Password Statistics: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly [Infographic]

August 31, 2015 at 06:00PM

When was the last time you changed your email password? Your Facebook password? How about your bank account password?

If it's been a while, you may want to take a few minutes and change 'em up. According to a survey of 2,000 people in the U.S. and the U.K., almost three-quarters of consumers use the same exact password for multiple accounts. What's more, a large number of people haven't changed that duplicate password in over five years.

So it should come to no surprise that about 40% of people have had an online account hacked, a password stolen, or were notified their personal information had been compromised. But, although 8 in 10 people say they're concerned about the security of their online accounts, they’re still using weak, old, or repeated passwords that can be easily stolen or hacked.

How can you make sure your online accounts are safe? Check out the infographic below from TeleSign to learn more compelling statistics about password safety, common password mistakes to avoid, and how to protect your online accounts with more than just a password.

http://bit.ly/1X64wuj

UPDATE 16 Examples of Awesome Email Marketing Campaigns

August 31, 2015 at 02:00PM

If you're reading this, you probably have an email address (or two, or three ...). In fact, you've probably been sending and receiving emails for years, and you've definitely received some questionable deliveries in your inbox. 

Whether they were unexpected, uninformative, or had a subject line tHaT wAs fOrmAtTeD liKe tHiS, we bet you didn't hesitate to direct them towards the trash, right?

While email has managed to stand the test of time, many marketers have failed to update their strategies since its inception.

So to ensure you're sending modern emails that warrant some of your recipient's precious time and attention, we've compiled a list of effective email examples to inspire your next campaign. 

And for help creating effective email marketing campaigns of your own, download our free guide here.

16 of the Best Email Marketing Campaign Examples

1) PayPal

There are a couple things we love about this email example from PayPal. Not only is the opening copy clever and concise, but the entire concept also reflects a relatable benefit of using the service. Think about it: How many times have you been in a situation where you went out to dinner with friends and then fussed over the bill when it came time to pay? By tapping into this common pain point, PayPal is able to pique the interest of its audience. 

2) ModCloth 

Great companies are always evolving, and your customers expect to experience change. What they don't expect (because too many companies haven't lived up to this end of the bargain) is to be told about those changes. That said, this email from ModCloth serves as a refreshing change of pace. If you're going to change the way you communicate with a lead or customer, give them clear, fair warning so, if they aren't on board, they can make the necessary adjustments to keep their inbox clean.

3) Tory Burch

Did you see that? Did you see it move? Pretty cool, right? This small bit of animation helps to separate this email from Tory Burch from all of the immobile emails in their recipient's inboxes. They also leverage exclusivity by framing the promotion as a "private" sale. Often times, this type of positioning makes the recipient feel like they're specially chosen, which encourages them to take advantage of the special opportunity they've been presented with. 

4) Zipcar

This example sample comes courtesy of my coworker who started signing up for Zipcar, got busy, and had to abandon the form. As a result, the email calls her back to the website with some lighthearted copy that nudges her in the right direction, and also reminds her of the value of using Zipcar -- being economical and helping the planet.

If your site visitors are abandoning shopping carts or landing pages, use your email marketing in this way to remind them they have some unfinished business on your website!

5) RunKeeper

RunKeeper makes an effort to reengage lost users with this friendly, informational email. By highlighting their app's most recent changes and benefits, the copy works to entice recipients to give the app another chance. Small inclusions like the "Hi friend" greeting and the "You rock" closing makes the content feel welcoming and less aggressive. 

6) Litmus

Here's another great example from Litmus of animation being used to create more interesting email marketing design. Unlike static text, the swipe motion used to provide recipients with a look "under the hood" of their email tool is eye-catching and encourages you to take a deeper dive into the rest of the content. Not to mention the header does an excellent job of explicitly stating what this email is about.

7) Loft

This email from Loft aims to demonstrate their understanding of your crazy, mixed-value inbox. In an effort to provide you with emails that you actually want to open, Loft asks that their recipients update their preferences to help them deliver a more personalized experience. This customer-focused email is super effective in making the recipient feel like their likes, dislikes, and opinions actually matter. 

