Category: Marketing Automation

 

 

61% websites get search results below consumer expectations. This is why SALESmanago is introducing a new technology supporting Online Stores Search Engines with Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing. And to increase your Customer Experience via mobile it includes Voice Recognition too. And all of that to make sure your Search Engine becomes another serious point of converting customers.

 

More and more customers are using Search Engines at online Stores but those have their serious limitations

 

According to the reports of Deconstructing E-Commerce Search and The State of Mobile E-Commerce Search and Category Navigation published by Baymard Institute these are the most problematic phenomena connected to Search Engines used by Online Stores

 

61% get search results below consumer expectations,

70%  do not support synonyms and related terms,

46%  do not support thematic inquiries, 

32% do not support symbols and abbreviations, which causes users to lose perfectly targeted products,

27% of cases will not produce useful results if users misspell just one character in the product title.

 

On top of that obviously there is the most important challenge of search results being somehow disconnected from the person making the query. Disconnected from the Customer Data Profile. SALESmanago Search Engine Turbocharger meets all these problems and lends a helping hand to marketers that want to improve this space of Customer Experience.

 

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5 reasons you should make SALESmanago Search Engine Turbocharger an integral part of your search engine strategy at your online Store

 

Search engines at Online Stores have always been kind of neglected simply because they are added as standard features of Online Store configuration especially when you set up your online store at one of the E-Commerce Platforms like Magento, Presta Shop, WooCommerce or Shopify. But now you do not have to be dependent on them and here is a list of what you can achieve now with the new SALESmanago Feature.

 

Upgrade your online store search engine results by delivering answers perfectly matching all queries thanks to the use of advanced NLP technology and sets of interrelated computational approaches that work together to home in on user intent,

Enrich your search engine page with AI-based product recommendations. Measure engagement in presented search results and score the effectiveness of each result to optimize feature recommendations,

Apply merchandising expertise to drive incremental revenue. Create custom collections pages for special occasions by building unique campaigns with perfectly matched products,

Simplify the way of products search thanks to the unbeatable AI Voice Search Engine which is seamlessly to use and easy to implement,

Measure your searchandising success through available advanced reports and search analytics dashboard.

 

Last but not least, with over 50% of the traffic worldwide coming from mobile devices by implementing the VOICE FEATURE make sure your customers browsing your online store via mobile phone do not face the pain of tedious manual searching for products and clicking through dozens of nonsensical filters.

 

Examples of using Search Engine Turbocharger that will surprise you and your customers and sometimes go a little bit beyond what you may think search engine has been built for

 

Surprise customers by displaying products that they exactly want to see – the newest technology allows all inquiries to be understood. That’s why customers can enter what they are looking for in any form, and they will get perfectly matched products to their interest. 

Quicker searching by AI Voice Search – let customers find interesting products without losing time on entering queries, but only by clicking one button and saying what they are looking for. Perfect solution for users, who are accustomed to quick mobile usage. 

Dedicated campaigns for special occasions – determine which products will be displayed for specific keywords entered by customers to search engine. Create unusual product recommendations for special occasions e.g. dreamed Christmas gifts or best birthday presents. 

Better control by defining what filters should be returned to dedicated queries – define what kind of filters and products will be displayed for specific queries. Control what you show your customers if they are searching for nonstandard products which probably you don’t have in your main products range. Thanks to this, recommend products based on a cross-selling strategy. 

Deeply analysis allows for sales growth – analyze which phrases are the most searched and improve your dedicated product recommendations to increase revenue.

 

 

According to Marketing Automation specialist, David Raab, as many as 70% (Vendasta) of marketers are dissatisfied with software they use. Why? Most of them refer to the too complex structure of the platform, too hard system management, and a quarter of users (Autopilot) do not know how to use the tools effectively with generating satisfactory income. That is why we have created Command Center, a management panel that you will not find in any other marketing software. A panel which will make your life easier.

 

Barriers in management and implementation of Marketing Automation systems do not attract potential customers from the B2C sector   

 

It is obvious that appetite comes with eating. The more hypermodern solutions in the martech industry, the more customers are interested in implementing new and subsequent solutions. But. Exactly but – everyone in the Marketing Automation industry has already realized that with the multitude of functions, the ease of navigation decreases. And even 86% (Regalix) of them  believe that ease of use is the most important criterion when choosing a Marketing Automation platform. What are the main problems marketers see in the world of automation?

 

44% – percentage of users dissatisfied because their software is too difficult to learn and manage (Autopilot),

61% percent of users think that the learning process of a new automation system is too complicated (EmailMonday),

37% – a drop in the ocean of companies relying on themselves for their automation needs because they do not trust in their Marketing Automation management skills (EmailMonday).

