I recently discovered a simple, yet very helpful, infographic by Pure360. Pure360 is an email & SMS marketing provider based in the UK, who specialize in helping businesses get the best results from their campaigns.

Improve Email Deliverability Summary:

• Be transparent in your subject lines and from address.
• Only send to those that have opted in.
• Have clean data, including personalization of their first name.
• Align with sales to ensure your subscribers know the email is communicated and expected.
• Avoid keywords commonly abused by spam.
• Keep images down to a minimum both for a good user experience and junk filters.
• Always have a plain text version of your email.
• Be aware of who is using (and abusing?) your IP address reputation.
• Keep your from address and domain name consistent.
• Ensure links and image paths are from reputable domains.
• Ask your subscribers to add you to their address books and safe senders lists.
• Encourage your subscribers to click through the emails to content you’ve produced.
• Frequently scrub your list of unengaged subscribers. If they never open then remove them.

How to Improve Deliverability Infographic

Infographic by Pure360

Click here for more email deliverability infographics by HubSpot

The post How to Improve Email Deliverability [Infographic] appeared first on Puzzle Marketer.

Business owners sometimes treat their online marketing like flossing. They know they should do it, but it nevertheless gets buried under the tasks of running the day-to-day business. Included in this bucket of online marketing is the concept of blogging. “What? How’s that going to grow my business?”

What is a blog?

First off, let’s explore what a blog actually is and how it’s part of the bigger picture. A blog, abbreviated for web+log, is typically an informational section of your website that allows for short content for frequent distribution. Meaning, it’s less words than heavy-duty whitepaper and it’s more informative than a Tweet. Blogs are also formatted fairly consistently with ability to filter through them with categories or tags that essential build a library of reference for the website visitors. They are also written in a unique way as people tend to read, or should I say scan, online differently than print. Bullet points, numerical ordering, and short paragraphs are more effective than long prose.

Why do website visitors value blogs?

Depending on the objective of the blog, visitors can get a lot out of it. Some companies use blogs less as a sales tool and more as a personality disseminator. In other words, it’s a way for employees to showcase their quirky attitudes or display their friendly faces. This is sometimes a much-needed human touch, instead of the flat lines, drop shadows, and icons that overtake the online experience. A blog can also be a great continuous stream of education.

The most successful blogs strive to add value, meaning educate or solve a problem, with every blog post that gets published. It’s also beneficial because the post can be released in a timely matter. Getting a press release out into the media can be a much more daunting task then publishing a quick post announcing the release of a new product or the hiring of a new sales person.

Why do search engines value blogs?

Search engines value blogs because they hold content at the center of everything. The search engine ranking algorithms will always select content that adds value to the person doing the search over a stale site that has none. After all, if Google and Big return bad results and irrelevant content, then people will stop using them. Additionally, blogs are a great way to encourage links back to the website. If the blog post is valuable to the visitor, they will in many cases share that link with their social networks. This concept of creating content to be shared by users is called “Link Baiting” and helps dramatically increase a website’s search engine ranking. After all, every link pointing to your website counts as a vote, and like politics the more votes more popular you’ll be perceived.

How does blogging increase sales?

Higher ranking in the search engines directly correlates to more traffic flowing to a website. If that traffic is targeted correctly, then more traffic typically means more leads and more customers. It’s human nature that if you solve a problem for somebody, they will remember you and reciprocate. This applies directly to blogging as the more visitors that get helped; the more they will value helping company’s brand.

In a recent study, the 2012 State of Inbound Marketing by HubSpot, it was discovered that 92% of companies that responded acquired a customer through their blog if they posted multiple times per day. The numbers are still impressive for those that post daily at 78%, 2-3 times per week at 70%, and weekly at 66%. This data along with some other metrics in their report shows a direct correlation between blogging and customer acquisition. Blogging was recorded as the most effective lead generation category as being “Below Average Cost Per Lead.”

Summary and Next Steps

Blogging, or publishing web content on a regular basis, can be an effective tool for adding additional value to prospects and customers. It provides for a strong online foundation that encourages other websites to link to the posts and for visitors to share them on social networks. It’s been found that blogging can increase traffic significantly and be another avenue to generate leads. If you’re looking to get started, then carve out an area of your site today and start writing. Good luck!

