Category: Marketing Automation

All about Marketing Automation that you ever wanted to know

  • Email Recap: Our 2020 Year in Review

    2020 has been a year of new challenges and unexpected obstacles. Email marketers around the world responded in spectacular fashion, adapting in the face of rapid change. 
    You innovated ways to connect with subscribers and supported them in a time of need. And as other channels struggled to perform, you drove critical results for your brands and clients.
    This was a record-breaking period for Campaign Monitor’s customers, and we couldn’t be more proud of your accomplishments. As we bid 2020 adieu (and for many of us, good riddance!), take a moment with us to reflect on some of your most impressive achievements from the last 12 months.
    P.S. Ready to share your own 2020 recap? Get started with our latest ready-to-use ‘Year in Review’ email template!

    Your subscribers turned to the inbox more than ever. 
    Email remains a resilient, reliable way to engage your community even during times of crisis.

    416,422 marketers sent 30.660 billion emails opened in 192 countries across the world. 

    Open rates increased more than 20% YoY in April and May as shutdowns and restrictions ramped up around the globe. When other channels became inaccessible or unreliable, customers turned to email to find how brands were responding to the crisis.

    More time at home brought the first shift back to desktop opens in years. The proportion of opens on mobile devices dropped from 63% to 54% in 2020.

    Explore COVID-19 email marketing benchmarks in depth.

    When times got tough, Campaign Monitor customers got smarter.
    You rose to the occasion with tenacity and ingenuity.

    Curious subscriber scientists A/B tested 148,450 campaigns, an increase of 63% over last year.

    Customer experience architects designed 47,484 automated email journeys, clearing the path to immediate engagement and lasting loyalty.

    Email artisans crafted 730,468 captivating custom email templates that lit up the inbox and stood out among the noise.

    New problems call for new solutions.
    You asked, we delivered. Campaign Monitors customers tapped into a suite of new features and resources to handle everything 2020 could throw at them. A few of the highlights:
    Jan – Pop-up forms
    Feb – In-app deliverability guidance
    Mar – Campaigns page update
    April – COVID-19 Resource Hub
    May – Crisis templates
    June – Unsubscribe survey
    July – Campaign tagging
    Aug – Layout templates
    Sept – My branded templates
    Oct – New holiday templates
    Nov – Link review tool
    Dec – Coming up: Lists & Subscribers UI update
    We’ve got your back.
    2020 pushed email marketers to the limit. We were honored to be with you every step of the way.

    99% delivery rate for all campaigns sent
    Features released: 25
    Product deployments: 601
    Code commits: 13,010
    99.9% app availability

    After all, your success is why we come to work every day.

    39,263 support cases were responded to within 2 hours (on average)

    Just like you, we’re working hard and making the best of the situation.  

    625 team members around the world made the shift to remote working, resulting in over 241,000 hours of Zoom meetings with very serious, 100% professional virtual backgrounds.
    Separated but not apart: We stayed connected with care packages, virtual yoga and fitness classes, digital master class events and competitions, and more remote happy hours than we care to admit.
    $58,000 raised for the Australian Red Cross BushFire Appeal.
    1995 hot meals and 1785 sweet treats produced for people in need in the Sydney CBD.

    It’s all possible because of our incredible community of customers and contributors! THANK YOU!
    What’s next?
    Email isn’t going anywhere, and that means neither are we. More than ever, the world needs the connectivity only email makes possible.
    Look forward to a long list of new tools, resources, and inspiration coming in 2021, starting with our much-awaited annual Email Marketing Global Benchmarks Report.
    Keep an eye out for it early January!
    What’s your 2020 story?
    Share it with your subscribers today with a Year-in-Review email template.

    Not a Campaign Monitor customer? Sign up now.

