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As chatbots become increasingly more developed, and the demand for instant online customer service continues to rise, the debate about whether we should be using chatbots in business is creating divided opinions. The truth is, there is a strong case for both sides. There is no doubt chatbots can be beneficial to both businesses and their consumers, but they can also be a nuisance for customers who have a more serious problem and just want human assistance. Improving Online Experience In the on-demand world we now live in,…

With 2019 kicking into full gear, what better time to reflect on the past year and some of the biggest trends that were front-and-center in the advertising world? While the industry saw many changes take place, there were some that I found to be especially noteworthy. It’ll be important for advertisers to pay attention to them as they continue to shape the industry in 2019 and beyond. Here’s a closer look at those three areas: Brand Safety Concerns Reached a New Peak From YouTube to Facebook, advertisers have become…

When it comes to really engaging customers, personalization and customization are the current buzzwords. But how can you personalize marketing content if you have tens of thousands of customers and contacts? Automation. Today’s marketing automation tools may help you reach masses, but you can do so in such a way that the message still feels personal. Here are some strategies for leveraging automation for your marketing campaigns. 1. Be More Responsive on Social Media It can be overwhelming to manage multiple social…

53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load (according to Google). According to a 2017 Akamai study, even a 100-millisecond delay in website load time can hurt conversion rates by 7 percent. For a business, an extra second of mobile loading time can mean the difference between a great quarter and trouble. That’s why Google introduced a little something you’ve probably heard of, way back in 2016: Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Read More: Google AMP for Gmail: A Marketer’s View…

Professional Service Organizations (PSOs) revolve around people. They’re always on the lookout for new tools to help employees perform at their best, more efficient processes to simplify work, and ways to enhance profitability so a business is viable and all can prosper. Service-based companies live amid flux and flow, and quick adaptation is table stakes. Marketing agencies have always required particular agility, and with digital ushering in dramatic changes, new technologies and strategies seem to arise daily, and…

When it was first introduced, GDPR was considered by many in the publishing, media and advertising to be a regulatory revolution. Almost nine months on, and it has certainly changed the face of how brands access, handle and store their consumers’ data. While companies rushed to achieve compliance with GDPR, the true extent of the regulation remains to be seen; with regulators just beginning to hand out major fines in the post-GDPR era. So, as we all wait with bated breath for more regulatory enforcement, how are brands and…

In the mobile app world, marketers spend just a fraction of their budgets on re-targeting. Over the next year, that spend will increase, especially for large brands that have already acquired large user bases. There is another change on the horizon. Today, mobile app marketers set aside different budgets for user acquisition and re-targeting campaigns and approach them as entirely separate initiatives. But whether you are investing in User Acquisition (UA) or re-targeting, there is only one benchmark that really matters:…

For decades, television has thrived on the basis of the following bargain: free content in exchange for watching advertisements. Today, though, the rise of subscription services like Netflix and Amazon Prime has made many question the viability of ad-supported services in the streaming media ecosystem. Yet ad-supported video is starting to gain audience share in the streaming world, as Freewheel reported in its Q2 2018 Video Monetization Report, and it should be no surprise. In fact, the ad-supported model is appealing to…

Recently someone asked me what makes a good marketer. I thought for a while and replied, "A good marketer is someone who can efficiently use every channel and back it up by measuring the channel's effectiveness." I have been handling B2B marketing for a long time now, long enough to witness the evolution of Marketing Automation from just Email Automation to automation of the entire process right from lead captures to nurturing, tracking, qualification, & analysis — with the more recent infusion of AI technologies like…

I remember when the thought of Augmented Reality seemed like a pipe dream — something we thought could only be found at the end of a rainbow or in an episode of The Jetsons. Now, it has become not only a reality but also a necessity for brands looking to create a more personalized and interactive shopping experience. Perhaps the most amazing opportunity AR presents is that it allows us to evaluate products as if they were right in front of us. Gone are the days of wondering… Will this dining room set fit in the corner…

