🤞 Cautiously optimistic.

Taking a closer look as BFCM dust clears, updates from TikTok and LinkedIn, and more. December 1, 2022 [Read in browser]( [logo] [sponsor]( Good morning. Not sure if you heard… we’re giving away $99 of holiday marketing advice for $0. There’s one small catch: you have to [answer a few easy questions](. Simply fill out the survey, then reply to this email with a screenshot of your submitted answers, and boom, the Holiday Marketing Deep Dive is yours. E-COMMERCE About those Cyber Weekend records… [article-image] Black Friday and Cyber Monday rode off into the horizon, leaving dust to settle. And while it was a record-breaking year in terms of revenue, with Shopify and [Amazon reporting]( their best-ever sales periods, there are other metrics to consider. Not so fast: [According to Tinuiti](, Google Search Ads rose in sales and orders 16% year-on-year on Thanksgiving, 19% on Black Friday, and then 18% on Cyber Monday. But while orders went up, the average order value (AOV) saw 5% slower growth than last year, proving shoppers were careful with their spending. Brick and mortar’s back in style: The same report suggests brick-and-mortar search demand is up, with Modern Retail [confirming the trend in their own report.]( Nearly 123M people have visited stores in-person… maybe a return to the pre-pandemic levels? Here are some other interesting findings: - 86% of shoppers expect more deals this holiday season, meaning deep discounts could extend towards the end of the year. - 59% of Cyber Monday shoppers used mobile to make purchases. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) increased during Cyber Week as well, with payments through Klarna, Afterpay, and similar BNPL providers [jumping 85% compared to the week prior](. According to experts, US shoppers are using BNPL “as a lifeline.” Why we care: These underlying metrics confirm that Cyber Week wasn’t immune to inflation. However, they also show that good offers such as discounts and BNPL helped mitigate the effects, and if you implemented them, you might have just passed through the season intact. SOCIAL MEDIA Events worth posting, TikTok’s new partner platform, plus new LinkedIn features See if you can read the following updates while holding your breath… Big days on the feed: If you had a major life event but didn’t post about it – did it actually happen? A study by Confused.com looked at [the most popular life events posted on TikTok and Instagram]( based on hashtag use. Here’s what they found out: - Good times are on Instagram, with marriages, birthdays, baby showers, graduations, engagements, and pregnancy top the Insta charts. - TikTok seems more personal, with separation and death in the top five, and divorce and funerals finding their place into the top 10. It looks as Instagram is a place to showcase the best of times, while people use TikTok to get advice, solicit empathy, and even grieve during tough circumstances. Good to know which platform you should use for what type of content marketing. Also, TikTok is revamping their Marketing Partners platform, [offering 186 endorsed providers from 35 nations]( to help you with your marketing efforts. The partners are broken down into six categories, including campaign management, creative, measurement, and more. Now might be a good time to reach out for assistance before Christmas and the new year. Or just to look at the work of TikTok’s official partners as you search for inspiration. Finally, LinkedIn announced new [Company Pages features]( including: - Getting your newsletter “out there”: LinkedIn is making it easier to promote your newsletter, allowing company pages to add SEO titles, descriptions, and tags in their newsletter uploads so users can find them in the search results. - New Product Page elements to help users discover products via search, plus a new product highlight to showcase specific items. - Competitor analysis allows you to track competitor growth, post performance, and engagement rate. OK, you can exhale now. That’s it… for today. And you didn’t even turn blue! It’s official. SPONSORED BY BLACK CROW AI DTC marketing leaders reveal the path to profitable growth in 2023 [article-image]( As you head into the new year, you probably have plans for helping your DTC brand achieve world domination. And all jokes aside, we hope you’re wildly successful. But be careful. Because the road to growth in 2023 is riddled with potholes for DTC marketers like: - Shifting market and consumer behavior. - Paid traffic volatility. - Making smaller budgets stretch further. The game is about to get tougher. That’s why [Black Crow AI is bringing together Nik Sharma and other DTC marketing leaders]( for a virtual event to reveal the latest tactics and strategies to increase your profitability and grow your brand. “Growth at all costs” is no longer a viable strategy. But brands that focus on exploiting the hidden opportunities in their businesses will grow profitably. [On December 15th at 12 pm EST, join these top DTC marketers]( to find out how they’re planning to explode profits in 2023. [Reserve your spot now.]( CONTENT MARKETING How to create an About page that wins customers and clients [article-image] Did you know About pages are among the top 10 most visited pages of any website? It’s not surprising. People refer to your About page to get answers to their most vital questions about your brand’s beliefs and values. And [as Andy Crestodina’s article shows](, the way you design your About page is critical to attracting the right prospects and candidates. He points out two key stats: - 58% of users buy or advocate for brands based on brand’s values. - 60% choose a place to work based on the brand's beliefs and values. Andy shares fundamental elements your About page should contain if you want to make it compelling. Let’s check them out… #1 – Navigation label. Make sure users can find your About page easily, and name it accordingly. If you think “About Us” is too vanilla, you can use whatever you like: Our