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How to use business emails as an additional marketing channel

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An email has long been the most efficient way to communicate in business. This channel has numerous advantages comparing to chats, phone calls, or live meetings. An ability to exchange any kind of content is arguably the most valuable aspect here, which is what makes email a productive marketing channel.

However, many business people don’t know how to implement marketing messages into their email communication effectively. With up to 25 emails sent every day, how do you make them all promote your product or service?

Problems with using email signature marketing channel

Email signatures have long been used for achieving greater results with email marketing campaigns. However, according to Newoldstamp’s business email marketing report, 41% of email signature users install them for branding and increasing business visibility only.

Why is it so? Well, an email signature is usually considered a nice addition to business correspondence. You can create a professional one, adding your company website and logo, as well as social media pages. But does it really amplify marketing efforts?

Marketing vs. Branding

Surely, branding is an essential part of marketing. But it doesn’t end there, not with email signatures. In addition to simply having your company information dangling at the bottom of every email, you can use email signatures to promote content or bring value to the recipients.

This implies updating signatures more than once in a while, which seems to be a problem for 35% of users (according to the same report). People simply don’t know why they should update their signatures more often.

What makes email signature marketing difficult?

Among the biggest difficulties that people face when setting up email signature marketing are generating leads, tracking the performance, and setting marketing KPIs. Which means they don’t consider email signatures a converting channel.

Learn to use the most of your email signature marketing

So, how can you make your business email signatures perform as a part of the marketing strategy? Actually, it’s not that hard. The first thing you need to do is realize that this small addition to emails is a complete marketing tool.

The obvious aspect of setting up an email signature is branding. Your logo, company colours, website link, and social media icons are essential. Once you have that added to your signature, as well as your employees’, you can proceed.

Set up email signature banner campaigns

Many email signature marketing tools allow users to choose a special promo banner or upload one. But what makes this whole banner routine really worth the time is scheduling and changing them according to specific variables.

For example, you can have a default banner that will always be in your team’s email signatures. And when you have a new feature or a nice blog post that you want to promote, you can set a banner dedicated to this matter. In this way, you get an advertising element right in your emails.

Create different signatures for different departments

Email signature management does not necessarily end on setting up identical signatures for everyone. Separate your marketing, sales, HR departments and create unique signatures for each member of the specific group.

Obviously, sales and HR have different things to promote. For instance, any sales manager should have a call schedule button in their email signature while HRs could link new vacancies to the banner in the email footer.

Email signature marketing and business correspondence

Now that we’ve mentioned all the benefits of email signature marketing, you might be wondering how to use it effectively in your daily communication.

The most important takeaway is that you should update your email signature regularly. There’s always going to be some content that you will need to promote. As email signature marketing takes little to no time and resources, use it to its most.

Change your email signature banner to keep it up-to-date. Every single email sent may result in a conversion. So, help your recipients by guiding them to the content you need them to see.

In addition to all that, you can try A/B testing different variations of signatures. Sometimes a CTA button will be enough and other cases might require a distinct email signature banner. Try to find out what fits your style of communication.

Conclusion

Email signature marketing is a powerful yet underrated channel. As the Newoldstamp business email marketing report suggests, too many people don’t use its full potential. Hopefully, this small guide will help you realize how beneficial an email signature can be and how to utilize them efficiently.

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Sourced from TechGenyz

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3 Ways Covid-19 Has Pushed Brands to Reevaluate Social Strategies

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Marketing on platforms has a renewed focus on communities and tone

For years, social media teams for brands all over the world advocated for resources to be more than just a distribution channel for marketing assets. They presented data, they touted growth numbers, and they elevated the best of their community content to executives to show just how powerful these channels were.

How do I know this? I was one of them. And I work with these types of organizations every day still as a consultant.

Up until a few months ago, the teams looking after these social channels were managing brands. Distributing brand messaging from a larger campaign, maintaining a presence on social to check a box or operating on a shoestring budget to build their social-first strategy inch by inch. Then Covid-19 hit; their brands started pulling advertising spend from out of home, TV, radio and all of the other traditional avenues a brand would allocate money to. Agencies were put on notice, and we collectively entered an entirely new space as marketers.

With everyone sheltered in place, where would attention turn? In that moment, every brand’s social media strategy went from nice to have to a necessity.

Acknowledge reality

In the first two weeks of the pandemic, channels went dark. Those that posted (some of which was likely scheduled posts) felt the wrath of Twitter, but most brands took a step back and assessed the chaos that had engulfed our world. Then brands, in the trusty hands of their social media organizations, started to emerge. They acknowledged the crisis, offered to help, pointed their communities toward government messaging and reiterated the messages we were seeing everywhere: shelter in place, social distance, wash your hands, stay safe.

Building a creative muscle that will rely less on the creation of content but instead on curation of content will serve every marketing team, not just the social team.

In that moment brands reflected the reality their communities of followers faced without hyper produced imagery, influencers, fictional storylines—just reality. We didn’t need the fluff; we needed acknowledgment. And brands did their best to support us in this new reality.

With every executive now increasing their focus on one of their only active channels (social), another big shift emerged from the chaos: comment sections and replies needed to be addressed and were exposed as underutilized or underfunded. With everyone in an organization now focused on these posts, brands increased their presence in finally treating these connections as conversations, ranging from how they can help or be of service to content creation. 

Curation versus creation 

The evolution of content hasn’t happened slowly during the pandemic. It felt like it happened overnight, and honestly, it’s still evolving.

Just take a look at your favorite brands. For many, you can visibly see where the shutdown started. One day they were posting beautiful product imagery, then—boom!—it’s all information on how to wash your hands, how they’re here for you during shelter in place, how they’re creating PPE.

