So I just finished recording my first ever HighRoad U Webinar yesterday on how to develop a keyword strategy. I’ll be the first to admit, developing a keyword strategy usually ends up being the last item on my to-do list – forever to be pushed off since something else is always more urgent. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are others who feel the same way – too time intensive and then no one consistently applies it in practice it once it’s ready. So imagine my delight when I discovered that my new team at HighRoad has been putting out marketing toolkits that are ready to use AND you can use them for multiple purposes! In particular, our Marketing Persona Toolkit pulls double duty (maybe triple) since Personas are the cornerstone of many related Inbound Marketing activities. You need to know your personas - their pain points and, in particular, how they search for information and what keywords they use, so that you can develop that keyword strategy. It’s not enough to have a sense or “guestimate” your target audience – these days, digital marketers can’t afford any sort of vagueness, especially in the era of hyper-personalization. So buckle down and tackle those Personas! It’s well worth the effort, and once you have an understanding of how your “person” searches for information that you have, you’ll be well on your way to getting that keyword strategy done. As I said in the webinar, the rest of the effort goes into following a consistent methodology and seeing it through to the end. If you find that you need some help along the way to talk it through (or help get it done), well, that’s actually why I’m here, so please reach out!

Email Marketing is constantly evolving.  Mobile devices are redefining design, inbox providers are redefining deliverability, and email service providers are redefining personalization.  There is one certainty, more changes are coming.  Litmus has released a new report, "Email Marketing in 2020".  In the report, they ask twenty industry experts to share their predictions concerning the future of email and they take a look at what email marketing will be like in the year 2020.  An article,  by Chad White at Litmus, lists who the panel of experts are and gives the link to download the free report.

In the association world we need to begin collecting and using more behavioral data about our members and consumers at large.  Data that will give us better infomation about the consumer and what they want.  Data that will help us figure out who are targeted population should be and how to best build relationships with them.  We need to learn what we can do to move these consumers to take the desired action that we want them to take.  Ultimately, we are attempting to get to the world of predictive analysis.  Digital educational programs give us the opportunity to not only collect more behavioral data, but to also experiment with ways of collecting that data, in order to better understand these consumers.  This week's webinar, "Measuring: Promoting Online Education & Certification", presented by Suzanne Carawan CMO of HighRoad Solution, is now available On-Demand.  Join us at HighRoadU for the third part in the series, Promoting Online Education & Certification, and learn the best practices for collecting and analyzing behavioral data.

The Toolkit of the Month program provides association professionals with templates, workbooks and outlines for common planning needs in digital marketing. We curate the tools from the massive marketing library of our partner, Demand Metric. Each month we focus on a specific topic and put together a collection of tools to allow association professionals frameworks & formats to take the guesswork out of strategic & tactical planning. This month's toolkit focuses on your website--the ultimate destination for your email, banner ads and social media. This toolkit focuses on giving you an interactive planning worksheet to better assess and evaluate your current website and get going on your spring cleaning for your site.

Associations offer online education and certification programs.  Your members know this.  So why is it important to promote these programs?  There is a great deal of competition in this area, from both the non-profit and for-profit world.  People have a multitude of options when choosing where they go for online education.  In order to keep the members you have and to bring new members into your association, you need to step up your game.  In today's world that means using digital strategies.  Join us at HighroadU as Suzanne Carawan presents "Best Practices: Promoting Online Education & Certification".  This webinar is the second in the series Promoting Online Education & Certification.  Suzanne explains exactly why promotion is needed and lists the best digital marketing tools available to grow your membership.