Step by Step for Sending Emails to a List

Most of us send emails to our mailing lists using email campaign providers such as MailChimp or Constant Contact. But there are still some companies who use list manager software and regular email, or even small businesses who just want to plunk a bunch of email addresses in the TO field of their email client.…

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Email Design Best Practices (A Brief Checklist)

Sometimes I just want a simple checklist to make sure I’m checking all of the boxes. Here’s a helpful list to keep close when you’re designing a good marketing email: Make sure that your most important info – headline, call to action – is delivered in text, not an image. Use an opt-in list. Provide…

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Improving Search Ranking for a Local Business

Last week I got a note from a friend who was disappointed in the number of inquiries coming in from his website. He was specifically interested in knowing what he could do to improve search rankings for his small service business. I took a look at his website and wrote him some recommendations, and I…

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Evolving Your Agency for Online Marketing – Part 1

Through the 80s and 90s, when I worked in traditional advertising agencies – first as a copywriter, then creative director and occasional producer/director – I didn’t think of what I was doing as “traditional.” You probably didn’t either, because there was nothing to compare to, nothing to be more “traditional” than. Then the Internet came…

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Super Glad: My Wrapup of BOLO2010

Just tweeting a thank you is not enough, so first I want to share some effusive thanks and praise for Bret Giles, Lacey Brown, and the fantastic Agencyside crew for putting on an outstanding BOLO conference. This was my second year in attendance, and everything about the conference jumped up a notch from last year’s…

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Does PPC Spend Affect Natural Search Results?

An associate in Northern Arizona pinged me about an odd effect she was seeing in one of her client’s online marketing campaigns. They turned off their PPC campaign for a while and saw a quick and dramatic drop – 50-60% – in traffic from NATURAL search. Not from PPC, which obviously plummeted to zero, but…

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Get Top Search Rankings with Sneedobb

I had a lively discussion with a writer and online marketing guy from a local ad agency over beers last night. (Side note: Wednesday is wings night at Sun Up Brewery, the hot wings are tasty and just the right amount of painful, and the Trooper IPA cools the fire with delicious efficiency.) Our conversation…

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Using KEI for Keyword Research in Wordtracker

If you’re using Wordtracker to do keyword research for search engine optimization, you may find this useful. Wordtracker is a great tool for keyword research, but it does have one puzzling quirk: Wordtracker gives us two indexes – KEI and KEI3 – and they don’t agree. KEI stands for Keyword Effectiveness Index, and it’s a…

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Getting a Handle on Post-Conference Overload

October 20, 2010 NOTE: I wrote this post after last year’s BOLO, but it’s still plenty relevant as I sit down to go through pages of notes and a thick pile of business cards. Links and tags updated. I just got back to my office after the excellent BOLO2010 conference here in Phoenix. (My sympathy…

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Going to BOLO? Grab My Conference Planner

I’m attending the BOLO Conference in Scottsdale next week, put on by my friends at Agencyside. If you’re going, and especially if you’re from out of town, download my BOLO Conference Planner. There are so many great workshops, labs, and breakouts at BOLO that I think you’ll find it useful in picking your sessions from…

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