[vc_column][vc_column_text]
Sell more on Shopify with this new Pinterest partnership
Shopify and Pinterest announced a new channel partnership which will allow Shopify store owners to push their products in front of 350M Pinterest users.
How will this work?
Store owners can simply upload their product catalogs to Pinterest and turn their products into shoppable Product Pins. This makes it possible for Pinterest users to discover and save the products on the platform and buy directly from the Shopify stores.
More features
The new app also includes a variety of shopping features such as tag installation, catalog ingestion, automatic daily updating of products, a media buying interface, as well as reporting and results tracking to maximize reach.
Who can apply
Shopify merchants in the US and Canada can install the tag starting today. Over the next few weeks this integration will go live to merchants in countries where Pinterest Ads are available, including Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK.
Some results
As per Pinterest, the number of users engaging with Shoppable Product Pins have increased 44% year-over-year and total traffic to retailers has increased by 2.3x during the same period.
Verified Merchant Program on Pinterest
Sprinkling some more delightful toppings for businesses on the platform, Cory Dobbin shared that Pinterest is also launching its Verified Merchant Program (VMP), allowing you to get your business verified with a blue check and improved reporting.
Criteria to get verified
- Provide a product feed integration with Pinterest.
- Install the Pinterest tag on your website.
- Meet their merchant guidelines.
Benefits of the program
- Exclusive verified badge.
- Early access to their new Conversion Insight analytics tool.
- Product Shop Tab on your profile.
- Appear in Shopping Experiences.
Again, this is only available to companies in the US or selling to the US.
Apply here to be a part of this program or to find out more.
Google testing mix-breed ad format in the US
The team at SEMrush spotted Google testing a format-blending Shopping ads test, where the product listing ad (PLA) includes a clickable text block below it with a blue linked headline and description.
Even though the text shows up within the ad layout, it might not be clear that it is not an organic listing for the average user.
A twist on Showcase Shopping format?
Maybe! It looks like Google is pulling the headline and copy from advertisers’ Showcase Shopping landing page.
The SEL team reports that this is a very small test running in the US only at this point, and the roll-out of this blended format will depend on the performance of the test.
Rising Retail Categories
In unrelated news, Google has also announced the launch of Rising Retail Categories, which offers detailed insights on the changing consumer interests amidst the dynamic fluctuations in consumer demand.
Quite similar to Google Trends, this new tool provides insights on fast-growing, product-related categories, their associated queries and the geographic areas where product categories are showing the strongest trends.
How is it useful?
In its official post, Google includes several use cases for the data, including content creation, promotion and product development.
While the product-trend data from this new tool is still relatively modest, it still has the potential to be interesting and helpful to some marketers and small businesses.
FROM THE CREW
Ask us anything about email deliverability
A couple of weeks ago, we showed you our checklist for maintaining our email deliverability, which has helped us achieve an average open rate of ~48% for this newsletter. We also asked if you want a comprehensive guide and the answer was a resounding yes. So…
We want to make sure this guide answers the most important and common questions you have, so we started a Q&A in our Stacked Marketer Insiders FB group.
This group is invite-only for those of you who share the newsletter with at least five other marketer friends using their unique referral link here.
So, if you’re already in the group and want to ask us anything about email deliverability and get your answer now, weeks ahead of the guide being published, check out this FB group post.
If you are not in the group yet, you know what you have to do.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Take it slow and steady, until it explodes!
We bring you an interesting read for this weekend, and maybe even next weekend for that matter! The Crew came across this affiliate case study, which starts in October 2019 and runs to March 2020.
Let’s try to make it more interesting: In October 2019, this affiliate website had 85 organic visitors and $0.85 in earnings.
March 2020? The website generated $4k. All from SEO juice. Plus, the website is now worth $7k.
The goal
The website is called Survival Front. When starting it out, Terry Daine’s goal was to create a sustainable business that would steadily generate $100k per month.
The progress achieved along the way
- October 2019: 85 organic visitors and $0.85 in revenue.
- November 2019: 187 visitors and $5.51 in revenue. That’s a 5.6x growth.
- December 2019: 401 visitors and $15.54.
- January 2020: 552 visitors and $32 in revenue.
- February: 663 visitors and $63 rev.
Wait, how did they go from $63 to $4k in 1 month?
Growth was pretty linear until February, but visitors and revenue exploded in March 2020. What happened? Terry gave us his reasons:
- On desktop, they saw a ranking increase for 247 keywords and drops for 57.
- Similar results on mobile, with ranking increases for 255 keywords and drops for 49.
What caused the ranking increase?
- The continuation of new content indexing and subsequently ranking.
- Improvements to Survival Front’s authority pushing up already ranking keywords.
Traffic spikes: 2.8x growth in just 31 days
Survival Front utilized social, email and search traffic, but it was this last one that saw a major increase.
- Organic search visits went from 663 to 3k.
- Traffic from social media grew by 3x.
Side note from The Crew: Maybe consider that the lockdown might have contributed to the clicks bump.
Building authority via link building
Half of their time has been spent on link building:
- Since October 2019, they have acquired 95 links. That’s around 20 links per month.
Some practices to keep in mind for acquiring links:
- Relevancy: Is the site (overall) relevant, or does it have relevant categories?
- Traffic: Is the site getting a decent amount of organic traffic? More importantly, is that site on an upward growth trend, static, or is it declining, and by how much?
- Link Profile: Does the domain have a decent, varied link profile from real sites, or is it being propped up by spam and low-quality links?
- Internal Linking: Is the site linking internally from the primary domain to its guest posts or have they siloed them off?
- Referral Traffic: Does the site have the potential to drive relevant referral traffic?
- Quality: Is the site professional and does it produce quality, well-written content?
Well, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The case study goes very deep, reporting on all expenses, monthly updates since November, monetization strategies and more!
If SEO and affiliate marketing are your things, give this piece a look.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
- SEO: Steven van Vessum, the VP of Community at ContentKing, says the LinkedIn de-indexing debacle was almost certainly a Google Search Console user mistake and nothing to do with robots.txt.
- INSTAGRAM: Users might soon navigate through IG Stories in a different way. Jane Manchung Wong found a test Instagram is running on this.
- E-COMMERCE: Although you generally hear about how annoying it is to deal with PayPal as a merchant, the company just hit record highs in their stock.
- SECURITY: If you are using Elementor Pro on a WordPress site that allows users to register, you must read this to keep your site secure.
BRAIN TEASER
A slender body, a tiny eye, no matter what happens, I never cry. What am I?
You can find the solution by clicking here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Welcome to the world… X Æ A-12?!
You’ve almost certainly seen the news about Grimes & Elon’s baby, but much of the discussion focuses on the name they have chosen. There’s no way around it, it probably beat COVID-19 topics this week, at least on Twitter.
If you are anything like us, you probably didn’t even have a clue how to pronounce it and you also weren’t sure if this was an elaborate troll from the parents…
For those of you who can’t head into the weekend having their curiosity itch scratched, Elon Musk went on the Joe Rogan Experience and cleared up how to pronounce the kid’s name: “X Ash A 12”.
So, they are one of the most talked about topics in the middle of a pandemic. An outrageous name, sticking to their guns saying this is the kid’s real name and making rounds on social media and podcasts… And Elon says he’s no good at marketing!