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3 Marketing Blind Spots That Are Holding You Back (and How to Fix Them)

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By JOY GENDUSA

Here are a few common pitfalls business owners encounter when creating a marketing strategy — and how to address them.

Have you ever taken blurry, out-of-focus pictures before only to figure out it wasn’t your photography skills that were the problem — it was the camera lens? After cleaning the glass, your pictures were perfect. Oftentimes, in business, it’s the same way. We can operate within a fuzzy lens and not even realize it.

My business has worked with over 115,838 business owners (and counting), so I know that sometimes business owners have blind spots in their marketing. We’re all guilty of it! We don’t know what we don’t know.

But the first step is taking a hard look at your perspective — the lens through which you see your audience and business objectives. The challenge is to break free from any limitations and expand your view so that you can reach more prospects with the right message.

Here are some common pitfalls business owners run into when creating a marketing strategy, and how you can expand your mindset to increase annual revenues and build strong customer loyalty.

You’re too laser-focused on digital marketing and neglect offline touchpoints that provide a 70% higher recall

Oftentimes the familiar feels comfortable, and for younger generations, like Millennials and Gen Z, there’s a stigma that they’re glued to their phones 24/7. Yet, the unfamiliar can sometimes strike a stronger cord. Print advertising, like postcards and letters, actually excites younger generations because they are outside of the normal scope for them.

One study found that 57% of 18 to 34-year-olds said they found direct mail extremely or very useful, and another survey showed 63% of Gen Z consumers were more excited about direct mail in 2023 than they were in 2022.

In fact, scientific studies have also proven that direct mail holds a more lasting impact than digital media. Researchers found direct mail holds people’s attention for 118% longer and stimulated 70% higher brand recall than digital advertising.

Whether you are a young business owner who has relied on digital marketing because it’s always been your go-to, or you assume all prospects naturally gravitate toward online content, it’s time to think outside of the box and get more creative with how you present your products or services in the tangible realm.

Give direct mail a try, track the results, and you may find that recipients respond even better to printed content. Remember, a postcard can stay in a home for months while an email often gets ignored or trashed within seconds of opening.

You don’t research the competition to discover new ways to grow your business

It’s possible to be so focused on your own business that you have no idea what your competitors are up to. But this is a huge blind spot. It’s crucial to take the time to get to know your competition. Get started by blind shopping, such as signing up for their newsletter, visiting their website, analysing the shopping experience and following their social media.

You may not want to copy what they are doing, but you can analyse what they do well, what they aren’t doing well and how you can offer something unique that fills in those holes. For example, your competitor may have an amazing social media presence, but they don’t have any in-person events or tangible touch points for their followers.

You could create more opportunities for prospects to interact with you in a personable way, such as shopping events, meet-ups, in-person consultations or trainings if it applies to your industry. Or if a competitor does a lot of email marketing, you could make an effort to do the same but include a tempting offer that is far better than the one they are giving out.

As you continue to analyse other businesses — not just your competitors, really any business you may interact with — save any marketing materials or ideas you like in a folder and use them for inspiration.

You never ask your customers why they like you over competitors to find the secrets to brand loyalty

After doing some secret shopping and gathering inspiration from other businesses, I suggest you ask your customers directly what they love about your products and/or services, and why they ended up choosing you over the competitor.

Some questions you could ask include: How much research did you do before making a decision? What was the determining factor after you looked into your options? Was there anything that stood out to you that you liked about us that was different from everyone else?

You may have a couple of loyal customers you are in regular contact with that you feel comfortable reaching out to. But if you don’t, you can always use a survey site, like SurveyMonkey, Jotform or Mailchimp.

You’ll never know what your customers are really thinking until you ask them, and you have nothing to lose by trying!

One way to bring in more surveys is to offer a discount or free item to them for completing it. You can also motivate your employees to provide feedback by giving them merch or a small bonus if their marketing ideas get used and are successful.

By remaining open-minded and inquisitive, you’ll enter new realms of growth for your company and even learn more about your mission and brand along the way.

By JOY GENDUSA

Founder/CEO of PostcardMania. Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998 with just a phone & a computer (no funding or investments), and today we generate over $100 million annually with 365 staff. I’m passionate about helping small businesses succeed at marketing and grow — because when small business does well, we all win.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Spam crusade lands charity in hot water with data watchdog

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By Paul Kunert

Penny Appeal sent more than 460,000 texts asking for money to help war-torn countries, no opt out

Typically it is energy improvement peddlers or debt help specialists that are disgraced by Britain’s data watchdog for spamming unsuspecting households, but the latest entrant in the hall of shame is a charity.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has ordered Penny Appeal, which sends aid to more than 30 crisis-hit countries worldwide, to cease and desist.

The charity was found to have dispatched more than 460,000 unsolicited texts during a ten-day period to 52,000 people that had not consented to receive the messages or had “clearly opted out,” the ICO said.

Following receipt of the texts, the ICO and Mobile UK’s Spam Reporting Services received 354 complaints. Among them individuals reported saying their opt-out replies were ignored and others described the messages as “intrusive” and often received late at night.

During the course of its official probe, the ICO says it found Penny Appeal had constructed a new database and users’ requests to opt out were not recorded, with messages transmitted to “anyone that had interacted” with the charity inside the past five years.

The watchdog has been engaged with Penny Appeal since 2020, addressing prior complaints about a similar campaign in the past. The charity had previously “committed to improving compliance with direct marketing law” yet the latest batch of complaints show it was “still sending illegal marketing texts,” the ICO said.

Penny Appeal has 30 days to stop sending marketing comms for which it doesn’t have valid consent, something the data regulator wants to remind all charities of.

Andy Curry, head of investigations at the ICO, said in a statement: “Penny Appeal inundated people with text messages, with no regard for their consent or their right to opt out. This is unacceptable and we will act decisively to protect the public from unsolicited marketing texts.”

“We also appreciate that small charities may need a helping hand when it comes to understanding the law. However, this is not an excuse for breaking it. All organisations sending direct marketing messages are responsible for ensuring they have valid consent to contact every recipient.”

Charities falling under the glare of the ICO is not unheard of. In 2018, a counselling charity attracted the watchdog’s ire after leaving confidential files in a former office building. And 11 charities were fined in 2017 over dealings with people’s personal data, including Cancer Research UK and Oxfam.

Mostly, however, it is still commercial organizations that are falling afoul of the regulator.

A spokesperson at Penny Appeal sent us a statement:

“Penny Appeal remains committed to continuous improvement in seeking to foster the highest standards of governance. As part of this journey, we have conducted a full review of our data use and data compliance processes and procedures including ongoing cleansing of the data we hold

“We remain committed to working closely with the ICO and our other statutory agencies in continuing to strengthen our charity in aid of the vulnerable communities we exist to serve.” ®

By Paul Kunert

Sourced from The Register

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Engaging the New Generation: Effective Direct Mail Campaigns Targeting Young Audiences

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By RICK ELMORE

Direct mail fundraising can resonate with millennials and Generation Z, but a refined approach to direct mail campaigns is in order.

