🌑 Blackout.

What happened to open rates after Apple Mail Privacy Protection? Yelp Ads getting key targeting capabilities. February 9, 2022 [Read in browser]( [logo] [sponsor]( Hello Wednesday! In news that makes you go “W00t?!”, we’d like to remind you that [this woman]( allegedly laundered [$1b worth of stolen Bitcoin.]( The general consensus on social media is that the video is “cringe”... What do you think? YELP Yelp Ads gets key targeting capabilities [article-image] Yelp Ads seem like a child when you compare them to Google Ads in terms of targeting. No keywords targeting, limited location targeting. Oh, well… Luckily, that's about to change, thanks to the [update Yelp announced yesterday](. Here are the features that have been added: - Keyword targeting. Here, you can specify which keywords you want to target and which ones you want to exclude from a campaign. For example, if you’re managing a breakfast restaurant, you can target keywords like “Sunday brunch”. - Custom location targeting becomes more widely available. Previously, this feature was available to only select advertisers. This update gives everyone the ability to specify where they want their ads to appear. If you do Google Ads, you're probably thinking: "C'mon, you're saying Yelp didn't have basic features like location and keyword targeting?" Yep. They made both of those features available to everyone yesterday. The opportunity: Imagine Google Ads adding keyword targeting yesterday. Whoever jumps on the bandwagon first will have a pretty good chance of getting low-cost clicks. The same is likely to happen with Yelp. ADVERTISING Will we soon face an ad measurement blackout? We’re closer than you think, [according to the Internet Advertising Bureau]( (IAB). “If we don’t diversify our approach to the market, soon we’ll be operating by the equivalent of candlelight,” explains Angelina Eng, Vice President of the IAB’s Measurement and Attribution division. Who’s to blame for this? Ignorance. Here are some stats: - 69% of the advertising industry has not increased their use of AI in the past year. - 66% of advertisers have not adjusted their measurement strategies. - Surprisingly, third-party data spending is the one growing, not first-party spending. 60% of advertisers are not spending more on first-party data. - Only 46% of the industry understands Google Privacy Sandbox, not to mention alternatives like Microsoft Parakeet or Unified ID 2.0. What’s going on? Everyone seems to be trying to take advantage of the existing options while they can. What will happen when nothing’s left? IAB has proposed three things the industry must do now to avoid a measurement blackout: develop common standards and KPIs, new privacy-centric measurement solutions and leverage existing tech standards and build on them in a cross channel-approach. What can we do as marketers about this? Educate ourselves. Your future self will thank you for learning about things such as AI attribution, even if it's not as sexy or easy as running Facebook Ads. SPONSORED BY CONSTANT CONTACT Level up your digital marketing game with Constant Contact [article-image]( Why do millions of customers trust Constant Contact to help improve their marketing? It’s simple—they’ve got everything small businesses and nonprofits need to succeed, all in one [easy-to-use digital marketing platform.]( - Best-in-class email deliverability. - Powerful list growth tools. - Thousands of integrations with tools you’re already using. - Award-winning live customer support, and more. [Try Constant Contact’s digital marketing tools for free.]( CONTENT MARKETING Should you write a Twitter thread, a blog post, or both? [article-image] Sometimes you have a content idea, but it’s hard to decide whether it suits a Twitter thread or a blog post. Or a whole newsletter issue rather than a quick LinkedIn post. Short or long format? If you want to get rid of this doubt forever, [Rand Fishkin shared a simple method to decide.]( Both blog posts and social posts come with their pros and cons: Social posts are great to grow your audience, fast to compose, and get you instant engagement. But they don’t last more than 48 hours, and they hardly drive actions that go beyond engagement and follows. Blog posts, on the other hand, can generate leads, last for years, but take more time and are expected to meet a certain quality level. You can remove doubt about the two options in just three steps: Step one: Start every content idea as a short social post, be it a tweet or Facebook post. Step two: After you wrote it, ask yourself the following questions: - Will this content be useful to my audience for months and years to come? - Are people searching for this content now or in the near future? - Will this content resonate with folks who already subscribe to my blog/newsletter/platform? If your content idea satisfies at least two of these criteria, then go for the long form format. Step three: Once you’re done writing it, share it in a short form post, and at the end, link your original article. Exactly, go for both. Use the engagement from social media to send direct traffic to your blog post and send the right signal to search engines’ algorithms. SPONSORED BY 800º GO This robotic pizzeria is taking over America’s favorite food and you can be an investor [article-image]( With Piestro and 800 Degrees Pizza joining forces to create [800º GO](, the restaurant industry now has a scalable, more compact, and high-quality way to create a delicious pizza. [800º GO]( can create a tasty fresh artisanal pizza in just 3 minutes, and only takes ~40 square feet of space. There’s growing demand for fresh food in the $660B US restaurant industry. On-demand food delivery is likely to go over $45B in the US by 2026. [Invest in the pizza revolution of the future.]