Facebook’s next big headache: Europe

Tags

Axios, Data, EU, Europe, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Privacy

Excellent insight from Axios. Facebook has bigger problems looming in the EU.

“Now that Facebook survived its congressional onslaught, it’s focusing its attention towards a much more powerful threat: the EU.

“Why it matters: The risk to Facebook’s business coming out of last week’s Mark Zuckerberg hearings is minimal. The threat to its business in the EU, where aggressive regulation has already passed, is massive.

“The latest: The European Parliament has issued a second invitation to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear at a joint committee heating. EU Justice Commissioner Věra Jourová had a phone exchange with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg urging Zuckerberg to pay the Parliament a visit, according to the Associated Press.

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Facebook has yet again changed the algorithm behind its news feed. What does that mean for online publishers?

Tags

Facebook, Publishing, Social Media

Facebook has yet again changed the algorithm behind its news feed to the effect that its users will see more posts from friends and family and fewer from brands and media outlets. What sounds like good news for users, will probably cause some concern among online publishers around the world.

The organic reach of news articles or other branded content on Facebook has reportedly been declining for a while now and after this week’s announcement, publishers might fear a further decline.

As the chart illustrates, Facebook has become an important traffic source for news publishers in recent years. In fact, it even overtook Google to become the largest source of referral traffic according to data published by Parse.ly, a company providing online publishers with analytics tools. Given its importance as a traffic source, limiting the organic reach of articles is probably a clever way for Facebook to entice publishers to spend more money on promoting their content on what is the world’s largest social network.

Source: • Chart: Facebook’s Importance to Online Publishers | Statista

What are The Most Popular Apps in the World?

Tags

Apps, Facebook, Instagram, iPhone, Messenger, Netflix, Snapchat, Spotify, Twitter, Uber, WhatsApp, YouTube

As we have recently learned, smartphone users in the United States spend more time using apps than ever before. On average, they spend more than 40 hours a month using their favorite apps. Meanwhile, the number of apps they use has plateaued since 2012. 27 appears to be the magic number in terms of how many apps people need.

So which apps do people actually use? According to SensorTower data reported by ReCode, there are few surprises when it comes to the most popular apps in the world. Big players such as Google, Facebook and Twitter dominated global app downloads in May, with Facebook owning four of the five most-downloaded apps in the world.

Source: • Chart: The Most Popular Apps in the World | Statista

Twitter Struggles to Reignite Its Growth Engine

Tags

Facebook, Social Media, Twitter

“When Twitter reported its first quarter earnings this week, those who had hoped that the company finally found a way to reignite its user growth were disappointed once more. Instead of reversing the trend and reaccelerating user growth, the company’s user growth basically flatlined. Twitter now has 310 million monthly active users, an increase of just 3 percent or 8 million users since last year’s March quarter.

“Let’s compare that number to Facebook user growth: now boasting 1.65 billion active users, the world’s largest social network still grew by 15 percent over the past 12 months. During those 12 months, Facebook added 213 million users – more than two thirds of Twitter’s entire user base.”

Source: • Chart: Twitter Struggles to Reignite Its Growth Engine | Statista

How has Facebook fared in its risky move to mobile?

Tags

Digital Transformation, Facebook, Instagram, Mobile, WhatsApp

How important is mobile? Let’s look at Facebook. They show what can happen if you focus on the transition. They could have been left behind. They knew it was a risk.

What did they do?

They transformed themselves. There is a lesson here I think.

When Facebook filed for its initial public offering in early 2012, the company named the ongoing transition to mobile as one of the biggest risks to its future success. If the transition to mobile was indeed the biggest challenge in Mark Zuckerberg’s young career as CEO of a billion-dollar company, he managed it admirably well.

Not only does Facebook generate most of its revenue on mobile devices, the company also owns three of the most popular apps in the world. First there’s Facebook, which had more than 1.4 billion mobile users in the fourth quarter of 2015. Than there’s Instagram, which has more than 400 million users and is immensely popular with tech-savvy Millennials. And finally, there’s Facebook’s most expensive acquisition: WhatsApp, which is quickly closing in on one billion users.

With a mobile line-up like this, Facebook appears to be in a position that all but guarantees sustained success in the mobile landscape.

Source: • Chart: Facebook’s Impressive Mobile Line-Up | Statista

The problem with Facebook is?

