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Without email marketing automation, your marketing team is missing out on major opportunities to nurture and engage your target audience and existing contacts.
In this article, we’ll review common types of email marketing automation, the tools to help you establish and maintain an email marketing automation strategy, and different automation triggers you may implement at your company. But first, let’s begin by answering the most important question: what is email automation?

Email Automation
Email automation helps convert leads into customers, delight existing customers, and encourage activity like greater product adoption, upsells, evangelism, and additional purchases.

 

Email marketing automation eliminates time-consuming tasks, such as preparing email lists, sending generic messages, or scheduling events manually. This gives marketers and salespeople more time to work on projects that actually require their attention (or cannot be fully automated).
Email marketing automation is centered around workflows which are a pre-determined, triggered set of actions you’re directing your automation software to take for you.
Now let’s look at how this process actually works.

 

Pro tip: While you work through the following steps, keep the teachings from this video on email marketing in mind — many of the topics covered below are also touched on in the video and vice versa — after all, your email marketing automation is part of your email marketing strategy.

 

1. Select email automation software.
There are a number of email automation software on the market today — the key is selecting the option that works best for your business and goals.
For the sake of this article, we’re going to work through the following steps in this section by looking at HubSpot’s Marketing Automation tool.
But here are a few more tools for your consideration with their main features and benefits to give you an idea of what these tools are capable of.
Email Marketing Automation Tools
1. HubSpot Marketing Automation

Best email marketing automation software for: Automating email campaigns and personalizing them using integrated CRM contact data to move prospects down the funnel.
Price: Free, $45/mo (Starter), $800/ mo (Professional), $3,200/ mo (Enterprise)
With HubSpot’s Marketing Automation Software, you can automate your email drip campaigns without any code. Select triggers, conditions, and actions so your emails are sent to the right audience members at the right time.
Pair your email campaign workflows to goals so you’re able to track and analyze their success. And speaking of workflows, you can visualize, customize, and personalize them to help you target every individual in your contact database.
(You can also use HubSpot to automate a number of other tasks aside from email such as lead scoring, lead rotating, setting up web hooks, etc.)
Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s Marketing Automation software to automate and personalize email campaigns to move prospects down the funnel and generate qualified leads.
2. Versium Reach

Best email marketing automation software for: B2B businesses that want to segment their customers to more effectively reach them across a variety of marketing channels including email.
Price: $300/mo (Tier One), $500/mo (Tier Two), $750/mo (Tier Three)
Versium Reach allows you to create target audiences that you can use across various marketing platforms (like HubSpot) and channels to help you effectively target and reach those groups through your email (and other digital) campaigns.
Versium Reach helps you visualize and segment your customers so you can tailor your email campaigns to them no matter which stage of the buyer’s journey they’re in.
The tool also helps you maintain a cost-effective lead generation strategy — Versium gives you the ability to experiment with a single data source for better-performing customer segments.
3. Mailchimp

Best email marketing automation software for: Connecting your ecommerce platform to your email platform so you can target customers based on purchase behaviors.
Price: Free, $9.99/mo (Essentials), $14.99/mo (Standard), $299/mo (Premium)
Mailchimp makes it easy to deliver personalized and relevant messages and purchase paths to individuals based on their contact information and how they interact with your company. Send-time optimization then schedules your emails to be sent when your customers are most likely to engage with them.
Mailchimp offers a number of ecommerce integrations (e.g. WooCommerce, Shopify) so you can connect your online store to the email tool — this way, you can target customers based on their purchases.
Mailchimp offers six main types of email automation to make your team more productive and efficient — these include 1) customer journey automation, 2) behavior automation, 3) transactional email automation, 4) postcard automation, 5) date-based automation, and 6) RSS-to-email automation.
4. Moosesend

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Best email marketing automation software for: Managing several email campaigns and mailing lists, and creating any condition combinations to segment your audience.
Price: Free, $8/ month (Pro), custom price (Enterprise)
Moosesend is an email marketing platform for managing several email campaigns and mailing lists. Design and A/B test responsive emails and newsletters to ensure they effectively target your audience.
Personalize your emails by creating any condition combinations in order to segment your audience based on the specific behaviors you care about on both your emails and your website.
Understand the success of your email marketing campaigns with Moosend’s analytics dashboard — track email opens, clicks, social shares, unsubscribed, and more.
2. Identify who you’re sharing your email campaigns with.
Determine who you want to send your emails to. For example, you might use lifecycle stages to group your email recipients — for upsell campaign, you send emails to existing customers who have not purchased a particular product yet.
Your email marketing tool should be able to help you efficiently segment your customers ahead of your campaign using the criteria you’ve decided upon. Again, your contact data in your CRM should help with this — for instance, in HubSpot, segment your email recipients by lifecycle stage.
3. Determine your email campaign’s goal.
Your email marketing is only as good as your strategy — so ensure you know exactly why you’re contacting these individuals. Do you want them to buy something? Learn something? Do something?
Once you answer this question, you can figure out the messaging you need to take them from where contacts are currently to where you want them to go.
You also have to plan for what happens when you succeed.
For example, imagine a 10-email series to get prospects to request a consultation. Prospect A converts within the first email. If Prospect A continues to receive emails telling them to do what they’ve already done, they’ll get frustrated.
In HubSpot, if you define your goal, it will unenroll any contacts who meet the goal.
4. Set enrollment criteria.
Enrollment criteria refer to the qualifications that must be met for a contact to be entered into a workflow.
If you’re using HubSpot Workflows, for example, you can create personalized, automated email workflows that can get triggered in a number of different ways — when a contact gets added to a list, submits a form on your website, clicks a link in an email, views a page on your blog, clicks on one of your ads, or becomes a marketing qualified lead.

