Monthly Archives: May 2012

Big changes are afoot at Facebook. Yesterday, we announced the rollout of Promoted Posts on Facebook that allow marketers to extend the reach of their page content. Today, two new changes that marketers have been requesting for what seems like forever are finally rolled out: the ability to schedule posts, and the ability to assign roles to page admins.

Hooray!

First, let’s take a look at the different admin roles and what permissions they’ll have.

Creating Facebook Page Admins

Here’s a matrix Facebook released in its Help Center that explains the 5 different roles a page admin can have, and what responsibilities those roles entail:

So a page manager is the ruler of the Facebook realm, and can do everything from create ads to moderate comments to promote and demote other page administrators. But not everyone should have that level of responsibility (or ability). You can limit some administrators to just content creation, some to just moderators, and some to simply analyzing your page Insights.

Why might you do this? Think of it this way — ever had that boss that wakes up in the middle of the night curious about how your Facebook page is performing, takes a look at your Facebook page Insights, freaks out at some numbers he doesn’t quite understand, and then starts posting updates every 15 minutes to “improve engagement?” That’s the guy you’ll demote to the ‘Insight Analyst’ role. Hey, that’s a pretty sexy name if you ask me!

Or perhaps you have a new social media intern who hasn’t quite mastered your social media strategy or brand voice, but you want to get her immersed in your social media presence so she can, you know, learn it. Maybe her role as a page administrator is ‘Moderator’ so she can do some social media monitoring, but doesn’t start messing with the page’s apps and status updates.

Sounds pretty handy, eh? To set these permissions on your own page, go to the top right corner of your screen and hit ‘Manage,’ then select ‘Settings‘ in the drop-down. That will take you to this screen:

Under ‘Admin Roles,’ simply select the page administrator whose permissions you’d like to change, and select the role for which they’re best suited. Voila! You’ve now edited the roles and permissions of your Facebook page administrators. And, bonus — there is no limit to the number of admins a page can have!

Scheduling Facebook Posts

And now, for the other half of this exciting news … the ability to schedule posts! Until now, you’ve probably made use of a third-party app (still a viable solution!) to schedule your Facebook posts in advance, or you’ve simply gotten used to logging in to your Facebook account every couple hours to post your next update. But now, you have options; take a look at how easy it is to schedule your posts right in Facebook:

To schedule your post, simply go to your page’s sharing tool like you usually do, and select the type of post you want to add to your page. Once you’ve crafted your update, click the little blue clock icon in the lower left corner of the sharing tool, and select the year, month, day, hour, and minute at which you’d like your post to appear in the future. Then click ‘Schedule‘!

You can schedule a post up to 6 months in advance in 15-minute intervals. If you choose a date in the past, however, the post will appear immediately on your page’s timeline. And no time zone calculations are needed, either — Facebook will automatically correspond to the time zone you’re in! Pretty easy, huh?

Facebook has made no mention of a timeline for when these two features will be rolled out to all pages, so just be on the lookout.

Are you excited for these new Facebook features? Are you promoting or demoting and page administrators? (Don’t worry — we won’t tell).

Image credit: DafneCholet

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We’ve already made the case for list segmentation in email marketing, and we sure hope you’ve bought in. Still in need of a little refresher on the merits of email list segmentation? How about the fact that, according to eMarketer, 39% of email marketers that practice list segmentation see better open rates; 28% see lower opt-out and unsubscribe rates; and 24% see better email deliverability, increased sales leads, and greater revenue. You know your ol’ pal revenue — he’s the whole reason you’re doing email marketing in the first place, right?

Alright, now that you’re undoubtedly on board with list segmentation, you’re probably asking yourself how you should slice and dice your own list. Well, the bad news is that it totally depends on the nature of your business and the goals associated with your email marketing and lead nurturing — so I can’t give you a one-size-fits-all answer. The good news, however, is that there are tons of creative ways you can segment your email list that empower you to run innovative and effective campaigns! All you need to do is collect the right information. So to get your creative juices flowing, take a look at this ultimate list of ways you could segment your email lists!

27 Smart Ways to Segment Your Email List

The whole point of segmentation is providing more relevant content to your email recipients. To do that, you’ll have to take the time to craft targeted campaigns (our marketing team uses a combination of HubSpot’s segmentation/email tools and our CRM system, Salesforce) that take into account not just list segments, but also lead data, and trigger events that help customize your email campaigns further.

