Email Marketing Trends to Watch Out for in 2018

The number of email users have grown exponentially over the years, and there's no sign that it will be stopping in 2018. Studies have shown that almost 90% of American consumers use email, and 65% or more have bought something online due to promotional emails.

This means the future of marketing relies on data-boosted content marketing. If you want to keep up with your competitors, you should watch out for these email marketing trends that are expected to dominate next year.

Increased Interactivity Inside Emails

Marketers forecast that emails will show increased interactivity in 2018, with the goal of making them fun to read so engagement rates are increased and bounce rates reduced.

One of the best ways to do this is to enhance emails by including image galleries, quizzes, GIFs, countdown timers, and add-to-cart capabilities. Quizzes and GIFS will lead to increased customer footprints while countdown timers create a feeling of urgency that will push recipients to take action within a stipulated time-frame. Meanwhile, including an add-to-cart function will shorten shopping time and enhance brand experience.

Email Marketing Programs Backed by Artificial Intelligence

It's a given that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology will be a big part of the future. As a matter of fact, numerous tech companies have already invested heavily in developing AI technology that will make lives easier. Email marketing is one area that will reportedly benefit from machine learning.

It's expected that machine learning programs can assist companies and email marketers by suggesting ways on how to better segment email lists, incorporate product recommendations and design more personalized emails that target specific customers.

Rise of More Plain-Text Emails

The trend of using HTML-powered email templates with images is over. Instead, 2018 will see the rise of plain-text emails. Researchers have found that this style of email is more effective than the HTML ones. Marketing campaigns using plain text emails have been found to have higher delivery and open rates, as well as better engagement numbers.

Marketing specialists have theorized that plain text emails look the same across various gadgets and look more personal. Recipients don't have to open a browser to read a plain-text email. They're also easier to format for mobile devices.

Mobile Becomes a Priority

More than half of emails are opened on a mobile device, and 2018 is expected to be the year when emails will be designed with mobile formatting as a priority.

Graphic via superoffice.com

Pretty soon, companies will be obligated to have a responsive design when it comes emails. This trend won't be limited to emails though. Subscription forms will also become more mobile friendly while articles will start wrapping up their content with an email signup form to boost conversions.

Increased Significance of Gmail and its Subscriber-Level Filtering

Gmail is becoming the primary inbox provider for a lot of companies. Therefore, most customers on subscriber lists have a Gmail address. But due to Gmail's system of filtering email, it becomes imperative for businesses to think about how it will be placed in the inbox.

In order for marketers to optimize clicks, opens, and conversions, they have to pay more attention to who they are emailing and how they're sending their email.Questions like whether the subscriber is actively receiving and interacting with the email and whether they have economic value should be answered. Likewise, the frequency of emails sent, the order, and even the time that they're sent becomes more significant.

However, the upcoming year will see more companies using more robust analytics to optimize results and foregoing conventional rules like not sending mail to those who haven't clicked or opened an email in the past three months.

The year 2018 will see more emails that are deeply personalized and utilizing advanced automation technologies. The integration of AI and machine learning will also help marketers to harness the power of email marketing and use it to further their business.

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3 Ways Automation Can Accelerate Event Growth

Hosting events is like growing a small business. You start with a shoestring staff and limited tools, but as your event gets bigger, so do your needs. More team members come aboard to handle the load, more technology and tools enter the fray, and what was once a straightforward task becomes a never-ending cycle of interlocking problems and solutions.

To make matters worse, events face market competition just like any other business. Attendees buy only so many tickets every year and events that fail to innovate may quickly find themselves underattended and out of the limelight. But how do you innovate if, like so many event teams, you’re bogged down by daily operations? Many in the industry have found that using technology to automate more tasks can increase their efficiency and can keep them focused on the long game as they grow their events.

In this blog, I’ll cover three ways that automation can help move the needle and grow your events to their fullest potential. 

Why Automation Matters

Before automation tools were commonly used, teams had to manage everything themselves. Social media ads, marketing campaigns, and content management all required multiple team members to track, log, and execute. A few disconnected solutions eventually hit the market but the burden still fell mostly on event teams to pick up any slack.

Today’s tools offer event coordinators the firepower they’ve always wanted. Event professionals can now take advantage of APIs—application program interfaces—without learning to code or hiring their own engineering staffs. APIs can customize the way each piece of technology communicates with the others, streamlining processes and making automation what it was always supposed to be: automatic.

APIs operate by connecting two unrelated applications without requiring developer intervention. Take workflow tool Zapier: Event professionals can create “zaps” for their specific needs and synchronize movement between applications (e.g., automatically adding new contacts from your CRM to your engagement platform—and saving your team countless hours of manual labor). This eliminates a time-consuming administrative task, freeing event staff to focus on creative ways to keep attendance up and maintain steady growth.

Automate to Make Your Event Great

Like a small business, every event has opportunities to become more efficient.

Here are three automation-based areas to experiment with:

1. Web Scheduling

The bigger an event becomes, the more budget web development demands. Attendees want to see personalized content, but when it comes to automation, personalized doesn’t have to mean customized. Automate event publishing so that staff members can schedule events ahead of time. By handling the administrative work behind the scenes, automation software frees staff to work on the most pressing tasks first. This maximizes efficiency and ensures that nothing goes live until it is vetted and approved. Check out a tool such as Sched, which enables event coordinators to control session availability while allowing attendees to create their own schedules.

 2. Social Media Marketing

Every event needs great marketing in order to remain relevant in attendees’ minds. However, the more time marketers spend organizing email lists and scheduling posts, the less time they have to create engaging, attention-grabbing content that brings eyes to an event.

Automate noncreative aspects of event promotion to let marketing staff spend their time on more valuable pursuits. Use your engagement platform to help free up your creatives’ minds by scheduling nurture campaigns and advertisements in advance.

3. Customer Service

Attendees and customers are the driving force behind the success of most events. If they’re not happy, the event won’t last long. As mentioned, customers respond better to personalized communications, but manual personalization takes an unreasonable amount of time to achieve.

Instead of spending thousands of dollars on unnecessary labor hours, automate data exports and outreach programs. Take advantage of the latest app technology so attendees can customize their experiences. There are programs to replace printed programs and create a closed social network, to streamline scheduling and communications, and to empower attendees to share their schedules and locate one another on-site.

