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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Learfield’s Huge Splash Into NFTs, Spotify Passes Apple For Podcasts, Surprising Email Stats

Happy Monday! Let’s talk about 3 stories that I noticed from the marketing, business and web3 worlds over the last week:

 

This is a big deal, and a story that’s continuing to develop, so you can get up to speed as it happens. Learfield, which partners with many of the top colleges and universities on athletic broadcasts, will be partnering with Recur Forever to launch a portal/marketplace for NFTs focused on college athletes. The portal, NFTU.com, will launch on March 14th, one week from today.  You can learn more about the portal and sponsorship here. There’s so many potential in this deal, it will be fun to see how this partnership evolves and NFTU.com could quickly grow into a competitor to OpenSea and LooksRare in the NFT marketplace space.

 

In 2021, Spotify passed Apple to be the top destination for podcast listeners. I think this is a sign of the growing popularity of Spotify and it’s move into hosting podcasts. Also, Apple podcast locks you into using Apple products whereas Spotify can be used across competing devices from Google and Samsung, among others.

 

I thought this was interesting, Marketing Charts reports that email marketing converts at a similar rate on both desktop and mobile devices.  This is where I think it gets interesting; Even though the conversion rates are the same for desktop and mobile, marketers surveyed said open rates and click rates were actually better on mobile! Yet when it comes to converting, desktop matched mobile users.

What does that mean? I think it suggests that we are more likely to read and click on an email on our phone because we are more likely to use our phone for email.  We are out and about, we have our phones with us at all times.  It’s the convenience factor. But a conversion usually requires a bit more attention and time, and that’s where the desktop usage comes into play.  I suspect in many cases users are opening and reading on their phones, then saving to investigate later on their desktops, and that’s when the conversion is happening.  Good stats to keep in mind as you are planning your next email marketing campaign!

 

So that’s it for this week’s Monday’s Marketing Minute. I hope you have a chance this week to get out and enjoy some of the Spring weather that is starting to pop up across the country!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Facebook vs Australia, Why Millennials Buy, Spend Emails on Friday

Happy Monday, and welcome to ‘The Week When Things Started to Get Back to Semi-Normal!’  I can finally see the ground again, almost all the snow is gone. I hope my friends in Texas are staying to dig out as well, I’m hearing good reports. Let’s hope last week was winter’s last gasp, and the warmer Spring temps will start this week!  Let’s dive into the news!

 

This will be a fascinating case study. Australia recently passed a series of laws governing the sharing of news content saying that Facebook and Google would have to share its revenue generated from sharing and distributing links to news content via its platforms. Australia is said to be making this move to help local publishers, especially print media. Google is apparently willing to go along with this, but Facebook will not. As a result, Facebook has BLOCKED the sharing of all news content in Australia. It will be fascinating to see who caves on this first; If it’s Facebook, that will simply encourage other countries to make similar moves. If it’s Australia, that means Facebook will have even more advertising leverage. I suspect Facebook has drawn a digital line in the sand here and will hold out as long as they can.

 

Insights from eMarketer into what prompts millennials to make a purchase. It’s interesting that the top factor is free shipping, but the second one is coupons and discounts. The reality for eCommerce sites is that customers now expect free shipping. I think even to the point that it’s worth adding free shipping even if you have to raise prices slightly to cover the cost. Since the expectation is there for free shipping, when many customers get to the checkout and see there is even a $7.95 shipping charge added, it can kill the purchase right there. When it comes to ecommerce, focus on adding convenience (free shipping, easy returns) and it will increase purchases and revenue.

 

So it turns out I was accidentally ahead of the curve in launching Backstage Pass on Friday! It seems emails sent on Friday have the best engagement! Those sent on Tuesday have the worst, which surprises me a bit.

 

Speaking of my newsletter, I’d love for you to subscribe! It hits your inbox every Friday with a deep dive into the marketing, digital and content strategy advice and inspiration you need. And it’s pretty indepth, which is why it’s delivered on Friday, so you have all weekend to ruminate over the (hopeful) pearls of wisdom! You can check out last week’s issue here, or subscribe by clicking the image below!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: eCommerce Sales Spiking, Smart Marketing For Virtual Events

Happy Thanksgiving week! I hope everyone has a wonderful week with friends and family! Let’s jump into some marketing stories that caught my eye the last few days:

 

According to eMarketer, eCommerce sales will rise by a little over 10% both this year and in 2021. When you consider that’s a big increase over 2018, 2019, it suggests that the changes in shopping behavior we are picking up this year will carry over. As a result, your company should be doing everything it can to streamline the online buying process on your website.  Calls to action should be clear and consistent, content that’s relevant and that moves the buyer through the purchase process should be utilized. More customers will be shifting purchase behavior toward buying online, and your website needs to be able to capitalize on this change.

Virtual events have been very popular this year, for obvious reasons. I love this idea of sending lunch to attendees of virtual events. There are so many opportunities with virtual events, and quite honestly, I’m not a fan of most virtual events because they are a really bad version of live events. But with a little thought and consideration for the attendees, you can come up with ideas like this that greatly improve their experience.

 

It’s been very troubling to see how social platforms continue to censor content it disagrees with. This censorship is often done under the guise of ‘policing misinformaton’, but the end result is typically that content moderators simply remove content because its expresses an opinion that the moderators disagree with. Which is very disturbing, and will likely lead to a removal of the CDA 230 protections that content creators now enjoy. I’ve written before about how this censorship could affect individual content creators in previous posts.

 

Hope everyone has a wonderful Monday! See you back here in 24 hours!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Growing Distrust of Influencers, Driving More Sales With Email

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and is ready to have a great week! Here’s a few stories that caught my eye the last few days:

 

I thought this study from Ipsos was very interesting. It found that most consumers don’t put much trust in influencers. In fact, the study found that consumers felt that influencers were only marginally more trustworthy than politicians! Yikes! I do think these results are a bit of an outlier, but at the same time, I do think trust levels for influencers are falling. A big reason why is because influencer marketing has become a cottage industry. Big money is flowing to these influencers, and some are creating content around their sponsors that looks and feels more like an ad, and less like organic praise for a product they use and enjoy.

 

Interesting findings from eMarketer on what we want from our emails. Emails that are pointing us toward products based on our purchase history seems to be the clear winner here. It makes sense, we often want and need products that compliment or are similar to what we’ve already bought. This works in stores as well. How many times have you seen a small display of ketchup placed to the french fries in the freezer section? Or maybe a display of buns placed next to the hot dogs? These are reminders that hey, you might want this product that works well with the one you have already bought. This is simply taking a tried and true upsell opportunity from offline, and bringing it to online in the form of smart email marketing.

 

One of the areas of marketing that I think is ripe for growth is visual representation. Pictures are so important to driving engagement on social media, so if you can nail the visuals, you have a much better chance at grabbing your audiences attention. I love this tweet from Alabama’s football team. Look at how they utilized including multiple images in a tweet. They included two images, and have them both combine to form one larger picture. This is a great example of leveraging visuals to drive higher engagement rates. This is an area I want to focus on with my own content.

Hope you have an amazing and productive week!

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