It’s safe to say that no email marketing campaign starts off with the intent of sending emails that end up in the trash folder. But that’s right where a large number of marketing emails end up due to the same common mistakes.

Any number of mistakes, from those that are simple to avoid to those that show you don’t understand your target audience, can quickly get you red flagged. By sending relevant, engaging and personalized messages at the right time, you’re much more likely to generate interest in your products or services.

If you want to avoid the trash (or worse, the SPAM folder) with your email marketing campaign, here are eight common mistakes to avoid:

Not having permission.
Before investing any resources in an email marketing campaign, start by getting permission from all of your customers. That’s a must. Unsolicited emails not only run the risk of damaging your reputation, but they have a miniscule return on investment compared to the click results and returns on a well-managed campaign.

Sending without testing.
This is an extremely simple mistake to avoid. Simply put, emails look differently depending upon the type of email program and device people use to view them. Don’t assume a test email you send yourself is representative of how it will look to all recipients. If necessary, hire a third party for testing.

Using a personal email address.
This should be obvious, but do not send any type of email marketing campaign from a personal/home email address like Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail.  Your brand is more valuable than this oversight; at the very least, use an email account from your own domain name.

Sending in a rush.
By simply taking the time to proofread your campaign, you will likely avoid a lot of common mistakes – broken links, bad images, writing mistakes, bad writing – that not only cause people to ignore your marketing email, but could cause them to block you.

Difficult to digest.
This starts with an engaging subject line with the ability to pique interest. Very few people have time to read an entire marketing email, so your content must be easy to scan and digest in a matter of seconds.

The wrong frequency.
Start off by letting your subscribers choose how often (daily, weekly, monthly) they want to hear from you. Take the time to analyze your campaign statistics to review open rates, click rates, and delivery rates to determine what is working best. Don’t scare off potential customers and their business.

No call to action.
Don’t get overly clever and rely on your potential customers to figure out what comes next. Just tell them. Provide the reader with a specific course of action to take and give them a reason to respond.

Being irrelevant.
Don’t assume people know who you are or want to hear from you. Relevance is critical for any email marketing campaign to be successful. Targeted, relevant emails that are personalized show you understand your audience and what they need.

The ways in which companies differentiate themselves in the digital world are changing. Those who fail to realize the potential for customer interaction and retention and then adapt are being left behind. To succeed in today’s digital marketplace, companies need a strategic model to take advantage of customer’s increased ability to engage, interact, and collaborate with each other as well as your organization.

The proliferation of mobile devices is the driving force in the shift to utilize digital customer experience strategies. The truth is that a company is no longer the sole motivator behind its corporate and brand messaging – it’s driven by consumers. In fact, consumers are now three times more likely to trust what a stranger online says about a product or service than what a company says about itself.

Regardless of the industry, customers’ relationships with businesses, and each other, have changed in the interactive economy. So where should companies start in implementing an effective digital customer experience strategy? How can they create multiple touch points across digital channels with empowered customers?

Empower your workforce.
Focus on your people, not the technology. With a digital strategy grounded firmly in the value of the brand, get employees engaged in customer interaction across the company in order to recognize and act on opportunities.

Describe and define the intended digital experience.
Your digital strategy should clearly describe how your touch points will meet customers’ needs and how your activities will differentiate from competitors to set you apart.

The right digital investments.
When it comes to digital channels, do not try to do it all. Set a clear strategy and prioritize investments in digital channels and interactions that fulfill brand promises.

Get personal with customers.
Engage with customers and become a valued source of content. Maximize the engagement by treating them as individuals and cultivating relationships with customers who have more choices than ever before.

Create brand advocates.
Take the time to listen to customers across digital channels, creating loyal and engaged advocates for your company who endorse you to their networks and beyond. According to TheGuardian.com, more than 70 percent of customers will spend more money with a company due to a history of quality service. 

For some, Google Analytics can be a bit like a foreign language. It’s difficult to know where to start. But if you run a small business or have a vested interest in managing a website, blog or brand, Google Analytics is more than an important tool.

It’s a tool you have to understand and utilize.

Google Analytics (GA) is a free online analytical tool that measures website performance. And even if you understand its importance, it is filled with so much data that it can be overwhelming  if you don’t understand what it is you’re looking for, how to find it and how to leverage it to your benefit.

Google Analytics generates detailed statistics about website audience, traffic sources, conversions and content trends. Here are a few of the more important basics:

Audience Engagement Metrics
These data sets help you understand who visited your site, and how they engaged once they visited.

Visits – The number of individual sessions initiated by all of the visitors to your site.

