What is marketing automation and why is it important?

Posted by: David Held
Tuesday, April 24, 2012

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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#NexusCafe Twitter Chat Recap: Commonly Overlooked Email Marketing Tips

Posted by: Amanda Berkey
Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Jody FreshwaterEach 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.

During a recent #NexusCafe chat, we focused on email marketing tips that are often overlooked or missed. Our guest for the chat was Jody Freshwater, account director at MarketNet. Jody has spent many years working with ExactTarget for her client's interactive marketing campaigns. She has also volunteered help lead our 3sixty Live Dallas...

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New Concepts in Facebook Marketing

Posted by: Susan Marshall
Tuesday, April 10, 2012

What is the difference between a Tab and a Fan Page? How is the Social Graph different from Open Graph? Marketers ask us these questions all the time and with help from folks at Facebook, we put together a Glossary to help you master the newest Facebook marketing concepts. We hope you find it useful!

Glossary

Actions and Action Response “AR”
There are a variety of actions within Facebook Ads or Pages including when a user clicks “Like”, “RSVP” or selects a custom action. Another way to think of actions is to think of the traditional “Call-to-Action” like click, call or download. AR stands for...

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#NexusCafe Twitter Chat Preview: Commonly Overlooked Email Marketing Tips

Posted by: Amanda Berkey
Thursday, February 23, 2012

Nexus CafeThe ExactTarget Nexus team invites you to participate in our #NexusCafe Twitter chat tomorrow and every Thursday from 11am-12pm ET, where we discuss emerging topics and trends from across the interactive marketing world. The virtual coffee chat is hosted directly on Twitter, hosted by @ETNexus. Follow the #NexusCafe hashtag and be sure and add the hashtag to your tweet to participate. The person with the best tweets wins a Starbucks gift card!

This week our #NexusCafe chat will focus on email marketing tips that are often overlooked. Our guest for the chat is Jody Freshwater, account director...

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SocialEngage – Updates & Answers

Posted by: Margaret Francis
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Thanks for the interest and excitement around the launch of SocialEngage.  Hundreds of CoTweet users have already signed up for the free trial and are up and running.  As we get closer to the Feb. 15 sunset date of the free edition of CoTweet, I wanted to answer some of the four most commonly asked questions that have come up about the differences between CoTweet and SocialEngage.  Here’s a quick recap:
 
What happened to CoTweet?
SocialEngage is the Enterprise Edition of CoTweet with a bunch of new features. We are sunsetting the free edition of CoTweet.
 
How is SocialEngage different from the... Read More »

Search Email and Social in the IMH Calendar

Posted by: Eric Hannon
Monday, January 23, 2012
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...Read More »

SocialEngage… The Next Generation of Social Media Management

Posted by: Margaret Francis
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
SocialEngageEarlier today we launched SocialEngage, our next generation social media management application that brings together the best of CoTweet and new capabilities to further empower brands to engage with customers through social channels.

Developed in our San Francisco Social Media Lab, SocialEngage serves as the cornerstone of ExactTarget’s social media management suite. It features everything you’ve grown to know and love about CoTweet, and much more -- including features such as RSS integration, editorial workflow and Facebook management, just to name a few.

The beauty of SocialEngage is that...Read More »

Manage Your Facebook Fan Pages With ExactTarget SocialPages™

Posted by: Jeff Cunning
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Looking for innovative ways to drive engagement through your Facebook Fan Page, a new way to fuel email list growth from Facebook, or maybe just looking to get started and build your page from scratch?

ExactTarget SocialPages is here to help – putting Facebook Fan Page management in YOUR hands. It’s not enough to just have a fan page – companies need an active presence to gain the attention of users, drive consumer engagement, and increase brand awareness.

ExactTarget SocialPages provides a variety of tools to help, including:

1.) SocialPages Editor: You can build a branded presence on Facebook...
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Avoid Repetitve Stress Injury - Automate!

Posted by: Jeff Middlesworth
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
doing more with less marketing automationWith 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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#NexusCafe Twitter Chat Recap: An Inside Look at the Interactive Marketing Hub

Posted by: Libby Bates
Friday, November 4, 2011
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.
#NexusCafe Andy and Libby
A recent #NexusCafe chat featured Interactive Marketing Hub experts Andy Bergman and Eric Hannon from ExactTarget. We mixed up the format—Andy and Eric answered questions from the audience. Here's a snapshot of the conversation.  

@ETNexus: What’s stopping marketers from doing cross-channel to its full potential?
@asbergman: It seems most...
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Marketing Automation Meets Cross-Channel Campaign Management

Posted by: Scott Roth
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
exacttarget and marketoMany 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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What is the ExactTarget Academy?

Posted by: Bo Dietrick
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
 Greetings faithful readers. This summer I, Bo Dietrick, have the outstanding opportunity to blog on the interactive marketing industry and related topics, on behalf of ExactTarget. From May to August, I am participating in the Slingshot internship program, and will attempt to let this educational experience shine through my blogs as we learn together.

