What You Need to Know About Marketing Automation - Search ...

Every five years or so, we see the emergence and maturity of something really significant in the ever-changing world of marketing. From search marketing to social media, these are business game changers that open new opportunities and avenues to achieve a competitive edge.

Although marketing automation isn't really that new, it's evolution is deserving of far more attention. In essence, marketing automation is software that helps streamline (and automate) a number of important marketing tasks.

For example, these tasks might include the automation of sending email, split testing landing pages, segmenting leads, and upselling to existing customers. The software also helps ensure the right tasks are executed, optimized, and measured over time.

Common Goals

As Jon Miller?wrote in his Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation, there are three core benefits to marketing automation:

1. Saving time and money.
2. Measuring and optimizing marketing investments.
3. Faster revenue growth.

The ultimate goal with marketing automation is to increase efficiencies and revenue growth. More specifically, companies frequently expect the ability to:

• Send relevant, time-released (drip-campaign) emails to segmented audiences.
• Easily create and test landing pages for multiple campaigns.
• Filter leads and prioritize actions based on levels of content engagement, roles and likelihood to buy.
• Measure revenue attribution from multiple components or touch points within a campaign.

To appreciate the full impact this "next big thing" is bringing, and even before getting to the core elements that make marketing automation valuable ? it's helpful to understand the relevant business history leading up to it.

The Missing Platform

In 1990, the Gartner Group coined the acronym, ERP, for Enterprise Resource Planning ? which essentially became the umbrella term for big-business software platforms that automated efficiencies in areas of supply chain and vendor management, accounting, human resources and sales, to name a few.

The Internet accelerated these platforms even further, fueling multi-billion dollar businesses like SAP, IBM and Oracle. By 2000, an emerging focus was CRM (customer relationship management) platforms that were web-based, as opposed to software that had to be installed on local servers and computers within a company ("the cloud" is over twenty years old).

But in the last three decades of this development, there's one important business function that's been relatively absent of a platform that could stay current and integrate well with others being developed. That function was marketing.

Why? Because marketing has been the most ever-changing practice there is in business. The fact that marketing has changed so quickly and often is part of what's kept companies constantly seeking solutions from people like us.

And although many of us have done a fair job of positioning ourselves as marketing integrators, our "integration" has often been a labor-intensive cobbling together of tactics under disparate processes, tools and strategies.

Among the growing number of marketing agencies and "experts" who produce such varied results under such varied budgets ? it's no wonder why marketing is frequently perceived by business owners as a cost center instead of a profit center.

Marketing automation helps fix this ? and although there are many marketing automation platform providers (Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, etc.), the platform as a concept is now also emerging as a popular investment for numerous companies worldwide.

The Elements of Marketing Automation

The 10 primary elements of marketing automation include:

1. Email Marketing: Initial and scheduled delivery based on buyer interests, roles, personas and actions.
2. Landing Pages and Forms: For each campaign.
3. Campaign Management: Includes development or repurposing of content (creative, video, short and long-form.
4. Marketing Programs: Associated offers and content to support sales.
5. Lead Generation: Associated advertising, social media, word of mouth and search engine visibility to drive participation in the system.
6. Lead Nurturing / Lead Scoring/ Lifecycle Management: Includes prioritization of customer types based on fit and likelihood to buy, in addition to the filtering of leads by engagement and interest. Assumes existing customers are always leads, and keeps them in a system that continuously delivers relevant content.
7. CRM Integration: Transfer of leads to sales opportunities and follow-up. This includes technical integration of platforms like Salesforce.com.
8. Social Marketing Capabilities: Includes integration of social media platforms such as Hootsuite to achieve better tracking and attribution of social to sales.
9. Resource management: Includes consultative services.
10. Marketing Analytics: Includes measurement of the revenue contribution of each campaign and associated program element.

The Opportunities

One of the common misconceptions of marketing automation is that it's strictly for B2B, and is essentially an email system pre-loaded with time-released messages (or even spam). Although it's true B2B companies have predominantly taken advantage of marketing automation, the success of it has B2C companies following their lead.

This is sophisticated marketing. No matter how easy the platform providers tell you it is, all you have to do is talk to a few companies who have made the investment to realize they aren't using the tools to their potential. That spells opportunity for those willing to invest in, and learn how these platforms work.

Note: As always, the magic is never in any tool or platform. The content and execution is what will ultimately drive the success.

Summary

The opportunities are numerous. For any successful organization that relies on the Internet for leads and sales, marketing automation stands to increase efficiencies and revenues. And for successful marketers, this is yet another thing you should be paying attention to.

