Interactive Web Marketing

Whether you're just getting started with mobile optimization or you're a pro and need some tips to share with your colleagues, here are our top mobile design resources for email.

Report: Designing for the Mobile Inbox
Get strategic and practical advice to help you deliver content that’s easy to consume on any device in this new report on mobile optimization.

Case Study: CareerBuilder's Responsive Email Design Results
Learn how CareerBuilder optimized their email design and saw increases of more than 20% in click-through and more than 15% in open rates.

Quick Guide: Design Tips: Mobile + Email
This...

When it comes to the marketing industry, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve. Not long ago, digital marketing was only a whisper within corporate marketing teams – now it’s here, it’s as competitive as ever and it’s completely changing the way we do business. Here are my predictions for what’s to come over the next year.

Smart, personalised content
It’s time to stop being oh-so-frightened of data capture and start taking advantage of the fact that personalised content makes browsing the web an absolute pleasure! Take Linkedin, for example – simply log in and you’re presented with the...

If you’ve mastered marketing automation 101, and even tackled our 9 steps to go beyond the marketing automation basics, then you’re ready for a few of our expert tips. At this point, you should be delivering highly relevant and dynamic email content, sending out drip emails to nurture prospects over time, and managing your social profiles using real-time and scheduled posts.

Sound about right? If so, then read on to find out how you can continue to improve your marketing automation efforts with these 8 steps, inspired by the Mastering the Art of Marketing Automation eBook:

1. Don’t get lazy. At...

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Currently, a stunning 43% of all email opens occur on mobile devices, quickly overshadowing desktop opens (32%) and webmail opens (25%). Data from Litmus shows us that this percentage is up 38% in the last year alone. Basically, subscribers continue to use viewing environments that include many screen sizes:

• iPhone, Android, and tablets (mobile devices)
• Installed email programs like Outlook and Apple Mail (desktop)
• Email accessed through a web browser like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail (webmail)

This means that by a growing majority, subscribers are tapping and swiping instead...

ExactTarget has a passion for bringing marketers and consumers closer. And we’ve gathered the industry’s top thought leaders and interactive gurus for the second annual ExactTarget CONNECT Global Tour.

Marketers from across Canada will have the opportunity to meet, inspire, educate, and empower the future generation of digital marketing on June 12, 2013, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This full-day gathering will include break-out sessions complete with leading-edge research, networking opportunities, and advice for guiding engaged digital marketing campaigns.

Leading the keynote...

Join Kristina Huffman, Design Practice Lead, as she discusses and answers seven common questions about responsive email design:

What is responsive email?
Responsive design is a set of techniques in web design and development used to adapt a website to be readable on any screen and/or platform on which it's displayed. These techniques are being repurposed for emails. A responsive layout uses a piece of CSS3 code called a media query to detect the pixel size of the screen on which that email is opened. Based on the screen size detected, multiple stylesheets may be triggered to alter the layout and...

October 2012 was an exciting time for ExactTarget’s partner ecosystem. Not only was the Orange Partner Network program launched at Connections, but also in front of the 4,000+ attendees, ExactTarget was excited to present the Power of ONE Reseller Partner of the Year award to our Platinum partner, C.TRAC.

C.TRAC has taken ExactTarget’s passion and unwavering commitment to client success and worked it into their own daily business practices by truly embodying ExactTarget's core values. Combined with their innovative strategy, design, integration, database management, reporting services, and...

In light of growing stats and recommendations making the case for responsive email, it's time to start taking a "mobile first" approach. Mobile phones are naturally the smallest of the devices we use to consume media, so it's arguable that if we design for this space well first, we can naturally adapt and branch off that version to deliver good experiences for tablets, desktop screens, and future devices to come.

Small screens and touch interfaces
Use the mobile landscape as a starting point and develop layout adaptations from there. Don't necessarily limit the content you share with various...

In my last post, "Do You have an Abandoned Cart Strategy?," I demonstrated how retailers could be leaving money on the table by not having a reengagement strategy to help shoppers return to their site and complete their purchase. In this post, we’ll be asking retailers if they are narrowing their shopping experience to a single channel and how this might impact their opportunity to capture revenue across channels.

