Research, Measurement & Database Marketing

SUMMARY: If it's difficult for your prospects to find you -- and if they do, but experience an arduous buying process -- your marketing efforts will be for naught.

One of the best ways to solve both issues is to test and optimize every part of a marketing campaign, from top-of-the-funnel lead acquisition to the signed contract. See how one nonprofit ran a series of tests and impressively improved results at every stage of its buying cycle. read the complete case study

SUMMARY: Between cloud solutions, tools that allow B2B marketers to conduct behavioral analysis, and data hygiene, the marketing database and the CRM are interesting topics right now for B2B marketers. There is a wide range of tools and solutions for marketers to use to enhance the database and how it's used by both Sales and Marketing.

We talked to three industry experts who outlined six topics related to the B2B marketing database that marketers should be thinking about in 2011. Read about data hygiene, the trending topics of social media and mobile computing, how both affect the B2B database and more. read the complete article

SUMMARY: "Advertising on blogs or social networks" was rated the most accurately measured (32%), and was also rated the least effective (16%). More than 90% of companies believe that social media is the most effective in accomplishing brand building goal, followed closely by goals for attracting website visitors. view the complete research record

SUMMARY: There is often reluctance to fix a machine that’s not broken. But when the machine is wasteful, minor tweaks can bring greater efficiency without sacrificing performance.

See how a menswear retailer brought their catalog circulation issues under control, realized huge savings, and invested in customer acquisition. Includes six lessons from their experiences. read the complete interview

SUMMARY: To help marketers envision how their peers’ LPO practice looks from the human capital perspective, we examined the job functions performed in broadly defined levels of authority. Find out the results from a survey of 2,673 marketers in this week’s chart. read the complete article

By Anne Holland, Content Director

Search pay per click (PPC) URLs are fairly short because of the nature of the beast. You are not given much room to type in a long URL.

So, the hot search PPC testing tactic is specific wording and capitalizations. Example: Should your text ad say www.ClickHere.com, or will you get better response with www.ClickHERE.com, or perhaps www.ClickHereFREE.com?

As all experienced search marketers know, organic search results get the lion's share of... read the complete blog post