Why Email Marketing (Still) Matters

November 22, 2021 Maya Benabdelhadi eCommerce, Email Marketing, Small business  

When I say email marketing, what comes to mind? Mountains of spam, I bet. I think we can all agree that way too many useless emails are floating about, and that’s saying nothing about that nasty “won’t you leave me alone” feeling we all get when spotting one of them crowding our inboxes. Let’s get one thing clear: that (insert shudder) isn’t email marketing. It’s death by a thousand cuts, also part of How To Make Your Customers Disappear 101: Noise Pollution… or, in less heated terms, spam.

 

So what is email marketing?

Simply put, email marketing is the practice of using email to promote an organisation and/or its product and services to targeted customers. And here is the key: targeted customers. This means individuals who have opted to receive communications from your brand. Email marketing carefully curates engaging and compelling content to a meticulously selected audience. As such, indiscriminately bombarding anyone you can with emails about lawnmower sales does not qualify as email marketing.

 

… And what makes it worthwhile?

Email marketing enhances the customer experience

It enables you to tie the different touch points (your website, organic social media, partners, paid ads) your customers go through together to create a smooth and continuous customer journey across your multiple platforms and channels. Email marketing works as the bridge that links all your customers’ individual experiences on different platforms together so that they form a seamless, overarching experience.

 

It’s a brand awareness booster

This is the most obvious benefit of email marketing: reminding people you’re there! This is more important than one might think. All of us have a thousand and one big and small interactions with multiple brands each day, which makes it difficult to remember any one in the medium (let alone the long) term. Audience members may or may not stumble on your brand or its communications again, thereby rekindling the brand awareness spark, but it is not guaranteed. 

Email marketing is therefore a conscious effort on your part to fan the brand awareness spark into a brand recall fire. (Excuse the fire metaphors, I am writing this in the middle of a cold Scottish winter and had fireplaces and bottomless hot chocolate on my mind). Now, you may be thinking that you can do all of this through your organic social media. True enough, social media is a great tool for brand awareness… just not as powerful as email marketing. Unless you’re following a brand, you may or may not see specific brands’ posts appear on your timeline, so it’s a bit of a gamble. 

You will definitely see emails in your inbox (remember, we’re not spam so no reason for your comms to end up in the junk folder). While 14% of individuals check social media in the morning, 58% check their emails and check them about 20 times throughout the day. And now for the knock-out punch, on average the engagement rate on organic social media is 0.58%, while email marketing has a 22.86% open rate and 3.71% of views lead to website visits.

 

It allows for personalisation

Most channels your brand will use have you addressing your entire audience at once. While this means more people will hear your message, it may not be worthwhile for everyone to pay attention to, meaning that some individuals may get the wrong impression about your brand and what it can do for them. 

Email marketing allows you to segment your messages to fit your different target audiences. This way, each type of customer gets a message that is valuable to them and aligned with their wants, needs and values. And this is the beauty of carefully built mailing lists: personalised communication is also more effective. By tailoring your message to your customer segments, you increase its readership, the perceived value of your brand, and in turn, sales.

Bonus: by using different messages per target segment, you can learn about their preferences, what works best for them and their behaviour. The better you know your audience, the best you can serve them… and increase your sales.

 

It helps you to nurture and deepen relationships

With email marketing, you are communicating with a warm audience: individuals who already know of your brand and who like it to an extent (remember, we’re not talking about spam, here). Through regular communication, email marketing enables you to slowly reveal other compatible facets of your brand to your target audience for them to get to know you a little better.

If you are clever with this tactic, you can also adapt your timing and content to fit major relevant moments in your audience life. This would demonstrate your understanding of your customer base but more importantly that you can be a partner in their lives. If you can achieve this, it will be absolute gold for your brand. This shift in perception deepens your relationship and upgrades your connection from a rational to an emotional one, which is stronger and longer lasting.

 

It’s an owned channel

Contrarily to paid advertising, email marketing is an owned channel, which means that you have complete control over the following:

  • Your message
  • Its visual aspect
  • The timing and frequency
  • The audience

This type of control is not that common when it comes to marketing. With email marketing, there are very few restrictions and templates you need to follow, allowing you to design every detail of your brand’s appearance, message and communication style.

