Social Marketing Guide

As digital marketers, we tend to be laser-focused on generating more business and revenue for our company. But it's also important to have a content strategy in place, to ensure that you're providing your customers with truly relevant content and actively listening to what they are saying about your brand.

Social media is one important channel for businesses to interact with customers (and potential customers) in real-time.

Every compant is unique, and each company's messaging must be relevant and engaging to their unique audience. At the same time, it's important for social marketing efforts to...

It’s a common misconception that SEO, social media, email, and other content distribution channels should reside in silos. There are numerous synergies to be had by launching campaigns that affect multiple channels of distribution. Strategic earned media is just one way to influence these channels simultaneously. When executed properly the social sphere lights up with buzz, landing page conversions increase and search engines take notice.

What a Strategic Earned Media Campaign Looks Like
Earning media has been a public relations (PR) goal for many decades – targeting newspapers, magazines and...

The Gmail Team announced impending changes to their user interface today that will have an effect on users of their desktop and mobile platforms. The changes deal with how mail in the inbox is sorted for review by the recipient. These changes will be rolling out over the next several weeks for everyone, or you can opt-in to test things out now by selecting "Configure Inbox" after clicking on the gear icon.

Currently, default users of Gmail see mail which is sorted into "Important and unread" and "Everything else." In the future, though, the desktop will look like this (taken from the...

Success in most digital marketing channels can be proven by the numbers. As much as some marketers and communicators don't like to spend their time drowning in math, any truly successful social media program will have the numbers to prove it.

In his new whitepaper The Mathematics of Social Marketing, Jason Falls says that many companies have turned social media marketing into a thriving source of web traffic and revenue, while others still don't fully understand how to leverage the world of social media and business.

According to the report, 45% of small business CEOs do not consider social...

Marketers have no shortage of inspiration. We are lucky enough to be surrounded by (and the target of) the work of our peers every day, and we appreciate a great campaign when we see one.

It can also be extremely helpful to take a look back at a successful campaign and identify areas of improvement--or new strategies for our own campaigns. That is exactly what most marketers should be doing with the recently completed Arrested Development campaign from Netflix.

Packed full of the snark and quirkiness Arrested Development fans have come to adore, Netflix’s cross-channel campaign leading up to...

If you’ve recently implemented a marketing automation system, or are thinking about doing so in the near future, then you’re probably ready to start dazzling your email recipients with highly targeted email communications, measuring and reporting on marketing campaign effectiveness, and automating tedious manual tasks like lead assignment. But first, let’s go through a few marketing automation dos and don’t — you don’t want to risk jumping in too quickly now, do you?

Before we get to all the great things you can and should be doing with your marketing automation system, let’s get a few of...

My colleages and I have dispensed a lot of deliverability tips on this blog throughout the years. But wouldn't it be nice to have the most useful nuggets of delivery-related wisdom compiled for easy reference? Well, your wish is our command.

Over the next few posts, we will, ahem, "deliver" the top ten tips to get your email campaigns to subscribers' inboxes in today's email ecosystem Let's start it off with the first two tips ...

Tip #1 - Subscriber Engagement Is Critical to Email Success
In years past, permission was seen as the key to having mail accepted. But we know things are changing. As...

Summer is heating up here at our Indianapolis headquarters, and our May product release delivered a few new features with plenty of sizzle over the weekend. Whether aimed to save you time, optimize your marketing efforts, or just make our interface easier to navigate, we think you’ll really like these new enhancements.

And don’t forget—we have free training on product release features via 3sixty. It’s interactive, and takes less than 30 minutes.

1. It’s Here! Send to Multiple Data Extensions
This long-requested new feature gives you the ability to save time by sending to a large data set in one...

When people talk about the basic elements of a successful email marketing campaign, there are a lot of facets to consider—responsive design, relevant messaging, personalization, pertinent send time, and beyond. But one facet of a successful email campaign that many marketers regrettably overlook is deliverability. After all, no matter how great the email, if it doesn’t reach the inbox, it can’t be effective.

Which brings us to Sky Angel.

Sky Angel came to ExactTarget in 2007 after experiencing deliverability issues sending emails from their internal servers. As a faith and family television...

Over the next several weeks, we will be sharing guest articles from experts in the realm of content marketing. This week, Jeb Banner writes.

Jeb is CEO of SmallBox, an Indianapolis web design and marketing company. He is also a co-founder of the Speak Easy, a local co-working space. He is happily married to his wife, Jenny, and they have three amazing daughters.

I attended a local tech panel recently and was starting to space out when ExactTarget's CMO Tim Kopp said something that caught my attention: "Serving is the new selling." It reminded me of something my buddy Kevin Bailey from Slingshot...

Over the next several weeks, we will be sharing guest articles from experts in the realm of content marketing. This week, Steven Shattuck writes.

Steven is VP of Marketing at Bloomerang. He is a featured contributor to Social Media Today, and has been published in Search Engine Journal, Business2Community and the Content Marketing Institute. Steven has spoken at national and local conferences, and is frequently interviewed by traditional media outlets in Indianapolis for his expertise in social media marketing.

There's no shortage of content marketing advice out there. Now that most marketers...

ExactTarget partnered with Social Media Explorer's Jason Falls and Nichole Kelly to deliver a hands-on, full-day workshop that will leave you with a fully executable and measureable social media strategy by the end of the day! We couldn't be more excited about the content and format of the Social Media Domination Road Tour. You'll walk away with a strong foundation in the most important strategies to be successful in social media, including:

Social Media Strategy: You'll particiapte in hands-on exercises that guide you on the creation and evaluation of a successful social media strategy that is...

There’s been a lot of debate about whether social media increases or decreases brand loyalty. While it allows a customer to gain more access and get closer to the brand, it also allows competing brands to do the exact same thing. With more brands competing for customers, it is easy for consumers to switch brands.  

In the sports industry, empires are built on brand loyalty – specifically the loyalty of the organization’s fan base. As we have written several times, social media and sports seem to be a combination built for each other. Now that nearly all teams at all levels are on Twitter, it is...

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...

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. The 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...

There’s a big difference between a first-class flight and a pedi-cab ride. Similarly, there are many differences between an ROI-optimized digital marketing strategy and a half-baked, unprofitable one. As a travel and hospitality brand, you’re tasked with creating a seamless booking process for your customers—or else you might miss that narrow window of time when they’re most likely to convert.

Our own Jeff Rohrs recently shared some tips for reaching the digital traveler in a blog post for Ataway Exchange, where he’ll be speaking next month. Here are five of the top tips from Jeff’s post and...

I'm proud to announce the release of the newest predictions guide from Australia. The guide features predictions for emerging trends across email, mobile, social, cross-channel and marketing automation from industry leaders, including Jeff Bullas, Chris Baumann and Iggy Pintado as well as thought leaders from Adobe, Direct Marketing Association, ExactTarget and Microsoft.

“The new year provides new opportunities for marketers to create innovative, customer experiences that build loyalty and deliver business results across email, mobile, social media and the Web,” said Lee Hawksley,...