Each month in our Growth Spurts blog, we publish the the highlights of our Advice from Across the Web page, which features a selection of the best, most actionable sales, marketing and technology advice from experts across the Web. May’s roundup of actionable advice includes tips about targeted email marketing, DIY marketing, analytics vs metrics, and Local SEO.

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Targeted Email Marketing: Has your email marketing moved from a batch-and-blast approach to a series of emails that are triggered by customer behavior? Learn why this approach leads to an increase in retention, revenue per email, customer lifetime value, and program ROI.

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Do-it-yourself Marketing: You know you have to focus on marketing to grow your business. But if you think you can do it yourself – along with everything else you need to do to run your business – think again. This article describes five reasons why it just makes sense to hire someone to do your marketing, whether you’re a small business or a large corporation.

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Analytics vs. Metrics: Where is the difference? While both begin with data collection, metrics – no surprise – is used for measuring effectiveness and for accountability, whereas analytics takes the data and uses it for predictive outcomes, business insights and the like. Read more here.

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Local SEO: From identifying local places to look for links and actually picking up the phone to ask them for that link to creating a calendar of local events that might offer good linking opportunities (whether you’re a paid sponsor or not), here are some hands-on tips from Wordtracker to start improving your local SEO.

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You can read more tips and updates like these on our News page. And if you don’t want to wait for our monthly roundup, why not subscribe to our News Page directly? You’ll receive a short digest in your inbox every Wednesday of the week’s highlights. It’s a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on.