The world may be changing, but for the entrepreneurs one thing just remains the same. Email marketing is still king. There are 4 billion daily email users, and that number is expected to surpass 5.6 billion by 2025. Sixty-four percent of small businesses use email to reach customers because it’s cost-effective, efficient, and it works like a charm.
Stephen Phillips – Hostreviews.co.uk/Unsplash
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As Marketer of the Year, Camelot CMO Keith Moor believes being an effective marketing leader comes down to building credibility by delivering on promises and having a curious mind.
Camelot CMO Keith Moor makes being an effective marketing leader sound deceptively simple.
For Moor it comes down to being able to deliver, which is something he has done in spades at The National Lottery operator. Two years into the role and he has completely revitalised the brand, repositioning it as a force for good by clearly linking participation to wider societal benefits rather than it just being a way to gamble.
Under his watch marketing investment has increased and advertising has shifted from being solely focused on shorter term, product-based activity to building a narrative about how the money raised through ticket sales directly supports local community causes.
This change of tack is clearly resonating with players and the revitalisation of The National Lottery has been widely heralded as one of the most successful turnaround stories of the past couple of years.
Despite the pandemic making it a challenging year for all, Camelot reported a sales increase of 6% for the year to March 2021, with the amount raised for good causes hitting £1.9bn, £1.2bn of which went directly to Covid-19 support.
The repositioning also boosted perceptions of The National Lottery brand. At 8.1 it achieved its highest ever score on YouGov’s BrandIndex in 2020, rising from 1.9 the year before and making it the second most improved brand of the year in terms of perception.
As a longstanding ISBA council member Moor is also an active voice within the marketing community, known for driving positive change and championing marketing within the wider business sector. All of which made him the top choice for the Marketing Week Masters award for Marketer of the Year 2021.
In typical style, Moor makes his achievements sound disarmingly simple.
“When you go into a job make sure you’ve got the tools and the licence to deliver, make sure you’ve got the buy-in of the CEO and then effectively just do it,” he says.
“The only way to get credibility is to prove yourself. I have to prove myself, as everybody else will in their jobs, by delivering for the business, helping it grow, turning it around, rebuilding it and building on the existing successes it has – whatever they might be. So ensure you can deliver proper tangible value that people can see and understand really quickly. Not just some kind of marketing waffle.”
The failures you get can be really self-defining, because they can make you understand and be confident about why things go wrong.
Keith Moor, Camelot
Key to his success at Camelot was getting buy-in from the C-suite before he joined the business to ensure his views and ideas lined up with theirs, because he says: “I didn’t want to come in and then have to battle”.
Having spent more than two decades at Santander, most recently as CMO, Moor wanted to make sure the move was going to be right. And while it may sound simple, ensuring this alignment is there from the start is crucial for any marketing leader to succeed, he says.
“Some big, well known marketers have been known to go into new jobs and have the arrogance to think ‘It’s my way or the highway’. I’ve seen marketers go into businesses and change everything because they feel they’ve got to put their own stamp on it. But sometimes it’s not about that. Sometimes it’s just about coordinating and bringing resources together,” Moor suggests.
Keeping things simple also allows marketers to “get the right focus”, he says. “Things like raising awareness, talking to the right people, ensuring [customers] want to buy, ensuring you know who your customers are, for example, that sounds much more straightforward than it is for a lot of people,” he adds.
“[Spend time] asking those difficult questions up front, thinking about what can give you the biggest value return, because then you can show jumps in sales, increase in purchase intent. Then that gives you the licence to go and show exec committees and talk to the CEO in his or her language, and show you can deliver tangible value.”
Increasing investment
Camelot is set up differently to other businesses in that its budget for marketing is part-funded by the Gambling Commission, so it’s not just the CEO Moor has to prove the value of marketing to, making it all the more important to be able to show results.
“We get investment two ways for marketing. One is a percentage of our ticket sales, which can go on marketing to generate more income and that’s a small percentage [around 1%]. It’s written in the licence conditions, so we can’t spend any more than that unless we choose to spend our own money,” he explains.
“Or the Gambling Commission decide to utilise money for good causes and give it to us, so we can generate higher returns for good causes. And then we use econometric modelling to prove that for every £X we generate from EuroMillions, for example, we generate £Y for good causes. That is a multiple much higher than a one to one, which is why the Gambling Commission invests all this money because we generate a lot more money as a result of it.”
Securing marketing investment became all the more important during the pandemic, because The National Lottery needed to show people the money being raised through ticket sales was going to support charities in dire need during the crisis.
“Going quiet because people can’t do things the way did before is not a good long-term strategy,” he says. “Continuing to support your brand – what it stands for, what it means – so that it’s maybe not right at the front of people’s minds, but it’s there, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
“That’s a role brands need to play, to show they’re supporting society, they’re underpinning the economy. If all the brands just disappeared for a year, a lot of income disappears. A lot of money flowing through the market disappears and I think brands have a responsibility to, where appropriate, stay present and stay relevant with consumers.”
Moor had the same approach during his time at Santander following the financial crisis in 2008. He continued to invest in the brand and used changes in the market as a launchpad to turn Abbey National into Santander, to show it was relevant and offer an alternative.
“That was the right thing to do. I had the same theory and vindication about the National Lottery and the [Covid] crisis. Stay relevant because when we start to come out of it people will remember – you’ll be front of mind,” he explains.
Team support
As well as keeping The National Lottery brand buoyant during the crisis, Moor was also keen to ensure his team continued to thrive.
Camelot introduced a change programme during lockdown, which helped people keep connected to the business while working remotely and ensured employees were able to continue learning and upskilling. While it wasn’t introduced as a result of the pandemic, Moor notes the timing was fortuitous as it gave the team “a bit of focus”.
“It also gave everyone an appreciation of still being invested in as people,” he explains. “We have a very clear vision as a marketing function and people know they can ask about areas where they might want to grow skills, maybe try a job in a new area to help them grow.”
Moor says programmes such as this are particularly important for Camelot, not only to show there are still opportunities for marketers to grow and progress despite the limitations brought about by the pandemic, but also given the company operates The National Lottery under licence. The third licence will be coming to conclusion in 2024 and there is currently a competition underway for licence four, which will cover the next 10-year period.