 

It’s cost effective

In part because it is an owned channel, email marketing is an economical way to reach your audience. In the grassroots stage, all you need is a little time to write your message, basic computer skills, repurposing your brand assets (pictures, videos, GIFs) and you can send the lot through your regular email platform. At this stage, your emails are cheap and not too time consuming.

Once your business and brand stabilises a little, you can move to email marketing platforms like Klaviyo, Mailchimp and the like for a more polished look, scheduling and analysis capabilities. These platforms are relatively inexpensive, with varied levels of subscriptions to fit your brand’s needs, and they save you some time by giving you templates to work with and automating some of your work. When your brand gets even bigger, you can opt for a higher-level subscription, saving you even more time for a reasonable price.

 

Performance is easy to track and has a high ROI

Last but certainly not least, performance is easy to track and highly successful. By UTM tagging the links you include in your emails, you can review the behaviour of users who clicked on it. With this tool, you will be able to know by audience segment how many users visited your page, how many times, how long they spent on it, how many pages were visited on the website, and how many conversions (purchases if your brand is in eCommerce) were made. All of this will give you a good idea of how well each segment email performed and the overall interest in the content you have published.

Not only is email marketing performance eminently trackable and measurable, its return on investment is high, with email being one of the highest-ranking marketing tactics. In 2020, for every £1 spent on email marketing, £35.41 was earned in return! Hard to argue with those numbers.

 

… So, have we convinced you yet?

 

Want to get into email marketing or upgrade your game? Get in touch with us now at [email protected], we would love to hear from you!

 

Sources

https://optinmonster.com/email-marketing-vs-social-media-performance-2016-2019-statistics/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/283067/return-on-investment-roi-for-email-marketing-in-the-uk/

https://www.kub-uk.net/insights/email-marketing-stats/

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How to Design your Black Friday and Cyber Monday Offer

October 11, 2021 Maya Benabdelhadi Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Business, Paid Media, Sales  

It’s this time of year again. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are approaching fast and 2021 looks like they will be even more hectic than 2020… But fear not, your trusty Pilot Fish Media team is here to guide you through the madness and help you plan (and execute) for BFCM success!

 

Step 1: Define your BFCM goal

Where should you start? First things first, begin by thinking about what you want to achieve this Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There are three big categories of BFCM goals:

Profit (short-term benefits)

And yes, it is profit, not revenue. The danger of focusing on revenue is that you try so hard to create an attractive offer that you could end up selling your products, services, or experiences at an unsustainable price where your profit margin is low to non-existent.

Tip: don’t forget to set yourself a best and worst case scenario measurable and time-specific profit objectives!

Growing your customer base (medium-term benefits)

With this goal, you are not so interested in a short-burst influx of cash as you are building your brand awareness in the market. You’re looking to the future with the goal of bringing in customers who will stay with you.

Tip: here also, you’ll want to define an ideal and break-even number of new customers from the BFCM sales to measure success!

Learning (long-term benefits)

Here, you take a longer-term approach and seek to know more about how your customers behave, to what techniques they respond best, their purchasing process… With this goal, you are using the BFCM sales as a research project to feed into future strategies.

Tip: Identify what you are analysing and how you will do so.

 

Step 2: Choose your type of offer

Now that you know your brand’s purpose in joining the BFCM sales, it is time to look at the different types of offers and deals available to your brand. You can then pick the one most aligned with your BFCM goal and most beneficial to your profit margins.

Percentage discount offer

This deal is one of the most widely used one and consists of offering a set discount to either selected items or to the customer’s full basket. Unsurprisingly, this is one of the most used offers and fits particularly well with profit-oriented BFCM goals.

E.g. 10% off selected items/your basket

Tip: make sure that your discount does not go beyond what your gross profit margin can sustain

Tip: display the original price AND the discounted price to show customers how much they are saving

Pounds-off discount offer

Here, you would offer a set amount of money off a product, selection of products, or even on customers’ total basket. This deal is also very popular and works well with profit goals.

