5 all-too-common missed opportunities which you can take advantage of to make the most of the power of Email Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation is a powerful Marketing Technology since it promises better response by sending more relevant emails to your audience in the context of the their interactions with a business. Small marketing teams or even a 'team-of-one' in a small business can potentially do the work that previously would have required many marketers. These time savings are possible by using rules to automate the type of emails that are sent and embedding more contextual content in personalised emails and web pages through dynamic content insertion. Yet, in my experience from training and consulting with email marketers and as shown by the GetResponse-Smart Insights Email Marketing benchmarking report, many businesses are not getting the full value from the Marketing Automation systems they have adopted. This post takes a look at some of…

The challenges and changes shaping the etailing environment

E-commerce sales growth continues to soar with forecasts projecting even bigger numbers for the future. All seems rosy in the world of online commerce. So why are analysts concluding that 'retailers have their work cut out for them' in the coming years? According to eMarketer's latest forecasts, worldwide business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce sales will increase by 20.1% this year to reach a whopping $1.5 trillion. Forrester estimates that US online retail sales alone will total $294 billion by the end of the year, and will grow to $414 billion by 2018. These are some mind-boggling numbers, but then there are powerful forces driving them, and these forces will define the future of retailing . For instance, rapidly expanding online and mobile user bases in emerging markets are super-charging sales. This year, for the first time, consumers in Asia-Pacific will spend more on e-commerce purchases than those in…

Examples of how to start getting results from Facebook

This post is an introductory guide to setting up your business on Facebook if you don't already have a company page or it has been neglected! If you are looking for more advanced content to optimise your use of Facebook, check out our other posts on Facebook marketing and related guides. Setting up a Facebook business page takes less than 30 minutes and is super-simple (if you’re yet to get started, we’ve included a handy “how-to” infographic below that will take you through what to do) however Facebook marketing isn’t all plain sailing - the tricky part is in understanding what to do to utilise the network to its full potential. Let’s take a look at a few insider tips that will get you on the right road to mastering the art of Facebook marketing and give you an introduction to Facebook for business …

How…

Struggling to generate ideas for your blog? Here are the tools you need

As an inbound marketer, you know how important your blog is for attracting people to your website, driving up your SEO rankings, and building trust with your target audience. You also know how difficult it can be to constantly come up with new and exciting content ideas that will both educate, entertain and convert your blog readers. In a recent survey from HubSpot and Smart Insights, we found that quantity and quality of content are top challenges for marketers. However, it doesn’t need to be an obstacle that gets in your way! In this blog post we will provide you with 10 cool (and free!) tools to help you brainstorm fresh new ideas for your blog so that you never have to run dry again.

Understanding Your Customer’s Language

The first step to creating great content that attracts the right people to your…

Examples showing how can you make pre-roll videos effective when people do not want to watch pre-roll video ads

Let’s face it. Does anyone really want to watch a YouTube advert? Probably not. In fact, ninety-four per cent of us choose to skip the rest of the pre-roll after the compulsory first five seconds. And that figure is considered fairly generous. And who can blame you for skipping? Often the ads are irrelevant, usually they are boring and sometimes they are just simply irritating. All you want to do is watch your video, right? It’s annoying having to stare at the Skip Ad button for five seconds, waiting for what seems like an eternity (and much longer than five seconds) to just view your clip. So you might be surprised to learn that occasionally, very, very occasionally, YouTube pre-rolls can work. However, it has to be something pretty…

GDPR Summary - Part 1 - On your marks, get set, go!

Companies and organisations that use data at the centre of their sales and marketing activities – and that’s just about everyone reading this blog - will be impacted by the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Yesterday (Monday 15 June), the European Council of Ministers gave its strongest signal yet that it was prepared to negotiate the detail of the GDPR with the European Parliament in order to try and reach agreement by the end of 2015.

Agreement between the European Parliament, Council of Ministers and European Commission now looks like a distinct possibility in November/December 2015 after which there’ll be a two-year transition period before sanctions begin to bite.

However, as the blogosphere went into overdrive, many critics were sceptical that this could be achieved in a 6-month time frame given that both sides will…

A summary of the main changes needed for mobile email best practices

You will know that changes in mobile use have had a big impact on our use of email marketing - with a growth in mobile opens of over 180% over the past three years. In their latest summary infographic EmailMonks remind us of the need to optimise our email by sharing this research on viewing patterns, and giving 14 tips for better responsive emails and highlighting pitfalls to avoid. …

How Moburst helped Mailwise gain visibility for their mobile app

For the past few years, the stock of mobile apps has been on the rise. As of May 2015, there are more than a million apps available in the leading app stores. To be precise, Google Play offers more than 1.5 million apps to its users, while iTunes follows closely behind with 1.4 million. Since the App Store was launched back in 2008, the number of apps has been rapidly growing, and it seems like that movement won't stop anytime soon. Thousands of apps are submitted for release each month - yet, for every successful app there are many others that fail to make a long-term impact, let alone find their way on the charts. How do apps get traffic and more importantly, downloads?

App Store Optimisation

Similarly to Google's SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), where websites optimise their sites to…

Digesting Mary Meeker's 2015 Internet Trends Analysis I always enjoy and gain great insight from Mary Meeker's 'State of mobile marketing' reports which she regularly publishes at this time of year via Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. It's part of a 2015 Internet Trends report available from KPCB and also available in Slideshare format. 2015 Internet Trends Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers The only issue is their scale - the deck is pushing 200 slides, so this year we're again giving a need-to-know digest of what's hot and what's new to save your eyes and digestion system. Of course there are a lot of data points showing that Mobile use is BIG and growing BIGGER, but you'll know…

A report from the 9th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), Oxford, Spring 2015

Over four days in Oxford, the 9th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) took place, at the Mathematical Institute. The event sponsors include Facebook and Yahoo and it’s not a huge conference, just over 250 researchers in computer science and social science who gather to “share knowledge, discuss ideas, exchange information, and learn about cutting-edge research in diverse fields with the common theme of online social media.” I’d stumbled upon the conference whilst reading articles for my PhD. The conference is often in far flung locations (2016 it’s Cologne, 2017 it could be Montreal, Doha or Seattle) and discovered it was taking place in the UK. I managed to attend just one day and sat through 20 presentations. Here’s what I discovered.

Beware of trolls

Justin Cheng of Stanford University and others are researching ‘Antisocial…