Category: Marketing Automation

Following the success of Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, Snapchat, and now LinkedIn Stories, Twitter’s finally launched its own story feature.
It’s called Twitter Fleets.
The launch of Twitter Fleets comes after a successful pilot which began nine months ago. In March, Twitter began testing the feature in Brazil and continued to add other countries to its pilot until unveiling the feature in the U.S.
But, how does Fleets work and how might your brand leverage it in your marketing strategy? We’ll walk you through everything we know so far below.
Fleets, or fleeting tweets, are similar to Instagram Stories. Like Instagram’s layout, Twitter users who have Fleets will see a bar with circular Story icons from each account above their Twitter feed.

From their homepage, a user can tap on a circular Fleet icon to see what an account posted in their Fleets area.

Unlike tweets, the text, video, or photo published shows up in a vertical format, similar to Instagram Stories. But, if you like the Tweet format, you can also share a one in a Fleet to draw more attention to it, like McDonalds does below:

How to Use Twitter Fleets
1. Tap the circle with your face in it in the Fleets bar. Like Instagram and LinkedIn Stories, the Fleets bar is above your feed and your Fleet icon will be on the right side, as seen the first screenshot shown above.  
2. Create your content.

Also similar to other story platforms, you’ll see a simple camera screen where you can take a picture, film a video, upload content from your camera roll, or create a Fleet with a basic background color and text comment.

3. Add text and descriptions.

Once you’ve designated your content, you can tap “Aa” to add text, the color icon to change the color of the text, or the ALT icon to add an alt-text description for those with screen readers.

4. Publish your Fleet.

When you’re done, you can simply tap “Fleet” in the upper right-hand corner to publish what you’ve created.

The Motivation Behind Twitter Fleets
Because Fleets disappear after 24 hours, just like Instagram Stories, Twitter says it’s aiming to see if its ephemeral content will promote deeper and more personal conversations on the platform.
To make Fleets even more “personal,” other users cannot retweet or share the link to them. Twitter users can also only reply to Fleets via direct message.
When Twitter started its Fleets pilot, the company surveyed some of the first beta testers. As expected, most who used Fleets said they felt more comfortable publishing more personal thoughts or opinions than they’d publish in standard tweets. This was because the users knew that this content would eventually disappear.
“We hope that those people who are not usually comfortable with Tweeting use Fleets to talk about the reflections that come to their head,” said Mo Al Adham, a Twitter product manager explained, in Twitter’s announcement.
Twitter Fleets also signifies yet another move social media platforms are making towards embracing ephemeral content.
While disappearing video, text, and Stories might’ve sounded like gimmicks back in the earlier days of social media, ephemeral content features are increasingly common in today’s online landscape.
Although Fleets might not be the center of brand strategies just yet, you can still begin identifying potential ephemeral content that could ultimately work on the platform. Below, I’ll highlight a few commonly used ephemeral tactics that could boost brand awareness on Twitter Fleets. 
How Brands Could Use Twitter Fleets
1. Publishing Limited-Time Offers
Want to sell out a lot of one product quickly? Or, offer a promotion to your most engaged Twitter followers? One great way to do both of these things could be using Fleets to promote temporary sales, offers, or coupon codes.
Since Fleets only last for 24 hours, users won’t be able to find the codes or promotions forever. That could mean that these audiences might feel a sense of urgency to make a purchase, use a given coupon code, or just visit your website to learn more about your product.

Image Source
2. Hosting Daily Giveaways
Along with posting about short-term sales and coupon codes, Fleets — and other Story platforms — could be great places to promote giveaways. With a Story-like platform, you can include more text, video, and photo about the products you’re giving away and explain the rules of your giveaway within multiple pages.
While you can announce a giveaway in standard tweets, all of this information might have to be published in multiple posts or a thread due to Twitter’s character count limitations. And, because Twitter’s feed is so fast-paced, you’ll likely need to post more than once to get a large number of contest entries in a limited time.
With a platform like Fleets, you’ll not only be able to post multiple pages of tweets in the same Fleet story, but your content will also appear in the Fleets area above a user’s feed. This might mean that there’s less risk in your contest announcement being buried by tweets from other accounts.
Additionally, because Fleets and Stories only last for 24 hours, viewers might feel a sense of urgency. Like with coupons or sales, audiences might want to enter your contest, view your entire Story, or go to your website before the Fleet disappears.
To give you some added inspiration, here’s an example of a contest that a brand once ran on Instagram Stories:

Image Source
3. Embracing Live Events on Social Media
Want to leverage live events or short-term news in your social media marketing strategy without it clogging up your Twitter profile? Consider covering the event with ephemeral content. That way, when the event is over, users focus back on your overall brand and business.
In this example below, the NBA’s Instagram Story featured coverage of the Toronto Raptors parade in Ontario, Canada. At this point in the Story, a Raptors team member took selfies with the rapper, Drake.

4. Interacting With Loyal Fans
While Twitter’s highly public platform already allows brands many opportunities to find and interact directly with fans, Fleets could also be a helpful tool for this.
On Instagram and Facebook Stories, you might regularly see content where brands ask users to DM them questions or content. Then, a brand might create a Story with user-generated quotes, images, or videos. This tactic makes users who participated feel like the brand cares about their thoughts. Meanwhile, an interactive Story like this allows other audiences to see that the brand appreciates its most engaged followers.

Aside from question-and-answer interactions, you could also go one step further by publishing Fleets with user-generated content from customers or fans. One brand that frequently does this on Instagram Stories and Facebook is Planet Fitness. In the story below, they highlight fitness journey photos sent to them by their actual customers:

Not only does this Story allow loyal Planet Fitness fans to contribute to the brand’s social media content, but it also allows prospects to see how real people have benefited from the gym’s services.
5. Offering Behind-the-Scenes Content
Most of us know that people love seeing behind-the-scenes content from celebrities, athletes, and influencers on Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, and Snapchat. But, research shows that consumers also enjoy behind-the-scenes material from brands.
While tweets offer brands a platform to create quick well-worded posts or publish heavy-lift content, Fleets could allow brands to show audiences behind-the-scenes content or insights that make them look more authentic and relatable. This is something we’ve seen brands frequently do on their temporary Instagram Stories.
In the Story below, the New England-based Caffe Nero highlights a Barista of the Year competition that it holds with its staff every year. The Story highlights how Caffe Nero baristas are dedicated to serving customers and shows off an authentic piece of the restaurant’s company culture that many customers might not know about.