Direct mail campaigns targeting young audiences can seem like a paradox in the digital age, but they are far from obsolete. Millennials and Gen Z expect more from brands, and direct mail that hits the mark on personalization, design, and digital integration can surprise and engage them. This article gives you the lowdown on how to create direct mail campaigns that resonate with a young demographic accustomed to filtering out digital noise.

UNDERSTANDING YOUNG AUDIENCES: WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY VALUE

To ensure a successful direct mail campaign, it is crucial to have a thorough understanding of the specific audience being targeted. The younger generations, including millennials and Generation Z, highly value elements such as authenticity, sustainability, ethical consumption, and digital savvy when considering marketing efforts.

This age group sees trust in direct mail campaigns as significant and effective due to their appreciation of its tangible nature. Furthermore, this demographic views direct mail as an avenue for establishing emotional connections with brands.

The Millennial Mindset

Engaging millennials requires personalization, as it caters to their preference for genuineness, significant connections, and superior customer encounters. These individuals tend to trust physical documents, viewing direct mail as more reliable and authoritative compared to other forms of communication.

Generation Z: Digital Natives Craving Tangibility

On the flip side, Generation Z—also referred to as “digital natives”—spends a great deal of free time on online activities and multitasking with various devices. Nevertheless, they highly value tangible encounters with brands. They are particularly drawn towards businesses that showcase transparency, commitment, and offer real-life experiences that align with their values and offer genuine connection.

CRAFTING A DIRECT MAIL STRATEGY THAT RESONATES WITH YOUNGER CONSUMERS

In order to connect with younger consumers, a successful direct mail approach must include the following elements: personalization, handwritten correspondence, integration with digital platforms, and relevant content. These tactics effectively target younger audiences who prefer online shopping or in-store purchases through various digital channels. By making them feel valued, these techniques enhance engagement and brand loyalty.

Personalization Is Key

Direct mail has proven to be a powerful tool for personalization, as evidenced by the success of campaigns such as Trustpilot, Charity Navigator, Shopify, and NerdWallet. These companies have used direct mail in targeting millennials and Gen Z consumers with great results, increasing sales and garnering significant social media interaction.

These well-executed direct mail efforts have captured the attention of young consumers who are typically difficult to engage through traditional marketing methods. By tailoring their messages specifically to this demographic, these campaigns have not only worked, but companies have benefited.

Handwritten Mail: A Personal Touch

Handwritten direct mail can be integrated into direct mail initiatives through mechanically written letters and postcards. This approach allows businesses to maintain the personal element of mailed communication while reaching a wider audience. For businesses looking to streamline this process, services like SimplyNoted offer automated handwritten letter services that can help scale personal touch in direct mail campaigns.

Integrating with Digital Platforms

Integrating digital marketing platforms with direct mail strategies can pay off, drawing on the strengths of both methods and reaching a wider audience. This integration allows for personalized messaging and targeted tactics such as Personalized URLs (PURLs) or QR codes, resulting in a seamless customer experience that drives higher engagement rates and improved response levels.

Content That Connects

Crafting captivating content for direct mail initiatives includes:

  • Creating influential messaging;
  • Implementing responsive customer engagement and assistance;
  • Maintaining a genuine brand image;
  • Producing compelling and enjoyable material; and
  • Generating user-created posts through competitions and interactive endeavours.

It involves establishing an emotional bond with younger audiences while steering clear of common mistakes made by brands in their direct mail campaigns.

DESIGN ELEMENTS THAT DRIVE RESPONSE RATES IN YOUNG AUDIENCES

The success of direct mail campaigns targeting young audiences relies significantly on design components. These features should include captivating graphics, interactive elements, and environmentally friendly materials. By incorporating such elements into their marketing efforts, businesses can expect higher response rates from younger consumers.

Eye-Catching Visuals

The younger millennial generation is drawn to vibrant colors, distinctive typography, and captivating visuals that resonate and elicit powerful feelings. Companies such as Earth Hour have successfully incorporated visually appealing elements into their direct mail pieces in order to connect with a younger audience.

Interactive Features

Engaging young audiences through direct mail can be made more interactive and appealing by incorporating personalized elements, using QR codes for easy access to digital content, providing coupons for discounts or special offers, creating a storytelling experience through unboxing, and including other interactive components in the mail itself.

Eco-Friendly Materials

Eco-friendly materials have become increasingly important for younger audiences. This demographic has a strong desire for sustainable products and retail, so using environmentally friendly materials in direct mail campaigns can potentially increase direct mail response rates. By committing to sustainability, companies can appeal to this generation’s values and showcase their dedication through eco-conscious mail initiatives.

MAXIMIZING IMPACT: COMBINING DIRECT MAIL WITH OTHER MARKETING CHANNELS

Integrating direct mail campaigns with other marketing channels such as social media, email, and event-driven campaigns can greatly enhance their impact. By utilizing the strengths of each medium, these strategies enable a wider reach to potential audiences.

Leveraging Social Media Influence

Social media can be a powerful tool in targeting younger demographics through direct mail campaigns. When social media handles and hashtags are included on mail pieces, recipients are able to engage with the campaign on multiple platforms. This allows for wider visibility with audiences who may not have been reached solely through traditional direct mail methods.

Email and Direct Mail Synthesis

Using both email and direct mail can boost the success of marketing endeavours. To connect direct mail campaigns with in-store visits, it is important to include calls to action, QR code scans, and URL links, then monitor the response rates from these elements. These tactics help bridge the gap between traditional postal mailing and online communication methods, effectively driving traffic to stores.

Event-Driven Campaigns

Integrating personalized URLs and QR codes in direct mail can greatly enhance event-driven campaigns by linking physical mail and online content. By creating triggers for sending out direct mail based on consumers’ individual interactions or events, a campaign can be refined and improved.

SUMMARY

In summary, the effectiveness of direct mail campaigns has been proven in capturing the attention and engagement of younger audiences like millennials and Generation Z. With a thorough understanding of younger consumers and their unique characteristics and preferences, marketers can design targeted direct mail tactics that resonate with them.

By RICK ELMORE

Sourced from Philanthropy Daily

 

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3 Ways to Personalize Your Marketing for Higher Engagement

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BY JOY GENDUSA 

Use these three key tips to successfully incorporate personalization into your marketing.

In the early 2000s, Starbucks made writing customers’ names on cups a standard. Every time you ordered a drink, the barista would make sure your first name was written right on your grande mocha latte.

However, no one would have guessed that this simple, personalized gesture by Starbucks would become the next viral meme. With millions of different names to nail down, errors would surely be made. The problem was that some misspellings weren’t just a little wrong, they were very wrong — so wrong that the internet loved it.

Personalizing every drink seemed a daunting task, but the payoff was worth it — even when you factor in those viral flubs. Snapping a photo of your morning Starbucks is still an Instagram mainstay to this day, regardless of whether they get your name right.

