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BOT MARKETING
Messenger update destabilizes Messenger marketers. More leads with this new feature
Two updates for Messenger: One relates to restrictions on the messages you can send via your bot, while the other is a global roll out of FB’s automated lead generation feature.
Messenger Policy Update
Yesterday, Facebook announced some key updates to Messenger as they look to prevent misuse of the platform, improve user experience, and make communication between users and businesses more relevant and timely.
Let’s jump quickly to the updates:
24+1 Rule is now just 24 – As part of the standard messaging window policy, you will no longer be able to send a message outside the 24-hour window.
This means that if someone engages with your bot, you only have 24 hours to respond to them before losing the potential customer. The only way you can engage with them again is using paid advertising.
From 17 to 4 Message Tags – Message tags can be used to reach out to subscribers after the 24 hour window is over. However, these tags have been reduced from 17 use cases to just 4.
Those 4 use cases are: post-purchase updates, event reminders, account updates, and human agent.
Subscription Messaging – Facebook has found evidence of businesses misusing this feature, so now FB is biting back. Until now, the feature allowed businesses to send messages that fell under the categories of News, Productivity, or Person Tracking.
Now, this feature will only be available for News Pages and will be deprecated for other types of businesses.
Business Discovery – To simplify Messenger for users, the Discover tab from the Messenger app is being removed.
Advertising is getting expensive on all platforms, CPMs are through the roof and businesses have been trying to take advantage of Messenger, so it was only a matter of time before Facebook enforced stricter policies around it.
Well, the era of using Messenger like SEO in the early 2000’s is now officially over.
All businesses have until January 15th, 2020 to migrate and comply with the new policies.
Check out the official announcement here.
Automated lead generation feature
The above piece of news has been circulating all over the FB groups, but that’s not the only update.
Facebook also announced the global roll out of its automated lead generation feature for Messenger, with it now being available to all FB advertisers.
This will allow businesses to create an automated question and answer experience within Messenger that launches via click-to-Messenger ads on the News Feed.
How does it work?
This tool was first announced in May, so some of you might already be using this feature. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, here’s how it works:
When a user clicks the “Send Message” button in a click-to-Messenger ad, an automated chat is launched within Messenger that allows the user to communicate with the business.
Advertisers can integrate the lead generation tool with a CRM platform, and will also have the ability to continue the conversation via their Page Inbox, the Pages Manager app or a third-party live chat solution.
Businesses with early access to the lead gen tool reported a measurable increase in qualified leads.
E-COMMERCE
An easy way to add another 25% revenue to your ecom store
Vincent Beima shared an apparently effortless method to add 25% to the revenue of your e-commerce business.
Too good to be true? Let’s check it out.
It’s involves Google Ads, and it’s all about leveraging your branded searches.
Here the steps:
+ Create a branded traffic campaign in Google Ads: So, basically, you bid on your own brand’s keywords.
Couldn’t you do this with SEO? Vincent said 55% of searchers are more likely to click on the ad because of the dynamic nature of it. For example, you can adjust the ads depending on the collections, best sellers, sales period etc to make the results more relevant.
You can’t do this with SEO. Plus, SEO is time consuming and you don’t have full control over how your results are being displayed. With Google Ads, you can get your ads running within minutes and display them exactly the way you want.
There’s one more reason you should run ads for your own branded keywords. It’s very possible that your competitors are already bidding on your branded keywords in order to steal your traffic.
PS: There’s another idea for you – Bid on your competitors’ brand keywords!
PPS: The cost per click (CPC) for bidding on competitor keywords is usually much higher than branded or even general keywords. So, adjust your budget accordingly.
+ Create a Traffic Campaign for your branded products in Google Ads. This is overlooked all too often.
People that have seen your Facebook Ads might go searching for your brand or products on Google. You must be ready and waiting when they go looking for you.
That’s all. Vincent says you should have these campaigns running all the time.
One major advantage of using this method is that your brand keywords shouldn’t have much competition, so you won’t be paying a lot for each click.
Eventually, the clicks you will pay for will have a high buying intent, thus… they’re worth the effort.
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Is ROAS pointless?
This last Facebook post of the week might leave you with a few questions to mull over. Or then again, maybe it won’t.
We want to bring up a discussion started by Gareth John on the Facebook Ad Buyers Group: Does looking at ROAS make sense when judging performance?
