Six examples where hype and hubris can trump common sense - to the detriment of your success

Spend too much time on the "cutting edge" of online marketing and you can end up like an exhausted puppy...hurtling excitedly from one new toy to the next before collapsing from the stress of too much choice. There is much current excitement, for example, about the double whammy of email and social marketing: email as digital's rejuvenated workhorse, social as the hot new talent. Clear and proven models for combining the two need more time to emerge, but there's much promise in the social/email integration premise. All this excitement, though, can take the edge off our sense of perspective and priority. As we choose a mix of channels to market through, we're easily lead astray by hype and hubris into making the wrong decisions. Here are six seductive traps for email/social marketers to avoid... …

How can I see my rankings in Google? 5 tools to consider.

This is the question we often hear as I'm sure you do! Our answer is that rankings aren't where you should start when reviewing how well your SEO is working. We have showed how it's best to start with your analytics which will show you actual traffic, leads and sales generated through your SEO efforts. But at the end of the day, marketers still want to know their rankings and rightly so - they do provide a benchmark even in these days of personalised, real-time search. These software or web services report on your position in different search engines, in different countries, for different search terms. The five tools we recommend considering include some of the best known, most widely used ranking tools and a…

The top 10 best sites for Google Analytics tips and Help?

I was checking my feedreader and thought it might be useful to share the sites I use to find more advanced tips on how to best use Google Analytics to analyse and improve a site and campaigns. These are also useful for reference when troubleshooting problems in Google Analytics. So, here's my top 10! Google Analytics blog - essential for anyone using Google Analytics for updates on new features to Google Analytics. Because it naturally has a lot of detailed updates we have a page on the most important Google Analytics updates for marketers. Google Analytics Help Sites - This includes both the text-based help and the forum which is good for troubleshooting - just use the search function on this page. It's also worth mentioning the Google Conversion University - this is a course for the Google Analytics…

How to make your emails work better on mobiles

How to make emails work better for users on mobile devices is a big issue for email marketers in 2011. I've recently written the forward for a new whitepaper by Ed Melly of SmartFOCUS on Email design for mobile devices (PDF). Here is my summary of 5 steps to take to design better for mobile. You can see the full whitepaper at the end of this summary.

Step 1. Review industry mobile statistics

You'll know that mobile usage is growing rapidly. There have been significant year-on-year increases in Apple iPhone adoption, the Android platform is gaining momentum.Furthermore, the tablet market created by the iPad is expected to continue growing rapidly. In its Internet Trends presentation of June 2010, Morgan Stanley predicted that the population of mobile users will exceed desktop internet users within five years. Such predictions are…

What is Google Adwords Remarketing?

Remarketing within Google is a specific use of the wider Google Display (formerly content) network (learn more about the content network). When remarketing is set up & configured it allows you to target people that visited your website with adverts on other website which have opted into displaying adverts from the Display Network. Check out this video from Google which outlines just how remarketing works... Some further reading can be found here if you are interested : Google Remarketing

Is it worth the time & effort?

The answer is yes but as with everything in life it comes with a few 'but's"... It has to be configured correctly, what I mean by this is: You HAVE to define & segment your…

Facebook Insights for domains feature now lets you tag your site to show interactions of Facebook users with your site

We know how important social plugins are now (specifically the Facebook social plugins such as the 'Likes' and 'Comments'). Their usage is constantly increasing with over 2.5m web sites now using them since early 2010, and with 600m consumers in Facebook, it represents a huge source for creating awareness about your brand and traffic to your site. This week Facebook just made visualising, monitoring and managing that a whole lot easier with an upgrade to Insights for Facebook - see this post from the developer blog for an explanation of the analytics and how to set it up. We've done this and it's relatively easy - just adding a Facebook specific meta tag to the header of your home page.

Insights (Facebook's analytics tool) isn't new, it's just been…

Research showing how should we create dialogue by combining email and social media marketing with other channels

I've recently been involved with creating the programme for the upcoming eCircle event:  ConnectEurope2011. As for last year I will share some highlights from the presentations like the case studies,research and latest thinking on Smart Insights. Last year I shared two case including Halfords Intelligent Lifecycle Marketing which went down well and Halfords are speaking again. In the meantime, I just wanted to let  you know about the event - if you have any questions please ask via my sign-off below or visit our website for more information. At the end of this note I'll share some interesting research about how the overlap in use of consumers of email marketing and social media. Other questions the speakers will address are: Is it possible to make people happy through your marketing? What can you do to get information…

Words to use and words to avoid to write more engaging email subject lines

Selecting the best subject line, headlines and content types for emails is a constant challenge for email marketers as they write copy for their campaigns and newsletters.

Which are the most engaging words on Facebook post headlines?

I recently found a good source of insight for words to consider by the excellent Dan Zarrella who analyses consumer Facebook behaviour. I hope this inspires you when you're next writing or reviewing email copy or trying to devise ideas for emails. Of course it should help with Facebook and blog posts too! These are the words that the research showed were popular for sharing. Source: 7 Ways to Get Your Blog Posts Shared On Facebook What can we take from this? Well, we have to remember this is an analysis across a massive range of…

What you post on Facebook stays on Facebook. Err, not anymore.

The new Facebook plugin allows asynchronous posting between web site comments and Facebook posts. This is the first time Facebook has enabled this kind of automatic external posting - and in truth it's also something that nobody else can currently offer - a killer feature? We think so. This means that the new Facebook comments system enables you to leave a comment on the host site (SmartInsights.com, if we had it installed) and opt to have that comment shared to Facebook, too. If a friend in Facebook then leaves a comment on Facebook about my comment, their comment will be posted back to the host site, SmartInisghts.com. In other words, any discussion that my comment sparks between my Facebook friends in Facebook will be seen on SmartInisghts.com as well. That’s very powerful I think. [caption id="attachment_4376" align="alignright" width="568" caption="Using the Facebook comments…

Update - Email marketing trends and challenges in 2011

This is a short, fun video recorded at MarketingSherpa's Email Summit in Las Vegas a couple in Feb 2011. I think it reinforces nicely the main trends in email marketing which need to be managed by email marketers. In the video, Jeff Ginsberg from TheEmailGuide.com interviews several attendees asking what they thought was the the biggest challenges for email marketers in 2011. These are the main challenges I took from the video: Relevance - nearly everyone mentioned this and the segmentation needed to deliver this. Engaging content which will be shared, especially with competition from content shared within social networks Integration with social media marketing Adapting email to be a conversation (my favourite) Testing and tracking Changing regulations - review your opt-in regulations and tracking Designing emails for mobile devices (Anna Yeaman of Style campaign mentioned that their clients are seeing 5-15% of emails on mobile devices …