Editor’s Note: This post is adapted from a chapter of GIJN’s forthcoming Open Source Research Guide, by Henk van Ess. Posts on using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have already been published. The guide will be released in full this September at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GICJ23).
Methodology Note: I chose English language examples as our user interface because new search options often appear first in English. However, most examples will work in other languages. In addition, I included screenshots to capture how these examples looked at the time conducted the searches. These results may change over time, however.
A beginner’s guide on how to search on Instagram, published via GIJN, is available in All You Need to Know to Search like a Pro on Instagram, followed by a Part 2. We recommend both articles if you are new to Instagram; if you’re looking for more advanced advice, this chapter offers additional tips.
Date Search via Instagram
Instagram’s search functionality is primarily based on keywords like hashtags, usernames, and location tags. If you don’t know any of these details, then the search algorithm won’t be able to find it for you.
Instagram’s date search feature is limited because the platform’s search algorithm is primarily designed to help users discover new and popular content, rather than retrieve specific content from the past. It’s optimized for speed and efficiency, rather than accuracy. Instagram always shows, like Twitter, the “Top” posts first. If you want the latest posts, scroll down a bit and look for “Most recent.” That is far from perfect.
Date Search via Google
Use Google to search Instagram for certain dates; Google may be able to find content that isn’t readily available through Instagram’s own search functionality. Google, by default, won’t see everything because Instagram doesn’t allow full access, but it’s worth a try. Say you want to find posts about an accident in Phoenix last week. Do this in Google:
Image: Screenshot, Henk van Ess
As you can see, when we did this search, we got two (not so good) hits.
Date Search via Google Images
If you’re struggling to search for dates on Instagram, there is a more effective solution. Google Images uses a distinct search algorithm and criteria, allowing it to locate images and photos from across the internet. Given that Instagram is also focused on visual content, Google Images may be a useful alternative for finding what you’re looking for.
Due to its fine-tuned search engine, Google Images may find more relevant images from Instagram than the regular Google search engine. Let’s repeat the search we just did.
Image: Screenshot, Henk van Ess
The same search for “accident” in “Phoenix,” the week before, on Instagram has better and more results now. Google Images is clearly the winner in this date search.
Both methods — searching on dates via Google and Google Images — can complement each other and be used together to enhance your search experience. It ultimately depends on what you’re looking for and what approach works best for you.
Location Search via Mobile App
It can be easier to find breaking news stories on Instagram, but investigative journalists may need to dig deeper. Using Instagram can be challenging, especially when trying to find evidence of activity across a wide area. The lack of specific search criteria, such as date ranges and advanced filters, can make the process slower and less effective.
Image: Screenshot, Henk van Ess
Instagram’s Map Search feature saves the day. It’s an excellent way to find photos in a broader area.
Use the mobile app for Instagram for this. Tap the looking glass, search for “Aleppo” and tap “Places.” Tab on “Aleppo, Syria.”
Image: Screenshot, Henk van Ess
Now you get a hit based on those keywords. Tap twice on the map now, click on the divider to see the full screen. There it is: your area map of Instagram, with the photos shown on a map.
You will now get a bigger map and more accounts, based on geolocation. You can search for specific keywords in that area if you want.
Image: Screenshot, Henk van Ess
Location Search via Desktop
The drawback of the “Location search via mobile app” is that it’s labor intensive. It is possible to do the same on your desktop. For that we need a tool, called instahunt.co.
1. Choose an area
Image: Screenshot, Henk van Ess
Click on the map of instahunt.co or search for a specific location.
Image: Screenshot, Henk van Ess
2. Activate tool
Click “Find Places.”
This will prepare a set of coordinates you need later.
Image: Screenshot, Henk van Ess
3. Get Instagram data
Now click on “Get Instagram Place Data” – be sure you already have your Instagram account open.
4. Copy the code
You will see all kinds of location codes around the place you picked. Just copy those.
5. Paste it into the tool
Image: Screenshot, Henk van Ess
It’s now up to you to decide which accounts would be interesting to study. Facebook photos will also be displayed if there are any.
Pinterest has a lot to offer both beginner and experienced photographers. Here’s how you can make the most of this undercover social media site.
Pinterest is a network where many people seek inspiration for their own creative ideas, and it’s also a spot where those with an open mindset can successfully promote their photography skills.
Whether you work with clients or create your own products (or both), you’ve got plenty of opportunities to use Pinterest effectively. In this guide, you will discover seven possible things you can try when using the platform.
1. Finding Inspiration From Other Photographers
If you’ve ever used Pinterest in a smaller capacity before, it was probably to find inspiration. It’s a great place to look for ideas related to travel, food, lifestyle, and much more. And whether you’re a beginner to photography or a seasoned professional, Pinterest can help you advance your skills even further.
When using Pinterest, you can find inspiration from other photographers in your field. For example, you can look for new locations to capture in your local area or potential ways to place items in a photoshoot if you want to improve your product photography.
Pinterest is also useful if you want to look at new aesthetics to adjust your editing style. You can then advance your editing skills in Lightroom once you’ve saved some ideas.
2. Learning More About Photography as a Craft
Finding inspiration from other photographers is one way to get better at your craft, but it’s not necessarily the most efficient way to do so. For many people, the best way to become a better street photographer (or excel in any genre, for that matter) is to absorb information and put it into action.
Pinterest might not be the first place that comes to mind when thinking about where you can learn more about photography. However, it’s an excellent place to find practical resources, such as blog posts, YouTube videos, and podcast episodes.
Many creators publish pins of what they share elsewhere on Pinterest, and you’ll also find the outbound link here. You can use the search bar on Pinterest to find topics (such as “photography tips”). When you see something that you want to refer to later, save it as a pin within a mood board.
If you enjoy using Pinterest, and your favourite browser is Firefox, consider trying these Pinterest add-ons for Firefox.
3. Drive Bookings for Photoshoots
For many photographers, photoshoots are a popular income stream. In addition to being skilled at your craft, you also need to market your services to your target audience. Social media in general is ideal for doing that, and Pinterest can help you get your work in front of others who may wish to do business with you.
When using Pinterest as a photographer, you can share your best work in separate pins. To bring all of these together, consider creating a board that others can access. Each time you share a pin that includes a portfolio piece, you can provide a brief description of what you do. If a user likes what they see, they can click on the link you include and book a shoot directly with you.
