Should you email inactive subscribers who haven’t opened or clicked any of your promotional emails in a long time? That seemingly simple question is actually fraught with nuance and complexity. But it’s critical to have a clear answer because maintaining your email engagement levels is probably the biggest factor determining your email deliverability.
Let’s decode that question by discussing five truths about inactive email subscribers.
Truth #1: ‘Inactive Subscriber’ Does Not Have a Standard Industry Definition
Every brand has its own unique definition of what an inactive subscriber is. Brands guide that definition largely by the negative effect that emailing these subscribers has on their deliverability.
However, many brands use a series of terms to describe various degrees of inactivity, almost always for the purposes of treating each of these groups differently. Typically, “inactive” is a point somewhere in the middle of the inactivity spectrum. When a brand seems a subscriber inactive, it often means that the brand emails them less frequently. For example, brands may only send the week’s most important campaign. They may also send a re-engagement campaign series to these subscribers, too.
Prior to a subscriber becoming inactive, many brands define a period where they’re disengaged or lapsed. Often, these subscribers aren’t mailed any less often, but the emails might include targeted subject lines or body copy that’s designed to spur engagement. Sometimes these subscribers actually receive more messages, including triggered re-engagement campaigns, in an attempt to generate engagement before the problem gets worse.
After a subscriber is inactive for a while and re-engagement efforts have been unsuccessful, these subscribers become long-term or chronically inactive. Sometimes they’re colourfully referred to as zombies. Brands generally send these subscribers a re-permission campaign to try to get them to explicitly reaffirm their interest in receiving your emails. If they don’t re-confirm their permission, they’re suppressed from all future mailings.
Truth #2: Lots of Brands Make Exceptions Around Inactives
Businesses are constantly under pressure to expand the reach of their messages by expanding their audience. In a pitch, that often means temporarily changing their rules around inactives.
For example, during the heart of the holiday season around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, retailers risk potential deliverability problems. Why? Because in exchange for boosting short-term sales, they email more campaigns to more inactives. Often that gamble pays off, but not always.
Beyond seasonal exceptions, some brands also make exceptions for individual subscribers. For example, some brands resist suppressing chronically inactive subscribers who are also high-value active customers. They take that risk because of our next truth.
Truth #3: Brands Have Increasingly Flawed Visibility Into Email Engagement
Traditionally, email engagement has been measured in terms of opens and clicks. You needed clicks because some subscribers and some inboxes would block images, making it so that open tracking pixels wouldn’t fire off. Tracking clicks in the absence of opens, of course, is far from a perfect fallback, as only about one in eight opens result in a click.
That gap in email engagement tracking has become a chasm thanks to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), which buries real opens in a haystack of fake opens. The impact of MPP is so high that most large B2C brands will have to fundamentally change how they define active email marketing audiences by overlaying non-email behaviours. But even with those difficulties, there’s no escaping the next truth.
Truth #4: Eventually, Every Brand Stops Emailing Their Inactives
That’s because — individual exceptions aside — if you endlessly email subscribers who aren’t engaging, you’ll eventually suffer escalating levels of blocking and junking by inbox providers. At that point, you compromise your ability to reach your active ones that drive the vast majority of your email marketing engagement and revenue. No one wants to do that.
Now, the exact amount of inactivity a brand tolerates before it has to start suppressing its chronically inactive subscribers varies greatly and depends on many factors. This includes their overall engagement rate, email frequency and list size. But generally, it’s around the six-month mark for high-frequency senders and around the 18-month mark for low-frequency senders.
Even if you’re able to safely stretch beyond 18 months, it’s wise to treat 24 months as a hard cut-off. One reason is because some mailbox providers declare email accounts abandoned after two years of no logins. They convert some of those accounts into recycled spam traps. So, the deliverability dangers ramp up significantly after that point. But there’s another reason to respect the two-year limit that’s related to the final truth.
Truth #5: Respecting Inactivity Is Also About Respecting Permission
It’s incumbent on brands to recognize that if a subscriber stops engaging with their emails, at a certain point it means that they’ve withdrawn permission. That’s why mailbox providers have made engagement so pivotal to their spam filtering algorithms.
Anti-spam laws have also validated that line of reasoning. For example, Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL) and GDPR both stipulate that brands have to stop emailing subscribers and customers after 24 months of inactivity.
In summary, use these five truths about inactive email subscribers to craft a strategy for managing all the nuances of inactivity. This way, your brand can maximize your email marketing opportunities while minimizing your deliverability and legal risks.
Chad S. White is the author of Email Marketing Rules and Head of Research for Oracle Marketing Consulting, a global full-service digital marketing agency inside of Oracle.
Social media platforms are making much of their revenue off of advertising. So is there anything you can do to avoid seeing these ads?
If you go on social media these days, the second you get to scrolling you’re bombarded with ads. Then when you go to another site, you see the same ones.
Survey Monkey found that even though ads perform well on social platforms — with nearly half of social media users buying something from those ads — 74% of people think there are just too many.
But, that wasn’t always the case.
The first digital ad was an AT&T banner on hotwired.com, now known as Wired, which made its debut in 1994. For over four months, a whopping 44% of people clicked on it, which is definitely not something we’d see today. It was part of AT&T’s larger “You Will” campaign.
It featured futuristic commercials, where people were doing things like using a GPS or video calling, and their predictions actually came true.
It was something that hadn’t been seen before. People were even sharing the link to the ad with friends.
Facebook, now Meta, got its start in 2004, but it didn’t make its first ad deal until 2006 in a partnership with JP Morgan Chase to advertise credit cards. YouTube soon followed, launching ads on their platform in 2007. They first used transparent ads that covered the bottom of the video.
In 2010, Twitter introduced ads. By then, it was already a lot more common to see ads on social media. Instagram and Pinterest would do the same in 2013 and Snapchat in 2014.
Today, digital ads are nearly impossible to avoid.
