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Vogue Magazine ‘May Become Illegal In Ireland’ Under New Alcohol Laws

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Sourced from Checkout Magazine & Retail Intelligence

The sale of foreign magazines like Vogue, GQ and Grazia may become illegal in Ireland under new alcohol laws.

According to the European Commission, legislation means that at present a magazine distributed all over Europe that contains advertisements for alcoholic products would need to be reprinted before it was lawfully marketed in Ireland.

‘A number of measures in the controversial Public Health (Alcohol) Bill will negatively impact intra-EU trade and go beyond what is required to effectively tackle alcohol misuse, according to the European Commission, who has submitted comments to the Irish Government in relation to the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill,’ the Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland (ABFI) said in a statement.

Trade Barrier

The representative body for drinks manufacturers and suppliers in Ireland said that the view of the European Commission highlights the urgent need for amendments to be made to this legislation.

“The drinks industry, like the European Commission, supports the overall objectives of the Alcohol Bill to tackle harmful and underage drinking in Ireland. However, it’s clear some of the advertising and labelling provisions are not proportionate and will represent a barrier to trade in the EU,” Patricia Callan, director of ABFI said.

“We are calling on the Government to remove the requirement for cancer warnings on alcohol products, and a requirement that health warnings take up at least one-third of the label and other printed material.”

© 2018 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Donna Ahern. Click subscribe to sign up for the Checkout print edition. 

Sourced from Checkout Magazine & Retail Intelligence

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Google loses ‘right to be forgotten’ case, opens door for more requests to have unflattering search results delisted

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By Jason Hahn

If you screw up in a way that gets any sort of media attention, chances are you won’t like what you see when you run a query for your name on Google. And those unflattering search results could have far-reaching implications for your livelihood. Two businessmen in the UK didn’t like some results that turned up when their names were searched for on Google, so they took the company to the High Court of Justice based on the “right to be forgotten” precedent set by the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2014. One of the men won, while the other lost and was granted an appeal. The ruling sets an important bar for future requests to have search results delisted.

The two businessmen, referred to as “NT1” and “NT2” in the case, were convicted of separate crimes and served jail sentences. NT1 was convicted of conspiring to account falsely in the late 1990s and served four years in jail; NT2 was convicted of conspiring to intercept communications 10 years ago and served six months in jail.

Both men requested that Google remove search results about their pasts: NT1 submitted his request to remove six links on June 28th, 2014, while NT2 submitted his request to remove 11 links on April 14th, 2015. While Google delisted one of NT1’s six requested links, it refused to delist any of the others. So, NT1 and NT2 took the search giant to the UK High Court.

On April 13th, 2018, Justice Mark Warby ruled in favor of NT2, upholding a claim that a national newspaper article had misleading information about the “nature and extent of the claimant’s criminality.” Justice Warby concluded: “The crime and punishment information has become out of date, irrelevant and of no sufficient legitimate interest to users of Google Search to justify its continued availability, so that an appropriate delisting order should be made.” The judge noted that NT2 acknowledged his guilt and showed genuine remorse, and that the claimant is now in a different line of work. NT2 will not receive any compensation and will not be awarded any damages.

In the case of NT1, Justice Warby said the claimant has not accepted his guilt, misled the public, misled the High Court, and “shows no remorse over any of these matters.” The judge added that NT1 remains in business, and information about his past criminal conviction and jail sentence available via Google search results minimizes the risk that he will continue to mislead people.

However, Justice Warby granted an appeal in NT1’s case, adding that “It is quite likely that there will be more claims of this kind, and the fact that NT2 has succeeded is likely to reinforce that.”

In a statement, Google accepted the ruling in NT1 & NT2 v Google LLC (right to be forgotten): “We work hard to comply with the right to be forgotten, but we take great care not to remove search results that are in the public interest and will defend the public’s right to access lawful information. We are pleased that the court recognised our efforts in this area, and we will respect the judgments they have made in this case.”

“The right to be forgotten” is a legal precedent that comes from the Court of Justice of the European Union’s May 2014 ruling in a case brought by Mario Costeja Gonzalez, who requested that information about his financial history be removed from Google’s search results. Since then, Google has received requests to delist at least 2.4 million links from its search results and has removed about 800,000 of those links. Search engine companies can reject such requests if they deem the information in question to be in the public interest.

The ruling in favor of NT2 will surely embolden people who want unpleasant information about them removed from Google’s search results, especially if said information could impact their ability to make a living. Balancing the public interest with personal privacy and reputation is a tricky game, but this ruling will serve as a guideline for future cases — and maybe for Google’s decisions on delisting requests going forward.

 By Jason Hahn

Jason is a corporate communicator by weekday, freelance writer by weekend. His Android days go back to the atrocity that was the HTC ThunderBolt, but his love for Android began in earnest with the Nexus 5. Jason lives in New Jersey and is always down to chat fantasy basketball (which he used to blog about).

Sourced from Android Police

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Millennials, Here’s How You Can Use Social Media In Times Of Crisis

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By Andrew Arnold

Millennials are often criticized for their over-reliance on social media. They often prefer online health advice to doctor’s visits; plan their vacation based on the destination’s “instagram-worthiness” and cite social media as their main news source.

However, when it comes to disaster management, judging millennials for their “obsession” is tediously wrong-headed, it can do a real disservice. In fact, there may not be a better tool than social media when it comes to responding to a disaster, organizing resources, and mitigating damage.

Not only are millennials in a good position to act as leaders in these situations, they can serve as educators as well. Here are for some practical uses of social media during a disaster as well as some best practices organizations can implement.

Disaster preparation: create smart social media policies

Unfortunately, too many companies create reactionary policies when it comes to social media. These policies tend to focus on mitigating the behaviors of a small percentage of abusers rather than taking a positive approach and maximizing social media’s potential as a business tool.

When disaster strikes, these policies can be very dangerous. When employees or customers are unable to access social media they are limited to other forms of communication. Considering that other pathways to getting information out could be limited that could be problematic, policies that involve blocking access to social media could be a bad idea.

Community forums can be used to share information and resources

Neighborhoods and other community groups are already using social media to connect with one another and share information. Location based groups on Facebook and other social media platforms are being used to share information about community events, offer items for sale or trade, and even as a source for help and advice.

In 2017, FEMA announced that it would be leveraging the Nextdoor app to send location relevant messages during disasters. Using messenger apps in this way is ideal for keeping residents up to date on information and resources that is as useful to them as possible.

Even without the participation of government agencies, these community forums can still be an extremely useful resource. Imagine residents impacted by flooding being able to inform each other which local roads were passable and which pharmacies or grocery stores remained open.

Brands can use social media to provide practical help and information

Disasters can disrupt supply chains and negatively impact business operations. That can negatively impact a business’ ability to provide needed supplies to customers during disasters. Not only can this leave already suffering communities reeling, it can be a PR disaster for brands as well. Worse, during these times brands’ responses on social media often ranges between tone deaf and wildly insensitive.

