 |
|
|
Online Communities Strengthen Brand Power (Chief Marketer)
|
|
Posted: 05/24/2009
|
|
 |
|
|
No matter your product or service, building online brands means building virtual communities that cultivate customer loyalty and provide lasting value. Shaping customer experiences that allows for custom-control, targeted e-mail follow-ups and strategic communications will not only maximize the time your customers spend with your brand, it will also increase your messaging impact and build mindshare, too. It never hurts to make the experience enjoyable, too, through elements like compelling visual design, intuitive navigation and user-generated content. Take for instance, the Pen Collective, by eROI and Wacom. The group now boasts more than 3000 active members, due to the brand’s intuitive mix of tutorials, testimonials, wit and social networking to create an inimitable personal connection to the brand.
|
|
Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Content Strategy,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications,
Technology Implementation
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
|
|
|
|
World Wise: Navigating a Global Market with an Eye toward China (BtoB Online)
|
|
Posted: 05/24/2009
|
|
|
|
|
Domestic marketers looking to tap into international markets should set their sights on China. The best place to start? “Leveraging search engines, which drive close to 40% of most suppliers' traffic, is the best way to enter a lot of foreign markets at the moment, and for the best price,” said Marisa Edmund, VP-marketing and communications at Edmund Optics America. China’s gross domestic production (GDP) is projected to grow by 8% this year and new research from Accenture reveals ample opportunity exists for customer-focused U.S. companies. An alarming 55% of companies in China switched vendors last year due to a growing international intolerance for poor customer service.
|
|
Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Marketing Communications
Region:
North America,
Asia Pacific
Audience:
Business to Business
|
|
|
|
The Plain Truth: Winning Email Tactics (BtoB Online)
|
|
Posted: 05/24/2009
|
|
|
|
|
It’s no surprise that marketers looking for high-impact email solutions take maximum advantage of Web technology to reach their audiences. Simply put, that means incorporating plain text e-mails into the marketing mix. While flashy HTML e-mails are great attention-grabbers and response-trackers, they aren’t always accessible to every user. The first rule of thumb: key content should be viewable without scrolling. Keeping offers, calls to action, brand identity and deadlines/time markers all at-a-glance is likely to increase your impact. While you can legally send unsolicited emails to anyone in the US without asking permission, it’s vital to keep your communications targeted and provide opt-outs. E-mail offers an easy, effective, affordable way to stay connected and build strong, lasting relationships with your customers.
|
|
Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications
Topic:
Marketing Communications
Region:
Global,
North America
Audience:
Business to Business
|
|
|
|
Crutchfield Optimizes First Impression (MarketingVOX)
|
|
Posted: 05/13/2009
|
|
|
|
|
This case study explores how online retailers can turn the average welcome email into a powerful conversion driving tool. A Retail Welcome Email Benchmark study estimates that only 76% of the biggest online retailers are even utilizing a welcome email—which is not to assume that the ones being sent are effective. The welcome email can be used to educate the recipient about your brand and what benefits they receive as a subscriber. In the case of Crutchfield, an online electronics retailer, they transformed their welcome email from a text only email to one that highlighted the differentiating factors of their brand. The redesign added images and was more consistent with the look of the newsletters recipients would receive. Crutchfield’s approach represents a changing trend with up to 89% of retailers sending HTML welcome emails, up 11% from 2007.
|
|
Industry:
Retail & Products
Topic:
Content Strategy,
Creative & Design,
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Consumer
|
|
|
|
Social Networks Growing Popularity (CRM Daily)
|
|
Posted: 04/22/2009
|
|
|
|
|
According to Nielsen, social networks and blogs are quickly becoming the most prevalent uses of the web at three times the rate of search and e-mail. Nielsen also notes that social-computing sites like blogs and social networks are visited by over 67% of the worldwide online population and represent 1 out of every 11 minutes of activity online globally. As the social networks become more varied, they are also growing to be more mobile with 19% of mobile device users in the US state they use their phones for social networking and as many as 3 million mobile users were regularly texting Facebook at the close of 2008. The statistics prove that social networks are now and will continue to be an essential part of the online experience globally.