 

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7 reasons why you should take advantage of SALESmanago Command Center and forget about current ways of understanding your marketing process

 

From process organization to organization and execution of campaigns. Here are the things you can do using our brand new feature.

 

Build your Marketing Management Cockpit with a centralized view of all your marketing processes and assets organized in Solutions and KPI oriented mode. Get a full understanding of what currently runs in your marketing and what processes are covered.

Switch from an ad hoc and siloed way of running campaigns to building comprehensive KPI oriented processes using all available tools and channels at your hand.

Organize your campaigns by scheduling bulk messages and starting automation processes at a selected date. Choose when your campaign should start and when it’s subsequent stages should be conducted. Plan the entire flow of communication by simply putting different groups of marketing actions to your marketing calendar with a simple drag & drop method.

Easily measure the performance of entire campaigns and individual sendings using the calendar view, where you can see the effectiveness of all sent outbound communication in a selected time frame.

Use one central point to create and analyze your marketing activities targeting your customers at different stages in their lifecycle, starting from the acquisition to their activation and growing retention.

Use the advanced calendar to easily plan and oversee all of the scheduled marketing activities.

Create campaigns using both single bulk sendings and custom multi-stage automation processes which makes it a unique solution on the entire market scale.

 

Ways of use Marketing Management Cockpit, which are a response to the industry’s problems and will ensure that no comprehensive marketing strategy will stand in the way of your success

 

Use the campaign view to plan occasional and thematic campaigns – create a separate folder for each day of the week and put in it the appropriate processes and shipments planned for that day, so that you don’t miss any element of your marketing strategy

Go straight to the analytics or editing of the selected element without pointless clicking through the system – save time and instead of clicking complicated panels with functionalities, manage and edit specific campaigns from one screen,

Control sendings from one place – apart from the possibility of editing elements, you can also cancel a sending of emails, text messages and Web Pushes in Calendar view with one click of the mouse if you change your marketing strategy at the last minute,

View daily, weekly, monthly statistics – if you need fast. but detailed information about the results of the campaign from a given day, week or month, you can find them in the Command Center panel,

Use the Command Center as a tool for planning and checking current marketing campaigns – use the functionality not only to build large, advanced and complex processes, but also to manage current campaigns.

marketing automation

marketing automation

 

 

Acquiring a new customer costs 5 to 25 times (Harvard Business Review) more than maintaining the current one and this is why more and more B2C companies are deciding to implement Loyalty Programmes. And their implementation seems to be a good approach as according to Accenture research, customers involved in loyalty programs not only stay, but will spend 12 – 18 % more every year. And here you go: SALESmanago is introducing its own Loyalty Program for its B2C companies and Online Stores.

 

Digital saturation is driving up customer acquisition costs but you can cope with it by implementing Loyalty Management Program for your customers

 

E-Commerce space is getting more and more crowded with customers being less and less loyal to brands. That’s why new customer acquisition can be 5 to 25 times (Harvard Business Review) more than maintaining the current one. Implementing a Loyalty Management Program can be a way to successfully face this challenge. A couple of studies have shown a very positive effect of introducing loyalty programs at Online Stores.

 

Average order volume increases by up to 319% (E-Commerce Incentives Case Study, 2019), 
The frequency of visits by regular customers increases by 35% (Thanx, 2017),
Customers involved in the Loyalty program will spend 12-18% more on eCommerce every year (Accenture, 2017).

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SALESmanago Loyalty Management enables a full range of Customer 360° Profile Data across reward and gamification programs

 

A couple of highlights explaining what you can do with a brand new Loyalty Management Feature at SALESmanago:

 

Engage and increase retention and LTV of your customers with highly customizable loyalty programs seamlessly integrated with all CDP data and executed with automated omnichannel communication.

Create your own gamification and reward programs to effectively support your customer’s buying cycle. 

Go beyond transactions in creating your Loyalty program and use data about customer behavior like website activities and any behavior tracked by the CDP, such as opened emails, filled forms, read articles, etc.  

Use data from Loyalty program in advanced omnichannel workflows to create a unique Customer Experience and increase customer engagement and revenues of your marketing campaigns.

Analyze the effectiveness of a Loyalty program by measuring how your customers are progressing across different program tiers and how different customer segments defined in the Loyalty program are contributing to your overall revenue.

 

Some examples of simple gamification and reward programs using SALESmanago Loyalty Program with transactional and behavioural data

 

Reward customers for online engagement – add points for visiting your website, reading a newsletter, or even simply clicking “Like” on product pages! All activities can be defined and translated into additional points, using the unlimited possibilities available in automation processes.