You can also set up email workflows based on any information you have about the contacts in your marketing database, such as page views, email or social media clicks, content downloads, contact properties, or any combination of these and more.
5. Determine which processes you want to automate with Workflows.
If you were manually emailing these contacts, what would you do? Think of your email marketing workflows as blueprints that outline each action your tool will take for you.
For instance, in HubSpot, specify which actions you want the software to take. Examples of automatable actions are:

Sending an email.
Scheduling an email (and/or delaying it).
If/ then email branching.
Updating and syncing all email and contact data to your CRM.

6. Create your email campaign assets.
By this point, you know how many emails you want to send, the general messaging you’ll include in the emails, and which groups of customers the emails are going to.
Now ensure all of your email campaign assets are created and available in your email automation software so you can add them to campaigns.

7. Check your email automation setup and run a test, if possible.
Some things to consider implementing into your workflow publishing process are:

Looking at your list of enrolled contacts for errors.
Ensuring the number of enrolled contacts is what you’d expect.
Considering your workflow chart and use cases.
Checking your “Send” settings.

In HubSpot, you can test your workflow to ensure the automation you plan to set live is working as planned.

8. Make our email automation workflow live and monitor its progress.
Once you’re happy with the workflow, set it live.
Mistakes can happen, so monitor for anomalies. Don’t be afraid to adjust as needed to resolve issues or improve the performance of your email automation workflow — similar to your other marketing strategies, this is also an iterative process.
Additionally, you can always expand upon your workflows to support other business goals. Use them to automate other actions such as setting or clearing a contact property value, updating a contact’s lifecycle stage, adding/removing a contact from a list, and other administrative tasks that allow for more targeted, effective marketing to your prospects and customers.
15 Examples of Email Marketing Automation Workflows You Should Try
Now let’s walk through some examples of automated email workflows you can set up to start getting more out of your contacts database and marketing automation software.
1. Topic Workflows
Main triggers: Page views or content offer downloads.
Create a workflow for each of the industry-related topics you create content about.
Imagine you’re a unicorn breeder whose main content topics include unicorn diets, unicorn gear, and unicorn boarding. Then you could bucket your content marketing offers (e.g. ebooks, webinars, kits, etc.) and blog posts by these topics. You could also create an email workflow for each topic and then trigger the appropriate workflow when one of your contacts views a page or downloads an offer centered around that topic.
Trigger a content download workflow based on a form submission from a tool conversion tool like HubSpot’s Free Marketing & Lead Generation Software. To trigger an automated workflow in HubSpot, you can use the “Lead Flow Submission” option as the starting condition.
So if a contact downloaded your ebook called 10 Tips for a Balanced Unicorn Diet, your “unicorn diet” workflow would be triggered, sending that contact more helpful content, such as blog posts describing unicorn dietary tips.
2. Blog Subscriber Welcome Workflow
Main trigger: Subscription to your blog.
Give your brand new blog subscribers a nice, warm welcome with a blog welcome email. Use this email to thank contacts for subscribing, remind them what they’ll get out of reading your blog, review their subscription settings (and allow them to make adjustments), and promote your blog’s best-performing articles or other offers.
(Get tips for creating a successful blog welcome email here, and learn more about optimizing welcome emails here.)
3. New Customer Welcome/ Training Workflow
Main trigger: Lifecycle stage.
While we’re on the subject of warm welcomes, consider setting up a series of welcome emails when a contact converts into a paying customer, which you can trigger when a contact’s lifecycle stage gets updated to “customer.”
Not only is this a great way to kick off your new customer relationship on a positive note, but it can also keep your customers engaged after they buy. And if your product or service requires a little training on your customers’ part, use this workflow as an opportunity to introduce helpful training materials on an incremental basis.
4. Engaged Contact/ Evangelist Workflow
Main triggers: Visits, clicks, or form submissions.
Create a smart/ dynamic list that automatically updates to include contacts that you’ve really engaged.
To create this list, use trigger criteria such as a high threshold of visits to your website, clicks on your emails or social media posts, or form submissions. Then create an email workflow to leverage this list as a way to encourage evangelism of your top content in social media.
Because these contacts are highly engaged with you already, they’re more likely to share your top content. You can also consider adding list criteria to pull in contacts with a certain number of Twitter followers to leverage the power of those social media influencers in your database.
5. Lead Nurturing Workflow
Main trigger: Multiple top-of-the-funnel conversion events.
If a contact has downloaded several of your top-of-the-funnel marketing offers like ebooks and webinars, it might be a sign that they’re ready for a bit more. Set up workflows that help advance these contacts further down the funnel.
If the contact is a lead, send them emails containing more middle-of-the-funnel content that can upgrade them to a marketing qualified lead (MQL) or an opportunity in your sales process.
This workflow may include content and web pages you’ve identified from an attribution report analysis as influential in converting leads into customers — perhaps content like customer success stories/case studies, free trial offers, or product demos.
6. Internal Sales Rep Notification Workflow
Main triggers: Bottom-of-the-funnel page views/ conversion events.
On any given website, there are certain page visits and conversion events that indicate more product interest than others.
First, identify these pages and conversion events using an attribution reporting tool like HubSpot. You’ll notice that, more often than not, the pages you unearth will be your pricing page, product pages, etc. — the pages that your contacts view when they’re truly considering your products or services.
