Manhattan Marketing Maven

Practical thoughts about working in advertising and marketing from a veteran player.

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The Search for Engagement

More engagement is on the lips and on the wish list of every marketer. The common understanding is that “engagement” is an aggregate measure of a variety of interactions, which include clicks, likes, comments, shares, downloads, sign-ups, retweets and re-posts. Engagement is a proxy for conversion in environments where goods and services aren’t directly sold.

All media experiences are not equal and have different outcomes. Engagement is a concept that can be used either to compare or to obscure these differences.But the universal desire for more engagement is real and highly competitive.

To the old school crowd, engagement is measured by counting the number of people who show up at a site or on a social property and take the marketer’s desired or most valuable action. These engaged visitors sign up for a newsletter, download something, play a game, use a calculator, enroll in a webinar or like, share or comment.

Part of the debate centers on levels of engagement and the value of continued or sequential interactions. In theory, any interaction signals either interest or intent.An individual interaction is a first step in the customer journey and a first indicator of likely brand awareness, lead generation or loyalty and advocacy.

Subsequent interactions build or deepen the relationship heading toward a positive resolution – an idea, a candidate, a product, a service or membership in a community is sold-in. This rationale underscores investment in content marketing where the conventional wisdom is that the more engagement you get by skillfully deploying robust content; the more likely the conversion. Its logical. But awfully hard to prove definitively.  

Add to this thinking about sequences, the notion that there is a hierarchy of interactive values. That specific types of content delivered at identifiable inflexion points in the customer relationship have different marketing values and produce different outcomes. Clicking “like” is an almost automatic and mostly meaningless interaction. Whereas a robust conversation among site or page visitors is more emotionally involving and ultimately more persuasive.

Watching or uploading a video, using a calculator, clicking around an infographic, interacting with a bot or voice assistant, answering a poll or taking a quiz fall somewhere in the middle. Each has its own interactive and emotionally resonant value. Ideally, the savvy data-driven marketer orchestrates the use of these content elements to engage, educate and convert site or page users.

Consider two promising engagement tools.

Bots. Every brand has frequently asked questions (FAQs), common recurring complaints and a variety of customer service needs. A segment of site or page traffic zeroes in on this content. Deploying a bot enables a faster interaction, which in theory, makes for happier customers who might further engage, convert or promote your brand. Most marketers still struggle to serve the right content to anonymous users.

A bot prompts immediate self-selection, self-service and self-gratification. More than half of Americans have interacted with a bot so acceptance is a given. Bots can be constructed in a variety of ways using an evolving array of technologies that can be targeted to a desired audience or segment. Bots offer marketers 24/7 coverage, efficiency, quality assurance and options for easy updating.

Quizzes, Polls & Surveys. Everyone has an opinion and a considerable majority of people like to share theirs. Quizzes, polls and surveys press an emotional and intellectual trigger for a large segment of the population eager to validate their knowledge or compare themselves to peers or compete with others. These content genres are well known to prompt immediate interaction which can be shareable and go viral.

Here too, there is an array of relevant technologies available. Ideally marketers need a platform that can incorporate an array of content genres, is easy to use, update or change, and simple to integrate into a marketing stack.

The on-going engagement debate won’t be easily resolved, But, in the interim, marketers can deploy content to improve the number, frequency and quality of interactions that influence business outcomes.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Harness the Power of UGC

There is a persistent belief in the wisdom of the crowd. In the public square, this belief plays out in our jury system. Online it plays out daily with the creation and trafficking of user-generated content (UGC). Each day hundreds of millions of photos, videos, social media comments, peer and product reviews, tweets, pins, conversations, influencer opinions, blogs, wikis, podcasts and comments in forums or in communities are posted, liked, and shared.

UGC is the digital equivalent of chatting with neighbors and friends. The content created by the crowd is broadly considered authentic, valid, believable, factual, detailed, nuanced, trusted and memorable. Consumers spend roughly 5 hours a day with user-generated content. Half of all internet users uploaded or shared a video or photo during the last 30 days.

UGC drives more traffic, time spent, click-thrus, conversions and sales than other forms of marketing and promotion. In surveys, upwards of 90% of respondents say UGC has greater influence on their buying decisions than email and search. A similar number of respondents say they trust reviews and recommendations from people they don’t know.

From a brand perspective, capitalizing on and promoting UGC validates, humanizes, educates, informs and motivates better than other advertising formats. Many people find UGC more interesting, relatable and shareable than professional ads. In a Comscore video study, UGC drew more engagement than professionally produced ads on the dimensions of emotional intensity, key message communication and easy to relate to.  

The average person consuming UGC feels that they get a realistic, in-depth look at a topic or product with a personal endorsement from its author. UGC stands out from the torrent of commercial messages online because it elicits contextually relevant emotional responses. UGC is unpredictable and exciting because it’s filled with real people, real emotions, real situations, real surprises, real reactions, real opinions and real practical insight and advice which is impossible to create artificially or fake.

The trick for marketers is to selectively embrace, deploy and harness the power of UGC to bolster brand awareness and engagement. This requires 3 steps.

Monitor and Moderate. Watch the user interaction on web and social properties. Keep an eye out for positive comments and interesting uploads that align with your brand and its customers or values. Check out the creator of a positive post as well as the content. Avoid using copyrighted material or content clearly created by professionals. Screen out inappropriate, false or hate comments. Fact check and validate statistical information or quotes from third parties.

Approach Creators Gingerly. Ask permission of creators to use their material. Make this conversation private and respectful. Check identities and bona fides. Answer questions and satisfy yourself that the content and its creator are genuine and original. Develop repeatable protocols to vet potential content partners.