Engage customers to make purchases regularly – setting points to expire is an effective way to encourage customers to make purchases regularly. If they don’t buy repeatedly they go down to the lower tier and they lose their desirable benefits.

Extra discounts in return for collected points – let customers collect points based on varied activities and create an advanced program that allows them to exchange points for gifts or discounts. Thanks to this, they will have the possibility to acquire products they really want without cheapening the perceived value of them. 

Celebrate a birthday – surprise your customers and make them birthday wishes in the form of a dedicated birthday card sent as a 1-to-1 email with extra points in the loyalty program as a gift. 

Determine nonstandard conditions to accumulate points for your customers based on unusual purchases – set advanced programs where you will encourage customers to spend more by giving them extra points in exchange for higher value of purchase. 

marketing automation

marketing automation

We just went through a big effort to redesign our internal Marketo Master Email Template. Since it’s getting close to the holidays, I decided to share it with everyone for free 🙂 Our goals with this template were to; ​
Create ONE template that would solve 99% of our email marketing needs. Reduce reliance on our MarTech developers for simple styling changes Reduce the time needed to QA each iteration of a new template Lock down branding, headers, footers, and style guides. Make it way easier for our junior associates to stand up gorgeous new campaigns.
Our instance became super cluttered with template variations, and it was becoming a real mess. This one master template should save us a ton of time, and hopefully level up our overall design output. As a marketo partner, we thought we’d give it away for free. There’s instructions on how to download it, upload it to your instance, and make the changes to snap it into your branding guidelines. Holler if you need any help. We’re happy to walk through it. I hope this saves you all some serious time! Let me know if you have any suggestions on how to make it better 🙂
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Last Updated on December 15, 2020 by Rakesh GuptaBig Idea or Enduring Question: When to use “Before-Save” vs “After-Save” Record-Triggered Flows?  Objectives: After reading this blog post, you will be able to understand: When should you use Before-save record-triggered flow? … Continue reading →

Last Updated on December 19, 2020 by Rakesh GuptaBig Idea or Enduring Question: When to use “Before-Save” vs “After-Save” Record-Triggered Flows?  Objectives: After reading this blog post, you will be able to understand: When should you use Before-save record-triggered flow? … Continue reading →

In the beginning of 2019, people were tweeting pictures of razors submerged at the bottom of their toilet bowls. No, this wasn’t a wacky teen challenge to make dads late for work. It was a protest against Gillette’s latest advertisement, one that confronts toxic masculinity.

Brands that craft controversial advertisements like Gillette’s, however, expect this type of response, at least from some people. Taking any kind of stance on potentially sensitive social issues tends to lead to some form of disagreement.
But authentically advocating for the causes you truly believe in usually has more pros than cons.
“Even if publicizing your beliefs may ostracize some potential customers, it also builds deep loyalty for those who share your values — particularly values like celebrating equality and inclusion, which many people support, regardless of political affiliation,” Joe Lazauskas, the Head of Content Strategy at Contently, wrote in an article after the divisive 2016 presidential election. “The same goes for expressing concern and support for the diverse people who work for you. Loyalty isn’t just a marketing metric; it’s also critical for measuring the internal health of your company.”
Executed properly and from a place of genuine support, controversial ads can be an unexpected, emotional delight that can not only deepen your connection with your core audience, but can also help you reach new audiences. For instance, after Gillette released their ad challenging toxic masculinity, Adweek discovered the campaign actually resonated with women the most.

What Is Controversial Advertising?
Controversial advertising doesn’t aim to polarize an audience. It’s an attention-grabbing technique for stating an opinion, and brands use it to spark productive conversations about certain moral values. In recent years, any stance taken on potentially sensitive social issues can be considered controversial advertising.

The Psychology Behind Controversial Advertising
People usually read and share opinionated content because it aligns with their own values. And by letting the world know about their beliefs, they can solidify an ideal image of themselves within their social circle and their own minds.
Opinionated content also has a knack for making people think and consider other points of view, which builds more loyal audiences because it can teach people something new and help shape their perspective on life.
But while controversial ads can generate more buzz than other types of ads, if executed poorly or in a merely performative manner, they can be detrimental to your brand. For instance, consider SNL’s hilarious skit of ad executives pitching commercial ideas to the snack brand Cheetos.

