by Fronetics | Aug 28, 2017 | Blog, Current Events, Supply Chain
Record spending, online shopping, and free shipping are hallmarks of back to school 2017.
With consumer confidence on the rise, the National Retail Federation predicts that back-to-college and back-to-school spending will hit $83.6 billion in 2017. That whopping total is an all-time high for back-to-college dollars, and the second highest on record for back-to-school spending, and represents and increase of more than 10% from last year.
If you started your shopping three weeks to one month before school starts, you likely found the longest lines: 46.7% of shoppers report that that’s when they planned to hit the shelves for back-to-school shopping, and 34.6% for back-to-college.
The top destinations for back-to-school shoppers are department stores (57.1%), discount stores (54.1%), and clothing stores (46.0%), while back-to-college shoppers prefer online shopping (44.1%), with discount stores (40%) and department stores (38.5%) following in second and third place. A whopping 90.5% of back-to-school shoppers plan to take advantage of free shipping services, with 88.7% doing the same for back-to-college shipping.
Per household, overall back-to-school spending has risen from last year’s average of $674 to $688 in 2017. The NRF predicts that 64% of that total will be spent on apparel and electronics.
Check out our infographic with some interesting facts from the NRF’s 2017 survey below.
Back to school 2017 supply chain infographic
(Made with Canva)
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by Fronetics | Jun 28, 2017 | Blog, Current Events, Marketing, Social Media
In June’s social media news, more social media platforms are making changes to benefit businesses who advertise.
June has seen a lot of recent changes in big-name platforms, like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, that will directly impact the engagement between businesses and potential customers. The trend is to create apps that work harder for paid advertisers, increasing brand awareness for businesses and proving their worth through built-in tracking.
Apple has also been working overtime to keep their products competing with the big players in the social media game. New analytics and introduction of Business Chat are keeping the fruit relevant.
Facebook Rolls Out Two New Ad Campaign Tools for Marketers
Facebook delivered two new options for helping businesses grow: Valued Optimization and Lookalike Audiences. The first, Valued Optimization, “works by using the purchase values sent from the Facebook pixel to estimate how much a person may spend with your business over a seven-day period. The ad’s bid is then automatically adjusted based on this estimation, allowing campaigns to deliver ads to people likely to spend more with your business at a low cost.” The second, Lookalike Audiences, helps marketers reach people likely to be interested in a business based on people who have visited their site. Read more
Facebook Expands Click to Messenger Ads to Instagram
Facebook continues to expand ways for users to connect directly with businesses. The Click to Messenger ads have been available through Facebook for a while, and now they’re expanding to Instagram. “Instagram Click to Messenger ads let you reach the people you care about on Instagram and engage with them on Messenger.” Read more
Instagram Makes Sponsored Content More Transparent
Last week Instagram introduced a new “paid partnership tag” that will clearly identify sponsored posts on its app. “Partnerships between community creators and businesses are an important part of the Instagram experience, and a healthy community should be open and consistent about paid partnerships.” This new tag will help users determine when posts are influenced by commercial relationships with businesses. Read more
Apple Rolls Out Analytics to Podcast App
During a podcast session at WWDC, the Apple developer conference, Apple announced that its podcast app will now have the ability to give publishers data that tells them just how much of their episodes are actually being listening to. Apple Podcasts app will allow creators to track aggregated data about when users start, stop, and skip within an episode. This data will give podcasts tangible results that were once estimated from the number of downloads a podcast received. Read more
Apple Debuts Business Chat
Business Chat allows real customer service representatives to communicate directly with users through iMessage. According to the Apple Developer site, customers can use this new feature to “find your business and start conversations from Safari, Maps, Spotlight, and Siri.” The Verge reports that “there will be built-in features like Apple Pay and calendar integration, which will allow Business Chat to facilitate purchases without requiring the user to exit the chat.” Read more
Twitter Experiments with New Promotional Features for Sponsored Live Video
After entering into an exclusive partnership with Live Nation, Twitter is experimenting with new features to help promote events featured on LN. New features like an alert that users can set to remind them of the live event or a branded timeline that will put all tweets about the event on one landing page will help strengthen the relationship between Twitter and Live Nation, paving the way for more partnerships with big brands. Read more
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by Fronetics | Jun 19, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
Facebook Lead Ads make it easy for both businesses to gather lead information and for prospective customers to learn more about products and services that interest them.
