#and try to drive for profit that brings in new users and more incentives to change what made the site special in the first place

[tvmblrsillyman]

just realized the new ui is mobile/tablet friendly first and foremost ):

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, July 19 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles, podcasts, videos and infographics I came across since the late June report, although some may be older than that.

I‘m still working on Etsy search testing and a few new blog posts and pages for my website, so it is still difficult for me to get this summary out more than 1-2 times a month. All suggestions on solutions to my time crunch are welcome. 

If you have an questions, comments or suggestions about my Tumblr or my blog, please contact me here or on my website. I’d love to know what you think! 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

Latest change from Google: the free Google Shopping listings will now show up in US organic search as part of product knowledge panels. Unfortunately, since they are only doing this for product knowledge panels to begin with, it likely won't help handmade sellers, but could be useful to sellers of vintage & supply items that are known products that will have a knowledge panel. It may be a sign that they are planning on moving free ads to more Google "surfaces" over time, however. Note that it appears that all product knowledge panel ads will be free starting this summer (US only), so that means that any Etsy paid ads for these types of items will become free ads that you won't have to pay EOA fees on if you get a sale. Google claims the free ads are bringing more searcher engagement to Shopping.  

Amazon announced they will begin to show US sellers’ business name and address on the Seller Profile page as of September 1. The same requirement already exists in Europe, Japan and Mexico. 

The USPS will no longer be delivering mail as promptly every day, to cut costs. This potentially affects anyone shipping to a destination in the United States. 

How 7 different companies grew profits during the last recession - there will still be business opportunities during the upcoming recession, but you have to be positioned to take them. 

ETSY NEWS 

Etsy Labels no longer offer USPS international shipping options for all packages under 4.4 pounds other than Canadian orders, replacing them with the Global Postal Shipping Program (GPSP). Many US sellers dislike the GPSP, and have moved on to outside providers that integrate with an Etsy shop and other services, such as Pirate Ship, Shippo, Stamps, and Shipstation. 

The quarterly category & attributes updates are limited to face mask & hand sanitizer attributes for July. Etsy also made some other minor updates recently, including allowing us to set a message auto reply for up to 5 days. 

You may have noticed that Etsy is really pushing Etsy Ads on sellers right now, despite the numerous complaints about the average cost per click becoming far too high last year. I’ve turned mine off permanently, but if you are interested in trying them or fine-tuning them, Etsy released an article and a related podcast with a transcript.

Louisiana and Mississippi have been added to the list of states that Etsy collects sales tax from. 

Etsy raised fees on Reverb to 5%, “to make further investments on behalf of our sellers.” 

Etsy will release the second quarter results on August 5. We already know that April and May were record-setting, and June was also probably pretty good. 

The site has continued to receive decent media coverage for the mask initiative; Etsy is mentioned in several articles/broadcasts a day as a place to get masks, including stylish ones. This article briefly interviews a seller and looks at what Etsy will do next, as the mask demand peak might be over. 

Now that people think of Etsy for things like face masks, Etsy is continuing to market itself as a place to buy everyday items, something it shied away from for a few years. (Remember when Etsy was all about “owning special”?) They’ve added “Everyday Finds” links & Editors Picks pages, and have published tips on what pandemic shoppers are looking for. (Note that the year over year values compare this April to last April, and so were during peak lockdown for the US.)  “Keeping surfaces clean is top of mind these days, and shoppers are searching on Etsy for many types of cleaners, from all-purpose scrubs to washable sponges...134% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “ceramic sponge holder.”...”74% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “mug”...”352% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “diy”.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but this page on the search and ads algorithms appears to be relatively new. 

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

The sea change in online buyer behaviour during the pandemic may mean that you need to update your keyword research. Keyword volumes have changed, some very dramatically. For example “‘adult bikes’ shows a massive upturn.This represents over ten times as many searches for this term compared to just under a year ago. If you projected this back in 2019 you’d probably be laughed at.”

Speaking of keyword research, if you need a refresher on why you should do it and how to approach it, here is a recent article. 

There are many different ways to get backlinks; here are a few that are pretty easy [video & text]. 

Are longer blog posts better for SEO? Not necessarily, as long as you cover the topic well. The exception is that blog posts under 300 words are usually not worth writing. 

Most SEOs think there was an unannounced Google update around the third week of June. Some are reporting that sites that specialize made gains, as opposed to those who have more general material. That same study reports Etsy had one of the largest traffic increases, but not as much as Pinterest (I’ve been seeing a lot more pins when Googling lately, so this seems likely.) Government websites also seem to have received better visibility. “As Google has described in their document on how they fight disinformation, they describe that their systems are designed to prefer authority over other factors “in times of crisis”. If this truly is related to what we saw happen in June, these changes could possibly be reversed once the worldwide pandemic situation improves.”

Bing released a few basic tips on how to use its keyword planner. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

TikTok has moved out of Hong Kong, while the US government may be looking at banning them, following India’s move on July 6. With TikTok in peril, many people are now downloading its competitor Byte. 

If you use Facebook for your business, please read up on the changes required to comply with California’s new privacy law. 

Instagram is now testing an Instagram Shop tab, which allows users to filter by category. 

Twitter is planning on starting a subscription service, but deleted some of the details  from the job listing just hours later. 

One of the results of the big Twitter hack on July 15th was Google removing the Twitter carousel from its search results. 

Pinterest searches involving Christmas started way earlier this year, with a 77% increase YOY in April. “That includes a 3x increase in searches for “Christmas gift ideas”, while other queries like “holiday recipes” and “Christmas” were up more than 90% and 80% respectively.” These are good stats for marketers to have, helping us decide when to release and promote new products.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Spending too much on Facebook ads? Here are some common mistakes and some suggestions on fixing them. 

If you already know that ROAS stands for “return on ad spend” then some of this article may be old news to you. 

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 

If you are using Google Shopping with your website, be aware that the Google bots may be inflating your abandoned cart rate. 

Google Analytics can help you track the effects of changes to your website, or other business conditions. You can also get alerts when certain types of events happen, or when traffic is abnormal. 

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

Walmart is expected to launch Walmart+, similar to Amazon Prime, this month. But note that while many brick & mortar businesses are now doing a lot more business online, it is more expensive for them. 

For those of you who use Stitch Labs, they have been purchased by Square, and the existing services will likely be cut in 2021. 

Deja vu for Etsy sellers - eBay was apparently offering incentive payments for signing up for their new Managed Payments system by mid-July. (Etsy did the same with its Etsy Payments system, but only for Americans.)

Is Amazon Handmade as good for small makers as it claims? Maybe not. If you sell on Amazon, consider these strategies to protect your core business from being swamped by the big A. 

Wix has introduced an ecommerce version with a lot more options and integrations. 

Shopify’s new “Shop” app has some good features but also some issues. [podcast & edited transcript]

BigCommerce filed to go public, and added Ayden as a payment option. More details on the Ayden move here. 

Did you know there are sites you can use to sell your ecommerce business? Here are 10 of them. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

US ecommerce sales are now expected to grow 18% this year, while overall retail is predicted to be down 10.5%. “In a pandemic economy, consumers have gravitated toward trusted and reliable retailers. As a result, we can expect the top 10 ecommerce retail businesses to grow at above average rates (21.8%). Amazon will gain US ecommerce market share this year, while Walmart's accelerating ecommerce growth will take it to the No. 2 position for the first time.”

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a factor you can use to drive sales; here are 6 tips. 

Generation Z is acutely attached to internet use, and is more likely to be planning on starting their own business than any other generation. 

MISCELLANEOUS 

It’s possible that the increase in people working from home will lead to more work hours and therefore more burnout.

[sharwareeshinde11-blog]

Future Of Data Science

What is data science?

Data science is a field that uses scientific method, process, algorithms and system to extract knowledge from data in various forms, structural, unstructured it is similar to data mining.

Data science is a concept to unify statistic, data analysis, machine learning and their related method in order to understand actual phenomena with data .It employs theory and techniques drawn from many field within the context of mathematics, statistics, information science and computer science

How to learn data science

Data science is a very practical field, and so it’s so important to apply theoretical knowledge that you have gathered. For example, when you learn starts, don’t just sit and read about it .see how it can be done with a programming language such as python, which a very popular language for beginners, find a data set and apply these concept on the data. Including other language like

1 linear algebra and calculus –for these refer to the book called advanced engineering mathematics by kreyszig. The various topics that you need to brush up your understanding in are hyper parameters, regularization function, cluster analyses are few topics under this domain and which is important for machine learning

2 vector calculus

3 Statistics—go on learning statistics on various sites like udacity, khan academy, courser. They provide detailed overview on this topic which is a vital topic under data science.

4 programming language---The most widely preferred open source statistical tools are ‘R’ and ‘Python’.

FOR R--start learning libraries like dplyr, tidyr, data table for data manipulation and ggplot2 for visualization which has the same syntax as R.in fact the visualization in ggplot2 is way better than that of matplotib

   Go to kaggle and download data sets so that you can practice the concept that you have studied and build project and put up on your Git profile  

How To Prepare for the Future of Data Science

There are many ways companies can and should prepare for the future of data science. These include creating a culture for using machine learning models and their output, standardize and digitize processes, experimenting with a cloud infrastructure solution, have an agile approach to data science projects and creating dedicated data science units. Being able to execute on some of these points will increase the likelihood of succeeding in a highly digitized world.

A Data Science Unit

In my previous role I was working as a data scientist for an insurance company. One of the smart moves they made was to create an analytics unit, which worked across company verticals.

This made it easier for us to reuse our skills and models on a variety of data sets. It was also a signal to the rest of the company that we had a focus on data science and that this was a prioritized issue. If a company has a certain size, creating a dedicated data science unit is definitely the right move to make.

Standardization

Standardization of processes is also important. This will make it easier to digitize and perhaps automate these processes in the future. Automation is a key driver for growth, making it much easier to scale. An added bonus is that the data collected from automated processes is usually a lot less messy and less error prone than data collected from manual processes. Since an important enabler of data science models is access to good data, this will help make the models better.

Adoption of Data Science                                  

There should also be a culture in the company for adopting the use of machine learning algorithms and using their output in business decisions. This is of course often easier said than done since many employees might fear that the algorithms are making them obsolete.

It is therefore critical that there be a strong focus on how employees can use their existing skill set alongside algorithms to make more high-level and tactical business decisions, as this combination of human and machine is likely to be the future of work in many occupations. It will probably be more than a few years before the machine learning algorithms are able to navigate alone and make superhuman decisions in an open world setting, meaning mass unemployment due to the rise of the machines is not a likely scenario in the near future.

Always Experiment

With new data being generated from IoT sources, it is important to explore new data sets and see how they can be used to augment your existing models. There is a constant flow of new data waiting to be discovered.

Perhaps including two new variables from an obscure data set into your model will increase the precision of the leads generating model by 5% — and perhaps not. The point is to always experiment and not be afraid to fail. Like all other scientific inquires, failed attempts abound, and the winners are those who keep on trying.

Create an environment that promotes experimentation and that tries to make incremental improvements to existing business processes. This will make it easier for data scientist to introduce new models and will also set the focus on the smaller improvements, which are a lot less risky than the larger grand visions. Remember, data science is still a lot like software development and the more complex the project becomes the more likely it is to fail.

Try building an app that your customers or suppliers can use to interact with your services. This will make it easier to gather relevant data. Create incentives to promote usage of the app which will increase the amount of data being generated. It is also imperative that the UX of the app be appealing and promotes use.

We might need to venture outside of our comfort zones to take on the opportunities and challenges that this digital gold brings. As the amount of data continues to grow, machine learning algorithms get smarter and our computational abilities improve, we will need to adapt. Hopefully, by creating a strong environment for using data science your company will be better prepared for what the future will bring.

Applications / Uses of Data Science

Using data science, companies have become intelligent enough to push & sell products as per customer’s purchasing power & interest. Here’s how they are ruling our hearts and minds:

Internet Search

When we speak of search, we think ‘Google’. Right? But there are many other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Ask, AOL, Duckduckgo etc. All these search engines (including Google) make use of data science algorithms to deliver the best result for our searched query in fraction of seconds. Considering the fact that, Google processes more than 20 petabytes of data every day. Had there been no data science, Google wouldn’t have been the ‘Google’ we know today.

Digital Advertisements (Targeted Advertising and re-targeting)

If you thought Search would have been the biggest application of data science and machine learning, here is a challenger – the entire digital marketing spectrum. Starting from the display banners on various websites to the digital bill boards at the airports – almost all of them are decided by using data science algorithms.

This is the reason why digital ads have been able to get a lot higher CTR than traditional advertisements. They can be targeted based on users past behavior. 

Speech Recognition

Some of the best example of speech recognition products are Google Voice, Siri, Cortana etc. Using speech recognition feature, even if you are not in position to type a message, your life wouldn’t stop. Simply speak out the message and it will be converted to text. However, at times, you would realize, speech recognition doesn’t perform accurately.

Image Recognition

You upload your image with friends on Facebook and you start getting suggestions to tag your friends. This automatic tag suggestion feature uses face recognition algorithm. Similarly, while using whats app web, you scan a bar code in your web browser using your mobile phone. In addition, Google provides you the option to search for images by uploading them. It uses image recognition and provides related search results.

Gaming

EA Sports, Zynga, Sony, Nintendo, Activision-Blizzard have led gaming experience to the next level using data science. Games are now designed using machine learning algorithms which improve / upgrade themselves as the player moves up to a higher level. In motion gaming also, your opponent (computer) analyzes your previous moves and accordingly shapes up its game.

Fraud and Risk Detection

 One of the first applications of data science originated from Finance discipline. Companies were fed up of bad debts and losses every year. However, they had a lot of data which use to get collected during the initial paper work while sanctioning loans. They decided to bring in data science practices in order to rescue them out of losses. Over the years, banking companies learned to divide and conquer data via customer profiling, past expenditures and other essential variables to analyze the probabilities of risk and default. Moreover, it also helped them to push their banking products based on customer’s purchasing power

Airline Route Planning

Airline Industry across the world is known to bear heavy losses. Except a few airline service providers, companies are struggling to maintain their occupancy ratio and operating profits. With high rise in air fuel prices and need to offer heavy discounts to customers has further made the situation worse. It wasn’t for long when airlines companies started using data science to identify the strategic areas of improvements. Now using data science, the airline companies can:

1.   Predict flight delay

2.   Decide which class of airplanes to buy

3.   Whether to directly land at the destination, or take a halt in between (For example: A flight can have a direct route from New Delhi to New York. Alternatively, it can also choose to halt in any country.)

