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Feedback has never been so business-critical as it is today. We live and work in an era of unprecedented global transparency, digital experience-sharing, and a desire to be heard. In this environment, feedback is constantly surfacing about your company, your products, and the experiences you do or don’t deliver. This is happening whether you like it or not, across channels, and around the clock. We refer to this as the feedback economy.

Customer expectations are at an all-time high, and they keep going up. The feedback economy has changed how people make decisions – which means it’s changing our roles as marketers. I recently gave a talk on using customer feedback to supercharge your marketing. Afterward, I asked the audience to give me feedback on what I got right and what people wanted to learn more about. In response to my survey, I saw that marketers want to tap into the power of customer feedback, but often struggle to integrate it into their organizations in a meaningful way. Two comments, in particular, caught my eye:

• “This reaches across the entire organization – who owns it? How do you get buy-in across the entire organization so that the customer perspective is not solely just to improve our position but better serve the customer’s?”
• “I still struggle with the responsible parties… As a product marketer, I worry that ALL of these things are my responsibility! How do I take these suggestions and disseminate them across the whole organization?”

When we convened a set of business leaders in London last quarter to discuss how to navigate the feedback economy, we explored this uncertainty a little more. We asked: “Which department in your organization is ultimately responsible for gathering feedback throughout the customer lifecycle?” The top answer was customer success, with 33% of the votes. Marketing was second with 16% and strategy was third with 13%.

But almost a quarter (23%) of the leaders in attendance told us customer feedback was owned by a different department, and the reality is that ownership is dispersed for many organizations. It’s empowering to think that all of our departments feel responsible for collecting and acting on customer feedback – but it can also lead to confusion, dropped balls and a disjointed experience for customers if you don’t think seamlessly across the lifecycle.

If we truly want to empower everyone at our organizations to tap into the power of customer feedback, it requires putting the right infrastructure and guardrails in place. Here are five tactical tips you can implement to strengthen how your organization collects and operationalizes feedback.

Tip #1: Create a culture of curiosity

We’re all awash in data. We know how people are finding us, who is clicking on what, and when customers are most active. But to really understand customers, you need to go beyond collecting metrics to uncover the “why” behind those clicks and scrolls. Your first step to operationalizing feedback in a meaningful way should be to encourage employees to get curious about what customers are thinking and feeling. Curiosity is a prerequisite for success in the feedback economy.

Tip #2: Let your data flow

Instead of worrying about who should “own” customer feedback, make sure the feedback can flow to where it needs to be to have an impact. Select survey software that integrates with your existing systems of record (Salesforce, Tableau, Outlook, Slack, Power BI, IBM Watson, Marketo, Eloqua and more). Piping data directly into these tools means your team will have access to valuable customer feedback – and therefore much richer context – where and when they need to make decisions.

Tip #3: Enable anyone to easily (and safely) deploy a survey

Now that your infrastructure is ready to funnel feedback data into key systems of record, it’s time to democratize access to survey software so every team can listen to customers. Help them be successful by setting the appropriate guardrails, for instance by providing templates or recommended questions. And make the impact visible by encouraging company leaders to bake customer feedback into daily, weekly or quarterly dashboards and goals check-ins.

Tip #4: Distinguish between ‘one-and-done’ and ongoing surveys

One-and-done surveys – like a pricing or packaging-related survey prior to a product launch – can be great. But sometimes you’ll want to measure feedback longitudinally, to get a sense of change over time. For instance, we run a semi-annual brand tracker across SurveyMonkey’s top global markets to keep a close eye on how we are trending relative to competitors. Educate employees on when they should be thinking one-and-done versus long term so they can take a programmatic approach to the feedback they collect.

Tip #5: Make survey results visible

Present the results of feedback surveys at all-hands meetings, highlight them in product development presentations, and talk about them in your press releases. Push your teams to talk about the implications. What needs to change in light of the feedback? Showing that you’re focused on the needs of your customers doesn’t just help improve customer experience, it can increase employee retention, too. Our research shows that 83% of employees who perceive that their company has high customer satisfaction think they’ll be at their job in two years. When employees think their company has low customer satisfaction, that number drops to just 56 percent. Show your team how invested you are in customer feedback, and it could pay off in some surprising ways.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

Signed-in Chrome users can now use payment methods that are saved to their Google accounts during the checkout process, Google announced this week via the Chromium Blog. This feature is available on all devices that run the Chrome browser and wherever Google Pay is accepted. 

Why we should care

This feature will auto-fill payment info associated with a user’s Google account meaning that payment method is available across Chrome-enabled devices so long as the user is signed in.  

Google has been working to reduce friction for users to complete e-commerce transactions for several years, particularly on mobile. Its Shopping Actions already enables users to pay for products directly from Shopping ads using Google’s own checkout cart and the payment information saved in their Google accounts. This feature in Chrome could help increase the number of users who save their payment information with Google — and eventually increase the likelihood they’ll convert on Shopping Actions-enabled ads.

More on the news

• When completing a transaction, Chrome will offer to show credit cards saved to a user’s Google account. The user then selects the desired card and verifies the CVC number.
• During the transaction, users can also add a new credit card to their accounts.
• Chrome sync does not have to be turned on to use this feature. 