Only 37% of B2B marketers feel Facebook advertising is working for their business. On pace to hit 2 billion users this year, Facebook obviously has reach. So why is Facebook advertising not showing a greater ROI for your business?
Well, are you using lead ads? If not, that’s probably one of the reasons.
Facebook lead ads allow you to run lead-generation campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. This kind of social advertising shows an ad for your product or service within the news feeds of potential customers. Just set the parameters (e.g., demographics, location, etc.) for your target audience, and the network’s algorithm will identify who sees the ad based on information they’ve provided in their profiles.
But here’s the real kicker: Unlike other ad types, lead ads include a contact form that lets these potential customers show their interest in a product or service by filling out the form with their details without ever leaving Facebook (or Instagram).
Lead generation made easy
These days, people expect that everything from shopping to job searching can be done on their handheld devices. Facebook lead ads make that true for people wanting to learn more about new products or businesses.
Here’s how it works: Potential customers click on a lead ad, and their contact information automatically populates based on information from their profile. No leaving Facebook to visit the business’ website and taking the time to provide contact information necessary. Lead ads makes gathering lead information as easy as two taps on a phone: one to open the ad, and one to submit the information.
“If you want to iterate through lead forms quickly, Facebook Lead Ads are a great way to collect the information without building new landing pages and creating tons of copy,” says Tony Adams in Visible Factors. “The contact forms appear natively on Facebook and Instagram. You can easily use them to sign people up to newsletters for drip marketing campaigns or in a direct B2B campaign funnel.”
According to research from Google, B2B buyers have increased the amount of mobile research they do throughout the B2B purchase path by 91% year over year. With lead ads, Facebook has set the bar for mobile marketing by eliminating the need for customers to fill out time-consuming forms and for companies to create landing pages.
theSkimm, a news and information site, wanted to expand its reach and increase its conversion rate, with the ultimate goal of attracting more highly qualified leads and significantly increasing its subscriber pool. After testing a number of different tactics, theSkimm created a series of Facebook lead ads. The ads featured the company logo to reinforce its branding and a ‘Subscribe’ link inviting people to sign up on the spot. The result was a 22% increase in lead quality at a cost per acquisition of just $1-2.
Creating and modifying your ads
As buyers continue to turn to their handheld devices for quick, easy information, Facebook lead ads will give your brand the opportunity to capture new leads with the click of a button. But just like any form of lead generation, you need to monitor and tweak your Facebook lead ads for optimal results.
Through Facebook’s Ads Manager reporting interface, you can obtain reports about cost, impressions, and clicks. As with all marketing tools, consistent refinement is the key to success. Lead ads can easily be fine-tuned to cultivate a larger target audience.
Facebook lead ads provide B2B companies an opportunity to gain leads and a larger reach. If you haven’t tried this yet, we highly recommend switching over some of your social advertising budget.
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by Fronetics | Jun 5, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
Don’t risk ruining your open rates by committing these 5 email subject line crimes.
Email marketers, beware: If you’re tasked with writing compelling emails to capture online customers, the subject line — the headline of your message — is the first and main spot to grab the viewer’s attention. But, while a cleverly written subject can boost open rates and click-throughs, a poorly written one can have the opposite effect.
With this in mind, Grammarly and Movable Ink polled 1,100 readers to find out what inspired them to click open, and what they considered their biggest pet peeves when it comes to email subject lines. The results of the latter might surprise you.
Your email subject line can make or break your open rate, so don’t commit these subject line crimes.
5 common email subject line crimes
1) Spelling and grammatical errors
Proofread, proofread and proofread even more. The top reason 35% of people don’t open email is because of errors in the subject line.
Viewers who see an error in the headline assume that the rest of the email has misinformation, and they immediately disengage with its content. So whether you read the email subject line out loud (and even the rest of the email), ask someone else to read it before you hit send. Or use an online spelling/grammar program to check it for you. Just make sure you don’t have errors in the subject line.
2) Using all capital letters
It’s commonly cyber-accepted that anything typed in all capitals translates into being yelled at, and no one likes that. In fact, 24% of survey respondents said this was their biggest pet peeve when it comes to an email subject line.
Don’t mistakenly assume that hitting caps-lock for your email subject line will demand your reader’s attention — it actually does the opposite, and sends your email straight to the trash folder.
