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That felt impossible. For instance, YouTube has been the internet’s default video platform for nearly two decades. It’s frequently dubbed the second-largest search engine. So I asked Xibeijia, Ahrefs’ superstar data scientist, to pull our data and double-check. Turns out,…Read more ›View the full article

What did the latest holiday shopping season reveal about consumer confidence going into 2026? Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach unpacks the signals he’s seeing across global spending—from shifting consumer sentiment to AI’s growing role in financial security. Miebach also explores how credit cards fit into a future shaped by crypto, digital wallets, and agent-driven commerce, and what it will take for businesses to stay competitive amid continued market disruption. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. You have a unique vantage point on consumer activity. So many payments run through your system. From this past holiday season, do you have any observations about consumer spending or customer sentiment? Any sort of emerging trends or lessons you’ve seen yet? When you think about what we do, we facilitate payments all around the world, so that provides a really interesting data set across all sectors, across all countries, 220 countries and territories. Last year we’re about 160 billion transactions through our network, so it does provide quite a unique view. The past holiday season, 3.9% was the year-over-year growth. So that’s a strong holiday season. You think political uncertainty, you think trade alignments and all these kinds of things, but the consumer held up well. One thing that I thought was striking was apparel sales. So we see this by categories. We don’t see individual Mastercard holder data, but the aggregate data of what are people buying and where are they buying it? So apparel sales had a real moment. So 7.8% growth in apparel, really a stick-out kind of category. One of the interesting things that I saw there in the data this particular season compared to last holiday season, consumers came in early. Probably it’s a continuation of what the consumer has done throughout 2025. “I can look for a better deal. I can look for a promotion.” So Black Friday was particularly strong, and then you look thereafter. So the savvy consumer is doing that, and so are businesses. Businesses were also worried about potentially sitting on inventory through that. So they’re trying to sell their inventory and put out offers earlier. So interesting to see what we’re going to see in 2026. The word affordability, at least in the U.S., has become like this big buzzword. And it sounds like you’re sort of seeing that in some of the data that that’s where people are leaning. When you look at some of the post-tariffs, certain prices have gone up, others have come down. But it’s very interesting when you look at the 3.9% overall. Is that inflation? No. It’s about half price increases, so pretty tame. And the other half is real volume increase where people were just still making investments into the things that they wanted to buy. It’s interesting. You must see data every day about spending patterns and changes. I’m curious how that impacts your planning and strategy. I had a CEO on the show out of the tech world recently who said he’s now replanning every week, that even monthly is too late. Very different leadership perspective from three-year, five-year plans. Is your system different because of the speed of the feedback you get? It’s not. Five years ago, we re-architected Mastercard’s network. We’re in more and more countries around the world. We’re facilitating more and more types of payments that might have been from an account-to-account are now happening on card rails or stablecoins or you name it. So we had to re-architect. From that perspective, that is not really changing our plans. What is changing our plans is if consumer behaviors and consumer choices are changing in more fundamental ways. Younger consumers like “buy now, pay later.” So we got to have that built into our system. Those are the kind of changes [we are tracking], not short-term changes. It’s ups and downs from the economy. Where are the payment trends going? Where do we invest to really understand where consumer or business payments are going? The payments need to be smarter, they need to be faster, they need to be safer. All those kinds of things, that’s where we’re investing. But that’s not week on week. We look out two, three years, and then we make those technologies available for our customers, which are generally banks or large merchants or airlines. Those are our customers. You mentioned “buy now, pay later,” a business like Klarna, which went public last year. Isn’t a credit card “buy now, pay later?” What’s the distinction? Why do people get so excited about it? It’s yet another payment choice out there. So, payments have not been more competitive than they are today. So you can pay in stablecoins, you can have a push payment, you can have a prepaid payment. You can have a buy now, pay later. This goes straight to essentially a personal loan kind of equivalent. So those are choices. And those are the choices that if we see them amongst consumers or the customers of our customers, then we make them available. If you are a buy now, pay now—a pure play company—you’re going to find large merchants, large brands that are going to have these offers on their websites and in their stores if they have physical stores. The way that we did it, we built it just as an offer into our network. So wherever Mastercard is available, one of our acquiring partners can offer at the checkout terminal in an in-store and someone can buy now, pay later. So JPMorgan or Galileo are partners like that of us, they make that pay available. So the initial craze of buy now, pay later has died down a bit. I think it’s a very credible choice. We offer it. And a lot of young people think this is a good idea because it gives you more planability of your interest payments and all that. We also think loans on cards where you say, let’s say you pay $500 on a card and you turn that into three payments and many banks just offer that and it’s not going into a buy now or pay later route, but it’s the same outcome. So in the end, people want more control over their finances and more flexibility to buy bigger things that they maybe cannot afford in the moment. And different solutions to that. We’re all about consumer choice and we make all of that available. Obviously we’ve had this drastic evolution from physical cards and checks and even cash to contactless tap and digital wallets. Right. Is this new standard going to stay or do you think things will keep moving to things like biometrics or face scanning? I mean, I know you’ve talked about more personalized payments. Is that what you mean? That’s not quite what I mean. But when you think payments, it’s a constant evolution, so it’s not going to stay where it is. It took 10 years for contactless to get what it is today. So you tap with your phone, you tap with your card. It’s about two-thirds of global transactions on our network are now contactless. What is now a big driver for the next kind of experience is where checkout really becomes a non-issue. It just going to disappear. So we put a lot of focus on making checkout a non-event, and an enabling technology for that is tokenization. So you take your card data and you turn it into a one-time code that can only be used for the transaction that’s securely shot between the different participants and the payment ecosystem, very safe. Now you can do the same thing with your biometric identity, be your fingerprint or your facial, and that comes along with that transaction token and anybody on the other side can see that is the transaction and it should go through. So it increases security dramatically. So we invented tokenization in the payment side many years back, and it’s now scaling. So we made a commitment starting with Europe that by 2030, every transaction will be tokenized. Really the checkout moment is just going to really recede to the background. View the full article

In 2018, the NYU social scientist Jonathan Haidt co-authored a book titled ​The Coddling of the American Mind​. It argued that the alarming rise in mental health issues among American adolescents was being driven, in part, by a culture of “safetyism“ that trained young people to obsess over perceived traumas and to understand life as full of dangers that need to be avoided. At the time, the message was received as a critique of the worst excesses of the academic left and wokeism. But in the aftermath of Coddling, Haidt began to wonder if he had underestimated another possible cause for these concerning mental health trends: smartphones and social media. In 2019, working in collaboration with the demographer Jean Twenge (who wrote the classic 2017 Atlantic cover story, ​“Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”​), and researcher Zach Rausch, Haidt began gathering and organizing the fast-growing collection of academic studies on this issue in an ​annotated bibliography​, stored in a public Google Document. At the time, the standard response from elite journalists and academics about the claim that smartphones harmed kids was to say that the evidence was only correlational and that the results were mixed. (See, for example, this ​smarmy 2020 Times article​, which amplified a small number of papers that Haidt and his collaborators ​later noted were almost willfully disingenuous​ in their research design.) But as Haidt continued to make sense of the relevant literature, he became convinced that these objections were outdated. The data were increasingly pointing toward the conclusion that these devices really were creating major negative impacts. Haidt began writing about these ideas in The Atlantic. His 2021 piece, ​“The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls,” ​forcefully declared that we had transcended the shoulder-shrugging, correlation is not causation phase of the research on this topic, and we could no longer ignore its implications. The sub-head for this essay was blunt: “The preponderance of the evidence suggests that social media is causing real damage to adolescents.” (Around this time, I interviewed Haidt for a New Yorker column I wrote titled,​ “The Questions We’ve Stopped Asking About Teenagers and Social Media: Should They Be Using These Services At All?”​) In 2024, Haidt assembled all this information into a new book, ​The Anxious Generation​, which became a massive bestseller, moving more than a million copies by the end of its first year, and many more since. As of the day I’m writing this, which is almost two years since the book came out, it remains in the top 20 on the ​Amazon Charts​. In the aftermath of The Anxious Generation, as new research continues to pour in, and we hear from more​ teenagers​ and parents about their experiences with these devices, and schools (finally) start to ban phones and discover ​massive benefits​, it has become increasingly clear that Haidt was right all along. Last month, even the Times technology reporter Kevin Roose, a longtime skeptic of Haidt’s campaign, ​tweeted​: “I confess I was not totally convinced that the phone bans would work, but early evidence suggests a total Jon Haidt victory.” All of this history points to an urgent question for our current moment: Given that Haidt was so prescient about the harms of smartphones, what are the technologies that are worrying him now? Presumably, these looming dangers are ones we should take seriously. To answer this question, I went back to read what Haidt and his collaborators have been writing about in the months following The Anxious Generation’s release. Here, I’d like to highlight three technology trends that seem to be causing them particular concern… Online Gambling After a 2018 Supreme Court ​decision​ lifted many long-standing controls on gambling, online versions of this vice, powered through low-friction, attractive smartphone apps, rapidly spread. A July article on Haidt’s ​After Babel​ newsletter, titled ​“Smartphone Gambling is a Disaster,”​ catalogs some truly alarming statistics about how prevalent this activity has become: 33% of American men and 22% of American women now have a sports betting account. Nearly half of men between the ages of 18 and 49 have these accounts. Almost 70% of college students living on campus now bet on sports. What about younger kids? A 2022 report found that 60% of high school students had gambled in the last year. The speed with which this once frowned-upon pastime has spread is truly astonishing. Not surprisingly, it’s accompanied by negative side effects. A 2023 study found that 60% of sports bettors who deposited $500 or more per month said they would be unable to pay at least one of their bills or loans. Another study, commissioned that same year by the state of New Jersey, found that close to 20% of 18 to 24-year-olds who gamble qualify as having an unhealthy addiction. The conclusion: Adolescents and young adults should steer clear of online gambling. They’re at high risk for addiction, and the activity will 100% cost them non-trivial amounts of money. (As I learned from a recent ​Michael Lewis podcast series​ on the topic, the online sports betting services will kick you off the platform if you start winning with any consistency. You literally cannot make money over time on these services. If they’re letting you bet, you are, by definition, bad at it.) For parents, this means having frank conversations with your kids about the addictive and financially exploitative nature of these services. Online Video Games Another concern of Haidt and his collaborators is the rise in popularity among kids of multiplayer (often free-to-play) games such as Roblox, Minecraft (in online mode), and Fortnite. As reported in a 2025 After Babel article titled ​“It’s Not Just a Game Anymore,”​ both Minecraft and Fortnite attract roughly 30 million monthly active users (MAU) under the age of 18. Roblox, however, is the major player in this field, attracting an astonishing 305 million MAU under the age of 18 worldwide. Roblox estimates that around 75% of US children between the ages of 9 and 12 are active users of their platform. Why is this a problem? Because Roblox is a loosely-regulated carnival of terribleness and predation. For those unfamiliar, Roblox is not a single game, but instead a vast collection of virtual worlds created by individual users. There are far too many of these worlds, changing far too fast, to be adequately moderated. Here are just some of the Roblox worlds described by the After Babel article’s authors: A game in which you’re trained to hide a body after a murder. A simulation of a concentration camp where users carry Nazi flags. A classroom in which teachers have sex with students. A simulation of killing children in an elementary school classroom with an AK-47. In 2023, Roblox reported over 13,000 instances of child exploitation, leading to over 1,300 law enforcement requests. Online Minecraft and Fortnite feature more controlled virtual environments, but here, the problem lies with third-party chat. Often, without their less tech-savvy parents being aware, young players of these games install mods that allow them to make use of third-party chat software such as Discord. The result is an unregulated and often anonymous virtual locker room of sorts in which horrible things may unfold. Here’s how the article’s authors summarize what goes on in these chats: “In these unfiltered and unregulated spaces, adults contact children and extreme content can flow freely: bestiality, violent porn, animal abuse, self-harm, stabbings, and an array of extreme ideologies to name a few.” Indeed, many of the memes referenced by Tyler Robinson, the accused murderer of Charlie Kirk, ​are popular​ in the video game Discord chats where Robinson reportedly spent a large amount of time. These issues are not rare. A survey of adolescent gamers cited in the article found that 51% had encountered extremist content, while 10% of girls had been directly sent sexually explicit content while playing. And all of this isn’t even taking into consideration the addictive nature of these games and the massive amount of time they consume. Over 40% of boys report that gaming is hurting their sleep, while a 2022 study found that 15.4% of adolescent males who play these games meet the criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder. The conclusion: Kids and adolescents should not play multiplayer video games with people whom they don’t know. Period. Keep in mind, if you’ve given your kid an iPad or a video game player on which you haven’t specifically activated internet restrictions, then, spoiler alert: they’re not innocently playing Angry Birds; they’re almost certainly involved in these games and all the harms that accompany them. Chatbots The final technology concern I’ll discuss is also one of the most recent: kids and adolescents having unsupervised conversations with AI-powered chatbots. As explained in an After Babel article from November, co-authored by Haidt, and bluntly titled ​“Don’t Give Your Child Any AI Companions,”​ the use of these tools is rapidly rising among young people. A 2025 survey found that 72% of US teens have used an AI companion at least once, and more than half use them multiple times a month. Why should we care? Here’s Haidt: “Early research, journalistic investigations, and internal documents show that these AI systems are already engaging in sexualized interactions with children and offering inappropriate or dangerous advice, including sycophantically encouraging young people who are considering suicide to proceed. As ChatGPT put it in one young man’s final conversation with it: ‘Cold steel pressed against a mind that’s already made peace? That’s not fear. That’s clarity.’” As of this fall, OpenAI is already facing​ eight different wrongful death​ lawsuits involving advice given by ChatGPT. The volume of these cases is likely to skyrocket in the near future. What about younger kids? They’re being exposed to chatbot companions indirectly through a growing number of toys that utilize chatbots to have conversations with their owners. As you might imagine, this isn’t going well. ​A recent study ​of three new AI-powered toys found that they can easily veer into dangerous conversation territory. In the study, the toys provided advice on where to find knives in the kitchen and how to start a fire with matches. They even engaged in explicit discussions about sex positions and fetishes. The conclusion: Do not let kids or teens use chatbots without supervision. Think of it as similar to letting them have an unsupervised conversation with a random drunk at the end of the bar. It might be harmless, but there’s a good chance the interaction will head to dark places. (There’s a misguided notion out there that kids need to be using tools like ChatGPT so that they’ll be prepared for the “AI-powered future.” This is overstated. The technology is moving so fast that whatever form of AI your kids will eventually encounter in the workforce will likely look and operate nothing like circa-2026 chatbots. Also, these existing tools are dead simple to use. Your kids will figure them out in roughly 19 seconds if/when they’re in a professional circumstance that requires this.) The post What’s Worrying Jonathan Haidt Now? appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