This is a shame because businesses have the ability to utilize their social media presence to broadcast important information to a wide audience during and after a disaster. They can provide updates on availability of supplies as well as informing the public of resources they do have to offer. Millennials who are connected with these brands can help to spread that information to their own followers.

Picture and video sharing can help agencies gauge impact

People who use Instagram and other sharing sites can provide extraordinarily valuable resources to public and private agencies tasked with rendering aid. By posting geotagged pictures to agencies’ Instagram pages, or by tagging various agencies, citizens can help officials gauge what is happening and where. This can help them to determine where to send responders and route supplies.

When agencies are slow to respond, geotagging can also get the attention of news outlets and other news agencies. This can serve the dual purpose of getting information out as well as leveraging media pressure and attention to get help where people need it.

Bloggers can share vital information that can be used after a disaster

While a blog certainly isn’t the most efficient way to spread information during a disaster, it can be a valuable resource during the post-mortem period. When kept up to date during a disaster, a blog serves as a time-stamped written recording of events and experiences. This can be much more useful, for example, in identifying successes and failures in established procedures and protocols than relying on people to properly recall things.

Community agencies can build confidence with regular updates

Not much causes more dread in a disaster than radio silence from the powers that be. Community and government agencies can work to establish a solid social media presence, and cultivate a following prior to disasters. Then, they can use those same social media accounts to keep citizens updated.

When disaster strikes, both citizens and entities can use social media as a powerful tool. It can be used to organize resources, spread information, and provide education.

By Andrew Arnold

Sourced from Forbes

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3 Tips to Increase the Quality of Your Leads (That Most Businesses Don’t Know About)

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By Marco Cirillo 

Are you generating leads for your business? Are they high quality leads that have the potential to turn into customers? If your answers are yes and no, then you are not alone, 61% of b2b marketers said generating quality lead is their number one challenge.

For most businesses, generating leads is not a big deal, the issue is getting targeted high quality leads.

So, how do you scale this hurdle?

One of the ways you can generate quality leads is by using content marketing. It is a tried and tested strategy. This is why 89% of b2b marketers are using content marketing for their business.

So, why should you use content marketing to generate quality leads?

One, it is a cost-effective way of generating quality leads and you can get three times as many leads per dollar spent.

Again, 20% of internet users’ online time is spent on reading content and 68% of people spend time reading about brands that interest them. Creating valuable content for your prospective clients will draw their attention to your business. As you do that, they will connect more with your brand and they will be willing to take relevant actions.

In this article, you will learn how to use content marketing to generate targeted and high quality leads for your business using three strategies.

Let’s get started!

1.Blog post on your niche sector

Blogging is one of the top ways you can generate quality leads for your business. Many businesses are creating content daily on the internet. In fact, Hostingfacts revealed that about 2 million blog posts are published daily on the internet.

Again, a report stated that 62% of marketers have blogs.

The question is, are all the blog posts created generating leads?

Of course No!

So, how do you create blog posts that generate quality leads for your business?

Simple!

Create contagious viral content.

Creating viral blog posts and promoting it heavily will position it in front of your targeted audience. They will help you to share it and boost its conversions. This will lead to generating more of high quality leads.

An example of a company that did this is River pools – a pool selling company. When they were just starting out, it was difficult for the company to generate leads. So, they started creating content that adds value to their audience.

They wrote blog posts that generated over $2,000,000 in sales. This catapulted the company to a multi-million dollar success story.

So, how do you create such content?

  1. Create valuable content: Create content that adds value to your audience. No one will share a post that is devoid of useful information.
  2. Evoke emotions: Humans are emotional beings. Creating content that triggers emotions will enable people to read and share your posts. Examples of such emotions include joy and laughter.
  3. Use catchy headlines: Blog posts with catchy and interesting headlines makes it easy for people to click, read and share.
  4. Use relevant content upgrades such as checklists, cheat sheet, etc. When you create useful content that evokes emotions, readers will be interested to read more about it. This is where the use of content upgrades come in. You can easily package the posts into a downloadable format and add it to the content as upgrades. Readers can read and also share.

2.Guest blogging on niche blogs

The second way to generate high quality and targeted leads for your business is by guest blogging on relevant and popular blogs in your niche.

Guest blogging is an effective lead generation strategy because you are leveraging on the success of other websites that have captured your target audience’s attention.

To generate considerable success from your guest blogging campaign, follow the steps below:

a.Create an audience persona

Knowing the type of audience you want to reach will help you to succeed in your guest blogging campaigns. This will enable you to reach out to the right niche blogs that have the attention of your audience. But, how do you get these blogs?

b.Find them on search engines

One way you can find top and popular niche blogs in your niche is by searching for them on search engines, such as Google. You can use queries such as:

“your niche” + “write for us”

“your niche” + “guest post”

“your niche” + “contribute to”

“Your niche” here represents your business E.g. “real estate” + “Write for us”.

A large number of websites that accepts guest posts in that niche will be displayed as shown below:

When you find relevant and popular niche blogs you want to use, find out the number of daily visitors, comments on blog posts and domain rating of the websites. This is to prevent you from guest blogging on spamming websites that will affect your rankings on search engines.

Once you find good websites that meet the criteria above, research for popular, most shared topics on the websites using the Buzzsumo tool. Then, create similar topics and pitch your content ideas to them.

c.Add a lead magnet connected to your email marketing

A lot of people stop at writing and publishing guest posts. They missed the most important aspect of generating quality leads from their content. One way you can get more out of your guest posting effort is by creating a lead magnet. This can be a checklist, a cheat sheet or an ebook, like in the example below:

The black book of lead generation:

Any resource that is valuable and relevant to the topic of your guest post will do. You can share a link to it in your guest writer’s bio, in the introduction or within the content.Content upgrade link in the introduction

Content upgrade link within the content

A good example of a company that leveraged guest posting to generate scores of leads and customers is Bufferapp. They wrote 150 guest posts within the space of 9 months to generate 10,000 customers for the business.

3.Answer selected question on groups and communities

Online groups and communities are great places to get targeted traffic, leads and customers for your business. This is because they are places where your audience hangs out. Two of the best groups and communities you can use to generate quality leads for your business are Quora and Reddit.

Quora

Quora is a question and answer community with over 190 monthly users and 200 million visitors per month. It works for lead generation because it gives you the opportunity to connect with your prospective customers when they ask questions. On Quora, prospects start the questions and you provide the answers.

Below are steps you can take to leverage Quora for lead generation:

1.Follow relevant topics in your niche.

Follow topics you that is of interest to your target audience. Quora will constantly update you when there is a fresh question that needs an answer.

2.Provide valuable answers to questions with expertise.

When you see relevant questions to answer, do it professionally. Write long form answers and include images in it. Carefully add your content links or links to your free resource within the content. When you offer thoughtful answers, users will click to download your resources.

3.Create content around popular Quora questions on your website.

You can write valuable posts on popular Quora questions. Search for popular questions in your niche, change the titles a bit and write on them.

