Chatbots. Facial recognition. Artificial intelligence. These days, marketing feels less like Mad Men and more like the handiwork of mad scientists. Our connected gizmos vacuum up data so marketers can target us with eerie precision. Am I the only one who doesn't want my TV watching me? Alas, I digress.

In a world that increasingly resembles Minority Report, an old-school marketing technology still reigns supreme. You guessed it. I'm talking about email. According to a survey of US marketers conducted by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Demand Metric, the median ROI of email marketing is 122%.

In the era of plentiful data, how does the Creative Professional — who relies on her taste, skill and instinct to make things that other people will consume — navigate a world in which insightful data is every bit as important as her intuition?

It used to be the case that, as a creative professional, her goal was to create something that was both beautiful and effective. Is it good? Does is work? If she could answer “yes” to both of those questions, she’d done her job.

We should all know by now that digital marketing is no longer an option, it’s a necessity. However, the digital marketing world can be confusing and ambiguous, so how do you know what to do, why to do it and if it’s working? I’ve put together 3 questions you should ask your marketing team so that you can sleep better at night, put some important changes in place or find a new marketing team.

Facebook tells you that you sent 691 people to your website from Facebook this month! Congratulations! Go to Google Analytics (GA) to see what those visitors did and you’ll get a completely different answer – one that is much lower - so low that it wouldn’t be unusual for GA to only attribute 25-40% of the traffic to social.

Don’t get stuck with Panda, roll with it. Apparently this is Google’s method.

Contributing Author: Melanie Heser

It’s 2016. By now you know the importance and impact of an integrated social media strategy. You’ve secured a social media advertising budget and you are ready to push the big red go button on a campaign. But, before you promote your beautiful graphics or videos, do you know why you’re launching this campaign in the first place? Do you know why you’ve chosen a particular social media platform to advertise on over another? Are you even sure you can call it a “social” campaign?

Paid search. If you’re a part of the marketing/advertising community, chances are you hear these words at least once a day. According to the Internet Advertising Revenue Report, paid search accounted for 50% of total digital revenue in the first half of 2015. So what makes paid search so important and how is it beneficial to your overall marketing strategy?

Get off my lawn! No, but seriously. It’s easy to release my inner curmudgeon these days with all the various social media platforms I download my physical body into and go to work.

I admit it, I'm old school. Early every morning I grab a cup of coffee and walk down the driveway with my hair sticking sideways to retrieve my morning paper before workout. But lately - as in the last few years "lately" - my routine has changed.

It’s no surprise digital marketing is dominating the ad buying space. Time spent online is predicted to account for 46.7 percent of total time spent with media, and as a result marketers are projected to spend 17 percent more in the digital space this year alone.

If you’re like other marketers, you’ve probably noticed that advertising is changing. Even though the first banner ad appeared 21 years ago, it seems the changes in digital advertising have recently been moving faster than the speed of light.