Social Marketing Article

In today’s digital era, brands are trying everything to stand out from the crowd. With more channels, more users and more campaigns than ever before, breaking through the white noise is becoming even more difficult. There is no special formula, process or social media "expert" that can guarantee success when it comes to these efforts. For Dick’s Sporting Goods, they have found a way.

@DICKS simply asked, “What do you #RunFor?” It seems like a simple enough question. And then you think about it. Running is hard work. It can be painful. There’s rarely a tangible reward at the end of a run. So,...

Over the next several weeks, we will be sharing guest articles from experts in the realm of content marketing. This week, Jeb Banner writes.

Jeb is CEO of SmallBox, an Indianapolis web design and marketing company. He is also a co-founder of the Speak Easy, a local co-working space. He is happily married to his wife, Jenny, and they have three amazing daughters.

I attended a local tech panel recently and was starting to space out when ExactTarget's CMO Tim Kopp said something that caught my attention: "Serving is the new selling." It reminded me of something my buddy Kevin Bailey from Slingshot...

If you’ve mastered marketing automation 101, and even tackled our 9 steps to go beyond the marketing automation basics, then you’re ready for a few of our expert tips. At this point, you should be delivering highly relevant and dynamic email content, sending out drip emails to nurture prospects over time, and managing your social profiles using real-time and scheduled posts.

Sound about right? If so, then read on to find out how you can continue to improve your marketing automation efforts with these 8 steps, inspired by the Mastering the Art of Marketing Automation eBook:

1. Don’t get lazy. At...

Over the next several weeks, we will be sharing guest articles from experts in the realm of content marketing. This week, Josh Miles writes.

Josh Miles is principal and founder of Miles Design, a branding firm specializing in branding and website design for professional services and software firms. Josh is the author of the new Content Marketing Institute book Bold Brand: The New Rules for Differentiating, Branding, and Marketing Your Professional Services Firm.

“It will look like you guys are on everywhere, even if you’re not.”

Our media buyer always had a way of helping our clients make the...

Over the next several weeks, we will be sharing guest articles from experts in the realm of content marketing. This week, Steven Shattuck writes.

Steven is VP of Marketing at Bloomerang. He is a featured contributor to Social Media Today, and has been published in Search Engine Journal, Business2Community and the Content Marketing Institute. Steven has spoken at national and local conferences, and is frequently interviewed by traditional media outlets in Indianapolis for his expertise in social media marketing.

There's no shortage of content marketing advice out there. Now that most marketers...

(Warning: Sarcasm ahead)

Sometimes it’s just too easy. The power to communicate through email, mobile and social is all right there waiting for someone to start flooding the world with information. So you strike out into the world with your content and expect great results.

Using email for monthly news, SMS for quick bites of information and social media for event announcements might seem like a good idea, but you can easily end up with a bunch of disconnected content aimed at way too many targets. At this point, you're just sitting and back hoping for results without a specific goal in mind.

Misu...

“Email is dead – Sign up for our email to hear more…”

Google the phrase "email is dead" and you’ll find countless news articles, blogs and opinion pieces claiming the death of our beloved email is nigh--and that by 2018, email's trendier younger cousin social media will ensure that email becomes as popular a communication device as the carrier pigeon.

ExactTarget caught up with Dominic Edmunds--founder and president of SaleCycle, the basket abandonment email specialists--to get his thoughts on the death of email.

ExactTarget: So, Dominic, let’s get straight to the point. When will you be closing...

You can have a massive subscriber list and a powerful subject line ready to impress, but without the right email designer, your subscribers will be deleting your email long before they notice the CTA.

A highly skilled email designer is a crucial member of your email marketing team, as ExactTarget Regional Manager, Services (Central Region) Chris Studabaker points out. In a recent column for MarketingLand, Chris argues for six required skills that marketers should consider when hiring a designer for an email marketing campaign.

Be sure your next email designer is the best you’ve ever hired...

Want some advice on how to deal with those complainers on Facebook and Twitter? I recently wrote an article for Marketing Profs on this very topic!

