Do you think your business is good at writing briefs? Your agency likely disagrees...
Research from Smart Insights exploring best practices for marketing planning has often reviewed the importance of annual marketing planning and how to structure marketing and digital marketing plans.
See, for example, our recent Digital Maturity research report reviewing how many businesses integrate planning for digital marketing into their annual plans.
However, we haven’t explored how marketers approach the process of creating a marketing campaign brief and whether it is effective.
Of course, this is important because of the amount of investment in marketing campaigns that support and must deliver on targets set out in annual marketing plans.
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But, we do recognize the importance of a structured, insights-driven campaign planning process through the templates recommending how to structure a brief in our campaign planning toolkit.
Campaign Planning Learning Path module learning objectives:
Define the essential parts of a marketing campaign…
Andy Dorling, General Manager of the DMA’s Institute of Data & Marketing discusses some of the key skills that marketers and business leaders identified as being important to marketing teams and business success in the future.
The future of intelligent marketing will not just be dependent on organizations investing in the latest technological advancements or adhering to regulations like the GDPR. It will require skilled marketing teams to innovate, interpret data, engage with customers, and communicate the latest trends to senior management to develop effective marketing strategies.
Perhaps even more importantly, it will require business leaders that acknowledge the importance of having a diverse, skilled workforce and who are willing to invest in career development for a range of technical and soft skills.
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Three key insights from the UK Government’s latest report on employers’ demand for digital skills
Regular readers of Smart Insights know all too well the importance of having an up-to-date digital skillset. In today’s age of the internet and social media, it’s become more important than ever for employees to have a sound working knowledge of digital in an ever-growing digitized economy.
The UK government has recognized the need for a digitally literate workforce in our modern economy and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport commissioned a report, conducted by Burning Glass Technologies, to provide an overview of digital skills demand and to help inform the development of evidence-based digital skills policy.
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Are you using social media monitoring (SMM) tools and services tactically? Or maybe you're still not sure if you are using the right SMM tool(s) based on your specific business needs?
Social media monitoring offers digital marketers a wealth of opportunities for a more strategic approach. There is certainly plenty of conversation about these tools and services. So with so many definitions and nuances out there, let's start with a 3 step glossary:
Social Media Intelligence: All aspects of social analytics inform your social media intelligence. This intelligence includes not only your own business but the wiser macro and micro environment, such as your competitors.
Social Media Listening: This tool is for listening consumers and delving into customer personas and motivations to inform market research.
Social Media Monitoring: Ongoing use of data-drive listening and analytics to shape your social media marketing strategy.
Successful enterprises across all industries are continuously looking for the…
... and what they might mean for 2020
Seasoned visitors to the Smart Insights blog will no doubt agree that there’s an abundance of, well, smart insights to take in on a daily basis. With digital and marketing constantly evolving, marketers have to work hard to keep up with the rapid pace of change and Smart Insights plays this role perfectly, providing up-to-date guidance, tips and advice on a huge range of topics.
There’s a handy function on the Smart Insights blog that lets visitors sort posts by both recency and popularity. But rather than talk about what others have found most interesting in 2019, I thought I’d outline some of the insights that have educated and inspired me this year and how they’re likely to influence my thinking further in 2020.
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Stories and stats that stood out in 2019
Looking back over the last twelve months, I was surprised by the breadth of…
The industry vibe is everyone gets too many emails, brands send too many emails and email marketers often see open rates in the 15% to 25% range
Why don’t more people unsubscribe from email? It’s a perplexing question.
The industry vibe is everyone gets too many emails, brands send too many emails and email marketers often see open rates in the 15% to 25% range.
Yet unsubscribe rates are typically around 0.25% - according to email industry benchmark reports.
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The new "Email Addiction" consumer research report just published by Zettasphere and Emailmonday provides an answer.
The report is based on results of a consumer survey and sought to get…
Aspiration for better digital experiences is never the problem but buy-in and execution can be.
Aspiration for better digital experiences is never the problem but buy-in and execution can be. Faced with rising digital expectations, B2B marketers and their IT colleagues know something must be done but often have too many internal roadblocks to get there.
Episerver recently surveyed 700 global B2B decision-makers and has provided insights into what professionals want to do today, tomorrow and in the future to fix the customer-centricity gap between what their customers want and what they actually deliver.
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Digital experience today
A large percentage of marketers and technology professionals say their website delivers an exceptional customer experience and follows industry best practices. According to Episerver’s research, 86% of professionals surveyed said they deliver industry-leading websites and 84% said they deliver exceptional customer experiences online.
This confidence reverses, however, when marketers and technology professionals were asked…
Chart of the Week: 42% of email senders have a good reputation score but is that enough to get emails into inboxes?
Email marketing can help convert leads into customers, re-engage existing customers and provide a high level of ROI – if you get your campaign right. Your emails aren’t just about engaging images or CTAs being in the right place, first and foremost, your campaign needs to be about getting emails into inboxes, which is where many people fail.
According to Return Path’s 2019 Sender Score Benchmark Report, 2018 saw more than 600 billion emails sent by spammers, which ultimately means that email providers get stricter with protocols designed to stop spammers. While these protocols are meant to protect people from potentially harmful emails, legitimate senders can be affected.
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A review of some of the most interesting and important insights from this year’s report
Mary Meeker’s annual internet trends report has become one of the most eagerly anticipated moments of the year (well, for internet/ data nerds at least!). Previously of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and now Bond Capital, Mary Meeker has been presenting key trends, statistics and predictions on the internet since 1995.
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I personally find the report fascinating. It gives me the inspiration and ammunition to back new ideas, explore new concepts and take a step back and look at the world from a broader perspective. Meeker’s reports cover a wide range of macro (economy, immigration) and micro (e-commerce, digital advertising) topics that deliver a very…
Three lessons we can learn from TV advertising in the UK
One of the many advantages we have as marketers is the access to so much diverse, interesting insight. At Smart Insights, we regularly blog about the latest trends in email, display, search and social, all of which give us the opportunity to improve our knowledge and understanding of the marketing landscape.
The latest research from Thinkbox, the marketing body for the main UK commercial TV broadcasters (Channel 4, ITV, Sky Media, and Turner Media Innovations), provides some interesting data points on how media is being consumed in the UK. Although many of us may never use television advertising as part of our media mix, the research provides some useful insight into how people are consuming media in the UK and how this impacts other forms of marketing.
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