In the past year, I’ve been researching and writing blogs that deal primarily with marketing trends and best practices. And through this analysis I’ve been able to distill the direction of marketing in 2017 and beyond into three words: data, personalization and content. Here’s 9 stats that speak to the importance of these three concepts:

1. 79% of organizations that exceeded revenue goals have a documented personalization strategy. – Monetate, 2017
2. Over 78% of consumers will only engage offers if they have been personalized to their previous engagements with the brand. – Marketo, 2016
3. Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. – Experian
4. Data-driven marketing is either embedded or strategic for 78% of marketers.
5. 7% of U.S. ad and marketing professionals said they segment data to better target and engage addressable customer, or B2B audiences. Some 50.5% said they were more advanced in that area.
6. 70% of B2B marketers plan to create more content in 2017 compared to 2016. – Content Marketing Institute
7. The demand for infographics has increased 800% in the past year. – Unbounce
8. About 49% of marketers are learning to drive content to align with the buyer’s journey. –LookBookHQ
9. 45% of marketers say blogging is their #1 most important content strategy. – Social Media Examiner

So how does data, personalization and content affect marketing moving forward? Here’s 7 ways:

Mobile phones. More people own smart phones and are using them more than ever before. 80% of internet users own smart phone and 48% of consumers start mobile research with a search engine (Smart Insights).  That means your need to make sure your content looks good on a mobile phone and is written to give them solutions clearly and succinctly.  And since video is exploding with an expected 69% of all internet traffic, your content mix better include video.

Email. Email is the most popular channel for personalization, and as data becomes more robust and integrated, measurable results will continue to point to positive results. Behavior-triggered emails improve your open rate 152% when compared to traditional emails. And make sure that your personalized email directs your customers to a personalized landing page. A consistent look, message and offer will increase your conversion rates.

Direct Mail. Advances in variable data printing mean more personalization options for consumers. 84% of consumers say they are more likely to open direct mail pieces that have their names printed on them; and when the personalization extends to data-driven content unique to the recipient, that number can get even higher. And with new technology products like augmented reality and audio/video mailers, the direct mail option is becoming more and more popular.

Website Personalization. Websites will continue to be optimized more and more for a personalized experience for the visitor. Website personalization increases the visitors’ time on site, pages visited and decreases bounce rates. This is all possible through “triggers” that will be set to provide personalized content based on data received, such as the time of day, a visitors’ past history, or which vertical of yours they are interested in.

Podcasts. You may need to add podcasts to your list of content channels soon. 15% of marketers plan to add podcasting to their marketing efforts in 2017, and podcast listening grew 23% between 2015 and 2016.

Voice Search. Voice search currently accounts for about 20% of all mobile searches, but with the rising popularity of Google Home and Amazon Echo, this percentage will continue to rise. That means webmasters and bloggers need to make sure and take voice searches into consideration when optimizing their content.

Marketing Automation. As companies gain more data on their prospect and customer profiles through landing pages, lead scoring, and automated tasks and workflows, the conversion rates and customer engagements will continue to grow. According to the State of Marketing Automation, however, the majority of businesses are not using marketing automation to its full potential.

If you would like to learn more about how personalization, data and content can help your business, contact the experts at NextPage at 1-800-660-0108 or through our website here.

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