Making Email Deliver Financial ROI
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to most marketers when the researchers at MEC Labs/Marketing Sherpa published this week’s marketing graphic: a look at how the ways in which email marketing campaigns are measured has changed over the last two years. How to make email deliver measurable results is a hot topic for nearly every marketer in the post-recession economy. Why? Because if there is one lesson that the recession taught us all, it’s that financial return on investment trumps almost every other measure by which marketers are measured. Here’s the graphic that Marketing Sherpa published, showing the year Read More
Baby Steps Towards Online Reputation Management
It seems like one thing that comes into sharp focus every time there’s a political campaign is just how fast a crisis fueled by Twitter, blog posts, Facebook, YouTube and other social media can strike. That’s true whether you’re a political candidate or a marketer with a brand’s reputation to build or protect. So we all need to take some baby steps toward online reputation management – if they aren’t already part of your multi-channel marketing communications plan, now may be the time to add them. It all starts with social media monitoring that tracks your online reputation. If you don’t know Read More
How to Sell Marketing Automation to the Boss
A few weeks ago, I attended a luncheon where Danesh De Silva, Vice President of Marketing at Orametrix, presented a great case study on how he had used marketing automation technology to transform his company’s marketing operations and the ROI he’s gotten. When Dan was finished with his story, one of the people at my table shook his head sadly. “He’s so right. I know that I could do great things if I just had the right tools. But how do I ‘sell’ marketing automation to my boss?” It’s a common question. A marketing director or even vice president of marketing becomes convinced Read More
5 Steps to Worry-Free Social Media ROI
Sales has always been a relationship-driven process, especially in industries like financial services, insurance, biopharma, and casino gaming. Since many of our clients operate within these industries, we’ve watched with special interest as they started the process of translating their relationships into successful social media marketing campaigns. For clients who operate in industries that are both highly regulated and distributed, it’s not as simple as hiring a smart, talented social media manager and getting started. To begin with, there’s the undeniable fact that most people have relationships with other people – not brands. Sure, they’ll “like” a brand’s Facebook page Read More
Best-in-Class Distributed Marketing Management
We are partnering with the Aberdeen Group on an important new survey on distributed marketing management. Individuals who take the 20-minute survey will receive a complimentary copy of the $399 research report on empowering local marketing through distributed marketing best practices when it is published. Individual responses are kept strictly confidential, and data is used only in the aggregate. The survey is open to corporate and field marketing professionals who work in a distributed marketing environment (where strategy and creative is managed centrally, but campaigns are executed at both the national and local level). To participate, click on this link. Distributed Read More
Marketing Sherpa Features Our Blog
David Kirkpatrick, a reporter with industry research firm MEC Labs’ popular Marketing Sherpa blog, today featured The Distributed Marketing Blog and its parent company, Distribion, in a case study. Case Study #CS32133: Overall Content Marketing Strategy Leads to 2,000% Lift in Blog Traffic, 40% Boost in Revenue looks at the blog and its success over the past 12 months. Kirkpatrick points out some of the unique pain points associated with distributed marketing, and explains how the content marketing strategy that Distribion adopted contributed to the company’s growth. With the focus on distributed marketing best practices and industry news, the company Read More
5 Social Media Tips We Learned This Week
Social media evolves and changes quickly, and even the experts learn something new every day – if they want to remain “experts”, that is. Sometimes it can seem as if the rules for social media are constantly changing. The best way for social media marketing to keep up is to try new ideas, and constantly look for new sources of information. This week, we picked up these five social media tips. What new social media tips did you learn this week? Blog as frequently as possible. Think writing a blog post once a week is enough? High-traffic blogs post new content Read More
Predicting Consumer Behavior
As marketers, we all want to “build a better mousetrap” — that is, to market a product or service that’s perfectly positioned to entice and encourage customers to buy it. So market research, and predicting consumer behavior is a critical part of our jobs. On February 16, 2012, Forbes carried an article titled, “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant before Her Father Did.” It stirred up a lot of controversy about the data that retailers collect, and how it’s used. Scott Anthony’s book The Little Black Book Of Innovation: How It Works, How to Do It hasn’t Read More
5 Minutes to Writing Better Marketing Emails
If you’re like me, you’re so busy doing your job that you barely have time to get it all done. So where do you find the time to improve your skills, and pick up on the latest research that can help you improve results? Here’s a formula that will help you write emails that get better results. You can read and implement it in five minutes – I promise. And it really does work. Follow the rules The three rules to improving email marketing results are simple. Design your email to look like a “quick read”. If they have to scroll down Read More