Use workflows here to trigger an internal email notification to your sales rep to inform them of these high-value activities. Using personalization, give the rep all the information they need about the lead in question, including relevant mid- and bottom-of-the-funnel content that they can send to the lead in their outreach email. This allows you to connect sales reps with the best possible leads at the right time.
7. Re-engagement Workflow
Main trigger: Inactive contacts.
Reawaken inactive contacts with a re-engagement workflow, enrolling contacts once they’ve met certain list criteria.
For example, you could set conditions such as the length of time since their last form submission, website visit, or email click, triggering the email once it’s been a while since a contact last engaged with you.
In your workflow, try sending them an exclusive offer or coupon to get them excited about your company again. For more tips about launching an effective email re-engagement campaign, check out this post.
8. Event Workflow
Main trigger: Registration or attendance.
Hosting a live, in-person, or virtual event? Use email workflows to automate your communication to event registrants and attendees before, during, and after the event.
For example, create a workflow that delivers important information registrants should know leading up to the event, such as hotel accommodations and agenda information for live events, or webinar log-in information for online events.
When the event ends, set up a workflow that gives attendees online access to session slides and continues to nurture them with additional content or promotion for future events.
9. Abandoned Shopping Cart Workflow
Main trigger: Shopping cart abandonment.
If you’re an ecommerce business, you’ll likely benefit from an abandoned shopping cart workflow.
The concept here is simple: When someone adds an item to their online shopping cart but leaves your site without completing the purchase, you can trigger an email workflow that reminds them of their forgotten purchase. By offering a special discount code or incentive to buy, you motivate the individual to return to your website in order to complete the transaction.
10. Upsell Workflow
Main trigger: Past purchases.
Communication with your customers shouldn’t stop after they make a purchase. This is especially true if you sell a variety of different products and/or services. Use workflows to help you upsell or cross-sell existing customers.
Create dynamically updating lists of contacts who purchase a certain product — or combination of products — and create workflows aimed at recommending other products/ services or encouraging upsells or add-ons.
11. Customer Happiness Workflow
Main trigger: High or low NPS scores.
If you administer regular Net Promoter surveys of your customer base, you can use customers’ Net Promoter Scores as a property to trigger workflows.
Simply determine what your ideal customer happiness score is, and use that as the threshold for your dynamic list of happy customers. Then trigger a workflow for customers with “happy” scores and reward them with exclusive content, offers, or discounts.
Trigger a different workflow for your “unhappy” customers that includes content/offers aimed at helping to improve their happiness.
You can even segment unhappy customers by the specific reasons they’re feeling unsatisfied — then, send them even more targeted workflows aimed at addressing their issues.
12. Customer Success/ Engagement Workflow
Main triggers: Success metrics or product usage.
If you keep track of customer success metrics, you have a prime workflow opportunity on your hands.
For example, if you’re trying to build up your arsenal of customer case studies, automatically trigger an email that asks customers if they’d be interested in being featured as a success story once certain customer success metrics were met.
Furthermore, if you track of customers’ product adoption or feature usage, you could trigger a workflow for users who are exhibiting low product engagement, providing resources that educate and train them on how to use the product features they’re not taking advantage of.
13. Upcoming Purchase Reminder Workflow
Main trigger: Purchases made on a cycle.
Does your contacts database include customers who typically purchase on a cycle? Enter those people into a workflow that gets triggered when they make a purchase.
For instance, let’s say you sell eye care products, and a customer purchases a six-month supply of prescription contacts. Enroll that customer into a workflow that sends them an automated email five months later as a reminder that their six-month supply is about to run out, and it might be time to order a new batch of contacts.
14. Customer Service or Ticket Workflow

Main Trigger: A customer or prospect contacts customer service via email or an online form.
Sometimes, your customers or prospects might have trouble using your free or paid software. When this happens, fielding a bunch of customer service emails and messages can take tons of valuable time from your schedule.
One way to avoid this is to create a workflow that turns customer concerns into tickets that can be categorized, labeled, and assigned to customer service reps on your team. These tickets can also help you keep track of ongoing problems as well as when issues with a customer or prospect are resolved.
15. Deal-Based Workflows

Main Trigger: When someone e-signs a quote or contract.
Sealing the deal is obviously key to successful marketing and sales. Automating small aspects of this process, like emails someone might get after signing a contract or quote page with you, allows your sales reps more time to nurture the client over the phone, during demos, or via other messages.
With a deal-based workflow, you can trigger confirmation emails when a prospect becomes a client or qualified lead by signing a quote or contract. With systems like HubSpot, you can also set the workflow to change the contact’s status to show where they are in the lifecycle.
Automate Your Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing automation increases efficiency and gives your team back valuable time that can be spent on customers and other work that requires their attention.
Additionally, the process helps optimize your email marketing strategy and personalize email content to increase its effectiveness among your target audience and customers.
Identify your ideal email marketing automation tool and begin setting up the workflows your team needs.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in September 2012 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