Small businesses and events both operate in a world where the person who spends the least time in the administrative weeds tends to come out on top. Don’t let manual processes overwhelm staff and hinder your event from reaching its full potential. Instead, follow these tips to automate processes, eliminate redundant work, and position the event for success.

How have you used your engagement platform to further automate event tasks? What tools from this article might you use to free up some more time for your team? Tell me about your plans in the comments.

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Hubcast 158: Sales Enablement, Dream Designs, & HubSpot Masters Facebook Group

The Hubcast: HubSpot Tips, Tricks, Inbound & Content Marketing News & Sales Info every week. Are you a HubSpotter looking to ...

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Why Marketers on Facebook Messenger Will Rule the Engagement Economy

The more marketing evolves, the more human it becomes.

The early days of email marketing were about outreach—talking at people. Now, in the Engagement Economy, marketing is a two-way dialogue and marketers talk with people. But we have one more leap to make: talking like people. Marketers today are still trying to be everything to everyone. They’re chasing consumers—who own 132% more devices and access 389% more apps than they did five years ago—across all channels, and consumers sense the desperation. To talk like people, marketers must commit the ultimate lifelike act and like consumers’ friends. Marketers need to explore focusing their energies on channels that maximize engagement, like Facebook Messenger.

The Way the World Messages 

Most friendships revolve around a single channel of choice. It may be Slack for work buddies, SMS for your significant other, WhatsApp for international friends, and email for the grandparents. These real-life relationships have unspoken rules: you don’t over-message, you don’t beg for attention, and you don’t blast people on all channels at once unless there’s a good reason. According to Twilio, 66% of consumers now prefer to reach brands (or be reached) via messaging apps.

Consumers want marketers to stick to just one channel too. In this day and age consistency is soothing. Consumers already proactively unsubscribe to all but their channel of choice. They’re tired of poorly targeted multi-channel offers, such as retargeted discounts for a dress they already purchased, and marketers are tired of trying to stay consistent.

For a great many consumers, that one channel is email—but this is changing. Email is great but can be full of clutter. If you’re going to go about culling down your channels to the one where you’ll focus your audience, it’s far better to future-proof it. Offer that your new ‘buddies’ meet you on a channel that’s growing, robust, and genuinely engaging, such as Facebook Messenger.

Facebook Messenger is where the world goes to:

• Connect with everyone. 31% of US app time is spent on Facebook and messaging apps.—Sprout
• Stay tuned. It’s used by 17% of the world’s population monthly.—TechCrunch
• Escape cold outreach. Brands need explicit permission to message consumers thanks to Facebook’s filtered inbox.
• Seek support. Customers demand that brands be on Messenger.—Conversocial

Messenger is ‘safe,’ but it’s also far more engaging because it’s so versatile. In the mold of China’s WeChat, Facebook Messenger does it all: video calls, emojis, stickers, mobile games, payments, group chats, music, bots, and integrations with services like ride-hailing apps. The ways to engage are endless.

And unlike static Facebook brand pages, which resemble the bulletin-boards of yore, Facebook Messenger is a truly 21st-century channel: it’s a never-ending personal conversation.

Put Your Marketing Where Your Messenger Is

Now, don’t delete your Twitter account just yet—I’m not implying you should abandon all channels. But refocusing your efforts on a core audience on one core platform will allow you to do a much better job engaging people because you and your team won’t be spread thin. You can use other channels to help direct traffic to your core messaging channel. Like a good friend, consumers will appreciate that you’re always there. As in, literally there, on Facebook Messenger, where they are too.

Marketers who build their audience on Messenger will reap the rewards. It’s the ultimate active channel with unheard-of open rates of up to 90%. By opting in, consumers offer you their attention. They expect to hear from you, and they click-through posts 30% of the time. And it’s a fun place to be: brands can engage with users one-on-one in a setting where they’re primed to have fun and interact in a rich-message environment.

Brands can build loyal fan bases on Messenger free of the pay-to-play component of Facebook’s newsfeed:

• Retailers e-tailers can post hot picks and announce sales.
• Musicians and artists can sell tickets, host music, and launch merchandise.
• Sports teams can engage fans with score alerts, team events, and VIP offers.
• Political candidates and causes can rally constituents and raise money.
• News organizations and bloggers can circumvent crowded inboxes and drive clicks.
• Businesses and startups can post press releases and live-report events.

It’s also a fantastic opportunity to blend direct-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer experiences that are the key to modern brand loyalty. According to the Harvard Business Review, that’s what Kimberly-Clark, maker of Huggies diapers, did by creating a rewards program to help new parents educate each other. And it’s why the retailer Burberry streams online-only fashion shows that include user submissions. These types of activities belong on Facebook Messenger where brands can and cultivate always-on, lifelike conversations their customers.

Future-Proof Your Audience

Nothing could be more friend-like than choosing one channel and sticking to it. Facebook Messenger is where consumers are increasingly spending their time and where they’re most likely to engage and click. And, it’s growing. If you’re a forward-thinking marketer hoping to build an audience that’ll be with you in the future, there’s no better place to be.

Do you use Messenger to engage your audience? What has the response been? What potential do you see for your brand? Let’s keep the engagement going in the comments.

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Snapchat is Now Offering AR Trial Ads for Businesses

Snapchat is looking to reinvigorate its brand with two new ads—Promoted Stories and AR Trial Ads. The company is hoping these new ad designs will capture the user's interest and reduce skipping. If they're successful, it could give the company an edge over Instagram.

It's easy to understand why Snapchat wants to stir things up a bit. The company has had a challenging year so far, with a hundred thousand of its Spectacles units reportedly unsold. They also lost about $30 million worth of revenue so far in 2017.

Snapchat's ads are largely comprised of short ads that appear either after the last video in a Story or during Discover or Lenses content. Now advertisers will have the option to book an AR Trial ad or a Promoted Story.

Snapchat gives brands a way to reach everyone with story ads https://t.co/TbH18JE49e pic.twitter.com/uyTeBN4u4R

— Ad Age (@adage) November 27, 2017

Promoted Stories can give companies the chance to develop more detailed ads featuring anywhere from 3 to 10 images or videos. It works like a Story but will stream throughout the country for one day as sponsored content. HBO has the distinction of being the first to use Promoted Stories in the US. The company used the new ad format to showcase six Snaps that users should watch on Black Friday.