Tags

Facebook, Social Media

Facebook is a complex ecosystem of individuals, creators, brands and advertisers. The problem is the only way Facebook has found to make money is by treating all entities on the site as advertisers and charging them to share their content.

Social Media

10 Facebook features to watch in 2016

Tags

Facebook, Social Media

Facebook continues to expand its services. It is hard to keep up with it all. It has stiff competition on many fronts but offers the advantage of “one stop” services.

A recent Cornell study describes how people are becoming increasingly dependent on Facebook’s usefulness.

The study asserts that users don’t leave Facebook for lack of utility; they leave for fear of addiction.

Though Facebook’s propensity to cause addiction is questionable, its usability isn’t. Facebook’s ecosystem (which includes Instagram and WhatsApp) offers unprecedented usefulness, and the social media giant is expanding its native services substantially in 2016.

The upcoming changes are new to Facebook, but not to the social media landscape. Facebook appears to be borrowing the best aspects of other popular social networks.

For communications professionals, this means that the ways you can communicate on Facebook are expanding. Imagine a platform with all of the functions of Facebook, Periscope, Yelp, Google, Yammer, Uber, Amazon Marketplace, Evite and Razoo. That appears to be what Facebook hopes to become in 2016.

Source: 10 Facebook features to watch in 2016 | Articles | Main

Can one simple oversight bring our stock price down 8% in two weeks?

Tags

CMO, Customer Service, Facebook, Twitter

Social Media

It is easy to underestimate the new power that consumers have in the digital world. Don’t let it happen to you. Will it take a disaster to get our attention. Let us hope it isn’t so. Now is the time to obsess about how our customers may point out our vulnerabilities.

Transparency is no longer debatable. We are no long in control of the message. Consumers are generally more in control than we believe. What we know can be dangerous. What we don’t know can be even more dangerous.

I have to ask myself, do I really feel like rolling the dice and risk being brought down by not paying attention to this? What will my staff think? How will my Board react? Will investors turn and run?

Almost five years ago, I was sitting in the conference room of one of the world’s largest insurance companies, trying to push the idea of social customer relationship management to their corporate marketing team. I showed them the power of Twitter and Facebook, and painted pictures of how they could get closer than ever to their customers with these then-new touchpoints. Roughly 4 hours and 45 slides later, the CMO stood up, shook my hand, and told me how he realized going social and “being there” for his customers was important. And then he added that he just didn’t have the bandwidth for it. He explained why his company was just not ready to go social, and why he believed it would be far too risky to allow his customer service onto public forums or leave his brand open for user generated debate. About six months later, a tweet from an angry customer went viral and brought the insurance giant’s stock prices down by 8%. In a mere two weeks! 

Read more: The Customer Support Hierarchy of Needs – Vikram Bhaskaran – Harvard Business Review

Are you ready to primarily use visual content?

Tags

Facebook, Photo, Picture, Video, Visual Content, YouTube

Visual Content

The old saying claims that a picture is worth a thousand words, but video ups the ante. According to Forrester Research, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words. Now would be the time to begin converting static, word oriented content into visual mediums.

Consider this:

• It is estimated that 3.8 trillion photos were taken in all of human history until mid-2011, but 1 trillion photos were taken in 2015 alone.
• And that’s without counting the number of people making, viewing, or sharing videos [YouTube alone boasts over a billion users worldwide], Vines [40 million users], and gifs.
• Nearly 60% of all digital impressions are now driven by images.
• Facebook now claims to be the largest video-sharing site in the world.
• 70% of marketers are planning to increase their use of original visual assets this year, meaning these brands are not just repurposing images and video, but creating new visual content.
• Those who do emphasize visual content are rewarded with measurable impact on ROI and engagement metrics.
• Posts with visuals receive 94% more page visits and engagements than those without and elicit twice as many comments on average.
• Sixty-seven percent of consumers consider clear, detailed images to carry more weight than product information or customer ratings.
• Sight is our strongest sense: 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and 40% of nerve fibers to the brain are connected to the retina.
• As a result of this hardwiring, visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text. Not only are visuals processed faster, they are processed better.
• Some suggest that 80%–85% of our perception, learning, cognition, and other mental activities are mediated through vision.
• One interesting experiment showed that when someone hears a piece of information, they will remember only 10% of it three days later. Adding a picture to that information increases retention to 65%.
• In 2000, average customer attention span was estimated at 12 seconds, while today’s estimate is 8.25 seconds. Since it only takes humans about 0.25 seconds to process an image, we can still communicate much more information within these shortening attention spans with visual content.

