We've a love-hate relationship with email. We welcome messages from friends or helpful advice; spam we detest. So how do you raise your email marketing efforts to that of wanted and welcoming? By making good use of such tools as list segmentation, strategic planning, follow-up, analytics and, of course, common sense.

If done right, email marketing is an effective—and extremely cost-effective—way of getting your message across to large groups of people. An email can say a lot about what your practice offers in ways that are personal, relevant and timely—driving traffic to your website, increasing your website's ranking on search engines, and, ultimately, improving your conversion rate (winning new patients or keeping existing ones).

Guest blog from DesignRFix.com

Whether you work from home, as a freelancer or as part of a creative team your success as a Graphic Designer hinges upon one thing; your creativity. And in order to keep the ideas fresh, fast and coming you need to take care of your motivation levels. When you’re feeling the pressure it can be hard to stay motivated, but with discipline, a little time and attention to the way you work, you can help prevent your inspiration from drying up.

Naturally, each individual will find their own way of working, and you should listen to yourself when it comes to finding out how to get your creative juices really flowing – here are a few thoughts and suggestions to help you on your way.

Are you looking to set up a new e-commerce website or spruce up an old one?

For many small businesses, Shopify might be the holy grail you've been looking for. Shopify is a popular all-in-one platform for e-commerce sites focused on simplicity. This is reflected in their pricing, setup, and built-in features.

Remember the old saying, "Good things come in small packages?"

It's still as relevant as ever. But these days, little packages aren't limited to things that twinkle and gleam. They beep and ding and dash off a favorite ditty, too.

If you're thinking of how best to grow your practice and grab notice in the digital age, you need to be thinking of launching a mobile website. Specifically, an optimized site that plays well on that small screen you, very probably, and so many others, definitely, spend hours at: the smartphone.

Welcome—almost—to 2014! For doctors, dentists and just about any healthcare professional, the New Year promises to be a year chock-full of challenges and changes. But opportunities exist, too, for those thinking of how best to take advantage of them.

That's why setting up a good strategic schedule now will help elevate your practice and make you a brand worth noticing.

Here are 4 ideas for making the most of 2014:

Guest blog by Allison Weiner | CEO/Founder, Brand New Marketing, LLC

In this five-part series, I hope to clear up some of the fog when it comes to finding the right agency for your business. Follow us and check back each day to get the rest of our tips on this topic!

By @JackieClews

Are you a content marketer looking to show results for all of your content marketing campaigns and collaborate easily but not quite ready to take on a more sophisticated project management software?

Whether you’re marketing an e-commerce or a service-based business to consumers or businesses, an easy trick to try is adding the most important stats to your editorial calendar so you can plan in advance and turn your calendar into a detailed analytics report, as well.

Two great tools to use are Microsoft Excel (as long as you can share it and edit in real time on the cloud) or Google Spreadsheets, which can be viewed and edited by all collaborators in real time.

By @AAAMarino and @JackieClews

What are infographics? Infographics are a way to visually display data. By using them you are replacing mind-numbing data with a visually appealing graphic that can be read quickly and clearly. Sure, there are people that love data, but for most of us on an information overload, we either don’t time or don’t want to sort through it all. This is why infographics can be a great idea for your company.

Guest Blog from TheDoctorBlog.com

Are you a doctor thinking about investing in online marketing but not sure whether it's worth the investment?

Check out this whitepaper from TheDoctorBlog that explains why you should seriously consider it- before your competition does.

Check out a quick preview below-

Abstract

The Internet has fundamentally redefined how Americans connect with physicians. In this white paper, ZocDoc draws on recent studies and expertise from digital healthcare leaders to interpret these changes. We provide a vendor evaluation document and an interactive return-on-investment calculator (see Appendices A and B) to help healthcare providers determine the optimal marketing mix for their practices. We illustrate the costs and benefits of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and detail best practices when appropriate. A method for obtaining positive reviews and attenuating negative reviews is described; it is demonstrated that an average 37 percent increase in appointments results from each half-star improvement to a provider’s online rating profile. We close by outlining the patient satisfaction and loyalty healthcare providers can accrue by offering online booking and related transactional services, which are preferred by 81 percent of consumers.