Then something interesting happened. As creative agencies and brands wrestled with not being able to go into a studio and produce the beautiful imagery we were accustomed to, many brands looked inward. We don’t know how long we’ll socially distance or when we can even go back into the office. Building a creative muscle that will rely less on the creation of content but instead on curation of content will serve every marketing team, not just the social team.

The pandemic has prioritized the need for community content and also the executive attention necessary to make sure this continues on through the global recovery and beyond in the brand’s plans for marketing. 

Shattering the social ceiling

As social media teams within each brand have adjusted to this new normal they face heightened visibility from the organization, an increased pressure to post, scrutiny normally saved for a TV campaign (for a single post), more executive communication to show what’s working and what’s not. While this is all an adjustment, it’s also an opportunity to up-level the internal awareness and showcase the discipline of what it takes to run a social media team.

These teams will come out of the pandemic highly experienced and with a newfound respect from peers within a marketing organization and across the leadership ranks. They kept the brand going, they engaged the people that the brand serves, and they evolved the brand.

As we continue our journey sheltered in place and wait for the pandemic to give us a glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel, I encourage everyone to continue to learn, evolve and share insights with your teams and those across our industry.

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Sourced from ADWEEK

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UK ad spend hits lowest ebb since 2009 crash, but recovery is set for 2021

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By Rebecca Stewart

Over the past three months, UK marketing budgets have declined at their fastest rate since the 2008/9 global financial crisis. However, marketers’ spending is poised to start recovering from the shockwaves of the pandemic by 2021.

According to the quarterly Bellwether report from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) – which draws data from a panel of around 300 UK marketing professionals from the UK’s top 1000 firms – the spread of Covid-19 has caused sweeping cuts to all forms of marketing activity from UK firms.

The IPA found that a net balance of -6.1% of UK companies had slashed their budgets since the start of the year. The sum was calculated by tallying the percentage of respondents showing an improved revision to their marketing budgets minus those that indicated a fall. 25% of respondents recorded a budget cut, compared to 18.9% signalling growth.

The figure marks a notable swing from the final quarter of 2019 when the net balance stood at +4.0%, buoyed by a degree of political certainty presented by Boris Johnson’s decisive election victory. The figures also come at a time when big global brands including Coca-Cola, Budweiser and Airbnb are freezing or reallocating advertising spend.

When it comes to which areas have been impacted most, market research budgets were identified as the worst hit by Covid-19 cutbacks, with a net balance of -21.0% of companies reporting a downturn.

This was closely followed by events at -15.9%. Elsewhere, PR was the next worst off at -14.3%.

Though not a single strand of the marketing mix has seen growth since January, for British businesses, direct marketing and sales promotions were among those to observe the slowest reductions, with net balances of -6.6% and -7.2% respectively.

There have been repeated warnings from the likes of Warc that Covid-19 could bring about a global ad recession. The accompanying suggestion is that marketers should invest in brand-building campaigns if they wish to emerge from the crisis in a strong position, a strategy that’s been adopted by the likes of clothing retailer Next. However, the IPA noted that the key brand-building category (which includes online video, TV, cinema and radio) had recorded its strongest downward revision since 2009 at -9.9%.

‘A sobering snapshot’

For the IPA’s director general Paul Bainsfair, the numbers offer a “sobering snapshot” of the initial impact the global pandemic has had on advertisers’ budgets.

He observed how fieldwork for the Q1 Bellwether Report closed just a few days after UK government enacted the official lockdown, adding: “These are undoubtedly the toughest overall trading times that any business and indeed any marketer will have ever experienced, but while we suspect the fuller, sharper extent of this global pandemic to be captured in Q2 data, the hope from this report is that we will see a more upbeat end to the year.”

Given the extreme degree of uncertainty surrounding the UK at present, the IPA Bellwether Report ad spend forecasts could be subject to “substantial revision” in the future as the impact of coronavirus on the UK economy becomes clearer in line with the release of official data statistics, which at present are lacking.

The IPA Bellwether Report has used IHS Markit’s latest forecasts for GDP, consumer spending and business investment which assume an extended lockdown to May but then a gradual reopening of parts of the economy.

IHS Markit estimates that GDP will contract by -4.3% in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, under which scenario the historical relationship with ad spend implies a -13.7% decline in expenditure. However, as the current situation is clearly unprecedented, there is an unusually high degree of uncertainty pinned to these forecasts, with risks tilted to the downside.

Consequently, 2021 may also pose a difficult year for marketers as the recovery spills over and Brexit negotiations creep back in. The IPA Bellwether Report forecasts that ad spend will rise modestly in 2021 (by +1.0%), before seeing more robust growth in 2022 onwards when the economy is more stable.

To achieve this return to growth will require UK marketers to make “bold decisions,” asserted Bainsfair, who acknowledged that when recession looms it is “understandable” if businesses try and shore up short-term profits by tightening the purse strings.

“However, as our evidence from past downturns shows, unless companies are saving cash simply to survive, or because they can no longer supply advertised services, cutting ad budgets – relative to competitor spend – is a high-risk strategy,” he went on.

“Such a move exposes firms to losing market share, forgoing sales and delaying the recovery of profits in the long term. Those brands that hold their nerve will gain extra share of voice which will achieve competitive gains.”

‘Survival mode’

The Bellwether data also showed a sharp deterioration in both company-specific and industry-wide financial prospects during the first quarter. This will come as a blow to agency giants, who in line with diminishing client budgets have had to introduce a series of cost-cutting measures to safeguard their own businesses.

Sentiment around own-company prospects moved into negative territory, reversing the marginal improvement seen at the end of last year which followed the partial decline of political uncertainty after the general election.

