Here’s how you can add value to your marketing campaign. Plus: What custom variables can do for your Google Analytics reports.

Effective marketing campaigns lie in the value of the content produced. Pulling off a successful marketing effort, and more, in today’s Lunchtime Links.

Valued ideas: How can your marketing efforts disrupt (so you’re heard) without disrupting (so no one listens)? That’s the question the FutureM conference tangled with, according to CMS Wire’s Dom Nicastro. The answer: It’s all in the value produced through the talent that you highlight. “[T]alent will be more important than technology,” he writes, citing keynote speaker and Hubspot CTO Dharmesh Shah. “Challenge your old ways, see what others are doing, and do it differently and better.” Consider shaking up how you use technology, including mobile, in promoting your products and services. How does your association blend value and talent into marketing?

Check before sending: Here’s a modern-day fear: drafting the email, glitches galore, and then accidentally hitting “send”—and out it goes  to your batch email contact list. Before sending a bulk message, run through the dates, subject, and alt-text—and all hyperlinks—of your email, advises Kristina Leroux of Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog. She also suggests glancing over at your editorial calendar to ensure your email doesn’t run over someone else’s scheduled message. (You don’t want to overload your members’ inboxes.) What’s on your association’s checklist before sending out bulk emails?

Tech talk: Google Analytics is a staple in many organizations. After all, it’s a versatile tool that collects data on the users who interact with your site. That’s useful, but merging it with custom variables to track demographic information would make it that much more effective, writes Alan Weinstein of DSK Solutions. “Doing so requires that you push data out (such as member type) so that the Google Analytics’ client-side JavaScript can access the variables,” he writes.

Does your site use custom variables—and how has the insight improved the web service you provide? Tell us in the comments.

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