Monday, 30 November 2015

4 Hot Mobile Marketing Trends to Watch in 2016

Few things have had such a profound effect on the way we live, work, play and socialize as mobile devices. From sending emails and texts to incorporating cameras, GPS navigation, menu ordering and entertainment, no one could have predicted that the humble “brick” would evolve to become such an integral part of our digital lifestyle.

But just as devices and technologies change, so too do our marketing methods. 2015 was the first year that mobile traffic exceeded that of desktop users. As marketers, this opens up a whole new field of ideas to try and avenues to pursue in order to reach these customers, create dialogues and forge relationships with them in a way that makes our offer irresistible.

Gone are the days of top-down communications, of intrusive ads and poorly aligned customer outreach campaigns. Today, we have more data than ever, and we’re leveraging it to come up with innovative trends and ideas like these:

Customer-Centric will become Customer-Obsessive

Big DAta

Big Data becomes Meaningful Data in our rush to learn more about our customers.
Image source: Connexia

It sounds like the makings of a horror stalker film, but the fact is, in our race to become more customer-centric, we, as marketers, are already bordering on obsession. We’re finally at the point where we’re not being swallowed up by wave after wave of big data, and can start using it to create more meaningful interactions.

Mobile is the vehicle that makes this happen. Few other things are as pivotal to sealing the deal as a device that the customer carries with them everywhere. Figuring out how to make that impact is something that companies are still working on, but you can bet it will be the customer, not the corporation, that powers how these decisions are made.

Search Engine Results Will Display More than Pages

apps

You got Apps in my SERPs!

Google already displays videos in search results, but they’ve recently been experimenting with video ads as well. Other search engines, as well as other platforms like Facebook and Twitter, already leverage these types of ads in the form of auto-playing videos and Vines respectively – but at the moment Google is still testing the waters to determine how audiences respond to video-based ads.

Assuming users are receptive of the idea, don’t be surprised to see apps also sharing a place at the SERPs table. Sure, we already have app directories and recommendations, but apps as part of search results will take these directories and stores to a whole new level.

Also, don’t be surprised to see big shifts in mobile search. UI and UX specialists are still learning how we gesture, point, flick and tap on our devices, and with a search interface that’s designed for typing and scrolling, you can see how trying to wrangle a process built for computers into a small screen with taps and flicks just becomes an exercise in frustration. With so much data available, and so many past browsing habits to draw from, coming up with a page full of results is no longer going to cut it. It’s very likely we’ll see fully optimized, fine-tuned mobile search that enlists the help of third party apps to not just recommend a particular product, but find it in the customer’s preferred color, size, location, price range and much more.

Brands will Blur the Lines Between Apps, E-Commerce and Social

shop-now

Well-known social platforms are taking their awkward first steps into becoming shopping centers.
Image Source: Adweek

2016 will be the year of even greater innovation from apps we already know and recognize. More seamless integration between those apps and their corresponding e-commerce and social outlets will become commonplace. Many social platforms are already tying e-commerce features into their networks. From Instagram’s “Shop Now” to Pinterest’s “Buyable Pins”, today’s hottest platforms are looking for ways to blur the lines between web, social, app and e-commerce.

As you might expect, the rallying cry from marketing has been “people don’t shop on social media!” but as mobile, social and e-commerce become more integrated, the possibilities open up to hit the right combination of buying and browsing buttons to turn that notion around.

Apps Become Reflections of our Lifestyles

lifestyle-app

Apps will evolve to become more feature-full in an attempt to position themselves as a lifestyle choice rather than a novelty.
Image Source: EATT Magazine

The problem so far with consistent app adoption has been nailed down to one singular issue – bandwidth. With caps on data and insane overage charges, brands really can’t get as creative or forward-thinking as they might like to with restraints like those holding them back. These days, you might have one app for weather, one to track your fitness level and food input, and another to remind you when it’s time to pick up the kids from school.

Expect apps in 2016 to become less about individual features and more about becoming an integral part of your life – a fitness journal that displays the weather before your run and reminds you when it’s time to get the kids. Sound a bit far-fetched? Not to app developers. As long as there are forced restrictions on how much you can download, apps themselves play a pivotal role in position themselves as more of a lifestyle attachment than a usable “thing” that can quickly be uninstalled in favor of the next big thing. There’s only so much bandwidth that will fit in a mobile plan – better make sure your app is making the most of it.

What’s more, the apps you choose could very well communicate your values in terms of your lifestyle. Just like Doritos and the Superbowl or Mountain Dew and gamers, the apps you use every day could tell people “I’m proud to be a _______ and that’s why I use (app). The more attuned these apps become to our goals, likes and dislikes in life, the more they’ll find themselves being used likely far beyond what the original developers envisioned.

The Next Big Thing?

2016 is bursting at the seams with mobile potential, and that’s not even counting things like wearable technology and mobile automation systems like Echo, Cortana and Siri. At the end of the next year, we’ll take a look back and see how these trends played out. Did they catch on or fizzle out? Did something new and unexpected take hold of our collective attention? What do you think will be the next big thing? Share your ideas with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!



