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Au Revoir, Last Click Attribution

“Last Click Attribution is dying”, that’s how people say now. Type “Last Click Attribution” in Google, most of the results come up are trying to explain why it is not the right tactics to measure conversion. Personally, I agree with the statement that it is not a good way to show the true picture of conversion.

Customers usually go front and back into websites before they make their purchase finally. In this case, neither first clicks nor last clicks will provide the true picture. This situation actually happens every day with my purchase behavior. If I got a promotion email from a brand’s email campaign, I would definitely click on it to check what the deal is about. If I’m not familiar with the brand, I will do some research on the brand via google or Instagram hashtag search to see if the brand fit my appetite, if I know this brand, I will think about the deal and not rush to make the decision at that moment. So in my purchase pattern, there is always a lag between I received the deal and I finally make my purchase. In most cases, the clicks that lead me to make the purchase is not the one that I click to check the deal in the first place. I believe there are thousands of customers who share the same purchase behavior with me, so the last click attribution hardly shows the true picture.

As people doubt about the last click, Google is planning to come up with a new way to measure the whole picture of conversion: multi-touch attribution. In this new system, different weights are assigned to different touchpoints during customer’s purchase path, to maximize ad dollars' effectiveness across different channels and devices. In my opinion, this will be the future of conversion measurement and this time, the tech giant is going to win again.

So Au Revoir, last click!

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Final Presentation

Brief intro: 

App for Chinese Hiphop dancer communities.

Need of Market:

Currently the atmosphere of Hiphop in China still remain largely underground, meaning every single channel of promotion is still in a very original way. For example, if organizations(studios) want to hold a event(competition, battle, etc…), the promotion of the event still highly depends on manual, and word of mouth. The market has always been strained in a small circle constitute by acquaintances, sponsors are always “outsiders”, who barely know hiphop culture, so it’s really hard to promote right event to right people. 

This app will break this circle and reboot the market in a digital way. Event holders can come to app and promote their events on app, app users (dancers) can sign up for events they like and later store their performance in app.

How it works:

This app is where dancers store their achievement, a community where dancers can talk, share, and create together. Beside, it is also a great platform of digital marketing for Hiphop culture in China. 

Further more, the app can cooperate with official organization like CSDA(China Street Dance Association) to acquire authority of event rating according to event’s scale, and authoritativeness. This rate not only will effects event’s position on SERP when users search for events close to them, but also have a great impact on dancer’s records, records of highly rated events will value more for instance. Market will also benefit from this format and create a positive progress. Overall, this app will include the following features: 1. A platform for dancers to search for events that’s right for them. 2. A platform for event holders to promote their events. 3. An authoritative platform of event rating. 4. A platform for sponsors to pick right event.

[hxliu-blog]

Final Presentation

Brief intro: 

App for Chinese Hiphop dancer communities.

Need of Market:

Currently the atmosphere of Hiphop in China still remain largely underground, meaning every single channel of promotion is still in a very original way. For example, if organizations(studios) want to hold a event(competition, battle, etc…), the promotion of the event still highly depends on manual, and word of mouth. The market has always been strained in a small circle constitute by acquaintances, sponsors are always “outsiders”, who barely know hiphop culture, so it’s really hard to promote right event to right people. 

This app will break this circle and reboot the market in a digital way. Event holders can come to app and promote their events on app, app users (dancers) can sign up for events they like and later store their performance in app.

How it works:

This app is where dancers store their achievement, a community where dancers can talk, share, and create together. Beside, it is also a great platform of digital marketing for Hiphop culture in China. 

Further more, the app can cooperate with official organization like CSDA(China Street Dance Association) to acquire authority of event rating according to event’s scale, and authoritativeness. This rate not only will effects event’s position on SERP when users search for events close to them, but also have a great impact on dancer’s records, records of highly rated events will value more for instance. Market will also benefit from this format and create a positive progress. Overall, this app will include the following features: 1. A platform for dancers to search for events that’s right for them. 2. A platform for event holders to promote their events. 3. An authoritative platform of event rating. 4. A platform for sponsors to pick right event.

[hxliu-blog]

Still a beginner of new style hustle😅 Well, I know there is a long way to go but I really enjoy the fun🤩🤩🤩 Thanks to my parents for tolerant a beginner like me🤣🤣🤣 #newstylehustle #dancelife #waacker #hustledance （在 EXPG studio NYC BY LDH）

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Search Engine Optimization Secrets: an SEO book

Coincidentally I enrolled Search Marketing in this semester, as a result I am familiar with tops SEO/SEM. 