Gmail turned 15 earlier this year — and with it, the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) feature is now a year old. AMP functionality was built to allow brands to be more creative with their email marketing strategies, offering increased opportunities for more engaging, interactive and streamlined experiences for Gmail users.

With AMP, marketers can code emails that allow Gmail subscribers to interact with email content without leaving Gmail to improve the email experience. The benefits of this are extensive. The functionality at its finest could enable marketers to build interactive content to stay relevant and reduce friction in the purchase process and ultimately increase conversions.

However, many of the concerns I noted when AMP was first released a year ago still remain and many marketers caution against using AMP. It’s easy to understand why.

Stringent coding guidelines for AMP mean that HTTML/CSS tactics will not work — you’ll need to use a separate MIME (Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions) type for any email with AMP support. With AMP coding less flexible than traditional HTTML/CSS, it may take longer for your in-house team to embrace the feature. In addition, the switch to AMP entails more time in the quality assurance and testing process for each email you send out.

In short, incorporating AMP into your email strategy is no simple endeavor. And marketers might initially balk at investing the time and money in a tactic that will only affect a certain segment of their audience: Gmail users. But remember, Gmail continues to surge in market share — up 25% YOY. In fact, Gmail is now the top email client across devices as of this post. So despite its difficulties, AMP is worth a look given the potential for your brand.

How much? That remains to be seen, but AMP is ripe for testing.  Start experimenting with low-risk use cases that are relevant to the subscribers in your industry to determine if it’s worth the level of effort. At the very minimum, as an early adopter you’ll reap the benefits of standing out in an already crowded inbox piquing your subscriber’s interest.

Test these low-risk AMP use cases

Now that AMP for Gmail has had some time to evolve, the pros outweigh the cons. Not only do Gmail users make up a large percentage of most marketers’ subscribers, but also the feature allows for marketers to get more creative with their emails, ultimately improving the customer experience and boosting engagement.  Here are some specific, low-risk ways email marketers can use AMP for Gmail:

Use the carousel feature to highlight products: Using AMP’s carousel feature, retailers can showcase multiple images of products and create more engaging experiences personalized to each user. With the carousel, marketers have the power to provide subscribers with more information along with a more interactive experience directly within Gmail. This increases the fun aspect of design and allows subscribers to conduct more research prior to leaving Gmail. Since this feature has already proven popular on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it’s easy to see the appeal for email across a range of industries. Travel and retail industries seem most ripe for this feature.

Allow customers to access info in real-time: Travel brands like airlines and hotels benefit from AMP’s ability to incorporate live real-time feeds of available rooms or plane tickets directly within an email. Using an AMP-supported email, consumers can choose dates and compare rates without leaving to go to your website. This minimizes the friction in the process and discourages customers from checking out your competitors or even purchasing your own tickets from third-party sites (which limits the data you can collect from them). Retail brands can incorporate a similar real-time content strategy as hot products go out of stock, offers change, or content becomes irrelevant due to the subscriber’s current location. 

Enable interactive forms for sign-ups, applications and more: AMP allows you to gain more information than ever from your customers since they can interact directly within your messages. Financial services companies, for instance, can use forms to allow customers to apply for loans, credit cards, or refer friends to credit cards. Or, why not use it to survey customers about their preferences about anything from the products you’re selling to their general interests?

While these are just a few use cases, AMP features are versatile and powerful — and in the end, they could become another tool for improving the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy and ultimately making your subscribers lives better.

Same as always, what works for one audience won’t work for another so if you use AMP be sure to A/B test and keep track of the additional time you’ve invested to measure the worth. If it turns out to be another Google+, well you’ll know pretty quick not to waste your money and time. But if it works, that time and investment will have you ahead of the pack reaping the rewards for quarters to come.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

When consumers need to find the right product, service or storefront for their needs, they grab their phone, jump on their laptop, or just say, Hey Siri, Hey Alexa, and Hey Cortana. Search results immediately populate their screen and they skim, select, learn, and go.

To win at the game of search, your small or medium-sized business needs to be present online, discoverable and well-matched to the specific needs of consumers. Easier said than done, right?

If you want to quickly reach a targeted audience, drive the right kind of traffic towards your website, and develop a marketing strategy that works alongside your SEO efforts, pay per click (PPC) advertising is a great option. When consumers perform high commercial intent searches, meaning they’re online with the intent to buy a specific product, paid ads get 65% of all clicks. It’s a very effective way to get your products front and center on the search page. Both Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) and Google Ads offer pretty intuitive platforms when it comes to the account set-up and refinement, but if you’re not a marketing expert (and even if you are) you’re going to need a little help sometimes.

As a small business, you may not have time to really dig into PPC advertising, but you still care about building a campaign that works for you and for your potential customers. Or, maybe you have a strong handle on PPC, but you’re wondering what you could be doing better. Both these scenarios, and many more, could be helped by reaching out to your Microsoft Advertising or Google Ads customer support center or setting up an appointment with a PPC coach.

