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Posted 25th August 2015 by APSIS
22,556 unread… Is email broken or is it just me?
I know I might be at one extreme of the bell curve but my email account has over 22,000 unread emails! I’ve used this account for 13 years – and it shows.
Strangely I am actually quite happy with this. It’s pretty rare that I miss an important email.
Posted 29th June 2015 by APSIS
How Can Hotels Fight Back Against Aggregators?
Aren’t Airbnb, hotels.com, booking.com and Late Rooms doing well! And yet they don’t own a bed between them!
How in the minted pillow have hotels allowed this to happen?
Posted 21st April 2015 by APSIS
Personalising web content is easier than you may think
Personalising web content isn’t hard.
20 years ago, Javascript – the programming language allowing all the wonders of analytics, tag management and everything related to web 2.0 – was created with this idea in mind. The simple concept was that a web page could be modified once loaded in a browser, depending on the actions of the visitor.
Posted 10th March 2015 by APSIS
3 problems with personalisation… and how to solve them
The truly personalised experience is something coveted by both modern marketers and their consumers. And rightly so. What is the point in communicating irrelevant messages to people to whom the message does not apply? It just wastes everyone’s time.
The same goes for communicating the same message to everyone. No one wants to be treated as a number, a face in the crowd, a cog in the works to be replaced as and when the machine operators deem it necessary.
Posted 05th March 2015 by APSIS
Design images and image blocking
Do you have images in your newsletter? You probably do – images are a vital part of modern email marketing. For a long time, images have caused problems for email marketers. Many email clients block image viewing by default, and will only display images when the user approves it manually. Here are some guidelines on design, images and image blocking!
Posted 05th March 2015 by APSIS
Focus on the details: subject lines link texts and preheaders
In our series on email marketing, it is time to cover a couple of things that we find in all newsletters – things that may look like minor details, but can be the difference between an opened letter and an ignored letter. Time to take a look at subject lines, link texts and preheaders!
The subject line
The subject line is best described as the name of your newsletter. It is the first and only thing a recipient sees apart from the name of the sender. The subject line must tell the readers what the letter is about – and be interesting enough to make them open the letter.
Posted 24th February 2015 by APSIS
How to become an MTO – 4 factors to consider
75% of CEOs believe marketers are always asking for more money, but can rarely explain how much incremental business this will generate.
According to those clever wonks at McKinsey, companies in the future will need an MTO (Marketing Technology Officer) to overcome this.
The MTO would bring together both technology and domain knowledge, he would know what can be automated, know when judgment is required, and know where to seek and place new technical talent.
Posted 16th February 2015 by APSIS
Personalise, predict, recommend… What’s the difference?
In my last blog, I offered a technical perspective on personalisation – what it is and how it works. In this blog I am going to elaborate a little on some common confusion that arises when we talk about customisation through personalisation, predictive analytics and recommendation systems.
Personalisation
In the context of Internet based companies, personalisation implicitly refers to a system that automatically delivers dynamic content such as textual elements, links, adverts, product recommendations, etc.
Posted 22nd October 2014 by APSIS
Why cross-channel marketing needs to be ‘the norm’
Do you focus on above or below the line marketing?
Above or below the line is a term that was common speak in the 80’s, used to identify whether an agency specialised in helping with mass marketing communications (e.g. TV advertising) or something with a 1:1 call to action (such as telemarketing).
Posted 08th October 2014 by APSIS
How to celebrate National Customer Service Week – and how not to…
So, it’s National Customer Service Week this week!
This will undoubtedly come as a shock to the pizza restaurant that treated myself and my colleagues with such unnecessary rudeness, that it prompted me to take to Twitter to lambast their – yep, you guessed it – customer service.
As a marketer myself, I understand why the customer has to come first, and I analyse each and every personal retail experience against what are probably fairly high benchmarks and standards.