The Daily Carnage

The savvy marketer's hub for industry news, insights, resources, and culture.

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The Year of Slop

SEO bait, syrup sneakers, and more.

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Coolors

Looking for a pretty slick tool to up your color game? Y’all we just spent way too much time playing with a palette creation tool called Coolors.

We talked a bunch about how colors play a fairly big role in your homepage. So if you’re planning a redesign, or want to discover more colors that can complement your current brand, Coolors is the tool to use.

- It’s incredibly easy to use (almost game-like).
- Search through a 5 color palette with the push of the space bar.
- Create your individualized palette with the locking feature.
- Use the inspector feature to input colors you already have.
- Upload an inspiring photo and automatically extract the palette.

Build a Better Site with Elementor

We’re about to spill secret sauce – ready? One of the main tools used in the project with BILT was a nifty tool is called Elementor. Like we said above, among other important tasks, the BILT team needed the ability to make changes to their own site.

We turned to Elementor as it offers the ability to edit pages in a completely visual way. And hang on to your socks folks ’cause there’s more to this tool…

Control every aspect of your web design workflow from one place
Reap the power of 100% visual design
Build websites that load faster, and speed up the process of building them
Offer pixel perfect design, yet produces 100% clean code
Integrate your site with your favorite marketing tools – generate more traffic, leads & conversions.

Can you tell we’re big fans?

Free Intent Data Tool

It’s true, buying has slowed in recent weeks, but not everything’s on hold. So how can you find out who’s still searching for what you sell, and who should be left alone for a while? It’s like they say, “work smarter not harder.”

And your key to working smarter is Intent data. It can provide clues about which businesses are actively researching topics relevant to your business across various digital channels. In other words, you get the opportunity to prioritize email outreach, ad targeting, and direct mail campaigns.

Bombora’s free Company Surge® Alerts tool helps you quickly get started with B2B Intent data. It takes less than 10 minutes to create an account and you’ll receive:

an immediate report of 10 companies showing elevated interest in your topics
a refreshed report delivered to your inbox every Monday morning.

Ready to work smarter?

Text Overlay Tool

While we’re on the subject of Facebook and Instagram, let’s pivot to ads for a hot minute.

Stop guessing whether or not the text in your creative will get disapproved or affect your Reach. Facebook’s Text Overlay Tool is a go-to resource for us when we’re getting creative prepared for ads. Just upload the creative, and bang, the tool gives you a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Save time and give it a go.

Captions on Facebook Video Ads

Captioned videos on Facebook should go together like PB&J. Why? Well, we’re gonna tell ya.

85% of a video on Facebook is watched without sound.
76% of video ads need sound to be understood

What do you do when the majority of a video is viewed without sound but needs sound to be understood? Captions, my friend, and here’s how to do it.

Begin creating an ad in Ads Manager by clicking Create.
Choose an objective and then click Continue.
Choose your targeting, placements, budget and then click Continue.
In the Formats section, choose Single Video or Slideshow.
Click Upload Video / Upload Slideshow or Browse Library to find a video for your ad.
In the Video Captions section, choose to Upload Your Own or Generate Automatically.
- If you upload your own, a window will appear. Click Select file and find the .srt file you wish to upload.
- If you choose to generate automatically, a Review Your Captions window will appear. Hover over the caption to edit or delete the caption. You can correct grammatical and spelling errors or manage length of time.
After you select the file, click Save. Your captions upload to the video or slideshow.

Email Marketing with DirectLync

It takes diligence and creativity to stay on top of your email strategy, especially since inboxes are crowded with emails. That’s why a flexible, easy-to-use editor that allows you to customize the email experience for your readers is worth its weight in gold.

Cue DirectLync’s Email tool.

Where most email editors lack flexibility and customization, (unless you’re proficient in HTML) DirectLync’s drag and drop email editor gives you the flexibility you need to create the perfect email without knowing any code.

But here’s the kicker – you can personalize your readers’ experience with the ability to hide content blocks on desktop or mobile. And to top it all off, you’ll have access to over 500,000 free stock photos to create graphically engaging emails.

Check it out and see what others have to say about DirectLync!

Coffitivity

Have you ever noticed eureka moments happen during a shower? What about the productive feeling you get when you work out of a coffee shop? Well, there’s proven science that suggests tiny distractions help your creativity.

Coffitivity capitalized on this notion. This tool gives the ambient sounds of a cafe to boost your creativity and heighten your productivity.

We’re definitely giving this tool a go this week!

Marvel

No, we’re not going to ramble about the superhero universe. Although, for the record, we could. See we stumbled across this web design tool called Marvel. It seems most useful in producing quick ideas, refining an interface, or building prototypes. This all-online tool allows you to…

Create beautiful wireframes, mockups, website or app prototypes for any device right from your browser.
Share work by showcasing the user journey and site hierarchy with realistic interactions. And no coding required.
Optimize your design-to-development process with our Handoff tool.
Give your team and stakeholders full visibility across every project.
Collaborate on each stage of the design process unified in one platform

Marvel has a variety of pricing options, but there is a free version with one user on one project.

Optimize Your SaaS Landing Pages Like an Expert

Here’s an insightful guide tailored to getting the most out of your SaaS landing pages. Not only does it come from Unbounce (a pretty dang comprehensive landing page platform), but they’ve teamed up with Talia Wolf and Active Campaign to corner the market on landing page conversion rate optimization expertise.

In this free guide, you’ll learn all about fixing your underperforming pages, best practices for optimization, and creating campaigns well-tailored to your customers’ needs.