A coach? Yes, a coach. Really, try it. Working with PPC customer support at Microsoft Advertising, for example, can help your business get the right advice, employ the right tactics, and simply streamline the process, so you aren’t emerging from a PPC rabbit hole feeling frustrated and upset. That’s no fun and can be easily remedied. Here are five common concerns and how customer support can help small businesses like yours with their PPC campaigns.

“I have no idea how to get started.”

Sometimes when people jump into the world of PPC advertising, the process begins easily enough, but issues tend to pop up. Maybe you aren’t sure about how to establish a budget or conduct important keyword research. That’s ok, nobody expects you to be an expert right out of the gate.

Onboarding specialists are part of customer support and work with small businesses to set up your PPC ad account from scratch, create your first set of ads, research keywords, set a budget, and assist you with competitive bids. They view the entire process as a team effort and are genuinely interested in understanding your business goals and objectives. Then they help you design a PPC campaign to meet them.

“I can’t figure out why my campaigns aren’t performing.”

Coaches and customer support specialists can provide visibility on what is and isn’t working by showing businesses how to generate and understand a variety of performance reports. With over 30 different types of reports available, selecting and analyzing them on your own can be a little overwhelming at first, simply due to the sheer volume of data at our fingertips. Working with a coach can help provide clarity, and together you can identify relevant strategies and innovations that have a positive impact on your campaigns. In other words, they can help you figure out what all the data means and how to use it to your advantage.

If you’ve been using PPC advertising for quite a while, coaches can support your campaign by introducing you to the latest features and tools you may not know about. Sometimes we get into a routine and performance plateaus but talking to an expert for 15 minutes can totally refresh your PPC perspective and provide you with valuable insight and ideas.

“I’m afraid I’ll look like an idiot if I can’t figure this out on my own.”

Managing PPC campaigns is a learned skill, but it might not be something that comes naturally to you. A coach’s job isn’t to do everything for you, but to educate you on how to improve campaign performances on your own. Customer support can help business owners get familiar with PPC tools, processes and resources that help you successfully manage your ads without external support. The goal is to empower businesses with the know-how, competence, and confidence to handle their campaigns like a pro and troubleshoot any issues that come up. Learning, in and of itself, represents a measurement of success and makes the next PPC campaign easier to set up, more profitable, and effective.

“I don’t think customer support will understand anything about my business and it’s too much of a hassle. I just have to figure this out on my own.”

The whole point of customer support is to take the time to understand your industry and your business goals, that’s the only way to provide meaningful and targeted guidance. Coaches treat you like a partner and pro-actively offer strategic direction and the right tools to increase your PPC efficiency. They meet you at your level of expertise and build up from there, no matter your budget or your business. You need to be willing to share your story and reflectively consider what you want to get out of your various campaigns, but rest assured, if you’re willing to put in the time, it will most definitely not be wasted.

“I’m not sure I’m managing my campaign correctly and spend too much time worrying about it.”

This is a big one, especially for businesses that aren’t familiar with paid search. Your time is spent worrying that you’re doing it wrong instead of learning how to do it right. This is where working with a coach can really help because they provide you with peace of mind. Peace of mind in the information you’re using, your level of comfort and familiarity with the platform, and the belief that you are fully capable of making changes that improve your business’s visibility and lead conversions.

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In an effort to provide advertisers with more accurate and granular ad targeting options in Display & Video 360, Google will be launching a revamped experience for environment and position targeting settings on August 26, 2019.

The changeswill include updated targeting settings when creating or editing items individually or in bulk, updated dimensions in Reporting and a new version of Structured Data Files (SDF) to support the targeting overhaul.

While the same targeting options will continue to exist, they will appear with the new targeting controls come August.

By August 26, advertisers running campaigns in DV360 can expect to see the following:

Updated environment targeting will be focused on web- or app-serving environments. The device- and position-related options will be relocated from environment targeting to a different targeting control panel.

A new position targeting setting will group togetherall controls related to an ad’s position on a screen or in content in a new position targeting control. The position-related settings that will be moved to position targeting include Viewability, Video, and Audio targeting. Even with the new grouping, all of the targeting options will still function the same as before.

Reporting changes to values in the Environment dimension will reflect the new environment targeting setting. All existing values will be re-routed to the new values, including historical data. For advertisers running scheduled reports, the reports will not change in terms of delivery and will also reflect the new values for the Environment dimension. However, scheduled reports will no longer include the new Position in Content dimension.

A new version (v5) of Structured Data Files will launch in tandem with the August 26 update and will include fields to enable advertisers to retrieve and set the new targeting options. Once the new SDF goes live, older versions will not work if updating fields for environment- or position-related targeting options, but will still function as normal for all other fields.

Why we should care. Google said that the existing options were built to meet the needs of advertisers running display ads on desktop and mobile web. With the changes, advertisers will be able to “target their ads explicitly based on environment (app or web) and position (on screen or in content).”

Once the changes are implemented, advertisers will be able to serve ads with a greater level of confidence across these newer contexts.

For now, if you’re currently running ads in DV360, Google strongly recommends you familiarize yourself with the new targeting settings and data structures in order to adjust to the new workflows come August.

A vast majority of customers find Google reviews posted by strangers just as trustworthy as personal recommendations. So how can businesses encourage customers to leave a review for them on Google?

