Monday 29 February 2016

9 Things Email Marketers Can Learn From Social Media’s Biggest Names

I just got back from Social Media Week NYC, one of the biggest industry events of the year. Social media marketers from across the globe came together in the Big Apple to learn from some of the most influential names in marketing. Among them were Forbes, BuzzFeed, The Coca-Cola Company and IBM, just to name a few.

Are you starting to feel a twinge of conference FOMO?

So here I am, post-conference, brimming with actionable tactics and inspiration that I just can’t keep to myself. Here are nine things that I learned and how they translate to your email strategy:

1. “Not all reach is created equal.” – @Forbes

If you’re spending all of your time trying to get your content out to the most people in the most places at the most times, you’re doing it wrong. Why?

Because not all reach is created equal.

Shift the conversation from page views (or in the email marketer’s case, open rates), to the people who are actually engaging with your content. Having a big list is impressive, but if those subscribers aren’t opening or responding to your emails, you may want to rethink your strategy.

Pro Tip:

Focus on building a more curated list of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say. These are your most loyal readers, and the ones who are most likely to do business with you in the future.

2. “Each space tells its own story.” – @Buzzfeed

Adapting original content that works on one platform to many others is the key to extending your reach. Facebook, Twitter, Google+… all of these platforms have different audiences and those audiences respond to different types of content.

What may have been a hit on Twitter may not necessarily translate well to your Facebook audience.

Try turning that listicle into a video, and vice versa. Keep tabs on the types of content that your audience is clicking through and sharing and keep on iterating.

Pro Tip:

Email is no exception. Don’t just copy and paste your latest article into a broadcast. Your emails should hold a level of exclusivity that gives people a reason to subscribe, even if that means simply repurposing content by changing the format.

3. “Brands are what people say they are.” – @RicolaUSA

The media landscape is changing and we’re witnessing a shift in the brand/people relationship. The opinions of friends, family and peers are becoming more influential than ever and this is kind of a big deal.

Brands used to be what brands say they were. Brands are now what people say they are.

It makes sense: relationships are a two-way street. Think of your subscribers as co-authors of your brand story. Acknowledge their voice and find ways to invite collaboration. Allow them to take part in shaping your content. Then what you can expect from them becomes significantly greater.

Pro Tip:

Send out a survey to your subscribers to see what kind of content resonates with them the most. Inviting their feedback is a great way to build trust and gain insights into what’s working within your campaign. Data can reveal a lot about your reader’s behaviors, but only they can tell you the reasons behind it.

4. “Think like a startup.” – @AbsolutVodka

Why? That’s exactly it. Startups are all about the why. The brands that are succeeding are doing a really great job of not only describing what they do and how they do it, but why they do it in the first place.

Pro Tip:

Make sure your message comes across loud and clear on all of your subscriber touch points, from your blog to your landing page to the content within the emails themselves. You have a passion for your business, share it!

(Oh, and don’t be afraid to take a risk. Startups have an appetite for risks.)

5. “Build a community of advocates.” – @Hootsuite

The people on your list are more than just subscribers. They are individuals with valuable opinions and insights that are crucial to improving your business. By building relationships with them, you’re opening the doors to a much bigger conversation.

A good start is identifying those key members of your community. These are the people that are engaging with your brand and sharing your content on a frequent basis. Nurturing and empowering these relationships will help build a solid group of advocates who will then spread the #brandlove amongst their networks.

Pro Tip:

Salute your super fans! Whether it’s sharing user-generated content or simply giving them a shoutout on your blog, a little acknowledgement can go a long way.

6. “It’s all about that data.” – @Seventeen

Data. We love it. It can reveal things about your campaign that your gut just can’t tell you.

That’s right – we can no longer trust our guts to drive when and where we place our marketing dollars when all of this juicy data is easily within reach.

From the best subject line to the optimal time to send your emails, we’re always looking for ways to improve our campaigns. And one of the easiest and most effective ways to do so is through split-testing.

Pro Tip:

Testing doesn’t have to be costly or time consuming. Check out this post for painless ways to set up a split test and ideas that you can start implementing today.

7. “Put the user first.” – @Spotify

How are you creating an optimal experience for your subscribers?

Think about every touch point that they have – from your signup form and landing pages to your newsletters and blog. Each of these should have a consistent look and feel.

Links should work. Images should load. Subject lines should not be forgotten.  (Who hasn’t made these mistakes at least once?)

