No one likes being rejected. That feeling of inadequacy, confusion, sadness – it’s the worst!
Of course, when Facebook is doing the rejecting, marketers risk losing revenue, engagement and growth opportunities too. While we can’t help with your personal relationships, we can help clarify why Facebook might reject your ads.
A Facebook ad rejection is frustrating, and its root cause isn’t always clear. Ad qualifications can be obvious (like avoiding implied nudity and adult content) or complicated (like avoiding copy implicating a user in any way).
Get help navigating this evolving ad channel – dive into Facebook Advertising Do’s and Don’ts!
Whereoware’s Client Partner, Chad Van Lier, sat down with technology partner Optimizely to talk through our client Cuisinart’s digital evolution and website, built on Optimizely DXP.
Chad and Haylee Ash, Optimizely’s Senior Manager of Global Partner Marketing, share the behind-the-scenes story of how Whereoware built Cuisinart an award-winning e-commerce website in just 6 months, project goals and strategy, and why investing in a digital experience platform (DXP) is crucial to stay ahead of the ever-changing digital landscape.
“We’re in the business of helping clients achieve their strategic goals and helping them solve their business problems. To do that, you need a digital experience platform, it’s your foundation and centerpiece.”
– Chad Van Lier
Watch the full interview below:
Want to hear more about this project or Optimizely DXP? Let’s connect.
Big news! We’re so proud to announce that our clients Cuisinart and Yamaha both took home major accolades at the 18th annual Marcom Awards!
Since 2004, the MarCom Awards have honored excellence in marketing and communication. Each year, around 6,500 print and digital entries are submitted, and Whereoware clients Cuisinart and Yamaha are among the winners for 2021.
Cuisinart Wins Platinum for Digital Marketing
Cuisinart worked with Whereoware to develop and execute a new Welcome Promotion to increase revenue through first-time orders from their core line of products.
Compared to the non-offer email, the promotional email generated a 92% increase in revenue and 1297% increase in products purchased. We saw an increase in email engagement as well with a 54% increase in email signups and 24% increase in open rate.
The campaign received the MarCom Platinum Award in the Strategic Communications – Digital Marketing category for the integrated approach which grew Cuisinart’s prospect list and increased online revenue by motivating prospects to convert.
Yamaha’s Gold-Winning Integrated Campaign
Whereoware and Yamaha created a strategic campaign for March Mental Health Awareness Month with the goal of increasing email engagement.
The email campaign centered a Spring Cycling Spotify playlist, generated using data-centered demographic profiles.
Email open rates increased to 12% and click-through-rates increased to 37% for this campaign.
For doubling their email open rates and generating unprecedented engagement for Yamaha, the campaign received the MarCom Gold Award in the Strategic Communications – Integrated Marketing category.
These accolades are indicative of Cuisinart and Yamaha embracing digital transformation, as well as Whereoware’s high standard for strategy and execution, and we’re honored to share these awards with our all-star clients!
As marketers, we’re no stranger to experimentation. Putting varying campaigns and strategies into place to see what’s working and what’s not is just another Tuesday in the office.
What we could all improve upon is marrying digital experimentation with company culture, which can often fog up maximizing your efforts and seeing a real return on investment. 45% of decision-makers invested in experimentation last year, but are they seeing real results?
Read on to learn four common mistakes companies make when investing in experimentation and how you can avoid them.
1. Executive Thumbs-Up
One of the biggest hurdles to surpass is from the top. That’s right, executive decision-makers honing in on an old-school mindset that further silos their teams and causes stagnant growth.
Failing is a part of the process, failing is fine, you need to fail to be able to pivot and make better decisions. A failed experiment is a lesson learned, after all. There’s a taboo surrounded by this concept that needs to be broken down, but that starts at the top and with a shift in mindset.
Instead of fearing failure, embrace it. Let your teams experiment on everything from web design, layout, copy, messaging, themes – there’s no end! Learn from what works and apply it to future endeavors, and tailor or shift what doesn’t.