Source: The Rise of Visual Content Online

 

Facebook’s Growth Is Entirely Fueled by Mobile Ads

Tags

Advertising, Facebook, Mobile advertising

It looks like Facebook has found the revenue machine secret sauce for now. It will be interesting to see how it holds up over time.

“Facebook’s strong mobile advertising business helped the social network to beat expectations on both the top and the bottom line in its third quarter earnings report. Revenue climbed 41 percent to $4.5 billion as net income grew by 11 percent to reach $896 million. The profit increase could have been even bigger, had Facebook not doubled its R&D expenditure compared to last year’s third quarter.

“When Facebook started selling mobile advertising in 2012, not even the keenest optimists could have predicted how successful this decision would turn out. In each of the past eleven quarters, mobile ads have accounted for more then 90% of Facebook’s revenue growth. In the first nine months of 2015, all of the company’s growth came from advertising on tablets and smartphones. Mobile ad revenue now accounts for 78 percent of Facebook’s advertising revenue and 74 percent of total revenue.

“Considering the fact that Facebook has 894 million mobile users on an average day, it is no surprise that its mobile advertising efforts are successful. The pace at which mobile ads have become the single driver of the company’s growth is noteworthy though.”

Source: • Chart: Facebook’s Growth Is Entirely Fueled by Mobile Ads | Statista

You’re Doing Social Wrong. Your Teenager Does It Right.

Tags

Cliff Watson, Digital, Facebook, Kik, Online Communities, Social Media, Social network, Twitter

Facebook Logo

It seems that everyone is freaking out about teens abandoning social media sites like Facebook. By “everyone” I mean advertisers. They’re racking their brains trying to figure out why it’s happening. If you’re puzzled too, read this lovely piece in Medium by Cliff Watson, who argues that the number one reason kids don’t need Facebook is that they “literally don’t need Facebook.”

After running through a host of theories as to why, including the fact that parents (ew) and even grandparents are on Facebook now, he comes up with a much more reasonable reason: Young people are gravitating toward messaging services such as Kik, and in doing so, they’re recapturing the intended meaning of social: “Making contact with other human beings. Communicating. Back-and-forth, fairly immediate dialogue. Most of it digitally.”

In other words, it’s not a post; it’s an exchange. Snapchat anyone?

Do Mobile Phones Make Us More Productive?

Tags

Facebook, Mobile, Mobile Apps, Productivity

Productivity

We have that look. We are being productive.

Are we?

Not all the time. We are playing games. We are checking social media.

On the other side of the issue, we are available. We receive and respond to text messages. We read and respond to work email. We receive real time changes to our schedules. We connect by phone with a customer or work team member.

We go back to playing a game. We check out Facebook one more time.

Mobile tracking metrics show that consumers rarely ever conduct productivity-related tasks on their devices. In fact, the official US productivity rate has dropped to its lowest point in the past two decades.

via The Data Digest: Do Mobile Phones Make Us More Productive? | Forrester Blogs.

Are you leveraging the power of your influential nonprofit followers on social media?

Tags

Facebook, GuideStar, Internet Marketing, Online Communities, Social Media, Social network, Twitter

Donor Experience

Every nonprofit is on Facebook and Twitter. Everyone is posting compelling content. That is the baseline in our digital world today.

What everyone is not doing is engaging donors and constituents. Everyone is not get getting influential donors to actively take up our cause and extend our reach.

Digital leadership recognizes this and organizes resources to create over the top donor experiences.

The point Artie Patel, VP of Business Development for Attentive.ly is making in this article is that having a social media presence and creating posts for existing followers is today’s baseline. Merely having a presence is not enough if you seriously want to further online advocacy campaigns and raise money for your nonprofit. It takes work and effort to do this, but it pays significant dividends for those organizations that are committed to actually devoting resources and time towards social media.

More here: Are you leveraging the power of your influential followers on social media? | GuideStar Blog.

Is it productive to work at home or anywhere other than the office?

