Martech Zone
Martech Zone provides daily articles for business, sales, and marketing professionals to research technology, discover new sales and marketing tools, and learn how to leverage platforms to drive greater business results.
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Content Marketing
The Internet Runs Better without Flash
Steve Jobs was right. The first person who advised me to get a Flash blocker was Blake Matheny. Blake is one of the best engineers I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with – and I’ve worked with him both at Compendium and at ChaCha. You’d think that I would have listened to a guy that transformed the entire infrastructure…
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Content Marketing
A Video on Design versus Usability
Jon Arnold does an amazing job explaining what his firm does, Tuitive = Usability. There are some incredible applications out there that never see the light of day. The application may solve some very difficult issues, but if no one can actually figure out how to use it, abandonment will be high and sales will be difficult. Branding managers, product…
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Sales and Marketing Training
For Traditional Businesses, New Media Is NOT Easy
Social media is easy. SEO is easy. Blogging is easy. Stop saying it. It’s not true. Technology is daunting. Conventional companies struggle with leveraging technology and newer channels to get positive results. Many abandon or avoid it altogether. Online search and social media are no less daunting. Twitter is simple. Right? How hard is it to type 140 characters? It’s…
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Engage! Business Rules and Social Media
For the past month, I’ve been reading Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web. This is not a light read – a complete guide may be an understatement! It’s a book you really need to sit down, concentrate on and digest one page at a time. Brian has outdone…
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Content Marketing
WordPress: Publish Future Posts as Upcoming Events
We built a WordPress micro-site for Corporate Blogging for Dummies and wanted to have a section where we displayed upcoming events in the lower sidebar. The solution to do this is actually quite simple and built directly into WordPress. Within your theme, you can add a loop that only queries and displays future posts for a specific category that is…
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Content Marketing
Productivity: The “Fast, Cheap, Good” Rubrik
As long as there have been project managers, there has been a quick-and-dirty trick for describing any project. It’s called the “Fast-Cheap-Good” rule, and it will take you about five seconds to understand. Here’s the rule: Fast, cheap or good: Pick any two. The purpose of this rule is to remind us that all complicated endeavors require tradeoffs. Whenever we…
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Email Marketing & Automation
Making a Case for Outsourcing Email Marketing
For marketers who want to mine more gold from their email programs; outsourced email marketing is quickly gaining popularity. They're seeking managed email marketing services because they’re frustrated and frugal. Does outsourcing your email marketing makes dollars and sense to you?
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Content Marketing
SaaS Shifts to Offer Database as a Service
A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of listening to ExactTarget Chief of Operations, Scott McCorkle, speak to the evolution of their platform. I’ve written in the past that I believe Email Service Providers have jumped the shark – and it appears the forward-thinking ESPs have already taken note. Scott spoke to ExactTarget’s goal of being the Marketing Hub…
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Mobile Marketing, Messaging, and Apps
Haptic Feedback: The Evolution of Touchscreens
If you’ve not heard of Haptic technologies, you will. Over a decade ago, researchers at MIT started developing devices that provide direct stimulation for people to feel virtual objects. In the last decade, the technology has begun to make it’s way onto touchscreens. Last year, Immersion demo’d a touchscreen at CES that provided haptic feedback. By adjusting the frequency and…