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3 Customer Metrics That Will Improve Your Email Marketing

As an online retailer you may know a customer’s name and address, but what do you really know about them? According to an Oracle poll from earlier this year, 86% of respondents currently have access to foundational data, or basic information with simple segmentation and personalization.

This is a good starting point, but there are many other types of data that will give you a greater insight into your customers, which will help you market to them more efficiently and effectively. This post will take a look at the top three characteristics that will give you a well-rounded view of who your customers really are, and offer some tips for how to use this data in your email marketing.

1. Customer Lifetime Value

One of the biggest predictors of retail success is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), which is defined as the total dollars flowing from a customer over their entire relationship with a business. Many retailers know their average CLV, but to truly create personalized marketing campaigns, you need to know much more than this.

For example, you can determine CLV for various segments and personas based on purchase history, which will provide you with a wealth of information for creating targeted email messages. There will likely be an overlap between your customers with a high CLV and your best customers who are the small group that are most valuable to you over time based on frequent purchases with a high order values. Since these are your most loyal customers, you should not treat them the same as your one-time buyers or churning customers.

To calculate CLV, multiply the number of purchases a customer has made per year by their Average Order Value, and then add together that number for each year that they have been a customer. For instance, if a customer makes two purchases a year averaging $50 each for a period of three years, then their CLV would be $300.

Email Tip: You can set up email campaigns with exclusive rewards just for customers with a high CLV. There are many ways to reward these customers, such as special discounts, VIP experiences, and exclusive events. You should also be strategic in offering discounts to save higher markdowns and related promotions for only your high value customers, which can yield great results.

2. Average Order Value

Average Order Value (AOV) describes the typical dollar amounts spent per order by each customer. For many retailers, AOV goes up on each customer’s subsequent purchase. This may be because repeat customers trust your brand more, spend more as they get comfortable with you, and discover more of your inventory that they are interested in. To calculate AOV, divide the total amount the customer has spent by the number of orders they’ve made.

Through this metric you can segment customers by high, medium, and low spenders, and then create optimized email marketing campaigns that deliver different content and promotions to each group.

Email Tip: If you see a specific day or time when AOV is significantly higher, you should act on it immediately. If it is a specific segment of your customers spending more during this period, you can craft targeted, exclusive messaging to this group. If it's something else, like a type of product that sells better at that time, you can segment everyone who has bought the product in the past, and test an email to them with cross/upsell messaging. Hopefully, you can replicate the trend.

3. Customer Latency

Latency is the average number of days between each purchase a customer makes. Once you figure out the phases of a customer's lifecycle, then you can determine what types of messaging to offer at various points in their relationship with your brand, in order to reach customers when they are most likely to buy again.

For example, if you have a post-purchase email series, you can match the cadence to different points in the customer’s lifecycle, with corresponding messaging that will appeal to customers at 30, 60, 90, or 120 days post purchase.

Email Tip: If the average customer takes 120 days to make a second purchase, then hitting them with sales messaging immediately after their purchase probably doesn't make sense. What makes more sense is to use the "honeymoon" period immediately following the purchase to reinforce your brand, and then as customers enter a point where statistically they are more likely to make a purchase, start stepping up direct offers.

These are just a few of the data points you can use to gain insights about your customers. By knowing what, when, why and how often they’re buying, you not only get to know who your customers are, but can also predict their future purchase behavior. This information allows you create personalized, data-driven email campaigns that will be able to drive customer engagement, revenue and retention.

As you get to know your customers, you can create consistent experiences both online and off-line by downloading the Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Cross Channel Marketing.

Author's Bio: Andrew Pearson is Vice-President of Marketing at Windsor Circle, a predictive lifecycle and retention marketing platform that helps retailers grow customer lifetime value and increase customer retention. Andrew is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years experience in technology start-ups, management and digital and email marketing.  



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How to Build a Lucrative Business with Premium WordPress Themes

How to Build a Lucrative Business with Premium WordPress Themes

Sometimes content marketers forget that content isn’t only a game for wordsmiths.

In fact, there’s a thriving community of visual content creators who have built robust businesses around what they do. And one of the most scaleable ways to do that is to craft high-quality premium WordPress themes.

But there’s a lot more to it than “build something beautiful and the customers will show up.”

In this post, I want to talk about what it takes to succeed as a WordPress theme designer in today’s environment.

Once upon a time, all WordPress themes were free. The robust open-source CMS (content management system) attracted enthusiasts of all kinds, who made themes that looked good and suited different tastes.

Today, WordPress has grown to power a quarter of the world’s websites — and premium (paid) themes are the norm for professionals, businesses, serious bloggers, and even passionate hobbyists.

That wealth of premium themes poses a new challenge for designers: the sheer number of great-looking themes out there. There’s more competition than ever, and a lot of them are gorgeous

But : there’s still room for someone with solid design skills to make a name (and a great business) as a theme designer. And it starts by thinking as a business owner first.

Here are five points of focus on your path to building your premium theme empire …

#1: Business know-how

No matter what kind of digital business you might want to build — and WordPress themes fall squarely into this category — you can’t ignore the business part.

You may think of yourself as a design professional who “isn’t into the whole business thing.” But business is just a set of skills that can be learned — and upgrading those skills can open the door to making a great living doing what you love.

