Automating your marketing is key in such a busy marketing period, find out how RedEye’s Head of Future email suggests it is done

Summer is long gone and the Bank Holidays have been exhausted for the year. While ‘normal’ people start to stress about when to put their central heating back on, us marketers are in full planning and panic mode. Two key events loom before us: Black Friday Weekend, and of course the run up to Christmas. It’s all become rather stressful. With more and more focus on the few weekends left of the year before sales season takes over, it’s more crucial than ever for brands to implement perfectly executed, strategic marketing experiences for shoppers on the approach to Christmas. Brands are not only at war with their competitors, but with the expectations from previous years’ performances and their customer’s expectations (all searching for the next big bargain).

Take a little…

The key trends emerging from this year's Black Friday marketing campaigns

Total consumer spending on Black Friday has consistently increased over the past few years, to reach heights so dizzying that many retail businesses have realized they can't afford not to get involved. Over 80% of retailers plan to participate in Black Friday, and it has become an E-commerce phenomenon. This year for the first time ever Black Friday E-commerces sales are set to outpace in-store sales for the first time ever. Many retailers, such as AO.com in the UK are now running campaigns over a full week, or in Amazon's case, several weeks. Yet, despite the hype, some retailers who have reviewed the profitability of their Black Friday campaigns, or rather lack of it, have decided to stop their campaigns in favour of other tactics where they can get more impact at higher margins. The infographic below provides some interesting background to the Black…

Chart of the Day: Third Quarter Smartphone ownership stats show near total adoption among under fifties

A whopping 97% of under 45s in the US own a Smartphone. That's just about as high a rate of adoption as it's possible to get. The adoption rate is now as high as it is for fridges! A technology that's almost 100 years old Vs a technology that only really became widespread after 2008. It's also interesting that Smartphone adoption is by no means restricted to the young and middle ages. Even the over 65s have a fairly high adoption rate of 68%. If current trends continue we can expect adoption rates of 80% or higher among the over 65s within just a couple of years. Customers of all ages are now using mobile devices to search for products, browse and consume content. The people are mobile first. You should be too.

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9 Key Content Types For Your Ecommerce Site

With so many ecommerce websites in each category, how can a retailer cut-through if they're not a 'high street brand'? And while each of them is unique in their own way, they all have something in common too. They aim to deliver what their visitors expect to find, from products to great user experience AND useful content. Content is the backbone of today’s marketing strategies. Be it a short snippet in an AdWords ad or a lengthy blog post, it helps you to attract new visitors and build an audience. But there is another type of content - the generic information about your store, which should be available right from the home page that convinces users to buy from you. Here are the 9 content types every ecommerce site must have.

1. Shipping Information

You know that, to many shoppers, the cost of shipping is one of the key factors…

A Smorgasbord of cutting-edge e-commerce stats to benchmark your business against

'It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics' - George Bernard Shaw. I don't think these statistics can lay any claim on being moving. Least not in the sense old Georgie B intended. But any good plan to move your Ecommerce needle in the right direction needs to be based on a solid foundation of accurate online market forecast data for your sector. If you live in blissful ignorance of key stats relating to how people are using mobile devices or what social networks are driving the most revenue on e-commerce sites, then it will be all too easy to misallocate budgets and resources and end up with a sub-par plan that doesn't get the results you want. So take a look that these 37 crucial Ecommerce stats structured around all customer lifecycle touchpoints using our…

Search Ads are just the beginning of a big year for Apple.

The public-facing changes made to the App Store in Fall 2016 have been nothing short of monumental, but for Apple the shift marks only the beginning of a new methodology for interacting with developers and consumers. As we roll into 2017, Apple’s recent updates will begin to solidify into a new App Store hierarchy, one which will include Search Ads as a core pillar and send a friendlier message to developers. App Store Optimization experts have been preparing for a major shift in the App Store for some time now. After all, Google introduced Search Ads to the Play Store in February of 2015, themselves following in Facebook’s footsteps. Apple is methodical, though, and the inevitable rollout of ads has come to impact the entire App Store experience. First, the ads themselves. Over 65% of all app installs originate…

Mobile, social video and messaging apps: The big trends to inform your 2017 strategy

Each year, analyst Mary Meeker, a partner at KPCB  does a rather fantastic job of curating a vast range of pertinent internet marketing stats , and 2016 is no exception. Her 213 slide presentation is 'packed to the gills' with a panoply of charts, graphs and data. You can view the whole deck below: For those without the time to browse all 213 slides, we've picked out they key points for marketers, just as we did last year, so you can stay abreast of the latest trends.

#1 Rapid Smartphone growth concentrated in emerging markets

We saw last year that mobile outstripped desktop for the first time when it came to web traffic. This year we see Smartphone use continuing its strong…

Chart of the Day: We explore recent research which shows that long term social media marketing engagement leads to increased sales and loyalty.

In a study by SocialMediaExaminer, marketers believe that when compared to short term work, long term efforts are proving fruitful for their businesses. The research suggests that most marketers believe that over time social media can increase sales, 66% believed that over 5 years of social media marketing, sales can improve. The research also found that social media can increase traffic and loyalty long term, but not in the short term. Key takeaways: Marketers should accept that social media will not give immediate rewards for their efforts in the short term, however, when embraced fully, long-term social media engagement can eventually contribute to driving sales and loyalty. Sources: Social Media Examiner and Convince&Convert  Sample: 5000+ marketers Recommended resources: The Smart Insights social media management checklist lives…

A detailed guide to scaling SERP rankings using competitor analysis

Every time search engine optimisation comes up in discussions with colleagues or clients, the first thing I do is place a mental bet on how quickly the chat is going down the rabbit hole. There is absolutely no denying the importance of SEO. No matter how much runway you think you have with PPC to fuel your business’ needs, sooner or later you’ll want to incrementally reduce the cost of acquiring users at the top of the funnel. What’s that thing about rabbit hole again? There are numerous factors (some say over 200) that Google takes into account to decide where your page ranks for a given search query. If you go about optimising each of these factors, it is going to take you a whole lot of time before each piece of content goes out into the world. Either that, or…

Chart of the Day: Ecommerce becomes the preferred method for Christmas Shopping among UK consumers for the first time ever.

Ecommerce has notched up double-digit sales growth every year for over a decade now. In certain markets, like white goods or electricals it really dominates, where as in others, like FMCG it's miles behind bricks and mortar stores. It's the time of the year where consumers are thinking about where to buy their Christmas prezzies and marketers are thinking about putting their lovingly developed Christmas marketing plans into action. This year we've got some seriously good news for ecommerce marketers. Bobatoo surveyed over 2000 UK consumers and found that almost two-thirds plan to conduct the majority of their shopping online this year. This is a huge jump on the 2015 figure, when the majority of consumers said they would be conducting most of their shopping in physical stores. If the figures are to be believed,…