If you use pins for photoshoot bookings, it’s worth mentioning the locations you’re willing to work in. Giving others an idea of where you’re based is also wise.
Although many photographers begin their careers with client work, running a business has the beauty of opening your eyes to plenty of other income-generating opportunities. It’s not uncommon for experienced photographers to launch their own products later on, including selling prints and photography books.
When promoting your photography services, you’ll need to build awareness around the products in your store if you want to maximize your earning potential. Pinterest is a handy place for doing precisely that.
To help promote products from your online store, you should think about what the end result is for the buyer. For example, if you create and sell Lightroom presets, showcase what a picture looks like before and after applying it. Similarly, if you sell prints, you can show how the photo looks when it appears on someone’s wall
5. Finding Other Local Photographers
Although many people have a camera on their smartphone these days, being truly passionate about photography—to the point of learning more about the craft—is a lot more rare. As a result, you may find your life as a photographer quite lonely if you don’t make an effort to meet like-minded people.
There are many ways that social media brings people together, and one of its greatest benefits is that you can find people living near you with related interests. If you’re looking for other photographers, you can use Pinterest in a similar way to Instagram by typing your location followed by “photographer” in the search bar.
When you see a photographer that interests you, you can send them a message on Pinterest. Alternatively, see if they have any other social media accounts and contact them on those.
6. Asking Clients to Find Photoshoot Styles That Interest Them
Like selling a service in any other business, it’s essential that you understand what your client wants from a photoshoot. The best way to do this is by asking in advance—or even better, asking your client to provide examples of what they’re looking for.
You can tell clients to create a board with different ideas on Pinterest, and once they’ve done this, they can provide you with the link. Alternatively, you can create a board of ideas you’ve got and send your proposals to see if the other party is happy.
When creating boards for this phase, you can always make them private if you want. You can find out how to use secret boards on Pinterest in a separate guide.
7. Promoting Pins via Advertising
Like many other social media networks, Pinterest offers an avenue for paid advertising if you want to get in front of more people. Of course, you’ll need a budget to use Pinterest advertising—but once you’re established, you may find that this is a useful option for getting in front of more users.
When advertising on Pinterest, make sure you understand who you’re trying to reach with your photography. Moreover, you should set a clear limit on how much you’re willing to spend in advance.
Pinterest: A Powerful Platform for Photographers
Pinterest has several uses for photographers, and it can help both those who work with clients and photographers who sell products. Even if you’re only in your early days as a photographer, you can find significant value in using Pinterest to discover different photography styles and resources.
Now that you’ve read this guide, you should have a better idea of how you can make the most out of this still-underrated social media platform. Why not experiment with each of these tips?
Danny specializes in writing about productivity and also enjoys exploring different creative disciplines, especially photography. He has a degree in Sports Journalism and has been writing professionally since 2016.
Have you seen the new Adobe *logo*? It appears in promotional videos introducing Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator with generative artificial intelligence, and it looks more luscious than a doughnut at a gluten-free convention.
Instead of using the classic red “A” graphic mark that Adobe users know from the company’s arsenal of creative tools, the videos show a new design: A sleek, slanting “A” that precedes the letters “dobe,” which are set in a bold typeface. It looks so cool that I thought Adobe had at last updated its brand.
Except, well, it’s not the new Adobe logo. According to Heather Combs, Adobe’s head of brand strategy and customer insights, it’s not a logo at all. Rather, she says, it’s a wordmark. “It’s not replacing the logo; it’s just a new expression in the way that we are creating the way our brand shows up in the world,” she says.
Combs popped my happy bubble over a video chat last week, after I inquired about the new look, casually (and hopefully) asking if this was the dawn of a new branding era at Adobe. Combs emphatically told me that this glorious new mark, seen across Adobe promotional videos, isnot a logo; it’s simply a new part of its brand tool kit. “We’ve had a logo for a long time. A beautiful logo, which is still our logo moving forward. We’ve just added a new piece to the tool kit so we can express the brand in multiple ways,” she says.
[Images: Adobe]
Combs is referring to the corporate logo that illustrator Marva Warnock (wife of the company’s cofounder John Warnock), designed in 1982 for Adobe’s launch. Warnock’s design featured a slanted “A” whose crossbar formed an open triangle. Though Adobe updated Warnock’s design in 1990 to the red, white, and black logo still used today, the company has had a shockingly consistent visual language from its earliest days. Which is why a new logo would have been so exciting.
Combs’ distinction between logo and wordmark rests on intention. A wordmark can be a logo. Just look at Coca-Cola, Google, and FedEx—designs that are made with letters set in a typeface. A logo—a term that comes from Greek for “word”—is generally understood by most humans to be anything that represents a brand. That can be a graphic mark (Apple’s bitten apple), a logotype (IBM), or a combination of both, sometimes called a graphical logo (Nike, Target, and Unilever).
In the case of Adobe, this wordmark isn’t the official corporate logo, and therefore, by the rules of corporate branding 101, it cannot be considered a logo at all. Combs says the company toyed with its new design at last year’s Adobe Max conference, but there weren’t any “hard rollouts.” Not until these new generative AI promo videos, that is. It’s really a shame because this design is better than any logo refresh I can think of in recent memory.
The new Adobe wordmark is modern and futuristic, yet it looks so classic that it could have easily been Adobe’s first logo from the ’80s. Just look at the perfect way the classic “A” mark integrates with the “dobe” set in a heavy weight of the Adobe Clean typeface.
“We felt that we were missing a bit of a bolder version of Adobe Clean,” Combs explains. This led Adobe’s typography team to craft a new version that was bolder and took up “a bit more presence,” as Combs describes it. As a result of this exercise, Combs says they are “also looking at the weight of the corporate mark as well.” It seems like the right move because, right now, the official “Adobe” feels rather anaemic and more boring than beige.
[Image: Adobe]
Even though it’s not a logo, the new mark does feel like it’s coming at a pivotal time for the company as it enters its AI era. When I asked Combs if this wordmark was the herald of the new generative AI Adobe, she deflected, saying that while she could see different places where they would use the mark, she won’t confirm it as a mascot for Adobe’s generative-AI tools.