Starbucks cashed in early on something people intuitively crave: personalization. A recent study on consumer engagement found that 86% of consumers feel personalized experiences increase their loyalty to a brand, while 66% said they would quit a brand if their experience wasn’t personalized.

Here are three ways you can incorporate personalization into your marketing without having to ask, “How do you spell that?”

1. Address every prospect by first name using dynamic or variable data

Luckily, computers are much more reliable than the human hand when it comes to spelling names. You can add prospects’ first names to mailers and emails to grab more attention and make a longer-lasting impression.

Leveraging someone’s first name is a good step toward creating a personalized experience. One study found that personalization in marketing, including naming, can significantly improve brand attitude and purchase likelihood without being perceived as intrusive.

Hopefully, you’ve already crafted emails using dynamic first-name codes that automatically substitute each recipient’s name into every email. You can also incorporate first-name tags into your subject lines for an added boost.

In the specific case of direct mail, research shows that most people prefer personalization. One study found that the response rate to direct mail increased by 135% when it was personalized by the recipient’s name and was in full colour. When all factors were combined — meaning name, colour and database information were personalized to each recipient through something known as variable data — the response rate went up even higher to 500%.

When you add that on top of the fact that studies put direct mail’s response rate at 500-900% better than other advertising channels, you have a powerful tool for boosting your bottom line.

The key with personalization is creating a personal connection without coming off like you are invading their privacy. Any information that you use should be either public record or first-party, provided directly by your customers and clients. Once you have the data, put it to good use with personalized messaging.

2. Target prospects based on context and interest rather than demographics

Marketing trends will have you targeting buyers like a game of Guess Who. Is my ideal customer a man or a woman? Are they older or younger? Do they wear a hat?

Demographic-based targeting focuses on who you want as your customer — but not the why or when behind the customer’s own experience.

But we can flip the script with contextual targeting, which focuses on the why and when of delivering ads. For example, with contextual search, a person who looks up “landscape lighting ideas” will see an ad about that same topic in their feed. This allows shoppers to find you faster.

You can also use geotargeting and a little creativity to find people likely to want or need your product or service. For example, if a woman often visits an organic grocery store or vitamin shop, she might respond well to other types of wellness products or services. A gym could target her and offer a month of free membership or a free yoga class at a studio.

The future of this digital marketing strategy anticipates prospects’ needs before they even start looking to fulfil them.

3. Automate responsive triggers that will personalize the customer journey without extra workload

Personalization is a great way to get prospects interested and even lead them straight to a sale, but what if their attention gets lost along the way, or you want them to bring them back for repeat purchases?

Automated marketing can help fill those gaps. Using the same example from above, a woman who is focused on wellness may see a yoga studio’s ad and visit their website to learn more. That is certainly a win. However, how do you get her to return to your website if she leaves without converting? Realistically, only a fraction of your website visitors will convert, after all.

Retargeting ads are an obvious answer that is hopefully already in your arsenal. Personally, when it comes to re-capturing attention, I’m for pulling out all the stops — and that means leveraging the high response rate of direct mail. Using a relatively new technology called direct mail retargeting, you can automatically retarget unconverted website visitors offline. With retargeted mailers, the woman in the above example would receive a mailer offering her a free yoga class within 24 hours of a website visit.

Abandoned shopping carts are another way to funnel interested buyers to a close. Send emails or postcards to prospects who put items in their cart but never followed through with a purchase.

Your message could say, “Forget to check out? Come back — we have a special offer just for you!”

The type of automation you put in place will be based on your specific industry. Take some time to think about actions and behaviours that could trigger a mailer or digital ad, and you’ll be on your way to a future of business growth and success.

BY JOY GENDUSA 

ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK® CONTRIBUTOR

Founder/CEO of PostcardMania. Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998 with just a phone & a computer (no funding or investments), and today we generate over $100 million annually with 365 staff. I’m passionate about helping small businesses succeed at marketing and grow — because when small business does well, we all win.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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How to prepare for the death of cookies and privacy reforms of 2024

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By SEBASTIAN DIAZ

Privacy is poised to be a big topic in 2024, with multiple ramifications on the digital advertising front.

Sebastian Diaz, iAB council member and senior digital solutions lead at Bench, explains how marketing teams and agencies must prepare themselves for Australia’s privacy purge, and Google’s cookie phase-out.

Privacy is poised to be a big topic in 2024, with multiple ramifications on the digital advertising front.

As we sit with the stalemate that is the Government’s response to the Privacy Act Review Report, marketing teams as well as agencies must prepare themselves for Australia’s turn for the privacy purge.

This has been a long time coming with the rise of consumer privacy legislation sweeping the globe since Europe’s GDPR’s in 2018.

In addition to that, Google has finally kicked off phasing out the cookie on Chrome this month, with it expected to take full flight in the September quarter this year. Be it legislation or technology changes, brands will have their hands forced in changing their advertising tactics. It’s time to get on the privacy and cookieless train before we feel the pain.  

Let’s take it from the top – what is the Privacy Review? 

Since 2019, the Australian Government has been looking at giving a measure of control to individuals on how their personal information is used in direct marketing and advertising. At the time, they announced the need for the Review to investigate the effectiveness of Australia’s current data protection regime to ensure it “empower[s] consumers, protect[s] their data and best serve[s] the Australian economy”. In February 2023, they published their Privacy Act Review Report, which was met with some concern in parts of the marketing industry.   

Some of the proposed changes that affect the marketing industry include a) a user having the right to ‘opt out’ of their personal information being used in direct marketing, and b) a website needing a user’s consent when ‘trading’ their personal information. However, the semantics around what direct marketing, targeted advertising, targeting and trading are all still in discussion.

The government is now undertaking impact analysis, in consultation with the industry, before coming to a final decision on the Review this year. This has set brands into a tailspin of what to do – particularly those who have been dependent on cookie-based targeting. Without this ability to target and collect users information as easily, brands and publishers are losing one of their most valuable assets.  

How to best prepare for the 2024 cookie and privacy double whammy:

Non-cookie based targeting solutions are making a comeback

What’s old is new and better than ever. Contextual targeting, which is based on the content being consumed, has made a resurgence, as strong as 90s fashion and flip phones, but is much improved. 

While the dust settles on the upcoming cookie changes, it is likely for advertising to step up their reliance on contextually-based environments as an interim, though alternatives to cookies that involve anonymisation-based targeting will continue.   

Contextual targeting has recently been supercharged by AI, which enables it to be delivered and tested with greater accuracy, speed and scale – using a combination of image, video, text and audio content. It’s far less word prescriptive than it used to be, and has proven to drive lower funnel activity. 

What’s old is new again, but definitely stronger.   

Data warehousing is all the rage

If you can’t buy it, make it. And there’s no stronger audience than the audience you already know. With most brands already collecting their customer’s data in one way or another (be it through loyalty programs, email addresses or site activity), 2024 will be the year to scale this up as a necessity.  

