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Category Archives: Email Marketing

Twiter and the 2012 Election – Lessons Learned

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Facebook, Marketing

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Behavior, Best Practices, Community, Community Management, ebooks

The following is an excerpt from the new ebook, “How to Use the Internet to Win in winningin2016-cover2014: A Comprehensive Guide to Online Politics for Campaigns & Advocates”, available in the Amazon store for the Kindle e-reader and as a PDFn Epolitics.com.

The explosion of Twitter marks one of the biggest changes in the digital political landscape in the last few years — in 2008, Barack Obama had all of 100,000 followers by Election Day, a number that was well above 20 million on Election Day 2012. Though the Twitter and Faceook are often lumped together in the popular mind, Twitter isn’t quite a mass medium in the same way Facebook has become — it’s more of a channel to reach those“influentials” like bloggers, journalists and activists. Also different: you can pretty much post as often as you want on Twitter, while you’ll probably want to limit yourself on Facebook to keep from burning out your audience.

An example of Twitter’s ability to influence the political discussion? In 2012, Obama and Romney campaign staff regularly engaged in “Twitter duels” online, with reporters and activists the intended audience. Though these back-and-forth exchanges probably didn’t change any votes, they got plenty of media attention — mission accomplished.

Functionally, Twitter is the very short equivalent of blogging, with a dash of social networking thrown in: individual Twitter messages (“tweets”) are limited to 140 characters in length, and people generally have to choose to “follow” someone’s Twitter feed in order to see their updates. As with Facebook, essentially anyone or any organization can create a Twitter feed, but in some sense Twitter lacks the reciprocal nature of a true social network — plenty of feeds have thousands of followers but follow far fewer people in return themselves (do you think that Lady Gaga really pays attention to what you say?).

One important consideration — Twitter’s a useful tool for campaigns, but its real political power may lie in what campaigns CAN’T do on it, which is to dominate the conversation. Twitter is truly a democratic medium (with a small “d”), and content and opinions spread on Twitter often find their way onto blogs and cable news and into newspapers. Twitter helps create the sea of information in which modern campaigns swim, and whether or not they’re active on Twitter themselves, it’s likely to shape the political communications environment in which they operate.

What to Tweet?

A common perception of Twitter is that it’s an inherently trivial medium — it’s often spoken of as a way to tell the world what you had for breakfast. But in practice, normal people who fill Twitter’s “airwaves” with self-indulgent drivel generally don’t pick up much of a following (for celebrities, that’s unfortunately NOT so true). In fact, perhaps the most common single use of Twitter is to spread links to blog posts, videos, news articles and other pieces of in-depth content, making the 140-character limit less of an issue.

In general, as in so many other parts of the online advocacy space, readers aren’t likely to pay much attention to you unless you have something of value to offer them. People who tweet too much trivia too often can find their followers dropping off in droves, so be sure to pay attention to the KIND of information you distribute. Not every tweet needs to be a haiku-like gem of wisdom, but it rarely hurts to think for at least a minute or two about your ultimate communications goals before messaging the world. How often people Tweet varies immensely — I have friends who’ve sent out 10 or 20 times more messages over time than I have, for instance. It really depends on what you have to say.

Building a Following

Once you’ve established an initial base of content on Twitter, next start building your following. Unfortunately, short of being mentioned in the Twitter feed of someone famous, finding an audience typically takes time. Start by following the people you want to follow you — your staff, political activists in your state, district or area, local bloggers, journalists, etc., since at least some of them will follow you back right away. Once they do so, you have the opportunity to reach them — and potentially, their own audiences through them.

Supporters = Amabassadors

Of course, you’ll want as many of your supporters to follow you as well, particularly if their own following is large and/or active. So ask them! A “follow us on social media” email is a nice break from a string of fundraising asks, and your supporters may appreciate a chance to help the campaign without having to open their wallets.

@Replies and Hashtages: Engaging the Community and Connecting with Prominent Voices

The most effective way to build your following over time is to actively engage the Twitter community, a process that can take several forms. The most straightforward is to use an “@reply,” in which you reference another Twitterer in your own post (i.e., “@epolitics why don’t you just shut up about this crap”). You can use @replies to hold a back-and-forth conversation with someone, plus they’re a good way to get the attention of someone with whom you’d like to connect (Twitter.com and other Twitter-management tools — like Hootsuite — typically make it very easy to see who’s @replied you).

@replies also play a role in “retweeting,” which is the forwarding of someone else’s posts to your own followers. Retweets are one of the signature characteristics of the ongoing Twitter conversation, since they let people provide value to their readers without having to write new content themselves. Plus, retweeting someone more prominent than you can be a good way to come to his or her attention, particularly if you use the old-school “RT @reply” method rather than Twitter’s newer built-in retweet function (RT’ing a tweet as an @reply also lets you add a comment, another valuable feature).

Besides RT’s, the other common bit of Twitter shorthand you’ll commonly encounter is a “hashtag,” a word or abbreviation preceded by the “#” sign. Twitterers use hashtags to refer to a topic that’s being discussed by several people at once, for instance an issue, event or public figure, and people often use Twitter’s search function to follow the extended discussion around a particular tag. This tendency makes hashtags a valuable way to gain exposure to new followers and to find yourself retweeted, assuming of course that you have something interesting to say. Some websites attempt to keep track of common hashtags, but the easiest way to find the hashtags in general use is to use a Twitter search around a topic and look for the tags terms people are using when they talk about it.

Engaging the Twitter community is obviously time-consuming, since you have to pay attention to what many different people are saying — you can’t participate in the conversation unless you’re actually listening. Besides hashtags, dedicated Twitter-management tools like Hootsuite and TweetDeck let you break the feeds you’re following down into various groups, for instance based on topics they cover or the kind of author they are (hint: track relevant journalists), and they also tend to speed up the process of posting content vs. going through Twitter.com itself. A good tool will typically allow you to pre-schedule Tweets for publishing, something that’s particularly handy if you have content that needs to go out over the weekend or while you’re traveling.

Besides public conversations, you can also “Direct Message” someone behind the scenes if you are following each other reciprocally, and I’ve known people who’ve been able to connect with a blogger or reporter via DM whom they’d never been able to reach via email.

Advanced Tactics

Twitter has given rise to an impressive array of different tactics and practices in its short time on Earth. “Live-Tweeting” an event involves covering it comprehensively as it happens, and social media-friendly conferences and seminars typically promote the use of certain hashtags to facilitate the process. Activists or groups can also pre-arrange TweetChats, which are public discussions at a particular time and around a particular hashtag. Many people pay attention to the hashtags that are “trending” on Twitter, i.e., becoming widely discussed, and the goal of a TweetChat or live-tweeting is often to either encourage a topic to trend or to ride the wave of a subject that’s moving up the popularity ladder. Finally, a Twitter interview can be an interesting way to run a one-on-one public conversation, though it practice it can feel like competitive poetry or a freestyle rap showdown — i.e., a public balancing act on a very narrow wire.

Twitter and Cell Phones

A common question about Twitter: why the 140-character limit? The answer is cell phones — Twitter is designed to be used like SMS text messages, making it one of the few online tools commonly and easily works on handheld devices. Some organizers have taken advantage of this fact to use Twitter to help rally communities in which cell phones are more common than access to the traditional internet. Others have used the Twitter/phone connection for on-the-spot coverage of rallies and other events, particularly as a means to distribute photos and videos shot with their phones. Finally, some campaigns in 2012 employed “protected” Twitter feeds — ones that can only be followed by people “approved” by the feed owner — to organize field staff and volunteers on the fly.

Advertising on Twitter

Update: this section has changed in the version 2.0 of this ebook, published in April of 2014! Please go toTwitter Advertising for Politics & Advocacy for the latest information.

Warning: Ways to Stumble

The most important Twitter rule to remember? Don’t be an idiot, since something you post on Twitter will live forever, even if you try to delete it (just ask Anthony Weiner). Even if you’re smart enough not to send topless photos over the internet, a big mouth can still get you into trouble. As a friend of mine once said of a Democrat challenging Sen. Chuck Grassley, “as long as he has a Twitter feed, she has a chance.”

