To close out a year of rapid growth and success, customers of ActiveCampaign, the leader in Customer Experience Automation (CXA), reported a 110% average increase in new leads compared to last year and a 94% improvement in the amount of leads that became customers, proving the effectiveness of ActiveCampaign’s platform. In the forthcoming 2022 Customer Experience Automation Impact Study, ActiveCampaign customers reported the platform helped them achieve a 109% average increase in sales effectiveness and a 108% increase in engagement rates from emails, all with the power of 1:1 automation. Its customers achieved higher revenue and rapid growth because of the great experiences the technology provides.

While customer success was a large focus for the company in Q4, ActiveCampaign achieved milestones on the product side as well. Highlights include:

• Launching Custom Objects, a feature that gives users a complete view of every customer and their touchpoints by unifying data from the apps they use the most such as Slack, Zoom, Eventbrite and Calendly.
• Offering additional features and functionality for B2B customers to set them up for a successful 2022, including Pages templates, over 250 designed email templates, 70+ free tools to help businesses grow, and more than 750 automation recipes.
• Introducing Sales Engagement Automation, which enables integrated engagement across channels allowing for alignment between marketing messaging, one-to-one emails, video, chat, voice and more.
• Reaching 260+ customer ideas executed on ActiveCampaign’s platform, as the company is adamant about a continuous customer feedback loop.
• Ranking No. 2 in G2’s Best Sales Engagement Software category, achieving grid increases on G2’s Landing Page Builder and Social Media Advertising, and entering the Landing Page Builder Momentum Grid at No. 1.
  • No. 1 in five G2 categories: Lead Scoring, Pop-up Builder, Attribution, Ecommerce Personalization and Email Template Builder.
  • Six categories that ActiveCampaign placed in the top three include: Marketing Automation, Online Form Builder, Conversational Marketing, CRM, Landing Page Builder and Social Media Advertising.
• Receiving the Best of TrustRadius Award, BIG Awards for Business’ Product of the Year, 2021 Corporate Excellence Awards: Leading Email Marketing & CX Automation Platform and a gold medal for Software Reviews’ Marketing Automation Report.

In Q4 2021, ActiveCampaign achieved internal growth milestones as well. Highlights include:

• Reaching 1,000 employees globally, which will further fuel innovation and customer support in all regions.
• Expanding its executive bench with seasoned hirings such as Salesforce executive Michael Rico as its first Chief People Officer and Jerome Alabado as a Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis.
• Opening and expanding new global hubs in Indianapolis, USA; Dublin, Ireland; and Florianopolis, Brazil. Florianopolis is ActiveCampaign’s first hub in Latin America, supporting the company’s commitment to creating more jobs and helping more businesses grow in the LATAM region.
• Being recognized for its culture, benefits, DEI initiatives and leadership across multiple regions by receiving numerous best places to work and leadership awards, including the Australia Great Places to Work certification, Quartz Best Workplaces for Remote Employees and EY Entrepreneur of the Year Midwest.
• Being listed on Inc.’s Best Led Companies 2021, Chicago Inno’s 50 on Fire and Crain’s Chicago’s Coolest Offices.
• Achieving Built in Chicago’s Best Places to Work and Comparably’s Best Company for Diversity.

Supporting Quotes

“While 2021 had major milestones like crossing $200 million in annual recurring revenue, growing the team to over 1,000 employees, and raising $240 million in funding at an over $3 billion valuation, what I’m most proud of is the success our 150,000+ customers have experienced using our CXA platform,” said Jason VandeBoom, founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign. “In 2022, our new features and functionality will allow the businesses we work with to provide the best possible experiences to their customers. Consumers today have higher expectations for the experiences their favorite brands provide than ever before. Meeting – and exceeding – those expectations is critical for businesses of all sizes to succeed. ActiveCampaign is committed to supporting our customers to scale their customer experiences, fostering their future growth.”

“Right now we have a 26% abandoned cart recovery rate, which is astronomical. The dollar amount that we have recovered is around $30,000 – and I believe that has a great deal to do with what ActiveCampaign does for us,” said Mike Morrow, president and CEO of Morrow Audio.

“Our joint customers continue to achieve rapid growth after implementing customer experience automation because the technology helps them do more with the resources they have,” said Aaron Shishilla, founder of WolfPack Advising. “ActiveCampaign is different because not only is the platform user friendly and easy to migrate onto, but their customer service is second to none.”

Learn more

• The CXA Platform
• ActiveCampaign Company Core Values
• Customer Success Commitment
• Customer Stories
• Tomorrow’s Business is Yours to Create
• Growth Decoded
• Ambassador Program
• Awards
• Open Positions

Originally Appeared Here

The Challenge: Maximizing An Already Successful Inquiry Generation Campaign To Improve Conversion Rates

Despite already having a competitive cost per conversion, a regional brand with multiple locations in the southeast wanted to improve the conversion rate of their pay-per-click (PPC) and pay-per-inquiry (PPI) leads, thereby reducing their cost per conversion.