Sites like Digital Commerce Institute and podcasts like Unemployable and Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer can help you pick up the core business skills you need — without compromising your integrity or making you feel like a creep.

In my experience, 90% of business ability is mindset. Once you get your head in the right space, you’ll be able to readily pick up the skills you need to make your business a success. You might also choose to partner with smart people who will complement your strengths.

#2: A targeted audience

Because it’s beautiful is no longer enough to find an audience for your WordPress theme.

Themes today need to solve specific problems for well-defined groups of people.

In other words, it’s not only about design — it’s about design thinking.

Virtually any type of business you can think of needs beautiful, thoughtfully designed themes.

Think:

  • Real estate professionals
  • Law offices
  • Restaurants
  • Medical offices
  • Schools
  • Artisans and “small batch” producers
  • Coffee shops
  • Online publishers
  • Coaches
  • … you name it!

Successful theme designers today know precisely who will be using their themes. And they use smart design thinking to solve real-world problems with those themes.

If you build themes for a particular group, decide how you’ll uncover that group’s needs and desires. If you’re not a member of that community yourself, work closely with the types of folks who will be using your theme, so you can come up with innovative and elegant solutions to their needs.

“Niching” down your offer this way might seem like it would narrow your audience of buyers — but in fact, it opens all kinds of doors to reach the right buyers.

#3: A way to reach that audience

It’s not enough to build a gorgeous solution to the needs of a well-defined audience — you have to be able to get the word out!

The web today provides incredibly focused tools for targeted advertising to precisely the kinds of buyers you’re looking for.

You can also partner with well-known experts in that space. For example, you might work with a popular blogger who has the audience you’re trying to reach.

And if you build your frame within an established “ecosystem” (like Genesis, which we’ll talk a bit more about in the next point), you get the benefit of a community looking for the solutions you have to offer.

#4: A commitment to security and clean code

WordPress sites are astonishingly common. MarketingLand reports that WordPress powers about 25% of all of the sites published on the web around the globe.

In fact, its next two closest competitors (Drupal and Joomla) power fewer than 5% of the planet’s websites — combined.

WordPress is robust, it’s amazingly flexible, and it’s everywhere.

And because it’s so popular, a WordPress theme that ignores security best practices can find itself vulnerable to hackers. Which is no fun at all for your buyers, or your reputation.

Fortunately, there are excellent tools available to manage security and protect the themes you create.

If you don’t want to become a full-time security expert, one simple way to address the problem is to design themes on a framework that’s doing the performance and security heavy lifting for you.

Our company builds one of the best-regarded frameworks in the WordPress community (if we do say so ourselves …), Genesis.

The “back end” (that means all of those behind-the-scenes technical elements) of the Genesis framework is reviewed thoroughly and frequently by security and performance experts. We make sure that all of the code is keeping up with best practices … and with updates in WordPress itself.

Security is just one benefit of building your theme on a reliable framework — but that’s a topic for another article.

#5: An eye for trends and beautiful design

You might have thought this one would come first! And of course, no one wants a premium theme that doesn’t look great and feel fresh and current.

Great designers know that beauty matters — but it’s only one element of great design.

In addition to your great eye for gorgeous site design, make sure you’re incorporating:

  • A solid business mindset
  • Theme design that solves meaningful problems for a well-defined market
  • Effective communication with the audience you’re serving
  • Serious security to keep your customers’ sites safe from the bad guys

Pull these elements together, and you might find that designing WordPress themes becomes the foundation of an amazing business.

Want to know more about the life of a premium theme designer?

The founder of StudioPress and creator of Genesis, Brian Gardner, will be the subject of a webinar inside of Digital Commerce Academy on December 2 where he will share his insights on how he built his WordPress-based business.

Brian wasn’t a technical guy — he has no formal education in programming or computers. In fact, when he started playing with WordPress themes, he was a project manager for an architectural firm.

He calls himself an “accidental entrepreneur,” following his interests where they led. And where they led was a genuinely disruptive innovation — the creation of the premium WordPress theme market. That’s because Brian was the first person to actually offer a WordPress theme and take money for it.

Join us for this live conversation with Brian (he will take questions at the end). We’ll be talking about:

  • How the premium WordPress theme market has changed over the last half decade
  • Expert tips for anyone who wants to create a theme
  • How to know what will sell (without guessing)
  • The biggest mistakes Brian made, and how he overcame them
  • The invaluable lesson about relationship building that Brian learned by working at a convenience store

Plus, much more.

To attend this webinar live (or to view the replay), all you have to do is activate your membership to Digital Commerce Academy.

Join Digital Commerce Academy Today
And attend Wednesday’s case study webinar with Brian Gardner

We offer a 30-day money-back guarantee with all Digital Commerce Academy memberships, so we invite you to check out this event and peruse the other content inside before you make any long-term commitments.

We’ll see you there!

About the author

Sonia Simone


Sonia Simone is co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Rainmaker Digital. Get lots more from Sonia on her podcast, Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer, or come hang out with her on Twitter.

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Site Optimization: 2 strategies to consider when trying to increase conversion

Online shopping is a favorite hobby of mine, mainly due to the convenience factor.

