But what appears to be a shiny new toy for some marketers has actually been the mainstay for specialist CRM agencies like Flourish for years. Since its inception in 2003 Flourish has used data to drive customer journeys that help brands to be more relevant with their messaging.
At the back of 2021 Flourish delivered a personalised end-of-year round up campaign for Twitch, the global streaming site. Over 45 million Twitch users, viewers and creators received the email campaign which was translated into 28 languages.
These uber-personalised comms didn’t simply include the customer’s name or what they just bought. We’re talking whole-email personalisation; with eight different creative variants, based on a contact’s level of platform engagement, each in-turn sharing cool and interesting personal stats based on their year with Twitch. The decision to allocate individual users to different creative variants was driven by real world data insights that identified the type of user they were, the relationship they had with Twitch and their future potential.
Every email was personalised to the recipient, reflecting their year with Twitch. Users and viewers could see the creators and channels they’d watched most, what they’d supported with subs and follows and even what their favourite emote was. Creators could see how many hours they’d streamed, how many viewers they’d picked up, how they interacted with them and who their biggest fans were.
The roundup was a big hit with recipients and saw 500K+ shares on social media. As the campaign landed Twitch saw a 67% increase in traffic to the site as users and viewers reconnected with their favourite content. So much so that there was a 971% incremental increase in the number of hours watched.
Rich James, Managing Partner at Flourish and Twitch client lead said: “We’re always striving to help Twitch be as relevant to their audience of users and viewers as possible. But we’re also conscious for the need to support the content creators that do so much to make Twitch what it is. The end-of-year campaign did both perfectly. Presenting a summary that hyped creators, helped them understand their impact and achievements, whilst viewers were given a timely reminder of everything they’ve loved on Twitch. The campaign was the perfect example of how every member of the Flourish team lives and breathes personalisation in everything they do. The project was led by the amazing Sanni Haltunnen (Senior Account Manager) and Glenn Carver (Technical Campaign Manager) with the wider support of the agency. We’re really proud of what they and the team have delivered for Twitch”
If you’d like help to take your communications beyond personalisation and into relevance, you can get in touch with Rich James. Alternatively, you can take a closer look at Flourish.
Digital agency Torchbox has gathered the SEO data of over 50 charity websites across eight sub-sectors to provide a benchmark of organic SEO performance across the not-for-profit space.
Torchbox has measured success against six SEO metrics, including technical health, backlink profile, and content. The data has been presented as a card game, allowing you to play your nonprofit against other charities operating in a similar space.
As well as a physical pack of cards, there is also a Super Trumps website, where you can play the game, read the state of the sector review, visually compare the performance of all included charities and read the individual sector reports. The eight subsectors analysed are:
“We hope this gets some conversations started internally about the value of SEO at charitable organisations, and if not, we hope this at the very least raises a smile!”
Phil McMinn, Digital Marketing Director, Torchbox
The Super Trumps project was launched at an exclusive webinar, with guest speakers from Oxfam, Sightsavers, and NHS Digital – with a panel discussion around SEO utilisation in the nonprofit space.
“It was a really great session. Very informative and has given us plenty to consider for 2022.”
Kim Watson, Head of Marketing, Versus Arthritis
The response to the project has been incredible, with positive feedback from charities that are and are not included in the analysis. Also, requests from other nonprofit sectors, such as Think Tanks, to be included in the next benchmarking analysis!
“Absolutely nerding out over these #TorchboxSuperTrumps. Who knew SEO benchmarking could be this fun?”
Dan Papworth-Smyth, Head of Digital Engagement, Breast Cancer Now
Torchbox’s overarching goal is that this benchmarking exercise will help to highlight where opportunities lie to utilise SEO and provide the data to illustrate what is possible in the not-for-profit sector.
Join the discussion #TorchboxSuperTrumps
There’s little wonder low-code/no-code is such a hot topic.
While website development used to be the domain of software engineers and technical whizz-kids, the latest low-code/no-code solutions allow a much broader range of people to produce eye-catching, modern web applications. Heck, they’re even responsive too.
You no longer need to hire a developer to create a website, tools such as Bubble.io, Adalo, and Webflow (we’re a partner by the way) give you all the tools to create first-class websites and applications without the need to write any code. So it’s a great hit for marketers with tight budgets. Simply upload this image. Move that one. Drag this copy over there. Click publish and – BOOM. Website.
But what if you need more?
