Spritz is a leading marketing agency that specializes in revolutionizing the petcare hospitality industry. With our expertise and innovative approach, we work closely with pet care businesses to create tailored solutions that enhance the overall experience for pet owners. From developing mobile apps to implementing digital marketing strategies, Spritz is dedicated to improving customer satisfaction and streamlining operations in the ever-growing petcare hospitality sector.

A. Understanding the Petcare Hospitality Landscape:

The pet care hospitality industry is a dynamic and competitive market, with pet hotels, boarding facilities, and pet daycare centers striving to provide exceptional services to pet owners. At Spritz, we recognize the unique challenges faced by these businesses, including the need to balance personalized care with efficient operations.

B. Customized Mobile Solutions:

Spritz excels in creating mobile solutions that streamline pet care hospitality operations and enhance customer experiences. We develop user-friendly mobile apps that enable pet owners to book services, manage reservations, and communicate with the facility seamlessly. Our team ensures that the app aligns with the brand identity of our clients, providing a visually appealing and intuitive interface that makes pet care management convenient and stress-free for pet owners.

C. Digital Marketing Strategies:

In the competitive petcare hospitality industry, effective digital marketing is crucial to reach a wider audience and attract potential customers. Spritz employs a data-driven approach to develop comprehensive marketing strategies tailored to the unique needs of each client. From search engine optimization (SEO) to social media campaigns, our experts utilize various channels to increase online visibility, drive website traffic, and ultimately generate more bookings and inquiries for our petcare hospitality clients.

D. Personalized Customer Engagement:

At Spritz, we understand the importance of providing personalized experiences to pet owners. We implement customer relationship management (CRM) systems that enable our clients to capture and analyze customer data, allowing for targeted marketing campaigns and personalized interactions. By leveraging this data, our clients can send tailored messages, offer special promotions, and build lasting relationships with their customers, ultimately fostering loyalty and repeat business.

E. Reputation Management:

Maintaining a positive reputation is crucial in the pet care hospitality industry. Spritz helps our clients proactively manage their online reputation by monitoring and responding to customer reviews and feedback across various platforms. By addressing customer concerns promptly and showcasing positive experiences, we help build trust and establish our clients as reputable and reliable pet care providers.

F. Social Media:

Spritz understands the significance of a strong social media presence and partners with pet care clients to develop tailored strategies that captivate pet owners. By identifying target demographics, analyzing industry trends, and creating engaging content, Spritz ensures that pet care businesses maintain an active and compelling social media presence across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Nextdoor. Through creative storytelling, eye-catching visuals, and community engagement, Spritz helps pet care clients establish themselves as go-to destinations for pet owners seeking exceptional care.

G. Creative Design:

In the visually-driven world we live in, creative design plays a pivotal role in attracting and retaining customers. Spritz collaborates closely with pet care clients to develop visually appealing branding assets that reflect their unique identities. From designing captivating logos, websites, and promotional materials to creating stunning imagery and graphics, Spritz’s creative team ensures that every aspect of a pet care business’s visual identity aligns seamlessly with its values and offerings. By crafting aesthetically pleasing designs, Spritz helps pet care clients make a lasting impression on potential customers, fostering recognition and trust.

H. Email Marketing:

Email marketing remains one of the most effective tools for nurturing customer relationships, driving conversions, and generating repeat business. Spritz understands the power of personalized communication and works closely with pet care clients to develop impactful email marketing campaigns. Through targeted segmentation, thoughtful content creation, and strategic timing, Spritz helps pet care businesses deliver tailored messages to their subscribers. Whether it’s sharing informative pet care tips, announcing exclusive promotions, or providing updates on new services, Spritz ensures that each email resonates with recipients, fostering engagement and encouraging action.

I. Measuring Success: Analytics and Continuous Improvement

Spritz is dedicated to the long-term success of its pet care clients. To maximize the impact of social media, creative design, and email marketing efforts, Spritz utilizes robust analytics tools to measure and evaluate key performance metrics. By analyzing data on engagement rates, click-through rates, conversions, and customer feedback, Spritz provides invaluable insights to optimize strategies and make informed decisions. This iterative approach allows pet care businesses to continually refine their marketing campaigns, drive better results, and stay ahead of the competition.

J. Continuous Support and Growth:

Spritz is dedicated to long-term partnerships with our petcare hospitality clients. We provide ongoing support, monitoring the performance of our solutions and making necessary adjustments to ensure optimal results. Our team stays up-to-date with the latest industry trends and technological advancements, ensuring that our clients remain at the forefront of innovation in pet care hospitality.

