The Awards for Marketing Effectiveness 2020 entry deadline closes today at 5pm, and we are really looking forward to reading your submissions.
This time of year always seems to come around quickly. Although, the launch and entry writing period has been a little different in 2020.
For the majority of businesses, the marketing department have driven the agenda more than ever over the past couple of months, providing vital customer insight as well as setting positioning, tone and leading strategy during the pandemic.
No surprise then, looking at the entries so far, that despite a rocky start to 2020 there are an abundance of innovative, positive and thought-provoking marketing effectiveness case studies to share. I’m really excited to get started with the judging over the next few months, and to share the shortlist with you after our judging day in September.
Jasmine will be on hand this afternoon to help you with any last minute queries, so feel free to drop her a line here, or give her a call on 020 7484 9956 if it’s urgent.
Five Things We’ve Learnt This Week
1. Worry about the ongoing pandemic shows a downwards trend and people think banks are doing enough to help’, MESH report from their weekly consumer retail banking insight research. However, information from banks is still highly valued, so communications teams should continue to engage despite concerns waning slightly
2. Additionally, the research found that the ‘experience reach of earned channels is back to pre-Covid levels’. MESH recommend leveraging earned communications, making sure that ‘advantageous actions are visible and positively reflect on your brand, as well as the category’
3. ‘Financial services providers aren’t the bad guys’ report Savanta in their latest ‘Making Sense of Change: The Finance Edition 2020’ research. In a somewhat dramatic contrast to post-2008 perceptions, banks have been viewed as ‘partners in survival’, due to recognition of the efforts made by FS businesses to help their customers4. ‘The Covid-19 situation has exposed a fragility and shifted mindsets, particularly among Gen Z and Millennials’, when it comes to long-term financial planning, being in control of financial situations and living on the edge of their means. As a result ‘people are more mindful of their finances and ‘psychologically, want to feel ‘in control’, report Savanta. This highlights an opportunity for FS companies to help customers to achieve these new goals
5. A study by Gartner found that marketing leaders report utilizing only 58% of their martech stack’s potential. That’s an awful lot of untapped (and potentially time-saving) functionality. As we begin to gear back up for our Autumn events, we’re adding the finishing tweaks to our 2020 Financial Services Martech conference on the 13 October, where we’ll be hearing from the experts on how to supercharge your stack and optimise return on investment.
Next week, don’t miss the first installment of our 6-part digital marketing masterclass in partnership with award-winning digital agency, Receptional.
These 40-minute webinars are designed to help you to optimise your digital marketing strategy and get the most out of channel marketing functionality available on social platforms, as well as organic and paid search.
We’ll be covering the fundamentals over the first 3 sessions, then giving Members the chance to vote on which channel masterclasses you’d like to see us put on for the final 3. Let us know what you’d like to see here, and we’ll run the sessions that will be most useful to the Membership.
We’ll be hearing from Justin Deauville, Managing Director & Dave Clough, Head of Content Strategy at Receptional and David Hunstone, Director of Content & Niel Scaife, Strategy Director at Hub.
Have a great weekend.
David
