A briefing on the new Experian UK Mosaic customer profiling

I recently attended the re-launch of Experian’s UK 2014 Mosaic Segmentation. I thought it would be useful to share a summary which I hope will be useful for marketers, who have been working with it and those who are new to what I have found is a fabulous segmentation tool. If you don't know it, Mosaic is a consumer classification tool that benchmarks the UK population on over 450 data variables. According to Experian, "Mosaic is our most comprehensive cross-channel consumer classification, built for today’s hyper-connected world. Using new data and analytical methods, organisations get deeper insights on consumer lifestyles and behaviour to help you make more informed marketing decisions". They go on to explain that they see Mosaic as more than a socio-demographic segmentation and they believe it is even more relevant today than when first created over 30 years ago.…

Prize draw options, tools and legal compliance to help create  an effective prize draws

Online prize draws are an increasingly common tactic used by marketers to encourage engagement and also to increase leads, particularly in key sales periods. I think this is largely due to the simplicity of devising and setting them up using social media campaign tools  and their popularity on social networks which facilitate sharing. I'm finding that I am often being asked about best practice for planning and running online prize draws. While I think the best approach differs in detail by audience and compliance needed for each brand and industry there are some general best practices we can summarise. In this post I have outlined a process I follow and included some of the tools you can utilise too.

Set-up and Planning

Key to any successful marketing activity is planning, I have outlined an approach to…

New research shows consumer preferences for online service and experience

LivePerson carried out a survey with over 6,000 consumers to understand their online consumer behaviour and expectations of the digital online experience from an organisation. Although they are known as an online customer service chat service the report covers broader perceptions than this.

Did you know that a consumer will wait no more than 76 seconds to receive help online? - a small window of opportunity to retain the customer.

The full report can be downloaded from Liveperson's site. Here is an overview of the four key themes from the findings:

 1. Do not be complacent! Consumers will switch brands for a better experience - 48% are still experiencing problems navigating websites and 33% can not find a customer service contact.2. Create trust and loyalty with your brand Consumers still expect the personal touch and to speak on…

Creative approaches to say sorry more positively

Having worked on a number of web projects over the years, I still receive great examples of 404 page designs sent to me by my former team members. Why? A well designed 404 page can be an opportunity to build your brand when something goes wrong for your user and I attempt to bring them in all web projects I work on. If you're not a webmaster, you may not know what a 404 is, although you will certainly have seen them! Technically speaking Wikipedia describe it as 'The 404 or Not Found error message is a HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server, but the server could not find what was requested.' Your users will describe it, to quote a great TED talk by Renny Gleeson  as 'a slap in…

A briefing on the options for creating more relevant, personalised offers for online shoppers

A recent report from Razorfish showed that 76% of businesses don't use behavioural targeting (or at least 'C-level' execs who responded to the survey weren't aware of it it being used in their companies). In this article, Jose Carlos Cortizo explains what Behavioural Targeting is and introduces how it can be used within E-commerce sites. Many of these approaches can and should be used for other types of business, so you may want to serve different content or offers to returning visitors for example.  

What is behavioural targeting?

At its simplest, Behavioural Targeting is segmentation based on customer behaviours. One benefit of Behavioural Targeting is the ability to organize our customers based on variables related to their behaviours, such as the number of visits they have made to our online store, what products they have bought, what categories…

Best practices for successful B2B corporate video campaigns

Online video marketing has come a long way in a relatively short space of time. What started out as secretly watching YouTube clips in your room or furtively sneaking a peek on your work computer has quickly developed into a practice suitable for the boardroom. In fact, a recent Forbes report stated that the majority of CEOs now prefer to watch a video than other types of content if both are on the same webpage. Consequently, there’s been an upward trend in video marketing for B2B businesses, in both effectiveness and popularity. However, B2B video marketing campaigns have been slow to shake off their boring, corporate image, which consists of them focusing solely on their product or service with stiff, emotionless campaigns. Here are 7 examples of companies where brands have added personality to corporate video, we particularly like the approaches that Intel…

New research shows how different types of content marketing supports brand engagement and purchase in different sectors

Value: [rating=4]

Recommended link: Download InPowered/Nielsen report

With the increasing focus on content marketing, it’s important for marketers to work out how effective different types of content are at different points in the buying process. This new research from Nielsen, commissioned by InPowered shows dramatic differences in the effectiveness of content types across sectors affecting these brand metrics:

Stage 1: Familiarity with a new productStage 2: Affinity toward a brand or productStage 3: Purchase consideration of a brand or product

The research reviews three types of content, credible experts, third-party articles and user-generated content reviews. The importance of this type of content is shown from the statistic that 85% of consumers regularly seek out expert content ­- credible, third-party articles and reviews -­ for products they consider purchasing. The impact of content through the buying…

Creating Email CTAs with Impact with Tim Watson

In this video, regular contributor Tim shows that too many email campaigns contain calls-to-action (CTAs) which focus on what to do, rather than the reason to click. This 99 second video shows how to improve email CTAs via top tips, examples and a simple formula on how to avoid mistakes, thinking about CTAs as mini value propositions. // // To get more tips on email best practices, read Tim's Zettasphere blog, sign-up for his email or check out the Smart Insights online copywriting course. …

New research and examples highlight video marketing trends

Value: [rating=4] Recommended Download: Research on the Future of Video Marketing, by Andrew Canter of the Branded Content Marketing Association (BCMA) - no registration needed Video content marketing is now a key technique for companies to engage their audiences when video is embedded into landing or product pages, so we found this an interesting thought-piece. Research also shows that 'bite-sized chunks of content' or micro content is particularly effective for distribution through social networks and video marketing hits this sweetspot highlighted by this research: This research from The BCMA highlights how video marketing should be driven by and integrated with content marketing strategy. The research asked leading experts from across the world on their thoughts and experiences of the 'future of digital branded video content'.

Key takeaways on video content marketing:

We found…

How the Met Office plans and evaluates its content marketing

The weather is always a talking point in our daily lives, especially since many have experienced floods and extreme weather recently. Events like this attract even more visitors to the Met Office website - the site has anywhere from 6 million to more than 24 million unique users per week, depending on external influences such as severe weather conditions and even astronomical events. As we will see, other types of events can also generate interest in the weather.

Digital marketing at the Met Office

In 2009, a dedicated digital team was introduced to manage the organization’s online portfolio,  Simon Swan, is head of digital marketing at the Metoffice. You may also recognise Simon's name as a Smart Insights Expert commentator on digital and content marketing strategy. A key part of the digital strategy for the Metoffice today is to use content to give site visitors an enhanced…