In a world of crowded inboxes and constant notifications, effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the form of email and text messaging isn’t about sending more, it’s about sending smarter. Whether you’re communicating through email or text (SMS), the goal is the same: deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

CRM channels like email and text are powerful because they’re personal. These messages land directly in someone’s inbox or phone, making relevance, timing and clarity absolutely critical. Start with some best practices to help your email and text campaigns connect, engage and convert.

Start With Segmentation For Stronger Email and Text Messaging

Before you write a single word, define who your message is for in each particular instance. Generic messaging leads to generic results. But specific messaging for a specific set of people generates tailored results that the receiver will find to be helpful and motivating. Segmentation can be based on:

• Past purchases or behaviors
• Engagement history
• Location or timing
• Lifecycle stage (new lead, active customer, lapsed customer)

Write Like a Human in Email and Text Messaging

People don’t want to read corporate language in their inbox or texts. CRM messages should sound conversational, clear, and approachable. Even in B2B environments, friendly and direct almost always outperforms formal and vague. For both email and text messaging try to:

• Use short sentences and simple words
• Avoid jargon and buzzwords that you might use in your marketing department
• Write how your brand would actually speak to a person, as if they were a person

Make the Value Clear and Get to the Point Fast

You only have a few seconds to earn attention, especially on mobile. Always ask yourself: What’s in it for the reader and make sure they can tell immediately.

For Email Messaging:

• Subject lines should quickly communicate benefit or relevance (remember your character count here is 60, including spaces)
• The first sentence should reinforce why this matters to the reader

For Text Messaging:

• Lead with the purpose of the message
• Avoid burying the point under greetings or filler
• Remember you have a maximum of 160 characters, including a link and the best practices phrase “Text STOP to end” at the end of the SMS

Keep Calls to Action (CTAs) in Email and Text Messaging Simple and Specific

Every CRM message should guide the reader toward one clear next step. Avoid stacking multiple asks or multiple CTAs into a single message. Focus in your messaging increases a reader’s follow-through.

Best practices for strong CTAs:

• Are action-oriented (“Book your spot,” “Download the guide,” “View your offer”)
• Match the intent of the message
• Feel easy to complete

Optimize for Mobile (Because That’s Where It’s Read)

Most CRM messages are read on phones, even emails are mobile first these days. If it’s not easy to read on a small screen, it’s unlikely to be read at all.

Best practices:

• Use short paragraphs and plenty of white space
• Avoid long blocks of text
• Make buttons large and easy to tap
• Keep SMS messages concise and skimmable

Test, Learn and Refine Your CRM Messaging

The most effective CRM programs evolve over time. Even small improvements in open rates or click-through rates can lead to significant gains. Consider regularly testing:

• Subject lines
• Send times
• Message length
• CTA wording
• Personalization

When it Comes to Email and Text Messaging, Be Helpful First, Promotional Second

At its best, CRM messaging feels like good service to loyal customers, not advertising. When emails and texts deliver value, solve problems or save time, they build trust that lasts beyond a single click. Strong email and text messaging isn’t about filling calendars or hitting send quotas. It’s about building relationships one relevant, well-timed, precisely-crafted message at a time.

It’s the last post of the year, y’all, time for a round-up of the best marketing tips from our blog. It’s about to be 2026 in a few days, and we’ve accomplished a lot! To move forward to the future of your marketing success, we thought it would be helpful to go back and share some knowledge from the past. Hopefully, this will help you start thinking about what you want your business to be in 2026.

Start the Year With a Marketing Plan

First of all, you don’t know where to start planning for the year ahead? Start with an official marketing plan. Put a document like this together to help guide you through the year. Here are some marketing tip posts:

• Get Started on Your Marketing Plan
• Get Your Marketing Plan Ready
• Business Success: Now is the Time to Plan

Pro Marketing Tip: Strong Branding

Next, does your branding stand for the company the way you want it to? Can you strengthen your brand? Will 2026 be the year for a re-branding to more align your business goals? Here are some branding posts to help you evaluate your situation.

• Harness the Power of Branding
• Begin with Branding: Do You Have a Solid Foundation?
• The Evolution of Your Brand’s Visual Identity

Your Brand’s Voice Has Power — Channel It!

