As the Holidays Approach, It's a Good Time To Ask: What’s Next in Email Deliverability?

What’s next? That’s a question that is asked often on my favorite television show of all time, The West Wing. The President of the United States, Jed Bartlet who was played by Martin Sheen, often ends conversations by asking “What’s next?” This is a good question to ask in general and I think it’s coming at a very appropriate time for email marketing, and especially and more personally for me on the deliverability side of the house.

As we approach the holiday season once again, I fear that not enough people are asking what’s next in an actionable way. Most marketers haven’t even realized how far deliverability has come. They are still trying to find a single reputation score that magically encompasses everything they need to know about deliverability in a single glance, or they may be a little more advanced and be thinking about engagement as an important deliverability factor.

We’re still talking to those senders who think there is a magic pathway to the inbox, where you don’t have to do any special work beyond signing up for a service. There’s still no shortcut to the inbox, if you were wondering. Inbox placement isn’t for sale, you can’t add it to your domain name system (DNS), and there isn’t anyone who is so connected that they can make a call, and make all your troubles vanish.

Ssshhh… It’s a secret.

There is a little secret that those of us in the know have been aware of for some time. I am excited to see that a lot of you out there also see what’s happening. We’re in one of those transitional periods in deliverability that we see every few years. The surprise is this time, the secret to great inbox placement isn’t some new deliverability concept. Good marketing leads to good inbox placement.

That’s the secret.

I know it isn’t that exciting to say, except for the fact that it actually is very exciting. Good marketers are winning the day, and we see it more and more each day. You want to see the inbox in Gmail? The way to get there is to do some amazing marketing. That’s what puts you in that position, not tricks and shortcuts.

That’s why this is an exciting time for us in the deliverability space. We know how to configure our systems to give you the best opportunity to get to the inbox. We know how to throttle, how to authenticate, which metrics to watch, and what time of day to send. All of that is already in place for you, the missing piece is the connection between you and your customer. Don’t forget that as you plan for the holidays.

Appetite Recognition

It isn’t about how many times you can touch a customer per week, it isn’t about meeting a send quota for the quarter. Smart and successful marketers this holiday season will be the ones who recognize their customer’s appetites for their products. It’s just fine to send some great promotional deals, but it has to be mixed in with content that people want to read.

Next time, I am going to talk about how those same smart marketers are using new tools to not only understand how they are performing, but they are borrowing ideas about what does and does not work. All the information that you need to be successful is there for you today, and as always it isn’t activated by a magic wand. The information is there for you if you want to see it. 

As always, we are here to answer your questions and provide you with the path to those solutions.

You're not alone. We understand how critical (and even daunting) of a task it is to get email into an inbox. With these challenges in mind, we are giving you the opportunity to learn from our experience. Download the Email Deliverability: Guide for Modern Marketers to achieve email deliverability that really matters.

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[Last Day] Get in Digital Commerce Academy Before Doors Close

One final note to let you know that the doors close to Digital Commerce Academy later today at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time.

We’ll reopen to new members in 2017, and when we do, the annual price will be $400 higher than it is right now.

So start your Academy membership today — because the low price you lock in now will be the price you pay for the lifetime of your account, no matter how much we raise it in the future.

Find out what your DCA membership will include and get started today.

Then our proven practitioners of digital commerce can help you build the digital business of your dreams without squandering time and money, stumbling to find the right path, or making unnecessary mistakes.

Sound good?

Join us today.

P.S. And yes, you get our standard 30-day money-back guarantee.

So lock in the current price today, and then spend the next month exploring the Academy to make your final decision on whether it’s right for you.

We think you’ll decide it is. Find out for yourself:

http://ift.tt/1NvJNur

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Oracle Data Management Platform: Empowering True Identity Management

As consumers increasingly interact with brands across a range of different devices and channels, the challenge of identity management for a marketer becomes paramount. We know that consumers don’t have a linear journey when engaging with a brand, they jump around between mobile apps, mobile web, desktop browsers, email, etc. leaving a trail of unique IDs along the way. Often times a consumer may do research on their mobile phone but ultimately transact on their desktop or laptop. In fact, according to Criteo’s State of Mobile Commerce Report, cross-device transactions accounted for 37% of all transactions, indicating that shoppers are browsing and buying on multiple devices.