I’m 52-years-old, I’m a marketing director in a big business but that doesn’t mean I don’t ask questions every week, most days of the week.
Keith Moor, Camelot
Given the bid process and the uncertainty that stems from this, Moor says it’s important to make sure people feel valued and supported – another key attribute of a marketing leader.
“People are starting to feel a little bit twitchy about what’s going to happen with their jobs, what’s going to happen to them in the future,” he explains. “We can’t answer that yet because we are currently very focused on operating the third licence, but people still have questions. They love their jobs, we have a very high satisfaction rating, but it doesn’t stop people wondering.”
He says this uncertainty around the next licence, coupled with the disruption triggered by Covid, means staying connected to people, having regular conversations and understanding their concerns is incredibly important.
Moor manages a team of around 70 marketers, which means he can “get to know everybody and they can get to know me”. He makes sure he’s available “at least once a week to take any calls they might have”, work related or otherwise.
The relatively small team Moor manages at Camelot is very different from his time at Santander, a global business with tens of thousands of employees. Yet, while there are differences he says the skills needed to run marketing at both are not dissimilar.
“We still have to know our customers and understand what’s going on with them. We still have to build plans going forward, have a clear strategy and a series of plans to be implemented related to that strategy. We have to deliver results,” he says.
He reiterates that one of the wonderful things about marketing is that the skills are transferable.
“I don’t think marketing functions change radically because people still need to have insight, data, understanding, an exploratory mindset and a willingness to try things in a proper structured way,” adds Moor.
“Whichever business you go into in a marketing role you’ve got to do all those things. So actually, that’s why marketers can change jobs – I wouldn’t say easily, because getting a new stakeholder set, getting a new team up to speed with how you work, all that takes time and effort – but marketers have some good transferable skills if they have the right mindset.”
Encouraging young marketers
As well as being an advocate for marketing within Camelot, Moor has been involved in championing marketing on a wider level to elevate the impact and influence marketing and marketers can have.
As part of this drive he believes more must be done to communicate how rewarding a career in marketing can be to encourage the next generation of marketers.
“There’s a real need to continue promoting how fulfilling a marketing career can be and that it’s not just about making ads,” he says.
“That’s the shortcut and we need to do a better job at explaining it as a much richer purpose. That it helps people understand the customers of a business, or helps them have a better experience. That it helps businesses to grow in line with what customers are hoping and wanting, and also fulfils the learning and career development that people might want. And that it’s flexible. It’s different things for different people.”
It’s also a career that never gets stale. One of his core philosophies as a marketer and something he believes is crucial to development is the need to keep asking questions. It was advice he was given as a junior marketer and it’s something he instils in his team now.
“I’ve got an exploratory mindset. It’s something I talk about a lot to younger marketers. Don’t lose that curiosity or the sense of exploration, because that ultimately will make you a better marketer. No matter how senior or junior you are – it doesn’t matter – everybody can benefit from doing that,” he says.
“I’m 52-years-old, I’m a marketing director in a big business but that doesn’t mean I don’t ask questions every week, most days of the week. It’s a great example I can set to my children. There’s not real downside to curiosity.”
While being curious might not always lead to the next big thing, learning from failure can be just as valuable, he says.
“Nobody’s career goes on an upwards trajectory the whole way. But actually, the failures you get can be really self-defining, because they can make you understand and be confident about why things go wrong,” he explains.
“I’ve tried to launch brands in the past that have failed. I’ve had brands pulled from under me the day before launch and there was nothing I could do about it. I just had to do my best work and bounce back from that. Learn from the mistakes, learn from all the good things I did during that time and then grow from it, so when I do launch brands they’re a success.”
Moor is not afraid to admit you need a thick skin to be a leader though, which becomes all the more necessary the more senior you get. So he encourages marketers to always keep perspective and not take things too seriously.
“Always allow yourself to see the reality of life and get the balance of things correct,” he advises. “I like to treat things in a very straightforward way, because I’ve learnt over the years that it’s really important I stay on top of keeping things simple. Because if I don’t do it no one else is going to. I’ve got to lead the way.”
Abandoning an online shopping cart may not be a big deal for a customer – but, for an eCommerce company, it could be a lucrative opportunity lost.
An effective abandoned cart email strategy is the perfect solution.
Start with this list of four abandoned cart email examples that will bring folks back to complete their checkout on your website.
Why are abandoned cart emails important for eCommerce?
According to an industry benchmark report, the standard abandoned cart email makes $5.81 in revenue per recipient. That same study showed that companies with an average order value of $100–500 also recovered 4–5% of their abandoned carts through this email marketing strategy.
In short, abandoned cart emails are a major customer retention lifeline for eCommerce businesses.
Every eCommerce brand should have a customized abandoned cart email framework as part of its email automation workflow and retargeting strategy.
A thorough framework will help you identify:
The exact point in the buyer’s journey where the customer clicked out
The kind of copy that brings them back to the site (or helps make a sale)
How to then upsell and/or increase brand affinity
In addition to that, it also helps you grow your email list for further remarketing.
When coupled with a high-level understanding of customer needs and email marketing data quality, an abandoned cart email marketing strategy works as a great remarketing tool.
How does an abandoned cart email work?
An abandoned cart email is an automated response that’s triggered by the customer leaving an eCommerce site or product page. Depending on the site and the brand’s strategy, the email can have various trigger points.
For example, a customer could trigger an abandoned cart email if they exit the site during the payment confirmation phase of checkout. In other cases, they could opt into the email just by viewing some products and then clicking out.
In both cases, the business needs a customer to provide their email address. This can be done in exchange for a discount code via a popup right before the home page, or while collecting delivery information.
Getting Customers’ Emails
Some business owners ask: Can you retarget an abandoned cart without a customer’s email?
No. Email acquisition is the key to abandoned cart emails. And, while collecting email addresses as soon as possible in the buying journey is beneficial to businesses, it’s not always plausible, considering how few customers actually share this information upfront.