8) UncommonGoods 

You've heard it a million times (and a few thousand of those times may have been from us): You should create a sense of urgency with your calls-to-action. That's what makes a lead take action, right? Well, this email from UncommonGoods succeeds in creating a sense of urgency by focusing on the value of acting now. 

Instead of saying, "Order your Mother's Day gift NOW before Preferred Shipping ends!", this email asks, "Don't you think Mom would've liked a faster delivery?" Why yes, she would. Thank you for reminding me before it's too late -- I don't want to be in the dog house because my gift arrived after Mother's Day.

 

9) JetBlue

Confession: We have a serious email marketing crush on JetBlue. And they continue to deliver their lovable marketing in this cheeky email campaign that aims to humorously reengage customers. Every element from the header, to the three witty points, to the actionable, contrasting CTA work together to create a lovable campaign that's promotional without being pushy. 

10) Bonobos

It's simple: If you want people to engage with your emails, give them a reason to do so. This clean, minimalistic, and easy-to-click email campaign from Bonobos creates an interactive experience that encourages the recipient to take action.

The structure of this email aims to cater to those who don't have time to waste scrolling through pages of shorts that may or may not be in stock in their size. By providing a direct pathway to what they're looking for, Bonobos creates a seamless online shopping experience.

11) Amazon Local

This email from Amazon Local is short and sweet, with just one CTA: click through this email to tell Amazon what you like and dislike. That way, the deals they send you going forward can be more in line with what you're likely to actually want. What's wonderful about this experience is not just that they asked, but also how consistent the experience is from email to landing page. Take a look at the email below, and the landing page that follows.

Notice how the language in the email above, "like" and "dislike," mirrors the language in the buttons below? This is a simple way to get feedback from your email recipients to provide more personalized offers in their inbox, thus increasing the chance of a high clickthrough and offer redemption rate.

12) Focus Pointe Global

Focus Pointe Global provides focus groups so regular businesses can get some meaty market research. While research is known for being a little complicated, this email is impressively simple. All of the information you need to know to determine whether you want to participate is called out in bold, and extremely short explanatory copy follows it.

What is the survey about? What do I get for taking it? How long will it take? Where can I begin? You can figure this all out pretty immediately. All emails should aim to provide such clear instruction.

13) Harpoon Brewery

My friends at Harpoon are so thoughtful, aren't they? This simple, timely email really does feel like it's coming from a friend, which is why it's so effective. In an age of email automation, it's easy for email campaigns to feel a little robotic. And while I'm certain that this email was, in fact, automated, it feels really human.

If you're looking to strengthen the relationship you have with your existing customers, consider taking the time to set up a quick email like this to let them know you're thinking of them. 

14) Bonafide

HubSpot customer Bonafide uses this email in one of its lead nurturing email series, and it's a great example of a principle so many email marketers forget. Your inbox recipients don't always remember who you are! 

Take a look at the callout in orange -- the first paragraph of this email tells the reader why they are being contacted. With the amount of inbox overload we all suffer, reminders of this nature are critical to preventing deletions and unsubscribes. 

15) Rip Curl

"JOIN THE REVOLUTION."

That's quite powerful, wouldn't you agree? Rip Curl, an Australian surfing sportswear retailer, combines urgency and our psychological need to be part of something to create an email headline that jumps off the page. This positioning is designed to lead people to believe that there's a "revolution" taking place and it's their turn to get in on the action. At the end of the day, people want to be part of something that's bigger than themselves, and this email aims to motivate them to do so by purchasing this sleek watch.

16) J.Crew Factory

For many of us, when it comes to wrapping gifts, the struggle is real. J.Crew Factory recognized this problem, and then created this email to serve as a solution for those incapable of pulling off a Pinterest-esque wrap job: gift cards. The email offers up two different says to pick up a gift card -- in store or online -- in an effort to avoid excluding anyone. 

They've also included a map of the nearest store location at the end of the email to lower the purchasing barrier even further. 

