Engagement has become a term that means everything and nothing. Too often it’s used offensively, defensively or indiscriminately to thrust or parry arguments about strategy, technology, media or creative. Engagement is the desired human interaction that results from marketing activity. It’s a feeling, a thought or possibly an action that a person takes in anticipation of or in response to messaging or functionality.
The pace of automation, interconnections and change in digital media buying is staggering. And while there’s still considerable blabbing, handwringing, stalling and excuse making about programmatic buying, reality is way ahead of the rhetoric even if media firms and their clients aren’t leading the charge. The days of armies of young media planners and buyers wielding spreadsheets are being replaced by a business rules that instruct computers to buy and optimize in real time.
In July, Google unilaterally decided to sort and filter Gmail users mailboxes for them. By introducing Tabs, Google proactively directed each inbound email to one of five tabs; primary, promotions, social, updates and forums. Commercial emailers went nuts. Assuming they were being unfairly ghettoized, they said Google was out to screw them.
I miss Jerry Lewis. Labor Day isn’t the same without him not only because he’s an incredible comic but also because he was the original social media marketer. His 44 year run left us with four enduring lessons.
Write Sizzling Subject Lines
28 Jun 2013
Subject lines initiate successful email marketing. The right subject line opens up a conversation or a relationship as quickly as “abracadabra.” The wrong line condemns your brand to die alone in the dark. Great subject lines are like great billboards or great headlines; they telegraph easily understood information to drive immediate comprehension and action.