Another note of caution: electoral campaigns in particular need to be careful to distinguish between a candidate or officeholder’s Twitter feed and one updated by staff, since Twitter as a community tends to value authenticity. If Twitterers find out that a “candidate’s voice” is not actually his own, the campaign’s credibility can take a hit. Campaigns can use both approaches in a single feed if it’s clear whose voice is speaking at any given time, and can even turn a relatively rare candidate appearance on his or her own feed into an event to promote. Finally, don’t forget that once a campaign has a Twitter feed, people will expect to be able to follow it and interact with the author(s). Don’t start a feed and let it die of neglect.

For more from this chapter, please download your copy of “How to Use the Internet to Win in 2014″ today.

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Social Media and Email Marketing – How To Leverage Them

30 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Email Marketing, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest

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Best Practices, Community Management, content marketing, Email Marketing

Want to know how to grow your email list?

Are you using social media to support your email list growth?

If you’re thinking of marketing tactics such as email and social media as two separate entities, you’re missing out on a lot of benefits.

In this article you’ll discover tips for using social media to improve your email marketing.

improve email marketing with social media

Discover how to improve your email marketing with social media.

What You Need to Get Started

There are two things you ideally need to make most of the tips in this article. In general, both will help you grow your email list.

A Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is a freebie you offer people in exchange for their email address. The freebie can be an ebook, whitepaper, report, access to a tool, template, video, presentation, course, etc. You can see a lead magnet in action on the homepage of Social Media Examiner.

social media examiner lead magnet

Example of a lead magnet promotion at the top of Social Media Examiner.

You should create your lead magnet with your ideal email subscriber and customer in mind. For example, if you want CEOs interested in social media to subscribe to your email list, create lead magnets about social media geared towards CEOs instead of people who work for them.

If you decide to use more than one lead magnet, you may want to create a resources section, learning center or another similar area on your website to help people find all of your freebies.

Visual.ly, for example, offers several lead magnets in their content hub. When you download one of their lead magnets, you’re taken to a squeeze page—the next thing you need for your own email marketing.

A Squeeze Page

A squeeze page is a landing page dedicated to converting visitors into email subscribers. Ideally, your squeeze page should include some information about your lead magnet and an opt-in form to capture your visitors’ information and email.

visually squeeze page

Example of a squeeze page for email subscriber opt-ins.

If you need to qualify leads for your products or services, you may want to include a couple of questions to find out who the subscriber is and what his or her needs are. But if your main goal is simply to grow your email list, fewer questions will lead to more subscribers.

Armed with the URL to your latest lead magnet squeeze page(s), here are some ways to use social media to grow your email list.

#1: Facebook Promotion Options

Facebook Page Short Description

You have the opportunity to share URLs in two places on your Facebook page. One of those is in the main website field for your page and the other is in your page’s short description. This is a great place to share the URL for your lead magnet.

The short description field is limited to 160 characters, so use them wisely to describe your business and get people to your lead magnet.

Facebook Page Custom Tabs

Custom tabs are applications you add to your Facebook page to create a specific functionality. For example, the Convince & Convert Facebook page uses a custom tab to house an opt-in form for their email newsletter.

convince & convert custom tab

Example of an opt-in form on a Facebook page custom tab.

Find out if your email marketing software provides a Facebook app to create an opt-in form on a Facebook page custom tab or you can use an app like Woobox Static HTML to display an opt-in form on your own website.

Facebook Page Call-to-Action Button

The Facebook call-to-action button can also be used to direct people to your squeeze page. Simply use the Sign Up text option and link it to your squeeze page.

call to action button set up

How to set up a call-to-action button on your Facebook page.

To encourage people to click on the call-to-action button, you can create a custom Facebook cover photo that promotes your lead magnet and points to the button.

Facebook Page Cover Photo

Speaking of the cover photo, you can also use the cover photo’s description to link to your squeeze page like Mari Smith does.

cover image with link in description

Example of a Facebook page cover photo promoting a lead magnet.

Even if you don’t use your cover photo to promote your lead magnet, you should at least update it to include a link to your website so people can click through to it.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook ads are a perfect way to promote your lead magnet and get your ideal subscribers signed up to your email list. Formstack‘s ad is a perfect example of promoting a free ebook, using a great image and a download button as the call to action.

formstack lead magnet in facebook ad

Example of a Facebook ad promoting a lead magnet.

Be sure to use the interests and demographics targeting options to go beyond age and location targeting to qualify the leads who see the invitation to your email list. The more qualified your leads, the better your email marketing will perform.

facebook ad targeting

How to use targeting options for a Facebook ad.

You can also upload your current email list as a custom audience and create a lookalike audience to target people similar to your current email subscribers.

facebook lookalike audience

How to create a lookalike audience from your email list.

Choose Lookalike Audience in your ad’s targeting options in the Custom Audiences field to promote your lead magnet to them.

Only use this option if you feel that your current email list is fully qualified for your business. Otherwise, you simply attract more unqualified email leads.

#2: Twitter Promotion Options

Twitter Bio

Similar to using the short description on your Facebook page, you can use your Twitter bio to promote your lead magnet and leave your website field for your main website URL.

link in twitter bio

Example of a link used in the Twitter bio.

Placing the URL of your squeeze page in your Twitter bio is particularly useful because only the link in your Twitter bio shows up in places like Twitter search results.

twitter bios in search results

Example of how a link in a Twitter bio appears in Twitter search results.

For maximum effectiveness, avoid including hashtags and other Twitter profile @username handles. That makes certain there’s only one clickable item in your Twitter bio for people to act on.

Twitter Lead Generation Card

The Twitter lead generation card is a feature that lets you collect email addresses directly from within Twitter. You’ll find it in the Twitter ads section and the setup will look like this.

twitter lead generation card

How to set up a Twitter lead generation card.

Additional configurations for specific CRM software (like Salesforce) can be found in the Twitter Help Center’s guide to setting up a lead generation card.

Otherwise, you download the list of email addresses from users who opt in from your card and upload it to your email marketing service. You can find your leads by going to your cards and clicking on the Download Leads icon (the one with the right arrow).

exporting leads

The location of your Twitter lead generation card submissions to export.

To get exposure for your Twitter lead generation card, simply tweet it to your audience or promote it using Twitter advertising.

Twitter Advertising

To promote your Twitter lead generation card or tweets with links to your latest lead magnets, you can use Twitter advertising. Just like Facebook ads, you can target qualified audiences. On Twitter, you do this with interests and followers of other Twitter accounts (like your competitors).

twitter ad targeting

How to target specific audiences for a Twitter ad campaign.

As with Facebook, you can market to custom audiences on Twitter. Start by uploading your current email list to Twitter’s audience manager. Choose your email list as a tailored audience, and then check the box for targeting users similar to your tailored audience. Then select your email list as a tailored audience again to exclude these users from ad targeting (since you don’t need them to sign up again).

You can also create a tailored audience from your customer list to ensure qualified subscribers by targeting your ad to a similar audience.

#3: LinkedIn Promotion Options

LinkedIn Publications & Projects

On your personal LinkedIn profile, you can add a Publications section that allows you to link directly to your ebooks, whitepapers, etc. You can also use this to link directly to your lead magnet squeeze pages.

linkedin publications

Example of the LinkedIn Publications section linking to a lead magnet.

If your lead magnet is a tool, like a free calculator, add a link to your tool in the Projects section of your profile.

linkedin profile editing

Where you can find the Publications and Projects sections to add them to your profile.

You can add both of these sections to your profile by using the guided profile editing option.

For more visibility, add your best lead magnet to the website links in your Contact Info. This adds it to the top of your public profile so visitors who aren’t logged into LinkedIn can still see it.

LinkedIn Advertising

For businesses looking to target specific professionals as email subscribers,LinkedIn advertising offers the best professional ad audience targeting options to help you get the ideal email subscribers on your list.

linkedin targeting options

How to target specific audiences with LinkedIn advertising.

Additional Opportunities on Social Media

Additional ways to promote your lead magnets and grow your email list with social media include the following.

