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E-COMMERCE
Four Conversion Killers
Ever heard that saying: You are your own competition?
We are not talking about that motivational, inner game stuff. We are talking about business.
What we mean is: Before blaming your competitors, have a look inside your garden and try to catch what blocks your sales from rolling.
And according to Vincent Beima, these 4 elements could be the conversion killers. The bad weed to cut off from your garden:
- Wrongly timed pop-ups: If visitors stay on your site after the first 3-5 seconds, it means they’re interested in what you have to offer. So, don’t distract them by giving away YOUR BEST THING immediately.
- Overload: Don’t show everything you’ve got on ONE page. Narrow down your product offer to max 6 different versions per product listing page.
Plus, Vincent suggests maximizing your product offer to 4 categories: A budget version, a regular version, a premium version and an awesome version. What stands for awesome version? We have no idea, but we’ll let your creativity figure it out.
- Slow loading times: This isn’t a secret. A one-second delay means a loss of 7% in conversion rate. There is a lot of backend optimization possible even for a Shopify or WooCommerce store. Vincent advises using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for mobile traffic. And remember: a faster website means cheaper clicks from ad platforms!
- Make your funnels predictable: What does that mean? If your ads talk about one product, the landing page must talk about the same one product as well. Not that one and other 5. Don’t confuse your prospects. Another example is: Showing the shipping costs only when users are at the checkout stage. Don’t do that. Nobody likes those surprises.
So, those are the steps to make your garden greener! Cheers to your conversions!
SNAPCHAT
Snapchat releases Q4 Earnings
After Facebook and Amazon, Snapchat released its Q4 Report.
The company posted a narrower-than-expected loss as it managed to stabilize its base and prevent more users from fleeing.
And here’s how they fared.
Financial Highlights:
- Operating Cash Flow: $126M ($50M Y/Y and $6M QoQ increase).
- Free Cash Flow: $149M ($49M Y/Y and $10M Q/Q increase).
- Change in cash balance: $135M ($120M Y/Y and $20M Q/Q increase).
- Revenue: $390M (36% Y/Y and 31% Q/Q increase).
- Avg Rev per user: $2.09.
- Gross Margin: 48% increase.
Business Highlights:
- Daily Active Users (DAU) stayed at 186M.
- It reached over 70% of the total 13 – 34 year-old U.S. population.
- iOS DAU increased both Y/Y and Q/Q.
- 70% of users played with or viewed a Lens every day.
- 700M users played with or viewed Lenses on New Year’s Eve.
- 30% more people are now watching Publisher Stories and Shows every day compared to last year.
- Bitmoji Stories, a new cartoon starring Snapchatters and their friends, reached over 40M viewers in December.
Advertising Highlights:
- 6s non-skippable video ads called Commercials continued to perform well.
- The majority ad sales happened via Premium Content Targeting self-serve tool, by large brands and agencies.
- Collection Ads (4 products in a single Snap) drove over 2X ROAS compared to other formats.
- Product Catalogs were launched to offer a simple and scalable way for eCommerce businesses.
- The Snap Pixel saw over 600M purchase events.
For those of our affiliate marketers for whom Snap was like an underground Disneyland in 2018, you can find more details about their full report in the slides here.
Zuck giving you his powers. Being live without actually going live
That day has arrived. Finally, Zuck is giving us the possibility to delete texts on Messenger. Not only that! He even allows you to go live on FB while you keep doing your business. Magic?
Not really, just an upload.
Go further and see what FB news are about today.
Facebook Premiere
Do you want to host live videos on FB? But maybe, you are too shy? Then Facebook Premiere might help you.
Facebook Premiere allows you to upload pre-recorded videos to broadcast Live on your Facebook Page. Viewers are able to Like, Share and Comment in real time. Exactly like a Live Video. Except that while this live video is actually on, you can relax on the beach sipping a mojito. Sweet, uh?
Besides, it allows you to upload a well-crafted video with prepared content.
However, there are some conditions to the videos you can upload:
- You can’t upload videos already shared on FB.
- You can’t upload previous live videos.
- Movies that have previously been released on the Internet cannot be premiered.
- Syndicated series that have been previously released on the Internet may only premiere their first upload to Facebook.
- Previously premiered videos on Facebook cannot be premiered again.
Again. this feature gives you the ability to host a quality live video, eliminating the stress of being live.
It could be a great way to introduce yourself, launch a product or give information about your brand. If you’re interested and want to know more, here is the step by step process to schedule a Facebook Premiere.
New Messenger feature: Remove messages for everyone
Quite a long time ago, we announced that Facebook was going to give us the same super-power that Mark Zuckerberg himself has: deleting Messenger texts.
Starting yesterday, February 5, that power is officially in your hands too. So, if sending a wrong message, or sending the right message to the wrong people, gave you awkward moments in the past, today you have a reason to be happy!
SPONSORED
Affiliate-tailored tracking that WOW’ed the industry!
We had a look into what makes Binom so good that affiliates like Benjamin Yong, aka kokofai, Erik Gyepes and Servando Silva say it’s an absolute top-tier solution. Here’s what we found…
Reporting. This is the main thing affiliates care about and Binom knows it. They have a few epic features here:
- Custom columns. You can add your own formulas to calculate stuff, no need to export into a spreadsheet.
- Events. You can track scroll percentage on your lander, detect bots, and have this reported as an event.
- Exit-point tracking. If you have multiple CTAs on your lander, you can track each one individually.
- Filters. You can filter what info you see, just like in spreadsheets. So for example, the placements with 100%+ ROI that you want to whitelist.
