Licensed vs bespoke database options. Which should you choose?
Which database should I use? It’s a question we get asked a lot, and it’s rare we ever give the same answer. Whether a company who’s decided to invest in a new database or software product should buy an existing off-the-shelf package or have...
Video conferencing
The growing demand for visual communications among millennials is re-shaping the traditional workplace. Video conferencing is forcing businesses to redefine their culture. There is undoubtedly a generational divide, with a split between those who view digital visual communication as either impersonal or a novelty, and...
Prototyping – why bother?
Is building a digital product really that different from building a physical one? When it comes to prototyping, the answer is no. There’s a reason architects build models. Sometimes, when a client actually sees for the first time what they said they wanted, they realise...
How Travellers Autobarn re-funnelled drop-out leads and increased conversions by integrating HubSpot with their Ecommerce platform
Too many businesses focus on upper-funnel marketing, yet all marketers know it’s lower-funnel-centric marketing activity that yields the best results. And no one likes it when a prospect drops out of their lower marketing funnel. Today’s cut-throat world of highly competitive ecommerce sees more money...
HubSpot development & integration
As Australia’s best HubSpot Integration Agency, we’ve solved all manner of systems development & integration challenges. And one thing is for sure: no two integrations are the same! You’ve just made a significant investment in a very cool Marketing Automation & CRM Growth Engine. We...
The un-rocket science to working out a marketing plan for your website
Anyone with an expensive MBA or post-grad Marketing degree will tell you that you will need one of those before you can be any good at marketing your business website. Codswallop. Mostly. I’ve worked with many business executives, owners and marketers to develop new plans...
A digital agency’s tips to building an eCommerce website that actually works
So you’ve done the hard work… you’ve actually come up with an idea, built something, made something, have something you’re really good at to offer to others. Now all you need is your website and you’ll be a gazillionaire… No, most likely not. Or maybe...
Understanding smart contracts
To understand the significance of smart contracts, we need to first take a quick step outside the technical sphere to briefly understand the basics of contract law. Contract law is in essence, the regulations surrounding the formation of a binding agreement, knowingly entered into by...
How to easily configure HSTS for super secure SSL
Setting up your web server with an SSL certificate is now easier than ever. Not only does it make accessing your website more secure by encrypting the data transferred via an HTTPS connection but Google also now factors it into your site rankings. This guide...
Marketing tech stacks – how to build yours
In marketing, a tech stack as the name implies, is comprised of different elements that, when combined, form a complete tool. Kind of like a transformer. But less destructive. All elements of the marketing tech stack work independently of each other, and depending on...
A day with Shopify
Last month, Engaging.io presented at the ‘Day with Shopify’ world tour. After gracing Birmingham in the UK, New York, Vancouver and Bangalore, its last stop was Melbourne and we fortunate enough to attend and wax lyrical about bespoke web design. Now as amazing as our...
Befuddled by Blockchain? You might want to check out these useful links…
We at Engaging.io are in the very fortunate position to have some very cluey tech people in our team. And while we now develop solutions for clients using Blockchain methodology, if I’m completely honest, it took me a very long time to get my head...
How to get started with a Marketing Data Stack
We talk to a lot of people about Marketing Data Stacks and, to us, they are always really interesting conversations. What makes it interesting is that we have yet to have the same conversation twice. By that, I mean no one ever talks about their...
David and Goliath – Taking on the marketing giants
It’s a story most people are familiar with, yet I’ve always kind of felt sorry for Goliath. For those who need a refresher, Goliath was a mighty warrior, a giant of man, who day after day (40 to be exact) defeated his enemies in single...
Rental Car Manager HubSpot Integration
We recently completed a custom integration for the Rental Car Manager platform (RCM) with Hubspot. This integration allows the client to easily create a email workflow from Hubspot for any quotes that were not converted into sales. Data fields such as: Name Email Source Vehicle Type...
A Few Good Reasons Why You Should Pay Attention To Your Ad Frequency
If you are a Marketer you are probably facing some really ‘big picture’ decisions at the moment regarding your data and technology solutions. This can make it tricky to think about some of the smaller stuff, but if you read this article, I’m confident at...
A great example of user generated content done absolutely right!
Fox AU Home Entertainment have put the call out to Australia’s most creative Alien fan, and holy moly, there are some fans with some serious skills out there! They’re currently running a competition for users to design their own Alien: Covenant movie poster featuring their...
A brief history of Engaging Comms… it’s not War and Peace :-)
As we near the completion of our brand refresh, some of our newer members of staff liked the story of our evolution so much, they put together a little video. For those of you who have a few minutes where you have literally nothing else...
What AI can, and can’t, do
Last week a few of us attended an intimate talk at The Florence Guild by Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at UNSW on what AI can (and can’t) do… even to us, who dabble in AI every day, it was a fascinating talk. As...