So while your jaws are agape at all the amazing ways you can segment your email marketing lists, keep in mind that while some of these recommendations will work wonderfully on their own, many of them are at their absolute best when crossed with other segments, triggers, and lead intelligence data. Alright, without further ado, here are 27 ways you can segment your email lists!

1) Geography

Knowing where your contacts live can be seriously powerful information. If you’re a brick-and-mortar business, you wouldn’t want to send in-store offers to out-of-towners, right? Or let’s say you’re a national franchise — you better be segmenting by zip code to ensure you’re not infringing on someone else’s territory, or worse, marketing to a location that your organization doesn’t even service yet.

2) Age

People of all ages have access to the internet these days, which means you could be emailing a college student, a retiree; heck, even a little kid. You may find knowing the general age range of the people on your list helpful to remove those not in your target audience (AARP might not want my name on their list … yet), or to adjust the messaging of your email communications.

3) Gender

Just as you’d speak to a retiree and a college student differently, you might adjust your messaging and offers based on gender, too. If you have a wide product offering that extends across genders, consider segmenting your list in this manner — and beefing up the segmentation with other demographic and psychographic details, as well.

4) Persona

Speaking of demographics and psychographics, you should have buyer personas that include information of this nature, as well as more detailed explanations of what makes these folks tick and why your solution provides value for them. If you don’t have buyer personas created already, reference this guide to create your own — and then segment your list based on them! Because each persona has different needs and value propositions, they’re all going to require different email content for the best click-through and conversion rates.

5) Organization Type

Do you sell to other businesses? Are they franchises? Non-profit organizations? Ecommerce companies? Enterprise organizations? Small businesses? They all have different needs, and as such, their email content should be different — so segment your list accordingly!

6) Industry

If you’re selling to other businesses, you may encounter leads and contacts across many different industries. I’m not sure who’s doing Dunder Mifflin’s email marketing, but you can bet Jim and Stanley are working restaurants chains one minute, and law firms the next. Knowing your lead’s industry will allow you to add another level of personalization to your email marketing.

7) Job Function

As a B2B marketer, your email list could contain a whole melee of different job functions — office personnel, salespeople, marketers, consultants, developers, customer service, accountants … the list goes in. Considering the breadth of job roles within any given organization, doesn’t it make sense to segment your list accordingly?

Seniority Level

There are different job roles, and there are different levels of seniority. Perhaps your contact said they work in marketing, but is she the VP of marketing, or a marketing coordinator? Those two contacts will differ in years of experience, salary level, pain points, decision-making potential, and a whole host of other differences that make segmentation critical for effective email marketing campaigns.

9) Past Purchases

If a segment of your list has purchased from you before, use that information to send them emails catered to that which interests them. Then make your bottom line bigger by identifying upsell opportunities with additional services or complementary products they’d enjoy based on their past purchases.

10) Purchase Interests

You can infer someone’s purchase proclivities from past buying behavior, or you can just … ask. I’ve highlighted two companies who do this in creative ways — such as with surveys — in a recent blog post about awesome email marketing to help them create better targeted emails.

11) Buying Frequency

Segment your email list based on how often someone purchases. Not only can you try to increase shopping frequency for some, but you can also reward frequent shoppers with an invitation to your loyalty program to make your brand even stickier!

12) Purchase Cycle

Do certain customers come to you on a weekly, monthly, yearly, quarterly, etc. basis? Or perhaps they only need you at a certain time of year — a pool cleaner might see upticks in spring and fall, for example. Segment your list based on customers’ purchase cycle so you can be there right at their point of need.

13) Content Topic

Here are HubSpot, we notice that some of our leads and contacts are far more interested in certain content topics than others. There’s one segment that’s extremely interested in sales and marketing alignment, while another is far more interested in Pinterest marketing. So it only makes sense that we segment our list based on the topics our contacts have showed interest in! Take a look at what content gets people clicking, and segment your list based on that.

14) Content Format

You may find that specific content formats are more appealing to certain segments of your database — some like blogs, others prefer ebooks, some may only show up when you put on a webinar. If you know how certain segments of your list prefer to consume content, you can deliver the offer content in your emails by their preferred format.

