Email marketing is an important part of your holistic marketing efforts, plain and simple. Some businesses have shied away from it, thinking it’s an antiquated marketing method, but those who've stuck with it and kept it fresh and interesting are seeing some serious results.

For example, did you know doing something as simple as personalizing an email can yield a 6X higher conversion rate? Oh, and 1 in 5 companies report a ROI of over $70 on email marketing campaigns.

Living and breathing social media marketing is a blessing and a curse.

On one hand, there's always something new to learn and try. However, not everything makes sense when it comes to marketing your brand and sometimes people can lose focus on strategy due to the bright and shiny nature of the new tactics that pop up.

Yes, the latest news around Snapchat is not so great - but then again, much of the negative press around the company relates to growth expectations (and failing to live up to them), not actual performance right now.

Right now, Snapchat added seven million more users in the last quarter, taking its total daily user count to 173 million, which is still a lot of people - and Snap Inc. also notes that their users are highly engaged. According to CEO Evan Spiegel, Snapchat users aged 25 and under spend 40 minutes per day in the app, which is higher than Instagram, where users under the age of 25 are spending 32 minutes per day.

Facebook's testing a new Custom Audiences option which would enable businesses to target ads at people who’ve visited their store, with a new ‘Store Visits’ option appearing for some advertisers.

As you can see below, the option would enable advertisers to ‘create a list of people who’ve previously visited your business location’. How, exactly, Facebook would compile this list would likely come down to matching store visitors with Location Services switched on against in store Wi-Fi signals, enabling them to estimate location.

Given more than 2 billion people now use Facebook, it's fast-becoming an essential platform for all business types, if it's not already. But the opportunities in the travel and hospitality sector are particularly significant, and all businesses within this segment should definitely have some presence on The Social Network.

As Facebook notes, our travel choices are heavily influenced by recommendations from other people, people we know, like and trust - recommendations that used to be delivered in person, but which we can now access for any business, at any time, via Facebook.