A staggering 97 percent of customers depend on online reviews to make a purchase decision. Google reviews build and insulate brand reputation, thereby helping customers to make a decision in your favor. In fact, a new research study reveals that Google review stars form social proof for your brand, boosting your site’s CTR by over 35 percent.

No wonder, reviews are among the top in Google’s ranking factors 2019 list. Google’s algorithm gives a thumbs-up to sites having maximum reviews. In Moz’s Local Search Ranking Factors review signals (review quantity, review velocity, and review diversity) make up 13 percent of Google’s local 3 pack or finder ranking factors.

Source 

Google is the fastest-growing review site gaining the highest number of reviews compared to other platforms. Hence, businesses cannot afford to ignore the role of genuine and regular Google reviews in building a strong online reputation. Further, reviews offer valuable insights and measurable information about the target audience.

Read on to learn a few tested Google review-generating more tips to improve your search engine rankings and positively influence customer purchase decisions.

1. First things first: Provide kick-ass service

The importance of customer service in the business world cannot be understated. A McKinsey study reveals that 70 percent of buying experiences are dictated by how customers feel they are being treated. Delivering excellent customer service will not only make you stand out from the crowd but also encourage people to be your online brand advocates, writing reviews and recommendations for you. Do your job right! Make sure your staff has a good understanding of the product and is adept at treating customers well. Amazon is leading the way in delivering awesome customer service. The ecommerce giant is known to have the most customer-friendly return policies in the industry. Amazon protects its customers with its A-to-Z guarantee and takes full responsibility for damaged products or delayed delivery, even for third-party sellers.

2. Simply ask for it

One of the easiest ways to procure Google reviews is to ask for it. Train your staff, especially the client-facing roles to request customers for their views and feedback. Further, simplify the process by giving clear bullet-point instructions with links, encouraging customers to leave a review. Notice how Anker, the global leader in electronic goods uses these Happy/Not Happy cards to encourage its customers to review its products. The card addresses both satisfied and unhappy customers, telling them what to do next.

 Source 

Here are a few ways you can encourage your customers to review your business on Google.

Conversing with a satisfied customer in your store? Just addressed a customer’s concern on a support call? Use these pleasant interactions with clients as an opportunity to request for Google reviews.

A personalized email campaign is an effective way to get more Google reviews. Keep the language in the email simple and specific. You can also use review-management tools like TrustPilot and ReviewTrackers that help automate product review invitations. These automated services send timely email reminders to your customers, urging them to write a review.

• Leave-behind cards

Leave-behind cards attached to products can remind customers to give a written review on Google. Better still, add a QR code to simplify the process of posting a review. Consider using business cards, leave-us-a-review cards, counter cards, window clings, and door hangers to generate reviews for your business.

• CTA or pop-ups

Customers often tend to procrastinate or miss out on posting reviews. Nudge such customers by including CTAs and pop-ups on your business page and mobile app. Typically, a pop-up like, “Hey, looks like you’re enjoying the read. Leave us a review!” can remind them to contribute a positive word. You can also add a CTA to your email signature in the form of a shortened link, taking them directly to the Google reviews page. For optimal results, make sure you solicit reviews at the right time of the customer journey. Ask for reviews when your customers have –

• Used or experienced the product or service
• Placed a repeat order
• Tagged you on social media
• Referred a new customer
• Are spending a lot of time on your website or app

3. Encourage your customer service team to collect reviews

Your customer service team is the face of your business. They interact with customers on a daily basis, addressing queries and solving product or service-related issues. Hence, it’s critical to motivate them to get reviews for your business.

•  Give them a script

Give your team a few examples of how they can invite reviews from customers. In an interview with Forbes, Daniel Vivarelli, the founder of Starloop, shares that it’s important to use the right phrases to remove the ‘sleaze’ factor and elevate your review request to a classy and sincere level.

Simply saying, “Will you please leave us a review on Google?” sounds obvious and awkward. Instead, train your employees to say something like,

“Thanks so much, Mr. Dorris! I am happy to learn that you are pleased with our services. I want to invite you to give an online feedback on Google. This will help us serve you even better.”

Sharing a few examples of such opening dialogues will help your staff speak the right language, making the process easier for them.

• Offer an incentive

Use an incentive system to reward employees based on the number of Google reviews they have secured. This can be a big motivator for them to make asking for reviews a part of their routine.

Offer extra incentives if their name is mentioned in the Google review. Not all customer service personnel get mentioned in reviews. But those who do, have definitely lived up to the customer expectations. It is important to reward such employees.

4. Create a custom Google review link on your site or app

Merely pasting Google reviews on your website can hamper the authenticity and legitimacy of your site. In other words, if you control the review content customers are bound to doubt its genuineness. Adding a link to your Google reviews form on your business page can help potential customers quickly access what others have to say about your brand. Add a graphic or button on your page like “Read our Google reviews” and link it using your Places ID.

Here’s how you can find your Place ID.

The complete link can then be used to direct your customers to the existing reviews page, encouraging them to add their own reviews.

