It’s actually pretty easy to make your own Mailchimp social media icons for your email campaigns.
Here is exactly what I do:
You first need to make your colored icons. I use Flaticon.com. You’ll sign up for a free account and then search “Instagram,” for example, and pick the icon you want to use.
From there you can click EDIT ICON and you will choose the exact color you would like your icon to be. Enter your brand’s HEX colors at this step.
Download a PNG file of your colored icon. I usually do 32px size.
Then you will go into Mailchimp and head to your Content Studio > My Files. Upload the images of your new custom-color social icons.
You will then click on the actual file in Mailchimp and then click “View Details” and then click COPY URL. This is the URL you will need for your coding.
Now the easy part!
Now head to your email campaign and you will drag in a “Code Block” wherever you want your icons.
PASTE IN THIS CODE and we will soon put in that link you just copied.
You can edit the code above and put in YOUR social media handles for each button (you see here – emilyryantweets and emilyryanlikes) – REPLACE with your handles.
And then PASTE in that URL you copied of your first social icons where you see the link “mcusercontent” – Make sure you paste between the quotes.
You’ll need to go back to your Content > My Files in Mailchimp and upload your other icons and grab those other links and repeat this for each.
That’s it! You should have pretty, custom-colored icons now!
Any questions? Let me know! You can email me at hello (at) westfield-creative (dot) com.
To help you identify the email platforms that are most commonly used these days, we asked CEOs and business leaders this question for their best choices. From Zoho Mail to Gmail to Convertkit, there are several email platforms that you would find most professionals using these days to run their day-to-day business.
Here are 14 email platforms these leaders prefer to use for their business:
Mailchimp
Zoho Mail
Kartra
Sendinblue
Aweber
Gmail
Klaviyo
MailerLite
Hubspot
ProtonMail
Drip
Microsoft Outlook
ActiveCampaign
Convertkit
Mailchimp
Personally, my preferred email platform is Mailchimp. It’s simple to use, but incredibly effective. It does what it needs to without fuss or unnecessary complications. It has different pricing options depending on your needs, and the free plan is surprisingly generous. For many people, this is enough.
Upgrading provides access to more sophisticated tools, including A/B testing, if required. The user interface is clear and comprehensible, and it’s a straightforward process to track whether consumers are engaging with your content. Mailchimp makes it easy to identify which aspects of your email marketing strategy are successful, and where improvements are needed. It integrates effectively with other software platforms, and campaigns can be customized with ease.
The concise, consistent reporting helps me to optimize my outgoings. This is a perfect platform for small to medium businesses, freelancers, and those just getting acquainted with email platforms.
Zoho Mail is a fantastic email service for freelancers and home-based businesses. I run a little business, and this email service is all I need. Zoho is a great tool for both professional and personal email. The Zoho migration tool makes the switch from Google Apps or Office 365 to Zoho Mail quick and painless. It’s simple to sync with the rest of the Zoho suite.
I use Kartra for email marketing because it is a powerful and easy-to-use platform. With Kartra, I can automate my email marketing workflow by creating automated campaigns that are triggered when someone takes a certain action on my website. For example, if someone signs up for my newsletter, I can set up an automated campaign to send them an email with helpful content. This saves me a lot of time and ensures that my emails are sent out on a regular schedule, even when I am not able to spend time managing my email marketing campaigns.
Another feature that I find especially helpful is the built-in email split testing tool. This allows me to test different subject lines, content blocks and call to actions, so that I can optimize my email marketing campaigns to get better results. Overall, I love Kartra because it makes it easy for me to grow my business and reach more people with the power of email marketing.
I use Sendinblue because it’s the best email platform out there, and I’ve found that it’s intuitive and easy to use. I also love how customizable it is—it allows me to create a ton of different campaigns with different segments and audiences in each one which is super helpful when I’m trying to reach a specific audience with a certain message. It also comes with a lot of analytics and A/B testing tools for improving the performance of your campaigns. I get to see an overview of all my emails in one place, and then I can drill down into specific ones if I need to see more details or track things like clicks and opens.
AWeber is the most suitable email platform for small businesses, which has been assisting our business for the last four years to manage our email marketing tasks. It offers various ready-to-use email templates, email tracking, auto-responding, and many other useful features. Other features of AWeber are also effective for email marketing, such as list management, automatic RSS-to-email, and subscriber segmentation. The subscription cost of this software-based platform is also affordable, pricing starts from just $19 per month.
