Can AI help your business, WordStream acquired by Gannett for $150M, Facebook Teases Ad-Free Subscriptions
Search marketing software company WordStream acquired by Gannett for $150M (searchengineland.com)
Topics: chief executive officer, Gannett Company, Gannett, Sigma Partners, digital transformation, local markets, earnout, tremendous value
- In August of 2008, the company was able to secure a $4 million Series A investment fromSigma Partners, and in 2010, it secured a $6M Series B investment led byEgan Managed Partners.
- “This acquisition marks anothercritical milestoneinGannett’sdigital transformation, enhancing our ability to support businesses and agencies in ourlocal marketswith the intelligent, data-driven marketing solutions they need to drive growth,” saidRobert Dickey, president andchief executive officerof Gannett.
Digital Marketing News: Facebook Teases Ad-Free Subscriptions, Google Tests SERP Questions, & Online Ad Spend Jumps (toprankblog.com)
Topics: Techcrunch, Snapchat, Augmented Reality, digital marketing, Google, mobile search, search results, Microsoft
- Google has recently testedquestion formswithinsearch resultsthat allow users to submit questions directly by text or voice to theInternet giantand its various publisher partners.
- Digital advertising totals could surpass spending on all other media types by 2020 or 2021, according tonew report datafrom eMarketer, rising from this year’s predicted 43.5 percent to 49.9 percent in 2020 and 52.1 percent in 2021. eMarketer
- We hope you’ll join us again next week, when we’ll share a new batch of the latest marketing news, and in the meantime you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timelydaily news.
Direct Marketing’s Relevance in a Digital World (martechadvisor.com)
Topics: online marketing, Direct marketing, digital marketing, brand awareness, direct mail, marketing strategy, online presence, digital space
- Direct marketing, mail marketing, tangible marketing – all terms that seem to have no place among theFacebooksandGoogle AdWordsof the world.
- Further, to increase the experience, the piece ofdirect mailwill have acall to actionfor the consumer to explore online, inviting the consumer to interact with the brand once again in thedigital space.
Consumers kill for digital convenience: Can AI help your business? (customerthink.com)
Topics: customer experience, onboarding, customer support, computer systems, based systems, proactive, wireless carriers, plug and play
- The new battleground for CX in business isdigital convenience, and those that use AI and automation technologies judiciously to provide seamless, one-to-oneomni-channel experienceswill prevail.
- “Brands that help consumers simplify thepurchase journeyhave customers who are 86 percent more likely to purchase their products and 115 percent more likely to recommend their brand to others.”
- If we agree that AI is a mixture of automation andintelligence technologies, AI can help streamline the process for consumers getting answers such as the status of an order, return, or claim.
- First the bad news – there is no oneright answer, and with thousands of vendors (6,829 in this marketing landscape), open-source packages, and resulting combinations ofsolution stackspossible, there’s no evidence anyone has found theabsolute best combination, or ever will.
- Dry run how each will navigate your services: some will be older and less familiar with technology; some will be capable of juggling five devices on five channels; sometimes technology will fail and requirefallbackprocesses.