Data driven marketing and understanding tech stacks
There’s a lot of talk in marketing circles about data, personalisation and data stacks. It can all feel pretty overwhelming and leave marketers unsure what the right solution is for them. I’ve seen stats that point to there being more than 3,500 marketing tech solution...
No outsourcing here, thanks.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve been approached by people & agencies almost forcing their outsourcing services on me, telling me how silly it would be of us not to accept their awesome offer of assistance… Not one of them asked me...
Mumbrella 360 2017 highlights
Todd, Fraser and myself attended this year’s Mumbrella 360 conference. We didn’t get to see all the sessions, but here’s a quick overview of what we think were the standouts: From Storytelling to the New Age of ‘Hypertelling’ Michael Yapp, Founder & Chief Creative Officer,...
Who is Map My Plan and why did they win FinTech’s Financial Advice Innovator of the Year 2017?
At the 2017 FINTECH awards, the winner for Financial Advice Innovator of the Year went to Map My Plan. We were especially thrilled, as we built their site. So who are Map My Plan, and why did they win? In a nutshell, Map My Plan...
How can you have a beautiful bespoke design on the Shopify platform?
You’d be hardpressed in the world of e-commerce not to have heard of Shopify. Although in 2nd place after Woocommerce for market share, it’s ranked #1 by merchants for usability. Like with Woocommerce, Magento or any of the commercial e-commerce platforms, Shopify operated on a...
When your virtual world doesn’t reflect your actual one
One of the big challenges faced by businesses in the digital era is how to replicate and align their physical business with their digital one. How do you articulate your culture in a few short lines or a couple of pictures? How do you interject...
Once upon an online
Have you ever started off with a clear vision of what you wanted to do or create, only to start the process and end up going in a completely different direction? Well this is one of those stories. I recently went to interview one of...
Website Security Scanning Service Australia
What would the consequences be if your website, application or database got hacked today? We often see on the news major hacks like Yahoo and the like which is extremely damaging to their brand and business. Most people do not perceive this as an issue until...
eBay Sales & Marketing Automation
Selling your goods on eBay can be a very profitable exercise. People will often use eBay over searching the web to find your online store and it can become a pretty effective sales / marketing channel for your business if you spend a bit of...
Custom Woobox Integration Guide – Webhooks
Woobox is great for slapping up a quick promo based on one of their templates. But what if you want to get this data into another database or mailing system that isn’t supported natively by Woobox? Well you’re in luck as this is your guide...
HubSpot Contact Cleaning – How to get clean contacts into HubSpot automatically via Sendgrid
We recently had a client sign up to use HubSpot as their marketing automation platform. Which was fantastic… until they sent us their contact list which was over 70,000 people strong! If we simply imported this list as is it would blow out their contact...
Website Maintenance & Support
Over the years websites have become extremely complex beasts. They now consist of many plugins and other software libraries from 3rd parties that require constant updating to remain secure. If you have ever come across a hacked website, chances are someone hasn’t updated it for...
How Programmatic, Marketing Automation and Database Segmentation should be driving your sales funnel.
I had an interesting conversation recently with the head of a very well respected, independent creative agency. Part of the conversation was me explaining how, 7 years ago we pitched a 5 year plan to a clothing retailer that focused on community/database growth via content...
Front end / WordPress developer
Front End Developer / WordPress As the main front end and WordPress Developer you will work closely with the IT team to enhance customer experience and drive digital revenue. We need someone who can: Take a PSD design, code, test and deploy new WordPress based...
Why design is important? (AKA what I have learnt so far)
Design matters Design is the approach we use to solve problems in the most efficient manner. It’s a systematic and intuitive way of finding the best solution. An iterative process that allows us to explore a wide range of ideas always with the end user...
Why you need a custom built website
So you need a new website? Your existing website is looking old and tired and its time to retire ye’ old faithful. It’s tempting to browse around for a new WordPress template, change the images, write some new content, add your logo and voila! All...
WordPress Hack Repair & Prevention
WordPress is an extremely versatile platform which gives the admin user a lot of flexibility. Being flexible is not always a good thing. The Admin user can easily make changes to the site code and if compromised by a hacker it can be a very long and painful...
Mailchimp API V3 CodeIgniter Library Integration
Looking to quickly integrate Mailchimp API V3 with code igniter? I’ve taken this API wrapper and converted it into a library for CI so you can quickly integrate it into your project. Step 1: Download this file and add it into your application/libraries folder. On line 185 I...
How to be a content marketing whizz in 2015
Robert Rose, Chief Strategist at The Content Marketing Institute stated; "marketing is telling the world that you're a rock star. Content marketing is showing them that you are one".
Knowing how to create and execute content effectively is a huge part of businesses' marketing...
Easy SSL setup for Elastic Beanstalk
Learn how to easily get SSL up and running on your EBS environment. (no command line required!)
You’ve heard about lead generation but what about lead management?
With new research showing businesses having an increased focus on leads and conversion, everybody is talking about lead generation. It isn't surprising then to know that nearly 50% of B2B marketers' lead generation budgets will increase this year. (B2