Categories
Marketing

E-Commerce is Fundamentally Changing the Way Marketers Think

With the drastic expansion of e-commerce, brick and mortar businesses have taken an obvious shift towards online retail. The increase in e-commerce shopping has transformed the way marketers must strategize.

E-Commerce marketing is the act of driving awareness and action toward a business that sells its product or service electronically. E-Commerce marketers can use social media, digital content, search engines, and email campaigns to attract visitors and facilitate purchases online.

 

E-Commerce is Becoming the Mainstream 

E-commerce has made the shopping experience instantly available to consumers. Studies have found that Millennials today make over 54% of their purchases online. Another recent study found that in the United States alone, over 17 million online transactions occurred on Amazon within just two days during the annual Prime Day event. In China, Singles Day shopping in 2018 shattered the previous year’s record, making $30.8 billion in one day, which is a 27% increase year over year.

As e-commerce continuously grows, it’s important that businesses utilize online shopping as part of their business strategy. With the switch to online shopping, businesses have the ability to track and measure the digital footprint left by consumers.   Collecting and examining this data helps marketers to determine the best future strategies. 

 

The Entire Customer Experience is What Matters

When it comes to tracking online shopping trends, marketers can get hung up on individual metrics such as shopping cart abandonment or bounce rates. While it is important to track individual metrics in order to increase numbers, potential customers can drop out of the buying process at any point in time. It is crucial for marketing professionals to study the entire part of the customer transaction in order to pinpoint what areas of the website may need improvement. Examining the conversion rate of each individual point of a customer’s online interaction will help marketers locate metrics for the customer’s entire experience. 

In order to analyze the impact on conversion rates, it is important to initiate tactics like A/B tests and quality assurance. This will help marketers to discover at what point in the buying process are they losing the interest of the consumer. Gathering feedback from the customer will also help with determining possible adjustments to the online shopping experience. A great example of collecting this information is by using online surveys to ask consumers why they did not want to proceed with the purchasing process. 

Nathalie Torres, the data director of Inamoto & Co, explains that “decades ago, brands were judged on product alone. Today, brands are being judged by the entire customer experience—and it takes smart design thinking to get this right.”

 

Categories
Design

Email Marketing Design Trends to Help Reach a Larger Audience

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your audiences. It’s important that your email stands out to your subscribers and speaks a clear and interesting message. An effective design can grab the attention of your reader and increases the chance for them to read your content.

Intelligent Design

Intelligent design within emails refers to the combination of design with technology.  This allows your subscribers to interact within their emails. Creating embedded surveys within an email allows readers to interact within their inbox, without getting redirect to another page.

Typography

Integrating creative and original typography into your email will help it to stand out. Using different fonts will also bring different parts of the email to life. Branding ideas use different typography to highlight certain offers within an email to capture the reader’s attention and lead them to make a purchase.

Videos

Based on a recent study, embedding videos in an email is the latest trend that has proved to increase the email open rate by 19% and the click-through rate by more than 50%. Also, including video content within an email is an interesting way to communicate your message to the reader. Videos grab the attention of the audience while also easily getting your point across. Viewers are more drawn to video content rather than reading through text. A video clip also saves time for the reader and the sender by explaining a concept or product in a quick and interesting way. Including videos in emails is an effective marketing trend that has proven success.

AMP Powered Emails

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) allows the viewer to stay within an email rather than being redirected to a new web page. Last year, Gmail (Source) announced the addition of interactive emails powered by AMP. AMP powered emails allow information to be updated in real-time, which means that an email can always stay up to date with its content. This is a valuable marketing trend that will drastically change email effectiveness.

Visuals

Visuals have gone to the next level. The new trend is creating 3D images. Using tools such as Adobe Dimensions CC helps designers to create innovate images with a realistic look. This content wows the reader and brings a who new design perspective to the email that your subscribers will love. 

 

Categories
Projects

Spectruss Wins 2018-2019 American Advertising Federation of Chattanooga ADDY Award

Spectruss competes in AFF of Chattanooga’s American Advertising Awards, the largest and most representative competition in the advertising industry, and lands a Silver ADDY Award and a National Client

 

Last night, the American Advertising Federation of Chattanooga hosted its annual American Advertising Awards at The Edney from 6:30 om – 8 pm. Individuals of the local advertising and media community came out to celebrate the best of online/interactive, film/video & sound, print, cross-platform and out-of-home.

