Today in Digital Marketing - Facebook Surrenders to TikTok

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

How Apple's Privacy Protection feature is affecting your email campaigns... Adobe hops on the AR bandwagon with a new shopping tool... A sneaky Amazon tactic used to churn cancellations... And Google has a new Forms API... Go Premium! No ads, more stories, audio chapters, and extended weekend episodes — https://todayindigital.com/premiumGet each episode as a daily email newsletter (with images, videos, and links) — b.link/pod-newsletterADVERTISING as low as $20: https://todayindigital.com/ads JOIN OUR SLACK! https://todayindigital.com/slackFOLLOW US: https://todayindigital.com/socialmedia(TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit) ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Please tweet about us! https://b.link/pod-tweet- Rate and review us: https://todayindigital.com/rateus- Leave a voicemail: https://b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- TikTok: https://b.link/pod-tiktok- Twitter: https://b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: https://b.link/pod-linkedin- Twitch: https://twitch.tv/todmaffin Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (https://b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (https://b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Does your brand need a podcast? Let us help: https://engageQ.com/podcastsOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected, be Zen. Today, the data's in how Apple's privacy protection feature at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. cancellations. Google has a new forms API. And on the premium podcast with no ads, more stories and expert deep dive weekend episodes, tap the link in the show notes for more how to market to hyper stressed consumers. It's Wednesday, March 16. I'm Todd Maffin. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Today's episode sponsored by vendasta.com. build your agency with the tools you need and the hassles you don't visit vendasta.com slash superhero to book a demo and learn more new research indicates that apple's mail privacy protection which we'll just call mpp from here in has a noticeable impact on email engagement metrics after it was introduced last year the average open rate across all industries was up 3.5% year over year in 2021,

and the click-to-open rate was down 3.6%. Researchers say these shifts were likely caused by Apple's release of MPP, which is a privacy feature in iOS 15 that gives users more control over their data when it comes to their inbox. Why the higher open rate? Well, MPP can artificially inflate open rates because messages are now pre-fetched and downloaded

for users who have opted in. MPP has a clear impact on open rates when looking at the metrics year over year. When you break it down month by month, it's even more evident. Following the release of the beta for iOS 15, open rates began to rise in June 2021 and then jumped in September after its public release. Again, these are opens by caching software, not by people. The analysis also tried to identify which day is best to send emails based on stats like average open rate, click-through rate, click-to-open rate, and unsubscribe rate, there doesn't seem to be a huge variation in how emails perform on a specific day of the week. That said, weekdays do perform best, with lower engagement rates occurring on the weekends.

And finally, the report found that email benchmarks varied across industries, as you might expect. Educational campaigns had the highest open rate and the highest click-through rate, while retail campaigns hold the title for the lowest open rate by industry. The data has been provided by Campaign Monitor and is based on an analysis of more than 100 billion emails. Adobe has unveiled some new augmented reality tech at its annual summit that will let brands set up a way for e-commerce shoppers to visualize their purchases before they buy them. The software giant also wants to be part of your e-commerce platform since retailers will need to integrate the AR shopping tool into their websites if they want to play. With the new tool, consumers will be able to point their phones at a product image on an e-commerce site and then be able to see it rendered three-dimensionally in their living space. Adobe says its AR service stands out from its competitors because of its true-to-life size precision and the ability to pull multiple products into the same view. The tool also allows the potential for consumers to mix products across different websites that employ Adobe's technology. Retailers will need to embed a flickering marker

into product images which will be invisible to the human eye but detectable to the computer vision built into Adobe's mobile app. The company is still deciding the best way to notify consumers that a site is using the technology. If you run a services business, you may have run into lead brokers. These are companies who have lead gen landing forms that rank really high in Google for your services. They collect the leads, then sell them to you. I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say I thought these were one shade away from scams, but that's another story for another day. But I'm not the only one thinking something nefarious is afoot. The American trade regulator, the FTC, has charged home advisors with allegedly defrauding

small businesses by having, quote, misrepresented the quality, source of leads, and likelihood they would result in actual jobs, unquote, consistently since 2014, quoting the complaint. First, while HomeAdvisor states that its leads concern consumers who intend to hire a service provider soon, many of them do not. In addition, while HomeAdvisor represents that services providers only will receive leads matching the types of services they provide and their preferred geographic area. Many of them do not. HomeAdvisor also represents to service providers that its leads are from consumers who knowingly sought HomeAdvisor's assistance in selecting a service provider, while many of the leads it sells are actually purchased from affiliates and didn't come from HomeAdvisor's website. The complaint also alleges HomeAdvisor often tells service providers that its leads result in jobs at rates much higher than it can substantiate, unquote.