Still, she concedes: “With what we were doing around generative AI and Firefly, we wanted to be more on the edge. And I think we see the wordmark as being a very fresh, bold kind of way to express the brand. Again, not in replacement of the corporate mark, but a really interesting and intriguing way to express the brand.”
When I told her that the wordmark is awesome and perhaps it would confuse people who might mistake it as a new official logo, she says she doesn’t believe that’s the case. “Our objective is to put the Adobe brand in people’s mouths to make them think about us and want to talk about us,” she says. “If this new wordmark creates a point of interest, then it’s doing its job.”
Combs insists that Adobe has no plans to quietly swap its current logo to the new wordmark. She believes its merits are clear. “It’s not broken. Our corporate mark is widely recognized. It is something a lot of people see and feel very positive things about. And I want to continue to sort of build off of that,” she says. Though, she does admit, the wordmark is a bit more scalable to social and places where the current Adobe logo can feel a bit cramped. “This wordmark gives us a bit more of a compact way to express the brand,” she says.
Exactly! Combine that with the cool factor, the classic look, and the obvious tie into the new generative AI era, and you’ve got a rock-solid case to evolve the corporate brand. As an Adobe fan since Photoshop version 2, I sure hope that happens.
Unstructured text and data are like gold for business applications and the company bottom line, but where to start? Here are three tools worth a look.
Developers and data scientists use generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to query volumes of documents and unstructured data. Open source LLMs, including Dolly 2.0, EleutherAI Pythia, Meta AI LLaMa, StabilityLM, and others, are all starting points for experimenting with artificial intelligence that accepts natural language prompts and generates summarized responses.
“Text as a source of knowledge and information is fundamental, yet there aren’t any end-to-end solutions that tame the complexity in handling text,” says Brian Platz, CEO and co-founder of Fluree. “While most organizations have wrangled structured or semi-structured data into a centralized data platform, unstructured data remains forgotten and underleveraged.”
If your organization and team aren’t experimenting with natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, you’re probably lagging behind competitors in your industry. In the 2023 Expert NLP Survey Report, 77% of organizations said they planned to increase spending on NLP, and 54% said their time-to-production was a top return-on-investment (ROI) metric for successful NLP projects.
Use cases for NLP
If you have a corpus of unstructured data and text, some of the most common business needs include
Entity extraction by identifying names, dates, places, and products
Pattern recognition to discover currency and other quantities
Categorization into business terms, topics, and taxonomies
Sentiment analysis, including positivity, negation, and sarcasm
Summarizing the document’s key points
Machine translation into other languages
Dependency graphs that translate text into machine-readable semi-structured representations
Sometimes, having NLP capabilities bundled into a platform or application is desirable. For example, LLMs support asking questions; AI search engines enable searches and recommendations; and chatbots support interactions. Other times, it’s optimal to use NLP tools to extract information and enrich unstructured documents and text.
Let’s look at three popular open source NLP tools that developers and data scientists are using to perform discovery on unstructured documents and develop production-ready NLP processing engines.
“I think the most important tool for NLP is by far Natural Language Toolkit, which is licensed under Apache 2.0,” says Steven Devoe, director of data and analytics at SPR. “In all data science projects, the processing and cleaning of the data to be used by algorithms is a huge proportion of the time and effort, which is particularly true with natural language processing. NLTK accelerates a lot of that work, such as stemming, lemmatization, tagging, removing stop words, and embedding word vectors across multiple written languages to make the text more easily interpreted by the algorithms.”
NLTK’s benefits stem from its endurance, with many examples for developers new to NLP, such as this beginner’s hands-on guide and this more comprehensive overview. Anyone learning NLP techniques may want to try this library first, as it provides simple ways to experiment with basic techniques such as tokenization, stemming, and chunking.
“spaCy is a free, open-source Python library providing advanced capabilities to conduct natural language processing on large volumes of text at high speed,” says Nikolay Manchev, head of data science, EMEA, at Domino Data Lab. “With spaCy, a user can build models and production applications that underpin document analysis, chatbot capabilities, and all other forms of text analysis. Today, the spaCy framework is one of Python’s most popular natural language libraries for industry use cases such as extracting keywords, entities, and knowledge from text.”
Tutorials for spaCy show similar capabilities to NLTK, including named entity recognition and part-of-speech (POS) tagging. One advantage is that spaCy returns document objects and supports word vectors, which can give developers more flexibility for performing additional post-NLP data processing and text analytics.
Spark NLP
If you already use Apache Spark and have its infrastructure configured, then Spark NLP may be one of the faster paths to begin experimenting with natural language processing. Spark NLP has several installation options, including AWS, Azure Databricks, and Docker.
“Spark NLP is a widely used open-source natural language processing library that enables businesses to extract information and answers from free-text documents with state-of-the-art accuracy,” says David Talby, CTO of John Snow Labs. “This enables everything from extracting relevant health information that only exists in clinical notes, to identifying hate speech or fake news on social media, to summarizing legal agreements and financial news.
Spark NLP’s differentiators may be its healthcare, finance, and legal domain language models. These commercial products come with pre-trained models to identify drug names and dosages in healthcare, financial entity recognition such as stock tickers, and legal knowledge graphs of company names and officers.
Talby says Spark NLP can help organizations minimize the upfront training in developing models. “The free and open source library comes with more than 11,000 pre-trained models plus the ability to reuse, train, tune, and scale them easily,” he says.
Best practices for experimenting with NLP
Earlier in my career, I had the opportunity to oversee the development of several SaaS products built using NLP capabilities. My first NLP was an SaaS platform to search newspaper classified advertisements, including searching cars, jobs, and real estate. I then led developing NLPs for extracting information from commercial construction documents, including building specifications and blueprints.
When starting NLP in a new area, I advise the following:
Begin with a small but representable example of the documents or text.
Identify the target end-user personas and how extracted information improves their workflows.
Specify the required information extractions and target accuracy metrics.
Test several approaches and use speed and accuracy metrics to benchmark.
Improve accuracy iteratively, especially when increasing the scale and breadth of documents.
Expect to deliver data stewardship tools for addressing data quality and handling exceptions.
