Time is going by so fast it’s almost impossible to keep up with all digital marketing news and updates for every month. Google always keeps us on our tiptoes with constant updates, changes and new features for all of its products, new marketing tech is being developed every day and social media is a complete universe on its own. 

But don’t despair! As every month, we are to gather and sum up for you the most relevant:

Digital Marketing News, Insights and Updates from May 2021

1. Search Marketing Updates

Google previews MUM

The biggest news from Google this month is the preview of MUM. It stands for Multitask Unified Model and this new tech was showcased mid May by Google’s Prabhakar Raghavan at Google I/O. 

Since 2019 Google’s search algorithm to understand queries has been powered by BERT, an extension of Natural Language Processing. This algorithm helps searches deliver accurate results by asking questions more similar to the way we talk naturally, instead of trying to think what type of keyword or phrase will actually give us the answer we’re looking for. 

Google has now announced the preview of MUM: a new tech 1,000 times more powerful than BERT. The biggest and most important difference is that MUM can multitask to help deliver more information: it’s trained in 75 languages and it’s multimodal, meaning it can understand information across text and images. 

According to Google, they have discovered that it takes an average of eight searches for users to get the information they want and complete a complex task. With the development of MUM they aim to solve this issue and help users get things done with fewer searches. Google says:

Imagine a question like: “I’ve hiked Mt. Adams and now want to hike Mt. Fuji next fall, what should I do differently to prepare?” This would stump search engines today, but in the future, MUM could understand this complex task and generate a response, pointing to highly relevant results to dive deeper. 

Google’s mission has always been to make information more accessible to everyone. They have already started running internal pilots with MUM and says to be very excited about how this new search technology can improve Google products and user experience. 

Google’s launching new features for smart bidding

Google is rolling out new features for Smart Bidding to make marketers life much easier, better manage their bidding strategies and improve campaign performance. 

• Top signals for Target ROAS and Maximize conversion: Top signals highlight some of the dimensions in which the bid strategy is automatically optimizing the bids depending on likelihood of users converting (device type, location, day of week, time of day, keywords). They currently report for campaigns that use Target CPA and Maximize conversions, with the launch of the new features, they’ll be available for search campaigns using Target ROAS and Maximize conversion value.

• Seasonality adjustments at manager account level: Smart Bidding takes into account seasonality to improve the performance of the campaigns. However, for specific times such as big sales or product launches, the adjustments had to be made manually for each individual account. With new features Google makes it possible to set them at the manager account level. 

• Maximize conversions with recommendations: Google will be showing new opportunities to opt into maximize conversions on the Recommendations Page: “These recommendations will show for eligible Search campaigns and can help you get more conversion value within your budget.”

• Target Impression Share simulators to predict performance: up until now Simulators to help understand how target bid and budget changes could affect campaign performance, were only available for conversion and click-based bid strategies. With the roll-out of new features they are expanding to Search campaigns using Target Impression Share.

New ad formats for local campaigns on Google

At its annual Google Marketing Livestream, they announced the launch of new formats for local ads campaigns: 

• Auto suggest ads: one of the new formats is called Auto Suggest Ads, which show ads based on the user’s location. When a user searches for a product or service in Google Maps, the auto suggest will show an ad of a nearby advertiser.

• Navigational ads: these new types of ads will be shown on the user’s screen when using Google Maps driving directions. So when a user is driving towards a destination, an ad of a nearby local business will appear on the screen and the user will have the option to add the destination to the route.

• Similar destination ads: another new ad format is Similar Destination Ads. They will show when a user searches for a local business and it’s closed at the time of the search. Google will then show a similar business with the tag “Similar and Open”. 

All new three ad formats will be available for local ad campaigns globally in the second quarter of this year.

2. Marketing Tech Updates

Microsoft Advertising announces Unified Smart

Acknowledging the importance of having a strong online presence for any business and how challenging it can be to manage it successfully, Microsoft has launched Unified Smart campaigns: a unified solution to manage social media presence and search advertising. 

With Unified Smart campaigns platform you can:

• Run ads: this new solution allows you to run ads on both search engines with Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads, as well as social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. 

• Manage social media: Unified Smart allows to publish, like and reply comments on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

• Reporting: additionally to being able to manage campaigns across channels in one single place, publishers can also see reports of search and social media in one place.

• Automate and optimize with AI: you can create ads, let them run for a while and then watch how AI creates additional ones for you, optimizing your campaign results. The same way you budget will be distributed by AI across channels to help you get the best ROI. 

The most interesting thing about the new Microsoft solution is that it is free to use. There are no charges, service fees or commissions. You only have to pay when someone clicks on your ad. That’s what makes Unified Smart campaigns so interesting for new and small businesses that wish to handle their campaigns all in one platform. 

Google expands its shopping integrations

Google is always considering its users needs and is now rolling out shopping integrations with WooCommerce, GoDaddy and Square. During the Google I/O they announced that they want to help retailers and consumers connect and build lasting relationships, hence the new integrations.

This open ecosystem approach means that retailers will have even more ways to get discovered across Google, and shoppers will have even more choice.

Retailers that use any of these e-commerce platforms will now be able to show their products for free across Google. A few days earlier Google announced the Shopify integration and has now revealed the expansion to the other platforms.

The aim is to help people discover new and easier ways to shop, and to offer retailers more options to connect with their customers. Google says that “As this generational shift to e-commerce accelerates, having a digital presence is just the minimum — it’s now imperative for you as a retailer to stand out and speak directly to your customers.“

Zoom announces all-in-one events platform

The popular video conferencing platform Zoom has announced the launch of Zoom Events, an all-in-one solution for digital events. It is scheduled to be launched this summer and it will combine features from Zoom meetings, chat, and webinars.

One of the interesting features is that you will be able to produce ticketed, live events for audiences of all sizes. All the process of organizing, managing and billing the event can be done in the platform, as well as keeping track of registration and attendance. 

The possibilities Zoom Events present are endless. You can host internal and external events for companies and businesses of all sizes. Conferences, classes, product launches and pretty much anything that has a space in the virtual world. 

This initiative finds its roots thanks to the on-going growth of virtual meetings during Covid-19 pandemic times. Zoom understands that digital events have found their way into our daily lives and it’s trying to make it as easy as possible for big and small businesses to adapt to this new reality and offer customers the best experiences they can. 

 3. Social Media Marketing Updates

Snapchat launches Public Profiles for Businesses

Snapchat had already launched Public Profiles for Creators, Shows, and Snapchatters and has now opened the doors for Business with Public Profiles: “Public Profiles for Businesses has launched on Snapchat, giving brands of all sizes a free, permanent home for all of their unique Snapchat content.”

Public Profiles for businesses offer brands the opportunity to house all of their unique content in one discoverable place. Some of the most important features include:

• Native store: you can link your Shopify ecommerce store to your Snapchat profile so users can browse products and even buy through the “Shop” feature. 

• Highlights: you can permanently showcase some of your content on your profile so that new users that visit for the first time get to know your business. 

• AR lenses: you can now publish lenses to your Public Profile so that snapchatters can discover them and engage continuously with them. 

• Public stories: so you can share any type of content of what’s happening behind the scenes of your business. 

With this new feature Snapchat is looking to catch up with businesses’ needs on social media nowadays by offering tools that allow them to engage and connect with their audience. 

New messaging features for Facebook and Instagram

New features are coming to Facebook and Instagram DMs to give users the opportunity to express themselves better with additions that go from new themes to the ability to reply to messages with photos or videos.

Facebook messenger new features

• Chat archives: users can now clear their inbox without deleting chats for good. With a swift “swipe to archive” option it’s possible to keep everything tidy and then access inactive chats in the future if need be. 

• Tap to record: for all those audio-lovers out  it’s now possible to record voice notes hands-free. With just one tap is sufficient to begin recording, and one tap to finish. This feature will be available also for Instagram in the future.

• New themes: new themes to customize chat screens are now available for both Messenger and Instagram DMs.

Instagram DMs new features

• Visual replies: Instagram has made it possible for users to answer direct messages with a photo or video they can take in the moment or choose from their camera roll. At the moment this feature is only available for iOS.

• Inbox seen states: users can now see from their inbox when someone has already read their message. This was only possible before when opening the chat. 

Twitter acquires Scroll

Scroll is a subscription based service that removes ads from new sites. From some time now Twitter has been focusing on offering content creators means to grow and monetize their content on the social media platform. 

With this in mind, most recently they acquired Scroll, a platform that removes ads from new websites for a monthly fee. The service will be integrated with Twitter into a subscription service they plan to launch in the future. 

Twitter’s VP of Product said, “As a Twitter subscriber, picture getting access to premium features where you can easily read articles from your favorite news outlet or a writer’s newsletter from Revue, with a portion of your subscription going to the publishers and writers creating the content.”

It seems that Twitter aims by this new acquisition is to offer users a subscription model to access an ad-free timeline by sharing revenue with content creators. 

Digital marketing news from May 2021

There was a lot to note and learn from the digital marketing world during the month of May. It was eventful and filled with very interesting updates to keep an eye out. 

What did you find most interesting?

If you wish to read something else, check out:

• Real Estate Marketing: Boost your Business with Web Push Notifications
• How to choose the right Web Push Notification Service
• Are Cart Abandonment Emails GDPR Compliant?

The real estate industry is no stranger to unexpected and intense fluctuations. Ups and downs are very common and especially during the last year with Covid-19 pandemic causing major economic uncertainty. Stay-at-home orders and job losses are a couple of reasons why people stopped looking for new homes. 

Real Estate Marketing

Is no secret that innovation and adoption of new technologies is key to success in any business. But if there has ever been a time when this is essential, it is now for the real estate industry. A seamless digital marketing strategy that integrates the newest channels plays a big role in growing the business and catching the attention of potential clients. 

Keep in mind that 92% of buyers use the internet to begin their house hunting, according to a study from the National Association of Realtors. This means that having a strong online presence that simplifies communication between buyers and sellers can make a huge difference to the success of the business. 

Web Push Notifications for Real Estate Marketing

Web push notifications are the new retargeting without ads channel that allows sites to engage subscribers without any type of personal data through their entire customer journey. With the use of dynamic parameters it’s possible to send hyper-personalised relevant messages based on an individual’s behaviour.

In this example of a web push notification for real estate using dynamic parameters you can see:

• Image of the apartment.
• Specific details about the characteristics of the listing, such as the number of bedrooms and bathroom and size in square meters. 
• City/Area of the listing

Even though web push notifications are more common for e-commerce sites, the truth is that this is an amazing retargeting channel for any type of industry. Real estate marketing can greatly benefit from the advantages of using them:

• Generate more leads from anonymous users: web push notifications don’t require any type of personal data such as email addresses from users. They just need to click “Allow” in the opt-in prompt from the browser to become a subscriber and start receiving them. This means that, by collecting subscribers, you’re creating an additional database of users you can contact later without the need of them filling out any form or sharing their information. 

