Artificial intelligence, a faster mobile web, and ad technology that knows us better than Orwell’s “Big Brother” — there’s been a lot for digital marketers to get excited about this year.

1. Omni-channel marketing

Today, the increasing number of tools consumers have at their fingertips to make purchase decisions has shifted the way they buy. For example, before the internet, if you wanted to buy a product, you went to the store and bought it. Even if you visited a few different stores, for the most part, it was a one, two, or three-stop-shop.

Now we have the internet, smartphones, magazines, TV, and brick-and-mortar businesses. What used to be a one-stop-shop has grown into a journey in which customers interact with your business in lots of different ways.

That shift has birthed a form of marketing known as “omni-channel,” which focuses on providing a seamless experience across all channels. If you’re a brick-and-mortar business with a website, you want the experience of transferring between that website to your storefront to be as easy as possible (to see a product on TV, research desktop, order it on mobile, and have it ready and waiting for you in the store, for example).

According to AdWeek, 62% of companies have, or plan to have, an omni-channel marketing strategy. Additionally, 70% of businesses say that omnichannel strategies are important, very important, or critical to their success:

Take Disney for example, who allows users to book trips right from their website, then plan them step-by-step with the “My Disney Experience” tool. You can find places to eat, decide where you’ll pick up fast passes, and even get info about attractions (like their location and estimated wait time) right from your mobile phone.

The seamless transition between desktop, mobile, and in-park experience is a model that many brands today try to emulate.

2. Google AMP and ALP

In the UK, internet users have the ability to browse the web 5x faster than we do in the US. In Venezuela, twice as fast. In a ranking of internet speeds around the world, America doesn’t even crack the top ten, which, statistics show, is bad news for businesses.

Most retail mobile sites take around 6.9 seconds to load, double the length of time that nearly half of all internet users will wait before they abandon a web page. Some experts estimate that ultimately translates to $500 billion in lost revenue for the e-commerce industry.

So, in an attempt to boost user experience by speeding up the mobile web, Google rolled out its AMP (accelerated mobile pages) project last year, and more recently, its AMP for ads and landing pages.

The AMP framework allows designers to build “lightweight” pages that load at lightning speeds. It includes:

• AMP HTML: A version of HTML without all the bells and whistles, like custom tags, for example.
• AMP JavaScript: This lighter version of Java is, like AMP HTML, a restricted version of of its parent programming language that doesn’t allow third-party JavaScript.
• AMP CDN: This optional “content delivery network” allows you store a cached version of your web page on Google’s servers, which makes for even faster delivery to the internet users requesting it.

When built correctly, these pages load in a fraction of a second, and they’re easier to find, featured prominently at the top of SERPs.

The only problem with them, at the time, was that speedy experience didn’t translate to ads on AMP pages or their corresponding landing pages. But that changed when Google recently announced a new upgrade. As of a few months ago, the AMP framework is no longer focused strictly on optimizing static content. Now, you can create ads and landing pages that load just as quickly.

Google expects these new AMP ads and landing pages to please everybody for three reasons:

1. Web users will be more likely to click on a result if they know they’re guaranteed a positive experience.
2. That improved user experience will result in higher conversion rates for marketers and advertisers.
3. Publishers boost their revenue while allowing users a way to return to their content.

So should you AMPlify your pages and ads? Find out here.

3. More landing pages

There’s no doubt landing pages have become a more popular marketing tool in the last few years, and recent data from Search Engine Journal shows that’s not changing anytime soon.

According to their State of Digital Marketing report, the content that marketers are seeing most success with are ebooks and whitepapers. So what does that have to do with landing pages?

More often than not, landing pages are where users actually get those ebooks and whitepapers from businesses who offer them in exchange for something in return, like name and email address.

These standalone web pages, which use highly persuasive elements like social proof and benefit-oriented copy to convince visitors to convert, can be a powerful addition to every stage of your funnel.

At the top, squeeze pages convince your prospects to part with their email address so you can nurture them all the way to the bottom, where sales pages get them to buy.

In between, lead capture pages help you learn more about those prospects — a lot more. Research shows that companies with over 40 landing pages generate 12x more leads.

If your biggest goal, like all digital marketers in 2016, is to “increase lead generation,” then landing pages are the weapons you need to add to your arsenal.

