MarketingSherpa Blog

It’s the start of a new year. We’ve made resolutions to fix mistakes we make in our diet, in our exercise frequency and in our relationships – put content marketing on your list as well.

Mistake #1. Toeing the company line

Sure, your company is engaged in content marketing because it has a message to get out in the world.

But nobody, except maybe your agency and brand police, cares about that message.

They care about themselves. Content marketing is inherently permission-based and inbound. Your content marketing needs to focus on what the customer really cares about.

The headline for this blog post was (lovingly) ripped off a legendary, high-performing ad for Sherwin Cody’s English course.

Sherwin explained, “There is but one sane, salesmanlike way to begin a selling letter, and that is with the customer and his needs, his troubles, his fight for life and success.”

That rings even more true in content marketing.

Overcome Mistake #1. How to use social media to help discover why customers buy from you

Mistake #2. Teasing

Local TV news promo commercials are the worst. They always hint at something of value, but only deliver if you tune in to the newscast.

Content marketing should, in and of itself, deliver value. It should help fulfill a customer need. It should help solve a customer’s trouble.

Overcome Mistake #2. Focus on value, not length

Mistake #3. Lonely content

No content is an island.

How does the content you’re creating tie into every other way your company is communicating?

Ideally, you would have an overall structure for your content with logical paths for the reader to follow. Those paths aren’t always linear since human decision making in a data-rich world is not linear.

However, they offer logical progressions and opportunities for further engagement through channels that your audience already uses.

Overcome Mistake #3. A process for evaluating content channels

Mistake #4. Telling customers how brilliant your company is

The people in your company are likely brilliant at something. Your software engineers are brilliant at de-bugging Java. Your project managers are brilliant at scheduling. Your audio engineers are brilliant at sound mixing.

They’re just not brilliant at creating content.

Because of this, your company’s brilliance is hidden. By using content marketing to pull back the curtain and shine a little light while not being overly concerned with corporate secrecy, you show the world how the brilliant people in your company can help members of your audience overcome their challenges.

Overcome Mistake #4. How to get your subject matter experts on your corporate blog

  Read more…

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

According to the MarketingSherpa 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report (free excerpt at that link), nearly one out of three (32%) respondents perceive that email marketing will yield ROI “eventually,” while 60% reported email is producing ROI.

No matter where you stack up here, one thing is certain – creating email copy that engages your customers is vital to aiding your efforts to produce ROI.

To help you do that, Donna Krizik, Director, Client Communications, Crestwood Associates, explained how the craft behind creating a powerful email copy is serving the customer rather than pushing the sale.

In this video clip from Email Summit 2013, Donna Krizik sat down with Justin Bridegan, Senior Marketing Manager, MECLABS, and discussed the three fundamentals in creating powerful email copy.

As Krizik reflected on giving the customer relevant content, she asked fellow marketers, “If [the message] is not really of value, do you need to email them?”

First, understanding your audience and communicating with them in a meaningful way that relates directly to their needs is likely to deliver a far more compelling message.

“If I can’t relate to you, if I can’t engage with you,” Justin argued, “why am I going to continue the conversation?”

Donna and Justin also discussed how an email is the beginning of a conversation with the customer rather than a sales pitch. They also touched on the goal of an email, which is to get the customer to the website, not to purchase from the email.

Finally, they wrapped up with your call-to-action. The idea here is having a clear, concise link or button in your email that allows the reader to make only one decision.

In summary, writers of powerful emails should do three things:

• Understand who they are writing to
• Communicate why they are writing to the recipient
• Wrap up what they want the recipient to do

Watch the full free presentation to see Donna’s transferrable case studies.

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“One of the biggest challenges we face is educating people about the benefits email campaigns can have for their business when they are done well.”

The above is a recent comment we received about the benefits of email marketing and e-newsletters. Perhaps you face a similar challenge with your clients or business leaders? To help you make the case, here are four benefits of email marketing.

Benefit #1. Social media is traffic, PPC is a billboard, but email is a fork in the road

Social media can be effective, but it doesn’t force a decision. It is much like traffic on a road – a nonstop flow of information. If you look over at the right time, you might see a particular car, and if you don’t, you may never notice it.

