The 15 Best Marketing Articles We Read in 2015

We searched far and wide for the best marketing articles of 2015. After a meticulous screening process, dozens of Slack messages, and a few tough eliminations, here they are in all their glory from our marketing team to yours. Cheers, mate.

Research results that changed the way we think

1. How To Go Viral: Lessons From The Most Shared Content of 2015 Buzzsumo analyzed over one billion articles (yes, one billion) to discover how to go viral. You’ll learn the four elements of shareable content, backed by data. One of their juiciest findings? Leverage zombies, like so… 2. What We Found When We Analyzed the Top 1,000 Posts On LinkedIn Percolate’s findings reveal title hacks, the most clickable topics, and who’s behind the top posts on LinkedIn. A little teaser: personalized titles that include “your” get the most attention. 3. How Often Should You Publish? Moz and HubSpot’s New Experiment Gives a Surprising Answer Sparked by a late night Twitter conversation, Moz and Hubspot ran the blogging experiment of the year. The two companies tinkered with their publishing frequency to see the effects on traffic, subscribers, and leads. The results will surprise you.

Mind openers that changed the way we work

4. Turbo-Charge Your Marketing With These 355+ Power Words People are utterly seduced by these power words that drive conversions. We constantly refer to this list to make our copy irresistible, provocative, and swoon-worthy. 5. Why Your Marketo Emails Don’t Get Opens or Responses Bad news…your “_sent via Marketo_” emails are turning people off. Heather Morgan says “Your recipients should feel like they’re getting a personalized one-on-one email if you’re doing it right.” Heather, we couldn’t agree more. 6. Success in Marketing Is All About How You Stack It Say hello to the marketing stack your SaaS company should have (and that Wall Street is rewarding). It’s a combination of tools that work together to help you engage customers wherever they may be. Everything on this list is easy-to-use _and _affordable. 7. 9 Secrets the Pros Use to Create Great Facebook Ad Designs The CEO of AdEspresso is the brains behind this insightful post. It’s chock full of helpful tips, real-life examples, and what he’s learned from managing hundreds of thousands of dollars in Facebook advertising. 8. The Social Media Manager’s Daily, Weekly, Monthly Checklist You don’t have reinvent the wheel with your social media to-do’s. This helpful checklist from Buffer tells you exactly what to do every time you sit down to manage your social channels. 9. The Ultimate Guide to No-Pain Copywriting (or, Every Copywriting Formula Ever) Turns out there are copywriting formulas for everything – web pages, emails, blog posts, headlines, and even tweets. We had no idea until Joanna Wiebe opened our eyes and taught us that “only rookies write from scratch.” 10. 40 Tips for Dramatically Better Emails Examples for all 40 tips is where this post shines. Since the goodness is too much for one sitting, bookmark this article and come back anytime you need inspiration. 11. 22 Brutally Honest Landing Page Critiques Unbounce’s Oli Gardner tears down nearly two dozen landing pages to improve their conversions. He’s brutally honest, but fair. You’ll learn what to do (and what _not _to do) from his feedback.

Major motivators that changed us

12. Easy Reading is Damn Hard Writing You’ll feel like a better writer after reading this article. It includes gold nuggets like “Effective writing is lean, clean, and easy to read” and “Don’t write words, write music.” 13. How Zapier Went From Zero to 600,000+ Users in Just Three Years Rejected from Y Combinator. Prototyped in Missouri. Zapier started from scratch and built one of the coolest companies in tech. Here’s their story. 14. GrowthHackers on Metrics that Matter to Communities Ever wondered what metrics the growth hackers at GrowthHackers.com focus on? The company reveals all its juicy secrets to growing their community in this Segment article. 15. The Smart Marketing Strategies Behind Slack’s Extreme Growth Think of the questions you’d like to ask Slack’s CMO – What have you learned in your career? How is the marketing department structured at Slack? What does the future of marketing look like? Yep, they’re here in this interview. Any reads you’d add to this list? Give us a heads up in the comments.