Every year during the month of August we start planning our professional developement for the following year.  We thought it might be fun to put together an infographic with some of the stats from this year.  Below is the infographic we created as a recap of 2015-2016.

If you are planning to invest in marketing automation, how can you help to ensure that you will be happy with the software you choose? According to a study by VentureBeat, 70% of marketers who purchase a marketing automation system are either unhappy or only marginally happy with their purchase.  Knowing the right questions to ask before buying a system is important to prevent you from being a part of that 70%.  Laurie Aquilante at Hubspot has written an article with 5 of the best questions you should be asking to make sure the system you purchase will align with your goals and make the most sense for your organization.

Facebook remains the king of social media with over a billion daily active users worldwide.  It remains the world's biggest social network. So it should be utilized as a part of any marketing strategy.  Check out 8 new and creative ways to reach your audience using Facebook in the Infographic below.

In this digital age, consumers have information at their fingertips and the ability to research products and services on their own.  In addition, they are being bombarded by marketing messages continuously.  It can be tough for marketers to build a sound strategy that will not only rise above the noise, but will also effectively message the right people at the right time, in the right way.  Marketing Automation can help segment your audience so you are able to personalize your content to them.  By having the tools to target your audience, and by using those tools effectively, you can ensure that your marketing automation efforts are successful.  However, trying to get your marketing automation strategy right can be tricky.  Jamie Lewis at Marketo has written a good article listing 4 pitfalls you should avoid when building your strategy.

TheAGA needed an easier, smarter way to manage member email sends, one that allowed for message customization, the use of different templates, provided meaningful metrics and integrated fully with its AMS. These enhancements would allow the AGA to serve its members better while eliminating the need to constantly upload address files and manually run reports just to get basic metrics, like open rates. 

AGA chose HighRoad as the agency to put together a marketing stack that would allow them to connect their association management database to their email marketing platform. Following implementation of their integration, AGA's deliverability soared and their staff labor time fell. As AGA freed up time from pulling and uploading lists, the VP Communications got to thinking about how they could do more with email. He turned to his staff to collaborate on thinking about new ways to deliver highly relevant content to members so that anything extraneous fell by the wayside--an important consideration when serving a membership of physicians and scientists.

“One of my first projects for the AGA had to do with personalization,” said Aaron White, senior director of digital communications strategy for the AGA. “We were looking for ways to specialize better, narrowcast more. We’ve been sending the weekly enewsletter for 10 years, every Thursday, to every member, and every member got all the same content. So if you’re a member, for example, from Germany, you really don’t care about CMS rules for Medicare reimbursement – but you got that article because everyone has the same newsletter.”

Making the move to marketing automation may sound like a daunting task – not only do you have to prepare yourself and your team to commit to this framework and approach, but you probably also have to build a business case to explain how a Marketing Automation Platform is different from your current Email Marketing Platform to your executive team – a team that doesn’t quite live and breathe digital marketing practices as you do. So how do you 1) determine and assess your readiness to make that transition to marketing automation and 2) approach building the case for it?