Why Email Marketing Shouldn't be an Ugly Stepchild

Email marketing isn't a sexy topic. In a world dominated by tweets, Likes and +1's, most marketers aren't excited by email marketing any more.

Marketing is about hype and the shiny new thing, making email the forgotten toy of yesteryear. But small business owners do themselves a huge disservice by failing to adopt the well-known best practices in email marketing simply because it’s not new. Here’s why they shouldn’t.

Email Has a Huge Audience

While the growth numbers in social media and search engine optimization continue to be impressive, the fact remains that 72 percent of people check their email more than 6 times per day. This means email is probably the most reliable way to get in touch with an audience.

People Prefer Email

While Facebook is great for reviving old social connections and Twitter is awesome for real-time commentary of political debates, research shows that 77 percent prefer to receive permission-based commercial messages via email. This implies that end-users carry strict expectations about how they like to use the various technology platforms they engage with. It is best not to violate those expectations just because the audience may be there.

Google Expands Search Results to Include Calendar, Drive

Google has extended its Gmail search trial to include results from its calendar and online documents applications, as well as adding the features to its email application and its core search tool.

Gmail users will now be offered a mix of search results from their Google Calendar, Google Drive and email messages when they start typing into the Gmail search box.

The first version of the expanded search results offering, which launched in August, was restricted to Gmail messages appearing in Google search results.

As well as adding the new search feature to the Gmail application, Google has also updated its core search functionality. When searching Google for a particular term or name, users will be now be offered a mix of results from their Gmail messages and Google Drive files on the right-hand side of the page, as well as the core search results in the middle.

According to Google, it has received positive feedback on the initial trial, which has led the firm to expand it to Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive.

We signed up and were accepted for the original trial back in August, but have seen very little evidence of it in practice. Although we run Google searches on a daily basis, we've seen our Gmail messages returned only once, even though we've run tests searching for specific terms included in our email.

Why PageRank Doesn't Matter

Every SEO professional reading this who's had more than one client has undoubtedly been faced with the following statement, "I know you got my rankings up, but when do you expect to see my PageRank increase?"

There are many replies that quickly race through the head from the slightly cheeky, "Let's worry about that when it matters," to the more obvious "Oh God, what forums have you been reading?" But you're a business-person and so instead you launch into your now well-rehearsed discussion about what does and doesn't matter when it comes to promoting a site online.

This issue got me thinking, rather than repeating the same discussion over and over, why not write an article outlining all the commonly misunderstood metrics thrown around?

Before we get into all that however, let me invite you to comment below on additional metrics and questions we're all asked about that are less than relevant. We all may be able to share replies but if not, at least you'll feel better knowing that others feel your pain. Misery does love company.

Who's To Blame For Misinformation?

Any frustration shouldn't be aimed at the client. The client isn't an SEO and further, their information is gathered from somewhere. That somewhere may be a blog post from 2006, but they have no way of knowing what is or isn't relevant any more than I know how to perform the surgeries that some of my doctor clients do regularly.

5 Pieces of Damn Good Advice for Social Media Marketers

I’ll admit, I’ve been a fan ever since I started studying advertising back in college. The way he just plain didn’t seem to care what the rest of the world thought played well with 20-year old me.

It wasn’t much later, until I actually started working in communications myself that I started to realize it wasn’t that he didn’t care what others thought, because he obviously did or he wouldn’t be in advertising, but it was that he knew how to make other think about things. It was that realization that made me fall head over heels in professional love with a bald, glasses-wearing, swearing guy named George Lois.

Since that time, I’ve read everything the guy’s written – from pieces in GQ, AdWeek, AdAge, heck if he’d scrawled something meaningful on a bathroom wall in Queens, I’d probably be there reading that too. So, when his book (which he worked on with his son) "Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent)" came out, I picked it up immediately and read it cover to cover a couple times (so many times that I’m sure my wife was getting tired of me pointing out parts).