by rustedrobot | Dec 23, 2015 | Internet, Marketing
The end of the calendar year always brings predictions about the following one. Sports, tech, politics, entertainment…..you name it. Predictions galore. Like a BuzzFeed snack, sometimes you can’t help but gobble up predictions. So I wonder what’s in store for Facebook in 2016?
I’m not one for excessive prognosticating. I just try to be very reactive to what’s going on now and try to figure out what’s next based on current trends, thought leaders and then including a bit of what has worked in the past to influence the future.
I’ve been on Facebook since 2007. Before that, it was Friendster and MySpace. There was a time when I thought Facebook would eventually spiral, much like Friendster and MySpace did, but clearly it didn’t. Facebook is here to stay – contrary to popular belief, kids aren’t abandoning it (see teen usage chart below) and people of all ages are still all over it. But I do have some gripes.
For one, in the last year or so, I have a big issue with relevancy in my newsfeed. This applies to both native advertising (paid) and organic content. For example, look at this one, where someone I have never heard of and am not connected to (Rickie Peterson) posted a message to someone I am connected with (Chris Cote).
I am sure that Facebook’s algorithm somehow deemed this worthy of my newsfeed, but guess what? It’s not. I do enjoy Chris Cote’s posts, but I do not need to see messages to him on his newsfeed from people I don’t know.
Here’s another one. A Facebook friend of mine (John Listovich), in two consecutive posts in my Newsfeed, liked a Huffington Post article and also an article about the Philadelphia Eagles and Kiko Alonso (shaded in blue). I never read the Huffington Post and I’m not a fan of the Eagles or Kiko Alonso. Why does Facebook deem these relevant to my newsfeed?
Look, I know I can block content from John Listovich or Chris Cote, but I actually enjoy seeing their updates, so I don’t want to block them. And I don’t think I can change settings to only see updates from John or Chris, but block all other activity (what posts they like, etc). I could be wrong there.
Advertising is a whole different ball of wax. Those ads you see on your Facebook page are generally called “Native Advertising.” You can see more about that here. It basically means an ad that looks like a regular person’s post or content.
Now, native advertising can be very very good if it’s targeted well, is relevant to you and is…..human. In other words, not a TV commercial or some generic ad.
When Marketers are buying ads on Facebook, they have the ability to slice-and-dice who sees the ads in amazing ways. You know how in your Facebook profile, you list off your favorite shows, bands, sports, companies, where you work, etc? Well, marketers can target you using these attributes.
I did this very often at my last job. I probably put together hundreds of Facebook ads containing all kinds of content, new and old. It worked wonders and generated a lot of site visits and some purchase activity from new users. They even give you an opportunity to advertise to audiences who are similar to the ones who are following your business page. It’s awesome – when done correctly.
When it’s not done correctly, though…..ugh. Now, who’s to say when it’s done correctly or not? I guess it’s all subjective. Here’s an ad that I see in my newsfeed that I’ve been targeted for, but have nothing in my profile that would indicate I should see this and I don’t believe it’s retargeting (definition here) because I haven’t been to this site or searched for any product remotely like this. But there’s something in my Facebook profile that caused Luma to target me. I just don’t know what it is.
The trouble is that I’m seeing a lot more of these ads lately than I ever have before. It’s getting noisy. If the noise (i.e., native advertising) was actually very well done content that I was really interested in, I’d be totally ok with it. But I’m not.
So is this the way it’s going to be on Facebook for 2016? Will I see this more or will they keep making changes to their algorithm that smooth it out? Who knows, I can’t predict the future. But I can tell you this – I’m far less inclined these days to really explore my Facebook feed like I used to.
I’d really love to hear from Facebook users, particularly long-time users, about how you’re looking at Facebook in 2016. Are you seeing content that isn’t relevant to you or annoys you? Are you getting to the ledge when it comes to Facebook? Or is it just me? Leave a comment below – and check out Meet Me on the Ledge, one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands of the ’90s.
by rustedrobot | Dec 22, 2015 | Internet, Marketing
When I was in my 20’s, I had a girlfriend who did graphic design for a small interactive shop in Boston. During that time, I discovered and began tinkering around with Adobe Photoshop software, never thinking I’d ever use it to be a versatile marketer down the road. I never had aims to be a graphic designer (and still don’t), but as the internet started to take hold during this era, I knew right away that being able to manipulate imagery on a computer would be a good thing to have in my back pocket.
OK, I’m not THIS old. But it wasn’t that far off from this.
