'Net Features : knotice

Monitor Mobile Email Activity for Free

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 19:00:00 GMT

Data suggests that more than half of commercial emails will be opened on a mobile phone or tablet by the end of this year. Most marketers, however, don't have access to campaign activity about their users' devices - enter Knotice Mobile View.

Knotice Mobile View allows marketers to monitor email campaign activity across device types, down to the device use of each person opening the email. Marketers can also generate and analyze data through the tool’s dashboard feature and even have data download capabilities. Knotice Mobile View is currently in beta, and is available at no cost through the end of 2013.

How does it work? When marketers sign up for Knotice Mobile View, they will receive custom code to paste into their email's HTML. Once the campaign is sent, they’ll be able to view the results in a dashboard on the Mobile View homepage or download the opens data to a .csv file which can be uploaded into other platforms for extended use.

3 Must-See Menu Design Styles

Amberly Dressler — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 19:00:00 GMT

Ever walk in a mall and not know whether to look left, right, up or down for the store, theater or restaurant you want? There’s a certain amount of anxiety in that experience and trying to locate a directory can add to the frustration.

This is where Web designers and developers can outshine their brick-and-mortar counterparts by optimizing one of the most important design elements on a website – the menu. Whereas mall developers likely want shoppers to get lost, website visitors expect to be told where to go, what’s important and how their visits play into a company’s mission or conversion path. Unlike mall shoppers, however, online users will simply leave and digitally drive away in their virtual cars for a more streamlined, user-friendly experience, so UX begins at the top (or in some cases left or middle).

“Designing a good navigation bar starts with solid information architecture,” said Filip Reese, associate product manager at 99designs. “The best navigation bars can both take a new visitor through the discovery process of understanding your business, and at the same time allow returning visitors to quickly return to important information or features.”

When it comes to trends in the menu arena, Reese advises to look out for ones that take an innovative approach to solving the challenges of responsive design.

Let’s explore different techniques currently in use…

Squarespace - Where’d It Go?

“Squarespace's navigation uses a mobile ‘off-canvas’ pattern across all screen sizes including the desktop,” said Reese. “While there is some risk in hiding navigation behind an interactive element, it works on this site because the main mode of discovery is scrolling through the long-form page.”

Knotice - Looking Left

Knotice made the switch from a traditional, top horizontal navigation bar to a vertical one on the left-hand side of the page for aesthetic reasons, according to its Director of Marketing Patti Renner.

“We wanted the hero image to have more prominence and having the navigation seemed to interrupt the flow and feel of the page,” said Renner. “With the amount of dropdowns, it also offered a cleaner approach. We did not test it, but we did seek opinions from key stakeholders. In fact, we are working on an entire redesign which should be complete in the next few months.”

Despite its somewhat untraditional placement, the Knotice nav bar is, well, noticeable, because people, in many countries, read from left to right. Enterprises catering to users whose languages read from right to left, however, should probably avoid this design technique as well as those companies who need sub-navigational elements to direct visitors. Dropdown sub-navigation links can make the page feel cluttered quickly and can overlap other design elements on the page.

PunchTab – Sign Up Already

“PunchTab seems to have made the navigation area secondary to the primary page content in order to encourage visitors to begin their sign-up flow as quickly as possible,” said Reese. “This strategy likely increases their sign-up rates, but may not be ideal for returning visitors or potential customers who want to learn more about their brand.”

Brands on Knotice for Complete Customer Profiles

Amberly Dressler — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:15:00 GMT

Creating coordinated brand experiences that extend across digital channels and device types can help companies better engage customers through consistency, helpfulness and value, according to Patti Renner, director of marketing at Knotice whose company recently announced an expanded relationship with Fender Musical Instruments.

Fender is using the Knotice platform to unite its campaign data and customer information. This relationship will allow Fender to inform highly tailored content across email, mobile, display, SMS and on their website. They will also be able to have a complete view of the customer across device types. Below, Renner offers an in-depth explanation of why this is important for all brands and the challenges that businesses face when creating complete customer profiles on their own.

How can unifying data and getting a complete customer profile help in a brand’s marketing efforts?

Patti Renner: Today’s customers are always connected, always looking for information and messages on whatever screen is handy at the moment. They could be browsing your site on an iPad, looking up information about your product on their mobile device or making a purchase on their PC. It doesn’t matter where they are or what device they’re using – they simply expect a consistent, relevant, enjoyable experience across channels. Connecting the channels across device types requires data management where the customer preferences and activity is stored within individual data profiles that can be automatically updated and appended as things happen.

Unfortunately, some marketers don’t think in terms of providing a cohesive consumer experience regardless of devices they use. They view each consumer by channel, focusing on their email audience as separate from their website visitors, separate from their online display views.

Having all their data unified within a universal profile management system, brands have the ability to connect the digital dots with each consumer, allowing them to provide a truly useful, relevant experience to each person as individuals. Here’s how a profile-based data management works. Let’s use Joe as an example. With proper data management, the brand knows Joe has opened their last 3 emails on a tablet, searched for the address of their nearest retail location on his iPhone, saw 4 ads for a blue sweater, then clicked on the sweater section of their website from his PC. Now, that brand can send Joe tablet-optimized emails, let him know when his favorite sweaters go on sale, and serve him with the content that interests him. The ability to cater to the interests of the custom based on available first-party data makes the brand experience better for Joe since he gets what he wants faster, and it also provides increase efficiency and a higher likelihood of conversion for the brand. Unifying your data makes this possible. Instead of pushing random offers to Joe, they’re now able to serve him with the information and products that best suit his needs.

