But when that day comes, your focus becomes less “doing” and more enablement and support. The latter can feel like an entirely different role than the one you anticipated.

At this year’s Activate Summit, attendees sat down with Jeremiah Runser, Head of Marketing at Sandboxx, to learn about why this transition to leadership is difficult for so many first-time marketing managers.

Today, we’re summarizing his seven tips on how to rise through the ranks from specialist to marketing leader. That way, even if you weren’t able to attend Jeremiah’s session, you can walk away with practical advice on how to level-up your career, get out of the weeds, and lead marketing teams effectively.

Missed out on Activate Summit? Sign up for the Activate Summit Virtual to gain access to two days of content you can enjoy from the comfort of your home.

7 Tips to Transitioning to Marketing Leadership

1. Be (really) successful at your core job. If your goal is to be promoted into marketing leadership, your first mission is to excel in your current position. It could go without saying, but it’s essential to prove yourself in the role you’re in before aiming higher. Mastering the responsibilities you have today builds trust and showcases your potential to handle more significant challenges tomorrow and beyond.
2. Be a marksman, not a sniper. Military metaphors come naturally to the team at Sandboxx—a brand that makes it easier to navigate military life with tools for recruits to connect with their families. But in this case, when talking about being a marksman, Jeremiah emphasized that while it’s important to specialize in a subset of marketing, pigeonholing yourself can keep you from taking on more strategic roles. Marketers should develop a broad skill set that allows them to adapt and manage a wider team.
3. Be a resource for others. Jeremiah caveated this tip as a potential hot take, but based on what he’s seen as he’s grown in his career, if marketers want to get promoted or earn a higher salary, that may require going above and beyond what’s expected of you. Leadership is all about helping others succeed, so he encouraged his audience to show they can lead by serving as the go-to resource for their teams.
4. Focus on outcomes over outputs. A common theme at Activate Summit was the importance of prioritizing impact over effort. By focusing on outcomes rather than outputs—as CMO of Grammarly, Lena Waters, put it—you can ensure that you’re contributing meaningfully to your organization’s goals. After all, when it comes to rising the ranks, it’s not about how much you do, but the value you provide.
5. Internal > external. Jeremiah stressed that “silence isn’t golden—it’s invisible.” Marketers need to be able to sell their ideas internally as effectively as they engage with their target audiences externally. For instance, he shared that it took him three months to persuade Sandboxx’s product and engineering teams to leverage Iterable’s Embedded Messaging in their app. Meetings and internal communication may not be marketers’ favorite aspects of their work, but they’re a critical component of collaborating with others and advocating for your team.
6. Learn the business lingo. Marketing metrics can sound like alphabet soup with terms like LTV, CAC, AOV, NDR, and ROI. But to gain credibility and influence, marketers need to familiarize themselves with their definitions and speak the language of business. Learning the lingo will help marketers talk about their work more strategically and connect the dots between their campaigns and their company’s bottom line.
7. Marketing is not equivalent to leading marketing. Because marketing managers focus more on enablement than the nuts and bolts of marketing campaigns, leading a marketing team can feel like an entirely different job than being an individual contributor. To decide whether a leadership role is right for you, Jeremiah urged marketers to have candid conversations with their managers about their professional goals. It’s totally valid if you decide you don’t want to manage people, so be honest with yourself before taking on the responsibility.

Practical Advice for Aspiring Marketing Leaders

If you decide to pursue marketing leadership after meeting with your manager, here are Jeremiah’s words of wisdom.

• Be obsessed with learning. As a future marketing leader, the people you hire will look to you for guidance and inspiration, so you should always be passionate about learning—especially with how rapidly technology advances and marketing adapts to those changes.
• Find a mentor. Marketing leaders need mentors as much as they need to provide mentorship to their own teams. Identifying those who are farther along in their careers and can offer their time and insights is incredibly valuable to accelerating your own learning and growth.
• Look for inflection points. Promotions often don’t simply land in people’s laps, so learn to recognize when it’s time to make a move, whether it’s taking on more responsibility at your current company or seeking a new opportunity.

Empower, Uplift, and Engage

Even if you climb to the top of the corporate ladder, you may never feel like you’ve truly “made it.” But once you find yourself in a leadership role, your next step is to empower, uplift, and engage your team. Your success is now their success, so encourage autonomy and seek their advice, not just their feedback. That way you can continuously improve and achieve both your career goals and your team’s.

And if you’re looking to continuously improve, uplevel your skills, and learn the latest in marketing technology, be sure to sign up for the Activate Virtual Experience on May 14-15. We hope to see you there!

The post 7 Tips to Rise Through the Ranks From Specialist to Marketing Leader appeared first on Iterable.

• The Need for Marketing Autonomy
  • Speed and Agility
  • Improved Efficiency
  • Better Control and Flexibility
• How Iterable Empowers Marketers

In the fast-paced world of marketing, agility and efficiency are paramount. Marketers are constantly striving to connect with their target audience effectively while delivering compelling campaigns that drive results. However, there’s often one significant roadblock standing in the way of seamless execution: the reliance on engineering teams to accomplish tasks.

Traditionally, marketers have had to depend on engineering teams for various tasks, such as building emails, pulling data, implementing tracking codes, creating landing pages, or integrating new tools and platforms. While collaboration between marketing and engineering teams is still important, the reality is that a dependency on engineering teams for smaller tasks can hinder marketing efficiency and autonomy.

Few things are more frustrating than having to wait for a ticket to be completed or your task to be prioritized. As marketers ourselves, we get it. We fully understand the importance of empowering marketers to take control of their campaigns and achieve their goals without relying on unnecessary delays or barriers. Let’s explore more reasons why marketers shouldn’t have to rely on engineering teams to accomplish goals and how fostering marketing autonomy can lead to greater efficiency and success.

The Need for Marketing Autonomy

Marketers are no strangers to tight deadlines and rapidly changing market dynamics. In such a fast-paced environment, waiting for engineering resources to implement necessary changes can slow down campaign execution and hinder the ability to capitalize on timely opportunities. Here’s why marketing autonomy is essential:

1. Speed and Agility

In the competitive landscape of modern marketing, speed is everything. Waiting for engineering support to make simple changes can result in missed opportunities and delayed campaigns. By empowering marketers to make these changes themselves, organizations can increase their agility and respond quickly to market changes and customer demands.

SG McDuff, CRM Marketing Manager at TodayTix Group, said, “I would highly recommend switching to Iterable. I’ve had a fantastic experience. It’s so user friendly in a way that we’re able to utilize all of this highly complex data to do personalization and we don’t have to spend hours with our engineering team figuring out a way to implement it.”

2. Improved Efficiency

Relying on engineering teams for every marketing task can lead to bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Marketers often have to wait for their engineering tickets to be added to a sprint, which can slow down campaign execution and impact time-to-market. By giving marketers the autonomy to execute tasks independently, organizations can streamline their processes and improve overall efficiency.

Betina Ng, Manager of Player Lifecycle Engagement at Kabam Games, for example, leverages Catalog to create no-code recommendations and dynamic content allowing one template to serve thousands of unique customers. She shared, “We are now able to leverage Catalog and can eliminate the need to build multiple versions of one template. This has been a huge time saver for us.”

3. Better Control and Flexibility

With full autonomy, marketing teams don’t have to be afraid to create complex campaigns. There’s no deciding between speed and quality. Marketers understand their campaigns and audience better than anyone else, so giving them the tools and autonomy to make changes on the fly, organizations can ensure that campaigns are executed according to plan and can be adjusted quickly based on real-time data and insights. This level of control and flexibility is essential for staying ahead in today’s competitive landscape.

Take jewelry subscription brand Rocksbox, for example. They’ve taken advantage of Iterable’s tremendous flexibility to create sophisticated journeys and to optimize all aspects of their campaigns—without needing the engineering team. According to marketing manager, Maeve Ricaurte, “Iterable has made it extremely easy for us to execute and optimize sophisticated engagement campaigns with minimal engineering engagement.”

How Iterable Empowers Marketers

Like we said before, we fully understand the importance of marketing autonomy and efficiency. But, instead of waiting for something better to come along, we took matters into our own hands. That’s why we’ve developed a powerful platform that empowers marketers to execute campaigns independently and drive better results. With Iterable, marketers can:

• Improve Access to Data: Getting access to data that’s historically locked away in cloud data platforms has required marketers to file tickets, wait for engineers to build custom integrations, or simply give up and abandon campaign ideas altogether. Smart Ingest, the Iterable-native feature co-developed with Hightouch, solves this by directly connecting Iterable to any major cloud data platform.
• Create Dynamic Campaigns: Iterable’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface allows marketers to create sophisticated campaigns without any coding knowledge.
• Implement Tracking Codes: Marketers can easily add tracking codes to their campaigns, track user engagement, and gather valuable insights without relying on engineering support.
• Integrate Third-Party Tools: With seamless integrations with leading third-party tools and platforms, marketers can expand the functionality of their campaigns and reach their target audience across multiple channels.
• Access Real-Time Insights: Our robust analytics dashboard provides marketers with real-time insights into campaign performance, allowing them to make data-driven decisions and optimize campaigns on the fly.

Putting Marketers in the Driver’s Seat

In today’s fast-paced world of marketing, efficiency is key. By empowering marketers with the tools they need to execute campaigns independently, organizations can streamline their processes, increase agility, and drive better results. At Iterable, we’re committed to giving marketers autonomy and helping them succeed in an increasingly competitive landscape.

To learn more about Iterable’s capabilities and how it can empower marketers on your team, schedule a demo today.

The post Why Marketing Autonomy is Essential for Efficiency appeared first on Iterable.

If you do still want to get the full scoop, in addition to some brand new virtual-only sessions, register to join us on May 14th and 15th for Activate Virtual.

1. “Brand is What You Mean to People Outside of Your Functional Benefit”

In a fireside chat keynote with Iterable’s COO, Jeff Samuels, Liquid Death CEO, Mike Cessario, took to the stage on day three of Activate to share his perspective on what makes a good brand and give some background on how Liquid Death—the healthy beverage brand—came to be.

Liquid Death CEO, Mike Cessario, and Iterable COO, Jeff Samuels, take the keynote stage during the Activate keynote day 3.

In particular, Mike’s quote “Brand is what you mean to people outside of your functional benefit,” really stood out. For context, he was talking about how brands define themselves. He said, “I think people have this big misconception that differentiation means functional benefit or difference. But, the reality is, nobody can own a functional benefit or ingredient. ‘What makes your thing different?’ ‘Oh, well, we have more electrolytes.’ Ok well, as soon as you’re big enough, another company with more money can add more electrolytes, charge less, and you lose.”

He goes on to explain how the fashion industry really understands this concept. He compares the functional differences between a Louis Vuitton handbag and a Target handbag—there aren’t any—before tying it back to emotion.

At the end of the day, the brands that stick are those that tap into what the customer feels.

2. “It’s Really Important We Think About Outcomes Rather Than Outputs”

On day two of Activate, Iterable’s CMO, Adri Gil Miner kicked things off by hosting a panel featuring Lena Waters, CMO of Grammarly, Angelique Jurgill, SVP of Audience Development at Dotdash Meredith, and Hannah Pscheid, CMO of Barre3. During this panel, Adri prompted, “What is your marketing pet peeve?” And asked the panel if anyone wanted to share first. Lena stepped up saying, “I’ve got a good one.” And boy, did she.

Grammarly CMO, Lena Waters (left), and Barre3 CMO, Hannah Pscheid (right), during the Activate keynote day 2.

“My pet peeve is marketers who don’t know how to say no,” Lena started, garnering audible “oohs” from the audience. “We have this great portfolio of technology, of data, of tools, where we’ve got more things at our disposal than ever. I think we feel this crisis of confidence where we feel like we have to do one of everything. It’s really important that we think about outcomes rather than outputs.

“You don’t necessarily have to participate in every channel, in every program, in every medium, and take every suggestion from everyone who thinks that they’re a marketer. This doesn’t happen to other departments.”

We couldn’t agree more.

3. “We Were Data Rich, Access Poor”

Kashish Gupta, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Iterable Technology Partner of the Year, Hightouch, and Aoife O’Driscoll, AVP of Lifecycle Marketing at Whoop, presented on data activation—how using the data they already had access to helped customers unlock their fitness potential.

Aoife talked about the challenges Whoop was facing with accessing their data. Not only did it take a long time for teams to pull lists to inform campaigns, but their data was in disparate systems, making it difficult to get a holistic customer view. She said, “We were data rich, access poor. As Kashish says, we were in like a data jail—and we really were.”

She continues on explaining how the data analytics team worked closely with the lifecycle marketing team to find the right tools to help Whoop activate their data and achieve their goals. Her presentation spoke to the opportunities two teams—like Iterable and Hightouch—can create for brands when layering their technological capabilities.

4. “Listen to the Market”

Three members of the IPSY team—Polina Akabas, Director of Lifecycle Marketing, Jessica Cox, Director of Lifecycle Marketing, and Carina Pedersen, Senior Lifecycle Marketing Manager—joined forces to present on the value of adding SMS as a marketing channel.

Polina shared the takeaways from the presentation. She said, “Listen to the market. Listen to your customers. Meet them where they want to be met next.”

Sure, we’ve heard this before, the old “meet them where they are,” but in the context of SMS it’s especially important to consider. Not every customer will want to receive SMS messages. Maybe it doesn’t even make sense for your brand. Don’t add channels for the sake of adding channels. Listen to what is being asked of you.

5. “Land and Maintain”

Dillon Nuanes, Director of Retention and Lifecycle at ClickUp, spoke to the importance of preparing your brand’s lifecycle team for the future. In particular he took the classic challenge of “land and expand” and gave it a new twist, presenting opportunities for lifecycle teams to focus more on retention and less on acquisition.

He said, “As companies grow in ARR, what used to happen was all you needed to do was focus on landing that customer and then you could expand them, right? Cross-sells, upsells, all that stuff. What’s happened now is that the opportunity to expand has almost disappeared—especially as companies grow in revenue. So what you’re lucky to do nowadays is just to maintain that customer, to have the opportunity way further down the line to gain more incremental revenue from them.”

Dillon’s point rings true for most marketers and stresses the importance of a good nurture program that keeps customers engaged until just the right moment to convert.

There’s Still More to Come

These are just some of the quotes that stood out during Activate Summit in San Jose. Every session had a ton of useful takeaways so be sure to catch the replays and on demand, along with net-new content during Activate Virtual.

Register for Activate Virtual to get access to full-length Activate Summit sessions plus brand new, never-before-seen sessions—May 14th and 15th.

The post TL;DR: Top 5 Activate Summit 2024 Quotes appeared first on Iterable.

At Activate Summit today, we revealed the winners of the 2024 Expie Awards and, without a doubt, these winners are the heroes behind the scenes. They think differently, bring new ideas to the forefront, and iterate on those ideas until they deliver results.

Here are the 2024 Iterable Expie Award Winners.

Expie Award Winners by Category

Next-Gen Innovators

As a reminder, this year we also introduced our Next-Gen Innovators Award, which is given to multiple marketers who are embracing change, pushing boundaries, and turning ideas into impactful realities. Here are the Next-Gen Innovators, in no particular order.

Louis Jahn, CRM Lifecycle Manager at Epidemic Sound

Louis thrives on exploration and adaptation, continuously learning and innovating to connect deeply with his audience. His commitment to data-driven insights and collaborative problem solving across teams sets him apart. By tailoring messaging based on user feedback, he achieved a remarkable 150% increase in engagement.

Through creativity, resilience, and a relentless pursuit of exceptional experiences, Louis and the Epidemic Sound team are pushing the boundaries of marketing to make a lasting impact in their industry.

Meagan Hardcastle, Email & Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Osmosis.org from Elsevier

Meagan consistently demonstrates a passion for big-picture thinking and a relentless pursuit of growth opportunities in her work at Osmosis from Elsevier. Her spearheading a collaborative effort to overhaul email communications resulted in a remarkable 54% increase in total clicks and unparalleled improvements in engagement metrics. This initiative not only elevated the brand’s digital presence but also set a new standard for customer interaction.

Her enthusiasm for exploring new ideas and pushing boundaries has not only inspired her colleagues but has also fueled a culture of innovation within her team.

Clinton Wilmott, Senior Email Marketing Manager at Namecheap

Overcoming numerous challenges as an experienced Email Marketer at Namecheap, Clinton has launched transformative initiatives, from educating stakeholders on marketing automation to implementing a consistent marketing calendar with a regular send frequency. His groundbreaking engagement strategy has yielded over 50% year-over-year growth, showcasing his visionary approach and dedication to driving results.

By orchestrating companywide brand campaigns with meticulously planned email sequences, Clinton has not only increased revenue and engagement but also elevated customer satisfaction. With a focus on personalization using Iterable’s tools, Clinton continues to push boundaries and shape the future of email marketing.

Rita Bastos, CRM Specialist at Wolt

Rita’s efforts to implement a content catalog logic for Wolt’s global reactivation campaigns have revolutionized and streamlined their campaign set-up process. Through innovative thinking, she designed, tested, and implemented Iterable’s content catalog setup, condensing the multitude of templates from over 400 to just 16. Rita’s achievements not only save time and resources but also ensure consistency, accuracy, and scalability across all campaigns. Her innovative approach has maximized efficiency and productivity and set a new standard for excellence at Wolt.

Priscilla Liu, Sr. Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Samsara

Priscilla’s self-initiated project to build out data feeds infrastructure at Samsara has significantly enhanced team efficiency and expanded the possibilities of utilizing Iterable. Serving as a centralized tool for content management within campaigns, the data feeds democratize personalization and localization, providing more control over messaging and reducing errors. Priscilla has enabled the team to build campaigns faster, increased operational efficiency, and introduced more dynamic personalization possibilities, positioning her as a forward-thinking Next-Gen Innovator.

Most Inspiring Switch to Iterable: Dotdash Meredith

Finalists: Guild, Peet’s Coffee

Dotdash Meredith is America’s largest digital and print publisher, with 40+ iconic brands including PEOPLE, Better Homes & Gardens, Allrecipes, and Investopedia. Dotdash Meredith hit the ground running when they switched to Iterable. Faced with the immense scale of their migration and a tight timeline, Dotdash Meredith partnered closely with the Iterable team to ensure a smooth migration. Through their collaborative efforts, the migration was a success, giving Dotdash Meredith the ability to deliver immediate value not only to readers but across the entire business.

“After our transition to Iterable, we’ve gained many efficiencies. The biggest being the speed at which we can set up and deploy campaigns. With Iterable we are able to deploy more monthly campaigns with one fewer production resource.”

Most Individualized Customer Experience: PGA of America

Finalists: Rover, Fender

The PGA of America (PGA) is one of the world’s largest sports organizations, composed of more than 30,000 PGA of America Golf Professionals who love the game, are expert coaches, operators and business leaders, and work daily to drive interest, inclusion and participation in the sport. The PGA is celebrated for their strategic, comprehensive and innovative approach to leveraging Iterable for data-driven, personalized customer experiences. The team has overcome challenges and achieved remarkable success in individualizing customer experiences, significantly enhancing engagement and business outcomes, and ultimately driving greater interest in the game of golf.

“Utilizing Iterable’s robust engagement tools, we’ve crafted campaigns that not only deepen involvement but also highlight career opportunities within the golf industry,” said Fahad Zahid, Senior Director, Brand and Digital Marketing at the PGA. “Our initiatives focus on using custom, targeted content in support of diversity, inclusivity, and philanthropy, showcasing the sport’s commitment to creating a positive impact beyond the green. We also leverage Iterable’s segmentation tools to attract spectators and volunteers to Championships, fostering a rich, inclusive golf culture that celebrates every individual’s journey and contribution.”

Best AI-Powered Customer Experience: Wolt

Finalists: Redbubble, Redfin

Wolt is a Helsinki-based technology company that provides an online platform for consumers, merchants and couriers. On Wolt’s app, customers can easily discover and order their favorite meals, fresh groceries and local goods delivered to their doorstep. The Wolt team is being celebrated for their innovative work and the outstanding results their team has achieved by leveraging Iterable’s Predictive Goals. Wolt’s use of this AI-powered technology has not only unlocked rapid results but also provided the team with valuable insights and data points that were previously unknown. The team rapidly incorporated these learnings into their future automation strategies and plans. This recognition highlights Wolt’s creativity and innovation in using Iterable’s AI to intelligently engage with their audience and revolutionize their customer communication approach.

“Iterable has enhanced our customer communication strategies, enabling us to interact more intelligently with our audience,” shared Selen Kucukarslan, Senior CRM & Marketing Automation Manager at Wolt. “Previously, we required data scientists to build audiences based on a smart data model. Through Iterable’s predictive audiences, we discovered a scalable method to craft intelligent audience segments. This enabled us to target users more effectively, focusing solely on those likely to achieve specific goals that are key for our business.”

Best Use of Cross-Channel Marketing: IPSY

Finalists: Booksy, Care.com

IPSY is the beauty industry’s most powerful marketing platform, uniting brands, creators, and hyper-engaged consumers with unprecedented access to each other through the world’s largest beauty membership. IPSY connects with its customers during their most exciting member moments, delivering joyful experiences through a comprehensive cross-channel strategy encompassing email, SMS, and push messages.

Leveraging Iterable’s platform, IPSY’s Lifecycle Marketing team orchestrates real-time, automated lifecycle communication, tailoring each interaction to meet their customers’ unique needs and preferences while driving business impact. IPSY was founded to inspire everyone to express their unique beauty, and they are celebrated for their success in building strong and meaningful customer relationships and infusing their mission across all customer touchpoints.

“Iterable enables us to connect with members during their most exciting moments via comprehensive cross-channel strategies that encompasses email, sms, and push messages. Leveraging Iterable’s platform, our Lifecycle Marketing team is able to orchestrate real-time automated lifecycle communication, tailoring each interaction to fulfill the distinct needs and preferences of our customers while driving impact for our business.”

Agency Partner of the Year: Bounteous x Accolite

Bounteous x Accolite is a premier digital agency offering end-to-end solutions in Strategy & Insights, Experience Design, Solution Engineering, and Growth Marketing. They accelerate clients’ time to market and enable rapid adaptation to changing business landscapes.

“Enabling our clients to be able to deliver the best personalized experiences for their customers is paramount to their growth,” said Fred Fred Faulkner, VP of Strategic Marketing at Bounteous. “Partnering with Iterable and their solutions has given our clients that opportunity. We’re excited to see our clients find success with Iterable and the additional services Bounteous x Accolite offers them.”

Technology Partner of the Year: Hightouch

Hightouch is the leading Composable Customer Data Platform (CDP) that empowers companies to activate their data warehouse to power personalized marketing and business operations. Trusted by leading organizations like PetSmart, The NBA, Warner Music Group, Calendly, Spotify, and GameStop, Hightouch enables anyone to deliver personalized customer experiences, optimize performance marketing, and move faster by leveraging data across their organization.

“Iterable and Hightouch share a vision of democratizing data so that marketers can deliver stronger personalized experiences,” said Kashish Gupta, co-founder and co-CEO of Hightouch. “We’re thrilled to partner more closely with Iterable to deliver our technology to marketing teams around the world.”

2024 Expies are a Wrap

Congratulations to our winners and our finalists. If you think your team has what it takes to win an Expie in 2025, keep your eyes peeled for the chance to nominate your peers next year.

And, if you have your eye on the “Most Inspiring Switch to Iterable” prize, schedule a demo today.

The post Here Are the Winners of the 2024 Iterable Expie Awards appeared first on Iterable.

At our flagship event, Activate, we were overwhelmed with excitement as we announced the latest innovations coming to the Iterable platform. And, not to brag, the future is bright for marketers using Iterable.

The Cutting-Edge is Upon Us

The world of marketing and communication at large is simultaneously shrinking and advancing at lightning speed. AI-powered tools are empowering marketers to do more with less, revolutionizing the marketing landscape and how we operate. However, with the rapid advancement comes a desire to better measure, understand, and act on the impact of these AI solutions.

At the same time, digital communication tools are making it increasingly easy to have a global reach—and brands are trying to follow suit. Marketers have to keep pace with consumers and reach them on the channels they not only prefer but are actually using.

Add onto all of this, the age-old goal for marketers: personalization. With 32% of brands willing to walk away from a brand due to a single bad experience, it’s imperative brands emphasize personalization even with increasing amounts of data being collected.

With these priorities in mind, we’re excited to announce four KEY features that will propel marketers forward to be the premier cutting-edge strategists in their fields. Let’s get into it.

Iterable’s Spring Product Announcements

Iterable Journey Assist

According to research we conducted with Wakefield Research, almost half of marketers (47%) state that the ability to work more efficiently draws them to use AI in their jobs. Marketers want tools that help them save time and focus more on creating memorable experiences for their customers.

Iterable’s Journey Assist will do just that. With Journey Assist, marketers will now have access to the market’s first prompt-based, AI-powered tool. Whether creating brand new journeys or updating existing ones, marketers can jumpstart and simplify the journey creation process.

Iterable Adds Native WhatsApp

It’s easier than ever to communicate with friends and loved ones across the globe, and WhatsApp is a huge reason for that. With 2 billion monthly active users, there’s no denying WhatsApp’s pervasiveness and impact on how we stay connected.

By adding WhatsApp to our native channel feature set—alongside SMS, Email, Embedded, and Push—users will be able to build dynamic, personalized messages with images, video, and interactive snippets for richer two-way communications. For brands with a global footprint, the ability to create WhatsApp templates without having to leave the Iterable platform makes connecting with your global audience easier than ever before.

Smart Segmentation

Everything moves quickly these days—even consumer preferences—so marketers must remain agile. However, 58% of marketers cite complex data systems as a big impediment to owning their data strategy.

In an effort to remove these obstacles, we’re happy to introduce Smart Segmentation, the best way for marketers to get real-time contextual insights for dynamic and precise segmentation. Smart Segmentation makes it easier to combine behavioral, demographic, and rich user data with AI-powered user attributes for more accurate segmentation capabilities. It also introduces intelligent guardrails to avoid common segmentation pitfalls and stay on track.

And, while segmentation can be a technical challenge, Smart Segmentation is built on top of the most flexible data engine so marketers of all technical abilities can build instant segments by activating data on Iterable.

Iterable Brand Affinity Reporting

Not to state the obvious, but connecting with your audience can be difficult if you don’t understand them. That’s where Iterable Brand Affinity comes in, an AI tool that automatically determines a customer’s engagement and affinity labels based on brand engagement.

Built to help increase loyalty over time, Brand Affinity makes it easier to understand customer affinity for your brand. With this latest enhancement to Brand Affinity, we are providing reporting to empower marketers to measure, understand, and act with strategic insights into what moves the needle toward campaign success.

Smart Ingest, co-developed with Hightouch

Smart Ingest, co-developed with Hightouch, has officially launched in General Availability (GA). Now, any marketer on Iterable can effortlessly import their data from leading data warehouses in a visual and marketer-friendly experience. With Smart Ingest, marketers can quickly activate new data in experiments, improve audience targeting, and deliver more personalized cross-channel communications—all from the same platform, Iterable, and without the need for engineers, lowering their dependency on technical teams. We are also excited to announce 10 additional data sources are available in open beta so more marketers can benefit from easy marketerer-friendly data activation.

A Bright 2024, A Connected Future

Our Spring product updates come at a time when technology and users are moving quickly and increasing expectations. Through increased efficiency with Journey Assist, richer conversations for global audiences with WhatsApp, agile segmentation with Segmentation, and a deeper understanding of audiences with Brand Affinity Reporting, Iterable users can make longer-lasting connections with customers worldwide—and at scale, too.

To see a recap of our Spring Announcements, join us for Activate Summit Virtual May 14-15.

The post Iterable’s Spring Announcements: Bringing AI-Powered, Personalized Experiences to Global Audiences appeared first on Iterable.

In this case MACH—which stands for Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless—describes types of technology or a technological architecture that is composable, scalable, swap-able, adaptable and flexible.

The MACH Alliance is an organization of diverse, MACH certified companies established to uphold the virtues of MACH with a mission to “future proof enterprise technology and propel current and future digital experiences.”

Members of the MACH Alliance are on the cutting edge, accelerating quickly, and breaking barriers (but not the sound barrier). And, as MACH says, “…customer expectations are disrupting every market at MACH speed. Acting slowly is no longer a viable option.”

What is a MACH Certification

Today, we’re excited to officially announce Iterable’s MACH certification—and not just because Forrester called the MACH Alliance “the coolest tech club in town.” There’s a list of criteria that an ISV (MACH Tech Vendors) must meet before even being considered for certification. The company:

• Product(s) offering/portfolio needs to be 100% MACH compliant
• Has at least three different microservices that each have their own domain
• Has live projects with at least 3 other MACH Vendor member companies
• Has 15 or more customers, each generating more than $100M in annual revenue must be using MACH compliant product(s)
• Has an annual revenue of $10million or more from product licenses AND/OR a headcount of 50 or over

MACH certified companies—members of the MACH alliance—are passionate about open tech ecosystems, knowledge sharing, and finding opportunities to collaborate. “The MACH Alliance is the only organization helping companies take advantage of the most innovative and flexible enterprise technologies available.”

How Iterable Aligns with MACH Values

Looking at the lengthy list of criteria for technology to be considered “MACH” and the mission of the MACH Alliance, we noticed immediate overlaps with Iterable’s initiatives. We established four tenets of technology—our north stars—that we keep top-of-mind as we build out our platform, interact with customers, and develop an ecosystem of technology partners:

• AI-Powered: AI is built directly into our platform. With our best-in-class AI Suite, marketers can automate, optimize, and create individualized marketing communications.
• Open and Flexible: Every layer of our platform is built open so you can easily move information in and out of the system, connect Iterable with the rest of your tech stack, and customize the stack architecture.
• Easy to Use: Iterable’s intuitive user-interface gives marketers the ability to create without relying on developers or engineers.
• Built for Data: Iterable is capable of ingesting data from anywhere—in real time. Our platform is designed to consume, unify, activate and utilize the entirety of your multi-source technology stack data.

We are hyper-focused on empowering marketers. With AI, flexibility, ease-of-use, and a structure built for data, Iterable aims to create autonomous marketing teams that have every tool needed at their disposal. We want to champion and encourage marketers to adopt this kind of technology to become marketers of the future. What better way to do this than apply to become MACH certified?

What This Means for Customers

MACH certified companies aim to put the customer (enterprise businesses)—not the vendor—first. They are driven by transparency and aim to ensure the tech brands that join the MACH Alliance are “helping support agile, nimble businesses ready to take advantage of the latest innovations as they emerge.”

Basically, the MACH Alliance ensures that enterprise businesses have all of the information they need to make informed decisions that help set up their martech stacks for success in the future. They do this by:

• Sharing technical knowledge about MACH
• Creating and sharing best practices that show organizations how to transition to a MACH architecture
• Listing and explaining selection criteria for enterprises
• Publishing technical documentation
• Developing and hosting MACH Alliance events

Benefits of Working with a MACH-Certified Vendor

As Russ Howe, VP Sales and GM EMEA at Iterable, wrote in How the Martech Landscape is Evolving in 2024, “Legacy systems weren’t designed to be plug-and-play like modern stacks, but now platforms can integrate seamlessly together in no time at all. Flexibility is the name of the game for the future of martech.”

MACH is about looking forward and putting marketers in the driver’s seat. Therefore, the benefits of working with MACH-certified vendors include:

• MACH tools easily integrate into tech stacks, allowing enterprises to evolve their stacks overtime, without a large replatforming effort.
• Working with MACH solutions gives enterprises the opportunity to roll out customer experiences ahead of competition.
• MACH allows enterprises to quickly respond to changing customer and market needs, and to innovate easily at a lower cost.
• The speed, scale, and performance that MACH technologies offer hint at a future where modular design will be one of the common enterprise architecture patterns.

“Iterable has been a Cloud-native, API-first, Microservices-based architecture from day one. We were MACH-compliant before we even knew what MACH-compliance was!” said Thomas Kim, Chief Architect at Iterable. “Our alignment with MACH principles and ideals reflects our belief that marketers are best served through orchestration that works with the entire ecosystem. Best-in-class interoperability has been one of Iterable’s superpowers from the beginning. This certification validates our dedication to providing our customers with a flexible, composable, and scalable platform that empowers them to create individualized, cross-channel experiences at scale.”

A MACH Made in Heaven

Like Russ Howe said, “Composability also takes the pain out of the marketer’s decision-making process. With a stack that’s easily adaptable, you can access a multitude of world-class technologies without the stress of worrying whether you’ve selected the perfect solution.”

We’re honored to have received MACH certification and be listed amongst like-minded tech companies who strive for transparency, efficiency, and excellence.

The post Iterable Becomes MACH Certified appeared first on Iterable.

Consumers are bombarded with information from various channels, so crafting and executing impactful marketing campaigns is both a challenge and an opportunity. Brands must leverage data-driven insights, understand consumer behavior, and employ innovative approaches to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

But what is a marketing campaign, and how can it help your business succeed? In this article, we’ll discuss the strategies and tactics that can unlock the potential of marketing campaigns, helping businesses navigate the complexities of the digital age and effectively reach their goals.

• What is a Marketing Campaign?
• Channels in Marketing Campaigns
• Key Components of Marketing Campaigns
• How to Create a Successful Marketing Campaign
• Measuring Marketing Campaigns with KPIs
• Compelling Marketing Campaign Examples
• Master the Art of Effective Marketing Campaigns

What is a Marketing Campaign?

A marketing campaign is the use of activities and tactics designed to promote a specific product, service, event, or brand over a defined period. The primary goal of a campaign is to achieve predetermined objectives, such as increasing brand awareness, driving sales, generating leads, or fostering customer engagement.
Key components of a marketing campaign include:

• Defining clear goals and objectives
• Identifying the target audience
• Developing a compelling message and creative assets
• Selecting appropriate marketing channels
• Determining the campaign’s timeline and budget

These components work together to create a unified and impactful marketing campaign strategy.

Channels in Marketing Campaigns

Many marketing campaigns are designed to engage audiences across channels and guide them through the customer marketing funnel. From the direct and personal touch of email marketing to the broader reach of public relations, each campaign type serves a unique purpose in driving brand visibility and customer interaction. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular types of marketing campaign strategies used in cross-channel marketing.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a direct approach that involves sending promotional messages, newsletters, or updates to a group of recipients via email. An email nurture campaign can be used to nurture leads and drive conversions. Email marketing is also commonly used in e-commerce as a cart abandonment campaign.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a digital marketing strategy that optimizes a website’s visibility in search engine results. By enhancing website content, structure, and relevance to specific keywords, SEO aims to increase organic traffic and improve search engine rankings.

Social Media

Social media campaigns leverage platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X , LinkedIn, and TikTok to connect with audiences, build brand awareness, and drive a customer engagement strategy. These campaigns involve creating and sharing content, running targeted ads, and fostering community interaction.

Direct Mail

Direct mail campaigns involve sending promotional materials, such as postcards, flyers, or catalogs, directly to a person’s mailbox. This traditional marketing approach can be highly effective when tailored to the preferences of the target demographic and combined with personalized messaging and compelling visuals.

Product Marketing

Product marketing campaigns focus on promoting and positioning a specific product or service. These campaigns aim to highlight the product’s unique features, benefits, and value propositions and address the target audience’s pain points and preferences.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

UGC campaigns involve encouraging and showcasing content created by users, such as customer reviews, testimonials, photos, or videos. Leveraging user-generated content fosters authenticity, builds trust, and creates a sense of community around a brand. Successful UGC campaigns inspire customers to share their experiences, contributing to a relatable brand narrative.

Public Relations

Public relations (PR) campaigns focus on managing and shaping a brand’s public image. PR professionals strategically communicate with the media, stakeholders, and the public to build positive relationships. These campaigns often involve press releases, media events, crisis management, and community engagement to establish and maintain a favorable perception of the brand.

Content Marketing

Content marketing revolves around creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage a target audience. Through blog posts, articles, videos, and other content formats, businesses aim to increase awareness, provide information, solve problems, and build trust.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing leverages individuals with a significant following on social media to promote a brand. These individuals have established credibility and trust with their audience. They collaborate with brands to create authentic and impactful campaigns, developing partnerships and content that resonates with their audience.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing involves partnering with individuals or other businesses, known as affiliates, who promote a brand and earn a commission for each sale or lead generated through their efforts. Affiliate marketing campaigns focus on building a network of affiliates, providing them with tracking links, and optimizing the program to drive sales for mutually beneficial results.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

PPC campaigns are online advertising strategies where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is engaged with. These marketing campaigns are associated with search engine advertising, social media platforms, and display networks and aim to drive targeted traffic to a website.

Key Components of Marketing Campaigns

Creating a successful marketing campaign involves a meticulous combination of key components. Each element contributes to the campaign’s effectiveness in achieving its goals. The key components you should know include:

• Business goals: Business goals are the overarching objectives a marketing campaign aims to achieve. They provide a sense of direction and purpose for the campaign, guiding all activities toward specific outcomes.
• Marketing channels: Marketing channels are the various platforms and mediums through which a campaign delivers its message to the target audience. The choice of channels depends on the nature of the campaign and the target audience.
• Campaign budget: The campaign budget outlines the financial resources allocated to execute and support marketing activities. It encompasses costs related to advertising, content creation, design, and other expenses.
• Target audience: The target audience is the specific group of individuals or entities that the campaign intends to reach and influence. Understanding the target audience’s demographics, behaviors, and preferences is essential for crafting messages and strategies that resonate.
• Content: Content is the substance of the marketing campaign, encompassing the written, visual, or interactive materials designed to convey the campaign’s message.
• Marketing plan: The marketing plan outlines the overall strategy, tactics, and timeline for the campaign. It provides a structured roadmap for executing marketing activities, ensuring that efforts are coordinated and aligned with the overarching goals.
• Team members and responsibilities: The team members and their respective responsibilities represent those executing the campaign. Each member plays a role in the campaign’s success, from marketing professionals to designers, content creators, and analysts.

How to Create a Successful Marketing Campaign

A marketing campaign requires careful planning to achieve desired outcomes. Here are steps to follow to learn how to create a marketing campaign:

1. Create a comprehensive plan: Develop a detailed marketing plan that outlines the strategy, tactics, and resources required for the campaign. This plan will serve as your roadmap, guiding all activities toward the campaign’s objectives.
2. Define your goals and purpose: Clearly articulate the campaign’s specific goals. Whether focused on increasing sales, brand awareness, or customer engagement, a well-defined purpose directs the entire initiative.
3. Determine what you’ll measure: Identify KPIs that align with your goals. Whether tracking website traffic, conversion rates, or engagement, determining what to measure ensures you can gauge the campaign’s performance.
4. Identify your target audience: Define your target audience by creating detailed buyer personas. Understanding demographics, preferences, and behaviors ensures your campaign resonates with those most likely to respond positively.
5. Choose your marketing channels: Select the most effective channels based on your audience and business goals. Whether leveraging digital platforms, social media, or traditional channels, the right channel enhances the campaign’s reach and impact.
6. Assemble your team: Build a dedicated team with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Effective collaboration among team members from various disciplines ensures seamless execution.
7. Set a campaign timeline: Establish a realistic timeline that includes milestones and deadlines for each campaign phase. A well-structured timeline keeps the team on track and ensures that activities are executed in a timely manner.
8. Create creative assets: Craft compelling and relevant creative assets, including written, visual, and interactive content. Creative assets should align with your campaign’s messaging and engage the audience.
9. Launch your campaign: Execute the campaign according to the plan and timeline. Monitor each component’s performance and ensure the campaign unfolds smoothly across all chosen channels.
10. Evaluate your results and optimize: After the campaign concludes, evaluate results against defined KPIs. Analyze what worked well and identify areas for improvement. Use these insights to optimize campaigns and refine strategies for continued success.

Measuring Marketing Campaigns with KPIs

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable metrics that help businesses assess the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. These metrics serve as measurable indicators of success, providing valuable insights into various aspects of a campaign’s performance. Essential cross-channel KPIs to know include:

• Conversion rate: Measures the percentage of your target audience who take an action, such as making a purchase.
• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked on a link out of the total who viewed the content.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): Determines the average cost to acquire a new customer.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV): Assesses the total revenue a business gains from a customer throughout their entire relationship.
• Return on ad spend (ROAS): Calculates the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising.
• Social media engagement: Measures likes, shares, comments, and other interactions on social media platforms, indicating the level of audience involvement and brand affinity.
• Website traffic: Tracks the number of website visitors.
• Open rate: Determines the success of email campaigns by measuring the percentage of opened messages.

Compelling Marketing Campaign Examples

Effective marketing campaigns are the backbone of successful businesses. Take a look at two standout examples of Iterable customers that showcase the transformative power of personalized automation and data integration in marketing campaigns.

1. Stanley Black & Decker

Stanley Black & Decker, a global leader in tools and outdoor equipment, wanted to automate customer journeys for four brands across eight markets with a small team. By adopting Iterable’s Catalog to streamline their processes, they collected all the right data, built a Catalog with Iterable to store and personalize messages at scale, and created dynamic email, SMS, and push notification campaigns.

With a mix of marketing campaigns and tactics, they achieved a 7% increase in clicks to e-commerce stores and enhanced personalization and engagement with fewer templates.

2. Glassdoor

Glassdoor, a well-known workplace transparency advocate, used Iterable and Snowflake to enhance user-driven communications. They wanted to attract contributors and job seekers while fostering transparency between employers and employees.

With user-centric data and a 360-degree customer view, they were able to personalize messages and optimize campaigns. As a result, they enhanced notification delivery visibility and improved user communications.

Master the Art of Effective Marketing Campaigns

Mastering the art of effective marketing campaigns is crucial for businesses that want to connect with their target audience and achieve tangible results. As technology evolves, businesses can harness the power of data-driven insights and innovative approaches to target audiences and create more personalized campaigns.

With Iterable’s innovative solutions in streamlining processes, businesses can improve their marketing campaigns and ensure seamless execution, enhanced personalization, and impactful engagement. Schedule a demo today to see how it works.

The post How to Unlock the Power of Marketing Campaigns appeared first on Iterable.

• Realizing Value: What Sets SMS Apart
  • • Improving Engagement Metrics
    • Adding a Communication Channel
  • Coordinating a Cross-Channel Strategy
• SMS at Every Lifecycle Stage

Nowadays, having an email program is non-negotiable for any brand, regardless of its size. On the other hand, only 39% of businesses use SMS (Short Messaging Service) marketing. Many marketers are interested in SMS (maybe that’s why you’re here), but launching this new communication channel can feel risky considering less than half of other companies have done so. Adding a new channel also requires effort obviously, but in this article, we’ll discuss why the juice is worth the squeeze.

Realizing Value: What Sets SMS Apart

So what’s so special about SMS marketing? After all, text messages are just a combination of words and images like any other message type. Next, we’ll go in-depth on a few of SMS’s differentiators.

Improving Engagement Metrics

As mentioned above, every single brand out there is fighting for attention within the consumer’s email inbox and most brands are sending out multiple emails per week (sometimes multiple per day). On average, only 19% of emails are lucky enough to even be opened, let alone drive the desired result of routing the consumer back to the website with an average CTR of 2.44%.

Meanwhile, 95% of text messages are read within the first three minutes of receipt! Conversion rates are also impressive. What’s more, according to G2, text messages have an average open rate of 98% and 33% of SMS recipients react to CTAs in SMS marketing messages, and 47% of them end up making a purchase.

Adding a Communication Channel

All that being said, the purpose of adding SMS is of course not to replace your email program, but to add an to the overall customer experience. Customers have unique preferences and may want to interact with marketing channels differently. If customers are subscribed to both SMS and email, for example, they’ll be exposed to your marketing content very regularly but in a way that’s individualized.

Email can be better suited for more lengthy, informative, and frequent communications. SMS, however, can be a perfect fit for shorter, more time-sensitive, messaging such as flash sales or low-stock alerts. And, if you want to ensure that customers see a specific, maybe more urgent message, SMS can make that happen. It’s worth repeating: 95% of text messages are read within the first three minutes of receipt.

Coordinating a Cross-Channel Strategy

We just covered when to use email and when to use SMS, but when both channels are used cohesively, rather than independently, it can create a very well-polished customer experience. Below are some examples of simple, intermediate, and advanced strategies to consider:

• Simple: Setting frequency caps to ensure both channels don’t fatigue the customer
• Intermediate: Collecting event data to segment customers based on the channel they engage with most
• Advanced: Experimenting with multi-step journeys (like a welcome series, for example) and combining data from both channels to find the optimal channel mix, message timing, etc.

Iterable customer, Madison Reed, for example, wanted to revamp their reactivation journey that would trigger after a missed order. Through much experimentation, they found optimal results when an email was sent first, then direct mail, and finally an SMS nudge.

SMS Marketing is a Two-Way Street

The final differentiator for SMS is the ability to collect customer feedback effectively and quickly. A common example is the option to respond with a single number or letter that allows the brand to gather zero-party preferences. While much more complex, some organizations even have full two-way conversations with customers via SMS for functions like customer service. Whatever the use case, those high open and engagement rates come in handy yet again and unlock an extremely swift form of zero-party data collection.

Link shortening and click tracking are also important features to be aware of when it comes to collecting zero-party data from your customers. These features in tandem allow you to automatically shorten URLs contained in SMS messages and collect additional engagement metrics around how users are engaging with your SMS campaigns. Visibility into these metrics will then allow you to make data-driven adjustments to your SMS and cross-channel marketing strategy.

SMS at Every Lifecycle Stage

First, let’s get to the good stuff and list out the potential revenue streams and business outcomes that would motivate a marketer to introduce SMS as a new channel. Here we break the customer lifecycle up into four primary stages: onboard, grow, retain, and winback.

Onboard

For your newest SMS subscribers, the goals of this stage are to drive the initial purchase and also set the foundation for a high customer lifetime value (LTV). Immediately demonstrating the value of being an SMS subscriber will increase the likelihood of customers staying subscribed long-term. Offering a first purchase incentive—”sign up for SMS to receive 20% off,” for example—is probably the most common onboarding campaign, but also consider asking a multiple choice question to better tailor future messages.

Grow

Communicating via an additional channel can inherently increase customer engagement and share of voice, but for many companies, a more tangible goal in this stage is driving purchase frequency. By now you may be able to increase engagement by incorporating customer preferences such as preferred send time or relevant products. Some campaign types to consider are flash sales, new product launches, or holding easy-to-enter contests.

Retain

Your most loyal and long-standing customers deserve a little bit of special treatment. Maintaining long-term customer satisfaction is key to a high LTV and ensuring your SMS subscribers stay subscribed. While simple, transactional and reminder texts can be a high-value add for customers. (Sending out exclusive promo codes for loyalty members or SMS subscribers doesn’t hurt either.)

Winback

SMS can be an effective tool for recapturing a customer’s attention, especially if they’ve stopped engaging with other channels. The goal here is to reactivate your idle customer base with your most attention-grabbing campaign type. Examples include low-stock alerts on browsed items or birthday/milestone messages.

The Value of SMS

Despite all of the points stated above, SMS still remains a largely untapped resource.
There is an opportunity to differentiate your marketing strategy with a channel that has a proven track record and countless substantiating data points. SMS undeniably stands out based on open, click-through, and conversion rates. Communicating via a new channel will inherently increase engagement with those customers, but creating a cohesive cross-channel strategy will take it to the next level.

The unique ability of SMS to gather feedback can then help you continuously iterate on your strategy to create and incorporate each customer’s preferences. There are so many ways to get creative when adding SMS and unlock value throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

To learn more about adding SMS to your cross-channel marketing strategy, reach out to your CSM or schedule an Iterable demo today.

The post The Value of Adding SMS as a Marketing Channel appeared first on Iterable.

It can feel deflating to a marketer when the answer to “why” isn’t easily identifiable. It can feel like we are just sending emails into a dark hole and whatever the omniscient Mailbox Providers respond with, we just have to accept. 

What makes the “why” questions particularly difficult to answer is when senders are not able to identify the “what.” What are mailbox providers looking at when they are reviewing inbound messages? What is email reputation and what aspects of a sender are applied to that reputation? What are the positive and negative metrics that Mailbox Providers give back to senders to help them understand their performance? 

The Activate Deliverability Workshops

Fear not! The Iterable Deliverability Team wants to help you answer the “whys” and the “whats” at our upcoming Activate Summit Workshops. Iterable’s own Senior Email Deliverability Consultant, Rob Schneider, will be hosting email deliverability workshops. Rob has over a decade of experience in the compliance, anti-abuse, and deliverability worlds at both the agency and email service provider (ESP) level. He has supported some of the largest worldwide brands and takes a data driven approach in driving strategic recommendations. Rob is also an active member of the Messaging Malware Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3aawg). 

During these deliverability workshops, Rob will be touching on two very core areas of email deliverability. First, the foundations of sender email reputation, including what it is, and how it’s applied from the mailbox providers to the sender. Rob will address what the positive and negative signals senders receive from mailbox providers, how to read them, and how to troubleshoot from those negative signals. The second topic will relate to recipient list hygiene management and smart ways to “sunset” email recipients who senders need to part ways with. 

If you’re planning to attend a deliverability workshop, be prepared to interact and learn from other email marketing professionals and how they tackle these core issues. There will be time for group exercises and discussions, to give attendees time to learn from one another. Don’t miss out on getting back to the basics of email deliverability and what matters within the industry. See you there! 

We’re looking forward to seeing you at Activate! Be sure to register to save your spot. 

The post A Preview of the Activate Summit Deliverability Workshops appeared first on Iterable.

Instead, send time optimization, as a concept, uses data science and artificial intelligence to automatically find the ideal time to send emails or notifications to each customer. By taking into account individual behaviors, such as usage patterns and open times, the tool can send a message when contacts are most likely to be looking at their inbox or glancing at their phone. That’s a powerful and effective way to bolster the odds of engagement.

How Does Iterable’s Send Time Optimization (STO) Work?

Iterable’s Send Time Optimization (STO) feature—part of Iterable’s AI Suite—relies on a target market’s engagement data. As every marketer knows, there’s no shortage of data when it comes to crafting and sending email campaigns. But, analyzing that data to produce actionable insights requires machine learning—unless you want to do it manually. Behind the scenes, STO uses real-time AI to analyze individual behaviors, like usage patterns and open times. The tool then predicts an optimal time to send a marketing message so that the message reaches the individual at a time they are most likely to see and engage with it.

The more data an AI tool has about an individual, the more refined that timing can become. STO aggregates data across a customer’s entire lifecycle. That means optimized send times aren’t set in stone. As an individual’s behavior shifts over time, the real-time AI tool captures and integrates that new data into the overall analysis. More recent data is more heavily weighted than historical data.

Engagement is the overarching goal when it comes to marketing communications and when to send them. However, specific metrics vary by platform. For email campaigns, Send Time Optimization tries to maximize two metrics: the open rate (calculated by comparing the unique opens or clicks to the total number of emails delivered) and the click rate (calculated by comparing the unique email clicks to the total emails delivered). For push notification campaigns, STO focuses on maximizing the open rate metric (calculated by comparing the unique pushes opened to the total pushes delivered).

Benefits of Send Time Optimization

Think of STO as the next evolution of marketing. In the early days of email marketing, for example, sending communications was a fairly manual process, and timing was based on a best guess. As email marketing matured, marketers pushed past generic email rules—like aiming for midweek or mid-morning messages—to create segmented lists. They would then target those segments by time zones or through strategies like A/B testing to vary email delivery and increase engagement.

STO takes that refinement even further. For example, two people on a segmented marketing list may share an incredible amount of overlap—from demographics to buyer’s journeys, engagement levels to brand loyalty—and still have dramatically different behaviors in terms of when they engage with their marketing communications. Send Time Optimization takes the guesswork out of timing marketing communications by using real data and powerful machine learning to target every customer as individuals.

While STO doesn’t guarantee higher engagement, it can increase the likelihood that messages will be sent and received at times when individuals are most likely to open and engage with those marketing messages. And there’s no question that reaching individuals when they’re most receptive to messages is a powerful differentiator in the world of marketing.

Send Time Optimization as Part of a Cross-Channel Campaign

Cross-channel marketing is all about connecting with customers across a cohesive customer journey—and sustaining that brand engagement as they move from passing contact to brand loyalist. Send time optimization can help drive home those goals, with minimal marketing effort.

How? Well, personalization is paramount when sending marketing communications. But that doesn’t only mean the marketing content should be tailored to the recipient. By also personalizing exactly when a message is sent to the individual, it’s possible to foster more (and more meaningful) connections between your brand and the customer. Rather than get lost in the slew of messages, a marketer can reach the top of someone’s inbox exactly when they’re most likely to be opening up their email. And push notifications can shift from generic, blasted sends to a more personalized delivery cadence that feels more useful and relevant. It can even help an individual feel seen and understood by the brand.

Given the number of marketing channels available, reaching an individual on the right channel and at the right time can be challenging. By leveraging the power of AI, Iterable’s Send Time Optimization makes it that much easier for marketers to personalize delivery and, ultimately, engage the people they’re trying to reach.

If you’re interested in learning more about STO, reach out to your CSM or schedule a demo today.

The post What is Send Time Optimization? appeared first on Iterable.

An example of a welcome journey built in Iterable Studio. Source: Studio Support.

A Checklist for QAing Journeys

As much as I wish I could build a new journey every day, launching a new one happens just infrequently enough that I have to re-collect my processes every time to make sure I’ve properly reviewed everything. So to do “Future Jeanette” and my colleagues a favor—and to be able to confidently hit that little green “publish” button—I pulled together this checklist template to help QA a journey before it goes live.

Download the full PDF template before you QA your next Journey.

Journey Details

We have a QA template we use that we copy, fill out, and review for each item (in this case, journeys). At the top, we have all the key info about the journey, including:

• Journey link and name (so you know you’re all looking at the same thing!)
• Key details about how it works, such as audience and trigger, and when you plan to have it start running
• Link to any docs you used for content planning as a reference point

Triggers

Your trigger is what you use to make sure the right users enter your journey at the right time. Some key elements to consider:

• Did you test the trigger? How did you test it?
• Maximum entries settings
• Simultaneous entry settings
• Did you check the parameters on the trigger? (Including within a scheduled list, if that’s the type of trigger you’re using)
• End date sendings (or set to never if you don’t want it to end)

Journey Operations

• Are all your tiles connected?
• Have you set your exit rules to correctly manage your audience?
• Have you included any suppression lists in either (or both!) the trigger and/or as an exit rule?

Messages

• Are all messages from the content source-of-truth accounted for?
• Have you QAed them according to whatever your QA process is for each message?
• Does the message type fit the audience entering your journey?
• Have you turned on conversion tracking, Send Time Optimization (STO), and quiet hours where it makes sense to do so?

The Checklist, Explained

The list speaks for itself (and everyone will have different things they add or subtract over time), but there are certain items on the template I think it’s important to emphasize or explain further.

Reviewing the Journey

We make a point of having a person that’s not the builder review the journey, but recognize that option is not always available. If you’re a team of one, I’d suggest adding a step where you verbally walk through each piece of the journey for a friend, your pet, or another captive audience member.

Keeping Notes

Labeling is key, as is our Notes feature. I often use one note to keep an abridged change log for the journey, and notes within specific tiles carry info about everything from quirks of the segmentation in a Yes/No tile, to ideas we’d like to test in a future email. 

Example of a note that can be attached to a Tile within Iterable Studio.

With the Labels and other info provided in each tile, whoever is serving as the pre-launch QA reviewer should be able to understand your journey without you needing to verbally tell them exactly what each tile is doing. (Think of Notes and Labels as a favor to Future You. With them, you won’t have to open each and every tile looking for the one Yes/No segment to which you need to make a teensy adjustment.)

Considering Individual Campaigns

The message-related items in this checklist are focused on what you can manipulate on the journey level, without opening the campaign. Our email QA process is separate from this, but I cannot emphasize enough that each message (whether it’s email or another channel) should also go through a rigorous process that includes sending a proof to multiple people, who will look at it on multiple devices, and click all the links.

Come Back for Seconds

It’s easy to forget this invisible checklist item. Make sure you set time to go back and review your journey. This is important so you can check on how it’s performing and also see if there’s anyone going somewhere they shouldn’t. The first time you check up on it should be as soon as possible after you expect the first users to enter. 

I can’t speak to our entire customer base, but personally I think the most common mistake I’ve made with journeys is accidentally blocking everyone from entering the journey!

Adding Experimentation

The lack of mention of experiments in this checklist is deliberate. You are free to choose your own adventure, but when launching something new, I prefer to keep it clean of experiments. That way, if something isn’t happening quite as expected, I’ll have an easier time troubleshooting without the additional “noise” of an experiment. The initial goal of journey building is to establish a performance baseline to help measure success against.

If you’re nervous about launching a journey, however, you can always add an A/B split tile just after the trigger, and adjust the percentage feeding into the actual journey before you turn it on. 

Go one extra step to add a “Subscribe to List” tile to capture whoever doesn’t enter the rest of the journey, and now you’ve got a holdout group you can track performance against to show your journey’s impact!

In the journey below, you can see I’ve adjusted the A/B split tile so that only 10% of the audience will be fed into the actual journey. The remaining 90% is tracked by getting added to a list. As you can see, this lowers the risk of launch while also providing a method for us to see the lift this journey can create with your audience. I’ve also left a clear note as to when the split tile should be removed so that the full audience can go through the entire journey.

Journey showing A/B split tile with 10% of the audience being fed into the actual journey.

Get Out of Your Own Way

Don’t let the perfect journey in your head prevent you from launching the good-enough journey in your project. Sure, maybe it would be better if you could get a different event built, or maybe you want to do fancier emails than you have right now. But if you have something that works, get it going so you can gather more info while you fine-tune…and, dare I say, iterate.

To learn more about Iterable Studio, reach out to your CSM. Or, if you’re not yet an Iterable user, schedule a custom demo today.

The post Creating an Iterable Journey Pre-Flight Checklist appeared first on Iterable.

The Expies recognize and celebrate Iterable customers and partners who are leveraging Iterable to deliver joyful experiences with harmonized, individualized, and dynamic communications at scale.

Like we’ve said before, “businesses often strive to sell. Make sales, close deals, generate leads—you know the drill. But making sales would be close to impossible without the support from the marketers behind the scenes. If sales are the fire, marketing is the coal, fueling success.

The Expies celebrate those marketers and marketing teams that go above and beyond. They ignite the flame of inspiration and spark thoughtful, innovative ways to drive growth and build customer relationships.”

The Iterable Expie Awards

The Expies were designed to showcase customers and partners that leverage Iterable to power world-class communication. From extraordinary customer experiences to authentic, emotional connections, Expie Award nominees and winners raise the bar for marketers all over the world.

We received countless applications for the 2024 Iterable Expie Awards, but could only choose a select few as our finalists. They’re the best of the best. The fuel behind the fire.

The 2024 Expie Award Finalists

The Iterable Expie award finalist list includes individuals and brands from around the world: Guild, Peet’s Coffee, Dotdash Meredith, PGA of America, Rover, Fender, Redbubble, Wolt, Redfin, Booksy, IPSY, Care.com.

This year we’re also introducing our Next-Gen Innovators Award, which is given to marketers who are embracing change, pushing boundaries, and turning ideas into impactful realities. With multiple winners, we aren’t announcing finalists ahead of time, but stay tuned!

