We know companies track us across the web, but most companies don’t make the tracking obvious.
LinkedIn, in quite a departure, is showing right on the homepage the company websites you have visited. [Read more…]
6 Cringeworthy Marketing Technology Failures
Today’s marketing simply wouldn’t exist without marketing technology. From marketing automation to demand side platforms to content management systems, technology puts the right message in front of the right person at the right time.
Or at least that’s how it is supposed to happen.
You no longer create your marketing communications. You just create the rules. The system does the rest. [Read more…]
When Marketing Automation Is the Wrong Solution
You wouldn’t jump in your car to go from the living room to the kitchen or pull out the chainsaw to cut a stick of butter.
Just because it is a more more powerful solution doesn’t mean it is necessary or advisable.
Marketing automation is quickly becoming like the self-driving car for B2B marketing. Led by Eloqua (now part of Oracle) and Marketo (with a very successful IPO last week), today marketing automation companies are collectively worth billions. [Read more…]
Are Machines the Future of Marketing?
The idea that someday the CEO or Head of Sales will click a few buttons to set objectives, budget and timing and a machine will create and execute a marketing plan seems pretty far-fetched.
When IBM’s Watson can tackle healthcare issues, marketing advice from machines doesn’t seem so unlikely anymore.
As marketers, we will soon be the managers of the machines that are managing our marketing. Are you ready? [Read more…]
Email Best Practice or Recipe for Disaster?
You strive to improve the performance of your email marketing. You test exhaustively. You pore over every benchmark and research study.
Subject lines, call to action, offer, design, images. You examine everything in your bid for more opens, more clicks, more leads and more sales.
These recent statistics and anecdotes point to a clear way to increase email open and click rates, but read on before you decide to test these approaches. [Read more…]
Marketing Automation’s Next Frontier: Madison Avenue
Marketers have invested in marketing automation, content and, in many cases, creating complex business rules to determine what content and message to deliver when.
This represents a significant investment but, for many companies, the application has been limited to emails and landing pages.
The real value is in the rules and logic used to deliver the right message at the right time. The next evolution in marketing automation will be extending the application of these rules across the full spectrum of digital and addressable marketing channels. [Read more…]
Content Syndication Options for B2B Lead Generation
Lead generation continues to be a top objective for B2B marketers and content syndication is primary offering from publishers.
Definitions:
- Content syndication refers to distributing content through publishers and requiring registration in order to capture contacts.
- Leads in this post refer to contacts captured through a registration form, in line with the way B2B publishers label their programs.
As demand for B2B lead generation programs increases, new providers are springing up, sporting slick new websites, massive email databases, lower costs and brand new approaches.
As the landscape changes, here are some of the benefits and drawbacks [Read more…]
7 Steps to Find Your Content Marketing Sweet Spot
You are ready to take your content marketing to the next level. Until now, you have been producing mostly mid and late stage content.
Your content supports the sales process and effectively communicates the value of your solutions to prospects.
Now, you are ready to use content marketing to raise the profile of your company overall.
Content that drives overall visibility for your company is different. To broadly improve your visibility within your market, you need to focus [Read more…]