Gmail has become a staple for my everyday personal and business use for almost two decades. Since 2004 and have never had any issues with this platform. I have enjoyed the advancement of the added features such as Google Meets and Calendar. These features have helped me stay organized and made attending and creating meetings for work or personal occasions easier. Another bonus, I receive less spam because I stay on top of my account and consistently keep it up-to-date and refreshed.
For all of our Ecommerce projects we exclusively use Klaviyo for email marketing. It is one of the most advanced email platforms that’s built specifically for Ecommerce and Shopify, so it offers the deepest integrations and allows us to create highly segmented campaigns. All of this means we can email customers with messaging and promotions which are personalized to each user.
Another great thing about Klaviyo is that it allows our brands to run both email and SMS marketing from one platform, with a single monthly fee. This is helpful for running cross-channel promotions where we need to deliver a similar message via both and SMS simultaneously.
I find that MailerLite’s drag-and-drop UI makes it really simple to construct the exact layout I want for my email campaigns. The goal of the company is simplicity, thus the interface is uncluttered and easy to use. If you’re looking for the most user-friendly platform, go no further than MailerLite. Email help is available for queries and troubleshooting if users run into any issues.
MailerLite has all the fundamentals of email marketing built in without overwhelming the user with unnecessary bells and whistles. It’s ideal for companies that want an email marketing strategy they can learn in a matter of days, not months.
Hubspot is the ideal all-in-one marketing suite since it includes amazing tools and reporting for all of your marketing efforts across channels (website, social, email marketing, and more). With Hubspot’s customer relationship management system, you can keep track of all of your contacts and use tools like online lead forms, live chat, and advertising to build a clientele. Email marketing is just one of Hubspot’s customer relationship management (CRM) offerings. This is the best all-around marketing platform because it can manage your email, social media, and blog content.
With Hubspot, you can monitor the performance of your online advertising campaigns, social media campaigns, email campaigns, and website analytics in one convenient location. The platform also comes with an in-depth training platform that not only goes over the basics of using the system but also highlights best practices for running effective marketing campaigns.
ProtonMail is my email platform of choice because it’s secure, private, and user-friendly. I love that it allows me to send and receive messages without ever having to compromise security. I love that I can control what information is shared with whom, and that my data is always protected. It also offers some great features that make it easy to organize and store my emails in one place.
With its comprehensive workflows and advanced list segmentation, Drip is, in my opinion, the greatest email marketing software for e-commerce enterprises. Together, these features allow you to send customers timely follow-ups based on how they interact with your emails and send customers tailored emails based on their shopping habits on your site.
Drip is the greatest eCommerce email marketing software since it was made with the user’s experience in mind. If you run into trouble while establishing the service or while using it, you can contact the service’s user support for assistance. Your ability to divide up your lists into several categories will help you provide the best possible service to your customers through your website and email notifications, which is something we really appreciate.
Our organization makes use of Outlook for our email needs. This is because of the amount of flexibility within the various plans that allow us to granularly scale it with our operations as time passes.
Additionally, possessing direct integrations with Microsoft’s suite of programs made it an easy choice. With programs such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Teams, and more already forming the backbone of our operations, it made sense to utilize the email platform with the most direct out of box integrations with them. The nature of Microsoft 365 also allows these files to be shared seamlessly across team members, improving the flow of operations.
The email marketing platform we use is ActiveCampaign, which has a large number of characteristics that makes it attractive for any company. ActiveCampaign combines the power of email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM/sales automation. You’ll be able to create powerful automated sales and marketing processes that scale to create more loyal customers. You can also send exactly what your contacts want. Create newsletters, email campaigns and promotions that connect with your customers. Personalize your communication to offer exactly what they are looking for.
I’ve used dozens of email platforms over the years and ConvertKit is my favorite. They offer powerful tools with an easy-to-use interface. I can create visual automations that connect stunning opt-in forms with different sequences. I can quickly evaluate the quality and engagement of my subscribers. I also appreciate that they’ve evolved with the industry, offering new tools to help promote sales and monetization.
How To Code a Button Into an Image Text Block In Mailchimp
There are some things that the Classic Builder in Mailchimp cannot do and this is one of them. When you use the Drag N Drop Builder to pull in an “Image + Text” block, there is no option to have a clickable button within that same block.
Well, this little html code does the trick. What’s cool is that you can edit the HEX code in here to create the exact type of button you’d like.
