The Blog

Google Chrome has released a new update for its version 80 on February 4, 2020. This update has been hugely important for websites using push notifications so they can keep interacting with their users. This update comes with a new feature which stresses the importance of the user experience, because it will start blocking web push notifications from websites who are not using push notifications in a UX-friendly way. Based on the ‘block’ and ‘opt-out’ rates of a website and of a user, some websites will be automatically blocked from sending push notifications.

While it is supposed to decrease and prevent cross-site web push notifications and unsolicited requests, Google’s own developers highly recommend reading about their new updates in order to not have your push notifications automatically blocked. 

In which conditions will Google block my push notifications?

To avoid being blocked, you first need to know the scenarios that can make your push notifications become blocked:

The first scenario is where Google Chrome enables the blocking of web push notifications automatically based on the behavior of the user. For instance, if a particular user continually blocks push notifications, it will assume the notifications are disruptive to the user’s workflow. This would result in a bad user experience. 

Secondly, if a website has exceptionally low opt-in rates for push notifications, all push notifications will get blocked for every user. As Google gathers data (since it is still a very recent update), the effects of this will eventually become more prominent. 

Also in the future, we can expect new features of this update to contain consequences for websites abusing their web push notifications. 

“Later in 2020 we plan to enable additional enforcement against abusive websites using web notifications for ads, malware or deceptive purposes. This enforcement will be described in detail in a future blog post.” –PJ McLachlan, Product Manager Google Chrome

 The Quiet UI feature

The new Chrome update will also introduce a new feature called Quiet UI, which will be available on desktop and mobile. The function of Quiet UI is to give the user an alert that certain web push notifications have been blocked, and thus they will be given the chance to unblock it. 

With this, the users are also able to enable “quieter messaging” manually, or entirely disable the notifications. When enabling the quieter messaging, Google will once again block certain notifications which are assumed to be disruptive to the user. 

The New Chrome User Experience Report

On February 11, 2020, the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) was released. This publicly accessible report started providing an insight into notification permission responses by typical users expressed in rates based on four actions: allow, block, dismiss and ignore. Anyone will be able to look up these numbers for any website, which comes in handy with making comparisons and benchmarking. Furthermore, it has the option to visualize the chosen data as seen below: 

You can get more information on this new public data and how to check the opt-in rate of any website on this link.

How to make sure Chrome does not block your notifications

The regulations regarding web push notifications are changing and becoming more complex for website managers, but the main concern for these managers will always be providing a better UX. Managers should also have the same concern while using web push notifications on their website. 

The goal for these website managers to prevent any blocking is to increase the opt-in rate and decrease the ’block’ and ‘opt-out’ rates. Some ways to do this would be to follow Google’s best practices guidelines. These important practices include no irrelevant and excessive notifications, and requesting permission from the users in a timely manner. It has shown that first time visitors don’t enable notifications as quickly. With that being said, effectively using these practices are explained in this permission ux post and this 5 minutes video.

Another helpful tip would be to test whether your website and notifications are in line with the future updates. This can be done by checking your push notification permission process on Chrome Canary. This free-to-use browser allows you to test unreleased features of the upcoming Chrome versions. This way you will be able to test its effects on your website.

However, the most effective tip for making sure Chrome does not block your web push notifications would be to delight your users by sending the most relevant notifications at the best time for them completely based on their behaviour. Basically that’s why Frizbit exists. Behavioural push notification campaigns of Frizbit offer you to provide the most relevant engagement experiences on auto-pilot through web push notifications. With the use of hyper-personalised notifications based on user behaviour, the relevance of your notifications increases and minimizes opt-out rates. Request a demo on Frizbit.com

On the 17th of December, after a two year break, we organised our second meetup: ‘How to Get Value out of your Stubborn Freemium Users’. Mark Smit, CMO at ModelManagement.com, showed us a real-time growth hack on how to convert those stubborn freemium users.

After Mark’s presentation, people had the opportunity to network while having drinks and some food. It was awesome to see all the CMO’s, Digital Marketers, Product Managers and many more professionals come together to listen to Mark, ask him questions and network with each other.

Check out some of the pictures that we made below:

We hope to see you at the next event!

On the 28th of January, we organised our first meetup event of this year. Juliana Turnbull took us through the different essential elements of SEO and showed us some elements that we can implement within our WordPress CMS. After the presentation, people had the opportunity to network with each other along with a beer and some snacks.

CEOs, founders, marketers and other professionals attended the event. It was great to see so many people showing up. We would like to thank everyone that attended and Juliana Turnbull for speaking at the event.

We have made a gallery of the pictures that were made during the event. Check them out below.

2019 was a year full of new trends, events and updates within the digital marketing world. In this article, we are going to take a look at what happened in 2019 and what kind of insights you can use in 2020 for your advantage. We will do this based on the following topics:

• Search Marketing Updates of 2019
• Marketing Automation Updates of 2019
• Content Marketing Updates of 2019
• Social Media Marketing Updates of 2019

1. Search Marketing Updates of 2019

When it comes to search marketing, a bunch of things changed in 2019. Let’s first take a look at the Google algorithm updates, because they definitely had a big impact on search marketing in 2019.

Google Organic Updates of 2019

• Google Search March update

The first update of 2019 was a big one. The update mainly affected YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) websites. Google started favoring websites that are more trustworthy, especially when people search for sensitive keywords. 

• Google Search June update

In this update, Google started showing video carousels a lot more. In 61% of the searches, a video carousel will show up now. Also some news sites got affected. Google raised the quality bar for news content. 

• Google Search September update

The last core update in 2019 was one that again gave more priority to video content. YouTube even overtook Wikipedia in the US Google Index. This means that video content is very important for your SEO.

• The BERT algorithm

BERT is an open-sourced technique for natural language understanding. This update should improve the understanding of queries, especially the longer spoken or written queries. 

These were the major updates that Google rolled out in 2019. The conclusion is that authoritativeness, expertise, and trustworthiness are the most important factors in your content to show to Google. And since the showing of video snippets have massively increased, video content is more important than ever.

Google Ads Updates of 2019

Pay-per-click advertising has changed digital marketing forever. In 2019, Google said that it has generated 32.6 billion in revenue from advertising, which is an increase of 16%. Google Ads is still increasing and that is why it is important to look at what happened with Google Adwords in 2019.

• Removal of average position

Google removed the average position metric from Google Adwords because it does not tell the whole story. When you have the first position, it does not mean that you are shown at the top of the SERP. Organic searches could be on top of you for instance. So because of this Google decided to favour other metrics.

• Evolution of phrase and broad matches

In 2019, Google announced that phrase match and broad match modifiers now also show to same-meaning variants like synonyms and paraphrases. This means that your keywords can show up for more queries, that have similar meanings. Google is saying it did this because the intent behind a query is more important than the semantics within a query. 

• New affinity audiences and in-market audiences

In October, Google added two brand new audiences: seasonal event segments for in-market audiences and affinity audiences. With in-market audiences you can now target your ads to exclusively users that actively search for products or services like yours. With affinity audiences, you can target people that have shown an interest in a particular topic. 

• Bumper ad creator

Lastly, Google introduced a bumper ad creator for everyone. Not every business has the resources to produce professional videos. So that is why you can now create a series of six-second Youtube Ads in a very easy way. Perfect if you do not have the resources to do this yourself. 

These were the major updates that Google Adwords released in 2019. There are some other updates that we did not mention here. You can find a full list of the biggest updates in Google Ads on Google Ads Announcements.

2. Marketing Automation Updates of 2019

Marketing Automation has been becoming increasingly popular over the last few years, and as of now, on average 51% of the companies are using Marketing Automation according to Email Monday. CMOs are allocating one third of their budget in marketing technology. Also, according to Salesforce, the fastest increasing tech solutions are Artificial Intelligence (+155%) and Marketing Automation (+104%). 

• Multi-Channel Automation Platforms

What is becoming more interesting now are Multi-Channel Automation platforms. These platforms offer the ability to create and execute contextual marketing campaigns in multi-channel and they  are hyper-personalized for each user. Companies that use omnichannel strategies achieve 91% greater year-over-year customer retention rates than a business that does not use it.

But how do you create an omnichannel experience for your customers? There are popular multi-channel platforms such as Salesforce, Infusionsoft, Hubspot for B2B and Frizbit for Marketing Automation for e-commerce. These would help you engage with your customers in multi-channel. 

• Web Push Notifications

One of the other things that got hold of the marketing automation world is web push notifications. Through web push notifications, you can send personalised notifications to your customers on almost any web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Microsoft Edge. This channel is very effective and profitable, because you can send messages even if the users are not on your website and bring them back. Some platforms such as Frizbit embedded it to their automation platforms so that you can use it as a retargeting channel. So you can trigger push notifications based on user behaviour and run personalised campaigns, in cart abandonment or form abandonment.

• Chatbots

In 2019, the usage of Chatbots has increased even more. Chatbots have also become more AI-driven, capable of handling complex human interaction with ease and are now taking over traditional conversational services.

Most companies prefer in-built chatbots on their websites as they facilitate enterprises in providing instant customer interaction. For instance, Slack and Twitter messaging platforms are preferred by majority businesses.

Messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger have had huge success with Chatbots since opening up integration for brands. Over 60 percent of users who received a chatbot ping on Messenger engaged with the message.

WhatsApp Business allows brands to integrate chatbots with their API, opening up a whole new avenue for brand-user engagement. With 1.3 billion active MAU’s, this is a tremendous opportunity for businesses big and small. 

The use of chatbots in business will evolve in the coming years – the design and architecture inevitably improving. So watch this space and keep a close eye on what happens through 2020 if you have designs on having your own chatbot in the near future.

• Machine learning, AI and Hyper Personalisation

You are probably seeing it everywhere, Machine learning and AI. At the moment, it is the new world the marketers will benefit in many areas  from hyper-personalisation of messages to bid optimisation or from content creation to product recommendation. We will have smarter marketing platforms, which yield more returns and profitability. Now many tools have started implementing but we will have to wait a bit for a perfect solution for smaller to medium size brands.
When it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is a perfect way to hyper-personalize your message to customers. But there are also companies like Amazon, that use AI, to recommend products to their users that are most likely to appeal to them. AI is very promising so you should follow this development carefully so you can be among the first ones that use this technology to their advantage.

3. Content Marketing Updates of 2019

Content Marketing offers a tremendous opportunity for businesses to boost their results. You should do this by delivering valuable and relevant content to users. This can improve your online reputation, build a community and grow supporters of your brand. In 2019, a number of changes evolved. 

• Video content

You are probably seeing it everywhere, video content. That is not surprising, because video is a highly engaging format for content. According to Forbes, 88% of the average user will spend more time on a website with a video than one without. And Hubspot is saying that 54% of consumers want more video content from a brand or business they support. So if you are not using video content in your content strategy yet, start using it now. 

• Podcasts

Podcasting has massively increased in popularity in the last decade. The amount of listeners has tripled in the last decade and it is expected to grow even more in the coming years. It is important though to not just start a podcast, but have an idea about what your goal is. Approach it as you do for the rest of your content efforts. 

• Content for voice

With the big increase of voice assistant usage like Alexa and Siri, the way people search changes a lot. While before, people would search for, ‘time China’, people now with the usage of voice recording search for ‘what time is it in China?’. This means that it is important for content marketers to start adapting their content creation for voice searches. 

• The state of content marketing

Backlinko analysed 912 million blog posts to understand the state of content marketing. This is what they found: 

• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing
• Long-form content got an average of 77.2% more links than short articles. 
• Question headlines got 23.3% more social shares than headlines that don’t end with a question mark.
• “Why” and “what” posts, as well as infographics, received 25.8% more links compared to videos and “How-to” posts.

4. Social Media Marketing Updates in 2019

In 2019, a lot changed on social media. Facebook had a massive redesign, Instagram got a new scheduling tool and LinkedIn expanded options for freelancers. 

• Facebook

As reported by Pocket-Lint Facebook got a massive redesign, described it as a much cleaner, with more of an all-white look. It also has a dark mode now too.

This redesign is supposed to put an emphasis on Groups and Events, which have become two of the biggest reasons people visit Facebook on a daily basis. The means the News Feed is featured less, which is probably good news for users overall. 

• Instagram

Instagram got a little less Insta with the new scheduling tool. You can now schedule feed posts and IGTV videos through Facebook’s Creative Studio. This new feature supports single and multiple photos along with videos. And you have the option to share it to your Facebook page as well. Once your copy and media assets are set, use the calendar to schedule the post. Hopefully the ability to schedule Instagram Stories is right around the corner.

• LinkedIn

LinkedIn has expanded options for freelancers who use the platform. Now you can “find an expert” post option. To create a new “find an expert” post, you would go to post an update like normal, select the “find an expert” option, and then answer a few brief questions about the services and skills you’re looking for. This will help freelancers decide if they’re right for the job and if they should reach out in hopes of cutting down search time. “Find an expert” posts also stand out a bit more on your feed to draw extra attention.

• Best Time To Post

During 2019, Sprout Social updated their best-times-to-post study. This is what it showed:

• Instagram: highest engagement on Wednesday and Friday between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. 
• Facebook: highest engagement on Wednesday from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
• Twitter: the best days to post are Tuesday and Wednesday.
• LinkedIn: highest engagement on Wednesday between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.

These were the things that happened in Digital Marketing in 2019. We also published a blog about what the marketing trends in 2020 will be. Check it out here.

The year 2019 is almost coming to an end, and what a year full of growth in digital marketing it has been. This does mean everybody is getting ready for the year of 2020. In this light we summed up 7 trends in digital marketing that are going to take off in 2020.

1. Start Using Alternative Channels

Email is still the most prominent marketing channel to use. But marketing emails are being less and less effective. There are companies that have seen their click rate for emails drop by 9,4% in 2019. This doesn’t mean we won’t be using email anymore, email will still be a prominent tool to use in 2020 and beyond that. What we will need to do in 2020 is making use of the other channels which can increase the marketing performance. A multichannel communication strategy allows you to connect with more leads, as well as stay top of mind with your customers. The next thing is that emails easily get overlooked or lost in the rubble, by using multiple channel you will make sure not to get overlooked. I will sum up some alternative communication channels below.

• Whatsapp Business: WhatsApp Business is a free app available on both Android and iPhone. WhatsApp Business makes connecting and interacting with customers easy by providing tools to automate, sort and quickly respond to messages.
• Chat Bots: This piece of software can interact with users while they are browsing on the website just like live chat tools, but with much more logic inside. Chatbots can communicate in a normal manner with people and are able to answer the frequently asked questions they have. So why hire someone to answer their questions while you can have a personalised service that is way cheaper.
• Web Push Notifications: Web push notifications are messages that are sent through a browser while the users are not on the website. You only have to opt-in to them to start receiving them, they can be send from both mobile and desktop devices. You can learn more about them on our web push notifications page.

2. Make Use of Multichannel Services

The amount of available marketing services is staggering, the average company has between 25 and 91 cloud services. This brings a lot of different problems with it, think about security for a second. That’s why a lot of companies are switching to multichannel services like Hubspot, Adobe Marketing Cloud, Marketo or Frizbit. Here you can take charge of different tools through one dashboard.

So, it’s expected that a lot of companies will be switching to an all-in-one marketing service that provides multichannel. It might be a good option for you too, we summed up some of the benefits for you.

• Less integration effort and time
• Faster page load time
• Less data shared with 3rd parties
• Flexibility on creating multi-channel campaigns

3. Expansion of Digital Marketing

According to the site TheDrum the global digital software industry will grow from $37.48 billion in 2017 to $74.96 billion in 2022 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14.9% during the forecast period that is from 2017 to 2022. The worldwide digital ad spending will observe a rise of 17.6%, i.e., up to $333.25 billion in 2019. However, it will keep on rising till 2023 according to Softwaresuggest.

According to a study by the US Small Business Administration, a company should spend 7-8% of its gross revenue on marketing depending on the industry. For the year 2019, 50% of that budget should be dedicated specifically for digital marketing. However, it must increase to 55% in 2020. Criteo states that by the year 2022, close to 87% of marketing budgets will be spent on digital marketing.

Although traditional TV still has the most viewers (43%), online streaming (35%) has risen in popularity in the past five years. To see a higher ROI, a blended strategy for advertising is the best bet. Traditional marketers advertise on both platforms for the best results.

According to emarketer Google is still the number one in digital ads with 36,2% of market share followed by Facebook with 19,2 % of market share.

4. Hyper-personalise Your Messages

Artificial intelligence has brought about the phenomenon hyper-personalisation, which enables more appealing and individualised communication with consumers.

Communication with consumers that is deeply personal and tailored to them is what keeps messages interesting and make consumers want to interact with you.

Hyper-personalised messages enhance the customer experience by tailoring to each individual’s preferences based upon user behaviour. More than simply including the customer’s name in an email, hyper-personalised campaigns utilise real-time data and user behaviour to create the most effective automated, individualised communication strategies. Take a look at the cart abandonment campaign from Frizbit in the picture, here you can see we included the name of the customer, the name of the product, and a picture of the product.

Hyper-personalised messages create a dynamic experience for customers, making them more likely to return to your website and interact with it. Real-time data and user behaviour are used in hyper-personalised marketing efforts to create the most relevant and effective communications with each customer.

5. Make Automation Your Friend 
Next to hyper-personalisation, automation is going to play a bigger role next year because far too much time is put into manually created and delivered messages. In order to optimise efficiency and ROI, industries like e-commerce and travel would benefit greatly from automated messages through the high volume of customers. But not only them, a lot of other industries like SaaS, Media and B2B could benefit from them as well.

As automated messages are triggered by user behaviour, always the most relevant users receive it. That’s why both click rates and conversion rates are quite high. It is also time efficient because the messages are triggered automatically with user behaviour. This makes that you only have to set the scenario and template once and that’s it. There is no need to spend more time to write content of the and that’s why automation is time efficient.

6. Give Transparency to Customers

How a company handles the private data of their customers is vital for their success. In 2018, the GDPR policy was more actively enforced to ensure that companies handle customer data transparently.

Coredna also indicates that companies producing transparent and easy-to-digest information are likely to retain around 90% of their customers.

In short, In the future there will be more emphasis on this. Companies will have to give complete transparency of kind of data is shared.

Tips on how to be transparent

• Honest communication to and with customers
• Make sure that selling is not your only goal.
• Respond immediately to concerns
• Share news with your customers

7.  Get ready for Voice Searches

More and more people will start using smartphones with voice assistants though the massive growth in technology. Voice assistants can be handy for searching for certain places, reading specific texts loudly, and even sending text messages for you.

Voice search is also essential when using it for your business. It’s helping in the growth of voice search also raises the use of Artificial Intelligence.

Most of the people who are using search engines, use long sentences with specific keywords. In order to optimise the opportunity to be found in voice search results, use longer keywords and complete sentences. Also include any questions that people may ask concerning your products and provide detailed answers.

The time of the year everyone who sells online has been waiting for is finally here.

Christmas offers a great opportunity to amaze your audience. While there are numerous ways how you can amaze your clients, nothing beats an impressive Christmas marketing campaign.

I will first give you some numbers to show why you shouldn’t take the Christmas shopping lightly as a retailer.

• Around 20% of holiday purchases are based on impulse
• An average consumer will spend $1,048 on Christmas gifts and decorations in 2019.
• 56% of consumers plan to shop online.
• 73% of all consumers use their phones and tablets to search for the best presents, even if later they go to an offline store.

If you want to be a real winner this Christmas season, you should have your campaigns ready to go. Next to that you should not only be able to deal with the increase in sales but more importantly be able to catch the eye of your clients. This will happen with creative campaigns that will persuade them to buy at your store.

You can of course do this through the traditional marketing channels like email, but there is a clever marketing channel that is way more effective for bringing customers back. This channel is Web Push Notification.

Why choose Web Push Notifications for Christmas Campaigns?

Firstly, it is very easy to install web push notifications on your website and you can directly start collecting opt-ins after a 10-minute setup. Web Push Notifications also have x3 higher opt-in rate than emails according to Sumo, which means that you can build a new subscriber base more quickly than email and start re-engaging with your users.

Secondly, Web Push Notifications absolutely don’t require any personal data from the end user unlike email or SMS. With that, web push notifications are GDPR compliant by nature.

Also, you can reach both mobile & desktop users without having an app. It is the most engaging channel with an average CTR of 8.5% vs 2.4% on the email channel according to Mailchimp.

To give you an idea what you can do with this channel for Christmas season, we’ve put together some tips for christmas branding in push notifications and 7 Christmas Web Push Notifications campaigns to help you get a higher CTR and ROI than ever before.

Tips for Christmas Branding in Push Notifications

• Logo

  You can update your logo during the Christmas period, to give it a festive look that your clients can’t miss. This would definitely increase CTR’s in both manual and automated push notification campaigns. You can use a Santa Claus, hat, sleigh, snow, reindeer or christmas decorations, tree, candy, etc.

• Action Button

  The call to action button can be adjusted in combination with the logo, with another item related with Christmas as listed above.

• Image
  

  You can design custom images to grab your customers attention and get them to visit your campaign pages. It is also recommended to use christmas branding matching with the rest of the elements in the notification.

• Colours

  To let the message pop-out it is recommended to use contrasting colours. You can use a red or green colour over a light background, or white color over a red or dark background.

7 Not-to-miss Examples of Christmas Campaigns with Web Push Notifications

1. Free Overnight Shipping

To start the list off, we chose the free overnight shipping method but with a holiday makeover.  We give a certain urge to buy in the message by saying they have to buy before 9PM to get the free overnight shipping.

2. Christmas Discount

Christmas is for family, that is a given. Therefore, it is a great time to approach your visitors by wishing them a happy holiday season and offering them an incentive to start buying things at a discount on your website for their families.  

3. Christmas Coupon

Everyone loves coupons, right? Those coupons work especially good in the holiday season when visitors need to buy a lot for friends and family. For this notification we did a personalised version with image and call-to-action button where visitors can sign up and get a coupon.

4. Christmas Welcome Campaign with Sequence

Christmas is a good time to get new customers and with this campaign you can let them know you think about them in an automated way. The first notification will be sent when a visitor signs up to the platform and they can get more information through clicking on the action button with ‘Click here to get started’. Three days after the initial push notification the user gets the second push notification with some tips. Through this way you nurture your leads and you refer them back to your site.

5. Countdown till Christmas

Let customers know there is not much time left for Christmas shopping and give them the urge to shop through adding a timer or countdown to Christmas clock to your notifications.

6. Welcome Gift Campaign

Who doesn’t love free gifts? Everyone right. Give your customers a small gift when they sign up to let them know you are grateful that they signed up.

7. Xmas Gift Campaign

Why just leave it at giving your customers a small gift when they sign-up? Why not give them a gift as well just for Christmas to let them keep coming back to your site.

What is Hyper-personalization? How does it differ from traditional personalization?

Artificial intelligence has brought about the phenomenon hyper-personalization, which enables more appealing and individualized communication with consumers.

Traditional personalization in customer engagement has been used commonly in email marketing. This mainly consists of simply including some static fields from the customer database to the email body, such as a customer’s name or salutation.

Hyper-personalized messages, on the other hand, enhance the customer experience by tailoring to each individual’s preferences based upon user behavior. More than simply including the customer’s name in an email, hyper-personalized campaigns utilize real-time data and user behavior to create the most effective automated, individualized communication strategies.

Frizbit enables optimal communication with customers by taking all of the available data points that take individual wants and needs into account. The hyper-personalization offered by Frizbit can provide you with behavior-driven marketing campaigns in multi-channel, that you will only need to setup once before you start bringing your customers back and start increasing your revenues. 

Hyper-Personalization Can Help You…

1. Compose individualized, appealing messages with dynamic parameters

Not surprisingly, Frizbit allows you to address each of your users personally with their individual names included in your text. However, to take your campaign to the next level, Frizbit provides the ability to hyper-personalize your messages by using multiple dynamic parameters in both your text used and images displayed. Inviting, individualized language that makes use of the data points listed below will make your customers feel that they are valued, increasing re-engagement.

• Product Data: Products or services previously engaged with their names, categories, images, prices, etc.
• Purchase History of the User: Total amount spent, frequency of purchase, basket size, basket value, categories of products.
• Time of Engagement: Last time of visit, last time of taking an action, how many specific actions they took in a certain period of time, how often they visit, registration date
• Device Data: Device model, brand, operating system, version, browser used
• Browsing History: Web pages visited, terms searched, filters and sorting selected, time spent and actions taken on the website.

2. Nail the timing

Hyper-personalization enables you to figure out when users would be most likely to engage with your company. With Frizbit, you can either set messages to be sent at a specific, repeated time or at a time triggered after a specified user engagement. This way, if you want John to receive a reminder for an event that occurs at 8 a.m. every Tuesday, he can, or if you want Jane to receive a message 24 hours after she last visited your site, she can, too.

3. Target based upon user behavior  

Using hyper-personalization, you can make it so that certain user behaviors trigger specific messages. These can be sent to the users through the preferred channel at the time of the behavior or at a specified time after the behavior.  For example, a clothing website could individualize messages based off of what a user buys, how much a user has spent, or at what time a user has engaged the most. To prevent annoying your users, which may cause them to opt out of messages, Frizbit allows you to limit the number of messages received by a single user in a certain timeframe with the Frequency Cap feature and limit the lifetime of your messages with the Time to Live feature.

4. Use the preferred language of users

Frizbit has the ability to pick up on the preferred language of the user based on the default language on his or her desktop or mobile device or the language they choose to use on the website. This way, whether one is an English or Spanish speaker in the United States, for example, your company can communicate with him or her in a way they will understand and appreciate.

5. Make use of users’ geolocation

Knowing the specific time zone, country, city and even the local area a customer is located in is important when it comes to effective communication. Taking advantage of this information will make it possible to send messages at the times in which your subjects will be most likely to engage. Also crafting your messages differently for each city or country will yield improved results in your campaigns.

6. Segment using demographics

Further segment users based upon the following demographics in order to communicate more effectively.

• Name
• Gender
• Age
• Civil status
• Birthday

7. Choose the right channel

Whether a message is sent via email, text message, web push notification, or app push notification makes a difference in how it is perceived. For example, if you are sending a detailed progress update, an email would be the best route, but if you are reminding a customer about a sale ending in an hour, a quick text message would be the way to go. For registered users, you can use email and SMS, while non-registered users can opt to receive push or app notifications, so they do not feel invaded. With Frizbit, you can create automated and hyper-personalized campaigns in each of these channels, which will give you the freedom to choose which platform will work best for each message you wish to send.

With Frizbit’s hyper-personalization, you can create meaningful connections with your users through effective communication on a variety of channels. The artificial intelligence used will improve the reception of your products and services, increasing customer re-engagement. Register to Frizbit for an online demo to see how hyper-personalization can improve communication with your customers today!

Text messaging has been used as a marketing platform for years, but in relatively ineffective ways. Some may view Short Message Service (SMS) marketing as costly for businesses, since sending out a massive amount of texts can be expensive. Moreover, critics may point out that text messages can only convey limited information or that recipients may find it intrusive and consider the messages as spam. However, these drawbacks only apply to the current way in which SMS marketing is being employed–in a uniform, impersonal manner.  When used in a hyper-personalized and automated way, SMS can be an extremely effective avenue to both engage and re-engage customers.

Universal Advantages of SMS Marketing & Communication

1. Instant communication

In today’s day and age, the majority of people who own a mobile phone carry it with them at all times. This makes SMS an especially effective medium when it comes to communicating messages that are dependent on time, such as a notification that a promotion is ending soon or a reminder that another customer might take the item a user left in his or her cart. Being clear-cut and convenient, unlike lengthy emails or tedious phone calls, time will be saved on the sides of both the sender and receiver. This leads to an efficient, effective transmission of information.

2. Highly Likely to be read

While not everyone has email notifications turned on, most people receive text notifications. According to research, 90% of text messages are read within three minutes of being delivered and 82% of people report reading every SMS they receive. This is about four times the open rate of emails, which is around 20%. Even if one does not open your message, a preview of the text is likely to show up on their phone, still reaching your consumer.  

3. Unsaturated form of marketing

It is estimated that the average person is bombarded with 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements a day. With social media and digital advertising being the more commonly used platforms at the moment, users become desensitized to these ads, making them more likely to scroll past and ignore the content. The usage of ad-blockers also inhibits these tactics. A text message, on the other hand, stands out because it is more direct and eye-catching, which is important considering the high volume of ads one sees in a day.

4. Can maximize user reach

While Whatsapp, Facebook, and other mobile messaging apps require smartphones, text messages are accessible to all mobile users. In the United States, for example, while 95% of the population owns a mobile phone, only 77% of those are smartphones, which renders 17% unable to receive communication through push notifications, app notifications, or emails on their phones. Globally, only around half of all mobile users have smartphones. Using SMS will enable you to contact a significant portion of users you could be missing otherwise.

5. Less likely to be marked as spam

Research suggests that while a whopping 53% of emails are marked as spam, only 2.8% of text messages are. Thus, SMS can increase both your overall reach and chances of user re-engagement.

Benefits When Used in an Hyper-personalized Fashion

Using automation and behavioral targeting, Frizbit can mitigate for the general faults that SMS advertising is thought to have, as well as add further benefits to those listed above. Reach your highest engagement rates ever thanks to the following capabilities of hyper-personalized text messaging:

• Call the users by their names
  • Let them know they are important
• Use advanced personalization parameters
  • i.e. price, product name, product category
• Trigger messages based on user behavior
  • i.e. geolocation, related products, cart abandonment

Sample Use Cases of Hyper-Personalized Text Messages Sent via Frizbit

1) Incomplete transactions

Remind customers to complete their purchases if they left any products in their carts.

2) Appointment reminders

Make remembering appointments easier on customers and reduce no-shows. This is perfect for salons, dentists’ or doctors’ offices, restaurants, or any other service that offers reserved timeslots.

3) Event Promotion

Behavioral targeting will enable you to recommend content your users will enjoy.

4) Geo-location

When a customer is in a certain area at a certain time, it can trigger a relevant SMS.

5) Promotions & Sales

Encourage users to take advantage of limited-time discounts.

6) Travel Alerts

Arranging travel can be complicated for clients. They will be more likely to return to your agency if their experience flows smoothly with helpful reminders and suggestions.

7) Holidays

Wish customers a happy holiday and encourage them to let your company help them celebrate.

8) Opinion Polls

Figure out how to improve customer service and ratings by encouraging feedback.

You can start utilizing automated and hyper-personalized SMS to bring customers back effectively and generate targeted conversions having high return on investment. Frizbit will enable your business to create timely, meaningful connections with users, via behavioral text messages. Register to Frizbit now for an online demo to see how you can take your communication with your users to the next level!

Many companies are taking advantage of managing their communication with their customers over multiple channels, leaving most of these channels to be managed by different teams or parties. The result of this strategy is that their customer is being sent different messages over different channels. Instead of attacking users with irrelevant information over different channels, companies should start to cater to their customer’s personalized needs and interests while managing them centrally. If you are not catering to your user’s preferences and interests, your user is more likely to opt-out from all communication that connects you directly to your user.

Multi-Channel Marketing Orchestration via Web Push, SMS, Email, App Push

In today’s day in age, customers have all of the power, leaving sellers constantly trying to compete against each other in order to get the end result necessary, which of course is to bring that customer back and consider them when planning from future purchases. To adapt to this reality, businesses must strive to make it as easy as possible for customers to gain access to their site. This is made possible by the sheer orchestration of all of your communication centralized on different channels, so that you are able to interact with your users in the most effective way possible. Therefore, creating a simple way for users to receive the same message over different channels, creating an effective strategy for retaining users.

Why Should You Utilize Automation Through Multi-Channels?

Value has more to do with being there for people rather than selling the industry’s best. Thus, resulting in an increase of customer retention. This is vital, because even a five percent increase in customer retention can raise profits by 25-95 percent. If you are not already sold by this statistic, imagine this: It costs five to 25 times more to get a new customer than it does to keep the customer you already have. Therefore, it is important to keep that user engaged through multi-channel marketing.

Segmentation and Triggered Messages on Multi-Channel Marketing

Benefits of Multi-Channel Marketing Orchestration

• Reach more customers on all of the channels that they prefer
• Drive more traffic to your website/app, therefore generating more revenue
• Engage with anonymous users who prefer not to share their personal info, via push notification channel
• Able to create a customer engagement journey through scenarios and templates created for each channel to be sent at the best time for each
• The user and campaign analytics that Frizbit provides, allows you to track performance of your campaigns on each channel
• Optimize your pitches and discover how to connect better with your customers on a more personal level, with A/B testing and machine learning
• Engage with customers in a less overwhelming way
• Successful with companies operating in multiple locations and languages—Frizbit is able to plan specific marketing campaigns for specific regions or a targeted audience coupled with unique product offerings—building long-term loyalty through localization and multilanguage feature

Example of Creating Sequences on Multi-Channel Marketing

The Different Forms of Multi-Channel Marketing

1. Email Marketing

Email Marketing Example on Multi-Channel Marketing

one of the most common and effective methods of marketing

• Instead of bombarding users with emails every day, Frizbit is able to strategically build a series of emails (combined with the other channels) that will grasp your user’s attention during the time that is best selected for them
• Able to build a subscriber list
• Customers appreciate and want to learn more about what you have to offer on a timeline that makes sense for them
• Provide a call to action—show customers the action you are encouraging them to take next

2. SMS Marketing

SMS Marketing Example on Multi-Channel Marketing

98% of all text messages are read and only 22% of emails are read

• Giving you a direct line to your customers, instantly and virtually guarantees that they will read it
• Texts are an intimate tool—they relate to close relationships (giving customers a reason to stick with you)
• Frizbit is able to send out automated and personalized text messages to each customer based on their actions X hours after they abandon website
• Speed and convenience is essential—instant access to everything
• After sending an email, customers will benefit greatly from receiving a SMS reminder that they have received an email containing specified information

3. Web Push Notifications 

Web Push Notification Example on Multi-Channel Marketing

a one click process to redirect customers to your site

• Send directly to their device via browser at any time, even when they are not on your website
• Send urgent sales alerts, out of stock availability, price drop alerts and cart abandonment reminders
• Schedule notifications
• Easily reach consumers through mobile and desktop in real time
• Enhance user experience without requesting personal information such as an email—just by clicking allow, is enough to start sending push notifications

4. App Push Notifications

App Push Notification Example on Multi-Channel Marketing

targeted notifications that can really bring people back at the right time and ensure your service is not forgotten

• Mostly the same as web push notifications, except they are sent for the app
• Reel customers back in by giving them a reason to come, sometimes all it takes is that extra push

Integrating Multi-Channel Strategies

In today’s society, it can take up to twenty impressions across multiple marketing channels to convince a potential customer to take action. Some companies stress that they are overwhelming their customers by repeating a message, but this is not the case. Most of the time customers will not read the entirety of the content being sent to them, but by solely receiving those automated messages, it is sparking curiosity in their minds. Users need to see the message you are trying to convey multiple times before they actually begin paying attention. This is easily done through consistent messaging across multiple channels.

