Web

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...

Wireframing is one of those mysterious steps of a web or email design project that can be tempting to skip. After all, once the site map and general architecture is established, everyone is eager to see those first beautiful mockups of the homepage complete with amazing photography, perfectly kerned typography and glossy buttons. 

However, taking the time to wireframe before jumping headfirst into Photoshop and mockups can spare everyone headaches down the road. Hereare a few reasons why:

Wireframing serves as a communication tool early in the design process
Developing a full mockup of an entire...

Design and content go hand in hand. With that, one of the biggest questions marketers ask is often about appropriate copy length. Let's take a look at the psychology behind decision-making and conversions to best inform what kind and how much content to use.

In a recent web clinic by MECLABS Marketing Experiments, Long Copy vs. Short Copy, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin walked through several great examples and principles, asking the following questions:

• Do customers prefer shorter pages?
• Are attention spans decreasing?
• Can long-copy pages be effective?
• How much information is too much, or too little?
• Is...

One of the great things about working on the web is that the work is never done. Even after a website or landing page is launched, there is always opportunity for improvement. Additional pages will be added. Some will be revamped. New microsites and landing pages will spawn at a moment's notice.

With all this movement and additional work, it is possible that the original designer or team that worked on the initial launch won't be as heavily involved in these new projects. But how does one maintain consistency and brand integrity with projects being passed through so many hands?

Unless you spend...

In my last post, "Are you Leaving Money on the Table by Manually Merchandising Your Site?", I explained how retailers can take a staggered approach to migrate from manually merchandising their ecommerce site to using automated recommendations.

Also in this last post, I mentioned the importance of not relying on “free” ecommerce platform add-ons. Today we’ll take this idea a step further and focus on how sophisticated product recommendations engines incorporate real-time customer insights with merchant rules to create a truly personalized experience for your customers. 

#5 Way Retail Marketers...

In my last post, "Are you Leaving Money on the Table by Sending Non-Targeted or Blast Emails?", I explained that sending the same offer to your entire database could actually be hurting your sales efforts and causing you to leave money on the table.

In this post, we will shift gears to focus on your merchandising strategy. By utilizing a "crawl, walk, run" strategy that leverages automation, you can actually increase AOV, boost your conversion rate, and provide your shoppers with an overall better shopping experience.

#4 Way Retail Marketers are Leaving Money On the Table: Manually Merchandising...

I'll start with a few simple words to remember: responsive web design is kind of a big deal. Even back in 2012, Mashable declared that 2013 would be the year of responsive web design, and it couldn't be more true.

I was able to attend a great webinar this week given by Josh Miles of Miles Design called the Responsive Design Revolution. He focused on why responsive design is becoming critical for websites, so I'll take a quick break from talking about email design and share his thoughts on web. For those that focus on email, remember that your message is only as good as the site that you're...

In my last post, "Do You have an Abandoned Cart Strategy?," I demonstrated how retailers could be leaving money on the table by not having a reengagement strategy to help shoppers return to their site and complete their purchase. In this post, we’ll be asking retailers if they are narrowing their shopping experience to a single channel and how this might impact their opportunity to capture revenue across channels.

#2 Way Retail Marketers are Leaving Money On the Table: Narrowing your shopping experience to a single channel

It’s no surprise that customers today interact through a variety of...

Let’s face it: gaining and retaining customers can often feel like a delicate negotiation process. What is the right mix between what you’ll give in the way of offers and discounts to what your customers gain through their interactions with you?

However, retailers will have more than just price in their bargaining arsenals. In this post, we explore the benefits of using an abandoned cart program to recapture lost revenue.

#1 Way Retail Marketers are Leaving Money On the Table: Not Having an Abandoned Cart Strategy

Our Retail Touchpoints Exposed data found that only 22 percent of retailers on the...

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...

As a follow-up to the article I wrote for ClickZ the other day, I wanted to talk a bit more about the use of technology and the adoption of best practices in large B2B organizations.

My research for the ClickZ article looked at B2B companies on the Fortune 500* and their adoption of modern marketing tools. But when you look at the raw data, it becomes clear that there are three easy lessons for any B2B marketer.

Lesson 1: Technology is only the beginning

When adopting radical new technologies, the technology itself is often only part of the story. The other part is a shift in thinking or action....

What image formats are most appropriate to use when I’m building an email? Let's explore the three common image file formats appropriate for email: JPGs, GIFs, and PNGs.

JPGs

The file name .jpg stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It’s one of the most common image formats, allowing for compression adjusting to benefit speedy load times for web display. The format utilizes compression that is best for image slices that include photography and images that need a higher amount of data to show detail. When you save the image for web use (often referred to as "save for web" in Photoshop),...

Leverage the data you gathered this holiday season to build long-terms relationships with your shoppers!

Any lasting customer relationship begins with an initial interaction, and for many shoppers, the holidays were like a first date on your site.

Now, the “getting to know you” process begins with these thousands of new customers. With each click, these shoppers are giving you access to their thoughts and buying habits. Each product viewed, description clicked, shopping cart filled, and item purchased gives you insight into each unique shopper’s wants, needs, preferences, and lifestyles.

And just...

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...

At ExactTarget, we pride ourselves in our ability to understand the digital market from the UK to Australia. In order to stay ahead of trends, we must dig through research to understand the consumption behaviors of consumers. The device, site, and usage is changing dramatically, from the millenniall to the baby boomer.

As marketers it is important that we understand how consumers use technology from mobile to the social Internet. At ExactTarget, we spent some time looking at the most recent research over the digital consumption behavior of Australia. Here's what we found : 

Important Stats of...