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tag:econsultancy.com,2008:/topics/marketing-automation Latest Marketing Automation content from Econsultancy 2017-04-19T09:00:00+01:00 tag:econsultancy.com,2008:Report/4457 2017-04-19T09:00:00+01:00 2017-04-19T09:00:00+01:00 Email Marketing Industry Census 2017
The 11th annual Email Marketing Industry Census, published in partnership with Adestra, is based on the largest UK survey of email marketers.

The census takes an in-depth look at email practices being adopted, the resources being dedicated to email and the channel's effectiveness compared to other types of marketing.

Personalisation, marketing automation, optimisation for different devices and the future of email are all themes that are revisited in this year's Census, and there are also new questions about the use of metrics, the application of artificial intelligence and the impact of Brexit on how companies are approaching the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

With 11 years' worth of data to assess, this provides an unparalleled opportunity to measure the state of the industry and find out how those at the coalface of email marketing are operating.

Over 1,000 respondents took part in the 2017 Census, which took the form of an online survey in February and March 2017.

What you'll learn

Find out how a variety of trends around email practices, budgets and opinions have changed over 11 years.

Discover other marketers' opinions on what the future of email will look like.

Benchmark your own practices with the activities of marketers maximising their email efforts.

Understand the challenges organisations are facing in improving their email capabilities.

Key findings from the report

Marketers get to grips with automation, helped by improved technology

Email reigns supreme when it comes to delivering ROI, though companies must do more to measure success

Companies are still under-investing in a channel which drove an estimated £29bn in UK online retail sales in 2016

Companies continue to adapt to consumer use of different devices

True personalisation at scale remains elusive for many businesses, though more companies are starting to reap the benefits

Census shows signs of inertia and lack of understanding around EU data law changes

Segmentation continues to deliver

Responsibility for email shifts from the individual to the team

Artificial intelligence can improve email marketing performance

Expert insight

The 80-page 2017 report contains insight and comment from leading experts in the email marketing world and associated digital sectors, including:

Andrew Campbell, Martech Director, First 10

Chris Combemale, Group CEO, DMA

Riaz Kanani, Joint MD and Co-Founder, Radiate b2b

Dave Littlechild, Email, Ecommerce and Sales & Marketing Consultant

Kath Pay, Founder and Senior Consultant, Holistic Email Marketing

Jordie van Rijn, eCRM and Email Marketing Consultant, eMailMonday

Philip Storey, Email Marketing and CRM Strategy Consultant, CEO at Enchant Agency

Tim Watson, Email Marketing Consultant, Zettasphere

Features of the report

Approach to email

Email effectiveness

Place in the organisation

Optimising for different devices

Personalisation

Marketing automation

Improving email marketing for the future

You can download a free sample of the report to learn more.
 tag:econsultancy.com,2008:TrainingDate/3234 2017-03-28T13:11:06+01:00 2017-03-28T13:11:06+01:00 Marketing Automation
Align sales with marketing, generate and nurture leads and increase response rates. Marketing Automation (MA) is a growing area of digital that offers big potential for increasing revenue and our training course provide the tools to take advantage of it effectively.

You will learn how to match your strategic marketing, demand generation and customer journey with a clear campaign and long term nurture process.

No matter if it's your first step, optimising your current platform, or looking to reassess your current goals, this course will help you set clear objectives, to automate and optimise your marketing for maximum success.
 tag:econsultancy.com,2008:TrainingDate/3233 2017-03-28T13:10:22+01:00 2017-03-28T13:10:22+01:00 Marketing Automation
Align sales with marketing, generate and nurture leads and increase response rates. Marketing Automation (MA) is a growing area of digital that offers big potential for increasing revenue and our training course provide the tools to take advantage of it effectively.

You will learn how to match your strategic marketing, demand generation and customer journey with a clear campaign and long term nurture process.

No matter if it's your first step, optimising your current platform, or looking to reassess your current goals, this course will help you set clear objectives, to automate and optimise your marketing for maximum success.
 tag:econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/68890 2017-03-15T01:00:00+00:00 2017-03-15T01:00:00+00:00 Two innovative ways brands will use web analytics in 2017 Jeff Rajeck
In the video below, Mr Clark lays out his vision for web analytics in 2017 and I've then provided a summary, examples, and additional commentary.

So, according to Andy, in 2017 we will see brands:

1. Combine web analytics with marketing automation for a 360-view of the customer

In the past, customer views to websites were largely used for one thing in marketing – to create a personalised ad campaign through retargeting. That is, if someone visited a web page for 'red shoes', we made sure that those 'red shoes' followed them all around the internet.

Now, brands are using customer browsing behaviour as input data in order to change many things besides just an ad campaign. Through combining analytics data with marketing automation, marketers are able to use data from multiple sources to achieve multiple marketing objectives.

For example, here a marketing manager from LL Bean describes how abandoned shopping cart data not only improves a retargeting display campaign, but can also improve email, paid search, and the user's future website browsing experience.

Then through assembling all of the captured data points, companies can produce a 'Universal Visitor Profile' which will be the central repository and source of data about identifiable customers.

This will allow brands, then, to treat each member of their audience pool uniquely. The excellent example provided by LL Bean is that having this profile allows the team to assemble an audience of people who have viewed an out-of-stock item and advertise it to them when it becomes available.

In doing so, marketing has captured website behaviour, combined it with their stock system, and leveraged it to give customers information that they are looking for through an email or display ad.

2. Integrate web analytics with offline systems for new business insights

It's curious that while most companies will use website data to improve their web experience, it's rare to find one which uses it as an input for enhancing other, non-web related data.

This could mean using page views, time on site, or even bounce rate to determine the level of consumer interest in a product or category. Or, with the right data, a conjoint analysis of product features and benefits could be carried out through highlighting particular combinations on the website.

American airline US Airways (now American Airlines) had a particularly interesting external use case for its website data. Besides providing air travel, US Airways also made significant revenue from its data monetization partner Adara Media.

But while US Airways had long ago integrated its offline booking system and loyalty programme database, the company website was changing so frequently that the web analytics data was often missing many key data points.

Using a tag management solution, though, US Airways was able to greatly enhance the website data passed to Adara, and achieve an annualized ROI of over 400%.

So...

So whether it's through using web analytics to improve your marketing via enhanced automation or repurposing your web analytics to improve internal analysis, 2017 is going to see big changes in how brands use their website data, according to Tealium's Andy Clark.

And while it will still be useful for more traditional reporting, the data marketers harvest from their websites can then be used to provide greater value both internally and to customers as well.
 tag:econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/68810 2017-02-22T14:09:14+00:00 2017-02-22T14:09:14+00:00 Four ways AI is already being applied to sales and marketing Patricio Robles
Here are four examples.

Chorus.ai helps companies analyze their sales calls

While the phone call is an ancient phenomenon to many individuals, companies large and small still conduct a lot of their sales activity over the phone. Unfortunately, for obvious reasons, tracking, analyzing and improving the performance of salespeople on phone calls is a much more challenging task than, say, tracking, analyzing and improving the performance of email sales.

But a number of companies, including Marketo, AdRoll and Qualtrics, are using "conversation intelligence" company Chorus.ai's platform to record sales calls, transcribe them and analyze the content using AI technology.

Currently, that AI technology can identify key points in phone conversations, such as when a potential customer talks about features, reveals a pain point or mentions a competitor. This AI-based functionality can be used to develop market and customer insights, help develop best practices and scripts for sales teams and aid sales managers in mentoring individual members of their teams.

In the future, Chorus.ai's AI tech could be used to display content to salespeople in real-time as a conversation is taking place. For example, if a customer raises an objection, Chorus.ai could surface content that a salesperson can use to address the objection.

Cosabella Lingerie uses AI to boost email revenue

Since high-end lingerie retailer Cosabella Lingerie adopted the Emarsys Marketing Cloud in October 2016, it has doubled its email subscriber base and grown email-driven revenue by over 60% compared to 2015.

Emarsys added an Artificial Intelligence Marketing (AIM) component late last year. It can be used to apply AI technology to a number of email marketing optimizations. Specifically, it offers automatic incentive management, "an AI-driven discount personalization layer that analyzes each recipient's behavioral history to determine who should receive discounts, and for what amount," as well as send time optimization, which predicts when emails should be delivered to specific customers to maximize open rates and engagement.

Because of the success of its email initiative, Cosabella says that, "The roll out of the Emarsys platform is the next big step in Cosabella's move into AI integration during 2017."

IBM allows Watson to manage its programmatic ad buying

One of the most talked-about AI platforms is IBM's Watson. But rather than just pitching the software to its customers, the software giant is eating its own dog food, and one of the ways that it is applying Watson to its business is by allowing the AI to manage its programmatic buying of digital ads.

According to reports last year, IBM's use of Watson's AI tech led to an average cost-per-click decrease of 35% and as much as 71%. With IBM spending tens of millions of dollars a year on digital display ads, it's no surprise that the company was eager to make plans to have Watson manage all of its programmatic ad buying by the end of 2016.

"Because of the volume and the dollars involved, trying to save those fractions of a dollar, or fractions of a cent, really matters to us," IBM's VP of marketing analytics, Ari Sheinkin, told AdAge.

Watson's AI is capable of tracking and analyzing vast amounts of data – far more than any human ever could – and learning as it sees more campaign results, which means that despite its apparently already-satisfactory performance, IBM could find that the ROI from using Watson increases even more over time.

