Twitter unveils persona targeting, adds segmentation feature

marketingdive.com

Dive Brief:

• Twitter is rolling out new features to help its advertisers, including “Project Lightening” that allows advertisers to highly segment their target audience via persona-based segmentation.
• Another new feature is being tested and is built into the app interface to gives marketers a quick view of how ad campaigns are performing.
• The personas feature allows marketers to reach pre-defined segments, such as people earning more than $100K and millennials. 

Dive Insight:

Twitter is continuing its push into advertising on the social media platform testing and introducing new features to make marketers’ lives easier. One key new feature is an expansion of its audience insights dashboard that offers advertisers a set of pre-defined personas to target with campaigns. The market segments include: college grads, people earning $100K or more, millennials, small business owners, and several more.

Twitter is also testing an app feature that provides marketers with a dashboard on campaign performance with KPIs including impressions, engagements, total spend, cost-per-engagement and engagement rate. Campaigns can even be edited within the dashboard to make immediate use of the data offered.

In a blog post, Twitter product manager, Andrew Bragdon, said, “Campaign insights help you better understand who you’re reaching with your ad campaigns. Within your campaign dashboard, you can simply click ‘View audience insights’ to learn more about your paid audience, and then use this information to optimize your targeting and ad content.”

He continued, “You can also easily compare insights between your reached and engaged audiences. Your reached audience are users who are viewing your campaign; your engaged audience includes users who are actively engaging (replying, favoriting and Retweeting) with your ads.”

How Brands Are Paving the Way for Periscope Marketing

entrepreneur.com

As more brands join and use apps like Periscope and Meerkat, it’s becoming clear that live streaming will play a major role in digital and social marketing in the coming months and years.

Live streaming is anything but new; however, it’s recently jumped to the forefront of industry discussions, since the launch of Meerkat and Periscope. YouTube has long featured live-streaming options, dedicated websites allow users to broadcast feeds, gamers have always had an affinity toward watching other gamers (Twitch attracts more than 45 million viewers each month) and cable companies often stream live programming over the Internet.

Related: Real-Time Video Streaming on Social Media Is Driving the Publishing Craze

But, aside from Twitch, you could argue that no technology, app or website has risen to such prominence as quickly as Periscope (and Meerkat, to a lesser extent). Furthermore, it’s safe to say that no other technology is capable of having such a widespread impact. Unlike Twitch, which focuses solely on the gaming industry, Periscope can be used by anyone. In fact, everyone is using it.

Everyone may be using it but a handful of brands stick out above the rest. Here are some examples of how big brands are successfully using Periscope and other live streaming apps to enhance their customer service and marketing messages.

Red Bull: If there’s a new, trendy marketing platform, you can expect Red Bull to get involved. They haven’t disappointed, already using Periscope as a new branding platform. At the recent Miami Music Week, Red Bull live streamed a handful of their Red Bull "Guest House" events. The company coordinated efforts with Twitter and Snapchat to drum up support.

Related: 3 Things Entrepreneurs Need to Know About Mobile Video Streaming

Spotify: The popular music-streaming service is also interested in live-streaming video. Shortly after joining Periscope, Spotify said “hello” by posting a behind-the-scenes video with Conor O’Brien from the Villagers. It received a few hundred live viewers and has been replayed a few hundred times more.

Mountain Dew: Another early adopter is Mountain Dew. They used it as a way to engage and reward their Twitter followers. “[In the video] we showcased Mountain Dew swag like hats and T-shirts,” reported Christine Ngo, head of digital marketing at Mountain Dew. “Of the many fans who liked/commented on our Periscope stream, we surprised a few fans and will be sending them some cool Mountain Dew gear.”

General Electric: It’s not just “hip” or “young” brands using Periscope, however. General Electric proved that it’s willing to adapt by using the app to live stream a behind-the-scenes interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and scientist Bill Nye.

Adidas:The award for most unique Periscope stream goes to Adidas. The popular sportswear company gave fans a chance to watch soccer star James Rodriguez sign his contact extension with the company.

How your company can use live streaming

While big brands like Spotify, Mountain Dew and Red Bull may steal the headlines, there’s plenty of room for you too. Small and mid-sized businesses will be able to carve out their own niches and drive engagement with apps like Periscope and Meerkat. Here are a few ideas:

1. New product releases

All signs point toward new product release features as a major focal point of live streaming. You could use it to showcase a product in anticipation of a release date, do a live unboxing or provide a firsthand look at beta testing and prototypes. This’ll be an interesting trend to follow, as major brands will likely invest in this strategy to gauge interest and enhance buzz around new releases.

Related: 5 Ways Brands Can Use Periscope and Meerkat

2. Live Q&A 

From a customer service point of view, live Q&A sessions are invaluable. You can use these opportunities to humanize your brand, address pertinent issues and solve problems. Having regular (weekly, monthly, quarterly) Q&A sessions can be a good way to gain valuable (and free) firsthand feedback and insights from your customers.

3. Celebrity takeover

It’ll be interesting to see how Periscope affects endorsements. If you happen to have good connections, or celebrity endorsers, you may be able to benefit from a “takeover.” Depending on with whom you align your brand, the viewership and return could be incredible.

