Email marketing trends for 2016

Simon Swan interviews Tim Watson, founder of the email consultancy Zettasphere.

Email marketing – a digital tactic that remains an important channel in any organisations digital marketing mix has come under some negative “flak” with many digital “strategists” claiming that email marketing is dead. Certainly Email marketing has had to re-define it’s purpose and the more savvy digital companies have embraced this channel to help position the channel as a key tactic to support both it’s acquisition and retention strategies

To help shed some more light on the story of email marketing, it’s maturity and new opportunities to embrace this channel, we are publishing Simon Swan's interview with with Tim Watson, founder of email marketing consultancy Zettasphere and a regular contributor on Smart Insights. Use the article to look forward to current trends and how email marketing will evolve through 2015 and into 2016. It provides fascinating insights into optimising your email channel for success, extracting actionable data from your email campaign and the opportunities mobile provides for email marketing

Q: You run your own digital email consultancy – Zettasphere – can you tell us about the agency, the services provided and skill-sets?

A: Mainly I deliver email strategy consulting. Brands contact me who believe they could get more from their email activity, but don’t want to spend time and money going in the wrong direction whilst they work out exactly what they should do.

There is so much advice and must do best practice that is mostly correct in generic sense, but what I add is the context. The advice that is right for each brand is different. I help by giving focus to the best opportunities and bringing to the table possibilities the brand won’t be aware of.

Q. You’ve specialised your digital marketing niche in email marketing – how is this channel performing as a digital tactic when compared to other tactics in the digital mix?

A. Just fine thanks, as witnessed by the revenue I see being delivered every day. Time after time, in industry surveys asking marketers about the best digital media, the best two channels are stated as search and email.

Q. The noise surrounding digital tactics broadcasting messages to existing customers and prospect has accelerated as social media has matured as a channel – has this had a detrimental impact on the return on investment to what email can provide?

A. The surprising thing is no. The email channel is alive and very strong; I believe smartphones have helped email hugely as it makes email a 24-7 always on channel with users checking emails multiple times per hour. This has supported the levels of email we see today.

Just recently Instagram turned to email to drive user engagement back to their social network, adding a ‘highlights’ email. Facebook send more email worldwide than any other single brand. I get loads of email from Twitter and LinkedIn about their services. Anyone see the irony?

When the social networks turn to email to drive their business you must believe it’s strong. BTW I’m not suggesting social networks don’t have their place too.

Q. What are the key metrics you advise organisations to monitor and measure when it comes to their own email marketing strategy?

A. I always say measure as close to your business objective as possible. For eCommerce that means revenue and that is easily done for online business. Add to this careful attention to list growth and measurement of list data sources, to ensure quality list growth.

Q. Due Diligence in ensuring your email list being “cleaned” and providing the best opportunities for email marketers to generate the best ROI is essential – do you have any tips in ensuring your email list is in the best possible state?

A. The best thing is to build good quality data, which is organic data. Use upfront, permission-based transparent data collection practices. It’s hard work but it really is the route to a highly valuable asset.

If you get data collection right the rest is easy. Just ensure you are removing bounces, complaints and unsubscribes.

Q. Getting actionable insights from the data you are reporting from email marketing is a challenge for organisations – what process would you recommend to organizations of all sizes to follow?

A. I found different process metrics (as opposed to business metrics) to be important in decision making for different brands. You really need an enquiring and challenging mind. Believe nothing and question everything. That’s the short version; the long version probably needs a book.

Q. How is it best to optimise and use email as a channel with the growth in mobile usage?

A. Simple, check your emails work on the email clients and devices your customers are likely to be using. In particular can the email be read without scrolling in two directions, is the copy easy to read and are links far enough apart so they can be touched?

The trend is towards cleaner, simpler, shorter and focused designed, in keeping with info snacking habits of mobile consumers.

A lot has been said that emails must be designed specifically for mobile and that doing so will give huge benefit. This is true if your email is badly broken on mobile, but for many brands the email is not badly broken.

