📣 Product updates December 2023. Learn more →
Vero logo

2014 Was a Big Year for The Vero Blog

  • Uncategorized
    Updated
    Posted:

2014 was a big year for the Vero blog.

We learned a lot. A few of our posts were big hits and a few fell flat.

Below, you’ll find links to all 104 posts we published this year along with the total numbers of pageviews (as of December 15). If you have any thoughts about why some killed it and some flopped, feel free to leave a comment … we’d be curious on your take.

What We Learned in 2015

1. Bigger is (sometimes) better.

Four posts had more than 10,000 pageviews and each was greater than 2,000 words. In fact, our most popular post of the year was over 10,000 words. We’re not suggesting using more words than you need to but know that people will read longer posts if they are informative.

Check out The Ultimate Guide to Successful Email Marketing, which racked up more than 46,000 pageviews.

the ultimate guide to email marketing

2. Invest in design.

We put some real effort into making our posts look great this year. We did this to enhance readability but also to let people know we’re serious about creating great content.

design is SEO.png

Check out these posts in particular:

Also, user experience is SEO. Which leads us to the next point …

3. Don’t screw around with SEO.

In August, we launched a redesign of the blog. As part of the process, we changed a few URLs and added a splash page in place of the normal homepage.

DOH!

That cost us 22 percent of our organic search traffic and we’re still recovering four months later.

We invested serious time in link building this year. I’m not talking about directories and forums. I’m talking about old-school networking. And that led to some seriously awesome links. Here are a few of the best links we earned this year:

5. Make friends.

This might seem silly but you can’t grow a blog alone. We got to know some people this year that really helped us. Sometimes that meant sharing our content but other times it meant giving us really honest (and sometimes brutal) feedback.

I can’t give you a formula for this but, in general, act like a human being and an upstanding citizen of the Internet. It goes a long way.

6. Create a swipe file.

We live and breathe the swipe file. (More on how to create one here.)

I get more email than just about anyone on Earth. That’s because I sign up for every newsletter and product possible to see what kind of emails they send me. I tag the ones that stand out then use them as examples in on the blog.

This has not only saved a ton of time but it allows us to create content with unique examples every time. We took this process to the extreme with our Amazon Email Experience post where we signed up for an account and bought things just to see what emails we’d get.

We also published a few swipe files that people can download. Find those here and here.

7. Be really transparent.

You don’t have to go as far as publishing employee salaries but a little transparency goes a long way.

Take, for example, this post where we explained exactly how we promoted our best practices guide.

That post racked up 38 comments, nearly 4,000 pageviews, and more than 1,200 shares. The knowledge we shared was a byproduct of our other marketing efforts. (Thanks to Jason Fried and Brian Dean for the inspiration.)

8. Try new things, even if you’re afraid they might fail.

Outside of writing blog posts, we tried a few other things:

Some of these kicked asses, others stunk it up. We learned a few key lessons that will help guide our marketing next year.

9. Get real with your data.

It’s easy to get stuck in an analytics rut. Fight your way out … it’s so worth it!

We spent a lot of time this year getting our Google Analytics data in order. Now we have a much better handle on where newsletter subscribers and free trials convert and how they find us. It’s been an enlightening process.

We also spent a lot of time in Excel mucking around with data. For 6 months, I kept track of the number of words in each blog post to see what our readers responded to. Chris and I also collaborated on a new way to visualize email campaign data.

It was time well spent. (Read more about that here.)

10. Surround yourself with inspiring people.

When you work remotely, it can be difficult to physically surround yourself with people. As motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously said, “You are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with.”

I work with my dog mostly. She’s great but Rohn did specify people. So in addition to my co-workers, I make an effort to read a lot of inspiring articles and books. These people bring my average up.

