Location-based marketing creates many opportunities to reach consumers based on the specific geographic area they are physically present in. Geofencing is a type of location-based marketing that establishes a virtual fence around a pre-defined geographical area to attract mobile users. Today, geofencing is used in social media, human resources, telematics, cybersecurity, and marketing.

How does geofencing work?

Geofencing uses a combination of technologies to track customers’ locations:

-GPS

-Bluetooth

– Beacons

Once the virtual boundary is dawn around a physical location and a user enters that set location, a triggered response is distributed. Dependent upon the device and technology, marketers can prompt mobile push notifications, send targeted ads on social media, initiate text messages (SMS) and deliver location-based marketing data. Ever notice the food recommendations you receive once you enter a certain location? That is geofencing.

 

The Intertwined benefits of geofencing for marketing

 

Increase local sales

If one of your marketing goals is to drive foot traffic to your store and increase local sales, geofencing is your answer. In fact, it was reported by salesforce that fifty-three percent of shoppers visited a specific retailer after receiving a location-based alert. Therefore, it is an extremely effective way to target users while they are at the set target location. In addition, this is a valuable tool for driving customer loyalty by targeting individuals who have previously visited your business with promotional and loyalty offers.

 

Tracking Conversions and measuring ROI

Local sales can be difficult to measure. However, with geofencing, there are a number of metrics you can measure, including sales, how long they were in the store, and how often they visit. Reports also indicate the performance of the campaign for each geofence, so you can see which one garnered the highest CTR or the lowest CPA, for example. All this insight can be valuable information that adds depth to your analytics.

 

Customer Personalization 

Another benefit of geofencing is the data you obtain in order to personalize customer offers. It gives you demographics about the local population, including what kind of offers interest them and got them in your store. If you look at the purchase history provided and realize customers’ wants and needs, you can alter your promotions accordingly.

 

Increase brand awareness with concentrated spends

Better engagement leads to more effective marketing spend. With geofencing, you can reach the audiences most likely to take action, which means less budget spend on less relevant consumers.

 

The holiday shopping season is upon us and with the right strategy in place, it can bring in as much as 30% of a retailer’s total sales in just one season. One of the biggest misconceptions about holiday marketing is that you need to get your ads up and running just in time for Black Friday. In reality, a recent study showed over 40% of US consumers plan to begin their holiday shopping before November, and a solid 31% plan to start before September or earlier.

Start early

Campaigns that start in October see a 7% increase in impressions, a 12% decrease in average cost-per-click (CPC) and a 20% decrease in average cost-per-impression (CPM) compared to other holiday months. These stats prove that by starting early, you’ll be able to reach both new and existing customers with strategic holiday messaging at a lower cost, which will positively impact your total ROI. It is also important to remember that the earlier you run your holiday campaigns, the better because of the less competition you’ll likely see. As the holiday season ramps up, so will the competition. However, you’ll be ahead of the game and can focus your budget on bringing your new high-intent users down the funnel to convert.

Keep them running

While October is the best time to start running your campaigns, this doesn’t mean that you should skip out on other holiday months. In fact, engagement is highest in November and December. Last season, advertisers saw a 9% increase in click-through-rate (CTR) in November and a 15% increase in CTR in December. This means during the two months, your brand needs more meaningful, engaging content and a clear understanding of your customer’s journeys.

The rise of mobile marketing

As content consumption habits shift further online and into mobile, so do shopping habits, and it’s crucial to build omnichannel engagement programs that meet consumers where they spend their time. Based on a recent study, this year consumers are planning to spend a majority of their holiday budgets online and via mobile devices this year. For the five-week holiday period from Nov. 21st- Dac. 26th in 2017, mobile shopping accounted for 41% of purchases. In fact, on Thanksgiving, mobile shopping accounted for more purchases than those that came from a standard desktop computer. Beyond that, cross-device campaigns feature some of the best performance when compared to regular desktop or social media campaigns. Plus the average CPC is 63% cheaper on mobile than it is on a desktop for the average holiday campaign.

Tapping into social media for success

One of the best ways to take advantage of a mobile audience is to make sure that you’re running your ads across social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. In fact, AdRoll customers saw a 400% increase in CTR on Instagram when compared to their display campaigns, and a 54% increase in CTR on Facebook.

Personalize the holiday shopping experience

Make sure you are planning your social media strategy around a user-centric approach. Try to think like your customers, figure out the platforms they use, and produce content they want to see and engage with. It’s not a secret that video marketing is a major trend to exploit. Providing something of value is often the key to success, and 77% of consumers are more likely to watch an online video ad if they would receive a discount off a holiday purchase.

