Marketing is becoming more technology driven and marketers are becoming more sophisticated and tech savvy than ever before.  The use of programmatic advertising among marketers has dramatically increased in the last few years.  The rise in usage of marketing automation software has now made it possible to tailor your message to the right people, at the right time and place for optimal results.  In-depth insights into this tech explosion in marketing are presented in AdRoll's State Of The Industry 2016 report.  1050 marketers, across numerous industries, were surveyed on their perspective of the changing advertising and marketing landscape.  Take a look at the report and see where marketers are in the adoption of these new marketing technologies.

Welcome emails can be used for more than just a friendly greeting.  Organizations can use this type of email as an opportunity to guide subscribers into their world.  They can be used to set expectations, provide education, highlight services and product features, or point out discounts and offers.  Welcome emails set the stage for what a customer can expect from an organization.  They also outperform promotional mailings. Welcome emails have 4 times higher open rates and 5 times higher click-through rates than promotional emails.  Yet close to 70% of marketers are still not incorporating them into their customer aquistition program.  Our partner Bluehornet, has created a guide of best practices for building a welcome email campaign.  Download "A Digital Marketers Guide-Welcome Email Campaign" and learn about the benefits of using welcome emails to help increase your digital marketing success and grow your organization.

If your organization is accumulating a growing list of leads with email addresses, it's probably time to take a look at marketing tools that will ensure effective digital interactions with those leads.  There are many options available for marketing software tools.  Before you start looking at vendors and software platforms, you might want to begin with a basic question.  What is the difference between email marketing and marketing automation?  Yes, they are two different things.  Both email marketing and marketing automation use email as the primary channel to communicate and engage with your audience.  However, email software only tracks the actions taken by recipients of your email.  Marketing automation software moniters every digital interaction a lead has with your organization.  Aleksandr Peterson at Act-On has written an article in which he breaks down the differences between these two types of software systems in much greater detail.  This article is a good resource to help you decide which system will best meet your needs.

HighRoad completed their Marketing Automation Workshop and the buzz in the room seemed to be people noticing how different an email marketing platform and a marketing automation platform really are…

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant content in order to attract and retain an audience.  Implementing content marketing into your existing marketing strategy can help to increase your number of leads and ultimately your revenue.  The infographic below shows five good reasons why content marketing should be an important piece of your overall marketing strategy and some best practices to get you started.

We have released our 2016 State Of Digital Marketing In Associations report.  In this benchmark report non-profit organizations can see how they compare to other non-profits in their digital marketing efforts.  This is our third annual digital marketing report in a row, so in addition we also have trend data to share.  Learn how your organization compares to other non-profits as Demand Metric Chief Analyst Jerry Rackley and our own CMO Suzanne Carawan discuss the results of this groundbreaking report.  If you missed this Analyst Brief Webinar it's not too late.  It is always available On-Demand at HighRoad U.

If you haven't yet viewed the Report, please take a look!