Category: Marketing Automation

You don’t want to waste time simply guessing what a prospect or customer wants and needs from your business or how they’ll react to a certain marketing campaign or strategy that you plan to implement.
Rather, you can turn to the process of data-driven marketing to make informed decisions that are based on real data to ensure your marketing efforts are relevant to prospect and customer interests and behaviors.
Now you might be thinking about the fact that your business has a large volume of complex data that are dispersed across multiple sources — this is where data mapping comes in handy.

Data Mapping
Data mapping is a key part of data management and data integration. That’s because it ensures you’re looking at and considering all of your data and doing so accurately — in other words, data mapping is what allows you to integrate your data from multiple sources.
In this blog post, we’ll talk more about what data mapping is, why it’s useful, data mapping techniques, and data mapping tools.
What is data mapping?
Data mapping is the process of matching data fields or elements from a source, or sources, to their related data fields in another destination — it’s how you establish relationships between data models that are in different sources or systems. Data mapping software and tools automatically match data fields from one data source to another for you.
Data mapping allows you to organize, distill, analyze, and understand vast amounts of data that live in various locations so you can draw conclusions and insights.
Why is data mapping useful?
Here are some more reasons why data mapping is both useful and necessary:

Integrate, transform, and migrate data as well as create data warehouses easily.
Establish direct relationships between your data across multiple sources at once.
Ensure your data is high quality and accurate (data mapping software can automatically flag inconsistencies and data that isn’t high quality or accurate).
Identify real-time trends and share data reports with team members both easily and efficiently.
Ensure you’re getting the most out of your data and applying insights and learnings appropriately.
Use data mapping software to simplify (and automate much of) the process of code-free data mapping.

Data Mapping Examples
A business like Amazon may use data mapping to accurately target you. They do this by pulling insights from your browsing habits, reviews, purchase history, and time on page. They can then pull and connect that data to/with data from other sources such as demographic information.
By combining these types of data sources, Amazon has the necessary information to target you with certain products and personalize your shopping experience in a number of ways (e.g. based on challenges you may be facing, geographic location, experience level, interests, education, nationality, age, and more).
Let’s consider another data mapping example — say you work for a TV network and you’re looking to organize TV shows on the network, actors who appear on the network, and actors within a show that appears on the network. The sharing of data between the three sources may look something like this:

Data Mapping Techniques
Within data mapping, there are three main techniques that are used — manual mapping, semi-automated mapping, and automated mapping. Let’s talk about what each of these techniques entails.
1. Manual Data Mapping
Manual data mapping requires professional coders and data mappers — IT will code and map your data sources. Although this is a heavy lift and requires professional help, it allows you to fully control and customize your maps.
2. Semi-automated Data Mapping
Semi-automated data mapping (or schema mapping) requires some coding knowledge and means your team will be moving between both manual and automated data mapping processes (hence the name of this technique).
Data mapping software creates a connection between the data sources and then an IT professional reviews those connections and makes manual adjustments as needed.
3. Automated Data Mapping
Automated data mapping means a tool will take care of all aspects of the data mapping process for you, making it an ideal option, if you are not/ don’t have access to a coder. This type of software will typically allow for drag-and-drop mapping. You just need to learn how to use the tool (and pay for it).
Speaking of the tools that will automate the process of data mapping for you, let’s review some of your options next.

Data Mapping Tools
Data mapping tools and software make the process of data mapping —including visualizing and interpreting your data — easier. There’s no code needed, they often have a drag-and-drop user interface (UI), and you can implement them on your team no matter your level of technical experience. Many data mapping tools also have the ability to help you with other data management tasks such as data migration.
1. Bloomi

Price: Free 30-day trial; contact for a quote.
Bloomi, which is owned by Dell, is an iPaaS solution — that’s both cloud-native and scalable — that connects both cloud and on-premise data and applications. Design cloud-based integrations, which the tool refers to as Atoms. Then, you can begin transferring data between the cloud and your on-premise apps.
Bloomi’s data mapping functionality translates electronic data interchange (EDI) for you. The tool has a drag-and-drop UI that makes data mapping easy as well as a library of available connectors so you can establish integrations quickly.
2. Tableau