Marketers need better control around the management of consumer IDs. To empower Oracle customers to quickly and efficiently manage these multiple ID spaces, Oracle has released major enhancements to the Audience Builder user interface within the Oracle Data Management Platform (DMP).These enhancements to the Audience Builder user interface make it easier for customers to manage and select ID types in order to identify, build, plan and analyze audiences based on the device or platform within which the ID was originally created.

The new Audience Builder UI gives Oracle Data Management Platform customers hands-on access to leverage the Oracle ID Graph to visualize linkages and build audiences across ID spaces. This means clients can narrow down which users to include in their audiences based on their IDs. For example, you can select only users linked to mobile web IDs, or you can further pinpoint your audience to only users linked to a specific mobile app ID (Apple IDFA or Google AdID).

With this release, the Oracle Data Management Platform becomes truly ID space agnostic. On average now, consumers own well over three devices, and each of these platforms operate with their own ID space. It can be with a login ID or a cookie ID or a device ID but with all of these major players in the industry, and the need for marketers to manage all of these different ID spaces, it becomes more important than ever to have “device agnostic” identity management baked into your DMP platform.

The new and improved Oracle DMP Audience Builder enables marketers to plan audiences for their campaigns using a combination of their own data and third-party data sources. Through the new and improved Audience Builders users are able to:

• Enhance Audience Segmentation and Engagement: Understand audience composition by device and environment to increase the effectiveness of engagements.
• Optimize Media Buys: By identifying the devices driving conversions, marketers can modify campaign strategies to focus the conversion points and eliminate wasted impressions.
• Increase Campaign Effectiveness: By managing advertising dollars based on targeting environment, customers can personalize campaigns against the source ID for relevant retargeting and prospecting.
• Improve Mobile App Targeting at Scale: Enables marketers to activate 1st and 3rd-party audiences on channels against their mobile ad IDs based on behaviors like mobile app installs.

Read more about this in our press release.

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The Ultimate Guide to Getting Sky-High Conversions From Twitter Ads

Will anyone actually click my ad and buy my product?

It’s a terrifying question, but an important one. Turns out that everyone (including you) wants to get more conversions from a Twitter ad campaign.

You spent countless hours writing lead magnets, creating landing pages and sales pages, and then later you set up a Twitter ad campaign to get some traffic.

While running ads is a great way to get some quick exposure, Twitter is a different ad platform. If you don’t understand the way it works, you might be wasting your money as well.

In today’s post I’ll be sharing some killer tips and resources to get sky-high conversions from Twitter.

So, would you like to know how to advertise on Twitter?

How about more advanced approaches to getting more followers, more leads, and more customers for your business?

But let me make it clear…

If there are secrets or special formulas that can magically unlock the power of Twitter advertising out there, I don’t know them.

What I do know, is exactly what the experts are doing — day in and day out.

And now, you will too.

But first let’s take a look at why you should invest in paid Twitter ads.

Why You Should Invest in Paid Twitter Ads

Twitter is a great social media channel for marketers, as it unofficially has 310 million monthly active users. Paid Twitter ads is an incredible way to complement your social media efforts. With Twitter advertising you can reach thousands of targeted customers and followers.

But why do you need to invest in paid twitter ads?

Organic Reach is Declining

Recently, Twitter made changes to their feed. Now, instead of getting all the recent tweets, Twitter only shows the tweets which they think are relevant to you.

Much like what Facebook did with their platform.

And just a few months ago, Twitter launched Engage which is for celebrities, influencers, and public figures that’ll curate the most popular tweets, mentions and replies.

This clearly shows that the reach of social media is plummeting day by day. Considering this scenario, Twitter paid ads is a way to go.

Adwords and Facebook Ad Costs Are Rising With Each Passing Day

Just last year, Search Engine Land reported a 20-25% increase in Google Adwords CPCs. More and more brands are investing in the same keywords which, of course, increase the competition and thus, the cost.

While Facebook ads were pretty cheap when they first started offering it, nowadays due to millions of advertisers, its platform is also becoming expensive.

For instance, Forbes reported a 21% increase in Facebook average ad pricing and the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) increased by an incredible 29% rate.

Considering both these reports, Twitter now looks like the promising ad channel. Facebook still beats Twitter on average cost per ad, but with some optimization and targeting options you can lower Twitter ad costs, even lower than Facebook.

