Google rolls out a major update to Advanced Segments
Value: [rating=4]
Timing: Originally announced July 16th 2013, rolled out end August 2013
Recommended link: Google Analytics announcement on new Advanced segmentation feature
I've updated this post as a reminder that this feature is now live in Google Analytics accounts. I haven't seen an official announcement on the GA Blog, but I am now seeing this feature in my analytics at the top of relevant reports:
A couple of points I've noticed now it's live are:
1. It's not actually labelled "Advanced Segments" with a button unlike the original. Instead you see a slightly intriguing circle next to a drop down - not sure that's the best usability decision.
2. By default you get to see all your standard and custom advanced segments together, for example, we have two based on a custom dimension in Universal Analytics…
If our audiences have less attention than a goldfish, it's important to push the right "hot buttons"
Did you know that the average attention span for a new idea, we page or piece of content is now only 8 seconds - compare that to a goldfish at 9 seconds. It’s pretty startling and when you observe your own behaviour, or mine at least, 8 seconds does feel like a short time. But it depends on the context, in this post, Dave Chaffey talks about a 2 second rule to get your message across as someone visits your site or social media outpost for the first time, comparing it to the 7 seconds we supposedly look at an outdoor billboard.
Rational vs Emotional Content
This got me thinking how so much content that we create does not take the huge lack of time into account. We write and create so much content.…
Facebook Embedded Posts follow the Embedded Tweets model
Value: [rating=3]
Original 31st July announcement: Facebook developer blog
Facebook has now announced that this feature was now available to all on 20th August 2013 and has given more examples. We couldn't demonstrate it when we first alerted readers to it, but can now show how easy it is to add to blogs.
This example for "everyone's favourite band" shows how images and video are supported, just click on the down arrow on the "Like Page" button to image.
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
Post by Mumford and Sons.
This is a neat feature since the Twitter Embed Tweets feature has proved popular for adding tweets or pictures to blogs or campaign sites - they’re a great way…
3 examples of integrating social media and email lead generation from small and medium businesses
Many businesses are wondering what they’re really getting from the time they spend marketing on Facebook and, more importantly, how they can turn their hard-earned fans into customers.
To support the integration between social media and email marketing, Constant Contact created a tool, Social Campaigns, specifically designed to make it easy to get measurable results from Facebook marketing. With Social Campaigns, businesses can offer current and potential fans something special, such as exclusive content like prize draws or discounts that help grow their fanbase and generate sales, leads, brand awareness, and social word-of-mouth. The tool integrates with email to help capture email leads too. Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights asked me to share the examples since they show how Social and Email marketing can be used for Permission Marketing today using our tool or others. Editor's…
Convincing your boss to invest in content marketing
2013 is the year for 'content marketing', but as marketers we still need to work hard to convince the budget holders or our bosses to invest time and resources in this area?.
Whether it's sharing content, curating it or interpreting it? FatJoe have highlighted some statistics (from secondary research), to support your business case in their Infographic.
Could these stats convince your boss or budget holder?
61% of consumers more likely to buy after reading custom content90% of consumers find content useful67% of companies with a blog generate more leads than those without.
Check out our guide and template to making the business case for investment in digital marketing for a more quantitative approach and how to win the emotional arguments too.
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New "Story bumping" and "Last Actor" ranking changes
Importance: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Facebook news feed announcement
It seems that for some businesses, gaining visibility in Facebook’s news feed is now almost as important or more important than gaining visibility in Google’s search results for your target pages. Like Google, it’s a challenge, in their briefing this week Facebook revealed how much of a challlenge it is…
“Every time someone visits News Feed there are on average 1,500 potential stories from friends, people they follow and Pages for them to see, and most people don’t have enough time to see them all…
we prioritize an average of 300 stories out of these 1,500 stories to show each day.”.
If you’re concerned with encouraging more sharing of your content through Facebook you will know how it’s controlled by the EdgeRank based on the affinity, weight and decay of posts. Marie Page has given some great guidance on…
12 Smart ways to capture customer data
Since email marketing is one of the most influential touch points in the online path to purchase, you’ll want to capture as many interested contacts as you can. Ideally you will also enrich these with profile data in order to develop a high segmentation methodology to enable you to target. It is not easy to make the most of the options to capture emails, but it's worthwhile reviewing all the touchpoints. Almost every interaction that your customers have online with any organisation - attempts to capture data, so you need to cut through that noise.
So let's break it down, how do you improve email capture and progressive profiling? This is best done in two ways:
1. Firstly, exchanging value in return for the data, such as more relevant content and products or offers exclusive to subscribers.2. Secondly, by capturing bits of data from multiple channels over…
Web product copy
When you’re writing about an individual product, the ‘formula’ or framework is the same as for catalogue copy or indeed any written piece of sales material. Start with a key benefit or statement of superiority, describe the benefits and end on a call to action. You all know AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire and Action).
The main differences between web product copy and catalogue product copy are:
Copy for the web can be longer but ensure it’s written and laid out so it can be ‘skimmed’ quickly and easily. Sometimes longer copy can bolster your natural search engine rankings. Be careful! as some individual product pages have a restrictive word count in CMS.
Websites often have a specific format including bullet points and paragraphs with headings. These are known as H1, H2 and so on down to H6 and can be limited in characters. As well as these, the bullet points…
Customer experience management (CXM) for multichannel commerce - moving from insights to action in 4 steps
In my previous post on practical improvements to CXM, the advice was around creating a path in your organisation that includes customer journeys. This article explains how you can plan a better customer experience for multichannel commerce. By implementing certain steps in your organisation you can overcome the difficulty of creating and implementing actionable insights based on qualitative data.
Planning is the process of thinking and organising a group of activities towards desired goals. There is not a convenient one-size fits all solution for structuring your customer experience. It is important however to build a structure that gives you the control and flexibility you need to grow.
Most organisations are now looking at the opportunity given by multichannel commerce by including their customers into the brand’s journey.
But to improve the customer experience all you need…
CXM vs UX - an introduction
The children’s TV programme Barney may not be the first place you would think to go to for business advice. But watching an episode last weekend (with my 3 year old cousin I must add) I did start thinking about Customer Experience Management (CXM), the new marketing phrase currently doing the rounds.
Barney and his cronies were singing a song about how 'everyone is special' and telling the audience 'you’re important' and 'you’re the only one like you'. I sat there with my cousin, (who was by now not sitting but instead jumping on the sofa with excitement) thinking that Barney had inadvertently done what many experts have managed to make a mess of in recent months, and that is define CXM without any marketing hyperbole or ridiculous buzz words.
CXM is essentially understanding that everyone is different…
