SparkPost Global Survey Reveals 74% of Marketing Leaders Concerned with Impending Privacy Changes

Uncertainties Related to Privacy Regulations and Changing Industry Rules Are Driving 82% of Organisations to Prepare; Causing 95% of Leaders To Commit to Better Organisational Alignment

SparkPost, the world’s largest email sending and optimisation platform delivering nearly 40 percent of the world’s email, today released its annual email benchmark report, titled Email in 2022: The trends, behaviors, and benchmarks driving email forward. The report closely examines how digital marketers and email marketers have adjusted two years into the pandemic, and what digital marketing strategies they’ve leaned on to accelerate growth and connection with key audiences.

The report includes data from two global surveys: 1) of 2,000 marketing leaders – of which 500 were based in the UK – that looked at changes in strategies and budget, teams and workload, effects of privacy changes, and email marketing value and investments; 2) of 224 email marketing practitioners focused on how industry and economic changes have affected their ability to execute and succeed.

The marketing leaders survey found that while businesses are showing a strong rebound from two challenging years, they are very mindful of how privacy can and will affect their future digital marketing success. The good news is most leaders recognise the importance of investing in aligning each marketing discipline, shoring up solid data practices, and bolstering their arsenal of branded content and communications channels.

2021 Proved Most Businesses Have Recovered Economically 

Businesses, for the most part, are bouncing back to pre-COVID levels, but marketing leaders are more mindful of where budgets are spent. Last year, only 42% of leaders were optimistic that economic recovery was within reach. Now, 63% report their budgets and priorities reflect pre-COVID levels. Priorities are shifting in that advertising and wide-net marketing efforts like social media marketing are too much of a gamble for organisations. Instead, they are investing in building out content and branding, which points to organisations knowing the value of investing in themselves.

  • 91% of leaders say their team has been successful this year, signaling changes brought on by the pandemic have allowed marketing teams to prioritise budget and energy to their benefit.
  • Consistently positive performance is good news for business: 71% of businesses have grown their marketing teams in the last year, reflective of a strong industry landscape, prioritization of marketing to the business, and appetite for good talent.
  • 70% report business performance as better overall compared to last year. In 2020, only 42% of leaders said their businesses were performing better than the previous year.
  • Comparatively, in 2020, 32% of leaders said business performance was worse. Fast forward one year, and that figure shrunk to 15%.

Budgetary spend has shifted in the last year, with 2021 ranked budget priorities: 1) Branding, 2) Content Marketing, 3) CRM and Email Marketing, 4) Digital Advertising, 5) Social Media Marketing, 6) Demand Gen, 7) Website. In 2020, the top three areas of spend were (in order): Digital Advertising, Content Marketing, and Social Media Marketing.

Email Marketing Continues to Perform as a Trusted Channel, Delivering Against the Bottom Line

In years past, email marketers have been viewed as siloed parts of the marketing organisation, but the tide is turning in a major way. Alignment across all marketing channels has skyrocketed in importance to marketing leaders in the last year, with 95% of leaders noting email marketing specifically is more tightly aligned with the marketing ecosystem compared to last year.

  • The effort is paying off, with 76% of leaders saying their email marketing program has made a positive impact on the business in 2021, compared to 58% in 2020.
  • 52% of marketing leaders deem their teams as “highly efficient,” due in large part to bringing the email campaign production and management work in-house.
    • Globally, 63% of leaders say everything is done in-house. 51% of UK marketing leaders have taken work completely in-house.
  • With returning budgets alongside bigger objectives and goals, workload is also on the rise – 69% of global leaders say their teams are “busier than ever” (compared to 48% in 2020)

Privacy-Related Changes and Challenges Continue to Worry Marketers 

The overall fragility of privacy – regulations, consumer behavioural shifts, and big changes coming from the likes of Apple and Google – are having both short- and long-term implications on business. Changes in privacy regulations and a shift in consumer perception of personal data are a big factor in marketing leaders’ commitment to invest in earned and owned marketing channels.

Email continues to grow in importance for CMOs, as many audiences have leaned on it for information and connection throughout the pandemic. The boom of email in the early stages of the pandemic shows no signs of slowing in 2021 and beyond. As such, marketing teams are prepping now for changes that are expected to come, with an overall approach of proactively respecting customer privacy.