Your Customers Spend a Ridiculous Amount of Time on Twitter

With each passing day, we’re getting more attracted towards social media. While Facebook is a beast with 1.2 billion monthly active users, Twitter’s 310 million monthly active users can’t be neglected.

According to DMR stats, 34% of active Twitter users log into it more than once in a day.

Looking at all these points, you’ll know that Twitter advertising is the way to go if you’re looking to make profits online.

Now let’s learn how to set-up the perfect Twitter ad campaign.

How to Setup the Perfect Twitter Ad Campaign

Twitter has a robust advertising platform. However, it is quite difficult to understand if you’re just starting out.

But don’t worry. Here’s how to setup your first Twitter ad campaign.

Step 1: Choose your primary objective

To advertise on Twitter you’ll need to log into your Twitter Ads account. For that head over to ads.twitter.com and enter your credentials.

Now, you’ll need to choose your primary objective. Whether you want to get more leads, more traffic, or just more followers.

Twitter has 6 types of campaigns to choose from, these are:

1. Followers
2. Website clicks or conversions
3. Tweet engagements
4. App install or re-engagements
5. Leads on Twitter
6. Video views

Choose a relevant campaign type and click on it.

Step 2: Select your targeting options

Once you’ve determined the campaign type, it’s time to set up the rest of the campaign. Name your ad campaign, choose all the relevant options, and select your targeting options.

Targeting is an extremely important feature for you to reach to your ideal customers. Twitter has 11 targeting options. These are:

1. Location
2. Gender
3. Languages
4. Devices, Platforms, and Carriers
5. Keywords
6. Followers
7. Interests
8. Tailored Audience
9. Behaviors
10. TV Targeting
11. Event Targeting

I recommend you choose relevant targeting options so you don’t end up wasting your time and money marketing to the wrong audience.

Step 3: Adjust your bid to make your campaign profitable

This is the place where most people get Twitter wrong.

Twitter sells its advertising via auction. That means the more you’re willing to pay, the more likely your ads will be shown, but if you set the bids too low, you’ll get no impressions.

So Twitter provides an option for that. It’s called automatic bidding.

This is how it works: you set a daily maximum budget and set the pricing to automatic bid, and Twitter will make sure your budget is spent very quickly. It might help you in winning auctions, but you don’t want to or have to win every auction.

So, avoid using automatic bid in most of the cases.

In fact, I recommend you to start with $2, then test with the ads, analyze the results and finally scale the campaign.

After doing all the steps, finally launch your campaign.

How to Make Your Campaign Go Viral

You’ve setup your first Twitter campaign. You now understand the platform and know its basics. You also know the way it works.

Now it’s time to optimize your campaign to make it viral. Here’s how:

1. Get High Quality Score to Lower Ad Clicks

First of all, you obviously don’t want to pay higher for ad clicks, when it’s possible to cut them down. Like Facebook and Google, Twitter also has it’s own quality score, which sometimes it refers to as “Quality Adjusted Bids”.

Larry Kim, the founder of Wordstream, actually found that the higher your engagement rate will be, the lower your ad will cost.

Here’s how Twitter determines quality adjusted bid:

1. Resonance: This is a metric to measure your engagement. Basically, the more likes, retweets, and comments you get, the higher your quality score.
2. Relevance: It checks whether a user is interested in your tweet.
3. Recency: This metric checks for the freshness of the tweet. If your tweet is fresh, then it’s going to get higher priority.

Here’s how to get a high quality adjusted bid:

Keep your tweets fresh
Like I already mentioned, Twitter keeps a check on the freshness of your tweet. That means Twitter is less likely to show your older ads. Here’s an example:

(Image Source)

This is a snapshot of Larry Kim’s Twitter ad dashboard. Notice how the impressions go down with each passing day.

Twitter wants to show fresh content to its users. So you’ll want to test different variations of each ad and consider replacing them with newer ads, instead of running the same ones for lengthy periods.

Promote your best stuff
The best possible way to get a high quality score and lower your ad costs is by promoting your best stuff i.e., the tweets which organically gained more exposure.

(Image Source)

This tweet by Larry Kim resulted in 1488 retweets and 1284 favorites.

Larry got these amazing results because his post was truly epic. So, when you write epic content like this:

• How do colors affect purchases?
• The Complete 101 List Building Strategies
• The Science of Social Timing Part 1: Social Networks

Your content has 100x better chance of going viral.

Narrow your audience
Relevance is another important metric in Twitter.

