It appears that Google is now rolling out the new curved mobile design that they have been testing for several months. This would be the first major redesign to the Google search results since 2013 saw the unified card design released. [Source: Search Engine Land]
In order to provide advertisers with more insights into what’s working – and what’s not – with their ad efforts, Facebook’s rolling out two new testing options which will enable more accountable, traceable experimentation with various creative aspects. [Source: Social Media Today]
Spending on paid media worldwide will reach $584.14 billion by the end of this year and approach $757.44 billion in 2021, eMarketer estimates, driven largely by advertiser investments in mobile formats. Ad spending growth rates will range between 4.9% and 8.3% over the forecast period. [Source: eMarketer]
Snapchat has announced that they’re now looking to roll out a new ‘Snap Pixel’, a conversion tracking tool which will enable advertisers to measure the traffic being driven to their sites via Snapchat ads. [Source: Social Media Today]
Commercial Office 365 users can now see the LinkedIn profiles of their contacts within the email provider. The feature lets business users see LinkedIn profile information, including connections and work history, within Outlook.com, SharePoint, and OneDrive for Business. [Source: TechRepublic]
Facebook is rolling out a way for brands to automatically create thousands of different versions of an ad that will vary in content based on who they are shown to and where they appear. [Source: Marketing Land]
Google announced today that it is changing the way it labels country services on the mobile web, Google app for iOS and desktop Search and Maps. To make search results more relevant, Google says the country of service will no longer be indicated by the country code top level domain name (ccTLD) such as “google.co.uk” for the UK or “google.com.br” for Brazil, but instead will default to the country where the user is performing the search. [Source: Search Engine Land]
Facebook with over 217 million monthly active users in India is closely working with marketers and advertisers to discuss how the social media giant can help businesses drive growth. [Source: The Economic Times]
The San Francisco-based company, Content Analytics, is adding another resource to its toolbox. Called VendorSCOR, it automatically generates Vendor Scorecards about a product page that an online retailer could send to its brands. Content Analytics says this is the first solution for generating these kinds of report cards. [Source: MARTECH TODAY]
As we head towards the holiday season, Facebook has announced an update for their Dynamic Ads for Travel, which help travel brands hone their ads on the most receptive audience. [Source: Social Media Today]
Expert Opinion:
- Making email marketing more relevant and effective
Email marketing has been a highly favoured marketing tool used across sectors, primarily due to the probability of high ROI. While we always pay attention to the look and feel, the open rates, click rates, etc; it is important to focus on making the inbox experience more engaging by offering relatable content and through user-friendly designs.
Some of the ways of making email campaigns more effective are:
- Creative use of behavioural triggers: Behavioral email is the practice of sending automated, targeted emails to the contacts in your database based on their interactions with your company across multiple channels: social media, email, your website and beyond. It is the actions of your site visitors that dictate what emails they receive. This method has proven to be effective to address ‘abandoned cart’ issue.
- Greater use of dynamic elements: Dynamic emails allow marketers to replace key pieces of the message to reflect a subscriber’s profile attributes, interests and previous activity. E.g. If an online pet product store is running an email campaign to inform its existing customers about new discounts. Instead of sending a standard mail to all recipients, it could customize each mail by mentioning the brand of products the customer has purchased earlier.
- Use of automation: This can also be called trigger based email marketing. A mail is sent to the user when they perform a certain action. For e.g.: A mail that explains how a site’s features can be used as soon as the user signs up on the website in order to get them started.
- Mobile-optimised customer journey: While the practice of creating mobile friendly email content has been on rise, it is essential to see it through till the end of a user’s journey. For e.g. in case of a ‘Call to Action’ mail campaign, even the subsequent transaction page should be mobile friendly in order to ensure smooth start to end customer experience.
- Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve performance: Email marketers can let AI determine what kind of content recipients are most likely to respond to. Machine learning allows these platforms to learn what resonates best with a specific marketer’s audience. These platforms then use natural language technology to create subject lines, body copy and calls-to-action that not only sound like they were written by a human, but are consistent with the language typically used by the brand.
- Embedding personalised videos in emails: Another trend that is rapidly catching up is embedding personalised and customized videos in emails. The content of the video dynamically changes as per the details of every recipient. These videos can be made interactive to make the experience further engaging.
