A Blueprint for the perfect LinkedIn Status update

This infographic from Salesforce on a 'Blueprint for the perfect LinkedIn Status update' is worth scanning whether you use LinkedIn for personal or business development. The value in using LinkedIn for engagement was shown by this LinkedIn research that found that:

50% of LinkedIn members are more likely to purchase from a company they engage with on LinkedIn'

Boosting engagement across any social media platform through engaging updates is key and their infographic provides some simple tips to do this. For more detailed advice, see our LinkedIn for marketing guide.

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Combining CRM and Big Data to drive Loyalty

Vaughan Chandler, Head of Customer Insights at Qantas, shared their successful strategy for growth using CRM and applying Big Data at the recent eCircle/Teradata Connect conference. In this case study, I summarise how they are using data and innovation to understand their customers, drive loyalty and ultimately increase ROI. Qantas is Australia's largest international and domestic airline, with many sub-brands to it's name including Qantas Loyalty. With 9 million members, more than 400 programme partners, and 50% household penetration - Qantas Loyalty is extremely successful: Focus on data and creating real-value through their communication; collecting data, segmenting and using technology, with targeted email campaigns is key. Qantas started in 1997 as a Frequent Flyers programme for high flyers and in 2007 created their Qantas Loyalty, launching …

Examples from testing the best time of day for email broadcast in different sectors

Sending emails at the right time to reach your subscribers when they are actively using their email will affect overall campaign response. Given the ongoing interest in this topic I've updated this post based on some of latest research from Pure360 where they looked at emails from 40,000 different campaign the last year from 150 of their clients (900 million email delivered). As you would expect the best time varies by sector, but they do recommend a best time for consumer emails:  'In fact, the best time to send an email is now during the ‘Post Work Peak’, as people are finishing up at work and heading home. Over a quarter (26%) of marketing emails that are sent in the most successful hour, 5pm to 6pm, are opened, which is 9% above average. '

Optimal time to send your email by…

Searchable, Shareable and Snackable are the keys to success

I read this post last week and feel it's worth sharing as a reminder for content marketing teams. It's created by Skyword a software company serving content marketers, so a good example of educational content marketing in and of itself. The infographic summarises a simple, and useful, mantra… I'd urge content marketers to take 10 and read more, to consider how you'd implement this within your programme: Searchable. Content must capture the passion and pain points of the consumer using relevant trending keywords, boosting the content’s search ranking. Read more about being findable. Snackable - Content needs to be relevant for an on-the-go consumer who needs answers to questions in a moment’s notice, increasingly on mobile devices. Snackable content leaves the consumer satisfied and eager to come back for more, you're part of their solution. Read…

Retail email expert Chad White talks about email frequency, list acquisition, mobile challenges, and more...

Retail email has seen its stock rise significantly in recent times. And recognition of its value as a significant source of both online and offline sales has reignited debates on permission requirements, optimum frequencies and just what constitutes a best practice. There are few people in this world who know more about these kinds of retail email issues than Chad White. Currently Principal of Marketing Research at ExactTarget, Chad recently authored a new book: "Email Marketing Rules: How to Wear a White Hat, Shoot Straight, and Win Hearts". Given his expertise, I decided to get his opinion on some of the top practical issues facing retail email marketers today... The first issue concerns a bit of a backlash among the email marketing community against "best practices",…

The Email Marketing timeline

It’s been 42 years since Ray Tomlinson sent the first ever email. The history of email itself is one thing, but the evolution of email marketing is quite another. Over the past 42 years, email (the ability to send messages through a network) has evolved into one of the most cost effective forms of direct marketing. Not only is the method fast and cheap, but it has opened the door to how marketers can monitor and react to consumer behaviour in a way that was never previously possible. This blog post provides the history to email marketing along with an Infographic below. How far back do you remember?

Timeline for email marketing

Billed as the 'Father of Spam' Gary Thuerk, a Marketing Manager at Digital Equipment Corp started the ball rolling for commercial email by sending the first mass emailing. (Ok, it was only a few hundred but in those…

Do your social media plans allow for the latest trends?

This is a very useful SlideShare presentation from We Are Social. Useful before you step into your next round of content or social media marketing planning. It's simple and succinct with important take-aways - 10 of them in fact.

 

Here are our 7 reflections

These are our take-aways, from taking a few minutes to flick through the SlideShare, it's well worth it:

Mobile, mobile, mobile… The penetration, usage and therefore importance of mobile to your marketing is, I feel, still startling. I say it, believe it, agree with it and then each time I see more data the sheer scale shocks me. We talk about mobile and it's importance, but slide 4 really drives that home.People, portable, practical… what a great mantra to build…

8 hacks for common email tasks

In the spirit of working smarter, not harder, here are eight tools that can maximize your email marketing efficiency.

1. Scope - Go behind-the-scenes of an inspiring email

Have you ever wondered how that beautiful email in your inbox got so beautiful? Scope creates a web-based version of any email you choose and reveals its HTML source code, mobile rendering, and desktop and plain-text views.

The free tool, created by the email marketers at Litmus, comes as a bookmarklet and works inside supported email clients like Gmail. Open an email, click the Scope button in your bookmark bar, and start inspecting.

2. Premailer - Convert HTML design to email-ready inline CSS

The retro nature of email design—heavy on tables, blind to external…

Defining a structured approach for managing your online brand reputation

When you are running a social media campaign, or even in your day-to-day monitoring and community management, you will, of course, come across both positive and negative mentions about your brand. Most of us know by now that ignoring negative comments never pays, and that not engaging with your fans is a missed opportunity. Dell manages their brand via social, with a classic approach as outlined below:

So how should you deal with negative brand comments?

1.  Firstly, it’s important that you find those comments in the first place. You should be monitoring conversation about your brand across the web. It’s the only way to know what is really being said about your business, to stop the spread of misinformation and to…

Yes 41 feature updates - here's our top 5 from the Google I/O announcements

Modern marketers have always had to take Google+ seriously, because of Google's dominance in Search. Yet, there are other reasons too... with the proliferation of Android users on mobile (now 900 million Android activations, up on the 400 million last year); Chrome with its 750 million browser users and now the reported growth of Google+ to 343 million users - there are more and more reasons to keep a very close eye on what Google are doing. Not to mention Google Glass.

It's always been tempting to just focus on Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter for B2C social media marketing and advertising, and given that Facebook shrugged off rumours of Facebook fatigue with large user increases in 2012 (now over 640m users) it's still tempting to do so. Google+ is the second largest social…