A net balance of -26.0% of firms felt less optimistic towards their company-specific financial prospects, down sharply from +1.0% in the previous quarter to the lowest since the global financial crisis in 2009. Almost half (46%) of panel members were pessimistic, compared to approximately 20% who said they still foresee growth.

Fran Cowan, vice-president of marketing, International Advertising Association (IAA) the report, though far from optimistic, offers an opportunity to apply learnings from previous times of crisis.

“Companies that maintain some marketing efforts will most likely reap the rewards and rebound quicker,” she said, agreeing with Bainsfair. “However, it’s important to do this in a controlled way. Now is the time to carefully consider where marketing budget is best spent, to look after employees, partners and suppliers as well as protect brand images.”

She continued: “Luckily in the UK, we have an industry that pulls together during these times. We’ve already seen some great collaborative thinking and initiatives that support the notion of ‘advertising for good’.”

Joe Hayes, Economist at IHS Markit and author of the report said firms are still very much in survival mode, reallocating funds to service liabilities and keep the business alive.

“This is critical to ensure that they can keep staff on the payroll, which will give their businesses the best chance to recover when the time comes. It will also support the economy on a broader scale if people remain employed and are earning, as they will be in the position to go out and spend when the lockdown is over.

“Positively, it seems that a number of firms expect a quick economic recovery and are planning to boost marketing budgets later in the year.”

Feature Image Credit: The IPA found that a net balance of -6.1% of UK companies had slashed their budgets since the start of the year

By Rebecca Stewart

Sourced from The Drum

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Coca-Cola slams brakes on ad spend: ‘There is limited effectiveness to brand marketing’

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By Katie Deighton

The Coca-Cola Company is looking to cushion the Covid-19-led decline of its bars and restaurants business by reducing marketing costs globally, and, in some markets, coming “off-air” entirely in Q2 2020.

The company reported global volumes were down by 25% in the first quarter of 2020. This was driven primarily by a substantial decline in its away-from-home business, which comprises trade orders from bars, restaurants, movie theaters, sports stadiums and on-the-go retail such as convenience stores.

James Quincey, Coca-Cola’s chairman and chief executive, noted this was partially offset in the US by a rise in drive-thru and carryout orders, as well as e-commerce and grocery stockpiling in some developed markets.

However, with lockdown halting out-of-home events and minimizing grocery trips for the foreseeable future, the company now predicts its second quarter to be “the most severely impacted” of the financial year.

Coca-Cola has thus cut brand marketing – partially to reduce costs and partially because it is skeptical of return on marketing investment at this time.

“We’re being … mindful about the right level of brand marketing and new product launches given the consumer mindset across market,” Quincey told investors yesterday (21 April). “We’ve developed and determined that in this initial phase there is limited effectiveness to broad-based brand marketing.

“With this in mind, we’ve reduced our direct consumer communication we’ll pause sizable marketing campaigns through the early stages of the crisis and reengage when the timing is right. These plans will vary from market to market with our earliest reengagement focusing on the recovery in China.”

He added: “Staying close to our consumers in a relevant way is a key guiding principle, and staying disciplined to demand an appropriate ROI is a close second.”

John Murphy, the company’s chief financial officer, confirmed that in its quest to “really stay close to the consumer in a relevant way”, Coca-Cola had made the decision come “off-air” in “many markets”.

He explained the brand is implementing this Q2 shutdown in order to give its various markets more flexibility with marketing strategies and budgets later in the year, dependent on when and how each country reopens for business and events.

“We have had a number of communications announcing that we will take a pause for now while we focus our efforts on our communities and on other priorities and that we’ll be back later in the year,” he said, alluding to the “millions of dollars of planned marketing spend” that Coca-Cola says it has donated to pay for the personal protective equipment (PPE) and beverages for healthcare workers.

Despite the company’s skepticism over brand marketing during coronavirus, it is making a concerted effort to enhance its presence on the shelf. The company has “redeployed” its ground sales reps and trained them in merchandising.

Coca-Cola hopes this will result in “increased share of displays of stock on the floor”, aided by a “ruthless” prioritization of core products and key brands to “help customers simplify their supply chains.

“We’re also taking this opportunity to reshape our innovation pipeline to eliminate a longer tail of smaller projects and allocate resources to fewer, larger, more scalable and more relevant solutions for this environment,” added Quincey.

The company’s decision to halt brand marketing is in stark contrast to the strategy of Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s largest advertisers. The CPG business is planning to increase spending on advertising during the coronavirus lockdown period in order to “maintain mental … availability to the greatest extent possible”.

Feature Image Credit: Coke’s Super Bowl 2020 spot was a celebrity-heavy affair

By Katie Deighton

Sourced from The Drum

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Secret Cinema pivots to Zoom experiences

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By Jennifer Faull

Secret Cinema’s plans for 2020 involved a much-anticipated show for Dirty Dancing, breaking the American market and bringing its first slate of Disney films to life following a mega tie-up with the movie giant. But amid Covid-19, the year ahead looks very different.

“It’s like winter has arrived, there’s a slowing down for three months, six months… I’m not sure,” says chief executive Max Alexander, who was facing a different kind of pressure just a few months ago when he revealed his ambitious plans to expand the experiential company.

After receiving private equity backing from Active Partners’ $131m fund and attracting industry heavyweights like Alexander, IMG veteran Alex Ward and The Mill and Copa90 exec Damien Macaulay, it inked tie-ups with Netflix and Disney to act as a pseudo ‘experiential creative agency’ to plan events around their most popular titles.