Recently, I was shopping online for a new coffee table and found myself with a dilemma. I found a website that had a great assortment of coffee tables: different sizes, shapes and every color you could think of. They had it all. After navigating through the website for a few minutes, I realized finding the right one was going to be difficult. I was having trouble sorting through the different styles and began to feel overwhelmed and frustrated.

I had great tables laid out on the page in front of me with no way to organize them how I wanted. Not only was I having trouble with the layout of the page, but there was also a pop-up continuously asking me to sign up for the newsletter and for my personal information.

I quickly became annoyed and overwhelmed, and I left the page.

This made me think of a concept that we teach at MarketingExperiment’s parent company MECLABS:  the inverted funnel.

 

The inverted funnel

Marketers usually use the funnel as an analogy for customers moving through the sales process. What many marketers don’t realize, though, is that their customers are not falling into the funnel — they are falling out. Our Managing Director and CEO at MECLABS, Flint McGlaughlin, has instilled in our company a customer-centric logic. With this logic, we realize that the funnel must be inverted.

By flipping the funnel to illustrate customers climbing up the sides of it, we change the way marketers think about the funnel. Marketers need to realize that their customers are being powered up by decision; if the funnel is not inverted, it is uncontrolled. There is a sequence of micro-yes(s) that a customer must make in their journey up the funnel that will, in the end, lead to conversion.

Personally, I was a customer that fell out of a funnel when looking for the right coffee table.  I was having a hard time finding the style I was looking for. After hitting too much friction on the page, I instead found myself making my purchase from a different website.  The website I purchased from had everything laid out on the page clear and concise. I was able to sort through the different tables by size, color, brand, etc. This made it easier for me to find exactly what I was looking for with less anxiety.

Today, we’re examining two strategies to consider when trying to increase conversion and power your customers up the funnel.

 

Strategy #1. Fight the friction

The first concept to look at when trying to power customers up the sides of the funnel is the friction on the page.  At MarketingExperiments and MECLABS, we define friction as the psychological resistance that interferes with a customer making a purchase.

Friction is psychological; it does not exist on your webpages but rather in the mind of your customer.

The website I was shopping on could have easily avoided losing me as a customer if its website had been simplified a little. I continuously ran into walls when trying to find the right coffee table. A marketer should always put themselves in the mind of the customer.

From our research here at MECLABS, we have learned that “difficulty friction” can weigh heavily on a customer’s cognitive conclusions about a purchase.

One factor we as marketers need to focus on is the eye path on a page. Ask yourself these questions:

  • Where will they look first?
  • What are they looking for?

Getting to know your customers and being able to provide a page that shows them exactly what they are looking for is an easy way to decrease friction and help push a customer up the funnel.

 

Strategy #2. Alleviate anxiety

The second concept to look at when trying to prevent customers from falling out of your funnel is their anxiety. At MECLABS, we have found that anxiety — a psychological concern that interferes with a sale — also weighs heavily on a customer’s decision to make a purchase.

In my own personal example, I began to experience anxiety with the pop-up. It continuously asked me to give them my personal information for their newsletter. Not only did I not want the newsletter, but I also didn’t want to provide my personal information.

It is necessary to think about the customer when you decide to place something on your webpage. Ask yourself, what will make them feel safe? You can add certain cybersecurity features to make them feel secure in giving you their information, such as security seals, credibility indicators and testimonials.

Being able to decrease the anxiety of the customer is another way to increase conversion and move customers up the sides of the funnel.

 

We have now reviewed two strategies to consider when you are trying to prevent someone from falling out of your funnel. Once you have controlled the friction and eased the anxiety of a customer, it becomes easier to push them up the sides of your funnel, thereby, increasing conversion.

As a customer shopping for furniture, I encountered a lot of friction on the website, unable to sort through to find the furniture. Most marketers forget they should focus on the customer’s eye path and thought sequence to try to create a fluid flow on the page.

We also discussed how anxiety can cause a customer to fall out of your funnel. For me, this happened with a pop-up. I was already frustrated from the layout of the page, and on top of that, I was experiencing concern with a pop-up that continuously asked me for my personal information so that I could receive a newsletter.

When marketers begin to use customer-centric logic, they will more clearly see when an ad or pop-up or even a question evokes anxiety from their customers. As we discussed, imputing certain features to help reduce customer anxiety will in the end increase conversion. From our research, we have found that when we focus on the customer and how they make choices, we can increase conversion and move customers up the sides of the funnel.

 

You might also like

Customer Anxiety: One element of the MECLABS Conversion Heuristic explained

Ecommerce: How parent brands can reduce user friction and anxiety

The Marketer as Philosopher: 40 Brief Reflections on the Power of Your Value Proposition



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Friday, 27 November 2015

Reasons to Ditch “Batch and Blast” and Get Started with Email Marketing Personalization

We all like to believe we’re special. Or as anthropologist Margaret Mead wryly put it, “Always remember that you are absolutely unique  just like everyone else.”  

That belief (or state of denial) is why so-called “batch and blast” email is usually less effective than email campaigns customized to your unique market. In a recent study of marketing professionals by Experian Marketing Services, 62 percent said a personalized email subject line is crucial.