LeadGenius brings AI to B2B lead generation

As its name suggests, B2B SaaS startup LeadGenius is in the business of generating leads. Historically, lead generation has been a highly manual process involving human research and categorization, but LeadGenius applies AI to this process to significantly reduce the labor involved, saving customers like fraud prevention solutions provider Signifyd lots of time and money.

John Livett, a sales manager for Signifyd, says that LeadGenius' tech saves him 15 hours each week, hours "that would have been spent trawling Google, LinkedIn, etc."

The AI applied by LeadGenius to the lead generation problem helps the company identify individual businesses and determine how frequently their information should be retrieved based on an analysis of how long information is likely to be reliable; determine whether a company is "in-market" for a particular product or not; and identify buyer roles based on business titles.

LeadGenius also applies AI to MailGenius, a salesperson-focused email client it created. MailGenius uses AI to craft email templates, track performance as responses come in and apply optimizations.

 tag:econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/68702 2017-01-20T01:00:00+00:00 2017-01-20T01:00:00+00:00 Three bold marketing technology predictions for 2017 Jeff Rajeck
Econsultancy has several posts which make bold statements about the future of digital, but to change things up slightly we asked a few industry experts to chime in with their vision of what we will see in 2017 as well.

In the brief video, Antonia Edmunds from IBM Marketing Cloud offers her views on what marketers should expect in the coming year.

While the trends Ms. Edmunds mentions may not have achieved mass acceptance yet, it seems that marketers have been talking about each of these topics over the past year.

Below are summaries of each of the points and links to further reading on the topics.

1. Cognitive marketing will give marketers better customer insights

Cognitive marketing, or marketing which uses technology that mimics the human brain to improve performance, was just starting to emerge as a concept in 2016. Industry experts feel that there will soon be an 'explosion' in the number of marketing systems which use it, though.

When the topic was discussed at an Econsultancy event in Delhi, participants came up with three ways in which cognitive marketing could be used to help them understand their customers better and improve their performance.

Segment audiences in new ways

Cognitive-based systems will be better at finding behavioural characteristics among people who appear to be very different.

Personalise content

Marketers using cognitive technology would be able to redesign messaging so that virtually every consumer saw something different, and something which was more relevant to them.

Help customers make better decisions

By using massive computing power and large data sets, cognitive marketing systems will be able to identify unmet and unstated customer needs and help brands produce better offers and product guidance.

2. Marketers will shift from siloed channel strategies to cross-channel engagement

Marketers needed little prompting in 2016 to discuss their plans for how they were tackling the difficult task of delivering cross-channel marketing.

At a recent event in Melbourne, marketers came up with three main points about what it will take for brands to follow consumer behaviour and become truly omnichannel.

Identify data sources and break down silos

Effective cross-channel marketing is 'all about the data'. Yet marketers felt that one of the most important steps toward increased cross-channel engagement was to have access to all of the channel performance data.

Without it, they would not be able to measure performance and improve.

Train up marketers so they can integrate systems

Another thing which brands need to do for cross-channel marketing is to ensure that their team knows how to use the technology they already have.

Participants indicated that there is a particularly big knowledge gap between what marketers are familiar with today and what is necessary to map the customer journey.

Take a unified approach to offline and online marketing

Finally, the brand needs to have a unified approach to its messaging, both online and offline.

As one delegate said, there is little point advertising to change perception of the brand on one medium and then not to be able to deliver that experience on the other.

3. Marketing and ad technologies will converge

Predicted for some time now, it seems that combining marketing automation with ad buying may finally happen in 2017. Benefits of doing so include being able to leverage data between web, email, and ad platforms to improve performance and customer experience.

At Digital Cream Singapore, attendees said that there are three things marketers needed before marketing and advertising could be fully integrated.

A cross-market ad buying strategy

For companies with marketing teams across geographies, marketers need to centralise ad spending before they integrate marketing.

This is particularly difficult in Asia-Pacific and as such many brands in the region are relying solely on the 'ad duopoly', Google and Facebook, for their advertising.

A single view of the customer

Most marketing teams now typically have data spread across many systems. So in order to merge marketing and advertising, they need to combine data to have a single, cross-organisational view of the customer.

Doing so will make it much easier to share attributes, interests, and behaviours between ad and marketing automation platforms.

An attribution model

Finally, in order to have one technology stack, marketers felt that they need to agree on how to attribute credit for conversions for each step of the customer journey.

Doing so is much more difficult than it sounds, so many marketers end up using last click or a 'fluid' attribution model which is changed periodically based on data.

It seems, therefore, that there are quite a few precursors required for these predictions to come true. One common requirement, though, is the need for a common data platform so that marketers can share data among themselves as well as with the organisation as a whole.

Breaking down data siloes should, therefore, be on everyone's wish list in 2017!
 tag:econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/68706 2017-01-17T10:00:00+00:00 2017-01-17T10:00:00+00:00 Ashley Friedlein's marketing and digital trends for 2017 Ashley Friedlein
You can read my 2016 post to see whether I had any success in predicting the major trends from last year, and here are the trends that I think will have the biggest impact in 2017.

1. The F word

I believe the guiding star for marketing, and digital, for 2017 will be: Focus.

In part, this is because the economic outlook is uncertain so there is less appetite for risk and instead a desire to focus on either fixing what is not working or doubling down on what is working and scaling that.

Businesses want growth, brands want saliency in a cluttered landscape, but there is not the money to 'throw a lot at the wall and see what sticks' so focus has to be the answer.

In part, it is also a reaction against the ever-increasing complexity and fragmentation within marketing. Both at the highest levels (What even is 'marketing' now? What is 'digital' really?) and at the tactical levels (Which new emerging platforms do we now also have to manage? Have we really nailed our responsive programmatic social video campaign? What are we doing about dark social and messaging?).

Focus is an antidote to ambiguity and complexity. In part, I think shareholders and boards are starting to lose patience with marketing and digital strategy and execution which lacks focus.

There are only so many times you can say "for us digital is like changing the engines on the plane whilst still flying!" or cunningly pass off what is really indecision, lack of competence or lack of operational clarity as "agile".

In 2017 prioritisation is the top priority. Focus on the focus. So I expect to see:

Brand portfolios being rationalised. This started in 2016 but I expect to continue this year. Weaker brands will be killed off so energies can be focused on the strongest.

As well as cutting some brands completely we will see more 'zero-based branding' thinking (cf. "zero-based budgeting" from 2016) where marketers revisit a brand's purpose, promise, positioning and audience. Again, to ensure clarity of focus.

Agency/supplier relationships being rationalised. Again, in the name of focus, I expect to see brands favouring fewer, deeper, supplier relationships. This will be a challenge for mid-sized agencies. I believe it will favour the big consultancies and systems integrators over the agencies too.

Media partners being rationalised. There will be less appetite for continual experimentation and fragmented efforts. Rather marketers will want to do better what is already shown to work. In the digital space this is good news for Google and Facebook in particular.

2017 will be more about refinement than reinvention for most marketers. More about consolidation, embedding and stratification than diversity and fragmentation. Time to get better at 'operationalising' marketing in a digital age.

Take a cue from Google which has been busy cutting back projects to focus on artificial intelligence. In 2017 your hardest decisions will be about what not to do.

2. Macro trends impacting marketing in 2017

Following are some broader trends that are shaping marketing, and digital, through 2017 and beyond.

2.1 The democratisation of AI (artificial intelligence)

AI is the hot technology trend. But a bit like 'big data' I do not see it as a thing in isolation. AI will permeate all aspects of marketing and beyond.

From quite specific applications like AI-powered email subject line optimisation (like Phrasee) through smart devices and right up to Samsung-acquired Viv the 'global brain' and 'intelligent interface to everything'.

AI is already powerful: Google's Go-winning DeepMind technology, Facebook's DeepFace facial recognition is better than a human's etc. But the exciting opportunity for us all is that AI is becoming democratised, becoming a utility, being made available as a service.

In 2017 you should not 'do AI' but you should keep on top of how AI can help make smarter things that you are already doing and make sure your suppliers and vendors are using AI to improve their services to you.

2.2 Conversational interfaces

I could have gone with bots, chat, messaging, even the 'conversation economy'. But let us focus on conversational interfaces for now.

Messaging, bots and smart home devices, like Amazon's Echo, are the main actors on the stage of conversational UI. This is an exciting area of development, possibly even a 'paradigm shift'?

Conversational UIs can help remove friction in a process. Before long we will expect to say "Find me three of the best tents that sleep up to five people for under £300", get a good answer, and then purchase, all by voice. Interfaces will have API access to marketplaces like eBay, Google Shopping, Amazon etc.

From a brand point of view this conversational paradigm is also compelling. Perhaps we can have conversations like we used to with businesses and recapture some of the intimacy that technology to date has caused us to lose? Can conversational interfaces re-humanise technology?

The big question for marketers and brands in 2017 is whether you choose to play directly in this space, by creating your own chatbot for example, or whether you figure out how best to integrate in the ecosystem of much larger players, e.g. building a 'skill' for Amazon's Alexa platform like the Guardian.

2.3 Realtime

Building on the conversational paradigm, we should also expect experiences to become more realtime.

