Millennials: The Shopping Cart Masters

Millennials may abandon their online shopping carts, but reminder emails should take the right tone - this demographic is far more likely to revisit those carts, even on another device.

Mark Zuckerberg takes questions from Stephen Hawking, Arnold Schwarzenegger in bizarre Q&A

Well, that got... weird.

Facebook held one of its regular Q&A Townhall sessions with Mark Zuckerberg Tuesday. Rather than a live event with Zuckerberg answering questions from a live audience, the question and answer session was in AMA format on the CEO's timeline.

But Tuesday's Townhall took a turn for the weird when a handful of Facebook's more high profile users, including Stephen Hawking, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Arianna Huffington, chimed in with their own questions for the Facebook boss.

See also: Facebook says your rainbow profile pictures won't be used to sell ads

In what must have been a well-orchestrated PR move from the social network, Hawking, Schwarzenegger and Huffington kicked things off by asking Zuckerberg about his take on science, workouts and journalism, respectively Read more...

More about Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Social Media, Tech, and Apps Software

What’s Holding CMOs Back When It Comes To Push Mobile Marketing

Push notifications are the official way for brands to reach users through an app since the operating system—such as Apple iOS or Google Android— doesn’t provide user email addresses or phone numbers. Their ability to provide information to aid in personalization makes push notifications one of the most important tools in the marketing toolbox.

All sounds great, right?

So why then are some CMOs reticent to implement a push mobile marketing strategy?

In our new guide, The CMO’s Guide To Mobile Marketing we identify several concerns that CMOs often have about investing in push— and solutions to overcoming those concerns:

Concern: Push costs too much to integrate into the workflow and back end.
Solution: Marketers should find a provider with an easy-to-implement SDK—which allows for rapid development—that uses technology to gather signals used for segmenting.

Concern: IT time and costs won’t deliver the desired return on investment.
Solution: Marketers are already focusing on delivering a cross-channel experience by integrating email, display, and SMS. Using multiple channels including push picks up incremental lift. Multi-channel customer interactions are 30 percent more strongly correlated with business outcomes such as customer satisfaction and desire to recommend, when compared to uncoordinated efforts, according to McKinsey & Company.

Concern: Users will be bombarded with messages.
Solution: Some marketers fear that if they implement push notifications, users will feel overwhelmed, leading them to delete the app or turn push notifications off. To combat this, send relevant, personalized notifications by segmenting. Another way to interact with customers without sending spam push messages is through an app inbox. Even if users say they don’t want to get notifications on the lock screen, brands can send offers and promotions to their inbox, bypassing the push alerts. This feature is helpful for reaching users that opt out of notifications and for providing offers that last longer than just one day.

To learn about the other two key aspects we identify: SMS & MMS and Data Management Platforms and how to overcome any concerns you as a CMO may have, download The CMO’s Guide To Mobile Marketing today.

The Importance of Customer Centricity in Evolving A/B Testing

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When we talk about A/B testing, we often think about it on a test-by-test basis. While this singular focus is beneficial, it overlooks testing’s role as an ongoing system for optimization.

At MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015, Courtney Eckerle, Manager of Editorial Content, MarketingSherpa, sat down with Lauren Wagner, Senior Manager, and Tessa Srebro, Lead Generation and Marketing Associate, both of VolunteerMatch, to discuss how to utilize A/B testing to constantly evolve programs.

Lauren and Tessa’s company, VolunteerMatch, is a nonprofit organization that is the world’s largest volunteering network. It also has an interesting funding model. The company sells a Software as a Service (SaaS) product to companies to help fund its organization and, so far, this model has generated almost $1 billion in social value each year through its work with nonprofits and volunteers. VolunteerMatch is also more than familiar with the benefits of testing, as evidenced by the subject line test it ran with MarketingExperiments.

Watch the excerpt below from the MarketingSherpa Media Center to learn how keeping up with current trends and thinking like a consumer can help evolve your testing and your company.

Keep up with current trends and your customers

Keeping up with current customer trends is one of the most important pieces of advice Lauren Wagner gave when asked how to keep a company’s A/B testing constantly evolving. Be sure that you’re keeping up with current trends in the marketplace, but don’t forget to take the time to learn about your customers.

Lauren suggested paying attention to what your customers are interested in and adapting to their needs and interests.

Lauren advised marketers to “continue to look at the space that you’re working in and seeing, you know, what are people talking about, what are the trends that they’re talking about so that you can continue to take your emails and continue to kind of mold them and change them and shift them to what those people are really looking for and are really interested in.”

By utilizing this mentality, VolunteerMatch saw a shift in the departments it worked with and was able to adjust accordingly.

“The employee-engagement, employee-volunteering space has kind of shifted over the years from, you know, sitting in marketing departments, sitting in corporate responsibility departments, sitting in human resources departments,” Lauren said. “For us to kind of shift the way that we’re approaching the benefits of employee volunteering from each of those different places in a company really has to evolve and change over the years.”