( THE CREW'S INSIGHTS Aftermath of Apple Mail Privacy Protection for open rates [article-image] Starting with iOS 15, Apple Mail now has a Privacy Protection feature which specifically affects open rates. What happens, in short, is that all the subscribers you send emails to, who use Apple Mail with this Privacy Protection feature enabled, will show up in your ESP as opening 100% of your emails. It’s not a real person opening the emails, it’s Apple loading all images, including the “open tracking pixel”. Here are our thoughts so far. 1. Your open rates since October 2021 until today should have significantly increased. For us, the open rate for the newsletter increased from an average of just under 50% to 55%. On the other hand, we’ve heard other newsletter writers report 10-20% higher open rates. Keep in mind this is just an artificial increase. 2. Unique clicks per newsletter matter more. If your unique CTR per email (clicks from total subscribers) decreased in this period, it’s likely your real open rate has decreased too. Unique CTR is required in combination with open rate to get a closer number or real openers. We can say that 7% unique CTR for us meant ~50% unique openers pre-Apple Mail Privacy Protection. With a re-engagement automation targeted at Apple Mail users, we’ve managed to keep our unique CTR at this level. 3. If you are not using a re-engagement automation for Apple Mail Privacy Protection users, your list will become full of inactive subscribers. We don’t have to explain why that’s not good, right? Create a re-engagement automation right now! Filter by who opened 100% of your emails since October 2021 and didn’t click any email. Adjust this filter based on your sending frequency. ROUNDING UP THE STACK [E-COMMERCE:]( We analyzed interviews with 181 e-commerce founders to find the top 15+ marketing channels that have consistently worked for them. Facebook Ads is at the top - no surprise there - but then the fun starts. Full deep dive available in Insights. [Read the free preview here.](* [GOOGLE:]( Enterprise search ads are getting a new look and feel. Google has revamped Search Ads 360. [ADVERTISING:]( Apple Ads is becoming the go-to ad network for mobile apps, according to this report. Are we truly surprised after the 2021 updates from Apple? [SEO:]( Uh-oh, yet another bug. Google Search Console suffered yet another data issue between February 1-3. [APPLE:]( Payment with a tap. Apple partnered with Stripe to offer merchants another way to accept offline payments. [INSTAGRAM:]( When a social network favors video, what do you do if you only have static images? You turn them into ultra-short video posts, according to Matt Navarra. [SOCIAL MEDIA:]( What is Jack Dorsey (the founder of Twitter) up to these days? Reinventing social media, it appears. [ADVERTISING:]( What happens when a big platform like Apple makes ad privacy changes? The ad industry consolidates. *This is a sponsored post. BRAIN TEASER What has many keys, but can't even open a single door? You can find the [answer here](. [poolside-logo] POOLSIDE CHAT “We’re fine without Facebook” [article-image] [That's the message]( EU officials are sending Meta after the company announced potential plans to leave the EU. “After being hacked I’ve lived without Facebook and Twitter for four years and life has been fantastic,” said German Economy Minister Robert Habeck. France agreed. “I can confirm that life is very good without Facebook and that we would live very well without Facebook,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire added. It seems that Facebook is now backing down from their statements, saying they’re [“absolutely not threatening to leave Europe](”. You are not alone in feeling like all of this is turning into a comedy show. SHARING IS CARING How does a free lifetime [Insights membership]( with all past and future content, and dedicated member’s area sound to you? That’s the prize for referring 250 new readers to our newsletter! And by the time you get there, you get tons of other goodies from The Crew. Start sharing using your unique link below. [article-image]( [CLICK TO SHARE]( Or copy your referral link: [ [SUBSCRIBE]( | [INSIGHTS]( | [ADVERTISE]( You are receiving this email because you want to know what is going on in digital marketing. If you aren't thrilled about our emails, reply and let us know why. 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