SURVEY
Let’s predict the future together!
October 1st is an important day for marketers. Can you guess why? It’s because the infamous Q4 – aka shopping season in the West – officially starts.
This year will be greatly impacted, probably, by a little something called a global pandemic. Physical stores are not doing their usual Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, so all the action is going to move online.
That’s where you come in – along with 16k other marketers reading this. We want to help you prepare for a wild Q4 by crowdsourcing some insights about how e-commerce advertisers plan to spend their ad budget in the coming quarter.
We’ve put together a quick, anonymous and painless survey that takes just 3 minutes to fill in.
At the end of September, we’ll analyze it and share all the insights in this newsletter. It won’t be locked behind any form or paywall, it will be free and open to read!
If you’re working at (or run) an agency, feel free to fill it in with stats from each of your relevant clients.
Give us 3 minutes of your time so we can give you awesome insights.
And share it with your marketer friends – they don’t have to subscribe to fill in the survey or read the report. It’ll be free for everyone on our website!
TIKTOK
TikTok vs. the United States
Last week was an oddly quiet one for TikTok. Other than launching their worldwide ‘It starts on TikTok’ campaign, we didn’t hear much buzz about what the future holds for the company.
As it turns out, last week was the calm before the storm – over the weekend, TikTok announced that they will be suing the United States government over the August 6th executive order that will ban the app if it’s not sold within 90 days. Here’s our overview of what’s going down:
- TikTok’s still up for grabs. If successful, the legal challenge from TikTok would mean that the app will remain with parent company ByteDance. But, for now, Microsoft and Oracle (and maybe Twitter, but who really knows) are still potential buyers.
- Employees will still be getting paid. TikTok said it’s doing its best to make sure employees continue to get paid, even if the app is cut off from the United States.
The Crew’s take: Nobody knows for sure what, if anything, is going to happen to TikTok. In any event, the app is a social media powerhouse that holds a massive market share among younger demographics. Even if it were to be banned, there’s still no clear competitor to take over (sorry, Instagram Reels).
Let’s look on the bright side, though – those TikTok ad campaigns are still chugging along like clockwork. At least for the time being…
Facebook reveals trend data, gives advice on creative
Ready to give your Facebook marketing a boost? Facebook just dropped data on some marketing trends along with advice for coming up with creatives that sell. Here’s what the company revealed on trends in 2020:
- Safer shopping, mindful wellness, glocal community, Gen Z, and connected convenience were the five big topics Facebook hit on. And no, glocal isn’t a typo – it’s a combination of global + local community efforts!
- Buckle up, e-commerce – conversations about contactless shopping have grown between 2X and 13X this year. This is being reflected in real-time with the meteoric rises in online revenue reported in Target and Walmart’s Q2 earnings.
- The market for wellness is growing fast. Gardening, baking, and meditation are all topics that have seen explosive growth since the start of the year.
The trends from Facebook aren’t particularly groundbreaking, but they’re helpful reminders that we’re living in a constantly-evolving world. And, if you want your marketing to keep up, this is what Facebook had to say:
- Add lightweight motion to static campaigns. Ads with any kind of lightweight motion added to static images see conversion rates 17% higher than those that don’t. Adding motion to stories is also a proven method to boost engagement.
- Don’t skimp on sound. Yes, people should be able to consume your ads on mute – but simply adding sound can prove to be a big boost for engagement and conversions.
- Be informal. Stories ads shot on mobile see consistently better results than those shot in a traditional studio setting!
It’s not too often we see Facebook drop helpful hints for advertising, but they offered up some sound advice. Give it a go in your next campaign!
SPONSORED BY THE CREW
We saved you a spot…
…but only if you’re ready to put your product in front of the 16k marketers who get this newsletter every single weekday.
It’s true – and the whole process is hassle-free, from start to finish. Want your product to take over this spot in the newsletter? Here’s how it works:
- We’ll do the copywriting for you in the same style we write the rest of the newsletter (and the style you’ve seen other products advertised here).
- We’ll also make sure we create a supporting visual that complements the copy and fits in the newsletter design seamlessly.
You might be interested in some numbers. Did we read your mind?
Here you go:
- 47.5% average unique open rate in the past 4 weeks for 7.3k unique readers every day.
- 7.6% average unique CTR, which means 1.1k unique readers click at least one link every day.
Interested? Reply to this email to get more info or head over to this page where you can see more info about who reads this newsletter and some past examples.
E-COMMERCE
Why you should be already hungry for the November feast
2020 has been a crazy year. But, one of the few things we can count on is advertising costs rising yet again for the 2020 holiday season.
One way to bank on the BFCM (Black Friday plus Cyber Monday) hype without getting slapped by those high CPMs is by building an audience now.
What do we mean? We’re talking about lead generation, baby!
Putting extra energy now into building a list of email or SMS subscribers will pay dividends in November, when CPMs go through the roof.
To prep you for building that list, Mandy Moshay has some great advice. Let’s give it a look:
- Test your integrations. Make sure that your automations, triggers, and scheduled broadcast work smoothly.
- Be careful with giveaways. It’s easy to attract leads by giving away your products. However, giveaways can often attract low intent leads. A conservative discount can be just as effective as a giveaway.
- If you want to do a giveaway, segment your list. Watch your contacts’ engagement, and segment them to make sure your messages will hit the inbox rather than the spam folder.
- Don’t switch your mobile capture to SMS only. While SMS can work wonders, it’s more expensive and your subscribers have a lower tolerance for frequent messages on this channel.
- Exclude your pop-us from triggering when someone clicks through an email or text message. You’re risking interrupting the user’s shopping experience to ask them to sign up for something they’re already subscribed to.
If you want to kill it this Q4, start getting that audience ready right now.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
APPLE: It feels like Apple’s been in a fight with pretty much everyone lately, and WordPress is no exception. Initially, it looked like Apple would force WordPress to include in-app purchases in their app – but, Apple quickly walked things back after it went viral.
FACEBOOK: Ahead of a FTC hearing next month, Facebook is considering the addition of new portability tools to make Facebook more compatible with alternative apps.
SEO: Just because you have a solid schema markup doesn’t mean you’ll be featured in SERPs. Google’s John Mueller clarifies why not all FAQ markups are prominent in Google Search.
CHROME: Google Chrome Dev Tools just got a significant update, adding debugging and auditing features, among other useful add-ons.
ADVERTISING: As the age of cookies comes to a close, mobile-location data is quickly becoming a major alternative. And this weekend, Foursquare became the first company to get approved for MRC location-data accreditation.
BRAIN TEASER
It’s that time of the week again. Which subject line from last week’s newsletters do you think had the highest open rate?
🏈 They’re back.
📶 Ramping up.
📊 Insights.
😲 The shock factor.
Go ahead and take a guess on our Twitter poll here! We’ll be back on Wednesday with the results.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
You’ll soon be able to drive through a real-life Stranger Things set
Netflix is creating a drive-in Stranger Things experience that we can only describe as, well, strange (but in the coolest way possible).
Billed as a ‘drive-into’ adventure, the drive-in-slash-theme-park will contain real-life reconstructions of some of the most iconic Stranger Things locations. The majority of the event takes place in various parts of the Starcourt Mall, and cars drive through separate stations, complete with visual and audio effects.
The ‘drive-into’ experience will be available in just a few days in downtown Los Angeles – and from a marketing standpoint, this is a smart move. At $59 a car, it’s a pandemic-safe activity that’ll still allow people to get the experience of going to a ‘live event’.
We can’t promise there will be a real-life secret Russian operation going on underneath the mall, but it looks fun regardless.