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Author: Ryan Dolotallas
View in browserShare thisBest Email Newsletter Practices, Busting Content Marketing Myths, an Event Invite, The Reciprocation Rule, and more!  | ||
| Email Newsletter Best Practices MarketVolt client Aero Charter unveiled its new-and-improved email newsletter last week. The newsletter demonstrates many best practices for email newsletters so we wanted to share it with you. Click here to read the blog post in which we describe some best practices for email newsletters and show how the Aero newsletter reflects those practices. You also can click here to see a replay of one of our 5in25 webinars (5 marketing tips in 25 minutes): “Five Ways to Create the Perfect Email Newsletter.” In this webinar, we elaborate on newsletter best practices and describe the Aero newsletter in more detail.  | ||
| You’re Not Going to Believe Where People Like to Check Their Email OK… the picture gives it away. But read on… A recent survey reveals that people check email compulsively. That’s good news for marketers. We discuss the survey in and share lessons learned for marketers in this post on our blog.  Give to Get: How Hare Krishnas Practice the Reciprocation RuleWhen someone gives you something valuable, you want to reciprocate. Hare Krishnas mastered these ideas when they solicited at airports. In the MarketVolt blog, we describe how the Krishnas did it and how their practices instruct marketers using Facebook, email and other marketing mediums today. Click here to read the post… | | Strengthen Your Business with Email Marketing Strategies Join MarketVolt’s VP of Sales, Pat Hawn, as he discusses email strategy to attract leads, market productively, and communicate effectively to accelerate your business. When: August 27, 2014 @ 11:45 AM Where: Edison’s Entertainment Complex 2477 South State Route 157 Edwardsville, IL 62025 Click here for registration details to apply these growth tips to your business!  In Case You Missed It: Replay of 5 Ways to Build Your Email ListCheck out our upcoming webinars for powerful marketing ideas delivered at your desk! Visit 5in25.com to see the list! Exclusively for our subscribers we’re offering a free webinar replay. We reveal five proven strategies and tactics to build your email list. Five powerful marketing ideas delivered in just 25 minutes. Click here to register for instant access to the webinar replay… |
| Busting Content Marketing Myths Content marketing has become a popular way of online communication. Strategies to grab the attention of readers vary quite a bit and questions continue to arise. We found a great article that addresses which content rules to ditch and which ones to keep. Here are some takeaways:Headlines don’t have to be shortDelivering email messages straight to inboxes worksThe more information you post, the more readers you will getTalk to your readers, not at them |
| View in browserShare thisMarketing Lessons from Dumb and Dumber, Kennelwood Tips on Email, New Social Media Platforms, and more! | ||
| Creative Email Uses From Kennelwood Pet Resorts What is the first thing you would do if your furry friend went missing… panic and drive around your neighborhood? Our friends over at Kennelwood Pet Resorts have successfully been recovering pets via Email and Facebook for five years in the St. Louis-area.  “Mimi Alerts” is a free program provided to the community that Kennelwood created. It is used by Kennelwood to 1. locate the owner of a pet found wandering, and 2. help find a missing pet for owners who turn to Kennelwood. They use MarketVolt to create a descriptive email including a photo, and send it out to all of their clients and other contacts in the zip code where the pet was found/lost. Our friends at Kennelwood Pet Resorts are using email not only as a marketing tool, but as a tool to contribute to the community.We dig deeper into Kennelwood’s brand enhancing strategy here on our blog… | ||
| Dumb and Dumber Content Advice When we think of the movie, Dumb and Dumber, we think about a certain audience that will laugh at it’s goofy humor. The writers knew exactly who to target, and created content to keep that audience entertained. The best practice is to deliver the right content at the right time, to the right people. Click here to read more about how your business can benefit from these content tips…  New Social Platforms to Check OutFacebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest,and Instagram are considered the most popular social media platforms. But as always, others are on the rise. For businesses, it is smart to try and find a new customer avenue that not everyone is taking. Click here for list of up and coming platforms… | | Using Content Calendars to Cure Your Headaches Does your business struggle to make deadlines on content marketing? Instead of trying to do activities all at once, breaking up the time to write and the time to post can help divide up tasks and get them done on time. Schedule tasks ahead of time to ensure that you aren’t struggling last minute. Here’s a post on our blog about the best way to execute your content plan to get newsletters out the door.  In Case You Missed It: Replay of 5 Ways to Build Your Email List As a bonus for our email subscribers, we’re offering a free replay of our webinar.We reveal five proven strategies and tactics to build your email list. Five powerful marketing ideas delivered in just 25 minutes. Click here to register for instant access to the webinar replay. Visit 5in25.com for a list of upcoming webinars! |
The St. Louis Zoo is Recognized as One of the Best in the World! We are happy to congratulate our friends and beloved clients at the St. Louis Zoo for being named by Trip Advisor’s Travelers Choice Award as one of the Top 10 Zoos in the world! Check out where they rank… |
