In 2017, Econsultancy published a report entitled ‘How Marketers Learn’. The goal was to identify how marketers were approaching their professional development. Its primary message can be simplified down to one mantra:

Always be learning.

It’s a mantra that is ever more applicable. The world of marketing barrels along at an ever-increasing rate — new tech, new platforms, new promises from vendors. Twenty-eight per cent of Marketers say they have a hard time keeping up with new technology — what role does TikTok play and should I use it in my marketing strategy? What exactly are AI and Machine Learning…

As is the case in this pandemic, I have been playing a fair few video games. I recently bought and finished Far Cry 5, a 2018 title that was on sale for the bargain price of about seven quid in PlayStation’s store (at time of writing it’s £49.99).

In addition, I’ve got history with the franchise having played Far Cry 2, 3 and 4 on PlayStation but never paying full price for them.

Now if you’re PlayStation there are a lot of signals about me in there. I like a bargain on older games. …

If I was writing a list of the things that annoy me about marketing the most, high on that list would be our discipline’s penchant for measuring things that aren’t really important or for measuring things that do matter but in hugely flawed ways.

Whether its judging email success only based on opens and clicks, using ‘engagement’ measures as a proxy for success within social marketing, or the flawed measurement around digital advertising described in this article here, it all drives me nuts.

I wrote an article recently where I laid out what I believe are the crucial skills of…

Be productive. Learn something new. Improve yourself. During the pandemic that’s been the mantra of a lot of people writing articles on Medium, talking on podcasts, making posts on LinkedIn and more.

The thinking goes that if there’s one thing that the pandemic and its consequences have done is present the opportunity to learn and grow your skillset. This article is another in that line — specifically aimed at marketers involved in CRM, Loyalty, and Direct Marketing — but before I start I wanted to get something off my chest.

If you’re doing no self-improvement, don’t worry

Not everyone has the mental capacity to deal with this…

There are times when I curse my advancing age. Before, during and after leg day for example. Or when I mentioned Jim Morrison at work and 90% of my team had no idea who he was.

But there are times when there are benefits — one of which is learning direct marketing before email marketing really hit its stride. When Direct Mail was predominant. Proofs. Print. Paper. Postage.

Higher costs require higher effectiveness

When something costs upwards of 30, 40, 50p a pack you learn to value what makes Direct Marketing effective — relevance and personalisation. You need to get the most out of every…

If I asked you to give me an example of a hugely successful loyalty program, would you mention Amazon Prime?

After all it doesn’t have the trappings of a stereotypical loyalty program — no points, no tiers, no rewards for transactional frequency or spend.

Yet you should be in no doubt that it was intended to drive loyalty from it’s inception. Vijay Ravindran (former Amazon director of ordering) was at the original kick-off meeting for Prime in the autumn of 2004 and recalled the conversation with Jeff Bezos:

The thing I remember very distinctly is this phrase: “I want to…

In my current downtime, I have been broadening my knowledge. For instance, I now know how inconsistent my golf swing is, what video games I enjoy, and how good ‘Community’ the TV show is (Really very good as it happens).

I have also been growing my professional knowledge. Reading books, watching seminars, listening to podcasts - that sort of thing. Recently, I got round to reading “The Long and Short of it” by Les Binet and Peter Field.

For those of you who don’t know it, it’s a seminal marketing report that takes an empirical look at what works in…

Business, like life, is all about making choices. Making the best choices you can with the information you have to hand and hoping things go your way.

Where should my next store be? Where should I advertise? How should I segment my customers? Who should I target with this offer? What products should I range in this store? What is the right creative message?

Sometimes the choices you make come off. Sometimes they fail. But ideally, you want to give yourself the highest probability that you’re making the right ones.

That, in theory, is where insights and insight development come…