Electric Marketing Blog

There has been a fair bit of low-level grumbling about the Apprenticeship Levy from the big beasts of UK plc. Payable by any company with an annual wages bill of £3m+, the Apprenticeship Levy has joined Brexit as the go to excuse for a CEO offering a sticky profits warning to shareholders. But many companies have embraced the the change; they are not just taking on apprentices, they have developed formal apprenticeship programmes and had their in-house programmes accredited as apprenticeship training providers. These companies running in-house schemes feature on our new lists of Apprenticeship

Why Email Marketing is Still Key to the B2B Marketer's Skill Set The under-21s are an entrepreneurial lot; revelling in their command of new technology, they blog, vlog and Snapchat, they roll their eyes at Facebook (it's where old people go online) and only check their emails if they are expecting something. But they are keen to make money out of technology: they dream of bringing a killer app to market and riding into the top ten of the App Store. How to achieve this? By blogging, vlogging and persuading other (more influential) bloggers and vloggers to write up the app. Sending an email to

Microsoft announced a leap in profits last month attributing the rise to its relaunch of LinkedIn. Since Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016, the corporate social media site has been flooded with innovative new functions. Microsoft has focused on the site's main user-base - recruiters and jobseekers, and sales and marketing people. It offers packages of paid-for extras and add-ons for each of these target markets and promotes them relentlessly, largely by on-screen prompts and email. I have been on the receiving end of a few comments on the lines of "Can't believe Electric Marketing is still

GDPR sure has been a long time coming. We’ve been worrying about the effects of the new Data Protection legislation from Europe since 2011. We are now a year away from the deadline of 25 May 2018 to comply. And Brexit won’t save us. For consumer marketers there are big changes but for b2b marketing, changes need to be made but they are not too onerous. And if you already comply with current legislation, you will find yourself with a pretty short to-do list for GDPR. Electric Marketing has prepared this guide to GDPR for b2b marketing. It focuses on what is relevant for b2b marketing. The key

Target The UK's Importers And Exporters With These Mailing Lists Brexit talks have begun and the UK is committed to leaving the EU. While smaller, nimbler companies can afford a "wait and see" approach, the UK's largest corporates are making plans, and contingency plans, to change how they operate, no matter what the Brexit deal will be. Pretty much all companies will eventually go through a process of adjustment post-Brexit; the UK's importers and exporters will likely get there first. These companies are examining their supply chains, pricing imports from outside the EU, looking at currency

Mailing Lists Of Innovative & Disruptive Companies Our new mailing lists feature companies who are pioneers in their field: young, ambitious start-ups, companies with an invention to bring to market and companies with new ways of working. Why go after these companies? Apart from the excitement of working with innovative, passionate teams? Apart from being in at the beginning with a future star and all the financial rewards that could bring? Many of these companies are, at present, operating under the radar of your competitors. They are not on the lists that everyone else is using. And so they

The uncertainty over the future of the UK’s data protection laws looks set to continue. In her first speech in her five-year term as Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham has acknowledged that when the UK leaves the EU in 2019 or later, there will need to be new UK data protection legislation. One thing that is certain is that the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will apply to all EU member states from 25 May 2018. All UK companies that wish to do business in the EU after that date will need to comply with GDPR. However Denham says that it is up to the UK Government to decide

Following the events of last summer, the Pound crashed against the US Dollar to a 30 year low. The UK's manufactured goods and services are falling in price for shoppers in the EU and across the world. It follows that UK companies which export are set for a few years of strong sales growth. With growth comes new opportunities for b2b marketers to sell into these exporters as they gear up for expansion by investing in recruitment and training, marketing, market research into international markets, IT, international financial services and many other corporate services. While many UK corporates

In May 2016, Companies House reported that there were 3,725,232 companies registered in the UK. Though many will be dormant, non-trading or too small to buy your goods and services, business marketers must decide on the best corporate targets and take aim. Electric Marketing has long offered targeted mailing lists by job title, industry sector, company size and postcode. This week we add a new mailing list selection, companies experiencing a high growth rate. We think these companies are excellent targets for your new business campaigns. Each one demonstrating an annual growth rate of 10% and

Summer of sport has begun with European Football, next week it's Wimbledon and the Rio Olympics starts on 5 August. Hundreds of companies have paid to sponsor the events, the teams and the players. But if you haven't paid to be an official sponsor, beware of trying to associate your brand with sporting events. Firstly, the sporting event brands themselves police sponsorship very closely; the chicken shop in Stratford that rebranded itself Olympic Chicken in 2012 was short-lived. Secondly, avoid tortuous connections in your email marketing. The eshot that begun 'With Valentines Day fast