August Release: Enhancements on Enhancements

No lazy dog days of summer here.

Our product managers and engineers have been hard at work. This release has a ton going on. 

In fact... ⬅️ here's a picture of my reaction when I saw the number of awesome enhancements and upgrades some of the areas of the product got. Mind 🤯 blown.

Metadata's August updates will help you stay laser-focused on:

• eliminating technical and repetitive tasks,
• executing campaign experiments at scale, and
• optimizing campaigns to pipeline and revenue

Last month we floated in. This month let’s dance on into this release:

Table of contents: Enhancements Daily Email Digest Google Ads: Retargeting Audiences Social Channels: Lookalike Audiences Updates to Tags Cohort & Channel Reports: Filter by Goal UX Updates: Dashboard Widgets & New Menu Icons FYIs

Enhancements

Daily Email Digest

Enable the Daily Digest to stay on top of your budget pacing, plus see a daily snapshot of the paused experiments so that you can take action asap to fix paused campaigns or adjust the budget. 

If you get the urge to say, "thank you for being a friend" after getting a few of these - we get it. Like Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia, the daily digest email is a helpful friend you can count on for you and your team. (It would have been wrong if I didn't follow up dancing Betty White with a Golden Girls gif, right?)

Google Ads: Retargeting Audiences

It brings a tear to my eye when I think about how much Google Ads has grown up since we released the new channel on Metadata back in March. New this month, you can now use retargeting audiences created on Google campaigns. Exciting announcement? More. It's a game-changer.

Why is this so awesome? You can reduce wasted spend, drive more high-intent conversions and unlock broad match keywords using Google Retargeting audiences. LFG 🥳

Retargeting audiences like YouTube and website visitors will be displayed if it is available in your Google Account.

If you're ready to dive in, get the full scope here.

This awesome article covers:

1. Why Google Retargeting
2. Install the Google Ads Remarketing Tag
3. Review Google Ads Data Segments
4. Add Google Retargeting audiences to Metadata

Not using Google Ads in Metadata? What gives!
Sike, learn more about the channel here, here, and here. 

Social Channels: Lookalike Audiences

As a twin, I know a lot about the phrase "same, same but different." 👯 So, I was pumped to see the lookalike audiences for Facebook and LinkedIn on the platform.

This functionality is available under existing Retargeting audience snippets.

While the use cases for B2C are obvious, tackling lookalike audiences is the B2B world takes a little more time and thought. But don't worry, we got you with the best practices here. 

(ps - if you'd like me to make your day and send you a hilarious photo of my twin and me, email me. I promise you will cackle.)

Updates to Tags

Tags are one of the hottest (aka most requested) releases we've had.  Why? Because they make life so much easier and help you get organized fast.

The big enhancements to tags this month are: 

• Ability to easily remove (uncheck) tags selected on your assets
• Alert customers to the impact of deleting one tag
• Unlimited number of tags

Don't forget tags are available for ads, audiences, experiments, and offers. Here are some best practices to help you get started. 

Cohort & Channel Reports: Filter by Goal

New views! New views! This improvement for cohort and channel reports was a long time coming. We knew we needed to update filters with the option for goals to improve your experience and ability to slice and dice data. Now see how you're tracking towards goals with a single click.  Want to learn more about reports? Click here.

UX Updates: Dashboard Widgets & New Menu Icons

We weren't clueless about this makeover.  We got amazing feedback from some of our customers on this and adopted some UX best practices.

Here's the deets on our design updates:

• Menu Icons
  • We've removed the expanded view of our left side menu. Prepare yourself for a cleaner, simplified view. 
• Goals Widget on the Dashboard
  • Marketers are goal-getters, so the goals widget had to come onto Metadata's dashboard. You can stay up-to-date on the progress towards reaching your key business objectives. Need some inspo? We suggest tracking the MQLs generated, new pipeline created, or form conversion rates.
• Spend Widget on the Dashboard
  • With the new spend widget, you can easily understand how spend is distributed across the channels.

Want to be in on giving feedback? Join our customer feedback circle. 

FYIs

Get ready. There's a lot of action down here in the FYIs. Let's go:

Optimizer frequency warning

This warning = best practice. The lowest recommended frequency for optimizer is 24 hours. This call out will (🤞) help you think twice about set up with a high frequency, but *ultimately* the platform allows set up frequency < 24h if there is a need.

Pacing by Group - Super User Stats

New columns were added for the overall group analysis: Optimizer - ON/OFF Optimization Formula - CPC, CPL, MQL, Influenced Opps, Triggered Opps Optimizer Frequency Auto-Pause low budget - ON/OFF Auto-Pause Monthly Cap - ON/OFF Auto-restart Monthly Cap - On/OFF Total active experiments

Optimizer UX improvements

The group table now contains navigation to Total Experiments. The optimizer toggle was added to the group table to show groups that have Optimizer OFF/ON, and the setting can be easily changed directly from the table.

SFDC Accounts Audience (LinkedIn Native) - Unlimited filters in Criteria Builder

Now it is possible to add an unlimited amount of filters in Criteria Builder for Salesforce Accounts Audience (LinkedIn Native). This feature was available only for Salesforce Accounts and Salesforce Contacts Audiences before.

Audiences Table - Statuses Improvements

Improved MetaMatch counters channel statuses, tooltips:

MetaMatch “Company”/”Contact” counters are consistent with audience type and audience building process now:

• MetaMatch counters show numbers only when those are calculated by the platform (MetaMatch audiences, and for “Companies” only - CSV/SFDC/G2 + LinkedIn Native).
• In other cases, MetaMatch counters show ‘N/A’ status with a tooltip describing the reason.

Channel Statuses:

• Native audiences now have either “Active” or “Inactive” status (instead of “N/A” status).
• Audiences not uploaded to channels now have a “Not Pushed” status with an explicit tooltip that aggregates all the possible reasons for the “Not Pushed” status.

SFDC Relative date filtering

Salesforce Criteria Builder now supports recent period as the date format for the Salesforce fields. When you select field of the “date” type from the Salesforce it is possible to specify the date in one of the following ways: “Date Range” format allows to enter “From” - “To” dates; “Time Frame” format allows to enter “Last Number of days”. Note that “Last Number of Days” includes the current day and entered number of days before the current day.

Meta - Instagram account selector

• Easily select Instagram accounts associated with your business.
  • How to: Connect your Ad Channels (Meta branding)

DEMAND 2022 - OCT 20th

• Why this is awesome: we’re bringing you tactical presentations so you can run better campaigns. The kind that generates demand and revenue.
  
• Register here

DEMAND Community

• Why this is awesome: it's the only community for demand gen marketers, built by demand gen marketers.
  
• Join here

And, finally here are some knowledge base articles you may have missed:

• All about: e-Commerce
• How to: Configure UTM parameters
• How to: Submit test leads

That’s a wrap for August - see you next month!