Make it Legal. Contract with creators to use their material. Specify which content will be used in which channels for a specific period of time. Get a signed release for the creative elements and for the use of the content creator’s name and likeness.

Done right, UGC can be a powerful tool for brands and companies that develop systems to identify, vet and contract for their legitimate use.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Handicapping the Race for a Covid-19 Vaccine

The race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine is complicated and challenging. The media is filled with wishful thinking, random prognosticators and a healthy dose of hype.

A handful of efforts are entering Phase 3 clinical trials to test different vaccines. As developments occur, consider these six factors in evaluating the news.

Developers. Some of the biggest names in pharmaceuticals are working on a vaccine. Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Moderna to name a few. Handicapping the race is in full swing. In a poll of infectious disease physicians conducted by InCrowd,  Moderna emerged as the frontrunner, followed by AstraZeneca/Oxford, Pfizer/BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson.

Some firms are working directly on their own. Others are working with partners. Most have the skills and infrastructure to expedite the scientific process, though these firms aren’t known for moving quickly. We don’t have visibility into the workflow, the division of labor or the internal politics of these organizations. Some will set the pace, while others will be hamstrung by size, scale, turf or other issues.

Trial Population. Many of the vaccines in development started and gained approval to proceed with small test populations. Recruiting multiple sets of 30,000 volunteers around the globe for Phase 3 trials will be challenging. People have to balance a desire to help with a deathly fear of the virus. So far, 350,000 have volunteered. Not all volunteers will qualify. But to be effective, the trial population must include significant numbers of high-risk patients. Recruiting the elderly, African Americans, Latinos, people with diabetes and other underlying conditions and people at different ages will take time and complicate the process.

Scientific Approach. Traditionally, the standard vaccine development tactic has been to introduce small or inactive forms of the virus into healthy bodies to stimulate and mobilize the immune system. Several competitors are taking this route. Other contenders are focusing on a new messenger RNA (mRNA) solution where an information-bearing molecule instructs the body to create copies of the S protein, spiked by the Covid-19 virus, which is then recognized and attacked by antibodies produced by a person’s body. In theory, the mRNA approach can be developed faster, administered at lower doses and mass produced rapidly. But safety issues have surfaced. Since Covid-19 is new -- and still significantly unknown -- nobody really knows which approach will work.

Adverse Effects.  Most new drugs provoke reactions in the body which can range from mild symptoms to severe life-threatening problems. Researchers must monitor test patients for adverse side effects and report them to the FDA. It’s likely that one or more proposed vaccines could be knocked out of contention over safety concerns by prompting either a large number, or particularly severe, adverse effects.

Efficacy. The flu vaccine, now years into its annual cycle of seasonal evolution, is 40 to 60 percent effective in preventing influenza. The likelihood that a first-time vaccine will be as effective is uncertain. And while any measure of effectiveness is better than what we have now, its likely that the first round of vaccinations will not fully protect large numbers of Americans.

Regulatory Approval. The FDA has established protocols, milestones and timelines for the development of new drugs. Expect the FDA to hold scientists to these protocols even with a desire to expedite approval and in spite of the political and popular pressure to rapidly produce an antidote to Covid-19. And while this may frustrate many, holding developers to rigorous requirements is a critical safeguard for the public. It’s possible that one or more new vaccines won’t get through the FDA approval process.

Producing a Covid-19 vaccine is our greatest immediate public health need. But it’s far from a slam dunk in spite of strong, well-funded developers with good intentions. Covid-19 is slippery and adaptive. It requires a vaccine that protects significant numbers of high-risk patients on the down stroke, and which can adapt and evolve to provide genuine herd immunity over time.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

It’s Time to Zag

Covid-19 has been an incredible digital accelerator. Now every brand and every company is creating multi-stage email campaigns, viral videos, social media posts and ads, display and retargeted digital ads, webinars, content marketing and increasingly sophisticated search engine marketing.

What do you do when everyone is using the same tactics at the same time?

You zag!

Zaging requires a willingness to break with convention, step outside your comfort zone, become a bit playful and rethink your media strategy. Zaging is stepping off a ledge with the understanding that it will yield different results.

Consider six zagging tactics.

Get Bold. Take an unexpected posture. Write provocative headlines and body copy. Boldness is the enemy of plain vanilla. Convince decision-makers that they will be lost forever in a sea of sameness. Only by standing out will they achieve awareness, lead generation or conversion   goals, especially when competitors are present in the same channels using the same tactics against the same audience.

Take the Gloves Off. This is the Trump approach. Take on the competition directly. Draw sharp comparisons. Compare features, benefits and outcomes. Share the comparative and competitive insights or language used in private publicly. This requires a healthy risk appetite and some clear legal guidelines. But a straight up one-to-one fight almost always attracts attention.

Develop a Distinct Personality. This can either be a differentiating spokesperson or a vocabulary that drives a distinct impression. Determine who you are and represent your attributes and values with ownable language or an exclusive personality. Yes, you can rent a Kardashian. But so can everyone else. And while you have to be culturally sensitive, there are plenty of celebrities, key opinion leaders and influencers that resonate with your primary audience who can appropriately and affordably represent you.

Carve Out a Time.  The frenzy of media and advertising rarely lets up. There’s way more content than anyone can absorb. Carve out a time or a space that you can own. Publish your best stuff every Tuesday at noon ET on Twitter. Or set your webinar series for Thursday evenings at 7p PT on LinkedIn. Or expose your best videos every Saturday morning on Instagram.  Owning a time sets you apart and enables appointment viewing. It gives your primary audience a reliable cadence; a relationship touchpoint they can count on. You don’t have to be the NFL to own a time slot.

Rethink Media Strategy. Most brands want to cover all the bases. Many run media roadblocks – the same content on every platform at roughly the same time - to create a captive surround-sound experience. Competitors carve up their messaging and expose different facets in different channels. And others, think Trump again, pick a channel and bombard the chosen platform with bold and unconventional messaging. All three strategies afford the possibility of standing out and finessing the competition. The critical variables are target audience composition and their channel or platform usage patterns. Be where your people are when they’re active and engaged. Borrow and direct the platform’s traffic to your advantage.

Use the Data.  You can know much more than ever about your target audience. Use the psycho-demographic, firmographic and mobile usage data to shape your creative and media tactics. One-to-one personalization is touted as the ideal. But mass or segmented personalization, using the general parameters of your audience will get you where you want to go. Data ensures that your messages are useful, timely, relevant and easy to grasp. And while privacy concerns are both real and serious, creating resonance compliantly is generally doable.

Zagging is both a state of mind and an agenda for action. In a time of crisis, when executives default to conservative, conventional and reactive thinking, the brand that zags will stand out and win.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

The Facebook Boycott Calls Attention to Social Media Moderation

The Facebook boycott with its focus on #StopHareforProfit and with brands piling on combined with forthcoming regulatory moves by the European Union to restrict hate speech and carefully scrutinized social platforms are casting a spotlight on social media moderation. Long considered a back office concern, skillful social media moderation is the key to achieving, accuracy, fairness, balance, safety and security in the social sphere.

Moderation involves the studied deployment of sophisticated software and highly trained human observers to monitor organic user generated content. Most marketers think of moderation as defensive risk mitigation. They understand the moderator’s role is to screen out hate speech and bias, identify and report adverse effects (AEs), rebuff or report the manipulations of scammers and foreign spies, and alert publishers and brands about negative trending topics.

This defensive posture ignores the fact that, in some cases, moderators stimulate, curate or add to the conversation. Moderation agents are the frontline defenders of civility and order in social media who can also become producers and impresarios of social communities.

Consider a broader array of functions for activist social moderation.

Early warning radar. Moderators spot trends early, identify influencers, discover memes and other forms of user expression. They can be a source of insight and intelligence on many levels.

Conversation dynamics. Moderators can shape or nurture the conversation by their choice of accepted and rejected posts. They can alert communities to trending topics and inject factual data, introduce or eject participants, or interject considered opinions of third-party experts into the conversation. By hiding or deleting offending posts, moderators clear the way for genuine sharing and personal interaction and can keep the conversation on track.

Retargeting. Moderators can spot truly interested and engaged users and provide them with added experiences or messaging. They can supplement a retargeting strategy.

Concierge. Moderators can direct or connect users with relevant or needed. resources. And they can escalate urgent needs to appropriate third parties. They are on constant alert for threats of suicide or terrorism with established response protocols.

Measurement. Moderators can gauge the intensity, length and strength of community conversations. They can calibrate the volume, duration, frequency and number of unique voices on a platform, page or topic. These are the variables that comprise a Passion Index, which rates the relative strength and import of social media engagement.

Central to realistically taking a broader view of social moderation is finding a seasoned partner with the staff, skills and experience to on-board quickly and properly represent you throughout the social realm. Key selection criteria should be a track record of success working with well-known brands, connections to and insights about the most popular social platforms, high quality and customizable moderation and social listening software, the ability to create compliant messaging at scale and in anticipation of likely conversations and a strong ethical culture attuned to the mores of our society able to negotiate the negativity that frequently arises on social platforms.

If you can find a partner that meets these criteria, you’re ready to effectively use moderation offensively and defensively to reclaim the social media conversation. 

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Optimizing Video Engagement

Since the dawn of the Internet, creative people have battled analytical people to control the insights, best practices and prerogatives for bringing to life video messaging and content that builds awareness or that engages and converts prospective clients.

Fueled by different types of backgrounds and dissonant personalities, the conversation frequently becomes heated. Art directors copy writers and creative chiefs argue that their collective wisdom, customer intimacy and best practices plus a magical spark of creativity gives them the exclusive rights to creative effective content.

Analysts, measurement professionals and data scientists argue that intuition and magic can be measured, scored and recycled. They insist that only by carefully and continuously testing and learning and mapping discrete behaviors and behavioral sequences along a defined customer journey can communication effciency and business goals be achieved. To the measurement guys, data and insight derived from data should drive the creative process which should be aligned to movement along the sales funnel.

Looking to reconcile these two postures, Google studied thousands of skippable TrueView video ads across eleven verticals around the globe. The goal was to understand which creative elements had the greatest impact on awareness, recall, consideration and purchase intent.

Surprise!  The creative elements and tactics long known and used by the creative community have the greatest impact on engagement. Specific creative tactics influence specific metrics.

Here are five takeaways.

People Buy People. Tightly framed shots of people and talent that reflects the target audience speaking directly to the audience or providing a first-person perspective drive awareness and recall.

Branding Matters. Introducing the brand in the first five seconds of an ad and using memorable visual elements are important. Pairing unique visual and audio cues and/or using brand colors or distinctive brand logos correlates with a lift in consideration.

Emotion is Essential. Action, intrigue and surprise influence engagement throughout the sales funnel. Pacing, using two quick cuts between scenes in the first five seconds of an ad is a grabber in terms of recall.

Focus on Benefits. Ads that convey a tangible and measurable benefit influence recall, consideration and purchase intent.

Direct the Action. Using a clear call to action (CTA) and/or making a distinct, pointed offer affects purchase intent. Guiding an audience toward the desired behavior by creating a sense of urgency works.

This study documents many of the creative approaches that have been in use for quite some time. Maybe it’s a step toward aligning the analytic and creative communities.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Talking Omnichannel Marketing

I had great fun speaking with Meg Goodman about #omnichannelmarketing on the #J&See Marketing podcast produced by Jacobs & Clevenger. Check it out.

https://jsee-views-on-marketing.simplecast.com/episodes/omnichannel-marketing-digital-revolution-danny-flamberg

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Optimizing YouTube SEO

YouTube, arguably the world’s favorite video platform, is the search tool with the second largest traffic volume, behind its parent Google. With 1.9 billion users generating 3 billion searches each month in 80 languages, 70 percent on mobile devices, mastering the secret and ever-changing search criteria on this highly trafficked platform can make or break a brand.

Until recently the conventional wisdom among SEO experts was that 4 criteria drove search rankings on YouTube. The number of views, the video title, the content description and the user ratings were thought to be the heavily weighted factors influencing search results.

Enter Brian Dean, CEO of Backlinko. He and his colleagues studied 1.3 million YouTube videos to discern how the YouTube search engine works and how to compete effectively to ensure your brand appears high up on the first SERPs page. His findings are at odds with the conventional wisdom.

Brian’s first finding is that YouTube favors content that engages. The number of comments correlates strongly with higher rankings. The more comments per video; the higher the SERP ranking. Similarly, the number of views, likes, shares and new subscribers all affirmatively contribute to ranking success.  

Shares, an explicit endorsement from users, has a strong correlation with higher rankings. Likes, an affirmative vote for content, also correlates with higher rankings for the same reasons. The number of views, previously a dominant ranking criterion, seems to be downgraded because it’s a poor indicator or predicter of engagement.

YouTube’s commercial value increases with large numbers of engaged users measured in the number of videos viewed, time spent viewing, repeat usage and reviews, shares or comments. The takeaway is to produce videos that prompt extended viewing and user interaction. Helping row YouTube’s boat contributes to ranking success.

What is surprising is that longer videos and HD videos rank higher. The SEO pros initially counseled short and snappy productions arguing that consumers want snackable instant gratification. Yet Brian discovered that the average length of a first SERPs page result was 14 minutes and 50 seconds. Total watch time is a key ranking factor.

In the same vein, 68.2% of high-ranking page one videos were high definition (HD). This is evidence of the maturity of the platform and the variety of engaging and available content. If they are interested in visually arresting content, they’ll watch for a quarter of an hour. This ,too, rows YouTube’s boat in terms of touting content quality, variety, affinity and engagement.

Equally surprising are the insights about keywords, tags and descriptions as ranking criteria. The study found a very small relationship between keyword-rich tags and rankings. There was zero correlation between keyword optimized descriptions and high rankings. Exact title keyword matches had only a slight edge over those that didn’t match exactly.

This finding challenges the keyword orthodoxy most of us were trained on and hints that YouTube armed with countless search histories, machine learning and artificial intelligence is moving away from the obvious and mechanical toward better understanding intent, nuance, implication and user needs.

The data suggests ways to adjust video content, production values and analytic processes to optimize rankings on the world’s number two search engine. Factors that expand use and drive engagement, vital competitive elements that YouTube merchandizes to advertisers, contribute favorably to SERPs rankings. In evolving its ranking criteria, YouTube seems to be saying, “if you scratch our back; we’ll scratch yours.”

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Marketers Are Getting Personal

The race is on to personalize and optimize holiday messaging. Personalized communication prompts better, faster and deeper response, engagement and conversion. Serving personal and relevant messages is dramatically more cost efficient. But few marketers have mastered the ability to truly personalize messages.

Personalization drives brand preference increases purchase frequency, and spikes customer loyalty and brand advocacy.  The ability to personalize interactions, frequency, messages and channels is much more challenging because it requires a change of mindset, a significant investment in technology, a sensibility about consumer privacy, creation of many more  messages and variations, plus a willingness to make educated guesses, using a wide range of variables representing each individual’s idiosyncratic customer journey.

Consumers understand and accept data collection as a fact of life. In fact, they expect a quid pro quo.In return for giving up personal information, they want deals, coupons, special or early access, rewards or points and inside information. People also want to be recognized. It’s as if they are saying, “Use what you know about me to keep me up-to-date, treat me special and tell me about things I like or care about.”   Consumers expect that the sum total of interactions, plus the tone and tenor of the relationship, will be used to super-serve them. When it’s a half-assed or bad attempt, personalization becomes a relationship killer.

The key to mastering personalization, which for many retailers is the only strategic defense against encroachment or destruction by Amazon, is compiling the so-called “Golden Record” also called mapping identity or identity resolution. This is the ultimate collection of data about an individual that spans psycho-demographics, contact information, media and channel use or preference, purchase history, favorite or frequented locations. This data trove can even include lifetime value calculations, predictive models or propensity scores.

This requires a well-defined strategy, creative thinking and creative assets and a supporting technology stack -- and the specialists to use these tools and tactics. Many brands claim that personalization is too difficult organizationally, too costly, too technically complex, too hard to measure and too hard to get it right.

The personalization process requires a single platform or a “single point of truth” vis-a-vis customer identity. Only then can AI and machine learning be deployed to decide who gets which message, when, where and how often. Once the data is collected and the algorithms are run, then automation tools become the muscles of personalization, synchronizing and deploying email, direct mail, SMS, video, social, display and retargeted messages.

Personalization is about using data to improve targeting, frequency, response and engagement, and to build or extend conversions and loyalty in hyper-competitive markets. At this stage, personalization is a mix of art, intuition, test-and-learn and science. But like the lottery, you have to be in it to win it.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Are You Omnichannel Competitive?

With back-to-school campaigns underway and holiday planning in full swing, brands are scrambling to implement agile and effective omnichannel strategies.

Omni mirrors customer behavior.Every person has a unique approach to finding and choosing brands. Each person regularly shifts from one channel to the next in researching products, services and deals. The channel sequence, timing, devices and duration of research are wildly idiosyncratic. According to Mobile Payments Today, 98 percent of Americans switch between devices in the same day using an average of six touch points before making a buying decision. All this activity yields more valuable prospects. Omnichannel shoppers, according to Google, have a 30 percent higher lifetime value than solo channel shoppers.

Consumers expect favorite brands to know them and seamlessly address them in any channel they choose, serving up personally relevant, useful and valuable messages. Shoppers expect consistent interactions across channels. Two-thirds expect to receive real-time customer service support regardless of channel.

Omnichannel is a marketing state of mind.Everyone shares the aspiration to have a complete, robust and constantly updated understanding of every customer and prospect. One-to-One marketing is still the technically elusive and privacy challenged Holy Grail.  Creating a so-called “Golden Record” is nearly impossible in most large-scale organizations. Marketers are kids with their noses pressed up against the candy store window. They know what they want. But they are frustrated and hamstrung by legacy systems, silos, and the realities of data collection, storage, hacks and growing concerns about customer privacy and potential regulation.

Omnichannel is a time and space monitor.Virtually everyone has a mobile phone and most Americans have smartphones. Seventy-five percent of mobile users check their device first thing each morning and the average American checks his or her device many times a day.

A detailed understanding of mobile customer psychology and customer journeys – emotional, rational and through time and space -- is now critical for any form of meaningful consumer engagement. The research about device use, cross-device use and sequential device use is in its infancy. Everyone expects that patterns are emerging. Few have identified them. Using these patterns to discern and clarify inflection points, openings in the conversation and multi-channel messaging strategies, even directionally, is crucial for successful branded interactions.

Omnichannel is an IT challenge and a frustration.Enterprises are collecting mountains of data in many different channels using many different systems or platforms. The challenge is normalizing the data by confirming each individual identity and then finding a way to join together disparate tables of data that signal segments, preferences or infer individual needs or wants.  In many cases, legacy systems, data silos, internal politics and budget constraints reduce processing capabilities. Many large enterprises need to “lift and shift” data sets to an external platform to work around self-imposed limitations.

Omnichannel is imperative for customer intimacy and loyalty.Sam Walton insisted that you have to meet and be available to customers whenever and wherever they express interest. Now marketers and technology professionals have to construct or piece together data, systems and processes to deliver this promise to ADD audiences that expect to be known, to be instantly gratified and to be addressed individually across the multiple channels that matter to them.

An effective omnichannel strategy, is rooted in the customer journey, assembles as much compliant data as possible and tactical plans and schedules message content and frequency against discrete consumer segments. That’s why Amazon runs thousands of distinct campaigns. The key to winning and effectively competing is developing an omnichannel mindset and exercising enough command and control to marshal and deploy marketing resources effectively.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Email’s 7 Dirty Words

The late great comedian George Carlin identified and joked about the seven dirty words that would prompt sanctions from the FCC. Now Emma Email Marketing has discerned the seven dirty words that trigger SPAM filters.

Email is the preferred channel for both B2C and B2B commercial communication. Approximately 205 billion emails are sent and received each day. It’s estimated that 45 percent of emails transmitted are SPAM. This torrent is expected to grow between three to five percent over the next few years. The average person has two email accounts and receives over 100 emails each day.

Getting an email through to a targeted customer is a lot like finessing a multi-layered missile defense system. Internet Service Providers, like Google and Hotmail, pro-actively police against SPAM maintaining complex and changing filters. They maintain sender scores and are quick to ding suspected spammers. Email Service Provides, like Emma, also screen for SPAM as do email clients. And in some cases, browsers have their own SPAM filters. Getting through this thicket of defenses and maintaining a pristine sender score is a specialized art form.

The seven dirty words reflect the sensibilities of anti-spammers and are designed to weed out obvious scams and worst practices.   The primary focus of spam filters is the SUBJ line, which to a greater extent, signals the contents and commercial thrust of an email. In many cases, the terms that trigger SPAM filters are the most obvious and common calls to action many of which have been co-opted by scammers and spammers. This puts an added burden on marketers who have to communicate urgency and offers without using the easiest and most familiar language.

Come-ons dominate the dirty word list. Free, Great Offer, Guarantee,Risk-Freeall suggest things that are too good to be true or are over used retail lures. Click hereis verboten because it’s a generic call to action captured by spammers. The use of Re or Fwdimplies an existing interaction or relationship which doesn’t really exist. These terms are used to trick recipients into opening an email. And the lack of personalization or a generic Dear Friendgreeting is content usually associated with unwanted or unsolicited messaging.

Emma also found that using random characters or ALL CAPS in SUBJ lines tend to be SPAM.

Retail hyperbole words like discount, big bucks, fast cash, or extra income are broadly used by spammers. Urgency words like apply now, don’t hesitate, or join millions can easily be filtered out.

Using these terms are most likely to trigger SPAM filters and void the impact of an email campaign and negatively impact a brand’s online reputation or sender score. The burden is on marketers and copywriters to get persuasive and compelling offers, urgency messages, and calls to action across without self-destructing.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Measuring ABM Effectiveness

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a simple, logical idea. Rather than fish the whole ocean, focus on the most likely prospects for your business. Identify the key players, usually in a B2B setting, engage them across channels using both sales and marketing resources, close them and retain them.

ABM holds the promise that a finite number of people in a fixed number of companies can be contacted and persuaded productively and economically. But it’s not a pure software fire-and-forget exercise. Effective ABM requires serious management involvement and direction.

ABM is becoming a buzzword reflecting software suites promising everything from “we’ll do it all for you” to we’ll empower you to do it yourself” and everything in-between. Measuring the productivity and value of these investments is not particularly clear, partly because of the general antipathy between sales and marketing and partly because there is no consensus on which measures matter.

A recent survey of 255 B2B marketers conducted by LeanData & Vidyard found that roughly half of those surveyed were satisfied if their ABM program “influenced the pipeline.” Forty percent looked to see if the targeted account moved from some level of engagement into a genuine sales opportunity. And a third of responders looked at the gross number of engaged accounts and/or the number of marketing qualified leads.  

Measuring ABM ought to be easier. It ought to be a joint effort of sales and marketing working hand-in-hand against a discrete target list.  Measuring value should be as simple as answering 4 questions.

Are we talking to the right guys?  Have we identified the decision makers, the influencers, the budget holders, the SMEs, the validators, the researchers and the junior players? B2B selling is a team sport. We need to be prepared to play at each position. Have we crafted role-based communications? Have. We identified budget cycles, business strategies, power relationships and have we factored this data into our thinking, our content and our systems?

Are we sharing useful or compelling information?  Typically, B2B prospects want to know what it does, how it works, where it fits, how much it costs, how hard will it be to learn or transition and what is the ultimate benefit. Frequently these questions are sequential and correspond to cycles of down selection. Often the answers need to be parsed to people with different levels of knowledge, access or technical sophistication and socialized or sold internally.

Are we orchestrating interactions and answering questions that produce buying signals? Responsiveness counts. The automation of sales and marketing interactions has to correspond to prospects’ needs and timing. The software should be able to personalize and schedule the messaging to reflect on-going interactions and intelligence gathering. Knowing where you stand in the process and relative to the competition are critical data points that demand agile handoffs between marketing and sales teams.  

Did we make the finals and/or close a sale? The ultimate measure of value is a sale. Was the ABM process worth it? Did the program yield a sale? And is the value of the sale a multiple of the resources, time and money invested in gaining the business?

ABM is not a silver bullet. But ABM provides a framework and a toolset which can enhance marketing and sales productivity, focus targeting, foster internal cooperation and spark innovation. The trick is to ask the critical questions to focus energy and attention on the targets and the outcomes.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Adapting Agile to Marketing

Agile, the project management philosophy, and protocols that originated during the 1990s in the software development world, is being applied to marketing. The hope is that by empowering self-directed marketing teams, we can capitalize on insights, eliminate silos, accelerate production, ensure transparency and improve customer input and satisfaction.

The promise and the payoff are tempting. According to McKinsey, in product lines where Agile is used companies have seen as much as a fourfold increase in revenues. And the time it takes to get new marketing ideas in front of customers has compressed from multiple weeks or months to less than two weeks.

The challenge is that tech-oriented approach is a totally new way of working that requires learning the language, translating concepts from code-writing to creative thinking and being open to sharing roles and responsibilities. In some cases, senior management thinks agile is a silver bullet to overcome an array of organizational or management issues.

The key elements of the Agile methodology make loads of sense. Agile insists on the primacy of the small team to determine content and production scheduling. Working in two-week sprints, projects are stewarded by a Scrum Master who leads daily face-to-face stand-up progress meetings. Projects are carefully chunked into bite-size steps which are assessed, measured and adapted, as necessary. Ideas are tested and iterated. Contingent or dependent issues and KPIs are raised, addressed, resolved and visually boarded daily. Every team member’s role and tasks are delineated, documented and accounted for. Clients, or project owners, make decisions, resolve conflicts, manage QA and direct next steps. Project movement can be noted, measured and accurately forecast regularly.

Having been through the Agile training several times and experienced the positive and negative grafting of the Agile concept into marketing organizations, four recommendations for success seem in order.

Be Adaptable.  Agile is a creature of the technology universe. Over the years it has acquired a religious-like following with both orthodox and liberal advocates. Applying Agile to marketing requires editing, translation and the ability to cherry-pick the most applicable and useful ideas.

Hardcore Agilists will squawk, but each organization needs to align the working principles with the organization’s structure and culture. In most cases, a pilot project is the best first step.

Staff Teams Carefully. A huge success component of Agile is the people practicing it. Staff the teams, especially pilot projects, with people who are open, flexible and open to learning new things and new ways. Imagine data scientists easily interacting with creative directors and IT guys mixing it up with marketing strategists. Find people who will welcome ideas and inputs without feeling threatened or turf-conscious. Becoming Agile is an adventure that will take some people far from their comfort zones. Avoid putting these people on the team.

Respect the Format. The prime building blocks of Agile; two-week sprints, daily meetings, Scrum leadership, client or customer decision-making and Kanban Boards (visible scoreboards) take a bit to get used to. Try to stick to these structures. Ultimately, they shape the project and cement the interactions and bonding of the team.

Get Senior Support. Adapting Agile requires realistic top-level endorsement and support. The approach will create a certain amount of anxiety and friction that will need to be absorbed and resolved by a strong senior advocate or champion.  

Agile is not a universal marketing cure-all. Some criticize the move to adopt Agile to marketing as a management fad. Testing Agile should aim to deliver improved project planning, team building, optimal application of specialized expertise, better and faster internal coordination and rapid response to markets, competitors and change.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Leveraging LinkedIn

LinkedIn is making a series of moves to increase revenues and improve marketer’s ability to define and reach carefully curated target audiences. With 467 million professionals on the platform, their pitch can be persuasive. That said, there are palpable limitations to the LinkedIn experience that must be understood and overcome.

Hiring Hall. The overwhelming majority of professionals think of LinkedIn as a source of new job leads referrals and connections. Recruiters and HR folks, with specializes tools and an amped up search function, have dominated the platform since its beginning. Everyone works on their LinkedIn profile to be able to attract recruiters trolling for passive job seekers and impress recruiters actively searching for the right keywords or experience. Net, net; a huge number of people on the platform isn’t open to your message because they have a different agenda, focus, and mission.

Intermittent Use. Unlike Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, there’s very little FOMO (fear of missing out) on LinkedIn. The vibe is not constant or immediate. The incidence of entertaining battles or polarizing personalities is extremely rare. You don’t look at LinkedIn every day or twice a day because you don’t have to. As a result, mounting ad campaigns or message sharing on LinkedIn takes longer because not everyone is paying attention at any given time. Many of us have had the experience of responding to a birthday or job change prompt, only to have the recipient reply a week or a month later because they don’t frequently check LinkedIn even when it's connected to an email account.  

Propaganda is Prevalent. Linked encourages the distribution of content. It’s widely perceived to be the number one channel for B2B content distribution. Marketers are using this pipeline big time. The problem is that much of the data, studies, insights, and reports are thinly disguised company propaganda rather than useful stats or valuable experiences.

The rampant violation of the 4-1-1 rule; post three neutral and relevant pieces of content for every self-serving one, has somewhat poisoned the well.  This has less to do with official LinkedIn than with the marketers using the platform. Nonetheless, too many users have been sucked in, faked out and disappointed thinking that they were part of a sharing and caring community.

Groups are a Black Hole. The names and the number of members promise an intense peer-to-peer experience. The reality is a mixed bag. Groups are filled with unanswered questions and posts that generate no heat or light. Here, too, the intermittent use of these forums limit their usefulness. And while there are some active and innovative groups, I suspect they’re in the minority.

LinkedIn can be a powerful B2B marketing and content distribution tool. They are regularly improving ways to target, engage, convert, and measure viral and paid campaigns. Understanding usage patterns and the reality confronting users on the platform can improve your results.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Mrs. Maisel’s Passover Promotion

Everything old is new again; with a twist. The 87-year-old Maxwell House Passover Haggadah has teamed up with Amazon’s “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” to promote both brands by appealing to nostalgia among its most likely audience. The Passover promotion not only targets the most observed Jewish holiday, but it also revives a waning brand and sells coffee.

The Passover prayer book, sponsored and distributed by Maxwell House, originally issued in 1932 and continuously published since has become a cultural icon among American Jews. Many of us used it at every Passover Seder in childhood. It's estimated that there are 50 million copies in print.

And now, redesigned in pink, with retro illustrations representing the Emmy-winning Amazon series, the promotion has a new life on social media. Maxwell House, a brand eclipsed in the coffee sphere, expects to distribute 40-50,00 copies as a gift with purchase. The connection between the 1950s theme of the show and the sweet memories of Baby Boomers’ and their millennial children is smart targeting.

The lesson for marketers is that knowing your audience and playing to their experiences and emotions will resonate and create a halo effect for a brand. It will be interesting to see if the sales spike will be sustained when the 8-day holiday, which begins April 19th, ends. Happy Passover!

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Building Better Chatbots

Chatbots are software configured, programmed and embedded in messenger apps, websites and SMS to replicate or simulate human conversation. A chatbot maintains a conversation with a user in natural language, understands the intent of the user, and responds based on business rules, stored responses or data from the business. Powered by advances in artificial intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), these robots connect to the Internet and mobile structures using APIs which give them immediacy and regular updates.

Principally deployed on SMS and messenger platforms, like Facebook Messenger, WeChat, What’s App, Telegram or Slack platforms that have become more popular than SMS or social media, they are on-call 24/7/365 and generally can anticipate and respond to frequently asked questions, routine inquiries, common complaints and basic transactions like sales, returns, reservations and subscriptions.

Building a bot strategy requires a series of choices and decisions which impact directly on engagement and customer satisfaction. Aligning a chatbot with the brand personality and promise is important for continuity, to influence the customer experience and/or facilitate or accelerate the customer journey. Anticipating many questions asked many ways with answers that address multiple audiences with various interests and intentions is a colossal task.

Consider seven factors in planning and building your chatbot.

Define a Clear Objective. Start with a clear understanding of what the bot should do mechanically and emotionally. In most cases, the objective will be to engage people quickly and effectively to assist them in getting answers, finding content or connecting to humans. Determine what you want those interacting with your bot to think, feel and do. Then configure the software accordingly.

Contextualize the Role in CX Strategy. Bots play a role in the customer journey and in a tiered brand response plan. If the chatbot is your first line of interaction or defense, it will address the most obvious and frequently asked questions. Try to imagine what level of curiosity, angst, frustration or confusion users might face as they interact with the bot. Urgency and emotion will help determine tone and functionality. Plot the most likely use cases and take a hard-edged look at the content or navigation that led a person to your bot.

According to Isabella Steele, chatbots should introduce themselves and give users a clue about available functionality. Similarly, by giving users instructions for interacting with the chatbot, users will stay on track, ask the right kind of questions and be much happier with the experience.

Focus on Brand Alignment. A chatbot is an extension of your brand. It should reflect brand values and brand personality. A directive or authoritative brand will choose language, voices, tone, and cadence to reinforce an authoritative posture. A breezy or friendly brand will do the same making different choices to reflect its unique gestalt.

Choose Graphics Purposefully. Humans relate to other humans. On one hand, you want to create immediate recognition and interaction. On the other hand, you want to make it clear to users they are not talking or texting with a human being. Finding the right image is a branding and philosophical choice. In many cases, the choice is avoided by the design of a chat window. In other cases, populating the chat window with a human face can spark more humane conversations.

Scope the FAQs.To respond quickly you must decide on the number, type, tone, length, and depth of questions and answers. Since most brands can anticipate or measure the 20 most asked questions, it’s a good place to start, keeping in mind that there are probably 3-4 ways to ask these same 20 questions.

Answers should be short, clear, factual and on-point. Answers can be links to other content which might better explain or flesh out responses. KPIs for chatbots should be one-click resolution and high customer satisfaction. The bot relationship should accelerate the customer journey and add to an appreciation of the brand. Carefully consider your “no answer” answer; the response to unprogrammed or unusual questions. Replies to these anomalies can change the perception of your brand.

Plan the Experience. Is the friction of soliciting information or an email address better or worse than an anonymous session? Bots can capture data and be personalized. But do these added steps enhance the experience, deepen the relationship or increase customer satisfaction? Most bot interactions are fleeting not sustained. In most cases, instant gratification ought to be the guiding light.  

Assume users will be talking face-to-face with a representative. That’s your bot in action. Think about the tone, word choice, cadence and presentation style that will mirror and/or resonate with your customer base. Imagine and role-play the conversation with the idea of finding the hiccups or sticking points. Plan on creating short, snappy, snackable responses that inform and educate users. And make it easy to bail out for any and all reasons.

Choose the Right Voice. According to Stanford professor James Landay, speech recognition is three times faster than typing into a cell phone, which intensifies thinking about the voice of your chatbot and brand. My former colleague, Lou Killeffer, points out the need for “sonic branding” insisting that brands create an “audio logo” to differentiate themselves in a voice-driven world. Naming your chatbot is the first step in aligning with your brand positioning and personality.

Male, female, neutral, mechanical or cartoon-y voices trigger stored perceptions and emotions. Take a cue from Siri and Alexa who play on cultural, and probably sexist, stereotypes of women as helpful customer service representatives. Research suggests that male voices communicate authority while female voices offer warmth and empathy. Choose carefully in line with the attitudes and expectations of your client base.

Chatbots require as much brand and engagement planning as programming legerdemain. Bots can add to or subtract from the customer experience based on the choices marketers make.

[manhattanmarketingmaven]

Best Times for Social Posts

In the relentless search for increased engagement and conversions in social media, timing and network use patterns focus our attention and our marketing spend.

Lindsay Kolowich, writing on Hubspot blog, collected, curated and analyzed research from multiple sources, like CoSchedule and Buffer, and produced a report on the best times to post content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest based on click-through rates.

The good news is that these clues might improve marketing productivity. The bad news is that many marketers will rush to test the recommended timing and, in so doing, will change or skew the timing dynamic.

Consider Lindsay’s conclusions which are geared to Eastern Time, with implications for social platforms used by people in the other US and international time zones. Take into account the fact that different demographic groups in different geographies use each network in unique and different ways, often with different interests or intentions on an array of devices. Assume that a growing majority of social media users everywhere access social media on smartphones where individual movement through time and physical space impact attention, awareness and interaction. So, finding the right moments to post are just the beginning of a serious engagement strategy.

Instagram. The best times to post are 1pm and 5pm on Friday suggesting maximum attention and clicks at lunchtime and as work is ending.  

Facebook. End of the week, Thursday through Sunday are strongest times on the biggest platform. 9:00 am and Noon see click-through spikes suggesting that people check in on Facebook when they get to work or school and at lunchtime. There is a secondary spike from 3:00p till 4:00p hinting that as biorhythms slump people use Facebook as a mood elevator.

Twitter. Use may vary widely based on who people follow, the perceived newsfeed value of the platform and how intensely (or not) they care about The Donald’s tweet storms. Optimal posting times mirror the national news cycle – 8-10am and 6-9pm. Retweets spike at Noon and from 5-6pm in sync with broadcast news cycles.

LinkedIn. Twenty-five percent of US adults are on this platform, though it's not clear how many are daily, weekly or monthly users. Daily users include recruiters and HR guys and job seekers. It’s no surprise that the premiere B2B platform is most active during business hours.  Mid-morning posts (10a-Noon) especially mid-week (Wednesday) generate the most clicks.

Pinterest. Active female users dominate this network. High click rates from the 8-11pm hint that Pinterest is a “me time” destination where women can pin, search, shop and pursue a variety of interests uninterrupted. Spikes in interaction from 2-4 am suggest significant engagement outside the eastern US.

In optimizing social media timing matters. But it isn’t everything. Use this data. Test its validity. Compare it with the pattern of responses to your content and your brand. Share what you learn.