The post Blogging Leads to Sales appeared first on Puzzle Marketer.

A new book by David T. Scott titled The New Rules of Lead Generation – Proven Strategies to Maximize Marketing ROI is a resource that every corporate marketer should own. The New Rules of Lead Generation helps marketers by defining a lead and more importantly defining what kind of lead a business wants. Tacking on some more traditional thinking, he identifies what stage in the buying cycle (attention, interest, decision, and action) the lead could be in and then suggests developing products/services that solve a problem at each particular stage. In his book, Scott walks through what he’s identified as the 7 most successful lead-generation marketing tactics.

The 7 Most Successful Lead-Generation Tactics

1. Search engine marketing
2. Social media advertising (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter)
3. Display advertising (a.k.a. banner ads)
4. Email marketing
5. Direct mail advertising
6. Cold calling
7. Trade shows

Scott provides some valuable best practices and insight well learned from his own personal experience. He talks about how to measure and optimize your campaigns and encourages marketers to embrace a integrated approach, which combines multiples tactics together for the biggest payoff.

The book is an easy read and although may seem a bit obvious to those with many years of experience in direct marketing, it will drastically reduce the learning curve for a new entrant. I could also see it being used as a powerful internal selling tool to provide to senior leadership to explain “why” the strategy is lead generation instead of simply branding.

For more information on The New Rules of Lead Generation:

• Like the book on Facebook
• Buy the book at Barnes & Noble
• Buy the book at Amazon
• Read the blog

The post The New Rules of Lead Generation Book Review appeared first on Puzzle Marketer.

Why do you need to check it on every device and email client? Seems a little overkill, no?

The reason you need to do so much “checking” is because every combination of device, browser and email clients produces a different result. Meaning, they render the email differently. For example, Outlook supports stylizing the email in the tags, Gmail does not. Gmail supports vertical alignment of content, and Outlook does not. Margin is supported in Outlook in all versions except for their new cloud version Outlook.com. Minimum and maximum widths aren’t supported in Outlook but work great on Apple Mail and the iPhone/iPad. If you’re going to use heavy background images, you’ll get support from Outlook 2000 and 2003 but not Outlook 2007, 2010, or 2013. Click here for a useful chart.

Email Programming Tips and Tricks:

Below are some tips and tricks for coding emails taken from the infographic that Litmus, a leader in email testing and analytics, created for debugging common problems.

• Media gets stripped from email and doesn’t work including: video, flash, rollovers, JavaScript, and forms.
• Background images aren’t supported in Outlook versions 2007 or later. Don’t use.
• Use absolute links over relative links to both images and website URLs.
• Set your image borders to “0″ if you’re seeing a blue border around them.
• Choose a common image format such as GIF or JPG.
• Remove gaps between images with the style tags line-spacing=”0″ and style=”display:block;”.
• Pick a common font that your subscriber will have installed on their computer.
• Hard code the heights and widths of every cell in a table to reflect the space you need it to take up. Redundancy is not a bat thing here.
• Code your emails in <table> tags instead of <div> tags.
• Remove spaces if you’ve tried everything else between elements.
• Use align and valign on your <td> tags.

Code Therapy – Identifying What Went Wrong When Coding Your HTML Email Infographic

Infographic by: Litmus and can be found here.

The post Tips for Fixing Email Template Code Problems Infographic appeared first on Puzzle Marketer.

Now that you have a website, the next natural question is “How do I get people to come visit it?”

Your options are quite large, although your budget probably isn’t.  Therefore one of the most popular and cost effective tactics is targeting the search engines to position your website higher for a specific keyword phrase. Yes, I’m talking about SEO, or search engine optimization.

SEO is less of a demand creating technique and more a demand capture technique. For example, being ranked #1 in the search engines for the keyword phrase “Blue Dog on Mars” doesn’t mean you’ll get an influx of visitors. Unless of course one was discovered or it becomes a popular Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream flavor.