The study also revealed that personalized promotional emails generated transaction rates and revenue per email six times higher than non-personalized emails. The personalized mailings had 29 percent higher unique open rates and 41 percent higher unique click rates. For triggered email campaigns (in which emails are triggered by a calendar event, a business action or an action taken by a website visitor), personalization doubled transaction rates.

Because today’s email marketing services allow for more detailed data about customers, users can implement some pretty impressive personalization that likely wouldn’t have been possible a couple of decades ago. Logistics like fully optimized mobile applications and time-delayed messaging are now par for the course, as is message micro-customization based on consumer behavior.  

“With so many available tools, businesses of all sizes can now employ the best email strategies for reaching customers,” writes Jayson DeMers in the Huffington Post. “When used correctly, these tools let businesses of all sizes compete with even the largest corporations. As more marketers discover the value of personalized marketing, businesses that don’t personalize their efforts will likely find their campaigns are largely unsuccessful.”

Reasons to Ditch "Batch and Blast" and Get Started with Email Marketing Personalization

“To get started with such customization, conducting customer research is imperative,” explains Vertical Response Senior Content Marketing Manager, Linzi Breckenridge. “Your success with email marketing lies in understanding as much as you can about your contacts so you can better communicate with the groups of people likely to find your message relevant,” she says.  

Since personalizing messages for a world’s worth of potential customers is probably still out of technology’s reach, here are tips for identifying whom to target in your next campaign.  

  • Identify your target market(s), segmenting the groups of customers most likely to buy your goods and services. Think about which segment of the population has a problem your product is able to solve. Narrowing that down keeps you from wasting time and energy, and maximizes your chance of gaining and keeping customers, growing profits and expanding market share.
  • The most common ways to segment are by demographics, geographic location, purchasing behavior and/or psychographic segmentation (interests, hobbies, lifestyles, values and attitudes). The most common demographics used are age, gender and income level, notes social media blogger Lisa Furgison, all of which can be collected from your customers and embedded for reference onto your website or blog platform.
  • To help you form your messages, some marketing professionals recommend identifying common themes among your best customers and conceiving of actual “personas” that represent them in their various forms  including their shopping objectives and possible objections to buying.
  • Further fine-tune your target market by analyzing email data to identify customers who answered calls to action, like clicking to open windows announcing new product arrivals. “Knowing if, when and how contacts engage with your email is useful in determining which contacts find the message relevant,” notes Breckenridge. “You can continue the communication with those who respond, and tweak or completely change the message for those who don’t.”
  • Limit your target market to a manageable size. Warns Furgison: “If you overdose on segmentation, you could get frustrated and make your email marketing strategy more complicated than it needs to be.”
  • Consider rewarding loyal customers with discounts or special sneak peeks of products. “With a marketplace overflowing with options, repeat buyers are a much smaller segment than they once were,” Furgison notes.
  • Identify, target, and maybe reward brand advocates  customers who praise your products on social media or provide you positive feedback.  
  • Make an effort to bring back inactive customers, possibly with a promo. Such emails have titles like “We miss you!” or “It’s been a while,” notes Furgison, who also advises that surveys should find out why customers have strayed.  
  • Place the customer’s first name or user ID at the top of the message to quickly capture attention, advises Kevin Gao on targetmarketingmag.com. “If the user took the time to register with your business, then there is some implicit trust between both of you,” he says. “Remind them of your relationship by promptly showing their names. This tactic is especially important for consumers on mobile devices as the limited space means brands need logical personalization right away.”
  • Ask customers for information so you can provide even more apt customization in the future. “But avoid being greedy,” warns Gao. “Customers don’t want to spend time with a detailed registration page that asks for demographic data or other personal information. Ask for the minimum, use that in personalized emails, and expand your data as the relationship grows.”
  • Messages to customers triggered by real-time behaviors  such as reminders that items have been left in a “shopping cart”  can be very effective. “Even if the visitor receives it minutes after leaving the site, it does help the brand to stick in their mind,” states Gao. “Personalization should also be included in standard messages, such as shipment confirmations, where companies can suggest additional products or services, perhaps at a discount.”
  • Consider customizing email messages to arrive at the optimal times for your customers depending on demographics and time zone. For example, emails to student customers could arrive in the evenings when they’re most likely to be browsing via computer.

Lastly, always test your email campaign before sending. Having more than one pair of eyes review the email reduces the chance of suffering from an error. After making the effort to boost open and click rates with personalization and segmentation, the last thing you want is to waste it on a typo.

Conclusion:  Move beyond the old-fashioned and ineffective approach of “batch and blast” to get the best results with email marketing.

VerticalResponse has made segmentation and tracking email campaign results a snap. Sign up and start sending up to 4,000 emails per month for free.

© 2015, Vertical Response Blog. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

The post Reasons to Ditch “Batch and Blast” and Get Started with Email Marketing Personalization appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.