Best AI-Powered Customer Experience

AI is making the lives of marketers not only easier but more efficient. Gone are the days of being worried about being replaced by robots. Top marketers are embracing the benefits Iterable’s AI Suite has to offer. The Best AI-Powered Customer Experience award recognizes those marketers who have grabbed AI by the horns and used tools like Iterable’s Brand Affinity , Send Time Optimization (STO), Copy Assist, and more—throughout the entire customer journey.

Most Inspiring Switch to Iterable

Have you switched to Iterable from another platform in the past year? This award celebrates the team that embraced adaptation, revision, and change by making the switch to Iterable. This team hit the ground running and has a success story that will inspire and excite others looking to do the same.

Best Use of Cross-Channel Marketing

Consumer messaging is, more often than not, inconsistent across channels. Many consumers receive a fragmented experience as they engage with a brand across multiple channels. That’s what makes individualization and cross-channel communication essential in today’s market.

The Best Use of Cross-Channel Marketing award celebrates Iterable customers who are making every interaction part of a holistic cross-channel experience by leveraging multiple channels throughout the customer journey, such as SMS, push, in-app, embedded messaging, and more, to enhance their brand’s reach and engagement.

Most Individualized Customer Experience

Marketers today have access to more data than ever before but also have to stand out amidst hundreds of messages for each consumer every day.

The Most Individualized Customer Experience award celebrates the brands that are able to activate their data in unique ways that drive individualized experiences for customers at scale.

Winners Coming Soon…

The anticipation is killing us! If you’re feeling the same way, don’t fret—we’ll be announcing the winners of the Iterable Expies at our signature conference, Activate Summit, and, with that, the winners of our Next-Gen Innovators Award and partner awards: Agency Partner of the Year and Technology Partner of the Year.

We hope this lights a fire under you and your team to get out there and continue executing some world-class marketing strategies.

If you want to see who wins and you’re looking for even more marketing inspiration, be sure to register for Activate Summit, coming to you live in San Jose, April 30-May 2.

The post Announcing the 2024 Iterable Expies Finalists appeared first on Iterable.

With automation, marketers can set up sequences of emails triggered by specific actions subscribers take or time intervals, allowing for targeted and timely engagement with their audience. Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, mastering email marketing automation can significantly enhance your marketing efforts and increase your return on investment (ROI).

This article will discuss the various aspects of email marketing automation, how to use it, its benefits, and the steps for building your own automation. Keep reading to learn more about email automation and how to set up a workflow.

• What is Email Marketing Automation?
• How to Use Automation in Email Marketing
• What Are the Benefits of Email Automation?
• How to Build Automated Email Campaigns
• Email Marketing Automation Tips
• Revolutionize Your Email Marketing

What is Email Marketing Automation?

Email marketing automation involves the automated delivery of tailored and individualized emails to subscribers or customers triggered by predefined actions, events, or timing parameters.

Automated email marketing allows marketers to create dynamic and highly relevant campaigns that engage recipients at the right moment with the right content, enhancing the customer experience, driving conversions, and improving the effectiveness of their email marketing.

Simply put, email marketing automation allows marketers to set up sequences of emails that are automatically sent to subscribers based on specific criteria or user interactions. These criteria can include signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, abandoning a shopping cart, clicking on a particular link, and more.

How to Use Automation in Email Marketing

So, what can you do with email marketing automation? Here are several ways you can use it in your marketing strategy:

• Abandoned cart reminders: Abandoned cart emails are triggered when customers add items to their cart but fail to complete the purchase. Automation allows you to send timely reminders to encourage them to return and complete their transaction. These dynamic emails often include details of the items left in the cart, compelling visuals, and a clear call-to-action (CTA) to prompt the customer to revisit the website and finalize their purchase.
• Re-engagement campaigns: Over time, subscribers may become disengaged or inactive. Re-engagement campaigns can help rekindle their interest and bring them back into the fold. Automated emails may offer incentives, exclusive promotions, or valuable content to reignite their interest and encourage them to interact with your brand again after a set period of no or little interaction.
• Onboarding workflows: Onboarding workflows are automated communications that introduce new subscribers to your business, set expectations, and guide them through onboarding. Automated emails, for example, could be triggered when someone subscribes to your email list.
• Drip campaigns: Drip campaigns can use automated emails to nurture leads, guiding them through the sales funnel over time. By segmenting your audience based on their interests, behaviors, or demographics, you can use automation to deliver targeted content and offers at each stage of their journey.

What are the Benefits of Email Automation?

While one-off promotional emails can be effective at delivering specific messages or offers to your audience, email automation offers several distinct advantages. By automating your email marketing efforts, you can achieve greater efficiency, consistency, and personalization in your marketing strategy. Here’s a breakdown of some key advantages of automating emails:

• Increase efficiency: Automation eliminates manual tasks associated with email marketing, such as individually crafting and sending emails, managing subscriber lists, and tracking campaign performance. Automating these repetitive processes can save time, reduce workload, and focus your efforts on more strategic activities.
• Enhance customer experiences: Automation allows for highly targeted and personalized communication with subscribers, delivering content and promotions based on data like their interests, behaviors, and preferences. By sending timely and tailored emails, you can provide a more engaging and seamless experience, fostering stronger customer relationships.
• Drive engagement: You can trigger automated emails based on specific subscriber actions or events, such as website visits, purchases, or form submissions. By delivering relevant content at the right moment, automation helps keep subscribers engaged with your brand, encouraging them to take the desired actions.
• Minimize errors: Automation reduces the risk of human error associated with manual email marketing processes, such as typos, incorrect segmentation, or missed deadlines. With predefined workflows and automated quality checks, you can ensure emails are sent accurately and consistently.
• Optimize resource management: By automating routine tasks and workflows, you can make better use of your resources, including time and budget. Email marketing automation allows you to achieve more with less to scale your marketing efforts without significantly increasing overhead costs or administrative burdens.

How to Build Automated Email Campaigns

Building automated campaigns requires you to have email marketing automation software that lets you create workflows, segment your audience, personalize content, and schedule emails.. Once you’re ready to begin, here’s how to build an automated email campaign:

1. Establish the goals of your campaign: Clearly define the objectives you want to achieve with your automated email campaign. Whether it’s increasing sales, nurturing leads, driving website traffic, or improving customer retention, having specific goals will guide your email marketing strategy.
2. Choose the right email automation software: Select an email automation platform that aligns with your needs, budget, and technical requirements. Look for features like workflow automation, audience segmentation capabilities, testing, analytics, and integration with other tools or platforms.
3. Segment your email list: Separate your email list into segments based on criteria such as demographics, behaviors, purchase history, or engagement levels. Segmentation lets you deliver more targeted and personalized content to different groups of subscribers, increasing relevance and effectiveness.
4. Build your workflows: Map out the customer journey and create automated workflows that guide subscribers through various stages of the campaign. Define triggers and actions that will initiate each email sequence, such as sign-ups, purchases, or specific interactions with your website or content.
5. Create your content: Develop compelling dynamic content for each email in your automated campaign. Tailor your messaging to resonate with your target audience’s needs, interests, and preferences. Use persuasive copywriting, eye-catching visuals, and clear CTAs to drive engagement and conversions.
6. Test and send: Conduct thorough testing before launching your automated email campaigns to ensure everything works as intended. Test for email rendering across different devices and email clients, check for broken links and formatting issues, and review the automation workflow for any errors or gaps. You can also use seed testing to ensure your email reaches subscribers’ inboxes. Once confident in your campaign setup, you can schedule or activate your automated emails.

Email Marketing Automation Tips

While email automation offers immense potential for driving engagement and conversions, its effectiveness depends on your strategic implementation of best practices. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a newcomer, using these tips can help you through the process of setting up your email marketing automation campaigns:

• Optimize your mobile content: With most email opens now happening on smartphones, it’s crucial to ensure that your emails are optimized for mobile. Your emails should look good and be easily read on smartphones and tablets. Consider factors like font size, image size, and button placement.
• Refine with A/B testing: A/B testing lets you compare two versions of an email to see which one performs better. You can test elements like subject lines, sender names, email copy, CTAs, or design elements to determine what resonates best with your audience.
• Track your results: Tracking and analyzing metrics is the only way to know how well your emails performed. Keep a close eye on email marketing KPIs like open rates, click-through rates, conversions, deliverability metrics, and unsubscribe rates to measure campaign performance.
• Follow all email marketing laws: Compliance with email marketing laws and regulations is non-negotiable. Make sure you’re familiar with and adhere to laws such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM. This means getting explicit consent from subscribers, providing clear opt-out mechanisms, including your physical address in emails, and honoring unsubscribe requests.

Revolutionize Your Email Marketing

With the right tools and best practices, you can use email marketing automation to streamline communication efforts, nurture leads, and drive conversions at scale. By embracing automation, you can deliver timely, personalized messages that speak to your audience, maximizing engagement.

Iterable is a cross-channel marketing platform with email marketing automation that empowers marketers to create, deploy, and optimize automated campaigns. With workflow automation, advanced segmentation capabilities, and robust analytics, Iterable provides everything you need to build and execute successful email—and cross-channel—campaigns.

To learn more about how Iterable can help you execute email marketing automation, schedule a demo today.

The post Email Marketing Automation: How to Automate Emails Like a Pro appeared first on Iterable.

Best Marketing & Digital Advertising Software Products

According to G2, “To qualify for the best Marketing Digital Advertising software list, products must be listed under one or more of the Marketing or Digital Advertising software categories.

Businesses use marketing and digital ad software to automate marketing processes, manage marketing and advertising campaigns, and measure marketing performance. These software solutions can be used to generate leads, promote products and services, manage customer data, improve customer experiences, and analyze marketing effectiveness.”

Marketing Automation by Iterable

Because the award is Best Software by Function, G2 assigns each marketing and digital advertising software a “main category.” Iterable falls under the Marketing Automation category.

G2 defines Marketing Automation software as a product that “automates marketing actions or tasks, streamlines marketing workflows, and measures the outcomes of marketing campaigns. These tools provide a central marketing database for all marketing information and interactions, helping marketers create segmented, personalized and timely marketing experiences for customers or prospects.”

With Iterable’s AI Suite, marketers can combine artificial intelligence and marketing automation to make customer communication not only easy, but impactful. With features like Send Time Optimization (STO), Channel Optimization, Frequency Optimization (beta), Copy Assist, Brand Affinity, and more, Iterable can take the manual guesswork out of sending the right marketing messages at the right time. Here’s how.

• Send Time Optimization (STO): “Send Time Optimization (STO) is an Iterable AI feature that helps send email and push notifications when your contacts are most likely to engage with them. For each campaign recipient, STO analyzes historical engagement behavior and selects an optimal, per-person send time.”
• Channel Optimization: “When a user arrives in a Channel Optimization send tile in a journey, Iterable analyzes their historical data and sends the message to the channel it determines they’re most likely to engage with. Data is analyzed on a weekly basis to account for changes in channel preference.”
• Frequency Optimization (beta): “This feature uses Iterable AI to maximize engagement by adjusting how many email, SMS, and/or push notifications each user receives in a given period of time, based on their historical engagement data. For more information about beta testing this feature, talk to your Iterable customer success manager.”
• Copy Assist: This “Iterable AI feature that enhances and expedites the process of writing copy for your campaigns. When you’re creating a campaign or template, enter text as you always do, and Copy Assist generates alternative suggestions for you to consider.”
• Brand Affinity: “Brand Affinity uses Iterable AI to label your users based on their historical level of engagement with your brand. You can use these labels in segmentation, campaigns, journeys, data feeds, and Catalog collections to send personalized, relevant messages to your customers.”

In addition to the AI Suite, Iterable’s key features support cross-channel automation. Take Iterable Studio, for example. This journey-building tool allows marketers to create an automated user journey via an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.

This is an example of a welcome sequence that not only uses tilesets, but AI as well.

This tool can be used to automate marketing messages across various channels, at certain times, to specific segments. You can even perform automated A/B tests within Studio to maximize engagement. It’s no wonder Iterable fits into G2’s Marketing Automation category.

Why Iterable Fits the Bill

G2 actually has a list of features for a software to be considered as a Marketing Automation software, making it even clearer why Iterable fits the bill. To qualify for inclusion in the Marketing Automation category, a product must, among other factors:

• Automate two or more of the following: email, social media, SMS, and digital ads
• Provide advanced email marketing capabilities including A/B testing, spam filter testing, scheduling, segmentation, and detailed performance reporting
• Act as a central marketing database for marketing information and interactions
• Allow dynamic segmentation of marketing campaign targets
• Contact targets across multiple channels after specific actions, triggers, or periods of time
• Provide analytics and reports that track the entire lifecycle of a campaign, including ties to revenue and/or campaign ROI

In addition, these following metrics affect a company’s Satisfaction rating:

• Customer satisfaction with end user-focused product attributes based on user reviews
• Popularity and statistical significance based on the number of reviews received by G2
• Quality of reviews received (reviews that are more thoroughly completed will be weighted more heavily)
• Age of reviews (more-recent reviews provide relevant and up-to-date information that is reflective of the current state of a product)
• Customers’ satisfaction with administration-specific product attributes based on user reviews
• Overall customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score® (NPS) based on ratings by G2 users

What Our Customers Say About Us

“I love the user friendly interface, especially for someone who is coming more from the marketing side, without a ton of technical experience. The flows and journeys are easy to build and the capabilities are very advanced. In addition, I appreciate that Iterable is always looking to improve their product and has a future-oriented mindset, introducing features such as their AI Suite and Copy Assist, which can help automate more of the operational work & inspire new ideas. Not least, our CSM is very involved & helpful with our questions & ideas, so the support is appreciated.”

– Sanda Z. (Mid-Market 51-1000 emp.)

“Innovative staying ahead of the curve in the tech space. One of the best workflow building and segmentation tool.”

– Kaylyn K. (Small-Business 50 or fewer emp.)

“I am newer to Iterable (~7 mos), and have previously used competitors including Mailchimp, Braze, and Hubspot. So far, some key pro’s to using Iterable include the user friendly interface and a responsive customer support team.”

– Julia A. Mid-Market 51-1000 emp.)

Thank you to our amazing customers for their partnership in maintaining Iterable as one of the best Best Marketing & Digital Advertising Products on the market!

Looking to learn more about Iterable? Schedule a demo today.

The post Iterable Named a 2024 Best Software by G2 appeared first on Iterable.

This single-channel strategy might have worked in a simpler era, but today’s customers are digital nomads, seamlessly transitioning between platforms and devices. They adopt new channels and can even abandon old, tried-and-true channels when they no longer benefit from them.

Additionally, when customers see disparate, disconnected messages on different channels from a single brand, it can feel like those messages are coming from different companies altogether. In modern marketing, truly reaching and resonating with customers requires a holistic strategy that transcends the limitations of a single touchpoint. Consistent messaging needs to move across marketing channels—a.k.a. cross-channel marketing.

Why Cross-Channel Marketing is Essential

Cross-channel marketing isn’t about blasting generic messages across multiple platforms. It’s about orchestrating a personalized, unified customer experience, ensuring consistent branding and messaging across all touchpoints. Cross-channel marketing not only benefits the customer, it benefits your brand too.

Reach Customers Where They Are

Single channel campaigns can miss some customers entirely if that particular channel is not the one that customers are actively using. By reaching them on their preferred platforms with relevant messages, cross-channel marketing allows for a much higher likelihood of those messages to be seen and interacted with.

Tip: Marketing platforms that are driven by historical data and AI can allow marketers to easily set up campaigns that automatically leverage channels that customers interact with most. Best-practice marketing organizations will ensure that their martech platforms can do this with ease.

Boost Engagement & Conversions

Imagine a customer browsing a product on your website. With cross-channel marketing, you might retarget them with a social media ad featuring the product they viewed, followed by a personalized email featuring that product and then, if they still haven’t interacted with your messaging, an SMS or push notification with a discount code.

This creates a cohesive experience that resonates with the customer and increases the chance of conversion. By tailoring communication to each channel and leveraging customer data for personalization, cross-channel marketing guides customers seamlessly through the buying journey, leading to significant improvements in engagement and conversion rates.

Tip: Map out each stage of the buyer’s journey and create templated content blocks for each stage and channel, leaving space for dynamic content snippets that contain personalized content for things like products viewed, sale prices and even promotion dates.

Build Stronger Customer Relationships

Consistency across touchpoints fosters trust and loyalty—the bedrock of any strong customer relationship. A single, impersonal message might be easily lost or dismissed, but a well-coordinated cross-channel campaign can create a lasting connection with your customers.

Cross-channel marketing allows you to deliver relevant content and offers at each stage of the buying journey. This can be easily done with best-in-class marketing platforms that leverage historical data on customer interactions to determine segments, channels, content and send times. This personalized approach shows the customer you care about their individual journey, rather than just a quick sale. This builds trust and fosters a sense of loyalty that goes beyond a single transaction.

Tip: In addition to where they are, think about when a customer is more likely to engage. Historical data should help inform when each customer is most active and knowing this, in addition to their preferred channel, can demonstrate that you really listen to your customers.

Fueling Cross-Channel Marketing Campaigns with Customer Data

If there’s one thing to take away from this post so far it’s that effective cross-channel marketing cannot exist without a strong foundation of quality customer data. This data allows you to personalize communication, tailor content to specific channels, and ultimately, create a seamless, individualized customer experience. Below are some key steps to developing a cross-channel marketing strategy built on customer data.

1. Create a Unified Customer View

The key is to establish a unified customer view. This is your single source of truth for customer profile and interaction data. This can be created within a traditional CDP (customer data platform) or data warehouse. This platform will be able to gather or ingest customer information from all touchpoints—website visits, social media interactions, email clicks, purchase history, etc.—and create a holistic customer profile.

For companies using a data warehouse, the approach might involve creating a central repository within the data warehouse that compiles customer data from various sources. This ensures a comprehensive understanding of each individual, enabling personalization across channels.

2. Segment Your Data

As we discussed in our recent blog post, Making Better Customer Segments and Why it Matters, effective segmentation goes beyond basic demographics and emphasizes building comprehensive customer profiles based on data points like purchase history, product preferences, message interactions, website visits, etc. to create highly targeted groups for personalized messaging.

Experienced cross channel marketing professionals, armed with modern platforms, leverage layers of segmentation which allow them to start with broad audiences—think, all customers who have opted in to marketing emails—and then whittle those groups down to smaller and smaller segments with layered segments for highly personalized messages. And the best part is that these layers can be reused repeatedly for future campaigns—small and large, specific and broad.

3. Automate Marketing Tasks

Choose a cross-channel marketing platform that integrates with your chosen data source and allows you to streamline the campaign creation process through AI-driven automation. Some notable Iterable examples are:

• Predictive Goals: An AI-driven feature that analyzes user behavior and predicts which users are most likely to perform certain actions based on business goals
• Copy Assist: which helps marketers generate copy for messages
• Send Time Optimization (STO): Another AI-driven feature that leverages customer interaction data to send messages at the most optimal time

Automating as much of the campaign creation process as possible, while still sending customers highly personalized, relevant campaigns, is a win for both the marketers who are being asked to do more with less and the customers who feel more connected to brands.

4. Track Cross-Channel Analytics

Lastly, track and analyze customer behavior across all channels by leveraging the analytics insights tools found within your cross-channel marketing platform. Firstly, with these insights you can keep a finger on the pulse of your active campaigns so that you can identify any potential issues before they become real problems.

Secondly, you’ll use them to monitor how well specific channels are performing as well as the content being leveraged within those channels. This will help you optimize where needed for active campaigns and inform your strategy for future campaigns. By continuously analyzing your data, you can refine your cross-channel strategy and create even more seamless customer journeys.

Remember, high-quality customer data is the fuel that drives a successful cross-channel marketing campaign. By implementing these steps, you can create a unified experience for your customers, regardless of the touchpoint, and ultimately achieve your marketing goals.

Build Connections Between Channels and With Customers

In the competitive world of modern marketing, a fragmented approach leaves your brand adrift in a sea of noise. Cross-channel marketing empowers you to break free from these limitations. By orchestrating a unified customer journey across all touchpoints, you can transform fleeting interactions into lasting customer relationships and ultimately, drive sustainable business growth.

To learn more about how Iterable can help you automate and optimize your cross-channel marketing campaigns, schedule a custom demo today.

The post Why Cross-Channel Marketing is Essential for Modern Businesses appeared first on Iterable.

In case you missed it, in previous posts, we covered:

• What marketers really think about generative AI
• How AI automation and optimization impacts today’s marketers
• Why explainability and optionality are the foundation and future of all AI marketing

We’re now concluding this series with an explainer on predictive AI. Once we reveal the current state of predictive AI, we’ll share a marketing success story and how to set up your marketing campaigns for success using Iterable’s Predictive Goals.

Let’s get started.

Want even more stats about AI marketing? Head to Ad Age now to download the full study.

What is Predictive AI?

Ad Age explains that marketers have been using artificial intelligence—despite its recent hype— for predictive analytics and personalized communications for many years. It defines predictive AI as using, “machine learning-based AI models [to] churn out customer insights and help marketers predict audiences and build segments for digital campaigns.”

When asked which type of AI would make marketers’ jobs easier, survey respondents listed predictive in the top four:

• Optimization (e.g. automatically recommending improvements): 57%
• Automation (e.g. machines automatically do tasks without intervention): 53%
• Predictive (e.g. segment most likely to convert): 50%
• Generative (e.g. content creation): 49%

That said, these categories aren’t mutually exclusive, and indeed, Ad Age mentions the benefits of using them in tandem:

“When combined with predictive analytics, AI-driven automation features can help marketers strengthen customer relationships, improve brand performance and meet their KPIs in today’s fast-moving marketplace.”

To demonstrate how predictive AI can positively impact your marketing campaigns, let’s walk through a case study of the technology-powered real estate brokerage, Redfin.

How Predictive AI Works

Iterable’s Predictive Goals feature analyzes your historical data and predicts which users are most likely to convert on your business goals in the future.

We gave a brief explainer of Predictive Goals in our last post on how the platform bridges the gap between insights and actions. Diving deeper here, you can use Predictive Goals for the following use cases:

• Identifying segments of users who are likely to convert on business goals you want to optimize—like purchases and clicks—or minimize—like returns or unsubscribes.
• Identifying which of your project’s relevant user properties and first-party data you want to increase or decrease in frequency to promote desired outcomes—like sending more special offers to the users who are most likely to make multiple purchases each month.
• Generating conversion probability scores for use in journeys to direct how users interact with your brand—like creating a loyalty campaign for users with strong scores.

With Iterable, you can create a new predictive goal from scratch or use one of the available templates displayed in the image above.

As always with any AI model, the larger the dataset, the more effective the outcomes. We recommend at least three to six months of historical data and 100,000 unique users to achieve a meaningful forecast.

Putting Predictive Goals Into Practice

You can create up to six predictive goals with Iterable’s AI suite. To build a predictive goal, use one of the predefined templates or criteria you specify based on your particular business goals.

In the example below, your goal criteria could look for users who might add at least one item to their carts OR redeem at least one promo code, AND who have a Premium account type within a given month.

Completely customize your Predictive Goals by setting specific goal criteria relevant to your business.

Once your Predictive Goals are built, you’ll see information about how likely users are to convert on your goal from the last refresh date through a 30-day period of time. Predictive Goals don’t have an end date, but instead “roll” from one refresh to the next, so you can keep an eye out for potential trends.

The dashboard also gauges predictive strength, telling you how reliable a prediction is likely to be from a range of weak to satisfactory to strong. This predictive strength is refreshed monthly to account for recent changes to relevant project-related data.

You can better understand your AI-powered predictions by evaluating each goal’s predictive strength.

There is so much to see underneath the hood of this robust feature, so be sure to check out our support articles on building and evaluating a predictive goal to learn more.

Redfin Lifts Conversions 72% With Predictive AI

Effective marketing is all about reaching people with the right message at the right time, and that’s never been truer than in real estate. With more than 50 million average monthly users across 100 markets, Redfin is the #1 real estate brokerage in the United States.

But despite its sizable audience, only a small percentage of Redfin users are active—meaning they’ve engaged with an email or visited Redfin’s website in the last 30 days. People don’t buy or sell a home frequently, so these actions are crucial early indicators that a user is ready to use Redfin’s services.

To take the guesswork and manual labor out of predicting the highest converting users, Redfin uses Predictive Goals, part of Iterable’s AI suite, to move users from inactive to active.

Redfin sent conversion-oriented emails like these to potential homebuyers and sellers, identified by Iterable’s Predictive Goals as having the highest likelihood to convert.

The retention marketing team at Redfin used holdout groups to determine the incremental difference that Predictive Goals made on conversions. Then they sent conversion-oriented emails to both Predictive Goals homebuyers and sellers, achieving significant results:

• A 72% lift in converting inactive sellers to an active state
• A 15% lift in converting inactive buyer to an active state
• A directionally positive lift in seller consultations and tours booked by buyers

Notably, with Iterable’s more predictive insights, the marketing team has the information they need to act quickly, with minimal-to-no support from engineering. The platform allows them to be creative and experiment with all their customer data at their fingertips.

Lisa Tulloch, Email Marketing Channel Manager at Redfin, spoke to the power of predictive AI:

“Predictive Goals has been an absolute game-changer for our team, maximizing our efficiencies and accelerating time to value. We’ve seen the tangible benefits of AI on our business, and look forward to seeing the impact of Iterable’s new AI innovations.”

Not to mention, you don’t have to be one of the largest real estate marketplaces to experience the value of predictive AI. Let’s now see predictive AI in action by walking through how a brand can set up its own Predictive Goals using Iterable.

We Predict Knockout Marketing Campaigns in Your Future

AI technology is only getting better and more sophisticated, so if you want your marketing campaigns to be at the forefront of innovation, download the full Ad Age report for even more stats and insights on AI tools.

And if you’re curious to see what predictive AI can do for your brand, we’re here to help.

Want to get started building business-specific predictive goals? Reach out and schedule a custom demo of Iterable AI today.

The post What is Predictive AI? appeared first on Iterable.

Introducing Iterable’s brand new Analog Suite. See ya later advanced metrics, automated tracking, glowing screens, and efficiency. We’re taking inspiration from the past to move us into the future. Our Analog Suite will include four new channels: Carrier Pigeon Delivery, Snail Mail, Fax Messaging, and Pager Notifications. Let’s explore the features of these channels and, because we believe in transparency, we’ll share both the benefits and considerations for each of them.

Carrier Pigeon Delivery

With Iterable’s Carrier Pigeon Delivery you can reach new heights as you let your marketing initiatives take flight. Just attach whatever marketing message you’re looking to send to an Iterable pigeon and let ‘em fly. 

Benefits: A friendly companion during down-time, absolutely zero technology involved, perfect for messages that aren’t urgent and maybe don’t need to be delivered at all, low cost (bird seed).

Considerations: Bird…droppings, really clean and/or closed windows, bread crumbs, Gen-Z may think they’re robots. 

We actually sent a Pigeon announcing this Analog Suite to each of our existing customers—still waiting on responses, but we’re confident we’ll hear back. 

How Fake Flights Used Pigeons to Increase Message—and Wing—Span

Definitely real travel brand, Fake Flights, was lucky enough to have access to our Carrier Pigeon Delivery beta and they’ve already seen impressive results with this new channel. 

Sending hundreds of thousands of communications per day requires a large fleet of feathered friends but, with Iterable’s flexible premium fleet packages, brands can choose the number of pigeons that fits their messaging needs. Fake Flights has seen a 54% uplift in messages delivered—attributed directly to the wind patterns in their geographic location—and only a 400% increase in complaints of “beak-related injuries.” 

Fake Flights now not only sells flights, but has their marketing messages soaring through the air as well—talk about cloud storage!

Snail Mail

Let us be very clear: we’re not talking about direct mail when we say Snail Mail. Direct mail involves too much automation, efficiency, and tracking to be part of this Analog Suite. What we are talking about is snails. Literal snails. Just attach your messages to the mini mucousy mailmen and off they go.

Benefits: Most effective delivery channel immediately post the rainy season, slow and steady, delivers messages with a vintage, ground-worn aesthetic. 

Considerations: Salt.

Note: There seems to be some…unwanted interaction…between the Iterable Pigeons and Snails. We do have plans to fix this on our product roadmap, so stay tuned!

Fax Messaging

You heard it here first (and probably last): Fax Messaging is making a comeback. For those who don’t know how fax machines work, you just scan a message you want to send to your customers, dial their fax number, and the receiving machine will print the scanned message. All customers who opt-in to Iterable Fax Messaging will receive an Iterable-branded machine through which they can distribute messages. 

Benefits: Warm paper coming out of the printer, no need for emails when hard copies exist.

Considerations: Absolutely zero metrics or tracking, your customers also need fax machines.

Pro Tip: Get your filing cabinets ready and make sure you have a method for organizing all of the paper messages you’ll be scanning.

Pager Notifications

Beep beep! Who needs a cellphone when you have Pager Notifications? Picture this: you want to connect with a customer but want to make sure they’re available first. Simply dial their individual pager number (hello, personalization) and wait for them to call you! Inbound marketing at its finest.

Benefits: The customer comes to you, no need to craft any messaging whatsoever, just make sure you have someone available to work the phones.

Considerations: Customers could just ignore your page.

To quote the lyrics of the Kim Possible theme song, “Call me, beep me if you wanna reach me, when you wanna page me it’s ok.” Now, imagine your customers singing it—compelling, right?

This is Totally, Completely Real

We want to stress the date we’ve chosen to roll out this Analog Suite: April 32nd. We think it’s important to note and set expectations for when these channels will be available to all customers. Spoiler alert: it’s never. If it wasn’t made clear as you read through the post, these will never be released to the public as legitimate channels. April Fools, ya’ll! 

If you’re interested in a beta of the Analog Suite, please don’t reach out to your CSM.

If you’re curious about our actual channel offerings—none involve animals*—be sure to register for Activate (April 30 – May 2 in San Jose) and come talk to Iterable experts at our booth. We’re just as funny IRL, we swear.

^{*But we DO have puppies coming to Activate!}

The post Introducing Iterable’s New Analog Suite appeared first on Iterable.

But with the quick adoption has been quick calls for regulation. Mounting concerns have prompted a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights from the White House and many companies—Iterable included—to initiate AI councils that review all tools for security and governance risks.

Every week we are seeing new tools and new considerations around risk. So does this mean we slow down or continue forward? The answer is a bit more nuanced.

The State of AI

Whereas last year marketers took the time to test and learn, this year marketers are looking to optimize for even greater benefits in three phases.

Any change worth having comes with risks. AI is no different. But this shouldn’t be a deterrent, and as you can see above, hasn’t been for marketers.

The truth is, these technologies are moving and evolving so quickly our understanding of the potential risks of AI is incomplete. We’re in the “what if” stage where teams are working to mitigate risks that haven’t arisen yet.

The more we adopt and adapt, the more we find out and understand what safeguards should be put in place. Marketers are learning this in real time, but so are legal, security, and IT teams.

Phase One: Increasing Productivity With AI

AI liberates marketers from operational tasks that take time, resources, and headspace to complete. The net gain in time and headspace opens the door for strategy, creativity, and scaling production.

When asked the top metrics for defining the ROI of AI, efficiency was the top selection. Marketers are facing increased expectations to reach their customers in a meaningful way despite battling against thousands of other brands vying for the same group’s attention.

It’s a difficult ask, but one made that much easier by utilizing AI tools for increased production, execution, and—perhaps most importantly—experimentation. Optimization and automation beat out Generative as the types of AI our survey respondents believe will simplify their jobs the most.

In an economic environment where marketers are asked to do more with less, AI answers the call. We are already seeing some significant gains in productivity like our customer, Care.com gaining 25% time by using Iterable’s Channel Optimization.

Phase Two: Unlocking Potential Through AI

As it stands, marketers are still adapting to the AI revolution. Yes, the majority are using these tools in their workspace, but there is an expertise gap forming. Just over half of survey respondents (53%) believe that the majority of their team is not fully trained to make the most of AI technologies.

So we need to accelerate investments to upskill our teams in using these technologies—everything from assisting in copy creation, to automating repetitive tasks, to automating decisioning for optimizing segments, channels and frequency.

The experimentation with creative and AI technology occurring now will unlock previously untapped brand potential. As we start to actually apply AI to our everyday workflow, we will start to uncover opportunities we can’t even conceive right now.

We will start to reorganize our teams, develop new practices, and change once more the way we market to people. Imagine a world where it takes seconds to create multimedia content, or where we move away from websites altogether, where the concept of campaigns does not exist.

The future of marketing and advertising technology will look vastly different in the coming years as the insights and scale from AI production converge creativity and personalization. As Josh Geiser, Senior Manager – CRM, Lifecycle and Mobile at Redbubble said: “The most exciting benefit of Iterable AI is giving us more time to daydream. When we can take a lot of that busy work away and let our minds wander, that’s when we come up with our best ideas.”

The true opportunity behind AI is elevating entire industries, not just functions within teams.

Phase Three: The Intersection of Creativity and AI

But, this isn’t to say the skills marketers have spent years developing will go away. They’ll simply be utilized in different, more efficient ways. The creativity and ingenuity of marketers will still be crucial to the success of a brand.

As more and more brands are built off the production of AI tools, we’re likely to see more homogeneity in marketing. With the noise of advertising and marketing already clouding consumers’ field of vision to find what they need, this potential future is bleak.

That’s where creativity and humanity come in. These tools will accelerate marketers’ ability to build the foundation for strong brands, but it is up to the marketers driving brand development to add a human layer on top to make sure brands stand out in a sea of sameness.

Context, connotation, intonation, sarcasm, slang. The way we communicate as people evolves quickly and these changes are often how we communicate. As the source of connecting brands and customers, marketers need to be sure to add the creative layer to their AI outputs to keep the human connection alive and thriving.

Where AI and Creativity Spark Marketing Joy

Much like how AI is being adapted and changing all at once, the above phases will happen concurrently for some and slower for others. The important thing to note is that we’re all building the future of marketing and customer engagement together.

At this stage, we’ll meet the intersection of creativity and AI—the art and science of marketing to create joyful experiences.

Curious about the future of AI and creativity? Hear from Adri and dozens of industry leaders at Activate Summit in San Jose, CA April 30 – May 2. Register here!

The post CMO Corner: Is the AI Revolution Slowing Down? appeared first on Iterable.

The Iterable team set up shop (the booth with the aura readings!) at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas from March 17th to March 20th to attend Shoptalk 2024—an event that provides a platform for brands of all shapes and sizes to learn, network, collaborate, and evolve.

The Iterable team at our booth. Peep the Aura Reading station behind us.

I was on site as part of the Iterable team and got to attend some sessions. So, if you weren’t able to go, I’ve got you covered. Without further ado, let’s get into the takeaways.

Creating Frictionless and Continuous Store Experiences

Lauren Morr, SVP of Digital Engineering & Architecture at Abercrombie & Fitch Co., Patrick McIntyre, Head of Development at Krispy Kreme, and Fei Wang, Chief Technology Officer at Saks Off 5th—moderated by Steve Dennis, Founder & President, SageBerry Consulting—discussed the benefits of omnichannel experiences.
They highlighted that omnichannel customers shop nearly two times more often than single-channel shoppers, making it imperative for retailers to provide them with a seamless, unified experience across physical and digital channels. There are two critical components to delivering on this promise—creating a frictionless and continuous experience.

Key Takeaways

• Brands need to focus on being “customer-obsessed.” Consumers want brand love and want to feel seen and rewarded for being loyal brand advocates.
  Morr emphasized that personalization will go very far in creating more brand advocacy in new and returning customers.
• A unified experience—online, in-store, or in-app—is imperative in creating a positive customer experience. The key is to listen to what your customer says through their data and then deliver a product at the price that works for them for a higher conversion rate.

Legacy Brands Winning Over New Generations

Heidi Cooley, SVP & Chief Marketing Officer at Crocs, Winnie Park, CEO at Forever 21, and Scott Mezvinsky, North America & International President at Taco Bell—moderated by Sarah Engel, President ofJanuary Digital—chatted about how each new generation of consumers is defined by their distinct worldviews, preferences, and expectations that influence their purchase decisions.
Brands need to adapt and remain relevant to young consumers while also keeping their history and values top-of-mind to avoid being labeled inauthentic or alienating existing customers.

Key Takeaways

• For Crocs, the challenge was that the brand was very recognizable but irrelevant. The team decided to take a consumer-centric approach: they listened to the fans’ feedback on social media when it came to designs, collaborations, and restocks, and acted on those needs quickly.
• Crocs saw a connection between their brand mission and the attitude of Gen Z and leaned into this for their brand voice, especially on social media and when selecting authentic fan partnerships that ignited the brand.
• Forever 21 went from facing bankruptcy to becoming a part of the zeitgeist. They let customers, especially Gen Z customers, tell them what areas of pop culture were of interest and tapped the culture through collaborations like Cheetos, Barbie, Juicy Couture, and more.
• Collaborations are a key part of the Taco Bell strategy—they connect and partner with celebrities who are true fans of the brand and lean in. For example, singer Doja Cat tweeted about bringing back the Mexican Pizza and Taco Bell resurrected the previously-discontinued product and asked Doja Cat to announce the addition during her Coachella set.

Creating the Next Growth Wave With AI-Powered Commerce

Maria Renz, Global Head of Commerce at Google and moderator Chris Walton, Co-CEO at Omni Talk, talked about how staying essential to both merchants and consumers is paramount. Specifically, they covered how the transformative power of AI is shaping commerce strategy, revolutionizing the shopping experience, and supercharging personalized interactions at scale.

Key Takeaways

• AI will change shopping in three key ways: 1) more connections with customers, 2) creating an “assisted experience”, and 3) supercharging personalized experience at scale.
• AI has also caused an evolution in the commerce space. It can give customers confidence when ordering online through a new level of personalization (for example, Google virtual try-on).

Maintaining a Modern E-commerce Tech Stack

Jason Gowans, SVP & Chief Digital Officer at Levi Strauss & Co. and moderator Vikalp Tandon, Managing Director, Global Commerce Lead at Accenture did a deep dive into how organizations are deploying modern, flexible e-commerce tech stacks.

Key Takeaways

• Businesses need to develop a new way to manage channel complexity. Previously, brands began in a fragmented state by starting with channels they want to communicate through, building capabilities, and then investing in key foundations reactively on a need-to-have basis. Versus starting with the necessary foundations and building capabilities that can handle anticipated complexities for new and existing channels.
• Life centricity is key for building an effective modern tech stack. Being life-centric means that a brand must:
  • Understand the full life of a customer—not just where your brand fits in.
  • Avoid a one-size-fits-all mentality.
  • Simplify for relevance—streamline internal loops and external customer experiences.
  • Scale for growth by connecting data tech and talent for constant evolution.

Until Next Year, Shoptalk!

We hope you could stop by the Iterable booth to meet our team, discuss your business and marketing goals, and get your aura read. If not, make sure you catch us next year in the exhibitor’s hall!

If you’d like to learn more about how Iterable is helping marketers power world-class customer engagement, then schedule a demo of our platform today.

The post Our Top Takeaways from Shoptalk 2024 appeared first on Iterable.

To help combat the difficulty of platform migrations, we recently published The Cross-Channel Marketing Platform Migration Guide—a detailed, step-by-step breakdown of what to consider when migrating to a new marketing platform. But, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of information jammed into that one guide. We still recommend you use it, share it, bookmark it, etc. but if you’re looking for a skimmable breakdown of the guide, you’ve come to the right place. 

In this first installment of the Platform Migration series we’ll explore the first section of The Cross-Channel Marketing Platform Migration Guide: Defining Your Goals and Quick Wins. In particular, we’ll focus on the questions you should ask yourself as you get started on your migration journey. 

Defining Your Goals and Quick Wins

As we say in the full guide, defining your goals and quick wins is, “An overlooked but critical step in migrating to a new platform is to review the goals of the migration and identify the first tangible wins you want.” Setting goals and quick wins helps focus the team when moving through a migration—it’s creating a north star. 

Following the People, Process, and Technology framework—which focuses on three powerful marketing assets to fuel growth—we explored the questions you should ask yourself during a platform migration as they pertain to people, process, and technology. 

People Questions to Ask Yourself

Think of people as the “who” of the migration process. This is when you can decide who will have a role in the platform migration and why. 

1. Who would do what during the migration?

Think about teams and individuals when you ask yourself this question. Think about everyone from executors to approvers and how they will impact the overall process.

2. Who would you not need after the migration is complete?

If you hire freelancers or third party partners to help you complete the migration, they may not be needed after the migration is complete. Because the migration could also lead to consolidation, some roles may become obsolete as well. It’s important to consider this before you dive in.

3. Which team members have bandwidth?

If there are people who will need to be involved in the migration—marketing operations, data teams, etc.—ensure they have the bandwidth to help in the desired timeframe. 

4. Which teammates are change agents excited about making a difference?

Maybe there are people on the team who are excited about the migration process or have experience with migrations in previous roles. Take advantage of these excited team members and be sure they’re included in the process.

Process Questions to Ask Yourself

Think of the process as the “when” and “why” of the migration process. This is when you can decide deadlines, milestones, what works in your existing processes and what doesn’t. This phase will be a lot of discovery and connecting with subteams to ensure everyone feels they have an opportunity to share input. 

1. What date do you want to start with the new platform?

This is a crucial step of the process. Without that hard launch date, there’s no proverbial fire under the team’s behinds. Choosing a launch date and working backwards is also a great way to block out milestones you want to hit to help you reach the launch date. 

2. Which processes work well and are efficient?

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Don’t reinvent the wheel. [Insert preferred idiom here.] There are a lot of ways to say the same thing—there’s no need to create a new process if a business unit has found a way that works. Use this as a learning experience and apply it to other parts of the migration.

3. Which processes have bottlenecks due to reliance on other teams or other tools?

Set up calls and talk to the different teams who will be involved in the migration and who will use the new platform. People will want to share their roadblocks and challenges because they want to find a solution.

Technology Questions to Ask Yourself

Lastly, think of the technology as the “what” and “where” of the migration process. This is when you can discuss what you’re planning to accomplish with the tool and necessary features. Rather than from a workflow perspective, which was considered with process, technology questions should focus on actual capabilities of the tool.

1. What are the pain points you’d like to improve by using a new cross-channel platform?

Here, reflect on your current platform and the tasks or goals you can’t achieve due strictly to technological limitations. This will help you understand what specifically to look for as you weigh the various options that exist.

2. What is the first campaign your team wants to launch?

Understanding where your team wants to start is helpful when evaluating the features readily available in your new platform. If a feature is on a prospective platform’s product roadmap or still in beta, consider how crucial that feature will be in helping your team hit the ground running.

3. Does your new platform have different integrations from your existing platform?

Platform migrations are an important consideration when migrating to a new platform. If your new platform doesn’t work with existing integrations, those partners may become obsolete. Then you have to consider contracts and how long you’re working with these partners. It’s easier to find a platform that works with the integrations you already have.

Setting the Groundwork for a Successful Platform Migration

Hopefully this breakdown of the questions to ask yourself provides a bit more depth into the initial stages of a platform migration. Remember, asking yourself these questions should result in your team determining quick wins and goals for the overall migration. Keep that in mind as you go through this list to keep everyone aligned. 

As we continue this series we’ll breakdown assembling teams, organizing campaigns, and standardizing data—so be sure to check back in. 

In the meantime, feel free to explore the entire Cross-Channel Marketing Platform Migration Guide and, if you’re considering making the migration Iterable, first of all, hi! Second, be sure to schedule a custom demo today.

The post Questions to Ask Before a Platform Migration appeared first on Iterable.

Many of you will already be familiar with Google Postmaster Tools, which allows senders to monitor their Gmail sending reputation. For those not using GPT (Google Postmaster Tools) to monitor your sending domain’s reputation, we encourage you to configure ASAP.

In this article we will cover what Google Postmaster Tools is, how to set it up, some of its features, and what was just unveiled.

What is Google Postmaster Tools?

Google Postmaster Tools is a free resource that gives senders direct access to feedback on how Google views their sending practices. Designed with high-volume senders in mind, this tool provides insight into your reputation, performance, and infrastructure setup, allowing you to be proactive about your deliverability. Access to this data is more critical than ever with the recently updated sender requirements.

What’s New in Google Postmaster Tools?

Let’s now look at how to access the new dashboard and what information is available there. You can log in using your Google Postmaster tools credentials. Upon logging in, you’ll be presented with a banner notifying you of the new dashboard.

Compliance Status Dashboard

The dashboard informs you how compliant the selected domain is with the new email sender requirements as a checklist to make sure you’re compliant with the requirements.

These requirements include:

• SPF and DKIM authentication: Sending domain has SPF and DKIM authentication
• From:header alignment. Does the from domain match that associated with SPF and DKIM
• DMARC authentication: Sending domain has DMARC authentication
• Encryption: The domain is using a TLS connection for transmitting email.
• User-reported spam rate: Is the domain under the spam rate threshold? The current threshold is 0.3% but senders should aim to remain under 0.1%
• DNS records: Sending domain and IPs have proper forward and reverse DNS

The two remaining requirements have a coming soon placeholder that will show compliance with:

• One-click unsubscribe (RFC8058): This applies to bulk sending and if sending over 5,000 messages a day and not transactional sending.
• Honor unsubscribe: We expect this will monitor if recipients continue to receive emails after using the one-click unsubscribe

How to Set Up Google Postmaster Tools

Let’s rewind a bit. If you’re not using Google Postmaster Tools yet, this should help you get started. Getting Google Postmaster Tools set up is pretty straightforward. As the tool is domain-based, you will need to add and authenticate your sending domains to identify your email traffic.

Visit postmaster.google.com and sign in with a Gmail or Google Workspace email address that you wish to serve as your account to manage your Postmaster Tools data.

Pro Tip: If you have a team that may need access to your account and Postmaster Tools data, we recommend creating a new Gmail address for your team to share. For example: GPT@company.name.com or marketing@companyname.com.

Once inside your Postmaster Tools account, you can hit the GET STARTED button, and it will prompt you for three additional steps to complete the domain verification process.

Step 1 of 3:

Enter the sending domain you want to monitor in Postmaster Tools.

Step 2 of 3:

You will be provided a TXT record to insert into the (Domain Name System) DNS for the sending domain. After you grab the TXT record, you can hit “NOT NOW” and verify later once the TXT record is added to the DNS.

Step 3 of 3:

Once the TXT record is added to the DNS for the sending domain, you can hit “Verify Domain.” Once the screen below pops up, simply hit the VERIFY box, and the sending domain will appear as verified in your Postmaster Tools dashboard. This is what it will look like once successfully verified (3c):

Important note: If you try to verify the TXT record before it is put into DNS correctly, you will see an error like the one below. Please have your IT/DNS team verify that the TXT record was put into place correctly.

How to Share Access to Google Postmaster Tools

It’s uncommon for just one person to be reviewing email deliverability and having the ability to share access with team members makes it even easier to stay on top of reputation metrics

To share access:

• On your Postmaster Tools account, mouse over the verified domain to which you want to add your team member.
• Click on the icon with the three dots and select Manage Users.
• In the bottom right, click Add.
• Enter your team member’s Google account email address in the pop-up window.

What Data is Available Once Verified?

Configuring your domain in Google Postmaster Tools gives you access to a swath of helpful email metrics to determine how effective your email sends are. Senders are provided with several different data points displayed in different dashboards:

• User Reported Spam rate
• IP reputation
• Domain reputation
• Spam feedback loop
• Message authentication
• Encryption
• Delivery errors

Below we go into a bit more detail.

User Reported Spam Rate

This dashboard shows how many users reported your message as spam. Complaint rates have a serious impact on your ability to get messages to their intended destination. From Spring 2024, Gmail has indicated that they will start blocking mail from senders that exceed a 0.3% complaint rate threshold.

Complaint rates are often calculated by dividing the number of emails marked as spam by the total number of emails sent. Gmail, however, calculates this differently. They compare the number of emails marked as spam against the total number of emails that landed in the inbox.

Emails delivered directly to the spam folder are not included in the User Reported Spam rate calculation. Only emails authenticated by domainkeys identified mail (DKIM) are eligible for spam-rate calculation.

Because there are no insights into the specific Gmail addresses that have reported messages as spam, brands need to consider all possible factors and all possible messages to help keep recipients from marking as spam. After all, user-reported spam can influence a brand’s domain and IP reputation.

Domain & IP Reputation

Domain and IP reputation gives a sense of whether Gmail’s automated spam filter will send mail to inbox or filter to the spam folder. If you have a bad domain or IP reputation, for example, there’s a higher likelihood your emails are sent to spam. Remember that spam filtering is based on thousands of signals and that domain and IP reputation are just two of them.

Domain & IP Classification:

• BAD: Sending history shows a high rate of spam. Emails sent by this domain will nearly always be refused by the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), or will be marked as spam.
• LOW: This domain or IP has the reputation to regularly send a significant volume of spam. Emails sent from this domain or IP are highly prone to be marked as spam.
• MEDIUM: This domain or IP has the reputation to send good emails, but is susceptible to sending spam sometimes. Most of the emails sent by this domain or IP will have a good deliverability rate unless the spam rate increases.
• HIGH: This sender sends very low volumes of spam and respects Gmail’s best practices for senders. Emails sent from this domain or IP will rarely be marked as spam.

Feedback Loop

This dashboard will show more granular identifiers if you have signed up to Google’s Feedback Loop (FBL). It allows you to track the average feedback loop spam rate and the volume of unique identifiers available for a given day. An Identifier could be campaign ID, customername or other project ID. The information is displayed if the rate is high enough to trigger a data point.

When this metric is provided it can help pinpoint a specific mailing that recipients have been complaining about. Allowing corrective action to be taken.

This can be particularly useful in identifying if a particular campaign or message channel is impacting overall sending reputation.

Authentication

This dashboard shows what percentage of sender policy framework (SPF), DKIM, and domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance (DMARC) authentication is passing into Gmail. DMARC-specific reporting would need to be set up outside of Google Postmaster to get details other than the percentage.

This metric is important because it informs if authentication has passed or if there are any issues. If no DMARC record is published, for example, then you would see 0% for that metric. When dips occur you can then diagnose and fix any authentication problems.

Encryption

This dashboard shows the percentage of inbound and outbound traffic that is being Transport Layer Security (TLS) encrypted into Gmail. GPT does not provide further details other than the aggregated percentages. This is important because as of December 2023, TLS is required to send emails to Gmail.

Delivery Errors

If Gmail rejects any traffic (emails sent for that day by the domain) on a given day, this dashboard will show the percentage of messages rejected and a high-level reason for the rejections.

Keeping an Eye on Compliance

Once compliant, most of these requirements will likely remain marked as compliant unless something breaks or a new infrastructure is created and not set up according to the requirements. (In this view, known status results are “Compliant” or “Needs work.”) The one exception is the user-reported spam rates, which should be monitored frequently since it can fluctuate based on sending practices.

Monitoring both Google Postmaster Tools pages—the new compliance dashboard and user- reported spam—regularly should be a part of any sender’s reputation monitoring. They should be used in conjunction with one another. For instance, you should monitor your user-reported spam rates in the original Google Postmaster Tools and compare them with the Compliance Status of the user-reported spam rate on the updated page.

To learn more about Google Postmaster Tools or your brand’s email deliverability, ask your CSM about Iterable’s Deliverability Services. If you’re not yet an Iterable customer, schedule a demo today.

The post A Closer Look at Google Postmaster Tools appeared first on Iterable.

Today, we’re talking about what Ad Age refers to as “the foundation and future of all AI marketing:” AI explainability and optionality and Predictive Goals. These aspects of AI marketing are why Iterable specifically is at the forefront of AI innovation.

So let’s jump in.

Want to read through all our AI research? Head to Ad Age now to download the full study.

What are AI Explainability and Optionality?

As Ad Age states, AI optionality and explainability are “the next stage of evolution for automation […] in which marketers can take even more cues from AI.” With this two-pronged approach, “the AI not only automates the deployment of a campaign, but it also automatically generates the campaign itself.”

If the idea of an AI deciding which of your audiences to target—and how—for example, makes you apprehensive, that concern is valid. That’s why explainability and optionality are so crucial to AI marketing:

• Explainability establishes trust by infusing transparency into the AI model’s decision-making process
• Optionality provides marketers the option to override the system’s recommendations

In a previous blog post about key AI terms to familiarize yourself with, we further defined Explainable AI:

“Explainable AI involves transparent systems with clear, understandable processes. Unlike the opaque, black box of certain AI solutions, Explainable AI provides a more ‘glass box’ experience that shares deeper insights into the data that powers predictions.”

Let’s now walk through an example to demonstrate explainable AI in action.

Explainable AI in Action

Ad Age illustrates the concept of explainable AI with an example—a fitness chain. To achieve its goal of converting free mobile app users to paid subscribers (a.k.a. “freemium” to “premium”), the business could use an AI model to target people who have signed up for three fitness classes. AI has identified that this particular threshold has a high statistical correlation to the campaign’s desired outcome, and explainability is how the algorithm shows its work, so to speak.

In this example, with the right marketing platform, marketers can pull up a dashboard with details that reveal how the model arrived at its conclusions. That way, the team can be reassured that the AI is working effectively—before they hit the send button.

Adriana Gil Miner, CMO of Iterable, discusses the reasoning behind this explainable AI:

“For instance, you will be able to see that the people most likely to move to the paid app watched three videos and logged in five times in 30 days. This builds transparency and trust. It validates the audience and the quality of the prediction, and further, it gives marketers insights on how to drive their business with ideas for other strategies.”

Explainability and optionality were built into Iterable’s AI from the outset, so let’s dive into how marketers can take advantage of explainable AI with our suite of tools.

AI Explainability With Iterable

Iterable’s AI Suite was designed to empower your marketing and forge deeper customer connections, and at its core is putting people in the driver’s seat of AI-assisted decision-making.

This built-in intelligence uses explainable AI at the heart of several features:

• Brand Affinity
• Next Best Action
• Predictive Goals

You can click through to get a comprehensive explainer of each feature, but here’s the TL;DR.

Brand Affinity

Brand Affinity harnesses Iterable AI to label customers based on their level of engagement with your brand. You can use these labels to provide rewards to loyal users, improve open rates by suppressing negative users, test offers by sentiment, and so much more.

If you’re wondering how these labels are assigned, that’s where Iterable’s Explainable AI comes in. Simply click into a specific user’s Brand Affinity score to view additional insights, such as:

• A user’s affinity labels for the past 30 days to see what changes may have occurred.
• A summary from the past 90 days of the campaigns that contributed most to a user’s past and current affinity scores.
• A summary from the past 90 days of the metrics that contributed most to a user’s affinity score with an explanation of how those actions compare to the behavior of users.

Iterable’s Explainable AI breaks down the contributing factors to each user’s Brand Affinity score.

It’s not enough for an AI model to score subscribers by sentiment. It must be able to explain why it’s given those scores and how these factors impact overall engagement.

Next Best Action

As Ad Age stated, we’re now entering a technologically advanced era in which an AI model can not only deploy a campaign, but also generate it. Iterable’s Next Best Action takes this to the next level, analyzing the end-to-end logistics of your campaigns and generating audience and copy recommendations to improve areas of performance.

With just a few clicks, you can automatically create a campaign, select the right segment and come up with the perfect subject line. You’re still in full control, but now you can access an AI-assisted push in the best direction.

Automatically send campaigns to the right customer segments using AI-optimized subject lines with Iterable’s Next Best Action.

Predictive Goals

In the last installment of our AI blog series, we’ll be covering Predictive Goals in more depth, but for the sake of this post, Iterable uses Explainable AI within its Predictive Goals feature to analyze your historical data and predict which users are most likely to convert on your business goals in the future.

Like Brand Affinity, Predictive Goals includes modules that explain how to understand the predictions the AI model is making. The platform lists the custom events and user fields that are contributing to the prediction, and surfacing which data points are making the most meaningful impact.

As seen in the image below, you’ll see a predictive strength score and an interactive view of your prediction results, including the events and properties that Explainable AI indicates have the greatest potential to influence your outcomes.

The module on the left-hand side in Iterable’s Predictive Goals displays how Explainable AI is reaching its prediction conclusions.

And when you click the “Explore” button to learn more, you’ll see a panel like the one below that shows the number of events and properties that Predictive Goals evaluated when the prediction was generated. It also displays a breakdown of the statistically significant contributors.

Clearly see exactly what factors are shaping your Predictive Goals with Iterable’s Explainable AI.

With Iterable, nothing is a mystery. While its AI-driven insights are sure to be illuminating, you’ll never be stuck wondering how the model is making its decisions. That’s our “glass box” promise.

Let Us Explain Iterable’s Explainable AI

We have so much more to cover on Predictive AI, so stay tuned for the final blog post in this AI series.

You can learn about all of the features we discussed and more in Iterable’s AI Suite. And don’t forget to download the full Ad Age report for even more insights about the next evolution of AI technology.

Ready to get even more explanation about how to advance your AI marketing? Reach out and schedule a custom demo of Iterable AI today.

The post Explainable AI: The Next Stage of Evolution appeared first on Iterable.

AI-powered marketing has an unprecedented ability to process large amounts of data. Whether it’s analyzing customer demographics, tracking online behavior, or interpreting social media interactions, AI algorithms excel at extracting valuable insights. These insights are the foundation for creating targeted campaigns that speak directly to the needs and desires of individual consumers. 

By using artificial intelligence, you can uncover patterns, trends, and correlations that help you make data-driven marketing decisions. From enhancing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns to optimizing customer journey experiences, AI marketing strategies enable you to stay ahead of the competition and deliver meaningful value to your audience. 

Keep reading to learn more about AI marketing and how you can use it to drive growth for your business. 

• What is AI Marketing?

• Types of AI Marketing
• How to Use AI in Marketing

• Advantages and Risk of AI Marketing

• How to Build an AI Marketing Campaign
• AI Marketing Best Practices

• The Future of Marketing: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence


What is AI Marketing?

AI marketing is the application of advanced technologies like machine learning, generative AI, natural language processing, and predictive analytics to enhance various aspects of marketing strategy, execution, and analysis. It leverages algorithms and data-driven insights to automate tasks, personalize communication, and optimize campaign performance, driving better outcomes and return on investment (ROI) for businesses. 

This allows marketers to use the power of AI to analyze large datasets and extract actionable insights about everything—from consumer behavior to market trends. By using these insights, AI marketing can help you create highly targeted and personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with customers on a more personal level. 

From segmenting audiences and tailoring content to predicting future behavior and optimizing ad spend, AI empowers marketers to deliver more relevant, timely, and impactful customer experiences. 

Types of AI Marketing

Integrating AI in marketing allows for diverse strategies and techniques to enhance efficiency, improve personalization, and increase effectiveness. Let’s dive into the different types of artificial intelligence in marketing and how they’re transforming the way businesses connect with their audiences: 

• Machine learning (ML): Machine learning uses algorithms and statistical models to help computers learn from and make predictions or decisions based on data. These algorithms use customer data to identify patterns, trends, and insights that inform marketing strategies. 

• Automation: AI is particularly useful when it comes to automating repetitive, once-manual tasks. Think about marketing workflows, for example. With automated triggers, you can send messages to users based on the last action they took and, to go one step further, if there are multiple options after a trigger event, AI can help determine which message is best for that individual user.

