Monday, 30 September 2019

European early-stage VC firm ‘Project A’ on Europe’s startup scene taking the next step

Project A, the Berlin-based VC, just raised a new $200 million fund (€180 million) to continue backing European startups at Seed and Series A stage.

In addition, the firm — whose investments include WorldRemit, Catawiki, Voi and Uberall — announced it will now have a presence in London and Stockholm in order to put people on the ground in what it says are “two of its favorite ecosystems.”

What better time, therefore, to catch up with the team at Project A, where we talked investment thesis, why Stockholm and London, and the increasing interest in Europe from U.S. LPs and VCs. Other subjects we touched on include diversity in venture, and, of course, Brexit!

TechCrunch: You last raised a fund in 2016, totaling €140 million, what changes have you noticed since then with regards to the types of companies you are seeing and the European ecosystem as a whole?

Uwe Horstmann: Entrepreneurs definitely matured a lot over the last few years. We see more and more of serial founders who combine drive with experience delivering great results. We also noticed an increase in more tech / product-centric and in B2B models.

This doesn’t come as a surprise as the market for consumer-oriented models started developing much earlier and is now reaching its limits after a few years. Many entrepreneurs gained experience in the Old Economy or have been consulting companies for a few years, learned about the struggle with products and processes first-hand and developed solutions specifically tailored to the industry’s needs.

We also notice a rise in professionalism in company setups and a higher ambition level in founding teams. This is probably also due to a more professional angel and micro fund scene that has developed in Europe.

TC: I note that you have U.S. LPs in the new fund, which I think is a first for Project A, and more broadly we are seeing a lot more interest from U.S. VCs in Europe these days. Why do you think that is, and how does this change the competitive landscape for deal-flow and the ambition of European founders?

Thies Sander: Having our first U.S. LPs on board makes us proud. LPs have noticed that European VC returns have really picked up during recent fund cohorts.



Fiverr Launches New Architecture and Interior Design Categories

New Fiverr Design Categories

Fiverr recently released some new products designed  to meet the needs of commercial and residential building and design.  As a result, freelancers in the architecture, interior design and landscape design space can pair up with clients looking for their services.

Yan Chelly, Head of Verticals at Fiverr, explains:

“For our community of freelancers in the architecture and design space, this provides them with additional exposure to a high-intent, professional customer base,” he writes. “We are also seeing an increase in demand from our customers. The industry store provides them an easy one-stop-shop to access the talent and services they need.”

New Fiverr Design Categories

 The Architecture & Building Design Industry Store also has a focus on tech. Chelly point to the latest software tools like building information modeling (BIM).

“Specific services include floor plans and 2D drawings, architecture 3D models and renderings, virtual staging, and landscape planning and design,” he says.

The Rise of Technology and Online Tools

Chelly also explained how the rise of technology and online tools have drastically transformed architecture and design. This means modern design projects need to be completed efficiently and quickly.

“Fiverr’s architecture and building design store will give specialists who understand how to use these new technologies the opportunity to work with a global audience of high intent, professional customers,” he says.

The new store will allow people with these skills to serve millions of others and get additional income. Businesses and agencies focusing on architecture, construction and real estate will be able to tap into this on-demand talent base.

How IT Works

Chelly explains how to use the new features.

“Interior designers, building designers and more can tap into talent on-demand for help with both large and small projects they’re working on — whether they need 3D or 2D renderings, AutoCAD drawings, virtual staging and more,” he writes.

They just need to go to the store on the Fiverr site and search for what they’re looking for.  There are thousands of qualified profiles to search through. Clients only need to find the one that matches up with their needs.

Why This Matters to Small Businesses

Architecture and Interior Design technology and services have found a new home online and become more accessible. That means that professionals like architects can work for smaller firms and even start their own SMBs

So, small businesses and freelancers can meet in the new global talent pool created.

“On the other hand, it also offers them a new way to work and make money should they choose to offer their skills and talent on the Fiverr marketplace,” Chelly says.

He sees this new focus as the wave of the future for Fiverr.

“We will continue to open industry-specific stores as we see increased demand for services on our platform,” he says. “The goal is to create a relevant, one-stop-shop for all of the services and ideas they may need to help their business grow and compete.”

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, "Fiverr Launches New Architecture and Interior Design Categories" was first published on Small Business Trends



SmartNews’ head of product on how the news discovery app wants to free readers from filter bubbles

Since launching in the United States five years ago, SmartNews, the news aggregation app that recently hit unicorn status, has quietly built a reputation for presenting reliable information from a wide range of publishers. The company straddles two very different markets: the U.S. and its home country of Japan, where it is one of the leading news apps.

SmartNews wants readers to see it as a way to break out of their filter bubbles, says Jeannie Yang, its senior vice president of product, especially as the American presidential election heats up. For example, it recently launched a feature, called “News From All Sides,” that lets people see how media outlets from across the political spectrum are covering a specific topic.

The app is driven by machine-learning algorithms, but it also has an editorial team led by Rich Jaroslovsky, the first managing editor of WSJ.com and founder of the Online News Association. One of SmartNews’ goal is to surface news that its users might not seek out on their own, but it must balance that with audience retention in a market that is crowded with many ways to consume content online, including competing news aggregation apps, Facebook and Google Search.

In a wide-ranging interview with Extra Crunch, Yang talked about SmartNews’ place in the media ecosystem, creating recommendation algorithms that don’t reinforce biases, the difference between its Japanese and American users and the challenges of presenting political news in a highly polarized environment.

Catherine Shu: One of the reasons why SmartNews is interesting is because there are a lot of news aggregation apps in America, but there hasn’t been one huge breakout app like SmartNews is in Japan or Toutiao in China. But at the same time, there are obviously a lot of issues in the publishing and news industry in the United States that a good dominant news app might be able to help, ranging from monetization to fake news.