Luckily, there are many ways to collect email addresses from your customers, including through:
Pop-ups: The tried-and-true method of email acquisition, you can use browser-close actions that ask for an email when a customer moves toward the exit button. You can also launch pop-ups at a certain step in the checkout process, or as a customer moves through different product pages on your site. Include discounts and other incentives to provide value for customers.
Chatbots: Not every customer who visits your site will engage with a chatbot. However, those that do engage will do so with a purpose. Build on their shopping intent and ask for their email for personalized responses from your customer service team.
Retargeted ads: If customers are leaving your site for a better buying opportunity elsewhere, you can market your business to them on other sites with a discount or personalized incentives. When they return to your site, make asking for their email the first pop-up that appears.
Creating Your Strategy
Like with all email marketing, testing is key with abandoned cart workflows. Before you implement your strategy, you’ll need to do some experimentation to identify the optimal timing, frequency, and trigger delay that motivates your customers to purchase.
Consider testing manual and automatic workflows, and don’t forget to include seasonal changes in buyer behavior and other parameters in your research.
While actually sending the abandoned cart is easy, the work required to design your strategy correctly is where you’ll spend most of your time. Fortunately, you’ll likely generate some degree of return on your investment while you’re still working out the kinks.
Using Your eCommerce Platform
Many eCommerce platforms make it easy to implement these triggers and workflows. Take Shopify, for example.
To set up this workflow on your site, you can go to the “Orders” page on the Shopify Admin dashboard and click on “Abandoned Checkouts.” From there, you can either send a recovery email manually by clicking on “Send a Cart Recovery Email” or automate the entire process by clicking on “Automatically Send Abandoned Checkout Emails.”
Contact your platform’s help team to see how the process works for your website.
4 Abandoned cart email examples and strategies to test
Every eCommerce business is different. Your customers have their unique needs and buying journeys, and it’s your job to identify how to best reach them after they leave your site.
That said, it never hurts to try a few successful strategies from other businesses first to see if any of them stick for your shoppers.
As you test these strategies, pinpoint the elements that seem beneficial to your brand, mix in your own insights and audience research, experiment, and accumulate the effective tactics into an abandoned shopping cart email framework that works for you.
1. Offer incentives to customers
Peel is a minimalist product retailer that offers incentives for uncertain customers at multiple stages of the buying process, including in the first abandoned cart email.
Sending a reminder email isn’t enough to convince browsers to purchase. Make it worth their while with a clear incentive. The top-level positioning of “Free Shipping on Orders Over $49” draws potential buyers’ eyes immediately upon opening the message.
In addition, Peel uses the copy “Still Thinking it Over?” to reignite customer interest. Don’t ever assume your customer has abandoned their purchase; your cart abandonment email should nudge them to re-engage with their buying journey.
2. Don’t wait for items to be placed in a cart
“Add to cart” is a great indication of customer interest, but you don’t have to wait for that action to send abandoned cart emails.
When you shop at JCPenney, you don’t have to click out at the checkout stage to trigger abandoned cart emails. Instead, you could simply browse some product pages for the system to register your interest and send a discount coupon.
Customers do need to link their browsing experience to a JCPenney account to receive this email, so always prompt shoppers to save their preferences by signing up or signing into their accounts.
Using this method as part of your triggered email workflow offers an opportunity to build or improve brand affinity — by offering value at a point in the buyer’s journey where customers often forget to complete their purchase or begin looking for alternatives.
3. Promote a sense of urgency
ELO (Export Leftovers) is an online retailer that offers exclusively production surplus clothing and accessories, with a focus on fast-moving items.
At first look, their abandoned cart email seems basic, with no consideration or incentive for customer needs. However, because their business is based on high-demand clothing at affordable prices (which causes unpredictable fluctuation in availability), urgency is emphasized in the “while they’re still available” copy.
Doubling down on availability-related messaging reminds customers that their viewed items may not be in store for long. It also works extremely well; urgency-related copy subject lines increase open rates by 22 percent.
4. Use creative copy
Shoppers are bombarded with eCommerce emails, so make yours stand out with copy that speaks to your unique audience experience and personas.
Dote, which used to offer trendy clothing and accessories for younger buyers, had this strategy down pat. Its message to almost-customers is one of the best-abandoned cart email strategies for its particular audience.
Dote’s email had it all, from clever copywriting to a very clear call-to-action (CTA). They played with language familiar to its Gen Z customers and incorporated feelings of endearment with a tongue-in-cheek approach.
As you draft your abandoned cart emails, use email copy that resonates with customers on a high level. Funny one-liners, prevalent social trends, or meme/punny language can turn a boring email into one that improves brand enthusiasm and perception.
Start testing these strategies today
When it comes to a solid abandoned cart email marketing strategy, a catchy and effective template is as important as any distribution strategy. However, like any other digital marketing toolkit, you’ll need to test components first to identify what works best for your brand and your customers.
Don’t have the time? Consider reaching out to an eCommerce email marketing agency for an expert’s help. They can create your abandoned cart email strategy from scratch and improve your chances of retaining a greater range of would-be customers.
Guest author: Entrepreneur and digital marketer Mike Belasco has been the founder and CEO of eCommerce digital marketing agency Inflow since 2007. His background as a web developer and SEO expert built an agency that has worked with major brands like Amazon, Overstock.com, Dish Network, and many more. Today, Belasco leads a team of more than 25 PPC, SEO, and conversion optimization specialists as a boutique, fully remote eCommerce marketing agency.
Your company’s future might depend on your ability to periodically refresh your brand identity.
“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare’s Juliet once asked. Perhaps a rose would smell just as sweet if it were called something else, but when it comes to your start-up, a name can be integral to your brand.
Take the hard seltzer company Berczy — originally called NATRL, the founders decided to change their product’s name as part of a comprehensive rebrand in order to better tell their origin story (the idea for the company was hatched during a trip to Toronto, during which the founders enjoyed evening drinks in the lively Berczy Park).
Each company has its own story to tell, and it’s essential to check in with your brand identity periodically and decide whether it’s still true to your company as it stands today. “A clear, unified corporate identity can be critical to competitive strategy,” write Stephen A. Greyser and Mats Urde for Harvard Business Review. “It serves as a north star, providing direction and purpose. It can also enhance the image of individual products, help firms recruit and retain employees, and provide protection against reputational damage in times of trouble.”