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July 17 2014 High Voltage
| View in browserShare thisMarketing Lessons from The Pasta House, Presentation tips, Facebook changes, Website advice, and a Seminar invite! | ||
| List-Building Lessons from The Pasta House Our friends at The Pasta House Co. — a chain of Italian restaurants in and around St. Louis, Mo. — do a great job of building their email list using MarketVolt’s online signup form, automated follow-up tools, and survey engine. Here’s how Pasta House does it… On the front page of the Pasta House web site, visitors see a prominent call to action: “Sign up for special offers & discounts here and get a FREE appetizer!” Two best practices here:Include a prominent call to action for email list signup on your front page.Give people an incentive to join your email list.We dig deeper into the Pasta House signup process and describe more list-building best practices on our blog | ||
| Web Site Quick-Tip: Make Your Domain Easy to Spell When we build web sites for clients, we always advise that they choose a domain name that is simple and unambiguous to spell. If you choose a domain name that’s difficult to spell, prospects stumble as they search for your site. Want more web site tips? Click here to download 11 Essential Elements for a Great Web Site.  Presentation Tips from the MasterWhen it comes to public speaking, Fred Miller is a master. Here are seven tips from Fred on how to take your presentation from Blah to Ah!. We love this for lots of reasons: 1) The tips are great. 2) The title is catchy and clever. 3) This is a great example of how to share a presentation online using a great site called SlideShare. Click here to view the presentation… | | July Speaker Series: Learn Email Marketing Strategies to Strengthen Your Business Join MarketVolt’s VP of Sales, Pat Hawn, as he discusses email strategy to attract leads, market productively, and communicate effectively to accelerate your business. When: Thurs, July 24, 5:30pm – 7:00pm Where: Unidev/The Net Impact Chesterfield Office Click here for details and registration..  5in25: New Look & New WebinarsOur 5in25 Webinar Series features powerful marketing ideas for B2B businesses, B2C businesses, and non-profits. Five powerful marketing ideas delivered in just 25 minutes.We’ve updated our logo and web site and added new topics to the calendar. Visit 5in25.com for a list of upcoming webinars! |
| Facebook Now Limits the Reach of Business Pages Facebook now makes it more difficult — and expensive — for your content to be seen. People who like your Facebook page won’t necessarily see all of your posts. You may already have noticed the “seen” counts declining for your posts.  Facebook has changed their algorithms to encourage paid ads over free advertising. Facebook will only display your posts to a fraction of your followers. Unless your followers go directly to your page, they may miss your posts. Facebook now encourages businesses to “boost” their posts by converting them to paid Facebook advertisements. We still think Facebook is a great platform to reach audiences — via both the free (‘organic”) and paid channels, and social media, in general, works well with email marketing. But gone are the days when you could reach huge audiences for “free.” Here are two great resources on the topic:From Adweek: Facebook Reportedly Slashing Organic Reach for PagesFrom Contently: Facebook’s Goodfellas Moment |
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July 1 2014 High Voltage
| View in browserShare thisMarketing advice from Key and Peele, New Spam Law, Twitter tips, and more! | ||
| Thanks from MarketVolt! Thanks for joining MarketVolt last week at the Charter Business Speaker Series with the SBMON. As promised, here is an addition of our bi-monthly newsletter in which we provide marketing tips, event information, and MarketVolt updates to keep you entertained! Canadian Law May Affect You If You Have Recipients in Canada  A new Canadian law requires businesses sending commercial emails to Canadians to obtain express permission for those emails, and to keep documentation of that permission. The law also gives the senders up to three years to keep sending if they have “implied” permission, such as when a customer makes a purchase from a business.We have all the details on our blog. You also can contact your MarketVolt marketing advisor for more information. | ||
| Marketing Lessons from Key and Peele The comedy duo, Key and Peele, shed a different light on marketing. They spend time building a relationship with their audience by providing them interesting content on a regular basis to gain trust and make marketing messages hit home. See how K&P get some laughs while building their audience… Start Tweeting to Engage CustomersThe continual growth of Twitter makes it a great platform to engage your followers. Try something new! Create a plan to incorporate tweets in your overall marketing goals. Click here for 4 ways to engage Twitter followers…  | | Keeping Email Subscribers Interested So you have an email database. Leads, prospects, and customers have said “yes” to receiving information about your business in their inbox. The next step is keeping them interested in what you are sending. Click here for 4 ways you can keep subscribers beyond the first message…  Five Marketing Ideas in 25 MinutesOur new Webinar Series features powerful marketing ideas for B2B businesses, B2C businesses, and non-profits. Visit 5in25.com for a list of upcoming webinars!  |
| MarketVolt Support – Online, All the Time! For MarketVolt users out there, the help desk is always there to help. You can reach us at 314-529-1435, or helpdesk@marketvolt.com. But as another resource, we also provide an online help-guide. Click on the green “online help” at the top corner of your MarketVolt page, and you will be prompted to a page with detailed instructions on MarketVolt usage. You can search by word or phrase of the issue. If logged into MarketVolt, click the above picture and browse our online help. |