Whether that is messaging, live customer service, live location tracking or live video streaming, we can see expectations rising for experiences that are 'in the moment'. Just recently Google updated its "Popular times and visit duration" information for destinations to include realtime information on how busy the place is.

In 2017 and beyond we need to look at how we can deliver customer experiences that are realtime which is a challenge across technology, people and process.

2.4 Google/Facebook duopoly unchallenged

I cannot see how Google and Facebook will not continue to gain momentum. This will be aided by the focus and consolidation I described earlier.

For many marketers who need to get good at a few things that they know have scale and can work, it is much easier to concentrate on a few platforms than many.

Over 2017 it will be interesting to see how the video wars play out between Google (YouTube) and Facebook and also the degree to which brands work more directly with Google and Facebook which threatens to relegate the importance of the agency relationship.

2.5 Consultancies and systems integrators steal share from agencies

Speaking of agency relationships... I fear agencies may increasingly lose out to the big consultancies in winning large digital and marketing transformation work.

Creativity and media planning/buying may hold out best against the consultancy attack but, as media becomes more programmatically driven, it is access to (increasingly backend) data and smart business logic that is required.

And 'digital transformation' is a lot about change management, business strategy, data architecture, process, systems integration, cultural transformation etc. This is home turf to consultancies who have also been aggressively acquiring or hiring agency talent.

2.6 Identity management and authentication

We know devices are proliferating, we know we want to deliver personalised experiences across channels, we know multichannel marketing and (re)targeting can work if well executed and we know we want to measure ROI in a properly attributed way across channels. But we also know the sensitivities around data control and privacy.

At the root of these challenges is how, and if at all, we can reliably identify who someone is. And even if we can, what the legal and perception challenges are around what we then do with that knowledge.

This is another reason for the rise and rise of Google and Facebook who can address these challenges at scale and whose users are pretty much logged in all the time wherever they go online. Not a luxury most of us have.

2.7 Talent

Yes, there is still a war for that.

3. Marketing trends for 2017

And now the key trends in marketing.

3.1 Marketing transformation

The 'death of digital' debate rumbles on but certainly I have noticed brands talking not only about 'digital transformation' but also about 'marketing transformation'.

Usually the initial focus is a restructure of the marketing organisation, often with the (re)integration of digital marketing, and often with a new person at the top who is increasingly likely to be a CCO (Chief Customer Officer) rather than CMO.

Oystercatchers (a sister brand to Econsultancy and part of Centaur Media plc) note a trend towards clients bringing more marketing teams in house – maybe not permanently but building dream teams for specific tasks.

Accompanying this internal transformation is a re-evaluation of supplier relationships, the likely outcome of which I address earlier, and zero-based budgeting has become more popular as another way to 'reset the clock'.

The area that I find most interesting is the idea of 'marketing ops': the operating system for marketing. This is one effective way of keeping focus but also dealing with complexity and delivering operational efficiency.

Just as (enlightened) IT has 'dev ops' it makes absolute sense to me that marketing needs 'marketing ops'. Marketing is adopting 'agile' from the world of technology (incorrectly in many cases, but still…) and could do well to adopt 'ops'.

If you want to get some insight into this emerging area of marketing I recommend you look at this presentation on marketing ops by Justin Dunham of Urban Airship.

3.2 Customer experience still top of the agenda

Customer experience has been a hot topic for a few years now but it shows no sign of cooling in 2017. Every single piece of market research Econsultancy does into what topics marketers are prioritising, and indeed the equivalent data I have seen from other analysts, shows customer experience topping the charts.

The drivers for this are partly just to meet customers' rising expectations, i.e. improved experiences, particularly digital and multichannel ones, are something that you just have to do. Partly, of course, it is in an effort to improve ROI through better conversion and retention rates.

2017 will see more 'customer journey mapping', more defining of personas and further efforts at personalisation. And, according to Econsultancy's recent Implementing a CX Strategy research, it is the marketing function which is most likely to own CX within a business. Yet only 8% of companies view themselves as 'very advanced' in terms of customer experience maturity.

Multichannel will remain a big focus for customer experience improvements. Amazon Go, which entirely automates the in-store experience using sensors and machine learning, shows what is possible when blending the digital and physical.

Multichannel should not be about the distinction of physical and digital channels but about experience fulfilment: what works best for what experience and customer need.

In 2017 we will move away from channel execution to thinking more about touchpoints and brand ("omni-brand" anyone?) experience.

Rarely is there a single linear customer journey; more usually customer journeys are pretzel-shaped.

3.3 Data lakes and data ops

The move towards brands taking greater, first-party, control of their data as a strategic asset will continue. Expect to hear more about 'data lakes' in 2017 and dedicated 'data/analytics ops' teams comprising data scientists, engineers and analysts.

The focus will be on getting better access to the data that is already available and smarter reuse of analytics assets like algorithms and models. Perhaps this year more marketers will finally be able to get a universal view of cross-channel performance.

In 2017 we will also start to recognise the need to use data to market to machines. We already know the value of structuring our data properly through schematic language to enhance how we appear in search results. But as personal assistants and IoT (internet of things) devices increasingly intermediate between our offerings and our customers we will need to learn how to 'teach' these machines with data.

3.4 Measurement scrutiny

2016 saw a lot happening in the area of measurement, performance and metrics: McDonald's zero-margin Omnicom deal setting a new precedent for agency contracts; Facebook's erroneous video metrics; the ANA's concerning report into lack of transparency in media buying by agencies.

As a result, there will be a lot of scrutiny from senior management around how marketing is being measured. Some may reach the nirvana promised by the aforementioned data lakes, assuming they can find the talent to realise them and harness their value, but for many this year's focus will mean having fewer KPIs but being more rigorously held to account over those.

Marketing attribution will still be challenging (less so for Google and Facebook): according to Econsultancy's State of Marketing Attribution research 76% of respondents are struggling to find the right staff to deal with attribution.

3.5 Rethinking segmentation and targeting

2016 saw a lot of debate around approaches to customer segmentation and targeting. How granular is too granular? Is 'mass targeting' the answer? How does programmatic work in the mix?

In 2017 we need to focus on resolving this question. As ever, the answer will be 'it depends'. It depends not just on your product and audience but on your business strategy e.g. if you are going after market share at any cost versus focusing on profits and margins.

Approaches to targeting are interesting in as far as they expose the sometimes differing philosophies and approaches of 'traditional' and 'digital' marketing. The former typically has a higher degree of planning and research up front and the segmentation and targeting models often built on more prescribed geo-demographic data attributes.

Digital, meanwhile, espouses a 'test and learn' approach to validate hypotheses, starting small and scaling what works, and using technology and data to optimise for successful outcomes.

For example, using programmatic advertising to optimise for sales using lookalike targeting which may not care what geo-demographic segment a prospect belongs to.

Digital focuses on assessing potential customer value based on realtime, dynamic and contextual data variables which might include the weather right now, your precise location right now, what device you are using, what transport you are currently in, what you have just searched for, just clicked on etc.

This year, as part of our marketing transformation (see earlier), we need to resolve these tensions between 'traditional' and 'digital'. This will play out in organisational design but also in our processes, culture and capability development.

4. Digital marketing trends for 2017

There is an increasingly blurred line between 'digital marketing' and 'marketing' but the following trends focus on the digital elements of marketing.

4.1 Digital Transformation

Econsultancy's recent research on The New Marketing Reality with IBM highlights the many challenges facing digital marketing:

fragmentation and complexity.

challenges in understanding the customer journey.

challenges with organisational and data silos.

confusion around metrics and what good looks like.

managing both generalist and specialist agencies and vendors at the same time.

lack of capability in areas like data and customer experience.

lack of clarity in strategy and leadership.

There is nothing particularly new here and there will not be for 2017. The challenges in becoming a digitally adept and mature organisation are many and will take years to work through.

2017 will continue to see a mix of initiatives which, on the one hand, deliberately create 'elite' digital units (McKinsey talk about 'war-room teams') in an attempt to move at speed and, on the other hand, attempts to integrate and unify 'digital' and 'traditional' within a single marketing function. In practice most organisations will do both at the same time.

Digital will also need better 'ops' (see the earlier section on marketing transformation), particularly in the area of data. Ops can help corral disjointed data and wrangle the complexity of channel silos.

Digital will also be in the vanguard as organisations seek to become more agile and better at design thinking, customer experience optimisation and product management.

Non-Executive Directors with digital expertise will stay in great demand. There will be more Chief Digital Officers (CDOs) but the rate of growth in this job title may have peaked.

4.2 Data and marketing automation

2016 was a big year for marketing automation. Martech outshone adtech. Companies like Oracle, Adobe and IBM went on a spending spree to acquire capabilities to bolster their martech offerings across areas including programmatic, personalisation, video and social.

Last year also saw a lot of talk about using data to optimise marketing including customer insight, personalisation, automation, conversion rate optimisation, multichannel, and predictive analytics.

2017 will primarily be about putting these things into action. For most, 'marketing automation' is, initially, just better email marketing. Improved customer onboarding, retention or renewal sequences, more refined trigger-driven messaging, more personalisation, introducing lead scoring and lead nurturing.

This practice is then extended into other channels as data becomes more joined up and the 'direct marketing' of email becomes joined to the 'above the line' of advertising with programmatic media.