Price: Free 30-day trial; $12-$70/ user/ mo.
Tableau is a visual analytics and business intelligence platform with data management and data mapping tools. Whether your data is in spreadsheets, Apache Hadoop, databases, the cloud, etc., the platform allows you to connect and begin visualizing your data in seconds without code.
Tableau regularly populates your most recent data (on a schedule that you can adjust). The drag-and-drop interface is easy to use and smart dashboards allow for effective data visualization. Lastly, you can easily share your data maps and dashboards with your team via mobile device for easy alignment and access.
3. Astera

Price: Free 14-day trial; contact for a quote.
Astera is an enterprise data management software that uses visual interfaces to convert, map, and validate data structures for you without the need for code.
You’re able to use the tool’s drag-and-drop feature to create, debug, and manage complex data integration tasks. Astera also natively connects to a variety of database providers including SQL Server, Oracle, and DB2.
To ensure your data is of the highest quality, there’s built-in data cleansing, data profiling, and data quality options — and to improve accuracy, there are built-in transformations that remove duplicate records, complete missing information, and get rid of redundant data. You’ll get flagged and receive emails if and when your data records don’t meet the high-quality data standards.
Use Data Mapping on Your Team
Data mapping has the power to ensure your marketing team and business as a whole get the most out of your data. It also helps you maintain high-quality data and automate the processes of data integration, transfer, migration, and more. Determine which technique you’ll use and if you need a tool to get started with data mapping on your team.

When you’re working at a new job or trying to get a promotion, you need to be organized. While you might list organizational skills on your resume, putting that skill into action is a little harder.
Having organizational skills means that you can meet deadlines and be efficient in your workflow management. In fact, organizational skills can be synonymous with energy and time management in most cases.

All of these skills are very important in the workplace and potential employers want to make sure you can stay on top of things.
In this post, we’ll dive deep into what organizational skills are, specific examples of what they look like in action, and how to develop organizational skills in the workplace.

Organizational skills are about building structure, boosting productivity, and prioritizing the right tasks at the right time.
The antithesis of organizational skills is procrastination, clutter, inefficiency, and miscommunication.
Organizational skills mean you’re able to keep yourself calm while coming up with a scheduled plan. Many people with good organizational skills break up projects into smaller goals so they are easier to accomplish.
Importance of Organizational Skills
Organizational skills are important because they’ll help you get tasks done on time. These types of skills are important in the workplace because managers will see that you can handle your tasks, and have autonomy over your own projects. This will help you get promotions and references if you apply to new jobs in the future.
If you don’t have a plan in place for how you’re going to accomplish something, it will be much harder for you to finish. You’ll need to be able to anticipate how long a task will take, what resources you’ll need to complete that task, and have the discipline to block out the necessary time to finish it.
Organizational Skills on a Resume
When you’re listing organizational skills on your resume, you might consider breaking it down into more specific sets of skills. Let’s dive into the examples below.
Organizational Skills Example
The best organizational skills to list on your resume include:

Communication
Time management
Delegation
Attention to detail
Decision making
Strategic planning
Goal setting
Creative thinking
Problem-solving
Productivity
Managing priorities
Teamwork/collaboration
Deadlines
Scheduling
Conflict management
Office management

1. Own your calendar.
The best way to develop organizational skills is to truly own your calendar. Block off time where you need to get work done. Then, create a schedule for yourself that is realistic to stick to. It’s hard to stay organized when you have random meetings popping up on your calendar.
Additionally, it’s important to know how you work best. For example, I like to have meetings back-to-back because it’s hard for me to get work done in 30-minute increments between meetings. I want all my meetings at the same time, so I can block working time and then meeting time.
2. Make lists.
When you have a lot on your to-do list, you can make separate lists for what needs to get done and when. I usually have a running to-do list where I’ll add everything I need to do for the week. Then, I’ll break that down into daily to-do lists. You can organize your lists by tasks, meetings, reminders, etc.
3. Figure out what tools will help you.
Obviously, everyone works differently. That’s why it’s important to figure out how you work best. Do you like using a physical calendar or a digital calendar? Regardless, you’ll need tools to help you stay organized. Below is a quick list of physical and digital tools to help you get started.
Physical Tools

