Designing for email is different than designing a print ad and coding an email is very different than coding a standard web page. I have compiled a list of resources to check out while you are producing, designing or coding your newsletter.

For those not familiar with the intricacies of the technical subtleties and workarounds necessary to produce your design optimally across different email clients- it can be a minefield.

Litmus –A company that consults on best practices for design in email. They have a great service that will render emails in different email clients.

Email on Acid -I’ve used Litmus before, I haven’t used these guys, but they seem to be very similar to Litmus, plus like Litmus they have a great blog.

Inline styler  -CSS has to be inline, so why not just have this handy tool help you make it so.

CSS email guide -A great guide to CSS and what email client will render what.

Mobile email design -An older article on using styles to make emails look great on smaller screens.

HTML email boilerplate -If you need a place to start, or get overwhelmed at the complexity of designing emails, then this is the place.

Preflight your email code -Want to check it quickly before doing a full blown test send? Try this.

Code primer on coding mobile HTML emails -See the title to the left. That pretty much sums up this link.

Are there some obvious ones I am missing? Let me know if there are others.

THE FIRST:  ExactTarget Launches Release 139 on Friday October 5.

Enhancements are coming this Friday to the ExactTarget system. Specifically increased data transfer rates, optimized tracking and support for use with Internet Explorer 8.0.  Details can be found in the ExactTarget Wiki.

THE SECOND:  Countdown to Connections!

ExactTarget Connections, the world’s largest gathering of interactive marketers, is coming up soon–October 16-18th in Indianapolis.

Follow along on Twitter at @inboxorange as we share conference and industry highlights.  If you’re attending Connections 2012, be sure to say hello!

We can give you tips for creating stand-out email marketing all day long, but sometimes advice is better when it comes from someone in your shoes.

We talked to Emily Ashburn, director of Business Development and Account Services with Paladin Engineers for a “how-to” guide on creating a simple email, from a real user’s point of view.

1) Gather Your Content As You Go

Emily sends out her email newsletter quarterly. “So for the first two months of the quarter, I’ll collect my content. I keep an email file and I just put whatever I think might be a good idea in there.”

2) Don’t Stress About Design

“I keep a yahoo account for email marketing samples,” explains Emily. “I take the ones that look easily replicable, and I use them as a template for design.”

When it comes time to actually lay out her email, Emily uses a sketch pad to draw out a rough draft of her design and map out where she will put each piece of content. “I put the most relevant content in the upper left hand corner and work my way down from there,” she says.

Another trick Emily uses, is to have a graphic designer prepare her header beforehand. “So it comes to me as an image I can upload into Exact Target, and it already includes all of our social media.”

3) Keep it Simple

For supporting images, Emily uses all stock images from her iStock account. “I find things that are within the same family and kind of theme together and use them throughout the same email,” she says.

She also sticks to one background color, plus a border and limits herself to two fonts per email. “The concern is how things will translate on the other end, so I just try to keep it pretty clean and uniform,” she explains.

4) Test, Test and Re-Test

The first step is testing links within the email, to be sure they go where you intend. The next, is of course to test the email send. “I personally test it within yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, outlook, and mobile,” says Emily. “I send it out to people in my office who have different types of phones, and that’s how I test it.”

Follow Emily’s tips and you can create reader-friendly, functional emails without spending time you don’t have to spare. It’s that easy!

]]> http://inboxorange.com/easy-email-creation/feed/ 0 http://inboxorange.com/relevanceinmarketing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=relevanceinmarketing http://inboxorange.com/relevanceinmarketing/#comments Wed, 05 Sep 2012 13:42:53 +0000 Christina http://www.inboxorange.com/?p=2646 Even in this age of electronic connection, I still enjoy checking the mailbox outside every day. Last week, as I flipped through the stack, curious to see what had arrived, I noticed a small booklet titled, “What to Expect from your Six-Month-Old.” It would have been something of extreme interest seven years ago.

I may have flipped through the material, and certainly clipped the coupon for formula. With three small children in the house, it would have been very relevant.

Now, however, it’s completely irrelevant. So I tossed it in the recycling bin without another thought. The marketer who sent the material didn’t hit the mark. And not hitting the mark doesn’t just mean wasted resources, it means missed opportunities.

As marketers, we must strive to be relevant to our audience. It was easy enough for me to toss the paper mail aside, but it’s even easier to hit the delete button on an email. Email marketing, especially, must be relevant in order to reach our audience.