• Optimization: AI is also critical when it comes to optimizing marketing campaigns. AI takes historical data into account to help create the most effective marketing messages for individual users. Take message send time, for example. If certain customers only open emails before noon, your marketing platform can take that data into account when messages are sent to that customer going forward. 

• Generative AI: Generative AI is artificial intelligence that can generate new content or images based on patterns and examples from existing data. In marketing, you can use generative AI to create content, such as blog posts, images, social media posts, or product descriptions. 

• Natural language processing (NLP): NLP involves using computers to interpret and generate language. In marketing, NLP technologies can help businesses analyze text from various sources, such as customer reviews, social media comments, or chat transcripts, for sentiment analysis. 

• Predictive analytics: Predictive analytics analyze historical data and predict future outcomes. In marketing, you can use predictive analytics to forecast customer behavior, identify potential leads, and optimize marketing campaigns. For instance, these models can help you predict customer churn or forecast sales trends. 


Learn more about AI terms before diving into your own strategy to ensure you have a comprehensive understanding of the possibilities and potential applications of artificial intelligence in marketing. 

How to Use AI in Marketing

There are several ways to use AI marketing to automate and streamline your internal and external processes. From automating routine marketing tasks to analyzing data for valuable insights, AI offers a variety of opportunities to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing strategies. 

Let’s take a look at a few AI marketing examples to help you understand what it can be used for: 

• Content generation: AI content generation tools can automatically create written content based on predefined parameters and patterns. These tools use NLP algorithms to generate high-quality content at scale.
• Personalization: With AI, marketers can deliver personalized experiences to their audience by tailoring content, recommendations, and offers to individual preferences and behaviors. Personalized AI campaigns can significantly enhance customer engagement, loyalty, and conversions. 

• Data analytics: AI-powered data analytics can process large amounts of data, extract actionable insights, and uncover hidden patterns. This can give you a deeper understanding of customer behavior, preferences, and purchase patterns. 

• Automation: AI automation tools streamline repetitive tasks, such as email marketing, social media posting, and ad campaign management. By automating routine tasks, you can save time, reduce manual errors, and focus on more strategic activities requiring human creativity and decision-making. 

• Customer service: Chatbots and virtual assistants provide customer support and assist users with real-time inquiries or issues. These solutions enhance customer satisfaction and reduce the workload on support agents.  

• Segmentation: Advanced algorithms can analyze customer data and segment audiences based on demographics, behaviors, preferences, and purchase history. By segmenting audiences more accurately, you can deliver personalized messages to specific customer groups, increasing relevance and engagement while minimizing wasted resources on irrelevant marketing efforts. 

• Forecasting: AI models can predict future trends, demand patterns, and market fluctuations based on historical data and other relevant factors. You can use these predictive insights to anticipate customer needs, optimize inventory management, and allocate resources more effectively. 

• Media buying: AI can analyze advertising data and optimize media buying decisions in real time, ensuring that ad placements are targeted, relevant, and cost-effective. Media buying platforms powered by AI use machine learning to optimize ad spend allocation, adjust bidding strategies, and maximize ROI across digital channels, including search, display, and video advertising. 


According to our study in collaboration with Wakefield and Ad Age, 47% of those surveyed use AI to work more efficiently. 

Learn more about how to use AI in marketing with this AI guide.

Advantages and Risks of AI Marketing

As with any technological advancement, AI marketing has benefits and drawbacks. While it offers unprecedented capabilities that enhance efficiency, decision-making, and effectiveness in marketing, it also presents challenges. 

Advantages of AI Marketing

Is AI marketing worth it? Let’s take a look at the benefits: 

• Boost ROI: With AI marketing, you can optimize your campaigns to get insights that drive better decision-making. Machine learning can help you allocate resources more effectively, target the right consumers, and optimize ad spending to maximize return on investment. 

• Enhance customer engagement and loyalty: Personalization through AI allows you to deliver highly tailored and relevant experiences to your audience, increasing engagement and fostering stronger customer relationships. AI algorithms can anticipate needs, recommend personalized content or products, and deliver targeted offers that resonate with consumer preferences, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.  

• Improve decision-making: Analytics tools give you actionable insights and predictive intelligence that inform strategic decision-making. By analyzing data from multiple sources, including customer interactions, market trends, and competitor activities, you can make decisions founded on evidence. 

• Increase efficiency: AI automation streamlines repetitive tasks and processes, freeing up time and resources for you to focus on more strategic activities. From automating email campaigns and social media posting to optimizing ad targeting and content creation, AI tools enable marketers to work more efficiently, reduce manual errors, and scale their efforts. 


According to our study in collaboration with Wakefield and Ad Age, 49% of those surveyed believe AI should increase business metrics. 

Risks of AI Marketing

Unfortunately, no technology comes without potential risks. For AI marketing, these include: 

• Ethical issues: One of the main considerations with AI marketing is the ethical implications of using algorithms to make decisions that impact the lives of individuals. This includes issues like algorithmic bias, where AI systems inadvertently perpetuate or amplify existing biases in the data used for training. 

• Privacy risks: AI marketing relies heavily on data collection and analysis, which relates to privacy and data protection. You must ensure compliance with regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and make sure to protect customer information. 

• Overreliance: While AI can improve decision-making and efficiency, there’s a risk of overreliance on AI systems without proper human oversight. This can lead to complacency among marketers, who may blindly trust AI without evaluating its recommendations, which can result in missed opportunities, flawed strategies, or unintended consequences. 

• Data quality: AI requires high-quality data to generate accurate predictions and insights. However, data quality issues like inaccuracies, incompleteness, and biases can undermine the effectiveness of AI marketing efforts. Poor data quality can lead to ineffective personalization and suboptimal decision-making, impacting the success of marketing campaigns. 


How to Build an AI Marketing Campaign

Building an AI marketing campaign allows you to use advanced technologies to streamline processes, enhance personalization, and drive better results. Here are the key steps to take when implementing AI into your marketing strategy: 

1. Determine your goals: Clearly define your goals and the outcomes you want to achieve with your marketing campaign. Having well-defined goals will guide your AI marketing strategy and help you measure success. 

2. Evaluate your marketing processes: Assess your current marketing processes to identify areas where AI can help. This could include audience segmentation, content creation, campaign optimization, and customer engagement tactics. 

3. Choose a marketing platform with AI capabilities: When selecting a marketing platform, consider factors like features, capabilities, ease of use, scalability, integrations, and pricing. Look for platforms that offer advanced analytics, predictive modeling, personalization tools, automation capabilities, and support to meet your specific needs.
4. Adopt and implement your strategy: Develop a comprehensive plan outlining your campaign objectives, target audience, messaging, content strategy, channels, and key performance indicators (KPIs). Use AI technologies to automate tasks, personalize communications, optimize targeting, and analyze campaign performance. 


AI Marketing Best Practices

Incorporating AI into your marketing can help you stay competitive. Here are a few best practices and tips for using AI in marketing to achieve profitable business outcomes: 

• Activate  your data: Marketers often find themselves with a lot of customer data and no way to activate that data in a way that benefits customers. Because AI relies on data to generate insights and make decisions, implement AI to create recommendations, automations, and optimizations based on the data you have.

• Individualize customer experiences: Use AI to deliver individualized experiences to your audience across various touchpoints. Use recommendation engines, predictive analytics, and dynamic content generation to tailor messages, offers, and interactions to individual preferences and behaviors. 

• Test and adapt: Continuously test and adapt your AI marketing campaigns to optimize performance and achieve better results over time. Use A/B testing, multivariate testing, and experimentation to refine your strategies, messaging, and targeting.

• Ensure transparency: Maintain transparency and ethical standards when implementing AI in your marketing efforts. Be upfront with customers about how their data is used, ensure compliance with privacy regulations, and mitigate the risk of algorithmic bias by regularly monitoring and auditing AI systems. 


The Future of Marketing: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence

Incorporating artificial intelligence into your marketing efforts allows you to streamline processes and drive better results. By investing in AI, you can gain valuable insights from data, automate tasks, and deliver highly targeted and personalized experiences to your audience. 

With Iterable, you can unlock the power of AI to revolutionize your marketing strategies and drive growth. Whether you want to optimize campaign performance, improve customer engagement, or maximize ROI, we provide the tools and support you need to succeed. Schedule a custom demo today.

The post AI Marketing: Your Guide to Revolutionizing Your Marketing Strategy  appeared first on Iterable.

Rather than focusing on making a sale, the goal of customer experience marketing is to create an enjoyable, memorable experience from the moment consumers meet your brand.

You can think of the goal as turning potential customers into life-long fans of your brand. You’ll be rewarded in the long-run with enduring customer loyalty, high retention rates, and positive word-of-mouth recommendations.

What is the Difference Between Customer Experience and Customer Service?

While customer service is part of customer experience, it’s only one part. You may have a customer service team dedicated to handling sales questions, purchasing, returns and troubleshooting, but customer experience is more than that. It’s a strategy that focuses on nurturing the customer relationship before a sale is ever made—and long after payment is collected.

Customer experience marketing is about fostering a positive brand association that extends to all the ways people interact with your company—not just on the sales floor, but online,, and through all of the marketing channels they use to connect to your brand. Customer experience marketing is used as part of a branding strategy to make the customer’s experience so good that they wouldn’t even consider switching to another brand. Customer experience marketing also generates increased engagement and positive reviews and recommendations.

Keys to Successful Customer Experience Marketing

Customer experience is important across all your marketing channels. Your users should have a great experience on every platform, device, and channel. Here are tips for creating a holistic customer experience marketing strategy that leaves customers wanting more, buying more, and recommending your business to others.

Take a Cross-Channel Approach

Show customers you care about their particular interests by using a cross-channel marketing approach. Cross-channel marketing not only reaches the customer via the channels they access most, but when they’re most likely to engage with that channel.

For instance, a user might historically never open emails, but they do open SMS messages. Rather than sending countless unopened emails, you could send this particular customer SMS messages. If the goal is to get the customer to open emails, perhaps the SMS message could include a note about the promotion code you sent to their inbox.

Why it works: Cross-channel messaging is essential for a seamless customer journey that leads your customer to your end goals—increased engagement and higher conversion rates. Cross-channel orchestration leads to consistency, which sets the framework for customers to recommend your brand to others. A good branding strategy that integrates consistency will lead to better brand awareness and loyalty, higher customer lifetime values and greater brand equity.

Take Full Advantage of Reviews

Customer reviews are a crucial part of any marketing strategy. With a cross-channel marketing tool, you’ll be able to keep track of your reviews and respond immediately, either thanking the customer for their feedback or addressing their concerns. Tracking review ratings is an important tool of customer listening, gathering priceless information about the customer experience and what you need to change about your strategy. And your responses to their feedback matter, big time. According to ReviewTrackers, 53% of consumers expect a response to their review within seven days.

Why it works: Reviews add legitimacy to your brand and products. According to a recent survey conducted by PowerReviews, 98% of consumers feel that reviews are an essential resource when making purchase decisions. The higher your customer ratings, the higher your brand equity. Keeping a close eye on reviews, responding appropriately and adjusting to customer expectations also reduces the need for expensive customer service interactions, increasing your return on investment and your bottom line.

Personalize Every Message

To create a smooth customer experience, you must deliver consistent branding across all channels. Never leave customers wondering if your brand knows who they are. Use a cross-channel marketing strategy to ensure your brand looks, feels and communicates in sync for every customer interaction across all platforms.

You can set up automatic connection points triggered by every specific interaction, personalizing the communication along the way and guiding the customer down the funnel at each point. The top personalization efforts that customers most expect include easy store/online navigation (75%), relevant product/service recommendations (67%), messages that are tailored to their needs (66%) and targeted promotions (65%), according to McKinsey & Company’s Next in Personalization 2021 report.

Why it works: A personalized marketing approach creates a better customer experience by anticipating their needs and meeting them in real time. Personalization leads to higher brand awareness and loyalty, better customer retention and higher lifetime customer values. Companies that grow faster net 40% more revenue from personalization than slower-growing companies.

Measure and Change

Keep a close eye on your customer metrics and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly. Your cross-channel marketing platform should provide a user friendly dashboard and offer customized reports to show you where your customer pain points happen. If you set up a marketing workflow to send an SMS message about a sale on a product, for instance, but the SMS message campaign has a low engagement rate, you know it’s time to make a strategic change. What’s more, these changes can be made in real time to adjust to customer expectations throughout the lifecycle of any campaign.

You can also use survey responses through your cross-channel marketing tool to calculate quantitative measures of how happy customers are with the overall experience of working with your company.

Common metrics include:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS), based on responses to a question like, “How likely are you to recommend [XX company or service]?”
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), based on prompts to rate a certain part of the customer experience, such as product delivery or onboarding process
• Customer Effort Score (CES) determines how hard or easy it was for the customer to complete a task, such as completing an online order or setting up a profile

Why it works: Using metrics and adjusting in real-time is an agile marketing approach that allows you to understand what is and isn’t working for your customers and immediately create a better experience. This strategy leads to more team efficiency and better marketing results, because you’re not waiting until the end of a campaign to make changes. Instead, you can increase your return on investment in real time all while creating a better customer experience.

Benefits of Customer Experience Marketing

Focusing on customer experience may sound like a “nice” thing to do, but it offers true sales benefits. According to a recent Forbes Insights Report with Treasure Data, 74% of consumers are at least somewhat likely to buy based on experience alone.

Excellent customer experience can lead to increased customer loyalty, higher customer retention, higher lifetime customer value and greater brand equity.

At the end of the day, you’re not just selling a product or service, you’re selling a brand and an experience. Customer experience marketing will help you keep the focus where it belongs—on building a strong relationship between your customers and your brand.

To start focusing your initiatives on the overall customer experience, schedule a custom Iterable demo today.

The post What is Customer Experience Marketing? appeared first on Iterable.

So in this installment, we’re diving deeper into the bread and butter of most AI marketing: campaign automation and optimization.

Want to binge all the AI insights? Head to Ad Age now to download the full study.

What’s the Difference Between AI Automation and Optimization?

Automation and optimization are core components of all modern marketing campaigns, but when it comes to how they’re connected to AI specifically, the research denoted key differences.

Automation was defined as using machines automatically to do tasks without intervention. As Ad Age explains in the study, “AI-driven automation features can help marketers strengthen customer relationships, improve brand performance, and meet their KPIs in today’s fast-moving marketplace.”

Optimization, on the other hand, was defined as automatically recommending improvements. Ad Age differentiates the two by stating, “AI-powered optimization occurs both inside and outside of automation. AI is now a standard practice in automation platforms as a means to optimize send times and frequency for email campaigns and in-app or web push notifications.”

Put another way, automation is invoked when you send a triggered message, but with AI optimization you can trigger the message to send via the channel a customer uses most often or at the time they’re most likely to engage. Both are necessary to ensure the success of any marketing campaign.

What Marketers Think About AI Automation and Optimization

The data proves AI automation and optimization are indeed standard practices. When asked, “Which type of AI would make your jobs easier?,” 57% of the 1,200 marketers surveyed selected optimization, and 53% selected automation. Although marketers could select more than one subset, these two were the top-ranked options.

When it comes to AI making marketers’ jobs easier, Adriana Gil Miner, CMO at Iterable, has heard this feedback firsthand:

“Marketers are telling us: I do not want to set up campaigns anymore. I do not want to crunch data or take a half-day to set up a three-stage welcome program. They’re saying, automate all of that for me, and surface the insights and recommendations to give me the option of making human decisions.”

And, given that 62% of marketers currently use AI both for their job and outside their job, it’s clear they’re looking to AI technologies to simplify and streamline both their professional and personal lives.

Marketing Advantages of AI Automation and Optimization

If there was one word that sums up the advantage marketers have with AI automation and optimization, it would be efficiency. Ad Age states in the report, “AI is now widely acknowledged as an essential driver of marketing efficiency and brand performance.”

In fact, nearly half (47%) of marketers are drawn to AI specifically because it will help them work more efficiently. As for the other advantages:

• 49% believe AI should increase business metrics and reflect better on their job performance
• 45% believe AI will increase their skills and make their work more accurate
• 37% see AI as becoming an integral part of their overall skill set as a marketer

Ashley Kramer, chief marketing and strategy officer at GitLab, agrees these insights reflect what she’s observing on her own team:

“This report finds that marketers increasingly view AI not as a threat but as an enhancer […] AI can drive tremendous efficiencies throughout all organizations.”

AI-driven optimization and automation impact a marketer’s ability to increase their skills and improve their business metrics by streamlining their routine tasks and unlocking their capacity for creativity and innovation. When you no longer have to stress about the logistics of building a campaign or maximizing engagement rates, you’re free to dream up bigger and better ways to strengthen customer loyalty.

After identifying why today’s marketers are using AI to automate and optimize their campaigns, the next question, of course, is how they’re actually putting it into practice.

Spoiler alert: they’re using AI-powered platforms like Iterable.

Automation and Optimization with Iterable AI

As defined above, AI automation and optimization are all about letting technology tackle your routine tasks and improving performance over time. While any modern marketing platform worth its salt should already be leveraging AI as part of its toolset. Iterable goes beyond the basics to making every campaign a piece of cake.

Optimization has been at the core of the Iterable platform from the beginning, and its AI suite offers three features every marketer needs:

• Send time optimization
• Channel optimization
• Frequency optimization

Over the past decade, marketers have become so sophisticated that sending mass emails at nine o’clock on Tuesday mornings has been rendered obsolete. Now the popular mantra of sending “the right message to the right person at the right time” can be completely automated.

Iterable AI analyzes when, where, and how often a customer is most likely to engage with your brand, so you can let it decide and save your brainpower for developing creative and innovative campaigns.

And once those campaigns are complete, you can use Iterable’s Next Best Action to automatically identify how to maximize future engagement. Next Best Action uses AI to analyze the end-to-end logistics of your campaigns and suggest new audience segments and content recommendations to improve performance. It’s like having your own personal guide to point your marketing strategy in the right direction.

You can learn about all of the features in Iterable’s AI Suite and download the full Ad Age report for even more insights about AI-powered automation and optimization. Stay tuned—we’ll cover AI explainability and predictive goals next.

Ready to take the next step on your AI marketing journey? Reach out and schedule a custom demo of Iterable AI today.

The post How AI Automation & Optimization Impacts Today’s Marketers appeared first on Iterable.

What Impacts Email Deliverability? 

At this point, you’re likely already aware of how much work goes into maintaining a successful email marketing strategy. You need to be concerned about email delivery rates and ensure your messages don’t end up in a subscriber’s spam folder or get marked as spam by the recipient after it lands in the inbox. Spam placement can happen in several ways:

• You don’t have explicit permission from email subscribers to send them email, resulting in low/no engagement and/or spam complaints

• You sent to inactive or nonexistent email addresses repeatedly.

• You have low email open rates. The average open rate for business emails is 21.5%. If yours is well below that, it can lower your deliverability rate.


While ending up in the spam folder isn’t the desired outcome, there is still a chance that emails in spam folders might be read. What’s worse is if your email is rejected before it even arrives. Emails can bounce back for several reasons. 

• Soft bounces are considered temporary since action can usually be taken to avoid additional future bounces. These can be caused by a recipient’s inbox being too full, an out-of-office message, or a message that’s too large. 

• Block bounces are a type of soft bounce, but will have more of an impact on your sending reputation. You, the sender, are being blocked by the mailbox provider because previous negative signals were not heeded. 

• Hard bounces happen when you send to an invalid email—whether it’s spelled wrong or doesn’t exist—and are considered permanent.


Also included in your email lists might be spam trap addresses. These addresses are managed (and sometimes created) by mailbox providers and filtering companies to identify and monitor organizations sending spam. But not all spam traps are created equal. Some can have highly disruptive effects on your sending, leading to your IP address or your domain being blocklisted.

How to Improve Your Deliverability Rate

There are many ways to fix and, even better, improve your email deliverability rate. You can:

Clean Up Your Email List

Regularly reviewing and removing inactive subscribers will help keep your email list in good shape. A good rule of thumb is to cull addresses that haven’t engaged with your emails in the last six months. Use a cleaning service such as BriteVerify to verify your email lists before sending any emails. Also, be sure to remove any emails that have previously hard bounced. 


Tip: You can still include addresses outside the 6-month engagement window in re-engagement campaigns, but add them back in small segments to see at what point engagement drops. At that point, you will want to stop.

Make Your Opt-In Memorable

If people don’t remember signing up for your emails, there’s a good chance they won’t trust you and will either unsubscribe or mark your email as spam. Therefore, using a double opt-in is a good idea. This means recipients must confirm their subscription in their inbox before they are added to your list. 


Tip: Requiring a double opt-in helps you build a more engaged subscriber base and protects your sender reputation. 

Make it Easy to Unsubscribe 

It might seem like you’d want to make it harder for people to stop getting your emails, but it’s better for people to unsubscribe than mark your email as spam. 


Tip: Ensure the unsubscribe link is easy to find and use clear language. Also, keep the unsubscribe process simple. Don’t require the user to jump through hoops to unsubscribe (such as logging in to their account first.

Check Your Data

Track metrics such as open, bounce, and complaint rates for signs that your emails aren’t being delivered to your subscribers or aren’t resonating with your subscribers.


Tip: You know what metrics are typical for your program, so look more closely when something looks unusual. Examples include a significant drop in open or click rates or a large increase in bounces. These can indicate spam placement or blocks.

The Case for Email Deliverability 

Email is the backbone of a successful cross-channel marketing strategy. Emails drive sales, help you build a relationship with your consumers, offer a forum for feedback, and generate traffic to your website and social media accounts. That’s why it’s so important to ensure that your emails are safely making it to your subscribers’ inbox and that you’re providing content they find valuable and relevant.

If you’re currently an Iterable customer and are interested in our Deliverability Services, be sure to reach out to your CSM. If you’re not an Iterable customer yet, schedule a custom demo today. 

The post What is Email Deliverability? appeared first on Iterable.

The idea behind in-app messaging is to grab the viewer’s attention to drive deeper engagement and encourage retention—which is important considering app retention rates drop over time. At the 30-day mark apps have a 66% retention rate, at the 90-day mark it dips to 48%. You can encourage interaction and deliver more value from your app by using in-app messaging to promote new app features or products, assist with onboarding, or provide updates on recent purchases.

Because in-app messaging can be used to send timely, targeted, and informative messages that drive users to take action, they are compared to push notifications. The major difference is that in-app messaging appears when the user is actively using the app, whereas push notifications pop up outside app use and are designed to bring the user into the app. In-app messaging can also be more timely since they’re often a direct response to user behavior. For example, if a customer is browsing a particular product page within your app, you might send an in-app notification offering them a 24-hour discount on that product, or alerting them that stock is low.

When to Use In-App Messaging

There are many ways that in-app messaging can deliver value to your users. Some of the most common and beneficial uses include:

• Onboarding: In-app messaging can be a great way to guide people through your app’s features, help them set up a profile, or turn on location services.
• Recognition: Gamification and rewards can help build loyalty to your app. For example, you might send users a badge when they complete a portion of their profile.
• In-app purchases: In-app messages are natural vehicles for offering new product promotions, deals, and coupons that drive in-app purchases.
• App updates: Layout or functionality updates and new features are things that users want to hear about. You can use in-app messaging to alert them to these changes as soon as they open the app.
• Collecting feedback: In-app messaging is a great way to get immediate feedback through surveys or ratings, and to encourage users to leave starred reviews on other platforms.

Best Practices for In-App Messaging

In general, the best in-app messages are short, engaging, and simple. You can dress up the text in your notifications with links, images, and even GIFs. In cases where you may need to send a longer message, you can use an interactive carousel feature to allow the user to rotate through the notifications.

Although many in-app messages are promotional, they should be helpful. After all, you want to encourage users to visit your app more often. To be sure your messages are more helpful than harmful, consider the timing. You don’t want to send pop-up messages when users are in the middle of a task in your app, like filling out a survey.

To test that your messages are resonating with your intended audience, use A/B testing as you would with other marketing efforts. When done well, in-app messaging can mean the difference between a user finding your app beneficial and easy to use, and deleting it off their phone.

Benefits of Using In-App Messaging

One of the top benefits of in-app messaging is its ease. Unlike push notifications, users don’t have to opt-in to get the messages. That means the potential audience for these messages is every user of your app. In-app messages also stand out more because people only see them when they’re using your app, versus the dozens of push notifications they receive from all of their downloaded apps throughout the day.

Targeted in-app messaging can provide a lot of added value to your user, and take pressure off certain aspects of your business, such as customer service. For example, you can use in-app messaging to alert people when a product is back in stock, or to offer real-time price drop announcements.

In-app messaging can be easily integrated into your app and is a simple tool to use. Most importantly, relevant and timely in-app messaging can help improve return on investment by boosting app satisfaction and conversion rates.

In-App Messaging as Part of a Cross-Channel Marketing Campaign

In-app messaging can be used as one valuable component of a comprehensive cross-channel marketing campaign.

For instance, if your hospitality brand is promoting a discount on a multi-night stay, you might launch a campaign that incorporates an email promotion, an SMS message, a push notification, and an in-app message, customizing your channel optimization for each customer based on the channels they use and how they respond to the offer across each platform. By engaging with your customers across the channels they are most likely to use, you’ll increase the chances they consider your offer and, ultimately, book a trip.

By using a sophisticated cross-channel marketing solution like Iterable, you’ll be able to get a 360-degree view of each customer and develop the right engagement strategy for each one of them, incorporating in-app messaging alongside other marketing channels to find the right way to connect with them.

Schedule a demo to learn more.

The post What is In-App Messaging? appeared first on Iterable.

In our latest research with Wakefield Research published by Ad Age, we’re bridging this gap and combating any misconceptions with an exclusive look at how marketers are using AI technologies. In this four-part blog series, we’ll share insights about all types of AI tools, starting today with GenAI.

And if you’re looking for fewer hot takes and more hard facts, then download the full AI report on Ad Age.

What is Generative AI?

As Ad Age explains in the report, “generative AI represents a subset of the automation category focused on content creation.” These tools use natural language processing (NLP) models to generate copy or imagery that can be used for marketing campaigns, hence the name.

Lynn Girotto, CMO of Vimeo, discusses the importance GenAI plays in marketing personalization:

“Personalization in marketing has evolved from having the right data and technology to crafting the right message at the right place and time. I’m a big believer that AI, especially generative AI, will bring us closer to realizing this vision of deeper personalization.”

Testing and learning are critical components of GenAI, as marketers can craft more options for email subject lines, text messages, and other elements of campaign copy to experiment with. This is even more true at scale: in record time, GenAI can spark marketers’ creativity and unlock their writer’s block so they can stay competitive and drive better results.

What Marketers Think About Generative AI

In our survey of 1,200 marketers, the data was clear, according to Ad Age:

“Today’s marketers increasingly recognize AI’s ability to do things for them, not as a replacement for them, and are much less likely to view AI as a threat to their careers. The majority of marketers now believe AI will increase future job opportunities and allow them to perform their current roles better.”

Specifically, these were the survey results that stood out the most:

• 91% of marketers are already using AI in their jobs.
• 62% use AI both for their job and outside their job.
• 49% believe generative AI will make their jobs easier.

Ashley Kramer, chief marketing and strategy officer at GitLab, notes that Iterable’s research validates what she’s seeing with her audience of software developers:

“Companies that use AI to automate inefficient tasks will free up talent to focus on more creative endeavors, leading to improved productivity, innovation, and a competitive advantage.”

As the data shows, that competitive advantage doesn’t just apply to a brand’s ability to succeed in a crowded marketplace. It also applies to a marketer’s ability to succeed in a rapidly evolving job market.

GenAI’s Advantages for Marketers

The rapid acceleration of AI adoption doesn’t mean marketers don’t have legitimate concerns: nearly 9 in 10 expressed concerns that “I will have to learn how to use AI to maintain my value as a marketer.”

But the impact of GenAI’s success with tools like ChatGPT has brought opportunities for marketers to reduce the need for “do” time and increase their “think” time.

When marketers were asked what draws them to use AI at their jobs, these were the top responses:

• 47% the ability to work efficiently
• 45% increasing personal skill sets
• 43% fostering more accurate work

These advantages contribute to over two-thirds of marketers (67%) seeing AI as a transformative tech revolution, not just a tool. The key for marketing organizations, both big and small, will be making sure their teams have proper training and access to the right AI tools.

And that’s where Iterable can help.

Leveraging GenAI with Iterable’s Copy Assist

Modern customer communication platforms are already harnessing the power of generative AI, and Iterable is no exception. Iterable’s Copy Assist is designed to provide alternative text suggestions for short message copy, like email subject lines, SMS messages, and push notifications.

Last fall, we announced Copy Assist’s integration within Iterable Experiments, so marketers can test which messages will perform better with their audiences. With a centralized space to review and group past experiments, marketing teams can review their experiments’ performance and automatically create new, optimized ones based on previous results.

You can learn about all of the features in Iterable’s AI Suite and download the full Ad Age report for even more insights about AI-powered marketing. Plus, stay tuned for the deep dive into all things AI automation and optimization.

Ready to take the next step on your generative AI journey? Reach out and schedule a custom demo of Iterable AI today.

The post Survey Says: What Marketers Really Think About Generative AI appeared first on Iterable.

To give you a sense of everything we’ve accomplished over the years, here are just a few of our favorite moments:

• Keynotes from Disney, Netflix, and comedian Nicole Byer
• Sessions from Corporate Natalie, Dotdash Meredith, NBC, SeatGeek, Strava, Ritual, Stitcher, and Evernote
• A unique virtual conference on Activate Island
• Taking Activate global with trips to London, Amsterdam, Sydney, and recorded sessions from around the world

But again, this is just a handful of everything we’ve offered at Activate over the years. To convey this entire evolution visually, we’ve compiled the below infographic. So take a walk down memory lane as you scroll through the Activates of yore.

Oh, and don’t forget to join us at Activate Summit this year to become a part of history. If you’re not already registered, get to it! 

The post The History of Activate [Infographic] appeared first on Iterable.

I couldn’t help but think about each visit from a marketer’s perspective. Considering I work for a company that expresses the value of a personalized experience, there were a lot of mental notes made. In this case, an individualized experience would have made a world of difference.

Boutique #1

I started the day at a smaller boutique. My mom, my maid of honor, and I were led to a back section of the store which we were told was “just for us.” I took note of the various gowns that flocked the walls as we were shown to a sitting area. Once seated, the sales associate, let’s call her Lily, asked me a slew of questions about my wedding, my style, and my preferences—some zero-party data, if you will.

Important to note is that when booking all of these appointments, I was asked to fill out a form with this same information. I noted the time I spent filling out the form only to answer similar questions in person. The appointment was only an hour long, so having to cut into my time with repetitive questioning was already a demerit in my book.

Then, Lily pulled some dresses for me based on the information she had asked. Some were huge misses, some were hits. I tried them on and gave my feedback, and she would pull more options. What was frustrating was that I wasn’t given the option to browse myself. I had to trust Lily to listen to my preferences.

After rounds of getting sort of close to what I wanted, I found a dress I loved, but it needed some alterations. This boutique doesn’t offer in-house alterations, so Lily wasn’t comfortable recommending solutions. I was told “that would need to be discussed with a seamstress.” Sigh, more people to repeat my needs to.

We left the boutique without making a purchase, but still keeping that gown in mind.

Marketing Takeaway: Data is knowledge, so use it when it’s offered up. Customers are going to get frustrated if they provide data and it’s not used to enhance the overall customer experience.

Boutique #2

The next boutique we had trouble even locating. We went into a building, got lost in a stairwell, found the elevator, entered the shop, all to be told we had to go to the bridal store, not the events store (both under the same brand name). So, we went to the building next door and finally found the right spot. As soon as the elevator doors parted, future brides were whizzing back and forth in their prospective gowns. Definitely a bit busier than the last boutique.

I was greeted by an associate at the front desk who proceeded to hand me a tablet with a form asking for basic information like my email address, home address, phone number, etc. It also asked for my preferences and wedding information. Again, I had to fill out this information when booking the appointment and had since received confirmation emails, meaning, at the very least, they had my email already.

My appointment was at 2:30 and we waited until about 2:50 until we were even spoken to by another associate. We were finally taken to another room where we waited another 10 minutes.

The sales associate that I was working with, let’s call her Sarah, came into the room and greeted us. I bet you can’t guess what she asked me next. Yep. “What are you looking for? When’s the wedding? What styles do you like?” At this point I was already frustrated and told Sarah that I had just filled out all of that information on the form about 20 minutes earlier. She replied with “oh but it’s on the computer so if I were to go read it we’d be postponed even longer.” Not off to a good start, Sarah.

A more experienced salesperson than Lily, Sarah was able to quickly help me find dresses based on the information I had told her. She also let me walk around the store and point out what I liked. This boutique did offer alterations, so Sarah was also able to show me what was possible, which helped me better envision the final product.

I found another dress I liked here but, again, left without a purchase.

Marketing Takeaway: Reduce friction for customers interacting with your brand. Take deliverability, for example. Having multiple addresses or sender names from the same brand often leads customers down the wrong path or, like in this case, to the wrong storefront.

Boutique #3

Last stop of the day. Throughout my experiences with the other two boutiques I had picked a dress silhouette I liked and realized that this last boutique didn’t carry any with this silhouette. On the way over to the store I called the associate, let’s call her Lauren, and asked about the silhouette. She confirmed they didn’t have any but, since we were already en route, we decided to go.

This boutique was also very difficult to find, but when I called, the associate walked me through how to find it and stayed on the phone with me until she greeted us at the door.

Prior to this appointment I had picked five dresses the store carried that I wanted to try on. When I walked into our fitting room I noticed the five dresses and, beautifully written on the mirror was “Congratulations, Brooke! We’re excited you’re here!” I pointed it out to my mom and maid of honor, and specifically noted how the other boutiques didn’t do that.

Lauren offered us glasses of prosecco and then helped me try on the gowns. While none of them were what I wanted, Lauren was super kind, patient, and helpful. She even let us hang out in the room after the failed try-ons so we could chat and finish our drinks. Even though I didn’t end up buying anything, or even finding something I liked, at this last boutique, I couldn’t help but compare the experience and level of personalization to the previous two shops.

Marketing Takeaway: Details matter and the little ones are what turn even non-buyers into brand advocates for others. Customers are going to compare what you do and what your customers do, so it’s important to stay ahead of the curve.

Each Customer is One-of-a-Kind

I left the day with a bad taste in my mouth. Not only did I feel rushed and pressured to make a decision, but I really felt like just another number to these boutiques—especially boutiques one and two. While they may see 20 brides a day, I’m only visiting a few boutiques and picking a once-in-a-lifetime dress. It felt like the salespeople lost sight of that and were only angling for a commission.

As a brand, it’s a good reminder to consider your customers as individuals. While you may have hundreds of thousands of customers, to them, you may be the one store they’re willing to purchase with. To them, you’re the top choice.

Be sure to deliver an optimized, individualized experience where you take their zero-party data into account and use it to inform every step of the overall experience. It can really make a difference to your customers, especially if your competitors are doing it and you’re not.

To learn more about how you can personalize your customer experience, schedule a custom Iterable demo today.

The post Wedding Dress Shopping: A New Perspective on Personalization appeared first on Iterable.

How are Winback Campaigns and Re-Engagement Campaigns Different?

Both winback campaigns and re-engagement campaigns are aimed at increasing lapsed engagement. But these marketing terms aren’t interchangeable.

Re-engagement campaigns tend to be centered on a single marketing channel—say, sending a personalized, targeted email to re-engage customers who once reliably opened emails, but no longer do. A winback campaign, on the other hand, tends to take a more holistic approach to the customer-brand relationship. The goal is less focused on a particular marketing channel and more on increasing overall engagement across all channels, to support the intention of increasing customer lifetime value.

Keep in mind, winback campaigns don’t always target customers who have unsubscribed from a brand’s marketing messages or stopped interacting with the brand entirely. These campaigns can also be aimed at customers who are still somewhat engaged, but at far lower rates than they once were.

How do Winback Campaigns Impact Customer Churn?

Every business deals with customer churn. Even if a company’s overall number of customers stays relatively steady over time, marketers tend to keep a close eye on customer churn rate—the percentage of customers who stop utilizing a service within a specific time period. That’s because finding and acquiring new customers tends to be far more costly than retaining existing customers. So, high customer churn can take a serious bite out of the bottom line.

Keeping customers happy is obviously important for high customer retention and low customer churn—but so is winning back customers who have become more dormant. Lapsed customers have already demonstrated an interest in, and affinity towards, the brand, and because they’ve engaged in the past, your brand likely has past data to draw on that can make future marketing efforts more successful.

Consider the data you have on a churned customer. You know what actions they’ve taken in the past, what channels they prefer to engage with, what time of day they like to receive messages, what incentives spark them to action, how their current engagement compares to their historic peak, and more. Plus, you can also see if there are similar customers that have hit lulls in the past that have been won back. That’s powerful information. Strengthening a brand relationship with this audience is far less resource-intensive than starting afresh and trying to get net-new customers.

Tips for Building Successful Winback Campaigns

Not every customer who has hit a lull can be made into a brand enthusiast. But there are best practices that help marketers target their efforts and maximize returns.

• Clearly define the target audience: Will you focus on long-term customers whose purchase patterns have dipped more than one month in a row? Customers who showed high levels of activity on the site before finally making a first purchase, but haven’t been back since? Every brand will have its own definition of what they consider a churned customer, and setting a clear target for the winback campaign is foundational to its success.
• Leverage the intel you have: This isn’t a mystery shopper, it’s a customer you already interacted with. All of the data you have about how and when they engaged with the brand in the past puts you at a powerful advantage to rebuild that brand connection. Cast a wide net when it comes to this intel, compiling insights on everything from marketing channel to timing of communications, friend referrals to customer complaints.
• Consider where the customer is now: If someone has largely stopped engaging with the brand because they feel inundated with generic emails, sending another message to their inbox could be the final straw that loses that customer for good. That’s why it’s so important to look at a churned customer’s current behavior. Have they stopped engaging on certain platforms, but are still active on others? Does engagement tend to bump up when they receive promotional texts or emailed coupons? Are they still shopping in-store, even as their online engagement has hit a lull? Harness that data to power the next steps in the winback campaign.
• Make it personal: Customers can feel when marketers pick up a bullhorn and blast out the same message to everyone on their list. No surprise, that sort of broad-strokes approach is more likely to turn off customers that have drifted away than welcome them back into the fold. Leaning into personalization sends a signal that you know this customer. You know which platform to reach out on, what type of message to send them, which promotions they like, and exactly when the message should hit their phone or inbox. When customers feel seen, they feel connected. The more personalization that can be integrated into the winback campaign, the more effective it can be at turning those churned customers back into loyal ones.

It’s important to develop a dedicated strategy for winning back lapsed customers, using their own preferred channels and types of content to re-engage them with relevant and personalized messaging.

Still want more winback info? Learn more about how to build a successful winback campaign.

The post What is a Winback Campaign? appeared first on Iterable.

Looking forward is really just an answer to the question we all ask ourselves at some point: “now what?” Once you’ve established your gaps and overlaps and evaluated the options that exist on the market today to help you consolidate to a more efficient martech stack, it’s time to set the wheels in motion.

A Quick Refresh on Looking Inward and Outward

Just in case you’re under the wire and don’t have time to reread two full posts (although we definitely recommend perusing eventually), we’re going to speed through a recap of looking inward and looking outward.

Looking Inward

Let’s start with looking inward. This first step is all about evaluation. Taking a look at your current martech stack and understanding what tools are absolutely essential, which are not, and if there are capabilities in existing tools that aren’t being utilized by your team. It all boils down to the question, “Would removing any of these tools impede your team’s ability to execute the necessary use case?”

Looking Outward

Then, there’s looking outward. You’ve gone through your stack architecture, you’ve created an inventory spreadsheet, you’ve thought about your team’s use cases, and now you need to evaluate martech tools. Looking outward is about the trifecta: partners, features, and support. There are marketing tools out there for pretty much everything you can imagine but a true all-in-one marketing platform will have an ecosystem of partner integrations, a detailed product roadmap, and customer support to help you get the most out of the tool. 

If you’re not sure of the right questions to ask when evaluating martech tools, we’ve put together a guide to help. 

Once you’ve selected the right tool, it’s time to put your plan into action. Put your money where your mouth is, so to speak.

Looking Forward: Making the Most of Your MarTech Stack

Now that you’ve made your choice regarding your martech platform, it’s time to make the most of the tool you’ve chosen. We recommend a cycle of exploring, experimenting, and adjusting to ensure you’re continuously using your tool in the most beneficial and effective way possible.

Exploring Your Platform

First, it’s important to get familiar with the tool you have. Sure, you explored the tools’ capabilities in the looking outward stage, but it’s likely those examples or capabilities were shared in the context of an example—not with your actual use cases. When looking forward with your martech stack you need to be sure you understand all of the tools’ capabilities and how the tools can work for your specific business. 

This is where support is crucial. To start, having an Implementation team will be critical in setting your brand up for success. An Implementation Consultant ensures the platform is set up to optimize for your team’s use cases. Then, you’ll want to be sure your brand is assigned a Customer Success Manager (CSM) and you’ll be able to ask them questions specific to how you intend to use the platform after implementation. 

Don’t be afraid to poke around the tool and explore every nook and cranny to make sure you know what the tool can do. And don’t forget to get your team involved! They may have different ideas for how to use certain features, widening the breadth of how the one tool can help everyone.

Experimenting With Features

When you bring your team into the process, you’ll see features through different lenses and gain different perspectives on how certain features can be used. This is when you can really start to dig into experimentation. Remember: nothing is set in stone. You can try a feature one way and, if it doesn’t go the way you were hoping, you can try something else. 

Take Iterable Studio, for example. Maybe you set up a Journey in Iterable and it only involves email. It runs totally smoothly and emails get sent out to the right segments without a problem. However, you’re thinking about adding a third email to your onboarding flow. Don’t just think about it, test it out (for frequency, send time, and even the content), see what happens. Flexibility will take you far.

Adjusting Your Processes

Speaking of flexibility, think about why you embarked on this martech consolidation journey in the first place—you had too many tools that were used by too many teams and there were too many features that were going unused. It was all too much. If you can adjust as you go, making sure you’re creating processes that fit your tools rather than getting tools that fit your processes, you’ll avoid going down the same chaotic path. 

Take the Iterable Studio example we used above. Testing and adjusting go hand-in-hand. Say your onboarding journey is perfect, the three emails work great, but now you need to incorporate a new channel—SMS. You could start looking for an SMS platform or you could adjust the journeys you already have to incorporate the new channels. Small change, big results. 

Empowering Forward-Thinking Marketers

Albert Einstein said, “Life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance, you must keep moving.” We’d like to think this applies to marketing as well. If something isn’t working for you with your current martech stack, you have to push forward to find a solution. 

While it may seem like a daunting task to explore, experiment, and adjust within your martech tool, this cycle gets easier the more you do it. You’ve chosen your new platform, so the goal now is to continuously move forward and use it in the most efficient and effective ways possible. Without understanding your tool you’ll seek new capabilities, new tools will pop up, and your martech stack will become unwieldy once again—bringing you back to where you first started.

It’s early in the year, so there’s no better time to look inward, look outward, and look forward. 

To learn why Iterable is the right choice for consolidating your tech stack, schedule a custom demo today. 

The post MarTech Stack Consolidation Part 3: Looking Forward appeared first on Iterable.

I’m incredibly proud of our team, and the entire Iterable community, for working together to drive the ongoing momentum and impact of Iterable.

The Iterable team at our in-person company kickoff earlier this month: Unite FY25.

Join me in exploring some of our banner year highlights:

Surpassing $200 Million in Annual Recurring Revenue

Over our nearly 11 years as a business, Iterable has established itself as the leading platform of choice for today’s biggest global brands. While industry recognition is certainly rewarding, our greatest source of pride comes from exceptional customer feedback about our team. Time and again, our customers highlight the dedication, passion, and tenacity of our people as one of our greatest values and differentiators:

 “Iterable has a top-notch customer support system; they truly feel like an extension of our internal team. They go above and beyond to make sure our problems are solved and that our needs and wishes are met. We feel like our opinions can truly make an impact on the roadmap of the product. They help finesse our customer journeys and even give us new ideas and ways to optimize, too.” 

– Iterable Customer, Redfin, in G2

Iterable isn’t only the platform of choice for today’s biggest brands, we’re the partner of choice. Our shared commitment to customer-centricity has been instrumental in driving our success. Surpassing the $200 million ARR milestone is a testament to the extraordinary individuals who define the Iterable community.

Only a tiny fraction of companies ever cross this revenue milestone. It’s extremely rare, and it’s a sign that we’re doing something special. This achievement not only underscores the ever-growing importance of customer connections but also reflects the crucial role Iterable plays in addressing the expanding needs of the market. It highlights the rising relevance of keeping customers engaged and the growing value of customer loyalty!

Leading the Charge in AI Innovation

A recent Iterable survey of marketers from Wakefield Research reveals that a staggering 91% of marketers currently use AI technology in their daily work. But despite widespread adoption, the data also reveals that marketers haven’t yet unlocked its full potential.

AI isn’t just about automation, it’s about elevation, and it offers the opportunity to liberate marketers from time-consuming tasks, enabling them to redirect their efforts toward creativity and crafting unique experiences that evoke joy and connection for their customers.

At Iterable, we are committed to empowering marketers with the tools they need to deliver individualized, harmonized, and dynamic experiences for their customers with ease. We released 37 new platform capabilities, including cutting-edge AI-powered innovations, in the last fiscal year alone.

A few AI-powered features introduced last year include:

• Channel Optimization, which uses historical data to help marketers determine and send messages on the channels users prefer based on their likelihood to engage with the message
• Copy Assist, which allows marketers to generate alternative content and messages quickly and easily, saving them time, enhancing creativity, and creating new opportunities for valuable customer engagement
• Next Best Action, which enables marketers to retarget unengaged users swiftly and effectively through AI-driven audience recommendations and pre-populated copy suggestions, streamlining the campaign creation process
• AI-Driven Experiments, which includes AI-assisted variant ideation, minimizing the time and effort it takes to configure and conduct experiments at scale to drive optimal results faster
• Frequency Optimization, which taps into Iterable’s powerful AI capabilities to determine what frequency is right for each individual within a set range.

At Activate Summit 2023, the Iterable Product team announced our latest AI innovations and releases.

Iterable’s customers, like John Geiser, Senior Manager of CRM, Lifecycle, and Mobile at Redbubble, not only share in the excitement and value of AI advancements but also witness firsthand the transformative impact of Iterable AI in their daily work.

“I’ve experienced firsthand how Iterable AI has revolutionized the way I work on a daily basis, but the most exciting benefit of AI is that it gives us more time to daydream. When we can take a lot of that busy work away and let our minds wander, that’s when we come up with our best ideas. Creativity, fueled by these moments of mental freedom, enables us to cultivate richer human connections and explore collaborative opportunities with AI, amplifying our creative potential.”

– John Geiser, Senior Manager of CRM, Lifecycle, and Mobile at Redbubble

Read about Iterable’s 2023 Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter product releases.

Ongoing EU Expansion

Iterable took our first step in going global back in 2019 when we opened our first international office in London. It’s amazing to see how our team and customer community has grown and continued to expand since. Last year, we opened our European Data Center, ensuring EU-based and multinational brands can confidently build customer trust through enhanced performance, compliance, and data security.

And I’m excited to share that we are establishing a new office in Portugal! This expansion will open doors to new global talent and allow our team to further support and engage with our customer community in the EU.

Last year, our team took Activate on tour to eight cities around the world, including: Berlin, London (shown here), Amsterdam, and Sydney.

We’re extending our reach and enhancing our capabilities in the region. This year, in addition to Global SMS, Iterable introduced a range of other innovative international features—including Flexible Default Locales and AI-Powered Frequency Management—that empower our customer brands to expand their global reach.

Discover how our EU-based customers like Wolt, Secret Escapes, and Zoopla leverage Iterable to foster and establish meaningful connections with their customers in different regions around the world.

Expanding Our Enterprise Customer Community

We continued to expand our customer base, and grew to over 1,200 customers globally in 2023! In addition, we saw a remarkable 32% increase in platform users last year, reflecting marketers’ growing reliance on Iterable to effectively engage their audiences as well as the success of Iterable’s focus on building a platform designed for marketers.

“To date the project I am most proud of is our migration to Iterable…the speed and success of this program was due in large part to the highest quality teamwork, work ethic, organization and leadership from everyone involved.”

– Madison McKone, Associate Director of Growth Marketing Platforms at Dotdash Meredith

Caption: Marketers from customers all over the world joined us at Activate Summit and Activate Tour.

Scaling With Our Customers

Iterable stands out as a driving force of innovation in the marketing automation space. Marketers from innovative brands like Redfin, Box, Airtable, and GitLab leverage Iterable to deliver more than 200 billion cross-channel messages and execute over 2.65 million campaigns annually. The extensive scale at which we operate isn’t by chance—our platform was designed over 11 years ago with unprecedented flexibility, allowing us to seamlessly grow alongside our customers.

Customers like Steve Mastrocola, Senior Director of CRM at SeatGeek, the high-growth technology platform transforming the live event experience for fans, teams, and venues. Steve highlights SeatGeek’s confidence in foreseeing and adapting to changes with Iterable as their partner, ensuring ongoing meaningful customer connections.

“SeatGeek has been a loyal Iterable customer since 2016. Working with Iterable, we’ve successfully expanded our reach across multiple channels, driving impressive results in the process. Staying attuned to evolving customer trends and demands is paramount for SeatGeek’s success. Through cross-channel marketing and AI capabilities, the Iterable team ensures we stay ahead of the curve in this dynamic industry. We’re confident that with Iterable as our partner, we can anticipate and adapt to these changes, ensuring we continue to connect with our customers in meaningful ways, now and into the future.”

– Steve Mastrocola, Senior Director of CRM at SeatGeek

A Bright Future Ahead

After three days filled with collaboration, connection, and strategic planning at our company fiscal year kickoff event, Unite, I wrapped up our time together with this quote:

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Working together, I have no doubt that we’ll go fast and far as a company. We’ll keep pushing the boundaries, not just in innovation and customer success, but in everything we put our minds to as a company.

This is just the beginning of an incredible journey, and I’m beyond excited to keep growing alongside this exceptional team and community! Let’s keep the momentum going. Our brightest years are ahead.

Employees from our New York office celebrate the $200M ARR milestone at NASDAQ Tower.

To learn more about Iterable’s new product releases and capabilities, check out what’s new. Join the Iterable team at Activate Summit happening in San Jose from April 30 – May 2, 2024!

The post Celebrating a Stellar Year of Growth, Community, and AI Innovation appeared first on Iterable.

But that’s not giving segmentation the credit it deserves.

We’re diving deeper into Iterable’s segmentation tools and revealing features you may not know you already had at your fingertips. Knowledge is power, and knowing more about audience segmentation will make your marketing unstoppable.

1. Benefit From Historical Trends With a Longer Lookback

Segmentation is a core feature of most modern marketing platforms, but did you know not all of them grant you access to your historical customer data? Some vendors only offer a 30-day lookback window—unless, of course, you pay extra for a longer range.

This may suffice for certain types of businesses that rely heavily on very recent customer interactions, but falls short when it comes to companies with longer or more complex sales cycles. If households are only buying a mattress every ten years, for example, how useful is it if you can’t access a customer’s lifetime data?

By default, Iterable stores customer data in perpetuity, without additional cost, and does not restrict access to historical data. This allows you to benefit from a wider variety of segmentation use cases, such as:

• Rewarding legacy customers for how long they’ve made certain purchases
• Personalizing messaging based on product usage or purchase frequency
• Using patterns in certain markets or segments to guide future campaigns

The Event history provides details about system and custom events that Iterable has saved for the user you’re inspecting.

2. Directly Access Your Business Data With Catalog

Catalog has been a robust part of the Iterable platform for years. It provides a way to store and activate important business and e-commerce data, like store locations, product inventory, and text variations. This enables dynamic recommendations, which you can automatically populate within your customer communications.

But Catalog data can also be accessed during segmentation (currently in beta). This can be used as search criteria to help identify specific groups based on purchase history. For example, customers of a food delivery service who have ordered from restaurants located in a certain San Francisco neighborhood or customers of a streaming app who have recently watched a movie from the romance genre.

This functionality is important because now marketers don’t have to duplicate data on their user profiles just to leverage valuable business information. This makes it easy to activate customer segments at a more granular level, so you can match people with the products and content they’ll love the most.

Catalog’s greatest strength lies in its flexibility. Marketers control how and where Collection content is used across your digital channels.

3. Identify Customer Sentiment with Brand Affinity

Marketers have always been on the hunt for their VIPs—the loyal customers who will keep coming back again and again. It’s standard to segment audiences based on metrics that indicate brand adoration—like purchase frequency, average order value, or a loyalty program tier.

But AI can take this type of segmentation even further. Iterable’s Brand Affinity^TM uses Iterable AI to label your users based on their level of engagement with your brand. You can use these labels to send more personalized and relevant messages.

When you’re in Iterable’s segmentation tool, simply select Contact Property and choose field brandAffinityLabel. Select Equals as the operator and enter one of the following values (in all lowercase): loyal, positive, neutral, negative, or unscored.

To learn more about using Brand Affinity, check out our support article.

Whether you want to provide higher discounts to your loyal customers or improve open rates by suppressing sends to negative users, Brand AffinityTM can take your audience segmentation to the next level.

4. Gain Deeper Customer Knowledge with Audience Insights

As your business grows, it can be harder to provide an individualized customer experience at massive scale. If your subscribers are little more than email addresses, then how can you speak to them as intimately as their friends?

Iterable’s Audience Insights allows you to get a better understanding of your users by displaying actionable behavioral and demographic data from lists you’re already using.

You can discover a treasure trove of information, including:

• Where your users are located
• What locales they prefer
• The mobile devices and email domains they use
• Their Brand Affinity status
• Their total and unique purchases
• Their revenue and average order value
• Their conversion and unsubscribe rates

View detailed segment demographics in Iterable’s Audience Insights.

You can also see where a segment is being used, in campaigns, journeys, and other lists. And for more specific use cases, you can add custom insights for any conversion event and user profile field.

For example, to learn if users in a certain segment open your emails and subscribe to your newsletter, you can add a custom behavioral insight for the Email Open conversion event, and another the custom conversion event you use to track newsletter subscriptions.

With Audience Insights, you can make more informed decisions about your various customer segments and improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

More to Come on the Segmentation Front

As you can see with these innovative features, Iterable never treats segmentation as table stakes. There are always better, more individualized ways we can group our customer cohorts.

Expect to see more modernization in Iterable’s segmentation tool as we revamp our user interface and offer new methods of building and organizing your lists. Whether you’re just getting started with segmentation or looking to become more sophisticated, we want to provide a superior experience.

To learn the latest with Iterable’s audience segmentation and see it in action, schedule a custom demo today.

The post 4 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Audience Segmentation appeared first on Iterable.

For this reason, batch-and-blast campaigns don’t cut it anymore. To capture some of that diminishing attention and be heard over the noise, brands must lean heavily into relevance and personalization in their marketing campaigns. To customers, anything else feels disingenuous, alienating, and can lead to unsubscribes. What’s more, your competitors aren’t sitting still, waiting for you to get it right. They’re leveraging best-of-breed marketing automation and segmentation tools to craft hyper-personalized experiences that build genuine connections.

Segmentation: Your Key to Rising Above the Noise

The key to breaking through the clutter and forging meaningful customer connections lies in effective customer segmentation. But what IS customer segmentation? Perhaps it might be easiest to start with what it’s not. It’s not taking your entire customer list and sending them the same message, regardless of demographic or firmographic attributes, the products or services they’ve purchased, or how they’ve engaged with your brand.

Essentially, best practice segmentation is about moving beyond broad demographics and diving deep into your data to truly understand the details of your various customer groups, or cohorts. This means identifying shared characteristics, behaviors, and preferences to create distinct groups with specific needs and interests.

Customer Segmentation in Action

An example of a best practice segment for a company in the productivity software industry might look something like this: All 90-day trial users who have been active within the last 30 days, who’ve indicated (through surveys or other interactions) that their primary use case is for scholastic organization, who’ve used features A, B, and D, but not C.

In this example, the company might use this particular segment to send a cross-channel marketing campaign to educate these users on how to get the most out of the software for scholastic users, with emphasis on the benefit of feature C—a feature that has proven to increase initial conversions and renewals once customers start using it. Messaging might also include some dynamic content snippets that talk about some of the additional benefits of converting to a paid account.

This is why segmentation is important. Any users who have an entirely different use case, or already use feature C or are already paying customers would immediately see this messaging as irrelevant and alienating. So, taking the batch-and-blast approach and sending the same message to all users would not only be less effective, it would cause a pretty big disconnect for many.

Segmentation in a World of Strict Data Policies

Now, you might be concerned, especially in the current environment of increased privacy legislation, that capturing quality data to use in best practice segmentation might be quite difficult. The good news is that the data powering the best customer segments doesn’t have to come from some outside source. It’s probably information that you already have, that your customers have provided to you. This information is known as first- or zero-party data.

First-party data, gleaned from implicit customer interactions and purchases with your brand, can be far more powerful than any third-party source. Analyze purchase history, website behavior, event registrations, email engagement, support requests, and even social media interactions to uncover hidden patterns and affinities.

Zero-party data is information such as preferences, interests, and feedback that customers proactively provide to a company. Unlike first-party data, customers explicitly share this information through surveys, polls, product customization options, loyalty programs, or even casual interactions. Zero-party data unlocks hyper-personalized experiences by directly tapping into customers’ own preferences and desires.

Best Practices for Powerful Segmentation

Now that we’ve discussed what powerful segmentation looks like, let’s dive into some practical steps that you can take to improve your segmentation capabilities.

1. Capture Where You Can

The first, and most crucial step to creating effective customer segments is ensuring that you’re capturing all relevant customer interaction data from every interaction point possible. Think of everywhere your customers engage with you and then work to ensure that all relevant data points are being captured and stored.

2. Activate the Data

Capturing customer interaction data is useless if your marketing automation tools don’t have access to that data. Make sure your data is actionable by getting it into your customer communication platform in a timely fashion.

3. Accuracy Matters

Your data needs to be clean (accurate) and refreshed regularly. One sure-fire way to ruin a good customer segment is to use inaccurate data or allow your good data to become stale. A solid data governance practice will help immensely here.

4. Go Beyond the Basics

Age, gender, and location are just the tip of the iceberg. Consider psychographics, purchase patterns, life stages, and even sentiment analysis to paint a richer picture of your customers.

5. Choose the Right Tools

Ensure that your martech tools make it easy for you to use this valuable data to create both static and dynamic customer segments that can be used across targeted campaigns, website/mobile app personalization and predictive modeling.

The Power of Meaningful Connections: The Segmentation Impact

Investing in better segmentation isn’t just about avoiding the unsubscribe button. It’s about unlocking a world of possibilities. These include:

• Strengthening Customer Relationships: By fostering a sense of understanding and relevance, you build trust and loyalty.
• Boosting Engagement: Segmented campaigns resonate better, leading to higher open rates, click-throughs, and conversions.
• Maximizing ROI: Targeted messaging delivers a higher return on investment for your marketing spend.
• Building Positive Brand Affinity: When customers feel seen and understood, they become brand advocates, spreading the word organically.