According to a 2020 study, Facebook and Instagram show more ads on average than any other major social media platform.
For both apps, more than 20% of the posts users see on their feed each time are ads. For Instagram, that roughly breaks down to an ad every four posts or so.
So, is there anything you can do to stop seeing this influx of ads every time you open up your social media?
Reporting them is definitely not the way to go — one study found users who report ads see about 5% more ads than users who don’t.
But cutting down on some of the time you spend on these apps could help a bit. Instagram actually shows more ads to people who spend more time on their app.
Unfortunately, you can’t just turn them off; a lot of these social media sites rely on ad dollars to keep their business running.
In 2020, 97% of Facebook’s global revenue came from advertising.
A lot of companies prefer advertising on these platforms because it’s cheaper, and it works for them.
In a recent report, market research company Million Insights found the global social media advertising market was valued at $103 billion in 2020 and is expected to see an annual growth rate of 12.4% between 2021 and 2028.
Insights from Myers-Briggs indicate that self-described introverts actually want some in-office time. But the bigger lesson is one of inclusivity.
As masks come down and Covid restrictions ease, offices are opening their doors to employees again — for some as an option, others as a requirement. There’s been a lot of ink spent on the pros and cons of these hybrid work policies, much of which touches on three key considerations: safety, productivity, and employee preference.
That last one is a sticky wicket. The convenience of remote work has been a boon for many employees, happy to ditch long commutes and spend more time with kids and family at home. But there’s another piece of the puzzle: The natural inclinations of introverted employees versus extroverts.
At first blush, you’d expect the extroverts to be clamouring for in-office, in-person work. That’s not what Myers-Briggs discovered in a recent study detailed in TheWall Street Journal. In fact, they found something quite different: 82 percent of extroverted workers would prefer a hybrid work model, with 15 percent actually preferring full-time remote work. Self-described introverts, on the other hand — a whopping 74 percent of them — said they wanted to be in the office at least part-time.
CEOs and people leaders who are navigating our new normal should see a lesson here, namely that employee preferences aren’t as black and white as management would like.
As one introverted employee, quoted in the article, noted: “At the end of the day, I want to be home by myself, but it doesn’t mean you can’t crave other people’s company.” Indeed, as Myers-Briggs’s head of thought leadership, John Hackston, noted, the takeaway here is that new work models shouldn’t be all or none — or even as highly regulated as some managers would want. The control should land with employees.
The study is instructive on another level. Beyond the formal in-office/at-home work policies now being drafted and implemented, companies creating culture from the ground up should understand that inclusivity includes those of varying introverted and extroverted tendencies — and that each employee’s comfort level for engagement can be mapped on a scale, not bucketed into either/or categories.
At the end of the work day, culture — in many ways being reborn as companies reconfigure in our ongoing digital transformation — must be organic, not forced. Much as a CEO or leader may want meaningful relationship-building on an ongoing basis (both internally and with outside communities and partners), the way there cannot be forced. The better tack is to model healthy relationship-building at the top, to live the values that champion team members and community, and to share personal vision for growth and engagement.
Forcing introverts to engage in a specific way or extroverts to back off is a no-go. Leave room for those on the social engagement scale to find their own cultural fit as you model inclusivity in whatever working model best fits with your business needs.
Stay at home and spend. That might as well have been the unofficial mantra of 2021 as consumers found themselves with record savings to splurge online
New research revealed digital advertisers were a big winner from the phenomenon. US digital ad revenues rose 35% to $189 billion last year as marketers sought out the record number of consumer eyeballs glued to their screens, according to a report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. It was the highest growth since 2006.
Three Kings
US e-commerce sales last year totalled $870 billion, more than the GDP of Switzerland and a 14% increase from 2020, according to the Department of Commerce. Besides Amazon, firms with direct B2C digital relationships — such as CVS, DoorDash, and Walmart — are letting advertisers buy ads on their websites or in their apps.
As a result, e-commerce growth has injected massive capital into the digital ad business. The catch is that growth is more heavily concentrated than Minute Maid’s frozen orange juice:
In 2021, 10 digital platforms and publishers pulled in 78% of digital ad revenues, according to the IAB and PwC.
While the report doesn’t identify those top firms, analysts at Insider Intelligence predicted Google (26%), Meta (24%), and Amazon (14%) would account for 64% of US digital ad revenue in 2021.
So far, this year’s success may be a tad muted. “The macro winds of uncertainty — in particular around Europe and Russia — continue to swirl,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak, in a note advising that the bank trim estimates for online advertising revenues by 1% to 2% this year.
Can I Sell You a Mattress? Advertising on digital audio, including podcasts and music streaming, was the fastest-growing digital ad category last year, rising 58% to reach $4.9 billion. But it’s just a 2.6% slice of the digital ad market pie.
Tik That: TikTok’s advertisement revenue will triple this year to more than $11 billion, according to Insider Intelligence. That is more than the company’s combined forecasts for Twitter and Snap. If only Twitter had a new board member to shake things up.
What Are The Wisest Investors Doing that You’re Not?
Ask yourself, is your media diet smart enough to keep you ahead of the pack?
Founded by a team of former investment bankers and scholars, The Daily Upside is a (completely free) newsletter designed to help investors get smart on the thematic trends and events shaping the business world.
It’s trusted by over 155k readers — including executives at Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, for good reason: it’s crisp, witty, insightful, and treats your time with respect.
Over the past year, the metaverse has grown from buzzword du jour to buzzword de l’année. Tech companies, game developers and brands alike are racing to claim a corner of the virtual world to come.
But though the metaverse hype continues to rise — in marketing departments, at least — brands interested in activating virtually should take precautions not to overwhelm potential customers. Multiple sectors such as gaming, social media and blockchain tech are currently competing to become the builders of the metaverse, leaving consumers scrambling to stay up-to-date with the latest jargon and technological developments. If brands put the virtual cart before the horse, they could risk burning their audiences out on the metaverse before it is able to fully take shape.