  1. Jason Fried: Rework, Remote, Signal v. Noise
  2. Seth Godin: Seth’s Blog, a bunch of books
  3. Joanna Wiebe: Copyhackers
  4. Greg Ciotti: HelpScout, personal blog
  5. Alex Turnbull: Journey to $500k a Month

So, with all that said, here is all the content we published in 2014. Thanks for making it a great year, and here’s to an even better 2015.

Post Pageviews
The Ultimate Guide To Successful Email Marketing 46,075
20 Tips for Dramatically Better Emails 28,812
50 Marketing Blogs You Should Read Every Day 28,127
The Complete Guide to Transactional Email 11,113
5 Reasons We Love This Behavioral Email From Airbnb 6,434
How Amazon Dominates E-Commerce With Email Marketing 6,404
Growth Hacking with Email Receipts Is a Huge Missed Opportunity 6,378
4 Tips for Killer Calls to Action in Your Emails 5,593
How to Write Email Subject Lines That Get Opened (Based on Research) 5,531
The Art of the Welcome Email: 3 Examples to Improve Your Onboarding Process 5,469
15 Truly Awesome Email Marketing Growth Hacks 5,083
100 Epic Email Marketing Statistics 4,712
Don’t Get Left Behind This New Year: The 9 Best Email Marketing Tips From 2013 4,202
How We Earned 300+ Links and 2,500+ Shares on a Single Post in Less Than 30 Days 3,945
The Swipe File: 50 Email Newsletters Every Marketer Should Subscribe To 3,832
58 Must-Read Email Marketing Articles 3,201
How to Collect Emails Addresses on Twitter 3,189
15 Experts Offer Their Best Email Marketing Advice 2,718
The Email Marketer’s Checklist: 9 Questions to Ask Before You Hit Send 2,536
15 Data-Driven Email Marketing Campaigns To Help You Kick Ass 2,300
54 Essential Email Marketing Resources 2,184
5 Transactional Emails Analyzed for Growth Hacking Opportunities 2,143
21 Welcome Emails to Inspire Your Lifecycle Marketing 1,801
5 Reasons Why Email Marketing Fails 1,725
5 Conversion Optimization Pros Review A Triggered Email Campaign 1,712
What SaaS Businesses Can Learn from Dollar Shave Club 1,707
How Unhaggle Increased Click Through Rates 378% 1,650
The Fastest and Easiest Way to Grow Your Email List 1,615
5 Online Marketing Communities That Have Taken On a Life of Their Own 1,596
I work for a company 7,814 miles away 1,542
3 Seriously Undervalued Email Marketing Strategies 1,388
How to Use Behavioral Email: 3 Ideas You Can Steal for Your Own Marketing 1,346
6 Tools To Take Your Email Marketing To The Next Level 1,335
The Hooked Model: How to Create Habit-Forming Emails 1280
The 5 Deadly Sins Of Email Marketing 1,174
Creating a Better Swipe File: 7 Newsletters You Should Subscribe To 1149
Why Product Hunt’s Emails Are So Addictive 1,139
A Beginner’s Guide to Tracking Your Competitors’ Email Marketing, Social Media and SEO 1,118
Say Goodbye to Comfortable Content: How to Make Your Marketing Perform 1,099
How to Use Animated GIFs in Email Marketing 1,063
4 Predictions for the Future of Email Marketing 1,040
3 Compelling Reasons Why Every Business Should Start a Blog 1,015
The 4-Step Formula for More Persuasive Emails 997
Less Effort, More Epic: Produce Better Content And Win 916
The Super-Simple Way to Get Ahead of Your Competitors (Hint: Use Video in Email) 915
Here’s How We Welcome New Subscribers to Our Blog 910
6 Ways You Can Improve Your Email Marketing TODAY 816
Email Marketing 2.0: A Smarter, Better, Cheaper Way to Succeed with Email 804
How The Founder of Vero Manages Email Marketing 750
Content Marketing Examples Guaranteed to Surprise You 749
How to Use Retention Emails to Make Money 726
The 8 Essential Elements of the Perfect Email 714
How to Guarantee Your Emails Get Delivered 713