Have sales left you feeling overwhelmed and burned out? It used to seem so simple. Now there are hundreds of millions of potential clients, along with millions of competitors vying for their attention. The world of sales is moving faster than anyone can keep track of, leaving only one thing for certain: If you’re using the same methods and tools you were using a few years ago, you’re going to be left behind. If you’ve spent any time with us at Reply, you’ll know we’re big fans of automation. We’re constantly looking…

Customers in the financial services industry want personalized experiences. They, in fact, expect and demand them from their service providers. They prefer to stay loyal to a company as long as they receive this special treatment. As a result, personalization has become the number one priority for marketers in the industry today. They are waking up to the realization that delivering personalized experiences highly depend on understanding customer data.marke Very few companies have the means to understand this data and use…

By now, marketing teams understand that prospects want a personalized experience. They expect their interactions with a brand to be tailored to their wants and needs. A Dun & Bradstreet poll of 500 B2B professionals reported more than half of companies today use data to make marketing decisions. Despite this growing majority, the most important objective for marketing professionals in 2019 is increasing the number of decisions made using data analysis, according to a 2018 Google Study. More than half of marketers…

Are you ready for the voice revolution? Gartner predicts that by 2020, 30 percent of web browsing will be done without a screen. Voice assistants accounted for twice as many sales in the fourth quarter of 2017 than in the fourth quarter of 2016. And speaking of voice-first devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home, voice-driven technology is being adopted at a faster rate than any technology in human history; by 2022, voice assistants will reach 55 percent of US households. These statistics make it clear that voice-tech…

You’ve taken your startup off the ground and maybe even have a small team. Search engine optimization for your website wasn’t a priority till now. But you know very well that it’s what will help you bring traffic, turn visitors into leads, increase revenue, and build authority. But how do you do SEO as a startup? If hiring an SEO specialist is out of the question, you have limited resources and need to get your first customers soon. You don’t consider yourself tech-savvy in this category, so what else can you do? Don’t…

Google+, Google’s own social media platform which launched in 2011, is to shut down in April 2019 after a new leak occurred. The social channel had quite a strong start in its early days but never managed to generate sufficient interest or activity to compete with other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. A study from Stone Temple Consulting revealed that 90% of people registered on Google+ had never posted anything on the platform. The network was due to shut down in August 2019, but a new bug that…

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and other advanced analytics can drive optimal customer experience for marketers worldwide. With an abundance of data, companies try to collect the right data and transform it into meaningful insights about customers via powerful algorithms. These insights drive relevant conversations and make it easy for a customer to act. Read More: The Future of Customer Experience, and What 2019 Has in Store But it’s not enough to use AI to automate processes. This increasingly popular…

Mobile phones have become more than communication tools. We use them to manage our schedules and finances, monitor our connected homes, order meals or groceries, shop for holiday gifts, navigate new places and conduct business, even at a global scale. It’s no wonder that Americans spend an average of 70+ hours a week on our phones. With more than 6 million mobile applications available for download from app stores, users can find one to facilitate almost any task imaginable. However, this wave of mobile saturation has…

Influencer Marketing has seen tremendous growth in recent years. Once viewed as an experimental channel, it has evolved into a core strategy for most marketing organizations and the industry is expected to reach upwards of $10 billion by 2020. But, as with any emerging market, Influencer Marketing must evolve in order to survive. As the industry grows, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for brands to achieve consistent success, which begs the question: How can the influencer ecosystem mature to keep up with demand? Here…

Picture this: You’re buying a television. How many brand names immediately come to mind? Most people can only mention  the top two or three brands in the television market. It’s the same with soft drinks, cars, chocolates—and even people. This is testimony to the fact that irrespective of market competition—and how many products a customer uses—there’s only space for a few brands in a customer’s mind when it comes to spontaneous brand recall. This idea holds across diverse products and consumer groups. Marketing…