TIKTOK
TikTok, meet Shopify
It’s 2020, and everything’s e-commerce.
Big platforms are implementing online shopping features faster than Facebook’s shutting down ads about onions, and TikTok made its biggest e-commerce move yesterday when it announced a global partnership with Shopify.
As you’d correctly assume, this is big news – here’s what the partnership will entail for the app:
- Shopify is getting TikTok integrations. If you’re a merchant on Shopify, you can create and run your TikTok marketing campaigns from the Shopify dashboard. You’ll also get access to the key functions of TikTok’s ad manager for businesses.
- There’s a new Pixel in town. If you run ads on Facebook, you’re familiar with Facebook Pixel. Well, TikTok’s getting its own version, which will allow Shopify merchants to easily track conversions that are driven by TikTok campaigns.
- Merchants get an ad credit to kick things off. TikTok announced that eligible merchants can claim a $300 ad credit to get things going with their first TikTok campaign.
This is a big update from TikTok, and it’ll no doubt bring more brands and products into the TikTok advertising fold. If you’re starting to consider marketing on TikTok, remember the biggest rule: User-generated content is king! If your ad looks like an ad, it probably shouldn’t be on TikTok.
All your $50M questions, answered
A successful email campaign is one of the many things that looks pretty easy until you actually start getting the boots-on-the-ground work done, when it can often become a nightmare of deliverability issues (thanks, Gmail), open-rate worries, and low CTRs.
So, who better to answer your email-related questions than Chase Dimond, an email marketer who’s driven more than $50M in sales through email?
Chase recently did a Q&A on his Twitter, and there was some great advice throughout the whole thing. Here are the highlights:
Q: Do pure copy emails work for ecom stores?
A: Chase suggested Customer Thank You, Last Abandoned Checkout, and Sale Announcement Emails (from the founder or community manager) as email which would work for plain-text emails.
Q: What is the best way to get people to subscribe to my email list?
A: Have something worth sharing – give away free value and gems on Twitter (and other social networks) first. The Crew’s tip: If you run a newsletter, paid promotions in other newsletters, in addition to advertisements on social media, can work well too!
Q: What are the most valuable marketing skills you need to learn in 2020?
A: Chase says that you should first understand the industry. Then, understand the business your client runs, and all the relevant metrics. Finally, pick a niche (media buying, email CRO, SEO) and master that niche.
There are plenty more questions – and plenty more great advice – from Chase in the full Twitter thread, but we pulled out a few of our favorites here.
A note from The Crew: We don’t do email marketing for e-commerce brands, but we do send out this newsletter five days a week. If you’ve got any questions about the newsletter creation process, shoot us an email! We’d love to chat.
Or, you can check out our email deliverability guide, which (in our humble opinion) is hands-down the best place on the internet if you’re looking to boost your deliverability.
SPONSORED BY QUICKFRAME
After analyzing ~700k videos, we know the key elements of high converting videos on Facebook and Instagram.
You want to create ads that convert better, right?
Then you must read this free report by QuickFrame.
What is QuickFrame? It’s a video-as-a-service platform that removes obstacles to traditional production (like high costs, slow speed, and uncertain performance) so you can create audience-specific and high-performing videos faster and more affordably.
They’ve analyzed almost 700k videos from the last three months on Facebook and Instagram and have surfaced extremely actionable insights into what makes a video convert better.
Here’s a glimpse into some of the insights:
- If you sell apparel, a video with a person on-screen has a 20% higher average conversion rate on FB and a 34% higher CVR on Instagram.
- On the other hand, if you’re in the Food & Beverage category, product-centric videos convert better.
- In the Health & Beauty industry, videos that did not promote a sale or discount had a 64% higher average conversion rate on Facebook.
Think of this report as your essential guide to creating high-converting video ads for Facebook and Instagram.
Did we mention it’s free? Go ahead and grab it right here.
SEO
How to predict the revenue generated by SEO
It’s one of the most challenging activities for SEOs – you know you’re providing value, but predicting the hard numbers can be tough. But, Kevin Indig says you can follow just two steps to do it.
Don’t let this fool you though. Implementing each one of these two steps isn’t so easy.
Enough build-up, let’s get to the meat and potatoes.
The two steps are:
- Project traffic
- Tie traffic projections to revenue
SEO traffic projections
You can narrow your traffic predictions to five areas by varying degrees:
- Whole areas
- Page type
- Keyword syntax
- Traffic to a single page
- Traffic from a keyword
According to Kevin Indig, projecting the traffic generated by a single keyword is the easiest path to follow, and this is the step-by-step process:
- Identify the keywords: Create a list of strategic keywords you want to go after.
- Calculate your traffic TAM (total addressable market): This is the total amount of traffic you can get from your set of keywords. Basically, the sum of clicks you can get if everything works out.
- Recommendations: This step is about auditing your website to find areas for improvements.
- Estimate the impact of your recommendations on keywords and traffic. The best way to project the incremental traffic increase from a set of keywords is to build a custom click-curve, and do it by page type. This is basically the most important part of the process, hence we suggest looking at the original thread.
- Launch your optimizations.
Tying traffic projections to revenue
Based on what kind of business you are, there are different formulas to calculate the projected revenue:
- E-commerce website:
SEO revenue = traffic X average product page conversion rate X average product revenue margin
- Marketplace (Ex: Uber, Airbnb, Spothera):
SEO revenue = traffic X conversion rate X customer lifetime value (LTV)
- B2C subscription or SaaS (Example: NY Times, Asana, Spotify):
SEO revenue = traffic X conversion rate X average LTV
But, as Kevin says, these formulas are just starting points. And they should evolve as your understanding of SEO and your users’ behavior change.
Once you know the projected revenue, you can finally define the ROI of your SEO efforts.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
ADVERTISING: CPMs sky-high? Well, Biden and Trump combined have spent nearly $15M on Facebook in the past 7 days… That might explain it.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Yann LeCun, Facebook’s Chief AI Scientist, just sawed down GPT-3 in a thoughtful post on Facebook. Check it out if you’re interested in seeing a unique opinion on the AI model!
SEO: If you aren’t ready for Core Web Vitals, this article is a must-read.
INSTAGRAM: You can now stream for up to 4 hours on Instagram Live – plus a couple new features that dropped yesterday.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Kazakhstan. Very nice!
Wawaweewa! If you aren’t aware, Borat 2: Subsequent Moviefilm just came out last week – with a largely positive reception – and it inspired the tourism department of Kazakhstan to get creative.
To catch you up to speed: Borat is a satirical character created by Sacha Baron Cohen – the character is an emissary of Kazakhstan, frequently echoing phrases like the aforementioned wawaweewa, great success, as well as, most importantly, very nice.
When the initial Borat movie came out in 2006, the Kazakhstan government lashed out and attempted to ban the movie. This time around, though, the response was a bit more positive.
The Kazakhstan Travel channel on YouTube posted a video this week, in which ‘Very Nice’ is named as the new tourism slogan of Kazakhstan – in an obvious reference to the classic Borat phrase.
The video has amassed more than 600K views in the last few days, and it’s being used in various ad spots.
There’s only one thing to say about this marketing pivot: Great Success!