Tags containing: "email marketing"

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Zero-party data is a publisher’s secret weapon against big tech changes

September 21, 2021 Allison Mezzafonte, Media Advisor – Sailthru

Every time there’s a big change in how Apple, Google, or Facebook works with publishers, a touch of panic can be felt in the air. Yet, we’ve all survived seismic shifts from these companies. From Facebook’s deprioritization of publisher content in 2016 to Apple’s recent iOS 14.5 release, we’ve absorbed the shock and made it through. But, as an industry, we always act like the next change might be our last. Now, Apple is specifically coming for email. It’s placing limitations on location and IP targeting that could make it more difficult to use personalization for some iPhone audiences… and the cycle repeats.

Yet, like all of the sky-is-falling fears before it, Apple’s latest move is nothing to panic about. The truth is that these changes are merely a distraction from the real work that publishers do every day to connect with their audiences through great content and great experiences. If change occurs to a specific algorithm or a particular measurement metric, that doesn’t alter the core of the business, which is to deliver value to an audience.

Embrace change for good

The old saying that “change is the only constant” is a well understood truth within the industry. But these changes tend to happen in rapid succession, making it near impossible to keep up if publishers are always in reaction mode. Nearly every year, digital experiences a seismic shift — from GDPR and other privacy regulations to pending cookie deprecation from Google. Rather than cling to what we have, we should be working to create stability from the inside out.

For example, open rate data will become skewed with the Apple iOS 15 release. It’s the core metric used to determine opportunity, in particular for advertisers. When this metric is threatened, fear rears its ugly head. If we can’t effectively track opens, should we begin to track clicks? If we do, does that mean publishers like Axios, who have a product-oriented approach to newsletters, should entirely scrap their email strategy that works? Should they start prompting their readers to “click to read” simply so they can track that user? Of course not. That fear should not determine a course of action.

Audience behavior won’t change. The desire to consume quality content in quality email experiences won’t change. The needs of our audiences must remain at the forefront of everything we do.

As an industry, one way to do that is to collectively accept that KPIs will change — on both the buy and sell side. The sooner we do, the sooner we can collectively move forward. Together, publishers can meet to determine a matrix of KPIs, and discuss with groups like the IAB which metrics are in danger and how to push up more stable metrics so that everyone, including advertisers, can move forward despite industry changes.

Stability through zero-party data

Change might be the only constant, but audiences are the only source of the truth. Both publishers and advertisers rely on audience engagement to hit their goals. Yet few use direct audience insights as a source for measurement and KPIs. The more publishers understand their audiences, the better they are positioned to create stability for the long run.

Zero-party data is the best way to make that happen. Defined as data that publishers explicitly receive from their audience as part of a clear value exchange, zero-party data is more valuable than first-party data such as search or browsing preferences.

More than ever, people are aware of the value of their own data. In a 2021 Merkle survey, 76% noted that they would be willing to fill out a short survey in order to get a better online experience. Taking a page from retail, personalization is proven to lift sales. Thrive Market, an online grocery store, weaves data collection into their entire online experience, using quiz elements to guide shoppers and then shape the content and offers they get in return.

Value remains constant

This focus on the direct value exchange between consumer and brand can be applied in the publishing world to great effect. Rather than just passively observe what readers pay attention to, more brands should be actively asking, engaging, and personalizing. The data that’s collected not only improves content personalization and audience targeting, it creates a foundation of insights that can be used to optimize reader experience. And that data is only as good as the last ask, publishers need to continually ensure they’re up to date on people’s ever-changing preferences.

Zero-party data shows how engaged audiences are, how much they’re willing to share, what they like, and what they want. For example, The Independent collected insights from subscribers in a New Year’s wrap-up newsletter that ended up producing a brand new newsletter focused on climate change. The team asked subscribers about which topics resonated the most in 2020. While the pandemic ranked at the top, they were surprised to see how many also cared about news about the planet.

Publishers have survived so much change in the digital world and we can certainly survive more. But rather than just focus on surviving, let’s actively build out a position of strength and move away from the passive, reactive moves of the past. When given the chance, people want to engage with publishers to make their experience better. Let’s own our own success, once and for all by actively prioritizing that relationship.

About the author

Allison Mezzafonte has worked in the media and publishing industry for 20 years and is currently a growth consultant, as well as a Media Advisor to Sailthru. A former publishing executive for Bauer Media, Dotdash, and Hearst Digital, Allison serves as a strategic partner to media clients.

