Tag Archive for: content marketing

Automated email sequence to an inbox.

How to Harness the Power of Email Sequences

Email marketing is the powerhouse of digital marketing strategies. One of the most powerful tools in this strategy’s arsenal is the automated email sequence.

Email marketing automation can entice new and bring back existing customers without you having to constantly hit send. Just set it, forget it, and reap the rewards.

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A screenshot of popular videos optimized for the YouTube algorithm.

7 Hacks to Unlock the Power of the YouTube Algorithm

Did you know that YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google?

If you aren’t using it to promote your business – you really need to be. But you can’t just upload videos to your YouTube channel and expect instant success. You need to make sure that you’re optimizing specifically for YouTube.

Not sure what that means or how to start? Then you’ve come to the right place. Learn how the YouTube algorithm works — and how to get the most out of it.

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Psychographics

What Is Psychographic Segmentation And How Can It Help Your Business?

Here at iSynergy, we’re a full-service digital marketing agency. We do SEO, creative design, ad placements, website design and hosting, among other things. In this blog, we’ll discuss a variety of industry essentials related to formulating an effective message to serve to your target audience. Read more

iSynergy digital media strategy

Creating A Successful Digital Marketing Strategy In 2020

Most businesses have some form of active digital marketing; we hear about blogs that link to social channels and backlink profiles from 2017 ALL THE TIME…but neither of those things are a “strategy.”

In 2017, a survey conducted by Smart Insights found that nearly half of all businesses had no strategic plan for digital marketing (and it’s likely that number hasn’t decreased much in the past two years). So, the question is – how do you build your 2020 digital marketing plan with a defined strategy?

Let’s start with a very important question. What specific marketing goals do you have for the next year?

Based on your answer, there are both simple and advanced digital marketing techniques that you can incorporate into your strategy. It’s important to understand where you’re currently at and where you want to be.

Here are the best ways to craft your digital marketing plan for 2020.

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Wordpress Design Practices

WordPress Website Design Practices To Follow In 2020

WordPress is one of the most popular CMS and website builders of all time. In fact, websites built with WordPress account for 26 percent of all sites on the web. Search engines also revealed that WordPress has 2,740,000 searches and counting every month!

So, if you have a WordPress site or want to build a new site using a WP theme, there are some best practices to consider that coincide with professional website design. You may be able to improve your website’s visibility, impact, functionality and mobile readiness just by looking into these factors.

These WordPress website design tips come from professional website designers and web developers who love this platform for building fast, beautiful sites for all types of brands.
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Are Facebook Ads Relevant In 2020?

Facebook advertising is still one of the best ways that brands connect with over 3 billion users on the network. However, the algorithm, targeting, and types of ads constantly change, which makes it difficult for some advertisers to see successful results from Facebook ads. Read more

How Web Design Can Affect Your Digital Marketing Strategy

When putting together a digital marketing strategy, web design should be one of the first things you consider. How will your navigation, messaging, forms and other elements stand out to potential customers? It’s all about the details when it comes to enticing a user to engage with your site. Read more

iSynergy Domain Rating

Understanding Your Site’s Domain Rating For SEO

Your domain rating (known also as domain authority) is a huge factor in where you rank in search engine results. With a higher domain rating, your website has the ability to shoot up in search engine results pages (SERPs) and may even hit in the coveted results on the first page.

There are other SEO factors besides a domain’s authority that matter, but since a domain rating includes so many signals for search engine crawlers, it’s definitely one of the most important to get right.

So, what do you need to do in order to achieve a higher domain rating? Let’s take a look at some easy ways to raise your website’s rating for SEO.

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iSynergy Combines Data-Driven Strategy and Creativity to Deliver Winning Solutions to Clients

iSynergy Combines Data-Driven Strategy and Creativity to Deliver Winning Solutions to Clients

Our unique approach has established us as the most dynamic digital marketing and SEO agency in eastern Ohio. More importantly, it gives our clients a huge edge over their competition. 

It starts with placing tremendous value on creativity internally, within our own company – and then pairing it with a data-driven strategy. This combination produces winning results that our clients can’t help but love.

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Our Top 10 Email Marketing Platforms for Your Business

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing tools out there (if you’re using it correctly), and most of the platforms available are easy to manage, giving you complete control in establishing direct communication with your customers.