Planner
Calendar
Notepad
Folders
Journals

Digital Tools

Google Calendar
Trello
Asana
Evernote
Teuxdeux

4. Communicate with your team.
Another way to develop organizational skills is to communicate with your team. It’s important to communicate your plan of action to any necessary stakeholders. Additionally, communication will help keep you accountable.
If you’re working on a project with several people, you can communicate updates on your part of the project as they occur or at the end of the day. This is a great way to keep the team organized and on task.
5. Declutter your workspace.
Lastly, to truly be organized, your workspace should be free from clutter. While not everyone likes to keep everything neat and tidy all the time, you should still only have necessary items on your desk so you don’t get distracted. This will help productivity and organization overall. When you need to find a list or an item, it’s important that you know where it is and it doesn’t get lost.
Organizational Skills in the Workplace
Now you might be wondering, “How can I use these organizational skills in the workplace?” and “How can I highlight these skills?”
The first step is to list these skills on your resume when you’re applying for jobs. You can say “organizational skills” or you can list other skills, like the ones above, to be even more specific.
If you’re in a job interview, think of stories and examples of how you remained organized and how it helped you solve a problem or complete a project successfully. It’s important to discuss how you scheduled your time, how you handle multiple assignments, and how you delegate tasks.
While a potential employer might not ask specific questions about organizational skills, you can highlight these stories in questions like “What are your strengths?” and “Why are you a good fit for this role?”
Once you’re working for a company, you can highlight your organizational skills during projects or meetings. It’s a good idea to use these skills whenever you can because it’s sure to impress your boss and help you move forward in your career.
Organizational skills don’t just mean that you keep to-do lists. It means you manage your time efficiently, you’re productive, can solve problems, and think critically. That’s why it’s important to develop your organizational skills whenever you can.

For so many of us, the pandemic has led to an increase in online shopping—we’ve been stuck inside, so of course, we’re scrolling through our favorite eCommerce sites trying to find a hint of joy. It’s a totally natural coping mechanism for these uncertain times. But it wasn’t expected. Retail businesses and shipping companies across…
The post How Email Marketing Can Be Used to Ease Customers During Supply Shortages appeared first on Benchmark Email.

https://digitalthoughtz.com/2021/08/22/15-tips-on-email-marketing-you-must-know-in-2021/
submitted by /u/digitalthoughtz [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/ClearWayLaw [link] [comments]

What is Search Intent? With the evolving digital world and consumers knowing what they want, it gets harder to engage them, and thus, search intent has become a hot topic for marketers.  Search intent refers to the reason behind a searcher’s query on a search engine. Creating content to satisfy search intent has emerged as…
The post What is Search Intent and How Can You Optimize it? appeared first on Benchmark Email.

If you happen to need a bookmark of all kinds of e-commerce tools, you may take a visit to my website. I got 300+ tools collected by their categories: Business Tutorials, Find Winning Products, Find Suppliers, Data Analysis, Keywords Tools, SEO Tools, Advertising Tools, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Shipment Tracking, Payment Methods, and so on. My site
submitted by /u/CassandratNoel [link] [comments]

After months of hard work, multiple coffee runs, and navigation of the latest industry changes, you’ve finally finished your next big marketing campaign.
Complete with social media posts, PPC ads, and a sparkly new logo, it’s the campaign of a lifetime.
But how do you know it will be effective?