Tags

Digital, Facebook, Google, Marissa Mayer, Mobile, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Telecommuting, Twitter, Yahoo

Certain subjects just naturally incite opinion wars. The big ones, like political preferences, or whether you’re Team A or Team B, are better left out of polite conversation. But when it comes to doing your job effectively, where do we draw the line? Should the nature of a person’s autonomy — or lack thereof — be at the whim of the boss, or the discernment of the employee?

The four corners of the Internet nearly came to blows recently when tech-world darling and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer boldly put a stop to employees working remotely. Needless to say, people are a little upset.

I’m definitely in the let them work at home camp. Here is a pretty good infographic on the state of things.

What’s Your Organic Reach on social media? Does it matter anymore?

Tags

Facebook, Paid Advertising, Social Media, Twitter

Social Media

Huge shifts are occurring in how to reach consumers in social media. The bias of the algorithms has clearly shifted to being paid for versus organic.

Organic reach’s heyday is over. Companies that publish content on Facebook are increasingly seeing their ability to reach users shrink unless they pay for exposure. As Facebook’s user count grows, the social network has been modifying its algorithms to decrease the organic or free exposure of brands’ posts in users’ News Feeds. Other social media platforms are also experimenting with paid media products.

At the same time, brands can’t afford to ignore social media users. With more than 1.4 billion monthly users on Facebook and 288 million monthly users on Twitter, brands that do not have a social presence are missing an opportunity to communicate with a huge audience. As the social media landscape matures, here’s what marketers need to know about the latest tactics for extending their brands’ reach.

via What’s Your Organic Reach?.

It’s Like Facebook For Work. Wait It Is Facebook For Work

Tags

Collaboration, Facebook, People, Strategy

Facebook Logo

Is there anything Facebook won’t get into? Well, here they go into the business market. I remember when Yammer upgraded their experience to give it a “Facebook like” interface. It really took off and Microsoft bought them.

Collaboration is huge. Business needs to focus more on the power it can create when used strategically to enable our people. Always good to see another tool to help.

Overall, I support Facebook entering the business market. They have a product already used by a billion plus people at home, certainly some percentage of those people will be happy also using it for work. I think they chose the right name, “At Work” versus something like “Facebook for the Enterprise”, as I don’t predict any large organizations will adopt this. There are just too many other choices for them that are better suited to meet the needs or large companies.  However, the millions of small businesses that don’t have IT departments and may already be using Facebook as part of their marketing efforts may be quite happy using Facebook for secure employee collaboration.

My advice to Facebook, spend 2015 partnering with large enterprise software vendors so that you can announce integrations that prove the validity of Facebook at Work as a platform people can really use to get their jobs done.

via It’s Like Facebook For Work. Wait It Is Facebook For Work | Constellation Research Inc..

Trends to watch to stay on the disruptive edge of digital business

Tags

Digital, Digital Transformation, Facebook, Mobile, Social Media, Social network

Digital Disprution Waves

There is no doubt technology is disrupting the traditional business models. Customers are in charge and they are plugged in. No one of these may be right for you but you should be spending time researching which are the right ones and leveraging them. You can either disrupt or be disrupted. Of course, now is the time to consider transforming your business model. What mix should we consider?

So here is a good list to start with via Small Business Strategy: 10 Trends to Watch – Brian Solis..

 1. Social Networks from Facebook to Twitter to Google+ and how they’re connecting to influencers and businesses (note: pay attention to nicheworks as well such as Path and Instagram.)

2. Geolocation check-in services such as Foursquare and Facebook location updates to share locations and earn rewards or opportunities for discounts

3. Crowdsourced discounts and deals including Groupon and LivingSocial and what’s valued and why

4. Social commerce services like Shopkick and Armadealo and how they create personalized experiences that are worth sharing

5. Referral based solutions like Yelp, Service Magic (now HomeAdvisor), and Angie’s List to make informed decisions and how shared experiences can improve your business, products, and services

6. Gamification platforms such as Badgeville and Fangager, and why rewarding engagement improves commerce and loyalty

7. How your consumers using mobile devices today and what apps they’re installing. Also, how they’re comparing options, reviewing experiences and making decisions while mobile?

8. The online presence your business produces across a variety of platforms such as tablets, smartphones, laptops and desktops. You must realize how consumers are experiencing the online presences you create and whether or not they deliver a holistic and optimized experience for each platform.