Gareth states that ROAS doesn’t have any tangible bearing on real business objectives. ROAS can work for some, but only when you know the exact net margins on every single product and only when you’re buying traffic solely from FB and IG.
But if you have different products with different net margins and you’re buying media from a variety of sources, several issues are going to crop up:
+ Facebook always gives itself 100% credit for the conversions. Even worse, this is usually over a 28 click and 7-day view window. In those 28 days, the user could convert also via Google or emails.
Basically, you can’t say for certain that it’s always down to FB.
The above problem influences retargeting campaigns as well. Facebook gives itself 100% of the credit for the conversions, even if it’s a view in the bottom of the right sidebar.
If you have a retargeting campaign with high ROAS, always look at the click vs view attribution. You’ll find that the majority come via a view, so Facebook is mopping up people who were already going to convert and claiming it’s 100% their conversion.
Given these two problems, Gareth says that the solution lies in the ROI:
+ Your reporting should be based on a last-click model and mainly through Google Analytics. This way, you know where that final conversion click came from, plus you can calculate the ROI on every channel.
Then, incorporate the margins and you’ll be able to really understand the value brought by each channel.
+ Reporting should be in Ads Manager using the number of conversion events that have taken place from your activity. This will give you the number of conversions that have happened as a result of Facebook activity and at what point in the journey FB contributed.
Our Take
Arguing that Facebook assigns itself more conversions than it should because of the 28 day window makes sense.
However, taking only the last click into account when measuring isn’t the best way to go about it. Your attribution modeling should never be last-click because that helps the whole problem of FB taking credit for more conversions.
It should always be linear attribution which gives equal credit to each click that contributed towards driving the conversion.
In every conversion journey there are many touch points that can come from different channels, and each one of these can play a significant part in the conversion.
But, well, you’re the real experts out there, so we wanna hear your thoughts. You can also join the conversation on the post here.
ADVERTISING
Why consumers hate ads
What are consumers’ reasons for blocking ads?
To answer this question, eMarketer surveyed the US digital consumers about the type of ads they find most annoying. What did the survey find?
Here are the most annoying types of ads according to the respondents:
- Video ads that play automatically on websites with sound on – 66.7%.
- Video ads that play automatically on websites without sound – 55.0%.
- Audio ads (on music streaming services or podcasts) – 47.4%.
- Ads that show up based on online searches – 42.4%.
- Static images on websites (banner ads) for products I’ve already purchased – 36.7%.
- Ads on social media feeds targeted to me based on my interests and behaviors – 36.3%.
- Static images on websites (banner ads) for products I’ve browsed but not purchased – 34.2%.
Sadly, only 10% of respondents said they don’t consider any digital ads annoying.
What can we learn?
Consumers don’t like intrusive ads and prefer contextual creatives. They are also clearly disturbed by retargeting ads.
So, the takeaway is nothing new: Create ads that aren’t intrusive and that integrate with the users’ activity. Simple, right?
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone?
Users: Now, where do we sign up for more jokes, Apple?
Tim Apple: *nudges Zuckk* *brotherly hug*
This isn’t a bug or any other technical glitch – Apple has literally been hiring people to listen to the conversations happening on Siri.
What’s the job description for these people? To regularly listen to users conversations, including sensitive recordings such as confidential medical information, business deals, addresses, possible drug deals, and recordings of couples getting intimate. All this is part of their job to provide quality control and grading.
And that’s not all. *drumrolls*
These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact details, and app data.
And there’s more. *ba-dum tss*
While, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant allow customers to opt out of some uses of their recordings, Apple doesn’t offer any such privacy protection option, other than just disabling Siri entirely.
As you would expect, Apple says these recordings are only used to help improve Siri’s understanding of what you say.
“A small portion of Siri requests are analysed to improve Siri and dictation. User requests are not associated with the user’s Apple ID. Siri responses are analysed in secure facilities and all reviewers are under the obligation to adhere to Apple’s strict confidentiality requirements.”
Apple has now accepted and apologized for this and halted the Siri grading program, although it will be resumed in the fall. We have no idea what they mean by resuming it again.
“As a result of our review, we realise we have not been fully living up to our high ideals, and for that we apologise.”
Well, now do this.
Breathe in, close your eyes and think of all the embarrassing conversations Siri has on you over the last few years. Now, breathe out slowly and imagine some random strangers in some random corner of the world, LISTENING TO THOSE CONVERSATIONS!
Have a nice day!