Successful Small Business Email Marketing Campaigns
The success of email marketing is not slowing down, in fact, quite the opposite. In 2015 Constant Contact reported that the return on investment for email marketing was $38.00 for every one dollar spent. In 2018, ESPs are now reporting an increase in ROI to $44.00 per $1.00 spent.
Need more encouragement to focus on email marketing? There's this datapoint to consider: "90% of customers prefer to receive company updates via newsletters over Facebook updates," according to research from Nielsen Norman Group. That same research shows at least 50% of subscribers made a purchase that was influenced by content in an email newsletter. Understanding best practices and inherent pitfalls is critical to the success of your email marketing campaigns. By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President Updated January 19, 2020 Need a little inspiration for blogs, email marketing, and social media?Sometimes you just get stuck. Trying to come up with engaging ideas to wow your blog readers, social media followers, and email recipients can be a challenge - especially for small business marketers!
But with statistics and pundits pointing to the the growing use of social media, you've got to stay on top of your game. Take this quote from Larry Kim, CEO of MobileMonkey, "According to Sprout Social, about 74% of consumers make a purchasing decision based on their social media accounts." 74 percent! So if you're not taking advantage of these social platforms to engage your customers and drive traffic both to your website and to your place of business, well, you may be losing out on sales. So how do you get unstuck and come up with ideas for great new posts and blog articles? Keep this content idea cheat sheet handy and refer to it for inspiration whenever you need it.
By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President
Why Your Small Business Needs a Better Visual Content Marketing Strategy
The attention spans of American consumers are waning and the amount of content being consumed is growing. So how can your small business cut through the clutter and noise and make an impact on social channels and in search engine results? The short answer is: deliver quality visual content.
This is actually easier than it sounds and can be a lot of fun! And when it comes to creating visual content for your small business, you have the ability to create content on a budget that's just as good, if not better, than the larger companies and brands in your industry. By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President Holidays, themes, and ideas for June email marketing campaigns.What we love most about our partnership with Constant Contact is they are so good at putting together helpful resources for small business marketers. And now that Summer is finally here, it's a great time to get inspired by these June email marketing themes and topic ideas. Not convinced about the power of email marketing? A survey by MarketingSherpa found that over 60% of customers prefer to receive emails from brands at least weekly and over 80% wish to receive email communications at least monthly. In fact, this same study found that, "A vast majority of Americans (91%) do in fact want to receive promo emails." Well there you go. Start with these ideas and be sure to check out the additional tips and resource links below the infographic.By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President How to Add Philanthropy to Your Small Business Marketing As a small business owner it can be really rewarding to see the success of your local business translate into a positive impact in your community. But it turns out that entrepreneurs who incorporate philanthropy into their business model and marketing don't just benefit from "feeling good," they also tap into additional profitability that can be essential to the success of their enterprise.
For example, you're probably already familiar with TOMS Shoes. The Santa Monica, CA based company donates one pair of shoes to a child in need for every one pair of shoes sold. To date, TOMS has given away over 75 million pairs of shoes to children in need around the world as part of its “One for One” program. Turns out that adopting a commitment to a positive social impact is good for business. So how can you, as a small business owner, incorporate a philanthropic mission with social impact into your business model and marketing plan? We have a few ideas: |
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