Conclusion:

Spritz is committed to transforming the petcare hospitality industry through innovative solutions that enhance the experience for pet owners. By developing customized mobile apps, implementing targeted digital marketing strategies, and offering personalized customer engagement, we empower our clients to streamline operations, attract new customers, and foster lasting relationships. Leveraging social media, creative design, and email marketing, Spritz empowers pet care businesses to attract, engage, and retain customers in an ever-evolving digital landscape. With Spritz’s expertise and customized solutions, pet care clients can effectively communicate their unique value propositions, build brand loyalty, and ultimately provide exceptional care for beloved pets.

The post Enhancing Petcare Hospitality: How Spritz Transforms the Experience for Pet Hospitality Owners appeared first on SpritzSF.

In today’s digital age, where cloud integration and seamless connectivity are the norm, creating a mobile app with a standalone CRM system from the 1990s presents a unique challenge. However, at Spritz, we thrive on embracing challenges head-on. Our team of experts specializes in analyzing and understanding the limitations and possibilities of legacy CRM systems. With careful analysis and innovative thinking, we create bridges connecting these outdated systems with modern APIs, enabling seamless integration with mobile applications on iOS and Android platforms.

Understanding the Challenge:

We tackled this challenge with Bayside Pet Resort, a leading pet hotel with multiple locations in Florida. The resort recognized the need to modernize their operations and cater to the evolving demands of their tech-savvy clientele and asked Spritz to create a solution—how would we develop a mobile fix that would streamline their processes and enhance client connectivity, replacing traditional phone calls and in-person visits.

Crafting the Solution:

Our team delved deep into the intricacies of Bayside Pet Resort’s legacy CRM system, carefully analyzing its code, structure, and functionalities. Leveraging our extensive experience, we designed a robust architecture bridging the gap between the outdated CRM system and modern mobile apps. The key objective was to provide a seamless user experience for the pet owners and the resort staff.

Integrating with Modern APIs:

Spritz developed a mobile app that seamlessly integrated with various software applications and APIs. By leveraging the power of modern technology, we enabled clients to manage reservations, book services, and communicate with the resort directly from their smartphones. This shift to a mobile platform provided convenience and flexibility for the pet owners and reduced the stress on the front desk and call center, leading to improved overall efficiency.

Results and Impact:

With the Spritz solution, Bayside Pet Resort witnessed a significant increase in client reservations. The seamless integration of the mobile app with the legacy CRM system empowered pet owners to access the resort’s services at their convenience, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. The streamlined operations also benefited the resort’s staff, who experienced a reduced administrative workload and improved efficiency.

Conclusion:

Creating a mobile app with a standalone CRM system from the ’90s, lacking cloud integration capabilities, may seem insurmountable. However, at Spritz, we thrive on turning challenges into opportunities. Through careful analysis, innovative thinking, and the creation of bridge software, we enable businesses to modernize their operations and provide enhanced user experiences. The success story of Bayside Pet Resort stands as a testament to our expertise in overcoming obstacles and delivering tailored solutions that drive growth and efficiency.

The post Bridging the Digital Gap: Building a Mobile App appeared first on SpritzSF.

Something important in the world of search engine optimization (SEO) happened in 2019. Google called it Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, which few people can understand — so it’s BERT, for short. And it’s still a bit complicated. 

At its core, it’s all about Natural Language Processing (NLP), which means that Google has learned to anticipate the questions people ask. And in turn, this impacts keywords and SEO. You can see Google’s search engine machine learning at work when you start typing in a topic and several related options appear as phrases, suggested in anticipation of your question.   

Observers have said Google’s algorithm updates guarantee the end of key words as we once knew them.

Google experts said it was “the biggest leap forward in the past five years and one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of Search.” Both statements are true. 

There was a time not long ago when many content producers believed that keywords and phrases used repeatedly would assist Google Search and move a piece of content to a higher ranking. In fact, this practice is known as keyword stuffing, a spammy practice that it is penalized by Google and will actually harm a page’s ranking.

With more than 200 ranking factors, Google has sophisticated ways to evaluate, measure, and rank a site. These include metrics such as recency, relevancy, reputation, and more. In all cases, Google also looks for authenticity and this is reflected via human speech patterns with the natural use of keywords and key phrases that are never forced.   