 It’s one thing to collect this data – but it’s another to utilise it. Brands often get stuck with this – either due to internal politics or red tape or the lack of expertise in building a valid consent framework and preventing potential data leaks.  

As data volume, variety, and velocity continue to outpace many teams’ capabilities, organisations face the challenge of collecting, transforming and putting customer data to use while adhering to new and evolving regulations. Still, data-first strategies are gathering plenty of advocates.

For brands leveraging significant amounts of customer data for various use cases, investing in a CDP would be a no brainer. As would be engaging in data partnerships with other brands, allowing brands to collaborate on data and utilising this across their marketing activity. Further to this, engaging in a data clean room comes up as one of the best ways forward to remain legally compliant.  

Data providers and publishers are the experts – they’ve been making the change for years

Publishers and data providers have been preparing for regulatory changes for some years – even if they haven’t known what the new regulation will look like.  

Big buying platforms with first party data such as Google (GoogleID), Yahoo (Next-Gen and cookieless), Meta (via Facebook) and Amazon (especially as a major player in the retail media space) are ready to go with their identity solutions. Other interoperable cookieless identity solutions such as The Trade Desk’s UID, or Lotame’s Panorama ID, enabling brands to target first and third party audiences on ‘cookieless’ inventory are also ready. 

Publishers have been testing these cookieless identity solutions, and will be protected once third-party cookies completely exit the ecosystem. 

Know – and embrace – that changes are for the greater good

Change doesn’t come without fear – but what’s most important is to keep perspective as to what drives the need for change, both legislatively and technologically. Though it may feel as though Australia is being dealt a double whammy in 2024, it’s important to remember that the privacy change is ultimately about consumer trust which, according to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC)’s latest surveys, is at an all time low. With privacy becoming a core expectation among 89% of consumers, this expectation demands that brands re-evaluate how they handle their customers’ data to ensure they prioritise privacy focused practices and technology to keep data safe. 

Some big brands such as P&G and tech giant HP have also been very proactive in implementing new cookieless technology and alternative identifiers (such as UID2), and have built consent frameworks that are compliant across privacy legislation worldwide. These players have enjoyed the maximum value from their investment and have built innovative new advertising solutions with a data collaboration platform at the core of their strategy. The same should be done for brands of any size looking to be ahead of the curve and capitalise on industry changes. 

Brands shouldn’t wait for legislation and Google to force their hand – they must prioritise privacy today, and as a framework for their business to make the best change possible, and not a band-aid job.  

By SEBASTIAN DIAZ

iAB Council Member & Senior Digital Solutions Lead at Bench

Sourced from Mumbrella

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A Well-Designed Brand Guidelines Presentation Template

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By Dirk Petzold

Unveiling the artistry: BrandPacks’ Adobe InDesign brand guidelines presentation template is something else.

A brand’s identity is its compass, guiding it through the vast ocean of consumer preferences. Every company, big or small, dreams of a unique and memorable brand image that resonates with its audience. Enter BrandPacks’ latest masterpiece – an Adobe InDesign Brand Guidelines Presentation Template that transcends the ordinary, elevating brand presentations to a whole new level.

Crafted with precision and passion, this 27-page template is more than just a set of guidelines; it’s a visual journey that transforms the mundane into the extraordinary. Let’s dive into the creative waters and explore why this template is the talk of the design town.

Download at Adobe Stock

Please note that this template requires Adobe InDesign. You can get the latest version from the Adobe Creative Cloud website—take a look here.

Brand Guidelines Presentation Template by BrandPacks
Brand Guidelines Presentation Template by BrandPacks
Download at Adobe Stock

1. Visual Symphony:

BrandPacks’ template is not just a document; it’s a symphony of visuals, meticulously composed to strike the right chord with your audience. The modern aesthetics and bold typography create a harmonious blend that captures attention and leaves a lasting impression. Each page tells a story, seamlessly connecting the dots between creativity and consistency.

2. Fully Customizable Magic:

Flexibility is the hallmark of a great design, and this template embodies that philosophy. With 27 fully customizable pages, it provides a canvas for your brand’s personality to shine. From colour schemes to typography, every element is a stroke on this canvas, waiting for your artistic touch. Adapt it to your brand’s unique voice, and watch it come to life.

3. Modern Elegance:

In a world of fleeting trends, timeless elegance speaks volumes. The modern look of this template is not just a passing trend; it’s a statement. The clean lines, sophisticated colour palette, and well-thought-out layouts exude a sense of modernity without compromising on the timeless essence that defines enduring brands.

4. Bold Typography, Bolder Impact:

Typography is the unsung hero of design, and BrandPacks’ template gives it the spotlight it deserves. Bold, impactful, and undeniably stylish, the typography in this template is more than words on a page; it’s a visual experience. From headers that command attention to body text that guides the reader, every word is a brushstroke in the masterpiece.

5. Uniquely Yours:

No two brands are the same, and this template understands that. It offers a unique style that serves as a starting point for your brand’s journey. Tailor it to your heart’s content, and let your brand personality shine through. The result? A presentation that reflects your brand, not a generic template.

6. Suited for Screens and Dreams:

In the era of digital dominance, the size matters – and this template gets it right. With dimensions of 1920 x 1080 px, it is tailored for screens, ensuring your brand guidelines look just as stunning online as they do in print. Seamlessly transition from boardroom presentations to online platforms, maintaining the visual integrity of your brand across all touchpoints.

Download at Adobe Stock

In conclusion, BrandPacks’ Adobe InDesign Brand Guidelines Presentation Template isn’t just a template; it’s a design revolution. A testament to the marriage of functionality and aesthetics, it empowers brands to present themselves with flair and finesse. So, if you’re ready to take your brand to new heights, embark on this visual journey, and let the world see your brand through the lens of creativity and innovation. Brand guidelines have never looked this good.

By Dirk Petzold

https://weandthecolor.com/
Of course, we are on Instagram: @weandthecolor

Sourced from WATC

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With ad spend up, here’s how agencies are preparing for growth

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By Branwell Johnson 

Gather intel, raise profile, and target carefully: those are Branwell Johnson’s ‘three commandments’ for agencies looking to leverage positive ad spend outlook following optimism from the IPA and the AA/WARC.

‘Cautious optimism’: it might sound tentative, but it’s a phrase to give confidence to agencies of all hues as they focus on the coming year.

Various ad industry barometers are showing some rays of sunshine amid the dark clouds of cost-of-living pressures and a potential ‘shallow recession’. It all helps build morale and resilience at a point when agency leaders are reviewing new business strategies, planning where to invest, and evaluating which potential partners can help develop their pipeline.

The recent IPA Bellwether report produced some uplifting headlines, with UK business revising their budgets up to the strongest levels in almost a decade in Q4, providing an optimistic start for the year. Nearly 45% of Bellwether survey respondents said that they were planning budget expansions for 2024/25 – three times the number planning to restrict spending.