PPC advertising can be effective as well, but it is a distraction off to the side. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t get noticed occasionally. However, it does not force an action. You can drive by a billboard without even noticing it.

Email, on the other hand, is a fork in the road. It forces a decision. Even if people simply delete an email without opening it, they took an action. While they were physically taking an action, your subject line had an opportunity to encourage an open.

Perhaps this is why so many social media platforms use email. Think about it – every time an action happens on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, you receive an email letting you know that it happened so you don’t miss it.

Benefit #2. Build your case over time (automatically)

By setting up a drip email nurturing campaign, you can take prospects from having a limited interest in your company to fully embracing your company’s value proposition – from tire kickers to warm leads.

For example, a gym chain was able to get 98% of people who qualify for a consultation to sign an agreement by using an email education drip campaign.

Benefit #3. Learn about your customers

“Hey”

This was one of the most effective messages for Obama for America that Zoltar himself could never have foretold.

By conducting A/B testing of email messages, the campaign learned what really resonated with its audience and generated more than $500 million in digital donations.

  Read more…

You have a great product to sell. So you pour time, creative ability and life’s energy into making sure customers know just how great that product or service is.

But, just between friends now, that product isn’t right for everyone, is it?

If you answer that question honestly, it naturally brings up another question.

How do you give your customers what they want even if you don’t have it?

Content marketing is about serving customers, not pushing product. Only once you serve those customers (and build up trust) can it become an effective vehicle for selling. And oh brother, can it ever be effective.

Here are two ideas for serving customers when your product isn’t right for them.

Idea #1. Help customers decide not to buy your product

Limited shapes and designs: Because fiberglass pools are built from a mold, the consumer is limited to the shapes and sizes offered by the various fiberglass pool manufacturers.

The above line is from a blog for a company that sells fiberglass pools.

What? Why?

“Fiberglass might be too skinny, but if you’re looking for that size, it can be good for you,” said Marcus Sheridan, Co-owner, River Pools and Spas. “We tell potential customers, ‘You know what, fiberglass might not be for you. And that’s OK, we’re going to figure it out together.’”

The results? The “problems post” garnered 176 comments, 396 inbound links and 43,867 page views. For a small pool company. In Virginia.

You can read more at “Competitive Messaging: Tell your customers what you can’t do.”

Idea #2. Help them get what they want

Sometimes customers can’t find what they want from you because it simply doesn’t exist yet.

Since the best marketing messaging is based on how the customer expresses what they want, hopefully you’ve been:

• Listening in on social media
• Engaging with customers service
• Learning from Sales
• Doing research in relevant target audience-focused newspapers, magazines and websites
• Testing value proposition expressions using A/B testing

In doing customer research, you will naturally come across these gaps of unfulfilled customer desire.

When you do, it’s a chance to work with product development and business strategy to test your company into new products and services to better serve your customers’ unmet needs.

But sometimes, you simply can’t produce that new product or service.

What to do? Check out this brilliant idea from Eventful, the Best in Show in the E-commerce category in MarketingSherpa Email Awards 2014, sponsored by ExactTarget.

Here’s how the event Web service handles an unfulfilled customer desire.

I’ll be the example. I go to Eventful.com to search for a Pearl Jam concert in Jacksonville. But Pearl Jam doesn’t have any concerts planned for Jacksonville (really, Eddie, really?), so I’m greeted with this pop-up that states, “Would you like to be notified when Pearl Jam comes to Jacksonville?”

The other option I have if I close the pop-up is:

“Bring Pearl Jam to Jacksonville! Demand it!”

  Read more…

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

How do you measure the return on investment of a LinkedIn InMail campaign?

This is becoming a fairly common question in B2B social media marketing, and it’s understandable given the increasing adoption of InMail as a B2B marketing strategy. Consequently, the need to quantify efforts in the channel is also becoming quite clear.

So, how do you approach it?