In 2018, the NYU social scientist Jonathan Haidt co-authored a book titled ​The Coddling of the American Mind​. It argued that the alarming rise in mental health issues among American adolescents was being driven, in part, by a culture of “safetyism“ that trained young people to obsess over perceived traumas and to understand life as full of dangers that need to be avoided. At the time, the message was received as a critique of the worst excesses of the academic left and wokeism. But in the aftermath of Coddling, Haidt began to wonder if he had underestimated another possible cause for these concerning mental health trends: smartphones and social media. In 2019, working in collaboration with the demographer Jean Twenge (who wrote the classic 2017 Atlantic cover story, ​“Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”​), and researcher Zach Rausch, Haidt began gathering and organizing the fast-growing collection of academic studies on this issue in an ​annotated bibliography​, stored in a public Google Document. At the time, the standard response from elite journalists and academics about the claim that smartphones harmed kids was to say that the evidence was only correlational and that the results were mixed. (See, for example, this ​smarmy 2020 Times article​, which amplified a small number of papers that Haidt and his collaborators ​later noted were almost willfully disingenuous​ in their research design.) But as Haidt continued to make sense of the relevant literature, he became convinced that these objections were outdated. The data were increasingly pointing toward the conclusion that these devices really were creating major negative impacts. Haidt began writing about these ideas in The Atlantic. His 2021 piece, ​“The Dangerous Experiment on Teen Girls,” ​forcefully declared that we had transcended the shoulder-shrugging, correlation is not causation phase of the research on this topic, and we could no longer ignore its implications. The sub-head for this essay was blunt: “The preponderance of the evidence suggests that social media is causing real damage to adolescents.” (Around this time, I interviewed Haidt for a New Yorker column I wrote titled,​ “The Questions We’ve Stopped Asking About Teenagers and Social Media: Should They Be Using These Services At All?”​) In 2024, Haidt assembled all this information into a new book, ​The Anxious Generation​, which became a massive bestseller, moving more than a million copies by the end of its first year, and many more since. As of the day I’m writing this, which is almost two years since the book came out, it remains in the top 20 on the ​Amazon Charts​. In the aftermath of The Anxious Generation, as new research continues to pour in, and we hear from more​ teenagers​ and parents about their experiences with these devices, and schools (finally) start to ban phones and discover ​massive benefits​, it has become increasingly clear that Haidt was right all along. Last month, even the Times technology reporter Kevin Roose, a longtime skeptic of Haidt’s campaign, ​tweeted​: “I confess I was not totally convinced that the phone bans would work, but early evidence suggests a total Jon Haidt victory.” All of this history points to an urgent question for our current moment: Given that Haidt was so prescient about the harms of smartphones, what are the technologies that are worrying him now? Presumably, these looming dangers are ones we should take seriously. To answer this question, I went back to read what Haidt and his collaborators have been writing about in the months following The Anxious Generation’s release. Here, I’d like to highlight three technology trends that seem to be causing them particular concern… Online Gambling After a 2018 Supreme Court ​decision​ lifted many long-standing controls on gambling, online versions of this vice, powered through low-friction, attractive smartphone apps, rapidly spread. A July article on Haidt’s ​After Babel​ newsletter, titled ​“Smartphone Gambling is a Disaster,”​ catalogs some truly alarming statistics about how prevalent this activity has become: 33% of American men and 22% of American women now have a sports betting account. Nearly half of men between the ages of 18 and 49 have these accounts. Almost 70% of college students living on campus now bet on sports. What about younger kids? A 2022 report found that 60% of high school students had gambled in the last year. The speed with which this once frowned-upon pastime has spread is truly astonishing. Not surprisingly, it’s accompanied by negative side effects. A 2023 study found that 60% of sports bettors who deposited $500 or more per month said they would be unable to pay at least one of their bills or loans. Another study, commissioned that same year by the state of New Jersey, found that close to 20% of 18 to 24-year-olds who gamble qualify as having an unhealthy addiction. The conclusion: Adolescents and young adults should steer clear of online gambling. They’re at high risk for addiction, and the activity will 100% cost them non-trivial amounts of money. (As I learned from a recent ​Michael Lewis podcast series​ on the topic, the online sports betting services will kick you off the platform if you start winning with any consistency. You literally cannot make money over time on these services. If they’re letting you bet, you are, by definition, bad at it.) For parents, this means having frank conversations with your kids about the addictive and financially exploitative nature of these services. Online Video Games Another concern of Haidt and his collaborators is the rise in popularity among kids of multiplayer (often free-to-play) games such as Roblox, Minecraft (in online mode), and Fortnite. As reported in a 2025 After Babel article titled ​“It’s Not Just a Game Anymore,”​ both Minecraft and Fortnite attract roughly 30 million monthly active users (MAU) under the age of 18. Roblox, however, is the major player in this field, attracting an astonishing 305 million MAU under the age of 18 worldwide. Roblox estimates that around 75% of US children between the ages of 9 and 12 are active users of their platform. Why is this a problem? Because Roblox is a loosely-regulated carnival of terribleness and predation. For those unfamiliar, Roblox is not a single game, but instead a vast collection of virtual worlds created by individual users. There are far too many of these worlds, changing far too fast, to be adequately moderated. Here are just some of the Roblox worlds described by the After Babel article’s authors: A game in which you’re trained to hide a body after a murder. A simulation of a concentration camp where users carry Nazi flags. A classroom in which teachers have sex with students. A simulation of killing children in an elementary school classroom with an AK-47. In 2023, Roblox reported over 13,000 instances of child exploitation, leading to over 1,300 law enforcement requests. Online Minecraft and Fortnite feature more controlled virtual environments, but here, the problem lies with third-party chat. Often, without their less tech-savvy parents being aware, young players of these games install mods that allow them to make use of third-party chat software such as Discord. The result is an unregulated and often anonymous virtual locker room of sorts in which horrible things may unfold. Here’s how the article’s authors summarize what goes on in these chats: “In these unfiltered and unregulated spaces, adults contact children and extreme content can flow freely: bestiality, violent porn, animal abuse, self-harm, stabbings, and an array of extreme ideologies to name a few.” Indeed, many of the memes referenced by Tyler Robinson, the accused murderer of Charlie Kirk, ​are popular​ in the video game Discord chats where Robinson reportedly spent a large amount of time. These issues are not rare. A survey of adolescent gamers cited in the article found that 51% had encountered extremist content, while 10% of girls had been directly sent sexually explicit content while playing. And all of this isn’t even taking into consideration the addictive nature of these games and the massive amount of time they consume. Over 40% of boys report that gaming is hurting their sleep, while a 2022 study found that 15.4% of adolescent males who play these games meet the criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder. The conclusion: Kids and adolescents should not play multiplayer video games with people whom they don’t know. Period. Keep in mind, if you’ve given your kid an iPad or a video game player on which you haven’t specifically activated internet restrictions, then, spoiler alert: they’re not innocently playing Angry Birds; they’re almost certainly involved in these games and all the harms that accompany them. Chatbots The final technology concern I’ll discuss is also one of the most recent: kids and adolescents having unsupervised conversations with AI-powered chatbots. As explained in an After Babel article from November, co-authored by Haidt, and bluntly titled ​“Don’t Give Your Child Any AI Companions,”​ the use of these tools is rapidly rising among young people. A 2025 survey found that 72% of US teens have used an AI companion at least once, and more than half use them multiple times a month. Why should we care? Here’s Haidt: “Early research, journalistic investigations, and internal documents show that these AI systems are already engaging in sexualized interactions with children and offering inappropriate or dangerous advice, including sycophantically encouraging young people who are considering suicide to proceed. As ChatGPT put it in one young man’s final conversation with it: ‘Cold steel pressed against a mind that’s already made peace? That’s not fear. That’s clarity.’” As of this fall, OpenAI is already facing​ eight different wrongful death​ lawsuits involving advice given by ChatGPT. The volume of these cases is likely to skyrocket in the near future. What about younger kids? They’re being exposed to chatbot companions indirectly through a growing number of toys that utilize chatbots to have conversations with their owners. As you might imagine, this isn’t going well. ​A recent study ​of three new AI-powered toys found that they can easily veer into dangerous conversation territory. In the study, the toys provided advice on where to find knives in the kitchen and how to start a fire with matches. They even engaged in explicit discussions about sex positions and fetishes. The conclusion: Do not let kids or teens use chatbots without supervision. Think of it as similar to letting them have an unsupervised conversation with a random drunk at the end of the bar. It might be harmless, but there’s a good chance the interaction will head to dark places. (There’s a misguided notion out there that kids need to be using tools like ChatGPT so that they’ll be prepared for the “AI-powered future.” This is overstated. The technology is moving so fast that whatever form of AI your kids will eventually encounter in the workforce will likely look and operate nothing like circa-2026 chatbots. Also, these existing tools are dead simple to use. Your kids will figure them out in roughly 19 seconds if/when they’re in a professional circumstance that requires this.) The post What’s Worrying Jonathan Haidt Now? appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

