Marketing is no longer a Mad Men’s world

The days of spending advertising budgets without understanding an exact return on investment are coming to an end. With the advancement of personalisation technologies and the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, internet advertising will continue to rise while the old school ‘Mad Men’ approach struggles to keep up.

This isn’t the death knell for traditional advertising, despite IPA’s Bellwether report (MWlinks.co.uk./Bellwether) revealing that more UK marketers slashed their ad budgets in the third quarter of 2012, but it is a sign that marketers are shifting to new platforms that offer efficient and measureable types of engagement such as social advertising.

At Adobe, we have seen spend from our customers continue to grow on search and other biddable media like Facebook as brand and performance marketers change the way they view advertising.

Greater insights and better ROI can be gleaned from the vast amounts of data available and we expect this trend to continue as more advertisers start to measure the value of their social advertising correctly.

This will be supported by the growth of mobile and innovations in the way advertising is served on tablets, delivering better returns for advertisers.

Merinda Peppard, head of marketing, EMEA, Adobe social and advertising solutions

Think of email marketing like holding a dinner partys

The notion that irrelevant emails are little more than an ‘anticipated nuisance’ (MWlinks.co.uk/EmailRestraint) severely underplays the consequences of untargeted email marketing campaigns. With the technology now available, the days of ‘one size fits all’ marketing are a thing of the past.

We find the primary source of frustration for consumers is receiving irrelevant messages. Companies should be less worried about sending too many emails and more concerned about the value of their communications. Sending email marketing that doesn’t interest subscribers reveals a company that doesn’t know customers or their relationship to the brand.

If marketers can use what they know about their customers, emails have a stronger chance of avoiding the bin and being appreciated in the inbox. Companies can alert ‘sale only’ shoppers to new sales, use geographical information to let consumers know about local in-store events, and let dedicated consumers know when similar lines are available.

When planning email campaigns, marketers should use what they know about their customers and marry it to the objectives of their campaign. Like at a dinner party, you look to seat people together who might get along or have common interests. We know our friends, their likes and dislikes based on our previous interactions with them. Marketers need to apply the same consideration to their customers and their needs.

The current challenge and solution rests within the data. When marketing decisions are based on actionable insight, more relevant and personal interactions will be made across all online marketing channels. Email is a great place to start, as recent advances in customer intelligence technology are now helping turn raw data into more visual information that can be used by the whole marketing department, not just by the data professionals on the team. This will reduce the amount of emails sent by the business and decrease any frustrations from unsolicited emails.

Once best practices are adopted, email marketers can avoid being tarnished with the same brush as nuisance callers.

Henry Smith, director of product marketing, Emailvision

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