4.   Effectively drive customer loyalty programs

Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines are among the top companies who’ve embraced data science to bring changes in their way of working

Coming Up In Future

Though, not much has been reveled about them except the prototypes, and neither I know when they would be available for a common man’s disposal. Hence,  We need to wait and watch how far Google can become successful in their self driving cars project. 

Self Driving Cars

[necroromancerdoll-blog]

A Chain Of Its Own: Mobile App Kik To Fork Stellar For Fee-Free Blockchain

The cryptocurrency which will shortly facilitate power the popular Kik electronic communication app is creating a giant technology shift -- once more.

Kik's crypto token, kin, presently exists as AN ethereum-based ERC-20 token, nevertheless CoinDesk recently reported  that'd the corporate would be moving to a two-chain system whereby its tokens were supported on each the ethereum blockchain and also the stellar blockchain. But today, the Kin Foundation, the non-profit organization managing the event of kin, has declared another move, deciding instead to fork stellar to form its own blockchain.

Kik Friends

While Kik had initial unreal the two-chain system as a result of it upset concerning group action fees on ethereum - a blockchain that pushed up against its scale once the crypto-collectable cat game, CryptoKitties, went microorganism - Kik has set that even stellar's minimal  fees were an excessive amount of for what the corporate hopes to accomplish.

For its kin token, the matter with stellar is that it prices a small quantity to create a group action thereon blockchain, which should be paid in lumens, stellar's native cryptocurrency.

Whereas on Kik's own blockchain, transactions will not value something.

This is particularly necessary given Kik's goal for its cryptocurrency - to facilitate micropayments, as little as a penny or perhaps less, across the net additional expeditiously. the speculation is that, if these seamless transactions area unit attainable, entrepreneurs can begin making new digital services that encourage transactions between users for things like cheap personal chats, digital gifts (like stickers or gifs), personalised photos and additional.

Speaking to CoinDesk concerning the choice, Kik CEO Ted Robert R. Livingston told CoinDesk:

"I assume what makes Kin distinctive is it's one in every of the only a few comes wherever product is driving the technology and not the other way around."

To encourage entrepreneurs to form these services on the Kik app, the Kin Foundation features a large pool of kin in reserve that it'll use to mechanically pay entrepreneurs for fostering economic activity, referred to as the Kin Rewards Engine (KRE). The KRE can pay out a share of kin each day, profitable every app supported what quantity economic activity it generated that day.

According to the announcement weekday, all that activity can currently occur on kin's blockchain.

Yet, ethereum can still be concerned. once a founder has earned  enough kin that they need to carry, the thought is that they may use a method referred to as atomic swaps to maneuver their kin over to ethereum. In short, each kin token can exist on 2 ledgers: one on the ethereum blockchain and one on the kin blockchain.

Kik Usernames

When its kin 0.5 is in an exceedingly user's notecase, the ethereum 0.5 is barred up in an exceedingly good contract, and the other way around.

But whereas this is often the roadmap nowadays, Robert R. Livingston will not hazard a guess concerning once this technique can formally go live. Although, the corporate is presently moving forward with building its own ASCII text file codebase, cloned from the stellar protocol and, as Robert R. Livingston place it, "taking destiny into our own hands."

Federated nodes, zero fees While Robert R. Livingston remains optimistic on stellar, having evaluated different blockchains as he probe for possible solutions, stellar still wasn't precisely the right acceptable Kik.

"It wasn't that the fees were too high, it's that they value one thing which created AN incentive for spammers," he said.

While originally, the team had thought it may simply subsidize the group action fees, they shortly completed that it'd ought to place lumens in people's wallets to try and do that. As such, they theorized that dangerous actors may then simply produce a bunch of wallets and come up the lumens, in a trial to secure enough cash to create a bearing on the network.

As such, Kik has created a fee-less proprietary blockchain, and have done thus with the utilization of established, permissioned nodes.

"When you examine the Stellar network and compare it with Kin's fork of Stellar, the 2 networks area unit identical, with one exception: the folks running the federation nodes," Robert R. Livingston aforesaid.

For instance, the Kin Foundation can run the primary node, however Robert R. Livingston aforesaid, that because the company brings on additional partners, those partners are expected to run sure nodes, too. As such, although the Kin Foundation can ab initio management the blockchain, as a result of all nodes are treated equal, eventually the foundation's ballot power over the network can diminish.

Unlike nodes within the stellar federation, these partners will not earn something for confirmative transactions (if they did, there would want to be a group action fee). however Robert R. Livingston believes future kin nodes are surpass the big services driving the kin economy, those that earn lots of financial gain through the KRE, thus have a robust interest in seeing the worth of kin grow steady and in and of itself, can volunteer as nodes.

"As additional digital services come back on board, and because the Kin system gets larger and also the client base gets larger, there is additional incentive for additional folks to run these united nodes," Robert R. Livingston aforesaid.

This move, whereas commercialism off some decentralization for top output, aligns with what some business analysts, as well as Blockchain Capital's sociologist player, have foreseen as a forthcoming trend. player worries that these systems can become not innovative blockchain systems however ones that gibe this centralized systems we've nowadays.

But Robert R. Livingston argues that distinction is trustlessness.

"If this is often planning to be a standard currency between billions of customers across thousands of digital communities, we'd like it to be trustless," he said, adding that customers will rest assured that it is not attainable for anybody entity on the network to require their cryptocurrency from them.

But censorship resistance? Yet, what may suffer during this united node model is cryptocurrency's initial cause - censorship resistance.

For instance, if the kin token ran on stellar, validation would be cut loose use cases. Validators would earn financial gain from securing the network, and firms building services to use kin would have paid those validators in fees to be used of the network. however beneath Kin's new vision, the larger corporations driving the general public facing use cases also will offer back-end validation.

And those are corporations UN agency may jointly decide, as an example, to ban a service viewed as offensive or malicious from exploitation the network (in different words, to censor it).

Think of it like this: imagine that the net nowadays were inbuilt the same thanks to the kin blockchain. the massive nodes - services in all probability like Ebay, Etsy, Vimeo et al. that with success encourage folks to pay cash with one another - may get along and choose to dam a site's transactions that they or their users assume is offensive.

Would the stellar nodes created from for the most part unknown back-end net services corporations cave to collective social pressure before a bunch of corporations with widespread name recognition and an oversized base of client users conceive to act as dictator?

Knowing that the latter is perhaps additional possible, this is often what several crypto enthusiasts wish to protect against through the utilization of suburbanized cryptocurrency protocols.

It's a question Robert R. Livingston has grappled with, however contends it's AN exception that perhaps is not as dangerous because it sounds.

"The question is a smaller amount concerning the terrible stuff of the planet. that is stuff we're all planning to ought to grapple with as a worldwide society," he said, adding, "The question is additional concerning centralized powerCould Kin become a centralized authority within the kin ecosystem? and that we wish the solution thereto to be no."

Governance, Robert R. Livingston continuing, is one in every of the foremost fascinating topics in cryptocurrency immediately, and also the team behind kin is pondering of these issues actively.

He concluded:

"I assume the very exciting issue from AN engineering purpose of read is kin is at the haemorrhage fringe of determination these blockchain challenges and leading the business there."

Bike chain image via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk could be a media outlet that strives for the best print media standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is AN freelance in operation subsidiary of Digital Currency cluster, that invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

[yash-tiknayat]

Ductless HVAC System Market Research Report - Global Forecast to 2024

Market Overview

Market Research Future (MRFR)’s latest study indicates that the ductless HVAC system market 2020 can progress at an approx. rate of 9.45% between 2018 and 2024 (appraisal period). We will provide covid-19 impact analysis with the report. The COVID-19 impact on the ductless HVAC system market has been carefully studied, following which the report outlines the key developments post the coronavirus disease outbreak.

COVID-19 Analysis

The impact analysis on COVID-19 by MRFR suggests that the energy and power sector can be massively affected by the falling demand coupled with the crashing prices of power around the world. Considering the long-term impact of COVID-19, a majority of the renowned vendors are currently trying to bring down the costs of protecting their assets, and are also putting in efforts to ensure uninterrupted operations to control the revenue loss. While various countries are striving to find a COVID-19 breakthrough, the lockdown situation has managed to restrain the movement of materials across energy and power plants. The short term impact has resulted in a considerable downfall in the investment capacity along with a drop in power prices in the face of political turbulence, confirms the COVID-19 analysis by MRFR.

Primary Drivers and Key Barriers

Despite the deep impact of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, the ductless HVAC system market is expected to perform well during the appraisal period. The market size continues to expand in view of the fact that consumers are more aware of the ductless HVAC systems’ benefits, such as easy to install and consumption of low energy, as they do not require duct for the cooling process. The high traction of the market has been as a result of their features like variable fan speeds, multiple heating and cooling stages. The surging environmental temperature along with the increase in disposable income of people in developing regions also drives the sale of ductless HVAC systems.

The market also benefit from the increase in government incentives in the form of tax credit programs, the rising trend of smart homes and the mounting demand for energy-efficient solutions. On account of the surging temperature and the fluctuating climatic conditions worldwide, customers are now opting for ductless HVAC systems, considering these as a long-term investment. In addition to this, the growing preference for comfort among consumers also leads to higher growth of the ductless HVAC systems market.

Latest technologies such as remote control access with Internet of Things (IoT) and automated control systems have disrupted the ductless HVAC system industry to a large extent. IoT-based ductless HVAC system works using the internet and provides real-time information to the users and manufacturers about the condition of the systems, helping in detecting any issues and also cut down the maintenance costs.

Market Segmentation

The ductless HVAC system market has been considered for equipment type, implementation type, as well as application.

The equipment types considered in the market study are heating, ventilation and cooling. The heating equipment generates the highest demand in the market, as the equipment heats the buildings to a certain temperature. A common practice in colder areas that observe frequent climate change, the demand for heating equipment is quite high here. Also, the soaring demand for renewable energy sources along with the solid backing from governments in the form of subsidiaries also induces growth of the heating equipment market.

The implementation types include retrofit as well as new construction.

The application-dependent market categories include commercial, residential and industrial. Ductless HVAC systems find extensive deployment in residential buildings for heating and cooling the air inside. Since these systems utilize lower energy compared to ducted ones and are easy to install, their demand in residential buildings has surged tremendously over the years. As a result, the ductless HVAC system market is anticipated to note the strongest growth in the residential building section in the following years.

Regional Insight

The main markets for ductless HVAC system market identified in the report are Asia Pacific (APAC), North America, Europe and the Rest of the World (RoW).

APAC is the most profitable market for ductless HVAC systems and can maintain its position throughout the evaluation period. Rapidly emerging countries with their thriving construction sectors and expanding population, steady economic growth and rapid urbanization are instrumental in the market growth across the region. Mini split ductless HVAC systems have become quite popular across India and China, with a majority of the demand generated from the residential sector. Surge in collaborations among market experts and regulatory bodies to promote star-labeled HVAC units combined with the rising number of government initiatives in favor of high quality energy-efficient units in old as well as new buildings can also boost the profits of the regional market in the ensuing period.

Europe, representing the developed portion of the world, has clinched a substantial share in the overall market. The key growth-boosters in the market are the existence of a well-developed real estate and tourism sectors. The robust growth of commercial ductless HVAC units, government imposing stringent norms and policies, rise in construction activities, and a flourishing industrial base has laid down a solid groundwork for the business in Europe.

Top Participants

Top participants in the market are LG Electronics, Daikin Industries Ltd., Johnson Controls, Hitachi, Ltd., Trane, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Electrolux, United Technologies Corporation, Whirlpool Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, to mention a few.

Recent News

1 June 2020

Ductless ACTwinCities.com has launched its new website for the promotions of ductless air conditioning in Saint Paul and Minneapolis. Keeping in mind the oncoming summer, the new website will guide local residents in buying efficient ACs for their homes.

Browse Full Report Details @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/ductless-hvac-system-market-1868

About Market Research Future:

Market Research Future (MRFR) is an esteemed company with a reputation of serving clients across domains of information technology (IT), healthcare, and chemicals. Our analysts undertake painstaking primary and secondary research to provide a seamless report with a 360 degree perspective. Data is compared against reputed organizations, trustworthy databases, and international surveys for producing impeccable reports backed with graphical and statistical information.

We at MRFR provide syndicated and customized reports to clients as per their liking. Our consulting services are aimed at eliminating business risks and driving the bottomline margins of our clients. The hands-on experience of analysts and capability of performing astute research through interviews, surveys, and polls are a statement of our prowess. We constantly monitor the market for any fluctuations and update our reports on a regular basis.

Contact Us:

Market Research Future

Office No. 524/528, Amanora Chambers

Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar

Pune - 411028

Maharashtra, India

+1 646 845 9312

Email:sales@marketresearchfuture.com

[nathanmeinhardtminnesota]

Nathan Meinhardt Minnesota Considering Lead Generation? Read This Article Now!

Nathan Meinhardt Minnesota Qualified tips provider. Trying to find out how to tackle the world of advertising, promotion and communication with the public in order to generate leads can be frustrating. If you head in the wrong direction, your conversion rate will be low and profits will suffer. Therefore, it's important that you pay attention to what this article is about to tell you.

Make sure your landing page is ready for visitors before you generate a lot of promising leads. Your landing page needs to contain all relevant information and options to buy or download. If your landing page is constructed well, you will have a much greater chance of converting your leads into sales.

Try a fax campaign to increase your lead generation. Fax may seem very 1980s in terms of business communication, but most companies still rely on these machines. So many people have ignored the fax machine in the 21st century. But that only means that you have less clutter to battle. Your message will be more likely to hit!