You don’t want to promote your content to the audience that shows little or no interest. Instead want to narrow your audience, target a smaller but precise audience who is interested in your content.

This not only helps get high conversions, but also helps you get higher engagement.

2. How to Find Your Best Content to Promote

Tweet engagement is a pretty important metric when it comes to advertising in Twitter. Not only does Twitter determine the pricing based on the tweet engagement but it also decides the exposure it’s going to get.

High engagement posts is the way to go in this scenario. Here’s how to find high engagement tweets:

1. Login to Twitter Analytics
2. Once you’re in there, click the tweets tab and then click export to export all your tweets
3. Twitter will take a few seconds to process it, depending on your account, then it will send a request to download CSV file
4. Open the file and sort the “Engagement Rate” tab by descending order
5. Now, the top tweets you get are the ones which are most engaging. This is where you should spend your dollars

Once you find your top engagment posts, head back to Twitter and start the advertising campaign for those top tweets.

3. Use Relevant Keywords to Narrow Down Your Audience

Keyword targeting is an amazing feature in Twitter that lets you to find the people based on the words and phrases they’ve tweeted or searched for on Twitter.

Each keyword has 6 options to match your ideal customer:

1. Broad Match: Broad match searches for all the tweets containing that keyword independent of the order.
2. Phrase Match: When you select phrase match, Twitter will search all the tweets that contains the keywords in exact order plus there may be other keywords present between those tweets.
3. Exact Match: It searches for the tweets with exact keywords in the exact order without any word in between.
4. Negative Match: Negative match will remove all the tweets with that keyword in any order.
5. Negative Phrase: Negative phrase will remove all the tweets that contains the keywords in the exact order.
6. Negative Exact: It removes all the tweets with exact keywords in the exact order without any keyword in between.

4. Use Behavior and Demographic Targeting Options to Boost Engagement

Like keyword targeting, Twitter offers behavior and demographic targeting which is a strong metric to find the relevant audience.

You can use behaviors and demographic targeting options to target the people who want to, and can afford to buy your products. Here’s how:

You can select their behavior like business type, industry, sales revenue to find the customers who might be interested in your offering. You can then select their demographic options like their income, education, and employment to find the customers who can afford to buy your products.

5. Create Tailored Audience for Each Buying Stage

Twitter also offers website tags, which is similar to the Facebook pixel. With this tag you can track different types of conversions for the customers visiting your audience, like:

• Site visit
• Purchase
• Download
• Sign up
• Custom

Once you’ve captured these visitors, you can then advertise to these customers in Twitter. And the best part?

You’ll get higher engagement for your tweets, meaning high quality score and low cost of the ads.

6. Leverage Twitter Lists For Best Results

Twitter lists is a great way to organize your followers, clients, influencers, and your team members. Many people know this feature but very few actually utilize it.

In Twitter advertising, Twitter lists is a great way to advertise. Here’s a great example of this:

Larry Kim wrote a blog post for WordStream.

He shared the post throughout his social media account, then promoted the post to the list of influencers using Twitter Ads.

(Image Source

Within 48 hours, the post picked 500+ press mentions and 100K visitors. All of this with just a $50 budget and 10 minutes of campaign setup.

Pretty cool, right?

Your results may vary.

7. Upload Your Email List to Create Your Own Audience

In Twitter, you can upload your email list to create your own list of audiences. With this feature, you can advertise to your email subscribers.

This is a great feature especially when you want to nurture your leads or promote your products. Here’s how to get started:

1. Head over to Twitter ads. Select Tools and click audience manager.
2. Click create new audience. Then, select upload your own list.
3. Fill out all the information, upload your email list and click create list audience.

This list audience is extremely beneficial in Twitter. You can promote your blog posts, lead magnets, and promote your products.

8. Use Retargeting to Promote Your Content

Remarketing is an incredible way to advertise to your website visitors or your email subscribers. In Twitter, you can either use promoted tweets, Twitter cards, or promoted tweets.

All of them gives you a great option to get more exposure. To use retargeting, here’s what you should do:

1. You must upload your email list to retarget your email subscribers
2. You must create a website tag and install it in your website

I recommend you set up a website tag and install it. It’s buried deep in Twitter, but it’s actually the first thing you should do before running any ad. Here’s how to generate a Website tag:

Login to Twitter Ads. Then, click tools, followed by conversion tracking.

