AMAZON
Amazon rigged search results to promote its own brands, according to internal documents
“Why do Amazon products show up everywhere in their search results?”
If you’ve ever wondered that, we now have the #leaked answer for you.
Amazon India secretly used Amazon sales data to copy successful products from other sellers. In addition, Amazon rigged its search results to appear in the top 3 for all keywords for which it has products.
That’s what an investigation by Reuters just discovered, and it shook the internet. Reuters based its article on internal Amazon documents they obtained.
High-level employees knew about this: To make things worse for Amazon, two senior executives (who have since left Amazon) were fully aware of and actually reviewed the strategy.
Court implications: Given that Amazon is now being investigated in the United States, Europe, and India for anti-competitive actions, all this is like adding fuel to a fire. It will probably expedite these investigations. And who knows. This may be happening in more countries than we realize.
Bad for Amazon, good for sellers (in the future?): Expect a flood of lawsuits against Amazon following this news.
If things work out in court as they did with Facebook and Apple, Amazon will have to make concessions and start clearing up its search results for hard-working sellers (like you).
We’re keeping our fingers crossed that things will move in that direction very soon.
Twitter improves Carousel Ads and is working on new ad formats
Twitter has just updated its performance advertising changelog (the previous update was on February 8th), announcing several new ad changes.
Multi-destination carousels: A carousel ad is a collection of image posts. With this update, each image post can have a different headline and lead people to a different URL.
According to Twitter, multi-destination carousels resulted in a 20-25 percent boost in clickthrough rate when compared to single-asset ads.
Improving app install campaigns: Twitter made several changes to improve the performance of app install campaigns, including increasing available inventory by over 30% percent and adding privacy-based attribution models.
In addition, Twitter announced plans to help App Install campaigns perform even better by working on unique formats to engage people, updating optimization models, and developing post-install features that would allow you to run campaigns focused on finding users most likely to make in-app purchases.
The opportunities: If you’re promoting mobile apps, you’re probably scrambling to find acquisition channels that don’t break the bank after Apple’s update. With these improvements, Twitter could be a good option.
If you run e-commerce ads, this tiny carousel change has just opened up a whole world of opportunities for running a single ad that directs people to different products on your website.
Something which we took for granted on Facebook (but now Twitter has made it possible).
SPONSORED BY SAILTHRU
The secret behind NASCAR’s 94% year-over-year conversions growth
Now more than ever, you need an omnichannel approach.
Considering the mass migration to e-commerce, the rising popularity of mobile devices, and all of the other changes that took place in 2021, it can be tough to know where to start.
But we can certainly help you with a guide straight from NASCAR’s strategy that brought some outstanding year-over-year results: 94% increase in conversions, 306% increase in revenue, and more!
How did they do it? Using Sailthru’s data-driven personalization product suite, NASCAR is able to collect and maximize cross-channel customer data to personalize every experience throughout the customer journey.
- Sailthru’s Lifecycle Optimizer tool makes it easy to build automated journeys and trigger emails based on stored insights
- Sailthru’s 360-degree view of each customer gives NASCAR a wealth of first-party data
- Sailthru’s partnership with Liveclicker enables NASCAR to turn static promotions into dynamic cross-channel experiences that increase audience engagement
Find out how a brand as big as NASCAR still finds new, fun ways to grow its marketing impact. Check out Sailthru’s latest case study now.
CONTENT MARKETING
10 ways to turn a podcast into a written content
Are you into podcasting?
Because it seems that everybody is doing it lately. And if you’re one of them, you might as well turn one of your recordings into written posts.
It would boost your ranking in the search engines. Or you might want to share it on platforms like Reddit, Twitter, Medium, or anywhere else where written content is the go-to.
If you like the idea, Jaclyn Schiff listed some formats you can use to easily re-adapt your podcast.
– The Q&A: This works well for interviews of a thought leader, or someone recognized in your industry. To make it work, cut down the transcript to focus on the substantive parts of the conversation.
– The list: If your podcast contains at least 5 interesting tips, ideas, or tools, you can turn it into a list. These kinds of posts always grab attention! After all, this post is none other than a list, and you’re here reading it, right?