  • Pin a great image of your lead magnet to your Pinterest profile and link that image to your lead magnet squeeze page.
  • Share a great image of your lead magnet to your Instagram profile andtell people to click the link in your bio. Temporarily (or permanently) change the link in your Instagram profile to point to your lead magnet squeeze page. Be sure that your squeeze page is responsive, since most people from Instagram will be viewing it on their mobile device.
  • Create videos on Vine and Snapchat telling your fans to download your latest lead magnet. Make sure your URL is short, easy to say, and easy to remember, like yourdomain.com/freereport.

#4: Make Sharing Easy

You don’t have to rely solely on your own promotion tactics to get more people to your squeeze pages. You can enlist the help of people who’ve already downloaded your free ebook or report.

Let’s say you offered a free ebook as a lead magnet. Simply create a landing page that thanks people for reading your latest ebook and add social sharing buttonsthat allow them to share the squeeze page for your lead magnet with their own audiences.

To get people to share on Twitter, pre-populate a Twitter Share button with custom text and the URL of your squeeze page. Make sure the URL being shared is the squeeze page of your lead magnet. Otherwise, you’ll end up with people sharing your thank-you page.

tweet button set up

How to set up a Twitter Share button for your lead magnet squeeze page.

Now, the tweet automatically points to your squeeze page!

sample tweet

Sample tweet configured in Twitter Share button setup.

You can configure a Facebook Like button in much the same way.

facebook like button set up

How to set up a Facebook Like button for your lead magnet squeeze page.

Add a LinkedIn Share button.

linkedin share button set up

How to set up a LinkedIn Share button for your lead magnet squeeze page.

Include a Pinterest Pin It button.

pinterest button set up

How to set up a Pinterest Pin It button for your lead magnet squeeze page.

Put It All Together

Once you’ve begun collecting your high-quality leads, there are a number of ways you can use social media to impact your email marketing campaigns.

For example, you can use your Twitter audience to split test email subject lines. If you send your experimental tweets through Buffer, you’ll get the following analytics for each tweet.

buffer metrics

Buffer analytics for a tweet.

The tweet with the most engagement can be considered the best headline, and the best headline should be used as the best email subject line.

Or you can get more traction for current email campaigns by targeting your email subscribers with social ads on Facebook and Twitter. Make sure the campaign and your social ads use the same images, call to action, etc., so your subscribers are presented with a similar message no matter where they see it.

What do you think? Have you learned a few ways social media can help grow your email list and reach your email subscribers? Do you have additional tips?Please share them in the comments!

Shared with permission via SM Examiner

By Kristi Hines

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Insight into the state of Social Media Marketing 2014

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, community manager, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Multi Channel Marketing, Online Marketing

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Audio, content marketing, Podcasting, Rich Marketing, Sales Conversion

There are three times during the year that I step back and spend some time evaluating my social media marketing efforts. One is right at the beginning of the year. I always have high hopes to do this in the first few weeks of January but as the saying goes, the best laid plans… The next is May which is roughly a third of the way into the year and once more in September.

When May came around this year I decided to document some of the steps I take to evaluate my social media marketing health so to speak. These will change from year to year as the tools of the industry change so plan on doing a little pre-evaluation research each year to make sure you are keeping up with trends and the ever changing landscape of social media.

I will be using results shared via the 6th annual social media marketing industry report. You can download the entire report from the link at the end of this post. Here are the gauges that I used this May to evaluate the state of my social media:

Visual Storytelling:

No surprise here. This point of view has been on the rise steadily since the beginning of social media and continues to be a cornerstone of content marketing. With the introduction of platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and even Google+ it has gained popularity in leaps and bounds. What has become more prevalent however is the use of both audio and video in the visual arena. While social media has always recognized and rewarded rich content it is now critical. It is by far the main advantage that social media has over marketing channels.

2014-05-25-Platforms-Common

Facebook advertising is a must:

Gone are the days of unlimited organic reach on Facebook. It was a great ride while it lasted but if you want to be effective or even noticed on Facebook you will have to pay. When Facebook first introduced “paid” advertising it was a extremely cost effective way to really get the jump on your competition. As marketers and businesses began to see the advantage of Facebook advertising and increased their budgets according, Facebook took notice and like any good free market company they used it to their advantage. I personally have no problem with the paid advertising model that Facebook is using and that others are sure to follow. It helped to weed out the players from the dabblers. Accordingly Facebook advertising has become more sophisticated, targeted and effective. If you have not spent time learning the new tools that Facebook has added to their advertising tool box you should do so, it is well worth it.

2014-05-25-Paid-MediaGoogle+ learn it, use it, embrace it, it’s not going away:

I have been telling my clients for the last 3 years that although Google+ may not appear to be a significant player in the social media arena, you ignore it to your own detriment. The primary reason Google+ is important is due to the general understanding that Google+ presents unique opportunities for building your online identity and authority.

If you have not heard  of Google+ recently change in leadership, well you might be living under a rock but that aside this change has some questioning its future. Let’s be clear about one thing: All of the social networks should be considered “rented land.” So, be sure you are building an online presence on a site you own and control. When it comes to Google+, I’m confident of two things. The nature of Google+ will change just as the other networks will. However, there is no question Google+ will survive as a resource for growing your business. Why? Google is in the content business, and social provides valuable context that adds value to that content. This is why Google co-founder Sergey Brin took over the CEO role at Google in 2011 to focus specifically on social search.

2014-05-25-Learn-More

Email Marketing is alive, thriving and the preferred tool for sales conversion:

If you think of social media in the same terms of the “circle of life” you begin to understand how email marketing plays a critical role in your content marketing circle of life. The majority of leading marketers name their email newsletter as their number one sales conversion tool. This is why everything else is designed to drive subscriptions to it. Podcasts are great for getting information out to the masses especially if they are free, but you will find statically that they very rarely convert. On the other hand email, good email does convert. Now it has to provide inherently great value for it to convert, after all subscribers want and deserve your very best. If you consistently honor that, conversion becomes a natural by-product of the ongoing conversation.
2014-05-25-Email-Marketing

Podcasting the great differentiator:

Serious marketers are getting into podcasting so if you consider yourself a serious marketer read on. Podcasting is on the rise for a variety of reasons, with one of them being that its much easier for audio content to stand out because there is far less of it available than other formats. On a practical level, every person you interview for your podcast becomes a willing marketing partner, at least for that show. Podcasting is also a great way to meet other industry leaders as you effectively collaborate to help each other. Probably the best reason for creating audio content is that it tends to be more personal. Think of it as the future of talk radio. Your personality will naturally emerge as you communicate your message to your audience that is giving (nearly) their full attention as they commute, exercise, or just pass the time.

2014-05-25-Audio-PodcastingThat is my process in a nutshell, now as promised, here is where you can download the 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Check it out, as there is a whole lot more to learn about the myriad questions that small business marketers share.

 

 

 

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Why Do People Say “Yes?”

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing, Social Listening

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Why do people say ‘yes’? How can we get them to comply with our requests? I asked my Fripp Associate David Palmer, PhD, MBA, CPA, an expert on negotiations and marketing. David Palmer has read more business books and managements books than any other person I have ever met; without hesitation he always refers to the best book to help anyone in their career is Robert Cialdini’s Influence: Science and Practice. Enjoy my interview. You next logic step is to buy Dr. Cialdini’s book.

“Fortunately, people often say ‘yes’ or agree with requests out of mindless compliance,” David told me. “They are frequently willing to say ‘yes’ automatically without thinking first. It makes their lives simpler and smoother. But what most of us are trying to overcome is the opposite phenomenon, when they’ve programmed themselves to say ‘no’ without thinking about it.

“Here’s where the emotional triggers come in. Researcher Robert Cialdini at Arizona State University describes the ‘Six Weapons of Influence,’ as he calls them, in his book, Influence, Science and Practice (Allyn & Cacon, 2000).”

1. RECIPROCATION – “The Old Give and Take–and Take”

All of us are taught we should find some way to repay others for what they do for us. Most people will make an effort to avoid being considered a moocher, ingrate, or person who does not pay their debts.

This is an extremely powerful tactic and can even spur unequal exchanges.
In one experiment, for example, half the people attending an art appreciation session were offered a soft drink. Afterwards, all were asked if they would buy 25-cent raffle tickets. Guess what? The people who had been offered the soft drinks purchased twice as many raffle tickets, whether or not they had accepted the drinks!

