(Image by StockSnap from Pixabay )

Spotify is one of the world’s largest online music streaming services and sends billions of marketing emails to its users every year. However, in December 2020 the team responsible for email campaigns was contacted by Twilio SendGrid – the platform it uses to manage email marketing – and was told that it was close to being shut down. 

Why? Because Spotify didn’t realize that it was sending millions of emails to what are known as ‘spam traps’: bad actors that are looking to harm Spotify’s systems. Matt Gioe, Engineering Manager at Spotify, and the person heading up the email campaign office, was speaking at Twilio’s Signal event this week, where he warned other organizations that they need to get to grips with both the art and science of email, in order to avoid a similar situation. 

The problem was brought to Spotify’s attention in December 2020, during the company’s largest campaign of the year, Holiday 2020. During this time Spotify sends approximately 1 billion emails to 170 email subscribers across 92 countries over roughly a 30 day period. It was in the middle of this huge campaign that Twilio SendGrid got in touch. Gioe said: 

I received a series of pretty frantic emails, messages and phone calls from three Twilio employees, two of them who I’ve worked with before, and one that I’d actually never heard of. 

It turns out this third person was Len Shnyeder, who is the VP of Industry Relations at Twilio. Len wanted me to know…that if I don’t do something, I’m going to get shut down…and by me, he really meant Spotify, and by Spotify he meant all of Spotify’s emails. So this is pretty terrifying.

This kind of came out of the blue. This was actually my first marketing campaign that I’d ever worked on. But you can imagine that I was not having a great day.

Gioe said that the reason he’s sharing this story is because the exact circumstances could happen to any organization, particularly ones with the scale of Spotify. However, whilst there is a lot of ‘science’ that is involved with email marketing, Gioe warned that this problem was not going to be solved with technical engineering. He said: 

This type of catastrophic conversation is not going to be saved through good software engineering. Success in email is not something that is simply an engineering domain. When you fall into issues, a lot of the time it’s something that can be solved by just great software –  if you’re not reaching out to people, you’re not serving enough messages, you’re not actually sending enough emails fast enough. – these are things that any software engineer can handle. 

But there’s another class of issues that is not software engineering related and this is important to understand as well. And the distinction between these two things is the difference between science and art. On the one hand, email has a lot to say about science, but on the other hand it has a lot to say about art. It’s a specific domain, it has a lot of rules that are not particularly obvious, and you need to really be aware of both.

Spam traps

As already noted, the Holiday campaign is Spotify’s largest and most important email campaign across the company. Gioe’s team sits in between Twilio SendGrid and the rest of the Spotify organization, in order to coordinate campaigns across the Spotify organization. Everything comes through Gioe’s team, in order to avoid “chaos”. 

Gioe shared some charts which showed the success of emails being received by Spotify users, which by and large are positive. However, looking closely at certain snapshots in time, Spotify was having approximately 1 million failures. Gioe said: 

As a software engineer, you look at 120 million successes and 1 million failures, and that doesn’t seem so bad. But when you’re talking about the art of email sending it is actually quite bad. 

One chart Gioe shared, which Spotify wasn’t aware of at the time, showed what are known as spam traps. He explained: 

In this third chart, which is really the crux of the issue, is the chart that I wasn’t aware of in the middle of holiday 2020. These are the spam traps that we were hitting – and spam traps is not a concept that I’d never heard of before. Spam traps are literally emails that exist only to expose poor sending behaviours, they’re only set up to catch you sending bad emails. 

We knew that we were hitting these spam traps because Spamhaus is an organization who monitors these types of things. When Spamhaus catches you sending all of these bad emails to spam traps, they let the world know. And unfortunately Spamhaus, spam traps, these are not things that any of the great software engineers throughout history had any idea about. These are not the things that my heroes had any idea about. 

