Do you need a vacation out of office email strategy?

 Have you ever returned from vacation, where you were able to disconnect, recharge and rejuvenate, only to come back to a mountain of email that immediately elevated your stress to pre-vacation level? Summer is in full swing and most people are emerging from lockdown and planning some sort of time-off. And coming back from any meaningful amount of leave means you need to have a strategy to deal with email, especially since the advent of the pandemic brought a 50% increase in email volume. Here is is a great read on the topic. Some great advice in this quick read. Interesting observation by the author that the  the vast majority messages she received during her vacation didn't warrant direct response from her. Should we exclude people that have OOO messages on that indicate more than 2-3 days, unless they are critical to the conversation? Or may be if critical write them a separate note with delivery delayed to the day of their return? I don't know, but in any case, this is an area where I suspect corporate culture will evolve soon, because it is evident it is a stress inducer! #email #strategy #corporateculture #worklifebalance #vacationmode

Too much stimulus in the economy?

 The Conference Board  forecasted a record US Real GDP growth of 9.0 percent (annualized rate) in Q2 2021 and 6.6 percent (year-over-year) in 2021. Compare that to 2019 real GDP growth of 2.3 percent in 2019 and 2.9 percent in 2018. In 2020, the U.S. economy shrank by the largest amount in 74 years, as unemployment rate peaked at a historic high of 14.8% in April 2020 (as of June ’21 unemployment is down to 5.9%). 

University of Michigan Consumer sentiment has edged up to 85 from the pandemic low of 71.8 last April (still not quite back to the pre-pandemic high of 99.3 in Dec 2019).

This strength seems to be translating well to consumer spending. Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), after dropping 18% from Feb ’20 to April ’20, grew back ~28% (April ’20 to May ’21), erasing all of the declines to bring it back in line with its multiyear 3.5% annualized growth rate. The National Retail Federation revised its retail sales growth expectation to 10.5 - 13.5 percent (vs. 2020), to a range between $4.44 trillion and $4.56 trillion (up from 6.5 percent - 8.2 % expectation just 6 months back). US demand for goods and services is driving global economic recovery for the first time since 2005 (https://lnkd.in/e2KgbAX).

Of course, the sheer breadth and magnitude of the stimulus aid has directly impacted the strength of the GDP rebound in 2021. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (https://lnkd.in/erkXHc6), of the $5.9 trillion ($5.2 trillion net) of enacted COVID relief, $3.6 trillion was committed or disbursed over the one-year period beginning last April, resulting in a nominal disposable personal income (DPI) growth of 10.6 percent, or 2X the income growth of 5% per year over the prior three years. According to CRFB, absent COVID relief and its economic effects, personal income would have fallen by about 5 percent. For now, we can be content with a turbocharged US economy (and contend with the inflation risk!). #economy #growth #retailsector #markets #inflation #consumerspending #consumersentiment

Google's not extending FLoC origin trials as part of its Privacy Sandbox Cookieless future

As the #adtech universe digests Google's decision last month to give a reprieve to the third party cookie until 2023, here's some insight from #Chromium (https://lnkd.in/etrhDwm) into #FLoC Origin trials (part of Chrome #PrivacySandbox) that are ending tomorrow:
-33,872 browsing interest based Cohorts (FLoCIDs)
-2000 minimum number of qualifying Chrome users in a cohort

-735 minimum number sets of visited domains in a cohort. Content creator CafeMedia's AdThrive did an interesting analysis below on grouping the 34K FloCIDs into 34 sets of 1000 each (they call it KFLoCs) and mapped their top 10 content keywords. On the downside, this analysis shows fuzzy targetable interest patterns at best (foodie, outdoors, travel from a quick glance). Probably part of the reason Google apparently is not extending the trial, but instead are "hard at work on improving FLoC to incorporate the feedback we’ve heard from the community before advancing to further ecosystem testing". IMO, this doesn't mean advertisers should lift their foot off the #cookieless pedal, it is inevitable, given other major browsers have already done this. Personally, I think, if anything, the FLoC experiment highlights the need to hedge your bets with other approaches including building a #firstpartydata ecosystem and/or explore audience #identity consortiums. (https://lnkd.in/eQ3pGx7) #google #thirdpartycookies #audiencetargeting #addressability #cookieless 

WFH email explosion- time to retire your inbox?

 At an average minute per email (those that need a response needing more, others less), that meant 2 hours per day working through emails. With pandemic WFH, that has gone up by 50%. So you have to set aside up to 3 hours per day to deal with email. And you have to come up with strategies to block off this time especially If you have back to back meeting days. So I am all for simpler communications (and rules around email lengths- no more 3 page essays!). But project chat boards do need better organizing- love the ability to call out a specific person using @, but I should be able to filter by team member or topic.