  • 82% of leaders are actively preparing for privacy changes.
  • 67% of practitioners say they’re concerned with how privacy changes will affect their ability to perform.
  • 59% of leaders report their organisation’s email engagement data has “taken a hit.”

For UK marketing leaders, specific changes that are keeping them up at night are: Apple’s iOS 15 changes are of most concern (72% rank it medium to high concern), followed by Google’s third-party cookie tracking (67%), government regulations (64%), and deprecation of app tracking data (59%).

Future of Work Success and Employee Happiness Hinge on Improved Collaboration and Communication

Globally, nearly half (49%) of companies are still fully remote; 41% are hybrid – in the UK, 30% are still 100% remote with nearly 60% working in a hybrid environment. When asked if they love it, hate it, or are indifferent to working remotely, 85% of marketing leaders globally say they love it; 90% of practitioners agree. Despite significant workload increases, it’s clear most companies have rebounded financially, and the increased investments in hiring and collaboration tools is allowing workers to succeed, mitigating frustrations, bottlenecks in work, and redundancy. For those fully remote:

  • 98% actually say their collaboration is either the same (16%) or better (82%) compared to being in-office.
  • 96% say communication is the same or better.
  • 95% say productivity is the same or better.
  • When gauging how changing work situations have impacted happiness: 95% of fully remote workers say it’s the same or better, compared to 89% of hybrid workers and 89% of those in the office full-time.

Work situations related to on-site, hybrid, and remote work still vary, yet it’s clear that workers are happiest (and most productive) when they have the flexibility to determine their own ideal work-from-home/office routine. For the 41% of companies that have a hybrid work set-up:

  • 71% of marketing leaders say they love it; 45% of practitioners agree.
  • 94% say collaboration is the same or better compared to being in-office.
  • 93% say communication is the same or better.
  • 90% say productivity is the same or better.

Download the SparkPost report “Email in 2022: The trends, behaviours, and benchmarks driving email forward” and register for the February 1st webinar here.

Smart factory expansion announced to improve 3D printing accessibility

A 3D printing service with a vision to make 3D printing technology more universally accessible has announced expansion plans that will see it compete with the world’s leading manufacturing businesses.

3D People is growing its business with a move to a purpose built 9,000 square foot smart factory in Woolwich, London, along with a series of key investments in new technologies including a HP MJF 5210 printer which will allow the company to swiftly turnaround more durable, accurate and competitively priced parts. It will also be introducing more automated post-processing technology to help it achieve its ambition of becoming a fully operational Industry 4.0 factory. Company founders Sasha Bruml and Felix Manley say their investments will drive their continued mission to ‘humanise’ 3D printing with simple, affordable and stress-free online ordering processes for custom 3D designs and parts.

Sasha says: “Our aim is to empower more people to create innovative products so achieving our goal to expand has been especially rewarding.” The new facility and 3D printing technologies and equipment will not only help the company realise its vision to make manufacturing accessible, but will also allow it to meet its 10-year growth plans and further develop its service offering, aligning it with some of the world’s biggest 3D printing bureaus.

Bringing down barriers to 3D printing technology

Originally meeting while studying at Central Saint Martins in 2013, the entrepreneurs were inspired by the sheer scope of innovation possibilities and revolutionising effects of digital manufacturing, and were particularly interested in what was happening in the 3D printing space.

However, they quickly learned of the challenges in gaining access to the industry and realised an opportunity to break down these barriers with new processes for engineers, designers and innovators wanting to use the technology. The pair initially began working on projects for fellow students and since graduating, they have grown to a team of ten and have successfully incorporated one of the largest-volume Selective Laser Sintering printers in London, with specialised polyshot finishing equipment. Their work to date has seen them collaborate with leading brands Rolls Royce, Jaguar Land Rover, Orms Designers and Architects, Foster + Partners, Barber Osgerby, and global advertising firms, McCann and M&C Saatchi.

Felix says: “The challenges we faced initially taught us that we needed to offer a more human experience and share our know-how to enable easier access to innovation, no matter what a customer’s knowledge of 3D printing is. Our track record and expansion plans demonstrate that this is an approach that is both wanted and needed in the industry and we will continue to develop our knowledge and service in this rapidly evolving sector.”