• Reach users when they’re not on your site: this channel has the power to reach subscribers when they have left the web and are browsing any other site. 

• Reach through desktop and mobile: web push notifications can reach users on both desktop and mobile without the need of installing an app. 

• Direct communication: unlike emails, when using web push notifications you can communicate with users in real time. You don’t have to wait for them to check their inboxes in order to get the message across: as soon as they open their browsers the notification will be delivered. 

Now that you know how you can benefit, let’s talk in depth about how to boost your real estate marketing strategy with web push notifications.

First things first: Identify you user’s journey and define events in your site

The success behind any digital marketing strategy is planning. Before you start designing your messages and setting up your web push notifications campaigns, you must have determined different scenarios that trigger the messages based on users’ behaviour on your site. 

In order to do this you must have a very clear understanding of your business marketing funnel. What’s the process users go through from the moment they enter your web for the first time until they reach conversion? What stages do they experience? 

The sequence of messages you create for your automated web push notifications campaign is directly tied to every action and step users take while browsing your website. That’s why it’s so important that you have complete knowledge of how the decision making process goes for your target audience and how you can engage with them in every stage. 

It could look something like this, for example:

1. Initial visit to the real estate website: user enters the site for the first time
2. Chooses a location: country, city, neighborhood
3. Selects a listing category: could be apartments, houses, offices
4. Applies a series of filters: price, size, number of bedrooms/bathrooms
5. Viewing of a specific listing page
6. Finally filling out a contact form requesting more information 

If you determine that these could be the steps users go through when browsing for a listing, you can easily determine that you need to use automated web push notifications campaigns that are triggered by each and one of these events. If a user leaves, before going to the next one, he/she will receive a notification with the objective of pushing them down the funnel. 

Create sequences of messages with automated notifications

Once you’ve defined your triggering scenarios, you can go to the next step and create a sequence of automated web push notifications for each one: homepage visited, category viewed, listing viewed, form filled out. The objective is to keep the communication flowing through a period of time that helps maintain the interest and lead to the conversion. 

With a platform like Frizbit you can define as many scenarios you want with as many sequences as you consider appropriate. A combination of 5 events with 3 sequences each, would be ideal to  show great results. You can schedule them to be delivered after the amount of time you see fit, for example: 1 day, 3 days and 7 days after the event if the user still doesn’t convert. 

In real estate it’s a great strategy to appeal to a sense of urgency that the listing is going to be taken by someone else who is also interested, and sequences of automated web push notifications are a great way to do just that. Let’s jump right into some specific examples for every scenario:

Practical use cases of web push notification for real estate: 

a) Retargeting based on City/Area  

This would be one of the first things a user would do when browsing a real estate site. After entering the web, users will choose a category to start looking for options that interest them. This category could be a location for example, a country, city or more specifically, a neighborhood.

If users browse through a listing category and then leave the site without going any further with their search, you can retarget them via web push notifications reminding them about the listings in that city or area.  A category can also include a type of listing. 

b) Retargeting based on filters

Once users decide the category they want to browse, they’ll start applying filters to get the result that meet their needs the best. Parameters such as:

• Size
• Number of bedrooms
• Number of bathrooms
• Price

All can be used to later send hyper-personalised messages via web push notifications to inform them about new listings with the same specifics. The main benefit of using these parameters is that they appeal exactly to what users searched for: they have already expressed interest in this information and will be appreciative of getting a reminder suited to their needs. 

c) Retargeting based on listing viewed

Once a user clicks on a listing and visits its page, but then leaves the site without going any further with the process, you can send a web push notification with said information encouraging the user to come back a schedule a visit.

This message can include all the details about the listing the users liked, increasing its relevance and value. 

d) Schedule a visit

This would be the equivalent of a cart abandonment recovery message from an e-commerce site. You can send a web push notification to users that visit a page listing but leave the site without filling in a form to schedule a visit. 

e) Similar Listings Recommendation

Additionally to being able to create scenarios and sequences of messages with automated web push notifications campaigns for every step of the user’s journey, you can also create campaigns with recommendations. 

Once a user has visited and showed interest in a specific listing, adding filters for every characteristic, you can use this information to create an automated campaign that sends  notifications after a period of time you decide if the user doesn’t convert.

When people are looking for a new home, they want to keep posted about new listings that they might like. Going online every single day to check all the sites for new opportunities can be very exhausting. By sending web push notifications with recommendations, you’ll save a lot of time and effort to your subscribers,they will appreciate it and you’ll generate a lot of new visits and leads.

f) Favorites reminders

When people search classified pages, they look at a lot of different options before finding the one they like. That’s why these types of pages always have a “favorite” bookmark option to save the listing in a separate category.

With automated web push notifications campaigns you can use this information to send hyper-personalised reminders to users who have added a listing to their favorites. You can send reminders encouraging them to schedule a visit as soon as possible appealing to a sense of urgency that someone else is going to take it off the market. 

Tips and strategies to improve your campaigns: 

1. Send bulk campaigns to announce new listings and price drops

Manual web push notification campaigns are sent to all the subscribers list, unlike automated ones that are delivered based on individual user behaviour and triggered by events on the site. That’s why they’re the best channel to communicate important information you don’t want anyone to miss out on. 

Bulk campaigns can be sent immediately or scheduled to a specific date and time. This feature comes in hand when you want to plan ahead and make sure you communicate any update in a timely manner, even if you’re out of the office 

Specifically for the real estate industry that’s constantly changing with new listings and price drops that subscribers surely don’t want to miss, manual web push notifications become an invaluable asset. You can send bulk campaigns every week to alert users updating them about all that’s new.

Additionally, these types of campaigns are great quick traffic generators. Even though their objective resembles a lot to the objective of newsletters, in this case you don’t need to rely on users checking their inboxes on time to learn about important and time-sensitive information. 

Massive web push notifications campaigns reach users on time and get them to go back to the website encouraging them to take action immediately. 

2. Use segmentation

If you choose the right web push notifications service provider, you’ll have the chance to use a lot of features that will help you make the best possible campaigns. One of them is segmentation. 

By segmenting users you’ll have the ability to send them super relevant information that specifically suits them, which ultimately will improve the performance of your campaigns and improve overall user experience. You can use segmentation for:

• Localization: if there’s an industry that revolves around localization is real estate. If you target users by country, city or neighborhood you can send them extremely relevant information about new listings in their area as soon as they become available. 

• Listing type: you can identify users by the type of listing they want: if they are looking to buy or to rent, for example. Then, you can target them with a notification letting them know about new listings that might interest them that have the same features. This can also be applied with other characteristics like size, number of bedrooms or bathrooms.

3. Choose the right service provider

Keep in mind that before getting into specifics about campaigns, sequences and strategies the first thing you need to do is to choose the right web push notifications provider for your business. This is the most important step because depending on the provider you select, you’ll have more or less features to play with, amongst other things. 

Here’s a list of the most important ones you should keep an eye out for:

• Ownership and subscriber portability 
• Campaign automation by triggering events
• Personalisation capabilities
• Campaigns tracking and improvement: segmentations, A/B testing, scheduling
• Pricing plans
• Customer support and account management

Make sure you’re clear about what type of notifications campaigns you want to send and make a list of which features are the most important for you and your business. Is it important to be able to send automated notifications? Do you want additional features such as A/B testing capabilities?

Ask yourself as many questions as possible,as the type of web push notifications strategy you are looking to implement and then search for the right service provider that offers a solution suitable to your needs.

Real estate marketing, classifieds and web push notifications

Web push notifications are reigning in the e-commerce world bringing customers back, recovering abandoned carts and more. But the potential they have for other industries, like real estate and classified pages, is boundless. 

You can notify subscribers about new listings, price drops, let them know about new opportunities in a specific area they are interested in and include all sorts of details related to their searches. Keep in mind that, since web push notifications are so versatile and adaptable to any type of site, you can use all of these strategies for classified platforms as well.

With platforms like Frizbit this is possible. If you wish to try it out for yourself and unleash the potential of this new channel for your real estate business, get in touch to request a free demo trial. 

Make sure you check out:

• How to choose the right Web Push Notification Service
• Guide: How to use Push Notifications for Online Stores
• Troubleshooting Web Push Notifications: Why I’m I not Getting Notifications

Web push notifications are quickly changing the way online businesses approach retargeting strategies. This channel allows sites to reach anonymous users in real time encouraging them to visit once more and complete a conversion while engaging with highly relevant content. 

The value they present is undeniable, especially when looking forward to a digital marketing landscape without third-party cookies. Even though web push notifications are a fairly new channel still unknown for many marketers, the ones that have tried them are seeing an exponential increase on their revenue and amazing ROAS results. 

With the rise of web push notifications as an essential part of digital marketing strategies, hundreds of companies have emerged or added them to their portfolio services. Conducting a quick online search will serve you with many (many) options making it very difficult to choose a provider. We are here to lend a helping hand and let you know:

How to choose the best web push notifications service

If web push notifications have piqued your interest but you’re not quite sure where to start, we have put together a list of the most important features you should focus on when looking for a web push notification service:

1. Subscriber ownership & portability
2. Data Security and GDPR compliance
3. Automated triggered-events
4. Hyper-personalisation
5. Segmentation
6. Scheduling
7. A/B testing
8. Customer support
9. Pricing plans

Let’s dive a little deeper on each of these features. 

1. Subscriber portability and subscriber ownership

Subscriber portability is something that gets overseen a lot. Once you sign with a web push notification provider and implement, you’ll start collecting subscribers every day. What happens, if for whatever reason, maybe a price increase or a lack of needed features you decide you want to change provider and you can’t take with you all of your subscribers with you?

No matter what happens you should be able to switch providers and not lose all the subscribers you’ve gathered and nurtured from day one. You need to discuss this, read the small letters and make sure your subscribers belong to you and not to your service provider.

What happens in many cases is that a lot of web push notifications service providers use a subdomain of their property to collect the subscribers. This means that every time users enter your site and click on “allow” to opt-in to your web push notifications, they get redirected to a subdomain that belongs to the provider who becomes the owner of the data when they accept.

If you don’t carefully read the Terms and Conditions of your provider, you might end up in this position. All the subscribers you asked permission to send web push notifications, won´t belong to your website, they’ll belong to your service provider website. 

So if in the future you wish to change platforms, you will lose all your subscribers and have to start from scratch, asking already subscribed users to opt-in again which could very easily damage your opt-in rates and your overall web push notifications campaign performance.

Custom Subdomain Opt-in Web Push Notification

Native Opt-in Web Push Notification Example

The easiest way to make sure this is not happening to you is to check you’re collecting subscribers via native opt-in. This is the browser prompt used to ask users to allow web push notifications. If your provider installed a custom opt-in prompt the chances of them registering subscribers under a subdomain of their ownership is higher. Take into consideration that native opt-ins have 3 times higher opt-in rates than custom ones. This is extremely important for the success of your web push notifications strategy. 