So how can we ensure that the content we provide is relevant? Start by asking yourself a few basic questions as you create content:

1. Does this content provide valuable information?
2. Is the content compelling enough that the reader will want to share it?
3. Does the content reflect the audience’s purchase history, interest or past preferences?

By paying attention to who your audience is, and tailoring messages to be relevant, you can increase your open rate and return on email investment. Just think–if the manufacturer sending me the formula coupons would send me sports drink coupons instead, they’d surely get my attention!

It’s a position many email marketers find themselves in, but it doesn’t have to end in frustration. Even if you are a new user, you can become adept at creating new email design.

A few tips:

• Keep it simple! There’s no need to be complicated. Concise content and a few supporting images are all you need.
• Place hyperlinks far apart to avoid confusion. Make it clear where you want your audience to click.
• Keep the most important information at the top and move non-critical items to the bottom.
• Use Alt tags.
• Consider every design with mobile in mind.
• Test, test, and test again.

Online Resources:

• Back to Basics: Improve Your Email Design
• Design Checklist
• Email Design in the Age of the Mobile Inbox

Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky (PCAK) offers a terrific example of making the transition with their Kid Are Worth It! conference. “About three years ago we began to transition to sending out all of our conference materials electronically,” says Becky Hake.  “Prior to that, we were printing nearly 5,000 Save the Date and registration materials to be sent across the state.”

Print campaign

Email campaign

PCAK now sends 100% of their conference materials via email, saving the agency thousands of dollars. In addition, email marketing enables PCAK to target the materials with custom messaging, thus increasing the response rate.   “This has allowed us to continually update the information we have available on conference workshops, etc., thus ensuring sponsors are being spotlighted on a continual basis and participants have access to the most current information,” explains Becky.

PCAK also followed a similar model this year with child abuse prevention month, relying more on social media for the event, rather than sending out “Save the Date” printed material as they had done in the past.

So once you decide to make the switch, or even combine printed and email efforts, it’s as easy as transferring your print design to an email design, right? Not quite.

There are several things to keep in mind when making the transition:

• Focus on the goal of the campaign.  Your message needs to be streamlined, clear and concise.
• Using the headline from your print ad typically makes a terrific subject line for email marketing.
• Move your call to action up to the top for email marketing. It needs to be visible and clear without your audience needing to scroll down in the email.
• Remember the “F” pattern for design when translating print to email. Most important information and “Click Here” buttons should be prominently placed in the top left hand corner, with other information radiating toward the right and down the page.

Need more help turning your print campaigns into email marketing campaigns? Visit our previous post on email design offering a variety of resources and this blog series by ExactTarget.  Best yet, give us a shout–we’re always happy to work with you!

Case in point:

When Bluegrass hospitality group added a ❤ to a subject line of the email below, the open rates increased above 30% across the board, and put the weekly UCTR at its highest since the first of the year. Check it out:

And you aren’t limited to showing your love with the ❤. Today’s inboxes support multiple Unicode characters, including arrows, smiley-faces, musical notes, even a thumbs up! Adding these characters into a subject line is as simple as copying they icon and pasting where you want it.  Just make sure you test on various browsers before launching to validate rendering and conduct a split test to make sure the Unicode characters work for your audience.

Using Unicode Characters in Emails and Subject Lines

7 Ways to Add Oomph to Your Subject Lines

Then go have some fun writing…um, drawing?…some creative subject lines that are sure to make your customers ☺

Why is that? I also follow these companies or personalities on Facebook and Twitter, so can’t I see what they’re up to there? Or I could find critical information about a company on their website.  But here’s the thing: Facebook and Twitter updates can only tell you so much, and a website is full of facts, but doesn’t give you the “behind the scenes” look at what’s really happening.

A blog does all that and more. Here’s five reasons why you should be blogging:

1. Blogging gives you the option of disseminating information to your customers in a way no other platform offers. Blogging lets you communicate directly with your audience in a very personal and real way.
2. Blogging is more current than a newsletter, longer than a social media post, and more personal than a website.
3. Blogging complements your other social media messages; Expands on them. A good blog is an authority on a subject–an authority your audience trusts.
4. Blogging is a great way to show your company culture, so customers get to know you on a more one to one basis.
5. Best of all, blogging is free, so your return on investment is huge.