To continue this thought, part of your brand is your voice. The words you use, the story you tell. Are you maximizing that voice in every point of contact? Here are some marketing tips on topics to think about when you are evaluating your content:

• Brand Messaging: How Strategic Word Choice Builds Trust
• The Impact of Brand Storytelling
• Brand Voice: The Importance of Consistent Communication

Tame the Tactics: From Email to Social Media

Finally, need marketing tips on how to do email or newsletter marketing? Social media posting? We’ve got you covered. Get started by checking out these post for information, or advancing your digital marketing prowess this year:

• Engage Customers With These 3 Smart Email Marketing Strategies
• Using Scroll-Stopping Content to Hook Your Audience
• How to Increase Traffic to Your Company Blog

For More Helpful Marketing Tips, Check Our Blog

Overall, we might have covered just about every every marketing topic that a small business could use to grow their brand. Because, we’ve been creating content on our blog for over a decade! Find a nugget or two in there to help you get started. If you want to subscribe to the blog and get a tip post every week next year, just subscribe here. If you have questions, be sure to holler.

I’m often asked by small and medium-sized business owners whether email marketing is worth the effort. Many say email marketing feels confusing, overwhelming and hard to keep up with. Here are a few of the questions I hear most often:

• Isn’t email just annoying to everyone? I don’t want to spam my customers.
• What would I even say on a recurring basis?
• Isn’t email just another way to try to sell something?
• How do I get started if I don’t have time or resources to build a list, find images, or write a copy?

At Front Porch Marketing, we see email marketing work for small and medium-sized businesses all the time. The key is focusing on connection, consistency, and value. Here’s how we help our clients make email marketing feel more manageable and more effective.

1. Share Something Worth Opening

Think of your emails to stay helpful, authentic and human – not salesy. Your audience wants to hear from you when your content makes their day easier, more interesting or more inspiring. That could be industry insights, community news or stories about people behind your brand.

Email marketing ideas to try:

• Welcome series: A few short emails that introduce your brand story and highlight what makes you different; you’re building trust from the start.
• Customer testimonials: Share real experiences and success stories that show the impact of your products or services.
• Educational content: Offer quick tips, how-tos or behind-the-scenes information that give your audience something valuable to take away. 

2. Send the Right Message to the Right People Using Email

Not every customer needs to hear the same thing. By segmenting your list into simple groups, you can tailor messages that feel more relevant. It doesn’t have to be complicated!

Example groups:

• Current customers, prospects and vendors
• Frequent customers versus first-timers
• Customers in different locations, such as like Dallas–Fort Worth, Austin and Houston

3. Be Consistent and Keep an Eye on Email Marketing Results

The best email strategies are the ones that show up regularly. Think monthly newsletters, team spotlights or helpful blog recaps. Over time, consistency builds trust and keeps your brand top of mind.

Lastly, don’t forget to check your metrics; open rates, clicks, and conversions. They’ll tell you what’s working and what might need to tweak.

Ideas to test:

• Monthly newsletter: Share updates, events or trends your audience cares about.
• Reactivation campaign: Remind inactive subscribers of what they’re missing.
• A/B testing: Experiment with subject lines, visuals and send times to figure out what yields the best engagement.

Wrapping It Up

Email marketing doesn’t have to be complicated or stressful, it just needs to be consistent, authentic and tailored to your audience. When you share valuable content, speak directly to your customers and pay attention to what works, your emails can become one of your most powerful tools for growth.

At Front Porch Marketing, we love helping businesses find their voices and turn everyday emails into meaningful connections. Ready to start? Let’s build something great one inbox at a time.

We’re hard at work on The Porch — even though its summer — and we wanted to share some of our proven digital strategies so far this year. The summer has flown by, and our team, business and clients have enjoyed many successes balanced with time with family and friends. As we roll into back to school whether it is elementary school, first year of college or next term of an MBA program, we have big goals on our mind at home and work.

With that being said, we are sharing digital strategies and tactics resulting in business success. Here’s what is working for our clients.

We Use These Proven Digital Strategies and Tactics for Our Clients

There are a handful of proven digital strategies that we are using to help build our clients’ brands. Often these strategies work together, and build upon each other. Sometimes they even share assets, which helps marketing budgets go further.

