How email marketing can boost your SEO and PPC

If you’re investing in search engine marketing and are NOT using email marketing to complement it, you’re leaving a lot of easy cash on the table, particularly if the search engine marketing is working.

But it’s okay, we can help.

The rest of this post will teach you how email marketing can increase the effectiveness of your SEO & PPC campaigns by 2-3x, and how YOU can start collecting some of that extra cash that’s being left on the table. If you’re NOT incorporating these tactics into your search engine marketing campaigns and your competitors are, they’ll run laps around you online. Here’s why:

Fortune Favors The Bold

Have you ever wanted to meet somebody‚ maybe an attractive member of the better-looking sex, or a potential client or power partner at a professional event, but couldn’t muster up the guts to introduce yourself?

Most of us have been there.

You know that you should walk up to them and start talking, but the butterflies in your stomach just aren’t having it.

It happens to the best of us.

You know you’ll probably never get such a good opportunity with that person again. And you know exactly what you should do – introduce yourself, take a genuine interest in the person, talk about things that are interesting to them, ask meaningful questions, try to deliver something of value, etc.

But even if you forget every single lesson you learned from How To Win Friends and you completely blow it, the simple act of introducing yourself and getting the person’s contact information makes it possible to contact them when you want.

And being able to contact the person again makes it way more likely you’ll talk to or see that person again, right? And talking to them or seeing them again exponentially increases the chances that you’ll make a valuable connection with them, right?

So when you’re networking (or looking for dates), the goals are to:

  1. Find people you’re interested in
  2. Make friends with them
  3. Get their contact information
  4. Follow-up with them to seal the deal

If you do step 1 and NOT steps 2, 3, or 4,  it’s no good.

If you do steps 1 and 2 only‚ it’s a little better, still not good.

If you do steps 1, 2 & 3, you’re getting close, but you’re still stopping 3 feet from gold.

To get the most bang for your buck, the highest ROI possible, (and to be thought of by me as a “ninja” marketer) you clearly want to do all 4 steps.

And so it is with internet marketing (except you don’t have to deal with butterflies in your stomach, and you don’t have to be all that bold). But you have to be smart.

Right now, I see a lot of companies not being smart about it. They’re stopping at step 2. Many have graduated to step 3. But for some reason, few are ninjas.

I don’t understand it.

SEO & PPC WITHOUT Email Is Like…

Salad with no dressing.

It’s like peanut butter with no jelly.

It’s like Thelma with no Louise.

Well, not really. Really, it’s like an expensive marketing campaign that’s not performing to its full potential. It’s like leaving money on the table. It’s like buying a full-page ad in The Post without including your contact information.

It’s a total no-brainer.

Running a search engine marketing (or any paid media campaign for that matter) without an email follow-up sequence is like investing a whole bunch of money to attend an exclusive networking event, and then sitting at a table by yourself the whole time. In the back of the room.

You may get lucky and make a few contacts (i.e., sales or leads). But you could dramatically increase your chances of success without doing that much more work! You’ve already done most of the work and invested all the money that it takes. It’s that extra 20% hustle that makes it really worth your while.

SEO & PPC WITH Email Is Like…

Wine & cheese.

It’s like cereal & milk.

It’s like free long distance (huh?).

Not really. It’s more like a really smart way to leverage your internet spending. It’s really like having a super-sticky offer that keeps people coming back to your store again and again. It’s like being really smart. Like a ninja.

Not everybody will sign-up for your email offer, but some will. Those who do will likely return to your site sometime. And by definition, you’ll get more web traffic than you would have otherwise. Higher web traffic equals a higher Alexa rank, which improves your SEO. Plus, it creates more exposure to your content, which makes link-backs (other sites linking to your content) much more likely, which is monumentally beneficial for SEO.

So in addition to helping you make more money, it also makes your SEO agency’s job a lot easier. Everybody wins!