You probably already use this principle, but it is much stronger than you suspect. You can build a sense of indebtedness in someone by delivering a number of uninvited “first favors” over time. They don’t have to be tangible gifts. In today’s world, useful information is one of the most valuable favors you can deliver.

2. COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY – “Hobgoblins of the Mind”

Once people have made a choice or taken a stand, they are under both internal and external pressure to behave consistently with that commitment. This desire for consistency offers us all a shortcut to action as we recall a previous decision we have already made.

When you can get someone to commit verbally to an action, the chances go up sharply that they’ll actually do it. For example, before starting your next meeting, ask each person to commit to following the posted agenda. Then, if anyone goes off on a tangent, just ask them to explain how it fits the agenda. If they can’t, they’ll quickly fall back in line.

3. SOCIAL PROOF – “Truths Are Us”

We decide what is correct by noticing what other people think is correct. This principle applies especially to the way we determine what constitutes correct behavior. If everyone else is behaving a certain way, most assume that is the right thing to do. For example, one of the important, and largely unconscious, ways we decide what is acceptable behavior on our current job is by watching the people around us, especially the higher-ups or old timers.

This principle of influence kicks in even more strongly when the situation is uncertain or people aren’t sure what to do. When you can show them what others like them believe or are doing, people are more likely to take the same action. (The mass suicides among the Heavens Gate followers in Southern California and the people in Jonestown are horrible examples of the negative power of this principle.)

On the positive side, product endorsements are the most obvious application of the Social Proof. If you want someone to do something for you, be sure to let them see that many other people are already doing it or are willing to do it. Show them that others like them (and the more like them the better) believe in your product or are using it.

4. LIKING: “The Friendly Thief”

People love to say ‘yes’ to requests from people they know and like. And people tend to like others who appear to have similar opinions, personality traits, background, or lifestyle. More people will say ‘yes’ to you if they like you, and the more similar to them you appear to be, the more likely they are to like you.

Most people are also phenomenal suckers for flattery, even when they know it isn’t true. When we have a good opinion of ourselves, we can accept praise and like those who provide it. (Those with low self-esteem reject even well-earned praise and distrust the source.) All salespeople worth their salt have mastered the flattery tactic. They know it works, but they may not know why.

People also tend to like and trust anything familiar. The best way to build this familiarity is to have frequent, pleasant contacts. For example, if you spend three hours straight with someone you’ve never met before, you would get a sense of who they are. But if you divided the same time into 30-minute segments of pleasant interaction over six consecutive weeks, you would each have a much stronger and positive knowledge about the other. You have established a comfort level, familiarity, and a history with them. Their repeated pleasant contacts with your organization’s services or products helps builds familiarity and liking.

5. AUTHORITY: “Directed Deference”

Most of us are raised with a respect for authority, both real and implied. Sometimes, people confuse the symbols of authority (titles, appearance, possessions) with the true substance.

Some people are more strongly influenced by authority than others, and compliance can vary according to the situation . For example, it’s 11:00 PM, and the doorbell rings. Two men in police uniforms want to come in and ask you some questions. Most people respect such authority enough that they would comply, even though the Constitution says they don’t have to. But if it was 3:00 AM and the men were in street clothes, claiming to be detectives, most of us would hesitate. The men would have to overcome our resistance with more proofs of their authority like badges or a search warrant.

You can put this general principle to use by citing authoritative sources to support your ideas. Look and act like an authority yourself. Be sure others know that your education and experience supports your ideas. Dress like the people who are already in the positions of authority that you seek.

6. SCARCITY: “The Rule of the Few”

Nearly everyone is vulnerable to some form of the principle of scarcity. Opportunities seem more valuable when they are less available. Hard-to-get things are perceived as better than easy-to-get things.

For example, the object you’ve almost decided to buy is out of stock. The salesperson offers to check their other stores. And guess what? A store across town has one left! Do you buy it? Of course!

Whenever appropriate, you can use the Scarcity Principle. Refer to limited resources and time limits to increase the perceived value of the benefits of helping or working with you. The possibility of losing something is a more powerful motivator than of gaining something. Let others (a customer, your boss, a lover) know what they will be losing if they don’t say ‘yes’ to your offer.

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How Brands Use Infographics To Create More Powerful Messaging

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Bloging, community manager, Email Marketing, Facebook, Google+, LInkedIn, Marketing, Multi Channel Marketing, Twitter, Uncategorized, YouTube

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Infogrphics

With numerous different types and formats available, infographics provide ample space for creativity and analysis for brands, both in the kinds of information they capture and in their approach.

For customers, the form helps them quickly visualize complex issues. Together, that’s a recipe for engagement and messaging, making creative visualizations an ideal marketing format.

That said, not all infographics are created equal, and any quick search of the genre is sure to source any number of hilarious “fails.”

Here’s a deeper look at the kinds of approaches the most successful brands are taking for a lesson or two in how to get infographics right.

The Hard Data Infographic

How Brands Use Infographics To Create More Powerful Messaging image 121

Designed by mycleveragency using data collected by Brandwatch, the data visualization above entitled “Language on the Internet” explores a topic that’s of interest to just about anyone with a Twitter account: how social media is changing the way we speak.

In visualizing these stats, both Brandwatch and Mycleveragency can reach a broad base of people who are inherently interested in this subject and are highly likely to engage in sharing (I mean, who wouldn’t want to know what all those LOLs and ROTFLs mean for humanity?).

The precision of the stats chosen and the logical, seamless layout and flow of the infographic help establish both brands as marketing and design authorities — go-to experts for anyone looking to market their brand or just learn a little bit more about marketing best practices.

In this way, the engaging choice of topic and design help to expand the reach of both agencies, while the excellent research and communication that undergird the project establish both companies as niche authorities not to be ignored by the industry.

That’s the best of two worlds, in one infographic.

The Timeline Infographic

How Brands Use Infographics To Create More Powerful Messaging image 211

If you’re a music fan of any stripe (so, if you’re human), you’ve probably wondered how we’ve moved from gospel music to grunge.

oncertHotels, a booking service that helps you find rooms near events, capitalizes on this curiosity in the above infographic, “100 Years of Rock”, which helps viewers visualize the timeline of rock in less than a minute.

Though it doesn’t directly discuss what ConcertHotels does, it stays within the brand ecosystem, which is built on a passion for music.

And because the timeline also provides samples of music, the infographic provides a fully interactive experience in a single interface for a totally dynamic experience, ensuring the infographic will be well-shared.

That’s sure to sell a lot of rooms (and maybe some MP3s) in the long term.

The Guide or Process Infographic

How Brands Use Infographics To Create More Powerful Messaging image 3

One of the most popular forms of content on the internet falls into the “how to” genre, and the guide or process infographic is no exception.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as it reflects the shift from passive to active media consumption; viewers want their content to help them create or learn, not to pitch to them.

In “How to Create Perfect Posts on Social Platforms”, mycleveragency again takes a very popular yet mystifying subject and breaks it down in a step by step, highly-visual manner that makes it easy for just about anyone to follow.

In doing so, the infographic reinforces the brand’s influence as a social media expert, ready to help both novice and advanced users, both of whom are more likely to develop brand loyalty thanks to this helping hand.

Again, the infographic is inherently shareable, especially in niche social media groups, and it’s sure to get followers engaged.

The Location or Map Infographic

How Brands Use Infographics To Create More Powerful Messaging image 41

London may be one of the world’s great shopping capitals of the world, but few working people have the time or energy to expend on dashing all about the city to find that perfect gift.

Online shopping is one solution; using this interactive map entitled, “Where Should I Go Shopping in London?” is another.

Just click the stores you’d like to visit on the sidebar and they’ll automatically populate on the map so that you can head to the areas with the densest concentration of your target shops.

For the company that produced this infographic, Trainline, which helps customers find the best tickets and routes for their travels, this kind of route planning is well within their area of expertise, and just goes to prove so even further.

The Christmas angle makes the infographic timely, relevant and helpful. It’s highly likely that consumers would take this map with them on their shopping adventures, meaning the brand’s messaging will be in the palm of their hand wherever they go.

