The digital ecosystem is undergoing a lot of changes. From Twitter, to Google, LinkedIn, and even Bing, how do you keep track of it all?

Fortunately, we have you covered with an extra set of eyes and ears. The work that we do here depends upon the success of the entire digital universe: we’re always up to speed on the biggest changes and opportunities in marketing as a result.

Recently, Facebook has been undergoing some changes that will be of particular relevance to publishers. Here’s what the following two updates will mean for your audience-building strategies moving forward:

Audience Optimization

In January of this year, Facebook introduced Audience Optimization, an organic targeting tool that helps publishers reach and engage their target audiences. The tool allows Facebook page admins to improve the relevancy of their posts by indicating who’s most likely to engage with them.

The tool gives publishers the following features:

• The ability to add interest tags to content, to help Facebook connect audiences with topics that are likely to capture their attention
• The ability to restrict or limit the visibility of certain posts by allowing for targeting based on location, language, or, or gender
• Visibility into performance of content, down to the post-level, by interest

So what does all of this mean?

In a world where audience attention spans are becoming increasingly fragmented, Facebook is giving publishers the tools that they need to build in-depth, substantive relationships with target audiences. 

You can bettertarget your content to your readers based on what they’re interested in reading and learning about. You’ll also have additional insight that you can use to optimize each of your posts and extend your publication’s reach. Early users of Facebook’s Audience Optimization tool have recognized considerable lifts in engagement, sparked discussions within unique groups, and provided stronger alignment between content and target audiences.

Messenger for Publishers

Publishers will soon have the ability to distribute content through Facebook Messenger.

This capability is big news. Why? 

Similar to email, Facebook Messenger represents a channel for 1:1 communication. Instead of requiring audiences to come to your website or bombarding them with email newsletters, you can ping them with relevant information, in the moment.

While this news is still speculative, meaning that Facebook neither confirms nor denies this upcoming feature release, the social media leader is suspected to be testing new features behind the public eye. For instance, TechCrunch reported that Facebook had begun testing a tool for developers that allowed people to do things like request an Uber, directly within conversation threads.

Given that Facebook Messenger reaches over 800M people, the distribution potential for publishers would be massive. Rather than competing for attention spans over email and in search, media companies can more actively reach out to and engage with their target readers.

And who knows what the future holds? In the future, publishers may be able to integrate Facebook Messenger into their sponsored content offerings. Facebook has yet to announce what’s planned.

Looking into the Future

Facebook’s changes reflect a larger industry trend around personalization and the importance of building 1:1, personalized relationships. 

It’s more critical than ever for media companies to create more lovable content. From email to social media, readers have more control than ever over the content that they see and the content with which they engage. Using audience optimization, publishers can better target their audiences on the aggregate level, learning about their needs and preferences along the way. Social media teams at media companies can then reinvest this information into 1:1 touchpoints over Facebook Messenger. 

While it’s important to be vigilant and ahead of the curve in this ecosystem, it’s not necessarily the companies that are first to market that will come out ahead. It’s the ones who take the time and conduct their due diligence to understand their audiences in depth. And thanks to Facebook’s new updates, publishers can better engage with and learn about their target audiences across platforms.

How to Get Started

The best way to get started is with the segmentation framework and marketing database that you already have in place. Who are your highest value readers? How is Facebook currently operating as a referral traffic source for your company? Most likely, you already have the answers to these questions in your marketing database.

What Facebook introduces is a mechanism to answer the question “why.”

Why do certain audiences engage with your articles? Why are they gaining value from the resources that you’re publishing? Facebook is a treasure trove of psychographic data that can help you answer these questions.

If you’ve been managing a Facebook Page over the past few years, you’ve likely noticed a drop in how many of your fans have been viewing and interacting with your organic posts. This decline in organic Facebook reach came to a head in 2014, when marketers started picking up on (and complaining about) the situation in droves, prompting a response from Facebook’s VP of Advertising Technology, Brian Boland.

“Over the past few months, I’ve read articles and answered questions from many people who are concerned about declines in organic reach for their Facebook Pages,” Boland wrote in June of 2014.

He continued, “My colleagues and I at Facebook understand that this has been a pain point for many businesses, and we’re committed to helping you understand what’s driving this change … “

The two main reasons Boland cited for the organic reach decline? First, there’s simply too much content being published on Facebook, making visibility in the News Feed increasingly competitive. Second, Facebook is deliberately trying to show people the content that is most relevant to them, as opposed to surfacing all the content available.

The good news in all of this is that there’s a lot you can do to counteract these changes, like being more selective about what you publish and/or throwing some money behind your posts (a.k.a. “boosting” them).

Download our free Facebook guide here for more tips on maximizing your Facebook reach.

Before we dive deeper into how you can improve your Facebook Page’s organic reach, let’s explore exactly what happened during the Great Organic Reach Decline of 2014, and how Facebook decides what content gets surfaced nowadays.

How (And Why) Facebook Reach Has Declined Over Time

Facebook defines organic reach as “how many people you can reach for free on Facebook by posting to your Page.” Prior to 2012, that number used to be much, much higher than it is now.

From the moment “Fan Pages” launched in 2007, anyone could create a Page for their company or organization, start collecting fans, and post unlimited messages to their fan bases with the assumption that they would see those messages. But when 2012 rolled around, Page managers learned that only a fraction of their Facebook fans — 16% on average — were seeing their Page posts in their News Feeds. And that fraction has only gotten smaller and smaller since. 

A study from Edgerank Checker found that between February 2012 and March 2014, organic reach for the average Facebook Page dropped from 16% to 6.5%. Research from Social@Ogilvy, meanwhile, suggests that for Pages with more than 500,000 Likes, organic reach could be as low as 2%.

Based on the figures above, that means a Page with 10,000 fans could expect just 650 of them to actually see that Page’s posts in their News Feeds. For a Page with 1 million fans, about 20,000 would end up seeing posts (based on the 2% figure).

Fewer people seeing your Page’s organic posts on Facebook means fewer clicks, comments, and shares. And having fewer of those interactions means fewer conversions, leads, and customers. Understandably, this has annoyed the crap out of many-a Facebook Page manager. So why would Facebook decide to decrease organic post visibility in the first place?

I already touched on Facebook’s official response to this question in the introduction: There are simply too many Pages producing too much content for too many fans, which means competition for visibility on the News Feed is high. What’s more, Facebook is trying to make sure people are only seeing the best content — the stuff that is relevant to them. 

But many in the marketing world suspect that Facebook had (and still has) an ulterior motive: To get people to start spending more on ads.

More Money = More Visibility

As Facebook has evolved into more of a paid marketing platform than an organic one, Page managers are realizing they’re now expected to pay for ads yet again to reach those newly acquired Fans, even if those Fans have seemingly elected to see a brand’s posts by liking their Page in the first place.

