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Happy Birthday, America!
Brands across the nation are getting into the holiday spirit and promoting Independence Day-themed sales and special events.
We’ve received tons of emails geared toward the holiday, and today, we’re sharing a few of our favorites to give you ideas for your own July 4th campaigns!
Click each example to open up our July 4th email design gallery.
Father’s Day is just a few short weeks away and we have started to receive numerous emails in anticipation of the holiday.
Check out some of our favorite below and get some gift ideas while you read!
Gift guides make it easy to cut through the clutter on a website and see what stand out items the retailer thinks are perfect for a holiday. We like that Kiehl’s shows both individual and kits that would make great gifts for dad. And we like the top 5 gifts guide from Mark & Graham – especially the S-curve layout of the email!
Is your dad the creative type? Or is he more of a sports guy? Emails that segment gift suggestions to a certain “type” of guy help you to determine where to focus your interest. Is your dude on the cusp or more than one type? Mix and match gifts from different segments for a personalized gift! We like how Bergdorf Goodman and Nordstrom Rack approached this email style.
Who doesn’t love a sale? Cabela’s and Artifact Uprising sent emails highlighting the deals and site-wide sales they have. This is especially great if you need to buy multiple gifts for the men in your life celebrating Father’s Day. Paper Culture sent an email about a specific product they are running a special on that they think would make a great Father’s Day gift.
Gift cards give you a lot of flexibility in your gift giving. Services like Stitch Fix offer gift cards that can be emailed, printed, or mailed to the recipient to fit your needs. Ahead of the game? Get a physical gift card gift boxed and sent to the recipient or sent to you to give to them in person. Looking for a list minute gift? Email them the gift card with the retrieval code.
Are you an e-commerce company that sells hundreds of products in various iterations and your customers come back to order from you time and time again? Are you pulling your hair out trying to house all the data you have on your customers into one database? Stop. Relational databases and tables will become your new best friend.
We welcome Digital Marketing Manager, Ali Nazam to explain what a relational database is and why as an e-commerce marketer you should use them.
MailChimp is an email service provider (ESP) for small to midsize companies with a range of communication needs. MailChimp offers an easy to use user interface with capabilities that personalize the experience for the sender and recipient.
MailChimp provides numerous campaign types and templates to customize for your needs. No HTML or CSS coding is necessary to use MailChimp with easy plug-and-chug systems in place. Follow along to see how to send an email:
Step 1
Locate and navigate to “Campaigns” in the top menu. Click “Create Campaign” to get started. Select the type of campaign you would like to build. In this case, we’ll start small. Let’s choose “Regular Campaign.”
Step 2
Choose your list. This is pretty simple – just select which of your lists you would like to send to from the drop-down menu. You then see the option to choose segments. This is where you would apply a specific set of rules to a targeted audience – or, just send to the whole list. (Hint – segmenting does wonders!)
Step 3
Complete your mailing settings. This includes all of the basics: mailing name, subject line, from name, from email address and tracking. MailChimp provides the option to personalize the “to” field based on data, or check different methods of tracing. The screenshot below shows the generic options – which suffice for a typical send.
Step 4
Now, the fun begins! Don’t get overwhelmed with the mailing template options, go into this step with a general idea of how you would like to layout your email.
You may choose from basic templates, themes, saved templates (from previous sends), set campaigns, or code your own. Once you have your bearings within MailChimp, you can create a saved template with standardized assets such as your logo, header, and footer. For all future sends, you can select that saved template rather than starting from scratch each time.
For now, we will select a simple 1:2 Column Banded template.
Step 5
Design to your heart’s content! This is your chance to play with the drag and drop functionality within the platform. Pull different content blocks from the right side and insert images and copy to make the email your own. The template you start with is just a jumping off point, customize it to your needs.
The right panel also offers you styling options per content block. Anytime a content block (image, text, column, etc.) is selected on the left, it’s settings will appear on the right. That’s where you can style based on color, size, linking and more.