To get a better sense of how regular consumers are approaching the metaverse, Digiday has pulled key insights from five data reports and surveys regarding consumer sentiments and activity in the space.
Most people still don’t know what the metaverse is
A January survey by market research firm Ipsos revealed that 38 percent of Americans state that they are very or somewhat familiar with the metaverse — though this figure varies drastically depending on consumers’ age and the presence of children in their households. Over 50 percent of respondents from households containing children were familiar with the metaverse, while only 20 percent of respondents aged 55 or older said they knew the term.
As shown by the chart above, the respondents who claimed to know about the metaverse differed greatly in their explanations of what exactly it was, with some associating the term with social media and others with virtual worlds. As brands continue to activate within metaverse platforms, it could be wise for them to use these activations to educate consumers rather than assuming they have prior knowledge of the metaverse.
Most brands don’t know about the metaverse, either
If consumers are still unsure about the metaverse, some brands might be even more cautious about dipping their toes into the virtual water. A December survey by social analytics company ListenFirst revealed that only 18 percent of brand marketing and analytics executives stated that they understood the metaverse and how it would impact their brand, as reported by MediaPost. That said, this figure could increase as metaverse activations become more mainstream, as 49.5 percent of survey respondents said they “somewhat” understood the metaverse.
Regardless, this data shows that, despite the presence of flashy activations such as the VR-powered AT&T Station, not all brands are ready to follow these big names into the metaverse, given the relatively untested nature of metaverse platforms and the lack of clarity about exactly what a more fully realized metaverse might look like.
People are willing to spend money in the metaverse
While only some consumers are familiar with the metaverse, those who are comfortable operating in virtual spaces find virtual commerce to be an appealing prospect. A quarter of consumers have shopped online in a three-dimensional virtual store, per a January study by the experiential e-commerce platform Obsess. Among that cohort, virtual commerce activity was highest among millennials, with 77 percent of millennial respondents saying they had made a purchase in a virtual store.
It’s worth noting that the language around virtual commerce has not caught up with the metaverse concept. Though commerce in a three-dimensional virtual environment certainly fits into most definitions of the metaverse, only 38 percent of respondents said they would like to be able to shop in the metaverse.
Gamers are the first residents of the metaverse
Using data from its November 2021 Consumer Energy Index and Retail Pulse Survey, research company Forrester divided online adult consumers in the United States and United Kingdom into four segments: digital immersives, digital socialites, digital commoners and the digitally disconnected.
The first two groups, comprising 47 percent of all online adult consumers, are the ones best accustomed to immersive experiences and multiplayer online games, per Forrester’s recent State of the Metaverse report — and it’s the 22 percent that is digitally immersed that is most likely to adapt to the metaverse early on. 49 percent of this cohort — 11 percent of respondents overall — uses a virtual reality headset often, one indicator that Meta’s VR-focused vision for the metaverse could line up with future consumption habits.
Gamers are accustomed to virtual spaces, but still wary of web3 technologies
Companies from the Web3 and gaming sectors are vying to become the builders of the metaverse, with some game developers combining the two to create play-to-earn games that hinge on blockchain and NFT technologies. But the majority of gamers are uncomfortable with the presence of NFTs in games — 69 percent, according to a March survey by online community platform FandomSpot. Of the 69 percent of respondents who stated they hated NFTs, only 12 percent said they fully knew what NFTs were, so sentiments are likely to change as knowledge of these technologies becomes more widespread.
At the moment, though, it is undeniable that many gamers have reacted with vehement negativity whenever large game developers such as Ubisoft have indicated an interest in NFTs. Given the wrathful sentiment surrounding NFTs in the gaming space, brands interested in getting involved in virtual space might be able to avoid bad press by leaning into the gaming origins of the metaverse rather than its web3 potential.
A supermarket starts stocking hot-cross buns straight after Christmas. A cling-wrap brand shifts its serrated cutter bar from the base of the box to inside the lid. The maker of M&M’s chocolates changes its marketing. Each time people take to social media to complain.
Why do people get so angry about things that seem so trivial?
We’ve examined the issue of consumer anger on social media because, as marketing academics, we’re interested in how companies handle the excessive toxicity that comes with corporate social media engagement. But our research also helps explain the causes of this culture of complaint.
Our findings point to this behaviour meeting two basic psychological needs.
First, complaining is a mechanism for social connection.
Second, it’s an opportunity to boost self-esteem through what psychologists call “downward social comparison”. Given social media feeds can be rife with opportunities to feel inferior, complaining about brands is an easy way to feel better about ourselves.
How we did our research
To figure out why people complain so much on social media, we analysed negative posts on Facebook about brands caught up in media controversies at the time.
We focused on six companies – a clothing brand, a supermarket, an airline, an e-commerce store, a department store and a beverage company.
Each had a Facebook page with more than 1 million followers. The controversies included alleged employee mistreatment, unethical business practices, bad customer experiences and a poorly received advertising campaign. We analysed hundreds of comments posted on these companies’ pages. We followed up with interviews with 13 social media users who said they used Facebook at least daily and interacted with brands on social media at least weekly.
We asked these 13 people what they posted about and their reasons for posting. We also asked them to speculate about other social media posts regarding the same brands. This enabled us to draw our conclusions.
Shutterstock
Complaining to bond with others
The most common reason for complaining online was paying for something that didn’t arrive or failed to work in some way. This was our least surprising finding.
More surprising was how many who joined in posting negative comments, without any firsthand experience. We saw this complaining used as a bonding mechanism, with users tagging family or friends in posts about malfunctioning equipment with questions such as: “Has this happened with yours?”
Complaining has long been “a pervasive and important form of social communication”, as psychology professor Mark Alicke and colleagues noted in a 1992 study, published before most people had even heard of the internet.
Social media has amplified this, enabling us to not only complain to friends but also to create a type of social connection with strangers. We could give you dozens of examples from our research, but you can probably think of many from your own experiences.
