Sources: Perryman fined $55K for unpenalized hit

Denzel Perryman wasn’t penalized for his hit on Eagles QB Jalen Hurts in Week 7, but he was fined $55,000 for an unnecessary roughness/use of helmet infraction, sources told ESPN.

The post Sources: Perryman fined $55K for unpenalized hit appeared first on Buy It At A Bargain – Deals And Reviews.

Best Email Marketing Services

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What if I told you there was a single marketing channel through which companies are finding a 3,800% ROI? 

That’s earning $38 for every dollar spent.

This magic marketing channel is called email. Yes, just good old email. And that insane average return on investment is one of many email marketing statistics that have held true for years now. 

The biggest surprise to me is how many companies aren’t taking advantage of email marketing.

I hear it’s too much work to design newsletters, manage a growing number of contacts, personalize messages, and keep the campaign moving forward.

There’s this perception that email is a time-sink, but it doesn’t align with the statistics. 

If it were really too labor intensive to run an efficient email marketing campaign, the average ROI wouldn’t even be 1/1000 of what it is, year after year.

The key is finding the right email marketing service. Don’t wait to start building better campaigns in less time.

The Top 5 Options For Email Marketing Services

  1. Constant Contact – Best for ecommerce
  2. Zoho Campaigns – Best for simple campaigns
  3. Sendinblue – Best ease-of-use
  4. Marketo Engage – Best for segmentation and personalization
  5. Pardot – Best for B2B marketing

How to Choose The Best Email Marketing Service For You

Email marketing services are packed features to help you save time at every step of a campaign.

Every step.

My favorite products get you minutes back on every task. Professional templates, drag-and-drop email editors, list management tools—they make all the hard parts easy.

On top of that, many of the most time-consuming campaign processes can be automated with an email marketing service.

The minutes you save turn into hours quickly, especially if you’re churning campaigns on a large scale.

More effective campaigns. Less effort. That’s the goal.

Let’s walk through the core features available with email marketing services so that you understand which product is going to deliver you the best results for you.

Ease-of-use

Unless your marketing teams double as developers, it’s essential to find a tool that anyone on your team can use.

As you browse, pay attention to the templates and pre-set workflows offered by each email marketing service. Are you excited to use these or do you intend to create your own custom templates? Some email marketing services lose their reputed ease-of-use once you step outside their pre-defined pathways.

It’s a definite plus if your solution comes with visual design tools to build emails and workflows. A simple-to-learn editor can be used right away by the people who need it. They don’t need training, and aren’t stuck waiting on someone who’s comfortable with the editor.

The best email marketing services also provide support, documentation, and walkthroughs to educate users and ensure that their product is truly self-service. 

If reviews indicate that customer support is sluggish, or that answers are hard to find, that’s a red flag.

Integration and Implementation

An important question to ask: How easily is your email marketing service going to mesh with your existing stack? 

Solutions that integrate with products you use are going to speed deployment and encounter fewer issues moving forward. This is especially true of your existing CRM and any other customer data sources.

Some products, like Sendinblue, come with their own CRM as part of the package, which can be nice for companies that aren’t looking to purchase multiple products in service of their email campaign.

Email Deliverability

The emails you send need to reach your recipient’s inbox. End of story. 

Without a high deliverability rate—I would be worried about anything below 95%—your email campaigns are dead in the water.

All good email marketing services ensure high deliverability in two ways. 

On the backend, they authenticate emails with DKIM, SPF, and SenderID, while also working with internet service providers to make sure that customer IP addresses aren’t blocked. 

Plus, quality platforms will provide ready-made email templates that are both visually appealing and compliant with privacy and anti-spam laws.

On the user side, email marketing services help you craft compelling subject lines and content that encourages customers to actually open your message. They also provide tools for managing subscribers so you can keep a clean list and avoid the spam folder.

Email Automation and Customer Journeys

One of the biggest defining (or limiting) features of an email marketing service is the level of sophistication your workflows can manage.

Entry-level tools can help you automate welcome series of emails for new subscribers, and other similarly straight-forward processes. 

If you want to start adding conditional or logical triggers that branch the customer journey into more personalized paths, you are going to need a more substantial tool.