In a World of Information Overload, Segmentation is Your Winning Strategy

In today’s marketing landscape, segmentation isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a requirement. By leveraging the power of data and insights, you can create targeted campaigns that truly resonate with your customers, forging meaningful connections that drive engagement, loyalty, and ultimately, brand success. So, ditch the batch-and-blast approach and embrace the art of segmentation.

To learn more about how Iterable can help you succeed in your segmentation endeavors, schedule a custom demo today.

The post Making Better Customer Segments and Why it Matters appeared first on Iterable.

With every new year comes new design trends. While we’re over a month into 2024, we figured it’s as good a time as any to focus on some marketing design trends we expect to take off this year. In 2023 we predicted retro, monochrome, highlights, outlines, and touches of illustration. Some of last year’s trends are likely going to stick around for the long haul (retro, we’re lookin’ at you), but this year, things are going to be a bit different.

Who better than us, an in-house Iterable Brand Designer and Social Media Manager, to share our expertise and look at what design trends brands can expect to show up in future marketing communications?

1. Kitsch

Kitsch has historically been defined as, “Something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality.” First of all, rude. Through the lens of this design trend we’re equating kitsch more to unique, colorful, retro, and tacky (in the best possible way). Going hand-in-hand with the maximalism craze, kitsch captures bold color with unexpected shapes.

Pinterest Predicts shared the popularity of kitsch in interior design. Source: Pinterest Predicts.

While Pinterest may be predicting kitsch in interior design, it’s safe to assume that this trend will bleed into all forms of design, including marketing communications.

2. Free-Form Photo Cropping

The next trend we expect to see more of is free-form photo cropping. By this, we really mean more organic shapes will be utilized to crop photography. Rather than just the basic square or circle crop we’re all used to seeing, brands will start cropping photos to shapes that more closely align with their overall brand aesthetic.

Fitbit and Soulcycle use unique shapes to crop the image of the instructor. Source: Really Good Emails.

Take this co-branded email from Fitbit and Soulcycle, for example. Where they could have placed a full width rectangular image, they instead cropped to an organic, rounded shape. This shape adds a bit of interest and, because they cropped the image in a way that breaks the borders of the shape, it adds dimension.

3. Hand-Drawn Illustrations

In what our Social Media Manager, Bri, referred to as “The Graza Effect,” we expect to see a lot more hand-drawn illustrations in emails and other marketing communications. These custom illustrations help develop strong brand identity and individuality. The Graza Effect is named after Graza olive oil, a brand that’s now synonymous with these custom drawings.

A large part of the Graza olive oil brand is hand-drawn illustrations. Source: Graza.

But, of course, Graza isn’t the only brand utilizing these types of drawings in their marketing messaging. Fishwife, a female-owned tinned fish company uses a similar aesthetic in their branding.

Fishwife uses small, custom illustrations throughout their marketing collateral. Source: Fishwife.

These illustrations are appealing to brands because they’re completely unique to the individual brand. Gone are the days of stock photos. Custom drawings are in.

4. Diagonal Lines

Another 2024 design trend we expect to see a lot more of is diagonal lines. Adding diagonal lines to designs makes them a bit more interesting. “Diagonal lines have the most capacity to lead the eye and they tend to make a design or image look more ‘dynamic.’ Since they are neither vertical nor horizontal, diagonal lines can seem unstable, like they are about to fall or they are moving somewhere. Diagonal lines can also show perspective. These lines lead the viewer into the image.”

Nandos uses diagonal lines to break up the various email sections. Source: Really Good Emails.

In this example from Nando’s, diagonal lines are used to separate the various content modules in the email. In a traditional email you’d see straight lines separating each section, but by including diagonals the email is more interesting.

5. Coquette

We couldn’t not talk about the coquette trend that’s sweeping social media. According to Buzzfeed, “The term ‘coquette’ refers to a ‘woman who flirts,’ but the trend leans more into incorporating playful, romantic, and dainty details into everyday style and decor.” Bows have become synonymous with the coquette trend and we’ve seen this play out on Tiktok—from people putting ribbons in their hair to tying ribbons around food.

Pinterest Predicts shared the coquette trend of “bow stacking.” Source: Pinterest Predicts.

One trend that Pinterest Predicts called out, in relation to the coquette trend, is “bow stacking.” Basically, this means wearing a bunch of bows either in one’s hair, as part of an outfit, etc. We wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing bows in brands’ marketing communications.

Design Trends for the New Year

As we picked out some of these trends, we started noticing some overarching themes. This year is not about quiet design. Gone are the days of “millennial gray”—brands are learning to embrace bold, bright colors and shapes.

We’re also noticing a desire for individualization. Just as customers expect to be treated like individuals, brands want to be recognized as unique—standing out from competitors. Hand-drawn illustrations really lend themselves to individualized brand identities because they’re truly custom for each brand. Brands are leaning away from downloaded icon packs and creating their own. Iconic, really.

Now’s the time to set your brand apart. Embrace these trends but really make them your own. Use these trends to develop a strong brand identity and keep it consistent throughout all of your marketing communications.

To learn more about creating consistent cross-channel marketing communications, schedule a custom Iterable demo today.

The post 2024 Marketing Design Trends appeared first on Iterable.

To help reduce the number of tools (and therefore the number of trainings, siloed data, and overall cost), martech consolidation should be a priority. Cutting various marketing platforms can be as tricky as finding new ones. Different teams use different tools for different purposes, so it’s important to find a tool that can perform the way multiple teams need it to.

We’ve created a guide to help you maximize the value of your customer communication platform with a series of questions to understand if a solution delivers on its promises. By focusing on data, design, delivery, and optimization, you’ll be able to direct conversations when you’re in the trenches exploring vendors, support deeper exploration of native features and/or functionality offered, and ultimately rule out what’s function versus fiction so you feel confident about your chosen solution.

This post is a preview but if you want to jump right to the full guide, it’s available here.

4 Measures to Evaluate Customer Communication Platforms

Let’s look closer at the four capabilities to look for in your platform and some questions included in the guide to discern important functionality, features, integrations, and more for each one.

1. Data

Data flexibility encompasses the platform’s ability to operate productively inside your existing technology environment. Flexibility goes beyond integration alone and characterizes how readily the platform ingests, activates, and feeds data throughout your broader stack.
Your martech platform’s ability to store data and make it actionable will dictate how well your team can send relevant communications to customers. Marketers need all the different layers of their data compiled and ready for use if they hope to reflect their customers’ real-time experiences.

Sample questions to ask:

• How readily does the platform integrate with other tools and data sources?
• What levels of personalization are possible?
• How flexible is the platform’s data storage schema?
• How does the platform support the advancement of each customer’s journey?

2. Design

Design speaks to the platform’s campaign management capabilities and the degrees to which your team can elevate messaging efficacy when efficiently creating and launching compelling cross-channel campaigns.

As modern marketers, 1:1 personalization across your customer database is essential. If a customer communication platform prevents you from maximizing a data-rich ecosystem, it will feel like you’re flying blind during campaign execution and management. Look for the platform that ticks off boxes for designing more enriched campaigns and getting them to market faster.

Sample questions to ask:

• How quickly can you build and send a campaign?
• How easily can cross-channel customer journeys be created?
• How can behavioral events be incorporated into campaigns?
• Are there templates to support journey building?

3. Delivery

Delivery speaks to the ability to effectively convey personalized messages to consumers across various channels—like email, SMS, and mobile push notifications—in a cohesive and coordinated manner.

This results in both greater efficiency— as marketers no longer have to switch between tools—and better customer experiences that lead to stronger engagement and retention. Brands with consistent, effective cross-channel marketing have customer retention rates ~91% higher than those that don’t.

Sample questions to ask:

• What level of engineering dependency does the tool require?
• How are audiences segmented while campaigns run?
• Does the platform maintain data export/import requirements?
• What communication channels are natively supported inside the platform?

4. Optimization

Optimization refers to fine-tuning campaigns with AI-powered segmentation and recommendations, experimentation, and insights driven by analytics.

Marketers have many factors to consider when personalizing campaigns at scale—customer profile data, message frequency, delivery timing, etc. Generic messaging just won’t cut it. Optimization can lead to better audience understanding, increased productivity and ROI, improved customer retention, and more.

Sample questions to ask:

• How is campaign effectiveness reported?
• Are there any A/B testing capabilities?
• How does the platform improve campaign performance with AI?
• How transparent is the AI with what data it uses to draw conclusions or make predictions?

Martech Consolidation Should Be the Opposite of Overwhelming

As Beth Comstock, former CMO and Vice Chair at General Electric said, “Marketing’s job is never done. It’s about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.” What that looks like is different for each brand, but if modern marketers have the right customer communication platform to facilitate insightful, responsive marketing experiences, the outcomes speak for themselves. Work is easier, demands are manageable, consumer expectations are fulfilled, and forward progress is possible..

Download the full guide for a comprehensive list of questions to help you find the best customer communication platform and decide who addresses data, design, delivery and optimization. And, if you’re curious about what makes Iterable a top-rated, AI-powered communication platform that thousands of brands trust, read our customers’ stories.

The post A Guide for Building the Right Martech Stack appeared first on Iterable.

1. Calm

Calm is the #1 app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation that offers guided meditations, sleep stories, soothing background music and more.

By coupling Iterable’s cross-channel customer journeys with Amplitude’s visualized product analytics, Calm gained a deeper understanding of customer behavior. For example, recognizing that user engagement is highest in the first hour of downloading the app, Calm began testing their new-member onboarding flow.

In their experiment, half of new members were funneled through the same onboarding touchpoints, but without the existing delays—instead of 27 days, the same eight emails went out in 15 days. With this shift, Calm quickly saw that users sent down the shortened path were engaging at a higher rate than those on the extended journey.

Investing in Amplitude and Iterable helped Calm build a martech stack that was fit to scale and keep pace with their rapid growth. It has enabled their team to be better informed about their users and continue to refine communications throughout the entire customer journey, ultimately bringing a little more Calm into people’s lives—one test, one conversion at a time.

Results

• 4x increase in revenue from new-member onboarding
• 15 day onboarding, shortened from 27 days

Read the full case study.

2. RealSelf

RealSelf is a leading healthcare marketplace for people to get factual, unbiased information on cosmetic procedures. Their mission is to create a world where every investment in modern beauty is worth it. RealSelf aims to be the go-to advisor for medical and aesthetic procedures by making the experience easy, personal, and trusted.

Due to an unwieldy and ineffective in-house AI model that led to a decline in engagement and high opt-out rate, RealSelf was in need of a more reliable, automated solution that would leverage AI to deliver their messages at the most optimal frequency.

To resolve the challenges with their AI model, RealSelf turned to Iterable’s Brand Affinity, which uses AI to automatically calculate a loyalty score based on a user’s recent interactions across their marketing channels, and converts these into affinity labels tied to each user profile. For example, users labeled as loyal are those who are highly engaged with RealSelf and can be considered brand advocates.

Using these affinity labels, the RealSelf marketing team gains a unique advantage by intelligently translating user engagement data into deeper, more meaningful connections. This helps them maximize retention with loyal customers, nurture customers through lifecycle stages, and mitigate churn with at-risk detractors.

Results

• Within the first month of launching Brand Affinity, RealSelf has seen sessions and contacts increase by 30% and click-through rate has increased by 13%.
• Comparing one month before versus one month after Brand Affinity, RealSelf has seen a +39% increase in website traffic and +44% increase in conversion.
• With the help of Brand Affinity, RealSelf saves their data engineers about two hours each week when downloading their user engagement to their data warehouse.
• Within one month, the team saw a 33% decrease in opt outs with their neutral Brand Affinity group.

Read the full case study.

3. The Body Coach

Founded by personal trainer Joe Wicks ten years ago, The Body Coach aims to get people moving and help them fall in love with fitness. As one of several mobile-based, subscription fitness apps available today, The Body Coach recognized it must move fast and use clever, personalized communications to attract and retain customers.

Easy Start, an activation feature launched in September 2022, helps new Body Coach subscribers—and especially fitness beginners—start their first workout. Having observed a common, but unfavorable behavior with beginners, the product team wanted to address it. Their plan was to soften the onboarding ramp with Easy Start and make it less intimidating for someone going from no-to-low activity to several weekly hiit workouts.

A cross-discipline team including product, design and product marketing implemented the Easy Start in-app feature and used Iterable Studio to develop the complementary communication series—in-app, push notifications, and email messages—with a goal to reduce the % of beginners who are inactive during their first 30 days using the app. After launching the Easy Start campaign and communication series in Q3 2022, Body Coach reduced the number of inactive beginners by 10% in one quarter.

Results

• A 10% reduction in the total number of inactive Body Coach beginners, within one business quarter.
• 60% of users who interact with personal voice messages from Joe, delivered through push notifications, complete a workout in three days.
• Improved customer engagement that increases the likelihood of 30-day retention and member renewal.
• More consistent, cross-channel branding from an improved digital ecosystem of Iterable’s marketing automation platform, the CMS, and social media. This strengthens members’ journeys and their overall emotional connection to the brand and Joe as the face of The Body Coach.
• Automated, nimble communications create operational efficiencies and support both reactive and proactive customer engagement to match the brand’s quick, effective, personal social strategy.

Read the full case study.

4. Curology

With over $17 million in funding and a business that has grown by over 500% in the past year, Curology is on a mission to provide personalized prescription skincare for acne and anti-aging directly to tens of thousands of subscribers.

In the past, the growth marketing team at Curology used two separate platforms to manage email and SMS campaigns. Data silos hindered the company’s ability to build robust subscriber profiles and deliver personalized messages in real time. Now, by partnering with Iterable, Curology has eliminated its data silos and increased its treatment plan compliance by 14% by incentivizing its customers with highly relevant messages.

Using Iterable’s visual, drag-and-drop Studio, Curology can now identify which members aren’t engaging via SMS, and reach these individuals with targeted email follow-ups, tracking email and site metrics to ensure that they’re achieving relevance across all marketing channels.

Results

• With Iterable’s true cross-channel capabilities, Curology has improved customer engagement by 26% and increased revenue by 10%.
• Curology uses Iterable to increase treatment plan compliance by 14% by sending dynamic, personalized messages across SMS and email.
• Patients younger than 30 are 10% more likely to opt-in to the SMS challenge—Iterable’s dynamic data segmentation allows Curology to quickly act on customer behavior.

Read the full case study.

5. Madison Reed

With Madison Reed’s online subscription service, consumers can achieve salon-quality hair coloring at home—conveniently, confidently, and economically. In addition to aggressively growing its online business, this relatively young company is opening physical locations called Color Bars to give customers the option of obtaining hair-coloring products and services in person.

Marketers and engineers alike were excited about Madison Reed’s move to Iterable. Iterable’s flexible data model, modern APIs, and universal webhooks saved engineering time by simplifying integrations with other platforms. For example, Madison Reed leverages integrations with Segment, for customer data, and Lob, for direct mail.

Because of Iterable’s straightforward, intuitive interface, marketers were able to quickly leverage these integrations. Today, Segment events trigger campaigns based on customer purchases and other behaviors. Delivery of a customer’s first order, for example, triggers a series of messages containing how-to videos and custom tutorials to set customers up for success, thereby increasing the likelihood of subsequent orders.

Results

• The upgrade-to- subscription conversion rate for Iterable campaigns is 45% higher than that of a control group.
• Multivariate Testing and Performance Optimization showed that the addition of direct mail to the reactivation journey drove an incremental 3% lift in upgrades.
• Easy integration with other marketing platforms saves hours of engineering time and powers sophisticated campaign journeys.
• Automated campaigns triggered by individualized customer behavior are increasing reorders, expanding the customer base, and increasing revenue.

Read the full case study.

Maintaining Healthy Relationships

We’ve managed to collect a few health and wellness examples from our customer story repository, but there’s plenty more where that came from. Overall, some themes have emerged from even just these examples alone. Iterable helps health and wellness brands experiment, consolidate tech stacks, automate campaigns, and increase customer engagement. That’s just one industry, too. Iterable has helped a wide array of other industries that we’ll continue to roundup as part of this series—so stay tuned.

To learn how Iterable can help your retail brand save time and money, schedule a demo today.

The post Iterable Industry Roundup Pt. 3: Health & Wellness appeared first on Iterable.

We’ve already put together some industry-based roundups, like this list of retail case studies, so we’re continuing this series by compiling some cross-channel marketing case studies. After all, 72% of consumers say they would rather connect with brands and businesses through multiple channels.

Let’s dive into these examples that demonstrate how Iterable (and our partners) can help brands make an impact with their customers.

1. SeatGeek

SeatGeek, the live entertainment platform rethinking ticketing, struggled to deliver consistent, relevant cross-channel messages using separate email and push notification platforms. Besides being cumbersome, the platforms didn’t support the marketing team’s AI-driven, cross-channel strategy to reach customers through SMS, in-app messages, and social media.

SeatGeek adopted Iterable to consolidate communications, and now delivers highly-personal content reflecting users’ past purchases, location, online behaviors, and event-driven activities, which drives loyalty and repeat engagement. Combining communications with their unique entertainment suggestions, and connecting with customers where they are, SeatGeek produces better experiences for everyone.

Results

• Consolidation of all email and push interactions onto a single platform ensures consistent messaging across channels.
  • 3x increase in revenue from email and push
• Easy-to-use interface allows marketers to create highly granular customer segments and complex journeys without engineering help.
• Data feeds enable precise targeting and personalization of messages, which enhances customer loyalty and encourages repeat business.
• Testing provides insight into which campaigns and channels work best, improving decisions on how to allocate marketing spend.

Read the full case study.

2. The Athletic

The Athletic subscription news service delivers sports stories and analyses that bring fans closer to games, their favorite leagues, and teams. As their subscriber base quickly expanded, the manual, time-intensive email platform couldn’t support a hyper-personal, cross-channel experience.

Iterable’s segmentation, testing, reporting capabilities, cross-channel delivery, and scalability were a silver bullet for their teams (CRM, Editorial, Social, and Programming) to create campaigns that engage and make customers happy. To onboard subscribers, they use data feeds to send personalized welcome and follow-up communications. For all subscribers—whether they use the mobile app, podcast, free newsletter, or go online—unique emails feature season previews or real-time news for their favorite teams and leagues, and push notifications keep them informed during events or on the go.

Results

• Greater marketing efficiencies from improved data collection, analysis, and more automated campaign workflows means The Athletic is activating 10 new user journeys in 2022.
• Easy-to-execute campaign testing and creative capabilities support more personal, targeted user communications that increase click-through and conversion rates.
  • 2x click-through rates with personalized vs. non-personalized campaigns
  • 127% lift in subscriber click rate
  • 70% higher click rate between the welcome email and the next best performing email
• Stronger campaign performance from deeper user segmentation, communication scheduling tied to key moments, and more data-driven intelligence.

Read the full case study.

3. Box

Box, which enhances employee and partner collaboration with its cloud content management, collaboration, and file sharing tools, needed to scale and personalize communications from thousands of business administrators to millions of end users. Operating with a lean team focused on this goal, they wanted a solution that can execute campaigns at massive scale.

Iterable supported and increased Box user adoption by facilitating unique, data-driven onboarding campaigns. Iterable’s API and flexible data model makes it possible to create and send personalized messages as users also reach certain event milestones and take action.

Results

• Personalization engages customers more effectively, strengthening relationships with enterprise customers. Higher engagement among users has increased user adoption by 10%.
• Lifecycle Campaign Composition enables the team to get new campaigns ready for rollout to Box’s global user community
  5 times faster.
• Marketers have enhanced segmentation and personalization by combining Iterable data with data from Salesforce and other marketing tools.

Read the full case study.

4. Fender

Countless musicians use Fender equipment to ignite their songs, but inspiration fades for artists, triggering customer retention challenges. As a result, three mobile apps including Fender Play, Fender Tune, and Fender Tone, plus a direct-to-consumer business and e-commerce channel, were developed. Having different properties, Fender user data was dispersed, and with a siloed tech stack, marketing couldn’t easily track and use it for meaningful experiences to increase retention.

With Iterable, Fender unified its data and uncovered engagement opportunities or where customers dropped off. It now powers their cross-channel campaigns to influence offline behavior with online engagement, prompting customers to start free trials, use their apps, and purchase products.

Results

• Fender has seen improvements in retention of a month-to-month paying user because of engagement with videos.
• 89% of users watch a video on their first day.
• Through a personalized onboarding experience, Fender has seen an increase in engagement, encouraging people to watch more videos, learn more guitar, and then stick around as a paying member.

Read the full case study.

5. CoinStats

CoinStats is a popular cryptocurrency portfolio management platform, securely managing crypto and DeFi portfolios in one spot, which makes buying, selling, and tracking assets easier. But with inherent friction involved in onboarding to a new financial service, there’s often hesitation to start or reservation about sensitive data being secure. The result for CoinStats: high abandonment rates as timid new users dropped before connecting their portfolios.

Reducing drop offs takes real-time response so lifecycle marketing initiated a re-engagement campaign, powered by Iterable. It triggers personalized push notification minutes after abandonment occurs followed by email and in-app messages reinforcing CoinStats’ value. With cross-channel orchestration easier and real-time re-engagement more impactful, relationship-building moments happen more often, improving user satisfaction and activity.

Results

• With a tailored, cross-channel re-engagement campaign, CoinStats achieved a 35% decrease in abandonment rates and a 20% increase in user activity.
• Personalized push notifications resulted in a 2x increase in open rates compared to their non-personalized counterparts.
• Shifting the tone of their communications from promotional to transactional increased push open rates by nearly 50%.
• Integrating Iterable with Amplitude provided unparalleled visibility into A/B testing, down-funnel analytics, and campaign performance.

Read the full case study.

Creating a Cross-Channel Community

These brands’ challenges may sound familiar, but by embracing a customer communication platform that brings together customer data, they have the ability to design personal experiences. By delivering communications across channels they’ve seen deeper customer connections, empowered marketing teams, improved key performance indicators (KPIs), a stronger bottom line, and more.

To learn how Iterable can help your brand save time and money with cross-channel marketing strategies, schedule a demo today.

The post Iterable Roundup, Pt. 2: Cross-Channel Campaigns appeared first on Iterable.

Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing strategy is crucial for cutting through the promotional noise and staying ahead of your competitors. So to maximize the success of those campaigns, we’re sharing a list of top mobile marketing KPIs that should be on your radar in 2024.

Top Mobile Marketing KPIs to Kick Off Your New Year

1. Mobile E-Commerce Adoption

Mobile channels are already driving 60% of global e-commerce sales, so experts predict that mobile adoption will only increase in 2024. If more customers are shopping on their phones and tablets, then marketers must be able to track their online behavior across devices and communication channels.

Standard KPIs to measure mobile e-commerce adoption include sales attributed to mobile and average mobile order value, but another not to overlook is your company’s mobile cart conversion rate.

High cart abandonment on mobile may be indicative of a clunky checkout process, which can be remedied by partnering with teams in charge of e-commerce and user experience (UX). Marketers can also increase conversion rates by harnessing the power of AI-led features like Send Time Optimization (STO) for abandoned cart messages. That way, customers can be easily reminded of what items they left behind—regardless of which device they used.

Want to lift your retail and e-commerce lifetime value? Grab our guide on boosting retail LTV with cross-channel marketing.

2. Cross-Channel Performance

Let’s put it this way: customers aren’t going to be using fewer methods to shop and interact with their favorite brands online. Industry experts anticipate SMS and other mobile channels taking a front seat in 2024, especially as they become foundational means of communicating with customers.

KPIs to measure cross-channel performance run the gamut, but an initial place to start would be tracking the opt-in and/or engagement rates of each channel: email, SMS, mobile push, web push, and in-app notifications should be in every marketer’s toolkit.

But if your data is sending mixed messages, don’t be afraid to ask customers to specify their preferred communication method. Assuming what your customers want can never take the place of asking them explicitly.

Don’t have time to send a mass survey? No worries. You can take the guesswork out of your campaigns by using Channel and Frequency Optimization tools to automatically decide when to send messages and to which channel based on each customer’s individual behavior.

For tips on ways to uplevel your cross-channel personalization, download our guide on orchestrating your campaign messaging.

3. Gamification Impact

You don’t have to play Overcooked like you’re on the TV show “The Bear” to understand how effective gamification can be.

What marketers can’t forget, however, is measuring the success of their gamification strategies. One common way marketers include gamification is through loyalty programs, in which customers can earn points to level up and earn discounts and rewards.

So if you offer a loyalty program, make sure you’re tracking the engagement and conversion rates at each tier. That way, you can determine how best to communicate with each customer segment to drive increased purchases.

That said, you don’t need a formal loyalty program to benefit from segmenting customers based on brand sentiment. Iterable’s Brand Affinity, for instance, makes it easy to label subscribers as loyal, positive, neutral, or negative based on their engagement or lack thereof with your brand. Once you better understand your audience, you can use gamification more effectively in your campaigns.

Unlock customer loyalty and growth with our 2024 guide to lifecycle marketing, which breaks down the key steps you need to take to set your brand apart from the competition.

4. ROI on Mobile Ad Spend

Economic turbulence has continued to impact marketers, but experts are optimistic in 2024. Our friends at AppsFlyer report, “2023 saw an impressive 9% year-over-year increase in iOS non-organic installs (NOI)—an app download that happened as the result of marketing activity—after a 15% drop in 2022 compared to 2021.”

Moreover, AppsFlyer has surveyed marketers about the impact of Android’s Privacy Sandbox, which allows for testing and betas, and 53% said they will be spending more budget due to Sandbox.

This additional budget means that marketers will want to track their ROI on mobile ad spend to ensure their dollars are not circling the drain. A great way to get the biggest bang for buck is to set up Predictive Goals, as offered in Iterable’s AI suite, to identify customer segments that are most likely to purchase. By analyzing historical user behavior, you can mitigate churn and increase customer lifetime value.

Get the most out of your technology investments by downloading our checklist on how to maximize the ROI of your martech.

New Year, More Mobile Marketing KPIs

The name of the game in 2024 will be mobile marketing measurement. From e-commerce adoption to ad spend, the KPIs we’ve discussed in this post provide a way for marketers to gain deeper insight into the performance of their cross-channel campaigns.

But tracking isn’t possible if you don’t have a robust platform to make it happen. The new year is the perfect time to evaluate whether your martech is meeting your reporting and analytics needs. And if it isn’t, we’re here to help.

Want to test Iterable’s analytics for yourself? Reach out and schedule a custom demo today.

The post Top 2024 Mobile Marketing KPIs You Should Be Tracking appeared first on Iterable.

A customer is more than just a single sale. Turning a one-time shopper into a return buyer and boosting the value of each transaction is all part of increasing LTV—and it’s great for your bottom line. The key to making that happen is identifying your most valuable customers and ensuring you provide them with the best possible customer experience, to keep them coming back and spending more for a long, long time.

Why is Customer Lifetime Value Useful?

The cost of acquiring a new customer is higher than the cost of keeping one. Calculating LTV is a good way to see whether you are getting a return on your investments in customer acquisition—like what you’re spending on advertising, marketing, and special offers.

This allows you to allocate resources toward acquiring and retaining high-value customers. For instance, you may choose to dedicate an account manager for these clients (even if it’s just in the couple of months before their subscription runs out). LTV can also show you the best prospects to target with add-ons and upsells to increase their per-purchase revenue.

LTV can be a useful measure to predict your company’s growth potential and decide whether raising or lowering prices is sustainable. If lifetime customer value doesn’t exceed what you’re spending per customer, you might have to change your business model or pricing structure to sustain or expand. On the flip side, if LTV is significant, you may have the wiggle room to lower prices without hurting growth.

How Do You Calculate LTV?

There are different ways to calculate customer lifetime value— it can be based on your business model, order volume, or frequency of customer purchases.

For average customer lifetime value, you first need to figure out what your average customer spends per purchase. Multiply that by the average purchase frequency. Then multiply that by the average customer lifetime, or how long the average customer remains a client.

For instance, if you run a coffee shop, your average customer might buy a cup of coffee ($3) four days a week, 50 weeks a year, and keep coming in for five years. Your average LTV calculation would look like this:

LTV = $3 x (4 purchases/week x 50 weeks/year) x 5 years = $3,000

Segmenting customers into groups (like those who buy more expensive products, versus those who stick to basic offerings), or looking at individual user behavior, can give you more detailed information to allow you to target clients who create higher profit margins.

If your business runs on a subscription model, a simple way to calculate LTV for new customers is to use the churn rate, or how many customers you expect to lose in a subscription period. In that case you use the subscription price divided by churn rate:

LTV = money spent per customer / churn rate

How to Improve LTV

Customer lifetime value can tell you a lot about your business and inform you how to nurture your highest-value contacts and boost their value.

Here are some ways to increase customer lifetime value:

• Invest in customer experience. Customer relationships are key to boosting LTV. From the moment a customer makes a purchase or inquiry, every part of their experience with your brand can affect the likelihood they’ll come back. The more they come back, the higher their value.
• Prioritize high-value acquisitions. It doesn’t make sense to spend more money on acquiring new customers that don’t return to you in the form of sales. By isolating high value customers, you can focus retention efforts on those who consistently buy.
• Create a loyalty program. Loyalty programs boost customer retention. Consider offerings such as frequent buyer points, perks like free shipping and early access to sales, or special promotions for program participants.
• Improve ordering, returns, and customer service. Every touchpoint is an opportunity to impress a customer or lose a customer. When orders and returns are frictionless experiences, customers are more likely to buy again. Use customer service best practices to answer all complaints and issues promptly, fostering a positive long-term relationship.

How to Take Your LTV to the Next Level

Perhaps the most important action you can take to improve customer lifetime value is to integrate that data with your cross-channel marketing strategy. Cross-channel marketing takes data, such as customer interactions, and then personalizes the customer journey to each individual consumer. This automation allows for targeted campaigns to be sent on the platform and device that’s most likely to reach that particular customer.

Cross-channel marketing is the perfect way to increase the lifetime value of your customers. By prioritizing each customer’s unique interests and communication preferences, you can send messages, promotions, and upselling opportunities that are custom-designed to re-engage them and encourage them to make additional purchases. By making each customer relationship a priority, your customers will reward you with their brand loyalty.

To learn how Iterable can help you build a cross-channel experience to increase LTV, schedule a demo today.

The post What is Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)? appeared first on Iterable.

If you haven’t been waiting on the edge of your seat since April and need a little refresher on what exactly Embedded Messaging is, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

What is Embedded Messaging?

Consumers are bombarded by thousands of digital touchpoints from various brands each day. They therefore tend to prefer the touchpoints that occur natively within their user experience, are personalized, and offer clear value by anticipating their needs by guiding them along their customer journey. In fact, 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences and native ads receive a 5-10x higher CTR than traditional ads.

An example of an embedded message and what it looks like in the Iterable platform.

Embedded Messaging, a new channel within Iterable’s cross-channel offering, allows brands to deliver marketing messages that are natively embedded alongside other content in a brand’s apps and websites, without interrupting the user experience.

What are the Benefits of Embedded Messaging?

Embedded messages are designed to meet customers where they are. With a low technical lift, real-time personalization, and non-intrusive design, Embedded Messaging was built from the ground up, keeping marketers top-of-mind.

1. Low Technical Lift

Allowing for marketer-friendly creation and developer friendly implementation, it’s easy to hit the ground running with Embedded Messaging. Once initial placements are built, marketers can create new Embedded Messaging campaigns with easy-to-use templates—no app store updates needed, making content creation a breeze.

With Embedded Messaging, marketers also have full control over the ordering of the messages. You can prioritize and sequence messages at the placement level, ensuring that important messages are shown first, or certain messages appear together.

2. Real-Time Personalization With Our Real-Time Eligibility Delivery Mechanism

Let automation do its thing. Iterable’s Real-Time Eligibility Delivery Mechanism watches for changes in the user state constantly. The moment a user becomes eligible, or ineligible, to see content—based on the set segmentation criteria—Iterable updates which messages a user has available to them in real time.

Example showing different stages of a customer journey and the messages that could be displayed as a result.

This real-time flexibility provides value across the entire customer lifecycle—from activation to retention. If a user is in your app and subscribes to a paid subscription, for example, their messages will automatically shift from urging them to subscribe to showing them messages related to their subscription. And, if you’re worried about defining user criteria, user criteria can be changed while a campaign is running. So if you decide you want to change the target audience for a specific message, you can.

3. Non-Intrusive Messaging Allows Customers to Engage With Content When They’re Ready

Customers prefer touchpoints that occur natively within their journey which is why Embedded Messages are designed to appear in-line with other content. These messages are nothing like the flashy pop-up banners of the early aughts. Instead, these messages are delivered to users without interrupting their flow.

On top of that, message placements within your app or on your website can be hyper-individualized, giving marketers the ability to fully customize the user experience based on the story the marketer is trying to tell each specific customer.

When Should I Use Embedded Messaging?

Embedded Messaging can be used for strategies across the entire customer lifecycle. Although there are essentially an infinite number of use cases, all revolve around the following three main objectives of activating customers, driving sales, and encouraging loyalty.

Activate Customers

Use Embedded Messaging in the pre-sale stage to help drive a customer’s first impactful interaction with your brand. You can also use this first interaction to learn more about your customers in order to personalize their experience and help guide their next action in the customer lifecycle.

Let’s say you’re a marketer trying to get a customer to switch from freemium to premium by offering a free trial. Using Predictive Goals, you could create a segment of users with a moderate likelihood of switching to a paid subscription to ensure you only target users who need a little extra nudge to convert. Targeting only these users, you could create an Embedded Messaging campaign in the top carousel on the homepage of your app that encourages visitors to “Try a 14-day free trial for a paid subscription!”

Drive Sales

Embedded Messaging is great for driving sales of a particular product line or feature during a set time frame. This is important because each time a customer makes a purchase, it’s one more step towards becoming a loyal customer.

As an example, say you work for a retail brand and, now that winter is almost here, you’re trying to boost sales for your brand’s remaining fall inventory. You target the hero banner location on both your app and website to spark interest and sales for their remaining fall line products with messaging saying “Get 20% off on our Fall merch through Friday only with code FALLING INTO WINTER.”

For customers who claim the offer and make a purchase using the code, you could replace the banner with another Embedded Message that offers a sneak preview of your winter collection. For customers who don’t claim the original offer, the message would remain until the deal ends.

Encourage Loyalty

Embedded Messaging is also beneficial when trying to keep customers engaged with your brand and increase the likelihood they remain a loyal customer. You can message customers who aren’t engaged with your brand to prevent them from churning. Embedded Messages can help re-engage customers who might otherwise not feel inclined to take any action with your brand.

In this example, you’re a mobile marketer and you notice that after customers use your brand’s app to achieve a certain goal, they often don’t re-open it for a while. To help increase app engagement, you could set up two embedded messages. One message could go on your brand’s website, letting customers know that the app has some new features available. The second message could be within the app, letting customers know of the new feature with a deep link that leads them to the feature.

Embedded Messaging Every Step of the Way

Embedded Messaging is another channel that allows marketers to create custom experiences for each and every individual customer. Rather than interrupting a customers’ journey, Embedded Messaging fits right in, helping to guide customers to the next step in a way that’s specific and unique to them. The best part? It can be automated and edited in real time to deliver the best results possible for both your team and your customers. We’re excited to see what you can do with this new feature.

Want to learn more about pricing and how to add Embedded Messaging to your existing channel mix? Reach out to your CSM or schedule an Iterable demo today.

The post Iterable’s Embedded Messaging is Here appeared first on Iterable.

Positive fingerprints contribute to emails being delivered to the recipient’s inbox, while negative ones might lead to categorization into specific tabs like promotions, or even the spam folder. For brands, understanding content fingerprinting is crucial to navigate the complexities of email deliverability and ensure their marketing messages reach the intended audience.

Attributes Tracked for Content Fingerprinting

As senders navigate the complexities of email deliverability, understanding content fingerprinting becomes a strategic move to position your brand above the rest. Mailbox providers employ a comprehensive approach to assess the legitimacy and relevance of each message. This section dives deeper into the various attributes mailbox providers fingerprint consider to determine both deliverability and sender reputation.

Headers and Metadata

Content fingerprinting heavily influences spam filtering. By including clear headers and metadata, you not only improve your email deliverability but reduce the risk of being tagged as a sender associated with unsolicited or harmful content. Having your content consistently flagged as spam can not only increase the chances of your emails being filtered into spam folders, but mailbox providers might also categorize your entire domain as suspicious, affecting the delivery of all your messages.

Mailbox providers scrutinize email headers and metadata for critical information that establishes the sender’s identity and validates the legitimacy of the message. They look at:

• Sender Details: The sender’s email address, name, and associated information
• Routing Information: Details about the email’s journey, including servers it passed through and the IP address used to deliver the message
• Authentication Protocols: Verification through protocols like SPF, DKIM & DMARC

Subject Line and Body Content

Crafting transparent, relevant, and engaging content contributes to a positive fingerprint and, in turn, nurtures a positive sender reputation. If your subject lines or body copy consistently exhibit characteristics associated with mass-marketing or deceptive practices, your sender reputation may plummet. Mailbox providers prioritize user safety, and being perceived as untrustworthy can lead to severe restrictions or blacklisting.

The wording, structure, and overall content of the subject line and email body are carefully analyzed. This includes:

• Relevance and Clarity: Recipient mailboxes assess whether the content aligns with the subject line and user expectations
• Language and Tone: The language used and the overall tone of the content are considered
• Deceptive Practices: Identification of potential phishing attempts or deceptive tactics

Formatting and HTML Structure

How an email looks is just as important as the content within it. Think about getting an email that just looks suspicious. Whether the styling didn’t render or it doesn’t fit your phone screen, there are certain red flags when it comes to emails. Mailbox providers think the same way.

Mailbox providers pay close attention to the HTML structure and formatting of emails to ensure a positive user experience. They consider:

• Device Rendering: Ensuring emails display correctly on various devices
• Broken Elements: Checking for broken links, images, or poorly formatted content
• Use of Responsive Design: Responsive design for adaptability across different screen sizes

Attachments and Links

We all know to stay away from suspicious links. Links can lead to malware or they can even look legitimate as a way to get personal information from the end user. Mailbox providers understand that bad links could be a sign of a bad actor—so links and attachments are examined when considering fingerprinting.

The nature of attachments and links within the email is examined for potential risks and relevance. Mailbox providers examine:

• Attachment Types: Identification of potentially harmful or suspicious attachment types
• Link Destination: Examination of links to ensure they lead to safe and expected destinations
• Consistency With Email Content: Links and attachments aligning with the overall content of the email

Engagement History

High engagement rates, a reflection of positive recipient interactions with your emails, contribute positively to your sender reputation. Conversely, if your emails consistently fail to engage recipients, it can result in a poor sender reputation. Low engagement rates signal to mailbox providers that your content might not be relevant or desired.

Both positive and negative recipient engagement history is a major aspect in content fingerprinting. This includes:

• Open Rates: Frequency and consistency of email opens
• Click-Through Rates: Interaction with links and calls-to-action
• User Responses: Direct user responses, such as replies or interactions with embedded forms
• Opt-Out Rates: The rate at which users are removed due to spam complaints or unsubscribes.

Consistency in Sending Practices

Mailbox providers track the consistency of your sending practices, evaluating how well they align with established patterns. If your emails consistently exhibit patterns associated with spam or unwanted content, your sender reputation can and will take a hit. Email providers may start flagging your emails as potential spam, leading to decreased inbox placement and a drop in overall engagement.

The regularity and consistency of a sender’s practices are tracked to identify patterns and potential deviations. Mailbox providers look at:

• Sending Frequency: How often emails are sent over a specific timeframe
• Send Time: Consistency or variation in the time of day emails are sent
• Changes in Sending Patterns: Identifying sudden deviations from established sending practices

Sender reputation is a long-term game. The impressions formed through content fingerprinting contribute to an ongoing evaluation of your sender identity. Long-term negative impressions stemming from consistent fingerprinting patterns can result in lasting damage to your sender reputation. Rebuilding trust with mailbox providers may become challenging, affecting your email performance and value for an extended period.

Why Updating Content Helps Avoid Fingerprinting

Regularly updating and refreshing your email content and changing elements within your emails can disrupt fingerprinting patterns, making it harder for recipient mailbox providers to establish fixed identifiers. This strategy not only disrupts fingerprinting patterns but also signals to mailbox providers that you are invested in providing fresh, relevant content, which positively influences both deliverability and sender reputation.

Incorporating dynamic content that adapts based on user behavior or preferences not only engages your audience but also adds an element of unpredictability to your emails. While leveraging dynamic content for increased engagement, ensure that the variability introduced aligns with your overall sender strategy. Consistent positive interactions contribute to a favorable sender reputation.

Implementing A/B experimenting for various elements of your emails, including subject lines, content, and formatting also helps optimize your campaigns and introduces variability in your email content. A/B experimenting is a valuable tool for optimizing campaigns and introducing new content. However, carefully interpret the results to maintain a balance between experimentation and consistent positive engagement.

Lastly, be cautious with predictable sending patterns, as they can contribute to the formation of consistent fingerprints. Varying your sending times, frequencies, and content can help to avoid being easily identified. While avoiding predictability, try to maintain some consistency that aligns with subscriber expectations. Striking this balance ensures that your emails are both recognized as trustworthy and engaging. However, you want to avoid too much change to avoid looking like a malicious sender trying to game the system.

Best Practices for Content Refreshment

Keeping content fresh isn’t always the easiest. But, to avoid fingerprinting and stay on top of the content you’re sending and what you’re planning to send, take the following best practices into consideration.

• Schedule Regular Audits: Establish a content audit schedule to assess the relevance and effectiveness of your email content. Use these audits to identify areas for improvement and adaptation.
• Align With Marketing Calendar: Plan content updates in alignment with your broader marketing calendar. Ensure that updates coincide with product launches, promotions, or relevant industry events.
• Leverage User Feedback: Actively seek and leverage user feedback to inform content updates. Understand what your audience finds valuable and adjust your content strategy accordingly.
• Monitor Performance Metrics: Regularly monitor performance metrics, including open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Analyze how content changes impact these metrics and refine your strategy accordingly.

Be Proactive When Creating Emails

By proactively incorporating methods to regularly update and diversify your email content, you enhance not only the chances of optimal deliverability but also mitigate the potential negative effects of content fingerprinting on your sender reputation.

Recognizing the dual influence of content fingerprinting on both deliverability and sender standing and adopting a holistic approach will fortify your standing as a sender respected for reliability and trustworthiness in the eyes of both mailbox providers and your recipients.

The post Email Content Fingerprinting and Its Role in Deliverability appeared first on Iterable.

Today, we are beyond excited to announce a massive leap forward in helping marketers overcome these challenges with our new Iterable Ingest Toolkit. This set of capabilities empowers marketers to bring all of their rich data into Iterable—without submitting engineering tickets or dealing with manual CSVs.

The Ingest Toolkit is highlighted by Smart Ingest, a free Iterable-native solution co-developed with Hightouch. Smart Ingest directly connects cloud data platforms to Iterable, making it easier than ever to bring user attributes, customer lists, product catalogs, and more into Iterable. The Ingest Toolkit also includes Data Schema Management, an intuitive user interface where marketers can manage and control their data schema. Together, these new features help marketers activate their data and drive richer personalization without engineering support.

In addition to the Ingest Toolkit, we’re making it easier for marketers to scale their impact across their businesses by updating how Iterable shares data directly with cloud data platforms to include AI-enriched user profile attributes.

What is Smart Ingest?

Brands have no shortage of data, but it’s often locked away in cloud data platforms and not accessible to marketing teams in the tools they use every day. Historically, getting that data into the hands of marketers has required filing tickets, waiting for engineers to build custom integrations, or simply giving up and abandoning campaign ideas altogether.

Smart Ingest, the Iterable-native feature co-developed with Hightouch, solves this by directly connecting Iterable to any major cloud data platform. It offers an intuitive, marketer-friendly user interface (UI) directly within Iterable for importing user attributes, populating customer lists, dynamically updating product catalogs, and using the latest data from cloud data platforms.

With Smart Ingest, marketing teams can bring all of their rich customer data into Iterable, enhancing their ability to segment and personalize campaigns—without having to deal with manual data uploads or waiting on technical teams.

“Iterable and Hightouch share a vision of democratized data, where every marketer has self-service access to all of their customer data and can activate it to deliver personalized experiences that create stronger customer connections,” shared Kashish Gupta, Founder and co-CEO of Hightouch. “We’re thrilled to partner more closely with Iterable to deliver our technology to marketing teams around the world.”

Smart Ingest will be available at no additional cost and will support all major cloud data platforms.

What is Data Schema Management?

Adding to the Ingest Toolkit is Data Schema Management—a visual experience empowering marketers to control and defend their data’s structure to drive faster activation, collaboration, and reporting across systems and teams.

With just a click in Iterable, marketers can lock their data structure, ensuring unmatched data integrity by preventing the addition of unintended data fields. This control not only maintains the consistency and reliability of their data but also makes the platform incredibly easy to use.

Data Schema Management also enables marketers to intentionally update their data schema, streamlining their data organization process without needing deep technical skills. With precise data management, campaigns become more targeted, measurable, and scalable. Marketers leveraging Iterable are not just organizing and activating data but optimizing their marketing impact.

Unleash AI Across Your Business with Iterable & Snowflake Secure Data Sharing

Our customers have fueled their cross-channel communications with our AI-powered Brand Affinity and Predictive Goals to make better targeting decisions, boost loyalty, and unlock business growth.

Now, it’s time to bring these powerful AI-enriched user attributes and augment their business data directly in their Snowflake accounts so they can scale their impact across their businesses.

For example, eligible marketers can now design better in-product experiences to boost loyalty for customers who are classified as “Neutral” by Brand Affinity. Similarly, by making Predictive Goals available in Snowflake, brands can now combine these user scores with other business or product data to clearly see how various in-product experiences influence engagement and conversion rates for specific custom events and customer segments.

This update enhances our Snowflake Secure Data Sharing solution by incorporating a complete set of user profile data into the already existing flow of campaign data—eliminating the need for custom pipelines and engineers.

Own Your Data Strategy

Iterable is built for marketers. With this newest release we’re building on this vision by empowering marketers to easily activate more of their customer data by reducing their reliance on tech and engineering teams.

The Ingest Toolkit and updates to our Snowflake Secure Data Sharing solution enable marketers to connect and activate their cloud data platforms, manage their data structure on the platform, and augment their Snowflake accounts with AI-powered user classifiers so they can truly unlock customer joy, all while reducing their dependence on tech teams.

To learn more about the Ingest Toolkit with Smart Ingest and the update to our Snowflake Secure Data Sharing solution, check out what’s new. For more info on Hightouch, visit hightouch.com.

The post Iterable’s Ingest Toolkit Empowers Marketers to Easily Activate Their Data appeared first on Iterable.

Machine Learning in Action

In an era where technology seamlessly integrates into our daily lives, the pervasive influence of ML stands as a testament to its transformative power. Many of our everyday experiences are powered by ML in ways we don’t even think about. ML stealthily operates behind the scenes, orchestrating experiences that range from effortlessly filtering out spam emails to delivering personalized recommendations on streaming platforms.

Machine Learning Filters Spam

Sometimes, the most valuable technologies are easily overlooked. Take the role of ML in spam filtering, for example. The value of spam filters lies in the ability to process vast amounts of incoming data, learn patterns from this information, and subsequently discern between legitimate and unwanted emails, all with lightning speed.

The model’s behavior involves analyzing email content, sender information, and user interactions to make split-second decisions, significantly reducing the burden of manually sifting through countless emails, all done in a way that users barely have to think about. While 10 years ago, one would frequently have to mark messages as spam or not spam, these days, the technologies have improved to the point where it’s only occasionally necessary.

Machine Learning Provides Video Recommendations

In the realm of video streaming services, the brilliance of ML shines through personalized recommendations. These platforms employ sophisticated algorithms that scrutinize user preferences, viewing history, and interactions with content to curate suggestions tailored to individual tastes.

When a user discovers enticing content aligned perfectly with their interests, it’s a testament to the iterative learning process of ML. These platforms continually refine their algorithms, gauging the success of recommendations based on user engagement metrics such as watch time, likes, and interactions. Through this iterative process, ML identifies patterns of user behavior and refines its suggestions, thereby enhancing the overall user experience. The viewer doesn’t have to think about the ML at all to benefit from it.

How Machine Learning Supports Predictive Marketing

Similarly, in the domain of marketing, predictive analytics—fueled by ML—revolutionizes campaign strategies. Predictive models can analyze multifaceted data points to forecast user behavior, enabling marketers to anticipate responses accurately. This predictive prowess eliminates the guesswork involved in targeting specific user segments for campaigns.

By learning from past campaign successes and failures, these models iteratively refine their predictions, optimizing the targeting criteria and enhancing the efficacy of marketing efforts. The value proposition of ML is profound—it not only saves time for marketers and users but also elevates the quality of interactions and experiences.

A Real-World Marketing Example

To illustrate how a predictive model operates, behind the scenes, we’ll walk through an example of building a predictive model using marketing data from a real Portuguese banking institution. The data is open-source, and the code is available in this notebook. The notebook contains a more detailed walkthrough of the code and how the model is built, while the explanation in this article is more high-level and focuses on the impact such a hypothetical model might have.

The Data
The dataset includes 16 features that give information about users, including demographic data such as their job, marital status, educational status, and marketing data like how many times they were contacted and the outcome of the previous marketing campaign. The goal will be to predict whether the client subscribes to a term deposit, which is the conversion event for this campaign.

Sample of the data used in this example.

Data Cleaning
The dataset includes data for 45211 contacts. The first step in building a predictive model is data cleaning. We have to wrangle the data into a format that xgboost, a popular machine-learning algorithm, can understand. In production model development, it’s not uncommon for this stage to take the longest. See the notebook for details about how we do the cleaning.

Sample data after cleaning.

Train/Test Split
Next, we split these contacts into a training set and a test set. The model will learn from users in the training set, while we test the model’s accuracy in the test set. (Note: the same user cannot be in both sets, since the model would effectively be cheating off the answer key.)

Different splits can be used, but here, we’ll randomly select 80% of users to be in the training set, with the remainder in the test set. Once we’ve completed this process, we see that we have randomly split our 45211 total users into 36168 users in the training set and 9043 users in the test set.

Model Training and Evaluation
Then, we’ll train the model using the xgboost algorithm. Afterwards, we’ll evaluate the resulting model. While xgboost is quite configurable, we’ll primarily use the defaults for simplicity in today’s example.

First, we look at the AUC (area under curve). This is a commonly used metric for classification models such as this one, which produces a number between 0.5 and 1. The higher the AUC, the better the model. In this case, our AUC was about 0.73, indicating that we have a medium level of model performance. This is to be expected in this type of use case because customer behavior can never fully be predicted.

The Confusion Matrix.

Next, we look at the above confusion matrix. The vertical axis represents the actual conversion outcome for users in the test set, while the horizontal axis represents the predicted conversion outcome. For example, 7638 users were correctly predicted not to convert, while 565 users were correctly predicted to convert. 314 users were predicted to convert but didn’t, while 526 users were predicted not to convert but did.

While this model is not perfect, it’s important to note that it could have been extremely useful, nonetheless, because we can use it for segmentation. Let’s examine this use case more carefully.

Segmentation
Segmentation is often not covered in introductory ML tutorials, but it’s essential to making the most of your predictive models for marketing. Let’s try ranking users into 10 deciles and seeing how likely each segment is to convert. The technical details of how we do this can be found in the notebook, but we’ll stick to talking about what we do with the results here. We divide users into 10 deciles, ranked by their likelihood of converting as predicted by the model.

Bar chart depicting conversion rate by decile.

As we can see here, the top decile, labeled “9,” has about a 60% chance to convert, while deciles 0-5 have almost no chance to convert. Since we know this information before sending the campaign out, this information is quite actionable. We can choose, for example, not to bother sending the campaign to deciles 0 through 5 and to send out a promotion to segments 6 through 9. We could even tailor our messaging to each of these segments.

The practical demonstration with marketing data from a Portuguese banking institution vividly illustrates the practical application of predictive modeling in marketing, showcasing its ability to enable precise segmentation and optimal resource allocation.

Machine Learning: A Marketing Game-Changer

Machine learning quietly revolutionizes our daily experiences, from filtering email spam to curating personalized recommendations on streaming platforms. Its prowess lies in learning from data, liberating us from mundane tasks, and enhancing our insight. As demonstrated in the example above, predictive analytics reshapes marketing strategies, offering insights that refine interactions and optimize resource allocation.

In marketing, predictive models equipped to analyze multifaceted data points accurately forecast user behavior, eliminating guesswork in targeting specific segments. This not only saves time but improves the quality of interactions. By discerning patterns in consumer behavior, ML empowers marketers to anticipate trends, personalize outreach, and optimize campaigns. This dynamic technology doesn’t just streamline processes; it refines targeting criteria, enhances customer experiences, and maximizes ROI.

Iterable’s Predictive Goals represents the next iteration of making your data work for you–what if you could predict what your customers will do instead of looking only at what they’ve already done? Predictive Goals, within the context of machine learning, sets the foundation for businesses to not only understand but actively engage and optimize interactions with their audience, marking a pivotal step towards a symbiotic relationship between technology and consumer engagement.

To learn more about Iterable’s Predictive Goals, schedule a demo or reach out to your CSM.

The post Getting Hands-On With Machine Learning in Marketing appeared first on Iterable.

Consumers are becoming increasingly aware—and wary—of how some companies track, sell, and buy their online data and use it to target them for aggressive sales and marketing pitches. Governments are cracking down by limiting how companies can collect and use customer data. And companies, including Apple and Google, are making it easier to opt out of being tracked.

As privacy becomes more and more important to consumers, intentionally proffered information is all the more valuable to marketers. Here’s what you need to know about zero-party customer data, how to collect it, and how to put it to use for your brand.

What’s the Difference Between Customer Data Types?

Various types of customer data can be collected. One of the most important distinctions is how data is collected, and those distinctions can be a little confusing. Here we’ll explain the difference between zero-, first-, second-, and third-party data.

Zero-party data: Zero-party data differs from the other types in that it is the only one that is collected directly—explicitly—from customers who voluntarily give you their information. Examples of zero-party data include:

• Communication preferences
• Purchase intentions
• Style preferences
• Self-identifiers
• Quiz responses

These are usually collected via surveys or user profile settings.

First-party data: First-party data is collected implicitly as users interact with your brand. It can include browsing history, purchase history, clicking and hovering behaviors, email engagements, downloads, and other actions. It can be collected automatically from all your marketing and sales channels, such as:

• Brand website
• Mobile app
• Emails
• CRM systems
• Subscriptions
• Social media
• Marketing campaigns

Second-party data: Second-party data collects the same information as first-party data—browsing, purchase, subscription history, etc. The difference is that instead of collecting the data on your own platforms from your own customers, you purchase the data from another brand. The data is considered the other brand’s first-party data, which makes it second-party data to you. It’s still specific to each user, but not specific to your site or app.

Third-party data: Third-party data refers to collecting and selling customer data. Information such as demographics, location, age, income, education, sites visited, and buying signals (that is, actions that indicate a person is interested in purchasing a particular type of product) are obtained by third-party data brokers and sold to marketers in large bundles of aggregated data.

Third-party data has been extremely valuable for learning what consumers are doing online, but it’s exactly the kind of data that makes consumers wary and causes regulators to crack down. Although it is still practiced, the future of third-party data is uncertain.

How to Use Zero-Party Data

Best practices dictate that you should offer something of value to your customers in exchange for their information—and then quickly deliver on that offer. For example, completing a short survey could earn them a coupon code, or a free download. Or, you might ask them to take a style quiz and then use AI to immediately serve up a list of personalized shopping recommendations based on their answers.

Whatever you do, be sure to put your data takeaways into practice immediately so consumers can see that you care about their preferences and want to build a customer experience to match. Acting on your user’s preferences will build trust and loyalty in the long run.

Benefits of Zero-Party Data

While consumers are less willing to let anonymous companies collect and sell their personal information, they are still interested in having personalized brand experiences tailored to their likes and preferences. Zero-party data is a great way to balance customers’ determination for privacy with their desire for personalization.

You can get valuable and reliable information directly from customers, without them feeling like they’ve been “tricked” into sharing personal data. Then, you can use that information to optimize their brand experience. Other benefits include:

Reliability: Because zero-party data comes straight from the consumer, you can feel confident that what you learn is reliably true.

Longevity: As companies and governments phase out third-party tracking and cookies and more users opt out of data tracking, zero-party data offers a lasting source of customer information.

Building trust and transparency: Asking users directly for their information—instead of obtaining it secretively—instills trust in your brand and shows that you are being transparent in your data collection efforts. Plus, being overt in how you use the collected data helps to establish trust. Be sure your users know what they’re getting in exchange for their personal information–an individualized experience. Then, when customers are willing to share personal information it demonstrates that they trust your brand with their data.

Getting the Most out of Your Zero-Party Data

The data you collect is only as good as the tools you have to take advantage of it. Integrating your zero-party data into a customer communication platform, like Iterable, helps centralize your data, synthesize its meaning, and allows you to automated personalized messaging for each consumer.

With zero-party data, marketers using Iterable can determine what type of message to send each customer, the best timing for the message, and which channel to use.

Rather than reaching out randomly and having your message lost amongst the plethora of information your consumer receives, you can reach your user’s preferred messaging platform (such as email or SMS) exactly when they’re most likely to see it and interact with it.

By personalizing marketing activities to each individual, you cultivate more connections to your brand. Better yet, each new user interaction is relayed to your cross-channel marketing tool, triggering even more tailored messages.

To learn how Iterable can help your brand use zero-party data effectively to create personalized customer experiences, schedule a demo today.

The post What is Zero-Party Data? appeared first on Iterable.

The latest Martech for 2024 report is that evidence. Published by ChiefMartec and MartechTribe, and sponsored by our friends at mParticle, Snowplow, and other leading marketing technology platforms, this 89-page analysis covers the state of martech and what to expect in the year to come.

You can see the full report for yourself, but these are the three things that stuck out most to me.

3 Major Martech Trends to Expect in 2024

1. Tech Consolidation Will Come—Just Not in the Way You Think

Experts have inaccurately suggested for years that the martech landscape has reached critical mass: after all, the Martech for 2024 report states that the current number of total martech solutions is now at 13,080— “a net increase of 18.5% in just the past six months since our last release in May.

Martech has evolved over the years. Source: chiefmartec.com.

The industry thought the pandemic and subsequent economic turmoil would decimate that number, but then the AI boom came along. “Generative AI is responsible for 73% of the increase,” according to the report.

And while 7% of vendors have been removed from the landscape from May 2022 to May 2023 due to dissolution or acquisition, most new solutions encompass what the report calls the “long tail,” or the companies that trail the industry leaders in market cap.

When you look at the industry leaders like Iterable, however, that make over $100 million in annual revenue, the report declares, “We absolutely see consolidation effects.”

“Not only are these companies still growing in their revenue—often by impressive double-digit percentages—they’re growing in their presence in most companies’ tech stacks. We see the same small set of ‘head’ martech solutions appear in the majority of martech stacks.”

Only about 260 solutions generate 80% of the mentions in the industry, which is proof that most martech stacks have consolidated to the best in the business. This leads to our next trend: the rise of composable architectures.