5. Informing Audiences About Complex Industry Topics
When you craft a tweet, you need to sum up your message in 280 characters or start a thread. But with Fleets or other social media Stories, you can add further information or insight with photos, videos, or multiple pages of text. This could allow brands to offer Twitter users a stronger variation of valuable, easy-to-create content that isn’t limited to tiny tweets, pricey marketing videos, or time-consuming live streams.
Here’s an example of how HubSpot discusses more complex industry topics via Instagram Stories. While you might not be able to add the same level of imagery to Fleets content, you could potentially leverage multiple pages of text in a similar way.

Navigating Ephemeral Content
Can content that disappears really leave an impression? Well, if Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have taught us anything — the answer to that question is, “Yes!”
While ephemeral platforms are a new and exciting opportunity, it does take creativity and brainstorming to create content that will grab your audience in a memorable way.
To get better acquainted with key ephemeral content tips and strategies, check out this introduction to the content type. Then, learn more about how major brands are leveraging current ephemeral platforms like Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, and Snapchat.
Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published to cover the Twitter Fleets pilot in May 2020, but was updated in November 2020 for comprehensiveness and freshness.

It’s been a few years since account-based marketing (ABM) joined the ranks of top marketing strategies. But even after all this time, that “A-B-M” acronym still leaves some people scratching their heads. 
If you’re not sure what ABM is or how it can help you target key accounts, you’re not alone. ABM is constantly evolving and adapting to the marketplace. If you haven’t been keeping up, it may seem hard to jump in now.
Good news: It’s not too late to get started with ABM — and there’s a new podcast series that can bring you up to speed. Our friends at Salesforce’s long-running Marketing Cloudcast have an all-new series, How to Speak ABM. 
This series explores tips and advice for marketers to target the right accounts and build strategies for successful ABM programs. Each episode covers a key ABM topic, so even experts will find new things to learn. 
All seven episodes of How to Speak ABM are now live:

Getting Started with Account-Based Marketing
The Data Imperative
Account Anthropology
3 Steps to Success
Three’s Company
The Digital Handshake
The Future of Lead-Gen

Dive in with Getting Started with Account-Based Marketing, where Marketing Cloudcast hosts Tina Rozul and Megan Collins chat with Michael Kostow, General Manager of Pardot at Salesforce, and Emma Chalwin, SVP of Global Field Marketing at Salesforce, about ABM fundamentals and how it helps marketing, sales, and service teams target accounts that are the best fit for potential business.
Check out all seven episodes of How to Speak ABM on Soundcloud or Spotify — and subscribe to the Marketing Cloudcast for more marketing insights.

Disclaimer: This blog post is not legal advice for your company to use in complying with EU data privacy laws like the GDPR. Instead, it provides background information to help you better understand the GDPR. This legal information is not the same as legal advice, where an attorney applies the law to your specific circumstances, so we insist that you consult an attorney if you’d like advice on your interpretation of this information or its accuracy.
In a nutshell, you may not rely on this as legal advice, or as a recommendation of any particular legal understanding.
 
It’s not enough to implement a few changes for data protection in your business and forget about it. As part of the GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation that’s now in EU law, businesses need “data protection by design and by default”.
This means building data security and privacy into every aspect of your business’s data management strategy. From data capture to storage, maintenance, transfer, use, and cleaning, it’s essential to take care of your contact data ethically and securely.
While we’re not advisors on GDPR, we can follow the experts and present their recommendations. This includes collecting clear consent for communication, managing data securely, and implementing requirements such as cookie banners and privacy notices.
One of the most straightforward ways to meet these requirements is with GDPR compliance software.
GDPR compliance software helps businesses to manage customer data, consent forms, and data security. Some platforms also enable a company’s customers to edit the personal data that is stored or processed about them.
What is Personal Data Under the GDPR?
Personal data includes information related to people who can be identified from it, whether directly or indirectly. Pseudonymized data can help reduce privacy risks, but it is still personal data by this definition. The GDPR applies to the processing of personal data wholly or partly by automated means, such as a form on your website, or the processing of personal data which forms part of a filing system.
How GDPR Impacts Email Campaigns
When whispers of GDPR first started surfacing many moons ago, one of the questions that most perplexed business owners had was whether they could continue sending emails to their existing contacts.
As an email marketer in the world of GDPR, you need to collect freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous consent (Article 32) before sending emails.
Adhering to data protection in your email campaigns includes adopting these practices:

Requiring all leads to specifically opt-in to communications before sending email campaigns.
Offering contacts an easy way for their personal data to be edited or removed.
Purging contact data you no longer require or after the communicated storage time in your terms and conditions.

To maintain a clear oversight of all contact data, you can sync your current lead and customer data as well as their latest subscription and consent status between apps with a two-way data sync. You can also implement a consent management platform to collect and manage consent for all contacts.

 
Simplify GDPR Compliance with a Consent Management Platform
One key part of GDPR is documenting each contact’s consent to store their data and communicate with them. While you can use built-in features in each of your apps, it’s also helpful to choose a dedicated consent management platform, or CMP. Here are some of the top CMPs to consider:

Didomi is a popular consent and preference management platform with comprehensive solutions to collect, store, and leverage user consents and preferences. After completing the setup process, you can see a compliance score out of 100% for your business. With their Privacy Center, you can also offer customers a dedicated space to easily access and manage their consent and preferences.

Piwik PRO was built as an analytics platform but now includes a Consent Manager to manage your marketing stack’s compliance in one centralized place. It’s designed to get your tools up to speed with GDPR, California’s CCPA, Brazil’s LGPD, and other privacy laws around the world.