You are also going to need to know a lot about your audience. Products that have really good list segmentation features will pick up tons of information on your customers, which in turn makes your automation more accurately targeted.

Segmentation really drives your ability to automate personalized emails, for example. You can set workflow triggers that respond to customer engagement, shopping habits, and other tendencies to ensure that customers are only receiving messages they’re likely to care about.

Subscriber Management

Quality email marketing services come with a lot of tools to manage the subscribers on their list. They will help you:

  • Import lists: Seamlessly integrate contact lists from CRMs and other databases.
  • Keep a clean list: Identify and remote inactive subscribers and spam traps that reduce deliverability
  • Generate leads: Create new contacts with pop-ups, landing pages, and other multi-channel tools that start an ongoing conversation.
  • Segment your list: Automatically group subscribers based on many criteria, including everything from what time zone they live in to how they signed up, and everything in between.

Campaign Performance Tracking

Email marketing strategies must be agile. 

Every service reviewed in this article comes with the ability to track traditional KPIs like:

  • Bounce rate
  • Click through rate
  • Conversion rate
  • Deliverability
  • Forward/share rate
  • List growth rate
  • Open rates
  • Unsubscribe rate

By keeping tabs on these metrics, companies can tweak their campaigns accordingly. 

Many email marketing services offer A/B testing, which allows you to test different versions of emails or subject lines to see what performs better. 

Look for that, because it’s super helpful for adjusting campaigns in the right direction over time.

More advanced email marketing services will help you tie traditional metrics to revenue, letting you see ROI per email sent and other business-critical metrics.They’ll also let you see how content is performing with features like click heatmaps, which show where your customers are spending the most time. 

You’ll probably have to spend more for those features, but they can provide crucial information that pays for itself.

Marketing automation software, like Pardot, provides multi-touch attribution models that let you visualize each touchpoint in the entire customer lifecycle. Marketing attribution drives business growth and informs your future campaigns by spotlighting the key elements of each customer relationship.

The Different Types of Email Marketing Services

Most products in this category want to provide email marketing services for companies of all sizes, so they offer a range of plans from a budget-friendly package to enterprise-grade service tiers.

Email Autoresponders

Exemplary products: Zoho Campaigns, Sendinblue (Free & Lite)

On the lightweight side of the spectrum, you’ll find services that augment your email marketing campaigns with easy-to-use tools for automation, email editing, and subscriber management. 

You’ll see these products billed as email autoresponders or email automation.

They don’t change what you do so much as they help you do it better, faster, and at scale.

Because they are so simple, the best email autoresponders are incredibly intuitive, inexpensive, and can start delivering results almost immediately.

Email Marketing Platforms

Exemplary products: Constant Contact, Sendinblue (Premium & Enterprise)

Email marketing platforms are a one-stop shop meant to help you build, track, manage, and optimize campaigns.

They are going to capture, store, and segment your customer data much better than a standalone email autoresponder. And with the richer picture of your audience, you can build much more complex email workflows.

You can get really granular when it comes to personalized customer journeys, for example. In Constant Contact, you can automate emails with shoppable product recommendations based on a person’s buying habits.

Doesn’t that sound great? 

What’s really nice is that these products are very easy to use and deploy. Campaign performance tracking features are built right in and provide a ton of visibility and control instantly. Some will integrate with tools like Google Analytics to get actionable data.

You can see what’s working, what’s not, and make changes on the fly.

Marketing Automation Software

Exemplary products: Salesforce Pardot, Marketo Engage

Marketing automation software includes email marketing services as part of a broader suite that accounts for every channel of communication. 

Organizations can expand their reach across email, SMS, social, SEO, websites, webinars, and paid media. Information from across all these channels is centralized in intuitive dashboards that drive real-time, evidence-based campaign decisions.

With marketing automation software, you can build out multi-branch email campaigns and customer journeys, tracking progress across every stage.

These products tend to be quite a bit more expensive, and understandably so. If you are looking to run simple to moderately complex email campaigns, you’re fine with an email marketing platform.

On the other hand, if you start to run into problems at scale or email workflows can’t handle your needs, it may be time to consolidate your processes with a marketing automation solution.

