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High CPA? Why not just gift product to almost-customers?
I loved this little tidbit so much I just had to raise it to the top of the newsletter. A US company called Hard Ketones started sending out free product to those who abandoned cart. Why? Well, their $CPA to acquire via advertising channels was more expensive than the cost to sending the product out / LTV of new customers. This won't work for everyone, so don't go out there and just start flinging free product to everyone who abandons cart. You may find that word gets around and your abandoned cart rate skyrockets. Is it right for you?
Is your $CPA higher than your $AOV for first purchases?
Do you generate repeat purchases?
If you're a service business, the same can apply to offering a free service sample.
I can't independent verify the truth of the story, but you can check out the original story on Twitter. True or not, it certainly raises some interesting conversion ideas.
Some Google Updates
Google is deprecating some attribution models on Google Analytics and Google Ads, keeping only Data Driven and Last Click. That means that first click, linear, position based and time decay are leaving us and you'll be left with last click and data driven. Last click is pretty self explanatory - Google will attribute 100% of the conversion to the last channel or ad a user visited your site via. Data driven is a bit more complex - Google will attribute a portion of a conversion to the various channels / ads that may have been part of a user's conversion journey. For example, let's say someone first visited your site via Paid Search, then Organic Social and then via Paid Social to then covert. A last click attribution would attribute 100% of the conversion to Paid Social, while a data driven attribution would attribute across the three channels that were part of the conversion pathway. The same example would apply for a variety of keywords. A user may first visit your website via a Paid Search intent term (e.g. digital marketing consultant) and then re-visit via a brand term (e.g. Hedgehog Marketing). A last click attribution would give 100% of the attribution to the brand term, while a data driven attribution will apply a value to each element related to the conversion. I'll be opting for data driven attribution in most cases. It's a shame all other models are going to be removed as they each had their own value, however data driven ticks most boxes for understanding a multi channel, multi ad funnel. You can learn more on Google's post. Is Google Ads following in Google's footsteps by launching a delayed AI tool to assist with content production? Before I even get into things here, let me start by saying this is just a leak for now. However, it looks like Google Ads may be playing around with adding AI content production into the platform, allowing you to create Headlines and Descriptions with the aid of their AI. Yes, you can ask tools like ChatGPT to create this content for you today. However, one would hope that Google will be integrating its AI content production with the terabytes of data it has on what makes a headline and description perform well. If anything, one would hope it would be a quick ticket to move an ad's quality score up the scale to excellence and achieve greater distribution. Let's not give too much air (or screen?) to this leak, but it's one I'm pretty excited for. You can learn more on the original thread.
LinkedIn Ads Updates
LinkedIn is deprecating Message Ads, saving space only for Conversation Ads. Message Ads and Conversation Ads are the two types of ads that get you into the inbox of a member of LinkedIn. But, what's the difference? Message Ads are essentially the traditional type of message ads. You can send a long form piece of text, followed by a single CTA (e.g. link to your website). Conversation Ads are ads which ... elicit a conversion (hence the name) ... kind of. They are ads which also feature a long form piece of text, but allow you to include multiple CTAs or encourage your recipient to start a conversation with you (there's the hence the name!). LinkedIn will be discontinuing Message Ads in May 2023, so make sure to move any Message Ads you're running over to Conversation ads to keep them distributing. You can learn more about the differences directly from LinkedIn.
Don't forget to set up GA4!
Google is sunsetting Universal Analytics (what you probably have) on July 1st. From then, you'll need GA4 to keep using Google Analytics to track your web traffic. If you haven't yet done anything, then let's get you moving! Start with Google's guide, it's actually reasonable assistive. If you're already using Universal Analytics (you probably are), then you may want to follow their migration steps. Next up you'll want to set up your conversions so that you're able to track key actions on your site. Or, if you've already got Destination or Event based Goals in Universal Analytics you can import them over to GA4 Conversions.