The people we studied got a kick out of debating strangers, particularly when they felt they had the upper hand. One interviewee told us:
I kind of like it, because it shows that at least I’m having an impact. If I’m talking about something someone’s so angry about that they write something back, at least we’re having a conversation.
Such responses speak the social dilemma of social networks. Our increasingly digital existence contributes to real-world social disconnection. To compensate, people look for whatever attention they can find on social media, including through complaining and arguing.
Downward social comparison
The second major psychological reward from complaining on social media was to boost their self-esteem. As one participant told us:
This is kind of that negative thing, but it’s more in a funny, sarcastic, trolling negative thing.
This pay-off came through strongly when we asked our interviewees to speculate on others’ complaints. “Maybe they’re bored and lonely at home,” said one. “The fact he’s obviously looking down on the people is elevating his position,” said another.
Boosting self-esteem by looking down others is known as “downward social comparison”. This idea was articulated by American social psychologist Leon Festinger in 1954, who suggested humans were hardwired by evolution to compare our value against others.
Generally we seek comparisons with people like ourselves. Upward social comparisons (to higher-status individuals or groups) is bad for our self-esteem, while downward comparison (to lower-status targets) can boost our self-esteem.
Leon Festinger’s 1954 paper, ‘A Theory of Social Comparison Processes’.Human Relations, CC BY
Research over the past decade or so suggest amplifies our need to find things to feel superior about precisely because it is so effective in making us feel inferior, with social media feeds typically subjecting us to “highlight reels” of other people’s beachside holidays, job promotions, romantic dinners and so on.
One study, for example, has found that spending more time on social media is associated with a greater likelihood of thinking others are happier and have better lives.
Looking down on companies and brands may be an easy, relatively socially acceptable way for us to feel smarter and superior.
Manipulating our love of complaining
Some complaining is a good thing. It shows companies we are ready to hold them to account.
But the degree to which complaining is done to scratch psychological itches is complicating the use of social media. Indeed, some companies now deliberately court controversy to exploit our love for complaining.
An example is British breakfast cereal maker Weetabix, which in February 2021 tweeted an image of Weetabix topped with baked beans. This is hardly an important issue. But it generated enough controversy on social media to also spill over into dozen of reports on legacy media.
Whenever you see a brand bringing out some odd flavour, it’s probably not because company executives have lost their minds. It’s more likely their marketing experts are deliberately looking to provoke people to express mirth or disgust about it.
So if you find yourself engaging in online complaining, be mindful of the social and psychological factors lurking below the surface.
Just as you may be taking advantage of a brand to make yourself feel better, it is possible a company is stoking controversy to take advantage of you.
So many brands today sound exactly the same. And that’s because the advertising industry has mostly abandoned one of the most powerful assets a brand can have: a distinctive brand voice. Pick up almost any brand style guide, turn to the tone voice section, and I bet you’ll find some variation of these attributes:
FRIENDLY
OPTIMISTIC
CLEAR
HELPFUL
GENUINE
All that’s missing from this insipid list is “useless.” Who would intentionally craft a brand that’s rude, pessimistic and phony?
Another “tone of voice” steer that pops up a lot in brand guidelines is this classic:
“We’re like that trusted, smart friend who always gives you great advice.”
Sorry, that’s not a brand voice—that’s a content strategy.
Everyone speaking in the same CLEAR and OPTIMISTIC tone giving HELPFUL, FRIENDLY ADVICE is making the work less effective. As Amy Kean observed, to their detriment, brands are all parroting the same vapid marketing speak. And this mind-numbing sea of sameness is obviously the opposite of what strong brands do. Because how a brand sounds is just as important as how it looks.
But there are a few brands that still understand how effective a tool brand voice is. And they’re getting noticed for it. Take Oatly.
Oatly is milk made from oats—it’s a bit of an oddball product. So they leaned into that weirdness and struck an irreverent, playful, somewhat sarcastic tone. And it’s worked. Whether it’s your cup of tea or not, it certainly stands out. And it’s pretty hard to argue with these results.
Now I’ll toot my own horn a bit—or I should say, David Abbott’s.
When I was leading creative at The Economist Group, I was determined to bring back AMV’s great “white out of red” campaign in social and digital. I couldn’t think of a reason why the iconic brand voice Abbott created for the brand—distinctly British, witty, and confident—wouldn’t work just as well as Instagram posts or banner ads. And sure enough, it did.
So how does one avoid the robotic pablum that’s taken over the industry and create a fresh brand voice? Here are three things to try.
A former ECD of mine, Cameron Day, had a particularly ingenious method. To create a brand voice, he combined two familiar, but distinct, personalities. A good example of this is the brand Cam came up with for a gourmet grocery store: “Dr. Seuss meets Dr. Frasier Crane.” So imagine a person who is deeply knowledgeable about fine foods—but delivers it with a dash of whimsy. Here’s what that sounded like. Delicious, yes?
Let’s go back to that helpful friend, the one always giving you good advice. To give that imaginary confidant a real voice, you have to ask yourself questions such as:
Is your friend a man or a woman?
Is she from New York or New Orleans?
How old is she?
Does she have a sense of humour? And is it the smart kind or a bit juvenile?
In other words, you have to imagine an actual person. Brands are like people, and what makes people memorable and likable works for brands, too.
Replace that milquetoast tone of voice list with attributes that will give the voice some real character. And keep the list to two or three, not five. Doesn’t a brand that strives to be “irreverent, playful, and sarcastic” immediately seem more impactful than a brand that’s just “clear, friendly, and genuine”? Of course, you can’t just force random attributes on a brand. You have to unearth something about it that makes the voice seem inevitable. This is harder for some brands, to be sure—especially in certain categories—but it’s worth the effort.
