A is for Apple and APIs in the ABCs of BNPL

 Digital technology and integrations between banks, fintech, and retailers are not just changing the how but when of payments. As a result, the way consumers pay for their purchases includes an increasingly popular option called buy now, pay later (BNPL).

Taking out a loan for a purchase as small as $35, which is basically what BNPL is, would never have been considered in the past. It would have been far too cumbersome for both consumers and lenders. But thanks to the prevalence of application programming interfaces (APIs) in the financial industry, the process is now as easy and seamless as a credit or debit card transaction.

Nearly every major retail store and site now offers customers the option to pay with a BNPL. The players in that space already include the Swedish fintech Klarna, as well as the US-based Sezzle and Affirm. The name behind many store credit cards, Synchrony, also has its offering, and now even bank-branded credit cards like Citi and Chase, as well as Amex, give their customers the option to use BNPL.

The space is heating up even more with Apple’s announcement that it would offer its own BNPL called Apple Pay Later through a subsidiary of the company that has obtained lending licenses.

Use of BNPL has exploded, accounting for $100 billion in retail purchases in 2021, up from $24 billion in 2020, as reported in Fintech Times. The forecast for the market indicates that the trend is here to stay. The global market for BNPL is expected to hit $3.98 trillion by 2030 with a CAGR of over 45%, starting from 2021, according to Allied Market Research.

Read more in The Way We Buy Now: The ABCs of BNPL The title is a nod to Anthony Trollope and my immersion in Victorian lit back in the day.

Why You Should Allow Customers to Pause Marketing Messages

 Glad to see major brands are taking my advice to enable customers to opt out of themed promotions.

Now that I'm on DoorDash's email list, it wants to use any and all occasions to market to me, including the upcoming holiday of Father's Day. But someone at the company realized that such messaging may not be appropriate for all customers and that it would be a nice gesture to ask before pushing out promotions around that theme.

I especially appreciate it this year because I did lose my father just last month. That doesn't mean I feel upset by Father's Day marketing, but I can imagine some people would be.

Last year I wrote about the email I got from ShopRunner ( see The Pause that Refreshes Marketing Relationships) that drew enough of my attention to warrant a click (very rare for me, I assure you). Its subject line was “Skip our Mother’s Day emails this year.”

For those who clicked the preference to pause, it explained that the pause on Mother’s Day communication doesn’t mean that it is pausing all marketing messages -- only the communication linked to that theme. As I noted, it's really a smart move that reduces email fatigue and the irritation of spam. It also lets you hear directly from your target market what they consider irrelevant.

People can have any number of reasons to find Mother’s Day messaging a pain, whether it is merely irrelevant or a sad reminder that they’ve  lost their mothers or mother-figures or their children. Linking a brand with those negative associations is not the way to make people like it better.

I said this then: "I think this is such a great idea that it should be applied to all occasions marketers like to seize on for messaging: Father’s Day, graduations, back to school, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, etc. To really show customers you care let them pick what occasions they’d rather not hear about."

It makes sense, right? Certainly, DoorDash got that message, though the company probably paid some consultant huge sums of money to get the guidance they could have had for free by reading my blog last year.

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Typing Horses Promote Iceland

 

Screen capture from the video embedded below. 

The emails are about on par with what you'd get if your cat walked across your keyboard, but real emails are not the point. The stunt is an attention-getter for tourism for Iceland, and it does that quite effectively. See the Visit Iceland site with the suggestions of what you can see in that country when you "outhorse" your emailing to an Icelandic horse.

Where HubSpot messed up

                                                       Photo by Kai Bossom on Unsplash

As I mentioned in What Edison can teach us about SEO, the first rule of writing is following through on what you promise in the title. If you fail to do that, you're guilty of bait-and-switch, or what is commonly known as clickbait.

                                                      Photo by Justus Menke on Unsplash

The promise the reader is not just about the topic covered but the approach and extent promised in the title. Consequently, if the title promises to explain a concept in 300 words, how long should it be? Just 300 word, not 500, and certainly not over 1800 words. Yet that's just what HubSpot did with its article entitled What Is an API? The Answer in 300 Words or Less.