Jeannie Yang: I think that’s definitely a challenge for everybody in the U.S. With SmartNews, we really want to see how we can help create a healthier media ecosystem and actually have publishers thrive as well. SmartNews has such respect for the publishers and the industry and we want to be good partners, but also really understand the challenges of the business model, as well as the challenges for users and thinking of how we can create a healthier ecosystem.



Africa’s top mobile phone seller Transsion lists in Chinese IPO

Chinese mobile phone and device maker Transsion has listed in an IPO on Shanghai’s STAR Market, a Transsion spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. 

Headquartered in Shenzhen, Transsion is a top seller of smartphones in Africa under its Tecno brand. The company has also started to support venture funding of African startups.

Transsion issued 80 million A shares at an opening price of 35.15 yuan (≈ $5.00) to raise 2.8 billion yuan (or ≈ $394 million).

A shares are the common shares issued by mainland Chinese companies and are normally available for purchases only by mainland citizens. 

Transsion’s IPO prospectus is downloadable (in Chinese) and its STAR Market listing application is available on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s website.

STAR is the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s new Nasdaq-style board for tech stocks that went live in July with some 25 companies going public.

Transsion plans to spend 1.6 billion yuan (or $227 million) of its STAR Market raise on building more phone assembly hubs, and around 430 million yuan ($62 million) on research and development, including a mobile phone R&D center in Shanghai, a company spokesperson said.

To support its African sales network, Transsion maintains a manufacturing facility in Ethiopia. The company recently announced plans to build an industrial park and R&D facility in India for manufacture of phones to Africa.

The IPO comes after Transsion announced its intent to go public and filed its first docs with the Shanghai Stock Exchange in April.

Listing on STAR Market puts Transsion on China’s new exchange — seen as an extension of Beijing’s ambition to become a hub for tech startups to raise public capital. Chinese regulators lowered profitability requirements for the STAR Market, which means pre-profit ventures can list.

China Star Market Opening July 2019 1

Transsion’s IPO comes when the company is actually in the black. The firm generated 22.6 billion yuan ($3.29 billion) in revenue in 2018, up from 20 billion yuan a year earlier. Net profit for the year slid to 654 million yuan, down from 677 million yuan in 2017, according to the firm’s prospectus.

Transsion sold 124 million phones globally in 2018, per company data. In Africa, Transsion holds 54% of the feature phone market — through its brands Tecno, Infinix and Itel — and in smartphone sales is second to Samsung and before Huawei, according to International Data Corporation stats.

Transsion has R&D centers in Nigeria and Kenya and its sales network in Africa includes retail shops in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Egypt. The company also attracted attention for being one of the first known device makers to optimize its camera phones for African complexions.

On a 2019 research trip to Addis Ababa, TechCrunch learned the top entry-level Tecno smartphone was the W3, which lists for 3,600 Ethiopian Birr, or roughly $125.

In Africa, Transsion’s ability to build market share and find a sweet spot with consumers on price and features gives it prominence in the continent’s booming tech scene.

Africa already has strong mobile-phone penetration, but continues to undergo a conversion from basic USSD phones, to feature phones, to smartphones.

Smartphone adoption on the continent is low, at 34%, but expected to grow to 67% by 2025, according to GSMA.

This, added to an improving internet profile, is key to Africa’s tech scene. In top markets for VC and startup origination — such as Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa — thousands of ventures are building business models around mobile-based products and digital applications.

If Transsion’s IPO enables higher smartphone conversion on the continent, that could enable more startups and startup opportunities — from fintech to VOD apps.

Another interesting facet to Transsion’s IPO is its potential to create greater influence from China in African tech, in particular as the Shenzhen company moves more definitely toward venture investing.

In August, Transsion-funded Future Hub teamed up with Kenya’s Wapi Capital to source and fund early-stage African fintech startups.

China’s engagement with African startups has been light compared to China’s deal-making on infrastructure and commodities — further boosted in recent years as Beijing pushes its Belt and Road plan.

Transsion’s IPO is the second event this year — after Chinese owned Opera’s venture spending in Nigeria — to reflect greater Chinese influence and investment in the continent’s digital scene.

So in coming years, China could be less known for building roads and bridges in Africa and more for selling smartphones and providing VC for African startups.



Kickstarter darling EcoFlow Delta battery generator is not what it seems

The EcoFlow Delta is a new battery generator available on Kickstarter with incredible features claimed. Most are true, some are not.

Devices like the Delta offer incredible battery storage capacity. Designed for more than just recharging phones and tablets, these can run refrigerators, pumps, power tools and medical equipment. They’re great for emergencies, camping and general use where power is not available. Similar devices have been on the market for some years, so I was eager to verify EcoFlow’s claims.

The EcoFlow Delta can recharge from a wall outlet to 80% in an hour. It’s amazing. The GoalZero Yeti battery of a similar size takes 25 hours. This capability means the Delta can be used and then reused more than competitors.

The device is currently on Kickstarter, where it quickly acquired more than $2 million from over 2,000 backers. The device’s features listed on the Kickstarter page are clear, but after testing a pre-production unit, I found several of these advertised capabilities and features misleading or false.

The Delta is the latest product from EcoFlow. The company’s founder, Eli Harris, says it’s “The world’s strongest battery generator.” I found the Delta to be a competent battery generator with similar capabilities to competitors, but it’s hampered by loud fans.

In short, if you need a battery generator that can recharge much faster than others, the Delta is a great option. Otherwise, the GoalZero Yeti makes more sense for most people.