#1 – Constant Contact — Best for Ecommerce

Constant Contact offers some of the best email marketing services alongside top-notch solutions for ecommerce, event hosting, website building, and multi-channel marketing.

They average a 97% deliverability rate. This is only possible because the mature platform blends powerful behind-the-scenes functionality—like blocklists, proactive monitoring, and multiple forms of authentication—with an intuitive UI that helps teams craft effective messages that don’t bounce.

You can get Constant Contact up and running very quickly, and it will eliminate much of the legwork associated with email marketing. 

Automate product recommendations, for example, by sending shoppable emails based on the items a customer has in their cart, the weather, or tendencies of like-minded shoppers.

Trying to accomplish this task without an email marketing service would be extremely time-consuming. With Constant Contact, the process can be automated by just about anyone.

Some of the other reasons millions of people use constant contact include:

  • Unlimited email sends
  • Custom and branded templates
  • Campaign performance tracking
  • Subject line A/B testing
  • Drag-and-drop email editor
  • Rich ecommerce capabilities
  • Subscriber management, segmentation
  • RSVP, survey, and poll

Constant Contact helps with lead generation, too, via landing pages, customizable pop-up forms, and free hosting for a mobile-responsive website. This includes a blog, where you can leverage your email content as posts for SEO.

There are three pricing tiers for Constant Contact email marketing services and the amount you pay is based on the number of contacts. The plans are:

  • Email: Starting at $20/month
  • Email Plus: Starting at $45/month
  • Pro: Starting at $195/month

Constant Contact Email and Email Plus are two of the most popular email marketing services available today.

Constant Contact Pro uses AI-driven marketing automation to provide personalized product recommendations, smart subject lines, behavioral segmentation capabilities, and more advanced workflows.

I would consider a Pro subscription if you are thinking about marketing automation, but aren’t ready to pull the trigger on a heavyweight product like Pardot or Marketo.

#2 – Zoho Campaigns — Best for Simple Campaigns

Zoho Campaigns is a lightweight, cost-effective email marketing service that comes with all the must-have features.

In Zoho Campaigns, everything has been trimmed (but not watered down), so you can still accomplish 80-90% of what you can do with an email marketing service that costs three to four times as much. 

The ease-of-use is on par with agile project management software like Trello. Not only can non-technical users navigate Zoho Campaigns, they can master their domain.

Intuitively control the following features:

  • Drag-and-drop email editor and template builder
  • Email autoresponders
  • Email automation
  • Merge tags
  • Subscriber management
  • A/B testing
  • Team collaboration
  • Real-time analytics

Keep in mind that Zoho Campaigns also has integrations with popular CRM, ecommerce, and contact management products. 

Tying these data sources in can help you better target and personalize your email campaigns, yet Zoho Campaigns will remain fairly easy to use. 

Integrating Google Analytics, for example, can enrich the amount of customer data you pick up on each interaction, providing data visualizations to help you make sense of relationships over time.

Pricing is straightforward for Zoho Campaigns:

  • Email-based Plan: starting at $2/month
  • Subscriber-based Plan: starting at $4/month
  • Pay-as-you-go Plan: starting at $6/month

The Subscriber-based Plan is my favorite because it includes email automation, which doesn’t come with the Email-based or Pay-as-you-go Plans. At $263/month for 100k contacts with the Subscriber-based Plan, the automation will pay for itself many times over.

You can also try the Zoho Campaigns free forever version. It’s limited to 2,000 subscribers, but you get a lot of the marketing and content management features, as well as the chance to see if you like the interface. 

#3 – Sendinblue — Best Ease-of-Use

Sendinblue is a unified CRM, chat, Facebook, SMS, and email marketing platform. It’s loaded with features that are super easy to learn.

In other words, lots of tools with very little training.

Unlike other options on this list, every Sendinblue subscription (including Free and Lite) comes with a sales CRM, marketing automation, real-time reporting, advanced segmentation features, and more.

How’s that for out-of-the-box function? But wait. There’s more.

With popups, landing pages, and chatbots, you can build out your contact list with minimal effort, turning website visitors and Facebook passerbys your next lead.