Note that there are many other effective ways to use maps to illustrate important points. Maps, just like infographics themselves, are a powerful tool for instantly capturing an important point that’s directly relevant to the people who care about the regions pictured.

The Quiz Infographic

How Brands Use Infographics To Create More Powerful Messaging image 51

There are few things people like quite so much as taking quizzes that reveal something about themselves. All the better if doing so involves a healthy dose of childhood. That’s something Two Little Fleas embraces wholeheartedly with the above “90s Nostalgia Quiz”.

The infographic is bound to be a hit with (you guessed it), a wide audience of ’90s kids who will definitely want to interact with the quiz and share their results on Facebook. That does a lot for the Two Little Fleas brand, as it brings more and more visitors to their site, where they’ll find even more quizzes and other fun games, recipes and quotes with which to engage.

The quiz is a quick, easy way to move potential consumers deeper into the brand.

The Takeaway

From hard hitting research to goofy quizzes, there are just about as many ways to approach an infographic as you can imagine.

But whatever your approach, an infographic is the perfect way to expand your viewership while still satisfying your diehard fans, establishing your authority and reinstating your authority within your niche.

Published by permission via B2B Community 

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Lose the Press Release and Actually Reach Your Audience Learn How

15 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Bloging, Email Marketing, PR, Uncategorized

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Blogging, Multi Media, PR, Video Promotions

Press releases have been around for over 100 years, so it’s natural that when organizations think of ways to share news, they default to a press release.

While press releases can be effective, they are not the only tool available to marketers in an age of social PR. Organizations need to look for other ways to share their their information and realize that poorly executed releases really do more harm than good.

Google announced changes to the link building scheme in July 2013 and reported that links with optimized anchor text in press releases would be in violation. That change facilitated  a larger discussion on press releases and how to do them properly, which was long overdue.  Often, press releases were being issued with little thought to the actual news value or they were being used to support SEO. The end result were a high number of releases that were simply not useful to the media.

Do You REALLY Need a Press Release?

It’s time for every organization issuing press releases to carefully assess if they are needed and consider alternatives. There are times when a press release is appropriate, such as financial news or major corporate announcements, but the majority of the time another tactic will be more effective.

The news release is simply a way to package your story and share it with the world.  Now, thanks to social media and the web, you no longer need to rely on journalists to tell your story. Instead of chasing after media hoping they will pick up your release, social PR puts you into the driver’s seat. Your organization is now the publisher and you have countless channels you can use to share stories directly with your target audience.

Here are five ways you can ditch the press release and reach your target audience:

Turn it into a Blog Post or Guest Post

When issuing a press release, the idea is to be able to share a story with media so they in turn will write a story that your customers, partners and other stakeholders will read. By turning your story into a blog post, it forces you to tell a better story with more context, doing what the journalist would have done for you. By playing publisher and sharing it on your blog (or as a guest post on a high visibility site in your industry) you are able to control the message and connect with those who are most interested in reading it.

Break News Up Into Social Updates

A press release when issued usually is posted to your site, distributed by newswire service and then shared on social media.  Go beyond the press release by taking key pieces of your story and sharing them via social media. Create tweets that share a link back to your blog post or related resources. Share updates on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ that add value to the bigger picture with your content. And remember, don’t just share things once. If you package your story the right way, it can become an evergreen piece of content you can share for months and possibly years to come.

Create a Video

Video is a highly effective way to share many stories. It can inject emotion and color into something that could otherwise be quite dull. For example, if your organization is announcing you’ve donated money to a local charity, instead of issuing a boring, factual release, why not create a video featuring stories of the organization you are helping? If you are launching a product, sharing stories of users and how this is helping their business is far more engaging than reading a product’s feature list. Videos can then be shared on your web site and via YouTube and other platforms to maximize their reach.

Use Stunning Visuals

A picture is worth a thousand words, especially on social media. It’s been proven time and time again that visual content gets more likes and shares.  A recent infographic from Infographic B2B indicated that photos are shared two times more than text only updates and our brains simply process visual content faster than text. Infographics are an ideal way to present research, share new product information or simply tell a story. Beyond the infographic, think of how you can use a picture with a text overlay to present the story visually and bring it to life.

Pitch the Media One-on-One

The goal of a press releases is to secure media coverage.  However, pumping out a release and hoping that the media see it is not strategic. If you truly have news, carefully research who covers this area, what type of stories they write, how best to contact them and create a customized story pitch just for them. Perhaps you have a customer that is using your product in an innovative way and has increased profits. A reporter covering that topic or a trade magazine may be interested in this type of story if you take the time to carefully craft the story so it is a fit for their needs and audience.  A personalized, well planned pitch sent by email will always be more effective at getting their attention than a generic press release.

Next time talk of a press release starts within your organization, carefully consider the audience and goals for sharing this particular story. Decide if your story is newsworthy and a press release is truly the right way to present this information. The options above provide some great alternatives that you can use to package a compelling story and actually reach your target audience.

 

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MailChimp for Designers

31 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Email Marketing, Mail Chimp

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Email Marketing

 Maybe you’re a freelance web designer hired to create email templates. Maybe you work for an agency, and you’re setting up a client’s MailChimp account, designing their templates and teaching them how to use the application. Maybe you’re a web design consultant. In any case, you can use MailChimp to create beautiful emails for your clients and see to it that their email marketing plan is successful. MailChimp got its start as a web design firm, so we’ve made it a priority to create a system that empowers both designers and their clients.

That said, if you’re looking for a completely rebranded email marketing solution that encourages you to charge a penny per send, then you should look elsewhere. We don’t want you to click every button and send every email for your clients, because as a web designer, your expertise goes far beyond button clicking. If you agree to hold a client’s hand throughout the entire process without teaching them anything, you’ll be forced to become an email marketing manager and a deliverability expert and a professional copy/paster. That’s not what you’re trained to do— and you probably wouldn’t enjoy it, either.

Different clients will want different services—you might choose to limit your email marketing work to template design, and that’s perfectly fine. But if your clients are looking for more involvement from a creative agency, you should know how to set up their account, create their templates, and teach them how to use MailChimp so they can send their own emails.

The setup phase usually involves general MailChimp training, creating accounts and lists, consulting your client on list management, and coding templates. Your client might even ask you to help them determine what kind of templates they need or how frequently they should send campaigns.

After setting up your client’s account, work with them to determine which features they should use. Set up social sharing options like auto-tweet, and add a signup form to their Facebook page. If your client has a blog, tell them about our RSS-to-email feature. Look into how to make it personal.

From there, teach your client how to send a campaign, and introduce them to MailChimp’s reports. Check in often to see how their campaigns are going, and ask if they need any new templates. Down the road, you might even want to look into API integration. And of course, always keep an eye on your client’s list to make sure they’re not spamming.

Once you learn your way around MailChimp, you can apply to become an Expert–our Experts Directory connects email marketers with creative agencies. Now, let’s get started.

Manage Your List

In order to manage multiple clients’ email marketing plans, you need to know how to build lists and group them. First, decide if you’re going to set up multiple accounts, multiple lists, or just create multiple groups within one list. Here’s the breakdown:

One list, no groups

If your client plans to send only one type of newsletter to one group of people, and they want every one of their campaigns to go to every one of their subscribers, then you should create one simple list in MailChimp.

One list, multiple groups

If your client plans to send different types of content to different segments of one subscriber list, then create one list for the company, and divide it into groups. For example: A nonprofit might have separate groups for volunteers, news, board of directors, and more—no need to bug the board with the volunteer schedule. And when the content applies to everyone, they can send a campaign to the entire list.

Multiple lists

One account with multiple lists makes sense for people who have more than one business. We know it’s tempting for web designers to set up one agency account and a list for each client, but it’s a bad idea. We recommend an account for each client for a few reasons: First, if you only have one account, you can’t give your clients access to your account, because other clients’ data is there too. Second, if certain clients take over their own email marketing and get in trouble for spamming, then your account will be shut down—and you could lose a lot of business over it.

Multiple accounts

Agencies that send email campaigns for different clients should create a separate account for each client—you don’t want your data for one client mixed with data for another. Plus, if you part ways with one client, you can simply remove that account from your keychain (we’ll get to that later).

