How Marketers Are Being Caught in the Email Crossfire

[00:00:00] It is Monday, March 4th, today caught in the crossfire how good marketers are being penalized for the actions of bad actors. Also, Threads finally gets an API, Performance Max rolls out to more Microsoft advertisers, our PR people aiming at the wrong target and some

[00:00:18] very welcome updates to Instagram messaging. I'm Tod Maffin, that's ahead, today in Digital Marketing. Do you want someone who understands you like no other? Someone who can be your wish and want to experience the most beautiful adventure of your life?

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[00:01:17] Made for Germany, powered by Shopify. Your email marketing program is about to get more complicated. Actually, it already may be. A great piece this morning in martech.org discusses the big changes that marketers are having to make

[00:01:31] to their email marketing setups thanks to new rules from Google and Yahoo governing how emails are sent. In short, the new rules focus on authentication, limiting spam rates and providing an unsubscribe method. Martech says the changes, quote, will lead to an arms race pitting email providers against spammers.

[00:01:51] Conscientious emailers caught in the crossfire will be collateral damage. While Martech acknowledged the new measures should improve deliverability and open metrics, quote, there's a more sinister interpretation. By mediating the relationship between mail senders and recipients, the platforms will render email marketing much less effective.

[00:02:12] The new email delivery rules won't deter bad actors. They'll find ways around them. For example, they'll use email distribution services that sell rotating email addresses and the tools to warm up hundreds, if not thousands of email domains, unquote.

[00:02:28] The whole piece goes into detail on why costs are likely to increase to what extent legitimate marketers will be collateral damage and a great recap on how we got to this point. If you are responsible for email marketing in your organization, this piece is definitely worth a read.

[00:02:41] You'll find it at martech.org. Look for the piece called new email sender rules. Legitimate mailers will be collateral damage. Meta has upped the ante in its attempt to take over the void left by Twitter. Late last week, the company began testing a publishing API for threads.

[00:03:03] APIs, of course, are the back doors into a social platform that let third party tools do things. Right now, a handful of such large tools have access to those, including Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Sprinkler. This could be a significant shift in marketers jumping onto threads.

[00:03:18] Until now, many brands went there to stake out their username, maybe post one or two things, but because there had been no API, all that work needed to be done in app or on threads' more scaled back website. Many brands prefer to use the third party tools instead

[00:03:34] to make it simpler to publish the same content to multiple sites at once and to consolidate reporting. Also, in our testing of this, it didn't appear as if topic tagging was implemented for now,

[00:03:44] at least not on Sprout Social's end, which is the tool that we use for clients of our agency. And it should be noted, this is a publishing API only, meaning while you'll be able to use it to send posts out, it doesn't include any engagement functionality.

[00:03:59] Seeing comments, replying to them, hiding comments, liking them and all that are presumably coming in another API down the road. This reason I expect most brands and agencies will still keep a relatively low profile.

[00:04:10] As I mentioned, this is a sort of live test with a small number of meta partners. The company says the full release should be out by the end of June. Performance Max campaigns will be available globally starting tomorrow.

[00:04:27] And if you're thinking, wait, I thought Google's Pmax campaigns were already available globally, you're right, they are. Because we're actually talking about Microsoft's version of this AI heavy campaign type, which it also calls Performance Max. You can import your Performance Max campaigns on Google's side from Google Ads

[00:04:45] or set up your own new Microsoft campaign. One important note, if you've imported a Performance Max campaign from Google Ads that originally came over as a smart shopping campaign or dynamic search ads campaign, Microsoft will upgrade it to a Performance Max campaign

[00:05:01] in phased approaches over the next few weeks. If you're currently using a third party platform that doesn't yet support Performance Max, those will continue to be imported as smart shopping or DSA. A new study from Coverage Book finds that only a third of public relations professionals

[00:05:22] align their activity with commercial goals. Quoting Martek News, quote, fewer than half of PR professionals currently consider new biz and sales when measuring the impact of their work. Just 41% of UK respondents and 34% of US respondents take the new business sales pipeline into account.

