These are the questions the team at Lexington Podiatry asked themselves when they recently started posting videos of medical procedures on their social media.

Elise Menold Hinchman, Marketing Director at Lexington Podiatry understands that some of the videos might be a little much for her target audience. “I’m hoping that even if they look away, it has enough recall factor,” she says. The goal is that the audience remembers Lexington Podiatry the next time they themselves, or someone they know, has a condition they’ve seen featured in one of the videos.

A New Way to Connect

Prior to the videos, Elise says they weren’t getting much engagement on social media posts. “You feel like you’re screaming into a void,” she says. “You’re doing all this hard work and nothing comes from it.” The idea to post a video was something new to their audience and worth a try.

The first video the team posted was of Dr. Nicole Freels demonstrating a product that looked a little bit like something else–in a humorous way.  They named the video, “What the Heck is it?” and the response was outstanding. “People were responding; They thought it was funny. So then we decided to do another one,” Elise says. After that, companies that specialize in products related to podiatry began sending the team products to review on the videos, and the excitement continued to grow.

Stage Fright

Of course, there have been bumps in the road on the way to video stardom. The medical providers in the office struggled at first with giving on-camera explanations, so Elise switched to a question-answer format that seems more natural. And although the videos are edited after filming, there is always the possibility that something unexpected can happen.

“Our fear was always: what if we shoot one of these videos and something goes wrong?,” says Elise. “We’re over that fear now, because it does! One thing I learned recently at a conference, is that if you’re not embarrassed by your videos, you’re not doing them quickly enough. No one is judging you on your videos, they just want the content.”

Success That Shows

Elise and her team follow 30 different doctor’s offices—not all podiatrists—and benchmark Lexington Podiatry’s engagement scores against the others. Although the videos take a lot of time to put together—from filming, editing, making captions, crossposting, etc.—they are succeeding in gaining attention and helping the team to grow their Facebook and social media presence.

Although the number of likes on Lexington Podiatry’s Facebook page had stayed static for about a year, since adding the videos, the numbers have jumped. One reason is that every time the team posts a video, which are getting bigger reach than traditional posts, the team goes in to see who liked the video and invites them to also like the Facebook page if they haven’t previously.

And it’s not just the videos. The team also recently added a social media counter—called Smirrl—in the reception area of their office. Elise made a sign that says “Watch me flip out—like us on Facebook.” Now, when people come into the office and see the sign, they want to like Lexington Podiatry on Facebook so they can watch in real time as the sign flips. “They’ve (Facebook) also made it really easy to share and invite other people to your page now,” explains Elise. “It was shocking to me how many people liked our posts but had not liked our page.” The team invited all of their friends to like the page and that also helped to grow the audience quickly.

Making Google Your Best Friend

Another thing Elise has learned is to use Google to the fullest. She not only cross-posts all her content to Google+ (which is on the rebound) but has also discovered a new promotion through Google Posts. When someone looks up Lexington Podiatry on Google, in addition to the location of the business and reviews, Google now includes space for an ad with a photo. “It’s been around for six months or longer and there are very few businesses doing it yet,” says Elise. “Google Posts are free and not paid like a display Google Ad…but they look so good, you’d think you’d have to pay for that exposure.”

What’s next? Live From Lexington Podiatry…

Although the edited videos have been a great success, Elise knows that live video is on the horizon. “We’re trying to get over the fear factor of it and pushing ourselves more because the kids getting out of podiatry school right now were born with a phone in their hands and are not afraid to do live videos,” she says. In addition, it’s easier to get a video in front of an audience if it’s shown live on Facebook.

The same holds true for static Instagram posts. “I read an article the other day that said you can basically forget about it being seen if it’s not in the “stories” on Instagram and you’re targeting millennials,” explains Elise. “We’re giving ourselves a little bit of grace, though. We don’t have to be the first, we just have to eventually get there.”

We think the team at Lexington Podiatry is already leading the way! What about you? — Have you tried posting edited or live video on social media? How did it affect your engagement? Let us know!

The idea of slowing down and getting organized is one we can all use when it come to our marketing, and our business as a whole.

It’s easy to get caught up in putting out fires and let’s face it–answering emails. However, it’s like the saying goes: we have to put on our own oxygen mask first so we are able to help others.

Here’s a concept we’re trying, and I urge you to give it a try as well: set aside one day a week for self reflection. Make it Monday, if you can, because research shows that if you wait until the end of the week, you are likely to be “too busy” and it will never happen. Spend this one day shaping your work week. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, small business, marketing team of two or flat-out just need it, you might try shutting down external distractions to focus.  Look at your marketing plan and use the time to set goals for the week, complete action items and engage in continuing education.