To make sure your martech stack is future-proofed, download our guide to the four steps of successful digital transformation.

2. The Future of Martech is Composable

Historically, the paradox of choice led to marketers choosing the monolith legacy martech platforms, but now that one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. The report explains that the modern martech stack is composable:

“Automations, apps, workflows, customer experiences, AI agents, and other kinds of digital solutions can be created by combining data and services from multiple products and data sources to serve bespoke use cases.”

This has led to the democratization of technology, in which marketers are seeking no-code solutions that don’t require as many engineering resources. With robust integrations and an API-first approach, platforms don’t need to do everything well—they just need to excel at their specialties and partner with vendors to fill any feature gaps.

Composability also takes the pain out of the marketer’s decision-making process. With a stack that’s easily adaptable, you can access a multitude of world-class technologies without the stress of worrying whether you’ve selected the perfect solution.

Composable architectures are inherently headless—meaning there is no singular point of failure. Tools can be added or replaced without system disruption. Legacy systems weren’t designed to be plug-and-play like modern stacks, but now platforms can integrate seamlessly together in no time at all. Flexibility is the name of the game for the future of martech.

An example of an integrated martech stack.

Find out how Iterable’s partner ecosystem of technology and solutions providers can support you in unlocking growth, engaging your customers, and creating joyful experiences.

3. Cloud-Native MarTech Makes Data Aggregation Possible

In addition to martech solutions themselves being composable, the data they harness has also become aggregated, thanks to the increased popularity of cloud-native platforms, such as cloud data warehouses, customer data platforms (CDPs), and data lakes.

This aggregation allows marketers to tap into their wide swaths of unstructured data and derive previously unseen insights about their customers. Cloud-native solutions eliminate the siloed nature of legacy systems and facilitate data sharing between departments to deliver a consistent customer experience.

“The ability to tap data from across the organization—sales touchpoints, customer service touchpoints, digital product interactions, lifetime customer value models from finance, etc.—for marketing use cases is a huge advantage being unlocked by this new aggregated data layer.”

And with the expansion of AI-powered solutions comes an evolution from basic business intelligence to cognitive analytics, where marketers are leveraging self-learning systems to understand how to engage with their customers in a more meaningful way.

Harnessing Data Analytics to Transform Your Business.

Investing in cloud-native martech that activates this customer data instantaneously will be the key to achieving the best marketing performance.

Want to get the most out of your technology investments? Download our checklist to maximize the ROI of your martech.

Make the Most of Your Martech in 2024

There is so much we didn’t cover from the Martech for 2024 report, so we encourage you to grab a copy for yourself. But all signs point to a year of technology democratization, composable architectures, and data aggregation.

And the ultimate goal of these trends is to make a better, more comprehensive customer experience available to marketers everywhere.

Want to know how Iterable can fit into your modern martech stack? Kick your new year off right and schedule a custom demo of Iterable today.

The post How the Martech Landscape is Evolving in 2024 appeared first on Iterable.

In this case, we can do you one better than a crystal ball—we have a plethora of incredible partners who can help forecast trends we expect to see in the world of marketing.

I reached out to our partners on mobile marketing predictions for 2024 and received many enlightening predictions from the likes of Ragnarok, AppsFlyer, Movable Ink, and Modular Marketing. Let’s get into it.

1. SMS and Mobile Channels Will Take a Front Seat

Steven Aldrich, Co-Founder and CEO at Ragnarok

Historically, marketing teams have internally built a separate muscle for the mobile channel, typically in the form of a Lifecycle Marketing Manager or a growth product role. As we’ve seen our clients start to drive equal to higher value from their SMS and mobile program compared to email, over the last three years, I predict we’ll see a shift in the foundational focus of marketing leaders and managers—mobile channels will not just be table stakes, but rather the primary means of communicating with their customers. This shift will mean adjusting the content and brand strategy that leans into the limits of strict character count to create digestible experiences.

I predict the savviest marketers will find ways to stretch out an engagement longer as they toe the line between volume of messages and channels necessary to drive desired outcomes and customer tolerance.

2. Increased Mobile Ad Spend

Shani Rosenfelder, Director of Global Content Strategy & Market Insights at AppsFlyer

Continued economic uncertainty will almost certainly impact mobile app marketers’ ability to drive scale in 2024. But, the good news is that there is room for optimism, as many economic parameters like GDP growth, inflation, and market performance were in a far better place in 2023 than they were in 2022.

Beyond that, AppsFlyer data showed that 2023 saw an impressive 9% year-over-year increase in iOS non-organic installs (NOI)—an app download that happened as the result of marketing activity—after a 15% drop in 2022 compared to 2021, when the impact of iOS 14.5 was still heavily apparent. In 2024, it’s likely we’ll see continued growth, especially with the major enhancements brought about by SKAN 4.0.

3. Focus on Testing

Shani Rosenfelder, Director of Global Content Strategy & Market Insights at AppsFlyer

On the Android front, Privacy Sandbox—which allows for testing and betas—will finally make its long-awaited debut in 2024, and marketers are feeling optimistic. According to a recent survey AppsFlyer held among 150 marketers, 53% said that they will be spending more budget due to Sandbox, while only 12% plan to decrease their budget.

Privacy Sandbox will lead to an increase in marketing spend. Source: AppsFlyer.

At AppsFlyer, we expect Privacy Sandbox to have a profound impact on NOIs. Just as Apple Privacy Changes (ATT) impacted NOIs due to the loss of signal on iOS (CPIs increase, budgets shifts from iOS to Android, shifts from some media sources to others), Privacy Sandbox will also impact NOIs as the industry adapts to the new paradigm. That’s why it’s critical for marketers to educate themselves about this framework and prepare their systems now.

As we’ve learned from the rollout of iOS 14.5, these types of significant changes require time for marketers to prepare, figure out, and ultimately drive positive business outcomes, so it’s vital to get ahead of the curve in the first quarter of 2024 to ensure success.

However, because operating system attribution (both SKAN and Sandbox) is still limited and incomplete, the ability to fill in the data gaps through modeling and unify multiple data streams into a single actionable reality for marketers will be paramount as well.

4. Increase in Mobile Adoption and Sophistication

Richard Trautwein, Product Marketing Specialist at Movable Ink

Mobile marketing will remain a powerful channel as consumers continue to increase their smartphone use. Mobile drives 60% of global eCommerce sales, meaning that if brands don’t optimize their marketing strategies to accommodate it, they risk falling behind.

In 2023, the majority of mobile marketing relied on either generic, batch-and-blast messages with little to no personalization, or basic triggers such as abandon cart notifications. Whether mobile marketing has been overlooked due to technology limitations or strategic misalignment, it’s likely that we’ll see more brands attempt to course correct and invest further in their mobile marketing execution for 2024.

5. Privacy-First Marketing Will Span into Mobile Retail

Julio Lopez, Senior Director of Strategy (Retail) at Movable Ink

With growing concerns about data privacy and the implementation of stricter data protection regulations worldwide, there will be a shift towards transparent and privacy-focused marketing strategies. As a result, marketers will need to be more cautious about how they collect and use customer data, and personalization efforts in mobile apps and email marketing will rely more on opt-in data and less on third-party data sources.

As this becomes the norm, consumers will seek tangible value in exchange for data sharing, such as hyper-personalization and an improved UX. Retailers will take a page from more regulated industries like financial services as they navigate uncharted waters.

6. Consolidated Tech Stacks to Include SMS

Kolby Yarnell, CEO of Modular Marketing

The adoption and integration of SMS into lifecycle journeys has never been easier or more impactful, thanks to new tools and features in the consolidated stack.

Consider, for instance, Iterable’s SMS opt-in feature, which makes number acquisition more efficient than ever. Coupled with this are AI-powered tools like Channel Optimization and Copy Assist, which are already helping lifecycle and CRM teams achieve new levels of sophistication and effectiveness.

For every brand that is heavily investing in SMS today (and being handsomely rewarded), 2024 is going to see even more success on SMS with ever more creative tactics. However, the real tipping point for SMS will be provided by brands that have long played it cautious with SMS but will finally join the party in earnest.

By this time next year, the exciting future of Rich Communication Services (RCS) will start to come into view. RCS promises to offer a more dynamic and interactive platform for marketers and consumers that will eventually reshape lifecycle marketing. So while SMS continues to gain momentum in 2024, it is also paving the way for the next revolution in mobile communication.

The Future of Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is no longer a “nice-to-have” channel. As of April 2023, there are more smartphones in the world than people—so it’s important marketers consider mobile marketing a top priority. Looking at the predictions listed above, a theme I’m seeing emerge is just an overall advancement of how mobile channels are treated by brands and continued commitment to invest more in the space.

Now that marketers have the ability to test Android applications and create betas for small sample audiences, we’ll see more brands get on board with creating mobile apps, which open the door to embedded messaging in apps, mobile push notifications and in-app messages. And, with these additional channels, we’ll see an increase in the amount of customer data that can be collected—which, in turn, will lead to more personalized overall marketing communications.

Email marketing—the tried and true—has been around a lot longer, so it feels like mobile marketing has been trying to play catch-up. In 2024, however, we’ll see the two converge in terms of how they’re being used by marketers. Mobile marketing is going to continue to evolve in 2024, so be sure your brand isn’t left behind.

If you’re interested in learning more about Iterable’s mobile marketing offerings, talk to your CSM. If you’re thinking about making the switch to Iterable, schedule a demo today.

The post 6 2024 Mobile Marketing Predictions appeared first on Iterable.

In this case, we can do you one better than a crystal ball—we have a plethora of in-house Iterable experts who can help forecast trends we expect to see in the world of marketing. Speaking of experts—not to toot my own horn—I’m Tom Corbett, Senior Email Deliverability Consultant at Iterable. I put together some thoughts on email marketing predictions so, without further ado, let’s see what 2024 has in store.

1. Yahoo and Gmail Changes

Last year, Iterable’s Head of Deliverability, Seth Charles, gave us a preview of what to expect with the major changes Yahoo and Gmail announced—but they’re going into effect early 2024.

As Seth put it, “Starting in April of 2024, both email platforms will begin to block and aggressively filter incoming email traffic that doesn’t meet new message authentication and procedural requirements. Additionally, they also included some infrastructure and performance thresholds associated with commercial email best practices.”

Why is it happening? Google and Yahoo want to provide a safer, improved experience for their users. Part of the change is to have a minimum of p=none for your DMARC policy. I think it very likely that by the end of the year they will require a stricter requirement of p=reject. P=none, according to Email on Acid, “tells mailbox providers to take no specific action on emails that fail authentication. They will most likely be delivered unless it is very obviously spam. A p=none DMARC policy leaves the decision up to mailbox providers.” P=reject, however, “is the strongest DMARC policy value. It ensures all malicious email is stopped dead in its tracks. If a message fails DMARC when set to “reject” will not be delivered at all.”

I also wouldn’t be surprised to see other mailbox providers follow suit.

2. Postmaster Best Practices are Top of Mind

This feels like a subcategory of Yahoo/Gmail changes, but with these changes and the emphasis on strict enforcement, we’ll see senders paying closer attention to the Best Practices published on the Postmaster site.

Some of these Best Practices include:

• The use of a DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) signature (not a suggestion, it’s mandatory)
• Sending emails only to those who have opted in (or double-opt-in)
• It has to be clear who is sending the emails
• The recipient has to be able to unsubscribe—both quickly and easily

While these aren’t new concepts to email marketers, in combination with the changes from Google, Yahoo, and potentially other email providers, email marketers are going to start focusing on these requirements first, versus dealing with it later.

3. A Need for Centralized Data

With even more importance on monitoring metrics from Google Postmaster tools, email senders will want to/expect to see more granularity in their email marketing dashboards. For example, Gmail & Yahoo have stated to keep complaint rates below 0.3%. Currently, the only way to see this metric is within Google’s postmaster tools account. Senders will prioritize integrating with other tools over collecting siloed information. (Luckily, we have a stacked roster of solutions and technology partners that integrate with the Iterable platform.)

Centralized data will aid in the future of AI as well. Because data fuels AI, having centralized customer data will allow for easier, more seamless email automation—while maintaining personalization.

4. Embracing the Creative Renaissance

Back in 2013 we saw creative teams become more visual with email. Gone are the days of designing around images by default, instead, we’ve seen the rise of mobile optimization. I believe we are now at a critical changing point with AMP/markup schemas allowing for senders to create hyper-personalized emails where a brand can directly communicate with an individual customer.

I don’t think this change will happen instantly but opportunities that can drive this change are:

• Accessibility: How are emails reaching diverse audiences with different needs? According to the World Health Organization, “An estimated 1.3 billion people – or 16% of the global population – experience a significant disability today”
• Interactivity: How can audiences engage with the emails? (With AMP in Gmail, for example, users can edit Google Docs right in their inbox.)
• Social media (TikTok): What opportunities does social create that can lead to more user-generated content in larger campaigns?
• Minimal/visual storytelling: We’ve all heard “show, don’t tell.” How can dynamic images speak to individual customers?

5. AI Will Play a Central Role

I’m not talking about subject line creation or copy writing—that’s a given—but I’m more so talking about email service providers (ESPs) and/or tech platforms developing AI-powered functionality. These functionalities (some of which already exist) will help marketers spend less time relying on engineers and more time thinking about big-picture strategies.

As a completely, totally unbiased example…let’s look at one of the tools in Iterable’s AI Suite: Brand Affinity. “Brand Affinity uses Iterable AI to label your users based on their level of engagement with your brand. You can use these labels in segmentation, campaigns, journeys, data feeds, and Catalog collections to send personalized, relevant messages to your customers.” These labels can then help determine what journeys users are placed into. Should they be placed in a re-engagement journey? Should they stop receiving messages?

The Future of Email Marketing

As cliché as it is, the only constant is change. Email marketing has come a long way and it’s only going to continue to evolve as we head into the thick of 2024. There are two major themes that capture the six predictions mentioned above: automation and customer experience. In fact, the two go hand-in-hand.

With the Yahoo and Gmail changes, Postmaster Best Practices, a creative renaissance, and sustainability there’s a focus on what’s best for the end user. How can we be sure to deliver communications that resonate? Then centralized data, AI, and personalization (as part of the creative renaissance) speak to automation. Without data there is no AI. Without AI, personalization becomes tedious and near-impossible.

With automation reliant on customer data, end users are served with a better overall experience, strengthening your brand reputation and your relationship with individual customers.

Want more info on the Google and Yahoo requirements? Register for our webinar on February 13, hosted by Iterable’s Senior Director of Delivery Operations, Seth Charles.

If you’re an Iterable customer looking to learn more about email marketing, connect with our Deliverability Team. And, if you’re curious about how to make the switch to Iterable, schedule a demo today.

The post 5 2024 Email Marketing Predictions appeared first on Iterable.

Care.com, a leading two-sided marketplace where people can find caregiver jobs and high-quality family care, recognized the importance of creating a cross-channel experience and switched to Iterable to make that happen.

Why Care.com Switched to Iterable

Long story short: they needed to save time. Traditionally, marketers lose efficiency and time when their martech stack does not support cross-channel campaign building. In looking to manage multiple channels at scale while still personalizing, Ellen Rockdale, Senior Marketing Operations Manager for the CRM and Lifecycle team at Care.com, and team sought out a platform that could allow for both.

What stood out to Ellen about Iterable’s cross-channel capabilities, versus platforms they’ve used in the past, is how easy it is to manage multiple communication channels at scale, while still maintaining a positive user experience.

They can automate their lifecycle marketing program with Iterable Studio and manage over-messaging their users on different channels by seeing where and how each user is engaging. For instance, if they send a push notification, they can wait for a period of time to see if the user opens it. If they have, they can avoid sending that same message in an email.

“Iterable allows us to create harmonious touch points across all channels, all in one place, which has been a huge unlock for us in launching new products, where we rely on timely customer updates. We’re now able to build everything end to end without relying on third-party tools. Not having to jump between different tools to share multiple links to all of our different teams saves us a lot of additional work,” said Ellen.

How Iterable AI Made All the Difference

A huge factor in the Care.com team’s ability to save time is automation. Iterable’s AI suite provides tools that give marketers the ability to automate otherwise manual processes while simultaneously learning from existing customer data. Care.com is no exception.

As Ellen said, “The way that we’re thinking about cross-channel communications is by taking an individualized approach to how and what we send. If a user has our app, then we’ll send them push notifications or in-app messages, depending on the level of urgency of the message. If it’s a critical, time-sensitive message, we’ll sometimes engage them across all channels, including email, push, in-app, and SMS, to make sure that they see it. If it’s a targeted promotional message, we use Channel Optimization, an Iterable AI feature that takes the guesswork out of which channel a user is most likely to engage with.”

As a result of this automation, Care.com has been able to scale in a much faster way than if they partnered with a less powerful and less flexible platform. By keeping everything in house with Iterable, and with its automation tools, they gain back 25% of time. With these hours saved Ellen and her team can spend more time mapping out their long-term strategy with Iterable.

The Road Ahead

Looking ahead to the future, Care.com’s vision with Iterable is to ensure they’re taking advantage of its full platform capabilities, including new feature releases.

“That’s another great thing about Iterable—they’re constantly innovating for the needs of their customers. We’re excited about all of the AI capabilities coming out so we can continue to improve our campaigns, making them even more impactful,” shared Ellen.

To learn more about the Care.com story, check out the full case study. And, if you’re interested in getting your brand on the Iterable platform, schedule a demo today.

The post How Care.com Gains Back 25% of Its Time With Iterable AI appeared first on Iterable.

Over the years, Iterable has worked hard to help enable our customers’ compliance around GDPR, HIPAA, and a variety of geo- and industry-specific requirements. With continual changes in global privacy regulations our customers are faced with ongoing challenges to remain compliant.

The CBPR and PRP certifications proactivity solve for data privacy compliance and cross-border trust. The PRP ensures that we treat our customers’ end user data with the required care and diligence, while the CBPR ensures we’re treating your (our direct customer) data with the same level of care and diligence.

CBPR and PRP Overview

The Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) and Privacy Recognition for Processors (PRP) standards are a response to the fact that, despite data traveling quickly and easily across borders, privacy requirements in each country tend to vary, creating a complex system of requirements. This certification process examines those requirements and affirms that Iterable complies with the privacy principles outlined in the APEC Privacy Framework, aligning us with global privacy standards.

“The APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) System, endorsed by APEC Leaders in 2011, is a voluntary, accountability-based system that facilitates privacy-respecting data flows among APEC economies.”

In short, it signals that Iterable’s privacy practices meet those standards and can better enable cross border data flow to these participating APEC Economies:

• Australia
• Canada
• Japan
• Republic of Korea
• Mexico
• Philippines
• Singapore
• United States

How Does the CBPR System Work?

According to APEC.org, “The CBPR system protects personal data by requiring:

• Enforceable standards: To join, participating economies must demonstrate that CBPR program requirements will be legally enforceable against certified companies.
• Accountability: To become certified, a company must demonstrate to an accountability agent—an independent CBPR system-recognized public or private sector entity— that they meet the CBPR program requirements, and the company is subject to ongoing monitoring and enforcement.
• Risk-based protections: Certified companies must implement security safeguards for personal data that are proportional to the probability and severity of the harm threatened, the confidential nature or sensitivity of the information, and the context in which it is held.
• Consumer-friendly complaint handling: Accountability agents receive and investigate complaints and resolve disputes between consumers and certified companies in relation to non-compliance with its program requirements.
• Consumer empowerment: Certified companies must provide consumers with the opportunity to access and correct their personal data. Further, by publicly certifying to the CBPR system’s requirements, consumers gain insight into the privacy practices on business with which they choose to do business.
• Consistent protections: While governments may impose additional requirements with which certified companies must still comply, all participants must agree to abide by the 50 CBPR program requirements, facilitating the implementation of the same baseline protections across different legal regimes.
• Cross-border enforcement cooperation: The CBPR system provides a mechanism for regulatory authorities to cooperate on the enforcement of program requirements.”

What Lies Ahead?

Our attainment of CBPR and PRP certifications is a testament to Iterable’s dedication to privacy and data protection. As we celebrate this achievement, we remain steadfast in our commitment to continually enhance our privacy practices to meet emerging challenges and evolving regulatory requirements.

To our clients, we extend our heartfelt gratitude for entrusting us with your data. We are committed to maintaining the highest standards of privacy, and these certifications reinforce our promise to be a responsible steward of your information.

Iterable continues to lead the way in prioritizing privacy, ensuring that your data is not just secure but is also handled with the utmost care in a globally interconnected landscape.

Looking for more information on Iterable’s privacy practices? Get all the info here. If you’re looking to make the switch to Iterable, schedule a demo today.

The post Enabling Global Business: Iterable Attains APEC Privacy Certifications appeared first on Iterable.

Why does Iterable dedicate an entire week to hacking, coding, and experimenting? The answer is simple: innovation.

Hack Week is our way of fostering a culture of innovation within the company. It’s about pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, thinking outside the box, and turning wild ideas into game-changing solutions.

What to Prepare: Essentials for Hack Week

Here’s what you need for a successful Hack Week:

• A Killer Idea: This is your moment to shine. Think of a project that aligns with this year’s theme and can wow both your peers and our esteemed judges. (Our judges included Iterable’s CEO Andrew Boni, VP of Product, Bela Stepanova, and CMO, Adri Gil Miner…to name a few.)
• A Dream Team: Assemble a diverse team with different skills and expertise. Remember, it’s all about collaboration and learning from each other.
• A Plan of Attack: Once you’ve got that killer idea, make a plan. What’s the scope? What are the goals? How will you measure success?
• Embracing the Theme: Iterate for Impact! This year’s theme is all about building the next generation of marketing tech. Think AI, think reliability, think data-driven brilliance.
• Coffee Reserves: Stock up on coffee! Seriously, you’ll need it. Hack Week runs on caffeine.
• A Sense of Fun: This is not the time to be too serious. Embrace the fun, the craziness, and the unexpected twists and turns.

The Awards: Bragging Rights Galore

This year, we’ve got some epic awards up for grabs:

• People’s Choice: Let the people decide! This award is all about popular demand. Win the hearts of your colleagues, and you could be the People’s Choice.
• Most Innovative (AI-Powered): This award goes to the project that leverages the incredible power of AI to advance Iterable as a product. To win, you MUST utilize the Iterable AI LLM Library or capabilities.
• Reliability: In the tech world, reliability is gold. The project that stands the test of time and scrutiny will earn this accolade.

Hack Week Thoughts From Iterable Engineers

We’ve invited some of this year’s winners to share their experiences and insights. What worked? What didn’t? What inspired them to create award-winning projects?

Jeff Sing (Director, Quality and Engineering Operations • Engineering, Hack Week Program Owner)

Biggest takeaway—I’m always stunned by how talented our teams are every Hack Week. It makes me so grateful and humbled that I get to work with such a group of talented people.

Here are some things I’ve learned by watching teams participating in Hack Week:

• There are no bad hacks! Sometimes the learnings just from the effort is easily worth the cost to participate.
• Cool Hack + Business Narrative = $$$$. Understanding why your hack is important, how it changes the story, and why it’s gonna blow everyone away is how winners are crowned.
• Halfway through the hack, start thinking about how we could actually launch your creation (both internal reliability hacks or external ones). This helps ensure your legacy and work carries forward. Remote Hack Week is hard! Especially if you don’t know what you want to work on. Join hack pitches and use all the resources put together.
• Involve a partner outside of engineering. Some of the best and most impactful hacks had a product manager, support engineer, or solutions architect as a member. These folks have firsthand knowledge of the product or what ails customers. Uplevel your hack by including their feedback.
• Some of the best hacks were done in two days.

William Nyffennegger (Staff Software Engineer • Winner for 2023 Reliability Improvement Award)

Hack week gave us the opportunity to bring engineers together across teams and domains to understand and attack difficult, meaningful problems. For us, that meant providing insight into the performance of our core product journeys. In a week we built optimization tooling that is going to drive performance improvements broadly for our customers.

There were a lot of complex, quality features and improvements to vote on that were remarkably complete. More impressive is the number of hack week ideas that will reach production within the next month or even before this blog is posted. Given the scale and variety of our customers, taking something from an idea to product in a week isn’t trivial.

I’m looking forward to more hack weeks and more cross-functional collaboration which Iterable is actively driving towards.

Krisha Agatep (Senior Software Engineer- Winner for 2023 Most Innovative with AI Award)

What I love about Hack Week is it gives us an opportunity to think outside the box and ask the question, if I had no constraints, what would I build? We get to put our user hats on for a week and put focused efforts toward features we wish we had as users.

Having worked on two hacks this year, it was a ton of fun getting to collaborate with some amazingly talented engineers from other teams that I normally wouldn’t work with.

The best part of the week is getting to see what exciting hacks the teams can put together in just a few short days. Every year I am blown away by the amount of thoughtfulness and innovation put into these ideas. Truly impressive stuff! And these are not just ideas we throw to the engineering graveyard, in fact, we actually push some of these ideas into our future product roadmap.

The 2023 Champions

Now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.

In the vibrant landscape of creativity and innovation, it is with immense pleasure that we extend our warmest congratulations to this year’s champions! From a pool of 28 remarkable pitches, 20 of which dazzled the audience during the hack week Demo Day, the winners have truly earned their moment in the spotlight.

These Iterators’ exceptional ideas and steadfast dedication have not only secured victory but have also positioned them as trailblazers in our community. This triumph is not just a recognition of hard work but a testament to the boundless potential that lies ahead. As these team members bask in the glory of this achievement, we hope it serves as a stepping stone to even greater heights in the exciting journey of creativity and excellence.

Well done, champions! Your success is an inspiration to us all.

People’s Choice

CMD + K Menu:Dylan Mahler, Elizabeth Mills, Geoff Kim, Lauren Li, Levi Campbell, Michael Seiden

The idea: In the current Iterable setup, there’s no comprehensive “Global” search feature available, making it cumbersome to locate specific resources amidst numerous campaigns, templates, snippets, and more. Introducing this feature would present a streamlined user interface, eliminating the need for an extensive index to support a consolidated view of various resources. This enhancement allows power users to effortlessly navigate different sections of the app, with the flexibility to add more functions over time.

Why is this Hack Awesome?

• Effortless Implementation: Thanks to the cmdk.paco.me React package, implementing this feature becomes a breeze. It streamlines the process, making it both efficient and user-friendly.
• Low Risk, High Reward: By seamlessly overlaying the existing interface, this hack mitigates the risk associated with tweaking the current UI. The transition is smooth, ensuring minimal disruptions.
• Tailored for Power-Users: This feature is tailored specifically for power-users, offering them enhanced functionality without impacting those who may not engage with it. It’s a win-win for both sides of the user spectrum.
• Proven Success: Drawing inspiration from successful Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) like Vercel, Linear, Raycast, and Framer, this pattern has already demonstrated its effectiveness. We’re tapping into a methodology that has stood the test of real-world applications. Get ready for an enhancement that’s tried, tested, and proven to elevate the user experience!

People’s Choice winners Dylan Mahler, Elizabeth Mills, Geoff Kim, Lauren Li, Levi Campbell, and Michael Seiden.

Most Innovative with AI

Generative AI journeys: Krisha Agatep, Greg Methvin, Thomas Kim

The idea: In the realm of marketing with Iterable, crafting customer journeys becomes an art of AI ingenuity. Marketers can seamlessly integrate artificial intelligence into the journey creation process, ushering in a new era of personalized and responsive campaigns. By utilizing AI, marketers gain the ability to predict user preferences, dynamically adjust content, and automate responses, ensuring that each step of the journey is finely tuned to individual behaviors. Iterable empowers marketers to not only streamline the journey creation process but also to elevate the impact of their campaigns by delivering highly targeted and relevant content. Dive into the world of AI-assisted journey creation with Iterable and witness how innovation can transform your marketing strategy into a dynamic, data-driven masterpiece

Why is this Hack Awesome?

• Reduced Errors: AI ensures a higher degree of accuracy by automating tasks prone to human error. Marketers can rely on the precision of AI algorithms to deliver campaigns without the risk of common mistakes, leading to more reliable and error-free outcomes.
• Customization at Scale: AI empowers marketers to customize customer journeys on a large scale. By analyzing individual preferences and behaviors, campaigns become highly tailored, resonating with each customer personally. This level of customization enhances the overall customer experience.
• Saves Time: AI streamlines the journey creation process, automating routine tasks and allowing marketers to focus on strategy and creativity. This time-saving aspect not only boosts efficiency but also frees up valuable resources for more impactful and strategic marketing initiatives.

Most Innovative with AI winners Krisha Agatep, Greg Methvin, and Thomas Kim.

Reliability Improvement

Journeys Optimization Detection: Will Nyffenegger, Nate Turner, Daniel Pugliese, Jenny Tan, Yueun Kim, Nishant Satpathy, Krisha Agatep, Sneha Dontireddy, and others

The idea: Read all journeys into memory and then search each journey for antipatterns. This will let us quantify how poorly journeys are organized and begin the path to developing best practices and suggestions in the user interface to improve journeys.

Why is this Hack Awesome?

• Spotting and Fixing Flaws: Recognizing that most journeys harbor significant flaws, this hack addresses common issues, like processes, that consume resources without any actual functionality or journeys laden with redundant tiles. It’s a powerful solution for streamlining and optimizing the user journey.
• Effortless Optimization: The beauty of this hack lies in its simplicity. It doesn’t necessitate intricate coding or complex development processes. In fact, achieving these optimizations is as straightforward as running a single Python script.

In essence, this hack is a game-changer, providing an accessible and efficient means to enhance and perfect user journeys, ensuring they are not just functional but optimized for peak performance.

Reliability Improvement winners Will Nyffenegger, Nate Turner, Daniel Pugliese, Jenny Tan, Yueun Kim, Nishant Satpathy, Krisha Agatep, Sneha Dontireddy, and others.

Hacking Our Way into the Future!

As we conclude our exhilarating 3rd Iterable Hack Week, the atmosphere is still buzzing with excitement. We’ve delved into a week of continuous iteration, innovation, and leaving our mark on the marketing tech landscape. So, hold onto your keyboards, rally your teammates, and unleash your boldest ideas because we’ve just wrapped up an incredible journey of hacking our way into the future!

The post Iterate for Impact: Our 3rd Annual Hack Week appeared first on Iterable.

What is Brand Affinity?

Broadly speaking, brand affinity refers to the emotional connection between customers and companies. When people share the values of a brand, they tend to buy their products and recommend them to others. This means that the entire buying journey becomes highly influenced by that emotional bond.

Iterable’s Brand Affinity^TM feature uses AI to help marketers measure customer brand affinity by scoring users based on their engagement with a brand’s messaging. In addition, leveraging insights within Iterable’s Brand Affinity allows for deeper analysis of engagement by the user.

As we mentioned previously, “This is where the Share of Voice rule becomes relevant. While a customer may initially have a negative Brand Affinity^TM score in Iterable, a marketer can dig deeper to uncover insights related to customer behavior to understand your brand’s SOV related to this segment. This enables more targeted segmentation and campaigns, ultimately driving engagement and revenue.” This is achieved through the extensive processing and analysis of data on a large scale, delivering invaluable insights and empowering data-driven decision-making to deliver personalized messages to the right audience.

Brand Affinity^TM can be used in a multitude of ways to help marketers better understand their customer. One way of using Iterable’s Brand Affinity^TM and insights, for example, is to pull in events like purchase or conversions for customers who have a “negative” brand affinity—meaning they didn’t interact with the messages being sent. By pulling in purchase events a marketer can uncover that this “negative” affinity group may actually make purchases, which would make them high value customers.

Once this insight is uncovered the marketers are able to better personalize and target their messages for these high value customers. Performance marketing campaigns might not actually resonate with this audience seeing they are high value and already have a strong view of the brand so instead, creating “thank you” campaigns for those customers who made a purchase and leveraging other channels like SMS would be a better way to engage with these customers.

One of the key strategies for sustainable growth is to focus on high-value customers in a meaningful way and personalize messaging based on the actions of the user. These individuals not only contribute significantly to your revenue but also have the potential to become loyal brand advocates. Crafting targeted marketing campaigns for this segment is crucial for maximizing their value and ensuring long-term success.

What are “High-Value” Customers?

We talk about focusing on high-value customers, but what does this really mean? High-value customers are individuals or businesses that consistently make substantial purchases, exhibit brand loyalty, and have the potential for long-term engagement. With all the data organizations capture and track, it can be difficult to identify and segment this group—but, Brand Affinity^TM can help.

Brand Affinity in Action

Dgtl Fundraising, a brand that focuses on building digital strategies for nonprofits, utilizes Brand Affinity to detect and categorize potential donors by analyzing engagement signals across various channels. Each donor or potential donor receives an affinity label denoting their general sentiment (loyal, positive, neutral, or negative). This labeling system proves instrumental in segmenting fresh audiences, crafting customized customer journeys, and dynamically personalizing content within templates through the application of conditional logic.

Leveraging Brand Affinity^TM allows marketers to easily identify and segment customers and lean into microsegmentation. Unlike broader market segmentation, which categorizes consumers into larger groups, microsegmentation drills down into finer details to create smaller, more homogenous segments. This approach allows businesses to tailor their marketing strategies, products, or services more precisely to the needs and preferences of each microsegment

Tips for Data-Driven Personalization

After pinpointing your high-value customers, you can leverage this insight to craft personalized and impactful communications. This tailored approach not only fosters loyalty but also translates into increased revenue for your business.

Exclusive Loyalty Programs

Rewarding high-value customers for their loyalty is a powerful way to strengthen the relationship. According to the Maigold Consumer Trends Index, 82% of consumers favor brand messaging that rewards them for loyalty—a 5% increase since 2022. To keep your high-value customers engaged, develop exclusive loyalty programs that offer special perks, early access to new products, or VIP events. These programs not only enhance customer retention but also encourage them to increase their spending to unlock additional benefits.

VIP Events and Experiences

Create memorable experiences for your high-value customers by organizing exclusive events or providing access to premium services. Whether it’s a private product launch, an invitation-only webinar with industry experts, or a personalized consultation, these experiences make customers feel valued and deepen their connection with your brand. According to a study by Bain & Company, increasing customer retention rates by 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%. VIP experiences can contribute to customer loyalty and repeat business, leading to increased spending.

Tailored Content and Thought Leadership

Position your brand as an industry leader by delivering high-quality, relevant content tailored to your high-value customers. This could include exclusive research reports, in-depth articles, customer reviews, product release information, warranty information etc. In addition, thank you campaigns and campaigns rewarding loyalty are great ways to engage with high value customers. By providing valuable insights and engaging content, you not only showcase your brand but also demonstrate a commitment to your high-value customers.

Strategic Cross-Selling and Up-Selling

Identify opportunities to cross-sell or up-sell products or services that complement your high-value customers’ existing purchases. This can be achieved through targeted recommendations based on their buying history or through bundling offers that provide added value. Clearly communicating the benefits of these additional offerings will help encourage higher spending. Iterable’s customer Stanley Black & Decker does this effectively by leveraging Catalog to automate email content based on existing product information.

High Value, High Reward

In a competitive market, the success of your business relies on cultivating and nurturing relationships with high-value customers. The first step in connecting with high-value customers is recognizing them. That’s why AI-powered tools, like Iterable’s Brand Affinity, come in handy.

By implementing personalized, data-driven marketing campaigns and offering exclusive experiences and rewards, you can not only retain these valuable customers but also turn them into enthusiastic advocates for your brand. Keep evolving your strategies based on customer feedback and market trends to ensure that your campaigns remain relevant and effective in the ever-changing business landscape.

To learn more about how Iterable’s Brand Affinity can help you achieve your marketing goals, reach out to your CSM or schedule a demo today.

The post Understanding SOV Pt. 2: The Power of Brand Affinity appeared first on Iterable.

First, if you’re asking what inbox placement is, you’ve come to the right place. Inbox placement is a critical email marketing metric that tells you how much of your mail landed in the end-users’ inboxes.

Inbox placement is one of the things that keep marketers up at night. While metrics like opens, bounce, complaint, and click rates can tell you quite a bit about a campaign’s performance (and the sender’s reputation), it doesn’t quite tell you everything.

Information about inbox placement isn’t returned to the sender the same way those other metrics are. In fact, inbox placement is not reported on at all.

Now, back to that crystal ball…of course you’d use it!

What if I told you that you have the next best thing to a crystal ball available to you right now? But, instead of a crystal ball, we call it seed testing.

What is Seed Testing?

I admit, I might be slightly overpromising, but when done properly and strategically, seed testing can provide a deeper look into how mailbox providers (like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) feel about your brand’s emails before you send them.

At its most basic level, seed testing is the practice of sending an email to a group of email addresses for the purpose of observing whether it landed in the inbox, the spam folder, or went missing.

Anyone can do this with a handful of addresses that they manage. Since they are domains you own and control, you could even use those addresses for other forms of testing—checking that the campaigns rendered properly in your browser, clicking links to make sure they go to the correct places, etc. The problem with using test addresses like this is that you’re engaging with the emails and, therefore, creating a history with the sending infrastructure, which can then impact inbox placement.

Seed testing works a little differently when using a deliverability platform such as Everest. In this case, while you’re still sending to a group of email addresses to understand inbox placement at a given time, those recipients aren’t meant to engage with the mail, meaning they are not opening and clicking. This is an important distinction because they don’t build the same kind of history with your sending infrastructure that your regular audience (or even the addresses you own and use for the other testing) does.

Seed testing ultimately designs a neutral playing field, allowing you to gain insight into inbox placement. If your inbox placement is strong, you can carry on with your email marketing strategy as intended. If your spam placement is strong, it’s time to make some adjustments to audience or frequency (or both).

Future Inbox Placement Based on Past Behavior

Mailbox providers have their own specific criteria when deciding whether to let an email into a customer’s inbox. For many, engagement history is a vital factor in determining if any given user will receive an email. If a user fails to open an email from a sender over a long period of time, for example, mail from that sender will often start to go to that user’s spam folder.

Conversely, if a user regularly opens and clicks, that user will reliably receive email from that sender in their inbox even despite other potentially negative factors. However, many users will have little to no engagement history, especially if they are recently subscribed, thus creating a window for you to see into how mailbox providers treat users with no engagement history.

If a large percentage of your audience regularly engages negatively with your mail (for instance, ignoring or deleting the mail without reading it, or marking it as spam), the likelihood of a majority of that mail (or even all of it) going to the spam folder in the future is high.

Future placement is based on past behavior and when a large portion of your audience is behaving a certain way, mailbox providers take note and take action. This is why it is vital that the sender puts their best foot forward even when sending to previously engaged users.

How Often Should You Seed Test?

Mailbox providers are watching senders’ practices and user interactions to determine what to do with mail sent to users with little or no history—like new subscribers. This is why using seed addresses that have no history of engagement with your sending infrastructure is important—it’s meant to represent those new-to-file email addresses.

Because seed testing provides placement feedback for a particular sending infrastructure, it’s not necessary to seed test every day. It’s rare that placement changes drastically day-to-day. Performing one test per sending infrastructure/mail stream once every week or two is usually sufficient.

There are times, however, when one send can upset inbox placement and more frequent testing is suggested. One example is after a large mandated email is sent to your entire customer base. These types of emails don’t often have CTAs calling for engagement of some sort so they can often be ignored or deleted without reading, so it’s a good idea to perform a seed test following a send like this to see if anything in your inbox placement changed as a result.

Understanding Seed Testing Results

Generally, seed test results are straightforward—the mail either went to the inbox, the spam folder, or went missing (usually due to a block). Sometimes, though, partial inbox delivery and partial spam filtering occurs and can indicate that the recipient’s mailbox provider has doubts about the sender.

In this case, they’ll watch closely to determine if users retrieve it from the spam folder and/or interact, as well as watching for other indicators of positive or negative engagement. When this happens, pay close attention to list engagement and segmentation to reassure mailbox providers and filtering companies that you are a responsible sender.

If you’re already an Iterable customer, reach out to your CSM for more info on seed testing. If you haven’t joined the over 1000 brands using Iterable, schedule a demo today.

The post Using Seed Testing to Predict Inbox Placement appeared first on Iterable.

The first “robocall”—automated phone soliciting—was documented in 1977. Robocalls were rebranded as “Dinner Hour Marketing.” This was when real people, not bots, would call landlines during dinner time to try and sell products or services.

With the introduction of emails, this type of solicitation quickly expanded. Yep, that’s right, we’re talkin’ spam. In fact, the first unsolicited email was sent by Gary Turk in 1978 to 400 people. As spam emails became more sophisticated, email phishing emerged. In the 90s, bad actors started sending emails disguising themselves as others to trick the recipient. Today, phishing attacks are highly advanced—email senders are disguised as businesses, employees, relatives, etc.

And now we’re back to the present day where these phishing attempts have breached messaging apps. So, what does a smishing attack look like? How do they work? Let’s explore SMS phishing a bit more to shed some light on this new type of attack.

SMS Marketing

We can’t talk about smishing without first talking about SMS marketing. With SMS marketing, brands can send customers texts sharing promotions, order updates, etc. So, as a result, people are starting to get used to text messages coming from unknown numbers with links to promotions.

There’s a catch, however. To receive marketing text messages, customers have to opt in and explicitly agree to get these types of messages. There also needs to be a way to opt out. Just as easily as customers can sign up, they can remove themselves from your SMS marketing list. That’s one way to distinguish between smishing and legit SMS marketing, but there are some other ways too.

What Does Smishing Look Like?

Smishing is one of those things that you recognize when you see it. At this point, most of us have probably experienced a smishing attack. When you open a text and think “Hm, this is a little weird” or “They probably have the wrong number,” it could be a smishing attack.

The goal of a smishing attack is to try to get some information from the recipient. So, generally these messages ask the user to complete some sort of next step. Whether it’s clicking a link, responding with a password, or sharing your name, the scammer is looking to collect data that helps them access protected information. These attacks can be incredibly sneaky as the sender can disguise themselves as a brand or a person and it’s hard, as the recipient, to ensure the sender is who they say they are.

And, as IBM points out, “It’s also harder to spot dangerous links on cell phones. For instance, on a computer, users can hover over a link to see where it leads, but on smartphones, they don’t have that option.”

Take this text from an unknown number, for example. I received this message around 3:30pm on December 19th (conveniently right before I wrote this post) while sitting on my couch. My first thought was, “What did I order?” Then, “Wait, what’s Tabit?”

A text from an unknown number I received.

After some research, I learned that Tabit is a POS system for restaurants. So, one of two things could have happened: someone who actually was at a restaurant accidentally used my phone number when placing their order or someone is disguising themselves as Tabit to try to get recipients to click on the attached link.

Either could still be possible but, to play it safe, I didn’t click the link.

How to Combat Smishing

With sneaky senders, it’s hard to know what’s smishing and what’s not. So how are we supposed to know? From personal experience, it’s better to be suspicious. When in doubt, don’t respond, don’t click any links, and don’t send any personal information. If someone is trying to contact you with important information, they’ll find another way to do so.

IBM also provided a list of common smishing scams to be on the lookout for. These include pretending to:

• Be a financial institution
• Be the government
• Be customer support
• Be a shipper
• Be a boss or colleague
• Text the wrong number
• Be locked out of an account
• Offer free apps

With any of the above examples, there are other ways these actual senders would contact you if it was truly necessary. Your bank would probably email you before they text, your boss would probably Slack you, etc. These smishing attacks have been so prevalent that our CEO, Andrew Boni, once said to the entire company “I’ll never text you about gift cards.” That cleared that up.

Feel free to ignore, report, and block any numbers you’re not familiar with. Like we said, any legit marketing text message will give users the option to opt out. So, if you get a message from a brand and aren’t given that option or don’t remember opting in in the first place, use caution.

SMS Isn’t All Bad

In the words of Olivia Rodrigo, it’s brutal out here. These bad actors aim to take advantage of vulnerability. They often use fear and urgency to scare the recipient into acting immediately. Remember, if something is truly an emergency, you’ll know about it outside of text messages.

All that being said, you shouldn’t fear signing up for marketing text messages. SMS marketing is highly regulated with rules in place to make SMS marketing extremely beneficial for the customers. Don’t let smishing scare you out of connecting with the brands you love.

If you’re a marketer looking to expand your brand’s mobile marketing program to include SMS, schedule an Iterable demo today to see what’s possible.

The post What is Smishing? appeared first on Iterable.

We perused the content we published in the past year and gathered resources from across the web to compile a list of the biggest mobile marketing changes we saw in the last year. These changes, like those changes in email marketing, aren’t going anywhere, so let’s get to it.

1. Automation

Yep, automation is on the mobile marketing list too. Mobile marketing channels like SMS and push notifications can be highly effective (SMS, for example, has a 98% average open rate), but marketers are hesitant to include them in their overall marketing strategies. There’s a misconception about how difficult these channels are to implement.

Mobile marketing automation, however, makes a world of difference. The right mobile marketing platform will have the following features built in:

• SMS smart opt-in that allows users to confirm their written consent in just a click
• Phone verification for enhanced security and list hygiene
• Configurable quiet hours to comply with regulations and retain brand trust
• Verified contact cards that users can add to their contacts for improved deliverability
• Frequency capping to limit the number of texts (and other message types!) a user can receive within a certain duration
• Opt-out attribution for automated tracking for every SMS campaign

2. Operating System Updates

When Apple or Android release new operating system updates, it tends to shake things up in the mobile marketing world. But, these updates are meant to benefit the end user which, at the end of the day, makes the overall customer experience better. In August of this past year we covered iOS17—specifically the link tracking update.

As stated in our August post: “With this new release, Apple announced Link Tracking Protection which, in a couple of key scenarios, will strip away the parts of the URL that Apple identifies as tracking parameters.

The good news, however, is that “at this point, Iterable’s links don’t seem to be impacted by this update. So, if a customer opens an Iterable link via Apple Mail, for example, Iterable’s tracking parameters are still intact and Iterable customers can still see click metrics.”

3. Gamification

It’s no secret that games are fun. So, when trying to engage customers through mobile channels, gamifying the experience helps make the experience more interactive. In our June article, Top 5 Strategies to Successfully Grow Your App User Base, we specifically mentioned push notifications and in-app messages.

We shared, “Now that you’ve optimized for the app store and acquired high-value users, it’s time to encourage customer engagement to drive actions within your app. When it comes to engaging and re-engaging users, two of the greatest channels at your disposal are push notifications and in-app messaging.”

What does this all mean? Consider how you can make the experience more playful to engage users while you have their attention (i.e., when they’re already engaging with your app). Take loyalty programs, for example. Maybe you offer points towards rewards if customers complete certain actions within your mobile app. Or, maybe it’s as simple as completing levels in a learning app and making strides towards an overall goal. Get creative with it!

4. Cross-Channel

You knew it was coming. Cross-channel is incredibly important when thinking about mobile marketing. What’s special about mobile marketing is that there’s an inherent link between users’ phones and the real world. Because people carry their phones with them everywhere, there’s the unique opportunity to link physical channels to mobile channels.

One way brands can connect the physical and the digital (aka phygital) is through QR codes. In our article from November we wrote, “QR codes are especially helpful in bridging the gap between digital and physical when it comes to retail. While shopping, customers can use QR codes to gather more product information, add the product to their digital shopping carts, or even get digital coupons.”

Customers always have their phones on them, so think of ways to use this to your brand’s advantage. Offer them multiple ways to connect with your brand—both online and offline—while simultaneously creating a seamless experience.

5. Mobile KPIs

Integrating mobile channels into your cross-channel marketing strategy requires an understanding of what success looks like. But, to measure success you need to define KPIs. Luckily a lot of the metrics we know and love—open rate, click-through rate, etc.—translate from email to mobile channels. But, there are also some new metrics to consider.

Because SMS regulations require customers to opt in to receive communications (and also require brands provide customers the option to opt out), metrics like opt-in rate and opt-out rate will be important to keep an eye on. A good opt-out rate, for example, is below 5%.

It’s not just SMS metrics you need to keep an eye on. With push notifications, for example, customers have to enable notifications from your brand to even see the messages you’re crafting. Consider how many customers are allowing notifications and keep an eye on that metric to ensure your messaging is engaging and relevant to your app users.

What a Year It’s Been

Mobile channels (SMS, push, and in-app) have solidified their spots in the group of necessary marketing channels. We’ll have some 2024 predictions regarding upcoming mobile marketing trends early next year—maybe even some new channels—but it’s important to take time to reflect, level-set, and understand the changes that have emerged in 2023 to set yourself and your team up for greatness in the coming year.

With automation, operating system updates, gamification, cross-channel, and mobile KPIs taking a front seat, the way mobile marketing programs are designed going forward will need to take all of these elements into consideration. Luckily, these changes benefit both marketers and customers, and only help to create a holistic, consistent customer experience.

To learn more about how Iterable can help you achieve your mobile marketing goals in 2024, schedule a demo today.

The post 2023 Mobile Marketing: A Year in Review appeared first on Iterable.

Voted a top 10 AI Influencer by AI Time Journal, Katie King has a 30-year career in consulting and marketing and has published two books. So, when we say she wrote the book on AI marketing, we mean…literally. She currently serves as the CEO of AI in Business, a future-focused consultancy dedicated to helping organizations gain a competitive edge in the age of AI, and Zoodikers, a content marketing, business strategy, and thought leadership agency built for the digital age.

It’s safe to say that when it comes to AI, Katie knows her stuff. So, let’s get into what she covered in her recent webinar with Iterable.

Want to watch the webinar? It’s available on-demand right now.

Defining AI

To kick things off, Katie went back to basics and defined what AI really means. Because 87% of global organizations believe that AI technologies will give them a competitive edge, it’s important to understand exactly what AI is in the context of business.

According to Katie, “AI is the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior.” This is the broad, all-encompassing definition of AI. There are subsets of AI, however, that connect more to how we understand AI today. Machine learning (ML), for example, is “a current application or subset of AI, using pattern recognition and algorithms to enable machines to accelerate learning through experience.”

Katie shared this graphic that defines narrow, general, and super AI.

Katie also broke down what AI is and what AI is not—a helpful distinction to help users overcome some initial hesitation to adapt the use of AI technology.

What AI is:

• A specialized technology capable of amazing things
• Better and more efficient at certain tasks than humans are, like data collection and analysis
• A tool and ally

What AI is not:

• An all-knowing, all-capable, superintelligent technology
• A total replacement for human intelligence, creativity, and skill
• A threat to every job and human worker

The Different Forms of AI

Of course, AI can look different depending on how you intend to use the tool’s capabilities. So, Katie then covered the different forms of AI.

Interactive AI

Interactive AI refers to developing AI systems that can engage in human-like conversations and respond dynamically to user inputs.

Common Examples: Chatbots, Smart Personal Assistants
Real World Use Cases: Amazon’s Echo devices, Apple’s Siri

Visual AI

Visual AI is an aspect of computer science that teaches machines to make sense of images and visual data the same way people do.

Common Examples: Computer Vision, Augmented Reality, Facial Recognition
Real World Use Case: Some insurers use Visual AI to assess the damage from vehicular accidents to draft a claim

Functional AI

Functional AI also scans huge amounts of data and searches for patterns and dependencies in it. However, instead of giving recommendations, functional AI takes actions.

Common Examples: IoT Solutions, Robots, Iterable’s Send Time Optimization (STO)
Real World Use Case: An IoT sensor on a manufacturing line notices a malfunction, and sends a command for the machine to shut down before further damage is incurred

Analytic AI

Powered with machine learning, analytic AI scans tons of data for dependencies and patterns to ultimately produce recommendations or provide a business with insights.

Common Examples: Sentiment Analysis, Risk Assessment, Market Insights, Iterable’s Brand Affinity
Real World Use Case: Various retailers use analytic AI to forecast demand and make smarter inventory recommendations

Generative AI

Generative AI is the process of AI algorithms generating or creating an output, such as text, photo, video, code, data, and 3D renderings, from data they are trained on.

The purpose of generative AI is to create content, as opposed to other forms of AI, which might be used for other purposes, such as analyzing data or helping to control a self-driving car.

Common Examples: ChatGPT, Bard, DALL-E, Iterable’s Copy Assist
Real World Use Case: A marketing team could use generative AI to craft copy for websites, social media, emails, etc.

You might be thinking, “All of these different types of AI are great, but how do they relate to marketing?” We’ve got you covered.

AI in Marketing

There are a variety of ways AI can be used in marketing that help both the marketing practitioner and the customer on the other end.

Crafting Experiences

Marketers can use AI to bridge the gap between online and in-person experiences, differentiate, and build loyalty.

Real World Use Cases: AI-powered tailored emails based a website or store visit, loyalty programs, ‘Smart Mirrors’ in fitting rooms

Smarter Targeting

Marketers can use AI to better understand their customers, build more detailed personas, and segment their audiences more effectively.

Real World Use Cases: Audience insight platforms, CRM, lead generation and scoring

Personalization at Scale

Marketers can use AI to better understand their customers, build more detailed personas, and segment their audiences more effectively.

Real World Use Cases: Audience insight platforms, CRM, lead generation and scoring

Campaign Generation

Marketers can use AI to make sense of their data and translate it into customer-focused campaign ideas.

Real World Use Cases: Creative campaigns for brands such as Coca-Cola, Lexus, Heinz, Stradivarius, and Kit-Kat

Content Creation

Marketers can use AI to craft engaging copy for all of their channels and modify it for different audiences, geographies, languages, etc.

Real World Use Cases: Social media copy, website content, AI-generated artwork, video closed captioning, etc.

Automated Engagement

Marketers can use AI to automatically engage their customers with messaging to keep the pipeline warm throughout their entire journey.

Real World Use Cases: Push messaging, abandoned cart reminders, etc.

Reputation Management

Marketers and comms pros can use AI to keep tabs on customers’ perceptions and attitudes, success of their campaigns, and discussions of their brand across platforms.

Real World Use Cases: Social listening tools, sentiment analysis platforms

Check Out the Full Webinar

Looking for even more AI info? In addition to covering all of the above information in her webinar, Katie also explores some real life applications. These include examples from Barbie, Delta, Jaguar, and more. Plus Katie covers macro issues and AI regulations and also covers top AI vendors, including reviewing Iterable’s AI Suite.

Don’t miss out, stream the full webinar now.

The post Unlocking AI’s Potential: A Guide for Success in the Experience Age appeared first on Iterable.

The popularity of the search term “AI” in the U.S. from January 1, 2022 to December 14, 2023. Source: Google Trends.

As marketers, we’re finding new ways to incorporate AI tools into just about every aspect of what we do every day. Whether it’s generative AI or using AI to better understand customers’ affinity towards your brand, AI can make a huge improvement in how efficient and effective a marketing team can be.

Throughout 2023 we’ve published a slew of AI marketing content. As a quick refresher, and handy guide, we’ve decided to compile a dozen of our 2023 AI-related blog posts in one spot. Whether you bookmark this or Slack it to a colleague, we’re hoping this serves as a helpful resource as we all lean into AI heading into 2024.

1. AI’s Role in Marketing, According to ChatGPT

In this article Iterable’s, Director of Brand & Creative Services, Michael Huard, wanted to see what ChatGPT was all about and hear it from the source. So, he asked ChatGPT what it thinks its role in marketing is and got…surprising results.

2. 3 Things You Can Do With Email Marketing Automation

You already know the importance of deploying a welcome campaign or triggering abandoned cart emails, but in this article we cover three modern benefits of email marketing automation you can take advantage of today. And of course, AI and Automation go together like peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, mac and cheese…you get it.

3. Busting the 3 Most Common AI Myths in Marketing

In 2018, we posited that we were only a few years away from a turning point, in which most businesses will use AI in some form. And with the recent skyrocketing popularity of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, it’s safe to say that the turning point has come and gone. However, misinformation continued to stymie the conversation around real-life, practical AI applications, especially when pertaining to digital marketing, so we re-evaluated the three most common AI myths we encountered five years ago and weigh in on whether they’re still debunked in 2023.

4. Great Examples of AI in Marketing…and Some Not So Great

We thought it’d be fun to highlight some great examples of AI in marketing…and some that are not so great. That said, we all could end up on a “not so great” list at some point so we aren’t here to judge. Instead, this article is here so you can hopefully leave with some inspiration and guidance to heed in your AI endeavors.

5. How AI in Localization & Translation Impact Global Marketing Strategies

AI-powered generative tools for translation and localization will likely have a huge impact on global growth marketing strategies because they make it easier, faster, and more accessible. Marketing teams can adapt content more efficiently without using up all their time or making a huge dent in their budgets. In this article Rachel Wolff from Iterable partner, Lokalise, explores the global potential of AI in marketing.

6. The 5 Ws of AI Marketing

But there’s another useful framework for understanding an emerging topic: the five Ws (who, what, when, where, and why). If asking these questions works for reporters, detectives, and elementary school teachers assigning storytelling prompts, then it can be valuable for us.
In this article we get back to basics and cover the 5 Ws of AI marketing.

7. Mastering Iterable’s AI Suite

It can be hard to know where to start, and, depending on your organization, you will have different priorities and needs for your AI solutions. At Iterable, we focus on three main categories for AI: message optimization, generative content creation, and AI-driven audience insights. In this article we break down each of these Iterable capabilities.

8. Is AI in Marketing Worth the Hype in 2023?

It’s apparent that incorporating AI in marketing may offer a lot of perks, but understanding these tools’ abilities and boundaries should always remain top priority. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the pros and cons of AI in marketing and provide tips for effectively implementing AI into your marketing strategy.

9. Ethical Considerations of Using AI in Marketing

As anyone who was raised on Marvel movies knows, with great power comes great responsibility. While AI-powered campaigns promise efficiency and precision, they also bring forward a set of ethical considerations that cannot be ignored. This article has five things to consider when confronting the ethical quandaries of AI in marketing.

10. 20+ AI Marketing Stats You Wish You Knew Sooner

The research shows that AI marketing is achieving greater results than businesses thought possible and could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2023. In this post, we’re sharing the latest stats from AI marketing analysts and experts to give you a better sense of how AI can improve your team’s performance and make your work easier and more efficient.

11. 5 Tips for Building Better AI Prompts for Marketing Campaigns

While we’re not all AI Prompt Engineers, when it comes to AI-generated marketing copy, there are some tricks for optimizing your prompts and getting to the finish line faster and more effectively. This article has five tips to enhance your AI prompts and seed copy to build better AI marketing campaigns.

12. Key AI Terms to Familiarize Yourself With

In this post, we cut through the confusion, clarifying essential AI terms we, as marketers, should start to familiarize ourselves with. Whether you’re new to AI or just need a quick refresher, these AI terms will provide you with a clearer understanding of key concepts, especially as they relate to using AI in your marketing campaigns.

There’s More Where That Came From

AI is here to stay so we’ve all got to start getting used to it and start embracing the ways it can help supplement our jobs, versus being afraid of being replaced. We’ll, of course, keep publishing our perspectives on AI in marketing so if these topics didn’t quench your AI thirst, be sure to check out all of the available resources we have.

Want more AI content right now? Head over to our AI Hub for webinars, downloadable content, and more.

The post Top 12 AI Marketing Articles to Bookmark for 2024 appeared first on Iterable.

We took a look at the content we published in the past year and gathered resources from across the web to compile a list of the biggest email marketing changes we saw in the last year. These changes likely aren’t going anywhere, so let’s get to it.