Finally, I’d argue that brand voice is especially important in an era in which the business is more and more reliant on stock photography. If everyone is using the same pool of imagery, one way to stand apart from the pack is to give your brand a unique voice. Don’t settle for FRIENDLY.
If you’re an SEO like me, you probably spent at least a year or two at an agency where you worked with other experienced SEOs. On large teams, there’s always someone to learn from, bounce ideas off of, or to help finish projects on time.
But what happens when the SEO team is just you? This is the question I had when, after several years agency-side, I moved in-house to be the first and only SEO the organization ever had.
More than three years later, I’m still a team of one. I had to figure out how to accomplish my goals without the built-in support of an established team, and although there are challenges, being the only SEO is an opportunity to flex your knowledge, develop the practices that will bring the organization into the digital age, and maybe even grow your own team.
Here’s how I get things done, and hopefully some of these practices will be helpful for you as well!
How and why some organizations start with just one SEO
Many “legacy” organizations are going through a digital transformation: transitioning from traditional media to a digital presence by investing in their websites and digital specialists. The pandemic likely accelerated this process, and these groups will be hiring their first dedicated SEOs.
This is how I was hired. The Nature Conservancy is one of the largest environmental nonprofits in the world, with offices in dozens of countries and thousands of employees. One SEO. Yet this is fairly advanced — most nonprofits have zero*.
*Sidenote: If you are a nonprofit SEO I would love to connect!
One of the first digital transformation hires was the analytics director, Jenny. Jenny’s mission was to find opportunities to grow the site. Almost immediately, she saw that half of the website’s traffic is from organic search. So she asked, “Who manages search here?” Turns out, no one. She believed that if the website was important, the organization needed to invest in it. And that meant a strategy for search.
Jenny needed to highlight how beneficial an SEO would be. She built an analytics dashboard for the CMO, who was from a traditional media background. His first question was, “What’s organic search?”
Yes, really. Then he had a lightbulb moment: “Oh, so Google! Wow, that’s all our traffic?”
And a new SEO position was funded.
A rough start
Unfortunately, this realization came at a less than ideal time. The Nature Conservancy was in the middle of this digital transformation, starting to heavily invest in digital marketing, building a team, thinking strategically about the website, and the CMS was shutting down. They scrambled to find a new CMS and execute a site migration.
No worries, they thought, the web developer vendor will handle SEO. Their contract included this line item: “SEO industry best practices for relaunch”.
If your stomach just clenched, imagine how I felt when, during an interview, my soon-to-be-boss excitedly said, “You might have noticed that the website looks a little different today. Our relaunch went live this morning!”
Yes, they went through a site migration while hiring for an SEO. They celebrated with cake.
Teams without an SEO don’t know what they don’t know, and they’ll make mistakes that you will be responsible for fixing. Until that moment, I had been thinking that I’d be setting the SEO strategy for the future of the organization, help the website emerge as an authority and a leader in the nonprofit space, and contribute to my personal goal of furthering the mission. Instead, my first several months on the job would be cleaning up the migration.
When I started, there were hundreds of errors across the site. It was slow, there were no dedicated SEO fields in the CMS, and there were broken links everywhere. Worse, there was no SEO guidance for content creators, meaning each new page created more errors.
So, how did I start to move the needle on over 2,000 pages that were published with zero thought towards SEO? I had to triage: there was no way I could fix all the issues myself, so my priority was slowing the rate at which new, problematic pages were published.
The solo SEO process
Step 1: Make friends on other teams and find your evangelists
When you’re the only SEO, especially if you’re also the first, it might seem like no one at your organization understands your job. But someone, somewhere, does — at least a little. You just need to find them.
And when you do, don’t immediately ask for favors or demand they change how they do their jobs. Approach your new friend with empathy, interest, and understanding. Start by learning how you can help them do their jobs.
Analysts
My first friends were on the analytics team. Obviously I had Jenny, the analytics director, and I also had Leigh Ann, an amazing analytics architect. She had been with The Nature Conservancy for 20 years and knew how desperate the site was for SEO guidance. Chances were if I was annoyed at an issue, she had been annoyed at it for years. She was thrilled some of these issues were finally being addressed, and I was thrilled I had current and historical data to back up my recommendations.
Developers
My second friends were the developers. When you’re the only SEO, you’re the default expert on both content and technical SEO. I give the developers a heads up on what the content team has planned that might require their involvement and, more importantly, educate the content team on the level of effort required for seemingly small tasks. This not only helps me directly, it also increases understanding and keeps relationships smooth across teams.
Other marketers
One unexpected friend I made early on was Rachel, a marketer with the Florida chapter. She worked with SEOs in a previous role and understood the value of organic search. She reached out to me after a training, wanting to collaborate. Together we created a new page specifically designed to bring in organic traffic.
The topic was mangroves, trees that grow in coastal saltwater that provide important habitat for animals and protect communities from storm impacts. The Florida chapter talked quite a bit about mangroves but didn’t have a dedicated page for them. I sent Rachel some keywords, questions, and examples of mangrove content and she built a new page. We collaborated on every element. We both wanted to show how SEO could improve the kind of content most marketers were creating.
A persistent notion among marketers is that their pages are primarily seen because they’re promoted. While the page was shared on social media and in an email, within a few weeks, it was ranking for our target keyword. Six months later, 85% of the traffic to that page was from organic search. I made sure to give that page — and Rachel — a shout out, both to give her credit and to show other marketers the kind of success SEO can bring. She also shares the success of the page with other marketers and is a valuable SEO evangelist.
Step 2: Provide SEO education every day
It doesn’t matter if you work with hundreds of SEOs or you’re the only SEO, every SEO role involves a good amount of education. The field changes frequently, new clients and stakeholders have varying levels of understanding (or worse, outdated ideas), and websites and priorities change. You need to keep up with the field and communicate changes and best practices simply and effectively.
Agency clients expect their vendors to be consultants, but when you’re in-house, it can be easy to forget to treat your colleagues and superiors like a client. And when you’re the only one with SEO expertise, everyone has questions. It’s your job to not only answer their questions, but also to be proactive.