Consider engagement and awareness

According to Meagen Eisenberg, Vice President of Demand Generation, Docusign, one approach to tackling the challenge is to look at the overall awareness and engagement your campaigns generate in your target group and drill down on prospect behavior and metrics from there.

Meagen also mentioned the difference between how your prospects read an email versus an InMail.

“When we get email, we’re either opening it on our phone or on our desktop, but are we truly taking time to read it or a moment of time to digest it?” Meagen asked.

“And I think when you’re in InMail on LinkedIn, you’re taking that time, so opens are significant,” she said.

Determine how performance translates into business opportunity

“The main goal is to drive revenue, so the absolute best measurement [is] did we actually close business and have some significant opportunities come out of it,” Meagen said.

To learn more about how Meagen used InMail as a strategy that cut through the noise to successfully create large pipeline opportunities, you can watch the free on-demand MarketingSherpa webinar replay of “B2B Social Media Marketing: DocuSign’s targeted LinkedIn InMail strategy creates 3 large pipeline opportunities.”

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Why Fear and ROI Should Never Drive Your Testing

“You don’t want no scrubs,

A scrub is a subscriber who ain’t getting no mail from me.”

Inspired by hip-hop group TLC’s 1999 hit, “No Scrubs,” Matt Byrd, Email Marketing Manager, WeddingWire, explained list hygiene with a beat and a rhyme to get his point across to attendees at MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013.

In this video excerpt, see how he explained a “scrub,” or disengaged email subscriber, not only affects the quality of your list, but also your email deliverability.

Matt’s wake-up call happened on the morning the soft bounce rate of his list went over 23%. After testing, educating and testing again, Matt discovered users that were inactive for four months or longer should be scrubbed from the list.

Although all of the users “opted-in,” these inactive users were far more likely to hit the delete button than open the email, let alone hit the unsubscribe button.

As a recently married bride, I must confess, I was one of those users.

When I first got engaged, I was so excited to register for newsletters on WeddingWire and other sites. Research and planning were at the top of my list and I could not read enough reviews, insights and planning tips.

But as the weeks and months went by, my plans turned into contracts and I didn’t need the help anymore.

Soon, the emails from Matt went from the top of my inbox to the trash. I didn’t need him anymore. I was likely one of the 23% of his list that was bringing him down (sorry, Matt).

Whenever I had the chance to watch this case study presentation, I was intrigued by how Matt overcame people like me – the busy, fickle customer, quick to hit the delete button.

Although Matt’s journey with list hygiene was initially met with skepticism, the reward has been great. Deliverability rate, Matt explained, open and clicks have increased since WeddingWire started implementing this routine, and spam complaint rates have plummeted 76%.

Here is Matt’s approach boiled down to three steps:

1. Constantly monitor bounce rate and spam complaint rate
2. Figure out who your scrubs are
3. Create an ongoing filter to remove scrubs from your list

To learn more about how scrubs are impacting your deliverability, you can watch the free on-demand replay of Matt’s presentation, “Proactive List Hygiene.”

Read more…

Every day I wake up, come into work, and stare at a box.

So do you.

Oh, it’s a magical box. I can write words in it that will instantly appear the world over.

But sometimes, we have to peer outside of this box, and think about content marketing as more than just digital words, pictures and videos.

Content marketing can also be a grilled cheese sandwich

Some of us (me for sure, how about you?) are so focused on digital channels for content marketing – to improve SEO, build email lists, gain more fans and followers – that we overlook an entire universe outside of this digital box.

For example, can content marketing be:

A grilled cheese sandwich?

In this MarketingSherpa case study, Bonvoy Adventure Travel rented the Gorilla Cheese NYC  food truck,  and let the good folks in Midtown Manhattan name their own price for lunch.

This is a great example of content marketing because it demonstrated Bonvoy’s value proposition while offering something of value to the audience: the triple cream brie with prosciutto di parma.

At the end of the gooey day, Bonvoy served up 34,000 impressions on Twitter.

Print?

As digital marketers and publishers, sometimes we overlook the value of good old-fashioned print. It obviously meets the two conditions of content marketing above (demonstrate value prop while providing value).