Although SNL isn’t specifically giving controversial advertising a ribbing, they’re poking fun at the way brands exploit sensitive social issues to peddle their products instead of what they should be doing when covering these types of topics — encouraging productive conversations.
Creating a controversial ad with a merely commercial motive is a one way ticket to receiving Kendall Jenner & Pepsi type of feedback (we’ll cover this later). In other words, it can spark harsh backlash and bad publicity instead of meaningful dialogue.
So how do you avoid this type of negative response if you want to create a controversial advertising campaign? Below, we’ll analyze three controversial advertising examples that work and two that don’t to help you support the causes you genuinely believe in and better connect with audiences.
Controversial Advertising Examples That Work
1. Anheuser-Busch | Born The Hard Way

Anheuser-Busch’s ad about their founder’s origin story makes people realize that something so fundamentally American, like Budweiser beer, can have immigrant roots.
Budweiser is commonly associated with themes of American patriotism, so taking a stance on immigration, which is a controversial issue in the United States, conflicted with some of the brand’s most loyal customers’ political beliefs. But taking this social stance also led to a meaningful dialogue about how immigrants have founded some of America’s most iconic brands.
By telling a gripping and emotional story about the founding of their company, Anheuser-Busch could take a stance on an important issue that’s essential to their brand and connect with the people who understand that the United States is country of immigrants, helping the ad garner more than 21.7 million views in only three days.
2. Nike | Dream Crazy

“Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything” is an accurate life motto for Colin Kaepernick, a professional American football player. In the 2016 NFL season, he stoked controversy by kneeling during the National Anthem before the start of every game as a protest against racial inequality.
Unfortunately, all the controversy associated with him has basically barred him from the NFL — no team hasn’t signed him since his controversial 2016 season. Yet, admirably, he still advocates for the causes he supported during his protests.
Along with Kaepernick’s story, Nike’s “Dream Crazy” weaves in other narratives of athletes who followed ambitious dreams to eventual success. And Nike made it clear that they want to help Colin Kaepernick achieve his dream of a righteous world, no matter how crazy it seems right now.
“Dream Crazy”, while highly controversial, resonated with millions of people. Just days after they released the ad, Nike’s sales soared by 31%, despite videos of their gear engulfed in flames circulating throughout social media.
3. Heineken | Worlds Apart

In Heineken’s “Worlds Apart”, people were paired together and asked to build stools and a bar together. After they completed the activity and developed some rapport with each other, pre-recorded videos starting playing and revealed that their political views were actually the polar opposite of each others. They were then asked if they would discuss their differences over a beer. All of them said a resounding “yes”.
Making an ad where people with such differing political views actually engage in meaningful dialogue and don’t just belittle each other is a risky move. A lot of people have a fiery passion for their political beliefs and won’t associate with people who don’t agree with them. But that’s ultimately why Worlds Apart was met with rave reviews and called “The Antidote to Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner Ad” — it focuses on putting our differences aside to work for a greater cause together, not Heineken’s product.
4. Burger King | Whopper Neutrality

Net neutrality regulation was repealed in the United States in 2018. Leading up to this decision, many Americans debated whether this would be a good or bad thing, but many more didn’t understand what the fuss was about.
Burger King aimed to explain and persuade with their “Whopper neutrality” analogy where customers pay a premium to get their food delivered fast.
Despite net neutrality being irrelevant to burgers, the campaign resulted in $67 million in earned media and 3.8% sales growth — while igniting conversations about the issue among everyday people and celebrities alike.
5. Poo~Pourri | Girls Don’t Poop

It’s not every day you see a post where the protagonist is sitting on the toilet. Culturally, going to the bathroom is an “inappropriate” or “crass” topic. Despite this, Poo~Pourri brings it front and center for their odor removal product.
Needless to say, this could’ve gone down poorly. However, the comical dialogue, impeccable production, and endearing relatability earned positive reactions from audiences. In fact, it was viewed 17 million times in just a month.
6. Lane Bryant | #ThisBody

In 2016, Lane Bryant launched their #ThisBody campaign, promoting their plus-sized clothing line in conjunction with radical body positivity. The ad features several plus-sized models declaring how they feel about their bodies and what they can do in an effort to change cultural perception and make a stand against body shaming. However, the ad was pulled by ABC and NBC for showing “too much skin.” Critics claimed the ad was no more risque than other underwear ads.
The networks proposed to re-air the ad once Lane Bryant made some minor edits, but the retailer refused, launching it on social media instead where it received viral levels of positive engagement.
Controversial Advertising Examples That Don’t Work
1. Pepsi | Live for Now