E.g. £10 off selected items/your basket

Tip: consider bundling complementary products and offering your percentage discount off said bundle to increase your average order value.

Tiered discount offer

This offer is designed to increase savings based on levels of spending as set discounts are applied to specific levels of spending. This deal is designed to increase your average order value by giving customers an incentive to spend more. As such, it fits the profit goal best and the learning goals, too. It is also a great way to gently nudge your customers into trying more than just your hero product.

E.g. £30 off when you spend £80

£40 off when you spend £110

£50 off when you spend £140

Mystery box offer

This is a slightly trickier one but that can yield great results. The customers roughly know the type of product, service, or experience they are purchasing but not the specifics. As such, it is an opportunity for you to bundle complementary products and to surprise customers. The key is to manage expectations (so be very careful with your product name and description) so as to meet, or even better, exceed customers’ expectations.

This deal works best with experiences and when your product/service portfolio has a homogeneous high quality level. We would recommend this for learning-focused BFCM goals.

E.g. Wellness basket for £50 (but not mention of specific contents) OR one-night stay in our hotel (without specifying the room category or inclusions such as breakfast, bottles of wine, flowers…)

Tip: copy is critical, here. Make sure your offer descriptions generate excitement and play up the mystery for an enhanced unboxing experience.

Free gift offer

Always a good option when your gross margins are too slim to justify any discount, the free gift deal enables to increase overall value without decreasing gross profits. It is also a good tactic to use at key points throughout the year, especially when trying to extend your customer base!

E.g. Free mirror with every makeup purchase

Tip: make sure the gift is relevant and complementary to the product purchased, otherwise customers will have a lower incentive to pick this deal.

Extra donation offer

This offer consists of pledging a caritative action for every purchase, which can be monetary or not. It is an excellent way to create an emotional bond with your customer base and to enlarge it. It can also be a good learning opportunity for the brand to understand your customers better.

E.g. For each purchase, a tree will be planted in Kenya

Tip: for this to succeed, you must pick a cause about which your customer base feels strongly.

 

Step 3: Consider the customer experience

Once you have identified your goal and selected your offer, your work is not quite done. You should also consider the overall customer experience. First, look at your offer. The easier to understand it is, the better it will do. So make sure your deal makes sense to your target customers. In the eternal words of Michael Scott, “make it simple, stupid”. This is also why we would recommend only using one type of offer at a time! With customers having easy access to many sales from many different brands at the same time, any confusion will quickly cause them to go to a competitor.

Now that your offer is profitable, attractive, and simple to understand, examine the customer journey in detail to make it as smooth as possible. Don’t forget the check out process. As the last step in the purchase process prior to receiving the product, the check out is your last chance to make a positive impression. As the last link of the chain, the ease of checking out will leave a lasting impact on the customer and will likely colour their perception of the entire purchase process. As such, you will want to make this step, fuss-free, fast, and easy, without forgetting to thank customers once completed.

Your confirmation email is also an extension on your customers’ purchase experience and should reflect your brand. It is also a chance for you to subtly push one-time customers into becoming repeat or even loyal customers. To do so, make sure the email is visually appealing (in a way that highlights and supports your brand’s aesthetics), clear, concise, and highlights the next steps (i.e. delivery process and timing). Thank the customers for choosing your products and you, and add a little fluffy message to leave them with a fuzzy warm feeling about having supported your brand.

Need some expert help to make a splash this Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Get in touch with us now at [email protected] for a strategy consultation…

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In Other News: Instagram Kids Gets Shelved, Influencer Marketing Keeps Growing, and Consumer Confidence Tumbles

September 29, 2021 Maya Benabdelhadi Business, In other news, Industry, Influencer Marketing, Insights, Instagram, Social Media, Uncategorized  

Welcome back to our weekly update, deciphering the latest digital marketing news for you! This week, we take you through the pausing of Instagram Kids, how influencer marketing is here to stay and the latest consumer confidence outlook.

