Email marketing is an essential tactic for connecting with and engaging your current and potential customers. After all, it is comparatively inexpensive, highly targeted and segmented, fast, and widely outperforms other direct marketing strategies.

But getting people to open your emails is tricky business. That’s why achieving a high open rate is the most important factor for your email marketing campaign.

Here are seven tips to improve your open rates:

Subject Line
The subject line is your chance to make a first impression as the gateway to your customer and one of two things they will see before opening any email. What would make you want to open an email? Utilize customer attributes and power words while avoiding cheesy phrases and exclamation points to pique interest and create a sense of urgency.

Be Specific
Make it clear why you are emailing and what they are about to open. You only have a few seconds to capture their attention. Reveal a little information to entice them to open with a sense there is more to come. Display your call-to-action early. Getting to the point while being upfront and honest will get opens.

Who Is It From?
The email recipient should know who the email is from without having to think about it. Otherwise, it might get deleted immediately. It’s best to put your company name in the From Line, or a combination of a single name and company name to make it a bit more personalized.

Personalize
A personalized email improves click-through rates by 14 percent and conversion rates by 10 percent, according to Sikich.com.  Using the recipient’s name in the subject line or greeting to create the sense you’re speaking directly to the customer and there is a real person they can reply to.
Optimize For Mobile
You shouldn't be surprised to know that 38 percent of all emails are opened on a mobile device, a number that will increase to 78 percent by 2017. It’s important to optimize your subject lines for mobile devices first by limiting them to 50 characters.

Timing Is Important
Test, monitor and analyze what times of day your emails are being read. Timing can be important for capturing your customer’s attention. This study suggests email sent during the afternoon is the top engagement window, but be sure to experiment.

Avoid Spam Filters
Spam filters work by analyzing a list of criteria to determine an email’s “spam score,” which determines whether it is sent to the spam folder. Avoid words and phrases like “free” and “act now,” using all capital letters, dollar signs and lots of exclamation points. Not only are they a red flag for the spam filter, but they appear sketchy to your recipient as well.


The bottom line is that social media is effecting the bottom lines  of  retailers. Big and small, many businesses have had to change their operational strategies to adapt to the impact of social media. It has changed the ways in which consumers choose to shop, and thus how retailers engage those consumers to build, and ultimately sell, their brand. It has created opportunities for retailers to leverage social media, which includes getting more feedback – in real time – than ever before from empowered consumers.

Communication
Social media has opened a gateway toward the number of touch points retailers have with consumers. Customers can openly or directly connect to businesses, as well as provide (often instantaneous) negative or positive feedback about products or customer service, which can impact other consumers. While complaints can and have go viral, it also gives retailers a chance to listen, solve problems, and build one-on-one connections with customers.

Marketing

Retailers are constantly finding new ways to market to customers, instantly informing them about sales, new products and exclusive or online-only promotions. Customers are directly informed about new marketing initiatives, and share their opinions or simply pass along the information via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and others in their social communities.

Social Shopping

Social media is changing the ways people shop. How many times does it happen that someone takes a picture of a product and sends it out to their social media sphere to elicit opinions? Smartphones, specifically, are the tools which allow customers the instant engagement on social sites, shaping their behavior, decision making and shopping experience. In addition to sharing information, consumers can check-in via mobile apps to receive instant specials from retailers, access coupons, Tweet about their experience or simply let others know where they are shopping. Retails can utilize social media with limited-time offers or rebates for liking or sharing information to influence behavior. 


Branding

Retailers have access to customers like never before, and opportunity to build their brands. Businesses have become more personal, shaping the way customers perceive their brand. Every aspect of the open dialogue about a brand via social media – a Tweet, a photo shared on Pinterest or a Facebook check-in – connects the entire social sphere of each customer, often in specific demographics.  When retailers understand the analytics behind their customers, they can utilize the data to better understand consumers as well as shape pricing decisions and product management.

There is no shortage of information written, analyzed and debated when it comes to business-to-business content marketing. But converting your prospects to customers through content conversion is the name of the game, and there are some critical points not to undervalue in the noise of information overload.

Many businesses have turned to content as the key tool in which to interact with their customers, but it’s simply not enough that prospects “like” your content. Customers need to buy into the overall experience, which engages, creates value, nurtures the relationship and ultimately influences their purchase decision.

Solving Needs
The first thing a business buyer will determine is how a product or service will help solve their need or issue. What’s in it for them, and how is your product or service helping? Validate the value of your products and solutions and pitch new approaches to the problems business face.

Keep It Simple
According to [The CMO Council http://www.cmocouncil.org/], 87 percent of businesses say that online content has a moderate or major impact on vendor selection. So learn how to not undermine the value and impact of content. The same survey indicated the top four dislikes in B2B content is too many requirements, non-substantive, overly technical and blatantly promotional content.

Understanding Customers
Appeal to the personal side of the people behind the businesses, and highlight your ability to understand their issues. It’s not about you; it’s about knowing your prospects well enough to anticipate their reactions accurately. Challenge your own assumptions, introduce fresh thoughts and ideas, and focus on a presentation that appeals to the solutions your prospects need.

