The 25th May 2018 marks the day that GDPR comes into force around Europe, and it's about to change the way many of us do business
A recent session I attended brought home not just the stark realities of the fast approaching GDPR, but also the plethora of unanswered questions that need addressing.
In this article, I’m going to be addressing some of the key issues we may be presented with, in the run-up to May 25th, whilst providing you with some actionable takeaways to make the transition as smooth as possible.
[si_guide_block id="99357" title="Download Premium Resource – GDPR briefing guide" description="Our round-up of the best guidance on the latest European Union data protection and privacy legislation and how it affects you and your business Are you ready for the GDPR? The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) comes into force in all 28 countries in Europe on 25th May 2018.…
How email automation can create better results for your email marketing strategy
At Communicator, we are trusted partners in email marketing. We work in partnership with our customers, which are all ambitious brands to make sure that they are achieving breakthrough results using our software suite. As part of our focus to help you to achieve email sophistication, we wanted to share with you what email automation is and how it can help your email marketing.
First things first, what is email automation?
Automation by definition is where you introduce systems that will generate actions due to certain triggers that you set up. Applying this to email marketing, it means that once a customer subscribes to a certain email journey, they will automatically receive your emails without you having to do anything else. This is a brilliant…
Chart of the Day: How do micro-influencers and mega-influencers compare in Instagram engagement rates
When you think of Influencer Marketing, names like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner are the first to pop up. Renowned celebrities or mega-influencers, with millions of followers, are often set as the benchmark of Influencer Marketing. However, you can be spending big budgets on a large reach and still get very little ROI.
A recent report on Instagram Influencer Rates, carried out by Influence.co, shows us that influencers with smaller followings tend to have higher engagement rates than those of mega-influencers. Brands are now increasingly looking for micro-influencers, with a steady following and niche focus, to share their brand messages.
Micro-influencers have a close-knit fan base, making their content more personalized, authentic and engaging for their followers. Looking at the top and bottom bars, the…
12 easy steps to making your business card a successful offline marketing strategy that integrates online marketing
At Smart Insights we focus on digital marketing channels, and how we can help our members plan, manage and optimize their marketing strategies. However, we also look at the effects of offline and online marketing integration to create a holistic strategy which leads to business success. Our lifecycle marketing model shows the integration of offline and online marketing across RACE planning framework.
Do you give much thought on how your business cards are going to impact people before you give them out? You probably just place an order for a standardized one from your local office supplies store. What you may not realize is that you are sitting on potentially the most potent weapon in your marketing arsenal.
Maybe it is time you start…
Cohesive customer journeys rely on brand and growth marketers working together
Many modern-day marketing departments are now split into two distinct groups: brand marketers who are tasked with building consumer awareness and growth or channel marketers who are tasked with transforming that awareness into action. Although both parties play for the same team, they often possess different internal priorities. It is easy for silos to emerge that make collaboration an uphill battle.
There is overlap between what brand marketers and growth marketers provide. They each play pivotal roles in fueling department-wide success — but only if they work in tandem to create cohesive customer journeys.
[si_guide_block id="95323" title="Download FREE Resource – Understanding different types of marketing plan" description="When, why and how to use different types of marketing plans. It will also be useful for any manager involved in setting future marketing direction for…
6 key metrics to measure your social media impact and social media ROI
Social media is one of those tricky topics that marketing departments know is effective for business growth, but getting this across to other departments – and specifically the C-Suite – can be difficult. Measuring vanity metrics and talking about “social shares” is not something the senior team has any interest in; you have to show the business impact and value your social activity is having.
52% surveyed in the recent Smart Insights and Clutch Social Media report confirmed that social media has positively influenced their revenue and sales with Facebook and Linkedin providing the highest value for businesses.
But how to do you measure and prove this? Below we’re looking more closely at the metrics to focus on and how they can be demonstrated to the board as positively…
If there’s one thing CROs could use more of, it’s psychology.
I’m all for testing crazy ideas. It’s how some of the most counterintuitive and surprising discoveries are made.
But we still need to build our landing pages on a solid foundation, and since it’s human behavior that our landing pages are attempting to influence, psychology is central to that foundation.
There’s no shortage of articles about psychology marketing out there, but I wanted to share three powerful ideas that I don’t think get enough attention in these discussions.
Let’s take a look.
1. Single Option Aversion
You’ve probably heard of “the paradox of choice”, the theory that if you are presented with too many options, you are less likely to make a decision. Well, it turns out that most experiments attempting to replicate that effect don’t actually find it. The effect may be real, but it seems to only occur in idiosyncratic circumstances that…
Social Media Essentials: Key updates in social media this week
To finish your working week off here are 6 updates we saw happen in social media to help inform your social strategy and keep you up-to-date with what's happened in the world of social media.
Vimeo and Livestream launch mevo plus
Livestream and Vimeo have debuted the new Mevo Plus camera. Vimeo announced that the 'pocket-sized live event camera will have faster data transmission speeds, increased range of use, stronger Wi-Fi performance, reduced network interference, and improved stability'. According to TechCrunch this new camera also makes it easy for creators to edit video in real time and stream live to every major platform.
Snapchat Rolls external link sharing and ghost mode
Snapchat rolled out two new features last week. You can now share links from other apps via iOS share sheet. This feature will allow users “to send a…
Paywalls, donations, monthly subscriptions, stealing your processing power!?…..the internet’s struggle to figure out which model works best for service providers, content creators and consumers.
Recently, Gizmodo broke the news that online torrent search engine, The Pirate Bay, had been caught trialing a new means of monetizing site visitors by getting them to mine cryptocurrency through the browsers on their devices without their knowledge or consent.
Naturally, people weren’t happy. I mean who would be? Modern device battery times deteriorate faster than fruit from Aldi.
But this does raise a good question, just how much is that content worth?
We are all very easily detached from the human and technological cost of our favourite media sites and flavour of the month apps. Ads have served as means of covering these costs for quite some time. The systems are in place, easy to implement and are very much a natural part of the online ecosystem.
However there…
What are the next big changes to digital that will affect digital marketing strategies in 2018?
Recently on behalf of Smart Insights, I gazed into the crystal ball to forecast some marketing and branding trends for 2018.
In this article, I am going to concentrate on five digital aspects which I believe will, in some way or other, affect just about everyone next year.
[si_guide_block id="38465" title="Download Business Resource – Managing Digital Transformation Guide" description="Create a roadmap to implement digital transformation."/]
To being with, as this chart by Smart Insights, in collaboration with TFM, demonstrates, more businesses than ever are putting digital transformation programmes in place. Yet still, according to Smart Insights, some 50% of businesses don't have an integrated Digital Marketing Strategy.
For more trends covering how to integrate digital media and technology to increase the contribution of digital marketing…