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How You Can Boost Your Internal Culture of Content Marketing and Other Content Marketing News

Hi there and welcome back to The Friday Five - where we do the curating for you on a wide array of topics. That's right kids, every Friday we showcase five articles that we think have relevance to you, the modern marketer. The articles will cover any one of the following topics: 

- Mobile marketing

- Social media marketing

- Cross-channel marketing

- Content marketing

- Marketing automation

- Data

This Week's Friday Five: Content Marketing

8 Ways To Boost Your Internal Culture Of Content Marketing

One of the biggest success factors for content marketing doesn’t have a thing to do with the actual content you publish. Instead, it involves the inner workings of your organization: your people, processes and priorities. Your culture.

Your culture will facilitate successful and consistent content production, bringing your strategy to life. Without the right people in place, the inspired vision from your leaders and the best tools to help you meet your goals, your content efforts will inevitably fall flat.

Read the full story on Marketing Land

The Role of Content Marketing Is Not Just About Creating New Content But Leveraging What’s Out There

We all aim to share engaging content to our target audiences. Content that will not only be seen by the vast majority of our contacts, but also content that they will want to engage with and share to their own audiences as well. A mistake that is too often made is believing that you should only be sharing your own content. Here’s why.

Read the full story on Business 2 Community

3 Reasons Why Content Marketing Is the 'Only Marketing Left'

The great Seth Godin once said that "content marketing is the only marketing left.” What Seth meant, however, is that marketers should be creating content that their audience cares about -- not just re-purposed advertisements. 

For business owners though, they still may not understand the value that quality content could bring to the table. In fact, content marketing is an essential part of today’s marketing strategies for each and every business. And that beings by regularly updating your business’s blog or websites.

Read the full story on Entrepreneur.

Five Strategies for Onboarding an Effective Content Marketing Team

Content marketing is a long-term initiative with all the necessary ingredients of a successful investment. It takes time to yield returns, and is driven by the need to achieve a positive ROI. While there may be a lot of discussion on strategies for making content effective, there is hardly any concern shown on how to onboard content writers and marketers so that the content succeeds and the investment goals are met. Here are some tips to get your content wizards ready and effective in no time.

Read the full story on Mar Tech Advisor

For UK Content Marketers, Social Is for Amplification

According to a Content Marketing Association (CMA) survey of marketers located primarily in the UK, there’s little question of social media’s most powerful role in the content marketing equation. Which social service is best, however, is up for debate. 

When asked about the primary purpose of social media in content marketing, 57% of respondents said it was best for amplification. Another 21% believed it was better for building a fan base, but no other response garnered more than 6% of answers. 

Read the full story on eMarketer

Want tips from leading content marketers and thinkers? Of course you do. Download the Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Content Marketing and get tips and a lot more like how to develop a balanced content marketing plan to support your most significant business objectives.



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Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Marketing Mania: Lego Slippers

Parents can finally rejoice because the Lego Company has heard their cries of pain and they just created the first ever Lego slippers. Together with French PR firm, Brand Station, these slippers come equipped with extra heavy duty padding in the insoles to protect the bottom on your feet.Related Articles
  1. Marketing Mania: Marilyn Monroe
  2. Marketing Mania: #BabyJonas
  3. Marketing Mania: Smoking Kid


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The Complete Guide to Website Push Notifications for Ecommerce

Website push notifications are clickable messages that are sent by a website to their subscribers’ browsers. They work very similarly to mobile app push notifications (notifications sent by a mobile app that land in your notification tray) except that they work on websites instead of apps and can be accessed on all devices (desktop, mobile, tablet, etc).

In this article, we’re going to take a look at website push notifications in the Ecommerce space. We’re going to discuss why Ecommerce players cannot afford to ignore website push notifications, how they work and how to optimize your push notification campaigns to deliver great results for your online store. Let’s start!

Why use Website Push Notifications

A brief look at the communication channels for Ecommerce

Ecommerce businesses use a variety of ways to grow their traffic i.e. new visitors, as well as engage with their existing traffic i.e. the folks who have already visited your website. These include exploring various communication channels – email, social media, SMS, push notifications (both websites and apps); it also involves employing these channels in different kinds of campaigns to reach and engage users. Let us take a brief look at each of these channels and try to understand where they prove useful.

Email

Email is most commonly used to deliver curated product suggestions, advertise upcoming sales and discount offers, ask for product reviews, recover abandoned carts, deliver transactional information such as order confirmation, tracking details etc.

The main advantage of email marketing is that it has a wide reach – a study by The Radicati Group reveals that there are currently 2.6 billion email users, which means that more than 1 out of 3 people have an email account. Another very important advantage is that an email stays in the inbox, accessible anytime, unlike social media messages and notifications, which are harder to access later (or even impossible). This is particularly useful for delivering important information like order and tracking details.

Where email marketing misses out, however, is the ability to deliver time-sensitive information. According to Zipstripe, the average time for email recipients to view an email message is 6.4 hours. This means that email is not effective for sending time-bound emails, such as coupons with a tight redemption period, or important actionable information such as “Your package is out for delivery”.

Social Media

Social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram) work better than email marketing when it comes to delivering short-time offers and discounts since people spend more time on social media websites than on any other online activity. So, what’s the problem? It’s the problem of engagement – only 0.07% of your Facebook audience interacts with your posts and the figure is 0.03% for Twitter. What this means is that social media is not very effective for messages designed to achieve a specific purpose in a specific time, since so few of your audience will actually react to that message. Instead, social media is better employed as a means to establish your brand and build a relationship with your audience.

