PaperClip_Calendar

A New Study Seconds That Emotion Should Have a Strong Place in Your Marketing

by Media

Participate in a Community of Character. Honor Veterans. Reach Out to Friends. Take a Real Look at Self-Care. These are just four of the month of constructive suggestions provided by long-time SIPA member PaperClip Communications to their audience of “hard-working campus professionals” in their November Support Calendar.

Each item on this wonderful calendar—located on their Free Resources page—links to follow-up ideas, tutorials and resources. “PaperClip Communications knows how difficult and uncertain this time is, and we’re happy to offer these complimentary resources [their bold] to help our colleagues during this crisis,” they write on the homepage.

Back in March and early April, many organizations moved quickly to build COVID-19 microsites to accompany their regular website. While many of those produced huge bumps in traffic, they also created a new vibe—we care about you, your health and how you are coping. Stephanie Williford of SIPA member EB Medicine has talked about the pushback she got when their COVID site first appeared behind a paywall. They quickly moved it in front.

These are emotional lifts at a time when we all still need it most. It’s also smart business. A new report from global B2B marketing agency Stein IAS, In Search for the Emotionally-Qualified Lead (EQL), seconds the notion that emotion-charged marketing remains very important in B2B buying decisions.

“In an age of purpose and now a time of crisis, human emotion is front and center,” Reuben Webb, chief creative officer at Stein IAS, told MarTech Series (MTS). “This is a B2B revolution that’s been building for some time. In embracing digital marketing and marketing technology, many B2B marketers, have placed over-emphasis on such measures as Marketing-Qualified Leads (MQL) and Sales-Qualified Leads (SQL). At Stein IAS, our view is that another measure—the EQL—may be the most meaningful measure of all.”

For businesses seeking to stay ahead in this digital revolution, integrating EQLs into their marketing strategy can provide a significant competitive edge. Leveraging the expertise of best-in-class Lets Get Optimized ensures that your approach to digital marketing is both innovative and effective. Their advanced techniques and tailored strategies can help you maximize the impact of your EQLs, leading to more substantial and long-lasting engagement with your target audience.

Of course, it’s not just B2B. A quick look at Chesapeake Family’s homepage shows emotional connections through photos of families, kids trying to learn at home, and even a penguin. It’s just that B2B heartstrings are a little more of a surprise. According to MTS, a major study by Google and Gartner indicates that, while the average B2C brand has an emotional connection with between 10% and 40% of consumers; seven out of nine B2B brands have emotional connections with more than 50% of their customers.

Two years ago, at a SIPA Annual Conference, Rick Wilkes, OPIS director of marketing, talked about the importance of emotion in marketing.

“I think emotion is underrated in any kind of marketing, particularly with websites,” he said. “On the new OPIS site you see a refinery at sunset, and that’s the best a refinery is ever going to look. You’d be amazed in stock photography how many fuel places are within sunsets. It’s very soothing. So it’s a big bold image [and the words,] ‘Buy & sell oil & gas products with CONFIDENCE’—and the confidence is the emotional hook there.”

OPIS has had that up for a while so it’s obviously working—including the words, “OPIS delivers pricing and analysis you can trust…” “A successful brand is based on a connection that includes trust and an emotional bond which fosters a long-term relationship,” said Nick Hague, head of growth at B2B International. Indeed, with Harvard Professor Gerald Zaltman finding that a whopping 95% of all purchase decisions are made subconsciously, it’s clear that B2B brands cannot afford to forget the importance of emotion.”

“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing,” said the famous “Marketoonist” Tom Fishburne, quoted on the site Instapage. They write: “Does it feel like marketing when you watch a poignant advertisement and connect emotionally with the subject? Does it feel like marketing when you read a genuine positive customer review of a kind waitstaff and great service?

“Emotional connections happen because we’re human, and we’re built for these connections, wired for them, and rely on them to live a rich, meaningful life. Despite our significant advances in science and technology, human emotion (mainly our subconscious) will always be core to our DNA. Marketing by appealing to raw and genuine human emotion is essential, smart, and pays off.”

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SIIA Cautions that the CPRA Will Be Detrimental to Education Technology

by PolicyPress Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
SIIA CONTACT: Michelle Harris, 202.789.4450

SIIA Cautions that the CPRA Will Be Detrimental to Education Tech

WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 29, 2020) – The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal association for the software, information, and digital content industries, cautions that California’s certification of the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) to appear on the November ballot will disrupt education technology and school and distance learning.

SIIA President, Jeff Joseph, issued the following statement:

“While we are heartened that the CPRA clarifies and improves some aspects of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), most notably by fixing the CCPA’s First Amendment infirmities with respect to publicly available information, it makes the wrong policy calls in a number of areas and leaves little room for the legislature to fix these flaws.