Typical actions, like campaign optimizations, were no longer significantly moving the needle, so the brand needed to try something else — something low cost and scalable.

DMS Solution: A Trigger-Based Email Nurturing Campaign

Although the client was doing a fantastic job of immediately reaching out to prospects by telephone, interaction by email was limited. Therefore, we determined an email nurturing campaign that maintained brand awareness and encouraged movement toward conversion would be a strong addition to the existing engagement strategy.

Data from PPC and PPI leads, including those from campaigns not managed by the DMS team, was integrated into Sparkroom performance marketing technology. Used by DMS and available for subscription by marketers, Sparkroom is an award-winning, cloud-based technology designed to maximize marketing efforts through automation.

Sparkroom uses a timestamp on each conversion milestone to indicate the moment of its occurrence. Dispositions provide intelligence regarding when and why a lead departs the inquiry funnel, for reasons such as “not interested” or “converted.” Using the data within Sparkroom technology, a behavior-based email nurturing strategy was developed with a series of emails deploying as time- and trigger-based milestones were met for individual leads.

The time- and trigger-based email messages encouraged inbound calls and immediate conversations with sales representatives. Prospects were removed from the email nurturing program once they converted or after 10 days of not engaging with emails. Prospects also had the opportunity to remove themselves from the mailing list by unsubscribing or clicking on the “remove me” link in the third email. This helped keep the data clean and provided additional information for campaign optimization purposes.

The Result: The Email Nurturing Campaign Quickly Produced Significant Boosts In Conversion Rates

After three months, there was a significant conversion rate boost produced from the time- and trigger-based email nurturing campaign. The conversion rate for prospects who opened a nurturing email was more than 2.5x the rate for prospects that did not open an email. Prospects who clicked a link within a nurturing email delivered a conversion rate more than 4x the rate of those who did not open an email.

Sparkroom Centralizes Marketing And Lead Data To Make You More Efficient And Boost Your ROI

Ideal for long-lead lifecycle marketers focused on driving results through online channels, Sparkroom is a lead management platform that connects with CRMs and other automation platforms and data sources to integrate data and provide a holistic view of marketing performance. Request a Sparkroom demo today to learn more.

 

 

Originally Appeared Here

Email marketing plays an essential role in customer retention and overall business success. And although spreading emails might seem like a relatively simple undertaking, believe it or not, there is much more afoot for getting the necessary results. 

 

That said, the seriousness of your approach and consideration of various aspects are unavoidable when designing an email marketing program. Among other things, coming up with a content strategy and utilizing this online poster maker will indeed come in handy. But aside from these are several more ways to polish your mass email marketing. Let’s glance at them together.

Source

Mass email marketing: A great way to draw people’s attention 

Emails have become an integral part of our lives. Everyone can pull up a smartphone and check inbox messages with just a few taps. And the same goes for PCs and laptops. Because of that, email marketing has never been as excellent a way to get new clients as it is right now. 

So what makes a good marketing strategy, you might ask. It is well-thought and flawless and puts the receiver in the center of attention. Although called mass marketing, it must consider people as individuals with unique engagements and areas of interest. That’s why every mail must contain something valuable to every person. 

Other than that, good email marketing is consistent and invigorating. Nothing is better than motivating people to act systemically. Reminding people of your brand by email marketing effectively establishes your presence on the market. 

Four ways to improve your mass email marketing program

Below are four practical ways to help you enhance your mass email marketing plan.

Include meaningful and easy to read text

With the amount of content people can reach swiftly, the need for originality has become in the limelight. Reading the same information repeatedly–even though written differently–will bore the reader sooner or later. And once a person reads the first paragraph and realizes that they have already read it elsewhere, the chances are they will delete the email, leaving it unread. 

Source

 

How do you ensure the recipients open and read your emails? Although you are never sure whether your emails have reached the right people until you see direct results (like the increase of your website activity, rise in sales, etc.), paying close attention to your content is essential. Analyzing the market and seeing what your competitors provide in their emails will allow you to compose exceptional copies and catch people’s curiosity. That also includes subject lines, which can work wonders.

Also, as mentioned above, people can access their emails promptly. That’s where your marketing planning has to start. When designing a mass email marketing strategy, consider users of various gadgets. It will help you tailor your emails to big and small screens. Readability doesn’t only mean the text is easy to follow. The concept of readability also touches upon experience. And the more pleasing it is, the better results it will bring.

Insert a powerful and visible call to action button

Although widely known, the call to action is often misunderstood and misplaced. Many business owners think that CTA buttons are helpful regardless of where they appear, let alone the form they have. And while such a button is practical and can stimulate people to take action, it can do way better if used correctly. 

Before scattering CTAs around, try to develop several versions and analyze how they could affect people’s actions. Besides, ponder where it would be the most pertinent on the screen, using different devices to find common ground.

Primp every email both by adding visuals and using templates

Content is king, beyond any doubt. But without sprucing it up with incredible visuals, content is barely a duke. In other words, your writing might be striking and compelling, but it will not bring the desired results if you don’t accompany it with awesome visuals. 