So how often should you blog? The best time to blog is when you have something to say. It’s fine to aim for a certain number of blog posts per quarter, for example, but there’s no need to stick to an exact schedule, just to say you have a schedule.

And don’t forget to add your social media buttons to your blog, so someone who finds your post interesting can continue to follow you on other platforms. Likewise, provide links to your blog posts on your social media sites.

If you don’t have a company blog already, where do you start? Blog platforms like WordPress and Blogger are easy to use and can be updated with the click of a mouse–no graphic knowledge required. Give us a shout–we’d be happy to help you start your blog!

For content development, check out these resources:

Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business , by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman

You can learn more about the book here: http://www.contentrulesbook.com/about/

Also check out Inbox Orange’s Content Webinar Recap and Resources

Fast forward to today, when companies like Connection Engine are helping take all the guesswork about where and when marketers should invest in order to best reach their customers. Inbox Orange partners with Connection Engine to add more value to our clients’ experience.

Sample profile

“We are an email intelligence and targeting platform,” explains Tim Judson with Connection Engine. “We have a large data assets that is uniquely organized in that it’s all tied back to an individual email address, or more specifically, an email hash key, which is an encrypted form of an email address.”

“All this allows a marketer to match email addresses into our data and pulls back all the information we have on the owners of those addresses, including purchasing behavior, lifestyle, level of income, marital status, etc. and then produce a rich, aggregate profile report that describes the people on that list,” he continues.

The value of this to a marketer, especially an email marketer, is that now they know the specific interest and behaviors of their audience and can target messages that will engage those customers in the best way. In short, this data helps marketers better understand their audience and build a better email marketing program. “It helps them retain their best customers and offer the programs that are of interest to their  customers,” says Tim.

In addition, Connection Engine is a partner of LiveIntent, giving marketers the option of even more targeted advertising. Imagine if you opened your favorite magazine to read and all of the advertisements were custom selected based on your preferences and past purchasing decisions. Those advertisements would have a much greater impact. Through LiveIntent, marketers can put the right message in front of the right customers, inserting advertisements into email newsletters customers already subscribe to—eliminating wasted impressions and maximizing return on investment.

We’ve come a long way from placing ads in hopes that the message reaches the right end consumer. I’ll be honest: I’m both amazed and exhilarated by the possibilities.

Let us know if you want to learn more about all that Connection Engine has to offer. We’re excited to share all the new ways we can help bring you and your audience together. And for more insight on how Inbox Orange is partnering with Connection Engine to bring more value to our customers, read this informative case study provided by Connection Engine:

Inbox Orange Uses InsightConnect to Improve Client Email Results

As a tool to drive traffic to the IU Health Twitter feed and website, the event was a great success. At the same time, IU Health helped spread the word about the importance of living organ donation.

“We went into this not knowing what to expect, and in the end we were blown away,” says IU Health Public Relations Coordinator Kris Karol. “We never in a million years expected the kind of response that we received.”

The surgery generated more than 700 responses on Twitter, including retweets, mentions and direct questions to IU Health about the procedure. Of course, the best outcome is that the surgery opened many peoples’ eyes to the importance of organ donation.

Aside from step-by-step Twitter updates throughout the procedure, IU Health produced videos, fielded questions and provided an e-postcard program, where supporters who were following the procedure online could send an e-postcard to both the donor and recipient, with well wishes.

“There were dozens upon dozens of questions asked by followers during the Twittercast,” says Karol. “And we even had some surprise retweets—we didn’t know that the LA Times would pick up on it and even the actress Alyssa Milano tweeted it.”

With such a successful outcome, will IU Health offer a live Twitter cast of a procedure again? Karol stresses that it requires choosing the right kind of procedure, and having enough lead-time to coordinate. “This has been a real eye opener, and a learning experience,” he says.

In the end, though, despite the wonderful response, it wasn’t about increasing numbers on social media. “Obviously, in terms of social media, this was a success. We need that, to get the word out,” says Karol. “But the real success is with the people who are helped through living donor organs.”

Check out this social media success story at iuhealth.org/kidneydonation. You can also read more at the hashtag #calebskidney on Twitter.

Tell us: How do you use Twitter as a marketing tool? Have you ever hosted a Twittercast?

We talked to Jeff Ensor with Market Points, an online survey company, to get some tips on listening and surveys in today’s mobile world. “The first thing you need is a clear goal,” says Jeff. “If you don’t have something in mind that you want to know specifically, then your research won’t have a purpose.”

