The emfluence Blog

On Tuesday night, emfluence and our clients won 4 KCDMA AMBIT Awards! Two for search engine optimization and 2 for email marketing.

I’m finally getting through some of my notes, tweets and photos from South by Southwest’s Interactive Conference in Austin just over a week ago. I’ve found more good tidbits than I know what to do with, so for the next few days I’ll post some of the juiciest content. In this pic-filled post, check out some of the coolest promos and giveaways I ran across.

Congrats to the emfluence Search Engine Optimization strategy team for pulling in their 3rd BMA Fountain Award in 3 years in the category of SEO!…

I’m finally getting through some of my notes, tweets and photos from South by Southwest’s Interactive Conference in Austin just over a week ago. I’ve found more good tidbits than I know what to do with, so for the next few days I’ll post some of the juiciest content. First up: 9 of my favorite takeaways from various sessions.

A big thanks to all who joined for my Future15 session at South by Southwest Interactive, “I Want My $28! Rockin’ Email Marketing ROI.“ As…

In this presentation, I go into the 6 Steps of Getting Started with Twitter, plus a diagram of “the perfect tweet.” The tips in this presentation are largely for marketers, but a lot of the material is helpful even if you just want to dive in personally!

It’s an ongoing discussion in the email marketing world: Do you choose to grow your list via opt-in or opt-out methods? I had a client ask me this week what were the real pros and cons and how can they decide what’s right for them.

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.

Last Sunday, Americans gathered ‘round our televisions for a rare real-time television event: a really big football game. But something has changed in television – really, in any content consumption: fans are experiencing real-time TV by pairing it with social media, like Twitter. Most notable was the quick and clever thinking of several brands that had been actively engaging in social media during the entire game, especially when the unexpected happened. Some brand responses were home runs and some, not quite.

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.*

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.

It’s that time of year when industry experts and practitioners reflect on the year that was and predict what is to come. Rather than making bold predictions about big news events in 2013, our lead Search Engine Optimization Strategist, Corey Morris, has compiled some strong recommendations of things digital marketers should know about search engine optimization (SEO) for the incoming year.

In a 2012 study, customers cited “impersonal communications” and “lack of services” as one of the top reasons they tried another bank. Using automated profile-based communications — or Profile Pathways — can build better banking relationships.

In 2012, SocialIRL hosted half a dozen full-day conferences on using “Social Media for Nonprofits” and I’ve had the pleasure of being among the line-up,…

In just 140 characters, The Salvation Army told an impactful story. The link goes to their blog post, which unravels the full story in just 5 paragraphs with a heartwarming payoff. They capped it with a poignant ask: “Will you make a difference this Christmas?” It’s mind boggling to me that a 255-word blog post and a 140-character tweet could have such an impact. 140 characters isn’t even enough for a preface. Heck, it’s not enough for an opening paragraph!

Facebook has rolled live with their “gifts” feature that shows up on the recipient’s Facebook page. Facebook has a (not yet well publicized) Merchant Interest Form where you can submit your products as gift options that friends can buy for each other.

Last Thursday, emfluence CEO David Cacioppo presented a Lunch ‘n’ Learn at Skyline headquarters on best practices in social media for marketing at trade shows. In the last few years, it’s almost impossible to attend a conference that doesn’t have a hashtag and a Twitter strategy. And with good reason: social media enhances your visibility, brand sentiment and leads to more conversations than standing on the booth floor alone. Here are a few ways Dave highlights that marketers should be using to increase visibility and traffic before, during and after the show.

In a world of crowded inboxes and short attention spans, marketers are always looking for the ‘edge’ – that special something that makes an email stand out and, ultimately, get opened. How do you grab attention? Some marketers are starting to experiment with the use of symbols – like hearts, stars and airplanes – in the subject line.

LinkedIn recently announced new look for Company Pages. With a now-familiar “Cover Photo” spanning the top of the profile page and a company news stream, this layout update is definitely an improvement. Bigger news: Company Pages now work with the LinkedIn smartphone and tablet apps. See an example of the major updates.

It's already (almost) October, so it's about time you started planning your 2013 email marketing campaign calendar. I recently gave a presentation on the characters…

What does it mean when your email goes “missing”? How is that different from a bounce? How should email marketers identify and address them differently?

Last week, Hotmail announced it would be offering its users a new inbox experience: Outlook.com. Most of the updates have to do with the look and feel of the user’s inbox. But the biggest gasp for email marketers was the realization that some or all of our subscribers list may suddenly have a new email address: a scary thought for deliverability.

Most businesses today – large and small – are sending some sort of email marketing. Some may send a monthly newsletter or digest. Others may focus on their products and driving sales online and offline. Some may have automated messages in place, like a welcome email. What are the 4 basic types of email that every marketer should be sending?

It’s a sensitive topic… No one wants to admit that they’re old. But, when you have a list… *ahem* of a certain age, you do have to work a little harder to take good care of it.

Let’s say you’ve been collecting names for a long time, but haven’t sent to them yet (this is a bad idea, more on this later) or you have a ton of hand written names that you’ve had typed up and are ready to import into your email database. Before you upload, you should take a couple precautions to ensure that bad addresses don’t wreck your sender reputation and make you look like a Spammer.

We’re hearing the question more and more: Should my business be on Pinterest? Now the third most popular social networking site, Pinterest reached 104 million monthly visits in March 2012. If your business relies on high website traffic to increase sales, you should consider joining Pinterest. Pinterest users are 79% more likely to purchase an item they saw on Pinterest than Facebook users who saw an item in their newsfeed or on a friend’s wall. So how can your business use Pinterest to increase your website traffic, improve your brand recognition, and convert new visits into leads?

Before Thursday of last week, as an Administrator of the emfluence Facebook page, anything I posted or liked showed up as emfluence comment or like. With the new Voice feature, I can toggle between if I want the post to come from me (Jessica) or from emfluence as a brand. I can now weigh in on company posts as myself!

Delving into the world of digital surveys? Here are 6 quick tips for creating online surveys so you can get better feedback from your respondents.