Encourage experiments and simplify the brainstorm-to-approval process. Removing corporate bottlenecks is crucial to seeing any experimentation success.
2. Strategic Framework is Key
Experimentation without goals and a consistent framework is for the birds. How can you move forward and make the best decisions for your company without purposeful data at your fingertips?
Ensure you have your goals, audience segments, key performance indicators, and transparent next steps ready to go. There is a time and a place for throwing caution at the wind and spaghetti at the wall, but it must be grounded in goals and data.
3. Don’t be Afraid to Dive in
Hesitancy will arise. When you’re in the process of shifting your… process, it’s hard not to let gut instinct take over, but try and resist. Bear in mind, it’s about optimizing from the lessons you learn during these experiments to continue driving incremental improvements.
Dive in and keep learning, iterating continuously to reap the rewards.
4. Demolish Team Silos
Experimentation isn’t just for your marketing team. When shifting your culture to this degree, you’ll want to pull in other teams to make sure the changes you’re making are also improving other operational areas.
Encourage open dialogue, a shared knowledgebase, and constant feedback to ensure silos are actively being broken down for the betterment of your teams and the company as a whole.
Experimentation is The Future
Digital Experimentation is here to stay. Aside from the obvious benefits of improving the accuracy of your strategic decisions, experimentation improves the customer and team experience.
That’s a win in our book. Check out the full article in CMS Wire and contact us with any questions on Digital Experimentation!
Whereoware is proud to have a majority woman workforce, particularly in the male-dominated tech industry. We’re recognizing our WOW women and their achievements in both tech and leadership, and sharing their thoughtful insight for the next generation of women in the workplace.
In this edition of WOW Women in Technology, we’re chatting with Radha Jujjavarapu, Whereoware’s Development Manager, Post-Production.
Tell us about your leadership style and philosophy.
I am a big believer in “teamwork.” Everyone on the team should have equal opportunity. Opportunity creates team belonging and accountability.
I respect my team, listen to their ideas, and lend them a helping hand when needed. In our fast-changing, complex business environment, it is very important to retrospect and correct mistakes, while giving team members support and empowerment.
What inspires you most about being a leader?
For me, it all starts with helping others. I have a passion for helping people and solving problems. The ability to make a difference – be it big or small – in anything we do for our team members and clients motivates me every day.
What do you think is the most significant barrier to female leadership?
Many women settle back into a socially evolved role around mid-career for various personal and family reasons. This restricts their movement in demanding leadership positions.
However, with the advent of technology, many constraints and barriers of the past may cease to exist in a not-too-distant future. Therefore, the only limitation that may remain is mindset.
Women often have a natural instinct to be caring, which helps earn people’s trust. Women seeking leadership positions frequently must work harder to earn attention and trust of their male counterparts and teams.
I am very proud to mention that at Whereoware, our Web operations is an almost all-woman team.
Our ability to juggle multiple things (homes, families, careers, friends) helps us work with multiple clients patiently in a timely manner. For many, late night feeds and diaper changes now translate to addressing the critical tickets during non-business hours.
It speaks volumes that Whereoware leadership empowers an all-woman team to head the one of the most important operations of the company.
What is the most valuable lesson you’ve learned in your career as a female leader in the competitive tech industry?
Your voice is valuable — and not just because you’re one of the only women in the room.
I’ve often found it difficult to speak my mind at work, especially when I was just beginning my career. I was surrounded by men who had been trained to believe their voices were powerful and that their opinions were worth something. Though my work ethic and skills speak for themselves, I’ve also learned that voicing your opinion, even when it may be uncomfortable, is critical to advance your role as a female leader in tech. This is advice I’d give to every woman in technology, regardless of your skills or experience.
How has your background prepared you for success in the industry?
I have my bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communications. The idea of building web applications fascinated me and led me to pursue my master’s in Information Systems.