How do I know if low-code/no-code is the way forward?
More often than not, today’s websites are more than just copy, image and text.
So what happens if you need to integrate your site with something else – say a payment platform, or a web API? What if you need to bring in a data source from a back-office system?
Some of these low-code/no-code solutions include e-commerce options (Webflow is one example), and you can do a fair bit with Zapier. But truly, these features won’t always meet all your requirements.
If in the future you think you’ll need more complex data APIs, tracking or marketing integrations on your site, you may want to look for something more structured…
Drupal 9: Now with increased flexibility
This is where Drupal comes in.
Traditionally, Drupal CMS has been rigid. It had fixed templates and allowed little-to-no flexibility for content editors. But this has all changed with Drupal 9.
Drupal 9 has been built with flexibility in mind, and when combined with specific modules (for example Layout Builder and Paragraphs) it allows a much greater degree of freedom for you to create the pages you need.
Although, you may well still need some help from a development team or a site builder, depending exactly on your requirements. Once you have it set up, the flexible-layout-world is your oyster!
Layout builder to the rescue
Layout Builder is included out-of-the-box with Drupal and can be used to create dynamic templates for any given content type.
By using Layout Builder, a content editor can build up a page using any number of defined components, e.g. images, text, and banners, and arrange them in any number of section configurations – for example, in either single or multiple columns.
Almost anything within Drupal can be positioned into a layout. You can drag things around and change a page’s blueprint completely from one page to another.
And if you have a list of documents you need to include on-site, site builders can define a document list block which you can then embed on any page. And, this can all be closely linked to the design using pattern libraries, where individual components, made up of atoms and molecules, can be tied to the components that are added through the layout builder.
More and more of our clients need flexible layouts. And that’s why, at P+S, we’ve combined several different modules into a Drupal ‘profile’.
This profile includes all the modules required to create a low-code/no-code site using Drupal, which can be rolled out for a comparable cost to Webflow.
The benefits of using a system like Drupal is that once you have it in place, you then have many more options for integrations with other web services due to its framework and server-side code flexibility, and your website can grow and evolve to meet your future requirements.
Acquia, who provide enterprise products, services, and support for Drupal, are also addressing the demand for low-code/no-code by developing the Site Studio project.
This enterprise level tool, included with their Cloud Solutions offering, allows you to build a Drupal site and theme it with no developer involvement at all. So developers can concentrate on more complex technical tasks, such as integrations and APIs.
Site Studio allows you to define and build a theme and components all entirely from Drupal’s interface. Once complete, your content editors have the freedom to create their pages using the drag-and-drop interface of the layout canvas.
Horses for courses
When choosing your next platform for your marketing requirements, it’s important to think long-term and consider how they might change.
So, while low-code/no-code solutions are excellent for crafting websites in short timescales, if you need your website to grow beyond hosting more simple content, Drupal may be a better fit long term. And it may not necessarily cost you much more.
As Webflow and Acquia partners, and an experienced Drupal agency, P+S are in a unique position, and can help you decide which solution is the best option for your business.
Talk to us about your next project today, email [email protected] to arrange a no-obligation chat.
Lockdown puppies. Admit it. You considered one. A little companion to keep you company working from home, a playmate for the kids and a reason to get out for your 10,000 steps each day. And if you did end up getting one? You’re not alone.
According to the BBC more than 3.2 million more pets were bought during lockdown. Veterinary charity PDSA’s research shows nearly 2 million of these were puppies, with many owners saying it was the first time they had owned a pet.
Over the same period 1.4 million more claimants registered for financial support as the pandemic effectively stopped people being able to earn a living. More pets, more first time owners and more economic uncertainty. A perfect storm for PDSA who treat the pets of owners who cannot afford veterinary treatment.
PDSA turned to CRM specialists Flourish to develop a campaign to raise awareness and money to meet the forecast jump in demand for their services. The resulting Give Pets a Fighting Chance campaign went live in late November 2021.
An initial priming film was shared on social and via email underlining just how much pets mean to us and have enriched our live during lockdown. This was followed by a fundraising phase on social, email and via direct mail to existing supporters.
The campaign celebrated pets, paying homage to just how amazing they are for our physical and mental wellbeing. This celebration provided the platform from which to ask for donations witch communications suggesting that: “For all pets do for us, they deserve a fighting chance.”
The response to the campaign has been incredible, with celebs including Ricky Gervais, Michaela Strachan, Alesha Dixon and James from the Vamps showing their support on Twitter.