In a 2014 interview with Digiday, James Del (who was the head of Gawker’s content studio at the time) summed up the general sentiment:

Facebook may be pulling off one of the most lucrative grifts of all time; first, they convinced brands they needed to purchase all their Fans and Likes — even though everyone knows you can’t buy love; then, Facebook continues to charge those same brands money to speak to the Fans they just bought.”

Of course, Facebook has denied that this is the case. Boland even had a section in his 2014 organic reach update post titled, “Is organic reach dropping because Facebook is trying to make more money?” Boland’s response:

No. Our goal is always to provide the best experience for the people that use Facebook. We believe that delivering the best experiences for people also benefits the businesses that use Facebook. If people are more active and engaged with stories that appear in News Feed, they are also more likely to be active and engaged with content from businesses.”

From Facebook’s perspective, it’s simply not an ideal user experience to flood the News Feed with posts just because a Page has lots of Likes and is publishing prolifically.

Nowadays, Facebook is encouraging marketers to look at their fan bases as a way to make paid advertising more effective rather than using it as a free broadcast channel. Additionally, Facebook says you should assume organic reach will eventually arrive at zero. So, if you really want to reach your target audience on Facebook, you’ll need to supplement your organic efforts with some paid advertising.

Additionally, Facebook advises marketers to expect things to keep changing, and often times for the better. Facebook has never been stagnant in terms of innovation, so no marketer can figure out a formula and then stick with it forever.

That being said, knowing how Facebook currently surfaces organic content in the News Feed can be helpful for understanding the broader Facebook marketing ecosystem.

How Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm Works

When Facebook first launched News Feed back in 2006, the algorithm was pretty basic. Different post formats were assigned different point values — so a post with just text might be worth one point, while a post with a link in it might be worth two points, and so on. By multiplying the post format point value by the number of people interacting with a given post, Facebook could generate a ranking system for determining the order in which posts would appear.

As the years rolled on, the News Feed algorithm evolved to factor in the recency of posts, as well as the relationship between the person doing the posting and the person interacting with said post. This iteration of the algorithm was known as EdgeRank. But in 2011, Facebook abandoned EdgeRank for a more complex algorithm that incorporates machine learning.

That machine learning-based algorithm is what’s responsible for surfacing content on your News Feed today. Unlike its predecessors, which assigned generic point values to post formats, the current algorithm adapts to individual user preferences. So, for example, if you never, ever, interact with photos in your News Feed, Facebook’s algorithm will pick up on that and show you fewer photos over time.

Ultimately, there are thousands of factors that inform Facebook’s algorithm, which range from using trigger words that indicate important events (e.g., “congratulations”) to whether or not you’ve actually clicked a link in a post before liking it.

Facebook’s end goal here is to have its algorithm match News Feed content to the individual needs and interests of each and every user. As Facebook’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, told Time in a 2015 interview:

If you could rate everything that happened on Earth today that was published anywhere by any of your friends, any of your family, any news source…and then pick the 10 that were the most meaningful to know today, that would be a really cool service for us to build. That is really what we aspire to have News Feed become.”

How to Deal With Declining Organic Reach

Now that you’ve got a better understanding of how Facebook surfaces content, let’s explore some tips for dealing with the decline in organic Page reach.

1) Be more selective about what you post.

Marketers have to switch gears from untargeted, frequent publishing to targeted, selective publishing. The goal is no longer to spray and pray — it’s to get as much interaction from a single post as possible. Each post published to a brand Page can be targeted to a specific audience regardless of whether or not it’s sponsored, which may improve overall interaction with that post among other people who are likely to find it more interesting and relevant. 

2) Remind your Fans they can go to Pages Feed on the left sidebar of their News Feed to see content from Pages they’ve Liked.

3) Educate your super fans that they can update their notification settings from your Page.

4) Encourage fans to engage with your posts when they do see them, so they see more of them.

This can be as simple as adding a reminder to “Please Like and share” at the end of your posts.

5) Re-allocate your time and effort toward your owned assets.

Since the only constant with Facebook (and the larger digital media landscape) is change, it’s always safest to focus on the digital channels you entirely own and control — your website and blog. Spend the vast majority of your effort creating content (blog posts and long-form content such as ebooks, case studies, or videos) that will continue to garner inbound traffic, leads, and customers long after they’re first created. If you have time and budget, share those assets to Facebook for additional reach.

6) Start treating Facebook like a paid ad platform.

If you’re going to pay-to-play, get your targeting right. Once you’ve built an audience of relevant fans, focus on advertising the content assets you’ve created — blog posts, ebooks, etc. — and use ads to amplify them to targeted users. Remember: It’s likely only a matter of time before organic reach hits zero, so you might as well hone your paid strategy now, which brings me to one final recommendation …

7) If you do advertise, go beyond the basics.

Facebook’s targeting capabilities have gotten considerably better over the past few years. You can now pay to reach your ideal persona based on demographics, interests, web behavior, and more. Additionally, there are a bunch of tools and features that can help you maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns, including …

• Conversion Tracking: Track the actions of site visitors after viewing your Facebook ad.
• Custom Audiences: Target Facebook ads based on your email list.
• Lookalike Audiences: Target Facebook users similar to your customers.
• Audience Insights: Learn about your existing Facebook audience to better target your ads.
• Website Custom Audiences: Target Facebook users who have visited your website before.
• Facebook Exchange: Place retargeted ads on Facebook for users who’ve visited a certain product or service page on your site.
• Lots and Lots of Customizable Reporting: Create reports based on metrics that matter most for your business.

To learn more about how you can improve your Facebook Page’s reach, check out our free guide: How to Attract Customers with Facebook.

Your turn! What are your thoughts and experiences with Facebook’s organic reach decline? How has it affected your inbound marketing strategy?

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in June 2014 and has been updated and for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Ever find yourself struggling with writer’s block? Honestly, who hasn’t? You spend precious time worrying about headlines, topics, and what length might appeal to you audience. You stress over engagement, lead generation, and social promotion. It’s frustrating. 

Good news: We’ve got something to help you out. HubSpot Research and BuzzSumo dug deep into 175,000 B2B and B2C blog posts to give you guidelines on optimizing your own content for the maximum amount of shares per social network. They looked into the differences in social shares, content length, and performance on social networks between B2B and B2C posts and broke down the data in our latest report: B2B vs. B2C Content Lessons. 

This report is designed to give you a much better understanding of how to make your own shareable content. More specifically, you will receive:

• Data-backed insight into what specific content topics do well on Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and Google+
• Easy-to-read charts showing the differences between B2B and B2C content
• Tips and tricks on how to create and promote your own shareable content and blog posts like optimal word count, etc. 
• Examples of top performing B2B and B2C posts to consider 
• Much more about creating shareable content!

Ready to get started? Click here to download the free report.

Instagram isn’t just a go-to social network for individuals anymore. Many marketers have caught wind that it’s a powerful social network they need to have some sort of presence on.

