🔊 Change is coming to Marketing Land

Your website isn’t what it used to be. Conversions are not happening. It has been years since anyone has looked under the hood. B2B marketing woes like this one are common — and it’s often not the marketer’s fault. Quick business decisions propel website design, sometimes with not enough thought given as to how the elements of a web page are supposed to come together as a working whole. Inferior UX hobbles the online effort to sniff out leads and convert them into sales. But matters can be corrected.

We reached out to UX experts from digital marketing agencies to get their perspectives on website optimization, and we got some actionable insights:

Companies cannot expect their web pages to remain unchanged while the world changes around them. But expert opinion varies as to how often a refresh is needed — anywhere from once every one to two years, to as long as once every three to five. One factor that can work against redesign: a company’s size. Some firms may be too big, and their web properties too complex to easily change. Such firms are at a competitive disadvantage since wholesale renovation is daunting. Instead, they tend to concentrate on improving their technology to engage with users, focusing on personalization and market automation.

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While many back-office tools such as ERP and supply chain management have already adopted AI-driven automation, the front office (sales, marketing and service) remains the last bastion of non-automated processes.

Why? Sales and marketing people have dug in on the idea that their roles are more art than science. And they’ve clung jealously to the idea that their intuition and creativity are what differentiate them – which is true, only not in the ways they think.

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The digital experiences that became a lifeline for many businesses in 2020 are with us to stay. That’s the bet Salesforce is making as it announces enhancements to its CDP, launched last October. It will now be known as Salesforce CDP and no longer as Customer 360 Audiences.

Two changes relate to high profile acquisitions. Mulesoft, the integration platform acquired by Salesforce in 2018, will enable the CDP to ingest data from any application or data source. Tableau, the analytics platform acquired in 2019, will deliver insights into customer behavior and engagement.

Other enhancements include an improved audience segment builder, the ability to append lifetime value and engagement scores to customer profiles, and the opportunity to activate segments across AppExchange apps from participating partners.

Why we care. Does slow and steady always win the race? Salesforce was the last of the big CX suites to fully deploy a CDP, and development has been incremental. “We’re doing it the hard way,” Chris O’Hara, VP of Product Marketing at Salesforce, told us last year. Of course, that might also be the right way.

Adopting headless and hybrid Content Management Systems is part of a move toward greater agility in marketing. These solutions give you more flexibility and speed in choosing where content is distributed and how it is displayed. Join a panel of experts moderated by MarTech Today’s editorial director Kim Davis, and learn the trends driving the adoption of headless and hybrid CMSs and the capabilities these systems provide.

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Google’s VP of Engineering for Google ads announced three new previews for Google Marketing Livestream:

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Join us online, June 15-16, at SMX Advanced — the premier training experience designed exclusively for expert search marketers. Explore the latest SEO, PPC, and user experience topics, trends, and tactics with the Search Engine Land editors.

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With the world opening back up again, brands like Extra are anticipating a summer of love. But how have people been finding love in the meantime? The pandemic pivot to digital seems to include dating behavior, suggested by the shifting dating habits of seniors, according to a new survey by life insurance provider Choice Mutual.

Dating apps and websites are the second most popular way that seniors are meeting people. A full 13% of people 55+ responded that it was the best way to find romance, behind the top option, being introduced by people they knew (18%). Social media, as a separate option, came in at 7%. Furthermore, the survey found that roughly a third of seniors who have dated in the last five years tried a dating app, and 66% of those using dating apps or sites had a lasting relationship with someone they met there.

Here are the top apps where seniors met a relationship partner:

Why we care. Consumers are turning to technology to enhance highly personal parts of their lives. Targeted channels like dating apps have deeply engaged audiences. Seniors are adopting social platforms and dating apps at high rates because digital channels increase access to users across demographics. Marketers, is there a digital audience out there you’ve yet to identify?

“Diversity, Equity, Inclusion is no longer a ‘fringe’ activity. If your business aims to serve a wide range of customers and build the best team possible, being able to work effectively with different kinds of people is a core management competency.” Jennifer Kim, startup advisor and HR specialist