The more of these that you’re hitting, the more it reflects poorly on your reputation as an email sender. And this is all completely non-obvious, you don’t even know that you’re doing this. You don’t know that you’re doing this until you’re about to get shut down. 

Set up for failure

As one can imagine, being made aware of spam traps and potentially being exposed by Spamhaus in the middle of one the largest marketing campaigns of the year is less than enviable. Gioe described it as “the worst possible moment”. 

As such, Spotify spun up a ‘war room’ between himself and the people at Twilio SpendGrid to understand how it could avoid sending emails to these bad actors and reduce types of domain specific, non engineering bad outcomes. The discussions centered around analyzing the entire lifecycle of Spotify’s user history. Gioe explained: 

How do we actually get to send users emails? And what we found was that, functionally speaking, our email programme was set up for failure.

And this is not really that surprising. We’re very far away from the point of user registration, that’s not the case in many other companies, or many other mailing lists, but we found that there were actually two main components of Spotify that were really hurting us.

On the one hand, users are not, and historically have not been, required to verify their identity when signing up for a Spotify account. You don’t have to prove that you’re a person to get a Spotify account. And the other side of that is that we are subject to pretty rampant fraud. There is a heavy incentive to create bad accounts and there’s a pretty heavy incentive for bad actors to try and harm our systems.

Gioe said that when you combine a lack of verification with the sheer reality of attempted fraud at Spotify, what you end up with is a section of your user base that is harmful. He added: 

We didn’t know any of this. This is so far away from us that we didn’t have any concept that this was happening. And that’s not really that surprising. Even though we have great engineers and even though we’re hitting pretty incredible scale, we also have a pretty young email programme and our domain knowledge is pretty inexperienced.

The art of sending emails 

Gioe and the team at Twilio SendGrid now think of email campaigns at Spotify in two ways, as has already been noted: art and science. On the science side, tools are built to empower scale, reliability, and to send emails quickly. However, it’s the art side of email marketing that Spotify has had to learn. Gioe said: 

But what we had to develop a growing appreciation for was that we had to, in certain circumstances, actually send fewer emails, because every email that you send is potentially a risk to your programme. And the act of doing that is an art, you have to understand the domain intimately. You need to insert intelligent guardrails that monitor this risk and you need to set up a system that minimizes this risk. And a successful email programme at the end of the day is a function of both. 

And if it hadn’t been for Twilio, Spotify could have found itself in a much worse situation. Gioe said: 

We couldn’t have done this without Twilio SendGrid. The way that I like to think about this is that Twilio SendGrid made the hard stuff easy and the really hard stuff easier. The science, the rhard stuff, hitting scale, It takes good engineers, it takes a great architectural plan, but it is difficult, it’s non trivial. On the other hand, the art of email sending is difficult and Twilio SendGrid really made it easier for us to get that done. 

They took the hard issue of scale off the plate, we never really had to think about it. But when we hit these issues that were more domain specific, when we really hit these issues that had to do with the art of email sending, they were also there to teach us. They were there to humble us. And without them I don’t think that we would have saved our email programme and we wouldn’t have such a successful programme going forward. 

So when you think about your own email programme, I encourage you to think about both sides. I find it to be a bit of a healthy and sane framework to think about these two sides of email sending, in terms of science and in terms of art.

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Summer has come and gone. The temperature is falling. And the days are getting darker earlier. This would typically mean a slight reprieve from the frenzied summer activity for agents, but that isn’t necessarily the case in today’s market.

It never hurts to revamp some of your weekend practices to help your week run smoother, especially with waning daylight hours. From updating your marketing strategy to resetting your schedule, there are many ways to optimize your week.

Here are four tactics to help you stay productive during the autumn months.

Rethink Your Schedule 
Tasks that you’d typically save for the end of the day during the summer and spring—calling leads, meetings with mentors and brokers, sending paperwork to clients—may need to be moved up earlier in the day because it’s getting darker sooner. With fewer daylight hours, you may also need to re-evaluate when you host open houses and schedule showings with your clients.