1. Artificial Intelligence

Yeah, big surprise, AI is on the list. Artificial Intelligence really took off in 2023—specifically, generative AI. McKinsey, in fact, referred to 2023 as “Generative AI’s Breakout Year.” In the same article they mention, “The most commonly reported business functions using these [generative AI] tools are the same as those in which AI use is most common overall: marketing and sales, product and service development, and service operations, such as customer care and back-office support.”

So how did AI impact email marketing? While generative AI can and did help email marketers write the copy for the body of the email itself (like Grammarly’s professional email writing tool and Iterable’s Copy Assist), email marketing is impacted by AI beyond just the content creation. Take Iterable’s Send Time Optimization (STO), for example. With this tool, AI is employed to examine historical customer behavior—like engagement—and that data is used to dictate the best time for sending future emails.

2. Privacy

In 2023 email authentication quickly rose to the top of the priority list for email marketers. Back in September, Iterable’s Email Deliverability Consultant, Steve Duff, wrote about the importance of email authentication. He said, “Email authentication adds layers of security that bolster trust, safeguard personal information, and preserve the integrity of digital interactions in an effort to make email safe for both senders and recipients.”

Then, in October, Iterable’s Senior Director of Delivery Operations, Seth Charles, covered the upcoming Google and Yahoo email policy updates that hinge on email authentication. “Starting in February of 2024, both email platforms will begin to block and aggressively filter incoming email traffic that doesn’t meet new message authentication and procedural requirements.” While the impending changes don’t occur until next year, email marketers should start putting procedures in place to ensure their emails are viewed as authentic by senders.

3. Automation

This probably doesn’t come as a shock either, but automation had a moment in 2023 and it’s not stopping anytime soon. Automation takes the guesswork out of email marketing. While we don’t recommend a “set-it-and-forget-it” mentality (good to keep an eye on things and audit regularly), automation does help free up your time to focus on the bigger picture. With automation, instead of zooming into each email and thinking about when you’re going to hit “send” you can take a step back and think about what each individual customer’s journey will look like as a whole.

Take A+E Networks, for example. With a variety of different channels—including A&E, Lifetime, The HISTORY® Channel, LMN, FYI, VICELAND, and Crime+Investigation—A+E Networks still manages to send highly personalized welcome emails via Iterable. Because each channel has a unique website where users can opt-in to receive emails, A+E uses this information to automate which welcome email goes out to which customer.

4. Cross-Channel

It wouldn’t be an Iterable article without a mention of good ol’ cross-channel marketing. This isn’t a new concept, but we’ve seen it take a front seat in the past year. Email has often been touted as the marketing channel with the highest ROI. While this still holds true (with an ROI of $36-$42 for every $1 spent), email marketing is best when used as part of a multi-channel marketing strategy.

So, something we’ve seen in the past year is a re-balancing of marketing channels. Because customers’ inboxes are getting more and more cluttered, finding ways to incorporate other marketing channels has been critical for brands’ success in the past year.

5. New KPIs

New tools means new measures of success. As email marketing evolved in 2023, new KPIs started to become more important for determining whether or not a strategy is working. Back in June we published an article featuring some email marketing KPIs to keep an eye on. Our list included some less-common metrics like: inbox placement rate (IPR), email forwarding rate, and list growth rate.

While these metrics aren’t necessarily new, they are becoming more important to email marketers as email marketing continues to evolve. For example, IPR is the number of emails that successfully land in a customer’s inbox versus being marked as spam or bouncing completely. This particular metric goes hand in hand with the prioritization of privacy and authentication mentioned above.

What a Year It’s Been

We’ve seen a shift in email priorities in the past year, and it’s not stopping any time soon. While we’ll have some 2024 predictions regarding upcoming email trends early next year, it’s important to take time to reflect, level-set, and understand the changes that have emerged in 2023 to set yourself and your team up for greatness in the coming year.

With AI, privacy, automation, cross-channel, and new KPIs taking a front seat, the way email programs are designed going forward will need to take all of these elements into consideration. Luckily, these changes are all extremely beneficial to marketers and help improve efficiency and effectiveness—so nothing to fear.

To learn more about how Iterable can help you achieve your email marketing goals in 2024, schedule a demo today.

The post 2023 Email Marketing: A Year in Review appeared first on Iterable.

Establishing a relevant and engaging social presence requires a deep understanding of who your customer is and how they like to be reached, while also tailoring your efforts to the nuances of each social channel. It’s definitely hard work, but it’s worth the effort when the result is a community of devoted and engaged fans that are eager to consume your content, share it with their friends, and sing your brand’s praises on and offline.

1. Know Your Audience

Understanding your audience is the first and most important step when building out your social media strategy. You likely have created brand personas when defining your brand’s overall marketing strategy, and these personas will be a great starting point for tailoring who your online social audiences will be and how they like to be reached.

Review your brand and describe the typical customer:

• Who are they?
• What stage of life are they in?
• What kind of job do they have?
• How do they spend their free time?
• What are their main pain points?

Once you have identified a few of your key buyer personas, do some research on what social platforms that persona uses and what kind of brands they are following. This will help you understand what kind of content that audience is actively engaged with.

Did you know? You can use your personas to build your perfect audiences in the Iterable app using User Segmentation.

A Generational Divide

One major factor when it comes to identifying digital preferences and typical behavior of your target audiences is understanding the differences in generational social media behavior. According to research conducted by ComScore, Baby Boomers are most active on Facebook, while Gen Z favors video content on YouTube and TikTok. Millennials and Gen X spend the majority of their time on the same platforms: YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

These nuances are key when developing your content strategy. Each platform has specific dimensions, format, and content preferences that are important to keep in mind when sharing content.

2. Know Your Platforms

Once you understand who you are talking to on social media, the next step is understanding the best way to communicate your message.

Facebook

Facebook started out with status updates and has shifted to more of a photo and video focus, with the capability to share direct links within captions. Additionally, Facebook has tools like business pages, stories, Reels, Facebook Live, offers, events, and community groups to help build an online community and manage offline event logistics.

Did you know? Iterable has an integration with Facebook that allows you to export static and dynamic lists from Iterable and create custom audiences in Facebook Ads Manager. Learn more on how to connect your brand’s page here.

Instagram

While Facebook and Instagram both sit under the Meta umbrella, Instagram’s engagement rates are four times higher than Facebook, with a focus on photo and video content. Instagram has tools like stories, Instagram live, Reels, broadcast channels, simple direct messaging, and highlights to make connecting with your audience in real-time a breeze.

TikTok

TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform that focuses on short form video content, paired with trend-driven sounds from both native users and recording artists. The “For You Page” (FYP) algorithm of TikTok leads to increased opportunity for virality and allows any user, regardless of current audience size, to have their content served to a massive audience.

TikTok has tools like in-app editing, filters, templates, TikTok live, and a robust music library to allow brands to lean into their experimental content creation side.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the online hub for career building and professional development. Content like industry articles, awards, job postings, education tips, and user case studies are a great fit for the audience on LinkedIn, and B2B companies tend to find that their target audience is very active on this platform. LinkedIn has tools like robust business pages, job boards, article publishing, and LinkedIn live to help connect users with businesses.

Threads/X

X and Threads are primarily text focused platforms that serve as a news source for many of their users. Both Threads and X are great for short updates, polls, breaking news, and photo and video content sharing from brands and users alike. Threads and X have tools like trend tracking, direct messaging, live streaming, and polls to help connect audiences with the content and information they want to see.

After reviewing the type of content that is best suited for each platform, review your buyer personas and business goals. What platforms are your audience already engaged with and how can you provide value with your content on those platforms?

3. Create a Social Strategy

You’ve established the platforms that make sense for your brand, and now it’s time to build out exactly what kind of content you want to share with your audiences.

All social media content should serve the purpose of one or more of the four E’s:

• Educate: Providing educational content to your audience will always be a high-value content strategy. Share best practices on how to use your product, new innovations in your industry, or solutions to common pain points that will be helpful and informative to your audience.
• Engage: Engaging posts help to connect your audience with the brand in a relatable and fun way, while continuing to build a community around your brand. Engaging posts can be anything from polls or quizzes to holiday digital bingo cards.
• Empower: Empowering posts drive your audience to take action and are coupled with strong CTAs. Examples of empowering posts can include registration links to webinars, updates about an upcoming event, or resources for continued professional development.
• Entertain: Entertaining posts are a necessary and often overlooked aspect of a brand’s social strategy. Humor, relatability, and fun are essential to an engaging and long-lasting social presence, so lean in to trend-driven memes and poke fun and the common pitfalls of your industry.

While you may feel inclined to ask which “E” is best for each platform, the four E’s are great for any platform, so I would hesitate to assign a “best platform” for each.

4. Be Responsive

Once you hit “post,” you might think you are finished with your social media duties. But, one of the most important aspects of a social media presence is timely social response. Inevitably, your audience members are going to turn to your social media channels as the first line of customer service, sending inquiries about shipping or services to your social media inbox or comments section.

There are two types of social response: reactive and proactive.

• Reactive: Reactive engagement is what we think of when we imagine basic social response. Engaging with your audience through responding to comments, direct messages, tagged content, reposts, and mentions all falls into this category and is an extremely important form of digital customer engagement and service.
• Proactive: Proactive engagement is when your brand makes the first move and comments or shares content from other creators or brands in the space that have a similar following and audience. This is a great strategy for first interactions with influencers you would like to work with down the line, as it sparks a relationship between your brand and the influencer in a casual way.

It is extremely important to foster these relationships across all of your social media channels as it’s one of the first places your customers will go to connect with your brand. Make sure that you’re replying to all questions in your inbox and are engaging with users in the comments of your posts to build community and demonstrate that you are available to help with any issues your customers are having throughout their lifecycle.

Don’t Be Scared to Be Social

While the social landscape might feel vast and daunting, it is imperative that all businesses show up consistently on the social platforms that make sense for their audiences and their business needs. Having an updated social presence will not only build trust in the legitimacy of your brand, but will also offer a space for easy updates, education, and entertainment for your key audience. So grab your tripod and ring light, it’s time to bring out your inner digital star.

Need inspiration? Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, X, Threads, and Facebook.

The post 4 Tips For Growing Your Social Media Presence appeared first on Iterable.

If you want to take charge next year, consolidate your martech stack. You won’t regret it or the outcomes! Let’s explore four reasons to do it, ways to start and complete the process, and stories of organizations reaping rewards.

What It Means to Choose a Lean Stack

The modern martech stack is powerful, but each application must be thoughtfully chosen to create a stack that works in unison towards your business goals. When you prioritize a holistic view of your stack and consolidate to a leaner, more efficient, and results-driven infrastructure, these perks can be achieved.

• Maximize ROI for a stronger bottom line: When marketing invests time and resources to adopt a tool and onboard staff, you better be sure the added technology is used for more than just one feature. If not, there’s an opportunity to simplify. Streamlining your stack in alignment with top business goals ensures every marketing tool is used at maximum efficiency and enhances your organization’s bottom line. It’s smart to first define benchmarks for tooling use to ensure full value When they aren’t hit, you should seriously consider what to cut.
• Reduce or eliminate redundancies: There are several marketing tools that overlap in features and capabilities. According to Gartner, only 42% of the capabilities available in martech stacks are used by marketers. By rethinking your martech stack, it’s possible to experience cost savings of 30% to 40%, shares Bain & Company. Start by eliminating tool sets with redundant features and functionality that don’t regularly benefit your team, customers, strategic goals, or value drivers, and use tools that best enhance the customer (and marketer!) experience, blending specialization and simplicity.
• Scale impact: In the “do more with less” environment, marketers must help their brands engage and scale for immediate, lasting impact. A martech stack with all functions in one place that integrates end-to-end, streamlines expenses, and improves the customer experience enables you to scale with the pace of growth and demand.
• Improve collaboration: A disconnect between tools creates silos in and outside of marketing and silos hinder performance and results. However, a centralized platform with an extensive partner ecosystem and easy-to-use integrations is advantageous for collaboration. Some pieces you should be looking for in your centralized platform include:
  • A data warehouse integrating behavioral data with the orchestration platform.
  • A unified identity solution that brings data together.
  • Content creation tools that expedite campaign creation and execution.
  • Web optimization tools that maximize external presence for audience attention, and which integrate with the orchestration platform.

This list of benefits isn’t exhaustive. Just remember the golden rule is to consider your most important use cases and choose a modern platform that supports seamless execution and maximum performance for each. The burden is lifted, time and money is saved, and your customer experience will be future-proof.

Helpful Steps to Consolidate

The next logical question is: “ok, now how do I consolidate?” Well, we’ve got a list of some steps to help you do it.

Take inventory of the tools you use to ensure your stack foundation is solid and can handle key areas like campaign orchestration, audience targeting, and analytic insights. A few practices include:

• Documenting the current ecosystem.
• Mapping tools to strategic drivers.
• Defining KPIs that allow for consistently tracking and measuring success.
• Measuring value based on delivery versus expected performance against KPIs.

When you uncover redundancies in this process, it’s time to cut some fat. As marketers, we can use more simplicity, am I right?

Centralize governance to put ownership and responsibility in the hands of stakeholders who can guarantee consolidation happens quickly and effectively.

• Choose an ecosystem owner in marketing with an empowered perspective who will set boundaries for decision-making.
• Develop a cross-functional steering committee to establish shared goals and resources and reinforce adoption throughout the organization.
• Set a schedule to evaluate performance metrics and utilization, and ensure maximum efficiency in resources spent.

Finally, consolidate (where you can) to experience the key benefits mentioned.

• Map tools to your customer journey for a more seamless experience, from beginning to end, with your brand.
• Eliminate the tools that have overlapping features and functions.
• Seek out a platform that has a strong partner ecosystem, flexible data model, and proven experience working with brands similar to yours or experiencing some of the same challenges.

Enterprises that Consolidated and Now Thrive

Iterable has helped numerous customers consolidate their martech stack for great benefit. For instance:

• Furniture brand Joybird streamlined their disparate platforms for email and event tracking in Iterable. Now, they benefit from maximum data flexibility, robust segmentation, and real-time event streaming. The measurable business value included a 93% reduction in engineering time and marketing being able to spin up new campaigns in an hour instead of two weeks.
• The Body Coach fitness app relied on two platforms for customer emails and push notifications. Choosing Iterable, they gained one solution that delivers individualized, automated, cross-channel communications to attract new members, keep them in a renewal cycle, and support their pursuit of health and fitness goals. Now, 60% of members who interact with voice messages from founder and trainer Joe complete a workout in a few days and more consistent, personalized customer engagement increases the odds of stronger retention and member renewal.

Visit Iterable.com to schedule a demo and learn how we help marketers elevate customer engagement, w and explore resources like this more extensive, downloadable checklist to maximize your martech stack.

The post 4 Benefits of Streamlining Your Martech Stack appeared first on Iterable.

For decades, retailers have relied on third-party data as the backbone of their customer engagement strategy. It’s been the fuel driving everything from targeted ads and personalizing customer experiences, to improving campaign performance, and ultimately, increasing sales and profitability.

But a backlash against the misuse of consumer data has spurred new privacy protections from big tech and governments alike. Google, whose Chrome browser accounts for nearly two-thirds of the world’s internet usage, plans to phase out cookies completely in 2024, while Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari have already done so. In addition, 137 countries now have national privacy laws in place that regulate how consumer data can be collected and used, with new state bills in the US seeming to pop up weekly.

All of these factors are resulting in a shift away from third-party data in favor of zero- and first-party data collected directly from consumers that’s both privacy compliant and offers deeper, more meaningful consumer insights. First-party data, as Neil Patel puts it, is “information companies collect from their own sources about their customers,” and it’s increasingly becoming the backbone of the most effective, targeted marketing campaigns for retailers in the U.S. and Europe.

While first-party data offers a number of benefits, one of the biggest barriers to harnessing its full potential is understanding the distinct ways it can be used to reimagine customer engagement and drive business growth. While the possibilities are endless, here are five fundamental ways retailers can make the most of their first-party data.

1. Strategic Email Marketing

Email marketing remains a potent tool for customer engagement. In fact, data shows email drives an average of $36 for every dollar spent — higher than any other channel. But to be truly effective, email campaigns must be strategically segmented based on the unique needs and interests of different customer groups.

When unified into comprehensive customer profiles, first-party data provides granular insights into individual purchase histories, browsing behaviors, product preferences, and more that retailers can use to create robust multi-dimensional segments. Their ESPs can then use these segments to personalize content, such as recommending products based on past purchases or sending exclusive offers tailored to specific customer segments. This targeted approach not only fosters increased customer engagement, but can significantly increase open and conversion rates.

2. Real-Time Personalization Across Channels

Modern consumers expect a seamless and personalized shopping experience across all marketing channels—not just email. In fact, data shows 75% of shoppers are willing to pay more for personalized online shopping experiences.

With access to unified, actionable first-party data, retailers can dynamically adjust website content, product recommendations, and promotions and employ targeted cross-channel strategies based on individual preferences and behaviors. For instance, if a customer opens an email but doesn’t make a purchase, retailers can use this data to trigger a follow-up SMS or push notification with a more compelling offer. This cross-channel engagement can help increase conversions and foster a deeper, more personalized connection with consumers.

Online retailer RevZilla was able to boost revenue by 35% simply by creating a more cohesive experience across email and SMS—their two main channels for keeping in touch with customers.

3. Lifecycle Marketing Campaigns

Modern consumers not only expect personalized and relevant interactions across channels, but also at different stages of their journey. By building long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with customers, retailers can boost their profitability by as much as 75% on average.

By collecting first-party data—including the likes of data on website visitors’ browsing habits, email engagement, social media activity or in-store shopping tendencies—retailers can tailor communications and promotions to specific stages of the customer journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase loyalty. This approach ensures that marketing efforts are highly personalized, fostering meaningful connections with customers at every touchpoint and optimizing marketing effectiveness throughout the entire lifecycle.

Take Bob’s Discount Furniture, where leaders are using their first-party data to support both short- and long-term lifecycle marketing strategies. For instance, because their purchase history is persistently stored in profiles, the Bob’s Discount Furniture is able to promote toddler beds to customers who purchased a baby crib two years earlier.

4. Enhanced Loyalty Programs

First-party data can also play an instrumental role in optimizing and personalizing loyalty programs. Armed with information such as the frequency of site visits and preferred products or services, retailers can tailor loyalty programs to offer personalized rewards, discounts, and incentives that resonate with each customer. This not only strengthens customer loyalty but also encourages repeat business.

Additionally, by analyzing data from loyalty programs, retailers can gain insights into customer behavior, enabling them to refine marketing strategies and further enhance the overall customer experience.

5. Optimized Media Spend

A more competitive advertising market coupled with privacy-related changes to ad targeting have driven digital advertising costs upwards of 60% over the last five years. To mitigate these costs, retailers need to find ways to allocate their advertising budgets more efficiently.

With access to unified customer profiles, retailers can create highly targeted and personalized advertising campaigns. This precise targeting not only enhances the effectiveness of digital marketing efforts, but also maximizes the return on investment (ROI).

Unlocking Your First-Party Data Potential

First-party data has become pivotal for navigating the challenges of the post-cookie, privacy-first era. By embracing the strategies above, retailers can adapt to the evolving industry landscape while delivering unparalleled value to their customers.

But success also depends on getting your first-party data house in order. By pairing a customer data platform (CDP) that makes first-party data accessible and actionable—like BlueConic—with a customer communication platform that enables personalization at scale—like Iterable—retailers can take a more holistic approach to customer engagement that not only optimizes marketing efficiency and effectiveness, but also fosters trust, loyalty, and lasting customer relationships.

The post 5 Must Have First-Party Data Strategies for Retailers appeared first on Iterable.

This year, Iterable users sent over 4 billion emails over Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend—a 36% increase in volume since 2022. Since Iterable users are not the only brands sending marketing communications, just imagine the huge increase in overall email send volume.

Beyond brands, think too about the increase in emails your customers are about to receive. Are they wanting (or even expecting) all of those emails?

If you want to make sure you don’t land on mailbox providers’ (and your customers’) naughty lists, follow our deliverability suggestions to make this season a joyful one.

Ensuring Consent-Based Sending

Many brands feel the pressure to contact all of their subscribers—hoping it will maximize potential sales opportunities—without realizing the long-term impact it can have on deliverability.

A mailbox provider’s role is to protect their ecosystem and keep their users safe by ensuring users want the emails they receive. Here are just some of the ways providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Apple, amongst many others) evaluate a brand’s reputation:

• Measuring how much mail is marked as spam
• Keeping tabs on how many unknown users you send to
• Sending messages to spam trap networks
• Paying attention to whether your mail is read or just deleted

When a brand exceeds certain thresholds, such as spam complaint rates, this is a clear signal to mailbox providers that the user doesn’t want to receive these communications, which results in more of the brand’s emails being sent to the spam folder.

It may sound obvious, but make sure your brand is only sending marketing emails to people who have made it clear that they want your email—whether through a recent opt-in or positive engagement.

Weathering a Flurry of Emails

Mailbox providers want their users to receive legitimate mail. However, with a surge in holiday volume, bad actors try to hide amongst all the noise. This results in stricter filtering from mailbox providers being applied to inbound messages.

It is important to note that some mailbox providers’ infrastructures aren’t capable of handling the increase in email volume. What does this mean for marketers?

• Delayed delivery times
• Increased in spam placement
• Increased bounces

While these are not guaranteed to happen to your brand, it’s worth keeping an eye out for these changes during heavy send periods like the holidays.

Tip: Shifting your campaign send times to avoid the top of the hour is known to help avoid rate-limiting delays and, ultimately, blocking. This shift can be five, 10, 15 etc. minutes after the start of the hour.

Tips and Tools to Make the “Nice” List

Knowing how to segment your customer base is important. What times of the day have been proven to drive a lot of engagement? What campaigns have shown the most success? What learnings were gained from those that we can use for the holiday season?

Sending to Engaged Users

From a deliverability reputation standpoint, you want to make sure that the segmentation gives you a better chance of sending to engaged (as defined by you) customers, to protect your reputation with ISPs.

Re-sending emails to customers who haven’t opened emails in the past can be effective sometimes, but remember that these recipients are typically less likely to engage and might start to shift your deliverability down. Consider past purchase behavior and perhaps “clicked but not convert” as an engagement metric.

On the other hand, If a user is clicking, you can assume the content was relevant for them and maybe a slight tweak to the content can get them to convert.

Fine-Tune the Volume

If you do have a large shift in volume from your normal sending, you’re better off breaking it up into smaller blocks that are more similar to your usual sending patterns, even if it means spreading them across multiple days.

Tip: Try to avoid large volume spikes. If you usually send to 50k recipients, don’t change from that too drastically and suddenly decide to send to 150k. Mailbox providers frown upon sudden spikes like that and will immediately defer or block the mail as a result.

Tools That Can Help

You’re not alone when it comes to making email deliverability easier this holiday season. There are tools in and out of Iterable that can help.

Segment Analysis

Within Iterable, if you click to see an individual campaign performance, you can see more granularity at the recipient domain level through a Segment Analysis. Here, you can see your metrics in gmail.com (Gmail), yahoo.com (Yahoo) or hotmail.com (Microsoft), for example. Some metrics might be declining overall (Opens rates), but when it’s through one mailbox provider, it typically means that your reputation with this mailbox provider has diminished.

If old users, never-engaged users, or users hitting the “spam” button are being targeted in large numbers, you will see your successful delivery rate go down exponentially.

Brand Affinity

If you are not sure how to segment your list, try leveraging the Brand Affinity feature within the Iterable platform to help identify who wants your email.

Brand Affinity uses advanced AI to automatically calculate customer engagement and sentiment based on cross-channel behavior. Brand Affinity then dynamically converts these signals into user profile affinity labels for use in smarter segmentation and more meaningful customer experiences.

Third-Party Tools

Outside of Iterable, getting feedback directly from two major mailbox providers can also provide valuable insight into sending behavior. Take advantage of two free reputation systems you can sign up for to monitor your IP/Domain reputation: Google Postmaster Tools and Microsoft SNDS (if sending on dedicated IPs).

Abide by New Privacy Requirements

“Starting in February of 2024, both Yahoo and Google inboxes will begin to block and aggressively filter incoming email traffic that doesn’t meet new message authentication and procedural requirements. Additionally, they also included some infrastructure and performance thresholds associated with commercial email best practices.” 

To learn more about these updates, check out the full post.

Avoid a Lump of Coal

Mailbox Providers have to decide which brands are “good” and “bad” quickly, so making sure you continue to implement trustworthy behavior will allow you to maximize your inbox during the holidays. The potential short term revenue gains from sending high volumes are not worth the negative long-term impact on your email campaigns.

Take the time. Check your lists…twice. And utilize the tools at your disposal. If you need or want help, schedule a demo today to chat with the Iterable deliverability team to uplevel your email deliverability success.

The post Holiday Email Deliverability: Make This Season a Joyful One appeared first on Iterable.

Yes, there’s a lot to keep in mind when creating international marketing campaigns—especially during the holidays. So, to help fellow marketers as we enter the thick of the holiday season, we figured we’d consolidate and share our advice.

1. Get Out the Calendar

We’re going old school for this first tip. It may seem obvious but with everyone’s busy schedules, ironically there seems to be no time to sit down with a calendar and go through the important holidays you should be creating campaigns around.

Even more obvious—ask your international coworkers for advice! Have them add important dates to the shared marketing calendar to make sure you’re getting insights from each of your markets.

2. Stay Mindful

This kind of goes without saying when considering different countries’ perspectives, but there’s some specifics to touch on here. In November, for example, U.S. customers are focused on Thanksgiving but in the UK and EU, folks are looking ahead to Christmas. Other countries, however, don’t celebrate Christmas at all. Do your research and, again, rely on team members to help provide context.

This is where segmentation can be really helpful. Create different audiences to make sure you’re sending the right messages to the right people.

3. Personalize to the Best of Your Ability

This goes hand-in-hand with being mindful. Outside of the major tentpole holidays, there are other holidays that may require more of a sensitivity. Personalization could be the difference between making a customer’s day and ruining it. Take Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, for example. Some people may want to opt-out of any communications around those holidays.

Look at your historical data and make sure your user profiles are synced to contain this data. That way, if a customer opts-out of sensitive holidays one year, it will carry over to the next year and they’ll automatically be removed from the send list.

4. Use Local Influence

Influencers are everything these days. After all, influencer marketing is expected to be an over $21B market this year. It can also increase brand awareness by 82%. But are all influencers global? Probably not. Think about selecting influencers—even micro or nano influencers—that can speak directly to your different audiences.

People want to hear from someone like themselves, so rather than alienating your audience with someone they can’t relate to, try selecting influencers in your different locales.

5. Speak Their Language

Again, this isn’t a groundbreaking concept, but it really will make a difference. Using a localization service or translation service can help capture the colloquialisms of different cultures. We’ve all struggled trying to use a quick translation tool, but truly understanding a language and the nuances that come with it offers a much more individualized customer experience.

If you don’t have translation in your budget right now, look to your team! Give the first version of a campaign a go with a translator and have your native-speaking colleagues give it a quick review. Your team is your best tool.

6. Abide by Privacy Regulations

Privacy and data restrictions are different in every country. Europe, in particular, loves their regulations. Consider the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) in the EU, Canada’s Digital Charter Implementation Act, state-specific regulations in the U.S. like The California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), and more.

It’s a lot to keep track of but with the right legal counsel you’ll be able to stay on top of all of these different regulations to ensure your customers not only have a good experience with your brand, but that your messaging even gets delivered to them in the first place.

Take the World by Storm

The world is your oyster (funnily enough, this went viral for being one of the hardest phrases to say with an American accent). You have the ability to succeed when marketing during international holidays and, in most cases, the tools are right under your nose. Every international team member is an asset and they can help provide perspective you may not otherwise have.

You may think it’s too late in the year to get started on your marketing during international holidays, but there’s good news: they happen every year. Consider this your reminder to get a jump on all the holidays 2024 has to offer. Whip out your calendars, sharpen your pencil, and get to work.

To learn how Iterable can help with your global marketing efforts in 2024, schedule a demo today.

The post Tips for Marketing During International Holidays appeared first on Iterable.

1. Joybird

Joybird specializes in the sleek lines of mid-century modern furniture styles, but its approach to customer messaging is thoroughly 21st century. The company’s value proposition is: “Joybird was founded on the idea that people should never settle when it comes to their home furnishing, but rather have the freedom to be boldly original.”

Joybird’s legacy tech stack had been built solely to serve online customers. This worked at the time, but its data systems and communication platforms didn’t give Joybird the unified customer views and supply-chain efficiency the company needed to continue its evolution into a fully hybrid operation.

Joybird realized measurable business value with three key areas with Iterable in its new, streamlined tech stack, which also includes RudderStack for data architecture and customer data platform and Snowflake for the data cloud. These key areas include flexible data, accessible data, and robust segmentation.

Results

• The company saved 79 hours of campaign creation time switching from Bronto to Iterable.

• Marketing team is now able to spin up new campaigns in an hour, down from 2 weeks.

• Engineering time fell 93 percent now that the back-end team no longer needs to build singular connections anymore. A marketing team request that might have required two weeks of back-end work can now take about an hour because the data is already in models in its data warehouse.


Read the full case study.

2. Lovepop

Founded in 2015 by best friends Wombi Rose and John Wise, Lovepop introduced the duo’s own creation: Slicegami, a pop-up paper design that marries kirigami’s cutting and folding with the mathematical precision of sliceform structure used in ship design. 

As part of its “customer happiness” goal, Lovepop relies on segmentation and 1:1 real time personalization to send meaningful messages, especially as it expands its product lines and designs to appeal to new customer segments.

Using an integration with tech partner Lytics in the Iterable platform, Lovepop adds dynamic content modules populated with individualized product recommendations to broadcast campaigns introducing seasonal designs and product lines. 

Plus, with Iterable’s Experiments tool, Lovepop can test several subject lines on small segments of a broadcast audience for two hours after deployment. At the two-hour mark, the winning subject line automatically goes out to the remaining 70% of the audience.

Results

• Reduced churn while maintaining higher engagement and maximizing revenue leveraging Iterable’s Brand Affinity.
• Using Iterable Experiments, Lovepop consistently saw a +20% lift in click-through rate.

• Individualized product recommendations with Iterable and Lytics.

• More effective use of first-party data with Iterable and Tealium.

• Saves at least 2 hours per week with the easy usability of Iterable segmentation.


Read the full case study.

3. Rocksbox

With Rocksbox, members pay a monthly subscription fee to gain access to rent unlimited jewelry from premium designers and brands. For Rocksbox, email marketing and member communications are key for growth, customer activation, and ongoing engagement. 

“We’re bringing a lot of data into Iterable through our API—custom events and woven properties to personalize our journeys based on the customer’s actions. But then we’re also bringing in details around the customer’s preferences. When working with our Engineering team on setting up the custom events we’re bringing into Iterable, we try to be as sort of broad at the top level as possible so that then a lot of the customization can happen within Iterable itself. It’s not happening on the engineering side and that has really helped us save a lot of time because we can just do it ourselves.”

– Naomi Eshleman, Lifecycle Marketing Manager @ Rocksbox

Iterable allows a team of two marketers to manage engagement campaigns sending well over 500,000 monthly messages to hundreds of thousands of customers and subscribers.

Results

• Rocksbox uses Iterable for all customer engagement campaigns and messaging, eliminating the need for separate systems.

• Iterable enables Rocksbox to easily run sophisticated journeys that maximize customer engagement.

• Rocksbox has A/B tested every single message sent via Iterable and has achieved significant lift in metrics and ROI.


Read the full case study.

4. Ritual

Ritual, a subscription based, direct-to-consumer wellness brand, was founded in 2015 on the premise that “better health begins with better ingredients.”

Like many growing companies, Ritual had a plethora of customer data but struggled to harness it to drive their marketing touchpoints. A number of cloud data sources sent data to Snowflake (their analytics database) which then sent data to Looker (their business intelligence tool). 

By replacing their legacy ESP with Iterable’s growth marketing platform, and enhancing their use of Segment, Ritual was able to orchestrate cross-channel campaigns on key intent and engagement behavior. In 2020, with the introduction of men’s products, this became mission critical functionality that enabled them to successfully launch into an entirely new audience. 

In addition, launching a new product into an entirely new audience required continual iteration and testing. With Iterable Experiments, Ritual was able to create an aggressive testing calendar to help them learn about their men’s audience and optimize their messaging in real-time. 

Results

• 12.5% lift in overall campaign conversion by leveraging Iterable Experiments

• 45% lift in conversion in a single campaign

• Hyper-personalized lifecycle campaigns enabled by Iterable’s partnership with Segment


Read the full case study.

5. Stanley Black & Decker

As a B2B2C company, Stanley Black & Decker’s core business is to generate demand for its distributors and retailers, such as Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Amazon, by acquiring and activating its end-user data.

This mission to better understand their customers is a challenging one: a small but mighty two-person team is responsible for managing over ten automated customer journeys across eight markets and four total brands, including DEWALT, BLACK+DECKER, IRWIN, and STANLEY TOOLS.

With minimal coding, the customer journey team can customize countless variations of their emails with a single template that auto-populates with data from the catalog they’ve created.

Results

• With personalization enabled by Iterable Catalog, Stanley Black & Decker achieved a 7% increase in clicks to its e-commerce stores, when compared to non-customized emails.

• In addition to increasing email engagement, Iterable’s automation decreased the team’s amount of busy work by reducing the number of email templates created by 80%.

• By gaining back 5-10 hours spent on each template, the customer journey team can spend more time on messaging strategy.

• Hours saved also equates to money saved as Stanley Black & Decker is now less dependent on external agencies to get their work done.


Read the full case study.

The Retail Rodeo

We’ve managed to lasso a few retail examples from our customer story repository, but there’s plenty more where that came from. Overall, some themes have emerged from even just these examples alone. Iterable helps retail brands save time, execute experiments, and increase customer engagement—ultimately reducing churn. That’s just one industry, too. Iterable has helped a wide array of other industries that we’ll roundup as part of this series—so stay tuned. 

To learn how Iterable can help your retail brand save time and money, schedule a demo today. 

The post Iterable Industry Roundup Pt. 1: Retail appeared first on Iterable.

Beyond sending any marketing communications, there are a lot of things you want to be aware of as your company’s Iterable account owner. Who has access? What data goes in and out? How is data formatted?

Whether you’ve never used Iterable before (welcome!), or whether you’re a power user, this checklist is a great start to making sure you’re keeping an eye on the infrastructure that enables you and your team to keep sending great campaigns.

Organization Level

Review Roles and Permissions

Let’s start at the organization level with roles and permissions. Roles are essentially designated sets of permissions (specific tasks people are or are not allowed to do in Iterable). You can customize them, or we have some pre-built ones as well. An example of a role might be that you want some members of your team to be able to build emails and access performance analytics. But permissions like “Manage and launch campaigns” should be limited to key trusted individuals.

Navigate to Settings > Roles. I made a loom: 

• How many people are assigned to each role? (If everyone has ended up as assigned to the Marketing Admin role, or you have only one person designated as a Marketing User, that may mean you need to review what permission sets are assigned to each role.)
• Is there documentation elsewhere explaining who should get assigned what level of access? It’s important to make sure things like sending capability are limited to those who truly need it

Next, go to Settings > Organization Members

• Does everyone you see here still work for the company? (Bonus question: How is Iterable access wrapped into your company’s on- and off-boarding procedures?)
• When was the last time they logged in? If it was a while ago, it’s a good chance to start a conversation as to whether they still need access.
• Are roles assigned appropriately? In particular, do enough people have Super Admin/Account Owner access? Do too many?

Here’s more information about roles and permissions, in case you decide you want to make any updates.

Review Usage and Billing

Settings > Usage and Billing takes you to…Usage and Billing. 

For obvious reasons, usage and billing with Iterable is not actually a concern for me. Since your instance hopefully ISN’T full of zeroes, here’s what I’d recommend checking on in your situation:

• Review your send usage across email, SMS, and push
• Scroll down further to check on user volumes and event usage
• Pop back up to the date filters in the top right corner and play around with different ranges–do you notice any quarters or months that seem higher than others?
• Click the “View project breakdown” link for each section. Are there any surprises?
• Compare these numbers to your contracted amounts

Project Level

Explore Your Projects

First, you’ll want to get to know your data. Starting with how it’s moving in and out of your projects. This is a section you may wish to review with a colleague from engineering, or someone else who is familiar with your martech stack. While you’re doing this, it’s a good idea to make a list of systems as you go with notes about who the admin is and what data it’s sending to or receiving from Iterable.

Click your initials in the top right corner to see a list of your projects.

• How many projects do you have? What are they all for?

Under the Integrations tab:

• Check your API Keys
• Do you know what everything does? You can change names to clarify using the Edit button
• If it’s disabled, find out why
• Is there anything that should be turned off or removed?

Rinse and repeat with:

• Third Party
• System Webhooks
• Journey Webhooks
• Facebook

Set up a reminder to review these on a regular basis (I try to take a peek every month or so, but you do you). Because these integrations handle customer data in and out of Iterable, it’s important to make sure you’re keeping things up-to-date!

Get a Handle on Your Data Schema

Settings > Project Settings, scroll down to Custom Event Management to see a full list of custom events feeding into your project.

• Toggle the buttons “Lock custom events” and “Lock custom event fields” to the green (locked) position. (This feature is currently in beta).
• View overall volume for custom events and how they’re leveraged in Settings > Custom Event Usage…or Data Schema Management if you’re in the beta(Loom: https://www.loom.com/share/6170a7dfdfd24670be21a5628d9cf1cc)

Scroll down a bit more to User Field Management. This is where you can find the FULL list of user fields, including hidden ones.

• Is there anything duplicative that SHOULD be hidden? What fields (if any) don’t make sense?
• Again with fangirling over the “Lock user fields” button. My preference is to keep them in their green (locked) position–no random fields are getting in on my watch!

After you’re done looking over everything on the Settings page, you can snoop some more by heading to Audience > Segmentation and clicking the green “Refresh Results” button

• Pick a user at random in the list that populates
• The User Fields section lets you see how the data plays out with actual field values
• Events lets you check out what activity is tracked for this user
• In both cases, click the carets to pull down and see any objects on the user profile or event data
• Use what you’re seeing to play around and practice segmentation

The other settings are good to review as well to familiarize yourself with your instance.

Last but not least, a few important things to check when sending messages (which may need its very own blog post!)

Head back to Settings > Message Channels and Types. There should be a pulldown caret labeled “X Message Types” so you can see the types tied to each channel.

• Do these match what you expect your program to be using? 

Go to Messaging > Campaigns and click the “Live” filter towards the top left, or go to Insights > Messaging Insights and set the “State” filter to “Running,” and click the Campaigns tab

• Do all of these campaigns make sense to you? If not, click a campaign to snoop further!
• Are there any delivery or other performance concerns?
• Does the branding look right?
• When was the last time someone made edits? (easiest to see on the list in the Messaging > Campaigns tab)

Go to Messaging > Journeys and snoop to your heart’s content. But keep an eye out for:

• Are there any zombie journeys? These are journeys that are still turned on, but when you look at the email stats, nothing has been sent in a while.
• Are there any operational journeys? These are easy to spot because there are no campaigns listed next to the journey status.
• Do you feel like the key points of your customer lifecycle are covered?
• Check on any journeys triggering off of events happening elsewhere (like a pop-up form that collects new users). Do the numbers match?

And there you have it! If that was your first time, hopefully you now feel like you know your Iterable instance better, and can feel confident that your data and infrastructure are set up to match your needs. You may also have a LOT of questions. Along with picking the brains of coworkers, I’ve also found answers by reviewing relevant modules in our Academy, checking out pertinent documentation, and talking things through with my CSM.

You may have a lengthy to-do list now too. I tend to lay this list out, but hold off until I’ve gathered more information before taking anything live. However, I do recommend setting a reminder to review this checklist regularly. Personally I try to do that quarterly, but choose your own adventure!

Ready to explore your Iterable instance? Go for it. 

The post New Iterable Account Owner Audit appeared first on Iterable.

Gobble gobble, ya’ll. Thanks for joining us. We, like other content teams, are trying to figure out what content to release around the holidays. Do people read content this time of year? Do we want people to spend time reading content or focus on enjoying time with family? So, as a compromise, we thought we’d keep it light.

Thanksgiving, a time of gratitude and celebration, offers a prime opportunity for businesses to connect with their audience through email campaigns that resonate. So now that the big day is here, we want to recognize the brands that are captivating audiences in a fun, dynamic way.

In the spirit of keeping it light and easy-to-digest, let’s take a look at some recent examples of Thanksgiving emails in preparation for this year’s holiday season.

Top-Notch Thanksgiving Email Examples

1. Disruptive Advertising

Disruptive Advertising, a marketing agency based out of Utah, caught our eye with this different Thanksgiving email. While most brands use this time of year to thank their customers directly, Disruptive Advertising stuck to their B2B roots and offered advice to businesses on how they should thank their coworkers and customers.

Disruptive Advertising, instead of thanking their customers directly, took a more B2B route. Source: ReallyGoodEmails.

Something we’re seeing a lot more of is the lack of gatekeeping—there’s no “click to read more” or “sign up to get the scoop.” The email itself is the content. Sure, there’s links here and there to some of their products or services, like their “Thank You Machine,” but Disruptive Advertising intended for this email to serve as a standalone resource.

2. Tracksmith

Thanksgiving, for some (not me), is the season of 3Ks, 5Ks, marathons, “Turkey Trots,” etc. Performance apparel brand, Tracksmith, took advantage of the time of year and sent a very simple, purely interactive email. The landing pages have since expired but one can only imagine these buttons lead to similar, if not the same, landing page featuring the later-mentioned Black Friday deal.

Tracksmith sent a simple email that encourages engagement. Source: ReallyGoodEmails.

It’s honestly pretty brilliant to have such a simple email and one that plays to people’s desires to check off an item on their to-do list or meet a goal. Not only that, it’s a way for Tracksmith to collect information on their customers. They don’t run during Thanksgiving? Maybe next year those customers don’t get emails featuring running shoes, maybe instead they’ll feature “lifestyle” clothing.

3. Artifact Uprising

Sometimes a heartfelt message is enough. Artifact Uprising, a photo printing company, took this approach in their Thanksgiving email. There’s no product plugs other than the links at the top and bottom of the email. The point of the email is to create a moment of pause and gratitude, and it does just that.

Artifact Uprising managed to send a heartfelt, not overly-cheesy email that calls for genuine gratitude. Source: ReallyGoodEmails.

Another highlight of this email is the design—it’s clean and inviting. It immediately gives off the holiday feeling without shoving a turkey in their customers’ faces. Extending the image down under the text also draws the eye down into the body copy. The colors are warm, calm and engaging.

Full Stomachs, Fuller Inboxes

You did it, you reached the end. If you’re thinking, “That’s it?” Well, we kept our promise and kept it light. Consider this a content amuse bouche—bite-sized, but packs a punch.

The top takeaway from this post is that customers have come to expect an over-saturated inbox—especially during the holidays. Brands have not only the challenge, but also the responsibility to stand out and make an impact for their customers. Instead of settling for blending into the noise, there needs to be an evolution in how marketers communicate with their customers.

So, when crafting a compelling Thanksgiving email, authenticity is paramount. A standout email not only showcases enticing promotions but also tells a story that resonates with the spirit of Thanksgiving. As we navigate the evolving landscape, these strategies promise to forge deeper connections and foster meaningful engagement during the Thanksgiving season and beyond.

Curious how Iterable can help your marketing team send outstanding holiday emails? Schedule a demo today.

The post Some Top-Notch Examples of Thanksgiving Emails appeared first on Iterable.

Developed by Japanese auto company Denso Wave in 1994, QR codes differ from regular barcodes because they can store much more information and can also be read faster. Unlike traditional barcodes, QR codes can be read from both top to bottom and side to side. They can also contain thousands of characters, including numbers and punctuation.

These codes have really taken off in the smartphone era because millions of people are now walking around with the equivalent of a barcode scanner in their pockets. They’ve also answered the post-pandemic need for more touch-free methods of communication.

With the rise in their usage post-pandemic, let’s take a moment to dive into how QR codes work, how they’re used, and maybe even see some of their benefits for marketers moving forward.

How do QR Codes Work?

Like other barcodes, reading a QR code is fairly simple: a user scans the image with a sensor (such as a smartphone camera or a special app) to read the pixelated image. The information they access might take them to a specific webpage or PDF or provide them with your brand’s contact information—it’s up to you!

There are two types of QR codes: static and dynamic. A static code can’t be changed once it’s been created. It’s best used for sharing information you don’t expect to change such as an email address. Dynamic codes can be regularly updated without needing to change the code itself. These QR codes don’t store the actual data, but direct the user elsewhere such as to a webpage or a PDF.

How are QR Codes Used in Marketing?

QR codes are still used to track products and product information in manufacturing, but they also have countless consumer-facing uses, too, including in marketing campaigns. They’ve especially taken off in restaurants because they give eateries the flexibility to update prices and menu items on the fly. While the options are nearly endless for how QR codes can be used, some common marketing uses include:

1. Linking to a portfolio or visual marketing items

A QR code on a business card or print marketing product can drive people to multimedia materials such as video or a portfolio of additional work.

2. Driving traffic to a website

A QR code is an easy way to direct traffic from print materials to your website without the need for someone to type in a web address. They can also be used to encourage people to download your app or join your mailing list.

3. Boosting social media following

QR codes can be set up to take users directly to your social media pages where they can immediately like or follow your page. You can also create one landing page listing all your social media accounts. (Check out the header image on this blog post.)

4. Sharing coupons and discounts

QR codes can be used to post coupons or discounts through print ads, social media, product displays or direct mail flyers. QR code coupons can be a great way to attract new customers without them needing to remember to cut out and carry a coupon with them or remember a discount code.

5. Asking for feedback

Reviews and surveys provide valuable feedback and can help companies gain new customers. QR codes that take users directly to your survey or review site can easily be added to receipts, signage, menus, or product packaging.

6. Providing more product information

You can’t always fit all the information you’d like on print materials—at least without making them overly cluttered. QR codes are a perfect way to direct users to additional information that can easily be updated, or enable them to watch a video or see more photos of the product.

7. Enhancing events

QR codes are a natural way to promote virtual versions of events. For in-person events, they can be a way to include e-tickets, maps, documents, and anything else people will need.

QR Codes in Retail

QR codes are especially helpful in bridging the gap between digital and physical when it comes to retail. While shopping, customers can use QR codes to gather more product information, add the product to their digital shopping carts, or even get digital coupons. Let’s take that second example—adding products to digital carts—and expand on it a bit.

Say a customer is browsing products in-store and likes a certain item but isn’t quite ready to purchase in store. Maybe they don’t have a way to get the item home, maybe they don’t have the money at the moment, etc. Whatever the case may be, you, as the brand, still want to capture this customer’s intent to buy this item. By putting a QR code near the item that, when scanned, opens your brand’s mobile app on the customer’s phone and adds the item to their cart or wishlist, you’re creating an event—you’re collecting data. Now, when the customer leaves the store you can still send marketing communications based on that event.

Adding a QR code to product displays is a way to help translate physical in-store actions into digital triggers that result in highly personalized marketing communications.

How to Use QR Codes in Cross-Channel Marketing

QR codes can be a great addition to a cross-channel marketing campaign. They provide a bridge between digital and physical marketing materials and can be created with different colors and shapes to cement your brand across multiple platforms. They also work well to guide customers between mediums—like using a postcard with a QR code to direct customers to download your mobile app. QR codes can also be displayed on your app or website and scanned at a point-of-sale in your brand’s retail locations.

QR codes also are very helpful to track the success of your marketing campaigns across different media. The data is tracked in real-time and can be tied to a tracking link to let you know how many conversions are being driven by your QR code.

By incorporating QR codes within your cross-channel marketing campaigns, you’ll be able to easily track customers as they travel between marketing channels, and understand the success of each channel in engaging and converting your customers. Using a cross-channel customer communication platform like Iterable, you can effortlessly set up cross-channel campaigns that integrate both print and digital mediums, engaging with each customer through a personalized marketing workflow based on their preferences to optimize the chances of conversion.

The post What are QR Codes and How are They Used? appeared first on Iterable.

By reducing the tools in your martech stack you’re not only reducing friction in your processes, but you’re consolidating contracts, RFPs, terminology, etc. Plus, by consolidating tools, you may find ways to streamline workflows and centralize data, freeing up more time for your marketing team to think of the big picture.

Maybe you relate to these common marketing challenges but aren’t totally sure if your martech stack needs a facelift. That’s fair. So, to help get you started, we’ve compiled a list of questions to ask yourself as you embark on your martech stack evaluation.

Martech Stack Audit, Revisited

Before we dive into the list of questions, let’s briefly revisit the martech stack audit we covered in Martech Stack Consolidation, Part 1. One crucial element of starting a martech stack audit is documenting information about your stack in a way that’s going to help you and other people that read your documentation answer the most common questions.

Example of martech stack audit documentation.

We recommend starting a spreadsheet that has a series of columns to organize the information that will help you answer the common questions you’ll want to be able to refer back to. For example “a column for the platform, what it does, what use case it supports, what it integrates with, pricing, point of contact, and when it renews.”

Questions to Ask Yourself

Starting a martech stack evaluation can quickly become overwhelming. With these questions we’re hoping to help you and your team stay organized, stay focused, and make decisions that benefit the business.

As you begin your evaluation, be sure to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Have we mapped out our key use cases?

This is #1 for a reason. Technology evaluations provide the most value when starting from clear use cases. Strip away all the clutter and think about the very basic use cases your business is meant to execute. “You have to start with a basic set of tools that allows you to execute your business’ most important use case. These core use cases are a great way to communicate the value these tools provide to your company.

2. What is the measure of success for each tool in our stack?

When looking at all the tools you have in your stack, you have to consider how you’re defining success. Defining concrete metrics, and tying the use cases the tool supports to outcomes will establish the value of the tool, how well it’s performing, and sometimes ROI.

3. How is each tool performing against that measure?

Once you’ve established what success looks like, in an ideal state, look at the tools you have and how they compare to those measures of success. This activity brings forward issues you may not have realized before. Say, for example, you have an email service provider (ESP) that isn’t allowing you to send the monthly volume you would consider successful based on your pre-determined metrics.

4. Do we have an active system owner for each tool?

Is there someone on your team that owns each tool? Owners generally understand the ins and outs of the technology and use the tool often. Ensuring the tools have owners can prevent tools from going extended periods of time without evaluation.

5. Are we near or pacing to exceed our contract limits?

Understanding the contracts you have with each of your vendors is critical to managing your stack effectively. Are you reaching a limit on some, and not utilizing the full scope of others? This question provides an opportunity to both save if you’re not fulfilling the line items you’re paying for and inform your annual planning process for increases beyond the norm when having to expand a contract.

6. How well is our current tech stack going to support the planned needs of our team?

Here’s where you need to start looking into the future. Consider your future roadmap and what your business is planning. Do the tools in your current stack help your team meet these upcoming goals? Starting with use cases again is a great place to begin. Going through this process some things that you ask might be related to scale, security, workflow, availability specific data points, or features needed.

This may present another opportunity to consolidate. Is there a tool that can execute the current tasks and help with future tasks? “While one martech tool can’t replace all other tools in your stack, the right tool can perform a majority of necessary tasks and seamlessly integrate with other tools to create an all-in-one effect.”

A Step in the Right Direction

As Benjamin Franklin said, “Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” Well said, Benny. While he likely wasn’t talking about martech stack evaluation, we like the message.

There are going to be changes, opportunities for growth, and new ideas that arise for your business, but if you keep muddying the martech waters with multiple tools, you’re not setting yourself up for success. Take the time now to look inward at your martech stack, evaluate your needs, and then look for opportunities to consolidate and simplify.

To learn more about martech stack consolidation and how Iterable can help you simplify your martech tools, check out our martech consolidation hub or schedule a custom demo today.

The post FAQ: 6 Questions to Ask When Evaluating Your Martech Stack appeared first on Iterable.

That’s right—around the world. Taylor’s not the only one with a global tour. This year we’re touring in the U.S. and venturing to other countries (and continents) as well. In September our tour started with a visit to Chicago, then we went to Europe for a quick trip to Amsterdam. Next up we have New York, Sydney, Palo Alto, and Los Angeles. (If you want to join us in the upcoming tours, register today!)

As we make our travels along the tour route, we’ll be updating this post with takeaways from each stop, so be sure to check back in for all the deets. Here’s a little recap of Activate Tour so far.

Activate Tour Chicago

Unlocking Growth by Closing the Activation Gap

Marketers gathered to tackle a pressing issue in their field—the Activation Gap. Iterable’s CMO, Adri Gil Miner, showcased how Iterable’s AI-powered cross-channel capabilities offer a solution. Marketers learned how Iterable empowers them to forge deeper connections with customers, delivering personalized and dynamic communications at scale.

Increasing User Activation With Iterable & Branch

Hallow‘s Head of Marketing, Evan Laird, shared their success story in leveraging Iterable and Branch. By focusing on SMS, they increased user activation, retention, and engagement. Attendees learned valuable strategies for building trust, optimizing onboarding campaigns, and achieving rapid results with SMS in their cross-channel marketing.

After the afternoon sessions, attendees engaged in a friendly ping pong competition, and enjoyed an evening of appetizers and drinks, nurturing meaningful connections, and camaraderie!

Captivating presentations gave attendees excellent takeaways.

The room was buzzing with marketing excitement.

Iterators and speakers join together for a group photo in Chicago.

Activate Tour Amsterdam

Optimising Large Databases With Iterable: A Small Team’s Success Story

Anna Levitin, Email & Marketing Operations Lead at Powtoon, shared things to think about when it comes to what you’re currently using in your tech stack. Consider what challenges and business goals you have and then (re)think about your tech stack and potential migrations. She also pointed out that brands need to invest in tech to stay ahead of the game—don’t let your competitors take your customers.

How AI is Revolutionising Marketing

In a panel session featuring Anna from Powtoon, Sander Pot, Lead CRM at DPG Media, and Beata Linz, Global CRM Director and Consultant at Adbirds & Beata Linz Consultancy, the speakers discussed how AI is making an impact. For example, they discussed how marketers are using AI to help with code versus having to scrape answers from Google.

Saving time is one of the crucial elements of using AI to enable extra brain space for other things. So in the coding example, they mentioned not only having AI help with code from the beginning, but also to find mistakes in existing code—making their teams faster and more efficient. They finished with a sentiment we’re likely all feeling: if you don’t get on the bandwagon you’ll be left behind.

Everyone getting ready for sessions to start.

Can’t beat European architecture.

Sessions begin in a packed house!

Activate Tour New York

Individualization at Scale

The Big Apple has millions of people, but Activate Tour New York showed how it’s possible to market to each one at the individual level. Lauren Gonzalez, Sr. Manager of CRM & Retention at Thirty Madison spoke about how SMS and email make a perfect pairing for a personalized campaign, optimizing each channel to fit the customers’ needs. Following Lauren, Shane Fitzpatrick, Solutions Engineer at Mixpanel, talked about how wellness brand Winona drives optimal engagement using customer behavioral data to individualize the experience. Finally, Eddie Benedito, VP of Growth Marketing at Upside spoke with our partners Ragnarok about how his team builds over 80 personalized messages to drive loyalty. 

The result: attendees learned how individualization is possible at scale, yes, but that it also can take many forms across industries. 

The keynote speech got the audience involved from the very beginning

The AI of It All

AI made a strong showing as well, with our executive panel featuring Cynthia Kleinbaum, CMO at MoneyLion, Louisa Wee, CMO at Asurion, and Toby Korner, SVP of Digital Marketing at Priceline. The group joined Iterable CMO Adriana Gil Miner to unpack if AI is really worth all the hype. To make a long story short, yes, it is. From full campaign implementation to daily efficiency improvements, the panel discussed the benefits and concerns in honest fashion, coming to the agreement that not adopting AI in your team is the quickest way to fall behind. 

New York is great for networking and having a good time all at once.

Activate Tour Sydney

Connecting Creativity to Channels to Campaigns

In our inaugural visit to Sydney, we homed in on how to meld creativity with cross-channel strategies for better, more impactful campaigns. Matt Brancatisano, CRM and CX Manager at Memories Group spoke about how his team, which delivers digital memorials to save cherished reflections with friends and family, used Iterable to send real-time communications, track interactions, and experiment across channels to personalize at scale. 

Following Matt, our friends at Indicia Worldwide took the stage to share how they partner with Iterable to help customers connect creativity with data. They shared how preparing your team with the right data—not just any data— empowers a more creative campaign that informs experimentation and segmentation. With first-party data, in particular, Indicia Worldwide showed how affinity data takes demographic data to the next level allowing for more personalized connections. 

The room was packed for our first trip Down Under!

Activate Tour Palo Alto

Efficiency, Efficiency, Efficiency

And we’re back to California, right back where we started from in April at Activate Summit. The unofficial theme of our Palo Alto event was efficiency. From our opening keynote discussing how Iterable’s AI Suite helps teams produce more at a quicker pace. Following this theme, Josh Geiser, Senior Manager of CRM, Lifecycle, and Mobile at Redbubble, took the stage to discuss how small teams can succeed using AI. Josh highlighted his team’s use of Brand Affinity and Send Time Optimization, but he also covered an oft-overlooked benefit of AI: task switching. He called out the cognitive overload of switching between tasks and how AI can help with information processing to streamline work and get you started on a new task quicker and more effectively. 

To close out the day, our partner Ragnarok spoke to the group about building a martech stack that more effectively drives revenue. Steven Aldrich, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Ragnarok, joined Charles Howard, Sr. Director of Customer Success at Iterable, to talk about how to take a bottom-up approach to measuring the impact of your martech stack. To start, you have to write out the use cases for each step of the customer journey, including determining which platforms and features you need to fill these steps. From there, assign a dollar value for each KPI and map the tools you need to each use case. You’ll be able to see that all of the use cases are set up for success, and with the dollar value for each KPI, you’ll see the value of each tool. 

Efficiency at scale was the unofficial theme of Activate Tour Palo Alto.

Attendees were buzzing with excitement while discussing the day’s takeaways.

Activate Tour Los Angeles

Personalization at Scale

In true Hollywood fashion, we had to finish with a classic: personalization. Activate Tour Los Angeles brought us back to marketing’s bread and butter. 

The day kicked off with a discussion on using Iterable’s AI Suite to individualize customer experiences before Kara Douglas, Lifecycle Marketing Director at Rocket Lawyer, walked us through her team’s engagement journey. 

Kara Douglas from Rocket Lawyer teaching a masterclass on personalization at scale.

Starting with the key components of their personalization plan (connecting data dots), Kara talked through how they devised a step-by-step plan that led to an 11% average increase in conversion rates. Just goes to show how impactful a detailed personalization plan can be!

Closing the day, Gray Dorsett, Head of Product at Winona, talked through his team’s data initiatives that have driven massive engagement results using Iterable and Mixpanel. He walked through how Winona established system visibility, fine-tuned their journeys with A/B testing, and started personalizing with attributes to push conversion rates. 

The final event of Activate Tour 2023: charcuterie class

We Keep Chugging Along

8 cities up. 8 cities down. After months of sessions, networking, food, and swag, Activate Tour has come to a close. But fear not, the Activate train is going to keep rolling real soon. Check back in here to see the latest updates for 2024. 