While there’s no sure way to know if your campaign will turn heads, there is a way to gauge whether those new aspects of your strategy will be effective.
If you want to know if certain components of your campaign are worth the effort, consider conducting a marketing experiment.
Marketing experiments give you a projection of how well marketing methods will perform before you implement them. Keep reading to learn how to conduct an experiment and discover the types of experiments you can run.
What are marketing experiments?
A marketing experiment is a form of market research in which your goal is to discover new strategies for future campaigns or validate existing ones.
For instance, a marketing team might create and send emails to a small segment of their readership to gauge engagement rates, before adding them to a campaign.
It’s important to note that a marketing experiment isn’t synonymous with a marketing test. Marketing experiments are done for discovery, while a test confirms theories.
Why should you run a marketing experiment?
Think of running a marketing experiment as taking out an insurance policy on future marketing efforts. It’s a way to minimize your risk and ensure that your efforts are in line with your desired results.
Imagine spending hours searching for the perfect gift. You think you’ve found the right one, only to realize later that it doesn’t align with your recipient’s taste or interests. Gifts come with receipts but there’s no money-back guarantee when it comes to marketing campaigns.
An experiment will help you better understand your audience, which in turn will enable you to optimize your strategy for a stronger performance.
Performing a marketing experiment involves doing research, structuring the experiment, and analyzing the results. Let’s go through the seven steps necessary to conduct a marketing experiment.
1. Brainstorm and prioritize experiment ideas.
The first thing you should do when running a marketing experiment is start with a list of ideas.
Don’t know where to start? Look at your current priorities. What goals are you focusing on for the next quarter or the next year?
From there, analyze historical data. Were your past strategies worked in the past and what were your low performers?
As you dig into your data, you may find that you still have unanswered questions about which strategies may be most effective. From there, you can identify potential reasons behind low performance and start brainstorming some ideas for future experiments.
Then, you can rank your ideas by relevance, timeliness, and return on investment so that you know which ones to tackle first.
Keep a log of your ideas online, like Google Sheets, for easy access and collaboration.
2. Find one idea to focus on.
Now that you have a log of ideas, you can pick one to focus on.
Ideally, you organize your list based on current priorities. As such, as the business evolves, your priorities may change and affect how you rank your ideas.
Say you want to increase your subscriber count by 1,000 over the next quarter. You’re several weeks away from the start of the quarter and after looking through your data, you notice that users don’t convert once they land on your landing page.
Your landing page would be a great place to start your experiment. It’s relevant to your current goals and will yield a large return on your investment.
Even unsuccessful experiments, meaning those that do not yield expected results, are incredibly valuable as they help you to better understand your audience.
3. Make a hypothesis.
Hypotheses aren’t just for science projects. When conducting a marketing experiment, the first step is to make a hypothesis you’re curious to test.
A good hypothesis for your landing page can be any of the following:

Changing the CTA copy from “Get Started” to “Join Our Community” will increase sign-ups by 5%.
Removing the phone number field from the landing page form will increase the form completion rate by 25%.
Adding a security badge on the landing page will increase the conversion rate by 10%.

This is a good hypothesis because you can prove or disprove it, it isn’t subjective, and has a clear measurement of achievement.
A not-so-good hypothesis will tackle several elements at once, be unspecific and difficult to measure. For example: “By updating the photos, CTA, and copy on the landing page, we should get more sign-ups.
Here’s why this doesn’t work: Testing several variables at once is a no-go when it comes to experimenting because it will be unclear which change(s) impacted the results. The hypothesis also doesn’t mention how the elements would be changed nor what would constitute a win.
Formulating a hypothesis takes some practice, but it’s the key to building a robust experiment.
4. Collect research.
After creating your hypothesis, begin to gather research. Doing this will give you background knowledge about experiments that have already been conducted and get an idea of possible outcomes.
Researching your experiment can help you modify your hypothesis if needed.
Say your hypothesis is, “Changing the CTA copy from “Get Started” to “Join Our Community” will increase sign-ups by 5%.” You may conduct more market research to validate your ideas surrounding your user persona and if they will resonate better with a community-focused approach.
It would be helpful to look at your competitors’ landing pages and see which strategies they’re using during your research.
5. Select your metrics.
Once you’ve collected the research, you can choose which avenue you will take and what metrics to measure.
For instance, if you’re running an email subject line experiment, the open rate is the right metric to track.
For a landing page, you’ll likely be tracking the number of submissions during the testing period. If you’re experimenting on a blog, you might focus on the average time on page.
It all depends on what you’re tracking and the question you want to answer with your experiment.
6. Execute the experiment.
Now it’s time to create and perform the experiment.
Depending on what you’re testing, this may be a cross-functional project that requires collaborating with other teams.
For instance, if you’re testing a new landing page CTA, you’ll likely need a copywriter or UX writer.
Everyone involved in this experiment should know:

The hypothesis and goal of the experiment
The timeline and duration
The metrics you’ll track

