📅 [May 24, 2021]

Happy Memorial Day! We want to send out a very warm thank you to all of our service members in the Furlough Community for your valor and dedication to our country. 

A very special shout out to our executive board member Joshua Butrum. We can’t thank you enough for all you do in our community and for our country.

In this week’s issue:

• Leverage influencer marketing to grow your business
• UTM Parameters – A Guide!
• Connect with you audience using Snap
• How to craft winning Abandon Cart Campaigns
• Furlough’s Facelift with the NEW design team
• Go viral with the Furlough Fam on TikTok

Keep scrolling for news, insider content, and new opportunities in the Furlough space!
💎 Join Furlough on Discord 💎

 

📱 Social Media

The Ultimate Guide to Leveraging Influencer Marketing to Grow Your Business

The word influencer gets a bad rap.

With the rise of scandals within the influencer circles, brands can be put off wondering if investing is the right move for their product and long-term success.

We have all heard about the influencer with 1 million followers who couldn’t sell 35 T-Shirts to her following.

Ouch.

There are definitely etiquette issues that I have seen within the influencer community, which is why it’s really important for brands to do their due diligence when partnering up.

On the other side, there are influencers who take their job extremely seriously and operate as business owners themselves. You can see this in the professionalism and high-quality work that they produce within their previous campaign history.

This is the type of influencer you want on your team! 

A match made in heaven can allow brands to reach that next level, tapping into new audiences, increasing brand awareness, and boosting their bottom line. Avoid costly mistakes with this guide to leveraging influencer marketing, the right way!

Read more Strategies here.

 

🔎 SEO

You Need This UTM Parameter Guide

For a lot of business owners, SEO presents itself as something very elusive. I know that many business owners don’t understand what SEO actually is and how it can help them.

Alongside ranking on the first page of Google, (goals!) you can also implement SEO strategies to track the effectiveness of online campaigns across traffic sources.

What’s the secret?

UTM Parameters. Otherwise known as Urchin Tracking Module.

Sounds a bit technical right? It works by tagging your URLs which allows you to understand how visitors interact with your website.

This can be advantageous, especially if you are trying to identify what is, or isn’t working. You can take this information and make logical decisions to move forward. You know what they say, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same results, so it’s important to adopt a data-driven mindset. Learn how to use UTM

Parameters effectively here.

 

💰 Paid Advertising

Connect with Your Audience in a Snap!

Some thought that Snapchat’s 15 seconds of fame was about to fizzle out. However, the stats are in and the details may surprise you.

Almost every single quarter of 2020 Snapchat added new users, closing out 2020 at 256 million users (touting a number very close to that of Pinterest and Medium).

So what does that mean for your paid advertising efforts?

Taking the time to use Snapchat ads can be a great payoff, especially if your audience is younger.

Consider this:

• Snapchat reaches 75% of 13-34-year-olds
• This percentage jumps to 90% if the audience is narrowed to 13-24-year-olds
• Daily Snapchat users open the app about 30 times a day

Having the right strategy to target this audience is key to bringing in significant ROI.

The data shows that 6-second ads are the way to go! This is largely due to the shorter attention span of millennials and generation z-ers. Furthermore, the 6-second ads lessened intrusion in the audience’s platform experience, more closely aligning with their behavior.
Want to read more about what else is effective on Snapchat? Check out this article and learn how to connect with you ideal audience in a snap.

 

💰 Remarketing

Are Your Abandon Cart Campaigns Really That Effective?

3 out of 4 shoppers will add an item to their cart and never complete the transaction.

That is 75% of your campaign investment down the drain. It is even worse if the shopper was using their mobile device, with stats as high as 86% abandoned rate.

Some things reported to cause shoppers to lose interest are:

• Having to create a new account to make a purchase
• Lack of payment options
• Checkout complexity

In the wake of these numbers, the question is not whether or not you need an abandon cart campaign.

The question is how do you optimize your abandoned cart campaign so that it wins back the highest amount of shoppers?

A few things that you can implement into your abandon cart campaigns immediately to help win back your customers are: 

• Implement exit intent pop-ups to collect emails: A great way to overcome collecting email addresses for remarketing without forcing shoppers to create an account.
• Use subject lines with discount offers: “Empty your cart with XX% off!”
• Use sensory words in your email copy: “We have a gift for you that will make you feel like it’s Christmas morning”

Utilizing abandoned cart campaigns effectively led marketers in 2021 to recoup 18.64% of their shoppers. And they can work just as well for you.
For an exhaustive list of ways to optimize your abandon cart campaign, check out 10 of the finest abandoned cart strategies in 2021

 

📈 Creative

Furlough is Getting a Face-Lift

The design team got right down to business in their first workshop this week by working on a project near and dear to us all – the Furlough Website Home Page.

Members got the opportunity Thursday to collaborate inside of Figma (just one of the tools team members are learning) to sketch their ideas and give real-time critiques, feedback, and reviews.

They will be re-designing the hero image and are expected to launch it in the very near future. (For our non-designer readers, the hero image is a prominent image displayed front and center on the screen. It is a user’s first visual encounter of the site, and presents an overview of the site’s most important features.)

This face-lift does not stop with the Furlough website. The team will also be revamping the Furlough Weekly landing page to create a friendly user experience for viewers.

We look forward to great things coming from this brand new team and their workshop-style sessions.
If you would like to be a part of helping re-design the face of Furlough, reach out to a community manager or the Design team leaders Darius and Birdy to begin onboarding.

 

🤩 Spotlight

TikTok With the Furlough Fam

Over 1,000 views!

That was what Furlough community member Adam S. saw on his latest TikTok video submission on the @FurloughFam community-driven page.

He fully intends on using our platform to build his presence – attaining the social media dream of going viral! And he doesn’t have to be the only one…

Furlough wants you to showcase YOU on it’s new Furlough Fam TikTok page. So break out those ring lights, brush up on those dances, and hit that record button!

To submit your videos, reach out to Roslyn or a community manager on Discord to get added to the TikTok channel.