Source 

5. Negative or positive: Remember to respond to reviews

Online reviews are social proof of your credibility and online reputation. Whether positive or negative, it’s important to respond to reviews to let your customers know that you are all ears and willing to assist them. In fact, a study published by Harvard Business Review found that responding to customer reviews yields better ratings. Find time to respond to reviews, making your potential reviewers feel that it’s worth their time to write a review for you.

• Positive reviews

Positive reviews are great for your online reputation. Be specific and thankful when responding to such reviews. Notice how Hard Rock Cafe, New York uses this positive review as an opportunity to reinforce the brand’s strengths and convert its customers into a repeat customer.

• Neutral reviews

Reviews that are three-star ones lack details as the reviewer doesn’t strongly like or dislike your product or service. These reviews often carry negative and positive comments. Hence, you need to reinforce the positive and address the concern, to show your prospective reviewer that you care.

Check out how the owner of Flowers of Dreams responds to a neutral comment posted by one of their customers. The response clearly shows that the business takes responsibility for an uncommon instance and desires to make things right for their customers.

• Negative reviews

Here’s the good news: Negative reviews can boost conversions and brand loyalty. This is because too many positive reviews seem fake to customers. Negative reviews make your brand seem authentic and offer customers the worst-case scenario. Remember: Writers of negative reviews want you to fix their issue and convert them into happy customers. Follow these basic rules when responding to a negative query.

• Be polite and empathetic.
• Do not respond in a defensive manner.
• Apologize and request to connect offline so you can address the customer’s concerns.

Notice how California Cuts responds to an unhappy customer by apologizing for the poor experience and taking the necessary steps to repair the damage.

When prospective reviewers see that you care to monitor and respond to customer reviews (even bad ones!), they will be encouraged to leave a Google review for you.

6. Address the WIIFM (What’s in it for me?)

Sadly, most businesses only focus on managing immediate product-related queries or following up with customers for reviews, laying little emphasis on building long-term relationships. Customers are more likely to take the time to write a word for you when you tell them how their review will be used or add value to them. It is critical to use the right words when asking your customers to review your product. For instance, in this customer review invitation Nest uses less compelling words like ‘make our ideas better,’ offering little motivation for its customers to leave a review.

Source: Thumbtack

On the other hand, Thumbtack uses powerful phrases like, “create a better experience for you”, putting customers in the position of a beneficiary and making them feel rewarded.

Source: Thumbtack

Secondly, offer incentives to customers for writing a review. That way, you are encouraging them to leave a review (good, bad, or neutral) and that doesn’t amount to bribing.

Source

Notice how this Kentucky-based chiropractic and wellness center doesn’t ask its patients to necessarily leave a positive review. They are offering a free adjustment for customers who leave “a review” not “a positive review”.

Addressing the “What’s in it for me?” will help your users see the direct benefit of spreading a positive word about you, motivating them to take the time to do so.

7. Host experiential events

Hosting a user conference or an industry event can help create a strong bond between your customers and the brand, creating conditions where they are likely to leave a review. That’s what experiential marketing is all about. Experiences don’t just sell products, they help your target audience connect with your brand’s core values. When customers are emotionally engaged, they will go out of their way to leave a review for you.

Source: YouTube

Check out how Oreo, one of the most popular cookies in the world, has used the 3D printing technology to allow customers to enjoy the cookie-making experience and receive uniquely flavored Oreo cookies. Such brand experiences coupled with a strong post-event feedback process can encourage people to leave reviews about the product.

Conclusion

Most customers read Google reviews to make a purchase decision. Reviews are a powerful marketing tool that should be used by marketers to improve online credibility, boost SEO, and drive conversions. The time-tested tips shared in this post will help you generate more Google reviews for your business, thereby strengthening your authority and online reputation.

George Konidis is the co-founder of Growing Search, a Canadian based digital marketing agency providing optimal SEO and link building services worldwide. He can be found on Twitter @georgekonidis.

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I’m noticing a trend among some email speakers lately – when they want to promote a new idea, they smack down the best practice that relates to it.

This bothers me because many of today’s best practices evolved from a yearning for innovation and guidelines in email’s Wild West early days, when we were writing and rewriting the rules almost every day as technology and expectations evolved.

Here we are, 25 years later, and we’re rethinking many of the practices that, for better or worse, helped us build email into the machine it is today. I agree that some best practices have either outlived their usefulness or didn’t stand the test of time, but I wish we wouldn’t be in such a hurry to move past the ones that still hold true.

Best practices grew out of email’s early days

Here’s why I’m not ready to discard everything we’ve built up.

Out of email’s early no-holds-barred environment, we began to see repercussions, like pushback from customers and subscribers, spammers and fraudsters polluting the space, ISPs and blacklists keeping us out of the inbox.

We also saw customers respond positively when we worked them with to show them how to use this new digital world.

This rapid development wasn’t all bad in those days before CAN-SPAM, CASL and the other state and national laws began regulating email. In case you haven’t been in the industry all that long, here’s what it was like:

• We were crazy. People tried whatever they could, emailing or even over-mailing. We developed send-time optimization because we were locked into emailing between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. That’s when people checked their email more often, from their work desktop computers where they had faster, more reliable internet connections.

• Testing was minimal because most email platforms didn’t allow it or limited you to simple A/B testing with long wait times to get results.

