Chart of the Day: How many email platforms are you using (Sending) - Part 6 of 6
This week is the final post in our series, and we will be looking at the number of email platforms that are currently being used to send segmented, triggered, and
transactional emails? (Catch-up on previous episodes.)
Why have more than one email platform? Doesn't that sound a bit dodgy?
Email Service Providers (ESP) have had a reputation of being simple send engines. Some may have had slightly different functionality but if you wanted something more, you had to pay for it. But what would be a legitimate reason to have more than one email platform?
Cost: prices increased with the number of email contacts in your database. So to keep costs down, many would split their lists and join another ESP.
Multiple…
You can now view and upload Instagram Stories on the web
Instagram Stories have announced they will now allow desktop web users to view Stories, and will soon allow you to post to Stories too. Instagram has already copied all of Snapchats' best bits and has now taken it one step further offering something Snapchat can't.
Similar to the mobile version Instagram explains you’ll see stories at the top of your feed, and you can tap to watch them. To skip or go back to a story, you can tap the right and left arrows
They also announced that in the coming months Instagram will allow users to upload stories via the mobile web. This feature will be helpful for professional photographers and videographers who go the extra mile by editing their images and videos…
Chart of the day: Research reports are king! Research reports are the content type that generates the highest conversion rate when used for lead generation
Research reports, video and social media content all provide a high conversion rate.
Reports are viewed as quality content and lead to the highest conversion rates when compared with other types of content. They are helping brands to establish their integrity and credibility.
The report also found:
Over half (56%) use a mix of in-house resources and agency/ third party resources to produce their content for lead generation
Just under half (49%) report that conversions are increasing marginally
Almost 6 in 10 (57%) say that content download forms generate leads with the highest conversion rates, this is followed by webinar registration (42%).
The key takeaway: Research reports and content downloads are performing best for conversion rates. These methods are worth…
Working with large numbers of smaller influencers is a logistical challenge, and requires the right set of tools
How would you like to recruit an army of influential people -- each with hundreds or even thousands of loyal followers -- to promote your brand?
If this sounds good to you, then you understand the rising popularity of micro-influencer marketing. Micro-influencers can sway opinions, there are millions of them, and many are already eager to work with brands. In fact, you likely already have micro-influencers among your brand’s customer and fan base.
Ready? Not so fast. In order to get results with micro-influencer marketing, you need to scale your campaign across hundreds, even thousands of influencers (depending on your needs). These are real people, not ad units, and there’s no simple way to automate the process of getting these individual influencers to promote you, let alone handle logistics like negotiation, content creation, and payments.…
IKEA isn't just innovating in their design process, they are innovating in their customer research approach too
Global home furnishings and meatball brand (IKEA sell 150 million meatballs a year), IKEA of Sweden already innovate in their democratic design approach when producing new products, but now they're taking a leading approach with their customer insights: chatbot surveys.
The IKEA concept already works to make their products attractive, functional, sustainable, accessible and affordable. IKEA are the masters of efficiency and it seems that they are working with their research agencies, to take this approach to customer insight.
The world of market research and insight has somewhat an obsession with innovation, researchers are always looking for new ways to gain insights, hence big data, online communities, shorter surveys (though I question whether many are actually getting shorter). But in the day to day, researchers tend to stick…
Chart of the Day: Only 2% of respondents will invest more than $5 million in the next 12 months - Part 7 of 10
So far in this 10 part series, breaking down Hubspot's State of Inbound 2017 report, we have looked at:
Top business priorities
Inbound marketing - what are your priorities and challenges?
Telesales remains a successful channel for sales representatives
Are marketing models and strategies even effective?
Is your marketing and sales SLA alignment positive?
Is marketing a top source of leads for sales?
For the 7th installment, it's time to see how much money respondents are willing to invest into their marketing efforts in the next 12 months.
Only 2% of respondents said they are willing/ or are going to invest a whopping $5 Million into their marketing efforts. Although a low percentage, this will be reflective…
Tips on how to create a non-profit marketing plan with limited funds
Non-profit organizations face one of the biggest digital marketing challenges of all: having limited funds or no money at all. Nonprofit organizations have to operate and thrive in marketing their cause without spending a substantial amount of money. This is difficult because bigger organizations have the funds to spend on online advertizing.
You can develop a marketing plan that helps navigate the unique challenges of nonprofits, and keep the nonprofit’s budget, objectives, strategy and other important considerations in perspective.
Creating a Nonprofit Marketing Plan
Objectives
What will the proposed marketing efforts achieve? Objectives can include big-picture goals such as educating the public about core issues and connecting with public figures or politicians.
Make your objectives as concrete as possible, for example:
Grow your list of email subscribers
Increase membership by 25% amount
Promote X, Y or Z service
Make sure your list of objectives is in…
Make sure you avoid these classic campaign planning mistakes
We’ve all seen it. The #fail where a company that’s big enough to know better, completely messes up.
The odd thing is that this continues to happen and I guess until the machines take over, that will continue. Whether it’s politics or business, rarely do organisations learn from their predecessors.
At Smart Insights we share best practice, hope that you find our content useful and can apply this directly to your organisations, so in this new guide we have explored 10 marketing campaign planning mistakes, with case study companies such as Absolut Vodka, Admiral Insurance, British Airways, Coca-Cola, HMV, Kodak, McDonald's, Southern Rail, Starbucks, and Waitrose, as well as the two primary candidates in the US presidential campaign and the recent Olympics.
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Chart of the Day: Marketing provide lower quality leads compared to those sourced directly by the sales reps
A Sales and Marketing SLA is important, but as we found out last week 21% of respondents characterize their company's Sales and marketings relationship as either misaligned or 'don't know'.
But how often do marketing teams provide their sales team with quality leads? Not as often as they find their own.
38% of respondents said that leads sources by sales are the top source of sales, 33% say referrals are the top source of sales and only 25% of respondents believe leads sourced by marketing are their top source of sales.
Sales respondents in organizations with an SLA between Marketing and Sales felt differently. Those respondents ranked marketing-sourced leads highest. Thanks to alignment, which sets clear expectations on the types of leads Marketing should provide and a feedback loop between departments, these sales…
Use video to enhance your digital marketing strategy
Days of old fashioned mass ads “spray and pray” approach to advertising are long gone now and what the modern day advertisers need today is more precise targeting. Video is one approach you may not have considered.
Video advertising today is organized more along the lines of a precise laser, rather than of an advertising equivalent of “shotgun” marketing. If the leads are what you are after in your online business, with 61 percent of successful businesses stating that they use video as a marketing tool. The very same tool helps them carve out revenue for themselves, as the research done by Eyeview demonstrated that using video on a landing page alone can increase conversion rates by 80 percent. The future of advertising is here and it offers lucrative propositions for those who can recognize it for what it genuinely is.
Brain as an Additional…
