When we speak of newsletters, we know that they are going to provide us with some really interesting information on the topic of our interests. As a content marketer, to create an effective e-newsletter is of prime importance for us. The initial days of publication and sending leaflets are outdated with everything available on the web. I’ve gathered four amazing web based newsletter tools that can come to your rescue in the plight of creating and effectively placing your personalized newsletters.
Mailigen claims that they are on a mission to make marketing software easy to use. Their drag and drop email template editor allows you to create and send newsletters with set design templates which can be customized easily. It gives you a constant full view of the toolbar whenever you are editing in an email. It makes use of the drag and drop feature to add images and change styles or blocks in the writing styles and inserting columns. It also allows you to provide social networking buttons such as Facebook, Twitter, etc, which makes is more likely for your subscribers to share your campaigns with others.
Easy drag and drop template editor makes it easy to create and share newsletters!
Key Features:
Create newsletters, surveys, signup forms and more.
Provide social networking buttons for further reach.
Generate real time performance reports.
Integrated with Google Analytics.
More than 130 templates to choose from.
Create auto-responders – Every time you get a new subscriber, Mailigen will send an automated newsletter programmed by you to the recipient.
2. LetterPop
LetterPop has the amazing ability to make creation of a newsletter as enjoyable as it is easy to create them. Attach images with the drag and drop feature and upload new ones at the click of a button. Choose from more than 300 templates and work your way into the world of creativity with what looks best to your eyes. With individual plans ranging from $4.95 per annum to Business Plans starting from $48.98 monthly, users have a variety of options to choose from.
More than 300 exciting templates to choose from!
Key Features:
Templates that can be chosen with the drag and drop feature where content and images can be personalized.
Faster editing options.
Upload pictures from your Flickr and Facebook accounts as well.
Ability to bulk import contacts from gmail accounts.
Publish it or keep it private. Share it on your social accounts effortlessly.
MadMimi is one of the easiest way to create, share, send and track email newsletters online. Free of cost, the tool supports easy integration and helps create professional looking, impressive newsletter.
Newsletters created at MadMimi
Key Features:
Provides a user friendly interface and thoughtful theme design approach to create great design templates.
With themes and modules, it provides a streamlined approach for its users and helps them use only what they need.
Themes created can be saved and cloned thus eliminating work repetition.
The ability to create themes or choose from among the 35 theme templates.
MailChimp allows you to design email newsletters of your choice, design your own logo and pictures making them look different and identifiable by your customers. The free edition supports 1000 subscribers and more than 5000 emails can be sent in a month. Emails can also be created using HTML tags making them look as professional as you want them to. It provides professional header graphics and color pallets to customize your news letter. Like other tools, MailChimp also provides a detailed report regarding the emails sent.
Key Features:
With subscriber profiles, users can keep their contacts in one place and get detailed insights about individual engagement and website activity.
Stay Updated!
Add notes either on one-to-one conversation either on desktop or on mobile, thereby knowing who your real customers are.
MailChimp has a suit of mobile apps that help in being able to make and send posts on the go.
Make an impact – ON THE GO!
Generate automated triggered emails based on subscriber activity.
With With Twitter Tailored Audiences, you can target your subscribers on Twitter and make it easy for them to share your content with other people who have similar interests.
Email designer helps add and collaborate campaigns that fit your brand interests.
Personalized templates can also be built.
MailChimp is integrated with hundreds of apps like Shopify, Eventbrite, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
There are many aspects that are considered while choosing an effective platform for creating and establishing a newsletter tool. Some may want a variety of design templates such as those offered at LetterPop or some may prefer effective integration on the go such as that provided by MailChimp. All said and done, these are the four most effective tools that can help you achieve professional-looking email newsletters that can be easily created and shared. They also provide you with suitable followup and generate reports that will allow you to stay updated with your user base and increase your reach.
About: Bottlenose is a trend intelligence application, or a social app/dashboard that allows its users to create business intelligence out of the clutter of social noise in Twitter, Facebook and so on. Simply put, it creates a streamlined access for its users to read only what is relevant to them and avoid all the other clutter. Works with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, to name a few!
Price: Free
In the current social world, there is data everywhere and for a person who needs to analyze them, without the help of an effective ‘sorting’ tool, it can take ages to lay hands upon the what is most relevant. It’s sonar streamline feature that not only alters the data based on the interest of the user, but also portrays it in a pattern that is easily understood and can be detailed when desired. Bottlenose identifies topics of your interest through your social feeds, social likes, etc and tags what is important based on these likes and displays them, also allowing you to toggle between topics and add more topics based on your preferences.
