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Welcome to the Merchant Mastery blog.

It has officially been two weeks since Apple released their iOS 15 update. In a turn of events shocking to absolutely no one, this update, along with the data tracking pop-up alerts released back in April, has disrupted the advertising and email game.

** Sighhh **

We all know acquiring new customers is a necessary cost, but if your customer acquisition cost (CAC) is too high, your profit margin will get smaller, and smaller, and smaller... well, you get the idea.

Calculating your CAC helps you understand how much you need to earn from each customer to have a profitable business. There are different ways to calculate your CAC, but before we do so, let's first define it.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the cost to your business of earning a new customer. CAC includes all costs that contribute to getting your product into a customer’s hands. Costs such as sales costs, marketing costs, product costs, etc.

How will the new iOS 15 update impact email marketing?

We're glad you asked.

The main changes include the ability to:

  • Hide open email behaviour by pre-loading email images, including tracking pixels.
  • Hide specific (e.g., city-level) location data by blocking IP addresses.
  • Obscure click-through activity by using a proxy email address.

Instagram recently removed the swipe-up feature for Instagram stories and replaced it with new link stickers.

Users who have over 10,000 followers will see a new option in their sticker menu, which they can use to link any products. The linkable sticker may be released to all accounts following a trial period. **Crosses Fingers** 

Instagram has surpassed 1 billion monthly active users worldwide, and over 500 million people use Instagram stories daily.

Because stories disappear after 24 hours, they can be more authentic than feed posts, making it easier to post more often. Keep people in the loop about product drops, limited releases, upcoming events, and offers you're running.

At Merchant Mastery, we often see startup merchants struggling to get traction with Facebook advertising. If your store is going to succeed, and sustainably scale, your online advertising is something you will need to master. And while SEO and publicity are great assets to have, they are highly unpredictable and will not produce the same, consistent, bang for the buck as interruptive advertising on social media platforms.
In case you missed it, Klaviyo introduced 4 MASSIVE product updates at its recent product event, to help merchants connect with customers better, with a key focus on ownership. Ownership of data, relationships, and the experiences they deliver. 

Snapchat has a distinct user base:

  • 75% of users are millennials and Gen Z (who have $1 trillion in direct spending power).
  • 70% of users are female. 
  • 84% of users are under 34 years old.

For companies whose target market aligns with this niche user base, Snapchat advertising is a no-brainer .

What about those companies whose target market doesn’t align?

Well….

Spoiler alert: There’s a lot of competition and the brands that are surviving are the ones that have a creative advantage. Brands using a lot of user-generated content (UGC) are performing relatively well. UGC gives an extra buffer to allow brands to still be profitable on the Facebook advertising side.

All because of cart abandonment.

Don’t panic. There’s a solution.

Online stores can earn back 3-14% of sales by sending abandoned cart emails. These emails remind customers of what they left behind and encourage conversion.

Having an abandoned cart strategy in place is critical as nearly 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned. 

There’s no way to sugarcoat this: We live in a pretty volatile world. 

And this volatility isn’t easing up any time soon. 

The key is preparation, and data. Sooo much data.

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