 

Instagram Kids Debacle

A little while ago, the Facebook Group started working on Instagram Kids, a platform specifically designed for tweens (10 to 13 years old). The aim of this new platform was to safeguard against kids misrepresenting their age and using the wider Instagram app, were the content is not age-appropriate.

“We firmly believe that it’s better for parents to have the option to give their children access to a version of Instagram that is designed for them – where parents can supervise and control their experience – than relying on an app’s ability to verify the age of kids who are too young to have an ID.” (Instagram)

However, this decision was met with growing suspicion from child safety collectives and, most recently, sparked a scathing expose from the Wall Street Journal. The main concerns about this project are the following:

  • Instagram Kids would push induce a constant focus on appearance and personal branding from a young age
  • Negative impact on mental health
  • Privacy issues

While the Facebook group denied these claims, it has decided to pause Instagram Kids while it consults parents and governmental bodies alike so as to be able to design a safer and positive platform.

 

Influencer Marketing: Big and Getting Bigger

Even though it already was an incredibly profitable industry, influencer marketing keeps getting bigger! It has proven as particularly effective for brands, especially when it comes to building and consolidating brand awareness and strength. In spite of the pandemic, influencer marketing has established itself as a relatively safe marketing tactic. As such, brands have overall increased their share of budget allocated to influencer marketing in 2020 and 2021.

But what makes influencer marketing so resilient?

  • Distrust of hard-selling tactics coming directly from marketers
  • Rising importance of social proof
  • Taste for authentic content (recommendations)

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is.” (Scott Cook, Inuit CEO)

As influencers represent what customers aspire to, they remain a good way for brands to subtly influence consumer perceptions while still meeting the mark of authentic customer-made content.

 

Stormy Consumer Confidence Outlook

In September, the general consumer confidence has degraded in anticipation of impaired personal finances and economic hardship. The main sources of worry that led to this drop in confidence are the following:

  • Expectation of rising tax
  • End of furlough
  • Fuel crisis
  • Brexit collateral damage (e.g. shortages)

So what does this mean for digital marketers? When consumers are worried about their disposable income (the amount of money they have left to spend after paying their taxes), they are more likely to be sensitive to price. As such, they may turn to off-brand products, limit spending on higher-end products, prioritise favourite hobbies over passing interests… and be more responsive to sales.

But it’s not all doom and gloom! This suggests that Black Friday and Cyber Monday will be even more important to consumers than in previous years. It is highly likely that they will concentrate the bulk of their “interests and treats” shopping to such big sales to maximise the bang for their hard-earned buck. So there’s no time to waste, it’s now time to prepare your BFCM game plan…

 

Do you need help making influencer marketing work for your brand or preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Get in touch with us at [email protected]!

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Losing Followers

July 13, 2021 Maya Benabdelhadi Celebrity, Social Media  

Which Reality Stars are Losing the Most Followers on Instagram?

 

We all know that celebrities rely heavily on their social media strategy, making sure they keep up a good following to give them clout as well as those all-important advertising and sponsorship opportunities. 

 

However, keeping followers is easier said than done, and with a combination of fake followers and real followers with short attention spans, some celebs see their follower numbers dropping at quite a rate. But which reality TV stars are losing the most followers?

 

We looked at a number of UK and US-based reality TV stars from a range of different shows, paying attention to their followers during a 30 day period between May-June 2021 to see who is losing followers.

 

The Reality Stars Losing the Most Instagram Followers

 

Out of the 50 reality TV stars with falling follower numbers, we see some TV shows make repeat appearances, such as Love Is Blind and Love Island. However, the star who tops the list is a well-known face from the American reality show, Dance Moms. Maddie Ziegler might be known for her dance moves in music videos, but she started out on reality TV. And with over 32,000 followers lost in just a 30 day period, Maddie is losing followers at the fastest rate.