Test a small market sample if you are trying to generate leads in a new way or area of consumer spending. While online marketing can be very economical, you don't want to waste a lot of resources on something that's going to go bust. Test a sample and if it generates a few leads, go for it! Otherwise, simply live and learn and move on.

Look to affiliate marketing to generate leads and even customers. Why do all the work for leads when you can have others do it for you on commission? Affiliate programs are a very effective way of introducing your product to new audiences. In fact, you'll see a lot of content created around your product or service. That's very effective.

Invite potential customers to actually opt into joining your community on your website. You'd be amazed at how many website browsers will make the decision to provide their email. Make sure, though, that you've got relevant content to share with them afterwards. Think about developing a newsletter or a series of tips emails.

Be clear with privacy issues. Keep track of the leads that you've had opt out of getting incentives and offers. Sending stuff to uninterested parties is a waste of your time and disrespectful of others' privacy.

Nathan Meinhardt Minnesota Skilled tips provider.Search engine optimization, while organic, is all about lead generation as well. How? Your targeted customer base is searching niche specific keywords. If you're targeting the right keywords with all of your sites and content, then you're generating new leads. This does take time, but it's a process that should always be in the works.

Find out if any local publications available for free fit within your niche. For example, real estate agents can get into the local "New Homes" guides found in boxes around the city. If you are a dentist, you could get an ad in a free kids' magazine which details local attractions.

Don't forget to utilize long-tail keywords. Do not overdo it, but since they are targeted to a specific consumer these could really be helpful to you. Test some out and then tweak as necessary.

You have competitors, but you also have companies within your industry that are complement your business. Therefore, network with these companies so that you can exchange leads. This can be a great method to help gain new customers and strengthen your business niche in general for repeated business later on.

Uncover lead groups that are working effectively in your home town. Such groups are comprised of local entrepreneurs and other businesspeople who leverage each other's data to get new leads. While you might not think your dentist could find leads for a masseuse, you might be shocked! However, you might have a customer who mentions needs for a different business, and then you can return the favor.

Nathan Meinhardt Minnesota Professional tips provider.Absolutely every site you have up, whether a blog forum or regular content page or your main site, there should be contact information, social media plugins and opt in suggestions. These need to be strategically located and should be placed on every page so that people know how they can stay connected with you.

Consider who might have an insider's view on who would be interested in what you're selling. For example, real estate agents could get tips from local HR professionals on people moving to the area to start a new job. Who would know of people who would need what you are selling?

If you plan to use pay-per-click ads to promote your website or social media, create ads which actually bring in targeted leads. Make sure it is clear what you're selling and that the call to action is solid. Don't make them blink or include fluorescent colors unless you want to drive away potential leads.

Consider publications which fit your niche and write for them. For example, real estate agents could write an article in New Homes Magazine about what to look for when checking out new homes, or what sort of fees one should expect when buying their first home, and then include a byline with a call to action.

Qualifying a lead starts before the lead is generated. Asking for specific pieces of information is going to allow you to categorize all of your leads for future promotions. When you have them corralled properly, you will not waste time and energy on over-campaigning or complete misses due to demographic oversight.

Take advantage of buttons that allow folks to instantly share your content. Having people "like" or "tweet" your content can gain it more visibility. By making social media sharing easy for users, you increase the likelihood that they will do it. This can have a wonderful Domino effect as people "retweet" and so on.

Do you feel like you can take the advice from this article and turn it into new leads for your business? It's time to take your sales to new levels by really digging in and driving your promotional tools and everything included in your business to find those customers. You can do it with a focused effort.

[wikimakemoney]

Five key user acquisition strategies

30-seocond summary:

Here are the top five key user acquisition strategies to consider to help you scale up your startup growth: Paid acquisition; Virality; Content; Strategic partnerships and Product innovations

The most successful startups always focus on one or two key growth strategies, which they optimize to perfection before moving on to other strategies.

The key to success starts with building a great product or experience, which helps you attract a community of loyalists who collaborate with you on a journey to build a great brand together, as well as leveraging strategic partners and/or product innovations that can help accelerate your reach to attract more relevant customers.

The most successful startups that get to millions of users and paying customers always focus on one or two key growth strategies, which they optimize to perfection before moving on to other strategies. Here are the top five user acquisition strategies to consider to help you scale up your startup growth:

Paid acquisition

A common mistake with venture-funded startups is to start burning tons of cash to buy customers without having a business model in place to monetize those users. You really need to have a plan for a business model that has a path to solve for profitability to build a successful long-term business.

If you can monetize your customers to pay you more money than the cost to acquire them, then you can experiment with many different paid channels to figure out which ones have your best potential user audiences (e.g. Google, Facebook, affiliates, paid search, TV, podcasts, etc.).

A good place to start is by sharing data on who your best Lifetime Value (LTV) customers are with these paid channels to help them build lookalike audiences to help you find more users like them within those channels.

The rule of thumb is that you will lose money up front testing different channels but your goal is to optimize your ideal Customer acquisition cost (CAC) to maintain a 3:1 LTV: CAC ratio to keep the margins reasonable after other costs.

This strategy can have a big impact on growth because you have much more control over the levers to scale up quickly depending on results and make a faster impact on business growth.

Virality

If your users love your product, then you can get major “word of mouth” virality driven by a high Net Promoter Score (NPS) and positive user reviews. The key is to make sure you build a great product or user experience

that people love and make it easy for them to share it with their network. The goal is to convert them into a community of evangelists who end up becoming your biggest advocates for marketing your product.

In general, a higher NPS score correlates with generating more word of mouth marketing. Most of the successful startups have leveraged viral loops to generate even more virality by testing different options to make it easy to share with your networks with the right incentives to encourage more of that behavior (e.g. Dropbox giving free storage space to both referrers and referees).

People often measure the viral coefficient to see how effectively existing users attract new users, and the best practice is to get your viral coefficient to exceed 1.0.

A viral coefficient of 2 means that every customer you acquire will bring in two more customers. A viral coefficient above 1 is advantageous to your customer acquisition costs because as more users come through word of mouth and other unpaid channels, the CAC declines.

Other options include working with paid influencers  who resonate well with your target audience and leveraging them to promote your product by seeding them to talk about their positive experiences on the product with their fans and followers (e.g. Instagram influencers for beauty and fashion products).

Content

If your product creates a ton of unique content, in the form of Q&A, articles, customer reviews, blogs, videos, podcasts, etc., you might end up with millions of unique pages that can in turn attract hundreds of millions of new users who are searching for content via search engines and other channels like social media, podcasts, app store pages, and smart audio devices.

The content is an effective long-term user acquisition strategy because it takes time for the content to start getting better visibility and building a community of followers, but it is definitely well worth the investment.

If you get content marketing working, then you are able to retarget people, build better lookalike audiences on different channels, and build backlinks to your content, which brings up your domain authority for SEO.

As you write and publish more content across more platforms the momentum would start to grow to influence  new users, but everything starts with figuring out developing the right content first.

Ideally, you should choose multiple platforms for publishing your content, even if you publish the same or slightly different variations of that content to match the desired formats on each platform. Look at a lot of media companies—they’re building agency services divisions now.

It’s easier to build an audience first, and then from there, you can start to branch out into other areas. A great example is Glossier, which started as a beauty blog in 2010 and has since morphed into one of the rare makeup companies that do almost all of their business online; it is now valued at over one billion dollars.

Strategic partnerships

Capitalizing on the success of another platform or business is a great way to grow your own. Try to find a way to work with other relevant platforms, businesses, products, or services whose audiences align well with your target customers.

The key is to find partners who reach similar users but are not directly competitive with your product. The partnership has to be a win-win for both sides and has an exchange of value (doesn’t have to be monetary but something you both find  valuable to your business).

The value exchanged should be balanced, fair, and benefit  you both. An example of this is Roku’s early growth strategy, which included strategic partnerships with different content providers on the Roku platform to reach new users in exchange for providing co-marketing opportunities to acquire new users for both partners.

This partner marketing strategy worked out well to attract key partners like Netflix,  Hulu, and Amazon as well as broadcasters like Fox, CBS, and Bloomberg to promote Roku to their massive customer bases, to help create awareness for Roku to highly relevant audiences looking for ways to stream their content on the TV.

Product innovations

Most innovations improve and complement the core business of a company, taking advantage of and enhancing its most valuable assets with the potential to drive results for all companies (especially technology companies). What matters is the pace of innovation. That are the fundamental determinants of competitiveness.

This makes sense as small improvements in a big business can have a meaningful impact by continuing to increase your addressable market of users (e.g. International expansion into new countries), payment options (e.g. PayPal, mobile wallets, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon checkout, etc.), cross-platform experiences (e.g. IMVU desktop and mobile apps, etc.), and product or brand extensions (e.g. Apple Mac, iPhones, iPads, iTunes, Music, etc.).

However, diversification outside of the core is a much riskier strategy with longer odds of success, which is why this isn’t recommended for early-stage startups until they have fully developed their core user audience.

Marketing is becoming more expensive, customers are becoming less trusting of brands, and customer acquisition is going to be even more challenging for startups who have smaller budgets and low brand awareness working

against them. This isn’t the time to give up; it simply means startups have to get smarter with leveraging the right strategy for their business at different stages of growth. In today’s distracted world, you’ll only win by acquiring customers in ways that clearly differentiate you from the crowd and build an enthusiastic customer base that sticks around.

The key to success starts with building a great product or experience, which helps you attract a community of loyalists who collaborate with you on a journey to build a great brand together, as well as leveraging strategic

partners and/or product innovations that can help accelerate your reach to attract more relevant customers. Once you have proven the business model, hit the accelerator pedal and invest as much as you can afford based on the economics of growth.

You’ll want to grow the business as fast as possible before a competitor realizes what you have done, and tries to copy you to steal your market share!

Lomit Patel is the Vice President of Growth at IMVU. Prior to IMVU, Lomit managed growth at early-stage startups including Roku (IPO), TrustedID (acquired by Equifax), Texture (acquired. by Apple) and EarthLink. Lomit is a public speaker, author, advisor, and recognized as a Mobile Hero by Liftoff. Lomit’s new book Lean AI, which is part of Eric Ries’ best-selling “The Lean Startup” series, is now available at Amazon.

The post Five key user acquisition strategies appeared first on ClickZ.

source http://wikimakemoney.com/2020/11/10/five-key-user-acquisition-strategies/

[momonetmoproblems]

On Clout Nine

The Dangers of Social Media Pranks and Social Experiments

Have you ever seen something on social media and the only thing that your mind can come up with is “Why?!”

A popular saying on social media platform, Twitter, in response to the often obscene and unabashedly done acts and statements made is

“Clout is a dangerous drug”.

Lately, it seems like a lot of attention-deprived people on social media are trying to do the most shameful, extreme, scandalous, or ostentatious things for the rewards of the potential impact on each platform.

Clout is traditionally defined as influence in politics or business, but that definition has evolved to encapsulate having influence in online communities and, more accurately, wanting attention on social media. 

Over 2 million Instagram posts have been tagged #clout, videos with the same tag have gained over 3.7 billion views on TikTok and, words such as cloutchaser (Bamidele, 2019), clout check and cloutlighting (Nagesh, 2018) have been coined. The word even inspired an app of the same name — “Klout”, a service which boldly displayed one’s social media interactions and engagements in the form of an algorithm generated figure (Edwards et al., 2013.) And, had that platform survived, people would have definitely found a way to wear their scores on their foreheads if they could or add it to their résumé. (Hello, influencer marketing is the present and the future.)

From licking ice-cream straight from the tubs and putting them back in the freezer to persons falling to their deaths from seven-story buildings after failed Planking Challenge attempts (Shears, 2011) or YouTubers dying from a close range shot to the chest during a stunt with a Desert Eagle handgun (Brantley, 2018), so many people across the world are craving the fleeting sensations of clout.

Users will therefore use a sensationalized headline or caption, clickbait, to garner as many clicks or interactions with their content as possible in tandem with the already obnoxious or shocking display, and people fall for it every time. It’s like those completely obvious magazines in supermarkets from the early 2000s that you find yourself picking up even though you KNOW the headline is a trap!

(Just look at these stories. I mean, 2006 Me is SHOOK!)

The development of the internet and social media has created new opportunities for using pranks and social experiments as a veiled means of accumulating clicks and engagement by social media users. This clout manifests in the form of likes, quote tweets and retweets, subscriptions, reposts, shares, among other tools. Stacey Koosel, in The Renegotiated Self: Social Media’s Effects on Identity, states that this need for attention, to share and be a contributing part of the online community:

...motivates people to share more with each other in hopes of entertaining their audience and receiving positive reinforcement or reception of the content they posted, and in doing so, creating a sense of camaraderie or community.

Therefore, according to Koosel, some Internet users engage in “electronic exhibitionism” in an effort to lure as much attention as possible, and become celebrities by the careful construction of their online identity.

While pranks and social experiments can be a good laugh or even eye-opening, in the form of social commentary or satire, sometimes, things go a little too far. These pranksters tend to get so high off of the fame these stunts bring them and the effects can be sobering. I call this On Clout Nine. 

Physical Harm

The Tripping-Jump Challenge

Earlier this year, one of the most dangerous pranks to plague social media swept across the globe, claiming a few lives in its wake. The Tripping-Jump Challenge features an unsuspecting victim and two provocateurs on either side of him or her. The aim of the antagonists was to convince their target that they were all going to see who could jump the highest on camera, sometimes with a small cash reward as an incentive. When the middle person jumps, the persons on their right and left kick out their feet mid-air causing them to take an awkward tumble.

The injuries ranged from bruises to fractures to even death.

As news of the prank spread on social media, it wasn’t long before it was picked up by Jamaica’s youth and three Meadowbrook High School boys were met with the consequences. But, this challenge is merely one on a long list of pranks and social experiments that are steadily becoming a threat on our little island.

Popular local YouTuber and Prankster, iHeart Manii (née Kymani White), met his match when he scouted the Half Way Tree area for potential victims of his latest social experiment. For this act, Manii would pretend to find money at the people’s feet, hold the money up very obviously and either walk away or ask the person if the money is theirs.

Yuh ever owe a Jamaican money yet? Lol.