At my company, Jotform, we recently rebranded for the first time in over a decade. It required a considerable effort from the entire team but in the end, it was well worth it. Whether you’re considering a light refresh or a total brand overhaul, here are some tips to keep in mind.
1. Make sure the timing is right
Rebranding might seem like an exciting endeavour, but it’s also a big investment and as such, carries significant risks. To avoid wasting precious time and money, start by considering whether the timing is right for your rebrand. Although it’s impossible to state a hard-and-fast rule for every company, I usually tell founders to hold off until the market or their customers demand it.
What does that look like in practice?
When the old branding doesn’t feel relevant anymore, which can be caused by various factors, including moving into a new geographical market; an evolved company philosophy; or offering additional services. With Jotform, we expanded our business over the years and the former brand, including the tagline, “easy-to-use online form builder for every business,” no longer encapsulated how we serve users. Our new brand identity, which features an updated logo and tagline — ”powerful forms get it done” — reinforces the essence of Jotform.
A seemingly obvious case for rebranding is post-merger or acquisition — but even then, perhaps not right away. When the airlines Avianca and TACA merged, Fabio Villegas, CEO of Avianca Holdings, explained that each company had its own rich heritage, culture and business. Because of all of the coordination involved, writes Villegas, “We decided to unify the vision, culture and operations of the two organizations prior to launching a single brand.”
For them, it was the right decision to wait to ensure that the new branding aligned with the customer experience. It’s up to each entrepreneur to determine when is the right time for them.
2. Do some soul-searching
If you’ve decided that now is the time to rebrand, the next step requires some soul-searching: who are you and where do you want to go.
Greyser and Urde, who came up with The Corporate Brand Identity Matrix to help companies articulate their corporate identities, recommend breaking these essential inquiries into two categories: the internal elements, comprised of a company’s vision and mission, and the external elements: how the company wants to be perceived by customers and other external stakeholders.
With Jotform, internally, we want to help users create robust forms and collect important data. Externally, however, we want to be perceived as an innovative tech company alongside trailblazers like Google, Airtable, and monday.com. This informed our entire rebranding process.
Or take Burger King — its most recent logo captured the company’s then-values: A food company that focused on speed. But Burger King’s values have evolved over the years and today, it wants to be known as a casual restaurant that focuses on taste and quality, which prompted it to revitalize its retro-looking pre-1999 logo.
“As a rule of thumb, brand strategy always follows the business strategy. Not the other way around. The business sets the objectives. The brand gets them done,” writes The Go Branding.
Asking the essential internal and external questions will inform your decisions as you envision your company’s future identity.
3. Don’t rush the process
I’ll be the first to admit: There’s a special kind of rush that comes with posting updates about your company. When you’re in the rebranding process, it’s tempting to jump the gun in order to share your flashy new brand with the world.
But if you’ve committed your company’s resources to rebranding, make sure you take the time to do it right: to gather the information you need from stakeholders; to analyze that information; to let the creative process happen organically. As cognitive scientist Art Markman has written, “Creativity needs time and space to grow.”
Hack weeks are a great way to foster bursts of creativity, but give those ideas time to simmer, and I guarantee they’ll get even better. Think of it like winemaking: You can’t rush the process. Avianca Holdings took three years to finalize its rebranding, but the final product was worth it. “I have no doubt that we made the right decision,” writes Villegas.
To nail the landing, take as much time as your company, with its unique needs and customer-base, requires.
4. Include customers in the journey
When rebranding, don’t ignore the most important stakeholder of all: the customer. Consider the case of Uber: when it redesigned its logo, the new image featured an image called the “atom and bit.” The company thought it would make the brand easy to recognize, but as it turned out, 44% of people were couldn’t tell what the new logo represented.
Alexander Chernev, professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, commented that the logo was “just too abstract for customers who know Uber for its primary function: efficient and reliable transportation.”
Had Uber included customers earlier in the rebranding journey, its trajectory might have been different.
So, how do you meaningfully include customers?
The founders of Berczy said that they kept customers in the loop by sending emails and soliciting feedback along the way. You can share updates via social media. Send questionnaires or feedback forms so that your customers feel like part of the process.
Being transparent about the process will safeguard against disappointment when you finally have the chance to reveal your new branding.
Final thoughts
Rebranding can be a powerful tool for giving your company a competitive edge — wait until the timing is right, do some organizational soul-searching, don’t rush the process and bring your customers along with you. Whether you’re considering a name-change or a total overhaul, just be sure the branding is true to your company’s internal and external ambitions.
Entrepreneur Leadership Network VIP. Aytekin Tank is the founder and CEO of JotForm, the easiest online form builder. JotForm was ranked in the 2016 Entrepreneur 360™ List, an annual ranking of the most entrepreneurial private companies in the U.S.
After a disastrous Pixel 6 pre-order experience, Jack Wallen shares his thoughts on what Google can learn from Apple.
The Pixel 6. The mere mention of the name gives me equal parts excitement and frustration. I haven’t been so excited for the release of a phone in a very long time, while simultaneously feeling as though I might forever shake my head at how a release went down. Google absolutely failed the release of its latest flagship phone, the Pixel 6, which should go down as a historic shame (at least within the realm of the tech sector), but will barely register as a blip on the radar of consumers around the world.
Let me explain.
The day of the Pixel 6 release was upon me. I watched the Google event because I had to report on the details of the new phone. During the event, I shifted between the Google speakers and the Play Store, hoping I could be one of the lucky ones to pre-order the exact Pixel 6 I wanted.
I don’t remember at which point it happened, but Google unlocked the metaphorical doors and allowed people to start pre-ordering the Pixel 6.
In theory.
What unfolded was an absolute disaster for Google.
I attempted to place the phone in my shopping cart, only to receive a 500 error. At first, I thought it was that Google hadn’t actually made the pre-orders officially available and I just needed to double down on my patience. But the error persisted.
And then morphed.
And then returned.