And once people are on your list, Sendinblue gives you a ton of great tools to nurture leads, build out customer journeys, and communicate effectively every step of the way. The key features include:

  • Unlimited contacts with any plan
  • Mobile-friendly visual email editor
  • Retargeting ads
  • Campaign performance tracking
  • A/B Testing
  • Customizable signup forms
  • Transactional emails
  • Email API, SMTP relay, and other core API features
  • Advanced email automation

Sendinblue offers a free forever version, and paid plans at several pricing tiers:

  • Lite: Starting at $25/month
  • Premium: Starting at $65/month
  • Enterprise: Contact sales

The amount you pay is based on your tier and the number of emails you send each month. You can store as many contacts as you want without affecting the price, which is not true with most other platforms.

Notably, Sendinblue’s pay-as-you-go plan includes the same great features as whatever tier you choose, except the phone support. This is also something you won’t find in other options, like Zoho Campaigns.

There is no prior knowledge or technical skill necessary to start using Sendinblue, and their free forever plan is one of the best available. 

#4 – Marketo Engage — Best for Segmentation and Personalization

Marketo Engage, from Adobe, is a full-service marketing automation solution ready to support your strategy across any channel. 

Centralize and analyze customer data in an intuitive environment that allows for email campaigns with fine-grained segmentation and dynamic personalization. 

You can customize intricate workflows with behavioral triggers that wouldn’t be possible on other platforms because they can’t capture as much information as Marketo does. 

Every feature is full-bodied. A/B/n testing, for example, lets you pilot multiple versions of the same site or email rather than just binary A/B testing, which is where many other products stop.

There’s also Adobe Sensei, which uses AI and machine learning to personalize content. Sensei analyzes the performance of all your assets, learns which content works best for whom, and updates emails accordingly.

Other great features that come with using Marketo for email marketing include:

  • Drag-and-drop workflow builder
  • Lead and account scoring
  • Deep engagement and performance analytics
  • Attribution and ROI dashboard
  • Customer lifecycle management
  • One-click campaign cloning
  • Champion/Challenger testing
  • A/B/n testing

You’ll have to contact Marketo to get a price. It’s going to have a higher total cost of ownership than a dedicated email marketing service, but if you want superior segmentation and personalization , this can get a lot more done.

#5 – Pardot — Best For B2B Marketing Automation

Pardot is the marketing automation platform from Salesforce that’s built specifically for B2B marketing.

Do you need to hear more, or are you already sold? It’s as good and as deep as you think it is.

Pardot has 2,000+ integrations, a rich feature set, and a surprisingly intuitive UI. To be honest, the platform is a few steps ahead of its competitors in the dedicated email marketing space. 

It’s going to take some time and effort to build out the backend, but once everything is set up, Pardot gives you unrivaled visibility into your campaigns.

If you feel like the sophistication of workflows is lacking with your current setup or your analytics and data visualization tools aren’t giving you the insight into campaigns that you need, Pardot is the ticket. 

Some of the advanced email marketing features include:

  • B2B Marketing Analytics
  • Engagement history dashboards
  • Merge fields
  • Visual lead nurturing designer
  • Social profiling
  • ROI reporting
  • Multi-touch attribution models
  • Developer sandbox

Pardot is not a cheap option, but it is money well spent in service of a high-growth campaign. 

There are four pricing tiers:

  • Growth: starting at $1,250/month
  • Plus: starting at $2,500/month
  • Advanced: starting at $4,000/month
  • Premium: starting at $15,000/month

Other marketing automation solutions, like Marketo, are going to be in this neighborhood price-wise. There are certainly email marketing platforms you can get for a fraction of the cost, but they’re not going to give you anywhere close to the oversight and customization Pardot affords.

Summary

If you are just starting out, I would try out one of the best email autoresponders to get a feel for which email marketing features are going to be most important to you. 

Zoho Campaigns is another really great starting point. These tools are easy to use and many have free forever options.

For companies that need more visibility into their campaigns but don’t want to struggle with a new platform, Sendinblue will be great. It’s also not prohibitively expensive, even at the premium tier.

Constant Contact is another great option in the SMB price range, especially for ecommerce. It comes with some of the functionality you find with marketing automation software, but there’s no loss to it’s ease of use.

If you need the marketing automation and business intelligence functionality of Pardot or Marketo, budget it in. After a certain point, dedicated email marketing services aren’t going to handle the automated journeys you have in mind.

