In the second part of our conference round-up we explore UX with Rufus Leonard, tune into video’s potential with Brightcove and Channel 4, and probe current issues in personalisation
Jenna Tiffany, Digital Marketing Strategist at Communicator
British Library: 20% Over Revenue Target Using Email
2015 marked 800 years since the signing of the Magna Carta and the British Library launched a major exhibition celebrating the origins and legacy of the document, which represents the birth of England’s legal system.
Central to the marketing campaign, says Communicator’s Jenna Tiffany, who worked closely with the British Library, was email. “The top three tips from this campaign,” she explains, “are plan ahead. You can never plant that seed too early. Start raising awareness with email subscribers. They’re a captive audience.” But, notes Jenna, avoid overloading subscribers with information and unecessary choices. “Be short, be sweet, keep to the point and make it clear to users what you want them to do. And then test. Everyone’s under pressure to get campaigns out, but if you have a planned approach you’ll have time for testing. You could achieve an additional 2.5k in revenue from one A/B test.”
Andy Iddon, Co-Founder at Building Blocks
Oliver Jaeger, Vice President Global Marketing & Communications at e-Spirit
Transforming To A New Digital DNA
Andy Iddon at Building Blocks sets out some of the drivers of change – and some of the barriers – encountered by businesses as they adapt to the new digital imperative. Among the drivers: users’ rising expectations and the need for greater relevance. Among the challenges: achieving C-level support and creating a strategy that might extend not just for weeks or months, but for the next three to five years. Legacy systems also provide their own unique challenges. Siloes within organisations mean that different departments may have different – and on occasion conflicting – KPIs. Addressing those issues, Andy highlights Building Blocks’ digital governance strategy, which is grounded in “the four ‘P’s”: people, processes, products and performance. Taken together these enable companies to deliver the optimum experience, and with the right metrics in place it becomes much easier to measure and optimise your digital assets.
Aaron Suppel – Global Vice President of Digital Strategy, Tahzoo
Transform Your Customer Conversation
Focusing on the importance – and the practical implications – of the drive towards greater personalisation, Aaron Suppel at Tahzoo sets out a 10-point check-list. Underpinning any digital experience, he says, is quality data. Without it marketers are in danger of eroding hard-won consumer trust. Ensure that you have a segmentation or persona strategy in place and spot trends in user behaviour where personalisation might enhance the digital experience. “At what point would a piece of personalised content drive a sale?” asks Aaron. “Would it be a call to action specifically relevant to that audience? Or is just a next best offer?” Personalisation, of course, is closely associated with privacy so be sensitive to users’ concerns and stay back from the “creepy line.” (There’s also the danger of focusing on “irrelevant personalisation” in the form of paid-for banners etc.) Ensure you’re consistent, memorable, differentiated, and consolidate trust by providing audiences with content they actually need.
Watch in full
Martin Greenbank, Head of Advertising Research & Development at Channel 4
How Online Viewing Is Changing
Martin Greenbank at Channel 4 discusses some recent research the channel undertook with Cog, which found that advertising on TV on-demand players outperforms YouTube for viewer engagement. The success of on-demand players rests on two key factors. First, they’re designed to mimic our experience of viewing a TV in the living room in a way that other online video platforms are not. That means there’s little in the way of distracting on-screen content (recommendations, playlists etc.) On-demand players also remain at full-screen during the ad breaks. That means that viewers are in a much more relaxed, ‘fluid’ state of mind when the ads do arrive, and are therefore more likely to engage emotionally with their content. Disruption, in this context at least, isn’t necessarily a good thing. The less intrusive the ad experience, the more effective it will be.
How to ‘Own’ Your Video Marketing Strategy
Willem Challenger, Video Marketing Consultant at Brightcove
Video is one of the most powerful drivers of results in digital marketing. “It’s bringing people to your website, it’s keeping them there and it’s converting them,” says Willem Challenger at Brightcove. And it’s not just audiences who favour video. So does Google. Pages with video are 53 times more likely to rank on the first page of results and videos appear in more than half of all keyword searches. Demonstrating what that means in a practical context, Willem showcases some neat examples of successful video content from Dyson, Net-a-Porter and jewellery brand Michael Hill, which allows users to ‘shop’ its video content. As we head into 2016, video remains a sector that enjoys strong consumer interest. According to Brightcove’s own research, 77 per cent of British consumers say better use of video will encourage them to buy more online.
Andy Marshall, Head of User Experience at Rufus Leonard
Five UX Principles To Boost Your Online Marketing
“What is UX?” asks Andy Marshall at Rufus Leonard. “For me it’s the process of seeing things from the customers’ perspective.” Since usability goes hand in hand with engagement and design, Andy highlights five UX principles to boost online marketing. These include reciprocity: consider what you can give to customers of real value. Aesthetic association plays a powerful role in the way consumers form an impression of brands and their products. Just ask 7 UP, who experimented with the greenness of their cans and were inundated with complaints that they’d changed the recipe. They hadn’t. “Consider aesthetics in all the experiences people have around your products and services,” says Andy.
He also highlights the importance of ‘endowed progress’: the fact that we’re more motivated to complete tasks we’ve already begun than those we’ve yet to start. (Think half-filled forms and abandoned carts). Users who are provided with assistance towards a goal demonstrate greater persistence in achieving it. Lastly, bear in mind that any experience comprises three key elements. “We remember the peaks and the troughs,” says Andy, “and how the experience ends.”
Watch in full
Richard Harris, Head of Marketing at Paddy Power
Rewriting The Rules of Entertainment
Paddy Power’s marketing has been consistently successful when it comes to getting the brand talked about. In fact, says Head of Marketing Richard Harris, that distinctive sense of mischief is even evident in the way the organisation presents its annual reports. It’s proved a potent strategy. Paddy Power’s share of voice on social channels currently outstrips all of its competitors combined, but the future, unsurprisingly, is mobile. A new app – built in-house and launched with an enhanced sign-up offer – demonstrates Paddy Power’s commitment to personalised, intuitive, substantial content, and the brand’s tongue remains firmly pressed to its cheek. ‘Simpler than a Tim Sherwood team talk’ runs one press ad for the app, and a series of location-specific gags were introduced to heighten engagement. But for all the fun and frolics, says Richard, Paddy Power is data-driven: the focus is on learning and optimising. And when it comes to establishing the most effective user journey, “the answer is always to test it and iterate the journey as you go.”
Mark Robinson, CEO at deltaDNA
What Games Can Teach You About Mobile Marketing
The F2P (free-to-play) games sector is developing smart, non-interruptive ways to serve ads within the game-playing experience. It’s a tactic, says Mark Robinson, which contains lessons for mobile marketers. “We can tell a lot about player experiences through live data and advanced analytics techniques. We can then start to think about the optimal messaging strategy for those players and start to deliver that in the game to improve response rates, engagement and monetisation.” For Mark, those communications must be personal and in real-time. “Email is too slow for gamers, and for people in the app world generally. Real-time is best. You can back it up with push notifications and email, but people will be much more responsive to real-time messages in the application. We have rich data to understand players, how they’re engaging with the game and what their mind-set is. Once we unlock that and start to realise that players are all different we can really build a great experience. Customers are all different and you need to be considerate of that.”
Compiled by Jon Fortgang