Eventually, the error vanished, only to reveal most of the devices had already sold out. I was able to finally place a 128Gb unlocked device (not the phone I was hoping for) in my shopping cart, only to receive yet another error.
I kept at it. No luck. I did some quick searching to discover the problem was global.
This was an embarrassment.
The company that is supposed to be the heart of everyone’s internet experience couldn’t deliver on a simple e-commerce solution on what should have been one of its biggest releases to date.
At some point, the wife and I had to run some errands. I asked her to drive, so I could continue trying to get Google to take my money (this time on my Pixel 5) yet the company persisted in failing to do so.
It wasn’t until I got home and tried again (some three hours after the event was over) that I was able to get the phone into the shopping cart and make the purchase.
Once this event was over, it gave me time to reflect on my experience and similar experiences with previous Pixel releases. A conclusion was drawn.
Apple absolutely kills Google on hardware releases. In fact, there’s absolutely no reason to compare the two.
Apple succeeds.
Google fails.
The “meh” approach
Apple spends the money necessary for proper marketing and is capable of getting consumers seriously hyped about a new product. It’s what Apple does best. And in this case, it’s astonishing how large the gap is.
During the lead-up to the Pixel 6 release, I think I saw maybe two commercials for the device, and those commercials were less than exciting (to say the least). Prior to the latest iPhone release, I couldn’t escape the advertising. It was everywhere. So prevalent was Apple’s iPhone hype, it had me wondering, “It’s been years since I had an iPhone. Is it time I try one again?”
On the contrary, Google’s Pixel 6 hype had me like, “Meh. Whatever. I’ll get one.”
That always seems to be Google’s approach to marketing hardware. “Meh, it’ll work.”
Thing is, the Pixel 6 looks to be one of the best phones on the market (once they start arriving in the hands of the users). So why the company approaches marketing with such a blasé attitude is beyond me.
Consider this: The Pixelbook Go is one of the finest Chromebooks on the market. Do you remember their marketing efforts? Neither do I. When the original Pixel Chromebook was released it was a work of technological art. It redefined mobile screens, keyboards and trackpads. Hype? Nada. Android 12 might well be the finest iteration of Google’s mobile platform ever released. PR? Scant.
If you’ve ever wondered why Android market share lags far behind iOS in the United States, it’s because of this very thing. You cannot turn your TV on without seeing iPhone ads or placement. They are everywhere. When was the last time you saw an Android phone in a television show?
I know it might seem silly, but product placement works … very well. People see celebrities using a product and they’ll feel inclined to want that product. You just don’t see celebs sporting Android. It’s all iOS all the time.
Apple knows this and uses it to its advantage. And when a new iPhone release is upon us, Apple inundates the media with incredibly effective advertisements that actually work to build hype around their product. Apple is the true master of marketing.
And until Google can bridge this gap, Android will continue to fall behind in the U.S. and Japanese markets (both markets where image is important). Google needs to markedly refine its lead-up to releases, shore up its e-commerce solution, and then hire a marketing team that understands precisely why Apple constantly succeeds (even when its product might be inferior to what Google has to offer).
If Google doesn’t fix this problem, it’ll have to accept that the Pixel market consists of previous Pixel owners and mobile device users who have grown tired of the iOS way of things. If that’s the company’s marketing plan, then all I have to say is, “Meh.”
Feature Image Credit: Google Pixel 6, Image: Google
The digital way of life is no longer a distant dream but our current reality and it has served everyone well too. For businesses, especially, it has far-reaching consequences, enabling them to reach newer heights every day. But how does one achieve such digital transformation, you ask? With help from big data; you see, the copious amounts of data companies now have access to, big data helps companies use said data to not only streamline their operational workflows but also drive business strategies. It also helps make processes quicker, effective, and much more efficient.
Further, the integration of big data analytics allows faster, more informed decision-making with access to real-time data. It has the ability to be a game-changer with the efforts of organizations to transform digitally. Today companies offering numerous data analytics services get extended while helping enterprises in creating new business models and achieving great heights.
Let us take a look at some other competitive advantages that big data analytics brings to world businesses.
Better customer retention rates: No matter how large a customer base a business may have managed to gather, unless you can consistently meet their expectations, the company’s business is bound to suffer the brunt of unhappy customers, i.e. high customer turnover rate. Thankfully, big data analytics can help companies avoid that by offering extensive insights about the business’ customer attributes, preferences, etc. Big data tools can also help companies boost their customer acquisition rates by fortifying sales and marketing strategies.
Risk management: Big data tools help companies not only quantify but also model various risks. In addition to that, big data analytics also drives predictive modeling and analytics, which helps companies to continually and effectively monitor threats and also prevent fraud and other such malicious incidents. Big data analytics does this via careful examination of all company data, be it customer profiles, transaction histories, etc. The information, then, gained helps not only remove risks but also fine-tune services, support, etc.
Improved marketing campaigns: Big data can also be put to work in the marketing department, allowing marketers to leverage all types of data to examine the distinctive manners in which various groups of the business’s target audience engage with the company, their purchase patterns, etc. Such insights can then be used to build marketing strategies that are primed to deliver desired results while also saving plenty of time and money.
Understand customers better: Big data analytics empowers businesses with the ability to better understand their target audience via insights on their behavior, thought processes, purchasing histories, etc. Based on this feedback, companies can quickly adapt strategies that will help them create a better quality of experiences, reduce complaints, and pre-emptively address issues that may mar customers’ satisfaction with the brand.
It is no secret that we are generating truly colossal amounts of data every single day, thanks to the deluge of connected devices and how much the world has come to rely on them for daily functions and tasks. This, of course, presents immense potential and a whole new world of opportunities but only if companies are successfully able to harness organizational data and put it to work for their businesses. How?
Well, as the above discussion demonstrates, with help from big data, of course. So, if you too wish to leverage the might of big data analytics and achieve critical and strategic business goals, you ought to start working on fortifying your digital business transformation strategy with big data. If you need help figuring that out, you can always engage the services of an expert vendor in the market. Now, off you go.
Instagram recently rolled out a new advertising opportunity: It launched ads in Instagram Shop. The new ad placement is the most recent addition in a long line of e-commerce capabilities introduced by the app and a prime example of how Instagram is leaning heavily into social commerce.
