Picking up where we left off in part one, we examine the rest of the day’s presentations that took place at our digital marketing summit. Don’t forget to continue the conversation on Twitter at @Figaro_Digital.
Building Trust And Confidence: AI Marketing Readiness In Retail And E-Commerce
If the history of retail has taught us anything it’s that even a small piece of tech can entirely revolutionise an industry: one of the most revolutionary being e-commerce and the ability to shop online. In retail and e-commerce B2C email marketing campaigns size doesn’t matter, what matters is the tools you use. A personalised approach is a consumer right and marketing promise, so whilst human driven personalisation in retail and e-commerce doesn’t scale up, AI offers the solution. Raj Balasundaram, Global Head of Solutions at Emarsys, has tackled the gap between the readiness of AI marketing solutions to execute real-time B2C marketing campaigns and the willingness of marketers and business leadership teams to adopt such technology. In two case studies in which companies implemented AI to retain a market, Evolution Slimming and Free Style Xtreme, Raj displayed how using AI to automatically support the generation and personalisation of emails using a consumer’s digital blue print with the vendor, can revolutionise customer interaction and sales.
Find Raj’s presentation here.
The Five Pillars Of Programmatic
Programmatic marketing is often defined as a process of automated bidding on advertising inventory in real time for the opportunity to show adverts to a specific consumer in a specific context. However, it has developed into an ever changing evolutionary step rather than a channel. Tom Wright, Head of Trading at Tomorrow TTH, took us through the five disciplines of programmatic advertising giving insight into the range of possible opportunities to reach customers, both new and existing, in a data lead media landscape. Programmatic advertising is a data led infrastructure that facilitates the most sophisticated type of ad buying, taking data from various digital sources to determine whether a particular device warrants seeing a particular advert. These programmatic steps that range from retargeting to discovery mean that consumers have a far more controlled experience and brands gain multiple points of contact with the consumer. Tom discussed how this approach to ad buying allows for campaigns that are both acquisition and CRM based, as through multiple formats and devices there can be an orchestration of the message and ultimately a smoother consumption of a campaign for the consumer themselves.
Find Tom’s presentation here.
The Fabulous Email Delivery Technique That Nobody’s Talking About
The process of email delivery in email-focussed marketing campaigns is one which has remained relatively unchanged for a long time, despite it being one of the top, or the best, marketing channel. Ben Tomlinson, Product Marketing and Partnerships Manager at Communicator, shares Communicator’s best kept secret and explains why you should be concerned about your email delivery rates and exactly how you can implement this process. Staggering email campaigns to consumers depending on activity levels to will help you to build and maintain a high reputation, protect high-value recipients, and reduce the likelihood of being blacklisted and the possible risk when sending to non-engaged recipients. Working with high street brands, such as Ted Baker, Ben demonstrated the success of this strategy and how this one change to your email sending will ultimately help you deliver more emails to their intended inboxes and will increase consumer interaction.
Find Ben’s presentation here.
The Content State Of Mind – Making Content Work
One of the most important facets of making digital marketing content work for you is understanding your consumers and target audiences. Having worked with brands such as Penguin Random House, McCain and Audible, James Erskine, Managing Director at The Big Shot, showcases the most recent wave of research into how different audiences react to different content types and outlines some top tips as to how to make your content work harder. The Big Shot have dived deep into understanding consumers perceptions, irritations, recognitions and cynicism across a manner of media and content types – in short what content best serves businesses within the content space. With a focus on age, gender and geographical demographics when attempting to understand concepts like the generation gap of traditional media, James displayed and analysed data from consumers of digital advertising and marketing campaigns across the country to show that when it comes to creating content that works, knowing your consumers inside and out is paramount.
Find James’s presentation here.
Test For Success: Optimising Your Forms For GDPR
“The GDPR is raising the bar for consent. Marketers must explain more, be more transparent, but keep the language simple and concise. Under the GDPR consent can’t be bundled with any other agreement, can’t be a condition of a service and consent op-in boxes can’t be pre-ticked.”
Steve Henderson, Compliance Office, Communicator.
With a portfolio of clients including huge names such as Facebook, Arts Council England, Transport for London and Ebay, Kath Pay, CEO and Founder of Holistic Email Marketing, is passionate about email marketing and how the added requirements for collecting permission with GDPR, that are just around the corner, will affect the impact of email campaigns. How do you ensure your list volumes don’t shrink whilst also complying with the new consent rules? Kath addressed how to test possible consent forms using a hypothesis to ensure you learn from the results, reviewed what factors could be tested when optimising your forms for GDPR, and introduced holistic testing to maximise results. There is always a silver lining and Kath highlighted the prospect that GDPR issues could result in clear (and provable) consent, persuasive copy, transparency, and creativity in email marketing campaigns.
Find Kath’s presentation here.