💀 Boneyard principle.

How to work asynchronously, why in-person shopping may hurt ad performance, and more. May 2, 2022 [Read in browser]( [logo] [sponsor]( Good morning. It’s officially May, which means a new Deep Dive just bloomed and is ready for plucking. This Deep Dive reveals essential info for growing your e-commerce brand and building revenue streams: - The marketing channels that are exploding right now. - Channels that are becoming less and less effective. - Bigger, faster-growing competitors to Amazon you probably weren’t aware of. The only thing it doesn’t do is smell fragrant. We’re sorry. More details at the top of our Rounding Up The Stack section! E-COMMERCE Amazon e-commerce sales are slowing down [article-image] Are consumers spending less money online? Because looking at [Amazon’s Q1 report](, there’s definitely a downtrend. What’s going on: The online giant recorded its slowest growth in two decades, with advertising revenue [missing expectations]( by almost half a billion dollars. Amazon is the latest tech giant to see a decline in ad revenue, just days after [Meta and Twitter announced similar declines](. Unplugging: The biggest reason might simply be the return to life “offline.” Physical store sales rose 17% since last quarter. Moreover, the rise of [Airbnb downloads]( indicates that people are eager to travel and enjoy more in-person experiences. Why we care: If your e-commerce sales are slowing down, it’s not just you. It’s happening almost everywhere. But knowing these trends will help you adjust your marketing strategy and put your ad dollars where they’ll get the biggest returns. Now’s a good time to find ways to improve customer experience, or maybe try channels that are working for marketers. Speaking of what’s working… ADVERTISING This social media platform is poised to own 20% of market share… Are you using it yet? Q1 may have dampened the mood for most social media advertising platforms, but there’s one platform that hasn’t stopped dancing… Yep, TikTok. By the end of 2022, TikTok’s ad revenue is expected to triple, and they’re also projected to own [20% of social media market share](. Making out like a bandit: With TikTok close to topping Snapchat and Twitter’s ad revenue combined, it’s possible the platform is stealing attention and revenue from its competitors. Why we care: Marketers are shuffling profitable channels into their stack, and TikTok is definitely one of them. In addition to TikTok, there are other platforms that are working, too… [Like iOS app install ads](. SPONSORED BY BLACK CROW AI DTC brands: iOS 14.5 got you down? Supercharge your performance marketing with Black Crow AI [article-image]( Are high costs per impression (CPMs) and poor targeting deteriorating your margins? [Black Crow AI]( can help you double your return on ad spend (ROAS) and get back the pre-iOS 14 performance you once enjoyed. How? Black Crow is a plug-and-play machine-learning platform for DTC brands that measures, in real time, every visitor's likelihood to buy to build high-value audiences for more efficient retargeting and more scalable prospecting. We enable brands to transform their performance marketing by making it easy to target their best potential customers. . Here’s just one example: Bearabay, a DTC seller of weighted blankets, saw a [100% increase in conversions]( from their retargeting ads using Black Crow AI’s audiences on Facebook, Google, and Snapchat. After just 30 days, [their ROAS increased by 120%.]( Over 250 DTC brands already used Black Crow AI to transform their marketing results. [You can try it for free for 30 days](. It takes one click to integrate it with your Shopify store, two clicks to integrate it with Google Tag Manager. So rev up your engines… [Learn how Black Crow can help supercharge your DTC performance marketing.]( BUSINESS Why subtle improvements in user experience can make a half-a-trillion dollar difference [article-image] Why did TikTok take over the world, while Vine, a similar app that launched years before, failed? Similarly, why did Tinder spread like wildfire… but Match didn’t? [According to David King and Mishti Sharma](, it’s because of the “Boneyard Principle”: The small improvements to failed or imperfect ideas. Or, in the cases of TikTok and Tinder, the small tweaks to user experience (UX) details that made the winning apps easier and more pleasant to use. Take a look at the subtle differences between the UXs of TikTok and Vine: Video consumption: - When you opened Vine for the first time, you had to go through five steps before you could watch your first video. - With TikTok, you just open the app and start consuming videos—even if you don’t have an account. Using