Kwai Chi

Well first, let’s get one thing straight: open rates are garbage They are about as reliable as a bin bag with a huge hole in it. Email marketing using behavioural and specific targeting should not be about getting people to just open your email. It’s about getting your audience to: – Engage with your brand – Recognise your brand as ‘not another annoying brand sending me annoying emails’ – Feel heard and seen – Associate your brand with positive emotions I use behavioural email targeting in all of my email campaigns (well, our clients’) and through experimenting with simple to the most intricate segments and targeting We’ve found: – When you use behaviour to not only trigger an email but instead as insight to get into the head of your subscriber, your email goes to another level. Here’s an example ⚠️ Let’s say I just downloaded a brochure online from an independent kitchen retailer and it was called ‘Kitchen Inspiration 2024’. Most marketers and businesses go wrong here; they call this a ‘lead’. It’s really not. This behaviour is often mistreated by brands and then it triggers some sort of sales & marketing process that hounds people with ready-to-buy content and sales calls. What this behaviour tells us is that: – This person is really invested in 2024 kitchen trends – This person MIGHT be looking into a new kitchen at some point in the future – This person cares about their kitchen and the way it looks and feels – This person isn’t ready to buy 📩 Now, using that insight from behaviour changes the strategy. The messages are tailored using behaviour but informed by insight to craft compelling messages and emails sent at the right time to talk more about 2024 kitchen trends and inspiration. This includes getting real on: 👍 The new kitchen process 👍 Providing a link to the brand's Pinterest board for lots more inspiration 👍 Sharing a message on how this kitchen company crafts designs and takes a look inside None of this is sales. It’s called nurturing Stop using behaviour to get opens on your emails and start using behaviour to build relationships. This was my contribution piece to the marketer interview's website last week! Read more in the comments about 7 Effective Behavioral Email Targeting Strategy to Boost Open Rates & Its Impact 👇 ____ Hi 👋, I'm Beth. I'm a CRM & Marketing specialist. I optimise systems and implement tried & tested strategies to drive revenue, engagement and conversions across a wide variety of different businesses and brands. Want to join the 30+ brands that have transformed their marketing, email strategies and CRMs? Pop me a message 📩

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This is so interesting (or should I say "Pinteresting?" (source: Matt Navarra via Stacked Marketer) We've been running ads for clients on this platform for 3 years - it's not perfect but does help with brand awareness. We're also about to take our Pinterest Media Buyer Certification at The Social Ads Squad so this news comes at a good time. How have you used Pinterest for your marketing or client's marketing? Has it been effective? Would really love to hear opinions from the marketers out there!

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How much control do you give to Google? I'm working on a new (to me) account this week. They reeeeeaally handed the reigns over to Google: ➡️ 100% broad match kws ➡️ Shared budgets ➡️ Portfolio bidding ➡️ Just a handful of negatives Needless to say campaigns that should be smashing it, aren't getting nearly enough action (thanks shared budget!). One or two campaigns are getting 80% of the budget, with the rest just getting scraps. There's also a CRAZY amount of keyword cannibalisation going on. Plus search terms triggering ads that have NOTHING to do with this company or their services. 😬 Absolutely massive amounts of wasted budget. I'm all up for letting Google and their AI do their thing, but you still need to steer that ship yourself. Thank F the AAR's weren't turned on! I am however really enjoying sorting this account out though. Nothing better than getting something tidy and organised. ***** 🖐️ I'm Victoria, founder of SMEketing, a UK-based PPC lead generation agency. 🤬 Fed up with disappointing lead generation results? Feeling ignored by your current agency? Get in touch. We do things differently. 🖥️ If you're spending (or wanting to spend) £2k+ a month on Google Ads, visit the SMEketing website to 𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗹𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆! #googleads #leadgeneration #businessowner #hampshire

