HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

How the Right Tools Can Help Remedy Your Website's Traffic Problem

Corey Eridon — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:00:00 GMT

Got low site traffic? If you're an inbound marketer, you know that investing in expensive tools and technology won't solve that problem for you -- you need to consistently create content to do that. But if you're just creating content and lack the right tools and technology to back up your efforts, you'll soon find you've hit a traffic wall.

We've talked a lot about how to increase site traffic on this blog, but we haven't given a lot of real estate to the subject of using the right tools to support your efforts. To remedy that, we've not only written an entire whitepaper about using technology to support your marketing efforts, but this blog post will highlight an important section from that whitepaper that teaches us exactly how it can help you grow site traffic, too!

Setting the Stage: Identifying Your Traffic Problem

Let's say you already have a robust analytics package in place. You take a look at your funnel, and your problem becomes abundantly clear: you don't get much traffic to the top of your funnel. Just take a look at your numbers!

So a decent chunk of the people who visit your site convert to leads -- even better, 75% of people who become leads on your site end up converting to customers! Your problem isn’t converting visitors to leads, and it’s not converting to leads to customers. Your problem, as you can see in the table above, is simply getting people to your website.

So what do you need to do to attract visitors to your website? In the traditional playbook, the answer was simple: buy traffic. Today, the smartest marketers are focusing on search engine optimization, blogging, and social media. In fact, HubSpot's 2012 State of Inbound Marketing Report showed that SEO, blogging, and social media were most frequently cited by marketers as channels with a below average cost-per-lead, and channels that were growing in importance. So it makes sense that marketers might want to invest in some technology to make their efforts with these channels even more effective. Hey, if your CPL is below average you have some change leftover! So how do you ensure that change isn't wasted? Here's what to look for when you start shopping.

What to Look for in SEO Technology

Search engine optimization is no longer the sexiest new online marketing technique (social media stole that honor some time ago), but it's still critical to generating site traffic.

There are two basic pieces of search engine optimization -- on page, and off page. On-page tactics focus on the code you can actually change on a page. The good news is that on-page SEO is easy to control; the bad news is that it's not critically important. Off-page SEO, on the other hand, revolves around the links that go into your site. Ready for some more good news/bad news? The good news is that off-page SEO is super important. The bad news is that it's harder to control. But a marketer looking to generate more site traffic needs to be concerned with both, and understand these three main factors when evaluating technology that will help them pursue better on- and off-page SEO.

1) Keyword Analysis - Keyword analysis should be the first step in any SEO process. It helps you understand which keywords you're ranking for now, and which keywords you should try to improve your rank for. To get this kind of insight, you need to be able to generate a report of all your keywords, and compare them by traffic, difficulty, and current rank. Those factors should dictate what keywords you need to focus on.

You don't want to waste your time trying to rank for keywords for which you're not currently ranking, that are highly contested, and that generate relatively low traffic levels. Instead, you want to focus on keywords that you're already ranking for but could have a higher rank, that generate large volumes of traffic, and that aren't very competitive. A good keyword tool will help you find these keywords.

2) Website Tools Designed for SEO - Keyword analysis tools help you develop metrics and plans for SEO; the right website tools will help you actually implement your SEO plan. When picking website tools, make sure that it's easy to change page attributes like the title, the meta description, and the keywords, and that new pages are created with default optimization like keywords in the URL address, and automatic sitemap generation. These are all on-page SEO elements that you can fully control and optimize.

3) Page-level SEO Analysis - The final key piece of SEO technology is page-level analytics. You need to be able to assess the SEO quality (and inbound links) of each of the pages on your website. Ideally, you'll be able to get a report on each of your pages, listing inbound links, their authority, as well as keywords the pages rank for, and any SEO errors on the page.

What to Look for in Blogging Software

SEO is a critical part of building traffic to your website, but it shouldn't be your only strategy. SEO tactics need to be coupled with content -- ideally, blog content! Think of it this way ... blogging is kind of like playing the lottery; would you rather have a fixed level of opportunities to rank well for a given term, or hundreds of thousands? Every time you write a new blog post, you're giving yourself another opportunity to win the SEO lotto. So if you're blogging to improve your SEO, and by extension your site traffic, here's what you should look for in a piece of technology to help supercharge your efforts.

1) Ease of Use - You need to be comfortable using your blogging software multiple times a week. Writing is hard enough, so you don't need to make matters worse with difficult software. Make sure it's easy to create, edit, schedule, and publish a post. Managing comments should also be simple.

2) Built-in SEO Tools - Business blogs should be designed with SEO in mind. The post URLs should have good SEO structure and page-level SEO features. You should have an easy way to add or change keywords for specific posts. Ideally, you'll also be able to get SEO feedback like keyword suggestions as you write.

3) Social Sharing and Email Subscription - Social sharing capability is a critical -- and fairly standard -- component of any blogging platform. Most blogging platforms make it easy to share your posts through social media. In addition to social media following, make sure your readers can subscribe to your blog by email, too.

What to Look for in Social Media Tools

Blogging and SEO are absolutely critical to driving traffic to your website, but they often struggle without a third element: social media. For consistent traffic growth, businesses need to continue building a community of fans and followers on social networks with whom they can share their optimized content and attract new site visitors. So it only makes sense that if you're investing in SEO and blogging software to improve your site traffic, you'll want some social media software to help you out, too. Here's what any social media software should have to help solve your traffic problem.

1) Social Media Monitoring - The first rule of social media software is don't talk about social media software. Just kidding, the first rule is actually, "listening." Many marketers do this for Facebook; then they hop over to LinkedIn; then they move over to Twitter; and before long they have 5 tabs open in their browser and spend the whole day hitting refresh. In other words, platform-hopping is complicated and time consuming. Ideally, your social media software allows you to monitor most social media discussions within one single application.

2) Integrated, Multi-channel Publishing - Chances are your customers and prospects are clustered across different social media sites. So if you want to reach all your customers and prospects, you need to publish to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other sites where your audience hangs out. It's a lot of work to publish a single piece of content on multiple sites, so you should make sure your social media publishing tools allow you to publish to all of them at once.

3) Easy Social Media Following - Building a following is a critical part of social media. The bigger and more engaged your network, the greater your ability to use social media to generate traffic for your site. You should have an easy way to encourage your community to follow you on your website, on your blog, in your emails, and in other places that you generate lots of new traffic.

4) Reach Tracking - Reach is a key metric for marketing teams. It's an indication of your ability to generate attention and traffic. A great piece of content will have a much bigger impact if it's driven by great reach. Your social media tools should make it easy to track the aggregate reach of your social media channels.

A Note on the Importance of Integration

All of these components are critical to a great piece of SEO, blogging, or social media software; but integration with one another -- and your other marketing technology, as well -- saves marketers time, money, and a whole lotta grief.

Let's take your SEO tools, for example. Wouldn't it be nice if your page-level SEO tools were integrated with your website management software? It would be a whole lot easier to fix errors that the report turns up if that were the case. Similarly, if your SEO tools are integrated with your marketing analytics tools, you can see the leads and customers generated from the keywords you're targeting. Same for your blogging tool -- if it's integrated with your marketing analytics tool, you can track the blog posts that drove the most leads and customers. And your social media publishing tools should be operating right alongside your website, blog, and landing page tools! Just think how much easier your life would be if you could track the social media activity of contacts in your marketing database, and track the leads and customer generated by social media.

The point is, you can do all of these things separately, but time is rarely an excess resource within a marketing department. If all of your tools and technologies are integrated with one another, you spend less time compiling data and reports, and more time analyzing and improving upon your marketing activities.

Want to learn what other marketing problems the right technology can help you solve? Download our free whitepaper How to Avoid Marketing Technology Paralysis.

Image credit: zzpza

Simple Step-by-Step Instructions for Setting Up a Facebook Ad Campaign

Dan Slagen — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:30:00 GMT

Between the IPO, debate around GM's ad performance, and Zuckerberg's recent marriage, there's been a lot of controversy -- or at least chatter -- around Facebook of late.