These moves come as no surprise when you consider the massive growth currently happening across the social commerce landscape. Earlier this year, eMarketer reported that U.S. retail social commerce sales will reach more than $36 billion this year, and Instagram and Pinterest are at the top of the list of social media networks delivering the “most relevant” social commerce experiences. Instagram has been undergoing an evolution by transitioning from its roots as a photo-sharing app to focus on creators, videos, messaging and, perhaps most of all, shopping.
The good news for brands: Instagram’s users seem to be more than happy to go along with these changes. According to Instagram’s data (via HubSpot), 90% of its users follow at least one business. A Facebook-commissioned survey of 21,000 people (via Social Media Today) revealed that two in three people on Instagram said the app allows interaction with brands.
For brands aiming to maximize their e-commerce efforts, Instagram could be key to building a social commerce strategy. The app has multiple features to help brands better connect with their audiences, expand their reach and increase online sales revenue. Here are three social commerce features Instagram has released recently and how to leverage them.
Instagram Shop Ads
After launching Instagram Shop in 2020, an area of the social media app that’s 100% focused on the shopping experience, Instagram has now rolled out ad placements in the Shop tab, which, according to Instagram’s website, makes it easier for users to “discover and shop from brands when they’re already in the mood to browse.”
Like other products, Instagram Shop ads are displayed as tiles on the Instagram Shop home page. A Shop ad tile links to the product details page, where shoppers can learn more about the specific item and browse other products from the brand. Some ways brands can leverage Shop ads include:
• Using look-alike audiences: The audience that engages with your Shop ads likely has a high intent to purchase. You can leverage their data by creating look-alike audiences based on their characteristics to use in your marketing campaigns.
• Learning from insights: Test different types of Shop ads for the same product to learn more about your audience’s preferences and inform future content creation.
• Retargeting shoppers: Create custom audiences in order to retarget customers who have purchased from your shops in the past.
Instagram Reels Ads
In August 2020, Instagram introduced Instagram Reels, which are 60-second video clips that come with a variety of features that allow anyone on Instagram to be a creator. Less than a year after releasing the video feature, Instagram Reels ads were made available in June 2021. They give brands the opportunity to share full-screen video ads that are up to 30 seconds long.
As with Instagram Reels content that users post, people can comment on, like, view and share Reels ads. To maximize engagement and win more conversions, brands should first familiarize themselves with the format: I’ve found that the key is to create Reels that blend seamlessly with native content. Reels ads tend to be more effective when they include audio, like a trending audio clip or audio your brand has produced, along with captions that grab users’ attention as quickly as possible.
Because of their reach — users can find Reels via Instagram’s Explore tab and the Reels feed, as well as within their own feed — Reels ads can be an effective way for advertisers to connect with new audiences. You can also use Instagram’s analytics data to view the number of plays, accounts reached, likes, comments, saves and shares to monitor your performance.
Checkout On Instagram
Instagram checkout, an in-app purchasing feature that allows users to buy a product without ever leaving the app, has been around for years but was initially only available to a select group of brands when it first launched. Last year, Instagram opened access to its checkout feature to all U.S. business and creator accounts that had an Instagram Shop.
As Instagram explains on its website, businesses can use the checkout feature to reduce the friction in the path to purchase, as well as take advantage of other shopping tools: “With checkout on Instagram, businesses can truly leverage the full ecosystem of Instagram Shopping features to build experiences that drive awareness and transactions all in one place.”
But challenges still remain for B2C brands that want to optimize their Instagram advertising efforts within their social commerce initiatives. Emplifi’s recent “State of social media and CX: Q2 2021” report found that ad spend on Facebook and Instagram jumped nearly 50% year-over-year during the second quarter of this year. With so many B2C brands vying for consumer attention on Instagram, one of the primary challenges for brands entering the social commerce market is getting in front of the right audiences at the right time with relevant content that inspires consumers to make a purchase.
Fortunately, because social commerce is still a relatively new and growing tactic, there are many opportunities for marketers to make an impact. Brands should look for ways to use Instagram’s new features to stand out on the platform. For example, they can try taking more creative risks with their advertising content in Reels ads, while they can tailor Shop ads toward the very users shopping for products they offer.
The internet is many things — it’s the place where a huge percentage of marketing takes place, but it’s also an untamed landscape where every day brings a new crop of transcendent, foolish and transcendently foolish content.Can you marry these two worlds? Can memes live in harmony with your well-designed and sensible content marketing strategy? They can, provided you don’t go overboard, and understand the context around what you’re doing.
It’s tempting to assume that because memes are silly, you can quickly toss them together and tweet them out for clicks and views. That strategy could backfire, though. After all, people who are online a lot — so, just about everyone — will recognize the “right” and “wrong” ways to use these images.
Depending on how trend-savvy your target audience is, an older meme or one reposted or assembled carelessly could show your brand to be out of touch. It’s also worth remembering that the internet is a place where some truly unsavoury speech goes on. Not realizing the history behind an image could end in a humbling social media apology for using offensive content.
Memes, applied to your content marketing strategy, can be the perfect flavouring for your more substantial social media marketing content. Just as you wouldn’t use a bowl of sugar as a main course, you don’t want memes to take over your brand voice — but they sweeten the overall mixture and keep people interested.
But first, let’s get back to basics. When we talk about content marketing with a meme, what do we mean?
What is a Content Meme?
Memes, images that are widely reposted and used to convey meaning, have become a building block of digital culture. Merriam-Webster took a stab at defining how the word “meme” came to define those images. The term goes back to the 70s, and Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene — the book described memes as ideas that catch on and spread.
Describing goofy pieces of viral content as memes began as early as the late 90s, and this meaning had taken over by around the turn of the 2010s. Merriam-Webster canonized the word’s new role in 2015.
The standard format of an internet meme, in the captioned-image sense, is a picture that signifies a feeling labeled in a way with which people will grasp. Maybe they recognize where the image is from, perhaps it’s just amusing or evocative. Either way, it now means something new.