“As drafted, the CPRA can be interpreted to present educational technology companies with an impossible choice: comply with the CPRA, and remove data from school records on student request and breach their contract with the school, thereby jeopardizing the school’s federal funding, or refuse and face liability for breaching the CPRA.

“This is the wrong balance and detrimental to both classroom and distance learning, which the California Attorney General recognized when he fixed the same policy error in the CCPA regulations.

“SIIA supports robust and comprehensive privacy regulation, but like all regulations it must reflect balance against competing values, from constitutional norms to the realities of business and educational operations. The policy misjudgments inherent in the CPRA underscore the need for Congress to act and pass a thoughtful national and comprehensive data privacy standard that sets the rules of the road, for industry and consumers alike.”

About SIIA:
SIIA is an umbrella association that represents constituencies from technology, data and media companies. Through in-person and online business development opportunities, peer networking, corporate education, intellectual property protection and government relations, SIIA provides a network of resources for its 800+ member companies that drive innovation and growth. For more information, visit www.siia.net.

ElizGreen

Exclusivity, ‘Wow,’ and Valuing Products Are Keys to Price Hikes and Upsells

by Media

Elizabeth Green (pictured), CEO of Brief Media—a leading publisher in the veterinary medicine field—once delivered a dynamic keynote at BIMS titled Disrupting Goliath: Tales of a Small Cap Media Innovator. “I’ve spent my entire tenure as a publisher watching Goliath,” she said. What she learned helped her to build one of the top brands in the field.

“Adapt and choose an unconventional strategy, and the tables flip,” Green told us, meaning David can come out ahead. During tough economic times around 2010, she raised the cost of print ads 20%. The strategy worked. Their print advertising dollars went up 40% the next year. “We went to see our clients to explain why,” she said. “The key was the exclusivity and valuing of our products. If you value them, [your customers] will value them.”

Seeing customers now and print ads have certainly waned, but raising prices—at times—and focusing on upsells should not. Here are five examples:

  • Ask with confidence. “Renewal time is also a great time to upsell or raise prices,” Dan Fink, managing director of Money-Media, said on his SIPA webinar last month. “If you have a great product and people are engaging with it, you really need to raise the price. If you can’t do that, you have a content or product problem.”
  • Offer add-ons. Coleman Report publisher Bob Coleman once told me about one of his upsell opportunities—where a customer could purchase a data report for $95 or access to the whole database for a little more. I said, “Wow,” which was just what he wanted to hear. “There are two parts to my philosophy of the upsell: The wow factor—someone telling me that it’s a good deal—and if it doesn’t cost me anything extra. Also, with webinars, Joseph Coleman would reach out to attendees to confirm and try to upsell with transcripts and unlimited access. They get about 20% conversions.
  • Build on something that suits the times we’re in. Knowing the state we’re in, Netflix recently announced that it would be raising prices for its monthly subscriptions in the U.S. A standard plan will go from $13 to $14 per month, while its premium tiers will go from $16 to $18. Greg Peters, Netflix COO and chief product officer, said that as the company invests more into both content and tech developments, they’ll “occasionally go back and ask [customers] to pay a little bit more to keep that virtuous cycle of investment and value creation going.”
  • Make it easy. In a webinar a few years ago, Adam Goldstein, publisher of Business Management Daily, spoke about their webinar upsells. After signing up for one, customers are offered an upsell to a season pass. On their website you see this language: “Save 90% on a complete year of training webinars. If you bought all our webinars offered for the year individually, you’d pay $39,400. What gets even more expensive (and dangerous) is when labor law mistakes you could’ve prevented end up in court. But for just $1,599, you can access all our webinars and get your team the HR training they need to be compliant with the law.”
  • Entice with content and gentle urging. “We use our own content to promote upsells,” said Joe May, marketing director at Pro Farmer. Snippets of grain reports and online videos might bring audience in. A free download might lead to a $29 report. And the report might lead to a trial membership for Pro Farmer. This way they can catalogue people over time—if they signed up for two free trials, Pro Farmer will ask, why don’t you give us a shot?

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Pictured left to right: Rihanna Collier, Vice President & Managing Director, SIIA Software & Services Division and Technology Council of Southern California; Stephen Wray, CloudMine CEO; and Joe Talley, SIIA Board Member and Deloitte & Touche LLP Audit Partner (PRNewsfoto/CloudMine)

SIIA Welcomes Entry-into-Force of United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA)

by AmicusPolicyPress Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

SIIA CONTACT: Michelle Harris, 202.789.4450 

SIIA Welcomes Entry-into-Force of United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA)

WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 1, 2020) – The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal association for the software, information, and digital content industries, welcomes the entry-into-force of USMCA.

