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Some updates for the great disaster survivors
The Facebook storm has passed and we are still looking at the damage.
There are some updates that you might want to know. Especially if you are among the people asking for a refund! These are from Depesh Mandalia’s rep, that, as always, shared his first-hand info.
Firstly, some advertisers may still experience intermittent issues. Although ads continued to deliver, there was a reduction in reach. This is because even users experienced issues accessing apps and services.
Reporting may take additional time due to backlogs but should be up and working around morning US Pacific time (afternoon GMT), referring to Thursday 22nd.
The important thing is that you won’t be billed for ads that aren’t delivered. Besides, Facebook is considering refunding damaged advertisers.
Then, if you’re worried for the future, the rep said that they fixed the underlying issue that caused the outage. And the teams are working to prevent such issues from occurring again.
Standard replies overall, wouldn’t bet against issues coming up again…
Did you think about the refund? What will you choose? Cash, data or flagged accounts back? We’d like to have a chat with Mark, we have some questions…
Whistleblowers wanted!
It seems that there is a group of activists using Facebook against Facebook… Ehhh?
Sounds weird, but “Freedom from Facebook” announced that it has launched a Facebook campaign to “offer Facebook employees who feel uncomfortable with recent events to voice their concerns.”
“Freedom from Facebook” is a coalition of organizations calling for stricter regulations on the tech giant.
Facebook employees who see the ad will be able to “anonymously” submit tips using the group’s website or encrypted email.
The activists were able to target the ads using profile information from users who have Facebook listed as their employer. A below the belt hit for the company.
Mark’s reaction? He reportedly told employees that he will fire anyone who leaks information to the media. Tough break!
We don’t know if Mark spread enough fear so that his employees won’t talk. And we have some questions: how in the world didn’t they get banned?
And how much are they paying for whistleblowers acquisition? It’s the holiday season and CPMs are so high…
Oh and by the way…
Do you remember when UK watchdog handed a £500K fine to Facebook?
That was because Facebook “failed to take appropriate organizational measures against unauthorised processing of personal data”. Thus, this negligence puts UK residents at risk.
Well, there’s an update: the company filed a motion to appeal the fine.
The message is clear: Mark doesn’t want to shell out a penny.
SEO
Neil Patel debunks 7 SEO myths
Popular Internet Marketer Neil Patel unlearns some of the 7 Biggest Lessons in SEO while in discussion with a Google employee and today, we are going to share those with you. Free Organic traffic, right?
Lesson 1: How Penalizations Really Work?
As long as you are building a brand and not doing anything bad, you don’t have to worry about penalizations, even if your competitor tries to pull you down.
Google’s goal is only to show the best content and provide for the best browsing experience for its users on SERP and if your content is the best fit for a particular search query, it will show up no matter what.
As Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt once quoted: “Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”
Lesson 2: It’s all Smart Automation!
Google prefers to have an automated algorithm which keeps getting better with its constant learnings and frequent algorithmic updates. They don’t wanna have thousands of people manually monitoring the websites.
This is the reason why Digg didn’t get acquired by them as they relied heavily on manual intervention. Just keep doing what’s best for your visitors and forget the rest.
Lesson 3: There are No Shortcuts!
Shortcuts, like buying expired domains and 301-ing them or building blogs on them or any other similar tactics, may work for some people for a short stint. However, over the long run, they will tank.
Remember how you see an inappropriate ad on FB getting approved but eventually getting both the ad as well as the ad account banned. It works the same way.
Lesson 4: Me: Guest Posts? Google: Meh.
If you are running a few seasoned content sites, you’ll recall how you must’ve received those several random emails from strangers offering guest posts on high authority sites like Forbes, Entrepreneur etc.
Well, it’s not hard for Google to spot these type of posts and devalue the links even if the publication decides to use do-follow links.
Besides, guest posts from such sites are anyway “No Follow”. Least you could do is stop wasting money on them.
Lesson 5: Google is NOT stealing your Traffic or Clicks.
We all have come across marketers complaining how Google is trying to scrape content off websites and keep the users on SERP and not drive traffic to their websites.
Well, Google is not doing what you think or what they want to do. Instead, they make decisions based on data.
Whether it’s Knowledge Graph or Mobile-First Indexing or newly booming Voice Search, their aim is to build a better product and do what’s best for its users, not what’s best for the marketers.
Lesson 6: YouTube, Search Beast!
Well, with so much competitive content and a gazillion websites around, it’s not getting any easier to rank on the most popular website on the web i.e Google Search.
The new chance lies in ranking on YouTube, the 2nd most popular site on the internet. Bringing Neil over 700K views per month, it’s one of his favourite and highly recommended source of traffic.
Lesson 7: Change is the only thing that’s constant
Things are constantly evolving, the world is ever changing and Google is only trying to adapt. So we recommend you do too and not get too used to how things have always been.
From ever-evolving voice search using Alexa, Google Home etc. to changing search patterns of the newer generation to self-driving cars to the Internet of Things, it’s all about changes and adapting to them. No point fretting over how things have always been in the past.
SEO
Email strategy for abandoned cart
On average, about 75% of carts never see the light of day. This means that you lose most of the revenue on the last purchasing step. And usually the reasons are:
- High shipping costs
- Having to create an account
- Complicated checkout process
Fortunately, Joshua Chin shared an email strategy to invert this sentence, in the E-commerce Elites group.
It’s thought out for BFCM, but it can work for the rest of the year too.
The first step is about how many emails you send. While just one email will do magic (62.94% open rate, 14.53% CTR, and $10.75 RPR based on a study done by Klaviyo), Joshua says you will leave A LOT of revenue on the table if you stop there.
Go further and send out at least 3 emails in a series for optimal performance. Keep in mind, though, that open rates, CTR, and RPR significantly drop off after the 4th email.
The second question is: When do we send them? The sooner the better, according to Joshua: you will get the most out of abandonment emails when you send all of them within a 24-hour period. Try this flow:
1st Email – 30 minutes after abandonment
2nd Email – 12 hours after abandonment
3rd Email – 24 hours after abandonment
What coupons and discounts work the best? Emails mentioning “free shipping” tend to perform better than emails that offer discounts in terms of open rate and CTR. This isn’t surprising especially considering that high shipping cost is the #1 reason why people abandon their carts!
You can find more insights in Joshua’s post. We hope that helps you improve your email game.
50 of the most visited Shopify stores – links and their ads revealed
We have to thank Ricardo Javier Martinez for his post in the Facebook Ad Buyers group.
Ricardo shared this list of the 50 most interesting Shopify Websites with us, ranked by visits per day, and some of the ads they are running!
It’s always important to see who is your competition and what they are running, so check out the list.
Someone in the comments said that “a lot of big brands are missing”. Well, we cannot judge that, but our sponsor of today’s newsletter might help you out there. 😉
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POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
“Are my eyes playing tricks on me?”
Magic Leap – a popular player in the AR space or maybe just a startup with funky looking glasses? You can decide…
But, to sway you towards “popular player in the AR space”, they launched their Independent Creators Program.
Do you have an idea that solves an actual problem using AR? Or maybe just something that would be a good business… Well, you can get up to $500k from Magic Leap, all you have to do is apply here.
Good luck! We’ll be waiting for AR ad networks submitted by you!
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