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 [...]

It’s easy to find tips on how to improve your marketing, but it’s not as easy to find tips that you can easily apply today. Of course you want to do whatever it takes to see better results with your email marketing campaign, but you only have so many hours to work on it. Today, [...]

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 [...]

Corey Koehler didn’t plan on making music his career. He was the guy that picked up the guitar by the campfire for fun, but his friends saw talent and encouraged him to record. He now has a full schedule of shows and music sales on his website. Smart email marketing helped get him where he [...]

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 [...]

Trying to grow your email list? Then it makes sense you’ll be happy when new people subscribe to your list. But here’s a tale from Corrina Gordon-Barnes of You Inspire Me of why you should also be happy when people unsubscribe… When I started my email list back in 2006, Penny was one of my [...]

“We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.” – Benjamin Franklin Since 2010, businesses have been increasingly adding game-like elements to their marketing campaigns. Viewers can participate, sometimes for the fun of it and sometimes to earn prizes. A fuller explanation of how it works is here [...]

If you’re a blogger, it’s likely people are reading your posts through Google Reader. (Click if you don’t know Reader.) Google announced Wednesday that Reader’s closing. Which means your RSS followers won’t see your posts anymore. Email to the rescue! What’s Email Got To Do With It? Well, your soon-to-be-ex-Reader followers have 3 options: 1. [...]