The platform’s heavy emphasis on visual content like photos, videos, illustrations, and GIFs is becoming a critical way for brands to communicate their story and message. Plus, it’s a great way for businesses to humanize their brand, recruit future employees, showcase their product and content, and delight and engage customers.

Download the complete guide to using Instagram for business and marketing here.

One particularly great thing about Instagram is that it isn’t just for still photography. There’s a lot of directions to go with each post, whether it’s posting shots from behind-the-scenes, videos, animated GIFs, holiday-themed content, contests and giveaways, reposts of followers and employees … the list goes on.

Check out these 18 ideas for videos, photos, and other content you can post on Instagram. (And for more inspiration, check out our list of the best brands to follow on Instagram.)

18 Ideas for Videos, GIFs & Photos to Post on Instagram

1) Behind-the-scenes shots.

Instagram is a great platform for humanizing your brand, and giving your audience a sneak peek at what goes on behind the scenes is one way to do that. It’s also a good way to show followers what it’s like to work there, which is great for your recruiting efforts.

Here’s an example from the Boston Red Sox, showing what batting practice looks like close-up (with a really cool, fish-eye shot to boot).

And here’s one from a small brewery in Somerville, Massachusetts called Aeronaut Brewing. We love how this one shares the faces behind the brand, giving followers the chance to get to know who’s on the inside.

2) Reposts from fans and followers.

Some of the best photos on brands’ Instagram accounts are curated from fans and followers. (In fact, FedEx’s Instagram feed is almost entirely made up of curated photos.)

Check out the posts people have tagged you in, and if you love them, consider reposting them to your own followers. Not only does it make the original poster feel good, it also shows everyone that you’re listening to your fans. Just be sure the photos you’re reposting are really high quality, and that you @-mention the original poster in your caption.

What do great examples of repost images and captions look like? Here’s one from the folks at ASOS. Take note of how they write the caption: They write an entirely new caption, which includes a tidbit on how their followers can get featured on their Instagram page (by using the hashtag #AsSeenOnMe). Then, they credit the original poster using the camera emoji and the poster’s username.

And here are two painfully cute reposts from Cisco Brewers in Nantucket. Take note of how they write the captions, which is different from the way ASOS does it: First, they quote the original caption, followed by the camera emoji and the original poster’s username. Then, they add their own hashtags, like #brewerydogs.

 

To repost a photo on Instagram, you can simply screenshot the photo and crop it. Or, you can use a reposting app like Repost for Instagram, which is my personal favorite. There’s a free version with (pretty inconspicuous) ads.

3) Relevant quotes that speak to your audience.

Some people poke fun at the number of quotes out there on Instagram. But if you post them sparingly, they actually tend to encourage a lot of engagement. If the post speaks to your audience, people love to share them and tag their friends in the comments. Quotes are also a great opportunity to share the types of things your brand stands for, whether it’s spiritual, inspiring, funny, or something else.

To create a quote image, you’ll want to download an app that lets you upload a photo and overlay it with text. Here are some good ones:

• Quipio: A free app with premade designs that makes adding text and sharing through social media really easy. Only downside it is doesn’t have a ton of editing options.
• Overgram: A free app that includes 10 of the most popular fonts from the premium app (Over HD, $2) and has the same text resizing, alignment, and positioning tools.
• Typic Pro: A $2 app that pairs fonts with different photo filters and design elements like banners, badges, and embellishments. Typic — the free, lite version — doesn’t have design elements and limits text color to black and white, but it does have some of the same fonts and filters.

Here are a few examples of quotes done well, starting with this one from TheSkimm. The key to this post’s success is that it’s hilarious to their specific audience — and it also shows that the quote itself doesn’t have to be fancy to delight people.

Here’s a more beautifully designed quote from activewear brand Lorna Jane, which carries an empowering message from their founder:

  

Pro Tip: Want to play around with words and images? I found this really cool, $2 app called WordFoto that lets you turn your pictures into images made of words, instead of just adding words on top of photos.

Image Credit: Pop Sugar 

4) Really cool statistics.

Another cool way to overlay text on an image is by posting a statistic that resonates with your audience. Try using statistics from your own research, or finding some that are relevant to your message, your value proposition, and so on. (Read this blog post to learn how and where to find accurate, compelling data.)

Here’s an example from Quarter For Your Crisis, a company with the mission of helping millennials reconnect with themselves, their faith, and their world.

Here’s another one from the meditation app Headspace, with a simple text box overlaying a colored, nondescript background.

5) Timely posts and newsjacks.

Is something cool happening in the world or the country where your target market lives? A specific holiday? National Puppy Day? Get in on the action by posting something delightful. Remember to use good judgment when newsjacking — the last thing you want to do is publish inaccurate information or offend anyone.

What are some examples of delightful, timely posts? Here’s one from a Mediterranean restaurant called Cava Mezze Grill to celebrate Opening Day for baseball, as all of their locations are in the United States.

And here’s a fun example from Starbucks for National Croissant Day.

6) Funny posts.

If you can make your followers laugh, they’ll likely enjoy your photo — and may even share it with others. After all, sometimes the most memorable photos are the ones that make us laugh. (Pro Tip: Since people tend to be happier on Fridays, Neil Patel suggests posting funny or upbeat content to match your audience’s mood.)

Try posting photos and images that you think will make your own audience laugh, like Oreo did with this fake text message conversation with “Milk.”

Here’s another example from BuzzFeed Parents, which goes to show how simple a super shareable post can be.

And in this one from Pabst Blue Ribbon. All they did was dress up a dog in a hilarious outfit and then put a Pabst beer can in front of him … and it worked like a charm.

7) Cool illustrations.

Have any artists on your team? One way to stand out in a sea of images is to post a really cool, compelling illustration. They don’t even have to be super fancy — check out this simple, black-and-white example from Oreo:

Here’s a more complex one from Pabst Blue Ribbon:

8) Content promotions.

Beautiful images are critical to your marketing strategy because they tell a story and draw people in. In fact, colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by a whopping 80%.

So if you’re creating a piece of compelling written content like a recipe, a report, or a blog post, why not use a visual platform like Instagram to promote it?

Simply pair an interesting and relevant image with a caption that promotes the content, and then ask people to follow the link in your bio. (Again, be sure to make that link trackable.)

Here’s an example from Staples, promoting a set of free, printable holiday-themed planners and gift tags:

And here’s an example from Nature’s Path Organic, which shows off the finished product of a recipe that’s linked to in their bio:

9) Product promotion.

Instagram isn’t the place to be publishing product-centric posts every single day — but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it to showcase products every once in a while. We suggest using the 80/20 rule on social media: 80% of the content you post to social media should be helpful and valuable to your audience, and 20% can be self-promotional.

For Instagram, it’s even more important to make that promotional content fun, compelling, and lovable. To highlight a specific product, post a picture or video about it, and then send people to the (trackable) link in your bio.

Here’s one example from the online clothing company ASOS. (Check out how casual and cool the caption is.)