A stroke of luck meant that it had wrapped up its successful showing of Stranger Things just weeks before the coronavirus outbreak in London. Meanwhile, as the situation improves in China, Alexander is hopeful that the Casino Royale show in Shanghai will re-open. The plan to bring Dirty Dancing to life this summer has not been cancelled, though he is anticipating that dates will change.

“But in America the brakes were pulled hard,” he continues. “We were so ready to go and now it’s hard to get people to return calls about property we can’t possibly visit in LA and Las Vegas.”

The partnerships with Netflix and Disney are still holding strong, but events are likely to take place deep into next year, even if circumstances on both sides of the Atlantic improve.

Perhaps surprisingly for an experimental company that can’t put on any experiences, Secret Cinema has not been forced to make redundancies to its team of over 40. And that’s largely thanks to a quick pivot to bring “congregational storytelling” into the digital world.

Last week, it held its first Zoom party. 80s themed, hosted by actor Jackson and two DJs, it sold over 1,000 tickets at £5 a pop to raise money for the Trussell Trust, a nationwide poverty charity and food bank network.

“It was wonderful. We had 600 browsers open at any one-time. People were playing games, we had a dance-off and we encouraged people to dress up. It was amazing.”

Since then, it’s forged a deal with ice-cream giant Häagen-Dazs for an eight-week run of virtual screening experiences. Dubbed ‘Secret Sofa’, it will take place at 7.30pm every Friday and feature bespoke content, character narratives and interactive elements inspired by the evening’s film.

The first screening will be for Wes Anderson opus The Grand Budapest Hotel. Much like its live-action experience, Secret Cinema will issue those that have signed up with an email containing instructions on what kind of costume to wear, the sing-a-long and music playlists to rehearse, dance routines and prop making advice.

Recipients of the newsletter will also be given a code that allows them to order the chosen Häagen-Dazs flavour of the week online via a collaboration with Amazon Prime Now.

Finally, a Secret Sofa Facebook group will host audience discussions about the film and encourage people to share their pictures from the night.

“What we’re trying to do is, firstly, not to overstate our own importance in people’s lives,” says Alexander. “What we’re doing is kind of silly right? It’s not serious, but it is important to add some kind of structure and appointment to people’s lives; come, dress up and have a dance. We’ll get better at it, embellish it and add more as we get up and running. But right now, it’s put a hat on, grab an ice-cream and watch a movie.”

Though born from necessity amid the coronavirus chaos, Alexander has every intention of keeping the format when life inevitably returns to normal. Having a digital extension of the brand was always on its agenda, it just hadn’t figured out exactly how to execute it.

“It’s the kind of thing we’ve wanted to do this over the past few years and have never had the time to get our act together because we’re always on the treadmill of the next show. But we have a loyal base and we’ve wanted to offer more than just a couple of shows a year,” he says.

“We’ll keep going after. Why wouldn’t we? If this does appeal to people, it’s not a huge overhead for us to deliver and for people to consume.”

Feature Image Credit: Secret Cinema

By Jennifer Faull

Sourced from The Drum

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The head of marketing for a UK urban-gardening startup explains how strong brand recognition helps him grow his team

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By Dominick Reuter

  • A startup’s brand can be one of the most valuable assets for growing its team.
  • “People want to work for a cool, exciting company that they’ve heard of,” said Franky Athill, the head of marketing for Patch Plants, a popular urban gardening startup in London.
  • Athill was Patch’s fourth team member, and it has since added more than 40 others.
  • He shared his advice with Business Insider about two key things to remember when it’s time to add talent to your startup.
  • This article is part of a series on growing a small business, called “From 1 to 100.”

The search for talent presents a significant challenge for many startups, and the ability to recruit the best people is one of the most critical factors for success.

Startups with strong brand engagement can have an advantage in this respect by reaching a wider field of potential hires.

Franky Athill does exactly that as the head of marketing for Patch Plants, a popular London urban-gardening startup that he has helped grow from four to 45 team members since 2017.

The idea for Patch came about when founder Freddie Blackett was looking for a better way to keep his houseplants alive on the balcony of his girlfriend’s apartment, and he discovered that many other would-be green thumbs in the city shared the same frustration.

After Blackett spent a few years refining the idea in a startup incubator, Athill joined Patch as the fourth employee.

Up to that point, Athill’s career included stints with several other marketing outfits, most notably with famed fashion photographer Mario Testino, whose digital operation he set up and built to 2.8 million subscribers.

Athill spoke with Business Insider about how he uses his marketing channels as a recruiting tool to grow the Patch team.

Use your brand engagement to reach potential hires

Over the past three years, Athill has overseen the growth of the brand’s social reach to more than 200,000 Londoners. Over the same period, he said, daily sales have gone from just 10 to 1,000.

That pool of social followers is also where he has sourced the 40-plus new members of his team.

While a gardening startup may not have the glitz and glamour of a Testino photo shoot, Athill says Patch’s brand engagement is strong. After all, growing your team isn’t simply about finding more people, it’s about finding the right ones.

“That has helped us a huge amount because it means that we’ve been able to hire really good people through our own networks and through our own marketing channels.”

Generating engagement and excitement for your brand is vital for a startup, Athill says, and not only because it drives sales.

“Without it, it’s very hard to compete in the job space for the very best people,” he said. “They want to work for a cool, exciting company that they’ve heard of.”

It all comes down to a numbers game for Athill, who said that reaching a wider audience improves the odds that he will find a good fit to join the team.

Get help from a pro to filter your prospects

Once you’ve amassed a sizable applicant pool, Athill recommended that early-stage startups outsource the screening process to a recruiter as they grow beyond 10 people or so.

“A good recruiter can pay back their weight in gold,” he said. “Use your digital marketing skills and brand to fill a huge funnel [of applicants], and get [the recruiter] to assess that funnel.”

