Chart of the Day: How is video being embedded into email marketing?
Email has limitations in what can be displayed correctly in email clients. But none more so than video playback.
The safest route would be a static image, meaning that a static image would display for all clients. But as this chart shows, this has become rather old school, as only 2% use this method. A staggering 52% of the clients use fullscreen or inline video embedding. Animation (.gif animation), accounts for 46% of the total of sends.
Before we all suddenly start to add inline video, there are a few points we need to remember:
Fullscreen interaction only works correctly for iOS
Inline only works on Apple Mail, Outlook for Mac and Outlook.com (non-preview)
Gif animation doesn't work for Outlook 2007-2013 and Windows Phone 7
Email clients vary in how they accept videos playing in your inbox. So it comes down to…
Chart of the day: Most consumers agree that video is the best way to get to know a brand online
Around three-quarters (74%) of consumers said there was a connection between online video and their decision making process on whether to purchase.
The study found that video is a perfect way of reaching and engaging customers, even informing their purchase decision.
The study also found that almost 7 in 10 (67%) of respondents said that the amount of video they watch on social media has increased in the last month; 6 hours per week is the average that customers spend watching videos on social media
Customers also react with brands a lot as shown in the chart below.
The research also found that customers "like" videos almost every two times they watch a video on social media and most customers…
Chart of the Day: Facebook's new corrected video view figures show it was never ahead of YouTube on video
Back in 2014, we saw loads of headlines saying 'Facebook is now beating YouTube in video views'. Then came the string of correcting articles pointing out that Facebook was only winning because it counts 3 seconds of viewing as a view, whilst YouTube counts 30 seconds as a view. So clearly it was like comparing apples and oranges, but Facebook still had more apples than YouTube had oranges.
Or so we thought. In late 2016 the news broke that thanks to a bug in its video view tracking code, Facebook had been accidentally overstating the length of video views on its platform by 80%.
Now new viewing data from Nielsen has shown that since Facebook fixed the error causing it to wrongly inflate viewing counts, the true viewing figures for Facebook's video views are…
Chart of the Day: Utilizing digital to drive consumers into store sees a resurgence with Retailers
Customers are increasingly expecting retailers to give them the convenience of browsing online from where ever they are; in the car, in a bar, from Wichita...you get the idea. This ability to visit a store, find the same products at the same price and take it home at the point of purchase with no waiting or delivery charges, can make or break a consumer's choice to spend their hard earned money. In the last few years, many high street brands are embracing multichannel here in the UK e.g. Argos, Debenhams and Next to name a few but many others aren't.
In this research from RSR Research, we see that while the primary role of digital channels is to sell products,…
Research shows most important factors for selecting martech
Marketers now have many, many potential marketing technologies they can deploy as shown by our 30 categories of martech relevant for all businesses serious about growth and optimisation. Selecting any type of new marketing technology is a serious businesses since although many services today offer paying monthly, collection of data and integration with other systems mean that although it's easy to switch providers in theory, in practice it often isn't. Of course, this depends whether it is a mission-critical systems like CRMs, which involve a lengthy migration between platforms compared to AB testing tools which can be switched relatively easily.
This research from Trustradius covers the factors that are important in taking a decision.
The research shows that buyers want hands-on experience with the product and insights from customers. Product demos and free trials were the best…
Chart of the Day: Gmail inbox placement and read rates
In 2013, Google rolled out its restructure of the Gmail inbox and introduced their tabs layout. Back then email marketers believed it would be the "death of email marketing". So we are nearly 4 years since the launch, how are marketing emails performing in the Promotions tab?
In the chart below, we see that Promotions has an Inbox Placement Rate (IPR) of 84.5%. We can also see that the read rate is the lowest of all the tabs, at a low 19.2%.
This tells us that out of all the promotion emails, in the tab, only 19% are read. So 81% of marketing emails will be simply deleted/unread. So if you land in the Promotions tab, chances of getting read are very slim.
What can i do?
First, check if you need…
Chart of the day: customers delete smartphone applications mostly because the app is not useful
A study of over 2,000 app users found that users delete the app because it's either taking up too much space on their device or the app uses lots of data.
Bugs and dislike of the ads in the app were also issues for users, as well as too many promotional issues.
Key takeaways:
It's important to make app content relevant, as encouraging customers to download your app is the hard bit, keeping them in important. It's best not to just create an app, it needs to be relevant and useful, just having an app is not good marketing.
Source: MarketingSherpa Customer Satisfaction Research Survey
Sample: 2,400 consumers
Recommended resource: Read more about marketing your app or building your first app
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Chart of the Day: New innovative management styles and their predecessors
When we talk about managing marketing teams, the emphasis is usually on building up a culture which inspires devotion and innovation. When looking to change company culture managers often have a hard time getting people to align themselves with what they envision the culture should be. That's where I think this graphic can be really useful. It shows the key breakthroughs in the history of managing human collaboration, right from tribes to the most innovative organizations in the world.
The chart doesn't specify any examples of the final 'teal' tier of human collaboration. But I think examples like Valve and Spotify show how self-managing teams can be incredibly efficient and effective.
Source: Strategy+Busines
Recommended Toolkit: Managing Digital Marketing Teams
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Chart of the Day: Average share of weekly activity on Twitter and Facebook
So, here's the thing. Most businesses don't utilise social media effectively enough to generate a return on their efforts. But with a few simple tweaks anyone can make Social work for their business. Start by considering the following questions:
1. Which platform is right for your business and target audience?
Consider who your target audience is and find the right social media platform(s). If you are a B2B business Linkedin is probably the best place for you and Snapchat is better aligned to targeting under 23 consumers. Which a little research you can find the right audience for you.
2. What content are you posting? The Sell-Inform-Entertain balance
One area where businesses fall down on social is posting promotional content too often in their eagerness to push a sale through the channel rather than posting engaging informative content that builds brand loyalty. Look at your posts, would…
It seems you either have what it takes... or not
When speaking to businesses about their marketing, integration is a common challenge, whether that's integration of comms, technology or teams within a business.
The latest Econsultancy / Adobe Digital Intelligence briefing sheds some light on how many businesses have achieved integration. It's encouraging to see that nearly half of businesses can confidently state:
Digital Marketing permeates most of our marketing activities
Kudos to the businesses that say that digital permeates all our marketing activities or that they are 'digital first'.
It's less encouraging to see that this figure hasn't changed much over the last 3 years. What's more, integration is severely lacking in nearly one-fifth of companies say that digital marketing is 'very much separate'.
Source: Digital Intelligence 2017 briefing
Sample: 14,163 respondents globally (64% client-side)
Recommended Smart Insights resource: Managing a Digital Marketing Centre of Excellence -…