Search Engine Optimization Secrets, is the required material of Search Marketing, and it’s write by Danny Dover, who previously work for Moz.com as an SEO consultant. According to the book, it helps you do what you never thought possible with SEO. Personally I think this book a very read friendly one, because of its features such as tips, insights, which helps to draw readers’ attention to the most important and useful information. Also, the language is easy to understand (Danny Dover does have humor :)). 

As I read the book, chapter 4 jumps into my eyes and I think this is something that worth sharing. In this chapter, author tells us how to find SEO problems: Audit for websites. He introduces two types of websites audit: 15 minutes SEO audit and 5 minutes brand reputation audit.

15 minutes SEO audit:

a. Prepare: disable cookies/ java script and change browser to google bot

b. Check:

 i. Homepage assessment: first impression - engine view? Or people's view?

 ii. Global navigation: find clogs/ disable java: to find weather navigation is build on HTML (if not: indexing issues)

 iii. Optimized Category(subcategory) page: they are the cross of the path where link juice pass/ stand higher chance of high rank/ enough content on it

 iv. Content page(the meat of website):title tags/meta tag/format of URL/Index ability/alt text on image/content

 v. Link: compare with competitors

 vi. Search Engine Inclusion(how search engine react):penalized?/n.of indexed page- more(duplication) or less(indexation issue)/keyword-how well the website is optimized/search for duplicate content(avoid competing with oneself)

5 minutes brand reputation audit:

a. SERP of brand: ideally all links land to official approved pages/ watch for negative review

b. On social media: pay attention to real time content-twitters/ search within 24hrs

Plus, there are some HTTP status code and source code that I think is interesting to share with.

HTTP Status Code 101

200: every thing ok

301&302: redirects ->send users & search engine to a different URL from what was originally requested

301:moved permanently

302: found/ moved temporarily

307: moved temporarily

404 not found

410 Gone

500 Internal server error

503 Unavailable server  

Source code 101

Title tag: <title=>

Heading :<h1>   better have the brand in it

Meta description :< meta name=“description”>

Image Alt Tags: <img src=   >

Canonical Tag: <link rel="canonical" >

Internal Links and Anchor Text: < a href= >

Apart from chapter 4, there are other brilliant chapters in this book, for example, chapter 1, 2, and 3 provide a basic view of SEO for beginners; chapter 8 and 9 give a highly detailed example of a site audit report; Chapter 10 talks about SEO industry and chapter 12 gives information about optimizing for alternative search engine like Amazon and Youtube...etc,. Overall, its a book for beginner of SEO, but also a book for people who want to be more than a beginner. 

and this book looks like this:

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Email, the other term of mobile.

Email has always been a huge part in nowadays marketing world. This powerful tool has successfully surpass direct mail, text msg, and other marketing tools, and kept growing in this digital era. To some degree, email has become the icon of this digital-mobile system, like another term of mobile, and they never fall apart. 

My thoughts about why email will keep to be a big part in future marketing is as follow:

1. Email is more likely to be clicked than other tactics, meaning higher potential of conversion rate. I read an article last month, it put forward the idea, young generation are getting lazier, so as a result of this phenomenon, less step produce higher profit, this also explained why in-app purchase is so popular now. Based on this theory, I think email has higher chance to be clicked. For example, if a brand promote a product via email and display, for email, people only need one click and will be redirected to the landing page. While for display, people will need to type the product in search engine, and click search and click on the search engine result, so this is in total two click, and is not guaranteed to land on the right page. 

People may argue, app can also provide one click experience and no need to wait for redirection. However, not every brand has an individual app, what's more, people will check their inbox every day for sure, but not likely to open every app in their phone everyday.

2. Over years of growing, developing, email has build up a well structured database where customer is nicely segmented. This give brand the opportunity to target whichever group they want to base on different criteria. Personalization also provide higher quality of communication with customer, these all lead to a higher conversion rate.

3. Email is easy to measure, it has KPI’s that are clearly defined and provide straight forward result. With this feature, email is one of the best format to conduct tests. Marketer can easily find problems from test result and KPI’s. Also, email is controllable, marketer can revise or change strategy immediately and constantly without worry about any side effect.

4. So far, email is still the best way to mix all type of content in one platform and send to mobile devices, we can find text, image, gif, html in one single email. Combination of different type of contents can infuse creativity to this long lasting format. 

After years of growing together with email, people have already come up with the habit of check their inbox everyday. Inbox is the place where they check informations sent from different places, a integrated inbox. No matter how individual application grow, they won't be able to replace the integration inbox has in a short time. That's why from my own opinion, no matter how digital world and mobile devices update, email and inbox will always show up and tie together with the digital-mobile system.

