Global Interactive Marketing

That is a familiar image, isn't it? The well-traveled, world-weary suitcase, littered with stickers from places visited from Alaska to Zimbabwe. The trusty suitcase that is lugged from state to state and country to country: it may be battered and bruised, but it serves its owner well as they globe-trot across the world.

I used to be envious of the owners of those suitcases. That image motivated me to have my own beat-up, decorated travel companion to visit far off places with.

I have been living outside of America for almost nine years now. I lived in Sydney, Australia for just under five years...

Summer is heating up here at our Indianapolis headquarters, and our May product release delivered a few new features with plenty of sizzle over the weekend. Whether aimed to save you time, optimize your marketing efforts, or just make our interface easier to navigate, we think you’ll really like these new enhancements.

And don’t forget—we have free training on product release features via 3sixty. It’s interactive, and takes less than 30 minutes.

1. It’s Here! Send to Multiple Data Extensions
This long-requested new feature gives you the ability to save time by sending to a large data set in one...

Facebook poses unique opportunities—and challenges—for marketers. It’s an inherently social channel where consumers are open to interacting with brands. But because consumers typically think of Facebook as their “personal” space, marketers have to tread lightly with hard-sell messages.

To complicate this balancing act further, consumers have a variety of reasons for “liking” a brand. Overall, however, consumers’ top reasons for becoming Facebook fans are similar to their reasons for subscribing to email. These statistics from ExactTarget's 2013 Global Executive Summary tell the story:

• For...

ExactTarget has a passion for bringing marketers and consumers closer. And we’ve gathered the industry’s top thought leaders and interactive gurus for the second annual ExactTarget CONNECT Global Tour.

Marketers from across Canada will have the opportunity to meet, inspire, educate, and empower the future generation of digital marketing on June 12, 2013, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. This full-day gathering will include break-out sessions complete with leading-edge research, networking opportunities, and advice for guiding engaged digital marketing campaigns.

Leading the keynote...

ExactTarget has a passion for bringing marketers and consumers closer. And we’ve gathered the industry’s top thought leaders and interactive gurus for the second annual ExactTarget CONNECT Global Tour.

Marketers from across Canada will have the opportunity to meet, inspire, educate and empower the future generation of digital marketing on June 12, 2013 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The full-day gathering will include break-out sessions complete with leading-edge research, networking opportunities and advice for guiding engaged digital marketing campaigns.

Leading the keynote...

Bonin Bough, VP of Global Media & Consumer Engagement at Mondelez Brands, presented a webinar with SocialChorus earlier this week. The focus of the presentation was how brands like Oreo and Wheat Thins have been generating consumer advocacy in a marketing world that now largely revolves around social channels and mobile devices.

Probably the most staggering fact shared was this statistic: 3% of brand fans create 75% of engagement. Furthermore, a customer typically has one interaction with a brand per year, while an advocate will have around 12 interactions per year. Clearly, the importance...

October 2012 was an exciting time for ExactTarget’s partner ecosystem. Not only was the Orange Partner Network program launched at Connections, but also in front of the 4,000+ attendees, ExactTarget was excited to present the Power of ONE Reseller Partner of the Year award to our Platinum partner, C.TRAC.

C.TRAC has taken ExactTarget’s passion and unwavering commitment to client success and worked it into their own daily business practices by truly embodying ExactTarget's core values. Combined with their innovative strategy, design, integration, database management, reporting services, and...

March 13, 2013, was a historic day for Kickstarter, the website dedicated to social funding for anything from software development to stage shows and everything inbetween. Ex-hit television series "Veronica Mars" launched a campaign to raise $2 million in financing to produce a motion picture of the cult favorite, hitting its goal in under 10 hours and setting a record for the quickest $1 million to be raised in the site's history.

Fans rejoice at the impending return of their favorite moonlighting private eye, but what does this mean for the film industry? And what does this say about...

I’m not a big fan of country music.

I don’t mean to alienate anyone due to personal preferences, and I’m sure we can find common interests even if country is the only genre on your iPod, but country tunes are just not my favorite tunes to hear.

That being said, one of my closest friends loves country music. We were recently at a restaurant that was playing a country song called “Where I Come From.” I was poking fun at the whole situation because I’d recently heard a completely different country song also called “Where I Come From.”

Lo and behold, there are two country songs with the exact...

Whether you're an email, mobile, or social media marketer, there's a new piece of research from Motorola that you'll want to get your hands on ASAP. Their 4th Annual Media Engagement Barometer is billed as "a snapshot of the way that people around the world are interacting with media," and whether viewed on its own or in combination with another longitudinal survey like The Future of the Internet from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the breadth of results are pretty impressive.

Upon perusing the report however, my attention immediately focused on page 49 in which Motorola shared...