Eliminate Busy Work
From executing your marketing strategy to updating and maintaining your CRM databases, there are plenty of daily tasks that you can take care of before your work week starts. Take time during the weekend to complete some of the essential tasks that you may forget to do during the week. Create and schedule your social media and email marketing content ahead of the workweek and take it off your daily to-do list.

Revamp Your Game Plan
Laying out your daily and weekly goals is an excellent way to keep your workflow running smoothly and keep you on task as you embark on your workweek. Establish tangible and measurable goals for different aspects of your business, like engaging with your sphere and marketing strategies. Develop task lists for each day of the week that prioritize items that need to be completed before the end of the week—getting contract documents sent to clients, explained, signed and returned, for example.

Prioritize Weekend Networking
Networking is essential to every agent’s business, and during the fall, there are plenty of opportunities to get out there and meet new people. While your workweek is likely to fill up, take time during the weekend to attend events, unwind and make some new connections that you can pencil into your schedule for the following week.

Jordan Grice is RISMedia’s associate online editor. Email him your real estate news to jgrice@rismedia.com.

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A good example of native advertising, where the ad is displayed on a virtual billboard by the side of the track in a racing game

As website owners, we always want more traffic and visitors interested in our page’s content. Lots of website owners earn from their pages, and they’d like a well-targeted audience to come and see what content they have prepared.

This is why most of them opt for marketing campaigns to advertise the brand, hoping for more visitors. However, it’s not easy getting visitors, and not all marketing channels provide excellent results. Social media, SEO, newsletters, or email marketing, are some of the most commonly used ideas.

Among them all, there’s the native advertising technique that obviously provides high ROI and gets the best user conversion. Research shows that this is the most effective way to get more well-target visitors.

What is native advertising?
Native advertising comes in many forms, from video to editorial and written content. It is made to match the platform it is published on and make users not notice that they are given an ad. In most cases, these users will not realize they are clicking or seeing an ad because the content feels natural.

In most cases, the point of the ad is to make them click on it and come to the prepared landing page for a different brand or product. This way, marketers manage to get more consumers to see their message. Because consumers don’t realize they are given an ad, they don’t feel pressured and go through the funnel.

What do the stats say?
It’s hard to miss the obvious when you look at the stats. According to Outbrain, consumers will look at native ads 53 per cent more than they will at display ads. That tells you that more than one in two people on the internet will feel comfortable getting the message you’re sending them.

Additionally, the same source claims that consumers trust ads shown in premium news sites 44 per cent more than social media. In other words, when an article in a newspaper says that the vacuum cleaner you’re thinking about buying is excellent, people believe it. If the same information is shared on a page on Facebook, fewer people will see it as valuable.

Why is it like this?
These stats claim that native ads are the best marketing channel of today because the average internet user no longer trusts digital media. With the ratio of ads vs. original content lowering and getting almost as many ads as the content they follow, consumers started ignoring the ads.

They understand that there’s no logic in stopping to see any new advertise because they are not interested in most of them. People know that artificially intelligent software tracks their behavior and targets them as suitable consumers to see a particular ad.

Instead, when they need information about a product or a brand, they go to specialized websites providing this information. Every marketer who wants their campaign to succeed needs to invest in native ads rather than any other marketing channel.

How to create native ads
It takes a lot of experience and skill to come up with great native ads. What you need to do first is to do great outreach and ask other websites to promote your brand or product. Since everyone on the internet is doing what they are best in, it’s not easy to find those who post your ads for free.

Most blog owners will ask for compensation, especially if their domain authority is high enough and have tons of visitors. There’s also native advertising software that provides these pages for you. If you don’t like spending time looking for options yourself, you can consider this option too.

Conclusion
Every marketer will do anything to get that marketing funnel filled with potential customers. The more consumers see their ads, the better chance there is for the product to be sold. However, not all marketing strategies are equally good. Native ads are the best ones, and stats show it.

