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This Padlet was designed on 01/07/2025. It has sources from the course learning materials and additional sources to enhance your professional development. 

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This Padlet was designed on 01/07/2025. It has sources from the course learning materials and additional sources to enhance your professional development. 

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Easily create surveys and polls to collect customer feedback, measure employee satisfaction, and organize team events.

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Market leader Facebook was the first social network to surpass one billion registered accounts and currently sits at more than three billion monthly active users. Meta Platforms owns four of the biggest social media platforms, all with over one billion monthly active users each: Facebook (core platform), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. In the second quarter of 2023, Facebook reported over 3.8 billion monthly core Family product users.

The United States and China account for the most high-profile social platforms

Most top ranked social networks with more than 100 million users originated in the United States, but services like Chinese social networks WeChat, QQ or video sharing app Douyin have also garnered mainstream appeal in their respective regions due to local context and content. Douyin's popularity has led to the platform releasing an international version of its network: a little app called TikTok.

How many people use social media?

The leading social networks are usually available in multiple languages and enable users to connect with friends or people across geographical, political, or economic borders. In 2022, Social networking sites are estimated to reach 3.96 billion users and these figures are still expected to grow as mobile device usage and mobile social networks increasingly gain traction in previously underserved markets.

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Biggest social media platforms 2023 | Statista

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Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp are the most popular social networks worldwide, each with at least two billion active users.

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The most popular social networks in the UK | Technology | YouGov Ratings

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The most popular social networks in the UK according to YouGov Ratings. Popularity is based on millions of responses from the British public and YouGov's innovative survey methodology.

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Social Media Monitoring: A Best Practice and Strategy Guide

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Social media monitoring can boost brand awareness, brand engagement, and customer experience. Learn strategies and metrics to track today!

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General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

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Newsletter mailings and e-mail marketing are a fixed part of the online marketing universe. Basically, the principle that processing is prohibited but subject to the possibility of authorisation also applies to the personal data which is used to send e-mails. Processing is only allowed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) if either the data subject has consented, or there is another legal basis. This could be, for example, preserving the legitimate interest of the controller to send e-mail marketing. Recital 47 of the General Data Protection Regulation expressly states that the law also applies to the processing of personal data for direct marketing as a legitimate interest of the controller.

In addition, such an interest could be seen, for example, if there is a relevant and proportionate relationship between the data subject and the controller. This could be the case if the data subject is a customer of the controller or is in the latter's service. Therefore, much indicates that e-mail marketing is allowed without consent, at least for existing customers. If the company has a justified interest in 'cold' calling through e-mail marketing, the marketing e-mails may be sent to potential customers without consent. To receive no further information by newsletter or e-mail, the customer receiving them need only object to processing for marketing purposes. According to Art. 21(2), (3) GDPR the data subject always has the right to object the processing of personal data for direct marketing purposes. If the data subject objects, the controller only has to stop the processing for marketing purposes, but can still process the data for other purposes, e.g. for the performance of a contract. The legitimate interest of the controller to process data for marketing purposes can never outweigh the objection of the data subject. One must note, however, that according to Art. 95 of the General Data Protection Regulation, this applies to all data protection-related purposes unless special rules with the same regulatory scope are contained in the ePrivacy Directive (see also recital 173). The consequence is that e-mail marketing is currently only allowed with the consent of the parties concerned (Art. 13(1) of Directive 2002/58/EC). One must wait to see whether the coming ePrivacy Regulation provides more clarity about this issue.

Regardless of whether a company bases its marketing measures afterwards on its legitimate interest or on consent, the controller has to adhere to the data subject's right to be informed. The content of said information depends on which justification reason is used. Please be aware that there might be certain additional national laws (e.g. competition law) which might be slightly stricter or which may impose additional restrictions.

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Email Marketing - General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

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Newsletter mailings and e-mail marketing are a fixed part of the online marketing universe. Basically, the principle that processing is prohibited but subject to the possibility of authorisation also applies to the personal data which is used to send e-mails. Processing is only allowed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) if either the data ...

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You know that saying about how the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago and the second-best time is now?

It's the same with email marketing. The best time to start building your list was the moment you had the idea for your business. The second best time is now. In fact, back in 2017 DMA discovered that the average return for each £1 (~$1.28) spent on email marketing was £32.28 (~$41.28), which is an incredible return on investment.

But that's easier said than done. The number of email marketing software options out there can make your head spin. Which one should you go with?

Today we are going to take a look at how to use Mailchimp, one of the most popular email marketing tools out there, and show you how you can use it to start building your email list today.

What is Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is an email marketing company that was founded by Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius in 2001.

Initially, it was just a side project meant to help Ben and Dan's web design agency clients build email lists, and it remained such for the first six years of its existence, bringing in just a few thousand dollars a month.

However, in 2007 Ben and Dan realized that their hearts weren't in the web design agency business anymore, and decided to focus on Mailchimp full-time.

(Suggested reading: Your Guide to Starting and Running a Successful WordPress Agency).

They didn't take any outside investment and financed the business growth by reinvesting its profits back into it.

Since then, Mailchimp has become one of the most popular and well-known email marketing software out there with recent changes that are turning it into a fully-fledged Marketing platform.

According to Forbes, in 2018 it had 20 million users, generated over $600 million in revenue, and was valued at $4.2 billion.

The co-founders remain committed to the business and have no intention to sell:

"Go public? Not worth the headache!" Chestnut says. Sell? The founders look incredulous.
"To this day, it's just a funny feeling that we can help" explains Kurzius. Chestnut chimes in: "I want people to see that the past 17 years were just a warm-up."

Pros and Cons of Mailchimp

What is the best email marketing software on the market today?

It's impossible to answer this question. It all depends on the needs of your business. So what you really need to ask is: "Which email marketing software is the best for me?"

MailChimp, just like any other tool, has its pros and cons and works better for some people than for others. If you're curious, we use and love Mailchimp at Kinsta.

Pros of Mailchimp

Established Business and Committed Founders

Going with a fledgling startup is always a risk because it might fold at any moment.

There's something called Lindy Effect. It is a theory that says that the future life expectancy of a non-perishable thing is proportional to its current age. So, for example, if a company has been in business for one year, you can expect it to be in business for one more year, but if a company has been in business for 18 years like Mailchimp, you can expect it to stay in business for another 18 years.

This is an important consideration because an email marketing software provider going bust would disrupt your email marketing efforts which might cost you a lot of money in lost revenue.

Easy to Use, Has All the Necessary Features, Is Reliable

18 years in business also means that Mailchimp has a polished product.

Sure, software is always work in progress, but they have had the time to work out the user interface (though some would argue that there's a lot of space for improvement there since learning how to use Mailchimp can take some effort), add necessary features, and ensure deliverability.

Free to start with

If you are just starting out, the chances are that the money is already tight, and paying $30+ monthly subscription fee to email your three subscribers might seem ludicrous.

However, with MailChimp, you don't have to pay anything until you reach 2,000 email subscribers, at which point you are probably making enough money from your list to justify the expense of upgrading to a premium plan.

Cons of Mailchimp

It's a Generic Email Marketing Software

Mailchimp's target audience appears to be anyone and everyone who wants to build an email list.

And they are doing the whole casting a wide net thing really well. It doesn't matter whether you are a hobbyist, an online creator, or an ecommerce entrepreneur, Mailchimp has got you covered.

However, serving such a broad target audience means that while it is an okay solution, it is not necessarily the best solution for your niche.

For example, if you are a hobbyist that only needs the most basic email marketing functionality, then MoonMail might be a better option.

Meanwhile, if you are an online creator, then ConvertKit was built with you in mind, and their mission is to help creators earn a living online.

And if you have an ecommerce business, then you might want to check out SmartrMail or Drip:

So you need to see whether it makes sense to go with Mailchimp when there are niche options available.

While You Can Start for Free with Mailchimp, It Can Get Expensive as Your List Grows

Mailchimp is free up to 2,000 subscribers, but how much does it cost after that?

You can use the cost calculator on their pricing page to work out how much you'd have to pay once you reach a specific number of subscribers.

Mailchimp has drawn criticism over their pricing which some people consider to be unfair.

For example, the bootstrapping star Pieter Levels switched from Mailchimp to SendGrind in 2017:

Switched from 🐒 @MailChimp to 🐳 @sendgrid and I recommend them to everybody!

