What’s Working in Marketing

I love the speed with which new Internet development tools hit the market. Here’s one that let’s you create a mobile app in just a few minutes. App Factory from Mippin.com. $20 to create the app, $750 each for distribution in an app store. Android and Windows Phone 7 are currently supported. The iPhone is [...]

Many of the marketing and sales techniques we take for granted were invented over 200 years ago by Josiah Wedgewood (yes, of Wedgewood china fame). The NY Times wrote an interesting article in 2009 about a sad event…Wedgewood’s bankruptcy. Josiah was an unlikely hero. He was the 13th child of an impoverished potter; a childhood [...]

To continue our discussion on email tales from hell, here’s an excerpt from a MarketingSherpa blog post that shows I am not the only one concerned about the quality of the many compiled and “verified” but definitely NOT opt-in lists. Note the concerns in Group #2, which is where list brokers fall. One of many [...]

After what I went through this morning, I’ve decided we need to start a thread on the topic of email list experiences from hell. I have one to get us started. One of our clients asked about purchasing third-party email lists. We warned them that this part of the marketing industry is still in rough [...]

Just came across this post by eMarketer about a new report on online lead generation… Based on the quantity and quality of leads generated, companies said email was their best lead generation program, followed by live events, website registrations and webinars. The effectiveness of online channels, coupled with the fact that prospects indicate the web [...]

We won’t know how well our marketing programs are working unless we track results. Here is an interesting resource on e-mail response rates from the Marketing Online wiki. These numbers jive with other sources we’ve seen. Your campaigns should be producing results close to these…or better. If not, reengineer the campaign to improve performance. – [...]

Spam filters, time of day, HTML formatting…there’s a lot to worry about in an e-mail marketing program. What tactics work best? In an excerpt from MarketingSherpa’s new Email Marketing Benchmark Report, we see relevant content leading the list. The business buying process is usually long and complex. So it is important to target your marketing, [...]

A wealth of new research is out to help us fine tune our e-marketing programs, from the web site (the cornerstone of any e-marketing program) to search marketing to e-mail marketing to social media. How does your implementation compare with these best practices? • All important calls to action need to stay above the fold [...]

Today, Nielsen Business Media announced they are shuttering Sales & Marketing Magazine. Yet another case of a print publication unable to adapt to the Internet era. With all the upheaval in the world of publishing, one of the hot topics is monetization of digital properties — how do publishers make money from the Internet? A [...]

I was on a conference call Friday afternoon when the phrase came up again around marketers “have lost control of the message.” (Hat tip to our dear friend Walt Boyes)…but Walt went further and described the “Wac-a-mole” scenario which made laugh…then cry.   Actually, I thought it was a pretty accurate depiction of the state of [...]