So Here’s What You Do

Want to start collecting some of that cash that you’re leaving on the table?

Commit to hustling that extra 20% to reap an additional 80% reward. Start thinking about how you could facilitate an email marketing campaign and incorporate it into your SEO & PPC strategy.

What types of information are your prospects looking for?

What types of content do you have at your disposal?

What could you give away for free?

But it always amazes me when I see clients investing substantially to generate sales leads and then dropping the ball at the moment that’s literally the most important. I consistently see companies making this mistake and I have seen some smart ones correct the mistake and profit handsomely.

Be smart. Be a ninja. And let WhatCounts help you.

Chris Mechanic is a co-founder at WebMechanix, an SEO company specializing in organic lead generation. His free newsletter provides step-by-step instructions on how to leverage SEO to get more leads and make more money. To become a member, go to SEObyWebMechanix.com

3 ways to make your landing pages deliver

Istanbul runway 6

Email marketing campaigns can have many goals; one being conversion. You want your readers to click a link, go to a specific page and perform a specific action. These actions should take place on a Landing Page – a page you send readers to that is specific to the email content, not just another page on your site.

How do you design a landing page that delivers? Try the following 3 methods.

1 – Determine your desired action, then make a wire frame.

When setting up a landing page, you (should) have specific goals in mind. Before you jump right into the design, take a little time to decide on what your targeted goals are and if they have any specific hierarchy. Also, determine if you need a page for each link or subject area in the email. It will be counterproductive to send someone to a page with too many calls to action or options; it dilutes the effectiveness of the landing page.

Make a list of your goals, prioritize them (primary, secondary, tertiary) and then design your page. However, before jumping right into design, try developing a wire frame first. Wire framing is a quick and effective way to visually plan the layout of your page. View some sample wire frames here.

Once you have your list and are ready to develop your wire frame, it’s time to start thinking about callouts. A callout is a specified area of a page designed to highlight specific information and its subsequent call to action. Consider which callouts are the most important and what real estate they will occupy within the layout. There are a few guides for this: the “F layout”, the “backwards S”, etc. They basically refer to the way the average eye will navigate the information on a page.

Because, in this culture, we generally read left to right and have a short attention span, the F layout tends to work very well. The idea is to place the most important information in the areas of an “F”, the horizontal lines of the F being the most desired real estate. Read F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content for more on this.

2 – Determine which design elements from your web site need to convey and which do not.

Design is important and the look of your page will determine a good deal of its effectiveness. Unfortunately, many designers will play it safe here and use the style guide of the existing site as their only guide for the look of the landing page. But some of these elements may not need to convey and some may actually hurt conversion.

Consider imagery, color, layout, and textures – all of the same things you take into account when developing a regular website homepage. The role of design elements is to lead the eye to targeted content and drive a user to take action. For example, your website may not have a bright red submit button on any of its forms but for the purposes of your landing page, a red button might just do the trick. Or there might be images that do not appear on your site but would make lots of sense on the landing page. Get the picture?

When designing this page, keep in mind that conversion is the goal and key to the success of your landing page. Branding is important and consistency will play some role, but conversion is how you are measuring the success of your campaign. So, be sure that all design elements, while attractive and appropriate, draw the reader in and move them to action.

3. Try a little A|B testing. The results will prove beyond valuable.

A|B testing is pretty simple and straightforward. Test your landing pages in two groups, group A and group B. Test them simultaneously and be prepared to track the results. From there, determine which works best and proceed accordingly.

For a landing page, set up 2 versions: Version A and Version B. If you’ve used landing pages in the past and did a relatively consistent layout for all of them, then use this layout as Version A (the control). For Version B, change the layout and adjust the placement of your callouts and the wording of your call to action items. When you have these 2 layouts ready and live as landing pages, then divide your email distribution list (or some portion of it) into 2 groups (your email marketing consultant will be able to help with this). Send Email Group A the email with links to Landing Page A and Group B to Landing Page B. Then using your campaign monitoring or web site analytics, see which landing page performs better and provides higher conversion rates.

