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Advertising in local markets: A playbook for success

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 18:34:30 +0000

Many brands, such as those in the home services industry or a local grocery chain, market to specific locations, cities or regions. There are also national brands that want to expand in specific local markets.

Regardless of the company or purpose, advertising on a local scale has different tactics than on a national scale. Brands need to connect their messaging directly with the specific communities they serve and media to their target demo. Here’s a playbook to help your company succeed when marketing on a local scale.

1. Understand local vs. national campaigns

Local advertising differs from national campaigns in several ways:

Audience specificity: By zooming in on precise geographic areas, brands can tailor messaging to align with local communities’ customs, preferences and nuances. This precision targeting ensures that your message resonates with the right target audience.
Budget friendliness: Local advertising is often more accessible for small businesses. Local campaign costs are lower, enabling brands to invest strategically within targeted locales. This budget-friendly nature does not diminish the need for strategic planning; instead, it emphasizes allocating resources wisely to maximize returns. As a result, testing budgets can be allocated across multiple markets to maximize learnings for further market expansion.
Channel selection: Selecting the correct channels is vital for effective local advertising. Local newspapers, radio stations, digital platforms and community events each offer advantages. The key lies in understanding where your target audience spends time and focusing efforts to ensure optimal engagement.
Flexibility and agility: Local campaigns can be adjusted more swiftly in response to market feedback or changes, allowing brands to stay relevant and responsive.

Maintaining brand consistency across local touchpoints reinforces brand identity and builds a strong, recognizable brand across markets.

2. Leverage customized audience segmentation

Customized audience segmentation is the process of dividing a market into distinct groups based on specific demographic criteria. This marketing segmentation supports the development of targeted messaging and media plans for local markets.

For example, a coffee chain might cater to two distinct segments: young professionals and retirees. After identifying these segments, the chain can craft messages, offers and media strategies relating to each group’s preferences and lifestyle.

To reach young professionals in downtown areas, the chain might focus on convenience, quality coffee and a vibrant atmosphere that is conducive to work and socializing. Targeted advertising on Facebook, Instagram or Connected TV, along with digital signage near office complexes, could capture the attention of this demographic, emphasizing quick service and premium blends.

Conversely, for retirees in residential areas, the chain could highlight a cozy ambiance, friendly service and promotions such as senior discounts. Advertisements in local print publications, community newsletters, radio stations and events like senior coffee mornings would foster a sense of community and belonging.

Dig deeper: Niche advertising: 7 actionable tactics for targeted marketing

3. Adapt to local market dynamics

Various factors influence local market dynamics. Brands that navigate changes effectively maintain a strong audience connection and stay ahead in the market. Here’s how consumer sentiment and behavior may evolve within a local market and the corresponding adjustments brands can make.

Cultural shifts, such as changes in demographics or societal norms, can alter consumer preferences within a local community. For example, a neighborhood experiencing gentrification may see demand rise for specific products or services.
- Respond by updating your messaging to reflect the evolving cultural landscape, ensuring it resonates with the new demographic profile.
Economic conditions are crucial. For example, during downturns, consumers often prioritize value and practicality.
- Highlight affordable options or emphasize the practical benefits of your offerings to ensure messaging aligns with consumers’ financial priorities. The impact is unique to each market and the marketing message must also be dynamic.
Seasonal trends impact consumer behavior.
- Align your promotions and creative content with changing seasons or local events to make your offerings timely and relevant.
New competitors. The competitive landscape demands vigilance because new entrants or innovative competitor campaigns can shift consumer preferences.
- Differentiate by focusing on your unique selling propositions, such as quality, customer service or community involvement, to retain consumer interest and loyalty.

4. Apply data and predictive analytics

Data and predictive analytics are indispensable tools for successfully reaching local target markets. These technologies provide consumer behavior insights, enabling you to anticipate market trends and adjust strategies proactively.

Price optimization: By analyzing consumer demand, competitor pricing and market conditions, data analytics enables you to set prices that attract customers while ensuring profitability.
Competitor analysis: Through analysis, brands can understand their positioning within the local market landscape and identify opportunities and threats. Predictive analytics offer foresight into competitors’ potential moves, allowing you to strategize effectively to maintain a competitive edge.
Consumer behavior: Forecasting consumer behavior allows your brand to tailor offerings and marketing messages to meet evolving consumer needs and enhance engagement.
Marketing effectiveness: Analytics track the success of advertising campaigns, providing insights into which strategies drive conversions and sales. This feedback loop enables continuous optimization of marketing efforts for maximum impact.
Inventory management: In supply chain management, data analytics predict demand fluctuations, ensuring inventory levels align with market needs. This efficiency prevents stockouts or excess inventory, optimizing operational costs and meeting consumer expectations.

Dig deeper: Why you should add predictive modeling to your marketing mix

5. Counter external market influences

Consider a clothing retailer preparing for a spring collection launch. By analyzing historical weather data and using predictive analytics, the brand forecasts an unseasonably cool start to spring. Anticipating this, the retailer adjusts its campaign to highlight transitional pieces suitable for cooler weather, ensuring relevance despite an unexpected chill.

Simultaneously, predictive models signal an upcoming spike in local media advertising rates due to increased market demand. Retailers respond by reallocating a portion of advertising budgets to digital channels, which offer more flexibility and lower costs than traditional media. This shift enables brands to maintain visibility and engagement without exceeding budget, mitigating the impact of external forces on advertising.

6. Build consumer confidence with messaging

Localized messaging and tailored customer service enhance consumer confidence by demonstrating your brand’s understanding of the community. For instance, a grocery store that curates cooking classes featuring local cuisine or sponsors community events shows commitment to local culture and consumer interests.

Similarly, a bookstore highlighting local authors or topics relevant to the community resonates with local customers. Additionally, providing service that addresses local needs — such as bilingual service and local event support — reinforces the brand’s values and response to the community.

Through these localized approaches, brands can build trust and loyalty, bridging the gap between corporate presence and local relevance.

7. Dominate with local advertising

To dominate local markets, brands must:

Harness hyper-targeted segmentation and geo-targeted advertising to reach and engage precise audiences.
Create localized content that reflects community values, engage in community events, optimize campaigns for mobile and track results.
Fine-tune strategies, outperform competitors and foster lasting relationships with customers.

These strategies will enable your message to resonate with local consumers, differentiate you in competitive markets and ensure you become a major player in your specific area.

Dig deeper: The 5 critical elements for local marketing success

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The post Advertising in local markets: A playbook for success appeared first on MarTech.

The state of data in 2024: How the ad industry is adapting to privacy regulations

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 16:11:44 +0000

Consumer privacy has become a major focus in the digital advertising industry. New regulations and growing public concerns over data collection practices have forced companies to rethink their strategies. As leaders in this field, it is our responsibility to adapt and evolve. It’s not enough to just comply with regulations. We must always serve the best interests of consumers.

By adopting a “privacy-by-design” approach, we can address the growing apprehension surrounding excessive data collection, build trust and foster long-term consumer loyalty — the cornerstones of economic success in the advertising industry.

Insights into the shifting privacy landscape

The recently released IAB State of Data 2024 report (registration required), titled “How the Digital Ad Industry is Adapting to the Privacy-By-Design Ecosystem,” offers insights into how the industry is responding to privacy changes. It surveyed and interviewed over 500 data and advertising decision-makers at brands, agencies and publishers.

The report highlights the strategic changes and innovations prompted by the need for privacy compliance and sustainable, consumer-friendly approaches.

Up to 95% of decision-makers anticipate ongoing legislation and signal loss in 2024 and beyond.
Two-thirds predict the implementation of more state privacy laws, reducing their capacity to personalize messages to consumers.
This shift toward a privacy-first environment has led to significant organizational restructuring for over 80% of companies.

Adapting to the new normal: Investments in training and expertise

To adapt, companies are investing significantly in training staff on data privacy (78%), creating dedicated teams for business transformation and seeking external expertise through new hires and consultancy partnerships.

Analytics departments are being impacted the most, along with legal and compliance, ad operations and programmatic teams, due to their heavy reliance on data.

Dig deeper: Why marketers should care about consumer privacy

The decline of high-quality data and its impact on media planning

The market is facing sweeping declines in accessible, high-quality data.

About three-in-four advertising and data leaders expect the ability to collect and leverage integral consumer data, including device signals and location, to be continually reduced.
While 60% expect the same with demographics, user preferences and behavior.
Confidence in data accuracy from key partners is also falling, including from social media (59%), programmatic (57%) and ad serving companies (52%).

These challenges have profoundly impacted media planning and buying.

Nearly nine in ten ad buyers report shifts in personalization tactics, ad spend and their mix of first-, second- and third-party data.
Over three-in-four cite selection changes in media channels and KPIs, along with more seller-direct deals.

Ad spend that taps into first-party data and engages audiences at scale, such as CTV, paid search, social media and retail media, is being prioritized.

Enhancing data quality through first-party data and AI

To improve data quality:

71% of brands, agencies and publishers are increasing their first-party datasets, with an average anticipated growth rate of 35% in the next 12 months. They are collecting an array of consumer data points to enable robust profiles, including contact info, device signals, transactions, content consumption, location, demographics and interests.
One-third are also leveraging AI and machine learning to enhance these datasets.

However, it is important to note that first-party data is not immune to potential future restrictions. As privacy regulations evolve, collecting and using first-party data may face increased scrutiny and limitations. Companies must remain vigilant and adaptable, ensuring their data practices align with the latest privacy requirements and consumer expectations.

Beyond first-party data, companies are investing in analytical methods that are less dependent on tracking, such as media mix modeling and multi-touch attribution. Contextual advertising is seeing a resurgence, with 66% of current contextual ad buyers planning to boost investments.

More direct deals with publishers are being struck to appear in trusted environments and leverage their first-party data. However, as with any data-driven approach, monitoring and adjusting strategies as privacy landscapes shift is crucial.

Dig deeper: An approach to unlocking first-party data strategies

Balancing privacy and economic growth

Adopting privacy-by-design is a strategic move to prioritize consumer interests and uphold our role as industry leaders. By integrating privacy into operations, you can mitigate worries about data collection, bolstering consumer trust and loyalty, which are vital for economic success.

It is crucial to achieve a balance between protecting consumer privacy and driving economic growth. This approach respects individual rights, supports innovation and enables a competitive marketplace.

Ignoring privacy risks can lead to regulatory fines and undermine public trust in advertising, potentially harming consumer engagement and economic performance. Keeping up with evolving privacy standards is critical to maintaining a positive market position and ensuring long-term success.

The industry faces hurdles, notably the lack of clear regulatory guidance and technological structure to support diverse business use cases. A privacy framework that prioritizes consumer rights while enabling companies to efficiently target relevant ads to consumers and provide effective measurement and attribution is essential.

Privacy-by-design is more than a compliance requirement; it’s a commitment to aligning business practices with modern values of privacy. Implementing it requires careful thought and planning to ensure that privacy measures are deeply integrated and not hastily added. This could dilute their effectiveness, compromise consumer trust and lead to potential revenue and profitability loss.

Dig deeper: How to build customer trust through data privacy and security

A call to action: Leading the charge in consumer privacy

Integrating privacy into your operations strategically mitigates backlash and positively influences public attitudes toward advertising. Embracing privacy-by-design as a collective effort can ignite innovation and growth within our industry.

By pioneering new advertising models and technologies that prioritize consumer privacy while driving brand engagement, we can significantly enhance our industry’s standing and unlock economic opportunities.

The time has come for the advertising industry to champion consumer privacy. As highlighted in the IAB State of Data 2024 report, embracing privacy-by-design as a strategic imperative is crucial for building a more sustainable, trust-based ecosystem that benefits consumers and businesses alike.

This transformative journey requires collaboration, innovation and an unwavering commitment to putting consumer privacy at the forefront of our efforts. Let us seize this opportunity to redefine the future of advertising and pave the way for a more prosperous, privacy-conscious era.

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The post The state of data in 2024: How the ad industry is adapting to privacy regulations appeared first on MarTech.

The latest jobs in martech

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 15:49:12 +0000

Every week, we feature fresh job listings for martech-ers, so make sure to bookmark this page and check back every Friday. If you’re looking to hire, please submit your listing here — please note: We will not post listings without a salary range.

Newest jobs in martech:

Senior Lifecycle Marketing Manager, B2B @ Zillow (U.S. remote)

Salary: $103,200 – $164,800
Develop multi-channel lifecycle strategies for our B2B audiences, encompassing onboarding, engagement, retention and upsell initiatives.
Analyze data and insights to identify opportunities for optimization and segmentation, leveraging both qualitative and quantitative methods. Lead the end-to-end campaign creation process, including creative review, briefing marketing operations and final approval.

Associate Director, Data Strategy @ WPROMOTE (U.S. remote)

Salary: $105,000 – $125,000
Oversee and mentor a team of analysts who manage a shared book of business. Manage the progress of multiple analytic projects and ensure they meet deadlines.
Support internal and external stakeholders. Clearly define and manage project scope, deliverables, timelines and dependencies for data analysis, internal stakeholders and clients.

Marketing Operations Lead @ Rad AI (U.S. remote)

Salary: $125,000 – $165,000
Own the martech stack to enable strategic targeting, dynamic demand generation campaigns, performance measurement, tooling and integrated reporting across sales and marketing.
Ensure data integrity and management initiatives, including segmentation and analysis, process workflows, data uploads and data augmentation.

Integrated Marketing Manager @ Qvest (U.S. remote)

Salary: $100,000 – $120,000
Lead digital marketing campaign, focusing primarily on lead generation to drive customer acquisition, retention and upsell.
Play a pivotal role in helping to drive and scale business growth while establishing brand relevance.

Marketing Operations Lead @ Authentic8 (U.S. remote)

Salary: $113,000 – $143,000
Own the marketing automation strategy and road map in partnership with marketing and RevOps leadership and optimize the Marketo-to-SFDC journey to ensure top-to-mid funnel efficiencies and the expedited lead-to-seller handoff.
Design and manage the campaign data taxonomy, UTMs, segmentation, list management and related system design to ensure data integrity.

Senior Marketing Operations Manager @ Postman (U.S. remote)

Salary: $135,000 – $175,000
Ownership of Marketo, including processes and automation, in addition to other marketing technology tools such as Zuddl, Metadata.io, Zoominfo and others.
Manage the integration strategies and requirements with the related technologies. Optimize the lead management process including documentation of campaign execution, leads management, automation and process flows.

Engineering Manager, Martech @ Spanx (U.S. remote)

Salary: $91,000 – $139,000 (est.)
Spearhead the technological vision for our Martech division, contributing to the growth and success of Spanx
Spearhead and propose technical features to improve the workflow for your stakeholders, allowing you to showcase your expertise and innovate within your role

Director roles:

Director of Marketing Performance @ Rectangle Health (U.S. remote)

Salary: $130,000 – $140,000
Responsible for overseeing marketing GTM initiatives inclusive of owning, developing and executing comprehensive demand generation strategies that drive customer acquisition, engagement and revenue growth.
Assist with developing and leading the demand generation strategy aligned with company goals and objectives focused on churn reduction and new business growth. Design an integrated multi-channel marketing framework to deploy.

Director of SEM @ Care.com (U.S. remote)

Salary: $150,000 – $175,000
Partner with the VP of growth marketing and director of performance marketing to align with overall company and strategy. Continually monitor macro-environmental trends impacting customer behavior.
Develop and implement comprehensive paid search strategies aligned with business goals. Oversee the management and optimization of large-scale SEM campaigns across multiple lines of business and platforms.

Director, Data Intelligence @ Zeta Global (U.S. remote)

Salary: $120,000 – $160,000
Use data insights to find opportunities and recommend omnichannel strategic solutions to clients or prospects; focused on improving marketing outcomes, reaching desired business objectives and improving customer experiences.
Partner with internal stakeholders on innovative ideas, as well as generating marketing & PR support for the company.

Sr. Director, MarTech Tools @ NBCU (NYC)

Salary: $195,000 – $235,000
Own all marketing technology from a product perspective, including product strategy/definition, vendor management, and feature deployment for various centralized MarTech systems.
Serve as the subject-matter expert for the core stack; understand and track local vs. core differentiation; summarize integrations & capabilities for executive leadership, cross-functional colleagues, and third parties.

Senior Director, Growth Marketing @ Rugs USA (U.S. remote)

Salary: $175,000 – $225,000
Developing a multi-channel growth strategy that drives brand awareness, consideration, conversion and loyalty for the Rugs USA brand portfolio.
Deepening the understanding and appreciation of our customers, including: where to find them, how we can connect with them, how we gain their loyalty and where they are doing their shopping today.

Senior roles:

Senior Growth Analyst @ Brigit (U.S. remote)

Salary: $110,000 – $150,000
Help measure the effectiveness of various marketing channels and strategies through dashboards and reporting.
Design tests and measure results to evaluate new marketing and growth strategies. Explain when our results diverge from expectations so we can continuously learn.

Senior Customer Success Manager, Brands @ LiveRamp

Salary: $128,000 – $145,000 (U.S. remote)
Ensure the timely and successful delivery of our solutions according to customer needs and objectives.
Drive adoption of LiveRamp products and services, blocking and tackling barriers to adoption and success. Assist clients with day-to-day management and troubleshooting for strategic enterprise brand partners.

Product Owner, MarTech @ T. Rowe Price

Salary: $83,000 – $141,000 (U.S. remote)
Develops and maintains a clear vision for the enterprise product, including technology and internal strategic perspectives. Helps execute strategic priorities to better reach clients, maximize engagement and deliver business value.
Through leadership of a cross-functional team, which could include marketing, technology and other business unit subject matter experts, ensures products meet and/or exceed internal client satisfaction, compliance and operational efficiency.

