Senior Digital Strategist Evan Arcoria recently wrote about starting the year with a little email housekeeping. He reviewed four areas to focus on:
- New Gmail and Yahoo requirements
- Segmentation efficiency
- Content audit
- More aggressive testing
Once you’ve addressed those, here’s another enhancement you can take to stand out in the inboxes of your constituents: Brand Indicators for Message Identification, better known as BIMI.
BIMI is simply a way to add your brand logo next to your name in an email inbox. It looks like this:
Image: BIMI Group
This simple update can enhance your brand awareness and improve the user experience. Another benefit is that it helps your supporters know that the email is authentic—not from a scammer trying to trick them.
Not sure if you’ve got this set up for your nonprofit organization? You can run a simple check here. BIMI Group also has a useful implementation guide to help you get started.
Bring some Clarity to your analytics
It’s been more than six months since we were all forced into Google Analytics 4, but time hasn’t made it any easier to navigate. We’ve heard from many of our clients about the challenges of finding insights in Google’s new system and the limitations of those insights.
We feel your struggle. And we’re here to help.
RKD’s VP of Digital Strategy Jenn Thompson and Software Engineer Kord Hickson shared how to get more out of GA4 in a webinar last fall. This is a great place to begin setting up what you need to be tracking.
On top of that, Microsoft has a tool that can supplement GA4, and it’s called Clarity. It can connect directly to GA4 to:
- Add more insight into how people interact with your website
- Generate heat maps for your pages to understand behavior
- Record sessions to watch people use your site
We have several clients who have begun using Clarity, and they are simply loving it. The best part of all? Clarity is free.
Meta focusing on AI to improve ad results
Meta has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence, and it has begun to pay off for advertisers on Facebook and Instagram.
The tech giant shared in a recent earnings call that Q4 saw a 25% increase in video watch time year over year, with users resharing Reels 3.5 billion times per day.
This re-emphasizes our recommendation that nonprofits should focus on creating captivating videos that engage donors. The changing landscape of digital media attribution is still a challenge, but the results are there.
“Our investments in AI are paying off for both advertiser performance and for our community with a more relevant discovery engine more than ever before,” said Alvin Bowles, vice president of Meta’s global business group.
Google cookie deprecation runs into hurdles
Google has imposed a deadline of ending third-party cookies by the end of 2024. They insist they’re not sliding that deadline back again, and 1% of Chrome users had their cookies turned off in January.
But Google is facing pushback from marketers and advertisers.
In the United Kingdom, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has raised concerns about Google’s market dominance with its new Privacy Sandbox. According to Search Engine Land, the CMA report highlights:
- Google can still benefit from user data while limiting their competitors’ access to that data.
- Google can control which ad tech rivals are included in this system.
- Advertisers won’t be able to easily identify fraudulent activity.
The CMA, a UK government regulator, is hoping to work with Google to resolve these issues. Ultimately, they do have veto power over this implementation.
Meanwhile, the IAB Tech Lab—a global organization that focuses on products and technologies within the advertising industry—has created a Privacy Sandbox Task Force to monitor this process. The task force published a scathing report on Feb. 6 with similar competition concerns:
“In its current form, the Privacy Sandbox may limit the industry's ability to deliver relevant, effective advertising, placing smaller media companies and brands at a significant competitive disadvantage. The stringent requirements could throttle their ability to compete, ultimately impacting the industry's growth.”
Digiday has a great overview of the ongoing saga. We’ll keep you posted on updates in this monthly roundup.
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