By putting your company first, you’ll begin the week rejuvenated and ready to give your customers the very best you and your company has to offer.

Monday has become our “RootedELM day” for discussion, research, evaluation and planning. With just a few people in less than two weeks, our team has accomplished the following and we have so much more planned:

1. Attended and shared content from Content Marketing World 2016.
2. Removed the posting date from all blog posts (thank you @crestodina for that advice).
3. Brainstormed on how to make the greatest impact in the shortest amount of time. (Meme’s and Buffer!)
4. Used Canva for Work to share responsibility in creating meme’s to amplify some of our more popular content using Buffer (also a new tool).
5. Evaluated several CRM platforms to enhance our customer journey.
6. Scheduled client interviews to clarify gaps in our messaging and service to become more customer centric.
7. Attended the Litmus Design Conference in San Francisco.
8. Set tasks in Flow, our collaboration tool, to make specific changes to the RootedELM website and blog.

In all actuality – Francis is a pretty fast character. In fact, I lose him quite often when he’s put outside to get a little Vitamin D. The tortoise reference by Ann Handley has been perfect for me because I’ve reduced distractions, taken back control and made time to focus on where I can make the biggest impact with my clients and team. AND not lose my tortoise.

Give it a try and let us know what you think @rootedelm.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) has always had wire frame templates that many of our customers have utilized, customizing each content box to match their brand. Other Email Service Providers (ESP) such as Campaign Monitor, have predesigned templates with a drag and drop interface where most of the formatting is already applied. The downside is you’re limited to what is available in the template. Most often, this means colors, font, layout and even a branded header and footer. Could it be possible to have the best of both worlds? You bet — as long as you have someone familiar with the template language of the ESP.

Lexington Podiatry is a podiatry practice that breaks the mold from others. It was only fitting that they do the same with their email campaigns and eliminate the “canned” format sent by their colleagues. RootedELM has worked closely with Elise Menold Hinchman, Marketing Director, to create a series of WYSIWYG templates uniquely theirs. Ever since, Elise has been able to create an email campaign from an email template and then edit the content without having to know or learn HTML.

The SFMC is in the process of releasing their new Content Builder which introduces an improved drag and drop user interface. Lexington Podiatry has been a part of the beta program since it was announced almost two years ago. With the launch of their new online store, Elise wanted to develop an eCommerce template. Using a variety of eCommerce email campaigns as inspiration, RootedELM developed a template that Elise could use. Unfortunately with new technology, there has been a few hiccups along the way.

Using Litmus as a rendering and coding tool, we were able to troubleshoot additional code applied by SFMC to the eCommerce email campaign when our formatted content boxes were added, throwing off the design and expectation. To get around this, we’ve reformatted each drag & drop content box once incorporated into the email campaign by editing the HTML to match what we intended within the template.

“Testing has been difficult,” admits Elise. “I think we all know what we want to see, for example, the image to be centered — but in this particular case it just hasn’t worked out.”

We’ve found quirks here and there — some related to learning the new user interface, but mostly testing what works and what doesn’t. That is the key to anything. Sometimes there is no better way to learn a new program or software than to troubleshoot.

SFMC has made improvements since we started using Content Builder. Elise launches her first eCommerce email today (July 8th). As far as making it easy for Elise to utilize this template for future campaigns, she will simply make a copy of this tested campaign and edit each content box using the WYSIWYG editor. We look forward to monitoring her results and continuous enhancements by SFMC.

The best creative content in the world means nothing if it’s not presented in a way that the reader will read it–that’s why content strategy is vital.

Content strategy means the following:

• identifying goals to meet the needs of your audience
• bringing people on your team together to brainstorm and achieve these goals
• keeping a place to store ideas for future content (we use a system called Flow)
• listening to your audience through behavior metrics and simply asking
• determining where, when and how your audience will consume the content
• ensuring your audience can easily access the content
• portraying a consistent brand and voice – don’t confuse your audience
• giving action to take the next step
• reassessing your strategy by evaluating results with your entire team

However, you can have the best strategy in the world and lead the reader right to your content, but if the creative isn’t good, they won’t stay. That’s why creative content is essential.

Creative content draws the reader in and captivates them. It bonds them to your message and delivers your brand voice consistently, on target. It delivers an enticing CTA, so your customers want to take that next step.

A company we refer to often and see doing this well is Litmus.  They offer relevant content that can be consumed in a variety of ways – blogs, videos, infographics, podcasts, webinars and conferences. For email marketers, Litmus makes it easy to search for content for ideas, grow your talents and troubleshoot common issues.

So how can you incorporate a creative content strategy to improve your email marketing program?

Bring a team of people together who are involved with the following:

• any form of content
• sales
• management
• valued customer

Look at your most recent email campaigns

• tracking
• engagement
• goals of email campaign
• conversion
• all marketing material – supporting or other

and talk.

