automated digital marketing

It’s hard to comprehend how small paid media ads used to be. My earliest working memories involve having to abbreviate company names to fit into a headline and split 70 characters evenly across two description fields with 35-character limits on some platform called Overture. The first Facebook ads I created had limited text and imagery so small you could barely make out what the product was (which didn’t stop me from buying a Denny Crane bobblehead from an ad).   Today, ad copy character limits have increased dramatically, allowing media […]

Here’s a surprising statistic for retail marketers to ponder: more than 40% of retailers aren’t implementing an abandoned cart email strategy to entice back would-be customers.   That’s according to a recent study conducted by Kibo and Astound Commerce, which outlined how many retailers were making efforts to entice cart abandoners back to their sites. Something else the study uncovered: online retailers are missing some serious opportunity.   Across all segments and sizes of online retailers, nearly three-quarters of all carts are abandoned, and they’re abandoned for a variety of […]

By now it’s no secret that email marketing is a must-have in every marketer’s toolbox.   More than 82% of companies—big and small alike—are using email marketing in some capacity to drive leads and sales, and they’re using it for good effect. Recent studies show that marketers rank email as the most effective channel for acquiring new leads and holding on to existing clients, and more than three quarters of marketers are happy with the ROI of email marketing.   But here’s the thing: even though the vast majority of […]

Meet InspiroBot, the internet’s first artificial intelligence bot solely dedicated to generating unlimited inspirational quotes.   The results are an intriguing mix of terrifying, hilarious, and sometimes just a little too close to accurate. But here’s the thing: if you print out your InspiroBot creations and hang them around your office (like we did), no one is going to mistake InspiroBot’s quotes with actual inspirational quotes. The sentences are a little off. The inspiration is a little frightening. Something about them just isn’t…human.   InspiroBot is nonetheless a harbinger of […]

You can blog and publish content regularly. However, if your site content isn’t converting your website/blog readers into actual contacts – then what’s the point or value behind it? Every marketer inevitably hits a content wall and bandwidth restrictions to keep churning out blog posts, social posts, infographics, videos, podcasts…you name it. The key is to keep the content and conversion wheels in motion, even while you’re not at the actual wheel creating it.

It's that special time of year when email and digital marketing enthusiasts gather in Kansas City for smart strategy and new features in the emfluence Marketing Platform: the emfluence Digital Marketing Conference! We're back at the snazzy Gallery event space for another year of best practices, feature announcements and of course, user feedback. We invite all marketers (users or not) to attend the emfluence Marketing Platform Conference… and we have some pretty sweet reasons why you should!  1. Email Marketing Insights: Creating the Perfect User Experience The “Trends in Email […]

Emfluence relaunched an awesome Magento theme update for our client Instore Design Display last week, and this got me thinking about the do’s and don’t of redirects. I started to list a few how-to’s when I realized that this would be much more fun with a theme. Since redirecting and canonicalizing can ruin an otherwise successful site relaunch, what better theme than the 10 Commandments?

If you’re a web development agency like us, hosting a growing number of clients in the cloud, you may sometimes feel like this guy with the balls in the  air. That can be especially true when it comes to managing resource costs in Amazon Web Services. Don’t get me wrong: I love that we can spin up an array of servers at a moment’s notice with minimal fuss. It’s one of the greatest reasons to use AWS.  But I also love feeling in control of the costs so that I’m […]

It’s been quite a year for emfluence in the award category! We won a total of 15 awards this year, 13 of them were from the KCDMA AMBIT awards, and 2 were SMCKC AMPS awards. The AMBIT awards are judged on measurable goals and results with the AMPS awards being judged by social media professionals.  2015 Awards: Ambit: Email: New Member Onboarding: Community America Credit Union The Goal:  Community America Credit Union has over 25+ locations in the Kansas City area and continues to grow with new customers. It became […]

Customer acquisition is only a small piece of your audience’s marketing journey. Oftentimes, marketing efforts are successful in bringing customers onto a website, but your website isn’t grabbing the baton when it’s time to finish the race. This is where an oftentimes overlooked piece of digital marketing comes in, conversion optimization. Many people know the phrase, but believe this part of strategy can only be accessed by user experience pros. It’s time we take the veil off of conversion optimization. Here are 5 useful tips to use during your website […]

