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Companies today are confronted with an ever-evolving IT landscape, which brings opportunity and risk in equal measure.

For every new device which enables enhanced productivity and the ability to work from anywhere, there is also one more potential security loophole within the business.

Managing this balance between embracing workflow-enhancing innovations and ensuring strong security defenses is crucial, and so companies look to the senior IT team to help workers safely transition...

It is no secret that digital has arrived and it is changing the way businesses operate, market themselves and communicate with customers.

What is surprising though is that many organisations are still failing to adapt to this shift. In fact, according to research from the annual Russell Reynolds Associates survey, 10% of c-suite executives confessed to still not having a digital strategy in place.

So why is this...

For retailers desperate to control their whole online customer journey, the issue of delivery has always been a stumbling block where retailers face basket abandonment and potential damage to their brand.  

But a new survey shows that 60% of consumers in the US said they had abandoned their shopping cart because the retailer offered slow delivery options.

The study, of 650 respondents in the US and carried out by same-day delivery firm Dropoff, showed that 97% of customers said speed is at least...

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Ad intermediaries can now be verified through new a new process and guidelines from an independent industry body to reduce the risk of ad fraud.

The UK’s Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (JICWEBS) published the Good Practice Principles today, against which companies can be audited to reduce the risk of fraudulent ads being served.

It’s estimated that ad fraud cost $6.3bn in 2015 and is set to increase this year. 

The new principles are based on...

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According to Jon Miller, CEO of Engagio, the secret sauce and the future of marketing technology is - wait for it - account based everything (ABE). 

As the keynote speaker for the recently held MarcomCentral Marketing Tech Roadshow, Miller outlined in an exciting, determined, informative, and illustrative PowerPoint the new concept of ABE. 

Miller’s presentation headlined the MarcomCentral mini-conference, a three-hour event...

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Businesses of all sizes need must have unified, defined customer experience and digital strategies to properly cater for the modern day customer’s needs, according to a recent report from Forrester Consulting.

The paper, commissioned by SugarCRM and Squiz, outlines how digitally mature businesses are succeeding...

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Marketers are still struggling with both measuring the impact of content and in personalising content, according to a new report from Rapt Media.

The report, The future of Content: Measuring Content Performance, showed that more than half (59%) of the 500 marketers surveyed said that gaining deeper insights is their biggest concern when investing in content.

Similarly 60% said that they were unable to measure ROI on the content that they produce.

The desire to measure is there however...

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More than three quarters (82%) of small businesses believe that digital marketing is critical to success and yet most don’t actually yet use the channel to drive their business, according to a new survey by research firm Clutch.

The survey showed that only 27% had begun a digital marketing strategy prior to 2015 and 17% began last year.

The survey showed that two key reasons held back small businesses’ adoption of digital marketing. They included the associated expense and...

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We nearly always think that a downward spiral is a negative, a downturn, and a disaster. Not always. I disagree and make an exception when it comes to marketing and developing a ‘go to market’ digital cross-media or integrated strategy, selecting the media, and determining when to use that media to support your strategy.

I often explain to clients and students that a useful image to visualise when discussing the development of an integrated marketing program is a...

Picture credit: Jack Morton

Mobile World Congress (MWC) can be a strange and inhospitable environment for the uninitiated, with its cavernous aircraft hangers, huge crowds, and endless aisles of things to see. It’s also a huge challenge for the companies that attend: everyone is competing for attention, and there’s only so much of it to go around. 

For brands, the secret of success is to resist the temptation to just talk about their products, and to instead seize the opportunity to...

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It used to be the domain of the IT manager, but new research suggests that two thirds of marketing managers are now making the call on purchasing new marketing software.

The study, by digital transformation business Squiz, seems to show that both marketing manager and IT manager agree that the shift in decision making has needed to happen with only 45% saying that they believed that such a purchase decision lay with the IT manager.

When it comes to where marketers are investing, the...

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Forget the EU – the big harmonious union we all need to be thinking about is marketing and compliance.

Historically, the two have mixed a bit like oil and water, but in today’s digital world, there is an even greater need for pulling together. In financial services, especially with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) monitoring companies and their electronic communications more closely than ever, the two are set to be even more closely linked. Perhaps with this in mind,...

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Business leaders need to do much more to get the most out of their brand with marketers frustrated at their bosses’ failure to maximise their brand efforts, according to a new report from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

Releasing its Brand Experience report at the CIM Brand Summit this week the report showed that two-thirds (67%) of marketers believe that senior leaders fail to gain the maximum value from their brand by failing to embed brand values throughout their...

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Marketers are focusing too much on content distribution and management rather than better content creation technology, according to a new survey.

In a study of marketing creatives by interactive video technology company Rapt Media respondents were asked about the challenges, priorities and technology investments that they faced when it comes to the evolving content marketing ecosystem. It also looked at whether measurement of the content they produce was a priority for them.

The results...

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Not so long ago, Gartner predicted that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs have ever done. Whilst vice president Jennifer Beck, made it clear that this does not mean the CMO will take over the CIO’s role, it does mean that those in control of marketing will become more data driven and will inevitably grow more technically minded. With this in mind, CEOs will come to support the CMO’s ability to utilise new technologies to generate faster ROI for marketing spend.

It is clear that digital...

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If you think about it, lasagne is not only a perfect food – well, maybe pizza is better – but also a perfect analogy to assist you in developing a near perfect marketing plan.

Consider the following. When developing your marketing plan, you need to first envision the scope, the universe, the market that supports your goals and objectives. Budget, cost outlay, and market spend must also be serious considerations. Marketing demographics, personas, diversification,...

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In many ways, influencer marketing is already a well-established practice; 84% of marketers planned to include influencer marketing in their strategy this year. Yet when I speak to brands, it is clear that they are spending millions on influencer marketing without the tools to make educated decisions and run effective campaigns.

Until recently, choosing an influencer for a campaign required spending...

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Marketers must be able to not only speak marketing talk but also be able to explain and quantify the contribution of the marketing department in the boardroom if they are to gain a higher profile within businesses.

A new study published this week by Econsultancy and Oracle Marketing Cloud says marketers must be able to speak the board’s language – translating marketing concepts into a business outcomes-focused conversation if they are to bolster the number of marketing...

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When a crisis breaks, brands need to react quickly to assess the extent of the damage.  How quickly is it spreading? Who is talking about it? How far has it spread? Sometimes news hasn't spread very far yet, and the impact can be contained. But sometimes, news spreads far and fast, especially on social media networks such as Twitter. A recent example of this happened to car manufacturer Volkswagen.

On September 18, the EPA announced that Volkswagen...

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Ad blocking is a catch-22 situation that must be resolved, according to a recent event on the subject held by the ISBA. According to a study by IAB and YouGov 15% of adults in the UK online are currently using ad blocking software but more than half (56%) don’t realise that means a subsequent loss of revenue to the website concerned. This of course leads to the risk that such sites can no longer produce content that such users enjoy freely.

Globally 7% of the world’s 3.3...