June 2018 - Stevens & Tate Marketing

Email Design Trends of 2018

June 28, 2018/in Articles, Direct Marketing, Directors, Mobile Advertising /by Terry Becker

Getting your leads to open your emails can be quite challenging as it is, which means that when they do open your emails, you’ll want to make sure that you make a good impression. This is where the visual design of your email comes in. High-quality email designs will leave a strong first impression, whereas poorly designed emails will reflect badly on your brand. If you can’t put the effort into crafting a nice looking email, your leads may assume that the effort you put into your products or services may be lacking as well.

Keeping that in mind, the following are a number of email design trends that you should consider implementing this year to help you make a better impression on your leads:

Interactive Emails

When it comes to standard email designs, interactivity is generally limited to scrolling up and down. However, more brands are beginning to focus on creating emails that are more interactive. Doing so helps to draw the attention of your readers to different elements of your email.

For example, image carousels or icons allow readers to click on different points or images to bring them to the forefront, which is more engaging than simply scrolling through a list of bullets. Even something as simple as allowing the reader to hover over an image to reveal product details can help increase engagement with your email content.

The Use Of Animation

Movement helps prevent email content from becoming too static, which can sometimes be a bit boring. To bring movement to their email content, many brands are using animated GIFs. Just be careful about their size since they can slow down the loading time a bit — especially on mobile devices.

The Use Of Infographics

If you need to convey a lot of information to your readers, then infographics are an excellent way to do so. Infographics are visually effective because they allow you to carefully organize your information in a manner that is easily digestible. Infographics are also much more pleasant to look at visually speaking than having to read through a list or table full of statistics.

An Emphasis On Color Use

Many brands use color in their emails, but don’t give a lot of thought into how they use it. Bold color choices can help you bring attention to different components of your email, whether it’s highlighting a product or emphasizing your call-to-action. The careful selection of color can also help you tie the entire aesthetic of your email together into a more cohesive design.

Click Here for More Email Marketing Tips.

The Use Of Monochrome

Monochrome email designs make use of greyscale in order to create a more sophisticated and elegant look. However, don’t be mistaken into thinking monochrome just means black and white. Black and white email designs look boring, whereas monochrome requires the careful consideration of various shades of gray along with black and white to create high contrast visual elements.

Minimalistic Designs

You don’t want an email design that’s too busy and cluttered or else it will overwhelm the reader. A more minimalistic design will not only make it easy for readers to scan your content, it creates a more elegant appearance when pulled off properly. Minimalistic designs often make strategic use of negative space to bring attention to headlines or images. It also tends to create a more professional impression of a brand.

Keeping up with the latest email design trends is a good way to ensure that your email designs don’t get stale. These are some of the current email design trends that you should consider adopting for your email marketing campaign this year.

4 Generation Z Marketing Strategies to Begin Using

June 26, 2018/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Mark Beebe

Marketing strategies have been focusing on millennial wants, needs and habits for years now — and for good reason. Millennials recently overtook baby boomers as the biggest generation. However, it won’t be long until the next generation — generation Z — comes to the forefront. As such, it’s important that you begin identifying effective generation Z marketing strategies that will help you continue to reach your target audience well into the future. The following are four generation Z marketing strategies you should begin implementing now:

1. Emphasize Mobile Marketing

Generation Z is the first generation to have grown up during the smartphone era. Most of them use the smartphone more than any other device. At this point, making sure all of your content is mobile-friendly should be a given. However, you should also begin designing marketing campaigns that specifically revolve around mobile marketing, such as through the use of mobile apps and mobile-based social platforms, such as Instagram.

Like smartphones, few members of generation Z will know what it was like before the age of social media. They use social media more than anything else in order to learn about brands and the products or services that they offer. In fact, more than 51 percent of Generation Z use social networks when researching brands and products, compared to 45 percent of millennials.

However, while you’ll still be able to find Generation Z on social networks like Facebook, they tend to prefer networks that their parents aren’t on, such as Snapchat, and often use more niche platforms as well. They’re also a bit more careful in how they engage having learned from the previous generation’s social media mishaps.

3. Create Video Content

Generation Z grew up on streaming video. They consume content on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Vimeo and more on a daily basis, which means that short-form video content is one of the best ways to reach them. Video content is also no longer as expensive to produce as it once was. As you adjust your content marketing strategy, you should begin emphasizing video content if you plan to attract audience members from generation Z.

Read More: How First Person Video Advertising Makes an Impact?

4. Personalize Your Interactions

Generation Z has spent a large part of their lives online, which means that the usual marketing gimmicks aren’t going to phase them. They are only going to engage with brands that they believe to be authentic. The best way to show authenticity and to stand out from the crowd is to personalize your interactions. This can be done by treating them like individuals instead of marketing stats, communicating directly with them via social media, communicating your message quickly and clearly, and providing helpful and informative content that’s also entertaining and personable.

Not only are these effective generation Z marketing strategies, they’re strong long-term strategies in general that you should begin implementing now. By using these generation Z marketing strategies, you will help position your brand for success even once generation Z eventually takes over as your largest audience.