4.3 Artificial intelligence

Earlier I noted that AI will permeate all areas of marketing so is not a discipline in itself. But it will be the digital experts within the marketing function who will be expected to take the lead in how AI is adopted by organisations.

Indeed, Econsultancy researched our subscribers to ask who is responsible for defining the role of AI-powered marketing within their organisations and 61% stated it was the marketing function.

The applications of AI in marketing for 2017 sit most obviously in the digital marketing disciplines: AI for content curation (e.g. smart recommendations); AI for customer service (particularly digital/social service); AI for content generation (e.g. email copy or video content); AI for sentiment analysis (e.g. social listening); AI for CRM (e.g. smarter loyalty or sales insights); AI for intelligent digital advertising optimisation; AI to power chatbots (e.g. for assistance in finding products or content).

4.4 Content marketing

As per Gartner's Hype Cycle, 2017 sees content marketing moving through the slope of enlightenment and entering its plateau of productivity. There will be more focus on understanding return on investment, more refined approaches based on learnings to date, more focus on scaling the things that are working, more clarity on roles and capabilities.

Gartner's Hype Cycle

Scott Brinker has an interesting view on what he terms the 4th Wave of Content Marketing and I agree that 2017 will see more focus on interactive experiences beyond static content or even rich content like video.

Video, as a form of content, will still be an active area of experimentation during 2017: vertical video, shorter and longer form video, video captioning and optimisation for stream viewing, live streaming, social video ads etc.

4.5 Social

"Social" is a very broad term these days. Plenty of activity to expect in 2017 across social:

Social care – deeper integration of social channels into customer service and care.

Social CRM – similarly to customer care, social data and touchpoints will become more closely integrated with backend CRM systems.

Dark social and messaging – more brands running private social groups, experiments with chatbots, greater usage of messaging as a medium both internally (e.g. Slack) and externally through integrations with Facebook Messenger or trials with WhatsApp groups and, for B2B, setting up messaging groups on LinkedIn.

Emerging platforms – social is at the forefront of experimentation with emerging platforms and formats. Last year it was Meerkat and Pinterest; this year I expect we will see more activity around Snap, Instagram and WeChat (even in the West).

Social answering – I have not yet come up with a name I am happy with for this... but essentially it is about listening for relevant conversations, or questions, taking place online and then participating and answering in order to drive awareness, traffic and search rankings.

In B2B this might be answering, or commenting on, content posted to LinkedIn; if you were targeting developers you would do this but on Stack Overflow; Quora, among others, has become a much bigger driver of traffic so it is worth answering relevant questions there.

Social amplification – thankfully there is less talk of 'going viral' as relates to social. But 2017 should see efforts in understanding how to use social to distribute, augment and amplify content and messaging.

There is a skillset to optimising this: the best practitioners know how to orchestrate social channels to maximise amplification. In its simplest form this is about choreographing how, and when, content is published. Enterprise social management software now allows for more sophisticated scheduling and provides the analytical insights to optimise it.

Influencer marketing – this is not just about 'social', of course, but 2017 will see continued efforts to identify and understand who the 'new influencers' might be for your brand and then engage with them, socially, commercially and through PR.

Social media advertising – driven largely by the emerging platforms as well as increasing experimentation by more traditional media owners, 2017 will offer a whole range of new ad formats, experiences and commercial models for agencies and their clients to experiment with.

5. Hot topics but still not significant in marketing for 2017

Our own Econsultancy research says that marketers are excited about VR, AR and IoT for 2017.

So perhaps I will get some criticism for having the temerity to suggest these are not likely to form a significant part of an average marketer's job this year. Unless you work for GAFA (Google Apple Facebook Amazon) that is.

My thoughts on some of these topics:

AR (augmented reality) – sure Pokémon Go was a great use of AR but most of us are not gaming businesses. AR has many great applications but it still does not feel like it will go mainstream for marketers in 2017.

That said, the iPhone 8 release this year could change that with 'mixed reality' getting a big boost.

VR (virtual reality) - there is huge hype and investment around VR including from GAFAM (I have added Microsoft because of HoloLens) so it should go large some time. But this year?

The hardware requirements are still too onerous, the tech and apps too fragmented, the use cases mostly gaming or too niche, for most marketers to spend much time focusing on VR this year. As with AR, VR's adoption could be turbocharged by the iPhone 8 release this year.

IoT (Internet of Things) – there are some fantastic examples of successful IoT services, a lot in B2B, and this will only grow. But I am less convinced there is an obvious opportunity for marketers yet.

As more products and things become connected, however, there is a really interesting customer-product relationship marketing opportunity. We should see more early examples of that this year.

Wearables – I am still not convinced there are enough use cases for most marketers to get excited about the wearables opportunity.

3D Printing – I wrote about 3D printing almost three years ago. The technology has improved, of course, but I'm still not clear how this is particularly relevant for marketers?

Blockchain – important, exciting, disruptive, but not clear to me how marketing can leverage this, unless perhaps for identity management and authentication.

Beacons – still not doing it for me.

But what do you think? Feel free to post any thoughts or links to your own digital/marketing trends and predictions for 2017.
 tag:econsultancy.com,2008:Report/1980 2017-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 2017-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 Digital Intelligence Briefings Econsultancy
Download the latest Digital Intelligence Briefing (2017 Digital Trends) here.

Econsultancy's Digital Intelligence Briefings look at some of the most important trends affecting the marketing landscape.

Marketers around the world are surveyed on a regular basis to give an accurate bellwether of trends that matter to marketers. Each year kicks off with a broader view on where marketers are focusing their attention. For the rest of the year, Econsultancy's Research Team dig into some of the key trends to add depth and insight.

These reports will benefit senior marketers with budget and planning responsibility who wish to benchmark themselves against their industry peers. They provide many stats and data points to assist with business cases, presentations and client pitches.

The Digital Intelligence Briefings are sponsored by Adobe.

2017

2017 Digital Trends

2017 Digital Trends in Financial Services and Insurance

2017 Digital Trends in Retail

2016

2016 Digital Trends

The Pursuit of Data-Driven Maturity

Taking Advantage of the Mobile Opportunity

Succeeding in the Omnichannel Age

2015

2015 Digital Trends

The Quest for Mobile Excellence

The Multichannel Reality

The CX Challenge

2014

Digital Trends for 2014

Finding the Path to Mobile Maturity

Delivering Digital Experiences

Why Marketing Should Be Personal

2013

 Digital Trends for 2013

 From Content Management to Customer Experience Management

Optimising Paid Media

Trends in Integrated Marketing

2012

Digital Trends for 2012

Personalisation, Trust and Return on Investment

Managing and Measuring Social

Making Sense of Marketing Attribution

2011

Digital Trends for 2011

Impact of Marketing Technology on Business

Social Data

All reports are free to download as part of an Econsultancy subscription.

More trends analysis from Econsultancy

Enterprise subscribers also have access to Digital Shift, a quarterly service which curates and interprets the most important developments, trends and innovation. Our aim? To make it simple for you to keep track of the key developments in digital technology and marketing.

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 tag:econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/68654 2016-12-21T00:01:00+00:00 2016-12-21T00:01:00+00:00 Five steps toward marketing automation excellence Jeff Rajeck
Yet many of those who have implemented marketing automation are struggling to use it to improve overall marketing performance.

According to a recent Econsultancy survey, less than 5% of marketers in Australia and New Zealand consider their automated email campaigns 'very successful'.

Additionally, more than 90% considered their marketing automation capabilities as 'basic' at best.

So, what is the problem? What do marketers need to do to get out of the 'basic zone' and deliver marketing automation excellence?

To find out, we spoke to dozens of marketers at our recent Digital Cream Sydney about how they overcome the issues they faced when implementing marketing automation.

Background

Delegates agreed that marketing automation has an aura of being a 'magical tool' which will help marketers deliver the right message on the right platform.

Implementation, however, often leads to disappointment. Initial projections were rarely met, and many felt that their original goals for marketing automation were 'drifting'.

On the whole, participants said that they were still 'pursuing the dream', but many have become more realistic about their marketing automation ambitions. Instead of expecting marketing automation to be a 'silver bullet', they are following several steps which, they believe, achieve more realistic incremental goals.

Below are the five steps which attendees agreed are leading them toward 'marketing automation excellence'.

1) Start with a basic marketing automation programme

A rookie mistake of implementing marketing automation, according to participants, is to first choose a marketing automation solution and then try to figure out how to use it.

In these cases, a company signs up with a provider and dutifully links up the customer database, the email engine, and the website. Once everything is up and running, however, marketers realise that the programme does not have a clear goal and enthusiasm for the project quickly wanes.

A better approach, according to delegates, is to review existing marketing strategies and pick one or two activities with well-known outcomes and work on a way to automate the tasks.

For example, an ecommerce company may have data which shows that encouraging customers to return to the site every 3 months reduces churn and increases revenue.

In this case, a marketing automation programme might just ensure that each customer is emailed relatively frequently for three months following a purchase. No new technology may be required at all.

In time, marketers may use solutions to make these emails more sophisticated, but before investing in marketing automation technology, according to participants, they should first successfully launch a basic programme.

2) Identify data sources

For even the simplest marketing automation programme, marketers rely on data. It may be as simple as the date of the last purchase or as sophisticated as customer behavioural data, but marketers need to have access to customer information for automation to be successful.

