Author: Franz Malten Buemann

You may not necessarily think of technology when you think of the nonprofit sector. Typically restricted due to the model in which they receive funding, nonprofits have to remain nimble and focus on cost-effective solutions. Traditionally, technology hasn’t always made the cut.   However, nonprofits operate in a dynamic environment that requires them to be efficient,…
The post The Role Technology Plays in Nonprofit Work appeared first on Benchmark Email.

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Coachella didn’t start off as the Met Gala for influencers.
The festival was first held in October 1999 and was intended to be an accessible event for alternative music fans. Held just three months after the infamous Woodstock ‘99, the first Coachella had an audience of just 25,000 people and failed to make a profit, costing organizers nearly $1 million.
After taking a year off, Coachella made its comeback in April 2001. While Coachella began picking up popularity in its first decade, the 2010s ushered in a distinctly new era for the festival and it became a profitable and style-defining event.
So, what changed?
In its first few years, Coachella featured predominantly alternative artists, with headliners like Beck and Rage Against the Machine. By the 2010s, mainstream artists including Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, and Beyonce started drawing bigger crowds.
What started as a single-day event evolved into a six-day festival spanning over consecutive weekends.  By 2016, there were over 99,000 attendees at Coachella each weekend — combined to be nearly 10x the attendance of the first event.
How Influencer Marketing Changed Coachella
The rise of social media also had a major impact on Coachella’s growth. Influencer culture and “festival fashion” became nearly synonymous with the event.
As content creators and celebrities began attending Coachella in droves, what they wore nearly overshadowed what was happening on stage. Brands, particularly brands that relied on influencer marketing, began leveraging Coachella as a pivotal part of their business strategies.
In 2015 and 2016 H&M partnered with Coachella organizers to launch #HMLovesCoachella, a clothing collection that captures the boho aesthetic the festival is known for. H&M also hosted a pop-up shop at the 2016 festival where attendees could purchase the clothes on-site.
Perhaps no company has used Coachella as an influencer marketing tool as heavily as the LA-based clothing company Revolve.
How Revolve Uses Influencer Marketing at Coachella to Drive Revenue
It’s reported that nearly 70% of the company’s sales come from influencers, and experiential marketing with content creators at events like Coachella is a core revenue driver.
Since 2015, Revolve has hosted Revolve Festival, an invite-only party for celebrities and influencers.

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Over the years Revolve Festival has made headlines for partnering with celebrity brands like Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila and Hailey Bieber’s Rhode Beauty, and for last year’s transportation issues that left influencers comparing the party to 2017’s disastrous Fyre Festival.  
Despite the controversy, Revolve Festival, combined with content distributed by influencers dressed in Revolve’s clothes, has helped the brand generate an astounding five billion social and media impressions.
Between sponsors throwing money at the opportunity to have their brands seen at the event, and influencers turning their experiences into content for their followers, Coachella has gone from a modest music festival to a $1+ billion marketing machine.
Elsewhere in Marketing
The latest marketing news and strategy insights.
Instagram is now letting users put up to five links in their bio.
YouTube is ending its in-video shopping feature.
Twitter gives Twitter Blue subscribers the ability to monetize their popular tweets.
Google is reportedly working on an AI-powered search engine to compete with Bing and OpenAI.
AI in content marketing: the HubSpot blog recently surveyed a group of marketers to learn how they’re using AI in their processes.

I created this amazing website that’s basically a chatGPT for kids. It works great and I even made custom quiz generator and writing assistance tools. My own kids are using it and their grades are improving but i’ve gotten no signups. Are there tools to automate the marketing for this? I’ve tried tiktok videos but didn’t get any views their either. Any tips you can provide on how to get this out there, I’m all ears. I was a non-profit manager for years so this is out of my wheelhouse. submitted by /u/aitutorgenie [link] [comments]

We are a team of graduate students working with an industry client to understand the needs and perspectives of business/technical users involved with managing a customer loyalty program. If you or anyone that you know has been involved in any part of the customer loyalty management process, please consider filling this survey out and sharing it with people in your network. In addition, if you would be willing to share your perspective with us over a 30-to-45-min call, please schedule a time to chat with our team members using this link. Thank you very much! submitted by /u/constantly-evolving [link] [comments]

