Confessions of a Digital Marketer

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...

Is your brand on every social media platform under the sun yet mastering engagement in none?

The virtues of having a social media presence are blindingly obvious. After all, what brand wouldn’t want to connect with their customers, build brand reputation and ultimately increase sales? But all too often this desire to engage online gets side-tracked and you find yourself staring down the barrel of multiple social media profiles with no notifications. So how can you optimise your efforts on social media and increase engagement with fans and followers?

Let’s take a look at some best practice...

You’ve all read the stats and seen the infographics: consumers are awash with technology, and mobility is leading the charge. Many marketers already have mobile marketing strategies in place--but for those who don’t, now is the time to prioritise. It’s no longer a matter of just being mobile-friendly. You have to think mobile first.

Remember, you’re up close and personal

Consider how you use your phone. You keep it in a special case, use it to take and store personal photos and communicate with loved ones. You work with it. You play with it. Heck, most of us even sleep with it! The smartphone...

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...

I'm pleased to announce the release a new collection Inspired Marketing Predictions for 2013, specific to Australia. The guide features predictions for emerging trends across email, mobile, social, cross-channel, and marketing automation from industry leaders, including Jeff Bullas, Chris Baumann, and Iggy Pintado, as well as thought leaders from Adobe, Microsoft, ExactTarget, and the Direct Marketing Association.

“The new year provides new opportunities for marketers to create innovative customer experiences that build loyalty and deliver business results across email, mobile, social media,...

The customer experience. Mere invocation of the words makes seasoned retail marketers misty for the days when they controlled every aspect of the customer’s journey from parking lot to purchase. Today, however, the customer experience that retailer’s work so hard to create is under siege, thanks to internet-enabled smartphones, barcode scanning apps, and comparison shopping tools. Indeed, the balance of informational power has shifted to consumers, and retailers are scrambling to fend off competition in every aisle of their own stores.

For those retailers hoping to avoid a fate similar to that...

VIVID, the annual Festival of Lights, Music and Ideas was on last month in Australia's arguably best city -Sydney! Creative entrepreneurs, digital marketers and businesses were invited to showcase their ideas, products and talent to over half a million unique visitors, through Vivid Sydney's vast array of tourism hospitality marketing, networking, sponsorship and experiential programs.

Through creating interactive and memorable experiences, Vivid Sydney was able to create a viral marketing storm that resonated across Facebook, Twitter, Email, YouTube and several other social channels. It is...

This week I presented the Digital Down Under, our Australian 'Subscribers, Fans, and Followers' research at Bazaarvoice's Interactive Marketing Conference in Sydney & Melbourne. The 'Ignite' conference is designed to give Bazaarvoice customers an opportunity to network with other people in the online social industry, hear from Bazaarvoice subject matter experts and to focus on best practices around Facebook and Twitter for business.

For those of you who are new to Bazaarvoice, they're an Integrated Partner of ExactTarget that bring the power of social commerce and the customer voice to the...

The ExactTarget Nexus team invites you to participate in our first Australian #NexusCafe Twitter chat! Our North American colleagues have been meeting weekly to discuss emerging topics and trends from across the interactive marketing world, and now we think it's time for 'Down Under' to join the conversation.

The virtual coffee chat is hosted directly on Twitter, hosted by @ExactTargetAU. Follow the #NexusCafe hashtag in your favorite Twitter application and be sure and add the hashtag to your tweet to participate. Check out some of our past discussion topics. And don't forget, the person with...