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Thought I would see how the UK political parties are performing online as we head into the general election. It seems that not only have the Tories taken their eye off the ball when it comes to governing the country over the last 14 years, but their online presence hasn't really grown much over the last 5 years either. 📊 Visibility Index Scores Labour Party (labour.org.uk): 3,229 Conservative Party (conservatives.com): 1,129 Green Party (greenparty.org.uk): 0,839 Liberal Democrats (libdems.org.uk): 0,707 Reform Party (reformparty.uk): 0,440 🌐 Indexed URLs in Google (yes, not a completely accurate number I know) Labour Party: 28,500 Conservative Party: 540 Green Party: 17,800 Liberal Democrats: 8,350 Reform Party: 1,210 Labour Party: Leading the charge with a robust online presence, Labour's strategy is clearly paying off. Conservative Party: The Conservatives have not invested in their content at all with the fewest pages indexed. However, due to a strong brand they sit in 2nd place for visibility. Green Party: The Green Party has recently overtaken the Lib Dem's when it comes to online visibility showing that their investment in content is paying off. Liberal Democrats: The Lib Dems are maintaining a steady online presence. As with their policies in the real world, not much to talk about here. Reform Party: The Reform Party, while having the lowest visibility among the major parties, is steadily growing its online footprint. There's definitely room for growth in enhancing their online visibility. #UKElection2024 #SEO #ElectionStrategy #GeneralElection2024 #DigitalMarketing

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How 1 PR campaign landed 200+ links. We wrote 2 stories. One 'national' story based on a trending topic, and one story that could be rewritten for each county in the UK. We used Muckrack to create target lists of journalists. We sent the national story to all relevant journalists who write for national newspapers. We sent the localised story to journalists in particular counties that cover local stories. Result? 200+ links, including Yahoo, MSN, Daily Record and 100s of local newspapers, all within 3 weeks of ordering.

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Have you been briefing your agencies all wrong? Yesterday I had the absolute pleasure of joining The Marketing Academy for a session with BetterBriefs. One of the most important tools in our portfolio, an excellent brief should deliver excellent results... a bad brief is just, well... expensive. To break it down: ✏ A good brief is rarely easy to write, and it's not linear. Forget your shopping list, instead think jigsaw puzzle where you keep adding to the final picture. Sometimes there's a clear picture of what needs to happen, but there are occasions where it might take longer to uncover. ✏ Briefs should be clear (well duh), scrap the marketing jargon, set SMART objectives, and keep it concise ✏ Keep it brief. The word brief literally means short in Latin. If it's not clear in two pages, then it's probably not clear full stop. If you need to, attach an appendix with additional background info, category context, and if you want to include creative thought-starters then you can add them here too. ✏ Don't present problems as opportunities. A problem is a problem, and only clarity on what is really happening will let your agency help solve it. ✏ It is the responsibility of a good brief to provide clear direction, but it should leave a runway for the agency. Prescriptive briefs don't leave space for creative solutions. ✏ Watch out for the 'brief killers', the generic words that can be applied to a huge group, that come up in briefs again and again. Make a list of vague words that come up, and ban them ❌ ✏ And finally, a brief is not a briefing. A good briefing gives a better understanding of the brief and allows your agency to ask questions and interrogate the task in front of them. A good briefing injects the energy and should inspire. Looking forward to putting my new thinking in place, and helping clients' new & existing help brief better so that we can keep driving those results 📈 Big thanks to Matt & Pieter-Paul for the insight. Image by Tom Fishburne

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In today's world, there's never been more DISTRUST between agencies and brands. It's a sad reality, but too many agencies fail to deliver value. There are good agencies out there, but you need to know what to watch for. #agencyproblems #marketingfails

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A common mistake I see brands make when looking for an agency to work with 👇 Going for the one their competitors use, or obsessing over sector specialists. It’s a completely natural and understandable route to take – if an agency has worked with the same kinds of businesses, they might often feel like the safest option. But the safest option is rarely the one that produces the most groundbreaking results. Just because an agency has worked with similar companies, it doesn't guarantee success for yours. What truly matters is finding a team that excites you and that you trust – because they get your challenge, understand your audience, and have past work that demonstrates this, creating strong professional chemistry. Innovation comes from making bold choices.