Mobile screen sizes and resolutions have increased drastically in recent years, so its become easier to use non-mobile optimised email on mobile too.

But if you are working on your template you’d be crazy not to factor in how well it works on mobile.

Q. What do you see as the key traits to develop if you’re looking to develop a successful digital marketing career?

A. Digital marketing is such a wide topic area already and set to get wider, that you have to consider in which areas you wish to specialise. It is around channels, design, optimisation, analytics, data, insight?

In terms of key traits; willingness to learn and then learn it all again when it changes, seek facts as much as opinion, be comfortable with data. Digital marketing is much more than just creative concepts.

Q. What’s on your reading list?

A. Glad you asked. I do read a lot, almost continuously in fact. I think study and reading is under rated, as you never know everything. I read not just industry news and blogs but good old fashioned paper books. They are incredible value, but buying them is no good, you must read and think about the contents too.

The topic of books I read include marketing psychology and persuasion, general marketing texts, data science and analysis, business strategy, books on specific technologies such Google Analytics and fun left field thinking books such as Freakonomics.

Image Credit: RaHuL Rodriguez

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The future of multichannel retail in Europe in 2020

New research shows retail predictions for the importance of different channels.

A new research report from PAC reveals what major European retailers think will be the key trends in digital and physical channels in the next 3-5 years. They asked 200 CxOs working in European retail businesses with over 500 employees to give their view on the future of omnichannel retail. The survey was conducted in May 2015, and the findings make for interesting reading since they reveal significant differences between European countries.

Diversity across Europe

Trends vary significantly between countries, so marketers should not mistakenly treat Europe as a homogenous market. Embracing digital technologies varies significantly by region. In the Nordic countries two-thirds already are selling through mobile channels, whilst in Italy less than a quarter of major retailers think mobile is important. Similarly in Germany 85% of retailers thought the physical branch will become more important, where as in Britain only 23% believed it would retain its position as number one channel.

Online and physical more important

A considerable majority thought that online shopping would become increasingly important as a channel for their retail business in the next 5 years, whilst only a tiny 4% thought it would be less important. An obvious trend perhaps. But interestingly a whopping 73% also thought that the physical branch would become more important- It can be easy to forget as digital marketers that the bricks and mortar store remains extremely important for most retailers, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. New tech trends such as beacons may serve to increase the importance of the physical store as they can improve the shopping experience and give personalised offers that could be extremely effective at encouraging purchases.

Half thought mobile will become more important, which is highly likely given over half of web traffic now comes from mobile.

For more insight, see our post on Online retail growth rates in the UK and US.

Obstacles to creating an ominchannel strategy

When asked about the biggest challenge to the development of their omnichannel strategy, European retailers gave an interesting mix of answers. Developing a long-term channel integration strategy came top of the list, which reflects the difficulty of developing such a strategy, especially when the rapid pace of change in digital may mean that the skills of the department are behind where the market is already at.

Making changes to the organisations structure was also rated as a major challenge. Again this is a tricky area, and our recent research into digital skills discovered that many marketing departments are weak in some areas of digital marketing, and recruiting for the right digital skills is frequently a challenge for managers. Our managing digital transformation guide can help by offering useful advice on how to increase the impact of digital marketing with your organisation.

Key trends in the next 5 years

When asked about their plans for omnichannel investments in the next five years, European retailers revealed an interesting set of priorities. When it came to investments they were planning for this year, webshop solutions and online payment solutions came top, highlighting the growing importance of ecommerce for retailers. A big trend for 2020 is the increasing importance of big data in the long term. Although only 7% had already invested in dig data analytics, over half (55%) planned to invest in big data in either the next 2 years or the next 2-5 years. So expect to big data to be a big trend in the next 5 years, with increasing investment and retailers using their data ever more effectively.

For more insights into the future plans of European retailers over the next five years see the full report from PAC.

If you are a retailer looking to assess your omnichannel strategy see our Multichannel retail proposition audit and competitor-benchmarking template from multichannel retail strategy specialist Chris Jones.