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Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2268690/What-You-Need-to-Know-About-Marketing-Automation

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The Real Benghazi Scandal (Atlantic Politics Channel)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/306314119?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Markets remain subdued after soft US data

LONDON (AP) ? Financial markets were subdued Thursday despite encouraging growth figures out of Japan, as investors digested a mixed batch a U.S. economic data a day after Wall Street indexes hit record highs.

One of the reasons why stocks have been buoyant for most of this year has been optimism over the U.S. economy. But a 32,000 rise in weekly jobless claims to 360,000 and a fairly downbeat manufacturing survey from the Philadelphia Fed raised questions about the underlying health of the world's largest economy.

The impact on the markets was muted, however, given that a 0.4 percent fall in monthly consumer prices, which took the annual rate down to a two and a half year low of 1.1 percent, suggested that the Federal Reserve won't be in a rush to end its super-easy monetary policy soon. The Fed's monetary injections over the past few years have lain behind the recovery in stock markets since 2009.

"Optimism abounds, and with inflation concerns starting to ignite concern for more rather than less bond buying ahead, it does not seem rational to sell stocks on the view that the economy may be slowing," said Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co.

In Europe, Germany's DAX rose less than 0.1 percent to close at 8,369.87 while the CAC-40 in France fell 0.1 percent to 3,979.07. The FTSE 100 of leading British shares also ended 0.1 percent lower at 6,687.80.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.1 percent at 15,285.19 while the broader S&P 500 index was flat at 1,658.85.

Japan was in focus earlier after figures fueled hopes of an economic turnaround in the country. A day after the latest set of data showed that the eurozone ? the 17 European Union countries that use the euro ? was in its longest recession since the currency was launched in 1999, Japanese data impressed on the upside.

Stronger consumer spending and public works investment coupled with aggressive monetary easing gave some oomph to the recovery. Japan's economy grew by a stronger-than-expected 3.5 percent in annual terms and by 0.9 percent on a quarterly basis, according to figures reported by the Cabinet Office on Thursday.

The forecast-busting data provides the first tangible evidence that the economic policy of the new government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is working.

Abe promised aggressive steps to restart the country's postwar boom, which effectively ground to a halt in the early 1990s. As part of that effort, the Bank of Japan plans to double the amount of cash circulating in the Japanese economy and held as bank reserves.

One of the offshoots of the policies has been a dramatic fall in the value of the yen, and that's boosted the export prospects of the country's businesses, lifting the Nikkei 40 percent this year.

The Nikkei didn't extend those gains Thursday, losing 0.4 percent to close at 15,037.24 as investors used the release as an opportunity to book some gains.

"If you're looking for a clear example of the markets currently moving in a way that is unrelated to the quality of the data, then look no further than the movement in the Nikkei," said Craig Erlam, market analyst at Alpari.

Despite the modest retreat in Tokyo, most other Asian markets advanced. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.2 percent to 23,082.68. while South Korea's Kospi added 0.8 percent to 1,986.81. China's main index in Shanghai ended 1.2 percent higher at 2,356.80.

Currencies were steady, with the euro up 0.1 percent at $1.2898 and the dollar flat against the Japanese yen, at 102.22 yen.

Oil prices eked out some gains, with the benchmark New York rate up 99 cents to $95.29 per barrel.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/markets-remain-subdued-soft-us-data-144141647.html

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It's Europe Day, but Europeans don't seem to know

With the very idea of a united Europe under debate amid the economic crisis, it's hard to find people who know what 'Europe Day' is, let alone celebrate it.

By Sara Miller Llana,?Staff writer / May 9, 2013

A huge European Union flag is installed in front of the Romanian parliament building in Bucharest, Romania, Thursday. The flag, with a weight of 800 kg and measuring 100 by 140 meters, was placed at the parliament to mark Europe Day.

Vadim Ghirda/AP

Enlarge

Today is Europe Day. It marks a pivotal declaration by French foreign minister for foreign affairs, Robert Schuman, on May 9, 1950, that led to the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community and essentially the foundation of the European Union.

Skip to next paragraph Sara Miller Llana

Europe Bureau Chief

Sara Miller Llana?moved to Paris in April 2013 to become the Monitor's Europe Bureau?Chief. Previously she was the?paper's?Latin America Bureau Chief, based in Mexico City, from 2006 to 2013.

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In theory, Europe Day should be comparable to Bastille Day in France or the Fourth of July in the US. Instead, it?s hard to find people who actually know what it is.