Being the only SEO means speaking up and asserting your knowledge. Within my first two months, I conducted an SEO 101 training open to anyone at the organization. I covered what SEO is, what it means for content creators, busted myths, walked through what a SERP looks like, how to optimize pages using our CMS, and highlighted examples of pages that were already doing a great job. I ended the training by giving attendees steps for conducting their own research, and offering to help anyone creating new content. (Giving out candy doesn’t hurt, either.)
Of course, not everyone is going to react well to someone who comes in and tells them the way they’ve been doing things this whole time is wrong. Naturally, you’ll encounter resistance. That’s okay — focus on those who do want to work with you, and minimize conflict with everyone else. Results, hopefully, will speak for themselves.
You get to choose the SEO hill you die on. Figure out what’s going to move the needle the most at your organization. Understand when to fight and when to let something go in order to appease that higher up you just can’t win over right now.
Step 3: Do (at least some of) the work yourself
One of the biggest culture shocks moving in-house was the level of bureaucracy standing in my way. The larger the organization, the more hurdles you’ll have to jump. Sometimes it takes half a dozen people to approve a title tag change and content owners are sometimes always too busy to fix their broken links. I quickly realized there would be times I’d need to just do things myself.
If your SEO agency experience ever involved providing recommendations to your point of contact and then wondering why almost nothing got implemented, you may have no idea how long it takes to actually do the work you’re recommending, or what very real barriers your client faces. I didn’t when I was with agencies.
At The Nature Conservancy, I tried everything I could think of to encourage content owners to fix their issues: meeting one-on-one with them, sending emails with step-by-step instructions, even setting up automated email reminders. They just didn’t have the time.
So, I started making some of the changes myself. I’d remove a few broken links on one page, update title tags and meta descriptions on another, and worked with my team’s writer (who was willing to pitch in) to update content. It’s important to not be too busy, proud, or afraid to do the work.
If you’re thinking this is time consuming, you’re right. If content owners didn’t have the time to manage a dozen pages, how could I manage thousands? Right when I was starting to resign myself to spending Saturdays doing all the stuff I was recommending so we could start seeing results, we hired a production manager, Lane. He quickly made a sizable dent in our backlogged work.*
*In the never-ending cycle that is nonprofit work, Lane’s plate is now also overloaded.
I was lucky that we had the budget to hire Lane, but what if we didn’t? It would have been unrealistic and unfair for me to actually spend my weekends implementing optimizations across thousands of pages. If anyone is in this position now, build a case for hiring someone. Estimate the time it would take to implement your recommendations, and the cost of not implementing as much as you can. Use the metrics that matter to the powers that be, and show how SEO contributes to their own goals. Ask your advocates for help, especially if they might have some insights you don’t.
In the meantime, protect your priorities: Block off time on your calendar for focused work (and use it), enforce no-meeting Fridays, don’t let “perfect” be the enemy of “good” or “done”, learn how to say “no” to tasks that don’t fit your priorities, and recognize and admit to your limits.
In essence, do the work, but don’t actually work through your weekends!
Step 4: Find your community
It can be a bit lonely and isolating to be the only SEO at your organization. Who do you go to for a gut check, a proofread, or to ask a dumb question without judgment when you’re the only SEO? You need to find your community outside your employer.
First and foremost, you don’t need to have every answer immediately. “I don’t know, let me find out” is an acceptable answer. You can Google answers to the questions you’re asked, or you can find people to ask.
Former colleagues, former classmates in similar positions, website forums, even Twitter hashtags can be a good community. Women in Tech SEO is a wonderful, global community for women in the field. I also had some success reaching out to others in similar positions at related companies. There are SEO podcasts, YouTube videos, webinars, conferences, and online courses to learn from.
No matter where you find your community, don’t just take: remember to help others as much as they help you.
Why it’s actually great to be the only SEO
Being the only specialist at a company comes with unique challenges, as outlined here. But there are some wonderful benefits to being the only SEO on your team.
The wow factor
Chances are, your colleagues and superiors are learning a TON from you. I regularly hear things along the lines of, “Wow, I never knew we needed to do this!” or “This is hugely helpful!” for simple best practices.
Employee appreciation
Your colleagues can be extremely happy you’re on the team. Like Leigh Ann, the analytics architect, who had spent years measuring metrics that no one had been working on. And Rachel, from the Florida chapter, who got to show her boss results from our collaboration.
It feels good
When there’s no one else who knows SEO at your organization, there’s also no one to disagree with you! But in addition, if you’re the only SEO on the team, your company may be low on digital expertise, maybe even transitioning from traditional media to a digital presence. You get to genuinely help bring an organization into the digital future and show how SEO can have incredible results.
Fluid design is having a moment—and embracing it will save start-ups time and money in the long run.
When Google Chrome revealed its first logo refresh in nearly a decade earlier this year, the internet was left scratching its head. The change was so slight, the new logo so simple, merely removing the highlights and shadows to completely flatten the logo, slightly adjusting the proportions, and saturating the colours.
[Images: Google]
As someone who has worked in branding for more than 15 years, I don’t think this subtlety was a failure—it shows that the company is paying attention to where the design world is going. If you look at the major rebrands of 2021—from Burger King to GM—almost all of them involve paring down, flattening, or simplifying a brand’s look.
The driving factor is more than just a trend in our visual language—it’s about adjusting to our new normal as companies and consumers. As we’re all too aware, the world is changing at an unprecedented pace. Brands are looking for simple designs that give them flexibility to adapt across new platforms, appeal to new audiences, and pivot as things change around them. And—jokes about Chrome’s new logo aside—consumers are craving simplicity in an increasingly complex world. A 2021 study by brand strategy agency Siegel+Gale found that 76% of people are more likely to recommend a brand that delivers simple experiences.