15) Interest Level

Just because someone converts on a content offer, doesn’t mean they actually liked it. Segment your list based on how interested leads are in your content. For example, we might email a segment of webinar attendees that stayed engaged for 45 minutes or more with a middle-of-the-funnel offer to help move them along in the sales cycle, while those that dropped off before 10 minutes might receive another top-of-the-funnel offer — or even a feedback survey to gauge what specifically lost their interest.

16) Education Level

While you could segment your list based on how many degrees they hold, I’m talking about how educated a lead or contact is regarding your brand and the subject matter you discuss. For example, here at HubSpot we tag our blog and offer content as introductory, intermediate, or advanced. If you segment your list based on the level of understanding they have on the topics you write about, you can tailor your lead nurturing content to speak at the right level.

17) Change in Content Engagement Level

Have you noticed an increase or decrease in the amount of time leads are spending with your content? This is an indication of their interest in your company, and should be used to either reawaken waning interest, or move leads along through the sales cycle while they’re at their height of engagement with your content.

18) Change in Buying Behavior

Similar to a change in content engagement, a change in buying behavior can indicate a lead is becoming more or less interested in your company. Leads that decrease purchasing frequency, for example, might need a little extra love — and thus, a dedicated lead nurturing campaign.

19) Stage in the Sales Cycle

I’ve mentioned it a little bit here and there, but the stage a lead is at in the sales cycle should determine which email segment they fall in. At the very least, set up separate lead nurturing tracks for those at the top of your sales funnel, in the middle of your sales funnel, and at the bottom of the sales funnel.

20) Email Type

There’s a lot you can tell by someone’s email address. Not only can you design your emails for different email clients if you’re really into sophisticated email design, but you can also tell what other free services they have access to with their email accounts. For example, you might send an email out to everyone with a Gmail address asking them to add your blog to their Google Reader.

21) Satisfaction Index

Many businesses use satisfation indexes to determine how happy their customer base is — Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a very popular one. If you’re measuring satisfaction numerically, consider sending an email segmented based on your customers’ level of happiness with your organization. Those with a high NPS score, for example, might provide opportunities to gather reviews, referrals, or even upsells. Those with lower scores, however, may get emails that give them access to educational materials that will make them happier and more successful customers.

22) Customers Who Refer

Consider creating a list segment full of those customers who repeatedly refer new business your way. These are your biggest brand advocates, and should receive emails targeted towards loyalty programs, refer-a-friend discounts, even possibly trials for new products or services you’re releasing to get honest feedback before widespread rollouts.

23) Customers Who Haven’t Reviewed

You should always be trying to get more positive reviews of your business, so why not create a list segment that targets those customers who haven’t written a review yet? You could combine this list segment with, say, those that are also social media fans and have a high NPS score. Think about it … you know they follow you on Twitter and their NPS score indicates they love you. That’s just begging for an online review email campaign!

24) In-Store vs. Webstore Visitors

If you have both a brick-and-mortar location as well as a website, segment your list based on where your customers like to shop. You can give invites to in-store events to those customers that give you foot traffic, while those that only visit your webstore might receive offers that should only be redeemed online.

25) Shopping Cart Abandonment

Marketing Experiments found that over 50% of shopping carts are abandoned prior to purchase. Yikes. If you run an ecommerce webstore, you absolutely must have an abandoned shopping cart email program, and you should be segmenting your contacts based on this behavior.

26) Form Abandonment

Not an ecommerce company? You still have abandoners on your site — form abandoners! If someone starts filling out some forms on your website and then loses interest, gets busy, has a lousy internet connection, gets eaten by a dinosaur … you know, whatever … segment out those leads for nurturing aimed at bringing them back to your website to complete the form. The offer was interesting enough at one point in time to pique their interest, so why not try to recover some of those form abandoners?

27) Usage

Whatever it is you offer, there are some customers who you could consider power “users.” These are the ones that totally get how to navigate your website, use every feature in your software, and make the most of their relationships with your service providers. Then there are the rest of us. Segment out the power users and the strugglers, frequent users, and infrequent users; then send email content that teaches them how to be more successful with your product or service. The more successful they are, the more likely they are to stick around!

I hope this list has given you ideas for ways to segment your own lists, and most importantly, sparked some creative email campaigns you can run as a result of this new segmentation.

So what about you — what other ways can you think of to segment your email lists? Which of these segmentation ideas could you combine with others for really epic results?

Image credit: Beta-J

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Sayonara, Google Places! Today, Google is taking the first step to eradicate Google Place pages and transition to new Google+ Local pages. Surprise, local businesses! Time to bite the bullet and learn how to use Google+.