    The post Email Recap: Our 2020 Year in Review appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

  • Looking for early adopters/testers for our Facebook contest automation tool

    We just launched a Facebook contest automation tool (https://soctify.com), it allows users to automate: post creation, awarding, message sending to the winners, and various other stages of the contest. You are able to specify multiple qualification criteria and analyze daily updated contests statistics. I created this post because we are looking for multiple early adopters / testers who have unique use cases and would like to test our tool for free (we can grant you access to use it for free for a couple of months) and give us some feedback. Everyone who would like to give it a try – contact me via private message or write a comment and describe your use case in a few sentences. All questions are welcome. Thank you for your time.
    submitted by /u/fluxas_lt [link] [comments]

  • Influencer marketing automation tool- reviews please???

    Hey everyone! I work for a startup in Canada called Socialpeeks and we have developed a really cool chrome extension to help streamline all types of influencer marketing campaigns. Our main focus was to create a dashboard which automatically downloads and queues all your branded content and automatically tracks all your active campaigns. This means forget screenshots to track influencer insights! I was hoping to get some feedback/reviews from digital marketers about our tool. I would love it if you would check it out and provide some feedback like: A. Is it useful for a digital marketer? B. Do you find the value prop useful? C. Would you upgrade to a paid plan? D. Any other suggestions? Thank you Socialpeeks Influencer Tool
    submitted by /u/Daydream1998 [link] [comments]

  • How Pardot Helps Marketers Comply with Today’s Privacy Regulations

    Today, technology is integrated into nearly every part of our lives. From the tiny personal fitness trackers on our wrists to the major data centers powering the internet we use daily, computers of all shapes and sizes have become ubiquitous in modern society, achieving levels of scale and popularity that were the realm of science fiction just a decade or two ago.
    However, our increasingly connected world is not without its challenges. The trail of information left by our digital actions can last forever. Power imbalances between those who generate data and those who collect it have the potential to lead to serious privacy and security issues. 
    As a result, legislative bodies worldwide have passed regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to give consumers more control over how their data is used and to penalize misuse.
    To remain competitive while maintaining consumer trust, it’s up to today’s businesses to build compliance into their products and services. That’s just what we’re doing here at Pardot. 
    Here’s how we’re helping our customers comply with existing and evolving privacy regulations and build tailored solutions to support requirements under different privacy frameworks. 
    Obtaining Consent 

    Consent is at the heart of our approach to marketing automation. As a result, we have a strict permission-based email marketing policy — but for added flexibility, we also offer our customers substantial configuration options for email consent collection and management. 
    Pardot also supports recency and frequency automation rules to govern suppression, which sometimes prevents communications from reaching recipients. Different governance strategies can be employed for different groups at a customer, segment, offer, product, or channel level.
    We also support alignment with web-tracking consent requirements like affirmative opt-in, and we provide features that ensure unsubscribe and opt-out are as easy as subscribe and opt-in.
    Empowering Customers to Manage their Data
    Pardot supports the right to know, the right to be forgotten, and the right to rectification by allowing our customers to:

    search their records for personal data on a given data subject
    correct records
    permanently delete data subject records

    Our customers can support these privacy use cases directly through our user interface, or they can implement custom privacy workflows through our software interfaces. These same features support privacy requirements like restrictions on processing and restrictions on sale of information.
    To enable compliance with data portability requirements, Pardot provides the capability to export records in a comma-delineated format, and we allow record export through our software interfaces for customers who want to build their own portability workflows.
    Incorporating Privacy-by-Design
    Our software interfaces are rich enough to allow our customers to build implementations using privacy-by-design principles, and Pardot encrypts all data at rest by default across all customer accounts. Pardot encryption works alongside Salesforce Shield and network security best practices to protect data at rest and in transit across systems.
    Privacy frameworks and regulations like GDPR enforce controls on how data controllers interface with data processors like Salesforce Pardot. We allow our customers to comply with these controls through non-technical features.
    Our Data Processing Addendum to our Master Subscription Agreement defines how Salesforce legally complies with GDPR and CCPA through mechanisms like Binding Corporate Rules. Salesforce contractually guarantees important security controls and certifications to our customers, allowing our customers to comply transitively.
    The Future of Privacy
    The privacy landscape is evolving, from both legal and social perspectives. The issue is receiving wide support from a variety of people and legislators. This is a good thing for consumers and businesses alike. The principles embodied in new privacy laws will protect against privacy threats that have emerged in recent decades and many of the future threats to come.
    Even before the current wave of privacy regulations, most B2B marketers were already focusing on prospects who provide their personal information willingly for the purpose of exploring a relationship. At Salesforce Pardot, we’re watching privacy trends to make sure we support our customers in the face of a changing legal, technical, and social environment. 
    Protecting privacy always has been — and always will be — the right thing to do.
    Keep Learning
    What is mixed content and why should marketers care? Learn why browser vendors are changing the browser experience to discourage mixed content.
    This blog post is part of our security, privacy, and technology series.