The newly-released Advertising Association/WARC report, meanwhile, shows UK ad spend up 15.9% in Q3, exceeding the £9bn mark for the first time for the quarter, while the credit ratings service S&P Global Ratings gave a boost for those agencies looking to expand into the territory with a forecast that US ad spend will rise 7.6% this year.

To provide balance, Sir Martin Sorrell of S4Capital indicated that he doesn’t see much improvement in the macroeconomic environment “and client caution on marketing spend will likely persist”, so agencies are going to have to be smart on qualifying leads and addressing how they are raising their own profile in a competitive environment.

Ad spend is robust

For agency leaders, it’s a question of gathering intel, staying on top of trends and spotting opportunities. By drilling down into various reports, we find the sub-trends that will have agency antennae twitching. S&P’s projections say that US digital ad spend will see the greatest rise over the course of 2024 and 2025, while “legacy” media will stutter this year.

The AA/WARC report points to search (including retail media) and online display (including social), driving higher than expected ad spend; online retailers increased their ad spend by 156% as competition for customers hotted up.

A deeper dive into the Q4 Bellwether shows that the disciplines that have notably benefited from recent ad spend investment include events and direct marketing. The latter enjoyed its greatest upturn since 2005. Events is expected to have another strong year, with a net balance of +17.8% of marketers boosting their events budgets for 2024/25. Direct marketing (DM) also appears to be an area of focus with a net balance of +16.8% preparing to increase DM spend. Main media has a rebound forecast for strong performance with a net balance of +14.2%.

Agency business development practitioners say the numbers are borne out by their own experiences. Pedro Martins, chief growth officer at Total Media, said: “2023 proved to be our strongest year yet (and that’s saying something given our 42 years). Q4 is always a big quarter for us and this year was equally strong.”

Andrew Rose, VP sales EMEA for StackAdapt, points out that with budgets up to the strongest levels in almost a decade, marketers will want to ensure they’re getting the most value – and looking to optimize campaigns for both efficiency and impact.

Rose said: “This shift presents an opportunity to explore innovative targeting approaches, with a laser focus on data-driven insights while adapting to evolving privacy standards as we enter the post-cookie era.”

Luke Willbourn, managing director UK at Talon, adds that the strong growth in events ties in with people wanting to spend more time outdoors, connecting with the environment and people around them, and experiencing the real world. He says: “This calls for brands to create exciting and inspiring experiences that truly engage and offer something meaningful to be experienced together. This not only builds brand awareness but delivers bottom-funnel results too when combined with programmatic out-of-home campaigns.”

Cameron Russell, head of marketing for Royal Mail Marketreach, comments that it’s heartening to see direct mail with its unique capabilities around capturing attention and targeting in the marketing mix, “being one of the principal drivers of marketing growth this Bellwether.”

What sectors are strong?

What sectors are staying buoyant? Sales prospecting tool Winmo has shared data that reinforces the increase in ad spend in retail and e-commerce, with significant jumps in investment for companies including Temu, Amazon, Argos, Boots, and Dreams – and in entertainment with YouTube, Freenow, and BBC all spending more.

A wider look at the business landscape shows retailers Tesco and Sainsbury’s reporting strong grocery sales over the festive period and raising their profit outlook. Travel is also surging, with the World Tourism Organisation projecting international tourism numbers to exceed pre-pandemic levels this year.

And no one should ignore the boost that elections give to media channels. It’s a near-certainty that it’ll be an election year in the UK, while the US ad spend is predicted to jump by nearly a third over the 2020 election investment according to Group M.

There is plenty for agencies to play for – but they must make sure they can use all the tools (from positive PR to punchy thought leadership) to differentiate themselves and highlight their cultural fit with a potential client.

Feature Image Credit: Andre Taissin via Unsplash

By Branwell Johnson

Sourced from The Drum

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Let’s not make the same mistakes with AI that we made with social media

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Nathan E. Sanders archive page& Bruce Schneier

Social media’s unregulated evolution over the past decade holds a lot of lessons that apply directly to AI companies and technologies.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A decade ago, social media was celebrated for sparking democratic uprisings in the Arab world and beyond. Now front pages are splashed with stories of social platforms’ role in misinformation, business conspiracy, malfeasance, and risks to mental health. In a 2022 survey, Americans blamed social media for the coarsening of our political discourse, the spread of misinformation, and the increase in partisan polarization.

Today, tech’s darling is artificial intelligence. Like social media, it has the potential to change the world in many ways, some favourable to democracy. But at the same time, it has the potential to do incredible damage to society.

There is a lot we can learn about social media’s unregulated evolution over the past decade that directly applies to AI companies and technologies. These lessons can help us avoid making the same mistakes with AI that we did with social media.

In particular, five fundamental attributes of social media have harmed society. AI also has those attributes. Note that they are not intrinsically evil. They are all double-edged swords, with the potential to do either good or ill. The danger comes from who wields the sword, and in what direction it is swung. This has been true for social media, and it will similarly hold true for AI. In both cases, the solution lies in limits on the technology’s use.

#1: Advertising

The role advertising plays in the internet arose more by accident than anything else. When commercialization first came to the internet, there was no easy way for users to make micropayments to do things like viewing a web page. Moreover, users were accustomed to free access and wouldn’t accept subscription models for services. Advertising was the obvious business model, if never the best one. And it’s the model that social media also relies on, which leads it to prioritize engagement over anything else.

Both Google and Facebook believe that AI will help them keep their stranglehold on an 11-figure online ad market (yep, 11 figures), and the tech giants that are traditionally less dependent on advertising, like Microsoft and Amazon, believe that AI will help them seize a bigger piece of that market.

Big Tech needs something to persuade advertisers to keep spending on their platforms. Despite bombastic claims about the effectiveness of targeted marketing, researchers have long struggled to demonstrate where and when online ads really have an impact. When major brands like Uber and Procter & Gamble recently slashed their digital ad spending by the hundreds of millions, they proclaimed that it made no dent at all in their sales.

AI-powered ads, industry leaders say, will be much better. Google assures you that AI can tweak your ad copy in response to what users search for, and that its AI algorithms will configure your campaigns to maximize success. Amazon wants you to use its image generation AI to make your toaster product pages look cooler. And IBM is confident its Watson AI will make your ads better.

These techniques border on the manipulative, but the biggest risk to users comes from advertising within AI chatbots. Just as Google and Meta embed ads in your search results and feeds, AI companies will be pressured to embed ads in conversations. And because those conversations will be relational and human-like, they could be more damaging. While many of us have gotten pretty good at scrolling past the ads in Amazon and Google results pages, it will be much harder to determine whether an AI chatbot is mentioning a product because it’s a good answer to your question or because the AI developer got a kickback from the manufacturer.

#2: Surveillance

Social media’s reliance on advertising as the primary way to monetize websites led to personalization, which led to ever-increasing surveillance. To convince advertisers that social platforms can tweak ads to be maximally appealing to individual people, the platforms must demonstrate that they can collect as much information about those people as possible.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much spying is going on. A recent analysis by Consumer Reports about Facebook—just Facebook—showed that every user has more than 2,200 different companies spying on their web activities on its behalf.

