If you’re surprised that consumers prefer relevant messages, Jamie from our Department of the Obvious offers this IAS report. It finds that 64% of consumers define relevant ads as featuring products they want or need, 35% are annoyed by ads that don’t relate to the surrounding content, and they’re 16% more responsive when ads do relate to that content.
Advertisers may worry about what’s surrounding their ads, but consumers are more annoyed by the ads themselves. Optimove found that 66% of consumers want fewer marketing messages. You won’t be surprised that relevant messages are more welcome than irrelevant ones.
Woolworths has raised ire for its dubious new improvement of adding surveillance cameras to monitor customers (without notification) using self-checkout in 100 of its Australian stores. Woolworth, which plans a larger rollout to more stores, bills this as a way to prevent “accidental” wrong scans. It also concedes its use monitoring for shoplifting and says the footage has been used for staff training (though promises that people’s faces and keypad punches are blurred to prevent identification). Regardless, customers are not being informed or given a chance to consent so may... Read More >
Customer engagement platform MessageGears will partner with content localization and translation platform Smartling to streamline email translation and localization for 450+ languages. The workflow is automated but actual translations are still done by (machine-assisted) humans.