  • How We Octupled Image Search Traffic to the HubSpot Blog in 1 Year

    This post is a part of Made @ HubSpot, an internal thought leadership series through which we extract lessons from experiments conducted by our very own HubSpotters.
    Cliché: A picture is worth a thousand words.
    Fact: HubSpot’s pictures are worth 120 thousand clicks.
    Last year, my colleague Karla Cook gave our readers a 3,000-word peek behind the curtain into a new SEO strategy we implemented at the beginning of 2018. That strategy, which was designed to fix a traffic plateau across the blog, increased our organic traffic by 25% year over year — to eight million organic pageviews per month. This is about three million new organic views we didn’t have at the beginning of 2018.
    Where that traffic is coming from is equally exciting.

    As I said, our new SEO strategy launched our organic blog traffic to heights it had never been to before. But that strategy had another, somewhat unintended consequence for us.
    While we increased our total organic traffic by 25% from last year, we increased our image search traffic by … wait for it … 779%. This refers to traffic that comes from people who conduct a search in Google, or a similar search engine, and click on an image result that leads to the HubSpot Blog.
    “Pics or it didn’t happen, Braden.” As you wish:

    Source: Google Search Console
    Take a look at the royal blue tile in the chart above. Between April 2018 and April 2019, HubSpot literally increased its organic traffic from 14,100 organic views per month to 124,000 organic views per month — a nearly 8X lift.
    Our image traffic accounts for just under 2% of our blog’s total monthly organic traffic, which, in the scheme of things, is not all that significant. But even though the vast majority of our organic traffic still comes from web search (the written blogs themselves), our image traffic’s rate of increase (779%) is vastly disproportionate to that of our total blog traffic (25%).
    And let’s be honest, 2% of 8 million is nothing to sneeze at.
    But what made the difference, if not just our new blog-aligned SEO strategy?
    Image SEO Best Practices That We Learned
    As it turns out, we had a few other tricks up our sleeve along the way that gave our images some extra juice on the search engine results pages (SERPs), all of which are just good best practices in commercial content creation.
    1. Optimized Alt Text
    In the HubSpot COS, we’ve almost always filled in image alt text fields with text that (tries to) describe the image it’s associated with. Last year, though, we started taking alt text way more seriously.
    Rather than automatically fill image alt text with the image file name — something the HubSpot COS conveniently does for you so this field isn’t left blank — we now optimize each image we embed with the keyword the blog post is targeting. Then, we add language that puts this keyword into context that reflects the image it’s describing.
    For example, if we’re embedding the image below into a blog post about “college courses about SEO,” our alt text might look something like this:
    “Marketing professor showing college student SEO on her computer screen”