You’ve heard it a million times, native advertising is one of the most immersive advertising experiences. But what exactly is native advertising, and why is it causing such a stir for brands, agencies, and publishers?
Native ads developed as a concept over 10 years ago and have a unique ability to evolve with media as it changes. They have since overtaken display ads as the most popular form of digital advertising.
Native advertising is a chance to put editorial expertise to work for advertisers and brands. It provides a more trusted and valuable, channel to reach readers as compared to banner or traditional display advertising.

In this article, we’ll cover why they’ve continued to grow in popularity and effectiveness and how you can incorporate them into your marketing strategy next quarter.

A small icon is also an indicator, often a small “s,” that if you click on it will indicate that the content is a paid ad. Google search results often include native ads in the form of listings that appear at the top or in the sidebar. The nature of native advertising is that it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb as the ad. So, the signs are often more subtle than traditional ads.

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Native Advertising vs. Content Marketing
The purpose of native advertising is to blend in and not disrupt the viewer’s experience with the given content and media. Native ads engage new audiences through a third-party with an established audience. It’s a method for distributing content, rather than the content itself. This might sound similar to content marketing, but the goal differs.
Content marketing is content that lives on your platforms, such as your website or social media pages. The purpose of this content is to build a following, grow a reader base, establish yourself as an industry expert, build trust with your audience, demonstrate credibility, increase engagement, improve sales, or all of the above.

1. Altran Engineering in the Financial Times

This native advertisement combines some of the best elements of digital advertising: video, a human interest story, and classy hi-tech with an Elon Musk connection.
Produced by the Altran engineering company, and published in the Industrial Tech section of the Financial Times, the above video, “Hyperloop: designing the future of transport?” tells the story of a group of students from the Technical University in Valencia, Spain who are competing in the 2018 Hyperloop Pod Competition run by Musk’s SpaceX company.
This native video ad has a palpable human component — the students and the Altran staff who are supporting them in the tough competition. This brings in its futuristic aspect — the best and the brightest working to design the fastest transport pod that will transform the future of transportation. And it’s presented as a news story, not as a promotion or ad for Altran or the SpaceX competition (although it’s actually promoting both).
What Stood Out
This video has a high production value, making it a high-quality native video ad. The compelling narrative it provides also strongly pulls viewers in and gives them a story they want to engage with.
2. Land Rover — A Mini Suspense/Action Movie

Land Rover uses diverse outstanding content marketing campaigns to promote its vehicles. These native content strategies are in full form in Land Rover’s Dragon Challenge video, shown above. It’s eye-catching, slick, and suspenseful. It’s everything a native campaign can and should be.
This nail-biting ad shows the world’s first attempt to scale the stairs leading to the Heaven’s Gate landmark in China — by vehicle. A specially fitted Range Rover SUV successfully drove up the 999 steps to Heaven’s Gate, at a frightening angle of 45 degrees.
What Stood Out
This native campaign perfectly captures the brand essence of Land Rover — daring, excellence, adventure, and ultimately, success. Promoted via social Land Rover’s networks, it’s much more than an ad. It’s a record-breaking event and a story of its own.
3. Eni Energy on CNN

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Here’s an example of graphic, luscious storytelling, ripe with green landscapes, promoted by oil and energy conglomerate Eni. It focuses on the Green River Project in the Niger Delta, an Eni development program for farming and livestock to improve the livelihoods of local communities. The campaign is promoted with native ads on CNN.com, linking back to the Green River Project. It’s a truly impressive example of native content.
The site is designed as a story, divided into three sections: Past, Present, and Future. The content is a mix of just about everything — text, imagery, audio, video, personal stories, animations, and illustrations. The complete look and feel is reflective of an environmental agency, rather than an oil company.
What Stood Out
In this native campaign, Eni succeeds in distancing itself from the criticisms faced by energy conglomerates. They also manage to create a brand image as a 21st-century social and environmental force for good, and a beacon of corporate responsibility.
4. Mercedes in The Washington Post

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This native campaign by Mercedes is an example of smooth, clean content designed to pique interest and engage the user. The campaign is called “The rise of the superhuman,” and it focuses on various technologies that are turning people into “superhumans,” such as robotic exoskeleton suits, virtual reality in medical settings, and the Mercedes Benz E-class series that integrates the new Intelligent Drive system.
The native content above is highly interactive, featuring quiz questions and hot spots the user can click to get more information. But one of the best things about this campaign is how it effortlessly creates a connection between Mercedes and the “superhuman.” It’s reminiscent of one of the oldest native examples, the “Penalty of Leadership” ad by Cadillac, which enhanced the Cadillac image as a prestigious leader. That simple print ad, published in 1915, is credited with reviving the Cadillac brand and boosting flagging sales that plagued the company at the time.
What Stood Out
The major draw of this native ad is the powerful connection it creates between the car and the concept of cutting-edge excellence. It establishes Mercedes as a company that is about more than just crafting cars.
5. Viral Meme on VentureBeat

