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Industry Spotlight

Belmont Press

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: Belmont Press
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Belmont Press has supplied high quality printed products to many of the UK’s leading companies and organisations for over 60 years. Throughout our long heritage in the printing industry we have embraced new technology so that we can deliver the best, most efficient service to our customers.

We provide a complete service, with in-house print (litho, digital and wide format) and have an extensive finishing and binding capability. We also have a significant storage, pick-and-pack, fulfilment, mailing and delivery service.

We hold international standards for quality, environment, health and safety and colour management – testament to our ongoing commitment to providing customer service at the very highest level.

From catalogues to business cards, roller banners to online solutions and everything in between, we’re commercial print specialists – ask us anything about print; we’re friendly, approachable and always happy to help.

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: Adestra
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Join a league of leading email marketers using this powerful, easy-to-use, enterprise technology, built to suit your marketing needs.

MessageFocus is built to be customised, matching the structure of the system to your business requirements.

With many great features to help you to optimise your email marketing, we’ll help you take the next step in your journey.

Hundreds of organizations have chosen Adestra for MessageFocus’ unique, flexible account structure, excellent deliverability, and our unparalleled customer service.

Shouldn’t you be one of them?

www.adestra.com

Mapp

Industry Spotlight: Say hello to Mapp
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Mapp is one of the largest independent digital marketing technology companies in the world.

Built by marketers for marketers, Mapp provides a comprehensive family of software and customer-centric services, including a sophisticated data management platform; tools that optimise email, mobile, app, social and web marketing; and campaign management and strategy consulting.

Mapp has more than 3,000 customers including Puma, PepsiCo, KFC, PacSun, Thomas Cook, Deutsche Telekom, Bon Prix, Cnet, Xerox, TUIfly, Lloyds Banking Group, TSB Bank, and Deutsche Bank.

Industry Spotlight – Digital vs Traditional: What works best for you?
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Print circulation numbers are down. On-demand and streaming services – sans un-skippable ads – are on the up. So what’s a marketer to do? Ditch the dinosaur channels and throw the entire budget at Larry, Sergey, Zuck and their contemporaries? Targeting, re-targeting and the ‘viral’ promise are all reasons to believe digital and social now reign supreme for the modern marketer, but in this we neglect to acknowledge the in real life (IRL) experiences and halting moments that also drive word of mouth and brand consideration – online or otherwise. So before you do throw everything at the digital plan, please ponder the following…

Magic in the mundane

If you haven’t heard the term ‘mindfulness’ this year then you’ve probably been living underneath the proverbial rock (and who would blame you in these turbulent times). It’s a reaction to our age of hedonism and the breakneck speed at which we’ve been living our lives, and like most trends, this desire to slow down and simplify is being reflected in publishing and advertising. In April this year, Ronseal decided to take a risk with a live TV spot which offered Channel 4’s Gogglebox audience three minutes of the unthinkable – watching actual fence paint dry. It was an inspired and effective product demonstration that earned them a trending spot on social media.

Stop the press

The digital evolution of the print industry is representative of the consumer’s move to more accessible, tailored and instant news without the barrage of irrelevant print ads. Despite the declining print figures, some brands still have the foresight to take advantage of reactive placements in bulk circulations, which often hit a captive, educated audience of commuters who will be reading cover to cover. Norwegian struck an extremely timely note in September this year following the news of Brad and Angelina’s break up, with a stark but cuttingly comic ad promoting their LA price promotion. The result: a viral campaign that puts it firmly in the hall of fame with Oreo’s ‘dunk in the dark’.

The great outdoors

Out-of-home and experiential marketing are truly challenging media. Bus wraps are hardly remarkable and being chased by a sampler at Waterloo while you try to catch your train isn’t entirely conducive to positive brand perception. The Economist challenges that notion. The publisher is infamous for its minimalist and innovative OOH creative, but it turned its hand to an unsettling on-the-ground activation in 2015 which was rebooted in the US this year. ‘High-protein’ is the new “on trend” claim for the food industry, and The Economists’ ice cream samplers achieved theirs by adding insects, the new proposed solution for the global food crisis which it covered in a ‘future of food’ feature. The campaign generated significant online press coverage and was branded ‘eye-catching genius’ by Business Insider.