It is also more credible than digital, and, like the above example, it can help your content marketing cut through the clutter. Zig where others zag.

For example, there are 861 million results in a search for “IT Solutions,” but I guarantee there are way fewer magazine articles that cover that topic.

Don’t take my word for it. The “Godfather of Content Marketing” himself, Joe Pulizzi, wrote about why you should consider print for your content marketing strategy.

Read more…

In social media, if 2013 was the emergence of Vine, then 2014 will likely be the year of more Vine videos.

The creative potential that surrounds the app will be fun to watch this year as more brands adopt it into their marketing mix.

I personally like Vine, and consider it the equivalent of a living breathing Pinterest; a mashup of all the goodies social media can offer in low calorie servings of six second videos.

Vine’s success in social media is also no real surprise to me.

Considering its story as a company founded in June 2012, it was gobbled up by Twitter three months later only to skyrocket to the status of most downloaded free app in Apple’s iOS app store before blowing out the candle on its first birthday cake.

What’s also exciting is with any new technology, there are always those few early adopters who set the bar only high enough to be outdone in ways that are as exciting as they are unique.

In this MarketingSherpa Blog post, I wanted to highlight three trailblazing brands that are using Vine to reach their customers that you can use to help get your creative mojo going.

Lowe’s “fix in six” tips help customers build know-how

Lowe’s uses the app to create mini “tutorials” that are strung together to help customers keep home repair D.I.Y.

Oreo Cookie shows its followers how to “Snack Hack”

I’m not too surprised by Oreo’s early adoption of Vine given its prior success with Twitter. Oreo’s use of the app serves as a great example of combining creativity, product and entertainment to engage an audience.

General Electric uses contests and tech mashups to engage consumers and drive new innovation

In the last few years, GE has really made any excuses B2B marketers have for slow adoption of social media quite tough to accept.

The brand’s use of Vine for holding contests to redesign jet engine parts using 3D printing is truly setting a bar for creative uses of social media in B2B marketing.

Read more…

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

As the holiday season quickly approaches an end, and marketers prepare to make 2014 their best year yet, we pulled together the top blog posts on the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog to share the most popular topics, chosen by marketers just like you.

In 2012, the top focus for B2B marketers was understanding and leveraging social media. With the quickly evolving nature of this medium, it is no surprise it was also the top category marketers wanted to learn more about in 2013.

Read on for five more areas of focus that were top of mind in the B2B realm in 2013.

Topic #1. Use social media to generate leads and connect with prospects

Social Media Marketing: Dell reveals how it turns thousands of brand detractors into fans

This  post was the most tweeted B2B Lead Roundtable Blog post in 2013 with, at the time of this writing, 199 shares. Andrea Johnson, Copywriter, MECLABS, revealed how Dell leveraged social media to reach out to customers and monitor conversations online.

“Social media has made more of an impact on B2B than B2C” Richard Margetic @ByJove at @Dell http://t.co/c225Gql7nr @B2BLeadBlog #Social #B2B ? Anna Lee (@annaleenyc) May 6, 2013

Through Dell’s efforts in establishing its very own Social Media & Community University, which 105,000 employees have attended, and its Social Outreach Services, Dell has turned thousands of brand retractors into advocates.

Out of the approximately 3,000 issues the Social Outreach Services team receives a week, all but 3% come to a resolution and about 40% to 50% of the people who initiated them speak positively of Dell afterwards.

“Social media has made more of an impact, significantly on B2B than B2C. For us, B2B is about relationships, and social media is all about relationships,” Richard Margetic, Director of Global Social Media, Dell, said.

In addition to connecting with customers, social media is also an outlet for generating leads.

Honorable Mention: Lead Generation: 5 tips to generate leads faster on LinkedIn

In this blog post, Ellie Mirman, Head of SMB Marketing, HubSpot and Shreesha Ramdas, General Manager, Leadformix, discussed five tactics for generating leads using LinkedIn.

Through audience segmentation, building credibility, providing valuable content, taking advantage of paid LinkedIn programs, and communicating effectively, B2B marketers can utilize LinkedIn to its full potential for lead gen.