The visual aspect of emails and their contents go hand in hand and demand equal attention. Improving your visual part is necessary if you plan to bank on your massing email marketing. Remember to stay original and include various posters, illustrations, and pictures in emails. Also, extend your list of templates and ensure your emails don’t follow the same visual patterns too often. 

Source

Try to reach during active hours

Since electronic correspondence lets people maintain professional communication without calling one another or meeting face-to-face, the number of emails one can receive in a day is impossible to estimate. You can get a dozen emails during business hours, and after responding to them all, you will unlikely be interested in reading another e-message at the end of the day. After all, everyone needs to disconnect and spend time offline.

Because of that, knowing when to send emails to get the highest response rate is crucial. Many tools to evaluate the time people are most active on social media exist. You can use them to determine when they’re online so that you can run a newsletter and get the best engagement level.

Summing up

As you can see, honing mass email marketing isn’t a formidable task. Provided are four simple yet practical ways to ensure your strategy is solid and focuses on the most critical aspects. Using them will boost your KPIs and help you achieve any goal you set.

Originally Appeared Here

Text Marketing service now provides custom autoresponder messages when Fans text specific keywords to Creative Artists’ text numbers

Adva Mobile Corporation, the leading mobile marketing platform for Creative Artists to acquire, engage, and sell to their Fans on mobile devices, expanded their popular marketing platform with new custom autoresponder message options when Fans text a specific, Artist defined keyword into their own unique text number. The text number is provided to Creative Artists on the platform and is the center of their mobile marketing efforts to acquire new fans, engage them on mobile devices, and sell to them. 

The Adva Mobile platform provides Artists with their own, personal text number, and simplifies the process of building a Fan database by automatically opting in Fans to their mobile text club when Fans text the Artist. Artists can text back to Fans for one – on – one conversations, and also send out targeted text blasts to Fans based on location and other Artist defined Fan segments. What’s new is the ability to craft specific text messages to Fans when they text a specific keyword to the Artist. 

As you can see in this example, The Artist Portal helps Artists create either a welcome message for when people DM the Artist, and an auto-reply, based on the keywords of choice.

The simple set-up process enables Artists to enter relevant keywords in a message that will trigger the automated response – so if Artists tell Fans to text “Houston”, for example, the Artist can provide information about their upcoming show in Houston, with a link to where to get tickets. Here’s what it looks like on the Fan’s mobile device: 

Artists that want to communicate and engage their fans with text – which are opened and read 97% of the time, far more than email or social media – now have a complete service to take advantage of these mobile technologies. Artists can build their fan base by having Fans text in to their own private text number, converse one on one with their fans, and send text and email blasts to targeted Fans about relevant information including show dates, new music and art, and news. Now, they can promote a show in Houston by having Fans text “Houston” – or anything they create – and deliver a specific, custom message about that show. 

It’s about the Data

These custom keywords are also “Tags” that are associated with each Fan Profile. This helps Artists segment Fans that texted in “Houston”, and can be used to target these Fans the next time an Artist has a show in Houston. This promotes increased ticket sales, as Fans often miss the news that their favorite band is coming to town. “It’s absolutely no fun to miss a concert.” Said Jack Kelly, CEO of Adva Mobile, “And Artists need to keep Fans informed whenever they are going to be in their area, so they never miss another performance again.”

The platform is designed to help identify supporting, paying SuperFans. Artists struggle with their current Fan Database – usually only email – because there is no way to learn which Fans actually buy their Art or come to their shows. Text conversations encourage Fans to share information about themselves, and this data is extremely valuable as it provides Artists with insights about who is supporting their art. “The data belongs to the Artist, and the data is private between Artist and Fan,” said Kelly. “With their personal phone number and our text conversation platform, we provide Artists direct engagement with their Fans, only possible when the Artist is the custodian of their own audience.”

These new capabilities augment the already strong existing Platform which provides Artists with Interactive Web App Landing Pages, Email Marketing, CRM Fan database and campaign creation and management tools.  Fan interaction on the Landing Pages is captured and associated with individual Fan Profiles, which help Artists understand engagement and identify which Fans are Superfans and ready to buy.  “Pour over your email list and try to identify your supportive, paying Fans, On the Adva Mobile platform, it’s as easy as segmenting by Engagement Score,” said Kelly.

About Adva Mobile:

Adva Mobile provides marketing technology and services that helps Creative Artists create closer relationships with their audience. The service aligns Text Marketing, Email Marketing, Responsive Web App and Landing Pages, Storefront, Engagement services and Fan Database management into an integrated mobile marketing services platform. 

For more information contact Jack Kelly, CEO, jackk@advamobile.com or 877-752-5116. 

Media Contact
Company Name: Release News
Contact Person: Andrew Braithwaite
Email: Send Email
Phone: +44 (0) 161 818 6487
Country: United States
Website: https://release-news.com/

Originally Appeared Here

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Revinate, the leader in omni-channel direct booking platforms for the hospitality industry, today announced new top industry awards from HotelTechAwards, including First Place in Hotel CRM and Email Marketing.

