A common startup mistake is having fragmented messaging, where marketing, sales, and product teams each tell a different story to the customer. Keeping core messages in hidden documents or team-specific tools leads to misalignment and missed opportunities across teams. The homepage, as a highly visible and cross-functional asset, is the best place to house these messages for both internal and external clarity.
This report compiles insights from 130 email professionals, offering benchmarks and best practices for email marketing. The survey covered topics such as deliverability, design, strategy, AMP emails, and AI adoption, with responses tailored to participants' expertise. Industry-wide benchmarks reveal an overall email open rate of 29.2%, a significant increase from the previous year.
Google made Meridian, its open-source marketing mix model, available to all advertisers after testing it with hundreds of brands worldwide. Unlike traditional models that oversimplify impressions and fail to measure digital channels accurately, Meridian incorporates real-world experiments and Bayesian causal inference for deeper insights. With direct integration into Google's MMM Data Platform, marketers gain more precise measurement of their Google Ads performance.
Flowdrafter is a tool for generating first drafts. It prevents editing as you go in order to help you write more productively. Flowdrafter is free to use.
Slack's early success can be explained by the Trigger-to-Outcome Journey. Slack originally positioned itself as a group chat app but struggled to convince decision-makers to pay for it. Customers actually valued the tool for reducing meetings, emails, and stress. The company repositioned its product as a new way of working rather than just another chat app, which significantly increased its perceived value and led to significant business growth. Strong brand positioning requires understanding customer triggers, problems, objections, and desired outcomes.
Labeling a product as “AI-powered” does not increase trust, justify higher pricing, or improve customer perception. While companies often emphasize AI in marketing to appeal to investors and boost SEO, most users care more about tangible benefits than the underlying technology that powers it. Successful messaging focuses on clear outcomes, such as time saved or improved productivity rather than relying on AI as the key selling point.
Capitalize on virality by turning it into news coverage, using it as social proof for new users, or potentially embracing a new target audience.
Many brands are prioritizing performance marketing with conversion attribution, but this strategy risks underinvesting in brand marketing that meaningfully drives long-term growth.
Instead of treating social media as a last-minute distribution channel, content should be designed with social in mind from the start.
Reports of explicit ads appearing on YouTube have gone up significantly, with users getting increasingly concerned about the platform's content moderation efforts. A new incident shared on Reddit involved a child mistaking an adult film actor in an ad for a popular game streamer while watching Fortnite videos. While the platform claims to have blocked 5.5 billion ads and suspended 12.7 million advertiser accounts in 2023, growing evidence suggests its safeguards remain inadequate.
New research from Snapchat found that creator ads drove 35% higher ad recall and 25% higher brand awareness compared to standard brand ads. Creators influence purchase decisions, with 71% of consumers valuing their opinions during the consideration phase and 70% during the purchase phase. The study also found that consumers value Snapchat creator recommendations more than those on other platforms (64% vs. 52% respectively).
To differentiate your brand, establish a unique, recognizable process that stands out. Back up your claims with specific, measurable results to show value. Highlight overlooked strengths that resonate with your audience. Challenge industry norms with bold statements to position your product as the alternative. Lastly, build trust with guarantees that go beyond typical offers.
Determining the ideal publishing frequency requires understanding audience behavior, leveraging data from tools like analytics or A/B tests, and aligning content schedules with audience needs and industry trends. Consistency is critical. Post multiple times daily on platforms like Instagram and tailor email campaigns to optimal times, such as avoiding Mondays and Fridays. Flexible strategies that adapt to seasonal patterns, viral success, or emerging industry trends can maximize engagement and make content resonate with customers.
Visitors don't trust companies that fail to provide credible proof of their claims. Effective proof elements include data, testimonials, guarantees, social proof, demonstrations, and celebrity endorsements. daFlores increased sales by 44% by showcasing Facebook followers, while Geeks2U boosted calls by 49% with a strong guarantee. Businesses should uncover hidden proof, rank and test it for effectiveness, and invest in acquiring persuasive evidence. Trust in a company and trust in a product are separate issues, both of which must be addressed to drive conversions.