While these might seem like little things, they’re actually a huge part of creating a great user experience.

Pro Tip:

Always go back and test before you send. Trust us.

8: “GIFs express things better than words or smiley faces can.” – @Giphy

A GIF can speak 1000 words – and delight your subscribers. They also lend an element of delight to your emails. The next time you launch a campaign, try adding a dose of personality with an animated GIF.

Pro Tip:

Looking to create your own? We love tools like DSCO, Boomerang and GifGrabber. And be sure to follow us on Pinterest for more great ideas on how to use GIFs within your emails.

9. “To be successful, you can’t be everything to everyone.” – @Refinery29

Sometimes we become so focused on latching onto “the next big thing”, that we lose sight of our original goals. Not only can this become totally overwhelming, but it can severely diminish the quality of the content we put out.

Pro Tip:

Instead of trying to have it all, focus your efforts on perfecting what you do have.

If you’re a vegan dessert blogger, own that niche. Expanding out into the world of hors d’oeuvres and beyond might seem tempting, but the market might be saturated. Set your sights on being the go-to blog for vegan desserts and ensure that your content is on par.

#WhatsNext

Are you going to try out any of these tips? Were you at Social Media Week? Leave us a comment or send me a tweet @oliviadello to keep the conversation going!

The post 9 Things Email Marketers Can Learn From Social Media’s Biggest Names appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.



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Google Cans Right-Side Ads & More Top Stories from February

When Google quietly decided to kill off ads on the right-hand side of its results pages earlier this month, it signaled one of the biggest changes to the SERP since AdWords first launched 16 years ago. Marketers the world over couldn’t believe Google would make such a bold change to such a familiar part of the digital landscape – but it did, and things will never be the same again.

Best of the WordStream blog February 2016

Of course, there was much more going on in the world of search besides Google’s historic decision to can right-side ads from the SERP, but it’s all too easy to miss what’s going on in the industry when you’re in the trenches. Check out the most popular posts from the WordStream blog from this month, and see what else proved popular with our readers in February.

1. Google Kills Off Right-Side Ads: What You Need to Know

Predictably, Larry’s analysis of Google’s decision to scrap ads on the right-hand side of the SERP was our most popular post of the month. In case you’re not sure of why Google chose to do this, or what it means for your campaigns, Larry has got you covered.

2. Cracking the Code on Gmail Ads: My 7 Best Tips

Gmail Ads can be remarkably powerful, but to many marketers, they remain somewhat mysterious. If you’re on the fence about whether to get started with Gmail Ads, Larry provides you with a ton of helpful information on why you should, as well as seven actionable tips on how to get the most out of this powerful ad format in our second-most popular post from February.

3. 25 Ways to Increase Sales Online

Making more online sales is the primary goal of countless businesses – and not just ecommerce companies, either. Despite the apparent simplicity of this goal, making more online sales can be much harder than it sounds. In our third-most popular post of this month, I offer 25 steps you can take immediately to increase sales online.  

4. The New Google SERP: 3 Changes & 3 Things That Haven’t Changed… Yet

The almost-overnight disappearance of ads from the right-hand side of the SERP was, understandably, major news in search. However, there’s more to the situation than meets the eye, and WordStream’s resident data scientist Mark Irvine went in search of answers. In this fascinating post, Mark dives deep into the data behind the restructuring to examine why this is such big news for digital marketers.

5. 10 Advertising Mistakes That Will Automatically Destroy Your Credibility

Erin certainly doesn’t pull any punches in our fifth-most popular post from February. Credibility is a precious commodity in today’s digital marketplace, and even simple, innocuous mistakes can ruin everything. If you’re making any of the mistakes in Erin’s list, you need to fix it – right now – or you could suffer much greater losses than a decline in traffic.

6. How to REALLY Run a Twitter Lead Generation Campaign

If you’re a regular reader of the WordStream blog, you’ll know that we’re firm believers in the power of Twitter as a lead-generation tool. In this post, Larry offers even more advice on how to get the most out of Twitter for lead gen, and offers tons of actionable strategies you can implement in your campaigns right away to start seeing more leads.

7. 10 Stats That Will Make You Rethink Marketing to Millennials

Despite being among the most highly coveted of marketing demographics, Millennials have a bad rep these days. In this post, Erin offers 10 fascinating statistics about marketing to this notoriously finicky demographic, and does so in a way that doesn’t reduce Millennials to the whiny, precocious snowflakes they’re often portrayed to be in the mainstream media. If your products are aimed at a Millennial audience, you need to read this post.

