A quick update
As I see the autumn colours around me I am reminded that time does not stand still and that the middle of 2019 is just around the corner. A good time for reflection and a bit of a sanity check to see where we are. I am happy to report that as we approach our 8th year of business, AdMarula is still growing. In fact, Q1 of 2019 has been our strongest quarter yet, thanks to clients dedicating more of their marketing budget to the performance channel and AdMarula’s targeting technology yielding continued results. I can also report back that our round-table seminar at the Two Ocean’s Aquarium on the 9th May was a big success. We had a full-house, some very interesting discussions and good feedback from our audience. Thanks to our speakers and to those of you who attended. We hope to host more of these events in future as we believe it is important to connect with our partners and clients face-to-face – these discussions and knowledge exchange can only benefit our industry as a whole. The performance marketing model works best after all when we work together. Below are a few pics from the event: Finally I would like welcome Wanda Meyer to the AdMarula team. Wanda joined us at the end of last month in the role of Account Manager and holds a degree in Marketing from Stellenbosch University. No doubt many of you will be hearing from her in the coming weeks as she gets acquainted with the business and our partners/clients. We wish her the best of luck in her new role. Onwards and upwards! Daniel Gross – CEO
Push notifications – what you need to know
If you’ve got a mobile application, then you need to know what push notifications are – and no, they are not the same as text messages. Push notifications can be an effective marketing tool for anyone with a mobile app, because they help you stay in touch with your users. Just make sure you use this strategy carefully. If you overdo it you can cause users to mute your notifications, which you’ll want to avoid. Although there are lots of similarities, push notifications are not the same as text messages. Both of these messages go directly to the user’s phone and look similar on their lock screen, but they’re still very different. For a push notification to show up on a lock screen properly, you need to have a restricted character limit. Text messages can be longer because the user can open it up to read the entire message. But if your push notification gets cut off on the lock screen, it’s going to hurt your conversions.That’s why push notifications with fewer words have higher click-through rates. The value Push notifications can provide assistance and value to app users e.g. provide sport scores and news on their lock screen, utility broadcasts like traffic and weather, flight check-in and connections data and more. Banks and vendors also use push notifications to send important transactional data to users. So what are the do’s and don’ts of push notifications? Do segment AND micro-segment your audience. The more relevant the information to the user, the better. Find the right time and frequency. Dive into the data and discover when your users are most responsive, then include that into your app marketing strategy. Location, location, location. Nearly half of mobile app users opt-in to both push notifications and location-based content, and when used in tandem, they can create extremely engaging and useful experiences. Reminders: If your app has any form of scheduling in it, people will want to be alerted when their schedule calls for it. When they see they have an event coming up, they will click through to find out details about it. Excessive usage of notifications will lead to spamming and the user unsubscribing from your notifications. Not all decives are capable of handling multiple push notifications within a particular app, which means only the current notification will be displayed and others won’t be seen. Happy marketing! The Affiliate Management Team.
April profile: Jeff Siepman, Blogger & Author of ManvsMind.co.za
Meet Jeff Siepman, ‘a Benoni-based, coffee-fueled creative, foodie, occasional cyclist and blogger/content creator @ManvsMind, as he describes himself. As the author of ManvsMind.co.za Jeff spends the majority of his time testing the latest tech gadgets, writing restaurant reviews, test driving cars and watching Netflix Marvel Universe – a life most bloggers (and males) only dream of. Or is it? Branch Out finds out more. When I was a kid I wanted to be a….. As a kid I loved designing and building houses with Lego so I guess I’d say I really wanted to be an architect. What made you decide to start a blog? I started my ‘blog’ years ago with the intention of having a place I could share all the interesting things I found, but this never really worked out and it transformed into what it is today when I got the opportunity to do a car review for Peugeot in 2017. Tell us more about the name: ‘Man vs Mind’. I wish it had a hidden meaning or was more philosophical, but is actually pretty simple. Man is me and vs Mind is the decision of what content to post and what not to post. Describe the ideal Man vs Mind target audience. Everyone! (Cliché much?). I try keep my content simple so that it appeals to more people. What marketing channels do you use to attract visitors to your blog? Currently I rely on a few channels to attract visitors to my blog. These are word of mouth, an email newsletter, my social media channels (Twitter, Facebook and to a lesser extent Instagram and Pinterest) as well as a few 3rd party websites like Bloglovin’ and Zomato. What you do would be considered the ‘dream job’ by many people. Is it as much fun as it seems? Yes and no. While I get to experience new things before some people and I get the odd freebie, it isn’t as glamourous as it seems. Blogging is time consuming and if you’re not on the right PR lists you have to pay your own way. What advice do you have for aspiring bloggers? Just get started and keep in mind that successful blogging requires a lot of time. Blogging also requires a lot more than just content creation like SEO, social media, networking etc so if you’re not fully committed it will be your downfall. When I’m not working I’m… So many things, but watching more YouTube tutorials/reviews than I’d like to admit to and spending time with my family are the main two. If I could dine with a celebrity I would choose… I’d have to go with Peter McKinnon. Besides the fact that he seems like a pretty rad person, he has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to photography.
