Nicky Lomax

Did you know 45% of people say they are more likely to notice a catalogue sent in the post than a marketing email? If you're in the planning phase for your Christmas activity take a moment, grab a cup of tea and discover more fascinating more stats and benefits for catalogues in our blog. ➡️

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Pret's subscription model wasn't about loyalty, it was about customer acquisition 🫴 I keep seeing Pret's £30 a month subscription referred to as a loyalty scheme; including in their own financial reports. Now, with their latest move to change it up there's a sense that this was a failed loyalty scheme. But if I flip it on its head, I see it as one giant sampling campaign, partly invested in by the UK population! If you want to get people to pay money for something that they're not quite sure on the quality, value, taste, then one of the ways to get it into their hands is to offer it to them for free or at a low price. And if you want them to continue enjoying your product regularly, you can aim to create a habit around your product. You could do this by giving away lots of your product around the same time every day to embed this ritual into your customers' lives. Brands are leaky buckets, and following the pandemic Pret had a mostly empty bucket! To grow, brands need to aim for light buyers, and continuously bring more people in to your brand than your competitors. I see Pret as looking to get a competitive advantage over other coffee shops by getting competitors' customers to make the switch to Pret, thus stealing market share. When they make the switch to their cheaper subscription but with less 'payback', I imagine there's an assumption that all these 'loyal' customers are so invested in Pret that they'll continue to visit and buy. Yet coffee is a commodity. People will generally go to the coffee shop closest to them in their moment of need! Unless Pret has coffee filled with magic, there's very little reason to choose one coffee chain over another. But, I'm optimistic. I imagine Pret will keep plenty of customers, many of whom were not Pret customers before, because of a successful initiative in driving trial. And if I'd like one thing to come out of this, I'd love to see the next financial report refer to this subscription as a customer acquisition strategy, not a loyalty one 😉

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This morning, I had the pleasure of participating in the judging session for the UK Search Awards, once again reviewing an impressive array of high-quality campaigns from across the Search Marketing industry highlighting that our industry continues to overflow with exceptional ideas and results. Now, this year marks a milestone for me, as it’s the 10th consecutive year that I’ve supported Don't Panic Events as a volunteer judge. Over the past decade, I’ve had the honour of judging several Don’t Panic Events awards, including the UK and EU Search Awards, Ecommerce Awards, and Agency Awards, to name a few. Each time, I’ve carefully reviewed countless entries, diving deep into campaign strategies, execution, objectives, and results to ensure that the most deserving work gets recognised. This process has taken quite literally hundreds of hours of my time over the years, unpaid, but I’ve never hesitated to contribute. And that got me thinking. Why do I continue to do it? I’ve heard all sorts of misconceptions over the years about awards, from claims of influence to “pay-to-win” setups, often from those who haven’t experienced the process firsthand. The truth is, as a judge, there’s a HUGE amount of work that goes on behind the scenes. We scrutinise every detail, validate results using industry tools, and benchmark campaigns against one another – all with rigorous attention. Multiply that across numerous judges and no single judge can sway the outcome. It’s a truly robust process and I am proud to help ensure honesty and impartiality continues to exist within these prestigious awards for our industry. I also remain committed to giving my time because I believe that great work deserves recognition. Beyond the marketing benefits for the winners, it’s about seeing the genuine excitement and pride on the faces of winners - knowing their hard work is being celebrated. It’s incredibly rewarding to be a part of that moment. It’s also rewarding to know that the winners will leave the awards ceremony incredibly motivated to keep pushing their work and our industry forward. For me to be able to play even a small part in contributing to the growth and support of our industry, as a judge, motivates me to keep doing my part. Best of luck to all the entrants in this year’s UK Search Awards, the shortlist will be announced this Friday! 🏆 #searchawards #uksearchawards #seo #ppc #sem #digitalmarketing