Download Expert Member resource – Multichannel retail proposition audit and competitor benchmarking template

Score the effectiveness of Ecommerce propositions using this Excel spreadsheet.

Access the Multichannel retail proposition audit and competitor benchmarking template

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Can you improve your marketing by predicting the future?

Using predictive analytics effectively will allow you to increase sales, but only if you have right data

Applying predictive analytics to marketing campaigns will enable businesses to increase sales and returns through visualising the campaign outcomes. Below is an introduction to Predictive Marketing and how you can begin to experiment with these ideas in your business.

Introduction

You may have heard of predictive marketing – it’s an increasingly popular topic. You may not, however, understand what it really means or how it could benefit your business.

In short: it involves using expected future events and expected future customer behaviours to create a marketing plan. It has become a lot more relevant to businesses as digital marketing campaigns have generated far more data which is analysed in far more detailed ways.

Intuitively, most marketers can see a clear value from understanding customers better and getting detailed numbers around a campaign’s expected returns before it has started.

However, the skills and processes required for predictive analytics projects can be difficult to develop and before you begin, you should know, if this really is for you. 

What is the potential?

Figure 1 – Marketing automation platform sales ($m) - These have grown by approximately 1200% over the past 5 years. (source) 

The potential to a business is based on the types of problems that can be solved. To begin with, it’s important to be clear that the problem is around propensity, i.e. the likelihood that an event will occur. This is in contrast to customer segmentation or recommendation problems – which require similar analytical techniques, but which involve describing current patterns (rather than predicting future outcomes).

As some examples that we have seen:

1. A marketing consulting firm increased lead to sales conversions by shaping the correct products for each client. This data was gathered by monitoring client reactions through a lead generating website.
2. A retail site reduced its bounce rate by 50% to a product category by predicting the landing page content that would be engaged with. The data was gathered through an analysis of the content referring visitors to the product category.
3. A B2B technology business increased its email response rate by tailoring each to the predicted client problems.
4. A professional services firm increased contact form conversions by changing format based on visitor location. The data was gathered through an analysis of a large set of high performing, international contact forms.

These can all be seen as generating value by increasing the value of each decision and action made. For example, by deciding which keywords to select in a PPC campaign or which colours to use on a product package. It relies on first organising marketing data correctly in order to quickly identify patterns and insights. The best organised data tends to enable the most successful digital marketing campaigns.

How this will vary between industries

As a rule of thumb, the more data available in the industry, the more potential exists for predictive marketing to provide new insights and benefits.

Although, what do we mean by data? In general the more transactions and interactions between customers and the businesses in an industry, the more potential data exists. The easier it is to record these interactions – for example, when they occur online – the more potential there is to harness this data for predictive purposes.

In addition, if the actions completed as a result of these predictions can be automated then that’s even better.

For example, a long-term online marketing campaign for a large online retailer like Amazon, has a large potential to be automated through predictive marketing due to the large stock of data available. Also, since the campaigns can all be controlled by machines, any decisions can be automatically implemented.

However, a new in-store event for a large supermarket may have less potential – even if you could collect the data (for example, through cameras and facial recognition of customers visiting the event), making a resultant decision and completing an action could only be done for the next day.

Since the optimisation cannot happen in real time, the value of the quick decision is reduced.

Figure 2 – Data Usage by Industry - Big data investment varies highly based on industry and the corresponding availability of data (source])

The power of learning

As industries exist for longer, the larger the available data sets become for those industries, which in turn creates a larger the scope for predictive marketing. In addition, as data is increasingly available around human interactions, due to increased connectivity and changes in regulations, the scope also increases.

For all industries we can therefore expect to scope for predictive marketing to increase as time goes on.

Figure 3 – CSC Infographic on the growth of global data – Growth in mineable data will enable more and more decisions to be made through predictive systems. (Source)

Will this affect a business’ profits?

Yes – in fact predictive marketing campaigns should not be undertaken unless there is a clear link between the decisions being made and the profitability of the business.

