Emojis in Subject Lines Give Open Rates a Boost, Brands Fare Far Better on Instagram than they Do on Facebook, and Other Social News from the Internet this Week
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5 min readMay 25, 2017
- Instagram gives brands and celebrities up to 400% more engagement than Facebook, according to Socialbakers. Looking at Facebook and Instagram data, and taking in over 144 billion engagements on both platforms, Socialbakers has identified a significant difference in participation rates across media, celebrities, entertainment, brands, and community accounts. The data shows that Facebook, unsurprisingly, is a news-heavy platform. Engagement with media accounts is 2X that of community groups, with celebrities and entertainment accounts taking third and fourth place, respectively. The shock result? Brands gain almost no engagement at all on the platform — faring between 10X and 12X worse than media organizations. Instagram, on the other hand, is most definitely not a news platform, with media coming last in the engagement stakes. Celebrities rule Instagram, and the engagement rates for celebrities on the photo and video sharing platform are 3.8X greater than on Facebook. Brands do better here, too, with 4X the engagement they get on Facebook. — Via VentureBeat.com
- “Email marketing firm Return Path tested the use of emojis in subject lines and found that when used appropriately, they can help to trigger higher response rates than traditional email, according to a press release about the report. Subject lines containing emojis had a higher read rate than comparable text-only subject lines in some cases, the report found. The company tested email campaigns throughout the year that used emojis to match holidays or seasonal events, such as the “lips” symbol for Valentine’s Day or the “gift box” icon for Mother’s Day. The “smiling poop” emoji got the highest read rate when used in email subject lines, Return Path found, whose report cautions that marketers need to consider brand identity in the choice of emojis for a campaign.Study: Certain emojis in email subject lines boost read rates” — Via Mobile Marketer
- “Instagram, the photo sharing service with 700 million users worldwide, added a Location Stories feature to its Explore page to let people see what’s happening in a specific area, TechCrunch reported. The Location Stories comes two months after Snapchat launched a Stories Search to find posts by location or topic. Instagram declined to comment about Location Stories or whether it was following in Snapchat’s trail, TechCrunch said. The location-based feature lets users see public posts from anyone at a specific spot. Those pictures may show how crowded an event is, what the weather is like or if there’s an emergency situation.” — Via Mobile Marketer
- “MailChimp launched Instagram Ad Campaigns on Monday, adding another marketing channel to its repertoire. MailChimp customers can now create, manage, and report on email, Facebook, and Instagram marketing campaigns from within the same dashboard. MailChimp has been transitioning from an email to multichannel marketing automation platform, and already offers Facebook support. MailChimp says that customers who create a Facebook ad using a MailChimp email list see an average return on investment 51% higher than customers who use interest-based targeting alone. John Foreman, vice president of product management at MailChimp, says Instagram helps small ecommerce business owners remain competitive against big-name retailers. Foreman says the key is specialty retail — “really unique products they want to demonstrate with strong images and brand messaging. All of that works super well on Instagram.” — Via MediaPost
- “Pinterest has long been seen as a laggard behind the giant platforms, but it’s slowly gaining traction with one key constituency: ad buyers. After a slow start in advertising, Pinterest has released a slew of new features over the past year — and a newly aggressive agency strategy. Its quick product roll-out, coupled with its emphasis on search and scale, has piqued the interest of agency executives. “Clients always saw Pinterest as the fourth player after Google, Facebook and Snapchat, but that’s not the case anymore,” said Alex Marsh, director of platform innovation at BBDO. “More clients are moving their money to Pinterest than ever before.” — The knock on Pinterest was that it lacked the scale and return of Google and Facebook, and the shiny newness of Snapchat. But Pinterest has impressed marketers with several analytics, targeting and ad options. Marketers can place a Pinterest conversion tag across their websites, which enables them to track existing users onto Pinterest and better target their ads. Pinterest Lens is a new visual search tool that detects objects in the real world and suggests a list of related items. While brands don’t have the option of surfacing their own products through this feature yet, marketers believe it is only a matter of time before Pinterest starts monetizing lenses this way. “While the camera is a focus even for Facebook and Snapchat, Lens is a very different product than anything that exists,” said Marsh. “There are clear applications for it in terms of e-commerce, beyond VR and AR.” — Via Digiday
- “Hearst is taking a cue from the explosive growth of lifestyle coverage and wellness culture by launching a new media vertical called Glo, a website designed to meet demand for health-related content. While competitors Condé Nast, Meredith and Rodale all have dedicated health and fitness publications (Self, Shape and Women’s Health, respectively), Glo will be Hearst’s first entirely health-centric brand. The brand, slated to launch this fall, was described as a “video-first millennial media brand” during Hearst’s NewFront’s presentation in New York City on Wednesday Night. Glo was inspired by an increase in web traffic to wellness content across all of Hearst’s publications, said Kate Lewis, svp and editorial director at Hearst Magazine Digital Media. Ultimately, Glo is aiming to tap an audience of women who exercise, but do so “without obsessiveness,” Lewis said. This deviates from a media company like Rodale, which, in addition to Women’s Health, owns Runner’s World, Prevention, Organic Life and Bicycling — all publications that cater to the more devout exerciser.” — Via Glossy
