Facebook has established a new partnership with the Better Business Bureau National Programs’ National Advertising Division (NAD), the investigative division tasked with addressing disputes regarding truth and accuracy in advertising. NAD will now be able “to directly share with Facebook the outcomes of cases related to specific ad campaigns faster.”

The BBB and Facebook have also launched a “Shop Safe, Shop Smart” campaign that will run through December on Facebook, Instagram and other social media channels. The campaign is aimed at helping consumers spot, avoid and report online scams.

Why we care. Trust and safety will be particularly crucial for Facebook to continue to grow its social commerce business. The NAD agreement should help bolster Facebook’s efforts to police advertising on its platforms. “This will allow our enforcement teams to take action on ads reported to us that violate our policies, while helping to encourage more ethical practices among advertisers and across the digital advertising industry.”

Many marketers are unaware their messages are missing the inbox. This report from Validy analyzes the performance of over 2 billion email messages sent in 2019 from thousands of senders in over a dozen industries to see how many emails were delivered to the inbox, spam, or blocked altogether. See how you compare and learn a few simple steps that can increase the chances your messages will pass through filters and reach your subscribers.

Download now »

Remember when the five-year business plan worked just fine, when the pace of change was slower, when it was easier for companies to spot competition coming, and when disruption wasn’t really a thing? That’s no longer the case. Not only is change a constant, but the buzz in business is continuous transformation, and especially digital transformation.

“Lack of a well-defined and well-communicated strategy is among the most common reasons for failed digital or other business transformations,” writes strategy and change consultant Mark Berns. “The upshot is inconsistent leadership, conflicting goals and initiatives, resistance to change, and lack of resources available to deliver on change and make it stick.”

Berns has provided us with detailed advice on how to make your transformation strategy successful, but above all, he says, communicate the strategy. “It will affect everyone, so it’s vital that they understand your new focus and direction, and how it will inform their own work. As you move from defining a strategy into planning and execution, if 95% of employees don’t know where you’re going, there’s a 100% chance you’ll end up someplace else.”

Read more here.

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Autodesk faced a challenge with which many marketers are familiar. Teams that were expert in their various disciplines — channel marketing, regional marketing, industry marketing, etc. — had diverged into silos in the absence of a strong marketing performance management program. There was no unified view of how marketing spend affected program goals across all of these initiatives.

“Without breaking down those silos, you can’t get to a point where you’re tracking spend in a unified way across campaigns,” said Autodesk’s Zoe Marquardt, the company’s consultant on marketing performance management (MPM). “You can’t even develop unified campaigns across the company.”

Read more »

Zoom and Lumen have announced an expanded partnership in the form of ‘Zoom delivered by Lumen.’ Building on a relationship that has existed since September 2020, Lumen delivers Zoom experiences over a high-speed, secure fiber network spanning 60 countries. The expanded partnership will combine the platforms’ security capabilities, and over the next few months roll out new features like Zoom Phone and Lumen Cloud Connect for Zoom.

Lumen, which serves enterprises worldwide, was formerly known as CenturyLink.

Why we care. Video communications are a way of life for almost all of us, and will continue to be so in the future. Zoom’s profile in the space could hardly be higher, so an expanded partnership with a Fortune 500 communications company gets our attention.

“Do what you can to find your peace and also the solution to the job in front of you. You’re not alone. You don’t see it now, but in the years to come, what we’ve been going through is going to change the face of digital marketing. You’re helping to shape our history.” Ryan Phelan, Origin Email.