Having an independent perspective can help you save your energy and attention for the most promising candidates.

“Don’t let yourself get in a position where you’re going into interviews hoping that the person is great, because then you’ve left it too late, and now you’re under a lot of pressure to fill that seat,” Athill said.

And there can be a real cost to making a bad match, especially if one of the core leadership has to find a replacement for a new hire that didn’t work out.

“If one person is focused on hiring for a week, that’s a very big distraction. So I would avoid doing that,” Athill said.

By Dominick Reuter

Sourced from Business Insider

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Earth Day Marketing May Be More Important Than Ever

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By Kaley Roshitsh.

“I can’t think of a better time to have an answer to a very difficult question. Why is my brand essential? That’s the lens upon which all your communications should shine.”

Like two peas in a pod, disease outbreaks and natural disasters occur as a consequence of a changing climate. One could even say the upcoming 50th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22 against the backdrop of a pandemic is perfect illustrative timing.

Mother Nature is clashing her cymbals as a lot of commercial activity in the U.S. and Europe falls silent. Even Earth Day, the world’s largest environmental movement based in Washington, D.C., is being forced to go digital with its conference, called “24 Hours of Action.”

But the noise of green-washing, or the usual sustainable product launches, capsule collections and so on, won’t cease on Earth Day regardless of the pandemic.

But there is a change in tune.

“While these uncertain times have put some of our adventures on hold, our fans still count on us to inspire and uplift them,” Erika Gabrielli, senior director of marketing at Teva, told WWD.

Teva, which this spring converted all of its “iconic” webbings to recycled content, is leaning into custom content and a sustainability sweepstakes to re-educate consumers on how they can help to decrease their impact on the planet.

At the same time, it’s providing a reminder of why they matter to their customers, which for the brand is most palpable in the sales uptick in its sandals, hiking styles and — naturally — house slippers.

Ryan Jordan, executive creative director at marketing and communications firm Imre, who has worked on projects for brands such as Under Armour, L’Oréal and Target, among others, believes the messaging stakes are even higher this Earth Day.

“Listen harder and better than you ever have,” he said. “It’s actually the same advice I would have given to brands three months ago, but it’s now more important than ever.”

Listening right now may be as simple as a company showing its compassion, reminding customers that they stand by their employees and aim to help them weather the hardships of the crisis to the best of their abilities.

While he doesn’t believe brands should outright cancel initiatives, especially if they’re really an “awesome game-changer” (although every brand may be biased to think so), he still calls for a rethink.

“I challenge you to do this; ask your target audience what they think. Get them involved in the execution,” said Jordan, adding “actual proof of empathy is not only the right thing to do, it’s good business.”

For some companies, it may just be that marketing campaigns that focus on the upbeat, humorous and self-aware hit the bull’s-eye with younger generations, especially in matters of sustainability and environmentalism, as opposed to the opposite: doom and gloom.

“Find something that works for you and make sure to have fun with it,” said Topper Luciani, chief executive officer and founder of online thrift start-up Goodfair.

Although luxury consignment, rental and resale businesses are dealing with their own set of challenges amid the coronavirus pandemic, Goodfair is seeing booming sales among its predominantly Millennial and Gen Z audience.

The company pulled in $300,000 in sales on Easter Sunday, according to Luciani. What he attributes it to is not simply a shift in consumer behavior but speaking Internet.

What do you meme?

At least for his company, “meme culture is what wins,” said Luciani, who credits the steep sales day to a viral TikTok from the company’s account. “If a brand is not on TikTok, they’re sleeping,” he added. With more than 1 billion users, TikTok has already seen the entry of heritage brands like Ralph Lauren and the christening of Fenty Beauty’s TikTok creative house in March.

meme, earth day, coronavirus

Bundles offered by Goodfair, with a largely Millennial and Gen Z customer base.  Courtesy

Start-ups like Goodfair may be more willing to front the risk and wrestle with the Internet. It offers various thrift bundles on its web site like the “cure corona bundle” retailing for $48 or the “tree hugger bundle” for $65 compiled of entire outfits including sweatpants and Henley shirts in the former and flannels in the case of the latter.

“But it can’t feel forced,” Luciani reiterated.

Speaking of forced, will sustainable capsule collections — often just a piecemeal sustainability effort and exercise in marketing — continue to pass by consumers’ eyes without them evaluating into the respective supply chains?

It depends, but they’re not always too good to be true in the case that brand values actually match up, according to Brendan Synnott, chief executive officer of organic essentials brand Pact.

Calling on a simple recipe of a few star ingredients, a successful capsule collection should mean: sharing the same long-term values and “working with partners that are 100 percent committed to sustainability in everything that they do. It can’t be just 5 percent of your product line,” Synnott said.

That also means shying away from greenwashing or “fakers,” as Synnott puts it.

Pact is pairing with Brooklyn-based label Zero Waste Daniel to release 100-percent organic Fair Trade-certified hoodies and sweat shorts for spring adorned with handmade, upcycled patches by designer Daniel Silverstein.

As with others, the company is broadening its approach, extending Earth Day festivities into a monthlong celebration and more importantly shifting the focus from product to engaging content — showcasing the brand alongside others in the sustainability space.

Doing so virtually is as simple as inviting like-minded sustainability thought-leaders to a joint Instagram Live broadcast, to the detriment of those with their notifications on. Virtual sustainability forums are another trending pursuit among brands small and large.

“As we are in a time of crisis, it’s important to show some of the more positive moments that we can all cling to for a smile,” reiterated Synnott.

Upbeat messaging is important in any case. U.S. unemployment benefits are sought by some 17 million workers who filed for it over the last few weeks, according to the Labor Department, and Coresight Research’s latest weekly U.S. consumer survey published last Wednesday showed a bleak outlook in discretionary shopping.