If you’re thinking about getting more visitors to your website, then you need to consider this option first. We explained through numbers why native advertising is better than anything else. If you want your page to be seen, you need to get the native ads software and see your page thrive.

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As we predicted, promotional email volume has skyrocketed this year as brands worked to retain and reengage customers because of pandemic-related shutdowns. And marketers facing the decline of third-party cookies are now chasing first-party data through — you guessed it — email relationships. Inbox placement and reputation management vendor Validity finds that global inbox volume has increased 94% since Q3 2020. Competition for email attention and email data is tougher than ever. 

The stakes around your email program are higher. Because of data deprecation, first-party data is gold. And email addresses unlock user identity and permission — keys to this treasure. So responsibly collecting email registrations, preserving relationships with good sending behavior, and enhancing user profiles through regular email interactions isn’t just about getting more opens and clicks. Improving deliverability now makes or breaks your entire customer data strategy. Here is how to do right with email marketing this holiday season: 

• Don’t get lured into the temptation of over-messaging. We get the appeal of sending just one more message when you are facing looming Q4 transaction goals. But wearing out your list now sacrifices longer-term revenue, compromises your sender reputation, and potentially deletes forever the identifier you need to stay in touch with a customer. GDPR allows that users can request that their data be permanently erased from a marketing database if requested. 
• Keep registration customer led. Boxed and Rue La La now require registration just to browse their sites. But we advise not forcing a customer’s hand. Let customers control their opt-in. Rent the Runway’s omnichannel preference center collects explicit proclivities and zero-party data such as user size and style searches for use in product recommendations. And Dollar Tree gives subscribers a chance to change contact information, desired message type, and frequency. 
• Deliver value to customers. We bet your email strategy over-indexes on accomplishing your Q4 goals — sales volume, revenues, inventory liquidation. This is the case for most emailers. But the best way to win this holiday and still have a database and solid sending reputation is to give customers what they want, rather than forcing them into your path to purchase. As Validity found, Red Letter Days increased inbox placement when it targeted emails to user behavior and preference. And improved inbox placement boosted opens and clicks, which generated more data for better targeting. This virtuous cycle increased revenue attributed to email by 10%. Email marketing vendors like Bluecore and Cordial collect and make usable non-email data (like point-of-service data, supply chain updates, or SKU-level metadata) to improve message relevance. 
• Measure more than opens and clicks. You’ve probably heard (and are fretting over) Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, which anonymizes email open information for an estimated 52% of all received emails. This certainly challenges how senders gauge campaign success and makes unengaged contacts unrecognizable. But this also encourages a better email measurement approach. Besides opens and clicks, measure the value of email customers over time; and track how email data is used to improve performance and internal efficiency. Many email service providers are also working on an open-rate proxy metric using data they collect across inbox providers besides Apple. 

Do you agree that the key to email marketing this Q4 is to think long term? How are you using email to reach your immediate sales goals while also preserving customer relationships? 

This post was written by Vice President and Principal Analyst Shar VanBoskirk, and it originally appeared here.

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NEWARK, Ohio — During this year’s RUBY Awards presentation by the Ohio Travel Association, the Trumbull County Tourism Bureau was recognized in four categories.

The organization received two top RUBY awards (Recognizing Uncommon Brilliance) for the Visitor Email Marketing Campaign and its 2020 Trumbull County Visitors Guide. The visitors guide also earned Trumbull Tourism the Destiny Award for Printed Collateral Material from the U.S. Travel Association.

Trumbull Tourism was also a finalist in the video category for its 2021 video campaign, and received a Certificate of Excellence for its 2020-21 Where’s Wally organic social media campaign.

“Our team, the Board, Staff, and marketing partners have persevered despite the adverse effects our industry has endured this past year and a half,” said Beth Carmichael, Trumbull Tourism’s executive director. “We’re pleased that we can bring positive results to our community and that our work has been recognized nationally and now on a state level.”

Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.

Originally Appeared Here

Ken Mahar, Founder and CEO of Email Broadcast, was interviewed on the Mission Matters Marketing Podcast.

Ken Mahar was interviewed on the Mission Matters Marketing Podcast by Adam Torres.

Ken Mahar, Founder and CEO of Email Broadcast, was interviewed on the Mission Matters Marketing Podcast.

Ken Mahar, Founder and CEO of Email Broadcast, was interviewed on the Mission Matters Marketing Podcast.

Beverly Hills, Oct. 18, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Ken Mahar supports business owners with a powerful tool: email marketing, helping them reach and serve their customers more effectively through his full-service email marketing agency, Email Broadcast.

Listen to the full interview of Ken Mahar with Adam Torres on Mission Matters Marketing Podcast.

How did Email Broadcast get its start?

Mahar’s introduction to entrepreneurship took place at age 12 as he did odd jobs. Later, when he became a salesperson, his mind would wander into the realms of leadership and management. At some point, he decided he’d run his own show.

“Learning the craft of sales pushed me in the right direction and helped me get my way around Email Broadcast”, Mahar says. “Understanding the steps of sales and product details, handling objections, strategizing, dealing with competition, and practicing it all consistently is the key to achieve tenfold excellence in the marketing journey.”

How has email marketing evolved in the last few years?

“It’s funny how in the last 20 years of my exposure to the email marketing industry, I’ve seen things changing and still find everything the same,” Mahar notes. “People thought emails would die in the wake of new platforms. Turns out, a major percentage of business communications still happen via email.”

The biggest change Ken sees is how tech innovations and advancements like professional ESPs (email service providers) have made email marketing much easier than it used to be.

Common mistakes businesses make in email marketing

Mahar says people tend to underestimate the amount of effort it takes to conceive and execute an effective email marketing plan. What’s more, they often dive into email marketing without aligning their strategy with their business goals.

Story continues

Another mistake people make, Ken says, is thinking of email marketing only as a sales channel.

“First, you need to deliver value to your audience and build trust and high engagement,” he says. “Sending back-to-back sales pitches does not get positive results. Businesses exploit their privilege of having email subscribers by overdoing the promotions, just at the (slightest) hint of positive outcomes, and miss the opportunities.”

What does Email Broadcast do?

“At Email Broadcast, I have curated a team of experts in every area—from brand and product research, development, and positioning to copywriting, designing, technical integration, account management, and project management. We execute every detail of the campaign precisely and remain accountable to our clients for the success of an email campaign,” Mahar says.

Who can benefit from the email marketing services of Email Broadcast?

“If you’re running a business, and you don’t leverage professional email marketing, you’re losing money,” Mahar advises. “Every company that can invest in email marketing to grow (its) revenues should design a world-class email campaign with us.”

What’s next for the company?

When asked what’s up ahead for Email Broadcast, Mahar says, “Email marketing is a vast marketing medium. We’re focused on it for the last two decades because we are thoroughly aware of the challenges and functions of the job. Since it’s our specialization, we wish to keep perfecting our craft for the decades to come and become one of the greatest email marketing agencies.”

To learn more about Email Broadcast, visit emailbroadcast.com to book a free 20-minute consultation call with Ken’s team or sign up for the agency’s newsletter via ken@email broadcast.com.

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Inquiries: adamtorres@missionmatters.com

Publicist for Adam Torres and Mission Matters Media KISS PR Brand Story PressWire

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For more details, visit Kisspr.com. KISS PR Digital PR & Marketing powers the Mission Matters Business podcast with brand storytelling. T: 972.437.8942

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In this week’s top stories: Apple officially sets is next special event for October 18, iOS 15.0.2 release, last-minute MacBook Pro rumors, and more. Read on for all of this week’s top stories and more.

