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How to become a better marketer: 6 marketing tactics you need to work on to stay relevant   With the rapid development in technology, many changes occur in the marketing scene within short periods. Therefore, as you're trying to execute the tactics you know, you're also in a constant quest to learn new things. Otherwise, it becomes difficult to stay relevant and achieve your goals. Even in marketing channels you know, changes are happening with time. For instance, 17 years ago, you only need to understand how to send blast emails to be a good email marketer. However, today, you need a deep understanding of automated email sequences just to get by. That said, you'll always stay relevant as a marketer if you keep up with important trends and apply them to your marketing campaigns. In light of this, here are 6 essential tactics to work on:

1. Creating and designing visual content

Over the years, …

Chart of the week: Discounts, receipts and advanced notice of products/sales are the top performers for email content according to customers, but marketers are not following suit in their email comms

The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) published its Marketer Email Tracker 2020 last week. Combining insights by marketers and customers alike, the report explores email’s multi-faceted role in communicating with consumers across all stages of the customer lifecycle – not just as a transactional channel, but one that can be used to inform and build long-lasting relationships.

Email is customers' top pick of the channels

Research by DMA found that email topped every channel when customers were asked their preference for receiving information, including appointments/reminders, customer service, new products, and tutorials. In this report, email outperformed all other channels listed below: Messenger Post Text Face-to-face Online Phone Social media Email This news is music to email marketers' ears, since this…

With the channels skills-gap currently estimated at 13%, whether you are looking to change company/function or keep progressing in the career you already have, building up your channel-specific skills will help you bring the right skills to the table

While we're adjusting to taking everything online (yes, it really does seem like there is a place for everything in this new physically distant world), as a digital marketer I am finding myself paying particular interest to the roles of different marketing channels in today's internet of things: "Q) How many engineers does it take to change a light bulb? A) Depends on whether or not that lightbulb is connected to WiFi - Arielle Pardes, wired.com" Although lightbulb marketing isn't something we specialize in at Smart Insights (yet?), I do recommend having a mental run-through of your marketing channels, and whether there's anything you've seen in the last few weeks that you…

A CapGemini survey of 18,000 consumers shows their preferences for apps, social media and other channels

Identifying how consumers interact with both physical and online retailers, their expectations and motivations to buy is important to any business. CapGemini's survey delves into this and explains how 'relevance' is crucial to meeting shoppers' needs and being aware that 'digital shoppers' (who use more than one digital channel along the purchasing funnel) have different needs and shopping behaviours. CapGemini categorises shoppers into 6 groups; for instance the Social Digital Shoppers are confident in sharing their experiences and feel safe buying on their mobile devices. While shopping online, these consumers expect retailers to 'remember their details'.  Value Seekers, as it says on the tin, are influenced by price and obsessed with offers. You can read more about these types of shoppers in their report and Infographic below: You can…