Battery generators are a safe and more portable option than their gas counterparts. There are no harmful fumes or fuel, allowing them to be used indoors, nearer the appliances or tools. Most often (though not with the Delta) they’re silent, too, making them perfect for a camping or hunting companion.

In real-world operation, this quick recharge time could come in handy. Say, on a construction site or in an emergency incident where power is still available, but out of reach of an extension cord — situations where loud gas generators are generally used. While the Delta is louder than other battery generators, it is not as loud as a gas generator.

The Delta battery comes packaged with a warning that the battery must be fully charged before use. I generally ignore warnings, but I followed this one and immediately plugged it in. Instantly, fans whirled to life and the screen popped on, displaying the current charge levels and how long it would take to get to 100%. The Delta was at 30% and would take 45 minutes to fully recharge. It worked as advertised, and 45 minutes later the battery was at 100%.

Recharging the Delta battery was a noisy affair. The fans are loud and continue to run after the battery is fully charged. Compared to a GoalZero Yeti, this was a shock. The Yeti is silent, where the Delta is not. I keep a Yeti 1400 in my basement, plugged in and ready to use. But with the Delta, even when the battery is fully charged, loud fans still run, presumably to keep the unit cool. EcoFlow says the shelf life on the Delta is over a year, where the GoalZero Yeti is six months. To me, I would rather have the battery constantly plugged into power so I know it’s ready to go when needed.

The Delta recharges without an AC power inverter (a power brick); it uses the same sort of cable as a desktop PC. The company says by passing through the inverter directly, the Delta can increase charging speed to more than 10 times the traditional AC to DC adapter cable. This also means it’s easier to replace a lost charging cable.

The Delta is much lighter than competing products and its design makes it easier to move. EcoFlow says it’s rugged, and it feels the part. Even my pre-production sample feels tough and ready to go to work. Large rubber pads keep the battery in place and the tough plastic feels more durable than competing products.

There are a handful of plugs and outlets around the device, including USB, USB-C and six AC outlets. It’s a lot, and similar in capacity to large gas generators. Most battery generators have much fewer AC outlets, though I’ve often supplemented the capability with small power strips.

IMG 0544
Kickstarter beware

The Delta is currently on Kickstarter for pre-order and exceeded its goal. I fear a good amount of backers will be upset to learn several notable advertised features are false or misleading.

The Delta is not silent. Under operation, either recharging a cell phone or running a power tool, loud fans run on both sides of the battery. These fans run when recharging the battery, too — even when the battery is fully charged. The Kickstarter page and video lists throughout that the Delta produces no noise.

ecoflow delta

These fans detract from the appeal of the Delta battery. They’re loud. You have to raise your voice to speak over them. Because of these fans, I wouldn’t take the Delta camping or use it in the backyard for a quiet get-together. During power outage situations, I wouldn’t want to sleep near it. But I would use it for power tools — like EcoFlow does in one of its demo videos.

Only one of the four videos on the Kickstarter page allows potential owners to hear the Delta battery. The third video on the page shows the battery powering a hammer drill. Six seconds into the video, the drill stops running, and the battery’s fans are audible.

There are a handful of competing batteries that operate without noisy fans. I’ve taken GoalZero’s Yeti batteries camping and they’re great despite their heft. They’re truly silent and can still recharge from solar panels and car batteries. I’ve used battery generators from Jackery, too, and those are also silent.

I spoke with EcoFlow CEO and founder Eli Harris during the run-up of this review. He was clear that EcoFlow’s main competitor is not other large batteries, but rather small gas generators available from Honda and others. And that makes a lot of sense. Those are the best-selling generators available, and widely used for emergency and convenience. These small generators are loud, and the EcoFlow Delta is quieter than those options while still offering most of the power capabilities.

When asked why the Kickstarter page is misleading, he said “that fallacy has never been called out” and he would check with his team about the use of “superlatives and blanket statements.” Three days later, the Kickstarter page still lists the false claims.

EcoFlow claims the Delta battery can run a variety of power tools, including drills, circular saws, power washers and welders. I found this capability hit or miss. Despite some tools being under the claimed amperage and wattage of the Delta battery, the battery wouldn’t power my small or large circular saw or power washer. EcoFlow also claims the battery can recharge a Tesla; it doesn’t recharge my Chevy Volt.

Many tools require extra power when starting up, and I found most of these surge requirements to exceed the capabilities of the Delta battery. This is the same with other batteries like the GoalZero Yeti. In fact, I couldn’t find one tool in my workshop that the Delta powered and the Yeti did not; they worked the same for me, and I have a lot of tools.

Don’t mistake what I’m saying. The EcoFlow Delta has impressive capabilities, mainly around its recharge capabilities. This makes it an attractive option for the right use. It’s compact and solid. It has a lot of outlets and is easy to move. This could be a lifesaver in emergency situations where a person still has access to power.

The Delta has some downsides just like other battery generators. It doesn’t offer a dramatic increase in electrical output over competitors, so don’t expect this battery to power larger devices. Don’t expect a silent operation, either. This massive battery is loud though; I admit, that’s a relative term. It’s louder than other battery generators but less loud than a gas generator.

I would rather have a silent battery generator that recharges slowly versus a noisy, fast-recharging battery. I use my battery generators camping and around the house when the power goes out. The Delta makes sense on a construction site or when providing power is priority. I just can’t get over the loud fans.



Badass millennial women are supercharging startup investments

Across the political, social and economic stage, women’s issues are finally receiving heightened attention and priority.

There are more women than ever seeking political officefunding for female-founded startups is reaching record levels (even if they still have a long way to go to reach gender parity); a sizable cohort of female-founded and led companies have achieved billion-dollar unicorn valuations; and several women-led companies, including PagerDutyThe RealReal, and Eventbrite, have entered the public markets with successful IPOs.