Leah Tharin and Kieran Flanagan will host a Maven session on January 31 on using AI tools to identify growth opportunities, create actionable strategies, and improve experimentation in B2B SaaS. Attendees will explore real-world applications of AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini for optimizing growth metrics, roadmaps, and decision-making processes.
DeepSeek's low-cost AI model, which operates at a fraction of current industry costs, could transform marketing by making advanced AI tools accessible to businesses of all sizes. This affordability enables widespread use across customer touchpoints, real-time analytics, and personalized interactions, fostering innovation and experimentation. Smaller businesses can now compete with enterprises, leveling the playing field, as the focus shifts from access to creative application.
Sculpd has built a strong community by turning customers into creators and encouraging UGC through product giveaways and competitions. Its content focuses on inspiring possibilities rather than just promoting products and showcasing what customers can create. The company connects deeply with Gen Z and millennial values by understanding its audience and tapping into cultural trends, like personalized spaces and creative nights in.
Meat, dairy, and egg marketing relies heavily on imagery to shape consumer perceptions. Symbols like red barns and green pastures suggest idyllic farming conditions, but in reality, most animals are confined in industrial facilities, where a single farm may house over 1,300 pigs or 50,000 chickens. These misleading visuals hide the harsh conditions of factory farming, making consumers believe in a sanitized version of industrial agriculture.
Focus storytelling around how your brand fits into your audience's journey, rather than shining a spotlight on the brand itself.
A template for BOFU posts.
Uber's "You're Almost There" campaign showcases quirky, relatable journeys from airports to beloved destinations.
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CallRail asked 70 small-to-medium businesses about their predictions for the year ahead [5]. The survey reveals some surprising (and some less surprising) trends:
Millennials' net worth has increased, primarily due to rising home values. However, many still don't feel wealthy due to the concept of "phantom wealth" - assets like home values or retirement plans that are illiquid and don't impact day-to-day cash flow. Inflation and debt have kept millennials feeling financially stretched despite higher income and rising wages, with many identifying as "high earners, not rich yet" due to increased living costs.
AI is reshaping social media marketing with new tools and challenges. AI-driven characters are set to boost engagement, though concerns about reliance on digital interactions persist. The rise of AI-generated content raises risks of misinformation and manipulation, especially in subtle, targeted forms. Democratized creation empowers more users but may dilute quality, while AI agents revolutionize user behavior by automating tasks, altering how brands attract attention.
Great content focuses on transforming the reader's perspective instead of simply conveying information. There are several behavioral cues that can be leveraged to do this effectively, including mirroring the audience's language to articulate their needs, using side-by-side comparisons to show what is at stake if they don't act, and using unexpected data, an unusual analogy, or an interesting story.
Meta's new memory feature lets users tell the chatbot personal details, such as dietary preferences, for tailored recommendations in future conversations. The feature is live in the US and Canada but lacks an opt-out option for data use.
LinkedIn employs strict anti-scraping measures. Exceeding limits or accessing private data can result in account bans. Tools like Snov.io, Lemlist, and PhantomBuster streamline data extraction while offering features such as bulk scraping, email finding, and CRM integration. Scraping public data is generally legal but scrapers must adhere to local regulations like GDPR and LinkedIn's terms of service to avoid legal issues.
Superfy is a social networking app that connects Gen Z users for real-time Q&A through AI-powered matching, delivering responses within 20 secs. With over 500K users aged 18-21 across the US, U.K., and Canada, it shows a shift in online behavior where subjective answers and personal recommendations are favored over traditional search results. The platform boasts high engagement, with users spending 40 mins daily and an 85% active participation rate, outperforming platforms like Quora and Reddit.
HubSpot's blog experienced a sharp decline in organic search traffic in 2024. Traffic dropped from 77% of the site's total in January to 42% by December, coinciding with Google's core updates. The decline primarily affected high-traffic articles on less relevant topics like "shrug emoji" and "famous quotes." Business-focused content saw stable or improved performance. Competitors such as Microsoft, Adobe, and Zapier gained traffic where HubSpot lost ground. Despite a 23.2% decrease in total traffic, HubSpot retained strong rankings for critical commercial and transactional keywords. Google's updates now prioritize subject matter expertise and business alignment, making quality and relevance essential for SEO success.