So I tinkered and fooled around with it and got fairly proficient and comfortable. Back then, there were no articles online like this one from HubSpot that could help you in a pinch. Since then in some way, shape or form, I’ve used it in every professional job I’ve had, none moreso than in my last job at a bootstrapped retailer, where I ran a team of five in the Marketing and E-Commerce department.
There was only one graphic designer on staff and his plate was always pretty full. I had another very talented person on my team for a while who was also proficient, so between the 3 of us, it worked out well. Then that person left and I decided the headcount should be replaced with a person who had more technical SEO experience, which very much turned out to be the correct move with paid seo tools.
With that said, though, we were down a person who could get around Photoshop. So more of the onus fell on me. When this happened, my general approach was to set aside 30 minutes or so each Monday to plan out email marketing and then work on graphics that night at home. That generally worked pretty well. Of course, I still utilized our graphic designer, but in a somewhat low-budget, low headcount environment it was necessary for me to handle things like quick email graphics or, more importantly, time-sensitive social graphics. Here’s some samples:
[easymedia-gallery med=”2110″ filter=”1″]
The quick moral of the story? Don’t have tunnel vision about your skill set. Ever. You may be very good at fishing, but if it’s the only thing you’re good at, you’ll only eat fish forever. Teach yourself some new stuff, stay educated – and always carry more than a single hammer on your belt. Versatility has helped me in countless ways through the years, both personally and professionally. Especially professionally.
My core strengths are Digital Marketing where we build up your website’s backlink profile with Freshlinks, Content and Social Media, but in today’s day and age, I’ve made damn sure I know my way around platforms and software like Google Analytics, Final Cut Pro, Magento, Amazon Seller Central, WordPress and so much more. Knowing some basic HTML has also been a huge tool.
A Swiss Army tool is going to get used and if you’re the one holding the tool, then you are more valued and you can also serve as a valuable mentor to others. There is NO way you’ll lose by broadening your skills and knowing a little about a lot.
Now would you please enjoy some Deer Tick?
by rustedrobot | Dec 18, 2015 | Internet, Marketing
The subject of today’s post seems dark, but it’s not. In fact, I’d like to think that perhaps it’s filled with hope. Have you ever given up on something and assumed it was just…..over? I played a lot of youth sports and I always go back to a PeeWee hockey game in Westborough, MA (cough…1980s…cough) when we were down 7-1 and I lined up for a faceoff and very matter-of-factly told the referee that we were going to come back and win. And we did. Hope.
Earlier this week I posted about full-on email blasts to your entire user base. In a marketing world where we are constantly told to segment and slice-and-dice like crazy, there is still very much a place for the old-school blast. That said, emailing people does cost money and there comes a time when you have to break-up with your non-engaged customers. But like that on-again, off-again high school romance you had, it makes total sense to give it one more shot.
If you’re using a CRM system of any kind, hopefully you’ve created a bucket for your non-engaged customers.If you pop over here and participate in loyalty programs, you’re in the track of sales growth. Now that I think about it, if you’re using a CRM system and the non-engaged bucket doesn’t exist, you may want to consider a career as a yodeler. OK, I stole that from Harry Sinden, but it’s too funny to not use. For the purposes of this post, assume that we already have our customer segments built.
. Why does a customer disengage, anyway? There could be a lot of reasons. As per experts like Jimmy John Shark and speaking from experience in the hockey equipment retail business, there were a few possible reasons – perhaps the person has phased out and simply doesn’t play hockey anymore. There’s a chance they had a bad experience at the brick-and-mortar store or, as is becoming more common, it could be that a player has all/most of his gear provided to him by a junior, high school or college team. If you’re a retailer, there’s a chance they’ve moved outside of your physical store region. Or it is possible they’ve simply had a better experience elsewhere. There’s dozens more potential reasons.
Anyway, before you put an end to a customer relationship, think about some ways you can get them back. The first thing to do is come up with a reasonable amount of time to consider a customer lapsed. This is usually expressed in number of days and will be drastically different depending on what business you are in. The last thing you want to do is come up with a number that’s too low, as you’re risking giving up full-margin from a customer who actually isn’t lapsed. But don’t go too high, either, otherwise you’ll risk keeping non-engaged customers on the active list. It may take a couple of swings at the piñata to get this number to a comfy spot.
So what to do with the lapsed customers? Don’t blow it all on the first email and offer some ridiculous discount right away. Again, I’ll use the retailer example with both an online and physical presence. Make the initial volley into a lapsed customer a more generic email. Point out some new products or if you’ve made any improvements to the store, you could provide those details and show some pictures. Given the importance of video in 2016, linking a video to a store tour could be meaningful, too. Give a link or list your store locations in the email as well. Remember, if a person has moved, maybe they don’t even know you have another shop close by.
