By Peter McCormick, UK GM and co-founder of on-demand email and one-to-one marketing firm ExactTarget In all of the talk on social media and its influence on email marketing, it occurred to me that email marketers consistently commit an antisocial sin. Worse still, it is a sin often taught as ‘best practice’ in order to decrease the hassle of managing a large number of responses to marketing email messages. I am writing of the dreaded ‘no-reply@’ email address. Consider this near perfect email from Dropbox. The subject line ‘Come back to Dropbox!’ makes it clear why I received the message. True,...

By Tim Hazlehurst, N.E. Chairman IAS b2b Marketing Now that the B2B marketing chips are down, it is easy for Marketers to be drawn into tempting but subjective routes that are offering sales salvation when the board is desperate for results. A lot of people (Bob Lauterborn, Jack Trout and Michael Treacy etc.) spent a lot of time researching, identifying and highlighting certain fundamental rules.Rules about the marketing process. Rules that can be accelerated but not ignored!  Technological and tactical advances can lead you astray I’ve seen communication tactics evolve from the commercial traveler with the Bell and Howell presentation, through video...

What’s a magic notion? You already know. You already know because everything you know – from the ideas and beliefs you cherish to the products and services you use every day… all of these things were originally the product of magic notions. I believe a magic notion really is magic. It appears, seemingly, from out of nowhere. It transforms the world around it. It turns our preconceptions on their heads. And it opens up new, previously unimagined ways of thinking, being and doing. It is destructive, but also creative. It is subversive, sometimes even threatening, but it is also liberating....

I hope I am starting or at least being a part of something, a revolution of sorts. On the 20th October this year I tweeted “People who complain about receiving too many emails. Opt Out from the ones you don't read, instead of deleting them” http://twitter.com/edweatherall/status/5020730534 I also then started telling people at events “ http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/blogs/in-business-blog/make-more-time-your-life-unsubscribe-spam “ Today I got a tweet about a Return Path blog http://savvyb2bmarketing.com/blog/entry/346771/how-to-improve-the-unsubscribe-process-yes-this-is-something-to-think-about Too often people sit with their BlackBerry or iPhone in hand saying “I hate email as it rules my life, I get so many messages”, to which I respond, “Opt Out it's your inbox, or get...

If you’re still trying to create marketing campaigns that are built on solid logic, sound value propositions and robust customer testimonials, then you are missing the point! The rules have changed. You have to be interesting first and then relevant! Being interesting starts conversations, content get shared around the web and your marketing campaign becomes something that lives and breathes. Think about it. If a direct mail piece lands on your desk with a solid and logical headline; “Save millions with our new business software”, “listen to what our customers have to say”, “download our amazing white paper”. What do...

Imagine a future (and we are talking two years max) where social networks will be more powerful than corporate web sites and internal CRM systems. If you don’t believe me, stump up $499 and read the Forrester report entitled “Future of the SocialWeb”. We all know the marketing landscape is changing at a rapid pace. We can see it first hand in the way we are consuming social media in our work and private lives; the odd blog, the Facebook update, the occasional tweet, the increasing usage of Linked In. Wherever you are right now on the social media curve,...

Any company, product or brand that is either No.2 or No.22 in its category or market has the potential to be a challenger brand. Think of the challenger as the underdog, the pirate, the rule breaker and you get the picture. What makes the challenger unique is that it looks at the conventions adopted by the market (niche or otherwise) and seeks to disrupt the status quo by offering a new perspective on the category or the market as a whole. This can often be driven by technology or service level innovations, challenging the existing price-models of the category or...

That was indeed the question I mulled over when travelling home from the recent B2B Marketing conference on lead generation. It’s not often that I think about breasts, and that may have been the result of too much wine, but the parallels between lead nurturing and breast feeding suddenly struck me. You see, there is a line. Like breast feeding, you can nurture for too long and before you know it you’re the subject of a Channel 4 documentary with two seven year olds clamped limpet-like to your teats. You enjoy the contact, the interaction, the reliance and it makes...

I actually wrote this blog last year but was persuaded by my business partner, to just leave it. Now we are having exactly the same conversations, internally as well as with clients and I cannot be silenced anymore.   What is wrong with Happy Christmas?   My business partner says, “No, it’s Season’s Greetings, we don’t want to offend anyone.”   Who are we going to offend?   So the question is - would anyone be offended if a company card said “Have a Merry Christmas”? We are wishing good will to all. Every shop we walk past from as...

The growth of online and web 2.0 has had an interesting side effect in marketing terms; that traditional forms of marketing are now resurgent. Take direct mail for example. So much of this has now moved to email marketing, that clever, creative direct mail has become a rarity. Which has greatly increased its impact. Creative direct mail has always stood out, but even more so now as a welcome distraction from the choked inbox. Also, as the effectiveness of spam filtering increases, many emails never see the light of day. Most busy decision makers work quite hard at ensuring that...