Dreams of lifting the World Cup 2018 have been dashed for England fans . . . but the event has been a winner for the Football Association’s email programme, which recorded a hugely successful uplift. Guy Hanson charts how sentiment and outside influences affect email performance stats.
How ‘diverse’ are your marketing teams? Are they viewing a campaign’s creativity from a multi-cultural, gender-fluid, age/ability-inclusive perspective? Or is there still an insensitive slant towards sweeping generalisation in your marketing messages? Lucy Smith calls for more diverse marketing and shows how and why your care and regard for all minority groups and segments can enhance your business reputation and customer loyalty.
Does your email arrive safely in the inbox – or end up in the spam filter? Mailbox providers deploy email engagement metrics to identify reputable senders – so marketers should take heed of subscriber complaints. Examine the email journey, advises Guy Hanson, and how emails are perceived by recipients, in order to successfully reach subscriber inboxes.
Research shows that 57% of customers would spend more with brands that make them feel valued and that personal touch can be achieved by brands through events such as last week’s Amazon Prime Day, which treated Prime customers to exclusive deals and won loyalty and trust in return. Here are the lessons Amazon Prime Day has taught marketers of other brands:
Some major brands are really ‘getting it right’ on Facebook, attracting and retaining hundreds of thousands of followers. How do they do it? What’s their strategy for success? And what can smaller businesses do emulate that success and get more followers on Facebook? Here’s some top tips:
As the iRights initiative launched this summer – campaigning for the rights of children and young people to be able to easily edit or delete personal information online – new research revealed a growing demand for specialist support.
According to a report from British reputation experts, Igniyte, 40 per cent of their inquiries now come from individuals, rather than corporations. Of those, another 40 per cent wanted help removing incorrect, defamatory or libellous information.
A further 21 per cent were parents or family members of young people concerned about their online reputation or behaviour.
In addition, 16 per cent of all new clients were looking for support with ‘Right to be Forgotten’ applications.
Despite being widely criticised for apparently allowing criminals to hide their past from the public, most requests were from people just wanting to protect their personal information and privacy, with more than a third (34 per cent) the victims, or family of the victims, of a crime.
Commenting on the findings and iRights campaign, Igniyte’s managing partner Simon Wadsworth (pictured left) said: “Concern regarding content online is growing and, with regard to young people, the iRights campaign is very much needed to protect them. Young people’s digital literacy often surpasses their parents’, teachers’ or guardians’, resulting in content online without advice on what should and should not be shared.
“For the iRights campaign to be a success, it needs to be backed by the main search engines and social platforms who tend to house the content that young people post online. Further legislation is required to protect them and practical steps taken to ensure children and adults are educated on how things are published, who can see them and what can be removed.”
Brands’ and celebrities’ worst nightmares could become a reality this June, when hundreds of questionable web domain 
names go up for grabs.
Names such as .sucks, .porn and .adult are just some of the TDLs that will become available, and experts are now advising businesses to purchase uncomplimentary names, before it’s too late.
Web hosting company 34SP.com has predicted that some of the world’s biggest brands could be subject to torrents of abuse from online trolls purchasing unfavourable domain names with the sole aim of tormenting brands and celebrities.
Indeed, Taylor Swift has already registered taylorswift.porn and taylorswift.sucks, while Microsoft has reserved Office.porn and Office.adult.
34SP predicts that thousands more registries will be made ahead of the June 1st deadline, when generic domain names are expanded to include more variations.
Daniel Foster (left), co-founder and technical director of 34SP.com, said: “Businesses should do everything in their power to avoid being associated with negative messages – it’s hard to imagine domain names like .sucks and .porn will foster positivity.
“Clearly some big brands are already taking this seriously by registering controversial names while we are still in a mandated period. However, after June 1st it becomes a free-for-all, so I’d advise all businesses with even a slight worry about how this could affect their business to swoop up the domains sooner rather than later.
“While some might use domains for good causes, by creating sites such as cancer.sucks for example, I’d predict that many will be swooping up the new names solely for defamatory purposes.”
Those who want to keep an eye on all the savoury and unsavoury new TLDs being released and applied for can do so on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ (ICANN) website.
Richard Noble says disregard for how valuable data is and how carefully it should be handled, can have disastrous repercussions for brands.