Attendees felt, however, that accessing customer information was a significant roadblock as the data is often spread out throughout the organisations.

In our recent survey of marketers in Australia and New Zealand, many in the region agree. When asked to identify the biggest barriers to implementing automation 'integrating data' was the most popular response from the client side.

No single solution to the problem was provided on the day, but participants acknowledged that obtaining and integrating data sources was an issue that everyone faced on the way to a successful marketing automation programme.

3) Implement data governance

While identifying data sources is an essential first step, marketers also need a strategy for how they are going to source data on an ongoing basis.

Initially, the data required by the programme may be relatively easy to obtain, but participants indicated that marketers will eventually have to work with departments who may be reluctant to share their data.

Several attendees said that having a written data governance policy makes obtaining data from other departments much easier.

Such a policy should let other people in the organisation know how you intend to use the data and your strategy for maintaining data integrity and keeping sensitive information secure.

One participant indicated that appointing someone as the 'data steward' to deal with policy and inquiries helped a great deal with internal data acquisition.

4) Have clear success metrics from the start

Participants also agreed that even the most basic marketing automation programme should deliver results which demonstrates the value of the programme to the business.

In order to make this happen, marketers need to be clear from the start about what metric they are trying to improve.

If the purpose of marketing automation is to increase web traffic, noted one attendee, then marketers should not include email open rates in the performance report.

For those marketers whose sponsors only look at top-line figures, they should ensure that the success metrics are focused on how marketing automation is increasing revenue.

Without agreeing on what constitutes success from the start, marketing automation, like any programme, will be at risk of drifting from its original goals and losing sponsorship in the process.

5) Always look for opportunities to expand the programme

The final step toward marketing automation excellence is that marketers must learn from the initial programmes and be on the lookout for other ways to use automation.

Those who successfully implement an initiative which provides relevant offers based on purchases may look to do the same with content. Or, if web activity and email have been automated, marketers can also look at ways to deliver more relevant content to their audience via social media.

Regardless of the results they have had with it so far, participants agreed that marketing automation was still worth pursuing and that it will be a significant part of their agenda in 2017.

A word of thanks

Econsultancy would like to thank all of the marketers who participated on the day and especially the moderator at the marketing automation table, Steffen Daleng, General Manager - Digital, The Co-op Bookstore.

We hope to see you all at future Sydney Econsultancy events!

 tag:econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/68634 2016-12-13T01:00:00+00:00 2016-12-13T01:00:00+00:00 Three ways brands will use cognitive marketing Jeff Rajeck

These same forces are also being used in marketing. AI, or 'cognitive', marketing systems use industrial computing power, big data, and machine learning to improve marketing performance.

While cognitive marketing has not yet been deployed to a great extent, it soon will be. According to IDC, more than half of all companies will be using cognitive marketing by 2020.

So, what exactly is cognitive marketing and how will brands use it?

To find out, Econsultancy, in association with IBM Watson Marketing, recently held roundtable discussions in Delhi. There, senior client-side marketers discussed the impact of cognitive marketing on brand messaging and how they see the technology developing.

Below is a summary of the three main ways marketers on the day plan to use cognitive marketing.

1. Segment audiences in new ways

Segmenting audiences is a key part of providing relevant messaging to consumers. Participants noted that most marketers use demographics to segment their audience into groups with similar wants and needs.

In contrast, cognitive marketing systems search massive data sets from a wide variety of sources, such as web analytics, social media, and purchasing behaviour, to find customer segments which exhibit similar behaviour.

In some cases these segments may resemble traditional demographic groups, but in others cognitive marketing may find common behavioural characteristics among people who appear to be very different.

What this means for marketers, according to attendees, is that cognitive marketing will transform the customer list into a database where each member is connected to others in many different ways. The result is that one customer will be part of countless segments depending on their observed behaviour.

So, a woman aged 34 would no longer be simply considered as 'female, 30-35' but, instead, she would be a 'fashion lover' who 'takes three months to buy', 'travels to Bangalore twice a week', and 'tends to open emails on Tuesday'.

Without using cognitive marketing, one participant noted, these sorts of segments would be nearly impossible to build, manage, and use effectively.

2. Personalise content

With these behavioural segments, marketers can use cognitive marketing systems to personalise content more effectively than ever before.

After receiving core content, a cognitive marketing engine could redesign the messaging so that virtually every person saw something different. Participants envisioned that the system would use data from social media, browsing behaviour, and even sentiment from customer service communications to reformat content for an individual.

Attendees offered a couple of reasons why brands will use this approach. First off, cognitive marketing would ensure that the brand message was delivered in the right way at the right time for each customer. Long-form, engaging content could be sent when you know a customer is at home and shorter, easy-to-consume messaging would appear when they are commuting, for example.

Personalisation would also ensure that brands avoid delivering irrelevant messages and risk being 'tuned out' by the customer. Put another way, one marketer said, 'you have five seconds to get their attention with something relevant, otherwise you are done'.

Following the event, Antonia Edmunds, business leader at IBM Watson Marketing, had a few more words to say on this topic:

3. Help customers make better decisions

Delivering a personalised message at the right time benefits the brand for the reasons mentioned above, but delegates noted that cognitive marketing will also help the customer make better decisions.

As cognitive marketing can make inferences using data from a wide variety of sources, it can also help brands identify customers who have a particular unstated need, said one attendee. This will allow the brand to deliver personalised offers and guidance.

For example, if someone is price sensitive at the moment, they could be told about a lower-priced product range. If they are time poor, the brand could let them know about a new convenience. And if they are in the middle of a major life event, say moving or getting married, the brand could offer to help them with the process.

In this way, according to participants, cognitive marketing will help companies start conversations with consumers around topics which matter to them and not just around what the brand wants to say about itself.

This, in turn, will demonstrate that the brand anticipates a consumer's wants and needs and, ideally, make it easier for them to choose the brand above all others.

A word of thanks...

Econsultancy would like to thank all of the marketers who participated on the day and our table leaders:

Antonia Edmunds, Business Leader - IBM Watson Marketing.

Gowri Arun, GBS Marketing Leader - IBM India/South Asia.

Joseph Sundar, Business Development Executive, ISA/ASEAN - IBM Watson Marketing.

Harsh Anand, CSP Leader - IBM Commerce.

We hope to see you all at future Delhi Econsultancy events!