Apple Event

Apple this week officially confirmed its highly-anticipated October event. The event will take place on Monday, October 18, and will be broadcast live from Apple Park. Apple is teasing the event with the tagline “Unleashed.” which is likely a hint at the new M1X MacBooks that are rumored to be coming.

Apple’s October 18 event will be held at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. The event will be live-streamed across Apple’s website, on the company’s YouTube channel, and via the Apple TV application on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV.

iOS 15.0.2 release

Apple is continuing to refine and improve iOS 15 following its release to the public last month. This week, Apple released iOS 15.0.2 to iPhone users everywhere with continued performance improvements and bug fixes.

iOS 15.0.2 specifically focuses on fixing bugs related to MagSafe, AirTag, CarPlay, Photos, and more. You can find the full release notes in our coverage right here.

MacBook Pro rumors

At Monday’s “Unleashed” event, we expect new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros to be the stars of the show. Last minute rumors this week indicated that the new machines are set to feature a 120Hz refresh rate for the first time, similar to the iPhone 13 Pro and iPad Pro.

Other last-minute rumors also indicated that the new MacBook Pro models will feature a 1080p webcam, as well as 16GB of RAM as standard.

These and the rest of this week’s top stories below.

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iPhone |

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9to5Mac Daily |

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

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Benjamin and Zac discuss the initial reaction to the Apple Watch Series 7, HomeKit announcements, some TV+ news, and — most importantly — get hyped for the new MacBook Pros coming at the ‘Unleashed’ Apple event next week.

Sponsored by Totallee: Get 20% off totallee iPhone 13 cases and more with code SLEEK at totalleecase.com or (SLEEK20DEAL on Amazon).

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Sponsored by BetterHelp: As a listener, you’ll get 10% off your first month by visiting our sponsor at BetterHelp.com/MacHappyHour.

9to5Mac Happy Hour is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play Music, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

Stacktrace Podcast |

John and Rambo share their bets, hopes, and predictions for Apple’s upcoming “Unleashed” event. Will we finally see a new, Apple Silicon-powered MacBook Pro, and what other products might make an appearance at the event? Also, SwiftUI backward compatibility, and re-prioritizing projects in preparation for new OS releases.

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Those cheesy TV infomercials promising “three easy payments of $19.99” were quite ahead of their time. Though calling a toll-free number to buy as-seen-on-TV items is no longer in style, the idea of paying in installments remains popular thanks to a booming marketplace of buy now, pay later services.

With companies like Affirm and Klarna, and credit card issuers like Chase and Citi, you now have a variety of ways to divide up the cost of large purchases. Of course, there are rules and limitations — some BNPL services partner with specific merchants, while credit card companies require you to carry one of their cards to participate.

But limitations haven’t stopped it from becoming a trend. In June 2021, Competiscan, a company that tracks and analyzes direct marketing activity, noted a 530% increase in BNPL email marketing campaigns in the past year, with 28% of retail emails mentioning BNPL in the first quarter of 2021.

BNPL is still a form of debt, though. If you’re debt-averse and would rather save up for major purchases and pay for them in full, that is indeed an excellent tactic. But debt isn’t inherently evil. It’s merely a financial tool that can make major purchases more manageable. As with any financial tool, it’s all about how you wield it. Here are some ways to use BNPL thoughtfully.

KNOW WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD

Andrew Gold, a financial advisor at Prestige Wealth Management in Southlake, Texas, has used BNPL services to finance large purchases, including travel bookings, business purchases and a new mattress. As someone who frequently discusses spending with clients, he recommends considering BNPL when you can afford to pay for something in full, but paying in installments would help you better manage your cash flow. Before you choose a payment plan, review what you have in your bank account and how much money you earn each month, so you know you can afford the payments along with your other obligations.