Unique Visitors – The number of unique, individual visitors.

Page views – Total number of times your site has been viewed.

Pages / Visit – The average number of pages viewed during one visit.

Avg. Visit Duration – The average length of time a visitor spends on your site within a specified period of time.

Bounce Rate – The percentage of single-page visits, usually people who visit your homepage and then leave the site.

% New Visits – The percentage of visitors that have not previously visited your website.

Traffic Sources
These metrics help understand how visitors reached your site and where they are coming from.

Search Keywords – Explains which search terms correspond with your website.

Referral Traffic Sources – Where traffic is coming from and measure the success of banner ads, guest blog posts or online press releases.

Social – Impact of social media activity on traffic by identifying the networks and content that generate the most engagement and activity.

Direct Traffic Landing Pages – Where visitors are landing when they visit your site.

Knowing these general concepts and basic terminology will help you understand the basic information within Google Analytics and the reports it can generate, giving you some context for the data analytics to help you evaluate the performance of your website.

Many marketers understand the importance of email marketing as a key component to an overall marketing strategy. But when it comes down to utilizing best practices within email marketing, it seems as though many have room for improvement.

One of those best practices is segmentation, a technique that breaks down your general email list into tailored, customized content targeted at groups within your list.

It’s common knowledge for many marketers that segmentation produces better open and click rates. And it makes sense – the end result is sending potential customers relevant content (and no other content) that they care about. By narrowing the focus, customers are much more likely to find your campaigns and content more relevant, thus driving stronger results and ROI.

If you haven’t completely bought-in on email segmentation, there are several compelling factors to consider. Many businesses sell one product or service to many different types of customers. With several types of ideal customers, do you treat them all the same? Another reality is that within your customer list, your contacts are all at different points of the sales cycle with your company. And while your email and brand reputation will also improve, the final proof is in the statistics. According to data from the Lyris Annual Email Optimizer Report, the top three results of segmented email from marketers were higher open rates (39 percent), greater relevance (34 percent), and lower unsubscribe rates (28 percent).

Many email marketing programs will segment a list, but the options of how to slice down a list is essentially pretty endless. Here are some popular segments:

Geographic area – Create geographically-specific offers to tailor highly-targeted promotions toward locals in certain areas.

Purchase history – Consider creating a list to reward those who buy – or buy regularly – with special offers to strengthen relationships with your best customers.

Abandoned shopping orders – Reach out to those who abandoned digital shopping orders to offer special incentives to come back and complete an order.

Loyal and engaged users – Determine your top and most loyal customers and offer special “VIP” recognition to create a feeling of exclusivity.

Event invitations – Create special events – physical or digital – for customers in specific areas.

New subscribers – Segment by date to determine who are new customers and send special welcome offers.

Mobile is more than a communications or information tool, it is a global lifestyle. For businesses, brands and organizations, it is both the present and the future in building connections and relationships with customers and consumers.

In laymen’s terms, mobile engagement is defined as marketing via a mobile device that provides customers with personalized time and location sensitive information that promotes goods and services.

There are a litany of statistics that represent why mobile matters. And it matters more each passing day.

Consider that half of the U.S. population uses a smartphone, and that it was estimated by Cisco that there would be more mobile devices on the planet than people by the end of 2013. This infographic shows that 79 percent of people use their mobile device within the first 15 minutes after waking up, and most smartphone users check their devices 150 times per day. By the end of 2015, there will be more people accessing the Internet via mobile devices than wireless computers.

The numbers that prove how addicted consumers are to their phones are staggering. You should be thoroughly convinced that mobile matters.

The reality is that building great experiences and serving customers through mobile marketing is the pulse of consumer engagement strategies for businesses and brands. So what are some mobile engagement marketing strategies businesses can use?

Real-time interaction.
Current mobile marketing is about real-time interactions that build brand value. A mobile device always knows where it is, and brands can unlock that power with hyper-targeted messages based on opportunity and location. Instant feedback from consumers – what they like, what they found helpful, an instant in-store special – are value that bring them back.

Direct interaction.
The social network market might be saturated, but it is still a growing mobile content activity. Integrating an app or ad campaign within a social network to create conversation is useful for any brand.

Useful interaction.
Getting someone to download an app in the crowded market is great, but giving them a reason to consistently use it is another.  Consumers are overwhelmed with noise, so cut through it with “sticky” apps that keep users coming back. Customizable content – such as a news feed or mobile chat – create a truly personalized experience that offers brand value.

Really, there is an app for just about everything. But sometimes that can also be the problem.

