Mobile Marketing Platform

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...

ExactTarget’s February 2013 release went live over the weekend, and several exciting enhancements and additions joined the cast.

The Welcome Series Playbook is now available via the Interactive Marketing Hub

Welcome series campaigns are critical players in the interactive marketing industry. They greet customers, and are often the first impression for a company’s email marketing. Subscribers tend to be most engaged at the point of opt-in, and the recently released Welcome Series Playbook makes it easy for marketers to act on this in a few simple steps. Take a few minutes and read about the Welcom...

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...

For the past three years, ExactTarget's SUBSCRIBERS, FANS & FOLLOWERS research series has taken an in-depth look at consumer preferences and behaviors as they relate to email, mobile, and social channels. In Marketers From Mars, the 20th report in that series, we turn the tables and look at ourselves: marketers.

As marketers, it’s our job to be on the cutting edge. We were most likely the first among our friends to have smartphones. We were the first to tweet, pin, like, follow, and have a business page on Facebook. We Skype, not Keek. We Google Hangout, not FaceTime. We are the early adopters...

Kyle Lacy recently posted a compilation of 140 Mobile Marketing Tips collected from marketing professionals via email, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media outlets. These are great 140-characters-or-less nuggets of knowledge you can apply to your mobile strategy. I’ll dissect a few favorites here:

#6 – Always include a call to action in push or SMS
It’s mind-blowing how brands invest so much in advertising yet leave out a simple call to action. As an example, only two Super Bowl ads included a mobile CTA! In an analysis on these pricey misses, Jeff Rohrs discusses how “branding only” ads...

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...

I had the pleasure of interviewing Matt Thomson, VP of business development and platform at Klout. During the interview, we talked about the future of marketing, influencer relationships, and social currency. There are many times when brands focus so much on lead generation and advertising that they forget the influencers within their community. 

The key to a successful social, mobile, and email strategy? Social engagement. Personalization. Influence. We are seeing a mobilizing base of influencers that is useful. How do brands get a better share of voice within the influencer community that...

You already know that email marketing is a powerful conversion tool and perhaps the most critical source of traffic for online purchases. But did you know that it takes up to five or more customer interactions before a purchase takes place? Exhausting! In fact, some studies show that only .25% of NEW site visitors will convert to a customer. That’s a lot of work for little return.

So, take a breath and nurture those new visitors with series of meaningful and personal interactions before asking for the sale. There are many ways to do this within the ExactTarget platform--and SocialPages and...

"We record anything, anywhere, anytime.” - Sam Phillips

Way back when in the year of 1950, Sam Phillips created a platform for what would become the foundation of American rock and roll. Sam Phillips founded Sun Records, a recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee. Phillips not only discovered Elvis Presley, he also helped launched the career of many of the most important artists in music history: Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Howlin’ Wolf, just to name a few.

Back in 1950, there were far fewer channels to reach customers: television was a luxury that few could afford, only 10% of homes had a...

ExactTarget’s first release of 2013 is now live! We’re constantly hard at work behind the scenes to deliver new features, improvements, and enhancements across all product lines. Here are three things that went live with this release that you could benefit from (or might just find interesting):

1. Distributed Sending = Empowerment

ExactTarget Distributed Sending is an easy-to-use application accessed via the Interactive Marketing Hub. It delivers an email marketing solution where corporate can provide email templates, images/logos, subscriber lists, and more for local marketers to use.

End users...

As a nod to the North American International Auto Show starting today in Detroit, we present this bonus #InspiredMarketing Predictions post from Jamyn Edis of Dash Labs. These predictions have been compiled in our new whitepaper, Inspired Marketing Predictions for 2013.

The Automobile Ascends

As the evolution of consumer engagement moves from web to social to mobile, we'll see an increasing desire to leverage the latest innovations. The amusing thing is, a lot of that will be right under our noses— everyday objects. Some people call this the “internet of things.” Others call it “physical...

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,...

Over the next several weeks, we will be 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. Today, ExactTarget’s own Bryan Wade shares his thoughts.

The Year of the First Impression

When it comes to email, 2013 will be all about making that first impression of the email count, reaching your readers wherever they are, and making sure your message gets read. The changing landscape for where and how emails are being viewed opens the door for new innovations in email....

For those of you who do not know, apparently the world is going to end on Friday, December 21. This date is regarded as the end-date of a 5125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. 

There are a couple of theories on how the world will end:

1. Mr. Earth meets Black Hole and the ensuing chaos will destroy mankind.
2. North Pole will play musical chairs with the South Pole and destroy mankind.
3. Aliens will visit the planet, consume all the fast food, and destroy mankind. 

Many scientists have shrugged off the notion of the world ending, stating that the 2012 phenomenon is purely a...

Over the next several weeks, we will be 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. Today, Christopher Parkin of Adobe Systems shares his thoughts.

The Millisecond Opportunity

The explosion in data and content, while a challenge to marketers, is leading to innovation.

We are rapidly moving into a post-PC world of unprecedented mobility, social connectedness, and content creation. The types, power, and connectivity of the devices we use is creating an increasing...

After attending LeWeb 2012 in Paris, there’s no doubt that we are embarking on a new era of the hyper-connected consumer. Consumers once viewed the internet on their desktops, which has quickly evolved to a laptop, and then the mobile device, and then finally – the web protrudes into our daily lives via connected objects and the “Internet of Things.” With products evolving into brand objects such as the Evian Smart Drop, which allows consumers to simplify their lives by placing product orders without using a computer or a phone, or tshirtOS, a programmable t-shirt allowing consumers to...

Marketers today are faced with a challenge. Hyper-connected consumers have a myriad of channels with which they can engage with brands, whether it’s through email, mobile, social, the Web, or other digital channels, and they don’t only desire this engagement – they expect it.

To deliver on these expectations, it’s essential for marketers to understand their customers and their specific, individual needs. They can then be sure to deliver the right message, to the right audience, through the right channel, at the right time.

An October, 2012 commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on...