Beacons… get around them!

Beacons are yet to be given a good run here in Australia, but I for one am looking forward to the brands that take on Beacons and give them a spin.

Essentially Beacons allow brands to tailor messages to their community that are close to where the Beacons are located.

1. Store sets up a Beacon in their store
2. Shopper walks within the Beacon range (low frequency Bluetooth range, generally up to 10 – 20 metres) and a notification automatically pushes up onto the customers mobile screen.
3. The message doesn’t need to be an offer or reward, but those types of notifications will help bring that shopper from outside into your store.
4. If shopper is in store the notification may encourage them to get something they weren’t planning on getting.

The only downside that I can see is that for Beacons to work ‘bluetooth’ must be enabled on the users phone and the user must first have allowed notifications to be pushed to them.
I don’t personally always have bluetooth on so these notifications would not work for me. Even so, I would still think it’s worthwhile for brands to adapt this new technology as they’re relatively cheap and easy to run.

If brands were to communicate these type of offers, I’m sure loyal customers would turn their bluetooth on.

Should Brands Be Building Optimised Emails?

There’s so much talk of ‘optimisation’ for websites and now that talk has moved to emails. Optimisation can be a costly exercise, one that should only be undertaken if your stats suggest it’s needed, I for one am not entirely sold on optimised emails.

Looking at my clients I have noticed that the trend for opening emails on mobile devices is only getting bigger and I cannot see that slowing down.
Does that mean we should be optimising our emails so they render perfectly on all devices? No!

This means that we should be designing for mobile first.

• Everything needs to be bigger; Fonts, Images and Buttons.
• Single column layout.
• Spacing out links and buttons so they’re easily tapped.
• CTA needs to be strong and clear.
• Designing max 600px width, as at thats size this still renders quite well on desktop.

Your final consideration should be where these mobile users land. It’s great to have a mobile friendly email, but if your site is not mobile friendly or responsive what’s the point.

A great info-graphic from Exact Target explains this in more detail can be found here.

Should your site be responsive?

As digital marketers we know that most people are consuming content on their phones.
This is quite obvious not even from looking at your Google Analytic stats, but by walking down the street and counting how many people are looking at their phones instead of where they’re walking or who they’re talking with. It’s good news for us that make a living online, but bad news for people that like to actually converse.

I think we all know the answer here, YES! Your site should be responsive and if it’s not now’s the time to take action.
This does mean more work, this does mean you’ll need a bigger budget to make the change, but it’s worth it and you’ll start to find your KPI’s will be better off for the change as well.

Making your site responsive is all for the end consumer and making sure their brand experience is the best it could be.
By making your site responsive, you’re also making your site more convenient for your consumer, easier for them to consume your content, easier for them to reach your sites goals.

At the end of the day the more convenient your brand is to the end consumer the more likely they’ll shop with you and more importantly they’ll come back and shop with you again.