Chart of the day: Businesses are either fairly responsive or it simply depends on the channel or situation.
Research by CMO Council has found that 45% of businesses are fairly responsive to customer feedback and customer needs, whilst 36% say it depends on the channel or situation, though they do try to respond quickly. Speed is essential and businesses are focusing on responding as quickly as possible.
The research also found that over 4 in 10 (43%) respond to complaints about marketing within 1 day and most (36%0 intend to make changes within 90 days based on customer feedback.
Key takeaways:
Businesses are responding as quickly as they can
They are trying to make physical changes and marketing campaign changes as quickly as possible but will always be restricted by cost of doing so
Businesses are actively making changes to their business, products and services…
Chart of the Day: Do you get your emails approved? How many are involved? (Approval process) - Part 5 of 6
This week in our series, we will be looking at the approval process for our emails. (Catch-up on previous episodes.)
Email approvals are fun. Well, for the people approving the email. For the email marketer, it can be torture. If there was no brief, it will result in many changes. And the majority won't have a brief for each and every email created because only 18.5% do.
How many people generally have to approve an email before it's sent?
In the chart below, we can see that the majority have '3' people included in the process (32.2%), and second has '2' involved (30.8%).
Scarily 8.6% have to send each email to '6+' people to gain approval.
6+ people!
You will find that the majority of those who have…
Chart of the Day: Exclusives, rewards and a sense of achievement drive people to purchase
Visit any ecommerce company website and you'll likely find you can sign up for a free account or a free trial of the product/tool/service, with which the company hopes to entice you enough to become a regular customer. For example, the office favourite Graze will send you your first box of goodies free, Amazon Prime offers your first 30 days free even here at Smart Insights your can sign up for a free account and access over 20 of our resources.
This freemium model has become the defacto model for most brands online. The issue? You have to try and convince your audience who use your free service how do you convert them into paying customers. This is where new research on the mobile gaming industry from Facebook could help.
The most important benefits for high-value payers in developed countries…
Chart of the Day: What challenges do a successful digital transformation programme need to overcome?
Our latest Managing Digital Marketing Research report showed that many businesses are actively pursuing Digital Transformation with over one-quarter (30%) of businesses already having a transformation programme in place. 33% are planning to start a digital transformation programme within the next 12 months.
By its very nature, successful digital transformation requires significant changes to diverse areas including marketing, technology, and skills. This new July article from the McKinsey Quarterly highlights a range of challenges according to a survey of senior respondents in large businesses. It's useful since it highlights the main risks that need to be managed in a transformation project:
The biggest challenge featured as the headline and recommendations of the McKinsey article is not digital-specific, but relevant to any large change management project, i.e. Cultural and Behavioural changes.
The other challenges…
Chart of the Day: Do you test? If not, why not? (Quality assurance) - Part 4 of 6
This week in our email marketing series, we will be looking at testing our emails. (Catch-up on previous episodes.)
While I'm typing this, I'm thinking of reasons why you wouldn't test your emails. And you know, other than being unsure how or what to test, there isn't a single reason why you wouldn't.
Mistakes happen, we are human. And believe me, I have made my share of mistakes - actually some pretty huge cock-ups. That sinking feeling when you realise something has gone wrong. You try to stop the dispatch, but it doesn't matter. It's out there now.
As Confucius said, "table your mistakes, learn from them, then move on." I learnt from my mistakes and now I'm probably one of the most cautious email geeks there are. So have…
Chart of the day: Closing more deals remain the top priority for sales teams worldwide, whilst getting a response from prospects remains a challenge - part 3 of 10.
Last week, my chart showed the priorities and challenges of a marketing team. This week we will delve deeper into the sales team within businesses to uncover their priorities and challenges.
What are your company's top sales priorities for the next year?
For the majority of sales professionals, closing more deals remains a top priority (71%). However, improving the sales funnel is in second place (44%) and social selling and other sales strategies are third (29%).
Investing in sales technology (16%) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) (14%) are the lowest scoring priorities.
What is the most difficult to do in sales compared to 2 to 3 years ago?
Even though…
Chart of the Day: Growing SEO and organic presence are higher priorities than product videos and webinars - part 2 of 10
For my next instalment in my Marketing and Sales 2017 statistics breakdown series, I am focusing on inbound marketing priorities and its challenges.
Over 70% of respondents worldwide stated that they primarily conduct inbound marketing. This shows a strong focus on inbound marketing across the globe, yet Asia showing the lowest percentage of inbound marketing priorities at 64%.
Thinking specifically about inbound marketing projects, what are your company's top priorities?
SEO and organic search presence are a higher priority, across all 5 geo-demographics surveyed, for inbound marketing projects (61%). Secondly, importance was placed on blog content creation (53%) and content distribution (47%).
It seems that companies are prioritizing SEO and content marketing in their inbound marketing projects and pushing freemium trails (6%), webinars (19%) and…
Chart of the day: length of time for results is the biggest challenge for account-based marketing, according to those in the field
Research by #flipmyfunnel amongst account-based marketers has found that length of time for results to show is the biggest challenge. Getting started and content marketing related to ABM are also big challenges.
The study also found that:
8 in 10 (80%) engage one on one via email outreach to engage with clients and prospects, with just over 7 in 10 (71%) using the phone.
Almost 6 in 10 (57%) say their marketing and sales teams are fully aligned.
45% say that revenue generation is the main goal of their account-based marketing approach.
More than 8 in 10 (83%) plan to expand their marketing stack for account-based marketing purposes in the next year.
Source: #flipmyfunnel Account-Based Marketing Survey
Sample: 250 B2B marketers
Recommended resource: …
Chart of the Day: To code or not to code? (Technology) - Part 3 of 6
We are now half way through our six-week series on email workflow. So far we have discussed Planning and Time spent on tasks. Last week I asked in a poll, "for each email that your company sends, which task takes you the longest?" View our results and find our which task takes you the longest.
This week we will be looking at what companies mostly used for the creation of the emails. There are two options - you can either use an email template or use HTML and CSS coding from scratch. Firstly, let's look at what an email template is.
Email templates - what they are and why you should use them?
An email template is a pre-formatted and reusable HTML file. When you load the template, it…
Chart of the day: Only 25% of data is being used for real-time customer engagement
According to a recent study, 25% of businesses are adjusting their marketing communications daily based on customer data they have collected. It was also reported was that only 16% of UK businesses adjust their marketing communication in real-time based on customer behavior and data collection.
Many businesses are yet to make a case for real-time marketing, saying they need to prove ROI before implementing. This is due to the lack of stakeholder buy-in.
What does this mean for marketers? By adjusting your marketing communications you can develop a more personal approach to reach your audience. Businesses that are putting themselves in a position to act in real time are more likely to meet their customer's demands.
Source: SAS
Sample Size: 350 heads of marketing
Recommended Resources: Social Media Marketing Toolkit
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