3) Excessive use of punctuation
When the email subject line is filled with exclamation points marks or other unnecessary punctuation, such as ellipses or too many commas, 17% of readers are most annoyed and deterred from looking at the message. You don’t want to be perceived as a spammer, by either the receiver’s filtering program or by the reader, so keep the extraneous punctuation to minimum.
4) Misused or broken personalization
Too often emails go out without proper formatting, or with generic placeholder fields left blank. For example, a reader who opens his or her inbox to a message with the subject line, “Hi, [name],” is sure to ditch the message — and lose any respect for the company who sent it. Make sure your email client and any dynamic content within is firing up correctly by sending a test message to yourself and a colleague.
5) Language that is too promotional
Some email subject lines use language that is over-the-top promotional, and readers don’t like it. Temper your language and don’t write subject lines that are too colloquial or filled with jargon.
What about using emojis in subject lines?
Increasingly, marketers are using emojis in subject lines. If used correctly, they may boost your open rate.
Some 56% of brands using emojis in their email subject lines report a higher unique open rate, according to data from Experian. Use of emojis can shorten your subject line, allowing an easy read on a mobile device. But, beware: Not all emojis are readable to every user, so choose wisely and always send a test first.
What bothers you most when it comes to an email subject line? Are there certain subject crimes that will prevent you from opening a marketing email?
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by Fronetics | May 2, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
YouTube creators focus on audience engagement, as opposed to branding, which helps them organically grow an authentic loyal following.
I recently watched a video from Truly Social President and Founder Tara Hunt about the genius of YouTube creators. She offers truly valuable insight into why people with little technology and resources have been more successful in growing a loyal audience with video than corporate campaigns with all the money and creativity in the world.
Perhaps it’s worth saying first: Yes, video can work for the supply chain. And YouTube, in particular, can be very worthwhile as part of your larger social marketing strategy. The decade-old video platform has over 1.3 billion users. 1.3 BILLION! And that’s not all: Users watch over 5 billion videos on YouTube every single day, and upload 300 hours of video every minute.
This presents a huge opportunity for your company to reach prospects in a new way. It also means that your videos really need to stand out to make an impact and avoid getting lost in the shuffle. After all, approximately 20% of people who start a video will leave after the first 10 seconds.
So how are creators attracting viewers while corporate brands aren’t?
5 ways creators are out-YouTubing brands
1. Consistency
Creators know the success behind their YouTube channels is a constant stream of content. This be can new content or simply responding to their followers, but they are active every day, around the clock. Brands tend to spend a lot of time and energy on content but are inconsistent in their posting, often abandoning their YouTube channels for days or weeks at a time. Their followers become bored with their lack of attention and move on.
2. Community
The foundation of YouTube — and most social media platforms, actually — is community and the resulting two-way dialogue between creators and their followers. The intent of a creator’s video is to engage their audience and build a relationship that is beneficial to both parties. On the other hand, brands tend to be overly focused on the attention their content stirs up, the “buzz” they are able to draw, neglecting the important process of creating and nurturing a relationship with their followers.
3. Interaction
Companies often focus on pushing their “messaging” on one (or just a few) social media platform(s). They spend an enormous amount of time and money perfecting content that reflects this messaging, hoping their followers will engage with it.
Contrarily, YouTube creators focus on interaction. They interact on multiple platforms, reaching out to their audience and taking full advantage of every opportunity to connect with their followers. What’s more, successful YouTubers don’t merely expect engagement — they ask for it. They promote hashtags, solicit video responses from viewers, and encourage feedback via social media interactions. Calls-to-action can stimulate subscriptions, shares and cross-pollination with other platforms.
4. Connection
Gone are the days of expensive and lengthy productions. Creators have captivated their audiences by creating organic, raw material that focuses on the emotional connect. The polished and professional content that brands create are void of vulnerability and lack the connection today’s followers are seeking.
5. Collaboration
Creators root for one another; they follow one another; they promote one another. YouTube creators seek the opportunity to expand their audience by collaborating with other creators who focus on the same topics and interests. Through the power of collaboration, creators expand the exposure of their content to different audiences, gaining subscribers and views.
Brands see other brands as competition. In a time when audiences prefer engagement and social awareness, this competitive attitude hurts brands’ likability and ultimately diminishes their viewership.
If companies were to focus more on audience engagement in these ways, they would have a better chance at mimicking the wild success of YouTube creators who have amassed a loyal following.
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