the app: - Vine divided their interface into Home and Exploring. In the Exploring section, though, they asked users what type of content they wanted to see: “Editor’s Picks,” “Popular Now,” or “All Posts.” When you’re a new user, how do you know what those things mean? - By contrast, TikTok serves you relevant videos based on what you watch and engage with. No decision-making. Just entertainment. Long story short, making the lives of your users easier can literally make you millions, even trillions, of dollars. Sometimes, instead of coming up with a new and fresh idea, you find the most lucrative opportunities by improving the bad ones. [David and Mishti explore this principle in more depth in their post](. Definitely worth reading in full, if you have time. SPONSORED BY AFILIADOS BRASIL Steal our TikTok Ads strategy [article-image]( Afiliados Brasil is happening May 26–28, and Felipe Mate, Stacked Marketer’s head of growth, [will unveil the TikTok Ads strategy]( he used to generate 3639 subscribers (and counting) at an average CPA of 1.68€. He’ll be sharing the stage with other killer marketers, too, like Joel Erway, Marcos Moura, and John Benson. Want to grab your share of a huge and unsaturated market? [Join us at Afiliados Brasil.]( THE CREW'S INSIGHTS How to work well as a team, asynchronously [article-image] Is your team working remotely? At Stacked Marketer, we’ve been a fully-remote team since we founded the newsletter. And there’s an important aspect of working remotely that we’ve learned to leverage well: Asynchronous, or “async” communication. Basically, async communication is the kind that doesn’t require your team to be online at the same time. It’s necessary if you want to have a great remote team. Here’s how we approach async work: - Default to never having meetings. Most people’s default is to book a quick meeting. If you want to work async, make it the default to never have meetings. Only schedule them if you’ve tried through other channels or have a complex topic that would be better discussed in person. - Try a fully-async week. If your team is having struggles, have a week where meetings are banned. You’ll find that it’s easier to work around this than you might think. - Try to hire good writers. Most async communication happens in written form, so it’s crucial that you hire people who can write well. And if they can’t, it’s important that you teach them how. - Understand that some communication still needs to happen in real-time (or close to it). Fully-async work is unrealistic for most teams. For example, The Crew here at Stacked Marketer still communicates in near-real time when we’re in the final stages of building and sending the newsletter. Some things are time-sensitive. One size doesn’t fit all, of course. What works for us might not work for you. But we wanted to share our candid thoughts on working async. If you’ve got any thoughts on a good remote workflow, share them with us by replying to this email. We’d love to hear from you. ROUNDING UP THE STACK [INSIGHTS:]( Want to diversify your revenue channels and build your brand? Our latest Deep Dive gives you the inside scoop on the biggest competitors to Amazon placements, Google and YouTube ad formats you didn’t know about, and more. [Preview it here.](* [TIKTOK:]( Guess how $350 goth platform boots suddenly started selling 5.000 pairs a week? Yep, TikTok. And you thought goths only bought from Hot Topic… [GOOGLE:]( Whew. Remember when Google told us that they were retiring the Business Profile Manager? Turns out that was a false alarm. [SEO:]( 404 errors everywhere! This study by Ahrefs claims that at least 66.5% of backlinks are dead. Sounds like a link building opportunity to us… [MARKETING:]( “Want to get rich quickly just by swiping on your smartphone?” If you’re running ad campaigns making claims like this, better hit pause and come up with new creatives. Or you might get sued. *This is a sponsored post. BRAIN TEASER What English word has three consecutive double letters? You can find the [answer here](. [poolside-logo] POOLSIDE CHAT Moon police [article-image] Watch out, space pirates. Canadian lawmakers are about to vote on an amendment that would allow the government to prosecute for [crimes committed on the moon](… And it’s likely to pass. “But Canada doesn’t own the Moon, so how is that possible?” Apparently, the government would have jurisdiction in and around Canadian spacecraft, similar to international waters laws. So if you’re an astronaut, be good out there, eh? SHARING IS CARING Did you know you can earn a free Insights membership? Normally joining Insights costs $99 a month. 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