Use your email marketing as a B2B lead generation magnet

B2B lead generation emails are being utilized more than ever in marketing. The sudden increase in their use is closely tied to the utility of emails. For long, emails have been utilized as primary tools for marketing and also communication. 91% of businesses use emails to create demand. It’s quite effective, efficient, and has a wide outreach as compared to other tools used in marketing and communication.

As much as emails are used on a daily basis, knowing how to write one to a good standard is quite a task. This is because the recipients are diverse, having different personalities, different needs, varied attitudes and specific preferences. Thus, crafting a B2B lead generation email that has an impact is more involving and may…

Chart of the Day: The popularity of different martech stack components

You will know that our options for using online services to manage marketing and get insight have increased dramatically over the past few years. Scott Brinker's martech landscape now covers over 5000 martech options. Our own Essential Digital marketing tools wheel covers what we see as 30 categories that are essential to a medium or large transactional e-commerce business that is serious about growth.  Smaller businesses with less budget and less need for information sharing can benefit from lower cost or even free tools, but are not likely to have as many tools, but can still benefit. Given this opportunity, it's become essential to audit your martech stack as part of digital strategy development. So when we completed our joint research about Managing Marketing with the Technology for Marketing event, we were interested to see the popularity of using…

Social Media Essentials: Catch up with the latest updates in social media

Spotlight story: Facebook launches Crisis Response hub

This year we have seen a number of disasters globally from the Manchester attacks to hurricane Harvey. In response, Facebook has been developing ways to help users tell friends and family members they’re safe. Last week Facebook announced a new feature called Crisis Response, which will act as a central hub for all of Facebooks safety-related tools.

The central hub will include safety checks, a feature already available that many of us will have already seen. Safety checks allow Facebook users to tell friends and family members they’re safe during natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and other life-threatening incidents. In February, Facebook introduced Community Help, which allowed users to find and offer help to victims of a disaster. Providing resources such as water, food, or shelter. The feature has also been integrated into the hub. …

6 tips to get the most out of the highest-performing digital marketing channel

We see emails every day. But few manage to make an impact and imprint on our memory. It's not surprising, since running a successful email marketing campaign calls for both creativity and the analytical know-how to make sense of ever-growing amounts of data. That’s why even the savviest marketers can get stuck – especially if they only ever look at their own results. To get fresh ideas and inspiration, it’s often worth taking a step back to see what others are doing. The new GetResponse Email Marketing Benchmarks report helps by providing plenty of insight into how successful companies create memorable, impactful email campaigns. Here are five lessons from the report based on the latest email benchmark statistics, in the reports plus actionable tips to try in your own campaigns:

1. Email at the right time

If a billboard is placed…

Chart of the Day: Do you do any structured testing for your email marketing?

Why is testing important?

Yes, yes I know I drone on about testing, my little Email Geeks, but like the nagging mother I am, I will repeat myself again. Testing your marketing campaigns is as important as creating them. The fun thing about testing email campaigns is that what you think your client wants, is completely different to the results. If we sent a marketing email from two years ago today, do you think it will do well? Like all digital trends, email marketing, and automation changes. Especially in marketing automation. Clients aren't impressed by a welcome sequence - they expect it. But is it doing what you want it to? If you don't have a welcome sequence, do you know that your clients will notice? (Take our Quick Win, "…

The focus is on the product

In the digital age, the role of a marketing manager is blurred and often comes down to online promotion. What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say ‘digital marketing’? I bet it’s SEO, paid ads or social media campaigns. However, user acquisition is only the top of the conventional marketing iceberg. Developing a lovable product in the SaaS world remains the task of the highest priority. The reason? Great products trigger word-of-mouth effect which is the most reliable and also the cheapest marketing channel. Therefore, keep in mind that the 4Ps of marketing are still alive and well.   What about SaaS pre-launch stage when you don’t have a product ready yet? I’m here to share our experience and best practices.   

Make use of the market research

SaaS marketing starts long before…

World digerati take centre stage at Brighton

Imagine you're a very busy CEO or senior digital manager (and if things are hectic, you'll know that's no joke)... Here's a quick 'helicopter' view of the sessions for you from BrightonSEO September 2017. That key thought to have 'front-of-mind' is, as ever, there's no quick fix these days that will miraculously propel any digital venture to overnight success. Time and money are usually key essentials - and not forgetting resources, e.g. People, computing power and related tools. It takes time to prepare the ground for great projects (e.g. SEO fundamentals), sow and plant on decent soil (e.g. write content + social media posts), nurture each element (e.g. content marketing + paid media) to reap a rich harvest (the millionaire lifestyle + live forever on the Maldives). BrightonSEO founder Kelvin Newman met up with Smart Insights at the conference. He described the current…

Whether you’re a web developer, CEO, marketing manager, casual blogger, or e-commerce guru - it is worth setting up a heatmap trial.

Anyone who works in the digital marketing world should at least have some awareness of what heatmaps are. Since companies like Crazy Egg have begun huge advertising campaigns - even regular, non-marketing or web-developing types know about them. In short, heatmaps are used to precisely understand what people are doing on your web pages. They show where people are clicking, and where they are lingering and scrolling too, and can be extremely useful for helping people optimize the journey of their visitors/customers.

Why So Underrated?

A lot of marketing agencies, even the ones that are responsible for developing their client’s websites, don’t bother getting a heatmap subscription. They figure that through a tool like Google…

Chart of the day: Research by Google reveals why it's so important your mobile website has good user experience

Mobile experience directly affects conversions and whether users will purchase again.

Users who have a bad mobile user experience are 60% less likely to revisit and purchase from that brand in future. In addition, 90% of users who report having a good experience would purchase from the brand again. It isn't a "chart" as such, but as you can see from the graphics from Google below, those users who had an interruptive experience, which wasn't fast or smooth (in terms of load times etc) are less likely to purchase from that brand in future.

What do users need?

They need speed…

How you can use Shopify to build your ecommerce business

When it comes to building websites for your business with so many options to choose from, sometimes it’s so overwhelming that you are tempted to just purchase from the first website you go to. You should buy your website from Shopify as this is the easiest, cheapest and most convenient way for a business to set up a store and start selling their products and services online straight away. If you're not tech savvy and you want your own e-commerce store, and have outgrown marketplaces like eBay or Amazon, and just starting out, go with Shopify. Last month, the leading multi-channel commerce platform, Shopify announced in a press release that it now powers more than 500,000 businesses in 175 countries around the world. Since 2012, the number of merchants on the Shopify platform has grown annually at an average rate of 74%, and these…