Email, social media, and mobile rank as marketers' top spending priorities for 2013, according to a survey from StrongMail: 55.5% of marketing executives say they plan to increase spending on email campaigns in 2013; 51.8% plan to boost spend on social media; and 42.8% plan to up their spend on ... more

C.C. Chapman, co-author of Content Rules, has a new book out, Amazing Things Will Happen, which is a collection of short pieces, lessons, and observations intended for "anybody out there," C.C. says, "who may be stuck in a rut or maybe just not doing exactly what they wanted with their ... more

Overall, consumers are unimpressed with their mobile shopping experiences at the top 20 brick-and-mortar retail brands: Retailers' apps and mobile sites are often too slow to load, challenging to navigate, and error-prone at checkout, according to a survey from Mobiquity. more

A recent content marketing study from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute found that B2B marketers are uncertain about whether they are effectively using content marketing tactics. This infographic captures and presents some key data from that study, including about budgets, social presence, and content challenges. more

Legitimate marketing messages account for an alarming 70% of "this is spam" complaints in consumers' inboxes, underscoring just how important it is for marketers to keep email lists up to date and make use of email marketing best-practices, according to a report by Return Path. more

Among the brands listed on the Interbrand Top 100, more than nine in ten (95%) use Twitter and nearly one in four (23%) use it as a customer service platform (i.e., they have a Twitter handle dedicated to customer service), according to a new report by Simply Measured. more

BusinessNext Social conducted a study of CMOs in the Fortune 100 to see which of them were most socially active in 2012. Surprisingly, only one in five Fortune 100 top-level marketing/communications executives have an active public presence on social networks, the analysis found. more

Only one-third (35%) of small business owners cite social media as a beneficial tactic for their business, though views about the benefits of social marketing vary by industry, according to a survey from Hiscox. more

Though consumers and marketers are fairly aligned in their focus on Facebook—similar proportions of each segment use the social networking site—marketers tend to be out of synch with their audiences regarding the use of other popular social channels, according to a study by Pitney Bowes Software. more

John Jantsch believes that if businesses are to grow, they need to be ready, willing, and able to change. To navigate and instigate such change, business leaders need a clarity of purpose and they need to set big, audacious goals. more

Bolstered by Internet advertising—particularly social media and online video—global ad spend growth is forecast to strengthen over the next three years, rising from an estimated 3.3% growth in 2012, to 4.1% growth in 2013 and 5.6% growth in 2015, according to projections by ZenithOptimedia. more

From Nov. 22 to 26, 2012, some 50 million tweets related to Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping were generated, with peaks of nearly 100 tweets per second, according to a report by DataSift. more

Today, we've launched a far simpler and cleaner homepage that we think helps visitors make sense of MarketingProfs and directs them efficiently and easily to the content they are looking for. more

Content marketing continues to be an integral strategy for B2B companies; however, objectives for content strategies are shifting toward thought leadership and educating the market, according to a survey from Curata. more

Over the years, many have augured the death of email, most recently foretelling that social media would make email obsolete. Nevertheless, for marketers, email remains an invaluable, even indispensable, tool. And this infographic from Eloqua spells out why. more

Traditional face-to-face tactics are still fundamental for SMB marketers: Personal relationships and networking (95%), tradeshows and industry events (89%), and in-person events (86%) rank as the most popular marketing tactics for finding new customers, according to a survey of small and midsized businesses conducted by Forrester Consulting for Act-On Software. more

The differences between search and social media marketing are many, but both are essential in today's marketing. The trick is to know which to use when and how to combine their power for maximum effect. more

When you want your target audience to take a particular action, including on Facebook, you must ask them to do it, according to a study by Dan Zarrella for HubSpot that explored how various call-to-action phrases impact the engagement of Facebook users. more

Before we can effectively communicate with our customers, we need to get their attention. According to Jeff Bander of EyeTrackShop, this means that when evaluating the effectiveness of our ads or calls-to-action or emails or whatever, we need to answer the question, "Did they see them?" more

On Black Friday (November 23), myriad holiday shoppers avoided the crowds at brick-and-mortar stores in favor of their Web browsers. Some 57.3 million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, up 18% from the same day in 2011, according to data from comScore. more

Consider this: Three-quarters of the world's population has a mobile phone, and within the next two years the number of mobile subscriptions will outnumber the number of people. more

Buoyed by emerging "native" ad formats, US social media advertising revenues are forecast to reach $9.2 billion in 2016, up from an estimated $4.6 billion in 2012, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.2% over the five-year forecast period, according to BIA/Kelsey's US Local Media Forecast. more

Cyber Monday (Nov. 26) will celebrate its seventh anniversary in 2012, and consumer motivation for shopping on the day synonymous with the best online deals continues to grow in popularity, according to a survey from PriceGrabber.com. more

More than half of Americans (57%) are expected to shop from the comfort of their own computer and mobile screens this Cyber Monday; moreover, consumers will use social media for finding discounts (57% of consumers), reading reviews (51%), and finding gift ideas (49%), according to Radium One. more

Ellen Valentine, product evangelist at Silverpop and my guest this week on Marketing Smarts, has an interesting perspective on the perennial tension between Marketing and Sales: Technology is to blame! And it's likely the solution, too... more