An Introductory SQL Tutorial: How to Write Simple Queries Ever heard of SQL? You may have heard about it in the context of data analysis but never thought it would apply to you as a marketer. Or, you may have thought, “That's for the advanced data users. I could never do that.” Well, you couldn't be more wrong. The most successful marketers are data-driven, and one of the most important parts of being data-driven is collecting data from databases quickly. SQL is the most popular tool out there for doing just that. If your company already stores data in a database, you may need to learn SQL to access the data. But don‘t worry — you’re in the right place to start. Let's jump right in. How to Query a SQL Database Ensure you have a database management application (ex. MySQL Workbench, Sequel Pro). If not, download a database management application and work with your company to connect your database. Understand your database and its hierarchy. Find out which fields are in your tables. Begin writing an SQL query to pull your desired data. With SQL, you don’t need to download and open a huge Excel spreadsheet to get the answers you seek. You can ask questions like “Which customers purchased a red jumpsuit in the past six months?” and SQL fetches the data from your database and returns it to you without you needing to manually sift...

Predictive Marketing: What it Is & How to Leverage It After months of working on a marketing campaign, nothing's worse than realizing you aren't seeing the results you expected. Unfortunately, many of us have been there. We've put all of our creative effort, time, and numerous resources into a campaign that sounded like a great idea, but had nowhere near the expected ROI or engagement. Then, on top of watching our project fail, we've had to deal with the awkward scenario of sharing bad performance data with our teams. No matter how hard you try, it's impossible to know exactly how well a campaign will do before you run it. However, there's a strategy that gets pretty close. It's called predictive marketing. While predictive marketing sounds like some futuristic technology you'd only see on a show like Westworld, using data to estimate an outcome isn't new. Predictive marketing is fueled by predictive analytics, which dates back to the 1930s. It enabled mathematicians and computers to calculate and analyze the possible successes, failures, and results of various scenarios -- such as health or weather conditions. Later, in the 1990s, when analytics tools became more available to brands, marketers at companies like eBay and Amazon began to combine marketing data with similar formulas or algorithms to predict and strategize around potential consumer behaviors, purchases, and marketing campaign performance. In the early 2000s, with the presence of "Big Data" many more brands and online advertising platforms embraced predictive analytics and marketing technology. Now, predictive marketing...

24 Data-Backed Reasons to Personalize Your Marketing When Larry Drebes, CEO of Janrain, set out to study online consumer experiences earlier this summer, he knew that relevant content would be at the forefront of consumer minds. We've seen for years that emails which are personalized to the recipient do better than their generic counterparts. But perhaps what he could not have anticipated was just how much consumers have come to expect personalization at every stage in their buying process. In truth, nearly three-fourths of respondents in the national poll expressed frustration at content that does not recognize them and adapt to their interests. “These results that consumers have reached the tipping point when it comes to being shown content that isn’t relevant to them,” Drebes explained. “Consumers have been pretty consistent and clear in their feedback, the way to avoid alienating them is to give them what they want -- personalized, relevant content using their data in a responsible and transparent way.” To put it plainly, consumers don't just like personalized marketing experiences. They expect them. Here are 24 stats to prove why you need to embrace personalized marketing in 2020.  Benefits and Challenges of Personalized Marketing Message Personalization is the #1 tactic used by email marketers to increase engagement rates. (HubSpot) More than 20% of marketers say personalization can improve email engagement. (HubSpot) 99% of marketers say personalization helps advance customer relationships, with 78% claiming it has a“strong” or “extremely strong” impact. (Evergage) 80% of...

Gen Z Searches For Online Content Differently: What Marketers Need to Know Gen Z enters adulthood and gains more and more purchasing power, it's apparent that the age group is more hyper-connected to the internet than past generations. At this point, smart marketers have begun to discover how Gen Z's technological influence makes them different from older age groups. They're also noticing key generational behaviors that could change the way brands market to younger audiences. For example, Gen Z is more frugal than millennials, chooses practicality over customer experience, has less brand loyalty than past generations, and -- oddly enough -- prefers real-life conversation to social media chatter. Aside from the differences above, Gen Z also consumes content differently from how older people have. For instance, Gen Z spends more time online each day than millennials. They're also usually logged on to multiple social media channels at once, have a mobile-first mindset, and love video content. With all these differences in mind, it's not shocking that the way Gen Z searches and discovers content such as videos, blogs, websites, or product listings is also quite unique. If you're a marketer that has thrived on search engines, it could be helpful to familiarize yourself with how the up-and-coming generation aims to discover new products, events, experiences, or information online. This way, you can improve on your own optimization tactics so that your content gets put on their radar. In this blog post, I'll highlight a few common ways...