There are two main purposes of research surveys: either to find out if something is worthwhile to your audience (such as launching a new program or product), or to keep tabs on a program or product already in place, for quality control.

For web-based surveys, it’s extremely important to make sure the survey works just as well from a mobile device. “When you’re talking about a phone or a touch device, the screens are different in the way you can interact with them,  among different devices. So if your survey design has too much craziness, you have a bigger chance of it not working on a mobile device,” explains Jeff.

Most of the time with survey design, simpler is always better. A simple design is more likely to have a clean interface that will work for everybody’s mobile device. In our world of instant everything, people are more likely to take a survey right after they have an experience, which usually means they’re taking it on a mobile device.

Jeff offers these tips for implementing surveys in a mobile world:

• Don’t try and ask everything you ever wanted to know. Focus on the goal at hand and keep your survey simple.
• If you can, tell people up front how long they can expect the survey to take to complete. If you can give them a time frame, they are more likely to click on it and do it.
• Pay attention to mobile rendering. Choose a vendor who’s familiar with implementing online surveys and has experience with mobile compatibility.
• Most importantly: keep it simple.  Design with the small screens and tiny graphics of mobile devices in mind.

Using Jeff’s advice, we created a sample mobile survey. Select the iPhone and tell us what you think »

How can you incorporate some of this strategy into your email marketing for impending events?

Instagram is not brand new, but I have to admit I only recently formed my own addiction to the photo sharing social media site. I love that I can play amateur photographer, using the vast array of filters to channel my inner artist, even where no actual artistic ability exists. And after I’ve perfected my image, I can easily share through all my other social media channels, like Twitter and Facebook.

But probably my favorite part of Instagram is following the brands I love. Brands are using Instagram in ever  more creative ways to reach customers, giving them a behind the scenes look that their followers crave.

Tiffany, Starbucks and even Playboy are just some of the big brands using Instagram in clever ways to further engage customers.  See the complete list of businesses using Instagram in neat ways compiled by Business Inside Advertising HERE.

In short, Instagram lets you connect with customers in a unique way that tells your brand’s story in the most real way possible: through candid photos.I think it’s well worth your time to share your vision through this new media. It’s also a ton of fun, so prepare to be addicted!

Are you using Instagram to connect with your audience? Do you plan to? Let us know!

My first Instagram, titled, "Morning at Ashland."

Below we’ve provided you with a list of some of our favorite blogs–well written, witty and full of a wealth of information about engagement.

Check them out:

Brains on Fire

Brand Against the Machine

Brass Tack Thinking

Chris Brogan

Exact Target

Marketing Profs

And of course, don’t forget to put your favorite blog–this one here at Inbox Orange–into the lineup! Happy Summer Reading!

Whether you’re in charge of your company’s blog, social media posts, or even larger content projects like a website re-write or producing printed marketing materials, your bound to struggle from writer’s block at some point. (When I can’t write, I tend to find myself watching ridiculous YouTube clips–that’s how I know it’s time to shake things up). Rather than spinning your wheels and wasting time and productivity, try a few of the following tricks for jolting your brain back into a content creating machine:

Step away: Go do something else. Anything else. Take a walk, clean your office, call a friend. Once you stop trying to be creative, your instincts will take over. When you find yourself phrasing ideas in your head and you’ll know it’s time to come back to your keyboard.

Read: Sometimes reading what others have written on a subject will spark just the beginning of an idea and lead to bigger and better content. I even find that looking at images on a particular topic will get my thoughts going.

Ask: If you’re really stuck, ask someone else to write up their thoughts on a subject. It doesn’t need to be strong writing–just have them get their ideas down. The hardest part of writing is always the first sentence and sometimes you just need a jumping off point. If someone else provides that point, you can fine tune, edit and add to the content until you’ve accomplished your goal.

What about you? Do you have any tips to share for overcoming a severe case of writer’s block?

For more on content curation, check out our webinar on creating content.

It started, as it always does, with a Derby pick. My horse was Creative Cause, an obvious choice for someone in my line of work. All that was left was to find a hat and we were off to the Kentucky Derby.