My point being, you should attempt to optimize your website for keywords that actually get searched. A great tool to help with this is Google Trends. This tool allows for you to enter one or more keyword phrases and it will show you the popularity of that search over time against each other. For example, we’ve created a comparison between the keyword “newspapers” and the keyword “tablets.”

Another tool, called Google’s Keyword Tool allows you to enter the keywords and  provide you with a global and local number of searches that specific keyword gets on average. Keep in mind that more searches typically means that your competitors have likely figured it out and are competing for attention there. Taking a step further with the first example, we’ve looked up the metrics on the keyword “newspapers” and the keyword “tablets” to see their search demand.

Take some time to research a broad range of keywords. Compare keywords about products, product categories, industry terms, and your own brand name.

Another option that can advance your learning a bit quicker is getting immediate feedback through Paid Search. Paid Search refers to the sponsored advertisements that appear above and to the right of the organic listings. Those advertisements appear after a company bids for clicks for that particular search term. With a Paid Search campaign, your website for a particular keyword phrase can appear within minutes. Watching for these results allows you to0 quickly gauge the popularity of the keyword and also your conversion rates once they get to your site. Conversion rates are measured by comparing how many people purchased something after clicking those advertisements.

Now that you’ve identified the keywords you’d like to rank for, below are five quick things you can do today that will put you on the fast track to increasing your ranking.

1) Update Your Title Tags – Every single one of your pages should have completely unique copy between <title> and </title>. Just as important, you should have the 1 and only 1 keyword phrase that page is attempting to rank for in the Title Tag. Finally, it should be no longer than 70 characters.

2) Update Your Description Tags – Similar to the Title Tag, every single one of your pages should have completely unique copy between <meta name=”description” content=” and “ >. The description should be your most compelling call-to-action for that page. Meaning, you should explain exactly what the visitor will gain by clicking the link to visit that page. The Description Tag should be no longer than 156 characters.

3) Sign Up for Google Webmaster Tools – There are many advantages to adding your website to Google Webmaster Tools and verifying your ownership of it. Verification normally only takes a few minutes and you have a number of options depending on your website. Methods include adding a Meta Tag, adding a file to your root directory, or creating a DNS (Domain Name System) record.

4) Submit Your Sitemap – A sitemap is typically an XML file that is used to tell the search engine the exact URLs of every page of your website and how often they get updated. Historically search engines only used robots, also known as spiders, to navigate around your website and index every page they find. This is limiting as some pages may get missed if there are no links to those particular pages. After you’ve signed up and verified your website on Google Webmaster Tools, you should navigate to “Optimization” > “Sitemaps” and click “Add/Test Sitemap.” Finally, paste in the name of your sitemap file.

5) Optimize Your Navigation – Your navigation is a very effective way to communicate to search engines which pages should be prioritized. Also, search engines give a lot of weight to the keywords that appear in those links. Therefore there are 2 quick opportunities here. First, link to the most important pages that you’re trying to increase the ranking for in your navigation. Linking to those pages and limiting the number of links to other pages will give these pages more weight and influence. Second, add your most important keywords as the text in these links. If your links are images, make sure to add the keywords in the ALT tags of the images.

The algorithm that determines which websites get ranked higher than other websites looks at hundreds of factors. However, if you’re looking for the low-hanging fruit that can begin to drive your website upward then tackle these five things today!

The post 5 Ways to Improve your SEO Today appeared first on Puzzle Marketer.

Please come back as this is a constantly evolving list.

The Marketing Power Reading List

On modern marketing…

The New Rules of Lead Generation by David T. Scott

Purple Cow by Seth Godin

The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch

On leadership…

Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

Entreleadership by Dave Ramsey

On ideas…

Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

The Little Black Book of Innovation by Scott D. Anthony

On networking…

Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi

The Start-up of You by Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha

On productivity…

Getting Things Done by Stuart Diamond

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

On negotiation…

Getting More by Stuart Diamond

The post Top Books for Marketing Leaders appeared first on Puzzle Marketer.

Looking at your own company or business, you’ll likely only need to ask yourself one question,

“Am I ready for my customers to engage with me via mobile devices?”

In another recent post of mine, I’ve identified why your business should go mobile and the best practices around it.

