Integrated Platform

Each Thursday at 11am EST, marketers from around the world join the ExactTarget user community on Twitter for a conversation about trends and campaign ideas across the interactive marketing industry.  We call this virtual coffee chat the ExactTarget Café. 

During this week's chat, we were happy to have to have Simms Jenkins (@SimmsJenkins) founder & CEO of BrightWave Marketing (@BrightWave) join us. Tied to the launch of his second book, The New Inbox, the focus of this week's chat was around the future of email, how to truly integrate social and mobile, and what trends and disruptions are...

The ExactTarget team invites you to participate in our #ETCafe Twitter chat this Thursday (and every Thursday) from 11am - 12pm ET, where we discuss emerging topics and trends from across the interactive marketing world. This virtual coffee chat is hosted directly on Twitter by @ExactTarget using the hashtag #ETCafe.

This week, we're excited to have Simms Jenkins (@SimmsJenkins) founder & CEO of BrightWave Marketing (@BrightWave). Tied to the launch of his second book, The New Inbox, this week's chat will discuss the future of email, how to truly integrate social and mobile, and what trends and...

Regardless of how long you’ve been using (or not using) a marketing automation tool, you should always be on the lookout for ways to improve your marketing efforts—whether it’s by implementing drip campaigns, exploring the wonders of dynamic content, or creating highly targeted email blasts for specific audiences. The point is, there are always new and exciting things to try, especially with all of the extra time that you free up by implementing an automation system in the first place.

But how do you know what the next step is?

The best way to make sure that you’re always progressing with your...

When it comes to the marketing industry, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve. Not long ago, digital marketing was only a whisper within corporate marketing teams – now it’s here, it’s as competitive as ever and it’s completely changing the way we do business. Here are my predictions for what’s to come over the next year.

Smart, personalised content
It’s time to stop being oh-so-frightened of data capture and start taking advantage of the fact that personalised content makes browsing the web an absolute pleasure! Take Linkedin, for example – simply log in and you’re presented with the...

Mastered the basics of marketing automation? If the answer is yes, I'm guessing you've already begun reaping the rewards of your initial automation efforts. I'm also surmising that your CRM system is busy collecting plenty of customer and prospect data, and you're actively engaged on multiple social channels. At this point, you might even have a little extra time in your schedule to dive into your RSS feed, or take a longer smoothie break.

You're off to a good start.

That being said, there's always more to learn about the complex clockwork of marketing automation. Take your knowledge to the...

Marketing automation is the intersection of many useful features and functions. It's a proven fact that marketing automation software gives marketers full visibility into aspects of the sales cycle that were previously a mystery. But the sheer number of buttons and tools can seem daunting if they're not old-hat to you just yet.

As you begin to build an effective marketing automation program, you can begin to gain a holistic view of your marketing activities. From there, you can streamline traditionally manual processes (like customer segmentation, email marketing, and campaign management).

Start ...

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...

When it comes to daily usage of various online channels, our Marketers from Mars research reveals some interesting trends and differences between marketers and consumers. In many ways, usage rates follow similar trends of prior reports, with email, text, Facebook, and Twitter rounding out the top four.

What’s interesting to note is the higher rates of consumer usage in emerging channels such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Foursquare. While marketers use nearly every digital platform more frequently than consumers, these platforms show different usage patterns.

If consumers are there, should...

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...

Cross-channel marketing. We're all trying to do it, but how many of us are doing it well? When it comes down to it, how do you put together a really successful cross-channel campaign?

Our advice? Build one campaign across email, mobile, and social media!

In this series of blog posts, I'm sharing three easy steps you can follow to accomplish this:

1. Create a Sweepstakes
2. Get a Committment and Follow Through
3. Measure, Refine, and Repeat!

Today, we'll explore the third and final step.

Step 3: Measure, Refine, and Repeat

In order to truly understand the impact of your campaign--and learn from the results--,...

