Birthday Emails #Infographic –This email client solution provider conducted research involving more than 180 B2C brands—including retailers, restaurants, manufacturers, travel and hospitality, and nonprofits—shows that there’s plenty of opportunity for brands to delight subscribers with best wishes on their special day. Check out the stats and tactics below to learn the who, what, when, why and how of birthday emails. Exact Target
Can Cameo Make Two-minute Movies as Addictive as Vines? – With Cameo, your movies can be two minutes long, but no shot can last for longer than six seconds. The principle is inspired by Vine, and the lessons it learned early on: that the attention span of the average person is pretty short. The Verge
IBM Researcher Can Build a Detailed Personality Profile of You Based on 200 Tweets – The breakdown is based on “psycholinguistics,” or analysis of word choice, and includes 41 traits. Business Insider
Top Content Marketing Tactics for 2014 – B2B marketers’ confidence in content marketing continues to grow; content marketing usage rates are up from last year; and, not surprisingly, marketers with a documented content strategy are having the greatest success, according to just-released research. Read how marketers rate Social Media, On-site Articles, Blogs, Events, Case Studies, Videos and more. MarketingProfs
Oracle Adds Leading Content Marketing Platform Compendium to Eloqua Marketing Cloud – Compendium’s data-driven approach aligns relevant content with customer data and profiles to help companies more effectively attract prospects, engage buyers, accelerate conversion of prospects to opportunities, increase adoption, and drive revenue growth. Oracle
Forbes BrandVoice Accounts for 20% of Total Ad Revenue – BrandVoice, which launched three years ago as AdVoice, is a big-ticket service that allows brands to contribute ad-labeled content that, if it works right, behaves the same way editorial content does. It appears in the same content streams and gets bumped to ‘most popular’ content modules and social trending lists if it performs well. Folio
Google’s New Ad Star: You – The search giant will soon have individual names and profile photos pitching products, across its sites as “shared endorsements.” The move encourages word-of-mouth marketing but is already raising privacy alarms. You can easily opt out, however. The Wall Street Journal
Content Marketing Director: Top Marketing Job of 2014 – And, according to HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report, companies that clearly define marketing and sales roles in relation to content marketing, experience a significantly lower customer acquisition cost than those that don’t have this in place. CommPRO
Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014 – Mobile devices, mobile apps and the Internet of everything. Forbes
Five Examples of Brands That are Nailing Pinterest – Three year-old social site Pinterest has over 70m users, and according to a study by Shareaholic, Pinterest is driving more traffic to publishers than Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and Google+ combined. Check out these retailers getting it right. eConsultancy
The Complete Guide to Twitter Etiquette – A comprehensive guide to Twitter etiquette (or Twetiquette), so you can look your best on social media. Mashable
BtoB to Merge with AdAge in 2014 – The move reflects the growing overlap between B2B and consumer strategies as both grow more focused on targeting and engaging specific customer groups. BtoB
Want To Find Brand Ambassadors? Start With Your Employees – The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, a trust and credibility survey that collects data from more than 30,000 people, found that regular rank-and-file company employees have more credibility than executives. This news represents a fantastic opportunity for employees with direct contact to your company’s customer base to become vocal advocates. Forbes
5 Provocative and Daring Marketing Campaigns in 2013 – More and more companies are starting to embrace multi-channel marketing, touching consumers on many levels at once. The best modern marketing campaigns make use of current events, popular culture, and emotions. Let’s look at 5 of our favorite boundary-pushing marketing campaigns from 2013. Marketo
14 Google Tools You Didn’t Know Existed – Now that the industry has written eulogies for Google Reader, it’s a good time to remember that Google has an abundance of other resources that may not be as popular but still deserve a spotlight. Mashable
Interesting Partnership Between Bing and Klout – Search is one of the most common ways that information about you is discovered by other people. “Snapshots” on Bing enables anyone who signs up on Klout to verify and manage how they appear in Bing search results, based on their public social network profiles. Search Engine Land
Phone-Wielding Shoppers Strike Fear In Retailers – Retailers used to think they had customers in the bag, coaxing them inside stores by enticing them with specials. Now, thanks to mobile shopping programs, competitors can match or beat a store’s prices—even as customers are standing in its aisles. Check out Lee’s post about it. The Wall Street Journal
Survey: 100 Most Beloved Brands – APCO surveyed 70,000 consumers in 15 major international markets about 600 of the world’s biggest brands to arrive at its top 100 rankings. Interestingly, the Washington, D.C., firm’s study measured eight emotional feelings people have toward brands: understanding, approachability, relevance, admiration, curiosity, identification, empowerment, and pride. Do you agree with brands that made the cut? Marketing Pilgrim
From the Online Community
On “Marketing Automation Essentials for Small Businesses,” Stefan Krafft said “I really do like this post and a fully agree that the time has come for SMB companies to take advantage of the technology behind it. The obstacle is, as you clearly pointed out producing relevant content. However I recommend everyone to get started right away even though they only have got one or two pieces of good content. Why? Because you learn will you´re taking your first baby steps in this field and that will give more knowledge about how your audiences respond to your content. From there, it´s much easier to take the next step. There is one solution out there which actually allows Marketers to get started with Marketing Automation without any cost what so ever.”
On “8 Questions About B2B Content Marketing You Really Need the Answers To,” Matthew White said, “Good point about content objects/assets vs outcomes and experience. Repeatedly, I’m surprised by how much timeliness and relevance trump quantity and sometimes even quality, as with images. Keeping existing content – including those images – up-to-date and engaging is becoming more and more important.
“If you’re not focused on outcome and experience, it’s easy to count content assets with tally marks.”
On “Content Marketing Tactics That Work: eBooks,” Barbara Mckinney said, “Great insight. Thanks for sharing these tips. If done right, eBooks can be key tool in your painless prospecting efforts.”
What’s Your Take?
Are Google Sponsored Endorsements a big deal? Are your employees your number one brand ambassadors? What do your tweets say about you?
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