8. Gmail Ads Get a Facelift!

Personally, I can’t stand Gmail Ads. They can be highly effective, but my inbox is pretty much the last place I want to see any advertising (of course, I use an ad blocker, so I never see them anyway). Perhaps realizing that many people feel similarly, Google decided to give Gmail Ads a visual overhaul earlier this month. In this post, Cleo Hage tells you everything you need to know about the changes, and why they’re a good thing for advertisers.

9. How to Use AdWords Search Partner Data to Improve Your Campaigns

Data from Google’s Search Partners can be really useful, but many advertisers choose to omit or overlook it when setting up their campaigns. In this guest post, Tom Whiley of Hallam Internet explains why Google Search Partner data can be so useful, and how you can use it in your own campaigns.

10.  Do You Know Who Your Competitors Are? The 5 W’s of PPC Competitor Analysis

At WordStream, we often extol the virtues of paying close attention to what your competition is doing – but do you know who your competitors really are? In the final post of this month’s round-up, Maddie Cary of Seattle’s Point It Digital Marketing offers solid tips and some fascinating data on how you can more accurately identify who your competitors are, and figure out what they’re up to.

Find out how you're REALLY doing in AdWords!

Watch the video below on our Free AdWords Grader:

Visit the AdWords Grader.



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MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 Wrap Up

MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 is in the books and we learned a ton. There’s a lot to digest in the day days worth of live blogs. So, I highlighted many of the key takeaways here.Related Articles
  1. Benchmark Email To Live Blog MarketingSherpa Summit 2016
  2. MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 Live Blog Day 1
  3. MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 Live Blog Day Two


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Infographic: Click-to-Call Commerce

Mobile devices are causing a huge upward trend. And advertisers are noticing.

BIA/Kelsey predicts that the annual number of mobile phone calls to businesses will reach 162 billion by 2019.

That’s great news for companies. Why?

Because consumers spend more than $11 trillion on offline purchases.

Customers normally conduct online research on their mobile devices, and then call businesses to make an offline transaction.

“Marketers are allocating more time to understand how to reach mobile consumers, especially millennials. Our data shows that for many types of purchases, millennials prefer to contact a business directly by phone, and then are following through with purchases,” states John Busby, SVP of Consumer Insights for the Marchex Institute.

A study by Digital Strategy Consulting found that consumers trust ecommerce businesses more when a telephone number is present. An unlisted phone number may discourage shoppers from purchasing products.

Capital One offers their customers the option to call service reps directly from their mobile apps. So, if an individual has questions about an account, he or she can immediately receive help.

capital-one-tap-for-help

Similarly, Redfin, a residential real estate company, gives home buyers the chance to speak to a local agent about specific listings. It’s a convenient solution for customers who need answers immediately.

redfin-tap-for-help

However, some businesses are missing the click-to-call commerce opportunity.

About 20% of phone calls are abandoned due to poor customer service and sales practices. For example, shoppers may wait 10 minutes on hold or experience trouble with automated telephone systems.

“To really reap the returns from this type of marketing, companies need to take customer connection seriously — customers want staff to genuinely understand their needs. One sign that businesses are beginning to understand this is the migration of U.S. company call centers back in-house,” writes communications consultant Shellie Karabell.

So, how do you improve customer service over the phone? Here are a few ideas to help your team:

1. Eliminate the need for customers to wait on hold

More than half of customers will abandon a call after one minute of waiting on hold. Instead, offer callers the option to receive a call-back.

2. Add a personal touch

Customers expect a personalized shopping experience. If possible, assign a designated representative to handle the buyer’s individualized needs.

3. Give decision makers actionable data

Customer satisfaction is a company-wide responsibility. Using data will help executives adopt new policies or upgrade initiatives to deliver a better customer experience.

This infographic shows us the trends behind click-to-call commerce and the opportunity to increase lead conversions.


kissmetrics-click-to-call-infographic

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[#EmailChat Recap] 7 Tips For Creating Compelling Calls-to-Action

The call-to-action (or CTA, for short) is arguably the most important part of an email. It’s the difference between subscribers reading your emails and subscribers responding to your emails. How else would you get your readers to do what you want?

Since these seemingly small bits of text are actually quite a big deal, we asked the AWeber community to share their best advice for creating a call-to-action that counts.