Whilst structuring a project, there should be a clear path between the decisions being made, the actions that will ensue and how this should increase the business’ profit. Predictive marketing, therefore is particularly powerful when looking at complex areas, where there are many possible ways forward.

Campaigns will improve – sometimes by many multiples – by reducing waste on actions that are not profitable, increasing investment on profitable actions and reducing the cost and time involved in making these decisions manually.

How do I know I will get meaningful answers from my investment?

It’s likely that a predictive marketing will generate value for your business if you are asking the right type of questions and you have enough data to complete a detailed analysis. In addition, this works best when you need to optimise for a particular decision and increased analysis can help you to close-in on the right answer.

The below is a short guide to some things that you should be thinking about.

1. What choices do you wish to optimise for? Is there a clear problem that you are facing and that you have commissioned this analysis for? Predictive analysis is at its most useful when you are looking to select the best choice from a set of options.
2. What is the list of possible options? Can you identify the universe of current options you have? For example, in a PPC campaign, keywords you can optimise for or in a PR campaign, the publications you can advertise in?
3. How many case examples do you have for each? Do you have enough case examples involving each option to complete an analysis? It’s important that the data set contains enough examples of successes and failures which include possible actions that are under consideration.
4. Which metrics are the better decisions designed to improve? Do you have a clear understanding of the metrics you are looking to improve (for example, CTR, sales conversions, etc) through this analysis and what represents success and failure with your decisions?
5. Can this be tied back to profitability? Does the resultant improvement in project metrics result in increased profits for your business – is it therefore worth investing into?

It should also be noted that predictive analysis is more valuable when obtaining the answer has no unintended consequences. An example could be, if your action resulting from a prediction causes your customers to change their behaviour, therefore making your earlier analysis invalid.

Making a start: Regressions don’t have to be scary

 

Figure 4 – Example of a simple trend line over a scatter graph generated by Microsoft Excel 

In order to make a start in short time, you should create an initial project to investigate one question around a single trend.

This will involve building a regression model, although this doesn’t have to be too complicated. In fact some of Microsoft Excel’s built in tools can help you do this, with two basic lists of numbers (please see Microsoft's Excel guide here).

By starting an initial project you can begin to answer some simple questions and build up the basic skills and processes that you will need in the long term.

Please see our short guide below:

1. Define and prioritise the questions - for example:
   1. Is there a link between our quarterly SEO spend and the number of organic visitors we generate?
   2. Which of our category pages is best at converting visitors to sales?
   3. What are the attributes of the individuals in our email data base, that signal that they are likely to respond to our messages?

2. Complete a review of the problems and supporting data you have (see our list of 5 questions in the previous section).

3. Find the right talent and divide your data
   1. Divide the historical data sets in to training, validating and testing sets, required for the model development.
   2. Find a mathematician and software engineer who can help you the build the basic model - this could be someone who has experience in applying predictive analysis to business or just someone who is good at using Microsoft Excel.

4. Don’t be afraid to fail

It’s likely that your first short test will not surface any meaningful patterns. This should not be seen as a loss as it’s the first step in the researching of more complex hypotheses and insights that will generate value for you marketing campaigns.

Thanks to Sachit Patel for sharing their advice and opinions in this post.Sach is a Chief Data Officer at dcyfr. This is a new business which helps businesses increases lead generation and conversion rates through applying predictive analytics to online marketing campaigns. He can be found here.

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Plain Text Vs HTML Emails

Plain text has proven impressively durable despite marketers preference for HTML

When it comes to email marketing, there’s only a few Email metrics that all marketers focus on: open rates and clickthroughs (although they should consider more, like the value generated). Without positive levels of KPIs, marketers often feel like they have wasted time and effort creating an email that no one has seen or interacted with, and that’s a hard pill to swallow.

This is why marketers are constantly trying to find ways to improve on their email marketing campaigns in the hope that something – be it a subject line, content piece, image choice or header wording – will make a difference.