Academy

Want to increase the effectiveness of your interactive marketing campaigns and boost your marketing IQ? ExactTarget offers clients and partners the opportunity to participate in various certification courses through a program known as...Read More »

Apps, Apptrophy & Email Marketing

Posted by: Jeffrey Rohrs
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
This is going to be a rather audacious post.  The reason?  I hope to introduce a new term into the marketing lexicon and prompt some discussion about our app-driven future.  Here goes:

apptrophy (app-trō-phee): a wasting away of a smartphone, tablet or other mobile application due to disuse or abandonment.  Most commonly experienced by those apps pushed beyond the fourth screen on my iPhone.

The iPhone App StoreIf you're currently a smartphone user, I suspect that this new term will be met with some head-nodding and smiles.  Loading up your first smartphone with tons of useful (Shazam), social (Facebook),...Read More »

Get Started with ExactTarget 101!

Posted by: Kara Findley
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
ExactTarget 101I am very proud to announce the launch of ExactTarget 101! It's a free, self-guided learning program on 3sixty, the exclusive online community for ExactTarget customers. Whether you’re just getting started with ExactTarget or looking to refine your skills, ExactTarget 101 walks you through the essentials of the ExactTarget email application. You’ll also “meet” several of our prominent thought leaders and read their words of wisdom.

ExactTarget 101 combines our helpful tutorials and insightful resources into an easy-to-navigate pathway, broken down into eight topics:

The Big PictureThe Big Picture – Just...
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Coordinating Email and Social

Posted by: Eric Hannon
Monday, February 7, 2011

Coordinating a cross channel messaging strategy is complicated. Hopefully you have already defined your messaging strategies for your Subscribers, Fans, and Followers (if you haven’t you can start here with our Subscribers, Fans and Followers research paper). While the usual focus is on how to maintain a consistent message across channels, another problem is that each channel will have its own optimum delivery times.  Experienced Email Marketers have honed their strategies and know exactly which days and times are best to send for each audience (if you haven’t developed yours yet, here is a...

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ExactTarget's "For Marketers Guide"

Posted by: Adam Evans
Friday, November 19, 2010
For Marketeres Getting Started GuideLast time I wrote about ExactTarget's Getting Started Guide and how you can use it to get up and running with our application. Today I'm moving on to our For Marketers Guide

If you're somewhat familiar with the ExactTarget application, and especially if you've already gone through the Getting Started Guide, this guide is for you. 

The purpose of this guide is to introduce you to some of the additional features not discussed in The Getting Started Guide. This is not a step-by-step process, but rather a list of features that you can use to make your email communications convenient for you and...Read More »

Fan your email fire with social forwarding

Posted by: Stefanie Jansen
Monday, October 25, 2010
Research shows that consumers are more inclined to open an email from a friend than from a company. Don’t believe me? Take it from Papa John’s who added 45,000 fans on Facebook  just three days after adding Social Forward to their  NCAA-themed email campaign.  Sounds like Papa John’s subscribers weren’t just hungry for pizza, but for a great deal to pass along to friends too…

With ExactTarget Social Forward, your subscribers can take control of the content you send them by passing it along to their friends on Facebook, Twitter, and more than 20 other social sites—all with less effort on your...Read More »

How Engaged Are Your Subscribers?

Posted by: Stephanie Williamson
Friday, October 22, 2010

Subscriber EngagementAs a Marketing Consultant, part of my role is helping clients analyze their data and make optimizations based on the trends we see. When it comes to subscriber engagement, most clients are shocked when they see their data and how few subscribers are interacting with their email. The subscriber engagement report is one of the most popular reports among Marketing Consultants at ExactTarget and is available in the application.

The report displays how many emails were delivered to a subscriber during a given time frame, and out of the emails delivered, how many were actually opened or clicked....

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What's your Nexus?

Posted by: Tom Williams
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Nexus DirectoryNot that long ago while working for a web analytics company, I went on a joint sales call with our founder Peter McCormick who was a partner of mine at the time. While neither of us were technically sales people, here we were in the boardroom of a Fortune 100 client pitching the benefits of a lead nurture campaign. For their part the client had very realistic expectations, after all they had believed most of what they had been told by their vendors.

The client wanted three basic things:

1) to track and measure traffic on their web site,
2) automatically trigger an event when a site visitor...
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ExactTarget Takes Over London at Connections '10 UK

Posted by: Megan Graham
Friday, October 8, 2010

An exciting landmark took place in the history of ExactTarget this week – we hosted our first Connections user conference in the UK! The one-day event was held at the famous Grosvenor House Hotel, in the heart of downtown London, and Featured guest speaker Elizabeth Bailey Weil, Twitter’s product marketing manager, and entertainment by one of Britain’s most beloved comedians Marcus Brigstocke.  With more than 400 people in attendance, this was the world’s largest interactive marketing conference to be held in the UK! 

Highlights from the day included the unveiling of our enhanced mobile...

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