If Pardot and Marketo give you sticker shock, but you still want true marketing automation, check out Freshmarketer, or one of the other best marketing automation software solutions.

The post Best Email Marketing Services appeared first on Neil Patel.

Equity Crowdfunding: Recession Investing is a Legitimate Option

The long predicted impending recession is here.  Now it’s time to figure out how to survive.  Equity crowdfunding recession investing could be a viable option.

How Equity Crowdfunding Recession Investing Could Be Your Ticket Out

I am sure you are thinking, “Your ticket out of what?” The answer is, “Your ticket out of the recession.”  Everyone hopes to escape unharmed, and few will. Even if you get out with a few bumps and bruises, equity crowdfunding recession investing can offer just enough padding to help you avoid any broken bones.  

The number of US banks has been decreasing slowly for a quarter of a century, as is seen from consolidation in the market.  Also, deregulation in the 1990s decreased barriers to interstate banking. See: https://www.fundera.com/blog/happened-americas-small-businesses-financial-crisis-six-years-start-crisis-look-back-10-charts.

Too many assets in larger financial institutions is a problem for local business owners. Big banks are less likely to make small loans. During recessions, financial institutions end up being more cautious with financing.

In short, recessions are a fact of life, and when that time comes, as it now had, banks hold on to their money much more tightly.  This is why equity crowdfunding recession investing is not only a legitimate option, but maybe even a necessary option.

Hit the jackpot and weather any recession with our best webinar and its trustworthy list of seven vendors who can help you build business credit. 

Why Crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding has become all the rage and it’s no wonder. It’s pretty much free money that you don’t have to repay, and you can get these funds without having to give up any ownership or control over your startup company. In addition, there is less hassle than with traditional financing.

Real Estate crowdfunding is different from startup crowdfunding.  It’s the same general idea, but there are a few tweaks for the industry.  You need to know more about real estate investing first however, before you can start to think about equity crowdfunding recession investing. 

Types of Real Estate Investments

There are a couple of different types of real estate investments.  Which one works best for you will be an individual decision, but when it comes to equity crowdfunding recession investing, here is what you need to know about each. 

Residential Real Estate

There are two types of residential real estate investments. You can invest in property to re-sell for a profit, or you can invest in rental property. 

Property for resale typically refers to house flipping, which is tricky. You have to find a home in a location that will sell. There has to be a balance between the work that needs doing and the resale price. A lot of things have to fall into place. Still, many people make a successful living flipping houses. 

Rental investments include either single family homes, apartment buildings, or duplexes. Improvements may be necessary depending on the situation. It is important to be sure any improvements actually add value however. There is a point where you will not be able to get the cost of improvements back through rental income. 

Commercial Real Estate

These are commercial real estate investors that purchase property for commercial use. These are the people building shopping centers, strip malls, and buildings for businesses. Most often they are companies rather than individuals.

The companies still need funding for their real estate projects. Thanks to the JOBS Act of 2012, they have a new way of getting that funding. It not only helps them, but it also lets individuals enjoy the benefits of commercial real estate investing. It may not sound like much, but previous to this it was very difficult for individuals to break into commercial real estate investing.  The problem was the high cost. What is this awesome new dream come true you ask? That would be equity crowdfunding for real estate investors. 

How to Choose Your Real Estate Investments

Hit the jackpot and weather any recession with our best webinar and its trustworthy list of seven vendors who can help you build business credit. 

Location Not Only Matters, it is VITAL

You have to consider the location of the property when making your investment decision. Flipping a house that is in an area no one is buying in is not a good idea. Even the most amazing house in the world won’t sell if it is in a bad area.  Locations high in crime, in the floodplain, or some other less than desirable area are not good ideas. Even if it does sell, the price will likely have to be so low you see a loss.

Be Consistent

To make real estate investing work for you, find your niche and stick to it. If you are going to flip houses, flip houses. If you are going to be a landlord, do that. Commercial property investment your thing? Stick with it. 

It is almost always impossible to do everything, and it is impossible to do everything well. Pick one area of real estate investment and stick to it. 

Know Your Options

While equity crowdfunding recession investing is a legitimate option, you can’t know if it is right for you without knowing all the options.

