Consider this statistic: 71 percent of marketers say they’re sending more emails than ever before, according to email platform Knak’s 2023 benchmark report. What’s more, the average professional gets 120 emails every single day. The result: It’s become more and more difficult to break through to prospects amid a deluge of marketing messages.

It’s not impossible, though. So while in Boston last week for HubSpot’s annual Inbound conference, we picked up a few best practices for email marketers on how to increase email open rates, avoid cliched content, write compelling subject lines and sidestep common pitfalls. Following are a few tips and tricks shared by Jay Schwedelson, CEO and founder at Outcome Media and GURU Events.

1. Personalize It

Email personalization is a no-brainer. But it entails more than putting someone’s name in the subject line. “The quicker you can tell somebody who they are, the faster they’re going to engage. The sooner they feel seen, the more they’re going to want to engage,” he said. For instance, in the subject line, mention the industry the person is a part of. The same can be done for title and function, which lifts open rates by 31 percent, as well as interests, which increases open rates by 27 percent, according to data from the latest GURU online email conference.

2. Make It Aspirational

Including aspirational ideas in your subject line lifts open rates by 24-28 percent, Schwedelson said. “We all want to know, what is the next level hearing about, thinking about, seeing? So if your database is made up of director-level and manager-level, or even VP level, if you start to mention C-level stuff, people want to engage with it… This idea of aspirational marketing is doing so well because we all want to level up.”

3. A/B Test the Name of Your Content

You might have a white paper or ebook that’s been filed away as evergreen content for years under the same name. The name of your content, however, is a critical variable. Change it, test it, and experiment.

4. Buttons Matter

“The words on the buttons in your emails can radically change the performance of your email,” Schwedelson said. A call-to-action written in the first person increases click rates by 28 percent. If your button says “Download,” that CTA is for you rather than the consumer. Phrases like “Save My Spot” or “Unlock My Savings” highlight the benefit of the user. Pro tip: Use a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to rewrite the word “download” (or another CTA) 10 different ways without saying the word “download.”

5. Use the Pre-header

A pre-header is most effective when it’s a continuation of the subject-line thought. A “continuation pre-header” increases open rates by 19 percent, Schwedelson said. Use the words “and,” “but” and “plus” to highlight additional content for the user.

6. Highlight the Pain Point

When you start your subject line with a pain point, it grabs the attention of the reader. “As a marketer, the faster that you can discuss the pain point, the faster somebody wants to engage…. You’re not changing your offer. You’re literally just stating that pain point within whatever market you’re talking to, consumer or business.”

The post Email Marketing Tips to Increase Open Rates, Clicks and Conversions appeared first on Chief Marketer.

When it comes to engaging consumers through holiday emails, research shows that they respond to subject lines, CTAs, content and discounts differently during the busiest season of the year. But there is in fact some common ground between those that are successful. Marketers can focus on a variety of factors, including writing catchy, brief subject lines, mentioning the actual holiday, creating a sense of urgency, emphasizing savings, and more. Check out these tips for writing engaging holiday emails, according to a piece in Multichannel Merchant.

The post Email Marketing: Crafting the Perfect Holiday Message appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The subscription business model has experienced a boom in recent years, particularly for news and media outlets. According to reporting by AdExchanger, here’s a look at how Bloomberg has relied on multiple revenue streams—beyond just ad-supported media—to ensure the sustainability of its business.

The post How Bloomberg Capitalized on a Subscription-Based Model to Fuel Growth appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The editors of Chief Marketer present this year’s list of the best brand engagement and activation marketing agencies across 11 categories and specialties serving the U.S.

“This year’s CM200 represents an agency community made stronger and more resourceful than ever before,” says Jessica Heasley, Group Editor & Publisher at Chief Marketer. “We hope that brand marketers will consider the partners on this list for their 2022 programs. They have all demonstrated incredible creativity and resilience and are poised to transform challenges into opportunities in the year ahead.”