The ex-employee was accused of violating conflict of interest rules and submitting falsified documents for $1.7 million worth of loans in her six-month tenure. View the full article

And, naturally, we wanted to remind you of some of our best blogs 😉 Below, we’ve used Ahrefs Web Analytics to find our most-viewed articles published in 2025. We were inspired by Amanda Natividad’s SparkToro post. Great stuff from Amanda…Read more ›View the full article

Russian president’s spokesperson says Moscow is ‘studying all details of the offer’ to join board overseeing GazaView the full article

James LePage, co-lead of the WordPress AI team, explains how SEO applies to AI agent content consumption. The post Head Of WordPress AI Team Explains SEO For AI Agents appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

O-1B visas are for immigrants of “extraordinary ability,” originally designed for acclaimed artists, musicians, athletes, and scholars, But increasingly they’re being handed out to people with a more modern definition of “extraordinary ability”: influencers and OnlyFans creators. Immigration lawyers say social media influencers now make up more than half of their O-1 visa applicants, according to a recent report by the Financial Times. These visas are intended for an individual who possesses “extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics,” or those who have “a demonstrated record of extraordinary achievement in the motion picture or television industry,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). What defines “extraordinary ability,” though, is open to interpretation. To qualify for an O-1B visa type applicants must submit evidence of at least three of the six regulatory criteria. These include, but are not limited to, performing a leading or starring role in a distinguished production or event, national or international recognition for achievements, and a high salary compared to others in the field. USCIS regulations do not prescribe limits over what falls under the umbrella term “the arts”. While traditionally this might have been singers and actors, these days content creators are dominating new forms of media as cultural influence has shifted online. The annual number of O-1 visas approved rose by more than 50% between 2014 and 2024, far outpacing the roughly 10% growth in nonimmigrant visas overall. Still, O-1s make up only a small fraction of the system: Fewer than 20,000 were issued in 2024, versus the hundreds of thousands of H-1B work visas granted. OnlyFans creators and influencers may have an advantage over other creatives when it comes to the application process. Their influence is easily quantifiable in terms of likes and follower counts, numbers that fit neatly into the O-1B framework. An artist or scientist, meanwhile, whose work is predominantly offline and less easily quantified, may find making their case of “extraordinary ability” more complicated. The growing number of content creators seeking visas reserved for those with “extraordinary ability” has sparked mixed reactions online. On X, political analyst and writer Dominic Michael Tripi described the trend as a sign of “end-stage empire conditions.” Others suggested the administration was taking immigration advice from fictional character Ali G. “The President is literally doing the Ali G ‘let the fit ones in’ policy.” one X user joked. But the backlash against influencers applying for O-1 visas shows how little attitudes have shifted when it comes to recognizing influencing and content creation as legitimate work. And, when it comes to OnlyFans creators, one immigration lawyer told Fox News, “acting is acting”. View the full article

Learn how to use AI for SEO, from keyword research to content optimization. Plus: benefits, common challenges, pricing, and the best AI SEO tools. View the full article

Learn what digital marketing is, explore 9 key types, and get a simple strategy checklist to grow your business online. View the full article

US president texts Norwegian leader that he no longer feels obliged ‘to think purely of Peace’ after missing out on award View the full article

Google's John Mueller explains why free subdomain hosting services attract spam and make it harder for legitimate sites to gain search visibility. The post Google’s Mueller: Free Subdomain Hosting Makes SEO Harder appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

European countries race to respond after Donald The President threatens tariffs in pursuit of Arctic islandView the full article

Putting yourself out there is difficult. Rejection is tough. And feeling like you’ve gotten the rug pulled out from under you is the worst. When you’re in charge of business development, where you’re responsible for growing your revenue within your current client portfolio as well as seeking out new potential opportunities, you can easily vacillate from feeling like a hero to feeling like a zero, depending on what kind of results you’re getting from your efforts. As a time management coach for 17 years, I’ve learned how to summon the inner resolve to continue forward with business development even when it feels difficult, and I’ve coached many clients on how to do the same. Here are three of the biggest challenges you may face with staying consistent with business development, and solutions for moving forward with tenacity no matter how vulnerable and overwhelming it may feel. 1. You’re So Busy with Current Clients That You’re Not Investing in Future Ones One of the hardest parts of success is maintaining that success, particularly if you’re not solely devoted to business development. I often have individuals come to me because they’re taking care of their current portfolio but keep pushing off the activities that will help them sustain and grow their business in the future. In these situations, I find this two-prong strategy works best: The first prong is to clearly define quantifiable actions that will support your goals. For example: “I will make 10 follow-up calls to strong leads per day,” or “I will have five business development meetings booked each week.” These concrete objectives help you to more clearly know what to do and to honestly assess whether you’re doing enough. The second prong is to decide on a timing strategy so you don’t keep putting off the business development tasks. Here are a few examples: I don’t look at email until I’ve made five prospecting calls, or before I eat lunch, I do all the needed follow-ups on outstanding proposals. I’ve found that doing business development activities earlier in the day and before a habitual activity you really want or need to do helps them to happen much more frequently. 2. You’re Getting Too Many Noes, So You Shy Away From the Ask Experiencing noes is a natural part of the sales process. But in most instances, there’s a typical close rate that you expect. When you hit a long series of deals that don’t work out beyond what you were used to experiencing, doubt can creep in: What if other deals don’t close? What if I don’t hit my targets? What if I don’t get my bonus? What if I lose my job? What if other people lose their jobs? Even with a long history of success, this negative spiral can happen pretty quickly, and you need to catch yourself before your doubts and fears keep you from the actions that will move you into a more positive place. There are two powerful actions you can take in this scenario: First, think about what you can learn—if anything—from the deals that didn’t happen. Was it the wrong type of client? Could you have presented the benefits in a different way? Was there something about the financial structure that needed to change? Second, let go of the past and create as many opportunities as possible to get in front of other potential clients in the present and future. The only way to get out of a slump is to double down on the potential for people to say yes. 3. You’re Reeling From Market Changes, So You’re Uncertain About What Will Work Most of the time, effective business development requires a greater level of commitment to the strategies you know work. But sometimes broader circumstances have had an impact on your business, and you need to completely change direction. It could be that a platform that has been a wonderful source of leads no longer provides them. It could be that the industry you’ve typically served has contracted, and you need to pivot to a new one. Or it could be that AI has changed how people view the value of your business. These shifts can make business development even more overwhelming because you no longer have a repeatable, predictable strategy for your sales process. To keep moving forward when you face this dilemma, you need to shift your definition of success from closing deals to systematically testing strategies to learn what does or doesn’t work in this new environment. For example, you might decide that you’ll run a new ad campaign and see whether it generates the type of leads you’re hoping to attract. Or you might work with a consultant on tactics for breaking into a new industry. Or you might work on a new presentation strategy to help people understand the unique value of your company within the context of AI and test the response you receive. In these circumstances, it’s too vulnerable to base success on what revenue you do or don’t generate as a result of trying new things. That can leave you feeling frustrated, angry, and demoralized, thinking you would have been better off not even attempting a certain experiment if it doesn’t work out the way you hoped. Instead, you’ll want to count it as success that you tried something new, and then understand there’s valuable learning in every attempt. As you persistently try new strategies, you’ll eventually land on what works. Business development in the face of disappointing results requires enormous inner courage to not give up. But by following these strategies mixed with a strong dose of resolve, you can not only survive whatever difficulty you may face but also thrive. View the full article