Design Your Campaign

Ready to design a campaign? First, you’ll choose or create a template. We have tons of Predesigned templates to choose from, or you can choose the Basicoption for a simple layout. Additionally, our Drag & Drop editor makes campaign creation quicker and simpler.

But as a web designer, you probably want to create your own.

If you’re providing your own code, choose Import. If you want to create a template for your clients, choose Code Your Own.

MailChimp’s template language makes it easy to code your own HTML emails that will allow your clients to adjust colors, fonts and more—without breaking the layout or messing with your code. And our template language uses CSS comments and a few special HTML attributes, so you don’t have to waste your time learning another language. (But if you’re not proficient in HTML and CSS, then using our template language isn’t your best bet.)

If you’re using a DOCTYPE declaration in your HTML email, you should use the Transitional Doctype:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/ TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

You should also use this meta tag in conjunction:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

CSS styling

Inlining CSS styles is the standard for making sure template designs retain their integrity within an email client. If you’re designing a template for yourself, this isn’t an issue. But if you’re designing for a client, inlining the CSS styling by default within the markup keeps them from making style changes to any editable sections within a template using the app’s editor. That happens because the inline styles always override what a user enters. Emails leaving our system have their CSS automatically inlined, so it’s not necessary to do it beforehand—it’s only necessary to ensure that the CSS styling would behave correctly in the first place.

Your email’s layout should be no wider than 600 pixels in order to allow proper viewing in most email clients. As a rule, avoid using floats and positioning in your email templates.

Remember to set the @theme declaration in your CSS for the page background, header, footer, and content space, so the templates can be quickly customized with MailChimp color themes.

Background images

You can use background images in templates, but getting them to work consistently across all email clients is tricky at best. Consider yourself warned. Using the “background-image” CSS property declaration to set a background image on an element is probably second nature for you—but unfortunately, a lot of email clients disregard the convention.

So if you plan to use background images, you need to know which clients support them, and which will require you to do a little more work to make sure your design is consistent across multiple platforms. These major email clients do support the background-image property:

  • Yahoo
  • Gmail
  • AOL
  • Apple Mail

These major email clients don’t support the background-image property:

  • Hotmail
  • Outlook
  • Lotus Notes

What can you do to make sure your email looks best across all clients? Two things:

  1. Make sure that when defining background images you’re using the “background-image” property and not the compound version of “background” as in:
    background:#FFFFFF url("bg-image.jpg") repeat;

    Using individual properties (like background-image, background-repeat, andbackground-color) instead can overcome issues of partial CSS support where the client doesn’t understand compound values in a CSS property.

  2. Use the often ignored “bgcolor” and “background” HTML attributes on your table and body tags. This can circumvent your CSS issues completely, since you’re using HTML code that’s older but still well supported.

Ideally, you’d have something like this:

<head>
  <style>
     #email {
       background-image:url("bg-image.jpg");
       background-color:#336699;
     }
  </style>
</head>
<body>
  <table background="bg-image.jpg" bgcolor="#336699" id="email">
    table stuff here, just like 1999!
  </table>
</body>

Editable sections

All mc:edit areas must have unique names (like mc:edit=”box1” and mc:edit=”box2”). Template content is attached to these names and stored in the database accordingly—so regardless of where in a template the mc:edit area is, if it shares a name with any other area, it’s going to duplicate any content entered (and it can trigger the loss of content). For simplicity’s sake, you should limit the number of editable spaces in your template and name all editable spaces consistently. The name you assign via mc:edit=”somename” is used to create a field in the database to store the user’s content. If the editable spaces aren’t consistent, and your client switches templates after writing the content, they could lose their copy. Use these conventions for common content areas:

mc:edit=”header”

to name your email’s header

mc:edit=”header_image”

to name an editable header image

mc:edit=”sidecolumn”

to name an editable left or right side column

mc:edit=”main”

to name the main content space

mc:edit=”footer”

to name your email’s footer

And remember, don’t place editable images within an editable content container.

Merge tags

The following five merge tags should always be included within your templates (generally in or near the footer);

*|UNSUB|*

unsubscribe link

*|FORWARD|*

forward to a friend link

*|UPDATE_PROFILE|*

update profile link

*|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|*

list address

*|LIST:DESCRIPTION|*

list description

The *|UNSUB|*, *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* and *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* are required by law under the CAN-SPAM Act. If you don’t use them, your campaign might get rejected.

We’ve got lots more great merge tags you can place in your templates—check out our merge tag cheat sheet for a longer list.

External links

When you’re including links in an email, include the target=”_blank” attribute in your anchor elements to make them open a new browser window or tab when emails are viewed in web-based email clients. Here are some handy links to include:

<a href=”*|UPDATE_PROFILE|*” target=”_blank”>change subscription preferences</a>

A link for users to update their subscription preferences.

<a href=”*|ARCHIVE|*” target=”_blank”>view this email in a browser</a>

A link to let users view the email in a browser.

<a href=”*|LIST:URL|*” target=”_blank”>visit our website</a>

A link to your website.

<a href=”*|FORWARD|*” target=”_blank”>forward to a friend</a>

A link to let users forward the email to a friend, usually somewhere prominent.

(It’s a good idea to make a cool button treatment for it where possible to encourage sharing.)

Declaration blocks

MailChimp requires that you define editable CSS styles using declaration blocks. The formatting is pretty specific:

**/
* @tab WWWW
* @section XXXX
* @tip YYYY
* @theme ZZZZ
/*

@tab

The @tab declaration establishes a tab within the template editor. It’s best to keep these broad (think Page, Header, Body, Footer). This is the only required declaration.

@section

The @section declaration establishes a subsection within a tab, and allows you to split styles into more specific areas. For example: In “@tab Page” you could have subsections like “background”, “title” and “subtitle”—anything broad enough to be applied to the email as a whole. This declaration isn’t required, but it keeps the editor from becoming too complex.

@tip

The @tip declaration allows for a short line of helper text that appears when a user is editing styles within the app. It’s not required, but it’s helpful if the style being edited could be confusing.

@theme

The @theme is used to set five specific default styles: “page,” “main,” “header,” “title” and “subtitle.” Once they’re set, the user can call on these styles to be automatically applied to selected text or areas within the template. In order for a heading to work correctly (title or subtitle), the CSS class has to be set correctly: either .title or .subTitle.

Only these five arguments are used in @theme, so it’s not necessary to set @theme for anything else. The “page” theme defines a standard background color for an email. The “main” theme defines an email’s default font style and color. The “header” theme should be used for the background color of the “View in this browser” (preheader) section, or leave it off entirely. The “title” theme defines the email’s primary heading. The “subtitle” theme defines the email’s secondary heading.

Editable content areas

Add the mc:edit=”section-name” attribute to any elements with content that should be editable. The attribute opens the WYSIWYG text editor. Its value should be alpha-numeric and unique, and edit values can’t be the same as any other in your template.

Editable image areas

An editable image within a template can take a few attributes in order to allow users to insert the content they want. An editable image structure follows a normal img tag html structure, with our attributes added, and with specific CSS rules:

<img src="xxx.jpg" mc:allowdesigner mc:allowtext style="max-width:600px; max-height:250px;" />

mc:allowdesigner

The mc:allowdesigner attribute lets the user trigger the header designer. This one’s only needed for the 600px images that are a main focal point of a template—it’s not necessary for smaller content images.

mc:allowtext

The mc:allowtext attribute lets the user replace an image with text. Again, this is only needed on large-scale images (like header images), and it shouldn’t be used on content images.

We strongly recommend using the max-width CSS rule in order to keep an image from blowing out the set width of the template. The app supports the max-heightrule too. When these rules are used on an img tag, they constrain the image size and show size limitations on an editable image within the app’s template design screens.

Repeating content areas

mc:repeatable

The mc:repeatable attribute defines a content block that can be repeatedly added to the template. When using mc:repeatable, make sure to use proper nesting of items. An mc:repeatable section should never be contained within anmc:edit section. Instead, nest your mc:edit sections within your mc:repeatable blocks. Never nest mc:repeatable blocks within other mc:repeatable blocks, mc:edit areas within other mc:edit areas, or mc:edit images within mc:edit areas.