Due to algorithm enhancements, Google now recognizes keywords and phrases that don’t read as natural speech, including when they’re placed in a list in an effort to increase the count. 

There are appropriate places for keywords to appear in a natural context:

• Page title
• Heading(s)
• Paragraph text only where it makes sense
• Title tag
• Meta description tag
• URL
• Website copy

Your objective: Avoid Google’s wrath! Don’t get dinged by Google for out-of-date website copy and content management practices. We can fix it for you. Just add Spritz to your website refresh plans and watch the Search results improve.     

The post Did Google Kill Key Words? appeared first on SpritzSF.

That can lead to the website conversation nobody wants to have. If you’re interacting with someone who has limited knowledge about how web browsers work (after all, that’s why you were hired in the first place), this can lead to a tense moment and the dreaded question: “Do you guys really know what you’re doing?” 

As web developers, we’re like…” Been there many times!” Let’s look into this common matter and how it can be avoided.

Every time a website is loaded from the server, certain things happen and certain things do not. In order to reduce the network load and to achieve faster website performance, most web browsers store a copy containing bits of information that do not typically change. For example, these may be styles, images, and scripts that are stored locally on your computer. While this is a benefit for users who want to zip around the website at a quick pace, it can become an issue when new updates and edits don’t appear when the site loads. 

Next time you encounter this issue, there is a solution: Clear your browser cache. Here’s how: 

Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari account for over 70% of all web traffic, so we’ve compiled simple steps for those two popular browsers:

• Google Chrome: 

  •  On your Desktop or Laptop:

    • Open Chrome
    • At the top right, click More
    • Click More tools Clear browsing data
    • At the top, choose a time range. To delete everything, select All time.
    • Next to “Cookies and other site data” and “Cached images and files,” check the boxes
    • Click Clear data

• • On your Android Phone or Tablet:

    • Open Chrome.
    • At the top right, click More
    • Click More tools Clear browsing data
    • At the top, choose a time range. To delete everything, select All time.
    • Next to “Cookies and other site data” and “Cached images and files,” check the boxes
    • Click Clear data

• • On your iPhone or iPad:

• • • Open the Chrome app
    • At the bottom, tap More
    • Tap History Clear browsing data
    • Make sure there’s a checkmark next to “Cookies, Site Data,” and “Cached Images and Files”
    • Tap Clear browsing data

• Safari:

• • On your Desktop or Laptop:

    • Open Safari app on your Mac
    • Choose History > Clear History, then click the pop-up menu
    • Choose how far back you want your browsing history cleared

  • On your iPhone or iPad:

    • Go to Settings 
    • Click on Safari
    • Tap Clear History and Website Data

If you’re concerned that by clearing cookies, you will lose all stored browser data, there’s a workaround. Follow these steps to clear only cookies from a specific website:

• Google Chrome: 

• • Right-click anywhere on your webpage and click on inspect
  • Select Application
  • Under Storage, select cookies 
  • Right-click on the URL you would like to clear and click on “clear”
  • Now refresh the web URL to reflect the changes

• Safari:

• • Click on the Safari menu and select preferences
  • Go to Privacy and select “manage website data”
  • In the search bar, type your web URL, select and click on remove
  • Now refresh the web URL to see the changes

Following these simple instructions, you can ensure that the next time you encounter a web browser cache issue, you’ll know what to do. 

If you’re looking to do website development, redesign, refresh, audit, or a simple tune-up for top performance, do let us know how we can help. Just Add Spritz. 

The post How to Avoid Website Conversations Nobody Wants to Have appeared first on SpritzSF.

Website accessibility enhances your digital presence for everyone. It is a solution to address the needs of each visitor, allowing an individual to experience the best possible level of usability. 

Like any road or building, while providing an on-ramp and an open door for all users. It does so without sacrificing anything for users who don’t need it. Like an automatic door that opens when your hands are full or a moving walkway at an airport terminal. It’s a useful thing for everyone. Think of how restricted your understanding might be watching a foreign movie in a language you cannot understand. But without the benefit of English subtitles. Pointless, really.

Did you know? An estimated 20 percent of the U.S. population has a disability of some sort.

Many people browsing the web have a permanent or a temporary disability across a wide range of possibilities. For example, there may be a visual or mobility issue affecting the use of the screen, the mouse, or the keyboard. There may also be accessibility issues around a broken arm or broken eyeglasses. In the U.S., about eight percent of men and 0.5 percent of women have some form of colorblindness. Looking across the entire population, there are common age-related issues as well that affect tens of millions.