5. Last but not the least, there are numbers of tactics out there have the same or batter performance than email do, but these will never cost less then email does. Low cost is the biggest advantage email has, because, business is all about provide better products or service and cost lower than other do.

[hxliu-blog]

Allure - A terrible desire

About 3 month ago I subscribed the fashion&beauty magazine: Allure. As a globe wide issue, their email strategy is way back from the standard that their magazine has set. 

After the subscription, I received a confirmation email.

Personally I’m confused by the structure of this transactional email. In general, this email addresses to me, but on the top, my name in bold is absolutely smaller than the “subscription summary” under it. Okay, since it was a conformation email, I understand the summary is the big part. Go into the summary part, at first I didn't feel anything wrong about this part, just felt different with other confirmation email I received. I’m not aware of the difference until I received another email from Allure recently.

This is a subscription alert email, and it alert me my subscription is undeliverable, I need to update my address. Till now, I suddenly realized, in the confirmation email I received previously, my address was not in there! 

What’s more, this alert email itself is also questionable. The title is “Allure subscription alert”, but the pre-header text is “action-required”. This is pretty confusing. And, again, my name is smaller than the “summary”, but this time, the first part is the key that explain the situation to me. In fact, when I quickly glance at this email, the “summary part”catches my eyes first. If I didn't go through the whole page, I won’t be able to notice the problem at the first sight.

[hxliu-blog]

Mobile Marketing: Whip Up The Best Push Notification Strategy

Read this white paper:

https://www.tune.com/resources/whip-up-the-best-push-notification-strategy/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWmpFMVl6RXlNR0ZpTkRGaiIsInQiOiJpb2srQTVBa0ZoZEZjV0tBbGVJRk85cXRRRGpQSXhFanI2cFd0SExtYm5nS29NMUZ1OFZhV3NGVWI1a3MzNElcL21rNDBQTzdPanN3b294dE10OXNkOGN6ZGVUZGJ1VkdwVW9HWHFROXBSa1BwTDVVeUY1ckIxU2cyR0Rsd0kwYTEifQ%3D%3D

For any app, acquisition is only the first step, engagement is the step that brings in revenue. Thus, push notifications, the thing lead people back to apps, become valuable to marketers. Fortunately, there is still rooms for marketers to improve. This white paper, briefly talks about 11 ways to optimize push notifications, which lead to success of the overall campaign.

For the presentation of this Tuesday, I will discuss this topic fowling the content of this white paper. The reason that I chose push notifications is, I think this is the unique marketing option for mobile marketing. In the digital world now we live, overlaps occur everywhere between large screens and small screens. Email can be dual, msgs can be dual, but push notification from apps are sort of unique for the vertical screens. Thus, if we want to position ourselves as marketer specified in mobile, we have to pay attention to push notifications. So I like to share this article with them with some of my personal experience to help people get the basic knowledge of push notification.

[hxliu-blog]

Greyhound & Absolut Vodka

First let’s start with a video.

At the very first glance, I thought I was watching a trial of a futuristic movie. And I have to admit that this “trial” catches my eyes all the time. This is a fantastic clips to enjoy. 

However, later when I found out this is a commercial for Absolut Vodka’s new flavor(grapefruit! my favorite!), co-worked with famous DJ Swedish House Mafia, I have to view it from a marketing prospective.

It is a little bit hard to tell the logic of the clips, at least for some marketer who lacks the sense of scientific like me. The story is a game of greyhounds. There are three teams with different colors and each team sends a greyhound into the game. They are not real greyhounds, but automatic ones driven by DJs, while DJs are playing, those greyhounds run. Winner will be the team whose greyhound arrives at the end first. (Notice that the video is five years ago, and the idea of AI and futuristic scenes are not as popular as they are now.)

Great story, but where is Absolut Vodka?

The new flavor of Absolut Vodka shows up at the very beginning and the very end, where people are waiting before the game and the celebrating after it. Although this is good enough to show people the physical evidence that Absolut Vodka helps people enjoy their life better, it is not enough for new customer to remember the brand. Like some ice bucket challenge, people will only remember the ice buckets but forget what the challenge is for at all. In this case, people will talk about the trial-liked clips, without mention Absolut Vodka.

“The sauce is better than the fish.”

To fix this, brand needs to pay more attention to the “fish”. For example, in the middle of the video, the blue greyhound falls down, and there is a close-up to the DJ who control the greyhound. At this moment, if there could add one more close-up of the DJ sipping the vodka before he start again and win the whole game, it would be a strong message tells how Absolut Vodka inspires people and makes them persist in their dreams. And make people remember, it is Absolut.