|
|
Industry:
Retail & Products,
Telecommunications
Topic:
Content Strategy,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
|
|
|
|
Salesforce.com Expands Service Cloud to Include Tweets (CRM Daily)
|
|
Posted: 04/22/2009
|
|
|
|
|
As the popularity of Twitter increases companies are struggling for a way to participate in exchanges on Twitter. To address this, Salesforce.com added Twitter to its Service Cloud as a way for their clients to track, search, and even respond to customer discussions among Twitter’s 8 million users with tweets. The service allows companies to sift through millions of tweets and uncover conversations related to their brand or significant to their industry. They can then monitor all related replies to the original post and even use the Service Cloud to direct the appropriate replies back to the original poster. Since launching the service in January Salesforce.com has experienced impressive uptake of the service verifying that this approach symbolizes where customer feedback and response is headed.
|
|
Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Content Strategy,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
|
|
|
|
Facelift for Facebook (Ecommerce Times)
|
|
Posted: 04/22/2009
|
|
|
|
|
Facebook recently underwent a redesign of its user home pages to put a direct spotlight on instant updates to friend posts. This has led many to compare the new look to Twitter but the additional result is a cleaner page based on more traditional web design and focused on information hierarchy. The new approach also generates several opportunities for Facebook to reach people interested in advertising to members of the social networking site. By offering the additional ad space, Facebook is hoping that marketers will embrace the idea of mixing ads with content and take advantage of the abundance of information on consumer behavior at their fingertips.
|
|
Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications
Topic:
Business Intelligence,
Content Strategy,
Marketing Communications
Region:
Global
Audience:
Peer Groups & Communities
|
|
|
|
Conversation Sells: Using Twitter to Boost Your Sales (Practical eCommerce)
|
|
Posted: 03/31/2009
|
|
|
|
|
In a virtual world that often lacks a personal touch, Twitter offers retailers a unique opportunity to make meaningful connections with customers online. Whether you’re quirky or serious, you can customize conversations directly with your customers that authentically reflect the personality of your business while giving you the tools to grow, manage and reward a loyal customer base. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, raves about Twitter's usefulness in building personal connections with customers and employees and Dell's Twitter success led to the creation of the Dell Outlet to offers exclusive discounts to its Twitter supporters. Learn how you, too, can turn conversation into conversion by incorporating Twitter into your online marketing arsenal today.
|
|
Industry:
Retail & Products
Topic:
Content Strategy,
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications
Region:
Global
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
|
|
|
|
B-to-B Outlook 2009: Integrate campaigns to boost performance (BtoB Online)
|
|
Posted: 03/08/2009
|
|
|
|
|
Don’t get caught up in the doom and gloom of today’s challenging economy. “There's a lot of good news out there, in particular in the b-to-b world,” said Bob Felsenthal, BtoB publisher. According to many B-to-B marketing experts, the key is to be creative, of course, but also design multi-channel initiatives to drive prospects to the web—and ultimately to conversion. This means that marketers may need to step out of their typical corporate comfort zones and embrace social media such as forums and blogs in order to gain that coveted brand awareness and preference. So what is the future for B-to-B marketing for 2009? 31% of marketers plan to increase budgets and chances are good they will be stretching them into integrated campaigns for the most effectiveness.
|
|
Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications
Topic:
Content Strategy,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications
Region:
North America
Audience:
Business to Business
|
|
|
|
Expanding the Mobile Web (MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
|
|
Posted: 03/08/2009
|
|
|
|
|
Microchip maker, ARM, has partnered with Adobe to bring more Adobe software capabilities to more mobile phone users. Until now, many videos that run in Adobe Flash Players could not be viewed on cell phones due to software incompatibility. This new partnership is good news for users as well as programmers who will now have the tools necessary to build content that can work across many devices. In addition, Adobe has teamed with mobile phone manufacturers Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Qualcomm and others to standardize Adobe Flash on mobile devices. Adobe is counting on its removal of licensing fees to encourage integration of its Flash Player. Some industry insiders claim the move is a reaction to Microsoft’s comparable Flash Player, Silverlight. Possible. But, if it gets Flash to more mobile users, that’s enough for us.
|
|
Industry:
Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications,
Retail & Products,
Telecommunications
Topic:
E-Commerce,
Experience & Interaction,
Marketing Communications,
Technology Implementation
Region:
North America
Audience:
Business to Business,
Business to Consumer,
Peer Groups & Communities
|
|
We cut through the clutter of the web to highlight innovation and forward-thinking. The best stories from leading publications – hand selected and organized to provide you a single point of access.
Newest
|
M3W Favorites