What’s driving so much positive change?

Clearly, broadened awareness of gender and power issues, largely due to #MeToo, as well as an increase in the number of female investors, thanks to groups like All Raise, are all contributing catalysts. In addition, women now outnumber men in collegea majority of American moms are in the workforce, and in 40 percent of households those women are the breadwinners. But it’s more than that; I believe that there’s a profound generational shift afloat, and that this first wave of female-led unicorns is just the tip of the NASDAQ iceberg.

Unlike previous generations who may have either looked at self-investment as self-indulgence or who simply didn’t have the resources or technology available to make supplementary investments in themselves, today’s badass millennial women are unapologetic about their desire to invest in their own success and well-being. Determined to succeed without compromising their values or physical and mental wellness, these uber-empowered millennial women are making viable a new generation of startups to help them realize their dreams and feel comfortable in their skin. I refer to this economic wave as She-conomy 2.0.

For decades now there have been tech companies, which I refer to as She-conomy 1.0, catering to traditional and homogeneous identities of women primarily as shoppers and caregivers. In contrast, these new modern She-conomy 2.0 brands address latent, historically unmet, often un-discussed and under-served needs that speak to the multitude of other facets of our identities.

These companies have less to do with what women buy and more to do with their willingness to invest in themselves — in their careers and in their physical and emotional health and well-being. They are seeking and are willing to pay for products and services that help them advance their careers, feel comfortable about their bodies, and provide the physical and emotional support they’re seeking.

The founding members of Allraise (Image courtesy of Allraise)

Women are taking control of their careers and supporting each other.

More than two decades ago, when I had my first child, I joined a mom’s group at Stanford Hospital. We were all working moms trying to juggle career and motherhood. It was a truly challenging time for each of us. The group provided such helpful support that we met every Monday evening for five years until our kids were in kindergarten. Why Mondays? Because Mondays are especially hard for working parents, marking yet another week in search of balance. We realized that meeting on Monday evenings provided us with the support we needed to make it through the work week. Perhaps even more critically, it gave us something about Mondays to look forward to.

There’s something incredibly empowering about experiencing a major transition like a new job or new parenthood as part of a cohort. Sheryl Sandberg famously sought to institutionalize this kind of support for working women with her non-profit Lean In. It has dramatically raised awareness around working women’s struggles. However, individual Lean In group leaders are usually volunteers running these sessions on the side while working and shouldering life’s endless list of other responsibilities.

Now a new generation of organizations is offering this support — for a fee. As for-profit organizations, they’re doing so in a scalable, consistent and reliable way. Women don’t have to worry about whether the organizer will be able to carve out time to orchestrate a meeting because doing so is the organizer’s job. ChiefDeclare, The Assembly*The Wing and The Riveter are all examples of companies that are growing and thriving because they’re offering valuable space, support and services that women are willing to pay for. Most of these organizations initially targeted millennials, but women of all generations are benefiting and participating.

A look inside one of The Riveter’s Seattle co-working spaces.

Women are changing the narrative around previously taboo topics and promoting inclusiveness and acceptance of oneself.

It wasn’t long ago that mannequins, much like cover models, only came in one size. Now mainstream brands not only sell broader offerings; they increasingly showcase them in magazines, catalogs, stores and the runway. For example, Nike’s flagship store in London featured both plus-sized mannequins and para-sport mannequins for people with physical and intellectual abilities, and Rhianna’s new inclusive lingerie line regularly presents both plus-size and pregnant models.

Millennials (like all of us) don’t want to feel shamed; they want to feel empowered and beautiful. Instead of settling for frumpy, ill-fitting clothing or outdated product design, millennials are using their social media megaphones to tell the market what they want. Traditional companies like Victoria’s Secret have moved at a molasses-like pace to evolve from treating women as objects of fantasy to celebrating their right to feel great about themselves. Their antiquated practices have created the opportunity for new startups to create brands centered on body positivity. Some companies are filling largely underserved market needs by catering exclusively to larger and specialty sizes, and others are addressing previously taboo topics like body hair, which also contribute strongly to feelings around body positivity. Eloquii offers extended clothing sizes, Ruby Ribbon* and Third Love provide a wide sizing range of under garments and bras, and Fur addresses body hair and grooming.

Women are dedicating more attention to their own health and relationships.

Self-help books have been around for ages, but tech is paving the way for a new generation of services to provide guidance and support that are more convenient and targeted. At the same time, women are increasingly willing to discuss health issues that were previously taboo, like menstruation, menopause and perimenopause, fertility, and depression. Advancements in technology are making health-related self-care more accessible from the convenience of our wristbands and phones. Meanwhile, people are spending a disproportionate amount of their wealth on health, making the entire healthcare industry ripe for disruption.

All of these factors are making femtech big business. Countless new companies are helping women take more active control of their sexual health, including birth control and STI testing (Pill Club and Nurx), period tracking (Flo Health), fertility and egg freezing (Kind Body and Carrot Fertility), menopause (RoryGenneve), postpartum depression and miscarriage (Maven) and even our relationships (Relish* and Bumble). In addition, no shortage of femtech companies are addressing period care, such as LolaCoraThe Flex CompanyThinx, and Sustain Natural.

These companies are only viable because so many women — beginning with millennials but expanding out to the rest of us — are now willing and able to invest in themselves. United across a shared mission of female empowerment and inclusivity, She-onomy 2.0 is making it more realistic than ever to empower us to advance our careers, feel good about ourselves and stay healthy. Hats off to the badass millennial women leading this charge; we’re all better off professionally, emotionally and even physically thanks to you!