Winners were determined based on verified client feedback and highlight best of breed companies across key categories of the hotel tech stack.

The awards provide proof Revinate is recognized as the #1 guest data platform for hospitality, now powering unmatched direct revenue performance, omni-channel guest lifecycle communications, and personalized guest experiences for the world’s best hotels.

The HotelTechAwards determine the best hotel software products across every category based on customer feedback and key proprietary data signals such as integration compatibility, organizational health, market share, partner network strength, and customer support quality.

“The ranking process is simple, transparent, and unbiased–judging is based on time-tested ranking factors developed specifically for the industry. Only verified hoteliers with hands-on experience using each product are allowed to participate in the voting process. This means that Revinate’s users decided the #1 Hotel CRM and Email Marketing platform,” said Hotel Tech Report CEO, Jordan Hollander.

The HotelTechAwards are often referred to as “the Grammys of Hotel Tech” and winners have been selected from more than 200 of the top technology products around the world. The HotelTechAwards are the industry’s only data-driven awards platform with winners determined not by a handful of judges or popularity votes but by product reviews from a global community of verified hotel technology users across more than 120 countries.

This will be the fourth consecutive year that Revinate Marketing has won Best Hotel CRM and Email Marketing.

Revinate also received second place for Reputation Management and Survey. Revinate Guest Feedback allows hoteliers to easily manage their reputation with Guest Surveys, Reputation Management and Best in Class Reporting.

“We’re honored and humbled to be recognized for a fourth straight year by HotelTechAwards and by our customers as the #1 CRM for Hospitality,” said Marc Heyneker, CEO and Founder at Revinate. “With the very best guest data, the world’s leading hotels and brands can power the very best direct revenue and profits, omni-channel guest lifecycle communications, and personalized guest experience from a single platform.”

Revinate’s mission is to deliver hoteliers scalable direct revenue and profits from data-driven solutions that cultivate deeper relationships with guests. Customers love Revinate as they can engage with their guests throughout the guest lifecycle with automated and personalized campaigns across various channels, including email, voice, SMS and the most popular messaging platforms. Thousands of hotels currently use Revinate’s direct booking platform to generate 20x or greater ROI.

Revinate Marketing is used by tens of thousands of hotels around the globe, including Noble House, AutoCamp, Dollywood’s DreamWorld Resort, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Fontainebleau Miami Beach and Miraval Resort & Spa.

“Revinate empowers our small marketing team by saving us time so we can do so much more than we could otherwise. I think our $100M+ in revenue with Revinate speaks for itself.” – Serena Bethle, Database Marketing Manager at Brittain Resorts and Hotels.

About Revinate:

Revinate is a global leader in CDP-driven direct booking platforms, cultivating intelligent and deeper guest experience and driving revenue and profitability for hoteliers. Founded in 2009, Revinate counts tens of thousands of the world’s leading hotels as customers and has won numerous awards for its software as a service (SaaS) solution, including 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 Top Rated Email Marketing and CRM Product by Hotel Tech Report. For more information, visit http://www.revinate.com.

About HotelTechReport:

HotelTechReport.com helps 170k hoteliers each month to understand the changing hotel technology and digital transformation landscape. We help hoteliers make smarter decisions about which technologies to adopt, keeping scalability and adaptability in mind. Hotel Tech Report helps hoteliers uncover the value propositions of emerging technologies and how they align with the needs of your property stakeholders and guests.

For media inquiries:

Casey Munck

Senior Director of Marketing

Revinate

casey.munck@revinate.com

 

SOURCE Revinate

Originally Appeared Here

Running a small business (and helping other small businesses succeed) means signing up for a lifetime of lessons, learning, and growing If you want to be successful, anyway.

The second that you think you have the world of small business figured out is the moment that everything falls apart completely. Just think about all those business empires created before the internet.

They were cruising along, dominating in ways smaller businesses never had an opportunity to, with true global reach that only their bottomless marketing budgets allowed access to.

Today, though, thanks to the internet anyone with five dollars, a web connection, and a back bedroom can create a legitimate global business – and start making sales from around the world that afternoon, too!

Josh Henry-Hicks of MuteSix has certainly learned a lot about small business and what it takes to succeed these days. Below you’ll learn a handful of the most important lessons he’s discovered, lessons that can help transform your business for the better going forward, too.

How to Build a Business with the Customer in the Driver’s Seat

If there’s one thing that you take away from this quick guide let it be this lesson:

You absolutely, positively, MUST build your business – right from the start – through the eyes of your perfect customer.

Ignore this lesson and you’ll be doomed to mediocrity. You’ll watch as your competitors gobble up customers and sales you would have made easily with your products, services, prices, and customer support if only you had listened.

Businesses in the past used to be able to be created almost whole cloth, right out of thin air, with nothing more than a generalized promise.

● Buy from us because we’ve been around since 1918

● We have what you need

● The best sauce in town!

That tactics simple do not cut it in today’s hypercompetitive business environment.

