Chart of the day: Marketers are most concerned with improving email engagement

New research has found that improving email engagement, followed by increasing sales revenue as well as increasing the number of subscribers are the top priorities businesses have for email. Top priorities have moved from wanting the most subscribers possible to increasing engagement to retain those subscribers and earn revenue from them. Improving the quality of subscribers was also important for just under 4 in 10 participants of the research (38%). Most businesses said they were successful in achieving their strategic aims for email marketing, the vast majority rated themselves either very or somewhat successful. The biggest barrier to their success was found to be improving the quality of subscribers, marketers want to make sure they have the most relevant subscribers for the services and…

WhatsApp, announced that it was not requesting any new rights to collect personal information in the agreement it created for the European Union

Barely a day passes without another social media platform notifying me of updated terms of business. Now, in a new twist to the ongoing data protection saga that is European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - due to come into effect on 25th May 2018, WhatsApp intends to ban under 16 year olds across Europe from its system. Potentially that represents a significant chunk of its 1.5bn users. (WhatsApp is the fifth most popular social network with 12 -15-year olds, after Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube).

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According to researcher eMarketer, about a fifth of Snapchat users in the US are aged…

A Customer satisfaction survey (CSAT) allows you to measure customer experience, how much a customer would recommend your business and satisfaction with your brand

There are some simple rules to follow when creating a customer satisfaction survey which gives you high-quality insights, accurate data and actionable findings, whether it's the metrics you include or question types which can enhance the feedback. In our Quick Win on how to create an effective customer satisfaction survey, we go into more detail about metrics and question types, how to analyse and interpret results and even how to project manage the process. In this blog post, we'll explore some effective question types which can help you pull together a useful CSAT.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

You might be familiar with NPS as it’s grown massively in popularity amongst marketers globally. It’s a low effort and generally excellent indicator of how a business is doing. It’s especially worth adding…

The elearning industry shows how to make niche marketing work

The internet is crowded with brands searching for the best way to grab consumers' attention — unfortunately, the roadmap to success is always in flux for digital marketers. With Google's constant algorithm tweaks, for example, tactics that drove traffic yesterday won’t always work tomorrow. Given how quickly best practices evolve, it's easy for marketers to get lost in the crowd, especially when working with a new industry that has no set of "rules" to follow and no clearly defined marketplace. A few months ago, I met with the head of marketing at a company that makes learning management systems, also known as eLearning software. He mentioned that the company's site traffic had been lower than expected and he was having a hard time generating leads. After talking a bit more, I found out that…

Your marketing's most valuable player: using attribution.

Imagine a typical customer journey for a business like TOMS, a shoe retailer that sells online. A user sees a sponsored Facebook post that was liked by a friend about TOMS, and clicks through to Tom's site, browses for a while, then leaves. Later on, the user sees a display ad from a TOMS retargeting campaign, and clicks through again, this time signing up for email alerts from the brand, but still not buying anything. Finally, the user receives an email from TOMS, clicks through, and starts to really think about buying the shoes. They leave it for a bit, and decide to buy, and they type the web address directly in the browser.   Who gets the credit for any revenue created? Well, that will depend on your attribution model. Attribution may sound complicated but in simple terms,…

As your business engages in both traditional and digital marketing practices for different outcomes you will see cross-overs and similarities in the way you work

There are overarching “rules”, “guidelines” and marketing best practice you can follow but when you delve into more niche sectors, you will need to learn new and valuable approaches, giving you scope to alter your marketing processes across the board. When you’re focused in a particular niche a whole new set of opportunities and marketing skillsets open up to you. The value of finding your specific niche and optimizing for that specific target audience is particularly important for search engine optimization and homing in on those very targeted buyers looking for businesses like yours.

Benefits of Niche Marketing

Niche marketing is an effective way of tapping into a ready-to-engage audience who are specifically looking for your product, service and/or…

Chart of the day: Time is the biggest challenge when it comes to content marketing

Marketers have revealed time and quality are their biggest content marketing challenges according to research by Clearvoice. Time, content quality and creating content were the top three challenges, which suggest a perception of the number of resource marketers feel content needs. And right they are! Quality and effective content takes time, needs to be good quality and needs the appropriate resource to put aside this time and make sure it's great quality. Marketers recognise that it's quality over quantity and understand quality is the most important aspect. Production is also a big challenge for marketers, the resource involved in making it happen and getting it live and as someone who works full time in the production of content, it certainly is harder than you may think. …

The must-knows if you want to create a multi-vendor website

E-commerce marketers who dedicate boundless effort to their businesses aren’t new to being told that “technology” is the best way to make their business work. And as with all good harvests, the yield from the newest of technologies depends on how well you pair them up with your business. Things are not much different for multi-vendor e-commerce websites. In the recent past, these websites have captured both the stage and the spotlight. With the passage of time, and with technology spilling over into every available space on the web, multi-vendor e-commerce websites have become the norm and the way forward. Given the intrinsically global nature of the trending e-commerce initiatives, it is vital to plant your business into a stable marketing matrix. Treat this article more like a preach piece on how to create a Multi-vendor e-commerce website from scratch. Follow the tips catalogued…

Chart of the day: 11.1% of businesses budgets is spent on marketing activities on average

Research by The CMO Survey has found that 11.1% is the average budget spent on marketing. As shown in the chart below, 11.1% on average is how much businesses are spending n marketing. If your business is spending less than this, it's worth considering whether there are missed opportunities. Across sectors, the research has found that marketing spend is mixed, but there are a number of industries that spend considerably more than others. Shown below is the percentage of budget spend on marketing in each sector listed. Energy, healthcare, media and tech industries are leading the highest average marketing spend Digital marketing also dominates marketing spend across B2C and B2B sectors when compared to "traditional" marketing spend. …

The voice assistant could eventually listen to all conversations in a room, identify speakers, and even interrupt them with sponsored suggestions

During the Second World War, a campaign warned private citizens against speaking too loosely in public places about matters of national interest. After all (so the campaign explained) one could never be sure of who was eavesdropping. In recent years, the rise of ‘listening robots’ has been precipitous, including Google’s Assistant, Amazon’s Echo device, and Apple’s Siri-activate HomePod. Triggered by ‘call names’ (for example, Siri), they offer useful hands-free assistance on everything from checking the weather and travel, to selecting music from a personal playlist. In the Case of Alexa, things are set to take what many would consider a sinister development by adopting a far more ‘hands-on’ attitude A recent Amazon patent suggests the voice assistant could eventually listen to all conversations in a room, identify speakers, and even interrupt them…