I interviewed Lauren Smith from Litmus, the email analytics software provider about some of the latest changes in the email marketing industry and what marketers can do to make the most of them

Email is consistently ranked among the most effective forms of digital marketing. The DMA's 2015 national email client report found that email has an average ROI of £38 for each £1 spent, which is spectacularly high. Given its effectiveness, email marketing is used by all kinds of businesses, from micro-businesses to the very biggest. To make the most of it you need to keep up to date with all the latest changes to platforms and tactics, which shift rapidly as ESPs launch new ways to view mail and mobile and desktop operating systems change the ways certain elements are displayed.

To help keep your email marketing efforts up to date, I interviewed Lauren Smith from Litmus, who are experts…

Use these 5 ideas to give your promotional emails a boost

Promotional email is a powerful channel when it comes to driving e-commerce sales - the Custora Ecommerce Pulse shows marketing emails are the third biggest driver of online sales after Search marketing. This makes it the biggest driver for customer sales and way ahead of social media But, sadly, most email marketers aren't making the most out of this channel. When it comes to creating these campaigns, most marketers spend a lot of time on the design and copy of these emails. Though this is a good approach and will yield good results, this will only get you so far. If you don’t know what compels your recipients to click through and buy your products, you're not going to get the desired results. To find out which elements work for your audience and which are unsuccessful, you need to A/B test…

Apple gets in on the rush to open up publishing on mobile optimised pages

Importance: [rating=4] (For content publishers) Recommended Source: Apple Developer blog The Internet was built for desktop computers. Then, some smart folks made the internet available on all sorts of devices small enough for us to carry about with us. After a few years of explosive growth, mobile web browsing rose to become the majority of web traffic last year. Yet we were left with an internet comprised of sites largely designed for viewing on desktop devices. Plenty of sites were quick to realise the issue and implement responsive sites so they're sites weren't impossibly hard to navigate for their legions of mobile visitors. Whilst there are still some laggards, the transition to responsive sites is now mostly complete for larger sites. Whilst responsive design removed one obstacle for mobile users, it doesn't completely solve their pain points. Another big issue…

Key PPC budgeting lessons for modelling AdWords investment for B2B companies

At any one time, there are only a finite number of potential clients searching for your product or service that you could convert to an enquiry.  Above this point, throwing more money at Pay Per Click or AdWords advertising will simply buy more traffic that will not convert to an enquiry. By analysing your data over a statistically significant amount of time it is possible to estimate the optimum PPC budget that will maximise customer enquiries and minimise money wasted chasing enquiries that aren't there.   Here I outline an example of a UK manufacturer running a B2B campaign who reduced their PPC spend by 30% to deliver the same level of customer enquiries.  The article then goes on to discuss applying the approach to your organisation.

PPC budget - the £700 rule of thumb

Deciding you optimum PPC budget is a difficult judgement call…

It has never been more important for digital specialists to break out of their individual silo and engage key stakeholders across the business operation.

As digital communication channels develop, as search engine algorithms change and as new platforms and trends emerge, many enterprise-level organisations are in a constant race to keep up with the rate of change in digital. Modern SEO now requires digital specialists to engage stakeholders across an organisation in order to deliver the consistent and effective experience that consumers – and by extension, search engines – are looking for. SEO is not just a single technical function and digital is no longer a single discipline that is removed from the rest of the organisation, it is a critical component that relies on an enormous range of skills and resources.

SEO requires a balanced approach

A lot of SEO specialists, digital marketers and agencies will focus very heavily on the creative side…

Strategy, tactics and ideas to consider as part of a winning lead generation strategy

Generating consumer interest and enquiries is a primary objective for B2B businesses, something backed up by a recent study from the Content Marketing Institute which states that lead generation (85%) and sales (84%) will be the most important goals for B2B content marketers over the next 12 months. In my previous post from November last year I explored the rationale for using content marketing for B2B lead generation and provided some case studies to demonstrate some best practices. In this post, I'll look in more detail at how earned media can be used to support B2B companies’ lead generation objectives.

Earned media as part of an integrated strategy

As we’ll see, earned media undoubtedly provides an effective set of tactics for lead generation and is associated primarily with generating interest at the top of the inbound marketing…

Adwords bidding landscape has changed as Google confirm the right sidebar on desktop SERP is to be removed.

Importance: [rating=5] (For PPC Managers & SEO managers) Recommended source: Search Engine Land Google have ended their six-year experiment with the Sidebar ads, instead opting for three above-the-fold text ads for queries on the desktop SERP and a further 3 ads at the bottom. “We’ve been testing this layout for a long time, so some people might see it on a very small number of commercial queries. We’ll continue to make tweaks, but this is designed for highly commercial queries where the layout is able to provide more relevant results for people searching and better performance for advertisers.” A fourth ad will be shown for only the highly commercial queries such as "Car Insurance", "Hotels in New York" and "Cheapest Smartphones", so the types of search where people express a deep intention to buy. Although we were a…

A simple introduction to on-page and off-page SEO factors

With every website vying for a moment in the spotlight, and viewers becoming more discerning between the value of various websites, the subtleties of search engine optimisation has become crucial in ensuring your websites visibility. By reading through this infographic, you can review 16 success factors which will affect how your website is ranked by search engines and increase web traffic to your page. Most factors are grouped under on-page optimisation which is directly from your own website -and a little forethought-, through the use of title tags, Meta descriptions, keyword density and many other factors. This can easily be used in your favour if you’re keeping up with your keyword research, and are ensuring sufficient volume is there. Off-page optimisation is the site awareness you are able to create, by creating listings, producing content and promoting your website in the public forum. This is…

A quick-fire guide and glossary to the essentials of Programmatic Marketing

Programmatic is a very hot topic in the world of marketing right now. As Ad Age points out, the advertising industry is on a journey toward widespread automation, and programmatic marketing which gives marketers the opportunity to purchase advertising more efficiently and - given the right data - more effectively, too. As a relative newcomer to the world of Programmatic Marketing, I was overwhelmed by the amount of definitions and TLAs (Three-letter acronyms) involved with programmatic. Trying to get to grips with programmatic can really make your head spin! I therefore thought I might be an ideal person to provide a hopefully simple introduction to programmatic for anyone looking to understand this marketing technique for the first time. [si_guide_block id="67100" title="Download free resource – Programmatic Marketing Brief" description="Learn the key questions to ask when managing Programmatic."/] As a follow-up to Rob’s definition…

Google are proactively asking business owners to keep their Knowledge Graph information up-to-date, by directly suggesting edits.

Importance: [rating=3] (Webmasters and "Official Representatives") Recommended source: Successful SEO Guide In an interesting move, Google have begun to ask people who they deem as "Official Representatives" of a topic, if they would like to request changes to the Knowledge Graph card. It came to my attention yesterday when SEJ published a tip from a reader, that when signed into a Google Account associated with a Google My Business page, the below option appeared.   Clicking edit, will move you onto this screen... Once the edits have been made, these are then passed onto Google for moderation and review. Once cleared, the edits will be updated to the Knowledge Graph.

How are you recognized as an official…