No, you need your business to stand out apart from the rest of the pack immediately. In the best way to do that is to build a business from the beginning through the perspective of your customer.

Instead of thinking about what you need to offer to make sales, instead think about what your customer wants to buy most.

Instead of thinking about what products you should sell, think about the ideal solution your customer is after and then reverse engineer it.

Instead of thinking about what you have to say to sell something, consider what your prospect wants to hear to make buying almost automatic.

These shifts seem somewhat subtle to be sure. But there’s a world of magic in them. The second that you start thinking about your business this way is the second that you start to change your financial future forever.

Build your business from the perspective of your customer. None of your competitors are – and you’ll be able to clean up because of it.

How to Generate Sales Almost on Autopilot with Smart Email Marketing

Email marketing is (somehow) still a bit of a secret weapon for successful marketers and business owners.

Leverage it ASAP!

A lot of people in the direct response marketing world talk about how all the money in your business is hidden in your list. They mean your email list – your list of prospects and customers that you can email anytime you like, day or night, 100% free of charge and instantly.

Think about that for a second.

Business owners just a few decades ago would have paid any amount of money for access to a marketing tool that let them:

● Segment their prospects apart from their customers for laser targeted campaigns

● Test, track, and optimize each marketing message to see which is most impactful

● Send mass marketing pieces to thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people with the click of a button

● Have that marketing delivered instantly all over the world, 24/7

… And have the opportunity to automate 99% of that marketing, too.

You’d have to be at least a little bit crazy not to make the most of everything that email marketing has to offer.

The best time to start working on your list and sending email messages was the day that your business started up for the first time.

The second best time is right now.

Social Media Really (REALLY) Matters

Social media has taken over our day-to-day lives in ways no one could have expected (some of them good, and some of them bad).

What cannot be debated, however, is the impact that social media has when running a business these days.

For one thing, it’s almost impossible to enjoy any real success online without having an account on all of the major social media profiles. Just like you had to have an email address and a website 15 years ago to be thought of as a legitimate business you have to have a social media presence to be legit today.

Secondly, there may not be a better tool out there for generating real authority and real influence online then social media – when done correctly, anyway.

It doesn’t take much research to find businesses that really hit social media out of the park.

These are the companies that are active and engaging with their customers and prospects. These are the people that don’t shy away from tough questions or angry people online, either.

These are the companies that always lead with integrity and with purpose. There’s a real value connection with their social media followings, and that almost always translates into cold hard cash, too.

Of course, you shouldn’t discount the impact that having fun on social media can have on your bottom line, either.

Go check out the “Slim Jim” or “Steak-um” brand Twitter feeds for perfect examples of how to use humor, memes, and affinity on social media to generate some serious sales and loyal customer basis.

At the end of the day, though, the most important lesson to remember about small business is that you’re still running a business here – and nothing happens in business until something gets sold.

That’s where your focus needs to be. That’s where your energy needs to be. And that’s the mission that MuteSix has today.

Published January 16th, 2022

Originally Appeared Here

Ross Moses, Senior Director of Analytics and Insights at the United States Soccer Federation, saw a need to re-evaluate how the organization interacted with its customer base. Despite the vast amount of digital resources available, he found it was failing to offer fans engaging experiences.

“We were sitting on an outdated digital infrastructure — there wasn’t much there,” Moses said in his presentation at our MarTech conference. “We had an outdated website, no mobile app, and a lot of manual tasks that we were using to track our customers. So, we knew that we had to invest heavily in this space.”

Getting your brand’s digital infrastructure in place is important, but it’s nothing without establishing strong customer connections. To do so, U.S. Soccer needed strategies and tools to better identify its customers — who they were and where they were coming from.

“The next challenge was identifying our fans, getting the 360-degree view of the customer,” Moses said. “This tends to be the Holy Grail, not just for us, but for a lot of businesses out there. Putting that in place would allow us to have that business intelligence to have more efficient feedback loops, and then enable personalization.”

Moses and his marketing team worked with customer data platform Treasure Data to develop a robust customer experience strategy. Here are some of the insights they gained in the process.

Use automation to personalize experiences

Moses highlighted U.S. Soccer’s loyalty program, which rewarded customers based on their interactions with the program. Using a CDP framework, The organization was able to personalize each customer’s experience with automated messaging that fit their group.

Source: Treasure Data

“This is our loyalty program known as U.S. Soccer Insiders,” said Moses. “Based upon the tier that you’re in, from the standard tier up to VIP, you’re getting a different message.”

He added, “This illustrates how once you have that segment created in a CDP, you’re sending it somewhere else. And then you’re using those audiences to program step-by-step journeys.”

Brands should remember that CDPs aren’t designed to fit within every organization’s framework — some aren’t going to meet your automation or personalization needs exactly. However, many allow users to develop custom solutions.

“There are a lot of pre-built connectors [in CDPs],” he said. “But if there’s something that not off-the-shelf, you can develop on top of it. So, if there’s some obscure data source, you can build those pipelines so that it comes in a batch or stream.”