    Now, let’s modestly estimate that one in three HubSpot blog posts (33%) have at least one image embedded on them, not including the article’s featured image. HubSpot publishes (or republishes) approximately 260 blog posts every three months. If we were to extrapolate this alt text process for 33% of these blog posts, that’s at least 87 images that can potentially capture new organic traffic for us every quarter.
    And if the average blog post targets a keyword that receives 3,500 searches per month — a rough estimate based on the HubSpot Marketing Blog’s editorial calendar — that’s a landscape of 304,500 searches per month to which we’re adding more HubSpot content (87 images x 3,500 searches per month). In other words, we’re putting ourselves inside hundreds of thousands of Google Image galleries we weren’t ranking in before.
    Read more about our team’s approach to alt text in this blog post.
    2. Branded Images & Templates
    At HubSpot, we create a ton of valuable resources for our readers to download, ultimately making them a qualifiable lead for the business. However, there are still a ton more resources our readers want for which we necessarily don’t have a lead generation strategy but still garner valuable organic traffic. And these resources appear in image form on many SERPs that are important to us.
    These resources include inspiring business quotes, resume templates, sample emails, and even image thumbnails that appear in Google’s featured snippets.
    To identify these images, the SEO team analyzed where HubSpot was getting most of its image traffic already, and categorized these sources into image types. Then, we worked with HubSpot UX designer Amanda Chong and the rest of our creative team to develop original HubSpot image templates for each image type.
    These new image templates allowed the blog team to effectively “brand” various images they might not otherwise embed into a blog post and add alt text for each image using the style described above to expose it on the right SERPs. Here are a couple examples of these branded images now live on HubSpot content:

     

     
    3. The Search Insights Report
    HubSpot’s “Search Insights Report” is a quarterly manifestation of our SEO strategy, delivered directly to the blog team every three months. These reports consist of more than 200 blog post topics, all rooted in searches for which we want to appear on a SERP, that our writers take up and publish over the course of 90 days.
    And although we have obviously made deliberate moves to capture more image traffic over the last year, the radiative effect these reports have on our website traffic can’t be overstated.
    For one, as we create these search insights reports every quarter, we’re tapping into topics that are increasingly being found in image form. There’s even data to support this — here’s a five-year trend line showing an increase in Google Image search for all queries related to “marketing”:

    Source: Google Trends
    Here’s one for all searches related to “sales”:

    And, finally, for “customer service”:

    Conveniently, these three topics reflect the target markets of three of our blog properties: the Marketing Blog, the Sales Blog, and the Service Blog. But image traffic has gone up across the board, which means more traffic from image searches has become a byproduct of our new SEO strategy — one that has continued to grow as we capture more space on SERPs we didn’t have before.
    Plus, having a document that distills all of our potential content topics, and aligning the content team with this document, has earned us ranking on some of the most competitive search engine real estate we’ve ever seen. It stands to reason we’d see a little (alright, a lot) more image traffic as a result.
    It’s easy for marketers to attribute website traffic increases to good SEO, but these results ultimately aren’t possible without the time, creativity, and good judgment put into the content itself.

  • 25 Stats That Make the Case for Infographics in Your Marketing

    When we think about visual marketing content, it’s easy to default to popular mediums like television, web video, and social media. It’s for good reason, too. These channels do a great job of grabbing your audience’s attention and getting them familiar with the visuals related to your brand.
    But, there’s one type of visual marketing content that’s sometimes overlooked by marketing teams. It’s not as flashy as high-end influencer videos or Super Bowl commercials, but it’s one of the most effective and reliable forms of marketing content.
    Infographics are an excellent marketing tool for educating customers and sharing information. They describe a product, service, dataset, or action in a visual way so that it’s easier to comprehend as the reader. Infographics have been used for marketing purposes since the 19th century and they continue to be an effective tool for marketers to this day.
    Read on for some additional stats you should know about infographics this year.
    Infographic Stats to Know in 2020
    Marketing Efforts

    32% of marketers believe that visuals are the most important type of content that they’re business creates. (Social Media Examiner)
    In 2019, 74% of marketing content contained a visual element. (Venngage)
    65% of brands use infographics for marketing purposes. (Xerox)
    56% of marketers use visuals in all of their marketing content. (Social Media Today)
    Infographics can increase website traffic by up to 12%. (One Spot)
    Infographics are the fourth most-used type of content marketing. (HubSpot)
    In 2018, 69% of marketers said that visual content was either “very important” or “absolutely necessary.” (Venngage)