A customer loyalty platform is a system that helps businesses manage and improve their loyalty programs. It tracks customer interactions, purchases, and rewards across different channels, creating a thorough view of customer behavior. By integrating with existing systems, it allows for real-time data analysis and personalized marketing strategies. Grasping how these platforms operate and their benefits can greatly impact your business’s customer retention and engagement strategies. What are the key features that make these platforms effective? Key Takeaways A customer loyalty platform is a technology system designed to manage and enhance customer loyalty programs effectively. It tracks customer engagement, rewards, and integrates with sales channels for real-time data analysis. The platform creates customer profiles for personalized rewards and targeted marketing strategies. It utilizes advanced analytics to provide insights into customer behavior and program performance. Seamless integration with existing systems ensures a cohesive customer experience and smooth reward redemption. Definition of a Customer Loyalty Platform A customer loyalty platform is fundamentally a technological system that helps businesses manage and improve their customer loyalty programs. Through effective customer loyalty management, these platforms enable you to track customer engagement and rewards seamlessly. They integrate with various sales channels, such as point-of-sale (POS) systems and e-commerce sites, allowing real-time tracking of customer purchases and interactions. When customers enroll, their profiles are created, which helps you tailor rewards and communications based on individual preferences and behaviors. Furthermore, loyalty agencies often utilize analytics tools within these platforms to gain insights into program performance, customer spending patterns, and overall engagement metrics. By leveraging a customer loyalty platform, you can’t just improve customer retention but also increase lifetime value and drive personalized marketing efforts through data-driven strategies. Importance of Customer Loyalty Platforms Customer loyalty platforms play an essential role in enhancing data management, allowing you to gather and analyze valuable insights about your customers. With these insights, you can create personalized marketing strategies that resonate with your audience, ultimately improving customer engagement. As you streamline interactions and reward systems, you’ll cultivate stronger relationships, leading to increased loyalty and repeat business. Enhanced Data Management Even though many businesses recognize the importance of comprehending their customers, improved data management through loyalty platforms takes this comprehension to a new level. These platforms empower you to collect and analyze customer data, yielding insights into purchasing behavior and preferences. By integrating with systems like POS and e-commerce, you can track customer interactions in real-time across multiple channels. Enhanced data management allows for customer segmentation, enabling customized communications and rewards that resonate with specific groups. Utilizing analytics and reporting features, you can monitor loyalty program performance and customer sentiment, which aids in informed decision-making. In the end, this data helps improve customer retention rates, as you can identify trends and adjust your offerings to meet evolving needs and preferences effectively. Personalized Marketing Strategies Integrating personalized marketing strategies is essential for maximizing the effectiveness of customer loyalty platforms, as these strategies leverage data-driven insights to improve engagement. By analyzing customer behaviors and purchase history, loyalty platforms allow you to segment your audience and target specific groups with customized promotions. This increases the likelihood of repeat purchases, as customers appreciate receiving offers that resonate with their preferences. Personalization can boost customer retention by up to 20%, making customers feel valued and connected to your brand. Additionally, effective personalization can yield a 5 to 10 times return on investment by turning data into actionable marketing efforts. Improved Customer Engagement When businesses effectively implement customer loyalty platforms, they can greatly improve customer engagement. These platforms improve engagement by offering personalized rewards and customized offers that resonate with each customer’s preferences, leading to increased satisfaction and retention. By integrating with various sales channels, loyalty platforms guarantee seamless interactions, creating a consistent experience that deepens connections with your brand. Data analytics play an essential role, allowing you to track customer behavior and preferences, which helps in crafting targeted marketing strategies that boost loyalty. Research shows that loyalty program members tend to spend 18% more than non-members. Furthermore, gamification elements like challenges and badges make the shopping experience more interactive, further improving customer engagement and encouraging ongoing participation. Key Features of a Customer Loyalty Platform A customer loyalty platform serves as a crucial tool for businesses looking to improve customer retention and engagement. One key feature is the points and rewards management system, which tracks customer actions and purchases, allowing users to earn and redeem points seamlessly. Furthermore, these platforms offer customer segmentation capabilities, facilitating targeted marketing strategies to guarantee personalized communication and rewards based on customer preferences and behaviors. Omnichannel integration is another core feature, providing a seamless user experience across various touchpoints, including in-store, online, and mobile interactions. Personalization tools enable businesses to tailor rewards and communications, enhancing customer engagement through relevant offers. Finally, advanced analytics and reporting features help businesses monitor loyalty program performance, offering insights into customer behavior and program effectiveness. This data supports continuous improvement, ensuring that your loyalty initiatives remain effective and aligned with customer needs. How a Customer Loyalty Platform Works A customer loyalty platform works by integrating seamlessly with your existing systems, allowing for efficient data tracking and analysis. When customers engage with your brand, their activities are recorded in real-time, facilitating a smooth reward redemption process. This all-encompassing approach not merely improves customer experience but furthermore provides valuable insights to refine your loyalty strategies. Integration With Existing Systems Integrating a customer loyalty platform with existing systems such as point-of-sale (POS), e-commerce, and mobile applications is essential for creating a cohesive customer experience. This integration streamlines customer interactions, ensuring they can track purchases and rewards in real-time. Here are three key benefits of integration: Unified Customer Profiles: Customers can enroll through various channels, creating a single profile that tracks their loyalty progression. Consistent Reward Management: API connections synchronize customer data, ensuring consistency in reward accumulation and redemption across all platforms. Instant Updates: Real-time tracking allows customers to receive immediate updates on their points balance, available rewards, and tier status, which improves engagement and satisfaction. Data Tracking and Analysis Tracking and analyzing customer data is crucial for the success of any loyalty program. A customer loyalty platform effectively tracks interactions and purchases in real-time, enabling you to monitor engagement and reward accumulation. The platform collects data that provides insights into customer behavior, preferences, and spending patterns, which helps you develop personalized marketing strategies. By integrating with POS and e-commerce systems, the platform guarantees a seamless data flow, allowing accurate tracking of loyalty points across various channels. Analytics features deliver performance metrics like customer retention rates and redemption statistics, helping you evaluate your program’s effectiveness. Additionally, customer profiles created during enrollment allow for targeted communication and customized reward offers based on individual purchase histories and preferences. Reward Redemption Process When you participate in a customer loyalty program, you accumulate points through your purchases and interactions, which can then be redeemed for various rewards, discounts, or exclusive offers. The redemption process is streamlined to guarantee you can easily convert your points without hassle. Here’s how it typically works: Track Your Points: Use your unique identifier, like a membership card or app, to monitor your points. Select Rewards: Choose from a variety of rewards available through the platform, customized to your preferences. Redeem Points: Present your identifier during transactions to apply your points and enjoy your rewards. This user-friendly approach improves your experience as well as enabling businesses to analyze redemption trends for better loyalty strategies. Benefits of Using a Customer Loyalty Platform A customer loyalty platform offers numerous advantages that can greatly improve your business’s performance. First, it boosts customer retention by providing structured rewards that motivate repeat purchases, ultimately increasing customer lifetime value. By leveraging data analytics, these platforms give you valuable insights into customer behavior, allowing for personalized marketing strategies that increase engagement. Moreover, loyalty platforms facilitate omnichannel integration, ensuring a seamless experience for customers across various touchpoints, whether in-store or online. This consistency can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. In addition, satisfied customers are more likely to refer friends and family, boosting your word-of-mouth marketing. Finally, utilizing a loyalty platform helps reduce churn rates, as you can proactively engage and recognize loyal customers, nurturing a stronger brand loyalty. Types of Customer Loyalty Platforms When exploring customer loyalty platforms, you’ll find various types intended to improve engagement. Points-based systems allow you to earn points for each purchase, which can be redeemed for rewards, whereas tiered reward structures create different membership levels based on spending, offering exclusive perks as you progress. Comprehending these options can help you choose the right approach for nurturing customer loyalty. Points-Based Systems Points-based systems serve as a popular type of customer loyalty platform that rewards you for your purchases and engagement. These systems encourage repeat business by allowing you to earn points for each purchase, which can be redeemed for discounts, free products, or exclusive perks. Here are a few key features of points-based systems: Real-Time Tracking: You can monitor your points as you earn them, keeping you engaged and motivated to reach rewards. Earning Opportunities: Points aren’t just for purchases; you can likewise earn them through referrals or social media interactions. Increased Spending: Loyalty members often spend up to 18% more than non-members, making these systems beneficial for both you and the business. Tiered Reward Structures How can tiered reward structures improve your shopping experience? These systems allow you to progress through different levels based on your spending, revealing greater rewards and benefits as you climb higher. With each tier, you might gain exclusive perks such as early access to sales, special discounts, or unique experiences, motivating you to spend more. Research shows customers in tiered programs tend to spend an average of 20% more than those in non-tiered systems, as they aim for better rewards. Furthermore, tiered structures cater to various customer segments, ensuring that rewards resonate with different spending behaviors and preferences. This design boosts engagement and encourages customer retention, making your shopping experience more rewarding. Core Components of a Customer Loyalty Platform A robust customer loyalty platform consists of several core components that work together to improve customer engagement and retention. Comprehending these components is crucial for creating an effective loyalty strategy. Points and Rewards Management: This feature allows you to track and manage customer actions, making it easier to reward engagement effectively. Customer Segmentation Tools: These tools enable you to tailor marketing strategies based on customer behavior and preferences, guaranteeing your messages resonate with different audience segments. Omnichannel Integration: This component assures a seamless user experience, allowing customers to interact with the loyalty program across various platforms, such as in-store, online, and mobile. Additionally, personalization tools augment the customer experience by tailoring rewards and communications. Analytics and reporting features provide valuable insights into program performance, allowing for continuous improvement of your loyalty strategy. How to Choose the Right Customer Loyalty Platform Selecting the right customer loyalty platform involves careful consideration of various factors that align with your business goals and customer expectations. Start by evaluating your business goals and customer needs to identify crucial features like points management or tiered rewards. Next, assess platforms for seamless integration with your existing systems, including POS and e-commerce solutions. Furthermore, analyze their analytics capabilities to track customer engagement and program performance effectively. Lastly, consider scalability to guarantee the platform can evolve with your business, accommodating future growth. Research user reviews and case studies to gain insights into how other businesses have benefited from the platform. Factor Importance Considerations Features Align with your business needs Points management, personalized offers Integration Unified customer experience Compatibility with existing systems Analytics & Reporting Informed marketing strategies Real-time data and insights Integrating a Customer Loyalty Platform With Existing Systems Integrating a customer loyalty platform with your existing systems is essential for achieving seamless data synchronization and enhancing the user experience. By connecting your Point of Sale, e-commerce, and mobile applications, you guarantee that customer points and rewards are updated in real-time across all channels. This integration not merely streamlines operations but additionally provides valuable analytics that can help you make informed decisions to optimize your loyalty program. Seamless Data Synchronization To maximize the effectiveness of a customer loyalty platform, businesses need seamless data synchronization with their existing systems, such as point-of-sale (POS), e-commerce, and mobile applications. This integration allows for real-time tracking of customer interactions and purchases, ensuring that data remains accurate and up-to-date. Here are three key benefits of seamless data synchronization: Centralized Customer Profiles: Easily track points earned, rewards redeemed, and engagement across all channels. Automated Data Updates: Utilize APIs for automatic updates, reducing manual intervention and minimizing errors. Enhanced Analytics: Leverage synchronized data for better insights into customer behavior, driving targeted marketing strategies. Enhanced User Experience When a customer loyalty platform integrates with existing systems, it considerably boosts the user experience by providing a seamless interface for tracking rewards and interactions. This integration allows you to access your customer data across various channels, ensuring personalized offers that align with your preferences and behaviors. The enrollment process becomes streamlined, making it easy for you to register and start earning rewards through in-store, web, or app interfaces. Omnichannel integration guarantees that you can earn and redeem loyalty rewards consistently, regardless of the platform you choose. Real-Time Analytics Integration Real-time analytics integration plays a crucial role in enhancing a customer loyalty platform by allowing businesses to monitor customer interactions and the performance of loyalty programs as they happen. By connecting your loyalty system with existing tools, you can streamline data flow and improve customer engagement. Here are three key benefits of real-time analytics integration: Immediate Insights: Track customer behavior and loyalty performance, enabling quick adjustments to strategies. Personalized Marketing: Utilize valuable data points, like purchase history and preferences, to tailor marketing efforts. Dynamic Adjustments: Identify trends and customer segments, allowing you to optimize loyalty offerings and improve retention rates continuously. This integration guarantees your loyalty programs remain relevant and effective in real time. Common Challenges in Implementing a Customer Loyalty Platform Implementing a customer loyalty platform often presents several significant challenges that businesses must navigate to guarantee success. One major issue is data integration, as your systems need to connect smoothly with existing POS and e-commerce platforms to ascertain accurate tracking of customer interactions and rewards. Another challenge lies in customer engagement; creating appealing and relevant rewards that consistently motivate customers can be difficult. Furthermore, maintaining customer privacy and data security is critical; mishandling data could lead to trust issues and legal repercussions, so compliance with regulations like GDPR is indispensable. Measuring the platform’s effectiveness likewise poses challenges, as you need clear metrics and KPIs to evaluate customer retention rates and overall program performance. Finally, training your staff on the new system is paramount; they must understand how to use it effectively and communicate its benefits to customers to guarantee successful adoption and utilization. Best Practices for Successful Adoption of a Customer Loyalty Platform Successfully adopting a customer loyalty platform hinges on several best practices that can greatly improve its effectiveness. To maximize the impact of your loyalty program, consider these crucial strategies: Seamless Integration: Verify your loyalty platform works smoothly with existing systems, like POS and e-commerce solutions, to provide a unified customer experience. Define Clear Goals: Establish specific objectives and metrics, such as customer retention rates and Net Promoter Scores, to evaluate the program’s success and drive ongoing improvements. Personalized Engagement: Leverage customer data to create customized rewards and personalized marketing, which can greatly boost satisfaction and overall participation. Additionally, training your staff on the platform’s features empowers them to promote the program effectively and assist customers. Don’t forget to regularly gather feedback from customers to identify areas for improvement, confirming your loyalty platform remains relevant and effective. Case Studies of Successful Customer Loyalty Platforms As businesses increasingly prioritize customer loyalty, examining successful case studies can provide valuable insights into effective strategies. Starbucks Rewards, with over 25 million active members, boosts customer engagement and increases average transaction values by 20% among its members. Similarly, Sephora‘s Beauty Insider program employs a tiered structure, resulting in a 15% retention increase and driving 80% of sales from loyalty members. Delta Airlines‘ SkyMiles program rewards frequent flyers, leading to a 30% rise in repeat business. Amazon Prime showcases the financial benefits of loyalty, with members spending an average of $1,400 annually compared to $600 for non-members. Finally, The North Face XPLR Pass merges community engagement with rewards, improving brand loyalty and participation by over 25%. These case studies illustrate how customized loyalty platforms can greatly improve customer retention and drive sales across various industries. Future Trends in Customer Loyalty Platforms As companies aim to improve customer loyalty, emerging trends in loyalty platforms are shaping the future scenery of customer engagement. Here are some key trends to watch: AI and Machine Learning: These technologies will enable hyper-personalized rewards and offers customized to individual customer behaviors and preferences, enhancing the customer experience. Social Media Integration: Loyalty programs are increasingly linked with social media platforms, allowing customers to earn rewards through their social interactions and user-generated content. Blockchain and Mobile Wallets: Blockchain technology will improve transparency and security in loyalty programs, enabling seamless tracking of points and rewards across various brands. Moreover, mobile wallet integration will provide customers with convenient access to redeem their rewards directly from their smartphones. As these trends evolve, you can expect customer loyalty platforms to become more engaging, secure, and aligned with customer values, particularly around sustainability. Measuring Success of a Customer Loyalty Platform To measure the success of a customer loyalty platform effectively, businesses need to focus on key performance indicators that provide insights into customer behavior and satisfaction. One critical metric is the Customer Retention Rate, which shows how well your program keeps customers engaged over time. Furthermore, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) assesses customer satisfaction and their likelihood of recommending your brand, highlighting the program’s effectiveness in promoting loyalty. Monitoring the Customer Effort Score (CES) helps you evaluate how easy it’s for customers to redeem rewards and interact with the program, directly impacting overall satisfaction. In addition, analyzing Negative Churn—the percentage of customers who upgrade or purchase additional services—can indicate the loyalty platform’s success in delivering value. Regularly reviewing customer engagement data and feedback allows you to refine your loyalty program, ensuring it continuously meets customer needs and expectations effectively. Frequently Asked Questions How Does a Customer Loyalty Program Work? A customer loyalty program works by allowing you to earn rewards for repeat purchases or engaging with a brand. You typically register, providing personal information, and receive a unique identifier to track your purchases. As you spend, you accumulate points that can be redeemed for rewards like discounts or free products. Many programs feature tiers, motivating you to spend more to access better rewards, thereby enhancing your overall shopping experience and nurturing brand loyalty. What Are the 4 C’s of Customer Loyalty? The 4 C’s of customer loyalty are crucial for building strong relationships with your customers. First, understand their needs, nurturing emotional connections. Second, focus on cost by providing competitive pricing and valuable rewards that make customers feel appreciated. Third, guarantee convenience by offering easy access to products and services across multiple channels. Finally, maintain effective communication through personalized messages and feedback, reinforcing trust and encouraging long-term loyalty to your brand. What Are the 3 R’s of Customer Loyalty? The 3 R’s of customer loyalty are Retention, Referral, and Revenue. Retention means keeping your existing customers engaged, reducing the costs of acquiring new ones. Referral encourages satisfied customers to share their positive experiences, bringing in new clients through word-of-mouth. Revenue indicates that loyal customers tend to spend more, with studies showing they can spend up to 18% more than non-members. Focusing on these aspects can greatly improve your business’s profitability. What Is the Difference Between a CRM and a Loyalty Program? A CRM focuses on managing customer interactions and data throughout their lifecycle, helping you analyze sales and marketing efforts. Conversely, a loyalty program incentivizes repeat purchases by offering rewards, encouraging customer engagement. During the time that CRMs collect extensive data for various functions, loyalty programs utilize this information to create personalized rewards. Fundamentally, a CRM provides a thorough view, whereas a loyalty program zeroes in on driving brand loyalty through targeted incentives. Conclusion In summary, a customer loyalty platform is crucial for businesses aiming to improve customer engagement and retention. By integrating data from various sales channels, these platforms create thorough customer profiles that inform personalized marketing efforts. Their advanced analytics offer valuable insights into customer behavior and program effectiveness. Adopting best practices guarantees successful implementation, as well as staying informed about future trends can further optimize loyalty strategies. Ultimately, investing in such platforms can lead to stronger customer relationships and improved business performance. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Is a Customer Loyalty Platform and How Does It Work?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