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Nothing beats a viral meme in terms of sheer stickiness, and it’s a great way to promote brand awareness. Recently, during the famous “Laurel or Yanny?” dispute, we saw VentureBeat take advantage of the meme in native content to promote the upcoming Transform conference on artificial intelligence and analytics. How? By using an artificial intelligence (AI) device to settle the dilemma of Laurel versus Yanny, once and for all.
VentureBeat promoted an article that briefly describes how AI was used to determine whether the stated name was Laurel or Yanny. The native article discusses some of the problems that arose, and how the engineers had to adjust the algorithms to get an accurate result.
What Stood Out
Using a viral meme is a smart move because it capitalizes on a large audience that already exists. It’s attention-grabbing and exposes you to a wider pool of viewers.
6. Allbirds in The New York Times
Special articles in The New York Times focus on creating an experience, not just a story. This is a great opportunity for native advertising to come into play. This paid post, The View From Above: Why Our Future May Depend On the Fate of Birds, was placed online and sponsored by the shoe company Allbirds. This example was placed as an in-feed/in-content ad on the platform’s newsfeed.
The article is about how valuable birds are to our environment and the ways climate change is putting them at risk. Allbirds as a company has a major focus on sustainability, and, obviously, has “birds” in its name. The post’s beautiful animated graphics and soundtrack of bird sounds create an awesome experience for viewers that also promotes the company.

What Stood Out
The format of native advertising is at its best when the media can align with the brand. Allbirds being able to create an experience about sustainability promotes not just their product but also their priorities as a company.
7. Influencer Promotion on BBC.com
BBC Future is one of the BBC’s “storytelling” channels, which connects brands to audiences via sponsored stories. An interesting example is this BBC article, which purports to show the face of the “average American politician.”
In fact, this is achieved by using technology to perform “face averaging,” creating composite images of all American politicians to derive the average face.
This technology can lead to all kinds of research and suppositions about what the average politician represents, including gender, race, republican, and democrat — all hot topics in a highly politicized time period.
The article ends with a call-to-action (CTA) to learn more about face averaging with an online tutorial on OpenCV, an open-source computer vision software. The link leads to a website owned, not by a large corporation or software giant, but by an individual entrepreneur, programmer, and blogger: Satya Mallik.

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What Stood Out
In this example, we love how native advertising is accessible to small businesses and influencers, affording powerful promotion opportunities on premium websites like the BBC.
8. Colored Corn on Business Insider

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One of the best native tactics is creating a story. And if the story is visual and colorful, well, that’s a huge help. Take this example of native content promoted on Business Insider.
The example above looks and feels just like a regular Business Insider article. It’s about Glass Gem Corn, a multi-colored corn variety that became a public sensation in 2012. It’s the story of one man and his search for his Native American roots that led him to develop the colored corn. And in true Business Insider fashion, the story of the rainbow corn is retold in amazing, bold, eye-catching visuals.
The article contains links to buy the seeds online from Native/SEARCH, a not-for-profit conservation company that now owns the product. So what’s in effect a product sales page is presented as a remarkable, colorful news story.
What’s most interesting about this article is the disclaimer published by Business Insider: “This article was originally published in 2013 and has been updated because the story is timeless.” It just goes to show: Evergreen content promoted natively can truly be a long-term success story.
What Stood Out
Crafting a story that is fun, interesting, and promotional is a great way to format a native ad. This also has the benefit of being attached to a viral story, making it even more effective.
9. KPMG on Forbes

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Forbes’ BrandVoice is a platform for native advertising and sponsored content. Many brands have their own BrandVoice channels, such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, SAP, Deloitte, and even the government of Japan.
KPMG has taken its native content on Forbes to the next level, with a campaign called “The Great Rewrite.”
Big and bold (just like native advertising should be), The Great Rewrite focuses on different industries and how they are being “rewritten” in a post-innovation age. The campaign look and feel is grand and ultra-modern, yet easy to navigate.
What Stood Out
This native ad connects KPMG with the future of innovation, while continually adding new “chapters” about various sectors. Each chapter is packed with content, including video, featured articles, and content recommendations. This is a great example of a native campaign that, just like its title, is rewriting the rules of native in an ongoing, ever-growing, content-rich user experience.
10. Orbit Gum on CollegeHumor

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Videos make great native ads because the entertainment value makes it easy to blend into traditional media. “Dating Footnotes” presented by Orbit was released ahead of Valentine’s Day on the popular YouTube comedy channel CollegeHumor. It’s short, funny, and capitalized on the holiday of the time.
Orbit has a history of fun, memorable commercials, so a native ad like this fits perfectly into their branding. This native ad also blended well into the humor of the channel where it’s posted and was able to promote Orbit Gum’s products without feeling like a regular commercial.
What Stood Out
Humor and creativity go a long way when it comes to advertising. This, plus the real-world application of a product, like gum on a first date, makes for a memorable and effective native ad.
Native Ads Have Great Potential
These days, many native ads that we see online are truly spectacular. Some are eye-catching, others are original, and yet others offer inspiration for new ways to promote compelling content and capture mindshare.
The nine examples give a taste as to how native advertising is constantly advancing, pushing the boundaries of content and design to create new, unexpected online brand experiences.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

And just like that, another year is (almost) in the books. As marketers begin to map out their 2022 marketing plans, it’s the perfect time to dust off the crystal ball and predict what will shape the industry over the coming year.

