Today in Digital Marketing - Sliding Into Your DMs Is Out, Buying In Your DMs Is In

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Go Premium! No ads, story links in show notes, deep-dive weekend editions, better quality, live event replays, audio chapters, earlier release time, exclusive marketing discounts, and more! Check out https://todayindigital.com/premiumfeedFor information on advertising, our social media, contact info, and everything else, please go to https://todayindigital.com/shownotes➡ Join our Slack at todayindigital.com/slackOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, this could be big. Direct payments in Instagram DMs. Also, Snapchat brings its core features to desktop. Retail braces for gloomy skies ahead. Twitter releases some brand building research. And is the poop emoji finally number one? It's Monday, July 18th. I'm Todd Maffin.

Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is putting a price tag on sliding into your DMs. The company announced today that Instagram is launching a new payments in chat feature, which lets users in the U.S. buy products and track orders through direct messages. For qualified merchants, which is to say those who have access to this, they will be able to chat with customers in real time to answer questions and confirm purchase details, create a payment request with the item description and price, and also request and collect the actual payment. MetaPay, of course, will be enabled to complete those purchases. The company says that purchasing through DMs also gives users access to in-app chat support. Well, while Meta lets users purchase via DMs, Snapchat is finally

working on letting users send DMs through their desktop devices. Snap announced today that it is launching Snapchat for Web, which lets its subscription users send messages and chat through video and regular calls from their computers. At launch, the tool will only be available to Snapchat Plus subscribers. We've plans to roll it out to a wider audience in the future. Snapchat Plus launched a couple of weeks ago and costs $3.99 per month. The web browser lets you continue conversations from where you left off on mobile. It also includes a privacy screen that hides the Snapchat window if you click away for another task or perhaps receive a Snap NSFW. As with mobile, messages will be deleted after 24 hours. Retailers are preparing for a tough second half of the year, according

to Retail Dive. The U.S. Commerce Department released data Friday showing that retail sales were up nearly 8% in June year over year, with e-commerce sales up 21%. But despite the gains, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reminded us that we are seeing record inflation in the U.S. of 9% last week. While a jump in sales would usually be good for the industry, Retail Dive notes that this report requires a different perspective, as, quote, higher prices mean consumers are spending more, but getting less, unquote. According to a data analytics consultant, consumers did not buy more stuff in June. They actually bought less product, but paid more for it. Consequently, it is expected that households will prioritize necessities like food and fuel over discretionary purchases in the months ahead. Twitter claims what consumers are saying about your brand is the new review.

A new study from the platform analyzed the effect of brand mentions in tweets on shopping behavior and whether product discussions in the app result in sales. Now, again, let's remind ourselves this is a Twitter-funded study, so, okay, onward. The research found that 9 out of 10 respondents seek out comments about brands, products, or services on social media, while 7 out of 10 said that brand conversations changed their opinion of the brand. Furthermore, Twitter's report says that the majority of consumers feel that brand conversation on social media platforms has a greater impact than traditional reviews. The data suggests that the chatter surrounding your brand is most significant at the beginning of a consumer's purchase journey, but does remain influential throughout the process. And don't sweat the haters. The study indicates that

positive conversations are remembered more than negative ones. Finally, Twitter's research found that three out of five customers who engaged with a brand via tweet said it had some influence on their purchase behavior. The study analyzed more than 9,600 consumers across the U.S., the U.K., India, and Mexico. Do you have business insurance? India, and Mexico. A couple of updates from Google to share with you. First, the company is retiring its Test My Site mobile speed test tool in the Think with Google portal. The search giant posted a notice at the top of the site that says, Test My Site is no longer updated with new data and will sunset in the next few months. Google has other tools to test site speed, including PageSpeed Insights,

mobile-friendly tests, Google Search Console, Core Web Vitals, and so on. Second, if you experienced any reporting delays with your Google Ads console last week, here is why. The company confirming that there was indeed an issue on Friday in which the affected users were able to access Google ads, but may not have had access to the most recent data. Google says the problem has been fixed. And finally, how is your brand's emoji game? A couple of social media platforms have shared some new usage insights to celebrate yesterday's International Emoji Day. Instagram focused on athletics and shared the most popular sports emojis around the world after soccer because soccer dominates all of the sport emojis. The basketball emoji took the number one spot in the USA.

In Canada, of course, it was the hockey stick. While the more Zen countries that opted for the yoga emoji include the UK, Germany, Zambia, and Ireland. Turns out the top three emojis tweeted worldwide are the crying face, the laughing while crying face, and the concerned face. Finally, Emojipedia, I can't believe that's a thing, announced its 2022 World Emoji Awards. May I have the envelope, please? The most popular new emoji goes to... Face holding back tears. Honestly, didn't even realize there was such an emoji. face holding back tears.

Honestly, didn't even realize there was such an emoji. So, Steph, welcome back. Thank you. So you were in Greece? What were you in Greece for, by the way? I don't think I even asked. I was in Greece for my best friend's wedding, so it was quite the time for two weeks.

Oh, nice. And did you like hop around the islands or did you just stay in one place? No, we hopped around the islands. So we were in Athens for two days and then we did Naxos and then we did Crete, which was quite the adventure. Did you have, when I was there, like I love spanakopita, the favorite Greek dish here. And I was on a cruise once years and years ago and we stopped in Greece. And I'm like, I'm going to go have spanakopita. And I went to the cafe just right off the cruise ship dock.

And it was awful. It wasn't even... It was puff pastry. It wasn't phyllo pastry. It was basically spinach and dirt. I don't think they even washed the spinach. Did you try that at all? Oh yeah, I had it every single morning for breakfast. But it's not called spanakopita there.

When I asked for that, they looked at me like I had three heads and said, spinach and cheese pie. So that's what you should ask for if you go back. Yeah. It's awful. Oh, my international dreams have been soured now with that. I'm glad you're back. I'm happy to be back too.