Traffic loss and leads approval. Especially useful for COD offers, you can see the status of whether the conversion status is HOLD, REJECT or LEAD. No need to add custom conversions – but you can if you want to!
Domain flagging checks. Binom integrates with Google Safe Browsing API so you can instantly check if any of your domains got flagged.
Godlike customer support. Yeah, it’s the hardest to prove but when everyone is in awe about it, there’s a lot of truth in this claim. So there’s no need for any tech knowledge even for this self-hosted solution. Support has your back quickly!
There are many more, and you can check them in the reviews by kokofai, Servando or Erik.
And you can check Binom’s live demo right here. Test out those reporting features, they are super-useful!
Impressive. That’s the one word to describe Binom, at least in our opinion. It costs $69/month on a yearly license or $99/month on a monthly license. Just one plan , regardless of your volume. The team there will install the tracker for free in 20 minutes – no tech knowledge needed from you. The regular updating is also just one click away.
You can start a trial without any hassle (no CC needed) right now! And with the code WTAFF50, you get a one-month subscription at zero cost (instead of 14 days) and 50% off the second month.
Head over here to create your account!
Businesses Can Now Directly Schedule Videos to Instagram
Late last month, Instagram quietly updated its API to include direct Instagram video scheduling. Though not many people are aware as it was not announced publicly.
What does this mean for marketers?
- No more of those painful workarounds of getting mobile alerts from your social media management apps.
- Well, you don’t have to struggle with scheduling videos manually to Instagram, which is a tedious task, especially during odd-hours or on weekends.
Previously, the Instagram API was limited to scheduling single-image posts, not yet allowing to schedule videos or multi-image posts. Now, these tools – mainly social media management apps – can add the ability to schedule video posts to Instagram without having to use the “smartphone workaround”. Though there is still no way to schedule multi-image posts.
Yes, the video scheduling API is still available only to IMPs via the Content Publishing API beta program. Your favourite social media management apps should have the ability to support this feature by now or may do that anytime soon.
Not to forget, there are some strict guidelines you must follow for direct scheduling of videos on Instagram.
FROM THE CREW
Our journey, our future and our thoughts
We are out there, ladies and gents!
The WTAFF Crew has been quite active these days. And chances are you saw our traces outside your inbox!
Let’s start with yesterday’s Live in Depesh Mandalia’s FB Group, Facebook Ads Expert Academy group.
Manu and Depesh had a seat talking everything about digital marketing. What is working in the affiliate space right now. How Manu started his entrepreneurial journey. How this marketing magazine was born. How it grew from zero to 5K subscribers and continues to grow. And what to expect from WTAFF in the future.
But not just that. You might have seen us on the Adividi Blog too. Where Manu talked about the biggest challenges he had to overcome on his entrepreneurial path. The importance of balancing between being confident and cocky. Yep, it matters! And why problem-solving is a skill every entrepreneur must develop. Psst: he says that Google can help you with this.
Obviously, affiliate stuff isn’t missing: Who helped him in being successful with his first campaigns, how he sees the industry and the unfounded bad reputation of affiliates.
Well, settle down in your couch and make yourself comfortable. There is a lot to know about us!
YOUTUBE
Now buy YouTube Masthead Ads on CPM basis
For the uninitiated, YouTube Masthead Ads are those big, attention-grabbing banners that run at the top of YouTube’s Home feed.
Previously, these Mastheads were only available for purchase through its partner agencies. And you had to purchase it for a whole day on a cost-per-day buying terms.
YouTube is now testing to allow advertisers to buy these mastheads directly on a CPM basis.
Should you care about this?
- Well, YouTube Mastheads Ads are a high-impact placement. A coveted real estate for marketers looking for impactful brand awareness campaigns and consumer based product launches.
- Combine that with the ability to customize the audiences and being able to purchase them on a CPM basis.
- A test conducted by Google found Masthead Ads delivered an average lift of 92 percent for ad recall, and an average 46 percent lift for purchase intent.
- The watch-time for content discovered on YouTube’s home feed has grown 10X over the last three years.
- FYI, Masthead Ads were a key component of many brands’ Super Bowl strategy this year.
The only thing that doesn’t change about these ads is that they remain as a “reserved buy”, only available through a Google Ads rep.
SECURITY
How to keep your passwords safe
Unfortunately, password breaches are a common occurrence. Sometimes it hits you, without letting you notice it. But a new Chrome extension can help you stay safe.
Password Checkup, a Chrome extension, automatically checks if your passwords have been exposed in a data breach.
The extension also matches your login details, against a database of around 4B usernames and passwords. Warning you, if it finds a match.
Since Password Checkup relies on sending your confidential information to Google, the company is keen to emphasize that this is completely encrypted. So, there is no way even for Google to be able to see your passwords.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong-un lookalikes cause wild scenes in Hong Kong
“When I arrived at Hong Kong airport, I didn’t see any beautiful ladies, but now I realise that Jollibee is where they are all hidden.
If any drug lords are listening, I might look like him, but I’m not the president. So I will kill you, but don’t kill me.”
Do you guys recognize these inspirational public figures in the above picture? Or should we say, Jokers!
Well, we mean no disrespect. They changed the lives (read made the day) of many people and caused a huge public frenzy in a Filipino restaurant, this Sunday.
No, they didn’t sign a nuclear treaty.
They are Howard X and Cresencio Extreme, doppelgängers (LLAs in our marketing terms) of the Supreme Leader of North Korea and President of Philippines, respectively.
Watch the video here to witness holy-moly craziness-in-action yourself!
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