SMS

SMS is effective if you want your user to read your message very quickly – 90% of SMS messages are read within the first 3 minutes. This makes it useful for communicating important business-information like “Your cab is arriving” or “Your item will be delivered today”.

SMS should not be used for information that the user will need to access later, such as receipts. SMS messages are difficult to search later on. Another disadvantage of SMS messages is that they can only contain a maximum of 160 characters, which drastically limits the kind of communications you can have through SMS.

Push Notifications (Mobile apps)

Push notifications is the default way by which mobile apps communicate. It scores over email for promotional content in that it delivers messages in real-time and it has also reported higher response rates compared to email (Open rates for push notifications are 50 percent higher than for email, and click rates are up to twice as high, according to this survey).

It is tempting to think of app push notifications and SMS as the same but they have crucial differences – the opt-in/opt-out options in app push notifications give the user greater control over what kind of messages he/she wants to receive. SMS on the other hand, often comes unsolicited and it is harder for the user to disable. Because of this, SMS is often perceived to be a lower messaging medium.

Where does Website Push Notifications fit into the picture

Website push notifications fit into a very unique spot in this entire spectrum. It differs from mobile app push notifications in that while app push notifications are limited to mobile devices and tablets, website push notifications also covers desktops. Desktop usage still accounts for 42% of total internet time. Web push notifications deliver the power of real-time push notifications to this 42% of internet users.

Another point which makes website push notifications very important for Ecommerce is the cost factor. Building a quality app is an expensive affair and sometimes the ROI can be difficult to justify. In fact, for small and medium sized companies, mobile websites may reach more people than mobile apps do. This makes website push notifications more critical since it gives businesses the ability to send push notifications without investing in an app.

All in all, it can be seen that website push notifications is an important channel for Ecommerce since it gives websites the power of instant communication via websites and that too on all devices, be it desktop mobile or tablet.

How do Website Push Notifications work

By default, whenever you install a mobile app, you give the app the permission to send you push notifications on your device. Websites, however, have to explicitly take permission from their users to send them push messages. This is how website push notifications work:

  1. The first step is getting opt-in from visitors. As soon as someone arrives on a website, an opt-in box is triggered. If the visitor clicks on “Allow”, he/she is added to your subscriber list.
    push-notifications-desktop-mobile

    Opt-in modal box
  2. As soon as a ‘visitor’ becomes a ‘subscriber’, you can send them push notifications from your website. The title message and the text message are customizable within certain character limits and a URL has to be specified. These notifications will arrive in real-time even if the browser is not open at that point of time. Clicking on the notification will take the subscriber to the URL specified.
    push-notification-animation

    How the notifications look

Optimizing Push Notifications

Now that we’ve established the importance of push notifications and how they work, it’s time to take a look into how to optimize your push notifications to drive more sales from your existing subscribers. This section is divided into the following subsections – writing great push notification copy, when to send a push notification, how frequently should you send push notifications, using segmentation to send personalized notifications and, lastly, what metrics to track.

Copywriting for Push Notifications

Since push notifications impose character limits on the title as well as the message, the copywriting becomes that much more important since you have to squeeze your message into a small package while still retaining its effectiveness.

Whenever you are writing the title and message text for a push notification, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the purpose of the copy is to get subscribers to click. For that, your copy needs to, above all, provide some value to the subscriber. People will only click on the notification if they find it valuable.

Here are a few tips you can follow:

  • Be clear in what you are saying – Your subscribers have busy schedules and do not have time for vague messages. Do not test their patience by making them think. A clear message will have a greater click rate by the very virtue of the fact that it is action-oriented. In a fight between “Have you read Jeffrey Archer’s latest?” and “Jeffrey Archer’s latest novel available for purchase”, I’ll always go for the latter because it is clearer in its message as opposed to the former.
  • Be crisp in your copy – Different platforms have different character limits for push notifications but all of them fall in the range of 40-120 characters. Thus, it is very important for you to be very concise in what you are saying. This often means that you need to identify the one most important value proposition of your message and let that shine through in the notification copy.
  • Use scarcity to create urgency – According to Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, we are more motivated by the idea of potential loss than of potential gain. That is, if we find that an opportunity is closing, we want it that much more. This is also known as FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
    You can use this psychological principle when you write your push notification copy. For example, if you have a sale coming up for your online store, try sending a push notification that says something like, “Flash Sale! 12 hours only”.
  • Use Social Proof – IBM’s marketing slogan in the 80s, “No one ever got fired for buying IBM”, is one of the most powerful marketing phrase ever created. This is one of the most powerful examples of social proof, where the company used the tendency of people to go along the established route.
    In push notifications, social proof can be used to increase click rate. For example, you can write something like, “4000 marketers have already registered for this event” if you want people to register for an event or “This post has more than 1000 Twitter shares” if you want subscribers to click through to a blog post.
    Keep in mind, though, that this is not the 80s and internet users have access to all the information they need on their fingertips. Thus, it is important to not go overboard with claims and only write stuff that is credible.