4.Connect with your followers

Quora allows you to connect with followers. You can do that by sending a direct message to them to interact and engage with them.

5Track your success

You can view your success on Quora through the analytic dashboard. It will show you the number of upvotes, views and shares on your answers. This will enable you to create a solid strategy for your business.

Reddit

Reddit is another great community for lead generation. It has over 1.58 billion users all over the world. It is a social platform where you can share your content and have lots of views and clicks to your website.

Below are three hacks that will help you to generate highly targeted leads from Reddit:

  1. Publish your content on the right subreddit

The success of your lead generation efforts depends on the quality of your content and posting it in the right subreddit. There are different subreddits for every niche.

So, how will you know where to publish your content?

Simple! Follow the steps below:

  1. Select a website that has the same audience as you. For example, if you are in the inbound marketing niche, you can use Hubspot’s website. Simply type – http://www.reddit.com/domain/blog.hubspot.com into your browser. See the result below:

  1. Choose the post with the highest engagement (i.e. lots of comments) and check the subreddit they were posted to. Then submit your article to the same subreddit.
  2. Post your content to trending subreddit

There are content that are trending at one point or the other on Reddit. When a subreddit is trending, it means it is getting lots of traffic. That is where you need to post your content.

So, how do you know a trending subreddit?

Use redditmetrics. Type the URL into your address bar and check out the list of currently trending subreddits. However, ensure your content is relevant to the subreddit.

  1. Use the AMA strategy

AMA means Ask me anything. It is a strategy that became popular on Reddit. It is a thread of questions within Reddit hosted by a person. It gives you the opportunity to generate high quality leads and traffic. Below is are samples of an AMA threads:

So, how do you start your own AMA?

  1. Type http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/ into your web browser
  2. Click on submit an AMA (as shown below)

3. Fill in the required details and submit

4.Ensure that you create an AMA on a topic you know so well. As Redditors ask you questions, respond to them and include leads to further reading or resources on your website.

Conclusion:

If you are struggling to generate quality leads for your business, use the three content marketing strategies mentioned above. With them, you will boost your lead generation efforts and acquire quality leads that can turn into customers.

By Marco Cirillo 

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Read more at https://www.business2community.com/marketing/3-tips-increase-quality-leads-businesses-dont-know-02044960

Sourced from Business 2 Community

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Closing the deal with in-store customers

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After brands spend big bucks to get a potential customer into the retail environment, how can they win the sale? Contributor Davor Sutija suggests approaches and technologies that can help.

One of the most fundamental goals a brand marketer has is to lead consumers to the point of sale (POS) — that is, a location or moment during the customer journey in which a retail transaction can occur. Guiding shoppers to these critical POS moments is often accomplished — at least in part — through awareness advertising, which helps drive overall consumer recognition of a particular brand and the products that brand offers.

Awareness advertising — whether delivered through TV spots, print pieces, online banners, social posts or mobile ads — is a key component of many successful brand marketing strategies. It often generates interest or curiosity among consumers, motivates them to learn more through product research and can play a key role in pushing them closer to a POS situation.

Conversely, if a shopper’s familiarity level with a particular brand or product remains low, it’s reasonable to assume the degree of friction along the path to purchase will be relatively high.

Awareness advertising in the digital age

Awareness advertising comes in many forms. Today, more traditional methods like television commercials, radio spots and billboard ads have given way to digital counterparts. And one-off ads with a single message have been replaced with fully integrated, multitouch digital campaigns.

For example, in years past, a consumer might see a billboard ad for a particular cosmetics brand while driving to work — and take action or not. But today, after they click on a similar digital ad on a webpage, they later see ads in their Facebook feed and on other webpages for the same product as a result of retargeting.

Distributing content through social media platforms is another popular and often highly successful way to generate awareness with audiences. Four years ago, the restaurant chain Denny’s increased its Twitter follower base 132 percent within a year by adopting an irreverent brand of humor. Other brands have aligned themselves with top influencers in social media. For instance, last year, carmaker Subaru turned to Instagram and YouTube stars to have consumers “meet an owner” of its vehicles, resulting in a reported 2.5 million YouTube views and nearly 2 million likes across both channels.

As we’ve touched on previously, today’s approaches to awareness advertising are increasingly driven by powerful demographic groups — namely, millennials and Gen Z consumers — and their preferred methods of interaction, including mobile. And for good reason — these groups make up nearly half of the American media-consuming audience.

Competition is fierce at the point of sale

It’s no secret, then, that successful awareness advertising campaigns help lead shoppers to POS moments. In today’s omnichannel world, consumers can execute on those POS opportunities through a range of channels, including desktop, mobile and physical stores.

However, once a brand succeeds in getting the consumer in-store or on an e-commerce webpage through a desktop or mobile app, the task is far from complete. In fact, additional challenges arise as competitive products, promotional signage, discount offers and strategic shelf placement, among other factors, all compete for the consumer’s attention and wallet.

Perhaps one of the most difficult challenges for brands to address involves in-store POS scenarios.

These are instances where awareness advertising has motivated a consumer to visit a physical store to check out a specific product.

Consider the cosmetics example mentioned earlier. A woman walks into a leading global cosmetics retailer to see product she saw on the billboard and is immediately bombarded with displays, signage, messaging and sample stations for 10 other competing brands. She’ll most likely investigate the product she saw earlier. She may even buy it. But that physical environment positions competitors to steal her attention and compete for her business. And the competition is getting fierce.

Using technology to drive consumer engagement, close the sale

This is where in-store and on-product technologies like augmented reality (AR), near field communication (NFC) and Bluetooth beacons can play a significant role as in-store “closers” of sorts. These solutions help to narrow a shopper’s field of focus to one product or brand while delivering a POS experience that can drive a sale. Ultimately, they complement awareness advertising and fill the gap leading to a potential transaction.

NFC is a compelling example of a “closer” technology that can help brands guide shoppers from point of sale through to an actual purchase. When NFC tags are integrated with a product’s packaging and tapped with a smartphone, brands can instantly deliver a mobile experience designed to engage the consumer, lessen the distraction from competitors and increase the likelihood of a sale.

That experience might involve a digital coupon, a tap-and-win sweepstakes, a how-to video or one of a host of other approaches. The point is to use technology to facilitate a direct one-to-one connection with consumers that empowers brands to control the experience and “close the sale.” Just as importantly, the technology can enable brands to keep the conversation going even after a customer leaves the store.

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With decades of experience in mobile communications, the Internet of Things and printed electronics, Davor Sutija is experienced and passionate about the scope to which the IoT could extend by incorporating disposable and consumer products. A passionate Internet of Everything (IoE) crusader, Davor is spearheading the effort to connect physical objects to the digital world, through NFC-based printed tags. Davor envisions a world where billions of disposable and consumer products each have a little bit of intelligence — and consumers will be interacting with related products by tapping their smartphones.