Below are some interesting statistics from the infographic:

• There are currently more than 1,038,000,000 smartphones in use (1 out of every 6.7 people on Earth).
• 79% will abandon your business’s website if it’s not optimized for mobile.
• Media tablet sales will likely increase from 118.9 million in 2012 to 369.2 million by 2016.
• 52% of retailers do not have a mobile website experience (You’re not alone!)
• Amazon.com will reach 4 billion dollars in mobile sales by end of 2012.
• 1 in 8 will use mobile tickets for airlines, rail and bus travel, festivals, cinemas, and sports events in 2015.
• Only 22% of insurers have a mobile quoting app.
• Mobile banking will increase from 47 million users in 2012 to 61 million users in 2013.

The Post-PC Revolution Infographic:

Infographic by Moovweb

The post The Mobile Revolution is Here Now [Infographic] appeared first on Puzzle Marketer.

Where are you spending your digital dollars? Mobile or Social?

In the blue corner we have Mobile! This includes mobile app development, responsive web design, push notifications, and mobile targeted paid advertising. We’ve seen why your business should go mobile recently with mobile devices overtaking PCs. Is this where you’re spending your marketing dollars?

In the red corner we have Social! This includes posting and resource investment in your favorite networks including: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Flipora, etc. This also includes your social paid advertising and any other tools you’re using for listening and scheduling. Are you driving revenue for your business by generating social conversations?

Sign in with Twitter to vote now using Birdfeud!

Vote by clicking here!

This debate voting functionality is powered by Birdfeud. If you haven’t had the pleasure of using Birdfeud yet, this tool helps businesses increase their social media footprint and engage with their visitors through social media tools such as Twitter. As seen by the example above, Birdfeud offers campaigns that allow organizations to leverage their follower base and drive engagement.

Birdfeud Advantages:

• Digital marketing tool that dramatically increases user engagement on every website.
• Debate-focused questions bring the social conversation onto your website.
• Content with Birdfeud is shared 2x more and engaged with 7x more than content without.
• Easy to admin and setup in 5 minutes, no development required.
• Monthly license, no limit to the number of debates – run as many as you want!

Click here to learn more about how Birdfeud works!

The post Mobile vs. Social – Round 1: Ding! Ding! Ding! appeared first on Puzzle Marketer.

It is not surprising that mobile searches have grown four times since 2010 (Google Mobile Optimization Webinar, 2011).

Take a look around at all the devices that have been released out into the marketplace. Between tablets, WIFI connected music players, and phones, everyone can be connected online 24/7. This means that wherever your customers are, they have the option to do business with you. Believe the data, your customers are exercising that option daily. This year, more people will use their mobile phones to get online, rather than using their PCs (Gartner, 2010). By 2015, there will be more than one mobile device for every person on earth (Cisco, 2011). Still think it’s going away?

What this means for businesses is that if you aren’t optimizing the mobile experience, then you’re likely losing customers. A bad user experience is an outdated website that makes your customers pinch, zoom, and navigate across your site. According to Google in 2012, 61% of your customers say that they will quickly move to another site if they don’t see what they are looking for right away on a mobile site. A good user experience is a fixed mobile stylized site that quickly and easily allows customers to navigate to the right pages with only a few thumb taps. In the same study, 67% of customers say a mobile-friendly site makes them more likely to buy a product or use a service.

Okay, so you agree with the data and believe that you need to take action to take advantage of this opportunity. What’s the next step? It’s important to first understand what makes a great mobile experience. Below is a quick list of mobile site best practices, according to Google…

• Keep it Quick
• Simply Navigation
• Be Thumb-Friendly
• Design for Visibility
• Make it Accessible
• Make it Easy to Convert
• Make it Local
• Make it Seamless
• Use Mobile Site Redirects
• Listen, Learn and Iterate

You can also download Google’s Mobile Site Best Practices PDF here.

Once you’ve outlined your mobile site structure and decided how you want your customers to interact with you, it’s time to build your mobile site. There are both free options and paid options. Free services such as DudaMobile allow you to enter your URL and it pulls information off your website. It’s not perfect so be prepared to spend some time customizing and changing what pages you wish to show up. You might also want to explore bMobilized, a similar service. Of course, you can also work with a mobile developer to build a mobile friendly or responsive website. Responsive website refers to a website that automatically renders to the device and screen resolution.