• We didn’t have widely accessible platforms for sharing ideas, like blogs or email-specific conferences, organizations or meet-ups. So, we innovated separately and aggressively.

Knowledge base begins to form

The email space began to formalize in the late 1990s. Enterprise-level and mid-market ESPs began to pop up. People who had been early leaders in the space signed on with the ESPs as strategists and account directors and began sharing their experiences and advice.

They aggressively implemented strategies and tactics that drove email innovation on a scale unmatched today. We were literally testing every new idea on hundreds of clients at a time  across verticals.

Industry newsletters, blogs, conferences, white papers – all of the things we rely on today for education and thought leadership bloomed rapidly after that. We began to build up a knowledge base of acceptable and unacceptable practices and shared our wins and losses.

Our customers and subscribers were learning at the same rapid pace. We were teaching as well as learning on an immense scale.

Best practices evolved as a starting point

Brand marketers, agency specialists and clients were looking for help with email in those early days. That’s how best practices evolved – from personal experiences refined over a short time. Best practices gave us a leg up, not as the only way to execute on acquisition, engagement, development or retention.

These helped us move into the second age of email development. For example, we knew enough that if we emailed customers who abandoned shopping carts, we stood a good chance of getting them to come back and buy.

A best practice developed – when you get your nightly file of abandoners’ email addresses from your web analytics provider, you shoot out an abandoned-cart reminder email.

Then, a CRM company challenged this belief. The strategy is right, the company said, but the timing is off. The platform had the technology to send the email within an hour after abandonment and research showing that sending as soon as possible after the abandonment would get better returns.

Voila! A new best practice.

Best practices like this and others covered welcome emails, opt-down pages to mitigate the opt-out page, permission in acquisition, managing inactives and other needs. They helped give everybody – newcomers as well as veterans transferring their direct-marketing backgrounds to digital – a leg up.

Best practices are a template, not the last word

As useful as best practices can be, they’re not supposed to be the final word. Instead, they’re something you use to launch a program, and then you develop the practice that works best for your brand, company and customers.

Take the win-back program. The best practice that evolved over several years of trial, error and testing is sending a three-email program spaced at different intervals with escalating offers, all geared to bring inactive customers back.

That’s the ideal. But your brand might need only one or two emails. A B2B company, especially one with long consideration cycles, might need five or more.

The best practice is your template. It gives you a place to start planning. Then, you adapt that template to your needs.

Why I’m not rushing to abandon best practices

In every vertical, space and aspect of marketing, we know certain things work, whether through our own experiences or what we’ve learned and adapted from our peers. We spent a lot of time testing to see what works and what doesn’t on a scale that’s hard to match today.

Should we revisit and revise this body of generally accepted best practices? You bet. We do that every time we get together to discuss, debate, educate and experiment. What worked 10 or 15 years ago – anybody want to revive the pre-checked boxes debate? – might not work today thanks to changes in laws, regulations, technology and customer expectations.

We’ve also been able to establish track records for long-term analysis of results. To advocate discarding 20 years’ worth of that work seems more like a quick way to make a name for yourself, not something that’s necessarily in the best interest of your clients or company.

What this means for marketers

Email is one of the only channels in which you can do a web search and find answers to your toughest questions from the top minds in our industry. And your voice is just as important when you have information to share that comes from your own testing and experience.

Write a white paper. Come up with a guest post in which you share the results of a new testing program, a case study or something else that attests to your success. Ask questions on blog posts, during webinars and at professional conferences. Pretty soon it will be your turn to speak up and share your knowledge. And that will help shape the new generation of best practices.

It’s the responsibility of marketing people like you – yes, you. Really. You. – to share the knowledge that leads to better-informed best practice and advancing our collective knowledge base. The best way to do that is through collaboration.

That yearning for knowledge and innovation is just as strong today as it was 20 years ago. What can you do to respond?

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

June 19 saw Alphabet’s annual shareholder meeting take place in Sunnyvale, California.

With protestors on the streets outside and a number of progressive policies being tabled and ultimately voted down by the board, the meeting was the latest moment in a storied 12+ months of internal issues and public criticism leveled at the search giant.

While pressure on Google to change continues to be on an upward trajectory, it was also something of a disappointing day for advocates of transparency, fairness, and equality both inside and outside of the company.

Let’s take a look at what happened and how this fits into the ongoing narrative of discord at Google and Alphabet.

First, a bit of background

As I reported for Search Engine Watch late last year, there has been growing discontent among Google employees about how the company is operating, with worker’s rights and leaked plans for the company to re-launch a search product (known as Dragonfly) in China both being key concerns.

This came to a head in November when thousands of staff staged a mass walkout from their offices in cities around the globe. The movement sought “to protest sexual harassment, misconduct, lack of transparency, and a workplace that doesn’t work for everyone,” with five demands put in front of directors – only one of which has been implemented so far.

Following the walkout, in late November, staff were moved to speak out publicly once more with an open letter to company leaders to stop the development of the Dragonfly project. More than 500 employees signed the letter which aligned itself with calls by Amnesty International. “We object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be,” it stated.

