Marketing automation is term that is gaining momentum whether
you are a B2B or a B2C marketer. But what does it mean and
what impact will have on your email and cross-channel marketing
efforts?
Marketing Automation is using a technology platform that
enables you to build content assets such as landing pages, emails,
Facebook tabs, web events, etc. and deliver them to a prospect
and/or customer at a time when it is most relevant to them in their
buying cycle. This "right time" is based on knowing your potential
customer by capturing demographic information, capturing their
interactions with...
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Each Thursday
at 11am EDT, marketers from around the world join the ExactTarget Nexus partner
ecosystem on Twitter for a conversation about trends and campaign
ideas across the interactive marketing industry. We call the
virtual coffee chat the Nexus Café.
Our guest for a recent #NexusCafe chat was Brian Shelton,
eCommerce & Special Projects Manager at Gilchrist & Soames. Brian
just completed a major website project at his company so content
automation was top of mind. Brian is involved in the 3sixty Live
Indianapolis user community and is a regular contributor to the
weekly #NexusCafe chat.
He...
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Each Thursday at
11am EDT, marketers from around the world join the
ExactTarget Nexus partner
ecosystem on Twitter for a conversation about trends and campaign
ideas across the interactive marketing industry. We call the
virtual coffee chat the
Nexus Café.
Our guest for a recent #NexusCafe chat was
Susan Prater, vice
president of integrated marketing at ChannelNet. Susan recently
joined ChannelNet and has held many roles in interactive marketing
and branding at Ford, Owens Corning, Masco Cabinetry, and her
marketing consultancy, Seven Pillars Marketing. Susan is passionate
about leveraging...
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If you spend much time in our 3sixty community, you will see that a
common suggestion is to offer better ways of searching for
information within our products: Emails, Templates, Subscribers,
Users, etc. One way we have addressed this is with our new search
feature in the Interactive Marketing Hub Calendar. The Calendar
search feature, released along with the launch of the IMH in
October of last year, lets you search for past and future email
sends by taking your search word (or words) and returning any
calendar entries that contain it in its name or description
The IMH Calendar is a...
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If
you’re one of the many ExactTarget clients looking to integrate
with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 platform, the time is here!
Take a look at the documentation to see what exciting possibilities
are open to you as Microsoft takes their CRM offering to the cloud!
Of course, on-premises installations are available as well, and our
new documentation illustrates how to accomplish these tasks
effectively. Take a look at what the documentation on ExactTarget
for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 has to offer:
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With
the right marketing automation solution, you can automate both
simple and complex marketing activities with just a few clicks from
one-off to batch messaging, data movements, integrations, and
report delivery.
No matter what your industry, marketing automation can simplify
repetitive marketing tasks and drive more sophisticated uses of
your customer data. For example:
-
Financial services: Back-end operations like
account statements, low-balance alerts, and lifecycle marketing
campaigns
-
Technology: Subscription renewal programs,
interactive account reminders, and product updates
-
Manufacturing:...
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With over 50 breakout
sessions during Connections 2011, interactive marketers had access to
hundreds of actionable ideas, proven strategies and success stories
in every room. One of the highlights for me was a session that
examined international email marketing campaigns.
Here are five of the great ideas fellow marketers shared with their
peers.
1. Make training easy. Sean Mattson of
Hitachi Data Systems stressed that robust
training is a key. When rolling out a global email marketing
initiative, Mattson found the best training tool was to create
short video clips to build a robust library...
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Last
week, I attended the world’s largest interactive marketing
conference -
ExactTarget’s Connections 2011 in
Indianapolis, IN - with 3,000 marketers from around the world. We
absorbed the idea of the Power of One: one consumer, one platform,
one cloud, one person, and one business. The conference encouraged
attendees to consider how one individual can change a life and one
idea can change the world.
One IndividualWhat would you do trapped in the desert, pinned under a rock, out
of water, and facing certain death? The highlight of the conference
was keynote speaker Aron Ralston, author of...
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Campaigns come standard with the Interactive Marketing Hub and are
a key feature of our October release. Integrated throughout the
Hub's tools (Calendar, Pulse) and new and existing Channel Apps
(ExactTarget Email, CoTweet, MobileConnect and SocialPages),
Campaigns make it easier for marketers to create, deliver and
measure cross-channel campaigns
Here are four quick steps to get started with Campaigns in the
Interactive Marketing Hub:
1) Plan
Map our your marketing calendar in
the IMH Calendar by adding the important marketing events for the
year that drive the marketing activities in your...
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Many
organizations don’t fit squarely into a B2B or B2C bucket. More
often, companies have multiple marketing teams, divisions or
business units that focus on different marketing and sales
objectives. One team may manage vendor or partner relationships;
another drives online sales; while yet another supports a lengthy
direct sales cycle.