To learn more, visit https://www.3dpeople.uk/about-us

 

Increasing input costs lead to inevitable price hikes by businesses

Written by Mr. Kunal Sawhney, CEO, Kalkine Media

Rising inflationary pressure has become a worldwide phenomenon lately, and the UK economy has been suffering from the evils of inflation too. A 2% inflation target was set by the Bank of England (BoE) with an aim to maintain stability in the economy. However, this 2% target has been breached recently, with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) going up by 5.1% in the 12 months to November 2021. After the inflation level of 5.2% recorded in September 2011, the highest recorded CPI 12-month figure, the BoE is estimating the inflation levels to reach approximately 6% by the spring of 2022.

Both households and businesses have taken the brunt of the pandemic, and even though the Government has stepped up and offered the necessary financial support, coping up with the financial squeeze has been difficult during these rough times. UK households have been dealing with higher food and utility bills, with many of the poorer ones falling into the trap of fuel poverty ahead of this winter.

To counter the impact of rising inflation and soaring prices, the BoE has recently increased the interest rates from 0.1% to 0.25%. The move to raise the interest rate was made for the first time in three years in response to the rapidly rising prices. In 2022, the rates are projected to rise further, with a 0.25% hike expected as early as February. When the inflation levels went up to 5% in 2011, the interest rates were maintained at historic lows, which proves that the BoE is in a weaker position at present. This may be true as the UK economy has been facing turbulence due to a combination of Brexit-related issues and Covid-related restrictions.

Price hike to impact all

The budget of the households has been impacted, the energy prices have been skyrocketing lately due to excessive demand for oil and gas across the globe, which has pushed up the energy prices. Supply chain issues have been further aggravating the problem of inflation, and with a shortage of labour, materials, and haulage services, the prices of goods have soared immensely. Amid all these issues, the Government’s withdrawal of various support measures from hard-hit businesses, like ending hospitality’s reduced VAT, has resulted in a greater rise in prices by businesses to cover their losses. The pandemic and Brexit have together made the recruitment of lorry drivers and hospitality staff quite difficult.

As the living standard of Britons is plummeting due to increasing inflationary pressure, the wage demand is likely to rise and potentially result in a wage/price spiral, which could have a detrimental impact on the economy. The current inflation level, which is already way above the target rate of BoE, has been making Britons more and more pessimistic about the UK possibly moving towards economic stagnation.

The increase in prices of goods is inevitable with the increasing cost of inputs and transportation, and this phenomenon will be witnessed across markets in 2022. With the new Omicron variant of coronavirus causing massive disruptions in the UK economy, it’s hard to predict what’s in store for the UK economy this year, but the rise in prices is certain in the current circumstances and common people, as well as business, will have to look for means to reduce its impact as much as possible.

Innovative Ideas for FREE with Code Computerlove’s Make Change Fridays

Organisations looking for innovative ideas to solve their biggest problems or improve digital service areas this year are being offered a free workshop by leading digital product and service studio Code Computerlove.

Its ‘Make Change Fridays’ workshops aim to help organisations with tech for good initiatives that are seeking solutions to challenging problems – whether that relates to strategic direction, comms, digital platforms, or positioning.

​​Code has recently trialled the workshops with charity Manchester Pride, where the agency provided strategic communications support in preparation for 2022 marketing planning.

Lizzy Holroyd from Manchester Pride said: “The team at Code were very insightful and generous with their time. They introduced a range of strategic and tactical comms ideas that has given us lots of impetus and a greater focus for our activities this year.”

Rob Jones, Managing Director of Code says: “This is our way of giving back and supporting tech for good initiatives that make meaningful change to people’s lives and communities.

“We have previously dedicated 10% of our time on Friday afternoons for our team’s personal development, but many felt that working on live briefs would be a more beneficial way to develop their skills. We’re also passionate about supporting organisations like Pride who are making a real difference, and our team now have the option to support if they wish.”

Rob added: “We have developed time-effective and impactful methods to deep dive into our client’s needs which we implement in our experience design and day zero workshops. Our ‘light touch’ Make Change Fridays workshops take elements of these methods to provide a boost of inspiration, direction and actionable ideas to shape future roadmaps.