4. Outstream video

According to Teads, not many people knew about this ad format before last year. But already, 77% of agencies say outstream is going to be crucial to their clients’ success going forward.

Its speedy rise to popularity has a lot to do with annoyed internet users, competitive advertisers, and publishers looking to drive revenue. So what is it exactly?

Outstream video is a new type of ad format that allows publishers to show video ads outside of actual video players, in text line breaks for example, or the corners of a web page.

Up until outstream, brands were forced to run video ad campaigns before or during an video, within a video player, which meant that only publishers with video content (like YouTube or Vimeo, for example) could run those ads.

That meant advertisers had to compete for limited placements, editorial publishers couldn’t monetize video ads, and viewers were forced to watch content before or during their video.

Outstream advertisements solve those problems by:

• Allowing publishers of more than just video content to monetize video ads. Editorial publishers like the Washington Post and Forbes sell outstream placements to advertisers.
• Giving advertisers expanded reach. Outstream has driven competition for ad placements within traditional video players down by opening up video ads to the entire web. Brands can now reach audiences on websites other than YouTube. They can also ensure their videos actually get watched, since outstream ads only play when they’re in full view of the internet user.
• Letting internet users ignore the ad. While these videos are intrusive in the sense that they can interrupt your reading experience, you can choose to ignore them by scrolling past. Many outstream formats play without sound, and they pause as soon as they’re out of view.

It’s for these reasons that some say outstream ads could be just as big as pre-roll advertising. If the amount brands are willing to pay for them is any indication of their value, that could be the case. Already, some report that advertisers are paying CPM’s as high as $45.

Learn more about outstream ads and how to get started with them here.

5. Chatbots

If you thought Instagram got big fast, wait ‘til you see its growth compared to messenger apps:

WhatsApp, WeChat, and Facebook Messenger are already outpacing the world’s biggest social networks, and some experts predict, with a little help, they could even spell the end of search engines.

That help comes from chatbots — customer service agents introduced to Facebook’s messenger platform earlier this year at the social network’s F8 conference. Since then, 18,000 bots have been developed to help brands offer streamlined, individualized service through chat.

Their capabilities range from allowing you to order an Uber, to even serving as a virtual booking agent.

While Kayak’s bot is one of the best examples of chabots’ potential, most brands have struggled to provide actual value with theirs.

Barack Obama’s bot was called “a glorified form” and a “security nightmare that could prove the worst thing Facebook has done in their existence to betray user privacy.” Another bot, Poncho the Weathercat, had some users claiming chatbots are “the slowest way to use the internet” after they found out it delivers weather and news “within the hour.”

Not everybody’s sold on chatbots yet, but there are some reasons to get on board. Early adopters have seen success, and people are spending increasingly more time in chat apps like messenger and WhatsApp (around 2.5 billion people use at least one messaging app, and by 2018 that could grow to 3.6 billion).

Since Facebook recently loosened their restrictions on sending promotional content via chatbot, now is a good time to rethink how chatbots fit into your marketing strategy. Learn more about them here.

6. Marketing automation

At a time when digital marketers have to be everywhere and track everything, marketing automation technology is a must-use. These tools save employees time while giving managers greater insight into what drives their business.

Today, nearly half of all companies use marketing automation technology, and 91% of the most successful adopters say that it’s “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels. Here’s how they’re using automation:

For email, tools like Autopilot allow marketers to track their prospects’ behavior and send automated messages based on that behavior.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software from companies like Salesforce helps businesses sort their customers and prospects into segments for more personalized communication.

In social media, Facebook’s advertising tools help you target users based on which pages of your website they’ve visited. To track everything, Google’s free analytics platform is used by the best marketers in the business.

Among successful adopters, 63% say they plan to increase their marketing automation budget going forward. And to become successful? Experience is key, as 79% of top-performing companies have been using automation for more than 2 years.

7. Remarketing ads

Nobody likes remarketing ads. They’re creepy, annoying, and ineffective, right?

Not so, says Search Engine Journal. Data from their recent State of Digital Marketing report shows that 91% of search experts use remarketing and claim it’s an effective tactic:

As far as it being creepy and annoying? Data from WordStream shows that’s not true either.

How could we claim remarketing ads are irritating if their conversion rates increase the more they’re shown?

