Using a bottom-up model to guide your analysis, you can gather amazing insights from the data you already possess

The key to data analytics lies in asking the right questions, but success can often hinge on the person who is asking those questions. Traditionally, organizations have analyzed their businesses from the perspective of the boardroom, approaching problems from the top down. But in trying to address how to best use their data to solve problems without first understanding the data itself, errors of human bias and oversimplification of the issue may occur. Consequently, company leaders may invest time, money, and resources into technology and products that don’t deliver on expectations. Just because a software package comes with a flashy dashboard and a colorful knack for highlighting correlated relationships doesn’t mean it’s all that great at proving the causal ones. But there’s no turning…

What is it? Does it matter? Do I already have one?

Marketing technology is exploding. Scott Brinker’s Marketing Technology Landscape showed 947 companies in 43 categories in 2014 – which seemed overwhelming. Then in 2015 it jumped to 1,876 companies. And we’ve learnt that 2016 has seen it double again, to a massive 3,500 companies. So what does this mean for marketers? What does it mean for IT managers? And how can we plan to make the most of the new technologies without getting lost in a sea of data? The aim of this post is to introduce the core components and purpose of a Marketing Technology Stack. Most of the current literature is aimed clearly at large organisations whose CIO’s, CMO’s and CTO’s are very busy dealing with mega integrations of multi-user software solutions. It’s fascinating…

The last AdWords re-design was in 2008. Now Google is re-building it for our mobile-first world

Importance: [rating=5] (If you use or manage Google AdWords) Recommended source: Google Blog AdWords is now over 15 years old. Not a lot of platforms survive that well in the fast-moving digital landscape. 15 years ago computers were big boxes that stayed in one place and had less computing power than we all have in our pockets now. It's easy to see why some platforms have died away and others have taken their place. Yet stoically AdWords has remained, and in many ways thrived. It is Google's main source of revenue, and given that Alphabet (Google's parent company) is now the most valuable company in the world, it's probably the single most successful web application in the history of the internet. The last time the AdWords interface was updated was back in 2008, when the smart-phone had only…

Mobile Marketing Trends And Tools You Can't Miss

Mobile marketing has had an incredible run, far exceeding the expectations of its pioneers with exponential increases in sales for those that use it well. 2016 marks a year where several trends that have had merely tacit relationships to each other in the past - such as social media, video ads, mobile apps and mobile pay - now have the potential to be fully integrated to increase exposure and drive up sales. Here's a crash course in important mobile marketing developments you can expect to see in 2016. With 40% of all online purchases currently taking place on cell phones and 66% of opted in consumers having completed a purchase because they received a text message from the brand, if you're not fully taking advantage of SMS marketing, you can bet someone else is (Source). Here are some trends and tools to enhance your…

5 content marketing lessons and insights from Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti

Buzzfeed is a modern publishing phenomenon. Best known for listicles, GIFs and click-bait headlines, the company has now diversified into new areas, including politics, world news and even motion pictures. According to Buzzfeed, 2014 revenues surpassed $100 million and their post in February asking people to vote on the colour of a dress has generated over 38 million views. Buzzfeed hasn’t found success by chance. Their business model and overarching content strategy has enabled them to consistently reach and engage a wide audience with a diverse set of stories, pictures, quizzes and breaking news. [si_guide_block id="5651" title="Download Expert Member resource – Content marketing strategy guide" description="This guide shows you both how to develop a strategy to deploy content across all your online marketing and gives practical tips to make it happen. Now updated for 2016 to give the latest best practice…

I interviewed Lauren Smith from Litmus, the email analytics software provider about some of the latest changes in the email marketing industry and what marketers can do to make the most of them

Email is consistently ranked among the most effective forms of digital marketing. The DMA's 2015 national email client report found that email has an average ROI of £38 for each £1 spent, which is spectacularly high. Given its effectiveness, email marketing is used by all kinds of businesses, from micro-businesses to the very biggest. To make the most of it you need to keep up to date with all the latest changes to platforms and tactics, which shift rapidly as ESPs launch new ways to view mail and mobile and desktop operating systems change the ways certain elements are displayed.

To help keep your email marketing efforts up to date, I interviewed Lauren Smith from Litmus, who are experts…

Use these 5 ideas to give your promotional emails a boost

Promotional email is a powerful channel when it comes to driving e-commerce sales - the Custora Ecommerce Pulse shows marketing emails are the third biggest driver of online sales after Search marketing. This makes it the biggest driver for customer sales and way ahead of social media But, sadly, most email marketers aren't making the most out of this channel. When it comes to creating these campaigns, most marketers spend a lot of time on the design and copy of these emails. Though this is a good approach and will yield good results, this will only get you so far. If you don’t know what compels your recipients to click through and buy your products, you're not going to get the desired results. To find out which elements work for your audience and which are unsuccessful, you need to A/B test…

Technical options and tools for creating more engaging content marketing

A brief history of animation on the web.

Since the beginning of the Internet, the web has been constantly and rapidly evolving. The evolution of the web has been directed by predominantly 2 conflicting factors. The first factor being content providers and readers who are always seeking for more complex and exciting forms of content. The other factor is the technology that provides the foundation of the web which allows users to have the type of content they require. It is both of these factors that have driven the web forward and brought us the web that we know and love today. One form of content that has always been a requirement for users is animated content. However, technology has often limited  the capability of animation on the web. One of the first signs of animation on the web was the introduction of the…

Overcoming Marketing-Sales Tension

Tension between the sales and marketing departments plagues companies of all shapes and sizes. One of the biggest sore spots is the feeling among sales personnel that the “leads” delivered by marketing are worthless. Typically, this is not entirely true, but an impression that develops as sales reps grow tired of chasing inquiries that turn out to be dead ends. Nevertheless, even the impression is bad; when reps sour on marketing leads, they may overlook or go through the motions on terrific leads, thinking they are more “junk.” If marketing adds lead validation to the process, this tension not only can be eliminated, but also can result in tremendous gains in lead follow-up efficiency and new business production.

What Is Lead Validation?

If you are not familiar with lead validation, do not be worried — few marketers implement it. For the…

A Q&A with Liam Fisher of BuiltVisible giving actionable advice and tools for people looking to improve their content marketing campaigns in the year ahead

Getting started with content marketing can be tough – from researching your audience through to executing a campaign across multiple mediums and devices, there’s a lot for the digital marketer to cover. Often it comes back to really understanding what content marketing can bring to your business, who your audience is and what’s most likely to resonate with them, and what it is you need to achieve as a business from your content marketing. To add a bit more to the conversation, I sat down with Liam Fisher the creative lead at Builtvisible, to talk about his views on content marketing and to share some actionable advice for people looking to improve their campaigns.

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