The 85th Academy Awards were held this past Sunday, February 24, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. While stars from the films of the past year waltzed down the red carpet, a reported 40.3 million viewers around the world (Nielsen Ratings) tuned in to see what became the most-watched entertainment telecast in the last 3 years.

Total viewership nearly doubled the Golden Globes and quadrupled the Grammys. But in a world of increasing social connectivity, something was happening in the homes of many that may be more important than which actor was snubbed and which walked away with an award.

The Osca...

These days, nearly everyone I know owns a smartphone. People (and myself included) are switched on 24/7. We can access email, social media, and other online content anytime, anywhere.

Marketers are finally catching on to this trend worldwide and are starting to target mobile devices in their planning. According to The State of Digital Marketing in Australia, marketers will be dedicating up to half of their marketing budget to digital activities in 2013. How incredible is that? And for a channel that wasn’t even on marketers’ radar five years ago. Anyway, here are the three themes from the...

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona kicked off in full force on Sunday. In addition to presenting at Pepcom, the ExactTarget Mobile team had the chance to talk to hundreds of press and analysts about our expanded mobile platform—all while eating wonderful Spanish food and enjoying some Catalan music!

We also attended the MWC Show, with its eight different exhibit halls. One of the highlights of the show was the Connected City, which included examples of all the ways our lives are—and will be—impacted by mobile across home, health, work, entertainment, and more. The high point for me was the...

If there was ever a buzzword in business that defined an era it would have to be “Big Data.” Everywhere you look there’s another article about merging data sets to make more relevant business decisions. To kick off blogging in 2013 I plan to write a few posts about how ExactTarget’s platform helps organizations leverage other technology providers to make more sense of this term. But first, what is Big Data? IBM shares some pretty eye-opening statistics in defining this term:

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in...

While you may know that SocialPages is a leading social media marketing application for creating, designing, and publishing custom Facebook Tabs, you may not know about some of its awesome features, like easy-to-use scheduled content updates, Smart URLs, and key partner integrations that can help you expand your Facebook marketing efforts.

1. Scheduled Content Updates: Content is so essential to Facebook marketing, because without it, you aren't giving users a good reason to keep coming back and engaging with your brand.  SocialPages makes it easy to maintain limitless versions of each tab and...

The online masses were first introduced to the wonders of webmail in the mid-90s, and one of the pioneers in that space was a service dubbed HoTMaiL, which launched to the general public in 1996. Their moniker’s odd use of letter case called out the technology that powered the service: HTML. From that point on, the market and landscape for webmail has immensely proliferated and evolved. (Microsoft eventually acquired HoTMaiL in 1997.)

Out with the old, in with the new. In July 2012, Microsoft launched a preview of Outlook.com, their new email service that’s the planned successor to Hotmail....

STRATEGY OVERVIEW:
Providing superior service for your customers should be your number one priority. But keeping your customers satisfied can be challenging and requires ongoing maintenance. That’s why SMS can be an invaluable weapon in your marketing arsenal during those times when it’s necessary to get a quick communication out to your customers.

By launching an SMS response program, you make your customer service representatives available to assist your most critical customer interactions and provide a more convenient experience for those choosing to accept assistance via SMS. It’s a win-win...

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, blogger, author, and business consultant Mark Schaefer shares his thoughts.

2013: The Year of Instagram!

One of the biggest social media trends is the emphasis on visual content, and new research from The Social Habit seems to confirm that the photo-sharing site is poised for a breakout.

Of the Americans surveyed who currently use a social media platform,...

New York's favorite wall-crawling superhero has taken over Broadway in the theatre production "Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark." Well known for its early technical difficulty and music by U2's Bono and The Edge, one of its lesser recognized features is how the show is connecting with audience members through social media.

The production is a strong mix between rock-ballad musical and Cirque du Soleil-style acrobatics that extend throughout the entire theatre. Needless to say, there is plenty of audience participation involved in this stage experience, which the show is capitalizing on through its...