AdMarula CEO, Daniel Gross, interviewed on current and future trends in digital marketing
Websiteplanet.com Editor, Ditsa Keren, recently interviewed our CEO, Daniel Gross, on the current and future trend in digital marketing.
10 KPI’s all affiliate marketers should be measuring
In a time when there is no shortage of data to measure how a website could improve in effectiveness, publishers should have the mind set of marketers, which means continuously finding ways of improving their ROI. This is only possible if you are measuring the right metrics. While measuring your impressions, clicks, social media shares and conversion rates is important, you should also be measuring how these metrics relate to one another in order to get a holistic picture and understand the value of each touch point. Here are 10 KPI’s every affiliate marketer should be measuring: Total visits – Measuring your total number of visits will give you a “big picture” idea of how well your campaign is driving traffic. If you notice your numbers drop from one month to the next, you’ll know to investigate one of your marketing channels to figure out why. New sessions – A metric found in Google, it’s a good one to understand because it tells you whether your site is sticky enough to encourage repeat customers as well as how effective your outreach efforts are. Channel-specific traffic – Found in Google’s ‘Acquisition’ section this metric will segment your traffic based on their point of origin i.e. direct, referrals, organic or social. Bounce rate – Generally, you want the bounce rate to be as low as possible because the more time someone spends on your site, the more likely they are to convert and perform meaningful action. Total conversions – Total conversions is one of the most important metrics for measuring the profitability of your overall marketing efforts. Low conversion numbers could be the result of bad design, poor offerings, or otherwise disinterested visitors. Lead to close ratio – This metric is easy to define: simply divide your total number of sales by your total number of leads, and you’ll get a ratio that defines your sales success independent of your marketing efforts. Customer retention rate – Most conventional businesses can measure this by calculating what % of customers return to their business to buy again. A low retention metric can be a symptom of a product or service that isn’t sticky, or an indication of lacking outreach programs. Customer value – Customer value is a difficult metric to calculate. To find your average customer value, you have to take into account all sales the average customer will initiate over the course of your relationship. Knowing your customer retention rate will help here. Cost per lead (CPL) – To calculate your cost per lead, take a look at the average monthly cost of your chosen campaigns and compare it to the total number of leads you generated with that specific channel over the same period. Projected ROI – The single most important factor for any individual marketing campaign because it demonstrates its profitability. The formula is simple: compare your cost-per-lead against your lead-to-close ratio, and compare that figure against your average customer value. For example, if you pay R200 per lead and close 50% of your leads, you’ll pay R400 for each successful new customer. If your average customer value is more than R400 in this example, you’ve generated a profit and your marketing campaign can be considered a success. AdMarula’s tracking platform already provides several of these metrics where publishers on the performance and transaction reports are able to measure their conversion ratios whether it is from click to lead or lead to sale and so on. These combined with your own web analytics can give you the insight necessary to maximise your content and your marketing efforts and ultimately your and the client’s ROI. Happy selling! Mawande Barnes – Affiliate Manager
