Holiday Season 2021: The Ultimate Marketing Guide
The Holiday Season is coming up – this time of year is the Highest performing Quarter for E-commerce businesses. Consumers are in a great mood and are ready to shop. As people take time off, digital activity hits all time highs. This year, with so much uncertainty due to Covid 19, marketers are wondering how to optimize their strategies with all the pandemic constraints and new shifts in customer behavior. To help you embrace all the challenges and get well prepared for this time, we have prepared An ultimate guide to Holiday Email Marketing that will ensure that you end the season with a big hurrah! Let’s get ready to rake in that revenue!
Growth Stack – What it is & Why you need to build one
At the peril of falling into useless jargon, the term “growth stack” has been catching on fast in recent years, and is on the verge of being part of our common lexicon headed into 2022. Let’s start with a definition so we can use the term in it’s proper sense vs just another “buzzword.” The term “growth stack” derives from growth hacking, which is a discipline focused on rapid growth of a user base through the use of iterative testing, analysis and optimization. The “stack” terminology comes from the development world, but effectively refers to a set of tools that work together to achieve a specific result. So, a growth stack is basically the set of tools a growth hacker or growth marketer uses with the specific focus on rapidly building their user base. Why is this concept catching on so quickly? For one thing, it’s because the tools available have improved dramatically in the past few years, and the ability to integrate tools from across a wider digital ecosystem has taken a radical leap forward. Marketers have been dreaming of this moment for decades, and now for the first time it’s truly possible to achieve a fully-integrated ecosystem with limited customization requirements. The key change really started almost a decade ago, but essentially companies started building products with an intentional focus on being a component of a growth stack rather than trying to be an “all-in-one” solution. Those who were insightful enough to see the near exponential diversification of the digital ecosystem came to realize that “all-in-one” is a pure fantasy, and that the alternate approach is to become a pure “best of breed” solution that could readily work with other best of breed solutions. What this means is that a tool built for the purpose of being a component in a growth stack must first consider integration and data architecture before even thinking about the product itself. The product will be useless if it can’t both consume data it needs from other sources, and be able to deliver the data it captures and generates back to the rest of the ecosystem. Fundamentally, it’s pretty simple and it breaks down into user data, event data, campaign data and potentially some administrative data. All of that must be bilateral from the beginning, so the data architecture must allow for unstructured data of all of those types that can then be used and compiled as necessary. It must have a robust API that can ingest that data as well as export it. So now that this new generation of technology has arrived and matured, the marketing dream of a fully-integrated digital ecosystem has become a reality. That said, here in Asia adoption has only just begun as marketing teams struggle with legacy systems, relatively high investment costs to begin building a growth stack, and a general lack of knowledge or experience in sourcing solutions and building the stack. Increasingly though, everyone is becoming aware that if they don’t start making the move now, their business will rapidly fall behind their competitors, and so the marketing technology arms race is truly heating up. In our next piece, we’ll review some of the key players and options in the space, but in the meantime we’ll finish up here with a few tips and core principles when thinking about building a growth stack: Building a growth stack is the path to future-proofing your business. A diversified, integrated ecosystem that and be systematically upgraded over time is the only way to prevent either falling behind or needing to undergo a whole sale overhaul down the road.