Sourced from Marketing Land

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How blockchain is disrupting loyalty

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The loyalty market is ripe for disruption, according to a number of brands who believe blockchain is the answer to building trust and improving customer experience in the long term.

There has been much discussion about the rise of cryptocurrency and the potential of blockchain when it comes to increasing transparency in the digital advertising ecosystem given its open ledger format. But perhaps less talked about is the way these new technologies could impact the future of loyalty and CRM.

Startup Trippki is collaborating with nine hotel groups across South America, Europe, Africa and Asia on a blockchain-powered loyalty system that rewards guests in cryptocurrency.

During their stay, guests will be able to collect Trip Token rewards, which are sent to their personal cryptocurrency wallet app on their phone. Alternatively, users can cash out on a secondary exchange and trade Trip Tokens for cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum or Bitcoin.

Trippki founder and CEO Edward Cunningham believes blockchain technology will transform the smart rewards market. “With this system each hotel would set their own business rules, so for example they could say you get X amount of Trip Tokens on your first night’s stay or if you stay three nights or more, or write a review and share it on social media.”

The smart contract means that guests will be eligible to write a review only if they have stayed at the hotel because the ledger registers your visit, guaranteeing reviews come from a source with experience on the ground.

Trippki plans to hold its ICO in June and is already promoting the sale on Telegram messaging app. Whereas in 2016 there were only a few ICOs taking place, by early 2018 that number has rocketed to hundreds a month, says Cunningham. He has seen the cost to advertise on cryptocurrency exchanges like Coin Market Cap rocket from hundreds to thousands of pounds.

“Two years ago, there were virtually no conferences on [cryptocurrency and blockchain], now it seems like there’s one every day. It’s a bit like the Gold Rush days; you have people rushing to get the gold and you have people filling shovels,” he adds.

Tokenising social

Canadian messaging app Kik integrated its own cryptocurrency into its platform in 2017. Known as Kin, tokens are available to use by the app’s reported 300 million users on the Ethereum blockchain.

The idea behind Kin is to give users the chance to earn and spend within the Kik platform. This means brands can reward users with small amounts of Kin for completing simple tasks such as answering questions in a survey or creating themed content such as stickers or GIFs.

Alec Booker, Kik B2B communications manager, explains that as a consumer-tech company, the received wisdom says you have to monetise your user base through adverts, but this does not work for everyone.

“This ‘centralised’ business model put advertisers directly in conflict with users on our platform – advertisers want you to view ads to make money; users don’t want to see ads,” explains Booker.

This was the reason the messaging platform first started experimenting with digital currency in 2014, launching the Kik Points pilot programme to test user appetite to earn and spend using a crypto-coin. The resulting points programme generated a daily transaction volume three times the size of the then global volume of Bitcoin, suggesting the community was ready to adopt a crypto-coin.

Kik went live with its ICO last September, raising nearly $100m (£72m) from more than 10,000 people across 117 countries.

Prioritising transparency

Another brand that believes strongly in the growth of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies to create better customer experiences is American betting company FansUnite.

The startup aims to create a more fairly-priced betting model that offers increased transparency and security for customers by storing all their betting information on a blockchain, removing the risk of bets being reneged upon post-match.

All payouts are made using FansUnite’s Ethereum-based token Fan, which will be launched widely with an ICO expected to take place imminently.

Blockchain

Co-founder Darius Eghdami is convinced of the power blockchain tech has to build trust and improve customer experiences.

“There has been a knee-jerk reaction in the court of public opinion to dismiss the influx of capital being poured into cryptocurrency as naive and unfounded; however, the blockchain technology underpinning crypto possesses an incredible amount of potential,” he states.

“Blockchain streamlines transactions between parties by facilitating trust, increasing transparency and removing unnecessary intermediaries.”

Eghdami hopes to inspire other brands to focus on incorporating blockchain technology, with the customer in mind every step of the way. He argues brands should embrace blockchain not only because it offers cost savings to businesses, but because it has the potential to make a positive social impact.

“We’ve already seen ambitious projects attempting to democratise inefficient, archaic and non-inclusive areas like banking, insurance and lending,” he adds.

“In spite of recent unrest surrounding regulations and predatory ICO practices, I have no doubt that over the course of the next decade people from all walks of life will benefit from the creative applications of blockchain being thought up today.”

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Sourced from Marketing Week

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How the Customer Experience is Powering the Fastest Growing Brands

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Sourced from KISSMETRICS

When we talk about the future of retail, industry news is abuzz with the idea of brands creating experiences for their customers. Consumers want more than an email newsletter—they want easy tracking and personalization. They want more than a product—they want community. The experiences we read about in headlines are often grandiose and costly, like virtual fitting rooms and same-day shipping. So, how can small- to mid-sized brands keep up with this trend in a cost-effective, creative way? With the help of scrappy teams and technology to automate processes, these brands are not only keeping up with the trend, but also are redefining it and leveraging it to grow. In this guide, we’ll discuss different approaches for building a memorable customer experience and how successful brands are executing on these creative ideas.

Automated Personalization Isn’t a Contradiction

Most businesses under-invest in customer loyalty, even though establishing some type of loyalty program is one of the most obvious ways retailers enhance their customer experience. Instead, they often put all of their eggs in the new customer acquisition basket. While this approach may work well in the early days of a business, it can be detrimental for scaling later. In order to set your business up for future success, you’ll want to think early on about a backend system that will scale with you. You’ll also want to think about today’s first-time customers who you hope will become tomorrow’s loyal brand advocates. As you grow in resources, you can consider many types of loyalty programs that will help you track and analyze customer behaviors and reward repeat purchases. If you’re starting out, there are simpler—yet still scalable— ways to personalize the customer experience. Customizing gifts based on the product someone buys is a thoughtful—yet realistic—way to make a customer feel warm and fuzzy about your brand. Chubbies, a clothing brand with an emphasis on the weekend lifestyle known for their colorful shorts and hilariously quirky marketing campaigns, figured out a way to send gifts without breaking the bank.

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With their target customer in mind, they created add-on gifts like branded koozies, coasters, and baseball cards that fit within their lifestyle theme but are significantly less expensive than sending an additional item of clothing. The gifts can match the purchases, too. For example, sending sunscreen when someone buys a swimsuit, or golf tees when a customer purchases golf shorts. This program is able to delight the customer in a personalized way, without having to know personalized information about the customer. In automating this process, they can quickly swap out a gift that isn’t garnering excitement and track orders so customers don’t receive the same gift twice. Their customers are surprised and delighted to receive add-ons and their loyal social media followers will often post their latest gift, thus increasing brand awareness in addition to fostering loyalty.

Using Data To Improve Customer Experience

The previous section is all about personalising the offline experience with your brand, but what about improving the online one?

The better you know your customer, the better the experience you can deliver – on and off-line. Data from customer behavior on your eCommerce site allows you to better understand your customer and therefore engage with them in a way that is deeply personalized to their experiences with your brand. With customers being bombarded with emails and offers that have little relevance to how they’ve interacted with a brand, you can stand out with more targeted, personalized engagements.