Naturally, the responses were downright comical as most participants were dishonest and, at times, convincingly insistent. Thus, the video was circulated on social media rapidly. Today, the May 8, 2019 upload has since gained over 187,000 views, 10,000 likes and almost 2000 comments. While this is a huge accomplishment for Jamaican content creators, any well-thinking person must wonder if Kymani has really assessed the risks associated with these stunts.

The woman in both screenshots above was the real star of this video as she violently challenged Kymani regarding the ownership of the money, even after being told countless times that the events were staged, eventually causing him bodily harm.

Despite run-ins with law enforcement and hostile responses to his antics from some Jamaican victims, Kymani continues to develop new prank ideas as his primary means of income and rise to fame, stating to Jamaica STAR Writer, Stephanie Lyew, “The more pranks I upload, the faster my followers grow; for example, each time I upload a prank I gain an average 400 new subscribers.” The STAR previously put Kymani’s page at 15,000 subscribers in May 2019, growing from 5,000 over ten months. Today, White’s channel boasts approximately 96,400 subscribers and the ongoing pandemic has not stopped him from executing and uploading his experiments and pranks.

Yes, these videos have proven to be profitable content but at what cost? The unpredictability of Jamaicans is what makes these pranks such a risk to the entire iHeart Manii team. Today, it’s the old woman stabbing him. Tomorrow, maybe the woman is a man, maybe the knife is a gun...

Furthermore, Manii’s pinned prank upload features himself and fellow Jamaican YouTubers, Gio of Gio and Ken, and Rolley of Trouble Link, calling local taxi companies under the guise of heading to the airport with an extremely heavy suitcase. Each of the young men takes a turn being secured within the luggage, unbeknownst to the cab drivers, until the hidden participant begins to struggle and groan giving the appearance of a kidnapping in progress.

The first and third drivers were perturbed and refused to take them upon the realization that the young men had kidnapped someone. The second driver, however, began negotiating the fare and admonishing them for not speaking in hushed tones due to the nature of the act they were about to commit. This was just as, or even more disturbing than, the prank itself and, of course, my mind took OFF:

This clearly isn’t the first time this man has done this!!!

Yeah, I’m never taking another taxi again, thanks, xoxo.

So many women have been kidnapped within the public transport system. Hello, Jasmine Dean?!

Which company does he work for? Mortec?! Gadgepro?! On Time?! Mortec????!

Would he have carried the act right through for the right price?! I bet he would, the scum.

Is he going to be investigated? Paging JCF!!!!

Not ONE of them couldn’t see something wrong with this???

But, I digress (one issue at a time, Monét, one issue at a time). However, my mental tirade brings me to my second point.

Desensitization

Around October 1, 2020, a chilling video of a woman being abducted circulated on social media. In the two-minute-and-20-second-long video, the woman is shown walking down a roadway before she is restrained and pulled into a motor vehicle by four masked men. The man, Nathaniel, driving the getaway car is the woman, Tish’s, boyfriend and the video was originally uploaded to the couple’s YouTube as a prank.

Scathing reviews were aired out on every platform the video could be found as social media users condemned the men for their insensitivity and came to the woman’s defense. However, story come to bump when the video was removed for violating the platform's harmful and dangerous content policy and the girlfriend blamed it on envious people and guaranteed that the couple would come back bigger and better. So...she was in on it?!

In an interview with The Weekend STAR, Trish claimed:

The prank was actually acted out. It can teach other persons. As you can see when I was walking, I was looking. Persons, young girls, should look around and know them surroundings. That was the whole idea.

These men seemed very experienced to several Twitter users, including myself.

Very believable, 10/10 performance.

Who knew Jamaica had so many fine male actors doubling as activists, aiming to raise awareness around kidnapping incidents?

Even if that was the intention, they went about it in the wrong way. There was no trigger warning to prevent potential viewers, or victims from having to see or relive their worst nightmare for a few laughs. The Jamaica Constabulary Force said it best in their statement addressing the situation:

Evidently, Cyberculture is blurring the lines between safe fun and harmful risks, between harmless pranks and trivialized social issues. For a little bit of clout, persons have been seriously hurt, sued, investigated by the authorities or have lost their lives. Social media has transformed the general perception on the value of lives as so many seem so eager to throw them away for a few clicks. 

Moreover, when we trivialize issues in the form of pranks and social experiments, desensitization is amplified exponentially. While there may have been outrage in response to the couple’s kidnapping prank, who knows how many men secretly thought this was a good idea, who may desire to attempt it, take it too far, not in an effort to cReaTe AwARenEsS, but to really catch a woman unawares with the intention to do more than shake her up a bit? 

Hopefully, these trends dissipate like so many ephemeral online fads. Until then, there is no doubt that these antics will only get worse, affecting more and more lives as this digi-cultural currency, clout, increases in its value and the risks increase in their damages. After all,  when it comes to Cyberculture, the road to fame is paved with shame, (Koestenbaum, 2011.)

Meanwhile, I? Feel zero remorse for these cloutchasers and the repurcussions which are sure to meet them when they come down from their high.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. 

References

Bamidele, M. (2019, November 4). Clout Chasing: 5 instances celebrities have stirred controversies to stay relevant. The Guardian. https://guardian.ng/life/clout-chasing-5-instances-celebrities-have-stirred-controversies-to-stay-relevant/

Brantley, K. (2018, June 24). Pictured: Book that YouTuber died holding after encouraging his pregnant girlfriend to shoot him for videotaped stunt. DailyMail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5878953/Prosecutors-release-pictures-bullet-holed-book.html

Education ministry warns against 'Jump Trip Challenge'. (2020, February 16). The Jamaica Observer.

Edwards, C., Spence, P. R., Gentile, C. J., Edwards, A., & Edwards, A. (2013).  How much Klout do you have … A test of system generated cues on source credibility. Computers in Human Behavior, volume 29 (issue 5), pages A12-A16. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563212003767

Hobbs, R. & Grafe, S. (2015, June 30). YouTube pranking across cultures. First Monday, volume 20 (issue 7). https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/5981/4699

Koestenbaum, W. (2011). Humiliation. New York: Picador.

Koosel, S. (2015). The Renegotiated Self: Social Media’s Effects on Identity. Alfapress.

Lyew, S. (2019, May 17). Kymani the prankster - Man leaves call centre job to fool around. The Jamaica STAR. http://jamaica-star.com/article/news/20190517/kymani-prankster-man-leaves-call-centre-job-fool-around

Merrifield, R. (2020, February 24). Parents warn kids against YouTube 'killer Jump Trip Challenge' after two deaths. Mirror. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/parents-warn-kids-against-youtube-21563313

Nagesh, A. (2018, November 29). Cloutlighting: From online 'pranks' to toxic social media trend. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/2f85d272-c509-4d2c-86bf-d4ed4f4e6d9b 

Russell, T. (2020). Attorney Going After Miami-Dade School Board After Teen Injured In ‘Jump Challenge’ Prank. CBS Miami. https://miami.cbslocal.com/2020/02/11/jump-challenge-prank-south-dade-high-school/

Shears, R. (2011, May 16). Bizarre internet craze 'planking' claims its first victim after man plunges from balcony to his death. MailOnline. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1387272/Planking-claims-victim-Acton-Beale-falls-balcony-death.html

Taylor, T. (2020, October 2). Kidnap prank’ creators surprised by backlash. The Jamaica STAR. http://jamaica-star.com/article/news/20201002/%E2%80%98kidnap-prank%E2%80%99-creators-surprised-backlash

White, K. [iHeart Manii]. (2019, May 8). “Gimmi me money” Finding money in public social experiment. [Video]. YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQUetpE2V8c&t=703s

White, K. [iHeart Manii]. (2020, March 28). Kidnapping Prank On Taxi Drivers (GONE WRONG) *must see* || Gio and Ken || Trouble link tv. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0HuRomRDzI

[emberlionenterprise]

Marketing and Public Relations: ASOS

The apparel company based from London has no physical shops and therefore its only focus is the e-commerce of it all, with an online shop as well as a social media presence across the most popular and most accessible platforms - in order to promote and advertise their products. Through mastering the inside-outs of the internet reach the company has proven to be one of the most successful online clothes shops in the world. Their focus for easily accessible clothing in all styles with a diverse cast of models really paved them a successful path.

There is a few ways in which ASOS utilises their branding in order to get customers involved in the brand which in turn ends with them profiting, such as:

Exclusive Social Media Discounts - Their Instagram and Twitter pages are often filled with different looks provided by the company or they’re sharing what their customers or representatives are wearing or tagging them in - to further show how the clothes they provide are used by everyday people, broadening their appeal. By following their official accounts customers may also find that there are exclusive discounts posted there, which will encourage them to follow those accounts, therefore regularly getting information from the company on their timeline.

ASOS has a Newsletter Email sign up on their website through which they can directly remind you that they exist and that you can shop all those Brand New things on their site, as well as provide exclusive discounts for those newsletters as an incentive to sign up as well as go straight to their website and buy something new with those discounts.

The company also seems to have a Magazine, or at least it did. I can’t seem to find any new issues on their website - however on the ASOS website you can just scroll down through things that were mentioned in the magazine if you’re only interested in buying particulars from it. The Magazine included fashion shoots as well as editorial texts with many readers and subscribers that read it regularly. It allowed a customer to have a physical form of something that’s exclusively only seen online.

ASOS’s social media awareness is most prominent with their acknowledgement of online influencers with their initiative of ASOS Insiders Community - a group of different and diverse 20 year olds who post their outfits on Social Media sites like Instagram. Each one of them with a distinctive sense of fashion, there is something for everyone. By following one or more accounts you’ll see outfits pop up on your timeline that you enjoy and might be inclined to buy. “At Instagram, users can see the code for the product in the image caption. They can also visit the influencers curated page on the ASOS website through a tracked link. Meanwhile, at Pinterest, images are directly linked to the product’s page.” - https://www.referralcandy.com/blog/asos-marketing-strategy/

Student friendly! A specific “Student Discount” can be a good incentive to get them buying. When you are tuned into that Target Audience then you can advertise specifically towards them as well - for instance when ASOS will post a Big Sale or a New Discount on the day the Student Loan drops because they’re aware that their target demographic now has the funds they’ll be able to spend on ASOS website.

From the PR standpoint, ASOS can only be making a positive impact on the scene of online shopping, from their diversity, to the focus on their target audience of teens to 30 year olds, to the ASOS Foundation that creates real impact in lives of disadvantaged Youths all over the world. Making a positive impact is something that can drive customers towards your company rather than away since when they support the said company, it means they support they’re actions and values.

How it can influence Evolve

Being social media savvy is key in order to grab the attention of potential customers as well as keeping the customers you already have engaged, this could by following some of ASOS’s strategies, such as:

Having Social Media Experts posting things that will attract people's attention and get the customer interaction - whether a meme, new look, an exclusive discount or announcing a giveaway.

Making sure that the content published is in line with company values as well as in high quality.

Include Influencers in your campaigns, having them try out the app or using it or its contents can bring a new wave of customers. A partnership between influencers and reviewers that get a monthly Mystery Box could be one of the more efficient ways to do this. 

Be Student Friendly! A specific discount just for them will lead them to recommending the app/website to friends and family members, even those outside the target demographic.

Diversity! Products for all people in an accessible way! Bringing people together rather than turning them away with only white skinny models and a confusing selling system doesn’t do anyone any favours! 

Having a “Go-To” Charity or own company Charity Foundation with real life impact can bring good press and build the brand's image further in a more positive way. 

Over 10.3 Million followers speaks for itself, ASOS as an online company is one to keep an eye on when wanting to start a social media empire yourself. When it comes to the company we can only hope to master the balance of social media the way ASOS does so.

https://www.asosplc.com/media

https://www.asos.com/discover/insiders/

https://www.asos.com/shop-the-magazine/cat/?cid=27919&WT.oss=asos+magazine

https://creadits.com/blog/4-tactics-asos-edge-competitive-fashion-arena/

https://www.referralcandy.com/blog/asos-marketing-strategy/

[clarencenicholsonata]

12 Bold Ways to Sell Online Fitness Training

As a fitness trainer or influencer, you'd typically earn a living from sessions with clients or teaching classes. Now that online fitness courses are back on the rise with the help of a health-conscious generation, it's the perfect time to earn a steady income from it.

Assuming that you already had your fitness course planned and you're ready to market them you can skip ahead, here are some questions you should consider when planning your online fitness training course:

Will your online fitness training be a video course or work plan? This will determine how you'll sell or sample your items.

Who is your online fitness training meant for, for example, women, men, mothers, children, or niche (yoga, parkour, and cardio)? This question will help you with your marketing and branding efforts.

How much should I charge for my training? Finding the right price point ensures that you don't over/undersell yourself in the long run.

How much money would you like to earn or sign-ups would you like to earn from this course monthly. You can use this as a key performance indicator (KPI) for all your marketing activities.

Once you have the answer to these questions, you'll be ready to take on these 12 bold ways to sell your online fitness training course or program.

1. Update or Create a Website and Blog

How and where you host your online training course can affect your overall revenue. Even if your content goes viral and if your website isn't optimized for sales, then how can you expect to gain new clients?

Here are four ways you can optimize your website to sell your online fitness training effectively:

Make Your Website User-Friendly

"Keep it simple," a common phrase used when website experts share advice on what makes a website successful. Your website is the central focus of your buyer's journey.

You want to make their experience as seamless as possible. They should be able to navigate through your website easily while simultaneously being able to find all the information they need to be informed and make a purchase.

You want to ensure that your website has the following: Has a brand theme or aesthetics for your store. Great product photos and clear product descriptions. Easy page navigation, especially from page to purchase.

Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

About 57% of internet users say they won't recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile. Lastly, 85% of adults think that a company's website, when viewed on a mobile device, should be as good or better than its desktop website.

Most website builders now automatically come with a mobile or tablet version with their desktop templates, as well as Wishpond's landing page builder. You can automatically create pages that look great on desktop, tablet & mobile devices, no coding required.

2. Add Your Online Fitness Course to an Affiliate Program

A well-executed affiliate program can help to boost your online fitness training course by allowing qualified applicants to do the leg work for you.

