In the age of the smartphone, we all get email and Facebook posts and texts all the time. So, thinking that people on vacation don’t check email is like saying that people don’t keep their phones by their bed. Okay, 57% do, but the statistics show that more and more of all generations are addicted to their phones. For your marketing, the concept is to provide a relevant, interesting connection to the customer/member’s summer dreams, finding affordable solutions for vacations, and …

Are your website and online branch effective channels for building more business with your customers/members? Consider doing an audit regularly to make sure you are keeping your marketing efforts working for you. We created a tool to help our clients understand how to migrate their website to be more effective and useful with a four–level audit! The checklist includes 10 items that are “Informational & Useful,” 10 that are “More 24/7 Access,” 10 items that are “Robust & Convenient Virtual Branch,” and then …

In these days of clutter in our inboxes, some C-Suite managers will say that there is too much junk — they never look at emails, so surely customers/members don’t either. There may be comments that no one opens email or clicks through. However, here are some stats that show you should be paying more attention to e-marketing: 91% of consumers check their email at least once per day on their smartphone (Exact Target Mobile Behavior Report 2014) 36% of respondents check email, …

As you try to juggle lots of different marketing projects, it is easy to lose sight of how you can repurpose content to make your life easier!  Think about it as not creating more content to fit different channels, think about creating really good content that is optimized across all your channels. Most importantly, it’s about a Win/Win – helping your customers/members to move into the relationship with your organization by understanding how you can help through consistent content “bites!” Here …

Since 2009, when social media came to the attention of marketers as another channel to reach customers/members, the idea has been to push messages out through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media channels. In the beginning, the idea of putting a contest on Facebook to get “Likes” was used to attract more followers. Twitter followers were harder to attract because news about where you would be for a community event or a special offer were not interesting to consumers. …

There are often so many meetings that it makes you wonder when you can get your work done, right? As the marketing executive, you need to balance information overload with ways to jumpstart creativity, to get back into a positive place to generate the best ideas. If you find yourself sitting in lots of them, here are some tips that will help stop the crush of your creative side! Take a walk outside – Meetings that are heavy on financial …

You have probably tried to read as much as possible about the online space and what you should do to market your organization online.  There are blogs, e-books, offers for free seminars, both online and live, and e-newsletters or e-zines.  You may read the “10 Ways to Get on the Top of a Google Search” or “3 Things to Create Better Facebook Ads.” And, frankly, none of us have the time to go through all that content to figure out …

As the old adage goes, “it’s who you know,” so make sure you are always building your Success Network. It is so important to keep in contact with a group of people who know you, your skills, and may have opportunities to pass your way.  It takes nurturing and communication including updating on a regular basis to keep your network fresh and working for you. Here’s a great way to update your Success Network. Enhancing Your Success Network – An …

If your organization has a Facebook page, are your locations connected to it? Facebook and the other social networks continue to change their business model to look for ways to monetize. Sometimes the impact of their tweaks cannot be seen at first. Recently, a client had a branch manager notice that there was a negative review posted on Facebook for her branch address. This client had an unpublished page for their organization, so this was surprising. When Facebook asks if …

Since so many of us are addicted to our phones and even young people are known to sleep with them, the marketer in me wanted to know more about how to still get marketing messages in front of those eyeballs! My summer reading was Ctrl Alt Delete by Mitch Joel, and he says, “In its simplest form: A digital-first posture means that the first place your consumers go when making a business decision is to their computers, smartphones and or tablets.” …