5 examples of how brands are using Snapchat to engage younger audiences

Have you heard of the photo messaging service Snapchat? You likely will have if you're a teenager or watch how teenagers use their smartphones. But if not, you may not have heard of it, since it's just 2 years since it launched. But it's definitely one to watch, if your brand needs to keep up with the social media engagement of the youth audience. These statistics on the popularity and potential of Snapchat speak for themselves:

350 million snaps per day shared via Snapchat (on a par with Facebook daily uploads)

Valuation of $3.6 billion sought (on a par with Pinterest)

9 percent of all call phone users in the US now use Snapchat according to Pew, which compares to 18% for Instagram

Facebook recently trying to…

 New research on consumer feedback on buyer omnichannel fulfilment requirements

Value: [rating=3] Recommended link: Comscore and UPS's 2013 Pulse of the Online Shopper survey ComScore was commissioned by UPS  to survey over 3,000 US consumers, to find out about their online shopping experience and the impact of the range of channels now available to the consumer. The research looks at the consumer journey from pre-purchase, to check out, delivery and post sales. It provides insight into how businesses need to adapt to consumers expectations of an integrated sales experience and the focus on the customer experience. 'Overall, satisfaction with online shopping is high at 83%. However, it drops below 50% when shoppers are asked about: flexibility to choose delivery date; ability to choose a specified time of day for delivery of purchase; flexibility to re-route packages; and a green shipping option' Key…

Video in Email: benefits, myths and best practices

This infographic from Email Monks and Email on Acid showcases some interesting stats on video email. It may surprise you that HTML5 Video is now supported by 58% of email clients. Our new infographic also reviews some of the myths of using video in email marketing and summarises some best practices. Some of the many business advantages of using video in your email campaign are: Stand out from the crowd: Using video in email gives you the first mover advantage and helps you stand out from the competition. Increased ROI: Research has shown that video email receives a better response in terms of open rates and very high click-through rates compared to traditional emails. Better Branding: Using video email leads to increased website traffic, increased conversion rate, brand awareness, and more referrals in turn. Matches Human Touch: Videos…

We find that keyword match types are an important aspect of Adwords that there is often confusion about. It is so fundamental that all Adwords customers understand this that I thought I would try and summarise it more clearly than Google do! We also cover the topic in more depth in the Smart Insights 7 Steps guide to improving AdWords ROI that I recently updated.

I will cover these two areas of good practice in this post:

Keyword match typesNegative keyword match types

It is worth doing this because; although negative keywords and standard keywords share the same basic match types (broad, phrase and exact) these terms actually have different meanings and functions with the two types of keywords.

1. Keyword Match Types

Exact Match

The users search term must exactly match a keyword in your account in…

Content marketing Survey on B2B marketing

The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, undertook a survey sponsored by Brightcove, to ask over 1,200 B2B Marketers in the US the key marketing tactics from last year and to discuss their focus for 2014.

 'Heading into 2014, many B2B marketers are feeling more confident than ever about the effectiveness of their content marketing strategies,' said Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and author of Epic Content Marketing. 'Though the industry is still in the early adoption phase of content marketing, it's clear that many are seeing success and are continuing to increase their tactics and devote more resources, and budgets, to producing great content experiences.'

Key content marketing survey findings included:

93% of B2B organisations are using content-based tactics and 73% are producing more content than the previous year.86% have someone who oversees content marketing strategy30%…