The learning? Search for new value in formats that have become hackneyed and contrived. Opportunities to reach a cynical populace using these traditional methods still remain and can be extremely successful for the creative and confident marketer. Whether you’re aiming for ‘disrupt’ ‘be bold’ or ‘surprise and delight’ don’t miss the simple proposition with cut-through messaging that’s right in front of you.

Words by Nicholas Gill, founder and strategy partner at Team Eleven

Industry Spotlight: The new rules of shopper marketing engagement…
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Today’s marketplace is a networked dialogue of information sharing between businesses and consumers. The more effectively information is shared across these functions, the better the relationship between all of the members. While consumers are increasingly comfortable with marketers using their personal data for targeted advertising that is relevant to them, marketers are still struggling to deliver the timely, personal customer experience that consumers are longing for.

According to Bazaarvoice and CMO Council’s Shopper Marketing: The New Rules of Engagement survey, marketers across brands and retailers are guilty of continually missing out on opportunities to influence and engage buyers as they shop. This awareness is positive, but what exactly are the most common mistakes marketers continue to make as they attempt to provide a more bespoke customer experience?

While 90 per cent of marketers say that access to real-time customer sentiment and shopping behavior is critical, less than 10 per cent are able to tie their content efforts directly to customer shopping behaviour. Furthermore, data strategies are often short-sighted, with 83 per cent of marketers admitting that they are unable to see beyond their own brand properties. This limited access to first-party customer data across the broader retail ecosystem, means nearly half questioned the accuracy of the customer data they were actually working with.

Conversely, 47 per cent  of consumers point to reviews, social media posts and past purchases as the best places for marketers to gather insights about them, indicating the value of identifying and reaching in-market shoppers based on their consumer-generated content (CGC) and shopping behaviour. In fact, consumers trust peer-to-peer opinions three times more than brand content, highlighting the clear opportunities when investing in a CGC strategy.

Marketers need to not only ask themselves if they have the right content to appeal to consumers along the various stages of the buying journey, but also which components are required to create successful customer engagement too.

Shop Direct, the UK multi-brand retailer ran 100 AB testing experiments in one month, comparing different versions of the website to see which one performed better. As part of this, they removed 50 per cent of reviews from their website, which impacted conversion globally by 1.7 per cent, showcasing the importance of online reviews.

The most powerful multi-channel marketing strategies are geared towards understanding the customers’ needs and building loyalty through effective customer communications, regardless of the business size. As expectations increase, customers are increasingly showing that if they are not being engaged, on either a practical or emotional level, then they are much more inclined to take their purchase elsewhere – a trend that businesses simply cannot afford to ignore.

The right content can take various forms, depending on audience preferences, and a Bazaarvoice study, looking at high street stalwart, John Lewis, confirmed the significance of displaying visual content on a retailer website; with 25 real shoppers looking at product images before any other content on the product page.

John Lewis recognised the value of visual association and transformed consumers into brand ambassadors with its #MyShoeStory campaign. By curating Instagram pictures of customers modelling their new shoes and then pushing these across into a variety of other social channels, John Lewis not only used CGC, providing its customers with inspiration, but also created further customer engagement too. This is a great example of how marketers can maximise engagement and build customer advocacy through the integration of CGC into a creative and thoughtful social campaign.

It’s only through listening to the individual preferences of consumers, analysing data on a case-by-case basis and considering each opinion as valuable stakeholder feedback that brands and retailers alike, can increase positive feedback, foster loyalty and retention, and crucially, increase sales figures.

Words by Prelini Udayan-Chiechi, VP Marketing EMEA at Bazaarvoice

Industry Spotlight: Direct mail is now stronger than ever…
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Direct mail is widely-viewed as one of the original forms of marketing. For over sixty years, marketers have enjoyed huge success with this simple, yet effective form of communication. However, the rise of digital technology has heralded an array of new methods, leading some people to question how much longer direct mail will form part of the mix.

