The CMO • 12th July 2024

11 Benefits of Marketing Automation Backed By Data

The benefits of marketing automation, from saving time to boosting profits, have grown by the day as marketing technology continues to advance. And it's not surprising when you consider that the earliest marketing automation software hit the market in 1992. And in 30+ years, we now have 76% of companies using marketing automation, and there are thousands of martech tools to choose from (HubSpot’s 2021 State of Marketing). This article explores 11 data-backed marketing automation benefits, from...

The CMO • 8th July 2024

11 Marketing Software Trends for 2024 and Why They Matter

Why bother about a marketing software trend? The iPhone was released in 2007. But as at 2016, mobile-friendly websites were still being touted as a “marketing software trend.” This lag—between introducing a new technology and its adoption—is common in the marketing world. There’s a certain logic: you don’t want to invest millions of dollars in a trend that fizzles out. (I’m looking at you, metaverse marketing). Still, no one wants their brand to show up last to the party. Late adoption means b...

The CMO • 27th June 2024

Marketing Automation Market Size: Major Players & Insights

For a look at how the marketing automation industry has changed over time, I fired up the Wayback Machine, a database of old versions of websites, and dug through the internet archives. In 2001, here’s how Eloqua—creator of what’s now considered to be the first true marketing automation tool—described its product: a “web based sales application for lead generation.” In 2003, it was a “complete solution that leverages the Internet to acquire new customers.” (Accurate, but a bit vague). It wasn’t...

24th June 2024

Google Chat vs. Slack: Which is best? [2024]

When Slack launched in 2014, it promised a better way of working: fewer emails, async communication, and easier remote collaboration. (Did you know that Slack stands for "Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge"?) It generated serious buzz, quickly gaining millions of users and inspiring competitors like Microsoft Teams.

All this was motivation for Google to join the party, too. It repurposed one of its existing consumer apps, Google Hangouts, for business use. Eventually, the app was...

17th June 2024

Klaviyo vs. tinyEmail: Which is best? [2024]

If you're looking for a David-and-Goliath story in the world of email marketing, tinyEmail-and-Klaviyo might be as close as you'll get. (Although—spoiler alert—Goliath might win this round.) While both are eCommerce-focused email marketing apps that integrate tightly with .css-12hxxzz-Link{all:unset;box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;cursor:pointer;-webkit-transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;outline-offset:1px;-webkit-t...

12th June 2024

How to use Chatbase to build an AI chatbot | Zapier

Back in 2017—before the age of accessible AI tools—I launched a primitive Facebook Messenger chatbot. It used a manual "decision tree" structure, which took hours to set up and presented users with a handful of preset questions and answers. It wasn't particularly useful, but since chatbots were on the list of "the next big things in marketing," we launched it anyway. Users mostly ignored it (as they should have).

Enter the age of AI: models from OpenAI and others have been advancing rapidly (an...

3rd June 2024

How to use Feathery for better no-code forms and workflows

There's no shortage of .css-12hxxzz-Link{all:unset;box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;cursor:pointer;-webkit-transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;transition:all 300ms ease-in-out;outline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-fill-color:currentColor;outline:1px solid transparent;}.css-12hxxzz-Link[data-color='ocean']{color:var(--zds-text-link, #3d4592);}.css-12hxxzz-Link[data-color='ocean']:hover{outline-color:var(--zds-text-link-hover, #2b2358);}.css-12hxxzz-Link[dat...

17th May 2024

How to use Browse AI to scrape data from any website

Like many people early in their careers, one of my first office jobs involved pulling together company data for a lead database. It was painfully manual, involving lots of scrolling, copying, and pasting (plus a fair dose of distraction—I remember sneaking peeks at a PDF of Harry Potter on another browser tab). But today's interns can rest a little easier: there's now a slew of tools that can automate this process.

.css-12hxxzz-Link{all:unset;box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-text-decoration:underl...