Winners were selected based on several criteria including: insightful client testimonials; outstanding case study submissions; high caliber, consistent work across programs and clients; innovative and creative executions; and bold and inspiring concepts and ideas that are moving the industry forward. The 200 agencies selected for this year’s program are thought leaders in their craft and representative of the best of the marketing industry.

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For questions, contact Emily Makadok at emakadok@accessintel.com.

The post Chief Marketer Unveils the 2022 CM200 appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Email marketing, on the other hand, has the advantage of being an opt-in channel—and conversion rates from promotional campaigns were way up in 2020, according to data from Omnisend. Marketers can focus on growing email marketing and consider other opt-in channels to communicate with customers, according to a piece in Multichannel Merchant.

Omnisend research indicates that conversion rates for promotional campaigns increased 111 percent year-over-year and automated messages saw a lift of 95 percent. Moreover, additional opt-in channels, such as SMS and web push notifications, also experienced a rise in 2020. SMS messages specifically increased nearly 400 percent and conversion rates were up more than 100 percent. Moreover, as the effectiveness of third-party cookies continues to depreciate, such channels will continue to increase in relevance.

For more on the advantages of using email marketing as an opt-in channel to reach consumers, read on in Multichannel Merchant.

The post Apple’s App Tracking Transparency Update and Email Marketing appeared first on Chief Marketer.

But, of course, it’s anything but that. To better quantify the impact of the pandemic on the industry, Chief Marketer set out to answer some of the questions marketers have been asking most during this time of upheaval. As live events eliminated the prospect of interacting with consumers and cultivating business leads, where have marketers turned to engage with customers and prospects? How have marketing budgets been affected as a result of consumer purchasing power being driven exclusively online and reduced? What types of content and messaging are marketers relying on during the pandemic?

We surveyed Fortune 1000 marketers from a wide range of companies and verticals at the start of the pandemic and again in the midst of the fallout. The following research attempts to answer some of those questions while uncovering some interesting insights pertaining to social media marketing, funding allocations and more.

We hope that these insights provide some of the data, analysis and perspective needed to craft your future marketing plans for the remainder of 2020 and beyond. Thank you to our readers, and especially to the survey respondents who took the time out of their hectic schedules to share their thoughts.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY HIGHLIGHTS

To pinpoint what aspects of marketing have shifted as a result of COVID-19, Chief Marketer surveyed our readership in two waves: first, in February and early March, as the potential effects of COVID-19 were just beginning to appear; and again in late April and early May, when the pandemic’s effects were in full swing. The data revealed some intuitive and surprising insights, from the decline of marketing budgets to the rise of virtual events to the increased reliance on social media for both engagement and conversions. Here’s a snapshot of some of the key findings:

BUDGET DECLINES

Survey data revealed that budgets were dramatically affected by COVID-19. In fact, the number of marketers who said their budgets were increasing in 2020 dropped by 30 percent, from 37 percent in February to seven percent in April and May. Moreover, compared to the first wave, many more marketers surveyed in April and May said their budgets were decreasing—from 14 percent pre-COVID-19 to 55 percent just two months later.

VIRTUAL EVENTS

Prior to COVID-19, the marketing categories requiring the most spend were content marketing, events and paid advertising, according to the surveys. Post-COVID-19, content marketing and paid advertising continued to require the most spend, but event spending dropped significantly among marketers from 41 percent to 22 percent of marketers ranking events in their top three spending categories. However, when respondents were asked where they were reallocating live event spend, nearly half of B2C marketers (44 percent) and more than half of B2B marketers (64 percent) said they were allocating live event spend to virtual events. This points to a major trend within the post-COVID-19 era: virtual engagement.

FUNDING ALLOCATIONS AND UNCERTAINTY

When examining which budget categories would receive more funding in 2020 compared to the year prior, there was consistency between the two waves. Content marketing, paid advertising and SEO were the top three choices for both time periods. However, Martech spending declined from 17 percent of marketers placing it in their top three to just eight percent post-COVID-19. Moreover, 25 percent of marketers surveyed in the second wave said they were not certain which line items would receive more spend in 2020. It is significant that a quarter of marketers surveyed post-COVID-19 were unsure of where and how to spend their budgets.