Topic #2. Content marketing is becoming more essential for success

B2B Marketing: 3 reasons for adopting video content into your marketing mix

Coming in second place at 141 tweets, John Tackett, Manager of Editorial Content, MECLABS, discussed three reasons B2B marketers should adopt video content into their content marketing strategies.

3 reasons for adopting video content into your marketing mix http://t.co/QF6RaRzkB4 via @B2BLeadBlog #B2Bmarketing ? Intelisys (@IntelisysCorp) August 8, 2013

“Not only is video a great way to share your story, it’s also a great way to build links back to your site. And, if users engage with your video, it helps to increase time on site,” Gaby Paez, Associate Director of Research, MECLABS, explained.

John also explained how it is projected that 77% of all Internet users will be viewing digital video content online by 2016. Therefore, it’s a great time to develop that aspect of content marketing into your own B2B efforts.

Honorable Mention: Lead Generation: Content among the most difficult tactics, but also quite effective

In the MarketingSherpa 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report (free excerpt at that link), the marketers surveyed  indicated content marketing to be one of the most difficult tactics. However, it was also ranked as one of the most effective.

In this blog post, Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, shared some insights from your peers on content marketing.

“… It’s all about feeling the pulse of your Web visitors. The power of content is that you can use different content pieces to speed up their pulse and get them to a purchasing decision by moving them deeper into the conversion funnel. Aside of email, hardly any other tactic is as effective of a convincer as content,” Igor Mateski, Owner, WebMaxFormance, said.

Topic #3. Understanding your customers

Lead Generation: Who knows the customer better – Marketing or Sales?

Marketing team FTW! RT @B2BLeadBlog Lead Generation: Who knows the customer better ? Marketing or Sales? http://t.co/YopZkJh2uP ? Grant Grigorian (@GrantG9) November 4, 2013

“We all feel that we have a golden gut to some extent, especially when we’re interacting directly with customers.” – Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS

In this blog post, Daniel discussed how to face a situation where sales and marketing departments are not aligned. Who really understands the customers better – Marketing or Sales?
Trust the data, not your gut. Are you choosing the appropriate keywords that will resonate with your audience the most?

When facing these types of challenges, use numbers to make your case on who knows the customer best.

Another method to discover what your customers want or need from you is to test your value proposition.

Honorable Mention: Lead Generation: How well do you really know what your customers want?

In this blog post, we learned that through testing value propositions, marketers can truly understand what your customers need.

Jon Ciampi, Vice President, Marketing, Business & Corporate Development, CRC Health, learned his customers craved trust, not luxury.

Using this, he reinvented his lead funnel and applied his discoveries to everything from landing pages to call scripts.

Testing a value prop can be tested through several key channels. Read on to discover which channels your peers are using.

Honorable Mention: Lead Nurturing: How a social business strategy can help you move from selling to helping your prospects

This year we heard from Todd Wilms, Head of Social Strategy, and Adriel Sanchez, VP, Demand Generation, both of SAP, at MarketingSherpa Lead Gen Summit 2013.

Todd and Adriel presented how engaged in a social business strategy to help teams around the world connect with local audiences.

“This idea of moving from ‘sell’ to ‘helping your customers buy’ is at the heart of social business. It’s a model that the customer is going to make the decisions already, they’re going come to you when they are ready,” Todd said.

Topic #4. Capitalizing on email for lead gen

Email Marketing: 4 steps to relevancy 85% of B2B businesses probably aren’t taking

Utilizing email is not a new marketing tactic, but many B2B organizations are not taking advantage of its potential to generate leads.

In this post, Brian Carroll, Executive Director of Revenue Optimization, MECLABS, discussed the importance of email as a tactic for B2B marketing and how to stay relevant with your audience.

Email Marketing: 4 steps to relevancy that 85% of #B2B businesses probably aren’t taking http://t.co/zFYiQB3fJD via @B2BLeadBlog ? Kurt Weisenberger (@KurtMW) May 14, 2013

Topic #5. Start developing a mobile site

Mobile Marketing: What 4 top B2B companies can teach us about mobile

Gaby Paez, Senior Business Intelligence Manager, MECLABS, reviewed the mobile sites of some fortune 500 B2B companies to gain a sense of how these successful enterprises approach mobile marketing.