What are your funding options? You can self-fund, which isn’t possible for most. In the past, the only other option was financing. There are plenty of real estate lending products available from various sources. 

Thanks to the JOBS ACT of 2012 however, there is now a new possibility on the list. That is equity crowdfunding recession investing for real estate. 

How Does Equity Crowdfunding Recession Investing for Real Estate Work?

To understand how this funding option works, you need to understand how crowdfunding itself works. With the JOBS Act of 2012, small businesses gained relief from a lot of requirements in place by the SEC. These requirements held many businesses back. 

The official title is “Jump Start Our Businesses Act of 2012.” By design, it relieves small businesses of many of the strict requirements put forth by the SEC. President Obama signed it on April 5, 2012. Equity Crowdfunding Recession Investing Credit Suite2

It releases some restrictions on raising capital, including allowing small businesses to go public with less than $1,000,000 in annual revenue. It also increases the validity of crowdfunding for both startup and real estate investing.

 The Act allows for open investing options that do not require investors to register with the SEC. This is true as long as they meet certain guidelines. Thus, crowdfunding platforms were born. For entrepreneurs looking to “kick start” their business idea, you now see sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. 

These sites allow individuals to post a business idea and accept investments.  These can go as low as $5 and as high as, well, the sky ‘s the limit. In return, investors receive some sort of reward. It may be a some of the profits, a free product, or any number of things. It is often a reflection of the level of investment. Today there are tons of crowdfunding platforms all over the internet. 

Equity Crowdfunding Recession Investing for Real Estate

Though similar to crowdfunding for small businesses, it isn’t exactly the same. There isn’t a need for perks or rewards for investing usually.  Additionally, there isn’t usually a lot of campaigning. Most of those that list on real estate crowdfunding sites are commercial real estate businesses. They are seeking funding for their projects.  Investors choose the ones that they feel will offer the greatest returns for their budget.

Anyone can invest in a commercial real estate portfolio.  It is similar to investing in a stock market portfolio. Then they can enjoy the returns without actually buying an entire piece of commercial property. 

This is how commercial real estate investors can raise equity and avoid a loan. At the same time, individuals can enjoy the benefits of commercial real estate investing for as little as $500. 

Top Sites to Find Equity Crowdfunding Recession Investing for Real Estate

There are many sites that offer equity crowdfunding for real estate investors, even in a recession. These are just a few. It will take some research to figure out which one will work best. When deciding, be sure to take into account ease of use and the lowest possible investment level.  If they do not offer an investment option that will fit your budget, there is no need to waste your time.  

Crowdstreet

 The options and training with Crowdstreet are what make it top notch. You can choose from portfolio or direct investing.  It is easy to make decisions with confidence because they offer a lot of training material for investors.

 The lowest investment for portfolios are $25,000, but the minimum for direct investing varies.  

RealCrowd

The best part about RealCrowd is that you can browse offerings before you sign up. The information includes minimum investment and average returns. This allows for a lot of the decision making to happen before you even log in. You can know before you even create an account if this site is for you, or not. 

Fundrise

Fundrise is a great starter site to break into the world of equity crowdfunding for real estate investors. The number one advantage of this site is that the minimum investment is $500. They also have lower fees than many other sites. 

 There are a lot more sites that have a wide range of options and advantages. It would definitely be worth it to take some time to look at them and see which one will work best for you. This is true whether you are a company seeking funds or an individual looking to invest. 

Remember, individual crowdfunding sites can change terms and details without notice.  Be sure to go to the site directly for the most up-to-the-minute information.

Equity Crowdfunding Recession Investing Offers Plenty of Benefits

On the property owner’s side, there are many benefits. The top one is the ability to raise funds without debt. This is the same reason crowdfunding is a popular way to fund a small business startup. It isn’t free money. There are fees and profit sharing involved, but it is often substantially cheaper than debt.

For individual investors, it is a great alternative option to stock market investing. The returns are typically larger and more consistent. The minimum investment can be very manageable. Those sites that have a higher minimum investment are options for investors looking to cash out current investments or retirement funds. They can try out a new option. 

More Equity Crowdfunding Recession Investing Tips

Be Honest

Always be honest. Lying and cheating never pays. Much of real estate investing depends on referrals. You will not get referrals if you do not practice integrity in your business. 