Next up, agree to the Terms and Conditions and then click generate website tag for conversions.

In the next page you’ll get the website tag. Install the tag in your website to setup conversion tracking.

Once done, you can advertise to your website visitors based on their behaviours and their purchase.

Measure your Strategy’s Success

You’ve created your first ad. You’ve also optimized your ad to get sky-high conversions. Now, finally it’s time to analyze your ad’s performance and tweak it, if needed.

Let’s start…

1. Test With the Different Variations of the Same Ad

Twitter loves fresh tweets and that’s the reason it gives high preference to fresh tweets. You don’t want to continue running your old ads; instead, you want to create new variations and test with them.

Here are some ideas to test your ads:

• Test changing the headline of your tweet
• Test changing the call-to-action button copy
• Try moving the URL to the front or in the center of your tweet
• Add relevant hashtags to your tweet, to see if it helps
• Try adding, removing, or changing the image

2. Use UTM Parameters

UTM parameters are simply the tags to measure your online marketing campaigns inside Google Analytics or Kissmetrics.

It helps you analyse and measure your online marketing efforts.

For instance, if you’re offering an eBook and want to track the number of users who visited the landing page from your Twitter ad campaign, then you simply ad this tag to your URL.

http://ift.tt/2dPFwEU

Then, you can track every conversion in Kissmetrics. But, it’s quite a headache to create URL every time you create a new ad. For this, you can use Google’s URL Builder, which does a pretty decent job in generating UTM tags for your URL.

3. Analyze, Tweak, Repeat

Finally, it’s time to measure your ad performance.

(Image Source)

Pay close attention to your Twitter Ad dashboard, view your engagement rate, clicks, replies and likes.

Make sure to double check this data with Google Analytics or Kissmetrics (a more robust option). This will help you find the actual number of clicks you’re generating.

With these results, check which campaigns are working and which aren’t. Delete the campaigns that aren’t working and double down on the stuff that’s working.

Conclusion

Twitter ads can be profitable; they can help you generate great ROI. But you must allocate your time to test with the platform.

Remember, Twitter can be misleading (hello, automatic bid) and at times their suggestions won’t work for you. Forget everything that Twitter told you, forget the best practices they told you.

Instead go by this approach, avoid the major pitfalls that Twitter offers and you’ll get incredible ROI from Twitter ads.

About the Author: Aman Thakur shows marketers and bloggers, simple and effective ways to build their mailing list super-fast. Download his exclusive bonus 101 list building strategies to grow your email list. A writer by day and a reader by night, he can be found online tweeting about marketing, or watching Cricket matches.

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Learn to Create, Curate, and Distribute Your Brand’s Story from the Latest Content Pros Podcasts

Have you been wondering who to follow in content marketing? With so many so-called experts and influencers in this industry, it can be a daunting task to find the best advice from people with real experience. Randy Frisch and I have gathered the best of the best in one place, just for you. They have real stories, lessons learned, and advice to help other marketers like you. This month, we’ve had the pleasure of adding Matthew Grant, David Fortino, Rick Wion, and Dan Levy to our archive of interviews with the best Content Pros around.

Join us over on the Content Pros Podcast to gain insights from these and other experts on strategies for successful conversion, reasons to prioritize content distribution, how to ask customers the right questions, and structuring your staff for the best results.

How Third-Party Content Converts Fans Into Customers

Many B2B marketers use content to move prospects through the sales funnel. However, rarely do marketers speak to customers, let alone know what a prospective buyer is looking for at any particular point in their journey. Too often content curation stems from speculation on the part of the content marketer, leading to trial-and-error marketing.

Matthew Grant, Director of Content Strategy for the Aberdeen Group, has experience with several tools that remove the guesswork from content. With a combination of third-party content, surveys, and old-fashioned detective work, any B2B content marketer can turn their campaigns into conversion machines.

Listen to Matt and learn more about these tips:

• Why finding out what your customers consider valuable is easy yet rarely done
• How content more often leads to identifying where a buyer is in their journey instead of pushing them along the funnel
• Why convincing content means sourcing it from outside your company

Why Content Distribution Matters More Than Curation

Many content marketers focus on the quality of their content and rest easy knowing that their audience will find, appreciate, and consume these high-quality posts.