Other Apps to Streamline GDPR Compliance
As well as adopting a consent management platform, there are several other types of apps to help you manage your contacts compliantly. Here are some GDPR-friendly apps to consider adding to your stack:

LogicGate Risk Cloud is an agile GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) cloud solution. It includes enterprise-level solutions for risk management, compliance management, and data privacy.

Boxcryptor makes your cloud storage more secure with encryption for OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive among other providers. It’s free to use for one storage provider on two devices, and you can upgrade for unlimited devices, providers, and advanced filename encryption.

Onna integrates, unifies, and protects knowledge platforms in one centralized and secure place. Connectors include Google Suite, Microsoft 365, Dropbox Business, Zoom, and Slack Enterprise.

iubenda generates instant cookie banners and terms and conditions that are customized to fit your business, tech stack, and the data you collect. It’s especially valuable for websites and small businesses to comply with legal requirements quickly and simply.

PieSync and its two-way data syncing tool existed before GDPR, but it has some handy benefits for secure data management and up-to-date contact information, including subscription status. The two-way sync enables you to create a “single source of truth” between your apps and make your customer data easier to use and manage. Next to the subscriptions, you can also sync consent status and preferences between apps with customizable filters and rules.

Fathom Analytics was co-founded by entrepreneur and author Paul Jarvis, Fathom Analytics offers simple, fast, and privacy-focused website analytics as an alternative to Google Analytics. It doesn’t collect any personal data, so it’s instantly GDPR-compliant and you don’t need to include it in your cookie notice.

Keep Your Company Compliant
To maximize your organization’s GDPR compliance, there are certain steps you need to follow and checkboxes to tick. However, there are ways to streamline the process. GDPR compliance software can reduce many of the headaches and make it easier to meet the most important requirements, enabling you to get back to your other business goals sooner.

Whether you’re running a small business website, an ecommerce shop, or a blog, email marketing is a powerful digital marketing tool that will help you attract and convert new customers as well as retain your current ones.

Introduction
If you could travel back in time to the wild west days of the early internet, you would find a web filled with very basic fonts that made designers and marketers cringe. That’s because marketers were forced to use the handful of web safe fonts that were most common at the time. 
But some very smart and creative people wanted to do more. And so as happens with so many emerging technologies, it was a forcing function for changes. Enter web fonts.
We partnered with Jay Oram to bring you heaps of web font know-how in this guide so you can use web fonts in your email campaigns like a pro.
Fonts
Before diving into the world of fonts in email, it’s important to know some information about fonts, terminology and where to find out more!
Fonts can express your brand and convey a specific message or aspect of your designs. They are an essential part of any branding guidelines and an important part of smart email design. 
As you will discover, email clients don’t all support importing fonts into your email that are not already on a user’s computer. But knowing a bit about fonts and how the web uses them will give you all the knowledge to let your brand shine through, whether using a web safe font or linked web font. Chris from Action Rocket has a great article on Fonts and the history behind them here.
Font or typeface?
A typeface is a group of fonts all with the same design elements, such as cap-height, x-height, serif and letter-spacing. Fonts are the different weights, widths and styles that make up that typeface. 
Cap-height and x-height
These are exactly what they sound like, the height of the capital letters or the letter ‘x’ in a font. This is helpful when choosing fonts that look similar. By choosing a group of fonts with similar x-height, you can ensure a good design experience across email clients.
Serif or sans-serif
A serif is the ‘tail’ of a character. Some fonts like Time New Roman have added tails on letters, whereas Arial fonts do not have these extra parts. 
Which should you choose? 
Serif fonts give a feeling of classic, stylish and traditional brands, such as The Times newspaper or classic brands such as Jaguar and J.P Morgan and academic institutions such as Cambridge and Harvard University.
Sans-serif fonts are often identified with more modern, cutting edge brands, such as Google, Spotify and Adidas.
Your brand guidelines will give you a hint of the style of font that should be used, and in some cases will give you a specific font. 
Letter-spacing
Letter spacing is the space between each letter. Some fonts have characters close together, whilst others have more room between them. Another important factor when choosing fonts for your emails. 
Not all email clients will allow you to import your brand font and show it to your email readers so you will need to set a few fonts in your ‘font stack’. If they all have similar x-height, letter-spacing and are serif or sans-serif to match your brand font, length of copy and the reader’s experience should remain consistent.
Elements you can control
Not all fonts may be supported, but you can ensure some elements are consistent. These include, font-size, font-weight, line-height and font-style.
Font-size
The height of your font can be controlled by using font-size in your email CSS. You can set this in the WYSIWYG editor on Campaign Monitor, or if you are coding your email HTML yourself, font-size can be set with units such as pixels(px) and points(pt) or by using relative units such as percentages(%) or viewport width(vw). Each has their own merits and support across email clients, which you can check on the Campaign Monitor CSS guide.
style=”font-size: 16px;”
Line-height
The line-height can be set using the same units as font-size and let’s the user control the height of the line, this won’t affect the font-size, but the gap above and below lines of text. A bigger line-height will add more space between lines of text. 
style=”line-height: 22px;”
Font-weight
This CSS attribute allows you to control the weight of each character, either by setting a numerical value or using words such as bold or normal. Font-weight is set at intervals of 100, with 100 being the thinnest lightest font-weight to 900 being the boldest. 
style=”font-weight: bold;”
TIP: Accessibility and font-weight
WCAG guidelines suggest using bold tags <b> or font-weight: bold / 700 to show a piece of text as bold for the design only. This won’t be highlighted to screen readers as something to emphasise. If you want a screen reader to emphasise an element in the text it should be wrapped in <strong> tags.
Font-style
To emphasise a word or some text in your email you can use the CSS attribute font-style, and choose from italic, normal or oblique styling. 
style=”font-style: italic;”
Choosing fonts
Now that you understand all the aspects of a font and how you can style them within your email, you can choose your fonts, yes multiple, as I have mentioned previously, not all email clients will support your branded, linked or custom font, so as well as the font you choose for your brand or the one that is in your brand guidelines, you will need to choose suitable fonts that will act as fallbacks. These fonts are all included in your font-stack.
When your email is built in HTML and CSS, the coder will add a set of fonts that the email will run through until it finds one that is supported. This is included in the font-family CSS attribute:
style=”font-family: ‘Open Sans’, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;”
In the above example, the font stack starts with Google’s ‘Open Sans’ font – this isn’t included as standard on all computers and will need to be linked in your email. If an email client doesn’t support linking the Google font, it will move to the next, Helvetica, commonly found on Apple computers. If the user has this installed on their computer, it will show this font, if not it will move on to Arial – a font pre-installed on most devices—but not all. 
So the final font in the stack is ‘sans-serif’. this means your email will be displayed in whatever pre-set sans-serif font is available on that device. The final font in your font stack should be sans-serif or serif—to ensure that the correct style of font is used, even if none of your specified fonts are present.
Using all of the above information, you will have your brand font. Then you will need to choose some web safe fonts to add to your font-stack.
What are web safe fonts and web fonts?
There are web safe fonts and web fonts but what’s the difference? We’re glad you asked.
Web safe fonts
Web safe fonts includes fonts such as:

