CMOs Plan to Increase Digital Spend - Inbound Marketing Highlights

Hi, I'm Roman; and this is Mike. Welcome, fellow inbounder. This week we look at what makes emails relevant, the benefits of personalization and CMOs' spending plans. 

4 Sure Ways to Make Your Email Super-Relevant to Your Customers - Email may be considered old school. But email still works. And how exactly do you get folks to open your email? Some useful targeting techniques include geographic and weather updates and inventory targeting. Whether it's highlighting the location of your stores in a customer email or emailing your list about umbrellas on sale when rainy days are coming - try to give folks what they need when they need it. 

The Business Case for Optimized Site Usability - Site usability isn't something only cool people talk about. "It's estimated that sites that have poor usability can lose up to three-quarters of sales due to user dissatisfaction." Losing 75% of your sales because of a bad site experience is a pretty big deal. Good usability will also encourage people to return to your site for additional purchases or downloads. 

Why Personalization Is Crucial For Marketing Success - People love their names. Marketers don't like waste. The more personal you can make a marketing experience for your prospects the less overall marketing waste you will see. If you can connect a physical store experience to an online and then an app experience you will have a stronger connection with your customers. And we're certainly not only talking about names. We are talking about trackable purchase history and digital footprint. 

CMOs Will Increase Spending on Social, Mobile And Analytics - Good that CMOs will increase spending on these items. "Spending on digital marketing is expected to increase 12.2% over the next year, with some of the largest growth being seen in social, mobile and data analytics." Troubling, however, is the inability to prove social media ROI. What's really needed is closed loop marketing - the ability to prove a visitor that converted on your website turned into a paid customer is the best ROI you can show. 

8 Ways Marketers Are Being Heard In 2015 - A good validation of what most of us spend our time on each week. A nice nugget on conversion rates too. "With 25% of Americans watching online videos each day, 73% of them are more likely to make purchases after watching a video."

Well that does it for this week's fantastic five articles. Make it a terrific week, inbound friend!