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Chapter 1:

Intro to Email Marketing

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing, at it’s core, is pretty straight forward. It’s the use of email messages sent to a list of subscribers to advertise or promote brands, products, offers, events, or pretty much anything you want. Now that “core” definition of email marketing may be simple, but email marketing has come a long way in recent years and there’s actually quite a bit more to it than that, today. We’ll be discussing those advances later in this guide, but first, let’s go over WHY you need email marketing in your business.

Why Email Marketing?

The need for email marketing is one of those things you just can’t argue with because the numbers are just too clear and astounding to ignore. According to a report by DMA, the average return on investment (ROI) for email marketing these days is $38 for every $1 spent. And 80% of business professionals report growth in customer acquisition and retention resulting from email marketing. There’s nothing else like it. Not even social media comes close. Leads are twice as likely to opt-in to your email list than they are to engage with your business on Facebook. And if you thought social media and search engines were the key to growing your business,

think again. Email conversion rates are higher than both search and social combined!

This should come as no surprise, really. Consumers have repeatedly insisted that they LIKE getting promotional messages via email. Over 70% of consumers say email is their preferred channel for business communication and 60% even say they want to receive your marketing emails weekly or MORE often. So, in light of all the recent trends and data, there’s really no questioning the critical importance of email marketing in your business. If you’re not using email marketing in your business, it’s time to start, right now. The only question is where to start.
Where to start Email Marketing.

So, as you’ve probably guessed, robust email marketing operations can’t exactly be run from your personal email account. You need an actual email marketing platform, commonly called an “autoresponder” service. These platforms can handle a wide range of email marketing processes from basic things like initial autoresponder sequences and weekly newsletter scheduling to more advanced stuff like automation workflows (which we’ll discuss later).

Popular platforms that can handle most of these functions include:

GetResponse
Aweber
ActiveCampaign
ConstantContact
iContact
CampaignMonitor
MailChimp
SendReach
ConvertKit
SendLane
SendGrid
VerticalResponse
MarketHero
InfusionSoft
Ontraport
As you can see, there are a ton of email marketing platforms out there for you to choose from. You should dedicate a day

or two to researching each one, comparing features and pricing, and determine which one is best for your business. Once you’ve chosen an autoresponder service, it’s time to start thinking about email marketing strategies.

Chapter 2: Email Marketing Strategies

There are a number of ways to leverage email marketing for your business. These range from super basic to super advanced and everything in between. Let’s start by differentiating between the two main types of email marketing messages.

Newsletters

Newsletters are one of the oldest types of marketing models. Both in the case of print mail and email. Basically, you send out broadcasts to your list in “real-time” to notify them of offers, promotions, events, and any kind of updates. By “real-time” we mean specific dates on a calendar, rather than “X” number of days after subscribing. Newsletters are great because they provide a lot of flexibility, can be planned well in advance, and allow you to adjust your marketing and customer relationships “on the fly” based on what’s going on in your industry at any given moment. Also, their “real-time” nature means everyone on your list is on the same page at any given time, which is great for moving large amounts of traffic at one time.

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Why You Should Market Your Business on Pinterest

There are so many social media platforms to choose from, that most business owners focus their time and attention on one or two. When deciding which sites are the best to brand and market your business, you must not forget the visually engaging Pins and Boards found on Pinterest.
There are a few standout ways in which Pinterest varies from other social media sites. While you can “follow” users, and they can “follow” you—it’s not about friends and followers.

Instead, it is about generating instant access to engaging visual imagery and informative Pins regarding any and every area of interest. These Pins can then be added to a user’s personal boards for future reference. Anyone can access any other users Pins by the category or keywords related to the Pin. While each Pin can have a bit of text or even a URL, the goal is not the “here’s where I am or what I’m doing” topic of most social media platforms. Instead, a relevant comment regarding the post, and what it represents is standard. Most importantly, unlike Facebook and Twitter where your posts peak engagement is rarely more than 5 days (or a few hours) Pins can continue to show up in search results indefinitely.

Still Not Convinced, Check Out These Statistics

If you're inclined to stick with the major players, like Facebook and Twitter, don’t write off Pinterest until you take a closer look at the statistics. First off, let’s talk about the shear size of your potential audience. Pinterest boasts an insane 150 million active users. Yeah, you heard that right. 70 million of those are in the US, with 80 million outside the US. As can be expected, Pinterest activity is proportionately astronomical. There are over 75 billion Pins, which have been posted to over 1 billion public and private user boards. Over 2 billion shopping pins are posted daily. 87% of users make purchases after seeing products or services on Pinterest and 93% use it with an eventual purchase (online or offline) as their primary goal, which makes Pinterest a no-brainer platform for those seeking to sell goods and services to a shopping-minded audience. And 72% of users make offline purchasing decisions based on Pinterest content. So it’s not just a goldmine for online businesses.

The average Pinterest user session is just over 14 minutes, which is very impressive when you compare that to most other social media platforms. 14 million rich pin articles are posted every day and a whopping 5% of all web traffic comes from Pinterest. 80% of Pinterest users access the site from a mobile device, so mobile marketing and mobile-friendly content is very important here, and 2 out of 3 pins are posted by businesses or brands, so you’ve got some competition. Oh, and if you happen to be in the culinary niche, guess what: there are over 1.7 billion recipes on Pinterest.

As for your audience make-up, 81 percent of Pinterest users are women, so the “Pinterest is for girls” stereotype clearly has some truth to it, at least from a market research perspective. But don’t worry, if your target audience is males, the percentage of men on the site is increasing rapidly, making up about 40% of new users recently. In case you were wondering, the most popular categories for these new male Pinterest users are technology, food and drink (big surprise, right?). As for age, millennials are using Pinterest just as much as Instagram. The median age of users is 40 years old, but the most active “pinners” are under the age of 40.
So, now that we’ve established why you should definitely be marketing on Pinterest, let’s talk about some Pinterest goals.