“We can support organisations with common business problems and use our expertise across strategy, marketing, tech and customer experience design to hone in on exciting ideas for how they might be tackled.

“We have always offered our event space for free to the local Manchester digital community to share ideas and collaborate, and we hope this initiative is another way we can help businesses thrive this year.”

Businesses can find out more about the workshops and register interest here: https://www.codecomputerlove.com/make-change-fridays-workshop/

Richard Kent joins VisionTrack as Vice President of Global Sales

VisionTrack, the leading AI video telematics and connected vehicle data specialist, has appointed Richard Kent as Vice President of Global Sales to help drive growth internationally and build on its market-leading position in the UK. The company is expected to further increase its global footprint during 2022, following the launch of a new operation in the US last year, so is expanding its business development team to support these plans.

In his new position, Kent will be responsible for targeting enterprise opportunities across all international regions. He will draw upon more than 20 years of experience in senior business development roles, most recently as Enterprise Accounts Director at Trimble for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Kent will also use his extensive knowledge of the North American marketplace to support the scale-up and sales growth of VisionTrack Inc.

Richard Lane, Commercial Director of VisionTrack commented: “Despite a challenging 12-months, we have achieved significant growth in the UK, US and globally, with comprehensive plans for further expansion and product innovations in 2022. Richard will be a fantastic addition to our team, and we look forward to him making a strong contribution to our international ambitions this year.”

How to Prepare Your Small Business for 2022

As businesses return to full operation following the festive break and the advent of a new year, business leaders across industries will be looking for new ways in which to prepare their business for the year ahead. Growth presents various opportunities, and having an idea of which to explore can make all the difference to the success of your business in 2022.

Going Digital

Since the advent of the 21st century, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a business which does not have a digital element to its business structure. ‘Going digital’ is nothing new, and in fact a requirement for success in nearly every industry – but continued leaps in technology present new avenues for growth, and evaluating new measures your business can take in online spheres can make all the difference in 2022. Blockchain technologies provide new, decentralised possibilities for secure data storage and seamless transacting, while the increased capabilities of cloud computing offer various benefits, from collaborative and remote working to reduced hardware costs.

Expansion and Outsourcing

Another key aspect to pay attention to in bringing your business into 2022 is that of expanding. As your business continues to grow and gain popularity, it will be necessary to pay attention to ways in which you can facilitate and support that growth. But attempting to grow your business multilaterally can be detrimental to that growth, as a result of you spreading your efforts thinly across different departments.

Any expansion efforts will widen the scope of others’ roles, particularly with regard to accounting; without the necessary support and resources to bolster that growth, mistakes can occur, opening your business up to the possibility of professional negligence. Instead of attempting to incrementally grow each aspect of your business, consider focusing on an area or department more suited to your growth pattern, and using your increased profits to outsource tasks in other departments. This enables you to give your full attention and energy to fostering internal growth, while leaving lesser time-consuming tasks to external contractors.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a particularly pressing issue for this and coming years, owing to the growing pressure of a worldwide climate crisis and increased public interest in adopting sustainability measures. Not only might addressing your relationship with sustainability impress existing customers, but publicly signalling a commitment to reducing your business’ carbon footprint can provide positive PR, increasing your reach and engagement if leveraged correctly.

Listen to Customers

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, you’ll learn the most about potential avenues for progression and preparation for the year ahead by communicating with your customers, whether businesses or individual consumers. By canvassing your existing customers, or your customer demographic, you can learn more about where and how they would like to see you grow in 2022.

Insurance broker hubb welcomes industry expert Sonya Homewood as new Strategic Advisor

Usage based insurance broker hubb has taken a substantial step on its ongoing path towards growth and development, by appointing experienced insurance leader – Sonya Homewood, as its new Strategic Advisor.

Established in 2019, hubb is a usage-based insurance broker that prides itself on its transparent approach to commercial insurance, underpinned by a unique technology ecosystem that provides all clients with a 360-view of their insurance policies 24/7.

Homewood’s appointment comes as the company intensifies its focus on talent, technology, and acquisition growth in 2022. She is an established presence in the insurance with over 30 years’ experience in senior leadership roles. These include Head of Customer Operations for comparethemarket.com and more recently, Chief Operating Officer for Commercial Lines at Royal Sun Alliance (RSA).