 If you are a landlord, be a good one. If you build commercial property, don’t cut corners. The same thing applies if you are flipping houses. Do not accept bad work to save money. Make sure your contractors do the best work they can so that buyers, investors, and renters get what they pay for. 

Keep Up with the Industry

Ignorance is not an excuse. Continue to educate yourself on real estate market trends, housing trends, and more. 

Hit the jackpot and weather any recession with our best webinar and its trustworthy list of seven vendors who can help you build business credit. 

Do Market Research

Speaking of the market, you need to know it inside and out at all times. You should be intimate with it. Read articles, watch videos, and do whatever you can to keep up with  your corner of the market. 

A Legitimate Option

Equity crowdfunding recession investing can open up a whole new world for many. Pretty much anyone can earn a nice passive income. Real estate investors have an alternative funding option, and it is often more manageable than financing. 

If there is a gap, there are plenty of other options still available. Many lenders offer real estate investment loan products with credit score requirements as low as 600. Interest rates vary, and due to the nature of the industry, terms are typically 13 months to two years. 

 If you are looking for financing to supplement your equity crowdfunding recession investing, be sure to shop around, the same as you would shop around for a crowdfunding site. Do your research so you can choose the best option or combination of options for your needs.

The post Equity Crowdfunding: Recession Investing is a Legitimate Option appeared first on Credit Suite.

Welcome to Ecommerce Unlocked: Your Free Ecommerce Marketing Course

E-commerce is booming.

There are currently 24 million e-commerce sites and counting. And with only 12% of sales taking place online, you can expect there to be massive growth in the years to come.

So if you want to create an online business, one of the best ones to create is an e-commerce store.

But how do you market it? How do you grow your traffic? And, most importantly, how do you get sales?

Sure you can use tools like Ubersuggest to help you out, but what do you do if you need step-by-step instructions from the very beginning… especially if you have little-to-no marketing experience?

Introducing E-Commerce Unlocked

Over the next 4 weeks, I am going to teach you how to market an e-commerce website. From SEO to paid ads to even CRO… I am going to cover all aspects of e-commerce marketing.

And of course, all for free. 😉

E-Commerce Unlocked is similar to my free SEO training course, SEO Unlocked.

But unlike SEO Unlocked, which is a 7-week course, I thought it would be more efficient to get you the training you need in just 4 weeks.

So, every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, I will release new videos to teach you how to get more traffic and sales to an e-commerce site.

And just like SEO Unlocked, E-Commerce Unlocked will contain worksheets, cheat sheets, PDFs, spreadsheets, and everything else you need.

Here’s the first lesson, which you can watch below:

Make sure you go here to download the worksheets that go along with it.

So what exactly will I learn?

As I mentioned above, it is a 4-week course. Here is an overview of what will be broken down in each week and in each lesson:

Week #1

Lesson #1: Getting Started

  • Foundation methodology
  • Strategies you’re going to learn
  • Strategies & mindset

Lesson #2: Sales Channels

  • History of e-commerce the timeline
  • What is working in the e-commerce space
  • Introduction to sales channels
  • Understanding sales channels

Lesson #3: Marketing Channels

  • Multi-channel marketing
  • Which market and sales channels work
  • Building visibility and brand
  • Current & future movers and shakers in the e-commerce industry

Week #2

Lesson #1: Conversion Rate Optimization

  • Introduction
  • Product pages made to convert buyers
  • Experience
  • Using reviews
  • Urgency and scarcity
  • Abandoned carts and follow up
  • Increase your AOV (Average Order Value)
  • Exit intent – capture lost traffic
  • Split testing with Crazy Egg
  • Increasing conversions on your e-commerce store
  • Email marketing campaigns for your site
  • Action tasks for optimizing your website for conversions

Lesson #2: SEO & Content Production

  • Setting up your Google organic feed
  • Rank your product listing pages
  • E-commerce content marketing workflow
  • Technical SEO for e-commerce
  • Making your content & transaction pages
  • E-commerce topical clusters
  • Content examples to look at

Lesson #3: Content Promotion

  • Link building for e-commerce
  • Building links to content, PDPs, & PLPs
  • Social media and social proof leveraging
  • Social media platforms in the long-term
  • Strategy for content promotion