SOCIAL MEDIA USE

Social media marketing has risen in importance during the pandemic. LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram were the most effective social media channels for marketers both before and after COVID-19, with Twitter and Instagram experiencing the largest increases. But while both surveys indicated that marketing handles the majority of social media management, there was an uptick in the number of marketers who are using a dedicated social media team in the post-COVID-19 era. This points to a growing need for more digital and social media skills in marketing organizations moving forward.

To access the full report, complete the form below.

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As martech solutions have expanded over the past decade, Baring writes, one result of the innovation has been the fragmentation of solutions. But there are numerous ways marketers can look for redundancies.

First, look for licensing costs accrued for using technologies across departments. It’s possible that those costs have inflated and can be avoided by deploying a single solution. There could also be hidden costs lurking in operational costs, due to the need for data to flow properly across systems and employees requiring training. Marketers should examine service fees as well, as there might be overlap between different agency contracts.

Inefficiencies due to lack of communication between various systems, in terms of loss of actionable insights, is another category to examine. And finally, the tech solutions themselves might provide duplicate functions. For a deeper look at Baring’s recommendations, read more in AdExchanger.

Other articles you might enjoy:

• Programmatic Ad Spend Increasing: Three Strategies for Marketers During COVID-19 Recovery
• Veritas Technologies Converts Annual Global Sales Meeting to a Virtual Event
• The Pivot: Accelerated Migration to Remote and Digital in B2B Marketing

The post Five Ways to Pinpoint Martech Inefficiencies During COVID-19 Economic Fallout appeared first on Chief Marketer.

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When he wasn’t being held in his mother’s arms, Manasi Gangan’s second son refused to sleep. “Every time we would put him down he would wake up. He slept in our arms, but it was really difficult for us to sleep—for me, mainly—because I was the primary caregiver,” she says. So, she asked herself: What was it about being held that kept him asleep? Why would he wake up from his slumber as soon as that changed?

Perhaps because of her engineering background, Gangan was determined to find a solution. “Intuitively, I placed a beanie baby on his chest. That seemed to work.” And thus, the idea for a weighted swaddling blanket was born.

With 15 years’ experience building IT products for major corporations under her belt, Gangan founded Nested Bean in 2012, a company with the mission to help babies and toddlers up to two years old sleep better with the help of a weighted garments, blankets and onesies. Following is the brand’s unique marketing story and evolution—from retail to ecommerce to brand marketing and beyond.

Early Days

At the start of the brand’s marketing journey, a time when social media wasn’t quite the marketing channel that it is today, Gangan took Nested Bean’s patented design exclusively to retail giants with the goal of earning consumer trust. At that time, the brand did 95 percent of its business through retailers. “My initial thoughts were: It’s a new product. It’s a patented, differentiated design. Let’s go that route because at least it would be a chance to earn the consumer’s trust. People like to go to a certain retailer because they trust the products that are on their shelves,” she says. However, she soon realized that her products required more consumer education than they were getting from retailers.

“When we had handed the product to bloggers, our influencers at the time, they all swore by it. Their babies would not sleep without being held and were sleeping a lot more peacefully for more extended periods of time, which matched what we had tested. But we were leaving the retailers to tell our story. Our products were so differentiated that they required a consumer’s education,” Gangan says. Nested Bean’s products were not selling at the rate they’d hoped for, and the result didn’t match the feedback the brand was receiving directly from consumers. The message of the brand story: effectively shelved.

A Direct-to-Consumer Model

Come 2015, a decision was made to marketing directly to the consumer. The brand began with content marketing—specifically a video—and started using Facebook ads to tell the brand’s story, effectively removing the middleman from the equation. But that meant a sacrifice had to be made: retail efforts would have to be abandoned. “In order to focus on doing something really well, you have to choose to do something not well,” Gangan claims. Setting monthly retail targets went out of the window; funds spent on trade shows for exposure were directed towards digital marketing instead.