Did you know? Digital accessibility is also the law.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has a mandate for businesses under Title I; that is, those operating 20 or more weeks per year with at least 15 full-time employees or under Title III, that is, businesses classed in the public accommodation category. That said, it’s best practice for all websites.

“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”  

— Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Computer scientist, and father of the World Wide Web

While the ADA doesn’t offer a clear set of guidelines for website compliance, it has become industry practice to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as recommended by The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In August 2020, W3C released WCAG 2.2 a working draft. 

We’ve put together a few important factors to help make your website accessible:

• Text inclusion for non-text content

  • Images/Pictures: Include alt attributes i.e alt text to describe all images on your website.
  • iFrames: When loading an iframe on your website, as it is content from another website that is being displayed on your site, ensure that they have descriptive titles defining the content.
  • CTA buttons and icons: Buttons and icons are frequently used as click-through action buttons and links to guide users on the website. The inclusion of alt attributes that describes the button/icon is helpful for users who aren’t able to navigate a page with a mouse. 
  • Decorative Images: A decorative image is an image that is non-essential to understanding the content and purpose of a webpage. There are a variety of opinions and options. One could either describe or hide decorative images from screen readers. If you decide to describe, use simple image guidelines. However, if you decide to hide these images, simply use a blank alt tag.

• Color and Text:

  • Color contrast: Some colors conflict with each other and when implemented on text, it may become difficult to read. That said, it’s advisable to always use complementary colors. A good resource for color study is Adobe’s Color Palette Generator. Also, to check the text contrast, an important tool is WebAIM’s contrast checker page.

• Clean Code and Navigation structure:

  • Website Navigation Structure: Having a clean site outline that defines the internal links through structured navigation conventions i.e headers, footers, titles, breadcrumbs and good use of space is crucial for easy accessibility of websites
  • Clean Code: For users who use text browsers and screen readers to access the website, it’s important to have a clean code structure to avoid output issues and confusion. A good resource to check the code is through W3C’s code validator site.

• CTA Buttons & UI Conventions:

  • Responsive Stylesheets: Implement responsive design to avoid horizontal scrolling on websites. Also, avoid using pixels to define conventions such as spacing and height of text boxes. 
  • Color contrast for UI components must be at 3:1. This way, the different elements can be clearly distinguished.
  • Content on hover buttons should be enabled to be dismissed by pressing the escape button on the keyboard.
  • Images as Text: It’s best to avoid making images of text except for logos
  • Zoom Feature: Designing websites with the ability to zoom in without breaking interactive elements on the page enhances the user accessibility experience on the website.
  • CTA Buttons: Clearly defining the buttons based on interactions i.e warning/error buttons can be color-coded in red with an appropriate icon, a learn more or more information button can be highlighted with the brand colors for easy navigation.
  • Animation Elements: Large Pop-ups, sliders that may cover the important navigation buttons on the web page make it harder for accessing important sections on the website and could lead to a bad user experience. It’s best practice to strategically place these interactive animation elements on the website for improved user accessibility. 

We invite you to connect with us to learn more about our website design and development experience. 

Spritz designs and develops websites that meet or exceed ADA compliance based on WCAG 2.1 AA standards for website design and functionality, so everyone can easily and fully access your content.

The post Digitally Compliant: Making Website Design Accessible to All appeared first on SpritzSF.

Every one of these active websites is giving due consideration to its essential  ingredients: 

• Fonts
• Colors
• Site outline
• UX/UI design
• Images
• Videos

It’s also crucial to ensure that highly effective search engine optimization is implemented. 

SEO is a combination of many on-site and off-site factors. Think of SEO as someone you know— the individual’s personal brand presents as clothing, posture, grooming, voice, facial expressions, gestures, communication skills, and more. Remember also, that in this analogy, SEO represents that individual’s friends, family, job, home, network and more. Bundled together, you have factors that impact the reputation of that individual.  

Take a look at the ultimate SEO checklist for redesigning or refreshing a website:

On-site: Content

• Keywords and Content Research

  Keywords are crucial for identifying the user’s intent during their search. And to ensure we target the right audience on search engines. Keywords searched by your audience can be by competitors, location, season, etc. Identify and review your competitors, utilize keyword research tools to discover average search volume and synonym keywords, and build a target keyword list. Review your new website’s content and ensure keywords appear naturally within the various pages of your site. Avoid keyword stuffing.