So why, in this day and age of digitally-innovative forms of promotion, should direct mail still be taken seriously?

Carpet bombing and the Dot.com bubble

The use of direct mail for marketing purposes was groundbreaking, enabling companies to communicate with their customers beyond the confines of an office or store. However, the extremely high volume of direct mail marketing in the 90s earned it the negative terms ‘carpet bombing’ and ‘junk mail’. People would return from holiday and struggle to open their front doors due to the sheer volume of promotional collateral piled up in their hallways.

Whilst direct mail has learnt from its mistakes and grown to become a medium that is much more refined, the problem of excessive volume is now plaguing the digital marketing industry. Regardless of how sophisticated digital communication methods have become, content inevitably becomes ineffective if it is not targeted at the appropriate recipients. According to CMO.com, 75 per cent of consumers get frustrated when offers, ads and promotions have nothing to do with their interests. Given that people are increasingly setting up ad-blockers and ignoring promotional emails, it has never been more important to carefully personalise content and only target individuals most likely to be interested in your proposition. Direct mail certainly leads the way in terms of its ability to deliver relevant, timely, and highly personal content to consumers.

The capabilities of direct mail

The success of direct mail marketing has exceeded most people’s expectations. The latest Advertising Association/Warc Expenditure Report states that direct mail is still one of the largest ad channels in the UK and continues to bring in well above £1bn annually. Direct mail marketing is just as effective as it ever was, if not more so thanks to more sophisticated forms of customer data analysis, enabling brands to target customers more effectively.

Direct mail has stood the test of time because it engenders trust; it feels more thoughtful, personal, non-intrusive and authentic. For older generations, direct mail is a reassuringly tangible form of communication. On the other hand, direct mail for younger people is something of a novelty; they rarely receive post, making them more likely to pay attention to it. According to a Royal Mail MarketReach report, young people are 18 per cent more likely than the general population to welcome direct mail, and 32 per cent more likely to find it memorable.

Direct mail can also be used to bridge offline and online marketing methods in order to provide a diverse communications strategy and cater to a modern, digitally-savvy audience. For example, marketers can ensure that direct mail contains information such as QR codes that draw customers back to company websites.

Intelligent data

Data is key to the long-term success of a company’s marketing strategy. Neither online nor offline marketing methods would be nearly as successful if businesses did not analyse customer data and use it to understand those they are targeting. The shrewd use of data has revolutionised direct mail in the last two decades by enabling businesses to deliver content with the right message, at the right time, to the right individual. It is this that has made it one of the most enduringly successful forms of marketing to date. And with the increasing volumes of data available today, the capabilities of direct mail will only get stronger and more effective.

 

Mark Roy is founder and Chairman of REaD Group, the UK’s largest independent data group. Over the course of his career, Mark has transformed the marketing industry by pioneering data suppression and data cleanliness, as well as introducing industry-defining products including The Gone Away Suppression File (GAS), The Bereavement Register, Qinetic and The Oracle.

Industry Spotlight: How can marketers ensure that their brand is being displayed correctly on the high street?
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Luca Pagano, CEO of BeMyEye, discusses the need for marketers to find a cost-effective means of ensuring that retailers in brick and mortar stores are displaying their brand correctly.

In the digital age, it’s easy to forget that marketers face challenges offline, as well as online. When faced with decreasing budgets and difficulties justifying ROI to the c-suite, a common problem is proving that offline marketing materials are achieving what is intended. Marketers do not have the same visibility afforded to them when their brand appears in a physical store as they do in online environments. Ultimately, as soon as marketing materials leave the marketers hands, they go into a blind spot.

With the uncertainty of Brexit’s impact and falling store prices, marketers will have to work harder than ever to ensure consistent revenue streams and safeguard operational efficiency. The majority of sales for brands and retailers still take place offline and therefore marketers who supply brand products and materials to physical stores must be confident that their brand is being presented to consumers correctly.