A customer loyalty platform is a system that helps businesses manage and improve their loyalty programs. It tracks customer interactions, purchases, and rewards across different channels, creating a thorough view of customer behavior. By integrating with existing systems, it allows for real-time data analysis and personalized marketing strategies. Grasping how these platforms operate and their benefits can greatly impact your business’s customer retention and engagement strategies. What are the key features that make these platforms effective? Key Takeaways A customer loyalty platform is a technology system designed to manage and enhance customer loyalty programs effectively. It tracks customer engagement, rewards, and integrates with sales channels for real-time data analysis. The platform creates customer profiles for personalized rewards and targeted marketing strategies. It utilizes advanced analytics to provide insights into customer behavior and program performance. Seamless integration with existing systems ensures a cohesive customer experience and smooth reward redemption. Definition of a Customer Loyalty Platform A customer loyalty platform is fundamentally a technological system that helps businesses manage and improve their customer loyalty programs. Through effective customer loyalty management, these platforms enable you to track customer engagement and rewards seamlessly. They integrate with various sales channels, such as point-of-sale (POS) systems and e-commerce sites, allowing real-time tracking of customer purchases and interactions. When customers enroll, their profiles are created, which helps you tailor rewards and communications based on individual preferences and behaviors. Furthermore, loyalty agencies often utilize analytics tools within these platforms to gain insights into program performance, customer spending patterns, and overall engagement metrics. By leveraging a customer loyalty platform, you can’t just improve customer retention but also increase lifetime value and drive personalized marketing efforts through data-driven strategies. Importance of Customer Loyalty Platforms Customer loyalty platforms play an essential role in enhancing data management, allowing you to gather and analyze valuable insights about your customers. With these insights, you can create personalized marketing strategies that resonate with your audience, ultimately improving customer engagement. As you streamline interactions and reward systems, you’ll cultivate stronger relationships, leading to increased loyalty and repeat business. Enhanced Data Management Even though many businesses recognize the importance of comprehending their customers, improved data management through loyalty platforms takes this comprehension to a new level. These platforms empower you to collect and analyze customer data, yielding insights into purchasing behavior and preferences. By integrating with systems like POS and e-commerce, you can track customer interactions in real-time across multiple channels. Enhanced data management allows for customer segmentation, enabling customized communications and rewards that resonate with specific groups. Utilizing analytics and reporting features, you can monitor loyalty program performance and customer sentiment, which aids in informed decision-making. In the end, this data helps improve customer retention rates, as you can identify trends and adjust your offerings to meet evolving needs and preferences effectively. Personalized Marketing Strategies Integrating personalized marketing strategies is essential for maximizing the effectiveness of customer loyalty platforms, as these strategies leverage data-driven insights to improve engagement. By analyzing customer behaviors and purchase history, loyalty platforms allow you to segment your audience and target specific groups with customized promotions. This increases the likelihood of repeat purchases, as customers appreciate receiving offers that resonate with their preferences. Personalization can boost customer retention by up to 20%, making customers feel valued and connected to your brand. Additionally, effective personalization can yield a 5 to 10 times return on investment by turning data into actionable marketing efforts. Improved Customer Engagement When businesses effectively implement customer loyalty platforms, they can greatly improve customer engagement. These platforms improve engagement by offering personalized rewards and customized offers that resonate with each customer’s preferences, leading to increased satisfaction and retention. By integrating with various sales channels, loyalty platforms guarantee seamless interactions, creating a consistent experience that deepens connections with your brand. Data analytics play an essential role, allowing you to track customer behavior and preferences, which helps in crafting targeted marketing strategies that boost loyalty. Research shows that loyalty program members tend to spend 18% more than non-members. Furthermore, gamification elements like challenges and badges make the shopping experience more interactive, further improving customer engagement and encouraging ongoing participation. Key Features of a Customer Loyalty Platform A customer loyalty platform serves as a crucial tool for businesses looking to improve customer retention and engagement. One key feature is the points and rewards management system, which tracks customer actions and purchases, allowing users to earn and redeem points seamlessly. Furthermore, these platforms offer customer segmentation capabilities, facilitating targeted marketing strategies to guarantee personalized communication and rewards based on customer preferences and behaviors. Omnichannel integration is another core feature, providing a seamless user experience across various touchpoints, including in-store, online, and mobile interactions. Personalization tools enable businesses to tailor rewards and communications, enhancing customer engagement through relevant offers. Finally, advanced analytics and reporting features help businesses monitor loyalty program performance, offering insights into customer behavior and program effectiveness. This data supports continuous improvement, ensuring that your loyalty initiatives remain effective and aligned with customer needs. How a Customer Loyalty Platform Works A customer loyalty platform works by integrating seamlessly with your existing systems, allowing for efficient data tracking and analysis. When customers engage with your brand, their activities are recorded in real-time, facilitating a smooth reward redemption process. This all-encompassing approach not merely improves customer experience but furthermore provides valuable insights to refine your loyalty strategies. Integration With Existing Systems Integrating a customer loyalty platform with existing systems such as point-of-sale (POS), e-commerce, and mobile applications is essential for creating a cohesive customer experience. This integration streamlines customer interactions, ensuring they can track purchases and rewards in real-time. Here are three key benefits of integration: Unified Customer Profiles: Customers can enroll through various channels, creating a single profile that tracks their loyalty progression. Consistent Reward Management: API connections synchronize customer data, ensuring consistency in reward accumulation and redemption across all platforms. Instant Updates: Real-time tracking allows customers to receive immediate updates on their points balance, available rewards, and tier status, which improves engagement and satisfaction. Data Tracking and Analysis Tracking and analyzing customer data is crucial for the success of any loyalty program. A customer loyalty platform effectively tracks interactions and purchases in real-time, enabling you to monitor engagement and reward accumulation. The platform collects data that provides insights into customer behavior, preferences, and spending patterns, which helps you develop personalized marketing strategies. By integrating with POS and e-commerce systems, the platform guarantees a seamless data flow, allowing accurate tracking of loyalty points across various channels. Analytics features deliver performance metrics like customer retention rates and redemption statistics, helping you evaluate your program’s effectiveness. Additionally, customer profiles created during enrollment allow for targeted communication and customized reward offers based on individual purchase histories and preferences. Reward Redemption Process When you participate in a customer loyalty program, you accumulate points through your purchases and interactions, which can then be redeemed for various rewards, discounts, or exclusive offers. The redemption process is streamlined to guarantee you can easily convert your points without hassle. Here’s how it typically works: Track Your Points: Use your unique identifier, like a membership card or app, to monitor your points. Select Rewards: Choose from a variety of rewards available through the platform, customized to your preferences. Redeem Points: Present your identifier during transactions to apply your points and enjoy your rewards. This user-friendly approach improves your experience as well as enabling businesses to analyze redemption trends for better loyalty strategies. Benefits of Using a Customer Loyalty Platform A customer loyalty platform offers numerous advantages that can greatly improve your business’s performance. First, it boosts customer retention by providing structured rewards that motivate repeat purchases, ultimately increasing customer lifetime value. By leveraging data analytics, these platforms give you valuable insights into customer behavior, allowing for personalized marketing strategies that increase engagement. Moreover, loyalty platforms facilitate omnichannel integration, ensuring a seamless experience for customers across various touchpoints, whether in-store or online. This consistency can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. In addition, satisfied customers are more likely to refer friends and family, boosting your word-of-mouth marketing. Finally, utilizing a loyalty platform helps reduce churn rates, as you can proactively engage and recognize loyal customers, nurturing a stronger brand loyalty. Types of Customer Loyalty Platforms When exploring customer loyalty platforms, you’ll find various types intended to improve engagement. Points-based systems allow you to earn points for each purchase, which can be redeemed for rewards, whereas tiered reward structures create different membership levels based on spending, offering exclusive perks as you progress. Comprehending these options can help you choose the right approach for nurturing customer loyalty. Points-Based Systems Points-based systems serve as a popular type of customer loyalty platform that rewards you for your purchases and engagement. These systems encourage repeat business by allowing you to earn points for each purchase, which can be redeemed for discounts, free products, or exclusive perks. Here are a few key features of points-based systems: Real-Time Tracking: You can monitor your points as you earn them, keeping you engaged and motivated to reach rewards. Earning Opportunities: Points aren’t just for purchases; you can likewise earn them through referrals or social media interactions. Increased Spending: Loyalty members often spend up to 18% more than non-members, making these systems beneficial for both you and the business. Tiered Reward Structures How can tiered reward structures improve your shopping experience? These systems allow you to progress through different levels based on your spending, revealing greater rewards and benefits as you climb higher. With each tier, you might gain exclusive perks such as early access to sales, special discounts, or unique experiences, motivating you to spend more. Research shows customers in tiered programs tend to spend an average of 20% more than those in non-tiered systems, as they aim for better rewards. Furthermore, tiered structures cater to various customer segments, ensuring that rewards resonate with different spending behaviors and preferences. This design boosts engagement and encourages customer retention, making your shopping experience more rewarding. Core Components of a Customer Loyalty Platform A robust customer loyalty platform consists of several core components that work together to improve customer engagement and retention. Comprehending these components is crucial for creating an effective loyalty strategy. Points and Rewards Management: This feature allows you to track and manage customer actions, making it easier to reward engagement effectively. Customer Segmentation Tools: These tools enable you to tailor marketing strategies based on customer behavior and