Email Marketing

Consistent communication whether it be weekly or monthly is paramount. Open and click rates for our clients’ email marketing exceed their peers’ average performance. And, their unsubscribe rates are lower than benchmark.

Keys to email marketing success include consistent communication, compelling content and professional creative and visuals.

The results include business growth by referral from existing clients and customers as well as inquiries from prospects and connections.

Digital Advertising

Our clients are spending their ad dollars on digital advertising strategies and tactics this year. The results continue to exceed the norm. LinkedIn and Google ads, geotargeting and retargeting continue to result in business growth.

Social Media

Content calendars are king. Client connections and reach on social media for the companies we work with have been strong — above industry averages. Social continues to be a proven digital strategy YoY.

LinkedIn continues to lead on the business-to-business front. Our clients’ senior leadership are embracing the power of LinkedIn. They are consistently active. This is resulting in broader brand awareness and increased employee engagement among other things.

Hashtag strategies continue to evolve. Less is more is proving successful for our clients. Protip: Utilize free tools to evaluate the relevance of the hashtags you use. We are happy to share our go-to tools. Email us!

Blogging

At least two blog posts per month continue to engage our Clients’ key audiences, their existing customers and new prospects. Google Analytics confirms this on the monthly reports we provide to clients. In addition to this, our clients’ websites’ SEO is benefiting from this proven digital strategy.

Video

Short and long form video marketing is increasing our clients’ SEO. Videos are a proven digital marketing tactic that also provides compelling, engaging content for social media. Repurposing these videos for digital advertising has also been a hit.

Website Refresh

Continuing to add content whether it be through blogging or keeping the look and feel of your company’s website updated has been a win this year as a proven digital strategy in 2024. Have you looked at your website lately? Is it working hard for your business? If not, we can help. If you don’t know how to figure out if it is effective, we can help with that too.

Implement These Proven Digital Strategies and Tactics for Success in 2024 and Beyond

The fall time period is the perfect time to re-assess your marketing plan and add some of these proven digital strategies to your brand mix. Reach new customers. Broaden your brand’s horizons. Share new products. Build loyalty. It’s all possible by starting now, and sticking with it.

Oh, Marketing. How Do We Love Thee?

In honor of Valentine’s Day today, we wanted to share some of the things that we absolutely LOVE about marketing. We cover many aspects of marketing in our day-to-day business with clients. We use tried-and-true marketing strategies and tactics that are the bedrock of a solid marketing plan. And there are also trends that we love, so we take advantage of those for our clients as well.

These Marketing Things Are Both Tried-and-True and Also On-Trend

Incorporating these marketing things (strategies, tactics, platforms, approaches) in your business of marketing for a client, is a win-win. First, your clients see results. Then, you look smart. And finally, you’re both successful at growing the business.

Email Marketing

Clients are reaping results from email marketing campaigns. So having the right content and creative are critical. Companies can build a relationship with their customers when email marketing is executed with the reader in mind. Be informative and helpful vs. direct selling, and see an impact on business.

Strategic Paid Traditional and Digital Media Campaigns

Linking these two strategies (traditional and digital) is more effective. First and foremost, invest to meet the target where they are. Approach them in the right mediums. Earn more quality customers by thoughtfully targeting your messaging to impact sales more effectively.

Marketing Leaders Asking the Right Questions

We love this marketing thing: smart leaders. Our clients are smart marketing leaders who are thoughtful in their approach. To start with, we see them asking the right questions. But then we’re asking them the right questions too. This collaboration pays off for both businesses. They want a plan over time, not a one-off initiative. Thus, they are in it to win it for the long haul, and so are we.

Re-evaluate the sales funnel

The sales team might be engaged in selling one-on-one. But it might not be utilizing technology, processes and other tools to continue to engage and grow the engagement. Successful customer engagement and retention includes tactics at every point in the sales funnel. And utilizing powerful tools to scale and automate in conjunction with smart, thoughtful strategies make sense.

Client Loyalty and Retention

It is easier to grow existing business than gain new business. Enter the customer loyalty program. The trend in loyalty and customer retention programs will continue, blurring the lines between physical and digital as 2023 progresses, making customer retention a seamless experience. Loyalty programs incorporate email, text messages, and even print. Clients can grow their infrequent shoppers into brand fanatics using loyalty programs.

Ready to Love Your Company’s Marketing Things?

