CaliberPulse

Do you know one of the most powerful tools to drive openings in email subject lines? Asking questions. Asking a question in your subject line piques your audience’s interest, and gives them a promise of what they will find in the body of the email. At Caliber, we’re big believers in subject line questions. This […]

Is a weak content marketing strategy hindering your social media efforts? Ten years ago, social media was an untrusted tactic that only the most cutting-edge marketers dared to explore. As the social movement gained traction, successful case studies emerged & people began to see how it could help their organizations.

Today, 95% of all email is considered spam. If you use email for your business, you must know the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act and how to protect your company from a violation. This act sets rules for how you can contact your current and potential customers by email and gives them rights for opting-out of future emails. If you don't follow the guidelines, you could face hefty fines for non-compliance – up to $16,000 per email.

They say “repetition is the mother of education.” In the pursuit of educating an audience and creating brand awareness and loyalty, your story must be told. Due to declining media outlets and staff, the best way to get your story told--the way you want to tell it, on a regular basis--is to tell it yourself. Become your own publisher via newsletters, blogs and social media platforms to relay a brand message, voice, personality and customer focus to loyal and potential clients on a regular basis.

Clients and seminar attendees frequently ask us when the best time to send email and post social media content is. The answer often depends on the business and the target market, but data have been released that reveal timing patterns of email and social media engagement. We recently participated in a HubSpot webinar discussing this very topic. Here are seven valuable suggestions.

“Email is the original social media” according to social media scientist, Dan Zarella. Zarella, on behalf of Hubspot, presented findings from an analysis of 9.5 billion Mail Chimp emails, survey responses, and focus group information in a webinar that we participated in last week. We’d like to share the top six takeaways with you. Try using some of this advice on your next email campaign and give us feedback on the results.

E-mail is one of the simplest and least expensive methods to market your business. There are no materials or overhead costs like with a paper mailing. You’ll know almost immediately whether the address you’ve sent to is still active (or spelled correctly) and you can ask for a read receipt to indicate whether your target has received the message. Perhaps best of all, you stand a good chance of getting a response since the easiest time to click on “Reply” or link to a Web page is while the target is actually reading the e-mail. Your number one e-mail marketing tool is your signature block. Use e-mail signatures to educate clients/customers and allow for them to refer business to you each time your message gets forwarded.

Successful retailers have generated business through the practice of “loss leader” sales & promotion (taking the loss on one product to get customer traffic in for upsales). The decisions are not made randomly; these items are selected with purpose and by crunching the numbers to estimate the ROI. That’s exactly how you should look at using the online membership coupon services such as restaurants.com or social promotions sites like groupon.com and livingsocial.com. In an American Express Open Forum Jennifer Van Grove, Associate Editor for Mashable, points out how the pomp and circumstance around Groupon’s success makes it easy to ignore the Posies Cafes of the world. Posies Cafe owner Jessie Burke describes offering a featured Groupon deal as, "the single worst decision I have ever made as a business owner thus far." Burke's primary problem was that after deeply discounting her goods -- $6 for $13 -- and handing over 50 percent of sales to Groupon, she was unable to cover her store's operating costs, including employee payroll.

Remember Betamax? Not many people do. In the late '70s and early '80s, Betamax, commonly known as "Beta," was a hot technology that allowed people to watch and distribute recorded video content at ease. Other similar formats, such as the more widely used VHS tape, were developed that held a similar role. In a few years, one format reigned and Betamax went into the history books as another piece of meaningless trivia. This week, Apple announced the iPad, a tablet device that combines the best elements of a laptop and a smart phone. It's today's VHS - a piece of innovative technology that will turn its competitors, such as Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook, into the next Betamax.