Back from the long weekend, and found a great collection of marketing technology information for your review and immediate action. You’ll want to read about Twitter’s retargeting offering, which reinforces our stance that there are four social media channels upon which the B2B marketer should focus: Twitter, LinkedIn, SlideShare and Google+. In addition, take note of the open rates for email, and how mobile devices are having a profound impact on the metrics (can you say Responsive Design?). And there’s more valuable scoops inside that will influence what you do and how you do it. A very good Monday.
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Featured Marketing Automation Article
Twitter Reveals Plans for Ad Retargeting – ClickZ
From www.clickz.com – Today, 9:11 AM
The site announced plans to move into the ad retargeting space today by using browser-based cookies and email identification with third-party sites.
Excepted…
Twitter wants to eat your cookies and turn them into Promoted Tweets. The site announced plans to move into the ad retargeting space today by using browser-based cookies and email identification with third-party sites.
Users’ browsing behavior and email addresses will be used to match them up with ads from brands or business that are most likely to fall into areas of interest.
Advertisers can now share scrambled email addresses or browser-based cookies with Twitter to retarget and direct Promoted Tweets to users who previously visited [the advertiser’s] site or joined a newsletter. “This is how most other companies handle this practice, and we don’t give advertisers any additional user information,” Kevin Weil, senior director of product revenue at Twitter, notes in a blog post about the changes.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
In a nutshell: it’s using Promoted Tweets as a means to retarget, not using clicked-upon tweets as a basis for retargeting. Regardless, it further drives home the utility of Twitter for the B2B marketer. Twitter, LinkedIn, SlideShare, Google+: the Big 4 for the B2B Marketer.
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5 Google+ Engagement Strategies | Social Media Examiner
From www.socialmediaexaminer.com – Today, 9:04 AM
Google Plus: How to engage, make your page findable and build long-lasting relationships with your core audiences.
Summary…
Here are five effective strategies that will take your engagement on Google+ to a whole new level.
#1: Make Your Google+ Page Findable
#2: Network Strategically With Circles
#3: Include Compelling Content
#4: Be Proactive With Engagement
#5: Join Communities and Hangouts
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Note #3: include compelling content. Think of Google+ as another distribution challen for your content, and deliver it in a fashion that draws attention, e.g., a video format. Just as it is with LinkedIn, Google+ requires a bit of work and attention.
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‘Big data’ causes big frustrations for marketers: report – Econsultancy
From econsultancy.com – Today, 8:15 AM
Big data has become something of a buzzword over the past year or so, but is it actually useful?
Excerpts…
We asked respondents ‘what effect has big data had on the web analysts in your organisation?’ and, as you can see from the word cloud, ‘none’ was the overwhelming answer.
Although resources and budgets are a key constraint on web analytics fulfilling business requirements, our research showed that only a quarter of companies have increased their budgets for technology and analysis capabilities in response to the big data trend.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Big Data is for Big Companies with Big Budgets and Big Datasets. So don’t sweat it, and focus on your analytics engine coming out of your MA/CRM implementation. Keep testing. Keep optimizing. If you need to learn more about Big Data, search our filter for “data” (and search for the term “little data”: that’s more appropriate).
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The Top-5 Content Marketing Trends in 2013 – Everything Technology Marketing
From www.slideshare.net – Today, 9:00 AM
Top-5 Content Marketing Trends in 2013:
1 – Content marketing is going mainstream and is becoming more sophisticated to help marketers generate more leads and enable thought leadership.
2 – The popularity of white papers as a content marketing format is declining relative to interactive, easily digestible formats such as video.
3 – More than 82 percent of B2B marketers are increasing their content production over the next 12 months.
4 – YouTube is gaining popularity as a social media platform to reach and engage B2B audiences – Facebook is losing ground.
5 – Marketing automation is on the rise. 61 percent of marketers use marketing automation platforms, up from 43 percent last year.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Wonderful report, and points out what we’ve been saying for some time: the rise of video, the decline of FB, the use of MA. Don’t ignore the combination of LinkedIn and SlideShare, and the use of Google+ (not only for audience engagement, but for SEO).
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[FREE EBOOK] Optify | How to Calculate the ROI of a Social Media Campaign
From www.optify.net – Today, 7:55 AM
Calculating the ROI of a social media campaign is actually pretty simple, especially if you’re handy with some basic math. You’re about to download a step-by-step guide on how to do the calculations. If you follow the steps, you’ll be able to start tracking and measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns. And that’s a good thing because it means you’ll be able to prove your value to your clients, which is the best way we know to retain and grow an agency.