There’s certainly a lot to consider — the continuing impact of the global pandemic, the massive shift to digital advertising, and the rise of platforms like TikTok — to name a few. Simply put, what worked for your marketing strategy in the past might not fly in 2022.
Ready to explore the future of marketing? Let’s look at all different types of advertising, and the 6 types brands are investing in this year.
1. Video Advertising
As marketers look for innovative ways to engage audiences, video has become an integral part of the conversation. Video advertising uses videos to promote products and services, educate or entertain consumers, and reach new audiences in an engaging way.
But let’s be honest — video isn’t a new, “up-and-coming” strategy. It’s here, and its impact is already undeniable. And with the popularity of video-related platforms like YouTube and TikTok, it remains a top priority for marketers.
2. Social Media Advertising
It’s hard to imagine any company successfully marketing its offerings today without a social media account. With over 4 billion people on social media, it’s easy to see why companies gravitate to this medium.
Social media advertising serves paid ads to your target audience on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Aside from its reach, it also offers a wealth of opportunities to boost brand awareness, generate and convert leads, and foster customer relationships.
Social media is also great for retargeting, which is the process of targeting audiences who have previously interacted with your website or social media. SharpSpring Ads is one retargeting platform that lets users recapture lost viewers by sending them targeted ads on Facebook, Twitter, and across the web.
3. Mobile Advertising
Digital advertising is all about meeting people where they are, and more often than not, they’re on their phones. In fact, as of July 2021, 56% of all web traffic came from mobile phones. If we jump back to 2011, this number was just over 6%.
Mobile advertising encompasses all forms of advertising on mobile devices — anything from banner ads and popups to SMS text messages. When done correctly, marketers can take their campaigns mobile to reach audiences exactly where they are.
4. Display Advertising
Display advertisements are mostly found along the top or sides of third-party websites. And due to their flashy style and placement, they aren’t exactly subtle. However, display ads can offer impressive reach, and they are easy to create and track in Google AdWords.
During a time where consumers want less intrusive ad experiences, it can be easy to write off display ads. Although it may take some trial-and-error, marketers can create effective displays ads while providing consumers a great experience. Plus, if the ads are enticing enough, they can build brand awareness and capture leads.
5. Print Advertising
When I think of print advertising, I picture the infamous poster of Rosie the Riveter, recruiting women for defense industries in World War II. While the ad industry has evolved since the 40s, print is still an effective and universally-used medium. It’s now migrated to the digital space, encompassing digital magazines, newspapers, and brochures, among others.
Unlike digital ads, print advertising is nearly impossible to track and analyze as accurately. However, many businesses have found innovative ways to incorporate print into digital ad campaigns.
6. Broadcast Advertising
Broadcast advertising uses TV and radio to promote products and services. TV ads, in particular, have a broad reach and can provide a more engaging, multi-sensory experience. But, these ads are expensive and the audience may avoid them (by clicking to another channel).
A cheaper alternative is radio, which plays spoken advertising spots between music and programs. It’s particularly powerful for local and regional advertising. But if you’re looking for national reach, podcast advertising is a similar method.
7. Native Advertising
Have you ever seen an advertisement on Instagram that looks exactly like a normal post from someone you’re following? That’s one example of native advertising.
Native ads often resemble the design, style, position, and functionality of the content around them. They’re undoubtedly harder to spot, but that’s actually a good thing. Because native ads naturally integrate with other content, they’re almost impossible to spot and skip — capturing three times more time and attention than other digital ads.