Senior Vice President for Global Public Policy, Carl Schonander, issued the following statement:

“SIIA has been an active participant in the development of USMCA.  The agreement’s digital trade, financial services and intellectual property chapters are particularly innovative.  The fact that the agreement contains binding data flow obligations with respect to financial data is especially praiseworthy.  We congratulate Ambassador Lighthizer and his team.  The USMCA provides an excellent template for additional progress as the United States conducts negotiations with the UK and the EU.”About SIIA:
SIIA is an umbrella association that represents constituencies from technology, data and media companies. Through in-person and online business development opportunities, peer networking, corporate education, intellectual property protection and government relations, SIIA provides a network of resources for its 800+ member companies that drive innovation and growth. For more information, visit www.siia.net

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‘You Can’t Move From Want to Need on Guesswork’; the Rise of Data and Culture

by Media

‘Lucy Kueng, senior research associate at Reuters and internationally renowned expert on digital disruption, has published a new ebook titled Transformation Manifesto: 9 Priorities for Now. It delves into how publishers can change for the better in the aftermath of the pandemic. She wants to help them “seize the opportunities presented by the undeniable crisis we face, because those opportunities are truly huge.”

Let’s go over some of these priorities, paired with upcoming sessions at our big annual BIMS event featuring the SIPA Sales & Marketing Leadership Summit, Dec 2-4.

1. Move from nice-to-have to ‘must-have’: triple down on data. “You can’t move from want to need on guesswork,” Kueng writes. “You can only shift… by diving deeply into understanding customers and how you can become more important to them… Triple down on data, not just on the volume flowing into the organization but on the caliber of discussions around that data, on the insights derived from it, the hypotheses you develop and test.”

BIMS session: Keynote: Audience Data: Creating Inclusive Connections to Grow Your Business. Data journalist Sherrell Dorsey, founder and CEO of The Plug, will share how she has leveraged data integration at The Plug to forge meaningful connection with her audience, attracting thousands of subscribers, several hundred paid members and over $500,000 in equity-free capital.

2. Seize the moment to do clean-up work that’s overdue. You have cover. In the same way we have been cleaning out our homes of its junk, Kueng wants us to do the same with our business—and stop doing things that aren’t successful. But also she wants us to pivot in the way we do age-old processes. “Remote working clearly offers opportunities to rebalance fixed costs.”

BIMS session: Marketing Pivot: How Are Publishers Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic Now? How are publishers pivoting in this new environment? What marketing ideas can help you turn this pandemic into opportunity? Hear from Charity Huff, CEO, January Spring, Stacey Bailey, VP, Chartwell, Inc., and Jeson Jackson, marketing & customer experience manager, Education Week.

3. Your culture is unfrozen. There will never be a better time to change it. “Culture is incredibly efficient – it works as an internal protocol that silently influences actions and decisions,” Kueng writes. “Ensure digital voices (often younger and more diverse) have equivalent ‘voice time’ and that they are heard first.”

BIMS session: Keynote: From Media To Intelligence: How National Journal Became a Premier Insights Platform. Kevin Turpin, president of National Journal, will discuss National Journal’s evolution from a trusted 50-year-old media organization to a premier insights and intelligence company. This presented a huge culture change for them! He will provide insight into how his organization stays relevant and forward-thinking.

4. Take extravagant care of your teams. “Remote working is often a boon for productivity when tasks are known. [But] it is bad for innovation and setting up new things (and finding a workaround for this is the challenge right now)… Ramp up communication as much as possible. Gather everyone together more often. Remind them that they are part of a cohesive organization”

BIMS session: Power Panel: Operating in the New Normal. A panel of B2B executives share their views on leading in the “new normal,” including: return to work and balancing legal concerns and workplace liabilities of the COVID era; balancing in-person and remote workflows; morale and productivity; business lines they’re prioritizing for growth.

 

5. Timing is the rarest of strategic skills. Now is the time. “Agility, innovation, optimism—these were the most critical traits for now, according to 22 CEOs surveyed in September 2020. This is a rare reset moment. COVID-19 has been a crisis on so many levels but it is also a huge opportunity: to rethink, to innovate, to shed things that need to be let go of, and to build for the future.”

BIMS session: Executive Discussion: Why Innovation Fails and How to Fix It. 80% of innovation managers believe that customers do not know what they want and have needs that they cannot express. This gets to the root cause of the problem with current innovation processes and why the majority of new products fail. Tony Ulwick, founder & CEO, Strategyn, will give you a framework to understand your customers that unite the entire organization around a common language of the customer.