In the meantime, if you want to learn more about Activate or watch old sessions, click here.

The post Activate Tour 2023: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Goin’ appeared first on Iterable.

In this post, we cut through the confusion, clarifying essential AI terms we, as marketers, should start to familiarize ourselves with. Whether you’re new to AI or just need a quick refresher, these AI terms will provide you with a clearer understanding of key concepts, especially as they relate to using AI in your marketing campaigns.

The Go-To AI Glossary

AI (Artificial Intelligence): Gartner defines artificial intelligence, or AI, as “applying advanced analysis and logic-based techniques, including machine learning (ML), to interpret events, support and automate decisions, and take actions.”

AI Marketing: AI marketing is the use of AI concepts and models to execute marketing strategies and campaigns that achieve business goals. When properly integrated, AI marketing can sort through massive volumes of data and quickly analyze patterns, making it easier to target audiences more precisely.

For more AI marketing best practices, peruse these Iterable resources:

• The 5 Ws of AI Marketing
• 20+ AI Marketing Stats You Wish You Knew Sooner
• Great Examples of AI in Marketing…and Some Not So Great

AI Prompt: An AI prompt, according to TechTarget, is “a mode of interaction between a human and a large language model (LLM) that lets the model generate the intended output. This interaction can be in the form of a question, text, code snippets, or examples.”

To build better AI prompts for marketing campaigns, check out our list of five top tips.

Brand Affinity^TM: In Iterable’s AI Suite, Brand Affinity generates sentiment labels for each user that reflect their level of engagement. These labels can be used in segmentation, campaigns, journeys, data feeds, and Catalog collections to send personalized, relevant messages to customers.

Learn the science behind Brand Affinity in this explainer.

Channel Optimization: Using Iterable AI, Channel Optimization sends messages to each user on the channel that they are most likely to engage with. Currently, Channel Optimization supports email, SMS, and push notifications, and data is analyzed on a weekly basis to account for changes in channel preference.

For the factors to consider before using Channel Optimization, review this Iterable support article.

ChatGPT: Developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT is an AI-powered large language model (LLM) capable of generating human-like text based on context and past conversations. ChatGPT uses what it has learned to “predict the next most likely word that might appear in response to a user request […] similar to auto-complete capabilities on search engines, smartphones, and email programs.”

Copy Assist: In Iterable, Copy Assist enhances and expedites the process of writing campaign copy. During the creation of a campaign or template, Copy Assist generates alternative suggestions for email subject lines and preheaders, SMS messages, and push notifications.

This Copy Assist support article details how to use the AI-powered feature in the Iterable platform.

Explainable AI: Explainable AI involves transparent systems with clear, understandable processes. Unlike the opaque, black box of certain AI solutions, Explainable AI provides a more “glass box” experience that shares deeper insights into the data that powers predictions.

Iterable’s AI Suite integrates Explainable AI within Brand Affinity and Predictive Goals to gauge customer sentiment and gain insights into what drives your predictive goals. Learn more about our approach to Explainable AI.

Generative AI (GenAI): McKinsey defines generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI, as “algorithms (such as ChatGPT) that can be used to create new content, including audio, code, images, text, simulations, and videos.” GenAI has become popularized among marketing professionals as a tool to assist with copywriting and content creation.

Large Language Model (LLM): A large language model (LLM) is defined by Gartner as “a specialized type of AI that has been trained on vast amounts of text to understand existing content and generate original content.”

Machine Learning (ML): According to McKinsey, machine learning (ML), is defined as “a form of artificial intelligence based on algorithms that are trained on data. These algorithms can detect patterns and learn how to make predictions and recommendations by processing data and experiences, rather than by receiving explicit programming instruction.”

Natural Language Processing (NLP): Britannica defines natural language processing (NLP) as “the use of operations, systems, and technologies that allow computers to process and respond to written and spoken language in a way that mirrors human ability.”

Predictive Goals: Within Iterable’s AI Suite, Predictive Goals identifies which customers are most likely to convert on a marketer’s goals in the future, so they can create experiences that match their interests and promote desired business outcomes.

To bridge the gap between insights and actions, check out this Predictive Goals support article.

Prompt Engineering: Prompt engineering, according to Techopedia, is “a technique used in AI to optimize and fine-tune language models for particular tasks and desired outputs. Also known as prompt design, it refers to the process of carefully constructing prompts or inputs for AI models to enhance their performance on specific tasks.”

Seed Copy: In the context of AI, seed copy refers to initial messaging to include with an AI prompt to provide examples and needed context to generate content or train an AI model. For generative AI, the seed copy acts as a foundation from which the AI can mirror the style, tone, or structure based on its programming and training.

This blog post includes examples of seed copy to build better AI prompts for marketing campaigns.

Send Time Optimization: Send Time Optimization (STO) is an Iterable AI feature that helps send email and push notifications when contacts are most likely to engage with them. For each campaign recipient, STO analyzes historical engagement behavior and selects an optimal, per-person send time.

For the finer details of STO, review the notes listed in this Iterable support article.

If Merriam-Webster Was Powered By AI

As AI continues to evolve, its terminology will grow and become more complex. Staying informed and familiar with these key AI terms not only aids in understanding the current landscape but also prepares your brand for the advancements that will shape the future of your AI-driven campaigns. Now that you’re caught up on the lingo, you can use AI to make marketing magic.

Interested in trying out Iterable’s AI Suite for yourself? Reach out and schedule a custom demo today.

The post Key AI Terms to Familiarize Yourself With appeared first on Iterable.

It’s from a hotel. They sent you a discount…on a trip you took last month. Disappointed, you open the email and unsubscribe.

This is an all too common experience. In fact, according to a recent survey published on Insider Intelligence, 85% of consumers feel that brands are not doing a good enough job driving personalization. This is not for lack of trying. As marketers, we know how important it is to connect the data we have with the audiences who would benefit the most. The inability to establish this connection is what we at Iterable call the Activation Gap.

The Activation Gap

The prominence of the Activation Gap isn’t due to a lack of data. The challenge lies in connecting the data to the activation layer, getting a 360º view of the customer, and then being able to measure the effectiveness of the campaigns launched. Forrester found that 73% of a brand’s data remains unused for activation purposes.

Deloitte also found that 68% of brands suffer from internal data silos that hinder a complete view of their customers. This forces marketers to spend more time—43% more—consolidating data than actually using it, hampering a brand’s ability to act swiftly in today’s fast-paced market and leaving the Activation Gap fully open.

Enter Iterable and Snowflake

Iterable is on a mission to close the Activation Gap and, as a result, unlock customer joy.

Iterable is built for data. Our open and flexible data environment enables marketers to actually close the Activation Gap by bringing together all of their customer data and activating it—in real time—in one platform.

Our lightning-fast segmentation tool empowers marketers to translate audience characteristics into audience lists in seconds, all from an easy-to-use interface. Marketers can then activate these lists in truly cross-channel experiences inside Studio. The result: individualized, harmonized, and dynamic communications that deliver customer joy at scale.

And, since we introduced a deeper partnership with Snowflake that automatically populates a brand’s campaign data directly on their Snowflake account, the data comes full circle—giving brands a 360º view of their customers so they can break data silos and derive business insights faster.

According to Denise Persson, Snowflake’s CMO, “Iterable emerged as a leader in the Customer Data Activation Category with joint customers leveraging its technologies to enable marketers to transform customer data into actionable insights.”

In addition to these features, our recognition as a Leader in the Data Activation category is based on:*

• Highest Number of Shared Customers. With the Iterable and Snowflake partnership, mutual customers get access to a 360º view of their customers.
• Number of Data Driven Insights. Iterable tops the list of platforms enabling marketers to transform customer data into actionable insights at scale.
• Sustained Use. Marketers consistently use Iterable to close the Activation Gap and drive data-centric joyful customer experiences.

You don’t have to take our word for it. Here’s how Glassdoor leverages the power of Iterable and Snowflake.

Glassdoor: Gaining a 360º of their customers

Built on the foundation of increasing workplace transparency, Glassdoor is a worldwide leader on insights into jobs and companies including salary information, company reviews, and interview questions.

With the Iterable and Snowflake data sharing integration, Glassdoor is closing the Activation Gap by combining campaign, business, and customer data in a secure place, tracking it in a way that protects any personally identifiable information (PII), and leveraging it to better understand users’ activities across their internal systems. With this data, Glassdoor can create more personalized, timely communications to help job-seekers decide if an opportunity is suitable, if they want to apply or keep looking, and if they then want to act to secure the job before it’s filled.

“Once we could integrate the data, and use a common identifier—our user ID—that’s when we gained a lot of value in measuring and optimizing our marketing campaigns and programs.”

-David Tjen, Director of Marketing Analytics, Glassdoor

With Iterable and Snowflake, Glassdoor makes sure that each time they message their users the messages are individualized, harmonized, and dynamic.

Looking for more info? Join us on 12/7 for a live webinar with Iterable and Snowflake about Modernizing the Marketing Stack. Register now. 

_{*Source: The Modern Marketing Data Stack, 2023; Snowflake. “Highest Number of Shared Customers” as defined by Snowflake. Number of Insights and Sustained Used is calculated by Snowflake as Breadth and Depth of use and Computing Consumption (spend).}

The post Iterable and Snowflake: Modernizing the Marketing Stack appeared first on Iterable.

In 2023, keeping pace means leveraging new technology to accelerate productivity and business growth. That’s why our Fall Release is tailored to pushing marketers’ ability to reach a larger audience in a more individualized way.

Experimentation to an Identified Audience

With Iterable Experiments, we’ve seen customers across industries see 45% lifts in email conversions, 15% increases in trial-to-paid conversions, and 20% lifts in clickthrough rate. Despite the impact experiments have on campaign success, many teams do not fully embrace experimentation because they can take significant time and resources to build and deploy properly. 

But, the reality of consumers is that not everything will work for everyone, so a uniform message without any variability or iteration will miss a portion of your audience that could otherwise be converted. 

Beyond the execution of an experiment, you have to know who you’re marketing to, which can be challenging when customers might be browsing your site without logging in or when considering the fact that the average website has 97-98% anonymous visitors. That’s why we’re introducing the Iterable Identity Toolkit to help marketers effectively capture, unify, and manage customer identity, whether they are anonymous or known.

With our Fall Release we set out to make the pace and precision of executing experiments easier, as well as provide ways to more efficiently manage customer profile data. Here’s how. 

After you’re done here, check out our What’s New page to see a bit more about these updates and our past releases as well!

The Keys to Marketing Success

Unlocking Creativity with AI

Conducting experiments at scale enables marketers to stay competitive, drive better results, and achieve long-term marketing success. 

With the addition of AI to our Experimentation setup flow, marketers can leverage Copy Assist to receive up to 10 variant options generated by AI and automate the setup process utilizing the new copy suggestions.

Copy Assist gives you options to generate the best copy for your audience.

Marketers can now see variations in context and set up multiple experiments in a matter of minutes, minimizing the time and effort it takes to configure and launch experiments.

Unlocking Learning

Discover what truly resonates with your audience, uncover hidden opportunities, and continuously refine your strategies to deliver maximum impact through experimentation with the new semi-automated experiment setup flow.

Through this setup flow, marketers have clearer explainability into their experimentation testing strategies—pairing that with the integration of Copy Assist for variant creation, launching new experiments is easier than ever before. Marketers now have streamlined insights and analytics in a way that promotes continuous learning and optimization at scale.

Unlock All Audiences

You can’t run experiments on users you haven’t identified! At Iterable, we’re excited to add to the set of tools we offer to manage customer identity with a robust suite called Iterable Identity Toolkit. Expanding upon the already existing capabilities to capture and unify customer data, this most recent release allows marketers to  control which anonymous users—those users who haven’t logged in or provided any identifying info—they want to send into the Iterable platform. They can then target them with specific content and eliminate data loss with automatic profile unification of both anonymous and known user profiles. 

It’s now easier to personalize for users who haven’t logged in or provided any identifying information.

Better audience identification means more successful experiments, more targeted messaging, and more conversions across channels.

Unlock Data Integration

Having your data in the right place makes a successful marketing campaign possible. Iterable’s extensive partner ecosystem allows data to be integrated from numerous sources to power your campaigns.

We’re excited to announce two new members of our partner ecosystem: Justuno and Extole. With these integrations, marketers will be able to increase subscriber acquisition and better leverage zero- and first-party data for more effective campaigns with advanced personalization and audience segmentation.

Moving Forward

Our Fall Release moves marketers one step closer to a more productive, targeted workflow by making experiments a breeze, audience identification a reality, and data integration simple. As marketers, our goal is to deliver deeper levels of personalization. With these new releases, that becomes possible. 
 
Interested in hearing about how to put these new features into practice? Check out our webinar with Rocksbox to see how their small, but mighty, team tests and experiments at scale!

The post Our Fall Release 2023: Unlocking Marketing Innovation With Iterable appeared first on Iterable.

NEW (January 2024): The new policy enforcement start date has been updated to reflect newly-released information.

Impact of the New Requirements

Key Changes in the Google and Yahoo Email Update

1. Passing DKIM and SPF Protocols: Senders must properly configure their outbound emails with passing DKIM (domainkey identified mail) and*  SPF (sender policy framework) protocols. This means that you will update your domain and IP’s DNS to essentially say you are who you say you are and that you’re sending email using the right infrastructure. (*a passing DKIM and SPF policy, as opposed to DKIM OR SPF is specific to those who send over 5,000 messages at a time to either mailbox provider, which is the vast majority of commercial senders anyway.)
2. DNS Configuration: A sender must have a “fully qualified reverse DNS” (FQrDNS), sometimes referred to as a  “forward confirmed reverse DNS” (FCrDNS) configured, which connects an authorized sending domain to an authorized sending IP using an “A” record and a “PTR” record respectively. 

3. DMARC Records: In perhaps the biggest news, part of this new policy requires that a sender’s FROM sending domain must have a present and passing DMARC (“domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance”) record. You can learn more about DMARC itself here or at dmarc.org. Without getting into the weeds about what DMARC is here, Google and Yahoo are now mandating that senders:

   1. Have a DMARC record in place on their sending domain.

   2. That the DMARC record will pass, meaning that either the DKIM or SPF authentication protocols are passing AND are aligned with a root domain. 

   3. Important note: It is permissible to have a DMARC policy type of “none,” or, “p=none,” which is the lowest form of domain owner enforcement of a policy.

4. Easy Unsubscribe: In all commercial messages, there must be the presence of a couple “easy” unsubscribe mechanisms. Google and Yahoo have described this as making sure that messages have a “one-click” unsubscribe element ingrained into the message’s architecture list-unsubscribe header value as well as a clear and conspicuous unsubscribe element in the footer of all commercial content. As always this is not legal advice, but all commercial senders should be familiar with and make sure they follow the US CAN-SPAM Act, as this defines requirements in more detail.
*Enforcement for the list-unsubscribe is tentatively scheduled to start rolling out in June of 2024 (previously February).
5. Complaint Rate Threshold: For really the first time, Google has specified a complaint rate threshold for mail to be blocked outright on their platform. Keep in mind that Google calculates and reflects complaint rates differently (spam complaints/messages delivered to Google inboxes) than the other, more traditional global mailbox providers (spam complaints/messages delivered). In efforts to maintain consistency of messaging and adoption, Google and Yahoo have both specified the complaint rate limit as .3%. It must be noted, however, that problems with reputation, deliverability, and email performance will begin to suffer with complaint rates much lower than that. You can learn more about gaining access to Google Postmaster Tools data here. 
6. Sender Domain: Another notable detail of this announcement relates to all senders that use “gmail.com” as the sending domain for any commercial or business mail. Similar to their requirement for sending domains to have an active DMARC record, Google is moving their DMARC policy to “quarantine.” 
This means that if a sender uses “gmail.com” to send commercial email from anywhere but directly from their Google account, they will be automatically filtered to the spam folder. This has long-since been known as something to avoid as a business in general, so this particular development makes a lot of sense.

Why These Updates Matter

The post What the Google and Yahoo Email Policy Update Means and Why It Matters appeared first on Iterable.

Just in time for spooky season, Meta has rolled out what they’re calling “AI Personas.” To fuel the influencer marketing fire, these artificial intelligence lookalikes take on the appearance of well-known celebrities but act like run-of-the-mill influencers, sharing photos and products from their already-established social media accounts.

Take Kendall Jenner, for example. Kendall has 294 million Instagram followers—amassing huge influencing power and clout. Kendall’s AI Persona, “Billie,” is quickly gaining followers with 190K in less than a month. Billie is completely managed by Meta but uses Kendall’s likeness to…well… it’s not quite clear yet.

Cecily Mauran, a Tech Reporter at Mashable, interacted with Billie and found the interaction to be pretty bizarre. “The interactions, Mauran pointed out, are ‘deeply unsettling’ because the personas are an attempt to humanize a chatbot and keep you logged on as long as possible. Basically, it’s trying to be a more engaging ChatGPT via celebrity faces.”

It seems as though, in their attempt to humanize AI, Meta has landed us somewhere in the Uncanny Valley. But this got us thinking, even though AI Personas seem to max out the creep-o-meter, what does the future of influencer marketing look like and what role will AI play?

What is Influencer Marketing?

To understand where influencer marketing is going, we have to understand where it is today and why it matters.

In what’s predicted to be an over $21B market this year, influencer marketing is when brands pay influencers—usually those with substantial, highly engaged social media followers—to promote their products or services.

“But,” as McKinsey puts it, “influencer marketing and celebrity endorsements are not quite the same thing. Celebrity endorsements typically involve a company making a huge investment in someone, but it’s hard to specify the exact return on that investment. With influencer marketing, it’s easier to figure out the ROI because companies can closely monitor likes, shares, online conversations, and so forth.” With many influencer platforms, for example, brands can see a full suite of analytics on an influencer’s account for specific posts.

Not only can brands more easily determine return on investment with influencers than they can with celebrity endorsements, but the definition of “celebrity” itself has changed as the line between celebrity and popularity blurred. When someone has a sizable social following, they start to gain fame and opportunities, making them a celebrity in their own right.

Nano to Mega Influencers

While influencers with a massive following (mega influencers) are obviously going to get brands’ attention, influencer marketing has started to evolve. Some influencers have a smaller number of followers but can still make a big impact for brands.

McKinsey defines influencer tiers as the following:

• Nano influencers have fewer than 10,000 followers.
• Micro influencers have from 10,000 to 50,000.
• Medium influencers have from 50,000 to 100,000.
• Macro influencers have more than 500,000.
• Mega influencers breathe rarified air: they have over one million followers.

While the reach or impressions may be smaller for some of these influencers, they generally are devoted to a niche topic and therefore have followers who are super interested in products and services related to that topic—garnering a high engagement rate. Plus, with a smaller circle of followers, it’s easier for these influencers to create relationships with their followers, which provides ample opportunity for user-generated content (UGC).

For example, if there’s a mom micro influencer with 10K followers who has a deal with a snack brand, the impact could be powerful because the interests of her followers align directly with the product.

While Meta is aiming to create a new category of influencers with AI personas, AI can play more of a role in influencer marketing than just impersonating celebrities.

AI in Influencer Marketing

While Meta took a more literal approach and generated new influencers, AI can be used to help brands find influencers or create campaigns. In fact, according to The State of Influencer Marketing 2023: Benchmark Report, “more than 60% [of respondents] plan to use AI or ML in their influencer campaigns.”

One particularly interesting example of AI in influencer marketing is helping to fight fraud. With new artificial personas being built, you may be thinking AI is contributing to fraud—but it’s actually the opposite. Because brands rely on influencers having genuine followers (not bots), they need to be sure the influencers they’re building deals with are legit.

According to Influencer Marketing Hub, “AI intelligence tools help you avoid influencer fraud by deep diving into an influencer’s profile and noticing any signs of fraud. They go beyond the superficial stats of followers and recent content and can detect sudden massive spikes in followers, indicating that those could be purchased.”

AI can protect brands from signing deals with fraudulent influencers, help understand which topics to focus on, and even help in negotiations when it comes to paying influencers.

The Future Isn’t All Creepy

So, there’s good news after all. While Meta’s AI Personas are somewhat off-putting, AI doesn’t always need to be a quasi-human to make an impact. The future of influencer marketing is certainly going to continue to evolve but AI will likely play a pivotal role in that evolution. Whether it’s helping to develop scripts, understanding campaign performance, or even finding the right influencer to begin with, there are endless ways AI can help brands improve their influencer marketing programs—without “your sis Billie.”

Did you know Iterable has an AI Suite too? With tools like Copy Assist, Send Time Optimization (STO), and Channel Optimization, Iterable’s AI Suite can increase your team’s efficiency and effectiveness. Schedule a custom demo today.

The post A Glimpse Into the Future of Influencer Marketing appeared first on Iterable.

As AI technology continues to evolve, marketers are likely to explore new and innovative ways to leverage it for a competitive advantage in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Let’s delve into one of Iterable’s AI Suite features, namely Brand Affinity, and explore how it can reveal valuable insights for marketers to understand their share of voice and market share.

What is Share of Voice?

Share of voice (SOV) can often get confused with share of market (SOM), so before we get into Brand Affinity, we want to give a bit of background on SOV. SOV is a marketing and advertising metric that measures a brand’s presence in a specific market or industry in relation to its competitors. It quantifies the percentage of the total advertising or promotional efforts within a particular space that a particular brand owns.

SOV is often expressed as a percentage and is calculated by dividing a brand’s advertising spending, media coverage, or overall marketing presence by the total advertising spending, media coverage, or marketing efforts in a given market. A high SOV indicates that a brand or company is dominating the advertising or promotional landscape within its market, while a low SOV suggests that it has minimal visibility compared to its competitors.

Understanding share of voice is essential for brands to assess their market presence, measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns, and make informed decisions regarding their marketing strategies. It helps in evaluating a brand’s competitive position and can be a valuable tool for strategic planning and competitive analysis.

Now, how does this differ from SOM? Well, according to B2B Marketing Report, the SOV Principle states, “Brands that allocate a higher Share of Voice (SOV) relative to their Share of Market (SOM) tend to experience growth (assuming all other factors remain constant), whereas those with a SOV lower than SOM tend to see a decline.” A greater SOV implies greater potential for expanding your SOM.

Key Principles of the Share of Voice Rule

1. Balanced Branding and Performance Marketing

Achieving an optimal SOV and market share in marketing involves striking a balance between long-term brand building and short-term sales-focused performance marketing. A well-rounded marketing strategy typically allocates roughly 50% of the budget to branding and 50% to activation activities. Balanced marketing tends to yield 4x better performance compared to solely focusing on short-term, performance-driven strategies such as lead generation.

2. Grow Engagement Within Your Customer Base

Targeting only highly-engaged customers may not effectively contribute to your SOV. To enhance your SOV, concentrate on expanding your customer base through reactivation campaigns, referral programs, and engaging with low-engagement users.

3. Optimize Mental Availability

Successful marketing campaigns prioritize establishing “mental availability,” where the brand effortlessly comes to mind during purchasing decisions. This can be achieved by creating emotional connections with customers and prospects through branding and informative lifecycle campaigns.

Now, let’s explore Iterable’s Brand Affinity and how it aids marketers in comprehending their share of voice and gaining insights into better customer engagement.

Iterable’s Brand Affinity and Share of Voice

Brand Affinity, at its core, offers a comprehensive assessment of engagement across all messaging and calculates an affinity score based on how users engage with your messaging. By incorporating additional data, such as conversions, revenue, and behavior events, marketers gain a deeper understanding of the overall attitude their customers have with the brand.

This is where the Share of Voice rule becomes relevant. While a customer may initially have a negative Brand Affinity score in Iterable, a marketer can dig deeper to uncover insights that enable more targeted segmentation and campaigns, ultimately driving engagement and revenue. This also allows marketers to ensure they are balancing brand and performance marketing.

Layering Behavioral Insights With Brand Affinity for Deeper Personalization

Consider a segment that, based on their engagement data on promotional campaigns, has a negative affinity score in Iterable.

Upon pulling in and analyzing purchase behavior and revenue insights, a subset of these users is found to make purchases, indicating that the brand is top-of-mind for them. This presents an opportunity for marketers to engage with this micro-segment in a personalized manner, such as expressing gratitude for their loyalty or launching referral campaigns. These insights also unlock opportunities to leverage additional AI features like Next Best Action, Copy Assist, and advanced A/B testing.

In this example from Iterable, Robert is a loyal customer who had a neutral, negative, then positive Brand Affinity.

By looking at additional insights when considering Brand Affinity, you as the marketer will have a better understanding of the behaviors and actions your users are taking as they interact with your brand. You can use this information to create micro segments and, from there, can send each small segment highly personalized communications to strengthen your relationship with each customer. Negative affinity, as highlighted, isn’t the end of the road—it’s the beginning.

Here are some additional use cases for neutral or negative brand affinity segments:

• Send thank you campaigns to negative affinity customers who purchased but have not interacted with messages. Use Copy Assist to iterate on different messaging options.
• Test different messaging and copy with inactive audiences using A/B experimentation to help entice and improve engagement rates
• Trigger a reactivation workflow when a user changes to a negative affinity

In Summary

Iterable’s Brand Affinity, within the AI Suite, can significantly enhance your understanding of SOV by processing and analyzing data at scale, providing valuable insights, and enabling data-driven decision-making. This understanding allows marketers to balance their brand and performance marketing initiatives while expanding the active customer base through the testing of messages to customers with an initial negative or neutral brand affinity score.

Learn more about Iterable’s AI Suite or schedule a custom demo today.

The post Understanding the Share of Voice (SOV) Principle appeared first on Iterable.

This information involves the following elements:

• A Large Language Model (LLM) is “a specialized type of AI that has been trained on vast amounts of text to understand existing content and generate original content.”
• An AI prompt is an input that instructs a large language model (LLM) to deliver a specific output, such as, “Generate a list of email subject lines with friendly tones that offer up to 50% off all items for a fall promotion.”
• AI seed copy is messaging you can include with your prompt to provide examples and needed context that the LLM can iterate on. With the above AI prompt, for example, the seed copy could be “Save 50% on Fall Promotions This Week.”

In other words, this information is crucial in bridging the gap between where you are and where you want to go with whatever you’re using AI to achieve.

And it’s not easy. With the rise of AI has come a momentous rise in the demand for AI specialists, including a new role known as AI Prompt Engineers. Yes, there are people who specialize in crafting the AI prompts that deliver the most impactful results. So, if you’re finding it challenging, don’t beat yourself up.

While we’re not all AI Prompt Engineers, when it comes to AI-generated marketing copy, there are some tricks for optimizing your prompts and getting to the finish line faster and more effectively.

So, without further ado, here are five tips to enhance your AI prompts and seed copy to build better AI marketing campaigns.

1. Familiarize Yourself with AI Functionality

While the use cases for AI in marketing are vast, the actual applications of it will depend on the platforms you use. Before you type a single word, it’s valuable to know the basics of an AI tool, including:

• What kinds of messaging it supports
• The minimum and maximum number of characters it can input and output
• Whether it’s optimized for your native language
• Any limitations on how content will be generated

Once you understand the underlying foundation of how an AI solution functions, you can be better equipped to start your AI campaign development off on the right foot.

2. Understand Your Target Audience

One major factor that’s lacking in most AI-generated copy is context, and no one understands your target audience better than you. Make sure your marketing team is aligned on customer needs, interests, preferences, and pain points.

For example, while there are millions of users in North America who use Redfin to buy or sell their next home, only a small percentage are active, meaning they’ve engaged with an email or visited Redfin.com in the last 30 days. The retention marketing team needed to identify which inactive users were most likely to convert and activate that segment with personalized, conversion-oriented communications. They leveraged Predictive Goals, an Iterable AI product, to understand which inactive sellers were most likely to convert to an active state if targeted by messaging, and were able to achieve a 72% lift.

Once target audiences are identified, brands can take that into consideration when drafting prompts and seed copy so the LLM will be more likely to create messaging that resonates with them.

Getting crystal clear on who you’re speaking to in your marketing messaging will make your customers more inclined to listen.

3. Keep Your Brand Voice Top of Mind

After you’ve agreed on who you’re communicating with, the next step is to decide on how you’ll be communicating to them. For consistent AI marketing campaigns, incorporate your brand’s voice into your seed copy or prompt. This will help AI tools generate copy that feels authentic and true to your brand’s identity.

To hone in on your brand voice, consider the following elements:

• Personality attributes you want to emulate
• Your goals and objectives with various types of content
• Your company’s writing style across mediums
• The tone of corporate written, visual, and video content
• Guidelines for grammar, mechanics, and even emoji usage

For example, here is a prompt a hypothetical Iterable Vitamins business might use to customize an SMS message:

An example of an AI prompt a vitamin business may use for SMS copy.

The LLM yields a response of:

The results from the above AI prompt with three different subject line examples.

When writing a prompt, consider providing:

• Messaging examples that exemplify your brand voice
• Instructions about the intended tone
• Seed copy that clearly expresses the intent of the copy and let the LLM optimize it for you

Ultimately, these elements help you determine how your brand would be characterized if it were a human being. The more specific you are with these characteristics, the more naturally an AI will be able to replicate them.

4. Don’t Forget to Personalize

AI at its worst is utterly generic, creating content that’s like a carbon copy of a carbon copy. At its best, it can empower brands to personalize their content to improve their rapport with customers. Thus, it’s even more important to humanize your communications to build a rapport with customers.

Most AI-generated copy is based on the text you provide, rather than on specific campaign or user data, but that doesn’t mean you can’t earmark opportunities for personalization. For example, let’s say we want to target runners. Here is how we might adjust our previous prompt:

Edited the prompt to include “using our brand voice and optimize it as an SMS message targeted towards runners.”

This yields the following responses, which are tailored to runners specifically:

Adjusted results that offer three new SMS options geared towards runners.

Smart AI prompt customization can help you tailor your messaging to your audience by personalizing your copy for their interests.

5. When in Doubt, Iterate

One of the advantages of AI in marketing is the ability to quickly generate a plethora of variations. AI marketing platforms are designed for iteration, because they’re learning from your inputs and adapting their outputs accordingly.

Even if your seed copy or prompt isn’t ideally constructed, you can test multiple variations until you land on a winning option that will resonate best with your audience.

Enter Copy Assist

Now that you’re up to speed on crafting AI-generated marketing copy, you can put your insights into action. A great tool to implement into your campaigns is Iterable’s Copy Assist, which is specifically designed for short message copy, such as email subject lines and message text for SMS and push notifications.

Copy Assist is especially useful for providing alternative text suggestions based on the seed copy provided. It quickly generates numerous options and variations as it learns in real-time from the seed copy you’ve entered recently.

Moreover, if you’re already familiar with using handlebars in Iterable to personalize your communications, they can be used as placeholders in Copy Assist. All you need to do is verify the accuracy of any handlebars expression that’s included in the generated text before publishing it.

Iterable’s Copy Assist generates assistive text, including any handlebar personalization you input.

With Copy Assist, you get a helping hand with your marketing campaigns, enhancing and expediting the process from input to inbox.

AI Starts With You

The prompts and seed copy you input into AI platforms play a pivotal role in the success of your marketing campaigns. As convenient as it may sound to hand over the keys and let a robot take the wheel, it’s worth investing the time and effort to ensure any AI-generated copy represents your brand’s voice and effectively connects with customers. With these tips in mind, you can take your AI marketing from mediocre to magical.’

Looking to enhance and expedite the process of writing copy for your marketing campaigns? Ask for a helping hand and schedule a custom demo of Iterable’s Copy Assist today.

The post 5 Tips for Building Better AI Prompts for Marketing Campaigns appeared first on Iterable.

Through many moons of experience, I’ve navigated the high sea of program management, guiding teams comprising front end pirates, backend buccaneers, SDK privateers, savvy managers, crafty product managers, and many more brave souls. Together, we’ve faced treacherous challenges and emerged victorious, forging a bond as tight as a sailor’s knot.

So, hop aboard, and let’s explore the seven essential steps that will guide us on this epic journey to managing cross-team projects.

Step 1: Define the Magnificent Ship We’ll Build

Every great voyage begins with a clear destination in mind. Likewise, managing a cross-team project starts with defining a concept document, a treasure map that outlines what needs to be built.

The sharp product team leads the charge, crafting a document that sparkles with clarity, including a captivating press release, detailed use cases, scope, technical / non technical assessment, and risk analysis.

By engaging the entire team in the planning phase, we harness their collective expertise, setting the stage for a successful program.

Treasured Takeaway: Bring your whole crew into the planning stage to align in direction towards your ultimate goal.

Step 2: Break Down the Voyage into Exciting Milestones

Ahoy, landlubbers! As we navigate this treacherous sea, we must divide the journey into exciting milestones that align with our grand vision. Our trusty product manager initiates the journey by setting feature milestones that align with business objectives. The team then dissects these milestones together into actionable tasks, considering various aspects such as resource allocation, dependencies, and timelines.

With a well-structured plan and clear deadlines, we ensure a smooth progression towards our shared vision. Using the Engineering team as an example, the engineering experts then join in the fray, collaboratively breaking down the tasks for each milestone, dividing them into backend, frontend, and SDK requirements. Well-crafted timelines and specific deadlines ensure a harmonious journey towards our shared destination, carefully considering the dependencies between teams.

Treasured Takeaway: A well-structured plan, meticulously dissected into actionable tasks, ensures our shared vision sails smoothly. Collaboration, clear deadlines, and consideration of dependencies chart our course to success.

Step 3: Assemble the Dream Team and Raise the Colors

Hoist the colors high! The next crucial step is to identify the key stakeholders and unite our diverse team in harmony.

We bring together a diverse group of professionals, including project managers, subject matter experts, developers, and external partners when necessary. But wait, that’s not all! We must also forge alliances with external dependency teams, ensuring everyone’s objectives align with the project’s timeline, scope, and goals.

Our crew becomes a formidable force, ready to conquer any obstacle that crosses our path. Employing the RACI framework to outline roles and responsibilities for various team members proves to be an invaluable strategy. This approach facilitates clear referencing of tasks and responsibilities, particularly in intricate situations.

Treasured Takeaway: Uniting diverse talents and forging alliances with external partners creates a formidable crew.

Step 4: Set Up Our Communication Rigging for Smooth Sailing

Ahoy, me hearties! Effective communication is the wind in our sails! To ensure our journey remains on course, we set up robust communication channels, inspired by the navigational essentials of the high seas.

From regular Jira updates that serve as our weather forecasts, to team meetings acting as our navigational checkpoints, and dedicated project Slack channels fostering real-time ship-to-ship communication, we maintain an open line of communication among the crew. Just as mariners share position reports to avoid collisions, we provide timely progress updates to avoid bottlenecks or misdirection.

Arrr, there is a golden rule though! Much like how sailors rely on a single source of navigational truth, we too keep a single source of truth—a centralized repository of project documentation and decisions. This practice ensures there’s no fog of confusion and we chart a clear course for our voyage. As mariners heed the lighthouse’s warning, we keep our channels clear, our messages concise, and our intentions transparent.

So, with our communication rigging taut and true, we’re ready to navigate these digital waters with the same precision and teamwork as the most skilled seafarers. Onward we sail, forging a course toward successful horizons!

Treasured Takeaway: Clear communication channels and a centralized repository of project data serve as our navigational tools. Transparent, concise messages and consistent updates ensure a smooth voyage, avoiding confusion and keeping us on course.

Step 5: Keep an Eye on Progress and Chart a New Course When Needed

Forks! Just like sea captains watching the horizon, we monitor progress and adjust our course as needed. We use project management tools to track deliverables, milestones, and priorities. When unexpected challenges arise, we adapt and adjust our course, leveraging innovation and collaboration to overcome obstacles. Our tools and processes, like a skilled navigator, guide us toward program success.

The tool may vary from department to department. For the engineering team, our trusty companion, Jellyfish, helps us track deliverables, milestones, and priorities. But, as any sailor knows, plans can shift with Neptune’s whim.
When unexpected storms arise, fear not! We boldly take the helm, steering toward calmer waters.

A constellation of challenges? We plot a new course, harnessing innovation’s winds and collaboration’s currents. But that’s not all, shipmates! Our tool Jellyfish isn’t just along for the ride—it’s our trusty shipmate in tracking project risks, keeping an eye on the treasure of work in progress, tallying up the doubloons of lifetime spend, charting our meeting course, untangling the web of dependency work, and blasting through blockers like cannonballs. Just as a ship’s navigator steers her true, Jellyfish steers us toward the X that marks the spot of project triumph.

With positive spirits and solution-focused minds, we navigate each tempest. We ride waves of change, emerging stronger. Guided by Jellyfish and unwavering resolve, we sail forth, united and daring!

Treasured Takeaway: Monitoring progress with tools like Jellyfish allows us to adapt swiftly to unforeseen challenges. Innovation and collaboration guide us through challenges, ensuring we navigate toward project triumph with unwavering resolve.

Step 6: Celebrate Victories and Learn From the Perils

Yo ho ho! When our crew conquers each milestone, we celebrate our victories with fervor! We raise a toast to their hard work and dedication, acknowledging their triumphs. And that’s not all—we’ve got a treasure trove of kudos ready to be plundered! Weekly, we bestow accolades upon those who have sailed above and beyond, filling their sails with praise and recognition.

But even when the sea of cross-team projects gets rough and we face setbacks, we don’t despair. Arrr, we conduct retrospectives, gleaning lessons from our failures, and charting a better course for future projects.

Just like a captain consulting the stars, we gather for a bi-weekly retro, scrutinizing every wave and navigating the choppy waters of our challenges. And rest assured, we don’t keep our swashbuckling strategies to ourselves—we share the booty of insights and improvements with leadership and stakeholders. It is all about gaining cross-board alignment, ensuring our compasses point in the same direction towards success!

So, my hearties, as we set sail upon these daring endeavors, we celebrate the wins, learn from the losses, and sail ever forward, guided by the North Star of continuous improvement and unyielding determination. Aye, the journey may be treacherous at times, but with our crew united and our spirits unshakeable, there’s no storm we can’t weather, and no horizon we can’t reach!

Treasured Takeaway: Celebrating triumphs and learning from setbacks is our compass for continuous improvement. Regular retrospectives, shared insights, and cross-board alignment steer us toward success, making every journey a valuable experience.

Step 7: Treasure the Bonds We Forged

As we approach the shores of project completion, we treasure the bonds we’ve forged along the way. Through transparent communication and shared victories, we’ve created a crew united in purpose. As we dock our magnificent ship, we bask in the glory of success, knowing that our teamwork and camaraderie made it all possible.

Treasured Takeaway: Transparent communication and shared victories create bonds essential for success.

Journeying Through Cross-Team Projects

So, me hearty program managers, there are the seven steps to navigate cross-team projects. Embrace the challenges, celebrate the victories, and remember, the journey itself is a treasure worth savoring. With these guiding principles, we can sail confidently towards project success, transforming our cross-functional team into a fearsome crew that conquers any sea that dares to stand in our way. Yo ho, yo ho, a program manager’s life for me!

The post Navigating Cross-Team Projects: 7 Steps to Success appeared first on Iterable.

We live in a time of digital-first marketing. The phrase “digital marketing” is almost redundant now because most, if not all, marketing strategies now have a digital component. Digital techniques are indisputably excellent for reaching people. According to Statista , with more than 5.3 billion people actively using the internet daily, digital can reach the masses across the globe.

With the widespread implementation of digital marketing, “reach” is no longer a main issue—but grabbing prospect and customer attention and engaging with them still is. Audiences today are bombarded daily with marketing messages. This makes standing out against the digital din, perhaps, the greatest marketing challenge of our time. In a recent Forrester-PFL report, we learned that in the post-COVID digital era, “the attention economy tells us that too much of ‘a good thing’ isn’t actually a good thing at all.”

According to a 2022 study overseen by Compu-Mail and Forbes, digital content includes 10,000 ads and more than 1,000 promotional emails weekly. Conversely, the average consumer receives 13 to 15 pieces of direct mail each week. Would you rather be one out of 10,000 or one out of 15?

Back in the day, we all got piles of ads in our mailboxes. That has since shifted and now we’re inundated with promotional emails in our inboxes. To stand out, marketers should shift their attention back to the tried-and-true but now less-populated world of direct mail.

Adding direct mail to digital campaigns in a cross channel strategy provides a more powerful way to capture attention than either alone. “Direct mail has an open rate of 90 percent,” reported Compu-Mail in a report titled, Direct Marketing Statistics for 2022. This is because consumers, particularly millennials, prefer promotional materials that are tangible and can be read later, unlike emails which normally get ignored even if they are from a recognizable brand. Digital is, and should always be, your first step in designing marketing campaigns. Direct mail helps drive the impact of the digital experience by directing audiences back into the digital stream.

Neuroscience tells us that direct mail is unique in the hands (and eyes) of the recipient. Data shows it takes 21 percent less cognitive effort to process the information on a printed piece than on a screen. And consumer’s motivation to respond to physical mail is 20 percent higher than with digital. This sensory experience equates to an easier ability to cut through the digital noise with greater sensory appeal to act.

Don’t Get it Twisted: Direct Mail is Digital

How can you bring direct mail into your digital ecosystem? Modern direct mail can be integrated into your customer relationship management (CRM) or marketing orchestration platform. This way you can insert relevant, personalized content into a printed piece that is pulled from the CRM or orchestration platform. Plus, you can determine when to send the piece based on buyer intent signals. Direct mail is now an integral part of the digital journey.
There are several advantages and use cases for integration with direct mail.

First: Personalization

Send relevant information and custom messaging when the recipient is most interested in your product or service. Audiences today are less likely to engage if the content is not personalized to them. Adding direct mail into your tech stack enables you to send hyper-personalized content that draws information from your CRM or orchestration platform. This personalization can impact your results for cart abandonment, lead conversion, or cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

Second: You Can Track Everything

It’s all measurable. No more guessing, sending, and hoping— you can show ROI for the direct mail program and can easily track the results. Gone are the days when your CMO and CEO ask for metrics on direct mail and you have little to offer. Because of the flow of data from a CRM or orchestration platform, when direct mail is tied to your tech stack, you see real-time metrics and results in dashboards with status updates on your sends.

Third: You Spend Less on Print

How? Because direct mail is only going to people who trigger a send based on their intent signals with your digital campaigns. For example, when your target audience is interacting with your digital content and they hit a trigger point in your Iterable Journey, the personalized direct mail piece is sent to them. Seamless orchestration at its finest! No more sending unwanted printed pieces to audiences that did not want them in the first place. The content is relevant to the audience and triggered to send to the most interested recipients. This reduces printing costs and makes for a more efficient and greener process.

So, what’s not to like about a marketing strategy that lets you compete against fewer messages for attention, arrives when the recipient is seeking information, and is handled by a process that is clean and efficient? Answer: Not a thing.
Modern marketers have a robust suite of tools available to drive engagement and ROI. Leveraging cross-channel strategies that include both digital and direct marketing tactics create a personalized experience for your audience. Modern direct mail, tied to your cross-channel communication platform like Iterable, is timely, personalized, relevant, and measurable.

If you are looking to stand out amongst your competitors, then a full cross-channel marketing strategy—including both digital and direct marketing—is the way to go.

Contact PFL Sales@PFL.com or schedule a custom Iterable demo today to learn how easy and effective this is to implement.

The post Modern Direct Mail is Perfectly Tuned for a Cross-Channel Marketing Strategy appeared first on Iterable.

Greater personalization is made possible when you can dynamically match this data to customers based on their interests, preferences, and shopping behavior. How can you increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and take the guesswork out of individualization?

Enter Iterable’s Catalog.

In this post, we’re diving deeper into Catalog—what it is, how it works, and why leading brands rely on it as their ultimate recommendation engine.

Let’s jump in.

What is Catalog?

Iterable’s Catalog gives marketers the ability to create no-code recommendations with dynamic content, allowing one template to serve thousands of unique customers.

This product uses two main terminologies:

• Catalogs: A catalog holds entries of non-user information, such as products, services, events, or content. This information is stored directly in Iterable and used to personalize the messages you send.
• Collections: In Iterable’s user interface, marketers create rules for what items get recommended. A collection refers to both the ruleset and the list of items returned by that ruleset.

For each of a brand’s recipients, Iterable-powered marketing campaigns can use collections to search, at send time, the information stored in catalogs. Collections (the rule sets) match users with catalog data based on their interests, preferences, locations, and historical activity—anything stored on their Iterable user profile.

For example, with Catalog you can send messages that provide:

• Products similar to a customer’s past purchases
• Retail store locations in close proximity to the user’s shipping address
• Real estate listings within a certain radius of a recipient’s preferred location that match specific search criteria (budget, number of bedrooms, etc.)
• Music, movies, or TV shows that match a subscriber’s preferred genres, actors, or directors
• Restaurants based on cuisine, price, location, and rating preferences
• Flights or hotels that match a recipient’s preferred carriers or destinations
• Online classes based on a student’s interests or course history

Historically, this type of personalization at scale required your organization to host and maintain a set of web services that could be queried for each of a campaign’s recipients. With Iterable’s Catalog, there’s no additional infrastructure required—Iterable hosts the data and queries it while sending a campaign.

What are the Benefits of Using Catalog?

As the examples above demonstrate, there’s no limit to what Iterable’s Catalog can be used for. This provides numerous benefits for your marketing efforts:

• Individualized campaigns: Messages are dynamically personalized in real time, tailoring product recommendations based on any criteria you select, including geolocation and user preferences.
• Marketer empowerment: Iterable’s native platform UI provides marketers the ability to access a recommendation engine without requiring any technical assistance from engineering or data science teams.
• Upleveled A/B testing: With multiple collections, you can generate and test different dynamic content experiences to audience segments. Instead of testing which messages are best for your brand, you can now determine which messages matter most to your customers.

Much like the rest of the Iterable platform, Catalog offers flexibility and ease of use, making it easy to build modifiable collections of personalized content in just a matter of minutes.
How Does Catalog Work?

Iterable’s Catalog works in three easy steps:

1. Upload a catalog
2. Create a collection
3. Reference the collection in your message

To illustrate each step, the example below imagines how a food delivery app could suggest restaurants to customers based on their favorite cuisines.

Let’s start with the first step of uploading a catalog.

By matching a catalog of restaurants to users’ favorite cuisines, a food delivery app can make individualized recommendations.

1. Uploading a Catalog

To use Iterable’s Catalog, you start by uploading a catalog of information. In our example, the catalog data is depicted in red and includes the names of each restaurant and the cuisine offered.

Catalog stores information about your organization and projects right in the Iterable platforms, making it possible to use this data to personalize campaign messages at send time.

Iterable’s web interface provides a variety of ways to create and edit catalog items:

• To create and edit a single catalog item, you can use the JSON or text editors
• To bulk create up to 1,000 catalog items at once, you can upload a CSV file
• For programmatic updates, you can use APIs

Iterable stores catalog items in JSON and supports the following data types: string, long, boolean, double, date, object, and geo_location. To learn more about catalog creation, please refer to Iterable’s Catalog documentation.

After the catalog is uploaded, it’s time to create a collection.

2. Creating a Collection

Marketers can create a collection within the Iterable platform that sets the rules for its recommendations. In our example, the collection is matching cuisine to the favorite listed in each user profile in Iterable.

Collections use information about a recipient to search for relevant catalog items.

To search for these catalog items, the Collection Builder supports boolean logic, static search criteria, dynamic search criteria, various search operators, ordering, sorting, and limiting. Marketers can combine multiple groups of static and dynamic search criteria into a single, overall search that finds relevant items in a catalog.

Once the catalog and collection are prepared, all that’s left is to reference the collection to display in your message.

3. Referencing the Collection to Display in Your Message

Referencing a collection is done by using Iterable handlebars, which in our example above, automatically populate the user’s first name and the restaurant recommendation in the subject line.

After the collection has been created, Iterable will generate handlebars for you, which can be pasted inside your message template within brackets. Handlebars can reference text, images, and colors with the use of HTML and CSS.

To give you a visual depiction of how Iterable handlebars are used, the image below represents a cart abandonment email that is personalized by product name, brand, and price.

With Iterable handlebars (pictured on the left with curly braces), this cart abandonment email is personalized by first name and features both the items left behind and similar products.

With Iterable handlebars (pictured on the left with curly braces), this cart abandonment email is personalized by first name and features both the items left behind and similar products.

How Can I Get Started With Catalog?

Consumers’ preferences and interests aren’t static—and your communications to them shouldn’t be either. Building dynamic content doesn’t have to be a burden. In just a few steps, Iterable’s Catalog gives marketers more flexibility and creative capability to personalize their messages better than ever before.

For even more examples of how leading brands are creating 1:1 experiences with Catalog, check out these Iterable customer success stories:

• UNiDAYS saved nearly 200 hours annually, allowing the team to further optimize their CRM program
• Omnia Fishing grew its subscribers by 55% and achieved an 18% increase in click-through rate with more personalized emails
• The Dyrt saw a 2X increase in weekly retention rates and a 150% improvement in its push open rates

To get started creating dynamic product recommendations with Catalog, reach out and schedule a custom demo today.

The post A Deep Dive Into Iterable’s Catalog appeared first on Iterable.

With all the hype around these tools, it’s important to understand the impact they will have on your industry and the work you do day to day. AI is dramatically altering the way marketers create campaign goals, identify new audience segments, analyze customer sentiment, and optimize when, where, and how often to send messages.

The research shows that AI marketing is achieving greater results than businesses thought possible and could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2023. In this post, we’re sharing the latest stats from AI marketing analysts and experts to give you a better sense of how AI can improve your team’s performance and make your work easier and more efficient.

Key AI Marketing Stats

AI is Already Part of Our Daily Lives

• 90% of marketers worldwide use AI for automation, with 88% finding it beneficial for personalization (Gitnux)
• 63% of marketers are using AI or ML software for email marketing (Capterra)
• 52% of enterprises have an enterprise-wide generative AI strategy (Forrester)
• 63% of people are unaware that they are already using AI technologies, such as personalized content suggestions (Gitnux)

Companies are Investing More in AI

• Worldwide spending on AI-centric systems is forecast to reach $156 billion in 2023, an increase of 26.9% over the amount spent in 2022 (IDC)
• Spending on AI-centric systems is expected to surpass $300 billion in 2026 (IDC)
• 40% of marketers spent less than 10% of their budgets on AI-driven campaigns, but nearly 20% of marketers spent more than 40% (Influencer Marketing Hub)
• High-performing organizations are more than 5x more likely than others to say they spend more than 20% of their digital budgets on AI (McKinsey)
• 63% of marketing leaders are planning to invest in generative AI in the next 24 months (Gartner)
• 40% of organizations will increase their investment in AI overall because of advances in generative AI (McKinsey)

Marketers are Seeing the Benefits of AI

• 95% of marketers believe that AI will improve their ability to personalize user experiences (Gitnux)
• 88% of marketers find that AI or ML software saves their company time and money (Capterra)
• 82% of marketers say content generated by AI or ML software is just as good or better than human-generated content (Capterra)
• 41% of marketers saw better performance and revenue growth with AI, and 38% noted improved individualized customer experiences (Gitnux)
• In 2023, AI in CRM-related activities is projected to boost business revenue by $1.1 trillion (Gitnux)
• 57% of marketers say it took their company less than six months to learn how to use AI or ML technology (Capterra)

Experts Predict Massive Business Growth With AI

• 98% of global business leaders agree AI foundation models will play an important role in their organization’s strategies over the next three to five years (Accenture)
• Approximately 59% of marketing experts believe that AI will have the largest impact on the marketing industry by 2025 (Gitnux)
• By 2025, organizations that use AI across the marketing function will shift 75% of their staff’s operations from production to more strategic activities (Gartner)
• Generative AI will have an average annual growth rate of 36% up to 2030, capturing 55% of the AI software market (Forrester)
• By 2025, generative AI will account for 10% of all data produced, up from less than 1% in 2021 (Gartner)
  As much as 40% of all working hours will be supported or augmented by language-based AI (Accenture)
• Approximately 85% of customer interactions will be managed with AI by 2025 (Gitnux)

Cutting-Edge AI Marketing

As these statistics demonstrate, AI allows marketers to automate routine tasks, accelerate business growth, and fuel intelligence at every step of the customer journey.

Whether you’re brand new to AI technologies or interested in optimizing your AI campaigns, we have a wealth of information in our AI Hub to help you develop smarter personalization strategies and gain deeper insights with AI.

Here’s a list of some of our most popular resources:

• Your Checklist for Unlocking the Power of AI
• Busting the 3 Most Common AI Myths in Marketing
• Ethical Considerations of Using AI in Marketing
• Great Examples of AI in Marketing…and Some Not So Great
• Watch and Listen: Faraday Talks About AI in Modern Marketing
• Mastering Iterable’s AI Suite

The purpose of AI marketing is to forge stronger customer connections, and we’d love to connect with you to make that happen. Schedule a demo to chat with us about delivering more meaningful experiences with AI-powered marketing campaigns.

The post 20+ AI Marketing Stats You Wish You Knew Sooner appeared first on Iterable.

At the height of the pandemic, folks were joining Clubhouse. Today, they’re swapping X/Twitter for Threads, Mastodon, or Bluesky. And consumers are multitasking just as frequently, whether it’s getting product recommendations on TikTok before adding items to their in-app shopping cart or digging through their inbox for a coupon while browsing their favorite store.

Because cross-channel marketing is always in flux, we’re sharing 30 of the latest cross-channel marketing stats to keep you up to date, so you can create integrated, holistic campaigns your customers love.

Key Cross-Channel Marketing Stats

Today’s Consumers are More Digitally Native

• Average time spent with digital media increased from 6.8 hours per day in 2019 to 8.1 hours in 2021 (Deloitte)
• Mobile commerce is increasing by 61% in the U.S. and 40% in the UK over the last 12 months (Internet Retailing)
• 32% of Americans have made a purchase on a social media platform in the past year (Deloitte)
• Younger shoppers are 2X to 3X as likely to have shopped using emerging media, like social media, virtual try-on, and online live stream (Think With Google)

Seamless, Cross-Channel Experiences are Expected

• 72% of consumers say they would rather connect with brands and businesses through multiple channels (Gitnux)
• 64% of customers expect a seamless experience when interacting with companies through digital channels (Gitnux)
• 73% of consumers point to customer experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions (PWC)
• 73% of shoppers expect brands to understand their unique needs and expectations (Think With Google)
• One in three consumers (32%) say they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience (PwC)

Impact of Cross-Channel Marketing

• Multi-channel shoppers spend three times more than single-channel shoppers (Invesp)
• Companies with strong multi-channel marketing see a 9.5% increase in annual revenue on average (Gitnux)
• Brands with consistent, effective multi-channel marketing have customer retention rates around 91% higher than those that don’t (Gitnux)
• An overwhelming majority (95%) of marketers feel that a strategy that integrates marketing channels enables for better targeting of the right audience at the right time (Ascend2)
• Multi-channel marketing can increase engagement by more than 300% (Gitnux)
• 63% of U.S. consumers say they’d share more information with a company that offers a great experience (PwC)

Challenges of Cross-Channel Marketing

• 95% of marketers say that they know how important multi-channel is for targeting, but only 73% have a multi-channel strategy in place (Invesp)
• Only 23% of marketing professionals would describe their multi-channel marketing strategy as very successful (Ascend2)
• 37% of B2C marketers say their top challenge is creating a single view of the customer across channels and interactions (Forrester)
• 26% report their organization’s biggest concern regarding their marketing efforts is reaching audiences on increasingly crowded digital channels (Bynder)
• Only 30% of marketers are highly confident of their ability to deliver multi-channel strategy (Invesp)
• 80% of organizations struggle to identify a common set of metrics and methods to successfully measure and attribute multi-channel marketing effectiveness (Gartner)

Unifying Customer Data and Automating Campaigns are Crucial

• 87% of marketers consider data the most underutilized asset in marketing organizations (Gitnux)
• 83% of companies admit they’re unable to turn fragmented data points into comprehensive user records (Segment)
• 83% of marketers believe it is now a challenge to unify consumers’ data when so many have multiple identities across platforms (Internet Retailing)
• Over half of marketers said automation will either increase efficiency, free up time to focus on more important tasks and/or improve brand consistency for their organization (Bynder)
• 79% of marketers claim to have unified customer profiles, but only 35% of consumers believe brands they interact with understand their shopping needs (Internet Retailing)

The Future of Cross-Channel Marketing

• Nearly eight in 10 executive leaders in retail foresee embracing the omnichannel experience as a top growth opportunity (Deloitte)
• 86% of marketers feel that multi-channel marketing is increasing in effectiveness (Ascend2)
• 51% of companies use at least eight channels to interact with their customers (Gitnux)
• Six out of 10 (59%) marketers feel they are using the right number of channels in their marketing strategy (Ascend2)

More Effective Cross-Channel Marketing

Regardless of the number of mediums marketers add to their strategy, cross-channel campaigns don’t have to be overwhelming as long as they’re orchestrated seamlessly. If you’re thinking, “Easier said than done,” then we’ve got you. Here are several resources to help you craft the optimal cross-channel customer experience.

• How to Orchestrate Your Cross-Channel Campaigns for Peak Harmonization
• 7 Tips for Designing the Best Cross-Channel Customer Experience
• Moving Beyond Email: 5 Channels to Incorporate Into Your Marketing Strategy
• The Iterable Cross-Channel Campaign Cookbook

Cross-channel marketing is all about connecting to your customers wherever they are, and we’d love to connect with you to make that happen. Schedule a demo to chat with us about taking your campaigns to the next level.

The post 30 Cross-Channel Marketing Stats You Need to Know appeared first on Iterable.

Even in today’s data-driven marketing landscape, marketers are only scratching the surface of building great customer experiences. In fact, according to Invesp, “87% of marketers say data is their company’s most under-utilized asset.”

The unfortunate truth is that most marketers today need more valuable data that can help them create personalized experiences and measure ROI. Unlocking the power of data is the key that will catapult brands into a new era of engagement in 2024 and beyond.

The Biggest Challenge: Personalization

Consumers are more cautious and demanding than ever, and 71% expect personalized experiences at every step of the customer journey.

“Creating marketing that feels like service is how you blow the socks off your market and win. You can do that when you understand your customer’s experience,” said Lisa Horner, SVP of Marketing at AppFolio.

She continued, “First-party data gives you the power to create value for your customer. When you’re blind to your customer, you’re in trouble. Eliminating blindness to your customer’s experience is really important.”

Resource-constrained marketers can only reach the right customers through carefully targeted messages, personalization, and segmentation. But what’s the key to hyper-personalizing engagement? Leveraging real-time, comprehensive data to serve up the most compelling content at pivotal moments.

Leveraging Customer Data With the Newest MarTech Innovations

The good news: you don’t need to scramble to find customer data to use for marketing. Everything you need to supercharge your campaigns is already sitting in your company’s data warehouse, waiting to be tapped.

As we’ll see with Upside’s success story, leveraging a data activation platform to tap into this rich repository can unlock meaningful advancements in customer experience and drive revenue for your business.

The newest generation of marketing technology, such as Data Activation platform, Census, now enables deep customer targeting like never before. With Census Audience Hub, it’s easy to unify data into a 360° view, build granular custom audiences, and export those customer lists to Iterable.

How Upside Improved its Loyalty Program CTR by 96%

Upside is a global cash back platform that helps both retailers and consumers get more value from their money. Unifying customer data was one of Upside’s biggest challenges, which made it difficult for their digital marketing team to deliver targeted, personalized user offers.