 

Facing the challenge head on

The biggest challenge in ensuring this is the spread of location. Marketers cannot easily monitor how their products and marketing materials are being presented in thousands of physical stores. Normally, marketers would receive a sample snapshot of data providing an overview of their brands presence across a handful of stores, but how can marketers ensure that this is consistent everywhere to measure accurate compliance of promotional activation and ultimately ROI?

To achieve a census view, the brand needs to ‘see’ each individual store. However, up until now this has been a costly, lengthy and improbable task for sales teams to complete. Brands need the ability to check thousands of retailers for in-stock presence of their products, effective activation of marketing collateral and POP and compliance of price quickly and cost-effectively.

 

The role of crowdsourcing to ensure brand consistency

Mobile crowdsourcing and the gig economy have grown at rapid speeds in recent years and businesses are beginning to tap into its incredible power. Marketers can utilise hundreds of thousands of eyes on the ground who are ready to deliver detailed actionable insights about their brand. The crowd can deliver images of promotional activity, pricing and competitor positioning from any location, all in real time.

BeMyEye’s recent report ‘Eyeing up the cost of UK groceries’ is an example of this at work, revealing price differences for a basket of popular groceries across hundreds of retailers in the UK, collected over just 4 days. The crowd uncovered granular level details of branded goods, including that cans of coke are less likely to be stocked in two of the four big supermarkets than avocados, which highlights changes in distribution for Coca Cola in the UK.

The report also discovered interesting insights for marketers when looking at convenience shopping, which is a trend that could unseat leading retailers as consumers move towards ‘little and often’ shopping. For example, results from the report showcase that whilst supermarkets like Tesco remain the most cost-effective outlet for grocery basics like milk, eggs and bread, some other goods, such as avocados, can often be found for lower prices in off-licences.

 

Brands are already benefiting from the crowd

The data from the grocery report highlights that it is possible to gather actionable retail intelligence at scale, cost-effectively and in real-time, however utilising the crowd doesn’t just apply to the grocery sector, the data can be applied to any brand or retailer operating on the high street.

For example, the world’s largest cruise line company, MSC Cruises, uses BeMyEye’s crowd of eyes to analyse the presence of their marketing materials in its travel agency partners. The results amounted to a complete overhaul in the brand’s marketing strategy as 30 per cent of the travel agent partners weren’t displaying the materials correctly.

During uncertain times, marketers need an honest representation of how their marketing materials, promotional offers, and products are being presented and they can turn to mobile crowdsourcing to find this stability. A recent report from McKinsey showed the importance of insights for brands, stating that brands such as Phillips and TRESemmé are all driving growth by meeting consumer needs better than their competitors are. Brands who invest wisely in scaled data, analytics and real-time insights will often achieve up to 10 per cent sales increase, up to 5 per cent higher return on sales and a margin uplift of 1 to 2 per cent – something the c-suite cannot argue with when allocating marketing budgets.

Crowdsourcing and the gig economy have quickly become the fastest, most feasible, accurate and valuable means for marketers to gather granular insights about their products, pricing and promotional activity across every single offline touchpoints. Combating this blind spot will be fundamental for marketers to maximise their brand’s revenue streams in the uncertain post-Brexit retail landscape.

 

Luca is CEO of BeMyEye, Europe’s leader of mobile crowdsourcing for real world data gathering. Prior to BeMyEye, Luca was co-founder and CEO of Glamoo, Italy’s third largest player in the digital couponing space, acquired by Seat Pagine Gialle in 2014.

Prior to joining Glamoo, Luca was VP of Publishing EMEA at EA Mobile, where he spearheaded the growth of iconic brands like Fifa, Tetris and Need for Speed into the dominant titles of the App Store; from 2001 to 2009 Luca was Managing Director UK & International at Buongiorno, a global leader in mobile Value Added Services (VAS).

Industry Spotlight: Mobile – is your strategy reaping the benefits?
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Mobile isn’t just the latest craze.  Mobile can’t even be called a recent trend.  It isn’t just the future, it is the now and here to stay.