2. Data Security and GDPR compliance

Even though web push notifications are GDPR compliant by nature, you still need to make sure that your service provider aligns with all regulations and keeps the data of your subscribers safe. This includes, not only abiying to the General Data Protection Regulation, but also storing the data in highly secure servers. 

Check that your provider complies with GDPR even for subscribers who are outside the European Union and that you are the owner of all the data. This protects, not only your subscribers, but you as well ensuring that no one can share or sell your information to a third party that could even be your direct competitor. 

3. Automated web push notifications by triggered-events

Automated web push notifications are the ones sent automatically. They’re triggered by a specific action from users on the site based on predefined events. You can create as many events as you wish but here are the most common and important ones that you should always include in your sequences:

• Category retargeting: a push notification sent to users that visit a Category Page but leave the website without taking any further action. 

• Product retargeting: a push notification that’s sent to users that visit a Product Page and exit the web without continuing forward. 

• Cart abandonment recovery: a web push notification sent to subscribers who add a product to their virtual shopping cart and abandon the site without completing a purchase.

Category Retargeting

Product Retargeting

Cart Abandonment

This is the basic sequence you should implement when using web push notifications. You can personalise it as much as you want depending on your type of business and industry and create additional ones that fit your specific marketing funnel and help users convert. 

It’s important that you check what type of scenarios, triggered events and sequence automation personalisation each web push notification vendor provides before choosing one. 

4. Hyper-personalisation

The next feature you want to keep an eye out for is the level of personalisation offered by the provider. Today’s users are looking for content and experience tailored to their wants and needs. Sending impersonal, pre-made messages just won’t cut it.

Hyper-personalisation is key when it comes to creating effective web push notification campaigns. Besides customising the messages with emojis and an appealing text make sure your provider offers the use of dynamic parameters.

By using dynamic parameters your web push notifications can include very specific and relevant information such as product image, product name, user name, price and even brand.  Dynamic parameters pull the information directly from the site and include it in the message of the notifications which, not only saves a lot of time and effort on campaign creation but also makes the notification hyper-personalised for the user. 

5. Segmentation

Segmentation is essential to any marketing effort. The success of any campaign can rely on  knowing who the target audience is and addressing the message properly to them. Is the same case when it comes to web push notifications. 

Before deciding on a provider check what segmentation parameters they offer within the platform. The most basic ones should cover:

• Location
• Gender
• Language
• Browser
• Age

Frizbit Segmentation

Frizbit Segmentation

Of course, depending on the web push notification service there are many more possibilities. In addition to all the mentioned above, Frizbit allows to target users by behaviour, life cycle and user actions and the possibility to include them or exclude them of a specific campaign.

6. Scheduling

Scheduling is a basic feature any provider must offer. It allows you to design and create a web push notification campaign and choose a date and time to send it automatically for you at a later time.

By scheduling a campaign you make sure to always stay in touch with your subscribers even if you’re out of the office or maybe too busy to send it manually. A great strategy is to check the calendar, plan ahead and schedule your web push notifications campaigns with enough time. This will help you be super time efficient and to make sure you don’t miss communicating any important sales or events from your site. 

That’s why it’s so important to make sure the provider you choose offers scheduling features within the platform. 

7. A/B Testing

When it comes to any digital marketing effort it’s not easy to get right with the first attempt. Even though you might have a lot of insight about your target audience and have crafted and designed a web push notification campaign based on that information, it’s possible you don’t get the results you were expecting.

Frizbit A/B Testing

That’s why A/B testing is so important and you need to make sure your service provider includes this feature. By gathering information on the performance of previous campaigns, you can make small changes and try-out different versions of the same notifications to test which one does better and, little by little, improve your campaigns to make them the best they can be. 

8. Customer support

Whether you’re familiar or not with web push notifications, is of utmost importance that your provider offers you impeccable customer support before and during your contract with them. During the decision making process you´re surely to have a lot of questions you need to clarify and this gives you the perfect opportunity to measure providers by requesting all types of information from them and evaluating their response. 

The most common doubts that your provider should solve at first are:

• What’s the implementation and integration process like
• How do I install web push notifications?
• How long does it take to start sending web push notifications
• What’s the average opt-in rate for web push notifications

Asking these questions and listening to how the provider answers them will give you important information about the type of service they offer. The best advice we can offer is that you choose a provider that offers a trial period.

This way you can both test the performance of the platform, how it works, what kind of results you can expect long term and the type of support you get during said period: are they solving your issues properly?. Familiarizing with the tool and the provider is key to the success of your web push notifications campaigns. 

Frizbit offers all new clients a trial period of one month with all features available for testing while providing customised support during the entire journey. 

9. Pricing plans

There are as many pricing plan models available, as web push notifications providers. This is where you have to do your homework and research the option that really suits your business needs, size, industry and growth prevision. 

Most providers offer subscriber-based pricing. This translates to you paying for the amount of opt-ins you get. These plans seem very appealing because they start with very low costs and seem very profitable. However, you have to think long term, taking into consideration that you cannot migrate all of your push notification subscribers.

In a subscriber-based pricing you could start paying 100€ for 5,000 subscribers, which seems nice. But as you continue to grow your database, each time you’ll pay more and more: if you reach 50,000 you’ll pay 250€, then 5,000€ for 150,000 and so on and on. The price is always going to scale through time becoming more and more expensive as you grow. 

Other options offer to pay per click, or amount of notifications sent. But what makes the most sense is that you go for a provider that offers you peace of mind with a pricing plan based on your monthly web traffic with unlimited subscribers and unlimited notifications. This is the best way to have your costs fixed for the future, instead of always inflating prices.

When choosing a web push notifications service provider…

If you’re considering adding web push notifications as a new retargeting channel to engage with your customers, you’re already on the right path to improving user experience with amazing results. We hope this guide on how to choose the right web push notification service helps you make the right decision and select the provider that suits all of your needs. 

If you are looking for the only provider which complies with all these above-mentioned criteria, contact Frizbit right away!

If you have any more doubts or just want to learn more about web push notifications, make sure you check out:

• Private Shopping Sites: Web Push Notifications Strategies
• Troubleshooting Web Push Notifications: Why I’m I not Getting Notifications
• Web Push Notifications: A Complete Guide for all Levels

Shopping cart abandonment makes reference to the action of initiating a checkout process on an online store by adding a product to a virtual shopping cart and leaving the site without completing the purchase.

There are many reasons why customers abandon their shopping carts. Maybe they were just looking around, perhaps they weren’t ready to buy, they just wanted to see the final cost of the transaction before making a decision or didn’t have enough time. Unexpected shipping costs, complicated site navigation or confusing checkouts can also be the cause. 

However, all of these reasons don’t mean they aren’t willing to complete the purchase and this is where cart abandonment strategies come into play. Cart abandonment emails have been the number one strategy for e-commerce sites to bring customers back to finish a transaction they left halfway.

But, what happened with cart abandonment emails when GDPR came into the picture? 

GDPR makes reference to the General Data Protection Regulation. Is the legislation enforced in May 2018 that aims to protect users’ data privacy. It applies to any business that provides services to EU residents, even if it’s located anywhere else in the world. 

This legislation states that no business can disclose users’ personal information or send any type of communication to users without their previous consent. It’s pretty clear that this raised many eyebrows of concern for marketers wondering what would happen with their customer’s email database.

Cart abandonment email retargeting is the main practice marketers rely on to tackle the issue of only 2% of users converting. If the appearance of GDPR meant they would lose the user’s database they have built with so much effort and time and wouldn’t be able to retarget customers that initiated a transaction on their site, it would be a disaster. 

So, are cart abandonment emails GDPR compliant?

In order to answer this question as accurately as possible, it’s important to clarify that there are three different types of emails. Each one of them fulfills a purpose and depending on its objective.

1. Marketing Emails

Marketing emails are the ones that contain a commercial message and it’s sent to groups of customers or to prospects. The objective of marketing emails is to push leads down the marketing funnel.

These types of emails are not sent programmatically, they are timed and sent strategically like newsletters, announcements or welcome emails. 

2. Promotional Emails

A promotional email is an email sent to inform email subscribers about offers and time limited sales, like Black Friday or Mother’s Day. They have a specific time frame and could be recurring given the nature of the offer.

Its objective is to get the word out about and inform email subscribers about something special. Promotional emails usually also include some sort of promotional code or coupon with the goal of encouraging customers to move down the funnel and complete a purchase. 

3. Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are direct one-to-one emails with personalised information regarding a transaction a customer did or started on a site. They are not sent to a large group of subscribers or to the entire list because transactional emails are triggered by an action a user took when browsing the site.

They include:

• Order confirmations
• Delivery updates
• After purchase receipts
• Post-purchase review requests
• Cart abandonment reminders

Cart abandonment emails are considered transactional emails because a user that added a product to the shopping cart showed an intention to buy, thus initiating a transaction. 

Unlike marketing and promotional emails, transactional emails are programmed to be triggered by specific user behaviour on site. With platforms like Frizbit, you can set up an event that sends an automated email to users that add a product to their carts but leave without finishing a purchase.

One of the main attractions of transactional cart abandonment emails is that they only need to be configured one first time. Since they’re automated and triggered by the scenario you define, you just have to take time to create templates and content once to set up the campaigns and then everything runs smoothly by itself. 

You can schedule a sequence of emails to be sent:

• 1 hour after adding a product to the cart and leaving the site without completing a purchase
• 1 day later
• 3 days later

These automated cart abandonment recovery emails, include hyper-personalised information such as user name, product name, price and image. These features increase the value of the communication between sender and recipient by making the information much more relevant. 

Is sending cart abandonment emails still allowed under GDPR? 

Now that you know what types of email exist and what their objectives are, you’ll understand the answer is yes. According to the European Commission’s definition of legal grounds for processing data, cart abandonment emails are compliant as long as you have explicit consent from users to receive those emails. (Source Nosto.com)

Abandoned cart emails are categorized as direct marketing and can work under the legal grounds of legitimate interest which basically states that if the recipient is really going to be interested in what you have to say and find value from it, it’s ok to send it:

“Processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party except where such interests are overridden by the interests…” icoo.org.uk

Processing personal data for direct marketing purposes may be considered done for legitimate interest. (BOE.es)

This means that you might not need specific consent from users to send this type of communication because when customers share their email addresses with you in the intent of making a purchase and don’t complete it, both parties have legitimate interest on the transaction being finished.

That being said, we strongly recommend you to not take any chances on this and be very explicit and straightforward in order to receive consent from users before sending any type of automated cart abandonment campaign. 