Senior Manager, Omnichannel Operations @BeiGene (U.S. remote)

Salary: $136,000 – $181,000
Work together with Associate Director and Omnichannel Strategy and Innovation team to configure marketing technology stack, including but not limited to marketing automation platform, CMS, web analytics services and integration architecture.
Utilize Salesforce Marketing Cloud to its full potential, optimizing our engagement with healthcare professionals and patients through personalized and impactful campaigns.

Associate roles:

Marketing Operations Manager @ AKASA

Salary: $95,000 – $130,000
Execute innovative B2B marketing campaigns across various channels (email marketing, content marketing, social media, paid advertising, SEO, etc.) with compelling information that drives target audience acquisition, engagement and retention.
Build and optimize dashboards that measure results by campaign, channel and cross-company, as well as use that data to report on areas for improvement.

Digital Marketing Manager @ WIN (U.S. remote)

Salary: From $75,000
Oversee the CRM system, including data management, segmentation and automation.
Collaborate with sales and customer success teams to ensure smooth communication and information flow. Develop and implement email marketing campaigns, newsletters and customer engagement strategies.

Marketing Operations Manager @ OpenVPN (U.S. remote)

Salary: $70,000 – $90,000
Manage and optimize HubSpot landing pages, CTAs and lead-generating forms.
Build, manage, maintain and optimize any marketing-owned WordPress landing pages on the company’s website.

Research Analyst – Consumer Insights @ Dumbstruck Inc. (U.S. remote)

Salary: $60,000 – $75,000
Communicate with clients to gather information about project objectives
Develop survey questions that help achieve project objectives

Integrated Campaign Manager @ Red Canary (U.S. remote)

Salary: $85,800 – $105,000
Manage marketing campaigns that drive qualified leads, meetings and pipeline. Each integrated campaign has an annual pipeline goal.
Actively identify synergies across business units to drive scale and maturity of demand generation. Consult during the marketing planning and execution process to understand business requirements, design and develop a recommended marketing mix for each campaign, and communicate the benefits of the approach.

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The post The latest jobs in martech appeared first on MarTech.

Adobe’s AI Assistant brings tl;dr to your documents

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 15:47:47 +0000

Good news for people with too many documents and not enough time to read them: Adobe’s new AI Assistant can give you the “too long — didn’t read” (tl;dr) at the click of a button.

AI Assistant is a chatbot-like helper that analyzes documents — PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, etc. — and prompts users with recommended questions (Adobe originated the PDF format in the early 1990s). It has a custom attribution engine that provides citations for all its answers. This helps ease concerns about AI hallucinations. If you don’t feel like asking questions, it can condense key points and format them for emails, presentations, blogs and reports.

Dig deeper: How to do an AI implementation for your marketing team

It was released to all Adobe users this week after being announced and launched in beta in February, with subscription plans starting at $4.99 a month. Don’t get too comfortable with that price, though. The current price is an “early access” rate only available until June 5th.

Image via Adobe

The company also released a free, mobile version of AI Assistant in beta. This version can respond to voice commands. Adobe said the service will soon be available via extensions on Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome.

Why we care. There’s no denying the convenience of this. If I could apply it to my email inbox it would be priceless. That said, the price point will be an important factor. The $5 a month dissuaded me from using it but the efficiencies provided at the enterprise level could make it a valuable add-on.

One other issue: There’s an old saying that the devil is in the details. An AI summary will likely miss a lot of useful devils.

The post Adobe’s AI Assistant brings tl;dr to your documents appeared first on MarTech.

Adobe puts two AI tools into general release

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 15:47:47 +0000

Adobe brought more artificial intelligence power to the masses this week, putting the Adobe Express app and AI Assistant into general release.

AI Assistant. Good news for people with too many documents and not enough time, this tool can give you the tl;dr at the click of a button.

AI Assistant is a chatbot-like helper that analyzes documents — PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, etc. — and prompts users with recommended questions. It has a custom attribution engine that provides citations for all its answers. This helps ease concerns about AI hallucinations. If you don’t feel like asking questions, it can condense key points and format them for emails, presentations, blogs and reports.

Dig deeper: How to do an AI implementation for your marketing team

The company also released a free, mobile version of AI Assistant in beta. This version can respond to voice commands. Adobe said the service will also soon be available via extensions on Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome.

Adobe Express. The mobile app is a scaled-down version of the desktop Adobe Express, home to the company’s Firefly genAI tools. It was released in beta five weeks ago.

With Express users can do photo editing, video editing, graphic design and AI work all in one place instead of using separate apps. It has a text-to-image generator and can further tweak the image if desired. It also has generative fill which lets you replace people or objects in photos. Video editing features include 4K video timelines and layer timing which lets users create real-time captions with generative AI.

As we all know, AI isn’t cheap and Adobe Express’ full public release likely means some features will be locked behind a paywall. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet, but the desktop version of Adobe Express Premium tier costs $10 per month for individuals.

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As lead gen grows on social media, marketers discuss what’s working

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 13:34:45 +0000

It’s one of the oldest debates in lead generation: quantity vs. quality. Marketers who are judged by the number of leads they generate will push for quantity. But big-ticket purchases in B2C and B2B will help marketers see ROI with a small number of wins, which pushes some marketers toward quality.

Even with new channels and new tactics entering the fray on a regular basis, the debate around how to do lead gen rages on, including on social media channels.

As social media platforms combine their vast collections of first-party data with artificial intelligence and machine learning, they’re enhancing their offerings for marketers looking to connect with those ideal customers in a buying mood.

And social media is a good place to start if you’re looking for consumers who are thinking about researching and buying products.

An engaged audience interested in products and services

According to a study by TINT, more than three-quarters of consumers said they use social media to search or discover new products and vendors. More than two-thirds of consumers say they made a purchase as a result of something they saw on social media.

These purchase-minded consumers are also spending a great deal of time on social media. According to Statista, average daily social media usage worldwide was 143 minutes per day, as of 2024, or about 2.5 hours.

Naturally, marketing leaders are taking note of the connection between social media and buying behavior. Data from Deloitte, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association (AMA) found spending on social media would hit its highest level since the height of the COVID pandemic in the 12 months following August 2023.

Marketers interested in tapping into social have a familiar decision to make regarding tactics. They can choose from brand awareness, driving traffic and collecting leads.

“Our lead generation products have evolved over the years,” said Becky Bui, Senior Director of North American Small Business Sales at Meta. “In 2016, they were focused on high-volume, low-cost leads. Since then, we’ve invested in helping our customers with quality.”

Meta saw 16.6% year-over-year growth for lead ad submissions in 2023 compared to 2022. There were more than 1.1 billion lead ad submissions globally during 2023, marking the first time Meta surpassed 1 billion lead ad submissions in a year.

Social media platforms like Meta are, of course, rich in data. And they already have much of the information that advertisers request from prospects in a lead gen form. Meta’s flagship lead gen product is instant forms, which sit within Facebook and Instagram. The forms automatically fill in the reader’s information when it loads and the lead is generated on the Meta platform, instead of sending the prospect off to a website.

An instant form lead gen ad. Image courtesy of Meta.

When a visitor has to visit an advertiser’s website to complete a form, Meta usually sees a 20% dropoff in conversions. In a test comparing instant forms to website forms optimized for website conversions, Meta found instant forms drove 20% lower cost-per-qualified-lead (CPQL) than website forms.

Another advantage of lead gen forms on social platforms is the ease of edits. Marketers who rely on developers to make website changes can’t react quickly when they want to change lead form questions or make visual changes. Marketers are able to quickly and easily change their instant forms running on Meta properties.

Lead generation is often synonymous with the B2B sector in modern marketing, but big-ticket items in the B2C space use similar tactics to B2B. These purchases include cars and home improvement services.

Lauren Petrullo is the CEO and founder of marketing agency Mongoose Media LLC. She runs lead generation campaigns on Meta’s platforms to generate very high quality leads for a customer in the home improvement industry. Most notably, her customer was able to close a $24,000 deal in just six days using lead generation on Meta properties.

Petrullo ran PPC ads on search platforms for years, but she’s shifting her agency’s strategy.

“Since October-November [2023], across local and national campaigns, we’ve been sunsetting search ads for forms,” she told MarTech.

Petrullo also finds lead gen forms on social media allow her and her team to ask really personal questions. For a campaign for a travel agency, for example, she asked prospects about their travel plans. Conditional logic can also be used to control the questions, which helps identify the right prospect for a campaign.

More questions? More personal questions? Isn’t this digital marketing heresy?

“Every business is different,” Meta’s Bui told MarTech. “Some businesses need to reduce friction.”

Petrullo’s agency isn’t one of them.

“We added as much friction as possible,” she said. “We get better leads, more serious leads. We wanted to get a $200 lead, but the cost is $20.”

While longer lead generation forms might sink a B2B campaign, in a B2C setting on social media, they might just match the mood of the prospect.

“I would argue social media is social first,” Petrullo said. “They’re looking to have a conversation. People share on Instagram or Facebook what they want others to know about them.”

If there’s a downside to instant forms that pre-populate with information and are nearly ready to submit, it might be that they are too instant.

“We typically stay away from instant forms because they are too easy for people to fill out by mistake and will lead to poor lead quality,” said Menachem Ani, a Search Engine Land contributor and the founder of JXT Group, an agency specializing in multi-channel online advertising. ”Sometimes we’ll use instant forms and add qualifying questions. But we’ll mostly drive traffic to a landing page.”

Ani told MarTech his challenge with lead generation campaigns on Meta is getting good quality leads, and he’s found it to be a matter of messaging and audience targeting. For creative, Ani’s team will use dynamic creative, which takes multiple media assets and ad components and combines them to create campaign ads, for lower-budget campaigns. For higher-budget campaigns, they will create individual ad units.

Ani’s lead gen efforts focus primarily on Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising and Meta.

Dig deeper: A marketer’s guide to Reddit

The B2B buying process is often much more complicated, and much longer than B2C. This impacts the way marketers think about lead generation in general.

“There’s more to running lead gen on social media than what you do on social media,” said Laura Schiele. Schiele is a past speaker at The MarTech Conference, a contributor to Search Engine Land and Head of Paid Acquisition at Jordan Digital Marketing.

Among the things Shiele says marketers need to consider are the goal of the lead and what happens once they fill out the form. It’s a common mistake to think someone who fills out a form in B2B is sales ready. Schiele calls this assumption “misalignment.”

Dig deeper: LinkedIn introduces CTV ads for B2B campaigns

Schiele and her team use lead forms with qualifying questions to weed out irrelevant leads. They’ve also seen success using some of Meta’s Advantage+ features, which use machine learning to optimize campaigns and creative for advertisers.

But B2B prospects often need a great deal of education because of the cost and complexity of the purchases and because they’re not making the decisions alone. There’s a whole group of people, often including leadership, that need to weigh in.

For that reasons, Schiele likes to use social media platforms as a distribution channel for content, and then re-market to the audience on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook with an offer for a demo. This approach provides more value than simply gating the content with a form.

“The revenue return on leads from a whitepaper is pretty low,” Schiele told MarTech.

Speaking of LinkedIn, marketers need to recognize that it’s a completely different beast from other social platforms.

“We’ve come into accounts spending a bunch of money [on LinkedIn] and not getting any demos,” Schiele said.

The problem, she said, is often the creative, which on LinkedIn needs to be thought out. Schiele’s team sees success with video ads and carousel ads on LinkedIn. As for re-marketing to LinkedIn members on Facebook, Schiele said it works some of the time, but if it isn’t working, move on.

“If re-marketing isn’t getting too much success, I don’t recommend testing it too much,” she said.

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Comarch Holds New Webinar – Top Loyalty Trends: Industry-Specific Ideas 2024 by Comarch

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 10:47:36 +0000

Studies show that loyal customers are responsible for as much as 65% of all brand purchases. In turbulent economic times, when consumers become warier with every penny they spend and brands are increasingly desperate to keep the income flowing, loyalty programs play a pivotal role in fostering retention and increased spending.

But creating a loyalty program that works is not easy – and it’s certainly challenging in 2024 when customers’ priorities are constantly shifting. To find out what they are right now, join Comarch’s upcoming webinar, “Top Loyalty Trends: Industry-Specific Ideas 2024.”

It’s your chance to engage in a discussion with loyalty experts and discover:

How to boost your loyalty program?
What do modern customers (Society 5.0) look for in a brand?
How do you make sure your loyalty program keeps up with the growing sustainability needs?
What are the top loyalty trends in industries such as retail, fuel, travel, and others?
How will the end of the third-party cookies affect loyalty solutions?
How to leverage new technologies and the development of AI to build loyalty?

The webinar will be based on the expertise and experience of Aurelie Balaes (Account Director, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions), Hadie Perkas (CEO and Founder, The Gift Club, The BIG Handshake, The European Loyalty Association), Joanna Witsch (Head of Loyalty Product & Operations, Alshaya Group) and Wojciech Kempny (Consulting Director, Comarch).

Combining their respective knowledge, the speakers will analyze the current state of the loyalty industry and share their ideas on how to make your loyalty program ready for Society 5.0.

Want to learn what they are?

Sign up for HERE to join the conversation on May 7^th, 2024, at 4:00 PM (CEST).

The post Comarch Holds New Webinar – Top Loyalty Trends: Industry-Specific Ideas 2024 appeared first on MarTech.

Comarch holds new webinar – Top loyalty trends: Industry-specific ideas 2024 by Comarch

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 10:47:36 +0000

It’s your chance to engage in a discussion with loyalty experts and discover:

How to boost your loyalty program?
What do modern customers (Society 5.0) look for in a brand?
How do you make sure your loyalty program keeps up with the growing sustainability needs?
What are the top loyalty trends in industries such as retail, fuel, travel, and others?
How will the end of the third-party cookies affect loyalty solutions?
How to leverage new technologies and the development of AI to build loyalty?

Combining their respective knowledge, the speakers will analyze the current state of the loyalty industry and share their ideas on how to make your loyalty program ready for Society 5.0.

Want to learn what they are?

Sign up for HERE to join the conversation on May 7^th, 2024, at 4:00 PM (CEST).

The post Comarch holds new webinar – Top loyalty trends: Industry-specific ideas 2024 appeared first on MarTech.

Why the shift from ‘conversions’ to ‘key events’ in GA4 is a game-changer

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 18:44:56 +0000

The recent shift from “conversions” to “key events” in (GA4) represents a significant change that digital marketers, especially SEO professionals, need to understand and act on.

This article explores the implications of this change and insights on how to leverage it to elevate your marketing reporting.

Understanding key events in GA4

On March 21, I got an email from a former student who said he’d logged into Google Analytics 4 (GA4) that morning and saw, “Analytics conversions have been renamed key events.”

Google explained:

“To distinguish conversions in Google Analytics from those in Google Ads, Analytics conversions are now called key events. You don’t need to take any action on your existing setup. Key events are created and reported like previous conversions in Google Analytics.”

When he clicked the arrow for more information, he learned:

“Key events in Google Analytics measure the interactions most important to your business. For example, you could mark an important event like a purchase or newsletter subscription as a key event. This will appear as a key event metric in Analytics reports.”

And when he clicked on the next arrow, he saw a summary of the updates:

“An event measures a specific behavioral interaction on your website or app.

“A key event is an event that you mark as important to your business. Key events appear in Analytics reports but aren’t directly eligible for reporting or bidding in Google Ads.”

Since he’d taken my online course on GA4, my former student asked me, “How will the change to key events impact my metrics and reporting? And is there anything I need to be doing?”

I started thinking about all the other subtle name changes that Google engineers had made to Universal Analytics (UA), which had signaled significant paradigm shifts in GA4:

UA used data based on sessions; GA4 uses data based on events.
UA measured bounce rate; GA4 measures engagement rate.
UA used cookies; GA4 uses modeling to estimate key events.
UA let you set up to 20 goals; GA4 lets you mark up to 30 key events.
UA provided data; GA4 automatically provides anomaly detection.
UA reported what users did; GA4 generates predictive insights.
UA used last-click attribution; GA4 uses data-driven attribution.

That’s when I realized that the shift from conversions to key events in GA4 is a game-changer.

This is not only true for SEO specialists who currently use website traffic from organic search to measure their results, but is also the case for other marketing professionals, who could use website traffic from referral, organic social or other default channels to measure their contribution to the success of their company or clients.

What this change means

Let’s start with the impact that measuring key events can have on the career path of SEOs. Many SEOs use Search Console to measure organic search traffic. And who can blame them?

Organic search is responsible for 53% of all website traffic, while paid search is responsible for 15%, per a BrightEdge study. (This study included thousands of domains and tens of billions of sessions, though it excluded direct traffic.)

Unfortunately, providing “53% of all website traffic” doesn’t appear to be highly valued by the executives in the C-suite at more organizations that you can shake a stick at. If it were, then you’d see a lot more VPs of SEO, wouldn’t you?

So, what is highly valued by the C-suite? Well, it differs by organization. But most executives are focused on business objectives like “raise brand awareness,” “generate leads” or “drive online sales.”

That’s why Google added the Business Objectives collection to GA4 in June 2023. However, the latest shift from conversions to key events gives SEOs a new opportunity to measure what matters.

Aligning with your CMO and the rest of the C-suite

Before this latest shift, it was possible to measure “micro conversions.”

But the term “micro conversions” tended to remind their executives that these small steps fell short of “macro conversions,” which are the important interactions that directly impact the success of their business.

However, “key events” sound much more valuable than “micro conversions.” If you disagree, then ask yourself this question: Would you rather tell your executives that you will be providing “sushi” or “cold, dead, raw fish” at their next meeting?

Words matter.

So, if your CMO is focused on raising brand awareness at your B2C company, then you should start reporting how many organic search users go on to:

Scroll to 90% of a blog post or article.
Play at least 50% of a product video.
Complete a tutorial.