That's Application Programming Interface (API) which connects many functions across many forms of business.

In truth it's a very thorough article that's been updated more than once to grown more comprehensives since it was first published in 2013. However, the promise of the title is not "Everything you need to know about an API" but a super-short overview that can be read in under a minute. For the current length, the article is described as a seven minute read.

What HubSpot should have done in this case is retain whatever short form the article may originally have held and then offered a link to the longer form with a CTA introduced along the lines of, "That's APIs in a nutshell. If you want to understand more about how they work for marketing, take a deep dive into the subject here."

Merely saying, "Here's a brief definition of an API, followed by some key information on how to make one work for your business" as a transition to the extensively detailed explanation that appears under the same title doesn't cut it as following through on the expected KISS (keep it short and simple) content.

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Churchill's guide to writing

Public domain photo of Winston Churchill in 1936

Necessity is not just the mother of invention but of improvement when brevity in writing is demanded by a state of war. 

In Chapter 28 of The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shares Churchill's instructions to improve writing at the War Cabinet in a minute, entitled "BREVITY."

It began with the reason it was particularly necessary for their writing:  

To do our work, we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long. This wastes time, while energy has to be spent in looking for the essential points. 

Anticipating the style of writing that we have come to expect in short form content online, Churchill offered four specific directions for removing anything extraneous:

1. Using "a series of short, crisp paragraphs" 

2. Removing the statistical analysis or more involved discussion from the main part of the report and offering it in an appendix.

3. Using of "headlines only, which can be expanded orally if needed."

4. Eliminating all "woolly phrases" that add needless words like: "It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations..." 

Churchill acknowledge that while the style "may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officalese jargon." However, the higher priority then was "saving time," and, he added that, in fact, such focus offers additional benefits: "the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking."

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Colgate needs to brush up on its email communication

Uupload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Toothbrush_toothbrush.JPG/512px-Toothbrush_toothbrush.JPG

What Colgate got wrong

 It forgot that in marketing communication, less can be more more, and more is only welcome if the audience sees value in it.

Some time ago, I granted Colgate permission to email me in order to receive its promotions. What I had in mind by promotions was value for me, meaning special offers and/or coupons. But Colgate seemed to think it was just about constantly reminding me about Colgate products with no financial incentive attached.

Finally, today, I decided I had enough of the Colgate clutter that wasn't bringing any value to my inbox. I put in a request to stop the emails. 

What Colgate got right

The opt-out form offers a menu of reasons to select that the folks on the marketing team should note in planning future campaigns. Most opt-outs include the first three, but this one adds a fourth option that fit my motivation exactly:

That was nice to find exactly my reason without having to fill in other or pretend I had not opted in. 

What Colgate should do with that data is plan for more effective email communication in future. If you lure customers in with the promise of special savings for subscribers, you have to deliver on that. Otherwise, you're not keeping up your end of the bargain and will lose the customer's attention and trust.

From Multi to Omnichannel Marketing

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From multi to omnichannel marketing

Photo by Pickawood on Unsplash

Not all marketing strategies deliver the same rates of returns. Omnichannel marketing outperforms single channel at the rate of 2.5x.

To get to that, it’s not enough to build an easy-to-navigate eCommerce site supported by marketing campaigns that reach out to them on various channels. All those components have to be integrated to work together through an omnichannel strategy.

The ROI of Omnichannel Marketing 

The returns of omnichannel marketing over single channel are quite impressive, according to the data offered on Clickz:

• Engagement rate: 18.96% on omnichannel vs 5.4% on single-channel

• Purchase frequency: 250% higher on omnichannel vs single-channel

• Average order value: 13% more per order on omnichannel vs single-channel

• Customer retention rates: 90% higher for omnichannel vs single-channel

One channel doesn't cut it

Most eCommerce businesses today do not rely on only one digital marketing channel. When competing for customer attention, you need to reach out to them in different ways in the hope that what they didn’t click on an email may still get a click on SMS or an ad served on social media.

 In a survey by HBR (Harvard Business Review), 73% of respondents said they use multiple channels during their shopping journey. That includes email, SMS, MMS, social media, as well as searches on the site.

