"I am 6 months into my new job and new role as Marketing Director at WorkCompass, A B2B SaaS firm selling Performance management and appraisal software. I am the first marketing hire coming fast on the heels of the first sales hire Colm. So what’s the perfect pitch for our audience? I had no idea!"

“Words matter very much Ms. Barnes, you should care more about them given your profession.”- Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey of House of Cards)

In the profession of digital marketing, our words matter very much. Words are the pinnacle point of persuasion that drive our consumers to either take an action or ignore our advances. Therefore, our pitches, or messages, warrant much more attention and affection than currently rewarded to them.

It’s that time again…. I dread it each year. The hearts everywhere in every color, sequin and bobble, Cupid with his stinging arrows, the flowers – don’t get me started on the flowers! Every year since pretty much my tween’s, I’ve hated Valentine’s Day. Don’t get me wrong, the idea of it is lovely – Romance, love, and all that, it’s, well, a beautiful thing. But, I really don’t enjoy the constant barrage of pink and red love with every breath and every turn.

Not in the business of hearts, perfume or roses? No biggie, you can still crush it with your V-Day campaign.

Did you know that people are willing to spend on average $130.97 on Valentine’s Day for their significant other (US National Retail Federation)? Heck, 3% of pet owners will even give Valentine’s Day gifts to their pets! That’s why you are missing out on some big bucks if you aren’t crafting killer V-Day email campaigns, even if you aren’t a jewelry store or chocolate shop. Here are 7 tips on creating an incredible Valentine’s Day email, for ANY company or product.

By sticking to a few key fundamental design practices, you can create beautiful and compatible emails that will delight and captivate your audience. Courtesy of LiveIntent.

Your landing page or capture / conversion page, is one of the greatest assets a marketer has. Those single pages that are crafted to capturing permission and get the contact (first step) or get the conversion (last step). Often general site pages don’t cut it. These are the micro-conversions that often don’t get the attention they deserve.

Site owners can build successful landing pages, there are plenty of resources and best practices to help you do it. Still, avoiding the pitfalls plaguing ineffective landing pages continues to be a struggle.

With an overwhelming number of devices to consider, taking the time to learn and adopt responsive design as early as possible will save you time, money, and resources in the future. Not to mention continuing to keep the customer happy and dedicated to your brand. (Courtesy of Shaw + Scott)

MailChimp analyzed over 395 million emails during a 6-month period to examine how a user’s preferred device affects email engagement, investigate the impact of responsive design, and find out if testing your emails can increase click rates. Courtesy of Litmus.

I have the pleasure of working with some truly talented people. But just because you’re good at designing crisp logos or iconic product packaging or gorgeous posters doesn’t mean you know a thing about designing for direct marketing. It’s completely different. And lately, I’ve had the dubious pleasure of having to tell some of my most talented colleagues that they stink at email design.

Design stunning, fully responsive emails without the need of any HTML or CSS coding knowledge!

One of the best ways to engage email subscribers is to connect with them emotionally, although this is often easier said than done. I have spoken and written many times about the importance of creating emotional resonance – either positive or negative – between your message and your audience. It is essential because without some sort of feeling connection to you, at least occasionally, subscribers will become bored by the purely practical (i.e. 20% savings this week!), often repetitive litany of subject lines showing up in their inboxes and easily tune out. It’s fine to engage them intellectually, but if you want your email to create a lasting impact, it needs to pack an emotional punch too.

Subject lines… the easiest thing to write, the hardest thing to get right. There is just no single rule, tactic or word that works every time. Best practices sometimes fail and A/B testing can produce unexpected results.

Why is this? In simplest terms, being original keeps your subscribers on their toes and can spark in-actives into life. But if every subject line you write is surprising and original, your subscribers catch on and that lack of clarity has a negative effect.

Your email subject line. It’s an invitation, a front door, a salesperson, an ambassador. It’s important, to say the least. Here are 10 ½ tips to make your subject line Don Draper not Al Bundy, caviar not tofu — in a word: better.

I got some great insights on responsive design and coding for non-techies from my colleague Luca Bellavita, a design and HTML manager for Alchemy Worx, which I shared in a recent ClickZ column. But one thing that’s been taking a lot of my head space lately is how and when to leverage responsive design and coding in unconventional ways.

"As email marketers, it's our job to get a slice of that Mother's Day pie. Let's take a look at how online retailers are promoting the holiday."

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"The body of knowledge on best practices for email creative has grown exponentially in the time since I started working in online in the late 1980's at Compuserve. Today there are dozens of resources for traditional and cutting edge best practices in email creative. Here are some of my favorites:"

As we start a new year, let's take a look at Christmas emails past. The 2013 holiday season was filled with promotional emails galore. Here are a few that caught my attention.

As email marketers, we cringe over what can possibly go wrong with our deployments - typos, broken images, broken links. And we lose sleep at night over the even bigger bloopers - missing or expired promo codes, products that sell out before the promotion is over, website glitches and more.

If first impressions are lasting impressions, then the welcome email is key to subscriber engagement. A welcome email - or series of emails - sets the brand tone and sets expectations of things to come.