    Image Source
    Buyer Behavior

    90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. (Infographic World)
    On average, people will remember 65% of the information they see in a visual. Whereas they will only remember 10% of the information that they hear out loud. (Cognition)
    Infographics are 30 times more likely to be read in their entirety than blog posts or news articles. (Digital Information World)
    65% of buyers are visual learners — meaning they absorb the most information when they look at an image, graphic, or video. (Pearson)
    Web articles that contain images receive 94% more views than articles that don’t. (Jeff Bullas)
    When directions are accompanied by visuals, readers are 323% more likely to complete the action described. (Springer)
    Web content that includes images gets 650% more engagement than content that only includes text. (Webdam)
    84% of people who have used an infographic consider them to be useful. (Infographic World)

    Sales Engagement

    Infographics and other colorful visuals can increase sales by up to 80%. (Xerox)
    Consumers tend to focus on “information-carrying images” like infographics more than they read the page’s text. (NN Group)
    Buyers understand infographics better than they understand written instructions. (Springer)
    The brain processes visual information 60 times faster than written information. (Content Factory 1)
    Presentations with visual aides are 43% more persuasive. (MIS Research Center)
    In 2018, 42% of marketing teams spent less than 10% of their budget on creating visual content. (Sproutworth)

    Image Source
    Social Media

    Infographics are liked and shared more than any other type of content on social media. (NN Group)
    Facebook posts that include an image receive twice as much engagement than posts that don’t include an image. (BuzzSumo)
    74% of marketers include visuals when posting on social media. (Social Media Examiner)

    Tweets that include visuals are 150% more likely to be retweeted. (Buffer)

    Image Source
    Using Infographics With Your Marketing Strategies
    Infographics are used in a variety of marketing campaigns. You can use them to educate buyers about new products or services, or you can use them to enhance your marketing content by adding an eye-catching visual element.
    You can also utilize them to explain how to use a product or service effectively. Adding visuals to your onboarding process can make it a lot easier for new customers to learn how to use your product or service — which can make a significant difference in customer satisfaction and retention. After all, your customers may be happy when they buy your product, but they won’t be thrilled for long if they can’t figure out how to use it.
    If your looking to create you’re own infographics, learn how to create infographics with free PowerPoint templates.

  • How to Grow Brand Awareness on Snapchat, According to Snapchat’s Product Marketing Manager

    Snapchat has undoubtedly become a powerful advertising tool for marketers aiming to reach millennials and Gen Z — and for good reason.
    For one, Snapchat reaches 75% of millennials and Gen Z.
    Additionally, Snapchatters are highly engaged on the platform. In fact, most users open the app 30 times per day.
    All of which is to say: If you’re looking to reach millennials or Gen Z’ers and you’re not using Snapchat for Business, you could be missing out.
    But that might sound easier said than done. How can you truly leverage the platform — typically used to send funny photos and videos to friends — to grow brand awareness and impact your company’s bottom line?
    Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to grow brand awareness and drive sales on Snapchat — with the help of engaging ad formats, intricate targeting, and plenty of access to creative tools and resources.
    Here, I sat down with Evan Orenstein, Group Product Marketing Manager at Snapchat, to explore how you can expand your business’ reach on one of the world’s most popular social platforms.
    Let’s dive in.
    *Click here for a $150 credit in ad credit from Snapchat & HubSpot — simply spend $50 in Snapchat’s Ads Manager and receive $150 in ad credit to use towards your next campaign!
    (Note: The italicized questions are mine. The rest of the text is Evan’s direct quotes.)
    1. How have you seen brands evolve over the years with how they use Snapchat? Do you think Snapchat serves a different purpose for businesses now than it did 2-3 years ago?
    It’s truly been amazing to watch the evolution of advertisers on Snapchat. When I initially came to Snap our business was entirely bought through insertion order and our ad products were mostly one day takeover type experiences designed for the Fortune 500.
    As the business grew, it became clear that we can drive success for businesses of all sizes. For example, products like Dynamic Ads allow ecommerce businesses of all sizes to leverage their existing product catalogs to build ads and automatically show the right product to the right Snapchatter at the right time.
    Even Lenses AR Experiences, which were originally only available as a one day takeover with a high price tag, are now supported in our auction, with many targeting and optimization capabilities, for as little as $5 a day.
    Beyond our advertising solutions, we are working on products and services like Brand Profilesto give brands a permanent home on Snapchat, SnapKit, which gives developers access to Snapchats best features, and the Yellow Accelerator program which supports entrepreneurs.
    2. If a company is looking to grow brand awareness via Snapchat, what are 2-3 methods you’d suggest they test out? (Those methods could be Snapchat features, tools, third-party extensions, or types of content itself)
    If brand awareness is the goal, I think it’s important to really take advantage of all our ad formats to ensure your brand is present in all areas of Snapchat to maximize reach. That means advertising across Single Image or Video Ads, Story Ads, Lenses AR experiences and Filters.
    Also, focus on broad audiences that align with your product by testing our first party targeting segments called Snapchat Lifestyle Categories.