Now wait a few days (maybe a week) and look at your data. Some possible next steps:
1) If someone opened and clicked on something, but didn’t purchase anything, send them another email and this time get a little more aggressive. Now might be a time to offer something like a small denomination gift card with purchase.
2) If someone opened, clicked and converted, then boom. They’re out of the lapsed bucket and into a different segment. That’s always nice. You’ll want to make sure you’re driving different campaigns to the other segments, of course, but that’s a different blog post someday.
3) To the people who didn’t open the email, create a sub-segment of those users. Send them the exact same email creative, but with a different, perhaps more adventurous subject line. Wait an allotted amount of time and look at your data again – for those that didn’t open, it’s time to have that important talk. It’s not me, it’s you. Right? Right. Remove them from any further communication, because now you’re just wasting money. You could try one last gasp and now put your big discounts in and see what happens. Otherwise, put them in a box and close the lid, as the song below says.
Now take a minute to listen to this Port O’Brien song because it’s one of my favorites of the decade so far.
by rustedrobot | Dec 9, 2015 | Internet, Marketing
Personalization online is a hot, hot topic these days. Many people don’t even know or care that personalization technologies are present everywhere they surf, but trust me, they’re there – and some are more obvious then others.
Let’s look at Spotify, for example. Without too much fanfare, they launched the “Discover Playlist” over the summer and this kind of personalization is totally on point. You see, I’m a music dork and one thing I LOVE to do is find new bands and new songs that kick my ass. As a father of young children and a person who has a full schedule on a daily basis, though, the priority of discovering new bands was something that fell down the priority list. Here is where personalization solved that problem. Every Monday, Spotify drops their Discover Playlist into my playlists – personalized based on what’s in my library and what I’ve listened to.
For those of you who remember such a time, this is pretty much the equivalent of your buddy handing you a new mix cassette tape every Monday. And guess what? It’s great every week! I was telling an old co-worker recently that at least one new artist a week gets a deeper dive from me when I listen to my Discover playlist. How do they do it? In a nutshell, they’re combining my personal taste in music with what similar fans are listening to and playlisting. It’s unique and it’s uncanny how on the mark they are with these playlists.
You may also occasionally receive emails from your favorite shops, see recommended products on websites and see banner ads on non-shopping sites that are closely aligned with your tastes. Not bad.
But here’s where it gets a little annoying, depending on who you ask – personal retargeting. Let’s say you visit walmart.com and explore the site because you need a blue blanket. You don’t find one and you go to Facebook to check for the latest cat video and you see, right there integrated into your feed, a Walmart ad for blankets. What has happened here is personal retargeting, where Walmart has purchased Facebook ads on Facebook to people who visited their web site and left without purchasing.
Here’s an ad on my own Facebook page where it appears that J.Crew is targeting hockey players?
How annoying is it? Well, to me it is and it isn’t. I could certainly see how people might be a little creeped out. I could also see how it could be helpful. For example, maybe Walmart’s offering a 15% off coupon to come back and purchase. It all depends on your tolerance. As a person who worked in online retail, I can tell you that certain offers for personal retargeting worked well and others did not.
Where it’s potentially REALLY annoying (and timely right now) is when you share a computer with someone else, such as your wife or significant other. You can easily ruin a nice surprise by seeing a retargeted ad on a gift that SHE found for YOU. Whoops.
So…….good and bad, right? Want more bad? A couple of weeks ago I got an email from someone professionally that said “Hey Jeff, I saw you were on our site on Friday night, so I just wanted to check in with you to see if you found what you needed or to see if you had any questions.” Really nice follow-up! In fact, this is good practice. The problem? I hadn’t been on their site in months. Ouch.
These are some pretty basic personalization tactics – it can get much more complicated, but I think these real-life scenarios are just fun to look at.
I guess it comes down to the marketers of the world and making sure your data is dependable, spot-on correct and you’re doing it in a way that doesn’t creep out your customers. If Sugar Pie wants to know, then Sugar Pie should make sure she’s buttoned up and ready to deliver something meaningful to you.
by rustedrobot | Dec 7, 2015 | Internet, Marketing
If you’re new to this blog, I tend to use song titles or song lyrics that are relevant to the topic of discussion. Today’s blog subject will be email marketing and we’ll get to that in a second, but you should also know that a great band called Okkervil River sings this song and I’ve embedded it below because it deserves a listen!