Be patient and give it a little time for the results to come in completely. Once you have a good data set of statistics on each layout, take the time to analyze everything and make some decisions. Review which callouts produced conversions and which ones failed. If you have multiple callouts, you might get a mixed bag of results where some callouts did well on A and others did better on B. Either way, determine which layout elements performed the best and use this to set up your final landing page for your next email campaign drop.

Taking some time to prepare a Landing Page correctly will prove very valuable and provide the conversions needed for your business to succeed. Design is important, layout matters, content and wording is key and colors make a difference. Good luck!

Jon-Mikel Bailey
President, CMO, Wood Street, Inc.

Jon-Mikel Bailey HeadshotThe following is a guest post from Jon-Mikel Bailey. Jon is President and CMO for Wood Street, Inc., a web and mobile design, development and SEO firm in Maryland. Jon blogs regularly on the Wood Street blog and speaks at area chambers and organizations on SEO, design, web content and Social Media. Jon is also a huge WhatCounts fan!


18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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5 Branding Must-Haves For Your Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is an opportunity to create one-on-one bonds with consumers and in our experience, when created correctly, can have the highest ROI of any marketing campaign. When designing your newsletter it is extremely important to stay on brand so consumers recall your brand and know you are a trusted source. Here are 5 branding must-haves to create trust, authority and reinforce that your brand can contribute value to the lives of your consumers:

1. Personality and Voice: Is your brand serious or playful? Scientific or colloquial? Whatever your defined personality, it must be leveraged throughout all of your brand touch points. I’ve witnessed some brands opt for a more youthful tone in this medium, deducing that internet users skew younger, only for them to realize that they are abandoning their values and core consumer group. Stay true to your brand and make sure your tone is representative of your personality and values. Consumers will notice the difference.

2. A Consistent Template: Your email marketing template is an opportunity to reinforce who you are as a brand and why consumers should trust you. The human brain is hardwired to recognize patterns, and these pattern recognitions are the basis for branding. Consumers will know, though they may not be able to articulate, when something does not adhere to your brand standards. Thus, they may not be able to draw the parallel to your brand, and you might miss out on a potential customer. When creating your email marketing template refer to your brand standards. Are you using your logo correctly? Are the typefaces consistent? Are you using your correct color palette? Do the buttons and designs match your website or other branded collateral? Make your email marketing campaign instantly recognizable by reinforcing your brand standards and sticking to them.

3. A Branded Preview Pane: You’ve spent all this time working on a beautiful template, and you’ve forgotten about the preview pane! If you haven’t branded the top third of your email message to be viewed in a preview pane, consumers are going to get a less-than-stellar first impression of your brand, and will potentially delete you. Be sure to include your logo in your preview pane as subscribers are more likely to open emails from brands they know. You should also utilize this area to hook consumers in with compelling copy and imagery. This section is basically the “elevator pitch” of email marketing and determines whether you’ll get read, or deleted. Use this section to give a succinct overview of what’s ahead, and be sure to include a call-to-action so consumers know what to do.

4. Branded Landing Pages: Whether it’s a sign up page or the unsubscribe page, ensure that the experience is consistent throughout for consumers. Elements should be consistent on the page so the consumer knows where to find common items. Furthermore, the look, feel and tone should be consistent with the rest of your brand value assets.

5. A Consistent Style of Imagery: Many brands go to great lengths to keep their assets consistent and somehow trip up when it comes to imagery style. When selecting images, refer to your brand standards, especially your brand personality. What mood and tone are these images meant to convey? Do all the images you’ve selected convey the same attributes? If you are using black & white photography, ensure you use that everywhere. If hand drawn illustrations more effectively convey who you are, use that consistently as well.