You may find that the NLP tools used to discover and experiment with new document types will aid in defining requirements. Then, expand the review of NLP technologies to include open source and commercial options, as building and supporting production-ready NLP data pipelines can get expensive. With LLMs in the news and gaining interest, underinvesting in NLP capabilities is one way to fall behind competitors. Fortunately, you can start with one of the open source tools introduced here and build your NLP data pipeline to fit your budget and requirements.
Navigating the tricky landscape of email marketing?
Email deliverability is your secret weapon to bypass the dreaded spam folder and land directly in your audience’s inbox.
Packed with actionable insights and techniques, our guide will transform your emails from avoidable spam to must-read content.
Ready to unlock your email potential and boost your marketing game?
Let’s jump in!
What is Email Deliverability (& Why it’s Important)?
In the labyrinth of email marketing, email deliverability stands as your secret weapon.
But what exactly does it entail?
At its simplest, email deliverability refers to the ability of your emails to land directly into subscribers’ inboxes.
Seems straightforward, doesn’t it? However, the subtleties in the concept beg for a deeper understanding.
Consider this… studies reveal that an acceptable email delivery rate hovers around 95%.
To break it down, for every 1000 emails you send, approximately 950 should hit the bullseye — the inbox.
But what about the elusive remaining 50?
These strays might find themselves lost in the wilderness of the spam folder, a destination dreaded by every email marketer.
Now, you might be asking yourself, why does email deliverability hold such weight?
The reason is quite simple…
Even the most creatively engaging email crafted with finesse amounts to naught if it doesn’t reach the recipient’s inbox. It’s akin to writing an excellent novel that no one reads.
Plus, understanding the importance of email deliverability sets a sturdy foundation for your email campaign.
Now, let’s delve into the tips…
12 Email Deliverability Tips That’ll Elevate Your Delivery Rate & Avoid the Spam Folder
Now that we understand the basics of email deliverability let’s discuss the actionable strategies you can adopt to avoid the spam folder and elevate your delivery rate…
1. Understand ISP Guidelines
Every Internet Service Provider (ISP), like Amazon SES, Google Workspace, or Constant Contact, has a unique set of guidelines that they use to determine what emails get delivered and what emails get marked as spam.
These guidelines often include technical aspects like IP and domain reputation, the relevance of your content, and your history of following CAN-SPAM laws. Ignoring these guidelines can result in a decrease in your delivery rate.
For instance, if you’re using Google Workspace, it’s crucial to be familiar with their bulk sender guidelines.
Google evaluates emails based on factors like authentication, list quality, and sending practices.
So, by tailoring your email marketing campaign in line with these guidelines, you can improve your chances of avoiding the spam folder.
2. Authenticate Your Emails
Email authentication is like a digital signature; it proves your emails originate from a legitimate source.
Techniques like Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) play a pivotal role in maintaining your sender reputation.
With SPF, you can authorize your domain to send emails, effectively preventing spammers from using it.
DKIM, on the other hand, allows you to add a digital signature to your emails, validating your domain name identity.
And DMARC, a protocol that uses SPF and DKIM, helps protect your domain from phishing scams and spoofing.
When implemented correctly, these authentication techniques tell ISPs that you are who you claim to be, increasing the likelihood of your emails landing in the inbox.
3. Maintain a Good Sender Reputation
Maintaining a robust sender reputation is essential for high email deliverability. Your sender reputation is like a credit score; it demonstrates your trustworthiness as a sender.
Factors contributing to this reputation include your email volume, complaint rate, bounce rate, and whether or not you’ve been blacklisted in the past.
For instance, if your emails frequently bounce because the recipient’s addresses are incorrect or no longer in use, ISPs might see this as a sign of poor list management and flag your emails as spam.
Thus, it’s crucial to regularly check and clean your email list to maintain a good sender reputation.
4. Manage Your Email List
Your email list is a valuable asset. However, it’s not just about size; it’s about quality and engagement.
Regularly cleaning your email list of inactive subscribers, addresses that bounce, and spam traps can increase your sender score, which ISPs use to determine if your email is spam or not.
For example, if a user hasn’t opened your emails in the past six months, it might be worth removing them from your list or placing them in a re-engagement campaign.
Similarly, if an email bounces more than once, it’s best to remove it to prevent harming your sender reputation.
By managing your email list effectively, you not only improve deliverability but also ensure that your content reaches engaged and interested parties.
5. Monitor Email Deliverability
Monitoring your email deliverability is an integral part of your email marketing strategy.
These tools not only track your delivery rate and inbox placement but also identify issues in your emails that could trigger spam filters.
For example, they can evaluate your subject lines, content, and email list health, providing actionable feedback to improve your deliverability.
Regular monitoring and troubleshooting can help you understand your email performance better and address any potential issues early, ensuring your emails reach their intended inboxes.
6. Content Matters
Content is the heart of your email. It can either make your email a hit or a miss with ISPs’ spam filters.
When crafting your emails, avoid phrases that are commonly used in spam messages, such as “get rich quick,” “risk-free investment,” or “save up to.”
ISPs have advanced spam filters that are triggered by such phrases, which may lead to your emails landing in the spam folder.
Furthermore, avoid using a single large image in place of text. If your email is just one big image with minimal text, spam filters may become suspicious and flag it.
Instead, maintain a healthy text-to-image ratio and use ALT text for images, ensuring your message is still conveyed even if the images don’t load.
7. Personalize Your Emails
Personalized emails resonate more with your subscribers and have a lesser chance of being marked as spam.
Rather than sending the same generic message to everyone on your list, use personalization techniques to make your emails more relevant and engaging.
This could be as simple as addressing the recipient by their first name in the subject line or as complex as using behavioural data to customize the content to each recipient’s interests or past actions.
For instance, if a subscriber recently purchased a coffee maker from your website, you could send them an email with tips on brewing the perfect cup of coffee.
Not only does personalization improve engagement, but it also helps to build a deeper relationship with your subscribers.
8. Ask to be Whitelisted
Whitelisting is like having a VIP pass to your subscriber’s inbox. When a subscriber adds you to their email provider’s whitelist, it tells the provider that they want to receive your emails, significantly reducing the chances of your emails being marked as spam.
You can encourage subscribers to whitelist you by including a simple request in your welcome email or in the footer of your newsletters.