Here’s a simple before and after:
Before
After
Step 6
You’re almost there! Let’s quickly pause and review what we’ve accomplished. You chose the send list, completed the mailing settings, selected and styled the template. Now you can finally press the “send” button to send now, or you can schedule the mailing for a future send time! Always use an email checklist and send with a buddy to ensure your send is successful.
Nope! MailChimp has many integrations that can be set up to extend its functionality to fit your needs. Let’s break down some of the popular options:
E-commerce Integrations
The more you know about your customer’s shopping behaviors the better you can target and personalize the customer journey. MailChimp has integration capabilities with numerous e-commerce, such as Shopify, Magento, and ShipStation to name a few.
CRM Integrations
Not only is it important to track online behaviors, but it is also necessary to track offline behaviors customers have with sales or customer service reps. Connect this data with MailChimp, through CRM integrations, such as Salesforce or SugarCRM.
Social Integrations
Facebook
Build single image or carousal image Facebook ads, using the same plug-and-chug tools that you use for email. There is no extra fee for this feature within MailChimp, just pay what you would for Facebook sponsored content. Not only can you setup and trigger Facebook Ads within MailChimp, you can set up custom audiences, and access holistic campaign reporting.
Twitter
Easily integrate Twitter information in your campaigns or post to Twitter all within MailChimp.
The best ESP for you depends on your needs (and wants) for the tool and your budget. MailChimp is a great resource if you have a smaller in-house team, who are unfamiliar with coding templates from the ground up. We’d love to talk to more about how MailChimp or another ESP would be best to fit your organization.
Do you still feel the need to go into a store to checkout a product in person before purchasing? According to Invesp, 78% of online shoppers don’t look at a product in a store before buying it online.
Buyer behavior has shifted with free shipping, convenient free returns, sizing tools, and more. This shift has led to a change in the retail climate which will allow some retailers to flourish and others to perish. The National Retail Federation has stated, “online and nonstore (catalogs, etc.) sales are projected to nearly triple the year-over-year growth rate for the entire retail industry in 2017”
Watson Campaign Automation is the IBM solution formerly known as IBM Marketing Cloud / Silverpop.
Is Salesforce integrated with your Watson Campaign Automation instance? Great! But, as a marketer what does that mean and how does it impact the day-to-day function of your leads? We’re here to help. This week we introduce Internal Marketing Manager, Nora Luongo, to share her 3 things every marketer should know about their Watson Campaign Automation + Salesforce integration.
Before we begin, there are some terms I’m going to talk about in this post that are Salesforce specific that you need to understand in context with Watson Campaign Automation:
Leads: Records that are synced to Salesforce and have not been converted to a Contact
Contacts: Records that have been converted and attached to an Account
Accounts: Company name object, that houses contacts and opportunities
Campaigns: A marketing activity that you can, plan and track within Salesforce
Campaign ID: ID for the specific Campaign you would like to add records to (found in the URL for the campaign in Salesforce).
Campaign Status: Status of Leads/Contacts in your Campaign (Sent/Responded or custom values)
When synching leads bi-directionally between the two systems or just from Watson Campaign Automation to SFDC, every record must have values for three fields: Email, Last Name, and Company Name. If these are left blank, the record will not sync over to Salesforce. If you do not know Last Name or Company Name put an X or another phrase to indicate it is a temporary placeholder and update it when known. Just remember, if you do use X or another phrase in these fields and you use these fields for personalization in mailings, you will need to put in safeguards to make sure the recipient doesn’t see the fake value.
Note: You must be an Admin of your Watson Campaign Automation org to see Organizational Settings
There are more sections within the CRM settings, but I will just highlight the 3 tabs I use most often:
a) Status Checklist
The CRM Integration Status Checklist catalogs all the sync agents that are currently enabled/disabled for your organization. Unfortunately sync agents are not stealthy secret agents, they are the kind of syncs that are set up to run between Watson Campaign Automation + Salesforce.com. Looking at the picture below, each of the categories: Profile Data for Leads, Contacts, and Accounts; Alerts to Chatter/Tasks; and are all sync agents. You will only have the ones applicable to your organization enabled and you can remove/add any later if you need to.