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🎁🎉 Q4 Ecommerce Growth 🎉🎁 We are already ranking position 2 for a transactional 201K peak trading UK search volume term for a gifting brand we started working with 90 days ago. Beating high authority retail giants Marks and Spencer and Fortnum & Mason. **This is not the first time we have done this postion 1 for this term is a brand we worked with two years ago.** Before working with us, the company an established e-commerce gifting brand had been working with an SEO for the past 2 years and was not getting much movement - for this term back in June the brand was Page 2, and July growth into 9 during the first month of engagement and now we are position 2. NB: As you will see from the image accompanying the post we have moved from 43-13 and 13-6 for two terms with a current volume of 50K per month (outside peak). Massive gains are being made. This growth in such a short time frame is a testament to the head of ecommerce putting faith in us, with a small internal resource massive shift from the POLARIS | SEO & Content Agency team to work on not just optimisation, content creation, new wireframes and addressing legacy technical issues holding the site back. We are bold, and we do sometimes suggest hard-to-swallow changes - but everything is data-backed (or based on years of e-commerce experience) we back ourselves, put the hard yards in and this is why we get these results so quickly. SEO campaigns are underpinned by passion, proactivity and clear strategic direction working on impactful areas to maximise exposure. This is how we get these results, time and time again. Big thanks to Sam Marlow working dilligently to deliver the campaign strategy with the client to get this traction. Safe to say, we have only scratched the surface, the peak index can be volatile and fluxes daily. We have briefed the team with a whole new Q4 strategy still to deploy to ensure we "stay sticky" during this peak for these queries - plus move further on a 300K term we are currently position 4. Data reference: SE Ranking - 2024 compare by dates 09 July - 07 October

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WARNING **RADICAL HONESTY POST** 😅 So today marks the second day in my new journey of reducing my screentime. But you work at a computer, I hear you say! Yeah but that's the thing. I have been looking at my job as 'separate' to any screen time consumed in the morning or evening and in the endeavor of radical honesty, this became a pretty big issue for me! Those of you who know me will know I'm raw-dogging life without ADHD meds (a personal choice) and there are pros and cons to this. One of the cons is that even though I am an absolute Pro with a capital P at masking, sometimes my impulses take over and I form really bad and unhealthy habits that are hard to break. For what it's worth, when I'm with my kids, it's rare I look at my phone unless it rings but that means that when I'm not I have a million notifications and end up getting sucked in. I also love ❤️TV and film❤️ so many evenings are spent devouring HBO's latest offering or maybe a Prime Home Premier if I'm feeling spicy. I started feeling really low recently and when I thought about it, the amount of hours that my eyes were focused on a screen were really totting up😅The thing is, when you have ADHD you kind of live your life with racing thoughts every waking moment of the day and I realised that my recreational screen use was me trying to self-medicate my exceptionally busy brain, which for obvious reasons isn't great. I mean, what therapist ever recommended more screentime as a means to treat ADHD symptoms? 🤣 Ironically, I've always been really strict on my kids using devices (they only have the telly or laptop for schoolwork) and my 11 year old only has a burner phone as I don't want his social development to be stunted by a screen and internet use, which surprisingly, he's cool with. So I'm owning my shit and making a decision to reduce my out of work hours screentime down to an hour a day and TV is going to become a treat after the gym or at weekends once my kids are in bed. I want to rediscover my creativity away from a screen and I'm hoping this will only enhance the passion and ideas I already bring to my job, which I love! Is anyone else out there just feeling that we are all spending way too much time looking at screens or is it just me? 😅😂 #partialdigitaldetox

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🐈‍⬛ Day2 at #DMIP2024 by Girls in Marketing🐈‍⬛ Lucy Street delivered a session on Thumb Stopping Social Content, showing us how to use Adobe Express tools, specifically generative AI which made me want to try it out myself 🖼️ 🎨 I was tinkering with it for a good few hours and managed to come up with the attached design 😂 Watching her create content through generative AI made me want to make a big calico cat alongside a tiny human near a cliff or mountain. Although calico cat didn't go well with the colour theme, I chose a black cat 🐈‍⬛ It took over 25 tries of generating and re-generating prompts and designs to come up with the perfect black cat. 😞 Why did i mention 25? Because the free version only offers 25 tries per month - which is a big bummer. I used up my free 30-day trial to unlock the premium feature because of how committed I was to finish this mini project and share it with all the girlies 🤭 I also found out what factors effected the generation; some of them being - 🖌 the size of the area you're marking 🖌the prompts 🖌the overlays in the pictures I was surprised to see you could use generative AI on texts too (i'm sure she mentioned it but i was too busy thinking about a calico cat). 🐈 Bubble theme felt like the perfect way to go 🫧 But something still felt missing. I tried adding hot air balloons but they didn't work well. So I added a big moon because that went well with my fictional theme. I feel like I could've added more but as of now, their elements tab, in my opinion, wasn't the best. I'm sure there will be more developments and more collections coming in. Overall it was fun! I will definitely be trying generative AI a lot more often 👩‍🎨 #Adobe #ContentCreation #GraphicsDesign #DigitalMarketing #GirlsinMarketing