7. Analyze the results.
Once you’ve run the experiment, collect and analyze the results.
You want to gather enough data for statistical significance.
Use the metrics you’ve decided upon in the second step and conclude if your hypothesis was correct or not.
The prime indicators for success will be the metrics you chose to focus on.
For instance, for the landing page example, did sign-ups increase as a result of the new copy? If the conversion rate met or went above the goal, the experiment would be considered successful and one you should implement.
If it’s unsuccessful, your team should discuss the potential reasons why and go back to the drawing board. This experiment may spark ideas of new elements to test.
Now that you know how to conduct a marketing experiment, let’s go over a few different ways to run them.
Marketing Experiment Examples
There are many types of marketing experiments you can conduct with your team. These tests will help you determine how aspects of your campaign will perform before you roll out the campaign as a whole.
A/B testing is one of the popular ways to marketing in which two versions of a webpage, email, or social post are presented to an audience (randomly divided in half). This test determines which version performs better with your audience.
This method is useful because you can better understand the preferences of users who will be using your product.
Find below the types of experiments you can run.
1. Website
Your website is arguably your most important digital asset. As such, you’ll want to make sure it’s performing well.
If your bounce rate is high, the average time on page is low, or your visitors aren’t navigating your site in the way you’d like, it may be time to run an experiment.
2. Landing Pages
Landing pages are used to convert visitors into leads. If your landing page is underperforming, running an experiment can yield high returns.
The great thing about running a test on a landing page is that there are typically only a few elements to test: your background image, your copy, form, and CTA.
3. CTAs
Experimenting with different CTAs can improve the number of people who engage with your content.
For instance, instead of using “Buy Now!” to pull customers in, why not try, “Learn more.”
You can also test different colors of CTAs as opposed to the copy.
4. Paid Media Campaigns
There are so many different ways to experiment with ads.
Not only can you test ads on various platforms to see which ones reach your audience the best, but you can also experiment with the type of ad you create.
As a big purveyor of GIFs in the workplace, animating ads are a great way to catch the attention of potential customers. Those may work great for your brand.
You may also find that short videos or static images work better.
This Instagram ad from We’re Not Really Strangers uses multimedia to make its post stand out. If you’re testing out PPC advertising, try diversifying those ads to capture the interest of more audiences.
Additionally, you might run different types of copy with your ads to see which language compels your audience to click.
To maximize your return on ad spend (ROAS), run experiments on your paid media campaigns.
4. Social Media Platforms
Is there a social media site you’re not using? For instance, lifestyle brands might prioritize Twitter and Instagram, but implementing Pinterest opens the door for an untapped audience.
You might consider testing which hashtags or visuals you use on certain social media sites to see how well they perform.
The more you use certain social platforms, the more iterations you can create based on what your audience responds to.
You might even use your social media analytics to determine which countries or regions you should focus on — for instance, my Twitter Analytics, below, demonstrates where most of my audience resides.

If alternatively, I saw most of my audience came from India, I might need to alter my social strategy to ensure I catered to India’s time zone.
When experimenting with different time zones, consider making content specific to the audience you’re trying to reach.
5. Copy
Your copy — the text used in marketing campaigns to persuade, inform, or entertain an audience — can make or break your marketing strategy.
If you’re not in touch with your audience, your message may not resonate. Perhaps you haven’t fleshed out your user persona or you’ve conducted limited research.
As such, it may be helpful to test what tone and concepts your audience enjoys. A/B testing is a great way to do this, you can also run surveys and focus groups to better understand your audience.
6. Email
Email marketing continues to be one of the best digital channels to grow and nurture your leads.
If you have low open or high unsubscribe rates, it’s worth running experiments to see what your audience will respond best to.
Perhaps your subject lines are too impersonal or unspecific. Or the content in your email is too long.
By playing around with various elements in your email, you can figure out the right strategy to reach your audience.
Ultimately, marketing experiments are a cost-effective way to get a picture of how new content ideas will work in your next campaign, which is critical for ensuring you continue to delight your audience.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Hi, I just built a web app where you can create image & video dynamically for marketing. It’s like canva but dynamic, you can generate your images or videos through form, spreadsheet and API (zapier coming soon) Here’s the url https://duply.co ​ Would love to hear perspective from marketing side – What do you think about the app? – What features are missing / need to change / improve? – or any other ideas you have Thanks
submitted by /u/distartin [link] [comments]

Do you think that marketing automation tools are relevant for someone who’s working alone in a marketing department? (I don’t refer to email tools like Mailchimp, but tools like Active Campaign, Hubspot…). What’s your opinion?
submitted by /u/Calista110 [link] [comments]