If you think long and hard about it, could a can of Pepsi really mend the complex rifts that divide the entire world right now? Nope. Not at all. Even worse, is Kendall Jenner really an integral part of any social justice movement, or was she just there because she’s a famous celebrity who can grab almost anyone’s attention? You probably know the answer to this question by now.
After receiving five times as many downvotes as upvotes on YouTube and a glut of bad publicity and negative reactions on social media, Pepsi removed the ad from their channel only a few hours after posting it.
If you want to avoid this type of response when creating controversial content, don’t emphasize your product more than the issue at hand. All advertisements are technically self-serving, but people can spot overly promotional fluff masquerading as social justice faster than they’ll click exit on a pop-up ad. So if you don’t truly feel convicted to support a specific social cause when creating controversial content, it’s best to not even put pen to paper.
2. Miracle Mattress | Twin Towers

Labor Day, Veterans Day, and even Memorial Day are prime holidays for furniture sales. However, San Antonia mattress company Miracle Mattress created a controversial video to promote a September 11th sale.
In the video meant to be an edgy parody, two stacks of twin mattresses are toppled over, and the Miracle Mattress employee says, “We will never forget.”
The ad was seen as insensitive rather than provocative, making light of the lives lost on September 11th. The company faced severe media backlash and closed its doors as a result.
3. Hyundai | Pipe Job

Speaking of, the whole goal of provocative narrative and imagery is to prompt an emotional response and, in effect, stand out.Hyundai set out to do this when promoting their lowered emissions with an ad featuring an attempted suicide. The man featured in the ad was unable to take his own life due to the exhaust being made up primarily of harmless water vapor.The ad was pulled after airing for only a day, criticized as being disturbing at best and, at worst, mocking toward suicide attempt survivors and suicide loss survivors.
4. Nationwide | Boy

It starts out as an adorable story about a boy who seems to lack self-confidence, but Nationwide’s “Boy” turns shockingly dark when it’s revealed that the main character can’t live a normal childhood because he’s actually dead.
Child accidents are a serious problem that should be addressed, but this ad was criticized for being too fear-mongering and manipulative — it literally uses the death of children to sell insurance.
So even if your ad highlights a prevalent problem, make sure it doesn’t exploit a potentially sensitive issue just to peddle more product. Otherwise, it might get crowned as the worst ad of the year.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When it comes to generating traffic and brand awareness, digital advertising is the way to go. It’s surpassing traditional advertising, and Google is a huge reason why. As one of the biggest digital advertising platforms, Google is responsible for 37.2% of total U.S. digital ad spending alone.

But how can you take advantage of the advertising opportunities on Google? By knowing how each of its programs — Google Ads and Google AdSense — work and evaluating which is right for you (or both).

In this article, we’ll cover:

Google Ads (Search and Display)
Google AdSense
The Differences Between Them

What Is Google Ads?
Google Ads — formerly known as Google AdWords — allows advertisers to make bids for ad placements to drive traffic to their websites. These placements can be in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) or the Google Display Network (the network of sites, apps, and more that show Google display ads).

Search

The search ads that appear in the SERPs are a great option if you know there’s a demand for your product and your audience is using search engines to satisfy it.

Display
The Google Display Network ads — also known as banner or display ads — are more visual, perfect for grabbing attention as you “rent” space where your audience hangs out online.

Google actually has another advertising program that they released three years after Google Ads’ inception. It’s called Google AdSense.

What Is Google AdSense?
Google AdSense allows publishers to place ads on their websites and other “real estate” in exchange for a “commission.” These publishers make up a portion of the Google Display Network that advertisers can leverage through Google Ads.
In the image below, the recipe website uses Google AdSense to allow 2 advertisers to place banner ads on their site. The recipe site is paid by Google for the success of these ads. (More on this later.)

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Google AdSense is perfect for website publishers who are already getting traffic and want to monetize it.
Read on as we go over the main differences between Google Ads and AdSense, for whom they’re geared toward, and what their cost structure is like.

Ads (Formerly AdWords) vs. AdSense
While the Google Ads program is geared toward attracting advertisers, the Google AdSense program is geared toward attracting publishers. Advertisers use Google Ads to drive traffic to their sites, and publishers use Google AdSense to monetize their existing traffic.

Below, we’ve highlighted some core differences between the Google advertising options so you can make decisions on how best to distribute your ads budget.
Purpose

Platform
Purpose

Google Ads (Search)
Generate traffic to your own site from Google as a search engine.

Google Ads (Display)
Generate traffic to your own site from the Google Display Network of publishing partners, mobile apps, and video.

Google AdSense
Generate traffic for other sites as a Google Display Network publishing partner.

 
Strategy

Platform
Strategy

Google Ads (Search)
You know that your audience searches for your products or services on Google, and you want to show up in the SERPs for those queries. 

Google Ads (Display)
Your audience may not know about your product or service and aren’t searching for it on Google. However, a visual ad may catch their eye if you can show up on the sites where they do hang out.