• Meta Title Tags and Description

  An important HTML attribute includes snippets of text that define the title of each page. The meta description is a summary of your page’s content which search engines show this information in the search results. It’s recommended to limit the character limit for title tags to 70 characters and meta descriptions to around 160 characters. Failure to include this means that search engines will determine it on your behalf.

• Header and Image Tags

  Titles for your content within each section of your website are helpful for users and search engines to read and understand the content. There are six elements (H1 – H6) that define the headings, not all are required for good SEO. Structure your website to include relevant keywords based on the order of importance for better search results and user accessibility. H1 tags have the highest rank and H6 tags have the lowest priority. Usually, higher-ranking headings are titles and the lower-ranked headings are part of the higher-ranked sections. In HTML, images are not inserted into the code but linked to a web page. Tag images with relevant keywords, captions and alt text identify images and images and improve user experience, discoverability and SEO.

• Structured URLs and Internal Linking

  Optimize your URLs with readable words, utilizing dashes to showcase character spaces, and avoiding special characters are among the best practices in SEO. Interlinking URLs on your website will improve your search positions, assist with better usability, and increase conversions on your website.

• Image and Video Optimization

  As numerous images are linked to your website. Larger image sizes will reduce the page speed due to the time it takes to load these images. Images enhance your website manifold and are well worth the time invested in their proper selection, care and handling. Also, optimizing images is important for your website to be found in image-based searches i.e Google Images, etc.

On-site: Technical

• Integration of Google Tools

  Tracking users and user behavior provides critical feedback and is cost-free. Integrating tools such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and a listing on Google My Business are necessary steps for improving your SEO, and also to measure its effectiveness.

• HTTPS Integration

  A secure site has the all-import ‘s’ after the ‘http’ protocol. When a user visits a secure site, it means the communication with the server is done through an encrypted channel. This is especially important for e-commerce and sensitive data, such as bank information, health information and other personal details. A website that is not secure may be flagged by search engines that deliver a cautionary message via search engines and web browsers.

• Redirection and Canonical Tags

  There is confusion about 301 redirects vs. canonical tags. It’s often asked which one to use and when. 301 redirect are used to permanently redirect one URL to another. Whereas, canonical tags are used to specify the preferred URL of a web page when there are similar pages. For instance, you may have a print version of a page and two pages with similar content. Adding canonical tags will avoid SEO penalization for duplicate content.

• Page Speed Optimization

  Does your site load in a nano-second? With the advancement of technology and gigabit internet speeds, research indicates that users are quickly frustrated by anything that takes longer than 1-2 seconds. Three seconds means abandonment. To avoid penalization by Google, optimize your website for speed as well as design, the capacity of your hosting server. Google Lighthouse and gtmetrix are good resources to check your page speed.

• Sitemaps, Robots.txt

  A sitemap is a document that lists all the URLs on your site, allowing search engines to identify and crawl these pages for indexing. Robots.txt file enables communication with search engines to know which parts of the website they should index. Sitemaps and Robots.txt are crucial steps to open up the communication channel with search engines to crawl your site and improve search performance.

• Broken Links and 404 Redirects

  Nothing is worse for the user experience than reaching the error page. Broken links scream for attention and a clean-up by the webmaster. On the backend, websites with broken links are penalized by search engines. Setting up custom 404 redirect pages for temporarily broken links is important so the user is not lost and there is an internal link within your website.

• Responsive Design Check

  In today’s world, smartphones outnumber desktops, so Google has adopted a ”mobile first” approach. It’s critical to enable mobile responsiveness for your website if you’re still playing catch-up. Having a mobile-friendly website is a requirement for SEO and business success.

Your website is your front door and unlocking it before hanging out the “Open for Business” sign is step one. Making sure the sign represents your brand at its very best means being able to reach your customers, prospect for new ones and grow your business. Let us know if we can help because it’s always a good idea to “Just Add Spritz.” 

The post Why Build a New and Improved Website Now? appeared first on SpritzSF.

This means an explosion in the widespread use of digital tools and platforms. 

Aside from the giant impact of Zoom and its several lookalike cousins. One of the mild surprises of daily life has been the subtle but unquestionably strong rise of email. It’s not as though email ever went out of fashion. People have been using emails for so long that they have almost forgotten. That it’s actually a digital platform and an important marketing channel. 