From the best length and placement to the power words you should add to your email vocabulary, here’s 7 things we learned about CTAs that will blow your mind (or at least your click-through-rates):

1. It’s the difference between a loyal customer and a missed opportunity.

Key Takeaways:

  • Don’t miss out on an opportunity for more time with your subscribers. A good call-to-action should link out to relevant content or products.
  • Your CTA should be actionable. Make your reader want to do something!
  • Put yourself in your subscribers’ shoes: What would make you click?

2. Think beyond ‘Click Here.’

Key Takeaways:

  • Test everything from language to colors and placement.
  • Keep the focus on your subscriber with first-person language.
  • Copy that feels too aggressive is a turn-off. Keep things fun!

3. Keep things short and sweet.

Key Takeaways:

As a general rule, your CTA copy should be:

  • Short
  • Sweet
  • Specific

4. Where to place your CTA? The answer varies.

Key Takeaways:

  • Your subscribers are always thinking, “What’s in it for me?” Show them value before asking them to click through.
  • Your call-to-action should feel natural and flow with the rest of your email copy. Keep it focused.
  • Testing is key to find out the placement your subscribers will most likely respond to. It’s common to see calls-to-action at both the top and bottom of an email, but a good split test will reveal what’s right for you.

5. But we all agree, your call-to-action should stand out.

Key Takeaways:

  • Your copy should be clear and actionable.
  • Color plays a key role. Make sure it “pops.”
  • Play around with things like type and design. It all comes back to testing!

6. Want more ideas for testing?

Key Takeaways:

  • Color, size, placement, links vs. buttons… these are all easy things to test!
  • Make sure you keep track of what worked best and use it in your campaigns moving forward.
  • But whatever you’re testing, be sure to test one thing at a time.

7. Make note of these powerful call-to-action ideas.

Key Takeaways:

  • Experiment using “you” and “I” in your CTA copy. Give ownership to your readers.
  • Add a little personality with humor, quirky copy, etc.
  • Think like your subscriber. What would get you to click?

Coming Up

Thinking of using video in your email campaigns? Maybe you’re not sure where to start? Join us this Thursday, March 3 at 12pm ET for a special #emailchat on pairing video and email. We’ll be joined by Margot Mazur, Community Manager at Wistia, for some expert commentary.

Follow us on Twitter (@AWeber) to stay up-to-date with the latest news, resources and events.

How are you using calls-to-action? Have you tried any of these split testing ideas? Let us know in the comments!

 

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Google Suggest Optimization: How To Optimize For Google Autocomplete

Google Suggest may often be the most random collection of auto-corrections you will ever see. I once saw a screenshot that took "I punched a…" and it auto-suggested "...whale right in the face". Oftentimes Google Suggest is a strange animal... […]

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Google Suggest Optimization: How To Optimize For Google Autocomplete

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Written by Ann Smarty, SEOsmarty.com

The post Google Suggest Optimization: How To Optimize For Google Autocomplete appeared first on Search Engine People Blog.



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The Google Analytics Add-On for Sheets: An Intro to an Underutilized Tool

Posted by tian_wang

With today’s blog post I’m sharing everything one needs to know about an underappreciated tool: the Google Analytics add-on for Google Sheets. In this post I’ll be covering the following:

1. What is the Google Analytics add-on?

2. How to install and set up the Google Analytics add-on.

3. How to create a custom report with the Google Analytics add-on.

4. A step-by-step worked example of setting up an automated report.

5. Further considerations and pitfalls to avoid.

Thanks to Moz for having me, and for giving me the chance to write about this simple and powerful tool!

1. What is the Google Analytics add-on and why should I care?

I’m glad I asked. Simply put, the Google Analytics add-on is an extension for Google Sheets that allows you to create custom reports within Sheets. The add-on works by linking up to an existing Analytics account, using Google’s Analytics API and Regular Expressions to filter the data you want to pull, and finally gathering the data into an easy and intuitive format that’s ripe for reporting.

The Google Analytics add-on’s real value-add to a reporting workflow is that it’s extremely flexible, reliable, and a real time-saver. Your reporting will still be constrained by the limitations of Sheets itself (as compared to, say, Excel), but the Sheets framework has served almost every reporting need I’ve come across to date and the same will probably be true for most of you!

In a nutshell, the Add-On allows you to:

  • Pull any data that you’d be able to access in the Analytics API (i.e analytics.google.com) directly into a spreadsheet
  • Easily compare historical data across time periods
  • Filter and segment your data
  • Automate regular reporting
  • Make tweaks to existing reports to get new data (no more re-inventing wheels!)