Think deeper in 2023. Really focus your attention on your customers. Ultimately, create a marketing ecosystem that keeps them informed. Give them insider information. And make their lives easier. This approach is a sure way to see your business grow this coming year. And we would love that for you!

Successful email marketing can be a cost-effective way to market your business. When done right, you’ll be keeping your brand top-of-mind and become a trusted resource for your customers. They’ll look forward to your emails because you’ll be sharing your knowledge and solving their challenges.

Keeping your audience engaged with email marketing, as a part of your overall marketing strategy, is an excellent way to introduce new products, solve an on-going pain-point for customers, give a tutorial, keep your customers up-to-date about the industry, and more.

How Do You Do Successful Email Marketing?

There is a lot to designing an effective and efficient email campaign to be successful. The most important question to ask yourself: Are you leading with the audience in mind? Everything you do should be from THEIR perspective. It’s for them. Help them. Guide them. Solve their problems.

Then ask yourself: Are you overselling? Your brand and your products do not always need to be the hero in email marketing. Afterall, this is an on-going dialogue you’re having with your customers. Establishing a relationship is a longer-term proposition. Don’t oversell. Again, be helpful. Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself: What do I need? What will make my life easier or better?

Getting Started With Email Marketing: Do This Not That

Your email marketing is a fail if it doesn’t contain these four elements. Set yourself up for success by making sure these four things are included thoughtfully in each email you send:

1. Look professional — Make sure the email platform template is set for your brand fonts and colors. Design is key to successful email marketing as well — design a nice header and footer. Link to your social channels in your footer. Stay consistent from month to month with this template and your customers will start to recognize your email and your brand, and look forward to your next email.
2. Have a call to action — What can readers do to learn more? Use a button in your email that links back to your website where the reader will read more, download something, watch a video, contact you for more information or order a product. For instance, if you are linking to a blog post, tease them in the email, but don’t reveal the real scoop…ask them to “Read More” and click the button to go to your website for the rest of the insight.
3. Date and time — When do users want to engage and not unsubscribe? Many email programs like Mailchimp will tell you when the best time is to send emails to be successful. Statistically, Tuesday mornings are the day most people open their emails.
4. Don’t try too hard to sell — Engage your audience and don’t make the email be all your company. Again, be helpful: share hints, tips, tricks. Give away your knowledge and they’ll see you as the industry leader and come to you to solve their problems (with your products or your service.

Most Importantly: Be consistent.

Successful email marketing campaigns provide content to make readers’ lives better. They are informative, not sales-y. Email marketing campaigns provide value, real value, to customers’ lives consistently. Create a schedule using Google Sheets and plan each month’s topic, date, and assign responsibilities. After a while, it becomes easier and easier to stick to your schedule and create smart, thoughtful, nicely designed emails that make your brand the one that customers turn to again and again.

Sales and selling never stops. What you are doing today impacts future sales the next quarter and beyond. Recently, we have heard of companies and non-profits pulling back on their marketing based on success to date, cash flow, lack of resources and/or business leader fatigue, among other things.

We know it is the end of another very long year, and you may be tired and lacking in energy and resources. But going dark isn’t the answer. There are ways to continue marketing efforts with less cash, less effort or less time. Build momentum and keep it going.

Be smart about what you’re doing today – impact future sales tomorrow.

Get the most out of your marketing efforts in a consistent, strategic way.

For instance, if your busy season is Q1, use Q4 to set your strategies, and get your ideas and materials ready so all you must do is hit “go” when you’re at the peak of utilizing your manpower in other areas throughout Q1. Have your plan for next quarter all ready to work for you.

As an example, we have already approved plans and strategies, are securing paid media schedules, and developing creative assets for Girl Scouts Texas Oklahoma Plains’ (GSTOP) Q1 initiatives. Doing this now means they can simply hit send when they are at their busiest time in January – gearing up for Girl Scout Cookie Sales time!

