When hyper-personalized emails miss the mark, they aren’t just ineffective — they’re downright unsettling.
To assess the effectiveness of personalization, my company conducted a real-world experiment. We paid a couple thousand dollars for a couple hundred hyper-personalized emails and then measured their successes against a similar number of generic and relevant emails. As it turned out, those run-of-the-mill emails performed better than the personalized ones by a substantial margin.
Why is that? Well, the truth is that most marketers believe that they know who their target audience is, so they integrate that knowledge into an approach that uses personalized emails that they feel is most effective.
When these hyper-personalized emails miss the mark, they aren’t just ineffective, they’re downright unsettling. According to a RichRelevance study, despite mostly enjoying personalized experiences from brands, up to 75% of US consumers deemed most forms of personalized business communications…
Getting website personalization right is hard and I bet you are sick of being told otherwise
I don’t blame marketers for trying to tell you differently of course. It’s immensely frustrating for them too – knowing just how valuable personalization can be and knowing that it will, in time, become a necessity, rather than luxury, for all brands to offer a personal experience to their customers.
Still, industry folk are frequently told we should be getting on board with web personalization and the many different approaches to execution that have been proposed over the last few years. But (and it’s a big but), rarely does anyone address the fact that most businesses have one or more fundamental and significant blockers in place preventing personalization success (more on this later).
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It's akin to asking a member of the public to take part in the World Championship triple jump competition and preparing them by showing…
Despite GDPR coming into effect over 18 months ago, new research shows that many marketers are still concerned about their organizations' compliance
It’s been just over 18 months since the enforcement date of the GDPR. The latest research from the DMA shows that while the majority of professionals in the data and marketing industry have been given some form of GDPR training, there are many marketers out there who are still concerned about their organization’s compliance.
The consequences of non-compliance have been well-publicized through a series of high profile investigations by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), ultimately leading to punitive sanctions for those organizations deemed to be acting unlawfully and with intention.
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There have also been a number of data breaches over the last year, a cause of which may well be that staff were not effectively trained in how to manage customers’ sensitive information and maintain the necessary safeguards to protect their…
A robust link building strategy is critical. Being discoverable online means having high domain authority and ranking for the keywords your customers use
Companies like Amazon and Google have forever changed the way consumers find and purchase goods and services. As a result, both B2C and B2B companies must consider the role online visibility plays in their campaigns to attract customers.
In the digital world, a robust link building strategy is critical. The modern consumer journey is driven by search engines, and being discoverable online means having high domain authority and ranking for the keywords your customers use.
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High-quality backlinks increase domain authority, ultimately increasing your Google page ranking. When pages have high-quality backlinks pointed…
Integrated campaigns are effective at balancing both short-term sales uplifts and long-term brand-building effects by combining a range of different channels
The advantages of creating a joined-up, integrated marketing communications (IMC) plan are well-documented and go back over twenty years. Even before the internet really took off businesses, brands and agencies were looking for ways to create consistency across content and media touchpoints.
Although not all campaigns have to be fully integrated (e.g. short-term guerrilla campaigns or PR stunts), brands looking to make an impression and raise awareness as part of a product launch or seasonal sales push should consider how the different elements of a campaign come together as one.
Integrated campaigns are effective at balancing both short-term sales uplifts and long-term brand-building effects by combining a range of different channels:
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Benchmarking your performance allows you to understand how well you’re actually performing, compared to real life competitors
Measuring digital success is no easy feat; even if you’ve reached your digital marketing goals and KPIs, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good enough. After all, what if your competitors are all outperforming you? What if the industry is growing at a faster rate than your business is?
That’s why it’s extremely important that you benchmark your business against your competitors: it allows you to understand how well you’re actually performing, compared to real life competitors.
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In this blog post, discover useful tips and tools for benchmarking success in the digital landscape: from social…
Nine out of ten marketers expect to increase digital marketing budgets in 2020, but how do you make sure your budget is effective?
Digital marketing has proven itself to be one of the most effective types of marketing. Email, social media, content marketing, search engine optimization - all of these tactics are essential to business success in 2020.
It’s probably why as many as 95% of organizations have increased their digital marketing budget in recent years – and why nine out of ten marketers expect that their budgets will grow in 2020 as well.
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That said, digital marketing is very complex and involves numerous strategies, all extremely important. As consumers increasingly expect omnichannel experiences and want to be able to reach brands on all their preferred channels, marketers have the big challenge of stretching out that budget for countless channels and strategies.
So how do you create a budget that…
Answering the real questions your customers are asking can form an important part of your customer retention plan.
Customers have questions. You have answers — or so they hope! By leaving any key questions unanswered, you risk:
Your prospects bailing out of your lead generation and sales funnels.
Your customers feeling like you know and care about them, and thus looking to do their business elsewhere.
Your bottom line revenues showing the effects of your customer neglect.
But by discovering these questions and addressing them proactively, you’ll stay one step ahead of your competition.
Now that we’ve established why it’s important to actively discover the top questions being asked — or thought of — by your prospects and customers, let’s dive into how to discover them.
Begin by discovering customer questions
A recent Harvard Business Review article states that acquiring a new customer is anywhere from…
Will smaller ad agencies end up ultimately trampled to death by yottabytes of Facebook and Google data?
Along with being reigning leaders of the tech industry, Google and Facebook run the most prominent advertising networks. The rest of the no-names pale into insignificance compared to the great and terrible Duopoly. Will smaller ad agencies end up ultimately trampled to death by yottabytes of Facebook & Google data?
"Who owns the information, he owns the world." This 300-year old quotation is more relevant today than ever. Like it or not, it is personal data and its quality that defines the success of advertising campaigns. Get the right data about the customer and this customer is likely yours.
Facebook and Google grew from unicorns into giant datavorous raptors that absorb all info about their users. No wonder they account for a combined 60% share of digital advertising in 2019. While such…
Content isn't really king, it's the kingdom. It is made up of various pieces that combine to create something greater: an effective content marketing strategy
You’ve no doubt heard marketers proclaiming that “content is king,” but that’s a vague and misleading statement. Really, a content strategy is more like the kingdom because it’s made up of various individual pieces that combine to form something greater. There are many different facets to an effective content strategy, and — unbeknownst to many marketing departments — there’s isn’t just one type of content that rules them all.
What content marketing ultimately boils down to is reaching your potential customers in a way that intrigues and engages them. Actually reaching them is the crucial first step, since you have to stand out from the crowd of 20 billion web pages that are viewed each month.
With so much content competing for views, it’s up to you to…
