I recently caught up with Marc Davison, co-founder of marketing, design and strategy firm 1000watt, to discuss the latest upgrade to Nudge, the company's marketing app. The latest version of the application is a significant upgrade that features Instagram integration.
The following is my Q-and-A with Davison:
Q: What is Nudge?
A: Nudge is a simple tap that gets someone's attention, which is what we call our marketing app because it enables our customers to work within certain boundaries to publish the perfect piece of truly compelling digital marketing.
Q: Version 2 was just released and includes a bunch of new features. Can you talk about the new features and the thought process that went into the upgrade?
A: The big feature is the Instagram API (application programming interface) integration that allows agents to import all their beautiful photos into Nudge as the centerpiece of their marketing.
For agents who do not have Instagram, we also included the ability to import photos from your desktop. We also added a WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") text editor so users can customize their copy. Finally, we redesigned the final Nudge output to be more colorful and beautiful and gave users the ability to customize many of the design features of the Nudge.
Our thought process is simple: build an app that helps users create beautiful, effective, compelling marketing on their own, in seconds.
Q: Platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram have changed the way real estate pros create and deliver marketing materials. Can you talk about the visual Web?
A: Let me share some simple but striking facts. Each day, about 300 million photos are uploaded daily to Facebook. Instagram has more than 100 million users who have shared more than 1 billion photos. And Pinterest, its traffic has doubled since May 2012.
It's now the fourth-largest source of traffic after Google, direct traffic and Facebook -- in that order. Essentially, pictures are everything on the Web. Since digital marketing is Web-based, if agents aren't incorporating gorgeous visual images into everything they are doing, I'd love to know why.
Q: I see a lot of email marketing in the real estate industry that is unfocused, busy and just plain ugly. Nudge isn't your traditional monthly newsletter. Can you discuss the anatomy of a well-designed email-marketing piece? I see brands such as Apple, Groupon, Threadless and others incorporate a big, bold headline, stunning image, copy and call to action.
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