Marketing tactics are hot and cold as time passes, but no matter what business or industry, one thing remains consistent: Customers love to save money, and free is still the best word in marketing. Thanks to a growing number of Americans online (more than 70% of the population), consumers are utilizing online coupons as a quick and easy alternative to spending hours clipping them from the newspaper (If they even ever did it before). Read more

As we prepare for upcoming conferences, creating booth displays and print material has been on my plate for the past few weeks. I’ve selected what I think is a pretty cool image surrounding the idea of “Is Your Website Listening?” that will span most of our booth display. As our creative team was developing the files, Nathan (web and creative designer) commented that he liked the look and feel we are going for with the booth creative… and perhaps we should create a more consistent brand that reflected this image throughout our marketing materials. That comment really stopped me in my tracks. As someone who has worked for a few companies with a very strong brands and has had the notion of consistent branding hammered into her head, my heart sunk. Among all the hustle to produce content, develop a web strategy, launch campaigns, and prospect for new customers, I’ve overlooked the fundamentals of building a strong and consistent brand. Read more

There are certainly benefits to sending both TEXT-Only and HTML emails when launching an email campaign. HTML emails are of course attractive when well-designed, allow you to insert images which help you determine an open rate, can be more compelling to click through, and convey multiple messages in an organized format. On the other hand, text emails can have a better deliverability rate, look more personalized, and are generally less likely to be confused with spam (although many spammers these days have caught on to that notion). So which one is right for your campaign? Well, it all depends on what message you are sending to what audience. Read more

At the beginning of 2009 we decided that by summer we would be ready to exhibit at various conferences throughout the US. We focused on internet/technology marketing conferences where we expected to meet a great deal of savvy marketing professionals and sales managers. We considered the shows we felt would yield the greatest return on a limited budget. Because such research takes a great deal of time and discussion with conference reps, I’d like to share the rundown of events we highly considered to help you decide your schedule. Read more

By Elizabeth Sklaroff, Access Marketing Company

I’m a pretty laid back person. I don’t get excited about much – and not much impresses me. But I have to say that I’m jazzed about lead gen again, and it’s because of the web intelligence I’m able to get now. With the help of a smart demand generation “solution” (forgive me for this grossly over-used term in marketing – but in this case, it truly fits), our clients know what their leads are doing and when they are doing it – and most importantly WHO their leads are.  After installing the snippet of Net-Results code onto our clients’ websites, I have been amazed, intrigued and slightly addicted to the intelligence. Read more