  1. Maddie Ziegler – Dance Moms – 32,070 lost followers
  2. Giannina Gibelli – Love Is Blind – 21,720 lost followers
  3. Lauren Speed – Love Is Blind –  17,400 lost followers
  4. Antoni Porowski – Queer Eye – 13,200 lost followers
  5. Morgan Simianer – Cheer – 12,990 lost followers
  6. Amber Gill – Love Island – 12,960 lost followers
  7. Ovie Soko – Love Island – 11,730 lost followers
  8. Curtis Pritchard – Love Island – 10,650 lost followers
  9. Lexi Brumback – Cheer – 10,200 lost followers
  10. Lauren Conrad – The Hills – 10,110 lost followers

 

The US Reality Stars Losing the Most Followers

 

The list of US reality stars losing the most followers features a number of names from Love Is Blind, including Giannina Gibelli and Lauren Speed, who round out the top three alongside Maddie Ziegler.

  1. Maddie Ziegler – Dance Moms – 32,070 lost followers
  2. Giannina Gibelli – Love Is Blind – 21,720 lost followers
  3. Lauren Speed – Love Is Blind –  17,400 lost followers
  4. Antoni Porowski – Queer Eye – 13,200 lost followers
  5. Morgan Simianer – Cheer – 12,990 lost followers
  6. Lexi Brumback – Cheer – 10,200 lost followers
  7. Lauren Conrad – The Hills – 10,110 lost followers
  8. Amber Pike – Love Is Blind – 9,720 lost followers
  9. Melissa Gisoni – Dance Moms – 8,190 lost followers
  10. Damian Powers – Love Is Blind – 7,800 lost followers

 

The UK Reality Stars Losing the Most Followers

 

When it comes to the UK reality stars, it’s a Love Island wash-out! Some of the best-known names from the series feature in our top 10, with 2019 winner, Amber Gill taking the top spot with 12,960 followers lost in just 30 days.

  1. Amber Gill – Love Island – 12,960 lost followers
  2. Ovie Soko – Love Island – 11,730 lost followers
  3. Curtis Pritchard – Love Island – 10,650 lost followers
  4. Luke Trotman – Love Island – 8,610 lost followers
  5. Sam Gowland – Love Island – 8,190 lost followers
  6. Chris Hughes – Love Island – 7,830 lost followers
  7. Amy Hart – Love Island – 7,020 lost followers
  8. Chris Taylor – Love Island – 6,960 lost followers
  9. Amber Davies – Love Island – 6,570 lost followers
  10. Georgia Steel – Love Island – 6,270 lost followers

 

Methodology:

 

We collated the names of US and UK reality TV stars, using a number of sources, such as Wikipedia, Radio Times and The Tab. In total, we looked at more than 200 reality stars, taking just the 50 stars losing the most followers, featuring 25 from the US and 25 from the UK.

Lost follower numbers and current follower numbers were taken from Social Blade.

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Privacy Problems

July 5, 2021 Maya Benabdelhadi Business, Industry, Insights, Social Media  

How closely do we really read privacy policies?

 

We’re all guilty of clicking the ‘accept’ button without reading the terms and conditions, but do we really know what we’re agreeing to when it comes to the privacy policies of our favourite websites and social media platforms?

 

We took a look at the privacy policies of some of the most popular websites in the world as well as some of the UK’s official government sites to find out how complicated they are and whether they are easy for users to understand.

 

The Wordiest Privacy Policies

 

There’s a lot to cover in a privacy policy, from detailing the information collected on the site to explaining links to third-party sites. Looking at 80 different websites, we found that some were particularly thorough. The average word count of all 80 policies is 5,130, but Indeed’s privacy policy takes the title of wordiest policy with 15,420 words.

  1. Indeed – 95,042 characters, 15,420 words, 629 sentences
  2. MyFitnessPal – 83,680 characters, 13,417 words, 684 sentences
  3. Samsung – 72,239 characters, 11,241 words, 346 sentences
  4. Daily Mail – 61,631 characters, 9,846 words, 506 sentences
  5. Silver Singles – 59,118 characters, 9,246 words, 422 sentences
  6. Weather.com – 58,830 characters, 9,219 words, 457 sentences
  7. Etsy – 55,809 characters, 8,885 words, 381 sentences
  8. eBay – 52,299 characters, 8,149 words, 358 sentences
  9. Bumble – 45,261 characters, 7,441 words, 301 sentences
  10. eharmony – 45,253 characters, 7,342 words, 401 sentences

 

The Shortest Privacy Policies

 

Other companies keep their privacy policies far briefer, with Barclays offering the shortest policy at just 345 words long. While the privacy policy page offers an overview of the policy, it also includes links to other pages where users can find more information about how data is used as well as the cookies policy.