To do this, a tool like Kissmetrics collects person-based behavioral data, defines and tracks key customer segments and then enables you to engage more effectively across email, facebook and more. You can segment by location, products purchased, time between events, etc. The more detailed you make your segmentation, the more easily you can personalize your messaging. Why does this matter? Because when you create refined segments of your many different customer types and tailor messaging uniquely toward just that segment you’re creating yet another delightful moment between your brand and your customer. Not to mention better suited engagements increase purchases and brand loyalty.

Collaborations: Combine Forces To Get New Customers

While brands obviously want customers to love their products enough to buy from them time and time again, we know no customer is 100 percent brand loyal. Even your most loyal customers have other brands they love and those are the very brands with whom you should consider working. Topo Designs, a Denver-based outdoor apparel and bag company, has partnered with brands like Woolrich and Chacos (not direct competitors, but other brands Topo’s target customer loves!) to create unique, limited-edition items that they then promote across both of their customer bases.

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Even if your brand doesn’t have the desire or resources to make physical products with another brand, there are many ways to collaborate with lower barriers to entry. Find brands with similar audiences and aesthetic and stock each other’s items in your brick and-mortar stores. Create a themed “swag bag” with several other brands and host an Instagram giveaway by having followers tag three friends for a chance to win. Similarly, host a giveaway where those who enter to win agree to sign up for your and your partners’ email lists.

Austin-based metallic tattoo and accessories company, Flash Tattoos is always finding ways to collaborate with brands who share target audiences. Entries can be as simple as tagging friends in an Instagram post or you could go so far as to have people fill out a form to ensure you’re capturing email addresses (and even additional information you can use to collect data). Keep in mind, the more involved the entry procedure, the more desirable you’ll want to make your prize.

Events: The Low Cost Way To Get Foot Traffic In Your Store

Want an even easier way to collaborate with other brands—without having to give away free product? Consider hosting an event at your store (or theirs). Modern Citizen, a San Francisco-based women’s apparel brand, hosts a series of events both with and without partners to foster a sense of community while getting people into their physical store. For one event, they teamed up with Fashion Incubator SF, a nonprofit that supports up and coming fashion designers. They hosted an open discussion with the two founders and answered questions from the audience—which was made up mainly of their exact target demographic. The total cost of the event was buying donuts and coffee for 30 people (who each purchased $10 tickets to attend, the proceeds of which were donated to Fashion Incubator SF) but they were able to establish themselves as thought leaders and make sales from the shopping attendees did after the talk. Additionally, they sent an email after the event thanking everyone who attended and included a 15 percent off coupon code that expires at the end of the month, encouraging further shopping as well as a sense of urgency and immediacy.

But what if you don’t have a physical store? Brands everywhere are using popups to boost awareness and collect data in a cost-effective way. Whether it’s renting a booth at a local fair or event or even creating a mobile trailer to determine the best location for your next (or first!) brick-and-mortar, temporary shops are great ways to gauge interest and build hype without breaking the bank.

Build a Community

Many brands are still at loss when it comes to Amazon. Is it better to adopt a, ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ approach, or try to compete as best you can with the behemoth? Building a community is small to mid-sized brands leg up on Amazon. They may provide same day shipping and low costs, but they don’t provide the customer experience that’s only increasing in importance for today’s consumer. One team hyper-focused on building a community and showing their customers they’re much more than a shoe brand is Freda Salvador. Through their mobile shoe trailer, in-store events, and collaborations with other brands, Freda Salvador is everywhere their customer is.

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Similar to Modern Citizen, the Freda team hosts in-store events that both increase foot traffic and brand awareness while simultaneously creating a sense of community between customers and the brand. They often choose tangentially related concepts that their target customer is interested in—like a flower arrangement workshop, a skin care workshop, etc. Since they aren’t actually selling anything Freda-related at the event or even talking about their brand, this is a great way to foster a sense of community in an authentic way.

Have a Backend That Supports Your Initiatives

There are so many creative ways to enhance your consumer experience but even the most well-intentioned plan can have the opposite effect on customer retention if your backend can’t support it. These creative ideas are great ways to connect with your customer, but you first and foremost must master the most basic customer experience: getting the right product, to the right person, at the right time. If someone can’t count on your brand for clear and descriptive product pages, easy checkout, and speedy delivery, you’ve already fallen behind. So, before you begin creating the experience of your customers’ dreams, get organized and make sure you have the right systems and people in place. Stitch Labs provides brands with visibility into their inventory at all times and across all channels, allowing them to be more efficient with their inventory. Stitch connects to your eCommerce site, 3PL, and marketplaces to make sure inventory numbers are accurate and you know where a product is at all times. This level of control lets you not worry about inventory, so you can focus on what matters most—your customers.

A form of this article originally appeared on Stitch Labs. Stitch Labs is a purpose-built inventory management software to help brands improve customer experience and scale efficiency. Download the original guide here.

Sourced from KISSMETRICS

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Power BI Desktop Update Brings Excel Users Into the Fold

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The August Power BI update allows Excel users to import their work into Microsoft’ cloud-powered business intelligence tool.

Microsoft wants to help business users unearth insights that may be locked away in Excel workbooks with the latest update to Power BI Desktop.

Formerly called Power BI Designer, Power BI Desktop is the free data exploration and interactive reporting tool that enables users to run analytics on various sources of business data, including Google Analytics, SQL Server and Salesforce, to name a few. Now users have another option: Excel.

The new import capability “makes it possible for users to convert their Excel Workbooks containing Power Query queries, Power Pivot models and Power View worksheets into a Power BI Desktop file,” announced Miguel Llopis, program manager for Microsoft Power BI, in a company blog post. “This is a one-time operation to help users get started in Power BI Desktop with their existing reports.”

Llopis characterized the Excel import feature as a stepping stone to business analytics until his company inevitably improves how the two platforms share data. “While we plan to have other means of communication (import/export) between Excel and Power BI Desktop in the future, the current feature allows existing Excel users to get started with Power BI Desktop.”

There are limits to the types of Excel data that can be imported to Power BI, according to a Microsoft support document, he cautioned. They include SQL Server Analysis Services Tabular models, the KPI (key performance indicator) Data Model objects and binary data columns, among a handful of others.

The August update also includes connectors for HDInsight Spark, the company’s Azure-backed, open-source big data analytics solution, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Plus, the product now supports custom Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) and Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) queries from SQL Server Analysis Services Database.

In addition to those new behind-the-scenes additions, Microsoft has made some improvements to Power BI Desktop’s Navigator, Query Editor and data modeling tools. For instance, users can “resize the Navigator dialog, so that they can easily preview tables with lots of columns” and use shortcuts to select multiple items, said Llopis.

On the data modeling front, users can resize columns or double-click on a column’s border to auto-adjust. “Users can now easily move measures from one table to another, without having to recreate the measure in the destination table,” Llopis added. They can “select a measure and use the ‘Home Table’ option in the Data Tools – Modeling tab in the ribbon,” he instructed.