- @levelsio (@levelsio) November 12, 2017

His main reason for switching was that Mailchimp was charging him $250/month which he called "predatory":

5 mins, yes I think MailChimp's pricing is predatory. $250/m to store my email subscribers, say what?

- @levelsio (@levelsio) November 13, 2017

However, to be fair to Mailchimp, their pricing isn't that outrageous when compared to some of their competitors but it's still something to keep in mind if the price is an issue to you.

Burning Question: Should You Use Mailchimp?

It depends.

If you have an established business and have money to invest in email marketing, then it probably makes more sense to go with one of the niche options on the market.

However, if you are just starting out, then Mailchimp is the most affordable option (at least in the short term) and a great way to learn the ropes of email marketing.

Moreover, the reality is that you should have started an email list the moment you had your business idea and now you are way behind schedule.

So, if you find yourself stuck in analysis paralysis, endlessly comparing various options without ever picking one, then it might be best to just go with Mailchimp.

You can always switch to another email marketing software provider later down the road (switching is a headache, but it's doable).

What matters now is that you start building your email list. You can check out here 22 Mailchimp alternatives, including free options as well.

Get Started with Mailchimp

As you will see in this Mailchimp tutorial, getting started with Mailchimp is easy.

Step 1

Go to the Mailchimp's website and click the "Sign Up for Free" button in the top right corner.

You will be directed to a signup form that asks for your email, username, and password.

Step 2

Once you submit the required information, you will get an email from Mailchimp asking you to activate your account by clicking the "Activate Account" button.

Step 3

Then you will have to confirm that you are human by clicking the "I'm Not a Robot" button.

Step 4

You will then be taken through a series of set up screens asking you for more information (name, business details, physical address, etc.).

There's even a "Let's Find Your Marketing Path" quiz that provides Mailchimp with the information they need to make marketing suggestions in the future.

Once you are done with all that, you will continue the onboarding process by designing your first email.

You can then add contacts by either importing them from a file or using a pop-up form to collect subscribers.

Finally, you can send your first email to the people you have just added.

You will then be presented with suggestions on what to do next which include creating a landing page, growing your audience with Facebook and setting up an automated welcome email.

As you can see, the registration and onboarding processes are very straightforward, so you don't have any excuses to delay signing up any longer. Do it today!

Mailchimp is an easy to use tool with pretty intuitive UI. The more you'll use it, the more familiar you'll get.

There's one key thing, though, you need to learn right from the beginning because they're super important: it's Merge Tags.

Merge tags are dynamic tokens you can feature and use when it comes to crafting your emails to make them look and sound more personal. These tokens pull data from your audience and your account (audience merge tags and system merge tags).

Let me give you a few quick examples:

*|FNAME|* is a merge tag that stands for your recipient's first name. So, given that you're collecting your subscribers' name, if you start your emails with "Hey *|FNAME|*", all of them will receive a nice email with their name on. That's a nice touch, isn't it?

Here's another one: let's say you need to send an email confirmation to someone but before that, you need them to double-check whether their email address in your records is the correct one (btw, follow these tips if you need to find anyone's email address). In this case, you might want to use *|EMAIL|* to pull your recipient's email address in your own message. It should look something like this:

There are plenty of Merge Tags you could take advantage of, many of which will show their full potential when it comes to building automation sequences and segmenting your audience.

Set up Your Email Autoresponder Series

An email autoresponder series is a sequence of emails that automatically triggers based on a set of rules and criteria you set up.

Some of the most common uses of automated sequences are:

Welcome email to freshly subscribed users

Educational series to get new onboarded users learn more about your product/service

Content upgrade email series for users who requested to receive an ebook, a cheatsheet, or any other freebie from your site

Automated responses for prospects who requested a quote from you

The list could go on for days. The important aspect to understand here is that implementing some solid email automation can really help you manage and improve your business outcome.

You can do it in Mailchimp by pressing the "Set up an automated welcome email" tab.

You will then be presented with three options: "Welcome message", "Onboarding series", "Education series".

You can start with the welcome message. Once you click the "Begin" button, you will be taken to a page where you can edit your welcome email (including what is shown in the "From" field, the subject line, and the content and design of the email). You can also send a test message to yourself to be sure that it's exactly the way you want it to be.

Online marketing expert Derek Halpern recommends asking a question along the "What are you struggling with right now?" lines in the welcome email.

"Why do I ask this question? Well, when people tell me what they're struggling with, it helps me figure out what content I can create for them (often times I turn this content into free giveaways to build my email list)" explains Derek. "It also helps me understand who my customer is a little bit better".

Consider doing the same in your welcome email. It doesn't cost you anything but helps with the market research.

Once you are done with the welcome email, it's time to set up either onboarding (if the new subscriber is also a new customer) or educational email series (if the new subscriber just wants to learn more).

You can do that by clicking the "Create" button in the top right corner of the screen, then clicking the "Email" tab, then "Automated" tab, then "Welcome new subscribers" tab, and finally either "Onboarding series" or "Education" series.

Mailchimp helpfully provides a template for the series in case you are at a loss of how to structure it.

All you have to do is fill out the template emails with your own content, add more emails to the series, and set up your triggers based on:

Tags

Subscriber Activity

Ecommerce/Purchase activity

Date based

API call

Custom settings

Automated email series is an essential element of email marketing because it allows you to engage with your subscribers, users, leads, and build a relationship with them on autopilot.

Don't forget that you will be judged based on these emails so make an effort to leave a good impression by providing as much value in them as you possibly can.

Take Your Automation to the Next Level with Segments and Triggers

Segments are sub-sets of your contacts that satisfy one or more criteria like similar audience data, purchase activity, subscription status, interests, activity. Think of this simple example based on a customer's purchase history:

leads = 0 items purchased in the past 30 days

new customers = 1 item purchased in the past 30 days

VIP customers = 2+ items purchased in the past 30 days

inactive cusomters = 1 item purchased in the past 90 days

You can use up to five conditions with Mailchimp's free plan.

Now, with the right combination of automated series, triggers, and segments ready, it's time to start thinking about how to collect more email addresses!

Create a Mailchimp Opt-In Form

An opt-in form is a form that asks for a name and email address (you can ask for more details but it's not recommended) and then adds a person to the email list once they submit that information (suggested reading: How to Embed a Google Form on Your WordPress Site).

You can create one with Mailchimp's form builder.

Click on the "Audience" tab and then choose "Signup Forms" in the drop-down menu on the left side of the screen.

Now, the default form isn't that great, and there are three things you should do immediately:

Change the default headline to a user-centric headline that tells the potential subscriber what they will get if they opt-in.

Remove all form fields except for "Name" and "Email Address" (yes, there are cases in which you might need more fields, but this is the standard practice).

Change the default button copy to a user-centric copy that tells the potential subscriber what is going to happen once they click it (you can do that by clicking on "Translate" and then changing the text in the "Subscribe" field).

You can then use a link Mailchimp provides to direct people to your sign up form ( like this).

Now, if you want to embed a form on your website, you need to click on the "Audience" tab, choose "Signup Forms" from the drop-down menu on the left side, and then click on "Embedded Forms".

This is a bit more technical because once you are done editing the form you will have to copy/paste the code to your website.

Finally, you can also create a pop-up form by clicking "Audience", then choosing "Signup forms" from the drop-down menu, then choosing "Subscriber" pop-up.

You'll then be able to design your form and generate the code that you can copy/paste to your website.

Here's the main thing you need to know when it comes to opt-in forms: don't be shy about using them.

Create a simple opt-in form that you can then link to immediately and start sharing it with people you think might be interested in your content so that you could collect email addresses on autopilot and start building a sizable email list.

Sending Broadcast Emails with Mailchimp

A broadcast email is an email you send out once (say, an announcement about a feature launch).

You can do that in Mailchimp by clicking the "Create" button in the upper right corner of the screen, then the "Email" tab, then choosing "Regular" tab, and clicking the "Begin" button.

Then, simply choose the audience you want to send this email to, edit the "From" line, the "Subject" line and the body of the email, and press "Send" (or "Schedule" if you want it to go out later).

When it comes to the "Content" part, you'll be asked to pick a layout and a design from those already available or upload your custom one:

The layout will set the basic structure of your email so that you can feature your content the way you like:

All layouts are fully customizable with a drag and drop interface that allows you to move elements around and place them wherever you prefer:

For those who need a fresh start with pre-made themes, you can browse through them by clicking the "Themes" tab at the top:

Our newsletter at Kinsta was easily built using Mailchimp's easy drag and drop interface. There wasn't any coding involved. Check out a few of our newsletters.