What challenges are there for a company to try and do this on its own?

In most organizations, customer data lives siloed in separate systems or it’s difficult to access due to internal departmental hurdles. Trying to integrate customer data into a single system with just your IT team can be a real challenge as important data can fall through the cracks (or not integrate properly) when attempting to combine into a single system. If a company is able to get all its data into one place, it then faces the challenge of being able to create those unique customer profiles to wrap all that data around, with automation in place so the data profiles update and append as new information is received. On top of this is usability and actionability of the data so you can use it to inform content going out (so Joe sees sweaters and Mary sees the item she left in the shopping cart last week). You also want to be able to inform advanced analytics, so you send and spend smarter. There also is the issue of having a storage environment large enough for you to collect and quickly access all the information you’re taking it.

Working with a data management partner takes the stress of the organization by seamlessly uniting all that data, storing it safely in a powerful Big Data profile-based environment, which can then be easily used to inform messaging, content and analytics. For instance, our system has email, website, SMS and display options already built into the platform seamlessly. Everything can be simultaneously fueled by the same data environment, which makes response and relevance faster and simpler compared to pieced-together DIY integrations. We also offer analytics dashboards so you can better monitor what’s going on and make adjustments to help shorten the sales cycle. While you might be able to integrate a few points on your own, your time and money may be better spent working with a professional data management platform provider to get there faster.

For more information, visit www.knotice.com.

Mobile Tipping Point for Email

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:30:00 GMT

How do your email list recipients consume your content? On a desktop computer or through their mobile devices (e.g. smartphones)? A new report from Knotice revelas that emails opened on mobile evices are actually on pace to surpass PC opens by the end of 2013.

The “Knotice Mobile Email Opens Report: 2nd Half 2012” reveals that most brands will likely see at least half of their commercial emails opened via mobile devices by the end of this year (2013). Currently, 41 percent of commercial emails are opened on mobile devices, up from a 27 percent mobile email open rate a year earlier.

Key findings from the Knotice report include:

- The number of emails opened on a mobile device (smartphone and/or tablet) during the second half of 2012 rose to 41 percent. This is a 51 percent increase over the former mobile email open rate of 36 percent from the second half of 2012.

- Nearly half of all emails opened in the consumer services industry were opened on mobile devices during the second half of 2012.

- Only 0.07 percent of emails were opened again on multiple devices, down from 0.09 percent during the first half of 2012. This means that even if a compelling subject line was created and the right offer was delivered, if it the email renders poorly on a mobile device or if there isn’t a seamless optimization of the post-click experience, there is a missed opportunity with the mobile opener.

- The Hospitality and Consumer Services industries have seen the highest mobile email open rates with 44 percent and 49 percent respectively.

Mobile Email Opens are Up, But Activity is Lagging

Linc Wonham — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:00:00 GMT

Digital marketing software and services provider Knotice has released new data on the percentage of email opens and click activity via mobile device across 11 industry segments for the first half of 2011.

The Mobile Email Opens Report offers a comprehensive look at overall mobile usage as it pertains to email, including percentages of mobile opens and click-to-open (CTO) rates of permission-based email (CTO is a measure of action taken within an email once it has been opened).

The report includes specific mobile devices or operating systems (including Android, iPhone and iPad); industry segments such as retail, hospitality, telecommunications, healthcare and more; time of day (including smartphone versus iPad usage), and geography (mobile penetration percentage by state).

Key insights include the following:

Mobile email opens rise 51 percent - The number of emails opened on a mobile device (smartphone, iPad, etc.) rose 51 percent the first half of 2011 over the last quarter of 2010. This lends further proof to the fact that smartphone adoption rates, as well as the comfort level of mobile users, are on the rise.

People are not saving emails to view later on a different device - Despite the rise in mobile email open activity, only 3.09 percent of the sample of 701 million emails were opened on both mobile device and desktop . Of that 3.09 percent, only one-third were opened on mobile device first, then viewed on a desktop device later. While some marketers resist optimizing email for mobile, rationalizing that a poor mobile email experience can be reopened once the recipient is at their desk, the data clearly shows that is not happening.

Best time of the day can differ for opening email versus taking action – Mobile open rates and CTO rates by time of day do not always correspond. Understanding the demographics of each send segment remains important.

Mobile email open rates rise, while mobile click-through activity lags behind – Even if a person opens the email, the real measure is what they do once it's open. The lower rates of CTO activity may reflect the growing need for optimization, as it may be difficult for mobile users to take action on emails that have limited functionality when viewed via a mobile device.

Other findings include:

• Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems remain the clear market leaders.

• The B2B, cable and telecommunications, consumer services and entertainment industries saw significantly increased mobile email open activity from Q4 2010.

• The email CTO rate on mobile devices is far lower than the CTO rate on desktop devices. This data reinforces the need for a mobile optimized email experience.