Hello and Happy Tuesday!
This week we're looking at designing a chatbot experience for your brand or service, engaging dormant email subscribers, and just what blockchain technology means for internet marketers. We also cover Facebook's Partner Categories removal announcement and tips for increasing mobile engagement.
How to Design a Chatbot Experience
As our preferences continue to shift to text-based communication over voice, messaging platforms are leaning on automated conversational interactions experiences for their user base. Chatbots can help consumers find the solution or help they need so if you’re considering designing a bot for your brand or service, there are a few factors to consider. First, determine if a chatbot is a suitable option for your product. Will a bot speed up purchasing, ordering and customer service, and provide convenience or will it just hinder the process? Mark Swaine offers best practices for implementing a chatbot as part of your marketing strategy.
Facebook Removes Third-Party Ad Data Options from Ad Targeting
In another move post-Cambridge Analytica, Facebook announced that they’re removing Partner Categories—an ad product that allowed third-party data to improve ad targeting and accuracy. Partner Categories will be phased out within the next six months. Even though there has been no controversy surrounding third-party data sources, some view this as a way for Facebook to reduce any potential risk and liability should it ever be found that this third-party data was acquired through misuse. Advertisers will have to rely on Facebook data but will have the option to upload their own data that they’ve obtained themselves in order to create their own custom audience.
The Rise of Passive Opt-Outs: Four Ways to Boost Engagement
With 45% of marketers ranking email as their top priority this year and the competition for a subscriber’s attention heating up, email marketers need to focus on engaging passive opt-out subscribers. Kyle Hendrick describes these subscribers as "an email subscriber who no longer engages with your brand but still collects promotional emails for as long as the brand sends them". To re-engage these mailing list subscribers, he suggests these tactics: mix up messaging cadence; reach out with unique content on a regular basis; invest and innovate your triggered emails; and offer unique, value-driven editorial content.
7 Ways to Increase Mobile Engagement
With mobile-first index here and the rising popularity of voice search, now is the time for brands to optimize their site for mobile e-commerce. Kristopher Jones offers businesses tips on how to best improve mobile conversion rates. Page speed is essential to the user experience and bounce rate. The longer a page takes to load, the less likely a page visit will result in a purchase. Another tip focuses on improving the checkout process. Finalizing a purchasing on a mobile device can be troublesome so the fewer steps and clicks, the better. Businesses should consider integrating a payment system such as Paypal where user information is already stored.
What Every Partner Marketer Needs to Know About Blockchain
Blockchain may not be used widely at the moment, but this technology is one that you should be keeping tabs on. Blockchain is a distributed database--a chain of blocks where each block contains a number of records that represent individual transactions. What's interesting about blockchain is that it's decentralized so no one single party controls it. It can't be altered or destroyed. It is the currency of trust. The relevance of this to marketers (and why it's cause for excitement) is that it offers truth when it comes to ad delivery, as one example. Impressions and clicks could be verified, so the advertiser could be assured of human traffic, brand safety and genuine clicks. Pete Cheyne breaks down why you need to be embracing this technology and what it means to you as a marketer.
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Being a marketer, it is highly important for me to know what a blockchain is – I guess for all those trying their luck in marketing it is of equivalent importance. I just want to say how much I appreciate the piece with such a well-structured writing style. The opt-outs section was also something new for me. I am totally going to look at my work from a whole new angle.
Keep writing such stuff!!