You're now all set to get in the email marketing game. It's now time to have a quick look at how to see how your emails are performing and learn to get better results!

Improve Your Email Marketing with Data

Mailchimp allows you to see how your emails and email sequences are performing, along with data related to your audience growth. This functionality is key here as you really need to understand what types of emails do better than others, what's a good day/time to send out communications, what users are the most engaged with your business, and so on.

To do so, after you've sent out at least one email to your subscribers, you should start looking at the _Report_ section in Mailchimp you can find at the top:

Here you'll find an overview graph showing how your emails' open rate and click rate stack against the industry average:

If I'm being honest, this data shown here isn't the most useful. If you really want to dive deep and see email-specific data, you should scroll down a bit on the same page where you'll get to see all email campaigns you've sent out and click on the "View Report" button on the right:

This will bring you to the specific email campaign's data and will provide you with a more in-depth look at its performance.

What about your automated email sequences?

If you need to check how they're performing, you'll need head over to the top Mailchimp menu and click the "Campaign" tab:

Once there, you need to click on "Ongoing" from the left sidebar to bring up your active campaigns and then hover over the one you want to look at to show the "Report" button, which you should click.

I know, it's not the smoothest UX path but you'll get used in a little time.

Now that you know how to create, set up, and check the performance of your email campaigns in Mailchimp, we have some additional tips to help you achieve the best results!

Bonus: How to Get People to Read Your Emails?

It's important to understand that most people are overwhelmed by the number of emails they get which means that you have to earn your place in someone's inbox.

You see, it's not enough to just get someone to subscribe to your email list, you need to then build a relationship with that person in a way that makes them want to read your messages.

Otherwise, you'll end up with a bunch of "ghosts" on your email list meaning people who are subscribed but never open your emails.

Now, the most important thing in email marketing is providing value, because there's no way you can build an engaged email list without doing it.

Each and every email that you send must somehow make the subscriber's life better. Otherwise, why should they even open them?

Think long and hard about what problems the people on your list are struggling with and how you can help solve them. Then offer those solutions in your emails.

(Asking "What are you struggling with right now?" in your welcome email like Derek Halpern suggested makes this much easier).

However, while content is king, how you present that content matters as well.

You also need to pay attention to subject lines, copy, formatting.

Subject Lines

You know how copywriters are obsessed with headlines? That's because the headline is how you grab someone's attention. Mess it up and no one is going to read the actual content.

Well, it's the same with subject lines, if you fail to grab the subscriber's attention, your email will simply get lost in the sea of other emails in their inbox.

What you should do is put a lot of thought into your subject lines, and think about how you can make sure that your email stands out among dozens of other emails in a crowded inbox.

Copy

In the world of copywriting, "copy" refers to a text that is meant to sell, whether it's an ad, an email, a product description, whatever.

What you need to keep in mind when writing your email is that it's not just a text, it's copy, because you are trying to get your subscribers to do something (even if it's just to read your next email).

So study copywriting. Learn how to draw people in, tell a story, and then tie it to the message that you want to convey. You won't get anywhere if your emails are boring.

Formatting

Let's keep it real: reading on a screen is a pain.

So don't make it even more frustrating by sending your subscribers walls of text (hint: no one is going to read them).

Make your emails easy on the eyes by using white space, bold text and bullet points to break up the text.

It doesn't have to be fancy. It just has to be readable.

For example, take a look this 5-Bullet Friday email from Tim Ferriss:

Do you see how the white space, the bold text, and the links make the email easy to read (that monstrous acetyl-L-carnitine paragraph would look better if it were broken into a few shorter ones, though)?

You should go for a similar look in your emails.

Finally, make sure that each email has one clear call-to-action, meaning tell people what you want them to do next. Answer a question? Click on a link? Participate in a survey? Whatever it is, make it clear and ask them to do it.

Keep Your List Clean

No matter what you do, even if you are the best copywriter in the world, you will end up with some "ghosts" on your list.

Again, by "ghost", I mean people who are subscribed to your email list but never open your emails.

Think about your own inbox. Do you ever get an email from someone you are subscribed to, decide that you aren't interested enough to read it, and just archive it without opening it? Well, congratulations, you are a ghost as well. We all are.

Rationally, this behavior doesn't make much sense, because unsubscribing from a list takes less than a minute. So why stay and keep archiving the emails? Because it somehow seems easier to do that than to go through the "hassle" of unsubscribing.

Now, when you are an owner of an email list, it quickly becomes clear that there are three problems with ghosts:

They feed your vanity. Say, you have a list of 100,000 subscribers, which sounds impressive. But what percentage of them are ghosts? It's easy to delude yourself into thinking that you are doing much better than you actually are if you allow inactive subscribers to accumulate.

They distort the statistics. When inactive subscribers make up a significant proportion of your email list, they affect the statistics such as open rates and click-through rates. While they make you overestimate the size of your email list, they also make you underestimate its engagement, because they bring the engagement numbers down. So you might look at your open rates, see that they are below average, and think that there's something wrong with your subject lines, when in fact you simply have a bunch of people on your list who never open your emails.

They cost you money. If you are using Mailchimp, then you are paying a monthly subscription fee based on the number of subscribers you have. Ghosts are not a problem when you have a small list, but as it grows all those inactive subscribers start adding up, and might cost you hundreds of dollars per month.

For example, Noah Kagan, the founder of AppSumo and Sumo, wasn't happy about his $700+ Mailchimp bill and started to look for ways to cut it down.

He managed to reduce it by 47% (down to $375 per month) simply by removing inactive subscribers (which they defined as people who haven't engaged with any of their emails for the last three months).

"Like many entrepreneurs, we enjoy the vanity of bragging about our email list size" admits Noah.

However, he still made the decision to clean up their main email list, as a result of which they went from 105,000+ subscribers down to 72,000+.

"Your ego will be hurt (...)" says Noah. "But at the end of the day, worry about results not vanity."

So don't hesitate to do the same. You can send a sequence of three emails to your inactive subscribers telling them that you are going to unsubscribe them if they don't confirm that they want to keep receiving your emails (provide a link for them to click on). Then bulk unsubscribe everyone who didn't do it.

Alternatively, you can simply pull the plug without warning, because it's unlikely that someone who has not opened your emails in the last three months will be upset about (or even notice) this.

You can do that by clicking on the "Audience" tab, click "View Contacts", then "New Segment", then choose "Campaign activity", "Did not open" and "All campaigns within the last 3 months" from the drop-down menus.

Then click "Add" to create a new condition, and choose "Campaign activity", "Was sent" and "Any campaigns within the last 3 months".

Click "Preview Segment", then tick the box next to each contact that you want to remove, click "Actions" and choose "Unsubscribe" from the drop-down menu.

You can also bulk unsubscribe inactive subscribers by viewing the segment, clicking "Export Segment", then "Export as CVS".

Then click on the "Audience" tab, choose "Manage contacts" from the drop-down menu, click on "Unsubscribe people", then open the CVS file on your computer, copy-paste the email addresses to the "Unsubscribe people" text field, and click "Unsubscribe".

Ideally, you should do this every three months, that way you will keep your list clean and your Mailchimp bill manageable.

Also, if you clean up your list regularly, removing inactive subscribers won't hurt as much as it would in a case like Noah's where he removed over 30,000 subscribers from their main list.

Most importantly, remember that it's the quality of the list that matters, not the number of email subscribers. Don't let your vanity get in the way!
Want to learn how to use Email Marketing to drive more traffic to your website? Check out our video:
Summary

Remember how I compared starting an email list to planting a tree at the beginning of this article?

Well, the comparison works, because just like a tree, an email list requires time, attention, and care to grow into something big and powerful.

So set your expectations accordingly. Everyone wants to have an email list of 100,000 subscribers. Yet only a few people have the patience to work hard to get their first, 10th, 100th subscriber.

However, the same way an acorn won't turn into a mighty oak overnight, your email list won't go from zero to 100,000 subscribers in a month, a year, or even several years.

But you will get there if you work hard to provide genuine value to your subscribers and stay committed to growing your email list.

So, start today.

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Beginner's Guide: How To Use Mailchimp (Build Your Email List)

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Mailchimp is one of the most adopted email marketing software. We even use it at Kinsta. Get to know everything about it in this thorough beginner's guide!

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Delivering your email marketing to your recipient's inbox is vital for the success of your marketing campaigns. If your recipients aren't able to see your mailer (because it went into their junk folder), then, no matter how good your design or sales message is, your email marketing campaign will fail to convert.