As we look across the digital landscape, however, we still get a lot of questions regarding Facebook ads and how to set them up, especially with the recent changes within the user interface.

This post is not to debate the efficiency of Facebook ads (I did that last week), but rather to show new users how to set up Facebook ads, and current users how to improve their existing ad campaigns by highlighting some of the nuances in the setup process. Let's get started.

How to Set Up Ads on Facebook

Step 1 - Create an Ad. When logged in to Facebook, look at the top right hand corner of your browser. You'll see a green button that says 'Create an Ad.' Click it and you'll be on your way.

Step 2 - Select What to Advertise. There are a bunch of options here. You can promote URLs (on or off Facebook), pages, applications, events, places or domains. For example, you might want to drive users off of Facebook to an external URL. Or perhaps you'd like to promote your Facebook page and get more 'likes' -- know as 'connections' in Facebook speak -- so that you can grow your fan base more quickly. As you can see below, I've chosen to promote our Inbound 2012 Marketing Conference!

Step 3 - Set Up the Ads. For Facebook ads, you'll usually need to write some short copy and confirm your URL. An ad preview will display on the right hand side so you can see how the ad will look once it's live. For certain ad campaigns, such as driving likes to your page, you won't need to write additional copy.

Step 4 - Target by Geography. Select the geographical region in which you want your ad to run. Pay particular attention to the checkbox that includes cities within 10, 25 or 50 miles of the region you've selected, as you may or may not want this additional targeting. Get as targeted as you can here, as the capabilities include country, state/province, city, and zip code; or you can even try to type in your target city as I've done below with Boston.

Step 5 - Target by Age and Gender. Select which genders and age groups you'd like to see your ad. Be sure to uncheck the box to the right, or else Facebook will be at liberty to show your ads "slightly" outside of your target market.

Step 6 - Target Your Ad to Precise Interests. At this stage, you can target users based on their hobbies, status, interests, ethical background, and more. Pretty crazy, right? Options include both broad categories and very precise interests, some of which you can see below.

Step 7 - Define Precise Interests. If the particular interests that you'd like to target your ad towards are not included within broad targeting, then this is the option for you. Simply type in the keywords that are most relevant, and Facebook will automatically show you options. For instance, I typed in "marketing" below and results instantly display for my exact keyword, as well as related keywords that I may also want to focus on.

Step 8 - Or, Use Broad Categories. Facebook also provides plenty of options within their broad categories. If you see categories here that fit your target market, simply check the box and your ad will automatically be included within the chosen segment.

Step 9 - Target Your Ad Based on Connections. While you can target by interests, age, and geographical location, Facebook also offers ad targeting based on connections. For example, you can target people who are connected to your business page or specific apps, and you can even target their friends. As you can see in the sample Facebook ad below, I've targeted people whose friends are connected to HubSpot. The strategy here is that you can target like-minded users who have an interest in your company.

Additional targeting features within this section include sexual orientation, relationship status, language, education and workplaces.

Step 10 - Set Your Objective and Pricing. This one is tricky. See the pop up below? If you aren't careful, Facebook will charge you on CPM pricing (cost per 1000 times your ad is displayed) rather than CPC (cost per click your ad receives). If you prefer CPM, then don't worry about this. But if you prefer CPC, like I do, then be sure to select "click on my ad or sponsored story" in the drop down like I did below.

Step 11 - Review Your Ad. Be sure to review your Facebook ad before taking it live, and check everything to ensure you know exactly how you're paying, when the ads are live, who the ads are targeting, and that every other detail below is as you intended!

Step 12 - Launch Your Facebook Ad! Click that blue "Place Order" button you see above to take your ad live. As always, be sure to watch your Facebook ads very closely during launch to ensure that everything is working properly, and that your budget is being spent wisely. Treat your Facebook campaign like any other well strategized campaign, and manage it with precision and diligence.

Have you set up a Facebook ad campaign yet? Were you happy with the results you saw?

Image credit: Diana Garcia BOG

The Inbound Marketer's Complete Guide to Newsjacking

Corey Eridon — Wed, 23 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Breaking news, you guys! Something really important happened in your industry. Or in an industry tangentially related to yours. Or ... somewhere in the world ... completely unrelated to your industry.

If you found an opportunity to write a blog post, launch a social media campaign, get press coverage, or generate some sort of sales or lead gen offer in all of those scenarios, then you're a newsjacker -- and that's a great thing to be as an inbound marketer! If you haven't heard of newsjacking before, well then this is the blog post for you. Without further ado, let's break down what newsjacking is, why every inbound marketer should be doing it, and exactly how you can do it yourself!

What is Newsjacking?

Newsjacking refers to the practice of capitalizing on the popularity of a news story to amplify your sales and marketing success. The term was popularized due to David Meerman Scott's book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Basically, news is breaking every second in this crazy world of ours, and there's a point at which marketers have a unique opportunity to ride the popularity wave of a breaking story to benefit their business in some way. Now, the popularity dies down pretty quickly -- perhaps in hours, usually in days, if you're lucky, in weeks -- but the impact of seizing the story early to benefit your business is big ... especially compared to the effort you had to put in to get in on the action. Take a look at a visual representation of this phenomenon with Scott's timeline:

Makes sense, right? It's why we at HubSpot write blog posts when Google makes an algorithm update or, most recently, changes to the way they display search results. If people are going to be talking about it, and it affects our audience, we should be writing about it and getting in on the action!

But it extends beyond just news directly related to your industry. Scott explains the concept of newsjacking stories that aren't directly related to your business in his book with a Kate Winslet example. That's right, I'm working Kate Winslet into this blog post. You may or may not remember, but last year Kate Winslet was staying with Sir Richard Branson at a private retreat in the British Virgin Islands when lightning struck the home, setting it on fire. Branson's elderly mother was in the home, and Winslet carried her out of the fire to safety.

Pretty amazing, right? News outlets certainly thought so, and the story was picked up worldwide. But you know who else thought it was amazing? The London Fire Brigade who, within a few hours of the story's release, wrote a story for their website in which they offered Winslet a chance to train with their firefighters at their local training center. They let reporters in on their offer, and with little or no money the London Fire Brigade had tons of site traffic, inbound links, and media exposure to do with as they pleased. And that, my friends, is newsjacking!

Why You Should Newsjack

Here's the thing about newsjacking ... to do it well, you have to be quick. That's also one of the biggest benefits of newsjacking! Marketers often get so caught up in the details of a campaign or bogged down by the prospect of writing a blog post that they become paralyzed, and don't actually end up doing anything at all. Newsjacking requires marketers to, in the immortal words of Nike, just do it.

But boosting marketers out of an inactivity funk isn't the only benefit to newsjacking. It also yields SEO benefits, improves your brand's reputation, and drives highly targeted traffic that can turn into leads and even sales -- and it does it all really, really quickly at a very low cost. Consider this scenario that HubSpot finds itself in pretty frequently ... just last week, in fact:

1) Google released the Knowledge Graph, and a coworker who knew my penchant for newsjacking immediately sent me a link to the story.

2) I quickly wrote a blog post about the Knowledge Graph, explaining what inbound marketers should know about the new release and its impact on organic search results.

3) The post generated double digit inbound links, and improved our organic search rankings -- especially for queries related to Google's Knowledge Graph, as Google's algorithm rewards websites who publish content about news stories quickly since their freshness update late last fall.

4) The post has also driven thousands of visitors to our blog and main website, due to not just the organic search visibility we gained from writing the content, but because of the hundreds of social shares the post received, too. After all, everyone wants to be the first to break industry news on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+!

5) Because we always include calls-to-action in our blog posts, newsjacking this story also generated leads for our sales organization, some of which will convert into future HubSpot customers. Plus, we know exactly what to talk about with those leads when we nurture them and speak to them on the phone -- SEO and the Knowledge Graph!

6) HubSpot's credibility increases as we prove to our audience that we will always stay up to date on important industry news and teach them what they need to know to be great inbound marketers.

Convinced that newsjacking is something you should incorporate into your inbound marketing repertoire? This next section will tell you how!