We are in the midst of a transformational shift in the Revenue
Performance Management market whereby:
- The buying process has changed; customers now touch dozens of
online and offline information sources before they ever talk to a
sales representative or buy...
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Text Messaging is unlike any channel before it. For most, it
is reserved for our inner circle of friends and family. It’s
for important updates and requests: ETA? / On way / Pick up milk
please. It’s for inside jokes, wry asides and
late-night musings. While many time-honored marketing
principles apply, we must appreciate this unique channel in the
context of human behavior. These basic practices lay a solid
foundation.
1. Start with the Value
Proposition. We should be asking, first and
foremost, “What value can I provide to my customers that is
important enough to warrant inclusion in...
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Each week, marketers from around the world join
the
ExactTarget Nexus partner ecosystem on Twitter for a
conversation about trends and best practices in the interactive
marketing industry. We call the virtual coffee chat the
Nexus
Café.
Last Thursday’s chat featured Caleb Williams, a Technical Marketer
from
Zondervan
Publishers, an ExactTarget client. Caleb shared some
insights on marketing automation and the ability to enable
automated comprehensive user experiences through marketing
platforms. A summary of the conversation is below:
@ETNexus:
What is your process for improving emails...
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Join ExactTarget's Privacy and
Deliverability Expert,
Al Iverson, and
our Nexus partner, Elateral for a free webinar "Email Marketing To
and Through Your Channel Partners" on Wednesday May 11, 2011
at 11:30am-12:30pm ET.
Elateral specializes in global brand
marketing automation for companies that have channel and local
representatives, enabling brand control management while empowering
local advertising and marketing campaigns.
Webinar Takeaways:
- A clear understanding of both the risks and opportunities of
hyperlocal email campaigns your channel partners are conducting
with and without your...
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With our most recent product
enhancements -- including the Interactive Marketing Hub™, Audience
Builder, A/B Testing, Inbox Tools powered by Return Path, and
Global SMS and API -- we've made it easier than ever for marketers
to achieve spectacular business results. The release includes
functionallity in all of the follwing areas:
- IMH Beta 2
- Campaigns
- Automation Studio
- Drag 'n Drop Interface
- Massive Parallel Processing
- Real-Time Counts
- Real-Time A/B Testing
- Inbox Tools
- Email Usability Enhancements
- Facebook Content Manager
- Mobile Apps
- Security Enhancements
- SMS API
- Global SMS
To learn more about this...
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The Interactive Marketing Hub Beta 1 has been a great experience
for us here at ExactTarget. 
We have been able to provide some new features and functions give
our customers better visibility to their Interactive Marketing
activity and present our vision of an integrated platform for
executing multi-channel campaigns. But best of all, we got to know
a number of customers better, and hear their feedback of how to
improve our products.
As part of Beta 1 we conducted one on one interviews with most
of the Beta 1 participants and got some great feedback. Our Beta 1
participants included customers...
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You might think that statement is sacrilegious for someone
whose very career depends on email marketing. Don't worry...just
give me a chance to explain. What I mean is that you
can not think of your email marketing program the same as those "As
Seen on TV" products. You can't just set it and forget
it. Email has to be a part of an overall marketing
strategy and communication plan with customers. Whether B2B
or B2C, you have to have a plan and many times that plan
may include other mediums: social, sites, mobile,
print, etc.
Some businesses have got it into their heads that once the...
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5 Resolutions Marketers Should Make And Keep In 2011
Resolution #5: I Will Use Automation To Save Time And To
Better Meets My Customers’ Needs
Once you’ve committed to
make data the foundation of your marketing and
market to your customers as individuals, it’s time to identify
what’s working – and start automating!
Before you jump into the automation deep end, make sure you
start with a process or campaign that works. Automation
only saves time if it’s effective. And with tools like the
Interactive Marketing Hub™, you can quickly pinpoint the
recurring emails or campaigns that are taking up...
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This time of year sees lots
of reasons for people to be out of the office...escaping to warmer
climates, skiing trips, snow days or even just the flu.
If you're like many marketers out there, you are the only person in
your office that hits the send button. That begs the
question: who mans the send button while you're
away? Does your office's email calendar simply have no
sends while you're away? Does the new person in the
office get a rush tutorial and then cross their fingers for
success?
If you have
AIM (Automated Interaction Management) on your ExactTarget
account, one option is to...
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Each week, marketers from around the
world join the ExactTarget Nexus partner ecosystemon
Twitter for a conversation about trends and best practices in the
interactive marketing industry. We call the virtual coffee
chat the Nexus Café.
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