  1. Barclays – 2,152 characters, 345 words, 22 sentences
  2. Craigslist – 5,551 characters, 890 words, 53 sentences
  3. GOV.UK – 8,066 characters, 1,346 words, 142 sentences
  4. NatWest – 9,984 characters, 1,649 words, 96 sentences
  5. Imgur – 10,217 characters, 1,694 words, 83 sentences
  6. IMDb – 17,082 characters, 2,623 words, 181 sentences
  7. ESPN – 17,534 characters, 2,681 words, 112 sentences
  8. NPR – 18,513 characters, 2,882 words, 151 sentences
  9. BBC – 18,671 characters, 3,338 words, 257 sentences
  10. ASOS – 19,576 characters, 3,504 words, 219 sentences

 

Privacy Policy Read Time

 

When we break it down into how long it would actually take to read these wordy privacy policies, we can see that some of these policies require a huge chunk of time just to read them, let alone understand them. If you want to sit down and read Indeed’s privacy policy, you’ll need to set aside just over an hour of your time.

  1. Indeed – 1 hour 1 minute
  2. MyFitnessPal – 53 minutes 40 seconds
  3. Samsung – 44 minutes 57 seconds
  4. Daily Mail – 39 minutes 23 seconds
  5. Silver Singles – 36 minutes 59 seconds
  6. Weather.com – 36 minutes 52 seconds
  7. Etsy – 35 minutes 32 seconds
  8. eBay – 32 minutes 35 seconds
  9. Lloyds Bank – 31 minutes 28 seconds
  10. Bumble – 29 minutes 45 seconds

 

Privacy Policy Sentence Breakdown

 

When writing important documents, the way we construct sentences really does matter. Longer sentences tend to make text more difficult to read and harder to understand, making it less accessible. As a general rule, 20-25 words is a good length for sentences, and some of these sites are really pushing the top end of that guideline with their privacy policies. Samsung, however, tops the list with an average sentence length of 32.5 words. At the other end of the scale is GOV.UK with just 9.5 words in the average sentence, making it far more accessible for users.

The longest sentences

 

  1. Samsung – 32.5 words per sentence
  2. Bumble – 24.7 words per sentence
  3. Indeed – 24.5 words per sentence
  4. Netflix – 24.4 words per sentence
  5. Tumblr – 24.2 words per sentence
  6. ESPN – 23.9 words per sentence
  7. Forbes – 23.5 words per sentence
  8. Etsy – 23.3 words per sentence
  9. Instagram – 23.3 words per sentence
  10. eBay – 22.8 words per sentence

 

The shortest sentences

 

1. GOV.UK – 9.5 words per sentence

2. Lloyds Bank – 12.3 words per sentence

3. New York Times – 12.8 words per sentence

4. Zoom – 12.9 words per sentence

5. BBC – 13 words per sentence

6. Wish – 13.6 words per sentence

7. Tripadvisor – 14.2 words per sentence

7. Tesco – 14.2 words per sentence

9. IMDb – 14.5 words per sentence

10. Target – 14.8 words per sentence

 

Privacy Policy Reading Ages

 

Each privacy policy has differences that make them more or less complicated to read. From using unusual words to long sentences, these differences can make policies difficult to read for some age groups, meaning that it is harder to understand what is being agreed to.

 

The Flesch reading score is a score given to text to assess how readable it is based on age and education level. A lower score indicates that the text is more complicated, whereas a higher score indicates that it is readable for those with lower reading ages.