But as David Fortino, Senior VP of Audience and Product at the NetLine Corporation, explains, it’s actually up to you as the content marketer to get your content in front of the customer. Without a solid plan to disseminate your material to a targeted audience, that excellently written, perfectly tagged, fascinatingly relevant post will go nowhere fast.

David’s approach to content curation, dissemination, and personalization will help any content marketer get their material in front of the right audience at the right time.

Join our conversation to hear David share:

• Why the quality of lead gen no longer means acquiring appropriate contact information

• How to move beyond personas and take your content to the next level of personalization

• How to better position your brand through content that’s shaped by data and client insights

Reputation Management Through Digital and Social Storytelling

From a background in journalism, to Social Media Director at McDonald’s, to his current position as the Senior Director of Consumer Engagement with The Kellogg Company, Rick Wion has been writing and developing content since age 17. Over time, Rick has learned the positive effect of conducting qualitative research to discover what kind of content your audience wants to hear, as well as the value in producing that content through a variety of storytelling methods.

He maintains a relationship with consumers by giving them an opportunity to ask the questions they want to know, then turning those questions and their answers into content. From there, Wion keeps the conversation going by polling his audience to make sure his content is consistently relevant, impactful, and new.

Rick has shared the following three insights:

• How to manage your brand’s reputation based on the quantitative research of what your audience wants
• The variety of approaches you can take to tell amazing stories
• Key differences in audience reach between a microsite and social media platforms

How Agile Content Marketing Powers Up Your Sales Funnel

One of the biggest challenges for modern marketers is how to structure your staff and set them up for success. It’s difficult to know where to start and how to focus your departments for maximum impact.

Dan Levy, Content Director at Unbounce, starts with distributing the workforce throughout a series of interdisciplinary squads working toward a common goal. Implementing this structure has given him unique insight into the pros and cons of existing setups, meaning he always knows when it’s time for a change. This knowledge will be incredibly valuable for any marketing manager looking to revolutionize their approach to content.

Here are three topics to look forward to in this episode:

• The importance of super-groups in cross-team communication
• How the traditional marketing channel structure leads to bumping against each other and wasted resources
• How cross-functional teams lead to a deeper dive into understanding the buyer’s journey

This monthly round-up of the weekly Content Pros podcast shares some takeaways from recent episodes. If you like what you've read (and heard), please subscribe to the show on iTunes or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

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How AI Will Be A Game Changer In Mobile Marketing

Merriam-Webster's two part definition of Artificial Intelligence or AI is "an area of computer science that deals with giving machines the ability to seem like they have human intelligence; the power of a machine to copy intelligent human behavior."

Make no mistake about it, AI is very much the "in term" around the marketing water coolers. And as such there is no shortage of pieces being written espousing the benefits of AI on the world of marketing. 

Earlier this month Google unveiled Google Assistant, that was described as being most exciting new product announcement since the iPhone in 2007. According to Geek Time "It is an AI personal assistant that chats with you and can assist you with many tasks. You can chat or talk to the Assistant and it can bring you relevant information, send messages, book events, save reminders, change the lights, play content on your TV and many other actions. Google is working hard to bring more functionality to its Assistant, so you can expect its capabilities to improve over time."

Yes this means that if Google is shifting from a mobile-centric world to an AI-centric world, we all need to pay attention.

Impact and Improve

At Target Marketing, they've identified three ways AI will impact and improve marketing while asking thought-provoking questions around each. 

1. Automation. As automation removes menial tasks, how can marketers use their newfound time wisely to consider what customers want and how to deliver it?
2. Connection. How can new connections with customers lead to unforeseen connections between businesses? 
3. Context. If contextual marketing reaches customers precisely where they are, but they don’t take action, what went wrong?

These are all very important questions to consider as we enter into this new "era" as Target Market refers to it, adding, "AI will help marketers automate campaigns, create new and stronger connections with customers, and ultimately lead to a hyper-personalized, delightful experience."

Going Mobile

I am not about to trot out the latest research on the use of mobile devices. By now you all know the usual stats suspects. Or do you?

Research from eMarketer shows that while mobile phones account for 30% of all retail traffic, they only account for 11% of revenue, this as per a piece on Internet Retailer which says "AI is uniquely able to provide a text-free shopping journey, one that transforms mobile shopping from a clunky, faux-browser experience to a wordless visual conversation."