Arial
Verdana
Georgia
Times New Roman
Courier

These are all considered web safe fonts that can be used for live text in email, they are ‘Web Safe’ as they are found pre-loaded on to most users devices. These change over time, with the above list being computer staples for a number of years. You can find a good breakdown of fonts at https://www.cssfontstack.com/. 
Who uses web safe fonts?
Employing web safe fonts may seem boring, but there are plenty of brands who use this type of text. Why? Because web safe fonts, in many cases, are classic. They look clean and render on virtually any device.
Brands that use web safe fonts or a variation of these fonts include massive companies, such as:

American Apparel
Crate & Barrel
JCPenney
Jeep
Mattel
Nestle
Panasonic
Target
Time
Toyota

Web fonts
Web fonts are typically not found on multiple operating systems and devices. They’re specifically designed and licensed for use online. Web fonts allow for more creativity for the designer as they aren’t limited to choosing a font that comes pre-installed on a computer.
Email client support for web fonts
The right font not only makes your emails easy on the eyes, but it also can convey a range of emotions. 
Using fonts correctly is essential to an effective email marketing campaign. When it comes to email marketing, it’s best practice to use web fonts wherever you can. However, it’s important to keep in mind that not all email clients offer universal support for web fonts.
Generally, the following email clients have good support for web fonts:
– iOS Mail app
– Apple Mail
– Samsung Mail app
– Thunderbird
– Outlook MacOS
However, web font support depends on the email client and how the web font is embedded in the email.
As we mentioned earlier on, if a user doesn’t include a supported font, the email client will run through the font-stack and will show the next supported font, with some exceptions.
Outlook on Windows
There currently isn’t a way to include a custom web font in Outlook. Older versions of Outlook used to default to Times New Roman unless a specific fix was added (we share this later!), but the latest version, Outlook 2019, now follows your fallback fonts.
Gmail
With a large share of the email market, Gmail doesn’t support web fonts (It doesn’t even support its own Google fonts!!). Gmail does have some fonts it uses. The default is Roboto, but it does show Google Sans, Google Sans Medium, Product Sans, Roboto Italic, Roboto Regular, Roboto Medium and Roboto Bold. By including these in your font-stack, Gmail should render your chosen font.
Fonts and accessibility
Choosing and styling fonts in your email can give you a massive range of options. Whilst you should be considering your brand guidelines and the needs of that specific design, something that should be second nature to email designers is to think about how accessible your choice is. 
Font choice
You should use your brand guidelines to find the font to match your brand. The team choosing the font has most likely taken accessibility into account when picking it, but if you get the chance to help with this choice and whilst choosing fallback fonts, there are some things to consider that will increase the accessibility of your choice.
Check out this excellent blog on choosing an accessible font from Fontsmith. Some points to consider include: 

Do characters look similar?
Can you tell the difference between a capital ‘I’ and a lowercase ‘l’?
How close are the letter ‘B’ and the number ‘8’?
Are the ‘b’ and ‘d’ symmetric or altered to aid in distinguishing the two? 
Are the letters too close together or joined and are the negative spaces, such as the center of an ‘O’ or ‘P’ large enough to be distinguishable?

Look for a highly crafted typeface with a considered, clear and elegant design.
-Fontsmith
Color choice
Basic email design principles will ensure that your font has a high enough contrast with the background color or image it is on to make it clear to read. WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) recommend a contrast of at least 4.5 to meet AA standard, or 7.0 to reach AAA standard. 
Reaching a contrast of 4.5 should be the minimum for all font and background color choices. To check your color contrast you can use an online tool, such as the WebAIM contrast checker.
Font-size
A minimum size of 14 pixels or the equivalent in relative units is widely accepted as a minimum to ensure your text is accessible. On mobile devices this can still seem a bit small for most, with an optimum size of 16 pixels as best for all of your audience.
Line-height
The space between the lines of text in your email can make it easy or hard to understand. Increasing the line-height will make it easier for recipients to read large blocks of text. 
Alignment
Another factor in your design should be the alignment of your text. Left aligned text is best for blocks of text with more than two lines. Center aligning short titles and subheadings is okay, but if you do this with too much text it makes it much harder to read. Never justify text over two lines in length and this makes it difficult to follow and read.
How to use web fonts in your email campaigns
Campaign Monitor’s powerful email builder takes all the guesswork out of using web fonts in your emails as they are built right in.
Our drag-and-drop email builder has a multitude of fonts that can be used in your campaigns that are supported by most email clients. If they’re not, a suitable fallback font will be displayed instead, with zero extra work required on your part.
For those who code
If you’re sporting some technical know-how about web fonts, then read on as we go a bit more in-depth on the topic.
How to embed web fonts in email
If you’re still reading you must know your web font stuff and you know a thing or two about coding an email (or at least, you’re ready to learn!). So let’s talk about how to embed web fonts in your emails.
It’s surprisingly easy to serve up web fonts in your HTML email. There are three approaches, all with slightly different levels of support in different email clients.
Two of these methods import your chosen fonts by linking to a CSS stylesheet containing the @font-face information. That means leaving your fonts in another file hosted on your own server or on your chosen web font server such as Google fonts. Both methods are well supported across the email clients that will load your custom web fonts. 
@import 
@import url(‘http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans’);
<link>
<link href=”http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css”>
The third method brings the CSS into your HTML file in a style block. This gives the most granular approach to bringing fonts into your email, with the file directly loading from your email’s HTML, rather than loading from an external stylesheet. This has some performance improvements, along with the ability to choose which font; style, weight and file type to download. 
 @font-face
@font-face {
  font-family: ‘Open Sans’;
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 300;
  Src: url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/opensans/v18/mem5YaGs126MiZpBA-UN_r8OUuhpKKSTjw.woff2) format(‘woff2’);
}
Think of the @font-face method as a direct-to-the-source sort of method of importing your web fonts. It can be more reliable to import the web font directly from the source as you can choose which format of web font you want to import. Especially if you’re given a choice, which some web font suppliers do have.
In the example above the WOFF2 font format has been imported, which is considered to be the most widely supported of font formats for email.
Finding this information on Google fonts can be tricky, but follow these steps to find the font you’re after. At https://fonts.google.com/ search for your chosen font and add it to your selection by hitting the ‘+ Select this style’ link. 