Ematic can help you SOURCE marketing technology at the best prices and terms
If you’re in the market for new marketing technology, the smart move is to contact Ematic Solutions first. At no cost to you, an entire team of experts joins your team as your “buyer’s agent” to help you review the best options, negotiate the best deals, and ensure that you get the best product at the best price every time. Our teams are local and understand your needs, and will work on your behalf to ensure that you get the outcome you are looking for. Ematic Solutions isn’t beholden to any one technology, and isn’t here to sell you something. We are here to help you with every aspect of the buying process, and sometimes the answer is to simply fix what’s wrong with your current provider or not buy anything at all if there’s not a good match for your needs. When you contact providers directly, they will send you their agents, whom you know as “sales people.” It’s their profession to convince you that their product is the best for you and get you to buy it at the highest possible price and the most favorable terms to them. A sales person will never tell you that their product isn’t a good fit for your business, and often times will even stretch the truth about their product’s capabilities to convince you that it can do exactly what you’re looking for. Isn’t it a good idea then to have someone on your team who can provide honest, unbiased opinions? Don’t you want someone on your team who’s seen thousands of contracts and knows what the market rates are, where you can negotiate, and can help create the best environment for you to get the deal you want? Even better, wouldn’t it be great not to have 10 sales people calling you constantly, sending you follow ups and check ins, and pressuring you on timelines that are based on their needs vs your needs? Ematic Solutions has a team of over 100 marketing technology experts constantly reviewing the entire ecosystem that now includes 10k+ companies building marketing technology. We can give you an overview of the market and help narrow down a few recommendations that will uniquely fit your needs. When you’re ready, our Growth Consultants can help reach out to the providers you’re interested in to organize pitch meetings directly with them, then narrow down to a few finalists for the negotiations to begin. If you’re not ready or didn’t find the right thing, no worries! There’s no commitment to buy and if you’d like we can help explore some more options. If you are ready to proceed into the buying process, this is perhaps where Ematic can help most: collectively our team sees thousands of deals every year, and we know what the current market rates look like, and what kind of terms can be negotiated in your favor. The outcome will be that you get the right product at the best possible price, every time when you start with Ematic. Perhaps best of all: we’re not done once the purchase is complete! Ematic can also help with implementations, migrations, integrations with your other marketing technology and ongoing support, all delivered locally and professionally. Not only that, we’re constantly reviewing the marketing technology landscape, and if something better becomes available, we’ll be the first to let you know.
A letter from our Founder: Re-imagining Ematic Solutions.
Looking back on the 8 years Ematic has been in business, and the thousands of lives we touched between employees, customers, investors, partners and vendors across our 9 markets in which we operate as well as the rest of the globe, I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished but aware that our mission is far from complete. I think the biggest lesson learned is that innovation isn’t purely a technology phenomenon, and that to address a market as diverse as Southeast Asia, innovation needs to happen at every level of an organization to achieve the goals of the business and our customers. Ematic has always advocated a distributed approach to marketing technology: focused, best of breed products will beat monolithic “all-in-one” initiatives every time. At some point as our business grew, and our offerings grew, we realized this same thinking needed to apply to our own business which has led to a fairly radical re-think about our positioning in the market. Our mission has always been to deliver real results for marketers – whether through our own technology, through 3rd party partners, or through our knowhow and services. While we’re still best known for Email Marketing, our drive to deliver results has increasingly led us to new places in a quest to bring a more integrated approach to the entire scope of digital marketing. We decided to heed our own advice, and re-imagine Ematic as not a single company, but an ecosystem where best of breed offerings can thrive and a unifying layer of business interfaces tie everything together to generate a whole that’s greater than the sum of it’s parts. Today we have reorganized into Ematic Group, which sports an initial lineup of three brands and business units, separating our digital agency (Elixus), our technology business (Sub AI) and bringing back our flagship brand, Ematic Solutions as a Marketing Technology Consultancy. The combined effect of these three business units gives us both the strength and the flexibility to tackle the core challenges faced by marketers in markets across Southeast Asia. The most fundamental challenge of building great digital experiences for consumers in