Countless reports have connected brand loyalty with status-seeking (think luxury cars), but a new study says some consumers' connections to brands stem from a far deeper source: their own insecurities. In the study, researchers asked a group of MP3 owners a few very serious questions and requests, such as: Please ... more

"Building your own opt-in email marketing list is an accomplishment," says Steve Adams in an article at MarketingProfs, "but don't stop there. Once you start reaching out to your list with great content, you can then improve the targeting and relevance of your email marketing campaigns by using segmentation." The ... more

Year after year for the past several years, pundits have prognosticated the rise of mobile marketing. But with recent developments in the mobile space, it seems the prediction is now reality. more

Despite being daily exposed to dozens of ads—including on television, in print, and on the Web—most Americans (55%) say they find advertising to be interesting ("very" or "somewhat"), though fully 41% say it is not interesting, a recent poll found. more

The data you gather on email marketing campaigns might not be as useful as you think. "Real danger lurks in not measuring the right factors or not measuring accurately," says Marco Marini in a post at the Email Experience Blog. "You could suffer lost revenue. You might not know which ... more

"Yes marketers," says Christina Kerley (aka CK), "you absolutely want people talking up (or, buzzing over) your brands. And you really want them saying great things. But you want the buzz you've worked so hard for to lead somewhere." Too often, she argues at her blog, we consider buzz-generation to ... more

In today's challenging economic environment, marketers are seeking better ways to maximize ROI. One way is to leverage insights from both SEM and email to drive greater success across channels. In a recent article at Inside CRM, Ram Krishnamurthy and Brad Neelan offer up five strategies for using such a twin ... more

You might have seen the video shot at the Sasquatch Music Festival in Washington state—footage of a young man as he dances wildly by himself to the strains of Santogold's "Unstoppable." He's clearly having a good time while bemused onlookers watch the spectacle. After a while, a second concertgoer ... more

Social networks have exploded in popularity in the past year: More than 4 in 10 (43%) among those who are online now use social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn—up from 27% a year ago. more

When subscribers opt in to your email campaigns, they will most likely make assumptions about the content, frequency and relevance of the messages you send. Accordingly, argues Justin Premick in a three-part series at the AWeber blog, it's important to set some appropriate expectations before they commit to you. "If ... more

Imagine this scenario: Your engineering team is about to close out a flawlessly executed systems job, and your customer is thrilled because the solution is already performing beyond expectations. You might have just discovered the ingredients of a great customer relationship—and a powerful case study. But how do you ... more

Not long ago, your spell-check would have revolted at a word like blogosphere; type it into a recent edition of Microsoft Word, however, and you won't see that angry red squiggle beneath its 11 letters. The bastardized term has been accepted by the software as a "real" word. Likewise, most ... more

Google accounted for 74.04% of all US searches conducted in the four weeks ended June 27, followed by Yahoo Search at 16.19%, the recently launched Bing at 5.25%, and Ask.com at 3.15%, Hitwise reports. more

"Predictive analysis has a long and profitable history with direct mail," says Arthur Middleton Hughes in a Pro article at MarketingProfs. "Millions of dollars have been saved by focusing on those customers most likely to buy—and not mailing to those who are unlikely to be interested." Only recently, though, have ... more

Heads-up, all of you out there who market to moms: Food mogul Nestlé is using Twitter to promote Juicy Juice—the super-popular, and now vintage, juice-box brand that caters to kids. Expect to see the pea-green pieces on mom-targeted sites like CafeMom and BabyCenter.com. Questions like "How do you stimulate your child's ... more

Last week, we offered Galen de Young's tips for optimizing B2B email content for search engines, just as you would optimize website copy. This week, we offer tips from his B2B Marketing Blog for optimizing internal site links to and from posted email content. Among his tips: Link email marketing ... more

In a post at the Daily Fix blog, Paul Williams poses this question: "If you were to put a few talented musicians or skilled screenwriters into a room and [mandate that they] write a Grammy-winning song or Oscar-winning blockbuster, could they do it?" They could try, obviously, and some ... more

ZenithOptimedia revised downward its forecast for global ad expenditure growth in 2009 to -8.5%, from its April prediction of -6.9%, after Q1 came in below its predictions, the firm announced this week. more

When spending must be cut, and it's just a matter of determining where, you face a process fraught with potential pitfalls. Here's some help. In a post at Harvard Business Online, Rita McGrath highlights key takeaways from a workshop on avoiding the traps that companies often encounter when trying to ... more

Becky Carroll recently engaged in a bit of nostalgia at the Customers Rock! blog—nostalgia for the 2008 MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer last fall. "While there, I spent a lot of time talking to my fellow speakers [and attendees] about what social media means to customer loyalty," she recalls. "If we ... more

"The operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project ... the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be." more

You might wonder whether the stories you tell in email marketing campaigns should be long or short. In a pair of posts from Chad White at the Retail Email Blog, you'll discover that it, well, depends. He offers two examples.  According to White, Neiman-Marcus has been incorporating brief quotes from designers in ... more

If you want to measure the impact of social-media campaigns on your brand reputation, try a free tool called Trendrr, Warren Katz suggests. "I haven't been using it long," he says at the CMG Partners Perspectives blog, "but so far I've found it incredibly useful for gauging the play [that] ... more

Nearly 55 million Americans (some 28% of US Internet users) visited an entertainment news site in May 2009—a 7% increase from a year earlier—with omg! and TMZ the leading sites in terms of unique visitors and video views. more

In a post at the Marketing Analytics blog, Lynne Harrold describes the quandary faced by an important Bostonian cultural institution. As its established member base dies off, it needs to attract younger members. But there's a problem: the young don't care for the repertoire favored by their elders. In general ... more