The selected style will be added to your ‘Selected Family’.

Choose ‘Embed’ and you will get the information you need to link your font.

You can also choose @import – to show it in this style if preferred.

To get the @font-face information for your specific font choice, you need to highlight and copy the link to the CSS file: https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Open+Sans:wght@300&display=swap.
Paste this link into your browser and you will see the range of fonts that are downloaded by your email client if you link or import this stylesheet:

To improve the load time of your email and also only import the specific font you want to use, find the /* latin */ version with the woff2 file format: 
/* latin */
@font-face {
  font-family: ‘Open Sans’;
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 300;
  font-display: swap;
  src: local(‘Open Sans Light’), local(‘OpenSans-Light’), url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/opensans/v18/mem5YaGs126MiZpBA-UN_r8OUuhpKKSTjw.woff2) format(‘woff2’);
  unicode-range: U+0000-00FF, U+0131, U+0152-0153, U+02BB-02BC, U+02C6, U+02DA, U+02DC, U+2000-206F, U+2074, U+20AC, U+2122, U+2191, U+2193, U+2212, U+2215, U+FEFF, U+FFFD;
}
Some of the attributes included in this @font-face are not supported by email clients. To reduce our file size further we can remove the unicode range, src: local and font-display information. Cutting down to the below:
@font-face {
  font-family: ‘Open Sans’;
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 300;
  Src: url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/opensans/v18/mem5YaGs126MiZpBA-UN_r8OUuhpKKSTjw.woff2) format(‘woff2’);
}
This will give your email the fastest and most direct information to download your font. However, be aware if you use this method in conjunction with Google Fonts, the URL may change in the future. It’ll be something you would need to keep an eye on. If you can host the font file on your own server, that would be best. 
After you’ve imported your font using any of the above methods all you just have to add it to your font declaration:
<td style=”font-family: ‘Open Sans’, Arial, sans-serif;”>Open sans font for all!</td>
Outlook web font bug and the joy of Times New Roman
As with many things email, web fonts come with their own particularly annoying problem. In this case: Outlook 2007/2010/2013. 
Oh, the joy of Outlook! There’s always one, isn’t there? Even if you’ve set your fallback font up correctly, Outlook won’t fallback to that font. Outlook will fallback to…Times New Roman. Great! Not so great if your fallback font isn’t Times New Roman.
The good news is that there’s a few workarounds for this issue.
This older fix is still valid, but involves a lot of extra code, both inline and in your <style> blocks, but isn’t to be ignored. You can embed the following code in your email:
<!–[if mso]>
<style type=”text/css”>
.fallback-text {
font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
}
</style>
<![endif]–>
Then use the class fallback-text wherever you have used your web font family like this:
<td class=”fallback-text” style=”font-family: ‘Open Sans’, Arial, sans-serif;”>Open sans font for all!</td>
What’s happening here is the CSS class is being used to target the text and serve Outlook an alternate font stack to use. You can substitute Arial for any other web safe font you would like to use.
Another method is to hide your custom web font from Outlook using the @media query:
@media {
@font-face {
  font-family: ‘Open Sans’;
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 300;
  Src: url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/opensans/v18/mem5YaGs126MiZpBA-UN_r8OUuhpKKSTjw.woff2) format(‘woff2’);
}
}
By wrapping your font inside this media query (which isn’t supported by Outlook) your custom font will be ignored, and Outlook will move down your font stack until it finds a font on the users operating system.
Lastly, you can specify a specific Windows Outlook fallback font, by including mso-font-alt in your @font-face:
@font-face {
  font-family: ‘Open Sans’;
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 300;
  Src: url(https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/opensans/v18/mem5YaGs126MiZpBA-UN_r8OUuhpKKSTjw.woff2) format(‘woff2’);
mso-font-alt: Arial;
}
This works because Windows Outlook still uses the Microsoft Office (mso) rendering engine to display your email and the specific mso CSS attribute tells Outlook to use Arial, or whichever your chosen web safe font is. 
Choosing good fallbacks
As mentioned earlier, a fallback font is the font that is shown to the subscriber of the email if their email client doesn’t support web fonts. You need to give choosing the right fallback font some thought. Keep in mind that the fallback font needs to be a web safe font, so you’re limited in your choice.
The vertical design of your email is incredibly important, and you don’t want it to fall apart when your second or third font choice is displayed. So you need to consider is the x-height of your web font that you’ve chosen and choose a web-safe font that has a similar x-height.
 