Here’s another one from Frank Body, which uses an image and some humor in the caption to pique followers’ interest in the product without being overly promotional.

10) Compelling videos.

For the past few years, most of the social media world has been moving toward emphasizing video. In fact, by midway through 2015, mobile video plays exceeded 44% — up 74% from 2014, and up a whopping 844% since 2012. It took Instagram a while to come around to video, but they recently announced they’re rolling out the capability for users to record and upload videos up to 60 seconds long (whereas the max was 15 seconds previously).

When executed well, videos are a great way for your Instagram content to stand out in the feed. You can either record a video from scratch (including recording multiple video clips), or you can upload a new video from your phone’s library the same way you’d upload a normal photo.

Pro Tip: By default, every Instagram video will start playing without sound — after which viewers can choose whether or not to turn the sound on. Because of this, you’ll either need to upload videos that don’t need sound to be well understood, or you’ll need to entice people to turn the sound in the first second or two.

Here’s a great video from Purina that delights viewers with some cute puppy love.

11) Hyperlapse videos.

Want to use video to stand out from the crowd while also solving for your followers’ short attention spans? Try creating a Hyperlapse video.

Hyperlapse is a free app by Instagram that condenses videos into brief, moving, hyper-speed videos. The videos end up looking pretty cool thanks to built-in stabilization technology that lets you film these time lapse videos without having to keep your hands still. (Want to make your own? Here are step-by-step instructions.)

Here’s on of my favorite examples, which comes from Starbucks.

12) Fun, lighthearted GIFs.

GIFs are everywhere nowadays, and people love them because they help accurately convey ideas, messages, thoughts, and feelings in a snackable (and often laughable) way. On Instagram, you can upload a GIF just like you would a video (as long as it’s less than 60 seconds long).

Check out the examples of GIFs on Instagram below for some inspiration. (And to create your own animated GIF using Photoshop, click here for instructions.) Here’s an example from Staples.

And one from Starbucks.

13) Contests and giveaways.

Trying to support the launch of a new product? Contests are one of the best ways to expand your reach and engage your community on Instagram. The network doesn’t make it easy to capture leads and information from your followers, but a contest or giveaway is one way to do it.

Just be sure to call your followers to take action by using the space in your caption to explain the contest and even guide them to a link in your bio. (Pro Tip: Be sure to make that link trackable so you can see how much traffic your Instagram post is driving. Learn how to add a trackable link to your Instagram bio by reading #6 in this blog post.)

There are many, many different types of contests you can post on Instagram. Here are a few ideas, starting with the one below from Social Print Studio. Their call-to-action asks for comments on the post, from which they’ll choose winners.

Here’s one from Rent the Runway asking people to enter a contest by following the link in their bio.

14) Mosaics.

Not many brands are using this tactic, but I’ve always found it to be a really cool, unique user experience. Not to mention, it’s also a clever way to get users to go to your business’ account page.

You see, most of your followers won’t be looking at your Instagram photos from your account page, as they’ll typically look at them in their Instagram feed. But when I started scrolling through the images below from Cava Mezze Grill in my feed, it took me a second to figure out what was happening. I kept seeing snippets of “New York,” which had a cool teaser affect. This enticed me to go to Cava Mezze Grill’s main account page, where I could see the full picture.

15) Asks to “tag a friend.”

While you technically can tag friends in posts on Facebook and Twitter, it happens most regularly on Instagram. There’s a culture around tagging your friends if you see a post that resonates with you or reminds you of that person. This helps you both increase engagement and broaden your reach.

If you want to encourage your followers to share the post with others, sometimes all you’ve got to do is ask. In the caption, include a call-to-action asking people to tag their friends, and give them a prompt to do so.

For example, in the post below from Rent the Runway, they ask followers to “Tag your BFF!”

In our post below from HubSpot, we asked followers to tag their office coffee buddy.

 

In this cute video from Headspace, they asked followers to tag someone they love to help celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Similar to asking your followers to tag a friend, you can also simply ask them to “double-tap,” which is how your followers can Like your photo or video. The common language for an ask like this is: “Double-tap if…”

In the example below from Rent the Runway, they ask followers to double-tap if they want to wear the dress from the photo to their next wedding, which is a fun way to engage their fans.

16) Reposts from your employees.

Reposting your employees is an awesome way to showcase what happens behind the scenes at your company, while really helping your followers “bond” with the people who work there.

For example, the folks behind the Boston Red Sox’s “Fenway Park” account often reposts photos and videos from their grounds crew.

ASOS has a really cool approach: They repost Instagram content from their individual stylists, who function as brand lifestyle ambassadors with accounts specifically associated with ASOS, like @asos_megan and @asos_isabella. While the main ASOS account posts mostly their own content, they often repost from their stylists, like in the image below.

17) Cross-promotion of another social media account.

Cross promotion of other social media accounts on Instagram is a great way to let your Instagram followers know where else on social media they can find you. That way, you can get your Instagram followers to become your followers on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and so on.

Pro Tip: If you have goals around increasing your following on Snapchat, post a picture of your unique Snapcode. A Snapcode is an image that looks like the Snapchat logo, but with a pattern of dots. To follow you on Snapchat, all users will have to do to is open the Snapchat app, take a photo of your Snapcode, and tap their screen. Here’s an example from HubSpot’s Instagram account.

18) “We’re hiring.”

Finally, let your followers know you’re hiring every once in a while by posting a simple call-to-action on your Instagram page, including a trackable link to your jobs page in your bio.

Here’s an example of a “we’re hiring” post from WeWork:

And here’s a delightful one from Rent the Runway.

What other ideas for Instagram posts do you have? Share with us in the comments.

Chances are thousands of prospective students and parents visit your website each year. Perhaps hundreds of them fill out a form to learn more about applying to your school.

Great – now you can market to them. But, not all prospective students are the same and nor should your emails be that way.

According to HubSpot, your click through rate (CTR) is higher when using the recipient’s first name in the subject line versus not using the first name. And CTR is also higher when using the recipient’s company name in the subject line over no company mention.

Segmenting your email list is a fundamental building block of personalization. Think of all those parents, school counselors, graduating students, students just starting to look around – they all need to be identified and segmented into separate email groups so you email them the content most relevant to them.

“Are You Talking to Me?”

The first step in segmentation is know who you’re talking to. As the marketing cliché goes, sending a vegetarian a coupon for a free meat-lovers pizza is no way to build trust with your prospect.

Effective segmentation means tracking online behaviors and designing sign-up forms on your offers that collect the information most valuable to you. Identify the key distinctions among your different personas. What are some simple questions you can ask so you can put the lead in their proper persona bucket?

You don’t have to be coy. Your form can include a dropdown question:

I’m a:

• Parent
• High school senior
• Other high school student
• Guidance/ career counselor

 When you analyze your distinguishing persona characteristics, prioritize them. You can’t ask for all the information you want at once. Knowing which contacts in your database are potential future students, or people in the position to influence the decision of a potential future student, is a basic distinction. Same with knowing what programs are most interesting to your prospect or when they plan to enroll. 