4. Behind the scenes

As you can see from the brands mentioned above, behind-the-scenes streaming features will be popular. Customers always want to know more about the companies they support, so giving factory tours, showing interviews, and providing teasers will be effective from a marketing perspective.

5. Build Twitter

Ultimately, the value of Periscope will always be tied to Twitter. If nothing else, you can use Periscope to increase and enhance your Twitter followership. A stream here and there may help you to grow your audience.

The future of Periscope, and live streaming technology in general, is unclear. Will it be a flash in the pan, or will it morph into something transformative? As a business owner or marketer, you have to bet on the latter. Now is the time to start experimenting with live streaming to see if it works for you. The companies that are able to build a strong foundation in the beginning stages will reap long-term benefits down the road.

Using the aforementioned brands as examples, and applying some of the tips mentioned here, how’ll you use Periscope to take your branding, marketing, and customer service to the next level? The answer to that question is anything but insignificant.

Related: 4 Creative Ways to Use Live Streaming to Boost Your Company's Exposure

Innovative Tips & Tricks for Measuring the Success of Mobile Apps

tech.co

How do you know if your app has been successful? For most app entrepreneurs, the challenge is measuring the app success and tinkering with the app marketing strategies to get improved results. There are 5 key ways with which you can measure the success of your mobile apps. Here they are:

1. Acquisition Metrics
This metric is used to measure the amount of downloads that the app is getting. It is important to have a large number of downloads. In addition to the number of downloads, the acquisition metrics also features the “Discovery” method, i.e. it is important to understand where the users are discovering the application. It will help you to focus on marketing in a better way.

2. Engagement Metrics
The 4 parts that this metric is divided into are Active users, Session length, Goals completed, and User Loyalty. An active user is generally the one who has used for more than 5 times. Session length refers to the amount of time that the user has spent with the app. You also need to measure whether or not your app has achieved the goals specified and the user loyalty that it has earned.

3. Retention Metrics
It is a very important metric in measuring the app’s popularity and includes two sub-metrics i.e. Life Time Value (LTV) and Retention Rate. The latter is measured in percentage terms and refers to the amount of users that your app has been able to retain over a period of time. An app with a high retention rate will also have a high average LTV because the users of the app are long lasting.

4. Quality Metrics
It calculates the quality of the app using the factors of automatic crash report, manual user feedback and app store reviews. When the app crashes, the issue should automatically be emailed to the developer. Also, the user should have an option of giving manual feedback and finally, app store is the most important place where you must get positive reviews for your app.

5. Behavior Metrics
You also need to measure the user behavior in general, i.e. by the devices and locations he operates from, the usage-time and frequency that he operates for, and finally the usage actions related to your app.

Tamagotchi is Back, Thanks to The Internet of Things

coinspeaker.com

The addictive 1990s toy Tamagotchi gets a 21st-century makeover.

Today’s modern Tamagotchi takes a cue from the Internet of Things and now supports interlinking one’s digital pet with a friend’s. By bumping the two toys together, this latest generation of Tamagotchis will prompt an exchange of data.

Besides, the Tamagotchi Friends Digital Friend takes advantage of the increasing capacity of modern data chips to include “five fun games” one can now play with a pet.

The interlink lends itself to a host of new activities for Tamagotchi play, including playdates, “friendship meters,” and even sending text messages from one toy to another. Maybe if your ‘90s Tamagotchi had done all that, it wouldn’t have met its untimely digital death only a few weeks after you convinced your parents to buy it for you.

The Tamagotchi was created in Japan by Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ and Aki Maita of Bandai, a Japanese toy making and video game company, in 1996. Within seven months of Bandai exporting the toy to the United States, the company earned $150 million in retail sales.

At the moment retailing at $19.50, it’s a pastel pink impulse buy for kids and kids at heart. Even if it doesn’t spark a new craze, it will certainly appeal to adults who remember the old one.

Furthermore, the Internet of Things products can help firefighters to operate effectively, saving lives and limiting the damages to the building.

In 2013 alone, according to data from the National Fire Protection Association, 1,240,000 fires were reported in the U.S., which caused the death of 3,240 civilians and $11.5 billion in property damage.

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Fire Protection Research Foundation believe that at least part of this heavy toll could be reduced, if fire brigades could base their decisions on the data systematically and scientifically collected on the scene.

“Today there is significant variety to the information accessible by fire brigades, and great potential as the Internet of Things continues to proliferate. Real-time information will greatly assist emergency responder situational awareness, which is especially critical during an event when time is precious,” said the Fire Protection Research Foundation’s executive director Casey Grant.

For instance, Drones are already deployed for monitoring wildfire events; in the future, thanks to technological improvements they could also be employed indoor. Robots, equipped with a wide array of chemical sensors, on-board cameras, and lasers, will be used to gather data in risky environments, where humans fear to thread.

Why we shouldn’t retire email in mobile apps

rainmaker-labs.com

Chat apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp may be taking over the online personal communication industry, but emails still hold a place in our world.

App marketers still need channels to communicate with users, and in-app messaging and push notifications don’t serve as wide of a range as emails do. In-app messaging, while effective in increasing conversion and retention rates, are restricted by their context, and push notifications can only fit so many words into that precious rectangle.

Email is evolving to meet these needs. App marketers have developed technologies that are able to send personalized emails, and their effectiveness is only enhanced as devices like smartphones and tablets become more ubiquitous each day, which emails can be effortlessly transferred to. We’re even able to check email on our wrists now!

Personalized emails are the future of app marketing, and for these reasons:

Just like in-app messaging, email marketing for apps has the potential to boost retention rates. It is important for users to keep coming back to the app, and the best way to do this is to maintain communication with the users. Emails that are personalized to the users will hold their attention, while irrelevancy is the easiest way for an app to be dismissed as spam. Emails must deliver the right content to the right people; a vegetarian subscribed to a gym app would enjoy seeing healthy vegetarian meal recommendations and consistent workout routines, for example.

Also, many people simply disable push notifications. According to studies, only half of app users opt-in for push notifications, yet it is still the most popular way for apps to communicate with users. As noted earlier, push notifications are already limited by the amount of words they can fit, and now they are suffering from a shrinking audience. You can only entice users so much with one sentence, but an email can contain much more valuable content such as videos and lengthier (and more useful) information to keep people coming back. Email marketing can and should be used to remedy the failure of push. App marketers who devote the proper time and resources to emails will find themselves with a much stronger user base.

$11 Trillion: Potential Economic Impact Of Internet Of Things By 2025

techtimes.com

The Internet of Things has a potential economic market value of up to $11 trillion a year by 2025. Factories are estimated to create the highest value in the IoT market which can reach up to $3.7 trillion.

The Internet of Things had been creating a lot of waves with more and more companies coming up with new products they believe would be viable in a connected world. Analysts are also making huge speculations on the future of IoT while issues such as security, data privacy, and the role of artificial intelligence are constantly being scrutinized. However, the economic aspect of these futuristic technologies seemed to be an evaded topic.

In order to bring a clearer picture of the IoT's real dollar amount, researchers from the McKinsey & Company's Global Institute have decided to release a report of the global IoT's estimated potential value. The group reveals that IoT has the potential value ranging from $3.9 to $11.1 trillion by 2025.

"Our bottom-up analysis for the applications we size estimates that the IoT has a total potential economic impact of $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion a year by 2025," said McKinsey. "At the top end, that level of value - including the consumer surplus - would be equivalent to about 11 percent of the world economy."

In other words, IoT can potentially make up around 11 percent of the total economy in the world. However, the researchers added that IoT has to be engineered in such a way for it to reveal any true value.

"To realize the full potential from IoT applications, technology will need to continue to evolve, providing lower costs and more robust data analytics," stated the report.

According to McKinsey, the speculated value can be maximized only when there is interoperability between IoT systems. The average requirement is estimated at 40 percent across IoT applications and almost 60 percent in some defined settings.

The company has identified at least nine of these settings. These include vehicles, cities, outdoors, retail environments, work sites (construction, mining, oil and gas), homes, factories, offices and human.

Among all these settings, it is believed that factories will be the strongest driving force behind the generated value by the IoT. McKinsey's report has estimated it to reach up to $3.7 trillion.

Smart cities, which include public health and transportation, will contribute up to $1.7 trillion in the IoT by 2025. This is followed by the health and management organizations which have an estimated value of $1.6 trillion while retailers with $1.2 trillion estimated value comes next.

"Business-to-business (B2B) applications can create more value than pure consumer applications," stated McKinsey. "We estimate that B2B uses can generate nearly 70 percent of potential value enabled by IoT."

Mobile App Push Notifications Drive 90-Day Retention Rates By As Much As 180%

marketingland.com

Kahuna mobile marketing report shows app retention rates at 30, 60 and 90 days more than doubled with the help of push notifications.

After analyzing data from more than 39 million mobile users, mobile marketing provider Kahuna found push notifications more than doubled a mobile app’s average 30, 60 and 90-day retention rate.

For opted-in users, push notifications drove the average 90-day retention rate by 180 percent, with a 27.6 percent retention rate for users receiving push notifications compared to only a 10.1 percent retention rate for users not receiving push notifications.

“For opted-in users, the average 30-day audience retention rate is increased by 125 percent.”

Kahuna’s data showed 30-day and 60-day retention rate averages significantly increased as well, with push notifications driving a 125 percent increase for 30-day retention rates, and 150 percent increase for 60-day retention rates.

30, 60 & 90-Day Retention Rates

When looking at opt-in rates by device, Kahuna says Android tops iOS, but only because of Android’s app permission process.

Android outperforms iOS with an average opt-in rate of 78%, whereas iOS only sees about a 46% opt-in rate. The disparity between the two can be partly attributed to the fact that users are automatically opted in for messaging on Android devices, but changes to the Android app permission process will likely have an impact on that percentage.

Kahuna

Overall, Kahuna reports the average opt-in rate for push notifications is 62 percent. According to Kahuna’s numbers, the average consumer has 33 apps on their phone, but uses only 12 daily.