*Denotes portfolio company for Trinity Ventures



WeWork withdraws its S-1 filing, will delay its IPO

WeWork’s parent organization The We Company just announced that it’s withdrawing the S-1 filing for its IPO.

The coworking company has had a turbulent month since the filing went public, around both the general state of its finances and the behavior of co-founder/CEO Adam Neumann.

As a result, Neumann stepped down down as CEO last week (he will continue to serve as non-executive chairman). In addition, the company is looking to focus on its core co-working business, which means it’s planning major layoffs and even reportedly looking to sell some of the companies it acquired over the last couple years — namely Managed by Q, Conductor and Meetup.

So it was widely expected that The We Company would delay its IPO Today, it made things official with the release of a statement from new co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham:

We have decided to postpone our IPO to focus on our core business, the fundamentals of which remain strong. We are as committed as ever to serving our members, enterprise customers, landlord partners, employees and shareholders. We have every intention to operate WeWork as a public company and look forward to revisiting the public equity markets in the future.



45% of Email Marketers Struggle for Inbox Attention

Email Marketing in 2019

The 2019 State of Email Marketing report reveals email is the most effective and widely used marketing channel available today. However, getting inbox attention still remains the biggest challenge for an email marketing campaign.

The report says 45% of its respondents find the competition for attention in the inbox a challenge. Considering 293.6 billion emails were sent daily in 2019 (Radicati Group), it is not surprising the inbox remains a considerable challenge. It also shows email is a proven marketing tool for businesses of all sizes.

It is especially important for small businesses because of the cost associated with email marketing. But in order to make it more effective, it requires accurate and useful data. This is what Tom Sather, Sr. Director of Research at Validity, points out in the press release.

Sather says marketers with clean lists will reach the inbox and experience higher email open rates, revenue, and increasing email effectiveness. Adding, “As email marketing continues to evolve, marketers must use the right mix of tactics and technology like list validation, inbox monitoring, and certification to continually improve results.”

This year’s report is based on research among B2C, B2B, and nonprofit marketing organizations. The online survey was carried out from June 27 through July 19, 2019 with the goal of understanding which email tactics marketers are using, how well they are working, and what challenges prevent greater success with email.

Email Marketing in 2019

Marketers have some clear objectives when they use email. And in this year’s survey communicating with customers was on top with 75% of the respondents. Building brand awareness is second with 64%, and communicating with prospects is in third place with 63%.

Rounding the top five are generating revenue (56%), capturing data on subscribers (28%) and other objectives at 4%.

Overall, B2C organizations say revenue generation is their top objective, while B2B firms value communicating with customers the most.

When it comes to the effectiveness of email, 43% say it is holding steady, with 28% seeing a slight increase and 9% a significant increase. But not everyone had a positive experience as 15% saw a slight decline, and for 5% the decline was significant.

How Can You Get More Opens?

According to the report, it requires the right email marketing tactics. Some of these tactics include email deliverability optimization, A/B testing, and reactivation campaigns. By using these methods, marketers are able to achieve higher open rates.

Even better, email personalization (72%), list management (63%), and subject line optimization (52%) deliver above-average open rates. The report shows marketers are using multiple strategies to achieve higher open rates. Compared to last year, marketers increased their use of email deliverability optimization (51%), A/B testing (50%), and reactivation campaigns (36%).

Is Email Still a Strong Marketing Tool?

The study says, yes. The bottom line is email continues to deliver results, this was the case for 4 in 5 or 80% of the respondents. They say email marketing is holding steady or increasing.

The report encourages marketers to strive to achieve high levels of email marketing effectiveness. This is because the cost of email is relatively low compared to other channels. And with prices being so low, the potential return on email marketing is often high.

The strategy for effective email marketing is to ensure emails have the highest possible inbox placement rate. You can make this happen by creating subject lines and constructing messages to generate as many clicks (conversions) as possible.

The final recommendation to help marketers execute this strategy is to set bold objectives, use the right tactics, maintain your list, optimize your subject lines, leverage technology, and know your subscribers.

You can download the 2019 State of Email Marketing Report here.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, "45% of Email Marketers Struggle for Inbox Attention" was first published on Small Business Trends



20 In Office Event Ideas for Your Small Business

20 Incredible In Office Event Ideas

Small business owners need their staff to bond with each other in order to ensure a good working relationship that benefits the company. They can achieve this with a variety of events and activities that are either free or inexpensive and can be hosted right there in the office itself.

In Office Event Ideas

Here are twenty of the best in office event ideas.

Two Truths and a Lie

A brilliant ice-breaking game that helps team members get to know each other better while having a bit of fun in the process. Form a circle and have each employee introduce themselves before revealing two true things and one false thing about themselves. Everybody else then has fun trying to figure out which of the three things is not true.

Suddenly Stories

Gather everyone together and start a story with three sentences, then say ‘suddenly…’. This is the cue for the next person to continue the story with their own three sentences, which they end with the word ‘suddenly…’ again. The next person then takes over and so on. This word game helps your staff innovate new content based on what came before as well as forcing them to be creative while the spotlight is on them.

Jigsaw Puzzle Race

Get several of the same jigsaw puzzles and split your staff into teams who must then race to complete the puzzle before their rival teams. It is an excellent activity for developing teamwork skills and helps focus their collective minds on a single task.

The Egg Drop Challenge

This team-building exercise has been gaining popularity in the last few years due to its quirkiness. Split your staff into teams who must use only simple materials such as sticky tape, cardboard rolls, paper and the like to create a structure around an uncooked egg that must protect it when dropped from a significant height.

What’s My Name?

