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SHOPIFY
“Reuniting commerce”
As stated by Shopify, the pandemic has accelerated nearly a decade’s worth of e-commerce evolution into just ninety days. Backing this claim up, the Shopify Reunite event came with sooo many new features and innovations.
Here the ones that look most interesting to us:
On the financial side:
- Shop Pay installments: This will allow buyers to pay in four equal instalments with no interest. The merchant will receive the full amount upfront from Shopify, with Shopify collecting the installments from the customer.
- Shopify Balance: This will include an account that gives you faster access to funds and helps track incoming and upcoming expenses.
Talking about sales:
- Integration with Google Shopping: The Google Shopping app will make it easier for merchants to list products (for free) on the Shopping tabs of Google.
- Custom FX: This allows you to sell globally and use different pricing strategies for different currencies.
What about shipping?
- Shopify Fulfillment Network: The company increased the volume of orders (10,000 per day) and SKUs (up to 2,000) for each merchant.
- Local pick up: The click and collect feature will allow customers to order online and collect their products in-store.
These are just a few tidbits. There have also been many updates regarding the backend of stores, online tipping and more. Read the entire thing here.
CONTENT MARKETING
Brand building: The right way
Nick Shackelford shared a Twitter thread about why brands should always be putting out deliberate content if their goal is to raise awareness and eventually drive more sales.
He bases his argument on three focal points:
+ Choosing the right channels. Depending on the kind of audience and demographic your business is catering to, here’s the platform break down from his experience:
- Facebook: A slightly older audience.
- Instagram: A mixed audience.
- Twitter: Adult audience.
- Pinterest: Adult audience and mostly women.
- TikTok: Very young audience.
- Snapchat: An evenly split audience.
So, ask yourself a question: How old is your audience and where are they buying from?
The answer to this will tell you which channel is right for you.
+ The communication. Nick has three personal brands and here’s how he reaches out to his audience depending on the services he offers:
Business: Structured Social – Agency.
Channels: Podcasts, FB, articles and word of mouth.
Business: Konstant Kreative – Advertising creatives production.
Channels: Podcasts, Twitter, white labeling and word of mouth.
Business: Geekout Edu – Education and live events.
Channels: Facebook, partnerships and word of mouth.
+ Content creation. He recommends podcasts, articles, short form copies and videos, which can be derived from one like Gary Vee does or created individually.
“Build the word of mouth and allow for your brand to carry you through.”
SPONSORED BY ADVIDI
The 4 fantastic affiliate verticals that have been proven to thrive in the pandemic
Things change quickly and the type of affiliate offers that work aren’t always the same.
Advidi is one of the networks that kept a close eye on what works and built a guide for offers that are working now, two months into the pandemic when lockdowns are starting to ease up and supply chains are up and running closer to their normal.
So whcm.wtaff.co/t/j-l-qthdyuy-l-kat are those offers? Let’s call the verticals The Fantastic Four:
Dating: People are craving social online interaction in their isolation, which is one of the reasons these dating offers continue to be their highest converting.
Advidi also accepts API traffic, so affiliates can create their own landing pages for higher conversion rates.
Finance: As unemployment rates rise and businesses struggle, people are looking for assistance, by signing up for credit cards, loans and grants.
Sweepstakes: They seem to be stable during such a turbulent time. Consumers can’t leave the house, so digital products and services are on the rise. CC Submit Sweepstake offers are bigger than ever.
Nutra: Without a surprise, people are ordering all sorts of nutrition and health related products to keep themselves as healthy, strong and fit as possible. These nutra offers are very popular with consumers at the moment.
Contact your Advidi affiliate manager right away. If you are not already an Advidi affiliate, sign up here.
Driving sales and creating deep connections using the inbox
From what we have seen so far, 2020 seems to be the year of rediscovery for emails and newsletters.
So, if you’re among those who picked up on this trend, this could be an interesting read for you.
Kendall Baker, ex-writer at The Hustle and founder of sports newsletter Sports Internet decided to share some nuggets after sending his 1,000th daily newsletter:
- A newsletter is not a blog post, nor a channel to distribute your content. It’s a letter.
- The most important component when building a community is consistency and cadence, and nothing is more consistent than sending a message to your readers at the same time every day.
- Once you nail consistency, the newsletter becomes part of readers’ daily habits. They find time to look for you in their inbox and focus on your message. You can’t do that on Instagram.
- The inbox is a private space. This helps you create a deeper relationship with your audience.
- On the “email is dying” buzz. This may be true for the old-school, traditional use of emails where people head to their desktop to check their emails. Now that everything happens on mobile, email is no different than texts.
But how do e-commerce businesses and such leverage newsletters?
First of all, you don’t need to write messages as content-heavy as Stacked Marketer or The Hustle.
You can go with 300-400 words messages speaking about your audience’s pain points, your story, how to use your products, industry gossip etc.
Email is not just for promo. Think about the power of having a bunch of people who, every day at the same time, open up their smartphones and look for you. And you’re not even paying for that.
Obviously you need a balanced mix of content and selling to build this habit but once you get their daily attention, no Facebook ban can stop you from making sales.
Speaking of newsletters, what are some of your favorites?
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
- TWITTER: Official confirmation from Twitter about a new feature that will let you restrict who can reply to your Tweets.
- PINTEREST: Announcing Shopping Spotlights, a new product recommendation tool which showcases selections of Pin products as chosen by fashion influencers and publishers.
- TWITTER: With podcast listenership on rise, Twitter is experimenting a new feature called “Hear and Now”, with audio tweets.
- TIKTOK: Digiday’s Lara O’Reilly had a closer look at how TikTok ranks its ads in the auction.
BRAIN TEASER
I may be simple, I may be complex; I may have a name, but no gender or sex; I am often a question, or statements as a setup; I tend to have an answer, ’til you find it I won’t let up. What am I?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Look who’s back, back again!
Is it the creator of Bitcoin? The fabled and mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto?
We don’t know for sure, but a chunk of BTC has been moved for the first time since it was mined way back in 2009.
As discovered by the blockchain monitor whale_alert over Twitter, around 40 BTCs have been featured in a transaction which were mined in the first month of Bitcoin‘s existence.
The movement caused the Twitter crowd to think that Satoshi is the author. However, there’s currently no proof linking the transaction to Nakamoto.
Whoever it is, it’s still good to see some movement there.
Consider that when these BTC were mined the price of them was effectively zero. Now it’s worth around $350k. Nice ROI…
Whoever is moving this cryptocurrency certainly has some very strong hands.
Good job!