So this Earth Day, as they sit in lockdown wondering whether anything will ever be the same and spend time evaluating what is essential in their lives, will consumers be looking at the messaging around the 50th anniversary — or the core values of the brands themselves?

Jordan put it bluntly: “I can’t think of a better time to have an answer to a very difficult question. Why is my brand essential? That’s the lens upon which all your communications should shine.”

Feature Image Credit: Many wonder how Earth Day marketing messages will pivot during the pandemic. Courtesy

By Kaley Roshitsh

Sourced from WWD

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How to Convert Someone to Your Cause in 5 Simple Steps

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By David Meltzer

Phillip Stutts discusses the branding and marketing lessons he’s learned from working in politics for the past two decades.

 

Phillip Stutts, founder of Go Big Media and Win Big Media and author of Fire Them Now, shares his thoughts on why the five-step process for branding a politician is the exact same as branding a person, product or service in any other industry. He also shares why customer data is so essential when putting together an impactful advertising campaign.

Stutts and The Playbook host David Meltzer chat about the importance of testing your advertisements before launching a campaign, why businesses should operate with a giving and abundant approach and why they believe in giving prospective clients a free assessment in order to get alignment.

By David Meltzer

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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How To Improve Marketing Personalization, Even With Crappy Data

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By Bruce McMeekin

When marketing teams are forced to use “crappy” data, they risk sending inaccurate or ineffective messages to customers and prospects. When you consider that personalization is a vital technique for businesses looking to draw customers’ attention, this is especially problematic. In fact, customers tend to respond more favorably to emails tailored to their preferences, and brands with mature personalization strategies see increases in revenue.

After all, most customers appreciate when Amazon emails a useful purchase suggestion or when Netflix understands their viewing preferences better than a spouse. These companies — and other personalization-first brands — use behavioral analytics to scrutinize customer behavior, develop personas and present offers with a high probability of converting into sales or improved user experience.

In working with clients across the board at my marketing agency, I’ve found that the art of personalization isn’t as easy to master. According to Experian, the majority of businesses say inaccurate data will impact their ability to provide a great customer experience.

5 Ways To Improve Personalization

Lacking insightful data is tough for any business trying to keep up in the digital age. According to Salesforce’s “State of the Connected Customer,” 73% of customers “expect companies to understand their needs and expectations,” and 62% “expect companies to adapt based on their actions and behavior.” However, you don’t need stellar data resources to practice personalization.

Personalized marketing is nothing new (after all, it’s nice when your favorite restaurant’s sommelier knows you enjoy Super Tuscans and suggests one to try). However, automated personalization now occurs much earlier in the sales process than it used to. If you have crappy data, there are still valuable best practices you can adopt to personalize your communications:

1. Place your non-crappy data sources in an inventory. 

The best place to find trustworthy contact and behavioral data is perhaps your transactional database (think QuickBooks or another accounting platform). Here, you can likely find email or postal addresses, customer or business names, and products or services purchased.

Make sure you focus on recent transactions, as data from the last year is more likely to be accurate. Besides this, focus on records with complete contact information and see if you can obtain any proxy for profitability (if so, consider also assigning a profitability decile). After all, there’s no point in spending marketing time or dollars to acquire low-profit business.

Look for data fields that show how much you know about customers’ needs. For example, if you run a computer servicing business, note which customers use Macs and which use PCs. If you have email addresses, you can get more information from FullContact, FreshAddress, Datanyze or Clearbit. Google Analytics also offers behavioral data, such as how frequently customers visit your site, webpages of interest and more.

2. Use your intuition to build personas. 

If you still can’t summon much confidence in your data, don’t worry. Create your own data by shaping personas from disparate pieces of accurate information and your intuition. Form a narrative around these scraps by answering some simple questions:

• What is this person’s pain point?

• What makes this person happy?

• What makes this person feel successful?

• How can our company help?

Creative teams love this type of information — it helps them craft offers to persuade and engage audiences. You also don’t need clean data to do this (though it helps).

3. Say ‘thank you.’

You’ll know this right away: Every transaction in your sales database represents a customer. With that simple fact, personalize your communication using an appreciative tone. You can also send communication from the manager of the store that customer visited or the employee whom the customer spoke with. Likewise, you can probably find out where customers like to do business, where they live and which website pages interest them most. All of these factors can help personalize your messaging.

Tie in the benefits of your product in a personal way. This could mean appealing to emotions (perhaps helping your audience feel or look better). And when customers visit your website, use cookies to trigger dynamic content based on the pages they visit. From these seemingly dull instruments, you can scratch out a convincing image of who your customers might be and which offers could interest them.

4. Remember that all you need is a single piece of personal information.

The quest for data wealth can be overwhelming — you want to know everything about your customers all at once. But even a single piece of information can be illuminating.

We recently helped a bank identify which of its personal banking customers owned a business. To do this, we scoured LinkedIn and company websites, verified contact information and assessed suitability for a business banking offer. Because this extra step individualized customer messages, it added much more credibility to the marketing campaign: “You trust us with your personal banking. We can help (insert business name) succeed, too.”

Is this tactic too intrusive? Not necessarily: Salesforce’s study also suggests that 62% of millennials and Generation Zers are okay with companies using relevant personal data in a “transparent and beneficial” way.

5. Don’t be afraid to take risks. 

People are understandably nervous around data. Remember that you can afford to take calculated risks in the quest for better personalization. Simply make sure you act ethically and comply with privacy laws.

For example, if you have more than 50% confidence in the personalized content you use, go with it. Perfection is impossible when dealing with marketing data, so it’s okay to be wrong with a minority of prospects in order to move your revenue and market share needles forward.