You can make sure your emails are compliant by checking the following:

• Users need to actively opt-in or subscribe. Unchecking a box is not enough, this has to be a voluntary decision. 
• Include a registered address.
• Make sure your website’s privacy policy clearly states the type of information being collected. Specify you’re going to send transactional cart abandonment messages. Here are a couple of examples:
  • We will use your data to suggest products or offers based on the profile you create based on your purchase history, the products you view when you browse our platforms, or the products you leave in your cart when you do not finish the purchase process.
  • Your data may also be used for other marketing and advertising purposes. These suggestions can come to you through push notifications, banners, or even to your email using the abandoned cart feature.
• If you’re going to rely on legitimate interest, your privacy policy should say something like this:
  • Why do we process your personal data? Guarantee the correct processing of your order, in the event that you purchase any of our products.
  • The Responsible Party treats user data for the following purposes: other commercial communications by email about the Responsible and the provision of services
• Check the source of the email list you have before automating an abandoned cart recovery campaign. GDPR also affects data collected before its implementation, so it’s very important for you to verify what type of consent previous subscribers agreed to. 
• Include an easy way for users to unsubscribe from your list.

Should you be using Cart Abandonment Emails?

Cart abandonment recovery emails by Frizbit have reported a CTR of 17,1%  and conversion rates of 4,1%, making them the highest performing channel in automated cart recovery campaigns. 

When it comes to GDPR and cart abandonment emails, consensus says that there’s no problem with sending these types of emails to users that voluntarily subscribe to your mailing list thanks to the base of legitimate interest. 

If you haven’t implemented a strategy for cart abandonment recovery, getting started with automated and hyper-personalised emails is a great way to go. If you’d like to know more about how to do so, get in touch with us and we will be happy to guide you. 

This information might also interest you:

• Private Shopping Sites: Web Push Notifications Strategies
• Are Web Push Notifications GDPR Compliant?
• Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategies for E-commerce – Recover Lost Sales

April was an eventful month for digital marketing. As always Google launched a number of interesting features for Search, Maps and Web Stories while social media platforms continue to keep us on our toes with new updates to compete with ClubHouse app.

We’ve summed up the most important:

Digital Marketing News, Insights and Updates from April 2021

1. Search Marketing News

• Microsoft rolls out new price comparison beta

Microsoft has announced a number of new features for Microsoft Advertising. One of the most interesting ones is the price comparison that allows sites that use Microsoft shopping features to be eligible to show in the flyout panel that delivers discount codes. 

The price comparison will appear within the toolbar of the panel when users browse and save a product on Edge or Collection. They would have to click on it to view the price comparison results. 

This new feature by Microsoft is so interesting for retailers because they can offer relevant information to their target audience while they browse other retailers’ sites and with no extra effort from their part. The listing will grab the information from existing catalogs from Microsoft Merchant Center which means no additional work is required from businesses that already have created shopping campaigns. 

The cherry on top is that, since this new feature is in beta testing, Microsoft won’t charge advertisers for the clicks they obtain through price comparison! Right now it’s only available on desktops in the US on Edge browser. 

• Google adds 3 new travel-oriented features to search results

Google is very well-known from listening and adapting to users’ needs. That’s why due to a recent increase in travel related queries, they have announced to add 3 new features to search results in the intent of helping people plan their next vacation during pandemic times. Google stated: 

As vaccines become more available, many people are eager to start planning vacations again. We’re seeing more searches for travel-related destination information — like travel restrictions by country and where to travel, which both recently hit all-time highs. 

When looking for travel information like hotels, flights or things to do, Search will show results regarding Covid-19 related advisories on destination. Additionally, they’re adding more detailed information regarding if you need to comply with quarantine requirements or show test results proof.

If users are logged in their Google accounts, they can choose to receive email notifications about restrictions updates from their selected destination by toggling “Receive an email if this guidance changes.”. These updates are country specific and will include information regarding any change on lifted or reduced restrictions. 

• Google lets users talk directly to them to fix indexing issues

As we said earlier about Google: they always have users in mind. That’s why they created a new feature that allows webmasters to communicate with them to solve indexing issues they can’t figure out by themselves.

Webmasters can now get directly in touch with Google’s search team to report any indexing problem they can’t find an answer to in the “community forums and support documentation.” The new feature is accessible in the footer of the URL inspection help document and indexing coverage report document,  as a pilot only in the US.

Webmasters that want to access the reporting issue form need to have a verified Search Console account. Once there, they’ll need to answer a series of questions that try to help the user fix the issue by himself step by step before submitting to Google.

This solution is aimed to help SEOs fix indexing issues that aren’t related to quality or technical issues within the website, but rather with Google Search. 

2. Marketing Tech Updates

• WordPress plugin for Google Web Stories Updated

Even though there’s still some debate on whether web stories are worthy of our time and effort or not, new features keep coming and Google has updated their official Google Web Stories WordPress plugin with a feature that allows to embed content on webpages.

The plugin had many options available for content creators, but the ability to embed web stories was still missing until now. The new feature allows to do this very easily and also offers the possibility to embed web stories from other sites.

The process is very simple:

• Insert a Web Stories block

• Select the type of Web Stories you want to to embed:
  • Latest Stories: display the most recent stories. The list will update automatically as new stories are published.
  • Selected Stories: display a list of handpicked stories.
  • Single Story: embed one single story by URL.

• Choose if you want to to display the Web Stories as a carousel, a grid, or a list.

• WordPress wants to block Google FLoC

Google’s FLoC (Federal Learning of Cohorts) solution for a cookieless internet has been raising some eyebrows. Even though Google has stated that this new tracking system is safe and much less privacy-invasive than 3rd party cookies, some don’t agree. 

Recently WordPress made their opinion very clear and proposed to block Google’s FLoC by default on all websites created with the platform. WordPress considers Google’s alternative for third party cookies a security concern:

Why is this bad? As the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains in their post “Google’s FLoC is a terrible idea“, placing people in groups based on their browsing habits is likely to facilitate employment, housing and other types of discrimination, as well as predatory targeting of unsophisticated consumers.

This is in addition to the privacy concerns of tracking people and sharing their data, seemingly without informed consent – and making it more difficult for legislators and regulators to protect people.

This is a proposal from a WordPress developer and website admins who do want to allow FLoC on their site, can override the code. Google said that they appreciate the community taking part on this initial test of their proposal and that they will adjust accordingly to all the comments received. 

• HubSpot acquires media company The Hustle and expands their CRM Platform with the launch of Operations Hub

The giant CRM platform announced they signed an agreement to acquire The Hustle, a media company that produces newsletter, podcast, and premium research content. Their objective is to keep offering their community very valuable and relevant content through a more diverse set of media:

For many customers, their first introduction to HubSpot is through our educational blog, Academy, and YouTube content, not our software (…) By acquiring The Hustle, we’ll be able to better meet the needs of these scaling companies by delivering educational, business, and tech trend content in their preferred formats.

With this move they show they’re listening to their audience and giving them what they want. HubSpot is betting for content marketing as their main strategy to reach out and get in touch with their target: entrepreneurs, startups, and scaling companies.

Keeping up with this in mind, they also announced they are expanding its suite with the launch of Operations Hub. The objective is to make companies’ lives a little easier by automating processes, unifying data and aligning teams’ purposes. 

With Operations Hub, users can unify customer data in a connected CRM platform, automate a host of time-consuming tasks, maintain a clean database with ease, and ultimately, play an active role in shaping their company’s strategy. 

 With the Operations Hub they want to include operations teams to the heart of the platform and help companies have seamless inner interactions. Hubspot believes that companies have to run better on the inside in order to offer a great customer experience, and the way to do so is for team members to work together in a unified CRM.

Operations Hub joins CMS Hub, Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub as part of the HubSpot CRM platform.

3. Social Media Marketing Updates

• Facebook and Instagram let business schedule stories

Last September Facebook introduced Facebook Business Suite. It’s an all-in-one platform designed for businesses to manage their social media activity from Instagram, Messenger and Facebook. Since the launch new features are being added constantly.

More recently a new capability was added in which businesses are now able to schedule stories on both Instagram and Facebook. Scheduling posts has always been a desired feature for any social media manager, since it helps plan ahead, save lots of time and maintain community engagement.

By going to “Create Story” on Home, or by navigating to the “Posts & Stories” tab on the Business Suite app on iOS,Android or desktop, businesses can create and schedule stories very easily. 

It doesn’t end here. Facebook also added a feature that allows users to edit scheduled posts. If users wish to, they can access the “Scheduled Posts”section, select the post they wish to edit, choose “Edit Post” , make the changes and save it. In some time, they will also add a feature to Create and Manage Albums and Save Posts in Drafts. 

• Reddit announces Clubhouse competitor Reddit Talk

Clubhouse appearance has shocked the social media world and now almost all platforms are preparing to launch their own version of the audio-only chat rooms wonder. We already talked about Facebook’s option, Twitter Spaces and now it’s Reddit’s turn with Reddit Talk. 

Reddit announced the intention to join the only-audio social media hype with their own version. It seems to be in very early stages of testing periods but the platform has invited moderators to join a waiting list, which indicates that they are moving pretty fast on the subject.

The moderators will be able to start talking immediately and they can invite redditors to participate as listeners. It will be available for both Android and iOS devices unlike Clubhouse which is only available for iOS with many interesting features:

We’re testing ways for hosts to customize the look and feel of Reddit Talk through emojis and background colors. Redditors can change their avatar’s appearance to fit the talk as well. We’re also exploring features to support AMAs and other types of conversations.

Moderators will have complete control over the rooms, being able to invite, remove and mute listeners. Reddit is really focusing on creating a complete experience for each room. 

• Twitter launches test of a new profile type called Professional Profiles

The new Professional Profiles will provide businesses a new way to present themselves on the social media platform:

Professional Profiles are a new tool that will allow businesses, non-profits, publishers, and creators – anyone who uses Twitter for work – to display specific information about their business directly on their profile. We’re starting with a small pool of businesses in the U.S. and will give more accounts access to Professional Profiles in the coming months.

This new layout for professionals shows different information than regular profiles. It includes address and contact information and other elements like products displays, image galleries and business categories are being developed for the future. 

They’re starting to test with only a handful of businesses while taking notes to make the new Professional Profiles exactly what Twitter users expect them to be. 

To sum up!

It seems to be like digital marketing news from April 2021 are all tied together by the common thread of complying with users expectations and improving user experience. Google, HubSpot, Twitter and Facebook updates are all aiming into pleasing people’s needs with features that help them improve their working processes. 

Which new feature or update caught your attention the most? 

Make sure you check out:

• Private Shopping Sites: Web Push Notifications Strategies
• SMS Marketing: 7 Tips for a Winning Strategy
• Marketing Funnel Explained: Optimize your Full Funnel Strategy

Over the past years ecommerce and online shopping have become essential for any retail brand. Not only because of the exponential growth of Internet interactions, but more specifically due to Covid-19 pandemic during 2020-2021. 

