Designing Mobile-Friendly Email-Marketing Campaigns

Mobile devices dominate all over the world. This should not be news to you. Just last year, 17 percent of holiday sales took place on mobile devices. It’s becoming more common for consumers to check their emails and convert on their phones and tablets. But, a significant number of people are turned off by how emails look on their mobile devices.

The single best way to ensure your emails open correctly on any device is to have a well thought-out mobile-design strategy. Creating fully responsive emails can be resource intensive and may be unnecessary for your brand at this time. At the very least, you should consider adopting a mobile-optimized or partially responsive design strategy. Here are a few tips to ensure you are optimizing your email program for the always on-the-go email subscriber:

1. Keep It Simple! This may seem obvious, but the simpler your email, the better your chances are of it displaying properly on mobile devices. When optimizing for mobile, think about what offers, links, and images are most important to display.
2. Optimize for Fingers — Not Mouses. Remember that customers will be navigating your emails using their fingers — not mouses. Make sure your links and buttons are large enough and have enough space to make them easy to tap.
3. An Image Tells a Thousand Words. Not everyone will be reading your email on a large screen, so ensure text is easy to read and to the point. Remember, an image is worth a thousand words.
4. Have a Single, Clear Call to Action. Make it obvious what you want your reader to do and put it near the top of the email. Don’t force your reader to scroll too much to get to the point.
5. Leverage Technology to Help You Test. It’s nearly impossible to test against all of the different mobile devices, operating systems, email clients, and mobile app combinations on the market today. Leverage technology providers to help you edit and test your email content.

There’s not a one-size-fits all approach to mobile design. While a fully responsive program may not be the right fit for every email program, email campaigns should always be optimized for mobile devices.

The post Designing Mobile-Friendly Email-Marketing Campaigns appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/campaign-management/designing-mobile-friendly-email-marketing-campaigns/

Why We’re All in the Experience Business Now

Once upon a time, not too long ago (think 1950s and 60s), businesses operated with much different focuses. Big companies had three key concerns: their customers, shareholders, and employees. And, employees tended to remain with the same company for decades—more often than not, their entire careers.

Fast-forward a few decades, and suddenly, all eyes were on the shareholders with customers and employees lagging far behind. In 1997, Business Roundtable succinctly stated that a business’s primary function was “to generate economic returns to its owners.” The report also warned that, for businesses and their executive leaderships who failed to rally around this goal, “it may be less likely the corporation will realize that value.” A few years later, shareholder value was dubbed “the driving force of 21st century business.”

Quite a shift from the customer/shareholder/employee trifecta.

But not everyone was so quick to jump on the shareholder-only train. Famously, GE’s Jack Welch called it “the dumbest idea in the world”—and he wasn’t alone. The pendulum had swung fairly far—too far in many business leaders’ minds. “Maximizing returns,” explains Forbes, “is an outcome, not a strategy.”

Then Came All Things Optimization
Interestingly, during this two-decade period, there was a game-changing force bubbling below the surface: Big Data and, with it, major opportunities to test, optimize, and personalize. As our capacities and optimizational maturity levels expanded, so did our collective ability to touch a customer’s entire journey and deliver spot-on relevant experiences every step of the way—and, in turn, pull audiences deeper and deeper into our brands.

So the pendulum swung again to today’s “era of experiences.” As a result, marketers from every industry, every niche, and every corner of every company are now in the experience business. And that’s as simple as it is complex.

Nowadays, a marketer’s job is to develop and deliver meaningful experiences to our increasingly diverse—and increasingly demanding—audiences. Done right, we excel. Customers feel that pang of connectivity the minute they land within our brand universe and transition from passive consumers to diehard advocates with limitless lifetime values and social influence.

What about the Shareholders and Employees?
For those who still have their eyes locked on shareholder value, know this: there’s no way to meet anyone’s goals if we aren’t transforming into an experience business with customers driving our core key performance indicators (KPIs). When customers connect with those spot-on experiences, shareholders reap the benefits of their increased engagements and conversions.

And what about the employee—specifically, the marketer? Marketing is still about brand and demand—the core of marketing since the beginning of time—but now, that’s an increasingly nuanced task because experiences are at the center. Brand and demand are all-encompassing experiences today, enveloping seemingly endless touchpoints, experiences, and customer journeys. Today, “brand” happens from a consumer’s very first exposure to your organization, and “demand” can happen at any point from there forward. And—thanks to the proliferation of data, optimization, and personalization—no two customer pathways are the same.