Workers, community groups, and shareholders are united in demanding #GoogleDoBetter, from human rights to housing. pic.twitter.com/Q4p4AmfCA5

— Google Walkout For Real Change (@GoogleWalkout) June 19, 2019

June 19 protests

The gathering outside the meeting on June 19 included:

• Google employees demonstrating for (among other things) a push to make the search giant abandon non-disclosure agreements and to allow staff more public forms of redress for harassment and discrimination.
• Students For A Free Tibet. In attendance to call upon Google to drop Dragonfly and to take a stand against censorship in China-occupied Tibet.
• Community groups, who were calling upon Google to address the housing shortage in Silicon Valley.

Reports from the shareholder meeting

The resulting protest covered a range of disparate issues. These, too, were reflected inside the shareholder meeting where a number of progressive motions were put forward for the board to consider. These included:

• An end to forced arbitration. Forced arbitration for sexual harassment policy was removed after the walkout in Nov 2018, but it is still imposed for employees seeking to solve other types of disputes.
• A sexual harassment review. Looking at whether the company should adopt and implement additional policies on sexual harassment, and to report its findings.
• Increased equitable employment practices.
• A report on human rights concerns in China.
• Appointing an employee representative to the board of directors.

Ultimately, all of these (and others) were voted down by the board of executives. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin – who collectively have 51% of voting power – didn’t attend the meeting, leaving other board members to face a number of difficult questions in the ensuing Q&A.

CEO Sundar Pichai was in attendance but did not respond to any questions directly.

Any positive outcomes?

While progressive outcomes from these protests and calls were seemingly not forthcoming on June 19, employees at Alphabet/Google, their contractors, and supporters are not being silenced by the board’s inaction.

Google has recently announced it would invest one billion dollars toward affordable housing after years of community and employee activism on the issue. Questions may remain as to whether they could be doing more in this area and what exactly this housing will look like, but persistence on the part of those taking direct action does seem to work, if slowly.

The issue of Dragonfly and whether it has been “dropped” has been handled by Google with just enough vagueness to keep some activists satisfied and others still pushing the issue.

In the days following the meeting, Students For A Free Tibet announced that they were viewing Google’s public confirmation that there are “no plans to offer a search engine in China” as a win after 10 months of campaigning.

However statements like these have been said before and, of course, do not assure critics that Google is not assisting a search player in China in some capacity. Not everyone will be convinced that their work is not supporting (or will not support) the surveillance state, even if only indirectly.

Google employees have a loud voice, but minimal power at board level

Conclusively, it seems to me that the biggest issue on seeing progressive change within Alphabet and Google depends on the make-up of the board. While a concentrated few people have a massive amount of supervoting power, and no employee representative is allowed to sit there, we can fully expect progress on employee rights within the business to improve at a frustratingly slow pace.

As for how long Google continues to be vague about its work in the Chinese search market, I imagine there will be many people inside and outside of Alphabet expecting little movement in this area either – unless we do see some significant changes with the make-up of the board and voter powers there.

Follow the Google Walkout Twitter feed for ongoing information about employee action and related issues.

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June 13 saw the release of a new tool by London-based company Trint which can assist the crawlability and visibility of video content in search engines by automatically attaching transcripts using AI.

In May, Google announced the launch of a new website aimed at explaining how they serve and address news across Google properties and platforms.

This is something I’ve been mulling over for a while. I threw the question out to SEO Twitter, and was surprised and impressed by the volume of responses.

Average position is misinterpreted as a metric that shows the actual position of ads on SERPs. How to accurately gauge the true page position of your ads?

On February 2018, Google implemented ad filtering for “annoying” and intrusive ads in Chrome in North America and Europe. This had been pre-announced in 2017 and was intended to compel publishers to adopt advertising standards established by the Coalition for Better Ads. 

Chrome has 64% of global browser market. The industry group was created in response to the rise of consumer ad-blocking. Now Chrome’s bad-ads filtering is going global, with a rollout to markets beyond North America and Europe on July 8. Google Chrome has a roughly 64% global browser market share.

We previously published an in-depth discussion of Chrome ad blocking and what it means for publishers and marketers (See FAQ: Google Chrome ad blocking is here. Everything you need to know).

In brief, sites that feature any of the four desktop or eight mobile ad categories banned under the Better Ads Standards (above), could see those units, or potentially all ads on their sites, blocked. Annoying formats include pop-ups, auto-play video ads with sound, prestitial ads, flashing/animated ads, large sticky ads and full-screen scrollover ads, among others.

Ads don’t display on sites with failing grades. When a user visits a site that has failed Better Ad Standards, Chrome’s filter will block ads from rendering on the page. Users will then see a message indicating ads have been blocked but will have the ability to “allow ads on this site.”

The global rollout of Chrome “ad blocking” comes at a time when Google engineers are contemplating controversial changes to browser extension APIs, which could disable most third-party ad blockers and privacy extensions. Google appeared to reverse course, although the status of the changes remains uncertain.

Why we should care. The vast majority of North American and European publisher sites pass the Better Ad Standards test, so the impact on users and publisher ad revenues has been minimal. That’s less certain in other markets, including Asia where consumer ad blocking is currently highest in the world — 50% according to one survey.