If you see green checks across the board and the last successful sync date/time is within 1-2 hours of checking – you’re good to go! But if you see that you have green arrows, but the last successful sync was at 8 AM and you’re checking at 1 PM, this can indicate a sync stall; open a support case if you see this. Also, open a support case if you see a red exclamation point – this means the sync has stopped, which indicates a bigger problem.
b) Field Mappings
The field mapping tab can be a bit confusing so let’s break it down. There are two tabs on left called “Active Mapping” and “Working Copy”. Active Mapping is the default view and shows you what fields are currently set to sync, one way or bi-directionally. Working copy is where you can go to add or remove mappings. There are also 4 tabs to the right, “Leads”, “Contacts”, “Accounts”, and “Review”.
If you click on Leads, Contacts, or Accounts you will automatically see their Active Mapping. If you want to update the mappings for Leads, Contacts, or Accounts that must be done in Working Copy, then you must go to the “Review” tab,at the far right, to activate your new mapping(s). If you do not activate in the “Review” tab after making changes to your mappings in the working copy tab, they will not save.
Note: Your mapping will look different based on your field names and sync directions
c) Alerts
Alerts are used to identify contacts “flagged” with an issue. These are not like lead alerts which you create, instead these alerts are created by the system when a record that is set to sync has an issue that does not allow it to sync. Using the “Search In Records” feature for a desired time frame, you can find if a specific record yields an alert. An alert may identify a contact with a missing Email, Last Name, or Company Name for example. Or that the campaign ID associated with the record is not the correct number of digits. If you do not understand how to correct the issue related to the alert, open a support case.
The CRM settings are a great governance resource a lot of marketers don’t know exists. If you do not currently have admin permission, but you are the resource who would handle these items, request admin status from the current organization administrator.
Did you know you can set Watson Campaign Automation forms to sync contacts on submit with Salesforce.com? Did you also know you can push those submitted contacts to a campaign in Salesforce.com? If you answered no to one or both – stick with me! In Watson Campaign Automation, go to the landing page that has the webform you would like to sync. Click directly on the form name and under Form Settings you will see the checkbox (default is unchecked) to “Enable sync record to CRM on ‘Submit’” and underneath that, two text fields relating to campaigns. Adding campaign information is optional, but you must have the checkbox ticked if you do add campaign information otherwise it won’t work. You can paste the campaign ID from Salesforce to the Default campaign code text box in the forms. If you would like to set the status of all contacts who submit the form and are added to the campaign, you can do that in the Campaign Status text box. Save and publish the landing page to activate.
I hope my 3 things (okay, more like 5 things) to know about your Watson Campaign Automation + Salesforce integration were helpful. I learned from speaking with other marketers they didn’t know how to optimize or oversee their sync – they just knew it was set up. Hopefully knowing these items will help streamline your sync and save time in your daily tasks.
If you’re marketing on Facebook, you likely hang out in one of two camps. You run a successful Facebook Business Page with an engaged, excited audience, or, like too many businesses, your Facebook Business Page exists, but interaction is few and far between.
Facebook Advertising offers many ways to tap into those 1.23 billion people logging into Facebook each day and increase engagement on your business page or drive traffic and sales on your website.
Today, we’ll walk through building a simple Facebook Ad from your Business Manager Ad Account.
Today, we welcome a guest post from Marketing Intern Amanda Whitaker. Amanda’s finishing up her summer-long internship at Whereoware and starts her senior year of college this fall. We’re excited to hear her perspective on interning at a digital agency.
Hi everyone!
I concentrate in Marketing and IT at the University of Virginia, so I knew I wanted to intern at a marketing agency this summer. I was excited to find Whereoware, a local digital agency. At first glance, Whereoware had an awesome culture and did interesting work with a lot of cool clients. (Upon further inspection, all of these things were true.)
