Direct mail remains a nutritious part of your complete marketing mix. But innovation is rare. So it’s exciting to see printer Quad/Graphics touting a new platform that can run tests “at a fraction of the cost of traditional mailing testing.” Their trick is to have an online survey panel preview mailer elements and then pick the best combination. Clever and effective but I had imagined something more magical.
Let’s give you some product news today, Dear Reader, because we know you like it. Salesforce has announced versions of its Sales and Service cloud products tailored for small business. Price is $25 per user per month, which is the same as their previous lowest tier. It’s not clear what’s different.
Nordstrom is beefing up its tech staff, but what if tech were so easy that workers could just build their own systems? Australia-based Kradle just launched a system that lets small and mid-size business workers do exactly that, at least to the extent of creating automated process flows. Companies that tried this in the past have discovered that ease of use isn’t enough: workers need a lot of help figuring out what to do with these superpowers.
Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.