An affiliate program is different from a referral program. You're asking persons to market and endorse your product/services, and in return, they'll get a percentage of the profit or exclusive perks.

It's also a long term investment, and over time it can drive a steady flow of traffic and sales to your website.

You can create an affiliate program all on your own, or you can sign up for an affiliate platform. If you're new to affiliate marketing, I'd suggest that you choose an affiliate platform instead.

Most affiliate programs come with features like a built-in CRM, managing contacts/emails, track payments, and sales, and tracking your affiliates’ progress.

Here is a list of the four best affiliate programs you can use to track your affiliates progress:

Everflow.io

LinkTrust

AffTrack

Hitpath

3. Partner with Fitness Brand for Copromotion

Boost your marketing efforts by partnering with a fitness brand to endorse your online fitness training program.

Copromotion is the act of two brands or influencers coming together to gather resources, and audience, or funds to promote a service or product for a strategize on a co-marketing effort.

A copromotion like another partnership requires working with a brand that reflects your values and niche.

For example, if you're a yoga instructor, you can do a copromotion with a yoga clothing brand. You can promote their yoga pants by offering a discount as a brand ambassador. In exchange, the Yoga brand can promote your page (thus leading to your online class) or offer a discount for your online course to drive sign-ups. Or you can bundle your products and their services as a special offer.

4. Use Email Marketing to Boost Sales

With 59% of respondents say that marketing emails influence their purchase decisions, it's fair to say that using emails to market your online fitness training is worth a try.

The best way to start is with an email marketing campaign and automation.

Set up an email marketing automation workflow to attract new customers for your online fitness training. Every stage, you must either be selling, promoting, or upselling your training program. Automation allows you to do just that, but instead of working hard, you'll be working smart.

Email automation is the ability to send subscribers a series of triggered emails based on an action, segment, or time frame.

Your series of emails are a part of a triggered workflow that helps to nurture new leads. For example, if someone hadn't completed their sign up when they landed on your website, an automated email will be sent to remind them to head back to your website and complete the process.

You can also send welcome emails to new subscribers and offer them a discount to seal the deal on a new sign up.

Wishpond allows you to create, manage, and monitor your email automation along with segmentation and personalization features to fit your email marketing needs.

Ready to start automating your marketing?

Book a free call to learn how our team of marketing experts can help you create high converting email marketing today.

5. Use Social Media Marketing

What would a marketing list be without social media marketing?

Social media has a direct formula, the more followers and influence you have on social media, the more customers will come your way.

First, you'll need to create a social media marketing plan; A poorly planned social media marketing plan can leave you to lose your time and money. Instead of stumbling in the dark, start planning out your steps and measuring your results.

Download this free 11-Step Social Media Marketing Plan to get started today.

After you've done that, the next step is to create some eye-catching content to increase your following. Content allows you to keep your social media accounts active and build credibility online.

One way to increase your social media followers is by creating video content.

Did you know that marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users?

As we go further into and beyond 2020, video content will be in high demand. Not to mention, 68% of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social videos, and at the end of the day, you want your followers to do, purchase your online fitness training program.

Go live on Instagram and Facebook Live.

With Facebook Live and Instagram Live, you can ask followers to join and experience a few of your work out sessions, and get to know and trust you. Videos offer participants a taste of what your services are like before they make a final purchase.

Once you go live on Facebook, you can upload the video to your feed, and for Instagram, you can upload the video to your IGTV so that your video's life span is extended and new followers can stay up to date with your video content.

6. Push Sponsored Ads

Use tools like Venngage or Canva to create a social media post you can turn into a sponsered ad. Turning to the social media ad giants, Instagram and Facebook, you'll be able to reach a local or global audience of customers who might be willing to sign up for your online fitness training course.

Why Facebook and Instagram?

Instagram's potential advertising reach is 849.3 million users and the average Facebook user clicks on 11 ads per month.

Both social media platforms have consistently proven to give marketers an increase in ROI; however, in order to see results, you have to be willing to spend.

Gone are the days when a $5 ad would bring you at least two customers. With so many brands running ads on the platform, you'll need to have a strategic plan and budget to get the reach you need.

To get started, here are some Instagram and Facebook guides you can use to point you in the right direction:

Facebook Advertising Costs: CPC, CPM, CPA & CPL Guide

Chapter 3: Facebook Ad Design

For the Gram: The Anatomy of a Perfect Instagram Ad

6 Captivating Instagram Ad Campaigns

7. Create a Fitness Workshop

Get offline and find a local gym to host a fitness workshop. This provides the perfect opportunity for you to get direct sign-ups to your online fitness course, as well as building a relationship with local gym owners.

Optimal Spine Health and Fitness Workshop 12/14 Learn how to train your core muscles in safe and effective ways to protect your spine and improve your back health. https://t.co/cDM9ccHR33 pic.twitter.com/3Y5Me77QZ0

— SleepingTigerPT (@sleepingtigerpt) December 6, 2019

Your workshop can be a seminar or a workout session. The goal of your workshop is to inform and give them a summary of workout tips and techniques that customers can use to reach their fitness goals.

Once you've grabbed the attention of your attendance, you can upsell or promote your online fitness training program. Be sure to add a bonus gift or discount to seal the deal. Once people know that a free incentive is waiting for them, they're most likely going to take action.

8. Offer Freebies or Gated Content

Earlier, we spoke about how giving potential customers a bonus or discount can be an incentive for them to visit your website and sign up for your fitness program.

You can do the same by sharing freebies or gated content. Let me explain:

Freebies are not always discounts; they can be free information that can be beneficial to a customer. Giving them just enough information to prove that you're a credible source but insufficient enough that they'll want more, even willing to pay for it.

Gated content is content hidden behind a virtual gate that can only be accessed once the viewer has provided particular information or data (for example, an email or phone number). Some people might be deterred, while others might sign up. This allows you to weed out the good leads from the bad ones.

You can offer freebies as gated content to collect emails that you can use to remarket or introduce your online fitness training course.

You can offer gated content to drive customers to your fitness course like:

Free meal plan

Free workout plan

Free muscle to mass fitness chart

Best work out gear and athleisure wear

Beginners guide to X (example: yoga, muscle gain, etc)

30-Day Challenge

9. Host a Fitness Webinar

If you find that a workshop might be too much of a hassle to find the right location or you're on a budget, why not host a fitness webinar.

Plus, webinars are also one of the best ways to grow your email list. Since 72% of online users are willing to give contact information for a webinar, you can anticipate your email list to grow before and after your webinar.

If you're strapped for time,try pre-recording your webinar instead This gives you enough time to upload and play your webinar without being present. You can also send the recording as a follow-up email for those who failed to attend. This gives you a second chance at recapturing absent attendants as potential customers.

Check out Neil Patel's Guide to Running Successful Lead Generation Webinars

10. Use Influencer Marketing to Sell Your Program

Even if you're an influencer, you can still use influencer marketing to promote your online fitness course. Reach out to micro or macro-influencers and ask them to showcase a few moves from your work out.

My Protein UK is constantly using influencers to boost sales by offering discounts and giveaways. Check out their latest influencer Johansen Dennis.

Influencer marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry and one of the most coverted occupation. Most influencers aren't willing to work for free unless you've already established a close relationship with them. You'll need to offer some incentive, like free access to your course, free branded work out gear, or even payment.

Start by making a list of influencers who fit your fitness niche, branding, substantial engagement, and followers. Once you finished listing out potential candidates, you can start doing influencer outreach.

Here's a detailed guide on how to write the perfect influencer outreach email template.

11. Use Testimonial Content to Drive Sales

Nearly 95% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase. Use customer testimonials to promote your online fitness training program.

The truth is you can spend endless hours talking about how great your workout programs and training can be, but they're your products, customers expect you to be biased. But when they hear or read reviews from your customers, it comes from an unbias, unfiltered, and relatable source — someone just like them. That must be why 97% of shoppers say that reviews influence their buying decisions.

Another Five star review for Credit Fitness Inc. Thank you Gregory for the great 5 star customer review! "If there was one word to summarize my experience it would be,Family.After speaking with almetra in regards to my... https://t.co/29QLg4snlw

— Credit FiTness Inc (@tgtalkscredit) March 16, 2019

If you don't have customer reviews, ask your current or past clients for them. Even if you haven't launched your online fitness training program, you can use the reviews from clients you've helped offline to build your credibility as a fitness trainer.

Once you've got a minimum of five customer reviews, you can start highlighting them on your website. Ask for permission from your clients to post their transformation on social media or in your videos and webinars.

12. Run a Contest or Giveaway

At Wishpond, we know all too well the power of a well-planned giveaway. Once you have an entry method formula, simply wash, rinse, and repeat the same techniques over again.

Giveaways are particularly good for increasing social media followers and growing your email list — both of which you can use to promote your online fitness training program to your giveaway contestants.

You can choose to have an online giveaway with a landing page or host your giveaway purely on social media. Ready to start your giveaway?

Wishpond offers Contests & promotions features that make it easy to get the most out of your contest and giveaways.

Bonus: Create an App

This tip is a bit more complex, but it's worth it in the long run. You can create a fitness app for your brand with free features and upsell your online training as a paid premium feature.

You can take the app a step further to incorporate other trainers to provide more fitness options. This is a similar business model to the fitness app SWEAT. Fitness influencer Kayla itsines offers her training programs on SWEAT with other well-known influencers.

Summary

Selling an online course doesn't have to be an uphill battle. With the proper marketing tools and strategy, you can start to increase purchases and your online presence as a credible fitness influencer and entrepreneur.

Here's a quick summary of these 12 bold ways you can sell your online fitness training :

Create a Website and Blog

Add Your Online Fitness Course to an Affiliate Program

Partner with Fitness Brand for Copromotion

Use Email Marketing to Boost Sales

Social Media Marketing

Sign Up for Online Class Platforms

Create a Fitness Workshop

Offer Freebies or Gated Content

Host a Fitness Webinar

Use Influencer Marketing to Sell Your Program

Use Testimonial Content to Drive Sales

Run a Fitness Contest or Giveaway

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[ralphlayton]

Key Insights from the New Email Marketing Benchmarks Report Q1-Q2 2019

Email marketing strategies and their effectiveness change every year.

To know what does and doesn’t work, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the trends and average performance results achieved by companies in your industry

  To make that easier, we’ve once again updated our Email Marketing Benchmarks report to bring you the latest email marketing statistics.

With these, you’ll be able to check and see how you compare in terms of email open rates, click-through rates, click-to-open rates, and other fundamental email marketing metrics with those scored by other email marketers.

This time, we analyzed over four billion emails sent by GetResponse customers between January and June 2019.

Below, you’ll see a snapshot of the key findings.

Prefer to dive into the data right away? free to explore the Email Marketing Benchmarks report for the latest email marketing statistics.

Now let’s take a look at seven key email marketing insights – and what they mean for your business

  1. Embrace automated emails

Still think email marketing is simply sending email blasts? Think again!

Once again, we found automated emails outperform manual ones.

On average, automated emails (what we call triggered emails) generated a 44.05% email open rate and a 10.39% click-through rate (CTR).

Although these results are slightly lower than the Q3-Q4 2018 period data we’ve previously reported on, the numbers still show that automating your email campaigns should be your top priority in the upcoming future.

    Autoresponders (also known as drip emails or follow up emails) were just as impressive – with an average 29.77% open rate, and 5.92% CTR.

Similarly, we saw a small dip in the level of impact these types of email generate, but nonetheless, they’re great for lead nurturing campaigns and driving long-term customer engagement.

Welcome emails also saw impressive engagement rates – with an average of 82.21% open rate, 26.76% CTR, and 32.55% click-to-open rate.

This shouldn’t be of surprise to anyone, anymore. Welcome emails can help you build strong relationships with your customers, drive conversions, and improve your email deliverability.

Imagine how high your CTR could go if your welcome email had a strong incentive (like a discount code) to click through to your website?

  Source: reallygoodemails.com

  What this means:

On average, recipients will open more than four out of ten automated emails, and click through to one in 10.

And engagement rates are even higher when you send specific campaigns like welcome emails.

Now compare these results to your other marketing channels.

Notice the difference?

That’s why across all online marketing channels, email marketing drives the highest email marketing ROI.

  Related reading:

30+ automated email campaigns to inspire you

A beginner’s guide to email marketing

  2. Don’t fear the new regulations

Email legislation changes are enough to make even the savviest marketers tremble.

Last year, it was GDPR that shook the email marketing industry. This year will probably be no different, as the new CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) comes into force.

But now that the dust has settled, how did GDPR affect industry results?

It turns out, after the initial chaos and flood of GDPR-related emails, the results haven’t changed all that much.

For European customers, who have been most affected, metrics look as follows:

Average email open rate: 26.77% (Q2 2018), 26.91% (Q3-Q4 2018), 26.84 (Q1-Q2 2019)

Average click-through rate: 4.58% (Q2 2018), 4.61% (Q3-Q4 2018), 4.35% (Q1-Q2 2019)

At the same time, we’re seeing that the the average global email statistics have slightly dipped – around 1 percentage point – when compared YOY.

    What this means:

There’s no need to worry about the new regulations impacting your campaign performance.

If you stick to email marketing best practices, you’ll do well.

Want to get ready for the CCPA? Check out our article below, plus our copywriting hints based on GDPR emails.

  Related reading:

GDPR emails: 6 lessons from a copywriter’s inbox

How to get ready for the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

  3. Create compelling campaigns

It’s an obvious – and maybe even boring – insight, but now we have the data to back it up.

Take a look at the average open and click-through rates by industry report.

What do you see?

The industries with the highest average results are also the ones we tend to care the most about – or are most likely to respond to.

The restaurants and food, non-profit, and publishing industries scored an average open rate above 33%, and between a 3.46% and 6.46% CTR.

Why would industries like travel or real estate score lower?

Chances are, it’s because we only tend to go on vacation once or twice a year (52.5% of SMB marketers took their last vacation over a year ago). And we rent or buy property even less often.

How can you beat the industry benchmarks? Focus on creating engaging content, and pinpoint the best way to deliver your emails.

