Are you wondering how to avoid spam filters? After all, a critical element of inbound marketing is being able to reach customers and prospects via email marketing messages on an ongoing basis so you can establish a relationship and nurture trust.

Especially if you've received permission from your visitors and prospects to do so (aka permission-based marketing). They've opted-in and want to hear from you.

Imagine how vexing, though, to have permission to send emails only to have all of your messages banished to the junk or spam folder without even the glimmer of an opportunity to connect with that person!

With all the talk about privacy concerns and online social networks, what often gets lost is the valuable role that networks play in building trust with customers.

When I first published this article in January 2012, I focused primarily on how business blogging helps build those relationships. In this update, I also want to call attention to LinkedIn.

If you have an ecommerce website, what do you do when your shopping cart gets abandoned? Do you use email marketing?

If you don't, you should reconsider.

According to the Baymard Institute, the average shopping cart abandonment rate is between 68% and 78%. However, many reasons can lead to abandoning a shopping cart -  including not being quite yet ready to purchase or even getting interrupted.

Imagine, then, following up with an email communication to find out more.

How important is it for you to build trust and cooperation? Aren't both an ongoing commitment you make to everyone your business touches?

And yet that commitment can become overwhelming. Nowadays, you need to be always-on, constantly figuring out how to develop and nurture ongoing relationships across tools and platforms that are forever in flux. Don't forget those critical in-real-life interactions!

Enter Simon Sinek who, during INBOUND 14, focused on the very topic of how to build trust and cooperation in an inbound marketing world.

Have you created your own Marketing Technology Stack? If you haven't, I strongly encourage you to not only do so, but also to submit a visual depiction of your stack to the 2018 Stackies.

In this article I share with you my 2018 stack and my journey to submitting my very first one in 2016, as well as references from 2016 and 2017 to inspire you to think about your marketing technology stack and how you might visually represent it.

Note: You have until Friday, April 6th, 2018 to submit your own entry to the Stackies. Details in this article: Share your marketing tech stack, and we’ll donate up to $10,000 to Girls in Tech.