How to Newsjack

You're about to learn how to newsjack, and it might look like a lot of steps. Don't be intimidated! Newsjacking is a pretty simple process, and remember -- the key to doing it successfully is thinking and acting fast. So while I've broken this out into many steps to make it easier to digest, when you do this for yourself for the first time, you'll see just how swiftly you move through the process.

Step 1: Set Up Alerts

To find stories to newsjack, you have to constantly monitor the news. You could spend the entire day reading the internet, or you could use technology to make monitoring much easier and less time consuming! I'm assuming you prefer the latter ;-) Set up an RSS feed that includes major news outlets as well as industry publications that will alert you to both natural and out-of-the-box opportunities. And don't forget about leveraging social media, particularly Twitter, as a means of stumbling upon newsjacking opportunities. We use our own social media monitoring tool to set up mentions of terms we'd like to monitor for, and perhaps newsjack!

Step 2: Check Keyword Search Volume

Once you find a story you'd like to newsjack, you'll need to create some content around it. Before you get writing, take a few moments to research the search volume around variations of the keyword phrase you'd like to target. Yes, Google's algorithm will reward you for writing about a news item first, but wouldn't you like to get that extra little organic boost because you chose to target a variation of your keyword phrase with higher search volume? For example, did you know that the phrase "what is the google panda update" has an approximate global monthly search of 14,800, while the phrase "google panda update explanation" has (gasp!) no search volume? That's a good piece of information to have when creating and optimizing your content, and all from just a few measley minutes of keyword research!

Step 3: Read About Your Topic

I know, you want to get to the actual newsjacking already, right? One more thing before you start creating content and promoting! Find the primary source of the news story, and what others have already written about the news story. This is important for two reasons: it allows you to maintain originality, and credibility.

Think about it this way -- if the London Fire Brigade offered their free fire training lessons to Kate Winslet a few hours after another group did the exact same thing, they'd look foolish and behind the times, not to mention their effort would be wasted. Similarly, if we had written a blog post explaining the Google Knowledge Graph based off of just one news outlet's understanding of the change, we could easily pass along incorrect information, or at the very least not present the entire scope of the story. Find the primary source, gauge what others have written, and get a firm grasp on the story before you proceed to the actual newsjacking.

Step 4: Write Quickly, but Accurately

Now that you're well versed in the breaking story you're going to newsjack, get to writing ... and do it fast! Usually when you write a blog post, you might spend time sifting through stock photography to find the best image to accompany the post. Or perhaps you experiment with formatting to see whether your list should be in bullet or number format. While we applaud your perfectionist nature, newsjacking is not the time for such things -- you want to be the first to respond to a news story, after all! As long as your content is accurate and has been read through once by a trusted colleague, the nitpicky things many of us typically do before publishing content should be reserved for later.

Step 5: Differentiate Yourself

You should always inject your own angle when you're newsjacking. Ask yourself -- what makes this story interesting to my audience, specifically? For example, a developer could newsjack the Google Knowledge Graph story by writing about how their algorithm was engineered, as opposed to writing about how it affects marketers and SEOs. Or maybe you're a tad late to the game and someone has already written your angle to the story. That doesn't mean you can't write it better -- perhaps you can be more thorough, more clear, or provide more meaningful examples. When you're newsjacking, you need to provide some reason for people to reference your content above all the other content out there!

Step 6: Get the Word Out

The last step to a successful newsjacking is actually marketing your marketing. Yes, you might get some natural traction from organic search, but that alone won't give you the power punch you wanted that made you newsjack in the first place. Let people know about your spin on the story! For example, we share all of our newsjacking content on our social networks to extend its reach. But we also foster long term relationships with partners and journalists who can help get the word out there when relevant. After all, others are always looking for juicy content to keep their web content flowing -- if you can be the one to offer them a unique story, you can bet they're going to give your newsjacking some coverage!

Do you already incorporate newsjacking into your inbound marketing strategy? Share your tips and tricks in the comments!

Image credit: Pasukaru76

The Technology You Need to Fix Dismal Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rates

Pamela Vaughan — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:00:00 GMT

Technology. It’s supposed to be a marketer’s friend -- the tool that democratizes and empowers marketing everywhere. Except ... how often does that happen?

Instead of empowering, it paralyzes. Marketers see all the choices -- marketing automation, social media, landing pages, content management systems, pay-per-click platforms, social tracking tools, social publishing tools, social advertising tools, marketing analytics, lead management tools, lead tracking tools -- they get overwhelmed, and they freeze or veer off course into a doomed solution.

So sure, maybe you've got the top of your marketing funnel all figured out. You've got a good amount of traffic flowing into your website, and your visitor-to-lead conversion rate is solid. But if you're like so many marketers, you may still be unsatisfied with your ability to generate the customers and revenue you want to be generating. If this is your case, the following excerpt from our new ebook, How to Avoid Marketing Technology Paralysis: A Guide for Marketing Technology Buyers, will help you understand the technology you need to help you convert leads into customers.

What to Look for in Lead Nurturing Tools

There is no shortage of email marketing software options, and you could read volumes about the differences between the various flavors. Here are the most important things to consider:

Choose Sending and Tracking Tools That Your Team Can Manage

There are lots of different levels of sending and tracking in email marketing software, but you have to make sure you pick the sending and tracking tools that you can manage. Make sure you don’t get stuck with a sending and tracking tool that goes beyond your needs and that is too complicated for you -- or one that is under-powered. The best way to find this fit is to run a trial of a potential new vendor.

If You’re Using a Shared IP, Make Sure You Have a High Sender Score

For most marketers, a shared IP address is the way to go. It’s far more cost-efficient, and less complicated to manage. Only there’s a catch: If your email service provider’s shared IP has a low Sender Score, many of your emails won’t be delivered. Make sure you find out if your ESP has a good Sender Score to ensure people actually see your emails.

Make Sure It's Easy to Manage Lists

Many email marketing programs make it difficult to manage lists. You have to export your lists from one app, then load them to another app, then deal with all the footing issues. You want a seamless way to manage lists, ideally within the email creation process itself.

Utilize Suppression Lists

Be sure any new email service provider you use allows you to upload suppression lists. A suppression list will prevent you from sending to all the email addresses on your main list that have unsubscribed. If you don’t upload a suppression list, you’ll end up emailing people who have already unsubscribed -- and those recipients will be unhappy, mark your message as SPAM, and hurt your Sender Score and deliverability rate.

Be Happy With Your Email Templates

Many marketers sign up for a new email service provider only to discover, halfway through producing their first email, that they can’t live with the template. Set up a trial with your
new email service provider and make sure you’re happy with the email templates they have available.

Make Sure There Are Custom Fields

The ability to customize and personalize email messages doesn’t have to be a complicated feature. If you collect your leads in the same application as the one the one from which you send your emails, you should be able to add custom fields in just a click!

Look for Integration

Your email tool should have good integration with your marketing database and list management tools. Without that integration, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time going back and forth between different tools as you download and upload lists. You should also ensure that your email tool has good integration with your marketing analytics platform.

What to Look for in Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is another key tool to help improve your lead-to-customer conversion rate. If you’re able to create well-timed, relevant, personalized interactions with leads, you’ll be able to engage them, build their trust, and turn them into customers. Of course, marketing automation runs the risk of appearing overly automated and spammy, too, so you need to proceed with caution. Here’s what you should look for in marketing automation software:

Be Clear on the Staffing Level it Requires

Marketing automation automates the email flow, but not the process of managing those email flows. Make sure you’re clear with your marketing automation vendor about the amount of time it typically takes to manage the types of marketing automation campaigns you need to run to achieve your goals. You don’t want to sign up for a marketing automation package, then get a big bad surprise when you discover how much time it takes to run it.

Don’t Pay for Tools You Don’t Use

Many marketers sign up for expensive automation solutions loaded with deep, sophisticated features, but end up only using a handful of them. Make sure you buy the tools you use ... and use the tools you buy. If you buy too much, the complexity will be overwhelming and will get in the way of doing what you wanted to do.