Chapter 2:
Pinterest Marketing Goals

Establishing marketing goals is critical to the success of your Pinterest marketing. Countless entrepreneurs and businesses have setup a Pinterest presence, made a few posts, and then let it sit untouched for months or even years. This is usually due to a lack or absence of goals. So, before you even begin establishing any sort of Pinterest presence or strategy, you need to establish clear marketing goals.

Your goals should be specific, measurable, and attainable. They can be long term, short term, or a mix of both. Deadlines and milestones can be helpful as well. “I want to increase my social following” would be an example of a bad goal that will likely result in your marketing efforts petering out after a while because there are no specific milestones. “I want to gain 1,000 likes by Christmas” is an example of a good goal. It’s specific, measurable, and certainly attainable. Below are some examples of the various goal categories you might be interested in.

Traffic to Website (Sales, Leads, Content)

Probably one of the most popular goals of Pinterest Marketing is to funnel your Pinterest traffic back to your own web properties. After all, most businesses don’t do business “on” Pinterest. You’re leveraging Pinterest to obtain traffic and convert that Pinterest traffic into brand-followers, leads, prospects, and customers. So maybe your goal is to get people to a landing page with a free offer where they can subscribe to your list and become a lead. Maybe they’re being sent to a sales page or an eCommerce store. Maybe you just want to do some content marketing and send them to your blog. Whatever the case, the end goal for a lot of businesses will likely be bringing Pinterest traffic AWAY from Pinterest and over to their own web properties.

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Chapter 1:
Intro to Twitter Ads

What is Twitter?

Twitter is an incredibly powerful online news and social networking service. It’s in a unique league of it’s own due to several features that set it apart from other social networking platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and GooglePlus. Firstly, one of the main functions and uses of Twitter is as a news/events broadcasting channel. In many ways it’s more like a news ticker than a social networking platform (albeit a news ticker where you get to choose what news you want to hear about by choosing who you follow). In fact, it’s become a must-have resource for news networks and journalists who want to stay in the know about anything newsworthy in their areas. Journalists make up almost 25% of all verified Twitter accounts. Secondly, Twitter is all about short burst broadcasts. All posts consist of tiny bite sized messages, called Tweets, of 140 characters or less, or some combination of video/images and text. Users can broadcast and receive these messages via SMS, Mobile App, and the Twitter website interface.

Interaction with these posts can take the form of replies, likes, and retweets, with the latter being the ultimate sign of a successful tweet. For businesses and organizations, Twitter is used not only as a place to network and broadcast news, but also as a way to keep audiences updated about content published elsewhere. For example, some businesses primarily use Twitter as the “hey look” step in their content marketing plan, in which they simply Tweet every time they publish a new blog post on their website or a new video to their YouTube channel.

Bottom line: Twitter is a powerful, “short & sweet” social broadcasting platform that can play a very significant and positive role in any business’ online marketing strategy.

Why Advertise on Twitter?

Advertising on Twitter could be one of the most impactful decisions you make in your business’ online marketing strategy. Why? Because of the shear numbers, for starters. There are well over 300 Million active users on Twitter (nope, not a typo) and that’s nothing compared to the total created accounts which is sitting at over 1.3 Billion (yes, with a “b”). Of that gargantuan amount, around half, 550 million, actually ever Tweet and another 500 million visit the site each month to read tweets and news without logging into their accounts. One-third of all US social media users are on Twitter and 80% of active users access the site via mobile. These days, anyone who is anyone is on Twitter, including over 80% of the world’s leaders.

So that’s all well and good from a purely personal perspective. Clearly the numbers are there. But what about business? Why should you market and advertise there? Well, if it’s any indication, 65.8% of US businesses with 100+ employees are marketing on Twitter. 58% of the world’s top brands have built and maintained enormous Twitter followings (100K or more). And how active are all these businesses on Twitter? 92% of them Tweet more than once per day, nearly half of them (42%) Tweet up to 5 times per day, and 20% of them go crazy and Tweet up to 10 times each day. Yeah, there’s a good bet that these companies have a very good reason for putting so much marketing energy into Twitter.

So the businesses and companies are clearly on board. But what do consumers think? Well, the average Twitter user follows 5 companies and 80% of them have mentioned a brand or business in a Tweet. 54% of consumers on Twitter reported that they have taken action in response to seeing brands mentioned in Tweets (e.g. Retweeting, going to the brand’s website, searching for the brand, etc). To finally drive the point home, Twitter revealed in 2016 that total paid ad engagements had grown a whopping 208% year-on-year. Yikes.

So, to conclude, the question clearly isn’t whether or not you should be advertising on Twitter. The question is: What are you waiting for?

Chapter 2: Establishing Goals

Establishing marketing goals is critical to the success of your Twitter advertising. Countless entrepreneurs and businesses have setup a Twitter presence, made a few posts and ads, and then let it sit untouched for months or even years. This is usually due to a lack or absence of goals. Also, your goals are will help you determine everything from your campaign objective to your budgeting and bidding. So before you even begin establishing any sort of Twitter ad strategy, you need to establish clear advertising goals.

Your goals should be specific, measurable, and attainable. They can be long term, short term, or a mix of both. Deadlines and milestones can be helpful as well. “I want to increase my Twitter following” would be an example of a bad goal that will likely result in your advertising efforts petering out after a while because there are no specific milestones. “I want to gain 1,000 followers by New Years” is an example of a good goal. It’s specific, measurable, and certainly attainable. Below are some examples of the various goal categories you might be interested in.