Today’s New Marketer
Given how massive this newfound notion of a “brand experience” has become, marketers are being pushed to new extremes in an effort to deliver consistent, cohesive, and spot-on relevant customer journeys that are littered with meaningful touchpoints at every turn. For marketers, that means virtually everyone in the organization is a marketer because virtually everything fuels those critical customer experiences. A great example is Disney. A Disney marketer wouldn’t have thought about a guest’s room key five years ago. But today, being able to tap your MagicBand against your door to unlock it is an experience, which means that room keys—or the lack thereof—matter to Disney marketers.

So now, we ask the million-dollar question: What does all of this mean for the new marketer? What skills does the next generation need to excel in this quickly evolving marketplace? More to come next week.

The post Why We’re All in the Experience Business Now appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/personalization/experience-business-now-2/

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Customer [Data] is Always Right: Five Tips for Improving Customer Experience

Retail has always been a beast of its own. There is simply no room to make a misstep in the current retail environment. Selling to consumers who may see your product as a luxury means that brands need to provide stellar customer experiences every time.

Customers have many opportunities to choose not to purchase a product from you. Decisions to abandon purchases can be made due to anything from competitors offering lower prices on the same products (on average, consumers price check three websites before making purchases), to difficulties navigating your website, to customers simply being distracted and abandoning their carts before completing the purchases.

Five Ways Data Improves Retail Experiences

With that in mind, it’s important to act on any opportunities you have to help your customers move through the purchase process. How can you optimize your customer experience in a way that helps prompt purchases? Data and analytics can help retailers create customer experiences that are overwhelmingly positive and facilitate strong relationships with their customers. Here are five ways to utilize data and analytics to strengthen your retail brand and its sales.

Experience Consistency

If your customer has one experience with your brand online and a completely different experience in person, it’s jarring for him or her at best. It can be confusing, and at the worst of times, it can be infuriating. Brands are struggling to stitch together the data from their websites, mobile apps, and in-store experiences. In fact, less than half of all brands even have a mobile app-analytics strategy. Brands must unify all of their data to help customers interact with them seamlessly and easily. Making your customers’ lives easier is always good for sales. One national retailer has begun to use digital methodologies in physical retail stores. By integrating online and offline inventories, customers can shop where, when, and how they want. Ultimately, your customer should not be able to see any barriers or differences between the online, offline, and mobile experience.

Personalized Messaging

Retail brands are now using this marriage of online and offline experiences to help them personalize their messaging as well. If you know a customer has spent time on your site looking at a particular type of product, when she enters your store next, you can personalize her experience by providing her with a coupon for that product, for example. If you can provide them with relevant coupons while they’re shopping, you vastly increase your chances to convert them. Any messaging should be highly customized, personalized, and based on your customer’s preferences and interests.

Mobile Engagement

Mobile usage is becoming increasingly important as well as increasingly innovative. In addition to mobile apps, mobile has changed the way payments are made. This completely revolutionizes the customer experience. In some cases, the cashier has been rendered almost unnecessary. Long line? No worry — have an associate allow customers to pay with mobile devices. Many retail technology brands have fully embraced this change in payment. Mobile also allows access to who and where your customers are, providing brands with great opportunities to capitalize on that increased knowledge to serve great experiences. These innovations will continue to change marketing in more and more innovative ways — and retail brands are best poised to take advantage of the mobile space.

Audience Segmentation

Data can also help brands to understand more information about each customer . This can help them not only personalize messaging appropriately, but also anticipate customers’ needs. Based on what they — and others like them — have done in the past, brands can understand how to best help their customers. This type of segmentation can provide invaluable insights into what your customers really want and need.

Supply-Chain Optimization

There’s nothing worse than selling a lot of a product in a particular area and not being able to keep it in stock. Data and analytics can help you to understand which products are selling in which locations so that you not only understand demand, but also stay ahead of it. A global auto company is using data to help them understand what types of cars their customers want most. Customers can visit the brand’s website and build their dream cars. The site only allows users to build cars that they can purchase — meaning, customers can walk into local dealerships, ask for exactly what they built online, and actually get their dream cars. More than that, the brand can understand which types of customers are looking for which types of cars, which features are most popular, which features are most likely to be seen as luxuries, and much more. The wealth of information companies have access to and can use to improve their customers’ experiences with their brands is almost limitless.

Using Data to Stay Ahead of the Curve

Retail brands that use advanced analytics techniques to embrace 360º views of their customers and then apply those views to the customer experiences — whether online or offline — are the brands that are going to win the retail game. Successful retailers are smart about how they use that data to create informed customer experiences. If your brand focus is always on customer experience, it helps you not only say, but also prove that the customer is always right — or in better terms, that customer data is always right. And when brands listen to customer data, they’re right too.