Southeast Asia boils down to one key thing: diseconomies of scale. Let’s face it: the Americans have it good when it comes to tech because the unit costs of technology are exceedingly favorable when you have a large single market and high Customer Lifetime Values. That means in Southeast Asia we pay higher unit costs for technology and leverage that against a population with significantly lower spending power, and frequently that leaves marketers upside down on their digital marketing initiatives. If we want to build better lives for consumers, employees and businesses in Southeast Asia (…and we do!), we must understand that core challenge in unit economics and address it at every turn. Those of you who know our killer app, Hi-iQ know that it has a singular purpose of eliminating wasteful spend in email marketing. Those of you who know Elixus know that they are an ROAS Machine focused on maximizing every dollar (Baht, Dong, Ringget, Peso, Rupiah too) spent. In some ways though, I’m almost most excited about reintroducing the Ematic Solutions brand to the market as it is capable of delivering impact on our collective unit economics challenge in a way we’ve not been able to do before. Ematic Solutions is a Buyer’s Agent – we help marketers ensure that you’re buying the best marketing technology at the best price with the fastest time-to-value and the maximum long-term return on investment. We have built a team who’s job is to scope the entire digital marketing landscape across the globe, evaluate the products in terms of price and quality, and identify which are most uniquely fit for our markets. We have now partnered with more than 50 marketing technology firms from around the globe and are adding more every day. To illustrate the point, a few years ago Ematic Solutions was a pure MailChimp shop. We still love those guys, but our roster of partners today just for messaging includes Iterable, Campaign Monitor, Mailjet, MailGun, Klaviyo, OneSignal, Active Campaign, Insider, Moengage, Webengage, Messagebird, Twilio, Smartmessage and several more coming soon. We also offer services on Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Adobe Campaign, Clevertap, Emarsys, DotDigital and Netcore. Our quest to help marketers maximize their ROI requires Ematic to minimize our costs so you don’t pay “on top” of your tech. In many scenarios, we can deliver technology, implementation of the technology, local support and services all for less than if you simply bought the technology directly. For those who want and need more help, we are also unveiling a whole range of services to help with a lot of the really “tough stuff” that many business struggle with. Let’s face it: operating a marketing team these days is getting more complex all the time, and often the need for specialization simply doesn’t align with the size of organization that makes sense for your business, and we want Ematic Solutions to be your swiss army knife to fill the gaps and ensure your entire ecosystem is running like a well-oiled machine. The bottom line: Ematic Solutions isn’t beholden to any particular technology. We can help your business with any marketing technology, and with any challenges you are having with your marketing technology. Ematic Solutions is here to build you the growth stack of your dreams, catered to your needs and budget, and open up a world of flexibility to adapt to whatever changes may come. It’s a very exciting time, and we are just getting started. Come join us on a journey to a better Southeast Asia.
Congratulations, Doug Chestnut!
That’s a little inside joke for our friends at Mailchimp – we know it’s “Ben Chestnut.” What a journey it’s been for those guys from a small-time agency business to the largest email marketing firm in the world, and a whopping $12 billion final price at the exit. Ematic Solutions essentially built our business around Mailchimp in the early days, becoming their largest partner in the world at one point (and still one of the largest today). We had the privilege of meeting the Mailchimp folks both in Singapore and at their headquarters in Atlanta a few years back, and it’s simply a great company with great people who have worked very hard to create one of the best products the world has ever known. The deal also seems to make a lot of sense for Intuit, despite what some folks are saying. Mailchimp has always focused on small business, and that will bring a ton of users into the Intuit ecosystem. If you’re an existing customer on Mailchimp, you should contact us to find out how we can help optimize your experience, cost and performance.
ALERT: Issues with Microsoft Domains
There appears to be an issue related to Microsoft domains (Hotmail, MSN, Outlook), causing massive spikes in abuse complaints and unsubscribe rates. This is affecting all ESP’s and email senders, even those with very good data management and subscription management practices. Ematic is investigating this issue to understand what preventative or corrective measures can be put in place, and in certain scenarios we might recommend suppressing all Hotmail, MSN or Outlook domains temporarily. Mailchimp users have been specifically affected due to their automated “account blocking” system, requiring forced removals of large portions of their perfectly valid subscribers, as well as a block on all future imports to the account. If your account has been blocked and you need help, please contact us. We will post more information as it becomes available.
