The age of the fourth industrial revolution that we are living through is marked by a more intelligent way of consuming. Now the economy is circular. Reduce, reuse and rethink are the basic principles to be applied to help ensure the survival of our planet. But they are also our business model. Sustainability, technology and people are the cornerstones of this circular concept, applied to any industry and any business area.
In the field of digital marketing, the client experience will be the main focus. This concept, key to ensuring customer loyalty, ranges from being able to find a company on Facebook right through to enjoying a good experience at the point of sale. Technological innovations to be implemented in this area include:

• Chatbots, the customer service channel with the best future prospects: Based on a study conducted by Facebook, 56% of consumers prefer to communicate with a company through a chat box than over the phone. As this trend keeps growing, the need to redirect questions and enquiries to the relevant customer services departments and sales teams will also increase.
• Artificial Intelligence: The secret behind chatbots is their capacity to make use of the latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI) to broaden their knowledge and capacity to provide good customer support and service. AI is already used in marketing, for example in the ads shown along our web searches and in social media, but its use is expected to increase by 53% over the following years.
• Augmented reality: In 2009, phone apps started to incorporate augmented reality functions, but they didn’t manage to engage consumers. However, the success of Pokemon Go may have helped to revive this technology and it’s once again got the attention of marketing strategists. In this area, there are great possibilities for businesses engaged in interior design (Ikea Place), real estate, digital banners or any kind of business with a physical headquarters (Google My Business).

Photo by Samuel Zeller

The Arial and Times New Roman dictatorship is about to end. Personalization has finally come to typefaces. Calligraphr (previously called Myscriptfont) allows you to scan handwritten text and use it in digital documents and designs. The pro version of this tool, developed by the Swiss company Maklabu GmbH, also gives you the option of joining-up letters, just as you can when writing by hand.

Photo by Marcus de Paula

Whether it’s because download costs stand at almost $1,000 or because you need to prove a millionaire’s income in order to be accepted as a user, there are some apps that will never feature on the top download charts. I’m Rich and its imitators are for sharing photos of luxury products, while others (Most Expensive App, Certify Yourself As Rich) which allow you to pay $300 to download a diamond screensaver image, are aimed at addicts to luxury. More useful are apps that guarantee access to exclusive services, just like iVIP Black, although for this one you need to prove you have a personal wealth of £1 million or more. Our favourite is Rich Kids, a social network for flaunting travels, cars and luxury bags for a monthly fee. Luxury aside, other apps for just a select few include those that offer an ultra-specialized tool, from VueCAD for engineers, Atlas of Surgical Operations of Zollinger, or CyberTurner, that helps tuning pianos. They can cost between $300 and $900.

Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov