Delving into Digital Marketing?

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Best of 2013: Responsive design, content marketing, conversion paths & more

2013. Google called it "a year of transformation." Mashable declared it "the year of responsive web design." And then there was Google Enhanced Campaigns, which was mandated across all AdWords campaigns back in July. If you weren't ready for mobile, well, it didn't matter, because it happened.

With smartphone sales expected to reach 1.81 billion...and double by 2015...compelling, intelligent, and integrated digital campaigns, and thus experiences, will be mandatory.

Not optional.

We've been preaching brilliant post-click marketing since 2007. But this year, highly relevant, smart, user-centered creative really took a front seat that will carry through 2014 and beyond.

So, to wrap up the year with a nice bow, we wanted to share our "Best of 2013" — a collection of blog posts designed to inspire better digital experiences and help you provide more value (and conversions) in the new year.

Cheers!

Jessica

9 Best Practices for Designing Responsive Landing Pages

Nine of our favorite best practices for designing stellar responsive landing pages. You can use these with or without a platform to ensure you are building landing pages that not only respond, but convert! Learn how to put the right content in the right place on the page for every user.

How to use conversion paths for a better digital experience

Humans click your ads and land on your pages. Seems obvious, but in our haste to put up an experience with the perfect layout, content & offer, we often forget to think about the human behind the click. Learn how to use user segmentation (aka conversion paths) for a better digital experience.

9 Ways to Drive More Leads From Your Content Marketing

Sure, you've used landing pages to 'gate' high value content such as white papers or ebooks, but there more creative ways to up-sell and cross-sell content to convert your audience's attention into business results. Discover nine ideas for innovative ways to drive more leads from your content marketing.

Three awesome [infographics]

Content marketing, landing pages and testing...these are three of our favorite things! Download these infographics.

Happy Holidays from ion!

Read our 2013 holiday blog post series — ionians cover best practices for testing, responsive design, user segmentation, marketing apps & more! Read the series.

Best of 2013: Responsive design, content marketing, conversion paths & more

Mogl nabs $11M because getting cash back after a tasty restaurant meal won’t ever go out of style

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Mogl’s loyalty program is as simple and attractive as can be: spend money, get cold, hard cash back.

The San Diego, Calif.-based startup that’s been around for four years lets its users spend money at partner merchants, mostly restaurants and bars, and get various percentages of the money they spend back every month. The company is raising about $11 million in new funding, which it will close out by the end of the month, cofounder and chief executive Jon Carder told VentureBeat.

Originally, Mogl’s model worked like this: Users signed up for an account and registered one or multiple credit cards. Then, every time they spent money at a participating merchant, they would get 10 percent back into their bank accounts every month.

But this past spring, the company rejigged its model to make the discount percentage and time periods adjustable for merchants. To do this, it’s partnered with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to get access to their systems and be able to match customers’ purchases with the time and place. That way, it can calculate the exact amount they should receive back.

On average, merchant discounts are between 5 and 30 percent at any given time, and there is a two-hour delay if a merchant wants to shrink the discount — a policy designed to save customers from feeling duped if they saw a higher discount in Mogl’s app a few moments before their purchase.

But because users rack up Mogl discounts without having to do anything different than the normal routine of whipping out their credit card, Mogl seamlessly integrates into the everyday flow. The money is automatically deposited into users’ accounts on the 15th of each month.

“Mogl is so easy that sometimes you use it on accident because you didn’t know that restaurant is a partner,” Carder said.

With that said, Carder was most enthusiastic during our conversation when he told me about Mogl’s new fundraising tool.

Publicly launched yesterday, Mogl’s tool is a twist on a well known fundraising approach. However, instead of being limited to one establishment and asking supporters to remember to bring in flyers or mention a cause, they can simply sign up for Mogl, join the fundraising campaign, and the money they earn will automatically be sent to the campaign manager to be donated.

For example, let’s say I wanted my company to support a local charity. I could create a campaign, get my coworkers to register for the campaign after making a Mogl account, and then every month, all the money they earn back by frequenting Mogl partners would be sent to me to donate to the charity on our behalf. We could even have internal competitions every month to see who can save-donate the most.

To be fair, Mogl has long had a soft spot for charities. It’s been donating meals to Feeding America for every $20 spent on Mogl and has donated more than 800,000 meals so far, Carder said.

The team eventually thought, “But what if we opened it up and let people raise money for anything else?” Carder said.

It’s actually that gamification-type thinking that gave Carder and his cofounders the original idea for Mogl.

Inspired by Foursquare and how it gamified its service (letting users gather checkins in order to become “mayor” of a restaurant or bar and so on), the Mogl team set out to create a way to make loyalty programs as addictive as checking in on Foursquare. Loyalty programs are important in helping small businesses stay afloat, but Carder and his cofounders wanted to create something different and more appealing than the models others like Belly, FiveStars, and LevelUp use, which is more of a digital punchcard approach.

Interestingly, Foursquare hasn’t exactly worked out wonderfully and is now desperately trying to stay relevant.

In the meantime, Carder and his crew have been spending some of the new cash on that deep integration with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express and will be using the rest to continue expanding (Carder says they project adding at least 14 new cities in the next 12 months).

Mogl raised the funds from Avalon Ventures, Sigma Ventures, Austin Ventures, and Correlation Ventures as well as from angel investors.

Mogl was founded in 2010 by Jon Carder, Jeff Federman, and Jarrod Cuzens. The company’s total funding is now at $25 million.

Mogl nabs $11M because getting cash back after a tasty restaurant meal won’t ever go out of style

What We Learned This Week

This week, we learned the best time to buy an airplane ticket, the best place to grab a beer in Antarctica, and the best glass to pour that beer into.
What We Learned This Week

Funding Daily: Today’s tech funding stories, in one place

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Get all the tech funding news of the day delivered straight to your mailbox! Sign up for Funding Daily and never miss a deal.

Here’s a list of today’s biggest funding stories, updated as the day unfolds. Tip us here if you have a deal to share.

Mogl nabs $11M for its loyalty program

Mogl’s loyalty program is as simple and attractive as can be: spend money, get cold, hard cash back. The company is raising about $11 million in new funding, which it will close out by the end of the month, cofounder and chief executive Jon Carder told VentureBeat.

VideoElephant raises $1M to sell you stock videos

Dublin-based VideoElephant today announced a $1 million funding round raised to expand its video marketplace in the U.S. ACT Venture Capital and Enterprise Ireland participated in the round.

Energy management app maker Chai raises $400,000

Chai, the company behind an app called Chai Energy, today announced $400,000 in funding in a public filing. The app aims to help users reduce their energy consumption and cut energy costs.

What We Learned This Week

This week, we learned the best time to buy an airplane ticket, the best place to grab a beer in Antarctica, and the best glass to pour that beer into.
What We Learned This Week

Making The World’s Fastest Wheels

To travel at 1,000mph, you need to ride on some special wheels. David Robson discovers how the Bloodhound SSC project is cracking a dastardly design problem.

Making The World’s Fastest Wheels

Clueless about social media? Here are 17 clues for getting started

Barry Feldman is a content marketing consultant, copywriter, social media advisor and more. This post has been adapted from an original version on his blog, Feldman Creative. Just four years ago, I felt like you do. Social media was another language. Foreign. Frightening. Your insecurities are natural. Will I look lame? Am I too late to the party? Will anyone care what I have to say? Let ‘em go. Relax. Social media is a conversation. You can join any time. Join now. You’ll be welcomed. Social media is not a trend, it’s essential. Just as your customers rely on the phone and email, they rely on...

This story continues at The Next Web
Clueless about social media? Here are 17 clues for getting started

Amy Poehler Outtakes Are Marketing Gold for Old Navy

TV might be in a death spiral, but film is not dead. That was the statement from Old Navy's global CMO Ivan Wicksteed during his presentation on expanding the retailer's marketing through digital content at Ad Age's Digital Conference San Francisco. Mr. Wicksteed talked at length about how content works for Old Navy, and how he thinks content and programmatic will intersect in the future.

For the retailer's recent campaigns, including one featuring comedian Amy Poehler, content has played a central role in its marketing and is being sought out by consumers far more than traditional advertising. Some of the content working best for Old Navy are outtakes from Ms. Poehler's TV-commercial shoots. After his presentation, Mr. Wicksteed expanded on why Old Navy's content with Ms. Poehler is resonating better than the TV spots she appears in.

UPDATE: Creativity has outtakes of Amy Poehler channeling Judy Judy for her latest Old Navy spot.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Amy Poehler Outtakes Are Marketing Gold for Old Navy

Here Come the Men of Pinterest

Pinterest's first explosive growth was fueled by women, as suggested by early reports from women's magazines that their sites were suddenly getting more traffic from Pinterest than from Facebook.

But don't discount the growing group of men on the social pinboard, said Don Faul, head of operations at Pinterest, during an appearance at Ad Age's Digital Conference in San Francisco.

See more video from the conference right here, with Old Navy Global CMO Ivan Wicksteed talking about the value of outtakes from its TV campaign with Amy Poehler.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Here Come the Men of Pinterest

Everything You Need to Know About Facebook’s Rooms and The State of Anonymity Apps

There are a few factors that seem to predict the relative success of a social media app. One of them is the app’s popularity among college students. Another indicator is whether Facebook makes their own version of the app, or attempts to acquire the original service provider (think WhatsApp and Instagram).

This week, Facebook unveiled a standalone anonymous messaging app called Rooms. The app’s concept is based on the chat rooms of the early millennial Internet, where users can skip the lengthy process of identity verification. You don’t need a Facebook account to log in: just enter your email address, pick a desired username, and start chatting. What makes the Rooms app different from chat rooms of the Internet past is the ability to change text, colors, customize images and member permissions.

The app’s chat rooms are based on different interest topics. To join a conversation in Rooms, a user must be scan in a unique 2D QR code associated with each chat room. The QR code can be shared by other chat room guests via text message, Instagram, or even by printing out a physical copy. The app is currently available to download for free to iOS users in “US, UK, and several other English speaking countries,” according to Facebook’s News blog. The Guardian reports that an Android Rooms app is expected to arrive in early 2015.

TL;DR

What: A standalone anonymous messaging iOS app from Facebook’s Creative Labs
Why: To let users discuss their topics of interest incognito
How much: Free
Where you can get it: the App Store in select countries

The Rise of Anonymous Messaging

Facebook’s Rooms is the latest addition to a constantly growing family of anonymity apps, a new way of messaging that has exploded in popularity among users since the Whisper app first took stage in 2012. Earlier this year, Kevin Roose of New York Magazine counted and reviewed 25 major releases in his Complete Guide to Anonymous Apps. While the apps’ monthly active user numbers are a lot more difficult to track due to the anonymity factor, and therefore don’t match those of messaging giants like WhatsApp and Snapchat, new apps are released and funded on a regular basis.

Anonymity and the Social Web

The growing popularity of anonymity apps raises a question: is anonymity good for the social web? We discussed the question in March, when two major anonymous messaging apps, Whisper and Secret, each raised several million dollars in funding rounds. In a way, anonymity brings back the early days of Internet, yearned after by many—pre-Facebook, pre-Foursquare days where it wasn’t so easy to find everyone, pre-Google days before plugging your name into a search engine became a common practice.

After Whisper’s debut into the app store, anonymity apps available now have a variety of media and anonymity levels to choose from. There is an anonymous video messaging app, and an app that only lets you see secret messages left in that particular location. There are anonymous and “anonymish” apps: some apps are location-based, some only go to your friends on Facebook and Google+, some let you pick your own friend circles, some only send anonymous messages to people in your phone’s contact list. In short, whatever level of secrecy you prefer, there is probably an anonymity app for that.

The Sensitive Issue with Secret-Sharing Apps

The dark side of anonymous messaging lies in the users’ ability to assume no responsibility for things they post. The ability to communicate back and forth makes these apps different from sites such as PostSecret, where users can post comments without a guarantee they will reach the person who shared the secret. As a result, anonymous messaging apps often make the news for cases of cyberbullying and harassment, making technology reporters and bloggers—and users!—wonder if the benefits of anonymity outweigh the potential for emotional distress.

As Rachel Metz discovers in her article on anonymous apps in MIT Technology Review, app developers are well aware of the potential for abuse of anonymity, and take preventative measures to address the issue. Secret, for example, anticipates the risks by reminding users to “say something kind” and “keep the community safe” throughout the posting and commenting process. The veteran of the anonymous app world, Whisper, has multiple options for flagging an inappropriate message or comment; it also uses software to detect the use of real names and delete messages that contain them.

Newer anonymous apps also take drastic measures to avoid being an inadvertent harassment platform. After a location-based anonymous messaging app Yik Yak, which earned popularity among high school students, was used to send fake bomb threats to high schools, the app’s developers made the decision to cut off access on school grounds.

“We want to grow and we want to be huge, but we also want to make sure that we’re creating sustainable, good communities, too. That’s number one [on] our list. We didn’t create Yik Yak so that people could target other individuals,” one of Yik Yak’s creators Brooks Buffington told TechCrunch after the incident. Even though high school students made up a large portion of Yik Yak’s user base, the app is far from struggling after their radical decision—as a matter of fact, it has expanded into an even bigger market with post-secondary students.

What’s next for anonymity apps?

Online marketers are always looking for the next big social platform to incorporate into their strategy, and this year’s growth spurt for popularity apps have placed them on the radars of social media specialists everywhere.

There are questions being raised about ways brands can reach out to audiences on anonymity apps, which are primarily designed as peer-to-peer platforms. And developers are listening: Yik Yak creators have talked about using the app for real-time updates on breaking news and other location-centric messaging. Forbes published an article outlining how brands can gain consumer insights from Whisper. Stay tuned, because once we find a way, you can be sure we won’t hold it a secret.

Do you think the future of social messaging is anonymous? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter or in the comments below!

The post Everything You Need to Know About Facebook’s Rooms and The State of Anonymity Apps appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.

Everything You Need to Know About Facebook’s Rooms and The State of Anonymity Apps