Email marketing is the fastest way to get in front of consumers and is an opportunity to reinforce your brand, so above all, make sure you are consistently on brand. The more consistent you are, the more likely consumers are to remember and trust you, and, the more likely they are to complete a transaction.

This is a guest post by Amina AlTai, co-founder and marketing director at Imagemme, a NYC branding and packaging design agency.


18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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You might be missing this critical email marketing metric

Ben Landers Head ShotThe following is a guest post from WhatCounts client, Ben Landers. Ben is the founder and president of Blue Corona, an internet marketing, analytics and optimization company that helps companies more accurately track their advertising and marketing strategies, get more qualified visitors to their website(s) and convert more visitors into leads and sales. Sign up for Blue Corona’s free monthly email newsletter (bottom right on the homepage) and get actionable strategies to double, triple, and quadruple your monthly web leads.

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Targeted, opt-in email campaigns can be a powerful and cost-effective way to generate more business from existing clients and strengthen relationships with new prospects making them more likely to become clients in the future. However, like any other marketing strategy, you cannot maximize the return on investment (ROI) from your email campaigns without proper tracking.

As the president of a marketing analytics and optimization consulting company, one of the primary reasons I use WhatCounts is the detailed tracking built into the Publicaster platform. It’s also very easy to connect Publicaster to common website tracking tools such as Google Analytics. If you’re intelligent enough to spend your free time reading BSF’s blog, surely you’re already leveraging these aspects of features (wink, wink)! But even with the Google Analytics integration, there’s still one email marketing metric that’s often missing and, for many companies, it’s the most important metric.

Better Data Equals Better Results

The metric I’m referring to is phone inquiries (aka phone leads).

No matter which marketing channels you’re utilizing or what type of business you’re in, you cannot advertise intelligently or maximize your ROI without a handful of basic metrics.

At a minimum, you must know/identify:

  1. What you’d pay for a new client
  2. Your average lead-to-sale conversion rate
  3. Your website’s true visit-to-lead conversion rate
  4. How many visits and leads you’re getting today (web AND phone leads)
  5. Your goals for the future (where you’d like to be vs. where you are today)

Of course, there are some instances in which phone leads don’t apply. If you’re running an e-commerce only website, you probably don’t get phone leads and there’s no need to track them from your email campaigns. However, if you own or handle the marketing for virtually any type of home services company (HVAC, pest control, plumber, remodeling company, roofer, etc.), you, without question, receive far more phone inquiries than web inquiries.

In fact, B2C (business to consumer) home services companies, often have a phone lead to web lead ratio in excess of 4:1!

Given this information, you can start to see the problem with having incomplete tracking in place. If you’re evaluating the efficacy of your email marketing based on web leads only, you could be (and most likely are) missing more than half the picture. Better information equals better results. Operating on insufficient information can cause a whole variety of problems – everything from emailing your subscribers too frequently to failing to invest more resources in email marketing as an advertising channel.

Look at this screenshot:
Publicaster Web VisitsThis company has a small opt-in email subscriber list and they do a monthly email newsletter promoting specials as well as new products. They have three goals with each campaign – increase web visits, generate leads and generate online sales. In the screenshot above, you can see that the three email newsletters generated 633 visits and 3 online sales. Web leads were tracked, but are not included in the screenshot. There were 43 online leads total.

These results give the company a total email conversion rate on leads and online store sales of ~7% – not bad, but not even close to their top performing marketing strategies. Given the low cost of email marketing, this company will (without question) continue to invest in email marketing as an advertising channel, but they probably won’t invest additional resources in it because they have other higher performing strategies to tweak and turn-up.

What’s not included in the screenshot above is the phone activity related to the email campaigns. Prepare to be astonished:

Phone Call Data From Email Campaigns

Now what do you think of your email marketing campaign!? Taking into account phone activity, the company now sees that their email newsletter generated a staggering 212 total conversions and a conversion rate of ~34%. This catapults opt-in email marketing into the hot seat as their top marketing strategy.