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AI: You Can't Prompt Yourself to Great Copy ChatGPT just doesn't create the type of emotional copy that will get you sales. You know, the type of copy that A lister copywriters will charge you tens of thousands of pounds for. In this week's podcast, Kevin Appleby and I discuss the AI applications that we have adopted in our respective businesses in the last 18 months. The copy solution is BNSN (based on Jon Benson, who developed it, The Billionaire Copywriter and originator of the Video Sales Letter). The attached clip explains that ChatGPT does have a role to play. Imagine your business. Come to me and I'll help you create A lister type copy for your emails (lots of variations - nurture sequences, cart abandonment etc) sales letters, short form videos, video sales letters...even your LinkedIn Profile! Chat helps you shrink the collective scraping you do from an existing website, other sales material covering you/your bio, your offer and the avatar )the type of people you wish to attract. Chat shrinks the say 5,000 to 300 words based on these partitions. Then, these 300 words drop into BNSN and it creates a unique blueprint. Choose a project for that blueprint - say a Press Release, or sales funnel and hit "The Magic Button". The blueprint combo with the project creates a link into Chat and it whizzes through and creates amazingly compelling copy. As if I'd paid an A Lister copywriter. This week, this minimum viable product, as BNSN remains, just got super quick as its APIs hooked up ChatGPT4o. Plus, it is nearly ready with a new refiner. You know, the copy produced is good, but let's say a bit salesy. Hit the Kill the Hype refiner and bingo, you have perfect corporate copy. Focuser allow you to change the emphasis of copy from one angle to another. Simply awesome capability. As I said on the podcast, this is one way that AI is enhancing my offer to my clients. You could say, I've gone from a middle of the road copywriter to A Lister. Well, almost. My fee is still more Championship than Premier League, so feel free to call and get on board. One last thing, the podcast also reveals an amazing new service I am involved in. That every single marketer in the UK will want access to. [I took out the hype in that last sentence too!]. #AI #copywriting

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Let's talk agency relationships. I've spent 10+ years managing agencies and 9 years being agency side. It's a two way relationship. Here are 6 of my top tips on how clients can get the most out of your agencies.. 1) Agree measures of success up front I see so many agency relationships fail as the client or agency doesn't understand what good looks like. Different retailers will have different expectations so it is clear these are set up front - even before you have signed a contract. 2) Agree how you would like the relationship to work Do you want face to face meetings, weekly calls, daily emails, etc. What levels at the agency do you want involved? What is your preferred method of communication? This can evolve as the relationship develops. 3) Teamwork I see agencies as an extension of my marketing teams. Involve them in the good and the bad. Communicate with them regularly as you would your team to keep them aware of what is going on. 4) Feedback consistently and clearly Be honest here. If you think their weekly reports are too detailed then say so. If you are disappointed with their approach tell them. If they did something that drove excellent growth make them feel special. Be honest and give them chance to solve issues before dumping them. 5) Share your business goals with them This will make sure you are on the same page. They will come up with better ideas and care a lot more about helping you achieve these goals. 6) Get your agencies together. Example - If you use different partners for paid search and social get them in the same room at least once a year. The channels can work together and they should be working together instead of fighting for more of the spend. What have I missed?

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Later today I'm moderating a panel on "Fintech Content Marketing in the Age of AI" with some incredible panelists including: • Geoff Whitehouse from ClearBank • Naomi Prakash from Finimize • David Beach 🏖 from Airwallex Although we'll be touching on all the usual points on how everyone's using AI currently, on our prep call we agreed that what's very interesting is the future of the content marketing role. Questions I'm pondering: • Some current B2B content already looks like it could be written better by AI (sad truth). Will AI force us to create better content to make it stand out more? Will content either be "AI" or "very high quality, human written content"? • Most content marketers start out as writers. But if an AI does most of the writing, how will junior content marketers start their careers? How can we make sure they have the right skillset from the beginning? • What will distribution look like? Can we use AI to help repurpose content and promote via social media? What are the downsides to doing that? So many interesting questions and thoughts which I'm looking forward to diving into tonight. We've had a few last minute cancellations so there's a few tickets left if you want to join us: 📍 Today at 5.30pm, Airwallex's offices, London I've added a link to the event in the comments!

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We're playing about with the formats for #brightonSEO in the UK this October and wanted to get some feedback on topics and the ideas in general. *Roundtables* - we've run these for a few years focussed around sector and job title, like agency owner, in-house ecommerce, agency head of SEO etc, there's usually about 12 people informal discussions. - Any ideas for topics for these you'd like to attend? - Do you like roundtables as a format? - What makes for a good roundtable? *Masterclasses* - a new thing, thinking about a 60-90 minutes slot, about 20-30 attendees, more in-depth and interactive than our usual conference talks. Aimed at more experienced attendees, more discussion, maybe more "laptop open and try thing thing" Might be topics like agency growth masterclass, paid media for ecommerce masterclass, Google tag manager debugging masterclass etc Would this be a format you'd be interested in attending? Any ideas for topics or masterclass host ideas? Thanks in advanced my lovely Linkedin focus group/connections!