Make Sure You Have Content or Conversion Assist Reporting

Content is the fuel for marketing automation campaigns. It’s the stuff that produces engagement in your emails and draws prospects in. Most marketers guess which content will create the best engagement with their users. Don’t do that. Use tools like Conversion Assists reporting to measure which pieces of content are helping to convert the most prospects to leads and customers. Then use that content in your automation flow.

Get Support for the Trigger Actions You Want

Marketing automation typically means setting up flows of actions to take on a prospect once they hit a specific trigger or condition in your system. Before you commit to any specific
system, make sure it supports the triggers and actions you want. Key actions to look for are emailing, list actions (adding a contact to a list) and contact actions (changing a value in
the contact record).

Yet Again, Look for Integration

Your marketing automation platform should be tightly integrated with your email marketing, list
management, and marketing database tools. For example, you should be able to use emails created in your email marketing tool as part of your marketing automation flow. Your contacts lists should be able to trigger automation actions. And, of course, all this should be measurable in the same marketing analytics platform that you use to measure everything else.

What to Look for in Your Marketing Database

As a marketer, you need to be able to manage all of your contacts. You need a place to collect all of the leads that you accumulate, and add data to their record as you gather it. Which emails did a contact click on? Which pages on the site did they visit? When did they tweet about you? All this information should be stored in your contact database -- and if you do it the right way with the right tools, it will help you improve your lead-to-customer conversion rate. Here are the keys for tracking your marketing database:

Robust Contact Tracking

Your contacts are the core of your business -- they’re the people you are trying to build relationships with so that you can nurture them down the funnel. The more information a contact database tracks, the more it will help you in that nurturing process. Before you decide on a marketing database tool, go through all of your marketing activities, and make sure that as many of them as possible are being collected in your new marketing database.

Robust List-Building Capabilities

You need to be able to slice and dice your database so that you can zero in on specific segments of leads and actually do the work of nurturing. You should be able to create dynamic lists (a list defined by a set of criteria that is updated with every new contact that matches the criteria); static lists (a list that meets a specific set of criteria at a specific point in time); and list imports (lists that come from an external source via a manual upload).

It Should Feel Like Sending Email, Not Database Programing

Your marketing database should be easy to use. Too many marketing database programs are all database and no marketing. You don’t need to sacrifice one to get the other. Anybody on
your team should be able to navigate their way around your marketing database and become an expert.

Integration, Integration, Integration

To be most effective, your marketing database needs to be the hub of all your marketing activity. It needs to be (you guessed it) integrated with all your marketing activities, because it’s the place where you need to record all the activities of your contacts. That means blog activity, social media activity, webinar activity -- you name it. In addition to collecting a record of all your prospects’ activity, you need to be able pass that activity into your CRM, so make sure that your marketing database also has a great integration with your CRM.

To learn how to overcome marketing technology paralysis to help you solve problems such as no funnel data, low traffic, and low visit-to-lead conversion rates, download your free copy of our guide today.

Image Credit: Zach Klein

Why Purchasing Email Lists Is Always a Bad Idea

Corey Eridon — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:30:00 GMT

You need people to email, and you need them quickly. Oh, and if you could make them pretty cheap, that'd be great, too.

That's the mindset many marketers find themselves in when they're on the phone with a list-purchasing company. Acting on that moment of desperation, however, will cause them more long-term (and short-term) harm than good. Yes, thousands of contacts are a credit card swipe away, but your email marketing program -- a critical part of a well-rounded inbound marketing strategy -- will seriously suffer. Curious why purchasing email lists is a legitimate email marketer's kiss of death? Read on, my friend ... oh, and bookmark this list of squeaky-clean and effective ways to build your email list.

Methods of Acquiring an Email List

Before we get into the pitfalls of purchasing an email list, let's review (for those who are new to the game) three of the most common ways marketers acquire contact lists to email:

1) Buy a list. You work with a list provider to find and purchase a list of names and email addresses based on demographic and/or psychographic information. For example, you might purchase a list of 5,000 names and email addresses of people with children who live in a certain city.

2) Rent a list. Also working with a list provider, you identify a segment of people to email -- but you never actually own the list. As such, you can't see the email addresses of the people you're emailing, so you must work with the provider to send out your email.

3) Generate an opt-in list. Someone voluntarily gives you their email address either online or in person (at a trade show, for instance) so you can send them emails. They may pick certain types of email content they wish to receive, like requesting email alerts when new blog posts are published. Opt-in email addresses are the result of earning the interest and trust of your contact because he or she thinks you have something valuable and helpful to say.

When it comes to rented or purchased lists, you may come across vendors or marketers who say, "this email list is totally opt-in!" This means that the people on the list opted in to an email communication from someone at some point in time -- like the list provider, for example. What it doesn't mean, however, is that they opted in to receive email communications from your business. This is a critical distinction, and the next section of this post will go into more detail on why this type of "opt-in email list" (should be read with air quotes) is not a good idea for your email marketing program.

Why You Shouldn't Buy Email Lists

So now that I've told you a few ways to acquire email lists, I'm going to tell you why you should acquire them through method number three above -- the opt-in method in which you generate your list of email contacts!

Reputable email marketing vendors don't let you use purchased lists.

If you're using email marketing software now or plan to in the future, you'll find that reputable companies will insist that you use opt-in email lists. You might be saying, "I'll just use a non-reputable email marketing vendor." Wrong again. Using ESPs that don't require their customers to use opt-in email lists suffer poor deliverability if they're using a shared IP address. In other words, one customer's ill-gotten email list can poison the deliverability of the other customers on that shared IP address. You're going to want to hitch your wagon to the light side of the email marketing force if you want your emails to actually get into inboxes.

There's no such thing as a good email list that's for sale.

Unless you're in the process of acquiring an entire company, you're not going to come across a high quality email list you can purchase. It being for sale at all means that the email addresses on it have already been ripped to shreds by all the other people who have purchased that list, and emailed the people on it. Any email addresses that once had value have since been spammed to the ends of the earth!

If someone actually had a good email list, they'd keep it to themselves because they don't want to see the value of those email addresses diminished by letting other people get their hands on it. Think about it -- would you sell or share with another business the email addresses of those who have voluntarily opted in to receive email from you? I didn't think so.

People on a purchased or rented list don't actually know you.

I referenced this in the previous section of this blog post, but it's worth going into some more detail on this subject. Rented and purchased lists are sometimes scraped from other websites, which, I think we can all agree, is a dirty way to acquire email marketing lists. But often list purchase and rental companies will tout that their lists are opt-in. Sounds great, right?

Not really, because it means that the contacts have opted to receive emails from, say, the list-purchasing company -- not your company. Even if the opt-in process includes language like, "Opt in to receive information from us, or offers from other companies we think you might enjoy," the fact is the recipient has never heard of your company, and does not remember opting in to receive emails from you. And that means they will mark you as SPAM ... which takes us to our next point.

Your email deliverability and IP reputation will be harmed.

Did you know that there are organizations dedicated to combating email SPAM? Thank goodness, right? They set up a little thing called a honeypot, which is a planted email address that, when harvested and emailed, identifies the sender as a spammer. Similarly, things called SPAM traps can be created to identify spammy activity; they are set up when an email address yields a hard bounce because it is old or no longer valid but still receives consistent traffic. Fishy, eh? As a result, the email turns into a SPAM trap that stops returning the hard bounce notice, and instead accepts the message and reports the sender as a spammer.

If you purchase a list, you have no way of confirming how often those email addresses have been emailed, whether the email addresses on that list have been scrubbed for hard bounces to prevent identifying you as a spammer, or from where those email addresses originated. Are you really willing to risk not only your email deliverability, but also the reputation of your IP address and your company? Even if you find the light after purchasing or renting an email list, and decide to only email those who have opted in with your company, it will take you months (or maybe years!) to get your Sender Score up and rebuild the reputation of your IP ... and your brand.

Because you're not a jerk.

