The Hive’s Friday Five Issue 31

Marketers knew that 2021 might see additional data privacy regulations but after the Capital riots and other events, governments are also looking at how social media platforms influence actions in real life. If you do any business internationally, it is a good idea to keep abreast of local social media regulations and ensure your are being a responsible marketer in not only how data is being collected/used but also in the way you message your brand online.

Dynamic personalization has been a key topic in marketing for years and now we can get closer to the dynamic experiences we have come to love in Pinterest. Working similar to Smart Display campaigns in GDN, marketers upload product information, images, and copy and then Pinterest will serve up the best ad for that user. There could be problems when Apple launches new IDFA changes that would expand user’s ability to opt-out of in-app data tracking so if you are using this technology ensure you can accurately track users.

Marketers need to keep a keen eye on the kinds of campaigns that Facebook and other social platforms are censoring this year. With additional scrutiny coming in 2020, social media companies have tightened restrictions on what can be seen and although some restrictions seem too far, the companies mostly leave it to the algorithms to decide so there is little compromising.

While a lot of things seemed to stop in their tracks in early 2020, Google kept making updates to search functionality and is planning many important rollouts in 2021. The first is the switch to fully mobile-first indexing in March, get ready!

Overall email metrics were showing positive results in 2020 due to the pandemic but the usually strong holiday months did not see a comparable increase. Open rate and revenue per email dipped YoY but the email types that did see a boost were Welcome, Post-Purchase, and Abandonment emails. Conversely, SMS saw a jump in both the number of messages sent and conversion rates, seeing a 136% increase YoY.