What do you think the topic of their April marketing meeting was? You guessed it: “A plan for going ‘all-in’ with opt-in email marketing!”

How to Track Calls from Your Email Campaigns

The good news is that tracking phone inquiries generated by your email marketing campaigns is easy if you’re using Publicaster. Once you have call tracking set-up, all you have to do is insert a small snippet of code to each link within your email campaign. Just like there are dozens of website analytics tools, there are dozens of call tracking platforms available – a quick Google search for “email marketing call tracking” will give you several to choose from.

The Takeaways

Running your marketing department without proper analytics tools and services in place is like operating your company with no financial systems! Accurate measurement and tracking is the foundation of every high performing marketing department. You can’t maximize it if you don’t (accurately) measure it!

If you receive inquiries from prospective customers via the phone, you must invest in call tracking to determine the true conversion rate from each marketing strategy – including your email marketing campaigns. If you don’t, you could be making decisions on incredibly inaccurate information and missing major opportunities in the process.

Like everything in business, the devil is in the details and, when it comes to marketing, the details matter.

Ben Landers
Founder & President, Blue Corona


18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Uncommon Goods Case Study: Fighting Winter Blues with Email

The following is a guest post by WhatCounts client and friend Amanda O’Brien, otherwise known as @amanda_pants. Amanda is the VP of Marketing at Hall Internet Marketing located in Portland, Maine. She is a self-proclaimed email nerd and is the organizer of Social Media Breakfast Maine. She also sometimes plays the role of a runner.

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I recently heard that the average person receives 5,000 opt-in emails a year. I am an email nerd; I think my number is probably higher than that. That is why when I see a good, I mean really good, email marketing piece, I stop and take notice.

Uncommon Goods is an online store that sells unique (and fun) items. I have been a fan of them for a long time. This year my husband was pretty excited to get their Ski Wine Rack for Christmas. They have always provided a unique online shopping experience, and lately they have really stepped up their email marketing game.

When Amy from WhatCounts recently asked on Twitter if anyone had seen any great email campaigns lately, I knew who to point out. The Uncommon Goods “9 ways to give winter the cold shoulder” email was still sticking out in my head as a well thought-out and executed marketing piece.

4 Things Uncommon Goods Did Uncommonly Good with their Email

1. Got my attention with the subject line

“9 ways to give winter the cold shoulder” was the subject of the email. I live in Portland, Maine. I am a fan of winter, but this time of year, winter gets old. Winter blues set in and hibernating sounds like the best plan of action. Relevance is key. Tying in their messaging with the season was great. The more relevant the email, the better your subscribers will respond.

2. Entertaining

Humor is a great way to connect with your audience. In the Uncommon Goods email, they listed one symptom of the winter blues, and then prescribed a product that they sell online (I think my favorite was Monochromata).  The symptoms were made up, but they were clever. The solutions they offered were really funny. For example: Frigidosis symptoms were chattering teeth and the refusal to leave bed because of a broken heater. The solution was one of their playful pocket flasks to warm yourself from the inside. They were witty and I appreciated the humor.

3. Ignored “best practices” and kept their audience in mind

The only thing more important than following best practices is knowing what your audience wants and delivering it. Uncommon Goods knows their audience. The email was pretty image heavy, which can be a best practice no-no, in case someone doesn’t load images in their email. The Uncommon Goods subscriber is probably a very visual person. The unique images and illustrations really sold the product and the company no matter what the rule book says.

4. Unique calls-to-action

As I mentioned before, I get a lot of email. A typical call-to-action is a “buy now” link or a “view more products” button. Uncommon Goods used calls-to-action to drive people to their site to view more items, but in a clever way. Instead of saying “view more products”, they grouped products together to match the email messaging  and added descriptive links. When they prescribed a colorful scarf for a case of “Monochromata”, they included a link to “view more bright accessories“.  That reflects the message and tone of the email and is more clickable than “view more products now”.

