A review of alternative call tracking techniques and systems linking to a contact centre
In the online world, it should be much easier for marketers to understand customer behaviour. Although online advertising is still evolving, it’s cheaper than offline marketing; ecommerce allows for instant conversions; and online it is possible to track real time results via impressions and clicks.
However, although the internet may be great for building smart customer profiles, businesses should not neglect the importance of human contact in the customer journey. A recent study found that 64% of people get frustrated when they can only interact with a company online.
The phone, the unsexy cousin of the click, is still the strongest lead source for the majority of businesses. Therefore one of the biggest challenges for online marketers is in connecting…
31 Predictions on the Future of B2B Marketing
Each year, through the year, I’m reviewing the latest trends and predictions for digital marketing to update Smart Insights members and to include in new editions of my books I’m working on. Looking to the year ahead, I have just updated my ideas on trends in marketing for 2015 with a focus on the latest software tools to help digital marketers - please take a look and vote on the most important trend for your business!
My reviews tend to span across all of digital marketing, so I was interested to see this compilation of predictions compiled by Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing focusing on the future of B2B Digital Marketing.
It’s curated by Top Rank Digital in association with Marketing Profs for their upcoming B2B Forum, so I was interested to take a…
Who uses Instagram by age, gender and country? [Infographic]
With more than 150 million users and 16 billion photos shared to date, Instagram is going from 'strength-to-strength'. For marketers, there are ongoing new features including the recent ads for the UK market, launched in the US last year, and their first ever app - 'lapsed video' which keeps up with the '#selfielapse phenomenon'.
In this GlobalWebIndex's Infographic, we share some profile demographics across the globe:
20% of Internet users now have an Instagram account.
For more ideas on Instagram Marketing, Expert Members can download our Smarter Instagram Marketing guide by Rhian Simms.
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How to create a marketing plan to launch your mobile app in three simple stages
Creating an app is a major accomplishment, but sadly not a guarantee of riches and rewards. If you want to make any money from your carefully crafted creation, you will need a solid and effective app marketing launch plan. Here is how you I believe you should create a plan based on my experience of app launches.If you want to make your app a success, promotion should start way before you’re ready to launch. It’s no good developing a beautiful app if no one ever learns of its existence, so it is vital to have a detailed plan in place of how to market your product and get it turning over a profit as quickly as possible.
Where to start with your…
Be objective by using Business Intelligence
One of the most pertinent quotes about the data analytics industry was said by Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO: 'If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.' This strikes a chord in businesses, especially when it comes to strategizing and improving the user experience (UX) where perceptions of how good an online experience is, with all its benefits and constraints, is shaped by the personal backgrounds and expertise of many individuals within an industry. Developers, designers, and information architects will all come up with different critiques and directions to the same issue.
Business Intelligence is your only objective friend
Tapping into the power of BI as a way to improve user experience
BI and data analytics, on the other hand, give businesses fact-based assessments, numbers, and…
Over half of businesses don't have any defined responsibility for multichannel customer experience
In our recent research, in collaboration with eCommerce Expo, on Managing Online Customer Experiences, one of the main challenges we wanted to investigate, is who is responsible for managing experiences - both online and across multiple channels.
Given that we are reaching and interacting with consumers across a multitude of touchpoints, all businesses are looking for the best ways to influence and engage with our consumers, to 'maximise conversion from lead to sale and customer loyalty'. But who is responsible for this?
Over 52.6% of respondents had no defined responsibility for managing for managing the Customer Experience
Well we think this is shocking, but understandable? What are the implications? Well, they're the same with any lack of management and likely include:
No / poor KPIs for evaluating Customer Experience
No / poor process for reviewing and improving…
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook's new ad network?
Importance: [rating=1] Current importance to small, mid-size businesses.
Value: [rating=4] for larger businesses and brands.
Recommended link: Facebook Atlas announcement
What is Facebook Atlas?
1. Atlas is not a new service
There has been a lot of hype around Facebook's recent re-launch of Atlas which you may know as an ad-serving product which has been used for managing display campaigns by large media companies for many years. Facebook purchased the Atlas ad server from Microsoft in early 2013 and are building it into their ad offering.
2. Atlas will offer targeting based on Facebook profile information and remarketing across publisher sites
Atlas will enable targeting of audiences on publisher sites based on their Facebook demographics and interests. Remarketing or retargeting should also be possible - this is an established approach by brands to offer people reminders about products or services. It's unclear…
The Top 10 world ranking email clients
If you're an email marketing specialist you'll almost certainly know Litmus for their awesome email analytics tool and great insights. We've featured them several times before, including this great infographic showing trends of Email client share. Here is the latest update from their Email client market share site which they update each month.
We would probably expect Apple to be dominating due to the surge of iOS mobile devices and growing popularity of Apple devices, though it's interesting to see that Outlook is still popular and it reminds us of the importance of testing the effectiveness of designs for Gmail on different clients. When interpreting these results, we need to bear in mind variation across desktop and mobile usage and demographics which Litmus have in their…
What do effective integrated marketing campaigns have in common?
Integrated marketing campaigns can be a tricky art to perfect. We live in a multi-media world, which means that new media and old media sit alongside one another, sometimes competing, other times working collectively - in the case of integrated campaigns they work together.
However despite saying all of this, what is it that actually leads to successful results? Consistent branding and messaging, frequency of communications and deciding on your primary medium are collectively important points to factor in. Let’s take a look at some of the most impressive integrated campaigns:
#1 Compare the Market - Baby Oleg
On Christmas Day 2013, comparethemarket.com released a television advert revealing new character Baby Oleg. In January 2014 the campaign went into full swing with an advertisement promoting a cuddly toy to accompany the cute Meerkat. Following this announcement a blog was created for Oleg online, for customers to…
Testing of over 900 Ecommerce sites shows how 'cleaner' designs can increase ecommerce sales
What can the fastest-growing eTailers teach us about visual design? Anyone involved in the design or marketing of ecommerce sites has had the discussion at some point: 'is this design too busy? Too cluttered?'
As it turns out, it probably is. And you can probably make more money by cleaning it up – at least according to our latest research here at EyeQuant, a German neurotechnology company that specialises in quantitative user experience metrics.
A classic debate put to rest by data
To examine the role of visual clarity in user experience, the EyeQuant team took a sample of 960 ecommerce designs and showed them to 500 users in pairs, asking which design felt 'cleaner'. After collecting responses from several hundred participants, the team ranked every design in the study and used this data to train an artificial intelligence that can…