Regardless of the direction you choose, hopefully you’ve learned about some of the major benefits of being mobile accessible to your customers online.

The post Why Your Business Should Go Mobile appeared first on Puzzle Marketer.

First off, let’s take a step back and understand people’s behavior online.

Every minute there are 70 new website domains registered on the World Wide Web, adding to the millions of websites that already exist. This rate of websites being created makes it impossible for anyone to keep up with all of the information available. Tools like search engines were created to simplify this massive amount of data by using a complex algorithm that rank these millions of websites and consolidate them into a short list on a single page. Search engines fund this service by allowing businesses to purchase advertising on these search engine results pages (SERP). This advertising is known as Paid Search.

Paid Search is a marketing tactic that involves placing an advertisement for when, and only when, a user searches a specific keyword and clicks on the advertisement. That last part is what differentiates this kind of advertising from other forms of advertisements online, such as banner placements on websites. Most other advertising, up until Paid Search, was cost by impression or CPM for short. Paid Search is billed only after a user clicks on the ad. This is known as a cost per click, CPC for short. The distinction, although subtle, means that businesses like yours are only paying if a prospect or customer not only sees your advertisement, but is engaged enough to interact with it by clicking the hyperlink.

An important aspect of online marketing, and Paid Search, is to understand the purchase funnel. There are many versions of this model but it basically breaks down to 1) Awareness, 2) Opinion, 3) Consideration, 4) Preference, and 5) Purchase. Awareness means that users are just researching and seeing if they have a need and Purchase means they’ve made their decision and are ready to buy. When shopping for products online, people consistently use search engines regardless of their stage in the funnel. However, it is believed that users will modify their search queries depending on their stage. For example, if a user is just starting a search to buy a new printer they’ll likely type “printer” into a search engine like Google and click “Search.” Only after some research, and as they move their way down the funnel, do they modify their query to something like “all in one inkjet printers,” and then likely adding a brand name.

Paid Search strategies can now be crafted off of these concepts and understanding of the model. If you want to affect the future purchase decision at the very beginning, and have a large budget, it would be valuable for a business to bid on broad keywords such as “printer,” “printer copier,” “inkjet printer”, “printing,” etc. It’s important to note that these keywords have a large volume of visitors but are highly competitive, very expensive, and likely have a low conversion rate as they are more in the Awareness or Opinion stage. Another strategy would be to target very specific Long Tail keyword phrases that are searched less often, but are further down the purchase funnel. Targeting keywords such as “wireless all in one laser printer for mac” will likely be less expensive, less competitive, and have a higher conversion rate. Targeting many of Long Tail keywords can add up to a significant revenue stream while building an online presence.

Most small and medium size businesses don’t have the budget to pay upwards of $18 per click for keywords such as “printer.” Therefore, a more targeted approach that aims at specific Long Tail keywords would develop into a successful strategy. To further optimize Paid Search, campaigns can be limited down to other factors such as mobile or desktop device, keyword match (broad, phrase, or exact), geography (X miles from Zip Code), time of day and day of week, and languages. Campaigns should also intentionally direct users to the appropriate page based on their keyword. If someone clicks on an ad shown for “laser printer toner cartridge red”, it should go directly to the page related to that keyword. Landing Pages that focus on one call-to-action, encouraging a user to make a phone call, order a product online, or download a whitepaper are a great best practice. Limit the amount of options users have and they’re more likely to complete the designed action.

To get started with Paid Search, businesses can create a small campaign with Google AdWords or Bing Search Advertising. Build a list of a very targeted keywords and add destination URLs to the appropriate product pages. Add some more advanced targeting and set a small budget. All online advertising should be based on a foundation of testing. Try campaigns for a product, a product category, an industry, a brand, etc. Keep testing, keep learning, and you’ll likely find digital campaigns like Paid Search a valuable marketing tactic.

The post Strategies for a Successful Paid Search Campaign appeared first on Puzzle Marketer.