marketing automation

Looking for ways to make your account-based marketing program a bit easier on your sales team? Look no further than your marketing automation platform.   Account-based marketing programs take personalization to the next level. From individualized follow-ups from your sales team to highly personal marketing touchpoints that speak to each recipient’s specific needs, the most successful account-based marketing campaigns focus on making each touch feel like your recipient is the only person in the campaign.   These programs typically start with a high-value, flashy physical item that incorporates a variable […]

When considering an email marketing or marketing automation platform, it’s easy to get analysis paralysis comparing features, promises and pricing tiers. With so many options, where do you start?   Whether you’re shopping for an alternative marketing automation platform, preparing an email or marketing automation platform RFP, or just starting to consider which platform might be right for the next level of your marketing efforts, the following questions can help you choose the right marketing automation platform for your digital marketing needs:   Be Selfish for a Minute You are, […]

Running successful, effective paid media strategies across Paid Search (Google/Bing), Paid Social (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, etc), and online display can be a challenging task for anyone, even marketers with tons of time. For marketers tasked with dozens of items, it becomes exponentially more difficult even for the most savvy and experienced digital marketer to keep up. Using marketing automation to enhance digital paid media campaigns can create new layers of efficiency and create a more integrated strategic approach. Here are four tricks for how you can leverage marketing automation […]

Every salesperson wants things right now, whether that’s quality leads, effective marketing materials, pricing or contract concessions. Whatever is needed to close more deals, reach their goals, earn more commission.   As marketers, we know that the problem is, not every prospect or client, even if showing initial interest, is on their same timetable. They may not have a big enough need to make a purchase right now. Or maybe they’re under contract, satisfied with their current vendor, other projects are taking priority, currently have no budget—or it’s simply taking them […]

SEO can boost your marketing automation efforts in these three ways: Build leads and lists through qualified organic traffic Utilize existing organic data to optimize conversion points Use keyword research to send targeted content to specific lists Click on the links above to jump to that section. I recently discussed this topic at the And Then Some emfluence Conference 2018. Here is the video and SlideShare of my talk: How SEO Can Boost Your Marketing Automation Efforts from emfluence   But if you’re more into reading/scanning, the meat of the […]

Now more than ever, marketing and sales strategies and communications need to be aligned in order to create an effective growth strategy. The path and singular focus of these two historically siloed business units continues to move closer together into a unified vision. I believe that inbound marketing will be the centerpiece of this unification because of the focus on pipeline growth and nurturing.   An inbound strategy, in the broadest terms, is a marketing strategy which is focused on demand generation, lead acquisition, and lead nurturing. Traditionally, the line […]

By now it’s no secret that email marketing is a must-have in every marketer’s toolbox.   More than 82% of companies—big and small alike—are using email marketing in some capacity to drive leads and sales, and they’re using it for good effect. Recent studies show that marketers rank email as the most effective channel for acquiring new leads and holding on to existing clients, and more than three quarters of marketers are happy with the ROI of email marketing.   But here’s the thing: even though the vast majority of […]

Another Google Marketing Live is in the books, and we have more insight into the path of Google Ads for the year. Last year was all about automation, and we continue to optimize to those initiatives today: Developing rich and diverse text ad assets for Responsive Search Ads is an ongoing task in our queue. Many of our campaigns have moved to Automated Bid Strategies with improved results for our clients. Attribution past Last Click is gaining adoption. We are making use of Smart campaigns, specifically Smart Shopping, to widen […]

Summer is in full effect, which means it’s time to take a breather from those out-of-office replies and take a look at email marketing benchmarks for the first half of 2018.   If this is your first Email Marketing Benchmarks Report, this is our twice-yearly dive into the email marketing metrics compiled by the global users of the emfluence Marketing Platform. These email marketing benchmarks are designed to give you a starting point for comparing your own email marketing metrics. You’ll be able to scroll through comparison metrics based on industries, […]

This story starts with t-shirts.   From our A/B Test t-shirts to our I Opted In to Get This Bag totes, emfluence has a long history of spinning digital marketing lingo into apparel. We like puns and we like marketing, and if we’re going to wear shirts anyway, why not have some fun with our brand? Turns out we’re not the only ones who like our shirts, and for years people have asked us: how can I get one of those shirts for myself?   So we did something a […]

There’s nothing that makes us happier than hearing from happy emfluence Marketing Platform users, which is why we’re excited to share the Spring 2018 G2 Crowd Report results with you.   G2 Crowd is a business solution review platform with a robust (and busy) marketing automation platform category. Each quarter, G2 Crowd releases reports to help buyers understand how software users feel about business software solutions, like the emfluence Marketing Platform. Rankings in each report are based on the data provided by actual users, which are averaged for the category—in […]

Meet InspiroBot, the internet’s first artificial intelligence bot solely dedicated to generating unlimited inspirational quotes.   The results are an intriguing mix of terrifying, hilarious, and sometimes just a little too close to accurate. But here’s the thing: if you print out your InspiroBot creations and hang them around your office (like we did), no one is going to mistake InspiroBot’s quotes with actual inspirational quotes. The sentences are a little off. The inspiration is a little frightening. Something about them just isn’t…human.   InspiroBot is nonetheless a harbinger of […]

Content marketing is a vast and ever-changing industry, so I thought I’d take some time to look into my crystal ball and see what the next year might bring. Naturally, I can’t actually see the future, but I like to stay as up to the minute as possible. Here are the content trends I think will dominate content marketing 2017.