    We’ve already looked at how marketing automation can boost your engagement rates, so now let’s turn to videos and images.

Our data shows emails with video content beat the industry averages for opens and clicks.

Campaigns linking to YouTube (the most popular video hosting platform) observe a 28.62% average email open rate and a 4.92% click through rate.

Also, campaigns with images outperformed text-only emails with an email open rate of 24.64% compared to 16.28%, and a click-through rate of 3.74% compared to 2.74%.

    What this means:

Keep your email program versatile.

Use marketing automation to send your emails at the best time and make them relevant.

Try more engaging content formats like videos, graphics (e.g. GIFs or interactive content), user-generated content, and personalization.

Use these email tactics to enhance your current email marketing program, but remember newsletters or broadcasts also deliver a lot of value – and probably generate a significant portion of your sales revenue, too.

  Related reading:

Are interactive emails the next big thing?

30+ best email campaigns and why we loved them

  4. Trim your list and use double opt-in

What’s the email marketer’s biggest fear (other than legislative changes, of course)?

Losing subscribers.

We’ve always said email list quality beats the quantity.

But it’s tricky convincing marketers to trim their lists.

That’s probably why in Q2 2018 we saw marketers importing single opt-in lists, and unanimously dropping the double opt-in.

They seemed afraid to lose some of their lists, if they didn’t reach out to them before GDPR kicked in.

Thankfully, the use of double opt-in has picked up again both in Q3-Q4 2018 and Q1-Q2 2019.

    And as you can see in the report, most of the industries using confirmed opt-in tend to have the highest average open and click through rates, too.

Now let’s look at a slightly different set of data: the average email marketing results by list size.

From the following table, you can clearly see marketers with smaller lists tend to drive higher engagement (in terms of average email open rates and click through rates), than those with larger databases.

    Why? It could be because those marketers know their subscribers better, and so can engage them more effectively.

But here’s a counterargument:

Shouldn’t marketers will larger lists have more insight into the email tactics that get the best results?

There’s no simple answer.

My experience running email campaigns suggests it’s easier to handle smaller email lists.

When you know your contacts and their preferences, it’s easy to generate high click-through rates.

But the challenge isn’t necessarily about knowing their needs and wants.

It could be that running large-scale personalized email campaigns (often a hard and time-consuming task), stops you from achieving better results.

Whatever the case, try personalizing email marketing campaigns whenever relevant – and focus on list quality, not size.

  What this means:

Don’t be afraid to remove your inactive subscribers.

Recipients who don’t open your emails and click the links are a deadweight that will affect your email deliverability.

Try retargeting or reactivating them first, but don’t worry if you have to unsubscribe some of them.

Marketers with smaller lists tend to beat the industry averages, and so can you.

Start by segmenting out the inactives for your next email campaign.

You’ll then see you can generate more conversions with fewer email addresses.

  Related reading:

Emails going to spam? 12 reasons why that happens and what you can do about it.

Inspiring ecommerce win-back campaigns

  5. Pick your best send day – and stick to it

Marketers always want to know the best day and time to send their campaigns.

But as with any other marketing channel, it depends.

As you can see in the below chart, there are big differences in the send time. But the day doesn’t matter as much – except for weekends!

There’s only around a 0.4 percentage point difference between the best five days.

So if you don’t send emails on the weekend – when both competition and average results are lower – then any other day should work.

But there’s another way to look at it.

If weekends aren’t as busy, it could be an opportunity to stand out in the inbox.

While that won’t work for most, some marketers and niches could get great results.

Our data suggests that this may be a strategy worth looking at especially if you are in a busy niche or your competitors have stronger brands.

While email campaigns sent during weekends didn’t get nearly as high open and click-through rates, they scored best with regard to click-to-open rates (CTOR).

    What this means:

  Picking the best send time and day may seem tricky – if you do it manually.

But with tools like Perfect Timing – which can automatically adjust the timing of your sends – it’s simple.

Prefer to do it yourself? Experiment until you find the best time – and then stick to it.

If your content is engaging, recipients will routinely check their email inbox for a new message – especially if you let them know on your website and other communications when they can expect them.

  Related reading:

What is the right newsletter frequency?

Email marketing best practices for 2019

  6. Give yourself enough time to collect data

How long should you wait before checking out your email analytics reports? And how long do your have to wait to follow up and retarget your email recipients?

It depends how time-sensitive your campaign is.

Let’s take a look at the data:

On average, 50.39% of your email messages will be opened within the first six hours of the send.

And you’ll see 52.52% of all clicks within the first four hours.

That means the people who are most likely to engage with your content will be the first to do it.

Also, four to six hours is generally enough for you to forecast the general outcome of your email campaign (at least in terms of opens and clicks).

In the first 24 hours after your send, you should see 73.5% of all message opens and 80.74% of all click throughs.

  What this means:

It’s useful to know how long it should take for you to get a general sense of your email campaigns success rate.

After four to six hours, you should be able to decide what other steps you need to take into consideration.

For example, if you’re not satisfied with the open rate, perhaps you’ll want to test a different subject line on those who haven’t opened yet? Or maybe use it for a different segment you haven’t yet included in your campaign?

Alternatively, if you’re happy with the results, maybe it’s worth launching a social media campaign to increase the buzz around your brand?

What you find out within that time-frame will affect how you go about your campaigns on other channels, too.

This includes retargeting, if you’re using Facebook or Google ads in your marketing funnels.

If you start running your retargeting ads too soon, you might burn your budget – because recipients could have converted without seeing the ad.

At the same time, if you wait too long and your offer is time-sensitive, you might end up leaving money on the table.

  Related reading:

The ultimate step-by-step Facebook retargeting guide

  7. Want higher conversions? Promise value and act on it

Ever wondered whether using particular words in your email subject lines correlate with higher open rates?

Words like “free”, “you”, or other ones we’ve written about on this very blog before?

We sure have, and that’s why we’ve decided to see what the numbers have to say about this.

For now, we haven’t managed to go through the full list of the common “power” words in the English language. Nonetheless, the results we’ve gathered are pretty interesting.

    Words that focused on content and value, like “ebook”, “pdf”, and “newsletter” scored very high in terms of opens, clicks, and click-to-open rates.

Surprisingly, the same wasn’t the case for the word “video”, which some marketers have previously suggested being a foolproof way for lifting your open rates.

Phrases that revolved around the sense of urgency, such as “now” and “quick”, didn’t get nearly as good results.

Perhaps they’ve been used by marketers too frequently, which caused their effectiveness to dip.

Marketers who used the phrase “fw” in their subject lines observed unexpectedly high average open rates. This wasn’t followed by high click-through rates, which may suggest that the recipients who’ve opened such messages weren’t entirely satisfied with the content they’ve received.

  What this means:

We take these results as an indication that there are no shortcuts to generating high outcomes with email campaigns.

Using a particular phrase or word in your subject line may help you increase your open rates, but it won’t guarantee that you’ll meet your business goals.

It may be that pairing a well-crafted subject line with email content unsatisfying to the recipient will have an overall negative effect on your conversion rates.

Think of it as going to the cinema based on the fact that you found the movie trailer interesting.

If the movie itself doesn’t live up to your expectations, your overall experience may be worse than that if you haven’t even watched the trailer. That’s because you might be feeling that you’ve been mis-sold or mislead.

  Related reading:

Email subject lines: specific is the new short

  What to do next

Email marketing is always evolving, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the latest trends and developments.

Come back to this article, as we’ll keep adding new insights from our email marketing benchmarks report.

Once you’ve set a goal you’d like to achieve with your email statistics, take a look at this guide that contains 20 tips on how you can improve your opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and spam complaint rates.

To learn more how you can up your email marketing game, visit the GetResponse Resources.

Have a question – or need feedback? Just leave a comment below.

  Good luck!

  Related posts

Email Marketing Metrics: Everything You Need to Know

Email Marketing Best Practices for 2019

The post Key Insights from the New Email Marketing Benchmarks Report Q1-Q2 2019 appeared first on GetResponse Blog - Online Marketing Tips.

Key Insights from the New Email Marketing Benchmarks Report Q1-Q2 2019 published first on yhttps://improfitninja.blogspot.com/

[zanytimetravelenthusiast-blog]

Local Video Jackpot Review And Large Bonus

Local Video Jackpot Evaluation - Are you looking for more understanding regarding Local Video Jackpot? Please read through my honest evaluation concerning it before selecting, to evaluate the weaknesses and also toughness of it. Can it deserve your time and effort and money?

Presenting Local Video Jackpot

5 Video Clip Marketing Ideas for Local Companies (Part 1)

Local services are beginning to sensible up: The Web might provide you much more get to, yet that does not suggest you should just concentrate on expansion. The genuine advantage to small-to-medium sized Local Video Jackpot companies is the ability to better reach a neighborhood target market, those that are already within your neighborhood geographical location yet may not have actually been converted into consumers yet.

Web content is still your best choice in this regard. You want to drive high-quality backlinks from good resources spread out among several websites. Luckily obtaining a web link from a reliable neighborhood website is a lot easier than a nationwide or worldwide one. And also the too-often untapped resource of locals themselves.

It's even less complicated to get these high quality back links with video clips, for a number of factors:

Video content has actually gotten on the increase for quite a while currently, so if you are not there, you offer the various other individuals the affordable advantage over on your own

Need for video is increasing while not many small businesses have begun creating video clips yet, so there's still that nice spot to quickly get observed

Lots of social media sites platforms have actually jumped on the video manufacturing bandwagon, consisting of titans like Twitter and facebook, so you have lots of channels to market as well as advertise your videos on

Video clips have significant re-packaging capacity, so your video clip can be turned into a brand-new advertising and marketing project method

Video drives a 157% increase in web traffic from organic online search engine results, so it's an excellent way to get even more clicks, as well

Videos enhance landing page click-through-rate

Now that you see the value in creating video clips for your company, right here are five ideas for producing reliable video clip content for your regional organisation, so you can start bringing in brand-new clients.

5 Concepts for Developing Local Video Clip Content

1. Come to be The Go-To For Neighborhood Guides

You know your area, so why disappoint it off? You can let individuals learn about concealed treasures in your city. Suggest restaurants or points to do if you are visiting. Testimonial hotels or the most effective AirBnB lodgings.

Speak about amusement venues, upcoming performances and events or explain treking tracks and camping places. Making good regional overviews will provide you traffic from both citizens and those that are taking a trip to your location.

If you wish to go a different Local Video Jackpot route, attempt creating some videos that describe fascinating realities or the history of historical places near you.

Try to find your very own one-of-a-kind voice and style! For instance, Tranquility Collective, a Toronto-based lifestyle brand, post video clips "to highlight gorgeous landscapes across the nation as seen through the eyes of a significant Canadian." The concept is that those video clips are not about visitor locations but rather feature popular creative Canadians that share their favorite points in Toronto.

You can after that work with local directories and city guides like Dirjournal as well as Goop to function some kind of a bargain for them to feature your video overviews in your city area.

My name is Eric Hammer and also I stay in the charming city of Haifa, Israel. I'm originally from New york city and battled for several years searching for a means to earn a living when I relocated here. After that I stumbled onto something big - VERY BIG!

As well as I have actually been able to obtain some incredible outcomes using this extremely easy system that ANYBODY can replicate!

Now if you're anything like me, you have actually most likely gone from SHINY OBJECT to SHINY THINGS, trying virtually every little thing that comes.

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[varstreet]

How to increase ecommerce sales during holiday season?

What is e-Commerce marketing?

Ecommerce sales have seen spikes in recent years due to decrease in time for people to go for shopping and the comfort of scrolling down the websites of online shopping at home. Ecommerce marketing helps in increasing sales by creating awareness about the products that an organization is selling.  Marketers use mostly digital platforms, search engine and social media influencing to advertise their products.

According to the analysis released by US Commerce Department, US ecommerce sales in USA grew 15.5% through the three quarters of 2018, this figure is highest in last three years. Based on the estimates by digitalcommerce360.com ecommerce sales during the five day period from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday grew 19% to $22.5 billion up from $18.9 billion in 2017.

If you are a VAR, various strategies could be adopted to increase the ecommerce sales of your organization. Following are the ways through which ecommerce sales can increase.

Ideas to increase e-Commerce sales

1. Holiday themed website

You need to make sure that your website is holiday friendly, bring down the same rusty theme and add the holiday touch to it by using creative templates so that visitors take interest in what you are trying to sell. You can add the remarketing pixel to your page so that later on you can market to the previous visitors.

2. Artificial intelligence marketing

AI marketing is a form of marketing leveraging AI concept and model such as machine learning and Bayesian network to achieve marketing goals. Using AI you can use historical data to know at what time users are likely to open emails, so that you can send them at an appropriate time and can even mail other live contents related to black Fridays and cyber Monday along with the main one. There are many AI partners that provide economical and straightforward services to a VAR to meet your marketing needs and business alike.

3. Offering incentives to the customers

You need to know what attracted the users/visitors to you, mostly deals and incentives are the ones that matter. In holiday season most people have a lot to buy but limited pocket, so to fulfill their demands they are more likely to go to those businesses/stores that offer good incentives like free shipping, discount, cash back and buy one get one free coupons, such promotional strategies work for many ecommerce stores. So you need to make sure that you offer good incentives and benefits due to which people will be encouraged to use your services. You need to do some calculations over what discount rate works best for your organization. Then to make the work easier for the customers you can choose video marketing, primarily highlighting the deals and products. According to Facebook, marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users. BFCM is probably the best time to sell the your products as the deals are highly beneficial from customer point of view, if you are a IT component seller you can attract huge people with luring deals. 

4. Retarget the customers and find new ones as well with social media

Use social media ad campaign like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to drive the users to your website and then review who saw what and then retarget them by sending emails as a reminder. Similarly you can acquire new customers as well because social media ad tools are great for attracting people and driving sales. For example, if you are IT components seller you can organize various activities, like competition, to attract new customers and the one who wins can be awarded Sony VAIO laptop or Smart TV.  