The number of digital buyers keeps increasing every year, making it indispensable for businesses to have an online selling presence: “In 2020, over two billion people purchased goods or services online, and during the same year, e-retail sales surpassed 4.2 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide.” . Statista

While most brands choose the road of traditional e-commerce, others bet for exclusivity with private shopping sites. 

What are Private Shopping Sites?

Private shopping sites are e-commerce websites that offer very high discounts for short periods of time, and users must register to access them. These private sales last for a limited period of time, that’s usually between 2 to 6 days. People are required to become members by leaving their email address to buy, and in some cases even to gain access to see the sales.

These sites normally buy the excess stock and merchandise directly from brands and designers to sell them at a much lower price. Private shopping e-commerce thrives on the premise of exclusivity, making it attractive for both consumers, who get amazing deals, and brands who rather sell their products here than in discount stores. 

Some examples of popular private shopping sites in Europe are:

• Veepee
• Westwing
• Privalia
• Interdit au Public
• BrandAlley
• KupiVIP

The marketing strategy focuses on getting people’s emails addresses to later send emails every time there’s a new sale or one is close to ending. This model works based on the sense of urgency created by the limited time duration of each offer.

Even though private shopping has always focused their marketing efforts in emails, a combination of manual and automated web push notifications open a world of possibilities worth examining.

How to use web push notifications for private shopping

Web push notifications are a new digital marketing channel that allows sites to connect with users with personalised messages without requiring email or phone number. Let’s talk more in detail about web push notifications strategies for private shopping:

1. Welcome web push notifications

When users first visit a site that has enabled web push notifications, they will receive a prompt asking them if they want to Allow or Block them. Once they accept them, the first notification that’s usually delivered is a welcome message. For private shopping sites there are two scenarios:

a) Web push notification to get more email subscriber: Users that visit the site for the first time but don’t register with their email address (non-registered users)

This is the first scenario in which visitors accept the web push notifications, but don’t become members of the site by sharing their emails. For this case you can send a first push notification asking them to join the shopping club and become a member by signing up so they don’t miss any special sale. 

For this specific case it’s recommended to automate a sequence of notifications to be sent:

• 5 seconds after the opt-in, 

• 1 day after the opt-in,

• 1 week after the opt-in,

IF the subscribers still hasn’t registered

b) Web push notifications to generate additional visits: Users that visit the site and sign up with their email address (registered users)

The second scenario focuses on visitors that accept web push notifications and also complete a registration with their email address to become members. In this case, you can send a “welcome” web push notification inviting them to check out the special sales of the week. This message it’s usually sent 5 seconds after the opt-in.

⏰ 5 seconds

2. Announce new offers via manual web push notifications to generate new leads

With manual web push notifications you can send bulk messages to all subscribers announcing new sales or communicating any type of information you think might be interesting and useful. They have the same objective as email newsletter but with added perks only web push notifications have like:

• Instant traffic generation
• Reach both email registered and non-registered users

a) Non-registered users: users that didn’t register with their email address, won’t have any means of learning about new sales unless they visit the web regularly. If you send them manual web push notifications informing about new offers that might attract them, you can get them back to your site and convert them into leads. 

b) Registered users: by reaching out to users that registered with their email address, you can generate instant visits to your website. Web push notifications appear instantly on users’ screen as soon as they open their browsers which means you don’t have to count on people checking their inbox to learn about new sales and going back to your site. 

3. Web push notifications for offer retargeting

This channel allows the creation of scenarios that trigger a message based on user behaviour. Private shopping sites can define a scenario that automatically sends a notification when a user expresses interest in an offer by clicking on it. 

In this case, if a subscriber accesses a sale, but leaves the site without visiting a product page or going through with a purchase, he/she will receive a notification as a reminder of the offer and the time left until it finishes. 

Private shopping sites can exploit the sense of urgency of the sales by creating a web push notification that makes reference to how much time is left and bring subscribers back as soon as possible. 

Note that you can design automated web push notifications sequences for every event that users complete on the site, just like we explained earlier in the scenario of a channel destined  to gain more email subscribers. 

This means you can set up a flow of messages for this specific event. You can send one first notification 1 hour after a user clicked on an offer and left the site, another 1 day after and a final one 3 days later. 

4. Web push notifications for product retargeting

Continuing with the flow of messages following users’ journeys on the site, you can create another sequence to connect with all those who visit a Product Page, but leave without completing a purchase. The sequence would look something like this:

You can define the timing of these notifications as you wish. However, based on the results of our clients, we recommend a frequency of:

• The first notification to be sent 1 hour after, IF the user visits the Product Page, THEN leaves without adding to cart.
• The second notification to be sent 1 day after, IF the user visits the Product Page, THEN leaves without adding to cart, OR doesn’t click notification #1.
• The third notification to be sent 3 days after, IF the user visits the Product Page, THEN leaves without adding to cart, OR doesn’t click notification #2.

Automated product retargeting web push notifications are a great strategy to maintain communication going and keep the brand on people’s top of mind. 

5. Web push notifications for cart abandonment recovery

The last step a user takes before purchasing is adding the product to their cart, and the online retail sector has an average of 84.51 percent shopping cart abandonment rate. Which means that it is imperative for online stores to have some sort of strategy in place to tackle this issue. 

There are a trillion techniques out there specifically designed for cart abandonment recovery. Web push notifications have proven their worth as very effective channel to do so and are in the running with SMS and cart abandonment emails with one huge advantage:

Web push notifications don’t require users to share personal information such as their email or phone number

For this last step of the user journey you can create a sequence of messages with the objective to reach subscribers and bring them back to the website to finish the purchase of a product they added to their cart and forgot about:

6. Web push notifications for post-purchase reminders

One of the main advantages of private shopping sites is the frequency they are updated. These types of sites have new products and new sales every week which opens the door to a more consistent communication with customers. 

Even though the previous sequences are the recommended ones for any ecommerce website, it is possible to create as many automated notifications sequences as wanted. However, in the case of private shopping we do recommend adding one additional flow given the fact of how frequently the content is updated: Purchase Reminder Notifications.

For this sequence you can also define a waiting time to send that suits your strategy in the best possible way. The timings we suggest are:

• Post-purchase reminder #1:14 days
• Post-purchase reminder #2: 28 days
• Post-purchase reminder #3: 60 days

Remember that retaining customers is far more profitable than acquiring new ones. That’s why it is so important to design a special strategy that focuses on reaching out to customers that have already purchased, encouraging them to repeat. 

Final thoughts

Private shopping sites are becoming more and more popular and it’s easy to stumble into one when searching to buy big brands at low costs. The communication strategy for these online stores focuses on continuous communication with users through email to share weekly updates regarding new sales.

By default email has always been the one and only channel that has shown to adapt the business model of private shopping sites. But not anymore. There’s a new channel that’s here to stay and become the perfect match for online private sales: web push notifications. 

They present a world of possibilities to engage with customers through their entire shopping journey. With a specific sequence for every stage of the marketing funnel, web push notifications offer private sales websites the opportunity to connect with customers in real time, with hyper-personalised messages in both desktop and mobile.

No other channel can do this. If you work with any type of private shopping site and, so far, you have based your digital marketing strategy around email, take us up on this one and dive into the web push notifications world. You won’t regret it.

If you need further reasons, make sure you also read:

• Social Media Retargeting VS. Web Push Notifications Retargeting
• Guide: How to use Push Notifications for Online Stores
• Bidcom reached a 37x ROAS with automated Emails and Web Push Notifications from Frizbit

SMS marketing is only as effective as the strategy behind it. According to a survey by Statista, “in February 2021, nearly half of the respondents stated that on average they spent five to six hours on their phone on a daily basis”. Taking this into consideration, not having a SMS marketing strategy is a huge missed opportunity for your business. 

What is SMS Marketing?

SMS refers to Short Message Service. SMS marketing is a strategy focused on sending users messages regarding special offers, sales, reminders or updates through text messages to their mobile phones. People need to give businesses their consent to receive promotional SMS. 

There are different types of messages used in marketing that are all covered by the term SMS, but have different characteristics:

• SMS – Short Message Service: messages that are text only. 

• MMS – Multimedia Messaging Service: they’re messages that focus on sending multimedia files such as images, videos, GIFs or phone contacts. 

• RCS – Rich Communication Service: rich media messaging is the evolution of SMS. They allow to send text messages that include multimedia content and links. 

Are SMS marketing campaigns intrusive?

Popular belief dictates that SMS are intrusive. However, it’s important to note that said misconception can be caused because of the abuse in sending bulk/mass SMS. 

These types of campaigns lack segmentation and personalisation, so they can be perceived as annoying from the users’ end. If you implement a well-though automated SMS marketing campaign, the results will shock you. It’s an amazing channel with the highest ROAS, surpassing 100x (10000%).

“Frizbit SMS marketing campaigns have generated clients a ROAS of over 100x. 

Every SMS marketing strategy should be planned carefully and thoughtfully. Is not to be taken lightly as it presents a direct communication channel to connect on a more personal level with customers. In a study conducted by GSMA, 61% of people said that they would engage more with businesses if they offered a more personalised service. 

Here are some interesting insights on the effectiveness of SMS marketing: 

• 59% of users want their communications built into the phone – not as a separate app, that they need to download (GSMA)

• 77% of consumers are likely to have a positive perception of a company that offers SMS. (eRetailers)

• 83% of millennials open SMS messages within 90 seconds of receiving them. (OpenMarket)

• 75% of millennials prefer SMS communications for deliveries, promotions, and surveys. (OpenMarket)

• SMS messages have a 98% open rate compared to 20% of emails. (SMS Comparison). 

• SMS messages have an average click-through rate of 36%, while email click-through-rates are a dismal 3.4%. (DSIM)

• 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes of being received. (SMS Global)

• Using short, branded links in your mobile marketing campaigns can help improve conversions by up to 34%. (Rebrandly)

• 77% of consumers said they opted-in to a brand’s text messages to receive coupons or deals. (Exact Target)

• 97% of companies found they communicated with consumers more efficiently after launching texting initiatives. (GSMA)

SMS COMPARED VS. OTHER CHANNELS

CTRs by channel from automated behavioural retargeting campaigns

Conversion rate by channel

*Data multiplied from website’s average conversion rate percentage

If you’re already on board with the idea of including SMS marketing in your strategy, keep on reading for:

SMS Marketing: 7 Tips for a Winning Strategy

1. SMS Marketing Tip #1: Create an opt-in strategy

The first thing you need to think about when deciding to implement a SMS marketing strategy is how are you going to get SMS subscribers, people to opt-in and share their phone number with you. You have to design a strategy that allows you to collect subscribers to add to your lists. Here are a few ideas on how to approach it:

• Website pop-up: is one of the most common methods used to capture subscribers. You can add it to your homepage and include an engaging offer such a special discount in return. 

• During checkout: it’s normal to ask a lot of personal information through the checkout process, including phone number. Make sure you include a message that requests the users’ permission to send information and updates and be explicit about using their phone number for promotional purposes. 