text:
By Ben Levisohn
Stocks look set for a tumble this morning as the failure of the Republican health bill puts President Donald J. Trump's agenda in jeopardy.
S&P 500 futures have dropped 0.8%, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures have declined 0.7%. Nasdaq Composite futures have fallen 0.8%.
Weatherford International (WFT) has climbed 7.8% to $6.35 after announcing a joint venture with Schlumberger (SLB). Schlumberger has declined 0.4% to $76.67.
Cal-Maine Foods (CALM) has tumbled 6.3% to $35.00 after missing earnings forecasts.
EXACT Sciences (EXAS) after its Cologard test was 'considered medically necessary every 3 years' by Aetna (AET). Aetna is unchanged at $126.77.
HCA Holdings (HCA) has risen 0.7% to $86.60 after getting upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Mizuho following the collapse of the Republican health-care bill.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The Adored One tells the story of Trace Worthy, a recently deceased angel in training, sent back in time to high school, to save the life of Max Holbrook, the school outcast. With the assistance of angels Michael and Philip, Trace sets out to help Max, but when history doesn't quite repeat itself, Trace finds himself falling for the man he was sent to save. The feelings are mutual, but will God claim his new angel before love takes flight?
The clouds were dark, and thick with damp. Thunder crackled through the air, but it didn't cover the agonized shrieks of the angel as the feathers were plucked from his wings.
"No!" the angel pleaded. "Please, Father, I repent! Have mercy!"
His cries fell on deaf ears. He reached out to the other angels witnessing his punishment, but none of them came to his aid. Charles had committed the ultimate sacrilege, and was to be cast out of heaven and into hell. One by one, his smooth feathers were removed until he appeared more like a bat than an angel. Thin, brown skin covered the bones that flapped uselessly around him.
He fell to his knees and begged God, "Please, Father. I made a mistake."
"You are greedy," God said. "You had love. You were one of the adored. For years you have served me with all of your being. You have brought many souls of my children to my side. But now? A young man in the prime of his life is dead because you gave in to the devil's temptation!"
"I'm sorry. Please, I'm so very sorry."
Thunder clapped as God's anger intensified. He stood, towering over the stricken angel. "It is done. I strip you of your name as I stripped your wings. You will be known as Pentus. I cast you down into the pit, where you will serve as carnifex for eternity. While once you guided blessed souls to the heavens, you will now drag cursed souls to hell. Be gone from here!"
The ground beneath Pentus began to tremble. He looked down in panic, then quickly said, "I accept my punishment, but may I say one thing, Father?"
The trembling stopped and God nodded. Pentus said, "Tell Philip I will always love him. I know I've hurt him, but I'm sorry. Please, God, let him be happy when I'm gone."
A fissure opened beneath Pentus' feet. Unbearable heat and the rank smell of death blew up from the portal. Pentus shook with terror. He closed his eyes and stepped off the edge, crying out as he disappeared into the darkness.
God sat on his throne and wept.
In the garden, an angel with long, wavy, white-blond hair sat on a stone bench, covering his ears and whimpering. Although Charles' infidelity had hurt him beyond words, Philip had still hoped the father would show mercy. It wasn't to be. Philip couldn't imagine the torment Charles had endured, but he had heard it. Thunder and screams of anguish echoed around him, as the fallen angel was sent down. When the horrible sounds abruptly stopped, Philip felt as though his own heart had been cast into the pit.
Another angel approached him and touched his shoulder. "It is done," the dark-haired angel told Philip gently. "He is to be a carnifex."
"I heard, Michael."
Michael sighed and said, "I… brought you this."
Philip accepted the offered feather, and ran his fingers over the soft vane. Then, he fell onto the grass and sobbed. His heart was broken. His own wings hung limply beside him, the feathers glimmering in the moonlight as he grieved.
Early this morning, a car driven by Mark Habowitz spun out of control and struck an oncoming motorcycle. Habowitz, 19, is in critical condition. The other driver, Trace Worthy, 46 was pronounced dead at the scene. State police confirmed this afternoon that Habowitz was legally intoxicated at the time of the accident, and speed was also a factor…
I put down the paper and leaned back in the chair. Looking at the two men sitting across the table, I asked, "Is this some sick joke?"
The smaller of the men took the paper from the table and folded it under his arm. His white-blond hair glowed in the overhead light and made his pale skin glimmer like pearls. Narrowing his silver eyes, he said, "This is not a joke."
"Bullshit!" I yelled.
"Please don't use vulgar language in here," the other man said. His looks were as opposite to his crony as possible. Dark hair, olive skin and deep green eyes lent him a sinister appearance, but for some reason I was still not afraid. I knew somehow these men were… gentle?
His scolding had a strong effect on me, though. I cleared my throat and said, "I apologize, but this is insane. Why have you brought me in here to fool with my head like this?"
The black-haired man leaned over the table and said, "We're not fooling with your head, Trace."
"But this says I'm dead! And it's dated yesterday!"
"Yes. You died yesterday."
"Who are you?" I demanded.
"Philip," the blond replied.
"Michael," his cohort said. "We're angels."
"Ha! Of course. God, please make me wake up from this nightmare!"
"God has other plans for you," Philip said with a wide smile.
My heart skipped. It took a moment for my mouth to obey my mind. "P-pardon?" I stuttered.
Michael stood up and explained. "You died before your time, Trace. It was an accident."
"God doesn't make mistakes," I shot back with a sneer.
"Exactly," Philip said. "He planned this so that he might give you a wonderful opportunity. A quest of sorts."
I stood up and paced around the room. "Wait a minute. You're telling me that a teenager got drunk and plowed into my bike just so the almighty can give me a job? I liked the job I had, thank you very much! I slaved my ass—"
"Language, please," Philip reminded me.
I scowled and continued, "I slaved my backside off to earn that job and now you're telling me that all of that work was for nothing?"
"Of course it wasn't for nothing," Michael said sharply. "Your life has touched hundreds of people in ways you'll never know."
"Exactly. I'll never know 'cause I'm dead." I ran out of energy and fell down into my chair. When I bounced on a soft cushion, I gasped. My hard, wooden office chair had become a plush sofa.
Philip motioned for me to lay down. "Relax," he said calmly. I rolled my eyes but did as he asked. I stretched out on the soft fabric and looked at the angel. He took my hand and said, "You are truly special, Trace. God doesn't grant everyone this chance at becoming one of The Adored."
"I thought he adores everyone," I said.
Michael chuckled and said, "You're right. He loves everyone, but there are a group of his flock which are referred to as The Adored Ones."
"You mean angels?" I asked incredulously. "God wants me to be an angel?"
"That is his plan, yes," Michael answered. "But you must first do what he asks of you."
I raised an eyebrow. "And what does he ask?"
Philip produced a folder out of thin air and removed a photo. He handed it to me and asked, "Do you know this child?"
It was a school portrait of a young man. The features were familiar: deep blue eyes a little too close together, mousy brown hair, acne. Thin lips attempted to cover teeth held tight by braces, but failed and gave the youth a forlorn appearance. I went back to the eyes and thought for a moment before I said, "Oh, yeah! Max. This is Max Holton."
"Holbrook," Philip corrected. "That was his seventh grade yearbook photo."
"Wow. I haven't seen him since high school. I wonder what became of him."
Michael took the picture from me and said, "In three weeks' time, Max is going to commit suicide. It's your job to save him."
"Save him?" I cried. "How do you suggest I do that? Am I supposed to talk him down off a bridge? I'm afraid of heights."
Michael sighed. "You misunderstand us. You're not going back to your life to save Max three weeks from now."
"Then what's the plan? 'Cause you've lost me."
Philip smiled and asked, "How would you like to go back to high school?"
It took a moment for the words to filter through my foggy mind. When I understood that the Almighty meant to send me twenty-eight years back in time to change the trajectory of Max's life, I hit the roof. "No way!" I yelled, hopping up from the couch. "I'm not doing it! I survived the whole high school thing once, and that was one too many times. If you expect me to go back to doing homework and picking up my room—"
"We don't expect anything," Philip said. "He does. God would not ask this of you if he didn't know you could do it."
"Besides," Michael said. "There are benefits. You can do all of your homework with the knowledge of a forty-six year old mind. You've studied mathematics and economics, languages. You've already learned how to write proper college essays. Think of the advantages!"
I had to smile. "So God's going to let me cheat?"
"That's not the word I'd use, no," Philip replied with a frown. "It's simply a way to make it easier for you to carry out your task without having to worry about spending all of your time studying. You just have to make sure not to give any hints about the future."
"You make it sound easy," I mumbled, flopping back down onto the sofa. I began thinking about my eighteen year old self and my life since high school. One event stood out, and I hopped up from my seat again. "My dad!" I shouted. "The year I graduated from college, my father died from skin cancer. If he'd been tested sooner…"
Neither angel said anything; they glanced at each other, and then placidly back at me. My heart ached as I asked, "If I can get him to have a test, will I be able to save him? Please! Answer me!"
Philip swallowed and said, "I-I don't know."
"You don't know? Too bad! I'm doing it. If there's a way to save Dad, I'm taking it. Maybe I'll try and fix a lot of things I've done."
Philip grabbed my arm. "Listen, Trace. God is charging you only with saving Max. When and where that happens is unknown even to us."
"What does that mean?"
Michael straightened his coat and explained, "It means that any of your actions may be the catalyst for changing Max's life; it is known only to God. We do not know how long it will take. You may say something tomorrow that will inspire him to change, or it could be some interaction years down the road."
"Why does that scare me more than being dead?"
"You don't need to be afraid," Philip answered. "Once you have saved Max, and your task is complete, you will spend eternity as an Adored One."
"So, I'll be whisked away, up through the Pearly Gates to float around?"
"Something like that," the dark angel laughed. "There are no gates, though. Just peace."
I tried to think of the place where my father had gone. "What's it like? Heaven, I mean."
Michael beamed. "Words cannot describe it! Imagination cannot render a likeness of its beauty. A million hearts could not contain the love and happiness that flows in God's presence."
"Wow," was the only thing I could think to say.
Philip smiled. "That's what everyone says. But it's time to start your journey, are you ready?"
"Now?" I asked. "But, I don't know what to do. Is there a manual or something?"
Michael put a hand on my arm. "No, no manual. However, you can look to God for guidance, and we will assist you as we can. Use your heart and your mind and you will succeed." They both stood and turned. The light started to fade behind them.
"No, wait! I still don't know what to do!" My head began to throb as my vision dulled. I staggered up and reached out toward the light and dark clouds, but they slipped through my fingers like smoke.
"Trace? Trace Worthy! It's time to get up!"
A beam of light from a split in the curtains felt like it was burning a hole in my forehead. I groaned and flipped over, but instead of my luxurious, king-sized, pillow-top mattress lulling me back to sleep, I rolled off the edge of a hard twin-sized bed and hit the floor with a thump.
Slowly, I sat up and rubbed my hand over my head. When I felt the collar length strands slip through my fingers, I gasped. I distinctly remembered having been to the stylist for my usual men's business cut a few weeks ago. "What the hell?"
"I really wish you wouldn't swear," came a quiet voice behind me. I spun around to see two men standing near my door. But we weren't in my obnoxiously large bedroom in my condo. We were in my childhood bedroom: cramped, clothes strewn over every surface and reeking of teenage boy. I burrowed my knuckles into my eyeballs, trying to wake myself up, but when I open my lids and my vision cleared, I was still in the tiny room in my parents' house.
"No way," I whispered. I noticed my voice seemed different. A little higher in pitch maybe.
One of the men spoke to me. He seemed so familiar, yet I couldn't quite place him. He said, "Listen to me carefully, Trace. When I touch your hand, you will remember what has happened."
He held out a hand and I took it warily. A momentary blinding headache knocked me backward, and then it dawned on me why I was now eighteen years old. I looked at the man whose hand I had touched. "You know, Philip, I really could have done without that shock."
The heavenly being chuckled. "It takes a little work to rewind the clock, you know. But now that you're up, get ready for school. Your mother will be up in a few minutes to wake you. Have fun on your first day back."
"Wait, am I going to remember what happened yesterday at school? If I don't know what's going on, they'll all think I'm nuts."
"It's all taken care of," Michael said. "Just remember, you need to make contact with Max today."
And just like that, they were gone. Seconds later there was a knock on my door. It opened slowly and my mother peeked in. "Oh! You're up."
"Yeah," I replied. "Can I have a laundry basket please? This room is a mess."
"Um…sure." She looked at me like I'd gone insane. In a few moments she returned and handed me the plastic basket. As I collected all of the laundry scattered over every surface of the room while she stood in the doorway, staring. When I excused myself and carried the clothes into the laundry room at the end of the hall, she asked, "Are you feeling all right, Trace?"
For a dead guy? Great.
"Never better," I replied with a forced smile. "Is…uh, Dad home this morning?" I was desperate to see my father, who I hadn't seen since he died from cancer almost twenty years before.
"Of course not," she laughed. "He always leaves before you get up. Are you sure you're okay? It's just that I've never seen you doing laundry."
I paused in my sorting and gave myself a mental nudge. I had to remember to act like a teenage boy. Damn. I said, "Well, I figure that I'm going off to college next fall. I may as well get used to doing laundry the right way. Not like you're going to be coming with me."
Mom shrugged and said, "Well, thanks. It'll be a great help." I emptied the basket into the bin, kissed my mother on the forehead, and then went back to prepare for high school.
Heaven help me.
The smell of floor polish and chalk dust assaulted my senses the moment I walked into the building. It was so surreal. On the spot where I stood, twenty years later, there would be a shopping mall.
Somehow, I really did remember everything that had happened before now. I recalled what I'd had at lunch the day before, and the nasty joke that Donny Stone—my best friend—had told me.
"Weird," I mumbled.
Suddenly, someone slapped me hard on the back and I lurched forward. Stone laughed and said, "Talking to yourself, Worthy?"
"Yeah," I shot back. "I was saying how much of a douchebag you are."
I punched him good-naturedly on the arm and said, "Go ahead to homeroom. I gotta go…check with a teacher."
Stone looked at me warily. "You? Check with a teacher? Have fun, bud."
I headed up the back stairs toward the language classrooms. I knew that the Spanish room was the most likely place to find who I needed. He was a genius with languages, and had helped me muddle through Spanish papers a few times. Right outside the room, sitting on the floor amidst a pile of papers and books sat Max Holbrook. He was bent over a laptop, typing with one hand while sipping from a large travel mug.
"Hey, Max," I called.
He was so startled that the coffee cup went flying, landing upside down on his books. "Shit!" he snapped.
I dove for the cup and righted it before much could spill onto the cover. Then I used my shirt to wipe the spilled java from the paperback. When I was sure that not much damage had been done, I sat back and noticed that Max was staring at me in shock.
I mumbled, "Sorry."
"It's fine," he said. He snatched the book from me and replaced it on the pile. I smiled sheepishly at him and he scowled. "What now?"
"What now what?" I replied.
Max shut his laptop and sighed. He started shoving his books and papers into his bag and spoke without looking up. "I've already run through the gauntlet this morning with all your friends, so I'm kinda tired. I assumed that you came to add the icing on the cake. So, go ahead. I can stand a few more jabs. Do you want to go with the ugly route, or maybe the gay thing? Take your pick."
The blunt speech surprised me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was poked in the back hard. I would have to thank Philip for the little nudge. I cleared my throat and said, "I'm sorry, Max."
"Sorry?" He blinked at me several times before frowning and saying, "That's a new one."
I held up my hands in surrender and said, "Look. I know I've always been an asshole to you, but I've changed—in more ways than you'll ever know—and I want to apologize."
He looked at me warily and finally smiled. I smiled with him, until his expression turned into a snarl. He took a step closer to me and said, "Fuck. You."
As I watched him storm down the hall and around the corner, I let my bag drop to the floor. "That went well." Then the bell rang and I realized I was late for homeroom. I trudged toward the stairs and groaned. "High school sucks."
I made it through my morning classes well. if anything, they were fun. With my extra twenty-eight years' experience, the history test that I took was a breeze. In algebra I was able to answer several of the questions that the teacher posed to the class. Stone sat next to me and kept shaking his head every time I spoke up.
On our way to lunch, Stone grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the streaming hallway crowd. He scowled. "What is it?"
"What's what?" I replied, trying not to shake with fear. Had he found out that I was dead and had been sent back on a secret mission to save the school outcast?
Stone leaned in closer. "What's got you so fucking hyped up? Did you do it with that chick from state?"
I let out the breath I'd been holding. I thought he'd figured out that I was now a quasi-reincarnated version of myself, but he was asking about a college girl I'd messed around with at a party the week before. "No. Nothing happened."
My best friend wasn't going to drop it. He grinned evilly and whispered, "What about the girl from Teauville, the team's manager? It was her wasn't it?"
Little did he know that it wasn't the female manager of the opposing team that I'd hooked up with. It was the shortstop. But was I going to tell Stone that? No way. He didn't know I was gay and I was in no hurry to tell him. Truth is, I was petrified of being mentally bashed like Max was on a daily basis. The tiniest shred of credit that I could give my friends was that they had never physically hurt Max. Our catcher, Steve, had once talked about "smearing the queer," but Stone went berserk and said that he'd smear Steve's face on the floor if he ever laid a finger on the smaller boy. That was the only reason that I hadn't severed my ties with Stone. Of all my friends, only he showed a little compassion. Too bad he didn't realize that mentally abusing someone can be just as bad as beating them up.
I came back to the present and realized Stone was still hounding me for the name of the girl he imagined had me in such a good mood. "What's-her-face from the cheerleading squad? That freshman? The mayor's daughter?"
"Will you shut up?" I barked. Stone blinked stupidly at me and I sighed. "I have to tell you something, Don."
Kazy Reed © 2013 | All Rights Reserved