How do you like it when you get an email in your inbox from a company you've never heard of? I bet that's not the kind of company (or marketer) you want to be. If someone didn't ask to hear from you yet, it doesn't mean they won't want to hear from you later. It's your job to prove to them -- through helpful content and valuable offers -- that they should stay up to date with your company via email. If you force your email content on anyone too early, even if you know in the depths of your soul that they're a great fit for your products or services, you will preemptively lose their trust and their future business.

What do you do to generate legitimate, opt-in email addresses for your email marketing program?

Image credit: 401K

The 5-Step Guide to Executing an Outstanding Inbound Marketing Campaign

Meghan Keaney Anderson — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

We marketers are known for launching and running various campaigns. But like lots of other terms in our industry -- 'engagement,' 'brand equity,' 'virality' -- what an inbound marketing campaign actually is sometimes seems like sort of a mystery.

It's not that it's a difficult concept -- an inbound marketing campaign is simply a concentrated effort to attract leads and customers who are interested in a particular topic, or have a specific need. But it gets complicated in the execution, because inbound marketing campaigns have lots of moving parts that require plenty of forethought and coordination. In other words, if you fly by the seat of your pants, your campaign's results will suffer accordingly. So whether you're starting your first campaign or just need a brush up on the basics, follow this simple, 5-step process to execute your next inbound marketing campaign like a pro.

Step 1: Determine Your Offer Mix

Inbound marketing campaigns are all about creating the right mix of offers. The idea is to create a number of pieces of valuable content that you anticipate will drive conversions. If this is your first campaign, I'd recommend starting with around 4-5 different offers of varying formats. Remember, you can always scale this up if you need to.

For example, HubSpot recently announced a brand new email tool. In anticipation of the launch, we wanted to raise awareness about how to build the right sort of email strategy that adds value for recipients rather than interrupts them. We also wanted to give people the chance to check out the new tools themselves and ask any questions they might have about them. So naturally, we wanted our offer mix to reflect those two goals. Some of the offers were more "top of the funnel" in nature -- meaning they were more educational and discussed email strategy and concepts. Others were more "middle of the funnel” -- better suited for individuals who were interested in learning about the email marketing software itself. Here are some of the offers we chose to include in our email campaign to achieve that balance:

A whitepaper with facts and benchmarks about email marketing
An intermediate-level guide to email marketing
An upcoming webinar on the science of email marketing
A free email marketing assessment
A series of webinars offering a first look at the new email tool

Each of the offers had a unique value proposition but were tied together by a unifying theme -- creating an email marketing strategy people love that simultaneously helps you achieve your goals with an email marketing program. As part of your own inbound marketing campaign, all of your offers should do this, too. And of course, each offer should have its own landing page so you can track the conversion of your offers over time!

What to Measure: Downloads, registrations, new leads, and eventually, the number of customers those offers generated

Step 2: Set a Timeline and Goals

The timeline will be unique for every campaign, but think about how to spread out your mix of offers to maximize their impact without having them run so long that the overall theme is diluted. A more complex topic may take longer than a straightforward campaign. As a rule of thumb, however, campaigns typically run anywhere from 30 to 90 days, with offers spread throughout.

Setting goals is easiest if you've already got benchmarks. Once you know your offer mix, try to find similar offers in your marketing history to compare each against. In the case of the intermediate email marketing guide, for example, we looked to see how many leads our introductory guide had generated and how many leads other ebooks on similar topics had generated. We then used those metrics to set benchmarks for this campaign. By adding up the unique leads, submissions, and customers generated by past campaigns, we got a framework for how to measure the whole campaign.

In addition to metrics directly tied to your set of offers (downloads, registrations, etc.), you may also want to add some complementary goals. As part of the HubSpot email campaign, we wanted to increase awareness about our new email software. For that, we planned to also measure the number of media mentions and external content created around the launch.

What to Measure: Keep an eye on your benchmarks; if a given offer doesn't meet your expectations for submissions or new leads, you may need to redirect your efforts or add in an additional offer mid-stream. By measuring throughout your campaign timeframe, you will ensure that you don't fall too far behind.

Tip for HubSpot Customers: Bookmarking a goal in HubSpot's Landing Page Analytics Report

Step 3: Drive Traffic

To support your campaign and drive traffic to your offers, give the rest of your communication channels an editorial tilt toward your campaign.

Blog: Dedicate a percentage of your blog posts to the topic your campaign covers. Include internal links to the offers where appropriate, and keep track of the traction those posts get.
Social Media: Post teasers to your ebooks and other offers to your social media channels, and join existing conversations on other blogs and forums. Try not to post the same content again and again; rather, mix up the content and offer different angles.
Email: Launch some of your offers with an introductory email, but don’t just blast a general email to your full list. Make sure your list is segmented to include people who are most likely to be interested in the topic or content. Save some of your offers for lead nurturing campaigns, which we'll discuss more in the next section.
Pay-Per-Click Ads: If you have the budget, paid search ads (PPC) aren't a bad way to drive traffic to your offers. Just make sure that what you're offering provides value and matches the message in your ads.

What to Measure: Click-throughs to your offers, conversions, content sharing (retweets, “likes,” re-posts)

Step 4: Nurture Your Leads

The cardinal rule of inbound marketing is to provide value, not high-pressured sales pitches. Just because someone converts on one offer in your campaign doesn't mean they're ready to make a purchasing decision. Use a series of related emails to incrementally give your leads more and more information, and to nurture them through the sales funnel. As your lead becomes more engaged in the content and opts to download additional offers, start to introduce them to your product or service. If they aren’t interested, don’t push a sales call on them. If they do continue to click through on your emails and convert on your offers, they may be ready to hear more. Lead nurturing tools make it easier to automate and scale this practice, but if you’re a small enough business, it’s something you can do on your own. We've written an introductory ebook about lead nurturing that you can download for more information about managing lead nurturing.

What to Measure: Watch that the click-through rates of your lead nurturing campaigns don't fall below 5%. If they do, your offer may not be sticky enough or you may have pushed a sale too early.

Step 5: Close Your Campaign & Report On It

At the end of the day, there are a few metrics that are truly central to the success your campaign. When your campaign period comes to a close, it's a good idea to report on the following:

Views: Measuring the number of views will give you a sense of how effective your promotion was. If your conversion rate was high, but views were low, you need to evaluate and improve upon your promotion channels and strategy.
New Leads: New leads are critical to your sales team and therefore central to any B2B campaign. New leads are a sign that you're tapping into a market that you haven't hit before, and that the content was valuable in attracting people to your company.
Total Submissions: Don't dismiss submissions from existing leads. They are another point of engagement, and they give you further indication of what your leads are interested in.
New Customers: Obviously, the number of customers your campaign generates is a critical metric. While you often can't measure this fully until some time has passed, it is especially interesting to measure which campaigns brought in actual customers compared to just leads.

Here's an example of campaign metrics in one of HubSpot's analytics reports. In it, you can see how each offer (color coded) contributed to the core metrics.

As an inbound marketing software company, HubSpot creates a number of content offers throughout the year, but we only run a few campaigns. That's because concentrated campaigns require efforts from of every member of your team -- from your bloggers, to your email marketers, to your sales reps. Your entire company should be aware of the campaign and ready to contribute to it.

Have you launched and run concentrated campaigns for your company? What lessons have you learned?

Image credit: Tamsin Slater

7 Secrets to Outsourcing a Killer Content Creation Team

Patrick Shea — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:30:00 GMT

This is a guest post from Steve Lazuka, founder of Interact Media, the software development firm behind the Zerys Content Marketplace and question-and-answer website, YoExpert.

If you read this blog regularly, you understand the impact inbound marketing and, more specifically, content creation have on a business' lead generation and customer acquisition efforts. Problem is, marketing agencies who deliver inbound marketing services for their clients somehow need to find the bandwidth to create a high volume of quality content that drives ROI for their clients, and do so profitably, efficiently, and across a number of niche business areas.

Even more difficult, most agencies don't have the budget and management resources to maintain a staff of in-house writers. This is where agencies can leverage the power of a large writer network to effectively manage an outsourced content team. Based on my experiences running a content agency and through case studies from power users of our Zerys content marketplace, I’ve learned what works and doesn’t work for an agency outsourcing content creation. Below are the seven very distinct peices of advice I always give to agencies who are getting started with a content marketplace.