One history professor did, but this was his take: ?It?s nothing.? Pieter Lagrou, a contemporary European history professor at the Free University of Brussels, says he likes to tell his students the obscurity of the holiday marks "the symbolic deficit of Europe.?

The central question of "What is Europe?" is being picked apart across and beyond the continent. In the midst of debt crisis, nations are fighting to get in, questioning getting out and even splitting in two, and bickering over banking unions and political control and sovereignty.

On the ground ? the level at which citizens take time to raise a flag and celebrate, or at least ponder, their national founding ? it?s also an exceedingly hard question to answer.

Dr. Lagrou used himself as an example. He?s a Dutch-speaking Belgian, living in bilingual Brussels, with a French employer. His regional government and federal government are accountable to him. But so are his EU representatives.

If he, for example, cared deeply about a jobs-creation program, would it be his federal government or the EU that he should contact, and among the latter, who holds the control among the European Commission, the European Council, and the European Parliament?

?The political landscape is increasingly difficult,? he says.

As a journalist new to Europe, I made Brussels, the heart of the European Union, my first stop on the European circuit. Perhaps it would have been better to visit the EU capitals first and then Brussels, where it?s harder than most places to know whom you need to talk to, who holds the power, and how it all works.

I walked through the city, which is the first thing I usually do when I arrive somewhere new. I went to the European district, past the European Parliament and the Commission. I went to the daily Commission press briefing. There were only a few questions asked: about funding proposals in Spain for the unemployed, EU representation at the International Monetary Fund, and Macedonia. All answers were about the same: ?We can?t speculate, we can?t answer at this point.? None of them shed any light on how the EU works.

I told many people that I couldn?t get my head around it. Without fail, they all replied, ?Don?t worry, neither can most Europeans.?

They were joking to a certain extent (at least those who work for the EU). But Lagrou says there is a risk here. To many, the EU has become a giant bureaucracy ?without a face or identity,? he says. In the face of crisis ? as real fault lines are forming between nations, especially over austerity ? many are increasingly losing faith in the project.

Each year, around Europe Day, the EU opens its doors to the public, so citizens get an inside look at the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council of the European Union, the Commission, the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions, and the Office of the Ombudsman. These kinds of events, of any governmental institution, are often disregarded as hokey. But it might be as important a time as ever to sign up for the tour. I know I wish I had.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/SlyPw3vRIq4/It-s-Europe-Day-but-Europeans-don-t-seem-to-know

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Caribbean talks conservation on Branson's island

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) ? In a bid to safeguard biodiversity and the Caribbean's tourism-based economy, regional political leaders and corporate executives will gather Friday on billionaire Richard Branson's private island with the aim of protecting 20 percent of the region's coastal resources by 2020.

Participants are expected to announce various commitments to advance the "Caribbean Challenge," an initiative that is touted as the first comprehensive conservation endeavor in the region of scattered islands that has 10 percent of the world's coral reefs and some 1,400 species of fish and marine mammals.

To safeguard the Caribbean's future, Branson says politics and business-as-usual will have to change. The adventuring CEO and founder of the Virgin Group of companies is co-hosting the meeting of political and business leaders at Necker Island, his home in the British Virgin Islands where he has developed an ultra-exclusive eco-resort that showcases renewable energy technology and reintroduced flamingoes.

"It's just so important to get every single Caribbean country 100 percent behind protecting the wonderful sea life and the wonderful reefs and mangroves, and therefore the species that occupy our oceans," Branson said in a phone interview from the island.

British Virgin Islands Premier Orlando Smith and Grenada Prime Minister Keith Mitchell are also co-hosting the gathering of delegations from nine Caribbean countries, chiefs of resort companies and cruise lines, representatives of the World Bank, United Nations and other international bodies, private foundations and environmental groups.

The Nature Conservancy, an international conservation group headquartered in Virginia, is helping to sponsor the summit and has been providing technical assistance to participating governments for years. The conservancy touts the Caribbean Challenge, begun in 2008, as among the world's most ambitious conservation initiatives.

"The Caribbean is truly paradise under threat, and today's focus is a critical step toward a brighter future," Glenn Prickett, chief external affairs officer with the Nature Conservancy, said in an email.

If the Caribbean, the world's most tourism dependent region, takes strong steps now to protect its natural resources, conservationists say it will put itself in a far stronger position to protect its small economies and cope with future threats from climate change and ocean acidification due to greenhouse gases.