Week #3

Lesson #1: Amazon

  • Keyword research for Google & Amazon rankings (and the differences)
  • Data sources
  • How to write good copy, product descriptions, ads, and come up with different marketing “angles” for Amazon
  • Amazon promotions & lightning
  • Optimize your listings
  • Using Facebook Messenger & Manychat
  • Amazon PPC
  • Sell more to your existing customers

Lesson #2: Sales Channels

  • Getting higher rankings on marketplaces
  • Walmart – how to get set up and what to expect
  • eBay – how to get set up and what to expect
  • Etsy – how to get set up and what to expect
  • Wish – how to get set up and what to expect
  • Facebook Commerce – how to win
  • Getting traction on each platform & what to do to win in each platform

Lesson #3: Marketing Types

  • E-commerce Marketing for (B2B) vs (B2C)
  • Sales process for B2B e-commerce vs B2C
  • Picking the one that’s right for you – do both or pick one?

Week #4

Lesson #1: PLA Campaigns

  • Setting everything up
  • Google dynamic remarketing
  • Google product listing ads (Google Shopping Ads) introduction + setting up
  • Your PLA campaigns
  • Bing product listing ads + setting up
  • Facebook dynamic product ads + setting up DPA’s correctly
  • PLA + DPA summary

Lesson #2: Additional Marketing Channels

  • Instagram ads
  • YouTube PPC – world’s 2nd largest search engine work to get you sales
  • Etsy PPC – what’s working on Etsy
  • Email marketing campaigns must have campaigns for e-commerce
  • Automate your customer emails and gather reviews much faster

Lesson #3: Additional Channels

  • Working with influencers
  • Push notification – lists & messaging
  • Understanding your metrics (COGS, ROAS, ROI to see what SKUs to scale with)
  • Case studies
  • Summary

How can I follow along during the 4 weeks?

You’ll see videos released every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday.

The videos are roughly 10 to 15 minutes in length on average so it shouldn’t take you more than an hour per week to follow along, including the completion of the homework assignments and worksheets.

To make things easier, the worksheets and homework assignments will be somewhat pre-filled so you will know what to do every step of the way.

No matter what, make sure you complete each assignment. Watching the videos is not enough.

Sure, the videos will teach you theories and strategies, but you also need to learn how to execute and implement. That’s why I want you to complete the worksheet and homework assignments.

In total, I’m asking you to commit an hour each week. If you are new to marketing, maybe an hour and a half, which should be doable. 🙂

Once you complete the 4 weeks (12 videos), you’ll know how to market any e-commerce website and even how to sell products online on sites like Amazon.

If you want to make sure you don’t miss a lesson (because I won’t be blogging about each lesson), make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel as I will be uploading the lessons there.

Once you click the link above, you’ll see a subscription box popup on YouTube. All you have to do is click the “SUBSCRIBE” button.

Once you click “Subscribe,” you’ll notice a bell image next to the subscribe button, make sure you click on that as well.

When you click on the bell, you’ll be given a few options.

Click on the “All” option. Next to the “subscribed” button, you should see a new bell notification :

This makes it so YouTube notifies you when I release a new E-commerce Unlocked lesson.

Conclusion

E-commerce is a booming field. Just look at Amazon, they are bigger than any traditional retailer.

Having the skillset of knowing how to market an e-commerce site can never be a bad thing.

And who knows, maybe you’ll do it full time as either a consultant or through running your own e-commerce site.

If you are new to marketing, don’t worry about being overwhelemed. I am going to teach you the main tactics that drive the majority of the results. And I will break them down in a simple step-by-step formula.

You’ll also be provided with the worksheets and tools you need, so you all you have to do is bring yourself and be willing to commit an hour to an hour and a half each week.

So, are you ready to learn e-commerce marketing?

PS: Leave a comment below letting me know what course you would like me to create next. I already did one on SEO, and now I am doing one on e-commerce marketing. Would you like one on content marketing, paid ads, Instagram…? It can be anything, just let me know in the comments.

The post Welcome to Ecommerce Unlocked: Your Free Ecommerce Marketing Course appeared first on Neil Patel.