Let’s face it: The application marketplace is one crowded arena. Running a business can leave you stretched for organization, time, or just peace of mind, and it can be difficult to sift through the noise to find apps that can truly make running your business easier.

So here’s a list of 10 business apps that you should add to make your business activities simpler and more effective.

Evernote – Evernote is immensely popular and does a little bit of everything. Along with plenty of third-party add-on apps, it lets you take notes (including audio), clip web pages, store images, and then share them across devices.

CloudOn – While several apps can run Microsoft Office on a number of devices, CloudOn is free and supports many of its advanced features. It is designed to work on touch devices.

Mileage Tracker – There’s no easier way to track business mileage than on a mobile device, and Mileage Tracker does that automatically via GPS, along with your expenses and itinerary.

YouSendIt – A comprehensive app that allows you to access documents, presentations and video from anywhere, send or share files to shared folders, and even sign documents all while syncing to other devices.

Expensify – Another app that lets you track receipts, Expensify is both free and simple. You can take photos of receipts, categorize expenses, and sync to QuickBooks online.

EZ Balances II – For tracking needs beyond just expenses, EZ Balances II allows businesses to organize spending by tracking budgets, travel expenses, cash accounts and credit cards and then email reports.

Bump – All about accessibility and organization, Bump shares contacts, calendars, files and photos from one phone to another, and does it for free. Use it to trade contact information instead of business cards.

Tripit – Just forward all of your travel information – flights, car reservations, hotels, meetings – and Tripit organizes it into one clean agenda that is sharable.

SignNow – SignNow allows you to sign documents electronically, which is ideal for business needs on-the-go like finishing or approving contractual agreements, while also reducing the risk of losing valuable paperwork.

Applause – There is indeed an app for everything, including one to help find the best apps. Applause measures user satisfaction and app quality to help connect you with the latest apps you need.

Managing a project and collaborating with colleagues has never been easier thanks to an array of apps in the marketplace that increase productivity through improved communication, file sharing, workflow and time management. But there are a lot of apps to sift through.

So how many of those hundreds of apps out there that promise “increased productivity” and “optimized workflow” actually deliver and make your project easier?

Here’s a list of eight apps that will make your next project easier:

Asana – A hybrid project manager and task list app, Asana offers collaboration features for individuals and teams. It lets you keep up with assignments, tasks, attach files from Dropbox, and sync to the web-based version.

Azendoo – Another hybrid project management and task tool that offers a top-down view and plugs into popular services like Evernote and Dropbox.  Upload files to projects, track assignments, make comments and check on the status of teammates.

Cisco WebEx – Great for when team members travel, Cisco WebEx helps you conduct meetings remotely complete with PowerPoint presentations and shared files. Plus, it supports two-way video.

Dropbox – The quintessential app for file sharing and document collaboration. With Dropbox you can share .PDFs, files and folders, plus select files to access offline at a later time.

Evernote Business – Ideal for communication between departments, Evernote Business is like a digital whiteboard that shares knowledge across your company, department or team that everyone can access, share and edit.

Flow – Designed to make project management simple and collaborative, Flow keeps everyone involved in a project on the same page with project folders, individual components, assignments and itemized task lists.

Trello – This is an ideal app for organizing all of the components of a project into columns, cards and lists. Team members can add details, comment on, assign from person to person, and add new boards for new projects.

Yammer – An amped-up group chat app that also allows you to share photos/files and track projects, along with dozens of add-on apps to help make any team more productive.

The latest in technology is always key for mobile sales reps and sales teams.

There’s very little downside in leveraging the latest in technology to make your job easier and you more efficient. As mobile sales reps are increasingly finding out, there are all sorts of tools on the market to make them better at what they do. But, let’s face it, sorting through hundreds of sales mobile apps to find the perfect fit for your business needs can be exhausting.

The latest in mobile technology has made it realistic for mobile sales reps to do their entire job via a mobile device and an internet connection, but there are many products with many features to consider.

Based on product reviews and best-of rankings, here’s a list of the best apps for mobile sales representatives.

CloudOn – One of the must-haves if you’re a sales rep editing a lot of documents, CloudOn brings Microsoft Office to the iPad with all the functionality you need.

DropBox -  An incredible tool where you can store your files securely and access them from anywhere. It’s user-friendly, has options for public sharing and can sync with other apps.

Handshake – This simple and fast app is ideal for mobile reps and sales teams, enabling the ability to write orders and present a catalog.

SalesForce – The front-end of the powerful CRM software, this app connects you to manage your account with full functionality, a must-have if you use SalesForce.com.

RepZio – A full-fledged CRM package that is a turn-key sales rep, product catalog and showroom sales tool that is also simple to use, which makes it a dream for mobile sales reps.

