Marketing automation industry is currently valued at $1.65 billion, and the majority credit for this jump in value goes to the introduction of AI in marketing automation; more-so the AI-enabled chatbots that are taking marketing automation industry by storm

Here we will go over three significant reasons for why every brand should consider a chatbot while framing their marketing automation strategy. The first breakthrough was the introduction of social media within marketing automation strategy. Marketers started using various tools and software to make the maximum out of their social media activities. Things took a more substantial leap when artificial intelligence made way into marketing automation strategy. The simple concept of making repetitive marketing tasks easy got a new lease of life with predictive analysis and personalized marketing. With AI, marketing automation became more human. Fast-forward to present time; AI…

6 questions your boss will ask about social media automation (and how to win them over)

Engagement is the name of the game in running a successful social media campaign. Customers are 20-40% more likely to spend money on products coming from brands that engage with them on social media. However, responding to comments and messages left behind by potential customers can quickly consume a huge chunk of your time. On top of this, running a successful social marketing campaign involves carrying out tasks that are repetitive. Here are 8 statistics to prove the worth of social media marketing: It is for this reason why more and more businesses are using marketing automation tools to run their social media marketing campaigns. As its name suggests, these are software programs that handle many of the time-consuming tasks involved in running a successful social media campaign. By…

How programmatic marketing can help you target specific demographics

Over the last five years, the way advertisers have bought media and the way publishers have sold it has changed significantly. Influenced by technology, sophisticated platforms, and automated processes, advertisers have the ability to target groups in real-time, through a range of segmentation methods and demographics. In theory, this new way of buying should bring marketers and media planners closer together. With the new level of transparency, it’s surprising how many marketers still do not understand the programmatic media buying process. [si_quick_block id="58728" title="Programmatic marketing guide" description="This report is aimed at marketing managers and directors, digital marketing, and e-commerce managers who are looking to understand the key components of programmatic marketing from both an agency and advertiser perspective."] According to eMarketer, the total UK spend on programmatic advertising is expected to more than double from £1.99 billion in 2015 to £4.52 billion by 2019.…

"Almost all members of Generation Z prefer to shop in bricks-and-mortar stores" - IBM & National Retail Federation

Online sales continue to grow in importance, as shown by our compilation of ecommerce growth trends. But for many businesses, the days of double-digit, year-on-year growth in online sales are over. We are now in the era of ecommerce optimization where, to maintain growth, businesses are having to innovate their growth strategy, for making their online experiences engaging and persuasive.

As the world of digital continues to transform, with different generational segments of the population adapting to technology at their own distinct pace, marketers keep a close eye on retail ecommerce trends and developments. With artificial intelligence being hot topic for the future of marketing, trends like conversational commerce, using chatbots and voice search have been closely associated to widely-adopted online shopping habits amongst millennials as…

Chart of the day: Email marketing tips to innovate your strategy

When it comes to email marketing, there’s always some discussion about its relevance as a digital marketing channel, in the fast-paced world of instant messaging and social media. However, each time it comes out as a winner in the debate. Email platforms can be used to deliver specific, personalised and prolonged marketing communications to your user-base, making it vital for marketers to use this channel to its full potential and innovate their email marketing strategy. A recent chart on MarketingCharts shows the various different ways in which companies want to innovate their email marketing strategy in 2018, as compared to 2017. Creative use of behavioural triggers, use of dynamic content and automation to trigger one-to-one communication are right up there, as more than 50% of  to try these creative…

It doesn’t matter if your product is tangible or not. You’ve got to protect your brand or wave goodbye to your good reputation

One minute you’re loved by consumers, the next… a social pariah. What happened? Failing to listen to consumer feedback Stolen brand identity Business data lost due to poor security Counterfeit goods undermining your reputation One of your team has a meltdown on social

Brand vulnerability

In this age of social media, you can’t avoid having your brand online; but it opens it up to attack. You need to secure your brand’s future potential as a revenue hero and remember… it’s not just about protecting your brand, it’s about promoting it. Having worked in several different industries, I’ve collected valuable tips on protecting your brand’s reputation. From trademarks and copyright issues to domain name registration and employee advocacy. Regardless of your industry, whether your product is tangible or not, this guide will…

Chart of the Day: Long-form LinkedIn Posts Drive Greater Engagement

For many social media platforms, brevity means business. Twitter has based its entire business model on this (though slackened somewhat when they raised their character limit from 140 to 280 this year) and Snapchat’s disposable nature demands quick captions on pictures and videos. LinkedIn, however, appears to have become a safe haven for long-form content. Paul Shapiro, reporting on OkDork, analyzed close to 3,000 of the most successful blog posts on LinkedIn to find out what the perfect LinkedIn post looks like. 1,500 words is something of a tipping point, pushing a successful post into the top tier of average views. Posts that approach 2,000 words also gained the greatest number of likes, comments, and shares. This love of high word counts is reflected in several aspects that can make posts more digestible.…

Take our short poll to share which skill you need to improve most within the year

This month we're focusing our content on Digital Marketing skills and careers development. As a marketing advice site, we're always creating new resources to help marketers plan, manage and optimize their digital strategy and channel specific tactics. We 20 toolkits spanning from digital marketing strategy and planning, campaign planning to B2B, Agency and much more. However, to understand what is needed and where marketers need to spend time improving, we need to know what areas of digital marketing are the weakest within companies and personal skills. To help us understand the skills gap in 2018 please choose the 3 skills which you most want to learn in the year ahead which are also important to your business. If you can't see the poll, please click here to complete the poll. We'll be sharing our findings at…

In the past couple of years, the popularity of influencer marketing has seen a meteoric rise

You can expect this trend to continue. In fact, in a study by Tomoson, influencer marketing was rated as the fastest-growing online customer-acquisition channel, beating organic search, paid search, and email marketing. 59% of marketers plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets over the next 12 months. But even as influencer marketing enters the mainstream, and more businesses see it as an essential part of their marketing strategy, marketers now have a new challenge ahead of them. Like any other marketing activity, significant money and resources go into the execution of an influencer program. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that marketers are now closely looking at the performance of their influencer marketing campaigns to make sure…

Chart of the Day: A summary of the state of digital marketing skills

I thought this infographic from General Assembly was useful for showing specific skills gaps since it isn't based on a survey, rather it is based on a test taken at the end of a digital marketing qualification. We will be sharing research we have done in collaboration with the IDM on the perceptions of marketers to their careers later in the month. The top of the chart shows a skills gap amongst non digital marketing specialists that might be expected since those focusing on digital marketing activities will naturally understand digital concepts better. It is arguable whether corporate marketers need to know the details of techniques like search, display and AB testing. However, they will need to discuss such techniques with their teams, so this does hint at a…