Google AdSense
Your site is generating traffic, and you want to monetize it. You don’t mind “renting out” real estate on your site to advertisers that your audience may find interesting.

 
Cost Structure

Platform
Cost Structure

Google Ads (Search)
You pay a fee every time a user clicks on one of your ads. This cost per click (CPC) can vary based on how much you bid, your ad rank compared to the competition, and your quality score. For this reason, more competitive keywords can have a higher CPC.

Google Ads (Display)
You can choose the right pricing for your goals: Paying by cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM), or cost-per-action (CPA). CPC is better for generating traffic, CPM is better for generating awareness, and CPA is better for conversions. According to Google, you bid for placement, and “the winner of the auction pays the minimum amount necessary to outrank the next advertiser in the auction.” Competition drives up bidding, so industry and highly sought-after publications may cost more.

Google AdSense
Participation in AdSense is free, and you receive commission for the clicks, impressions, and other interactions the ads on your site receive from users. For this reason, your audience, the ad placement, and the ad quality will all be factors in how much you can make with AdSense.

As you can see from the table above, cost structure depends on a number of variables. We’ll go more in-depth on it below, starting with Google Ads.
Google Ads (Search)
Naturally, there’s enormous demand for the top ad rankings, so Google triggers an auction anytime there are at least two advertisers bidding for keywords that are related to search queries that users consistently enter into Google.

Image Source
Advertisers can then categorize keywords and their corresponding ad copy and web page into groups, pick the group they want to bid on, and choose their maximum bid. Next, Google will select a keyword from the advertiser’s ad group that they deem most relevant to users’ search queries and enter it into the auction.
A Google auction isn’t like your typical auction for antiques, though. They want to level the playing field when it comes to leveraging the size of their reach, so instead of the highest bidder always winning the auction, the bidder with the highest Ad Rank always wins.
AdRank is calculated by multiplying your maximum cost-per-click bid with the quality score of your ad, which is calculated by measuring your page’s relevance to the keyword, user experience, and click-through-rate. This means organizations can’t acquire the top ranking for any keyword they want just because they have the biggest ad budgets. Their content has to be engaging.

Image Source
Google Ads wants to incentivize the best advertisers to advertise the best content on their search engine results pages, so they reward ads that have high quality scores with higher ad rankings and lower cost-per-clicks.
In the same vein, they also want to discourage bad advertisers from advertising bad content, so advertisers with low quality scores will usually only acquire a high ad position if they pay a huge cost-per-click bid. If they want to pay lower a cost-per-click, they have to settle with stooping at the bottom of the ad rankings.
If you win a Google auction, your actual cost-per-click is calculated by the second highest ad rank divided by your quality score, plus one cent. The only time you’ll pay your maximum bid is if you’re the only bidder in the auction or if you make the highest bid in the auction, but you have the lowest ad rank. In this case, you’ll acquire the last ad rank.

