External hard drive space and cloud storage have become so inexpensive we no longer have any excuse not to have multiple backups of our digital content to protect all of our devices—computers, smartphones, tablets, etc. Think of the many hours you invest at your company in gathering client data, developing amazing creative solutions, conducting online research, finalizing that perfect proposal or even just preserving your photos from a family vacation. Now, imagine all of that work is gone in an instant due to a computer crash. Think of the hours of billable time that would be lost in trying to recreate what was lost.

I recently had one of my computer hard drives fail. I had backed it up onto external storage drive—but that one failed too. Thankfully, I had a third backup in the cloud and all of my data was saved. It’s not as simple as just connecting your computer to an external hard drive, or with Apple, turning on Time Machine, and initiating a backup. You also need to periodically check your backups and the integrity of the drives you are using. Another great, cost-effective and convenient solution is to subscribe to a cloud computing backup service.

Tracking is important no matter if you’re creating television spots, print, digital or outdoor advertisements, developing a method of tracking success is of the upmost importance. Some tools already exist that won’t cost you any extra money.

Think about using multiple URLs and targeting each URL for a specific advertising outlet. For example, you could use a unique URL for outdoor ads that direct customers to your website. Use a different URL on your print ads, another in email blasts 
and so on. This simple method will allow you to track the traffic your website is pulling from each different advertising medium, so that you can pinpoint which method is driving the most traffic. The goal is simple: if something works do more of it, and if it doesn’t work, retool it or consider eliminating the underperforming ads from your marketing mix.

Now is the time to start working on your holiday promotional campaigns and taking advantage of the power of of online resources – especially e-blast emails – to help spread the word. Whether you are a seasoned pro e-mail marketing pro or a novice, here are some tips you should keep in mind to increase the effectiveness of your campaign. It’s important to have a clean and modern e-blast design, and even at our ad agency we sometimes find this challenging.

During the Holiday season, time is especially short for your customers and potential customers and they will spend only about 4.8 seconds scanning your email before they decide to read further. So, designing an elegant and simple e-blast that clearly states your key messages is essential in getting their attention – fast! Resist the temptation to cram tons of text in your promotions to ensure the message elicits action.

How do you decide what design will work for your business? At Nuevo, we’ve conducted countless focus groups to determine what is most appealing to consumers. We’ve found consumers are most interested in discounts, special sales and coupons this time of year. Sounds obvious, right? The “prime real estate” in your e-blasts is from the headline down to the first two or 3 inches of that email. Here is where you must convey your message clearly and concisely and without room for interpretation.

Every business should take extra steps to safeguard its customers’ information and protect business technologies from hackers. It is always a good practice to change passwords at least 3 times a year. Make your password hard to crack. Good passwords should include both uppercase and lower case characters, special characters (like #$%! etc.) and be at least 21 characters long. You can find a few good online password generators (https://lastpass.com/generatepassword.php). If you use a password generator, make sure the passwords are generated on your local device such as your laptop or desktop instead of your handheld, and to be extra safe, change a few of the characters in the auto generated password before you use the new pas sword. A strong password would look like this: “g8T06^P4h&Jw@5X*8Aa79We.” Using a phrase with numbers replacing some key text characters is also a great idea.

A strong password is important to protect personal information and business assets online. Using a different password for each unique web site login that is long and has multiple types of characters (numbers, letter and symbols) will help protect you and your business from someone hacking into your accounts.