But from there, consider your school’s priorities. For instance, are you looking for a more geographically diverse student body? Or maybe you want to enroll local high school juniors in an advanced placement program. Also consider the niches of content you have available to send. If you have a report on graduation employment rates and articles of curated links to academic journal and press accounts of your school’s achievements – wouldn’t it be valuable to know what motivates a prospective student’s school choice? 

You’re not going to send your educational resource guide for returning military personnel to everyone, right?

Segmentation is only as valuable as the information you’re collecting about leads.

Progressive Profiling – Gathering More Intel for Your School

There’s much discussion on how much information people are willing to give online. Fortunately, you don’t need to collect all the information you want from a prospect on the first offer form. In fact, if you take that approach, chances are good that won’t get many sign-ups. 

Instead, you can use progressive profiling to pre-fill an offer form with a lead’s data so you can add one or two new fields for them to fill out.

Segmenting by Phase in Enrollment Journey

Knowing to whom you’re talking is one part of segmentation. From there, let’s cross-slice this intel with what you know about where a lead is in their enrollment journey. 

The awareness stage may be most challenging for segmentation, since by definition you’re looking for people who haven’t identified themselves to you yet. That doesn’t mean you can’t segment during this phase.

Do you want to target teens who are interested in STEM subjects? Create some social media memes or .gifs with the right hash tags and links back to STEM-related content on your school’s blog or website. 

You can use persona information such as where they get information, what devices they’re using to access content, what questions they have about how to look for a school or figure out what kind of school makes sense for them.

Once a lead gets into your database, you can refine which segments they fit in as you collect more information about them.

As people move into consideration and decision stages, their questions are shifting to what can your school offer them. This is the time you can send those prospects you’ve identified as returning veterans invitations to a meet-up with current soldier-students on campus. Or you can send an offer to talk with a financial aid counselor to someone who downloaded a financial aid guide.

Once a prospect gets into the decision stage, you want to have data on what will motivate their decision to select one school from among their options. You can’t push out the most compelling content to a prospective student in this final stage without understanding what’s going to motivate their decision.

Let’s go back to those student personas. Let’s say you’ve got a list of prospective students (or their parents) who have downloaded applications, but haven’t submitted them. Your marketing system is set up to set a “nudge” email at the 15-day mark. Will they be motivated by the same email? Probably not.

Instead, you can send:

• Joey Jobs a link to an article about new simulation technology used in his department of interest, that improves students’ hands-on experience as part of their course of study.
• Sarah Status an invitation to a faculty tea.
• Military Mike an explanation on your school’s leave policy for soldier-students who get called up.

Each email will contain a call to action regarding submitting their application. However, the segmented content communicates information genuinely valuable to each persona’s motivational priorities, which boosts their perception of your school as a good fit for them.

Remember that Data is Only Half the Battle

As you can see, having the data about leads so you segment them accurately is only half the battle. The other half is having the content that speaks to these personas in order to engage with them effectively. As you create your list segments, that’s a great time to uncover and address any content gaps you may have. That way you can be sure each persona segment has the content they need for whatever stage of their decision journey they’re in.

Founded in 2012 by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, Medium is quickly becoming one of the world’s most popular websites. According to Alexa, Medium.com has risen nearly 100 spots in the past three months alone to become the world’s 372nd most-visited site. (If you’re not impressed, remember that there are more than 1 billion websites currently in existence).

But Medium is more than just a destination site: It’s a hybrid content discovery/publishing platform. And whether you’re interested in potentially publishing on Medium, or you are just curious to see what the platform is all about, I recommend taking a look at some of the top Medium publications.

A Medium publication is a collection of stories that’s usually centered around a particular subject or theme. In addition to running their own publications (some of which you’ll see in the list below), Medium allows anyone to create them.

Of course, the downside — from an SEO perspective — is that the stories you publish in a Medium publication don’t live on your site, and hence they don’t help improve your site’s search rankings. That being said, a Medium publication can still be a great way to reach a new audience with your content.

Regardless of your goals or intentions, here are some of the most popular Medium publications for you to enjoy and/or get inspired by.

8 Medium Publications You Should Be Following

1) Backchannel

Backchannel is one of Medium’s in-house publications. It focuses on publishing “lively and meaningful tales and analysis” from the tech world, and has veteran tech journalist Steven Levy as its editor-in-chief. If you’re looking for in-depth, well-researched tech news, Backchannel is definitely a publication you want to follow.

But in addition to being a high-quality resource for tech news, Backchannel is perhaps one of the best-designed publications around, and showcases some pretty amazing illustrations and animated GIFs. Just check out this example below from a recent story:

Suggested stories from Backchannel:

• “We Are Now at Peak TED”
• “The Secret to Moonshots? Killing Our Projects”

2) Life Learning

Life isn’t promised. After all, 99.9% of all species go extinct. So how can humanity evolve? Learn, as fast as we can.”

That’s the copy that greets you on the Life Learning email newsletter landing page. The folks behind that newsletter — Googler Stephanie Postles and veteran-turned-entrepreneur Chad Grills — have also created a successful Medium publication with the same name.

Boasting nearly 100 thousand followers, Life Learning is a go-to resource for self-improvement and uncovering life’s mysteries. Some of the publication’s more well-known contributors include WordStream founder & CTO Larry Kim and investor Ben Horowtiz.

Suggested stories from Life Learning:

• “5 Ways Incredibly Productive People Master Their Time”
• “Usermind” (Note: there is some NSFW language in this one.)

3) Startups, Wanderlust, and Life Hacking

This publication goes by many names, including Startups, Wanderlust, and Life Hacking; #SWLH, which is the initialized, hashtag version of the previous name; as well as simply The Startup, which is what’s currently listed on their publication page.

Regardless of what you call the publication, here’s what you’ll find in it: “Handpicked business, marketing, design, and technology articles for entrepreneurs and startups.” Contributors have included the likes of marketer/speaker extraordinaire Seth Godin, as well as an entrepreneur named Dharmesh Shah who works at a little company called HubSpot.

Suggested stories from Startups, Wanderlust, and Life Hacking:

• “‘Will this be on the test?’ Rethinking online education”
• “The Surprisingly Simple Thing Slack Got Wrong”

 4) Bright

Bright is another one of Medium’s in-house publications. And like Backchannel, it too features some pretty stellar design work — as you can tell by the illustration above. But instead of taking on the tech world, Bright‘s editorial focuses on innovations in education.

Funded by The New Venture Fund and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bright story topics range from education reform to how too much screen time can affect learning. Even if education isn’t your field, there’s plenty of knowledge to gain from perusing the Bright publication.