Template design best practices

Don’t wrap your email’s content text in standard HTML tags if other people are going to use your template—avoiding unnecessary tags will help minimize confusion and errors if part of the tag is deleted within the editor. To style your content, simply target the container it’s in with CSS, instead of targeting the content itself.

A simple way to set up your editable styles is to alphabetize your CSS rules. Don’t go overboard with providing editable styles—try not to repeat styles from section to section if a global style will have the same effect. And try to pare down the number of styles you have for any particular item. For example: With heading styles, only consider color, font family, font size, and font weight as your editable styles—this will help keep a lightweight editor interface.

Leaving out a title in the email template can bring up some difficulties when using social sharing functions. It’s best to include the html title tag and include the*|MC:SUBJECT|\* merge tag within it. This allows the campaign title to be pulled in automatically.

Save your template under My Templates, without content and with your necessary editable areas, and use it to create your campaigns instead of replicating a campaign and re-editing previous content every time you want to send.

Check out our template language resources for more info on MailChimp’stemplating language, tutorials and email template packs and plugins.

Testing your templates

Don’t forget to thoroughly test your templates. MailChimp has a spam filter checker (look for Inbox Inspector under your Account tab) that’ll tell you exactly what your email’s spam score is, and what you need to change if you want to improve your chances with spam filters. It will also show you what your campaign’s going to look like in all the major email applications. For more information, visit For more information, visitmailchimp.com/features/inboxinspector.

Inbox Inspector tests your email before sending, but consider it just one tool in your toolbox. Practical testing, by creating different accounts with different email services and sending to them, can also help you get your templates just right. It pays to research just which CSS rules email services and clients render correctly, and which ones are ignored.

For additional information about designing your email campaigns, visitMailChimp’s Email Template Reference.

Avoid Spam Filters

You work hard on your clients’ emails, and we wouldn’t want all that hard work to end up in spam folders. Your clients can make sure their newsletters go straight to their subscribers’ inboxes by learning how spam filters think. Spam filters look at a long list of criteria to decide whether or not an email is junk. The list of spammy criteria is constantly growing and adapting, because spam filters learn more about what junk looks like every time someone clicks the This is spam button.

Common mistakes to avoid:

  • Using spammy phrases like “Click here!” or “Once in a lifetime opportunity!”
  • Going crazy with exclamation points!!!!!!!
  • USING ALL CAPS
  • Coloring fonts bright red or green
  • Coding sloppy HTML (usually from converting a Word file)
  • Sending an email that’s nothing but one big image
  • Sending a test to multiple recipients within the same company

Warning signs that your client is spamming:

Can you tell if your client is spamming? Unfortunately, it’s the most common issue we see designers having with email marketing, and we’ve had to shut down a lot of agencies for their clients’ bad email-marketing practices: sloppy list management, poorly designed emails, purchased and old lists. This stuff gets the client—and the agency—reported for spamming, and often blacklisted.

Again, you should have a separate account for every client. If one of your clients is spamming on your account that they share with some of your other clients, then everyone gets shut down. And you probably lose a lot of clients as a result.

If your client has their own account, MailChimp can be the bad cop when it comes to spamming. But in any case, your role as an agency might be to consult your client on email marketing best practices, so you need to notice the way they manage list.

Understand Your Reports

You’ve worked with your client to create a beautiful and unspammy campaign, and it’s out the door. Now what? Take a look at your client’s MailChimp reports so you can analyze the campaign’s performance and make notes for next time.

Click the Reports tab and then on the title of the campaign. It’s especially important for agencies to know what the reports mean, not only so they can impress their clients with all the opens and clicks, but also so they can make informed recommendations for upcoming campaigns. In the next section, we’ll explain how to take it a step further by rebranding these reports so your client can see them without having them log in to MailChimp.

Subscriber activity

If you want to know even more about your clients’ subscriber activity, click theReports tab, then select Subscriber activity from within an individual report.

These reports give you extra insight about your clients’ recipients, like who opened the emails and what they clicked. See a real-time report for each recipient’s email activities: when they opened, what they clicked and when they came back. You can even generate a list of people who did not open, and send them a modified campaign.

Social tracking

MailChimp’s Social Stats allow you to watch your campaigns make their way around Facebook. To find out how many people like your campaigns, click Reportsin your MailChimp dashboard. Select a campaign and click Social Stats.

The like stats are located under Facebook Activity and organized by subscriber. You can see how many times each subscriber liked your campaign, and how many other likes they generated. Good to know!

We even track comments and analyze their sentiments with our Facebook Comments feature.

Twitter stats are located in the same place as Facebook stats: Click the Reportstab in your MailChimp dashboard, and you’ll see a list of all your campaigns. Select a campaign and click Social Stats.

Under Twitter Activity, you’ll see how many times your campaign has been tweeted and retweeted, who did the tweeting, and a timeline of all tweets. Only tweets that include the automatically generated eepURL for your campaign are included in this report, so you might have even more tweets than you think.

To really dig into what these stats mean and how you can learn from them, check out MailChimp’s Understanding Reports guide.

Collaborate

You’re already juggling plenty of tasks, which is why we focus so intently on collaboration features. We realize that email is not your job, but it is a part of your job, so we’ve created some features and integrations to hope you collaborate better with your clients.

Multi-user accounts

MailChimp’s multi-user accounts allow you, the account Admin, to grant permission to Managers, Authors, and Viewers, depending on how much access you’d like for your collaborators to have. Some people will work on your campaign, others will send, and some will only want to see the results. Now you can make those decisions.

Comments

Our email designer allows you to leave comments on campaigns. Start a conversation with your coworkers, or make sure something important gets changed. Your collaborators can respond to your comments in real time, complete tasks, and leave their own feedback so everyone’s on the same page.

Experts

If you’re a freelancer or agency looking for work, and you know your way around MailChimp, then check out our Experts program. Experts are freelancers and agencies who know email design, coding, and programming. We have a lot of customers who need help with their email marketing— with list importing, HTML email design, API programming, e-commerce and more. MailChimp’s Experts database gives users a list of third parties who can help them.

You can learn more and register to become an expert at experts.mailchimp.com.

Keep Your Data Safe

MailChimp has lots of security measures in place to keep your data safe. But when you’re responsible for your clients’ email lists, it’s especially important to stay informed and paranoid when it comes to security.

Security questions

MailChimp asks you to create security questions for your account, so that if we ever detect anything weird, like a login from a suspicious IP, we can ask one of the secret questions to make sure you’re the one logging in to your account. You have an option to force the security questions whenever we detect a login to your account from a different IP that you normally use. This is a great way for creative agencies to keep their clients’ data super safe.

To activate the security-question feature, log in to MailChimp and click Account > Username/Password & Security Settings. Check the Ask Security Question When Your Location Changes under Security Questions.

Email/SMS notifications

If you want to go the extra mile when it comes to email security, sign up for our security notifications. We’ll send you an alert via text message or email whenever we detect any of the following:

  • A login to your account
  • An API key has been generated
  • An account key has been created
  • Your contact info has been changed
  • Someone has attempted to download your list

To activate the feature, log in to MailChimp and click Username/Password & Security Settings. Under Notifications, fill in your mobile number, or your email address if you’d prefer email alerts.

Now you’ll get a simple message every time a security event is triggered within your account. We’ll include the IP address and approximate geolocation, to give you an idea of where the attempt is coming from.

AlterEgo

AlterEgo is the two-factor security web app we created to add an extra layer for thwarting phishing attacks and breaches caused by insecure passwords. It works by generating a temporary auth code only accessible on a user’s mobile devices, and requires that code for entry. We offer a 2% discount for any MailChimp user that activates AlterEgo. Think of it as a “good driver discount” you’d get from your insurance company.

MailChimp takes security extremely seriously. But you have a responsibility to protect your clients’ data too, so make sure you’re using a safe password for your MailChimp account that you don’t use anywhere else, and stay on top of our security updates. Check out our Email Security guide for tips on how to protect your data and what to do if you get hacked.