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To be an effective LCC member, it is important to know the requirements and processes used to
administer the grant cycle. An online training course and video tutorials are available to help teach you
the ins and outs of the LCC Program.
The best place to get an introduction to the LCC Program is through the LCC Online Basics Training. All
new members are required to take the training within the first three months of their service. The training
will inform you about the grant cycle timeline, the types of grants that can be approved, what kinds of
projects are eligible and how to review a grant application. You'll also learn about how your council
works, how meetings are conducted, how your council's finances are organized, and the role of community
input in the work of your council. The training will provide you with the tools you need to be a part of
this exciting program, and serves as your orientation to the local cultural council program.
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tutorials highlight the various features and resources on the site, as well as provide step-by-step
instructions for completing the Annual Report, updating your member list, and more.
Welcome to the MCC
Site: Get to know the LCC Online Toolkit and the resources available to members through this
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Looking to access the Annual Report and other council specific information in the Toolkit? Watch this
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The Annual Report:
Familiarize yourself with the online report that goes to the MCC as a final part of the grant cycle.
Section 1 : The
LCC Account Form: The first step of the Annual Report, this video explains the components of the LCC
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Calculating the Amount Available for Granting: This video is a step by step guide to completing Section 2,
and shows how councils can determine the amount available for granting prior to the voting meeting to avoid
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What this policy covers
This policy covers how we at Ahaus treat personal information that we collect and receive through our websites. Personal information is information about you that is personally identifiable like your name, address, email address, or phone number, and that is not otherwise publicly available.
We are committed to protecting your information. We want your experience as a visitor to our websites to be safe, secure, and valuable. We believe that helping you feel comfortable with our information practices will contribute to your ability to effectively use our websites.
We will not share your name, email address, or any other information provided on our websites with other people or nonaffiliated companies except to provide products or services that you have requested.
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Our servers automatically collect certain non-personally identifiable information, such as your computer's IP address, the type of browser in use, and pages viewed, when you visit the website for our workholding, power generation and automation equipment. We use this information to understand how visitors navigate through our websites, to enhance your experience while using our websites, and to make the materials we post as valuable to visitors as possible. We do not link this information to personally identifiable information on our website.
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text:
22seven is very much a data company, and we've done a lot of soul-searching on what that means. This is our data ethics manifesto.
We all leave data trails behind us in our digital lives.
What you read and buy, where you click and when you do it, even where your eyes are looking – these things can be tracked and analysed. Data scientists are discovering new techniques daily to pull insights out of all that data (usually to sell you more stuff). The intimacy and accuracy of the things that can be predicted is unbelievable. Machine learning algorithms chew through huge datasets, finding patterns and making predictions that the greatest human minds could never achieve. At 22seven we do a lot of this cool stuff, and that's why we have to have strict rules.
Buying and selling data.
No bit of data from your life is neutral. Whether it's where you shop or who you bank with or how much you spend at restaurants – all these little pieces add up to a very intimate and detailed portrait of your life, so it would be a bit dishonest to pretend that individually they don't matter. These are tiles in a mosaic, and since they can collectively make up a detailed picture, individually they must be treated as sensitive and confidential. Because the data is so powerful, it's very valuable. Because it's valuable, it's often bought and sold, often without your knowledge or benefit. We will never sell your data, nor will we buy more data about you. (The only exception is that if you are an investor with us, we do pay for data verification services, which we are obliged to do for FICA purposes).
If, in the future, we ever do want to buy or sell data about you, we will seek your explicit consent and without your consent we will do nothing. If we go out of business, or we are acquired, your data will not be sold or handed over to anyone else. If at any time you ask us to forget you, we will purge almost* every trace of your financial life from our database. Just bear in mind that once we do that we can't get it back for you 😉
* We are obliged to still keep your name, email address, Yodlee Username, customer ID, Ticket history and Zendesk audit logs, so that we can prove we ever had you as a customer.
The REALLY personal stuff.
For a data scientist, personal details like gender and race can be fascinating, but these attributes still attract serious societal prejudice. Usually they're also facts that people don't get to choose. We're interested in the choices you make, but your body is none of our business – so we won't try to collect this information and we won't use the information you do give us to try and work it out. However, we do think that your age matters. We don't care about grey hairs, but we do care about things like years until retirement. A bit like having kids, getting older changes the decisions you make and the advice and information you need to make them. A young person in their first job and someone approaching retirement have very different options. If you do decide to share your age with us, it will be your choice, and we'll use that information to tailor our suggestions to be more relevant to where you are in life. It will be an explicit request, not something buried in a lengthy Terms and Conditions document. Note that if you're an investor with us, you did give us your ID number – but we will not use this to figure out your age without your consent. While it's an easy thing to do, we want real permission from you, not presumed permission.
So: we won't buy, sell or share your data, we will not collect or derive creepy personal demographic data, we will delete your data forever as soon as you ask us to, and we'll always ask and wait for your permission before we change any of that. We are here to help our customers lead healthier, happier financial lives and all our data choices will be in direct support of that one goal.
A note for our investment customers: all the FICA details you supply will be visible to our Svens for verification, and then we will have to give those FICA details to the Financial Services Provider partner that holds your investment. We never share your personal finance planning information with that partner – we transfer only the minimum data required under South African law so that the investment partner can administer your investment legally. Because they do administer your investment, they can see any transactions in and out of it, including dividends, distributions and switches to or from other funds. We can't prevent our partners from enriching that data themselves, but whatever they do will be governed by South African data privacy laws. Also, if you choose to close your 22seven profile, South African law obliges us to hold on to your data for at least five years – please contact our Svens if you'd like more details.
For more detail on our legal obligations, or how we manage who can see what kind of data here at 22seven, head over to our Privacy Policy. You can also contact our awesome Svens, and we'll answer any questions you have about your data privacy.