The numbers are extraordinary and continually rising. In 2020, roughly 306.4 billion emails were sent and received each day, which’s equal to about 39 emails per person per day considering the world’s population of 7.8 billion people. That comparison includes non-users of course. So, for those of us actually using email all day, every day, the actual numbers are much, much higher. 

Despite the growth in messaging and chat apps, and putting aside personal communications, emails have remained a simple, less expensive, and effective marketing tool for essential B2B and B2C connections. 

With the flood of emails in the digital space, getting noticed by the customer is the single most important requirement for your email marketing campaign to be successful. After all, we all know that “delete” is only a quick tap away, right?

Check out seven simple and effective recommendations to make sure your email meets two primary objectives: a) It is opened and b) It is worth the recipient’s time to read: 

1. Clean up your list and segment it regularly

   Do your subscribers still want to hear from you? You probably know that it’s important to send emails regularly to keep your subscribers engaged. Well, that may not be true if you have a stale email list with inactive subscribers. People change email accounts, switch jobs, and especially now during the pandemic, many people have been either furloughed or laid off. So, frequent clean up of your list is crucial. Subscribers who haven’t opened your email in the past six months should be considered inactive. However, before you remove them, you may want to consider a “win-back offer” or “we miss you” email.

   Are you experiencing lower open rates and higher unsubscribes?

   Segmentation of an email list is very important to target the right customers. For instance, an existing customer should not be hearing about a first-time user offer. And a flash sale for tomorrow should not be sent to out-of-state customers.

2. Timetable your emails

   Timing is everything — The cliché holds true for email communications, too. Sending an email during off-hours and weekends may not garner the same attention as it may during business hours. And depending on the nature of the business, the opposite could be true. Email marketing platforms allow send-time optimization so that users in different time zones will receive the email at the right time, not the same time. For instance, if you schedule the deployment of an email at 11 a.m., it will reach the user’s inbox at 11 a.m. local time for each individual.

   How frequently are you sending emails? Ask yourself whether you’re overly aggressive or underutilizing this powerful channel. The answer lies within your own analytics, so listen to your customers.

   Analytics and metrics, patterns, and trends are revealed for open rates, unsubscribes, call-to-action, sources, and more to develop a balanced, well-planned email marketing strategy.

3. Avoid spam filters

   Despite sophisticated spam filter enhancements, they’re not flawless. Even the best email filters will dump your email into the spam folder if a hiccup is detected. It’s recommended to:

   • Avoid deceptive subject lines
   • Ensure your subscribers are not from a purchased list
   • Use a reputable email marketing company that pre-screens for IP addresses, verified domains, and authentic email addresses
   • Avoid using excessive spam trigger keywords i.e discount, free, buy, etc.
   • Don’t “scream” headlines in all capital letters and crazy punctuation
   • Allow subscribers to easily opt-out of your emails

4. Craft your subject line and preview message carefully

   Your first impression is everything, and as they say, you only get one opportunity to make it.You can’t tell your story if you can’t get the email opened. Given the number of promotional emails in the subscriber’s inbox, it’s very important to have a subject line that develops curiosity and interest.Pay close attention to the preview preheader text as well. Similar to search engine results which are driven by the meta descriptions, this preview text in the preheader helps the subscriber to determine what the email is about and quickly decide to open your email. If you are not given this preview text option by your provider, ask about it.

5. Balance content, KISS (Keep it short and simple)

   In recent times, customer experience (CX) or user experience (UX) has become a widely recognized world of study within the field of digital marketing. For email marketing, this covers everything from personalization to privacy. A customer’s perception of your brand and the emotion it reflects on them are among the most important factors of CX. Always remember to write with your audience in mind. Nobody wants to read a long email lacking structure…and they won’t. Just like a good story with a beginning, middle, and an end, content needs a compelling title, short paragraphs, and a call-to-action closing. Strategic placement of click-through actions (CTA) such as “learn more,” “book now,” or “save money,” and a sprinkling of appropriate images and compelling video content are the keys for long-lasting customer engagement and loyalty.

6. Personalize your tone of voice

   Simply put, don’t be boring. To capture an authentic tone of voice, read your email aloud and imagine you’re talking to a friend. If it sounds stilted, try again. The right touch of humor, emoji, or GIFs is welcome but tread lightly and carefully depending on what is appropriate for your product or service.