While this shift is important for all companies to pay attention to, it presents an especially exciting opportunity for start-ups, which are constantly changing by nature. When done correctly, approaching branding with simplicity can help start-ups more easily align their brand with their strategy—and save a lot of money in the process.
Why distinctive branding doesn’t work for start-ups
Company branding used to feel permanent: You spent a lot of time and money getting it right and then didn’t change it for as long as possible. Take American Airlines, which didn’t change its branding for 40 years. While the original branding was classic, it ended up looking a little too patriotic as the world became increasingly globalized. When they addressed this issue with a major rebrand, they faced some pushback for such a drastic change. And yet, too many founders still adhere to a mindset where they see branding as a boxed-in solution that will last, even if their business changes.
The reality is exactly the opposite. There’s no way to create strong visual branding without a solid understanding of a company’s core product, purpose, and audience—something start-ups are still figuring out in the early years. As start-ups pivot their strategy to find product-market fit or appeal to different audiences, branding that used to work might not anymore. I’ve even seen designer friends work on projects where the brand is already dated by the time they’re exporting the final files (no exaggeration!) because of the speed at which the client is pivoting.
The more distinctive a brand identity, the more exaggerated this problem becomes. Foursquare is a great example: They launched over a decade ago with complex, consumer-focused branding and have had to significantly rebrand every few years as they found their footing and eventually expanded to include a B2B business model.
The evolution of Foursquare’s branding. [Images: Foursquare]
A more fluid way forward
Looking at Foursquare’s latest rebrand, you see how simplicity helps solve these issues. The company stripped its branding back to a wordmark and a few basic colours, describing the new approach as a “simple, scalable system” that allows them to appeal to the multiple audiences they’ve grown to serve.
[Images: Foursquare]
Simplicity not only helps growing brands be more things for more people, but it also gives them more flexibility to tweak things as they grow and evolve. I like to think of this approach as “fluid design”—start with something simple, and make subtle updates as your strategy changes or you learn more about your audience.
Chat app Discord took a fluid approach last year in a brand update they described as “not too different: just a little friendlier”—a move to make the product more welcoming as they expand beyond the gaming community.
[Screenshots: courtesy of the author]
Dropbox has seen a similar fluid evolution, starting with a simple logo that has seen small upgrades over the years, and more recently adding pops of colour to their traditional blue branding in order to appeal to a more creative audience. It’s still obviously the Dropbox brand—just more playful.
Save money on simplicity
So, why am I talking about this approach when there are plenty of brands—big and small—that already do it?
For one, there are still plenty of start-ups taking the old approach, looking for trendy or flashy design to help them stand out, when they should really be seeking a simple brand that gives them flexibility while they find product-market fit.
The other issue is that start-ups are hiring branding agencies at all—at great cost. Top agencies for early-stage companies typically charge $150,000–$500,000 for their branding work; even entry-level agencies often start at $50,000. At that price, growing companies (that barely have that money in the first place) feel pressure to get it perfect and never update their branding.
Instead, young companies can DIY a simple design system, with a sleek wordmark, professional fonts, and a basic color palette. Moreover, when they take the fluid approach, there’s no pressure for this early branding to be perfect: Tweaks can and should happen along the way.
I’m not saying that the work brand designers do isn’t valuable—but it’s only valuable once a company feels secure in what it’s doing and who it’s marketing to.
So, my advice for start-ups: Take advantage of this simple design trend to create something that’s good enough for now, make perhaps imperceptible changes as you learn along the way, and spend the bulk of your resources getting your product right. Once that’s in place, you can pay for all the fancy design work you want.
By Saskia Ketz
Saskia Ketz is the founder of MMarchNY, a New York City-based branding agency that’s worked with brands like Netflix, IKEA, Timberland, and Mojomox, an online wordmark builder that allows start-ups to create dynamic, professional-looking logos themselves.
A dashboard is an excellent way for businesses to consolidate their data and use it to improve various aspects of their operations. In this article, we will look at step-by-step instructions on how to make a dashboard in Excel. You can use Excel to create different dashboards, including a financial dashboard, sales tracking dashboard, product metrics dashboard, and more.
Continue reading for a deep dive on how to make a dashboard in Excel using interactive charts such as a pivot chart or a bullet chart. In this article, you will discover why Excel is essential and the benefits of using Excel to make a complex or simple dashboard. We also cover some advanced dashboard elements and features.
What Is a Dashboard in Excel?
A dashboard is a simplified visual representation of data relating to business performance. A dashboard keeps all essential data in one place so that managers can look at the data and make crucial decisions. A dashboard usually contains key performance indicators and compares data points.
There are three different dashboards that all have specific functions. A strategic dashboard helps managers identify opportunities or forecast issues. An analytical dashboard helps managers find trends and make decisions quickly, while an operational dashboard helps managers monitor their employees and processes.
Why Learning How to Make a Dashboard in Excel is Useful
It will help you improve your Excel skills. Learning how to make a dashboard on Excel can enhance your skills and help you learn new aspects of this program. Many jobs use Excel for various tasks, so learning and practicing how to use it is extremely useful.
You can use Excel to make better visuals for your dashboard. By learning how to make a dashboard in Excel, you will also learn the best visuals for your dashboard depending on what data you need to display, whether in tabular format, a chart, or a graph. Your dashboard will report important values and data, so it must be easy to read.
You can explore new chart types and learn how to use them best. Sometimes, we get stuck in habits and avoid change, but you can embrace change in your dashboard creation and try various charts with Excel. Take the opportunity to experiment with a new chart type that you have never used before because formatting matters.
It will help you gain a new viewpoint on your data. It can help you spot problems and gain a new perspective on your data. When working on Excel to make a dashboard, you must enter the data into multiple places. It will help you choose the perfect visuals, such as a pivot chart or a doughnut chart.