SlideShark – Considered the top app for showing Power Point presentations in original form, which makes it a proven, powerful tool.

MileBug – Helps mobile reps effectively track all of the miles they’ve traveled, and reports can be exported as HTML files.

SquareWallet – Takes care of every aspect of payment processing in the field so you can bill customers and clients without having to worry.

EchoSign – A new e-signature app for mobile sales representatives who need to get documents signed quickly, it allows users to sign, send and manage documents.

Evernote for Business – This note-taking app allows users to write all of their sales notes and sync over the cloud, meaning they’re waiting for you next time you log on to your computer.

Many restaurants survive (or don’t) on word-of-mouth, which makes social media an obvious tool for restaurants to use in their online strategies to gain exposure.

Restaurant brands need to take strong hold of their social media presence. The space allows for direct, one-on-one connections to customers. Getting people to talk about your brand in social spaces can make a dramatic impact on business. Unfortunately, lack of planning, inactivity, and poor engagement damage the presence of many brands and result in poor results.

Here’s a look at ways restaurant brands can better leverage social media to gain exposure.

Keep Customers in the Loop – Do you have a new dish on the menu, or added a new beer to the mix? Have a new promotion, special, or event coming up? Let your most loyal customers know what’s going on as it happens. If your restaurant is busy and reservations are tough, announce cancellations on social media.

Post Pictures – Your food is your signature product, so why not share what your dishes look like and display what you have to offer? This strategy works well on sites like Pinterest and Instagram.

Highlight Customers – Many of your customers already talk to each other, so highlight them on social media to create community and build loyalty. Create campaigns for customers of the month or year.

Say Thank You – What’s easier than thanking your customers in the digital space, just as you do in person? Create different campaigns to say thank you to groups like teachers or military personnel.

Utilize Video Content – You’re an expert in your field, so leverage your brand presence to create original content to share via social media. Video is a mandatory medium, so create educational cooking videos to educate and connect with your customers. Create a library of your video content with a YouTube channel.

Mobility – If your restaurant is a food truck or even just has frequent off-site events, you can keep customers in the loop by posting your next location or daily menu items on Facebook or Twitter.

Exclusive Offers – Leverage social media like Foursquare to create special offers for first-time customers, or special offers available only online with passcodes. Integrate your various media channels to spread the word.

Create Conversation – Create regular, consistent conversations with customers by answering questions or complaints, or just responding when they mention your brand. Utilize hashtags to group the conversations. Compel people to participate with contests and promotions. Create daily, weekly, and monthly conversation calendars.

Promotions – The number of contents and promotions available via social media is only limited by your imagination. One of the easiest ways is to utilize your online customers. One New York City restaurant encouraged customers to take photos of their food and send it out with a hashtag for exposure and brand awareness. Offer specials and discounts for participation.

Measuring and tracking your website traffic offers numerous tangible benefits. The metrics involved in traffic analytics will allow you to determine your audience, study their behavior and make the necessary strategic changes to boost traffic. You will be able to determine audience patterns and trends, better leverage your SEO strategies, and create efficiencies by devoting and allocating resources to content that drives traffic.

In layman’s terms, it’s critical to know who your visitors are, where they are coming from, what they are doing on your site, and how long they stay.

So the reasons to track website traffic, as well as the benefits, are all there. But what are the best methods of tracking your traffic, and how do you capitalize on what you find?

When tracking traffic, it’s important to remember what you are really trying to find out, rather than merely collecting data.  Knowing what the information means, and how to interpret what you have found, is also important. For example, if you’re running an email or social media campaign, it’s important to know its effectiveness and the impact on website traffic.

Here are the best methods of tracking website traffic, and the questions you should be asking:

1.       How many visitors are using your website (Hits, visits, unique visitors and page views)?
2.       How much time does a visitor devote to your website?
3.       Which are the top entry and exit pages?
4.       How do the visitors reach you? What were the referrers and keyword searches used?
5.       What is the bounce rate of the web pages?
6.       What is the average time spent on pages and the website?
7.       How are visitors navigating (click paths) through the website? What are the sequences of the web pages, and are they behaving a certain way (conversion)?

No one tool will be able to tell you comprehensively everything you need to know. Using multiple tools simultaneously will give you the most clarity to see the big picture, and there are many different tools in the marketplace available to accomplish what you need.

Here are a few lists to start: Sociable.co.uk has compiled a list of 12 killer analytics tools, while Onextrapixel.com offers a list of the ten best alternatives to Google Analytics, and SearchEngineLand.com put together a list of 25 analytics solutions.