Here are six other ways to market now and help yourself later:

1. Run a brand campaign. You can keep it simple or gear up for a big push. Just make sure you do something to get and keep your name out there. Always remember that new clients or customers take time to make a decision and do research before buying.
2. Make a list so you can check it twice. First, create a list of prospective audiences to whom you can market. Then, build on this base list. This can include:
   a. Past customers / clients
   b. Prospects or past website visitors
3. Check Google trends. Find out what main keywords may be trending that relate to your business. Spend now to get noticed and included in these trends.
4. Develop or redesign your website. Do not wait for Q1 to jump back on this task. Get it done now so it is ready to launch in Q1. 4th Quarter is the perfect time to refresh and update the content on your website.
5. Send those emails. E-mail marketing is cheap and easy but halting your monthly communication will affect results when you start back up. Don’t lose momentum. Don’t rest and count on past success to continue. If you’re not consistent, your sales won’t be, either.
6. Stay active on social media. Your audience is listening, even if passively. Be consistent and engaged. Build your audience now, so they’re with you when all your big news hits next year.

So, when is a “safe’ time to put the brakes on marketing your brand? Around a quarter to … never.

Building and maintaining a successful brand requires continuity. Consistent marketing creates and sustains trust with your audience. Don’t stop marketing your brand when cash and/or resources are low. Don’t stop marketing your brand based upon success to date.

Your brand doesn’t wait while you’re tired. Your brand deserves continuous marketing effort, in some way, to make an impact both now and in your future sales. Don’t ever stop.

Stop and start marketing is not an option for successful brands.

Get out there and keep rocking your brand. Call us to help. The Porch is always ready to roll.

Starting a business in 2021 is hard. You have to have the right product, shown at the right time, to the right people, and have everything executed properly. Not to mention you have to compete in an ever-growing marketplace. It’s a tough world and you have to have real mental grit to be successful. Startups have a 90% failure rate according to Investopedia.com. One of the main reasons as to why these startups failed was due to poor marketing. We’re going to go over some of the top marketing strategies that will aid your start up, to get you going in the right direction. 

1. Make a Marketing Plan

You can’t have successful marketing strategies for a start up business without a marketing plan. This means coming together with metric-driven marketing goals, creating user personas, coming up with a budget that supports how you will achieve these goals, and researching your competitors, for starters.

2. Post on Social Media

Posting on social media is crucial to gaining exposure for your business. Around 2.4 billion people use social media. It’s important for you to be seen and heard, and for people to know who you are. Not to mention this helps reach a younger generation. Make sure you’re posting engaging quality content consistently.

3. Make an Email List

Email marketing can attract customers if done correctly. One way to build a list is by having a subscribe page on your website. Make sure when you send these emails out that they aren’t too advertising based – answer questions, be helpful. Help potential customers solve their problems. For example, you can post guides, infographics, or videos. 

4. Don’t be Afraid to Try Some New Marketing Strategies

Don’t be afraid to voice your ideas! If you never try something new you won’t grow as a company. You never know who could benefit from an idea you might have. You don’t have to always stay inside what everyone is comfortable with. Innovations come from questioning the status quo.

5. Use More Than One Channel for Promotion

This builds off of tip #2. Once you have your social media set up, it’s important to diversify your brand. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and even TikTok can be a channel for you to connect with your audience. These are amazing tools to get your brand out there. They each hit different audiences and you should change your approach depending on the socials you use, and who your audience is. 

6. Know Your Audience

You must find your target audience. Find what age group is going to be interested in your product. What type of topics are they into? Don’t try to be too broad and play to your strengths. Once you’ve identified your target market make sure you cater to them.

7. Create and Maintain a Blog

Blogs are important to driving traffic your brand. They make you a source for information. Did you know that businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads than those who do not have one? Make sure you’re publishing blogs that you know your audience would read. Quality over quantity.

8. Sponsor an Event

Sponsoring events can gain massive exposure for your business. It’s a great way to get the right people looking at your company (investors). All you have to do is pay a fee to the event organizer and then you market your business with marketing materials like signs, stickers, etc. Try and sponsor events that are related to your business. For example, if you sell comic books maybe you can sponsor a comic book convention.

9. Give Away Small Things as a Marketing Strategy

Everybody loves free stuff. What do I mean by free stuff? Stickers, t-shirts, merchandise, or gift cards. These help people have a positive association with your business. It makes your company look very friendly and is great PR.

10. Use Paid Search Advertising

Paid search is a way to purchase focused traffic on popular search engines like Google. They use a system called cost-per-click. Which means you pay when someone types a specific word you have listed in your ad. You only have to pay for when people click on the ad. This can be a great traffic driver to your website.