Bringing significant board level experience with regards operations, organisational design, change and transformation, Homewood will ensure hubb continues to retain its ‘challenger’ sensibilities and strengths as it moves towards increased agility, growth and profitability.

Speaking about her appointment, Sonya Homewood said: “Hubb is a breath of fresh air in an industry crying out for simplicity and transparency. Therefore I’m delighted to be joining hubb’s dynamic team, whose desire to put their clients at the heart of everything they do, perfectly aligns with my own values and beliefs. I cannot wait to contribute to the exciting journey ahead.”

Stuart Middleton, Chief Insurance Officer for hubb, commented: “We are delighted and honoured to welcome Sonya to the hubb team. With her vast experience working in financial services, she is perfectly placed to help guide our company towards its development goals, and I have every confidence that her advice will prove invaluable in this regard.”

Peter Harvey, former Barclays Corporate CEO and current Chairman of the hubb advisory board, added: “Sonya is a very impressive individual, and the success she has achieved for those organisations she has worked for throughout her career speaks volumes about the quality and value of her advice. Her appointment is hugely exciting to everyone here at hubb, and we look forward to her playing a key role in driving strategic and accelerated growth in the months and years to come.”

Established in 2019 and a proud member of Fintech Scotland, hubb operates from offices in both Glasgow and London and is currently engaged with regulators in other markets across Europe.

Tech Mahindra Bets Big on Digitally Transforming Insurance Industry; Acquires Com Tec Co IT Ltd and Invests in two Leading InsurTech Platforms

Acquisition of Com Tec Co IT Ltd will significantly enhance digital engineering capability and establish scalable nearshore delivery presence in Europe with over 700 highly skilled IT professionals

Tech Mahindra, a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting, and business re-engineering services & solutions, today announced 100% acquisition of Com Tec Co IT Ltd (CTC) for €310 million including earnouts and synergy linked payouts. CTC is an IT solutions and service provider serving the insurance and financial services industries with development centres in Latvia and Belarus. The acquisition will enable Tech Mahindra to tap into the potential industry disruption in the Insurance sector, expand its offerings to high-end digital engineering services for some of the largest insurance, re-insurance and financial services organizations globally and scale its nearshore delivery presence.

Tech Mahindra is also investing a cumulative amount of €20 million, in SWFT and Surance, for a 25% ownership in each of these two InsurTech ventures funded by the same founding group as CTC. SWFT is a SaaS-based digital customer engagement platform. It offers multiple functionalities for insurance sales & distribution and is designed for digital brokers, price comparison websites, and insurers wanting to directly reach their customers through digital channels. Surance is an end-to-end personal cyber insurance solution that focuses on vulnerability assessment, cyber protection, and cyber insurance coverage.

 

Vivek Agarwal, President – BFSI, HLS, and Corporate Development, Tech Mahindra, said, “The Insurance industry is currently undergoing a significant transformation which is driven by new emerging business models, that are powered by disruptive digital technologies. In order to enable this digital transformation, we are investing in strengthening our capabilities to support insurers in accelerating their transition to cloud-based platforms and provide end-to-end engineering with a strong European nearshore presence. We welcome the CTC team into the Tech Mahindra family, and we expect to achieve significant market and service line synergies through this combination.”

Through these investments, Tech Mahindra will bolster its global leadership and demonstrate its commitment in building differentiated capabilities for accelerating the digital transformation in the insurance, reinsurance, and financial services. CTC’s expertise and experience in delivering marquee solutions for customers will complement Tech Mahindra’s offering to provide end-to-end digital engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and DevSecOps capabilities. The acquisition will also help Tech Mahindra to scale its European presence with over 700 highly skilled IT professionals in contemporary technologies and processes.

 

Avraham Shaked, Co-Founder, Com Tec Co IT Ltd, said, “Since our inception over 20 years ago, we have scaled sustainably entirely through customers’ recommendations and delivered award-winning strategic solutions for them in the insurance and reinsurance industry. Becoming a part of a global entity like Tech Mahindra will give us immediate access to global scale and create a tremendous growth and development opportunity for our people and the business.”