Banks and Credit Unions call it “onboarding:” A series of communications that cultivates the relationship with a new customer and provides an opportunity to (eventually) talk about other services that they could provide for the customer. The rest of us may know this process as a “welcome series,” “lead nurture campaign,” and “customer loyalty campaign.” It’s all the same – and it’s great marketing automation! At the 2014 emfluence Marketing Platform User Conference, Jenny Nichols from CommunityAmerica Credit Union and I shared their 5-part, 90 day “honeymoon” onboarding email campaign, […]

Our recent whitepaper on customer retention in the banking industry painted a detailed picture of a changing marketplace where customers leave banks at an alarming rate (8-10%) within their first two years of joining, and often because of a simple lack of effective, consistent and timely client communication.

There’s an obvious and simple solution: rebuild your communication approach for your banking customers in a way that can automatically nurture them and build long-term loyalty. If your customers are leaving you for services they didn’t know you had, then all you have to do is have a better plan for telling them about your offerings.

Move over, B2C. Ecommerce isn’t just for you anymore. B2B ecommerce sales through online marketplaces and websites are on the rise, growing 11% in the last year, and surpassing $1 trillion in sales.  Not only is it important for business-to-consumer brands to have an ecommerce function to keep up with the demand these days, but with 74% of buyers doing research online before making a purchase, it’s becoming increasingly more important for business-to-business brands to follow suit. In this digital age, everyone wants the convenience of popping onto a website, […]

Let’s start by covering the basics – what is a survey? A survey is defined as a research method used for collecting data from a pre-defined group of respondents to gain information and insights on various topics of interests. That’s just a long-winded way of saying that surveys can be used to collect data. And as marketers, we LOVE data! The more data we have, the more targeted we can make our messaging to specific audience segments.   When to Use Surveys in your Marketing Campaign There are so many […]

If you’ve heard my position on CRM systems before, it should come as no surprise that I firmly believe marketers should have at least a 50% stake in every CRM system—and perhaps more so if you’re a B2B marketer. CRM systems are one of the most valuable repositories of data for marketers, and understanding how they work—as well as how they might work better—can help you refine your targeting strategy, improve your budget projections, prove out your ROI on marketing spend, and help you make marketing decisions based on data […]

Featuring an average open rate that can be eight times higher and an audience that requires a broad opt-in policy, it’s no wonder that transactional emails have sparked your curiosity. You’re probably here because you’re looking for transactional email best practices—the rules on what you can—and can’t—do in a transactional email, and you’ve come to the right place.   Let’s dig in:   What Is a Transactional Email? Let’s start with the groundwork. If you haven’t read Dave Cacioppo’s post on The Art of the Transactional Email yet, click on […]

emfluence is delighted to welcome Joe Ramsey to the role of Customer Success Director! In this role, Joe will be responsible for nurturing long-term relationships with our emfluence Marketing Platform and emfluence agency customers. We’re excited to have him dig into goals and metrics—and even more excited for our customers to work with him on their individual measures of success.   Joe joins us with more than 20 years of marketing and support leadership across B2B and B2C companies. He has overseen marketing strategies in financial, telecommunications, and technology industries, […]

Re-building websites costs money and time. The trick to approval is justifying the expense. It has been my experience that rarely is the decision to rebuild a website up to one person. That being said, since different internal team members will need to be excited and inspired by the idea to rebuild, you will want to share different customized ROI stories. It would be smart to start with crafting a few ways that you see the website redesign benefiting the company and then tell the right story to the right […]

It’s only the single most critical shopping day of the year. We’re either the shoppers fighting crowds to catch the best deals to fulfill our holiday shopping lists, or we’re the marketers behind the scenes creating the strategies that get them buying!   2017’s Black Friday represented 4.6% of revenue for the entire year’s sales, and this year, sales are projected to be better than ever. It’s important to prepare ahead of time for what’s to come, and to ensure you stand out from the competition.   That’s where a […]

As a digital marketing agency, we are highly focused on identifying strategies and tactics that will work to drive further engagement and conversion online. We love digital because of the high level of “measurability” we have when it comes to monitoring the tactics that we deploy. However, we also know that most businesses rely to some degree on their offline footprint to drive ongoing engagement beyond the typical digital channels like search, email, and social media. That’s where offline to online ad targeting comes in handy.   These business that […]

You know the value in attending the emfluence And Then Some Conference. But how do you relay that effectively when asking for your company’s support in sending you? Getting time off and budget approval can be a real challenge sometimes, so here are three things you can share with the budget-boss in your life to help elicit a successful send-off: It’s designed to enhance your skillset. It presents an opportunity to connect with Kansas City’s brightest digital marketing minds and a variety of local, regional and national organizations. You’ll be […]

Attention all e-commerce businesses…if you’re not running a bounce-back email campaign to your buyers, you’re missing out on some major additional revenue.   What is a bounce-back offer? Let’s first review…what exactly is a “bounce-back” offer? Think of something like this: We’re not talking email delivery failures here. Plain and simple, a bounce-back offer is created to entice the client to “bounce back,” or return and buy more from you in the future. Brick and mortar retailers invented the bounce-back with return offer mailers, and with good reason: the cost […]

Summer vacation is almost here, but don’t swap your shoes for flipflops just yet. For marketers in higher education, this is the perfect time to map out your social media calendar for the academic year.   Social media is a key component of a good content marketing plan, and like any plan, you should start your social media calendar for the academic year with goals and KPIs. Here’s how:   Social Media Marketing Goals Content marketing is most successful when you understand what you hope to achieve. Setting goals (examples […]

How to evaluate your email mistakes so that you can use that information to become a better email marketer. At some point, everyone sends a bad email, whether that’s an email with clunky design or mistakes or image issues, and some of these email mistakes can be embarrassing at the least. But look at the bright side: there’s good that can come from carefully examining email mistakes. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? Same goes for making mistakes. By learning from the email marketing mistakes you make, you’re […]