Perspectives

Retailers drive revenue with email. So can publishers

February 1, 2021 Allison Mezzafonte, Media Advisor – Sailthru

A fundamental shift has occurred in the past year: Publishers experienced a fortuitous combination of increased audience size and engagement. Many publishers are considering how to balance subscription marketing with ad monetization in order to take advantage of new readers and higher engagement.

In a recent survey, 53% of publishers experienced an increase in engagement with their email newsletters during the Covid pandemic. Email is taking on a new role in nurturing these relationships and maximizing their value. Much like retailers, publishers can leverage email as a path to conversion.

Rethink the “customer” experience

Executives are rethinking many parts of their business in light of the pandemic’s silver lining of higher engagement. And with third party cookies under imminent threat, publishers have both a challenge and opportunity with how to collect insights about visitors to deliver value for advertisers and drive business operations effectively.

One way that publishers can take better advantage of their new engagement opportunity is to collect more data. They have an opportunity to more effectively test and integrate new revenue opportunities by approaching their digital business the way a retailer approaches ecommerce. Many publishers have discussed adding commerce opportunities to their models, such as The New York Times’ addition of Wirecutter to their portfolio. However, for many publishers, the concept needs some direction.

Often, the best work across publisher initiatives is done by connecting experiences between the website, search, and social media. Unfortunately, email remains a relatively static, separated channel. Retailers would be shocked to know that publisher email is frequently bifurcated between content-based newsletters and transaction-based messages about subscriptions with little coordination between them. Email is a hidden opportunity that will help with many 2021 publisher goals.

There are many strategic and tactical improvements that publishers can make to better orchestrate channels to achieve their goals. And these improvements have already proven successful in ecommerce. The multichannel retail experience includes data collection and segmentation, intricate channel orchestration, a dedication to measurement and analytics, and sophisticated testing and personalization with email and SMS. These channels must work together seamlessly to serve to engage, connect, and communicate.

Mapping the “customer” journey

A loyal reader has a particular series of actions that they will, pretty predictably, take. They might visit the site every morning. Or perhaps they open their mobile app every evening as they hang out on the couch. A search-driven reader might have another set of behaviors. They might averaging 30 seconds on the page, with a possible second article before abandoning the site.

These various user profiles are essentially different “customer segments.” Each of these offer their own set of value opportunities and paths to conversion. Many publishers have already created segmented strategies and content personalization. However, multichannel revenue-driven marketing, including email, usually takes a back seat. This reduces the ability to re-engage, offer deeper personalization, and drive conversion.

Retail tactics to learn from

Publishers have more in common with the ecommerce experience than they may realize. In fact, several established ecommerce best practices can be repurposed for publishers:

Browse abandon

Retailers will often trigger a personalized email when someone abandons a product search. Publishers can do the same, tracking everything from scroll depth to which search terms drove them to the site. By testing segmented triggers to bring different readers back to the story, or to similar or different stories, publishers come across as more relevant and more interesting.

Cart abandon

Similarly, retailers will trigger a personalized message via email or SMS to remind people of what’s in their cart. Publishers can do the same with event and subscription signups, or with articles saved for later reading.

Interest-based triggers

Every time a consumer reviews a product, or clicks on a link, that information is gathered to improve personalization and triggered messaging in the future. This information, be it driven by content behavior or more transactional behavior, should be collected by publishers to build richer user profiles and to inform segmentation and marketing actions. This data is also hugely valuable for editors seeking to better understand reader interests.

Live content

Retailers used live content during Black Friday/Cyber Monday to drive interest in sales, manage inventory. Streaming content showing employees explaining products, and influencers discussing health tips, drove engagement and sales. Publishers can imagine incorporating everything from breaking news and live entertainment to real time interviews and podcasts.

Channel optimization

Email is only one element of a multichannel communication strategy. It’s best to test within and across channels to understand how to get people to stay engaged based on their preferences and habits. For example, testing the success of driving engaged readers on mobile web to download the app, or transitioning engaged mobile app readers to in-app messages and push instead of email, can help publishers meet readers where they are without any friction. SMS can take things one step further for brands that don’t have standalone apps but cover breaking news, the same way many D2C retailers alert shoppers about sales.

Bonus points

These five common triggers in a retail strategy also serve another purpose: to test messages and collect more data. Adding triggers along the customer journey doesn’t just provide opportunities to re-engage, they make businesses smarter. Combining insights and measurement across different parts of the business can help speed up learning. Personalizing different elements of the customer journey can help speed up conversion.

