A year after GDPR’s introduction, 42% of US news sites flatly block connections from Europe, limiting the potential reach of marketers’ stories.

It’s been one year since GDPR was introduced, which should be more than enough time to adapt to the changes. However, some sectors still haven’t adjusted to accommodate the new rules. One key area for marketers is the United States’ news landscape. When GDPR was first introduced, many newspapers in the United States opted to simply block all connections from the EU while a new solution to handling customer data could be developed. However, a year later, this is quickly becoming the permanent state of affairs. We tested a group of over 500 US news sites and found that 42% of these sites still simply block any attempt at connection from Europe, while a further 9% offer users an inferior experience with limited content. …

The DMA’s head of insight, Tim Bond, discusses why its research points towards the GDPR having a positive impact on the relationship between consumers and brands

Consumer behaviours and preferences are constantly evolving, alongside the rapid pace of technological change. In particular, 2018 saw a number of significant changes to this landscape, not least the prospect of Brexit and new laws governing how marketers go about their daily lives. For these reasons, it was a timely opportunity to see how recipients of our marketing emails feel about the channel as part of the latest 'Consumer email tracker 2019' report. In an age of innovation and change, one of the most encouraging findings was that email remains central to how customers engage with brands across the countless touchpoints now available to them. [si_guide_block id="99357" title="Download our Premium Resource – GDPR and ePrivacy briefing for marketing professionals" description="In this report we cover…

Chart of the day: A comparison of the effectiveness of paid search marketing contrasting Google's search network with the display network

This chart gives an update to historical data on conversion rates in Google Ads from the Google Ads management platform Wordstream. It's part of new benchmarking paid search marketing mobile statistics by industry. If you're considering paid search it gives you an idea of the conversion rates you can expect when making the business case. Of course, tests will show you rates specific to your market, type of keywords (Brand, generic, product, long tail, etc) and your proposition, but this gives an indication. The full report also covers clickthrough rate and cost to help you build conversion rate funnel spreadsheet revenue models which are provided as resources in Excel for our premium members.

Mobile Google Ads conversion rates by sector

The new 2018 cross-industry Google Ads clickthrough rate and conversion benchmarks shows that: The…

The average CPC paid by Google search advertisers for keywords that included their own brand name rose 30% Y/Y in Q2 2018 whilst desktop organic search visits fell 5%

Benchmarking company performance against goals and competitors is vital in understanding your current cut-through in digital, market share and potential revenue losses. It also helps identify opportunities in digital and set a KPI driven 90-day digital marketing strategy or campaign to improve current performance and achieve digital excellence. New research from Merkle's Digital Marketing Report Q2 2018 shows benchmarks for paid and organic search and social media reach, click through and cost. We've summarised the most important (and surprising) statistics below:

Paid search benchmarks 2018

  The use of Google Shopping ads for ecommerce and online retailers is vital. Shopping ads expose your brand's products in a visual element on SERPs, which includes brand name and pricing. Google shopping ads…

30 key statistics from 2017 to inform your marketing strategy in 2018 when targeting millennials

Millennials have become a bit of a buzz word over the past few years, but do you truly know how to reach this generation? Millennials were born in the early 1980’s to early 2000’s. Currently, this generation has a global population of over 2 billion. Their population is large enough that they carry a lot of influence, both in sociocultural and economic ways. Millennials have grown up in a world where digital technology and the internet are a critical part of daily life. We have found 30 of the key statistics you will need to inform your marketing strategy in 2018 when targeting millennials.

Tech use and online habits

Millennials touch their smartphones 45 times a day 63% of Millennials stay updated on brands through social networks (Sproutsocial, 2016) Smartphones are the most popular device with millennials as 7 in 8 millennials own one (Fluentco, 2017) While still…

10 statistics and reasons why you should turn your marketing attention to baby boomers

Baby boomers are born between 1946 and 1964, there are around 74.9 million baby boomers. That's an audience of 74.9 million that need to be reached. They made up almost 40 percent of the nation’s population. Because of the buzz built around millennials, it has become easy to market to that generation. But what about baby boomers, how are marketers reaching them and seeing an ROI? Marketers will usually be looking to reach one of the following generations to promote their product or service: Baby boomers – born between 1946-1964 Generation X – born between 1965-1980 Millennials – born between 1981-2000 The generation that often gets overlooked is baby boomers. More importantly, this generation now constitutes the wealthiest age group this century. But marketers find boomers difficult to target. One key reason it is so hard to target this generation…

What works best in Digital Marketing today?

In our latest infographic, we show the importance of digital marketing to businesses today and the digital marketing techniques that marketers find most effective. To create it, we blended the latest research from the best sources for digital marketing consumer adoption stats with the results from our latest Managing Digital Marketing 2017 report. It's structured in three parts:  The Global Picture of consumer use; a review of benchmarks across the RACE customer lifecycle followed by research on the most effective techniques for managing Digital Marketing. This research from Smart Insights in association with the TFM&A 2017 event explores approaches businesses use to plan and manage their investments in digital marketing. Findings and recommendations are grouped into 6 areas to improve the commercial contribution of their digital marketing. Given that we're…

How is cart abandonment and remarketing changing in 2017?

The global cart abandonment rate for Q1 2017 was 75.6%, down 1.2% from the previous quarter, which included the Christmas shopping season. 

This data is taken from more than 500 ecommerce sites and tracks abandonment rates across six key sectors. 

There is plenty of variance between the sectors studied, and it's interesting to see why. For example, while fashion site experience lower than average abandonment rates, at 68.3%, abandonment in the finance sector is much higher, at 83.6%. Travel sites also experience high abandonment rates, at 81.7%. 

Broadly speaking, the more complex the on-site experience and purchase process, the higher the abandonment rates. So, a fashion retailer with a simple checkout and relatively low-cost items will experience fewer drop outs than a travel site with more expensive products and longer forms to complete. 

We know…

Is the Marketing Automation Industry about to be disrupted? 

Marketing Automation software is on the rise. In today's digital landscape, most marketing departments have to automate tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions. The technology of marketing automation makes these tasks easier, by enabling companies to connect with their various customer segments or personas at designated times, based on set parameters that respond to a customer's relationship or previous interactions with a brand.

As marketing teams are required to establish more frequent and bespoke conversation with customers and other potential clients, marketing automation software has fast become a staple of most marketing teams.  

HubSpot and Marketo are the pioneers in this field, and remain the most widely used marketing automation platforms on the web, with tens of thousands of companies using them to optimize and automate their inbound marketing…

20 marketing stats for 2020

2020 now looms ahead of us, emerging from over the long-term planning horizon. For years marketers have envisaged 2020 as a distant realm where consumers are empowered, companies responsive and new technologies like virtual reality and the Internet of Things ubiquitous. Now it isn't actually far off, less than three years. Marketers, therefore, need to stop imagining 2020 as some distant concept and start planning for it as business reality. To help you construct your plan, we've put together this list of 20 marketing stats showing what the state of the market will be in various areas, from search to social to VR, will be in 2020. These predictions can then help you decide where to allocate resources and spot possible opportunities for your business. [si_guide_block id="5676" title="Download FREE Resource – Digital marketing plan template" description="Our popular marketing planning template built on the Smart Insights RACE planning system."/] For more marketing statistics…