If your CRO is focused on generating leads at your B2B company, then you should kick off a new set of reports on the number of organic search users who go on to:

Download a white paper.
Subscribe to a newsletter.
Complete a registration form.

And if your CEO is focused on driving online sales at your ecommerce, then you should begin reporting the percentage of organic search users who go on to:

Begin the checkout process.
Add merchandise to the shopping cart.
Make a purchase.

This is particularly true if you can assign a default monetary value to a key event in GA4.

Assigning monetary value to key events

Now, purchase events already have value and currency parameters. But you can add the same parameters to any other key event. Just calculate the economic value of a key event based on how often the people who take this important action go on to become customers later.

For example, if 10% of the people who sign up for a newsletter go on to become customers and your average transaction is $500, then you can associate $50 (10% of $500) as the monetary value of this key event.

If you want to see this for yourself, then go to the Google Analytics demo account. Just click on the Google Analytics 4 property: Google Merchandise Store (web data) and then ask yourself this question: Would you rather tell your executives that organic search provided “27,657 users,” “42,596 key events” or “$61,370 in revenue” over the last 90 days?

I know the revenue number above looks like “small change,” but the most popular item purchased from the Google Merchandise Store in the last 90 days was a “Google Cloud Sticker,” which cost $1.25. So, you may provide your company or clients with significantly more economic value.

Dig deeper: The state of GA4, one year after the big migration

Adopting key events beyond SEO

SEOs aren’t the only ones who can adopt key events and revenue as key performance indicators (KPIs).

For example, if you scroll down the Google Merchandise Store data in GA4, then you’ll see the “referral” channel, which is an innovative way to measure digital PR, delivered 5,987 users, 12,260 key events and $10,210 in revenue over the last 90 days.

The “organic social” channel, which offers a new way to measure social media marketing, delivered 1,920 users, 4,952 key events and $5,797 in total revenue over the same period.

This brings us to direct traffic, also known as “dark traffic.”

Back in 2014, an “experiment” by Groupon found that up to 60% of “direct” traffic was actually organic search traffic.

In 2023, a large portion of traffic marked as “direct” in Google Analytics was likely sent by “dark social” networks like TikTok, Slack, Discord, Mastodon and WhatsApp, according to research by SparkToro. (Disclosure: I was one of about 100 experiment participants recruited to conduct this experiment.)

So, would it be a “career-damaging move” to ask an executive to discuss the probable sources of direct traffic?

Well, you know the “highest paid person’s opinion” in your office better than I do. But I’d bet dollars to donuts that he or she would welcome such a discussion – especially if it takes place before his or her next meeting with other members of the C-suite.

And while you will want to use your own data from GA4, here’s what the Google Analytics demo account will show you:

The “direct” channel provided 75,788 users, 91,304 key events and $189,918 in revenue over the last 90 days.
That makes it almost 2.5 times more valuable than the organic search, referral and organic social channels put together.

However, only a very small percentage of these users went to the home page of the Google Merchandise Store.

The overwhelming majority went to a wide variety of landing pages, including ones for stationery, new products, sale (clearance) items, men’s and unisex apparel and drinkware and bags (lifestyle) merchandise.

So, where did all these people discover the relatively long URLs for the plethora of landing pages?

Here’s my scientific, wild-ass guess: It was a two-step process.

Step 1: A small group of opinion leaders discovered a page about a specific product using organic search, news articles or social media posts.
Step 2: This small group copied and pasted links to these pages – along with their opinion of the product – in thousands of emails, text messages or Zoom chats to a larger group of their friends, family and colleagues.

And voila! You get a ton of so-called direct traffic to a wide variety of landing pages on the Google Merchandise Store’s website that’s hard to track directly.

Now, I didn’t make up this two-step flow model of communication. According to an article written by Monica Postelnicu and fact-checked by the editors of Encyclopedia Britannica:

“The two-step flow model was formulated in 1948 by Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet in the book The People’s Choice, after research into voters’ decision-making processes during the 1940 U.S. presidential election.”

I think it offers a tested and validated model of what is probably happening today.

Test and prepare for the ‘searchquake’

Even if you haven’t tested or validated it yet, it’s a fairly smart move to ask an executive to discuss the probable sources of direct traffic – especially if you also recommend conducting some tests using Google’s campaign URL builder tool, which enables you to easily add campaign parameters to URLs so you can measure your custom campaigns in GA4.

You should have this conversation and conduct these tests sooner, rather than later. Why?

Because a seismic change is coming in 2024 and those who can measure the quality as well as the quantity of organic search, referral and organic social traffic will be in a stronger position to survive – and thrive.

In an article entitled, “Google SGE a top threat to brand and product terms, study finds,” Danny Goodwin of Search Engine Land wrote:

“You should expect to see ‘some erosion of current traffic levels’ from brand-related terms as a result of Google’s Search Generative Experience, according to a new Authoritas analysis.”

So, how much erosion are we talking about?

Well, Authoritas found Google SGE displayed for 91.4% of all search queries. Another study by BrightEdge found 84% of search queries will include Generative AI when SGE is fully deployed by Google.

So, imagine that you’re living on the brink of the verge of the edge of the San Andreas Fault. You’d probably take some prudent precautions to prepare for the upcoming “searchquake.” And you’d almost certainly want to do more than hang your pictures with two nails instead of one.

The sooner you start measuring key events, the better. As Sun-Tzu observed, “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”

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Adtech’s approaches to greener marketing

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 18:21:26 +0000

Left to right: Kellyanne Perez-Vera, Mastercard; Matthew Cullinen, HSBC Bank; and Solitaire Townsend from agency Futerra. Image: Green Media Summit.

The second-annual Green Media Summit at New York’s Javits Center last week showed the promise of greener pastures for marketers and customers concerned about harmful business practices overheating the planet. Leaders in the adtech industry gathered to discuss new tools and strategies that lead to more sustainable digital advertising.

“This year, our aim was to place a strong emphasis on actionable insights at the core of our discussions,” said Benoit Skinazi, CMO at Sharethrough, the programmatic adtech company hosting the event. “We were fortunate to feature industry leaders, climate experts, and storytellers who generously shared their experiences and recommendations for building a greener media ecosystem.”

Why we care. Clearly, there’s a disconnect between environmentally conscious consumers who want to buy green and stakeholders who think “ESG is a four-letter word.” Implementing a sustainable adtech solution is part of adopting a larger environmental mission that brands can communicate proudly to customers. But these improvements have to make business sense as well.

“For broader adoption of environmentally friendly digital advertising, it is crucial to promote the tangible benefits of green media products more vigorously,” Skinazi said. “As Martin Brian from IPG has aptly put it, we need to demonstrate that ‘purpose and profits’ are indeed compatible.”

Green adtech tool. At the summit, sustainable adtech company Scope3 introduced the GMP+ green media offering. By cutting out wasteful ads, it aims to bring efficiency to the ad supply chain, saving dollars and emissions for advertisers.

GMP+ is a standardized media offering that protects advertisers from wasteful programmatic ad placements. Ads that load outside the viewable area of a browser or reload frequently are examples of the digital ads GMP+ helps advertisers avoid because they waste money and increase the advertiser’s carbon footprint.

Flagging these ads is possible because of the Global Placement ID (GPID) standard. Sharethrough is the first adtech partner to make GMP+ available to media buyers and publishers through its programmatic platform.

The GMP+ improves on a previous iteration that reduced emissions by 25% by cutting out high-emission websites from the ad supply chain.

“[GMP+] creates a win-win situation,” said Skinazi. “It enables advertisers to place their ads on higher-quality inventory that is more efficient and has a lower carbon footprint. This approach not only delivers improved performance but also further reduces the environmental impact of advertisements.

Mastercard making team green. The adtech supply chain is part of a larger system that companies can impact by changing how they do business. Mastercard took steps to align internal ESG goals with employee performance. In 2021 they implemented an ESG bonus for executives. In 2022 they expanded the initiative by tying ESG goals to the performance score for all employees, including those in marketing.

“Sustainability is no longer a nice-to-have,” said Kellyanne Perez-Vera, sustainability manager, global media at Mastercard. “It is something that, going forward, everybody is going to be required to do because it’s the right thing to do…From an employee perspective, they can see that their company is tying compensation and goals and everything to this. The company morale was super happy and everyone is really engaged.”

HSBC Bank aligning green operations with portfolio. HSBC Bank adopted a net-zero approach not only internally but by measuring the emissions of its investments as well. The company pledged its operations will be net zero by 2030, and its portfolio by 2050.

To get there, HSBC Bank monitors “scope 3” emissions, which are created by the company’s value chain and not just the company itself. (The company Scope3’s name is a nod to this term.)

“Our operations are fairly lean,” said Matthew Cullinen, HSBC Bank’s VP of global sustainability. “For us as a bank, our scope 3 emissions are finance emissions. So all your emissions as clients, that’s our scope 3 emissions, as well as our 20,000 suppliers for various things we purchase. Fifty percent of our energy now comes from renewables. We have a target of 90% by 2025 which is challenging, but we’re well on our way to achieving that.”

Curbing marketing emissions. “We’re a financial services company so our scope 3 initiatives aren’t necessarily [what they would be for] consumer packaged goods, but that still doesn’t stop us,” said Mastercard’s Perez-Vera. “We do see that the bulk of our emissions comes from marketing and we are tackling that head-on. You have to dive in and do the best you can with the tools and information you have.”

She added: “When you really break out carbon emissions [in marketing], everything has a carbon footprint. Your media team has to get to work, your transportation has a carbon footprint. Going into the building in which you have a strategic meeting, lighting that building and that specific room, has a carbon footprint. So, what we’re doing as best as possible is vetting what tools, what products, what teams can help us in actually reducing, which can be tricky. And yes, digital is a hotspot, so it’s being intentional about our media and our production shoots to ensure that we are essentially being as optimal as possible.”

Green venue. The Green Media Summit was held in the Pavilion on the Farm at the Javits Center. The venue sits by the largest green roof in New York state, housing a one-acre working farm and 6.75 green acres total.

Dig deeper: Adtech’s climate change: Can marketing cool the planet?

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AI-powered martech releases and news: April 18

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 17:19:37 +0000

Try not to be too shocked: Businesses continue to deploy chatbots knowing they can give false answers, according to The Washington Post.

It gave the example of tech entrepreneur Vivek Wadwha asking WhatsApp’s new AI “who he was, then what he’s famous for, and finally what he’s ‘infamous’ for. … In response to the last question, the bot described a 2014 blog post accusing Wadhwa of plagiarism, complete with a byline, date and formal citation. As you may have guessed at this point, the blog post doesn’t exist.”

They are a “work in progress,” the companies say. User beware!

Now, here are this week’s AI-powered martech releases and news:

Overcast HQ added AI-powered automated video metadata tagging and conversational search capabilities.
Pipedrive has five AI tools to speed tasks across sales, simplify communication and help teams effectively close more deals. Features include summarizing long email threads, helping draft emails, finding patterns to recommend high-potential deals.
PubMatic and GroupM have partnered on a product with cohort-based modeling capabilities for advertisers. It leverages a distributed AI model to provide scaled targeting across multiple publishers simultaneously, ensuring privacy-first ad buying at scale.
CommentSold’s AI ClipHero is an AI-powered shoppable video generator for live sellers that automatically generates social-ready, platform-optimized content from live video replays with a single click.
Adjust’s InSight is a mobile analytics solution. Features include synthetic control groups that eliminate data variables; Incremental models that consider many external variables like seasonality; and the ability to run multiple data experiments and get results within minutes.
Impact Media is an AI-powered media buying platform billing clients only when a display ad is seen for one second or a video ad for three seconds. The products will roll out to CTV and audio.
Atom.com (nee Squadhelp) has added AI-powered features to its naming and branding solution. These include trained AI personas to analyze domain names at scale using various demographic and aspiration trends; generating names based on bigger concepts like emotion or style and not just industry keywords; and AI-based brand alignment tools.
Kore.ai’s XO V11.0 combines SLMs, LLMs, GenAI and CAI into one solution to drive business value at scale for enterprises. It simplifies building and managing intelligent virtual assistants, optimizes search capabilities, improves transitions from automated services to human agents, and assists with contact center or help desk management.
Pega’s Pega GenAI coach is a generative AI-powered chatbot to help people use Pega’s products. It can also access information synthesized by Pega GenAI Knowledge Buddy to bring relevant enterprise knowledge directly to users as they work on cases.
Stravito’s Stravito Assistant prompts agents to ask follow-up and clarifying questions in hope of delivering useful and applicable information. Each response is footnoted throughout, so users can click through to the source material for more details. Responses can also be sorted by time and location to reflect the dynamic nature of insights and how they can vary by region.
Button’s Button for Publishers uses AI to maximize publisher revenue from commerce partnerships by identifying the best path to conversion.
Zendesk’s AI agents for workflow automation, agent copilot, workforce management and quality assurance. Capabilities include: Personalized intents to give agents an understanding of customer needs to deliver better answers; simple ways to create robust knowledge bases and use generative search; and reporting to track and measure KPIs and AI predictions.

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Decoding generative AI: Top LLMs and the app ecosystems they support

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 16:27:17 +0000

I’ve been writing about marketing tools for over a decade, and some of my earliest published articles were about the new breed of social media monitoring tools. Looking at those pieces today, two insights struck me:

The basic approach and strategy of selecting technology tools to help us with marketing tasks hasn’t changed much (the good news).
Everything else has changed dramatically (the not-so-good news).

Instead of creating a list of hundreds of AI marketing tools that may (or may not) be around in a few months, I hope to arm you with the foundational knowledge to select AI tools strategically well into the future. I’ll start with what hasn’t changed and provide an overview of what I consider a strategic approach to AI tool selection.

Once the basics are out of the way, I’ll provide my thoughts on how these new AI tools are total disrupters and explain the large language model (LLM) and app ecosystem. Finally, I’ll conclude with a guide to the most popular and powerful AI models available today, along with my short list of AI marketing tools worth paying for.

A strategic approach

I recommend answering the following questions before investing in any AI tools:

Identify the opportunity. What does your business need to do with AI? Which marketing tasks could benefit from the help of AI tools?
Available resources. What’s your budget?
Target users. Which roles within your organization work on the tasks identified and who needs access to the AI tools?
KPIs. How will you measure the success of your AI tools to positively impact the completion of these tasks?
Support. What type of customer support are you looking for?
Integrations. Do you need your AI tool to integrate with other tools like your CRM, CMS, Google Analytics, etc.?
Desired outputs. Do the results need to be exportable? In which formats?
Historical data. How long do you need to archive the information?

Thoughtfully answering these questions will set you and your team up for success when selecting the best approach to your AI toolset. For a more in-depth approach to building an AI strategy, check out my article, “Decoding generative AI: How to build a basic genAI strategy for your marketing organization.”

LLMs and the app ecosystem they support

Back in the good old days, dozens of social media listening tools sprung up in hopes of helping marketers tackle the challenge of social media marketing. The market was relatively stable for years, and one of the tools I wrote about in 2013 is still around today.

However, many of the best third-party tools were eventually acquired by companies like Adobe and Salesforce, which were eager to build a “one and done” martech stack for their clients. The sad reality was that most of those new tools didn’t survive.

Today, instead of dozens of third-party AI tools or apps, there are thousands, with more cropping up daily. I predict many of these won’t be around long, but there is one thing most have in common: the underlying LLM that powers their capabilities.

This basic chart was created using a community GPT as part of ChatGPT’s pro subscription called AI Diagram Designer: Smart Mind Map & Chart Maker. While it did an astounding job building a basic chart from text, I spent way too long tweaking it and the original output was likely more compelling, shown below. This is a great example of how formerly text-based GPT’s are beginning to generate complex visuals.

For this reason, I advise marketers to interface directly with these powerful models and cut out the middleman. I repeatedly get much better results when I go directly to ChatGPT (one of the most popular and powerful LLMs available) with a thoughtful prompt instead of paying for a third-party tool.

The one exception would be proprietary AI tools that output visuals and text specifically for marketing purposes. These third-party tools comprise the core of my AI tool shortlist. While they are immensely helpful, their lifespan is likely limited as their capabilities will eventually be integrated (or acquired) into tools we already use.

One and done? A comparison of major LLMs

If I had to choose only one AI tool, it would be OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It houses one of the best conversational AI models, one of the best image generators (DALL-E 3) and a ground-breaking video generation tool called SORA. A close second would be Microsoft’s Copilot which is built using OpenAI’s technology.

However, the AI landscape is shifting rapidly, and other LLMs are hot on the heels of OpenAI and ChatGPT. Below, I outline the major LLMs on the market, their primary uses and the pricing information available.

1. OpenAI GPT Models: ChatGPT 3.5 vs. 4.0

Variants: Ada, Babbage, Curie, Davinci.
Capabilities:
- ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0: Advanced conversational abilities based on datasets up to September 2021.
Cost: OpenAI offers subscription plans through the ChatGPT Plus service, which costs $20 per month. This provides general usage priority, including faster response times and priority access to new features and improvements.
Use cases: Enhanced conversational agents, sophisticated content generation and educational applications.
Learn more: OpenAI pricing

2. Google Gemini Models

Capabilities: Handles text, image and audio data, with advanced reasoning and multimodal integration.
Cost: Google does not publicly list specific subscription pricing for Gemini models, as access tends to be bespoke and integrated within Google Cloud services.
Use cases: Advanced research, complex reasoning and multimodal applications.
Learn more: Google Cloud.

3. Amazon Q

Capabilities: Optimized for use within AWS, leveraging 17 years of AWS data. If you sell on Amazon, you are likely already seeing advanced AI capabilities built into the platform.
Cost: Amazon Q’s pricing details are not widely published as it integrates deeply with AWS services. Costs are likely based on usage and the AWS infrastructure utilized.
Use cases: Enterprise systems, AWS optimization.
Learn more: AWS AI Services.