Looking to take control of your data? Learn about trends and capabilities of customer data platforms in the latest edition of this MarTech Intelligence Report.

Click here to download!

Gather relevant business intelligence

Moses and his team extracted the relevant customer information from all of their platforms using a CDP, pulling in relevant information such as average annual spending, renewals, etc. They used this data to make better business decisions when choosing U.S. Soccer’s match locations.

Source: Treasure Data and U.S. Soccer

“There’s a lot that goes into picking where we take the team,” he said. “It’s not all based upon where the customers are. There’s a lot of other factors, like the opposing team, or how long it’s been since we’ve been there.”

He added, “This information helps us understand where customers are coming from and where we think there might be an opportunity.”

Pulling in this valuable business intelligence from many customer sources is critical for brands wanting to develop a sustainable customer experience strategy.

Develop a future vision

Using the insights gathered from its audience, U.S. Soccer made a new game plan for delivering enhanced customer experiences. Knowing what fans wanted out of its digital assets, the organization developed new ways of connecting with them.

Source: Treasure Data

One of the more popular upgrades allowed customers to predict the starting 11 players, which also extended to other aspects of the game.

“Soccer fans love to debate who should be in the starting lineup, or who should even be called into the roster for a specific game,” Moses said. “This is a way to build some community and discussion around this topic. Within the app, we allow people to easily create ana field map and then share it on social, continuing the conversation.”

He added, “A lot of the personalization we’re doing is in advertising or email marketing, but we need to bring this into our inbound experiences.”

Gaining a full view of customers and extracting insights from their journeys serve as foundations for future strategies. But to be sustainable, marketers must practice proper data governance to keep everything in line. This is where CDPs often work well with data management platforms (DMPs), informing the latter to create more relevant audience experiences.

“Our CDP is our master data MarTech, but we need to do more in terms of bringing in those other data sources and getting that holistic view,” Moses said. “We need to make sure that we have that data mastered so that we have the utmost confidence in our analytics and personalization.”

About The Author

Corey Patterson is an Editor for MarTech and Search Engine Land. With a background in SEO, content marketing, and journalism, he covers SEO and PPC to help marketers improve their campaigns.
Originally Appeared Here

As we begin 2022, it’s a nice time for small business owners to reflect on all of their successes and challenges, as well as look ahead to future opportunities. Over the last several years, business owners have had to make major shifts in the way they operate, serve customers, and cultivate relationships within their community, with their vendors and partners. And the reality is, small business owners will continue to face an uphill battle as COVID-19 challenges continue.

READ ALSO: 6 ways small businesses can stay relevant on social media in 2022

A record proportion of small business owners report they continue to have an extremely hard time hiring the workers they need to operate their businesses. In fact, according to National Federation of Independent Business’s (NFIB) monthly survey, 56% (93% of those hiring or trying to hire) of owners reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill. Headlines about the new Omicron variant will also likely make hiring even tougher in early 2022. And, business owners will continue to experience the aftermath from supply chain constraints, lower profits, and increases in material prices.

But, often the biggest challenges for small businesses are also the greatest opportunities. Below are some tips to help prepare your small businesses for success in 2022.

Don Pearson is Wells Fargo Regional Banking Executive.

Flexible planning

If there was one glaring lesson business owners learned from COVID-19, it was to be flexible. With COVID-19 impacts, businesses had to revamp their online offerings and create a digital, ecommerce presence. Most had to change relationships with supply chains and vendors or reduce hiring. When it comes to business planning for the next six, 12 or even 18 months, one thing is certain: flexibility will be key. Between staffing demands, supply chain delays and rising costs, write your 2022 plans in pencil. It will be important to stay connected with your business banker, tax advisor, accountant, and local chambers of commerce to stay on top of trends and developments that could impact your business. Most importantly, be nimble and open-minded to pivot, using your experiences over the past 18 months as a guide.

Digital payment processing

Cash flow is the lifeblood of businesses, but manually handling, processing, and dealing with cash, checks, and money orders can be costly and time-consuming. According to a report published by Wells Fargo in December 2020, a fifth of consumers made their first contactless payment during the pandemic, and more than half of them will keep using that payment method, per the National Retail Federation. The retail trade association also found that roughly two-thirds of retailers are now accepting some type of contactless payment to accommodate consumer preference as of last year. To gain a competitive advantage, small business should be looking at adopting technologies that can help speed up their access to working capital such as automated clearing house (ACH), accounts payable and receivable tools, and commercial cards.

Labor saving technologies

Utilizing technology to compensate for the persistent difficulty in hiring workers is also something to consider. Many business owners are investing more in labor saving technologies that help process orders, automate production and distribution and onboard and train new workers. A variety of labor saving technologies have become increasingly affordable and now is the perfect time to adapt.

Sharpened marketing efforts

To better promote your goods and services, consider investigating, investing, and optimizing digital marketing tools, including:

• Targeted email marketing, which allows you to send different information to unique groups of customers and measure the effectiveness of your messaging via open and click rates.