Story, Our Journey, etc. These names have shown no difference in clicks, so just pick one that fits your brand voice. #2 – Add visuals. Does your company even exist if you don’t show images? Post a video to introduce visitors to your brand. You can also include employee images, certifications, badges, and more to add life and personality to your brand. #3 – Don’t worry about SEO. The About page is not your search engine traffic magnet. It doesn’t target any keywords your homepage isn’t snagging already. However, if you’d like to get technical, you can improve the schema markup of your About page, as it may help you pass data to Google more effectively. #4 – Add a call to action (CTA). Like your home or service pages, your About page also answers sales questions and acts as a sales funnel for your prospects. So it should contain a CTA at the end, either to your premium offer, or to a lead magnet for further content marketing. It’s story time. The About page is the place to tell a compelling story about your business. The article itself contains [a bunch of examples]( that will help you visualize a well-designed About page, so make sure you take a look. Good luck! SPONSORED BY INBOX MAILERS Boost your open rate by up to 300% by sending emails when you subscribers are looking at their inbox [article-image]( Three times better open rates means three times more potential clicks to your landing pages… and three times more sales. [It’s possible thanks to a new tech]( that literally allows you to time your emails when your subscribers are checking their inbox so you can send an email at that exact moment. And it works so well, a 60-70% open rate is common. [Find out how you can get your hands on this new tech.]( THE CREW’S INSIGHTS Why it matters where you get your readers [article-image] We’ve advertised on lots of platforms throughout the years, particularly on Facebook and in other newsletters. There’s a stark contrast between the two: - On Facebook, quantity is high—but quality is low. Although our cost per acquisition on Facebook has often been lower than newsletter partnerships, the cost per engaged reader is much higher. People coming from Facebook are less likely to be the type of people that enjoy Stacked Marketer. - With newsletters, quality is high—but quantity is low. Newsletter partnerships don’t always net you hundreds or thousands of new readers. And, there are only a limited number of relevant newsletters to advertise in. But, when we have advertised in highly-relevant newsletters, we’ve seen an influx of readers who genuinely want to read the stuff we write. The takeaway? It matters where you get your readers. While it’s easy to say “Hey, a reader’s a reader,” it’s not really true. For us, partnering with other newsletters has been a more reliable source of readers who stay subscribed and read frequently. It makes sense, too: If we advertise in another marketing newsletter, we’re getting people who are a) interested in marketing content, and b) already read newsletters. The odds that a person coming from Facebook will be equally as interested in reading newsletters as someone we already know reads newsletters… Well, they just aren’t good odds. Today’s insight: Keep an eye out for where your readers are coming from, and ask yourself what that source says about those readers. Are they really the type of people you want reading your content? Happy writing—and marketing! ROUNDING UP THE STACK [PRODUCT LAUNCHES:]( Want to build winning products? Then you’ll want to stay up on top of the latest launches, news, and analysis with the newsletter designed to help. Join 17,000+ product people from Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, and others and [get your free weekly product briefing](.* [REVIEWS:]( Words 1, Stars 0. According to a new Yelp study, 85% of respondents say they trust written reviews more than stars only. Also, users read five reviews on average before making a spending decision. Good to know! [SEO:]( Backlinks don’t carry as much weight anymore. According to Google, “backlinks as ranking signal is a lot less significant than before.” There are “hundreds of robust ranking signals” you should focus on instead – like user experience and helpful content. Hmm… [PRIVACY:]( Amazon launched a data clean rooms service, a “protected environment” that enables two companies with their own data to collaborate and improve ad performance without compromising privacy. Could be huge for large marketing organizations… [SEO:]( Watch out, robot copycats. Google’s search quality team claims the search giant has algorithms that “go after those who post AI plagiarized content.” Yes, even if you slightly modify it. If you’re using AI writing tools, make sure your content is original! [REGULATIONS:]( Thousands of digital publishers in the UK are suing Google for anti-competitive behavior related to the company’s ad tech practices. They claim Google “abused its dominant position” and are seeking up to $16.3B dollars in damages. What else is new? *This is a sponsored post BRAIN TEASER Two men were playing tennis. They played five sets and each man won three sets. How can this be possible? You can find [the answer here]([.]( [poolside-logo] POOLSIDE CHAT Toilet from the future… out of order [article-image] If mother nature calls in the future, you better learn how to hold it in. Because going [by this futuristic public toilet](, the future looks… backed up. A “high-tech state of the art public toilet” unveiled last Wednesday in San Francisco served folks for a grand total of three days before breaking down. And so far, there’s no date set to reopen it. Well, maybe in the end, toilets of the future will just be good old fashioned toilets. They seem to work, at least! SHARING IS CARING How would you like to have complete access to our content library for $0? It’s easy. But we don’t give it to just anyone… All you have to do is get four people to subscribe to our newsletter. That’s literally it. 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