You’ve put together a solid review strategy to improve local SEO and build your online reputation, and now you’re seeing a few subpar reviews come in – don’t panic.   A few negative reviews are inevitable. According to research from TrustPilot, venting frustrations is among the top motivations for writing online reviews. People want to share a notably good or bad experience to feel empowered or help others make a better buying decision. Instead of feeling disappointment or frustration when a negative review comes in, try to see value in […]

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, […]

So you’ve gotten your five HIPAA rules under control and your marketing budget is at least 10% of your company’s overall budget. Now you are ready to embark into the healthcare digital marketing world, but don’t know which digital strategy to implement.     Let’s look at the five ways you can uplevel your digital marketing strategy for healthcare to help you generate more traffic and stay competitive in the healthcare industry.     Have an Easy-to-Navigate Website While Staying Mobile Conscience Although many people still use desktops, the majority […]

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 […]

Switching Banks is Hard. Luckily, it’s not impossible.   Switching. Banks. Is. Hard. Like – getting-a-toddler-to-sit-still, opening-a-pickle-jar-on-your-91st-birthday, changing-political-views-on-social-media hard. Yet as financial institutions, we all want to achieve that brass ring, to become their primary financial institution – with all the loan and share balances that come with that relationship.   So let’s take the hard and make it eas…OK. OK. Let’s take the hard and make it less hard.   It’s gonna take more than a banner ad Helping a potential customer switch to your place won’t happen with […]

Imagine being part of a team that includes a designer, copywriter, developer, and marketer. They are all working together harmoniously on an email campaign, each contributing to it from their area of expertise, resulting in a perfectly crafted email that is great looking, well written, and renders correctly in every inbox. You are all together when the send button is pressed, and you look on as your beautiful emails are released like doves into the sky.   The unfortunate reality is that’s almost never the case. It’s you, the marketer […]

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 […]

Our KPIs are better than yours. I believe that most of the time this statement is true (although there are the occasional times where I run across someone with some really kick-ass KPIs and strategies). I believe that our KPIs are better because this is an emphasis of how we do business for ourselves and for our clients. We take it so seriously we brought in a Customer Success Director to make sure we are tracking toward KPIs that indicate success.   What Are KPIs (In Marketing)? KPIs, or key […]

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 […]

There are certainly some industries ripe to produce the razzle dazzle social media content that we love to see in our newsfeeds—the beautiful models, game-winning statistics, new movie releases, breaking news headlines. While you might think the inspiration for content may come easier in a fast-paced, highly visible, large corporation or adorable, mission-based nonprofit, it doesn’t mean social media can’t be an effective player in your marketing line-up.   Let me start off by saying “boring” is a completely subjective judgement. There is no such business that will appeal to […]

Improving website accessibility can seem like a never-ending and always-challenging process. Mostly because, it is. It’s the collision of two complex worlds – legislation and web development – coupled with the realities of people with disabilities, which can be misunderstood unless you know first-hand what it’s like to live with a disability. The content on your website is also frequently changing, so it’s not a one-time optimization project. That’s where website accessibility statements can come in handy.   Before we dive in, if you need an overview on website accessibility, […]

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 […]

emfluence rounded up another year of marketing success at the 2019 Fountain Awards on March 7th at the 2016 Main Event Space. The Fountain Awards, which are co-hosted by the ANA Business Marketing Association of Kansas City and the Kansas City Chapter of the American Marketing Association, feature results-oriented marketing work from agencies and brands across the greater Kansas City metro.   Featuring categories honoring work for both B2B and B2C oriented brands, The Fountain Awards gathers entries from dozens of marketers, all of whom are competing for the clout […]

The digital landscape for how you market your business and connect with customers at a local level is extremely important. As more local businesses create a stronger presence leveraging local search, reviews, and social media connections, it can become a more challenging task for businesses with multiple locations to manage. In order to compete with smaller businesses in all of your locations, you will need to create a concentrated and efficient local social media strategy.     Why is Localized Social Marketing So Important for Multi-Location Brands? In their latest […]

