Our roundup of the "need-to-know" developments in digital marketing and technology

The main development across the major digital marketing platforms in July was the upgrading of Google AdWords to Enhanced campaigns and adding Promotional tabs in Gmail. There were also significant developments of analytics tools for Facebook, LinkedIn and Google this month. So, in our five categories this month we focus on advice to improve marketing effectiveness.

Strategy and planning

Are you ready for Marketing 2020 Steven Van Belleghem asks how we should be preparing now for future shifts in marketing.

Here’s a summary of his ideas:

The top 10 most useful digital marketing statistics sources? In July we released a new compilation of 50+ trends available for Expert members to include in their business case presentations. But many of the best stats are freely…

A tutorial on Facebook's updated business page insights

I was very excited to finally get Facebook's new Insights rolled out last week. Well worth the wait. Not sure if you have the new Insights? Take a look at your Admin panel and you should see this:

If not, then you are still awaiting the roll out. It's worth hitting the "Check out the new Page insights" button as it will simply tour you through the new features using your very own data. Facebook describes the update this way: "Historically, Page Insights has reported on posts' performance, reach, and engagement in three distinct places. In the new Page Insights, we aggregate all these metrics into a post-specific score card, so marketers can evaluate positive and negative metrics together. This will help Page admins better identify content people interact with, produce more of it, and…

12 Smart ways to capture customer data

Since email marketing is one of the most influential touch points in the online path to purchase, you’ll want to capture as many interested contacts as you can. Ideally you will also enrich these with profile data in order to develop a high segmentation methodology to enable you to target. It is not easy to make the most of the options to capture emails, but it's worthwhile reviewing all the touchpoints. Almost every interaction that your customers have online with any organisation - attempts to capture data, so you need to cut through that noise.

So let's break it down, how do you improve email capture and progressive profiling? This is best done in two ways:

1. Firstly, exchanging value in return for the data, such as more relevant content and products or offers exclusive to subscribers.2. Secondly, by capturing bits of data from multiple channels over…

Five key takeaways from new email marketing research

It's the Holy Grail of subject lines, the El Dorado of email marketing...the one word that tugs magically at the heartstrings, calling siren-like to the customer to claim that click. And it doesn't exist. The right word(s) for a subject line depend heavily on the unique context: what you send, to whom and to what purpose. That's why experts urge you to test for yourself. Intuition, experience and benchmark studies can only take you so far. But...subject line research does help give direction to your efforts. Adestra just released a fascinating study which looked at over 2 billion emails to find correlations between certain keywords in subject lines and campaign response rates. The infographic is below, followed by my key takeaways. Don't take the results at face value, of course. Context matters. But at the least, the study gives you ideas for what you might test. …

The art of rules based personalisation and how to make it work

You are charged with promoting an array of content and promotions within shifting parameters and evolving conditions. "Rules based personalisation is an effective way to re-engage with customers through your website. It empowers marketers to get the most value from their content. Personalisation decreases bounce rates and increases conversion. Providing relevant and engaging content through personalisation rules is a powerful tool in the marketer’s arsenal, you need to know how to use it". My first post, A practical guide to website personalisation gave you an outline of the three central types of personalisation: Digital Body Language, Digital Fingerprint and Marketing Automation. In my last post Using a Digital Relevancy Map to create more personalised website experiences. we covered the process of researching and preparing for personas and user journeys. It is now time…

If social networks are your online resume, how do you stand out?

Recruiters are now scouring social media sites to either head-hunt candidates and/or to check credentials, and candidates are actively searching for roles, uploading CVs - some without realising that their LinkedIn profile is their on-line resume!.

Earlier on in the year, we interviewed top recruiters who reinforced this view and provided tips for companies looking to recruit the right digital staff online following it through to interview questions.

Reed Global have released an infographic, sourcing information from sites including Reed Employment and the Guardian, to provide the top ten tips on how a candidate can use social media to improve their job search, including savvy ways to produce a CV - ever considered creating an Infographic?

If you are an active user of LinkedIn, we produced a …

5 key features and differences of Google's Keyword Planner

As many of you know, the Google Keyword Tool has been sunset and in some accounts has already been replaced by the Keyword Planner.

There has been much discussion (and disappointment) around this, as the Keyword Tool has, for many years, been the leading keyword research tool, loved by marketers SEO’s, bloggers and copywriters

Google’s launch of the Keyword Planner brings the functionality of the veteran Keyword Tool, combined with data from the Traffic Estimator. Clearly there’s more focus on the needs of AdWords customers, and whilst it’s not perfect, it will no doubt evolve as customer needs grow.

To ease the transition between the original Keyword Tool and the Keyword Planner,we’ve listed 5 changes Google has made.

5 New Google Keyword…

Social media ROI is a messy business

How do you bring some order to it? There’s no getting away from it. The higher up the sales funnel, the harder and messier it is to make decisions on measuring ROI. Social media is, like any channel (if you choose to view it as one) not perfect to measure, though far from hard to get a good handle on it, and to compare channels with channels using techniques like Google's Multichannel funnels or social reports. It’s the scale of choices that become complex. It’s much easier to post rationalise and retrospectively connect the dots, but not easy to plan for it - otherwise why is ‘viral’ still so remarkable in social media - and why we don’t see the experts doing amazing campaigns repeatedly. It’s always been a challenge, attributing the value of visitors through multiple channels, social media has made that more…

Ideas, examples and a process to develop your online value proposition (OVP)

I’m really pleased that Jay Baer of Convince and Convert could speak recently in our webcast. He explained three blueprints and examples of how companies can develop their Youtility.  Jay is one of the great original thinkers who shows how to apply social media and content marketing to get business results. Dan and I have been following his ideas from his blog for a couple of years now. The talk and slide deck are now available

Youtility talk

Youtility slide deck

…

A new report from eBay mapping the flow of international sales

Value to retailers: [rating=4]

Recommended link: eBay cross-border Ecommerce sales report

eBay commissioned Nielsen to conduct a research study on the importance of cross-border / International Ecommerce sales in six key markets around the world – the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, China and Brazil. The output is this interesting infographic which shows the main flows of traffic (click to enlarge).

The report makes the analogy of cross-border Ecommerce with the Spice routes of the past between Asia and Europe. The report certainly provides support for investing in approaches to localise Ecommerce merchandising to market needs. Just within these six markets:

Cross-border online shopping will be worth $105 billion this year with 94 million consumers regularly buying from overseas websites.By 2018, this will increase nearly 200%…