When to send Push Notifications

Website Push Notifications, by their very nature, require an instant response on the part of the receiver. This makes timing all the more important. A classic mistake when sending push notifications is not take into account the time zone your subscribers are located in. To fix this, you need to have a clear understanding of how your subscribers are spread around the globe and be very particular that each time zone receives the message at an appropriate time. It’s definitely more complicated than sending out a notification in a single batch, but that’s the kind of effort that is required in this highly-personalized environment. For example, you don’t want to end up this notification when the stars are twinkling, do you?

push-notification-wrong-time

A wrong time to send this notification

Another thing that you need to consider is that different kinds of notifications work at different times of the day. If you are sending a promotional message, you want your users to be in a restful state of mind so that they have the mental bandwidth to check out your offer. Choosing to send something funny and light-hearted? Go for the afternoon, when people are feeling bored in the office and want something to crack them up.

How Frequently to Send

Probably the most important thing to consider as you scale up your push notification campaigns is the frequency of your messages. Since push notifications is a high-engagement communication channel, you need to be really careful not to inundate your subscribers with more notifications that they can handle.

Since website push notifications is a fairly new technology, there is no data out there on optimal frequency. At this stage, you need to carefully monitor your click rates, time on page, bounce rate and opt-outs after every push notification to find out which frequency works best for your audience.

Using Segmentation to Send Personalized Notifications

As Ecommerce marketers, personalized messages are nothing new for us. We all know that they work. However, it is doubly critical to not follow the spray-and-pray approach when it comes to website push notifications, simply because opting-out is so easy and there is no way for you to get those unsubscribers back, unless they change their settings. For example, this guy is totally opting-out after receiving this notification.

poorly-personalized-push-notification

A poorly personalized push notification

Ecommerce players, therefore, need to categorize their subscribers into different buckets that are as narrowly defined as possible. One way of doing this is to ask subscribers for preferences at the time of opting-in. Another very effective way is to go for behavioral segmentation i.e. putting subscribers into different segments based on their on-page activities like type of pages viewed, number of views of a particular page etc. For example, if I’ve been checking out books in the spy thriller genre lately, the store should mark me as someone who’s interested in the genre and send me a notification whenever something new is published in that category.

What Metrics to Track

The most immediate metric that comes to mind when thinking website push notifications is click rate. This is how many people clicked on the notification as a percentage of the number of people to whom that notification was delivered.

However, just focusing on this one metric can lead your analysis astray. Instead, you should strongly focus on the business goals you deem most important, which in this case would be sales (primary goal) and visits to checkout page, add to cart (secondary goals). Tag your notification links with the proper UTM parameters and then sift through the data in Google Analytics and other analytics tools you are using to find out how many people arriving on your website via push notifications are actually performing the above actions. This is the only way that you will be able to determine whether website push notifications are working for you or not.

That’s it! This covers almost everything you need to know as you start with website push notifications for your online store. Just remember – keep listening to what your audience is trying to say and keep iterating on the basis of that!

About the Author: Anand Kansal works at PushCrew, a tool that enables websites to send push notifications on desktops, mobiles and tablets. He tweets about push notifications and online marketing in general at @PushCrewHQ.



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Why Retailers Need To Love Millennials This Thanksgiving Weekend

According to Nielsen millennials make up about one-fourth of the US population while they wield about $1.3 trillion in annual buying power according to Boston Consulting Group. In other words retail brands should always show be showing love to millennials. 

But since this is Thanksgiving Eve with the unofficially official start to the holiday shopping season less than 24 hours away, let's focus on the retail crush that is about to unfold over the next five days. 

"Millennials love shopping in stores and online over Thanksgiving weekend for several reasons, including the opportunities afforded to them that allow them to splurge on ‘non-gifts’ for themselves and even the potential to sleep in on Black Friday after having spent the night before bouncing from store to store."

The quote comes from Prosper’s Principal Analyst Pam Goodfellow and falls right in line with findings from a National Retail Federation survey which revealed that 77.8 percent of 18-24 year olds and 77.4 percent of 25-34 year olds who said they definitely will or may shop online and in stores over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Additional findings include: 

*Of those millennials who will or may shop over the holiday weekend, the survey found 84.3 percent of 18-24 year olds and 80.2 percent of 25-34 year olds say they will shop on Black Friday.

*One-quarter (25.4%) of 18-24 year olds will or may shop on Thanksgiving Day and nearly one-third (32.7%) of 25-34 year olds will make room for shopping after turkey and dessert.

*35 percent of those who are planning to or may shop on Saturday will specifically shop to support small businesses over the weekend.

*88% percent of 18-24 year olds and 91 percent of 25-34 year olds say yes or maybe when asked if they will shop online on Cyber Monday. 

Saying Vs. Doing

Now, we all know there is a big difference between what a person says they're going to do vs. what they actually do. Take me for example. I say all the time I'm going to start exercising and drink less coffee but here I sit throwing down yet another cup of Joe while my stationary bike gathers dust. 

But when it comes to holiday shoppers, however, the best laid plans often go awry. We found out that last year during our holiday research where we literally asked shoppers what they would do when it came to holiday shopping then went back and asked them what they really did. 

You will be amazed at some of the differences. Download Turning 2014's Holiday Trends into 2015 Revenue and see for yourself. 

And Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!



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