Meanwhile, the AR Trial ads are described as a more robust version of Snapchat's 3D World Lenses. The app's users will remember that Snapchat previously rolled-out Lenses promoting Blade Runner and Bud Light. But those ads were more for fun than function.

That's not the case with the AR Trial program. This time around, companies can push for an immersive experience by giving users the chance to get a closer look at their product. For instance, BMW's AR Trial offering will permit users to place the vehicle model of their choice in their chosen environment. The user can then walk around the AR model and check out its details. They can even resize the image or change the product's color.

Snapchat is moving towards #AR advertising - starting with BMW! Find out what to expect from the ads here https://t.co/5iwJCEIL0P #AugmentedReality #GazeCoin pic.twitter.com/z7HsPwnta7

— Gaze Coin (@GazeCoin) November 27, 2017

Snapchat is hoping that companies that opt for AR Trial ads will also gain more exposure through users who will share their experience with the AR ad via Stories or private messages.

[Featured image via Pixabay]

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The Wait is Over! Microsoft Office is Now Available on Chromebook

It took a while but Microsoft Office is finally available for Chromebooks.

Chrome Unboxed recently reported that Microsoft Office apps are now showing up in Google's Play Store for Chromebooks. The apps are expected to roll out on Acer's Chromebook 15 and C771, as well as on Samsung's Chromebook Pro.

The Office apps on Chromebook might be Android versions but they will include the same features found on any Android tablet running the productivity apps. This is good news for Chromebook users, as Microsoft's Android tablet apps have been described as nothing short of amazing. They boast an interface that's optimized for the big screen. While it looks like the regular windows app, it has a limited feature set.

Microsoft Office for Chromebooks is now available at Play Store https://t.co/aaYGTNUGNe @GooglePlay @Office @googlechrome pic.twitter.com/z9t6EvvDcE

— Innogriti (@innogriti) November 27, 2017

Devices like Asus' 10-inch Chromebook Flip will receive free access to Microsoft Office via the Chrome OS, but larger-sized gadgets will require a subscription which starts at $6.99 per month.  

It should be pointed out that an ongoing Microsoft policy mandates that devices larger than 10 inches need to be subscribed to Office 365 in order to unlock the suite's ability to create, edit and print documents This rule holds true for all gadgets, regardless of whether they're using Android, iOS, or Windows hardware.

It's a rule that can potentially increase Office 365 subscriptions. However, most Chromebooks are being used in schools, which means that they either already have subscriptions to the program or are utilizing Google's G Suite. Still, Chromebooks are becoming more popular, so this move can have big returns for Microsoft.

Microsoft's foray into Google laptops has been quite a struggle. When the arrival of the Android app support was announced more than a year ago, people automatically assumed that they'd also be available on Chromebooks. But while Microsoft's Office Suite did run well on select devices, it wasn't compatible with other models, leading to mounting frustration among users.  

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3 Ways to Incorporate Digital Innovation Into Healthcare Marketing

With an ever-changing and complex landscape, healthcare marketers are facing more challenges than ever before. Growing consumerism and changing demographics in healthcare have led to higher patient expectations and demands. Regulatory uncertainties make it hard to strategize and execute on long-term growth. New entrants from retail and technology are shaking up the traditional ecosystem. Increasing marketing touchpoints and channels have created an overwhelming amount of noise for target audiences. With all these changes, it’s clear that the winners in healthcare are those who can embrace technological solutions faster. One thing is for certain—if you don’t innovate, someone else will.

Attending this year’s SHSMD Annual Conference gave me insights of how healthcare providers have tackled these challenges by undergoing a digital transformation in different parts of their business. In this blog, I’ll share three ways to leverage digital solutions to deeply understand patients and stakeholders in ways that truly move the needle.

Personalize Physician Engagement

Physicians are more overwhelmed with marketing messages than ever before. Tired of a constant barrage of phone calls, emails, and office visits, it’s not surprising that a recent study by ZS Associates shows that over 50% of physicians have stopped responding to sales reps. To combat this while driving service line growth and moving market share, Valley Health System transformed the way it approached physician relationships. Using a “needs-based relationship” approach, the team found the key to building physician relationships is by uncovering pain points and addressing them.

With targeted communication tools, marketing teams can uncover and track each physician’s top concerns, such as improving patient outcomes or staying current on professional information, and communication preferences. By combining the two using digital marketing tactics, you can drive the most compelling message through at the right time and the right channel. Moreover, these insights can enable physician liaison teams to build trusted advisor relationships. Unlocking insights about an individual physician’s newsletter subscriptions, which articles they’ve read, and which CME’s (Continuing Medical Education) they’re interested in, can help target communications and drive conversations to help physicians understand truly what’s in it for them.

Leverage Virtual Health

Virtual Care is a transformational solution that produces real revenue results and can impact lives in profound ways. Mercy Sisters rolled out virtual health options to the sickest 5% of their chronic health patients who also contributed to the highest healthcare costs. With virtually supported home hospice care, elderly patients were able to stay home surrounded by family and comforts, instead of a nursing home. They interacted with physicians more frequently and received quicker response rates. Not only did this improve quality of life, but it also had enormous revenue benefits, Mercy was able to reduce Medicare and labor costs, totaling $1M in cost savings. Although we tend to think technology can create an impersonal and disconnected culture, this is a great example of how technology, combined with change management, in a healthcare environment can make a real and personal difference to human lives.

Understand Patient Journeys

In healthcare, increasing your share of voice by understanding the ins and outs of your target audience is not a new concept. Especially in crowded urban geographic regions, health systems have leveraged databases to research patient demographics and use focus groups to test messages for years. However, what’s new is the idea of designing marketing campaigns around the concept of “digital first.” To grow market share in a highly competitive region where leaders consistently outspent them in marketing, UI Health did just that.

