Good morning, Marketer, bring on the holidays.

Despite the upside-down of 2020, many of you are in the familiar territory of holiday marketing season. It’s a stressful time, where success counts for more and hurdles can really knock you out. 

In today’s newsletter, we’ve got an update on bugs in Facebook Ads that are coming at the worst time. But, on the plus side we have some email tips for optimizing your holiday campaigns.

Onward!

Henry Powderly,
VP, Content

 
 
 
Ads
 

More Facebook Ads bugs unnerve advertisers ahead of Black Friday, Cyber Monday

Facebook Ads has earned a reputation for being particularly glitchy and unpredictable. Over the past 12 to 18 hours, many advertisers experienced issues with temporary ad disapprovals and accounts being disabled.

“This is the second widespread bug that we’ve seen impact Facebook campaigns in the last 4 weeks. The most recent bug caused multiple accounts (across various verticals) to receive ad disapprovals starting around 6pm Central Time yesterday,” Zenia Johnson, account lead at performance agency 3Q Digital, said Friday.

Another agency we spoke with Friday morning said roughly 10 to 20% of its client accounts experienced issues last night.

Facebook confirmed the problem at 11:15 p.m. EDT Thursday. “There was a technical issue that caused some FB ads & ad accounts to be mistakenly disabled,” Rob Leathern, Facebook director of product management, said on Twitter. “We identified and resolved the issues within a couple of hours, and access should be restored.”

“Account access should be restored. Some ad rejections may still take some time to run through the system – should be sorted out soon however,” Leathern added in a reply.

Read more here »

 

Webinar: 3 Ways the CMO and the CFO Can Become BFFs

Marketing teams that are able to excel at spend management, financial agility, and optimized planning will be the ones that set themselves apart in 2021. In this webinar, we’ll break down the three key areas where marketers can strengthen the relationship between the CMO and the CFO to continue to grow the business at scale. Join our experts and learn the importance of proper spend management how to best calculate customer value and build financial acumen

RSVP today! »

 
Email
 

Tips for optimizing holiday email marketing campaigns

In some ways, it’s back to basics: you need to get your list and your content right if you’re going to be heard above an unprecedented volume of email noise this season.

Clean up your list, perhaps with the help of a validation service. Cutting the list may be painful, but there’s no point marketing to unknown users and mistyped domains.

“Avoid scheduling any type of full blown ESP migration or a warm up of a brand new IP,” said Validity email Strategist Tori Garcia at MarTech. “During the holidays the volume is already really high because of the number of emails that retailers and brands are sending. Mailbox providers are already having a hard time handling the influx of emails.”

You should also be thinking, not just about content, but about personalized content which means more than just inserting a customer’s name. There are opportunities to trigger messages based on consumers’ multi-channel behavior. Triggered messages can substantially increase conversions.

Read more here »

 

Get beyond the algorithm with a data-driven SEO content strategy

Sponsored by Merkle

The divide between SEO and UX is shrinking, making success in search more challenging. Evolving your SEO strategy to focus on site experience is critical.

Join Merkle’s Director of SEO, Melody Petulla, and SEO Content Lead Kacie Gaudiose on Thursday, November 12 as they discuss how to shift your content strategy to a data-driven, user-centric and search-optimized approach.

Read More »

 
Social
 

Reputation.com announces two new patents to simplify creation of social media ad targeting

Reputation experience management platform Reputation.com has announced two new patents for its online reputation management technology, Customized Allocation Framework and Customized Targeting Framework. Both frameworks operate together to simplify the process of creating targeted advertisements on social media. 

The patents allow users to select a top-performing post and target it based on demographic data to increase engagement and reach. Reputation.com monitors past consumer choices to make future customization easier and more efficient. The ideal users of Customized Allocation Framework and Customized Targeting Framework are multi-location customers who have created simple and intuitive advertisements. 

Why we care. Reputation.com’s announcements indicate the ways in which brands are looking for clarity and efficiency in their social campaigns.

 

Early Bird rates end Saturday

Register now to access 45+ tactic-rich SEO and SEM sessions that can help you drive more awareness, traffic, and conversions… and join us at SMX online December 8-9!

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Quote of the day
 

“A brand’s ability to be nimble and adapt its messaging with a tone that demonstrates empathy is a key ingredient for emotionally intelligent communications.” Apryl Casale, Director, Product & Solutions Marketing, SundaySky.