9. The consumer clickpath based on the platform consumers are using. Are you steering experiences based on the expectations of your customers? And are you taking into consideration the device or network where the clickpath begins and ends? Are you integrating Facebook F-commerce and m-commerce into the journey?

10. The expectations of connected consumers, what they value in each channel and platform, where they engage and how your business can improve experiences and make them worthy of sharing.

Do you need a multi-channel messaging strategy?

Tags

Customer Experience, Facebook, Google, Online Communities, SEO, Social network, Twitter

This is a very good article on how disruptive social media has become for a business focused on the Customer and the experience they have with us.

If you haven’t been convinced yet, this is for you.  The world has changed. Consumers have changed. We have to change to meet the needs and expectations of our customers. Are you ready?

Social media and smartphones are disrupting the established patterns and practices for B2C interactions. To be successful, businesses have to engage with customers through their preferred channels, whether that be mobile, IM or social networks.The link between technology and consumers is, however, a two-way street. Take, for example, Facebook notifications (the auto-generated email or text alerts you get when someone posts you on your wall or comments on a photo). These alerts constitute B2C dialogue, though they operate under the guise of a C2C interaction.

The initial attraction of social networks like Facebook and other pioneers in the space was bringing groups of people of shared interest together on the web. Adding a messaging capability to the basic web presence extends the social experience beyond the website. Without notifications, you’d have to go online to Facebook to hangout with your friends. With notifications, your friends — and the Facebook brand — come and check in with you throughout the day via your inbox.

This kind of messaging lets businesses participate in, inform, and add value to the social interaction (wall post/sharing) without ever forcing users back to the site.

Why Businesses Must Adopt a Multi-Channel Messaging Strategy

Where’s the walls now to your office? Not so clear anymore … is it?

Tags

Command and control, Facebook, Industrialisation, Online Communities, Social network, Spam, Twitter

Walls to offices during the Industrial Age intended to guard leaders from the daily onslaught of activity and requests. Today, leaders are bombarded with Facebook requests, Twitter feeds, texts, IM pings, SPAM, an eMail from their boss demanding the most recent numbers in a report, and another eM just below the eMail from the boss … from a friend sending a stupid “forward” eMail with cats in it.

Where’s the walls now to your office? Not so clear anymore … is it?

via Saying Goodbye to the Industrial Age | MAGsays.

We have moved to an “open world”.

Whether we want to believe it or not, the command and control world is now gone.

It seems to me we have a choice.

We can continue to ignore it. Where will that lead me?

Or, we can embrace it. What would that look like?

How did being on-line change things for you as a digital executive so far this year?

Tags

Customer Experience, Digital, Facebook, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

We are all online now more than ever. So how did being online change things for you this year?

Here are some questions to help get the answers:

• What business opportunities have you discovered through social media or other online channels this year?
• What online tool did you start using this year that changed the way you work?
• What online project helped you develop new knowledge, learn more about your customers or improve skills this year?
• What is the most important business or personal relationship that began or grew online this year?
• Which of this year’s entertaining online discoveries have helped you bond with friends, family or colleagues?

I would love it if you would share your thoughts on any of these questions. What do you think? What is it like to be a digital executive?

Are you putting your career at risk by not building your social network?

Tags

Business, Digital, Facebook, Forbes, Google, LinkedIn, SAP, Social network, Twitter

This is powerful. Think 5 years from now. Not too hard to do in some cases. Or, think 2 or 3.

Will you regret not moving faster? I’m thinking we will. Our digital world has changed. Now would be the time to learn and change. Our future as leaders is at stake.

Let’s move fast. Let’s get with it.

Picture yourself as an Executive in 2017, struggling to make sense of how many of your peers failed to become social. Many of them pushed aside by their more savvy underlings who built up both internal and external social networks. Their large networks wield tremendous power, collective intelligence and the ability to influence both employees and customers. Many of the executives that didn’t adapt were caught in a type of ‘vocational innovator’s dilemma’; where they stubbornly refused to change despite the warning signs. 

Welcome to the new world. It’s the same as the old – only faster, smarter and a bit more effective. 

via SAP’s CIO: You’re Putting Your Executive Career at Risk if You’re Not Social – Forbes.

It is a social revolution. And it isn’t going away.