But how do you know if you’ve chosen the RIGHT email marketing platform to meet the needs of your business? If you haven’t done your research, you may be overpaying for a product with fewer features and terrible results, which in turn causes you to lose more money. Not good!

The right email marketing platform allows you to:

  1. Create engaging emails
  2. Manage your contacts
  3. Segment users into groups
  4. Track the performance of your emails and campaigns
  5. Integrate with your website and other platforms
  6. Ensure that your emails will not end up in a spam folder

Now that you know what an email marketing platform needs to accomplish, we’ve compiled a list of providers (featuring pros and cons) to help you understand whether or not you’ve chosen the right one for your business! Let’s get to it:

Constant Contact

Pros:
Constant Contact offers a 60 day free trial to ensure satisfaction. Their pricing is extremely fair because it’s based on list size. For example, the basic plan starts at $20/month for 0 – 500 contacts, $45/month for 501 – 2,500 contacts, and so on (find extensive info on their pricing here). There are no contracts, so if you’re not happy with their service, you can cancel at any time.

There are also some other features that we at iSynergy find important. They offer a drag and drop builder with mobile-optimized templates to choose from (or you can design your own), they feature reporting and A/B testing abilities, they offer a mobile app, they allow you to segment contacts to create more targeted lists, and they fully integrate with WordPress, Bluehost, WooCommerce, Gmail, etc.

Cons:
One of the integrations involved with WordPress is a built-in form designer, which sounds AWESOME, however, the form builder only features text fields when building out your forms (no radio buttons, check boxes, drop-down selections, etc.). Definitely not good practice. Our suggestion would be to not use this feature and use a form plugin such as Gravity Forms on your websites.

MailChimp

Pros:
Based on our own experience, MailChimp is extremely easy to use. They offer a free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month, they have a very visual drag and drop editor/builder with plenty of email templates to choose from, they integrate with WordPress and WooCommerce, they offer detailed reporting for your campaigns, A/B testing, embeddable forms, landing pages, Facebook, Instagram and Google ads, API, and they have a mobile app.

A major pro we found is that MailChimp offers a “Growing Business” plan for $10/month with unlimited subscribers and emails — this is the most inexpensive option for email platforms we’ve found!

Cons:
Free accounts do not have access to email and chat support. Also, when opting in through a form from MailChimp, they require a double opt-in. We see a couple of problems with this:

  1. After filling out the form, a subscriber then receives an email prompting them to confirm that they want to subscribe. Until the subscriber confirms, they are not added to your email list, meaning you could be missing out on a potential lead.
  2. If there are too many clicks involved to sign-up for your offer, a subscriber may not decide to sign-up after all, meaning you just lost that lead.

Drip

Pros:
Drip fully integrates with WooCommerce and Gravity forms, they have a flexible API, a drag and drop builder and they offer reporting. They have a free plan for up to 100 subscribers, which is perfect for anyone who doesn’t have a large list. Drip also offers a payment option to pay annually, and in turn, you get 2 months free.

Cons:
In comparison to Constant Contact, Drip seems a bit pricey; Constant Contact offers a plan that is $65/month for 2,501 – 5,000 contacts while Drip’s plan for the same amount of contacts is $83/month. Drip also is very specific to eCommerce companies, meaning that this platform may not be suitable to other types of businesses because you may be paying for features that aren’t necessary.

AWeber

Pros:
AWeber integrates with a lot of awesome platforms! Some of these include WordPress, WooCommerce, Google Calendar, Google Sheets, Facebook, Linkedin, Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Contacts and Slack. AWeber also uses a drag and drop builder with email templates, while offering a 30-day free trial, reporting and pricing comparable to Constant Contact (basic plan starts at $19/month for up to 500 subscribers and unlimited emails).

Cons:
After checking out some reviews, many users state that the available email templates are a bit dated in appearance. Also, according to EmailToolTester, even though it seems that their pricing is fair and comparable to other email platforms, unsubscribed email addresses count towards your monthly quota, meaning if you lose emails, your monthly cost does not go down – bad.

Active Campaign

Pros:
Active Campaign integrates with WordPress website messaging that can be installed on your website, which is extremely beneficial if your company receives frequent inquiries. Some of the features of this tool include site messaging, SMS, engagement tracking and segmentation. Some other pros of Active Campaign are a drag and drop builder, reporting, form builder, a Gmail extension and a mobile app.