We’re addicted to our phones – just look at the number of people sitting in restaurants flicking through social media rather than having a face-to-face conversation with their dinner companion(s).  We order food via our phones; we even date via our phones.  There’s an app for everything.  Mobile is constantly developing and finding new ways to integrate into our lives that little bit further – if it’s not part of your marketing strategy, you’re already way behind…

You may not be on mobile but your customers are

We wake up in the morning and the first thing we do is reach for our phones.  The Deloitte 2016 UK Mobile Consumer Survey found that almost half of 18-24 year olds check their mobile even during the night.

How many times have you browsed on your phone while on the train?  While you walk home?  While you’re watching TV? If you’re not tapping (or swiping) into the potential mobile marketing has for engaging with your customers, then your competition has a clear advantage on your offering…

Still not sold on the idea of mobile marketing?

I receive an email on my phone advertising a shoe sale and click the perfectly crafted trackable URL.  Website doesn’t load within a couple of seconds?  Goodbye!  Now, on to the next email; speed is crucial to using mobile data on the go.

Your website’s too small to read on my 4.7 inch screen?  Forget it.  Will I go back and check out the website when I’m on my desktop?  Maybe – but chances are I’ll find what I’m looking for quicker elsewhere via my smartphone.

Say a potential job candidate works long hours; has a hectic home life; and gets half an hour to themselves each day – if they’re lucky.  They’re looking for opportunities to advance their career.  Your website SEO is excellent.  They find the ideal job opening.  They click apply.

Suddenly they’re confronted with a long application form, which they grudgingly complete.

Then they’re asked to attach a CV.  Their CV isn’t stored on their mobile.  They have it on Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Docs but none of those are integrated with your website.  There’s not even an option to send their LinkedIn profile.

They give up, close their browser and end up not applying.

Want consumer engagement?

Mobile marketing is one of the best platforms for consumer engagement. How many times have you liked an incredible holiday destination on Instagram; pinned a delicious looking recipe on Pinterest; or checked into a bar on Facebook?  If your customers aren’t engaging with you via mobile, chances are they’re engaging with your competitor.

We tweet companies our complaints rather than contacting them directly.  We’re concise, quicker and don’t want to wait for more than a couple of hours to receive a response.

Everything is in the public domain.  And if you’re not monitoring what’s being said, if you’re not replying fast enough, if you’re not putting out your own content, then you don’t have control of your brand’s story online.

What’s the difference between desktop and mobile content?

Simple, mobile is shorter, sharper and punchier.  Mobile gets to the point quicker and readers don’t have time to search for what they’re looking for within a sea of text – they want it to jump out. They want easy to read content with short paragraphs and sentences. Crisp, clear language is key.

Know what you need and what’s a waste of your resources

The more you know about your audience – what they’re looking for and where they are – the simpler it becomes to implement a mobile marketing strategy that delivers return on investment (ROI).

Test your emails on mobile.  Can you see the full subject line?  Does the design work for all screen sizes?  Are your links easy to click?  Test your website on multiple mobile devices too.  What needs optimising for mobile?  Maybe a faster load time is needed; or a larger font; more spacing; bigger buttons; and simpler navigation?

Does your content need cleaning up and breaking down?  Is it time for a complete rewrite?

What content do you have that lends itself to social?  What social sites are your customers using? 

 

Words by Jennifer Wright, head of Group Marketing at BlueSky PR

Industry Spotlight: Engaging with customers in a mobile gaming society…
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In the world of mobile gaming, customer engagement is defined in different ways: it is an effect, a reaction, a connection, a response and/or an experience of customers with one another and with a company or a brand. With the ever-increasing popularity of mobile and social technology, today’s consumers live in an ‘always connected’ state. This level of instant interaction and a more demanding consumer means that, as marketers, we have had to reconsider the engagement and connection with our customers.