5. Anthropic Claude

Capabilities: Designed for safety and scalability, focusing on generating truthful content.
Cost: Anthropic does not publicly list specific subscription pricing; access is typically part of a tailored enterprise agreement.
Use cases: Content moderation, safer internet interactions.
Learn more: Anthropic.

6. Meta LLaMA

Capabilities: Advanced natural language understanding and generation.
Cost: Open-source, available for research use without commercial restrictions, unlike its predecessors.
Use cases: Research, education, potentially integrating into consumer products for language tasks.
Learn more: Meta AI.

My shortlist and third-party apps

So, once you establish a direct relationship with your preferred LLM, it may be time to consider which specialty apps might be worth the investment. This depends on the task you want the AI machine to complete. (See the “Strategic approach” section above.) But I do have a few questions to answer when considering any third-party AI tool:

Which LLM does the tool use? Often, this isn’t publicly available, but you can always ask.
Are the results as good as ChatGPT and/or Copilot? If the tool only outputs text, compare the results side-by-side.
What is the knowledge level of the tool user? These apps can be a great fit for those who aren’t tech-savvy and need a simple solution for a specific task.

After months of evaluating many of the third-party AI tools available and spending countless dollars on monthly subscriptions, here’s the list of tools that I’m still paying for:

OpenAI Pro ($20 monthly): Used for most text-based projects.
Copilot Pro ($20 monthly): Used for text and image combo projects.
Canva ($15 monthly): Used for comped images that require specific text overlay.
AIPRM Pro ($30 monthly): Used to store my own prompts and GPT’s, allowing me to share them with specific teams.

While not on my list, I want to mention a few tools I would use if my current role required them.

AdCreative.ai: This tool does a phenomenal job crafting visuals and text for digital ads. If you need to build an endless supply of fresh digital ad content, this platform will save you a ton of time and perhaps even improve campaign results.
GlossAI.co: This platform helps you craft video shorts, ebooks, blog posts, and carousels from your long-form video content. The tool uses AI to craft chapters, key moments and even a sizzle reel for any long-form video. You can instantly add captions, stickers, animated elements and audio tracks, then download the final version as an MP4. This tool is a must-have for teams with hours and hours of talking head videos, event videos, live stream content and dry educational footage they need to tease on social media. I have used this tool to help create my AI Marketing Revolution Challenge on YouTube, which has saved many editing hours.

Use AI or die?

Eventually, all our standard marketing tools will house AI capabilities. I firmly believe all businesses need to leverage AI for their purposes and to enhance their offerings to customers and employees. If they stand on the sidelines too long, they will eventually become completely irrelevant.

The same can be said for us merry marketers, we’re only as good as our tools. Trying to work without the help of AI is like trying to build a house without power tools. You might get there, but it’ll take you a lot longer and the result will be questionable.

While we rely on our tools, it’s up to us to use them wisely. AI is simply a knowledge machine, and there’s an enormous difference between knowledge and wisdom. As humans, we bring the wisdom.

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What is marketing work management?

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Marketing work management platforms help marketing leaders and their teams structure their day-to-day work to meet their goals on deadline and within budget constraints, all while managing resources and facilitating communication and collaboration. Functions may include task assignments, time tracking, budgeting, team communication and file sharing, among others.

Before the pandemic, many marketers had already been accustomed to working on initiatives that involved collaboration with people outside their own offices since many brands operate across regions or around the globe. Additionally, marketing projects — whether they’re campaigns or websites or whitepapers or videos — regularly involve working with outside resources, whether it’s an agency or a contract designer or photographer.

All of that has heightened the need for marketing work management software, which documents and optimizes the processes, workflows and projects undertaken by digital marketers, often integrating with other systems like digital asset management (DAM) or creative suites.

For various reasons, marketing is an ideal use case for these tools.

Are your workflows running you, or is your team in control of them? Explore the platforms essential to marketing work management in the latest edition of this MarTech Intelligence Report.

Click here to download!

Benefits of marketing work management tools

Marketing leaders face increasing and complex workload challenges. Enterprise marketing work management tools can offer significant benefits that help marketers get a handle on their work and better communicate with colleagues, including the following:

More efficient management of global operations. Marketing work management tools can help distributed employees coordinate with each other, allowing for accountability and consistency across markets. Some tools specifically support collaboration and approval processes geared toward marketing collateral.
Ease and transparency of reporting. Though it’s possible to use manually updated spreadsheets to manage projects, they don’t offer the native reports and dashboards provided by marketing work management tools. Many of these platforms include highly customized reporting capabilities that are widget- and wizard-driven to make reporting faster and easier. These reports are often shareable and can be exposed to executives at the VP- and C-levels, giving all stakeholders a view of progress across multiple initiatives.
Visualizations that aid in planning and resource allocation. Most marketing work management tools provide visualizations that allow marketers to see numerous projects at a glance, enabling them to adjust schedules or tasks as necessary to avoid overtaxing, or underutilizing, resources.
Improved coordination with clients and other stakeholders. Many marketing work management platforms allow “guest” access or other flexible permission structures that enable the sharing of some information while other aspects are hidden. This is especially helpful for marketers working at agencies or as outside consultants because they can document what they need to within the tool, without being concerned about appearing less than professional when the client logs in and sees their own view.
Digital asset management and file sharing. Most marketing work management tools allow users to upload files or link to them in cloud storage, serving as something of a DAM “lite.” Some are even integrated with a full-fledged DAM or creative suite, allowing creatives developing marketing assets to do their work, and obtain reviews and approvals, while also tracking the status of work for other stakeholders.
More seamless communication with development team and other groups. Digital marketing initiatives often include a technological aspect that calls for the talent of developers. When marketers and developers are in different functional departments, but utilize the same marketing work management tool, their work together runs with fewer hitches. The same applies for any other department with which marketing interfaces.
Easier tracking of billable hours and human resource management. Many marketing work management platforms track the time that has elapsed while an assignee works on a task, enabling agency account managers to easily tally up the number of hours spent on a particular client’s projects. This feature can also help managers keep an eye on employee productivity levels.
Clear accountability that keeps tasks from slipping through the cracks. The heart of most marketing work management tools is some version of a to-do list where discrete tasks can be assigned to the person or group that is responsible for accomplishing it. By using dependencies functionality and tracking these tasks, managers can eliminate hold-ups and miscommunication about what is expected.
Automation of repetitive tasks. Many marketing work management platforms include the creation of templates or reproducible sets of tasks that can help avoid tedious repetition. If an agency has an onboarding process, or a regular check-up process, that it follows with each one of its clients, a manager can create the structure for that process once and re-use it every time the use case arises. Additionally, some tools include recurring tasks that can be used to document processes that occur at regular intervals.

Dig deeper: Questions to ask marketing work management vendors

Relationship with agile marketing

To keep up with the pace of change, some marketing organizations have adopted agile marketing, a philosophy and workflow pioneered by software developers. Though it’s been around for a while now, the pivot to agile marketing workflows appears to be accelerating.

The practice of agile marketing doesn’t require any particular software, but marketers adopting this methodology are likely looking for tools that mesh with their new philosophy. Many marketing work management vendors offer reports and interfaces geared for agile, such as Kanban boards and a place to input backlog items.

Catch up on the Agile Marketing Navigator series!

Complexity is driving the adoption of these solutions

The complexity of marketing work itself has grown exponentially. What used to be a face-to-face office meeting is now more likely to be multiple conversations over email, chat tools and video calls. A recent Salesforce State of Marketing survey found that marketers have adopted an average of four collaboration technologies to facilitate digital-first communication and unify their global marketing teams. Even so, it’s become increasingly difficult for marketing managers to track the status of various tasks and campaigns: 69% of marketers say it’s harder to collaborate now than before the pandemic, according to the State of Marketing survey.

Such factors have heightened the need for marketing work management platforms, which document and optimize the processes, workflows and projects undertaken by digital marketers, often integrating with other systems like digital asset management (DAM) or creative suites. In an article called “The ‘how’ of transformation,” McKinsey analysts noted that “70% of complex, large-scale change programs don’t reach their stated goals.” One part of the remedy, they concluded, is the adoption of more sophisticated work management tools.

Interest in marketing work management solutions is also being spurred by a desire to keep digital transformation initiatives on track by providing transparency and accountability, and helping marketing managers, as well as C-level executives, keep work on track whether employees are at home or in the office.

Dig deeper: Does your organization need marketing work management?

Marketing work management will be impacted by AI

How and where people work has shifted dramatically in the past several years, with remote and hybrid work becoming more commonplace. The introduction of ChatGPT has reverberated through the workplace, inspiring much experimentation with generative AI and a rethinking of many well-established workflows.

The marketing function has been at the forefront of both of these trends since much marketing work can be done without regard for physical proximity and also because generative AI is expected to have an outsize impact on marketing.

The tools broadly known as project or task management platforms — which we call marketing work management platforms because we’re focusing on their utility to marketers — have responded to these trends by quickly developing new functionality to aid remote workforces and incorporate generative AI features.

Use cases for AI in marketing work management platforms include:

Artificial intelligence and machine learning functionalities to smooth workflows such as summarizing task status or activity or anticipating automation needs.
Generative AI to aid in creating text (and perhaps images) to facilitate internal communication
or for use in writing copy for campaigns and other creative.
Use of AI capabilities to manage the high-volume creation of assets such as visual and textual content, websites, video and digital events.
AI-powered automations that reduce the amount of manual work required to move projects from one state to another.

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The post What is marketing work management? appeared first on MarTech.

The future of first-party data and why it will be critical by Edna Chavira

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 14:15:00 +0000

In a world where cookie-dependent strategies are becoming obsolete, and privacy concerns are on the rise, leveraging first-party data is more important than ever. But establishing a successful first-party data strategy can be challenging.

Join our upcoming webinar, “Data Driven Decisions: The Future of First-Party Data and Why It Will Be Critical,” hosted by AtData. During this insightful session, you’ll learn practical strategies and best practices to help you navigate the complexities of utilizing customer data effectively while addressing privacy concerns and regulations.

Don’t miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights and perspectives on optimizing your first-party data strategy. RSVP today!

The post The future of first-party data and why it will be critical appeared first on MarTech.

The state of GA4, one year after the big migration

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 20:13:41 +0000

It’s been just over a year since Google Analytics 4 (GA4) replaced Universal Analytics (UA). In March of last year, Google automatically migrated all UA properties to GA4.

The changeover was met with much gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair and some justifiable complaints. GA4 is fundamentally different than its predecessor. It measures interactions (“events”), not visits. It is designed for a digital world without third-party cookies. Understandably, marketers who cut their teeth on UA were unhappy with learning new ways to do new things.

Google didn’t help itself or its users by wrapping all this in a UI which, to use a technical term, “Sucks.” Even so, because it’s part of the Google-verse and its price point (free) can’t be beat, it is still the dominant digital analytics platform.

We talked to Sharon Mostyn, CEO of Mostyn Marketing Group, to find out the current state of all things GA4-related. (Interview edited for length and clarity.)

Q: It’s been a year, have people adjusted to the UI?

A: Everybody still hates it. It’s certainly not an easy UI. Even setting dates is difficult. It defaults to giving the last 28 days of information, this year that wasn’t even applicable in February. That’s not all. Your other choices are the last seven days, last 30 days, last 90 days and last 12 months. Well, May has 31 days. So the last 30 days doesn’t do it for me. Great, but that doesn’t match how reporting works. You know, if I have a quarterly report, I’m not looking at the last 90 days.

Q: Anything users like about GA4?

A: There are some good things. The new key events are a positive thing. Now we have three different levels of events. There are page views and things like that, key events, like newsletter sign-ups, and conversions, like, making a sale or getting a lead.

Dig deeper: 5 GA4 issues and why they’re a good thing

Still, whenever I recommend Google Analytics, especially for a smaller client, I’m like how do I explain to them? You want them to set it up right. You want them to set it up through GTM so they can put in their Facebook pixels and their Google Ads conversion pixels and their LinkedIn conversion pixels and all of those things, but it’s another step, and it’s already complicated enough just getting them to put Google Analytics on a site.

Q: What else has changed about GA4 in the past year?

A: Other than key events,I haven’t really seen much.

Q: What particular problems have you run into?

A: I was running a report one time that I wanted to segment by country. I put in here’s the country and I want to see how many people, page views, etc. and it would run just perfectly. And then I would run it an hour later, and I couldn’t pick by country.

And there’s things like the hyper log where each line of the report is calculated independently. So if you’re looking to do something by source, say, your total users. Your users for search paid search, organic search, social media, whatever, if you add those up, they don’t necessarily match what the total number of users is. And that’s a challenge.

I spent three or four hours on a chat with a Google rep one night asking, “Why is this not adding to the total?” And she’s like, ”Well, we’re only off by 3%.” I said, “But 3% on 100,000, is a lot.”

Q: You can’t beat GA4’s price, but are there other programs you recommend?

A: It depends on the client, what they do and what they use. If they’re enterprise clients, certainly, Adobe Analytics and things like that are possibilities. And for smaller businesses, there are things like Matomo and Piwik PRO and things like that, but those clients don’t have the resources or time to spend on this. They’re too busy trying to get things done.

Dig deeper: 15 low-cost alternatives to GA4

Q: The clients who have adopted other systems, what made them do it?

A: Because Google is not HIPAA compliant, some of our healthcare clients have either made the move to a different healthcare HIPAA-compliant system or have added a buffer solution that makes them compliant.

What it all comes down to is the balancing act between what’s working and what’s not. We have some clients who are now running GA4 concurrently with Adobe. Most of our clients still have Google Analytics on there but are testing out the Matomas and the Piwiks of the world.

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It’s time to turbocharge our path to email innovation

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 15:19:11 +0000

Back in 2017, I wrote an article for MarTech, “Message to email marketers: Show me something different in 2018.” It popped up again while I was preparing a presentation, so I scrolled through to see if anything I advocated back then had become standard practice.

The answer is, sadly, not much.

Here’s what I was looking for:

Stop depending on batch-and-blast.
Use incremental innovation to create change.
Use customer data to inform email programs.
Look for something to fix instead of using the same playbook year after year.
Call on vendor and tech partners to help us succeed.

So here we are, nearly seven years later and we haven’t moved far on complexity.

Yes, we have made incremental gains, and yes, some dramatic leaps in innovation. That’s what we should be doing (see the second point above). But now, we need a lightning bolt to propel us down the innovation path.

I thought COVID-19 would have done that. In the opening years of this third decade of the 21st Century, email became the saving grace for many enterprise and mid-level companies.

Email was the quick pivot, the messaging and the low-cost way to insert their companies into the customer experience in the inbox. Email was the one action that preserved and grew revenue, saved jobs and helped stabilize the financial future.

Fast-forward to 2024. We are at an inflection point in our industry. We need to turbocharge our path to innovation and greatness. Not that email hasn’t been great over the last 25-plus years that we’ve used it to connect with customers. But we are still struggling.

The list of changes marketers must cope with now isn’t getting shorter. It’s getting longer, but we are still fighting for inch-by-inch gains with the usual lack of time, money and resources. How do we recognize that we are at this turbocharging moment and prepare for it? I see three areas where this acceleration is happening.

1. The rise of data proximity

Marketers like to debate whether we’re served better by the wheel-and-spoke model of technology or the unified platform model.

With this approach, data is at the wheel’s hub, and vendors like your email or marketing automation platforms are the spokes. Also, called the “best of breed” model, you choose each vendor individually and then focus on integrating all your platforms.

The unified platform is the “all in one” model, which provides all of the platforms you use in your marketing programs, with your data theoretically accessible and easily across all platforms.

In the past, the argument against unified platforms was that they often were built on technology that vendors acquired by buying the companies that developed the platforms and then stifling any further innovation.

But in speaking with customers and vendors in recent years, I’ve learned this big negative has faded away. Technology companies continue to invest in their acquisitions and fully utilize them.

I’ve seen these shifts in companies like Zeta Global and Marigold, which acquired disparate tech vendors and integrated them to create unified platforms. But proximity to data is the key gateway we need to act on every innovation over the last two decades.

One-to-one messaging comes from being able to access data in real-time so you can change your message. Marketers, how close are you to data overload as you look across your martech stack?

To what degree do you have a frictionless relationship with your full data set? You don’t always want all the data but need options and access. Beyond that, you need tools to assemble data that may be disparate in location and unified identification.

You need the power to pick and choose data that powers different segmentations, models and ways to render your message according to the information you have available, not just the information in your ESP.

This data proximity is the key to sending the right message. This is a central focus for enterprise companies. They want to know how close they can get to their data and how reliable and accurate that data is so they can use it across channels.

To answer questions like these, look at your martech stack and see how easily you can retrieve data and how to expand it. When shopping for new vendors, look beyond the features and capabilities of a platform to discover how it can help you access all of your relevant data.

Dig deeper: Marketing technology optimization: The path to peak martech stack performance

2. Generative AI

Generative AI is still in its infancy, but it helps you see what it can do for companies and where it’s going. Aside from incorporating language models like ChatGPT for creating content, many email platforms are working on using AI to get users closer to their data. Your full use of AI depends on the data proximity I discussed in the previous section.

As I’ve viewed product demos in RFPs and talked with clients, I’ve seen something promising: Companies are improving how they give you access to data for insights. They’re proactive in the form of predictive segments or the ability to rapidly assemble new customer segments based on your needs at the moment. They’re moving beyond basic language models toward actionable language models.

Yes, it’s all still in the infancy stage. However, vendors are bringing us to realize what we have been promised since I wrote that MarTech article in 2018.

For marketers, it’s time to move beyond fooling around with prompt engineering in ChatGPT. It underscores one of my firm beliefs about email marketers: Great marketers know how to code and market.

