EMAIL MARKETING
If Facebook gives you lemons, do email marketing
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
When Facebook went down on October 4th, most companies complained about their ads not being delivered.
Except for these few. Lulu’s, Mott & Bow, and other e-commerce brands used the downtime to send email campaigns that probably got crazy high open rates. Some of the subject lines they used were:
- “Here’s a distraction while Instagram/Facebook are down…” (Mott & Bow)
- “Instagram (Got U) Down?” (Lulu’s)
- “Instagram May Be Down, but Our Holiday Arrivals Are Up” (Rifle Paper Co.)
The lesson: Be in the moment. Write about what’s on everyone’s mind. There are always temporary events that you can take advantage of. Find a way to connect them to your company and capitalize on them by coming up with special offers.
APPLE
Apple isn’t going to give up its 30% App Store fee that easily
After becoming the masters of “increasing everyone’s ad spend”, Apple is now mastering a new skill: court delaying.
The company has less than two months to adjust its US App Store so alternative payment methods can be used for app purchases.
The clock is ticking. And now Apple wants to stop the clock by asking the US court to postpone the deadline until all appeals in the case are concluded.
The catch: That could take years. Epic Games, for example, has an open appeal that will probably take at least a year to resolve.
Apple’s D-Day is fast approaching. November 16th is when the company will present its case in front of a US judge.
SPONSORED BY DAVID HAUSER
Will you miss the next big thing in online marketing?
One billion active users. Ridiculously low CPMs. And high chances of going viral.
TikTok is for marketers what the end of a rainbow is for a leprechaun.
You know it is there.
You can even imagine the money it will generate.
But you need to figure out how to find it.
And if you want to start taking advantage of the TikTok opportunity before the ocean gets bloody, we have something for you from David Hauser.
David created a guide that will show you how to find your own pot of gold on TikTok. Either through advertising or influencers:
- The best advertising formats for your brand.
- The exact sounds and visual elements to make your ads feel native.
- How to set up a campaign from zero.
- The formula used by London Lazerson to organically build a 600k audience in three months. This strategy is quite simple, but it requires getting your hands dirty a bit..
- Why TikTok penalizes sponsored videos posted by influencers, and how to avoid that.
- Why according to creators you should ignore TikTok analytics to get more exposure.
E-COMMERCE
Struggling to write product descriptions?
Here’s a simple framework shared by Mathias von Appen Schrøder. The model works well for products with functional features, but it can be applied to almost anything.
Let’s check it out:
1) List all the features of your product.
Example for a lightweight down jacket:
- Quality zippers from YKK.
- 2 inner pockets.
2) For every feature on your list, explain the benefit it provides.
Example:
Quality zippers from YKK → The zipper doesn’t break.
2 inner pockets →
Extra hidden storage.
3) State the benefit of the benefit.
Example:
- Quality zippers from YKK → The zipper doesn’t break → You don’t have to waste money changing the zipper.
- 2 inner pockets → Extra, hidden storage → You can feel safe because your valuables are out of sight of pickpockets.
The final step is probably where the money is. Users must be guided by the hand. They will not consider how your product will ultimately benefit them. You must show them.
Another tip from The Crew is to include emotional benefits in step three (if possible). That will make your conversion rates increase even further.
In this case, the feeling of safety provided by the extra hidden storage is a good example.
SPONSORED BY INSIGHTS
We spilled the beans on 8 successful brands…
And we made it so anyone can discover their secrets as well.
Snow, Morning Brew, PEEL, Simulate, Goli, Huckberry, LadyBoss, and Pete & Pedro… Those are the 8 multi-million dollar brands we’ve analysed so far this year.
What did we learn? More than we can mention here… But we’ve put out over 100 pages of insights for free right here. That’s still under 10% of everything…
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
Apple Mail Privacy early impact
We’ve had a look at our “Email Clients” reports for Stacked Marketer and this is what we found.
- Before iOS 15, Apple devices (iOS + macOS) were about 20% of our opens.
- Undetectable had a share of only 4.2% of devices that opened our newsletter.
Since iOS15 rolled out, we *did not* see an increase in opens for Apple devices. We saw a decrease!
- After iOS 15, Apple devices were about 15% of our opens.
- Undetectable grew to a share of 13%.
Our open rates went from an average of just over 48% in August and early September to just over 49%. In other words, we get ~1% more opens that are probably not real opens – just Apple loading all images on their end before it reaches the inbox.
For a newsletter with an average open rate of almost 50%, the increase in opens isn’t high. But if your average open rate was around 20%, you might have just seen an explosion of opens and undetectable devices.
To also give more context, our CTR has stayed very stable: ~7% of subscribers click a link in a newsletter on average.
The biggest challenge will be maintaining a clean list now that this segment will continue to grow. We cannot ask for a click strictly for those using a certain email client (for now).
We’re curious. What have you seen with this? Let us know by leaving a comment on our thread here.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
EMAIL MARKETING: This is the tool we have used to send over 7M emails with a 47% open rate, since January 2019. Professionally-designed templates. Hyper-targeted segments. Granular user-permissions. Full analytics suite. Give Campaign Monitor a free try.*
GOOGLE: One feed for all countries. That’s what’s on the horizon for Google Merchant Center.
E-COMMERCE: Live, live. Everything is going live. Macy’s will soon offer live shopping on its site and app.
SOCIAL MEDIA: If you want to predict the next big thing in social media, listen to teens. Here are their favorite social media platforms.
MARKETING: Deepfakes are getting real. By real, we mean really real.
INTERNET: Which countries around the world are the biggest users of mobile internet? Cloudflare has the answer.
* This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
The police found a murdered man in a car. The windows of the car were raised, the doors were locked, and the keys were inside, in the man’s hands. The man was shot several times with a gun, but there were no holes anywhere in the car. How is this possible?
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.
The hitman business is a pyramid scheme
If you thought marketing agencies are the masters of outsourcing, hitmen have a message for you: Hold my beer (and gun).
It all started in a Chinese province. Tan Youhui, a realtor from Nanning, wanted to eliminate his business competitor. So, he hired a hitman named Xi.
The twist: Xi (the hitman) then hired another hitman (Mo), giving him half the money. Mo was too busy, so hired Yang (another hitman), giving him around half of his money. The chain doesn’t stop here.
Apparently, Yang was also too busy and hired a man named Ling to “finish the job”, giving him a portion of his money.
So yeah, a hitman hires a hitman who hires a hitman who hires a hitman who hires another hitman. All while giving the next person half of his money or less. Hitception.
It seems that Li (the last person on the chain) got a fee that was just enough to buy a cheeseburger and fries, so he went to his victim and tried to convince him to fake his own death.
This didn’t work out and Li was reported, along with the rest of the hitman chain.
Assass-inception failed.