Finally, Power BI Desktop users have a little more flexibility in selecting their Live Analysis Services data sources.

“Based on feedback from many of you, we have improved the Edit Queries dialog for Live Analysis Services connections to allow users to modify the database and model, in addition to the server (which was available in our previous release),” Llopis said. “After confirming the Server name and clicking OK, users are presented with the Navigator dialog where they can browse to the right Database and Model, just like they were able to do on the initial connection.”

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Pedro Hernandez is a contributor to eWEEK and the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Previously, he served as a managing editor for the Internet.com network of… V

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The Top MarTech Tools Every Digital Marketer Needs to Know

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By  Bob Van Rossum 

In today’s marketing world, the rise of marketing technology (martech) doesn’t just impact the way organizations adjust their marketing operations, but the way recruiters and employers recruit for top talent.

The growth of technology drives the need for digital marketing talent who can move quickly, learn new skills, and implement powerful martech tools and solutions. As marketing technology recruiters, we place those with specialized knowledge in martech at the top of the digital marketing talent pool. The digital marketers who are capable of evolving and adding new skills to their marketing stack are successful in keeping ahead in a competitive job market.

The shift of technology in marketing drives employers to re-evaluate the key skill sets and qualities they look for in today’s talent to push their efforts forward in a fast-paced environment. As digital marketing recruiters, we have a firsthand perspective on marketing trends and what businesses are looking for in their new marketing hires.

The birth of new roles like the marketing technologist or VP of MarTech is a testament to the impact technology has on the marketing landscape. Today’s marketers must continue to develop skills to stay forward in the industry and become familiar with emerging marketing technology tools across multiple disciplines to remain competitive.

Looking for a way to stand apart from (and above) competition for a hot digital marketing job? Whether you’re pursuing a career as a marketing technologist or any other area that falls under the digital marketing umbrella, consider adding some of these martech tools to your pedigree to demonstrate your technical expertise.

Content Marketing

  • BuzzSumo: A great tool for research. It is good for analyzing the type of content that performs best for any topic or competitor, and the influencers amplifying it.
  • Medium: An online publishing platform and community of bloggers and writers. The platform helps marketers find their target audience and increases traffic to their site, and makes it easy to publish blog posts, stories, and articles.
  • Trello: This tool helps keep track of projects and organize content. Including features like an idea board and content calendar, it makes collaboration between team members simple and easier.
  • Grammarly: This tool is great for checking the grammar and spelling of content.
  • Keywordtool.io: This is a keyword research tool that makes it easy to discover keywords for content.

Marketing Automation

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  • Marketo: This tool integrates key tasks including email, content, automation, and social media. Marketers can use this to measure performance of campaigns, and identify prospects based on demographic and behavioral criteria.
  • HubSpot: An inbound marketing and sales system that helps create personalized landing pages, pages, and emails to attract vistors, convert leads, and close customers. The platform has a lot of other features, including a completely free CRM.
  • Pardot: A lead management tool that helps marketers and salespeople move prospects through the sales funnel. It helps create automated, targeted messaging, and personalized marketing experience.
  • Customer.io: A tool that allows digital marketers to build, test, and send messages all from one platform. It helps craft ideal customer interactions for clients.
  • Oracle Eloqua: A tool that enables marketers to plan and execute personalized marketing automation campaigns.

Attribution

  • Improvado.io: An automated marketing data pipeline that allows marketers to manage all of the moving parts of data management.
  • Bizible: An integrated marketing analytics platform to help digital marketers optimize campaigns by unifying behavioral and ad data with sales outcomes and machine learning.
  • BrightFunnel: A full-funnel reporting suite that helps marketers optimize the entire customer journey from lead acquisition to close.
  • Engagio ABM Analytics: A tools that helps B2B marketers create and measure engagement in one tool, drive success, and measure impact.
  • LeadsRx: A solution designed to give marketers new analytic insights into which advertising campaigns result in conversions.

Social Media Marketing

  • Hootsuite: A tool for managing social media posts and automating content to be posted on social networks. This tool is great for making the time marketers spend on social media more efficient.
  • Buffer: A tool that helps manage all of your social media platforms. It automatically posts your content for whenever you schedule it, and allows you to gauge their performance.
  • Followerwonk: A Twitter analytics tool that helps social media marketers find, analyze, and optimize for social growth.
  • Sprout Social: A social media management tool that’s designed to help marketers and businesses grow their social media presence.
  • SocialFlow: A social media optimization platform that uses real-time data and business rules to determine what and when to publish social media content.

Video Marketing

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  • Viewbix: A powerful tool that improves video advertising performance by adding interactive apps to video that drives engagements with calls to action.
  • Rocketium: This tool can be used to quick create short videos for social media using text, images, video footage, and voiceovers.
  • Adobe After Effects CC is great for digital visual effects, video compositing, motion graphics design, and animation.
  • Magisto: A video editing tool that helps video marketers turn photos and video clips into video stories.

Customer Relationship Management:

  • Salesforce: Offers cloud-based platforms that help create deeper relationships with customers. Most certainly, Salesforce is the leader in the CRM market.
  • InfusionSoft: A tool that helps automate small business sales and marketing by combining CRM, email marketing, lead capture, and e-commerce all in one place.
  • ActiveCampaign: This platform combines email marketing, marketing automation, and small business CRM.
  • Insightly: This CRM solution makes it easier to manage deep customer relationships and includes some project management-style capabilities to help marketers keep things organized.
  • HubSpot: The CRM tool under HubSpot is free even if you don’t have the rest of the platform. It allows marketers to organize, track, and nurture leads and customers.

Account-Based Marketing

  • DemandBase: This tool offers optimized targeting and personalized solutions to help marketers better identify, target, and close deals with key accounts.
  • Terminus: This platform enables B2B marketers drive demand and accelerates your pipeline with account-based advertising.

Email Marketing

  • MailChimp: This software provides email marketing automation for businesses that allows marketers to send emails, advertise, and build brands.
  • GetResponse: A platform that enables you to create a valuable marketing list of prospects, partners, and clients to develop relationships with them and build a profitable customer base. It also includes survey features.
  • Followup.cc: A solution that keeps track of conversations and tasks, and sets reminders for them. Its Open Tracking tool notifies you when your email has been opened by recipients.
  • AWeber: A tool that helps email marketers keep in touch with subscribers, while upholding email marketing best practices.
  • FollowUpThen: This tool makes it simple to schedule all of your email reminders and helps you remember to follow up on tasks.

SEO/SEM

  • SEMrush: This tool helps marketers identify profitable keywords to help marketers optimize their content and sites.
  • Moz: Moz provides tools that makes it easier to drive SEO, inbound marketing, link building, and content marketing.
  • BrightLocal: A reporting platform that provides accurate local SEO data for reporting and citation purposes.
  • Ahrefs: A toolset for backlinks and SEO analysis. It carries the largest base of live links, huge index and the best speed of index updates.
  • BrightEdge: This tool is powered by AI solutions to help marketers discover the true search demand of visitors, and create engaging content to drive conversion.