A great sales offer and a great looking email marketing design needs to be delivered to the inbox in order to convert email subscribers into buyers. Here at email blaster, we have put together an easy to follow guide to help ensure that your email marketing is delivered to the inbox. If your email marketing is currently being delivered to the spam folder, then help is at hand.

This guide covers all of the areas to look at in order to get to the bottom of an email marketing deliverability problem.

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Delivering your email marketing to your recipient's inbox is vital for the success of your marketing campaigns. If your recipients aren't able to see your mailer (because it went into their junk folder), then, no matter how good your design or sales message is, your email marketing campaign will fail to convert.

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Email Marketing Tutorial: How to Write Catchy Email Subject Lines

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Data Driven Marketing Software | Spotler

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Marketing knowledge: whitepapers, blogs & cases | Spotler

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Do you want to know more about marketing automation? Then read our extensive white papers, reports, customer cases and blogs. Click here!

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Having easy access to the web has radically changed the way people shop for almost everything today.

From mobile phones to dental services, it's rare to blindly make a purchase decision without reading through several online reviews. In 2016, 90% of shoppers read at least one online review before deciding to visit a business.

More importantly, 94% of online shoppers reported that a negative review has convinced them to avoid visiting a business.

This means that whatever your industry, having a positive online presence gives you several key advantages, which is why it's becoming a key part of branding.

Understanding why you need online reviews will help you optimize your customer experience to help create a positive online footprint. Let's review these seven reasons why your consumers' published experiences with your brand are vital.

1. Social Proof Drives Purchases

We're more likely to make a purchase if others around us-even total strangers-agree that it is a good decision. Today, online reviews are the biggest source of social proof, and they have a clear impact on sales.

For example, Seriously Silly Socks has been able to drive 60% higher average order value on the company's website than its other sales channels, and it's likely that the 3000 five-star reviews that populate the ecommerce site's various product pages have helped a great deal.

"We encourage reviews by emailing customers after purchase and offering a discount coupon in return for a completed review," Andrew Gill, the owner of the company, recently told BigCommerce in an interview for a case study.

"This has been a major difference from the start of our journey to selling directly from our store and has reduced our reliance on shopping channels. Customer feedback creates that 'social-proof' trust that encourages other visitors to our store to buy."

2. They Make You More Visible
Being a successful brand also means you're a visible one.
Most shoppers will look on search engines like Google and Bing, or even on Facebook, when deciding what to buy. These websites all have their own unique ways of indexing and surfacing content, but they all value original and fresh content, and customer reviews can definitely help feed the content machine, keeping your brand favored by algorithms.

Image source: https://www.yotpo.com/blog/reviews-seo/
Online customer reviews give you a steady pipeline of(hopefully) positive content that search engines value highly when choosing which results to return.

When you're ranked higher, algorithms and people alike tend to see your website as an authority in your industry, which also leads to more exposure.

3. They Make You Look Trustworthy

Your brand can build significant trust and credibility from a steady stream of positive reviews.

One of the more interesting findings of recent research is just how powerful reviews are at building your company's online identity.

Many shoppers distrust businesses that have ratings below(or even above) four stars. This leaves a small margin of error at the top, but companies with better average ratings are significantly more likely to see views converted to traffic and sales.

Image Source: https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/local-consumer-review-survey/
The way customers are talking about you is just as important as the fact that they're saying your name. Having a highly positive footprint will eventually help you drive more sales.

4. They Expand the Conversation About You

Very good (or bad) reviews have a way of quickly spreading.
Encouraging consumers to review your company is an easy way to expand your brand's reach.
When people have good things to say, they are also more likely to share their reviews on more sites, including external websites like Yelp, FourSquare, and TripAdvisor.

These hubs are vital to your online presence, as Google collects data from their sites when building its own results ranking. Even on an individual level, having positive reviews can help push further reviews.

For example, the Search Influence agency recently teamed up with GetFiveStars to reach out to patients of Houston-based orthopedic surgeon Dr. K. Mathew Warnock, generating his first 100 five-star reviews over the course of just five months.

When these reviews were published on Warnock's site, it not only lifted his organic search traffic by 23% but also snowballed to prompt more reviews on sites like Google+, Facebook, and Healthgrades, the latter being especially important to his vertical.

Image Source: https://www.healthgrades.com/physician/dr-k-warnock-ymtfn
Reviews on your website are always useful, but happy customers are likely to share their thoughts on as many places as possible, increasing your multi-channel footprint.

5. They Are Increasingly Essential to Decision Making

A proactively cultivated brand is one that increases your online visibility, and today, that means encouraging several ways for people to talk about you. Social media is a great tool, but the ability for customers to talk about you on other channels is a crucial component of your presence.

Almost two-thirds of shoppers think that online reviews are an essential part of the decision-making process. When they want to know the best places to go, they're more likely to turn to Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor than they are to a newspaper or even their friends and family.

Image Source: https://www.reviewtrackers.com/online-reviews-survey/
By focusing on creating a steady stream of reviews, your brand is more likely to show up when customers are making their next shopping decision.

6. They Have a Clear Impact on Sales

Case studies and theory can be misleading. Reality doesn't always follow a logic, and there are always outliers. But there's a growing body of benchmark data that proves that reviews do empirically lead to increased revenue.

A study by the Harvard Business School found that online reviews can demonstrably impact your bottom line. Brands that are viewed positively have better sales, but even improving your star rating can have a positive effect on your sales.

According to the study, a one-star improvement on Yelp.com leads to a boost of 5% to 9% on sales in the short term. Even a small improvement can have a massive impact.

Image Source: https://blog.reevoo.com/ratings-reviews-landscape/
In a 2016 study, Revoo found that online reviews drive an average of 18% sales uplift, with benefits including increased conversion rates, order sizes and repeat order rates. And a landmark Berkeley study from as long ago as 2011 found that a half-star improvement for a restaurant made it 30% to 49% more likely to fill up at peak hours. If readers like what they see, they'll show it with their wallets.

7. They Give You An Open Line to Consumers

More than simply posting reviews, consumers today expect companies to respond to their comments.

These reviews also give you a forum to be frank with consumers and reinforce positive reviews with thanks, or promotions. More importantly, they also give you a way to quickly rectify a poor review and show that you care.

Medical company MedQuest, for instance, was able to significantly improve its review ratings and volume by improving the rate at which it responded to both negative and positive responses. The company's review volume on Facebook soared by 163%, while it got 23% more reviews on Google.

"Our new focus on patient experience goes hand in hand with monitoring and responding to online reviews - especially any negative ones," MedQuest's Dave Hidding recently told Reputation.com in a case study.

Image source: https://www.reputation.com/resources/case-study/medquest-increases-patient-acquisition-and-retention-through-improved-review-responding/
The immediacy of these reviews and the personalized responses also mean that they give your brand a face. Having a friendly, open-to-feedback appearance can work wonders for your brand.

You're Under Review

The way you market your brand is important, but having people talk about you is a great way to enhance your message.

By encouraging positive conversations about your brand, you can quickly and clearly improve your marketing efforts.

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7 Reasons Why Online Reviews are Essential for Your Brand

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Having easy access to the web has radically changed the way people shop for almost everything today. From mobile phones to dental services, it's rare to blindly make a purchase decision without reading through several online reviews. In 2016, 90% of shoppers read at least one online review before deciding to visit a business.

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6 Key Benefits of Digital Marketing and Why Your Business Needs It

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Learn more about the benefits of digital marketing now. The advantages of online advertising range from its cost-effectiveness to its targeting and more!

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Your website is a living, breathing entity on the internet. Every update you make to your website once it is "live" on the internet plays a part in its interaction with visitors, customers, and the powerful search engines. However, a static website without updates of any kind may be viewed by search engines as a "dead" entity - with no life and nothing new to offer.

Thankfully, your frequently updated website offers search engines a haven for fresh content and sources of new information for their search requests. Simply put, if you update your website often with high quality content, search engines will love you for it.

What are the other reasons it is important for your website to update frequently with fresh content?

Fresh Content = Frequent Indexing

Don't confuse this phrase with the thinking that fresh content will give you higher indexing. That may not be the case. However, the more frequently you update your website with articles, downloads, and new web pages, the more frequently a search engine will stop by to visit your website. When search engines look at your site more frequently, you have the opportunity to achieve higher rankings based on the content you provide.