    From a creative perspective, make sure your ads are eye catching and get your brand’s key message or offer across in the first 2-3 seconds, and make sure to include your brand logo early in your ad.

    If you don’t have creative readily available, you can try out Snap Publisher, our easy-to-use video and image ad creation tool, or Lens Web Builder, the easiest way to create engaging AR ads right in your browser. Both of these tools are super easy to use and available within Ads Manager.
    3. Do you have an example of one brand that really impresses you with how they use Snapchat for brand awareness?
    There are so many brands that impress me by how they use Snapchat to market their business.
    In general, the brands that impress me most tend to have a few things in common — first, they leverage creative that is designed for our unique Snapchatter community. They also use more than one of our immersive ad formats because our ad products work better together.
    A specific brand that impressed me was Truff, a luxury hot sauce brand. They used Snap Publisher to develop creative that showcased their product being used in everyday situations and leveraged video ads and Story Ads to reach new potential customers on Snapchat.
    To see other success stories, I highly recommend checking out the Inspiration section of the Snapchat For Business site. There are so many great examples of brands that leverage the versatility of our ads platform to drive mass reach amongst our diverse audience, while also driving efficiency that contributes to their bottom line.
    4. What do you think is unique to Snapchat’s platform for growing brand awareness, that a business might not see with other social platforms?
    There are a number of reasons why Snapchat’s ads platform is perfect for growing brand awareness, but if I had to choose one I’d have to say our Snapchatter community.
    On any given week, many Snapchatters can be found exclusively on our platform, as opposed to competitors.
    For example, per App Annie’s analysis commissioned by Snap Inc. for figures calculated for Q1 2020, 43% of Snapchatters 16 and older in the U.S. aren’t on Instagram on a weekly basis, and 86% aren’t on Twitter.
    Daily exclusive reach is based on the daily overlap of active users on Snapchat and competitor apps. App Annie weights iOS and Android data in their sample to reflect the general population of the market.

    If you want to reach millennials and Gen Z where they are everyday, you need to be on Snapchat.

    This is proof that if Snapchat is not part of your media mix, you are missing out on reaching all of your audience. Snapchat captures an important audience that is hard to reach on other platforms — in fact, they are unduplicated and incremental to your efforts.
    It’s a recipe for success when you combine our engaged and unique audience with an expansive set of immersive ad formats that were made for mobile. Whether brands want to use their existing assets or build their own from scratch, we offer a ton of flexibility within our tools to let a brand’s creativity fully come to life.

  • How Three New Instagram Shopping Tools Could Help Marketers Boost Sales

    For years, millions of brands have flocked to Instagram to spread awareness to millennials, Gen Z, and members of other generations on the app.

