Learn · every claim sourced
Understand integrated marketing, step by step
Plain-language foundations, primers and guides on integrated marketing communications, with a source for every claim. New here? Begin with the short reads below.
The library
CRM and loyalty 101: customer data, lifecycles, programmes and retention
How companies use what they know about their customers to keep them: segmentation by recency, frequency and value, lifecycle marketing, loyalty programmes from points and tiers to paid memberships and coalitions, how retention and the Net Promoter Score are measured, and the rules on profiling and loyalty data.
Events 101: bringing people to the brand, in person and online
Events and experiential marketing put a brand and its audience in the same place: trade shows, conferences, brand experiences and their hybrid and virtual forms. They are costly per person but rich in conversation and first-party data, and they are judged by objectives set in advance, a published sustainability standard and growing accessibility duties.
Messaging 101: marketing in the chat, from SMS to WhatsApp
Messaging marketing reaches people in the apps they use to talk to friends: SMS, WhatsApp, RCS, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram and LINE. It works when people have opted in, when the first message follows each platform's template and window rules, and when the conversation leads somewhere useful: an answer, a booking, a purchase.
Social media 101: earning a place in feeds that algorithms run
Social media is where most people online spend part of every day, and where brands both talk with communities for free and buy attention in auctions. How feeds and ad auctions decide what people see, what businesses use social for, how platforms and rules differ by region, and when it should lead the plan.
Touchpoints and the customer journey: from the funnel to the messy middle
Every contact with a brand is a message. How the consumer decision journey replaced the funnel, what Google's messy middle adds, how business buying groups decide, and how to map touchpoints to objectives.