I started as a developer and worked on any and everything that came my way to build expertise in all the areas. It really helped me identify my core strengths and areas of interest. Working with different kinds of companies, work cultures, and people along the way has helped build my interpersonal skills.
What do you wish you had known before embarking on your career in tech?
Finding a career that we truly enjoy can be difficult, as most of us will experience a job that we don’t like, or that isn’t suitable for us. However, keep trying – the right workplace is out there! We spend most of our lives at work. If we aren’t happy in our role, this will undoubtedly have an adverse effect on our personal life.
I wish when our teachers taught us to solve puzzles in childhood, they’d have mentioned that life is like an infinite piece puzzle. We just need to find the right piece for that point in time, and keep solving it till the end.
Part 1 of this series – Social Media Strategy 101 – covered social media basics, platforms, and best practices to grow engagement and success. Now, we’ll dive into the fun stuff: social media analytics.
One of the most validating (and nerve-wracking) parts of marketing is going back to the data, measuring performance, and immediately seeing whether your approach achieved desired goals.
The numbers never lie, but instead, reveal where your efforts succeeded or fell short, giving you the insights necessary to pivot your marketing strategy.
This is particularly true in social media marketing, where you can test new tactics, themes, copy, images, and other variables very quickly and at low investment, and learn from their success to apply to your overall marketing strategy.
Today, we’re sharing the social media metrics to prioritize and steps to perform an accounts audit – something you’ll want to do at least once yearly to ensure your social media channels are hitting performance goals.
Our guide to auditing and measuring social media performance will cover:
Social media is largely a top of the funnel channel, serving the supportive, storytelling aspect of digital marketing. Over 4 billion users are on social media worldwide and the adoption rate in 2020 alone increased 12%. Plus, more than 40% of consumers use social media as a discovery engine.
Social needs a lot of attention, but that attention pays off in customer engagement, brand awareness, audience reach, and social listening (the opportunity to have your ear-to-the-ground and hear what customers say about your brand, products, or competitors).
Today, we’re comparing the most popular social media platforms, sharing best practices, and providing a list of handy tools used by our Whereoware social media team to drive social media engagement and success. Let’s go!
Arguably one of the most important social media platforms for B2B businesses and jobseekers, LinkedIn is an excellent network for professionals to connect.
According to a HubSpot analysis, LinkedIn’s lead conversion rates are 3x higher than other major ad platforms, including Google Ads. Four out of 5 members drive business decisions, and LinkedIn’s audience has 2x the buying power of the average web audience, making this platform a favorite amongstmarketers.
LinkedIn is the first-place potential customers and candidates will check out your company, so grab attention by sharing behind-the-scenes peeks into your culture, photos, open positions, upcoming events or awards, project updates, and other news.
These posts should embody your brand and reflect your businesses’ mission, goals, or accomplishments to drive excitement for both jobseekers and customers.
Driving traffic to your website is one thing, but converting visitors is a feat. WordStream reported the average website conversion rate is only 2.35%, with top-performing websites coming in at 5.31%. This tells us that putting the spotlight on conversion rate optimization (CRO) can make a world of difference.
Whereoware VP of Client Success and Marketing, Randi Mohr, caught up with Customer Think to discuss how marketers can harness CRO to improve their website success. Catch the highlights below!
Improve your homepage experience by creating a clear navigation, highlighting contact and FAQ information, and making the site visually pleasing. Don’t forget to include clear calls-to-action (CTAs)!
Tailor individual landing pages to further guide customers through the funnel. Whatever your desired action, ease-of-use and clear indication is key here. Keep your webforms on the shorter side, requiring information that won’t be a struggle for users to divulge (understand that requiring things like a phone number can reduce conversions by up to 47%).
Product pages should deliver every piece of critical information a customer needs to make a purchase, such as descriptions, specifications, warranty information, quality photography, and user reviews to inspire trust and push customers across the finish line. Bear in mind that quality user-generated-content (UGC) can increase conversions 161% – 207%.