#2 Way Retail Marketers are Leaving Money On the Table: Narrowing your shopping experience to a single channel

It’s no surprise that customers today interact through a variety of...

Although much of the interactive world was focused on SXSW in Austin this week—and then New York for the Galaxy S 4 launch—the news did not slow down for a moment. Luckily, the Content Marketing team at ExactTarget is here to help you stay on top of what’s important!

We’re always on the lookout for fresh, interesting content, to help you stay up-to-date with the latest news and trends.

Here are a few of the top stories that caught our eye this week:

Facebook Working on Incorporating the Hashtag (Wall Street Journal)

Samsung Galaxy S 4 Compared (Mashable)

Facebook Unveils Revamped Timeline (MediaPost)

Wh...

Last week, ExactTarget had the opportunity to participate in one of our first tradeshow events in Stockholm, Sweden, home to our newest office location. Webbdagarna was a two-day event attracting more than 1,500 of the Nordic region’s interactive and web marketers--all keen to understand more about the future of cross-channel, how to implementeffective programs, and where to start in bridging the gap between offline and online channels.

ExactTarget Nordics recently opened its doors in Stockholm, Sweden, in the Östermalm business district. We’re excited to have a local team led by Henrik...

ExactTarget is excited to announce the launch of a new website across seven regions and a fresh brand experience. The vibrant new look, elegant navigation, and richer user experience reflect the evolution of our company’s growth over the past 12 years. A lot has happened since then and we’re excited to share new services, innovations, and partnerships that help marketers around the world connect with their customers across the spectrum of digital channels.

What’s New:

• 7 new sites spanning ExactTarget’s global presence in the US, Australia, Brazil, Germany, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
• W...

I recently read an article on TFB (The Future Buzz) which argued against the principle of using simple communications to reach out to the mass of your customers. I must admit, I wholly agree with assuming that you have a smart base of customers! It is definitely apparent that "dumbing down" messages does not guarantee that they will be engaged with by everyone, especially in today's digital age of smart and service-focused consumers.

The same blog post argues that using generic and simple messaging can portray your brand as "cheap" and "untrustworthy." I am not a businessman, but I am sure...

Last week I attended the On Deck Sports & Technology Conference in Silicon Alley. The inaugural conference was billed as “a group of top innovators and entrepreneurs in sports technology and business.” Leaders in sports business were on hand from teams, properties, leagues, media networks and sites, agencies, brands, and startups.

The day started with a keynote from Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), and was followed by a series of speaker panels, rapid fire presentations from technology companies, and a pitch contest between seven start-ups to end the day. The...

If there was ever a buzzword in business that defined an era it would have to be “Big Data.” Everywhere you look there’s another article about merging data sets to make more relevant business decisions. To kick off blogging in 2013 I plan to write a few posts about how ExactTarget’s platform helps organizations leverage other technology providers to make more sense of this term. But first, what is Big Data? IBM shares some pretty eye-opening statistics in defining this term:

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in...

While you may know that SocialPages is a leading social media marketing application for creating, designing, and publishing custom Facebook Tabs, you may not know about some of its awesome features, like easy-to-use scheduled content updates, Smart URLs, and key partner integrations that can help you expand your Facebook marketing efforts.

1. Scheduled Content Updates: Content is so essential to Facebook marketing, because without it, you aren't giving users a good reason to keep coming back and engaging with your brand.  SocialPages makes it easy to maintain limitless versions of each tab and...

It’s that time of year. Football has passed, our Sundays are free, and basketball emerges in the limelight. For the NBA, there are few times when the light shines brighter than during @NBAAllStar weekend.

It should be no surprise that the NBA is going to deliver on their social media strategy this weekend. After fans were able to vote via Facebook and Twitter this year, the NBA will continue to engage with fans throughout the weekend. For the already interactive league, the events will be much more than a couple of competitions and a game—it is a chance to reach their audience in new and...

What image formats are most appropriate to use when I’m building an email? Let's explore the three common image file formats appropriate for email: JPGs, GIFs, and PNGs.

JPGs

The file name .jpg stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It’s one of the most common image formats, allowing for compression adjusting to benefit speedy load times for web display. The format utilizes compression that is best for image slices that include photography and images that need a higher amount of data to show detail. When you save the image for web use (often referred to as "save for web" in Photoshop),...