Preliminary results are incredibly encouraging with the campaign being well on track to meet its financial targets to make sure any increase in need for PDSA services will be met.
Laura Tovar Senior Account Director at Flourish said: “The potential increase in need for PDSA services had to be addressed, and quickly. We’ve been working with PDSA for 3 years now and in that time our campaigns have always hit their targets and often smashed them. Our Give Pets a Fighting Chance campaign has been well-received and I have no doubt that many pets lives will be saved as a direct result of it”.
If you have a CRM project you’d support with, you can get in touch with Flourish by contacting Steve Davis. Alternatively take a look at some of our work.
Having worked closely with the Epilepsy Society for the past few months, we’re delighted to announce the launch of unFlash, an AI-powered tool that detects and helps prevent the spread of flashing images on social media that in turn could trigger seizures.
The first-of-its-kind plug-in allows specific users to report examples of flashing images that appear on their Twitter feed, which are then captured as part of a dataset used to train a Machine Learning model.
unFlash’s aim is to eventually teach the AI how to effectively detect and block media that falls within the photosensitive range. This would prevent harmful imagery with the potential of triggering a seizure in people with photosensitive epilepsy from being shared online.
“Social media is a global platform, and the only true way to protect people from seizure-triggering content is to turn off the tap at its source. That’s why we are so grateful to the team at Gravitywell for their commitment to developing unFlash. We are hopeful for what the AI can contribute to the protection of people with epilepsy online.
However, small companies such as Gravitywell who have donated their time to protect people should not burden the responsibility of protecting Twitter’s users; the social media giants must be held accountable for protecting vulnerable people with disabilities on their platforms.” — Epilepsy Society
Our Ops Director Mike Sharp gives his take on what to expect next year.
As we roll towards the tail end of 2021 it is that time of year where agencies and thought leaders start to roll out their predictions for the coming 12 months. In fact, a quick search online yields my own article from a previous life written six years ago. What did I predict then?
A change in attribution – the growth and importance of Data-Driven Attribution as it became mainstream
Year of the mobile continued – the switch to mobile-first and the growth of mobile-first formats
Hyper local search – A move towards Minority Report style ads thanks to improved accuracy in tracking
Google Shopping advances – since Google’s switch away from the free listings, Google Shopping would push forward significantly with new formats and local ads
It’s strangely comforting that even six years on these could still be relevant in 2022 – everything has changed in advertising, but also nothing has! Although hopefully everyone realises that ‘the year of the mobile’ prediction has definitely run its course.
So, what could be dominating the digital marketing industry over the next 12 months?
It’s safe to say that people are now more comfortable than ever talking to things around their house and expecting to get coherent answers – not something as a parent I can quite relate to!
Our industry’s been predicting voice search uptake for years, but now the interesting part comes with how these searches get monetised. From an SEO perspective the What, How or Who queries have long been valued as a way of owning these results, but over the next 12 months I expect to see more from audio ads with advances in Google’s existing YouTube Audio ads offering.
Android Auto penetration is also on the rise, which is further boosting voice searches, so there is another captive audience waiting to be advertised to by Google.
We take it for granted now that Smart paid media campaigns are the norm and will outperform most human-led ones. They’ve helped to free up Account Managers’ time with automation, allowing marketers to focus on strategy and creative processes to push our clients even further.
We’ll see the use of AI increase even further as companies big and small lean into it to help with predictive modelling and forecasting as part of the standard planning cycles.
The pandemic has also seen the rise of conversational AI in the form of bots and digital assistants – again, something that will continue to grow over time, helping with onsite conversion and customer retention.
Expected to surpass 1.5 billion users in 2022, TikTok is going to absolutely dominate social media in 2022 – bringing with it the continued captivation with influencers, memes, and trends.
TikTok has quickly advanced its ad platform to become more accessible for more brands. In the coming 12 months I think we’ll see smaller brands using the platform, moving it away from the playground of the mega brands and into a core part of the media mix. ‘Always on’ micro and nano influencers will also become more valuable as brands try to target their niche in an affordable way.
Between the impending death of third-party cookies, talk of first-party analytics and even zero-party data, much has already been said in this space, so I won’t dwell on it too much.
Given Google’s already delayed deadline of 2023 for them phasing out, we should expect to hear a more about the possible alternatives. No doubt Google will desperately be finding a way of protecting its revenue streams whilst tipping its hat to the more privacy-conscious consumers and advertisers.