Tap into optimizing Core Web Vitals to ensure your website is loading fast, keeping in mind that 1/3 of users tend to bounce if the site takes more than a few seconds to load.
Mobile experiences are unsurprisingly on the rise compared to desktop browses, with about 50% of all ecommerce sales in 2020 taking place on mobile devices. Be sure to review your website on mobile to make the experience as equally compelling.
It’s table stakes to invest in a Secure-Sockets-Layer (SSL) certificate to further enhance the security and consumer trust on your website. Payment security is a big reason customers abandon, so instilling trust by using a popular payment method like PayPal or Apple Pay is a great strategy.
Testing and pivoting strategy over time is one of the most effective ways to see what works best for you and your consumers. Set upA/B tests and follow the data to further optimize your site and rake in the conversions.
Boost website success through conversion rate optimization. Remember to put yourself in the consumer’s shoes, how would you ideally be pushed through the funnel and to the finish line when making a purchase? For the full article, visit Customer Think.
Acoustic Campaign is a comprehensive digital marketing tool enabling brands to design and automate multi-channel campaigns.
With Acoustic Campaign, marketers can manage their audience database, automate outbound messages, move leads through profitable sales funnels, measure performance, and make the 1:1, personal connections that customers increasingly demand.
Acoustic Campaign has robust capabilities to help businesses of all sizes achieve customer acquisition, retention, and maximization goals. In our first of two Comprehensive Acoustic Guides, we’ll cover:
Want a head start? Check out our on-demand webinar, Acoustic Campaign Features You May Be Missing.
In this on-demand 30-minute webinar, we share our favorite (but all-too-often overlooked) email, automated programs, personalization, and reporting tips available in Acoustic Campaign and other automation tools.
Watch the webinar for tips and tools to work smarter (not harder) and get the most out of your go-to marketing automation platform.
Maximize Your Audience: Intro to the Acoustic Database
Acoustic Campaign makes acquiring new leads and nurturing customers simple. Import contact lists directly into your database or combine incentives and webforms to automatically capture new prospect information (like incentivizing prospects to sign up for your email list or download a piece of content).
While setting up your database, you must determine how Acoustic matches an individual in the database. Your goal is to capture important information and activity about each individual interacting with your brand into robust customer profiles.
Setting the unique identifier enables Acoustic to match up and add to an individual’s profile, not add duplicates to your database. For Whereoware, we use Email as the unique identifier to match individuals, to ensure we don’t end up with duplicates in our database.
Next, customize your Acoustic database to capture critical insights about your customers. Acoustic captures pre-set system fields, like Opt-In date, automatically for every contact added to the database.
Your team can define additional field types to capture extra customer data for marketing outreach. For example, you may want to capture a lead’s Industry or phone number, and you can easily add these new fields to the Acoustic database. Adding new fields or editing field names in the future is easy.
Once you’ve customized your database, you’re ready to add contacts.
It’s no surprise that Automation and AI (Artificial Intelligence) are growing as the front runners of modern marketing and data analysis. Accelerated workflows, reduced manual efforts, data-driven decision-making, and impossible possibilities are the name of the game in 2021.
IBM reported that 80% of companies are using automation software or plan to in the next year. Likewise, 50% of respondents in a recent McKinsey survey stated that their companies have integrated AI in at least one business function.
Whereoware CEO, Michael Mathias, chatted with CMS Wire on the adoption of AI and automation in the marketing world. Read on for a few of our favorite highlights.
MarTech Evolves to Peak Optimization
When AI and automation are harnessed by talented marketers bent on streamlining strategic decisions and optimizing processes, the only way forward is up.
Leveraging automation,predictive modeling, easy to follow analytics, AI recommendations and experimentation, MarTech is swiftly evolving into an all-in-one powerhouse, allowing marketers to execute, analyze, and pivot strategy at the turn of a dime with much more efficiency.
Harnessing the power of AI in this capacity expedites the decision-making process and proves time and time again that the future is now.