Suggested stories from Bright:

• “Automated Teachers, Augmented Reality And Floating Chairs”
• “You Tell Me: When Kids + Screens = Happiness”

5) Personal Growth

If you’re looking for some first-hand stories and advice on how to make sense of your chaotic life, Personal Growth might be the publication for you.

Created by writer Dan Pedersen, who also runs a blog called Living With Confidence, Personal Growth features stories from contributors who live both inside and outside of the tech world. Story topics range from life-hacking tips to personal accounts of overcoming adversity.

Suggested stories from Personal Growth:

• “7 Surprisingly Simple Rules to Change Your Life”
• “26 Things I’ve Learned In 26 Years”

6) The Coffeelicious

It’s hard to pinpoint what The Coffeelicious focuses on in terms of editorial, which is probably due to the fact that, when it was launched, the publication had a rule that it would “accept almost all the submitted stories, because what may not appeal to someone might just be bookmarked by another.”

The democratic nature of The Coffeelicious has lead to the publication having more than 450 contributors, all of whom offer different viewpoints and writing styles. From marriage, to drug addiction, to marketing, The Coffeelicious covers a diverse array of topics. It’s the perfect publication for uncovering a great story you didn’t even know you wanted to read. To quote their tagline: “Look around, relax and enjoy one with a sip of coffee.”

Suggested stories from The Coffeelicious:

• “You can’t run, but you can write”
• “A House Made of No”

 7) Marketing and Growth Hacking

Created by student/software engineer Lincoln Daniel, Marketing and Growth Hacking is a highly collaborative publication that has featured stories from dozens upon dozens of different writers. The common theme tying all of their stories together, of course, is kayak polo.

Wait, nope, I’m being told “marketing and growth hacking” is the theme. (But in case you were wondering, yes, kayak polo is an actual thing.) Marketing and Growth Hacking story topics run the gambit from SEO tactics and headline-writing tips to learning how to growth hack your own happiness.

Suggested stories from Marketing and Growth Hacking:

• “How I Drove 28k Views and Ranked On Page 1 In 30 Days Without Spending a Dollar”
• “Work Hacks and Tools for the Digital Marketing Pro”

8) The Story

For keeping up to date with all things Medium, there’s no better publication than Medium’s official blog: The Story. From company updates, to the latest feature rollouts, to curated lists of Medium’s best stories, The Story allows you to keep your fingers on Medium’s pulse.

Suggested stories from The Story:

• “Ideas That Moved Us in 2015”
• “Management and Organization at Medium”

Know of any other awesome Medium publications? Tell us about them in the comments section below.

When you’re an email marketer, your to-do list often looks like this: Generate opt-in leads, segment your lists, set up lead nurturing workflows, draft clear and concise email copy, check your emails for deliverability, optimize for plain text and HTML, and so on. 

Geez … isn’t there any fun in email marketing anymore?

Thankfully, there are plenty of email marketing geeks out there (ourselves included) that do think all of that’s kind of fun. But these less glamorous aspects of email marketing — though critical to your campaign’s success — don’t paint the entire picture of what amazing email marketing really is.

Download our free ebook here to learn how to design emails that people actually click.

There are brands out there that have also figured out how to create emails that are pretty darn beautiful. While plain text or bare-bones emails can still be extremely effective, sometimes you want to amaze your subscribers with creative, captivating, or delightfully understated email design.

If you’re looking to dabble in something a little more adventurous for your next email marketing campaign, check out the examples below for inspiration.

Email Newsletter Design Examples

1) Collaborative Fund

In design, red and yellow serve as powerful color choices. While red is known to convey power or passion, yellow is often considered both bright and energizing. 

Although many companies use a big block of color at the top of their newsletters to draw people in, the folks at Collaborative Fund took it a few steps further by combining red and yellow bursts of color throughout the whole email. Pretty powerful, right?

Color aside, they leveraged clean divides to separate these blocks, while incorporating different textures — like that crumpled paper — to create a really compelling experience.

Image Credit: Beautiful Email Newsletters

2) Starbucks

This newsletter from Starbucks covers a lot of information: instructions for the pour-over method, a call-to-action to shop for a new product, recipes for summer floats, and so on.

To make this more easily scannable, the folks at Starbucks paired these short descriptions with high quality images. (You can practically hear the coffee being poured over ice in the first image.) Like the Collaborative Fund example, they also used clear, horizontal divides to separate each topic.

In addition, we really like how they incorporated the Pinterest logo and the Instagram logo alongside two of the calls-to-action. These logos support the text by setting the recipient’s expectation up front. In other words, they know that clicking through to browse more recipes will ultimately direct them to Pinterest. 

Image Credit: Beans N’ Rice

3) InVision LABS

Here’s a much more concise email from InVision, which includes a clean design and an eye-catching color. Thanks to that darker blue background, both the call-to-action and the white box near the bottom of the email really command attention. 

Additionally, the fanned out product images help the recipient understand what the announcement entails before diving into the explainer copy. 

Image Credit: Really Good Emails

The best part? The colorful experience doesn’t stop with the email. The bright blue color is carried through to the corresponding website, making this a strong example of seamless branding. 

4) GrubHub

This email from GrubHub is a great example of product promotion … because it doesn’t sound or feel like product promotion at all. Instead of saying, “Hey, you like food. You should order it using our service!”, the email tells a story with the help of a really cool piece of interactive content: an “Eat Map.” (See what they did there?)

We especially love the colorful GIF they used to promote the piece of content, as it really commands the recipient’s attention. (Want to learn how to create a GIF using Photoshop? Read this.)

 

Transactional Email Design Examples

5) Handy

We love this simple welcome email from Handy. The color scheme is consistent, relying on grey for the base, and bright blue to draw attention to the logo and calls-to-action.

There’s a nice balance between text and visuals here, and the tile design makes it easy to skim through. Finally, we love that they used non-cheesy stock photos to represent their brand, which makes them more genuine and lovable from a consumer perspective.

Image Credit: Really Good Emails

6) Litmus

You might expect a beautiful email from a company that’s announcing an email design conference — and Litmus doesn’t disappoint. The email starts out with a bold burst of color, which grabs readers’ attention. Below this, you’ll find a clean design that includes concise copy, whimsical illustrations, and a great use of white space.

At the bottom of the email, you’ll see a live Twitter feed showing tweets that use the conference’s official hashtag. That social engagement factor is a really cool touch that we’re willing to bet increased engagement, while simultaneously informing folks about how to stay connected at the event. 

Image Credit: Really Good Emails

7) Uber

As marketers, we know that charts and graphs can serve as an effective way to illustrate information. But what about incorporating graphs into emails? 

This email design from Uber skillfully demonstrates the power of data visualization through the use of simple graphs. Rather than relying on words to explain their lowered rates, Uber whipped up a few comparative visuals to do the job. Thanks to the bright blue color choice, it’s easy for recipients to understand how the rates have shifted in just a quick glance. 

