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Are you looking for a marketing automation tool to take your business' digital communications to the next level? With so many different resources available, it can take time to determine which solution is right for you.

Today, we'll be taking a deep dive into ActiveCampaign pricing plans and benefits – so that you can decide whether this powerhouse of a digital marketing platform is the perfect fit for your company's needs.

Are you confused about how to use HubSpot's prebuilt email sequences for your sales and marketing drip campaigns and workflows? Or are you not even sure what drip campaigns are (if so, you're not alone!).

Drip campaigns, or the process of continuing to nurture prospects and leads in a systematic way via emails, are a key part of moving cold leads and prospects more quickly through your sales and marketing funnel with less manual effort, time and resources.

If you want to take your marketing campaigns to the next level, you've got to test them. How do you do that? With A/B testing. It's sometimes called split testing. What is A/B testing? It's basically comparing two versions of a web page, email or banner to see which one performs better.

You can compare these by showing the two variants, calling them A and B, to similar visitors simultaneously. See which one gives the best conversion rate and then use that one moving forward! It's simple, but also necessary.

It's obvious to any marketer nowadays that you should use email marketing as a way to stay connected with your target audience. Despite the wide array of different strategies available to marketers, having a well-developed email marketing plan is integral to your overall marketing campaign. It's an excellent way and the most productive channel for getting the best ROI. 
 
Yet, don't expect the stars and the moon from your email marketing strategy if it's not done right. If you haven't planned out a sustained email marketing effort, it simply won't be effective. You can’t just send out whatever and expect it to get results. A well-planned and thought-out strategy has to take into account your customer's likes and behaviors, and has to then target them efficiently. 
 
Here are some tips about how to do it:

According to the Radicati Group, email use worldwide will top 3 billion users by 2020. While some industry experts are convinced that social media’s convergence with the ever depleting millennial attention span is going to erode email just as email depleted print, that number certainly presents a very different picture.  

Back in November 2013, Flair Interactive provided tips on building a successful email campaign. While that post is still relevant and accurate, in 2017, there are some definite changes in what defines and drives a successful email campaign.

So, what has changed in the last three years to keep email relevant, effective, and aligned with the technological trends that are impacting marketing as a whole? Let’s take a look:

Most of us have figured out at this point that Content Marketing isn’t a magical powder that gets sprinkled on our marketing plans and suddenly, all of our
goals are instantly met. No, content marketing is nothing more than a tried-and-true formula. Effective application of that formula is what truly yields success.

Queue nebulous time warp squiggles back to the year 2015 when Flair Interactive posted the blog, What Should be Included in My Content Marketing Strategy. While the blog is on point in terms of building and executing on an inbound marketing plan, in 2017, we’ve taken some measures to perfect the formulaic fairy dust even more. As you dive into your plan this year, keep these additions in mind:

Create data-driven goals—this is still very much the starting point of your content strategy. While not much has changed here since 2015, you’ll want to make sure your goals are clearly defined and mutually agreed upon by everyone. Ensure your ‘wins’ or ‘milestones’ are marked and attainable. Finally…do your homework. Avoid arbitrary, executive-driven numbers. Look at your competitors, your metrics, what’s worked, and what hasn’t worked before getting to an achievable number.

As inbound marketers, it’s our responsibility to provide our clients the best-of-the-best in modern, customized marketing services. 

In 2009, we published a "Typical Projects Handled by Flair Interative" blog post and video that described our services. While we still offer all of the services described in that video, our core focus has shifted during the last eight years to focus on inbound marketing. But one thing remains the same...our number-one priority is to deliver high-quality solutions that get results for all of our clients, and we do that by delivering tightly integrated inbound marketing campaigns and services.

To us, marketing tactics shouldn’t be isolated instances. They shouldn’t be disparate solutions to immediate problems or what we like to call short-term, reactive goals. They should be proactive and strategic in nature with both immediate incremental and long-term wins in mind.

Interactive marketing is trending right in line as it was forecasted seven years ago. In 2009, Flair Interactive posted the blog, Interactive Marketing Has
Finally Come of Age. The blog cites an article by Forrester Research who forecasted that digital spending would nearly double in five years while ad budgets would decline. In fact, its exact predicted growth was a 9% increase in five years (from 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009 to 21% overall spend in 2016).

So, based on Forrester Research's prediction, let's get a pulse of where we're at as we enter 2017:

Overall Marketing Spend

• Digital marketing spending is predicted to grow 12% in the next year, while budgets for traditional advertising will fall to 2%. (The CMO Survey)
• B2B digital ad spending has increased 15% to $5.8 billion in 2014 — due largely to growth in native advertising, while display advertising is becoming less important. (MediaPost)

First impressions are everything, and you can be sure that your recipients judge your emails based on their subject lines. They may be the smallest part of your message, but they are absolutely essential to sparking the interest of your readers and increasing your open rates. So, make it stand out.

As a child, when someone told you "less is more", you probably thought they were crazy. If you're like most of us, that opinion probably also followed you into your teen years (and maybe even your early 20's). Today, however, you know better than that. As a mindful, capable, experienced business owner, you have seen enough to know that more is not always better. Unfortunately, it can be a struggle to know when you should take the minimalist approach versus going all-in. That's the enigma we are confronting here: when is low-key better than the whizbang alternative?