Good morning,
Yesterday we asked if you prefer pen and paper or note-taking apps.
The results? Handwriting is alive and well, baby! Most of you said pen and paper, no question. A few said they use apps for convenience, but always keep a trusty notebook nearby.
Apparently, some habits are too good to digitize. We get it.
Meta shows you how to use Reels, Facebook drops YouTube channel just for creators, while YouTube wraps up the year
Short-form video gains are beefing up.
Meta shows you how to use them: Get Reels right, and the platform says your ads become 5.3x more likely to drive purchase intent.
Here’s what you should be doing, according to Meta:
- For brand campaigns, show your brand and main message within the first 5 seconds, use dynamic branding, and leverage speech and music together.
- For DR campaigns, feature your product more than once, tell your story with extra context, and experiment with native assets.
50% of Instagram’s engagement now lives in Reels, so brushing up on best practices will help you refine your strategy. Check out Meta’s full list of advice here.
Facebook wants creators back in the family: The platform just launched a YouTube channel dedicated to helping creators.
Here you can check tutorials on new features, content trends, and business success stories.
If you’re building creator partnerships, Facebook is trying to make itself more alluring. This could mean better tools, more engagement, and fresh opportunities for collaboration.
It’s giving Spotify Wrapped: YouTube has rolled out its first-ever year-end recap feature, complete with personalized summaries.
You’ll see highlights of your top channels, interests, and viewing habits across up to 12 insight cards. It’s starting in the US and will be expanding globally.
Year-end recaps are fun to share. Users love showcasing their personalized data, which means your content could receive free amplification if it appears in someone’s top moments.
Plus, YouTube’s public trend reports reveal which creators and topics actually resonated this year, giving you data for your 2026 content strategy.
What, it’s 2026 already? Oh man…
Shopify and TikTok Shop cashed in over the Cyber Weekend, Amazon plans to lower European seller fees next year
This year’s holiday feast was served up by shoppers with credit cards in hand and zero chill about their cart totals.
Forget the turkey: Merchants on Shopify racked up $14.6B in global sales, a 27% jump from last year.
Australian brand LSKD alone raked in over $10M in the first hour of its sale at peaks of 2,500 checkouts per minute.
The 15% increase in Australian consumer purchases and the nearly 95k merchants hitting record sales days prove that BFCM momentum is still growing.
TikTok Shop is no longer the underdog: The platform hit $500M in US sales over Black Friday weekend, a 5x jump from last year’s single-day haul.
Social commerce is set to cross $100B in 2026, and TikTok Shop is maturing fast. Major brands are now investing, which means the platform’s credibility and infrastructure are improving.
If you’ve been waiting for the proof in the TikTok Shop pudding, it’s here.
Amazon’s playing defense: The e-commerce giant is slashing fees for European sellers in 2026, cutting costs by an average of £0.15/€0.17 per unit sold.
The biggest reductions are hitting fashion, home goods, grocery, and pet products as it battles ultra-cheap competitors like Temu and Shein.
If you’re selling in Europe or advising clients who are, these fee cuts directly improve your margins. Lower fulfillment costs mean more room for competitive pricing.
Find global influencers in 48hrs — who actually follow the brief!
UGC delivers 4x higher CTRs and 50% lower CPC than traditional ads.
But trying to source and manage creators yourself is time-consuming.
Insense enables you to find brand-aligned creators within 48 hours through:
- Their vetted marketplace of 68K+ creators and micro-influencers from 35+ countries.
- Their influencer discovery tool provides access to 7M+ global creators to scale your influencer campaigns.
Major e-com brands use Insense to find their perfect creators to reach global audiences and run diverse collaborations from UGC to product seeding, influencer posting, Meta Partnership Ads, and TikTok Spark Ads.
- Quip saw an 85% influencer activation rate with product seeding
- Revolut partnered with 140+ creators for 350+ UGC assets
- Matys Health saw 12x increased reach through TikTok Spark Ads
Try Insense yourself.