Vary your promotions/sales

If you want to keep consumers interested, you’ve got to add variety to holiday promotions. Start by deciding how many different types of sales or promotional events you want to offer during the holiday shopping season. Here are a few ideas that you can use for different types of promotional offers during the holiday shopping season:

• Provide early access to those on your email list.
• Offer “VIP” shopping opportunities to your most loyal customers.
• Create a sale for different product or category of products each week.
• Ramp up your sales percentages as it gets closer to the holidays.

What are you doing today in order to increase your visitor to sale conversion?

E-commerce business is changing faster than ever before, along with customers taking more time to think about their purchases. Shopping cart abandonment is an online retailers’ biggest challenge due to potential lost revenue, but luckily marketers can help solve this problem with cart abandonment emails. According to SalesCycle, approximately 75.6% of online shopping carts were abandoned in 2018. Cart abandonment is when online shoppers on your e-commerce site add items to their shopping cart, and then leave your site before converting (completing the purchase). The thing is, ¾ of people who abandon their carts usually plan to come back, so if you’re not reminding shoppers with abandoned cart emails, you’re missing a huge opportunity to recover lost sales.

 

How to Create Abandoned Cart Emails that Convert

 

Timing

The time distribution of your abandoned cart email is crucial if you want prospects to complete their purchases. The sooner you send it, the easier people will remember who you are and why they added the items into their cart. If you wait too long, you lose that shopping urge that caused the shopper to add the item to their cart in the first place. So make sure to distribute your email within 24 hours of them exiting your checkout so the prospect’s near purchase is still fresh in their mind.

 

Use Converting Subject Line

Subject lines have the potential to grab the attention of the customer and increase open and click rates. It’s the first thing prospects will see, so if your subject line isn’t well thought out, all your hard work won’t be read. The most effective subject lines are those that are straight to the point and evoke emotion like excitement, humor, fear of missing out, etc. So have fun and be creative with winning back customers. Another important factor in grabbing attention is to make it feel personal. You can play around with subject lines to see which have the highest open rates by using A/B testing in your campaign. Here are a few great subject line suggestions:

• “Hey Joe, you forgot something.”
• “Baby come back!” (the song)
• “Don’t let your favorite items sell out”  

Include Abandoned Product

In your email’s content, make sure to include the exact product along with the product image, size, color, pattern, etc in the hero of the email. This is a great way to remind them of what they are missing out. Using visual marketing to show interested shoppers which items they’ve abandoned makes the email more personal and immediately grabs their attention again.

 

Eye-catching CTA button

Bold and easy-to-see CTAs can direct the attention of the shopper towards the desired action you want them to pursue. In this particular situation, the action is to finish buying the product, so make it easy for them to complete the action a button text like:  “Continue Shopping” or “Snatch it!”

 

Present an Incentive

Who doesn’t love discounts or free shipping? One of the most common reasons users abandon their shopping carts is because of extra costs like shipping, tax, and fees. With that in mind, try offering an incentive in your abandoned cart emails that are only exclusive to them. This could be the final push they need to complete their purchase.

Effective emails that convert can also include scarcity that informs readers of the items they placed in the shopping cart have a high risk of selling out if they continue to wait. When deciding on your incentive, it’s recommended to test two incentives in your emails to find out what your audience responds to best.

Offer Customer Support

Another common reason for abandoned shopping carts is because of a failed/poor website or checkout flow experience. This includes long/complicated checkout process, website errors, slow delivery, not enough payment methods, or couldn’t see total order cost up-front. So, with each cart abandonment email, give the opportunity to provide customer assistance or guidance.

 

Include Customer Reviews and Testimonials

If visitors are in doubt when completing their purchase, a credible and honest review might influence a conversion. Go through your testimonials and place them at the bottom of your email.

 

At Spectruss, our powerful abandoned cart automation workflows implement these tips and more to remind your customers what they’ve left behind and encourage them to complete their purchase. With this abandoned cart messaging system, our retail clients reconnect with customers who navigate away from their shopping carts, recapture sales, and generate more revenue.

 

Instagram has more than 400 million users that share 80 million posts daily, making it a compelling platform for advertisers. The platform itself says its ads can help drive awareness and increase customers among a highly engaged audience. Instagram offers photo ads, video ads, carousel ads, and stories ads.