How to Make a Dashboard in Excel: A Step-By-Step Guide
Step 1: Import the Data Into Excel
You cannot create a dashboard without a dataset. First, you’ll transfer the entire dataset you need to Excel. When making a dashboard from scratch using Excel, you don’t need to worry about scary formulas to move data. You can use an application programming interface, test file, copy and paste, or use Microsoft Power Query to help you transfer the initial dataset from your external data source.
Step 2: Create your Excel Workbook
Next, you must select the insert tab option to open three worksheets. One separate worksheet is for your raw data, the next one will be for the specific data going into your dashboard, and the third will be your dashboard tab. Creating three sheets will keep your work organized and ensure the easy creation of a dashboard structure.
Step 3: Make a Table and Insert Your Raw Data
The next step of this process is to insert your raw data into a table. You can insert the table on your first Excel sheet and name it “Raw data”. A table will help you read the data, making the next step easier.
People often refer to this stage as the data cleaning phase. Make sure you look for any missing data or mistakes during this stage. You will save real time and avoid major errors if you pay attention to the cleansing process.
Step 4: Analyze the Data in the Table
Once you have all the necessary data in one place, you must consider what you want to display on your dashboard. A sales dashboard may require different features than a project management dashboard. There are many dashboard examples online that can give you an idea of the cool features available.
Select the data you need for your dashboard, insert it into a table on the second sheet, and name it “Chart data”. This phase will help you determine additional tools you will use, such as a pivot table or excel formulas.
Step 5: Choose the Best Visual Representation for Your Dashboard
Now that you have all your data sorted, you should decide on the visuals for your dashboard and your dashboard background color. There are numerous chart types available in Excel for all dashboard types. You can use a pie chart, pivot chart, bar graph, column chart, gauge chart, bar chart, or dynamic chart.
For example, if you want to summarize your data in a table with statistics, you will use a pivot chart. If you need ideas, you can use a dashboard template or use an existing dashboard as inspiration. You will want to make sure to use an easy-to-understand format to ensure you get your vital metrics across.
Step 6: Construct your Excel Dashboard
Now you’re prepared to construct the actual dashboard. Open the third sheet and name it the “Dashboard tab”, select the “Insert” button and choose the type of chart you need, such as a pie chart, pivot chart, or a column chart. It will open a blank box.
Then, click “Select data,” open your chart data tab, select the data you need, and press “enter”. You will see your chart when you move back to the dashboard sheet.
Step 7: Customize the Dashboard
Now you can customize your stunning dashboard. You can modify chart colors, change fonts, add a chart title, and decide whether you want an interactive or static dashboard. Interactive dashboards allow you to change what data you see using a drop-down list or a slicer.
Use a dynamic chart if you want your dashboard to be interactive, and you can constantly update your dashboard with this type of chart. An interactive screen can grab viewers’ attention more than boring graphs, but may not be necessary to get your essential metrics across. You can add dialogue boxes and adjust each chart widget to make sure your dashboard is visually appealing.
Benefits of Making a Dashboard in Excel
It has excellent analytics abilities. Excel has statistical calculations built into its software and can handle complex calculations. The formula tab enables you to enter specific calculations that you need. This nice feature cuts down the average time it takes to analyze large data sets.
Excel is very flexible. Excel is fantastic for dashboards because it is flexible, and you can modify data or add additional chart options, such as a pivot table, at any time. Flexibility allows for correcting mistakes that you may have overlooked, and you can create a dynamic dashboard with the drop-down menu.
It is a software program that is easy to learn and use. Excel is an excellent option for creating various types of dashboards because it’s simple, and anyone can learn to use it. Many businesses and schools use excel, so most people have already come across and used this program.
Excel is a cost-effective tool. Excel has fantastic capabilities, as discussed above, and it has a much lower price than other software programs used to make dashboards. The average price of Tableau, a program that helps people understand data is $70 per month, while Excel only costs around $7 a month.
Utilize Microsoft’s Business Intelligence Visualization Software with Excel. When you use Excel to create a dashboard, you can also use Microsoft’s BI program , which helps you manage and store your data. Power BI and Excel work well together and improve your dashboard design experience.
Importance of Learning How to Use Excel Sheets
Learning how to use excel sheets is useful because it can open up new job opportunities and help you organize data better. Companies use Excel to share core performance metrics, create insightful reports, and even for customer service. Excel is part of Microsoft Office 356, a group of software programs that make our lives easier. Statista has mentioned that over one million companies worldwide use office 365 .
If you are interested in learning about using Excel sheets, you can consider enrolling in one of the best Excel bootcamps . Bootcamps are a short-term learning path and can quickly teach you everything you need to know. Other learning pathways available are online Excel courses, classes, and training .
How to Make a Dashboard in Excel FAQ
How can I make an effective dashboard?
You can make an effective dashboard by understanding the audience, using clear labels, and enhancing your dashboard constantly. You can use Excel to make editable reports that share key information on a single screen. This can be anything from feedback about customer satisfaction to an interactive to-do list.
What does a slicer on an Excel dashboard do?
A slicer is similar to a drop-down list, but a slicer is a filter you can see directly on a complex dashboard. You don’t need to click on an arrow or toggle button to show it. You can click on a word within the slicer to custom view the displayed data.
What industries use dashboards?
Most industries that work with data use dashboards. Some industries that use dashboards include healthcare, marketing, human resources, social media, and project management . A social media dashboard can improve a platform’s infrastructure.
What are key performance indicators (KPI)?
KPIs are targets set for companies or professionals to meet to succeed. It provides evidence of performance and progress and helps businesses make crucial plans and decisions.
Danel is from South Africa but currently lives in Cambodia. After teaching English as a foreign language to children in Asia, she started working as a content writer. She is eager to share her love for teaching and learning by helping others find their passions and access the tech industry. Danel’s personal interests include travelling and learning about new cultures.
Sourced from Career Karma
About us: Career Karma is a platform designed to help job seekers find, research, and connect with job training programs to advance their careers. Learn about the CK publication.