Google+ Local pages can be found via a new ‘Local’ tab in the sidebar of Google+, and Local pages also feature Zagat scores and recommendations from people you’re connected to on Google+. Looks like last year’s Google acquisition of Zagat is finally being put to good use.

If you’re a local business who’s curious about just what’s happening with your Google Places page — or if you’re simply curious about the new Google+ Local pages — here’s what you should know …

The Google+ ‘Local’ Tab

Through the new ‘Local’ tab, now located on the left-hand sidebar of Google+, users can search for specific places or browse through various categories of listings such as restaurants, museums, clothing stores, etc.

Clicking on a particular listing will take you to the Google+ Local page of that establishment, which features useful information such as location and contact information, photos, reviews, and Zagat scores/summaries.

Google+ Local & Zagat Scores

That’s right! Zagat summaries and scores are featured on every Google+ Local page. The scores you see are based on a 30-point scale, which is the averaged score of the individual scores given by reviewers. Zagat also aggregates highlights from users’ written reviews into one summary, featured at the top. Check out the following video from Google to learn more about how it works:

On each page, you’ll see individual scores on a 0-3 point scale next to users’ reviews. You’ll also notice a business’ overall Zagat score(s) on a 0-30 point scale, which may be broken down into various categories depending on the business. For example, a restaurant would be broken down into food, decor, and service categories, each indicating a 0-30 point score, calculated based on the averages of users’ individual reviews. Furthermore, users can also indicate costs associated with the business (e.g. ‘cost per person’ for restaurants).

Local Pages’ Integration With Other Google Properties

Google+ Local is also integrated with other Google services, including organic Google Search and Google Maps. If you look for a place on Search or Maps, you’ll find Google+ Local page results there, too. Searches on either of these services pull in Zagat ratings as well, replacing the former 5-star rating system you might be used to. This also holds true for searches on Google Maps for mobile on Android devices, with functionality for iOS devices coming soon.

Reviews & Recommendations From Your Google+ Circles

The launch of Google+ Local also aims to make the reviews, recommendations, and opinions of the connections in your Google+ Circles central to your Google+ Local experience. As a result, any searches a user conducts for places in Google Search, on Google+ Local, or in Google Maps will feature results from that user’s Google+ Circle connections. So If I were to search for Mexican food, I might see a review from a friend of mine who recommends a particular Mexican restaurant in the area.

Now on to your questions …

I’m a local business. What happens to my Google Places page?

Good question! If you’re a local business that had a Google Places page, you’re probably wondering what all this means for the management of your local listing.

First, you’ll probably notice that your Places page gets transitioned into a Google+ Local page. All of your basic information should get migrated over to the new design, and according to the Google and Your Business Blog, you should still manage your information via Google Places for Business. This will enable you to verify your basic listing data, make any updates, and respond to reviews. If you’re using AdWords Express, Google confirms that your ads will function normally, automatically redirecting users to the destination you chose or your current listing.

What if I already have a Google+ business page?

No worries! According to Google, you’re still encouraged to maintain your Google+ business page, but there are still more changes to come. Ultimately, Google will be merging your Google+ business page with your local page presence in the future, so stay tuned. And for a sneak peek into what to look forward to, Google has already worked with several business owners to fully upgrade and merge their listings, sharing their Google+ business identity across Search, Maps, and mobile.

So if you’re a local business who hasn’t already created a Google+ business page, now might be the time. Doing so will ensure that you’re ready to take advantage of all the other social features Google+ pages offer (such as status updates, Circles, Hangouts, etc.) when Google decides to integrate your Google+ Local page with your business page. And don’t worry — we’ll keep you updated when this integration happens

What do you think of Google+ Local? How do you think it will affect your local business’ presence in search?

Image Credit: Kossy@FINEDAYS

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Learn more about this new feature from Facebook itself by attending our Facebook webinar series today at 1 PM ET (#FB4Biz). Click here to register!

Traditionally, the reach of the organic content you post to your Facebook business page has been limited by the scope of Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm. In other words, when you posted an update to your page, that update would only reach a limited number of your fans’ news feeds, because Facebook’s algorithm ranks and shows content based on the likely interest of a given user. But today, Facebook is rolling out a new tool that enables page admins to extend the reach of their page’s organic content.