If this all sounds like you could use it, read on!

2. Getting started: How to install and set up the Google Analytics add-on

2A. Installing the Google Analytics add-on

  • Go into Google Sheets.
  • On the header bar, under your Workbook’s title, click add-on.
  • This opens a drop-down menu — click “Get add-ons.”
  • In the following window, type “Google Analytics" into the search bar on the top right and hit enter.

  • The first result is the add-on we want, so go ahead and install it.

  • Refresh your page and confirm the add-on is installed by clicking “Add-ons” again. You should see an option for “Google Analytics.”

That’s all there is to installation!

2B. Setting up the Google Analytics add-on

Now that we have the Google Analytics add-on installed, we need to set it up by linking it to an Analytics account before we can use it.

  • Under the “Add-ons” tab in Sheets, hover “Google Analytics” to expose a side-bar as shown below.

  • Click “Create New Report.” You’ll see a menu appear on the right side of your screen.

  • In this menu, set the account information to the Analytics account you want to measure.
  • Fill out the metrics and dimensions you want to analyze. You can further customize segmentation within the report itself later, so just choose a simple set for now.
  • Click “Create Report.” The output will be a new sheet, with a report configuration that looks like this:

  • Note: This is NOT your report. This is the setup configuration for you to let the add-on know exactly what information you’d like to see in the report.

Once you’ve arrived at this step, your set-up phase is done!

Next we’ll look at what these parameters mean, and how to customize them to tailor the data you receive.

3. Creating a custom report with the Google Analytics add-on

So now you have all these weird boxes and you’re probably wondering what you need to fill out and what you don’t.

Before we get into that, let’s take a look at what happens if you don’t fill out anything additional, and just run the report from here.

To run a configured report, click back into the “Add-Ons” menu and go to Google Analytics. From there, click “Run Reports.” Make sure you have your configuration sheet open when you do this!

You’ll get a notification that the report was either successfully created, or that something went wrong (this might require some troubleshooting).

Following the example above, your output will look something like this:

This is your actual report. Hooray! So what are we actually seeing? Let’s go back to the “Report Configuration” sheet to find out.

The report configuration:

Type and View ID are defaults that don’t need to be changed. Report Name is what you want your report to be called, and will be the name generated for the report sheet created when you run your reports.

So really, in the report configuration above, all the input we’re seeing is:

  • Last N Days = 7
  • Metrics = ga:users

In other words, this report shows the total number of sessions in the specified View ID over the last week. Interesting maybe, but not that helpful. Let’s see what happens if we make a few changes.

I’ve changed Last N Days from 7 to 30, and added Date as a Dimension. Running the report again yields the following output:

By increasing the range of data pulled from last 7 to 30 days, we get a data from a larger set of days. By adding date as a dimension, we can see how much traffic the site registered each day.

This is only scratching the surface of what the Google Analytics add-on can do. Here’s a breakdown of the parameters, and how to use them:

Parameter Name

Required?

Description & Notes

Example Value(s)

Report Name

No

The name of your report. This will be the name of the report sheet that's generated when you run reports. If you’re running multiple reports, and want to exclude one without deleting its configuration setup, delete the report name and the column will be ignored next time you run your reports.

“January Organic Traffic”

Type

No

Inputs are either “core” or “mcf,” representative of Google’s Core Reporting API and Multi-Channel Funnels API respectively. Core is the default and will serve most of your needs!

“core”

/

“mcf”

View (Profile) ID

Yes

The Analytics view that your report will pull data from. You can find your view ID in the Analytics interface, under the Admin tab.

ga:12345678

Start / End Date

No

Used alternatively with Last N Days (i.e you must use exactly one), allows you to specify a range of data to pull from.

2/1/2016 – 2/31/2016

Last N Days

No

Used alternatively with Start / End Date (i.e you must use exactly one), pulls data from the last N days from the current date. Counts backwards from the current date.

Any integer

Metrics

Yes

Metrics you want to pull. You can include multiple metrics per report. Documentation on Metrics and dimensions can be found in Google’s Metrics & Dimensions Explorer

“ga:sessions”

Dimensions

No

Dimensions you want your metrics to be segmented by. You can include multiple dimensions per report. Documentation on metrics and dimensions can be found here.

“ga:date”

Sort

No

Specifies an order to return your data by, can be used to organize data before generating a report. Note: you can only sort by metrics/dimensions that are included in your report.