Tags

Business, Digital, Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing and Advertising, Mobile, Social Media, Social revolution

It is a full scale social revolution. So some questions:

• Do you have accounts on all the current social media?
• Are you active and post content?
• Do you respond to others?
• Do you use rich media like photos and video?

This where we are headed fast. For leaders of organizations, do your employees see that you get it? Are you there and relevant? Are you willing to be open?

The future is here and now. Imagine it is the year 2017. Other leaders have been part of the social revolution for years. You decide to start. Will it be too late then?

How often does the social media monster swallow you whole?

Tags

Digital, Facebook, Mobile, Social Media, Social network, Twitter

How often does the social media monster swallow you whole?

More than you may think, according to Red e App, which lets consumers get notifications from businesses without having to provide their personal information.

The company developed an infographic that details how interruptions impact employee productivity.

“Is it possible to be too connected in this digital age?” Red e App asks. “Research data indicates, yes.”

Among the findings, the infographic shows that workers are interrupted approximately once every 10.5 minutes, and that it takes an average of 23 minutes to return to an assigned task. The impact of these interruptions is staggering — costing the American economy almost $650 billion dollars a year, it says.

The infographic then breaks down the amount of time that Facebook, Twitter and email suck out of your day.

For years, productivity experts have suggested what I call segmenting your time with strict limits on the amount of time you spend in email. It seems logical to extend that to social media as well.

What do you think of the data?

 

Who drives more traffic to content, Facebook or Twitter?

Tags

Facebook, Social Media, Twitter

This one surprised me a little.  While I would have thought Facebook would have an advantage, I would not have guessed it would be this pronounced.  20 times as much is a lot.

Facebook’s significance as a traffic source for online publishers cannot be overstated. According to a new report by Shareaholic, who analysed the traffic composition of more than 200,000 websites around the globe between June 2013 and June 2014, the world’s largest social network now drives almost a quarter of the overall traffic to these websites. But not only is Facebook by far the most important source of social referrals, it is also the fastest-growing one. In June 2014, Facebook referrals accounted for 23.4% of traffic to the sampled websites. That’s an increase of more than 150% compared to June 2013, when Facebook drove less than 10% of traffic.Twitter’s role as a traffic source pales when compared to its larger rival Facebook.

The share of traffic driven by Twitter referrals has fluctuated around 1% for the past year and does not make any signs of changing in either direction. Aside from the obvious difference in size, Shareaholic attributes Twitter’s comparably minor role in traffic generation to a couple of reasons: one being the assumption that the Twitter feed is less personal than Facebook’s news feed is, and that links posted in Tweets are therefore less relevant to users. Another one being the idea that brands tend to use Twitter as a brand building tool, rather than a means for traffic acquisition.

via • Chart: Facebook Drives 20x As Much Traffic As Twitter Does | Statista.

 

What medium is king of the social world?

Tags

Facebook, Online Communities, Social network, Twitter, Video

StarGreets NASCAR

Video is becoming king of the social world. Studies indicate that over 50% of Americans watch user-generated video at least once a month. That is more than any other vehicle, including blogs, music, and photos on photo sharing sites. As video becomes an effective way to communicate with consumers, several emerging technologies allow you to target video content to your audience.

One technology to look at allows you to forge one-to-one customer relationships with real-time, personalized video using StarGreetz. If you were sent a video that was instantly personalized for you based on a number of factors, would you watch it? StarGreetz (www.stargreetz.com) helps brands create one-to-one personalized video messages that use the actual voices and images of brand spokespeople, popular celebrities and iconic characters to increase engagement. The videos are personalized to address the recipient by name, gender, location, date/time, and dozens of other potential attributes, and are delivered via messages and quick-response (QR) codes on Facebook, email, Twitter, mobile, point of purchase, on-package, outdoor, and print.

Quaker’s Chewy Granola Bars used StarGreetz to put QR codes on packaging that led consumers to personalized video messages, via Facebook API, starring Nick Jonas, delivering 88% opens, 74% click-through rates, as well as 5 minutes and 10 seconds of engagement. Toyota Racing sent NASCAR fans that registered for the Pit Pass an email containing a personalized video of Kyle Bush and experienced open rates that were five times higher than those of traditional emails.

This is very exciting for businesses who are obsessed with the customer experience.