Article There Are Only Three Good Reasons for Content by Christopher Butler on December 12, 2013 There are really only three good reasons to put content on your site. They are: SEO, Lead Development, and Sale. That's it. Content can be for any or all of these purposes, but if it isn't intentionally created and managed for any of them, it's wasted... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Parallax Websites, the Right(ish) Way by Dave Mello on December 10, 2013 Building a parallax-based website to be SEO-friendly and reasonably fast requires some unique work-arounds. We'll take a look at some of them, and look at why, in most cases, they're probably not worth it. Read Now About
Article Email Marketing Marketing Automation Takeaways from Dreamforce published on December 9, 2013 There was a lot to take in at the 2013 Dreamforce conference. I took note of a few key themes that emerged regarding the use of marketing automation and email marketing. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design How to See What a User Sees by Christopher Butler on December 5, 2013 A few weeks ago, I spoke at the HOW Interactive Design Conference in Chicago. As a member of the Advisory Board, I’ve helped to shape the programming of this conference for the last three years. We’ve learned a ton, and I saw many of those learnings applied in this year’s event. It was definitely the strongest one yet — a great location, a great crowd, and fantastic content. One of the talks I gave was on usability testing, which I’d like to share with you below. As you’ll see in the agenda, a big portion of it involved doing live usability testing from stage. At some point, I think HOW will release video of this. In the meantime, I’ll provide a few big takeaways from a couple of the tests we ran... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Parallax is the New Flash published on December 2, 2013 Parallax design is the hot new trend, but it's not always a good idea to base your site around it. Parallax can have major implications for SEO, usability, and the conversion rate of your site. Worst of all, Parallax is the single easiest way to make your site look dated in the next 18 months. Read Now About
Article Dreamforce: The State of Digital Marketing on Planet Earth by Mark O’Brien on November 19, 2013 Salesforce's annual Dreamforce conference is the place to be for digital marketers. This month, Mark gives us a recap of what it's like to attend Dreamforce, and why you might want to consider going in 2014. Read Now About
Article My Mixbook for 2013 by Christopher Butler on November 13, 2013 2013 is dying, and so it's time to commemorate it again in the form of giftable pulp. That means another mixbook! This one makes number five in a row. Each one has been an experiment, and so there are a few new details in this one that I'm excited for you to discover. You can't buy this book, though. It's a gift, not a product. I've printed a limited number of copies and will be solemnly distributing it to the members of our secret cabal in the next few weeks. If you'd like to join us, contact me and we'll begin initiation rites. More details inside... Read Now About
Article Email Marketing Sample Automated Marketing Programs – part 4 published on November 12, 2013 What happens to the leads that acrue over time that signed up at one point, but have not been active for a long stretch of time? Usually, they just sit there taking up space in your database. Why not build an automated program that will encourage them to re-engage, and if they don't, remove them from your list? Read Now About
Article Email Marketing Sample Automated Marketing Programs – part 3 published on November 7, 2013 Once you have leads in your marketing automation system, you will want to nurture them through the buying cycle. I have put together a simple program that illustrates how this can be done by utilizing your content strategy and a marketing automation program. Read Now About
Article You Should Be Happy published on November 5, 2013 "Do what you love and the money will follow" is a lovely sentiment, but until someone starts paying me to eat french fries and read books, I think the better choice is to choose to love what you are doing. Or at least be happy. It's a choice, like any other and you should be happy. Read Now About