When you learn to code, you experience a mind shift. You have to infuse your planning with strategy and structure, think about how to set up A and why it’s important that B comes after it and C and D, all the way back to Z.

That mentality can carry over to how you plan and execute your marketing strategy. The work you do to learn about AI and generative engines will teach you the muscle memory you will call on as AI evolves.

You also gain a broader perspective. What you accomplish today can help you understand the next iterations of ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini (formerly Bard) or DALL-E for images.

Understanding this rapid development tells you what you need to look for as you evaluate your tech stock and seek out new vendors. You know what you need to become more innovative in creating more relevant messaging.

Dig deeper: New report shows enterprise email marketers embrace AI

3. Innovation

Data proximity and AI can power innovation, but only if you know what that innovation should look like. With my mantra of “strategy first, tactics second,” you’ll be more effective at using your proximity to data and wider vision of AI’s possibilities to map out your innovation path and bring in others in your company to get you there.

Knowing how generative AI works, how platforms that use GenAI work and how GenAI exceeds its current mandate gives you goals to work toward. Having a program isn’t enough to succeed. A program without goals and a plan to achieve them is just pushing buttons.

Success isn’t just about reaching the end. It’s about charting a sustainable path to success and being open to the technology from ESPs and niche vendors that offer singular solutions to challenges.

Knowing where you want to go and how to get there is critical. Your innovation map can show you where to free yourself from repetitive, mundane tasks and put that time toward creating strategy and bringing innovation.

Dig deeper: From campaigns to conversations: The future of email marketing

Wrapping up

I know it’s hard to dive into the future when you’re still challenged with time, resources and money, the drive to launch the next campaign and the seasonal craziness that devolved from the channel we profess to love.

But as I learned in teaching the Master Class, we are trying to accomplish things I wrote about in 2017. Back then, we were still bemoaning that we had already been talking about these basic changes for 15 to 20 years.

We need a seismic change in the industry if we want email to survive as more than the cheap channel that drives discounts and brings in incidental revenue. We will have to depend on technology to get us there.

What I’ve listed here should show you where to focus your efforts now, how to raise the bar and how you can see the wider field and become more than the marketer who sends out one 20% discount after another. It’s difficult to do with everything else you have been tasked to achieve. But if not you, then who?

Let’s stop being satisfied with the handouts we’re given when companies make their technology decisions. Instead, let’s step up. Let’s ask our companies and tech vendors for the technology, proximity to data as well as time and resources to plan what we need and how to get there.

Email:

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The post It’s time to turbocharge our path to email innovation appeared first on MarTech.

GrowthLoop and TransUnion partner to improve audience reach

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:22:47 +0000

Composable CDP GrowthLoop and information company TransUnion have announced a new partnership to optimize audience reach and ad spend. The partnership will bring together GrowthLoop’s CDP capabilities and TransUnion’s TruAudience Marketing Solutions. TruAudience’s identity graph is based on data from more than 98% of U.S. consumers.

The problem that is the focus of this partnership is the reported low match rate between a business’s first-party data and the third-party data from advertising platforms like Google and Facebook. This can lead to campaigns reaching non-optimal audiences. The claim is that GrowthLoop users, by having access to TransUnion’s data, will be able to achieve better identity resolution and enhanced audience reach.

Dig deeper: TransUnion unveils enhanced identity graph for marketers

Benefits of GrowthLoop’s Enhanced Match Rate. Enhanced Match Rate, as the new capability is called, is aimed at:

Engaging higher percentages of target audiences on paid channels.
Better suppressing current customers or recent purchasers.
Supporting more seamless cross-channel experiences.
Driving more meaningful data from campaigns.

The solution will be available to GrowthLoop customers in the first half of 2024.

Why we care. Marketers are not giving up on audience reach just because third-party cookies are set to be deprecated on Chrome. Among the many alternatives are identity graphs that can match data from different sources to a unified profile. TransUnion, with its background in credit reporting, is just one of the businesses out there sitting on a ton of audience data. Make that data accessible in a CDP and just maybe you’ll be reaching the right audience — and in a privacy-compliant way.

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The post GrowthLoop and TransUnion partner to improve audience reach appeared first on MarTech.

Achieving a low Gmail spam rate: 3 essential steps

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:17:09 +0000

On February 1, Google began enforcing spam guidelines for bulk email senders, warning senders to keep their spam rates reported in Google’s Postmaster Tools below .01%. Here are three steps email marketers can and should take now — even if they’re not “bulk” senders — to stay on Google’s good side and keep their email compliance up to speed, regardless of their ESP.

This article will lay out:

Common mistakes we still see in email campaigns.
Proactive strategies to address those mistakes before Google does.
Gmail and Yahoo sending requirements to know like the back of your hand.
Advanced techniques to reduce spam.
How to buy time to comply and keep your most valuable customers engaged.

Common email mistakes that increase spam rates

There are four major categories of common mistakes:

Poor CRM/data hygiene.
A lack of domain authentication.
A lack of compliance with privacy laws (CAN-SPAM, GDRP, etc.).
A lack of compliance with new Gmail and Yahoo sending requirements.

Issues in any of those areas can be enough to fall out of line with Google’s requirements, so it’s time to get a handle on all of them.

Proactive strategies to get your email campaigns in compliance

1. Clean your subscriber list

Keeping your master subscriber list clean and organized is the best way to ensure a lower spam rate, yet we find it one of the most difficult requirements for our clients.

A clean list has a segment for inactive and/or unengaged subscribers and excludes them from campaigns. If you constantly send emails to records that don’t engage with you, the size of this audience will grow. That will quickly create problems with your spam rates and inbox placements.

It can be difficult to pare down the total send count, but if you keep up with your list hygiene, you are less likely to run into compliance issues. Always go for quality subscribers over quantity.

Dig deeper: How to send more emails and grow your subscriber list

2. Double-confirm that your domain is authenticated

This is a vital component to ensure a low spam rate. Going through the authentication process with SPF, DKIM and DMARC will validate your domain as a legit sender, so your emails don’t get flagged as spam. Ensuring your domain is authenticated is easily done if you have a Litmus account (if you don’t have one, you should).

3. Stay on top of privacy laws

Complying with privacy laws is a must! Read up on the compliance laws for your audience types (CAN-SPAM for the U.S., GDPR for Europe). If you have audiences in other parts of the world, read through and understand the requirements to ensure you don’t run into any issues. And keep an ear to the ground about proposed legislation, including at the state level, so you can be ready if it gets enacted.

Gmail and Yahoo sending requirements to commit to memory

The new sending requirements Gmail and Yahoo released in February target parties sending emails to lists larger than 5,000 records. You should know these rules even if your lists are well below that threshold.

Along with domain authentication, they require providing an obvious, simple way to unsubscribe. Remember, sending emails relevant to the customer will minimize voluntary unsubscribes.

Constantly check your spam rate on Postmaster Tools — depending on how frequently you deploy your emails — to hover at or below .10% (and never above .30%).

Reference Litmus and Postmaster Tools to get advanced techniques for reducing spam

Understanding how to leverage Litmus and Postmaster Tools is a game-changer. Each tool will give insights specific to your email marketing to ensure compliance. The view you get in these tools goes beyond what you can pull within your ESP, so make them part of your regular reference checks to keep spam low.

For instance, Litmus checks domain authentication for SPF, DKIM and DMARC, alerting you if you’re out of compliance. Postmaster Tools provides a day-by-day view of your spam rate. A great way to monitor your average rate and ensure it does not exceed .10%.

How to engage your best users and buy yourself some time to get in compliance

There are things you can do to maintain email marketing even if it will be a while before you can get spam rates under the Gmail threshold.

Review your master audience table to segment low-to-unengaged subscribers from upcoming deployments to gauge the impact on your spam rate.
If the rate goes down, schedule sends to your low-to-unengaged subscribers at a different cadence than your more active users — or consider pausing the sends to this group altogether. That alone should address the “send wanted emails” initiative by keeping your focus on folks who have indicated interest in your emails.

Dig deeper: 3 keys for better email engagement in Gmail

Wrapping up

None of these steps should greatly impact your bottom line. They’re generally good, solid email practices that show respect to regulations, users and email providers.

What will affect your bottom line is getting tagged by Gmail and Yahoo and having your emails choked off for all users, even your most loyal ones. Take the right measures to stay in compliance, and you’ll have healthier and better-performing email campaigns to show for it.

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The post Achieving a low Gmail spam rate: 3 essential steps appeared first on MarTech.

The top 10 benefits of customer data platforms

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:13:00 +0000

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, customer data platforms (CDPs) can be pivotal tools for some organizations aiming to harness the power of data-driven strategies. There are drawbacks as ever. Not everyone agrees on the definition of a CDP; they can be expensive and take considerable time — and expertise — to implement. We are witnessing the evolution of traditional CDPs into composable CDPs that draw data from data warehouses or lakes without copying it into the CDP itself. And there are even those who question the benefits of having a so-called 360-degree view of the customer.

Here, we delve into the top 10 proclaimed benefits of CDPs and some questions that have been raised about them.

CDP features

1. Unified customer view CDPs excel in aggregating data from multiple sources, eliminating silos and providing a holistic view of the customer journey. This unified perspective enables marketers to craft campaigns that resonate on a personal level with each customer.

72% of marketers who believe they need every customer data point to be successful also report that the more data they collect, the less benefit they see. The cost of integrating data across channels rises exponentially as channels are added (on average, marketers use nine channels, but some use as many as 20). This is easily visualized. To integrate four channels with each other requires six cross-channel integrations; fully integrating 20 channels will require 200 integrations.

The conclusion? Give up on the 360-degree view of the customer because the cost of attempting to achieve it will become unmanageable.
Based on research by Ben Bloom, VP analyst at Gartner

2. Enhanced personalization Sometimes using AI and machine learning, CDPs analyze and predict customer behavior, making it possible to create hyper-personalized experiences. This level of personalization isn’t just about addressing customers by name; it’s about understanding their preferences and delivering content that aligns with their interests and behaviors.

In 2019, Gartner (again) predicted that 80% of marketers would abandon their personalization efforts by 2025. Of course, that was before the widespread democratization of AI.

3. Data compliance and governance As data privacy regulations continue to tighten, CDPs provide a framework for compliance. They ensure that customer data is managed responsibly, respecting privacy and consent across all touchpoints.

Dig deeper: What is a CDP and how does it give marketers the coveted ‘single view’ of their customers?

4. Omnichannel orchestration The modern customer interacts with brands across various channels. CDPs attempt to synchronize these interactions, ensuring a consistent and seamless experience whether the customer is online or offline.

The challenge here, of course, is achieving a unified profile so that you know, for example, that the user communicating with your business by text is the same user posting about it on social media and making purchases (or abandoning carts) at the website. To get the unified profile right you need quality data, adequate data management and speed in updating profiles. Knowing what a user was interested in last month may not tell you what they are interested in today.

5. Revenue growth By delivering relevant experiences and reducing friction points, CDPs directly contribute to revenue growth. They enable marketers to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities effectively.

That may be true, but it doesn’t necessarily happen — or be demonstrable — fast. “There are many use cases for a CDP, but some provide a faster time to value than others. If you purchase a CDP with a plan to implement all your use cases at once, or focus on more complex ones right away, you will struggle to show the value of the implementation early.” That’s from a CDP, Treasure Data.

6. Operational efficiency CDPs streamline marketing operations by automating data collection, segmentation and campaign execution. This efficiency frees up valuable time for marketers to focus on strategy and creativity.

Although CDPs may automatically populate audience segments based on the profiles in the database, it will often be the responsibility of the marketer to define the segment they wish to target.

Dig deeper: Real-time customer data platforms: The promise and the reality

7. Actionable insights Beyond mere data collection, CDPs provide actionable insights. They help marketers understand the ‘why’ behind customer actions, enabling data-driven decisions that drive conversions.

However, not all CDPs are equal when it comes to the “decisioning” capabilities that support such insights.

8. Customer loyalty and retention CDPs play a crucial role in retention strategies by helping brands stay relevant and top-of-mind. Through personalized engagement, customers feel valued, fostering loyalty.

To some extent, anyway. There’s also plenty of data to show that consumers are uncomfortable with their behavior being tracked for marketing purposes. The word often used in that context is “creepy.”

9. Scalability As businesses grow, so does the complexity of their data. CDPs are designed to scale, managing increasing volumes of data without compromising performance.

Or at least that’s true of some CDPs. Some are designed to handle smaller data sets.

10. Agility In a fast-paced market, agility is key. CDPs allow marketers to quickly adapt to changes in customer behavior and market conditions, maintaining a competitive edge.

This does not, however, necessarily happen in “real time.”

Dig deeper: 10 CDP implementation mistakes to avoid

At its best, a CDP is not just a tool; it can be a strategic asset that empowers marketers to navigate the complexities of customer data. By leveraging the full spectrum of benefits offered by CDPs, businesses can achieve a level of customer engagement and satisfaction that was previously unattainable. But it’s also important to be aware of the challenges that come with such solutions.

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Internet advertising up 7.3%, reaching record high in U.S.

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 17:25:55 +0000

U.S. internet advertising reached a record $225 billion in 2023, a 7.3-percent increase year-over-year, according to the latest IAB report on U.S. ad revenue, conducted by PwC.

Digital ads boomed in the fourth quarter when the growth rate spiked to 12.3% — in 2022 the growth rate for the quarter was 4.4%.

Top channels included CTV, retail media and audio, which all saw double-digit growth in 2023.

“Despite inflation fears, interest rates at record highs, and continuing global unrest, the U.S. digital advertising industry continued its growth trajectory in 2023,” said IAB CEO David Cohen, in a release.

Why we care. The digital ad ecosphere has met challenges due to snowballing privacy regulations and the deprecation of third-party cookies. But advertisers, facing competitive pressures, still see digital ads as an effective way to reach customers at all stages in their journeys and therefore continue to increase their digital spend.

Dig deeper: Google’s Privacy Sandbox: What you need to know

Video. Video advertising saw 10.6% YoY growth in 2023 as revenue rose to $52.1 billion. Forty-two percent of the revenue came in CTV and OTT, according to “IAB/PwC Internet Ad Revenue Report, FY 2023.”

Although growth was down marginally from 2022, CTV is expected to drive video up in the coming years with added inventory from ad-supported subscription tiers introduced by major streaming services like Netflix.

Retail media. Even higher growth came from retail media networks (RMNs), which saw a 16.3% increase in revenue YoY, reaching $43.7 billion. RMNs are an attractive way for advertisers to reach customers because of the quantity of first-party data retailers have and the tech solutions available to leverage the data in a privacy-compliant way.

Other non-retail consumer brands are creating similar ad media platforms. Recently, JP Morgan Chase announced Chase Media Solutions, the first bank-led platform of this kind.

Dig deeper: Why we care about retail media networks

Digital audio. Although relatively small compared to other channels, digital audio saw the highest growth of any channel — 18.9% YoY. In 2023, revenue reached $7 billion.

The report cited new ad-supported tiers from audio subscription services, as well as AI-powered personalization, as contributors to future growth in the channel.

Social rebound. Social media ad revenue rose 8.7% YoY to reach $64.9 billion in 2023.

Much of the growth came in the second half of the year, which saw $4.1 billion of the $5.1 total growth.

Longer view. After huge growth in 2021, following the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital advertising spending cooled in 2022. The 2023 numbers show areas of promising double-digit growth and some sign of normalcy in otherwise turbulent times.

Image: IAB/PwC Internet Ad Revenue Report, FY 2023.

“With significant industry transformation unfolding right before our eyes, we believe that those channels with a portfolio of privacy-by-design solutions will continue to outpace the market,” said Cohen. “For 2023, the winners were retail media, CTV, and audio which saw the highest growth.”

Report. The “IAB/PwC Internet Ad Revenue Report, FY 2023” report (registration required) was commissioned by the IAB and conducted by PwC Advisory Services LLC. It uses data and information reported directly to PwC from companies selling advertising on the internet, as well as publicly available corporate data. Released quarterly, “IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report” was initiated by the IAB in 1996.

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Adopting consent-based analytics for long-term marketing success

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 16:58:29 +0000

It’s important to start monitoring consent management as part of your digital analytics strategy. Apart from the EU, various privacy laws in the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia and other regions require notifying users about using cookies at least in your privacy policy or through an opt-out banner if any personal information is being collected.

Users are becoming increasingly aware of their privacy rights, opting out of tracking cookies more than ever (call it the fear of being stalked). Without a robust consent mechanism allowing people to accept analytics cookies, you risk losing valuable insights into user behavior. The repercussions? Major players like Adobe and Google won’t accept event data without consent. It’s time to act.

Choosing the correct tools

Implementing consent doesn’t have to be scary. Finding a third-party tool that aligns with your content management system isn’t hard. From WordPress to Shopify, there’s a solution out there for you. But don’t just settle — ensure seamless integration with your analytics tool for maximum efficiency.

Take the time to research and find the tool that is the right fit for your needs. Make sure it integrates with your analytics solution. Some are compatible with Google Analytics and Adobe, while others are designed to work with only one. If you’re using a different analytics tool, consult your provider for help.

Remember, while some options are free, most come with a price tag. Fees vary widely depending on factors like the number of pages on your site, the number of domains (including subdomains) and the traffic volume. Consider additional factors like ongoing support when making your decision. After all, investing in the right tool now can save you headaches down the road.

Dig deeper: How consent management platforms support data privacy compliance

Implementation considerations

An implementation plan is a must. Consider the user’s choices regarding which cookies they’ll accept. Within your tag management system, ensure that it correctly reads the user’s consent choices. Define which events can be tracked with your analytics management platform.