Introducing ‘Promoted Posts’

Facebook is calling this new tool Promoted Posts, a paid offering for Facebook page admins to promote recent posts, extending their reach beyond the normal exposure they’d get in fans’ news feeds. In other words, using Promoted Posts will increase the percentage of fans your organic content reaches, although Facebook makes no indication of exactly how much more that percentage is:

“Your promoted posts will be seen by a larger percentage of the people who like your Page than would normally see it. It will also be seen by a larger percentage of the friends of people who interact with your post.” – Facebook

You can promote any type of post you can create in your page’s sharing tool, including status updates, photos, offers, videos, and questions. Using Promoted Posts, you’ll generate sponsored stories that get delivered to both desktop and mobile news feeds, not the right-hand sidebar where ads are normally displayed. These Promoted Posts will get shown to users who are already fans of your page in addition to friends of people who interact with the promoted post (i.e. friends of people who have liked, shared, commented, or claimed an offer from the promoted post). These promoted stories, which are marked as “Sponsored” in news feeds, will run for up to 3 days after the post was originally created; so if you decide to promote a post 1 day after you originally published it, the promotion will only run for 2 days.

The tool is reportedly being rolled out to all Facebook pages (regardless of type), provided they have at least 400 fans.

Use Cases for Promoted Posts

Why use Promoted Posts? Quite simply, they can help marketers get more exposure for organic Facebook content they want to put more promotional muscle behind. According to Facebook, fans spend 2x more on average than non-fans. Considering this is a paid offering, marketers might reserve this extra promo push for content they really want to drive more engagement and interaction for. Here are some examples:

• Posts about lead-gen marketing offers such as ebook landing pages 
• Posts about marketing events such as webinar or live event registrations
• Posts about specials, discounts, or Facebook Offer coupons to drive in-store, brick-and-mortar sales or on-site ecommerce sales
• Posts about new product or service launches 
• Posts about important company news and other updates

How to Use Promoted Posts

Interested in experimenting with Promoted Posts to extend the reach of your page’s content? Follow these simple steps to promote either a new post you’re creating now or one you’ve already published.

Step 1: Click ‘Promote’

When creating a new post, click the ‘Promote‘ button:

When promoting a post you’ve already published, you’ll find the Promote button on the bottom of the post after any engagement it’s already generated:

Step 2: Specify Targeting

If you’re creating a brand new post, click the ‘Public‘ drop-down arrow to select from the targeting options. You can make it public or choose to target by location (country, state, or city) and language.

Step 3: Set Your Budget 

Decide on the lifetime (not daily) budget for your post. Remember, promotions can run for up to 3 days from when the post was first published. Facebook will indicate the estimated reach for the budget you select to help you decide how much to spend. Click ‘Save,’ and your promotion will immediately become live.

Pausing Promoted Posts

Admins also have the option of pausing particular promotions before the 3-day promotion period if they’d like to stop their promotion and ad spend. Just click on the ‘Promoted for $X‘ drop-down arrow, select the gear icon, and choose ‘Stop Promotion‘ to pause a Promoted Post.

Measure Promoted Post Success

As savvy inbound marketers know, the only way to know the success of the marketing experiments you run is to measure them!

Tracking Via Facebook Ad Manager

Luckily, Facebook will automatically generate a new campaign in your Ad Manager for every Promoted Post you create, which will consist of one promotion and one Sponsored Story. The stats you’ll find here are the same as you would see for any other ad or Sponsored Story you’d run, such as click-through rate and impressions. To learn more about how to measure the success of your Facebook advertising efforts, check out this post.

Tracking Via Post Flyouts

Marketers can also get a quick look at a Promoted Post’s Insights via flyouts accessible from the post itself, such as the number of people it’s reached and the budget that was spent up until that point. This information can also be accessed via your page’s Insights.

If you don’t have access to Promoted Posts yet and you have at least 400 fans, sit tight. It seems like Facebook is rolling it out gradually. To learn more about Promoted Posts and watch Facebook’s overview video, visit https://www.facebook.com/help/promote.

Learn more about this new feature from Facebook itself by attending our Facebook webinar series today at 1 PM ET (#FB4Biz). Click here to register!

What do you think of Facebook’s new Promoted Posts? Will you experiment them for some of your Facebook page posts?

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Generate opt-in leads. Segment your email list. Set up lead nurturing workflows. Draft clear and concise email copy. Check your emails for deliverability. Optimize for plain text and HTML.