At the Gala, 12 Gold, 23 Silver, and 21 Bronze were awarded to a wide range of local advertising agencies, in-house marketing departments, and freelancers that participated. Entries were judged based on creativity, originality, and creative strategy. A panel of four judges from across the nation reviewed and scored the work.

Spectruss was awarded a Silver ADDY Award for their work on their “Randy the Safe Guy” viral video that received over a million global views. The video was distributed through YouTube and Facebook and featured on Reddit, Digg, Info Wars, and thebigshow.com.

The award-winning video was created for Liberty Safes of Chattanooga, a client of Spectruss. The goal was to create a strong, rough around the edge video to promote the business online while overcoming Facebook’s ban on the sale and promotion of guns and accessories. As a result, the Spectruss team created an entertaining commercial featuring “Randy the Safe Guy” and devised a clever way to get around the ban – censor any mention of the word “gun.”

Soon after the viral success, Liberty Safe’s National Company reached out to Spectruss to produce similar campaign commercials for their nationwide networks.

The American Advertising Awards is a three-tiered advertising creative competition with the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition for creative excellence. Entry in the local Ad Club competition is the first step towards winning a national ADDY. At the second tier, local ADDY winners compete against winners from other local clubs in one of 15 district competitions. District ADDY winners are then forwarded to the third tier, the national stage of the American Advertising Awards.

So… stay tuned on Randy the Safe Guy and Spectruss’s adventure towards fame!

Categories
Events

When in Doubt, Flat Out- Spectruss Racing Results

After months of preparation, rebuilding the Spectruss RZR and the long 2,000-mile journey to Las Vegas, the results are in from the brutal test out in the dessert from last Sunday’s Mint 400.

 

Sam started just after 6:45 a.m.,  59th on the grid. After 3 nearly sleepless nights, Sam and his crew had the car running perfectly. After lap 1, Sam and his co-driver, Cory Wilson, pitted and replaced the left rear drive axle, due to a malfunction.

After an underpowered first lap due to drive train issues on the left side, Sam started lap 2 at around 9:35 a.m. At around mile marker 33, Sam entered a rough part of terrain which sent the car airborne, bucking the car sideways and rolling it over at around 60 mph.

Sam and Cory and the Spectruss Team completed around 130 miles of the mint 400 before an official DNF (did not finish) was declared at around 10 a.m.

Watch the full action below.

 

Categories
Events

Spectruss is Competing in the Largest Off-Road Race in the U.S.

A Chattanooga-based marketing agency takes their talents off-road

 

Chattanooga, TN – March 5th, 2019– Spectruss, a full-service marketing agency based in the Chattanooga, TN area, is competing in the most celebrated, prestigious, and challenging off-road race in the United States, the Mint 400, in Las Vegas, Nevada, March 10th at 6 a.m. Spectruss is only one of the three teams competing in the race east of the Mississippi.

Known as “The Great American Off-Road Race”, this annual four-hundred-mile marathon between the top off-road racers in the world includes over five hundred and fifty race teams in twenty-four different classes of off-road vehicles. The four-wheel racing with the Pro UTV Classes and more limited race vehicles will be held Sunday, March 10 at 6 a.m., with pre-race festivities beginning earlier in the week on Fremont Street East in downtown Las Vegas. Click here to view the full schedule. The world famous Mint 400 has always attracted celebrities and racers from around the globe. This year Formula One Champion Jenson Button, NASCAR Racer Casey Mears, and two-time UFC Champion Cain Velasquez will all join the field of racers.

“We’re very excited to embark on this all-new adventure in racing and to showcase who Spectruss is to all these outdoor enthusiasts. Spectruss is all about new challenges, but this is a big one. I couldn’t be more excited,” said Sam Silvey, President of Spectruss.

When the racing gets underway, the event will be live streamed online here, http://themint400.com/live/,  and will later air on national TV. Last year 250 thousand viewers tuned in for the live stream and the event amassed over 300 million impressions on social media. This year they expect those numbers to grow and ABC will air the event on TV, reaching 80 million homes nationwide.

For more information, go to spectruss.com/racing.

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ABOUT SPECTRUSS

Spectruss is a full-service creative agency based out of Chattanooga, TN area that specializes in brand identity, web design, paid media, e-commerce, videography/photography, digital marketing, public relations, and more. It has distinguished itself by creating beautiful and cutting edge work, fueled by market research and data analysis, that produces a guaranteed return for their customers.

For more information about Spectruss, its clients, and services, visit https://spectruss.com.