Fancy is not a negative sense at all, but details make difference.

[hxliu-blog]

Yamibuy CNY Campaign Audition

This is the weekend of Chinese New Year, as a result, my mail box is fulled of ads about CNY. Among them, one ad is designed with traditional Chinese pattern, the lion, the lotus, and the lantern with Chinese character “福”. It is sent from Yamibuy, an online retailer particularly targeting Chinese students in the U.S.. The whole email is written in simple Chinese, which helps its target customer to understand the content better. 

After I clicked the CTR button in the middle, the landing page was automatically redirected. The process of redirection is smoothy and quickly(less than 1 second), the landing page looks very much alike to the email ad with the promo code in the middle of the page.

On the top right corner of the page, there is a link for english version.

(I have to say the english version is really good)

And on the top left of each page, there is a button linking to the home page of Yamibuy.

From the homepage we can tell the landing page of that e-mail is directly to the page of this campaign “the year of dog”, however, we can still find the banner of this campaign from the home page. 

From a campaign overview, this campaign is a successful one regarding to content consistency and the adaptive design across different content formats.

Scrolling down the english version page of this campaign, there is a interesting map of China in order to indicate the specialty of different areas of China, and  clear categories and subcategories link with delighted Chinese style UI. (I really like the design of this campaign.)

Each category page has a clear CTR button and every product has a image and  descriptive intro with price. (I checked the translation of some of the food, the translation is very clear and decent.)

The whole campaign is well organized and well designed. I think it is a good one a serving the purpose of helping Chinese student to have a warm New Year.

[hxliu-blog]

Three Minutes - A story about homecoming

This is a story of a conductor, who always spend her spring festival on the train, meet her son on the platform of one of the stop of her journey.

She has only 3 minutes.

She has always been a tiger mother since she want her son to be self-diciplined when she is not around. Last year they met, she gave him a homework —he has to remember the multiplication tables, she will check it next time they meet.

The count down starts when the train entering into the station, she sees him immediately from the crowd. She watches him behind the window and mumbles his name as the train passing him by.

Slowly, the train stops. She walks down the train, meanwhile her son is rushing through the crowd towards to her. Time is ticking. 

She helps the passengers to get off and get on the train, searching for his face from time to time.

When they finally meet, there is only one minute left. He starts to recite the multiplication tables. She is so anxious because she want to spend this priceless minute with other words, however, she is also so happy since he has always been a good boy. 

Ten seconds last, she has to go back to the train even though he hasn’t finish yet. 

The train whistles. He finished. She is leaving with the train to the next stop.

This is a short video filmed by iPhoneX. It’s now the headline of Apple China. It is pictured for the incoming Chinese New Year. 

I think it is a successful content. During the time of homecoming, Apple focuses on the group of people who sacrifices their time with family in order to guarantee the majority. This content links the festival and people who can’t spend the new year with Apple’s newest product, iPhoneX. When people value the time they have with their family, they will think of those other people described in this short cut, and immediately, think of iPhoneX.

The high definition of the video, on the other hand, shows the power of Apple’s new model’s camera function.  

Here is the link of this video:

https://www.apple.com/cn/three-minutes/

[hxliu-blog]

Digital Marketing: good to KNOW or good to PLAY?

Imaging, you are browsing Instagram on your phone, and suddenly there is a sponsored content from the brand which you just accidentally like to know, coincidence? 

NO, this is the game of digital marketing. The big data we generated helps to feed us with the next target that is precise enough to hit it, through online platform, click, and the target is down. In this circle, digital marketing is playing both the role of branding and direct response, although it may not have exact the same amount of effort to both, it is definitely good for both. So i say, good to KNOW but also good to PLAY.

Branding:

Personally I don't really remember any brand that is known to me from big screens since I hardly have the chance to look at it. Phone is the master of our lives now. At least for me, 60% of the brand I got to know last year is from “this is the content that you might interested in”. I believe my percentage is only at the average. Plus, the low cost for branding via digital platform has brought many brands (especially start up) a paradise to blossom. 

Direct response:

No doubt digital marketing favored this side more than branding with all those “one-click” buttons. If there is anything we like to buy, just click. For brands, campaign is like a battle, and those digital data is the biggest weapon they have to turn us down. They chase us with the trace we provided to them, that’s why we can never resist to those sugar bullets liked contents. We just like to get hit! Not only the stage of purchase is facilitated, but also the stage of consideration and communication. With digital platform, the interaction between brands and customer can be personalized and instant. 

To wrap up, digital is now the core of our daily life, and it revolutionized and benefited both branding and direct response.