So we can all expect to become more familiar with terms like Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoCs) and Unified IDs or Authenticated Traffic Solutions… exciting!
One of the biggest struggles in digital marketing is the constant battle to improve attribution modelling – especially cross-channel and cross-device.
Google spent many years teasing Google Attribution, only to pull it and pretend it never happened. GA4 is now stepping up to fill some of this gap as well as staying on the right side of the incoming privacy changes.
In 2017 Facebook pushed out its own attribution tool, which seemed to be gaining momentum – only for it to be pulled again this year.
So, my hope is the next 12 months will bring with it improvements in how we measure clients’ success and attribute that fairly across the channel mix – but a part of me suspects it will still be a hot topic for the next few rounds of predictions.
It should be another exciting year in the paid marketing sphere this year. After what’s been a fairly strange 18 months for everyone, these advances will allow us to drive forward our clients’ businesses and continue helping them capitalise on opportunities.
All the best for the festive season!
The new ‘Intro to Game Art’ short course will give you an insight into the world of game art, exploring the range of roles and essential skills needed to get you started when exploring a potential future career in game art. There is a host of exciting modules that your tutor will guide you through, including:
Planning and producing work to a design brief.
Working in the games industry
Concept art for computer games
Modelling for computer games
This new and exciting programme is designed to equip individuals (aged 19+) with the technical skills, knowledge and understanding needed to produce digital content across several platforms, ensuring you can use social media most effectively for your small business, sports team or trade.
This course will provide a great opportunity for you to develop media production techniques, such as camera operating (on mobile devices, DSLR cameras and broadcast cameras), video editing, graphics and motion graphics to produce content for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and more. There is a host of exciting modules that your tutor will guide you through, including:
Planning your Project
Camera Production Techniques
Sound Recording Techniques
Editing Techniques
This new and exciting programme is designed to equip individuals (aged 19+) with the technical skills, knowledge and understanding needed to produce digital content across several platforms, ensuring you can use social media most effectively for your small business, sports team or trade.
This course will provide a great opportunity for you to develop graphic design techniques, such as designing and producing a brand identity and branded graphics for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and more. There is a host of exciting modules that your tutor will guide you through, including:
Planning your Project
Typography and Layouts
Working with Illustrator and Photoshop
Creating a Brand
Atomic Smash is a WordPress and WooCommerce specialist agency run by Piers Tincknell and David Darke. Based in Bristol, we’re a growing team of 17 who help businesses to improve and evolve their digital platforms through long-term partnerships.
We’ve been working with WordPress for over a decade and we’re experts at what we do. Not only do we help our clients achieve their commercial goals through constant evolution and improvement of their WordPress and WooCommerce platforms, but we’re also deeply integrated within the local WordPress and creative communities.
Adding to our WordPress credentials, Atomic Smash is now a WordPress VIP partner agency.
Offering peace of mind that your site can scale for billions of site visitors instantly, WordPress VIP is a powerful platform for enterprise. Working with WordPress VIP means our team of developers can build flexible websites with security and reliability that meets enterprise needs at scale.
At Atomic Smash, we help our clients improve their WordPress and WooCommerce sites over time so their websites are always performing at their best. This comes to life through our Always Evolving model and the WordPress VIP platform aligns perfectly with this philosophy by offering an infrastructure that can grow with your business.
With the WordPress VIP platform, we can continue to enhance our clients’ sites while:
Piers Tincknell, Co-founder and Managing Director of Atomic Smash said:
“I am really excited about working closer with WordPress VIP and bringing those benefits through to our clients. The work they are doing with the wider WordPress community is amazing and we are really proud to be part of that.”
David Darke, Co-founder and Operations Director of Atomic Smash said:
“Gaining access to the WordPress VIP ecosystem is going to be an amazing resource for our current and future Enterprise level WordPress clients.”
Jeff Mills, Partner Director, EMEA at WordPress VIP said:
“I am pleased to welcome the Atomic Smash team to the expanding WordPress VIP Partner Program. Their extensive knowledge with Enterprise WordPress combined with their ‘Always Evolving’ mantra ensures a great, strategic approach to building websites. They are an amazing asset to the whole WordPress community.”
Through our partnership with WordPress VIP, our clients will be able to create even more impactful digital experiences for their customers while driving better results for their businesses.
Are you interested in knowing how we could support your business by making your website work harder? Let’s talk.