There are hundreds of other examples of excellent email marketing. Share some of your favorite campaigns in the comments.

 

http://bit.ly/1Kyf7ZT

7 Things to Know Before You Run an App Install Ad Campaign

August 31, 2015 at 12:00PM

The explosive growth in mobile usage -- specifically in app usage -- has created an ultra competitive marketplace. A whopping 1.4 million apps are on both the App Store and Google Play. In such an environment, app marketers face a difficult challenge as they battle hundreds or even thousands of direct competitors for user attention.

According to a new report from eMarketer, “the flooded app marketplace means paid install campaigns are a must.” Indeed, advertising is a big part of today’s app marketing toolkit, with acquisition campaigns attracting bigger and bigger chunks of their ad budgets. According to BI Intelligence, U.S. app install ad revenue alone will top $4.6 billion this year and grow to $6.8 billion by the end of 2019.

So if you're one of those marketers who is thinking about running, analyzing, and optimizing their very first app install ad campaign, keep on reading. We'll touch on some of most important things to know before you run an app install campaign for the first time.

1) Running app install campaigns boosts organic growth.

Realistically speaking, the only way for apps to get noticed in a shark-infested competitive landscape is by generating a volume of installs from both organic and paid sources.

Organic installs mainly come from app store exploration or organic search. That means people discover an application after they search for a related keyword or brand search, look at top apps per category, or get a tip to download the app through an app store’s featured recommendations.

Non-organic or paid installs are installs that were driven by active promotions, especially in an advertising campaign or through an incentivized network, where users are prompted to download and install an app in exchange for virtual currency or another incentive.

Since the overall number of installs is a major factor in app store optimization (ASO) -- a method that enables marketers to improve an app’s location in the store’s search results -- an investment in non-organic installs will improve an app’s ranking (which will ultimately increase the number of organic installs as well). In fact, our research says that on average, every paid install drives three organic installs:

So if you're looking to boost your organic rankings, you should consider folding paid efforts into your overall promotion plan.

2) Measuring app install campaign performance is tricky.

Before mobile took our lives by storm, tracking and measuring digital marketing campaigns was easy -- we just used cookies. Cookies enable online marketers to accurately and anonymously track users, measure the impact of their campaigns, and make smart decisions about their ad spend.

Then, the mobile revolution turned things upside down -- the cookie wasn’t supported on apps or on Apple’s Safari browser (at least not by default), which meant a large part of the market couldn't be tracked.

Without the cookie, the mobile world is deeply fragmented: there are both different operating systems (iOS, Android) and different environments (in-app, mobile web). To make matters worse, there’s no standardization. The good news is that there are ways to accurately connect the dots by using several identification methods: ID matching (e.g. Apple’s IDFA, Google Advertising ID), Google Play Referrer, and fingerprinting.

Here’s more on how ID matching works:

3) Beware the double or triple charge.

Today’s mobile measurement largely runs on a last-click attribution model. That means that the advertiser only pays the single network that drove the last click before the install (usually within a seven-day grace period). Attribution companies are able to do this because they are integrated with hundreds of networks and that gives them a bird’s eye view of the path to conversion.

Without this view, both the advertiser and the network would have no way of knowing which click was last. Networks that drove a click would then bill the advertiser - regardless of whether they delivered the last click or not. In this case, the advertiser would end up paying double or triple what it should pay as different networks will all claim credit for the same install.

To make sure this doesn't happen, you need to have the proper connections set up -- that way, the network is informed in real time (in what is called a postback) that it was the last click, and it doesn’t wrongly charge the advertiser. If it somehow does, the advertiser would immediately notice the gap between the invoice and the attribution data (and be able to fix it).

4) Figure out which ad network drives the "best" installs.

A common problem in app install campaigns happens when a network delivers tons of new users to an app only to find out that they’re low quality. The marketer’s user base may have grown, but many of these users may not have had any active app sessions nor completed any in-app actions. In an environment where most apps are free and therefore rely on in-app purchases to drive commercial success, that’s a big problem.