For example, “To ensure our emails always reach your inbox, please add our email address to your contacts or safe senders list.”
The process of whitelisting varies between email providers, so it’s helpful to include a link to a page with step-by-step instructions for different providers.
This proactive step can greatly enhance your email deliverability and ensure a consistent subscriber experience.
9. Respect the Unsubscribe
Honouring your subscribers’ wishes isn’t just about goodwill; it’s also a solid strategy for email deliverability. If a subscriber wants to leave, make it as straightforward as possible for them.
This may seem counterintuitive, but in reality, it’s better than getting a spam complaint which can tarnish your sender reputation.
Besides, an unengaged audience can harm your open and click-through rates. Implement a one-click unsubscribe option in a clear, easy-to-spot area in your email. Also, consider having an exit survey.
This optional feedback form can provide invaluable insights into why subscribers are leaving, helping you to improve and adapt your content strategy.
10. Use a Reputable Email Service Provider (ESP)
Your choice of ESP could make or break your email deliverability. A good ESP, not only offers robust infrastructure but also provides valuable advice and support to improve your email deliverability.
They manage relationships with ISPs and stay updated on the ever-changing landscape of email regulations, ensuring your emails are always compliant. Moreover, top-tier ESPs offer comprehensive analytics tools.
These tools can help you monitor your email campaigns, enabling you to spot any potential issues and adapt your strategy accordingly.
11. Test Your Emails
Regular email testing is a must for achieving high deliverability rates.
This is more than just sending a test email to a friend. Services such as GlockApps or Mail-Tester allow you to check if your emails are landing in the spam folder, if your IP has been blacklisted, or if you’re encountering other deliverability issues.
It’s also crucial to test your emails across different email clients (like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook) and devices to ensure your content displays correctly.
Use A to B testing to see what subject lines, email content, or sending times resonate most with your audience, further optimizing your email marketing strategy.
12. Monitor Your Metrics
Metrics are your North Star in the realm of email deliverability. Key metrics such as delivery rate, open rate, click-through rate, and bounce rate can offer valuable insights into your performance.
For instance, a high bounce rate could indicate an outdated email list, while a low open rate might suggest your subject lines aren’t captivating enough.
Monitoring these metrics allows you to identify trends, spot issues, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns.
Remember, continuous improvement is the name of the game in email marketing.
Use these metrics to guide your strategy, refine your messaging, and ultimately, deliver emails your audience is eager to open.
Mastering the Art of Email Deliverability
You’ve weathered the storm, wrestling with frustration as your meticulously crafted emails vanished into spam.
But cheer up, there’s a silver lining.
With our email deliverability tips, your emails will no longer be the wallflower at the party, but the guest of honour in your recipient’s inbox.
So, stand tall, and let’s conquer that spam folder together!
By Sam Driver
Sam is an Associate Editor for Smart Blogger and family man who loves to write. When he’s not goofing around with his kids, he’s honing his craft to provide lasting value to anyone who cares to listen.
Meta is looking to capitalize on the 200 million users now catered to by WhatsApp Business, which previously stood at 50 million in 2020.
With ‘click-to-WhatsApp’ ads now accounting for a healthy part of the platform’s revenue, the Meta-owned messaging platform is now looking to expand that to allow users to generate ads without needing a Facebook account.
As part of the revisions to WhatsApp Business, companies will also be able to create ads for Facebook and Instagram from within the app.
WhatsApp Business is getting better
The news comes as Meta continues to battle a tough and changing economy during its so-called ‘Year of Efficiency’ which has seen it lay off thousands of workers and cut funding to several projects.
While the company has stated that it remains committed to artificial intelligence and the metaverse, ensuring a diverse selection of revenue streams is vital for sustainability, and given the four-fold increase in WhatsApp Business users, trying to eke out more money from SMBs and larger enterprises is a no-brainer.
The company has not confirmed how much the changes to its messaging app will cost, but we do know that the services will be chargeable thanks to a Reuters report.
Personalized messaging is also set to come to the platform, with the messaging app soon to be able to generate messages to customers to notify them of upcoming appointments, or for ecommerce businesses to advertise new products and sales, for example.
These changes represent an entire shift for the company as CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks to make more money from Meta’s messaging platforms, including WhatsApp and Messenger.
The company has not announced details on pricing as yet, but testing for the new features is expected to follow imminently before a full release, likely later this year.
With several years’ experience freelancing in tech and automotive circles, Craig’s specific interests lie in technology that is designed to better our lives, including AI and ML, productivity aids, and smart fitness. He is also passionate about cars and the decarbonisation of personal transportation. As an avid bargain-hunter, you can be sure that any deal Craig finds is top value!
Your copy is the heart of your email; any seasoned email marketer will tell you this. While the design language plays a crucial role in grabbing your readers’ eyeballs, it is ultimately the copy which determines your email’s value proposition. To be able to strike a connection with your subscribers, you need to engage them in a dialog and that is going to be pretty tough if your copy isn’t compelling to begin with, isn’t it?
Much has been said about the prowess of email as a communication channel- its mind-boggling user base, its more-than-impressive market penetration, and its jaw-dropping ROI. What you need to realize, however, is that if you want those virtues to be on your side, you first need to tick all the right boxes with your copy. If you are new to this, it can feel a little overwhelming at the outset. And that’s okay. No brand out there perfected their email copywriting game overnight. It’s a continuous journey, necessitating dollops of hard work, tenacity, and resourcefulness. As long as you are mindful of the best practices and stick to your process, stay assured that the results will follow.
What are these best practices, you ask? Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today. In this blog, we are going to dive deep into a host of email copywriting techniques (all tried and tested, of course) that will help you create a buzz with your campaigns. Excited to learn about them? Read on!
Nail Your Subject Lines and Preheaders
While reading a newspaper, to which articles do your eyes dart first? Invariably the ones that have a catchy and exciting headline, right? Well, the same principle more or less applies to emails as well, with subject lines acting as the equivalent of headlines in this realm. With subscribers’ inboxes getting bombarded with scores and hundreds of emails on a daily basis, email fatigue is something that most of them complain about. In this scenario, should your subject lines lack clarity and appeal, your emails stand a tough chance of fetching an open. After all, it is the first thing about your email that a recipient notices. And we all know the perils of casting a bleak first impression, don’t we?