“This is not for somebody that is complaining about never having money, or is always borrowing money from people,” he says. “This is for people who have consistent income, who are looking for ways to take advantage of some of the benefits and the convenience of breaking up a purchase over a few weeks.”

        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        

 

Yes, you can spring for the nice shampoo and split the purchase into four $6 payments, but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. BNPL services are helpful, but they also make it far too easy to impulse shop when your budget is tight. “We’re in a world of instant gratification,” Gold says. “There’s a ton of overindulgence and excess in everybody’s life.”

REVIEW THE FINE PRINT BEFORE YOU BUY

Before you make a major purchase, find out how you can get your money back if you return the item, it gets lost during shipping or it arrives damaged. What rights do you have if the merchant won’t refund your money?

If the merchant allows for refunds, you can get your money back. Affirm, Klarna and Afterpay will refund you in full, for example — though Affirm notes that if your plan includes interest payments, you won’t get that money back. Should you need to dispute a charge because the item is missing or damaged, your first step is to contact the merchant directly, much like you would if you paid with a credit card. In some cases, if the merchant grants you a store credit instead of a refund, you must still make payments on your installment plan.

GO IN WITH A STRATEGY

Stay organized by using BNPL for very specific purposes, like a series of purchases for one event. Alexandria Broward used BNPL when she and her now-husband decided they wanted to elope in a month’s time.

        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        

 

With just three weekends to find a dress and sort out other logistics, Broward put some expenses on credit cards and used BNPL for her outfit. She ordered several dresses and fronted a fraction of the cost, returning all but one and getting money back for those returns. Her tactic was to avoid putting the whole cost on credit cards. She also used BNPL to divvy up the cost of her $400 wedding shoes. “They really tied the dress together,” she says. “If I ever have a daughter, she’ll get those.”

“It was a great solution and service to have in my situation, given how last-minute everything was,” Broward says.

This column was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Sara Rathner is a writer at NerdWallet. Email: srathner@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @SaraKRathner.

        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        

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Rep. Matt Willhite brought in more than $24,000 in September, expanding his cash-on-hand advantage in the race for the Palm Beach County Commission District 6 seat.

Willhite is one of four candidates pursuing the seat being vacated by term-limited Commissioner Melissa McKinlay. He’s one of three Democrats competing in the contest, including Michelle McGovern and Sylvia L. Sharps.

McGovern has collected more cash than Willhite since April, when both candidates entered the contest. She added $18,500 in September, leaving her less than $6,000 short of Willhite’s haul.

But Willhite retains an overall cash lead thanks to money he brought over from previous House runs via his political committee, Floridians for Public Safety. Willhite announced in April he would forgo a fourth and final term in the House to pursue the District 6 seat on the Palm Beach County Commission.

Willhite holds nearly $202,000 in cash on hand as of Sept. 30. McGovern is second with nearly $139,000. Sharps retains just over $6,800, while Republican candidate Sara Baxter has just under $2,300 available.

Willhite, an experienced firefighter, collected $3,000 each from Palm Beach County FIREPAC and the Professional Firefighters and Paramedics of Palm Beach County. Both of those donations came through Willhite’s PC.

In September, Willhite spent just under $3,000. Almost all of that cash went to MDW Communications for email marketing.

Sharps and Baxter heavily trailed Willhite and McGovern in September fundraising. Sharps raised just $1,200, while Baxter showed $0 in contributions for the month.

September marks the second time in three months Willhite has topped McGovern in monthly fundraising, though McGovern beat out the field in each of her first three months as a candidate. McKinlay has also endorsed McGovern as her preferred successor.

McGovern spent more than a decade working as former U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s regional director in West Palm Beach. She then served as Nelson’s state director.

District 6 on the Palm Beach County Commission includes the communities of Belle Glade, Pahokee and South Bay. Candidates and political committees faced a Monday deadline to report all financial activity through Sept. 30.