How could we say we’re creeping people out if research shows these ads fatigue at half the rate of normal display ads?

We can’t. What we can say, though, is that remarketing tactics have helped some big brands produce big ROI.

PPC Hero cut their cost per action by nearly 80% when they started using remarketing, and when Watchfinder tried it, they boosted ROI by 1,300%. So what makes the technique so powerful?

With remarketing, you can target prospects with ads who have viewed a particular product or certain web pages — providing a highly relevant and personalized user experience. Since as many as 96% of people who visit your website aren’t ready to buy, the method has become a powerful way to draw those prospects back into your conversion funnel.

Source

Email marketing automation is a powerful customer retention tool for online retailers. The trouble is, many companies don’t know which automated email campaigns are worth prioritizing and testing.

There’s significant upside to adopting email marketing. It generates the highest return on investment (ROI) out of the most common digital channels, earning businesses an average of $38 for every dollar invested, according to a VentureBeat Insight study. It also cites that “84% of marketers believe email is important or critically important for customer loyalty.”

Email continues to provide a high-leverage way to encourage repeat purchases, making your ecommerce business less dependant on the sometimes unreliable flow of new customers. Email marketing helps you build your brand and get better customers who spend more money with you.

Equally exciting is email’s potential to provide lasting value to your business with just a few starter campaigns. In fact, there are 7 automated email campaigns that nearly every ecommerce business can benefit from implementing.

I’m going to walk you through which email automations you should consider, what you need to know before you start broadcasting, and how to make the most of each email. 📧

1. Abandoned cart email series

According to research from the Baymard Institute, as many as 81.4% of online shopping carts are abandoned. That’s a lot of money left on the table from shoppers who were interested enough to add your product to their cart.

Fortunately, there’s good news: While Business Insider estimates online retailers will lose as much as $4 trillion to cart abandonment, it also estimates that savvy ones can recover about 63% of that lost revenue. That’s why it’s crucial to have a cart abandonment strategy, and automated cart abandonment emails that support it.

To maximize effectiveness, take this automated email campaign further than a single reminder email. Consider a sequence of emails, and you can continue to reap the benefits long after you push the campaign live.

How to set up an abandoned cart email series

When you send your abandoned cart emails is important. Though there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, we generally recommend the following as a place to start if you don’t have your own data:

• Email 1: send 24 hours later.
• Email 2: send 48 hours later.
• Email 3: send 72 hours later.

Over time, look at your data to determine if and how you need to adjust. Look at when conversion rates start to drop to determine when you can end the sequence. Don’t be afraid to send four, five, six or more emails, especially if that’s what your metrics are telling you. I know one company, for example, that sends a seven-part email automation to re-engage abandoned carts.

Bottom line: If people keep buying from your cart abandonment emails, you should keep sending them.

Email 1: Remind shoppers of what they left behind

Most companies distribute discounts and promo codes immediately after a cart’s abandoned, and savvy shoppers have caught on. Some will abandon just to see if you’ll send a discount. If your go-to strategy is using offers, you’re throwing your margins to the wind.

Instead, use the first email as a simple reminder: Tell shoppers that they left something in their cart. Show them a picture of the product if your template allows. Add low-cost benefits, and include a link that takes them directly to checkout.

Hello Merch keeps it simple in this text-only cart abandonment email. This type of approach is particularly great for bootstrapped businesses. If you only have the resources to design a single beautiful email or create a series of text-only emails, you’ll likely get more bang for your buck with the latter.

Email 2: Handle objections

What’s the main reason people aren’t buying your products? Now’s a good time to address those objections head-on, and convince subscribers that your product is worth buying.

Whisky Loot addresses hesitations with their abandoned cart email automation, overtly listing product benefits and including FAQs to push users to complete their purchase.

Image source: reallygoodemails.com

If you don’t know what people’s objections are, you’ll want to ask. Add a question to your first email that solicits feedback about why they didn’t complete the purchase. Run it for a month, and you’ll have a baseline of data around why people aren’t converting.

Use those insights to guide how you build out the second email of your cart abandonment series. Maybe you need to emphasize your free shipping or provide additional social proof through reviews and testimonials from happy customers.

Email 3: Offer a discount or incentive

If people haven’t converted after the first email, you’ll want to add extra motivation. Now’s the time to send a discount. Whether it’s a percentage, dollar amount, free gift or other offer, you’ll want to use something that both compels people to action and works well for your margins. Run an A/B test to find out which approach is more effective for your audience.