1) Invest Time in Learning the Platform

Most people don't like writing; or if they like it, they certainly can't find the time to do it. So what's the next natural step? Outsource it!

Anyone who has outsourced content creation, however, knows there are lots of moving parts you have to manage to get the quantity and quality of content you're looking for. To put it plainly, businesses don't want to spend the time figuring it out, which is why we see so many businesses out there struggling to keep up high levels of content creation. But as an agency, this affords you a great opportunity to learn and master the process of outsourced content creation on behalf of your clients!

When you settle on a content creation platform -- like Zerys for Agencies, for example -- set aside time to start experimenting. Start simple, placing a few uncomplicated orders (think blog posts, not white papers) and sampling a variety of writers. Over time, you can start to learn the more advanced features that can make your process more efficient and streamlined. Think of it like a science experiment -- if you test too many variables at once, you'll have a hard time identifying what specifically contributed to your successes and failures. And if you do run into trouble, whether with processes or specific features, leverage the platform's available support resources. That's what they're there for!

Once you feel comfortable with the ins and outs of a platform, you'll be able to invest time in things like writer development without getting caught up in those little snags that hinder your productivity.

2) Sample Lots of Writers

Agencies that sample one writer, throw up their hands in frustration, and then quit are never going to find the writers that make their clients' content creation dreams come true. In order to build a solid team of trusted writers for your agency, you’ll need to sample plenty of writers, and identify which ones are capable of giving you the content quality you need, ad the price you're willing to pay. It is possible to find great writers at lower price points, but only if you're willing to invest time in searching for those writers, and teaching them about the intricacies of your clients' needs.

One of our main goals when designing Zerys was to make the process of sampling writers fast, simple and risk-free. Get started by posting an initial batch of 10-20 simple assignments to the job board. This way, you can sample work from many different writers with no risk, since you only pay if you’re happy with the work you get back. Once you identify the writers you like, you can save them to a list of your favorite writers for quick access to your arsenal of killer content creators in the future.

3) Get Good at Providing Instructions

If you want to create amazing content for your clients, you must provide amazing instructions to your writers. And it's a tricky balance to strike -- instructions must be at once comprehensive, and concise. But mastering this skill is critical to your success at outsourcing content creation, because your writers simply cannot read your mind, or that of your clients. As you work with writers more and more, however, they will get to know what your clients are looking for and require less instruction.

Let's take a look at an example of a brief and comprehensive set of writer instructions, and an incomplete set of writer instructions for the sake of comparison.

Write a short blog post about email marketing campaign best practices, and reference features from this tool: http://www.hubspot.com/products/email-marketing

Write a short blog post -- 700-900 words -- about email marketing campaign best practices. While there may be other best practices you hit on based on your research, but it should definitely explain the importance of list segmentation, email design, copywriting best practices, personalization, and performance analytics. Pepper in references to this email marketing software throughout the post (http://www.hubspot.com/products/email-marketing), as it helps you implement all of those best practices and will be a nice visual counterpart to the text. The tone should be educational, but a little light hearted; we don't want people to get bored reading it!

If you sent a writer that second set of instructions, it's much more likely you'll get a piece of quality content than if you sent the same writer the first set of instructions. Investing a few minutes really figuring out what it is you want, pointing writers to external resources they can use to inform their writing, and establishing the right tone for each piece of content will save you time in revisions down the road.

(Tip: While many agencies provide too little context and information for writers, providing too much direction can be just as ineffective. Unless you plan to pay the writer enough to spend hours sifting through heaps of documents you send them for reference, you're better off keeping instructions clear and concise.)

4) Consider the First Piece of Content a First Draft

As you build your writer network, consider each post you get back as a first draft that may require a bit of editing and revisions. Even great writers may not capture exactly what you need the first time, but if you like their style and they are well-informed on the subject matter about which they're writing, you can invest some up-front time offering helpful feedback, and nurturing the relationship to the benefit of your client.

You can choose to offer a higher amount of money, and attract higher rated writers who will give you more “publish-ready” work, thus spending less time editing. Or, you could offer a lower amount and save more up-front, with the understanding that you will probably need to spend more time on the back-end editing.

If you choose to work with lower-cost writers that require more feedback, invest time in providing clear, constructive feedback just like you did when writing your job instructions. Let's pretend the email marketing blog post we referenced in the previous example needed a little work -- here's the right way to give feedback to that writer:

Thank you for this first draft, it's looking good but needs a few edits. In the performance analytics section, can you please provide a more comprehensive list of the metrics that an email marketer should consider to evaluate the effectiveness of their campaigns? Right now, you just recommend a few, and say there are others. The readers will want to know everything to consider, though. Also, the email design section get's a little to technology-oriented; the client's audience will likely be outsourcing the design of their emails, so can you please remove the how-to design parts, and simply list some general best practices they should reference when working with a designer? Other than that, looks good. Thank you!

If you give feedback like this that's extremely specific, the writer knows exactly what to change and will be able to turn around revisions much more expeditiously, and accurately.

5) Invest in Building Long-Term Relationships

Platforms like Zerys are tools, but at its heart, content development is all about people. In order to be successful in the long run, you’ll need to invest some of your time in building solid relationships with good writers. It’s no different than if you were hiring people in-house at your office; you don’t hire the first person that walks in, but by the same token, you’ll invest in developing your strong candidates to help them perform at their best.

Once you identify writers that give you the quality you want at the price you can afford, be sure to offer well-thought out feedback like you saw in the previous example, as well as more general feedback that's not necessarily tied to any particular assignment. For example, you might let them know what clients really appreciate about their writing so they continue doing more of that in the future. Similarly, you can tell them what you love about working with them -- perhaps they always format their work very nicely, for instance. They will greatly appreciate this type of feedback, and over time, they will improve their writing to give you exactly what you want.

6) Reward Your Writers

Want to build a team of dedicated, loyal, reliable writers? Treat them well and they’ll reward you by giving your assignments top attention, and always doing their best work for you and your clients. There are a couple of ways to do this, but one of the best ways is to add a bonus every now and then when they do a great job, or go above and beyond your expectations. With Zerys, you can add tips on the content review/approval screen with just one click.

On top of monetary incentives, however, you should also just be good to work with. Set clear and high expectations, but be understanding, too. For example, if you've worked with a writer for several months and they have an emergency come up that will impact the due date of their assignment, don't flip your lid. Instead, thank them for letting you know in advance, wish them well, and reassign the job to another writer. It seems obvious, but when there's a computer screen between two people, it's easy for clients to forget they're working with another human being -- if you're not familiar with the phenomenon, just visit the comments section of almost any blog.

7) Let Your Clients Build Your Team for You

Why not let your clients help you build your team of writers for you? After all, it doesn’t really matter if we feel that a writer’s great. All that matters is what our clients think!

Tell your clients that you work with a network of writers with a wide variety of different skill sets and expertise areas. Tell them you will choose a writer that you think will work well for the client based on prior experience, and have that writer compose the first piece for the client's review. If they don’t like that writer, it’s no problem, and they don’t have to pay for it. You will simply try another writer until the client finds the one they like. But just like you strive to provide specific instructions and feedback to your writer, you should also request that your clients provide clear feedback about what they do and don't want before writing begins, and during the revision process. This will help you better match up clients and writers, and start off new client relationships on the right foot.

Are you an agency that outsources content? What are the outsourced content creation best practices that work for you?

Image credit: Kazarelth

7 Infographics That Make the Case for Mobile Email Optimization

Corey Eridon — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:30:00 GMT

More and more marketers are jumping on the mobile-optimization bandwagon, but it's important to remember that being a mobile inbound marketer extends beyond simply having a mobile-friendly website. If you haven't thought about optimizing your email marketing for mobile yet, your email marketing program may face some seriously sad results.