AI-powered platforms that are supported by advertisers will face all the same perverse and powerful market incentives that social platforms do. It’s easy to imagine that a chatbot operator could charge a premium if it were able to claim that its chatbot could target users on the basis of their location, preference data, or past chat history and persuade them to buy products.

The possibility of manipulation is only going to get greater as we rely on AI for personal services. One of the promises of generative AI is the prospect of creating a personal digital assistant advanced enough to act as your advocate with others and as a butler to you. This requires more intimacy than you have with your search engine, email provider, cloud storage system, or phone. You’re going to want it with you constantly, and to most effectively work on your behalf, it will need to know everything about you. It will act as a friend, and you are likely to treat it as such, mistakenly trusting its discretion.

Even if you choose not to willingly acquaint an AI assistant with your lifestyle and preferences, AI technology may make it easier for companies to learn about you. Early demonstrations illustrate how chatbots can be used to surreptitiously extract personal data by asking you mundane questions. And with chatbots increasingly being integrated with everything from customer service systems to basic search interfaces on websites, exposure to this kind of inferential data harvesting may become unavoidable.

#3: Virality

Social media allows any user to express any idea with the potential for instantaneous global reach. A great public speaker standing on a soapbox can spread ideas to maybe a few hundred people on a good night. A kid with the right amount of snark on Facebook can reach a few hundred million people within a few minutes.

A decade ago, technologists hoped this sort of virality would bring people together and guarantee access to suppressed truths. But as a structural matter, it is in a social network’s interest to show you the things you are most likely to click on and share, and the things that will keep you on the platform.

As it happens, this often means outrageous, lurid, and triggering content. Researchers have found that content expressing maximal animosity toward political opponents gets the most engagement on Facebook and Twitter. And this incentive for outrage drives and rewards misinformation.

As Jonathan Swift once wrote, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” Academics seem to have proved this in the case of social media; people are more likely to share false information—perhaps because it seems more novel and surprising. And unfortunately, this kind of viral misinformation has been pervasive.

AI has the potential to supercharge the problem because it makes content production and propagation easier, faster, and more automatic. Generative AI tools can fabricate unending numbers of falsehoods about any individual or theme, some of which go viral. And those lies could be propelled by social accounts controlled by AI bots, which can share and launder the original misinformation at any scale.

Remarkably powerful AI text generators and autonomous agents are already starting to make their presence felt in social media. In July, researchers at Indiana University revealed a botnet of more than 1,100 Twitter accounts that appeared to be operated using ChatGPT.

AI will help reinforce viral content that emerges from social media. It will be able to create websites and web content, user reviews, and smartphone apps. It will be able to simulate thousands, or even millions, of fake personas to give the mistaken impression that an idea, or a political position, or use of a product, is more common than it really is. What we might perceive to be vibrant political debate could be bots talking to bots. And these capabilities won’t be available just to those with money and power; the AI tools necessary for all of this will be easily available to us all.

#4: Lock-in

Social media companies spend a lot of effort making it hard for you to leave their platforms. It’s not just that you’ll miss out on conversations with your friends. They make it hard for you to take your saved data—connections, posts, photos—and port it to another platform. Every moment you invest in sharing a memory, reaching out to an acquaintance, or curating your follows on a social platform adds a brick to the wall you’d have to climb over to go to another platform.

This concept of lock-in isn’t unique to social media. Microsoft cultivated proprietary document formats for years to keep you using its flagship Office product. Your music service or e-book reader makes it hard for you to take the content you purchased to a rival service or reader. And if you switch from an iPhone to an Android device, your friends might mock you for sending text messages in green bubbles. But social media takes this to a new level. No matter how bad it is, it’s very hard to leave Facebook if all your friends are there. Coordinating everyone to leave for a new platform is impossibly hard, so no one does.

Similarly, companies creating AI-powered personal digital assistants will make it hard for users to transfer that personalization to another AI. If AI personal assistants succeed in becoming massively useful time-savers, it will be because they know the ins and outs of your life as well as a good human assistant; would you want to give that up to make a fresh start on another company’s service? In extreme examples, some people have formed close, perhaps even familial, bonds with AI chatbots. If you think of your AI as a friend or therapist, that can be a powerful form of lock-in.

Lock-in is an important concern because it results in products and services that are less responsive to customer demand. The harder it is for you to switch to a competitor, the more poorly a company can treat you. Absent any way to force interoperability, AI companies have less incentive to innovate in features or compete on price, and fewer qualms about engaging in surveillance or other bad behaviours.

#5: Monopolization

Social platforms often start off as great products, truly useful and revelatory for their consumers, before they eventually start monetizing and exploiting those users for the benefit of their business customers. Then the platforms claw back the value for themselves, turning their products into truly miserable experiences for everyone. This is a cycle that Cory Doctorow has powerfully written about and traced through the history of Facebook, Twitter, and more recently TikTok.

The reason for these outcomes is structural. The network effects of tech platforms push a few firms to become dominant, and lock-in ensures their continued dominance. The incentives in the tech sector are so spectacularly, blindingly powerful that they have enabled six megacorporation’s (Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook parent Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia) to command a trillion dollars each of market value—or more. These firms use their wealth to block any meaningful legislation that would curtail their power. And they sometimes collude with each other to grow yet fatter.

This cycle is clearly starting to repeat itself in AI. Look no further than the industry poster child OpenAI, whose leading offering, ChatGPT, continues to set marks for uptake and usage. Within a year of the product’s launch, OpenAI’s valuation had skyrocketed to about $90 billion.

OpenAI once seemed like an “open” alternative to the megacorps—a common carrier for AI services with a socially oriented nonprofit mission. But the Sam Altman firing-and-rehiring debacle at the end of 2023, and Microsoft’s central role in restoring Altman to the CEO seat, simply illustrated how venture funding from the familiar ranks of the tech elite pervades and controls corporate AI. In January 2024, OpenAI took a big step toward monetization of this user base by introducing its GPT Store, wherein one OpenAI customer can charge another for the use of its custom versions of OpenAI software; OpenAI, of course, collects revenue from both parties. This sets in motion the very cycle Doctorow warns about.

In the middle of this spiral of exploitation, little or no regard is paid to externalities visited upon the greater public—people who aren’t even using the platforms. Even after society has wrestled with their ill effects for years, the monopolistic social networks have virtually no incentive to control their products’ environmental impact, tendency to spread misinformation, or pernicious effects on mental health. And the government has applied virtually no regulation toward those ends.

Likewise, few or no guardrails are in place to limit the potential negative impact of AI. Facial recognition software that amounts to racial profiling, simulated public opinions supercharged by chatbots, fake videos in political ads—all of it persists in a legal grey area. Even clear violators of campaign advertising law might, some think, be let off the hook if they simply do it with AI.