Data and Analytics

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  • Google Analytics and Google Analytics 360: Google Analytics is a tool to gauge which content users are engaging with, and to evaluate the performance of your marketing efforts. Google Analytics 360 provides in-depth insights of the customer journey.
  • Kissmetrics: An analytics tool that provides information to help you identify, understand, and improve key metrics.
  • Optimizely: An experimentation platform that enables marketers to deliver personalization and experiments across websites, mobile apps, and connected devices.
  • Adobe Analytics: This solution allows you to better understand your customers as people by enabling you to discover valuable customer segments and key insights.
  • Funnel.io: This tool helps marketers work more efficiently by automating marketing data collection and allows them to feed the data anywhere they want.

User Experience and Customer Behavior

Pexels

  • Sprinklr: A unified platform for customer experience management. It helps marketers navigate through digital transformation across marketing, advertising, research, and commerce and care.
  • Crazy Egg: Crazy Egg’s heat map and scroll map provides reports to help you understand how visitors engage with your site to boost conversion rates.
  • Hotjar: This tool provides marketers with analysis and feedback tools to understand the online behavior and voice of their users to improve the user experience and conversion rates.
  • Usabilla: Usabilla puts your users at the center of digital strategy and collects qualitative and quantitative insights to help you optimize the UX.
  • Woopra: An analytics tool that gives insights on each individual or segment to help marketers analyze, optimize, and engage through every touchpoint in the customer experience.

Local Marketing

  • Moz Local: A platform that creates and maintains your company’s business listing with Moz’s partner sites, mobile apps, and directories that factor into local search engine results.
  • Brandify: This platform provides location-based digital marketing solutions to help marketers connect marketers with their consumers.
  • MomentFeed: This software helps manage the mobile customer experience for multi-location brands.
  • Vendasta: Vendasta helps marketers and brands achieve revenue growth with scalable marketing solutions for local businesses and marketers.
  • Placeable: Ignite’s Placeable solutions helps drive online and offline revenue through location data management, local marketing, and digital advertising.

Chatbots

  • ManyChat: A tool that can be used to create a Facebook Messenger bot in two minutes without any coding.
  • Chatfuel: Another tool that allows you to create an AI chatbot on Facebook without coding. Its bots serve up news, allows users to narrow down on topics and ask questions about items or people in the news.
  • Chattypeople: This platform enables you to create, test, deploy, measure and manage your bots on Facebook, without any coding.
  • Botsify: This tool allows technical marketers to integrate their API with bots to make them is even more effective. Again, no coding required to build a bot with this platform.
  • MEOKAY: This platform allows you to build chatbots to talk to your audience, monetize opportunities, and grow your audience.

Closing Words

Emerging marketing tools are dominating the marketing space and it’s important for marketers to keep up with the evolving technological landscape.

Marketers today must rise to meet the growing demands of the industry and present their credentials to employers in an attractive way. If you’re looking to set yourself apart in a crowded talent pool, get yourself acquainted with these technologies. Put yourself in the best possible position to succeed – don’t let the speed of digital outpace your ability to adapt, expand your skills, and ultimately grow your career.

By  Bob Van Rossum 

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Read more at https://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/top-martech-tools-every-digital-marketer-needs-know-02042641

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Learn How To Plan, Produce and Execute Your Paid Media Strategy at #SMWNYC

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Sourced from Social Media Week

From data and creativity and paid media models to the future of brands and publishing, our curated tracks are designed to provide you with a deeper understanding of what tools, strategies, and tactics you should be investing in to advance your career.

At SMWNYC, we’re giving you the tools you need to develop and execute on a smart paid social media plan. From learning how to authentically reach the right audiences to making the right budget decisions, we’ve got you covered.

Fewer than 53 passes remain. Claim yours before they’re gone!

Here is a preview of what you can expect:

The Formula for Brand Safety: Consistency + Transparency + Effectiveness

Hosted by Verizon

In this session, you’ll hear from John Nitti, Chief Media Officer at Verizon, who will share his point of view on the three keys to brand safety in 2018 and beyond: consistency, transparency, and effectiveness. He will share insight into how Verizon, a company that is among the top digital spenders, views brand safety and how his team is taking steps to ensure their ads are placed in premium environments among contextually relevant content.

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Does Facebook Still Work for Direct Response?

Hosted by Croud

Two years ago, Facebook moved into direct response advertising in a big way with their new pixel product. Since then, CPMs have risen and tactics have changed—so, is Facebook advertising still a viable performance marketing tactic?

In this session, you’ll gain insights into the market for Facebook impressions via tried-and-true best practices and real-world case studies. You’ll be able to walk away with a framework for determining if you should be including Facebook in your performance media plans.

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Timely, Personalized and Relevant: How to Build a Responsive Organization

Hosted by Simon Data

The customer journey is radically changing. Brands collect more customer data and communicate using more channels than ever before. Consumers, for their part, have ever-increasing expectations around timely, personalized, relevant messaging — they want authentic connection and human conversation.

Delivering these experiences requires more than just personalization or journey mapping. Going forward, the real winners will be “Responsive Organizations” embracing a new approach that listens better, anticipates consumer needs, and addresses them in a fundamentally human way. Major players already know this: companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Google have radically changed core aspects of our lives by earning people’s trust through unparallelled responsiveness. In this critical moment, all brands must start doing likewise if they want to grow and succeed.

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Content to Commerce: How Social Grew Up to Drive What We Buy

Hosted by Weber Shandwick

In this session, Obele Brown West, Executive Vice President and Client Experience Digital & Innovation Lead at Weber Shandwick, will explain what’s behind the emergence of social as an e-commerce engine and what marketers need to know about using social to drive sales.

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There’s Power in Consumer Feedback: How Listening to Reactions can Drive Better Brand ​Performance on Social Media

Hosted by BrandBastion

In this session, Jenny Wolfram, CEO & Founder of BrandBastion, shares case studies from brands that effectively used engagement to drive tangible business objectives, such as increased website conversions and positive user sentiment. The best part: It’s much less labor-intensive than you might think.

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What The World Can Learn from Chinese Social Media

Hosted by Hot Pot Digital

In this session, hear from Jonathan Smith, Founder & Managing Director of Hot Pot Digital, to explore the functions of China’s digital platforms that are not available in Western markets. In his talk, he’ll highlight opportunities for selling to Chinese consumers and dive into how the future of digital and e-commerce for Western markets might take shape based on what’s happening in China.

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Elevating Digital Performance with Community Engagement

Hosted by Kickstarter

Join this workshop to learn how you can use community engagement to your advantage by understanding the data, algorithms, and processes behind the leading digital channels available to modern marketers. You’ll get inspired by lessons shared via Kickstarter’s Digital Director, Jon Chang, who has helped the company build one of the most engaged online communities in the world.

