We’ve compared SMS text messaging and email marketing before, with advice on the best situations to use each. But mobile marketing involves more than just SMS. Thanks to smartphones, your mobile marketing can have a wider reach in a number of mobile channels across apps, location-based services, email, mobile search and more. Let’s take a [...]

Email marketing and social media together are powerful tools for building a following for your business. But how can they help you as a local small business owner? Welcome to the tribe mentality. Your tribe is a fiercely loyal following of customers who are excited about your business. Using the connecting power of social media [...]

Mmm… spam. Gmail’s got some tasty recipes to make with the email spam you receive. And it all started 35 years ago today. Today’s the 35th anniversary of the first spam email that ever got sent – to a list of about 300 people. Spam is still an email plague today. But consumers tend to [...]

Imagine this: It’s your birthday. You check your email and see a message from your bank. “Happy Birthday from Capital One 360!” says the subject line. Lots of businesses send out birthday greeting to their customers, often with coupons or free offers. Hey, maybe the bank is giving my savings account some extra interest! Of [...]

We’ve talked about a lot of marketing trends this spring, from whitespace to long scrolling ads to other trends that are catching on. Maybe you’re ready for a complete overhaul of your emails by now. But don’t jump in full-force just yet. It’s polite to give your readers a heads-up first that things are going [...]

In the spirit of March Madness, we pitted 8 online marketing channels against each other to find out which ones small business owners like best. Here’s how they voted, with our own expert analysis of the qualities that make each channel the better choice for marketing a small business. Here’s the final outcome: ROUND 1 [...]

March Madness is college basketball’s biggest tournament, pitting 68 teams against each other in elimination rounds until there’s one winner. This year, we wanted to capture the spirit by pitting 8 popular online marketing channels against each other. The winner will be the channel that you – and other small business owners like you – [...]

You might encounter a mystery when you check your open rates. Along with the standard opens from each of your readers, you might find a few people who open your message more than once. Why would someone open your email more than once? The answer is simple: There are four different kinds of people who [...]

Facebook just unveiled a major overhaul to its news feed. The good news? You don’t really need to do anything and it can really help your business. Just like Facebook Graph Search can make your business page more visible without much effort from you, these news feed changes will make your page’s updates easier to [...]

Facebook’s new Graph Search can make your business’s Facebook page easier to find – and get you more visibility. But that’s only one function Graph Search can serve for your business. Graph Search can also give you fun and surprising insights about the likes and tastes of your customers, which you can use to make [...]