MarketStar Blog

In an amazingly short span of a couple or so years, Cloud Computing has become an integral, perhaps even the most vital part of an enterprise’s IT Strategy. It has helped free-up a huge chunk of the IT from the constrictions of legacy software and hardware licensing data center models, and has opened, revolutionized and to an extent democratized the way IT delivers services and how the users access information, applications and business services. 

But with the ever-increasing impact the cloud has on IT, there’s also a palpable confusion about how its full value to business can be harnessed, mainly because of the continuous and rapid evolution of the cloud and its related technologies and the growing flux of vendors using portentous hyperbolic marketing speak to sell their cloud solutions. 

That is why it is essential for businesses to continually monitor computing trends to keep updating and adapting their cloud strategies to evade expensive oversights or encash market opportunities over the coming years.

It’s being called nothing less than the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”1. And in terms of uncovering the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT), it seems the limits are defined only by our collective imaginations. Indeed, as one Forbes.com article argues, “The most important thing to do when considering how the Internet of Things will affect your business is to think bigger—much bigger.”2 And what applies to our businesses applies just as much to our individual lives. 

Welcome to the next generation of digital business, where predictive marketing powered by artificial intelligence and advanced analytics is revolutionizing the way we connect with customers. As a B2B marketer, you know that the traditional methods of marketing are no longer sufficient. Today’s customers are more informed and discerning, and their buying journey is more complex than ever. So, how do you stay ahead of the curve? The answer lies in predictive marketing. 

Emailers have been a favorite tool of marketers. But in recent years, with inboxes getting clogged by more and more promotional mailers, they may be losing their effectiveness. In fact, with fewer respondents checking their work and personal email than last year (down 17% and 25% per week respectively) and 35% of personal emails going unopened by consumers, as shown in a study done by Adobe amongst European consumers, the need to supplement emailers with other marketing tools has never been more important. 

After 28 years in the world of Sales as a Service™, MarketStar has forged many lasting relationships with leaders in our field. We’ve asked Claudio Ayub, a 20-year channel veteran and Chief Channel Strategist of Perks, to discuss his view on improving sales performance through his experience as a loyalty marketing expert with broad knowledge in strategy development, market management, and channel sales planning.

In today’s world, a customer is the nucleus around which the whole business revolves. A product or solution, no matter how ground-breaking, will be unable to survive if it doesn’t meet consumers’ expectations. In this consumer-centric economy, marketers are relentlessly trying to capture customers’ attention and improve their experiences with the brand so as to keep them coming back for more. 

The customer revolution is powered by the influx of mobile devices which allows them to seek information, make purchases, and make recommendations all with the click of a button. The implication is that this is all shaping up to be a shopper driven revolution, with customers shopping online, in the store, on their mobile phones, and switching in between them without any concept of borders. 

Companies now acknowledge the importance of providing a consistent experience at each of these touch-points for consumers; else they run the risk of losing them altogether at any of these interaction points. But it is important that while doing so marketers keep their customers in the center and develop a framework for enhancing their experience with the brand accordingly. 

Using video for marketing is a growing trend that is especially important in ABM because it leads to a quantum jump in successfully connecting, engaging and converting prospects. And personalized video takes marketing effectiveness even further. This article shows how the numbers stand and some proven ways to interpret your video marketing strategy for ABM. 

Email is an indispensable channel for marketers seeking to attract, engage and retain prospects and customers. However, sometimes in an attempt to talk to customers, they end up having a monologue instead of a meaningful two-sided conversation, which leaves a bad taste in their inboxes. It is important for marketers to keep some basic best practices in mind to ensure that their communication is such that it prompts their target audience to open, respond and even share their message onwards with their networks. 

Over the past few years, the retail industry has been negotiating with the challenge of adopting an omni-channel strategy for providing a unified experience to its customers across all channels. The reason for this is not hard to find. According to research1 conducted by the Aberdeen Group, companies with the strongest omni-channel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers, increase their annual revenue by an average of 9.5% year-on-year and decrease their cost per customer contact by an average of 7.5% each year. 

Here are four steps to achieving a seamless omni-channel retail experience: 

Start with a Clear Strategy 

Any strategy that you develop for creating an omni-channel experience should begin with the customer. All stakeholders within the company, be it marketing, customer success or product need to buy into this new approach of making the customer the center of all that you do. 

In order to develop a clear strategy you need to identify the key touch points that your customers frequent and see how you can enhance their journey at each one of them, based on the stage at which they are in the customer journey. 

New Age selling requires that your engagement with customers be contextually relevant to what they are looking for and where they are in the customer journey at any given point in time. You are thus able to offer timely solutions to problems for which they are seeking answers. That’s context-driven marketing, also called contextual marketing.