Summary: Water might get into a bathtub in many different ways, but it all goes out through the drain. This is analogous to your marketing efforts. You might “fill the tub” with several different types of marketing efforts, but they might all lead to one drain — or one “last touch point.” If you look … Read more
Summary: Watch changes in engagement and take appropriate actions. When engagement declines, send an email or so something to get them back. When engagement increases, find out what you’re doing right, or get a testimonial! I thought I had coined a new phrase in the May issue of The Krehbiel Letter, which is available online … Read more
Summary: This article explains why third-party cookies matter, what their loss will mean for internet marketing, and what companies should do now. How do you know which part of your marketing is helping you? That’s an old problem, and over the years people have tried various methods for solving it. Let’s say you publish “Carrot … Read more
Summary: What you pay attention to will change the way you perceive the world, and what you take from it. I have a friend who quotes some ancient theologian to the effect that “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” What does that mean? I think I can illustrate it with a story … Read more
Summary: To make your content stand out in a crowded field, consider these nine concepts: voice, focus, frameworks, recurring segments, vocabulary, message, favorites, characters, and skits. Publishers spend a lot of time and money developing their own brand image, which can include typography, colors, logos, and stylized art. Think of the dot-matrix images in The … Read more
Summary: It’s impossible to avoid duplicative functionality in your tech stack. Here are 12 things to consider when deciding where you want that functionality to reside. One of the challenges of building a tech stack is that there are always overlaps in functionality. For example, your customer data platform and your email service provider might … Read more
Summary: AI summaries of books and articles present a copyright threat to publishers, but a wider movement towards summaries and bullet points might have more significance for culture and for understanding. Bo Sacks recently distributed an article titled, “A tech sector dedicated to boiling things down has raised temperatures in some quarters of the publishing … Read more
Summary: When an audience member’s engagement lags you need to take action. Here’s another quote from Amanda Landsaw’s talk at MACMA Industry Day. “Stay on top of inactivity in the database. If a known audience member has not visited in a certain number of days, send an email.” I’ve seen a surprising indifference to this … Read more
Summary: To create a solid content-based business, don’t focus on the “flyby” traffic. Use high-quality, relevant content to attract an engaged audience, then create a robust database around that audience. At MACMA Industry Day last week, Amanda Landsaw said “flyby visitors don’t create robust databases.” There’s a lot to unpack in that statement. Let’s start … Read more
Summary: Brick and mortar stores need a way to connect in-store data with online data. A customer data platform is a good tool for that. Here’s an idea for how shoe stores can provide great service to their customers and also get more customer information. How can I find the right laces and polish for … Read more
Summary: Modern website design — especially mobile design — simultaneously bombards users with content and ads, creating a frustrating, lousy experience. There is another tried and true model that we should explore. Show the content, then the ads, then the content, as we do on TV, in movies, on podcasts, etc. Imagine you’re in a … Read more
Summary: To work effectively in a customer data platform you have to understand the distinction between online and offline data, and how that distinction will affect your marketing efforts. This article explains. Here’s a tricky thing about Customer Data Platforms. On the one hand, you want to import all your customer data. That’s the point, … Read more
Summary: Tricks and tools can help break through to new ideas. This article focuses on ways to get outside the ordinary and re-think and re-imagine your business, product, or project. The connection between writing and design is one of the issues raised in “Lessons on Branding from the World’s Most Iconic Cold,” distributed last night … Read more
Summary: Publishers don’t lose their rights to their content when they post it online. Also, bullet points are nice, but we learn through stories. I like the people vs. algorithms podcast. It’s an entertaining mix of insight and quirky personalities. The interactions between Alex, Troy and Brian are amusing. In today’s podcast I’m going to … Read more
Summary: AI is biased, and its answers are filtered through a woke superego. It is possible to get more balanced answers from AI, but you have to work at it AI bias doesn’t get enough attention, and that’s a serious problem. The truth is that all the results you get from AI are filtered through … Read more