Image Source
Google Ads (Display) / Google AdSense
For display ads, just as with search ads, advertisers bid on publishers’ ad space in the Google Ads auction. They bid on certain keywords, and if a publisher’s content has the same or similar keywords, Google will sell their ad space to the highest bidder and pay the publisher a small portion of the bid whenever people click the ad on their website.
However, AdSense doesn’t optimize the ads that they display on publishers’ website for a maximum return on investment like Google Ads does for its search advertisers when they want to optimize their ad campaigns. So, essentially, the amount of money a publisher can earn with AdSense hinges on how well they place the ads on their site and how well advertisers can craft their ads.
Publishers do have control over the types of ads that are displayed, though. They can choose from text ads, display ads, rich media ads, and more. They can also customize their ad’s style or create their own, which gives them the ability to change the size, color, textual, background, and border details of the ads that display on their website. Additionally, they can only place three content ads, three link ads, and two search boxes on each of their web pages.
Google Ads (both Search and Display) and Google AdSense are effective ways to generate revenue with digital advertising methods — the former as you drive traffic to your site and the latter as you use your site to drive traffic elsewhere.
Once you choose the program(s) that are right for you, you can begin your strategy and execution.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Branding is a key factor when you want to create instant recognition with your audience. Cultivating a sense of familiarity gives your audience a feeling of connectedness that will inspire them to seek your business out among your competitors. 
This is also true—and possibly even more so—for your digital communications. Without a brick-and-mortar to sell the experience of interacting with your business, you need your branding to resonate through your online presence as well.
One way to do this is to connect your audience’s physical experiences to the digital experience through branding.
Using colors, fonts, and logos strategically creates a seamless transition from physical experience to digital—or vice versa. If you sell products or services, your packaging should contain the same elements of branding as your storefront. 
Similarly, your emails—from your transactional emails to your newsletters—should also contain your branded elements.
Branding your email program
If you haven’t branded your emails—including your transactional emails, which will have huge open rates during the holiday season—you have missed a chance to reiterate and confirm your brand identity in the minds of your biggest fans. 
A good experience via email will imbue your branding with positive associations, leaving your readers with strong, positive feelings for your company.
How can you brand your emails?
Emails, even transactional ones, should always contain your creative elements, such as your logos, your brand colors, and fonts. Our customers have told us that uploading these elements is one of the hardest parts about getting their email program up and running.
Our new branded templates feature aims to fix that. Now you can get started and get sending in a few minutes. Simply enter your website URL and Campaign Monitor will automatically upload your creative elements into one of our branded templates. You can then tweak whatever you need, add your own copy and content, and get sending. 
With our branded holiday templates, you can start taking advantage of the increased digital traffic this holiday season with minimal up-front effort and time.
Your emails should always use the same fonts and colors as your brick-and-mortar stores, your ads, and even your website. The more places you can utilize your branding elements, the more repetition will solidify your brand reputation in your audience’s mind. 
You can even use the same colors and images on your social feeds to create a seamless, cohesive feel.
Branding with consistency: How to brand your emails, website, and beyond
Your emails aren’t the only place you should utilize branding. Instead, you should carry these elements throughout your digital presence. Consistent branding is a great way to make it seem like you have a dedicated marketing team behind you, even if your entire company only consists of one or two people. 
For example, here is a 2019 holiday email from Alo Yoga. But that fact is obvious at a glance, even without the explanation. Not only is their brand named multiple times throughout the email, the design and aesthetic are also similar throughout. Here’s an example of a branded email:

Your website, social platforms, and even direct mail should all follow the same design and tone guidelines so it’s clear at a glance that they’re all from you. 
Building strong brand recognition will strengthen your relationship with consumers and have them coming back to your organization even when your competitors might be easier or more convenient for them. 
Similarly, if you look at the Alo website, you can see they’ve got the same 70 and 30% off sales, similar graphics near the bottom, and the same inter-galactic design throughout. All readers who click through to the website will find themselves in familiar territory.

If you look at your emails side by side, is it obvious they’re from you? It’s an easy tweak that will improve your email results in the long-term. What about your website? When you follow your links, do you end up someplace that looks familiar?
You might find a few tweaks lead to more conversions and an even higher ROI from your email program.
Wrap up
Consistent branding helps you create seamless, memorable experiences that lead customers to return to your business time and time again. This holiday season will be unlike any other and, while that can be intimidating, it also means there are enormous opportunities for you to connect with your audience. 
Consumers want to do business with brands they care about, with brands they feel a personal connection with. Branding across your platforms and in your physical locations can help you do just that. With Campaign Monitor’s branded templates, creating unique, branded emails is even more simple and effective than ever before. You can send your first email on day one after signing up. 
Sign up today and get started with branded templates to send your first email right away.
The post Branding with Consistency: Email Templates and More appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