preferences, guaranteeing your messages resonate with different audience segments. Omnichannel Integration: This component assures a seamless user experience, allowing customers to interact with the loyalty program across various platforms, such as in-store, online, and mobile. Additionally, personalization tools augment the customer experience by tailoring rewards and communications. Analytics and reporting features provide valuable insights into program performance, allowing for continuous improvement of your loyalty strategy. How to Choose the Right Customer Loyalty Platform Selecting the right customer loyalty platform involves careful consideration of various factors that align with your business goals and customer expectations. Start by evaluating your business goals and customer needs to identify crucial features like points management or tiered rewards. Next, assess platforms for seamless integration with your existing systems, including POS and e-commerce solutions. Furthermore, analyze their analytics capabilities to track customer engagement and program performance effectively. Lastly, consider scalability to guarantee the platform can evolve with your business, accommodating future growth. Research user reviews and case studies to gain insights into how other businesses have benefited from the platform. Factor Importance Considerations Features Align with your business needs Points management, personalized offers Integration Unified customer experience Compatibility with existing systems Analytics & Reporting Informed marketing strategies Real-time data and insights Integrating a Customer Loyalty Platform With Existing Systems Integrating a customer loyalty platform with your existing systems is essential for achieving seamless data synchronization and enhancing the user experience. By connecting your Point of Sale, e-commerce, and mobile applications, you guarantee that customer points and rewards are updated in real-time across all channels. This integration not merely streamlines operations but additionally provides valuable analytics that can help you make informed decisions to optimize your loyalty program. Seamless Data Synchronization To maximize the effectiveness of a customer loyalty platform, businesses need seamless data synchronization with their existing systems, such as point-of-sale (POS), e-commerce, and mobile applications. This integration allows for real-time tracking of customer interactions and purchases, ensuring that data remains accurate and up-to-date. Here are three key benefits of seamless data synchronization: Centralized Customer Profiles: Easily track points earned, rewards redeemed, and engagement across all channels. Automated Data Updates: Utilize APIs for automatic updates, reducing manual intervention and minimizing errors. Enhanced Analytics: Leverage synchronized data for better insights into customer behavior, driving targeted marketing strategies. Enhanced User Experience When a customer loyalty platform integrates with existing systems, it considerably boosts the user experience by providing a seamless interface for tracking rewards and interactions. This integration allows you to access your customer data across various channels, ensuring personalized offers that align with your preferences and behaviors. The enrollment process becomes streamlined, making it easy for you to register and start earning rewards through in-store, web, or app interfaces. Omnichannel integration guarantees that you can earn and redeem loyalty rewards consistently, regardless of the platform you choose. Real-Time Analytics Integration Real-time analytics integration plays a crucial role in enhancing a customer loyalty platform by allowing businesses to monitor customer interactions and the performance of loyalty programs as they happen. By connecting your loyalty system with existing tools, you can streamline data flow and improve customer engagement. Here are three key benefits of real-time analytics integration: Immediate Insights: Track customer behavior and loyalty performance, enabling quick adjustments to strategies. Personalized Marketing: Utilize valuable data points, like purchase history and preferences, to tailor marketing efforts. Dynamic Adjustments: Identify trends and customer segments, allowing you to optimize loyalty offerings and improve retention rates continuously. This integration guarantees your loyalty programs remain relevant and effective in real time. Common Challenges in Implementing a Customer Loyalty Platform Implementing a customer loyalty platform often presents several significant challenges that businesses must navigate to guarantee success. One major issue is data integration, as your systems need to connect smoothly with existing POS and e-commerce platforms to ascertain accurate tracking of customer interactions and rewards. Another challenge lies in customer engagement; creating appealing and relevant rewards that consistently motivate customers can be difficult. Furthermore, maintaining customer privacy and data security is critical; mishandling data could lead to trust issues and legal repercussions, so compliance with regulations like GDPR is indispensable. Measuring the platform’s effectiveness likewise poses challenges, as you need clear metrics and KPIs to evaluate customer retention rates and overall program performance. Finally, training your staff on the new system is paramount; they must understand how to use it effectively and communicate its benefits to customers to guarantee successful adoption and utilization. Best Practices for Successful Adoption of a Customer Loyalty Platform Successfully adopting a customer loyalty platform hinges on several best practices that can greatly improve its effectiveness. To maximize the impact of your loyalty program, consider these crucial strategies: Seamless Integration: Verify your loyalty platform works smoothly with existing systems, like POS and e-commerce solutions, to provide a unified customer experience. Define Clear Goals: Establish specific objectives and metrics, such as customer retention rates and Net Promoter Scores, to evaluate the program’s success and drive ongoing improvements. Personalized Engagement: Leverage customer data to create customized rewards and personalized marketing, which can greatly boost satisfaction and overall participation. Additionally, training your staff on the platform’s features empowers them to promote the program effectively and assist customers. Don’t forget to regularly gather feedback from customers to identify areas for improvement, confirming your loyalty platform remains relevant and effective. Case Studies of Successful Customer Loyalty Platforms As businesses increasingly prioritize customer loyalty, examining successful case studies can provide valuable insights into effective strategies. Starbucks Rewards, with over 25 million active members, boosts customer engagement and increases average transaction values by 20% among its members. Similarly, Sephora‘s Beauty Insider program employs a tiered structure, resulting in a 15% retention increase and driving 80% of sales from loyalty members. Delta Airlines‘ SkyMiles program rewards frequent flyers, leading to a 30% rise in repeat business. Amazon Prime showcases the financial benefits of loyalty, with members spending an average of $1,400 annually compared to $600 for non-members. Finally, The North Face XPLR Pass merges community engagement with rewards, improving brand loyalty and participation by over 25%. These case studies illustrate how customized loyalty platforms can greatly improve customer retention and drive sales across various industries. Future Trends in Customer Loyalty Platforms As companies aim to improve customer loyalty, emerging trends in loyalty platforms are shaping the future scenery of customer engagement. Here are some key trends to watch: AI and Machine Learning: These technologies will enable hyper-personalized rewards and offers customized to individual customer behaviors and preferences, enhancing the customer experience. Social Media Integration: Loyalty programs are increasingly linked with social media platforms, allowing customers to earn rewards through their social interactions and user-generated content. Blockchain and Mobile Wallets: Blockchain technology will improve transparency and security in loyalty programs, enabling seamless tracking of points and rewards across various brands. Moreover, mobile wallet integration will provide customers with convenient access to redeem their rewards directly from their smartphones. As these trends evolve, you can expect customer loyalty platforms to become more engaging, secure, and aligned with customer values, particularly around sustainability. Measuring Success of a Customer Loyalty Platform To measure the success of a customer loyalty platform effectively, businesses need to focus on key performance indicators that provide insights into customer behavior and satisfaction. One critical metric is the Customer Retention Rate, which shows how well your program keeps customers engaged over time. Furthermore, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) assesses customer satisfaction and their likelihood of recommending your brand, highlighting the program’s effectiveness in promoting loyalty. Monitoring the Customer Effort Score (CES) helps you evaluate how easy it’s for customers to redeem rewards and interact with the program, directly impacting overall satisfaction. In addition, analyzing Negative Churn—the percentage of customers who upgrade or purchase additional services—can indicate the loyalty platform’s success in delivering value. Regularly reviewing customer engagement data and feedback allows you to refine your loyalty program, ensuring it continuously meets customer needs and expectations effectively. Frequently Asked Questions How Does a Customer Loyalty Program Work? A customer loyalty program works by allowing you to earn rewards for repeat purchases or engaging with a brand. You typically register, providing personal information, and receive a unique identifier to track your purchases. As you spend, you accumulate points that can be redeemed for rewards like discounts or free products. Many programs feature tiers, motivating you to spend more to access better rewards, thereby enhancing your overall shopping experience and nurturing brand loyalty. What Are the 4 C’s of Customer Loyalty? The 4 C’s of customer loyalty are crucial for building strong relationships with your customers. First, understand their needs, nurturing emotional connections. Second, focus on cost by providing competitive pricing and valuable rewards that make customers feel appreciated. Third, guarantee convenience by offering easy access to products and services across multiple channels. Finally, maintain effective communication through personalized messages and feedback, reinforcing trust and encouraging long-term loyalty to your brand. What Are the 3 R’s of Customer Loyalty? The 3 R’s of customer loyalty are Retention, Referral, and Revenue. Retention means keeping your existing customers engaged, reducing the costs of acquiring new ones. Referral encourages satisfied customers to share their positive experiences, bringing in new clients through word-of-mouth. Revenue indicates that loyal customers tend to spend more, with studies showing they can spend up to 18% more than non-members. Focusing on these aspects can greatly improve your business’s profitability. What Is the Difference Between a CRM and a Loyalty Program? A CRM focuses on managing customer interactions and data throughout their lifecycle, helping you analyze sales and marketing efforts. Conversely, a loyalty program incentivizes repeat purchases by offering rewards, encouraging customer engagement. During the time that CRMs collect extensive data for various functions, loyalty programs utilize this information to create personalized rewards. Fundamentally, a CRM provides a thorough view, whereas a loyalty program zeroes in on driving brand loyalty through targeted incentives. Conclusion In summary, a customer loyalty platform is crucial for businesses aiming to improve customer engagement and retention. By integrating data from various sales channels, these platforms create thorough customer profiles that inform personalized marketing efforts. Their advanced analytics offer valuable insights into customer behavior and program effectiveness. Adopting best practices guarantees successful implementation, as well as staying informed about future trends can further optimize loyalty strategies. Ultimately, investing in such platforms can lead to stronger customer relationships and improved business performance. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Is a Customer Loyalty Platform and How Does It Work?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

