After a year at Cognique, we speak to Kim about her first year working agency side, her love of people, storytelling and building relationships.  Have you always been interested in marketing? That’s a very good question and the answer is 'yes' (there’s a bit of a story)! When I was in Year 10 at school, doing my GCSEs I had a business mentor who worked as a Marketing Manager in a local business. It was such a great initiative and I ended up doing work experience with her and just found som...

We specialise in providing bespoke website design and digital marketing for OMBs and SMEs. Winners of the Somerset Business Award Small Business Of The Year 2021, we are enjoying a period of business growth. In response to increased client demand, we have recently expanded the marketing team with Marketing Manager, Kim Barnard who oversees the marketing team and Amy Scriven, in the role of Digital Marketing Executive. Combining their skills and enthusiasm will help take Cognique to the next lev...

Since the UK lockdown, time spent online has increased exponentially. In fact, UK daytime internet usage has more than doubled. Consumers spending more and more time online will, and has, created opportunities for some businesses, notably ecommerce businesses. The key for these businesses is retaining new customers in the short term and beyond the lockdown period.  Email marketing Email marketing is an effective and cost effective channel for retaining new customers. There are a variety o...

In these challenging times, it’s essential that businesses keep talking to their customers; this really is not the time for marketing 'radio silence'. While cashflow may be a concern for many businesses, the great news is that marketing doesn't have to involve big budgets. In fact, there are lots of highly effective and impactful, low cost marketing activities businesses can (and should!) utilise.  Email marketing  Mailchimp offer free email marketing up to 2,000 subs...

Email marketing is an extremely effective marketing technique and the relatively low cost means it can deliver excellent return on investment. On average, every £1 spent on email marketing can see a return of over £40. Sounds good, doesn't it? Sadly it’s not quite as simple as putting an email together and sending it out to the world. In order to take advantage of the power of email, you need a strong email marketing list, and when it comes to email, quality is just as important as numbers....

Is your business currently using email marketing, or are you someone who is still sitting on the fence? Either way these email marketing statistics will be of interest to you, if you are doing it already, these stats will just convince you that you have made the right choice. If you are still umming and ahhing, then these stats will do nothing but amaze and convince you that your business should be using email marketing as a vital marketing tool to stay in touch with your customers and attract n...

With spam filters becoming ever more stringent, improving your email campaign deliverability can make a huge difference to the success of your communications. So it’s worth taking a minute to review the mistakes that are most likely to put your message in the Junk Mail folder, or worse, stop it being delivered altogether. Simple ways to improve email campaign deliverabilityAvoid using words such as free, cash, guarantee, win, opportunity, earn, offer, limited, and ‘click here’ Avoi...

Google has changed the way Gmail handles images in email messages but what does it mean for email marketers and their campaigns?Gmail 'open' rates to rise Back in December Google announced they were allowing images to be displayed by default in Gmail messages for the first time. The reason for the change was the introduction of new technology running behind Google's email service to scan image files in messages for viruses before displaying them. So why is this change important to your email ...

I recently gave a presentation about email marketing to an audience of business owners and managers. There wasn’t enough time to cover all attendees’ questions regarding the legalities so hopefully I set the record straight in this article.I have a simple definition for spam (unsolicited email): it is any email message sent to the recipient without their explicit consent to receive email communications on that subject from the sender.But what does the law say? The EU directive on Priva...