What she found was shocking as  out of 12 she selected for her review, only four total had a mobile site.

Although her pool of companies is small, this is an interesting find given the MarketingSherpa 2012 Mobile Marketing Benchmark Report, (free excerpt at that link), reveals that 52% of B2B marketers considered mobile marketing very important to influence their company’s growth in the next three years.

Read on to see how top B2B companies are incorporating mobile websites into their strategy.

Examples of 4 good B2B mobile websites from http://t.co/64rZOQp7fz @B2BLeadBlog ? Jon Miller (@jonmiller) October 25, 2013

With all of those great insights on how a B2B mobile site should function, this next blog post focuses on where to spend your mobile budget to make those ideas a reality.

Honorable Mention: B2B Mobile Marketing: 3 ideas on where to spend your next mobile budget

With 12% of Americans consuming their media through mobile phones, B2B marketers should be thinking seriously about their mobile sites.

In this blog post, Michael Groszek, Business Intelligence Manager, MECLABS, presented three ideas for balancing value and reducing friction on a mobile experience.

Topic #6. Leads 101— Back to basics

Intro to Lead Generation: How to determine if a lead is qualified

Finally, one of the top blog posts for 2013 took lead gen back to its roots. How should you be determining if a lead is qualified?

Intro to Lead Generation: How to determine if a lead is qualified http://t.co/D93hYYwm via @B2BLeadBlog ? Data.com (@datadotcom) January 22, 2013

Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, explained that before marketers start qualifying leads, Sales and Marketing need to devise a universal lead definition.

“This involves a sales-marketing huddle since, much like good art, it is not only the artist but also the art viewer and buyer that must agree on a definition. To put it more bluntly – if Sales doesn’t think the lead is qualified, it ain’t qualified.”

From there, Daniel presented six methods, ranked in order of least to most difficult, of determining if a lead is qualified:

• Contact information
• Firmographics
• BANT
• Behavioral analytics and lead scoring
• Predictive analytics
• Hand raiser

Related Resources

B2B Marketing: 6 essentials for testing your teleprospecting

Lead Management: 4 principles to follow

Lead Generation: How using science increased teleprospecting sales handoffs 304%

After tallying up the number of times our audience shared posts, social media, content and email marketing are the areas to receive the most tweets from your peers. That means inbound marketing as a whole once again reigned supreme on the MarketingSherpa Blog, earning 10 of the top 15 spots of 2013. We’ll break down these three areas with key lessons we can learn and apply to our efforts in the new year.

And, since this list is all about the tweets, we’ll include some interesting ones about select posts. Carry on to learn the top 10 lessons of 2013.

Social Media Lessons

Lesson #1. Adapt your social content so that it is appropriate for each social media platform 

In his post, “Social Media Marketing: Which type of content is appropriate for different platforms?” Jonathan Greene, Business Intelligence Manager, MECLABS, used an unusual set of analogies to help marketers understand what tone and content to use on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Read this post to learn about the personality each platform has, and how you can effectively put them to work.

Great lighthearted analysis of social media for businesses RT @MarketingSherpa Social Media Marketing: http://t.co/N94IbPF7cZ

— Mike Garrison (@mikejgarrison) May 21, 2013

Lesson #2. Be able to answer why customers should like or follow you

When it comes to social media buttons, you should ask yourself why your customers should follow you. This can be a tougher question for companies that aren’t natural content producers.

You must provide some value for customers in exchange for the privilege to show up in their newsfeed. Value can be ongoing, like exclusive discounts just for Twitter followers, or a one-time opportunity, such as a chance to win a prize.

Read more about this question, and three others, in the post, “Social Media Marketing: 4 questions to ask yourself about social media buttons.” You can also use value proposition to better answer this question, as described by Jonathan Greene in this post, “Social Media Marketing: Why should I like or follow you?”

