Even if your email campaigns meet goals and deliver great ROI, you probably wonder how you compare to industry standards. If so, you’re going to love the spreadsheet in a recent blog post from Mailchimp. The company analyzed 271 million emails delivered by its system on behalf of small business ... more

Should SMS be used for every marketing message? No, definitely not. Your company must consider whether or not your intended message is urgent and determine if subscribers will appreciate receiving it in a mobile form. With that said, there are certainly are two major reasons SMS should be on your ... more

If you dropped everything and followed the leader every time a social media tool went live, you'd never have time to do real work. Right? Not this time. Chin up: the social media gods have smiled upon you. While your rivals fought for the title of Early Adopter—taxing both their ... more

No doubt about it: corporate images are important, and many companies work very hard to cultivate them. But how do specific corporate images (eg, an image of being innovative, trustworthy, socially conscious) affect customers' impressions of the products a company makes? In some instances, quite a lot. Research shows that ... more

Marketers have recognized the immense creative talent that resides outside of Madison Avenue. They've recognized that, with Consumer-Generated Advertising, properly executed, they can generate quality, consumer-relevant content at a fraction of the cost of conventional agency productions. And these commercials break through the clutter with their "real" feel and relevant ... more

Founded in 1897, the Blue Cross is one of the UK's oldest animal welfare charities. It built an online community of pet owners - then launched a viral campaign, including rich media, that had people flocking to the social network. more

A recent television ad from Britain's Hovis has gotten as much press for its cinematic scope as for the bread it markets. Shot with 750 meticulously costumed extras over a week in the city of Liverpool, the spot checks in at a full 122 seconds—one for each year of the ... more

If you have a television, you've seen the snarky Apple ads that personify Microsoft as a hapless dork in a bad suit. That "loser" characterization went more or less unchallenged until a recent Microsoft campaign kicked off with some surreal spots featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. One vignette—set in a ... more

"[Your subscribers] are reading e-mail on mobile devices more frequently than ever," says Winston Bowden in an article at MarketingProfs. "[And] there are some specific issues to consider." At a minimum, he suggests you keep PDAs in mind as you design: Optimize image ... more

Do you have a live Internet video channel in your future? You may scratch your head wondering how such a Web presence might improve your business. But, even though it's not a mainstream marketing vehicle today, real-time streaming is a trend to watch. What started as live sports and concerts on ... more

Of course we want customers to like our brand. But recent research suggests that an even more important driver of brand equity is brand attachment. Brand attachment represents the emotional bond that consumers have between a brand and themselves. (Ahhhh! That's the cologne he wore on our wedding day!) Consumers ... more

In a provocative post at the Online Marketer Blog, DJ Francis argues that the days of email marketing—as we know it—are numbered. "Marketers are no longer interrupting customers' lives with sales pitches," he says. "Instead, they (or the good ones, at least) are concerned with providing value so that the customer ... more

Some advertisements stand the test of time, and a classic television spot for Volkswagen is currently making the online rounds. It opens with a shot of two neighbors emerging from a pair of identical houses. "Mr. Jones and Mr. Krempler each had $3,000," intones the narrator as each man walks ... more

It would be terrific if email marketers had universal standards for the creation of all their html messages. In the absence of such comprehensive guidelines, Winston Bowden offers some fundamental design rules as a jumping-off point: Aim for a width of 600 to 620 pixels. Use CSS inlinks ... more

Sharp Electronics may have led the LCD revolution, but consumers don't view it as an agent of change. As part of a multichannel campaign to change consumers' minds, Sharp turned to an innovative effort on Facebook. more

Last month in Beijing, Lenovo leveraged its Olympic sponsorship to develop global brand awareness. Unique to its approach was its use of new media, which fortified its traditional marketing and created a new level of athlete and fan interaction. more

According to Drew McLellan, there exist only a few rules for outdoor advertising—for instance, use provocative visuals and less than seven words. But in a blog post, he recalls a 1989 campaign devised by Crowley Webb for Garcia's Irish Pub in Buffalo, New York, that ignored this conventional wisdom. "[This] ... more

GotVMail set out to raise brand awareness, promoting itself in a way that would both amuse its audience and set the company apart. What resulted was a viral video campaign starring Gary Busey. more

We live in an age of euphemism. A used car isn't "used," it's "pre-owned"; we're sold "bathroom tissue," not "toilet paper"; and no marketer in her right mind would dream of calling wrinkle cream anything but "rejuvenating moisturizer." This is why the decidedly un-euphemistic name of a Beverly Hills clothier—Jimmy ... more

Over 50 percent of music downloaders consider iTunes the best fee-based digital music service. And a growing legion of iTunes users are implementing Coverflow, which lets you scroll through a music collection by album art, for aesthetic purposes. Millennials may be a generation obsessed with instant gratification, but music remains ... more

When CBS Sports announced that it would once again live-stream the NCAA March Madness tournament during regular business hours, eTelemetry jumped at the chance to use the event as a prime backdrop for its own campaign. more

"It is a sociological fact that when times are tough, people turn to the past—to what they know—for comfort," writes Patrick Byers in a post at the Responsible Marketing blog. "So, it should come as no surprise that recent advertising is taking us away from the present and into our ... more

In post at the Neuromarketing blog, Roger Dooley says, "U.S. consumers have been conditioned to believe that proper wine comes in a 750ml glass bottle with a natural cork. Artificial corks and screw cap closures are suspect, to say the least. And box wines are traditionally suited only for penniless ... more

New Media Monetization Series, Part I: Web Advertising Online advertising spend continues to increase, but the process remains fraught with doubt. This year, NBC paid $894M for the programming rights to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This "most ambitious single media project in history" will deliver 3,600 hours of coverage over ... more

There's a lot that China could do better, like every country in the world. But the Beijing Olympics PR machine is failing badly to put a positive spin on anything. So, what are they doing wrong? more