Loyalty schemes form a critical part of a retailer’s retention programme. After all, a happy customer is a returning customer.

But behind the machinations of loyalty is the data that sits behind the scheme, which gives the retailer the power to deliver personalised communications, offers and promotions, all of which add to the customer experience. Retailers analyse spend, frequency and items purchased to build up a view of what an individual customer looks like across all channels - online, mobile and...

Emerging technology has disrupted the way marketers plan and implement any strategy. Whether it is investing in virtual or augmented reality (VR/AR) to bring a campaign to life or implementing artificial intelligence (AI) to manage and analyse data, technology is firmly ingrained in the daily lives of marketing teams.

However, with budgets squeezed and expectations mounting from executives, the pressure is on to provide a real return on investment. As a result, marketers have begun focusing purely on...

Despite the mounting pressures being placed on marketers to do – and achieve – more, budgets are still being stretched to their limits. Investment in marketing tech is no exception, which means the business case for comms platforms and apps needs to be strong.

Previous articles have covered topics such as budgeting for marketing automation software and even

Marketing automation has been somewhat of a blessing to many employed in the field; it’s freed up a lot of time and reduced the tedium associated with repetitive tasks.

Automation swooped in providing a range of tools to save time and effort needed day to day. Still, the digital marketing landscape is evolving further, driven by changing consumer behaviour and demands; on average, consumers now spend more time online...

WhatsApp is launching a pay-to-use advertising service for brands looking to engage their customers directly on small screens.  

The move opens up a new revenue stream for the Facebook-owned messaging app since removing subscription fees in 2016 and allows businesses to send information or services updates, such as delivery information or tickets.

According to BBC news, the fee will be based on confirmed delivery, on which advertisers will pay between 0.5 cents to 9 cents (0.3p to 7p), depending which...

Every day the customer experience becomes more important to brands who aim to capture their audience’s attention. A better CX can be the competitive advantage a brand needs to push themselves above the crowd, considering the fact that 86% of customers would be willing to pay more for a better experience with a business.

Smart marketers know that honest customer reviews are

Some of the fresh-faced marketing grads reading this will be too young to recall the biggest shift in consumer behaviour for generations.

It happened right under our noses, and if like me, you’re long enough in the tooth to remember a time before smartphones and super-fast broadband, you lived right through it.

Back then, people didn’t all carry powerful supercomputers around in their pockets. When you needed to buy something, you’d ask a salesperson for advice. And the role of CMO was...

Most sensible marketers — and everyone but the worst of the worst — left pop-up windows behind ages ago. While that move was welcome news to, well, everybody, similarly intrusive tactics still exist in modern marketing playbooks.

While interruptive tactics can be effective, marketers must first weigh short-term benefits with long-term costs. Full-screen overlays, modal windows, and interstitials, for example, could do more harm than good. They might be highly visible, but they can damage the...

Salesforce has announced the acquisition of Israel-based Datorama, a cloud-based AI (artificial intelligence) company.

While terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, reports suggest the deal could be worth approximately $800m (£602m), as the US sales and marketing cloud tech giant looks to keep pace with rivals such as Adobe and Oracle.

Datorama enables more than 3,000 leading global agencies and brands - including PepsiCo, Ticketmaster, Trivago, Unilever, Pernod Ricard and Foursquare, make sense of...

By 2020, customer experience is expected to overtake both price and product as a key brand differentiator. A 280-character Twitter post, Instagram snap or Facebook update from a disgruntled consumer can destroy a brand’s long-built reputation and performance in an instant, so brands must deliver a consistent, connected, competitive customer experience. Those businesses that get this right are rewarded: 68% of UK consumers in a