Lesson #3. Add visual elements to your social media content

While a quote is just words, it doesn’t mean you can’t bring a visual component to the content. The New York Public Library created graphics for an already popular content type –  celebrity quotes – to create a social media campaign with impressive results. Learn more about its efforts from Courtney Eckerle, Manager of Editorial Content, MECLABS: “Social Media Marketing: How New York Public Library increased card sign-ups by 35%.”

Interestingly, it seems this post was the most shared on Twitter for certain individuals:

@librarydonna Hi Donna. Hope you’re well. Saw this social media campaign from New York Public Library. Thought of you http://t.co/uIywx1alES

— John Madden (@ja_madden) March 11, 2013

Lesson #4. Go beyond the “like” to track your social media success

David Kirkpatrick, Manager of Editorial Content, MECLABS, broke down a chart covering social media marketing metrics tracking in the post, “Social Media Marketing: Social metrics from “likes” to ROI.” While social reach (e.g., “likes”) tops the list, some marketers are also measuring ROI, leads and conversion. See what other metrics your peers are using to benchmark success in their organizations.

Content Marketing Lessons

Lesson #5. Analyze your blog to identify areas for improvement

There are a lot of elements that make up your blog. When was the last time you stood back to evaluate if all of those pieces were working as well as they could?

In his post, “Content Marketing: An 8-point analysis for your blog,” Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, explained the eight points on which to focus your evaluation. From the frequency of your posts and their titles, to author bios and social media integration, you could have untapped potential waiting to be found.

Great #blog pointers from @MarketingSherpa: Be consistent, provide value, tell the world about it http://t.co/VbVj4hQhoV

— Francis Moran (@FrancisMoran) February 26, 2013

Lesson #6. Use WordPress, or any tool, to its fullest potential

No matter what channel or platform you’re using, you want to get all you can out of it. For the post, “Content Marketing: 5 tips for WordPress blogging,” Erin Hogg, Copy Editor, MECLABS, broke down some ways she’s learned to improve a WordPress blog. Learn how to cross promote media with embedding, use basic HTML to improve the look and feel of a post, and more.

Lesson #7. Implement (and stick with) a style for your content

AP? Chicago? MLA? APA? There are many established styles, and one might work as-is for your organization. You could decide to create your own.  At MECLABS, we use the Associated Press Style Book as our foundation and supplement it with a set of our own guidelines.

No matter which direction you choose, it’s important to stick with the guide for all of your content. Having well-proofed and consistent content adds to the credibility of your content and builds the authority of your brand.

Erin Hogg explained this and other tips in her post, “Content Marketing: 7 copy editing tips to improve any content piece.”

Yes, please #copyedit! RT @MarketingSherpa Content Marketing: 7 copy editing tips to improve any content piece http://t.co/NeMBCh85rU

— Christine Parizo (@cparizo) October 30, 2013

Email Marketing Lessons

Lesson #8. Don’t forget about current customers when designing triggered email campaigns

In the post, “Email Marketing: 3 overlooked aspects of automated messages,” Daniel Burstein said nurturing current customers is one of the most overlooked automated email opportunities. He shared a list of triggered email types you can implement to strengthen relationships with you customers, including product education and upselling.

This post also features two other overlooked aspects of automated emails: customer lifetime value and the gap between what marketers should do and what they actually do.

Some great insights into better managing your automated emails… http://t.co/H2H5zWZ0Dd

— Dustin Luther (@tyr) April 1, 2013

Lesson #9. Test your emails to discover what really works for your audience

You could be using every best practice you’ve come across, but unless you know it’s best for your specific audience, then it might not be the practice you should be using. Testing lets you know what your audience best engages with.

Justin Bridegan, former Senior Marketing Manager, MECLABS, explained how testing revealed two segments of the MarketingSherpa email list prefer different email lengths. Read on to learn his other tips in the post, “Email Marketing: What I’ve learned from writing almost 1,000 emails for MarketingSherpa.”

“Write your copy with the understanding that your audience is likely not reading, but skimming” http://t.co/UkkkEa6uTR

— Elizabeth Sosnow (@elizabethsosnow) August 26, 2013

Read more…