First, when you’re in your text block, you will want to click this button <> and paste the code Into this.
You should plan to edit the coding some below to whatever you need for your button. Make sure you update the link in the coding below to your own link and you can also change the “Learn More” text too.
Simply copy and paste this coding below into your text block:
What are the benefits of getting a Mailchimp certification?
To help marketers see the benefits of earning a Mailchimp certification, we asked marketing professionals and business leaders this question for their best insights. From keeping you current on trends to showing employers you are dedicated, there are several benefits of getting Mailchimp certified that may encourage you to add this program to your learning and development initiatives.
Here are seven Mailchimp certification benefits for marketers:
Keeps You Current on Trends
Learn How to Create & Automate Email Campaigns
Showcase An In-demand Skill
Insider Access to Special Events
Enhances Your Credibility
Charge More for Your Expert Services
Shows Employers You Are Dedicated
Keeps You Current on Trends
The benefit isn’t as much the certification itself, although that does give you access to some marketing tools, a badge, and an approved freelancer status. The benefit is what you learn in obtaining your certification. It’s like taking free marketing courses.
The amount you learn to gain certification to be a freelancer through Mailchimp gives you an edge with your clients. It keeps you current on trends and updates that are important to you and your clients.
One benefit of getting a Mailchimp certification is that you would learn how to create and send newsletters, email campaigns, and other automated emails. Additionally, you would be able to track their success using analytics, and make necessary adjustments to improve the effectiveness of your communications. You would also be able to troubleshoot any issues that may arise.
Email marketing is one of the most in-demand skills for marketers. A Mailchimp certification sends a message to employers that you are a valuable asset to a team. The more you know about how to personalize, segment, and analyze data in email marketing, the more you have to offer. A Mailchimp certification is a great thing to add to your resume to help you stand out and prepares you for a job in email marketing.
A Mailchimp certification grants you access to exclusive events, webinars, and product news. These special opportunities, offered only to those with this special certification, are a great way to consistently feed your mind valuable insight into the marketing industry.
You can further take advantage of these benefits by networking with other like-minded professionals with similar career goals. Once you’re Mailchimp certified, a whole new world of valuable information and exclusive opportunities are afforded to you.
Being able to flaunt a Mailchimp certification and thus call yourself a Mailchimp Partner instantly lends credibility to your credentials. This badge of honor separates you from others in freelance marketplaces such as Fiverr and Upwork in terms of knowledge and skillset. Mailchimp is widely recognized as one of the leading marketing automation platforms and email marketing services in the world, so a stamp of approval from them is an invaluable feather in your cap—it also looks great on a resume!
Mailchimp’s certification program is a great way to show you know your stuff when it comes to email marketing. It takes just 2 hours to complete, and you can watch the video lessons on your own time. Once you pass the exam, you get a badge that shows up on your profile and is able to showcase to prospective and current clients.
When people are searching for an email expert, they’re looking for someone who’s knowledgeable and trustworthy—and Mailchimp certified tells them you are. You’re likely also able to charge clients a bit more for your services because of your certification too. Plus, if you’re looking for a job, it makes your résumé stand out.
The benefits of getting a Mailchimp certification are many, and one of the most important is that it will help you land a better job. Since many businesses and marketing agencies rely on Mailchimp for their email marketing, the demand for people with the skills to work with this software will only grow. If you are serious about landing a job in the marketing field, getting a Mailchimp certification will show employers that you are dedicated to furthering your education.
How can you can use Canva and Mailchimp, together?
To help you best use Canva and Mailchimp together, we asked marketing professionals with experience in both tools this question for their best insights. From creating engaging email banners to newsletters, there are several was to use Canva and Mailchimp together to enhance your email communication and marketing efforts.
Here are six ways to use Canva and Mailchimp together:
Create Engaging Email Banners
Personalize Emails With Customer-Centric Designs
Set Up a New Team Member Onboarding Email Sequence
Create Data-driven Emails With Infographics
Design Graphics to Fit the Dimensions You Need
Create a Newsletter
Create Engaging Email Banners
You can use Canva to find visually engaging banner templates to be used as banners at the top of your marketing emails. Within these banners you can include important announcements such as big sales coming up. By seeing this aesthetically pleasing content right when opening these emails, your readers will receive a positive impression of this company as professional and creative.