• what percentage reached your goal for the campaign?
• is the email design clean and consistent with your brand?
• is it engaging?
• what about the content?
• could you have done something different to get the message out in a better way?
• what do you want your audience to do next?

It’s work, but it’s important work.

RootedELM can help identify and provide many of the resources and metrics mentioned to get your team talking. For example, by using Flow we’re able to manage tasks, collaborate and keep the lines of communication open. Below is a snapshot of Flow and an example of our team sharing ideas to keep the content flowing.

1.  Develop a template for each type of email you send.

Sit down and think of every email you’ve sent over the past year. Now add to that any additional campaigns you’re wanting to add over the coming year. This is the minimum number of templates you’re going to need.

Each of these templates are going to look similar while addressing the layout needs of each individual campaign. This allows you to focus on the content of the email without trying to re-invent your email design every time.

2.  Templates can be broken.

Just because you now have templates doesn’t mean you no longer have to worry about specifics. Even the best templates can be broken.

You can place content in the wrong areas, include images of the wrong size or change the suggested font sizes and or colors. Some outdated ESP’s don’t allow for fine grain control over templates because their template language wraps your input. If this is the case for your ESP, then your template might not be able to control font sizes or colors and you might be better off entering your content as HTML instead of through your ESP’s WYSIWYG editor.

If your template needs an image that is a specific dimension, most ESP editors allow for you to place an image of any dimension. Depending on the design of your template, placing the wrong size image could do everything from making the design of your email look bad to breaking the email completely on multiple devices. It’s important to take note of the dimension your images should be and stick to those dimensions.

3.  Create one template that is mostly free form in nature.

There’s always going to be an email that doesn’t exactly fit into the templates you have available. Having a template where only the header and footer of your email are defined permits you to create free form emails. The header and footer for these open templates will adhere to your branding, ensuring the campaign ties in with the other emails you send.

4.  Sometimes a bespoke email is the only way.

Even with an open format template available there will be times – whether it be a holiday sale or special event – that a bespoke email is needed.

In these cases it’s important that the email still retains some of the branding and style from your template campaigns. By keeping things like your font families and sizing of your logo consistent with your template emails, your custom email will look special while maintaining your overall identity.

In Summary: Moving your production from bespoke emails to templates has multiple benefits: it can save you time, provide consistency to campaigns and keep you more focused on content. However, following these key points for creating templates, as well as knowing when to use your templates and when to use a custom design is important to the overall success of your email marketing.

Email templates have always existed within email service providers and outside vendors. Streamline is the word I would use to describe the trend taking place with email templates. This is happening for a couple of reasons: 1) the industry is making it easy for companies to follow best practices with mobile rendering and readability and 2) using a template saves on time and budget while ensuring brand and code consistency.

Choosing the Template:

The College Program is a small company with a tight budget. Their audience is comprised of high school student-athletes and their parents looking for assistance with finding the right college based on a their individual profile. The template I chose, Awesome, Co (see below), is HTML and came from the Litmus template catalog. This template offered quick, bite size chunks of information and was exactly what The College Program needed based on what we’ve learned about their audience through previous Litmus Advanced Analytic tests.

Converting the Template:

I started with the style guide for The College Program, mainly for colors and font. The Director, Tim Twellman, provided me with a variety of facts and snippets of information to include as content. Using a subscription to FlatIcon, I selected relative icons that fit the message and changed the color of the icon to match the branding of The College Program and colors within the email. The header image remained from their previous email template and is sized to optimize mobile rendering, but the background is a solid color to render properly for desktop.  Note: basic HTML knowledge was required to edit this particular template.

Testing is Vital!

Because this template came from Litmus, one might think that it’s already been tested. Change is ongoing within this industry and you still need to test to make sure the campaign looks the best it can on all devices. Plus, changes were made to the code. Using Litmus Builder (as shown below), I am able to edit the existing HTML, images and conduct a rendering test within the same window.

The Results:

With this new template, the client has seen an increase in mobile viewing (above 65%) and an increase in Skimming (engaging between 2 – 8 seconds). Reading stayed the same (engaging 8+ seconds) at 27%. This makes sense based on the email content.

In regards to saving time and consistency, we were able to save 3 hours per campaign. Yes 3 hours! Part of that was in drafting content and placement within the email campaign but the other was sourcing images because we are working with more specific parameters.

You might have noticed I mentioned Litmus quite a bit, not because we’re promoting them but because they’re a partner in every step of our email: email strategy, design and development – whether bespoke or template. Currently most of the email marketing program for The College Program is managed by us, but if that was to change, with a little bit of HTML knowledge, their team would be able to update this template on their own.