You know you're a dyed-in-the-wool marketer when you leave the local bagel shop with more than pastrami on a sesame seed, spicy mustard and pickles.

Some of the best marketing lessons come when I'm away from the computer...and this past week didn’t disappoint.

So I’m sitting with a cup of coffee at Georgie Bagels before heading to the office, reading my latest copy of GKIC’s marketing newsletter - and sorta listening to the chatter between the regulars and Georgie the owner.

Now George is about 5’ 5”, early thirties, born and raised along with two brothers in New Jersey by a single mother [...]

In our previous post, we hit 3 of the top questions businesses are always asking in regards to email marketing.

If you missed that post, you can view it here.

And now for the top 2...drum roll, please!

Its not a bad idea to include multiple links in an email since each link is a call-to-action that could eventually lead to a conversion...as long as they're not obsessive in number, distracting, and competitive.

What do I mean by competitive?

You don't want those calls-to-action to compete with one another...which [...]

With social media and mobile marketing getting a lot of attention on the street, there are people waving the white flag of surrender and crying, "Email marketing is dead!"

Not true! Email marketing is alive and well - as long as it's done effectively. Ahh...there's the rub!

When we work with businesses, one area of their marketing we focus heavily on is their email communication strategies for following up with leads and customers. Invariably we get asked the same questions time and time again.

And because we use the heck out of Infusionsoft, we do a lot of testing. So here are the [...]

Behind every great entrepreneurial success story is an untold story - and it's usually more interesting and a lot more inspiring. They all tend to have a few common elements, though.

One of which is ugly grunt work.

Take Bob Stupak, for example. A true renegade marketer. He took a one-floor, slots-only dump at the downtown end of the Strip and built it into the big, tall, flashy Vegas World Hotel & Casino, now called The Stratosphere...all without taking on any debt and building it one floor at a time as he had the cash to do it.

He generated cash by selling [...]

What kind of person reads the end of a book before reading the entire story?

Or watches the end of a movie they DVR'd before it's time?

Seriously how can someone actually do that?

Can you imagine...

...reading a spoiler and finding out that after Rocky beats Apollo to a pulp, it's announced that the match ended in a draw and by default Apollo retains his title. And while the crowd is chanting Rocky's name, Rocky is shouting to Adrian who sneaks into the ring for the embrace!

That's just pure sacrilege!

Well, Cheryl does. Never have understood it...but it turns out that she's actually on [...]

I've always had a love/hate affair with social media.

If you don't have a business Facebook and Twitter account, you're way behind the times.

I totally get that.

But because I'm an analytical guy, I just can't wrap my head around how I'm supposed to actually make money by Tweeting, Liking, Pinning, and Posting.

Every B2B business I've asked "Are you making serious money with social media?" starts to squirm a little and stammers something like...

"We've got over 12,000 Likes, and we use some really cool plugins that automatically Tweet three times a day." Or...

"The social media experts say it's all about the conversation [...]

If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone refer to Infusionsoft as “Confusionsoft,” I’d be richer than Tiger Woods even after he lost GM’s and Gatorade’s endorsements.

Tags, campaigns, decision nodes, reports. ARGGH!

Yes, using Infusionsoft is hard, frustrating, and overwhelming.

So let's simplify it. Ask yourself:

I'm talking about a plan that systematically does these seven things:

You may know Joe Sugarman from his infomercials or his QVC appearances for Blu-Blockers.

But he was also a mail-order pioneer hawking the world's 1st pocket calculator, cordless phones, and digital watches to the public via his direct sales  and marketing genius.

I was listening to a recording one of Joe's speeches the other day and he said, "One good path to success is to learn all the proven rules and meticulously follow them. Another path is to occasionally break all the rules, because breakthroughs come only from breaking rules."

Resonates with me - I've always been more maverick than not. On the [...]

Walter Bergeron, Dan Kennedy's 2012 Marketer of the Year, tells the story about speaking to a crowd of over 1,000 well-dressed entrepreneurs in big old Texas.

He was describing his "shock and awe" campaign that resulted in an unheard of 70% conversion rate.

When he got to the end of his presentation and unveiled the grand finale, there was a mob of questions about the cool techy toy that capped off a brilliant multi-step, multi-media campaign that took him months to put together.

They were all obsessed with the shiny object - not the research and work that went into finding the perfect [...]

Test and grow rich.

Doesn't have quite the same ring as 'Think And Grow Rich' does it?

"Testing" isn't a very sexy topic - but it will be when you it makes you a boatload of moolah!

Why? Because testing variables in direct mail campaigns, phone scripts, sales presentations, and landing pages requires discipline, diligence and patience...in other works WORK.

To get it right, you can only test one variable at a time. This means that if you change a headline, you can't change anything else. Plus you have to make sure all other variables remain the same - like the mailing day if [...]