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How To Improve Customer Experience With Social Intelligence and Audience Analysis

Hosted by Synthesio

Modern marketers have a wealth of tools at their disposal to help optimize and validate the programs that they run. SAAS technology has empowered the integration of these tools, which has lessened the complexity of tracking marketing success across channels. Social Listening technology is a piece of the Mar-Tech stack that’s often used as a means to capture data – without a solid plan for how that data will be analyzed and leveraged. In his presentation, Greg Roth – Vice President of Global Marketing at Synthesio – will share six ways that businesses can immediately put the data they collect through Social Listening into action.

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Paid Media for the Socially Awkward: Planning, Producing & Executing with Confidence

Hosted by SOCIALDEVIANT

The world of paid social media has opened up a whole new world of creative and targeting opportunities for brands. Custom lists, local buys, national filters, and more, provide limitless potential for what we can achieve.

But it’s not always clear on how to best use these paid tools to our benefit. In fact, changing formats, endless targeting options, unclear standards and fluctuating creative requirements can often cause brands to stumble their way through the paid social media landscape.

This workshop will help you transform from socially awkward to socially confident in your paid media decisions, focusing on merging strategy with the right creative approach.

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Driving on Empty: How the Internet has Fundamentally Changed the Rules of Brand Equity

Hosted by L2 Inc.

The sun has passed midday on brands. Since 2008, the percentage of affluent consumers who can identify a “favorite brand” has fallen by nearly 20 percent in both retail and fashion. New social platforms and online retailers have created an ecosystem in which winning brands are the nimble players focused on experimenting with new ad formats, search strategies and meeting the consumers on their terms.

In this session, Evan Neufeld, VP of Digital Intelligence at L2, will explore the ways digital behavior has disrupted the traditional brand equity equation and reveal strategies and tactics for brands to thrive in this new paradigm.

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Why the Truth is Worth Paying For

Hosted by The New York Times

The mission of The New York Times is to produce fiercely independent, high-quality journalism that helps people understand the world–and to deliver that journalism in new and innovative ways.

The Times’s mission has propelled its business strategy: the company seek to make journalism so good it’s worth paying for, despite free or less expensive alternatives. Today, The Times is the most successful digital news subscription business in the world.

Please join Meredith Kopit Levien, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of The New York Times Company, in a fireside chat with CNN’s Senior Media Correspondent Brian Stelter focused on why great journalism matters and why it–and The Times–is having a moment.

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Scroll, Click, Own: How to Power Up Social Commerce on Facebook

Hosted by Diply

The convergence of social media and e-commerce established a new shopping category, called social commerce, that has transformed the online shopping experience for brands and consumers alike. More and more companies are implementing social commerce as part of their overall marketing campaigns to increase consumer engagement, awareness, conversion, and sales, and help establish long-term relationships.

As social commerce increasingly grows in importance, buying behaviors will also evolve, which will challenge brand marketers to identify the best tactics to take consumers from content discovery and shopping inspiration to purchase.

With U.S. e-commerce sales expected to reach nearly $522 billion in 2018, how can brands maximize their share? In this session, Dan Lagani, President and Chief Revenue Office at Diply, will outline the ever-changing landscape of social commerce and the ways it will influence how brands reach consumers in 2018 and beyond.

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Getting Back to the Work You Love: How Automation Can Help You Scale Your Business

Hosted by Accelo

You love the work you do, heck, it’s why you do it! The problem is that sometimes, or a lot of the time, you get stuck doing things like updating client records, filling out timesheets and figuring out if you’ll be able to make a projects deadline – tasks that take up the time that should be spent doing the work you love: work that generates revenue!

That’s where automation comes in.

Learn how automation can streamline your operations to reduce chaos and confusion by leveraging the power of smart technology to manage client relationships and/or internal work. Service Operations Automation enables you to manage projects, requests, retainers & more from one place, so you can finally have the right insight and tools to drive a more profitable operation.

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Patronage in the Digital Age

Hosted by Twitch

For centuries, kings, popes, and society’s wealthiest citizens supported musicians, painters, sculptors and artists of all kinds to flaunt status and support the Arts and creativity. Patronage is still a major part of today’s society, but it’s no longer reserved for the elite. Every day, millions of people tune into Twitch to watch live streaming content. Though the content is free, financial support is an integral part of the community.

In this talk, we’ll explore why viewers support Twitch streamers via Subscriptions, Donations and Bits; explore examples of how broadcasters are empowered to create their own reward systems; and discuss how brands can tap into the symbiotic relationship between streamers and viewers.

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The New Age Of Transparency In Social Advertising

Hosted by Unified

Despite social budgets growing 3X faster than display and search, only 8% of marketers feel confident they have sufficient transparency into their initiatives. That means they’re making critical decisions on large-scale investments based on incomplete, and potentially inaccurate information. In part, the traditional brand-agency dynamic contributes to this lack of transparency, with multiple agencies working on campaigns in silos.

In this session, Rick Martira, VP of Marketing at Unified, will discuss the steps brands are taking to gain more insight into their social advertising, and how this growing demand is shifting the social advertiser mindset of marketers.

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How Advertising Can Save Itself from Ad-blocking: Introducing the Value Economy

Hosted by Kiip

The Golden Era of Advertising is over, and has been for years. Smartphone-wielding, digitally-savvy consumers have wisened up to marketers’ games. They understand how advertising works, especially in digital, and are averse to experiences in which they feel as though they’re being duped or tricked by a company to buy their product. Instead, they are valuing the companies and products that offer tangible value to them: either by making their lives better or easier, or by aligning with their own values.

In a media landscape that’s dominated by just a small handful of hyper-powerful companies, marketers are exploring how immersive technologies like AR/VR can build deeper relationships, how rewards can create tangible value for consumers, and how the decentralized web can help increase trust and transparency. In this session, Brian Wong, CEO and Co-Founder of Kiip, and author of The Cheat Code: Going Off Script to Get More, Go Faster, and Shortcut Your Way to Success, will break down the predominant industry trends that are keeping brands relevant in the age of ad-blocking.

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What Marketers Need to Know to Boost Influencer Marketing Strategies in 2018

Hosted by Bloglovin’

Eighty-six percent of marketers reported investing in influencer marketing in 2017, and the majority of them plan on increasing their budgets in 2018. But, how do they ensure their campaigns are successful and drive ROI? This session will explore how marketers can leverage influencers as a successful step in the customer’s path to purchase. It will also emphasize the necessity of working with influencers whose content is authentic, and who understand and abide by FTC guidelines. The session will also explore ways in which marketers can ensure the success of their influencer marketing campaigns, including increased attention to data and analytics, continuous investment in influencer marketing as a core part of the marketing toolkit, and building “always-on,” bi-directional relationships with influencers.

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Sourced from Social Media Week

Social Media Week is a leading news platform and worldwide conference that curates and shares the best ideas, innovations and insights into how social media and technology are changing business, society and culture around the world.

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