Image Credit: HTML Email Gallery

8) Cuyana

Here’s a product promotion email Cuyana sent to people who signed up for a new product’s “early access” list. The email is centered entirely around showcasing the new product, but in this case, that’s exactly what the folks who opted in to the “early access” list were looking for.

The design of the email is clean and sophisticated, thanks to a brilliant use of negative space and attractive fonts. This approach is very true-to-brand for a women’s apparel and accessories company. We love the use of consistent coloring — especially the signature orange hue they chose for the call-to-action button at the bottom.

(Note: This is an example of an email made using HubSpot. Click here to check out more email marketing examples from our library.)

Image Credit: HubSpot Academy

Ecommerce Email Design Examples

9) J.Crew

Sometimes, words can be overrated. Why not let a picture tell the story for you? That’s what J.Crew did in this email, anyway. The email is promoting a sale, but you wouldn’t know it right away: All you see is the copy, “This is worth the scroll,” along with a very long (and very scroll-worthy), high-definition picture of an ice cream cone. Yum. 

If you make it to the bottom, you’ll notice that the tip of the ice cream cone acts like a directional arrow, pointing recipients toward the call-to-action. 

Image Credit: Akingkiwi

10) Apple

This holiday email from Apple balances white space with product displays to create a really interesting experience.

While the products all share a similar color scheme, what’s really compelling is their positioning. By strategically arranging the products, Apple was able to create visual patterns that alternate throughout the email. 

Image Credit: HTML Email Gallery

11) Union Made Goods

Consumers get a lot of emails from ecommerce businesses showcasing holiday gift ideas from their websites, and this is an example of one of these emails done well. They opted for a simple design here, which includes a really nice use of both color and white space, making the copy and images that are there pop a little more. 

 

Image Credit: Canva

12) Shwood & Stanley

In the ecommerce world, the quality of visuals in your emails can have a huge impact on whether recipients stick around to look through the whole email, or quickly hit the “delete” button. This email from Shwood & Stanley places a big emphasis on those high-quality visuals. We especially love the textured backgrounds, as well as the ways in which they play with list and shadows.

Image Credit: Really Good Emails

13) Harry’s

For seasonal emails like this one from Harry’s, you might consider using color schemes that go with the season. To promote their winter gift set, the folks at Harry’s cooled down their color scheme with traditional winter colors like green, blue, and brown. They also struck a nice balance between text and visuals, and helped to make their email easier to skim by using a simple tile design.

Not to mention, those bright red calls-to-action look pretty clickable … wouldn’t you agree?

Image Credit: Beautiful Email Newsletters

What other companies out there have you noticed are creating beautiful email marketing?

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2012 and has been updated and for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

“Never let schooling interfere with the tech startup you’re running out of your dorm room.” – Mark Twain

Admittedly I may have taken a few artistic liberties with the Mark Twain quote above, but the underlying sentiment remains: When it comes to learning — to amassing the knowledge you need to be successful in life — formal education isn’t always the best option.

In a study of over 39 companies with $1 billion valuations or higher, eight of them boasted co-founders who had dropped out of college. Not to mention, three of the top five companies were run by college dropouts.

Of course, there’s no ignoring the evidence to the contrary: The overwhelming majority of billion-dollar companies were founded by people who not only earned college degrees, but who earned them from selective schools. So the point of this post, to be clear, isn’t to convince folks to drop out of school. It’s simply to highlight some of the exceptional cases where taking a less traditional route ended up paying off big.

6 Famous Business People Who Dropped Out of School

1) Bill Gates

(Source: ITPro)

Bill Gates applied to just three colleges after graduating from high school: Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. 

He was accepted to all three.

In the end, it was Harvard’s campus that Gates chose to stroll onto in the fall of 1973. But within a couple years, earning a degree from one of the most prestigious universities in the world would take a back seat to another opportunity: Creating a programming language (Altair BASIC) for one of the world’s first personal computers, the Altair 8800.

Originally working out of his Harvard dorm room, Gates would formalize his partnership with long-time friend Paul Allen in 1975 under the banner “Micro-soft.” The two then set up shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which was where their first customer — Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), maker of the Altair 8800 — was located. And while Gates did initially try to balance academics with business, and would travel back to Harvard to take classes, the business inevitably started taking up more and more of his time. (He was a CEO, after all.) So Gates made the decision to drop out of school for good.

Today, Gates has an estimated net worth of $77.6 billion. And you might be surprised to learn that he also has a Harvard degree: Gates received an honorary doctorate from the school in 2007.

2) Steve Jobs

(Source: 9to5Mac)

Unlike Bill Gates, who dropped out of college so he could run a company, Steve Jobs dropped out of college so he could … well … go to college. Allow me to explain.

Having found the required classes on his schedule too boring to bear, Jobs dropped out of Reed College just six months into his freshman year so he could drop in on the classes that he was actually interested in — like Shakespeare, dance, and calligraphy. That calligraphy course, as Jobs would later call in a 2005 Stanford commencement speech, helped inspire him to incorporate multiple typefaces into the Macintosh.

I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great … None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac.”

In that same speech, Jobs mentioned another reason why he dropped out of college: He felt bad for spending his parents’ money on an education that he didn’t really see the value in.

I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.

And when you consider that Jobs went on to create what is now (at the time of this writing) the most valuable brand in the world, I think it’s safe to say it all worked out OK.

3) Oprah Winfrey

(Source: K92.7)

Three years after Steve Jobs gave Stanford’s commencement speech, another college-dropout-turned-billionaire would take the stage: Oprah Winfrey.

In her speech to the graduating class of 2008, the Queen of Talk recalled how she started working in TV at the age of 19 while she was a sophomore at Tennessee State University. “I was the only television anchor person that had an 11 o’clock curfew doing the 10 o’clock news,” she commented, before continuing, “Seriously, my dad was like, ‘Well, that news is over at 10:30. Be home by 11.'”

By the time her senior year rolled around, Winfrey’s TV career was looking promising. So promising, in fact, that instead of sticking around to complete the one credit she needed to graduate, Oprah dropped out of college. A year later, at the age of 22, Winfrey was co-anchoring the 6 o’clock news in Baltimore.

Needless to stay, Winfrey’s decision to drop out paid off big. Today, her net worth is estimated at $3.1 billion. But there was one person in Winfrey’s life who could never come to terms with her not finishing college: Her father. As Winfrey recalled in the Stanford speech …

He’d say, ‘Oprah Gail’ — that’s my middle name — ‘I don’t know what you’re gonna do without that degree.’ And I’d say, ‘But, Dad, I have my own television show.’ And he’d say, ‘Well, I still don’t know what you’re going to do without that degree.’ And I’d say, ‘But, Dad, now I’m a talk show host.’ He’d say, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to get another job without that degree.'”

In then end, Winfrey’s dad would prove to be the winner of that argument. In 1987, Winfrey went back to Tennessee State University and completed her degree.

