industry news

There’s truly no need for us to restate the details of the current coronavirus conditions we find ourselves in. With many businesses feeling like they’re in a tailspin, it’s more important now than ever to take a calm, calculated look at your marketing, advertising and overall communication efforts. And while every business is different and the level to which they’ve been impacted by the pandemic varies, we’ve put together a list of universal considerations and thought starters to focus on as we all try to navigate these uncertain waters.     #1 Don’t Lose Sight  While […]

Since the onset of the coronavirus crisis in the U.S., we have had multiple clients approach us with uncertainty and questions. How is the coronavirus affecting current user behaviors? How do we think it will affect ongoing, long-term search behaviors? The truth is, we’re experiencing this for the first time along with everyone else. But as a data-driven agency, we wanted to dive in and provide some insight into current trends and we put our heads together to discuss. We analyzed all our client data to see how the coronavirus […]

Congratulations, you’ve taken the first steps to taking your manufacturing business to the next level with the use of email marketing! That’s right, email is still a thing. In fact, email marketing is used by 92% of manufacturer marketing professionals according to the Content Marketing Institute.   How the Manufacturers Can Incorporate Email into their Marketing Strategy In an industry where each purchase can be an intense and expensive, long drawn-out sales cycles that involve multiple stakeholders and other decision-makers, having a well-thought-out email marketing strategy to provide support is […]

Is the role of the CMO over? In Fall 2019, Forrester predicted that CMOs must broaden their view of their role or see their responsibilities divided to newly created positions, such as VP of Marketing Technology. Global corporations, including Johnson & Johnson, Uber and Coca Cola, are revisiting the role of the CMO, and in some cases eliminating it altogether.   Forrester is not saying marketing is less critical to success. Rather, org structures are redefining roles to adapt to evolving marketing technology, consumer sentiment, employee expectations, talent acquisition, automation, […]

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 […]

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.