The acquisition underlines Tech Mahindra’s focus on digital growth, under the NXT.NOWTM framework, which is focused on leveraging next generation technologies to deliver disruptive solutions today, and further enable digital transformation, meet the evolving and dynamic needs of its customers.

The Smart Cube releases January 2022 edition of Amplifi PRO

Latest release includes supplier intelligence from Craft and new commodity insights dashboards

The Smart Cube, a global provider of strategic research and analytics solutions, has released the latest version of Amplifi PRO, its on-demand digital procurement intelligence platform for the worldwide procurement community.

As procurement teams are challenged with mitigating pandemic-induced disruption, as well as the planning for rising inflation and increasing commodity volatility, The Smart Cube is continuing to invest in developing new content and features for Amplifi PRO, its global procurement intelligence platform, following the last release in July 2021.

The January 2022 release of Amplifi PRO includes:

  • Supplier intelligence powered by Craft: Under a new partnership, Amplifi PRO will now host 150,000+ suppliers via Craft – a significant addition to supplier coverage on the platform. 6,000+ key suppliers will be tagged to categories and subcategories, a major advantage for users, as this connects existing category intelligence with new supplier information, aiding effective supplier discovery.
  • Broader and deeper commodity intelligence: With commodity price inflation on the rise, this release sees a significant expansion in breadth and depth of commodity intelligence, across 80 key commodities, including expert analysis. Beyond the existing pricing data, users can now access price intelligence, commodity news, supply and demand information and analysis, value chain, and cost structure.
  • Integrated commodity dashboards: With more intelligence comes the need for easier access. Building on the last release in July 2021 which saw the introduction of integrated category dashboards, Amplifi PRO now features 80 brand new integrated commodity insights dashboards, which bring together all intelligence and related insights into one place.
  • Inflation monitor: Users can now view inflation trends distinct from specific category inflation. The aim is to provide category managers with a regular and an up-to-date view on the inflationary trends across their key cost drivers. It comprises inflation indices for labour (850+), electricity (30+), and PPI (7,500+).
  • Category intelligence: Increases in key category report types, including Insight Reports (560+) and Deep Dives (110+).

Gaurav Kumar, COO, The Smart Cube, commented: “With ongoing supply chain disruption and the continued rise of inflation, the latest release of Amplifi PRO is designed to provide procurement teams with new and relevant intelligence to help them tackle their biggest challenges. Our partnership with Craft further strengthens the platform’s supplier intelligence offering for clients. We stay committed to investing in Amplifi PRO to offer greater digital and analytically-enriched procurement intelligence to our clients.”

 

Leading Worcestershire business support provider endorsed by the ScaleUp Institute

Leading Worcestershire business support provider, BizSmart®, has received full endorsement from the ScaleUp Institute for its role in helping UK businesses achieve their growth ambitions.

The ScaleUp Institute is a private sector, not-for-profit company focused on making the UK the best place in the world to scale up a business.

BizSmart® is one of only 10 scaleup support programmes and financiers to be newly endorsed by the Institute in 2021, a testament to the firm’s success in bringing like-minded business leaders together via peer-to-peer learning and engagement.

The endorsement will further establish BizSmart® as the support provider of choice, having helped hundreds of businesses across the Midlands to scale up, grow their profits and improve their operating practices.

David Shoesmith, head of projects and programmes, ScaleUp Institute, said: Scaleups have consistently flagged a desire to have access to local networks of peers who can act as a sounding board and share experiences and expertise with each other.

“We are pleased to see BizSmart®’s SmartBoards having a positive impact on local Worcestershire scaleups in supporting this need and look forward to seeing others build on the learnings to enhance support in their local ecosystems.”

Kevin Brent, founder and managing director of BizSmart®, added: “Being endorsed by the ScaleUp Institute is a huge achievement for us. We know the incredible impact our work has in helping businesses across the UK to grow and scale, but to receive recognition from the Institute confirms we are making a real difference.

“2021 has been a crucial year in our growth as a business having launched our first franchise, and I couldn’t think of a better way to end the year than by receiving this endorsement and the great credibility that comes along with it.”

Founded in 2012, BizSmart® is on a clear mission to help as many business owners on their scaleup journeys as possible and has supported over 700 firms.

To find out more visit http://www.biz-smart.co.uk