Email strategies must recognise users are now constantly moving between devices
Consumers now expect a consistent experience across every device – whether they happen to be using a PC, mobile or tablet. So what can businesses do to improve the customer journey that is gradually blurring between devices?
Since Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, smartphones have saturated our society with as much as two thirds of UK’s population owning one according to Ofcom[1]. Even before we have stumbled out of bed in the morning, we are likely to have checked our mobile to catch up on the news, read emails, get the weather forecast and browse social media channels.
In fact, the average smartphone user carries out over 200 tasks a day on their mobile, compared to just 140 on a desktop or laptop.[2] Even web browsing, traditionally a desktop or laptop task, is now a smartphone-centric pastime…
Sales metrics should not be alien to digital marketing teams
As digital marketers, it is our job to drive sales for our business, correct? Wait, but isn’t that the job of the sales department..? As it turns out, with Smarketing we have many of the same goals and objectives so it makes sense that we would work together to form a more united team and focus on the same measurements to close our deals.
Source: HubSpot
I realize this is easier said than done, but if you look at the statistics: according to an Aberdeen report, companies that were successful in aligning their sales and marketing teams were able to increase revenue by 20%. This is in stark comparison to those who weren’t able to align the two departments and saw a 4% decline.
Yes, it…
Video already makes up 70% of global internet traffic, but this is set to increase still further.
To state the obvious, video is already an extremely popular content medium. But far from plateauing, online video it set to continue its rapid growth. By 2020 it's set to reach an overwhelming 80% share of all global internet traffic.
This trend is propelled by two key factors. Firstly there is the growing popularity of on-demand video. Then there is the increasing popularity of video-based social media. This doesn't just mean YouTube. Facebook's push of live video as well as uploaded video, and Snapchat's and Instagram popularity (both of which now involve video) mean increasing views of video content from social platforms.
Marketers need to take advantage these trends, and utilise video- whether for marketing or advertising. Exploiting the incredible prominence Facebook is currently giving live video at the moment looks like a promising tactic at the moment…
What are Ecommerce brands like yours spending on search engine marketing?
It is a question which all marketers have probably wondered at some point; How much marketing budget should be spent on SEO and PPC? It’s quite the balancing act, either risk spending too little and see no results, or spend too much and watch ROI tumble? We take a look at some industry benchmark data specifically for ecommerce brands and see how marketing practitioners are spending their budgets.
What are your goals?
Marketing budgeting should be designed specifically to meet your ecommerce goals. Different types of goal are more suited to different channels, for example if you want to get a better ROI on marketing spend you might want to shift some budget from PPC to SEO. Conversely, if you’re looking to increase sales in the next quarter, you might want to turn on some paid media advertising in order to…
Marketing agencies need to learn from tech leaders
Having spent ten years spearheading one of the UK’s leading dot com companies to digital success, Dave Heath is now shaking up the agency landscape by taking dot com thinking into agency processes.
Dave believes all companies should behave like a dot com; and an agency’s role is to help clients take a dot com approach to gain competitive advantage, especially where technology is core to achieving business goals – arguably in 2016 this is almost every company.
[si_definition title="What is it? Dot Com" description="A dot com company is a company that does most of its business on the internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain “.com”."/]
Some of the largest dot com companies are undoubtedly leading the field in digital innovation, delivering huge profits as a result.
Dot coms tend to act differently to multi-channel businesses that have added…
The 11 step launch marketing plan
The success of a startup will often depend on its approach to marketing. Unfortunately the vast majority of startup founders have little to no experience or marketing or managing a marketing budget. How do you deal with this dangerous contradiction? Well it's in the planning! Make sure that you’ve got your marketing strategy in line by applying this product launch framework.
There are a million articles out there on brand development, launch marketing, PR, viral videos and more. Reading them all would be a start – or you can check our tried and tested approach below!
The framework described below is typically rolled out step by step over 18 months. We hope it helps.
'In this world of intangibles and endless competition branding is everything.'
Phase 1 - Strategic Positioning, Brand and Web Presence
1. Strategic positioning (ad Early Adopter target market definition)
The first step in a successful brand/product…
Google's new shopping insights tool offers useful data to ecommerce marketers
It might feel too early for a lot of people but the holiday season has already started for the retail industry. Lights are being turned on by celebrities, merchandisers are arranging fancy new window displays, and a new Michael Bublé record is heading to the top of the charts. While the attention might be on the bright lights of every high street and shopping centers, the real winner will be the ecommerce industry with continued growth expected.
I was browsing for the must-have toys of 2016 and stumbled across an amazing tool from Think with Google - Shopping Insights. This tool is still in beta but has a wealth of data allowing you to explore trends and popularity of consumer products across the U.S.
As you…
How the ‘brains' behind the 45th President of the United States turned out to be a robot
In 1973 I went to a cinema in London to see “Westworld” starring Yul Brynner. Last week I watched the first episode of the 2016 TV series remake. As with the movie, the series concerns a future where robots act as hosts at a Wild West theme park.
Hosting paying human guests, the bots are so realistic that it is difficult to spot the difference between them and the humans. The bots play the roles of cowboys and citizens of highly realistic frontier towns - enabling humans who visit the theme park, to act out their greatest fantasies. The interesting thing about the programme is whether, guests who, given the chance to act out no-limits fantasies choose to shoot bad guys – have flings – start a brawls at saloons – or…
Knowing if you’ve got a successful retail SEO campaign all starts with picking the right metrics
With a wealth of information at your fingertips in Google Analytics, how do you determine what the key performance indicators (KPIs) are for your website? Everyone wants to demonstrate the value of organic campaigns but since the cruel and unusual punishment of the removal of the organic keyword conversion report in Google Analytics to be replaced by the opaque 'not-provided', it can seem difficult to measure the impact of all the hard work although the improved Search Console-Google Analytics integration does help. Before we dive into the KPIs, it’s important to remember a few things when you’re pulling data out of Google Analytics and drawing conclusions from this…
What is data without human interpretation?
As with any quantitative data you get the what but not the why. Human interpretation of this data is where the…
A New Definition of Edgerank
Facebook Pages are not what they used to be.
It may (or may not) come as a surprise to discover that only a tiny proportion of the content published by Pages that you “Like” actually reaches your News Feed. Some studies put this percentage (known as “reach”) at as little as 2%. Even the most optimistic of studies suggest that little over 11% of a Page’s fans will see its content.
This is due to the existence of a filtering mechanism Facebook uses that employs a complex algorithm. Without the algorithm in place you’d be overwhelmed with something like 1,500 posts a day on your News Feed. And a lot of those would be from brand Pages.
Facebook is well aware that users like to see content from friends and family first, and dislike a News Feed cluttered with promotional messages from…