First, the marketing team armed themselves with in-depth insights about their target audience. This changing demographic doesn’t just include millennials, but anyone exhibiting digital and participatory behaviors, including over 33% of seniors. This audience tends to self-diagnose online, use online research to confirm a doctor’s diagnosis, and share health information via social media. Armed with these insights, the team crafted two ad concepts designed for online viewing, rather than a traditional TV ad, and tested them with a virtual focus group. But they didn’t ignore traditional advertising completely. By creating a consistent experience across channels, such as running TV and YouTube ads together, physically reaching Millennials with billboards, and having a single continuum from paid search and display ads, they actually saw 2.4x more ROI.

I hope these examples can serve as inspiration for you, as it did to me, to think critically about your organizations and look for transformational ways to innovate. Let’s challenge ourselves to take a risk now because the consequences are too significant to wait on the sidelines.

Share your stories of healthcare innovations you’ve seen both inside and outside of your organization. I’d love to hear what you have discovered. Tell me about it in the comments!

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The 1 Secret to Effective Customer Engagement at Any Scale

Customer engagement is the key to effective digital marketing in the Engagement Economy. The internet is saturated with content marketing, people’s inboxes are full of well-designed emails, and account-based strategies are quickly becoming a B2B standard. Improved customer engagement is the only answer to increasing customer expectations, but it can be a complicated strategy.

Customer engagement is the strategy by which businesses build relationships with their clients and customers, with the intent of creating awareness and fostering brand loyalty. It is the foundation of the Engagement Economy, a movement to deliver the authentic and personalized experiences that consumers expect and demand.

Brands that continuously engage with their customers benefit from doing so in many ways:

• It differentiates brands. Consistently finding opportunities for customer engagement results in memorable brand touchpoints.
• It increases customer satisfaction, which helps to retain customers while also making them your biggest advocates.
• It creates trust between the brand and their customers. It’s hard to feel buyer’s remorse over a purchase when a brand is consistently interacting with the buyer—even after the sale.

It’s because of measurable, proven benefits like these that 98% of marketers have a developed a clear strategy to address customer engagement. Despite their efforts, however, almost half of those strategies are severely restricted by one internal hindrance.

Your customer engagement efforts won’t be effective without internal alignment. Even though 98% of marketers understand the value of a robust customer engagement strategy, only 56% report having alignment on that strategy with the most important part of their team—the executives.

In this blog, I’ll cover how to achieve executive-level alignment to take your customer engagement to the next level. 

Every department should be aligned with a marketing strategy, especially a broad strategy that will involve many campaigns, but getting buy-in from the C-suite is key. In one sense, even the best customer engagement strategy will likely fail without the support of the executive team. On the other hand, the C-suite can help mobilize alignment across the entire team, redirect company resources to the strategy, and provide the kind of oversight to make sure the strategy is constantly improving. In fact, 58% of companies reported higher profitability than their competitors when their CEO was in charge of customer experience initiatives.

The key to any customer engagement strategy, at any scale, is executive-level buy-in.

First, of course, you need a strategy for customer engagement, but once it’s on paper, how do you get the C-suite to sign on?

1. Make the Case for Customer Engagement

While the case may be clear for marketers in the trenches of a new age of digital networks and communications, it’s also easy to see why many executive-level leaders don’t jump at ideas like, “building relationships with audience members.” That sounds time-intensive and hard to quantify.

And it is.

So, quantify it, and do it quickly.

• Define “customer engagement” in terms that can be measured, like email opens, branded SEM keywords, etc.
• Provide statistics that connect improved engagement to the bottom line.
• Demonstrate how your competition is better at customer engagement than your organization.

Some statistics you can use:

• 60% of consumers expect an improved experience from brands they are engaged with.
• 54% of consumers engage with brands in order to get the latest news on products and services.
• 66% of B2B consumers want to advocate for brands that engage well.
• 66% of B2B consumers fully expect that all communications with a brand to be personalized.

Once you’ve proven the need, cast a vision.

2. Present Your Customer Engagement Goals

Tie the need directly to your organization and your audience, and outline the end result of your customer engagement strategy. Create some goals based on the metrics you chose to quantify engagement strategies, and extrapolate the revenue-related consequence of those improvements. For example, you know that every X email opens results in one purchase, qualified lead, etc. Your customer engagement strategy aims to improve email opens by Y%, which would, in one year, result in additional revenue of about $Z.

If there are a variety of management and executive-level leaders you need to get aligned, be sure to also highlight how the strategy will help each individual department.

3. Outline the Strategy

Thomas Edison is credited with saying, “Vision without execution is hallucination.” The C-suite doesn’t want to know every detail, but you will need to demonstrate your plan. The executive team won’t buy into a hallucination.

Outline the basic strategy for taking your customer engagement metrics from where they are today, to where they need to be. Make sure the plan is rooted in the present-day reality of your situation and shows practical, achievable increments.

4. Listen and Apply Feedback

There will be considerations you didn’t think of, and insights you didn’t have. Not to mention, anyone—executives included—is more apt to get on-board with a plan when they have a say in that plan.

Be prepared to listen and make adjustments.

5. Commit to Accountability

Make sure you have a plan to share frequent updates with the C-suite. Whether it’s a quarterly meeting or a monthly email, make it part of the overall plan, promise periodic updates—and then make sure your team delivers them!

Customer engagement is a requirement for effective marketing, sales, and customer service in the Engagement Economy. Every team needs the right strategy, insights, and tools, but the one secret to truly effective customer engagement is executive-level buy-in. Start by ironing out your engagement strategy. Make sure it’s rooted in the present reality and clearly tied to revenue-related goals and you’ll be set up for success.

What do you stand to win if you achieve optimal customer engagement? How would you approach achieving executive-level buy-in? Tell me about your obstacles and how you might overcome them in the comments.

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How Facebook Local Will Affect Local SEO

If you run a local business, it’s time to reframe your view of Facebook as a purely social play to a social and search channel. Nearly half of people already use social networks to find local businesses. With the introduction of Facebook Local, that number’s about to go way up. Launched in early November in North America, Facebook Local is the new and improved version of its Events app. It’s a directory of local businesses and events, all organized by category and whether or not your friends frequent them. It’s like Yelp if it factored your friends’ preferences into its ranking algorithm, and if it had the over 1 billion daily (and 2 billion monthly) user base of Facebook. In case anyone’s wondering, Yelp has fewer than 100 million monthly users.