    And, at this point, Instagram marketing has proven to be a smart tactic. Currently, 90% of Instagram’s 1 billion-plus user base follows a Business page on the platform.
    But, while Instagram has been a great place for brands to engage target audiences, it hasn’t always been easy for those companies to turn their followers into customers.
    When the app launched, Instagram only allowed links in profile bios. Shortly after, the platform allowed users to place links in Stories — but only if they had a verified account or more than 10,000 followers. This meant that smaller or less-followed brands had to think strategically to get their Instagram audience to view product information, research the brand, and ultimately leave the Instagram app to buy products.
    Things got easier for brands with the global launch of Instagram Shopping’s Shoppable posts in 2017. This was the first time standard feed-based posts or Story images could be linked to a brand’s Facebook product catalog. However, the feature still required Instagram users to leave the app to make a purchase.
    But this summer, with the launch of Facebook Shops, Instagram Checkout, and Instagram Live Shopping, many of the friction points between discovering products on Instagram and buying them have been eliminated.
    In this blog post, I’ll highlight the three free, new tools that brands can use to make sales directly from Instagram’s platform, as well as any brand requirements for using them.

    3 New Instagram Shopping Tools to Know About
    1. Facebook Shops

    Technically, this tool was launched by Facebook, which owns Instagram. However, your Instagram followers won’t need a Facebook account to make purchases with this feature.
    Facebook Shops, launched in May, enables brands to create online stores that link directly to a brand’s Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, or Facebook Business Page.
    When creating a free Shop, brands can upload bulk or individual product listings with photos, prices, and descriptions; change the store’s button colors and text to make it consistent with their brand; and choose to have visitors buy products directly from the shop or through an integration with an ecommerce website they already use.
    Facebook Shops can be created on Facebook Commerce Manager. To get started, you’ll need admin privileges to the Instagram Business or Facebook Business account you’ll be linking the Shop to — as well as admin privileges for your brand’s Facebook catalog.
    Once a Shop is created, it can be linked directly to your Instagram Business profile. When this is done, an icon that says “View shop” will appear on your mobile profile under your bio. At this point, you can access Facebook Shops on desktop from Facebook Business profiles, but not from Instagram or WhatsApp desktop sites.
    Here’s what the Shop experience looks like when an Instagram app user visits the account of Ink Meets Paper, a printing company which offers a Facebook Shop:

    Facebook Shops, which is free to all businesses that fulfill the business page requirements noted above, could be a great option for small or medium-sized businesses that are interested in ecommerce but don’t have the time or bandwidth to create and promote a full ecommerce site around their brand.
    To learn more about how Facebook Shops works and the background of why Facebook launched it, check out this post.
    2. Instagram Checkout
    For brands that want to sell a few select products on Instagram, or don’t have time to create a Facebook Business Page or catalog to open a Shop, Instagram also now offers an in-app Checkout experience that links to Instagram Shoppable posts.
    Before 2020, several brands were already using Shoppable posts. These posts, which often highlighted an image of a product or experience, allowed users to tap the content to view it in an online catalog outside of the platform.

    But, in March, Instagram launched a Checkout feature that allowed Shoppable purchases to happen directly in the app.
    In an announcement, Instagram explained that it launched in-app Checkout to keep users on the platform when they were inspired to make a purchase.
    Instagram also adds, “Businesses can truly leverage the full ecosystem of Instagram Shopping features to build experiences that drive awareness and transactions all in one place.
    Currently, Checkout is free to brands through until at least 2021. However, there might be selling fees for businesses after that.
    “We also want to help reduce the cost of doing business during this tough economic time, so we’re waiving selling fees for businesses that use Checkout on Instagram through the end of the year,” Instagram’s post said.
    Now, when users click on a Shoppable post that links to the Checkout feature for the first time, they’ll be asked to give their name, billing information, and shipping address and can then click “Place Order” directly on Instagram. To further eliminate friction, users can set the app to remember purchasing information so they don’t need to submit it each time they place orders.