5. Enhance mobile experience for people

Twitter says that over 90% of video is viewed on mobile; around 10 million Snapchat videos are watched per day and last year cyber Monday only generated $2 billion revenue. According to shopify.com in the U.S., 57% of BFCM traffic came through a mobile device while mobile purchases only generated 39% of revenue, why is that websites are not able to convert? Mobile sites can be enhanced by putting attractive templates, unnecessary texts are eliminated so that descriptions are to the point and precise. Shopify.com was the only ecommerce website in USA that had 66% of mobile sales; the website largely gives credits to its simple payment method for mobile users. In same way, ecommerce websites should provide easy way of making payments on mobile devices like online wallets. 

6. Triggering emails and cart abandonment

Cart abandonment is not a stranger to ecommerce stores, the average abandoned cart rate across all Emarsys ecommerce clients is 67.2%. It happens when visitors add products to their carts and leave them without taking any action; this causes triggered emails, which is basically a reminder for the users to take further step. And holidays are important times to give reminders as people are browsing internet, searching for best deals for their gifts and utility.

However, without proper analysis abandoned carts cannot be converted. This phenomenon is due to various reasons like extra costs on shipping, complicated checkout process, website crashed, lack of trust in providing personal information, returns policy are satisfactory, and lack of other payment options. The solution for all these problems could be transparency of cost, free shipment is what attracts customers the most (especially in holiday time as they have a lot to buy), full information of people working at your store, so that people can build trust on your site and you can even put testimonials/reviews. Smooth checkout process should be adopted, so that customers don’t have to deal with unnecessary contents and waste time. You can even send the mails to customers modified according to their preferences; this will be enticing and encourage them to shop with your store.

Conclusion

Holiday season is the happiest time of the year, in which people spend a lot of time with their family and friends. And during this period only organizations look to drive their most of the sales and earn profits. As a VAR you can choose any one or more tactics from above that suits your way of operating business, and boost your revenue. If proper marketing strategies are adopted you can stand out of the crowd, or else it easy to go unnoticed in the middle of the celebrations.

[lucashawro]

Marketing Automation

I have yet to meet a business owner who has never been in need of automation. Today startups, SMBs and large companies have one thing in common - they're all thrown in the game of pursuing the holy grail of business and marketing automation (The Automation Singularity).

As you’re reading this, I wouldn't be surprised if you've got your feet wet trying a marketing automation software at some point. MailChimp for example or even chatbots...?

  Marketing Automation

But maybe you have been doing all your marketing the "old school" way, and you want to get some of the piling work volumes off your shoulders, and you don't want to hire, train, pay and manage additional employee(s). Well, I share your viewpoint, because running a business means innovation. So, you either work on out-innovating your competition or your practices get inefficient and your business becomes outdated pretty quickly.

I will try my best in this article to help you get started with choosing the lowest hanging fruit of marketing autopilot platforms. You should finish the piece having a grasp on what is marketing automation, why marketing automation is the next big thing in coming years, and how to use the power of automation platforms and tools to their fullest potential.

Remember, you can't turn your eyes away and pretend the business innovations don't affect you. I will argue here that 2018/19 is a perfect time to jump on board and benefit from at least some of the cheap and accessible business automation out there. As you read on pick one or two solutions and over the next few weeks try to integrate them for the betterment of your business and your life.

Why do businesses need marketing automation?

The traditional marketing as a scientific field goes back to early 1900s or even earlier with the development of modern capitalism and consumerism. In a nutshell, business owners and (modern) marketers discovered that by studying consumer behaviour they can predict and influence sales profits. Businesses then went on developing step-by-step processes to anticipate the needs and wants of potential consumers so they could satisfy them more effectively in comparison to its competitors. Several decades later we use complex data and scientific methods to measure and design specific procedures to sell more to more people.

Marketing and sales funnels evolved and it's no longer just printed ads in papers and magazines or lump mail ads. With the technological revolution, especially the Internet and social media's worldwide blitz, we've opened several channels enabling us to communicate more effectively and build relevant relationships with our customers. What it means for marketers like you is that a need for a more sophisticated and technologically enhanced approach with complex, multivariate sales funnels is required. Hence, marketing automation.

  Marketing Automation Sales Funnels

What Marketing Automation meant up until 2018

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." - Steve Jobs

Despite the overblown claims and inflated marketing slogans, marketing automation is NOT an artificial intelligence (AI). The real AI doesn't exist (yet) and we're likely far away from it. Some moderate that and use "semi-AI" but it's misleading because the "semi-" isn't clearly defined and means anything. I just call it for what it is for now. Marketing automation is a set of logical rules, processes and tactics that run on autopilot, making some tasks or even segments of your business autonomous and independent from human input. Besides the obvious profits like time, money and energy saving, such marketing practices bring a real and quantifiable added value to your business.

Although the philosophy of business management and marketing orientation remains intact and pretty solid, the tools and methodology seem to evolve and set new milestones almost every week.

Today, marketing automation software has never been more accessible. And in such high demand. Entrepreneurs keep coming up with creative ideas and cutting-edge technology to help businesses design their perfect strategies to predict the needs and personalise the copywriting.

So new marketing software is springing up like mushrooms.

But let's step back to something basic, like MailChimp which is an email auto-responding system. Their automated software is free (to the extent) and allows for:

Easy integration on your website so you can quickly start building your email list

Getting your prospects details in an engaging form (MailChimp Lead Magnet)

Designing an auto-responder with a drag-and-drop visual builder

... and Sending automated and targeted emails to your recipient's list

----------------------・・・----------------------

Here're a few triggers you can use:

Email your tagged contacts - Send a targeted message when you add a tag to a contact.

Welcome new subscribers - Introduce yourself to people when they sign up for your list.

Say 'happy birthday' - Celebrate with an exclusive offer or cheerful message that will be sent out based on the birthday field in your list.

Share blog updates - Help contacts keep up with your blog by sending new posts straight to their inboxes.

Now you can essentially build "set and forget" email sequences.

(did I mention it's free? ;)

----------------------・・・----------------------

Check this video on how to set one up with this step-by-step tutorial:

----------------------・・・----------------------

The top 5 essential gains of automation

To summarise, here are the top 5 essential gains of automation in the area specific to marketing:

Automated marketing tools build complex customer journeys and sales funnels (e.g. MailChimp)

Marketing artificial intelligence software learns your customers' behaviour or who they are and tries to make your product and services highly personalised (e.g. UNLESS)

Marketing bots aim to leave your customer informed, happy and engaged (e.g. Quriobot)

Marketing analytics enables you to quickly test and change the direction of your marketing strategy (e.g. CustomerLabs)

Automated sales software makes your marketing efforts more efficient, faster to adapt and scale (e.g. DataGran)

What Automation means for the future of business

"In peace prepare for war, in war prepare for peace." - Sun Tzu.

The future of automation in 2019 and beyond looks bright. And it isn't just Tesla and their self-driving autonomous cars. Interestingly enough, I find those same principles that drive Musk and his robo-vehicles towards automation apply to any aspect of the business. Here's what we all are after:

multiplied productivity (ROI)

exponential growth

multitasking (that actually works)

large data processing power

and, yes - if used correctly, a much better life

----------------------・・・----------------------

See Marquees driving Yandex self-driving car around California

----------------------・・・----------------------

Sales and marketing automation software - who's on the frontend?

Let's bring it down to a business application and see what benefits businesses can expect from automated systems in 2019 moving forward.

The most common use of marketing automation software appears to be in sales, but this limited utility expands very quickly.

eMarketer reports that only 5% of companies have never benefited from marketing automation (I couldn't dig their source though, so take it with a grain of salt). But that makes sense, given the power of computing and how technology penetrated the entire world of economy. It is clear that customer journey maps are extensively used by Googles, Amazons and eBays of this world to accurately map out how customer behave in relation to businesses. And the same applies to Social Media giants like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Their optimisation is so granular, and it developed so fast, that <a some people stood to consider its ethics and what we want as a civilisation.

Nevertheless, the value in sales is so obvious and tempting that it only makes sense to continue using it. Providing your primary incentive is to quickly "help" your prospects who are travelling the distance from being a bystander to a raving fan. And the distance, no matter the length, is measurable and categorisable. Therefore, prone to endless optimisations (and exploitation).

Is marketing automation software difficult to access?

As of today, experts agree that by learning different ways how customers interact with businesses, pretty much guarantees big profits. For this reason, social scientist and marketers flock to use all sorts of automation tools that help with just that. Meanwhile, Marketing SaaS companies try to meet their prospects midway offering easy to understand but potentially vastly scalable in its application software. In fact, lowering entry level is now the name of the game with most marketing automation software.

One such software is FullStory. The software works based on simple principles but the results, which it draws through different modes of user interpretation, provide comprehensive and quite elaborate customer journey maps.

"See your site through your users' eyes. More than the sum of its clicks, FullStory replays your customer's journey – like a DVR for your website – so you can search, see, and understand your user experience."

There is certainly a learning curve associated with implementing any new system or technology. However, with much lowered entry-level bars the fruit has never hung so low.

Large Data Set Calculations - how to optimise your website running costs and business spending for free?

  Data analysis in marketing automation

Back in the days, gathering and calculating any large data sets was done by businesses who could afford full-time data analyst and a "numbers person". So it was reserved usually for enterprise-level companies and agencies, or outsourced and never looked at closely again. Today, with tools like Google Analytics, you have quick and easy access to software that with a click of a button displays almost complete picture of your company's money flow.

It's free and offers a tremendous amount of actionable data that is automatically gathered and calculated from your website, ads and email campaigns, to mention just a few sources.

It's also worth mentioning that Facebook, Pinterest or LinkedIn Ads platforms use sophisticated dashboards where data is calculated and presented to you in any way you want. It takes time to figure it all out, though. I'd suggest to start with finding answers to simple questions like:

What is my website's monthly traffic?

Which of my ads increased traffic the most?

How long an average visitor spends on my homepage?

Is my traffic local or international?

Using what device (mobile/tablet/desktop) people are visiting my website?

Which of my web pages are most popular?

Where is my traffic coming from?

The Rise of The Marketing Bots

One of the most significant aspects of marketing automation is the sudden spread of bots and various auto-messengers. Apart from built-in Facebook Messenger Bots, platforms like Quriobot and MobileMonkey are rapidly developing and are more and more sophisticated in methods of visitor engagement on your website. The key to a great visitors engagement appears to be:

the speed of response

24/7 availability

useful and relevant bot responses based on the keyword and intelligent intent recognition

and so-called "triggers"

Speaking of "triggers". These can be heavily customised to adhere to the customers' behaviour on your site and provide visual and heavily targeted responses. For example, imagine you have someone checking on your "Home Page" then going to "Pricing" where they spend two minutes and decide to leave. Normally this particular visitor could be classified as a prospective customer, that you may want to engage further. Therefore, at each individual stage, your bot can enhance your visitors' experience by way of targeted messages, additional content and offers. Even at the point of departure, a bot can be configured to throw an "exit intent" trigger and, hopefully, stop the visitor from leaving the website.

  AI bots - chat automation

The "AI" in bots gets also increasingly sophisticated. For example, tools like ActiveChat try to mimic human-like responses and with it infinite visual building blocks you can make it up as complicated as Lego's Star Wars Millennium Falcon set. It can also integrate with e-commerce systems so you can have an actual "digital counter" right on your website.

No wonder bots are the next big thing and we will hear about them more and more.

"I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better, and questioning yourself." - Elon Musk

Conclusion

It may be hard to start learning all these platforms today. However, in the long run, it will pay back immensely. Also, know that 99% of your competitors aren't doing it.

So, it’s better to start giving marketing automation some attention before it is too late. Whatever industry you're in, it will be driven by the same principles as any other, whoever puts in the hours to innovate will increase the odds of success over the business owners that procrastinated and neglected to do the homework.

You may not have enough resources to go all in with learning the marketing tools, but there is no harm in trying. I have probably been guilty of procrastination more than anyone in the business. But eventually I have learned to take little steps from early on, and over time I realised that I made a quantum leap in growing my business and developing myself. So, if you are reading this article right at this moment, stop wasting your time and jump right in.

These are obviously just a few tips and the ocean of automated tools is filling in with more and more fish. There are few more things that I have learned over the years, so pop back in and check this article for updates. But most importantly start with making your first marketing automation funnel, no matter how big your goals are. From my experience, the right actions will pay off. I wish you good luck with your marketing automation journey.

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This article was originally posted on: Colorpeak.co.uk

[seanmeverett]

Emerging Trends of Master Product Management

What you need to be at the top of your game in 2019

I. THE WORLD HAS CHANGED

The world of Product Management is no longer changing. It has changed. At some point over the last few years we transitioned into a new way of thinking when it comes to technology. Let’s review the situation as we move into the last year of this decade.

What used to be emerging tech a decade ago has now become the de facto standard. VCs used to be enamored by SoMoLo (Social, Local, Mobile) and Gamification, but the new emerging technologies revolve around Spatial Computing. The focus now is about taking computing from behind a rectangular piece of glass and bringing it into the real world. This includes Augmented and Virtual Reality as the interface layer, Artificial Intelligence as the logic layer, and Blockchain as the emerging database layer. With 5G connectivity and the proliferation of IoT devices and sensors, we enable new things like self-driving and Pokémon or Amazon Go.

The future of Humanizing our Tech

Our interfaces are becoming ever more invisible as we begin to wear our computers. AirPods in the ear and speaking to voice assistants like Siri and Alexa our in the world or at home. Even physical touch interfaces went from some-of-the-time with smart phone taps to all-of-the-time with vibrating wearables and always-on heart rate monitoring.

Meanwhile, blue chip industrial companies are investing in SAAS-based technologies and because Wall Street no longer rewarding a gigantic sales team that has to start each quarter from zero. The sawtooth revenue curve of the past is being replaced by curves that look more like hockey sticks. It’s not just software that’s eating the world, it’s also their business models. Namely, moving from one-time payments to Monthly Recurring Revenue from Software as a Service. Did you know Salesforce got its start by convincing customers they shouldn’t use installable CDs, but rather a website that gives them updates every day? Now this is taken for granted but changing software buying patterns was hard in the beginning.