Geez — isn’t there any fun in email marketing anymore?

Well, some email marketing geeks do think all of that’s kind of fun But these less glamorous aspects of email marketing — though critical to making your campaigns successful — don’t paint the entire picture of what amazing email marketing really is. There are brands out there that have also figured out how to create emails that are just plain beautiful. While plain text or bare-bones emails can still be extremely effective, sometimes it’s also wonderful to amaze your subscribers with creative, captivating, or delightfully-understated email design. If you’re looking to dabble in something a little more adventurous for your next email marketing campaign, get some design inspiration from these brands that send out beautifully designed email marketing!

1) UncommonGoods Tells a Story With Its Products

This email from UncommonGoods is a genius solution to product promotion, that doesn’t sound like product promotion at all. That’s because instead of just saying, “Hey, you like bikes, you should buy these!” the email tells a story through a combination of text, sketches, and product images. Plus, it’s lighthearted, both in visuals (just look at that dreamy, watercolor background) and content (the email is essentially a breakup letter between a biker and her car). UncommonGoods has figured out how to do storytelling — and by extension, sales — with the perfect mix of complementary images and copy in its email marketing.

2) Brain Pickings Punches Up the Traditional Email Newsletter

Email newsletters can be quite the drag. But Brain Pickings has managed to put together an email newsletter that has something entertaining just about everywhere you look. Visually inclined? Take in that awesome email banner, followed by some comic strips and a smoky Hunter S. Thompson image. More interested in the written content? You can start reading the site’s content in the email, or just get pulled in by one of the many quotes they’ve highlighted throughout the email. This email balances graphical and textual elements to keep your brain engaged with their various brain pickings!

3) Jetsetter Uses Pictures That Are Worth a Thousand Words

Shhh, shhh, no words.

That’s how Jetsetter has approached its email marketing, anyway. And when you have breathtaking photography like you see in their emails, why would you lean on copywriting to tell your story? A very simple photographic lineup of the vacation destinations being featured is all that’s needed to get email click-throughs and site conversions.

4) UrbanDaddy Emails Sure Know How to Make an Entrance

It’s not that the entire UrbanDaddy email isn’t awesome — I admire UrbanDaddy for their copywriting and layout abilities alike — but I just want to highlight the header of their emails for this blog post. After all, if your recipients enable images in their email, the header is the first thing they’ll see! And UrbanDaddy really knows how to pack a punch. Just take a look at a few, some from local editions, some national; some featuring events, others promoting products. The images always reflect both the Urban Daddy brand and the product or events being promoted in the email … all the while being eye-catching, unique to each email, and just plain beautiful.

5) ShelterCare Creates Appropriately Adorable Imagery

When you have an adorable brand, you can do adorable things with your marketing. ShelterCare works with animals, and this email presents a $10 “Adopter Offer” as a gift to the recipient. But instead of just telling the recipient about the offer (how boring would that be) the email is designed as a gift, complete with bow and gift tags — gift tags that also serve to tell us about the offer’s details.* This email is effective because it has crisp, clean design, as well as relevant imagery. Think about it; if you’re offering something, it makes sense to depict it as a gift! The only thing that would make it better is a puppy popping right out of the inbox … just give email marketing technology a few more years to develop that functionality.

*You’ll notice that one element of content in this email is broken — it’s in that first gift tag. Email marketers, this happens sometimes! But you know what makes it okay? Check out that great alt text. Because it’s descriptive of what image would have appeared there, it doesn’t diminish the clarity of the email. If you’re using any images in your email marketing, be sure to write clear, descriptive alt text!

6) Mozilla Reminds Us That Lovely Emails Come in Text-Form, Too

We would be remiss not to include an example of beautiful email marketing that is largely text-based — because frankly, many marketers’ design resources are quite limited. Take a look at how Mozilla pulls off a visually-appealing email that, logo and video aside, relies largely on just text.

The white background, bold yet still soft gray text, and red hyperlinks keep the focus of this email on the copy — copy that is formatted in such a way that it looks like a breeze to read. If your email requires a few paragraphs of copy, take a hint from this Mozilla email and remove distractions that, well, distract email recipients from reading.

