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SNAPCHAT
Snapchat beats every forecast
If you remember, on April 15 we shared a forecast by eMarketer predicting Snpachat’s flat growth rate. According to that report, Snapchat will keep losing users until 2020, when the user base might stabilize again.
THEY. WERE. WRONG!
And Snapchat is proving it with numbers.
In fact, yesterday, the social app reported its earnings for the first-quarter of 2019 and things are completely opposite of what eMarketer predicted.
Let’s look at some stats:
- 190M daily active users.
- 4M more daily users compared to the previous quarter: Ah ha eMarketer…
- 80M active daily users in North America: up 1M from the previous quarter.
- $320 M quarterly revenue (+$89M on a yearly basis).
- Average revenue per user is $1.68: up from $1.21 of the previous year.
- Net loss: $310M: down by $75M on a yearly basis.
- Reaches 75 percent of 13 to 34-year-olds in the U.S.
- More than 450 premium content channels are now on Discover.
This report not only beats eMarketer forecast but also WallStreet’s expectations. In fact, shareholders expected $306.6M in revenue, which Snapchat beat by garnering a total of $320M.
And compared to last year, the stock price went up by more than 100%.
What’s behind Snap’s user growth? One obvious reason is Snapchat’s investment in the Android app. In fact, improving the app resulted in huge growth among Android users.
Another reason is the growth of publishers: Snapchat Discover has gone from a handful of publishers in 2015 to more than 450 “premium” channels globally.
Moreover, Snapchat is focused on its overseas content offering. This results in new audiences joining the app.
What about the revenue growth? They may never beat FB when it’s about advertising revenue and the number of advertisers. However, this year Snapchat did focus on improving its Ads Manager, making it easier to use than before.
And this probably attracted more ad-money too.
Well, Snapchat looks healthy and on a promising course. We hope this trend will stay positive.
What’s the lesson to be learned here? Don’t ever take forecasts too seriously. We might report them because sometimes they’re interesting. You should still exercise caution when acting based on such forecasts.
Cat Howell: What to do when your ads don’t get approved
One of the most frustrating things about FB Ads is seeing your ads disapproved with no clear reasons.
You don’t even get the chance to test if your funnel and copy is on point and will convert. You just get shut down.
However, when that happens, the onus is on you. You will have to edit your ads to make them compliant and have them running.
Trying to address this problem, Catherine Howell shared a video showing how she approaches things when her ads don’t get approved. And it could be very helpful especially if you’re at the starting point of your FB Ads journey.
Her process is very simple. You have to eliminate every potential threat changing one variable at a time: copy, image/video, landing page.
So, you analyze your copy, and if you think there’s something that could go against the policy, you change that. E.g. some words that FB doesn’t like.
If you changed your whole copy, and your ads still get disapproved, then obviously the ad copy is unlikely to be the issue.
Go further.
Analyze the image. Change what could go against policies. Still disapproved? Move to the landing page. Do this until your ads get approved.
This way, you’ll even discover what Facebook wants. And the next time, there are fewer chances your ads get disapproved.
If you want to see how Catherine Howell goes through the process, check the video here.
When you go through this process all the time, your “internal algorithm” will develop the intelligence to make you recognize when you’re creating an ad that goes against policy. And you’ll be less likely to launch non-complaint campaigns.
In order to consistently run good FB campaigns, you clearly have to be a “policy expert” as well, so better start learning!
SPONSORED
New Crypto Offer from Converting Team!
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It’s been the general trend in crypto prices to stay relatively low from their peak, with many so-called crashes. This offer is unique, giving your leads the chance to make a profit even if the crypto markets are crashing or just not heading to the moon! Nice little angle there, right?
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Google 74: New Chrome update
Yesterday, Google announced the release of Chrome 74, for desktop as well as mobile devices.
39 different security issues in the desktop version have been patched in the new version, including some with a high severity rating.
Any new features?
Support for Dark Mode: Initially, it will be released to a small number of users. Though, if you feel the itch, you can force dark mode using the -force-dark-mode shortcut.
- Windows users can right-click on the Chrome icon in the taskbar.
- Right-click on Chrome again.
- Select Properties.
- Add -force-dark-mode to the end of the Target field.
The target would look similar to this:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” -force-dark-mode.
Lazy Loading: Another feature in Chrome 74 is an experimental flag to enable lazy loading. This helps you to prioritize loading of visible content over non-visible content of a page.
It provides for a smoother user experience as the above the fold content loads way before the rest of it. So, users experience a faster load time. If some of your pages see a drop in performance, maybe have a look at how your page loads with this feature enabled.
Here’s how!
- Enter chrome://flags/#enable-lazy-image-loading in the browser’s address bar and set it to Enabled. This lazy loading defers the loading of images until the page is scrolled down near them.
- Enter chrome://flags/#enable-lazy-frame-loading and enable it as well. This lazy loading defers the loading of certain cross-origin frames until the page is scrolled down near them
- Restart Google Chrome.
Excited to try these features and the new dark mode? Yay or Nay?
Twitter’s Q1 revenue: +18% Y/Y
Twitter released its Q1 2019 earnings showing signs of more marketers joining their ad platform. So it’s not just Snap that’s been looking good!
Here are the key highlights:
- Total Revenue: $787M (18% increase Y/Y)
- Ad Revenue: $679M (18% increase Y/Y).
- Ad Engagements: 23% increase Y/Y.
- Cost per Engagements: 4% decrease.
- Monetized DAUs: 134M (14M increase Y/Y).