You can use Canva to personalize emails to your customers. If, for example, they like a certain design of ours, we can use Canva to craft an email with that design aimed at them to help convince them to take the next step. Then, we take that design and send it to Mailchimp through Canva, directly enabling us to send beautiful, personalized emails to our customers without having to use multiple apps or programs.
Set Up a New Team Member Onboarding Email Sequence
While usually used for customer outreach, Canva and Mailchimp make a great pair for internal email campaigns. For instance, a new team member email sequence can include timely reminders each step of the way, with one call to action in a video or presentation link.
Managing new employee onboarding reminders doesn’t have to be overwhelming or dull. Inexpensive tools like Canva and Mailchimp can support your small business growth including employee onboarding, so you can focus on quality time with your people and customers rather than manually send reminders.
Canva and Mailchimp don’t only go together with marketing. If there’s any data you’re presenting in an email, for a client, digital outreach, or within your company, you can use both programs for appeal and simplicity. You can design infographics with incredible ease in Canva by inputting the right keywords in the elements sections. They have intuitive charts and ready-to-go templates if you need a little more help with the visual presentation of the information.
Link your Mailchimp account to Canva, and you’ll be able to import these graphics seamlessly into your carefully crafted email. Presenting data with visuals can make your email more readable, unique and attractive.
Canva is an excellent platform to create appealing graphics for email newsletters. You can design graphics to fit the dimensions and branding of your newsletter in Canva and then upload them into Mailchimp. Graphics make email newsletters more interactive and visually pleasing. Canva and Mailchimp are best used together, like peanut butter and jelly!
One way that you can use Canva and Mailchimp, together is to create a newsletter. A newsletter will help your company stay in touch with customers by providing information about current events, sales promotions or new arrivals. They are also a great way for companies to promote upcoming products or services as well as share their latest updates on the business itself.
What is one thing to know about Mailchimp’s send time optimization?
To help you better understand Mailchimp’s send time optimization, we asked small business owners and marketing experts this question for their best insights. From understanding that automated emails are not offered to recognizing the software’s first try isn’t perfect, there are several things to be aware of before using Mailchimp’s send time optimization.
Here are seven things to know about Mailchimp’s send time optimization:
Automated Emails Are Not Offered
It is Very Timely
You Still Need to Do Your Own Research
Mailchimp Uses Data Science
You Must Choose a Plan
Send Time Optimization May Not Work The Same Day
The Software’s First Try Isn’t Perfect
Automated Emails Are Not Offered
Send time optimization is not available for automated emails. You must craft the email. Mailchimp analyzes user engagement patterns for their emails to determine the ideal time for sending an email to achieve maximum engagement. By turning on send time optimization, Mailchimp will send the email on your desired sent date at the appointed time. You can still send email campaigns, but they aren’t automated.
Mailchimp’s send time is on point and timely. It is very difficult to stop a campaign once it is in motion and sent out. Make sure that you have proofread the material multiple times in order to see that everything is on par with messaging and it is good to go.
There has been a lot of research done about the best time to send a message to an email subscriber. Still, the answer truly lies in what works best for your audience. While Mailchimp offers time optimization as a perk, you should still do your own A-B tests to see what jives with your audience that sends messages to your subscriber count at different times. Then, use a comparative reporting feature to help identify which had the best open and conversion rates.
Send time optimization takes a lot of the guesswork out of ensuring your email campaigns are read by your email list contacts. Using data science, Mailchimp’s send time optimization figures out when your email contacts are most likely to interact with your messages. It then schedules emails to be sent at that time, increasing the chances that they will be received and read. It’s a useful tool for increasing contacts’ engagement with your emails.
You have to be signed up for either the Standard or Premium plan to access Mailchimp’s send time optimization features. Consider whether you are willing to afford these plans and whether this is a worthwhile investment. You could always try it for a month or so to see if your email engagement rates increase during this time.
Though Mailchimp’s send time optimization is a great capability, it’s not always an option if you’re sending a same day email. You can implement the optimization tool when scheduling emails that are further out, but it can only be used when there are five hours left in the day. That five hours is based on the time zone you’ve set for the Mailchimp account.
Mailchimp counts send time optimization based on the previous behavior of recipients; however, it doesn’t have all emails in the database. The software may lack data about recipients you contact for the first time, so its estimation wouldn’t be so successful. Therefore, keep in mind that your campaign will work better and better with every use of your sending list.
