What happens when three marketers, one graphic designer and a data scientist put forward the 2017 trends they are most looking forward to? You get inspired! We asked some of the Movio Crew to share their thoughts on the coming year's most exciting new, or revived, directions in their particular fields of expertise.
Holly Jones
Marketing Manager
Responsible for communication and automation. I love new tech, travelling, films and coffee.
Social and email
Most businesses now have a strong social presence across multiple platforms, as it is becoming increasingly important for connecting with customers, promoting content and offers, and boosting engagement. While featuring social buttons in email is nothing new, encouraging social sharing of the offers and content in your email is. Emails that have social sharing buttons can increase click through rates by 150%, and are an easy way to connect all channels. By harnessing this simple tool, you’ll be empowered to spread your content and message to a wider audience.
Interactive elements
2016 definitely saw a rise in the use of interactive elements in emails but gifs and videos look set to take center stage in 2017. Incorporating interactive elements into your email campaign makes for higher recipient engagement, and allows marketers to compress lots of information into a single piece of content. Revolving images, countdown timers and images or words which appear in a sequence are all exciting examples of how gifs can be utilized to boost engagement.
Ashleigh Davis
Content Publisher
Inspirational content gets me out of bed. Avid lover of books about other people's lives, and eating airplane food.
Video content
This year, all eyes are on the expected surge in video content. We have utilized video in the past with our AskMovio, Hackathon and product explainer posts, and it’s now becoming a vital avenue of regular communication. Video is a great way to connect with a modern audience, and it allows companies to humanize their brand in a way that written content often can’t. It grabs attention and creates an immersive experience that breaks the glass wall between a brand and its audience. According to Syndacast, 74% of all internet traffic this year will be to video content, and I can’t wait to see this in action!
Storytelling
Content for content's sake isn't welcome in 2017. If businesses wish to engage with their audience, they need to provide a story that their customers can relate to and feel a part of. Writing for people rather than SEO crawlers means creating a real connection between your audience and your brand based on their needs, experiences and emotions. By maintaining a strong, consistent narrative in all of the content you create, and switching between the equally valuable elements of informational and emotional, customers will be able to align themselves with your brand long-term.
Ingrid Grenar
Digital Marketing Manager
Online addict who loves making connections on social media, writing about movies and watching live comedy.
Chatbots
A trend that really took off in 2016, and one that could be very useful for the cinema industry’s customer experience, is Chatbots. These programs are able to convincingly simulate conversational ‘chat’ for the purposes of providing information and customer service. In December 2016 Odeon in the UK launched their chatbot to allow moviegoers to find cinemas and book tickets using Facebook Messenger. The capability of the AI technology means that your customer experience can be vastly improved relatively simply. A chatbot should have the tone, manner and personality of a human, provide conversational UX with its logic, content and overall experience as well as be value-orientated i.e be insightful, useful and solve a unique problem for your audience.
Mobile search and mobile optimization
The proliferation of mobile and tablet usage globally makes it essential to ensure that your company’s branded channels are optimized for all devices. Making sure your customers have a good experience whenever and wherever they are on your site should be a top priority in order to increase your sales and brand loyalty. Working on your page load speed will improve your website visitors experience, and this is even more important for mobile users than desktop users - MOZ have some good tips on how to achieve this. Design your website with all screen sizes in mind by considering easy navigation, optimized images and button sizes and spacing. As your site will have less screen space on mobile devices, be sure to optimize your titles, URLs and meta descriptions as concisely as possible.
Thaisa Da Silva
Graphic Designer
Passionate about all things design-related, music, movies, and travelling.
Minimalism
Minimalism has been around for almost as long as design itself, and it’s continuing its revival in 2017. The idea behind minimalism is to do more with less in order to communicate a strong and direct message. Typography, colors, contrast and whitespace are used in harmony to emphasize information and deliver great content. When the layout is clear, the message shines through, and is easily digestible for the reader. But don’t be fooled - the simplistic design of minimalism doesn’t mean boring. It’s bold, modern and memorable, and still allows for pockets of character, which aligns brilliantly with the Movio brand.
Personalized design
Now, more than ever, there’s a craving for content that provides real value to audiences. Conscious consumers are everywhere and design elements are having to reflect that shift in behavior. This is very exciting for Movio, as a big part of what we do is study consumer behavior and translate it into simple data. We endeavour to present valuable infographics and imagery to our audiences through the mediums of stellar graphic design and photography. In 2017 we will be exploring this further, and ensuring all customer-facing design is human-centric and relevant.
Karthik Subra
Data Scientist
Responsible for data analysis and product development. Avid moviegoer, love reading, and sports nut.
Quality data = Customer attention
2017 will see a shift in data collection priorities from quantity to quality. Making truly personalized movie recommendations requires high-quality data that incorporates multiple points of information about each individual, along with a rich viewing history. You can then use this ‘clean’ data to train sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) systems. These tools will result in the next generation of hyper-personalized marketing.
Advanced AI
'All things AI' will be the mantra for the data science world in the coming year, with a focus on simplification of human-machine interaction. For us, this means a lot more intelligence and automation in selecting target audiences, thereby reducing human effort and ensuring effective marketing campaigns. Audiences for upcoming movies will be predicted using rich datasets and advanced AI algorithms that will be trained to learn individual members’ tastes.