With customers increasingly expecting personalized communication, you can’t afford to stay frozen in fear. According to the Salesforce study above, half of millennials and Gen Zers usually ignore messages from brands unless they’re personalized — that’s 50% of connected young people shut out of your business before they get a chance to learn more. Don’t let your data insecurities stand in the way.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Bruce McMeekin

Bruce McMeekin is CEO and Founder of BKM Marketing, an integrated marketing agency based in the Boston area.

Sourced from Forbes

 

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Stephan Loerke, Tamara Rogers, Nigel Vaz and more on the next digital disruptions

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By The Drum Reporters

From The Trade Desk to Condé Nast and Puma to PepsiCo, we ask some of the world’s best digital marketers where they think the next big industry shift will come from?

Nigel Vaz, global chief executive officer, Publicis Sapient

If you’re riding (or getting hit by) waves then you’re probably still swimming in the shallows. By which I mean it would be easy to answer that the next big wave is the ability to reach new possibilities in personalization at scale, across touchpoints, through data and machine learning. It’s true, but tells only part of the story. What we are all here to do is not to help clients create a deliverable, but a way to operate and exist so they don’t end up on the receiving end of another company’s disruptive breakthrough. The most compelling conversations I have are with business leaders who aren’t looking for waves, but horizons: people such as Novartis chief executive Vas Narasimhan, whose vision is to move beyond being a pharmaceutical company and to create value for patients and support them through their entire lifecycle. That’s an incredibly powerful and purposeful ambition that requires reimagining that business on a number of fronts, from strategy to experience to the application of data.

Oliver Deane, director of commercial digital, Global

Voice will start to have a huge impact on our daily lives. We will begin to do much more than ask Alexa to play the radio. As we embrace voice to be more productive, we will use our devices to order groceries while we make dinner, have a long-form feature read to us while we exercise and book our train travel while shopping. Much of this technology is already accessible – the wave of disruption in the coming years will be how much voice is used and how regular it becomes within our lives.

Ray Soto, director of emerging tech, Gannett

The digital signs of the next big wave are all around us, but you can’t focus on one without considering the others. I foresee the next big wave will be a convergence of several technologies that solves a problem and delivers an experience worth being a part of. I see it as something that helps us navigate our digital space differently, but provides a more immersive experience and efficiency without a lack of connection we may feel today.

Adam Harris, director of custom solutions, Twitch

I believe live sport is surfing the first wave of digital disruption. Sports often look to expand their reach into different audiences or look for different ways to communicate with existing fans. On top of that you have a host of traditional sports, such as golf and Formula 1, with aging fan bases, contrasted with the eSports scene, which is thriving among younger demographics – just look at the success of the recent Fortnite World Cup.

With eSports’ success as a purely digital-first experience, traditional sports have a huge opportunity. Interactive live environments such as Twitch are made for the kind of communal, passionate tribal experiences live sport delivers. We are already seeing strong engagement in this area with the likes of the NFL, Champions and Europa Leagues, MLS, Rugby League and National Women’s Hockey League all broadcasting live on Twitch.

Luke Davies, senior manager of global yield, Reuters

Data privacy law, again. GDPR is a slow burner and unfortunately our industry’s attempts of adoption have reduced the general user experience quality across the web. For GDPR, and now CCPA in 2020, with the potential for wider uptake across the US market, we can expect to experience changing tides across the next few years.

Simon Gresham Jones, chief digital officer, Condé Nast

On our mobile devices, again. 5G will open up a new frontier of business and creative possibilities for brands. For media and entertainment in particular, there’s an opportunity to re-imagine how we inspire our audiences at scale.

Morten Grubak, executive creative director for northern Europe, Virtue

The intellectual properties of brands. Brands need to be innovative in the products, services and solutions they bring to the world (this is where adding value really gets to live), not just in their communication.

Creative agencies should have as much contact with product development and innovation, not just marketing. We need to prove our value by solving real problems – and not just that, but doing it in surprising and interesting ways to capture the world’s increasingly scarce attention. It’s harder than it sounds. But don’t fret: the world is young.

Alexandra Willis, head of communications, content and digital, AELTC

A continuation of the ability of AI, machine learning and automation to drive personalization: it will just get better and more sophisticated and therefore true choice for the consumer over experience, rather than just customization within rules.

Voice: not being wedded to keyboards will rapidly increase the speed at which things are expected to happen, both in terms of the way we work and how consumers engage.

5G penetration: if it does what it says, it could transform the cost and flexibility of content production in such a way that we move completely away from linear and digital, and have a truly integrated model.

Alysia Borsa, chief marketing and data officer, Meredith

It’s hard to pick just one thing. From a consumer perspective, behaviors continue to evolve and expand to multiple platforms, with voice being a major shift in engagement. From a business perspective, providing personalization and relevancy in a cookieless world is going to be disruptive, and players who have direct relationships with consumers will be best set up to succeed.

Julie Clark, global head of automation revenue and podcast monetization, Spotify

How we leverage and utilize data is going to be a massive disruptor to our industry; we all need to plan for it now rather than allowing it to happen to us. There is also a reimagining happening right now as we start to connect digital back to real-world engagement of consumers. While direct to consumer brands have fundamentally changed purchase behaviors, I do believe human tactile experiences will continue to be fundamental now and into the future. From pop-up store trends to retailers becoming more skilled in connecting their on and offline worlds, I think we are going to have an interesting few years seeing these worlds merge.