In some significant news out of the Ads wing of Google HQ last week, it was announced that Google Ads will be sunsetting the Average Position metric. If you’re surprised (like I was) you can relax for now – the change isn’t coming until September. Surprised as I was, upon reflection the change makes a lot of sense. Below I’ll explain the “why” behind the move, as well as metrics to pay attention to moving forward.   Why Did Google Ads Get Rid of Average Position? From my first day […]

“If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s use mine,” former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale emfluence partners with our customers on a breadth of digital marketing initiatives, from website development and SEO to email strategy and delivery. In every engagement, we encourage customers to establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). In Business to Business marketing, with longer, complex sales cycles, the right KPIs provide early indications of success and can raise early alerts that it’s time to recalibrate the marketing if a campaign appears […]

If you work in higher education marketing and your job requires any of the following: new student recruitment current student interactions graduate student communications   Then I am writing this blog post just for you (but wait – if you don’t work in higher education and your job doesn’t require any of the above, you’ll probably still get some great ideas from the rest of this blog. Stick around!).   We’re about to dive into the world of influencer marketing and how you can integrate this tactic into your own […]

You’ve done it! Your campaigns are scheduled and targeted, and ad groups are aligned to your offerings with carefully crafted keywords and ad copy. Time to sit back and watch the results come in, right?   Not so fast! No campaign is ready to go without a full array of Ad Extensions. Ad Extensions are add-ons to your ad copy that can increase your performance, including through improved clickthrough rate and higher likelihood of conversion. Simply put, ads with more information that make use of more pixels tend to perform […]

GIF usage continues to flood every corner of the Internet, and while their popularity can be attributed to the fact that they inject more fun into our content, marketers can also utilize them to better engage their readers.

What’s now, new and next in social media for marketers?   In the ever-evolving world of social media – from platforms to platform enhancements – the landscape is looking great for marketers in 2019. Let’s consider five new social media tactics to try in 2019.   Tune and Improve Your Facebook Ad Targeting Ad targeting via Facebook got a great upgrade this year with the introduction of household income by U.S. ZIP code. In simple terms, this means for any given zip code, there’s an average income per household marketers […]

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 […]

Latest Ranking Factors and Organic Search Trends How to appear organically in Google search is a constantly evolving process. New features appearing directly in search results, more results page real estate going to ads, and continuous algorithm updates keep marketers on their toes. Let’s look at the SEO trends to watch for in 2019.   7 Important SEO Trends in 2019 Machine learning / RankBrain Intent based content and keywords Featured snippets Crawler optimization Expertise, Authority, and Trust (E-A-T) JSON-LD schema Site usability   1. Machine learning / RankBrain From […]

“Alexa, read my emails…”   Email is one of the most widely used forms of digital communication. With 54% of consumers using a voice assistant at least once a day, it’s no surprise that virtual assistants are implementing the ability to read emails.   Last December, Alexa lead the charge by announcing that consumers can now check their email using Alexa’s new capabilities to read and delete emails in a Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, or Live.com inbox. Using this new Alexa function, consumers can access the ability to have their emails […]

Want to make your content marketing tasks a bit easier in 2019? Start the year off fresh with a content inventory.   Wait, What’s a Content Inventory? Let’s start with definitions. In its basic form, a content inventory is a list of content items created for your brand—this could be anything from blog posts to website pages, whitepapers, infographics, case studies, testimonials, or other types of content you’re creating for your audience—and a recording of where that asset has been published.   The idea behind a content inventory is that […]

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, […]

As a digital marketing agency, our mission is to provide our clients with the tools they need to effectively reach their audiences online. We specialize in services such as email marketing, SEO, and web design to help bring your company directly to your customers on a channel they are comfortable with. Much to our excitement, our hard work has recently been noted by ratings and review firm Clutch, who has included us in their directory of B2B agencies as a one of the top digital marketing companies!   Clutch is […]