MarketingProfs, a leading marketing resource organization, put on a conference in Scottsdale, AZ last week. Like you, we like to be informed and aware of what the industry is doing so we can fully maximize our best practices. The Infusionsoft marketing team went to soak up the best practices from the verticals in the marketing industry. In this entry, we rounded up our notes together for you.

The Digital Mixer offered three main tracks: e-mail marketing, social media and search marketing. These tracks also had several breakout sessions for more specific one-on-one consulting. We enjoyed the freedom of switching between sessions and we heard a lot of feedback which suggested people were thrilled.

Our marketing team jotted plenty of notes about the points made during the conference. To illustrate our interesting and useful takeaways, I’ll break it out by topic with bullet points. Keep in mind; these are only the tip of the iceberg of information that was shared.

• E-Mail Marketing
  • Test, test and test again. It’s critical that marketers always test and try new things before “sticking” with a best practice.
  • Permission is crucial. Before sending any e-mail, always have permission. Consumers, as a whole, are leveraging their power to receive only what interests them. Respect it.
  • Shocking E-mail Stats:
    • 21% of people knowingly report e-mail that they know is not spam;
    • Commercial email volume will double by 2013 to 840 billion messages.
  • Be unique. If everyone on your list is getting the same email, you’re doing something wrong.
  • Track performance. Stop focusing on e-mail list size, instead, focus instead on list performance.
  • Be relevant. E-mail marketing should be relevant to the lifecycle of the customer, not what promos you have.
  • Sticking to a consistent publication schedule is not necessary. only e-mail when you have something important or relevant to share.
  • Anecdote: Gary Vaynerchuk deployed 22 million emails last year and only had 5,500 complaints. That’s only 0.0025%! (It is possible to send relevant e-mail.)
  • Time is the new currency. Respect it and they will give it to you.
  • Use Twitter to compliment your e-mail marketing. You can even get new e-mail subscriptions with Twitter.
  • Newsletters should follow the Pareto Principle. 80% content, 20% marketing.
  • Don’t be afraid to take people off your list after two years. If they want your newsletter, they will sign up again.
  • Use transactional e-mails as a clever marketing opportunity. Within your orders and acknowledgments, mix in a bit of marketing. If not, you’re wasting a great opportunity your customers gave you.
  • Build your prospect list creatively. When building your prospect list, consider using an on-hold message, an irresistible discount for signing up and when opting out, offer choices besides opt-out.
• Social Media
  • If you’re not listening and participating, you’ve failed. For any business, including marketers, you must be accessible and leverage the online community for feedback.
  • Listening is the new “messaging.” Stop shouting with your messaging, if you listen and react appropriately to people, your message is clear.
  • Market your personal brand over your company brand. When interacting in social media, it’s important to market your personal brand over your company brand. This means that you (as a person) need to be accessible, thoughtful and interesting, and people will naturally attract to your company.
  • Stop measuring success in social media with ROI. If you’re there, accessible and in the discussion with your customers, that’s the return. (Not really intended for smaller businesses, but good advice nonetheless.)
  • Social Media Web sites are merely destinations where your customers are. People tend to be nomadic is migrate to newer sites which meet their personal needs. An example of this would when people ditched MySpace to move toward Facebook.
• Search Engine Marketing & Optimization
  • Submit your Web site to relevant Web sites and directories. When approaching webmasters, send a personal e-mail and let them know why your link would add value to the page.
  • Write Linkbait. Linkbait is content which catches reader’s attention in an effort to elicit backlinks from Web sites around the world. That is, anything that is mildly offensive, provocative, unique, fresh and insightful.
  • Place links of most importance near the header tags. Header tags are H1, H2, etc carry weight when search engines crawl your Web site.
  • Manage the “flow” of Google PageRank over your site. Use a robots.txt and “nofollow” attribute on links accordingly. In essence, you don’t really need Google to index your privacy policy, management team information or your “contact us” page. Interested parties will find those on their own.
  • Gain intelligence with free tools. Make full use of Google Sitemaps, Google Analytics and Yahoo Explorer to gain intelligence on your search engine standings and opportunities for improvement.
• Other Tidbits
  
  • Great people to follow on Twitter: @Garyvee, @ChrisBrogan, @ScottMonty, @ComcastCares and @CSpenn. (Oh, and also @Infusionsoft.)
  • When going to a conference, meet your rockstars. Conferences are social, so relax, keep the pitches to a minimum and meet some great people. We all have idols, so find yours.
  • Follow (or create) the backchannel. That is, use Twitter and use a hashtag to follow it with Twitter Search.
  • Just because all your peers aren’t on Twitter or have a blog, do it. Find something you’re passionate about and do it. Stop the excuses and lead your industry with a strong voice and hit it hard.

We had a great time and met a lot of impressive people in the field who are growing their business and brand on the Web. We also enjoyed the timely appearance of Ariana Huffington from The Huffington Post, and her view of the traditional and digital media landscape. Check out the MarketingProfs coverage of her attendance at the mixer.

Finally, we’d like to thank everyone for attending and stopping by the Infusionsoft booth. We’re always interested in hearing your feedback and are open to answer your questions on small business and e-mail marketing; so feel welcome to let us know by Tweeting at us or posting a comment on this blog. In addition, we like to share our acknowledgment to the sponsors of the Digital Mixer: silverPOP, Aquent, iLinc, Unisfair, Emma, Radian6, Genius, SmartBrief, HubSpot and TailoredMail.

Disclosure: Infusionsoft was the platinum sponsor of the event; nevertheless, it was a pleasure to help connect marketers, small business owners, social media gurus and many other experts in their field.

You might also like these blog entries:

• Thank You to Our Infusionsoft Fans!
• 19 Ways to Connect Social Media & Email Marketing Together
• Using Email Marketing and CRM Effectively at Events