The number of social shares per blog post suffers from a massive 89% decline over the past five years

Mark Schaefer originally coined the term content shock 3 years ago. Since then we've seen a massive explosion in the amount of content produced - an almost seven-fold increase -but a huge crash in engagement with each post. An October 2016 study by TrackMaven analysed over 65,000 blogs and found that the number of blogs produced increased by 800%, but the number of social shares per posts crashed by a massive 89%. We can see this huge drop off in engagement is impacting brand's decisions - the number of articles published has plateaued since August 2015. In an attempt to cut through, brands have been driven to creating not just more, but longer content. The average number of words in each post increased by 100 words, to 750 words per post on average. But…

Radio isn't dead. Don't make the mistake of writing it off.

The importance of omnichannel marketing is an ever increasing reality for high street retailers to succeed. Online-only retailers are starting to see the benefit of having physical locations to serve their customer in the real world, this year has already seen Amazon opening its own high street bookshops. As consumers across the globe demand more from every retailer big or small, our shopping habits are changing and the internet has opened a new always-on world, where if we want it, we want it and nothing else will do. Retailers are wising up new customer experiences and implementing real digital transformation change across their business's, to give their customers the choice they desire, to buy online or in-store for home delivery or store pick up, but the marketing departments still have work to do, to prioritise their marketing activities across the whole customer lifecycle. …

Automated customer lifecycle marketing will be the future of email marketing

To look forward to the future of email marketing 2020 - a report I have contributed to from Litmus, I believe we need to look back to appreciate how little the support for marketers from email marketing platforms has evolved to deliver customised lifecycle messaging. Frankly, I have been amazed how few companies have adopted email as a strategic communications tool for personalised, behavioural based email across the years since I started training on email marketing in 2001.

Research on the adoption of email targeting still shows us a reality where the majority of email marketing involves either no segmentation at all or targeting of just 4 to 6 segments.

So, by mid 2017 I’d like…

Just because Penguin constantly updates, doesn't mean you can throw out the disavow file

When taking to the familiar waters of the social media swimming pool this morning, instead of enjoying my relaxed, smooth, exercise regime, I was met by the sound of shrieking and splashing from the children’s pool of Twitter. Upon investigating, I see there is a lively debate about the implications of disavow in the fallout of Penguin 4.0. The main topic for the heated discussion? With the new incarnation of Penguin and its constantly refreshing live scrutiny when it is evaluating domains and URLs, is the presence of a disavow file even necessary for your business going forward? There are arguments both for and against this, there are those who are of the inclination that complete and utter removal of the disavow file is in their best interests as Google Penguin 4.0 algorithm is only doing minor devaluing…

76% of adults use multiple devices to access content- only a tiny minority uses desktop only

The results of Comscore's 'Cross-platform future in focus 2016' make for interesting reading. One of the most interesting charts from the report show just how tiny the number of people not using a combination of devices to access content online is. For those aged between 18 and 34 only 3% are only accessing content on a desktop device - if trends continue then the figure for December 2016 will be less than 1%. But we're not seeing a dramatic shift to pure mobile - instead users are making the most of both mediums and utilising desktop and mobile together in order to suit whatever their needs are at the time. This explains why we are seeing high levels of mobile traffic on ecommerce sites but very low mobile conversion rates. Those people browsing on mobile are converting…

We asked top SEO experts about how they see the implications of Google's announcement of a separate mobile index

Gary Illyes, a Google webmaster trends analyst, announced this month in a keynote on Google's search plans at Pubcon, Las Vegas that rather than its current single index for all sites, Google will run two indexes in parallel. One will be for informing mobile search results, the other desktop, but the mobile one will be the primary database and will be updated more regularly. It's a big, bold move from Google, and there's no doubting it will have a huge affect on SEO, with the possibility of a big divergence between mobile and desktop search results. For marketers the implications will be less instant, as they'll take longer to filter through. But that is no reason for complacency. A change in rankings one day is a change in sales the next, and…

Litmus, Liveclicker and Unbounce speak on conversion optimisation for ecommerce

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) can be a very complex creature – particularly when it comes to optimising ecommerce sites and campaigns using Email marketing to engage our audience. The opinions in this article focus on email marketing. A common theme is that during the process of optimisation we need to put our subjective opinions aside, create some robust hypothesis-based upon data and insights and try to start optimising for the biggest wins first – not always an easy task. So we asked three of our expert speakers from our email marketing summit the following question: “So many channels, so many aspects of a campaign to test. What’s your key piece of advice that you would provide to increase conversions for an ecommerce site?” Dave Holland, European Regional Director of Liveclicker and expert presenter, gives us his…

Direct traffic is a great indicator of brand strength - marketers should consider its use as a KPI

How a brand drives its traffic in the online arena is one of the most important things for any digital marketer to know. These traffic drivers can be divided broadly into these 7 segments Direct Mail Referrals Social Organic Search Paid Search Display Ads Each has its own implication on a brand’s online presence however for the scope of this article we will focus on Direct Traffic vs. Various Search metrics. Direct Traffic is when a consumer directly types in the name of a brand’s website in the address bar. Search Traffic is when a consumer is looking for information about a brand and its services/products via a search engine or directly inputting the name of the brand or its product/service, in a search engine. Before we begin it is worth mentioning that a lot of the…

Planning and optimising across the whole customer journey is the most effective way to win and retain customers.

Anyone who's worked for an Ecommerce business, or indeed just about any kind of business, will know that customer retention and re-activation is the key to driving consistent growth in profit. Attracting entirely new customers at the top of the funnel can often become the focus of Ecommerce campaigns because you naturally want to get more and more people into that funnel to convert and thus make you money. But if you have not invested sufficiently in creating an engaging customer lifecycle which converts and re-engages your customers to tempt repeat purchases then attracting new customers will not be the most effective tactic. You should be focusing on improving the customer lifecycle itself. I'm going to show you why with a nifty little tool I like to call maths. …

Partnering with a supplier can save time and boost profits.

Ask any eCommerce retailer what is the number one concern they have and inventory will likely enter the equation. Fulfilling orders yourself is time-consuming and not always the cheapest option in the long run. Hiring employees to do it cuts into your profit margin. So what’s the solution? Dropshipping. If you haven’t heard about this rising trend in eCommerce order fulfillment, let this article be your guide to understanding dropshipping, how it makes you a better business owner, and what to expect in the coming months.

What Is Dropshipping?

Image: Oberlo Rather than you buying inventory, stocking it, then packaging and shipping it out every time an order comes in, dropshipping allows you to sell products that are housed by your manufacturer or a wholesaler. They store it until you sell it. And you don’t…