26Sep 2018 by Robyn Hatfield

19 of the Best Small Business Applications for 2018

CRM, Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, Uncategorized
Do you have a favorite application for your small business? We have MANY favorites! From organization tools to scheduling to collaboration and automation, these tools will help your business be more efficient and effective! This is an updated post from a previous post in 2016.  We just added some new favorites! Here's our favorite 2018 Applications and Programs for Small Business! ActiveCampaign - ActiveCampaign has moved to the top of the list.  It's our FAVORITE marketing automation, email marketing, and light CRM platform.  Learn more about ActiveCampaign. HootSuite - Hootsuite is a scheduling and monitoring application for social media.  You are able to post across many different platforms as well as monitor mentions, tags, etc. on many different social media sites.  Just remember though:  you still need to log in to…
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20Sep 2018 by Robyn Hatfield
What is UTM? Why Should I Use UTM Parameters?

What is UTM? Why Should I Use UTM Parameters?

Email Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Uncategorized
UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module code and is the code added to the end of a URL or link.  UTMs allows you to measure where your traffic is coming from in more detail than you can get from referrer traffic.  If you do not use UTMs you will still see the referrer of traffic, but you may miss key details such as what specific post, tweet, page or link the user clicked to get to your site. UTMs include the source, medium, and campaign.  An example UTM is below:     ?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=profile&utm_campaign=email UTMs are a very valuable tracking tools to help you make better decisions.  A few important points to remember are:  be consistent, use dashes, don’t repeat yourself, use lower case, and keep it simple but descriptive. Use…
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31Aug 2018 by Robyn Hatfield
SEO & Content Really Can Go Together

SEO & Content Really Can Go Together

Uncategorized
In the early days of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), many companies created absolute nonsense in their content.  You would read the content and think 'did this person even proofread this garbage?'  You would see the same word again and again.  You would see weird bolds and underlines.  And it just didn't make sense to any human. It did, however, make sense to the search engine. This type of writing was popular to increase traffic (although I can't imagine it kept people on the site or made them want to return). Now the search engines are smarter.  Search engines began recognizing keyword stuffing, 'invisible' key words, and gaming the system.  Websites started being penalized for black hat or gray hat (depending on where you sit on the fence) methods. So what does that…
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07Aug 2018 by Robyn Hatfield
Email Marketing: Where’s the Email Marketing Rule Book?

Email Marketing: Where’s the Email Marketing Rule Book?

Analytics, Email Marketing, Marketing, Uncategorized
Email Marketing:  Where’s the Email Rule Book? Email marketing has one of the highest returns on investment (if not the highest) of any marketing tactic.  It’s important for Business-to-Consumer and Business-to-Business companies.  So we must have an email marketing rulebook, right?  No, there’s not one.  Email campaigns perform differently with different audiences, voices, products, services and more. What does this mean to you? This means that while you can use tips and good rules of thumb, you HAVE TO test to get the most out of your email marketing campaign.  You can review the best performing email campaigns, but if it doesn’t work for your company, brand, voice or audience, it doesn’t matter. What are a few tips for testing your email marketing campaign? The subject line is the most…
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