 

Reasons to Use Instagram Ads

 

Audience Growth

The key reason brands advertise on Instagram is the efficiency of this marketing channel. It’s one of the fastest growing social media platforms, with over 250 million daily active users in June 2017 according to TechCrunch.

Constantly Adapting

In Instagram’s monthly updates, you will find that the platform is updated regularly to provide a better user experience and making advertising even more efficient.

Attention

Instagram is a highly engaging social media platform that helps your brand receive a lot of attention and engage with new users.  According to Pew Research, 51% of Instagram users access the platform daily, and 35% say they look at the platform several times a day.

Additional Instagram advertising stats:
– 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram per day.
– Currently, Instagram has 1 million monthly active advertisers—up from just 200,000 in   March 2016.
– eMarketer projects that Instagram’s global mobile ad revenues will reach $2.81 billion this year, accounting for over 10 percent of parent company Facebook’s global ad revenues.

Targeting

Instagram ads use Facebook’s advertising system, which most likely has the most powerful targeting ability. You can specify your target audience’s location, demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. You can even target people who have bought from you or interacted with you and others similar to them.

 

Instagram Feed Ad Formats

 

Carousel Ad

Carousel ads bring another layer of depth to campaign where people can swipe to view up to 10 additional photos or videos in a single ad. They are a great way to accomplish business goals by highlighting several products and specific details to give them a considerable boost. You can recognize these ads by the small dots under the image, indicating that there is more than one image.

 

These ads provide an excellent opportunity to:

-To create a step-by-step illustration of how to use your product
-Tell a story about your brand in several images or videos
-Give a good sense of the essence of your promoted offer
-Lower your Instagram ads cost

Specs:

Caption: up to 125 characters
Media type: image or video
Recommended image/video resolution: min. 600 x 600 pixels, max. 1080 x 1080 pixels
Image format: .jpg or .png
Minimum number of cards: 2
Maximum number of cards: 10
Image ratio: 1:1
Video aspect ratio: 1:1
Minimum video length: 3 seconds
Maximum video length: 60 seconds
Video thumbnail image ratio: Should match the aspect ratio of your video. If not, thumbnail auto resize is available.

 

Single Ad

Exactly how it sounds, these are ads with a single image in landscape or square format. This is the most widely used ad type and consists of an image, ad copy, and a call-to-action button.

 

Specs:

Caption: up to 125 characters
Media type: image
Recommended image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels or 1200 x 628 pixels (the typical Facebook ad image size)
Image format: .jpg or .png
Max. file size: 30 MB

 

Video Ad

Instagram used to have a 15-second limit for video, but now videos can be up to 60 seconds long and shot in landscape or square format. They are an effective way to explain how your product or service works or simply share a fun and engaging message. Overall, this type of ad is known to catch users attention as they scroll through their feed.

 

Specs:

Caption: up to 125 characters
Media type: video
Recommended video resolution: 600 x 600 pixels (square) or 600 x 315 pixels (landscape)
Aspect Ratio: 1:1 (square) or 1.9:1 (landscape)
Minimum resolution: 600 x 600 pixels
Maximum resolution: 1080 x 1080 pixels
Minimum length: 3 seconds
Maximum length: 60 seconds
Maximum size: 4GB
Frame rate: 30fps max
File type: .mp4 container
Video: H.264 video compression, high profile preferred, square pixels, fixed frame rate, progressive scan
Audio: Stereo AAC audio compression, 128kbps + preferred

 

Slideshow Ad

Slideshow ads are looping video ads with up to 10 images and music. It’s almost like a carousel ad that scrolls on its own, with music. You can upload an existing slideshow or create a new slideshow. Facebook Ads Manager has an easy-to-use slideshow creator where you can select the images, music, video captions, and a thumbnail for your Instagram ad. You can also choose whether you’d like to images to transition or fade while changing.

Specs:

Caption: up to 125 characters
Media type: images + soundtrack
Image duration: up to 50 sec per image
Image size: min. 600 x 600 pixels, max. 1080 x 1080 pixels. If you use images of different sizes, your slideshow will be cropped to be square.
Music file format: WAV, MP3, M4A, FLAC, and OGG. You must have all legal rights necessary to use the song.

 

Lead Ads

Instagram lead ads help to collect valuable information from prospects without leading them off the Instagram platform. As someone clicks on your Lead Ad, they’ll be guided to a new page with a lead form that asks for their name and contact details (e.g. the person’s full name, email address, phone number, etc.)

