This Week in Small Business: Text and Email Marketing Showdown, Why You Need a Vacation, and more

email and text marketing square off

Among this week’s curated articles, it’s great to see someone size up email and text marketing and see which one would emerge the victor in a cage fight. But maybe my favorite article of the week is the one that tells me exactly why I need to go on a vacation this summer.

That’s advice I’m sure to take. You should too!

Marketing and sales

In this corner we have the reigning champion: Email Marketing, and in this corner we have the feisty challenger, Text Marketing! Which packs a bigger punch?

The sales funnel guides customers through a journey. This article outlines ways to “disrupt” your sales funnel for better results.

Whether you’re a marketing pro looking for a job or you’re looking for a marketing pro to add to your small business team, here are three skills that are required for the job today.

You’ll find the latest social media marketing data from surveys, studies, and industry predictions in this article and they should help your small business decision-making process.

If you think that social media is your prospecting golden ticket, you’re wrong…at least according to Mark Hunter.

Can a “mom and pop” small business land a contract with a national chain like Best Buy? The answer is yes and when you read this, you’ll see that SEO was the key.

Do you run a retail small business? If so, here are six strategies for marketing your business online.

Videos will be 80 percent of all Internet traffic by 2018, says Cisco. But more importantly, it’s crucial for your marketing automation strategy.

Leadership, management and productivity

Okay, not that I need a lot of convincing, but here’s an article that tells us why we need to take a summer vacation this year!

Not every business needs its own app, however a good app can offer tremendous benefits to your small business in customer service and marketing. And with today’s DIY app building sites, it is easier and less expensive than ever before.

The best things in life may be free, but that doesn’t mean they won’t take time, sweat, and perseverance to acquire. For example these 10 skills that are hard to learn but pay off forever.

At the heart of an amazing customer experience, is a team that is amazingly aligned with each other and your company’s goals. Shep Hyken shares two keys to keeping your organization well aligned.

The secret for successful projects may be in “free range developers.” Learn how to get the most benefits from a remote workforce.

You may have noticed little shiny chips on some of your customers’ credit cards. Come October, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them and you need to be ready to accept EMV payments! Here’s how to do it.

Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation

Vitaliy Rizhkov says that raising money from family and friends is a very bad idea and he has a personal tale to tell about it.

Politics, government and the economy

No matter how you align yourself politically, the news out of Washington D.C. has been interesting. Small business owners see this Supreme Court ruling on the EPA as a win.

Sponsored by AT&T


 

Image: Muhammad Ali, © 2009 benyupp, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.