 
The animated GIF shows three different fonts which fit incredibly well together, in terms of their x-height. While Verdana does have an overall greater size, the x-height is similar to the other fonts. So vertical spacing of your email will be fine.
Another font attribute to consider is letter-spacing to ensure line length doesn’t change dramatically.
Consider if the feel of the fallback font is similar to your web font. If your web font is a serif font (like Times New Roman), you need to make sure you choose an appropriate serif font as a fallback. And the same if you’ve chosen a sans-serif font (like Arial). This ensures that the overall look and feel of your email doesn’t change if the web font is used or fallback font. You need to keep the design of your email consistent from client to client.
Where to get web fonts
One of the most popular and easy to use sources of web fonts is Google Fonts (https://fonts.google.com). 
While you won’t find some of the more popular fonts here, you will find great alternatives. Which are available for free. Yes, you won’t have to pay to use any of the Google web fonts in your emails. You can also download any of the fonts on Google Fonts to your computer so you can use them when you design your email.
Other paid for services are also available. Below is a list of web font services which house web fonts licensed for use in email. (More on licenses below.)

MyFonts
Commercial
FontSpring
Typotheque
Process Type Foundry
Production Type
YouWorkForThem
Village
FontShop

Licensing
A license is required to legally use a web font online. As web fonts have been used on websites for a few years, licensing is already in place that covers use on websites and even mobile apps. 
However, licensing for use in email isn’t quite as widespread. This is because the use of web fonts in email is often seen as redistributing the font. And for many web font services, this goes against their EULA (End User License Agreement).
Most licenses for use of web fonts in email are based on the number of monthly opens. Something to consider if you’re using a paid for web font in your emails.
Always test your web fonts
Different email clients will render a web font very differently from one another. Careful selection of a font should be considered, as some typefaces that are not as well designed as they should be can render poorly in certain email clients. Testing your emails is a good way to avoid that and might influence the selection of one font over another.
If you test your fonts and find they don’t work, you luckily have options. You might consider changing to a web safe font or design an image with the specialized font you want to use.
In other words, testing can help you get creative so your users still have a great experience. If you use Campaign Monitor, the platform lets you effortlessly test email campaigns before sending to ensure they look great and your fonts perform as expected.
Wrap up
Unless you’re stuck with strict brand guidelines which dictate which fonts you can use in your email designs, you should feel free to start implementing web fonts. Using any one of the many free and paid for services available, it’s easy to get your emails set up with web fonts.
Bear in mind the costs of licensing specific web fonts, or there’s always the option of using free web fonts from Google Fonts. Don’t forget to have your fallback fonts in place, as it may be that the majority of your subscribers will see this font rather than your web font.
Think of web fonts as a nice-to-have in your email campaigns. An added bonus for those subscribers who are able to see them, and a way of pushing your email into the future, one step at a time.
Creating a beautiful email with modern web fonts is easier than ever before and with some simple testing and good fallback fonts, your email can look great in every email client.
 
The post All You Need to Know About Web Fonts in Email appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

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In January of 2019, Contently, a content marketing platform that connects enterprise brands with freelance talent, surveyed over 1,000 people in the U.S. about their media and marketing preferences. What they uncovered about people’s preferred content length shattered a seemingly unbreakable convention that longer is always better: 75% of people prefer to read articles under 1,000 words.
With our ever-dwindling ability to concentrate on given tasks, Contently’s discovery makes complete sense. Writing shorter articles is better because people prefer consuming that type of content.
However, longer articles typically rank higher on Google and generate more website visits because these types of resources are more comprehensive and better equipped to solve the searcher’s intent. 
So how do you reconcile these two ideas, and when is it appropriate to craft concise content? Fortunately, the answer lies in microblogging.

This form is best used when: 

The topic or post has low search intent but high potential for virality. 
You want to take advantage of the communities on common microblogging platforms. 
You’re covering a live event or providing timely updates. 
You’re using your microblog as a vehicle for delivering multimedia content without a lot of accompanying text.

The conundrum then becomes how you can create a microblog without filling your site with thin content, which can actually hurt your site when it comes to search because Google sees these pages as low-value. 
While it’s not necessary (as evidenced by the FiveThirtyEight example below), most microblogging actually happens on platforms designed specifically for the purpose. 
1. Twitter

The OG of micro blogging sites, Twitter is not only one of the most popular microblogging sites around, but it’s also one of the most popular social media platforms around.
On Twitter, you can create a profile where all your posts — or Tweets — live. In your Tweets, you can include text, links, photos, videos, GIFs, audio, and more. Each of your Tweets also has a 280-character cap. Additionally, you can reply to and share — or retweet — other users’ Tweets.
2. Tumblr

With over 496 million different blogs, Tumblr is bustling hub of short form content. On the microblogging site, you can create a blog and include links, text, photos, GIFs, videos, Spotify tracks, MP3 files, and more in your posts. When you follow other blogs, their posts will show up in your dashboard. You can also comment on and reblog other blogs’ posts on your own blog.
3. Pinterest

Unlike most microblogs, Pinterest is purely visual. On your profile, you can create Boards, which are collections of pictures curated around a specific topic, post Pins of your favorite pictures, and add Tries, which are notes and photos of ideas you tried, like new recipes you cooked or new places you traveled to. You can also follow other people’s profiles and topics, which are the most popular Boards that cover specific topics.
4. Instagram

While Instagram is mostly a visual platform — like Pinterest — Instagram also lets you add 2,200 character long captions to each photo or video you post on your profile. Some media outlets are even leveraging Instagram to spark a new phase of journalism that focuses on crafting visually appealing articles.
On Instagram, you can follow other profiles and popular hashtags, discover new content based off your user behavior and popular topics, watch long form videos and Instagram stories, comment on posts, tag your friends in posts, and direct message them.
5. Facebook

You might know Facebook as the most popular social media network in the world. But it’s also the most robust microblogging platform out there.
On Facebook, you can create a profile where you can share text-based updates, photos, GIFs, videos, an emotion you’re feeling, an activity you’re currently doing, and the location you’re currently in.
You can also ask for recommendations on where to go when you’re about to visit a location, tag friends and events in your updates, poll your friends, support and donate to a nonprofit, answer a question about yourself, create fun lists, post Facebook Stories, record live videos, interact with your friend’s updates, message, call, and video chat with them, start groups with them, create events, watch long form videos, sell and buy products, and play games.
6. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social media platform geared towards business professionals, but it nonetheless has a powerful microblogging arm. Not only can you use LinkedIn’s publishing functionality to post articles, but you can also use status updates for short-form microblogs. With these status updates, you can share a photo, video, event, or link… or you can choose to publish something longer form. Everything you share or engage with can then be found on your profile under “Activity.”
As you probably already noticed, most of the microblogging sites above are also the most popular social media sites — but this shouldn’t be a surprise. People love scrolling through social media because they can consume tubs of snackable content in a short amount of time. And marketers should take this insight and apply it to their content strategy. Because, just like eating a bag of Doritos, you never stop after the first chip. 
Microblog Examples
So you know when microblogging works and the common platforms where it takes place. But what do you end up posting?
Take inspiration from some of these incredible microblogs: 
1. Liz Ryan on LinkedIn