Content has evolved from traditional advertising copy to playing a central role in digital design. It transitioned from persuasive writing to creating clear, accessible, and engaging user experiences. Future roles, such as content architects, narrative engineers, and experience shapers, may emerge to address technological advancements like AI, AR, and VR. These roles could focus on organizing complex ecosystems, crafting adaptive narratives, and overseeing cohesive user journeys.
Three-quarters of Gen Z shop in-person at least once a week.
Focus on creating content that changes minds and grows revenue.
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Want to know what your customers are really saying about you
The ‘intention economy,' fueled by AI, will create a digital marketplace where companies commodify and sell predictions of users' future actions. Companies can map evolving thought patterns to forecast behaviors by analyzing conversational data, offering unprecedented targeting capabilities for advertisers. Researchers from the University of Cambridge warn that this evolution will erode privacy, enable subtle manipulation of beliefs, and undermine democratic norms. With AI chatbots acting as intermediaries, this marks an important shift from the attention economy, turning personal motivations into a powerful and profitable currency.
Substack writers are taking on advertising sales, managing deals directly with brands, often through DIY methods like Google Docs. Ad prices vary widely, with small mentions costing around $100 and larger sponsorships reaching up to $20K. While Substack focuses on subscription revenue, some writers, like Alex Kantrowitz of Big Technology, earn more from ads. New platforms like Beehiiv offer semi-automated ad networks, but many writers prefer handling deals independently, despite the operational challenges.
Premature investment in paid marketing often leads to high costs, poor results, and unsustainable growth. Companies should ensure product-market fit first, with churn below 25% and retention metrics in place. Landing pages must be optimized for clarity, speed, mobile use, and conversion. Organic marketing like SEO and product-led growth is crucial for sustainable traffic before investing in paid channels. Paid marketing requires technical preparation, reliable data systems, and a budget of at least $75K over 6 months to achieve scaled growth and acceptable ROI.
Most content fails because it's too simple to create, forgettable to read, and lacks depth. Techniques like weaving strong opinions throughout, sharing personal anecdotes to ground ideas in real-world experiences, and writing "How I" pieces that showcase firsthand problem-solving elevate content from generic to compelling. While more time-consuming to execute, these methods create a distinctive voice.
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Tech inboxes are crowded, but TLDR stands out—and so do the ads inside. With over 5 million software devs, founders and other tech decision-makers tuning in daily, this is where ideas, tools, and
Meta has announced a small-scale test of ads on Threads, starting with select brands in the US and Japan. The image-based ads will appear in the home feed and will be tailored using user activity across Threads, Instagram, and other external sites. Meta will give users tools to manage and customize their ad experience within the app.
AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, making it difficult to identify the best tool for individual use. Top choices include ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, each with unique strengths. ChatGPT excels in Live Mode and reasoning, Gemini integrates with Google Workspace and leads in image generation, while Claude is valued for its insightful interactions. Emerging players like DeepSeek and Grok also offer niche advantages.
Dropbox struggled to communicate its value due to the "curse of expertise," where deep knowledge made simple explanations difficult. A new explainer video featuring a "magic pocket" story drove significant growth by making the message relatable and clear. Examples from Rolls-Royce, Volvo, and JFK's moon pledge show how focusing on key benefits, crafting compelling narratives, and delivering unexpected messages can improve communication.
Promotions in product marketing depend on strategy, timing, and visibility. Ensure you work for a company that values career growth and has a supportive manager who advocates for team members. Focus on impactful work rather than mastering every skill - excel in one or two high-value areas like product launches or positioning while maintaining broad exposure elsewhere. Build visibility, influence, and strategic thinking, as these skills are essential for long-term career growth. Periodically assess your environment and create a plan to close skill gaps and align your expertise with your target role.
Why you should hire a brand marketer before a product marketer.
Kind Snacks leans into the bed rotting trend with a playful “Bed Rotting Essential's Kit” on TikTok Shop.
A reminder that email opens are one small piece of the email data puzzle.
Netflix gained 19M new subscribers in Q4 2024.