At tombola, we encourage our customers to engage with our brand via our social media channels and live-help service. We believe that real-time feedback and social media engagement gives us the opportunity to interact with our players, providing them with a much more personalised experience and it helps ensure they get a positive representation of our brand. We also encourage our customers to engage with each other through the chat feature, as we feel it adds genuine value to their experience and adds to the sense of community that is at heart of the tombola brand.

Since the launch of our app in 2013, we have seen growth in players accessing tombola through mobile devices. The general shift in the gaming market towards mobile platforms caused us to take a more extensive outlook at our customers’ journey, to keep us at the forefront of the industry. For tombola users, we aim to create an app experience that is compelling and fun. For this reason, we now design our games as mobile first. We believe this helps to engage and retain our brand’s audience and is compliant with the expectations of a mobile-savvy consumer who is constantly confronted by well-crafted interactive experiences.

We believe that mobile marketing is a necessary platform for consumer engagement and loyalty. As marketers face more competition than ever before, our users are becoming increasingly demanding of high-quality experiences, which we can successfully deliver on mobile platforms. The first game we developed intentionally for mobile use, Pulse, still remains one of our players’ favourites today. We attribute this to the fact that our games are fun, which is essential to audience engagement. This element of gaming helps to intertwine the marketing and entertainment niches, creating a more transparent experience for customers, which in turn helps us generate brand loyalty. We expect mobile platforms to continue to grow and develop and to be used more and more for gaming purposes, and it’s our challenge to grow with the platform.

 

Find out more about tombola here

 

Industry Spotlight, Apple iOS 10: What do brands need to know?
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Product marketing manager for Urban Airship Engage, Diana Laboy-Rush looks at the implications for brands following Apple’s recent iOS 10 release , with its support for Rich Notifications, where images, video, audio, GIFs and interactive buttons are embedded directly within push notifications.

For businesses, iOS 10 brings massive changes to Apple’s operating system that place better and richer app engagement front-and-centre. If past adoption rates hold steady, it won’t be long before all of your iPhone app users gain richer experiences that offer deeper insight into what they care about. Here are some key points that businesses should be aware of…

 

Reap before you sow with key improvements

iOS 10 solves existing barriers that will make current engagement efforts more effective. A Raise to Wake feature means TouchID users won’t blow past lockscreen notifications when unlocking their phones. Notifications are immediately visible as users pick up their phones. Notifications also become the default view for the Notification Center, a chronologically-ordered archive that makes messages easier to find later.

 

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a GIF or video could be worth more

Rich Notifications can include images, GIFs, audio, video and interactive buttons embedded directly within push notifications. Grab the attention of your audience with notifications that inspire action. Recent Android data analysis found a 56 per cent higher response rate to notifications with pictures versus those without.

 

Better visibility for richer, actionable notification experiences

With iOS 10, users get visual and written cues that there’s a richer notification experience awaiting them. Lockscreen notifications arrive with rich media thumbnails and an instruction to either “Press for more” or “Slide for more” depending on whether Force Touch is available on the device.

That’s in stark contrast to previous Apple operating systems, which had businesses building these instructions into notification text to help ensure interactive buttons were discovered.

 

Mind your media, or risk ruin with too much of a good thing

Apple provides maximum file sizes for images, audio and video that would be best to undercut dramatically. Rich media will impact consumers’ data plans, ranging from barely noticeable with judicious use of images, to potential reasons to delete an app for sending files that are too large or too frequent. These files will impact your bandwidth costs too. Think about opt-in campaigns where users can get a taste and choose to receive these richer, more immersive and data-heavy experiences.

 

Don’t be a blockhead with Rich Notifications

With brands running to emojis for a quick if quirky engagement hit, it would be easy but wrong to approach Rich Notifications in the same manner. When rich media is tailored to specific users’ interests it adds immersive depth not interpretive color to messaging campaigns.

Remember also that not all users will immediately upgrade to iOS 10, so messaging should be made to work without reference to embedded rich media or sent specifically to the segment of your users that have adopted iOS 10. Some solutions will allow you to provide alternative text if the rich media successfully downloads.”