Chart of the day: most users find their favourite brands on Snapchat by searching for their username

The research by Snaplytics shows that most Snapchat users wanted to engage with brands and actively seek them out on Snapchat The latest research in their quarterly updates also shows that Snapchat is the most popular social platform amongst US teenagers.

The research found:

More than 6 in 10 (64%) search for brands using their username A quarter of new followers have used Snapcodes and almost 1 in 10 (9%) have used deep links. Snapcodes are QR codes for Snapchat profiles, which may appear on websites and across social media 6 in 10 (61%) of Snaps are video, rather than images Snapchat has 161 million daily active users. Source: Snaplytics Sample: The data is based upon the metrics from accounts monitored with the technology from Snaplytics. The data…

Live chat, video and product finders can help you massively boost your conversion rate

If you suddenly discovered you had superpowers, you’d use them, right? Of course you would! (and hopefully in a socially beneficial way). Well, I recently discovered a few user experience (UX) techniques that are proven to significantly lift E-commerce revenues, so I wanted to share these techniques so that you can starting use them yourself soon. First I’ll describe the revenue ‘leverage factors’ each of these features provide. Then I’ll provide guidance on how to design and implement them for your eCommerce website.

The X factors, please

My recent analysis for a website that sells surveillance products found that the Revenue Per Visitor (RPV) - the top conversion metric for E-commerce websites - was amplified by the following factors: By 3.9X when visitors used chat By 1.7X when visitors viewed videos By 2.2X when visitors used a product finder In other…

Building Chatbots: Everything you need to know

Chatbots continue to receive a lot of hype in 2017, with companies including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and many others investing heavily in the technology. Smart Insights have covered how Pizza Express have built a chatbot. This brief guide explores some of key things to consider when building and launching your first chatbot.

Understand your audience

Before you start building anything it is essential to fully understand who will be using your chatbot, and what you already know about them. Facebook Insights and other analytical tools may provide some useful information. Personas are frequently used when building websites to address specific audience groups, and may also be helpful when creating chatbots.

Set the right tone

The conversational nature of chatbots makes getting your tone of voice right critical. Tone of voice will vary according to the nature of…

Are LinkedIn's new features the most effective B2B ad product on the market?

This week has seen the launch of two powerful new B2B advertising products from LinkedIn. Both have the potential to help B2B advertisers get far more benefit from the business-focused social network.

LinkedIn Matched Audiences

Matching audiences to email addresses is one way to re-target people who you know are interested in your product (because they've given you their address). Facebook, Twitter and Google already have options to re-target audiences based on email address. The idea is you upload the list of your customer's email addresses, and then the ad network matches these addresses to the people on its database, so you can serve ads to those exact people. This is a great tactic for B2B because the long, complex selling process for big ticket purchases often involves signing up to research and white papers and then comparing several different providers. Advertising to…

How to create and implement a successful SMS marketing campaign

There are countless reasons why your business should consider implementing SMS marketing as part of your overall communications strategy. It’s budget-friendly - you can send messages from around 2p / 2 cents per message It hits the mark - over 97% of text messages are read within the first four minutes It gets your customers to act - 19% of people will click a link in a SMS campaign rather than just 4.2% for emails It produces results - 30% of SMS campaigns receive average response rates of 30%, compared to 4% for emails But there are rules to follow in order for each of your SMS campaigns to be successful. In this post I will…

Chart of the Day: As Twitter's active users stagnate, WhatsApp becomes the front runner

Twitter was once a fast-growing social media site and the darling of marketers everywhere. But it has fallen on hard times of late, as growth as stalled. This chart from Statista shows Twitter only managed to gain 31 million additional users actively utilizing the platform monthly over the past two years. Whereas Facebook has seen over 467 million join. This is impressive for  a platform once considered to have plateaued. But the biggest of threats is WhatsApp. The instant messenger platform presents a massive opportunity for marketers. Companies such as Just Eat and BBC are just a couple of the brands who are successfully using the platform to enable instant customer service and highly targeted marketing. With this in mind, do marketers need to adjust how they spend their social marketing budget? And would investing in growing platforms…

Use these live chat tools to engage your users at the most critical stage of the buying process

As customer expectations rise and users demand instant responses to questions & complaints, live chat tools are growing rapidly both in usage and in capability. 60% of those in the 18-34 'millennial' age bracket reported in a study for Forrester research that they preferred to have their questions answered via live chat than via phone. 44% of that age group also reported that having the ability to ask questions via live chat was one of the most important features a site could offer. With the growing importance of live chat to the customer experience and thus your bottom line, you need to review what technology is available to deliver a great live chat experience, at a cost that is right for your business. That's why we've reviewed a wide range of live chat tools…

Chart of the day: Market research budgets have been cut whilst marketing budgets are being sustained

Market research (increasingly referred to as "insight") budgets are taking another cut this year, according to research by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, whilst marketing budgets overall have not grown. As few as 8% of respondents signaled growth in their insight budget whilst just over 26% of respondents indicated marketing budget growth. The analysis shows it's the worst prediction for market research in over four years of data collection. One reason for the fall in budget could be that businesses are using non-traditional research methods, doing fewer large-scale annual research projects and instead focusing on more cheaper, innovative techniques, such as the use of research communities, online focus groups and cheaper providers such as Survey Monkey Audience, Ask You Target Market and Toluna Quick Surveys, rather than using…

How marketers are using analytics wrong and how to fix it

Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tools for marketing analytics. However, it is also one of the most underutilized tools - the amount of data and information it provides can be overwhelming, and users often have to spend hours tweaking their segments before finding any use in their data. To solve this problem, we set out to build a data science algorithm that turns that data into actionable insights. We thought it’d be a straightforward task. We had no idea about rabbit hole it would lead us to, the nuances we would have to factor in, and how working with hundreds of brands and agencies would allow us to see that it’s not only a data problem, but also a psychological one. Marketers are human. Our views are biased, our thoughts have fallacies, and our teams have constraints. Coupled with only…

How to successfully combine your PR and Content Marketing efforts

Content marketing and public relations (PR) are very similar in nature. One can even say that they are two sides of the same coin. Most people thought that with the emergence of social media, public relations (PR) may become irrelevant. But it didn't. Instead, it started using different approaches than the age-old methods of engagement and publicity. This post offers tips on why you need to combine content marketing with PR and how to do it successfully.

Why Combine Content Marketing with PR and Vice Versa

As PR and content marketing share a common goal, there is a great deal to be gained by harnessing a hybrid approach. Here is why any PR firm should be combining PR and content marketing strategies.

Offers Consolidated Platform for Sharing Ideas

Whether you are a content marketer or a PR professional, it is your responsibility to keep track…