For example, if the user opts out of marketing cookies, you cannot execute any tracking pixel code scripts provided by your ad platform (Google Ads, Meta, etc.). You cannot use conversion pixels, as they report user activity to these third-party ad platforms.

If you’re not sure about getting permission from users because you don’t think it’s necessary, consider this: Nowadays, many users are blocking cookies, so can you really trust the data you get from analytics?

For example, with Google Analytics 4, if you properly set up V2 Consent and your website gets enough visitors, your data might be improved with a feature called Data Modeling (but users have to choose this in their settings). This means Google Analytics attempts to fill in the blanks of user activity on your site (excluding transactional data and some other elements) with modeled data.

Dig deeper: 3 privacy-centric solutions for marketing compliance

Addressing concerns and misconceptions

Implementing consent may seem daunting, especially if you’re worried about losing some analytics data and how accurate your reports will be. Yet, it is a step toward a more transparent and trustworthy relationship with your users.

Our research found no more than 10% opt out of cookies and it’s usually less than 5%. This means 80% to 90% of all site users still accept the analytics cookie (tracking). This lower sample size means an error rate of less than 1% 19 times out of 20. Previously, the error rate was no more than 0.5%. So the difference is minimal.

Implement a robust consent option for your users. This choice has minimal negative impact and opens the door to exciting potential benefits, such as GA4 and advanced data modeling.

It’s time to take action. Start developing a rollout plan for implementing consent today before legislation forces your hand.

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New rules for bulk email senders from Google, Yahoo: What you need to know

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 14:40:00 +0000

We’ve updated our story on bulk email restrictions to include details of bulk email limits for Microsoft Exchange Online users.

On Feb. 1, 2024, Google and Yahoo started enforcing new requirements for bulk email senders. The guidelines largely focus on three areas: authentication of outgoing emails, reported spam rates and the ability to easily unsubscribe from email lists.

Google defined bulk senders in an early-October 2023 announcement as “those who send more than 5,000 messages to Gmail addresses in one day,” which caught the attention of email marketers in both B2B and B2C circles.

Bulk senders that fail to meet the sender requirements will get temporary errors (with error codes) on a small percentage of their non-compliant email traffic, according to Google. These temporary errors will help senders identify email traffic that doesn’t meet the new guidelines and give senders an opportunity to resolve issues leading to non-compliance.

Email rejections began in April 2024. According to Google:

In April 2024, we’ll start rejecting a percentage of non-compliant email traffic, and we’ll gradually increase the rejection rate. For example, if 75% of a sender’s traffic meets our requirements, we’ll start rejecting a percentage of the remaining 25% of traffic that isn’t compliant.
Google email sender guidelines

What are the email authentication requirements for bulk senders?

The two companies require bulk email senders to use what Google calls “well-established best practices” to authenticate the sender. This will close loopholes that can be exploited by attackers, according to Google.

When it comes to email authentication, three mechanisms work together:

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) helps prevent domain spoofing by allowing senders to identify the email servers that are allowed to send emails from their domain.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) adds a digital signature to outgoing email, which verifies the message was sent by an authorized sender and wasn’t tampered with along the way.
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) helps domain owners specify which actions to take when an email fails authentication. It also enables reporting on email authentication results.

Google and Yahoo now require bulk senders to set up all three of these mechanisms.

What are the reported spam rates for bulk email senders?

Google says bulk senders must keep their reported spam rate (i.e., the percentage of outgoing messages reported as spam by recipients) in Google Postmaster Tools below 0.10% and “avoid ever reaching 0.30% or higher.”

Reporting an email as spam is relatively easy, which sets this requirement apart from authentication and unsubscribe links. It comes down to the value the receiver thinks they get. To some extent, it’s out of the hands of the sender.

Dana Carr, director of email marketing for customer data platform vendor Optimove, recommends a couple of strategies to avoid having legitimate messages flagged as spam. First, pay attention to send times. Many bulk emails are sent at the top or bottom of the hour, which makes it easy for people to report them as spam altogether.

She also suggests using preference centers, which let users dictate the frequency of emails, as well as the categories and products included in the messages. Preference centers not only reduce email volume, but they often increase engagement with emails, Carr said.

What are the ‘unsubscribe’ requirements for bulk senders?

Unsurprisingly, Google is requiring marketing messages and other subscribed messages to support one-click unsubscribe functions.

This should already be table stakes for experienced email marketers, Carr said. Any lingering reluctance to include the feature is a sign of an email strategy focused on quantity over quality.

“The number of people receiving your emails is one number in a group of numbers that can hurt your reputation. That includes not only list size, but open rates,“ Carr said. “At the end of the day, all of these numbers are hurting your engagement metrics. Instead of thinking about list size, we need to think about segmentation and targeted content.”

Dig deeper: Email marketers may be hit by Google mass account removal

How concerned should email marketers be about these requirements?

Most experienced email marketers will look at these requirements and say, “Check. Check. Check.”

Carr believes senders who understand authentication and good email practices shouldn’t be overly concerned. But there’s a catch.

The requirements apply at the domain level, which means they apply to all of the emails sent by the organization using the domain, not just marketing. That includes sales teams, particularly, business development representatives and sales development representatives that often rely heavily on outbound cold email tactics.

Armed with generative AI tools and sales engagement platforms (e.g., Salesloft and Outreach), these teams are capable of generating a high volume of email.

These roles don’t always report to marketing, either, and likely aren’t familiar with email authentication requirements. That sets up a turf battle of sorts for marketers trying to protect their email strategy.

“It is generally marketing that controls the authentication,” said Ryan Phelan CEO and co-founder of digital marketing services company RPEOrigin.com and a MarTech contributor. “This is where a good partnership between sales and marketing is critical.”

Carr also thinks marketing should take the lead on authentication and good email practices throughout the organization. “Marketing should be aware of the sending domain for messages,” she said. “Some people will get this confused with the website domain.”

Marketing should also be advising the team managing the authentication, Carr said, because any change at the DNS level could cause a serious problem.

Dig deeper: 3 keys for email marketing in 2024: AI, change, learn

Why are there new requirements for bulk senders?

Spam is a significant problem. Most people don’t realize the breadth of the issue because the vast majority of spam messages are blocked before they reach the inbox. Spam is also a security threat, and when it reaches the inboxes of users in certain corporations or government agencies, it’s potentially a very serious security threat.

But ridding the world of spam is only part of the motivation here.

“The inbox is a revenue source,” said Phelan. “The ads at the top of the inbox. The ads in the mobile app. It’s a hook into the data mart for Google.”

Google has, for years, taken steps to protect its revenue source, including adding tabs to sort out promotional and social emails in Gmail. Phelan believes the latest moves are another way to address the problem. The natural reaction, he said, is to filter out the noise by using tactics like authentication to help decide who reaches the inbox.

Carr agrees that the move has a lot to do with keeping the inbox central to people’s daily activities. “[Google is] not foolish,” she said. “They know more and more customers are choosing other channels, including SMS and in-app messaging. This is like parents saying, ‘I gave you three chances.’”

Study finds B2B firms aren’t prepared for bulk email restrictions

Companies in the B2B sector, where outbound email is an important part of the sales strategy, will have to learn to live with these bulk email restrictions.

A report from Customers.ai, which sells tools to help businesses better identify their website visitors, suggest many B2B sectors are experiencing reported spam rates far above the level of 0.1% suggested by Google and Yahoo and even surpassing the 0.3% threshold that senders should never reach.

The average spam complaint rate across the B2B space was 2.01%, with a range between 1.1% and 3.1%.

In fact, for the nine spammiest verticals identified by Customers.ai, the company was unable to find a single sender that was able to score below the 0.3% threshold. Learn more about the Customers.ai study and its methodology on the company’s blog.

Source: Customers.ai.

What about Google Workspace inboxes?

But there’s good news for B2B bulk email senders. If they’re sending to business email accounts running on Google, there’s an exemption.

Google Workspace inboxes are email accounts managed by businesses or educational institutions that reside on Google servers. While it was initially unclear whether the bulk email restrictions would apply to Google Workspace accounts, Google eventually confirmed they did not.

The Email sender guidelines don’t apply to messages sent to Google Workspace accounts. Sender requirements and Google enforcement apply only when sending email to personal Gmail accounts.
Google email sender guidelines

A multichannel approach will help protect your email

Outbound sales teams in the B2B sector are getting much of the attention around the new bulk email restrictions. Unlike marketing, cold sales outreach in B2B relies mainly on two channels: email and phone calls.

“On the B2B side, this all traces back to the money,” said Phelan. “Cold email has become so prevalent in the toolbox, everyone is using it.”

While marketers in some organizations might prefer that sales teams dial down their email outreach, the reality is that it’s easier than ever to send a high volume of cold emails.

Phelan prefers marketers take the lead on outreach with account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns. A multichannel approach to ABM will expose prospects to messages in display ads and on social media, for example, in addition to email. The downside of the ABM approach? It takes a lot more work to plan and build than email.

Natalie Jackson is Director of Demand Generation at CBIZ, co-host of the podcast Humans of Email and a MarTech contributor. She agrees that a multichannel approach will not only keep marketing organizations from running afoul of new bulk sender restrictions, but will also deliver more insights about marketing channels and revenue streams. That includes putting marketing in a position to see how sales outreach compares to other channels.

“These changes are 100% an opportunity for marketers to have a bigger hand in the customer journey and prospect experience,” Jackson said. “Email can’t live in a silo. You see this in email engagement reports. If you’re only looking at a sent email report, you’re missing the bigger picture of what interactions are influencing recipient behavior. What’s the impact of one-to-one interactions? Sales engagement tools? Social media? Website? Advertising?”

A holistic view of outreach and results will allow marketers to protect their email domains and better judge the performance of different channels and tactics.

“If we, as marketers, don’t have insight into these interactions, we’re limiting our ability to influence revenue streams,” Jackson said. “We need visibility into other sending systems, yes, but for reasons beyond deliverability.”

Microsoft Exchange Online introduces External Recipient Rate limit

Microsoft announced in April 2024 it would begin enforcing an External Recipient Rate (ERR) limit of 2,000 recipients in 24 hours in January 2025.

The goal of the ERR is to reduce abuse and unfair usage of Exchange Online resource, according to Microsoft. Exchange Online was not designed to support bulk or high-volume transactional email, but Microsoft has not enforced limits on bulk email until now.

Currently, Exchange Online enforces a Recipient Rate limit of 10,000 recipients. The new 2,000-message ERR limit will become a sub-limit within the 10,000 Recipient Rate limit. Users who send to less than 2,000 external recipients in a 24 hour period, will still be able to send to 10,000 total recipients.

The new ERR limit will be introduced in two phases:

Phase 1: Starting Jan. 1, 2025, the limit will apply to cloud-hosted mailboxes of all newly created tenants.
Phase 2: Between July and December 2025, Microsoft will start applying the limit to cloud-hosted mailboxes of existing tenants.

Microsoft is advising users with bulk email needs for cloud-hosted mailboxes to switch from Exchange Online to Azure Communications Services for Email.

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How to optimize your content strategy across the customer journey

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 13:55:00 +0000

With the right content marketing strategy, you can engage your audience at every stage of their journey. From sparking initial awareness to nurturing their consideration and guiding them toward a decisive action, crafting your content with precision is crucial.

Here are some actionable insights and strategies to ensure your content reaches, genuinely resonates with and converts your audience.

Customer journey basics

First things first, let’s unpack the customer journey. Imagine it as a roadmap, with your customer at the wheel and your content the signposts guiding them. This journey unfolds in three key stages:

Awareness: The potential customer realizes they have a problem and begins searching for solutions.
Consideration: They understand the problem better and start evaluating different options.
Decision: Armed with information, they’re ready to choose a solution.

Your content must address the needs and questions specific to each stage to make a real impact. But how? Let’s explore actionable strategies and examples for each stage.

How to craft content for the awareness stage

At this stage you want to educate and inform people about their problem and introduce them to potential solutions — ideally, leading them towards your product or service. The focus is on visibility and engagement.

Evaluating your awareness strategy

These are key metrics to measure the success of your awareness-stage content:

Traffic: Are your blog posts, infographics and videos attracting viewers? Monitor the views on your blog posts, infographics and videos. High traffic indicates that your content is drawing in viewers.
Engagement: Are people commenting, sharing and interacting with your content? Look at comments, shares and other interactions. Engaged users are more likely to progress further along the customer journey.
SEO rankings: Is your content ranking for relevant keywords your audience is searching for? Higher rankings mean greater visibility.

Enhancing your approach

Boost the impact of your awareness content with these strategies:

Keyword research: Dive deep into the search terms your potential customers use. Tailoring your content to these keywords enhances visibility and relevance.
Content variety: Experiment with different formats to discover what your audience prefers. Maybe infographics captivate more than blog posts or maybe it’s the other way around.
Competitor analysis: Investigate which content types are hitting home runs for your competitors. Use this insight to identify and fill the gaps in your strategy.

Content for the awareness stage

In this stage, your audience seeks information that enlightens and educates, helping them better understand their problems and the available solutions. Here’s how to craft content that shines a light on their path:

Educational blog posts

Goal: Educate your audience about their problems and the general solutions available.
Strategy: Identify your audience’s core questions at the beginning of their journey. Use keyword research tools to uncover the search terms related to these questions. Create comprehensive blog posts that answer these questions in an informative, accessible manner.
Example: For a sustainable energy company, a blog post titled “How to Reduce Your Home’s Energy Use” can provide practical tips and introduce the concept of sustainable energy solutions without a hard sell.

Engaging infographics

Goal: Simplify complex information into engaging, easily digestible content.
Strategy: Use data visualization to break down complex problems or solutions related to your industry. Infographics should be shareable and designed for easy comprehension.
Example: An infographic that visually illustrates the energy consumption of average households versus those using sustainable solutions can effectively communicate the benefits of energy efficiency.

Insightful videos

Goal: Connect with your audience on a personal level, showing empathy for their challenges.
Strategy: Produce videos that share stories, explanations or insights related to your audience’s problems and potential solutions. Focus on the emotional aspect to resonate deeply with viewers.
Example: A video series featuring stories from individuals who have successfully reduced their carbon footprint can inspire viewers and introduce your brand in a positive light.

The art of nurturing during consideration

Your audience now knows they have a problem and is evaluating different solutions. Here, you want to position your product or service as the best choice.

Gauging your strategy’s effectiveness

To understand how your content is performing in the consideration stage, keep an eye on these indicators:

Lead generation: Are your tools — like comparison guides, case studies and webinars — turning readers into leads?
Content engagement: Do your guides and comparison content keep potential customers engaged?
Email sign-ups: Is there an uptick in newsletter subscriptions or downloads of your ebooks, indicating growing interest?

Refining your approach

Enhance your content’s impact during the consideration phase with these tactics:

Targeted content: Craft content to address the audience’s questions and concerns about your product versus the competition.
Proactive follow-up: Use email marketing to reconnect with individuals who have interacted with your content. Offer further resources or a chance to consult with a sales rep to deepen their engagement.
A/B testing: Continuously test different headlines, calls to action and content formats to discover what effectively transforms readers into leads.

Content for the consideration stage

As your audience moves into consideration, they evaluate their options. This is your opportunity to showcase why your solution stands out. Content in this phase should provide clear, comparative insights guiding the audience toward your product or service.

Detailed comparison guides

Goal: Help your audience understand the differences between your solution and others on the market.
Strategy: Create content comparing your product or service to competitors in a balanced manner. Highlight unique features, benefits and value propositions without disparaging others.
Example: A comparison guide titled “Eco-Friendly Home Energy Solutions: Our Solar Panels vs. The Rest” can educate readers on the benefits of your product over competitors.

Customer testimonials and case studies

Goal: Build trust and credibility through real-world examples.
Strategy: Share stories of customers who faced similar challenges and found a solution with your product or service. Focus on the journey, the decision-making process and the outcomes.
Example: Develop case studies that detail how different households have implemented your sustainable energy solutions and the impact on their energy costs and carbon footprint.

Educational webinars and ebooks

Goal: Offer deep dives into relevant topics, showcasing your expertise.
Strategy: Develop webinars and e-books that provide valuable insights into topics related to your products or services. Use these platforms to educate and engage with your audience at a deeper level.
Example: Host a webinar titled “The Future of Home Energy: Trends and Technologies” to discuss industry trends, challenges and solutions, subtly positioning your products as the forward-thinking choice.

Dig deeper: B2B content marketing: Driving success through strategic content creation

How to win at the decision stage

This is the moment of truth. Your audience is ready to make a purchase decision, and your content needs to lead them confidently to choose your solution. This stage is about reassurance and motivation, ensuring that the audience feels they’re making the right choice.

Measuring success in the decision stage

To gauge the effectiveness of your decision-stage content, focus on these key performance indicators:

Conversion rate: Track the proportion of leads that transform into paying customers, providing insight into how effectively your content persuades.
Customer feedback: Collect and analyze feedback from customers influenced by your content. Positive responses indicate your content’s effectiveness in making them feel confident in their purchase.
Return on investment (ROI): Evaluate the ROI of your decision-stage content. High ROI signifies that your content is not just attracting customers but doing so cost-effectively.

Enhancing content effectiveness

Optimize your decision-stage content with these strategies to ensure it delivers maximum impact:

Clear call to action (CTA): Ensure your CTAs are clear and compelling, leading directly to the action you want your customer to take.
Reassurance: Use money-back guarantees, customer testimonials and free trials to alleviate any last-minute fears about purchases.
Personalization: Tailor your communication and offers to the specific needs and interests of your leads. Use the data gathered about them during their journey to make the final pitch as relevant as possible.

Content for the decision stage

When potential customers are about to make a decision, your content should give them that final nudge toward your solution.