The online marketplace was also charged with misleading service providers about the cost of an optional upsell. The action illustrates some of the problems associated with using marketing-qualified leads from third parties and affiliates, since it's always difficult to determine the quality of those leads. Speaking of FTC complaints and a warning, in case you're thinking of making it harder on your website for consumers to cancel your services, multiple complaints have been filed with the FTC asking for an investigation

into the cancellation process of Amazon Prime, and in particular, its use of dark patterns. And now, according to a new leaked internal document, Amazon intentionally drew out the process of canceling a a Prime membership under the code name Iliad. This according to Business Insider. The project created multiple layers of questions and new offers were created before members could cancel their subscription in an attempt to reduce those cancellations. And, spoiler alert, it worked.

After the project's launch, the number of Prime cancellations dropped by 14% in 2017. The complaints say Amazon's multi-step cancellation process is just one example of subtle user experience design choices the e-commerce giant has used to complicate or confuse Prime's cancellation processes. It's the season for new styles and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first.

Join free at rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters.

Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Some good news if you use Google Forms. The company today announcing an update that will let you create surveys, quizzes, and more using a new Forms API. The company says the Google Forms API provides programmatic access to manage forms

and receive responses, supporting the development of a variety of powerful integrations. You can use the API to develop real-time dashboards or data visualizations. You can trigger business workflows by incorporating project management, CRM, or LMS tools, or auto-generate forms from question banks or other datasets. This feature is available now for all users. As this is an API and not a forward-facing tool, you will need a developer to integrate it into your system.

A couple of updates to share with you from Google. And now that I think about it, I probably should have put this at the top of the show, given its importance and potential impact on pretty much all of us. If you have not set up your Google Analytics 4 properties yet, that's the number 4, consider this your sign. Google today announced it will stop supporting Universal Analytics next year in favor of GA4. What does this mean for you? Well, if you're still using the UA, Universal Analytics code, that will stop processing new hits on July 1st of next year. And Universal Analytics 360 properties will stop processing hits on October 1st of next year. Previously processed data in Universal Analytics will be stored for at least six months after those dates.

And second, the search giant announced it has launched Search Ads 360 integration for Google Analytics 4. By integrating Search Ads 360 data into GA4, advertisers can track sessions, users, and conversions within the context of dimensions such as source, campaign, medium, and default channel. So didn't see this one coming. Facebook has set up an account on TikTok. It hasn't posted anything, but at the time that I record this, which is 2.12 in the afternoon Pacific time on Wednesday, it has 21,000. What is it up to?

Something like that, 21,000. I'm personally still waiting for the big holdout, which is Apple on Twitter. Apple does maintain a Twitter account and has never posted to it. So the engineer came out to look at the deck to see if we could put a two-person hot tub up there. It looks like it'll support it, but I think we're going to get an official recommendation. Given that we have a tenant suite in our house and our tenant walks underneath that deck several times a day.

So, you know, I don't need the lawsuit. But, you know, one by one, getting those little house tasks handled. The gas, for some reason, stopped working to our outdoor barbecue. I'm guessing that there's something to do with just getting too cold. Gutters need realignment.

It never ends. Talk to you tomorrow. Yo, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy, Sandy Benjamin They ain't never use it in fame I probably, I probably Sandy, Sandy, Sandy Benjamin, the name never used it in fame. I probably, I probably, I probably going, I probably going out. Starting a marketing agency is a rewarding experience, but it can also be a challenging one. The fear of selling to prospects, the pressure of delivering top quality services to paying clients, and the scramble to invoice and collect so that the revenue keeps coming in,

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