Key Features
For those who tend to get access to as much meaningful data as possible is the target group of Bottlenose that excels in providing real actionable data. Coming to how effective and efficient it is, let us look at the pointers below.
1. Effective Keyword Search
Whether it is a paid or a free search optimization, it is highly important to know that what is being said about the topics of your interests. Be it Google or Bing’s AdCenter, we can gather an understanding that people’s searches are never the same and every search adds a new keyword. That is where Bottlenose comes into the picture. It ensures that topics and everything that is inter-related to it is made available to the user by way of keywords search.
2. Refined Hash-Tag Research
Twitter is massive and to create a presence on the right page, it is important to use the most optimal hashtags within your tweets. It is the keywords search and social listing tools that helps you know which hashtags gives you the maximum visibility. Bottlenose dashboard renders to you a plethora of hashtags relevant for your tweets and also facebook posts, everytime you add a topic.
3. Sentiment Analysis
It is important to write about what interests your viewers. Thus again, Bottlenose comes to respite with its sentiment streamlines analysis that gives you a clear picture of what is really trending. From topics, hashtags, keywords, mentions, etc., that are used most frequently, the user can get a clear picture of what is really in without much hindrance.
4. Sonar Solo
This feature of Bottlenose gives a glimpse of everything that is trending with the help of simple keywords and hashtags that are inter-related to one another. With a simple input into the search bar, the user gets access to everything that is going on related to that field in real time.
5. Automated Trend Alerts
Bottlenose’s Stream Sense analyses more than 3 billion messages, filters out all the clutter and displays an array of emerging topics, people, and content, thereby making trend discovery simple. The latest developments and trends are delivered at the users inbox.
Judging the Opacity
Bottlenose is your virtual analyst on cloud. It automatically spots trends, discovers patterns and tracks perception as it changes. The two types of views, sonar and newspaper give a radar like view or a detailed newspaper like view to the user based on their convenience and time availability. It provides the ability to compare brand performance and give an analysis based on sentiment analysis on various brands, campaign or topic.
Get the larger picture!
1. New Trend Alerts:
Bottlenose quotes \”Get alerted when new trends emerge and when there is a burst of activity. See when a crisis spikes, peaks and drops. Track engagement, sentiment, demographics, psychographics, geography, influencers, topics, links, and more — across all forms of social media simultaneously.\”
A holistic view to the current emerging trends!
2. Analyse the stream and sentiments:
With bottlenose you can point out the reason why a particular trend is trending the way it is or what is causing the buzz about the latest product.
3. Judgments based on real-time performances:
See how well you’re performing in real-time. Discover previously unknown trending links, topics and hashtags around your interests to influence real-time marketing campaigns and promoted keyword buys.
4. Discover:
Discover what is trending and what is in news. having a personal virtual analyst team working with you 24/7.
To say it in their words –
Everyone has an opinion and something to say, often on many networks simultaneously. Bottlenose is how you make sense of all of the conversations you follow, and the trends they relate to. Bottlenose is intelligent. Bottlenose is personalized. And If you have a large audience, follow lots of people and interests, or create a lot of social media content — Bottlenose is for you.
About: Mavenlink is an online project management software that provides its users access to a streamlined workflow and support that helps them increase productivity. With a set of well established features for collaboration, file sharing, project management and team management, Mavenlink ensures that that its users not just manage projects effectively but also ensure timely and effective business management solutions. With its aim to be one of the most prime online workplace for companies while they engage in businesses with each other, Mavenlink creates an atmosphere that enables effective work environments with timely deliverance.
Pricing Model: After a free trial that is available, Mavenlink can be subscribed for a starting rate of $4 per month.
A tour of the Mavenlink Project Workspace below shows the ease with which a user can collaborate and manage projects and teams and get an instant access to the ongoing workflow and tasks in a dashboard view or Gantt Charts.
Key Features
1. Advanced Project Management
Mavenlink focuses on workforce management programmes by enabling effective collaboration between the teams and groups. Mavenlink centralizes and prioritizes all conversations, activities, tasks, and financials in one convenient location, so you can spend less time organizing and more time growing your business.
Activity streams allows viewing of all your projects in one global feed and also individually in project feeds.
A centralized dashboard gives an overall view of all the activities.
Users have control over their choice of when to receive email updates which can be replied to even when offline.
Chrome plug-in turns emails into manageable tasks. To-dos can be assigned to your team members.
