IMN | Content Counts

Whether your business is banking and financial services, direct selling, or franchising, having a content strategy in place that provides a mix of engaging articles and customer-specific promotions is key to your marketing efforts. This is the difference between the hard sell and the soft sell: the first is driven by a desire for concrete ROI metrics while the second focuses on building the relationship between customer and brand. This is also, however, where a solid content strategy can shine: striking a balance between the hard sell and the soft sell means fine-tuning your message to be relevant, maintain engagement, and most importantly, move buyers through the cycle. How does that work, and what does finding that balance look like? The Hard Sell The hard sell places all marketing emphasis on turning prospective buyers into customers; i.e., making the sale. Whether that’s cold-calling or offering some sort of deal or special rate to make the product more appealing, it is essentially a marketing approach that is entirely concerned with meeting short-term goals. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the hard sell […]

It happens to even the most accomplished authors. Writer’s block. Sometimes all it takes is a little nudge to get your out of the rut. We found a post from The Social M’s to help spark the creative process. Read Tools and Tips on How to Write the Perfect Blog Post to forge a path to creativity.

In today’s marketing landscape, email newsletters and email campaigns don’t just qualify as targeted marketing – they’re content marketing, focused on informative, relevant, and timely editorial content that helps customers solve problems and answer questions. A content-and-experience-centric approach helps you build relationships and influence customer behavior, and iMakeNews® is a self-service solution that aims to achieve this exact result. How? As a newsletter platform that creates customized microsites delivered by email, iMakeNews allows for deep engagement and behavioral analysis while serving as an ideal option for communicating with customers, internal employees, and vendors and partners at multiple levels. But, what exactly are microsites and how do they add value to an email newsletter campaign? Microsites serve as custom-made companion pages for every email newsletter, encouraging subscribers to click, navigate, and interact with content quickly and easily. They represent a shift from one-dimensional, hard-sell promotional emails by putting the focus increasingly on engaging content – content designed to meet customer needs rather than explicitly sell product. The measurable analytics inherent in an email newsletter service mean you can track subscriber clicks, […]