“sort=ga:browser,
ga:country”

Filters

No

Filter the data included in your report based on any dimension (not just those included in the report).

“ga:country==Japan;
ga:sessions>5”

Segment

No

Use segments from the main reporting interface.

“users::condition::
ga:browser==Chrome”

Sampling Level

No

Directs the level of sampling for the data you’re pulling. Analytics samples data by default, but the add-on can increase the precision of sampling usage.

“HIGHER_PRECISION”

Start Index

No

Shows results starting from the current index (default = 1, not 0). For use with Max Results, when you want to retrieve paginated data (e.g if you’re pulling 2,000 results, and want to get results 1,001 – 2,000).

Integer

Max Results

No

Default is 1,000, can be raised to 10,000.

Integer up to 10,000

Spreadsheet URL

No

Sends your data to another spreadsheet.

URL for sheet where you want data to be sent

By using these parameters in concert, you can arrive at a customized report detailing exactly what you want. The best part is, once you’ve set up a report in your configuration sheet and confirmed the output is what you want, all you have to do to run it again is run your reports in the add-on! This makes regular reporting a breeze, while still bringing all the benefits of Sheets to bear.

Some important things to note and consider, when you’re setting up your configuration sheet:

  • You can include multiple report configurations in the the sheet (see below):

In the image above, running the report configuration will produce four separate reports. You should NOT have one configuration sheet per report.

  • Although you can have your reports generated in the same workbook as your configuration sheet, I recommend copying the data into another workbook or using the Spreadsheet URL parameter to do the same thing. Loading multiple reports in one workbook can create performance problems.
  • You can schedule your reporting to run automatically by enabling scheduled reporting within the Google Analytics add-on. Note: this is only helpful if you are using “Last N Days” for your time parameter. If you’re using a date range, your report will just give you the same data for that range every month.

The regularity options are hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly.

4. Creating an automated report: A worked example

So now that we’ve installed, set up, and configured a report, next up is the big fish, the dream of anyone who’s had to do regular reporting: automation.

As an SEO, I use the Google Analytics add-on for this exact purpose for many of my clients. I’ll start by assuming you’ve installed and set up the add-on, and are ready to create a custom report configuration.

Step one: Outline a framework

Before we begin creating our report, it’s important we understand what we want to measure and how we want to measure it. For this example, let’s say we want to view organic traffic to a specific set of pages on our site from Chrome browsers and that we want to analyze the traffic month-over-month and year-over-year.

Step two: Understand your framework within the add-on

To get everything we want, we’ll use three separate reports: organic traffic in the past month (January 2016), organic traffic in the month before that (December 2015), and organic traffic in the past month, last year (January 2015). It’s possible to include this all in one report, but I recommend creating one report per date period, as it makes organizing your data and troubleshooting your configuration significantly easier.

Step three: Map your key elements to add-on parameters

Report One parameter breakdown:

Report Name – 1/1/2016

  • Make it easily distinguishable from the other reports we’ll be running

Type – core

  • The GA API default

View (Profile) ID

  • The account we want to pull data from

Start Date – 1/1/2016

  • The beginning date we want to pull data from

End Date – 1/31/2016

  • The cutoff date for the data we want to pull

Metrics – ga:sessions

  • We want to analyze sessions for this report

Dimensions – ga:date

  • Allows us to see traffic the site received each day in the specified range

Filters – ga:medium==organic;ga:landingpagepath=@resources

  • We’ve included two filters, one that specifies only organic traffic and another that specifies sessions that had a landing page with “resources” in the URL (resources is the subdirectory on Distilled’s website that houses our editorial content)
  • Properly filling out filters and segments requires specific syntax, which you can find on Google’s Core Reporting API resources.

Segments – sessions::condition::ga:browser==Chrome

  • Specifies that we only want session data from Chrome browsers

Sampling Level – HIGHER_PRECISION

  • Specifies that we want to minimize sampling for this data set

Report One output: Past month’s sessions

Now that we’ve set up our report, it’s time to run it and check the results.

So, in the month of January 2016, the resources section on Distilled’s website saw 10,365 sessions that satisfied the following conditions:

  • organic source/medium
  • landing page containing “resources”
  • Chrome browser

But how do we know this is accurate? It’s impossible to tell at face value, but you can reliably check accuracy of a report by looking at the analogous view in Google Analytics itself.

