A look at academic research on change management with a digital lens

"You can't do today's job with yesterday's methods and be in business tomorrow" - Peter F Drucker The current Mrs Sealey and I sat down recently to watch Captain America: the Winter Soldier (my choice). It's a great action packed film that sets things up nicely for the forthcoming Avengers 2 movie. It occurred to me during the film that Captain America is a leader of change. He identifies threats and handles them with help from the ensemble cast. He removes corruption, replacing it with new alliance with the vision and mission to do right. Let me segue into the main topic of this post; accelerating digital transformation (definition). I've had the good fortune in my career to work for or with digital leaders who are attempting to do something new and brave. One thing that is common about…

New research shows the increase in social media stacking

It hit us all years ago, but when did we realise? In our busy lives, we 'multi-task' at work, or in our personal lives, and some are now calling this 'social media stacking'. The Millward Brown's Ad Reaction report refers to it as 'putting the kettle on', as it's embedded in most of our daily lives. I am guilty of this behaviour - while watching the TV, I check my emails on my iPhone, answer a Tweet and time permitting will find a good recipe on Pinterest for the evening meal-- an ideal target for advertisers and publishers to connect with me beyond 'passive viewing'. For brands, there are now multiple opportunities to connect, as Millward Brown global multiscreening report shows in their findings. The implication is that brands need to leverage this by evaluating reach…

An interview with Nick Dutch, Head of Digital at Domino's Pizza UK

Nick Dutch is Head of Digital at Domino's Pizza Group Limited in the UK and ROI. In this interview he shares the approach used to help manage customer experiences for Domino's. He will explain their approach in more detail at the Smart Insights Digital Marketing conference.

Q. Please outline your role and how your team is structured?

My role combines all aspects of the online customer experience from media to conversion, both on the desktop site and in mobile. So, I’m responsible for all online marketing activity that drives people to the site and in determining the customer journey whether on our desktop site, mobile sites and apps or our communities on social media sites which are also part of how the Domino’s brand is presented in the digital space. From a strategic point-of-view, I’m responsible…

Learning to avoid Dumb AB testing mistakes

Back in 2005, I started my first forays into split testing of emails, landing pages and funnels whilst working at LOVEFiLM.  I'm nearly at my 10 year anniversary, and after seeing over 40 million visitors split tested with stuff, I've become rather battle hardened to all the curious, strange and just plain stupid ways I've managed to break my own experiments. I'll be doing a talk this Wednesday at the Smart Insights Digital Marketing conference on how to improve structured testing to boost profits, so to introduce it, I wanted to write a little about one critical way we can all improve our AB and Multivariate testing.  So, in this article, I'll be exploring device and browser compatibility or 'Getting with what your customers have at their fingertips'.

AB testing your developers instead of…

The 3 digital techniques B2B marketers must excel in

Whether it’s on desktops, laptops, phablets or tablets, there is one truth when it comes to marketing your business online. If you can’t be found, don’t have a clear and compelling offer and don’t make “transaction” easy for customers, you’re doomed to failure. Web searches, supplier websites, and in most countries email remain the primary information sources for the modern business buyer. These are the tools that allow customers to seek out products and services, to learn about the companies that provide them and to ensure they are regularly updated on them.

Brand storytelling for B2B lead generation

The underlying premise of effective B2B (digital) marketing though, lies in engaging customers and prospects and providing them with useful, relevant content that improves their own business’ revenue and performance and positions yours as an expert to rely upon. So before we get distracted by no less important traffic generation,…

Digital Impact Conference 2014, Wednesday 17th September 2014, Central London

We're in the final countdown to our first conference in London and looking forward to meeting everyone who has booked. Thank you if you have registered! The final confirmed programme is below. We have just 8 tickets remaining, so it will be a "full house". If you haven't registered, but are now able to attend, then we would, of course, like to welcome you - please register via Eventbrite which has details on discounts for Smart Insights members that are still available. Here is the final, confirmed programme for the day. You can also download a PDF of the programme here Smart Insights Digital Impact Final Conference Programme.

Finding the venue

Of course, you know how to use Google Maps, but we have found that the venue needs careful navigation to…

Surprisingly plain text often out performs HTML Emails

When it comes to email marketing, there’s only a few metrics that marketers really focus on: open rates and clickthroughs. Without positive levels of these, marketers often feel like they have wasted time and effort creating an email that no one has seen or interacted with, and that’s a hard pill to swallow. This is why marketers are constantly trying to find ways to improve on their email marketing campaigns in the hope that something – be it a subject line, content piece, image choice or header wording – will make a difference. But something that marketers generally don’t seem to change is the format of their email. Comfortable in the flashy world of HTML email design, marketers may be missing one very important point – the plain-text email usually performs better.

Which has better deliverability?

The plain-text vs. HTML debate is one that has been underway…

Travel, retail and brand examples of marketing with the new virtual reality headset

You will know that the Oculus Rift is one of the hot technologies for 2015. It came to prominence in March this year when Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook's acquisition of the VR platform explaining that, as he sees it, it is much more than a new gaming platform. 'This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures'. While no consumer launch date has been set yet, Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2, a developer version with headset has recently started shipping and it is expected to be released in 2015 with a price in the range of $200 to $300. At this price it seems inevitable…

People still love print – sometimes more than digital – so enabling good printing is essential for online marketing success

Internet marketers live in a digital world, but they should not forget printed documents. In this article you will discover: Why print is psychologically important How to ensure your website is printable What printed documents are worth providing Back in 1975, Business Week magazine predicted that we would soon have a “paperless office” thanks to all the new technology being introduced at that time. Of course, here we are almost 40 years later and the paperless office is still a distant dream. Even in this age of instant digital information, where you are not short of things to read, the chances are you also have a pile of print to wade through. The notion that digital would replace print clearly hasn’t happened. Indeed, even though the sales of ebook readers have soared, printed book sales are…

How Wauwaa is creating valuable content to grow a community passionate about its brand

Tell me a story. Use evocative language, inspiring graphics, beautiful imagery and original sound. Tell me a story which draws me in and keeps me with you and prompts me to tell you how I feel about it. Tell me a story which I want to share with the world, and come back to you tomorrow for more of. Tell me a story. This, you see, is how we do things at Wauwaa. Our business is e-commerce retail, that’s where we make our money. Our income is made from the sale of baby and nursery items online. But our content marketing is an essential facet of our overall marketing activity, and it feeds directly into our digital marketing strategy. As a result, our brand is about more than just…