That said, let us look at the ingredients that go behind cooking up the perfect subject line.
Attempt to pique your subscriber’s curiosity. Ever found yourself eagerly awaiting a movie’s release moments after watching its trailer? Now, if you were to dissect said trailer and pinpoint the exact factors that made it effective, you’ll pretty much have a blueprint for the ideal subject line on your hands. Much like a blockbuster trailer, an impactful subject line needs to walk the tightrope between generating interest and not giving away too much regarding the central plot.
Prioritize clarity. Whatever your email contains- an offer, an update, an announcement- strive to summarize it in your subject line. Essentially, make life easier for your subscribers. Don’t make them wait to scroll past the first fold of the email to discover its contents. See, providing clarity in your subject line won’t necessarily always translate into an open. At the end of the day, the recipient will only engage with the email if and only if they find the subject line relevant to their interest. However, you’ll still end up earning brownie points even when they ignore your emails, for you didn’t force them to open the email to find out what’s inside it.
Add emojis to your subject lines. Emoji-infused subject lines experience 56% higher open rates than their text-only counterparts. That said, this practice comes with a small caveat. Emojis are, by nature, informal, and thus not every business can afford to implement them. Hence, prior to using them, first, determine whether they align with your brand identity or not.
Weave sensory words into your subject lines. The better you help your readers visualize your content, the more inclined they will be to engage with your email. Besides, when your copy is peppered with sensory words, it leaves a firm and enduring impression in your subscribers’ minds. In a similar vein, make as much use of action words as possible. At all points in time, your goal should be to tacitly encourage your readers to not just read the email, but also commit themselves to the action stated within it; using action words will help you do so with ease.
Always, always pay attention to your subject line’s length. Curate the character limit keeping in mind that your emails will be accessed across both mobile and desktop devices. Most experts reckon 41 characters (approximately 6-8 words) to be the ideal length.
Now that we understand how to get subject lines right, let’s address preheaders. First off, why add a preheader text? Because they lend context to your subject lines, furthering its appeal. It boosts the efficacy of your subject line and gives subscribers an additional push to open your email. So, how to compose infallible preheaders? Let’s take a look.
Make them conversational. Subject lines are generally declarative in nature, right? Therefore, it pays to keep the preheader interrogative- essentially, attempt to foster a dialogue with the reader.
As with subject lines, the length of preheaders is quite critical too. Should it fail to fall within the prescribed limits (which is considered to be between 40-130 characters), your preheader will either pick up text from the email body or end up getting truncated.
Use preheaders to reinforce your email’s value proposition. You’ve already hinted at its content with the subject line. Now, with the preheader, you have the opportunity to paint an even clearer picture for your readers. Say, the subject line announces a new product. With the preheader, you could list out a few of its USPs. Now imagine just how potent this combination of a subject line and preheader text is.
To be sure what works best for your audience, write multiple versions of your preheader and A/B/n test them to identify the best-performing one.
Leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI)
With the rise of sophisticated AI models such as ChatGPT, it is no longer possible to look beyond the impact AI is going to have on all kinds of sectors in the very near future. In the email marketing space, businesses have already started to rely upon it to generate content ideas for their newsletters. The one place where AI lacks is giving nuances to its content pieces, making human intervention an absolute necessity. With the right operator, thus, you can take your email copywriting to the next level and perch yourself head and shoulder above your competitors.
Listed below are a few merits of composing your copy with AI.
Increased quality control- The content that an AI produces is, essentially, an amalgamation of everything that it consumes. AI copy, therefore, is the text that is generated with the assistance of natural language processing tools. You need to give the machine certain directions- the length of the email, its nature, the tone of the copy, and the like. Following this, the model gets to work, scanning through millions and millions of copies that are true to your parameters and at the end of it, produces a copy that is in the same vein. So, if you play your cards right, you can use AI to obtain large volumes of high-quality copy with stunning regularity.
Earlier, we discussed the need for A/B/n testing several subject lines and preheaders to be able to identify the most effective one. This is, of course, easier said than done. A dozen variants later, your mind tends to run in circles. Enter: AI. Based on your dozen inputs, it can spawn a hundred more along similar lines, giving you more options to contend with, and setting you on course to obtain fruitful results from your A/B/n tests.
The importance of personalization, especially in the current email marketing climate, cannot be overstated, even if one tried to. Despite this significance being common knowledge, brands still fail to marry their intentions to their actions, the primary culprit being a lack of resources. You see, implementing personalization is no walk in the park. From segmenting your email list to writing personalized content for each to ensuring they receive the right message at the right time, it can get incredibly demanding. This is where an AI writing tool comes as a boon. Once you’re able to determine the unique profile of each segment, you can feed your findings into the tool and trust it to not only write them personalized emails but also to replicate their tone while dealing with their reverts.
Generate FOMO
Invoking a sense of urgency in your reader’s minds is an excellent tactic to drive them into action, thereby amping up your engagement and interaction levels. While a tempting offer certainly captures your audience’s imagination, putting a ticking clock against it nudges them to take out their wallets and make a transaction. A great way of creating urgency in your emails is by adding countdown timers. There are many avenues where you can summon them into action- sales, new product launches, coupon redemption, early access, and seasonal events, to name a few. What’s more, making one is pretty convenient as well.
Broadly, you can take two routes toward crafting one. In a first way, you need to make an HTML timer and embed its code in the email. And no, you don’t have to write this code from scratch; there are many online tools that will help you with that. From your end, all you have to specify is your deadline and the time zone. These timers countdown in real-time. The second way is making a looped GIF animation. These are both, easier to execute than HTML emails and also carry a lesser risk of being flagged by email clients. However, with clients such as Outlook, that don’t provide desirable support to GIFs, you might face a few challenges.
Tell A Story
Right from the time man started gathering around open fires in small circles to the present where we dig our noses deep into Kindles for hours at end, our pursuit has been the same- a good story. Storytelling is as innate to us as our need for survival. It is the hallmark of writing, be it at any level or of any kind. Therefore, while writing your email copy, always, always, try to stitch a narrative. Information lies all around us, but we only feel compelled to engage with it when it is presented to us in the form of a narrative. Of course, marketing emails aren’t allowed to have the same level of flair and vigour as a work of fiction, but you still have enough liberty on your hands to take your audience on a journey every time you send them an email. In fact, they’ll keep coming back to you for more and more if you manage to strike all the right chords with your narrative.