This fun game has been parodied in a number of TV comedy shows, perhaps most notably in The Office where the well-meaning but idiotic Michael Scott makes an utter mess of his company’s diversity training day. Stick to celebrities from any era and write their names on paper that you stick to each other’s foreheads or backs and then try and figure out who is written on yours.

Sneak-a-Peek

This game is a test of your staff’s descriptive and communication skills as well as their creativity. An object or shape is made out of building blocks (such as Lego) and one member of each team gets to ‘sneak a peek’ at the structure before returning to their group and describing it to them so they can recreate it as accurately as possible.

Board Game Tournaments

Spend an afternoon engaging in some board game tournaments to relieve stress, reward employees for their hard work, and to help everybody either work together or compete in friendly fun. The low stakes of such games means everybody enjoys themselves, even when they lose!

Office Trivia Games

Expand everybody’s knowledge with a few rounds of general knowledge trivia as well as some specific categories that are relevant to your business or individual members of staff. Split into teams to challenge each other and work together to win points and maybe even a prize!

Catch Phrase

This game involves teams describing a phrase or thing without saying the name of it directly. It is a great way to get your employees working together while teaching them how to communicate with one another.

Office Improv Workshop

Improv or comedy workshops are another fun way to help your staff develop useful skills such as communication and concentration. These interactive experiences can be hosted right there in the office, and for a small fee you might be able to get an experienced improv expert to pop in and get the shenanigans underway.

Hero, Highlight and Hardship

Get each member of staff (including yourself and other management) to share a hero who influenced them, a special highlight of their life so far, and also a hardship that they endured and perhaps also had an influence on the person they are today. This game helps you all get to know other on a much deeper level, strengthening the bond between you and the respect you have for each other.

Strengths-Finding Workshops

Initiate a strengths-finding workshop so that your staff can learn more about their own strengths as well as those of their workmates. By helping them understand each other’s strengths as well as their own, they will become a much more effective team.

Concentration or Pairs

A simple card game where teams must work together to remember where matching pairs of the same symbol are in an arrangement of otherwise facedown identical cards.

Democratic Employee Awards

Instead of the boss deciding who is the employee of the month according to sales figures or other such stats, let the staff themselves vote. Other factors then come into play besides just cold hard numbers. It might be someone’s willingness to help others will see them rewarded, or perhaps another’s dedication to tasks that often get overlooked will finally get some recognition.

Active Shooter Training

While hopefully not something your staff will actually ever need, knowing that your workmates are equipped with the knowledge and ability to handle a terrible situation will strengthen their bond and the trust they have in each other.

Table Sports

A foosball or table tennis table are not too expensive and don’t take up much room, but they can be great for staff to unwind and you can even organize mini-tournaments to encourage fun interactions between staff members.

Themed Sales Day

Organize a themed sales day that alternates work tasks with games. Provide snacks to enhance the fun factor and perhaps even encourage fancy dress for the day. Award fun prizes for the teams or individuals that generate the best sales for that day.

Customized Jeopardy!

Come up with several questions in a variety of categories related to your business or industry and then form teams to compete by answering the questions.

Untangle the Human Knot

This team-bonding and problem-solving exercise involves everyone standing in a circle, putting their right hand in the air and grasping the hand of someone on the other side of the circle, then linking your left hand to someone else’s. Then the game is to untangle yourselves without letting go of each other’s hands. Sounds easy until you try it.

Group Grouping Challenge

Split everybody into smaller groups and then challenge them to sort themselves according to a variety of categories. Some of the categories can be easy such as height, age or hair length.

However, you can really help them get to know each other by including categories such as how many countries they have visited, how many music bands they have seen play live, how many siblings they have or how many sports teams they follow. The possibilities are quite literally endless.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, "20 In Office Event Ideas for Your Small Business" was first published on Small Business Trends



Businesses Take Up Slack as Governments Abandon Social Responsibility

Is Your Business Working for the Common Good?

It now seems that many governments around the world are backing off from social responsibility. They no longer try to alleviate all the social problems in their counties. However, with a decade of economic growth, for-profit companies are taking up the slack. They now take more responsibility to solve these perennial issues in addition to the products or services they traditionally sell.

On the Small Business Radio show this week, we speak with the “father” of modern marketing, Professor Philip Kotler. His 70th book, “Common Good”, examines how the cost and benefit analyses are now done by business and governments.

Professor Kotler contends that the U.S. was created on the notion of building a better society. He explains that “from the earliest times, the nation had reformers who fought for a better life for all. The ‘Common Good’ calls for favoring the choice that will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people…. Most social movements like women’s rights, civil rights, labor rights, and gay rights succeeded because they advanced the ‘Common Good’.”

More recently, Professor Kotler describes it has become a “cost-benefit analysis” when choosing government policies. He adds that “economists use this principle in welfare economics where they count how many people would benefit minus how many people would be hurt by a particular policy.” This is especially true in the areas of health care and higher education.

Is Your Business Working for the Common Good?

But Professor Kotler believes in three principles of the corporate bottom line: “Profit, People and Planet” and does not think that companies have done well by the last two. He adds “we treat the customer well, but what about the employees?” Professor Kotler insists there has been too much focus on just profit by leaders such as the economist, Milton Friedman and leading business schools. Now, he mentions that Marriott actually says the customer is number 2. (Employees are number 1!)

Increasingly, customers are looking for companies to support social issues that they care about in order to keep buying from them. For example, Microsoft, Google, Lego, Levi Strauss and Warby Parker all have large social giving programs. There is even international conferences that focus on how corporations can increase their social impact.