Marketing Strategies for Start Up Businesses Can Take Many Forms

Don’t fall behind when running your startup business. It’s very competitive out there and if you aren’t doing everything you can to stay ahead of the game you may fall behind your competitors. However, if you follow at least half of these strategies your startup will be headed in the right direction.

We are in Q4 of 2021. Whaaattttt? Don’t panic-spend the rest of your marketing budget! Maximize your your remaining 2021 marketing budget through the end of the year by thinking smart and acting smarter. This isn’t our first rodeo, so we see this every year. And we get it: marketing is one of the first line items asked to be cut for next year. How do you combat that mindset? Spend wisely with what’s left in your remaining 2021 marketing budget because budgets are being scrutinized before being renewed. So if you’ve spent your marketing budget wisely this year – showing brand impact and growth – you’ll have a better case to make for 2022’s marketing budget numbers. How can you maximize your remaining 2021 marketing budget and get more done? First, start with the help of your marketing partner.

Where can business leaders find real value in the fourth quarter 2021?

Marketing partners. Small or large, your team can help you plan and carry out the most efficient and effective way to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to Q4 spending. Partners can help you in these 7 ways to maximize your remaining 2021 marketing budget:

First Maximize Your Remaining 2021 Marketing Budget by Using it to Set Up Your 2022 Plans and Budgets

• Forge marketing budgets and marketing plans for 2022. As objective professionals with your business’s success in mind, marketing partners will research, employ best practices and take great care in detailing your path to success. Not just for Q4 2021, but next year as well. Marketing partners tend to think both short-term gains AND long-term momentum, which ultimately means growth and sustainability for your business.

Then build a winning team

• Next, build a marketing team that is set up to succeed. From your marketing plan for next year, and your budget, identify the gaps you have needed to execute your plan. Provide resources for finding the talent and tools to fill those gaps. Whether you’ll need new team members, new tech or new skills, make sure you’ll have it covered ahead of time. Being reactive about getting things done at the last minute because of poor planning benefits no one.

Seize Opportunities for Brand Impact

• Then, capitalize on existing opportunities to shine. Q4 is full of events, inherently built into the holiday calendar. And fall is often trade-show season. And, your marketing calendar can include multiple opportunities for touch-points with your audience around the holiday season
  • Sponsor events at trade shows for exposure to a broader audience
  • Community events around the holidays are great local, grassroots places to connect with your audience
  • Partnering with a charity is a tangible way for your business to give back to the community
• Also, give direction but stay out of the weeds when it comes to social media. Maximize your time, by providing social marketing content in the form of access to your asset library (photos, graphics, brand guidelines), as well as any messaging documents, previous collateral and press releases. Your team can build successful, impactful social media and “speak as the brand”. If you are wordsmithing copy and micromanaging design from your team, you’re wasting resources, not maximizing them. One big time suck that every business owner and leader needs to take off their list – editing social media content before it is posted. As a business leader, is this the best way to spend your valuable time? Ask your marketing partner to handle this for you.

Adopt a Continuous Improvement Mindset

• Most importantly, fine tune your website. Q4 is the perfect time to assess the strength of your website. Ask your marketing partner to help you:
  • Assess your digital situation. Prune your content, evaluate and fix underperforming pages and links
  • Fine tune your SEO (search engine optimization) so that your content answers the questions that people are asking. Draw customers to you with smart, precise content
  • Update the look and feel of your website to reflect modern times and modern UX behavior (user experience). Your site should be responsive (able to change to fit desktop, mobile, ipad, etc) and use common structures to guide site visitors along their customer journeys.
  • Start content marketing. This means setting up a blog on your site, if you haven’t already. and get your marketing partner to ghost-write weekly content – which can then also be promoted on your social media channels. Content marketing, as this is called, is one of the most important ways to keep your site fresh and “indexing” higher on Google. The more you establish your voice of authority in your business space, the more your site is recognized by Google and recommended to others for that knowledge.
• Don’t forget to reward your loyal clients/customers. It’s not always about finding new customers. In Q4, make it about retaining your strong client base for 2022. Remind them why they’re with you.
  • Identify your top email subscribers, top social media followers, etc. and create a marketing campaign that is created for and target to them on the channels where they interact with you.
  • Create direct mail holiday messaging and snail mail a heartfelt message and perhaps a reward (like a gift, discount, or plus-up) just for being loyal members, subscribers, clients.