Here is a quick video showing you a really neat Mailchimp hack for the way your subject line and preview text line will appear in subscriber’s inboxes. It takes a small bit of code at the very top, but it’s super easy.
Another Black Friday in the books. Ready to start planning for BF 2022? 🙂 #nevertooearly
Also, this tweet above made me laugh.
This Black Friday probably hit another record and I’m excited to see how our clients emails performed. It’s such a wild time for email marketers, but somehow I managed to collect some links for ya.
Before I tell you the best decision I ever made for my business, you must first know this story…
In the early 90s, my dad decided he would have a side hustle, creating a touch-screen computer program that would be sold to grocery stores where you could pair your wine purchase with food. This was the VERY early 90s…so we’re talking super high-tech for that time. Actually, WAY before its time. But amazing nonetheless.
He worked with a close friend who was a wine expert and I just recall 4-5 computers laying around our house with these wine pairing options. (If this was developed 10 years later, we could have been billionaires….thanks, dad). It didn’t quite take off, but I remember it being in one or two stores.
But what did happen is that my sister and I grew up around computers and my sister became the real techy of the family, going to a “math and science” high school for very smart people (that’s what I call it), later going on to study Information Technology (IT) and then worked in Seattle for many years for various .com’s doing IT. I just remember her being on the computer A LOT. I was probably in the other room singing showtunes way too loud.
Main story here — years later I get to work with my sister every day and having her join forces with me and grow this business, has been, hands down, the #1 best decision ever. For me, having someone that I can, not only bounce ideas off of in Slack every single day, but having that partner that I can ask what to do when I’m dealing with a tough client or a stressful situation…it’s truly priceless. Many people don’t get that and I feel extremely lucky.
I don’t talk about her enough and how vital she is to our business. Years ago when we were designing our website, she told me she didn’t want her photo on it. She said to me — “I don’t want to be in the spotlight. I don’t need my name on anything. I am good in the background. Video off.” She was even adamant the business be under my name. But that felt weird. (BTW – Westfield Creative is named that because we grew up on Westfield Road in Charlotte, NC.)
Elizabeth has always just wanted to do the work, make a great income from home and call it a day. She’s truly one of the most humble people I know and whenever we have a win in our business, it’s pretty incredible to get to celebrate with her.
So I just wanted to give a major shout-out to Elizabeth (Liz, I get to call her — but please don’t call her that) and everything she does behind the scenes daily to make our clients happy. She is truly the brains behind most of the work we do and I always say – she can usually fix anything tech-related. Give her a broken website and login and you good.
I am a very lucky sis. Thank you, Liz, for being the best possible partner to work with every day.
When we decided to focus our agency on Mailchimp email marketing, we started getting a lot of the same questions. Many of these questions we hear several times a week from prospective and new clients. So we’re giving you the deets today.
I’m going to try to answer these for you in the easiest and shortest way possible.
But these are truly four of the most frequently asked we get OFTEN.
1. What’s the best time to send my email?
The answer: There is no perfect send time, except the time you determine after months of testing YOUR audience. Some experts will say Tues-Thurs at 10 am is the best and don’t send on Mondays, but there truly isn’t a perfect time and it’s super important to utilize A/B testing to test different send times to see which time performed better.
In this awesome Guide from Hunter on the best times to send an email, they analyzed 9 prominent case studies and came up with some interesting data – like Fridays being the best for open rates.
And with the pandemic, optimal send times have changed a ton. In the past, Saturdays used to not be so great for sending an email, but now I find that everyone is home and relaxing and this can be a great send time. So it’s important to test this over a period of weeks or months to see what works for your people. What works for an audience of realtors is going to be different than an audience of people who buy, say makeup.
2. Do I need to clean my email list?
The answer: Yes and no. “Cleaning your list” refers to removing or archiving any contacts that are no longer opening your emails or engaged. This is extremely important because it affects the deliverability of your emails. The cleaner your email list, the higher your open rates will be, which improves your sender reputation.
The good news is that Mailchimp helps you do this. Mailchimp automatically “cleans” emails that bounce. I still recommending periodically creating a segment of contacts that “have not opened” one of your last 10 or 20 emails – and then ARCHIVING them. OR creating a re-engagement email campaign to reach out to them and asking if they’re still interested in hearing from you. Anyone that does NOT open that email– archive them (don’t unsubscribe).
3. How do I grow my email list?
The answer: There are many ways, my friend. This is a long conversation, but this should always be one of your top priorities. Growing your email list is vital to having success with your email campaigns. So I always tell clients to focus on this before anything.