Liz Ryan is a thought leader in the human resources space, and she’s known for her Ask Liz Ryan series where individuals submit their burning career questions. Common topics include job hunting, salary negotiating, and toxic work places. 
Her LinkedIn posts feature these stories as well as helpful human resources tips in a concise microblog format. She actively encourages participation from her followers to create a rich community where people share their stories.
2. Magic Realism Bot on Twitter

The magic realism bot on Twitter automatically generates a premise for a magical story every four hours. Followers can either use these as writing prompts for their own projects or simply bask in the absurdity that it creates. 
The Magic Realism Bot completely fulfills its purpose in less than 280 characters, making it a great example for proving that long-form is not always the form for a content project.
3. Etsy on Pinterest

Etsy is an ecommerce platform where indie creators and collectors can list their products for sale. Because Etsy provides this service and generates revenue from transactions, it’s in their best interest to not only promote themselves as a platform but also the goods that can be found there. 
In this type of scenario, casual browsing is a mighty tool, so they use their Pinterest as a microblog that showcases various gems from Etsy sellers. This tactic doesn’t work as a long-form blog, and the goal is not organic traffic but instead catching the eye of potential customers on Pinterest.
4. FiveThirtyEight’s Live Election Coverage

FiveThirtyEight is a website founded by analyst Nate Silver that covers poll analysis, politics, and economics. On November 3, 2020, their election coverage took the form of a microblog, releasing bite sized updates on the status of vote counts and projections on electoral vote distribution as well as expert commentary. 
Unlike the other microblogs on this list, FiveThirtyEight used their own website to host their microblog posts, with all election coverage accessible on a single page. This helped keep users on their site while providing a good user experience when it came to refreshing for more information as information trickled in live.
5. Will Lucas on LinkedIn

Will Lucas uses LinkedIn to share insights on entrepreneurship and growth. While many of his posts include links to his initiatives as well as status updates on some of his ventures, he also uses the microblog functionality of LinkedIn to deliver video content that provides value to his audience.
6. SparkNotes on Twitter

As a study guide website for humanities classes, SparkNotes’s goal with their marketing is to reach out to their target audience of high school and college students. Their website content is geared toward students who are searching for something specific. However, they use Twitter as a microblog that takes a different approach: Using a viral approach that relies on humor and relatability to generate awareness, earn engagement, and increase reach.
7. Humans of New York on Instagram

The Humans of New York project uses Instagram to highlight real stories about real New Yorkers. Each Instagram post functions as a mini-feature piece about someone that photographer Brandon Stanton comes across.
Because these individuals aren’t famous, there isn’t a lot of search intent, so there’s no need for it to take on the form of a typical search engine-indexed blog post. Instead, Humans of New York relies on the visual aspect of the site to humanize its subjects with short articles that range from touching to absurd, heart-wrenching to hilarious.
With the advice regarding blogging vs. microblogging and the above examples serving as inspiration, start crafting a content strategy that uses form to reflect its purpose so that it can be as useful as possible to your audience.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

I’ve written about the importance of sales and marketing alignment before, but the point can’t be understated: businesses undeniably have better success when they align sales and marketing teams.
Plus, having strong alignment between sales and marketing is mutually beneficial for both teams — in fact, sales and marketing alignment can help your company become 67% better at closing deals, and can help generate 209% more revenue from marketing.
If you’re anything like me, however, it’s likely helpful to learn through example. Which is why we’ve reached out to eight brands to learn how they mastered marketing and sales alignment.
I’d encourage you to use the following examples as inspiration for your own process as you work to better align your teams, but remember — marketing and sales alignment will be unique to each individual company.
For that reason, you’ll find the most benefit from this post if you pick-and-choose from these strategies which aspects feel most authentic to your own company culture and business goals.
Let’s dive in!

1. Crossbeam rolled out company-wide OKRs.
Robert Moore, Co-Founder and CEO at Crossbeam, told me: “At Crossbeam, we’ve rolled out company-wide OKRs that change each quarter and can be measured using sales, marketing, and product data from HubSpot.”
He adds, “Everyone at Crossbeam has access to dashboards that update in real-time with our progress toward these key results, and our progress also auto-posts to Slack each morning to keep people in the loop and drive discussions around progress. This keeps the company on the same page and aligned on what matters most.”
Key Takeaway: Ultimately, for strong marketing and sales alignment, it’s critical both teams share key metrics and can iterate on their alignment based on which metrics are exceeding expectations, and which ones are falling short.
2. Rybbon created a Marketing to Sales circle.
Jignesh Shah, CEO of Rybbon, says his company shifted its mindset to create better alignment between sales and marketing: “At Rybbon, instead of a marketing to sales funnel, we believe in a marketing to sales circle. Marketing campaigns are launched and supported by coordinated sales follow-up. Sales and marketing meet weekly to discuss the results of these campaigns and ultimately evaluate their effectiveness. Sales’ feedback to marketing then helps to guide decisions on what campaigns to do next.”

“The circle process keeps sales and marketing teams aligned and results-driven.”

Key Takeaway: To create your own circle process, consider how you might bake weekly or monthly sales and marketing collaborations into your company culture. Ultimately, both teams should feel comfortable working with one another on a regular basis for true, sustainable company alignment.
3. SmartBug Media aligned its content calendar with its revenue targets.
Hannah Shain, Director of Marketing at SmartBug Media, told me her team has directly tied its marketing goals with revenue targets to ensure both teams stay aligned and on-track: “Our campaigns and content calendar are directly aligned to revenue targets, resulting in an average of 17.4% increase month-over-month in inbound-qualified sales leads that convert to qualified pipeline at an average rate of 47.73%.”