Create new projects with ease and have a detailed display of all the actions that take place within teams and on your project!
2. Task Management
Tasks can be assigned and prioritized with the drag and drop feature. With the entire workspace visible in an absolute collborative manner, work is simplified. Users can track time and budget, attach files, create sub tasks, all on the go. One of the added highlight of Mavenlink is the fact that it integrates with google tasks. Therefore, you can virtuously sync all your tasks at one location.
3. File Sharing
File filtering, file history, linking files to tasks and again integrating them with Google Tasks, file management has taken an all new turn here.
4. Financial Management
Manage time and expenses easily as users can input their project based expenses, upload receipts and categorize the accounts.
Get a bird’s eye view of all that is happening!
5. Invoicing
Mavenlink allows users to create and link invoices to their projects tasks, deliverables and milestones. Invoices can include fixed fee, time, expenses, etc. Mavenlink is also integrated with Quickbooks, desktop for windows and Quickbooks Online.
Payment capabilities can be embedded with each project which can be made and received via Paypal.
6. Timeline Management
With Gantt Charts, users can create dependencies between tasks and make the most of a comprehensive visual timeline. Know what is prioratized with the critical path tab and make changes effectively. Also track the percentage of completion of a task or project in real time.
7. Resource Management
With personnel planning, hours can be allocated to individual team members. With the utilization reporting, you can view how the assigned tasks are being delivered and where do they stand in the schedules. With project job costings, user can compare the exact expenses with the budget that was allocated, there by cutting down extra influences.
Assign hours to your team members and manage collaboratively.
8. Analytics and Reporting
Know exactly how much time and money is spent on each project along with clear status of ever invoice. Know your work in progress down to the task levels and stay on top of visibility in every sphere. Accounts receivable reports provide an overview into what costs are pending on individual projects.
User Interface (UI)
With a fairly simple and easy to use UI, Mavenlink boasts of creating projects and managing them in a manner that make businesses grow. Be it creating tasks or assigning them to individuals, it is all done with simple and user friendly modes as easy as a click of a button. A highly visual display of all the activities ensures that nothing stands amiss. With effective resource management tools, Mavenlink provides and all encompassing experience at a very reasonable rate.
With the only hitch being that Mavenlink’s basic plan does not have enough storage space for its users which is sorted with the premier packages, Mavenlink provides it all for its users. With Mavenlink’s feature of generating custom reports, users can generate reports on any other information as well which are not included in the built in reports.
Social media has become the medium where brands have made it their word of mouth. The latest app, Snapchat developed by Evan Spiegel and Jonathan May, carved way for an engaging campaign created by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) called the #LastSelfie.
#LastSelfie
Snapchat is popular for its photo and video sharing features with a specialty of setting a time limit for the viewing of the same by the sender to the recipient, ranging from 1 to 10 seconds. WWF used SnapChat by sharing ‘selfies’ of many endangered animals such as tigers, polar bears, dolphins and others under the hashtag #LastSelfie. These images lasted for 10 seconds and before they disappeared, users had to either share, donate or adopt the animal or help in any other way which they could. These images cannot be saved and are clicked from real life moments creating emotional impact in the minds of the viewers.
The idea behind the campaign is simple – the animals are conveying a message to their viewers which says “Don’t let this be my last selfie”.
In an interview with Click Z, WWF’s communications officer Tugba Ugur said, “Since Snapchat has a limited display of images, you have to take a screenshot in order to save the #LastSelfie. At this point, we ask and expect the images to be shared on Twitter with their quotes.”
Quotes from the campaign includes: “Better take a screenshot. This could be my #LastSelfie” and “In 6 seconds, I’ll be gone forever, but you can still save my kind.”
“The emphasis of this new campaign is to underline that if we don’t take action in real life, these species will disappear for real,” Ugur shared.
The WWF campaign #LastSelfie managed to achieve a donation sufficient for one month in a span of three days. The company made this possible by tapping the core of social media tools. What were the key points that WWF made sure to adopt to make its mark can be understood as below.
1. Creating an Impact
The campaign’s main highlight was to create an awareness among the minds of viewers that these animals needed help or they would go extinct. For this, the company used Snapchat’s photo sharing feature where in real life images of these animals were shared and which disappeared within 10 seconds, post which the image cannot be saved implying on the fact that if we do not act soon enough, they are going to go!
2. Factual Accounts
The campaign ensured that it was true to its words and stated facts about the animals. They gave real life images and videos as examples with an option for the viewer to either share the post on twitter or snapchat, donate or adopt the animal for its well being.