Search engines use web crawlers (a.k.a robots, bots, or "Googlebots"), which are simply high-tech programs that scan the internet for websites. The web crawler "indexes" a site based upon a number of algorithmic factors determined by the search engine company.

For instance, a site may be indexed based upon a combination of the number of incoming links to the site, the number and type of subject keywords used, and how often a site is updated. Every time you make an update to your website, the search engine takes notice and re-arranges your site's ranking. Thus, if you want to increase the chances of your website getting a higher ranking, update the content frequently so that a search engine will reassess your position on its index.

Keep in mind, more content is not the key here, quality is. So, yes, it is a good idea to update frequently, but keep your content standards high. If you blast your page with a ton of low-quality articles stuffed with keywords, you are going to be penalized.

Google Loves Frequent Updates

By far, the most frequently used search engine is Google. As the king of all search engines, Google has a tremendous influence on webmasters and how websites are constructed. When Google expresses its love for websites that update frequently, this is a sure sign that you should add fresh content to your website as often as you can.

Of course, you should not make unnecessary changes, additions, or postings every hour of every day. However, a site that is updated once a day, or at least two to three times a week, is considered a frequently updated site. The "Googlebot" that crawls the web is constantly searching for web pages that are new or updated and then adds the fresh content to the Google index. If you update your content often with reliable and valuable information, then you have a better chance of Google ranking your site higher with each update.

So, add an article, an image or just make some change on your site to get noticed. The easiest and most effective way to stay fresh is to add a blog on your site and continue to add articles that will get noticed by your viewers. If they comment on those articles, that counts as an update on your site. So, write something that will get the attention to begin helping with your frequent updates.

More Content, More Keywords

When you publish new content, you present yet more opportunities for your site to contain more keywords. Keywords are high on the algorithm chart for search engine indexing and ranking. Frequently added content, such as blog or article postings, allows you to optimize the article with pertinent keywords that can attract visitors to your site.

For instance, if you run an insurance quote website and update four to five times a week with new articles, you can focus each article on a different aspect of insurance, such as "automobile liability insurance" or "universal life insurance." Each time you add a new article, you incorporate valuable keywords that help a search engine recognize your website as a place searchers can visit for their specific insurance needs.

Now, you have to remember that with the algorithm updates, Google does not base a ton of weight on how many keywords your website has. Google is looking at top-quality content, rather than keyword-stuffed crap content when it indexes a site.

Yes, keywords are still a part of your SEO strategy, but you cannot build your entire SEO campaign around a keyword or keyword phrase no longer. Instead, create quality content that yes, has your keywords within it, but only if they are naturally in place. In other words, write content that answers questions, explains how to do something for the reader, or provides quality information that they want. Do not write content around a keyword; write it around what the reader wants. Use your Meta tags, title tags, and descriptions for your keywords, but leave the content in a more natural state.

Fresh Content Increases Your Authority Potential

All webmasters strive to become the industry "authority" in Google's eyes. The predominant strategy to becoming an authority site is by abiding by the SEO adage, "content is king." The more informative, valuable content you can publish that pertains to your industry, the greater authority potential your website enjoys.

In addition, if you review your competitors' websites, you will quickly find that the authority sites in your industry have tens of thousands of pages indexed by Google, who also measures relevance by site saturation. The more valuable content you publish, the better your chances of becoming an authority site.

Furthering this endeavor, frequently publishing industry news updates is another solid strategy in becoming an authority site. Each time you update your website with a news story, another page is created and indexed by Google.

The more you write on a particular topic, as long as the content is great, you become a stronger authority and people begin to trust what you say. The more they trust you, the more likely they are to purchase from you. Social media platforms are a great place to begin building authority on a topic. Answering questions on forums, posting valuable in-depth articles on your blog or just commenting on something worthwhile on other's blogs can build your reputation and gain you the authority you need in your industry.

If you consistently write top-quality content, users will become loyal. Loyalty is something you cannot buy, so even the small business owners have a chance to compete with the big dogs of their industry.

Keep Your Audience Informed and Updated

Another good reason to update your website with valuable content is to keep current subscribers updated, as well as provide necessary information for new visitors to convert to customers. You could utilize a RSS feed that will update subscribers each time you publish fresh content to the website. By keeping your audience engaged, you develop long-term loyalty, which translates into returning traffic that adds tremendous value to your website.

Likewise, your continually fresh content can provide new visitors with valuable information about your small business and your products or services. If a visitor was led to your site through a search engine link, then you need to convince them that your product is the best choice for them compared to the thousands (or millions!) of other results presented in their search. Give them articles about customer satisfaction. Inform them on the benefits of your product. Help them understand why they need your product. The more information a potential customer can access, the more likely he or she will be able to make an informed decision to purchase.

Regularly updating your website with fresh content will not only garner appreciation and loyalty from your visitors, but will put you in good standings with the powerful Google.

If a visitor finds your site and begins reading through your content and finds it is outdated, do you think they will stay or go? What would you do? I certainly would not order anything from someone who had an article from 2011 on their main page. I want to know the business is active, alive, worthy.

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5 Reasons Why Fresh Content is Critical for Your Website and SEO

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Maximize the presence of your website and learn about the reasons why publishing frequent, fresh content to your site will help you reap higher rankings with Google.

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How to Share Reviews on Instagram (to Look Like a Pro)

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Learn how to effectively share customer reviews on Instagram to boost your business reputation and drive sales with these practical tips and tools.

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Rankings and traffic through search engine optimization

Welcome to your SEO learning journey!

You'll get the most out of this guide if your desire to learn search engine optimization (SEO) is exceeded only by your willingness to execute and test concepts.

This guide is designed to describe all major aspects of SEO, from finding the terms and phrases ( keywords) that can generate qualified traffic to your website, to making your site friendly to search engines, to building links and marketing the unique value of your site.

The world of search engine optimization is complex and ever-changing, but you can easily understand the basics, and even a small amount of SEO knowledge can make a big difference. Free SEO education is also widely available on the web, including in guides like this! (Woohoo!)

Combine this information with some practice and you are well on your way to becoming a savvy SEO.

The basics of search engine optimization

Ever heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs? It's a theory of psychology that prioritizes the most fundamental human needs (like air, water, and physical safety) over more advanced needs (like esteem and social belonging). The theory is that you can't achieve the needs at the top without ensuring the more fundamental needs are met first. Love doesn't matter if you don't have food.

Our founder, Rand Fishkin, made a similar pyramid to explain the way folks should go about SEO, and we've affectionately dubbed it " Moz low's hierarchy of SEO needs."

Here's what it looks like:

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Strong data and smart analytics are must-haves when it comes to SEO work. Try Moz Pro free for 30 days and see why so many marketers trust our SEO tools!

As you can see, the foundation of good SEO begins with ensuring crawl accessibility, and moves up from there.

Using this beginner's guide, we can follow these seven steps to successful SEO:

1. Crawl accessibility so engines can read your website

2. Compelling content that answers the searcher's query

3. Keyword optimized to attract searchers & engines

4. Great user experience including a fast load speed and compelling UX

5. Share-worthy content that earns links, citations, and amplification

6. Title, URL, & description to draw high click-through-rate (CTR) in the rankings

7. Snippet/schema markup to stand out in SERPs

We'll spend time on each of these areas throughout this guide, but we wanted to introduce it here because it offers a look at how we structured the guide as a whole.

Explore the chapters:

Speed up to catch up
Go from zero to hero with our step-by-step refresh on the core fundamentals for setting your site up for SEO success.

How much of this guide do I need to read?

If you're serious about improving search traffic we do recommend reading the Beginner's Guide to SEO front-to-back. We've tried to make it as concise and easy to understand as possible, and learning the basics of SEO is a vital first step in achieving your online business goals.

Go through at the pace that suits you best, and be sure to take note of the dozens of resources we link to throughout the chapters - they're also worthy of your attention.

If you want to take a more guided approach to learning SEO or training your entire team, check out the Moz Academy SEO Essentials Certification. We've consolidated all the resources you need to learn SEO fundamentals alongside unique learning methods, task lessons and quizzes to test your knowledge. You can also display your knowledge with your Linkedin Moz SEO Essentials certification badge.

Getting excited yet? You should be! Without further ado, let's launch into Chapter 0: Quick Start Guide.

Moz Academy SEO Essentials Certification

Organize your learning with Moz's SEO Essentials Certification. Learn with on-demand videos and task lessons, test your knowledge with exams at the end of each section, and top it all off with shiny new credentials to share with your professional network.

