Matthews on Marketing

Matthews on Marketing

Three Math Tricks Every SaaS CMO Should Know

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Time was when you just needed to be an idea guy to be a great CMO. When it came to academic strong suits, English was desirable, and maybe Art if you were really good. But marketing has changed. Numbers are much more important than words or pictures. To be a great CMO, you need to be great at math, too. This shift to numbers is even more pronounced when it comes to running marketing at subscription businesses like SaaS. That may be a tall order for some. You can’t just decide to become a … [Read more...]

Four First Steps to Make Your Marketing Authentic

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Authenticity. Everyone wants it. Nobody wants anything inauthentic. Fake. Substitute. Artificial. Ersatz. Even though it's intuitive, too many marketers ignore this basic desire and put out advertisements and campaigns that come across as phony. Marketing needs to be authentic. Marketers need to understand that their customers want something real and deliver it to them in every way – in the product, in the promotion, and in their language. No customer wants to be sold. Or on the receiving end … [Read more...]

Marketingspeak: What Is Greeking? And Why Is it Latin?

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Marketingspeak is my occasional series on interesting words I encounter in my day job in marketing. I do my best to channel the late great William Saphire, whose 'On Language' column brought a smile to my face many a Sunday. – TM Greeking is a typesetting technique where intentionally incomprehensible dummy text is used to test the layout of a document. Since the reader can’t understand the text, they focus on the layout, which is the point. Plus, the designer doesn’t have to wait for the … [Read more...]

Marketingspeak: Butter Bars and Hamburgers

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Marketingspeak is my occasional series on interesting words I encounter in my day job in marketing. I do my best to channel the late great William Saphire, whose 'On Language' column brought a smile to my face many a Sunday. – TM In an occupation chock full of fluff, it was nice to encounter these two hearty web marketing terms. No empty calories here. This combo is a protein-packed marketing value meal. Butter bars are rectangular notifications that appear at the top of a web browser, … [Read more...]

Marketingspeak – What’s a Burn Pixel?

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I’d heard of pixels being fired, but never burned. The term burn pixel was a new one on me. To understand burn pixels, you first need to know about tracking pixels, which are single, transparent pixels placed on web pages. We all encounter tracking pixels while browsing, we just don’t see them. When a web page is downloaded, so is the invisible tracking pixel. That allows the marketer to track how many people visited the page. In digital adman parlance, tracking pixels are “set” or “added” to … [Read more...]