– The news article: Does your recording include some newsworthy information, metrics, or insiders’ reveals? Then you can write a news article from it.
– The deep dive: This is about creating a detailed and informative story gathering information from different podcasts you’ve recorded. It could take more time, but you might end up with a highly detailed piece about a topic that can help you position yourself as a leader in your space.
– The brain dump: This is a comprehensive re-sharing of thoughts, ideas, or predictions from a podcast.
– The SEO boost: If you have a blog post that is ranking well, but needs a refresh, you can update it with content from a podcast closely related to it.
You’ll find four more re-purposing ideas in Jaclyn Schiff’s post. However, when picking one, think about the channel you’ll want to use it on as well as the type of content your podcasts contain to make sure that they are a perfect match.
SPONSORED BY INSIGHTS
How this supplement brand comfortably runs Facebook ads that would get you banned in an instant
Over $24M in revenue a year with one product. Partnerships with Ellen and Jennifer Lopez. FB ads that would get your account banned. How do they do it?
Learn how to successfully promote supplements with our Goli deep dive. See a free preview from all our deep dives here.
To unlock the full versions of all 8 deep dives, all you have to do is subscribe to Insights.
Try Insights risk-free with our 24-hour money-back guarantee.
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
We think this is the best way to improve your open rates
Reaching the Primary or Updates tabs for Gmail will give you 20-25% more unique opens than when you reach Promotions. And that’s every single time you send a campaign.
Sure, you can say open rates matter less now with Apple’s update, but do they? They are just less reliable as a metric. You still want more people to read your emails, don’t you?
The best way to increase your chances of reaching Primary or Updates is to get engagement. One of the best (if not the best) engagement is a reply on the very first email you send to someone.
In order to increase your reply rate, here are some tips:
Ask for the reply. Seriously, ask people to reply. For some reason, most welcome emails don’t ask for a reply.
Focus on the main goal. You will hear advice that the welcome email has the highest open rate so you should use this as an opportunity to tell your whole life story. Don’t do that. Instead, focus on the goal of getting engagement – the reply.
Offer something interesting in exchange for a reply. Have a unique report? A template? A valuable mini-course perhaps? Pitch it and tell readers to reply to get it.
Don’t just copy other welcome emails. If you use the exact same text as everyone else, your welcome emails are more likely to be sent to the Promotions tab.
Optimising our welcome email has been the biggest improvement for our deliverability. You can read our full deliverability guide here, including the current welcome email we have.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
MARKETING: On Deck Marketing (ODM) is a continuous community for top marketing and growth leaders and executives to exchange practical frameworks for scale and develop deep connections alongside a highly-curated and trusted network of peers. Apply to the inaugural cohort today!*
REDDIT: If you want to make your community more engaged, add a little bit of gambling to it. Reddit just did that by introducing a “Prediction” feature with virtual points.
ADVERTISING: Most media buyers underestimate the reach of in-game ads (hint: it’s in the billions).
TIKTOK: Don’t run your ads to the ground. If you’re in the automobile industry, TikTok has released a playbook for creating TikTok-like automotive ads.
WORDPRESS: It’s slow. WordPress core developers have opened a proposal to speed things up.
ADVERTISING: Are performance ads a waste of money? Rand Fishkin thinks so, but the Hacker News community disagrees.
INTERNET: Is the internet having a “Kodak” moment? If yes, it has the potential to radically alter the way we do marketing.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
What kind of tree can you carry in your hand?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Drones can also walk
Meet LEONARDO, the walking drone. This small drone, which looks both cute and creepy, can not only fly but also walk on two feet.
Switching drones between flying and walking is more difficult than it appears, according to the Caltech scientists that built this drone (dubbed LEO for short).
The team at Caltech got inspired by, interestingly enough, birds (since they can seamlessly switch between flying and walking). LEO is literally taking its first steps.
If the experiment is successful, we could see drones that not only serve as bragging rights for obnoxious YouTubers, but also do useful activities such as installing equipment in humanly inaccessible areas.