Free trials and demos

Goal: Showcase the tangible value of your product or service, letting customers experience its benefits directly.
Strategy: Provide risk-free trials or interactive demos, allowing potential buyers to see how your solution fits into their lives without commitment.
Example: For a SaaS platform, offer a 30-day free trial with full feature access and supplemental tutorial content to enhance user understanding and engagement.

Money-back guarantees

Goal: Minimize perceived risk, making the purchase decision easier for the customer.
Strategy: Implement a straightforward satisfaction guarantee or refund policy, assuring customers of your confidence in the product’s value.
Example: Offer a 60-day money-back guarantee on your eco-friendly appliances, reinforcing the message of customer satisfaction and product reliability.

Special offers and bonuses

Goal: Inject a sense of urgency and exclusivity, encouraging quick action.
Strategy: Introduce time-sensitive promotions or exclusive perks for customers who act within a specified period.
Example: Propose a limited-time discount on installation services or a unique energy-saving device as a bonus with each solar panel system purchased within the next month.

Optimizing content at every stage

The true power of content marketing lies in its ability to guide your audience through their journey with your brand at their side. By tailoring your content strategy to each stage of the customer journey, you increase the relevance and impact of your message and build a relationship based on value and trust.

Remember, the goal isn’t just to make a sale — it’s to create a customer who feels understood and supported at every turn. So, look closely at your content through the customer journey lens. Is it aligned, helpful and persuasive? If not, it’s time for optimization.

Your audience is out there, waiting for content that speaks directly to them — make sure you’re ready to meet them where they are with the right message at the right time.

Dig deeper: How to map marketing science to the customer journey

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What does ‘Real-Time Marketing’ really mean? by Salesforce

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 11:00:00 +0000

If you’re like most marketers, you’ve been hearing the term “real-time” a lot lately. And you’ve probably been wondering, what is real-time marketing? Are we delivering content in seconds? Milliseconds? Even faster?

It can sound like marketers need to live in the world of the Oscar contender Everything Everywhere All at Once. Not necessarily. What matters is that you reach your customers when they need to be reached, with the right experience. Real-time marketing is not so much having all the answers all the time, but giving customers what they need, when they need it.

Let’s look at the concept of real-time marketing and show some ways leading brands use it to win customers.

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What you’ll learn

What is real-time marketing and how does it use real-time data?
What do marketers mean when they say “real-time”?
What can you do with a CDP using real-time data?

What is real-time marketing and how does it use real-time data?

A search for “real-time marketing” reveals a grab bag of definitions. They range from the vague (“systematically responding to your customers”) to the prescriptive (“focusing on … customer feedback”). It seems as though nobody knows what time it is.

Let’s start with the difference between real-time data and real-time marketing. Real-time data is processed and available for use right after it’s captured. That’s milliseconds. For example, the GPS on your phone captures your location and recommends a driving route in real time.

But while it’s important to capture and process data quickly, it’s not always necessary to act on it right away. This is especially true in marketing, when the customer drives the journey. Real-time does not have to mean right now. It’s delivering the information when the end user needs it. That could be seconds or even hours later.

Travel and hospitality is a very time-sensitive business. If a customer’s digital profile isn’t accurate at the moment, it can trigger unfortunate events. When this happens, a passenger misses their flight or doesn’t get the right seat — and airs their grievances on social media.

When a customer changes their seat or flight on the airline’s app or website, they expect it to show up in their experience right away. When they later go to a kiosk or a service counter, or call customer care, they expect — quite reasonably — that the service agent is up to date. The customer also likely assumes the airline won’t send them irrelevant emails or offers.

This example shows us the difference between real-time data and real-time marketing. Real-time systems should update customers’ profiles right away. On the other hand, real-time marketing should happen at whatever speed is the right one for the customer — whether that’s today, in five minutes, or next week.

There are implications for the marketers’ back-end data processing systems and resource requirements.

When the customer is on the website or app, they expect their actions to be processed in milliseconds (under a second). But there’s no reason the contact center can’t be updated in seconds and the email system within minutes, right?

Managing response rate requirements can lower costs and complexity, as long as they don’t impact the customer experience.

It’s time to redefine the CDP
Dig into use cases that show how to power personalized and connected experiences across your marketing.

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What do marketers mean when they say “real-time”?

On most occasions, when marketers say real-time, what you really mean is right-time. What is real-time marketing, really? It’s delivering the right data at the right time, to the right systems, to better connect with customers.

Right-time is doing what is needed to make each moment count for the customer.
Real-time is collecting and processing data with no delay.

The only reason to make this distinction is there can be major technical and organizational costs to imposing real-time requirements on the marketing team. Some teams have resources to handle it and some don’t.

It’s more important to make strategic investments into the systems that need to be real time — for example, your personalization platform and customer data platform (CDP) — and understand what’s required elsewhere.

How can you set your real-time data priorities? It helps to remember that marketing has two basic modes:

Respond: You’re reacting to customers when they’re already engaged. They’re on your website, in your app, poking around on a kiosk in your store.
Inspire: You’re trying to get the attention of customers and prospects when they may not be thinking about you. You send emails with offers, show ads on Facebook and Instagram, etc.

In most cases, it’s the “Respond” mode that needs you to address customer concerns quickly. On the other hand, most “Inspire” activities are pre-planned and benefit from complete and curated data that does not need the hyper-warp-speed investment.

But in some cases, real-time responses can even be counterproductive. Take an abandoned cart email. Not many of us would react calmly to a reminder email — or, even worse, a text message — a mere few milliseconds after we decided to leave. That’s what we mean when we talk about real-time marketing.

What can you do with a CDP using real-time data?

When you’re making decisions based on real-time data, you’re able to respond to customers in ways that make sense to them. Upgrading your customer data platform to one built on real-time data can help make sure that you have the answers your customers want — when they want them.

Doing this not only makes for happier customers, but improves your bottom line in a cost-efficient manner, too. After all, what is real-time marketing but a timely way to meet customer needs?

For example, a customer might make a purchase on an e-commerce website that puts them into a high-value segment. The segment change can trigger — right away — that person’s entry into a journey tailored to high-value customers. You can then target them with the right ad the next time they’re scrolling through Instagram.

Recently, we announced Data Cloud, our CDP that uses real-time data to make real-time marketing easier for companies. Making the most of real-time data can help you improve customer journeys.

Anyone considering a CDP to support real-time data management should ask how well it will support their “right-time” requirements. Just having parts of the customer journey happen in real time may not be enough. For example:

First-party data: Many enterprises already have a trove of first-party data, and it should be easy to make use of it in real time with your CDP.
Data actions: Marketers have different ways to communicate with customers, and these different methods (or channels) need to receive rapid signals from the real-time CDP.
Partnerships: Reliable and easy-to-use integrations with key partners also helps eliminate friction in the data transfer process, where third parties are needed (such as for data enrichment, media activation, and auditing). For example, we recently announced integrations with Snowflake, Amazon SageMaker, Microsoft Azure and others on the AppExchange.

Any lingering confusion about what is and isn’t real-time fades in importance when we pose a better question: What does the customer really need from us right now?

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Originally published on Salesforce.com on February 28, 2023.

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Why relying on AI won’t improve the customer experience

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 17:31:08 +0000

What will customers remember after they have experienced your website, product, service or people? What will they tell their friends or colleagues about their experience — will they even mention it?

A tremendous amount of investment and resources are being focused on integrating AI into the customer experience, from automating responses to comments on social media to improving the call center experience. And who knows where OpenAI’s Voice Engine will eventually take us?

Do you think customers will talk about how they were “wowed” by their AI experience? I’m willing to bet they probably won’t notice. Whatever experience is created from AI will lean more toward “expected” than “exceeding.”

So, how do you create a customer experience worthy of conversation? I was determined to answer that question as I went on vacation a few weeks ago.

Discovering a 5-star customer experience

After seeing Dan Gingiss, author of “The Experience Maker,” at a recent event and with his book in hand, I headed to a resort off the coast of South Carolina to find out how it earned its AAA Five Diamond award and Forbes 5-star rating.

It began with a room upgrade because I had booked our stay through American Express. I’ve had this perk for years, yet I rarely receive an upgrade at other hotels we’ve stayed at. And it wasn’t just any room; it was oceanfront with a million-dollar view. Boom, at least one star, maybe more, accounted for in less than 10 minutes.

The next day, at breakfast, we met Lincoln. Lincoln wasn’t just our server; he was our vacation coach. He asked us what we were hoping to get out of our vacation. He then reminded us to slow down, breathe and enjoy our time at the resort. It was a much-needed reminder that we were on vacation and to take time to reset, be present and enjoy our time together.

He also asked, with genuine sincerity, if there was anything he could do to make our stay more enjoyable, which we would later take him up on. Another star earned, thanks to Lincoln.

With our mindset adjusted to vacation mode, we set out to see the resort and walk on the beach. We went to the hotel room to find another surprise that really brought home the art of “wowing” your customers with the little things.

Dig deeper: 5 simple ways to improve customer experience

Anticipating and exceeding customer needs

My wife is a member of a neighborhood book club. She, like me, brought her book with her to read and enjoy our newly found free time. The book was left on the ledge of the bathtub and the person who provided the cleaning service to our room noticed that she didn’t have a bookmark.

There, carefully placed on top of the book, was a resort-branded gold tassel bookmark. Impressive! If that attention to detail doesn’t earn you a star, I don’t know what will.

A couple of mornings later, Lincoln was once again our breakfast server. This time, my wife was trying to decide between two tempting items on the menu. Lincoln offered to take the most appealing items from each and make a custom breakfast specifically for her. After all, he asked what he could do to make our stay more enjoyable. Mission accomplished.

His final act occurred on the last day of our stay. We mentioned that we’d be checking out later that day, and Lincoln prepared a “goodie bag” for our trip, complete with utensils. This is a perfect example of going “above and beyond.” We were impressed and touched.

During our stay, it was clear that the resort empowered its employees, from room service to spa to restaurants, to make decisions that benefit the guest experience. Taking a page out of Gingiss’s book, they noticed the little things, like a book without a bookmark.

Delivering exceptional experience through a customer-centric culture

As the bookmark illustrates, experiences can be shaped without even interacting with customers. The power of observation, anticipation of needs and the willingness to act all shape the experience without engagement.

The resort earned its high ratings because everyone bought into their mission. They all lived it. It wasn’t one or two things or one or two people; it was everyone. They knew what business they were in and it wasn’t hospitality — it was the experience.

You just can’t tell a customer what your brand stands for. They have to experience it, just like our experience at the resort. We felt the service and experience that earned them their well-deserved high rating.

Every touch point shapes the experience. You can’t fake it and customers can feel it. You also have to know what business you are really in. It isn’t a technology you’re selling, but what it does for the users. It’s what it enables or produces, not the feature or functionality.

CX beyond AI: Focus on delighting customers

AI-enabled customer experiences will not be about what the technology can do but what job it does for the user. As an emerging technology, I see early signs this thinking isn’t happening.

Currently, the application seems more about what it can do for the company. Perhaps that’s a valid first step, but it needs to quickly move to the customer experience.

It’s still too soon to know, but in the meantime, there are many things you can do without it. Focus on the small things that delight customers, train and empower your employees and find opportunities to exceed their expectations. Sounds simple and intuitive, but is it happening consistently and across the organization?

What did we tell our friends and family about our trip? Was it the food, weather, beach and the resort’s beauty? Perhaps a little. But what truly captured the essence of our experience was the story of the bookmark — proof of earnest attention to detail.

We didn’t even have to explain it; people just got it when they heard the story. That’s how you build a good reputation and earn high ratings.

Dig deeper: The new blueprint for customer experience: Always on, always listening

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Ana Mourão: Spotlight on the expert

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 16:43:51 +0000

Our “Spotlight on the expert” series digs deeper into the stories of our expert contributors. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Stanley Black & Decker is a truly iconic brand, around for more than 180 years, with a global market and its name practically synonymous with power tools. For more than six years, MarTech contributor Ana Mourão has been a leader in digital engagement, data architecture, CRM and CDP at the brand. She is currently global customer CRM senior manager and CDP advisor.

Q: You studied in São Paulo. Is that where you are from?

A: Yes, I am Brazilian, correct.

Q: You did a bachelor’s in economics and then — fashion marketing?

A: I never really liked economics in itself. I like more the communication and the data part of it, so I ended up being really interested in digital marketing because it really had a lot of data you could leverage. That really piqued my interest. When I was finishing up college I had the opportunity to do an internship at a project that was funded by the Brazilian government. Its objective was to increase the exportation of Brazilian software to the U.S., Europe and Asia. They had an office here in South Florida so I had the opportunity to come and work in digital marketing, so that’s how I got started. I ended up meeting my husband here and staying and developing my career.

Because I loved the data part of digital marketing so much, I ended up going towards marketing technology, CRM and customer data. That’s it in a nutshell.

Q: Although you’ve spent most of your career in Florida, you also worked as a digital marketing manager at 3M in Brazil for some time.

A: Yes, I stayed 13 years here; worked for Charles Schwab, Starwood Hotels and Resorts (now part of Marriott). I had my daughter here. Then we moved back to Brazil and spent five years in Brazil so that she could be closer to family and grandparents. While we were in Brazil, I worked for 3M. My role there was digital marketing and ecommerce, even though the ecommerce piece was a very limited presence because 3M is a B2B company — but they had some products that were more geared to the end user that we could have in our little Brazilian ecommerce store.

Q: And just before that, some time at Univision, the major U.S. Hispanic television network?

A: Yes, right after I left Starwood and before returning to Brazil.

Dig deeper: MarTech Spotlight interviews

Q: How did you come to join Stanley Black & Decker?

A: I joined them six years ago and I joined what they used to call “global emerging markets,” including Latin America, Asia, Middle East and Africa. Even though Stanley Black & Decker is very much a B2B company, it understands that it can generate demand on behalf of its distributors and retailers. In order to do that, we need to know the end user who goes into the Home Depots, or wherever, and buys our tools. That was the effort I was hired to do, so we put in place a marketing technology stack to make sure that our different teams in different markets could have access to their piece of the database (and only their piece) so that they could leverage digital activation.

All that was put in place first; after we started collecting the data, we brought the CDP to the center of the marketing technology stack. We’re now bringing the large regions into the CDP; we’ve brought North America, and this year we’re going to bring Europe.

Q: So Stanley Black & Decker is not direct-to-consumer. You’re selling to distributors or retailers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have marketing initiatives directed at stimulating demand among consumers.

A: That’s exactly the point. We can not only understand end users, but also tap into them to do product innovation. We work closely with our customer insights team and other commercial teams inside Stanley Black & Decker.

Q: The CDP, then, collects data about consumers rather than the businesses you’re selling to?

A: Yes. We realized we wanted to have this data over time; we wanted to have a 360-degree view of the data. In order to have this view over time, the CDP was the best choice.

Q: Many businesses use a CDP to try to activate messages for customers, almost in real time. But from your perspective, you’re more interested in the customer’s behavior over a period of time. You’re not trying to reach them immediately.

A: Exactly. For the most part, our use cases are more about knowing that an end user is really interested in woodworking and then matching that interest with our content. It is more valuable for us to have that information, unified, and then serve that customization to you than it is for real-time use cases — I know that fits in a lot of other companies, but it’s not representative of our use cases.

Q: Are you, then, creating content to deliver to the customers?

A: Yes. This is something else that may differentiate us from other companies. We work very closely with business stakeholders to develop our data template. Whenever we have discussion about collecting data for a new data field, we ask ourselves, “Do we have content against it?” If you tell me you’re a woodworker, do I have content to serve you as a woodworker? Otherwise, why would I collect this data point? Everything we collect, we want to make sure we have content or are on track to develop content.

Q: What are the other important elements of your martech stack?

A: In addition to the CDP, Treasure Data, we have the omnichannel platform, Iterable. Those are the two main pieces. In addition to that, we have a platform to leverage landing pages.

Q: What catches your eye most in marketing technology today?

A: Making sure that companies match marketing technology to the processes because I think this is sometimes disconnected, especially because the business users think technology will solve everything (it won’t) and IT thinks the business users don’t know what they want. That’s something I’ve been writing for MarTech — that the usage of marketing technology is decreasing over time, which is crazy. Now you have smaller teams and smaller budgets and an expectation that the output is going to remain the same or improve.

How to do that, in my experience, is to manage the marketing technology with the processes in a way that it can improve the processes.

Q: What interests do you have outside of marketing technology?

A: I like photography. I used to have my own lab and everything. I also like baking. Sweet treats.

Q: And do you get back to Brazil often?

A: Yes, every year-and-a-half to two years to see family; and they come to visit as well.

Fuel for your marketing strategy.

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Salesforce reportedly close to deal for Informatica

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 16:43:30 +0000

Salesforce is in advanced talks to buy Informatica, according to published reports.

Informatica helps companies — including Toyota, Unilever and Deloitte — manage data across cloud and on-premise systems. It has a market cap of more than $11 billion and last year debuted Claire GPT, a generative AI tool to help companies handle data.

Informatica, founded in 1993, offers subscription-based data management services and helps automate tasks for more than 5,000 active customers, according to its website. It was taken private in 2015 for about $5.3 billion by a consortium that included Permira and CPPIB. Informatica went public again in 2021.

Why we care. The deal would add to Salesforce’s cornucopia of abilities, arming it with powerful data managing tools and more AI technology.

Dig deeper: MarTech’s CRM experts to follow

The deal would be Salesforce’s largest since it bought Slack in 2021 for $28 billion. It would also mark a return to form for the company, once known for its acquisitions. If the Informatica deal goes through, it would be the 75th business purchased by Salesforce.

Early last year several significant investors, including ValueAct Capital and Elliott Management, questioned whether all the acquisitions were good for stock value and pushed for changes. In response, Salesforce laid off 10% of its workforce, increased share buybacks and disbanded its M&A board committee. Salesforce stock fell Monday following the Informatica reports.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been praising Salesforce Data Cloud as an incredible new product.

