E-COMMERCE
Shopify just made selling in China much easier
How? By partnering with JD.com, the Amazon of China.
The partnership allows Shopify’s US merchants to easily list their products on JD’s platform, giving them access to JD’s 550 million active customers in China.
JD will handle all of the legwork, such as price conversions, product translations to Chinese, product shipping, and duties. Shopify merchants will only need to create a JD marketplace account and sync their Shopify products.
From months to weeks: According to Shopify, this partnership will reduce the time it takes for foreign US brands to begin selling in China from 12 months to 3-4 weeks. Now that’s what we call real progress.
Availability: Here and now. According to Shopify, “the sales channel became available to Shopify’s US merchants on January 18, 2022.”
ADVERTISING
Europe is making it harder to run crypto ads
Yesterday, we reported that Spain is cracking down on crypto ads.
Today, the U.K. is following suit.
The details: The U.K. government has announced plans to bring crypto ads under “tighter scrutiny” by applying the same rules as for other financial promotions.
According to the announcement, 2.3 million people (3.4 percent of the population) in the United Kingdom own cryptocurrency.
Many of them are not fully aware of “what they are buying,” which poses a risk that these products “could be mis-sold.”
The Crew’s take: We wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of Europe follows suit on this. The more mainstream crypto becomes, the more government regulation seems to follow.
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FACEBOOK ADS
Agency, did you get this warning in your Facebook Ads account?
It seems that many advertisers are getting a warning in their Facebook Ads accounts related to the violation of Item 5 of the “Things You Should Know” section in the Facebook advertising policies.
If you’re one of them, Jon Loomer explained in this post what is happening and what to do.
The rule is this:
“If you are managing ads on behalf of other advertisers, each advertiser or client must be managed through separate ad accounts.”
Basically, if you manage ads for multiple clients, you can’t use a single ad account to manage all of your clients.
This rule is old, but up until now, Facebook looked the other way.
Agencies are usually reluctant to follow this practice for two main reasons:
- Too much work and hassle to get unsophisticated clients set up.
- Advertisers are afraid that clients will see what they are doing and decide to do it themselves, or pass the insights to an intern.
However, this means putting your account – and the ones of your clients – at risk.
How to avoid it?
As Jon Loomer explains, if you manage multiple clients, this is the ideal setup:
- Have each client set up their own Business Manager.
- Have each client share their ad account and assets (page, audiences, pixel) with you as a partner.
- You can then organize client assets within Business Asset Groups.
And if you can’t get access to your client’s ad account, set up a separate ad account for each client that you control.
FROM THE CREW
Make over $500/month profit on autopilot
OK, this is a great one.
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We’re talking about an app available for web and mobile (iOS and Android) that allows users to send and receive text messages without cellular service.
Since last year, the business has grown basically on autopilot, and now it’s on the Flippa Marketplace because the current owner wants to capitalize to invest in other things.
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THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
3 strategic and 3 tactical conversion killers you should avoid
We’ve heard there’s a place in e-commerce hell for marketers guilty of killing their conversions. Read these bad practices, and make amends if you’re a sinner.
Three strategic conversion killers:
- Not being clear: Are you sure you’re communicating the right message? Are you sure that the person on the other side understands what your product is about and what benefit they will get?
- Not delivering a transformation: Your customer has two lives. One before your product; and one after your product. They must feel that after buying from you, their life will be better.
- Lack of credibility: If a stranger came up to you and offered to sell you a $100 bill for $5, what would be your reaction? Skepticism… right? If you don’t have trust, you can’t even sell with a discount.
Three technical conversion killers:
- Mandatory sign-up: This adds too much friction to the checkout, and it will likely make you lose impulsive purchases. When you ask them to go through a sign-up process, they’ll start thinking about their decision again. No bueno!
- Too many upsells: Putting too much pressure on buyers with too many upsells might scare them away and make for a bad experience.
- Not being mobile-friendly: We shouldn’t even talk about this nowadays, but yes… optimize your website for a mobile-first experience. Make sure that your CTAs, images, text, and every element look well both on mobile and desktop.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
ADVERTISING: Is there a decline in demand for streaming service ads? A survey suggests so.
LINKEDIN: Let’s be honest, LinkedIn can be a cringe-worthy social network. That’s why it’s one of the best social networks, according to this blog post.
SEO: According to Google, when it comes to URL encoding, “keep things as they were in 2014.”
TIKTOK: It looks like TikTok is merging Stories into their for-you feed, according to Matt Navarra.
BRAIN TEASER
What happened when the strawberry attempted to cross the road?
You can find the solution here.
SPONSORED BY INSIGHTS
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POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
FedEx wants to equip its planes with anti-missile lasers
The courier wars are about to begin (literally).
FedEx has requested permission from federal regulators to install anti-missile lasers on its planes.
According to the company, its system would “direct infrared laser energy toward an incoming missile… to disrupt the missile’s tracking of the aircraft’s heat.”
Nobody knows why FedEx wants anti-missile lasers installed on its planes.
Some (jokingly) speculate that this is because things have started getting heated between them and UPS.