7) Fast Company’s Co.Design Uses Visuals to Complement Content

We always tell you to include visuals in every blog post — well Fast Company’s Co.Design is applying that concept to its email content. And boy does it make a difference! Take a look at that first visual, for instance. Pretty striking, isn’t it? They wisely lead with that bright image that accompanies the post about interactive art, and follow it with the more demure but still entrancing black-and-white image of a school teacher and her pupils. That image also accompanies a post. Fast Company’s written content is superb, but they’re leaning on bold visuals first and foremost to capture email recipients’ attention and entice click-throughs to their website.

Pinterest Creates a Consistent Brand Experience From Email to Website

Yesterday we wrote about how Pinterest’s email digests help to increase user engagement. But they should also be celebrated for creating a consistent experience across website and email inbox. Just take a look — if you’re a Pinterest user, this email will look familiar to you … because it looks almost identical to the website. And you know what? With all that visual content, the website is gorgeous. Makes it pretty easy to come up with visually appealing email marketing when your website is made up of stellar visual content!

9) ModCloth’s Email Layout Draws Attention to All the Right Places

You didn’t think you’d escape one of my email posts without a ModCloth example, did you? The e-retailer knows a thing or two about drawing attention to the right places … with clothes. But turns out their email marketing does it, too! First, take a look at those arrows (they kind of look like the dotted lines you’d see on a dress pattern, don’t they?) that move you along from one section of the email to the next. And do you notice what they’re moving your eye to? That’s right, products!

This email is designed to give you cues on which direction to take in the email — from one crop of dresses to the next — without directly stating it. Plus, they give you some fun yet non-distracting details, like those subtle gray stars in the background, along the way. It’s those little accessories that make your outfit (err, email) fun to look at!

What other companies out there have you noticed are creating beautiful email marketing?

Image credit: vinodvv aka vcube

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As of Q1 of 2012, Pinterest had generated 11.7 million unique visitors. And here at HubSpot, our main website receives 1,000+ monthly visits through referral traffic from Pinterest — and all we do is pin some content! Everyone keeps talking about how Pinterest will grow to become one of the largest used social networks, but truth is, it already is.

As a social network that is built around one of the hottest trends in social media today — visual content — it’s no wonder Pinterest is thriving. But in order to reap business benefits from Pinterest, a solid understanding of how the social network works is important. So what better way to explain this highly visual platform than through visual content? If you’re still trying to wrap your head around the Pinterest phenomenon, the following 10 infographics will help you do just that.

What Is Pinterest?

First things first: let’s review the basics to ensure we’re all on the same page.

Source: Infographic Labs

Who Uses Pinterest?

As marketers, it’s important to understand the audience of each social network we use. Here’s the audience dynamic for Pinterest. (Click infographic to enlarge.)

Source: Modea

The Rise of Pinterest

Before we continue, let’s briefly review the rise of Pinterest as a social network.

Source: Statista

Why Is Pinterest So Addictive?

We’ve seen facts and figures about Pinterest, but what makes this social platform so addictive anyway? (Click infographic to enlarge.)

Source: Flowtown and Column Five

Pin It to Win It: A Marketer’s Guide

And of course, once we understand the social network, marketers need to know how to use it for marketing! (Click infographic to enlarge.)

Source: MDG Advertising

PIO: Pinterest Image Optimization

Marketers understand the importance of search engine optimization, so it makes sense to also focus on Pinterest image optimization. (Click infographic to enlarge.)

Source: Pinnable Business

How to Get More Pins and RePins

With all that hard work on PIO, be sure to get your content pinned and repinned! Here’s how:

Source: Dan Zarrella, HubSpot

16 Ways Educators Use Pinterest

Marketing is about educating. A lot of inbound marketing involves helping to solve your audience’s problems through educational content, which establishes your business as an industry expert. Therefore, it’s only natural that we learn from educators themselves! (Click infographic to enlarge.)

Source: OnlineUniversities

Is Pinterest the Next Social Commerce Game Changer?

Pinterest has opened up a whole new platform for featuring products, but will it completely change how people purchase? (Click infographic to enlarge.)

Source: Monetate

How Pinterest Drives Online Sales

At the end of the day, all your marketing efforts should be driving sales. Inbound marketing should enable you to close the loop on all your marketing efforts to show revenue — Pinterest should be no different! (Click infographic to enlarge.)

Source: Shopify

Have you stumbled across any other informative infographics about Pinterest? If you have additional Pinterest data that would benefit marketers, feel free to share below!

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