    Image Source
    At this point, you might be wondering, “How is this different from Facebook Shops?”
    Both tools similarly allow consumers to make purchases directly on Instagram. However, a Shop is a mini-online store where you can purchase one of many products listed by one brand. Meanwhile, Checkout allows consumers to buy a product they happen to see on an Instagram Shoppable post within their feed or a brand’s profile page.
    Additionally, to use the Checkout feature, you’ll need to fulfill the same requirements as Facebook Shops, plus approval for Instagram Shopping.
    Checkout might be a good option for your brand if you want to dabble in internet sales but don’t want to monitor how multiple products are selling in a wider shop. With Checkout, you can choose to sell one or two products within a few posts, and monitor your content for engagements and sales metrics.
    3. Instagram Live Shopping
    Aside from adding Checkout to posts within a feed, Instagram Live Shopping brings a similar purchasing experience to live content streamed on the app.
    Essentially, Instagram Live Shopping lets brands or Instagram influencers present a small CTA for a product at the bottom of an Instagram Live stream. Below is an example where an influencer discusses a product live as its Checkout CTA is highlighted at the bottom of the screen:

    Image Source
    When an Instagram Live viewer sees the Checkout CTA and clicks “Add to Bag,” they can either save the order for later if they want to continue watching the stream, or they can purchase the product immediately via Checkout.
    If a user places a product in their Instagram Bag, they can find it by going to the app’s Explore tab and tapping “Shop” in the top navigation. Fram the  Shop page, they can then tap the bag icon in the upper right corner to see carted products:

    Because users who purchase items via Instagram Live Shopping will be directed to Instagram Checkout to finalize the purchase, brands will need to gain access to Instagram Checkout before using Live Shopping.
    What to Keep in Mind When Selling Products on Instagram
    At this point, you might be ready to sell your brand’s products using Instagram’s in-app shopping features. However, as you would with any new marketing or selling technique, you’ll want to keep a few key things in mind:
    Your content strategy is still key.
    While it might sound tempting to blast your followers with posts filled with product shots or basic promotional messaging, and hope that users click the Checkout button immediately, some audiences might not respond well to content that feels like a basic advertisement.
    Remember, social media users see ads with product shots and bland descriptions daily. If your content doesn’t stand out above all the other promotional posts out there, your audiences might disengage from you, even if they like your brand.
    Rather than posting basic images or videos of products linked to Checkout, consider going a step further. For example, you could air a live stream tutorial where an influencer discusses your product, or publish user-generated content such as customer testimonials. These types of content will show audiences more valuable details than a basic product shot, while also presenting how real people benefit your product. This could persuade them to click and buy your items much faster.
    You’ll want to pick the right feature for your company.
    While Shops will allow customers to buy a bunch of different products from you all at once, Checkout and Instagram Live Shopping allow you to zone in on specific items or services through your content. While Facebook Shops might be great for brands that can deliver multiple products at once and handle potential high demand, Checkout and Live Shopping could be beneficial for smaller businesses that are more comfortable highlighting one standalone product at a time.
    Additionally, if you have a killer supply chain, tons of products to sell, and no time to make content, a Facebook Shop could help you move your inventory. Meanwhile, if you have a great content team, but only have a few key products to sell, you might want to create solid product marketing content paired with Instagram Checkout.
    You’ll want to monitor your metrics, including revenue.
    Although brands don’t need to pay for Facebook Shops, Checkout, or Live Shopping, time and effort will still go into creating and maintaining a Shop or content that highlights items sold in Checkout. Because of this, you’ll want to monitor the money and engagement-related metrics of each strategy you take on. While these metrics can help you learn what to do, and what not to do, they can also help you determine if these features are worth your team’s time.
    If you’re considering an ecommerce strategy on Instagram or another online platform and don’t know where to start in your planning, bookmark our Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce. If you’re interested in learning how other brands shifted to ecommerce in 2020, check out this piece.

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