4) Mark Zuckerberg

(Source: PR News)

Mark Zuckerberg holds an interesting spot on this list, as he’s one of the few college dropout success stories who actually planned on going back to school. In a talk he gave back in 2012, the Facebook co-founder and CEO recalled how he had been upfront with investor Peter Thiel about not wanting to drop out of Harvard.

Thiel didn’t believe him. In fact, Zuckerberg’s own family didn’t believe him — they all thought he would drop out. As Zuckerberg commented during that same talk back in 2012:

My life is a long history of people thinking I would drop out of school long before I did.”

For Zuckerberg, at least in the early days, Facebook was just a hobby. Whereas Gates knew he was onto something big (e.g., consumer software) when he started running Microsoft out of his Harvard dorm room, Zuckerberg was a bit more skeptical when he launched the first iteration of Facebook. He even had a back up plan if this “hobby” didn’t work out: He’d go work for Microsoft.

Of course, as Facebook began growing like wildfire, becoming one of the top 10 most-trafficked site on the internet within a year and a half of its launch, Zuckerberg inevitably realized that this side project of his had some serious potential. So in the fall of 2005, Zuckerberg left Harvard to focus on Facebook full-time.

He’d return to Harvard a year later … to recruit engineers.

5) Jay Z

(Source: EW)

While Jay Z is perhaps best known as a rapper, he’s also an accomplished entrepreneur. From founding his own record label (Roc-A-Fella) and talent agency (Roc Nation), to launching a clothing line (Rocawear), to re-launching a music streaming service (Tidal), Jay Z a.k.a. Shawn Carter has a diverse business portfolio.

Something else you might not have known about Jay Z: He never finished high school. The Brooklyn native dropped out to focus on his job at the time … dealing drugs. As Jay Z recalled in a 2013 interview, drug dealing ended up teaching him some valuable business skills, like budgeting. But at the same time, he always knew it wasn’t a viable path forward:

At some point, you have to have an exit strategy, because your window is very small. You’re going to get locked up or you’re going to die.”

Fortunately for Jay Z, he had an exit strategy: Music. As of 2015, his estimated net worth is $550 million.

6) Lady Gaga

(Source: The Mirror)

I know, know … another music example. But trust me, Lady Gaga is more than just a performer: she’s a business unto herself. (I mean, there’s a Harvard Business School case study on her, for paparazzi’s sake.)

Born Stefani Germanotta, Lady Gaga attended New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts after graduating from high school. But during her sophomore year, she decided to drop out to focus more on her fledgling music career — a decision that would end up paying off in a big way.

In addition to earning millions through selling and performing her music, Lady Gaga has been able to cash in through numerous brand partnerships and tie-ins. For example, she’s teamed up with Versace, Virgin Mobile, and even Starbucks for promotional campaigns.

Today, Lady Gaga’s net worth is estimated at $225 million.

Know of any other successful dropouts who should be on this list? Tell us in the comments section below.

Fundraisers are great opportunities to raise money, right? Wrong—well, sort of wrong.

Often hosted just a few times a year, these races, picnics, galas, and more are great opportunities for nonprofit marketers to learn more about their communities, members, and donors. Rather than chasing down your website visitors to complete sample surveys or connect with your team over the phone, you can have a good old fashioned conversation.

Rule #1 is to tone down the selling. Focus on getting to know your event-goers on a personal level so that you can empathize with them. Human connections are often difficult to replicate online, so it’s important to make the most out of all the face time that you have—it’s a treasure trove. And because your donors are often busy individuals, it’s rare that you’ll be able to wrangle them into a room together.

Make sure that you have a good marketing and research plan in place for your next fundraising event.

Here are a few tips to guide you: 

Organize Your Ducks

As you spend time with members and donors at your fundraising events, you’ll collect immensely valuable information that can inform your marketing strategy. Where are you storing this information?

The answer to this question is mission-critical. These days, companies are making huge investments in researching their audiences—something that you can do at no additional cost when you’re hosting a high-profile event.

Weeks before your event, do a little due diligence on your marketing systems. Make sure that you have a unified database with comprehensive audience profiles. The information that you collect from your events will ultimately need rehoming from your notebooks and brain.

Get Personal

Personalization is one of the biggest opportunities—and biggest challenges—in marketing. The amount of data that you’ll collect at an event is unparalleled compared to what you’ll collect online and over time.

Make sure that your database is flexible enough to organize this information. The best way to get started? Brainstorm a set of personalization elements that you think will make your core website experience better. Then, make sure that your database can accommodate this valuable information.

At the event, focus on collecting the information that you’ve identified as ideal for your user experience.

Get Feedback on Your Marketing Campaigns

While you’ll want to keep the pitching to a minimum at your fundraiser, you should still feel comfortable ‘talking shop.’

When mingling at your fundraiser, ask your members and donors to share feedback around your marketing campaigns. Are they reading your blog posts? Do they find your one-pagers valuable? What information do they wish they could have on hand?

By answering these questions, you’ll be well-positioned to build upon your marketing campaigns. Instead of generating content and messaging that are off base, you can develop a more compelling value proposition.

Since you’ll be talking to donors in person, you’ll have an especially valuable opportunity to collect feedback ‘between the lines.’ Pay attention to what people aren’t telling you during your conversations. A follow-up email with a survey or request for feedback is a great way to make sure no attendee information falls through the cracks. 

Be Delightful

In a day and age when automated marketing campaigns are the norm, your company needs an extra edge to stand out. 

Why not follow up with the donors that you ended up meeting in person? Take initial steps to build a lasting, long-term relationship with each person: show that your organization cares.

When it comes to marketing, never underestimate the value of a personal touch. When the people behind your organization are present and visible, your audiences will take notice.

Plan for the Future

Stuck on the messaging for your next ad campaign? Looking for case study ideas? Next time you host a fundraiser, make sure to identify these goals ahead of time. As you’re well-aware, marketing moves at a million miles per hour. If you want these same donors to come back next year, you’ll want to start your event planning process now.

Look for in-depth stories. Pay attention to the conversations that elicit the most emotions from your donors. Figure out what you can do better next time.

Final Thoughts

Effective marketing campaigns are getting tougher to develop—especially if your organization is budget-strapped and lacking a seven figure marketing budget. Stop trying to compete with more dollars: improve your value proposition instead. Make the most out of every donor touchpoint—build lasting, impactful relationships.

Inbound marketing is shown to be incredibly effective for attracting website visitors and generating leads. But for many companies, there’s still a place for outbound marketing tactics (like print advertising, broadcasting, and so on) alongside those inbound tactics.

So how can offline marketing work hand-in-hand with your online marketing efforts? Is there a way to incorporate both into your larger marketing strategy?

To learn how different online and offline marketing channel can work together, check out the infographic below from Colour Graphics. You’ll learn where companies tend to spend their online and offline marketing budgets, which marketing tactics give the best return on investment, and how you can help drive offline conversations through online marketing.