• Email: if you already have an email subscriber list, you can use it to your advantage and send a campaign to direct them to a landing page asking them to leave their phone numbers. 

2. SMS Marketing Tip #2: Exclusive Content

A marketers life is a very hectic one. It’s understandable that we might not have the time to design a different message for each one of the channels we use to communicate with our audience. However, when it comes to SMS marketing success, exclusivity of the message is of utmost importance. 

Send exclusive offers and deals to your subscribers. Include a text that indicates the offer you are sending is for VIP SMS customers only! This type of message will make them feel special, helping you create a tighter bond with your audience, which ultimately decreases opt-outs, increasing CTRs and conversions.  By using a provider such as Frizbit, you can do this by using dynamic parameters and adding users’ names. 

Take the time to strategise specifically for SMS marketing. Design sales, promos and offers that are exclusive to this channel and make users know that. When you ask them to opt-in: make it clear that they will receive special and unique benefits from subscribing to your SMS marketing channel. 

3. SMS Marketing Tip #3: Segment your Audience

You might have thousands of subscribers to your SMS channel, but each of them is an individual with unique tastes and preferences. That’s why it’s so important that you segment your audience for every campaign you send. 

Your segmentation can be as general or as specific as you want it to be. You can segment from language, location, purchasing history, gender and much more. Taking your time to do this will highly increase the effectiveness of your SMS marketing campaign. 

Let’s say you’re an online sports store. There’s a big, important game coming up between two rival soccer teams and you want to send a special sale on their t-shirts. If you don’t segment your audience only to people who have shown interest in soccer, there’s a really big chance your CTRs are going to be really bad and you might end up with a lot of opt-outs from people who will find the SMS irrelevant and annoying. 

This goes for all bulk SMS campaigns you send. You have to take your time and segment your audience to deliver the right message to the right person. 

4. SMS Marketing Tip #4: Send a Sequence of Messages

With Frizbit, you can do  SMS marketing by automating messages to reach subscribers every step of the marketing funnel. You can set up triggered SMS that are sent a period of time after a subscriber completes an action on the website:

• Product viewed
• Product added to cart
• Post-purchase reminders

Design, automate and schedule a message for each event targeting users by behaviour. Event-based SMS are great to maintain a communication flow and seek an immediate response. 90% of the messages are read within the first 3 minutes after receiving it. By designing a sequence of SMS you keep your brand on the user’s top of mind with ongoing communication. 

In addition to that, by configuring a flow, you’ll have a long-term marketing strategy without extra work. The setup of the sequences only needs to be done one first time so you don’t have to invest more efforts every time you want to send out a campaign. 

5. SMS Marketing Tip #5: Include an Image

Is no secret that including images in your communications have a direct impact on click-through rates. In a study conducted by Simple Texting, they discovered that messages with an image had a 52% higher CTR than the ones that didn’t.

People are very visual and respond well to images. That’s why it’s always advisable to include a photo as long as is pertinent for the message and your industry. If you’re in real estate, include a photo of the listing the subscriber shows interest in, if you own a restaurant include mouth-watering photos of the plates you offer, or maybe you have an e-commerce so you can add images of the articles the person liked!

Remember that the objective is to make the communication as personalised as possible. Including a photo will make the message more relatable, as when users open it the first thing they’ll see is something they liked. 

6. SMS Marketing Tip #6: Include an appealing CTA

If you know anything about digital marketing, you might be tired from hearing about the “include a great CTA” tip. But the importance of the call to action justifies the repetition. The CTA is the element that closes the deal: this is when you tell people what to do. 

The copy of the call to action lets people know what to expect if they decide to click on that button. If you want recipients to finish a purchase, see what’s new, discover new products or to not miss out a sale,  tell them here. 

Put yourself in their shoes. For example, what would your reaction be if you get a SMS from a travel website with a wonderful photo of the Eiffel Tower and a copy that says “Paris in the Spring is beautiful” but nothing else. It doesn’t specify what you expected action should be, it doesn’t include a CTA saying something like “book a flight with 15% off before spring is over”. Don’t leave people hanging and include a CTA that lets them know what their next move should be. 

7. SMS Marketing Tip #7: A/B Testing

Either you’re a new or an experienced SMS marketer, A/B testing needs to be part of your strategy. You might have a lot of knowledge about your audience and have developed a strong instinct on what they respond to the best. However, these types of analysis will help you sharpen the strategy and make it the best it can be. 

Changing the CTA, the image or the copy can have a major impact on the results of your SMS marketing campaign. It’s important to try different versions of the same message, track their performance and adjust it in order to get better and better results each time. 

A/B testing your SMS campaigns will give you amazing insights on your audience likes and dislikes. You can then take that knowledge and apply it to your overall strategy to optimise and enrich user experience.

8. SMS Marketing Tip #8: Select the right provider

None of the amazing ideas you have for your SMS marketing strategy is going to be effective if you choose the wrong provider. You have to do your homework and research the features available from each option you consider.

Is extremely important that you choose a SMS marketing provider that offers automated and personalised SMS, rather than only bulk ones. The key of success with SMS marketing campaigns is automation and that’s exactly what Frizbit offers. 

In addition to complete automation and sending of campaigns triggered by users’ behaviour on the site, Frizbit also offers dynamic parameters for hyper personalisation. The SMS include:

• Sender ID
• User name
• Product name
• URL
• Call to action

Bonus tip!

To increase effectiveness of your SMS marketing campaign, we strongly recommend you to integrate it in a multi-channel marketing strategy. With Frizbit you can implement an orchestrated campaign that includes web push notifications, email marketing and SMS to offer users an enhanced experience and increase retention. 

Related blog post: 

• Marketing Funnel Explained: Optimize your Full Funnel Strategy
• Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategies for E-commerce – Recover Lost Sales
• Web Push Notifications Done Right – 7 Mistakes To Avoid!

Marketing funnel knowledge is key for any business owner, e-commerce manager or marketing specialist. Understanding the basic know-how of the shopping process a person goes through, will help you create a more effective strategy to achieve your business goals.

What is a Marketing Funnel?

A marketing funnel represents the stages a person goes through before they reach conversion. The journey begins when a person discovers the product or service and ends when an action is taken, whether a purchase, a subscription or any other objective depending on the business goals.

Marketing Funnel Template

Marketing Funnel Template

There are many variations to the marketing funnel. Nowadays it’s even possible to find companies and businesses that have identified a specific funnel of their own process. However, in this case we are going to focus on explaining the most typical or standard one divided in three stages which will explain with more detail ahead:

• Top of the funnel (TOFU): Awareness & Discovery
• Middle of the funnel (MOFU): Interest & Consideration
• Bottom of the funnel (BOFU): Decision & Purchase

The reason why it ‘s called or portrayed as a funnel is because in the beginning of the process, during the discovery stage, there are lots of people. Then, as they continue to advance to the next stage, some of them drop out, abandoning the journey and reducing the crowd. 

The objective of identifying these steps and how people go through, is to optimize every marketing effort into pushing the most of them to the bottom of the funnel and getting that conversion we’re looking for. Let’s say that we have a clear funnel path defined and data tells us that we’re losing a big percentage of people in the second stage. We can then deeply analyse what we are doing in the Interest & Engagement step to identify the issue and adjust our strategy accordingly. 

Marketing Funnel Stages

1. TOFU: Awareness and Discovery

Awareness and discovery is the first stage of the marketing funnel. This is the step in which people become aware of a problem and of your product or service as a solution. The top of the funnel refers to when someone realizes a need and starts looking for information to fulfill it. It’s during this stage that the first contact between prospect and business occurs. 

The Awareness and Discovery stage is where you have to provide leads with useful and relevant information about your product or service and how it can solve the problem they’re having. This first step is critical because it’s the first opportunity you have to catch people’s attention and try and persuade them to move forward to the next stage of Interest & Engagement. 

There are many strategies available to create content that’s both appealing and useful for this first stage. Let’s cover a few examples:

Inbound marketing strategies for Awareness & Discovery stage

Inbound marketing consists of all marketing actions oriented to connect and engage with the target audience with useful and relevant content that interests them through organic means. 

• Blog Posts: creating consistent content that’s aligned to the interest of your target audience, opens a door for them to find you. Use the keywords they’re looking for on browser searches and create posts centered around those topics including information about your product/service with call to action. 

• Social Media: most people have, at least, one social media platform. Having a strong social media presence, posting regularly and being where our target audience is, represents a great opportunity to make that first contact and show them how our business can fulfill their needs. 

• Landing Pages: landing pages are great for lead generation. In these pages, offer your target audience something valuable for them in exchange for some personal information like name, email address and phone number. This way, you can create a database and contact them with more detailed information in the future. 

• Videos: video content offers a more real and tangible contact between you and your prospects. It’s a world of possibilities where you can create various videos that engage and connect with your target audience.

Outbound marketing strategies for Awareness & Discovery stage

Outbound marketing is the opposite of inbound marketing and makes reference to actions oriented to reach a target audience through direct communication initiated by the brand or business. It consists of more traditional marketing channels such as ads. 

• Ads: display ads, retargeting ads or social media ads all comprise outbound marketing techniques. They go directly to the target audience without them reaching out or making any type of effort to find you first by their own means. 

• Pop-ups: emerging messages that promptly interrupt the visitor while browsing a site to show an offer, subscription request or special discount trying to catch the users’ attention above all. 

• Cold emails: these are emails sent to a recipient you don’t know. They’re mainly used in sales with the objective of a dual-sided gain, networking or lead generation. 

• Website’s homepage: when people look online for an answer to a question or problem, the first contact they’re bound to have with you is through your website’s homepage. This is your presentation card. That’s why it’s so important to build a website with a homepage that offers great user experience, including the most relevant information here to catch user’s attention and make them want to move to the next stage down the funnel. 

2. MOFU: Interests & Consideration

The middle step of the marketing funnel is Interest & Consideration. In this step users already know about you, your product or service and are actively engaging with your content. Usually, during the Interest & Engagement phase, users evaluate if the option you provide as a solution for their problem is right. 

This is when prospects need to know more about you, they ask for opinions and research to find the best alternative. So during this stage it’s your job to provide as much information as you possibly can to help them learn what they can gain if they choose you.  

Here’s a few references on what type of content and strategies you can implement for the second stage of the marketing funnel:

• Case studies: creating detailed case studies with insightful information and backed data of how your product or service performs, is a great way to provide convincing information that tilts the balance to your favor. 

• Whitepapers/guides: whitepapers are guides that delve into a specific topic with insights that help people have a better understanding of said concept. These documents are a great resource to share with prospects who have reached this stage of the funnel with the purpose of providing deeper knowledge about what your solution can do for them. 

• Ebooks: ebooks present a golden opportunity for you to declare your authority on the subject of your business/industry with a level of depth that a blog post just doesn’t allow. They’re also a great lead generating channel. 