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Beginner's Guide to SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

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New to SEO? Looking for higher rankings and traffic through Search Engine Optimization? The Beginner's Guide to SEO has been read over 10 million times.

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With technology all around us, it is vital for your company to have a website. Websites are an easy way to communicate with current and potential customers. Websites are an important part of marketing your business and sending out necessary information about your company/brand/blog/charity, etc. Websites can play a big part in your business's success!

A good marketing strategy for your business, is to notice your website traffic. Website traffic is important for many reasons. The more people see your site, the more potential customers you will have. The number of visitors to your website becomes the number of opportunities your business has at giving an impression, generating qualified leads, sharing your brand and building relationships. Building relationships and trust can ultimately sell your product or service, gain new clients or customers and help to grow your business.

More website traffic doesn't just mean more money. More website traffic can grow your business, expand your product line, open more locations and develop more services and products.

Website Conversion Numbers

Increasing the quality of the website traffic and visits to your site, you are also increasing your conversion numbers. Website conversion numbers is a very important factor to the success of your online marketing strategy and your business goals. This means you are getting your visitors to do what you want them to do, whether it is to attend your event, buy your product, sign up for your newsletters or mailings, get a quote or sign a contract. Increasing your conversion numbers ultimately decreases the number of new visitors you need to maintain your goals. It is not always about the number of visitors you have going to your website, but more the ones that are interested and end up making the purchase.

Target Audience

A big part of increasing numbers and increasing the quality of the website traffic visits to your site, is your ability to capture your target audience and convert them into customers.

Increasing Traffic on Your Website

Many businesses might be wondering how they can increase the traffic on their site to keep their website relevant and noticed. Try focusing on results, not features. Tell your potential customers the benefits that your products or services will provide for them. It is also beneficial to talk about your customers instead of focusing too much on yourself. Focus on why your customers should care about your company and how you can help them, not too much about how awesome you and your company is.

Repeat Visitors

Make sure you work on building your reputation around your company based on the quality of your brand identity. Also remembering that repeating visitors are important. People tend to continue buying from companies they know and trust. There is a very low chance people will just randomly click on a product they searched for and buy it right away. They tend to stick to what they know. Make sure to keep those repeat customers informed about your products to remind them to buy from you.

Concentrating on your website traffic is important to maintaining repeat visitors and gaining potential leads and new clients. Increase your website traffic, stick to your target audience and work on your website conversion numbers. All this and more will help your website become a successful website and in turn a successful business.

Need help increasing your website traffic and making your website one that draws in customers? Let Hooked Marketing help you with your website! Call us at 727-333-5270.

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With technology all around us, it is vital for your company to have a website. Websites are an easy way to communicate with current and potential customers. Websites are an important part of marketing your business and sending out necessary information about your company/brand/blog/charity, etc. Websites can play a big part in your business's success!

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The complete guide to optimizing content for SEO (with checklist)

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Learn how to craft content that stands out, drives search traffic, is visible in AI-powered search, and resonates with your audience.

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Have you heard the words Schema.org, Schema Markup, Structure Data thrown around in conversation? Have they left you scratching your head, wondering what the heck your teammates (especially web developers) were talking about?

Well, you are in luck! We're clearing the fog so you know exactly what they are, why they matter, (and can get more out of all that technical talk).

Let's roll.
Free Assessment: Website Performance Assessment
What is Schema Markup?

Search Engines work hard to understand the content of the page. That is where Schema markup comes into play.

Ryan MacKeller, in his "My Six Search Resolutions for 2018" infographic, had the best short and skinny definition of Schema, in my opinion:

"No matter how smart we think Google is, it still struggles to make sense of what a webpage is actually about. That's why there's schema markup. It's a form of metadata added to a website that tells the algorithm what it is drawing and how to categorize it. In December 2017, Google even launch an algorithm update that penalized websites without."

In other words, Schema markup, also known as structured data, is the language of search engines, using a unique semantic vocabulary. TopSpot SEM does a great job breaking down what is semantic vocabulary.

"At its basis semantic vocabulary is simply the ability to break down a sentence (in any language) into its varying parts. For example, while you may be able to interpret "mydogneedswater" as "my dog needs water," a computer typically can't. In the same way, schema markup uses semantic vocabulary to break down the language of the computer. In this case, the computer's language would be its code."

It is code used to more clearly provide information to search engines in order to understand your content. In turn, this helps provide users with better, more accurate information in the rich snippets that are displayed beneath the page title.
(Example of SERP with different Schema Types)
Some schema you may be familiar with and not even realize it are the rating/review, product/service (showing price or whether it is in stop), and news articles that appear directly in Google when you enter certain queries.

Depending on what platform your site is built on, there are a couple of ways to implement schema. For WordPress, for example, there are plugins you can install.

For other CMSes, depending on the type of language, it is either manually in the head of the page, or inline with the HTML.

It is so essential to search engines, schema.org, the website for schema markup, is actually the result of collaboration between Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. Something's gotta be crucial if it brings competitors together like that!

Why Should Implementing Schema Markup Be So Important to Me?

Search results that have schema applied inform the user faster.

The user is able to see details of your page at a glance which help them decide whether to click through or move on to a more relevant one.

This information also helps your website rank better for all kinds of content types, get found, and in turn, get more clicks.

Recently I have been doing some research on a new dehumidifier for my basement, and before I started writing this article, I never really paid attention to all the details on the SERPs.

Learning more about schema, I started to pay attention to them more. Here are the search results from me looking at the Frigidaire 70 Pint Dehumidifier.

I was able to quickly see all the ratings for the dehumidifier, and if I was lucky to price it was going to cost me. Then, I wanted to go in further to see what people were saying about the dehumidifier. Many reviews were right there!

Keep in mind this isn't an SEO hack, it's a staple that helps search engines find and display your content.

The only way that schema can hurt you is if your competitor is using it and you are not.

According to Search Engine Land, by implementing schema, you could get a 30% increase in click-through rate.

At IMPACT, we implement a very basic schema to help with your company profile, such as logo, website URL, phone number, and social media profiles.

On blogs, we also implement the Article Schema markup that includes the headline, featured image, author, published date, etc.

What Types of Schema Markups Are There?

There are hundreds of different markup types because there are so many different questions people turn to search engines to answer.

You may ask yourself, well, are there certain schema that only works on certain search engines? Since the big search engines (Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo!) are collaboration as we mentioned, the answer is no. All of them are looking for and reading the same information.

Here is an FAQ from Schema.org to explain further:

Q: Why are Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo! collaborating? Aren't you competitors?
Currently, there are many standards and schemas for marking up different types of information on web pages. As a result, it is difficult for webmasters to decide on the most relevant and supported markup standards to use. Creating a schema supported by all the major search engines makes it easier for webmasters to add markup, which makes it easier for search engines to create rich search features for users.

Here are the 10 most common schema markups that are used.

1. Organization Schema Markup

The organization schema markup clarifies your company introduction, including official logo, contact info, location, and social profiles. This helps give you the short and skinny of a company right off the bat without having to dig around to try and find basics. It also makes it easier for people to find the information they need to contact you right away.

2. Person Market Schema Markup

The Person Market Schema shows information about an individual, such as name, birthday, address, education, and family members.

Google assumes that if you're searching for someone by name, you're likely looking for some basic information.

So, with this schema, it's aiming to deliver the answer you seek without you needing to click through to another website.

3. Local Business Schema Markup

The Local Business Schema Markup is great for local companies or a local branch of an organization. It helps consumers find the company's location and other information such as the address, opening hours, contact info, etc.

Local Business is a particular physical business or branch of an organization, for example, restaurant, branch of a bank, bowling alley, medical practice, etc.

4. Product & Offer Schema Markup

The Product & Offer markups are used to sell a specific item of a service or product.

Both enable product information to be delivered, such as price and status, but the Offer markup also requires the price and price currency properties, while Product markup only requires the name property.

This helps your product/service stand out from the rest if competitors aren't using it, or it allows the users to easily compare you to other competitors if they are selling the same product/service you are.

5. Breadcrumbs Markup

Breadcrumbs markup lists the path links that lead to the current page. It helps users to see their location and helps reduce bounce rates.

6. Article Schema Markup

Schema Article Markup is most commonly used for news and blog posts.

It makes it easier for search engines to understand the content pulling in the headline, time it was published, a featured image, and sometimes even a video. There are, however, different types of Article Schema Markup for the different type of articles, such as Blog Post, News Article, and Scholarly Article.