Over the last year, I’ve attended a few banking conferences and a hot topic that’s often brought up is the future of the bank branch. In a recent survey performed by Javelin Strategy and Research, 23% of consumers said they prefer to bank online over the in-branch experience. 40% of millennials would consider banking without a branch, according to Accenture. While banks have responded to the growing demand for online banking preferences, such as mobile deposit, the big question is what is to become of branch banking? Source: Accenture Last […]

With Techweek concluding recently, here is a run-down on some cool tools you can use for your business with helpful advice from Techweek speakers. So, you are in the process of creating your own business. You’ve spent countless hours brainstorming ideas, building the website, designing and re-designing, and getting the final product out of the window.  You’ve made it this far, but you could use a little help on some internal aspects: organization, SEO, content creation, possibly building tools for your site, or even email marketing. Seems like a lot […]

Are you an all day every day user of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) management console? Do you represent a number of clients, each with their own AWS assets and separate AWS accounts? Do you find yourself managing dozens of AWS account credentials and juggling logins just to make small changes throughout your day? Are you tired of jumping through hoops before you can even start your work? If you’re a developer at a digital marketing agency, (and like many developers these days, your cloud provider of choice is Amazon,) […]

You got your customer to your site, helped them find what they were looking for, and now they’re ready to order. Nice work! While it may seem like you’ve accomplished your mission, the reality is that an average of 68% of shopping carts are left abandoned. (http://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate).  That means for every three people that come to your site and add items to their cart, only one is buying! Those other two may have decided against buying, or found a better deal elsewhere. But what if the problem could be the […]

In this age of data, endless supplies of information can be accessed with just a click of a button. But most of us have no idea what to do with all of the information available. One area confusing marketers is how to grab actionable insights from our site data. Whether you are a Google Analytics pro or novice, we all know that surfing through analytics can be difficult. Let’s do a quick test of our Google Analytics prowess: Are you using Google Tag Manager or event tracking? Have you setup […]

Here's how to implement an effective content strategy solution for the busy content creator! We all know content is the key building block to a successful web presence. Your users want to enjoy good quality content created with the reader in mind. There are many content strategy methods. Some you might have heard of include the skyscraper method, the cluster method, and drip down strategy. These strategies are all very effective when trying to create an effective blog. The toughest part, however, is planning the time to write your initial […]

Chances are that you’ve heard of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), but what is it and why do you need it? Conversion rate optimization is the process of improving your website user experience to convert more visitors into customers. We’ve all bounced off websites that don’t provide a clear message or navigation to get us what we need. Or worse, the website or form isn’t working the way that it should. By having a conversion rate optimization process in place, we can find and solve these problems to improve your customer […]

Over the last few months, something very exciting has been happening at emfluence. For years, our Marketing Platform developers have been slaving away at improving our online Marketing Platform. Recently, they’ve unveiled a feature that promises to multiply their efforts and rapidly increase the potential of the platform.  What is this awe-inspiringly powerful feature, you ask? It’s an Application Programming Interface, or API! An API is like a lever: It allows people (mostly developers) everywhere to apply a small amount of code to a big tool so that they can […]

At the Bank Director Conference in April, I sat down to chat about growing customer relationships. Check out my 4-minute intro to how automated email messaging can cultivate your new banking customer relationships. (Click below to be taken to BankDirector.com for the interview.)

Automated emails used to be just for advanced marketers, business-to-business sales cycles and bigger retail companies. Now, every marketer should have at least three basic automated emails. Most email platforms (including emfluence) make it pretty easy to set up, and if you find that you’re doing the same list segmentation or same campaign regularly, you may be able to take advantage of setting up an automated message instead. An automated email is any email sent based on an action that your buyer or email subscriber takes, such as a click, […]

Our recent whitepaper on customer retention in the banking industry painted a detailed picture of a changing marketplace where customers leave banks at an alarming rate (8-10%) within their first two years of joining, and often because of a simple lack of effective, consistent and timely client communication.

There’s an obvious and simple solution: rebuild your communication approach for your banking customers in a way that can automatically nurture them and build long-term loyalty. If your customers are leaving you for services they didn’t know you had, then all you have to do is have a better plan for telling them about your offerings.

In a 2012 study, customers cited “impersonal communications” and “lack of services” as one of the top reasons they tried another bank. Using automated profile-based communications — or Profile Pathways — can build better banking relationships.