1st May 2024

11 native advertising examples to learn from | Zapier

Consumers have an uneasy relationship with ads. Ads are annoying, no question. But at the same time, people love free stuff—and advertising either subsidizes content or makes it entirely free. Generally, the more intrusive an ad is, the less it's tolerated by viewers.

Native ads are an attempt to have it both ways: they're designed to reduce the intrusiveness of ads while continuing to subsidize content. And some forms of native advertising, like sponsored content, also allow advertisers to bor...

Zapier • 23rd April 2024

Jotform vs. Typeform: Which is best? [2024]

Back when I was scrolling through my first website in the mid-'90s—I'm almost certain it was SpaceJam.com—web forms were still in their nascent stage. Websites were treated more as one-way communication devices, like newspapers.

Forms changed all that. At first, forms were clunky HTML elements that you had to pinch-and-zoom to interact with on small screens. Eventually, Jotform, Typeform, and other came along to improve the user experience and boost conversions.

Jotform and Typeform are both h

Zapier • 22nd April 2024

17 testimonial advertising examples to inspire your next campaign

My all-time favorite testimonial ad campaign is from Surreal, a breakfast cereal company. If you were in London in 2023, you might have seen billboards proclaiming "Serena Williams* eats our cereal." Then came the hilarious disclaimer: "*She is a student from London and we paid her to eat it but the point still stands."

The best testimonial ads are deeply tailored to their target audience: they can be tongue-in-cheek, like Surreal's fake Serena endorsement, or entirely serious. While plenty of

Zapier • 18th April 2024

Claude vs. ChatGPT: What's the difference? [2024]

When OpenAI released the first iteration of in late 2022, it quickly became the fastest-growing app ever, amassing over one hundred million users in its first two months. GPT-4, an improved model released in 2023, is now the standard by which all other large language models (LLMs) are judged. Recently, another LLM has begun challenging ChatGPT for that title: Anthropic's .

I've used ChatGPT since its release and have tested Claude regularly in the months since its beta. To compare these two AI

The CMO • 9th April 2024

How Marketing and Sales Can Work Together: A Guide

Marketing and sales teams have a decades-old arrangement: marketing attracts interested prospects, and sales closes them.

But this arrangement has been crumbling for years. The average B2B buyer now spends 70% of the buyer journey doing their own research before ever talking to vendors (6Sense, 2024).

What used to be “the marketing funnel” and “the sales funnel” have merged into a single buyer journey.

But marketers and sales reps still aren’t working together seamlessly. Fixing this issue is

The CMO • 29th March 2024

How To Build A Personalization Strategy (+ Tactics & Tools)

Personalization is no longer optional for businesses or consumers. According to McKinsey, 71% of customers expect personalized experiences, and fast-growing companies are reaping the rewards for their efforts, pulling in 40% more revenue from personalization than competitors.

Despite these glowing statistics, Gartner reports that 63% of marketers struggle with personalization. In fact, Twilio Segment found that Just 24% of businesses say they are successful at it.

If you haven’t quite nailed y

The CMO • 22nd March 2024

15 ABM Best Practices to Failproof Your ABM Program

You'll would agree that the days of “spray-and-pray” marketing are over. Highly targeted account-based marketing (ABM) is increasingly the standard for B2B marketing. That’s good for customers, who are more likely to be contacted about solutions they actually need.

Most companies see a boost after adopting ABM.

According to data from Forrester, 58% of marketers see larger deal sizes, and three-quarters of marketers see a higher ROI with ABM than any other marketing approach (ABM Leadership All

The CMO • 21st March 2024

30 ABM Statistics to Prove ROI and Get Buy-In

Account-based marketing (ABM) is frequently hailed as the most effective form of B2B marketing. Despite that, marketing budgets still haven’t shifted accordingly. Most ABM leaders say that less than 25% of their overall marketing budget goes to ABM efforts (Ascend, 2023)

Sound familiar? If so, this article is for you. I’ve collected a set of compelling ABM statistics that will put the success of your ABM program in context—and help you make the case for a budget increase.