ExactTarget is excited to announce the launch of a new website across seven regions and a fresh brand experience. The vibrant new look, elegant navigation, and richer user experience reflect the evolution of our company’s growth over the past 12 years. A lot has happened since then and we’re excited to share new services, innovations, and partnerships that help marketers around the world connect with their customers across the spectrum of digital channels.

What’s New:

• 7 new sites spanning ExactTarget’s global presence in the US, Australia, Brazil, Germany, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
• W...

Mobile World Congress convenes just one week from today in Barcelona, Spain (February 25-28). We are excited to make the trip to the world’s premier mobile industry event and round out what seems like a mobile world tour, after already hitting CES, Mobile Insider Summit, and MMA this year.

The theme of Mobile World Congress 2013 is “Explore the New Mobile Horizon” and will center on trends like contactless payments, augmented reality, embedded devices, and connected cities. There will be over 1,500 product and technology exhibitors and an App Planet dedicated to the mobile app...

At ExactTarget, being "Orange" isn’t just our internal company culture. In fact, partners who are part of our Orange Partner Network also embrace what it means to be Orange. These partners have taken ExactTarget’s passion and unwavering commitment to client success around the globe and worked it into their own daily business practices.

To recognize partners who truly embody ExactTarget's core values, we announced the winners of our "Orange to the Core" Channel Partner awards at the Global Sales & Services Kickoff event in January. I'd like to extend our congratulations to:

• ClickMail
• DEG Digital
• The...

Do you remember every business that has a stand in your local food market? How about every conversation you had at a networking meeting? What about all of the restaurants on the last street you drove on?

The law of diminishing returns is one brands know very well. You have to work for your customers’ attention, and you have to work even harder to retain it. Retention is a key differentiator that can be built using social media.

"Most big brands are still using Twitter as a publishing channel rather than an engagement channel," says Saif Ajani, Sling Digital’s co-founder. Do you hear that? It’s...

Tennis is often viewed as a sport for purists. Wimbledon whites, proper etiquette, and winning with grace are some of the defining characteristics of the sport that dates back to the mid-1800s. For a sport as historic as tennis, it is easy to understand why it may be slow to adapt. The Australian Open is not only adapting but it’s changing the tennis world with its use of social media marketing.

The first Grand Slam of the 2013 tennis season is setting the bar extremely high. They are simply going above and beyond the typical social media interaction. The Championship is executing small details...

As our Global Marketing Manager at ExactTarget, it's a privilege to work with each of our different market locations: North America, Australia/APAC, Brazil, and our EMEA locations which include the UK, France, Germany, and the Nordics. Working with each of these talented teams around the world means that I get to see interactive marketing in action.

In fact, there is a lot planned for this upcoming quarter: ExactTarget will be making a grand entrance into some of our relatively new offices with exciting positioning of our cross-channel capabilities. This week alone we had a group of global...

I'm excited to share that ExactTarget is expanding its award-winning Content Marketing team! We are currently hiring for the positions of Content Design Specialist and Content Development Specialist in our Indianapolis headquarters.

Content Design Specialist: Our newly created CONTENT DESIGN SPECIALIST role is custom-made for someone who can conceptualize, create, and optimize design for infographics, emails, eBooks, blog posts, presentations, interactive applications, mobile environments, and video animations. The right candidate will be a self-starter with proven design talent and an ability to...

In this #InspiredMarketing blog series, we are sharing predictions on the future of marketing from 25 industry thought leaders. These predictions have been compiled in our new whitepaper, Inspired Marketing Predictions for 2013. In today’s post, Linda Woolley from the DMA shares her thoughts.

Regulatory Threats Rise Up

The economic turmoil of the past four years has deeply affected the marketing industry. Yet, of all the changes I’ve observed, perhaps the most significant has been the evolution of marketing data as a highly effective driver for bottom-line growth.

According to “The Power of...

Twitter announced last month that they have come to an agreement with Nielsen to create a "Nielsen Twitter TV Rating" -- a tool that will measure the total audience for social TV activity on Twitter, including both people who comment and people who are exposed to their comments. This announcement is worthy of much more than 140 characters. 

Twitter and social media have been changing the way we go about our everyday life since their introduction. This is just another step along the disruptive technology's path. Steve Hasker, President, Global Media Products and Advertiser Solutions at Nielsen,...

We’re excited to announce the launch of ExactTarget’s new partner program, the ExactTarget Orange Partner Network, at Connections 2012!

The ExactTarget Orange Partner Network draws on ExactTarget’s entrepreneurial spirit, innovative technology, and commitment to client success—helping extend our Orange culture beyond the walls of our offices. The goal of the Orange Partner Network is to build and promote a world-class ecosystem of partners who deliver global expertise, comprehensive services and innovative technology to help ExactTarget's clients design, manage and deliver highly targeted...