The Weekly RAP: December 14, 2012

True confession time. . . I prefer my mobile email to have not images (OK, maybe one) and I leave images turned off in my desktop email software.

But it appears that I am in the minority and need to change how we design emails.

“Tweet it!” “Pin it!” “Update your status!” “Blog about it!” This is the common advice you will get about promoting your new service, product, or event. But what about a good, old-fashioned press release? It may not sound too exciting…until you see the results.

This morning Nimble Social CRM announced its new integration with HootSuite. Just think of it. . . two of my favorite friends coming together! Now I can access my Nimble CRM right from within HootSuite!

Nimble is a social CRM (customer relationship management) tool that combines the power of unified communications, social media tools, client management and team collaboration…

Do you have good website traffic and leads coming in, but not closing? If so, your biggest marketing opportunity is to create optimized lead nurturing campaigns. “Lead nurturing” sometimes goes by other names like marketing automation, drip marketing, auto-responders, etc. Simply put, lead nurturing is a system that allows you to send an automated series of emails to an early stage lead in order to qualify them before handing them over to your sales team.

Who wouldn’t want to become a secret agent like Jack Bauer, Ethan Hunt, and Perry the Platypus? We all want cool gadgets, sexy entourages, and glamorous gigs. More importantly, we want to be secret agents because they always have inside information.

Analytics is one of those words: it gets used correctly for the most part, but often gets used as a catchall. As marketers, we understand the importance of having web analytics set up, of having an analyst on staff, and of constantly working with the data as a part of our daily practice.

Well, it’s about time. Google+ hasn’t had a big update in a while, it seems.Earlier this week, Google+ rolled out its latest new feature thingy — Google+ Communities. I’ll explain what they are and how to set them up in detail in this blog post, but the long and the short of it is they’re little online communities on Google+ … pretty much what the name implies.