Rhian Harris (was Simms)

About Rhian Harris (was Simms)

The importance of ‘boring’ content for SEO

We can all get excited about the prospect of working with a new client that has an exciting product, brand or industry, but what about the more ‘boring’ ones?

Do you reject the proposal on the basis that your innovative ideas might not be a good fit or win you any awards, or do you accept the challenge and benefit from opportunities others might have overlooked?

If you’re from the latter camp, you’ll appreciate the major benefits to each stage of the purchase cycle that so-called ‘boring’ content can provide.

Let’s take a look at how and why it is so important.

Is Twitter planning a major redesign?

So Twitter has just rolled out its latest look, and if we are to believe the latest pictures of yet more testing, it could be ‘goodbye, Twitter feed’ and more ‘hello, timeline’…

Could it be that the unmistakeable look of Twitter is to become a thing of the past?

Top 10 Twitter Trends of 2013

Twitter

It’s the time of year again that analysts report yet another bumper year for ecommerce trading, and commentators try to predict digital trends for the forthcoming year.

But it’s also the time when we gain access to data to help understand what was most talked about online. 

Abandoned basket emails: creative vs. best practice?

Cath KidstonWhen it comes to abandoned baskets, all digital marketers worth their salt should be thinking about how to get their hands on every penny that is not being converted on their websites.

Of course we know that through price, stock or postage checking, all abandonments aren’t truly lost customers, but that doesn’t excuse the whopping 73% of purchases that are left idle.

A significant chunk of idle baskets therefore are shoppers who are in the purchase phase and should be followed up with a targeted email.

Abandoned basket emails: the good, the bad and the ugly

With 73% of shopping carts left to become idle, abandoned basket retargeting is a key part of the digital marketing mix.

It might be that users are price checking, or that they intend to complete their purchase later or on a different device, so in truth, these may not all be genuine abandonments.

Either way, with the help of analytics integrations or third-party suppliers, marketing managers are proactively trying to recover that ‘low hanging fruit’ through abandoned basket emails, and with different creative treatments, messaging and abandonment times, there is quite a spectrum of tactics being employed to do so.

Unfortunately, as with a lot of campaigns it seems that ‘getting it live’ is where attention ends, leading to little or no ongoing optimisation. 

So I thought I’d take a look at some of the good, the bad and the ugly of what I’ve seen recently whilst shopping online. 

Intelligent levers: foolproof your budget requests

Most people in digital are now au fait with the idea of attribution modelling, if not the reality, but in the year of ‘big data’, how many of us are really crunching the numbers to identify the key periods in which to invest?

I’m not talking about knowing when the peaks are and throwing money at them. I’m talking about really understanding when you need to invest in order to assist that peak before it’s even happened.

Think lead times. Think objectives. Think overall channel attribution.