- Global Monthly Active users: 336M (6M decrease)
- US MAUs: 68M (1M decrease)
As per Twitter, video ads have seen great success and marketers’ budgets for video ads have seen a double-digit increase Y/Y.
The decline in the number of MAUs has been attributed to their efforts to reduce malicious activity on the service, including spam, malicious automation, and fake accounts.
Key Takeaways:
Their focus on improving the health of the platform by removing spam and abusive content makes it a platform safe for brands.
Increased ad engagements at reduced costs make it more attractive for marketers to test out their ad platform.
Wanna have a detailed look at the Q1’19 report, check it out here.
COPYWRITING
WTAFF’s biggest fails
A while ago, we shared the exact process The WTAFF Crew uses to come up with good subject lines every day, in our WTAFF Insider group. Only available for those who referred 5 marketers to WHAT THE AFF 😉
What’s so interesting?
Read here: According to MailChimp, the average email open rate in the Marketing and Advertising industry is 16%. WHAT THE AFF’s average open rate? 40%.
It’s 2.5 TIMES the average.
What are the reasons behind it? Delivering good content is one of the solid foundations to achieve high open rates. We also don’t have any lead magnet, so you generally sign up to actually read our content. However, what makes the rest of the difference is coming up with good subject lines.
How do we manage to come up with good performing subject lines every damned day? (Most days at least)
We’re gonna share with you our internal guidelines, but swear to keep opening these emails, OK? And you must use these new found powers for good! Let’s see now…
- Knowing your audience: Marketers are the hardest people to sell to. The usual headline formulas like “X tips/hacks/steps/secrets for doing ABC”, “How to {Desired Outcome}”, “Method/System That’s Helping {Blank} to {Blank}” do NOT work. We, marketers, use this stuff every day and we can’t really be tricked with our own jaggery! Some of those templates are still good headlines for SEO purposes though.
- Classic recipes don’t work. But what does attract marketers’ attention?It’s a combination of these kinds of topics:
- Fuckups: For example, a network that doesn’t pay commissions or a company that gets fined.
- Unusual success stories.
- Out of the box solutions to ordinary problems: Dropshipping without AliExpress and FB Ads, for example.
- Controversial topics: E.g. MundoMedia bankruptcy.
- Confidential: The leaked Google UX playbooks, for instance, drove high open rates.
- Industry personalities names: Having well-known industry names in the subject line always attract readers attention.
- Power words: Maybe the common formulas don’t work for marketers. But power words still do. So, after we come up with an acceptable subject line, we try to add 2-4 power words whenever possible.
- Numbers: This isn’t anything new. Numbers always catch our attention.
- Avoid spam words: Having a spam word in the subject line means killing the deliverability.
How does this look in practice? Well, here are some of our best subject lines from this first quarter:
March 4, Open rate: 45.66% : Fuckup + out of the box solution.
🔨 Nutra company faces $12.8M fine from FTC. 🎁 Insider hack: RSS + Zapier + Buffer = Free traffic with complete social media automation: Less than 2 hours/week.
January 23, Open rate: 45.44%: 2 Fuckups (fine and Go2Mobi update) + unusual success stories.
Google bankrupts agency with $750k fine! Scaling ad sets from $5/day to $15k/day. Go2Mobi update too.
January 22, Open rate: 44.26%: 2 fuckups + confidential.
$57M Google fine. Go2Mobi dead. Confidential Google Playbook for Lead Gen also leaked!
Here are our biggest fails:
February 25, Open rate: 34.81%:
New FB Ads Manager: 👍 or 👎 ? $6k experiment ⚗ : What is the best video ad format? 🧔 Nick Shack reveals creative team management process.
What was wrong here? Except using a well-known name (Nick Shackelford), there are no other concepts used from the recipe shared above: No fuckups, no controversial stories. No unusual success stories. Nada.
March 20, Open rate: 36.51%
Huge 🎁 114-actionable growth experiments to boost your online business. ⚠️ Evaluating FB outage: e-commerce store loses $10K in 24 hours. Many other businesses hit.
Here we fell into the trap of using exactly what we said doesn’t work: 114 experiments for doing X. The $10K loss would have been a nice fuckup but the sentence “Many other businesses hit” is too weak.
Now you know… You see both what our open rates are and how we try to tempt you into opening this email. Anything that surprises you?
PS: If you want to get this sort of analysis on what we do, how we do it and how we plan to improve it faster, all you have to do is refer 5 marketers to read WHAT THE AFF and you will get invited to our WHAT THE AFF Insiders group.
See you on the inside.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
“Hustlers gonna hustle”
How far can you go to get the domain name you love?
Rossi Lorathio Adams II, a student at Iowa University had big plans to be an internet entrepreneur.
He founded Snap States, a series of social media accounts that showcased footages of scantily clad women and pictures of partying college students. His catchphrase for his audience being “Do it for State!”
The accounts gathered 1.5M followers in no time.
And when he decided it was time to scale his business, he noticed a small roadblock. He owned the doit4state dot com domain and was lusting to acquire doitforstate dot com which was already registered and owned by someone else.
He found the address of the domain owner from GoDaddy’s Whois service and reached out to him to purchase the domain name. (Always use privacy protect on domain registrations!)
What followed was a series of refusals to sell the domain name, threats and warnings by our entrepreneur and finally, an attempt to get a hold of the domain name over gunpoint.
Things escalated and Adams now faces a maximum 20 years in prison and a $250k fine. All for a freaking domain name. A classic example of web gangsta!
There is a thin line between hustling and losing your mind over it. – Unknown
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