Here are some quick ways to start growing your email list:
Create a simple one-page PDF to use as a “freebie” or “lead magnet” and offer that people in exchange for signing up. You can offer through a popup on your website or creating a page on your site where people sign up. Create an automated email that sends to them, with the download, after they sign up.
Host a short webinar on a topic and ask people to sign up for it.
Post weekly on your social media channels about joining your list and the fun stuff they will receive if they subscribe (Ex: This Friday I am sending out the latest edition of my fun weekly email, full of the best email marketing tips…make sure you’re on the list!)
Talk about your email list in everything you do. If you’re on a podcast or speak on a webinar, remind me to subscribe to your list.
Post multiple opt-ins around your website. Your homepage should have several – a popup, a button at the top, and others weaved in.
There are many other ways, but start with these and it will grow quickly.
4. Do I need to use Tags or Groups or Segments?
The answer: Yes. Using Mailchimp’s “Tags” or “Groups” and also creating “Segments” are some of the most powerful Mailchimp features you can utilize to personalize your email marketing and create campaigns that are sent to the right people at the right time. And I promise you, they’re not as confusing as you may think.
Tags are used to simply tag your contacts internally. Think of it as a little contact note. Tags could be “local contact” or “contest entry” or “attended Feb webinar” or “Subscription-Active” and the list goes on. A tag is is powerful because you can create campaigns JUST for a specific tag of people and then send them an email campaign. Read more on getting started with Tags here.
A segment is something that you can create in Mailchimp or you can use one of Mailchimp’s pre-built segments. Segments use data already in Mailchimp. For example, “did not open the last email campaign” would be a segment you can create. Or “Purchased an item in last month.” Or “Email contains nike.com” or even “Location is United States.” There are endless possibilities for segments you can create and they’re incredibly useful when sending targeted email campaigns. More on segments here.
Lastly, “Groups.” The important thing to note about “Groups” is that the contact can view these. You can set up a Group to ask your customer/contacts something like “Are you interested in:” “Emails only, webinar info, events, don’t want any emails” Those would be 4 responses within 1 group. Groups are useful for gathering contact’s interests. More here on getting started with Groups.
Example of a Group in Mailchimp
So while TAGS are something you do internally to tag a contact, a Group is something you setup so your contacts can choose. And a segment is what you create based on these tags and groups.
These are some quick answers to some of our most asked questions. Hope they were helpful!
What is one creative way you plan to market your business in 2021? What do you have planned?
We asked marketing professionals and business owners about what they have in store for the year ahead.
Here are twelve creative ways to market your business.
Instagram Reels
Prioritize Video Content
Plain Text Emails
Optimized Blog Content
Join Online Communities
TikTok
Exterior Branding
Get Personal
Hit It Old School
Highlight Success Stories
Establish Yourself as Experts
Live Shopping on Apps
Instagram Reels
Everything is virtual these days and one of the most creative things you can do is capitalize on this. I am a big fan of Instagram’s “Reels” feature which is similar to TikTok. I’ve seen a lot of business owners using Reels to teach their followers something short and fun. You could do a simple “3 Tips for…” and set it to music. It makes for fun content and it gets a lot more exposure than a traditional Instagram post. Make sure to include hashtags in your caption!
Video creation is one of the most creative ways to market your business in 2021. Studies show that video content performs better on social media and also increases the average time on page for web users, and it is a powerful tactic that not many people use due to the labor-intensive nature of video production. We are excited to do more in this space come 2021!
Sending personalized, plain text email messages to existing and prospective customers is a simple, but underutilized marketing tactic. We receive so many emails every day, but if you can insert your business into an inbox in an unobtrusive way, then you are able to deepen customer relationships and be there when customers need you.
Going into 2021, we plan to create high-quality, optimized content to be featured on our blog. Our goal is to be the most trusted experts in our industry. This helps us organically rank on search engines and be the featured page when people are looking for durable device cases. We have gotten really creative with keywords and topics to appeal to potential customers and just rolled out a 3-month content strategy to aid in our marketing efforts. Content will be king in 2021.
One creative way you can market your business in 2021 is to join different online communities! I personally attend online webinars and meetups for female entrepreneurs and creatives to build my network and promote my company to potential clients. In addition to the reach these communities provide for my company, they also give me the opportunity to meet other prominent professionals in my vertical who help me get even better at my craft.
