Marketing's year of mobile, social and the end for legacy tech
The sales and marketing stories of 2010
As we prepare to say goodbye to 2010, silicon.com looks back at the biggest sales and marketing stories of the year.
The year kicked off with recommendations on which technologies retailers should invest in to combat falling sales and cost-cutting in Retailers' shopping list for 2010: Linked sales channels, mobile and web 2.0.
However, with predictions of more promising economic conditions, retailers were once again planning to invest in technology after holding fire on IT in recent years. Replacing legacy technology, such as store management systems, was deemed essential for businesses to cope with the increasing number of sales channels, according to Retailers revamp ageing tech to cash in on multichannels.
Mobile tech was being exploited to a greater extent by marketing and sales organisations in 2010 with many famous brands ramping up their mobile marketing campaigns in Mobile retail, advertising: Now the big name brands are catching on.
In 2010, retailers also moved ahead with plans to provide consumers with mobile shopping apps and sites. About two-fifths of UK retailers said they aim to have a transactional mobile site or app in place within 12 months in Shopping on your smartphone: Retailers ramp up app plans.
Companies were also having more joy in putting together successful business cases for the development of iPhone applications. Some of the UK's biggest names discussed their reasons for going down the iPhone app route in iPhone apps: British Airways, Ocado and Oasis explain why they did it.
Other well-known companies investigated location-based mobile marketing in 2010, with the help of mobile operator O2: Starbucks, L'Oreal to trial location-based mobile marketing.
Marketing professionals themselves even got involved with the mobile tech trend in 2010 - silicon.com rounded up the best apps in Photos: iPhone apps for marketing pros.
Along with mobile, customer relationship management and social networking were marked out as technologies that will be key to the sales and marketing world in: Facebook to CRM: Tech trends for sales and marketing pros.
Marketing departments have also been putting a greater proportion of their budgets into social media and SEO to increase their visibility with existing and potential customers. Digital marketing was estimated to make up about a quarter of overall marketing spend in Social media and SEO: Where you'll spend your marketing budget this year.
However, silicon.com's Naked CIO urged IT and marketing departments to work more closely when looking at how to implement social media in Naked CIO: Ditch the turf war - IT and marketing must work together on social media.
And finally, despite the hype about social media, email marketing is still holding its own. About one-third of consumers said they had been persuaded to buy a product online after receiving a marketing email, compared with just six per cent who said they use recommendations for products found on social media in Email marketing beating social media for shoppers.