As my internship comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on my great experience working here. I learned so much about email marketing. (I didn’t realize emails had to be coded in HTML and CSS before I started, so you could say I’ve come a long way.)
To any students on the fence, I definitely recommend getting an internship in your field. It’s truly been an eye-opening experience. Overall, here are the top three things I learned interning at a digital agency.
This summer, I had the privilege of working on emails and helping with projects for at least 10 clients. Through these hands-on projects, I learned email design and deliverability best practices, and how to apply them to different clients.
I gained valuable skills in email coding, the IBM Marketing Cloud, Google Analytics, and Excel. I also got experience working with a diverse team of creative and talented people, and I’m grateful to have learned from so many of them.
When you’re looking into internships, I recommend asking whether you’ll be getting your hands dirty on real projects. If I’d only been taking coffee orders all summer, I wouldn’t have gained the real-life skills or insights into agency life that’ll give me an advantage when I’m job searching in the future.
Before this summer, I had no knowledge of HTML or CSS. While I learned a lot from colleagues, I also found free tools that helped me when I was starting out.
SoloLearn provides a great basic overview of several coding languages, including HTML and CSS. The great thing about SoloLearn is it can be accessed online or through a mobile app, so you can learn to code from anywhere. I also used W3 Schools as a quick reference for looking up HTML symbols.
Another crucial area of knowledge I lacked was Google Analytics. Did you know Google Analytics Academy offers free videos on the basics? These videos combined with hands-on projects helped me understand how to navigate Google Analytics.
If you’re struggling to land an internship or find a new job, use free resources to expand your skill set. Understanding HTML and analytics are transferable skills in most industries and will help you stand out from the competition.
I saw firsthand how an awesome culture affects employees and the overall organization.
When work is flexible and casual, yet efficient, people are happy, work hard, and have fun doing it. Whereoware has events every month, free snacks and drinks, and a rooftop area with WiFi where you can work and socialize. There are whiteboards all over the office to brainstorm, stuffed animals everywhere, and a variety of different work spaces to change it up from the classic cubicle.
When I graduate college, I’ll look for my first employer to have the same focus on culture. I learned at Whereoware how culture influences your workday happiness and attracts helpful, hardworking, and fun employees.
For college students interested in marketing, web development, mobile development, or related fields, I recommend interning at a digital agency. Not only will you learn about marketing in general, but you’ll also gain technical skills invaluable to so many career paths. As a bonus, digital agencies are fun, fast-paced, and exciting to work for! It’s a great way to spend your summer.
Interested in joining Whereoware’s team? Check out our current job openings.
Thank you to everyone who joined us for our workshop: Quick Wins for Website + Email Success today in the DC Metro Area! As promised, both the website + email checklists are available for download below.
Website Checklist:
Our Website Checklist highlights the most important aspects your website needs to be a lead generation machine. From set up to trust building to relevant and fresh content, our checklist sets you up for success. See the Website Quick Wins slides.
Email Checklist:
Our Email Optimization checklist walks through tried and true techniques for crafting and sending emails that capture inbox attention, convince your audience of your message, and close the sale, conversion, etc. Follow along with our checklist to feel confident every time you hit send. See the Email Quick Wins slides.
Perhaps you’ve seen them – throngs of zombie-eyed wanderers clutching cellphones in one hand, swiping rabidly with the other; murmuring gibberish under their breaths punctuated by victorious fist pumps.
Perhaps you even know a guy, who’s heard of a guy, who swears he’s seen the infamous Mewtwo, one of the ever-elusive “Legendary”.
No, these impromptu, impersonal public gatherings aren’t the advent of The Walking Dead, nor a particularly sluggish flash mob.
They’re ambitious Pokémon trainers, living their 90’s-era-obsession with “Catching ‘Em All” in the real world.
Continue reading Marketing tip – 4 Marketing Lessons From Pokémon Go
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