We parked on the backside and took a brief stroll near the barns before heading to the front. In the clubhouse we were impressed by beautiful people, gorgeous surroundings and incredible service. Mint Juleps in commemorative Derby glasses were the drink of the day, and celebrities mingled freely with those of us who were not so much the object the camera desired. I won’t lie, I was completely blown away when I realized I was casually hanging out on a balcony next to Andre Agassi, or when I walked past Tom Brady twice, like it was no big deal. (Oh, okay, I totally stopped and took a picture. I’m not that cool.)

Enjoying the day with my own personal star.

The highlight of the day, though, came when we met the trainer of Creative Cause and found out we were going to the paddock to greet the Derby horses. Standing in the Paddock, with crowds all around, watching as the horses paraded right by us–there aren’t words to describe it. Growing up in horse country, surrounded by all these beautiful farms and even more beautiful horses, you come to hold a certain amount of respect and pride for all that surrounds the sport. And the crowning glory of the sport, is of course, the Derby. To be in the middle of that is simply awe-inspiring.

I was already in a state of complete amazement, so when we all headed through the tunnel to the winner’s circle to watch the race, it was the pinnacle of an already perfect day. As I stood in the middle of Churchill Downs, looking back at the enormous crowd towering all around, singing “My Old Kentucky Home,” I was overcome with love for this great tradition.

It’s hard to get much luckier than I was at that moment, so I tried not to be disappointed when Creative Cause didn’t show. We celebrated a win for I’ll Have Another.

Meanwhile, back on the marketing front–because this is a marketing blog, remember?–our friends at Keeneland were excited to see the blanket of roses going to one of their own sales graduates. In fact, of the field of 20 horses running the Derby race, eleven were Keeneland graduates, including the top two.

Prior to the Derby, Keeneland sent subscribers an email introducing their Keeneland Select online wagering. They received many new members after launching this campaign, making it a significant success.

As soon as the Derby race ended, Keeneland immediately released an email campaign of congratulations, which was both relevant and timely:

A similar campaign went out the previous day following a win in the Oaks by Believe You Can, a Keeneland September Sale graduate:

So there you have it: A Derby Day worth remembering, for everyone.

In September 2011, Bluegrass Hospitality Group (BHG) redesigned their email marketing strategy and weekly email campaign to their BHG Rewards Members.  The redesign required an increase for landing pages to support ongoing activities within their family of restaurants.   As a secondary database used mainly to segment their audience and for reporting capabilities, Salesforce was integrated with ExactTarget.  The landing page feature, specifically Smart Capture was used as a means to acquire BHG Rewards member data to enroll in the program and store member information within Salesforce.

Today, BHG has expanded the use of landing pages to enhance workflow.  For example, Smart Capture is used as a means to collect data regarding missing points on a member’s card.

95% of their subscriber’s are BHG Rewards members and we’re able to take behavioral data from card usage and create relevant campaigns featuring the restaurant the BHG Rewards member visits the most.  To enhance engagement, content within the email campaigns are supported by a landing page, for example:

So much energy and passion goes into BHG Rewards and their Culture of Excellence. Attention to detail on the landing pages are just one part of a successful campaign.

Often, much of what we want to convey to our audience through email marketing is the same, or similar. For example a restaurant chain might be offering a new/different special, but the overall message–”Come on in and dine at our restaurant”–remains the same. How do you ensure that your audience doesn’t lose interest and tune your messages out?

The trick, of course, is to mix it up. You know this. But in the middle of all you have going on, it can be easy to get ‘stuck’ on creating fresh content. The great idea you had last week might be preventing you from coming up with something new and different. Writer’s block is often the worst after a big success. There’s a feeling of being ‘tapped out’ of good ideas.

The solution is often found in your thesaurus. Simply writing down a list of key words, even those you’ve already used a hundred times before in your marketing, then hit the thesaurus for a list of possible replacements. You may not even end up using any of the words you find, but inevitably this exercise will get your creative ideas flowing. Just seeing the combination of words on paper will lead to key phrases and eventually spark a new idea for communicating your message.

It’s simple, yes. But it’s an easy and effective way to generate new ways to connect with your audience.  And that is the ultimate goal.

Can marketing get any more complex? In short answer, yes. With the advent of all of the social tools available and the web’s amazing ability to track usage, clicks and interactions–it is only going to get worse. The answer lies in news feed optimization.

Just think, a few years ago marketing was somewhat simple (in comparison). You had your budget for print, radio/TV, direct, promotional and so on. Pretty standard, time proven techniques to measure, research and adapt. And we had been doing it that way for years. A lot of decisions were based on gut feeling–unless you had a brand with a lot of resources and were able to measure and then adapt and measure again.

