Ian Michiels
The Most Common Mistake Marketers Make on Landing Pages
The landing page, or lead capture page, is an essential tool in the marketer’s toolbox. Yet many marketers completely overlook one of the most important opportunities to drive engagement on landing pages. I know what you’re thinking: how could that be? Aren’t they designed...
How to Tell if Your Inbound Content Is Truly Engaging or Just More Noise
Everyone is clamoring for mindshare. Marketers rely heavily on digital content because it’s a highly effective way to resonate with prospects on a more intimate level. But while content is growing at exponential rates, the size of your addressable market probably isn’t. That means...
You Wouldn’t Purchase a $300,000 Marketing Automation Solution and Not Use It
An all too common reality for companies that adopt marketing automation is that they struggle to fully embrace core functionality in the tool, even after using marketing automation for over 24 months. In a January 2014 survey from Gleanster Research, about 47% of Top...
What an Ice Cold Shower, Behavioral Marketing, & the Silverpop Amplify Event Have in...
Last week I attended the Silverpop Amplify user conference in Atlanta. The event featured notable keynotes from Arianna Huffington, Peter Shankman, and a number of Silverpop leaders. But for me, the event also featured a few surprises that I dare say left me initially...
You Are Not Tony Stark, or a Seal – Takeaways for Small Businesses from...
A funny thing happens when more than 3,000 small business owners come together to learn – it’s like adding one part gunpowder and one part gasoline to the proverbial entrepreneurial flame. This year Infusionsoft hosted ICON14 in Arizona, and once again it was an...
“Email Marketing Automation” – Where did that come from?
An interesting thing happened when we published the Marketing Automation and Email Marketing CheatSheets. A massive volume of traffic was being driven by a search term we had not considered “Email Marketing Automation”. In hindsight seems pretty obvious. While this may be a byproduct...
The First Notable Theme from the 2014 InfusionCon Small Business Conference
I had the pleasure of spending my morning yesterday at the Infusionsoft headquarters in Phoenix, a day before the kick-off of the annual Infusionsoft User Conference. This year the event moved to the Phoenix convention center to make room for the 3,000 plus registered...
3 Key Takeaways for Building a Business Case for Localized Marketing Automation
In my recent webinar “Building a Business Case for Localized Marketing Automation” hosted by Gleanster and Balihoo, we explored how organizations with a national or global focus (overseen by a centralized corporate marketing function and a network of affiliate or local marketers) justify investments...
Justifying Investments in Social Relationship Management
As the popularity of social media grows, social media channels and platforms multiply. While the importance of tapping into online social activity is clear,how to do so, considering the scope and diversity of platforms and websites is overwhelming. For this reason, many businesses have...
There are 2 ways to cut through the noise on Social Media. Only one...
The Greek philosopher Epictetus once said “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” What he didn’t account for was the digital revolution. The danger isn’t so much the mouth, but the fact that...
Important Considerations Before Investing in Marketing Automation
2014 should be a great year for marketing automation; frankly, the last two years have been great years for marketing automation. We saw multiple IPOs, acquisitions galore, demand for new positions with titles like "VP of Demand Generation" and "Marketing Technologist." And most of...
Sorting Out Key Concepts in Customer Experience Management
Last week I was working on a Deep Dive on Customer Journey Mapping. During my research, I stumbled upon an elephant in the room and I've got to point it out; customer experience management is an ill-defined discipline. It reminded me of...
Measuring the ROI of Digital Asset Management
When is a blog post not a blog post? When it's a vlog post. Enjoy this analyst vlog on Measuring the ROI of Digital Asset Management (10:20). The vlog references a number resources that can be found below:
Scaling Digital Marketing at the Local Level
For marketers that operate in a distributed or local marketing environment (such as a national brand with a localized or distributed presence) , traditional media has played a critical role in brand strategy for decades – but digital, not so much. Nobody knows...
Salesforce.com Announces Salesforce 1: Great Concept, Troubled Reality
This week Salesforce.com kicked off the annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco. Gleanster is in the thick of things the entire week in dozens of briefings with the 300+ sponsors at the event. This year, Salesforce is touting a record 120,000 registered attendees both...
Essential Skills for Analyzing Social Data
It is estimated that the average internet user spends a quarter of their time on social media sites each year. With over 400 million tweets a day and 10 million Facebook apps (and growing) the social frontier is evolving at an alarming rate –...
The Internet of Things Becomes the Future of Things
Last week I attended the Oracle Open World conference in San Francisco. During the opening keynote, Oracle CEO Mark Hurd talked about how Oracle is positioning to be a core enabler for the connected world of today – and tomorrow. Mark...
Q3 2013 Marketing Automation Vendor Rankings
This month, Gleanster released the newest version of the Marketing Automation Gleansight Benchmark report. The report features vendor rankings across 4 different dimensions: Ease of Use, Ease of Deployment, Features and Functions, and Overall Value. End users who participate in Gleanster surveys are asked...
Unexpected Findings from the Q3 2013 Gleanster Marketing Automation Benchmark
Last week Gleanster published a refreshed copy of the Marketing Automation Gleansight Benchmark Report. The 43 page report, which can currently be downloaded for free, highlights the experiences and intentions of 220+ companies and offers a comprehensive look at how Top Performing organizations are...
Adobe Announces Plans to Acquire Neolane. Good Luck, Competition
Adobe today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Neolane, a privately held "conversational marketing provider" (i.e. campaign management, i.e. marketing automation, i.e. database marketing) headquartered in France, for approximately $600 million in cash. Earlier this month, Salesforce.com announced the...