Maximize Your Remaining 2021 Marketing Budget When it Counts – The Holidays

• What is your holiday plan? Counsel with your marketing partner and then execute on holiday season activity via direct mail, email marketing, text campaigns and social media. Create a sale, a promotion, or an experiential event for your customers and invite them to experience your brand during the holidays. Introduce a simple as a holiday discount, or hold a fun a pop-up brand experience as part of a neighborhood or even city-wide event. Your marketing partner can help you discern what opportunities are best-suited for your company.

Maximize your remaining 2021 marketing budget to win, yes even in Q4

Smart marketing leaders can continue business growth during this time by working with smart marketing partners to maximize remaining 2021 marketing budgets. How do they do it? They don’t waste valuable resources – the most valuable being THEIR TIME. Spend your valuable time wisely on the big things that will grow your business for next year – and your marketing partners can handle the details for you. As we like to say “spend time ON your business not IN your business” to maximize your impact as a leader.

Now that school is around the corner, it’s time to refresh your digital marketing strategy for your school, academy, or university. From experiencing a pandemic to entirely transforming a new academic environment for students and staff, the marketing and communications strategies that used to work for your district “pre-covid” may not work in this ever-changing 2021 environment. It is now the time to be pro-active, adaptive, and present to meet the increasing expectations of today’s families. 

Practice #1: Start a School Blog 

A school blog is a wonderful way to display the activities that students participate in and around the school. It’s also a great place to distribute advice and share the community’s voice. The blog will give outsiders an inside look on the programs and events that the students participate in. Connecting with the school’s community will emphasize how much the directors care about the students and faculty, while promoting conversation. It will also let more people organically find your school when searching for their children’s next academic steps. Overall, creating a blog will strengthen your school’s brand identity.  

Practice #2: Enhance the School’s Website 

Times are changing, and so should your website! Making an inadequately designed website and not thinking about the user’s experience will produce site traffic and static action. Like the director of Front Porch Marketing, Julie Porter states, “create a clean, user-friendly website.” This will increase the school’s reputation and lead to more engagement. Just remember to keep it simple to navigate and creative. An easy way to accomplish this is to rebrand logos, create a color scheme that seamlessly translates throughout all pages, and habitually update the navigation tabs.  

Practice #3: Make Social Media Accounts 

Posting on social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, create opportunities for parents and guardians to find your school organically. People can easily share, like, or comment on your posts to help create more popularity quickly. As your account grows, the more recognition and traffic your school develops. You can achieve this by devoting time into capturing professional videos and photos of events and activities.

A great example of this is with one of our clients, Faith Family Academy. As Christine Finnegan, our media relations director states, “be consistent will all messaging throughout your platforms.”  In addition, you can connect with your audience by responding to their comments and other members can add reviews.

Practice #4: Begin an Email Drip Campaign 

Emails are increasing in popularity due to people relying on the digital-sphere to stay in the loop. This upward trend in email reliability is the result of them being tailored to user preferences and behaviors. This personalization helps users see information related to their interests rather that unfavored topics that are being pushed upon them through advertising.

By asking current families and interested families for contact information via a survey or sign-up sheet, users can subscribe to an email list and look at automated content daily or weekly. This proves to be an easy strategy for reminding and promoting members of future academic and recreational events. Email workflows truly provide a personal touch to electronically reach each community member. 

Practice #5: Promote School Events 

Events, such as an open house, are a great way for newcomers to meet the faculty and staff. It also helps families understand if their values align with the school’s and if the school fits their expectations. Parents and guardians will also be given the opportunity to explore the campus for the first time.  

Additionally, back-to-school kickoffs are a wonderful way to understand what people personally look for in a school and its curriculum. Having organized school events with informational pamphlets to give out aids prospective families to secure their decision of coming to your school. Whether you share the events via social media or on the website, the end result allows you to increase engagement and nurture relationships with newly inquiring families.   

Conclusion 

The expectations of parents are higher than ever. It’s crucial that your school’s digital marketing strategy adapt alongside them. As the fall semester comes right around the corner, use these best practices to ensure that your digital marketing strategy is future-proofed.