For the little guy, the new social landscape has leveled the playing field in terms of reaching customers. It has flipped the advantage from the huge brand to those brands in touch with their customers–which is often easier in smaller companies.

The problem is, as smaller companies introduce themselves through the social channels, they play copycat to what the big brands are doing. Plus, smaller companies don’t have the staff/resources to manage each channel appropriately as well as stay up to date with all of the changing technology and terminology.

So I’m on Facebook, now what?

When Facebook took off as a force a number of years ago, everybody, including brands, said “I need to have a page on there.” Then they resorted to what they’ve been trained to do in traditional marketing channels: “Let’s get a lot of people to LIKE our page.” What happened? Well, the audience started getting overwhelmed with everything from status updates from high school friends and long-lost relatives to invitations to become part of their Farm garden or Mafia Wars.

Facebook had a problem. It needed to allow people to filter out some of this noise, so its platform would be a good place to receive your personal news feed. Facebook has always had the ability for users to control what they wanted to see, but most users aren’t technically savvy enough to look for or even have the patience to find those settings.

So instead of having users control their own news feeds, Facebook is now trying to ‘help’ people by controlling what people see in their news feed. Facebook is now using a secret formula for determining importance of what you should see in your feed called Edgerank.

How to make sense of Edgerank

Developers and marketers were given a peek under the hood for Facebook’s news feed optimization (NFO) algorithm at the F8 developers conference last fall. Facebook won’t reveal all of the details of its formula but it did give some guidance to best practices:

• Affinity. It is based on the closeness of the person posting content and the person reading or interacting with that content. So every time you comment, like or interact with a post of one of your friends or ‘liked’ pages, Facebook tracks that interaction and assigns an affinity level to you based on your behavior. Key takeaway: Improve engagement with your fans and friends.

• Weight. This has to do with the type of content uploaded. Is it a link? a photo? or just a status update. Facebook gives different importance to users commenting on a photos vs. commenting on status updates or even posted links. It will weight comments much more than ‘likes’ and in turn think that the content has relevance to others, based on overall interaction levels. Key takeaway: Post different kinds of interesting content that incites action (engagement) from your fans or friends. Encourage comments.

• Time Decay. This one is pretty obvious. The older posts are rated different that recent ones. But if you have a comment from a previous day with a lot of engagement, the formula will find that the information might still be relevant to people and keep it higher in their news feed. Key takeaway: Gotta post good stuff–and often if you want people to see it.

The most important takeaway is to not just post passive content that isn’t relevant or engaging. Post photos, ask for comments and respond. The snowball effect of engaging and interactions with your friends and customers will add to your affinity and increase your reach.

Your branding is sometimes as important to your business as the end results you deliver. It is typically the first thing your customers see and can speak volumes about how your company does business. If you have a hodge-podge of looks and logos, your audience isn’t going to be as trustworthy of your brand. Branding your web and social properties should be as important to your company as the content that goes into them.

While your branding should be consistent across all media, it doesn’t mean you have to make everything identical, though.

Each social site on the web has its own look and feel and you want to design to the limits and style of each of them. Whether it be twitter, Facebook or any of the other social sites on the web its important to keep the feel of those sites while being true to your own brand at the same time. A great example of this is the venerable stalwart of iconic branding, Coca-Cola. If you visit their corporate website, you get a feel for their current branding and marketing; now if you visit them on twitter or Facebook, you can see that they have kept their brand consistent while conforming to each sites own look and feel. Customers visiting these sites will know immediately that they are interacting with Coca-Cola and the consistency is what they would expect from a company that spends $millions each year on marketing.

You don’t have to spend $millions to get the same results as Coca-Cola. You can ensure your branding is consistent across all your web properties – not to mention those in the physical world – and garner the same goodwill from it that a large corporation does: trust in your company. It’s not something that is always put front and center for a small business, and we are guilty of not being good shepherds of our online properties as well. While we have changed our own branding recently, we’ve been so busy working with our customers that we haven’t had time to ensure our own brand is consistent.

Over the upcoming weeks we will be consolidating Inbox Orange’s own brand presence and ensuring that we are consistent across all our properties, from our own website to social media all the way to our email signatures. Check back here as I update you on our progress and give you tips to manage your own branding along the way.