The Story Behind “The Star-Spangled Banner”
The War of 1812 was a 32-month military conflict between the United States, and Great Britain and its Indian allies in North America. Great Britain was fighting two wars at once, but after the defeat of Napoleon of France in April 1814, the British had newly available troops and ships to ramp up the war […]
Terry Forsey Consulting Builds Business with Marketing Automation
Editor’s note: We love success stories, especially those involving marketing automation. Even better: The success stories our clients tell when marketing automation allows them to succeed, sometimes even beyond what they hoped for. In 2012, Terry Forsey Consulting, a specialist software marketing consultancy in the United Kingdom, was enjoying growth in their marketing services and […]
10 Tips to Master the Art of Writing Micro-Copy for Social
Mark Twain hit the nail on the head when he said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”* This is the challenge of writing micro-copy. If an elevator speech needs to be conveyed in the amount of time it takes to get from the first floor […]
Singin’ the Blues: Client-Agency Breakup Songs … and How to Prevent them from Replaying
I worked at a creative agency for several years. It was a great opportunity for a writer, and I loved it because there was always something new to learn about. One day I might be writing web copy advertising snowboards; the next day I’d work on an interactive game promoting an animated movie. Working with […]
Report From New York: How Agencies are Using Marketing Automation
On June 6, 2014, Act-On held its i♥marketing User Conference in New York City for the first time. We had our first-ever i♥marketing Partners breakout, which focused on our agency partners. Talking with so many members of our agency community, I reveled in the talent that we have in our partner base – and was […]
Choose the Right Social Networks to Boost Your Business
Find Kelly Jo on Twitter: @KellyJoHorton I have some good news … and some bad news. Let’s start with the bad news. You have to embrace social media and integrate it into your marketing strategy. I know what you’re saying; it doesn’t work for my industry, we tried it once and nothing happened, I’m a […]
What Sales Should REALLY Expect From Marketing Automation
The benefits of marketing automation are clear—better customer engagement, increased loyalty, and more effective campaigns. But what can your organization realistically expect in terms of sales? How about a 2x higher bid-to-win ratio for the top 20% of your sales reps? Or would you prefer an average of 1.5x higher revenue year-over-year? Perhaps you’d settle […]
SEO Questions from the Fact & Fiction Webinar
Recently I presented a webinar called “SEO in 2014: Fact, Fiction and Sensationalism.” We had so many questions at the end that there wasn’t time to answer them all, so I’m recapping a few of the most popular. (And you can catch up with the on-demand webinar here.) How important is website load speed? The […]
The Cobbler’s Children Have No … Marketing Campaigns
Editor’s note: While this post was written for the marketing agency pro, most of its recommendations are good for any time-strapped marketer. As an agency-side marketer, chances are that you spend far more time whipping up assets and planning campaigns for your clients than you do creating anything for your own company. But you, of […]
AGILE SELLING: Jill Konrath and Shawn Naggiar Discuss New Book on Rapid Learning and Sales
An Act-On Conversation Editor’s Note: Jill Konrath is one of America’s top experts and speakers on sales. She has an innate affinity for challenging projects that require an intense learning curve and a fresh perspective. Her clients range from organizations like IBM, Wells Fargo, and Microsoft to SMBs. She is the bestselling author of Selling […]
Deliverability: 8 Tips for Getting Your Email Into the Inbox
Editor’s note: The Tim Asimos post you are about to read was published on the circle S Studio blog a few days ago. We liked it so much that we’re republishing it here today. For those who read our post yesterday on the rel=canonical link, we are indeed using one on this post so that […]
SugarCRM Partner Sees 7X Increase in Qualified Leads
It’s always a great pleasure when an Act-On customer achieves outstanding success in some way. In the case of W-Systems Corp., that success story has multiple layers, extending to W-Systems Corp.’s own clients. W-Systems Corp. helps companies integrate their sales and marketing using CRM technologies to meet the needs of mid-sized companies. As a top […]
4 Reasons Small Business Owners Flock to Marketing Automation
While medium-sized businesses have shown a steady increase in adoption of marketing technologies in the last several years, small business owners are finding that the results are definitely worth the costs.
Lessons for Marketers From the Second Screen Experience
Tune in to just about any show on television today and you’re sure to see the stamp of social media in some form or another. Be it, say, a series-specific hashtag intended to encourage conversation, or a call for contributions placed directly to viewers (guesses at plot twists, questions for talk show guests, votes on […]
Get Found: 3 Tips to Optimize Your Blog for SEO
Sixty percent. According to blogging.org, that’s the percentage of businesses with a corporate blog. I don’t know how many businesses there are, but a quick search across the interweb reveals a few swags about how many blogs there are: close to a billion. (Yes, with a “b”.) Blogging is a crowded space. Particularly for business […]
Show Them the Money! (Or at Least the Marketing Performance Report)
In two previous blog posts (Five KPIs to Track and Marketing Accountability from the Lead Up), we laid out an analytic framework for evaluating a company’s marketing performance. In this post, we will discuss how to showcase the fruits of that labor in terms of useful, actionable marketing performance reports. The ideas presented here are […]
How Can You Use Content to Rank Higher in Search?
“Build it and they will come.” It’s the mantra of many, but not one that content marketers use often. Smart marketers realize simply developing content isn’t enough; you have to get that content in front of your end users, your prospects, your existing customers in order to affect the bottom line. One way is to […]
A New Framework for Sales Enablement
Is “sales enablement” just another buzzword? Yes, and no. Yes: A quick Google search returns just over a million hits, and many are insipid. (“Is ‘sales enablement’ the new black?” I’m paraphrasing, but you know what I mean.) No: In a 2010 blog post, Forrester’s Scott Santucci described the struggle an executive roundtable composed of […]
Lead Management: 7 Steps to the Process that Creates Revenue
Editor’s note: Jay Hidalgo is – among other things – the Demand Gen Coach. He’s spent over 20 years in the trenches, working hand-in-glove with with enterprise, midmarket, and smaller companies to develop and build buyer research, demand generation, database development, and lead management programs. In this post, he gives us dead-simple guidance for lead […]