Think as a marketer and a consumer

Tessa Srebro highlighted one of the biggest and often underutilized advantages marketers have: Every marketer is also a consumer. Instead of only looking at campaigns and advertisements through a marketing lens, question what ads are working from your point of view as a consumer. Tessa explained that when she sees an ad that impresses or interests her as a consumer, she then asks herself why that’s the case. This approach has led to great marketing insights.

“I’m kind of looking for things that I can take from other marketers to my own organization. I’m constantly analyzing the world around me in that way,” she said.

She then added, “Human nature doesn’t change. So if you have these skills about what sorts of messages are going to appeal to a person, whether through emotions or logic or all of that, that’s timeless. Human nature is not going to change.”

You might also like

MECLABS Email Messaging Online Course [Register now]

Register for MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 in Las Vegas, Feb. 22-14

Watch Full Sessions from Email Summit 2015

Online Testing: How a B2B SaaS nonprofit increased clickthrough on landing page by 291% [MarketingSherpa case study]

Lead Management: How a B2B SaaS nonprofit decreased its sales cycle 99% [MarketingSherpa case study]

The Writer’s Dilemma: How to know which marketing copy will really be most effective [More from the blogs]

A/B Testing: How to improve already effective marketing (and win a ticket to Email Summit in Vegas) [More from the blogs]

Conservative Russians are putting flags on profile photos to offset the rainbows

KIEV, Ukraine — In Soviet Russia, love doesn't always win.

Responding to the wave of pride rainbow-embossed profile photos that washed across social media in wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in America on Friday, some conservative and homophobic Russians are shading profile images the colors of their country's flag: white, blue and red.

See also: 12 same-sex marriages that just made history Read more...

More about Social Media, Russia, Facebook, Twitter, and Us World

Why Solar Energy Is a Good, Renewable Energy Source?

These days we hear a lot about using organic products, biodegradable products, recycling plastics, etc., to minimize carbon footprint and save the environment. But we do not realize that unless and until we minimize consumption, we can not really save our environment. For example, look at the world consumption; Today’s products are manufactured, used and disposed of at a higher rate than the earth can accommodate in a less harmful way. Therefore it is important that we move to green alternatives now, otherwise, will be covered by pollutants and toxins produced in the normal course of the manufacture of non-biodegradable products like plastics. In this article, we will discuss as a green alternative that has a remarkable effect on reversing the negative effects that we created by technological progress and industrial revolution.

There are many ways to fight climate change, but the transition to a power of clean, renewable solar power is an ideal way. So let’s look at some of the interesting facts about solar energy.

· It is the most abundant source of energy. The amount of energy the Earth receives in one minute is approximately 10,000 times the energy needed worldwide.

Undoubtedly, solar energy is the energy source of cleaner available on the planet. Unlike fossil fuels, solar power produces no toxic byproducts. Solar panels use photovoltaic system that has no harmful effect on the environment and humans.

· Solar energy is practical, versatile and flexible in relation to wind energy and the main source of solar energy is the sun that is accessible to all parts of the globe. Unlike hydropower (which is also a source of renewable energy and cheap energy), solar power is not a threat to marine life and / or people on Earth.

· Worried increase utility bills and looking for a way out? Well, solar energy is the solution. By installing solar panels will not only reduce their utility bills, but is also increasing the value of your property. Although solar panels are little expensive at first, they turn out to be efficient and profitable in the long term. The best part is they do not require much maintenance and saves additional costs as well as being sustainable.

One of the misconceptions about solar panels is that they are expensive and affordable only to the elite class is wrong. Solar panels require an investment of time after which you do not have to invest in regular maintenance. In fact, in most countries, the government provides special tax benefits and other advantages of solar energy. Once installed solar panels, freedom of utility bills is obtained, power outages and enhance the value of their property by being friendly to the environment.

Getting Your First 1,000 Facebook Fans (Infographic)

More and more people are using Facebook to research businesses these days, and they’re doing more than just finding a business’s location and reading posts. People are using Facebook for social proof. They want to see how many people “Like” a business.

Think about it. If you want to go to a new restaurant and you visit its Facebook page and it has 30 fans, does that make you more or less likely to visit the establishment? It probably doesn’t help. The same goes for internet businesses. If you’re running an ecommerce store and you have only 100 fans, do you think that helps your chances of getting orders, especially when your competitor has 5,000 fans?

This doesn’t apply to all businesses, but for most B2C companies, having a lot of Facebook fans is important. This is especially true for small businesses. In certain bigger industries, such as automotive, the amount of Facebook fans doesn’t factor into a buying decision for the consumer.

To help you grow your fan base, Neil Patel over at Quick Sprout has created an infographic that’s full of wonderful tips to help you reach your first 1,000 Facebook fans.

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

For additional tips on getting more Facebook fans, check out this content from Kissmetrics:

• How to Get More Likes on Facebook (Infographic)
• How to Increase Facebook Fans and Twitter Followers

About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is a Content Writer for Kissmetrics.