For example, you may run an ad campaign across TV, print, and social media to promote a new product launch. Regardless of the medium, the singular message is there — we have a new product, and we want you to know about it.
Types of Advertising Campaigns
Here are three main types of advertising campaigns:
1. Promotional Campaigns
Promotional campaigns focus on promoting products or services and building awareness in new markets or locations. In other words, the name of the game is customer acquisition. For example, you may run a Facebook campaign to promote an upcoming business event.
2. Engagement Campaigns
Engagement campaigns have a simple goal: provide enough value that people complete an action (make a purchase, sign up for an e-newsletter, download an eBook, etc.). It’s an excellent way to attract, retain, and, ultimately, convert leads and build brand awareness.
3. Advocacy or Retention Campaigns
We’ve all heard the statistic — it’s cheaper (and arguably easier) to retain customers than to convert new ones. This is why advocacy and retention campaigns are so important. These campaigns keep your business top-of-mind for your existing client white boosting repeat business long-term.
6 Types of Advertising Brands Are Investing In This Year
Ad spending in the US will surpass the $200 billion mark in 2022. Let’s find out where marketers are investing their time and money next year:
1. Short-Form Videos
Short-form videos are everywhere nowadays. In a 2021 HubSpot Blog poll of 1,000+ global marketing professionals, 85% of marketers ranked short-form videos as the most effective type of content in 2021. Additionally, 64% of marketers surveyed plan to invest their ad spend into video in 2022.
The popularity of short-form videos has continued to rise since the introduction of TikTok, and it has no signs of slowing down. Unlike its digital marketing counterparts, short-form video can create immersive experiences for users. They’re more “sticky,” shareable, and, in my opinion, way more addicting than other formats.
A variety of social media platforms have tried to emulate TikTok’s format. This creates a lot of ground for marketers to cover — from Stories on YouTube to Reels on Instagram. For marketers who have the budget for creating, producing, and editing video content — and the creativity to make engaging videos — the iron is hot for the striking.
2. TikTok and YouTube
Since short-form videos are skyrocketing in popularity, it only makes sense that video-sharing platforms are too.
Marketers are certainly setting their sights on YouTube and TikTok next year. In a 2021 HubSpot poll, 44% of marketers plan to leverage YouTube for the first time in 2022. And 61% of marketers plan to increase their investment in TikTok marketing in 2022.
When it comes to video marketing, YouTube has become the go-to destination for marketers. It now has over 1 billion active users, and is the second most popular website behind Google (which owns YouTube). All this to say, your audience is probably on there.
Then there’s TikTok. It’s climbed the ranks over the past few years, becoming the most downloaded app in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Not only is it the app of choice for Gen-Z’ers, but it’s also quickly growing in popularity among Millennials. The app has yet to plateau, so there’s still time to leverage it.
3. Live Video Streaming
Before the COVID pandemic, I’d never heard of Zoom. Now, I use the app a few times per week. Turns out I’m not alone — many marketers did experiments with live video in 2020 and realized its power as a customer acquisition and retention tool.
In terms of expenses, live video is typically more cost-effective than producing and editing an actual business video. Additionally, many social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have live video capabilities, presenting a great opportunity to expand your reach.
We predict live video streaming will become a default for marketers moving forward. Whether that means refining your presentation skill or learning to engage views on stream, marketers will need to keep a pulse on best practices and industry standards in this space.
4. Conversational Marketing
Conversational marketing and chatbots are becoming commonplace online. In 2021, 47% of marketers report using bots for marketing efforts, up from 45% the year before — and this trend isn’t slowing down.
Here’s why we’re hedging our bets on conversational marketing in 2022 — first, chatbots are now much easier to use and add to websites. Second, AI powers many of these tools — which significantly impact (and improve) the way we connect with customers and manage leads.
Marketers should expect to see AI powering a growing number of customer support, ad targeting, campaign management, and automation tools. This leads to our next trend…
5. Marketing Automation
Odds are, you have at least one marketing automation tool in your wheelhouse — and we predict this number will grow in the next year.
76% of companies in 2021 report using automation. Of those that don’t, 26% plan on adopting automation in 2022.
The trend is clear — marketers are turning to automation to make their life easier. For instance, AdStage offers automation for scheduling and tracking digital ads — which frees up valuable time for other tasks.
When nearly 90% of agencies say their marketing automation strategy is successful, it’s clear why it’s here to stay.
6. Hybrid Events
Hybrid events occur both in-person and “virtually” through a streaming platform.
Engagement is what distinguishes a hybrid event from, say, a Ted talk on YouTube. Hybrid events cater to both in-personal and online attendees by using technology to spark participation between them. Virtual attendees can typically still ask questions (if applicable) and engage with presentations with no issues.
A report found that 93% of event professionals plan to invest in virtual events post-pandemic. That’s a staggering number, and we predict it will continue to rise.
Final Thoughts
Marketers are always learning to evolve in a world where consumer preferences are ever-changing. As we inch closer to 2022, it’s important to revisit the past year, pinpoint areas for improvement in your advertising efforts, and leverage emerging trends and shifts.