But something that marketers generally don’t seem to change is the format of their email. Comfortable in the flashy world of HTML email design, marketers may be missing one very important point – the plain-text email usually performs better.

Which has better deliverability?

The plain-text vs. HTML debate is one that has been underway for a while – and is mostly focused on email deliverability. Generally, there are two things that a HTML email needs to include to ensure that it has good deliverability; proper coding and a working plain text version of the email.

By ensuring that your email has been properly coded, and contains no broken tags in the HTML, you will also ensure that email providers won’t mark it as spam. Additionally, adding a plain-text version to your email is considered best practice and is something that email providers now look out for – penalising those who don’t have these versions and segmenting them to a spam or trash folder immediately.

If your HTML email follows those two important steps, both the HTML email and plain-text version should have the same deliverability metrics – however, you also have to consider the increasing ability of email providers to filter out emails to provide a better user experience. Gmail, for example, will automatically filter what it deems to be commercial content away from the main inbox stream. Adding high levels of image tags and using HTML-rich templates appears to be a sure-fire way to get your email filtered out of a recipient’s main inbox.

With the complex email filtering ability of the majority of email providers in mind, it may not seem all that shocking that plain-text emails are performing better on open rates than their HTML-rich counterparts.

Which one receives better clickthrough rates?

However, it’s not only open rates that matter in email marketing, clickthrough’s are another essential part of the process. So which one performs better in the clickthrough stakes?

Even if open rates decrease with HTML emails, those who do open it will be more likely to click through to landing pages than they would be on a plain text email because of how beautifully it has been designed?

Not quite.

Plain-text reigns champion in this arena too. Most marketers are being lost in the haze of sleek design and beautiful imagery, and are forgetting one key principle: Email is designed to be a one on one interaction. Your readers’ email inbox is likely to be a space where they email colleagues and friends and communicate in a personal way. Following this principle, it appears that HTML emails that are too design heavy suffer with clickthrough’s because they aren’t resonating with the audience in the same way as the rest of their inbox does.

What does this mean for email marketing?

Email marketers should be looking to simplify the whole email marketing process, taking it back to a simpler time. The statistics suggest that they should be diverting their attention away from the design and reverting back to the basic idea that content is the key to a good marketing message – not the colour the content comes in.

That doesn’t mean that marketers shouldn’t be creative, and that they shouldn’t be trying versions of HTML designs and working with already established successful templates, but it does mean that the focus should once again revert to copy. Outstanding copy will work whatever the format of the email.

Ultimately, in the HTML vs plain-text war, it appears that less is actually more when it comes to a great email marketing campaign.

Thanks to Simon Moss for sharing his opinions and thoughts in this blog post. Simon Moss is a Chartered Marketer with over eight years’ marketing experience gained primarily in the B2B marketplace. He currently looks after the marketing for CommuniGator and WOW Analytics, a leading digital marketing agency providing email marketing solutions and cutting edge technology that enables you to maximise the value of every visit to your website – identifying and naming prospects visiting corporate websites. CommuniGator are Content Partners of Smart Insights. You can follow him on LinkedIn or connect on Twitter.

Want to stay informed on the latest digital, email, social and automated marketing strategies? (all based on research and evidence undertaken by us and marketing industry experts) Take a look at CommuniGator’s great whitepapers and other resources.

 

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Which are the best KPIs for Email Marketing?

A new whitepaper shows how to prove the contribution of email marketing to the business

Email marketing frequently appears in the top 3 when marketers or businesses are surveyed about what digital marketing channels deliver the best ROI.

The latest benchmarks from Custora from August 2015 looking at to what channels drove the most sales for e-commerce sites demonstrates the continued importance of email as a marketing channel.

There can be no doubting that email is a powerful tool for marketers, especially when you harness the insight collected from subscribers profiles and behaviour to send targeted messages. You can use this data to segment your list based on user behaviour and send personalized emails to each subscriber - no other channels enable this. This will help you generate better results than if you are just broadcasting the same template to your whole audience.