Digital Marketing Strategies For Higher Education

June 20, 2018/in Advertising Agency, Articles, Blog, Digital Media, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Nicole Wagner

As a college or university, you have a lot to offer to your students in terms of obtaining a higher education that can help them pursue their dreams of a career. However, you’re not the only school around, which means you’ll need to implement effective marketing strategies for higher education in order to attract prospective students and to convince them to enroll. The following are a few digital marketing strategies for higher education that are proven to be effective if leveraged properly:

Using PPC advertising

PPC (pay-per-click) ads are an excellent way to reach the students in your target audience and to generate high-quality leads. Prospective students will perform a significant amount of searches when trying to find higher education options, which means that PPC ads are a great way to put your school in a position to be found. They’re also very cost-efficient since you are only paying for the clicks that your ad gets.

When using PPC ads, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind. For example, you need to know who your audience is and what they are searching for in order to choose the right keywords and create effective ad copy. You will also need to take great care in deciding where to place your ads to best reach your audience.

Optimizing your site for SEO

To improve your page rankings and increase exposure to potential students, you’ll need to make sure that your website is properly optimized for SEO (search engine optimization). This includes paying attention to both on-page and technical SEO, using high-quality, relevant keywords, and earning high-quality external links. All of these elements are important in bringing in more organic traffic. Building up your external links will also help you bring in a bigger audience from other relevant websites and will go a long way towards expanding brand awareness and building a positive brand reputation for your school.

Check out our article: 7 Reasons Why Digital Marketing for Manufacturers is Critical to Success

Creating high-value content

Prospective students will do a substantial amount of research before making a decision. Not only do most students have to pay for a higher education, it requires them to commit a significant amount of their time to it as well. They’ll want to make sure they make the right choice, w

hich is why you will want to provide them with plenty of content on your site that is relevant and helpful to their interests.

Not only can good content help with your SEO efforts (thereby drawing in more organic traffic), it can help establish your school as an authority, which will make your programs more attractive to potential students.

A regular social media presence will put you in a position to communicate directly with prospective students, allowing you to address questions and concerns, provide valuable information, and develop relationships with students, thereby building trust.

These are just a few of the marketing strategies for higher education that can help give your school an advantage in attracting prospective students for years to come.

4 Tips for Marketing Senior Living Communities

June 4, 2018/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Senior Living Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Marketing senior living communities can be a real challenge. You’re providing services for seniors; however, there are many people that are involved with the decision-making process. This means that one of the biggest challenges that you face is not only setting yourself apart from other senior living communities but fulfilling the needs of everyone in your audience. This is why how you market senior living communities is so important. Keeping this in mind, the following are a few tips for successfully marketing senior living communities:

1. Know Who Your Audience Is

Identifying your audience will help you target them more effectively when marketing senior living communities. However, since there are several types of people you’ll want to target, marketing a senior living can be tricky. Like previously mentioned, a lot of different people have a say when it comes to a senior moving into a senior living community, from the senior’s adult children to the medical professionals they work with.

Knowing who your audience is will be vital to your marketing efforts, especially when it comes to creating content. You have to write content for the person who is reading it, after all. If you attempt to create content that appeals to everyone, odds are it will end up appealing to no one. To avoid this, you’ll want to create a buyer persona. Creating buyer personas will allow you to more effectively target the needs of your audience when marketing senior living communities.

Buyer personas represent your ideal customers and provide insight that you can use to target them. For example, a standard buyer persona will include a person’s age range, their income levels, their goals, their needs, their challenges, their preferred method of communication, and more. This information can be attained from existing customers, from online surveys and from social media. Because different types of people have a say in the decision-making process, you’ll want to create several buyer personas.

2. Market Your Staff

While you’ll want to market the services, amenities and activities that your community offers, one of the most important elements of a senior living community is the staff. Families who are looking to move their loved ones into a senior living community will want to make sure that the staff is not only competent but that they will build meaningful relationships with the residents.

Because of this, you’ll want to make sure that you highlight your staff as friendly and caring. You should have a page on your site introducing visitors to your staff. Along with that, you should also create content highlighting their interactions with current residents. Video content is a great way to achieve this since it will help showcase their personalities and their connection to residents.

Check out our article: 5 Digital Marketing Tactics For Senior Living Communities

3. Promote Activity

One of the main things that both seniors and decision-makers care about is that residents will be able to live a fulfilling life once they’ve transitioned into a senior living community. Seniors want to maintain as much independence as possible, which means that they want to be able to live an active and social life.

You’ll want to position your senior living community as a place where this is possible. You can do this by highlighting and promoting different events and activities that your senior residents participate in. This can be done by writing blog posts about some of the daily or weekly activities that are available, posting pictures and videos of residents participating in various activities, or promoting upcoming events using social media.

4. Use Your Website As A Sales Tool

You should treat your website as a sales tool to help promote your community as a service. Publishing high-quality content that’s relevant to your target audience can help bring in traffic and will allow decision-makers (who are your customers) to educate themselves via the content you have provided. These are your leads. You’ll want to use your website to capture your leads and nurture them through the buyer’s journey.

A social media presence can be incredibly helpful for a number of reasons. First of all, you’ll put your community in a position to directly address concerns and answer questions that decision-makers may have about your community. This can go a long way in building relationships and trust. Secondly, it allows you to keep family members up to date with any news or events concerning your community. This shows your audience that you care about your community and are regularly engaged in improving the quality of life of your residents. Using social media in such a manner can help to build your reputation and spread awareness as a result.

Marketing senior living communities is no easy task, but these tips will give you a good foundation on how to reach your target audience and to position your senior living community as a safe, comfortable and friendly place that will meet the needs of your residents and of those involved in the decision making process.