| Email personalization tips, the power of surveys, web site ideas, stock photo recommendations, and more…View in browserShare this | ||
| Personalized “From…” & Reply Save Time, Improve Results Recipients are more likely to open your emails if you send them from a person the recipient knows, rather than just from your company name. You should also personalize the reply-to address of your emails so recipients are more likely to interact with the sender. If you use an email provider other than MarketVolt, it can be a challenge when various recipients have relationships with different contacts in your business. With other systems, It’s a lot of work to schedule delivery of an email multiple times if you have different “from…” names and reply-to addresses for different recipients. MarketVolt solves this problem by automatically merging different from names and reply addresses into a single email delivery. We’ve now enabled “From…” and reply merging for all accounts. Here’s a post on our blog about how a networking group uses personalized from and reply to improve email marketing results. Here’s a link to MarketVolt’s online help that explains how this feature works.  | ||
Email Quick-Tip Include interactive surveys with your email newsletters to solicit feedback from your clients and prospects. When a client offers positive feedback, ask whether you can use the feedback in a public testimonial or case study. More marketing tips on our blog | | Web Site Quick Tip Publish testimonials on your site. Testimonials are especially effective for answering prospects’ objections.More tips in our updated free report 15 Essential Elements to Maximize the Impact of your Website Click here for the report |
Stock Photography Options for Email, Web and Social The web offers countless stock photography options if you need photos or graphics for your emails, social media posts or site. But prices and quality vary. Which ones are best?Here are four of our favorites. There are many others available, but we always find what we need by relying on these four sites…  Five Powerful Marketing Ideas in 25 MinutesEarlier this month, we launched the 5in25 Webinar Series — five powerful marketing ideas deliver in just 25 minutes. The response has been great. Visit 5in25.com for a list of upcoming webinars. |
| Introducing 5in25 WebinarsFive powerful marketing ideas… …delivered quickly. Designed for busy people who want tips, tactics, and strategies to grow their businesses, these FREE webinars deliver the goods in just 25 minutes. Attend from the comfort of your own desk. Visit 5in25.com to learn more and to register. A few of our upcoming seminars:Five Ways B2B Businesses Use Email to Drive More SalesFive Ways B2C Businesses Use Email to Drive More Sales Five Ways Nonprofits Use Email to Engage Followers and Increase Donations Five Tips to Develop a Content Plan for Your Email Marketing …and many more |
Use Excerpts and Links to Deliver Content via Email Every item in this email has a link to read more. We rarely tell the whole storyin an email message. We tell the whole story on our web site or blog. We include an excerpt or teaser in the email, and then we link to the story from the email.You should do the same — excerpt and link — in your emails. Why? Several reasons. First, readers have short attention spans. For more on this, plus the other reasons, read more on our blog… p.s. If you don’t have an easy way to post the whole story on your web site, you probably need to build a new one that’s easier to edit. We can help with that. Give us a call to discuss how to build an affordable, easy-to-edit web site. |
| Network with Us and Yellow-Tie On June 10, we’re happy to be hosting Yellow-Tie’s “Drinks and Connections” event, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at our office in Creve Coeur.  Yellow-Tie is a great business networking group that we have supported since its inception. This free event is open to non-members.Click here for more details and to register. Date: 6/10/2014 — Tuesday, June 10 Time: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Cost: Free Location: MarketVolt 11433 Olde Cabin Rd., Suite 100, St. Louis, MO 63141 Questions? Contact Anna Wiesler at 314-529-1471. |
| More of a good thing…We get great feedback from clients and prospects about our newsletter. Many have asked that we send the newsletter twice a month so we’re going to give that a try, beginning in June. Watch your mailbox for another edition in about two weeks for more marketing tips, event announcements, and other important updates! |
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High-Voltage May 2014
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April 2014 High Voltage