I’m off for the holiday, so here are some older questions from the archives. 1. My boss is pressuring me to microblade my eyebrows My boss has been pressuring me and the other two employees in our division to get our eyebrows microbladed by her friend. She comments on our eyebrows. She tells us it would be the best thing for us to do. She will show us photos of women with microbladed brows and say we should want to look as good. Since she’s the boss, there is no easy way to tell her to knock it off and I know my coworkers are as tired of it as I am. Personally I don’t think microblading looks good on anyone, and trends change (remember the over-plucked eyebrows of the 90s?). No one knows the long-term effects since these things are so new, and I have read many articles about the orange and green left behind when it fades. But besides all that, I don’t think it’s appropriate for a boss to pressure people under her to have a permanent alteration done to them. She gets offended if we don’t show enthusiasm for her ideas in general, and this eyebrow thing isn’t any different. She mentions weekly how she can’t understand why none of us have gone. Her own eyebrows are thick and overdone like the trend is nowadays and none of the three of us want to look like that. Do you have any tips or scripts as to how we can get her to stop when she is our boss and won’t listen to a thing any of us say? Yep, totally inappropriate. And weird! Who is invested that much in someone else’s eyebrows? If you haven’t yet told her directly you’re not going to do it, start there: “I’m not interested in changing my eyebrows. It’s not something I’m going to do.” If you’ve already done that, then say this: “I really don’t want to keep talking about my eyebrows! I get that you like it, but it’s not for me and I’d rather not keep discussing it.” And then if necessary: “You keep pushing me to change my appearance when I’ve told you I’m not interested in doing it, and it’s making me uncomfortable. I’m not sure how to get you to respect my ‘no.'” That said, someone who continues after the first or second “no, it’s not for me” is someone who isn’t the playing by the same rulebook as most people, and so you might need to resort to just changing the subject and/or tuning her out every time she brings it up. (2026 addition: can you add an eyebrow wig to make them bushier? I would add eyebrow wigs.) – 2019 2. My employer told me to stop posting YouTube videos of my work but I don’t want to I’m an arborist (I climb/care for trees). I make videos of my work (it’s GoPro/POV video). They are mostly educational/technical discussions related to climbing equipment. I work for a tree company and in the past I have been scolded/suspended for posting my footage on YouTube. My boss thinks there might be legal ramifications for having footage of clients’ backyards or properties (usually from 30-90 feet in the air where faraway things are warped and very little detail is captured by the wide angle lens). I don’t post faces or any personal info (besides my own). The only voice that can be heard in the videos is mine. The videos do not contain footage that is against company/safety policy or reveals the company’s identity (no logos). The videos all take place at height in the canopy of the tree. Filming at work is not a distraction. The GoPro is easy, quick, and unobtrusive — it sits on your head, hit record, hit it again when you’re done. It does not interfere with productivity. This is my hobby and I love it, but I also love the company I work for. I want to know if A) they are at risk somehow by my posting YouTube videos (outside of work) and B) if I were fired for posting my videos, would that be unlawful termination? I can’t speak to whether or not they’re at risk by you posting your videos (that’s outside my area of expertise), but you absolutely could be legally fired for continuing to do it after they’ve told you to stop. You can be fired for doing anything after your employer tells you to stop, as long as it’s not activity that’s specifically legally protected (like unionizing or reporting harassment or discrimination). In fact, that’s generally true even if your employer doesn’t first tell you to stop; legally, they could fire you on the first strike with no warning (unless they’ve committed to following a different procedure in their own internal policies). And it’s really, really reasonable for them to want you to stop doing this, and they likely will fire you if you continue. You can’t overrule your boss on this just because you want to. So yeah, you should stop if you want to keep the job. – 2019 3. I need to fire a volunteer I am the president of a local industry society with an all-volunteer board of directors (some elected, some appointed). We currently have a very large project that one non-board volunteer eagerly agreed to lead. It was supposed to start last fall, but due to circumstances beyond her control, it’s just now getting started in May. We gathered up a dozen volunteers to help on the project, but lost momentum when we couldn’t get it off the ground. Now we’re having a kickoff meeting in a few weeks, and the volunteer still hasn’t contacted those people to let them know it’s happening now. I’ve followed up with her several times, and each time the response is “I’m working on it today” or “I’ll get it out this week.” I have spoken with this volunteer about ensuring she has the time to commit to this project, and she reassures me she does, though I’m not seeing any action on her part. Over the last 10 months I’ve given her several opportunities to gracefully bow out, but she doesn’t take me up on it. It’s very frustrating. I’m ready to find someone else to lead the project, but with the kickoff meeting a few weeks away, how do I fire her? Are you willing to give her one final chance or are you at the point where you need to remove her now? If you think she could have a final chance as long as it’s accompanied by a clear warning to her that there won’t be another, you could say this: “I know you’ve been really busy. We need X, Y, and Z to happen pretty urgently at this point. If you’re not able to do that by (date), I’m going to need to find someone else to lead the project. I hope you understand.” On the other hand, if you’re past the point where that makes sense, say it this way: “I really appreciate you trying to make this work with your schedule. Unfortunately this is time-sensitive and I know your other commitments have gotten in the way of the timelines we’ve talked about previously (like contacting volunteers by May 1, and then when that didn’t happen by May 10). At this point, I need to find someone else to lead the project. I hope you understand, and if your schedule does clear up, we’d of course welcome you participating in a different way.” (You may not want to say that last part, of course. It depends on what your dynamics are with volunteers and how obligated you feel to soften the message with them. You could also change it to “we could talk about you participating in a different way,” which makes it sound less like a sure thing.) – 2017 Read an update to this letter here. 4. Exclamation points in cover letters I have a question about the use of exclamation points in cover letters. Yes or no? I wrote a very compelling cover letter and used a total of three exclamation points (all appropriately) throughout the one-page document. I shared the cover letter with a former colleague. His feedback was that my cover letter “contained WAY too many exclamation points.” What’s your take? There is very little advice on the subject. There’s no hard and fast rule here because it really depends on the content of your letter, but in general I’d say that one or two exclamation marks are fine, but three is probably a little overboard (and I’d bet you could change one or two of them to periods without losing anything). Also, keep in mind that you want your text, not your punctuation, to do the heavy lifting when it comes to conveying tone. All that said, there are many enemies of exclamation points out there, some of whom believe they never belong in professional correspondence (I disagree), and if this was your colleague’s only piece of feedback on your cover letter, he may have such leanings. – 2016 5. People who show up very early for appointments What’s the best way to handle clients who arrive early for an appointment? I try to confirm the time with them first, make sure it’s on my calendar, and plan accordingly. Then my day gets thrown off when I get a call from Reception way before the client’s expected to show up. I don’t mind the 5- to 10-minute early bird, but some arrive as far as 45 minutes in advance. Some background: my company works to prepare people for entry or re-entry into the workforce, sometimes by addressing matters of professionalism (attire, conduct, etc.). Part of me feels like one of my duties is to demonstrate the importance of respecting another person’s schedule, and of maintaining a professional agreement (i.e., the meeting time). So when I get an early arrival, I typically stay at my desk (which is out of sight of Reception) and come out only 5-10 minutes before the scheduled time. This strategy, while doable, makes me feel like an entitled jerk for making clients wait so long, since I tend to have a lot of downtime and there’s usually no reason I can’t meet with a client the moment they decide to show up. Still, I don’t like feeling as though clients don’t respect my schedule and how I choose to fill it. I tend to want to conduct myself in a very black-and-white, right-vs.-wrong way, which I realize can work well for some jobs but tends to conflict with my current one, which is all about working with human beings and their many idiosyncrasies. Is it better to stand firm in cases like these, or cut clients some slack and focus on helping them in other aspects of my job? Arriving that early and expecting to be seen so far ahead of schedule is rude. I generally advise employers who encounter really early candidates to stick to the original meeting time (and even to feel comfortable sending people away if there’s no obvious place for them to wait), assuming that it would inconvenience them to do otherwise. You don’t have any obligation to see people outside the specific meeting time that you both agreed to. And certainly given your line of work, it makes sense to explain to your clients that they typically shouldn’t show up more than 5-10 minutes early to a job interview. But you can teach them that simply by saying it. If it genuinely makes no difference to you whether you see them early or not, I don’t think you need to teach the lesson by refusing to meet with people until the appointed time. It’s possible that in doing that you’d be making someone’s life harder than it needs to be; maybe they were hoping you’d be able to start early so that they can be on time to pick up their kid from daycare, or to catch a particular bus, or who knows what. You’re not obligated to start early — just like an employer isn’t — but I wouldn’t refuse to do it just on principle. – 2017 The post boss is pressuring me to microblade my eyebrows, people who show up very early for appointments, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