The challenge for retailers is maintaining coherent and consistent communication that makes the most of the different ways of connecting.  A Facebook or Instagram ad may be what first grabs the customer’s attention, though they may need some follow up to convert to the level of putting together a shopping cart with an email or MMS  message that offers personalized recommendations.

So why do we call this omni and not just multichannel?

Multichannel marketing is simply messaging that a brand uses across various channels to try to increase its reach. In contrast, omnichannel marketing is not just about sending the messaging out across the different channels but linking up the data on feedback on each one back to the customer to personalize the experience through responsive adaption. 

Customer interests are not static but constantly changing as they respond to contextual triggers. Brands that utilize omnichannel use big data analytics to update customer data and adapt  each message that goes out accordingly. An omnichannel approach adapts to such shift to make marketing messages as relevant as possible.

Timely texts

Emails remain an important marketing tool for all businesses, especially eCommerce. However, widespread smartphone use makes texts a very effective way to get attention, as they work off a device many people keep at hand for most of their waking hours. 

Text messages the perfect medium for sending time-sensitive information. That includes:

• Announcement of new product drops, especially if one of the benefits you offer SMS subscribers is early access to what’s new.

• Promotions for  same-day  flash sales, particularly if they are set for certain times like noon to three. 

• Notification that something they wanted to order is now back in stock or is now on sale.

• An urgent notice that their selections in a cart they abandoned are in danger of selling out.

Channeling Success with Targeted Communication

Targeted messaging is much more effective than generic messaging. The basis of that communication is identifying customer segments, and it can get even more relevant with personalization with product offerings and promotions selected specifically for that customer’s interests.

No matter how responsive your customers are to emails or texts, it’s important to remember that a single channel does not fit all customers under all circumstances. You need to adapt to the needs and context of the moment to deliver the right message through the right medium.. 

For example, you could have a customer who has subscribed to both emails and texts. Even though sending an SMS is fast and easy, it's not an appropriate medium for longer messages. You also can use both channels for reminders say of an upcoming promotion or a price drop on something they have looked at but didn't end up adding to cart or that they added it to the cart but failed to complete the transaction.  

On that basis, you can get the right offer to the right person at the right time, and through the right channel.

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When automated messages make your brand look stupid

Marketers love using emails and texts to be in contact with customers. It's so cheap and easy to get messages out that some abuse the channels and send out daily messages. Even worse, some send out multiple messages a day, which just crowd a customers' inbox and make them start tuning out those messages.

One of the biggest offenders on this front is the Gap family of brands. As the umbrella organization comprises not just Gap but also Banana Republic, as well as the "Factory" versions of both those brands, on top of Old Navy and Althea, it sends me a minimum of three and sometimes even five emails each and every day. So, yes, I tune most of them out now. 

But the one pictured above caught my eye. Can you guess why?

Are you motivated to make a purchase because a brand lets you know that you have free money to spend that amounts to just $0 in rewards? In other words, your purchasing power is unchanged from what you thought it was before.

 It's all too obvious that Old Navy is attempting to personalize the offer not just by using my name but by trying to tempt me to make a purchase that will be discounted by my rewards. As the algorithm is not programmed to discard that message for customers without a reward balance, we get a message that shows not all personalization necessarily fits your marketing message.

A bit later I got this email that made a similar mistake in a PR pitch. Notice how the personalization is worked in without regard for understanding how we address people in real life:

"Setting up your business remotely during Great Resignation

Inbox

KJ Helms via prnewswire.com
to me

Hi Brown, Ariella​ Team,

 

I have a story I think Brown, Ariella​ would want to cover about a firm that can help businesses 

affected by “The Great Resignation,” which is continuing with 4.3 million resignations in 

December 2021 alone ⁽¹⁾.

One other nitpick I have is that it refers to the Great Resignation continuing by citing the numbers from December 2021. As we are in March now, that is a non sequitur. Instead of presenting the sentence in this order  the text should have started with the December stat and then say that the trend continues in 2022, possibly with its own sentence set up this way: In December 2021 alone 4.3 million resigned from their jobs, and "The Great Resignation" trend is continuing in 2022, raising concerns for businesses that want to retain their employees.

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