It is predicted that customers will likely interact with at least two marketing channels out of the many offered, so Frizbit ensures that they are consistent with their information across all marketing channels. With stable content, this will ultimately make your brand memorable. When viewing automated messages, people are looking for content and products that interest them personally. Frizbit is able to fulfill these needs by collecting user data after gaining permission from the user and targeting customers based on their interests, ultimately, bringing your customer back.

Start marketing your brand over multi-channels collectively by signing up for Frizbit today!

Booking abandonment rates within the travel industry are at over 80 percent, according to Leonardo.com. These rates are a result of the longevity of the purchasing process involved when looking into flights, hotels and all things travel-minded. This type of planning takes up some serious time, and in our busy lives, it has become quite difficult to find that time. Travel businesses should take initiative in recovering abandoned bookings for their customers through marketing automation campaigns.

Web push notifications are a new channel that you can utilize to communicate with anonymous users in an automated way, in order to bring them back to your website. They offer customer engagement, increased revenue opportunities and customer satisfaction without requiring an email address.

Online travel websites are benefitting the most from the use of automated push notifications, within all other industries. Through all stages of the booking process, companies are able to send relevant and personalized notifications that will help increase conversion rates and boost customer satisfaction in the newest and most convenient way available.

How Can Travel Sites Bring Customers Back Through Automated Push Notifications?

1. Notify Users About Travel Deals

Starting at the beginning of the purchasing process — Most users begin by researching various destinations and costs of different hotels and flights. Imagine finding a hotel or flight that is of interest to you, but the price is far too high for your liking. Instead of having to go through the hassle of monitoring that hotel or flight each day in hopes for a price drop, imagine how much easier it would be if you were alerted through a push notification regarding that specific price reduction.

These notifications have the unique ability to contact users about broader sales and target people based upon their specific interests. For example, if you are running an early summer discount sale, you might target users who have previously searched for sunny destinations along the coast in order to alert them of a new or upcoming sale within that area of interest.

Push notifications help trigger the beginning of the travel planning process and gives that extra push that is necessary in finalizing their decision.

2. Abandoned Booking Reminders

Cart abandonment is a major issue within the travel industry because of the longevity of the booking process. Research is a very crucial part of travel and users tend to first research many websites in order to find the best deal for them. Nearly 40 percent of users agree that they abandon a travel website simply because they are still researching other options.

By retargeting users through push notifications, travel companies are able to remind users of what they were previously looking at and also provide recommendations to the user based upon what they formally looked at. Again, the idea is all about benefiting the customers and making the booking process easier for the user.

3. Cross-Sell Campaigns

Travel businesses should take full advantage of cross-selling because it offers opportunities to sell services such as hotel bookings and car rentals after the customer has booked their flight. In addition, in-flight services can also be offered such as preferred seating, pre-paid meals and in-flight entertainment.

Cross-selling and up-selling not only project increases in revenue, but also drive consumer retention.

4. Deliver Travel Plan Alerts

Once your user determines their destination and books the trip, push notifications become a great communication tool bridged between the website and the user. Updates on future travel plans are notifications that users tend to find very helpful.

A few push notification campaigns that would be of great contribution could be preparation alerts.

• Luggage Reminders: Get ready for your trip by packing those bags and adding any extra luggage you may need
• Check-in Notices: Time to check-in for your flight tomorrow
• Delay Updates: There has been a change in your flight due to weather, keep updated with our app

Real time alerts make your user’s travel experience run smoother and increases the chances of a rebooking through your company in the future.

5. Share Useful Information About an Upcoming Destination

Information featured on mediums, such as blogs, have the outreach available to share information on ideas such as popular destinations or the best restaurants in that particular area. Blog posts share attractive information on destinations and in return, excite travellers.

If your site runs a blog or another source containing informative content, you will then be able to trigger push notifications pertaining to that content to users who have booked a trip to that specific destination. Not only is this drawing automatic attention and bringing more traffic to your website, but it is also offering quality content to your users who are more likely than not, to find it relevant.

6. Post-Trip Suggestions

Through push notifications, it is possible to send automated suggestions regarding new destinations that your customer may like to discover based on their previous destination choices.

If a customer formerly purchased a flight to Palma, a suitable suggestion would be a destination such as Seville, another city located in Spain. Bringing the customer back is the ultimate goal and by suggesting new locations, you are able to spike curiosity among your consumer and in return, sending them running back to your site.

7. Offer Customers Travel Planning Advice

Take into consideration, sending helpful tips that will help give your customers information on how to save money. This will help you to gain their business and bring the customer back instead of traveling to a competitor’s website. An example of a push notification campaign that could be put in place, could be a number of travel alerts regarding popular travel times, such as the holidays and summer.

These notifications make reaching out to the user easy by informing them when flight or hotel prices are expected to rise, the cheapest days and months to travel, among other traveling tips. This encourages users who are starting the booking process to continue visiting your site and will keep your company relevant and fresh in the minds of potential customers.

You can start utilising marketing automation through web push notifications with Frizbit now. Create an account on frizbit.com right now and start a trial on your website.