• FAQs section: a frequently asked questions section is an excellent resource to help users move down the funnel from consideration to conversion. Giving detailed answers to the most common doubts by identifying your prospects “pain points” will give you an advantage when the time for decision making comes. 

• Website’s feature page: remember that in this stage of the marketing funnel, prospects are looking a little deeper to find out more in depth about your product or service. Having a section in your site, specifically destined to highlighting the features of your solution is a great way to solve user’s doubts.

• Webinars: webinars are a great tool to help people to get to know you much better. You can use them focusing on building trust around your business.

• Podcasts: podcasts are very digestible content. People listen to them almost in every scenario possible, so they have a great reach and you can get to new audiences. You can share useful information related to your business and industry offering additional value to your prospects and engaging with them. 

• Email: with email marketing is possible to connect with users after they already expressed interest in your product or service and offer them more information. Sending more details after some time has passed, can help them move to the next stage of the marketing funnel. You can include here newsletters with infographics, white papers, guides, videos or invitations to webinars. 

• SMS: is a fundamental for brands to nurture the relationship with their audience through a more personal channel. SMS has a 98% open rate and 45% response rate, with 90% of the messages being read within the first 3 minutes after receiving the SMS. 

• Web push notifications: automated web push notifications offer a pathway to engage with the audience. The most interesting thing about this channel is that you can configure a different notification for each stage of the marketing funnel as it is explained on this web push notifications guide. It’s possible to design a flow of messages and send them sequentially for top, middle and bottom of the funnel. An example of a notification created for Awareness and Discovery could be a Welcome message sent to users who visit a site for the first time, informing them about a special discount or promotion they’ll receive if they decide to continue with their shopping journey.

3. BOFU: Decision & Purchase

BOFU, or the final stage of the marketing funnel is Decision & Purchase. It makes reference to the end of the journey when users just have to take one more step into making a decision to finally convert. In this stage users usually take under consideration budget, goals and specific solutions for their main pain point. 

This is when prospects compare different providers to choose the right fit for them. Is the negotiation stage where they need that final push into making a decision. Keep in mind that users that have gotten this far down the marketing funnel, already know you and understand the value your product or service represents for them. 

In order to give your prospects that last push they need towards conversion you can focus on:

• Comparative Analysis highlighting the advantages between you and your competitors: during the Decision & Purchase stage, prospects are contrasting you against your competition. Is the moment to make it clear as water what you bring to table on top of them: what makes you unique and what makes you the best option. 

• Post-purchase service: a lot of people base their buying decisions on post-purchase service. Nowadays customer experience has a ton of weight when it comes to tilting the balance towards deciding for one option or the other. Make it clear on what you have to offer prospects after they opt to choose you regarding important issues such as: 

• Payment options
• Timelines
• Delivery experience
• Customer support
• Installation and onboarding (if the case)
• Refunds and return policies

• Demo/free trial: if your product/service allows it, offering a free trial period or a demo is a fantastic way to clear any doubt prospects might have by actually having direct contact with your solution. It’s a great strategy to hook clients and make them realize, first-handed, you are the best choice. 

• Testimonials: by this stage, users are already engaged with your content. In the intent of getting as much information as possible and gaining trust on your offer, they’ll be more willing to read testimonials. They help increase trust on your solution, so make sure you ask clients to share their thoughts and opinions about your business. 

• Website’s pricing page: prospects that have arrived to this stage of the marketing funnel are already interested in your product. Most likely one of the first things they’ll do is look for your pricing. Make it easier for them to find it by adding a specific pricing page or section in your website. 

• Promos and discounts: a  “first-purchase” discount or “no shipping fees” promo can go a long way into closing the deal. Entice prospects to take the final step with a one time offer they can’t refuse. 

• Nurturing emails: if users have engaged with your content by sharing their email addresses with you, take this opportunity to communicate with them with nurturing emails. Share content that’s both attractive and valuable, inviting them to visit your site once more. 

• Nurturing web push notifications: with automated web push notifications from Frizbit you can send subscribers a message after a few days they haven’t visited your site inviting them to come back. You can also add a few manual notifications to share special discounts, promos or updates and stay in their minds through time. 

Additional marketing funnel stages

As we mentioned before, there are many variations of the marketing funnel and its stages. In some versions, there are two more: Loyalty and Advocacy. These stages make reference to what happens after prospects have become clients. 

4. Loyalty

It’s important to design a strategy to keep in touch with customers after they finish a transaction. You don’t want people to leave your site and then forget about you forever or until they need something from you again, leaving it to fate that they remember you and come back. 

Creating a loyalty program to build a relationship with your customers deserves your attention (or more) as all the stages that got them here. You can do this with:

• Manual web push notifications: if users allowed them, even after they have completed a purchase they still are part of your subscribers list and you can send them bulk notifications with special discounts, flash sales or promos. With regular communication through web push messages, you can stay on the top of mind of your customers and increase the chances they think of you the next time they need a product or service from your business category. 

• Mailing lists: asking your customers to share their email addresses and become part of your mailing list to send updates and interesting information is a great way to keep in touch through time. 

• Innovation: you want to maintain customers engaged. Constant innovation is a great strategy to peak their interest constantly and make them want to come back and repeat. Launch new features, make upgrades, create new collections and keep things interesting!

5. Advocacy/Referral

Advocacy is the ultimate goal and dream for any business. This stage of the marketing funnel makes reference to the moment customers become fans of your brand. They turn into advocates and start sharing content on social media, writing reviews and recommending you to others. 

Final thoughts about the marketing funnel

When it comes to planning your strategy, the more information you have about your target audience the better. Having a clear understanding of your own funnel, and in which stage prospects are, can help you perfect your digital marketing actions and make every single one of them as effective as possible. 

This marketing funnel offers the view of the prospects journey with a very broad perspective. Depending on your business model and your own products or services, the funnel can be much more detailed, specific and with more stages.

Based on this model, you can analyse your processes and identify additional stages. Remember that the most important thing is that you know who you’re talking to and with what purpose. 

Let us know the stages you have in your business marketing funnel and which strategies you apply for each one, we would love to know!

You might also like: 

• Social Media Retargeting VS. Web Push Notifications Retargeting
• How to Conduct Successful A/B Testing: Go from Beginner to Pro
• Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategies for E-commerce – Recover Lost Sales

Taking into consideration that 96% of people that visit your site are not ready to buy, In previous articles we’ve talked about the importance of implementing retargeting strategies for online businesses. We’ve specifically compared using web push notifications VS. retargeting ads with the purpose of bringing customers back, connecting with anonymous users and, ultimately, retaining clients and increasing revenue.

There are many channels available to include in the digital marketing mix to accomplish this purpose. Social media platforms have become the top choice for many brands to connect and engage with users. They offer many possibilities, are very versatile and people spend lots of time there. According to Statista, “As of 2019 and 2020, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 145 minutes per day, up from 142 minutes in the previous year.”

No wonder most brands seek to have a strong presence on, at least a couple of social media platforms. However, building a follower base and cutting through the noise in these channels nowadays is a daunting task. Social media is great to engage with users but has become a jungle of content in which everyone wants to stand out from the crowd. Actually reaching people, getting their attention and urging them to take action is an uphill battle. That’s why social media platforms are almost obliging you to use their ads to even reach your own followers. 

That’s why it’s so important to don’t rely on just one channel to achieve your goals. In this case, we want to talk about how to mix and match social media retargeting with web push notifications retargeting strategies. Combining multiple channels and creating a multi channel marketing strategy can do marvelous things for your online business.

But first, let’s take a look at some stats (considering paid posts for social media not exclusive for retargeting):

With info from Q1 2020 Paid Media Benchmark Report – https://www.adstage.io/

*It’s an estimate, because push notifications are not based on bidding. Amount calculated based on the average of millions of web push notifications sent by Frizbit’s clients

Now, let’s break down a little bit more and talk about the benefits of each channel specifically. 

Social Media Retargeting

Social media platforms offer a pathway to reintroduce a product to a user. If someone visited your site and liked something, you can retarget him/her through social media and offer a special incentive, like a discount, to encourage him/her to come back and finish a purchase.

By placing a cookie on users when they visit the site, it’s possible to show them an ad on social media platforms, like Facebook or Instagram when they’re browsing later on. These ads offer many possibilities for brands, making it easier to create engaging content like videos, photos or image carousels. 

Social media ad campaigns allow brands to work with all kinds of budget, segment the audience based on location, likes, interests, gender and age and choose daily spent on a period of time. Setting up social media retargeting ad campaigns is very simple and doesn’t add a lot of workload, once you have already designed the pieces you want to use. However, optimizing them and making them as best as possible, involves a great deal of analysis and time. 

These platforms also allow brands to connect with customers through organic non-paid content. However, as time passes, it’s getting harder and harder to get non-promoted posts to reach people. According to Hootsuite “On Facebook, the average reach of an organic page post hovers around 5.20%. That means roughly one in every 19 fans sees the page’s non-promoted content.” So when it comes to social media retargeting strategies, paid posts are the way to go. 

Benefits of social media retargeting

• Brand awareness: as we mentioned earlier people spend a lot of time of their days on social media and everyone has at least one social media account. In 2020, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, according to Statista. As this number is expected to increase over the next few years, having a social media presence increases the chances for brands to be present in their consumers’ minds. 

• Availability: nowadays there’s practically one social media for every interest, taste and demographic. We have LinkedIn for business and professional relationships, Twitter for news and world-events, Facebook and Instagram for entertainment, Tik-tok for younger audiences and now even only-audio chat rooms with Clubhouse. Every time a user accesses one of these platforms they do it during a time they’re open minded to consume said type of content. This makes it a golden opportunity for brands to try and connect with them when they’re available to engage with the content. 

• Versatility: continuing with the previous thought, every social media platform offers a different and versatile way to create retargeting content. Videos, photos, reels, stories and influencer marketing offer a range of different possibilities for brands to create engaging content. 

• Adaptability: one of the main advantages of social media retargeting is that you can do a lot with little money investment. Social media allows you to set up campaigns with even just 1 euro a day and reach around 15,000 people and have complete control of the amount spent. This makes it ideal for new business, entrepreneurs and small companies to reach a lot of people with very little budget. 

Web Push Notifications Retargeting

Web push notifications are a very pretty new digital marketing retargeting channel. When users visit a site that has enabled them, it’s possible to send them messages relevant to the actions they took while browsing, inviting them to come back once more.

By asking users to accept and subscribe to web push notifications (opt-in), it’s possible to send them a hyper-personalized message based on their behaviour when they are browsing online later on. This channel offers brands the opportunity to reach non-registered users on both mobile and desktop with engaging messages. 

Depending on the provider you work with, web push notifications allow you to segment the audience with all types of demographic data and use dynamic parameters to make the message as relevant as it can be. The setup of the campaigns only needs to be done the first time and then everything basically runs on autopilot.  This means there’s not any extra workload that needs to be done through time. 