There are few things as nerve-wracking as hitting send on your next big email campaign. After all, you’ve spent a lot of time crafting every line of copy and choosing the perfect imagery to hit the right tone with your audience. 
You’ve also spent time, energy, and resources building your list, crafting segments, and A/B testing. As if those aren’t stakes enough, you’ve also got a specific goal tied to your campaigns, whether it’s an ROI goal for your email strategy or an individual goal you want your email to accomplish.
And after all that work, something as simple as a broken link can throw all that work out the window. That’s why we’ve launched our new Link Review tool.
A broken or missing link shouldn’t ruin your email—or your day. When you know your links are working as they should, that’s one less thing to worry about.
Despite your best-laid plans, marketers are only human and plans can still go awry. But mistakes don’t mean the end of your career. It just means you have one more thing to add to your email marketing pre-flight checklist and a few extra tasks to make amends.
Below, two email professionals are sharing their stories of an email send that didn’t go as planned and, more importantly, what they did next.
Lizzie’s story
Lizze Newbern is the Email Marketing Manager for Asurion with more than five years of experience. (When Lizzie isn’t working, she likes to spend her time illustrating!) 
Even with that much experience behind her, she missed how a subject line would get truncated on mobile for a specific inbox provider. Needless to say, it’s a mistake she won’t make again. 
Cut-off catastrophe
Like many email marketers, the subject line is one of the biggest stressors in hitting the send button. This one line of text is essentially the subscriber’s first impression of your email, and can seriously impact your open rates and sender reputation. You can try your hardest to proof and re-proof, and test and re-test, but at the end of the day, unfortunately we’re not computers. And we all have off days where our child kept us up until 4 a.m. wanting to watch the newest Frozen movie. 
We’re human, and mistakes can happen. Although some mistakes are worse than others…like a perfect, once-in-a-lifetime subject line truncation. 
One of my previous positions was working as the Email Marketing Manager for one of the top senior living companies in the business. We occasionally marketed events for the local communities where we’d send an email invite to the residents, and other interested leads in the area. This event in particular was for a conversation-starting cocktail night, where potential residents could come tour the community and meet some of the residents over some craft cocktails. 
The subject line that was written was “Celebrate the long weekend with cocktails and conversation.” Pretty harmless. The email was tested, proofed, and sent on its way. Throughout the day, I noticed I was getting a few responses to the reply-to inbox. 
I immediately started to sweat when I started seeing responses like “SO inappropriate.” “Wow, so unprofessional.” “Looks like someone didn’t check their subject line cut-off!” 
Panic ensued. 
I finally found a response that included a screenshot of the subject line, and how it displayed in their inbox. There, in all its glory was “Celebrate the long weekend with c***…” 
Oops. 
Immediately all the panicked thoughts came flooding in: “How can I recover from this?” and “Where’s the nearest hole to bury my head into?” 
I had to take a deep breath. The first step was to figure out the damage: How large was our audience? Realistically, how many people had this truncation issue? Luckily—if there was any luck to be found in this situation—our audience was very small for this particular send. We’re talking less than 100. 
I was feeling a little bit better, but not great. Next, I had to figure out how many opened on mobile. It turned out to be over 45%, and at this point I was feeling less better.
We had to decide whether to risk additional exposure by sending a follow-up email addressing the issue. At the end of the day, you have to weigh your mistake, and the impact it had on your message. In this particular instance, we felt that due to the audience size and the small amount of responses, we were going to let this mistake lie. It’s not the most exciting response to the situation, but as an email marketer you have to make those decisions when mistakes inevitably happen. 
I feel like every email marketer I know has some sort of document, or notes page titled “MISTAKES MADE IN PREVIOUS EMAIL SENDS. DON’T DO THIS AGAIN.” At the end of the day, you take your mistakes and you learn from them. You become more aware of the issues to test for, and you move forward. 
Most people in the email field have “send-button shakiness.” (If you don’t, you’re either a robot or have an English degree.) The main challenge comes with how to handle the inevitable mistakes that can sometimes happen and, most importantly, how you move forward.
Justin’s story: 
Justin is the Email Marketing Manager for CM Group and he has over 6 years of experience. But when you work in email, technology is always evolving and the introduction of dark mode led to an email mistake.
Dark mode faux pas
Once you’ve been around email marketing for a little while, you start to notice some quirks with how your sent campaign will look different across email clients. There are tons of different apps and thousands of screen sizes out there. What looks one way in Outlook may show up differently in Gmail. 
And while every email I’ve built gets tested, I recently failed to test one campaign for dark mode compatibility. Parts of my email were unreadable in Gmail’s dark mode.
While none of our subscribers pointed out the issue, several of my team members were on the email list for this campaign and noticed right away.
The first thing I wanted to do was to group together all the stakeholders for this email and inform them of the potential issue customers may have with the email. From there, I truly wanted to identify the source of the readability challenges and make note of what to change for the next send. 
I also made sure to go back into Litmus, where I do all my testing, and make sure all Dark Mode email previews were checked in my test settings.
My confidence did shake a bit after this one send. When you’re an email marketer and you make a mistake, you know that your next several sends are going to get extra attention, but I think there’s also an opportunity in that extra attention. 
Because of this experience, I have more team members willing to help me test future emails. I was able to revisit designs with the rest of the team to double-check other templates we have to ensure the same issue won’t get repeated, and also add in more time to do testing before each scheduled send. 
Having a supportive team around me has helped in regaining confidence.
Wrap up
Whether you’re just starting out in email marketing or you’ve been around the block, mistakes are an inevitable part of any email marketers career. Luckily, no one expects you to be anything other than human.
What matters most is that you learn from your mistakes and take steps to prevent them moving forward. Figure out when you need to send an apology email and when you need to contact stakeholders. Sometimes, as in Lizzie’s case, doing nothing is better than drawing more attention to the problem.
Whatever your next email send is, you can rest easy knowing there’s one less thing you have to test on your plate. The Link Review will monitor your URLs so you can spend your time and energy on other areas of your email.
The post Email Mistakes and How to Prevent Them appeared first on Campaign Monitor.