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Minnesota Twins right-hander P.J. Walters lasted only four batters Wednesday, tagged with four earned runs and the loss in a 9-8 setback to the Philadelphia Phillies at Target Field.
After Walters gave up four consecutive singles to start the game, manager Ron Gardenhire had seen enough.
"I said, 'You're throwing 80 miles an hour. What's going on here?' " Gardenhire said.
Walters, 27, initially said he was fine but finally came clean: His shoulder was sore. He's scheduled to have an MRI on Thursday and could be headed for the disabled list to make room for right-hander Lester Oliveros, who was called up from Class AAA Rochester to join the bullpen for Thursday's series finale against the Phillies.
"He was trying to protect our bullpen is what came out at the end," Gardenhire said. "Finally he told me he had a sore shoulder, but no one knew about it. He hasn't said anything, he hasn't been in the training room, hasn't received any treatment. Obviously he's trying to pitch through something, and that's not a good way to go about it tonight, because it put us in a pretty big hole."
By the time reliever Jeff Manship closed the door on a nine-batter first inning, the Phillies led 6-0.
Signed last winter as a six-year minor league free agent, Walters has helped stabilize the rotation since being called up on May 10, going 2-1 with a 4.42 ERA before Wednesday's game. On May 22, he threw the Twins' only complete game this season in a 9-2 victory over the White Sox in Chicago.
"I've never missed a start before," Walters said. "Obviously I don't think I'll be throwing for five days, but hopefully it's no big deal. We'll get it checked out tomorrow and go from there."
Oliveros, 24, was a combined 2-2 with six saves and a 2.70 ERA in 25 appearances for Class AA New Britain and Rochester.
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text:
Frank: More about life on the farm
Expand Messages
- Koscilek needed some money, so he decided to get some from the chest. Pil'arek unlocked it for him and...there was no money. When Koscilek asked the Pil'areks what had happened to it, they told him not to be mad, that they'd used it to pay off the debt on the farm and then had bought some needed things with the rest, reminding him that it was all his as well as theirs. So Koscilek was now without money, without a contract [deed?], and without anything written, either in English or Polish, that he'd lent them money. It was only their spoken word that they were all owners.
Now Mrs. Pil'arek's younger sister had arrived and Koscilek had no money. Before, the Pil'areks had called Koscilek "Mr. Koscilek", "Mr. Kmoter" (<kmoter> is the dialect form of what you'd call your child's godfather--a very close relationship), and sometimes "Brother-in-Law". But now that he didn't have any money, Pil'arek started to get bossier and more argumentative. Later, they told the sister not to talk to him very much, and it came to Koscilek sleeping in the barn and coming in for breakfast before clearing land of shrubs and pines all day. He was now being ordered around like a servant, and even though he was small and Pil'arek a big man, Koscilek was the one doing the heavy work.
Koscilek was treated (and fed) worse and worse in hopes that he'd get mad and just leave on his own. Koscilek saw that the Pil'areks were selling butter, eggs, chickens, and ducks, but not giving him a penny, even though he worked for free every day. He figured that if he went to work in Portland, he'd get paid, while he had to work for free on the farm.
One day, when Koscilek asked Pil'arek for some money so he could go into town and look for some sort of work, Pil'arek pulled out a half-dollar and gave it to Koscilek. Koscilek said, "This is all you're giving me?" to which Pil'arek answered that Koscilek was stupid: he was always giving and the smart one always taking. Pil'arek "showed him 5 fingers and his palm was number 6." Koscilek left in tears and walked into town.
- Yes, I saw the movie many years ago and it was OK. Never read the book though.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: email@example.com [mailto:Slovak-
> email@example.com] On Behalf Of Ben Sorensen
> Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 8:39 AM
> To: email@example.com
> Subject: Re: [Slovak-World] Re: VYBORNA KNIHA
> I am glad that they kept to the story! The beauty is not in what
> happens, but how it is described. I read "Corelli's Mandolin," and then
> saw the movie- great book, horrible movie. I wonder if this is another
> case of that. Joe, did you see the movie?
> Ben
> ________________________________
> From: jarmata00 <armata+@... <mailto:armata%2B%40pitt.edu> >
> To: email@example.com <mailto:Slovak-
> World%40yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 8:21:42 AM
> Subject: [Slovak-World] Re: VYBORNA KNIHA
> This was made into a movie, which is available on DVD in Polish with
> English subtitles ("The Quack"). The basic story is that a famous
> doctor loses his memory and ends up in a tiny remote village, where
> his medical skills come back to him and he begins treating people.
> Joe
> >
> > Ben,
> > The original title of the book is _Znachor_ and it looks like it
> was first published, in Polish, in 1938. The only library I can find
> in the big WorldCat system that has the Slovak translation is the
> Berwyn Public Library in Illinois. No one has an English
> translation, which is not to say that it doesn't exist, although I
> suspect that it doesn't. Say, Bennnn....
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >>> Ben Sorensen <cerrunos1@. ..> 11/27/2008 1:09 AM >>>
> >
> >
> > Hey all,
> > I just wrestled a book from Milka's clutches :-) by Tadeusz Dolega
> Mostowicz- a Polish writer. The book is Mastickar, (Medicaster- or
> Quack) and I am gently reading a first Slovak printing. It has, in
> the first eighteen pages, captured me so much that I am now wondering
> if there is a GOOD English translation to share with others. Anyone
> know of such?
> > IF you speak/read Slovak, this is a book to read. It is outright
> wonderful... I recommend it. However, I couldn't find a copy on the
> internet....
> > Ben
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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text:
All The World's A Stage
Spiritual growth is not linear. It is cyclical. Becoming
more spiritually aware, you are in an uptrend, so to speak, but it has
its setbacks. There are many moments when, despite what we know, we act in opposition to what we know. This is just part of the process of transforming our knowledge into understanding.
It isn't a one-time event either. Sometimes we respond to life
circumstances with keen awareness. Then the next time we fail to be
mindful. That's okay because as my husband loves to say, "Earth is the
planet of lesson." As long as we don't continue to be oblivious of the
spiritual learning curve that is our journey, our setbacks will be
Shakespeare wrote: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts..." This is true in our individual journeys and in the journey of the human race. As humans, we often accept knowledge as the goal and fail to assimilate it beyond our intellectual center into the emotional and moving centers from which it can morph into understanding. If we observe knowledge from all sides, that is, think about what we think we know, we awaken the Emotional Center. We can begin to experience emotions that are not our usual fare. It enables us to step outside what we've accepted as our truth into a new understanding.
In our world today, there are many situations that are giving us the opportunity to step back and apperceive or comprehend new ideas by assimilation with the sum of one's previous knowledge and experience. As we think about what we think, we begin to see the forest of change rather than the trees of discontent. Here in the United States, we are experiencing a global change in our own unique way through the current political scene. If we step back, we can observe that as Shakespeare said, the players here are only fulfilling their roles. We have for centuries manifested a society that reflects a dependence on the masculine energy rather than the feminine energy. As individuals we have both energies within; however, one tends to dominate over the other as it has with our nation. It is time to embrace the change toward a healthy balance.
These few examples can help you understand how the two energies can be contrasted, masculine versus feminine. Differentiating/integrating; individual/collective; external focus/internal focus; competitive/collaborative; speaking/listening. If you're willing