Cons:
Payment plans are required to be paid yearly, and plans are based on the number of contacts you have or plan to have, so this can be a large chunk of money to start off with. And (this might only be considered a con if you’re after a quick and easy to use email solution), Active Campaign’s numerous features can be overwhelming.

ConvertKit

Pros:
ConvertKit offers a landing page editor in case you don’t have your own website, which can be extremely convenient for social media campaigns. They also integrate with WordPress, feature embeddable forms and they offer reporting.

Cons:
Unfortunately, we found more cons with ConvertKit than pros. First, they only offer a 14-day free trial, but you have to register a credit card in order to get the trial, which we don’t like.
They’re also pretty pricey (there are more advanced tools — like Active Campaign — that are cheaper). They have no email builder, which ends up being a huge setback. They do have email templates, however, they only offer 3 templates to choose from and users have stated that they look outdated.

As great as it is that ConvertKit has a form option, unfortunately adding form fields requires HTML knowledge, which is not beginner-friendly, and it ends up being very unproductive.

GetResponse

Pros:
GetResponse offers an extremely flexible drag and drop email and landing page builder, and their landing page editor is easy to use while allowing for A/B design testing. They also offer a form builder and detailed reporting for landing pages and email campaigns.

Cons:
Based on our own experience, the platform itself can (at times) be difficult to navigate. Also, the form builder only features text input fields and no radio buttons, checkboxes, drop-down selections, etc. Their email and landing page templates are also a bit dated in appearance even though they have quite a few options to choose from.

Zoho Campaigns

Pros:
Zoho Campaigns integrates with quite a few platforms such as G Suite, WordPress, Zoho, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. They also have a mobile app, a drag and drop builder, a form builder, and offer A/B testing.

Zoho Campaigns is also valuable in that it combines an email builder and CRM in one bundle. It features modern and visually appealing email templates and offers a free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month, which is exactly the same as MailChimp

*Our suggestion would be to compare features between these email platforms as their pricing is extremely similar.

Cons:
The main con for Zoho Campaigns is that it’s a bit on the pricier side; their pricing plans seem to be based on the number of contacts you have (which is normal) but doesn’t explain in detail the features you receive with each plan. Their form builder also only features text input fields and no radio buttons, checkboxes, drop-down selections, etc.

Campaign Monitor

Pros:
Integrates with WordPress, Salesforce, WooCommerce, Facebook and Google Analytics. Based on user reviews, the platform is easy to use and beginner-friendly.

Cons:
The pricing is on the higher side. The HTML and SQL are not easily accessible, if at all, which could be a problem if you needed to customize anything.

Campaigner

Pros:
Campaigner offers a 30 day free trial and social media integration. They also offer a drag and drop builder with professional templates to choose from.

Cons:
Unfortunately, Campaigner is extremely pricey starting at $149.95 per month, and you have to pay the plan yearly which is a large expense at one time. Based on user reviews, the platform itself is on the slower side when processing any submitted action or when editing campaigns. To sign-up for the free trial, you are also required to register a credit card.

Omnisend

Pros:

Omnisend offers a 14-day free trial of any of its paid plans, and their standard plan starts off at just $16 per month. What’s cool is that there are different modules you can add with extra features so you can really customize the standard plan to be perfect for your needs.

Omnisend offers some really interesting features for e-commerce marketers. Most of the tools in this list handle email marketing automation, but Omnisend takes it further. With this tool, you can actually add several different channels into the same automation workflow, which lets you centralize your customer data and marketing campaigns, and shave hours off your workload.

Also, Omnisend is really easy to use: each kind of campaign uses a drag-and-drop builder with a ton of customizable templates so you can create your messages easily. They offer email capture, smart segmentation for precise targeting, and a ton of channel and e-commerce platform integrations too.

Cons:

Where Omnisend has room to improve is via mobile. They don’t have a mobile app as of yet, so creating campaigns on the go is a bit tricky. Also, while their automation workflows are quite sophisticated, they don’t have the most visual platform. Their automation workflows, in terms of being clear and visual, fall somewhere between Mailchimp and Drip.

In conclusion, our advice would be to cross-reference features with prices to fit the needs of your business. Every company is different, and only you can know what email platform will suit you best.

Do you need help choosing the right email marketing platform OR even writing the email itself? Take a look at our services and see how we get you the best open rates possible!

We are recognized as a top Digital Marketing Company on DesignRush.