A tactic we have been utilizing in 2020 and will use well into 2021 is TikTok. With over 800 million monthly active users, Tik Tok is officially the hottest new social media platform. While TikTok is thought to just be for teens, we have found that a lot of our target market is active on TikTok and looking for content geared toward them. We created an account and have been making our own videos and publishing them for the world to see. With no monetary investment, we just use our free time and creativity to spread the word about our brand.
We equip all of our vehicles with visually appealing exterior graphics to help capture what it’s like to “Cruise America.” We often hear positive comments from customers and prospective customers about these graphics. With more than 4,500 vehicles on the road, the more our vehicles are in use, the more marketing benefit our company receives.
Not in a creepy way, but in a true authentic way. We are all exhausted from being online 24/7. Can you send a handwritten card just because? Can you organize a pickup/drop off spot for a joint activity or craft project? Can you organize a safe winter wonderland activity? I believe the secret sauce behind effective marketing in 2021 is going beyond the digital screen.
We’re hitting it old-school with some of our approaches this coming year to activate our wholesale network. Our plan is to resurrect the idea of “scratcher postcards,” but with actually great rewards under those silver flecks. Digital ads are becoming more expensive and are vying for subprime attention, while print advertising is seeing a resurgence in both affordability and the stronger eyes it gets.
In 2021 we are aiming for the strategy of storytelling. We’re focusing on telling our clients’ stories. We believe storytelling, be it brand-led or customer-led, connects with audiences. We’re combining the two to show how our brand helps our customers through their success stories. It will take us some time to find the right stories, shape them for our audiences, and tell them in a way that showcases our clients’ hard work and success. Any good story has a setting, a character, character flaws, conflict, resolution, and lesson. Brand storytelling is not an exception. We plan on incorporating all those elements into our stories.
When we look at 2021, it’s important to understand that we still have uncertain times ahead. Therefore, we need to not only have a Plan B, but we need to work our way a little further down the alphabet. We plan to stay innovative and ready to make a pivot whenever traditional marketing efforts aren’t paying off. So, we have targeted strategies for outreach, guest posting, and providing beneficial quotes for articles on high-traffic sites. By establishing ourselves as experts in our niche, we plan to exude trustworthiness and professionalism.
In order to successfully market your business next year, the answer lies in adopting a combination of new social tools vs. tapping into just one. We’re anticipating that the next phase of retail will heavily focus on ‘Live Shopping.’ For example, our partners at Facebook and TikTok are rolling out new features that will make it extremely quick and easy for consumers to make purchases directly from interactive content—without ever leaving their respective app or site. In 2021, brands will be able to sell seamlessly through Instagram’s ‘Checkout’ feature and take advantage of TikTok’s first-ever commerce partnership with Shopify. This provides a great opportunity to work with influencers across platforms and explore new channel capabilities.
Email marketing can be challenging. From making a simple technical mistake that is then sent to thousands of people (we’re all human), like not testing your email or checking spelling, to not finding out what your subscribers really want to know, mistakes do happen. So we thought it would be helpful to ask the email experts. We surveyed 8 Mailchimp Pro Partners to find out what they see as the biggest mistakes that are made in email marketing. The answers are varied, which shows that so many mistakes can easily be made, so there’s a lot of great to stuff to learn here.
Here’s what they had to say about the biggest mistakes in email marketing:
“Sending the same message to the same people. It’s bonkers, but people do.”
“The biggest mistake most marketers make is telling subscribers what they want them to know and not what the subscriber wants to hear. You have to deliver on what you promised when the subscriber signed up. If your emails are self-serving and not valuable to the subscriber, you’ll quickly lose their attention.”
Adam Q. Holden-Bache, Director of Email Marketing, Enventys Partners
“Sending emails that are TOO long or too wordy. Simplify, simplify. Emails do not need to be long and full of TONS of content. Days of the long newsletter are over(in my opinion). Sometimes a great image, a short blurb and a button are all that you need for a great email. Try not to overthink it.
Also, many people don’t think to recycle/reuse old content. Bring back an old blog post(and make it into an email). If you had an email do really well a year ago, bring it back. You don’t need to create brand new content with every email.”
“Lack of segmentation: you have a huge mailing list and you send to everybody, because“it costs nothing and somebody could be interested”. As I always repeat, you can’t do nothing to raise relevancy of a message for anybody; or it is relevant, or it isn’t. What you can positively do, instead, is to diminish irrelevancy, by choosing not to send a message to people who are the least likely to be interested(e.g. send a discount reminder to people who have already made a purchase using that discount code, or invite people to events they can’t attend because of distance or other constraints).”