• Engaging social media campaigns, which emphasize consumer engagement via shares and measurement of results.

• A robust strategy for online customer reviews, including regular requests for customer feedback via pop-up surveys on your website (or in marketing emails) and timely personal follow-ups to reviews — both good and bad.

• A thorough website renovation, including updating policies and products, adding personality and branding, taking down dated or broken pages, and adding more photos of you and your friendly team.

Kick off the new year by conducting a thorough review of your current approach to marketing and begin assessing how digital improvements may fit into your strategy.

While there is no one-strategy-fits-all approach to planning for the new year, applying these tips along with what you have learned during these challenging times, can help lead your small business to a successful 2022.

 

Don Pearson is Wells Fargo Regional Banking Executive.

Originally Appeared Here

One would think that scammy emails are a thing of the past and that users are digitally educated in this day and age, a fact which enables them to tell which email is a scam and which one isn’t.

And while this may be partially true, email scams — and scams in general — have become more sophisticated, making the task of recognizing them that much harder:

The numbers above come from FBI reports and refer to the losses people and businesses suffered in 2019. As we know, this number increased vastly in 2020, as “It was a year of fake news and scams, deceiving users while taking advantage of the pandemic,” according to Avast Security Evangelist Luis Corrons.

Email scams, generally speaking, are emails that intend to damage a person or a company in some way. Their objective could be to trick recipients out of large sums of money or obtain important credentials like bank emails and passwords. Of course, a scammer may also want to target other data, like email lists, social security numbers, even personal information like home addresses and phone numbers.

Usually, scammers implement tricks that will trigger a person’s worry or make them an offer they can’t refuse — perhaps an investment opportunity or an outstanding deal for expensive products at a very low price.

How to recognize emails that aren’t a scam

Recognizing emails that are not a part of some elaborate scam is not easy for most users. Especially since some of the things one would think scammers wouldn’t do, are a matter of speculation rather than certainty.

However, the email address, wording, and grammar used is not a matter of speculation. More specifically:

(Source)

This is not a legitimate email address, which means that it’s improbable for this email to be valid. In this case, a good rule of thumb would be to understand the type of action that could have led to this email having been sent.

Generally speaking, scammers are here to entice for a quick buck and rarely — if ever — are in it for the long game. Which means that elements like personalization are not something they use in most cases.

Another thing scammers won’t use would be subtlety. On the contrary, they’ll use words like “URGENT”, “EXCLUSIVE” and so on.

Of course, setting a time limit is common practice with many email marketing campaigns. As a matter of fact, most email marketing tools offer elements like countdown timers that can spice up your email marketing campaigns.

However, there’s a difference between this:

(Source)

And this:

(Source)

Wording like “Urgent action required”, or “Your account is at risk” won’t sit well with your recipients. This is textbook scammer language, especially if it’s highly generic and impersonal.

Marketers, unlike scammers, use techniques that minimize — almost eliminate — suspicion and allow users to understand that they’re talking to an actual brand, with triggered emails and personalized and honest content that makes sense to the user first and foremost.

The different types of email scams

Before we dive into the different types of email scams and how to spot them and protect your account, let’s point out what goes into an attempt at scammy behavior.

Scammers will:

• try and trick recipients out of important information and passwords by claiming an urgent — and very serious — situation is at hand
• claim they’re a part of a well-known brand or a partner of a trusted contact
• use poor grammar
• claim to need more complex and intricate procedures than a well-known brand would (i.e., calling a specific phone number or sending scanned documents)

But let’s get a little more specific.

What is email phishing?

The most common digital scam is email phishing.

Phishing emails are designed to urge people into biting into a scam, by giving away financial data, passwords to protected websites, or other sensitive information.

The reason why phishing is so successful is because it’s modeled after human behavior. The scammer uses techniques that can manipulate a person’s way of thinking, leading them to believe that there’s an urgent situation at hand that requires them to act quickly.

This sense of imminent danger pushes users into making online payments or giving up important data.

What is spam?

Spam emails are not inherently dangerous, but they could be. They are intended for a large number of recipients, mainly for commercial purposes, and more often than not, they lack personalization and segmentation.

The reason why they could be dangerous is the fact that the brand or person messaging the recipient hasn’t built an email list organically. On the contrary, your data could have very well been mined or sold at a hefty price, much like the content of the email list overall.

What are email scams?

Email scams, as mentioned before, are designed to trick recipients into disclosing information that could harm them in a multitude of ways.

From causing physical and emotional damage up to identity theft or creating false claims at illegal activity, email scams can be positively harmful to a person’s well-being.

What is spoofing?

Spoofing scams have the ability to create an email address almost identical to that of a well-known brand users would most likely interact with, as well as email content that includes the logos and colors of said brand. These addresses could look legitimate at first glance, like “@venrno.com” instead of Venmo and so on.

Usually, those emails contain a link that could lead to the user downloading malware or disclosing personal information that could lead to users losing a good chunk of their assets.

What is malware?