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A day does not go by where we are inundated by agencies promising AI generated writing will deliver the perfect email, social media, or letter on our behalf. With AI going mainstream, millions of robots are now competing against those who “think and write.” This terrifies some I have spoken to BUT it excites me. Why? Because we can defeat the robots in the writing world by being authentically human. ⬅️ AI can't copy me because it's not me; it doesn't have my stories, experiences, or perspectives. Neither does it have yours. A strong writing voice is what leads to success. Humans follow humans – not topics, formats, trends, etc ~ Selah #AI #Writing #Authenticity

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I will 10x your ROI in 6 months. Sound familiar? Guarantees are coming from every angle in the marketing sphere from dodgy agencies looking to make a quick buck out of you. I don't stand for that. Which is why I don't work on false promises. I identify your main success metric, and we
work together to reach it. No smoke and mirrors, and an awful lot more efficiency. Because we're not spread too thin trying to hit every angle. If you want leads, let's build a social-driven outreach strategy like I have for 10+ businesses and charities across the country. Want to engage your community? Let's get you in front of the right people by communicating your purpose and story through content. Watch the video below to hear my thoughts. If you want to find out more, connect or message. Would love to chat and show you how I've helped businesses across the UK and US get TANGIBLE results from social media. #SocialMediaManagement #DoingItRight

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Abandon rates average 70% in the UK for eCommerce websites… as high as 82% for beauty and 79% for home and furniture. That’s a lot of value left behind after Google, Meta and your other marketing investment has done the hard work brining consumers into your funnel. It’s time to reconsider the right marketing mix to close more sales. Email and SMS can’t work in isolation, they should be tied up with something cost effective and gets noticed. Consider data-driven postal triggers. They have better CPAs and drive stronger basket spend on top of recovery. Don’t know how it can work for you? DM and I can show you :) #abandon #directmail #paperplanes

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Let me guess, you know you need to improve your marketing but you’re scared of getting stuck in a big contract with a crap agency? This is why I work with open contracts (and don’t deliver crap results)… Some agencies are terrified of this prospect, and that’s because they don’t deliver. I don’t worry about locking you down to a specific period of time because I’m confident in our services… If you leave, it’s because we didn’t do a good job. The incentive should be for the agency to provide results… Not the for the client to pray they don’t get burnt by someone who talks a big game. Let’s be real, most contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re written on anyway… You should trust and build a relationship with the team managing your marketing, not be in fear of them ripping you off. Let’s chat if you’re looking for an external marketing partner who won’t lose interest in your account after 3 months.

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I read this response from the UK's Affiliate Performance Marketing Association website recently, about the ICO's call for views on Consent to Pay. It made for an interesting read and is something affiliate marketers really do need to keep abreast of as privacy and consent changes are taking place at different levels around the world. Take a look at the overall response here and let me know what are your thoughts? https://lnkd.in/gi9RR9Pw

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Top 3 Reasons Why Eastern European Companies Should Target the UK Market 🌍🚀 The UK is calling, and here’s why it’s a golden opportunity: 1. Cost-Effective Talent 💸 UK companies are on the lookout for high-quality, cost-effective solutions. They always have been but especially now. Eastern Europe is home to a wealth of skilled professionals at competitive rates. This makes your services incredibly attractive to UK businesses aiming to optimise their operations without breaking the bank. 2. Rich Talent Pool 🎓 Eastern Europe is renowned for its highly educated workforce, especially in IT, software development, biotech, and fintech. With a strong focus on technical education, you have access to top-notch talent ready to meet the demands of the UK market. This is your chance to shine and showcase your expertise! 3. Smooth Communication 🌐 High English proficiency in Eastern Europe means smooth and effective communication with UK clients. This linguistic advantage ensures seamless collaboration and strengthens business relationships, making it easier for you to deliver exceptional service. At Phase2, we’re here to help you navigate the UK market, bridging any cultural gaps and ensuring productive collaborations. The UK offers vast opportunities for growth – let's seize them together! #Outsourcing #EasternEurope #UKBusiness #TechTalent #GlobalExpansion #BusinessGrowth #ITServices #TechInnovation #CostEffective #SeamlessCollaboration #Phase2 #MarketOpportunities #BusinessStrategy

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Please join me for this webinar - I doubt you could ask for insights from two better placed, market-leading, award-winning B2B Editors, who have driven the success of their subscription-led businesses. Catrin Griffiths Alastair McLellan

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