industry news

It’s been a few weeks since Google began rolling out its latest major search algorithm update, BERT, and many members of the SEM community still have questions about what this change means for search engine optimization and content marketing. For good reason, too. The sheer amount of speculation and “expert” guides that were published just days after the update was announced have made separating algorithmic fact from fiction difficult.   Thankfully, we’ve done most of the heavy lifting for you and put together a no-nonsense guide breaking down the key […]

emfluence is excited to welcome LaToya Rozof to the role of HR Manager! In her role, LaToya will oversee employee engagement, hiring, and in her own words, making sure we continue to have fun without breaking any laws.   LaToya joins us as an HR superstar with a passion for fashion. She has 13 years of HR experience and has expertise in employment law, employee relations, and HR strategy. One of her favorite work tasks is finding ways to help make the workplace a destination and not a dread (a […]

Do you market to consumers in California? You probably need to get to know CCPA. Even if you don’t, the new law could be the model for others states to quickly follow suit. Forbes is calling the measure “a wake-up call for everybody in tech.”   The California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), which takes effect in 2020, is the strongest privacy legislation in the United States. The California law protects the consumer privacy of California residents and affects every major corporation who collects data on California citizens. In its current […]

Email Marketing Benchmarks 2018: Part Two With peak email season behind us and a fresh year of metrics on the horizon, it’s time to take a look at how email marketing campaigns performed for the second half of 2018.   If this is your first Email Marketing Benchmarks Report, welcome to the emfluence Marketing Platform’s twice-yearly review of email marketing metrics compile by our users across the globe. In each report, you can evaluate email marketing benchmarks by industries, audience types, and messaging styles. Use these numbers to benchmark your […]

Like it or not, the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is coming very soon. The legislation is designed to put control into the hands of consumers regarding how their personally identifiable information (PII) is obtained, used and shared. Most would agree that giving consumers control is the right thing to do. It does, however, present some significant challenges for businesses, including non-EU based companies, who do business with or market to individuals who are part of the EU.   GDPR consumer advantages:   Increased security. Companies are required […]

What You Need to Know About Facebook’s New Audience Optimization Tool

I’m writing this blog post because I just can’t hold in my excitement. Let’s Encrypt has just entered public beta! Read on for technical details.

Last week, emfluence and our wonderful clients won 13 KCDMA AMBIT awards for excellence in targeted, measurable marketing – 2 more than last year! emfluencers took home 6 gold and 7 silver awards in the Email, Social Media, Business-to-Consumer Marketing and Search Engine Optimization categories.  The AMBIT awards are particularly important to us because of their judging criteria. AMBITs are awarded based on results and measureable goals in addition to design and creative, perfect for our marketing standards! Congratulations to the emfluence Email Marketing team and SPIN! Pizza for winning […]

The emfluence crew loves any occasion to celebrate great work, but was especially excited to attend the first-ever AMPS Awards — an awards show put on by the Social Media Club of Kansas City, where awards were judged by fellow social media professionals on those points that mean the most when you’re really in the business. emfluence and our pals (client) SPIN! Pizza were thrilled to have gotten a few nods from people we admire.

Technology might have thrown the traditional publishing industry into turmoil, but BookDaily.com is thriving—and helping authors succeed—thanks to a digital marketing strategy, that emphasizes Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. Three years ago, they wanted help reaching a new market and the PPC team at emfluence was eager to help. BookDaily.com, owned by Virginia-based ArcaMax Publishing, offers the first chapter of more than 88,000 books via email, for free. BookDaily.com’s customers are the thousands of authors who use its platform to promote their titles. (A basic account is free and allows authors to […]

Eleven years after emfluence and the emfluence Marketing Platform were first created, the emfluence team couldn’t agree more that Dave deserves the honor of Direct Marketer of the Year!

Today, Gmail inbox users noticed appearance of a new easy unsubscribe link at the top of many promotional emails. And this is pretty good good news for email marketing practitioners.

emfluence CEO, David Cacioppo and our client Kris Nielsen from Soave Automotive Group/Mercedes-Benz of Kansas City will be speaking at the 2014 Email Evolution Conference in Miami, January 23.

Gmail announced today that they’ll be able to turn images on for all inbox subscribers by default. For email marketers, this is good news! Not only because your subscribers will be able to see your gorgeous email as you intended it — with images — but because it may lead to an increase in open rates. Here’s how…

Gmail has rolled out their new Inbox, featuring a tabbed (categorized) look. There are three default tabs for “Primary,” social notifications and promotions. Many email marketers’ emails will probably be classified as promotions, and so many are concerned that it will decrease open and click through rates.

Yahoo! announced that on July 15, it will be “freeing up” inactive email addresses, making them available to claim by someone new. For email marketers, in order to clean these inactive and potentially recycled email addresses off your list, you’ll have to send at least one email to them during the period of deactivation and should consider cleaning inactive contacts off your email list. Read more about how and why to clean your list.

It’s almost summer which around emfluence means it’s time for our annual emfluence Marketing Platform User Conference! A full day of sessions on best practices, training on new features in our Platform and case studies from our savvy clients. We’re brewing a lineup of super powered content for this year’s conference and we thought we’d let you sneak a peek at the sessions:

Storify is among the newer tools for a social media practitioner and has been gaining popularity as a way to collect and organize tweets, especially those collected around a specific hashtag or top. Today, they launched their Storify Business account option, offering journalists, agencies, brands and bloggers the chance to upgrade their toolset.

Twitter recently rolled out – a bit early – their character-reducing update for tweets with links. Now instead of counting all URLs (including photos/short links) as 20 characters, they’ll count as 22.

This year, our Community Director, Jessica Best won’t just be attending South by Southwest, she’ll be presenting! Among the top notch speaker line-up in Austin this March, you’ll find our emfluencer speaking on how to make your email marketing really… well, *rock.*

A few notes about things in the search engine optimization (SEO) world that you may or may not have heard about, including changes to Google’s algorithm thanks to JCPenney’s recent press and social media’s impact on how we search.

Social Fresh’s fifth social media conference was hosted April 19th just across the state in St. Louis. We sent Jessica Best to soak up some knowledge about emerging media from some heavy hitters. Here’s what she gleaned:

Last week, our Marketing Nerd — oops Marketing Manager — Jessica Best headed off to New York City for the first Innovation Uncensored conference, put on by Fast Company. Here’s what she heard from some of the smartest and most innovative people in business:

Indigo Wild, an all-natural soap happily went home with a shiny AMBIT Award from the Kansas City Direct Marketing Association. Their Holiday 09 multi-part email marketing campaign won kudos for being both beauty and brains, with a 40% growth in seasonal sales over 2008.

Wondering where you can catch up with the team from emfluence? Check out a few of our upcoming celebrity appearances:

We got the call last week from the Kansas City chapter of the Direct Marketing Association that three of our AMBITS submissions have won an award! We’re pleased as punch to be winning more AMBITS this year. We believe in judging our campaigns based not just on cool-factor and smooth style (which our clients can also boast), but on performance and return on investment. Kudos to the entire emfluence team and our winning clients on great work with great results!

Our very own Marketing Manager, Jessica Best, will join the ranks of other industry folk as the newest contributor to the eMail Guide's blog. www.theemailguide.com/blog/ Congrats and may you speak emphatically. But try to keep it short and sweet, would ya? We'll look forward to commenting away…