The Top 10 world ranking email clients

If you're an email marketing specialist you'll almost certainly know Litmus for their awesome email analytics tool and great insights. We've featured them several times before, including this great infographic showing trends of Email client share.  Here is the latest update from their Email client market share site which they update each month. We would probably expect Apple to be dominating due to the surge of iOS mobile devices and growing popularity of Apple devices, though it's interesting to see that Outlook is still popular and it reminds us of the importance of testing the effectiveness of designs for Gmail on different clients. When interpreting these results, we need to bear in mind variation across desktop and mobile usage and demographics which Litmus have in their…

Chrome triumphs on desktop, but Safari on mobile

If you're a marketer or designer you'll be aware of the dramatic change in browser use since Google introduced Chrome. This compilation from the US from Adobe Digital Index's report clearly shows the change across the most popular browsers, across desktop and mobile. Is it no surprise that in 2014 we have seen a crossover so that Google Chrome commands the highest share, as us consumers are spending more time in the 'google ecosystem' through our Gmail accounts, Google hangouts, and Chrome and Android browsers default to google search - we can't escape it!   However, Internet Explorer and Safari are still at similar market share, so as Craig Sullivan points out in his post on 17 ways to F**k-up your AB Testing - many sales can be lost because designers ignore older versions…

Which are the most popular content marketing tactics used by UK Marketers?

We are all working to exploit the ''content marketing revolution' and are feeling the pressure of keeping up with fresh, engaging content. The Content Marketing Institute's report reminded us that there is continued growth to increase this year in the UK as 76% of Marketers are using content marketing more than they did last year, regardless of the challenge of resources to produce sufficient, engaging content. Content marketing was used by 88% of respondents, perhaps a misleading figure since the survey was completed by the Content Marketing Institute. Source: Content Marketing Institute, 2014 Benchmarks, Budget and Trends report

What's behind the growth in content marketing?

Are we realising the ROI as we can measure the impact of content marketing on our…

New report reveals the effectiveness of different Facebook retargeting options

Value/Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Facebook ad research With the continued decline in organic reach in Facebook, opportunities for brands to get visibility for their brand page status updates is getting severely limited. According to this Social@Ogilvy report, the organic reach of brands’ posts may soon reach zero, meaning that brands will no longer be able to reach their Facebook fans at zero cost. They recommend advertising as one option, which begs the question of the clickthrough rates and costs of Facebook ads. This new report from Facebook retargeting service AdRoll provides useful data for brands to make the case for investment in Facebook advertising. The research shows that overall clickthrough rates of both News Feed targeting on desktop and mobile were significantly better than general web retargeting according to the report, with desktop…

Research shows purchase uplift from social sharing and reviews

What is the value of social sharing online? How does it impact sales? Can I charge more if my product has a highly perceived value?  Sharethis and Paley Centre for Media conducted a research stud research sharing behaviour amongst 6,000 consumers, that helps answer these questions. It's a piece of companion research to the infographic we shared recently, asking what prompts online sales? It gives more evidence of the impact of social proof where social sharing and reviews of products or of a brand as a whole give reassurance to purchasers about buying a product or service. This new research shows that the impact of social proof on retail buys is significant, it concludes that: 'Content sharing can influence consumers more than price and brand, and motivate people to spend 9.5% more', according to the research.' In this…

New research shows how different types of content marketing supports brand engagement and purchase in different sectors

Value: [rating=4]

Recommended link: Download InPowered/Nielsen report

With the increasing focus on content marketing, it’s important for marketers to work out how effective different types of content are at different points in the buying process. This new research from Nielsen, commissioned by InPowered shows dramatic differences in the effectiveness of content types across sectors affecting these brand metrics:

Stage 1: Familiarity with a new productStage 2: Affinity toward a brand or productStage 3: Purchase consideration of a brand or product

The research reviews three types of content, credible experts, third-party articles and user-generated content reviews. The importance of this type of content is shown from the statistic that 85% of consumers regularly seek out expert content ­- credible, third-party articles and reviews -­ for products they consider purchasing. The impact of content through the buying…

Which email clients should we design and test for? 2014 update

It's important to agree the target email clients you want the email to be displayed in when briefing an agency to develop a new email template or enewsletter layout. Of course, large volume senders will want the email to render in all, but for smaller businesses it's OK to target and test a smaller number. Traditionally the main email clients to target were the main webmail services plus different Outlook versions. Hotmail Yahoo! Mail Gmail Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 B2B marketers would have added different versions of Lotus Notes and Blackberry with Gmail becoming more important through time amongst professionals. In 2014 this is radically different - you also need to think really seriously about how emails will render on different mobile platforms. This 2014 infographic has the data published from their clients for the whole of 2013 - it's from the excellent Litmus…

New Verdict research for retailers

Here we're sharing new e-commerce findings by Verdict, who surveyed over 10,000 on-line shoppers to reveal a forecast that the 'UK’s e-retail market will grow by almost 50% over the next five years to reach £50bn by 2018. One pound in every seven will be made online'.

Something that I found interesting and surprising from the research is that

‘Only 4% more people considered store shopping more enjoyable than online, a gap that’s lowered since the 25% recorded 18 months ago'.

The report highlights some other interesting findings about buyer behaviour:

35-54 males prefer Internet buying.Mobile consumers are savvy enough to know that they will only buy from a trusted, secure network as expected.Smartphones and tablets are used by consumers in-store to research prices and product details. 41% research in store before they purchase online.67% of respondents still shop from their ‘living room’ – second screening…

What are you your plans to trial new tactics in the Year of Content Marketing?

2013, if you haven't realised it as yet is the year of Content Marketing. Study after study have shown that content marketing can turn the unaware into aware, the non-engaged into advocates and web browsers into customers. It does though require effort, resources and quality creators. To be successful, content marketing relies on sharing a regular dose of quality content and producing this takes a big investment in time; not to mention being creative with it. 

This recent joint DMA-CMI report on 2013 Content Marketing trends in the UK, US and Australia is worth checking if you haven't seen it. It shows that half of all marketers surveyed are planning to increase their budget on content marketing in the next 12 months, encouraged by the effectiveness of existing tactics.

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An analysis showing how using the right calls-to-action can increase content sharing on blogs, Twitter and Facebook

Great content is naturally sharable based on the visuals or copy you use to describe it. But this latest infographic from Dan Zarrella shows how you give content a further boost to reach a larger audience by including the right type of call-to-action to encourage sharing.

This is great insight since there are big differences based on using the right CTA, particularly on Twitter… expect to see a lot more “Please RT/Like/Share” in social media. Remember you can overdo it… Please RT can look desperate if used too much… creating compelling content that is more naturally shared is still most important to shareability.

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