Key Email Marketing Trends from 2015

This article talked about some of the key email marketing trends over the last year.  The key highlights were as follows:

1) Email triggers on the rise
Email triggers were used more and were seen as more effective then in previous years - 7% of marketers said email triggers were very successful (up from 4%); 54% of marketers said email triggers were quite successful (up from 47%)

1) Making emails more mobile friendly
This has been one of the key changes - marketers focused not only on the design of the emails to make sure they display well on emails, but also on the content to ensure that it captures the attention of consumers in less space and less time (emails are read much quicker on mobile then desktop)

Key Email Marketing Trends

Teens Think Facebook Uncool, but Still Use It

According to a recent study, American teens think Facebook has lost its 'cool factor', but still use it.  35% of respondents in the study said it wasn't cool anymore, but still use it.

My takeaways from this article are the following:
- it's hard to decouple how successful a business is / will be based upon what consumers say - in this case although teens say they aren't as attracted to Facebook it appears their usage is up and increasing
- Facebook has been on the verge of innovation in the social media space.  We have seen this story play out with other social media sites (like My Space for example).  Is this 'lack of coolness' perhaps a precursor to problems arising at Facebook?

Teens think Facebook uncool, but still use it

Half of Southeast Asians Clicking on Mobile Ad Did It By Accident -

According to a recent study, half of people surveyed across 5 Southeast Asian countries who said they have clicked on or read a mobile ad said they did so bu mistake.

I think this ad is interesting because it highlights that there can be errors in data collection.  While there is no doubt that mobile advertising is an increasingly important medium, it is important to understand that discrepancies may rise when judging the value of certain initiatives when we focus solely on quantitative metrics that may contain flaws (like click-through-rates for example).

A Simple Mistake?

Predictions about Digital Marketing - Pay to Play

This article talks about big changes that are happening over the next 12 months in the digital marketing space.  I wanted to highlight a couple that I thought were interesting:

"Pay to Play"
This has become more and more prominent in recent years, but recently it is become harder to get content across for free.  Especially with Facebook Instant being launched it will be harder for those who don't pay to get their message across

"You can no longer count on Google as your top source of website traffic"

SEO has become more difficult on Google, with the Company changing their algorithms several times in recent years.  The article suggests focus shift to traffic acquisition from multiple, reliable sources that can be controlled 

PRedictions about Digital Marketing

Google facing fines from Russia

Google's antimonopoly agency has ruled that Google's MOS is anticompetitive - the issue stems from consumers being forced to download Google Play when a device manufacturer choses to use the Android system.  The case was initiated by Yandex, the leading Russian search engine.

Google has until November 18 to make changes or it could incur fines of ~15% Russian revenue from mobile applications.

"Russia demands Google fix ‘anticompetitive’ Android"
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/06/