Like Yelp, Facebook Local relies on user-generated content to organize photos taken at businesses, note busy times, and rank them based on the Facebook user reviews for over 70 million business pages. Where Facebook Local stands out is in its attention to the friend factor. Facebook understands people’s inherent need to fit in. That’s why it shows users where their friends are going and where they went. This search based on popularity by friends—not strangers and Yelp Elite—differentiates it from Yelp. Instead of using general user reviews to find the best hair salon, Facebook Local helps you find the best hair salon, according to your friends.

Facebook Local is currently available for iOS and Android. However, the app’s information is all available within the formerly “Nearby” tab in the Facebook app (now called “Local” for consistency), so local search marketers can’t afford to ignore this announcement, whether or not users opt to download the separate app en masse.

Here are five predictions for how Facebook’s Local app will affect local SEO.

1. Reviews Are Here to Stay

With Facebook Local, Facebook has tackled the problem facing the review sites: credibility. While 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends, a quarter of them have to believe the reviews are real first. There is a rising prevalence of fake reviews and an awareness that they exist.

On Facebook Local, businesses are ranked by their popularity among people Facebook users know, trust, and respect—not strangers or business owners posing as reviewers. This highlights the continued importance of reviews and the need for businesses to prioritize Facebook Local just as much as they do Yelp or Google My Business.

2. For Local Guides, Context Matters

David Pierce of Wired said, “At a quick glance, [Facebook Local is] not quite as complete a database as Yelp’s, nor does it have as many reviews or ratings, but it’s a pretty useful tool. Where Facebook starts to differentiate is by letting you search ‘comedy’ and ‘literature,’ and sort by ‘late night,’ to find something to do after dinner.”

This is why businesses must take care to ensure their Facebook pages are filled out accurately and completely. Make sure that your business name, address, and phone number are correct. Add more relevant business categories. Don’t hold back on the text fields of your profile like the About section, where you can mention keyword-rich information like how people love to frequent your business for happy hour. Remember: the more you fill out your profile, the less you force Facebook to crowdsource an incorrect answer.

3. Check-Ins Indicate Popularity

By scanning its billions of users’ accounts, Facebook can look at check-ins to see which businesses are the most popular and when.

Encourage check-ins at your business to signal to Facebook that your business is hopping. Like Yelp’s check-in offers, let customers unlock unique discount codes if they show you a successful Facebook check in on their phone. Run a contest for the best photos taken at your restaurant. Enable appointment and reservation booking buttons. The key is to get customers in the habit of using Facebook as part of their experience with your business.

4. Events Boost Visibility

In their efforts to bring the social into local search, Facebook has tied events and a business directory into a single app. Facebook Local integrates with your calendar, syncs your events in one place, and includes Trending Events and Discover tabs to show what’s popular right now and among your friends.

Hosting events increases your discoverability within the platform and your likelihood of being included in your customer’s’ feeds. Create events often and for anything you can, including product launches, sales, and obviously, traditional events.

5. Ads Are Sure to Come

Facebook Local product manager Aditya Koowal told TechCrunch, “We’ll think about advertising way further down the line.” So Facebook Local doesn’t include advertising yet, but that’s a big yet. If you haven’t already, start experimenting with advertising on Yelp and Facebook it may make sense to start now and experiment. Pay attention to what works,  so you can apply those learnings later on to Facebook Local ads.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Facebook has been making plays in the local search space for years, and Facebook Local is just one in a long line of efforts. Lest you forgot, Facebook recently expanded Marketplace to include car listings, apartment rentals, and mobile food ordering. With Facebook Local, Facebook has created a very worthy competitor to local search giant Yelp. Whether Yelp will reign supreme is yet to be seen, but marketers should be adjusting their strategies now to include Facebook Local if they don’t want to be left behind.

How will your business utilize Facebook Local in your 2018 marketing plan? What advertising potential do you see? I’m interested in your thoughts. Let’s keep the discussion going in the comment section below.

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3 Ways to Incorporate Digital Innovation Into Healthcare Marketing

With an ever-changing and complex landscape, healthcare marketers are facing more challenges than ever before. Growing consumerism and changing demographics in healthcare have led to higher patient expectations and demands. Regulatory uncertainties make it hard to strategize and execute on long-term growth. New entrants from retail and technology are shaking up the traditional ecosystem. Increasing marketing touchpoints and channels have created an overwhelming amount of noise for target audiences. With all these changes, it’s clear that the winners in healthcare are those who can embrace technological solutions faster. One thing is for certain—if you don’t innovate, someone else will.

Attending this year’s SHSMD Annual Conference gave me insights of how healthcare providers have tackled these challenges by undergoing a digital transformation in different parts of their business. In this blog, I’ll share three ways to leverage digital solutions to deeply understand patients and stakeholders in ways that truly move the needle.

Personalize Physician Engagement

Physicians are more overwhelmed with marketing messages than ever before. Tired of a constant barrage of phone calls, emails, and office visits, it’s not surprising that a recent study by ZS Associates shows that over 50% of physicians have stopped responding to sales reps. To combat this while driving service line growth and moving market share, Valley Health System transformed the way it approached physician relationships. Using a “needs-based relationship” approach, the team found the key to building physician relationships is by uncovering pain points and addressing them.

With targeted communication tools, marketing teams can uncover and track each physician’s top concerns, such as improving patient outcomes or staying current on professional information, and communication preferences. By combining the two using digital marketing tactics, you can drive the most compelling message through at the right time and the right channel. Moreover, these insights can enable physician liaison teams to build trusted advisor relationships. Unlocking insights about an individual physician’s newsletter subscriptions, which articles they’ve read, and which CME’s (Continuing Medical Education) they’re interested in, can help target communications and drive conversations to help physicians understand truly what’s in it for them.

Leverage Virtual Health

Virtual Care is a transformational solution that produces real revenue results and can impact lives in profound ways. Mercy Sisters rolled out virtual health options to the sickest 5% of their chronic health patients who also contributed to the highest healthcare costs. With virtually supported home hospice care, elderly patients were able to stay home surrounded by family and comforts, instead of a nursing home. They interacted with physicians more frequently and received quicker response rates. Not only did this improve quality of life, but it also had enormous revenue benefits, Mercy was able to reduce Medicare and labor costs, totaling $1M in cost savings. Although we tend to think technology can create an impersonal and disconnected culture, this is a great example of how technology, combined with change management, in a healthcare environment can make a real and personal difference to human lives.