Consider this if you're not totally convinced of the importance of sending mobile-friendly emails: email opens on mobile devices increased 34% from April 2011 to September 2011, while the relative number of opens on webmail and desktop decreased by 11% and 9.5%, respectively. So tell me, how long do you really want to wait before optimizing your emails for mobile?

Probably not much longer, right? If you're interested in leveraging the power of mobile email, we've compiled the 7 best infographics we could find to help you stay informed and get started. Take a gander at these great visualizations that explain the booming mobile email market!

7 Awesome Mobile Email Marketing Infographics

1) Email Viewing Habits by Litmus

2) Email in Motion by Return Path

3) Mobile Email Marketing by Marketing Technology Blog

4) Anatomy of the Perfect Mobile Email by Litmus

5) Strong Signals: Mobile Email Marketing is Connecting With Consumers by e-Dialog

6) How Small Businesses Use Apps to Drive Email List Growth by Constant Contact

7) Using Mobile Channels to Grow Your Email Database by Silverpop

What are your favorite mobile email infographics on the web? Share them in the comments!

Image credit: Robert S. Donovan

13 Things to Check Before Hitting 'Send' on Your Next Marketing Email

Pamela Vaughan — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Raise your hand if you've ever sent out a marketing email, only to realize after clicking 'send' that your email's main call-to-action contained a broken link. What a waste, right? And talk about embarrassment ... Now how many of you did I actually get to raise your hand? ;)

Yes, silly mistakes happen -- more easily than you might think. After all, we may be savvy marketers, but we're still only human. So how can you prevent those silly mistakes from bleeding into your email campaigns? Enter the mighty test send! Most email service providers, including HubSpot's own email tool, allow you to send a test email for review before you send the real email out to your list of email contacts. So if you're not leveraging these test sends to proof your email messages before they go out, you're just asking for the scenario we highlighted above.

To avoid email marketing embarrassment -- and the poor results that accompany it -- print out this checklist, pin it to your cubicle, and consult it every time you're reviewing an email test send.

13 Things to Look Out for in Your Email Test Sends

1) Broken Links

The mishap we mentioned in our intro scenario is probably one of marketers' biggest nightmares, especially when lead generation is the goal of an email send. That's why we're emphasizing how important it is to check to make sure your links are working as the first item on this checklist. Like -- actually click on them. Every single one. Does the (right) page load? Do you get a 404 error? Unbreak any broken link you find.

2) Forgotten Links

A close second to the dreaded broken link is the forgotten one. The most common (and regrettable) instance of the forgotten link is when you're using an image to serve as a call-to-action (CTA) button. Double check to make sure everything that's supposed to be linked is indeed linked. This includes anchor text, CTAs, social media follow/sharing icons, and images.

3) Broken Social Media Sharing Buttons

While we're talking about social media buttons, let's discuss how easy it is to break those little buggers. We've published a helpful guide to make creating the buttons for social sharing on social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter less painful, so be sure to check it out. And luckily, if you're a HubSpot customer, our email tool makes the creation of social media sharing buttons in email messages virtually idiot-proof. Just plug in the URL of the page you want your email recipients to share (whether it's a landing page, blog post, or the HTML version of the email, which we'll discuss later in this post), and -- POOF! -- social sharing buttons. But whether you're using HubSpot's email tool or another ESP, always be sure to try out those sharing buttons in your test send as an extra sanity check.

4) Spelling/Grammatical Errors

Spelling and grammar do matter in marketing, whether you're creating an ebook, writing a blog post, or drafting your next email marketing message. Send your test email to the biggest grammar geek you have on your team to alert you to any slip-ups, and always be sure to spell-check!

5) Distorted Images

How do your images look? Are they stretched or squished? Pixelated? Overwhelmingly large? When they don't render, did you remember to associate alt text with them? Check to make sure your images are displaying the way you want them to, and if not, adjust accordingly.

6) Wonky Formatting

When you view the email in an inbox, make sure the formatting looks the way you intended it to. Is there a line bleeding onto the next because you forgot to add an extra space? If you used bullets, are they displaying properly? (Tip: Some email clients can't handle HTML bullets, so you're best off just using asterisks (*) instead of rounded or squared HTML bullets.) If things are looking wonky, fix those formatting issues before you send the email to your true list.

7) Color Issues

Is the font color you're using clear and easy to read, or do you have to strain your eyes because it's an odd shade? Are blocks of background color making it difficult to read the text you've layered on top? Also keep in mind that, while blocks of color can add a pretty design element to your email, you should beware the following scenario: Say you decided to create your entire email -- or just a section -- with a dark gray background. To make the text readable, you selected white as your font color. Now what happens when your recipient's email client doesn't render that background color (yes, it can happen)? Invisible text! Lesson: the visibility of your email's copy should never depend on the background color of your email.

8) Subject Line/Sender Name

Does it look like your email was sent by a human, not a robot? In other words, what moniker are you using for your sender name -- your company name (robot), or the name of someone at your company (human). In fact, according to a HubSpot A/B test in which we compared a generic “HubSpot” sender name to the personal name of someone from the marketing team with our company name, we found that emails sent by a real person are more likely to be clicked on than emails sent from just a company name. Another thing to watch out for is the length of your subject line. Does it get cut off? Keep your subject lines as brief as possible -- a good rule of thumb is 50 characters or fewer. You want as much of it as possible to display in the email pane (especially on mobile devices).

9) Functioning Dynamic Tags

If you're using any dynamic tags (e.g. [FIRSTNAME], etc.), check to make sure they're functioning properly and pulling in the correct information. And if you're using dynamic tags, make sure the list you're using is clean, and only use tags that everyone on your list has information for. For example, if you're trying to pull in the recipient's Twitter username within your email, yet the contacts on the list you're sending to never provided you with that information, you're going to run into quite a few problems. (Note: If you're using HubSpot's email tool, you can set your default values for dynamic tags/email personalization in your email settings to accommodate any outliers on your list who haven't provided certain information you're targeting in dynamic tags. Either way, only use dynamic tags that most people on your list have provided information for.)

10) Fulfilled CAN-SPAM Requirements

You don't want that email send to get you into legal trouble, now do you? If you're sending any commercial email, you should be aware of and know how to comply with the requirements enforced by the CAN-SPAM Act, which establishes rules for commercial messages. Specifically, each email you send must include your valid physical mailing address -- yup, we're talking snail mail here. Furthermore, check that you're not using misleading, deceptive, or falsified information in your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” subject line, and routing information. In other words, make sure you clearly identify who is sending the email, whether it's from a company or an individual. Make sure your email subject line clearly indicates what the content of the email is about. Lastly, in each email you send, you must also include a clear and obvious way for recipients to unsubscribe from all email communication from you. So if there is no opt-out link in your email, you could get into big trouble. And remember, failing to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act could mean penalties of up to $16,000 for each separate email violation.

11) Option to View on the Web

Does your email include a link to its web-based counterpart? Many ESPs (including HubSpot!) will enable you to create a web-based version of your email. Include this link in your email send. That way, if the images or anything else isn't rendering properly for your recipients, they can easily click over to the web-based version and see exactly what you intended.

12) Plain Text Formatting

How does the plain text version of your email look? Your email client should enable you to view the test email in both HTML and plain text formats. And yes, optimizing for both HTML and plain text is absolutely important. To make sure your email is optimized for plain text, look for the following in your test send (all of which we elaborate on in this post): similar copy to the HTML version of the email, compelling email copy, shortened links (and few of them), all caps in headers, and plain text bullet points (e.g. asterisks *).

13) Accessibility Across Devices, Browsers, and Email Clients

The best way to understand how different browsers, email clients, and devices (mobile or desktop) interpret your email is to see for yourself! To save yourself the trouble of testing every single email send to every single option, test a few options once across the most popular devices, browsers, and email clients, and then create a template to use for each email you send using the winning version.

What else would you add to this email marketing pre-send test checklist?

Image Credit: Nico Paix

The 10 Best-Branded Companies on Instagram

Allyson Galle — Fri, 18 May 2012 20:15:00 GMT

Earlier this year, we profiled five brands that have each built themselves a solid marketing presence on Instagram, the popular photo editing and sharing social network so often linked to Twitter and Facebook updates. We’ve also stressed the why and how of using Instagram for marketing, citing the increasing importance of mobile marketing, and how that should be playing into the strategies and tactics of your social media marketing.