Download ‘How to Calculate the ROI of a Social Media Campaign’ eBook and get:
- 9 pages of insight, best practices, tips and advice
- Step-by-step guide on how to do the calculations
- Ways to improve social media ROI
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Agency oriented content, but absolutely applicable to you regardless of which side of the desk you sit. And it’s priced right.
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12 useful tips for web form optimisation – Econsultancy
From econsultancy.com – Today, 7:59 AM
Let’s face it, forms are a real pain to fill in, so it’s important to get them right, and minimise any friction when visitors are signing up for emails, or completing contact and checkout forms.
Summary…
- Use in-line validation
- Label fields clearly
- Use side by side field captions
- Include product information
- Make error messages easy to understand
- Use cookies to remember customer passwords
- Anticipate and deal with common errors
- Don’t clear existing fields after user errors
- Keep forms short
- Make forms fun
- Use the right format for each field
- Give users some feedback after submission
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Some of these tips are Ecommerce oriented, but the rest of excellent reminders of what you need to do to keep your forms optimized. And as always: TEST!
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Email Open and Click Rates on the Rise in Q1 – Marketing Charts
From www.marketingcharts.com – Today, 7:46 AM
Excerpted…
The average email open rate in North America climbed to 31.1% in Q4, a significant increase from 27.4% in Q4, according to a new report from Epsilon. And after having dropped from 5.9% in Q1 2011 to 4.5% in Q4 2012, click rates rebounded to 5.1% in Q1 2013, a finding which Epsilon believes is an indication that marketers are increasingly optimizing emails for mobile devices.
Breaking the Business as Usual emails down by 13 industry segments, Epsilon reveals that open rates increased by more than 5% year-over-year in 8. The financial services CC/Banks (41.6%) and retail general (39.1%) sectors topped the list, while consumer publishing/media general (19.3%) languished at the bottom. Consumer products CPG boasted easily the highest click rate (8.3%), followed by consumer publishing/media general (6.5%).
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
This is definitely slanted to the B2C world, yet indicative as to the overall performance of email marketing. I trust that you are seeing the same type of open and CTR increases over time, as your list becomes more valuable, your mailings are tested to be more impactful, and your overall techniques are improving.
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Increase sales velocity by mapping content to buying stages | @HeinzMarketing
From www.heinzmarketing.com – Today, 7:52 AM
“I recommend starting with your sales pipeline (pre-defined lead & opportunity stages), then enumerate the content topics, formats and tools required to support both your buyers as well as your sales team.”
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Matt Heinz has made it a bit easier for you to define your stages if not already done, and with each stage, map content to the prospective buyer.
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25 Elements to Test on Your Landing Pages – OMI
From www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org – Today, 7:35 AM
Increase your landing page conversions by testing these 25 elements, including headlines, design, calls-to-action and more.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
I wouldn’t call this elements to test as there are handful of elements that are not testable. Rather, see this as a checklist of sorts as you continue to fine tune your landing pages for the greatest return.
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From litmus.com – Today, 7:40 AM
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Litmus is one of the most practical tools available to the marketer, and they have many customers from across a wide range of verticals. It may not be representative of you, your industry or the B2B world, but I bet its damn close. Moral of the story: RESPONSIVE DESIGN.
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Which Industry Leads in Leveraging Eloqua University to Become Marketing Masters? [CHART] – Eloqua
From blog.eloqua.com – Today, 7:31 AM
The end of graduation season and associated commencement speeches got me thinking about how graduates of Eloqua University – i.e. folks with Eloqua ‘Masters’ – are using their training to become successful modern marketers.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Not exactly applicable to the industry as a whole, but you can get a feel for which verticals are adapting MA vs. others.
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[INFOGRAPHIC] The Best Times to Get The Most Out Of Social Media – Weblinx
From www.seo-company.co.uk – Today, 7:28 AM
When it comes to Social Media there are both bad and good times to share your content, these times have been defined in the Infograph provided.
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10 Quick Tips for Better Status Updates (Infographic) | The Social Skinny
From thesocialskinny.com – Today, 7:19 AM
Want to post better Facebook status updates? Here’s 10 simple tips to help you get more fan engagement.
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