Understand Patient Journeys

In healthcare, increasing your share of voice by understanding the ins and outs of your target audience is not a new concept. Especially in crowded urban geographic regions, health systems have leveraged databases to research patient demographics and use focus groups to test messages for years. However, what’s new is the idea of designing marketing campaigns around the concept of “digital first.” To grow market share in a highly competitive region where leaders consistently outspent them in marketing, UI Health did just that.

First, the marketing team armed themselves with in-depth insights about their target audience. This changing demographic doesn’t just include millennials, but anyone exhibiting digital and participatory behaviors, including over 33% of seniors. This audience tends to self-diagnose online, use online research to confirm a doctor’s diagnosis, and share health information via social media. Armed with these insights, the team crafted two ad concepts designed for online viewing, rather than a traditional TV ad, and tested them with a virtual focus group. But they didn’t ignore traditional advertising completely. By creating a consistent experience across channels, such as running TV and YouTube ads together, physically reaching Millennials with billboards, and having a single continuum from paid search and display ads, they actually saw 2.4x more ROI.

I hope these examples can serve as inspiration for you, as it did to me, to think critically about your organizations and look for transformational ways to innovate. Let’s challenge ourselves to take a risk now because the consequences are too significant to wait on the sidelines.

Share your stories of healthcare innovations you’ve seen both inside and outside of your organization. I’d love to hear what you have discovered. Tell me about it in the comments!

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How to Get Shoppers to Download Your Retail App

Now that the holiday season is fast approaching, retailers are doing everything they can to attract consumers. But what they're not doing is getting consumers to shop using their retail apps.

According to the latest Pulse of the Online Shopper report from UPS, four out of every five shoppers around the world have used a retailer's app. The numbers are not so surprising as the rise of millennial shoppers mean that more purchases will be done on a mobile device.

It's a fact that people are on their mobile devices longer now and a huge chunk of that time is dedicated to shopping-related tasks. For instance, 72% of the time is used to track an order delivery while 69% is used to compare prices among various retailers. But despite these impressive numbers, a small segment of consumers are actually using a retailer's mobile app, much to the consternation of these companies.

Reasons Why Shoppers are Not Using Retail Apps

The sad truth is that while many shoppers are willing to download retailer mobile apps, they are quickly abandoned or forgotten. Here are the reasons why:

Shoppers Don't Know Their Favorite Retailer Has a Mobile App

It would appear that one major reason why shoppers are not using retail apps is that they're not aware their favorite shop has one. Business Insider mentioned that 64% of American consumers are in the dark about this issue. This is a big blow for retailers who have focused time and money on mobile apps because they give higher conversion rates than mobile browsers.

It's imperative for retailers to find a way to get around this visibility issue. Failure to do so will lead to the industry's stagnation and can cause companies to miss out on the $285 million that consumers are expected to spend on mobile purchases by 2020.

Consumers Prefer Using Retailer's Website

The UPS report also revealed that 53% of shoppers around the world prefer using a brand's mobile website rather than the mobile retailer app. As a matter of fact, only 8% of shoppers actually use a retailer's app in-store. The main reason for this is that these apps do not offer anything different from the brand's mobile site. Shoppers want retailer apps that will give them a better shopping experience but they usually just receive the same incentives or discounts that they would get from the mobile site.

Shoppers are Worried About Online Security

It's not surprising that a lot of people (31% according to the UPS report) are wary of using retailer mobile apps because of security concerns. Shoppers are worried because they don't know how the stored information retailers will receive will be used.

Retails Apps are Difficult to Use or not Working

An app that's not user-friendly or doesn't work will definitely cause users to lose interest. This particularly holds true for retailer apps. The problem is compounded by retail brands not investing enough in these apps, with multiple companies outright dropping their retail apps from the App Store or from Google Play. Meanwhile, other retailer apps have not even been updated since 2016.

There are also complaints about how retail apps are not optimized for mobile devices or how shoppers can't access these apps in-store because of connectivity issues. One survey showed that 92% iPhone users deleted retailer apps because the program was too slow or it crashed or froze.

What Can Retailers do to Improve App Download and Use

While it's a sad fact that many companies have not been able to utilize retail apps to their full advantage, luxury brand Gucci have figured out how to make sales through their app.

Gucci has invested heavily in its retailer app and has used it to successfully integrate customers' online and offline shopping experiences. Just recently, the fashion giant unveiled a new feature called the “Cabinet of Curiosities.” App users would have to scan a mobile sticker in Gucci's store window displays to activate digital artist Ignasi Monreal's latest masterpiece. Once done, shoppers can check out the brand's 2017 gifts selection. Gucci is also using fun elements like stickers, emojis, and VR videos to attract consumers and boost the odds of securing direct purchases.

Presenting the new digital #GucciGift campaign illustrated by artist #IgnasiMonreal. The Cabinet of Curiosities opens into a surreal and spellbinding world featuring the 2017 gifts selection. Discover more https://t.co/RKGldfZEDN #AlessandroMichele #GucciCruise18 pic.twitter.com/Csu04xpJTI

— gucci (@gucci) November 14, 2017

If retailers want to emulate Gucci's success, there are certain steps they can take to optimize their retail apps:

• Push for Wish Lists: Entice app users by offering deals that they can't find on the mobile website or anywhere else online, like exclusive Wish Lists. Providing customized gift ideas, complete with price alerts and stock numbers could interest consumers into using the retail app.
• Reward Loyal Customers: Make your hard-core customers feel even special by giving them special information or early access to seasonal deals. This will stoke their desire to keep using your app and continue their dedication to your brand.
• Give Easy Access with Touch ID: Making it simpler and easier for customers to access their Wish Lists, Shopping Cart or Checkout will draw more in more users. Integrating a Touch ID feature will help with cart conversions.  

Getting your customers to download your business app and make purchases is a challenge. However, identifying your apps weaknesses and employing effective strategies to make it fun and useful to the customer could yield the boost in revenue your business needs this holiday season.

