A new year is upon us, and with it comes the potential to find new opportunities for engaging with audiences and providing them fun, engaging experiences. In fact, according to a consumer trends report from Attest, customers have a large appetite for content that brands seek to satiate. As you settle into the year by gauging how to realize your goals with tactical planning, a couple Monks weigh in on steps to take.

When planning for the new year, it’s good to begin by stepping back and reflecting on the past. 2018 has prompted consumers and brands alike to consider the role data plays in our lives, highlighting a need to use it responsibly to add real value to users’ lives. With a proliferation of voices constantly vying for our attention, it’s in this spirit that we ask brands to keep things simple moving into the new year. Why? Because simplicity allows you to better provide a consistent, relevant experience for your audience wherever they are.

Jouke Vuurmans, Global Executive Creative Director at MediaMonks puts it plainly: “People are blind to what’s not relevant to them, which makes it easy for them to tune it out.” But simplicity is key to leveraging data in smart ways, which in turn “leads to higher likelihood that people will like and do something—that interactivity makes it stick.”

This Year, Less is More

By now you’ve likely set your budget and strategic goals for the year and are developing a tactical plan to successfully meet them. Easier said than done, right? Let this be your first step: take a deep breath and adopt a simplified approach in how you distribute information to your audience. Whether it be the information that helps customers make a purchase or content that demonstrates the value and relevancy of a product to customers’ lives, simplicity is the key to unlocking sticky, memorable and delightful experiences that have impact and drive conversions.

First, what do we mean by simple? Designing simpler experiences means providing users with greater clarity of information that they can act on immediately. For example, we built a car scanner for Uber in 2017 that would immediately and automatically alert drives if their car qualified for one of Uber’s services as they pulled up to a gas pump. The scanner provides users with a clear message and, by offering a link to signup if cars qualify, a CTA whose value becomes obvious—all without requiring any input from the user. The goal is to meet the user at the right place and the right time with the right information.

Gain Trust Through Transparency

In the past year, data collection and personalization have gotten a bit of a bad rap. Anticipating this unease makes it all the more important that brands rethink the way they collect and use data to benefit the user. The problem, according to Jason Prohaska, Managing Director at MediaMonks NY, is that access and understanding of this data has become over-complicated for both brands and users alike.

Take media buy, for example: the promise to users is that handing over data will result in more useful and valuable content for them—but it’s hard for brands to access that data in planning their media buys, providing less-than-stellar results for everyone. “What we do well is help brands navigate this challenge through programmatic solutions to provide small moments,” says Prohaska, “little bits of info applied properly to provide tremendous value.”

A new year means new challenges and opportunities.

Let’s look at one such moment. Taking inspiration from the trend of using smartphone cameras as mirrors for applying makeup, beauty brand Ulta wanted to make one of their own that could help add product relevance to users. Our solution, made in partnership with Google, is the Moxi Mirror. The smart mirror app scans the user’s face before providing them with a personalized stream of beauty content. Because they can access the mirror while viewing the content, users can apply their new know-how while applying their makeup.

Setting the Foundation for Personalization

The user experience detailed above is simple, though the tech under the hood may be a bit complicated for some organizations to design for. While everyone can see the value in personalization, the under-the-hood requirements often intimidates. But “personalization doesn’t need to be really complex to make a huge impact,” says Vuurmans. “You could create just three different segments for your audience and conversion will already improve.”

The first step to tactical planning for simpler user experiences aided by AI is to open up your strategy to different types of messaging and methods for distributing them. The singular creative thought behind your brand or campaign should be conceived as a platform from which related ideas can thrive—different ideas and messages you can tailor to segments.

When planning or distributing your content, ask yourself: “What is the key information, and how are we tapping ad tech to solve that loop?” The second question can be a bit trickier to answer—but help is available for brands who need help making that next step. “Our focus at MediaMonks is largely on the user experience and value proposition,” says Prohaska, “then bringing the best out of ad tech on behalf of brand initiatives and UX, evolving the bad and old into new hotness that is more valuable to our partners.”