Jeff Allen is Senior Director of Product Marketing at Adobe Analytics.

This post originally appeared on multichannelmerchant.com. To see the original article, click here. 

The post Customer [Data] is Always Right: Five Tips for Improving Customer Experience appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/web-experience/customer-data-always-right-five-tips-improving-customer-experience/

How Integrating Marketing Technology Can Accelerate Acquisition

Adobe and Econsultancy recently conducted a study that included more than 300 financial-services executives from around the world. The study revealed that “growth” was the organizational top priority for financial-services companies and projected that digital sales goals will increase by 33 percent over the next three years. This expectation is not only in terms of new-account volume, but also better account quality.

Can your digital-marketing strategy and acquisition-marketing capabilities today meet the increased goals of tomorrow?

Break Down the Roadblocks to Success
Successful acquisition starts with DATA. The good news is — as with most financial institutions — you more than likely have the data you need to create more personalized experiences and, ultimately, increase conversions.

However, some common, well-documented challenges can prevent this from becoming a reality. For starters, the channels that make up a connected customer journey are being managed separately, by separate teams, and using separate tools. Display is commonly managed by an agency, search might be managed in-house, and a company’s website is likely managed by an entirely different internal team. Additionally, customer relationship-management (CRM) data is used for direct mail and email marketing, digital marketing leverages digital behavior — and all of these must converge to be more effective across all channels.

In another recent survey, 61 percent of respondents indicated that improved tool integration would enable them to make better use of their data to support marketing and advertising. Only 12 percent of businesses surveyed indicated that they had a single view of the customer — without which, results include reduced message relevance, response, conversion, and marketing efficiency as well as increased difficulty with attribution.

Start Your Engines!
Here are three ways you can jumpstart the process of accelerating your acquisition efforts.

1. Embrace a Data-Driven Culture.
Creating a data-driven culture is critical to the survival of organizations going forward. Without a solid foundation of data, marketing decisions rely on trial and error — and today’s customers won’t stay with brands that miss the mark. Your organization must be prepared to quickly deliver the most relevant brand experiences at any touchpoint — and carefully executed data-driven marketing is the answer.

2. Take Hold of First-Party Data.
While the use of third-party data is profuse, financial-services firms find the deepest insights about their customers from their own first-party data. By activating and operationalizing your first-party data, you can deliver more relevant content and offers more consistently.

3. Welcome Integration With Arms Wide Open.
Our mindsets must shift with regard to not only how we define the success of our marketing channels, but also how our organizations view integration. With customers jumping in and out of touchpoints, it takes a unified, integrated approach to make sure they have a solid experience to land on. As the world of acquisition evolves, so must your digital marketing strategy — including the integration of marketing and advertising technologies.

Expectations have increased exponentially in this new world of acquisition. Customers want you to know them, and executives demand results from your marketing efforts. Learn more about how the Adobe Marketing Cloud — by uniting marketing and advertising technologies — can accelerate your acquisition marketing.

With the tools and strategies outlined, you can unlock the full potential of your data to better identify the right prospective customers and understand how all your channels are truly performing. You can acquire more, better-quality accounts — and all using less media dollars. It’s not just theoretical anymore — it’s the new reality.

To learn more about using data-driven marketing to attract high-value customers for financial services, read the full report here.

The post How Integrating Marketing Technology Can Accelerate Acquisition appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/integrating-marketing-technology-can-accelerate-acquisition/

Adobe Analytics Drives Superior Video Analytics with Video Stream Measurement

Digital video isn’t the next big thing: it’s already here. As people continue to consume content where they want, when they want (TV Everywhere, or TVE, video viewing grew 107 percent between 2015 and 2016), it’s clear that optimizing and analyzing this experience is a must for any publisher or programmer. And with one of the largest broadcasting conferences, IBC, around the corner, Adobe is thrilled to announce our newest video analytics release, providing new and improved measurement for both content and ads.

Measurement is one of the major friction points when it comes to television consumption across devices. While traditional television ratings are a longstanding institution, and the foundation for major decisions for everything from programming to ad buys, the digital transformation currently happening simply wouldn’t be possible without standardized metrics. As video measurement grows increasingly important for marketers to drive major decisions, the significance of these metrics comes into focus daily. The ability to obtain data such as time spent, ad performance, device, geography, bounce rates, impressions, and more is now a crucial piece of the pie.