Mitigating the risks

The risks that AI poses to society are strikingly familiar, but there is one big difference: it’s not too late. This time, we know it’s all coming. Fresh off our experience with the harms wrought by social media, we have all the warning we should need to avoid the same mistakes.

The biggest mistake we made with social media was leaving it as an unregulated space. Even now—after all the studies and revelations of social media’s negative effects on kids and mental health, after Cambridge Analytica, after the exposure of Russian intervention in our politics, after everything else—social media in the US remains largely an unregulated “weapon of mass destruction.” Congress will take millions of dollars in contributions from Big Tech, and legislators will even invest millions of their own dollars with those firms, but passing laws that limit or penalize their behaviour seems to be a bridge too far.

We can’t afford to do the same thing with AI, because the stakes are even higher. The harm social media can do stems from how it affects our communication. AI will affect us in the same ways and many more besides. If Big Tech’s trajectory is any signal, AI tools will increasingly be involved in how we learn and how we express our thoughts. But these tools will also influence how we schedule our daily activities, how we design products, how we write laws, and even how we diagnose diseases. The expansive role of these technologies in our daily lives gives for-profit corporations opportunities to exert control over more aspects of society, and that exposes us to the risks arising from their incentives and decisions.

The good news is that we have a whole category of tools to modulate the risk that corporate actions pose for our lives, starting with regulation. Regulations can come in the form of restrictions on activity, such as limitations on what kinds of businesses and products are allowed to incorporate AI tools. They can come in the form of transparency rules, requiring disclosure of what data sets are used to train AI models or what new preproduction-phase models are being trained. And they can come in the form of oversight and accountability requirements, allowing for civil penalties in cases where companies disregard the rules.

The single biggest point of leverage governments have when it comes to tech companies is antitrust law. Despite what many lobbyists want you to think, one of the primary roles of regulation is to preserve competition—not to make life harder for businesses. It is not inevitable for OpenAI to become another Meta, an 800-pound gorilla whose user base and reach are several times those of its competitors. In addition to strengthening and enforcing antitrust law, we can introduce regulation that supports competition-enabling standards specific to the technology sector, such as data portability and device interoperability. This is another core strategy for resisting monopoly and corporate control.

Additionally, governments can enforce existing regulations on advertising. Just as the US regulates what media can and cannot host advertisements for sensitive products like cigarettes, and just as many other jurisdictions exercise strict control over the time and manner of politically sensitive advertising, so too could the US limit the engagement between AI providers and advertisers.

Lastly, we should recognize that developing and providing AI tools does not have to be the sovereign domain of corporations. We, the people and our government, can do this too. The proliferation of open-source AI development in 2023, successful to an extent that startled corporate players, is proof of this. And we can go further, calling on our government to build public-option AI tools developed with political oversight and accountability under our democratic system, where the dictatorship of the profit motive does not apply.

Which of these solutions is most practical, most important, or most urgently needed is up for debate. We should have a vibrant societal dialogue about whether and how to use each of these tools. There are lots of paths to a good outcome.

The problem is that this isn’t happening now, particularly in the US. And with a looming presidential election, conflict spreading alarmingly across Asia and Europe, and a global climate crisis, it’s easy to imagine that we won’t get our arms around AI any faster than we have (not) with social media. But it’s not too late. These are still the early years for practical consumer AI applications. We must and can do better.

Feature Image Credit: STEPHANIE ARNETT/MITTR | GETTY, ENVATO

Nathan E. Sanders archive page& Bruce Schneier

Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist and an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and a fellow and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Sourced from MIT Technology Review

 

 

Nathan E. Sanders archive page& Bruce Schneierarchive page

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Reach Your Fullest Potential with These Extraordinary Daily Habits

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By Guy Kawasaki & Madisun Nuismer

Below, co-authors Guy and Madisun share six key insights from their new book, Think Remarkable: 9 Extraordinary Habits that will Transform Your Life and Illuminate the World. Listen to the audio version—read by Guy—in the Next Big Idea App.

Think Remarkable Guy Kawasaki Madisun Nuismer Next Big Idea Club

1. Sweat the small stuff.

People are judging you all the time. They judge you not just by the big things, like your degree and your work experience, but also by tiny things that you may not even notice anymore. For example, what’s your email address? Are you still hanging out on aol.com? Do you still have a yahoo.com email address? That’s embarrassing.

Another small detail. What does your avatar look like? Is it a picture where your face is cropped out of a wedding reception? Is it a picture where you pose with your frat brothers or sorority sisters, or have you taken a good portrait photo that shows you’re likable, competent, and trustworthy?

2. Adopt a growth mindset.

A growth mindset means you believe that you can learn new skills. You can have new interests; you can develop yourself. You are but a slice of time. Time changes, and you will change with it.

A fixed mindset is quite the opposite. It means that you believe that you are what you are. You’re not going to be any better and you’re not going to be any worse.
Adopting a growth mindset means believing you can learn new things. You can assume new tasks—you can do all those things. If you want to make a difference, and if you want to be remarkable, you have to have a growth mindset.

3. Make yourself indispensable.

Andrew Zimmern is a famous chef who had a TV series called Bizarre Foods, where he went all over the world eating bizarre things. When he was about thirty, he became the world’s oldest intern. He had three internships at once. His career advice is this: wherever you are, make yourself indispensable.

“Indispensable people get more opportunities.”

This will open up opportunities for you. This will mean that you will get more attention. How do you make yourself indispensable? You do whatever it takes.

When he was working for the TV station, they asked for someone to help lay cable, so he raised his hand. They asked for someone to set up lighting, and he raised his hand. They asked someone to help with video editing, and he raised his hand. Pretty soon, he was indispensable. And guess what? Indispensable people get more opportunities. You have to pay the price. It’s that simple. Make yourself indispensable.

4. Do good shit.

There is no better way to say this. If you want to be remarkable, it’s not about positioning yourself as a thought leader or a visionary. What you have to do is do good shit.

This means you’ll make a great product. You make a great service. You’ll make a great team. You’ll build something, and you’ll make a difference. You don’t have to be Steve Jobs. You don’t have to be Jane Goodall. You don’t have to be Elon Musk.

You can change one person, one team, or one classroom. This person can even be yourself, but you have to do good shit. When you do good shit, the people around you will have no other choice but to think that you are remarkable.

5. Fulfil your success oblige.

There’s a concept called noblesse oblige, which refers to the obligations of the nobility to help people less fortunate. My father explained this concept to me when I was in high school, and I have come not to like the term. It has a haughty, upper-crust arrogance to it—“I’m such a wonderful noble person that I realize I have to help you peons”—which is a total crap attitude.