She continues, “Additionally, our sales team is seeing instant benefits in their HubSpot Sequences. The marketing content being produced is directly on target with their outreach, landing them meetings on the first touch.”
Key Takeaway: To truly motivate and inspire both teams to work together, consider how you might create intersection in key business metrics. For instance, perhaps you tie revenue back to your marketing goals, to ensure marketers stay on-track to serve the same bottom-line goals that matter most to sales, as well.
4. Outreach encourages both teams to avoid blame at all costs.
If your marketing and sales teams are misaligned or don’t communicate well, it might be easy for each team to assign blame when things don’t go as planned.
As Mark Kosoglow, VP of Sales at Outreach, says: “You need to decide not to have a blame-game mindset or culture. When pipeline is viewed as a shared challenge, then it becomes easier to talk about what needs to be done to improve the situation.”

“Sales and marketing is a complex relationship, and assigning blame narrows your ability to create needle-moving solutions.”

Key Takeaway: Create a culture in which your sales and marketing teams feel authentically connected and aligned when it comes to your company’s bottom-line. The more leadership can encourage collaboration over competition, the better.
5. Nextiva focuses on high-quality data analysis to align marketing and sales.
Ultimately, data analysis is critical for understanding the current level of alignment between sales and marketing goals, and iterating to ensure future alignment success.
Nextiva is fully aware of the importance of data for marketing and sales alignment. As Gaetano DiNardi, Director of Growth Marketing at Nextiva, told me: “At Nextiva, we have a joke: ‘Hey marketing, can we just get one more lead?’ Our lead flow is 100% inbound, but with that arrangement comes a unique set of challenges. Sales can often argue that lead volumes are too low. So we’ll go and fix that by ranking highly in Google for important terms like Business VoIP.”
He adds, “Alternatively, when lead volumes are unquestionably above forecast, then sales will say that the lead sizes are not large enough. So we’ll dig into the data and show them how poor their close rates have been on our largest lead sizes. Eventually, there will be an aha moment among both groups on where the biggest problem exists — but that only happens when you can bring the right data to the conversation.”

“Great alignment between marketing and sales comes down to high-quality data analysis and effective communication with an action plan, and accountability on both sides, in order to solve complex problems.” 

Key Takeaway: Bring data into every conversation you have between sales and marketing. To avoid blame, you can use this data to demonstrate where each team might be falling short of helping support the other team’s goals. 
6. BluLeadz’s sales and marketing teams share an ecosystem to improve the customer experience. 
To truly align your marketing and sales teams, you’ll want to consider what tools and platforms each team uses. Is there an opportunity to align your tools to enable each team member to visualize how their individual actions are helping or hurting the other team’s goals — and, ultimately, what the experience looks like for the customer? 
As Dave Stout, an Inbound Specialist at Bluleadz, explains: “Our ability to maintain alignment between marketing and sales comes down to three elements: Process, communication, and shared ecosystems.”
“We collaboratively create processes that we share and refine together. For example, marketing will help us create sales content, and our sales team refines those content assets over time and shares the results. This ongoing communication about what’s working and what is not working is vital. We maintain an open communication channel by meeting every week to address friction points, establish action items, and hold each other accountable.”
Stout adds, “The most important tactic we use to stay aligned is sharing an ecosystem. Both of our teams use HubSpot, and we share access to each team’s portal and reporting dashboards. This allows us to have impactful conversations about the quality of leads coming from different channels, enabling us to accurately forecast sales and identify touchpoints we can add throughout the buying process to improve the customer experience.”
Key Takeaway: Choose an ecosystem that offers advanced tools for both sales reps and marketers. The more your teams can align on tools and processes, the easier it will be for your entire company to reach tighter alignment. 
7. SuperOffice asked its sales reps to become more active on social media.
In this case study blog post, Steven MacDonald writes about SuperOffice’s experience aligning its own sales and marketing teams.
In 2016, the company chose to bring in Jan Willem Alphenaar, a social selling expert, to instruct the sales team on how to use social media for sales. The sales team shifted their perspective and recognized social media as a tool for capturing B2B sales — not just leads.
As MacDonald writes, “Sales and marketing became much more aligned and now hold frequent meetings to discuss content, campaigns, digital activities and goals – such as what to post online and how often, how to target prospects and build relationships and how to engage with potential customers.”
The results? An increase in business leads by 168%, an increase in social media visits to SuperOffice’s website by 61%, and a business revenue increase of 10% within the first 12 months — with plenty more room to grow.
Key Takeaway: Consider in which aspects of marketing — including social media, blogging, event planning, email, and video — you might ask your sales team to get involved. In this case, the sales team recognized their own power to reach new audiences and convert leads into customers through social media. Your sales reps might have unique opportunities to reach new networks — tap into that.
8. American Express created a content hub with both marketing and sales playing a role.
American Express had a lofty goal: to position itself as a leader in the corporate travel industry.
To make that happen, the company partnered with the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) and conducted extensive research on the experience of global business travelers.
American Express then established a pilot social selling team, comprised of employees across multiple departments and locations, including sales and marketing.
This team created content based on the research from GBTA — and, while marketing took the lead on creating and distributing that content, the sales team provided customer insight and played a critical role in ensuring the content was customer-centric.
American Express’ corporate travel content hub was undeniably successful — with a reach of more than 100 million publications, over 1,500 page visits, and an increase of 100% engagement rate on LinkedIn.
Key Takeaway: While marketers are critical for conducting customer research and understanding the needs of your audiences and prospects, it’s important for marketers to remember that sales reps are the ones who speak most directly to prospects and customers on a daily basis. Consider how your marketing team might collaborate with sales to leverage that unique customer insight for upcoming campaigns or content launches.
Now that we’ve covered some amazing brands mastering sales and marketing alignment, feel free to take a look at Tried-and-True Tips for Sales and Marketing Alignment for a more individualized, step-by-step guide to better alignment.