ABM can strengthen cu

Zapier • 18th March 2024

Microsoft Bookings vs Calendly: Which is best? [2024]

is a massive suite of tools ranging from household names like Word and PowerPoint to more obscure apps (ever heard of Clipchamp?). Microsoft Bookings, which is included with Microsoft 365, is an alternative to better-known meeting scheduler apps like .

Let's get this out of the way: you probably haven't seen Microsoft Bookings on many lists. Rather than competing directly against powerful apps like Calendly, its raison d'être has more to do with offering essential features to get users to stay

Zapier • 29th February 2024

TidyCal vs. Calendly: Which is best? [2024]

In the dark ages of scheduling meetings—a mere decade ago—back-and-forth emails were the standard. Then came along with its "smart scheduling" technology, which blocks out the times you aren't available and lets meeting attendees book whatever time works for them. Over time, it inspired . is one of them, offering fewer features but significant cost savings.

I'm a long-time Calendly user, and I recently spent time in TidyCal to compare the strengths of each tool. If you're choosing between them,

Zapier • 16th February 2024

ActiveCampaign vs. tinyEmail: Which is best? [2024]

is an incredible piece of software, but it's most assuredly not for newbies. I consider myself tech-savvy, but ActiveCampaign's automations tool is intimidating enough that I was happy to let a consultant create workflows for my marketing agency. The demand for this kind of support is strong enough that ActiveCampaign features on its website.

So I can understand why there's a deep hunger among users for a simpler way to manage email marketing. , which focuses on beginner-friendly email marketin

Zapier • 6th February 2024

ConvertKit vs. ActiveCampaign: Which should you use? [2024]

For years, I used ActiveCampaign as part of my web agency's sales process to track sales prospects and send follow-ups. More recently, as a writer, I've found myself firmly in ConvertKit's demographic of creators, and have experimented with its range of features.

Both and are solid marketing tools, but they excel at different things. For this article, I explored the latest features of both apps and spent time testing each one to compare them head-to-head. Here's what I found.

Here's a high-lev

Zapier • 25th January 2024

How to send a test email in Mailchimp

If you've ever sent an email with the subject line Subject goes here, you know the importance of test emails. Spelling and grammar mistakes—or, even worse, pricing errors—can be costly and embarrassing. Then there's formatting: without testing, it's easy to send an email that seems perfect within Mailchimp but looks glitchy in your audience's inboxes.

In this article, I'll show you the step-by-step process for sending a Mailchimp test email (complete with screenshots). I'll also outline the tro

The CMO • 19th January 2024

What is Brand Marketing? Beyond Logos and Taglines

Since its launch in 2008, Airbnb has steadily converted the idea of staying in strangers’ homes into a legitimate (and often even preferable) alternative to hotel stays. But as competitors surfaced, the brand struggled to distinguish itself.

The CMO • 18th January 2024

Making Your Brand Stand Out: A Guide to Brand Activation

In 2020, Adobe challenged filmmakers worldwide: create a short film using only Adobe’s stock video footage. The result? The Adobe Stock Film Festival, which had over 1.5 million viewers and resulted in a 50% bump in brand awareness for Adobe—and 3,000 new Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions.

Adobe’s film festival is an example of what’s known as a ‘brand activation’: an event that gets people talking about your brand and influences customers to purchase. It's brand marketing on steroids.

Read o

Zapier • 18th January 2024

What is lead scoring? [+ Lead scoring best practices]

My most recent buying experience looked less like a straight line and more like a plate of spaghetti. Here's how it went down: while listening to a podcast, I came across the founder of a product and ended up following him on Twitter. Later, I joined his product's email list; eventually, I signed up for a free trial. Then I stopped using the product for a while, before realizing I needed it after all. Finally—a full year after first hearing about it—I made the purchase.

My long-and-winding cust