| MarketVolt’s Mobile Friendly TemplatesSmart marketers today do everything they can to enhance how email appears on mobile devices. MarketVolt has launched five new mobile friendly templates to help you do just that. The templates are built to scale down the width of the mailing (and in some cases stack columns on top of one another) reducing the need for mobile viewers to magnify or swipe left to right to see all of an email. In fact, this email is built on one of our new templates. Learn About Our New Templates Reaching your Mobile Audience  By Anna WieslerMarketVolt Marketing Advisor My coworker enjoys telling this story about my relationship with my smartphone. She came up to my desk one day to ask if I had received her email. My computer was up and running, but I instinctively ignored it and grabbed my Android to check my inbox. Obsessive? Maybe. But checking email on cell phones is here to stay, and that’s why I recommend this article on how best to reach your mobile audience. Run and Finish Strong with List Segmentation  GO! St. Louis’ sent 108 mailings via MarketVolt in the past 12 months. Yet no one seems to be wearying of their emails. In fact, a recent email regarding the marathon earlier this month had an astonishing open rate of 73%.How does GO! St. Louis keep that kind of stamina? The answer: segmentation, big-time. Learn about list segmentation by GO! St. Louis. MV’s Marketing Advisors Ready to Help YouEvery MarketVolt account comes with the free services of a Marketing Advisor — an experienced digital marketer who can help you with a broad array of issues related to marketing. These are services you are not likely to find with any other email service provider. | MarketVolt Sponsors All American 5KMarketVolt Chief Technologist Bill Langton, who routinely busts out of our office building over lunch break in his running shorts and shoes, will lead our team of runners. The event, which also includes a 1-mile Family Fun Run, takes place on Saturday morning, June 15. Learn about the race. Forward to A FriendDo you know people who want to grow their businesses more productively and profitably? These free marketing tips might help. If you share this email with your friends, we would be grateful (and they will be, too)! Join Our Email ListIf you’re seeing this email online — rather than in your inbox — or had it sent to you by a friend or colleague, you may not be on our mailing list. Join now to receive emails from us with with strategy, tactics, tips, and news to help you grow your business — productively and comfortably.Connect With Us Share This EmailClick the button(s) below to share this email on your favorite social networks. Thanks for spreading the news!     |
| New Mobile Friendly Templates By Peter Shinkle Chief Executive Officer peter@marketvolt.com With more people opening email on their mobile phones and tablets, smart marketers everywhere are doing everything they can to enhance how email appears on mobile devices. Now, MarketVolt has introduced a suite of enhanced email templates that will maximize the appearance of your emails on mobile devices. While many of our previously existing templates fared well on mobile devices, the new templates are designed to ensure a high-quality presentation. Learn About Our New Templates Time Zone Feature Coming Soon By Bill Langton MarketVolt Chief Technologist blangton@marketvolt.com  MarketVolt will soon release an update that will allow users to select a prefered time zone. The new feature will be particularly useful for clients outside of the Central Time Zone and those with users in multiple time zones sharing the same account.After the release, all date and time values displayed or entered in MarketVolt will be shown in the time zone specified by the user. For those outside of the Central Time Zone, this new feature will mean no longer having to do time zone math to set a specific mailing delivery time or see when a link was clicked. A separate announcement providing more specific instructions will be made shortly before the new feature goes live. Small Business Monthly Conference Will Feature MV Founder Tom Ruwitch By Peter Shinkle MarketVolt CEO St. Louis Small Business Monthly will hold its 20th annual business conference, the St. Louis Business Expo, next month in St. Charles. MarketVolt Founder and President Tom Ruwitch will lead the kickoff seminar, a discussion of online marketing techniques that companies can use quickly and easily. The event, which takes place April 8 at the St. Charles Convention Center, is free and open to the public. It features speakers discussing subjects ranging from digital marketing to corporate partnerships and cloud computing. The conference web site provides this summary of the kickoff seminar: “Interactive marketing expert Tom Ruwitch will share seven examples of proven marketing tactics that he or his clients have employed to close more sales, improve customer retention or generate referrals. Tom has selected real-life examples that you can apply without busting the budget. This is not some theoretical, hocus-pocus. These are real strategies and tactics that Tom has taken directly from his playbook and that you can add to yours.” For more information, visit the conference web site. Recommended Productivity Tools By Tom Ruwitch MarketVolt President I recently asked several business experts whom I know, “What is one of the online tools you’re using to help you operate more  productively and how does it help?”Here are a few of the answers published on the Experts for Entrepreneurs (e4e) blog. Experts 4 Entrepreneurs is a community for savvy business people who want to grow their businesses quickly, run them more efficiently, and enjoy the fruit of success and living well. I contribute regularly to the e4e web site, and MarketVolt hosts monthly e4e workshops on a variety of topics. Learn more about e4e… Mobile Marketing Tips By Anna Wiesler Marketing Advisor anna@marketvolt.com “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.” | Forward to A FriendDo you know people who want to grow their businesses more productively and profitably? These free marketing tips might help. If you share this email with your friends, we would be grateful (and they will be, too)! Share This EmailClick the button(s) below to share this email on your favorite social networks. Thanks for spreading the news! Connect With Us Join Our Email List  If you’re seeing this email online — rather than in your inbox — or had it sent to you by a friend or colleague, you may not be on our mailing list. Join now to receive emails from us with with strategy, tactics, tips, and news to help you grow your business — productively and comfortably. |