Google to follow Facebook by adding more 'Social Proof" into its ads

Value/Importance: [rating=5] (For Marketer's investing in Google AdWords]

Recommended link:  Google's Shared Endorsements

You may have seen the new privacy agreement in Google recently?

It's the precursor of a big change to Google's Sponsored Ads, the intention is revealed in Google's Terms of Conditions for the ads above that state that

'We want to give you, and your friends and connections, the most useful information. Recommendations from people that you know can really help. So your friends, family and others may see your Profile name and photo, and content like the reviews that you share or the ads that you +1’d.

This only happens when you take an action (things like +1’ing, commenting or following) –…

Examples of how Hotels are integrating social media and mobile marketing

Technology is the cornerstone of business growth. Whether it means new tools for maximizing efficiency, new platforms for reaching out to potential customers, or new resources for building professional networks; digital innovation is a boom for businesses of all shapes and sizes. But social media and the recent proliferation of mobile devices has proven particularly beneficial for the hotel industry. Because travelers rely upon their mobile technologies and depend upon social networks to find accommodations they can trust; web savvy hotel marketers can connect with customers like never before. So whether they are well-known international chains or tiny boutique businesses, hotels throughout the world have begun harnessing the tremendous potential of mobile technology and here is how:

Hotels harnessing social media

Size Matters (Less Than Ever) Social media has leveled the playing field in the world of hotel marketing. Sites like …

How a new analytics company use Branded Swag to integrate the digital and physical marketing worlds

How big is your stockpile of branded startup T-shirts? Chances are most of them are collecting dust somewhere in the back of your closet. This is problematic for two reasons. The first is that the swag, which was meant to be a means of branding and exposure, is not doing it’s job. It’s burning a hole in the company’s pocket. The second: seemingly every startup handles production of their swag the same way; by simply giving it away, but startups are supposed to be different and disruptive by their very nature. Careless swag management is irresponsible for any company; but it’s particularly problematic for startups that often work with a very limited marketing budget. The Office’s Michael Scott, the world’s best boss, said SWAG is 'stuff we all get' and…

Slides, videos, white papers, design galleries, articles and more (+ five quick tips)

Q4...one number and a letter that has heart racing at retailers everywhere... There are lot of great sources to help you with your Christmas and year-end email efforts. In this post I have summarised what I see as the best of the bunch to help your planning & preparation, strategies & tactics, and email design. (Be sure to read through to the end for some quick bonus tips, too.)

Preparation and planning:

Useful articles and white papers: 19 holiday email planning tips A month-by-month guide to holiday marketing success Email marketing holiday planning calendar from ExactTarget and a checklist from Silverpop: [slideshare id=24996872&doc=emailmarketingholidaycalendar-130806132952-phpapp02&w=500] [slideshare id=5390145&doc=holidayemailmarketingchecklist-101008004627-phpapp01&w=500]

Strategies and tactics:

A selection of ideas, examples and screenshots: The retail email guide to the holiday season (from 2012) The Top 12 marketing tips for the holidays 10 holiday gift…

Examples of the many ways email marketing influences sale in addition to clickthrough

Email Marketing is already highly valued by a diverse range of B2B and B2C companies because of the excellent ROI it provides.

eCommerce brands are the biggest users of email, in no small part because the tracking makes the business case for email crystal clear.

Social media too puts huge value on the power of email. Facebook is joint third biggest sender of email worldwide. Whilst ExactTarget is the biggest ESP by sent volume, Facebook sends more email than all their clients put together (source Senderbase top senders)

Even so, could it be that email is undervalued, even by many big brands?

More often than not the value of email is determined by conversion resulting from an email click.

How about when there is no click on an email? Does it mean the email had no value?

It would be strange to consider…

A review of Chad White's new book and recommendations from his webcast

Chad White's new Email Marketing Rules gives a great toolkit to help marketers systematically review all aspects of their email programmes. I love its simplicity, with focused advice given throughout using short tips covering all the key issues that matter in Email Marketing. Altogether there are over 100 Rules or key best practices that can be easily reviewed. The Rules are grouped within different areas that matter to performance from the fundamentals like Permission, List-building and Deliverability into best practice guidance on content, design and targeting plus more advanced topics like behavioural emails. This slide deck from our recent webcast examples some of the main best practices we covered: In the webcast, Chad used examples to show how to improve all aspects of email marketing from Welcome Emails through Defensive Design and Enewsletters to…

Should you run competitions on your Facebook Timeline?

On October 24th, Richard Jones, CEO of EngageSciences, will give a talk at Social Media Marketing 2013 (London) on ‘What's Really Behind Facebook's Competition Rule Changes?’ To explain the opportunity and to get you in the mood, I’m offering my own take on how and when you should make use of Timeline competitions and when you should steer well clear. The change was first alerted to Smart Insights readers in Rhian Simm's post on Facebook's new competition rules on 29th August 2013 - so it's a relatively new issue.

Facebook Rule changes

First of all, let’s be clear on what the Facebook rule changes actually are. For the past two years it’s been against Facebook rules to run a competition directly on a Facebook Page and all Facebook competitions have needed to be managed through a third party app –…

An introduction to factors that affect email deliverability and steps you can take to improve inbox delivery

When it comes to getting your emails into the inbox aka email deliverability, reputation is everything. In an ideal world, every email marketer would have good intentions, and there would be no need for email providers like Hotmail or Gmail to block any emails.

The reality however is that 70 percent of all emails that are sent worldwide is spam. Email providers have trust issues when it comes to parties that send a large amount of emails, and have every reason to.

To avoid being a "false positive" where your legitimate marketing mail is viewed as spam, there are plenty of techniques that help you gain trust of the various email providers and build a good email reputation. I will give an overview of these in this post.

What is email reputation…

An example of Holistic Email Marketing

Here’s a taster of what you can look forward to on October 8th at the free International Digital Marketing Summit  from Plan To Engage. It’s a free summit held At Your Desk, so why not register? If you can’t make it on the day, register anyhow and view the sessions on-demand. In my session: 'From Search to Conversion: 3 keys to a successful customer journey' we will be addressing the below tactic. When we think of the words ‘personalise’ and ‘email’ we more often than not think of including the subscribers name and possibly their Company name within the email. But this is the most basic of ways of personalizing the experience within email and quite frankly, impresses very few. Personalisation can be achieved numerous ways by utilising the following types of data: Explicit data such as filling in a form Implicit data…

A Step-by-Step Guide to App Store Optimization

With so many competing apps available within Apple’s App Store and Google Play, app store optimization (ASO) is now essential for driving traffic to your app, particularly for apps targeting a need which aren't developed by well-known brands. In these cases, demand for apps is high... 63% of people discover apps via search, according to Forrester Research, making it all the more important to focus on ASO. Investing in ASO is one of the best strategies for increasing the organic downloads of your mobile app.

Guide to improving your ASO ranking in searches

Here’s a step by step guide on how to go about achieving exceptional results from ASO to ascend the ranks in user searches, ultimately driving more traffic to your app.

The right keywords

The principles of SEO often also work for ASO. Create your app store metadata using the right…