Red Kite Creative

email marketing

Weekly Links Roundup – Email Marketing Images, Heatmaps, Map Plugins, PDF Plugins

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Ever really think about using images in your email newsletter? And what kind of an impact those images might have? If not, take a look at this post about images in email marketing, you might learn a thing or two about selecting and using them more effectively.

Here’s a nifty new addon tool from Google Analytics – read this guide to using the Page Analytics Chrome plugin to see heatmaps of any website. A heat map can show you where users linger on your website – where they tend to spend the most time. Learn what sections and elements your visitors are interacting with, and which they are not.

If you have a brick-and-mortar business (or a number of them) you can use a map on your website. Maps add a great visual component and can help users find your location easily. But there are so many map plugins for WordPress – which should you use? Here’s a review of 8 WordPress map plugins to help you decide which is a good fit for your site and needs.

Finally… if you have a lot of documents on your site, you may want to check out PDF Poster. This free plugin displays PDF files right within your WordPress pages and posts and supports file downloads. See the complete review.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Website Maintenance, WordPress Admins, Email Marketing, Why WordPress?

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

When you own a WordPress website, are you aware that updates and maintenance are all on you? If you don’t do it, you’re increasing the risk to your site from hacking, malware, and loss of functionality due to old plugins, themes, or server software. Websites under your control require attention – they’re not set-it-and-forget-it, no matter what you may have been told. Maintenance has to be done either by you/your staff or another provider. It’s just a part of having a business website – like doing routine maintenance is part of owning a car or a house. If you don’t want to do this work yourself, try our services at WP Minder.

If you ever need to change the superadmin of your WordPress site (that’s the email account listed on the Settings > General page where notifications go by default), it can sometimes be problematic. In my case my client was never receiving the requests to confirm the changes in Gmail. Not to worry – it’s also easy to change this email address in the database using phpMyAdmin. Learn two ways to change the admin email.

If you’re thinking about starting a newsletter for your business, you’ll soon discover there are quite a few strong options for email marketing solutions. Here’s a review of top email marketing services – my current favorite is Mailchimp for its intuitive user interface, nice template selection and good support; you can start with them for free. But there other good choices here – see what fits your needs best.

I ran across a post that reinforces my strong opinion that WordPress is a great fit for many small businesses. Check out 11 reasons to use WordPress for your first website.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Lazy Loading, Tracking Downloads, Page Speed, Email Marketing for Bloggers

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Here’s an easy performance win – implement lazy loading on your site. Lazy loading means not loading images that are off-screen; they eventually load when the user scrolls down to them. Learn more about lazy loading and here’s the plugin I like for this task in WordPress sites.

If you offer white papers or other kinds of downloads on your site, did you know that you can use Google Analytics, which you’re most likely already using, to track downloads? Though GA doesn’t natively track this kind of interaction, you can set up this tracking in either Google Tag Manager (easier) or a plugin like Monster Insights, or you can add tracking code manually to your download links (harder and not recommended unless you only have a couple of downloads). Learn more in this thorough post on how to track downloads with Google Analytics.

This is cool… since Google made page speed a search engine ranking factor last year, websites in 95% of the world’s countries have become faster. In addition, we all know that a slower site tends to get abandoned more often. Turns out the opposite is also true – faster sites mean lower abandonment rates! If your WordPress site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, try our WordPress Performance Optimization service.

Do you have a brand new blog, and are you out to change the world? While you’re working on gaining loyal subscribers, learn how to build trust by using the 5 types of emails new bloggers should send to their subscribers.

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Weekly Links Roundup – Updating Content, Gutenberg, Email Marketing, Bing Search

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

When you change content on your website, do you let Google know about it? I don’t mean a simple change like rearranging a sentence or fixing some grammar errors… more like changing the title of a post, or adding a new section to a services page. You need to let Google know about this. Learn how to use Google Search Console when you update content.

Gutenberg is on the way, if it’s not here already – the WordPress 5.0 drop is scheduled for today as I write this. If you’re a WordPress user and are not yet familiar with Gutenberg take a look at this….

Gutenberg is not yet ready for prime time for a number of reasons – that’s the feeling shared by many developers, including me – and for the time being you might be better off sticking with the classic WordPress editor. This is what I’m recommending to my clients and maintenance service subscribers. Here’s how to disable Gutenberg (when it goes live) and keep using Classic Editor.

How to do Christmas email marketing right – it’s not too late to start, though this is really a longer-term process.

And just in time; here’s a study that shows which email closings get the most replies. Is it ‘sincerely?’ ‘Regards?’ Read the post to find out.

Finally… if you’re doing SEO to do better in Google Search, have you thought about Bing lately? Though it’s far behind Google’s 86% market share (as of this summer), Bing is growing about 17% per year. Competition is a good thing, and marketing with Bing in mind is not that different. Learn how Bing is innovating to provide a better search experience, and how you can get involved.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Slow Sites, Black Friday, Improving Conversions, Google Reviews, Blogging

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Think your slow-as-a-turtle website isn’t hurting your business? Think again. Google has been looking at page load time since back in 2010, and they use this information when ranking websites. A study from 2016 showed that over 50% of mobile users would abandon a site if it took more than 3 seconds to load. Do you think they’ve gotten more patient since then? Nope. Learn how a slow site impacts your business. And then take a look at our performance optimization service. We can help you stop frustrating your users!

Having a great big sale on Black Friday? It’s time to start sending emails to customers now – like, today. Learn some handy (and timely) email marketing techniques for the big day.

And speaking of the 2018 holiday shopping season… learn how to tweak your landing pages for more conversions. What’s a conversion? That’s an action you want a user to take. It usually includes things like: making a purchase; submitting a contact form; or clicking a contact link. Top tip for this season: chatbots (when done well) can be a big help to your business for both shopping assistance and customer support.

Google Reviews. You know how important they are – and how a bad review can turn your day upside down. But don’t worry… you can respond to bad Google reviews in a meaningful and effective way, and often turn them around to demonstrate how well your business responds under pressure. Hint: you should also respond to positive reviews to show you’re paying attention. The fewer reviews you have, the more important this is.

Finally… does your blog content play it safe? Is it boring? Or do you stretch your boundaries and get out of your comfort zone from time to time? If you think you’re not that kind of writer, maybe you should learn to be. How to avoid creating safe content. This is good advice for all bloggers.

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