We appreciate what you do as a web designer. Our creative users are special to us, and we work hard to make MailChimp a product that you’re excited to use and share with your friends and colleagues. Thanks for taking the time to learn your way around MailChimp. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact our support team at mailchimp.com/support.

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Google Analytics Email Marketing Dashboard For Beginners – This is a must read for anyone who uses Email Marketing

23 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Bloging, Email Marketing, Multi Channel Marketing

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Tags

Analytics, Email Marketing, Google Analytics, Google Dashboards, Marketing, Online Marketing, Reporting, Social Media, welcome campaign, welcome emails

Brought to you from the fine folks at Marketing Land and
Online Marketing Mavin Carrie Hill

With the sophisticated software and programs available today for email marketing, the state of emails I receive from huge corporations blows me away. Historically, email marketing has been an afterthought. There are those that do it well. Really well. But it seems to me that a majority of email marketing is this last-minute, “crap I forgot to do this,” throw something together, send-without-testing nightmare that converts a fraction of what it could — or nothing at all.

So, what is the difference between doing it right and doing it completely wrong? Tracking. If you’re consciously tracking how well your email marketing efforts are performing and truly analyzing the conversion rates, there’s no way you’d relegate it to last minute.

Read the entire article here Google Analytics Email Marketing Dashboard for Beginners

 

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5 Ways to Incorporate Social Media into Your Mailing List

16 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Bloging, Email Marketing, Google+, LInkedIn, Multi Channel Marketing, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube

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Tags

Advertising, Best Practices, Blogging, Facebook, Online Marketing, Pinterest, SEM, Social Media

Want to get more mileage and benefits from your mailing list? Then be sure to socialize your updates and newsletters. The following tips will help you simultaneously grow your list and your social media audience.

1. Add social profile links to each newsletter.

Want to increase a particular social media audience, such as your Facebook fans or Twitter followers? If so, include a link to to it in each of your e-mail updates and newsletters. You can try focusing on building each audience one at a time or include both.

When it comes to the verbiage, be specific. Include a link or image that says “Become a fan on Facebook” or “Follow us on Twitter” in order to increase the likelihood that people will do just those things.

2. Encourage social sharing.

If your mailing list service provider allows it, include social sharing options in your newsletter itself. As people share your latest newsletter with their friends, their friends will be tempted to sign up to it as well.

Also be sure to encourage that people forward the newsletter to their friends. To increase the odds of people signing up for your newsletter when it has been shared, include a link to the signup page for your newsletter.

3. Share your newsletter on your social profiles.

Take the web-based version of your best newsletters and share the link to them on your main social profiles. For example, if you have a great deal for mailing list subscribers, be sure to tweet about it so people can jump on your mailing list to get it.

Another great way to share your newsletter on social media besides tweets and Facebook posts is to pin an image from your newsletter to Pinterest. Then, you can capitalize on Pinterest traffic to your newsletter and hopefully convert it into subscribers.

4. Add ClicktoTweet to tweetable quotes.

People love to tweet little snippets, quotes, and facts. ClicktoTweetallows you to create a custom status update that people can share just by clicking on the link provided by the tool. So if you have a tweetable bite in your newsletter, make a quick “Tweet this” link so that people will share the text and a link to your newsletter.

5. Direct e-mail readers to discuss on your social profiles.

Don’t let your e-mails become a one-way street. To increase the chances of mailing list subscribers becoming Facebook fans, create a discussion on your Facebook page and include the link to that post on your wall in the newsletter. This way, you not only gain fans and boost the engagement on your Facebook page, but you also show your subscribers that you care about them and what they have to say.

Last But Not Least, Don’t Forget to Measure Your Results

If you’re using MailChimp, Constant Contact, or SendGrid, you can sign up for a free trial account on SumAll and connect your mailing list service provider along with your social networks.

This way, you can measure the boost in fans or followers after your mailing list goes out. Or, if you encouraged engagement from your newsletter to your social profile, you can correlate the change in advocacy.

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Your Facebook (and most of your Social Media) audience are visual creatures

28 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Bloging, Email Marketing, Facebook, Google+, LInkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Blogging, Facebook, Marketing, Online Marketing, Pinterest, Social Media, social media tools, Strategy

As a psychology/visual communication major this is a no brainer for me. It has been a constant struggle however to convince people of just how important it is for Social Media. So here is, fact based information on the why of it.

It is common sense that the images we use in our adverts are important. However, to leave it at that would be a gross understatement. You and your audience are extremely visual creatures.

Over one third of your brain is dedicated to processing visual input from the world around us, and this includes the adverts we see on our screens. The correct visual imagery can provoke some of the most primal emotions that drive action and behaviour.

So how much time do you put towards picking the right image for your advert? Hopefully it isn’t an afterthought; hopefully it isn’t a quick detour through Google Images.

Below we consider what to think about when choosing, evaluating and refining your images.

Two critical criteria

Of course, there are countless things you could think about when picking an image for your advert. However, in my experience the most important considerations are straightforward;

  • who will see the image, and

  • the graphical context of the image (e.g. nearby images, page colour schemes)

From here, you can then design/pick the image itself much more efficiently. For example, if you are displaying images to a younger demographic on Facebook, you will want to pick something that is relevant to them, looks good on a white background, and stands out from the competition.

So far so good.

Additional Constraints

However, you should also work within additional constraints to have the best result. You will need to consider brand continuity and style guidelines; this is all about managing customer expectations.

For example, if you have a very stylised image advert with a red and black colour scheme, and the landing page for the advert is white and blue (your company colours), you will automatically weaken the effectiveness of the image advert.

However, with that said, don’t let your existing style guidelines prevent you from running the correct image advert design. Create a specialised ‘squeeze page’ that matches your custome designed advert, if you need to.

Consider the following real-world example:

My company commissioned a beautiful banner advert collection by a well established and talented designer. We all loved what we saw: the attention to detail, the new choice of colours, the clever call to action, etc.

We put some big bucks behind it and let it rip, both through Google Adwords Display network and affiliate partners. At the same time, I knocked up a garish, brazen, bold, basic banner that matched our landing page.

Not only did my image convert users who had clicked it much more effectively, it produced x3 as many click throughs as the more beautiful and detailed banner.

The two take home points here are that the best looking banners won’t always win, and however they look, they should match the page they lead to. If this means creating a new specific squeeze page that matches the advert style, then so be it. It will be worth your time.

Clearly, it is crucial that you measure the performance of your image adverts.

Application to Facebook

Turning our attention specifically towards Facebook. Clearly the platform offers different ways for you to use images in your campaigns, but it doesn’t matter whether it is the 100x72px ‘right-hand column’ or the larger real-estate offered by the News Feed, the image is absolutely crucial for a successful advert on Facebook.

My data would suggest that it is the single most important element of your advert campaign. Specifically, a basic analysis of variance (ANOVA) shows that the vast majority of the variance accounting for how well an adverts performs (regardless of how it is measured) can be attributed to the image. When I am designing or picking new images, I follow the same guidelines listed above.

Facebook does put a number of important constraints on your use of images in promoted posts and adverts. Most notably, when you wish to promote an image that you have posted to your Page’s Timeline, you may be very aware of the 20% text constraint.

Facebook splits your image into a 5×5 grid. If text appears in 6 or more grid locations, it will fail the 20% text on image check. Putting text on images is not something Facebook wish to endorse, so think carefully whether you can convey the same point using the image itself, without resorting to text overlays.

Pay your images the attention they deserve

You may be familiar with the concept of testing, measuring, tweaking and repeat on your advert copy and headline. However, the image is so important it deserves the same level of attention all by itself.

Make sure that you have a tool that allows you to quickly upload the numerous image variations that you make and promptly rollout the different overall advert combinations.

Create three or four very different images and see how they do. Once you start to see a bias towards one outperforming another (hint: use metrics like CTR, and pixel tracking with conversions), focus on it and carefully consider what is it about the image that drives audience behaviour.

Often it will be something simple like the colour, but on occasion something more subtle will have caused the variation in performance, and that’s where the real analytical fun begins.

In considering who the image advert is for, and where it is presented, you will gain better insight into why it is working, ultimately aiding you in creating the perfect image for your advert.

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