How Email Marketers Can Thrive While Respecting “Inbox Zero” 712
How To Find A Starving Crowd of Hungry Buyers 700
Did Google Just Kill Email Marketing Analytics? 692
How to Run an International Team Retreat 691
3 Misconceptions About Email Marketing (Backed by Data) 658
How to A/B Test Your Way to Better Email Marketing 655
Why It’s Time to Embrace Google+ Doorway Pages 641
Marketers: Please Don’t Cannibalize Your Content 617
9 Killer Email Marketing Mistakes 597
How to Create Dead-Simple, One-Click Email Surveys 590
Why Email Is the Ultimate Defense Against Digital Sharecropping 472
How to Measure the Success of Email Marketing Campaigns 470
Masterclass: How to Use Email to Drive 29% of Your Revenue 452
A Content Marketer’s Guide to the Post-Analytics World 448
How to Build an Audience of 1.5 Million Readers 442
To Gain or to Give: What Motivates People to Act? An A/B Test Case Study from Emble.io 436
5 Innovative Ways to Increase Your Sales in 2014 426
Helping You Achieve More With Email: Updates Coming To Vero 424
How to Unsubscribe From Unwanted Email 416
The Story Behind Vero’s Revamped Content Strategy 412
How to Send a Great Promotional Email, Courtesy of Evernote 401
13 Steps to Take Your Content Promotion to the Next Level 379
Show Me The Money: The Secrets of a Great ‘Upgrade’ Email 347
Masterclass: Meet Moz Community Manager Erica McGillivray 341
The Beginner’s Guide to Making and Using Video in Email Marketing 327
33 Essential Tools for Content Creators 323
9 Things You Should Know About Vero’s Email Marketing Platform 307
Why You Should Learn From Success, Not Failure 306
The Lean Marketer: What You Need to Know About Minimum Viable Email 304
7 Important Things I Learned About Marketing at Authority Intensive 287
How I Manage a Team of Five Without… 284
12 Weeks of Holiday Email Marketing Education (for Free) 282
Inside the Vero Blog: Our Journey from 0 to 43,000 Monthly Pageviews 249
Meet Courtney Seiter, Buffer’s Head of Content Marketing 239
Want to Contribute to the Vero Blog? Here’s What You Need to Know 233
The World on Your Terms: Why You Can Start a Successful Business Anywhere 232
Product Update: Better email preview and expanded segments 225
Data-Driven: 3 Important Types of Email Marketing 224
Transactional Email FAQs: What You Need to Know 224
Building a Startup: How and Why Vero Came To Be 218
The Nature of Nurture: Email Marketing Strategies That Nurture Leads 208
How to Use Vero for One-to-One Email Personalisation 201
Email vs. Social is Passe: 10 Smart Ways to Think Social and Email 188
Email Marketing and Community Building: A Match Made in Heaven 182
5 Fascinating AMAs for the Marketing and Startup Communities 179
How to Earn a Spot in the Elusive Inbox 162
Twitter Philosophy: The Tools, Advice and Resources You Need to Succeed 162
[AUDIO] Our First Email Marketing Q&A 154
Vero joins AirPair Trusted Partner Experts 127
Why Great Email Marketing Is Immune to Platform Changes 114
Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Transactional Email? 108

Want to send more personalized mobile and email messages to your users?

Check out Vero, customer engagement software designed for product marketers. Message your users based on what they do (or don't do) in your product.

Sign up for free

Consider signing up for a free trial. No credit card required.

Vero Cloud Workflows
  • Dribbble logo
  • Unsplash logo
  • Docplanner logo
  • Pipedrive logo
  • Snappr logo
  • Stockpile logo
  • Stickermule logo
  • End logo
  • Flock Freight logo
  • Ausmed logo
  • CodeSandbox logo
  • Bubble logo
  • Dovetail logo
  • Uno logo