Today, everyone has a startup or a side hustle. What we used to hear five years ago, “I’ve got an idea for an app”, is now, “I’m raising $1M on a $5M pre- and have traction with 100,000 users”. Wait, what? You’re only 15 years old? Which brings us to our next point. Digital Natives, Gen Z, and yes, Millennials, have overtaken mindshare, marketing, and advertising share from the Baby Boomers. Many of us with decades of Product experience merely adopted the tech, but these individuals were born into it. Christopher Nolan, eat your heart out.

Valuations have soared since 2008, and new millionaires are minted so regularly that we now collective keep count in billions. Growth at all costs, even profits, have created an irrational exuberance the likes of which Greenspan could hardly comprehend during the go go dot-com days.

Even retailing has changed. The anchors of malls aren’t seeing the foot traffic they once did, Sears is shuttering its doors and Best Buy is struggling. The reason is because we get free shipping and cheaper prices shopping online, and at least in the US, eCommerce executive’s go-to-market strategy is simply www.amazon.com.

As we transition into the mindset of investors, we see a more modern Private Equity, new family offices sprouting up in record numbers, new regulations like the JOBS Act, and new funding mechanisms like Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Security Token Offerings (STOs) enabling much more capital flowing into tech than ever before. Because traditional LPs have been reading the same blogs and would rather source and diligence their own deals than pay a middle man their 2-and-20 fees, we see more demand than ever for the best deals and unique deal flow as a competitive differentiator. The leveraged buyouts of yore targeting low-growth manufacturing firms are now targeting niche software companies because the economics and multiples are better with the same consistent cash flow.

As we turn our attention to go-to-market strategies, the traditional ad budgets spent on TV and display continue to evolve more towards a universal view of a person. Spend on Influencers have shifted from Movie Stars and Athletes to the Kardashians, and then to micro-influencers, and now to pico-influencers with 500 followers who are all personal connections. It’s the word-of-mouth virality that spells success for many products, after all. GDPR regulations that came online in mid 2018 means every website we now visit has a horribly thick bottom bar overtaking our screens. As a result of all this hypertargeting, user tracking, and dynamic content, the user experience of the web has decreased dramatically, especially when including abysmal loading times resulting from excessive overuse of Javascript. Did you know there are now 7,000 MarTech startups, up from 5,000 only a few short years ago, creating a bewildering amount of programmatic ad choices, and ever-increasing customer acquisition costs. The result being building quality product mechanics for incenting organic virality and engagement are 10x harder than they used to be.

Finally, there’s a resurgence of interest around outer space and private rocket companies. Space Tech is a thing and with falling prices of launches by Blue Origin and SpaceX, the cubesat subsector will ultimately enable next-generation cellular connectivity from space. This is how the other 50% of humanity gets internet access while also being a source of cash for the burgeoning New Space industry in desperate need of investment.

II. THE WINNERS & THE LOSERS

Taken together, we’re all playing a whole new ballgame. The playing field has become shorter while the game has become faster, and harder. Greenfield opportunities where you used to be competitive with a buggy LAMP stack and lackluster UX has even stopped working in the Enterprise. High-quality consumer apps that everyone now uses means we expect the same from all our software, including what we use at work. And desktop apps are no longer enough. The world has become smaller but we’re traveling more often and so we’d rather lose our luggage than our smart phone. We expect our work software to be just as efficient as the apps we use for play. Customers and users don’t care that it takes 320 different video encoding renditions for a single video file shared behind a firewall. “It’s just a play button, why is that so hard?” They don’t care how the sausage is made, expect perfect connectivity and high-resolution streaming. And expect it to be as cheap as YouTube.

We have reached a significant milestone for humanity. Half the human population is connected to the internet, mostly with mobile phones, and everyone is in search of the next gigantic growth product. Skill and talent has blossomed in unexpected markets around the world. France is a key global spot for world-class software development, Africa is emerging as a new startup capital learning from the likes of the Valley and Singapore, while China and the US are in an AI arms race for powering the world of our future. Information is shared in tiny bursts through text messages and short-form videos, with the entire world is trying to steal market share of eyeball for their Monthly Active Users.

At this point you may be feeling a bit down, wondering why you should even consider starting a new project. With the degree of difficulty steadily marching up-and-to-the-right, what hope do you have for standing out in a sea of competing projects, apps, sites, and initiatives?

The winners will be the ones who both Accept & Acclimate to this new world quickly. There’s no time to debate. The winners take action. The losers, on the other hand, will continue to exist in the Web 2.0 or, even worse, pre-connected world. It’s true that legacy business models and declining markets have a much longer tail than anyone realizes, but it’s getting shorter.

In either case, you’re either compounding in a positive direction or a negative direction. The graphic below from Farnam Street tells the story better than any amount of words could.

Source: Farnam Street

The key insight here is that it doesn’t require organization-wide adoption to reap the benefits. It only takes a single “2-pizza team”, as Jeff Bezos famously states, to kickstart action in the right direction. But whom you pick for those teams makes all the difference in the world.

So it begs the question: with a discipline as varied and misunderstood as Product Management, how can we begin to slice the skill sets required to determine the right person for the first project but also the second? Is it a mini-CEO, a turnaround genius, a mobile app maven with hundreds of daily builds, or a growth hacking expert who’s earned the stripes from a decade in the trenches? As a high-performing Product Officer, you need all of these next-level skills to stay at the top of the capabilities mountain.

The Product winners understand the importance of spending the time and budget to go find the right talent before doing anything else. The team is the single biggest difference maker between 2x and 10x. The Product losers, on the other hand, focus on business as usual and going with whomever is a phone call away, whether or not they have the requisite skills required to execute in this new world.

III. THE PROMISED LAND

But what does it look like to win? It means you’ve got a successful project on your hands. Your KPIs are up, the product is working, the team is energized, and the kudos stream in from around the internal organization and external community. Most importantly, your revenue and/or users are growing with a healthy k-factor above 1. The A/B testing and Cohort analysis is paying off once you found the correlation between Retention and Engagement. You’ve maintained quality and are in a great repeating cadence of 1) customer development, 2) agile design and development, and 3) continuous deployment and retrospectives.

Master-level Product Management means that the compounding flywheel effect applies to your product, but also the operations of your team, whether that’s a small 3-person group or a large 10,000 person global conglomerate.

A well-run machine is the opposite of chaos. You’ve developed esoteric metrics, like how many Slack messages are sent and how many files are sent back and forth to tell you how good the team is working together and how high-quality the work product is. And of course, that the entire group works backwards from the customer or user, and not forwards from the technology, unless we’re in Hard Tech territory like Quantum Computing.

Master Product Managers have been doing all these things for years but as we move towards 2020, a new set of skills has emerged.

IV. TOP 3% PRODUCT MANAGEMENT MASTERY FEATURES

Below are the top things you need to execute on to maintain your role as one of the best Product Managers in the world, or in identifying them for your next project.

Focus on one KPI: Revenue. Paul Graham of YC fame said a Startup could be defined by a sigle word: growth. Projects and businesses can also be defined by such a word. If the business is not making money, then eventually it ceases to exist. So, for any Master Product Manager, the starting base-level KPI for any project must have Revenue in it somewhere. Even a consumer app with MAU as a metric eventually needs to become self-sufficient at some point. You can choose a monthly subscription fee (Netflix) which has gained popularity above the one-time purchase to match ongoing revenue with ongoing costs, or an ad-supported model (Facebook) to sustain itself. Pricing strategy is understood as a key component of this. If you double the price and demand decreases by less than half, then you just created additional revenue growth with nearly zero marginal cost. In short, the right Product also has the right Price. Note that we’re leaving aside Not-for-Profits as they have a different motivation and core KPI, which would typically center around positive impact, measured by Human, Animal, or Environmental improvement.

Understand and design business models, especially applying them in new ways. A project starts by answering the question of “Who buys what from whom, for how much, and why?” For a lemonade stand, the answer is: a customer buys lemonade from us for $1 because she’s thirsty and we’re located right next to the park she walks her dog at. There are a limited set of business models that exist, like Remove-the-Middle-Man or Give-Away-the-Razor-To-Sell-the-Blade. Flipping standard business models on their head creates new insights and the Master Product Manager has a list of them at the ready with examples. One such example is the new online school that kept the definition of the customer the same (the student), but shifted when the student pays. Instead of paying every semester for classes as a big up-front cost for a buyer with very little money, this startup shifted the cost for the student to a percentage of salary for the first two years after graduation. Of course, the school makes a promise that they will help the student get placed. So, the novel insight here was shifting the business model to a transaction fee of the benefit rather than an up-front fixed cost. Payment processors have been using this model for some time. You submit an invoice to someone and in return for a company processing that payment, you’re willing to give them a fee because it’s small compared to the amount of money you just earned. It’s the same concept, now applied to a different industry: education. Gamification and Incentive design also play a part and have been recognized widely in the tech community since the days of Foursquare and Gowalla. Today, with the emergence of Initial Coin Offerings and its successor, Security Token Offerings, creating an app that becomes an economy means a Master Product Manager needs to understand the intricacies of micro and macroeconomics down to the granular level of “How do users earn tokens?” and “Where do users spend tokens?”. In the beginning of Bitcoin, for instance, it was much easier to acquire the cryptocurrency than it was finding who would accept it as payment. Thus, supply, demand, and transactions are important for unleashing value creation and developing a healthy economy. See Metcalfe’s Law for more.

Position Brand as a key differentiator. A brand is not a logo or a design. A brand is how it makes you feel. Apple feels different than Google which feels different than Facebook or Amazon. They do different jobs for their users, but it’s wisely said that the money in a company’s bank account is really just a physical measure of the trust that their customers or users have in the organization. People spend more money and return more often to brands they love. Today, when consumers are much less brand loyal and are willing to switch providers and products on a dime based on the service they receive (i.e., how it makes them feel), getting Brand right is a big deal.

Executes as CEO of the Product and the real CEO. As the world moves faster, demands of shareholders and the team become larger, and quality-at-speed becomes the new standard, CEOs and Founders are spread more thin than ever. Master Product Managers understand the intricacies of the entire business, not just their own product, in order to successfully deliver on where the puck is heading. They can run the business if the CEO was on leave for a month, they see around corners, understand where the industry is headed, talk with the Board and investors, raise capital while maintaining cost controls, hire grade-A talent, work with adjacent industries to establish new critical Business Development opportunities, and execute capital allocation strategies. See the book Outsiders by William Thorndike for more on how the top 8 public company CEOs over the last half century allocate capital.

Embed social and moral ethics into the atomic unit of the product. MNI Targeted Media’s study showed that more than 50% of Gen Z (i.e., between age 3 and 23) favor a brand who is socially conscious, so the $4B in buying power they have today will transform into tens of billions more when they reach full maturity. Master Product Managers not only act as technology builders, but as an ethical voice of the product and organization as well. They are not afraid to raise a red flag, take a stand, and stick to what’s right and just. Even the CEO of the most valuable brand in the world, Tim Cook, has taken stands for human rights and privacy, total shareholder return be damned (though studies have shown it actually helps). In addition, while operating ethically within business has long been a subset of the standard CFA exam, it is a growing requirement when news spreads around the world in an hour, and talent has the ability leave in a moment’s notice to work for anyone from anywhere. Long-term relationships matter because the apprentice of today will be the master of tomorrow, and reputations are written in stone on the internet.

Has smooth PR and media presentation skills. Master Product Managers know how to talk to the media about the product succinctly. A “repeatable sound bite” is just another way of saying “viral marketing”. Because if the viewer can’t remember it and repeat it, that alone can negatively impact the product’s k-factor. Today, the builder is more important than ever, as it’s less the CEO talking about the product and more about the the trade-offs the people building it had to make. Jony Ive is a hot commodity because the way he thinks is a leading indicator of what gets built. Great Product people are comfortable on camera, and don’t use the “ums”, “ya knows”, and “likes” that have become so prevalent in spoken conversation. As the steward of the product, you represent the product both on camera and on social, whether or not your profile says, “my thoughts don’t reflect my employer”. Again, who you are definitely becomes what you build, especially when customers and users care so much about what Products do with their data, they research who the people are behind them. In terms of efficient communication, a former McKinsey consultant, Barbara Minto, literally wrote the book on it, called “The Minto Pyramid Principle”. She teaches you the way to craft concise memos, reports, presentations, and talking points for a short attention span audience. World-class product people study not just the art of Judo, but also the subtle art of communication.

Exist outside the tech bubble. There are 7.5 billion human beings in the world. These are the users and customers of your product. They have feelings, stresses, and relationships that machines don’t have. Understanding consumer behavior is arguably the most critical aspect of any product. The Job-To-Be-Done framework must also include something new called The-Feeling-It-Creates framework. Is your product about saving time, money, and stress, or is it about escape, fun, and entertainment? As an example, BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model was used almost entirely as the core product mechanic for Instagram, because Kevin Systrom took his class at Stanford and remembered it when investing his product from location-centric to image-centric. Dale Carnegie’s famous book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is another great resource as is Chip Heath’s book, “Made to Stick”. These are all now table stakes. Understanding human consciousness, and the move towards mindfulness are necessary requirements for building a product that moves past addiction, and into transcendence. Technology always changes, but humans never do.

IV. IS THIS POSSIBLE & WHAT’S NEXT?

What we’ve laid out here may seem overwhelming, especially for those Product people just entering the discipline. But because the best Product people are ruthless prioritization experts, and agile enough to climb seemingly insurmountable challenges, we believe this gets the best and the brightest excited.

This is a juicy new problem to solve, and a new vector for investing in ourselves and our discipline. “Give me more to learn!” we hear some of our close friends in the industry constantly saying.

So, yes, it is possible. Similar to the documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the mountain of mastery reaches ever higher, and even after seven decades spent as a master, it’s an unreachable target. So, if you’re more junior, or know nothing about Product, but need someone who does, you’ve come to the right place.

The subtleties in Products often end up making the most difference but can take decades of experience to uncover. Thankfully, this is where many of the top Product people in the world call home, to work together, and learn from each other.

We are equally as excited as we are humbled, to build the products that influence future generations.

�� Sean

Emerging Trends of Master Product Management was originally published in Humanizing Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Stories by Sean M Everett on Medium http://bit.ly/2Cw8at5