Tip: When you create this form, there are several fields to fill in. Once you hit “Finish, you won’t be able to edit the lead form. You can use the “Save” button to save a draft of the lead form if you wish to edit it afterward.

When setting up Lead Ads, you’ll also need to include your company’s privacy policy (As you will be collecting user information).

Specs:

Caption: up to 125 characters
Media type: image
Recommended ad image size: 1080 x 1080 pixels or 1200 x 628 pixels (the typical Facebook ad image size)
Image format: .jpg or .png
Max. file size: 30 MB
Other requirements: Privacy policy

 

Stories Image Ad

In 2017, Instagram opened up Instagram Stories ads to businesses globally and people appear to be highly engaged while watching the stories from their followers. You can create image stories ads that contain up to six images to share your brands messaging in a fun and engaging way. There is not much customization you can do with these ads, making them very straightforward and simple to create.

Specs:

Caption: not currently available. Any text must be part of the image file
Format: Full-screen vertical ad (9:16)
Recommended Resolution: 1080 x 1920
Minimum Resolution: 600 x 1067
File types: .jpg or .png
Max. image size: 30MB
Photo content: visible for 5 seconds

 

Story Video Ad

Instagram stories video ads is a great way for your brand to stand out among all its peers’ advertising. With this format, you can upload a video or GIF of up to 15 seconds in length. Simply upload your video or GIF and choose a video thumbnail. The thumbnail you choose will be what people see before your video plays. It can influence a user’s decision to watch the ad. It’s an amazingly engaging way of showcasing your product, building your brand’s personality, and engaging your audiences by reminding them of your offers.

Specs:

Caption: not currently available. Any text must be part of the image file
Format: Full-screen vertical ad (9:16)
Recommended Resolution: 1080 x 1920
Minimum Resolution: 600 x 1067
File types: mp4 or .mov
Max. video size: 4GB
Max. video length: 15 seconds
Recommended Video Codecs: h.264, VP8
Recommended Audio Codecs: AAC, Vorbis

 

Key performance indicators (KPI) for marketing tells you how well you’re doing in relation to your overall marketing and business goals. Marketers use KPIs to understand what is selling, who’s buying, how they’re buying, and why they’re purchasing. They give you enough insight to make better decisions to prove and improve the ROI of your marketing efforts. Column Five Media recently reported how to measure five important KPIs and how improve each one.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV is the net profit that a customer will generate for a business during the entire relationship with that customer. It can be calculated historically, over specific time periods, or it can be predictive. One of the most effective ways to boost LTV is by focusing on two areas: retention and upselling (add-ons and complementary products). The longer a customer continues to purchase from a company, the greater their lifetime value becomes. Incorporating a customer loyalty program can help you keep achieve this, increasing average purchase frequency (APF) and Average customer lifespan (ACL).

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC is the cost of convincing a potential customer to buy a product or service. The online traffic you generate must be converted into sales, so make sure you’re focusing on boosting conversion rates to lower your CAC. When you try to improve your conversions, you need to optimize the landing pages you are directing traffic to. Construct A/B testing on the content, CTA layout, structure, testimonials, emails, etc. The other way is to retarget potential customers and receive attention through email and ad targeting. Referral programs are also a great way to lower CAC and grow revenue. When a customer refers two friends who then make a purchase, you’ve just gained three customers for the price of one.

Marketing ROI (MROI)

Marketing ROI is exactly what it sounds like, a way of measuring the return on investment from the amount a company spends on marketing. There are several benefits associated with using this measurement including justifying marketing spend, deciding what to spend on, comparing marketing efficiency with competitors and accountability. Analyze your data before, during, and after every marketing activity for every part of the marketing mix. Also, use the insights you derive to focus on efforts that bring the greatest returns.

Traffic-to-lead Conversions

This simple KPI is how many subscribers, leads, or users you are generating from your top-of-funnel efforts. The goal is to increase both traffic and conversion rate. Here are some common places a business might get visitors: email marketing, social media, blog post, etc. Once you identify where your leads are coming from, you want to make sure the pages they’re landing on are doing everything they can to capture a visitor’s interest.

Lead-to-Customer Conversions

Once you have leads, you need to turn them into customers. You’ll need a lead-nurturing system to guide leads through each stage of the sales funnel; Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. Make sure to segment your leads so you can offer more targeted content. Create content that solves specific issues for specific buyer personas. Lastly, engage with your leads often, 10 times on average to make the sale.