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Are you looking to streamline your marketing campaigns? Utilizing crucial template marketing calendars can greatly improve your planning and execution process. From organizing editorial content to scheduling social media posts, these tools help keep your strategies aligned and efficient. Each calendar serves a specific purpose, ensuring that you stay on track with your goals. Comprehending how to implement these templates can transform your marketing efforts, but there’s more to contemplate for successful integration. Key Takeaways Editorial and content marketing calendars enhance content organization and ensure alignment with marketing goals through effective tracking of publication dates and topics. Social media calendars improve engagement by scheduling posts at optimal times and coordinating seasonal campaigns for a cohesive brand strategy. SEO strategy calendars help align SEO activities with broader marketing objectives by tracking tasks, deadlines, and progress for accountability. Event marketing calendars organize logistics and marketing efforts for events, ensuring no details are overlooked and enhancing collaboration among stakeholders. Email marketing planners track individual campaigns and audience segments, providing insights for targeted communication and follow-up strategies to boost engagement. Editorial and Content Marketing Calendar Template An Editorial and Content Marketing Calendar Template is crucial for organizing your content strategy effectively. It tracks significant elements like publication dates, topics, authors, and promotion channels, streamlining your content creation and distribution process. By using a sample marketing calendar, you can visualize your schedule, ensuring that various content types—such as blog posts, videos, and eBooks—are well-represented in your strategy. This template additionally allows you to schedule email campaigns and automated sequences, enhancing the visibility of your content distribution efforts. In addition, it aids in tracking key metrics, helping you assess the engagement and effectiveness of different content pieces. Finally, a template marketing calendar promotes collaboration among team members, aligning your content strategies with overall marketing goals. Social Media Calendar Template A Social Media Calendar Template serves as an essential tool for marketers aiming to streamline their social media strategies across multiple platforms. This template helps you track content by organizing key elements like the date, platform, content type, concept, publish time, hashtags, and notes. By scheduling posts for ideal engagement times, you can improve audience interaction. Utilizing a Social Media Calendar permits teams to coordinate seasonal campaigns and contests, ensuring a cohesive strategy. Furthermore, it aids in managing influencer partnerships and tracking performance reports, giving you valuable insights into engagement metrics. Implementing this calendar increases accountability among team members by clearly assigning content responsibilities and deadlines, which contributes to a more effective marketing approach. SEO Strategy Calendar Template Creating an SEO Strategy Calendar Template is vital for effectively organizing and tracking your SEO activities, as it guarantees that all efforts align with your broader marketing objectives and deadlines. This template helps streamline your processes and guarantees project clarity. Here are four key components to include: Task Descriptions: Clearly outline what needs to be done. Project Owners: Assign specific team members to each task. Deadlines: Set clear completion dates to keep everyone accountable. Status and Notes: Track progress and document any important insights. Event Marketing Calendar Template When planning events, having a structured approach is vital for ensuring that all marketing initiatives align seamlessly with your objectives. An Event Marketing Calendar Template helps you organize and manage marketing efforts for webinars, conferences, and workshops, making sure no vital details are overlooked. This template typically includes fundamental elements like event name, date, location, marketing tasks, team responsibilities, and status updates, allowing for clear tracking and coordination. By utilizing this tool, you can effectively plan logistics, booth setups, and attendee engagement activities, maximizing your event’s impact. Moreover, the template can automatically update for the current year, enhancing its versatility for ongoing planning. With a visual representation of timelines, it encourages collaboration and keeps all stakeholders informed about upcoming marketing activities. Annual Marketing Strategy Calendar Template An Annual Marketing Strategy Calendar Template serves as a crucial tool for aligning your marketing efforts with your business goals throughout the year. This template provides a thorough overview of your marketing objectives, helping you stay focused. Key elements typically include: Month: Breakdown of activities planned for each month. Marketing Focus: Specific areas of concentration, like social media or product launches. Key Campaigns: Major initiatives scheduled for execution. Notable Milestones: Important dates to track progress and achievements. Email Marketing Planner Template An Email Marketing Planner Template helps you keep track of all your individual email campaigns by detailing campaign specifics like name, type, audience segment, send date, subject line, and content topics. It furthermore provides insights into audience segmentation, enabling targeted communication that can greatly improve engagement and conversion rates. Moreover, the template lays out follow-up strategies, ensuring you maximize audience interaction and maintain a clear line of communication throughout your marketing efforts. Campaign Specifics Tracking How do you guarantee your email marketing campaigns stay organized and effective? Using an Email Marketing Planner Template helps you track campaign specifics efficiently. This tool secures all vital details are at your fingertips, which is critical for campaign success. Here are four key components to include: Campaign Name: Clearly label each campaign to avoid confusion. Email Type: Specify if it’s a newsletter, promotion, or update. Send Date: Plan your timeline to maintain consistency. Subject Line and Content Topics: Outline these elements to improve engagement. Audience Segmentation Insights Maintaining organization in your email marketing campaigns sets the stage for effective audience engagement. The Email Marketing Planner Template helps you segment audiences based on demographics, behaviors, and preferences, allowing for personalized communication that greatly boosts engagement rates. By tracking specific audience segments, you can guarantee customized messages reach the right groups at peak times, enhancing open and click-through rates. The template includes fields for audience details, such as interests and past interactions, enabling you to refine targeting strategies to address each group’s unique needs. Regularly reviewing segmented data helps identify trends, allowing timely adjustments to your marketing strategies. Implementing segmentation can lead to a substantial increase in campaign performance, with targeted emails generating up to 760% more revenue than non-targeted ones. Follow-Up Strategies Implementation Effective follow-up strategies are crucial for maximizing the impact of your email marketing campaigns. Using an Email Marketing Planner Template can streamline this process, ensuring you maintain organized communication. Here are key elements to focus on: Campaign Details: Record campaign name, audience segment, and send dates. Subject Lines & Content: Align your messaging with audience needs for better engagement. Goals & KPIs: Include measurable objectives to evaluate campaign effectiveness. Follow-Up Actions: Designate follow-up dates and strategies to improve timely engagement. Importance and Organization of a Marketing Calendar When you implement a marketing calendar, you create an important tool that streamlines your team’s workflow and improves communication. This calendar serves as a central hub, visualizing upcoming due dates and activities, which boosts collaboration across departments like product, sales, and customer support. By organizing your marketing efforts—such as social media posts, emails, event planning, and product launches—you gain visibility that solidifies your overall strategy and execution. It reduces confusion and miscommunication, clearly defining tasks and deadlines for team members. Including elements like campaign goals, target personas, and responsible owners promotes accountability. Regular updates and maintenance are vital, as the calendar’s effectiveness relies on accuracy, so make it a habit to review and adjust weekly. Frequently Asked Questions What Should Be Included in a Marketing Calendar? A marketing calendar should include a clear time frame, whether daily, weekly, or monthly, to visualize upcoming tasks. You need to define specific goals that align with broader initiatives, list campaigns to identify marketing efforts, and clarify target personas for each activity. Include status updates like “Not started” or “In progress,” along with start and end dates. Assign task owners and add details like deliverable type and notes to improve organization and decision-making. Does Canva Have a Marketing Calendar? Yes, Canva does offer a marketing calendar. You can find various customizable templates that help you organize and plan your marketing campaigns effectively. These templates include crucial elements like dates, tasks, and visual layouts to improve usability. You can additionally collaborate with team members in real-time, making it easy to edit and share calendars. Plus, many of Canva’s templates are free, providing a cost-effective solution for streamlining your marketing efforts. What Are the Eight Steps to Creating a Successful Marketing Calendar? To create a successful marketing calendar, start by defining your goals and objectives, ensuring they align with your business strategies. Next, identify key dates and milestones, such as product launches and events. Organize the calendar with crucial fields like campaign names and responsible owners. Regularly update it to reflect changes, and periodically review its effectiveness to optimize future efforts based on performance insights. This structured approach helps maintain clarity and accountability within your team. What Does a Marketing Content Calendar Look Like? A marketing content calendar typically looks like a structured grid or spreadsheet, displaying dates, content topics, authors, and publication channels. You’ll often find sections for key metrics and notes, helping you track engagement and effectiveness. It organizes various content types—like blog posts, videos, and podcasts—ensuring you maintain consistent messaging. This calendar serves as a central hub, aligning your content strategies with overall marketing goals, making it easier to coordinate efforts across your team. Conclusion In summary, utilizing these seven crucial marketing calendar templates can greatly improve your campaign management. By organizing your editorial content, social media, SEO strategies, events, and email marketing in a structured manner, you’ll enhance collaboration and efficiency across your team. Each calendar serves a distinct purpose, ensuring that all marketing activities align with your overall strategy. Adopting these tools will enable you to make informed, data-driven decisions, eventually leading to more successful marketing outcomes. Image via Google Gemini This article, "7 Essential Template Marketing Calendars for Streamlined Campaigns" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Are you looking to streamline your marketing campaigns? Utilizing crucial template marketing calendars can greatly improve your planning and execution process. From organizing editorial content to scheduling social media posts, these tools help keep your strategies aligned and efficient. Each calendar serves a specific purpose, ensuring that you stay on track with your goals. Comprehending how to implement these templates can transform your marketing efforts, but there’s more to contemplate for successful integration. Key Takeaways Editorial and content marketing calendars enhance content organization and ensure alignment with marketing goals through effective tracking of publication dates and topics. Social media calendars improve engagement by scheduling posts at optimal times and coordinating seasonal campaigns for a cohesive brand strategy. SEO strategy calendars help align SEO activities with broader marketing objectives by tracking tasks, deadlines, and progress for accountability. Event marketing calendars organize logistics and marketing efforts for events, ensuring no details are overlooked and enhancing collaboration among stakeholders. Email marketing planners track individual campaigns and audience segments, providing insights for targeted communication and follow-up strategies to boost engagement. Editorial and Content Marketing Calendar Template An Editorial and Content Marketing Calendar Template is crucial for organizing your content strategy effectively. It tracks significant elements like publication dates, topics, authors, and promotion channels, streamlining your content creation and distribution process. By using a sample marketing calendar, you can visualize your schedule, ensuring that various content types—such as blog posts, videos, and eBooks—are well-represented in your strategy. This template additionally allows you to schedule email campaigns and automated sequences, enhancing the visibility of your content distribution efforts. In addition, it aids in tracking key metrics, helping you assess the engagement and effectiveness of different content pieces. Finally, a template marketing calendar promotes collaboration among team members, aligning your content strategies with overall marketing goals. Social Media Calendar Template A Social Media Calendar Template serves as an essential tool for marketers aiming to streamline their social media strategies across multiple platforms. This template helps you track content by organizing key elements like the date, platform, content type, concept, publish time, hashtags, and notes. By scheduling posts for ideal engagement times, you can improve audience interaction. Utilizing a Social Media Calendar permits teams to coordinate seasonal campaigns and contests, ensuring a cohesive strategy. Furthermore, it aids in managing influencer partnerships and tracking performance reports, giving you valuable insights into engagement metrics. Implementing this calendar increases accountability among team members by clearly assigning content responsibilities and deadlines, which contributes to a more effective marketing approach. SEO Strategy Calendar Template Creating an SEO Strategy Calendar Template is vital for effectively organizing and tracking your SEO activities, as it guarantees that all efforts align with your broader marketing objectives and deadlines. This template helps streamline your processes and guarantees project clarity. Here are four key components to include: Task Descriptions: Clearly outline what needs to be done. Project Owners: Assign specific team members to each task. Deadlines: Set clear completion dates to keep everyone accountable. Status and Notes: Track progress and document any important insights. Event Marketing Calendar Template When planning events, having a structured approach is vital for ensuring that all marketing initiatives align seamlessly with your objectives. An Event Marketing Calendar Template helps you organize and manage marketing efforts for webinars, conferences, and workshops, making sure no vital details are overlooked. This template typically includes fundamental elements like event name, date, location, marketing tasks, team responsibilities, and status updates, allowing for clear tracking and coordination. By utilizing this tool, you can effectively plan logistics, booth setups, and attendee engagement activities, maximizing your event’s impact. Moreover, the template can automatically update for the current year, enhancing its versatility for ongoing planning. With a visual representation of timelines, it encourages collaboration and keeps all stakeholders informed about upcoming marketing activities. Annual Marketing Strategy Calendar Template An Annual Marketing Strategy Calendar Template serves as a crucial tool for aligning your marketing efforts with your business goals throughout the year. This template provides a thorough overview of your marketing objectives, helping you stay focused. Key elements typically include: Month: Breakdown of activities planned for each month. Marketing Focus: Specific areas of concentration, like social media or product launches. Key Campaigns: Major initiatives scheduled for execution. Notable Milestones: Important dates to track progress and achievements. Email Marketing Planner Template An Email Marketing Planner Template helps you keep track of all your individual email campaigns by detailing campaign specifics like name, type, audience segment, send date, subject line, and content topics. It furthermore provides insights into audience segmentation, enabling targeted communication that can greatly improve engagement and conversion rates. Moreover, the template lays out follow-up strategies, ensuring you maximize audience interaction and maintain a clear line of communication throughout your marketing efforts. Campaign Specifics Tracking How do you guarantee your email marketing campaigns stay organized and effective? Using an Email Marketing Planner Template helps you track campaign specifics efficiently. This tool secures all vital details are at your fingertips, which is critical for campaign success. Here are four key components to include: Campaign Name: Clearly label each campaign to avoid confusion. Email Type: Specify if it’s a newsletter, promotion, or update. Send Date: Plan your timeline to maintain consistency. Subject Line and Content Topics: Outline these elements to improve engagement. Audience Segmentation Insights Maintaining organization in your email marketing campaigns sets the stage for effective audience engagement. The Email Marketing Planner Template helps you segment audiences based on demographics, behaviors, and preferences, allowing for personalized communication that greatly boosts engagement rates. By tracking specific audience segments, you can guarantee customized messages reach the right groups at peak times, enhancing open and click-through rates. The template includes fields for audience details, such as interests and past interactions, enabling you to refine targeting strategies to address each group’s unique needs. Regularly reviewing segmented data helps identify trends, allowing timely adjustments to your marketing strategies. Implementing segmentation can lead to a substantial increase in campaign performance, with targeted emails generating up to 760% more revenue than non-targeted ones. Follow-Up Strategies Implementation Effective follow-up strategies are crucial for maximizing the impact of your email marketing campaigns. Using an Email Marketing Planner Template can streamline this process, ensuring you maintain organized communication. Here are key elements to focus on: Campaign Details: Record campaign name, audience segment, and send dates. Subject Lines & Content: Align your messaging with audience needs for better engagement. Goals & KPIs: Include measurable objectives to evaluate campaign effectiveness. Follow-Up Actions: Designate follow-up dates and strategies to improve timely engagement. Importance and Organization of a Marketing Calendar When you implement a marketing calendar, you create an important tool that streamlines your team’s workflow and improves communication. This calendar serves as a central hub, visualizing upcoming due dates and activities, which boosts collaboration across departments like product, sales, and customer support. By organizing your marketing efforts—such as social media posts, emails, event planning, and product launches—you gain visibility that solidifies your overall strategy and execution. It reduces confusion and miscommunication, clearly defining tasks and deadlines for team members. Including elements like campaign goals, target personas, and responsible owners promotes accountability. Regular updates and maintenance are vital, as the calendar’s effectiveness relies on accuracy, so make it a habit to review and adjust weekly. Frequently Asked Questions What Should Be Included in a Marketing Calendar? A marketing calendar should include a clear time frame, whether daily, weekly, or monthly, to visualize upcoming tasks. You need to define specific goals that align with broader initiatives, list campaigns to identify marketing efforts, and clarify target personas for each activity. Include status updates like “Not started” or “In progress,” along with start and end dates. Assign task owners and add details like deliverable type and notes to improve organization and decision-making. Does Canva Have a Marketing Calendar? Yes, Canva does offer a marketing calendar. You can find various customizable templates that help you organize and plan your marketing campaigns effectively. These templates include crucial elements like dates, tasks, and visual layouts to improve usability. You can additionally collaborate with team members in real-time, making it easy to edit and share calendars. Plus, many of Canva’s templates are free, providing a cost-effective solution for streamlining your marketing efforts. What Are the Eight Steps to Creating a Successful Marketing Calendar? To create a successful marketing calendar, start by defining your goals and objectives, ensuring they align with your business strategies. Next, identify key dates and milestones, such as product launches and events. Organize the calendar with crucial fields like campaign names and responsible owners. Regularly update it to reflect changes, and periodically review its effectiveness to optimize future efforts based on performance insights. This structured approach helps maintain clarity and accountability within your team. What Does a Marketing Content Calendar Look Like? A marketing content calendar typically looks like a structured grid or spreadsheet, displaying dates, content topics, authors, and publication channels. You’ll often find sections for key metrics and notes, helping you track engagement and effectiveness. It organizes various content types—like blog posts, videos, and podcasts—ensuring you maintain consistent messaging. This calendar serves as a central hub, aligning your content strategies with overall marketing goals, making it easier to coordinate efforts across your team. Conclusion In summary, utilizing these seven crucial marketing calendar templates can greatly improve your campaign management. By organizing your editorial content, social media, SEO strategies, events, and email marketing in a structured manner, you’ll enhance collaboration and efficiency across your team. Each calendar serves a distinct purpose, ensuring that all marketing activities align with your overall strategy. Adopting these tools will enable you to make informed, data-driven decisions, eventually leading to more successful marketing outcomes. Image via Google Gemini This article, "7 Essential Template Marketing Calendars for Streamlined Campaigns" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article