Content is the product that many publishers focus on, but it’s the readers (aka customers) that will deliver insight and revenue. By turning focus toward the transactional touchpoints along the reader journey, publishers will find more chances to increase their insights and improve their performance. Retailers may have more measurable ROI. However, what retailers have spent years learning through testing can now serve as a reliable blueprint for publishers.

About the author

Perspectives

Metrics that matter: email marketing

December 5, 2017 Tim Bourgeois — Digital Media Auditor and Consultant

Email marketing, which was likely the first digital marketing tactic to go mainstream, has experienced a public relations drubbing over the past decade. Maybe it all started in the wake of the CAN-SPAM act of 2003, and the category has yet to recover its shiny gloss. But savvy professionals know otherwise: When employed smartly, email can be one of the core components of a successful marketing operation.

Source: Smart Insights, GetResponse Survey

When thinking about your organization’s email marketing strategy and planning for improved performance, here are the metrics you need to keep top-of-mind.

1. Everyone’s Doing It

This statement applies to both individuals and corporations. According to Pew Research, 88% of smartphone users actively check email on their phones. Also, after being around for more than two decades, most organizations have some kind of either active or passive email marketing strategy in place – because it works. In a recent survey by Smart Insights and Get Response, more than 50% of marketers said email marketing performed good or excellent, outperforming all other tactics. And, eMarketer forecasts the U.S. email advertising market to increase from $343M this year to $500M+ in 2021 – not the skyrocketing growth we see in other digital categories, but not bad considering it’s been around awhile.

If you don’t have a formal email marketing strategy in place, prioritize its design and launch as soon as possible. It’s likely there’s an in-house list that exists somewhere and can be dusted off and put to use. If are currently engaged in email marketing, have a senior member of the marketing team assess its status and budget. Depending on the type of organization, the email marketing budget should account for 2.5% – 25% of overall marketing spending. A large, B2B company will skew smaller while a small B2C company will skew larger.

2. Be Wary of ‘Rate’ Metrics

Yes, this is an article on metrics, but too many organizations measure email marketing team performance on their rates: open rates, click-through rates, deliverability rates, etc. While meaningful in some ways, they aren’t very useful in the context of strategic marketing goals like branding, engagement, and conversions. Deep-pocketed technology companies with sophisticated marketing and sales operations like Constant Contact, Hubspot, Marketo, and Salesforce have force-fed the industry a set of metrics which, outside of small and specialized email teams, aren’t very meaningful. Senior marketing managers and non-marketing executives don’t need to understand the minutia of the operations, and sharing ground-level performance data with them only weakens the impact.

Email marketing performance is best viewed vis a vis other marketing tactics (direct mail, events, telemarketing, etc.) and its ability to contribute to customer acquisition and retention. While the true, absolute contributions of a tactic like email can often require sophisticated modeling and measurement operations – rolling up to attribution – the baseline metrics that are easy to track and serve as a reasonable proxy for attribution are engagement and sharing. Both are genuine measurements of the impact of an email’s content and strategies.

3. Take the Long View

Successful email marketing operations follow a 3-to-1 give-versus-ask ratio. That is to say, they only ask for something – a purchase, a piece of information – one time for every three times they give. While people have an overall preference to email-based communications from brands, their biggest point of feedback, according to an Adobe survey, is to make the correspondence “less about promotion and more about providing me information”. This is a big challenge for brands of all stripes, as hammering email lists to meet quarterly or year-end goals is a common tactic, but a short-sighted one.

While challenging, employing the 3:1 ratio isn’t as difficult as it might seem. A “give” to a user base could be a coupon, an entertaining but brand-promoting video, or a white paper or webinar pass. It takes some creativity, but most organizations have enough assets in place to make this happen without extraordinary effort. The important thing is to approach an email marketing strategy from a user-based perspective, and get the audience to look forward to opening your emails. It’ll pay major dividends over the long run.

To be sure, email marketing is capable of delivering on nearly every major marketing goal in our crosshairs: branding, awareness, thought leadership, engagement, acquisition, and retention. So, from a marketing strategy perspective, it’s not a question of “if”, but rather “how much”? That email marketing is the oldest and least shiny object among the current digital marketing toolset – which includes search, display, social, native, video, etc. – means that it might require an extra dose of support during budgeting season. But for most organizations, it’s well-worth the effort.

Tim Bourgeois (@ChiefDigOfficer) is a partner at East Coast Catalyst, a Boston-based digital consulting company specializing in strategic roadmaps, marketing audits, and online marketing optimization programs.