Overall, the email from Uncommon Goods was fun, relevant, entertaining, and really well put together. If you need another example, they also put out a Cats vs. Dogs email the following week. By really knowing their audience and delivering timely, targeted messages, they are a perfect example of a well done email marketing campaign. I look forward to seeing them in my inbox, and that is Uncommon these days.

What are you doing to provide value, humor or information to your subscribers so that they are looking forward to seeing YOU in their inbox?

Amanda O’Brien
Vice President, Marketing, Hall Internet Marketing


18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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5 Ways to Ramp Up Your Newsletter Content

Today’s post is brought to you by our guest blogger, Matt Krautstrunk.  To learn more about Matt, see his bio at the end of the post.

With all this micro-blogging & instant chatting going on these days, email marketing is beginning to seem like a fossilized communication channel. However, email marketing still fits in to a lot of businesses marketing mix, because of its low-cost and high potential for exposure on massive scale. In fact a popular email marketing solution provider did a study on the advent of social in the email marketing industry and found that, social networks were not decreasing the time Internet users spent on email.

Whether you are small business marketing to a few hundred people, or a corporation sending out an email to thousands, understand your content is the key determinate of your email newsletters success.

1. The Shorter. The Better

Email that has shorter sentences tends to bode well with readers. If your readers open an email with 2,000 words they are going to panic and most likely close out of your email. Your goal is grab the user with your subject line and essentially catch them with your first two sentences. This can be increasingly difficult for many content writers, so make sure your companies email marketer understands a customer’s state of mind when marketing to them. It comes off bad to the company image if they are receiving poor content, so your job is to convince the recipient that your email isn’t SPAM and has value to them.

2. Keep it Timely

Articles that are relevant to a certain time will create action. Whether you are reporting on a news story, or simply giving readers a seasonal time frame for a purchase decision. Try to incorporate the clock in your content; doing so correctly will increase open rates and click through rates.

Examples of timely content:

  • Spring is here: Getting Hopping With 15% off April Purchases
  • Blagojevich is Ousted, What Can Your Business Do Foster a Trusting Environment?
  • Party in Red, White and Blue This Summer! Get 25% all 4th of July Merch

Tying your content into your audience’s lives is the key to engagement. You would rather have 100 people find and open your email and click through, than have 250 people open it and then delete it.

3. Solve a Problem

Before you send an email out, ask yourself, “what is the point of this email?” If you can’t answer that question, you may want to revise your email. Get to the point within the first paragraph and then back up your point in the remainder of the email. If you are trying to help business owners find a suitable VoIP phone system, the first paragraph may look start out.
“If you are like many, your only exposure to VoIP has been watching your wife and kids playing around with Skype. But Skype is feeble in comparison to many corporate VoIP solutions. If your business is looking to lower overhead, unify communication channels and improve sales and customer service, VoIP is for you.”

4. Give Links

Links, Links, Links! With email, the more relevant links you can throw in your email the better. I tend to appreciate emails with timely, relevant links because they can expand on an idea easier than adding another few sentences. If you are able to shorten your content by adding links to explain statements, the do so. More links will also give you more opportunities to drive traffic to your site.

5. Have Fun!

Even some of the most corporate companies able to lighten up a bit on their email content; this gives them a human touch. Social media has become so popular because it allows people to a see more human side of a company. When writing your email content, try and speak with a human voice and reason with your audience with a happy tone.

Remember you are competing with a wide variety of things in a user’s inbox. The only way you will stand out in the crowd is getting your audience to trust you by creating engaging and fun content. Give links to relevant material, keep your emails timely and solve a problem; you will begin to see higher open rates and better click through rates as a result.

Today’s post is brought to you by our guest blogger, Matt Krautstrunk.  Matt Krautstrunk is an expert writer on business pos systems based in San Diego, California. He writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as point of sale systems at Resource Nation.


18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

Share this page: