One of the biggest challenges in marketing is predicting customer behavior – but we can do so much, quickly and easily, on that front now that it’s a little mind-boggling. These six POI nuggets delve into personalization, automation and commercialization to offer a peek into what makes people tick and how we can work together to get them to tock!
I was framed!
Content authoring is one of the final stages before launching a new website. At this point, the client has approved the information architecture of the site, wireframes and the content that will appear on all the site pages.
Wireframes serve as a blueprint of a website. Purposefully, we leave colors, fonts, images or other visual elements out at this phase, as the focus is on structure. Wireframes demonstrate page structure for various types of pages in a website (home, contact, products), to look at basic functionality, such as content areas, headers, buttons or image area.
When content is written to fit in the framework, authoring can be simple. It can be as easy as copying and pasting into various sections or modules within the template. How closely the final content follows the wireframe or design determines how efficiently it can be authored into the site.
We dig into how wireframes solve challenges for content authoring and save time for all involved in this new Savoir Faire blog post.
Stats don’t lie, right?
Some are quick to abandon or downgrade their email marketing platforms for newer, shinier tools – “Ooh, chatbots!” – but at Savoir Faire, we continue to see the strong, positive impact strategic emails have for our clients.
Techspective gets it, too, and offers some great statistical information as to why email is still relevant – and will continue to be so into 2020:
One, a recent report shows that every dollar spent on email marketing generates a $44 dollar return – and that’s up from $38 in 2018!
Two, automated emails get 119% higher click rates than broadcast emails, meaning that your customized, strategic campaigns are still a powerful way to convert customers.
Three, 99% of consumers check their email every day, which means if you’re not in the inbox, your competition likely is.
Four, email marketing is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Twitter or Facebook, so consider using social media as an addendum to your email marketing.
Double team Google
For our customers, design and SEO are not two disparate entities, never meeting, never crossing boundaries. In fact, at our first big discovery meeting with clients, design and SEO are equally represented, so both elements are on the same page from the get-go.
Google appreciates the marrying of design and SEO, too, and there are tactics to consider if you want to make Google happy – and trust us, you do want to make Google happy.
Entrepreneur offers some handy tips in a new article:
- Mobile is not just an addition to your site. Most of your traffic likely comes from mobile, so your visitors should have a great experience there, too, and not just on your desktop site. Your design should be user-friendly, feature optimized images, and read well no matter the size of the screen. Your organic rankings will trend in the wrong direction if your mobile site isn’t optimal.
- Design for functionality. Yes, designers are artists. But, they aren’t alone on the canvas. Working together, designers and optimizers determine the correct image sizing and placement so pages load quickly, all information is easily accessible and everything makes sense.
Psych you in
“If I could just get into their heads,” marketers think when devising new efforts to engage and convert leads.
Associations Now knows how we think, which resulted in this article relating psychology and marketing strategy. Here are some ways they tie together to get you pondering your next piece of content:
Frequency – how do I realize how often they want to hear from me? Answer: Test to gather behavioral data of your prospects.
Color – what design will spark interest? Answer: Different shades historically result in varying emotional responses – such as red equaling urgency.
Social proof – how do I get prospects to engage with my content? We’re psychologically predetermined to mimic behaviors we sense as correct, so by including positive reviews into your content, more customers should be inclined to add their own.
Once upon a time, nearly 50% of U.S. adults smoked. As years passed, that number has dropped to 15%. People became more aware of the health implications not only through government warnings on packages but also a variety of communications, messages and reports that government and health agencies produced and broadcast. The result: social pressure to smoke became social pressure to quit.
Do you think these tactics help improve our use of social media?
Remember Wish Book?
Kids of the ’80s and ’90s loved this time of year, waiting for the post office to hand deliver a glossy, heavy catalogue packed with photos of toys, toys, TOYs, baby!
Every major department store relied on these hefty tomes for wish list creation – back when driving to the store and mail order were kings.
Varying costs saw those catalogues virtually disappear until recently, when a savvy shop decided to bet it all on paper. British retailer Argos revives its catalogue this year, dubbed The Book of Dreams, playing on the nostalgia of parents plus the fact that young folks have trust in marketing materials they can touch.
Marketing Week details the campaign effort; it will be interesting to gauge the results. For those truly wanting a flashback, there are several nostalgia-themed Facebook pages dedicated to those Wish Books of yore.
AI in 2020
“Not for me” is the last thing you want a prospect to think when looking at your marketing content. Personalized marketing efforts continue to be at the top of everyone’s strategies, but true one-to-one marketing is time-consuming and really expensive, right?
It can be, but opportunities to utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) arise on the regular, offering us simpler ways to reach an individual with the correct content without having to pen a single email to each person. According to ClickZ, AI will make some inroads to affordable options for small- and mid-size businesses next year.
Hyper-personalization programs that offer predictive customer behavior elements are likely to increase in 2020 and become affordable options, allowing your marketing experts to spend more time on content creation and other strategic tactics.