Confirming Report One data

Since the Google Analytics add-on is an analogue to what you find on analytics.google.com, in your account, we can combine separate pieces in GA to achieve the same effect as our report:

Date Range

Organic Source/Medium

Landing Page Path & Browser

The result

Hooray!

Now that we’ve confirmed our framework works, and is showing us what we want, creating our other two reports can be done by simply copying the configuration and making minor adjustments to the parameters.

Since we want a month-over-month comparison and a year-over-year comparison for the exact same data, all we have to do is change the date range for the two reports.

One should detail the month before (December 2015) and the other should detail the same month in the previous year (January 2015). We can run these reports immediately.

The results?

Total Sessions In January 2015 (Reporting Month, Previous Year: 2,608

Total Sessions In December 2015 (Previous Month): 7,765

Total Sessions In January 2016 (Reporting Month): 10,365

We’re up 33% month-over-month and 297% year-over-year. Not bad!

Every month, we can update the dates in the configuration. For example, next month we’ll be examining February 2016, compared to January 2016 and February 2015. Constructing a dashboard can be done in Sheets, as well, by creating an additional sheet that references the outputs from your reports!

5. Closing observations and pitfalls to avoid

The Google Analytics add-on probably isn’t the perfect reporting solution that all digital marketers yearn for. When I first discovered the Google Analytics add-on for Google Sheets, I was intimidated by its use of Regular Expressions and thought that you needed to be a syntax savant to make full use of the tool. Since then, I haven’t become any better at Regular Expressions, but I’ve come to realize that the Google Analytics add-on is versatile enough that it can add value to most reporting processes, without the need for deep technical fluency.

I was able to cobble together each of the reports I needed by testing, breaking, and researching different combinations of segments, filters, and frameworks and I encourage you to do the same! You’ll most likely be able to arrive at the exact report you need, given enough time and patience.

One last thing to note: the Google Analytics interface (i.e what you use when you access your analytics account online) has built-in safeguards to ensure that the data you see matches the reporting level you’ve chosen. For example, if I click into a session-level report (e.g landing pages), I’ll see mostly session-level metrics. Similarly, clicking into a page-level report will return page-level metrics. In the Google Analytics add-on, however, this safeguard doesn’t exist due to the add-on being designed for greater versatility. It’s therefore all the more important that you’re thorough in outlining, designing, and building your reporting framework within the add-on. After you’ve configured a custom report and successfully run it, be sure to check your results against the Google Analytics interface!

Abraham Lincoln famously said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Good advice in general that also holds true for using the Google Analytics add-on for Google Sheets.

Supplementary resource appendix:

  • RegExr – General Regular Expressions resource.
  • Debuggex – Visual Regular Expressions debugging tool.

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Sunday 28 February 2016

The Pupil Becomes The Master: Five Things Mobile Advertising Can Teach Desktop Marketers

Mobile companies understood mobile-specific strategies long before the widespread adoption of mobile devices and increased adoption of smartphones and tablets. With more than three years of experience and state of the art mobile expertise, there is a lot that can be learnt.

Fred Joseph, COO of S4M, offers some takeaways for planning and executing campaigns for the mobile era:

1. When it comes to creatives, keep it short and catchy

Some brands are used to creating long scenarios as used on desktop (i.e. a 25 second video). However, what we’ve learnt from the mobile user experience is that users have short attention spans. Very short. The shorter and the stronger the message, the more likely a user will be engaged – and bearing in mind that our attention spans have dropped from 12 seconds (in 2000) to 8 seconds (2015) according to a survey conducted last year by Microsoft you really need to make every decisecond count!

Keep things short and sweet and move away from disruptive banner ads that have a tendency to distract users in a negative way rather than enhancing their mobile experience. See a recent example by Adidas here: Adidas ‘Superstar’

Smart marketers need to think more along the lines of immersive augmented app experiences, where they are giving something enhancing to consumers.

For example, this Christmas, S4M’s in-house team created a 3D cube interactive format for mobile devices (the cube is interactive on desktop by clicking and dragging the cube: on mobile it’s tactile) which was used as a holiday greeting for their clients, a format that is only interactive when viewed in a mobile browser.

2. Location is the new cookie

Geo-fencing and geolocation are key to targeting the right individual due to the intimate and individual nature of the smartphone. They allow for a clearer understanding of user behavior by following the entire customer journey. There’s also the benefit of being able to measure mobile investments and mobile store campaigns enable the measurement of direct ROIs. Geolocation can also deliver personalized advertising scenarios and transform ads to a service. For example, presenting a store locator or helping users locate the nearest point of sale can prove an extremely helpful service. There’s no imitating users or delivering irrelevant ads when efficiently dealing with location data.