Some memes stay in circulation for years, while for others, diminishing returns set in almost immediately. The extremely online members of the audience will likely scoff at anything even slightly out of date, but that doesn’t mean those posts are worthless. Some topics spin off one meme after another, year after year. And when I say “some topics,” I mean Spongebob SquarePants. That show must have come along at just the right time. But that’s another article entirely.
Making variations on these widely shared images has become easier over the years — for this article, I’ve used the meme generator on Imgflip to pair text with common meme template formats. There’s nothing stopping you from taking a similar approach.
Using a meme as content for marketing is a natural next step once you’ve learned to generate these posts. After all, your goal as a content marketer is to draw eyes to your brand and get attention. Speaking the lingua franca of the internet seems perfect. So begins the marriage of meme and marketing into meme marketing.
As an introduction to using memes for marketers, you can go back and check out our favorite SEO memes for inspiration. The mere fact that there are captioned images about search engine optimization shows the wide variety of topics you can discuss in meme form.
5 Tips for Creating Your Own Content Memes
OK! Are you ready to start using memes in your content strategy? Don’t answer right away! It’s a little more complicated than it seems.
Admittedly, it may seem very, very simple. Just slap some text on a trending meme and post it to social media. But that’s not the whole story. Remember, we’re content marketers, and we can’t unlearn everything just because we’re in the land of captioned cats and Spongebob Squarepants.
Here are a few tips on creating content that uses memes:
1. Don’t Always Take the Shot
Turning every trending meme into a branded post isn’t necessary. Even if you’ve established a fun tone in your social media strategy, you can afford to pass some up. Getting a good reaction to one post could lead to a too-quick follow-up or a post trying too hard to make a meme match your message.
Take good matches between meme and brand when they come up, and let bad matches pass by. You may feel like you’re missing an opportunity, but that beats “posting cringe.”
2. Don’t Force Memes to Follow the Rules
Treating memes as regularly scheduled parts of your content marketing strategy — that is, keeping them relentlessly on-message and including a ton of information — can lead to big, unwieldy posts that just don’t work.
Memes in your brand’s Facebook or Twitter feed every once in a while can keep things light, but they’re not load-bearing pieces of your content strategy. Let’s face it, that weight of expectation is too great for such goofy content to bear.
3. Tell a Joke
This ties in with point No. 2, but is worth stating on its own. Memes, at their best, are funny. They’re absurd. They’re jokes. Trying to make a salient or incisive point with them is a near-impossible needle to thread.
Using a meme as part of a serious discussion of the issues is in the spirit of topical editorial cartoons. You may think that’s a reason to try it, but take a moment to ask yourself: When’s the last time you enjoyed an editorial cartoon? There are dozens of useful marketing content varieties that can express your brand’s values. Memes can just be humorous.
4. Do Your Homework
Before you post a piece of trending content, you should know your meme… or at least visit Know Your Meme. Doing some research can stop you from having to backtrack later if you’ve accidentally started to participate in a trend with a less-than-wholesome origin. This is the internet we’re talking about. Anything can and does happen there.
The temptation to be first, and to post something while it’s still topical, is strong. After all, jumping on a trend that has faded away is a bad look, and the cycles seem to move faster than ever these days. With that said, in some cases, it’s best to go back to point No. 1 on this list and let the opportunity pass. The clicks aren’t worth the risks.
5. Be Nice
Kindness and digital culture don’t always go together, but when you’re posting for your brand, they should. Taking shots with your meme-powered marketing messages may seem like it’s all in good fun, but if someone gets offended, that can be a PR problem for your company. People will notice the logo on the Facebook or Twitter account that posted the offending content, and they’ll take screenshots of the incident.
If there’s even the slightest risk that your post is punching down at any person or group, rethink it. Keeping things light and fun is the rule of the day when it comes to funny marketing posts. This isn’t a very edgy approach to marketing, but it’s also good common sense. Imagine how it feels to be insulted by a meme posted by a company. Would you inflict that on anyone? No way.
What It All Memes
You may have noticed a trend among these tips. They’re more don’ts than do’s. Does this mean we’re telling you not to use trending memes for content marketing? Certainly not. It just means we’re looking out for your brand, and there are plenty of risks that come with getting it wrong.
Let’s face it: When you google “branded memes” or “memes about marketing,” the results aren’t encouraging. Working with a fast-moving, user-generated type of content with its own logic has some real, foreseeable challenges. If you keep those challenges in mind, you can score some social media victories among your core audience. If not? You may stumble into trouble.
A well-deployed meme is a momentary journey back to the goofy, anything-goes energy of the early World Wide Web. Can that help your brand create a good impression? In the right circumstances, it sure can.
Modern marketing strategy is a tug-of-war between assumptions and absolutes, gut instincts and concrete data.
This balancing act can be uncomfortable. Data-driven strategy places marketers directly into customers’ shoes. Every interaction, conversion, friction or opportunity can be analysed and maximized to drive the business forward. Yet, fortune favours the bold! There’s an undeniable time and place to throw caution to the wind and lead through gut instinct.
Digital experimentation steadies this balancing act, offering a framework to act on gut instinct within the safety net of fast, quantifiable and customer-cantered results. This tempered risk taking is very attractive: 45% of marketing decision-makers invested in experimentation last year.
Running experiments (A/B testing, multivariate testing, multi-armed bandit testing, user research, personalization and more) measures the target audience’s response to design, segmentation, channel or product strategies in near real-time, enabling marketers to make incremental improvements to customers’ experience.
To maximize this opportunity, businesses must adopt a culture of experimentation. But that’s easier said than done. Today, we’re sharing four common mistakes to avoid when building a culture of digital experimentation.
1. No Executive Buy-In
Building a culture of digital experimentation comes from the top. It cannot be siloed to teams or individuals, and it cannot be throttled by corporate bottlenecks.
Running frequent experiments means inevitably some will fail — and that’s perfectly fine. Failure is an opportunity to learn something new. It’s in these moments of surprise that true innovation takes root.
Executives must champion experimentation across the organization and work tirelessly to remove bottlenecks and silos from the optimization process. Failing to do so dilutes effectiveness, reduces agility, and negatively impacts overall innovation culture.