The next step was communicating the brand story online, which required understanding—and mapping—the customer journey. “It’s not just putting up some pretty pictures on your website. You have to really understand the customer’s online journey, which starts with awareness, then goes towards consideration, then research and then conversion. We were literally building those paths on our website,” Gangan says.

In addition to the website, the brand relied heavily on social media platforms. The brand’s target audience lived on Facebook, so it used the social platform to engage with consumers and build the brand story. And then, they caught a break from Google. Because of Nested Bean’s success with Google advertising, the tech giant gave them a call and offered up a videographer free of charge—as long as the brand committed to spending money on YouTube towards video marketing. The brand still runs that initial video on its channels today and has since developed a fruitful professional relationship with the videographer. Score.

Shift to Integrated Marketing

Nested Bean’s marketing model today is more diversified compared to the brand’s early years of direct-to-consumer marketing. “We are still performance-marketing driven, but we’ve reached a point where we use different marketing channels and platforms to facilitate the conversion,” she says. “So, we may create awareness using one platform, but the conversion might happen as a result of another platform. We have a more integrated marketing model than what we had initially started with.”

Back in 2016, the goal was customer acquisition. The brand used Facebook to introduce their products and convert, which resulted in strong ROI. “Because it’s such a need-based product, we found out very quickly that our message was resonating more with moms of a certain age bracket who had experienced the problem.” But the message of preventing sleeplessness did not resonate as well with expectant parents as did the immediate promise to alleviate sleep deprivation for both babies and the parents who care for them.

Fast forward a few years and by then the brand noticed a change in customer behavior. First touch would often occur on Facebook, but after a few days consumers would return to the brand’s website. “At that time, we did not want competitor websites, such as other retailers, to scoop up the last sale,” Gangan says. The solution: start competing at the bottom of the sales funnel through Google AdWords. “We wanted our site to be the first link when someone would make a branded search, either for our products or for our company name,” she says. The strategy ultimately led to higher sales on Amazon, Target and Buy Buy Baby retail sites, Gangan asserts.

The brand has also increased social media engagement on Instagram with influencer programs. “The first touch is happening on those channels,” Gangan says. “Then the conversion might happen as a result of the web search. We need to have presence in multiple places.” Instagram is particularly useful today for marketing and making connections with consumers. Through market research and focus groups, the brand learned that consumers perceive Instagram to be raw and truthful, whereas Facebook is seen as more polished and therefore less trustworthy. In light of this, Nested Bean uses Instagram for a softer, more personal touch and Facebook for broader brand awareness.

The brand also uses Facebook to foster a community of brand evangelists. It created an invitation-only Facebook group, the criteria being that members must have purchased one of the brand’s products. Parents discuss challenges they’ve been having with sleeplessness, receive feedback from members, celebrate baby milestones and more. The group is moderated by a Nested Bean “consumer champion” who helps nurture the community and ensures that content is not judgmental toward other members. Gangan says members treat the group like a family and feel safe to communicate freely with like-minded individuals. “It’s really wonderful to see that happen. The fact that we are in a position to do that makes me feel like I did this for a good reason,” she says.

From Sleep Products to Sleep Wellness

As Nested Bean continues to expand and grow—it reported $14 million in sales last year and has experienced 3X percent year-over-year growth since 2016—it has shifted to a brand marketing approach that includes a commitment to sleep and wellness within its community. It partners with sleep experts, co-authoring blogs with them on its website, and uses email marketing for nurturing and retention. “We are seeing that there is more and more of this need—and we are trying to fulfill that need through sleep education, not just educating on our products,” Gangan says. “We’re making a shift from being a sleep product company to a sleep wellness company.”

 

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5 things to think about before hiring a sleep consultant! Tip from @psychedmommy . Her new blog post is up on our Zen Blog, titled The Importance of Sleep for New Moms

A post shared by Nested Bean (@nestedbean) on Mar 10, 2020 at 1:07pm PDT

From a platform perspective, it’s leaning into YouTube as a way to communicate to the community using sleep experts and tips and tricks provided by real moms who’ve been through similar challenges. The result is new content marketing and education surrounding the brand that relates to its commitment to sleeping wellness. “We started with small circles of performance marketing and now we have concentric circles drawn around it that allow us to go wider and wider into our ecosystem,” Gangan says.