[00:05:42] These numbers drop significantly when asked about investment generation, 14% of UK respondents and 13% of US respondents. So what are PR companies measuring? Well, unsurprisingly, the focus is on outputs and audience with 66% citing high volumes of coverage as their priority, unquote.

[00:06:04] It is definitely a sobering result and something to keep in mind when you're talking to a PR agency. Are they asking questions about measurement that are tied to your actual business goals? Or will they consider it a success if they get you a million reach

[00:06:16] even if that results in no new leads? What's to blame? Inertia for one, the idea that this has always been the way it's been. Plus, budget cuts. A third of agencies said they cut back last year. The survey pulled more than 350 senior PR and marketing professionals.

[00:06:58] Thanks to the efficient design knowledge, thanks to the efficient education and intuitive social media and online marketplace integration, you can sell and sell via Instagram, eBay and Co. It was never easy to reach new target groups. Shopify offers a single secure platform

[00:07:16] all tools to build up your online business. Test without cost and present your business to the world. Just visit shopify.de.stri and start. Made for Germany, powered by Shopify. Let's be honest, retros can be boring. And if you're the organizer,

[00:07:37] you know it's more than just running a meeting. You have to synthesize and categorize themes, get the team involved, assign next steps and make it all a fun safe space where teammates want to participate. Miro is the visual collaboration platform that helps you run effective, engaging

[00:07:54] and actionable retrospectives. We use Miro at our agency to map out a client's messaging for our engagement team. That can be complicated. A lot of if-bends. But making it visual and sharing it directly with our client sped things way up.

[00:08:09] Plus, our side can share spitballing ideas with private mode. The client doesn't get to see our thoughts until we've decided on the approach. Whether you work on the marketing side or in product design, engineering or UX, bring your team together on Miro.

[00:08:24] And your first three Miro boards are free when you sign up today at Miro.com. That's three free boards at M-I-R-O.com. Instagram announced a suite of updates today, aimed at improving the direct messaging experience on this platform. Users will now have the ability to edit direct messages

[00:08:44] they already have sent within a 15 minute window if you want to fix any typos or errors. The new pinning feature also allows users to prioritize specific chats by pinning them to the top of their inbox. Third, users will have the ability to disable read receipts entirely

[00:09:02] or on a chat-by-chat basis. Fourth, users can now save their most used stickers for easier access during future conversations. This is in-app only, of course. The update also expands reply options to include stickers, gifs, photos, videos and voice messages. And finally, the update introduces a variety

[00:09:21] of new chat themes, letting users customize the visual aesthetic of their conversations. This includes a theme inspired by the popular animated series Avatar, The Last Airbender. These updates expected to be rolled out to all users in the coming weeks. Google Ads Editor, the standalone app,

[00:09:42] is getting a new update today. Version 2.6 now adds Performance Max Migration so users can migrate display campaigns to the Performance Max Campaign Type within the Editor application. This migration can be accompanied by experiments to assess the performance of Performance Max campaigns against other campaign types.

[00:10:02] Also, the Ad Responsive Display Ad recommendation now includes suggested fields, pre-populating text and images within newly created ads. Also, Editor now supports Reserve CPMs, a bidding strategy similar to Target CPM. It allows for one-time upgrades from Target CPM for the most compatible campaigns.

[00:10:22] And video campaigns can now leverage multi-asset ads enabling the addition of up to five videos, headlines, descriptions and calls to action within a single ad. And some other updates like granular pause filtering and improved third party measurement settings. Little end of the weather today for some reason.

[00:10:42] Actually started yesterday at Aki, all that. So I don't know, maybe it's my usual March cold coming a little earlier than usual. I actually, my throat is quite sore. I actually gave consideration to having AI readout today's show. I do have my voice cloned with 11 labs,

[00:10:59] but it doesn't really sound like me. Although we did it when Steph was here. Steph is our associate producer who's on mat leave right now. Honestly, it nailed Steph completely accurately. Even Steph's husband was like, no, that's you. I could not tell the difference.

[00:11:14] But for me, for some reason, it just maybe I didn't give it enough training data. I don't know. So you're getting the real me for better or for worse. I'll see you tomorrow. Media and Markplace like Facebook, Instagram and eBay will be supported.

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