[Featured image via Techno Softwares]

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The 1 Secret to Effective Customer Engagement at Any Scale

Customer engagement is the key to effective digital marketing in the Engagement Economy. The internet is saturated with content marketing, people’s inboxes are full of well-designed emails, and account-based strategies are quickly becoming a B2B standard. Improved customer engagement is the only answer to increasing customer expectations, but it can be a complicated strategy.

Customer engagement is the strategy by which businesses build relationships with their clients and customers, with the intent of creating awareness and fostering brand loyalty. It is the foundation of the Engagement Economy, a movement to deliver the authentic and personalized experiences that consumers expect and demand.

Brands that continuously engage with their customers benefit from doing so in many ways:

• It differentiates brands. Consistently finding opportunities for customer engagement results in memorable brand touchpoints.
• It increases customer satisfaction, which helps to retain customers while also making them your biggest advocates.
• It creates trust between the brand and their customers. It’s hard to feel buyer’s remorse over a purchase when a brand is consistently interacting with the buyer—even after the sale.

It’s because of measurable, proven benefits like these that 98% of marketers have a developed a clear strategy to address customer engagement. Despite their efforts, however, almost half of those strategies are severely restricted by one internal hindrance.

Your customer engagement efforts won’t be effective without internal alignment. Even though 98% of marketers understand the value of a robust customer engagement strategy, only 56% report having alignment on that strategy with the most important part of their team—the executives.

In this blog, I’ll cover how to achieve executive-level alignment to take your customer engagement to the next level. 

Every department should be aligned with a marketing strategy, especially a broad strategy that will involve many campaigns, but getting buy-in from the C-suite is key. In one sense, even the best customer engagement strategy will likely fail without the support of the executive team. On the other hand, the C-suite can help mobilize alignment across the entire team, redirect company resources to the strategy, and provide the kind of oversight to make sure the strategy is constantly improving. In fact, 58% of companies reported higher profitability than their competitors when their CEO was in charge of customer experience initiatives.

The key to any customer engagement strategy, at any scale, is executive-level buy-in.

First, of course, you need a strategy for customer engagement, but once it’s on paper, how do you get the C-suite to sign on?

1. Make the Case for Customer Engagement

While the case may be clear for marketers in the trenches of a new age of digital networks and communications, it’s also easy to see why many executive-level leaders don’t jump at ideas like, “building relationships with audience members.” That sounds time-intensive and hard to quantify.

And it is.

So, quantify it, and do it quickly.

• Define “customer engagement” in terms that can be measured, like email opens, branded SEM keywords, etc.
• Provide statistics that connect improved engagement to the bottom line.
• Demonstrate how your competition is better at customer engagement than your organization.

Some statistics you can use:

• 60% of consumers expect an improved experience from brands they are engaged with.
• 54% of consumers engage with brands in order to get the latest news on products and services.
• 66% of B2B consumers want to advocate for brands that engage well.
• 66% of B2B consumers fully expect that all communications with a brand to be personalized.

Once you’ve proven the need, cast a vision.

2. Present Your Customer Engagement Goals

Tie the need directly to your organization and your audience, and outline the end result of your customer engagement strategy. Create some goals based on the metrics you chose to quantify engagement strategies, and extrapolate the revenue-related consequence of those improvements. For example, you know that every X email opens results in one purchase, qualified lead, etc. Your customer engagement strategy aims to improve email opens by Y%, which would, in one year, result in additional revenue of about $Z.

If there are a variety of management and executive-level leaders you need to get aligned, be sure to also highlight how the strategy will help each individual department.

3. Outline the Strategy

Thomas Edison is credited with saying, “Vision without execution is hallucination.” The C-suite doesn’t want to know every detail, but you will need to demonstrate your plan. The executive team won’t buy into a hallucination.

Outline the basic strategy for taking your customer engagement metrics from where they are today, to where they need to be. Make sure the plan is rooted in the present-day reality of your situation and shows practical, achievable increments.

4. Listen and Apply Feedback

There will be considerations you didn’t think of, and insights you didn’t have. Not to mention, anyone—executives included—is more apt to get on-board with a plan when they have a say in that plan.

Be prepared to listen and make adjustments.

5. Commit to Accountability

Make sure you have a plan to share frequent updates with the C-suite. Whether it’s a quarterly meeting or a monthly email, make it part of the overall plan, promise periodic updates—and then make sure your team delivers them!

Customer engagement is a requirement for effective marketing, sales, and customer service in the Engagement Economy. Every team needs the right strategy, insights, and tools, but the one secret to truly effective customer engagement is executive-level buy-in. Start by ironing out your engagement strategy. Make sure it’s rooted in the present reality and clearly tied to revenue-related goals and you’ll be set up for success.

What do you stand to win if you achieve optimal customer engagement? How would you approach achieving executive-level buy-in? Tell me about your obstacles and how you might overcome them in the comments.

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Amazon Web Services Improves AI for New Consultancy Program

Amazon has rolled out a consultancy program with the goal of assisting consumers with cloud machine learning. The company plans to do this by connecting clients with their own experts.

Dubbed the Amazon ML Solutions Lab, it helps clients unfamiliar with machine learning to find beneficial and efficient uses of it for their company. Amazon plans to do this by integrating brainstorming with workshops to help clients understand machine learning by cloud better. The company will also be utilizing its experts to act as advisors to clients. Together they will work through the problems the company will face and then come up with machine learning-based resolutions. Amazon's cloud experts will also be checking in with the company weekly to see how the project progresses.

AWS ramps up in AI with new Rekognition features and consultancy services https://t.co/Cjd4va860B by @ingridlunden

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) November 22, 2017

No two solutions will be alike though, as the ML Solutions Lab will work according to the needs of the business. For instance, Amazon could send their developers on site if the client wants a more hands-on approach or clients could go to AWS' Seattle headquarters for training.

How long the ML Solutions Lab will work with the company will also depend on the client. But it's expected to last anywhere from 3 to 6 months.

Companies that have more experience with machine learning can avail of the ML Solutions Lab Express. It's an expedited program that runs for a month and begins with a 7-day intensive bootcamp in Amazon headquarters. However, this program is only offered to companies with machine-learning quality data since it's geared towards feature engineering and building models swiftly.