Hemp cultivation is a taboo subject in the United States, particularly in non-white communities.
Not only are there access barriers to non-white communities learning about hemp cultivation, there’s a strong negative stigma associated with Black people and hemp (or cannabis), part of the generations-long ‘war on drugs’ in the United States.
Damian Fagon, the founder of Gulleybean, wants to change the script, sharing hemp cultivation knowledge so more people, especially Black and Brown people, can access the multi-billion dollar opportunity of hemp.
Featuring insights from Buffer’s Small Business, Big Lessons podcast episode eight and the accompanying unpublished interview, Damian shared his journey from hemp farmer, to teacher, to business accelerator leader, and the economics behind why he focuses so hard on encouraging people to become hemp farmers.
Damian Fagon, Founder of GullybeanFinding farming and facing challenges
After years in the Peace Corps in Guatemala and a few more in Washington, DC at the State Department, Damian Fagon wanted a change.
Instead of focusing exclusively on diplomacy, he wanted to work in economic development. This shift brought him to New York City, where he did his Masters of Public Administration at Columbia’s School for International and Public Affairs (SIPA). While there, he said he balanced business education with policy work, explicitly focusing on learning how he might help farmers get better yields from their crops. His goal was to return to Guatemala and other South American countries to help economic development through farming.
Damian realized that while the medical cannabis market is fairly large (around $5 billion in the United States), it pales in comparison to other types of crop farming. However, the possibility for hemp plants, he said, have multiple other use cases from textiles to plastic alternatives. But there’s one key problem: the war on drugs.
“The problem with the crop and with the genetics we have access to, is that the United States spent the last 80 years with a federal ban on studying and growing the hemp crop,” said Damian.
After graduating from Columbia, Damian found investors in Philadelphia who would back him in a hemp farming operation in rural South Carolina. Unfortunately, the crop failed and Damian returned to New York City.
Determined to figure things out, Damian spent a lot of time – and money – learning the ropes of hemp farming from consultants in states that had legalized recreational cannabis. As he flew around and paid consultants, he couldn’t help notice how gatekept this knowledge truly was.
“The people who’ve had access to growing cannabis own farms and they own land, and they live in communities that have very traditional agricultural roots,” said Damian. “And only 2% of farmers nationally are Black, and so the disparities that already existed in agriculture and land access are just being amplified in the cannabis space.”
After learning more about hemp and cannabis farming, he set up shop in the Hudson Valley in New York. Unfortunately, though, he had to deal with significant challenges around fitting in as a non-white person (and immigrant to town) in a region that’s majority white and settled for generations.
“I’m not saying that all the people in these communities are racist, but they don’t have a lot of experience in diverse conversation, diverse engagements,” said Damian. “There’s not a lot of immigrants moving out there either. So, that challenge is very real and very, very personal.”
From farming to business incubation
After successfully navigating hemp farming in the Hudson Valley, Damian wanted to leverage his knowledge to have a wider economic impact for Black and Brown people in urban areas.
First, he started teaching at Medgar Evers College, a historically Black college (HBCU) in Brooklyn. He not only taught the agricultural tools of farming, but also brought in the business side, especially the opportunity in hemp and cannabis cultivation.
“I’ll be teaching horticulture, but a lot of it will be a larger discussion on the supply chain business opportunities in cannabis so that people can actually see it the way it exists in other states and identify places where they can position themselves to make money [or] start a business,” said Damian.
Second, he started working on a much larger project in the Bronx: a hemp business incubator.
“The idea with that project specifically is to create a facility and an environment wherein interested people in the Bronx – entrepreneurs, formerly incarcerated people who formerly grew cannabis in the basements of public housing in the Bronx and were arrested for it – those people can access our facility, rent equipment and launch their own cannabis businesses,” said Damian.
The goals of this incubator, said Damian, are three-fold:
1. Micro-cultivation pods: These pods will allow people to rent equipment and space to start growing hemp legally on a micro-scale.
“The facility will be designed in a way where growers, particularly first time growers from the city, from the Bronx, [can] pursue a micro business license,” said Damian.
2. Cannabis and hemp education: Spreading knowledge of hemp farming, the economic opportunity behind it, and the job opportunities for people who don’t want to start a business right away. This arm, said Damian, will be run by a nonprofit organization set up by Damian and his team.
“They have a lot of experience working with marginalized communities, formerly incarcerated, formerly homeless, particularly young people, helping them get jobs in high demand industries,” said Damian.
3. A business within the incubator: Damian said this part is still being fleshed out, but he wants to see the incubator run its own hemp cultivation business so it has an active revenue stream to fund other activities.
“I do want that facility to have its own business that can make it self-sustaining,” said Damian. “There will obviously be a level of profit sharing with those who come in and utilize the spaces to start their businesses, to pay for the overhead, but I don’t want to start something that is reliant on continuous funding and sponsorship from donors and corporate sponsors.”
A global impact waiting to be recognized
There are so many possibilities for hemp and cannabis, whether medicinal or industrial, beyond recreational use. And Damian sees this potential as a massive way to uplift historically impoverished nations.
“I saw that crop as potentially transformative for the global south, specifically West Africa, Caribbean, Latin America, Southeast Asia; some of these regions that are perfectly suited for cannabis commercial cultivation, and I wanted to learn how to grow the crop,” said Damian.
Thinking about the reason why he landed on hemp farming as his means of economic development, he ties it back to his family and his passion. Even the name gullybean, for example, came from a crop his father still farms in his native Jamaica.
“I fell in love with farming through Gullybean,” said Damian. “… With adult-use cannabis legalization in New York, there has never been a better opportunity if you’re interested in inclusive economic development [and] generating wealth in low-income communities… there’s never been a better time to be focused on the cannabis market.”

Last week, I collected some feedback from users. They said that when they used their mobile phones to log on to the website, the experience was not good. They felt that the whole site was very disorganized, and they didn’t even know where to start using it. I am very sorry about it. I think I’m going to start optimizing the mobile interface next week, but before that, there’s a more urgent problem. I’m having some trouble with my website speed. I used nitropack to optimize the speed of my website. Before using PageSpeed Insights, the score measured by mobile was 19, PC was 39, after use, mobile was 31, PC was 56, but the score was not very ideal. Do you guys have any better suggestions?. Before: https://postimg.cc/hf6HkXXK After: https://postimg.cc/KKhdzBYC
submitted by /u/crazyeye-rabbit [link] [comments]

Writing an email can be a daunting task. It’s not the length of the content that makes it difficult, as opposed to other forms of long-form content, like blog posts. However, emails can be tough because they’re more personal, impactful, and tell a lot of things in a few words. Penning a heartfelt welcome email…
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