If you have the skills and technology in place you can even track user activity in real time to find out how your email marketing campaigns are going down with your audience, and you can test individual elements of an email and optimize even the tiniest details of each campaign to optimise the open rate, click rate and conversion rate.

Overwhelmed by data about your email marketing?

However the vast amount of data that can be collected via email marketing means you can easily become swamped by the volume of it and spend your time scanning data but never able to infer useful insights or actually do anything off the back of it.

The solution to this is knowing the best KPIs to use to set targets, review performance and complete analysis to improve results. There are 100s of KPIs that could theoretically be used, but only some are really worth tracking.

Cutting through the Vanity Metrics

With email marketing, as with marketing more generally, it is all too easy to focus on vanity metrics such as subscriber numbers and open and click rates instead of what is actually driving business. Big, impressive sounding numbers don’t translate into business results. If you have a huge email list but they aren’t relevant to your audience then you will be plagued by low open dates, low click through rates and lots of reporting your emails as spam. Whereas a much smaller list made up of your target audience is likely to get far higher conversion rates and thus be more lucrative. That’s why knowing the right KPIs to target is so important.

What KPIs to target?

In a new whitepaper, A Guide to Email Marketing KPIs GetResponse recommends the KPIs which are critical for inferring actionable insights and avoiding distracting vanity metrics.

Some key performance indicators they recommend focusing on include: Incremental sales, Customer Lifetime value and engagement. Studying these metrics can be highly useful, both because they can help paint a fuller and more accurate picture of your email marketing campaigns over-all ROI, and because they can inform marketing decisions, such as if a customer loyalty program would be likely to generate strong results.

Discover how to evaluate these metrics and the other KPIs recommended by GetResponse in their new whitepaper.

GetResponse is a Content Partner of Smart Insights who collaborated with us on new research on the State of Email marketing to be published in Q4 2015.

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How the self-service economy reinvents ‘customer’ service

Welcome to the real self-service economy

Consumers want to be in control. They show a clear preference for self-service solutions, both in planning a purchase, the purchase itself and possible questions afterwards.  Smart companies try to anticipate this trend because it is in the mutual interest of businesses and their customers.

The use of customer data is absolutely indispensable as this will improve the customer experience in every phase of the purchase process. Tweet This

This evolution doesn’t mean the end of the traditional 'human' customer service. The need for a safety net with personal contact still exists. This contact can be organized by the companies themselves, but it may also mean contact with other customers.

These are some of the conclusions from a worldwide study conducted over the past few months in collaboration with SSI (fieldwork) and No Problem! (translation partner). The study included ten countries from all around the world.

The results of the study are detailed in this presentation and, as usual, my report can be downloaded and used free of charge.

The Self Service Economy from steven van belleghem

Welcome to the 'real' self-service economy

Fifteen years ago, companies forced consumers to perform certain task themselves. When banks started charging customers for not executing their own transfers this led to widespread protest. Today the world looks very different: a company that doesn’t offer a self-service solution has to suffer the consequences.

Consumers expect companies to keep improving their level of service. They want their questions answered and problems solved in a timely, friendly and efficient manner. Consumers have a strong aversion to having to contact a company several times or sharing the same information more than once.

The days are long gone when it was OK to answer an e-mail inside 24 hours. 39% of modern consumers expect a reply within 4 hours. Twitter and Facebook users have even less patience. 55% of social media users want an answer in less than 4 hours.

Self-service is the only long-term solution to meeting customer expectations. Already, 70% of consumers expect a self-service option for handling commercial questions and complaints. Still, this doesn’t preclude the need for a personal solution: if self-service falls short, personal contact as a safety net is an absolute necessity.

Data is the secret weapon of the self-service economy

Big data is one of the buzz words of the last few years. In the years to come, three key questions will determine the use of data:

• ‘How far can we take the use of data?’
• ‘How far do we want to take it?’ and
• finally ‘How far are we allowed to take it?’.