7. Video Schema Markup

Video Schema Markup is a good way to help Google crawl and index videos on your website, as we all know it is tough for search engines to do so.

It also helps your video appear in the Google Video Search, alongside those from YouTube.

8. Event Schema Markup

Event Schema Markup provides additional information for scheduled events (i.e. webinars, concerts, lectures, etc) such as date, location, and price.

This helps make it easier to draw people to the specific events they're looking for and give them the basic information they need to want to make a purchase.

9. Recipe Schema Markup

Recipe schema markup is meant for the recipe website pages to show as a rich snippet.

Besides making searchers hungry, it helps them evaluate the finished product before they click through.

10. Rating/Review Schema Markup

Who doesn't look at reviews before they purchase a service or a product? Rating Schema Markup generates your best directly in the SERP pages.

This will help get useful buyer information right out front without the user having to dig deeper.

Looking for the full list of items that Schema Markups can define, you can find them here.

Schema Encoding Types

There are just three different encoding types of Schema Markup they are, JSON-LD, Microdata, RFDa. SEMRush does a great job breaking it down further for the average marketer to understand.

As a marketer, it's important to understand that RDFa and Microdata are the older way to write schema.

These types of language involve implementing code right into the HTML and this can make things more difficult and more prone to causing issues on your page such as causing incorrect HTML syntax and your page not properly loading.

JSON-LD is the preferred method of adding structured data to your website because it is the easiest to understand as well as implement into the code of your site. Just until recently not all search engines adopted this type of language so you had to use the others.

RDFa stands for Resource Descriptive Framework in Attributes. It is a form of code that can be added to any HTML, XHTML, and XML-based document.

In the end, they all do the same thing for getting your schema out there for search engines, the only difference is how they are implemented into your site.

RDFa's attributes include:

about - to specify the resource the metadata is about

rel and rev - to specify a relationship and reverse relationship with another resource

src, href, and resource - to specify a partner resource

content - to override the content of the element when using the property attribute

datatype - to specify the datatype of text specified for use with the property attribute

typeof - to specify the RDF type of the subject or the partner resource

Microdata implementation is similar to RDFa, and its attributes include the following:

itemscope - to create the item and indicate that the rest of the element contains information about it

itemtype - to describe the item and properties with a valid URL of a vocabulary (for example, "https://schema.org")

itemprop - to indicate that the containing tag has the value of a specified item property (ex, itemprop="name")

itemid - to indicate a unique identifier of the item

itemref - to reference properties of an element that are not contained in the itemscope. This provides a list of element ids with more properties elsewhere in the document

JSON-LD stands for Javascript Object Notation for Linked Objects. This style of annotation can implement schema by pasting directly in the <head> or <body> tag of a web document. The notation uses "@context" and "@type" attributes to specify the vocabulary (schema.org).

How Do I Implement Schema Markup on My Site?

Now you have probably said to yourself, great another coding language I have to learn, or more money that I have to spend having a developer to get this implemented on my site.

You don't need to learn any new coding skills!

Here are some steps you can take using some of Google's tool to get your schema markup generated.

1. Go to Google's Structure Data Markup Helper.

2. Select the type of data that you plan to markup.

3. Paste in the URL of the page or article you want to markup.
Looking for a more technical definition of each (maybe for your developers) has a great definition of each.
4. Highlight and select the type of elements to be marked up.
That's not the case!
5. Continue adding markup items.

Use the list of data items as a guide, and continue highlighting the other items in your article to add them to the markup list. Don't worry if you can't tag every item, just get the ones that are required. But keep in mind the more the better.

6. Create the HTML.

7. Use the Structured Data Testing Tool to find out what your page will look like with the added markup. You can also use the tool to test for any warnings.

8. Add the generated schema markup to your web page. If you wish you can also add before testing.

There are plenty of other tools out there that will help you create your schema markup, and even validate it.

Here are just a few.

For those WordPress people, here are a couple of plugins.

Jump on the Schema Bandwagon!

In 2017, Bing and Catalyst did a study and it was reported that only 17% of people were using schema markup. If you aren't on the schema markup bandwagon, time to jump and get this implemented as soon as possible. With it, you have a better chance outranking your competitors, and gaining that brand recognition.

Need help getting started with schema markup? Talk to IMPACT!
Generators Validators and test tools WordPress Plugins

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Digital marketing is more important now than ever. My recommendations on the challenges and opportunities for growth

Where do you start if you want to develop a digital marketing strategy? It's still a common challenge since many businesses know how vital digital and mobile channels are today for acquiring and retaining customers. Yet they don't have an integrated plan to support digital transformation and business growth based on engaging their audiences effectively online.

The importance of digital channels in influencing brand discovery is highlighted by this research from Global Web Insight published in the Datareportal April 2023 Global Snapshot report.

This research shows that if you don't compete by maintaining quality online content to gain visibility within search engines and social networks, then you're missing out on opportunities to reach new customers.

Regardless of the type of business, if your business doesn't have a strategic digital marketing plan aligned with your business plan, you will suffer from the ten problems I highlight in this article and you will lose out to competitors who are more digitally savvy.

Let's now look at the 10 reasons that you can treat as challenges, or better, as opportunities. For each of the potential digital marketing challenges, I will also recommend marketing solutions and next steps to help you improve your process of digital marketing planning.

10 reasons why you need a digital marketing strategy

It's important to be able to make the business case to invest more in digital marketing since, if you can't convince yourself or your colleagues to invest, then the future of your business is in jeopardy. It's simple, you won't be able to compete to attract new customers in the future.

1. You're directionless - you don't have a plan

I find that companies without a digital strategy (and many that do) don't have a clear strategic goal for what they want to achieve online in terms of gaining new customers or building deeper relationships with existing ones.

Our Managing Digital marketing research report showed that almost half (45%) of companies don't yet have a defined digital marketing strategy, but are doing digital marketing!

You can see that around one-fifth (17%) do define their digital strategy. This is a great first step in the process towards a fully integrated strategy. Where you want to get to is where all digital marketing activities are prioritized as part of overall investments in your marketing

And if you don't have goals with SMART digital marketing objectives you likely don't put enough resources to reach the goals and you don't evaluate through analytics whether you're achieving those goals.

Our templates can support you to create more realistic forecasts of investing in digital media and improving conversion rates. Use our RACE digital marketing dashboard to simplify your reporting of Google Analytics goals for monthly reviews.

2. You have poor digital maturity since digital marketing doesn't have enough people/budget given its importance

We often see that businesses of all sizes have insufficient resources devoted to both planning and executing digital marketing. There is likely to be a lack of specific specialist online marketing skills which will make it difficult to respond to competitive threats effectively.

A good starting point to make the case for more investment in digital marketing is to assess your digital maturity. To help our members we have created a free download of maturity benchmarks like that shown below.

We have collected these visuals together in a single download so that you can easily review them and print the most relevant for you. We've designed them so members can use them for different scales of business and roles. There are more than 10 templates which cover:

Digital marketing for small and medium businesses using our RACE framework

Digital transformation for larger businesses

Digital channel marketing activities including SEO, Social media, email and content marketing

I designed this example for reviewing digital marketing effectiveness with senior leaders in small and medium or larger businesses. I recommend you score your current maturity across each of the pillars of effective digital marketing and then set targets of how you need to improve within the next 12 or 18th months and put in place a plan to achieve that. We find that often, many businesses are at level 1 or 2 and should aim to reach at least level 3 when they will have a planned approach and will be able to compete.

The other templates in the download are more granular, looking at specific digital marketing activities using our RACE framework.

Free digital marketing maturity benchmarking template
Score your business on this simple five-point scale to identify techniques you can use to improve your digital marketing overall and for the core channels and techniques including SEO, social media, email marketing and conversion rate optimization.

Access the Free digital marketing maturity benchmarking templates

As a Smart Insights premium member, you'll have access to strategy and planning tools including performance and digital maturity benchmarking, and regular marketing insights reports, so you can keep track of your position in a competitive landscape.

3. Existing and start-up competitors will gain market share through optimizing their always-on marketing

If you're not devoting enough resources to digital, or you're using an ad-hoc approach with no clearly defined strategies, then your competitors will eat your digital lunch since they will be more focused on always-on marketing!

Always-on marketing refers to the investments in paid, owned and earned media needed across the customer lifecycle shown in this figure from the eighth edition of my Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice book. Investment is needed to maintain visibility and support conversion and retention continuously as people search for and select products online.

