• Serena Williams and Mark Cuban invest $3m in a digital support network for moms.
• Waze now shows road toll prices along your driving route.
• Twitter rolls out a new desktop design that adds more customization options and a new navigation experience.
• Amazon competitors (Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, etc.) are trying to keep pace with Prime Day. Here are their best deals.

Is email marketing part of your channel strategy?

We hope so.

If not, here are 2 stats that’ll nudge you in the right direction:

• 59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel in terms of revenue generation.
• 80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention.

Even if you’re not in the B2B or retail space, email marketing is undoubtedly one of the best marketing channels. Why? You own the audience.

There’s nothing worse than your emails not getting to your audience though.

Today, we’re sharing some tips on how to avoid ending up in the spam filter.

1. You didn’t get permission to email them: Self-explanatory here. Make sure your visitors know what they’re signing up for. Don’t try to scam them into your email list. Be upfront and transparent from the get-go.
2. Your open rate sucks: The average open rate across all industries is 20.81%, according to hundreds of millions of email campaigns analyzed by MailChimp. It’s good practice to regularly clean your list. Cue “It’s so hard to say goodbye” by Boyz II Men and let them go.
3. You haven’t sent anything in a while: Consistency is key. Whether it’s daily, once a week or once a month; be consistent with your sends. Otherwise, your subs will forget who you are. If you haven’t sent anything in a while, send out a re-engagement campaign asap. Here are 10 good ones.
4. You’re using spam trigger words: Spam filters love words like “free, lowest price, buy, etc.” Before you hit the send button, run your email through Mail Tester to test the spammyness of your email. It’s free.
5. Big image, no text: We’re all for nice imagery in emails, but it’s a fine line. Make sure you’re using text as well as imagery and always, always split test.

See 10 more spam traps to avoid below.

Q&A interviews were a featured evergreen content format in yesterdays email. If you’re looking to transcribe your Q&A videos, we have a service for you.

It’s called Rev. If you need transcriptions (great for SEO) or captions, Rev should be your new jam. The turnaround times are fast and the prices are more than reasonable. We’ve personally used Rev and are big fans.

Perm, personality, and paintings. That pretty much sums up the late Bob Ross.

Ross was a PBS legend and painted over 1k landscapes for his TV show.

Here’s the thing though…

Nobody can find them. Enjoy today’s watch courtesy of ‘The New York Times.’