The challenges are many in the ecologically stressed Caribbean, which covers some 10,000 square kilometers (3,860 square miles). Once brilliant coral reefs have lost their luster due to warming waters and disease. Live coral cover has plummeted to an average of just 8 percent from 50 percent in the 1970s, the International Union for Conservation of Nature says. Three-fourths of the reefs are considered threatened, also degraded by overfishing, runoff pollution and coastal development.

"In the past, the Caribbean has not been great at protecting the eagle rays and the sharks and the reef fish and so on," Branson said.

Some of the Caribbean Challenge's participating countries ? Bahamas, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and the British Virgin Islands ? have already taken steps to reach their conservation targets.

The Dominican Republic has actually exceeded its 20 percent goal by creating more than 30 new protected areas in recent years. The Bahamas established the largest marine protected area in the region by expanding a national park in Andros from 185,000 acres to 1.28 million acres. Jamaica has set up several "no-take" fishing sanctuaries.

But there are questions about how deep the political will really is in a region with heavily indebted governments. Political leaders have long spoken about the need for protecting coasts, developing alternative energy sources and diversifying tourism-dependent economies but little has been accomplished. One country, Antigua & Barbuda, recently dropped out of the initiative for reasons that are not clear.

Branson said strong conservation efforts would pay off for years to come for a region where 70 percent of the people live in coastal settlements and a $20 billion tourism industry provides more than 2 million jobs.

"Many, many people who come to the Caribbean come because they want to enjoy the reef, they want to see the sea life on the reef," Branson said. "And therefore they want to see it better protected."

___

David McFadden on Twitter: http://twitter/com/dmcfadd

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-05-17-Caribbean-Conservation%20Summit/id-561c544724ea4248b390aa1e15ee91fa

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Kremlin regrets U.S. spy incident, no threat of further action

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday a spy dispute could impede efforts to improve ties with the United States, but did not threaten any more action after the expulsion of a diplomat accused of trying to recruit a Russian agent.

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov made his first comments on the case as U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul discussed it with the Russian Foreign Ministry. McFaul, who was summoned on Tuesday, made no comment as he left the meeting.

"It (the attempted spy recruitment) does not contribute to the future process of strengthening mutual trust between Russia and the United States and putting our relations on a new level," Peskov told Itar-Tass news agency.

He did not comment in detail on the incident and appeared to avoid any inflammatory language over the detention and expulsion of Ryan Fogle, a third secretary at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow who was detained on Monday night.

The incident came at an awkward time for Washington and Moscow as they try to improve relations and bring the warring sides in Syria together for an international peace conference.

But there is little sign that either country wants the affair to go beyond a minimum response.

(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel and Thomans Grove, Writing by Timothy Heritage, editing by Elizabeth Piper)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kremlin-says-u-spy-incident-not-benefit-relations-062940728.html

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Using clay to grow bone: Researchers use synthetic silicate to stimulate stem cells into bone cells

May 14, 2013 ? In new research published online May 13, 2013 in Advanced Materials, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) are the first to report that synthetic silicate nanoplatelets (also known as layered clay) can induce stem cells to become bone cells without the need of additional bone-inducing factors. Synthetic silicates are made up of simple or complex salts of silicic acids, and have been used extensively for various commercial and industrial applications, such as food additives, glass and ceramic filler materials, and anti-caking agents.

"With an aging population in the US, injuries and degenerative conditions are subsequently on the rise," said Ali Khademhosseini, PhD, BWH Division of Biomedical Engineering, senior study author. "As a result, there is an increased demand for therapies that can repair damaged tissues. In particular, there is a great need for new materials that can direct stem cell differentiation and facilitate functional tissue formation. Silicate nanoplatelets have the potential to address this need in medicine and biotechnology."

"Based on the strong preliminary studies, we believe that these highly bioactive nanoplatelets may be utilized to develop devices such as injectable tissue repair matrixes, bioactive fillers, or therapeutic agents for stimulating specific cellular responses in bone-related tissue engineering," said Akhilesh Gaharwar, PhD, BWH Division of Biomedical Engineering, first study author. "Future mechanistic studies will be performed to better understand underlying pathways that govern favorable responses, leading to a better understanding of how materials strategies can be leveraged to further improve construct performance and ultimately shorten patient recovery time."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brigham and Women's Hospital, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Akhilesh K. Gaharwar, Silvia M. Mihaila, Archana Swami, Alpesh Patel, Shilpa Sant, Rui L. Reis, Alexandra P. Marques, Manuela E. Gomes, Ali Khademhosseini. Bioactive Silicate Nanoplatelets for Osteogenic Differentiation of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells. Advanced Materials, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/adma.201300584

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/TKgTWsawLmM/130514135423.htm

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