When the quirky and soulful independent hit Garden State was released in 2004, it captured the hearts of audiences around the world and helped creator and star Zach Braff gather a social following any marketer would salivate over. 

However, it is the way that Braff is utilizing this audience for his follow-up project "Wish I Was Here" that is really capturing the attention of marketers.

Braff took the unusual step of funding his new project through crowd-funding platform Kickstarter two weeks ago. The project has over 37,000 backers at the time of writing and over $2.5 million pledged already...

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The recent success of social music platforms, such as Spotify and Songza, has inspired Twitter to expand its reach into the world of arts and entertainment. Primarily used as a collective newsource to share information in 140 character chunks, Twitter launched its music platform #Music last week to support music sharing and promotion. This comes only a few months after the release of Twitter's video support application, Vine, which can be used as further evidence of Twitter's expansion into other forms of communication and sharing.

#Music allows Twitter users to explore popular, emerging,...

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The first thing most aspiring marketers learn is the importance of identifying and subsequently engaging those beautiful people called “the audience” no matter where they live online. This lesson gains wholehearted acceptance from everyone in the marketing world. However, the execution becomes complicated, and soon we all learn that feeding something like a blog everyday just simply isn’t enough.

We must put ourselves on the customer's online path.

Think goals first, campaigns second and tactics third.

What’s the goal? Always start there. That’s what the university lecturer taught you a long time...

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Last week I had the pleasure of listening to Lori Wizdo from Forrester Research on a webinar with our own Adam Blitzer. It was a great learning experience, covering how the sales and marketing processes have changed in recent years. Since it's so hard to give up an hour to attend a webinar these days, I wanted to share a few key takeaway from Lori's presentation.

Stat #1: 86% of B2B buyers engage with social media while working

I love this stat, and here's why. As marketers we have two weapons at our disposal: tools and techniques. Most marketers use the same set of tools; it's the techniques...

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"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...

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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...

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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...

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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.

During our recent chat, DJ Waldow, founder and CEO of Waldow Social, joined us for a discussion on Email and Social Cross-Promotions. Having worked in the interactive marketing industry for many years, DJ recently started his own company to develop email and social media marketing programs which help build leads, sales, and online...Read More »

Google+ - It's All About Relevance

I am very excited to share my first thoughts and impressions after using Google+ for the last few days.  Also, as an email marketer, I want to focus on how this will impact businesses and what it means for the world of email.

So far, I love the concept of circles.  Some people on the Internet are saying it's too complicated, and people will never use it, but I've found it very intuitive.  I have yet to look at any of the Help videos, and I've only glanced at the Help documentation, yet everything seems to be where you would expect it and work the way you would...Read More »

Each week, marketers from around the world join the ExactTarget Nexus partner ecosystem on Twitter for a conversation about trends and best practices in the interactive marketing industry.  We call the virtual coffee chat the Nexus Café.

A recent #NexusCafe chat discussed social listening and online reputation management with Casey Knox, pictured in this fun photo with her team. Casey is a social media consultant and PR manager at Area203Digital, a full-service interactive marketing agency focused on strategy, analytics, design, and creative.Casey joined us previously on the #NexusCafe chat...Read More »

Remember when it used to be a competitive advantage just to be “active” in social media? Listening to customers, responding to their complaints, communicating to with them on a personal level - these were the things, done even moderately well, that used to give businesses an edge. Based on recent research, it looks like we've now entered a new era of social media.

This month, eMarketer reportedthat 60% of the Fortune 500, or 3 in 5, are now Tweeting (up from 35% in 2009) and 56% are using Facebook. Of those, one third are "regularly" interacting with customers through @replies and retweets. In...

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Interactive marketing has two sides of the equation: the marketer and the end customer. The relationship that the two develop plays a major role into how effective communication is.



Marketers need to listen to customers and see where and how they want to be communicated with.  Customers need to let marketers know what they like and don't like. The Subscribers, Fans, and Followers research being done by ExactTarget helps clear up some trends in the world of marketing. Part 3 of the research pointed out that marketers cannot meet the needs of every customer with a single strategy or campaign....Read More »

With CoTweet joining the ExactTarget family, we see the convergence of the power of social media and email communication; an Internet Marketing Hub to maintain relationships on both platforms.

In Guy Kawasaki’s blog post, he wrote, “ExactTarget’s acquisition of CoTweet heralds the beginning of the growth of Social as an integrated marketing channel and is nothing short of being historical.” At the Twitter Conference (#140tc) on March 8 in Seattle, WA, I had the opportunity to listen to panelists and professionals talk about Twitter. The two words that kept coming up were relationships and...Read More »

Last week was a tremendous week here at ExactTarget with the acquisition announcement of CoTweet.  This acquisition sent a lot of buzz through the press (we really have been all-a-Twitter!), Twitter and even my inbox! I couldn't be more excited about the future of interactive marketing.

I've used CoTweet since the spring of 2009 to listen and engage with ExactTarget's Twitter conversations.  Honestly, after going thru multiple processes and using multiple different applications - it is the only platform truly built for businesses to manage their Twitter conversations.

Email Marketing Meet... Read More »