Remember to include a picture of the product(s) if possible, and an obvious link back to the shopping cart so customers can complete their purchase.

2. Welcome email series

A welcome email is the first email someone receives when they join your mailing list. You can have a welcome email for customers, but in this case, we’re talking about a welcome email for new subscribers who haven’t converted yet.

According to 2016 data from Omnisend, welcome emails have an average open rate of 45%, versus 18% for promotional emails. Shoppers are actively paying attention to and engaging with these messages, so it’s a great opportunity for businesses.

How to set up a welcome email series

As you’ll see in the examples below, an effective welcome email has several goals:

• Welcome new subscribers.
• Give users an incentive to purchase.
• Set the right expectations.
• Connect with subscribers on other channels.

Welcome new subscribers

Your first email should welcome new subscribers and introduce your brand. Craft a few sentences that begin the story of your brand, how you’re different, what you have in common with shoppers, and why shoppers should be excited.

Huckberry’s welcome email automation is clean and easy to understand, showcasing what the brand is all about and what subscribers can expect. They give a warm welcome to a community of like-minded, adventuring customers.

Nomad’s email also does a solid job of introducing their brand. The email highlights products without coming off as overly sales-y. They refer to their subscribers as a “family,” another play on the idea of creating a tribe of loyal customers.

Give users an incentive to purchase

If you offered subscribers a coupon in exchange for their email address, make sure you set up your email automation to actually send the coupon code in the email. Create an obvious CTA that takes users directly to your website to redeem the coupon. If you offered a PDF or something else in exchange for an email, make sure it’s included in the first one.

Overstock sends a simple email, leading with the 15% off incentive and personal language like “just for you.” They also remind users of the free shipping benefit for an extra nudge towards conversion.

Set the right expectations

The idea of setting expectations ties in with welcoming and introducing subscribers to your brand. You want them to look forward to future emails, so tell them what you’ll be sending, and remember to reiterate the value. Will you send helpful content, cool videos, promo codes, or something else? How will your subscribers benefit from this?

Get creative. Don’t be the one-trick online retailer who only sends discount codes. Treat your subscribers like friends, not as bits and bytes in your database.

Connect with subscribers on other channels

You might also want to link to your social media profiles and other channels where you’d like subscribers to connect. Rather than being the sole focus of an email, this could be a component to one or more emails. Including other ways to connect is a great way to get users to engage with your brand on multiple channels, giving you more chances to stay top-of-mind.

Mention your social media profiles, print catalog, brick-and-mortar stores and other mediums towards the end of your emails. Tiffany & Co. includes their phone number and links to social media, a store locator and customer service at the bottom of their welcome email.

Source

The campaign is part of a push from the fast food giant to highlight its innovations in customer service such as the mobile ordering, in-store touchscreens and table service.

McDonald’s has launched a new campaign that highlights how its new customer experience is making its customers’ lives easier as it looks to more widely promote new services such as table service and mobile ordering.

The campaign, created by Leo Burnett features three adverts – Hands Full, Grownup and It Must Be – each of which focuses on a different McDonald’s service.

Hands Full sees two new parents struggle with everyday tasks such as taking a pram down stairs and juggling shopping, before finally getting some respite with table service at the fast food chain. Grownup, meanwhile, centers around a father and daughter day out which ends in them getting a McDonald’s using new in-store touchscreens to make their order.

READ MORE: McDonald’s on the next stage of its digital transformation

The final TV ad, It Must Be, follows two teenagers who connect through the McDonald’s app and will launch in June. The TV spots are supported by four radio commercials and a social campaign.

Marie Emery, head of marketing, brand and experience at McDonald’s, says: “Bringing good times to our customers is a key part of the McDonald’s offering and, thanks to our latest convenience services, these are now made that little bit easier.

“The suite of ads created by Leo Burnett aim to showcase these services through the little everyday moments which they help to facilitate.”

The campaign is part of a push from the fast food giant to use marketing to ramp up consumer awareness about its innovations. CEO Steve Easterbrook said earlier this year that McDonald’s would look to push new services, including food delivery and mobile ordering, as it looks to change perceptions and ramp up take-up among consumers.