Consumers’ use of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology is a novel trend that seems to be scaling upward lately — such a trend, what some may view as a fleeting fad, may be the next big, innovative opportunity for marketers across the globe to engage customers, both new and current. In the last few years, AR and VR technologies have been continually, and at an increasingly rapid pace, transforming the way consumers choose to spend their hard-earned dollars. In an omnichannel marketing strategy, AR and VR technologies ultimately provide customers with a digital experience in place of a traditional, physical one, offering brands a new space to market their products and services.
The money-making power of the internet
With such ongoing innovations in e-commerce, forecasters at Forbes predict that the global e-commerce market will total $6.3 trillion in 2023, and by 2026, the e-commerce market is expected to total over $8.1 trillion. If brands wish to get a slice of this pie, it may be worthwhile to note that AR and VR trends are expected to continue growing in the 2023 – 2024 years and accelerate over the 2023 – 2027 period, giving retailers the chance to enhance online shopping experiences in an exciting way that may bring in a fresh, young audience. 
As the money-making power of the internet radically changes the world economy, the economy of virtual goods generates more than a modest portion of overall global gaming revenue. With the gaming industry expected to maintain its recent growth, possibly becoming worth more than $321 billion by 2026, the market seems to be dripping with opportunities for brands to generate more direct sales. Indeed, in a VR world with billions of users, these goods aren’t simply gaming products — they are the same products brands are marketing — trying to drive revenue with — in real life. While the rise of cryptocurrency continues to find a place in the global economy for the long term, the world of VR is already seeing innovation and development from leading brands, in both virtual-to-physical and physical-to-virtual transactions.
How brands are driving revenue in virtual reality
By creating virtual experiences for shoppers such as product trials and tutorials as well as virtual store experiences like in-store navigation apps and games for shoppers, brands are both enhancing their image and yielding an impressive ROI. Notable examples of brands driving revenue in VR come from companies like Estée Lauder, MAC, Gucci, and Dior, to name only a few. These brands, and others, allegedly created AR “try-on” advertisements that successfully generated direct sales. These “try-on” ads allow app users to use their smartphone cameras to superimpose 3D digital replicas of products onto their bodies. According to The Coin Republic, “Dior’s digital sneakers had 2.3 million views and a sixfold return on advertising investment.” 
As a savvy marketer looking for new ways to drive revenue, you may be thinking this sounds like an excellent brand-enhancing opportunity, but how do transactions in VR work? Depending on which platform consumers are engaging on, where brands have set up shop, and whether users are making real-to-virtual or virtual-to-real transactions — will all determine how money moves across wires. The short explanation is that in some VRs, consumers can link their payment info into the app. In other instances, users are making purchases with cryptocurrencies; however, rest assured that whichever way brands are making cash in VR now — they are actually seeing those dollars in real life. 
Think first — Don’t jump into Decentraland just yet
While the opportunity may seem golden, don’t jump into Decentraland and set up shop just yet. It’s important to remember that consumers have typically used AR and VR for gaming only, so there is a lot to consider when thinking about VR as an interactive consumer experience, in which users actively engage with brands online in real time. 
Only recently, mostly with Mark Zuckerberg’s company’s rebrand to Meta, has VR become more of a social engagement platform, allowing users to participate in VR for reasons other than gaming. Users are shopping, dining, socializing, etc. There is no doubt that money is being spent, and investors are reaping the profits. Domino’s is taking pizza orders in the Metaverse, to deliver actual pizza to customers’ doorsteps in real life, and Gucci, using an NFT method, is engaging shoppers with lower-cost virtual replicas of its products to adorn users’ avatars. 
In a recent article, Reuters reports the Investment bank Morgan Stanley forecasts that by 2030, the digital fashion industry may rise by $50 billion with consideration to new VR purchasing trends. Yet, this is only a prediction — like many social platforms we have seen over the last two decades, they rise and fall. Those individuals deeply invested in VR, in the Metaverse, in incorporating it into their lifestyle, are fortelling that VR will be the next iteration of the internet — a platform that will change society for generations. 
However, if you casually browse chat boards engaged in by VR users and creators, the overall attitude is that the VR platform is stalling — it’s not growing, and companies’ demands of it will likely outbid its abilities. The start-build-stall pattern driving the engineering behind VR may entirely be its downfall, and as consumers desire more and more from a platform that can simply not deliver, the novelty may quickly dissipate. 
The questions all marketers must ask
Undoubtedly, offering an omnichannel experience is a great way to include and engage a multitude of customers; however, deciding whether to make AR and VR a part of your omnichannel strategy takes major consideration. Some key factors to keep in mind might include questions such as who are my customers and what type of experience would drive their engagement? How can my brand create a differentiated experience? And, does AR and VR offer a unique opportunity to showcase my value proposition?
There are countless opportunities for most industries to try AR and VR and win a high ROI — especially now since consumers are being drawn to it for lifestyle experiences. Will it catch on, will it truly deliver the ROI you desire, or will it be a failed endeavor? — these are the first, essential questions every marketer must remember to ask when taking on a very new channel that still sits only as a possibility. 
The post Should You Add Virtual Reality to Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy? appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

submitted by /u/rzykov [link] [comments]