Benioff said Salesforce added a thousand new Data Cloud customers over the quarter and called that business “the cherry at the top of the cake.” The company’s Data Cloud revenue was up 22% from the previous year. According to Benioff, companies are realizing they need proper data management to effectively bring AI into their businesses.
CNBC

If there’s any substance to the Informatica rumors, perhaps Salesforce still needs help managing data.

Neither company has publicly said anything about a possible deal.

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Deep links for push notifications: Best of the MarTechBot

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 16:32:19 +0000

Best of the MarTechBot showcases the MarTechBot’s responses to prompts submitted by readers. See more about how marketers are using MarTechBot here. The language model is based on content from MarTech embedded on top of ChatGPT. The editors of MarTech selected this response for its usefulness and have supplemented it with additional relevant content.

I am the first generative AI chatbot for marketing technology professionals. I am trained with MarTech content. Here’s something somebody asked me! After that, how to improve prompts to get even better answers from me.

Prompt:

How do you send a push message with a deep link?

Answer:

To send a push message with a deep link, you will need to follow these steps:

1. Choose a push notification service: Select a push notification service provider that supports deep linking capabilities. Popular options include Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), OneSignal, and Pusher.

2. Implement deep linking in your app: Integrate deep linking functionality into your mobile app. This involves configuring your app to handle deep links and specifying the desired destination within the app when a user interacts with the push notification.

3. Generate a deep link URL: Create a deep link URL that corresponds to the specific page or content within your app that you want to direct users to. This URL should be unique and specific to the desired destination.

4. Craft your push message: Compose a compelling push message that entices users to engage with your app. Make sure to include a clear call-to-action and provide value or incentive to encourage users to click on the push notification.

5. Include the deep link URL in the push payload: When sending the push notification, include the deep link URL in the payload of the push message. This ensures that when users click on the notification, they are directed to the desired location within the app.

6. Test and track performance: Before sending the push notification to your entire user base, thoroughly test the deep linking functionality to ensure it works as intended. Additionally, track the performance of your push messages with deep links to measure engagement and conversion rates.

By incorporating deep links into your push notifications, you can provide a seamless and personalized user experience, driving users directly to relevant content within your app and increasing engagement and conversions.

Updated prompt:

Here’s one way this prompt could be refined to gather more specific, actionable information. MarTechBot now has 10+ personas to provide more targeted responses. For this prompt, try selecting the marketing manager persona. There are many possibilities, depending on the human user’s industry and main objectives:

Before we start, in addition to your other context, you manage marketing programs for a regional fitness gym chain. How can your team use a deep link in push notifications to increase conversion and retention? Please include specific examples of where the deep link should take a customer in their journey and what messages should be in the push notifications. Please keep answers simple.

The key elements and enhancements to this prompt are as follows:

(Task)

Use a deep link in push notifications to increase conversion and retention.

(Context)

You manage marketing programs for a regional fitness gym chain.

(Format)

Please include specific examples of where the deep link should take a customer in their journey and what messages should be in the push notifications.

(Tone)

Please keep answers simple.

Updated answer:

As a marketing manager for a regional fitness gym chain, using deep links in push notifications can be an effective strategy to increase conversion and retention. Here are some simple examples of how you can utilize deep links in push notifications:

1. New Class Promotion:

Message: “Join our exciting new yoga class! Click here to reserve your spot.”

Deep Link: The deep link should take the customer directly to the class schedule page within your gym’s mobile app, where they can easily reserve a spot for the yoga class.

2. Personalized Workout Plan:

Message: “Get a personalized workout plan just for you! Click here to start.”

Deep Link: The deep link should take the customer to their personalized workout plan within your gym’s mobile app, where they can access exercises, track progress, and receive recommendations tailored to their fitness goals.

3. Exclusive Membership Offer:

Message: “Upgrade to our premium membership for exclusive benefits! Click here to learn more.”

Deep Link: The deep link should take the customer to a dedicated page within your gym’s mobile app that highlights the benefits of the premium membership, such as access to additional classes, discounts on personal training, or exclusive events.

4. Refer a Friend Program:

Message: “Refer a friend and earn rewards! Click here to invite your friends.”

Deep Link: The deep link should take the customer to a referral page within your gym’s mobile app, where they can easily invite their friends to join and earn rewards for successful referrals.

By using deep links in push notifications, you can provide a seamless and personalized experience for your customers, leading them directly to relevant content or actions within your mobile app. This can help increase conversion rates by reducing friction and improving the user journey, ultimately boosting customer retention and engagement.

Now it’s your turn to give MarTechBot a try. It’s free and includes multiple expert personas to choose from, as well as an image generator.

Dig deeper: How to send mobile app messages that build loyalty

Fuel for your marketing strategy.

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Integrating AI into MOps: Aligning your platforms, data and processes

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 14:59:36 +0000

Many companies are exploring and integrating AI into their marketing strategies and across business functions. While every organization has its own characteristics, the main goal of integration is to boost efficiency, gather valuable insights and enhance marketing outcomes with less effort.

This article, the second in a series, outlines the essential steps and factors to consider when selecting the right AI solutions for your marketing ecosystem. Building on the previous article that explored setting the right goals for AI integration, this piece emphasizes the importance of choosing AI tools that are tailored to your specific marketing environment and can help achieve your desired outcomes.

Choosing the right AI platforms

First, make sure you choose the right tool(s) for the job. While a handful of platforms are getting a lot of attention in AI, thousands of others can provide writing assistance, content and image generation, predictive analytics and much more.

Based on your goals, make a short list of some of the biggest challenges that AI can help your team solve. Here are a few ideas:

Spellcheck and fix writing for errors more easily.
Turn meeting minutes into project briefs and action items for marketing campaigns.
Generate campaign concept ideas more quickly.
Quickly analyze datasets using natural language prompts.
Create first drafts of marketing content, such as blogs, emails and brochure copy.
Turn a single image into multiple versions for multiple channels, all using different size requirements.
Generate personalized product images.
Anticipate customer churn using predictive analytics.
Route customers to different automated journeys depending on their. engagement and behavior.

Based on the examples above, you can use several types of AI tools, depending on the challenges you choose to focus on. For instance, a tool like Grammarly might be great to adopt as a common spellcheck and writing tool, but another tool will need to be used to analyze datasets. Still, another would be needed to understand customer churn and route those customers to the right automated journey.

Once you’ve identified and prioritized the marketing areas where AI can help the most, it’s time to examine platforms closely. Consider the following criteria:

Scalability, or how well it can support your organization beyond an initial proof of concept or test.
Integration with your existing martech stack, so that you have minimal efficiency losses from switching between applications.
User-friendliness, or how well your current team and new team members who will join over time will be able to utilize it within their day-to-day work.
Privacy and security and how secure your company’s data is when feeding it to the tool’s machine learning models and other AI processors.
Total cost of ownership, or how much cost savings or revenue generation occurs from using the product vs. the cost of implementation and maintenance over time.

Existing products may also not fit the use case, security or other marketing or technical requirements. Thus, choosing between building a custom solution or buying off-the-shelf can be complex and unique to each company.

Custom-built platforms can offer tailored features and tighter control over data privacy. In contrast, pre-packaged solutions might offer faster time-to-value and easier implementation due to existing API connectors. Yet, proprietary systems could lead to longer-term costs and reduced influence over product development.

Dig deeper: How to decide which generative AI tools fit your organization

Getting the data (lake)house in order

“Garbage in, garbage out” is crucial when implementing AI in a business setting. An intelligent system is useless if it doesn’t have quality data to learn from and adapt to. Therefore, for AI to work effectively, it needs data and the state of your data storage platforms, like data warehouses or lakes, significantly influences the outcomes.

It’s also essential to ensure that the necessary data is easily accessible and shareable across systems while safeguarding consumer privacy and sensitive company information that should remain confidential. This is why generic AI solutions may not be as suitable for businesses as those tailored for enterprises or custom applications developed with these factors in mind. Given the growing regulatory focus on data handling practices, prioritizing practices and business security considerations in data strategies is crucial.

Dig deeper: How to make sure your data is AI-ready

Understanding and mapping process changes

Integrating AI into your MOps workflows requires a clear understanding of current processes to identify where changes can make the biggest impact. A good starting point is to map the current state against the desired future state involving AI.

With this start, you can then find areas for improvement in the form of:

Bottlenecks that some increased automation could mitigate.
Areas where there are not enough resources to do the desired work.
Instances where generative AI tools could do more work with fewer resources.
Opportunities to automate reporting and analysis tasks that help marketing teams get better recommendations.

Guide teams through the transition using an interactive process where tests and proofs of concept are used and learned from and where feedback is gathered from everyone involved. Taking an approach like this ensures you don’t make large, untested changes that may not achieve success and minimizes resistance to change by the people you need to support the long-term adoption of these changes.

Incorporating AI into marketing activities goes beyond choosing the technology; it involves preparing your company’s data infrastructure, grasping the process changes and readying your team for the transition. This approach can revolutionize your MOps with AI, resulting in enhanced ROI and customer interactions.

The upcoming segment of this series will explore how to combine these components to implement AI in marketing strategies and projects.

Fuel for your marketing strategy.

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The post Integrating AI into MOps: Aligning your platforms, data and processes appeared first on MarTech.

3 Ways Top Websites Personalize On-Site Content via @sejournal, @xandervalencia

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 12:45:51 +0000

See how Adidas, Aveda, and Netflix create exceptional experiences and drive engagement and revenue with personalized content.

The post 3 Ways Top Websites Personalize On-Site Content appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

YouTube Shorts: An Introductory Guide via @sejournal, @gregjarboe

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 11:41:10 +0000

YouTube's quick and entertaining video format did very well in its first year. Here's everything you need to know about YouTube Shorts.

The post YouTube Shorts: An Introductory Guide appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

How to Use Structured Data to Support E-A-T via @sejournal, @lilyraynyc

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 10:45:12 +0000

Do you want to boost your content's perceived E-A-T? Learn how to leverage structured data to do that in this guide.

The post How to Use Structured Data to Support E-A-T appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

The 5 Paid Ad Channels You Need to Incorporate Right Now via @sejournal, @adzooma

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 05:00:50 +0000

Ready to advertise beyond Google Ads and Facebook? Learn how you can get the most out of Microsoft, Amazon, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

The post The 5 Paid Ad Channels You Need to Incorporate Right Now appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Google Announces Search Redesign Using MUM Algorithm via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 20:55:30 +0000

Google announced a redesign of Google Search that introduces an intuitive way to explore topics and surface more content with MUM

The post Google Announces Search Redesign Using MUM Algorithm appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Google Helps You Validate Sources Directly in Search Results via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 19:42:16 +0000

Updates to Google Search will help you determine if a website is a trustworthy source of information before clicking a link in search results.

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Google MUM is Coming to Lens via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 19:05:38 +0000

Widescale introduction of Google's MUM AI Algorithm is an encouraging development for web publishers and ecommerce sites

The post Google MUM is Coming to Lens appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

The Smart Marketer’s Guide to Google Alerts via @sejournal, @AdamHeitzman

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 14:41:11 +0000

Google Alerts is a flexible free tool every marketer should know. Learn how to use it and get a step-by-step guide to getting started.

The post The Smart Marketer’s Guide to Google Alerts appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Enterprise SEO Content: Opportunity, Dynamic Creation & Scale

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 13:45:06 +0000

Learn how to scale your enterprise SEO with dynamic content creation. Identify new opportunities and build incremental revenue.

The post Enterprise SEO Content: Opportunity, Dynamic Creation & Scale appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

How Facebook Messenger Generates Cost-effective, Trackable Leads via @sejournal, @closedloop

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 12:45:25 +0000

It's the perfect time to build, test, and perfect your lead generation tactics using Facebook's native tools. Here's how.

The post How Facebook Messenger Generates Cost-effective, Trackable Leads appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Call Tracking for Google Ads & SEO: Convert Leads Faster [Webinar] via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 11:45:42 +0000

Get a better understanding of how call tracking can help your lead generation campaigns become more successful.

The post Call Tracking for Google Ads & SEO: Convert Leads Faster [Webinar] appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

How to Find What’s Trending: 14 Tools for Topic Inspiration via @sejournal, @drumming

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 10:45:46 +0000

Check out these 14 tools for finding trending topics in your industry, to inform your SEO and content marketing campaigns.

The post How to Find What’s Trending: 14 Tools for Topic Inspiration appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Google Publishes Best Practices Guide for Ecommerce via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 09:47:08 +0000

Google published an advanced SEO guide featuring best practices for a successful ecommerce online presence

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Can Chrome-Based Spammers Impact Core Web Vitals? via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 09:17:10 +0000

Is it possible that Chrome-based spam traffic can have a negative impact on Core Web Vitals?

The post Can Chrome-Based Spammers Impact Core Web Vitals? appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

YouTube Adds More Viewership Data to the Studio Mobile App via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 07:46:02 +0000

YouTube creators are getting access to more data in the Studio Mobile app with metrics such as 'new and returning' and more.

The post YouTube Adds More Viewership Data to the Studio Mobile App appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Google: URLs Are Case Sensitive via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 23:06:35 +0000

Google's John Mueller clarifies that URLs are case sensitive, so it matters whether the characters are uppercase or lowercase.

The post Google: URLs Are Case Sensitive appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Bounce Rate: Is It a Google Ranking Factor? via @sejournal, @annaleacrowe

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 14:45:02 +0000

Does bounce rate impact your Google rankings? See whether it's a ranking factor and learn about any impact on organic traffic here.

The post Bounce Rate: Is It a Google Ranking Factor? appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Local Competitors Violating GMB Guidelines? Here’s What You Can Do via @sejournal, @sherrybonelli

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 13:45:42 +0000

Are you getting beat in local rankings because competitors are violating the Google My Business rules? You can fight back. Learn how.

The post Local Competitors Violating GMB Guidelines? Here’s What You Can Do appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Should You Create a Niche or Multi-Topic Website? via @sejournal, @mindyweinstein

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 12:45:02 +0000

Both niche and multi-topic websites can work with an organized site structure and plenty of content to support each topic. Here's how.

The post Should You Create a Niche or Multi-Topic Website? appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

How to Make Paid Social Work for Lead Generation [Webinar] via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 11:45:03 +0000

Discover innovative ways for B2B and SaaS brands to generate leads and drive revenue using paid social, with expert guest Garrett Mehrguth.

The post How to Make Paid Social Work for Lead Generation [Webinar] appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Cannibalization

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 07:00:00 +0000

In today's episode of Whiteboard Friday, Moz SEO expert Tom Capper walks you through cannibalization: what it is, how to identify it, and how to fix it.

SEO Biz Updated RSS Feed

Advertising in local markets: A playbook for success

1. Understand local vs. national campaigns

2. Leverage customized audience segmentation

3. Adapt to local market dynamics

4. Apply data and predictive analytics

5. Counter external market influences

6. Build consumer confidence with messaging

7. Dominate with local advertising

The state of data in 2024: How the ad industry is adapting to privacy regulations

Insights into the shifting privacy landscape

Adapting to the new normal: Investments in training and expertise

The decline of high-quality data and its impact on media planning

Enhancing data quality through first-party data and AI

Balancing privacy and economic growth

A call to action: Leading the charge in consumer privacy

The latest jobs in martech

Newest jobs in martech:

Director roles:

Senior roles:

Associate roles:

Adobe’s AI Assistant brings tl;dr to your documents

Adobe puts two AI tools into general release

As lead gen grows on social media, marketers discuss what’s working

An engaged audience interested in products and services

Social media lead gen for B2C businesses

Social media lead gen for B2B companies

Comarch Holds New Webinar – Top Loyalty Trends: Industry-Specific Ideas 2024 by Comarch

Comarch holds new webinar – Top loyalty trends: Industry-specific ideas 2024 by Comarch

Why the shift from ‘conversions’ to ‘key events’ in GA4 is a game-changer

Understanding key events in GA4

What this change means

Aligning with your CMO and the rest of the C-suite

Assigning monetary value to key events

Adopting key events beyond SEO

Test and prepare for the ‘searchquake’

Adtech’s approaches to greener marketing

AI-powered martech releases and news: April 18

Decoding generative AI: Top LLMs and the app ecosystems they support

A strategic approach

LLMs and the app ecosystem they support

One and done? A comparison of major LLMs

1. OpenAI GPT Models: ChatGPT 3.5 vs. 4.0

2. Google Gemini Models

3. Amazon Q

5. Anthropic Claude

6. Meta LLaMA

My shortlist and third-party apps

Use AI or die?

What is marketing work management?

Benefits of marketing work management tools

Relationship with agile marketing

Catch up on the Agile Marketing Navigator series!

Complexity is driving the adoption of these solutions

Marketing work management will be impacted by AI

The future of first-party data and why it will be critical by Edna Chavira

The state of GA4, one year after the big migration

It’s time to turbocharge our path to email innovation

1. The rise of data proximity

2. Generative AI

3. Innovation

Wrapping up

GrowthLoop and TransUnion partner to improve audience reach

Achieving a low Gmail spam rate: 3 essential steps

Common email mistakes that increase spam rates

Proactive strategies to get your email campaigns in compliance

1. Clean your subscriber list

2. Double-confirm that your domain is authenticated

3. Stay on top of privacy laws

Gmail and Yahoo sending requirements to commit to memory

Reference Litmus and Postmaster Tools to get advanced techniques for reducing spam

How to engage your best users and buy yourself some time to get in compliance

Wrapping up

The top 10 benefits of customer data platforms

CDP features

Internet advertising up 7.3%, reaching record high in U.S.

Adopting consent-based analytics for long-term marketing success

Choosing the correct tools

Implementation considerations

Addressing concerns and misconceptions