7. Leverage A/B testing

   Before you click send, test and test again. The re-arrangement of just one or two words in an email subject line can make a big difference in the open rate. Rather than sending the same email to everyone and hoping for the best, use a strategic approach and try different subject lines, images vs. animations, schedule different delivery times, and track the analytics to help understand your recipients more intimately. This exercise is key to identify your most effective email marketing strategy for the best ROI.

Go through the link for more information: https://spritzsf.com/spritzbits/dont-just-spray-pray-email-marketing-is-here-to-stay/

Clearly, email and email marketing are here to stay. Simply put, our job is to make sure you are using this powerful tool in all the right ways to ensure your business is also here to stay. Let us know how we can help because it’s always a good idea to “Just Add Spritz.” 

The post Pandemic Fact: Email Marketing Is More Important Than Ever appeared first on SpritzSF.

Concepts represented visually are an important step in relaying information—especially with complex information—in a way that’s easier to digest. 

Did you know that visual aids improve learning by as much as 400 percent?  Did you realize that we can process visuals 60,000 times faster than text? Would you guess that the average person only remembers one-fifth of what they hear?¹

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” – Confucius

Eye-catching infographics, data visualizations, charts, maps, cartoons, animations, illustrations, simulations, even GIFs all fall into the category that gives audiences a chance to process and recall facts and key takeaways.

It’s OK! Even Geniuses Need Help

Comprehension is the goal. A kindergarten teacher can explain that a picture is worth 1,000 words. 

“Big, complex thoughts. Human cognitive effectiveness and efficiency is constrained by the well-known limitations of working memory that George Miller identified in 1957. Large visual displays have for some time been known to help us overcome this bandwidth constraint,” writes Robert E. Horn.²

Horn, a political scientist who taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Sheffield University in the U.K., has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Language and Information. An expert and author known for the development of information mapping, he states that he is, “…usually integrating visual and verbal elements. Trying as much as possible to use words when they do the job best, and visual elements (images and diagrams) when they do the job best.”

Bring Your Thoughts to Life 

When creating content that can be enhanced by visuals, marketers should ask themselves: 

• Beyond words, can my storytelling be improved with visuals?
• Can I do that with more than a photo?
• Is there a concept that’s easier to understand using an infographic?
• Should this be an interactive infographic?
• Do I have the skills/resources to produce the visual or should I outsource it?

Making appealing and trustworthy infographics doesn’t require an art degree. Although at Spritz we do have an experienced team with art degrees and a deep understanding of color, layout and graphic design. 

Be amazed! Let us know if we can help you make powerful, memorable infographics that deliver the WOW.

___________________________________________________________

¹ 3M Meeting Network, 11/2/2000

² http://web.stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/recent/artclNSFVisualLangv.pdf

³ http://www.macrovu.com

The post Show, Don’t Tell: Use Infographics appeared first on SpritzSF.

In a year that began with clichéd quips about perfect vision. We’ve all been blindsided by the reality of a pandemic. As we move through the phases of shock, fear, understanding, action, and reasonable behavior. But without a timeline for a road map—marketers are adjusting as best they can. And they must. 

Head-Spinning Sea Changes   

March 2020 saw a paradigm shift that caught most of us off guard. Before the thing that hit us even had a name, invisible germs were upending large and small businesses. 

In the rush to move from office to home and to set up remote internal and external communications. It was easy to overlook existing campaigns, content, email and website messaging. As a travel, commerce and social events came to a screeching halt. Many businesses still had plans in place that reflected an upbeat spring mood, coming off record-breaking 2019 results. 

Clearly, a sea change in communications was called for without delay. Nevertheless, we’re still seeing emails with subject lines like “Spring is in the Air” to sell party dresses and “Book Your Next Vacay to Paradise…” from a cruise line!

Brands Need to Be Meaningful 

Trust and authenticity play a significant role in brands. Especially while customers deal with the fear and disruption in their lives due to the COVID-19 crisis. People are paying attention to how companies are treating their employees, what provisions they’re providing to help seniors, what assistance they’re offering loyal customers and how they’re giving back to the community. 

The 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report on Brand Trust and the Coronavirus Pandemic¹ indicates that consumers believe brands play an important role during these difficult times. “The power and necessity of brands as well as their urgent need to act,” said CEO Roger Edelman. “Brands that act in the interest of their employees, stakeholders and society at large will reinforce their expertise, leadership and trust and immeasurably strengthen the bond they have with consumers.”