Professor Kotler emphasizes that he wrote his latest book to show how citizens, businesses, government agencies, and nonprofits can adopt policies that advance the ‘Common Good’. This book reviews all the social tools that reformers can use including discussion, debate, negotiation, education, social marketing, legal action, and protest action.

Professor Kotler also talks about how the next recession might affect this focus. Listen to the entire interview.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, "Businesses Take Up Slack as Governments Abandon Social Responsibility" was first published on Small Business Trends



Want to Grow Your Digital Marketing Agency? Try These 5 Hacks

5 Digital Marketing Agency Growth Hacks

Here’s the reality: most marketing agencies go nowhere. Even fewer achieve scale.

So should you be leveraging growth hacks for your digital agency?

The answer should be: Why wouldn’t you be trying to grow your digital agency?

The number one excuse that holds Donkey agencies back from the wonderful world of Unicorn Agency Land is that they “don’t want to be a big agency.” Some marketing agencies will claim that they are a boutique agency. This typically translates to: “My marketing agency is stuck, and I don’t know how to scale it.”

But why grow your digital agency at all?

Three Reasons to Grow your Digital Agency:

1. For money. You can make millions. You can speak at all the cool conferences. You can become an internet sensation.

2. For a challenge. Some people do things because, “why not?”

3. For a purpose. Create a valuable service that truly helps people. Participate in job creation that also helps people.

Agency Growth Hacks

And thus, we present our top 5 growth hacks for your digital agency.

Agency Growth Hack #1: Be a Little Bit Delusional!

Doesn’t the old saying go, “Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today?”

Sure, the quote might be about living life to the fullest rather than scaling a digital agency, but it can be applied the same way. If you can dream as if you’ll live forever, why can’t you dream as if you’ll develop the greatest digital agency in the world?

In order to grow a digital agency to the top, you need to project a bold vision of that agency. Take a look at my business plan for my first company, before I started MobileMonkey, from 2008:

5 Digital Marketing Agency Growth Hacks

The scale depicted by this plan shows the company’s total revenue increasing over one hundred times the starting amount in just three years. Talk about a lofty goal!

But, it worked.

The reason that having bold, bordering delusional, aspirations for your agency is the first step in scaling it is because of what these bold ideas attract (or rather, who).

A lot of people want to simply go to work, do the bare minimum to achieve their base goals, and go home. An agency with goals that show projection of over 100 times the starting revenue won’t attract these types of people. It’ll attract people that share those visions.

Having lofty goals for scaling your agency will attract the employees, partners, and investors needed to make those goals a reality.

Agency Growth Hack #2: Deploy the Customer Churn Detectors and Churn Busters!

In order to successfully grow your digital agency, you need to have customers. But not just any customers – you need customers with a long customer lifetime – meaning they stay customers for a while!

The longer the customer lifetime, the more profitable the customer is. If you are churning customers after just a couple months, your agency business is not going to grow.

You want to retain customers for at least a year; better yet, keep them for over a year! The best you can do is to keep a customer for 18 or more months. This means they are likely to stick with you for the long haul, and will be the most profitable.

 

The average customer lifetime for marketing services is around 13 months.

How can you predict customer churn?

There are several ways that you can predict customer churn, and, using those predictions, you can take action to eliminate the possibility beforehand!

The biggest predictor of customer churn is the type of client option that your customers choose. Customers that choose the month-to-month client option tend to churn at a rate two times higher than the rest, because it’s the path of least commitment.

So what’s the churn buster in this situation? Eliminate the path of least commitment!

If you eliminate the month-to-month client option, you’ll sell less customers, but the customers you do sell will stay on for longer and be more profitable in the end, thus helping you grow your agency.

The second biggest predictor of churn is the customer’s pre-existing monthly advertising budget. This can also be viewed as the customer’s pre-existing commitment to the marketing channel.

Usually, the higher the monthly advertising budget, the more the customer has bought into whatever form of marketing your agency provides. This makes the customers more committed and thus, better customers. The most committed quartile of customers will churn at half the rate of the bottom quartile.

So what’s the answer here? How do you bust this churn?

Go up market! If you focus on finding bigger customers (much bigger customers), you’ll likely have fewer customers, but the customers you do have will have much bigger budgets and be far more committed to the marketing channel. These will be better customers overall and result in a higher profit for your agency.

The third biggest predictor for customer churn is mis-set customer expectations, or when you can’t live up to sales promises.

The way to defeat this problem is to look at the average customer value based on the sales representative who sold it. This way, you’ll be able to see if one particular sales rep is causing customers to churn; then you can take action accordingly.

Another way to deal with this problem is to disincentivize selling bad clients. For example, if you don’t pay your commission checks until 30-60 days into a client engagement, your sales representatives will be less likely to promise things that can’t be provided in order to gain more customers.

The fourth biggest predictor of customer churn is the 90-day Net Promoter Scores.

Net promoter scores (NPS) come from those surveys that often get sent out with questions like “How likely are you to recommend us to your friends or colleagues?” The answer is usually a number chosen by the customer from 0-10.

As you can see from this chart, a customer is only a promoter if they rank your agency with a 9 or 10. If they rank you with a 7 or 8, they are simply passive. And if they rank you from 0-6, they are actually detractors.

The NPS is calculated by subtracting the percent of detractors from the percent of promoters.

A good NPS is anywhere from 20-30%. If it is any less than that, you’re in trouble.

There are ways to manage and manipulate your score. If your agency has a lot of detractors and a bad NPS, do interventions! This can mean anything from a discount on a product to upgrading a client account to a more senior sales representative.

In addition, if someone says they are likely to refer your agency, ask them for that referral. Referrals can go very far in helping your agency grow. If you have a good customer give you a good referral, you will likely get more good customers.