Spying on your competitors’ marketing efforts is one of the most efficient ways to come up with your our marketing campaigns, learn new tactics as well as predict the future of your niche.

The powerful driving source of any business is its competition. Competitors force us to move forward, implement changes and evolve.

I am not a big fan of competitive research unless you use the data right away to create your own marketing plan. Furthermore, I like plans that are pretty quickly turned into reality. I like action, so here are three competitive research tools that provide highly actionable insights:

1. Spy on your competitor’s traffic

Haven’t you wanted to know where exactly your competitors’ traffic and sales are coming from. Or how their landing pages convert? Or what are their best-performing keywords?

Nacho Analytics is a unique and innovative tool that will help you find answers to all the above questions and more. It uses its own database of “millions” of people who agreed to share their browsing history with the tool to help you spy on how they find and interact with your competitors’ pages.

Now, the most important part about the tool is that domain monitoring starts only when you add it to the tool. There’s no historical data available until you start monitoring any domain, so the earlier to add your competitors, the more data you’ll end up accumulating, with time.

Now, what sort of data is it?

Nacho Analytics looks exactly as Google Analytics, so you’ll see all the reports there. The difference is, there’s no tracking code to install and that’s not your site you are tracking, which sounds even too good to be true, only it’s both good and real. Some of the competitive insights you’ll be able to obtain include:

• Traffic sources (including conversions, page engagement metrics, etc. for each)
• Lead sources
• Conversion funnel analysis

In essence, you can do the same things with anyone else’s data that you do with your own: You can explore traffic acquisition tactics, see real-time data, identify best-performing CTAs, and more.

You can also share any data with anyone for free, similarly to how it works inside Google Analytics.

Nacho Analytics cheapest package is $39 and it allows you to track one competitor. For $79 a month, you’ll be able to monitor five competitors of yours.

2. Spy on your competitor’s backlinks

Ok, this one isn’t new: Monitoring competitors’ backlink acquisition methods help you create your own link building strategy as well as learn what not to do and how to avoid penalties.

But until now that was a pretty expensive and time-consuming process. Unless it’s your own site you are investigating, you had to pay for link research tools. And if you were dealing with a successful competitor, you had to go through thousands of lines before realizing how to sort and filter them to make sense of the data.

Therefore, I was pretty excited to discover this new backlink checker tool by Neil Patel which is free, available for use without the need to register and extremely usable.

Simply copy-paste your competitor’s domain and the tool will generate the list of backlinks including:

• The referring page title and URL
• The target page URL
• The link anchor text and type (text and image)

Now, there’s also a domain and link scores available but since I am not a fan of any link scoring (to put it mildly), I ignore those for the most part. Yet, if you come to think of those, you can actually use these numbers for sorting purposes. So, unless you miss a good link because of that, they might turn useful.

The advanced filtering is where the tool really shines. They make it so much easier to filter backlinks by identified patterns, including/excluding:

• Keywords in the anchor text
• Domains
• Words in the URL

Finally, you can easily export the whole list in a CSV file to keep playing with the data.

Again, this tool is absolutely free, with no registration required.

3. Spy on your own missed keyword opportunities

This, again, is not such an innovative tactic but it’s the format and the tool that can make all the difference.

The best way to improve and diversify your rankings is to expand the list of keywords you are targeting, and the easiest way to discover new keywords is to see what your competitors are ranking for.

“Keyword gap” tactic is about identifying queries one or more of your competitors’ domains is ranking fairly high, while yours is nowhere to be found.

This Domain vs Domain tool takes this tactic to a new level:

• It suggests competing domains for you to analyze
• It generates a handy venn diagram showing how close the selected competitors are and how many more opportunities you can explore. The venn graphic is clickable allowing you to instantly load the keyword lists based on the overlap:

The tool also shows current rankings of each domain for each query, as well as its recent movement. The latter should be a signal for you to go ahead and check what they possibly did recently to see the ranking change.

The chart also shows Google search volume for each query. However, sadly, you cannot sort results by it. You can export the whole chart to a CSV or Excel file to obtain more sorting and filtering flexibility.

You can also select a search engine for the analysis which is a pretty amazing feature. I find it absolutely invaluable when clients are trying to enter a new market, especially the same-language market, like Google.ca or Google.co.uk

Being able which queries your competitors are ranking for in various versions of Google makes international SEO much easier and more predictable. There’s some more info on how to make the most of the feature.

The tool currently costs $19 per month but they are giving up on the cheapest plan this summer.

Which tools are you using to explore your competition and, more importantly, make use of the data? Please share in the comments!

Ann Smarty is the Brand and Community Manager at InternetMarketingNinjas.com. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.

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Traffic forecasting is one of a CMO’s best resources to allocate marketing spend across the most useful tactics. Here’s how traffic forecasting could mean smarter ad spend.

FAQs improve SEO rankings as Google values your website for providing all the information needed to take an educated decision. Five ways to get it right.

When using nontechnical techniques, sound marketing principles ultimately lead to increased web rankings. Simple techniques to adopt for Google visibility.

It’s always best to have tools and processes in place. Obviously, you don’t need anything fancy. You could start by setting up Google Alerts.