Key insights:

• Brands should ensure their coronavirus-related messaging is factual and compassionate.
• Survey participants have already scrutinized brand reactions to the COVID-19 outbreak.²

The survey highlights the almost unanimous worldwide belief that brands have a critical role at this critical time. In commenting on the survey results, Adweek writes, “U.S. consumers believe brands should provide meaningful solutions, not just sell things.”

Photo by Macau Photo Agency

What Customers Want Now

The golden rules for keeping consumer attention in 2020 could not be more clear: Relevance, emotion, purpose. Yet, 27% of these survey participants in the U.S. indicated certain brands had acted in poor judgement during the initial weeks of the Coronavirus pandemic impact.  

What’s at stake? The future of a brand that gets it wrong is threatened because consumer trust is connected to a willingness to purchase from brands that are deemed trustworthy.  

According to Adweek, “Sixty-nine percent of U.S. respondents said that, in the future, they will absolutely not choose brands they see placing profits before people during the pandemic. Stakes are high and according to the survey’s results, the trust will be lost forever if brands do not handle COVID-19 appropriately.

Looking After the Health of Your Brand

Spritz SF is your brand doctor. Let us know how we can help you look after the health of your brand before the opportunity passes by. We conduct brand audits to make a quick and accurate diagnosis, we develop brand messaging guides that hit the right tone of voice, and we create content for any and all channels, including social media, to amplify that voice while engaging customers in trust-building dialogue.

¹ Edelman special report, March 30, 2020

² Adweek, “US Consumers Are Keeping a Close Eye on How Brands Handle the Coronavirus Crisis”

The post The Golden Rules for Content in the Age of Coronavirus appeared first on SpritzSF.

In May 1978, marketing manager Gary Thuerk hit ‘send’ on the first unsolicited email ever. It signalled the birth of junk mail, received by 400 customers as an ad for a presentation by Digital Equipment Corporation, an early vendor of computer systems. People hated it.

Fast Forward

It wasn’t until two decades later that mainstream America started setting up personal email addresses.

However, the prehistoric dial-up landscape of the World Wide Web in the 20th century still looked like Jurassic Park.

Surprise, surprise…email has survived and thrived. Who would have thought that the oldest technological form of mass communication could still be the cool kid in 2020?

Delete is Sweet

Since the objective in email marketing is not to have people hate it, best practices matter more than ever. The high volume received on a daily basis by the average user can make the delete button extremely attractive.

Number of emails sent and received per day worldwide (in billions) 2017-2023, Source: ©Statista 2020

Even worse for marketers, one or two email campaigns poorly written or badly deployed can have customers deciding to make the breakup permanent by hitting ‘unsubscribe.’

“The level of detail and personalization that can be integrated
into it is high, but there are also a significant number of pitfalls
of which senior marketers need to be wary.” – CMO by Adobe

What Not to Do

Before addressing the proper etiquette “do’s,” let’s visit these cringe-worthy “don’ts” in email marketing for business:

1. Don’t purchase lists or add to your database without permission.
2. Don’t neglect the unsubscribe button; that’s illegal.
3. Don’t make the unsubscribe functionality slow as molasses.
4. Don’t mark mass emails as urgent.
5. Don’t shout by using all caps. EVER!!!
6. Don’t overuse exclamation marks and emoji.
7. Don’t start with “Dear ___, I hope this finds you well…”
8. Don’t make spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
9. Don’t write long blocks of text that resemble a book chapter.
10. Finally, don’t use email when you should pick up the phone.

Best Practices

Customer experience for your brand is a journey—and it begins at the inbox. Take it from the pros at Adobe who say, “Don’t send more, send better.”

1. Do personalize email greetings.
2. Do write email subject lines that prompt opens.
3. Do optimize preview text and taglines.
4. Do use A/B testing to continually refine results.
5. Do send the email to yourself to review it carefully.
6. Do use one or two typefaces at a maximum.
7. Do include an email signature.
8. Do clean your mailing list regularly.
9. Do place the message and call-to-action above the fold.
10. Finally, do measure and analyze results.

The Big Picture

Importantly, email marketing is not a standalone product. It’s both a key element for brand communications and a critical, early touchstone in customer experience. Sure, you can use an email marketing service provider for templates, deployment, and tracking. However, automated platforms cannot think.

The teams at Spritz keep clients a step or two ahead of the email marketing game by integrating brand strategy with a content strategy for the win. Let us know if we can lend a hand?

The post Don’t Just ‘Spray & Pray,’ eMail Marketing is Here to Stay appeared first on SpritzSF.