E-COMMERCE
Visa and Mastercard plan to update their credit card fees
Are you about to pay higher fees? Well, it depends on your company’s size.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Visa and Mastercard are planning to increase credit card fees for large merchants next month.
What about small merchants? You could actually get a fee reduction. Visa, for example, said that their new charges will lower fees by 10% for more than 90% of American businesses. Nice.
Meanwhile, Mastercard has said they will reduce fees for all merchants with transactions under $5. Furthermore, Mastercard will lower the fees for businesses like hotels, casual dining, daycare facilities, and other industries affected by the pandemic.
Which fees will increase? Interchange fees. In case you’re unfamiliar with interchange fees, here’s an explanation.
What about online stores? We still don’t have a definite answer to this question. Visa said they will lower the fees for some small merchants with $250,000 or less in annual credit card volume. That’s all we know.
Will Stripe, PayPal, and other payment processors update their charges, too? Time will tell…
ADVERTISING
Instagram now allows you to tag everyone who contributed to a post
Let’s say you’re posting an Instagram photo of a model.
Several people probably contributed to that picture. A makeup artist. A clothing brand. A photographer. How do you give credit to everyone?
Instagram just announced a feature that will allow you to do exactly that.
How it works: When you start creating a new Instagram post, you’ll have the option to “tag people” and select the profiles that contributed. All of those people will be tagged in the post once it is published.
Why you should care: More visibility. If you’re working with an Instagram influencer, they can now tag your profile in their photo or video, increasing your visibility when others view the post.
SPONSORED BY CAMPAIGN MONITOR
Get 320% more revenue from your emails with this combo
Your recipient’s inbox is flooded with emails. Countless emails.
And every marketer and their dog know that one way to stand out is personalization. Consumers are 90% more likely to shop with your brand when you personalize your message to them.
But personalization comes with a problem: The more you scale, the harder it gets to create hyper-personalized email campaigns.
That’s where Campaign Monitor comes in.
Campaign Monitor lets you easily create automations to personalize your email marketing campaigns at scale – and they even created a guide to help you do it
The results speak for themselves. Morning Brew increased their open rates by 125% using Campaign Monitor, while Girls Who Code increased applications to their program by 150%, and English National Opera increased donations by 80% year-over-year.
You could get the same results following the practices shared by Campaign Monitor.
Read the whole free guide here.
ADVERTISING
How to get customers to trust you like family: turn testimonials into ads
Testimonials are powerful.
BrightLocal found that nearly 50% of consumers trust customer reviews as much as recommendations from friends or family.
And the spike in companies using UGC proves that testimonials work in advertising.
So instead of talking about your own products, why not let your customers do it? This makes your ads more authentic, more intimate, and more credible.
In this Wordstream blog post, Céillie Clark-Keane shares 17 testimonial advertising examples you can swipe or take inspiration from.
Here are our takeaways:
Real testimonials are not endorsements. The incentives are different. A testimonial is a genuine review by a customer, sometimes in exchange for a discount or a gift. A celebrity endorsement involves money.
You don’t always need video testimonials. You can pair a review or even an Instagram comment with a photo of your product and turn that into an ad, like the jewelry brand Ana Luisa did here.
…but video testimonials are more trustworthy and drive more sales. 8 out of 10 people bought an app after watching a testimonial video ad.
The more detailed the testimonial, the better. Details paint a vivid picture of the transformation, change, or benefits of your product—and they make the testimonial more compelling. Look at this ad used by Alan David Custom.
If there’s a common objection in your niche, use a testimonial to address it. There are many beauty companies with great branding but subpar products that don’t live up to their promises. Glossier tackled this problem with an Instagram ad.
Address a specific pain point of your audience, like Calm did with this LinkedIn ad.
Encourage an emotional response. If it’s a longer video, using a personal story will make the testimonial more engaging. See what Secret Deodorant did here.
Feeling inspired? This post gives you a dozen more ad ideas.
SPONSORED BY VIDIC
Spotify, Digital Ocean, Square, and DTC brands are generating millions in sales with these video ads
Video ads rule because they can bring results:
- Bailey Nelson’s got a 3,617% increase in Google Search Lift!
- Wisr generated 10,000 app downloads from a single video.
- Koala increased their response rate by 20%.
How? Vidico – video ads that bring results to both B2B and B2C brands. Just have a look at their massive library of examples.
And they don’t cost a fortune!
Take the free VidiFit quiz to quickly find out how much your desired video costs.
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
All you have to do is ask, really
It’s a headache for any marketer. You open Google, search your brand’s name, and you see three PPC ads pop up, burying your website in the pits of hell.
Most marketers stop there. They look, they cry, they do something else. But…have you ever tried asking people to take their ads down?
Pieter Levels, the founder of NomadList and RemoteOK, recently tried this. He saw that Employer-of-Record companies were advertising on his trademark, ‘Remote OK’. He asked them to stop, and they did. It was that simple.
Now, people who google ‘Remote OK’ will get straight to Pieter’s site.
Here’s why it works: In this case, Pieter has a trademark on the name of his business, RemoteOK. While Google allows competitors to bid on trademarked words, Pieter asked nicely and the CEOs of two large companies took down their ads immediately.
Second, RemoteOK is a job board. Employer-of-Record companies offer a very different service. So, they’re not direct competitors––more like complimentary services.
What you can do: If you see that an unrelated brand is advertising on your trademark, ask them to remove their ads. The worst they can say is no. But if it’s a mistake or if they’re feeling particularly nice, they’ll remove them for you. And you’ll likely see your traffic increase as a result.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
COPYWRITING: Landing pages not converting as well as you’d like? Our latest deep dive is packed with best practices and 150 examples. Worth a look if you want to optimize your results.*
AMAZON: Remember Clubhouse? Amazon has launched a Clubhouse-like competitor. Seems like the wannabe radio producer’s dream, at least in print.
ADVERTISING: And the “sanctions” keep coming. Apple has stopped running Search Ads on the Russian App Store.
NATIVE: With user-tracking on its way out, Taboola founder Adam Singolda believes contextual advertising will be the future of advertising.
AMAZON: Guess who’s driving the majority of the growth in retail media advertising. Yep, you guessed it!
GOOGLE: The Google Ads API is changing how it handles duplicate assets—and this update affects five asset types. Hopefully for the better.
LINKEDIN: Are you a sales pro who’s active on LinkedIn? LinkedIn published a magazine issue titled “The Pitch,” and it includes tips for improving your profile, outdated sales techniques, and more.
PPC: Save the date. Google announced Google Marketing Live will take place on May 24th. Not something to miss if you’re running Search ads.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
Which is the least spoken language in the world?
You can find the answer here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Wanted: Grizzly bear conflict managers
Ever considered quitting marketing and working in the great outdoors… with bears? If your answer is “yes,” then you might consider this position with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“Did you really just say ‘grizzly bear conflict management?’” Yes. But no, you won’t be breaking up fights between angry grizzlies. Your job would be to “reduce friction” between bears and humans. In other words, prevent humans from being eaten.
The pay isn’t bad. It ranges from $79k to $103k, probably dependent on your experience handling grizzlies. And with all that opportunity for viral videos, you could probably do affiliate marketing on the trail. You know?