Greg Sterling says, “According to Adobe, Thanksgiving and Black Friday online retail sales exceed $5 billion. More noteworthy in some ways is that mobile devices contributed a record $1.2 billion to that total on Black Friday alone. There was mixed data on in-store traffic and sales, with some sources reporting an initial decline vs. last year and others reporting small in-store gains. However, on a percentage basis, online shopping growth far outpaced store traffic. While retail analysts and the media focus on the distinctions between online and offline shopping and the particulars and... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Marketers say segmentation/targeting and list growth are their top email challenges, according to recent research from Clutch. The report was based on data from a survey of 303 respondents who describe themselves as expert, advanced, or intermediate email marketers. All respondents work for companies with 100 or more employees (31% B2B, 69% B2C). Tracking results ranks as marketers’ third biggest email challenge (respondents were asked to pick their top three issues). Personalization ranks fourth, followed by developing a strategy and retaining subscribers. The most... [...]

Patrick Bet-David says, “n this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Patrick Bet-David underscores the importance of monitoring and inspecting your business. Do you know how your business is doing? Bet-David enumerates the 12 facets of your business that you need to inspect, from your team to your sales flow to your brand. Every aspect of your business plays a crucial role in its success. Examine your team to determine whether you should hire more people or whether a specific department needs attention. When it comes to sales flow, ask yourself: Are you consistently offering enough to your... [...]

Bryson Meunier says, “n the first full day that we had a Google Home in our house, we interacted with it 473 times over the course of the day. Four hundred of those were my two-year-old asking it to play “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways, followed by his mother or me interrupting with, “Hey Google! Stop!” (Look, I love that song, too, but enough is enough, you know?) The point is, watching the way that my family interacts with the device, and how often they interact with it, I’m more inclined to believe the forecast that sales of Amazon Echo and Google Home type devices will go from... [...]

Anjali Yakkundi says, “Has the topic of personalization come up within your organization recently? Chances are that personalization not only comes up, it’s also a foremost priority: 68% of the firms we surveyed in our Q1 2016 Digital Experience Delivery Online Survey said personalization was one of the most important initiatives for their business today. Why? Because personalization is one of the best ways to contextually engage with customers across a variety of touch points. But many organizations we speak with today struggle to get initiatives off the ground and struggle to prove the... [...]

April Berthene says, “Mobile sales totaled $3.46 billion between Thanksgiving and Sunday, a 28% increase year over year, Adobe says. Mobile shopping surged throughout the Thanksgiving weekend according to data from Adobe Inc. and payment processor PayPal Holdings Inc. Mobile had its biggest day ever on Black Friday, when mobile sales reached $1.2 billion the day after Thanksgiving, up 33% year over year, according to the Adobe Digital Insights unit of marketing and analytics software provider Adobe. Between Thanksgiving and Sunday, Nov. 24-27, mobile devices accounted for 56% of visits to... [...]

Austin Iuliano says, “Over the past five years working in the digital marketing space, I have found that freelancers can’t seem to get enough work. I hear it all the time. They’re always looking for more and more work. This baffles my mind a bit because there is just so much work to be had. I think the true reason freelancers are searching for work all the time is because they just don’t have an accurate system to generate leads. How to Get More Freelance Work Generally speaking, freelancers are people who work in some creative capacity. Examples include but are not limited to graphic... [...]

Jerod Morris says, “As Showrunners, we understand that the act of creation and publishing brings about detractors — sometimes more aptly referred to as haters. To thrive in this space, we need to wear our first (and subsequent) negative reviews as badges of honor. This is part of the game and an integral part of being a Showrunner. But what happens when the medium itself begins to make its own waves? It seems podcasting, as a medium, has reached a point in its life when it is beginning to take it on the chin. From small jokes to snide remarks, we are seeing the first wave of this beginning. On... [...]

Richard Agu says, “The rate at which business startups are springing up all over the world is a pointer that lots of businesses are chasing limited customers. Issue like this, especially among big firms, encourages unhealthy rivalry and the pressure of thinking outside the box in order to devise superb competitive advantages. However, this is not the case for business startups as such issue can lead to stagnation or even its demise. Depending on the nature of a business startup, one wish of every business owner is to have a reasonable number of customers to keep the business going. In the... [...]

Tamar Weinberg says, “In the beginning, there was no light, and marketers were forced to rely on “gut feeling” when it came to assessing the success of marketing initiatives. We simply lacked the tools and information needed to scientifically conceive of and measure the effectiveness of our efforts. Even as more effective data analytics tools started to become available, many marketers preferred to trust intuition over the data. Intuition became prized in the C-suite, and taking action based on gut feeling was valued over the hard work of crunching data and formulating rational strategies. As... [...]