Tickle Your Readers’ Funny Bones
As a brand, constantly worrying about your audience’s perception of you is not uncommon. Trying to win over them is a constant challenge, but there’s one tool that you can always rely upon to make life a touch easier- humour. Why?
Evocative content drives strong results. Email copy that is laced with humour leaves readers awash with positive emotions, causing them to warm up to your brand. Brands indulge in a silly vein every now and then to convince their subscribers that they are as imperfect and vulnerable as their subscribers and that in turn, goes a long way toward strengthening customer relationships.
Making humour one of your brand’s core values will make it extremely convenient for you to grab the spotlight. People always hold close to their hearts those who manage to bring a smile to their faces. Should your emails manage to do so, you’ll find yourself rewarded generously by your subscribers.
Wrapping It Up
Email copywriting can be a tough nut to crack, but once you get the lay of the land, there’s no looking back. We hope the tips and tricks given above will be able to breathe clarity into your copywriting endeavours.
Disha Bhatt (Dave) works as a Content Strategist at Email Uplers. She is a dentist, who has found her calling in words & technical subjects. She loves to pen down travelogues and romantic short stories in her free time.
Major brands are paying for ads on these sites and funding the latest wave of clickbait, according to a new report.
This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review’s weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here.
We’ve heard a lot about AI risks in the era of large language models like ChatGPT (including from me!)—risks such as prolific mis- and disinformation and the erosion of privacy. Back in April, my colleague Melissa Heikkilä also predicted that these new AI models would soon flood the internet with spam and scams. Today’s story explains that this new wave has already arrived, and it’s incentivized by ad money.
People are using AI to quickly spin up junk websites in order to capture some of the programmatic advertising money that’s sloshing around online, according to a new report by NewsGuard, exclusively shared with MIT Technology Review. That means that blue chip advertisers and major brands are essentially funding the next wave of content farms, likely without their knowledge.
NewsGuard, which rates the quality of websites, found over 140 major brands advertising on sites using AI-generated text that it considers “unreliable”, and the ads they found come from some of the most recognized companies in the world.Ninety percent of the ads from major brands were served through Google’s ad technology,despite the company’s own policies that prohibit sites from placing Google-served ads on pages with “spammy automatically generated content.”
The ploy works because programmatic advertising allows companies to buy ad spots on the internet without human oversight: algorithms bid on placements to optimize the number of relevant eyeballs likely to see that ad. Even before generative AI entered the scene, around 21% of ad impressions were taking place on junk “made for advertising” websites, wasting about $13 billion each year.
NewsGuard identifies these websites by using AI to check whether they contain text that matches the standard error messages from large language models like ChatGPT. Those flagged are then reviewed by human researchers.
Most of the websites’ creators are completely anonymous, and some sites even feature fake, AI-generated creator bios and photos.
As Lorenzo Arvanitis, a researcher at NewsGuard, told me, “This is just kind of the name of the game on the internet.” Often, perfectly well-meaning companies end up paying for junk—and sometimes inaccurate, misleading, or fake—content because they are so keen to compete for online user attention. (There’s been some good stuff written about this before.)
The big story here is that generative AI is being used to supercharge this whole ploy, and it’s likely that this phenomenon is “going to become even more pervasive as these language models become more advanced and accessible,” according to Arvanitis.
And though we can expect it to be used by malign actors in disinformation campaigns, we shouldn’t overlook the less dramatic but perhaps more likely consequence of generative AI: huge amounts of wasted money and resources.
What else I’m reading
Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader in the US Congress, unveiled a plan for AI regulation in a speech last Wednesday, saying that innovation ought to be the “North Star” in legislation. President Biden also met with some AI experts in San Francisco last week, in another signal that regulatory action could be around the corner, but I’m not holding my breath.
Political campaigns are using generative AI, setting off alarm bells about disinformation, according to this great overview from the New York Times. “Political experts worry that artificial intelligence, when misused, could have a corrosive effect on the democratic process,” reporters Tiffany Hsu and Steven Lee Myers write.
Last week, Meta’s oversight board issued binding recommendations about how the company moderates content around war. The company will have to provide additional information about why material is left up or taken down, and preserve anything that documents human rights abuses. Meta has to share that documentation with authorities, when appropriate as well. Alexa Koenig, the executive director of the Human Rights Centre, wrote a sharp analysis for Tech Policy Press explaining why this is actually a pretty big deal.
What I learned this week
The science about the relationship between social media and mental health for teens is still pretty complicated. A few weeks ago, Kaitlyn Tiffany at the Atlantic wrote a really in-depth feature, surveying the existing, and sometimes conflicting, research in the field. Teens are indeed experiencing a sharp increase in mental-health issues in the United States, and social media is often considered a contributing factor to the crisis.
The science, however, is not as clear or illuminating as we might hope, and just exactly how and when social media is damaging is not yet well established in the research. Tiffany writes that “a decade of work and hundreds of studies have produced a mixture of results, in part because they’ve used a mixture of methods and in part because they’re trying to get at something elusive and complicated.” Importantly, “social media’s effects seem to depend a lot on the person using it.”
The new Text2Speech model, Bark, was just introduced, and it has constraints on voice cloning and permits prompts to ensure user safety. However, scientists have decoded the audio samples, freed the instructions from constraints, and made them available in an accessible Jupyter notebook. Now, using just 5-10 seconds of audio/text samples, it is possible to clone a whole audio file.
What is Bark?
Suno’s groundbreaking Bark text-to-audio model is built on GPT-style models and can produce natural-sounding speech in several languages, in addition to music, noise, and basic sound effects. Suno developed the Bark text-to-audio paradigm using a transformer. In addition to making a natural-sounding speech in several languages, Bark can also create music, ambient noise, and basic sound effects. The model can also generate facial expressions, including smiling, frowning, and sobbing.