3. Call To Action
Snapchat’s time limit feature was a boon in disguise to the campaign as it literally displayed what the core of the campaign dealt with., that is, act soon enough or it will disappear! The images were viewable for only 10 seconds within which the viewers had to act. Taking an all new spin in the selfie category, pervasive marketing was used to embed the feeling of loss and fleeting urgency if not acted soon enough. There are variant images and videos of animals shared, but all of them hold the same tagline.
Creating a feeling of urgency with the catchy tagline!
4. Going With What’s Trending
The campaign aimed at capitalizing on the popularity of selfies prevalent in today’s social front. It introduced ‘selfies’ of endangered animals quoting “this could be my #LastSelfie”. This kept in tune with the minds of the viewers and made an impact based on what is currently trending in the social marketplace.
5. Emotional Quotient
EQ forms the most prominent tab that holds the first position in the checklist of things to consider before creating a social media campaign. Creating an impact on the emotional sphere in the minds of the viewers is essential and this has been taken care of very well.
6. Choosing The Right Medium
The Snapchat’s disappearing feature adds to the tagline of the campaign #LastSelfie. It creates a notion of urgency which is actually the aim behind the campaign itself – The urgency to act before time laps!
The outcome is definitely the success of the campaign. there are many drawbacks to Snapchat as a tool, some like limiting sharing of the picture or video, time limit, inability to save or refer back to the images shred, no archives. These all can contribute to a major failure in a campaign. But the nature of the WWF’s campaign was to enable a feeling of urgency and impact that if not acted soon enough these animals would be extinct, it blended beautifully with the features of the tool. The otherwise drawbacks of Snapchat became just what the meaning of the campaign was! In short, it seemed to be a tool tailor-made for the campaign #LastSelfie, enhancing every meaning behind the tagline “This could be my last selfie!”
If you are looking for a campaign tracking tool that can track hashtag campaigns like this campaign, across multiple social media platforms, look no further than 20/Twenty.
The all encompassing social media has got everyone running at a marathon\’s pace to create a presence on the world wide web. With the online marketing cosmos having players such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, LinkedIn to name a few, the dilemma of making the right choice for marketing your product/blog/service is no less complicated than a three year old solving a Rubik\’s Cube.
Why Should You Be Present On Social Media?
Create a presence on social media to monitor what’s being said about you
Incredible tool for deepening connection with customers
Yield larger interest among customers through detailed marketing
Faster mode of communication
Minimal investment for small and medium scale businesses
With all the social media channels at our disposal, it is not a choice, but now a necessity to make one\’s presence in not one, but all the spheres of the online marketing. The social media channels not only enable way less cash outflow than traditional marketing techniques, but also channelizes our product and services through the right mediums enabling a larger market presence. The choice of the right channel or a multitude of channels however is the smart thing to do, helping you make sure that you are heard. So here\’s a basic checklist for business to determine which social media platforms they should be present and spending their resources on:
Choosing The Right Platform
This chart shows which industries are present on social media platforms.
A brand should focus their time and resources on practical social media platforms that work for them. Research has to be done to figure where their target audience is on social media and which platforms are most effective at creating brand awareness and engagement. If your target audience is minimal or non-existent on a particular platform, don’t waste your time on it. Read, research, plan, organize, schedule and make your way mark on social media.
Solve the Social Equation! They took the right measures and earned the cookie! Courtesy of Wed Me Good
In the small scale sphere, Wed Me Good, an online portal that helps you to find wedding inspirations, ideas and the professionals who create dream weddings took to Facebook in the month of February, 2014. In it, you can view gorgeous real weddings and see the vendors they hired, or browse wedding inspirations by color, theme and category. With great content, visuals and links, WedMeGood got itself more than 3,000 likes in a span of two months. This poses as a great example of what benefits you receive while choosing the right platform.
Using More Than 1 Platform
When Instagram was on Twitter!
With a list of social media channels available, it does not come as a surprise when we find other social media brands having accounts on rival social media channels. In August last year, Instagram went offline for over an hour. They eventually took to Twitter to share their technical issue. This was due to the all-encompassing presence of these channels making it inevitable for these channels to have accounts with their rivals.
Essentially, choosing the right social media platform is an individualistic choice that varies from business to business. What works for your competitor may not work for your brand. Thorough research and analysis should be done so that your efforts and resources are not wasted on creating a presence on a social platform that doesn’t end up working for your brand.
More than 300 exciting templates to choose from!
As simple as THAT!
Newsletters created at MadMimi