Motionable for Website: Efficiently improve SEO using explainer videos
What is an explainer video? It’s a method of conveying knowledge to package the information you want to deliver in a short narrative through video – explain a concept and understandably create top-of-mind awareness and increase message retention with a clear call to action. Adding a video to your home page will help increase your SEO. Incorporating such a method will also result in more traffic to your website from different sources that talk about your video and further advance your website ranking. However, having good content and guiding the viewer to visit your website at www.[website].com at the end of the video isn’t sufficient as most videos are often not watched until the end. And this is where Motionable steps in. An agency team with a strong performance marketing DNA can strategically help you apply the proper keywords, video titles, and descriptions that can further boost your SEO. Moreover, they can help consult and optimize your explainer videos for any orientation and length based on social media platforms. You can also count on Motionable.io to creatively leverage your static brands’ assets by quickly turning them into a video. Contact us to find out more examples and how you can leverage explainer video with Motionable to improve your SEO efficiently.
Motionable for Instagram: Enabling Marketers to leverage Reels and Story
Instagram launched Reels ads in June 2021, directly competing with TikTok ads, where you can post 15, 30, and 60 seconds videos. This new launch is good news for marketers, content creators, and business owners. However, the problem many of them face is not only in the duration of the video but also in figuring out how to get them ready fast, engaging, and cost-effective. Motionable is a motion video agency that turns static brand assets into powerful motion videos for ads, snackable content, and AR filters that are perfect to spruce up your social media. Their solution reduces a fair amount of time and costly resources for marketers to create highly engaging videos. With their experience producing motion videos for various industries around the globe, their use of industry-specific best practices can effectively grab and hold viewer’s attention considerably within seconds, which in Instagram Reels and Story is critical. Contact us today to learn more about how Motionable can help you create the best motion video content for your Instagram. They offer affordable pricing packages and services to suit your needs without ruining your budget, starting from $250. Consult with the experts and discover the endless benefits of using motion video.
Motionable for Email Marketing: The power of video to the inbox, but finally in a way that works
Have you ever thought of implanting a video in your email content? If the answer is yes, take a look at Motionable. They are a motion video ads agency that enables marketers to deliver a video-like experience in the inbox in an email-friendly way using animated gifs. Typically in email, having a video has never been possible due to the limitations of the inbox environment. Marketers have wanted to put videos in email for a long time, and as a workaround, some usually apply gifs. However, it’s generally just cramming a set of frames into a single file for sequential playback. Motionable offers video-like animated gifs that efficiently grab and hold your subscriber’s attention, and it’s affordable enough to do it at scale. They leverage your static assets and turn them into visually engaging animated gifs to help deliver complex pictures and ideas into a short and straightforward clip. It helps to develop strong brand recall and promote awareness among your email subscribers. If you are interested to understand the requirements needed, template examples, pricing, and best practices, our buyer’s agent can help you arrange a demo and consult with the experts. Contact us now and start bringing your email to life!
Motionable: video ads agency that turns static assets into powerful motion video, at scale
Suppose you are looking to find innovative ways to communicate with your visitors or improve your marketing efforts without ruining your budget. In that case, Motionable is the new generation video agency that empowers brands to unlock the power of mobile-optimized motion ads by turning static assets into motion video. Motion video or “moving pictures” has increasingly been adopted by marketers as the modern way to optimize their marketing efforts, and it’s proven to produce 5x more attention and a 35% uplift in conversion. It’s the future approach of capturing more market shares and ensuring your brand is always on top of mind. Motionable is mobile-first and has created more than 800+ videos since 2020 for brands across the globe. Ematic loves them because their Media buying DNA allows them to produce motion videos optimized at scale for each format and channel you could think of, such as Email Marketing, Video Ads, Explainer Videos, and Snackable Content for your social media. They also handcrafted every single video in-house by their design and motion team to make sure the video aligns with your brand character and the goal of your campaign. How the process works are incredibly straightforward. Submit your brand assets by following the brief detailed structure, and the Motionable team will take care of the rest. Motionable offers a reasonably affordable price as well starting from $250 and can get them ready for you zippy fast in three days with a friction-free brief and feedback process, making the whole experience seamless and convenient. If you are keen to get one and need to consult with the experts, Ematic can help to arrange a demo for you or you can observe some of the examples at this link: Ematic+Motionable Contact us now and start engaging with your visitors with amazing motion videos!