Malware is a type of software designed to obtain data like passwords by gaining access to a computer. This access allows scammers to monitor, alter, and ultimately steal sensitive data.

Usually, users receive an email with suspicious links or attachments through a suspicious sender address. This email urges users to download the attachment or click on the link as a part of a standard operating procedure that could solve a possible “threatening” problem.

How to ensure you’re protected every step of the way

The most surefire way for users to protect themselves from scam email attacks is to educate themselves and truly realize what goes into a scam.

Until then, here are the steps to follow.

Use backups and two-factor authentication

Using backups and two-factor authentication could save user data and educate users on what to expect at the same time.

Backup software can keep information secure in the sense that the user won’t suddenly see their computer wiped out of all their data, even if the computer suffers great damage.

On the other hand, two-factor authentication will send a message to the user when it comes to suspicious log-in activity or password change. By asking the user to verify and authenticate the action, two-factor authentication ensures that the activity is driven by a user action.

Keep your OS and antivirus updated

A computer’s operating system (OS) needs to always be up to date. Some scam methods can override the security provided by an older version of your OS. This is especially true considering that an OS can be the object of frequent attacks, largely through older versions of internet browsers as well as scam emails.

The same holds true for an up-to-date version of the antivirus software. Updated antivirus software can protect computers from newer versions of malware.

How to spot an email scam

As mentioned above, the first level of protection, and the most important one, is understanding what an email scam is and what its tell-tale signs are.

Apart from verifying the sender’s email address and pointing out inconsistencies between addresses and domain names, users should note that spam emails usually have subtle mistakes. 

These mistakes are focused on spelling, syntax, and grammar. The level of subtlety varies, much like the scam’s sophistication.

(Source)

This scammy email is subtle enough, and a user would fall for it with a quick look. However, the sender’s address is one of the giveaways.

The same goes for the salutation. In the era of personalization and sophisticated lead nurturing, the “Hello user” salutation is quite unusual. And while this email doesn’t ask the user to give up an important password, it asks the user to follow a suspicious link.

Emails that are unsolicited and feature strange-looking links and attachments should always be considered suspicious, provided the recipient doesn’t recognize the sender’s address — or, in some cases, even if they do.

Other types of attacks to keep an eye for

Sometimes, email scams are just the cherry on top of a well-crafted holistic scam. This is why users need to keep up-to-date with various online attacks.

HTTPS phishing attacks

More often than not, users think that HTTPS websites and links are safe and legitimate. However, this is no longer the case, as scammers use this protocol in the links of phishing emails to make them seem legitimate and trustworthy.

Ensure the link you’re about to click isn’t shortened but is the original link of the website you are asked to access. Also, notice if there’s hypertext, as the “innocent” URL inside the email could very well be plain text linked to a scammy website.

SMS and social media phishing

SMS phishing (smishing) attempts to lure a person into giving up sensitive data like credit card details installing malware to their machine through text messaging. The texts appear to be sent by a well-known brand or a person, usually containing a link that leads to a page asking the user to give up personal information.

Social media phishing is another way scammers obtain sensitive information that could potentially be used in other scams aimed at users. Sometimes scammers use social engineering techniques, such as false claims at collaborations with Instagram influencers that increase social proof and make it easier for users to trust them.

Vishing (voice phishing)

Vishing is used to obtain data over the phone. Usually, scammers aim for the victim’s credit card details, but identity theft could also be the goal in some cases.

More often than not, a dialer will generate a random number, and scammers will “bait” the caller by claiming there’s an issue with the potential victim’s credit card or even a problem with another family member. That way, the victim feels like they need to take immediate action.

The takeaway

Users often find themselves in a difficult position, not knowing whether to trust an email address asking them to take urgent action or not.

In the day and age of sophisticated digital campaigns, it’s important to remember that not everything is what it seems and that emails that don’t stem from a specific user behavior but ask for a particular type of action that requires data could very well be a scam.

This can threaten the well-being of your machine and its operating system, be it Windows or macOS, as their operating system can get viruses as well.

The facts above emphasize the necessity of using email marketing, marketing automation, and updated antivirus tools that make a difference.

Originally Appeared Here

Rob Dobi

En español

In the earliest days of the internet, Geoff Harper made what seemed like a logical decision: to use his work email account for all correspondence, both professional and personal.

When he changed jobs 17 years later, he lost access to that email address and with it the account’s vast archive of notes from friends and family. He also lost the ability to log in to many websites.

“It was a crazy nightmare,” says Harper, 53, of Dallas. “You just don’t realize everything in today’s world is tied to your email. When I’m on a website and forget my password, when I try to change the password, the system demands I verify my identity by an email that’s sent to my old address. It’s been five years since I switched, and I still can’t get into some things.”

Changing an email address is a hassle. Yet sometimes we need to do it, be it for cutting the cord from your cable TV account that includes a free email address, moving to a new city where your provider is not offered or just freeing yourself from a spam-ridden account and starting fresh. But taking the effort to switch effectively is worth it.

Here are four steps that can lessen the pain:

Originally Appeared Here