The last question is especially interesting. How far will the government and other regulatory bodies allow us to go and, even more importantly, how far will consumers allow us to go?

The overall conclusion is positive. Consumers are willing to share their data and are actually encouraging companies to use them. Of course, there’s an important 'but' involved. If companies are going to use their data then the consumer expects to reap the rewards.

As a company it’s important to give careful consideration to the use of data in every phase of the consumer’s purchase process. The customers themselves see advantages in the use of data in the pre-purchase, the purchase as well as the post purchase phase.

Pre sales:

• 48% would like to receive personalized offers
• 43% would like to receive bespoke promotions
• 33% are interested in personalized advertising.

Sales:

•  62% want faster and improved purchase possibilities through the use of client data

Post sales:

• 48% want companies to be able to track data through various channels so they don’t have to repeat themselves
•  81% are quite willing to provide data to help cut waiting times.

Consumers see no harm in surrendering their data as long as they stand to benefit from doing so. Especially in the post sales phase, the idea is to grant access to data in order to speed things up.

Companies have to look for better ways of using the customer history to the customer’s advantage. In the pre-sales phase, the use of data largely boils down to increased relevance. As it happens, this is very interesting for companies as well because it makes for more accurate communication. In other words, there are plenty of opportunities for creating a win-win situation.

Time for real 'customer' service

For the consumer, the self-service economy means greater relevance and a faster process; for companies it delivers far greater efficiency. The self-service economy doesn’t signal the end of personal contact.

From time to time, the parties involved will have to discuss certain matters. Whereas sometimes this personal contact will be initiated by the companies, the initiative may also come from other consumers. Being able to connect people and thereby enhance the customer experience is a wonderful role for companies to be able to fulfill. This is the ultimate form of 'customer' service since the customer is the one providing the service.

In any case, the customers are more than ready to consider this approach:

• 55% are willing to put questions to other customers on forums
• 48% would welcome the assistance of other customers
• 60% would like to provide feedback on the company’s current process
• 58% of customers would like to help other customers answer their questions

Self-service with a personal touch

The conclusion is obvious. We are evolving towards a self-service society where the consumer is free to choose how to obtain information and make a purchase. For companies it will become essential to cater to that self-service need in every phase of the customer relationship.

In addition, data will play a crucial role in guaranteeing added value for the customer. Data can also provide a personal touch without human involvement. And finally, the idea of having customers help other customers puts a highly interesting spin on this debate.

Thanks to Steven Van Belleghem for sharing his advice and opinions in this post. Steven is one of Europe's Thought Leaders in the field of social media, conversations and digital marketing. His entire career, Steven has studied the influence of digital and social media on consumers and organizations. With this knowledge he inspires and facilitates companies to adapt their current way of working towards the new world we live in. His latest book is The Conversation Company and his previous book, The Conversation Manager . He provides motivational keynote speeches, strategic workshops, coaching and strategic advice about social media and conversation management. As well as an author, he is a part-time marketing Professor teaching interactive marketing.. You can follow him on Twitter and connect on LinkedIn.

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The evolution of Digital Skills

Which of these skills does the modern marketer need too?

Throughout this week we've been looking at the digital skills needed by marketers and found a large percentage of marketers roles is now taken up by managing digital activities. Here's a round-up of all our posts and new report on the level of digital marketing skills. This means marketers are starting to need many of the skills previously reserved for IT professionals. So we thought it would be interesting to see how the role of the IT professional has developed over the past 25 years, and where it is headed.

As Gen Y steps up to take centre stage in the employment pool, and technology increasingly dominates our life and work, it is predicted that there will be an 18% growth in tech jobs by 2022.

This infographic looks at how tech roles have evolved alongside the technology they support. It charts the changes of the past 25 years to offer glimpse into which roles are likely to be in demand for the next decade.

Do you have the skills to future proof your career? Or are you in danger of becoming a tech dodo? Members can check out our Online marketing roles and skills template for the finding the sought-after skills for different job roles.

 

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