For every complaint expressed, studies indicate that more than 25 go unregistered. Rather than complain, the vast majority of those dissatisfied customers simply take their business elsewhere. And the millions (or billions) of lost revenue are rarely recovered. But for those who do complain, there is no one right way to respond because every situation is unique. Instead, it's important to look at different complainer personas and react accordingly.

So...

I’ll make this quick, because I know you want to get back to your bracket and trying to figure out where it all went wrong...

According to MBA@UNC, more than a quarter of March Madness fans used mobile as their main viewing source during the 2012 finals—and more than two-thirds of consumers used their mobile devices in conjunction with watching the tournament on TV. See the specific mobile activity below:

Mobile Marketer confirms that mobile makes it even easier this year by giving fans 24/7 access to March Madness with live streaming. Turner Sports views mobile as a complement to...

March 27 is observed as the festival of colour, Holi, by a large number of Indians across the world. This holiday is a particuarly interesting social experiment, and one I've grown up observing since early childhood.

It’s a day celebrated not just with friends and family, but with pretty much anyone you can get your hands on--neighbour, neighbour's dog, et al. The key is dousing your victim in either coloured water or colourful powder dyes. In fact, it's not unusual for prim and proper suited office workers refusing to get into the spirit of things to be hit with water balloons thrown by school...

I recently read an article on TFB (The Future Buzz) which argued against the principle of using simple communications to reach out to the mass of your customers. I must admit, I wholly agree with assuming that you have a smart base of customers! It is definitely apparent that "dumbing down" messages does not guarantee that they will be engaged with by everyone, especially in today's digital age of smart and service-focused consumers.

The same blog post argues that using generic and simple messaging can portray your brand as "cheap" and "untrustworthy." I am not a businessman, but I am sure...

Organisations have been using social media for a long time now. The focus seems to be on pushing content out to the audience and expecting them to consume. But how often do you consume the content that your customers are sending to you and act on it?

Conversocial recently released some data stating that “88% of consumers are less likely to buy from companies ignoring social complaints” and that “90% of upset customers can be retained with great social customer service.” You can see the details here.

This is occurring due to the focus on marketing in the social space. Traditionally, Facebook...

While reading a recent article posted by Chris Penn called Which 3 Metrics Should You Pay Attention To?, I found myself thinking that his suggestions were great for a majority of companies... but what about those companies wanting to be agile with their marketing? Do those metrics work for agile marketing teams?

Agile marketers look at their campaigns, and their metrics, in a way that's slightly different from most. For instance, Chris' post says that the three most basic metrics for any business are audience, leads, and sales.

I would agree these are key areas to measure regardless of whether...

Permission-based email has become the foundation of successful one-to-one marketing, and a company's database of email subscribers is one of its most valuable assets.

And with good reason! As our 2012 Channel Preference Survey revealed, 66% of US online consumers report making at least one purchase that was triggered by an offer received via email. And for BtoB marketing, nothing tops email for aiding the customer’s buying decision. In a 2012 article, BtoB Magazine reported that 59% of BtoB marketers say email is their most effective channel for generating revenue.

At the recent 2013 MarketingShe...

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...

The Burger King Hack (and Jeep, too!)… the “Harlem Shake” viral craze… the end of Hotmail… and mobile, mobile, and more mobile! It’s practically impossible to keep up with the news in the world of cross-channel marketing.

Luckily, the Content Marketing team here at ExactTarget is here to help! We’re always on the lookout for fresh, interesting content, to help you stay up-to-date with the latest news and trends.

Here are a few of the top stories that caught our eye this week:

Jeep, BK Hacks Shine Light on Twitters’ Treatment of Marketers (Ad Age)

STUDY: How Are Top Brands Using Instagram? (AllFaceboo...

When it comes to the job search, social media has almost become self-destructive. With younger and younger generations adapting to technology and social media faster and faster, digital footprints are being created at younger and younger ages.

Last weekend, ExactTarget had the opportunity to sponsor and attend the 2013 Doster Leadership Conference, a student-run event which connects 100 top student leaders from the Krannert School of Management (Purdue University) with corporate representatives for a weekend-long leadership conference in Indianapolis.

The event's hosts had the foresight to...

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...