Victor Knaap, chief executive officer, MediaMonks

In my opinion the word ‘digital’ needs to be killed soon – everything is digital. Besides that, my prediction is media companies that don’t master programmatic will have a real hard time in the next 12 months. To be frank, I am afraid we all generally expect too much from the near future. Old models die slowly, while we are overlooking the real change that will happen in the long-term. The media, agency and consultancy industry will look completely different in 10 years’ time.

Tamara Rogers, global chief marketing officer, GSK Consumer Healthcare

A truly intelligent internet of things. A world where the devices around you no longer just respond to your instructions, but predict your needs based on the behavioral data patterns they have tracked. For example, your vehicle self-adjusting the seat and heat pads to the optimum position and temperature to ease your back pain, identified as an issue from the way you have been moving during sleep the previous night and your range of mobility since rising. How are brands part of a dynamic system to improve the quality of life?

Aaron Cho, head of digital, IPG Mediabrands Hong Kong

There are growing privacy concerns around the usage of data, while digital properties continue to tighten their data policies. I think these forces might bring about the next big shift in digital marketing for two main reasons. Firstly, the privacy landscape is still changing and the dust has yet to settle – there’s no clear indication about which digital linkages will break and which ones marketers will need to bridge, which affects practices around identity resolution and data-driven audience planning. Secondly, while there are numerous data and tech companies on the market right now, their solutions are mostly still in development in the APAC region and there’s also a very real shortage of talent that understands how to manage their implementation.

Josh Peters, director of data partnerships, BuzzFeed

First-party audience collection and data privacy. They’re intrinsically linked together – as they should be – and companies and brands who handle this well will be big winners. We’re already seeing apps like BigToken helping consumers not just take control of their data but also helping them monetize it themselves. That’s a huge shift in the market – users making money off their own data instead of just companies. This, in turn, makes the data the app holds even more valuable in the market.

For brands and publishers, the ways in which they collect and use audiences is going to be imperative to future success, especially in an industry whose regulatory structure is exponentially increasing in complexity. Tech that makes it easy to collect in areas third-party pixels can’t, that seamlessly connects to privacy compliance frameworks and even the privacy frameworks themselves, will change the way marketers do business. The ones who make it both easy and effective will help change the course of digital marketing soon.

Sean Lyons, global chief executive officer, R/GA

Data privacy. There are a lot of new technologies currently in development that rely on almost unlimited access to people’s behavioral and personal data. What happens when people, and legislators, decide that privacy is more important than personalized messages and services? What happens when these technologies fall into the wrong hands? There is a big opportunity to solve this problem in fair and novel ways.

Mike Scafidi, head of martech, adtech and consumer data, PepsiCo

The next digital disruption will be through establishing trust. This will protect the interests of the consumer and improve the marketer’s ability to have an accurate understanding of the consumer. This will fundamentally disrupt everything we see in the data ecosystem today.

Sujatha Kumar, senior director of marketing, Visa India

I think we are seeing it as we speak. It’s no longer a fragmented market or media, but it’s a fragmented consumer who has a myriad of choices and a short attention span – hence the rise of programmatic ad platforms for dynamic creative optimization. There’s still a long way to go on how these platforms really evolve to serve their purpose – not just to us marketers, but also the end consumer.

The other big disruption will be voice – how it will become the key enabler and how tools such as facial and voice recognition will become the norm for security encryptions.

Stephan Loerke, chief executive officer, World Federation of Advertisers

The next big wave of digital disruption will be voice. We see penetration of voice assistants growing exponentially, and hurdles to voice commerce are comparatively low – once the technology is fully there. From a brand marketer’s perspective, voice will change the equation fundamentally – in terms of consumer trust, role of platforms and brand presence.

Chris Curtin, chief brand and innovation marketing officer, Visa

Augmented reality will hit in a big way. I think we’ll see it primarily through virtual shopping experiences, with consumers being able to trigger supplemental experiences through AR and brands. With AR, companies can manifest much more engaging experiences with their consumers than what we generally see today.

Adam Petrick, global director of brand and marketing, Puma

I think many brands have been successful in making the jump from advertising-based messaging to storytelling, story creation and content-focused messaging. Now we must find ways to actually leverage the power of the technology at our fingertips to leverage content and story creation in a targeted way, at scale. That’s the issue at the heart of the current moment of stress and tension in the industry. Once we overcome the hurdle of getting promising dots to line up, then we can all start to focus on the ‘next’ wave, which I have to assume will be linked to end customers beginning to exert ownership of their personally owned marketing space and opting in to virtually all messaging that we want to deliver.

Jeff Green, chief executive officer, The Trade Desk

As I have said before, we will likely never see a bigger industry shift than what’s happening right now in connected TV. We are at the very beginning of the digitization of TV advertising. For the first time, advertisers can apply real data to their large TV ad campaigns. Much of what we’ve done over the past decade has simply been a dress rehearsal for the digital shift happening in TV right now. Every top advertiser wants to know how they can best access CTV inventory at scale and how they can apply programmatic to it.

Nicolas Bidon, global chief executive officer, Xaxis

To use a famous quote: “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.” I believe the next big wave of digital disruption will be when some of the forces that have been at play in China for a couple of years already – such as mobile-first experiences powered by AI, social commerce at scale and frictionless mobile financial payments, to name just a few – will make their way to the US and Europe.

Lisa Utzschneider, chief executive officer, IAS

At IAS we are placing big bets on connected TV and OTT as the next digital disruption. We are already seeing major broadcasters start the shift to CTV/OTT content and that trend is expected to continue and grow. We’re leaders in creating solutions for advertisers and publishers to ensure that every ad impression is viewable, brand-safe and fraud-free, and we’re bringing our 10 years of experience in digital verification to the CTV space with our open beta in the US.

By The Drum Reporters

Sourced from The Drum

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