Some churn-busting tips…

You can benchmark customer churn by using client service representatives.

Customer satisfaction and retention metrics should be reviewed monthly. You can incentivize great service by tying around 15% of a client service representative’s compensation to tangible performance numbers in terms of customer service rankings.

5 Digital Marketing Agency Growth Hacks

Believe it or not, a client’s happiness and satisfaction with their service representative is slightly more tied to client retention than account performance. To ensure a lot of happy customers, and thus a scaling agency, focus on training your client service representatives!

Another churn-busting tip is to hire more salespeople.

Obviously, the more people working to sell, the more customers are gained. This accelerates your agency’s rate of growth and decreases the customer churn rate. Both of these things result in accelerating the rate of revenue growth for your agency!

Here’s another churn busting tip: up-sell adjacent marketing services to established customers.

If you have established customers, it’s easier to up-sell them additional services than it is to find new business.

This also makes it harder for them to churn, because your agency is taking over so many parts of their business!

And a last churn-busting tip for you: use Facebook Messenger marketing tactics.

Messaging apps have surpassed social networks in terms of monthly active users.

So why not utilize this technology for your marketing?

In fact, Facebook Messenger marketing gets 10-80 times better engagement than email marketing or Facebook Newsfeed ads.

You can even use Messenger in your Facebook Newsfeed ads. Instead of clicking a link that takes them to a website, a potential customer will click a link that takes them to Facebook Messenger. This also captures their contact info. You can send these potential customers into Facebook Messenger chatbots that you host, and bring them to surveys, registrations or reminders, or segmentation and drip campaigns.

Chatbots are very influential in marketing. They also provide a differentiated value to your agency over others. Talk about scaling!

You can use Facebook Messenger marketing to put together an easy pricing proposal, charting a monthly retainer fee for your services. Here’s an example:

 

Now…let’s get back to growth hacks for your digital agency!

Agency Growth Hack #3: Growth Marketing!

Your agency’s purpose might be to do the marketing for your customers, but you can’t forget to market yourself!

Put time and energy into marketing your own agency to help it grow.

You can do this in a number of ways. Use popular marketing methods to catch attention. This can mean content marketing, or something completely different! Perhaps you can offer some of your services for free for a select number of people. This gets your product out there and shows potential customers what you’re made of!

It’s like sales events at car dealerships – draw attention to your agency!

Agency Growth Hack #4: Recruiting to Grow your Agency!

A good agency becomes a good agency when it has good people working for it and supporting it. A major growth hack for digital agencies is to focus on how and who you are recruiting.

It is a good idea to determine how you will spend your agency’s money. A good financial ratio splits the money three ways. One third will go to general administrative costs and cost of customer acquisition, including marketing and sales. Another third will go towards the costs of goods sold, meaning the cost of the software, and the hiring of employees. And the final third will be the net profit; money that you can drop to the bottom line to cover taxes, etc.

Here’s three agency scaling hacks that will help you recruit the best candidates for your agency:

Have an internal training department for client service representatives. This will allow you to hire your service reps at a lower cost and train them to do the work.

Have employee non-compete agreements in employment documents and client contracts. This way, you can take action against employees that move to work for competitor agencies.

Have an amazing work culture. Having a beautiful office is a perk in its own right. But making sure people don’t want to leave your agency will mean your employees aren’t only there to do a job; they actually like where they work. This will lead to better performance. In addition, employees who genuinely love where they work will refer more good people to work for you.

And finally, the last marketing agency growth hack…

Agency Growth Hack #5: Cold Emailing!

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean spamming your customers and potential customers with email after email. It’s more about supplementing traditional inbound marketing with outbound prospecting.

It’s important to note that you should do your outbound prospecting from a different email domain.

So how do you go about cold emailing as a marketing agency growth hack?

First, get a list of emails. You can do this by manually searching for emails using tools like Hunter, if you happen to know the name of a person or company that you want to email. You can also buy lists from tools like ZoomInfo or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Or, you can use a Scraper like the Phantom Buster Facebook Group Extractor to collect information.

And then…bombs away!

5 Digital Marketing Agency Growth Hacks

Here’s a couple tips about cold emailing:

Use an email list verfier service. This will ensure that you have minimal deliverability issues and the majority of your emails actually get sent.

Warm up your email address. Do this by sending emails to friends and family. Tell them to engage with the emails!

Fly under the radar. Instead of going crazy and sending hundreds of emails a week, go slowly. Send around 10 or so emails a day. This makes engagement rates higher because people are less likely to feel spammed. There is software that will do this for you automatically.

Make emails more engaging. Low intent means low engagement rates (around 3 to 5 times lower, in fact!).

Use intent signals. Obviously you have to find ways to make your emails more engaging, and one easy way is by using intent signals. These include changes in management, a company moving, and similar things. This means you’ll send out fewer, but more targeted, emails that are more likely to be clicked on.

And

There’s 5 great growth hacks for digital agencies. Let’s recap this journey from Donkey Agency Land to Unicorn Agency Land:

1. PROJECT a bold vision for scaling your company.

2. DEPLOY the churn detectors and churn busters.

3. HACK your growth. Use the latest marketing strategies and outbound marketing.

4. EXPAND. Offer adjacent marketing services and charge more.

5. HIRE great employees. Train people yourself.

And finally…

6. ACCELERATE. Grow your agency as fast as possible to maximize exit valuation.

With those steps, you’ll be in Unicorn Agency Land. Your agency will be scaling faster than you can even keep track of, and you’ll achieve whatever it was that led you to leverage digital agency growth hacks in the first place.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, "Want to Grow Your Digital Marketing Agency? Try These 5 Hacks" was first published on Small Business Trends