“The biggest mistake I see with email marketing is not doing it. The next mistake is businesses just‘ticking the box’ with their email marketing and not seeing the value in the customers they’re sending too. That sucks to me. Email addresses are like gold. They are literally putting you in the palm of someone’s hand and they need to be treated as such.”
“Most businesses and organizations who do not use professional email marketers make the mistake of not sending enough email. There is an ingrained concern about over-messaging by email in most organizations that is a direct result of past attitudes and technologies that no longer play in the space. For those of us who work every day in this business, we understand that the correct strategy and planning means that you can send email every day, sometimes more than once per day, and you will not only see great results from your campaigns, you will build loyalty and engagement with your audience.”
“Not having a plan before they start. I’ve spoken to too many people who jump into Mailchimp, get quickly confused or disillusioned and then think the system doesn’t work. If you don’t start with a clear goal you’ll always struggle no matter what it is your trying to do.”
“Not doing it or giving up on it too soon or both together. If you’re not sending regular emails and people don’t know who you are don’t expect them to jump at the chance to purchase from you on that 1 email you sent this year. Email is a dialogue. Email is a relationship. Relationships take time. Email marketing needs consistency and persistence.”
Amy Hall, Email Marketing Strategist and Certified Mailchimp Partner, amyhall.biz
Want to learn about these Mailchimp experts and Pro Partners? Check them out in the Mailchimp Directory here.
I heard this yesterday on a podcast with Laura Belgray — Don’t wait to be inspired to write your next email (or to write anything). Just start writing and then you’ll be inspired in the process, much like now, when I had not a single idea for this email until I sat down and sifted through the last few weeks of links I’ve collected. If you want to send out more emails then just sit down and start. Cool?
In other news, I bought the domain name emilyryanemails.com this week, Stay tuned for some cool stuff there soon, including my new Mailchimp course, with everything you could possibly need to start sending great emails.
Have a great week ahead and if I ever inspire you to write an email, purchase something or read one of these articles above, I’d love to know. Just hit reply and lemme know anytime.
With so many features, how can you get the most from Mailchimp’s platform and tools?
To answer this question, we asked six Mailchimp customers and experts for their best tips. Here’s what they had to say about maximizing Mailchimp to get results.
Take Advantage of the Campaign Analytics
Tapping into the analytics from a campaign on Mailchimp will better equip you for the next one and the many more after that. Using their analytics will help you have a solid idea of the success, including how many people it reached, how many opened it and how many people engaged with whatever you sent. By using these numbers, businesses can continue to improve their email campaigns and gain more and more engagement.
Research all their offers and choose the tools that are best suited for your needs and business. While it may be tempting to use all sorts of services, if you do not understand them or how to use them, they will be of no use to you and you will blow your budget.
If at any point in your Mailchimp journey you get stuck and need help to see results, don’t be afraid to reach out to their Customer Service staff. These are people that work day in and day out with Mailchimp, knowing it much better than the average user. Go to them for anything and you are guaranteed to get your answer as well as better your Mailchimp skills during the process. A win-win!
In the spirit of efficiency, one of my favorite features of Mailchimp is the ability to automate your campaign. For example, you can set up triggers for when the initial intro email to your new customer should be sent or an email to be sent to a customer based on their website activity. Mailchimp’s “set it and forget it” approach truly provides you with the necessary tools and platform to provide timely and relevant information to your customers with ease.
My best Mailchimp tip to get the most from their platform is to use tags to send more relevant emails. For example, create a tag for email subscribers who have not opened your last 10 emails. Such subscribers are in danger of disengaging! You should talk to those disengaged subscribers differently. For example, offer a “welcome back” coupon exclusively for them. You can start the email with something like this “we noticed you haven’t opened our emails so we created a special offer just for you!”
On top of manual, one-off email campaigns, Mailchimp has the ability to set up back-to-back email campaigns—many paid users don’t make use of this feature. For instance, for new customers, you can set up weekly onboarding emails for the first month, to educate and inform this pool of users on your product/service. You can also set up a rule to only send out follow-up emails if a user had not previously opened the last campaign. This one—you don’t over email customers who are already actively using your service and may not enjoy the over-supplement of email-based content.