Book a free strategy call by December 12th for $200 towards your first campaign.
The key to closing more sales? Cranking up the volume of your voice, apparently
A loud voice doesn’t mean a rude voice.
8,920 sales calls later, and Thomas McKinlay from Science Says suggests that the volume of your voice could be your most impactful feature.
They found that if you speak loudly you can speed up buying decisions, but you have to know when to dial it up and when to dial it down.
Don’t whisper to your customers: The study found that salespeople using a loud tone increased the likelihood of a purchase for both new and existing customers.
This doesn’t mean you should scream into your headset, but you should project confidence. A mousy voice suggests you don’t believe in the product, so why should they?
Sounding confident is especially important for new customers: New customers were 7.7% more likely to buy when the salesperson used a bright, energetic tone.
When a prospect doesn’t know you, they use your voice to judge your emotion. High energy signals passion, which captures attention and helps get a stranger over the line.
But don’t sound too excited when talking to your regulars: If you use that same high-energy voice with an existing client, they are actually 3% less likely to buy.
For current customers, a calm, stable tone works best.
Existing clients don’t want to listen to hype. They want competence. A calm, measured tone signals that you are in control and confident in what you are saying.
High energy can make you sound less competent to someone who already knows the product.
It’s the upbringing, too: Cultural reactions to volume vary. For example, US customers might love high energy, while Japanese customers might find high volume aggressive.
The core lesson stands. Match your energy to the relationship stage.
Hype the new guys, reassure the old guys. That’s the selling formula.
This “boring” channel still converts 58% of users and hasn’t stopped growing
We spent the last few weeks analyzing email marketing trends and data. And the verdict is in: Email is still one of the most profitable channels out there.
It generated $7.5B in 2020 alone. In 2027, email is projected to hit $17.9B.
And you don’t need to invest much effort to profit from it.
For example, data shows that welcome emails convert 58.26% of clickers into customers.
This is just one of the many email marketing insights you’ll find inside our latest The Big Email Marketing Report.
If you’re running ads for Christmas, try targeting parents
Who spends more: a single adult with a disposable income, or a parent terrified of disappointing their child on Christmas morning?
The data gives us a very clear answer.
While general adult spending on gifts is projected to dip slightly from $641 in 2024 to $628 in 2025, households with children are moving in the opposite direction.
Households with children plan to increase spending to $743, up from $710.
This divergence is critical. While the general population pulls back, parents are digging deeper into their pockets to ensure the holidays remain special.
Parents will sacrifice their own comfort if it means their kid gets that specific LEGO set. The “parental guilt” driver is a more powerful economic force than inflation.
Segment your email lists. If you can identify parents (based on past purchases of kids’ items), target them with premium, higher-ticket offers.
For everyone else, emphasize discounts.
AI EDUCATION: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Midjourney… So many names, but what’s actually useful for you in your work? There’s a newsletter called The Deep View that exists to sift through all the noise and get you up to speed on what’s actionable with AI products, and it’s free. Join 512,000+ subscribers with one click and let AI empower you.*
REDDIT: If the platform’s new Dynamic Products Ads feel like a head-scratcher, this guide can help. It contains performance tips from past campaigns, like character count, headline length impact, and targeting strategies. Reddit is the 5th most-visited US website, so it pays to know your way around.
THREADS: You can now tap the quote icon in the composer to instantly access all your saved and liked posts. This makes it much easier to reshare content that inspired you or build on an idea. The feature is live on iOS and rolling you to Android soon.
AI ADVERTISING: Users have spotted ad-like app recommendations in ChatGPT conversations, even for Pro subscribers. Commence backlash. OpenAI clarified that these are unpaid suggestions meant to enhance user experience, not advertise to them. Oookay.
REGULATIONS: Ireland’s digital regulator is investigating TikTok and LinkedIn for potentially violating EU rules by making it too difficult for users to report illegal content. If the platforms are found non-compliant with the Digital Services Act, they could face fines of up to 6% of their global annual revenues. Big ouch.
*This is a sponsored post.
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