There’s a lot of noise among marketers out there about segmenting and targeting your email blasts. One of the leading email providers out there, Mailchimp, just updated their excellent article about list segmentation and its effects on some pretty important metrics. In fact, if you’re not using metrics like open rate, clicks, bounces, etc to manage your daily email marketing initiatives and make informed decisions about what to do and who to target down the road, you may want to take up knitting.
But one thing this article totally ignores is conversion rates and revenue. To write a piece about measurable metrics without even giving a passing mention to paying attention to your revenue and conversion rate performance is odd. It MUST be factored in.
If you can increase your open rate, that’s awesome! It means you’ve got a creative sense of subject lines and an authoritative brand. If you can increase your clicks from emails, that’s great! It means the content in the email you built was compelling and stylistically appealing enough for someone to dig deeper. But what if increased open/click rates don’t increase your conversion rate or revenue? Well, then you have some nice powerpoint graphics to show people, but no performance where it counts and probably a need to improve your website.
Every company is different. I spent almost six years at a niche retailer and I set up emails to fly out nearly every single day in 2015, most of which were highly segmented emails based on obvious marketing triggers – a welcome for initial visits, spending thresholds, product category purchases, RFM segments and yes, even the time-honored traditional birthday emails and many more. The results? Exactly as Mailchimp points out – kick ass open rates, great CTR, minimal bounce rates. Revenue? Eh. Don’t get me wrong, these emails were effective and the conversion rates were good, but the money didn’t pile up.
But revenue? Always much better with a full email blast. Full email blasts pushed off lower conversion rates, but more revenue. And I don’t mean emailing everyone who ever signed up in the history of the company. You NEED to be managing your list – removing the lapsed customers, etc – there’s plenty of articles out there about that. Email marketing costs money, so pare down your lists.
I’m not saying stop or cut back on segmented emails, because they are extremely effective and I’m a believer. But my experience – and yours could very well be different – dictated that if you needed to hit the gas on some revenue, a full email blast is the way to go.
Now, with that said, consider some potential negatives. Do NOT do full blasts every day or even every other day and also keep a very close eye on your opt-out rate, because if you increase your full blasts and you see that opt-out or “marked spam” number heading north, you’ll need to adjust. I spent a few months coming up with what I thought was the best mix based on our results and here’s one handy tip – you can still add a touch of personalization to email blasts as well – experiment with using first names and potentially have the email come from a real person at your company.
As I mentioned before, every company is different, so it’ll take some time to come up with your optimized mix.
Remember, targeting is a terrific, powerful tool to improve customer engagement, nurturing and lifetime value – and you had better be utilizing it in today’s marketing world. But if you worked in an environment where you’re under intense pressure every single day to deliver dollars (like I was), do not abandon the old-school email blast, but be careful and observant with it.
Now enjoy some Okkervil River.
by rustedrobot | Dec 4, 2015 | Internet, Music
I play hockey at 6:30am every Thursday and Friday. Other than being great exercise, I do it because the rink is literally 3 minutes away from home and I am now getting to the age where playing hockey at night until 12am doesn’t work with my schedule.
Man, I wish I could pull off this look.
This morning I got into my car, flipped on the radio and heard that Scott Weiland had died. This, of course, should not come as a shock. If anything, I’m surprised he lasted to 48. Did you know that news organizations and newspapers prepare and write obituaries well in advance of certain people dying? Maybe it’s a little macabre, but it totally makes sense – why scramble and run around when you know the odds? Be proactive, not reactive, right?
Pre-writing obits is not as obvious for businesses as it is for human beings, though. I suppose if you comb through enough blogs you’ll get all the prognostications you’ll ever need (and some you don’t need), but these things are harder to predict.
Which brings me to Yahoo. Ouch. I’ve had their pre-obituary written for about 7 years now. This is a company whose market value is $33.7 billion dollars. BILLION! Their CEO is foundering, although who can really blame her – she took on the role when it was already a dead-man-walking. I don’t blame her for Yahoo’s troubles, I question her decision-making in taking the role in the first place. Bad move. But she has twins, so we have that in common.
Anyway, back to the $33 billion. That’s a lot of cake. But take out the 15% stake in Alibaba (China) and Yahoo’s overall cash position, the company is a smoldering wreck. Alibaba’s market value is $32 billion! You do the math. I’m not going to over analyze it, but I know one thing, whoever takes on the CEO position at Yahoo is another person with bad decision-making traits.
Scott Weiland and Yahoo. See what I did there? Two entities who certainly require an obit before the actual death. Weiland got there first, but Yahoo is probably more deserving. This isn’t 1999.