To propel business growth, a marketer needs to know not only which ad network drove an install, but also more importantly – which drove the best install (‘best’ could be determined by the highest revenue or best engagement or retention rates, depending on the marketer’s goals). This is done by continuing to follow the user’s post-install activity and in-app events, and then tying these events back to the acquiring network. When aggregated, a clear path can be easily drawn to the value each network is generating.

The following example shows the top networks sorted by the average revenue per user (ARPU) they acquired. Clearly Network 1 reigns supreme. If that’s a key goal for the marketer, he should consider increasing its budget.

5) Cohort analyses are your friend.

For marketers looking to increase the quality of their newly acquired users, cohort analysis is one of the most effective tools to help them understand user behaviors and target new user groups accordingly.

A cohort report allows marketers to group users with common characteristics together in order to measure specific KPIs for these groups over different time frames. As opposed to retention reports, this analysis allows the marketer to better compare their results.

For instance, the marketer can focus on users who came from a specific Facebook campaign in the U.S. (or any other geographic area) and measure average revenue over a day, 7 days, or even up to 30 days. They could then compare this cohort against another cohort group that came from a different source and see which source drove the highest quality users over time.

Cohort analysis could also be used to compare the engagement (number of sessions, frequency of visits, etc.) or monetization (in-app purchases, ARPU, ARPPU, LTV, etc.) of various user segments. This information is invaluable in helping app marketers optimize their future ad spend and targeting.

The following graph shows a cohort of users from the U.S. who installed an app in March, grouped by media source. The metric measured is the average number of in-app purchases per user. It shows that Networks A and B delivered great value with a growing number of in-app purchases from Day 5 and climbing after Day 14, while Network C generated some value but plateaued after Day 14. In this case, the marketer can increase the budget of Networks A and B, and launch a retargeting campaign with Network C starting Day 14 in an attempt to tackle the slowed growth.

6) The “last touch” source isn’t the only one that matters.

Conversion is influenced by multiple touch points across the consumer journey -- each playing a key role in introducing a product/brand to a user, keeping the product/brand top of mind prior during the decision-making phase and actually leading a user to seal the deal.

Suppose, for instance, that a consumer saw an ad for an app on a social network, and later watched a video trailer for that app while playing a mobile game. Even though he might not have downloaded the app at that time, these touch points introduced the game and then kept it top of mind. After seeing another app install ad on another network, the user is ready to convert. She clicks on the ad, goes to the app store, and installs the app. In such a case, giving all the credit to that last network doesn’t make sense.

Flawed as last-click attribution is, it’s the industry standard. From a pure billing perspective, this is good enough since billing standardization for multi-touch attribution is not realistic at this stage.

However, just because it doesn’t impact billing doesn’t mean it lacks value. If marketers are able to measure the most common conversion paths that lead users to install their apps, they should continue to invest in these contributing networks. After all, these networks drove users down the funnel and made them “sales-ready.” If it weren’t for their presence, the user may have never converted.

The following scenarios show the importance Network C to driving installs:

So marketers should keep the full-funnel in mind when making app advertising decisions. For example, if you choose to cut all budget from one network, you should look to see how conversions change on the other networks.

7) Use deep linking in your ad campaigns for a better user experience.

Deep linking is the technology that enables developers to send a user to a particular part of their app, similar to the way that URLs allow a user to go to a specific page of a web site.

With deep linking, the developer can use ad creative and calls-to-action that send the user to a specific app screen that is actually tied to the campaign in question, rather than the app’s home screen. This creates a non-disruptive user experience with higher engagement.

Take, for instance, the case of a hotel reservations app that wants to serve ad campaigns targeted to users based on what city they happen to be in. The app marketer could promote a 50% discount for the user to find a hotel room in San Francisco that night, and then, using deep linking, steer them to the section within their app that lists all hotels in San Francisco. The same process could be used by an ecommerce app to promote a specific line of clothing, or by a movie-streaming app to promote a specific movie, and so on.