Adobe Analytics for Video offers brands a variety of benefits, including:

• Lighter, simpler implementation: Implementations are 50–60 percent faster than before.
• Greater flexibility: The SDK is much more flexible with respect to how the API calls are triggered.
• Streamlined configuration: Enjoy easier control as all API calls are centralized in one place.
• Error state recovery: Adobe’s Video Heartbeat Library keeps track of the current state of the playback and can automatically ignore any errors that may pop up. For example, if a buffer complete is sent without a previous buffer start, this won’t be included in the report.

Adobe has a strong footprint in the video analytics space, working with 10 out of 10 of the world’s largest media companies, 4 out of 4 of the world’s top broadcasters, 5 out of 5 of the largest cable companies, and 4 out of 5 of the top digital news sites. With more than 100 billion videos measured in 2015, this new measurement model will help marketers more clearly understand video engagement, faster.

One of the biggest challenges broadcasters and programmers face is getting detailed insights into viewing patterns. In the past, brands would pick how many server calls to send in for playback (i.e., every minute, every quarter of the video, or at the halfway mark and ending). While this approach provided insights for many brands, ultimately it presented a problem due to the lack of granularity, and the decision was often based on cost.
Adobe’s video analytics model measures engagement (time spent) with “heartbeats” pinged every 10 seconds during a video playback and/or during a live event. The initial start server call is sent directly into Adobe Analytics; however, all heartbeats are sent to a new processing layer, which aggregates those heartbeats until the viewer ends the session (i.e., completes the video, closes the browser, switches to a new video, etc.). When the viewing session is complete, a second and final server call is sent to the Adobe Analytics platform to complete the playback data set. The 10-second heartbeat measurement eliminates the blind spot and offers a much more thorough view of how content is being consumed.

By analyzing video streams, rather than just starts and stops, brands can gain a more complete picture of how content is being consumed. Moving away from simply monitoring milestones based on server calls, streams not only provide brands standardization across video performance metrics (such as video, ads, segments, and quality of experience), but also provide deeper insights into media consumption. Adobe also provides the ability to democratize video analytics—such as sharing video metrics with syndication partners for greater transparency beyond simply a brand’s properties. Additionally, stream-based measurement is the foundation data required for Adobe Certified Metrics, the standardized digital census data that Nielsen Digital Content Ratings and Federated Analytics require.

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The post Adobe Analytics Drives Superior Video Analytics with Video Stream Measurement appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe.

from Digital Marketing Blog by Adobe https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/adobe-analytics-drive-superior-video-analytics-with-video-stream-measurement/

5 tips to find inspiration for your blog

What do you do when inspiration for your umpteenth blog posts is low? What’s the solution to a writer’s block or a general lack of ideas? Every writer will encounter a lack of inspiration every now and then. You’ll be staring at your screen, not knowing what to write about. Nevertheless, you are determined to write those blog posts on a regular basis. In this post, I will give you 5 tips to find inspiration for your blog.

1. Consult your keyword research

Everyone who has a solid SEO strategy will have executed a proper keyword research. So, you should have a document containing hundreds of words you’re aiming to rank for. Of course, a keyword isn’t a topic for a post yet, but it can be a start. Pick one of those longtail keywords. Google it. See what turns up. That’ll be the competition. Is it any good? Could you do better? 

2. Go outside

Sitting behind a desk for too long might be the cause of your lack of inspiration. So, change your surroundings. Take a little walk outside. Clear your head. Let the thoughts slide in.

Once you come back inside and get back to your computer, you’ll probably feel much more inspired than before. Of course, if it’s raining outside, a walk to the coffee machine might do the trick as well.

3. Browse the internet

Reading other articles could get your inspired for your own work. Check your email for any newsletters. Read some posts of bloggers you admire. Browse around the internet a bit to find new and fresh material, different from the things you’re used too. These things could really help you to find inspiration for that article you need to write.

4. Keep a list of ideas

Prepare yourself for those days you’re lacking inspiration by keeping a list of ideas for your blog. Keep a list on your mobile phone or carry a small notebook with you. Every time you think of a good idea, write or type that idea down. You can use these ideas on days of little inspiration.

5. Google your most successful posts

Use your most successful post as inspiration for a new one. Google the title (or the focus keyword) of that specific post and see what turns up in Google. Hopefully, you’ll find your own article. If not, you’ll have some SEO work to do.

The results that come up if you Google your most successful post could inspire you to write a similar one. What are those other posts and pages in the search results about? Maybe you can find another angle or additional information that’ll fill a new blog post.

Conclusion

Finding inspiration to write a blog post can be really hard. Stop staring at your screen and try one of my tips above. Let me know how that works out for you! Good luck!

Read more: ‘10 tips for an awesome and SEO-friendly blog post’ »

from Yoast • The Art & Science of Website Optimization https://yoast.com/5-tips-get-inspiration-blog/