Amazon has not shared any details yet on how much the program will cost companies. No information has been posted on its website yet and company representatives are reportedly not responding to any requests at the moment.

Vinayak Agarwal, Amazon's senior product manager for AWS Deep Learning, pointed out in a blog post that the company has been immersed in machine learning for the past two decades. He also added that Amazon has pioneered innovations in areas like forecasting, logistics, supply chain optimization, personalization and fraud prevention.

Agarwal further enjoined clients to take a closer look at the Amazon recommendations and fraud prevention ML Solutions Lab, saying that they will have access to the experts that developed most of the company's machine learning-based products and services.

The Amazon ML Solutions Lab is being offered to customers worldwide. However, the ML Solutions Lab Express is currently exclusive to US clients.

To get started with the Amazon ML Solutions Lab, visit https://aws.amazon.com/ml-solutions-lab.

[Featured image via Amazon Web Services]

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Top 5 Tools Digital Marketers Should Use for Making Video Explainers

Video explainers are all the rage now, thanks to sites like Buzzfeed and Tasty.

The format started to come into its own in 2016 and hasn't shown any signs of stopping. As a matter of fact, all signs point to videos becoming an even more vital tool in social media marketing. This is due to how easy video creation is nowadays and the benefits it provides businesses.

Video Explainers Simplified

Video explainers are quite different from other marketing videos. An explainer video is short and uses attractive visuals to immediately grab the viewer's attention. It's informal, educational, and explains an idea in a straightforward, compelling, and engaging manner.

Benefits of Using Video Explainers

Explainer videos have shaped up to be effective marketing tools and provide businesses with various benefits. One such benefit is its ability to explain a business idea in as little as 90 seconds. If properly designed, the video's call-to-action can lead the audience in the direction you want.

Animated video explainers also target the consumer's auditive and visual senses, making them more engaging and leaving a stronger recall on the brain. Aside from being informative, these videos are also great educational tools, thus making it easier to turn complex ideas into simple concepts.

Companies who use explainer video also find that they can build brand awareness and trust more effortlessly. Developing characters that your target audience can relate to also create a strong connection with prospective clients. After all, people are more inclined to be interested and trusting if they empathize with a character.

Probably the best benefit of using video explainers is that videos are mobile-friendly and highly visible. Startups and established companies alike either offer a mobile app as one of their main products or have developed one that links to their marketing strategy. And with most people on the go all day, mobile devices are the perfect place to showcase content. Utilizing video content also gives your company access to YouTube, the world's second largest search engine.

Top 5 Tools for Making Video Explainers

Animoto

Animoto is a user-friendly video creator that's perfect for both regular people who want to create awesome family videos and marketers who need the right explainer for their business. The platform's marketing video builder is relatively new and doesn't really have a wide selection of templates. But the ease that one can add extra media or do a voice-over more than makes up for it. Users also have total control over how text from the videos can be optimized, as well as the creation of split screens and video collages.

Biteable

Those new to video making would do well to check out Biteable. The online video creator is so easy to use that even beginners will be able to create a memorable animation, infographic videos, slideshows, animated logos, presentations, and ads. Users can utilize any one of Biteable's templates or choose from the hundreds of photos, live action videos, and different styles of animated scenes. Users can also add their own content, text, photos, and sound to make the video explainer more unique.

Kizoa

A movie maker and video editor in one, Kizoa is mostly used for making personal videos but has loads of features that would also help you create compelling explainers. Users can either start from scratch or take advantage of the hundreds of templates that the platform offers. There are also hundreds of animations, effects, and animated texts that can be used. The program also has ready to use GIFs, although users can also make their own with Kizoa's GIF-creator.

 

Powtoon

Social media marketers simply love this animated video tool. Powtoon enables companies to create professional-looking videos in minutes using its drag-and-drop design. The platform's striking and colorful designs can be customized to fit a company's needs.

Renderforest

Renderforest is another great tool for making video explainers. The animated video maker can also create logo animations and slideshows. The program is free and users can create and export any number of high-quality videos. The platform also offers hundreds of customizable templates, allowing companies to design event invitations, presentations, promotional videos, testimonials and more efficiently and swiftly.  

[Featured image via videoexplainers.com]

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Facebook's New Creator App Will Help Social Influencers Create More Video Content

Facebook is doing everything it can to woo influencers away from YouTube. The rollout of its Creator app might be just what the social media giant needs to get more video creators on its side.

The app is touted to make it simpler for users to create video and live streams using mobile devices. Facebook is also confident of two things that will draw users to the app – Facebook Live's new features and unified communication.

The Creator app now includes a feature that allows for the addition of custom created intros and outros to be used during live broadcasts. Specially designed video frames, interactive stickers, and various camera effects are also being introduced. The app also allows the user to shoot and edit photos and upload them to Facebook Stories and various platforms.

Facebook Launches New 'Creator' App, Adds Tools for Video Publishers https://t.co/spZ7NqfI1L #socialmediamarketing pic.twitter.com/ptt7zwiIjN

— Social Media Today (@socialmedia2day) November 21, 2017

The app's enhanced communication features are also expected to draw in more influencers. The Creator app boasts of an incorporated inbox for all messages and comments posted on Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram. Having a unified inbox means that the user doesn't have to move through different apps just to reply. Unfortunately, the app only covers messaging within Facebook's services but who knows if this will change in the future.

Data and analytics about the video will also be made accessible to users, allowing them to regularly check any algorithm changes to their output. Knowing key details about their follower demographics can help influencers focus on the type of video content they should post and the brands that might be willing to work with them.

Facebook is also launching a website where video bloggers and creators can get more information on how to develop videos for the site, as well as receiving answers to key questions. Site members will also be given early access to any upcoming features.

The Facebook Creator app is now available on iOS. However, Android users will have to wait a few more months for the app to be launched on the system. It should be pointed out that the Creator app is not technically new. It's a rebranding of the Facebook Mentions app that was launched in 2014 and which was initially available only to verified Pages and public figures. However, the app is now open to all users.

With the Creator app, Facebook is showing just how much it wants to work with influencers and independent vloggers. And with the errors and strange changes currently happening on YouTube, the social media giant might just be able to win this influential and potentially lucrative community to its side. 

[Featured image via Pixabay]

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