By keeping informed about what messaging works on a per-audience and per-channel basis, you can provide fun and simple, intuitive experiences across channels that drive conversions. This makes all the difference between content that annoys versus content users enjoy, helping you achieve your goals reaching into the new year with a stronger brand-customer relationship.

An RFP shouldn’t read like a mail-in order. Instead, the most successful ones strive to foster strategic communication between clients and their prospects.

You finished writing your RFP and you’re ready to find the partner who can tick all the boxes on your list of deliverables. But rather than simply list out needs, an RFP designed for success should foster communication and collaboration between client and partner. Before you send out yours, try to include the details below to ensure your partner clearly understands your goals—and can provide some extra help in realizing them if need be.

Get a sense of the entire scope of project deliverables.

When envisioning your project and drafting up the RFP, don’t focus so much on the big things that you forget the little ones, too. A strong campaign includes several different materials, which can include social media assets, gifs/video, copywriting and more, so take some time to list out all the ones you’ll want from production. Otherwise, you might find yourself scrambling to make up for missing campaign materials later. On a related note, you might include a list of deliverables that are excluded from the scope of your project (for example, concept art) for extra clarity.

If you don’t have a handle on all the deliverables or a roadmap to your goal, that’s fine; that’s what partners are for, and they can help you find your answers. If you’re eyeing some partners already, see if any offer workshops to help clients strategize and realize their goals. This can also aid you in making a case for your brand and project in your RFP’s value proposition.

Include details on life after launch.

Something your RFP shouldn’t overlook is some detail on the life of your project post-launch. This goes beyond a simple warranty agreement, which focuses on fixing technical bugs or issues for a period past launch. If the project will need continuous updates into the future, ensure your prospective partner is open to collaborating a handoff procedure, which might impose technical limitations on them or require they draft up additional documentation for your team.

It’s also useful to detail if, and how, your campaign fits within an overall strategy. While a high-profile campaign is certainly nice for causing a stir and generating lots of excitement, a “one-and-done” approach no longer fits the bill for today’s media landscape. “The big idea is great and necessary,” says Joe Olsen, SVP of Growth at MediaMonks, “but the ability to deliver a personalized experience across different channels is both the challenge and opportunity that brands face today.”

If your project serves as catalyst for a larger overall campaign, include that strategy within your RFP. A good partner will help you ensure your messaging aligns across projects and will help you realize those goals.

Don’t be afraid to ask for advice.

Some businesses bite off more than they can chew when developing campaign goals, resulting in systems or platforms that aren’t actually sustainable. Eager agencies will deliver on whatever the client asks for regardless of whether the solution fits the client’s size or track record. For example, they might provide a state-of-the-art CRM for a client who seeks one, only for the client to discover it’s too complex for them to use efficiently.

Ideally, your chosen partner will be able to offer their point of view to help you find the best-fit solution—even if that means helping you grow your ecosystem over time. In fact, partners are experts in their field, so if you need help with a specific industry, technology or platform, don’t hesitate to ask for their professional opinion on how to approach something.

When clients write their need in an RFP with greater transparency, it helps prospects understand their needs and limitations. Such a proactive approach helps clients get much more value out of the relationship. And speaking of communication…

Have a communication plan to deal with unexpected issues.

The chance of your project going off-track isn’t too high, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be proactive in lowering the risk. One of the most common issues that clients and their partners run into is an unexpected holiday that puts things to a halt—although this is easily avoided by including a detailed calendar in your RFP.

Team turnover is sometimes an issue with longer-term projects, whether it be a manager switching roles or a developer moving onto another project. But this isn’t much of an issue for larger companies who have resources to spare, so it’s useful to request team or organization size.

Setting up a clear communications plan is a great way to avoid issues over the course of a long-term project, and an RFP is the perfect place to lay out any and all your needs. By keeping the four points above in mind, you can add a level of detail to your RFP’s that better show partners what you need—and will make it easier for you to assess who’s fit for the job.