The highest reading ages

 

1. ESPN – 30 Flesch reading score, 18+ reading age

2. CNN – 31 Flesch reading score, 18+ reading age

3. Netflix – 32 Flesch reading score, 18+ reading age

3. eBay – 32 Flesch reading score, 18+ reading age

5. Fox News – 36 Flesch reading score, 18+ reading age

5. Business Insider – 36 Flesch reading score, 18+ reading age

5. Fandom – 36 Flesch reading score, 18+ reading age

8. Etsy –  37 Flesch reading score, 18+ reading age

8. PayPal –  37 Flesch reading score, 18+ reading age

8. Silver Singles –  37 Flesch reading score, 18+ reading age

8. Amazon –  37 Flesch reading score, 18+ reading age

 

The lowest reading ages

 

1. BBC –  71 Flesch reading score, 12 reading age

2. ASOS – 66 Flesch reading score, 13 reading age

2. Lloyds Bank – 66 Flesch reading score, 13 reading age

4. GOV.UK –  59 Flesch reading score, 15 reading age

5. NatWest –  55 Flesch reading score, 15 reading age

5. Royal Mail – 55 Flesch reading score, 15 reading age

5. Tesco – 55 Flesch reading score, 15 reading age

8. NHS – 53 Flesch reading score, 15 reading age

8. Snapchat – 53 Flesch reading score, 15 reading age

10. New York Times – 52 Flesch reading score, 15 reading age

 

The Sites with the Worst Data Breaches

While the privacy policy is designed to help users understand what data they’re giving a website access to when it’s used, what happens when that data is breached and falls into the hands of hackers with nefarious motives?

 

Of the 80 sites we studied, 14 have had data breaches with a total of 1,442,064,223 accounts compromised. The biggest breach took place in August of 2019 and involved the accounts of nearly 20% of Facebook users. Compromised data included everything from phone numbers and email addresses to employer names and phone numbers.

 

  1. Facebook – 509,458,528 compromised accounts
  2. MySpace – 359,420,698 compromised accounts
  3. LinkedIn – 164,611,595 compromised accounts
  4. Adobe – 154,445,165 compromised accounts
  5. MyFitnessPal – 143,606,147 compromised accounts
  6. Tumblr – 65,469,298 compromised accounts
  7. SHEIN – 39,086,762 compromised accounts
  8. Snapchat – 4,609,615 compromised accounts
  9. Imgur – 1,749,806 compromised accounts
  10. Forbes – 1,057,819 compromised accounts

 

 

Methodology:

 

The 80 websites studied are taken from a compilation of lists of some of the most visited websites according to sources including Visual Capitalist, SEM Rush, The Telegraph, and Similar Web.

 

Finding the privacy policy page, we copied the text for these policies and ran them through Grammarly. This allowed us to find details such as the Flesch reading score and reading age, as well as compiling the word counts, sentence lengths and reading times.

 

Information about data breaches was taken from Have I Been Pwned’s list of sites with data breaches.

 

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The Hotel World & Digital Marketing: A Rocky Love Affair

July 2, 2021 Maya Benabdelhadi Industry, Insights, Working Remotely  

Hello, netizens! Maya here: the newest addition to the Pilot Fish Media team. Before joining your favourite digital marketing agency, I worked in the world of luxury hospitality. So to kick things off in style, I thought I’d share a few thoughts about the relationship between hotels and digital marketing.

A photo of our fabulous newstarter, Maya!

Most hotels, especially luxury hotels, have beautiful and often fairly distinctive products as well as outstanding levels of service. With such unique and attractive offerings, it’s easy to assume that their promotion would be fairly simple. I mean, how difficult could it possibly be to get noticed and to inspire with such alluring products?

And there lies the trap. Oh, what a shiny and enticing trap it is, too! One that, sadly, the overwhelming majority of hotels fall head first into, especially when it comes to the upscale luxury segments. Hoteliers assume that the sheer beauty and aesthetic dimension of their establishment is their main strength and, as such, that it is the only factor needed to entice the market. This leads them to use a similar, if not identical, marketing approach and produce promotional materials that heavily feature the physical evidence and, if you’re lucky, their location… And they stop there. The result is – you guessed it! –  a collection of pictures and videos showcasing an endless sea of bright beaches, cityscapes, rooms, restaurants and spas on a background of soft inspirational music. Absolutely stunning… and utterly forgettable. The only people who will be excited to see the hotel’s advertisement will be its own staff and tired hotel students who are 6 hours into an 8-hour day.