A great example of this is the Adidas mobile-to-store campaign. The goal of the campaign was to drive sales to Adidas brick and mortar stores, assign a value for mobile in store-conversions and prove that mobile brings incremental value to the business. They pursued this by leveraging location extensions in the search ads, which meant users were directed to the store locator page and thus boost in-store traffic. They then pulled pertinent information from the Adidas retail stores, plus relevant industry data and developed a unique way to report an applied conversion rate. The results proved that mobile ROI brought a 680% incremental increase in ROI and a 20% conversion rate from mobile store locator to in-store visits. For desktop marketers, location is one of the biggest considerations to start making when planning a campaign.

3. The power of now

Users increasingly expect to get what they want in the immediate context and in their exact moment of need. There is a huge battle waging for a customer’s attention and it’s being battled out in ‘mobile moments’ (anytime that a user pulls out their device). The power of immediacy must be harnessed and understood properly by marketers, who need to make sure their customers can get what they want in that precious mobile moment.

A great example of this is played out in how we search. Google processes an average of over 40,000 search queries every second, or 3.5 billion searches per day…or putting it into a wider context that’s a staggering 1.2 trillion searches per year (Google search states here).

This recent post from Think with Google discusses the idea of the “micro-moment” (or mobile moment), the small everyday moments in life that prompt us to search the web with an intention of acting immediately.

google-micromoments-vendiagram

Image Source

A few examples of micro-moments:

  • Your juicer just broke. You need to search to find a new one, or research the best or most economical ones currently available.
  • You just watched a news report about the snowfall in New York. You search to find out what you can do to help.
  • You see a product you’re thinking about buying in a store. You search to find out if you can get a better price or find a better option.
  • Your child wants to play in a park but it’s pouring with rain. You search online to find out where to go.

Each moment where a customer is engaged with their mobile device provides an opportunity to impress or disappoint.

Fail to deliver timely ads and not only do marketers risk losing out on immediate sales but on a longer term they also risk their brand equity and being shut out by consumers irked by invasive messages that would otherwise have been useful had they been properly timed.

4. Cross-channel

When marketers truly understand their customer’s journey they can better adapt the channel mix taking into consideration multiple mobile devices. Companies need to ensure that their marketing departments are set up to effectively orchestrate the cross-channel mix and that the ad can follow the user whatever mobile device they are using (be that a smartphone, tablet, watch or other wearable).

When designing a creative that’s headed cross-channel, check that it works across devices (iOS to android to desktop) and that any calls to action are integrated and flow across the campaign.

For example, when you create a video ad on desktop, it can’t be used on smartphones as it won’t play and deliver the same way. The same applies for smartphones to tablets. This means that not only does a marketing strategy need to be mobile-dedicated, the creatives need to be device-specific too.

Marketers also need to take into consideration the cross-channel operating systems (OS) between iOS devices and Android devices. Never assume that just because a customer has a MacBook that they’re also using an iPhone – increasingly customers make frequent daily journeys between iOS and Android devices so creatives that play out well on both will reach the customer whatever their OS of choice is. The brands that follow this journey with ease will reap rewards.

5. Don’t hide from the mobile world

Desktop marketers need to bear in mind that desktop users are also mobile users. Even if the user started and ended their journey on a desktop, there will likely have been mobile device usage along the way. This doesn’t mean that a desktop strategy will suffice for a mobile advertising campaign, however.

Digital strategy campaigns need to contain a mobile-specific strategy. With the increasing adoption of wearables, mobile devices are not going away; in fact, more are being added to the mix. The brands that are already responding to this explosion are the early adopters who will win the trust of consumers. They will be respected rather than reviled by users as their content will be relevant, useful and timely.

Conclusion

The companies that will excel with marketing strategies that truly reach their customer with the right message, well presented, executed at the right time and in the right context will doubtless win the trust and respect of the consumer while increasing sales and customer retention in a way that is second to none.

Mobile marketers are now adopting strategies that include such a powerful mix of consumer considerations to capture that small “mobile moment” and the desktop marketers who embrace these new power tools will similarly reap rewards. The pupil has certainly become the master!

About the Author: Fred Joseph is the COO of COO of S4M.



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