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Good news... UK marketing budgets have increased by the highest levels in a decade. The latest quarterly IPA Bellwether report reveals a significant uplift in marketing budgets across all main categories, the strongest upward revision since the first quarter of 2014. Interesting to see that events continue to be the main area of marketing budget growth, up 17.2%. Read more at: Marketing Week https://lnkd.in/e_CQyuF5 #MarketingBudgets #EventMarketing

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Ignoring key metrics destroys your campaign's success 📉. Without tracking and analysing metrics like response rate and ROI, your direct mail efforts may fall short. At Mailings Direct, we transform complex data into targeted campaigns, ensuring you reach the right audience effectively. 🌿 Our commitment to sustainability and personal service makes us your ideal partner. Start your journey today! Comment or share if you agree. #DirectMail #MarketingSuccess

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Check out our latest article on how to maximise the usefulness of your existing databases. #b2bdata

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Attention brand owners! 📣 In today’s digital world, it can be hard to ‘cut through the noise’ and connect with your target audience. Tailoring content and interactions to suit consumer preferences and needs is the key to capturing and retaining attention 🔑 In our latest blog, Lee Metters explains how to do just that, using 2D coding technology including QR codes powered by GS1. Check it out 👇 https://lnkd.in/d2D9MjJF #BrandIdentity #2DCodes #QRCodes #CustomerExperience #GS1

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Attention brand owners! 📣 In today’s digital world, it can be hard to ‘cut through the noise’ and connect with your target audience. Tailoring content and interactions to suit consumer preferences and needs is the key to capturing and retaining attention 🔑 In our latest blog, Lee Metters explains how to do just that, using 2D coding technology including QR codes powered by GS1. Check it out 👇 https://lnkd.in/dPVAhJYb #BrandIdentity #2DCodes #QRCodes #CustomerExperience #GS1

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A conversation many Senior Marketers are having at the moment- Should we manage Social Media ourselves or outsource it to a specialist agency? There are pros and cons to both, but one thing is for sure, the impact of a strong social media strategy can be huge for the bottom line. Join us in a couple of weeks as we look at both sides of the coin and explore the benefits of using an agency vs bringing it in-house. A must-watch for any Senior Marketer. Click on the link in the comments to register.

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You and your Performance Marketing Agency work so hard to achieve a seamless pre-click experience on Google Shopping & Meta... You then just sit and think that the traffic driven by that seamless pre-click experience should convert on its own... ❌ Wrong ❌ After clicking an ad, your traffic lands on an impersonalised PDP which: 😪 takes 6 - 8 secs to load. People are impatient these days. If nothing is showing up on their phone screen after clicking an ad, they just bounce back to Google Shopping and buy from your competitors. 👁 doesn't allow you to show similar/ best-selling products at first glance above the fold. If people are new to your brand or are just casually browsing on Google Shopping, they are just gonna go back to Google Shopping if the original product doesn't interest them. 👯‍♀️ looks the same for all your different traffic coming from different paid media channels for different product categories! KIABI understood the importance of personalisation during the post-click phases and increased their ROAS by 21% with the help of Dataiads! #PPC #performancemarketing #growthmarketing #paidmedia #search #googleshopping #SEA #SEM

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📊 Are you getting the most out of GA4? Hallam have launched an online course that will help you get more from Google Analytics 4, empowering you to generate more useful reports that drive better decision making. The first event takes place on Tuesday 9th July, and is available as a half-day session, delivered via a virtual classroom and led by our Head of Insights, Jonathan Catton. Register your interest here >> https://lnkd.in/eZwFMN2F #GA4 #DataAndInsights #GoogleAnalytics

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FFS 😂😂 Just 1 more position to go until Assertive cracks position #1 for online pharmacy. This is the culmination of SEO testing with SEO stack & an amazing team. Implement > AI analysis of data from outcome > next action. Eat, sleep, repeat, rank, make the client f*ck loads of money. Traffic is vanity profit is sanity. Come outrank me. Pharma, iGaming/Gambling, Finance, Health. #seo #seoresults #digitalmarketing

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