Jessica Celenza says, “You’ve probably heard time and time again about the concept of testing and optimization (a.k.a conversion rate optimization or CRO). But if you’re not quite sure what it means, that’s okay. Optimization refers to the process of improving your marketing efforts in order to maximize your desired business outcome. In other words, it’s all about testing and refining your marketing tactics to ensure they’re delivering the best results possible. How effective is it, you wonder? Accordingly to Optimizely, SaaS companies saw a 17 percent increase in customer engagement... (Read More ...)

Eric Samson says, “Global ad spending is predicted to reach reach $662.73 billion by 2018. Unfortunately, a lot of those dollars will go to waste. Marketers regularly throw away money on Super Bowl ads, promoted social media posts and bot traffic. The typical spray-and-pray approach is often utilized by brands with multi-million dollar budgets hoping to boost brand awareness and affinity. Nike, for instance, spends $3 billion a year on what they call “demand creation.” It works but is inefficient. Smart businesses can become household names without a seven-figure marketing budget. For... (Read More ...)

Christopher Lester says, “After surviving the competitive holiday season, many marketers could use a break. Unfortunately, new challenges come with the turn of the calendar page. Many people feel compelled to clean hypothetical house at the start of each new year—purging clutter, conquering unhealthy habits, and opting out of emails from the brands that crammed their inboxes in December. So, how can modern marketers deal with this detox mode—and make sure their messages aren’t lost in the New Year’s clean sweep? Here are three simple steps to connect with post-holiday email... (Read More ...)

Ginny Mrvin says, “Google says that only 1 in 5 marketers successfully completes the remarketing set up process in Google Analytics. Whether it’s tagging problems or other implementation challenges, a 20 percent success rate is a pretty good indicator that the process isn’t user friendly for most marketers. To improve that success rate, Google has released “instant activation” of Advertiser Features for users in Google Analytics. The fine print (or no print on the announcement, actually) is that this instant activation only applies to Universal Analytics users. Standard GA version... (Read More ...)

Eric Devaney says, “284 million. That’s how many monthly active users Twitter has. Believe it or not, Instagram has actually surpassed Twitter with 300 million monthly active users. (For comparison, the fourth most populous country in the world, Indonesia, has a population of 255 million.) And then there’s Facebook, with 1.35 billion monthly active users. That’s billion … with a “b.” In other words, Facebook’s user base is just a hair smaller than the population of China, the most populous country in the world (with about 1.37 billion people). Stats... (Read More ...)

Lauren Orsini says, “Suppose the only way to get to this article—yes, the one you’re reading—was to first visit readwrite.com and then trust that you could locate it using the site’s navigation tools. Odds are good that you’d be somewhere else right now. Instead, you probably followed a link shared on Twitter, passed along in email or even displayed here on ReadWrite. That “deep link” made it possible for you to zip right to this page, the same way you can visit just about anywhere on the Web with a single click. Deep links make the Web what it is; they’re... (Read More ...)

Graham Charlton says, “How can businesses find out that they have been penalised by Google?  I’ve been asking a number of search experts for the tell-tale signs to look out for… Types of Google penalties First up, I think it’s important to distinguish between manual penalties, for which sites will recieve notification via Webmaster Tools, and those caused by algorithm changes. The larger changes like Panda and Penguin are designed to cut down on nefarious practices like automated link building or on sites with thin content, as in the latest updates. However, Google also takes... (Read More ...)

Sean D’Souza says, “Let’s say you’re choosing between three photography courses covering similar topics. The prices are stacked like this: $200 $250 $2,000 What’s going through your mind right now? Curiosity floods your brain. Even if you’re not sure you can afford the $2,000 course, you want to know why it’s so expensive, compared to the other photography courses. If we were truly happy with lower prices, we would simply snap up the $200 workshop, right? We wouldn’t so much as take a glance at the rest”. Do Lower Prices Lead to More Sales? ‘Copyblogger’ Blog  (Read More ...)

Michael Cottam says, “This is a story about Panda, customer service, and differentiating your store from others selling the same products. Many e-commerce websites get the descriptions, specifications, and imagery for products they sell from feeds or databases provided by the manufacturers. The manufacturers might like this, as they control how their product is described and shown. However, it does their retailers no good when they are trying to rank for searches for those products and they’ve got the exact same content as every other retailer. If the content in the feed is thin, then... (Read More ...)

Allison Howen says, “Snapchat made a major move this week with the launch of a new feature called “Discover.” With Discover, users are able to find Stories from a variety of editorial teams, such as CNN, Comedy Central and Food Network. According to Snapchat’s announcement, Discover is the result of a collaboration with media partners to build a storytelling format that puts the narrative first. Moreover, Snapchat puts an emphasis on the fact that this feature is not social media. “Social media companies tell us what to read based on what’s most recent or most popular. We see it... (Read More ...)