Call To Action
Create a sense of urgency with your prospects that makes them feel they need to make a decision, moving from prospect to customer. It could be through a product review, software demo, white paper or any other lead generation piece. According to The CMO Council, 67 percent say professional association reports and papers are among the most trusted content. Endorsements by industry peers are far more effective than touting your own products.

Don't think of your business brand as just a marketing component of your overall strategy, but more as a critical and direct interface to engage your customers and audience.

Yes, branding is vital, and more complex than ever. Your brand differentiates you from your competition, plus builds recognition, loyalty and trust. Aligning all of your strategies to maintain branding consistency can be precarious, so here are a few components to keep in mind:

Define your brand
A better understanding of your own brand makes it easier to keep consistent. Scrutinize and analyze your brand as it grows, conduct brand and marketing reviews and adapt as services and products are added. Clearly define a brand strategy to create brand identity standards and defined best practices.

Clear message
Develop clear, concise messaging that supports your company's values and products as well as represents your identity. The message of your brand should not only be compelling, engaging, authentic and confident, it should remain true to your business. Customers will become loyal to your brand when they know what to expect.

Find your voice
It's somewhat intuitive to know your audience, what they like, and how to reach them. Narrow in on your brand persona by finding the tone and voice of your messaging – is it sarcastic, subtle or witty – that represents your brand and resonates and connects with your customers.

Appearance
The visual elements and presence of your brand matters, and the look and feel of your brand reflect your business at all times. From the colors and design of your logo to your storefront, packaging, website, marketing and print materials and social media icons, this is often the first point of contact for your customers and creates brand recognition.

Platform consistency
Above all else, consistency is vital. Your branding should be clear and consistent at every touch point of customer contact, across all platforms, in every facet of your business. Find a brand ambassador to ensure your branding is consistently executed.

Let's face it, the ease in which we create and use to-do lists have come a long ways.  It's no longer so easy to escape your tasks and unfinished business, because they can follow you everywhere on your Smartphone. 

What is a bit trickier is deciding what to-do list app to chose. The best apps synch with your email and across all of your devices, are supported on all platforms, easy to use and best of all, free. 

There are myriad options for to-do list apps, so here are a few that frequently top the lists:

Wunderlist
This popular cloud-based app focuses on adding and later organizing tasks into folders and smart-lists, and does it all for free across all platforms while synching across all your devices. [Techradar.com http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/applications/6-best-to-do-apps-and-extensions-to-manage-your-time-1144266] named it as the best to-do list app.

Tooledo
Packed with features, Tooledo handles to-do lists and tracks projects. It can import tasks from other managers, share lists with groups and integrates with email, helping it [make the list at Lifehacker.com.

Astrid
A clean interface and the ability to sync and share lists and tasks across devices and with other users helps Astrid make many of the top-ranked lists. Manage lists from the web or via email, enter tasks by voice and get push notifications, among other features.

Remember The Milk
A simple and easy app that has been around a long time, Remember The Milk is available across many platforms. It integrates with Gmail and synchs with Google Tasks, among other features. 

Any.Do
Easy to use and nice to look at, Any.Do has built-in sharing features and lets you drag and drop tasks onto different days and into different folders. It syncs with Google Tasks and has a Gmail plug-in, helping it rank as the top must-have Android app by PCMag.com.

Evernote
While it's not technically a to-do list app, Evernote is a popular note-taking app can create to-do lists among its many features.  It was nominated among to-do apps by PCWorld and was named one of the 50 must-have iPad apps by Time Tech.

It's good news for small business owners that the today's software market is inundated with more choices than ever when it comes to online invoicing and accounting options. The biggest problem might be knowing which option to choose.

Thanks to the boom in online cloud-based applications, there is a wide range of inexpensive, easy-to-use and widely-used options with similar sets of features for business of all sizes.  Given the options, it's important to determine the services your business requires, how the invoices are generated and your budget. Then draw up a short list of options and try the free trials to test each to decide which best suits your needs.

Freshbooks
One of the veteran application options, Freshbooks facilitates fast and simple invoicing, offers team management tools and  the ability to work across platforms , on mobile devices (iPhone and iPad only) or by using other apps. Create invoices, manage projects and accept payments online from anywhere.

QuickBooks
Offers eight different products, including five online accounting packages, which run on Windows or Mac operating systems. Provides advanced invoicing, reporting, expense tracking, billing and payment tracking, imports data from Excel and comes with mobile tools to create invoices (both iPhone and Android).

Invoicera
Offers an intuitive user interface as well uncluttered navigation. Supports 20 global payment gateways and languages and advanced invoicing functionality, including a time and expense tracking feature. Creates estimates and supports reoccurring billing, invoice scheduling, partial payment options and late fees payment.

Harvest
Features superior online, desktop and mobile time-tracking app, which is both iPhone and Android compatible. Supports Google apps integration, plus uploading data to Excel and QuickBooks. Includes timesheet management features and is adept at converting estimates and tracking expenses on the road.