How to Handle Ad-Blockers

Who doesn't love Adblockers? They limit your interruptions, make your overall online experience smoother and faster, and help you avoid irrelevant ads that can often lead to embarrassing talks with your parents when they think the game site you're on isn't very appropriate for an eleven year old when there's an advertisement for boosting your sex drive (or was I the only incredibly unfortunate one?). 

Every marketer, given their choice, would want to sell ads on their page if people let them. Unfortunately, the choice is now moving in the consumers' hands - who make it very clear that ads are disruptive. The growing number of ad blockers is putting pressure on marketers to improve their online advertising structure and advertising as a whole. 40% of all users use adblockers on their desktop while 75% of people use at least one form of adblocking every single day. 

Marketers are put in a bind: how to balance their duty to earn meaningful engagement and maintain revenue without sacrificing user experience. After souring the inter webs for tips on how to circumvent these, three main methods seemed to make the most sense: 

1. Beg to be whitelisted, which may seen transparent but I think you really need to build that connection and loyalty with the consumer to get them to do this. The only website I willingly whitelisted for citethisforme.com - the real MVP and sole reason I submitted 99% of my college essays in on time. 
2. Block your own content - although this strategy would only work for websites where traffic is heavy and content is continuous so demand is consistently high. This, along with the fact that subscription based services are on the rise make this a good tactic - although you do risk people losing people who were turned off by the wall and bouncing.
3. Incorporate new advertising forms. Native advertisement are the new answer to ensure the user experience isn't interrupted while still making your advertisers happy. Native ads aren't always blocked by adblockers. They can, however. sacrifice the integrity of your site, but if you were transparent and honest about the content policies, this shouldn't bother you too much. Native advertising is a very selective game: the content needs to be as relevant to your audience as the content on your page.

All in all, ad blockers are not going away. The worst thing you can do is be unprepared for the potential impact they can have on your user experience.

Email marketing introduction and tips

INTRODUCTION TO EMAIL MARKETING:

Email is a channel that you own, so take advantage of it. It is a great resource because:

1.       Your audience has already opted in

2.       You can speak directly to them in a relevant way through segmenting, targeting and testing

3.       It has a higher conversion rate than other opt-in relationship channels such as social media

There are different types of emails:

1.       Transactional: welcome email when you sign in, thank you email when you complete a purchase, confirmation email when you made a purchase, abandoned cart email when you initiate a purchase but do not complete it.

2.       Marketing: newsletter, promotions…

Key metrics:

1.       Open rate: # opens/total recipients. A good open rate is around 20% to 30%.

2.       Click to open rate: # clicks/# opens. A good click to open rate is around 20% to 30%.

3.       Conversion rate: # actions/total recipients. It depends on the industry and the email offer.

4.       Unsubscribe rate: # unsubscribes/total recipients. Should be less than 1%.

Taylor and test depending on your customers:

You can modify and do A/B testing to improve your metrics. Recommendations are to create different subject lines, images, messaging, landing pages, time of the day you send the email, and others.

GENERAL TIPS:

·         Be clear: when creating an email start with a question, what do I want to say to my customer?

·         Be concise: use short and simple words, and avoid fluffy modifiers such as amazing, memorable, powerful, beautiful, unique, innovative, it’s never been easier…

·         Define who is your customer? What do they need to know? And give them the information they need and want to read.

·         Write how your brand speaks.

·         Think about mobile.  Everything you send should be mobile-friendly, if not it is not going to perform very well.

·         Avoid jargon and catchphrases: for blogs and magazines examples are: X is the new Y, the future of X, viral… For startups examples are: adaptive, disruptive, seamless, game changer…

·         Subject line: tell what it is inside, don’t sell what it is inside, be descriptive, make it local or personal, < 50 characters, avoid all caps and exclamations, use emojis for fun (not as replacement of words)

·         Pre-header: summary and teaser (longer that the subject line, should complement each other, has to be different).

·         Headline: different from subject line, the most obvious. It is what people read.

·         Body: people are scanning, make it easy for them to scan, and images are key. Do not make false promises.

·         Call to action (CTA): make it clear. Keep it short, no more than 5 words, the majority are two words such as Buy Now. Use active language because you want customers to act now. Create a sense of urgency, so give customers a reason to act now. For instance, put a limited time frame on deals so customers won’t wait.

·         Footer: unsubscribe (make it easy to unsubscribe), address, link, little image (something fun), social media buttons.

·         Track and analyze your results.

Sources: Vertical Response, Mailchimp, General Assembly, Forbes, Huffington Post, HubSpot

 

 

Twitter 101

For anyone interested in Digital Marketing for a company especially startups - it is essential to master the beast that is Twitter. As the Marketing Manager for a startup called Chef’s Basket, I had zero budget and no training in Digital Marketing, or for that matter any sort of marketing. What I did know was that Twitter was fairly popular amongst the audience I was targetting. This brings me to my first point:

1) Audience - Make sure your target group is on Twitter. The best way to check is to see if your competitors have an active presence on Twitter. If not, it’s more likely that Twitter will not work as a Marketing medium for your brand. However if your competitors have an active Twitter presence - learn from them:

• Follow the companies they are following
• Look at who is retweeting their tweets and follow those people. Also tweet at them as they are the ones that will most likely engage with the brand and follow you back.
• See the kind of posts that are getting retweeted the most and ensure your posts are in a similar vein.
• See the posts schedule - are they tweeting daily, hourly and if so is there a specific time?

2) What is a tweet - a tweet is a 140 character sentence used to give bits of information. It is considered acceptable practice to ignore grammar and use phone accronyms such as LOL, BTW, u, pls, w/ (for with) and w/o for without etc. Remember that links and photographs will take up some of the characters of a tweet. For longer tweets - use 1/2, 2/2 at the end or beginning of the tweet.

3) Handle - if you have a common name - it is most likely taken on twitter. If you’re a new brand - it’s better to create a name so that you can get the handle you want on all the social media portals including your own domain name. But if that’s not a possibility then it’s best to add numbers to your name. For e.g. if your name is John Doe and @JohnDoe is taken - don’t put @Itsjohndoe or @Thejohndoe. If someone is trying to tweet at you they will likely just write @Joh hoping witter will automatically give them suggestions. So it’s better to make your handle as @john_doe or @johndoe1

*If your brand name is a registered trademark and is being used by an inactive account  - you can submit a report to Twitter to transfer the handle to you. If you don’t have a registered trademark then Twitter will not help get the handle.