Many brands don't get the balance right between investment in always-on across these activities and campaigns, so neglect AOM.

Our RACE planning framework defines how to create a plan covering both always-on and campaign communications. You can learn more in our free download.

4. You won't know your online audience or market share

Customer demand for online services may be underestimated if you haven't researched this. Perhaps, more importantly, you won't understand your online marketplace. The dynamics will be different from traditional channels with different types of customer profile and behaviour, competitors, propositions, and options for marketing communications.

Our templates include a customer persona guide and template to help you develop more detailed, actionable personas that map messages and content requirements through the customer journey. Through completing this persona analysis you will be able to create a content strategy to support customers in selecting products and to implement the strategy to improve engagement through your search, social media and email marketing too. That's why a content strategy is one of the pillars of your digital marketing.

5. You don't have a powerful online value proposition

As part of defining the scope of opportunity when using a strategic approach to digital marketing, it's helpful to think about how digital experiences can improve your brand appeal. This involves improving online services, interactive tools and digital audience interactions to improve customer service.

A clearly defined digital value proposition tailored to your different target customer personas will help you differentiate your online service encouraging existing and new customers to engage initially and stay loyal.

6. You don't know your online customers well enough

It's often said that digital is the "most measurable medium ever". But Google Analytics and similar will only tell you volumes of visits, not the sentiment of visitors, what they think. You need to use other forms of research and website user feedback tools to identify your weak points and then address them.

7. You're not integrated ("disintegrated")

It's all too common for digital activities to be completed in silos whether that's a specialist digital marketer, sitting in IT, or a separate digital agency. It's easier that way to package 'digital' into a convenient chunk. But of course, it's less effective. Everyone agrees that digital media work best when integrated with traditional media and response channels.

That's why we recommend developing an integrated digital marketing strategy, so your digital marketing works hard for you! With your integrated plan in place, digital will become part of your marketing activity and part of business as usual.

8. You're wasting money and time through duplication

Even if you do have sufficient resources, they may be wasted. This is particularly the case in larger companies where you see different parts of the marketing organization purchasing different tools or using different agencies for performing similar online marketing tasks.

That's why you need to invest in a marketing strategy that works for you and your team, to plan, manage and optimize your digital channels and platforms. Drive the marketing results you need to achieve your business objectives, and boost your marketing ROI.

9. You're not agile enough to catch up or stay ahead

If you look at the top online brands like Amazon, Booking.com, Dell, Google and Zappos, they're all dynamic - trialing new approaches to gain or keep their online audiences.

Our 90-day RACE Growth system approach will support you to create a similar process to improve your results.

To manage your always-on marketing activities we recommend a 90-day planning approach (template) to prioritize your activities using the RACE growth process that identifies 25 key digital activities you should continuously refine by prioritizing those that matter most.

10. You're not optimizing

Every company with a website will have analytics. But many senior managers don't ensure that their teams make or have the time to review and act on them. Once your digital channel strategy enables you to get the basics right, then you can progress to the continuous improvement of the key aspects like brand building, site user experience, and lead nurturing.

Transform your marketing strategy and accelerate your results today with Smart Insights

So, the good news is that there are powerful reasons for creating a winning digital strategy and transforming your marketing, which you can use to persuade your colleagues and clients.

If you're looking to integrate your marketing strategy, Smart Insights membership is a no-brainer. Since all our marketing solutions are integrated across our RACE Growth System, you can confidently track and adapt the journeys which you know deliver the best results, integrated across multiple channels. Download our free template to find out more.

What is digital marketing? The six pillars.

Digital marketing must support your marketing and business goals, so in my book - Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice - I define Digital marketing, also called online marketing, simply as:

Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies and media.

This is the big picture which you need a strategy to support, but, as we explain on Smart Insights, to be successful in online marketing you also need mastery of the details to compete across the main digital platforms that consumers or businesses use to find and select products.

The algorithms used to power Facebook, Instagram, Google, LinkedIn and the publishers control your visibility and how much you pay, so to get visibility digital marketers need to get to grips with the latest techniques. It's why my books on professional marketing run to over 500 pages, yet they can only touch on the best practices we detail on Smart Insights.

Before we review the different channels that make up digital marketing, it's useful to simplify since business managers like the owners, finance or operations directors ultimately want to know what they need to invest in at a top level and the returns they will get. There will be a finite budget assigned to online marketing for the year and they want to ensure their team are spending time on the right activities and investing in the right types of media to get a positive return.

The six pillars comprising digital marketing

When training and consulting on digital strategy and as recommended in our free template, I recommend grouping digital activities in these six areas which each need someone responsible to manage them and improve results.

A focus on each of these is important regardless of the size of business. The pillars help show that success in digital marketing isn't just about digital media and platforms, important as they are. Creating an effective digital experience, messaging and quality content to fuel your digital strategy are all vital too.

In today's demanding digital landscape, there is internal and external pressure on marketers to continue to grow during inflation.

This simple division of digital best practices can also help students learn beyond the complexities of the different types. I have created this video to introduce these terms.

How many different types of digital marketing are there?

Our six pillars of marketing represent six types of marketing activity, categorized by the role they play in your customer's experiences of your brand.

In smaller businesses, it may be one person such as a digital marketing manager responsible for all, or one for each pillar with many team members in larger businesses.

These 6 types are:

1. Strategy and governance (or management): Goals - Analytics, Strategy (Segmentation, Targeting, Brand Positioning), integration, marketing and sales alignment, resourcing, structure, marketing technology and data

2. Goals and measurement: Forecasts, digital reporting including KPI dashboards, attribution and customer insight

3. Media: Paid, owned, earned media including Search, Social and Display ads

4. Experience: Desktop / mobile website and apps. Customer service.

5. Messaging: Email, Chat, Social media, customer service, on-site interactions and personalization

6. Content: Product and blog content to fuel content marketing, PDF downloads, Interactive tools

Our free digital marketing plan template has more details on the key decisions for each of these.

How does digital marketing differ for B2B and B2C marketing?

Many of the largest brands in the world today including the digital platforms like Facebook (Meta) and Google (Alphabet) are consumer brands, but when considering how best to use digital strategies, it's important to consider business-to-business brands too. There are many B2B companies which often serve B2C brands.

Smart Insights developed our RACE Marketing planning framework so that it works equally in B2B and B2C markets. This is the case since it integrates your customers' digital experiences interacting with brands across Reach, Act, Convert and Engage - the full customer journey. You can download our free digital marketing plan template to find out more.

The 16 digital media activities forming digital marketing

As I've mentioned, success in digital marketing requires mastering the details. In my book I explain how these 16 examples of different types of marketing technologies span 6 digital media channels, plus a range of paid media, owned media and earned media options.

Search engine marketing

Social media marketing

Digital advertising

Digital PR

Digital partnerships

Digital messaging

Pay-per-click PPC

Paid social

Programmatic display

Online advertorial

Affiliate marketing

Publisher email/push

Organic search (SEO)

Organic social

Native advertising

Guest blogging

Co-branding

In-house email/push

Backlinks

Earned mentions

Sponsorship

Influencer outreach

Co-marketing

Partner emails

However, to be truly successful, digital techniques must also be integrated with traditional media such as print, TV, and direct mail as part of multichannel marketing communications. More importantly, now more than ever, you need to be able to demonstrate the value of your work.

The purpose of this article is to highlight these 10 reasons why you need a digital marketing strategy. You can read more about the 16 types of digital marketing techniques with more recommendations and examples in Dr. Dave Chaffey's What is digital marketing?

Where do I start when creating a plan?

I hope this article has shown the compelling reasons for creating a dedicated digital marketing plan to simplify your focus on digital marketing to the priorities that matter.

But where to start is a common question, since digital marketing is complex!

We created our RACE Growth system to simplify digital marketing planning as much as possible.

Your plan doesn't need to be a huge report, a strategy can best be summarized in two or three sides of A4 in a table linking digital strategies to SMART objectives within our OSA Framework - Opportunity, Strategy, Action.

As a Business Member, we can support you to get it right the first time through following our example planning templates for different sectors which are available as downloads in Word and Powerpoint.

To step you through the process of creating a plan our Business Members use our RACE Practical Digital Marketing Learning Path.

Our Learning Paths are integrated with downloadable templates to help you audit your performance, set forecasts and create action plans. Each Learning Path includes different types of example templates in Excel, Powerpoint and Word from our resource library to help you create your action plans as you work through the Learning Path.

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