Deep linking allows marketers to get much more personalized and targeted with their ad campaigns, which leads to better conversions and a higher quality experience for users. And all of it is trackable thanks to the custom URLs enabled in the deep linking technology.

http://bit.ly/1Evb6ES

27 Tweetable Quotes From #INBOUND15's Most Inspiring Sales Influencers

August 29, 2015 at 02:00PM

This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Sales Blog. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.

Working in the marketing industry requires a lot of willpower. Between trends changing and attention spans shrinking, doing your job well is no easy feat. 

The same can be said about sales. Quite simply, it's a constant grind. And while marketers may not always be in the trenches with their sales reps to see it, that doesn't make it any less real. 

Aware that aligning your sales and marketing departments is critical to improving your organization's output, we've compiled a list of inspiring tips and advice from some of the top sales rockstars speaking at #INBOUND15 to help marketers better understand the world their reps are living in. 

From Jill Rowley's tips on social selling to Daniel Pink's insights on how to influence people, there's a ton of good advice to be had from these knowledgeable speakers. 

Want to hear these speakers at INBOUND15? Now's your chance -- book your ticket today.

27 Tweetable Quotes From Sales Rockstars Going to #INBOUND15

Daniel Pink (@DanielPink)

Daniel Pink is a keynote speaker at INBOUND.

1) “Anytime you’re tempted to upsell someone else, stop what you’re doing and upserve instead.”

2) “In the new world of sales, being able to ask the right questions is more valuable than producing the right answers.”

3) “Clarity on how to think without clarity on how to act can leave people unmoved.”

4) “If you need me to motivate you, I probably don’t want to hire you.”

5) “Think about the essence of what you’re exploring -- the one percent that gives life to the other 99.”

Jill Konrath (@jillkonrath)

Jill Konrath will be leading "Optimize Me: Insanely More Productive Sales Strategies".

6) “Think about the most important points of your story -- from your customer’s perspective, not yours.”

7) “When you keep it simple, you make it easier for customers to buy from you.”

8) “Be your buyer’s resource center.”

9) “As sellers, if we’re going to be successful landing the big ones, we need to expand our thinking about what’s possible.”

10) “Today’s prospects want to know the truth, so don’t shade it.”

Trish Bertuzzi (@bridgegroupinc)

Trish Bertuzzi will be leading "7 Sales Development Hacks to Jack Pipeline".

11) “You have to believe in what you sell and you have to care about your industry.”

12) “It is the cold that is dead -- not the calling.”

13) “Buyers won’t engage with sales reps who pitch product, but they will give access to trusted advisors.”

14) “What if you let your customers do the talking?”

Jill Rowley (@jill_rowley)

Jill Rowley will be leading "Social Selling: How to Connect With the Modern Buyer".

15) “Your network is your net worth.”

16) “LinkedIn is no longer an online resume. It’s your digital reputation.”

17) “No one really likes and trusts the quota crusher.”

18) “Common sense isn’t optional. Don’t do stupid.”

Tony Alessandra (@TonyAlessandra)

Tony Alessandra will be leading "How to Read a Person Like a Book".

19) “Unless you ask the right questions, you won’t uncover the right needs.”

20) “Your customers aren’t just part of your job. Your customers are the reason you have a job!”

21) “Enthusiasm, not apathy, makes the world go ’round.”

22) “Trust and reputation are not discretionary. They are as necessary in business as the people in whom they reside.”

23) “In selling as in medicine, prescription before diagnosis is malpractice.”

Craig Rosenberg (@funnelholic)

Craig Rosenberg will be leading "6 Sales Hacks That Actually Work".

24) “Takers are going the way of the dinosaur.”

25) “You can’t propose a mutually beneficial business relationship if you can’t understand their business.”

26) “Your job is to not only help but to strive to give more than you get back.”

27) “Create great content until the cows come home.”

Looking for even more inspiration? Join the Malala fund at #INBOUND15 and support their mission to provide quality, free, and safe secondary education to girls worldwide.

http://bit.ly/1KsXVoG