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Facebook files a suit vs a cloaking service. Its accounts and users are now on the radar too
Yesterday, Facebook announced that it has charged a company that severely violated its policies.
What did they do exactly? The company provided cloaking software and services designed to circumvent automated review systems, with the ultimate goal being to run deceptive campaigns on Facebook and Instagram.
The company, whom Facebook mentions by name in this announcement, also targeted other technologies such as Google, Oath, WordPress and Shopify. And that name is LeadCloak, created by Basant Gajjar…
A lot of meat on the brazier, uh?
Facebook is targeting the users too: As per the announcement, Facebook isn’t just punishing the service. It’s also taking action against accounts that used the service as well as disabling their ads and accounts.
The Crew’s take? Well, new story, but same old lessons. BH marketing is a short term game. And now, it’s not only about dealing with blocked accounts. Facebook wants to take BH marketers in front of a judge. We’ll keep you updated with developments on this…
Final bit for those most curious, we’ve gotten our hands on the actual case that has been filed right here.
PS: This was first mentioned in our STACKED MARKETER Insiders group. If you want to get this breaking news fast, refer this newsletter to five friends and we’ll welcome you on board.
CRO
How’s your popup game?
It’s that man Matt Tanguay, once again making it into our daily briefing with his 10 mistakes to avoid with popups. Let’s have a look:
- Showing a popup before the content loads: Not only does Google penalize sites that do this, but it’s also awful for users. Do restaurants show you the bill before you even take a seat?
- Showing a popup right after the user logs into their account: The popup will be ignored because, if the user logged in, he probably has a clear plan of what he wants to do after login.
- Asking for an email address before the user interacts with your content: Same as the first point. Serve first, ask later.
- Showing a modal dialogue right after the user accesses a piece of content.
- Showing a modal overlay for GDPR and cookie notifications: If you can, use a small unobtrusive overlay panel at the bottom of the page instead.
- Showing multiple popups in a row: Show them one at a time or, even better, embed the information in a page instead of putting it in a popup.
We said 10, but that’s just six… Well, these were the most interesting points to us, but you can check the whole list to get more.
SPONSORED
📺 Let’s plan your weekend
Or at least, a small part of it.
What do we have in mind? Watching Netflix and baking pizzas is funny. But do not forget to feed your marketing brain as well. That’s why we are bringing you three episodes of the Stacked Marketing Show. Each one of a different traffic source.
What’s your pick?
- Lead-generation on push with IAmAttila – Episode here
- Going into Snap Ads with Van Oakes – Episode here
- All about Google Ads with Jim Banks – Episode here
We want to say sorry in advance because that intro song will hustle in your mind for the whole next week.
Understanding & interpreting email statistics
How do you interpret the data from your email campaigns? What can you do to fix data that’s not really converting the raw figures into meaningful information?
This post addresses these questions with a handy checklist focused around the three biggest areas of email statistics:
+ Low opens: 15% is the industry average. Anything below that is not a good sign. Three main areas to troubleshoot this issue are:
- Segmentation. This allows you to reach and communicate with your audience based on their behavior, preferences and demographics.
- Deliverability. Are your emails landing in the Inbox, Promotions or Spam folders? Your audience can’t open your emails if they aren’t even seeing them. Poor deliverability often keeps your open rates low. For example, a low open rate in Gmail but strong open rates for others usually means you have a deliverability issue. Improve this by setting higher standards for Gmail users included in your next campaign.
- Subject lines: Are you pulling them in or driving them away? If segmentation and deliverability are both okay, you could improve the results by experimenting with subject lines. Be self critical and check whether they sound intriguing rather than spammy.
+ Low clicks: There are two main areas to address with this:
- Does your content match your target audience? If your content fails to interest your target audience, low engagement will follow. Especially if you’re overpromising in your subject lines and under delivering in the content.
- Is there a clear CTA? Are you making it clear where your users should click, or is it hidden down below a wall of text? Maybe try reserving a special color that you use only for the CTA so that it catches the reader’s eye immediately.
+ Low conversions: This occurs when you have decent email opens but hardly any conversions.
- For the e-commerce industry, promos convert better than newsletters because they usually offer a coupon or some other time-limited reason to convert.
- A great email that takes users to a poorly designed landing page or one with an unclear click path will usually have low conversions.
- In fact, the greater the disparity between the quality of the email design and the quality of the web page design, the lower the conversions.
That’s about it for now! While Stacked Marketer is an informative news briefing and not into selling anything, we still deal with these things day in and day out. So, we understand how big a part these above factors play when looking at the end objective.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
- INSTAGRAM: Good, funny, cool, creative, cute or inspirational. These are the 24 best Instagram bios according to WordStream.
- FACEBOOK: Andrei Lunev shares the strategy he uses to create LLAs based on pixel events OR catalogue events.
- TWITTER: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey pledges $1B from his personal shares to assist in COVID-19 relief efforts.
- MANYCHAT: With this update, ManyChat makes it easier for its users to collect phone numbers on the website with its SMS Website Widget feature.
BRAIN TEASER
A very pretty thing am I, fluttering in the pale-blue sky. Delicate, fragile on the wing, indeed I am a pretty thing.
What am I?
You can find the solution by clicking here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
How tennis prepared for the pandemic…
Who had the vision or the foresight to gaze into a crystal ball and not just prepare for this pandemic, but also benefit from it?
Certainly not most of the Govts… it was Wimbledon.
Wimbledon has reportedly been shelling out $2M a year on pandemic insurance for the last 17 years, amounting to a total of $34M.
All this without any hope of getting anything in return.
But now it’s looking like a very strategic and well thought out decision.
As this year’s tournament stands cancelled due to Coronavirus, Wimbledon will reportedly receive $141M from the policy.
What would have been considered ridiculous six months ago looks like genius foresight now…