You might’ve heard by now that we’re putting on a killer digital marketing conference in our hometown of Pittsburgh, PA.
But if ya haven’t heard, well, we’re putting on a killer digital marketing conference in our hometown of Pittsburgh on Friday, April 13th. Yep, that’s Friday the 13th. It’s really the only day that the Carnage could hold a conference when you think about it.
And good news! Tickets are only $99. But, that pricing is good for this week only.
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Missed Your Marketing Goals? Here’s What to Do Next
Let’s talk about something no marketer wants to talk about…failure. Sometimes you do everything in your power and you still fail to hit your marketing goals. It happens to the best of us (Carnage writers included).
When you do miss your goals, you gotta know what to do next. You can’t just ignore your misses and pretend that nothing ever happened. Well, you could, but then nothing is going to change. You’ll just miss your goals again next quarter. So here’s what you do:
Step 1: Reassess your goals and take a serious look at them. You should do this in one of two ways:
- Ask yourself, “are these even the right goals? Or are they focused on the wrong problem?” For example, if your goal was to get more leads by increasing organic traffic, great! But, if your conversion rate on organic traffic is 0.3%, not great. Increase your conversion rates by channel, before focusing on increasing traffic from that channel.
- Are your goals too aggressive? Yeah, you wanna set aggressive goals. But, if you set the bar too high, you’re just setting yourself up for failure. To fix this, start by properly reviewing trends. For example, if your goal is to increase organic traffic in Q3, but you’re comparing it to Q2, you might be setting yourself up for failure. Instead, look at year-over-year trends.
Step 2: Refocus. Okay, so you’ve reassessed, now it’s time to refocus. Make sure your entire team is on the same page. Anyone that might slightly impact your new goals should understand what changes are happening and why. Transparency is a big success factor when it comes to hitting your goals.
Step 3: Keep going! If you get a month into your new strategy, and things aren’t looking as good as you hoped, stay the course! Switching your strategy halfway through is likely going to make things worse, not better. It’s easy to forget that marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes you just need that little reminder.
More insight inside →
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20 Email Marketing Best Practices That Will Improve Results
A healthy, happy email list is one of the greatest gifts we can ask for as marketers. Of course, it’s not a gift; it’s a whole lotta elbow grease and strategy. Take it from one of our recent blog posts about growing our subscriber list.
Maintaining and growing your list is one thing. Ensure you’re keeping your subscribers engaged is the next. The article below is serving up a long list of best practices to help you do just that.
20 is a lot to squeeze in here, but we’ll do our best to show you a lot right here.
- Send it to yourself to ensure there are no typos, the images show up, the links work, etc.
- Make it easy to subscribe. Embed signup CTAs throughout your website or blog, add a signup form to your Facebook page, and regularly tweet out a link to your subscribe page.
- Use a double opt-in (and keep it short and sweet). Double opt-in involves sending a person a confirmation email after they sign up, letting them know that they signed up.
- Develop a cadence. How frequently do you want to send your emails?
- Or, give people options. Rather than guessing for them, you can always let people choose the frequency themselves.
- Automate your outreach.
- Keep it true to you. Your emails should match your brand. The colors and font choices should be the same. The tone should read like the same voice of the person who wrote your web copy or your latest Facebook post.
- Optimize for mobile.
- Test, test, test. Things like subject lines and preheader text, send times and days of the week, format and layout, featured image or copy, CTA placements and types of buttons…
- Track, analyze, and review. Email marketing is not a one-and-done thing. Once you send an email, you’re not done with that particular email—you’re just onto the next step. Things you’ll want to review: Open rates, click rates, A/B test results, conversion numbers, and popular content
Hey, and that’s just the half of it! If you’re not sure where to start on email marketing or need to give yours extra loving, let us help! On our list of mastered skills, email marketing is def at the top.
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It’s All Run & Games
Until someone loses an eye. Just kidding. The worst thing that would probably happen to you in Nike’s latest campaign stunt is twisting an ankle.
To promote their new Epic React running shoes, Nike teamed up with Wieden & Kennedy Shanghai to create an immersive in-store experience for shoppers to test them. You tie on the sneakers and jog on a treadmill while your video-game avatar races through a fantasy world.
If this doesn’t sound like the coolest way to market a pair of sneakers, we don’t know what is. You’re basically Mario in a fresh pair of kicks, running and jumping through a prismatic, pixelated playground! Everyone who tries it gets a 10-second clip of their experience that’s designed for social sharing.
Unfortunately, the 3-minute experience is only running at Nike stores in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Chengdu. Still extremely awesome to witness. Check it out below.
“I don’t know the rules of grammar… If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think.”
David Ogilvy