2. Skipping the Strategic Framework
A strategic framework marries experiments and goals, ensuring processes are consistent and reliable. It forces marketers to evaluate gut instincts and define a hypothesis to be measured, proven true or false, and iterated on for better outcomes.
The framework is a shared plan to document goals, tactics, audience segments, key performance indicators, duration and next steps.
It must specify the test variable — an element that can be identified, modified, added, or removed to improve the customer experience or achieve a desired outcome. If you test too many things at one time, there’s no definitive revelation to drive the next approach.
The framework must include guidance on achieving statistical significance — what threshold determines action? If the sample size is too small, the results may be misleading.
The shared strategic framework ensures experiments are transparent, defined, rooted in data and purposeful.
3. Haphazard Adoption
Placing digital experimentation at the heart of digital strategy can be uncomfortable at first. It’s not uncommon to undermine success through haphazard adoption.
Inconsistency may manifest as cherry-picking results or letting gut instinct take priority over experiments. It might mean applying insights unevenly across campaigns or channels.
Smart experimentation isn’t just running experiments, it’s optimizing from the lessons learned. Marketers must iterate ongoing to continuously drive incremental improvements. The intent is to learn something and apply those learnings to the rest of your strategy.
Investing time into SEO strategies — no matter how basic or advanced — gives a web presence to your brand that is within your control.
Increasing your visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) is a worthwhile payoff. Many people use major search engines like Google and Bing to discover new brands. According to findings from SEO analytics software Moz, “66% of distinct search queries resulted in one or more clicks on Google’s results.”
Ultimately, SEO is one of the single-best marketing channels for optimizing return on investment (ROI). The data speaks for itself: According to Statista, SEO has been the most profitable form of marketing in the past four years — even topping content and email marketing.
This is why brands should prioritize SEO in their marketing efforts. Likewise, brands with in-house marketing teams of their own should be actively implementing marketing channels related to SEO. Before we jump into the specifics, it’s important to first understand what SEO stands for.
What is SEO?
SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to a website through organic search engine results. SEO encompasses the relationship between a brand and major search engines. Essentially, brands develop a rapport with prominent search engines to establish their credibility as an authoritative source for information, especially as it relates to their industry.
There are effective, proven and practical steps to increasing visibility in major search engines. In fact, many of those steps are free of charge and fairly simple, even for beginners. Why is it so crucial, though? Here are three reasons you should pay attention to SEO for brand marketing.
1. SEO increases visibility in search engines and boosts consumer awareness.
Investing time into SEO strategies — no matter how basic or advanced — gives a web presence to your brand that is within your control. If your brand is new to SEO, it’s a good idea to link your URL with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. From here, you can get your feet wet and familiarize yourself with SEO data related to your website. These programs help you learn which specific keywords and phrases people type or speak into a search engine to find your brand’s website.
Additionally, while many people searching for brands may already be existing customers, SEO increases visibility for new and prospective customers. A brand’s search engine visibility can be optimized based on location. For example, a dispensary brand based in Atlanta can be optimized to show up in results for “Atlanta dispensary.”
Although many experts would claim that SEO marketing can be done without media awareness, I fundamentally disagree as an expert on both SEO and public relations (PR). When you develop relationships with reputable journalists who write for credible news outlets, their reporting can — and does — show up in search results. These results are organic, meaning any interviews or quotes can help boost your brand’s rankings in searches. While boosting your search results of course helps you reach more potential customers, having credible news coverage puts you on everyone’s radar, including other journalists who could write about you in the future or even investors looking to fund new projects.
2. SEO is easy to implement.
Even if you’ve never done anything with SEO marketing for your brand, it’s fairly simple to get started. Even a little effort can be worthwhile.
Rather than hoping search engines will work in your favour naturally, brands can take simple steps to ensure visibility. Even if a brand is already notable and gaining traction on search engines without a planned, coherent strategy, these tips will still help. Here are a few practical steps.
1. List your website on Google, Bing and any other engines you might want.
Beyond the fundamentals, I’d recommend brand leaders consider collaborating with an established marketing firm to develop a long-term, data-driven SEO strategy.
3. SEO is extraordinarily cost-effective.
You don’t have to pay to be listed on major search engines. Google, for instance, crawls — or scans and reads — listed websites multiple times a day for new and credible information to include and reflect in its results pages.
This is why SEO is a free form of marketing compared to paid advertisements in magazines, on billboards and beyond. Although specialty SEO software can be expensive, the basics are completely free. Plus, because of the low overhead costs, hiring an SEO marketing team will typically be less expensive than traditional print media — or even social media marketing campaigns — on average.
Do the SEO basics, reap the search engine rewards.
Implementing SEO into your brand’s marketing is fairly simple. To do the basics, you don’t need to be an expert. Any marketing professional can learn from scratch and gain some knowledge even in a short amount of time by putting free training and resources to use.
However, keep in mind that since search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, marketing teams need to be frequently monitoring the latest trends, tips, tricks, data and more as it relates to SEO. Brands without the capacity to take on SEO marketing internally should consider partnering with an experienced SEO firm to do so on their behalf. In the meantime, get optimizing.
As an introduction to using memes for marketers, you can 
Turning every trending meme into a branded post isn’t necessary. Even if you’ve established a fun tone in your social media strategy, you can afford to pass some up. Getting a good reaction to one post could lead to a too-quick follow-up or a post trying too hard to make a meme match your message.
Treating memes as regularly scheduled parts of your content marketing strategy — that is, keeping them relentlessly on-message and including a ton of information — can lead to big, unwieldy posts that just don’t work.
This ties in with point No. 2, but is worth stating on its own. Memes, at their best, are funny. They’re absurd. They’re jokes. Trying to make a salient or incisive point with them is a near-impossible needle to thread.
Before you post a piece of trending content, you should know your meme… or at least visit 
Kindness and digital culture don’t always go together, but when you’re posting for your brand, they should. Taking shots with your meme-powered marketing messages may seem like it’s all in good fun, but if someone gets offended, that can be a PR problem for your company. People will notice the logo on the Facebook or Twitter account that posted the offending content, and they’ll take screenshots of the incident.
