🎛️ Pride Month and beyond

The transparency forced on brands by social media today means that engaged consumers can monitor brand values and behavior year round. That channel isn’t just switched on in February for Black History Month, or one day a year for Martin Luther King Day or Juneteenth. It’s always on — and brands that forget that run the risk that their messaging, for Pride Month for example, will be viewed as inauthentic, especially by younger demographics.That’s what we learned in a wide-ranging conversation with Adriana Waterston, SVP of Insights and Strategy for Horowitz Research with special expertise in multicultural market research.

The agency recently conducted research on Gen Z — a generation brands are struggling to engage with, thanks to the fragmentation of the media ecosystem. They found that 28% of those surveyed identified as LGBTQIA. “That’s a substantial proportion,” said Waterston. “The story of Gen Z,” she said, “is one of allies and being inclusive. The big message from our data is that for brands to really engage with Gen Z audiences, the tokenism of Black History Month or Pride Month or Asian and Pacific Islander — that kind of pandering engagement during these marketing months just really falls short.”

It’s necessary to rethink your whole approach to marketing, Waterston told us. “It’s part of the whole conversation that’s happening in this country. It’s not just about LGBTQ; it’s about diversity overall. The marketing world has, for way too long, been very binary, meaning that what is white and straight is called the general market, and everything else is not. The reality is that what is white and straight is not only not the general market, but is actually a much smaller portion of the market than you would have thought.”

Read more here.

While many back-office tools such as ERP and supply chain management have already adopted AI-driven automation, the front office (sales, marketing and service) remains the last bastion of non-automated processes.

Why? Sales and marketing people have dug in on the idea that their roles are more art than science. And they’ve clung jealously to the idea that their intuition and creativity are what differentiate them – which is true, only not in the ways they think.

Read more »

At Salesforce Connections yesterday, enhancements were announced to Digital 360, the platform which supports Salesforce Marketing, Commerce and Experience Clouds. Among the highlights:

Salesforce also announced a one-stop destination in Trailhead, the online education hub, for marketers to develop their career paths. The products noted above are immediately available, with the exception of Snapchat Audience Match and the B2B2C app, which are expected to be available in June.

Why we care. What we are seeing from Salesforce is continued emphasis on the CDP initiative, where Salesforce had lagged behind its most obvious competitors, plus a widening range of engagement with conversational channels. As more marketers prioritize data management and the elusive “single source of truth”, it’s no wonder Salesforce is shining its spotlight on CDP.

As customers interact with your business through various channels, the streams of information they provide can be endless. But, that data can also be hidden and difficult to tap into. Join experts from Actian, who will help you simplify real-time customer insights across your martech stack while reducing dependency on IT, making faster decisions and recovering costs.

RSVP Today »

I was once told that a presenter should change a slide, add a build or include an animation every 90 seconds of a presentation in order to keep the audience’s attention. That was a while ago and I’m willing to bet that attention spans have decreased, especially in the past year as many of us have developed Zoom fatigue. Of course it’s harder to keep someone’s attention online to begin with so what’s a presenter to do?

Start strong: Start with a short story or a strong statistic related to your topic to get your audience’s attention. Don’t waste this opportunity by focusing on your bio and talking about why the topic is important.

Check the number of slides you have: For a 30 minute presentation, unless you have builds and animations on each slide, the minimum number of slides you would have is 20 not including your introduction and closing slides. That means you’re changing slides every 90 seconds, but as noted we want to do more than.

Use the chat: Most event sessions and webinars have them for viewers to talk to each other and ask the speaker questions so use this interactive tool. Ask viewers to answer a question by posting in the chat. Even when it’s a pre-recorded session you can do this. You just won’t be able to react to the answers if it’s not live.

Pause to take questions: Who says you have to wait until the end of the presentation to answer questions. If you see live questions coming into the chat, answer a few during the presentation.

Poll the audience: If there’s a polling feature in the technology you’re using, use it. You can poll the audience about their experience level, test them on what they might think they know about the topic, or ask them any number of things. Most people enjoy seeing the live results.

Raise the hand feature: Again, this depends on the technology but if you have this feature, take advantage of it. You can ask a simple yes/no question and ask people to raise their hand to indicate a yes. Save the polling feature for questions with multiple choice answers.

There are many options available to keep your presentation interactive. The important thing to remember is that your audience is likely to lose focus so plan a few ways to draw them back into your presentation. Feel free to reach out to me at kbushman@thirddoormedia.com.

Attend SMX Advanced, online June 15-16, to dive deep into the latest in search marketing, including the Google Page Experience update, Core Web Vitals, Quality Score, and more.

Register for just $249 »

Gen Z consumers (ages 9 to 24) are least likely to trust that a brand will protect their information once they opt in, according to a new survey from performance marketing company Fluent. The same group is also least likely to be concerned with how brands use their data.

For a generational comparison, Boomers are 12% more likely than the overall pool to express concerns about how brands use their data, and 53% more likely than their Gen Z counterparts. Over half of all consumers (51%) trust that a brand will protect their info. Only 39% of Gen Zers feel this way.

What does this mean for marketers? They should be transparent by following the 71% of consumers who believe it’s important for brands to ask permission before sending communications. They should also, obviously, comply with all privacy laws that are applicable. They should take these actions, which Fluent concludes from their survey of over 14,300 consumers:

This kind of clear communication about data use can open more opportunities for marketers, even and especially among the younger set. While special offers and free trials are attractive to consumers of all ages, Gen Z is 189% more likely than the overall pool to favor discounts via email, and 153% more likely via SMS.

Why we care. Gen Z isn’t a monolith, but they have two highly important attributes as a group for marketers. They are young, so they can potentially be customers for a long time. And they are the first digital natives, and fundamentally have a different relationship to digital channels than their predecessors.

“It’s psychologically revealing that what some people call a roadmap, others call a backlog.” Ari Paparo, Head of Partnerships and Strategy, FreeWheel