It can be tricky to keep an eye on what’s happening in the fast-paced world of email and digital marketing, so to save you time, we’ve provided you with a quick round-up of the latest and greatest digital developments of the week that we think will be useful to power your campaigns and future planning. We’re nice like that.

Selfies!

In a thoroughly modern move, MasterCard are rumoured to be introducing “Pay by Selfie”, allowing consumers to snap a picture of their face to verify their identity for mobile payments. Young millennials have indicated that they’d like to be able to do everything from opening a new bank account to signing up for a new storecard using mobile capture functionality.

Would you be ready to hop on board this new development with your latest campaigns? Perhaps it’s time to think about how customers could sign up to your campaigns or make a purchase from your email using a selfie.

Big data, little knowledge

Following on neatly from a topic we covered last week Oracle Marketing Cloud have raised a valid point- successful marketing is not necessarily about big data, but the right data, and the need for an adaptable, open framework CRM platform to make sense of this data. If you’re struggling to make sense of the masses of data you’ve accrued from your campaigns, this could be your simple solution.

Walk a mile in their shoes

Customers want relevancy and this should be reflected in email campaigns in order to see success as the old, outdated path-to-purchase journeys simply don’t cut it anymore. As consumers are looking for products that are different and serve the greater good, so your campaigns must reflect this.

A simple step is to analyse the language you’re using in your email campaigns to determine how effectively you’re tapping in to your customers’ mindsets and communicating with them in a way that is truly meaningful.

Choice is everything

In the words of Marty Rubin, “Never say yes to something you can’t say no to.” If you’re struggling to get signups to your database, it could be because you’re not giving your customers a choice in the matter- and not just a yes/no choice, but also an option of channel choice.

The Direct Marketing Association found that when customers were given channel choice, consent to receive communications jumped from 33% to 49%. If you’re only offering your customers one channel, could you expand that to include SMS and phone contact too?

Sacrifice consistency to achieve accessibility

With over 9.4 million disabled people in England alone, one of the key subjects at the recent Email Design Conference was accessibility. Have you ever assessed your email campaigns for accessibility? If you haven’t, you could be missing out on an enormous amount of potential readers. Think about the logical reading order of your campaigns, the colour contrast, and including meaningful link texts for screen reader programmes.

ad:Tech

This week we were at ad:Tech and I was fortunate enough to speak in the Connect theatre about our new Email Maturity Model, as well as that I listened to a few keynotes. The main talk that stood out to me was from Pete Blackshaw (Global Head of Digital and Social at Nestle) who talked about many things including the power of simplicity.

He explained that when judging at Cannes Lions what really screamed out from the winners was the triumph of simplicity over technology, and in the world of tech wiring, data streams and programmatic connections around us, simple ideas matter more than ever. At Pure360 simplicity for the marketer is part of our ethos too.

Read Pete’s article on the importance of simplicity here.

My book of the week

I’m going back to basics this week with Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing. If you haven’t read it yet, it is one of the marketing classics which recommends the key to successful marketing is actually a really good understanding of your customer, providing them with relevant hooks to get their attention and then to ensure they keep paying attention. This is the basis of email marketing.

To whet your appetite, here’s a great quote from the book:

“Permission Marketing is anticipated, personal and relevant”

You can purchase it here.

Festival of Marketing

Finally, a quick note on the ‘Festival of Marketing’ which I will be attending in November and which our friends over at Econsultancy are pitching as the UK’s equivalent to Cannes. There will be lots of great speakers in all things marketing, across both digital and offline. I look forward to meeting you there if you are going! If you’re unsure about attending, see Ashley Friedleins 202 reasons why you should attend this year’s Festival of Marketing.

We’re sure this has given you some food for thought when it comes to creating your next campaigns. See you next week, folks!

Komal

Komal Helyer
Head of Marketing

Stay in the digital loop: Follow Komal on Twitter

p.s. – Don’t forget to download our recent guide to the Maturity Model. Discover your email effectiveness and together we can make the steps to improve.