My ideas on how to deal with unpredictability in email marketing in the year ahead
As your local Greek philosopher never tires of telling you, the only constant is change.
Many industry experts devote the occasional post or two in January to predicting how email marketing will develop this year.
Instead, I'd like to look at what we might do to better exploit or cope with the dynamic nature of the email and online marketing environment in 2012. Because change isn't always as predictable as we'd like it to be.
Please chime in with your own ideas!
1. Revisit the basics
Like every year, vendors and the media will regale us in 2012 with all sorts of clever things you can do with your email marketing. Clever things that can bring great results, such as shopping cart abandonment emails that pull in £250 in sales for each £1 invested.
Not everyone can access the necessary tools,…
A roundup of what the experts say
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It's the end of the first week January and most of the influential bloggers / "experts" have published their predictions for what will change in the world of SEO in 2012. Rather than add to the noise and because most of the authors are far more knowledgable than I am I have decided to filter the predictions and give you the 3 most likely predictions of 2012 (in my opinion)
These are four best SEO 2012 roundups if you missed them:
Econsultancy
Search Engine Land
Search Engine Journal
SEOMOZ
1. Social Media Influence Will Impact Search Results
It will come as no surprise to most, indeed looking back, it's over a year since I reported "Official: Facebook and Twitter do influence rankings". Still, in 2012, precisely how metrics and engagement…
More predictions for marketing using digital technology platforms in 2012
Wow: it’s 2012. Now thoughts naturally turn to the future. What might this year hold for the world of Digital Marketing? Of course none of us knows for sure. The rapid pace of change and the accompanying opportunities and threats facing players in the digital/tech space are, in large part, what makes it all so exciting. And hard to predict. But it’s always fun to guess…
I used to think that being a futurist would be quite a good gig; you know: fly in to somewhere nice, speculate a little about what might happen, pocket the fee, then fly out and keep a low profile elsewhere while none of it came true…?
I’ve realised though, that to do this you’ve really got to keep running (see George Clooney’s character in the excellent Up In The…
12 digital marketing fundamentals to get right in 2012
At the turn of the year, it’s always worth reflecting on the opportunities and challenges ahead to help shape priorities for marketing. In a recent talk for AdTech London, I identified 12 marketing trends, available in the Slideshare embed at the end of the post. In this post I’ll highlight some of the main opportunities and I've added links to our posts and guides to help you think through your strategy.
We've kept this post available on the blog for historical reference, for the most up-to-date marketing trends see our 2015 Digital Marketing trends predictions.
Most important marketing trend for 2012 : creating a cross-channel engagement strategy
We can be sure that there will be will be lots of announcements of exciting innovations and marketing trends in all of the search and social networks within in 2012. We look forward to covering them within our alerts, but they can…
6 E-CRM Trends to consider for 2012 planning
I've recently asked several CRM specialists including Paul Greenberg and Shaun Smith to describe how they see the key ECRM trends from 2011 which will also be important in 2012. I've picked out 5 key trends
E-CRM Trend 1. Brands as curators
Shaun Smith, founder of Smith+co believes there are a number of innovations that have become more popular this year as businesses seek to deliver deeper customer experiences. This includes brands positioning themselves as curators to ensure that they provide added value to their customers.
“Increasingly, brands that are really clear about what they stand for have the credibility and the authority to be able to recommend other things associated with that brand,” he explains. “So Nike, for example, has an app called True City that will recommend all the best places to go to in a city you are unfamiliar with. If you like driving, BMW…
Update - Email marketing trends and challenges in 2011
This is a short, fun video recorded at MarketingSherpa's Email Summit in Las Vegas a couple in Feb 2011. I think it reinforces nicely the main trends in email marketing which need to be managed by email marketers.
In the video, Jeff Ginsberg from TheEmailGuide.com interviews several attendees asking what they thought was the the biggest challenges for email marketers in 2011.
These are the main challenges I took from the video:
Relevance - nearly everyone mentioned this and the segmentation needed to deliver this.
Engaging content which will be shared, especially with competition from content shared within social networks
Integration with social media marketing
Adapting email to be a conversation (my favourite)
Testing and tracking
Changing regulations - review your opt-in regulations and tracking
Designing emails for mobile devices (Anna Yeaman of Style campaign mentioned that their clients are seeing 5-15% of emails on mobile devices
…
To complete our look at trends to review to include within your Internet marketing strategy in 2011, here are my suggestions on key issues to consider when considering your social media strategy in 2011.
1. Content
Social media is nothing without content, your content, partners content and of course customers content. As marketers incorporate social media more to engage visitors in their brand or business, they will wonder how they can make use of the several profiles that have been set-up. It's my belief is that the realisation will be that the answer lies squarely with content. As social guru Chris Brogan commented about a year ago, "it's the firewood around which social campfires form". 2011 will see marketers see the results of content investment (ebooks, video, PowerPoint presentations) and test the waters en masse.
Though great content is born from the unique intersection between your brand and the needs of the…
Its always a popular time of reflection at the start of a New Year & 2011 is undoubtedly no different for most of us. However, I want to look forwards & give some practical recommendations on how you can use new features within paid search to help you in 2011. While I may not be a 100% right in my predictions, a lot of the techniques I'll talk about are already available and you may be missing out - to help I'll link to sources to find out more.
Making some bold decisions for pushing your paid search strategy in 2011 maybe just the start to the year you are looking for!
5 techniques to review in how you approach paid search in 2011:
1. Mobile will alter PPC as we know it
The volume of people now using the internet on their mobile phones is continuing to grow as phones adapt & grow…
The start of a new year quite often means lots of reflection & sets in place new ideas / learnings for the year to come. 2011 is no different; its always difficult to remember where you were 12 months ago, but digital marketing and search as part of that came a long way in 2010. Search in my opinion has matured, enough people now understand enough for it to become more widely accepted and feared less.
The smoke & mirrors, black hat techniques and complexity that used to make it inaccessible to so many has finally been broken down. Moving into 2011 I believe Natural Search will start to work its way into marketing teams & businesses rather than outsourced to "specialists" or left to specific roles in the business, it will as my first trend talks about become integrated.
Recommended reading on SEO success factors for 2011
I've been checking out the…
Here are the most popular posts by page views as voted by you and our listings in Google since we launched the site in March 2010.
Thanks to all our readers, writers, commenters and retweeters for creating, adding to and sharing our advice and alerts. All the best for you in navigating the Internet marketing maze in 2011!
1. Internet marketing strategy and planning template
Comfortably most popular was a detailed word document for developing or refining an Internet Marketing strategy. We also provided this RACE framework to help structure your plans with this content. We're hard at work developing more guides to release in 2011 to help with your Internet marketing planning.
Download Digital marketing strategy and planning Word template
2. Online brand reputation or social media listening software - a comparison review of 36 tools in 7 categories
Originally…