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Gravity Global won the ‘Best Response to Change’ category at The Drum Awards for Digital Industries 2021 with its campaign for Embraer. Here, the team behind the winning entry reveals the secrets of this successful project…

The challenge

Embraer, a Brazilian company, is a world leader in the design and manufacturing of aircraft in the 70-130 seat segment (known as regional jets), competing against giants of the industry Boeing and Airbus and other regional challengers.

The latest iteration of Embraer’s ’Profit Hunter’ campaign, ‘A Force of Nature’, had several objectives:

• To support the recovery of the airline industry as Covid-19 changed the future of air travel and passenger numbers

• Lead the aviation headlines on sustainability

• Amplify how Embraer aircraft solves future challenges post-Covid

• Land the tech message with audiences in an imaginative way

• Beat previous campaign results

• Outperform positive brand sentiment of Boeing and Airbus

• Increase global reach and brand awareness by maximizing media opportunities across paid, owned and earned on a smaller budget than previous years

• Drive prospects to visit the website

The strategy

Gravity research indicated three key issues keeping airline operators awake at night:

• How to navigate the impact of Covid-19

• How to generate profit in a post-Covid world with reduced passenger numbers

• How to deliver on its environmental targets as climate change becomes the world’s number one priority

The solution to these challenges involved persuading airlines of the benefits of the E2 next generation aircraft, which is a lot easier to fill in an environment of lower passenger numbers and has the innovation and technology to deliver significant environmental benefits by operating with lower noise, less fuel burn, less maintenance requirements, as well as delivering a much reduced carbon emission footprint.

Gravity created personas for the audience and the aircraft, renaming the E190-E2 and E195-E2 (not memorable) as the ‘Profit Hunter’, reflecting the core proposition (most efficient/profitable) and the target market’s needs (profit) – something even more relevant in the current environment

The ‘big idea’ extended from previous campaigns was to use hand-painted predators from the natural world on nose cones to attract attention, but this time it needed to reflect the audience personas as hunters of profit and environmental improvement.

Our challenge was to ‘own’ sustainability without having the ability to visit customers or showcase the aircraft at the various airshows around the world. Covid had closed it all down.

The campaign

We designed an integrated brand campaign that utilized virtual events, viral video, VR and AR, print, social casts and social media.

The E2 Profit Hunter campaign ‘A Force of Nature – Different Animal for a Different World’ included:

• Painting the ‘Profit Hunter’ aircraft nose-to-tail

• Press, online display and paid social advertising

• Paid and organic social posts

• Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube posts

• Embraer TV streamed live on social media

• VR experience of flying the Profit Hunter

• AR to demonstrate the technology on the aircraft

• Produced a new Market Outlook report – market forecast, challenges and opportunities for the next 10 years

• Created a short film series, ‘Incredible Journeys’

• Customer events (Helvetic, Air Peace, KLM, press, online display and paid social advertising)

• Insights for a Different World (web series, three episodes)

• Webinar (marketing communications around webinars, LinkedIn campaigns and email marketing, content writing)

• All content, designs, UI, development, hosting and management of the ECA website (www.embraercommercialaviation.com)

• e2sustainability.com web page, content, advertising

• OOH, print and digital OOH communications, for KLM, Helvetic delivery

• Social listening and monitoring and reporting

• Social media marketing and managing social channels on behalf of leadership, including community management

The results

The campaign increased reach and engagement across all regions.

Website traffic rose +52% in Europe, +60% in Asia, +45% in North America and +106% in South America.

Social following growth rate 4x faster than Boeing, 8x faster than Airbus.

214.7% increase in social engagements.

5x growth in engagement over largest player, Airbus.

Total engagement volumes +59% higher than Airbus and +64% higher than Boeing, despite these brands having circa 4x the number of followers.

272 aircraft on firm order as at March 2021, +$10bn in order value.

This project was a winner at The Drum Awards for Digital Industries 2021. Find out which of The Drum Awards are currently open for entry.

Originally Appeared Here