By presenting their originally singular product in exactly the same way as their competitors, hotels end up doing the unthinkable: not differentiating themselves. This is a hard lesson to learn but a critical one. Product is not enough for promotion. Fear not though, the end is far from nigh for our favourite hotel brands. So what can they do to truly stand out and captivate?

Present & Engage Unexpectedly

In addition to having a great and unique product, which is still incredibly important, the presentation of said product needs to be different too. Otherwise, people will switch off after a few seconds. You need to make the discovery of the product unique, entertaining, and most of all, captivating. It must be an experience. 

Two great examples of this are Accor’s Live Limitless and Kempinski’s Instagram video, which portrayed their hotel stays as the ultimate lifestyle experience in different ways. Both brands make clever use of music to liven up their video ads and build excitement. While they both heavily bank on their properties’ visual identities, they use different types of dynamic filming and sharp transitions to keep the audience engaged. While Kempinski created the engrossing illusion of @jasnauskaite walking through the hotel with stark outfit transitions, Accor consciously used a bold and contrasting colour palette to keep the eye transfixed while focusing on the brand’s unparalleled collection features and special services. You will also have caught the use of celebrities (the French football team for Accor and a local fashion influencer for Kempinski) to add a little extra incentive to like their brands.

Craft a Unique Tone of Voice

Part of presenting differently is also having a unique tone of voice (a way of speaking and writing). Don’t forget to make sure that it fits your brand, too! The way you express yourself will give your audience a preview of what type of experience they can expect from their hotel stay. Will it be a grandiose and pompous affair, glitz and glamour, or fun and friendly? 

Make no mistake, tone of voice is a powerful tool. Most hotel brands have a tendency to speak in a similar mild and polished way, so expressing yourself with a specific personality will help you to cut through the noise and be remembered. For some inspiration, check out Welcome to The Wonderful World of Belmond. In this tongue-in-cheek ad, Belmond makes fun of the usual bland hotel ads and puts the focus on people through their friendly and facetious narrator. His peaceful and witty delivery draws the audience in and takes them on a journey filled with eccentric guests and exceptional staff against the backdrop of Belmond’s story-book properties.

Use Persuasion

Last but not least, let’s chat about persuasion. Promotion is often used to convince the audience of our merits. We have the most beautiful pool, because it hangs in the sky in between two buildings, or we serve the most delicious cocktails, because our barmen have extensive training and so on. We try and reason with the audience to prove we are the best, the prettiest and the fanciest – which is why they should pick us. 

This direct approach appeals to the audience’s analytic and conscious mind. It’s the Ravenclaw method. There is, however, another sneakier way to make an even greater impact: persuasion (aka the Slytherin method). Instead of rationalising, subtly appeal to your audience’s feelings and values (i.e., their unconscious mind). A great way to do that is to build ties with people, products and places that your audience values and considers as high quality. By association then, the hotel experience will be seen similarly. A noted example was Hilton appearing in virtually all 80s American films as the hero’s hotel of choice, although that is very blatant and no longer effective in a world of omnipresent product placement.

A more modern method is the use of influencers. Your favourite influencers have developed a trusted relationship with their following, who perceive them as an authority in their field and someone to be emulated. They can tug at your heart strings without looking obvious or fake. Have a look at the Mandarin Oriental – He’s a Fan campaign, a true masterpiece. Without seeing the hotel once, Morgan Freeman persuades us with his iconic smooth baritone voice that the Mandarin Oriental is the place to be. That’s the power of persuasive influencers in action: a dash of celebrity, a series of evocative positive associations, an emotional connection, and your audience is hooked.

As you will have seen, while the very traditional world of hospitality tends to butt heads with digital marketing, there are some gems out there. Take a page out of these hotel masters’ books by following their key digital marketing lessons:

  • Product is just the beginning
  • Present your offering in a unique and engaging way
  • Use a distinctive, brand-affirming tone of voice
  • Complement convincing your audience with subtle persuasion

Happy promoting!

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