Now, I'm sure most of you know that social media is important. I’m also confident that many of you know some basic strategies. But let’s talk about the Earlybird-filtered big picture: when it comes to presenting your brand on social media, your reputation and brand image is only as strong and complete as your most recent update. If your content is off-brand, your image will come across as confused, incomplete, or just plain wrong. That’s not to say you should be dropping nothing but explicitly on-product tweets, but to say that your content, be it original or shared, should always carry within it some sort of a representation or affirmation of your brand’s identity in some way. In fact, a Facebook study just recently confirmed this very philosophy!

An interesting way to explore this constant depiction of brand values and traits is through—you guessed it!—Instagram photos posted by brands. Check out the following images and learn how these ten companies completely nailed the representation of their respective brands.

Annie’s Homegrown

Annie's Homegrown has done an excellent job of asserting its brand identity as an all-natural, organic, and healthy provider of foods Americans love, from macaroni and cheese to frozen pizza to fruit-flavored gummy snacks. The brand understands how important these qualities have become to its target demographic, so its Twitter strategy is based upon sharing product news, tasty-sounding recipes, and Instagram photos. This shot of a wooden version of Annie's logo keeping guard over a small vegetable garden incorporates several important parts of Annie’s brand identity. It takes the brand's logo, already cute and loveable, and places him directly amidst the action of the brand’s foundation. Additionally, the garden is small, and looks to be on a residential street instead of a factory, implying that Annie’s ingredients are not only natural and organic but also as homegrown as the brand name implies.

Billboard

Billboard is, like many other publications that originated in print, evolving its strategy to mesh with the era of real-time social content. On Twitter, Billboard uses Instagram to capture photos of the stars gracing its pages and share their presence within its brand in real time. The Billboard brand is based on its knowledge of who’s on top in the music industry, and its revelations of music previews, exclusive photographs, and breaking news in the music industry. Twitter is an excellent platform for Billboard to explore these real-time aspects of its brand identity, and Instagram allows for this exploration to turn into proof – Billboard can reveal its latest associations in more casual, semi-candid photographs, which make the stars—and thus, Billboard—appear more real and genuine.

Brisk

Brisk has gone through quite the evolution as a brand. Named after an archaic definition of the word 'brisk' that means 'tangy,' the drink has become Lipton Tea’s attempt to compete with various other popular canned tea drinks in today’s beverage-to-go market. This Instagram photo of a hand just about to pop the tab on a can of Brisk, coupled with a caption referring to the can as an alarm clock, serves two brand-representation purposes: it cues the viewer to imagine the scene playing out, watching the hand open the can and hearing the satisfying popping sound as the task is completed. The filter of the photo is one of Instagram’s many filters meant to call-back to older photos, just as Brisk’s name recalls an earlier definition of a flavor. This makes the brand seem both long-lasting and nostalgic, yet entirely modern due to the update's home in social media.

The Boston Celtics

The Boston Celtics are quite the social basketball team. Their Twitter presence is huge, from the individual players’ accounts to the strong social media strategy utilized to market the Celtics as more than just a basketball team, but also a brand built on the history of Boston, the luck of the Irish, and the joy of the game. They’re a team that builds its reputation on hard work and fast-paced play. This Instagram photo, sent out in a tweet just before the start of a game, captures a real-time moment that likely passed without notice, but displays the team’s togetherness, dedication to the game, uniformity, and excitement to go play, all in one shot. It also assists with the Celtics' down-to-earth reputation in delivering a photo that is close-up, placing the fans’ viewpoints on par with the players, and low to the ground, literally implying that the team is down-to-earth and willing to put their noses to the grindstone to get to work.

Coach

Coach can sum up its brand identity in three words: classy, trendy, and luxurious. Seeing a Coach logo on a bag instantly raises the bag’s (and carrier’s) social capital, and the price tags attached to Coach bags are more than enough evidence to point toward their earned status as a luxury brand. In Coach’s Twitter feed, ample evidence of these three points are pronounced, but none are as pronounced as in its Instagram account. In this image, Coach divides a purse into three smaller photographs, all muted by a filter to suggest the classiness of the bag, despite its loud, unmuted color. The logo is present in two of the photographs, with the third zeroing in on the handcrafted detail of the bag, reinforcing Coach’s high-quality reputation by showing consumers the details in a setting more causal than a photography shoot, and more personal than a busy store.

Forever21

Forever21 is a clothing brand dedicated to affordable, trendy fashion. Despite its smaller price tags and distinctly non-couture reputation, from its name, Forever21 indicates that with its brand, it's attempting to emulate a timeless feeling, through which clothing buyers can remain rooted in a particular time or age. In this Instagram shot, sent out over Forever21’s official Twitter account to announce some new arrivals to its stores, the recently-declared-back-in leopard print trend is paired with timeless fashion staples, and then sent through a nostalgia-inducing filter that ages the photograph back to the last time leopard print was in.

PepsiMAX

PepsiMAX is one of the newest product launches of megabrand Pepsi, and can be classified as Pepsi’s attempt to bridge the energy drink and “healthy” soda categories for sales. The brand identity pushed for PepsiMAX is that of something fresh, modern, and exciting, while also familiar to the trusted Pepsi brand consumers know and love. The Twitter feed for PepsiMAX, separate from its parent brand, serves to illustrate these seemingly paradoxical qualities, especially through its liberal use of Instagram. In this photo, we see an over-saturated image of a PepsiMAX can and a billboard of its ad campaign, indicating the real-time freshness of the drink and the update alike, paired with a foosball table, an activity that has been around for years that requires focus and one-on-one competition. PepsiMAX asks us to recall the in-the-moment feeling of playing a fresh round of a game we’ve all known for years, pairing that memory with its brand offering.

Puma

Puma is a footwear brand with attitude. Originally choosing to instill the quickness, agility, and hunting prowess of a puma cat with its footwear, this Instagram photograph suggests a far more laid back image. With the old photograph-toned filter, the presence of a pair of shoes on a person and a pair of shoes shed from a person, as well as the leisurely pace of the activity portrayed, it shows consumers that Puma shoes don't only allow you to speed past every opportunity, but they also get you to places you can enjoy with others, and remember for a long time. While Twitter is fast-paced, filled with customer service interactions, product announcements, and other news, Puma's Instagram account is a refreshing change, reminding users that Puma knows its product isn’t just about the journey; it's also about the destination.

Sharpie

Sharpie is an odd presence on Twitter. Its flagship product, permanent markers, is hardly something that seems easy to market on Twitter at first glance; however, the acute focus on artistic freedom and expression that Sharpie integrates into its brand makes it one of the most successful social branding companies on Instagram. Many of its Instagram snapshots, each posted to Twitter and enjoyed by many followers, does not feature the markers themselves, but rather their ink as applied to some sort of canvas by unique individuals. In this particular composition, for example, Sharpie has brought alive an artist’s passion for music, through the quick, black-and-white illustration of old-school headphones. Choosing headphones over earbuds indicates a preference for the classic, timeless instruments that have a permanent place upon the scene, which are exactly what Sharpie markers and their permanent inks are intended to be.

Starbucks

Starbucks got a mention in our last Instagram post, too, and it’s no wonder why. The coffee retailer is almost definitely the brand making the absolute most out of its Instagram-centric social media strategy. Starbucks strives to be seen as a local-friendly, socially conscious coffee shop that happens to have, oh, a few locations, rather than just another large corporate chain. In this particular image, we see bags of beans, for sale in the shops, that subtly boast the Starbucks logo, and a tray of samples of this coffee, conceivably headed for the counter of the tweeter’s local Starbucks location to be handed out to individuals. The coffee is unaltered, and the background is dimmed to black, allowing Starbucks to assert that when it comes to its brand, two things matter: the coffee and the customers’ opinions.

How could you depict your brand in an Instagram photo? What filter would you use?