Our HighRoad Analyst Brief series presented in conjunction with Demand Metric continues this month with a discussion about Marketing Performance Management.  Marketing Performance Management or MPM is the management of marketing resources through the use of analytics.  By analyzing your marketing processes to see what's working and what isn't, you can improve your marketing effectiveness and increase ROI.  When marketers can prove the impact their efforts are having on increased ROI, marketing budgets increase as well as the respect for and value of your team.  Demand Metric recently conducted a study on the current state of MPM.  As this is a follow up study to their 2015 MPM study, we can now share trends found in the data.  Join us Tuesday, August 9th at 12pm ET, as Demand Metric Chief Analyst, Jerry Rackley, discusses these trends and what companies are doing to master Marketing Performance Management.

Over the last decade SEO has changed a lot.  These changes include how people perform searches, how search engines index and rank pages, and how marketers can influence search engines to send web traffic to their site.  In fact, SEO has changed so much that many marketers aren't sure what works and what doesn't.  There is a lot of misinformation out there pertaining to SEO and best practices.  At HighRoadU, we have put together this toolkit to debunk the 17 most common myths and misinformation about how SEO works along with solid tips from some experts on how to get it right.  So if you find yourself uncertain at times on what you should or shouldn't be doing to improve your website's SEO, this toolkit may be exactly what you need.

Transactional email is a personalized email that is system triggered in response to some type of online transaction by a subscriber with your organization.  Transactional emails are an excellent way for you to increase engagement with your subscribers by offering them personalized content and offers based upon their previous transaction.  Multiple surveys have shown that this type of email is far more effective in engagement,  result in greater brand loyalty, and deliver higher ROI. Unfortunately, according to Experian, only 40% of all marketers are sending transactional email.  If you are in the 60% of marketers who are not yet utilizing this type of email, Kevin George at Marketo, has written a great article that you should read.  In the article, Kevin lists some best practices when developing a transactional email campaign and six types of transactional emails you can send to your subscribers, based on their unique behavior.

Inbound marketing is a relatively new marketing strategy that is designed to attract prospective customers to your organization.  In contrast, with traditional marketing you must go out and find them.  Through the use of digital platforms including social media, SEO, blogs, videos, and all other forms of content, prospective customers find you.  In this digital age, it just makes sense to incorporate inbound marketing into your overall marketing strategies.  The infographic below explains in more detail what inbound marketing is and why you should be using it.

Jenny Lassi was recently interviewed by Mizz Information, herself, Maggie McGary on email marketing. Maggie recently found herself in charge of her org's email marketing program and realized it was time to bite the bullet to learn more about why email marketing is so painful. Maggie reached out to us to help her understand where the areas of the most complexity lie and why they're so tricky to navigate. 

In her article, Maggie provides a great explanation of the 5 biggest pain points and chiefareas of misunderstanding about email that association marketing professionals need to know:

1. Reputation: Email address is bouncing and/or continually being flagged as invalid/ineligible 
2. Authentication: Emails going directly to the spam folder abyss, 
3. Filter: Email getting delivered but member says they didn’t get it,
4. Feedback Loops (or FBL for those in the know): Email address mysteriously disappeared from the system, 
5. List Hygiene: Prospecting new members 

Do you think sending a mass email using Outlook is a good idea?