The writer of the piece, Andy Narayanan does a great job at laying one scenario in which AI will play a huge role in mobile marketing. Instead of me trying to explain it, here's what Andy wrote:

"Instead of going through the typical search experience, all you'd need to do is tap on images of products you like. The AI looks at the images themselves and surfaces similar options based on image alone. Smart AIs understand product facets we typically search for, like color and brand, as well as subtler, more difficult-to-describe characteristics, like fringe, unique patterns and logo placement. Instead of re-searching or clicking tiny text boxes, you'd just tap the next image you're interested in. Each tap successively trains the AI to understand what you want, right then, whether it's red shoes or a plaid hat."

You can see by just this one example the incredibly powerful and impactful benefit AI can deliver to a brand in a mobile environment. Remember, this all comes back to personalization: true personalization. Since the data collected will be about you as an individual, the experience the brand delivers can be and should be personal. 

I highly recommend reading the full post on Internet Retailer.

Makes senses, yes?

Test, Test and Test

Like anything else AI needs to be incorporated slowly and it absolutely needs to be tested. 

Download the Mobile Testing Guide For Modern Marketers for the best advice from analysts, engineers, and thought leaders on how to help mobile-minded businesses master the non-desktop landscape.

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Ready to Sell Your Products or Services? We’re Here to Help

Hey there — welcome back to the Copyblogger Weekly!

So, I’ve been known to lean a bit toward the “kumbaya” side of content marketing. (“Kumbaya” meaning, “Let’s all join hands and sing songs about our feelings!”)

But I have bills to pay, just like you do. Selling is an integral and important part of business. And content marketing is as much about marketing as it is about connection.

This week, we’ve got some content to help you unapologetically, effectively — maybe even joyfully — sell some stuff.

On Tuesday, I was tickled to see Beth Hayden riffing on a presentation I did at our live event in 2015, cracking open the three essential elements your landing pages need to make more sales.

Yesterday, we revisited a classic Brian Clark post on how to motivate audiences to buy. He has some fascinating insights into what we really mean when we say we “sell from emotion,” and about the emotional states that prompt us to act.

And The Showrunner podcast this week dives into how to use empathy (very kumbaya) as a map for creating the products and services your audience will love (very pragmatic). Which is really what we’re all about.

Digital Commerce Academy closes to new students on Friday

Quick reminder that Digital Commerce Academy (DCA) is going to close to new students on Friday, October 28 so we can put all of our focus into developing some killer new courses for our members.

Don’t worry, DCA will be back … but not until 2017, and with a substantially higher price.

If you’re into the mix of ethical connection and pragmatic business solutions, DCA is a great resource for you.

We’ll be adding the videos from our recent live Digital Commerce Summit, as well as a live workshop I taught with Brian Clark that walks you through how to plan, execute, and market a digital course.

The annual price for DCA will be rising quite a bit, to reflect the quantity and quality of new content we’re adding. But you can get all the great new stuff and today’s pricing if you jump in now. Get all the details here:

http://ift.tt/1O2Esy1

Hope you enjoy this week’s content, and I’ll catch you next week!

— Sonia Simone
Chief Content Officer, Rainmaker Digital

Catch up on this week’s content

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Master These 7 Essential Elements for Winning Content [Infographic]

by Pamela Wilson

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Build Landing Pages that Convert with These 3 Smart Steps

by Beth Hayden

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How to Motivate People to Buy

by Brian Clark

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The One Thing That Can Make or Break Your Creative Business

by Brian Gardner & Lauren Mancke

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Empathy Maps: A Podcaster’s Guide

by Jerod Morris & Jon Nastor

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How to Create Impact That Endures (Instead of Ending Up in a Landfill)

by Brian Clark & Jerod Morris

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Announcing: An Intriguing New Tool for Collaborative Content

by Sonia Simone

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How Bestselling Sci-fi Thriller Author Blake Crouch Writes: Part One

by Kelton Reid

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Understanding the Brain Science Behind Effective Persuasion, with Roger Dooley

by Brian Clark

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Cool-Headed Advice for Keeping It Together Just Before Your Book Launch

by Pamela Wilson & Jeff Goins

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Behind the Scenes with Matthew Berry

with Matthew Barry and Pamela Wilson

Friday, October 28
What can you do when you have a nice-looking site that’s not converting as well as you want? And will content marketing really work to promote a thoroughly offline business like a fly fishing lodge in Idaho? Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from someone who’s on the front lines, using content marketing to promote a strictly offline business.

Join Authority to attend this session

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