Bark uses GPT-style models to create speech with minimum fine-tuning, resulting in voices with a wide range of expressions and emotions that accurately reflect subtleties in tone, pitch, and rhythm. It’s an amazing experience that makes you question whether or not you’re talking to real people. Bark has impressively clear and accurate voice generation capabilities in several languages, including Mandarin, French, Italian, and Spanish.
How does it work?
Bark employs GPT-style models to produce audio from scratch, just as Vall-E and other incredible work in the area. In contrast to Vall-E, high-level semantic tokens incorporate the first text prompt instead of phonemes. Therefore, it may generalize to non-speech sounds, such as music lyrics or sound effects in the training data, in addition to speech. The entire waveform is then created by converting the semantic tokens into audio codec tokens using a second model.
Features
Bark has built-in support for several languages and can automatically detect the user’s input language. While English presently has the highest quality, other languages will improve as one scale. Therefore, Bark will use the natural accent for the corresponding languages when presented with code-switched text.
Bark is capable of producing any form of sound imaginable, including music. There is no fundamental distinction between speech and music in Bark’s mind. On occasion, though, Bark will instead create music based on words.
Bark can replicate every nuance of a human voice, including timbre, pitch, inflection, and prosody. The model also works to save environmental sounds, music, and other inputs. Due to Bark’s automated language recognition, you may utilize a German history prompt with English content, for instance. As a result, the resulting audio typically has a German accent.
Users can specify a certain character’s voice by providing prompts like NARRATOR, MAN, WOMAN, etc. These directions are only sometimes followed, especially if another audio history direction is supplied that conflicts with the first.
Performance
CPU and GPU (pytorch 2.0+, CUDA 11.7, and CUDA 12.0) implementations of Bark have been validated. Bark can produce near real-time audio on current GPUs using PyTorch every night. Bark demands running transformer models with over a hundred million parameters. Inference times might be 10–100 times slower on older GPUs, the default collab, or a CPU
Dhanshree Shenwai is a Computer Science Engineer and has a good experience in FinTech companies covering Financial, Cards & Payments and Banking domain with keen interest in applications of AI. She is enthusiastic about exploring new technologies and advancements in today’s evolving world making everyone’s life easy.
Tailoring prompts for ChatGPT means increasingly the effectiveness of the chatbot’s responses. Here are the best tried and tested prompts to bookmark.
ChatGPT has taken the world by storm since its release, with millions of users flocking to utilise its services at an unprecedented rate.
However, while some users have found the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to be a useful tool, others have been less than impressed, citing issues and limitations with their interactions with it.
One key factor to consider is the way in which users communicate with it. Simple commands may not always suffice, with users needing to employ more nuanced prompts to achieve their desired outcomes.
To help users make the most of ChatGPT’s capabilities, experts on social media platforms such as Twitter have been sharing valuable insights and strategies for effective communication with the chatbot.
Why is getting prompts right so important?
ChatGPT has been facing criticism for its inability to perform specific tasks accurately and its tendencies to lie and hallucinate. However, the secret to mastering ChatGPT and getting desired outcomes is choosing the correct prompts for it.
By using specific prompts, users can navigate the chatbot more effectively and achieve more personalised responses, unlocking the full potential of ChatGPT.
The importance of tailoring perfect prompts is so valuable that companies are recruiting experts who can communicate with chatbots effectively and a new job, AI prompt engineering, has emerged in the market with a salary range of up to $300 000 (€275 346).
Euronews Next has compiled a list of the five most useful prompts and put them to the test.
Prompt 1: Simplifying complex notions
Prompt: Hey ChatGPT. I want to learn about (insert specific topic). Explain (insert specific topic) in simple terms. Explain to me like I’m 11 years old.
ChatGPT explains blockchain for an 11 years oldChatGPT
ChatGPT’s ability to provide clarity, use simple language and provide explanations are top tier. When asked to explain blockchain in a way an 11-year-old understands, its oversimplification of complex notions helps users to understand things outside of their expertise and with no prior knowledge of technical terms required.
Prompt 2: Generate the perfect marketing plan
Prompt: I want you to act as an advertiser. You will create a campaign to promote a product or service of your choice. You will choose a target audience, develop key messages and slogans, select the media channels for promotion, and decide on any additional activities needed to reach your goals. My first suggestion request is, “I need help creating an advertising campaign for (insert description of service or product)”
ChatGPT use for marketing campaignsChatGPT
ChatGPT has access to the Internet’s database. It knows what people like, what appeals to them the most, what advertisements work well for companies and the marketing strategies to build a successful brand in any domain.
With ChatGPT on hand, the time when the success of marketing strategies is left in doubt or is a question of mere luck appears to be coming to an end.
So much so that individuals are using ChatGPT to build a whole company from scratch. Perhaps the interesting part of this development is that it is working, and by following simple step-by-step guides from the chatbot, users have been able to launch businesses and generate profit.
Prompt 3: Take advantage of expert consulting
Prompt: I will provide you with an argument or opinion of mine. I want you to criticise it as if you were <person>
Person: (insert expert name)
Argument: (insert desired topic)
ChatGPT use for expert opinion from Elon MuskChatGPT
No one is better at providing money-making advice than the richest man in the world. Thanks to successful people’s presence online like billionaire Elon Musk, ChatGPT is able to easily mimic their thinking process and personify them to provide relevant and helpful advice to users.
Prompt 4: Job interview simulations
Prompt: Simulate a job interview for (insert specific role). Context: I am looking for this job and you are the interviewer. You will ask me appropriate questions as if we were in an interview. I will respond. Only ask the following question once I have responded.
Simulating job interviews using ChatGPTChatGPT
Provide the chatbot with enough context about the job you’re interviewing for and let it do its magic. This is a great way to practice your interview responses and get an overall idea of what questions you might get asked.
As you provide the chatbot with more and more information when responding, it will tailor its questions more effectively.
Prompt 5: Make ChatGPT write like you
Prompt: [Insert Text]
Write about (insert text topic) as the above author would write.
ChatGPT mimics writing style based on writing sampleChatGPT
One of the many complaints people have about chatGPT is its inability to provide content tailored to each user. This leaves many complaining about the dullness of the responses and how in some cases it can easily be guessed that an AI wrote the piece.
However, when using the correct prompt, ChatGPT is capable of mimicking one’s own writing style and providing personalised responses.