That expansion has unlocked many doors for the brand as it ventures into the wellness category. And it’s emphasized how the goal is to care for customers’ needs—not just to sell units. “We are recognizing that it’s not just handing her a product. It’s taking care of her sleep education, her need to be a part of a community. Because at the end of the day, that’s what they want. When everything else goes out the window and the baby’s still not sleeping, all she needs is just an empathetic ear.”

The post Marketers on Fire: Nested Bean Founder and President, Manasi Gangan appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The firm polled more than 50 fractional CMO consultants serving Fortune 500 companies about business performance and challenges in 2020. Following are additional key takeaways from the Market Trends 2020 report and an inforgraphic detailing the findings, here.

• 72 percent of CMOs say greater collaboration is happening between organizational entities in order to meet company-wide growth.
• In terms of achieving that growth, understanding the customer and developing relevant strategy are the first and second most vital ways to do that.
• Approximately one third of businesses expect to bring more marketing agency work in-house in order to reduce costs.
• Looking at content focus for CMOs, the survey showed video, blogging and case studies as the top three priorities.
• Keeping up with technological advances is major challenge, with 88 percent of CMOs surveyed saying it’s difficult to keep pace.
• CMOs expect that private equity partners in particular will be more demanding of growth this year.
• 54 percent of CMOs believe retailers will see Amazon’s dominance as a negative, with just 14 percent viewing it as a positive.
• In order to thrive amidst Amazon’s dominance, a direct-to-consumer strategy for retailers is recommended by 53 percent of CMOs.
• Experiential marketing campaigns will continue to be used to encourage brand advocacy.
• Advancements in predicative analytics will particularly influence predictive modeling of consumer behavior, qualification and prioritization of leads, and customer targeting and segmentation.

Other articles you might enjoy:

• The CMO Reckoning Isn’t a Coincidence
• Getting to the C-Suite: How Six CMOs Rose to the Top
• CMO Roundtable: Visa, Personal Capital, AKT and Zoom Talk 2020 Marketing Trends

The post Chief Outsiders’ Survey of CMOs Reveals 2020 Digital Marketing Trends appeared first on Chief Marketer.

1. INFOGRAPHIC: Five Insights from the 2020 Chief Marketer B2B Marketing Outlook

Our annual B2B Marketing Outlook survey results—including a handy infographic—is one of our most read B2B marketing stories this year. It looks at insights on topics that are important to B2B marketing success, including the channels most used by marketers to generate ROI, the greatest challenges to social media marketing and the types of content most effective for moving prospects through the sales funnel.

2. CMO Roundtable: Visa, Personal Capital, AKT and Zoom Talk 2020 Marketing Trends

To shed light on how modern marketing chiefs prioritize the range of tasks they’re charged with today, and how marketing trends in 2020 are influencing their roles, we spoke with CMOs, from Visa, Personal Capital, Zoom and boutique fitness brand AKT.

3. Oracle CX CMO Talks Customer Experience Trends for Marketers in 2020

Each interaction a consumer has with your brand has the ability to influence—and perhaps determine—customer acquisition. We spoke with Des Cahill, CMO of Oracle’s global customer experience business, about how CX is evolving, trends to look out for in 2020 and how AI and data management will influence the customer journey this year and beyond.

4. How to Effectively Use Marketing Content in the Mid-Funnel

Reliance on the start of the customer journey and the all-important end without considering the mid-funnel may decrease conversions. Indeed, what goes on between the intrigue and conversion stages can make or break a company. We look at how to use content more effectively in the mid-funnel.

5. Five Ways to Make Email Marketing More Effective

If you depend on email to generate leads and drive revenue, it’s critical to understand how the email marketing environment has evolved and how to maximize email engagement. Consider these five tips going forward.

The post Our Top Five B2B Marketing Stories of 2020 appeared first on Chief Marketer.