One of the main attractions of web push notifications is their reach. Unlike social media, this channel has a deliverability of 100%.  If users opt-in, the next time they open up the browser, it’s guaranteed that they’ll receive the message. With web push notifications you don’t have to fight against social media algorithms that almost randomly choose whether to show or not your post. With web push your message will be delivered. 

Benefits of Automated Web Push Notifications Retargeting

• A message for every step of the funnel: web notifications are set up to be triggered by events you define on your site: category viewed, product viewed, product added to cart or any other you wish. This means you’ll have multiple opportunities to connect with users that leave without completing an action with a specific message related to the step of the shopping process where they abandoned the site. 

• Hyper-personalised messages: web push notifications are 100% based on user behaviour. If someone who accepted them visits your site and takes any action that triggers a notification, he/she will receive a message containing the image, product name, brand and even price of the article. You can also put your own brand’s personality to the notification by adding emojis and customizing the text. 

• Guaranteed deliverability: as we mentioned before, web push notifications have a deliverability rate of 100%. These messages are browser based which means that, as soon as a user opens its browser, the notification will be delivered. They also work for both mobile and desktop. With one campaign you can reach users on any device they own. 

• Time efficient: web push notifications automated campaigns only need to be configured one first time. Frizbit offers its clients ready-to-use templates that allow brands to start sending messages right away as soon as the implementation is done. Of course, you can customise said templates as much as you want and modify them through time as well, but it’s not something that needs to be optimised and analysed on a regular basis in order to achieve great results. 

• No CPM/CPC cost: when using web push notifications as a retargeting channel with Frizbit, you don’t have to worry about CPM and CPC costs like in the case of social media promoted posts. With automated web push notifications you have unlimited messages to send, with no costs for impressions or clicks. 

What retargeting strategy should I use for my online business?

Social media platforms and web push notifications are inherently very different channels. Nonetheless, both of them are used by big and small brands in the pursuit of  reaching and engaging with users with retargeting strategies. 

When it comes to planning a digital marketing strategy to retain users, the ideal scenario is to combine channels. In this case both social media and web push notifications, present very clear and unique characteristics that can greatly complement each other in a well-thought communications plan. 

There are many big brands and online businesses that invest a lot of their budgets on working with social media ads agencies to promote their products and services. Most of these companies haven’t considered including web push notifications campaigns in their marketing strategy because they don’t even know the benefits of this new retargeting channel. 

If you would like to try it out, get in touch with us and we would gladly introduce you to the world of retargeting with automated web push notifications campaigns.

Since we got your attention, you might also like to read:

• Web Push Notifications: A Complete Guide for all Levels
• How to Conduct Successful A/B Testing: Go from Beginner to Pro
• Guide: How to use Push Notifications for Online Stores

Digital marketing news from March 2021 cover updates from Google Search to important social media new features. It’s amazing to witness how, every month, marketing technology changes and takes a step forward into making marketers jobs easier with new features added to existing platforms and new tech being developed.  

As we do it every month, we have gathered the most relevant marketing news and information worth revising for search marketing, tech marketing and social media marketing. you never know which new feature of technology will help you improve your digital marketing strategy. So keep on reading for the:

Digital Marketing News, Insights and Updates from March 2021

1. Search Marketing Updates

Google puts to the test displaying a cost estimate for local search queries

Google has announced that the company will be testing a new feature to show cost estimates in local search results. The feature is inspired by an alliance between Google and Homewyse, a site that provides contractors a system to calculate accurate quotes for their clients. They provide cost and pricing estimates for common houseworks, such as maintenance, repairs or remodelings. 

The new costs feature will show an estimate of the price range. Google says “The price information provided should be used as a guide only. The actual cost of service may vary widely based on the provider you choose and the specific details of your job.”

The results will show a price range for the service the users search for in the local area near their homes. According to Google, “Knowing the typical prices for a service in your ZIP code can help you estimate the cost of your job before booking it with a Local Services provider.” This feature is limited to the U.S. for the moment.

Google brings Full Coverage news to search results

Another marketing news by Google is that they’re bringing the Full Coverage feature to show on search results. This feature was already available for Google News since 2018, but the company has decided to now add it to Search Results as well with an announcement on their blog last March 8th.  

According to Google, the reasoning behind this decision is that “People are hungry for context that helps them break down and understand (…) complicated stories from multiple perspectives.” This decision has been inspired because of how important and ongoing news and stories, such as Covid-19 or the U.S. elections are “consumed” by people. 

The “Full Coverage” page will show next to the carousel of articles that appear at the top of the Search results page when users introduce a query. If users want to dig a little deeper on any big developing news, they just have to click Full Coverage.

With this launch, we’re introducing new technology that is able to detect long-running news stories that span many days, like the Super Bowl, to many weeks or months like the COVID-19 pandemic. We then organize the Full Coverage page to help people easily find top news along with additional content like explainers and local coverage that are helpful to understanding these complex stories.

Right now the Full Coverage feature is only available for mobile devices in English and limited to U.S. users. Google says they intend to roll it out to more countries and languages in the upcoming months. 

Microsoft Bing updates search results interface

There are several updates coming up for Microsoft Bing interface. Recipe results, carousels, infographics and local answers are getting a revamp with the purpose of making the search experience more “visually immersive” for users. 

• Infographic-like search panel experience: one of the first changes is a new, knowledge panel design. The objective was to make it more visually appealing and “provide both style and substance”. 

• Local answers with more information: when users search for anything on local answer, they’ll get more information. Microsoft Bing added more than just a single images carousel, they added more to Bing Maps, top images and reviews.

• Expandable search carousels: they also added a feature with expandable carousels that show high-level information results in order to avoid a crowded results page. A user can hover an specific result and it will expand showcasing more detailed information.

• Similar looking items feature: when users make a search on Microsoft Bing Image Search, they can now click on it and use the “similar looking items” feature to highlight a portion of said image and get more results of images similar to that specific portion and can even directly go to a retailer’s site to purchase an item if that the case. 

• Recipes result with more information: when looking for a recipe, users will get a list and have the option to expand them to see more. The information can go from nutritional information to, users reviews and ingredients list and possible substitutions. 

2. Marketing Tech Updates

Google Chrome can now caption audio and video

Google rolled out the Live Caption Feature for Chrome. This allows users to automatically generate real-time captions for media on their browsers. The feature works for social media, podcasts, radio, personal video libraries, embedded video players and most web-based video and chat services. 

Captions make online content more accessible. If you’re in a noisy environment, trying to keep the volume down, or are part of the 466 million people in the world who are deaf or hard of hearing, having captions lets you follow along to whatever content you are watching — whether it’s viral feta pasta videos, breaking news or a scientist discussing their latest research. – Google Blog

One of the most interesting features of the new Live Caption, is that the captions are generated on real-time. This means that they appear as content plays and they work offline as well. 

To turn on the Live Caption Feature, users just need to go to Chrome Settings, click on Advanced and then go to Accessibility. The captions currently only support English and are available worldwide on the latest update of Chrome on Windows, Mac and Linux. 

Google My Business report shows how people found your business

If there’s an important piece of information for every business, is definitely how people found them. Google’s aware of this and has rolled out an update for Google My Business that shows how users got to you. 

The new performance report insights upgrade shows a section of people who viewed your business and how they found it, whether through desktop, mobile or either Search Results or Google Maps.

Businesses can access these new reports by logging to their My Business accounts and selecting the Insights tab. From there, go to the top of the page to access the new performance reports and scroll down to the section that shows “how people discovered you”. 

The reports breakdown the information by device and type of search. This feature has been available as a beta since late January and Google pointed out a few details:

• The metric represents the number of unique users so it might be lower than the number of views found on Google My Business and in email notifications. 
• The metric focuses on views of the Business Profile, not overall views of the Business in Google. 

Hootsuite adds new “best time to publish” feature

The social media management web platform has rolled out a new feature that shows you the best time to publish on your different social media channels. These suggestions are completely personalised based on your own publishing history of the last 30 days. 

The new feature aims into helping content creators “build awareness, boost engagement and drive traffic”. Knowing when to post is so important to reach as many people as possible on social media, and this feature has the objective of helping with that. 

This month, Hoostsuite also included an update that allows you to add Magento into your dashboard. This will allow you to:

• Add streams of your products to Hootsuite
• Share to multiple networks, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
• Schedule when posts are sent
• Respond to users on Twitter with product information
• Use templates for frequently used posts/replies

3. Social Media Marketing Updates

Instagram is testing new auto-caption feature in stories

Instagram is testing a new auto-caption feature for stories. It’s called “Closed Captions” and shown in the stickers tab. A social media consultant shared a video showcasing how it works and it seems the captions are really accurate.

After recording a video with voice, you just have to open the stickers tab and select the Caption one and the app will automatically generate a transcription. There are different options for styling the captions, very similar to the ones available for the transcription of lyrics from the music sticker. 

The feature is just under test by Instagram and not available to the public yet. However, we can expect it to be launched very soon. 

Twitter is testing new e-commerce features

Twitter is testing a new feature that links to e-commerce product pages. It displays the tweet with a different card format design that includes a big “Shop” button and showcases details about the product directly into the tweet.

The information displayed on these new tweets format for e-commerce show:

• Product name
• Shop name
• Product price
• Shop button

Twitter confirmed that these new e-commerce tweets are an example of a new “organic” type of tweet. The social media platform is aiming into helping content creators monetize their work with many new features. Joining forces with newsletter platform Revue a few months ago and a new Super Follow feature that will allow creators to charge followers for “exclusive content” , are definitely aiming in that direction. 

Facebook looking to launch audio-only rooms

All the world has been on a hype since the popularisation of the new audio-only social media Clubhouse. Other social media platforms don’t want to be left behind and Facebook has started working on its own version of audio-only chat rooms. 

In May last year, Facebook rolled out a feature called Rooms that allowed users to create private video chats others can join. So, creating a new one that’s audio-based only wouldn’t be a major work or effort for Facebook.

The new feature will allow users to create public or private audio group rooms. It’s basically the same thing as Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces. Maybe this would suppose a threat to Clubhouse since the app still works just for iOS and it’s based on invites only. 

We can expect Facebook to roll out the new feature very soon, since the amount of work behind it is basically ready. 

Summary

This is it for the most important digital marketing news from November covering everything from search marketing, tech marketing and social media marketing. Which news caught your attention more?

Bonus Material

We’ve recently created the Digital Marketing & E-commerce Experts group on Linkedin for all of you marketing professionals and enthusiasts. Here you’ll find all sorts of content related to digital marketing and e-commerce, you can share your own experiences, questions and just rub shoulders with other marketers on a daily basis.

Since you’re already here, you might want to check out:

• Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategies for E-commerce – Recover Lost Sales
• How to Orchestrate your Marketing Strategy on Multi-Channel?
• Troubleshooting Web Push Notifications: Why I’m I not Getting Notifications