Rather than fulfilling your noblesse oblige, I suggest that you fulfill your success oblige. This means that when you are successful, you realize, yes, it’s because of your growth and your grit, and you’re making yourself indispensable and you’re doing good shit—but it’s also because lots of people helped you. Lots of lucky things came your way. You are not solely responsible for your success. Because you aren’t solely responsible, you understand that you have a moral obligation to help others. You went through a door to become successful. Your obligation is to leave the door open—even better, make the door bigger so other people can enter. That’s your success oblige. I believe that in the first third of your life, you’re underpaid. In the second third of your life, you’re overpaid. The last part of your life is when you build your legacy. This is when you pay it back.

I interviewed over 200 remarkable people for my podcast. And guess what? Everybody came to the end of their career and realized, “I need to help the next generation.” You progress through growth, grit, and grace—those are the three stages of becoming a remarkable person.

6. Make your decisions right.

So much of our effort—data wonks, analysis, and all this great quantitative stuff—is about making the right decision. It’s as if, with enough work and data, you can make the absolutely singular right decision. I think you are deceiving yourself if you believe that’s how the world works.

Instead, I recommend that you take your best shot at a decision, knowing full well that it could be wrong. There are always unforeseen or mistaken circumstances. Who knows, lightning strikes and your decision is wrong.

“[Remarkable people] take whatever decision they made and then work to make it right.”

So rather than focusing only on making the right decision, remarkable people make their decisions right—which means they take whatever decision they made and then work to make it right. That is about implementation. That is about actualization.

I went to a surfing competition in Manhattan Beach about six months ago. The way a surfing competition works is you have a limited amount of minutes, and you have six other people in the water with you. Much of surfing involves looking out to sea and making a decision. Is that the right wave? Is that the right place to sit? Is this the right time to turn and paddle?

I watched my daughter, and on one wave, she was sitting in the absolute wrong place. She not only couldn’t make the right decision, the decision was made for her. This wave just came down and was going to crash on her. It looked like impending doom, but what did she do? She turned and paddled. Instead of focusing on making the right decision, she made the decision right. She turned, paddled, and caught the wave.

With all of these insights, you will make a difference. You’ll be remarkable, and you will murder your mediocrity.

To listen to the audio version read by co-author Guy Kawasaki, download the Next Big Idea App today:

By Guy Kawasaki & Madisun Nuismer

Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. Formerly, he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google and chief evangelist of Apple. He is the author of APE, What the Plus!, Enchantment, and nine other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University, an MBA from UCLA, and an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Madisun Nuismer is the producer of the Remarkable People podcast. She has a BA in Public Health from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She also attended the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and is a certified holistic health coach.

Sourced from Next Big Idea Club

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New email rules from Google and Yahoo will change your inbox (and your communication strategy)

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BY AMIT BENDOV

New policies signal a major change for brands that have relied on ‘spray-and-pray’ techniques to drive sales.

We all know the pain of misguided sales spam—and lots of it—cluttering our inboxes. Whether it’s emails to our personal addresses that assume our buying habits of a decade ago are the same today, or sales pitches to our work addresses that are completely irrelevant to our roles and responsibilities, we’ve become overwhelmed with poorly targeted emails. Statista found that spam accounted for 45% of the 333 billion emails sent daily in 2022, while research from Gong shows that only 4% of emails are ever even opened.

Why are business leaders still accepting this antiquated and ineffective way of doing things?

This month marks the beginning of new policies from Google and Yahoo to limit the bulk email sends that result in billions of irrelevant and poorly crafted sales pitches emailed daily. This signals a major change for brands that have relied on “spray-and-pray” techniques to drive sales. And for B2B brands, this too should be a wake-up call.

  • How will these new policies reshape how sales teams think about attracting customers?
  • Will mass emails become generally unacceptable in our professional inboxes, in addition to our personal ones?
  • And how will the disruption of a commonly used sales tactic impact bottom lines?

THE HISTORY OF SPAM

The first bulk emails were sent by Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for a computer company, to promote the company’s products to some 400 people. Thuerk said in a 2007 interview that “complaints started coming in almost immediately” after sending the emails, but more importantly, the company “sold $13 million or $14 million worth of DEC machines through that email campaign.” With that, cold emailing as a sales tactic was born.

In the decades that followed, the practice grew, and email marketing tools enabled sales teams to contact an ever-growing list of potential customers, forsaking personalized outreach for a broader pool of recipients.

While more data-driven approaches to sales emails have been introduced over the years, the overwhelming volume of irrelevant sales pitches has led to widespread fatigue. In fact, Gong’s research found that 87% of buyers say that the emails they receive are not relevant to them.

This practice can convert to sales. Even if only 4% of bulk emails are opened, that translates to 40,000 people opening those emails for every million sent by a salesperson. But companies need to ask themselves if irritating and alienating the other 960,000 people is an acceptable sacrifice. And, even more importantly, are they missing out on valuable opportunities by not sending thoughtful, personalized messages to the appropriate buyers out there?

RETHINKING SALES SPAM WITH AI

The technology industry is at a pivotal moment. AI is transforming the ways we work, live, and interact with each other. Now bulk emails can be drafted by generative artificial intelligence far more quickly than by a marketing and sales pro.

The potential impact for teams sending out large email campaigns is significant. Will the rise of gen AI mean that inboxes are flooded even more? Can AI make a difference in how these companies communicate with prospects?

AI can also bring new knowledge and perspective. Using AI to draft emails based on a few lines of context isn’t new, innovative, or effective. But done right, it can actually help companies cut down on the volume, and instead target the right customers with the right message.

We’re seeing new applications of AI that capture and analyse customer interactions to create content and thoughtfully personalize outreach based on a holistic view of the relationship. These applications might be the new approach that could reshape how sales teams develop and assess their outreach programs, from the initial outreach to a prospective customer . . . and over the entire relationship.

The era of relying on volume over strategic precision is over.

AI as a blanket solution won’t solve this problem for businesses. Not all of these tools are created equally, and those without the proper knowledge will only exacerbate the problem. However, there is potential for well-designed AI tools to help teams change their approach.

HOW TO CREATE CHANGE

Google’s and Yahoo’s rules are a positive first step to end spray-and-pray practices, but sales teams will need to do more. The good news is that there’s a path forward that not only doesn’t harm the bottom line but also can improve it.

Business leaders need to stop accepting this practice as the status quo and rebuild these programs from the ground up. Teams have often been measured and evaluated on “activity metrics”—how many emails have been sent, how many phone calls have been made. They should instead be measured by meetings booked and qualified opportunities, giving sales teams the motivation, time, and resources to focus on targeted, relevant outreach.

Similarly, leaders should make sure that their teams haven’t become over reliant on email. Research from McKinsey shows that the number of channels that B2B companies use to interact with other businesses has doubled in the past five years, and includes email, phone, web conference, chat, and social. Leaders should ensure that their teams can meet those potential customers where they want to be met.

The onus is on business leaders to evolve their strategies. While a spray-and-pray approach may have worked in the past, the tides are changing, and to stay competitive, businesses need to take a step back and reimagine how their sales teams operate. And they need to do it soon, before their last emails go unanswered.

Feature Image Credit: 84 Video/Unsplash

BY AMIT BENDOV

Sourced from Fast Company

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