I hope you enjoyed some downtime with family and friends over the recent long weekend! How exciting (and odd if I’m being honest!) it is to have plans on the calendar and to be thinking months ahead again. The resources I’ve gathered for you this month are directly related to changes coming in the marketplace, which will require some technical and strategic planning and some exciting marketing automation events to put on your calendar.
As always, stay safe and be well,
– Karin Tracy, Pardot Practice Lead / VP Marketing
UPDATE: Google extends the end of third-party tracking
TL:DR – Google has extended the end-of-life date of third-party cookies until “the end of 2023”. There’s no harm in switching to first-party tracking well in advance, but the urgency has been somewhat decreased.
Want to learn more? Check out our blog about first- and third-party tracking and what changes are required for your Pardot instance.
EVENT: ParDreamin’ Presentation
I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be presenting at the second annual ParDreamin’, to be held virtually on October 27-29, 2021. I’ve blogged about how we worked closely with a client to create a Pardot form that, on submission, redirects users to one of 40 unique URLs depending on where the form was initially embedded. This presentation is based on that use case and will include other examples for supercharging Pardot forms with Javascript.
ParDreamin’ is free but does require registration. Learn more about the event and get it on your calendar!
BLOG: What’s So Important about Usability Testing
We just published this article about why usability testing is critical to the success of any digital initiative and that includes email marketing. Usability testing allows you to offer a digital experience that matches what external users expect based on their experience with other websites and apps.
Read on to learn what’s involved with usability testing and how your organization can introduce or enhance its efforts.
ARTICLE: Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection: What This Means for Email Marketers and How to Prepare Now
At the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple announced Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) for their Mail app to launch sometime between September and November of 2021. Litmus (an excellent email testing tool, built into Pardot Plus and above) posted a helpful article about what MPP really means and how your open rates will be skewed. The long and the short of it is, that while turning on MPP will be optional, users who do opt for it will be recorded as opening every email you send, even if they never actually do – MPP “opens” every received email first through a proxy server and the pixel that Pardot uses to track opens will be activated by this false “open”. Apple Mail (across iPhone, iPad, and Macs) accounted for 46% of email opens in 2020 so it’s clear that MPP has the potential to create a shift in the way marketers analyze open rates.
ON-DEMAND WEBINAR: Improve Your Email Engagement with a Conversational Email Strategy
Sponsored by the American Marketing Association, this on-demand webinar covers ways to bring a conversational tone and sense of warmth to your email marketing.
Learn how to turn your static emails conversational from Drift’s Sr. Director of Demand Generation Charm Bianchini. She’ll discuss how conversational email helps improve reply rates, scale outreach, and unlock email’s hidden potential.
Attend to learn how to:
Send emails that people actually want to open
Leverage proven strategies and tactics for writing conversational emails
Measure and optimize your conversational email results
ARTICLE: 6 creative ways brands are taking advantage of Instagram Stories
While not directly related to Pardot or email marketing, I found this association-focused (but entirely practical for nonprofits) article quite engaging.
Idea #4: Crowd-source your content creation using Instagram Stories Questions feature – now this is a clever way to receive direct feedback from your audience to inform future web and email content. Read on for other ideas around sharing ongoing education, thought leadership, and more.