Thursday, November 19, 2015

Facebook's Search FYI Has Marketing Promise

Facebook's recent launch of Search FYI may offer exciting new scope for social and content marketing, as a recent post by econsultancy.com points out. With Search FYI, Facebook has updated its search function so that search results include posts from the entire Facebook universe, which consists of more than two trillion posts, as well as posts from users' connections, friends and family members. When users tap Facebook's search function on a mobile device or desktop to find connections and content, Facebook will now generate personalized search suggestions that may include timely topics and current events and will organize search results to include public posts deemed relevant to the query. This implies that, via Search FYI, marketers can use social content to reach users with whom they don't have a relationship already. Although Facebook's 1.5 billion daily searches are less than half the estimated daily searches on Google, Facebook's search scope is still big enough to earn marketers' close attention. Of course, there are unanswered questions, the post notes, such as how users will interact with Search FYI, how Facebook will determine post relevancy to queries, and how Facebook may end up monetizing the search function, via paid placement for example. But marketers will definitely want to observe and adjust strategy as Search FYI evolves. For the full post, go to https://econsultancy.com/blog/67097-what-facebook-s-major-search-update-means-for-marketers/

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Research Offers Five Clues to E-mail Success

While chasing the holy grail of e-mail response, marketers can get lost in a forest of subject line and offer gimmicks.  Here's some helpful guidance that Direct Marketing News shared from a recent study by Retention Science, a marketing platform provider. Based on Retention Science's analysis of one billion e-mails, the article can distill five tips for success. Tip No. 1 is that percent signs trump dollar signs: According to Retention Science, 38% of customers are more likely to click on e-mails containing percent-off offers than on dollar-off deals, and 47% are more likely to convert in response to percent-off. Tip No. 2 is that mystery is better than excitement in subject line punctuation: Subject lines containing question marks have a 44% higher open rate than those containing exclamation marks. Tip No. 3 is that brevity is the soul of response: Retention Science found that e-mails containing subject lines with six to 10 words generated the highest open rates, at 21%, compared with a 14% open rate for messages with 11- to 15-word subject lines. Tip No. 4 is that timing matters--depending on whether the goal is click-through, conversion or retention. While open rates are fairly consistent year-round, click-through rates jump during the early holiday months, rising to 30% in October and 27% in November, and conversion peaks in July, with a rate 21% higher than average. But then e-mail list retention hits its nadir in August, with unsubscribes at a 28% rate. And Tip No. 5 is that novelty may spur opens, but familiarity breeds clicks. A novelty item in the subject line yields a 6% lift in open rates, but necessities in the e-mail body (such as groceries) earn a 10% higher click-through rate than featuring specialty items, even if those special items won an open for the subject line. For more on the Retention Science study, read http://www.dmnews.com/email-marketing/how-to-send-the-almost-perfect-email/article/449482/