Their source of truth for customer data was in Snowflake, but it wasn’t connected to Iterable, where Upside’s marketers build campaigns. They couldn’t use Iterable’s powerful engagement features to their full potential, making advanced marketing initiatives—like loyalty programs—hard to execute.

In parallel, the lack of 360° customer context in other platforms such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Salesforce, and Zendesk hindered their ability to optimize customer experiences across multiple channels and drive consistent outcomes.

Read the full success story here.

Simplified Audience Building With Census Audience Hub

After implementing Census, Upside was able to supercharge their Iterable account with access to all their 360° customer data in Snowflake. Today, marketers build audiences in one central place, Census Audience Hub, and then export those custom lists to all their business tools like Iterable and Google Ads. Census is a massive time saver for day-to-day operations because it automatically keeps audiences up-to-date when source data or audience memberships change—no CSVs, coding, or engineering favors needed!

Deploying a Loyalty Program with Ragnarok

With the martech stack in place to build and activate granular custom audiences, Upside leaned on their marketing agency and Iterable partner, Ragnarok, to strategically improve their personalization efforts. Thanks to Ragnarok’s expertise in handlebar logic, Upside deployed a comprehensive lifecycle campaign centered around purchase behavior.

Upside’s improved loyalty program now includes 27 possible messages (across email, in-app, and push notifications) over one month, depending on how the user progresses through the program. Users get monthly updates to track their progress and encourage them to make a certain number of purchases. When users hit the desired purchase threshold, Upside gives loyalty rewards for the following month.

Rapid Experimentation With Iterable Journeys

Thanks to Iterable’s marketing automation capabilities, testing different variants and sequences of the loyalty program was simple. Ragnarok leveraged Census to push the necessary behavioral data into Iterable to orchestrate complex messaging sequences. By testing three separate variants of the program using Iterable’s Experiments, Ragnarok could efficiently build and analyze over 80 message variants to optimize the program. Ultimately, Upside improved the click-through rate of email campaigns by 96% month-over-month and forged a more personal bond with their customers.

Key Takeaways

As Upside’s success story shows, leveraging customer data is essential to launching faster, more intelligent marketing campaigns and supercharging personalized experiences.

Activating data in Iterable is the next step for brands looking to enter the next era of modern customer engagement. Our three key takeaways are:

1. Data Activation is crucial. It connects your single customer view to your marketing efforts, making you more real-time and data-driven than ever.
2. Personalization is the key to ROI. Better data results in better personalization. To target accurately and deeply, invest in a solution that updates audiences continuously and makes your data available seamlessly.
3. Your martech stack should embrace data. Choose a customer engagement platform that integrates with your tech stack, instead of using siloed tools. Unite marketing, sales, and data teams around the same 360° view of your customer.

“The last decade was all about bringing sales and marketing together. The next decade will be about bringing data and marketing together.”

— Boris Jabes, CEO at Census

With the help of Census and Iterable, you can activate first-party data to reduce customer acquisition costs, unlock even more ROI, and drive higher revenue and retention rates.

Ready to make data a part of your competitive advantage? Check out Iterable’s data capabilities or schedule a Census Audience Hub demo.

The post Why Data Activation is Crucial for Your Martech Stack appeared first on Iterable.

After a previous career as a fundraiser and marketer in museums and other fun nonprofits, I decided to give startup life a try, and made the shift to lifecycle and CRM marketing. I’m a huge fan of Iterable–I’ve implemented our product twice in previous roles (shoutout to customers HopSkipDrive and BURST Oral Care).

Now, my day-to-day involves working with our customer marketing project—the instance of our own product we use to market to our customers—and continue to expand its functionality to showcase the rich capabilities of our product.

But, recently, as I dug into our project, I realized there were some optimizations we could do to make our own day-to-day a lot easier and efficient. I figured sharing my experience might be helpful for others using Iterable, so let’s get into it.

Intro to Iterable Projects

Iterable projects are essentially buckets that hold separate data. So, for example, if your brand is an umbrella brand with multiple smaller brands under it, each brand could be its own project. Or, maybe you have two audiences that need to stay really separate to manage separate experiences with your brands—like buyers and sellers—or, maybe you have a live instance and a sandbox instance.

The Iterable project architecture also allows you to maintain control of access—so, if your different projects are different brands, someone working with one brand can’t accidentally make changes to another brand. And, since API keys and other integrations are set up on a project by project basis, you won’t unintentionally cross your data streams.

But you can share resources across projects so no one has to take up a second career in wheel (re)invention. So, for example, email templates and journeys can be cloned across projects within the same organization.

My Experience—as an Iterator—With Iterable Projects

Now it’s time to get a little meta. Our customer marketing project kicked off when Iterable itself was only a few years old. Through experimentation and rapid growth, over time, the project accumulated some issues. (How many ways can you label a firstName field? We had nine.)

To be clear, this is very normal for any project that grows with a company. We’ve all had to move quickly at one point or another and were forced to choose the quickest path instead of the methodical, no-stone-unturned path.

All of that hampered our ability to leverage some of Iterable’s greatest features. For example, starting an email with “Hello {{firstName}}” is treacherous if you don’t know whether you should be using {{first_name}} or {{First_Name}}.

Ultimately, to tackle these issues we decided the best route would be to start fresh. A new org and project(s) would allow us to start over with a revised data schema, and choose what betas we want to participate in and when. I was also able to start instating and documenting processes so that we won’t accumulate as many zombie or bonus items going forward.

Selecting the Data to Migrate

Hand in hand with how you’re passing data is what data you’re sending. Some advice for those getting ready for an Iterable (or really any) implementation: minimalism is your friend. We stripped our data schema down to the bare necessities for building segmentation. Initially, we also restricted the project to one audience: our customers. Both these things made it dramatically easier to ensure that the sync I built was functioning properly.

I went through multiple drafts until I was satisfied with the data schema. To make it easier to navigate the user profile data, I grouped data fields of similar purpose or sources under the same object. For example, anything like accountId or accountType was placed under the “account” object.

It was also important to me that our naming was consistent. All data fields were named with camelCase because Iterable is case-sensitive. This may seem like a minor detail to fixate on, but it makes things like inserting merge fields, or building new routes for your data much easier when you don’t have to look back every time to see whether it’s Id or ID.

Screenshot of Iterable project settings.

Turning on Events

Once user profile data (what I sometimes think of as the flat data) was flowing, we also needed to turn on events. Examples of event data include things like when a user clicks an email or makes a purchase, but Iterable also offers custom events that customers can build to track everything from a user signing in, to viewing a page in an app. You can also set up event fields under a custom event to track things like the date something happened, or which page was viewed.

Events provide a richer understanding of your users. While it’s nice to know that Sally has two dogs and lives near Los Angeles, knowing recent events in Sally’s history–like she just checked out your webpage selling your company’s new dog food—means you can craft a better experience to market to her (at least…you can with Iterable).

I took the approach of only allowing into the project what was necessary—I didn’t want the clutter of events we don’t need. The first priority was events we wanted to use to trigger a journey (like when a user signed in to our platform).

Enjoying the Fruits of Our Labor

It’s amazing looking back on the “before” of this project, and realizing how far we’ve come. Thanks to the data schema management beta, I’ve been able to keep fewer bonus fields from entering our production project.

While we continue to deploy new user profile fields and events, we’ve got an established process for testing and releasing them, and we continue to build on our segmentation and personalization capabilities, and have even started moving in audiences beyond our customers.

And I’m even more thrilled that some things I once categorized as “someday” have now very much entered the realm of the possible. I’ve started playing with catalog to support a product usage summary email (and a growing list of other use cases).

We’re starting the process of bringing in event data that is more conversion-related (rather than what we need to kick off a journey) so we can start playing with some of our fancy AI toys like predictive goals.

Plus, best of all (at least to me!), our new org has reached the maturity level where I get to pre-beta new features and can actually give meaningful feedback. Win-win.

To learn more about Iterable and how you can get started, schedule a demo today.

The post How Iterators Use Iterable Projects appeared first on Iterable.

Any marketer worth their salt knows that the key to creating revenue-driven campaigns is through data—after all, campaigns powered by data-driven personalization are the key to nearly 70% of customers’ loyalty. Customers tell marketers what they want to see through their data, and marketers that pay attention inevitably come out on top.

But data-driven marketing is easier said than done. From disparate information to inconsistent and manual practices, marketers often find themselves spending over 30% of their workday trying to solve data mysteries.

To unlock the treasure trove within their data, marketers need to consolidate and manage it effectively. By putting these key guidelines into practice, you’ll unlock your marketing superpowers in no time.

Data Consolidation

Most marketers have more data than they know what to do with via multiple channels and touchpoints. While this is an incredible opportunity, this information needs to be captured efficiently before the data trail runs cold. Remember, customer preferences rapidly evolve every day, meaning that key data points will only stay relevant for so long. The best way to manage this data issue is by consolidating.

Choose All-in-One Strategic Tools

To consolidate your data landscape, start by opting for tools that give you the most bang for your buck by eliminating redundancies and scaling efficiently for maximized ROI.

If you rely on multiple APIs to support your messaging, use marketing solutions that offer multiple in-house data points to deliver those experiences. If your customers love interacting with your brand via mobile, you’ll want a tool that can generate content across channels for a seamless experience.

Unify Your Data Practices

Consolidating tools is only the first step. Marketers must also optimize their marketing solution with unified data practices:

• Consistent terminology isn’t a “nice-to-have.” For marketers to accurately measure campaign performance, they need the same terminology across the board. Otherwise, both strategies and attribution are liable to inaccuracy.
• Organizing data types before your data is merged is crucial, especially when you’re collecting information from multiple campaigns and channels. Even better, look for a marketing solution that ingests and organizes data in one automated swoop.
• Training team members is a non-negotiable to data-driven success. For longevity and effectiveness, marketers need to be on the same page and given standardized training.

Data Management

Managing data can feel like bailing water out of a leaky boat; you’re just trying to stay afloat with a few inaccurate data points, never mind moving forward with strategic, hyper-relevant campaigns. It’s time to bail out the unreliable data quickly and move onto bigger and better campaigns:

Prioritize Owned Data

While third-party data from outside sources is quick to acquire, relying on a bedrock of zero- and first-party data is the key to a lasting customer-brand relationship.

It’s more accurate and far more effective: zero-party data is information customers intentionally share with brands in exchange for a better marketing experience, and first-party data is what brands know about customers via direct interactions, such as web or mobile browsing activity. It’s straight from the source and an obvious win-win.

Automate Your Data

If it’s not automated, it’s not managed. Marketers have countless data points to keep track of, making it impossible to manage effectively without automation.

From collection to activation, marketers need to uncover the areas of opportunity where automation can create efficiencies in every step of the process, such as enhanced tracking, organizing, and segmenting of data. Otherwise they risk using data that’s already grown stale, missing their opportunity to resonate with customers.

Activate Your Data

Having access to consolidated and well-managed data can only get you so far. It’s what you do with that data that sets you apart from other brands. So, now that your data is primed and ready to go, it’s time to activate it into personalized content that’s effective across channels.

In this mobile onboarding journey, the customer receives a product tour, personalized offers and recommendations, as well as a call-to-action to join the loyalty program.

In the above example, once customers download the branded app, they receive an initial welcome message that’s closely followed by a push notification featuring product recommendations. Over the next week, customers are kept engaged with notification opt-ins, personalized coupons, and loyalty program enrollments—the perfect place to continually collect zero-party data.

By consistently sending mobile messages fueled by powerful, organized data, customers are nudged further down the funnel. And with sophisticated tools that ensure a smooth experience from browser to mobile every time, marketers are able to automatically scale their data-driven mobile program.

Master Data-Driven Marketing

Data-driven marketing is all about using customer information to create a better experience for both the customer and you, as a marketer. It removes the guesswork and helps marketers create one-to-one connections with customers and deliver valuable messaging across preferred marketing channels.

Efficient and effective data practices are the key to powerful marketing messaging that keep customers engaged with your brand.

To learn more about how you can take your campaigns to the next level, explore the Iterable partnership with Movable Ink and Movable Ink’s cutting-edge solutions.

The post Get the Most Out of Data-Driven Marketing appeared first on Iterable.

How do Bots Affect Sender Reputation?

While it might seem like no big deal to have bad email addresses sign up, these can cause deliverability problems that can be detrimental to your sending reputation. Some of the possible issues you can run into include invalid addresses or hard bounces, increased complaints, a rise in spam traps, or even a decrease in overall engagement.

All of these examples can cause deliverability issues as they all have varying levels of negative indicators for your reputation. Some of these indicators include hard and soft bounces, spam traps, lower opens and clicks, etc. Once mailbox providers start seeing too many of these negative indicators, you can expect to experience a range of challenges from increased spam folder placement all the way to getting a SpamHaus listing causing massive blocking from multiple providers. In fact, SpamHaus even mentions that a lack of bot prevention is considered a negative indicator for sites or senders.

How Can You Spot Sign-Ups From a Bot?

The first tip off is usually you’ll see a large influx of new sign ups in a short period of time. If you see this, you’ll want to start digging into the new sign ups to see if you can determine their legitimacy.

Sometimes, you can manually spot the addresses—like a string of nonsensical letters and numbers that’s longer than most people would normally use. Other times, you can usually see patterns in the sign ups, like a large number of sign ups coming from the same country, IP address, or using the same information in sign up fields.

However, when you have thousands of addresses, it would be a painstaking effort to review them all manually, and you still can’t be sure they’re not the result of a bot attack. This is why prevention is key.

Bot Prevention Best Practices

Adding any of the following techniques will help cut down the number of bad addresses you attract to your lists. What’s better is if you can implement a number of these concurrently. Bots do get “smarter” by adapting to some of the techniques used to root them out, so adding additional layers of protection isn’t a bad idea to stay ahead of the game.

• Double/Confirmed Opt-In – This is when a user signs up and then your brand sends a confirmation email to the subscriber asking them to click a link to confirm their selection. Only after they confirm the subscriber is added to the list. Because this process requires a confirmation step, many bad addresses do not get added as a result.
• ReCAPTCHA – We’ve all run into this one. It presents some sort of image/text/numbers that must be identified and submitted, which can usually only be completed by humans. Because of the wavy text or blurry images, it helps obfuscate the details enough that a computer/bot would have a harder time completing.
• Hidden Sign Up/Honey Pot Fields – This one is not as noticeable from the subscriber’s standpoint, which I guess is the point, right? This method entails adding some hidden fields in the form that one would only see on the source code of the page. As many bots use the source code of pages, they won’t know this is a hidden field and will populate it with information. As a result, any entry that has information in this hidden field will be considered a bot and can be purged.
• Adding a Test Question or Simple Math Problem to the Sign Up Form – Because bots are used to using predefined fields like Name, Email Address, etc. They have a hard time adapting to dynamic fields like this. These types of fields would cause a bot to fail or get the answer wrong because it can’t do the “thinking” required to complete it successfully.
• Third-Party Validation – Third-party services can do email validation in real time when users sign up to ensure the email addresses are valid. Based on the settings you can choose to reject failed addresses which prevents those users from getting added to your list. We partner with both Everest and Kickbox for list validation services.

How do I Get Rid of Bots Already in My List?

If you’ve been attacked, you’re going to need to do some investigating to see if you’re able to identify the bad addresses. As previously mentioned, you can review the sign ups for commonalities like IP address, country origin, sign up date/time frame affected, or other details you may have captured. Usually, using a combination of these, you should be able to identify a large portion of the bad addresses and remove them.

You can also try using a list validation company, like our partners Everest and Kickbox, which may be able to clean up some of the bad addresses or bad domains. However, keep in mind that none of these companies can clean 100% of your lists all the time so it’s not a magic pill, but they might be able to clean out another chunk of them if you’re having trouble identifying these addresses based on the information you do have.

Finally, once you’ve been able to hopefully clean up a good portion of the list using the above methods, the remaining addresses can be resolved using standard engagement segmentation. Unfortunately, this will be the slowest method but this should allow the bad addresses to fall off over time as you focus on subscribers that open, click or otherwise engage with your email. If you aren’t currently using engagement-based segmentation (based on opens, clicks, purchases, website visits, etc,) it would be a good idea to start doing this.

Bye Bye Bots

As you can see, removing bots from your list can cost you a fair amount of time and effort but it can be done methodically. Not to mention, you don’t get to plan for when it might happen. This is why it’s important to implement some practices discussed above to prevent them from getting on your list in the first place. While it might take a little more effort initially, the time saved once it happens will be well worth it.

Looking to learn more about deliverability? Connect with Iterable’s Professional Services team or, if you’re not yet an Iterable customer, schedule a custom demo today.

The post Securing Sign-Up Forms From Bots appeared first on Iterable.

Now, you might be thinking, “I thought we were consolidating? Why would I need more tools?” While this is a great point, the tools that exist may be able to replace existing capabilities in your tech stack that are currently spread across multiple tools. Selecting new tools could involve removing others. Enter: the all-in-one marketing platform.

But, before we dive into what features to look for in an all-in-one marketing platform, let’s first do a quick recap of what evaluating your stack involves.

A Refresh on Looking Inward: MarTech Stack Architecture

A large chunk of the first article in this series was dedicated specifically to auditing your own martech stack—hence, looking inward.

As part of that section we explored martech stack architecture, which covers how you could think of the structure of your stack. We broke architecture down into four sections: data, design, delivery and optimization, where data is the foundation that every other aspect of your stack should be built on.

An example of how to think about martech stack architecture. Data is the foundation and the rest of the stack is layered on.

After understanding your martech stack architecture you can find the overlapping capabilities. Maybe you have data tools that also have campaign creation capabilities, for example. So, rather than having to layer on additional tools, you could aim to find all-in-one solutions that can fill the gaps in your stack without adding multiple “onboarding” tasks to your team’s already-full to-dos.

What is an All-in-One Marketing Platform, Really?

Because enterprise brands use an average of 120 martech tools, having a tool that magically performs all 120 necessary tasks sounds too good to be true. And honestly, that’s because it is. While one martech tool can’t replace all other tools in your stack, the right tool can perform a majority of necessary tasks and seamlessly integrate with other tools to create an all-in-one effect.

So, without further ado, here are three features to keep in mind when looking for your next all-in-one marketing platform.

1. Partner Ecosystem

When searching for a tool to help streamline your martech stack, make sure the options you’re considering have an established network of partners. These can be technology partners or solutions partners that help your marketing team achieve their goals.

Iterable’s partner ecosystem, for example, has over 190 partners—including technology partners like Hightouch, mParticle, Snowflake, and Talon.One, and solutions partners like, Indicia Worldwide, Mammoth Growth, Ragnarok, and Tinuiti. These partners integrate with and have deep knowledge of our platform, enabling Iterable customers to deliver the best experiences to their customers.

2. New Feature Releases

When a martech tool doesn’t evolve, that’s a big red flag. Expectations change, the marketing landscape changes, business needs change so, with all of that, martech tools should change. While no one tool can do truly everything, tools can evolve to include new capabilities to align with the needs of marketers.

AI, for example, is a relatively new technology that has gained a lot of attention as of late. In one of Iterable’s recent releases, we introduced our AI Suite which includes Frequency Optimization, Copy Assist and Next Best Action. All of these features were created to help marketers deliver individualized experiences, at scale.

3. Customized Customer Support

All-in-one goes beyond the technological capabilities and partnerships, it also includes the support you get from the team behind the platform. Each brand is different and what your brand needs or what your platform instance looks like may be very different from another brand. Therefore, the support you receive needs to be personalized to how your team uses the technology.

Our customers have praised Iterable’s support on multiple review sites. One quote from an Iterable customer on G2 reads, “Iterable has a top notch customer support system, they truly feel like an extension of our internal team. They go above and beyond to make sure our problems are solved and that our needs and wishes are met. We feel like our opinions can truly make an impact on the roadmap of the product. They help finesse our customer journeys and even give us new ideas and ways to optimize, too.”

Explore Your Options

Obviously when we share the features to look for in an all-in-one marketing platform—surprise—Iterable has all of these features. But in all seriousness, removing our biases, it’s important to consider your options when consolidating your martech stack. Think about what tools you already have in your stack and how any new tools can help both consolidate and integrate into your existing stack.

At the end of the day, consolidating your martech stack is supposed to help your team improve efficiency and save you time and money. Once you develop your shortlist of potential technology solutions, consider how easy it will be to learn, how scalable it is, how customizable it is, and what the reporting and analytics looks like. Set yourself up so you don’t need to reconsolidate further in the future.

For a quick guide through the initial steps of consolidation and maximizing your martech stack value, be sure to check out our downloadable checklist.

The post MarTech Stack Consolidation Part 2: Looking Outward appeared first on Iterable.

But as anyone who was raised on Marvel movies knows, with great power comes great responsibility. While AI-powered campaigns promise efficiency and precision, they also bring forward a set of ethical considerations that cannot be ignored.

So how can companies strike the right balance and ensure they’re not overstepping the bounds of their customer communications?

Here are five things to consider when confronting the ethical quandaries of AI in marketing.

1. Put Privacy at the Forefront

AI advancements don’t change the fact that consumer privacy protections are required for all technology solutions. This means prohibiting the use of AI to generate any information that falls within the scope of personal information as defined under applicable data protection laws. This includes, but is not limited to, any sensitive, financial, or health information relating to any individual.

Action item: For any AI-powered solution you’re considering adding to your martech stack, request documentation of the technology vendor’s AI terms of use. This legalese should detail additional restrictions on AI use according to the vendor’s privacy policy, so you know exactly what the responsibility is of all parties involved.

To learn more about Iterable’s approach to data and privacy, check out the Activate session featuring our AI team.

2. Prioritize Transparency

Consumers deserve to know when they’re engaging with AI marketing campaigns, whether they’re interacting with a chatbot to receive style recommendations, or browsing algorithm-fueled content catered just for them.

To practice openness about their use of AI in marketing, companies are ditching the black box for the glass box with open technology that shares deeper insights into the data powering its marketing predictions to better inform marketing practitioners.

Action item: Make sure your AI solutions enable an open, transparent experience. Iterable is clear about which tools are AI-powered, as outlined in our Spring Release. From Frequency Optimization to Copy Assist, we share which features use AI. Additionally, Iterable provides transparency to marketers through Explainable AI for features like Brand Affinity and Predictive Goals by providing insights into the data driving these AI-tools.

3. Ensure Oversight With Ethical and Regulatory Guidelines

While no federal legislation exists in the U.S. regarding the use of AI in marketing, legal and regulatory scrutiny is expanding at the state and local level, as well around the world. The EU, for example, defines the levels of risk an AI technology could pose to its citizens, ranging from minimal to unacceptable.

Remaining compliant with AI regulations is only the first step toward creating a more ethical relationship between marketers and the AI tools they use. Companies should also lead the charge by drafting a set of ethical guidelines for their AI marketing practices, which spells out principles on non-manipulation and fairness. Third-party oversight can also take the form of establishing a dedicated ethics board to ensure a business keeps its AI campaigns above aboard.

Action item: Review the latest consumer data privacy protections that govern your business with your legal and security teams. The more your team is educated about AI’s role in marketing, the better your brand can foster trust with its customers.

All Iterable products are reviewed and assessed by our counsel team to ensure they comply with regulatory requirements. Additionally, all customer data is kept separated and not intermingled.

4. Audit Regularly for Potential Biases

New York City recently implemented a law that requires employers that use AI as part of their hiring process to perform an annual audit of their recruiting technology. But it’s not just HR professionals who should be cognizant of biases, all organizations share the responsibility to mitigate bias in their AI practices.

With the rise of AI popularity, we’re seeing new applications across various industries and with these new applications comes new opportunities to introduce biases. While AI can increase efficiency and help complete once-manual tasks faster, marketers need to be aware of the potential for introducing biases and should aim to mitigate them along the way.

Action item: Commit to running a regular audit of your AI campaigns to ensure you’re working with a sizable enough data set to reduce bias. Additionally, focus on use cases and interest-based variables that aren’t centered around demographic-based data.

5. Determine When AI is Most Beneficial

To make sure you maintain trust with your customers, determine when to use AI tools for your campaigns and identify the use cases where AI is needed to meet campaign objectives. AI and personalization aren’t synonymous, but they can be used in conjunction to turn mass communication into one-on-conversations at scale.

For instance, a cart abandonment reminder is an example of overt personalization because it explicitly references a user’s action. But, it may not require AI if it’s automatically triggered after a certain time frame post-abandonment. Using send time optimization for a newsletter, on the other hand, would be putting both personalization and AI into action since the time the newsletter is sent is based on when a user is most likely to engage.

Action item: After you’ve determined your objectives for each AI campaign, you can decide which methods of personalization are best suited. For a deeper dive on personalization tactics, you can download our playbook with four steps to make individualization seem like magic—not manipulation.

Striking the Right Balance With AI Marketing

It is more than possible to harness the power of AI in marketing without compromising on your team’s ethics and integrity. The key is to protect consumer privacy, prioritize transparency, ensure oversight, audit against bias, and be mindful of your personalization strategies. When in doubt, always build AI campaigns that put your customers first.

After all, growing your business should never come at the cost of your brand’s reputation.

If you’re looking for a trusted technology partner that’s dedicated to ethical, explainable AI, schedule a custom demo of Iterable’s AI suite today.

The post Ethical Considerations of AI in Marketing appeared first on Iterable.

Enter: email authentication. Robust email authentication mechanisms ensure the legitimacy of emails, combat spoofing, and significantly impact email deliverability. In this post, we’ll dive into the world of email authentication, demystify spoofing and phishing, review the technical intricacies of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols, and highlight the role email authentication plays in optimizing deliverability.

Understanding Email Authentication

Email authentication is a comprehensive process that combines various mechanisms to achieve two crucial goals: verifying the sender’s identity and ensuring the message’s content remains unchanged. Security layers work together to form a digital passport that certifies an email’s authenticity and guarantees that it has not been tampered with during transmission.

These protocols and mechanisms are put in place to ensure the email is actually being sent by whom it claims to be. Without proper authentication, emails become susceptible to spoofing, phishing, and other malicious activities.

Decoding Spoofing and Phishing

Spoofing is a deceptive practice where an email sender disguises themselves as a legitimate source to deceive recipients. This involves forging the sender’s address or domain name to create an illusion of authenticity.

Phishing is the act of baiting individuals to reveal sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, credit card details, or social security numbers. Fraudsters often cast their phishing nets through cleverly crafted emails that seem genuine. These fraudulent communications aim to create a sense of urgency or excitement, enticing victims to click on links or share personal information. Once the bait is taken, the phishers gain access to valuable data, often leading to identity theft, financial loss, or unauthorized account access.

Spoofing and phishing are like two dancers performing a sinister tango. Spoofing provides the deceptive appearance of legitimacy—think of it as the fancy costume the cybercriminal wears. Phishing, on the other hand, takes advantage of this disguise by crafting deceitful communications that exploit the false sense of trust established through spoofing. The masquerade mask of spoofing hides the true intentions of the phisher, making it much harder for victims to spot the danger lurking beneath.

Organizational Email Authentication

The rapid rise of email-based attacks has highlighted the need for businesses to employ robust email authentication methods. As more sophisticated techniques emerge, relying solely on recipient judgment to differentiate between genuine and malicious emails becomes inadequate.

Email authentication adds layers of security that bolster trust, safeguard personal information, and preserve the integrity of digital interactions in an effort to make email safe for both senders and recipients.

There are three primary layers that are responsible for email authentication – SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

SPF (Sender Policy Framework)

The Basics: We’re not talking about sunscreen here. SPF is a DNS (Domain Name System) based email authentication method that leverages TXT records (a text-based DNS file). Domain owners and organizations specify which IP addresses are authorized to send emails on their behalf by including them in a published TXT record. When an email is received, the recipient’s email server extracts the sender’s domain from the email header and queries the DNS for the TXT record. It then compares the source IP of the incoming email with the authorized IP addresses in the SPF record.

How it Works: If the source IP is on the authorized list, the SPF check passes, indicating that the email is legitimate. If the source IP is not on the list, the SPF check fails, suggesting that the email might be fraudulent. Recipient email servers utilize the SPF check results to determine whether the email should be delivered, flagged, or rejected.

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)

The Basics: DKIM utilizes public-key cryptography to verify the integrity and authenticity of an email’s content. When sending an email, the sender’s domain generates a unique private key and attaches a digital signature to the email’s header or body. The corresponding public key is published in a TXT record associated with the sender’s domain.

How it Works: Upon receiving an email, the recipient’s email server retrieves the public key from the DNS and uses it to decrypt the digital signature. The server then calculates a hash of the email’s content and compares it with the hash value derived from the decrypted signature. If the hashes match, the email’s content is verified as unchanged since the signature was applied, confirming the email’s authenticity.

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance)

The Basics: DMARC builds upon SPF and DKIM, adding a layer of policy enforcement and reporting. Domain owners publish a DMARC record that specifies their preferred email authentication policies. This record also includes an email address to receive authentication failure reports.

How it Works: When an email is received, the recipient’s server checks the sender’s domain for a DMARC record. If one is found, the server proceeds to authenticate the email using SPF and DKIM. If the authentication fails, the recipient’s server checks the DMARC policy. Based on the policy, the server takes actions such as delivering the email, sending it to the spam folder, or rejecting it outright. Additionally, the server generates a DMARC report detailing the authentication results, which domain owners can use to monitor and analyze their email traffic.

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC complement each other, creating a defense against email-based threats. Organizations can publish SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to provide a comprehensive email authentication framework. Email service providers (ESPs) use these records to verify sender authenticity, email integrity, and adherence to authentication policies, ultimately influencing email deliverability.

The Role of Email Authentication in Deliverability

Email authentication plays a pivotal role in deliverability, influencing how ESPs handle incoming messages. When emails are not authenticated, ESPs might classify them as suspicious or fraudulent, leading to lower deliverability rates.

The authentication process impacts deliverability in the following ways:

1. Reputation and Trust: Authentication mechanisms like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC contribute to building a sender’s reputation. ESPs use this reputation to gauge the trustworthiness of incoming emails. A positive reputation increases the likelihood of emails landing in the recipient’s inbox.
2. Spam Avoidance: Unauthenticated emails often raise red flags for ESPs. These emails are more likely to be flagged as spam or even blocked, leading to dismal deliverability rates. Authenticating emails helps them bypass these filters and reach the intended recipient.
3. Spoofing and Impersonation Prevention: Email authentication acts as a shield against domain impersonation and email spoofing, where malicious actors mimic trusted sources. This ensures that recipients only receive emails from the actual sender, fostering a safer email environment.

In a landscape where email has evolved into a vital marketing channel, email authentication has remained the backbone of the industry for security and deliverability. By authenticating emails, organizations can safeguard their communication channels, foster trust among recipients, and fortify their email security strategy against the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats and trickery.

Looking to learn more? Connect with Iterable’s Professional Services team or, if you’re not yet an Iterable customer, schedule a custom demo today.

The post The Crucial Role of Email Authentication appeared first on Iterable.

The good news is you’ve come to the right place. Iterable has a blog full of cross-channel customer experience best practices, but we get it if you’re strapped for time and can’t read through our entire archive.

That’s why, in this post, we’ve summarized our top seven tips. Here’s how to create an exceptional cross-channel experience and build lasting brand loyalty.

1. Consolidate Your Martech Stack

Like a closet bursting at the seams, having hundreds of marketing solutions is a waste that clutters your life and drains your dollars. On the other hand, consolidating your martech stack is like curating an elegant capsule wardrobe. Consolidation is crucial to reducing redundancies, increasing ROI, and scaling the impact of your team.

We break down the details of conducting a martech stack audit, but the first step is to take inventory of all the platforms you have and align them to the use cases they support. Once you identify any glaring overlap, you can set out to remove any unnecessary tools.

2. Reevaluate How Your Customer Data is Managed

The foundation of any martech stack architecture is the data layer—meaning how customer data is collected, stored, accessed, and activated. The issue for most companies is sitting on a wealth of information but not knowing how to put it to good use. This is what we refer to as the Activation Gap, and it leads to poor customer experiences.

Following the previous tip and eliminating redundancy will streamline the flow of data, but it’s important to dig deeper and implement a modern customer data management strategy. It can be challenging to weigh the benefits of a cloud data warehouse, a reverse ETL solution, or CDP, but with Iterable’s partner ecosystem, we can help you find the right technology for your business.

3. Automate the Entire Customer Journey

An ideal cross-channel customer experience involves sending relevant messages through the right communication channels at the perfect moment. But this isn’t possible if you haven’t determined what these crucial channels, messages, and moments are. After all, you can’t automate what you haven’t outlined, so it’s key to plot the full customer journey, from initial awareness all the way through to first purchase and long-term loyalty.

Lifecycle mapping and customer journey automation go hand in hand, so to make things simple, we have a personalization playbook that walks you through the four key steps to creating the ideal customer journey: defining your customer, identifying the problems they face, positioning your brand as the solution, and calling the customer to action.

4. Prioritize a Mobile Cross-Channel Customer Experience

The mobile experience is like an umbrella containing multiple communication channels, so connecting them seamlessly is crucial: SMS, push notifications, in-app messages, and the mobile inbox. This also involves optimizing email and browser notifications for mobile devices and even adding QR codes to direct mail or in-store promotions.

Improving your company’s mobile experience means fostering conversations with customers that are immediate, informative, intimate, and individual. Going mobile-first doesn’t necessarily mean building an app from scratch—although if your brand already has one, we have plenty of tips to successfully grow your app user base. There are countless ways to increase mobile engagement, including adding embedded messages to a mobile-optimized website, setting up smart opt-in permissions, deploying actionable push notifications, and enhancing your SMS/MMS strategy. Start by executing the tactics that will make the biggest impact on your users.

5. Train Your Teams on AI Marketing

There are a ton of misconceptions and myths around AI marketing, but true innovation isn’t achieved without experimentation. Before the summer ends, brush up on the basics by studying the five 5Ws of AI marketing and start creating your own repository of great examples of AI-powered campaigns across all your channels.

Once everyone on your team has a better understanding of what’s possible with AI, they can brainstorm how to apply it to develop more creative messaging for your brand, whether it’s copy generation for subject lines or automatic decision-making on when to send an email or text.

6. Put Your Sends on Autopilot

Cross-channel marketing has moved way beyond sending a message at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday. If you’re going to orchestrate a breadth of channels—like email, SMS, mobile push, web push, direct mail, connected TV, and more—the last thing you need is to manually determine when, where, and how often to communicate with customers.

Thankfully, with Iterable’s AI optimization of send time, channel, and frequency, you can let AI decide based on the historical engagement data of each individual user.

7. Continue to Test and Experiment

As our name suggests, we’re big fans of iteration. It’s not recommended to just set-it-and-forget-it when it comes to cross-channel marketing—customer behavior is always in flux. After implementing the previous tips, carve out time for testing, whether it’s running an A/B split on a holiday promo or trying out a new email design. Don’t let your customer experience go stale, especially in the lead-up to the biggest shopping season where standing out among your competitors is mission-critical.

This list of cross-channel customer experience tips could be a mile long, but the very best tip we can share is just to get started. Grab that seasonal caffeinated drink of your choice, and charge ahead on bringing a joyous experience to your customers, wherever they are.

Want our personalized recommendations on how to design the best cross-channel customer experience for your business? Reach out to schedule a custom demo of Iterable’s all-in-one customer communication platform today.

The post 7 Tips for Designing the Best Cross-Channel Customer Experience appeared first on Iterable.

It’s apparent that incorporating AI in marketing may offer a lot of perks, but understanding these tools’ abilities and boundaries should always remain top priority. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the pros and cons of AI in marketing and provide tips for effectively implementing AI into your marketing strategy.

The Benefits of AI in Marketing

The advantages of AI in marketing are noteworthy and include improved efficiency, greater personalization capabilities, and enhanced decision making.

Increased Efficiency

According to Forbes, “AI and Machine Learning are on track to generate between $1.4 Trillion to $2.6 Trillion in value by solving Marketing and Sales problems over the next three years, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.” Through automating processes such as data analysis, campaign development, and certain content creation tasks, marketers get back more time to focus on things requiring human discernment—like strategy implementation—which leads to increased performance of the business’s marketing activities overall.

The time saved with AI content creation tools like Iterable’s AI-powered Copy Assist, gives you alternative copy suggestions for everything from subject lines to SMS copy based on your initial prompt, allowing you to innovate quickly and focus on strategizing the lifecycle journey instead of spending excess time on smaller tasks.

Enhanced Personalization

Customer data is extremely valuable for brands because it can be used to create personalized content and offer recommendations that meet individual requirements. This, in turn, leads to higher engagement levels which help improve marketing performance over time. As McKinsey points out, “Over three-quarters of consumers (76 percent) said that receiving personalized communications was a key factor in prompting their consideration of a brand, and 78 percent said such content made them more likely to repurchase.”

Personalization comes from insights, but data analysis can be time consuming. Products like Iterable’s Brand Affinity use AI to enhance personalization and expedite customer data analysis. Brand Affinity tells you where your brand currently stands with each customer and helps identify the most appropriate journey for a customer based on their sentiment towards your brand..

Improved Decision Making

AI marketing tools provide accurate data analysis and aid marketers in making sound decisions regarding their strategies. Using historical customer data, AI takes the “guess” out of guesswork and makes it easy for your team to make decisions that have impact.

There are AI marketing tools that help with even the seemingly mundane decisions, like when to send a message. With Iterable’s Send Time Optimization (STO), for example, marketers can send messages to their customers at the time of day that is most likely to garner engagement from each of them—individually. Without such a tool, marketers could be sending messages at times that receive no engagement. AI allows every decision in the marketing workflow to be optimized for best results.

The Challenges of AI in Marketing

When considering AI for marketing, it is important to also recognize any associated issues and potential risks that come with its implementation. Marketers should aim to maintain data protection and safety, avoid algorithmic favoritism, and find a balance between automation and human creativity.

Data Privacy and Security

When utilizing AI in marketing, companies must ensure the protection of customer data and compliance with relevant regulations to uphold consumer trust. To safeguard information, organizations should implement measures such as encryption technology, access controls, and regular audits.

Regulations—like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), for example—need to be observed when using AI in marketing too.

Algorithmic Biases

Navigating the intricacies of algorithmic biases in AI is crucial for both ethical and business reasons. These biases, often reflecting existing societal prejudices, manifest in various forms—be it racial and gender biases in facial recognition, or discriminatory practices in healthcare resource allocation.

CEOs and upper management need to adopt a multi-disciplinary approach, focusing not just on the technical aspects but also on organizational responsibility, to effectively mitigate these biases. After all, a biased AI system could lead to poor business decisions and reputation damage, aside from perpetuating societal inequities.

Balancing Automation and Human Creativity

While AI excels in data analysis, pattern recognition, and even automating rote tasks, it falls short in understanding nuanced human emotions, crafting compelling narratives, and making ethical judgments. These are realms where human creativity is irreplaceable.

Striking a harmonious balance between the computational power of AI and the creative insights of human marketers ensures not only optimal returns on investment but also a marketing strategy that resonates on a deeply human level with your target audience.

Tips for Successfully Implementing AI in Marketing

For a successful implementation of AI in marketing, brands need to start small and slowly scale up while balancing technology with human input for best results. Investing in training and education can guarantee that your organization achieves their desired objectives when incorporating AI into their strategies.

Start Small and Scale Up

Businesses can benefit from starting with small AI projects to gain an understanding of the potential and pitfalls associated with its applications. Assess different solutions that align best with your needs and identify reputable vendors who specialize in AI marketing efforts.

For example, start by integrating AI into one facet of your operations—say, channel optimization. To begin, use AI to understand through which channel your messaging will resonate most effectively. Starting small enables you to tailor your efforts, learn how adding AI can change your strategy, and help determine where human involvement is essential.

Balance AI With Human Input

Brands that seamlessly weave AI automation and human creativity together can craft strategies tailor-made for their specific objectives. The automation provided by AI serves as a powerful accelerator, allowing for quick data analysis, customer segmentation, and even content creation. However, it’s human expertise that adds the essential layers of nuance, emotional intelligence, creativity, and ethical considerations. These human elements ensure that marketing campaigns are not only ethical and efficient but also deeply resonate with consumers on an emotional level.

As I shared in my Activate Summit presentation, “AI technology can complement and enhance the work of marketers, but it cannot replace them entirely.” In essence, the ultimate goal should be to create a symbiotic relationship between AI and human input.

Invest in Training and Education

Training and education related to AI in marketing is important for harnessing the technology’s capabilities. The Marketing AI Institute, for example, provides employees with resources so that their teams can use AI technology correctly, allowing them to stay competitive. By investing in training opportunities, brands will experience improved output from their marketers as well as enhanced customer satisfaction levels. Leveraging advanced AI within marketing environments helps ensure continual success overall.

It is Worth the Hype

AI in marketing is clearly worth the attention it receives as it can be used to streamline operations and boost personalization and decisions. According to I Mean Marketing, “Marketing teams with high performance are averaging seven different uses of AI and machine learning today and 52% are planning to increase their adoption this year.”

It’s important for brands to consider all potential facets of deploying this technology—like data security measures, protecting against algorithmic prejudices, and balancing automation with human creativity. There’s a learning curve as we all become more familiar with the available technologies, but there’s no better time to start learning than right now.

To learn more about Iterable’s AI capabilities, check out our AI Hub and schedule a demo today.

The post Is AI Marketing Worth the Hype? appeared first on Iterable.

In a world that’s becoming increasingly more data-centric, Apple is prioritizing data privacy and giving users the ability to control the data they share. As Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering said, “We are focused on keeping our users in the driver’s seat when it comes to their data by continuing to provide industry-leading privacy features and the best data security in the world.”

With these privacy and security updates, however, come some changes that may shift the way marketers operate. One change in particular—Link Tracking Protection—will impact how marketers collect customer data. Don’t panic. Remember, iOS updates are meant to improve the overall customer experience, so let’s talk link tracking.

Revisiting URL Structure

We’ll get to the new link tracking protection update, but let’s rewind a bit. Links can hold a lot of information besides the basic URL. Within a link there are often URL parameters, which, as defined by Google, are “way[s] to pass information about a click through its URL.” Google breaks down parameters into two buckets: 1) content-modifying parameters and 2) tracking parameters.

Content-modifying parameters are link additions that send users to a specific page on your website or personalize the content or behavior of the page. Tracking parameters, however, are added to the end of a URL and can track user behavior across websites and marketing channels. These tracking parameters will be impacted by the iOS17 Link Tracking Protection update.

What is the iOS17 Link Tracking Protection Update?

With this new release, Apple announced Link Tracking Protection which, in a couple of key scenarios, will strip away the parts of the URL that Apple identifies as tracking parameters.

These scenarios include:

• Any time you share a link with another person via Apple’s “share” menu in Messages or Mail apps
• Any time a user clicks a link via Safari Private Browsing (This includes browsing around, or clicking a link in email or messages when Safari Private Browsing is enabled.)

This example shows the tracking parameter being stripped off of a link. Source: Peel.

While Apple says that the links will continue to work, and typical Urchin Tracking Modules (UTMs) won’t be impacted, removing the tracking parameters will prevent things like cross-site and click tracking at an individual level. Which, as a cross-channel platform powering billions of personalized conversations across multiple channels, prompted us to dig in further to understand what these changes mean for our community.

There’s No Need to Panic

Deep breaths. In reality, there’s no need to panic. After all, not all parameters from all sources are being stripped and your existing links won’t break. Apple seems to be focused on large, egregious tracking offenders like Facebook, Tiktok, and Google. Yes, the list of parameters that Apple will strip could expand, but for now, there seems to be a select group. Plus, these are only impacted on Apple-related software—Apple Mail, Message App, and Safari Private Browsing.

And—even better news—at this point, Iterable’s links don’t seem to be impacted by this update. So, if a customer opens an Iterable link via Apple Mail, for example, Iterable’s tracking parameters are still intact and Iterable customers can still see click metrics.

To protect against link parameter stripping in the future, we’re taking proactive measures behind the scenes. We, of course, will continue to closely monitor the situation, but for now everything is business-as-usual.

Rethinking How to Measure Success

Link Tracking Protection is just one more step in Apple’s continued trend of taking action to give consumers more control over their data. The industry saw the visibility and reliability of open metrics impacted in iOS 15, and now with these latest moves we are seeing Apple move farther down the funnel into click data.

As this trend continues, it is becoming more and more important that marketers start to shift their thinking. Rather than relying fully on what some may consider “vanity metrics”—like clicks and opens—marketers may need to start incorporating more down-funnel conversion metrics into their assessment of success to understand the impact of their efforts.

Consider what is leading customers to convert once they’ve reached your website or app. What metrics can you look at that really tie to a return on investment (ROI)? Consider conversion metrics like conversion rate, leads generated, purchase, order value, etc., and engagement events like streamed, favorited, or other events that drive retention.

You can also start to lean into first- and zero-party data more to better understand your individual customers. First-party data would include any behavioral data or purchase data you have collected implicitly from a customer interacting with your website or app. Zero-party data is data you collect explicitly from customers—so think surveys, quizzes, customer support chats, and so on. This data can help inform marketing strategies in ways beyond just link tracking.

The Silver Lining of iOS 17 Link Tracking

Apple isn’t releasing these new features to spite marketers. Apple is only keeping the customers’ best interests at heart and, at the end of the day, that’s what we, as marketers, should strive to do as well. Continuing to rely on data from clicks and opens isn’t going to push us to be better, but change will. Rather than seeing each customer as a click, each customer should be viewed as an individual.

Emails should contain content that provides value, not clickbait. SMS messages should be a two-way conversation that gives both the customer and the brand insight into the person on the other end. Personalization is about more than just a number on a dashboard and the iOS 17 link tracking protection update is just another step towards recognizing customers as individuals.

To learn more about the iOS 17 link tracking update and what it could mean for you, reach out to your Iterable Customer Success Manager or, if you’re not an Iterable customer yet, schedule a demo today.

The post iOS 17 Link Tracking Protection: What it Means for Marketers appeared first on Iterable.

In the world of modern marketing, success is often written in the stars—both figuratively and literally. Just as celestial bodies influence our lives through the cosmos, the right Marketing Technology (martech) stack can guide your brand’s journey towards prosperity. Imagine harnessing the power of your horoscope to craft a tailored martech constellation that aligns with your destiny. In this blog post, we’ll explore the mystical connection between building a martech stack and the guiding influence of horoscopes.

Aries (March 21 – April 19): The Fearless Trailblazer

Dynamic and energetic Aries, your fiery spirit calls for a martech stack that matches your pace. Embrace flexible marketing automation tools that adapt to your swift decisions. From personalized email campaigns to real-time mobile engagement, automation helps you blaze a trail while staying true to your individualistic flair.

 Aries as a Marketer: Agile 
 Recommended Product: Catalog 

Embrace the dynamic cosmos of data-driven marketing with Iterable’s Catalog , your agile access point where customer’s behaviors and demographics converge to create a constellation of personalized content across the vast reaches of cross-channel harmonization.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20): The Enduring Stalwart

Taureans thrive on consistency and reliability. Channel this energy into your martech stack by investing in marketing automation platforms that nurture customer relationships and maintain a steady flow of engagement across channels. Just as you nurture relationships, marketing communication platforms nurture customers, fostering a harmonious growth trajectory.

 Taurus as a Marketer: Consistent 
 Recommended Product: Studio 

As the steadfast Taurus, your unyielding dedication to nurturing customer engagement finds its cosmic resonance in the ability of Iterable Studio to cultivate personalized connections. Harness the energies of behavioral and demographic data to create campaigns that bloom with authenticity, fostering lasting connections for consistent engagement across email, SMS, in-app, web push, direct mail, and more. engagement

Gemini (May 21 – June 20): The Adaptable Communicator

Chatty and versatile Gemini, the stars urge you to embrace the SMS cosmos. Craft a martech mosaic by intertwining SMS tools that allow you to curate conversations across mobile devices. Your ability to adapt to trends and engage in lively discourse will propel your brand into the digital spotlight. Geminis excel in communication, and so should your martech stack.

 Gemini as a Marketer: Flexible 
 Recommended Product: SMS 

Embrace your innate Gemini gift for trendy and chatty communication as the stars align to amplify your marketing strategy with the dynamic force of Iterable SMS. Your flexible nature effortlessly weaves conversations that sparkle with trendsetting charm, tap into the zeitgeist, and forge connections that dance through the digital cosmos, bridging the gap between you and your audience.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22): The Intuitive Nurturer

Empathetic and instinctive Cancer, your connection with data analytics tools enhances your emotional intelligence. By deciphering consumer behavior patterns, you can provide personalized experiences that resonate deeply. Let the stars guide you towards insights that foster authentic connections.

 Cancer as a Marketer: Empathetic 
 Recommended Product: Brand Affinity 

Embrace the intuitive essence of Cancer as you harness the lunar currents of customer behavior. Infuse your marketing communications with Iterable’s real-time responsiveness and Brand Affinity to understand each customer’s emotional resonance, nurturing connections that ebb and flow harmoniously, creating a tidal symphony of engagement that truly understands and speaks to the hearts of your audience.

Leo (July 23 – August 22): The Charismatic Performer

Dramatic and expressive Leo, your creative prowess shines. From dazzling visuals to captivating copy, your martech stack empowers you to craft narratives that draw the spotlight while connecting with audiences. Step onto the digital stage and let your content roar with power and originality.

 Leo as a Marketer: Creative 
 Recommended Product: Copy Assist 

Roar with confidence, mighty Leo, as you harness the celestial prowess of Iterable’s AI-powered Copy Assist to amplify your creative brilliance, igniting your messages with a majestic flare that captivates hearts and commands attention. Your creativity makes your marketing campaigns shine as brilliantly as the sun itself, leaving an indelible mark on all who behold your majestic communications.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22): The Detail-Oriented Perfectionist

Virgos excel in precision, a trait that aligns perfectly with marketing optimization. Utilize supercharged experimentation and A/B testing tools to meticulously refine your campaigns, ensuring every detail contributes to a harmonious whole.

 Virgo as a Marketer: Meticulous 
 Recommended Product: Experiments 

Channel your Virgo precision and analytical prowess as you embark on a stellar journey of Iterable’s Experimentation and A/B testing tools, fine-tuning your marketing campaigns with meticulous care, ensuring every detail aligns flawlessly to create a symphony of perfection that resonates with your audience’s desires, leaving a trail of efficiency and effectiveness in your celestial wake.

Libra (September 23 – October 22): The Harmonious Diplomat

Balanced and diplomatic Libra, the cosmos encourages you to synchronize and balance your marketing efforts. Integrate marketing orchestration tools that align your campaigns seamlessly, creating a symphony of experiences for your audience. Let your brand’s voice resonate harmoniously in every touchpoint.

 Libra as a Marketer: Equanimous 
 Recommended Product: Channel Optimization 

The harmonious spirit of Libras shines through when determining the best channel to reach each individual. A Libra’s equanimity is best on display when utilizing Iterable’s Channel Optimization for cosmic equality in channel distribution, letting customer data determine the destiny of each message, sending them only where the customer most needs them.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21): The Strategic Detective

Mysterious and insightful Scorpio, predictive analytics tools unveil hidden truths. Dive into the depths of consumer behavior, revealing insights that guide your strategic decisions. Your martech stack becomes a crystal ball, allowing you to navigate the marketing realm with foresight.

 Scorpio as a Marketer: Intuitive 
 Recommended Product: Predictive Goals 

Embrace your Scorpio intuition and delve into the mystical depths of Iterable’s Predictive Goals, allowing you to unveil the hidden currents of customer behavior with uncanny accuracy, unlocking the secrets of what they’re most likely to engage with. Just as your sign’s insight pierces through veils, this tool empowers you to anticipate desires and forge connections that resonate at a soul-deep level, cultivating a magnetic allure in your marketing endeavors.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21): The Adventurous Explorer

Embrace the spirit of adventure in your marketing endeavors. As you set forth on your stellar journey, remember that your path is not determined for you. You have the ability to create a martech stack that fits your needs through the power of strategic integrations. Expand the scope of your stack to forge connections far and wide and expand your reach like shooting stars across the universe. Your boundless curiosity propels your brand towards unexplored territories full of optimization.

 Sagittarius as a Marketer: Energetic 
 Recommended Product: Partner Integrations 

Let the stars guide you towards the integrations that make sense for your business needs. Iterable’s extensive partner ecosystem creates a choose your own adventure style stack that enables you to achieve your wildest dreams. By adapting your stack to your—and your audiences’—needs, you’ll shoot arrows of personalized engagement straight into the hearts of your customers, forging connections that span horizons and ignite a fire of deeper, meaningful interactions.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19): The Ambitious Achiever

Ambitious and disciplined Capricorn, the stars guide you to find just the right cadence with your customers. Craft a martech framework that fine-tunes user experiences, driving visitors towards becoming loyal customers. Your commitment to achieving results paves the way for consistent growth.

 Capricorn as a Marketer: Disciplined 
 Recommended Product: Frequency Optimization 

Capricorn, as you climb the ladder of success, remember the celestial wisdom of Iterable’s Frequency Optimization. Just as you find balance in your pursuits, this tool ensures your customers receive tailored engagement—not overwhelming, but precisely the right amount. By being disciplined in your messaging rhythm, you build steadfast connections, mirroring your sign’s patient and practical approach to achieve lasting engagement that resonates at the perfect frequency.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18): The Innovative Visionary

Innovative and forward-thinking Aquarius, you see modern in-app messaging as an accelerator, not bogged down by the mundane. Your messages stay current with real-time, dynamic content based on customer behavior. You look to move quickly and keep a forward trajectory, so your tech stack operates efficiently without stopping for constant maintenance.

 Aquarius as a Marketer: Inventive 
 Recommended Product: Embedded Messages 

Let the currents of innovation flow as you embrace the cosmic power of real-time eligibility by using Iterable’s Embedded Messages in your marketing endeavors. Just as your sign seeks to break boundaries of what’s possible, this tool allows you to dynamically exchange messages based on shifting user behavior. Embrace the innovative currents as you craft personalized, seamlessly integrated communications that resonate with customers, easing interactions, preventing disconnects, and amplifying client involvement through real-time relevance both on web and in-app.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20): The Creative Dreamer

Pisceans are creative souls with high emotional sensitivity. Your martech stack should be a canvas for your imagination and desire for connection through storytelling. Use the customer data in your integrated tech stack to design an immersive customer experience, weaving enchanting narratives that resonate deeply with your audience.

 Pisces as a Marketer: Imaginative 
 Recommended Product: Templates 

Embrace the flowing currents of creativity, Pisces, as Iterable’s Templates provide you with a structured foundation, allowing your imaginative ideas to navigate smoothly, enhancing your efficiency and guiding your messages to captivate your audience’s emotions. Let these Templates be your artistic canvas for creativity across audiences to weave messages that transcend the mundane and evoke a symphony of emotions in your customers’ hearts. Just as your sign embraces the ethereal and imaginative, these Templates become your palette, splashing vibrant strokes of joy across the digital world, leaving a trail of enchanted connections.

Embracing Your Celestial MarTech Journey

Just as horoscopes offer guidance for our personal lives, aligning your martech stack with your horoscope can bring a sense of intentionality and purpose to your marketing endeavors.

By integrating the right technologies that resonate with your astrological traits, you’ll navigate the cosmic currents of the marketing universe with confidence, creativity, and success. Remember, the stars may guide, but it’s your innovative spirit that charts the course.

The post Navigating Your Marketing Destiny: A MarTech Stack Horoscope appeared first on Iterable.

When incorporating AI into your marketing efforts, you can unlock insights to help better understand your audience and their preferences, leading to an improved customer experience.

However, it can be hard to know where to start, and, depending on your organization, you will have different priorities and needs for your AI solutions. At Iterable, we focus on three main categories for AI: message optimization, generative content creation, and AI-driven audience insights. Let’s break down each of these capabilities.

If you are still in the process of starting your journey with AI or looking to take your current plans to the next level, review Your Checklist for Unlocking the Power of AI to identify your next steps.

AI Optimization

As marketers, we spend days, weeks, and months building great campaigns and we want them to deliver as much impact as possible. But, we’re always faced with the age-old question, “ How can we break through the noise and stand out to our audience?”

Leveraging Iterable AI solutions focused on message optimization makes it easier to cut through the noise and message them on the right channel, at the right time, and at the right cadence.

Send Time Optimization

Is your customer a person who likes to read their emails as soon as they wake up? Or do they prefer to review them at the end of the day? Knowing these preferences about your customers can help you send your message at the time they are most likely to engage.

Iterable’s STO has an easy checkbox to opt in to using the tool.

With Iterable’s Send Time Optimization (STO), AI determines the optimal time to send a message based on analysis of historical engagement data. To implement this optimization into your delivery, simply select the checkbox when configuring your message delivery settings. You can also layer in experimentation for STO so you can prove the effectiveness across your user base.

Channel Optimization

You’ve got a limited-time offer for customers and want them to go to your website to claim it as soon as possible. Where are they more likely to engage? Email? SMS? Knowing customer preferences for channels can help ensure that you are connecting with them on channels that matter most to them while also avoiding overwhelming them with similar messaging across all channels.

Iterable’s Channel Optimization tile allows AI to decide a user’s preferred messaging channel within a user journey.

With Iterable’s Channel Optimization, you can add a tile into your customer journey which uses AI to determine the preferred messaging channel across email, push, or SMS. This tool takes what used to be a complex configuration across multiple message types and reduces it down to a single tile selection.

Frequency Optimization

As marketers, we have to take into consideration the balance between under and over-messaging—and that number can vary depending on the person and their preferences.

With Frequency Optimization, AI determines the ideal frequency for each user, based on the range you provided.

With Iterable’s Frequency Optimization, marketers can set their preferred capping range per channel, and then AI determines the ideal quantity of marketing messages a user should receive in a given week or month across all of your channels, on an individual basis, while still maintaining the ability to override for high-priority messaging.

AI Content Generation

In recent months, it seems you can’t escape news of the latest innovations in generative AI. The technology is moving at a quick pace and we are still watching the various use cases unfold across industries.

At Iterable, we’ve made investments to include generative AI tools within our platform to allow for faster iteration of copy creation. We’re excited to see the potential applications expand in the future. Is there a potential Copy Assist x Experimentation feature for one-click variant copywriting in the works? Who knows. *Wink*

Copy Assist

Writer’s block is a real thing—just ask me how long it took me to write this blog post. With Iterable’s Copy Assist, we are giving marketers a creative “jump start” on their copywriting efforts.

With Iterable’s Copy Assist you can easily generative creative copy for your cross-channel campaigns.

Copy Assist will appear within Campaign Creation & Templates Campaign Creation and, as you write in your prompts for copy like subject lines or SMS messages, you will receive alternative copy suggestions based on your initial prompt, allowing you to get creative and innovate quickly.

Next Best Action

Sometimes campaigns don’t perform as expected and who wouldn’t want a second chance to make it right?

With Next Best Action users can easily retarget less engaged audiences with pre-populated recommendations.

With Iterable’s Next Best Action, past campaigns are analyzed by AI within Campaign Analytics, and marketers are then provided with a slate of the next best actions to take. This could include sending to new AI-generated audience lists, content recommendations, insights, and more. From there, with one click you can generate a whole new campaign and get a second at-bat for this campaign.