The Daily Carnage

The savvy marketer's hub for industry news, insights, resources, and culture.

Today’s Issue

Here We Go Again 😮‍💨

What makes content worth reading when it’s all been said before.

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Text Overlay Tool

While we’re on the subject of Facebook and Instagram, let’s pivot to ads for a hot minute.

Stop guessing whether or not the text in your creative will get disapproved or affect your Reach. Facebook’s Text Overlay Tool is a go-to resource for us when we’re getting creative prepared for ads. Just upload the creative, and bang, the tool gives you a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Save time and give it a go.

Captions on Facebook Video Ads

Captioned videos on Facebook should go together like PB&J. Why? Well, we’re gonna tell ya.

85% of a video on Facebook is watched without sound.
76% of video ads need sound to be understood

What do you do when the majority of a video is viewed without sound but needs sound to be understood? Captions, my friend, and here’s how to do it.

Begin creating an ad in Ads Manager by clicking Create.
Choose an objective and then click Continue.
Choose your targeting, placements, budget and then click Continue.
In the Formats section, choose Single Video or Slideshow.
Click Upload Video / Upload Slideshow or Browse Library to find a video for your ad.
In the Video Captions section, choose to Upload Your Own or Generate Automatically.
- If you upload your own, a window will appear. Click Select file and find the .srt file you wish to upload.
- If you choose to generate automatically, a Review Your Captions window will appear. Hover over the caption to edit or delete the caption. You can correct grammatical and spelling errors or manage length of time.
After you select the file, click Save. Your captions upload to the video or slideshow.

Email Marketing with DirectLync

It takes diligence and creativity to stay on top of your email strategy, especially since inboxes are crowded with emails. That’s why a flexible, easy-to-use editor that allows you to customize the email experience for your readers is worth its weight in gold.

Cue DirectLync’s Email tool.

Where most email editors lack flexibility and customization, (unless you’re proficient in HTML) DirectLync’s drag and drop email editor gives you the flexibility you need to create the perfect email without knowing any code.

But here’s the kicker – you can personalize your readers’ experience with the ability to hide content blocks on desktop or mobile. And to top it all off, you’ll have access to over 500,000 free stock photos to create graphically engaging emails.

Check it out and see what others have to say about DirectLync!

Coffitivity

Have you ever noticed eureka moments happen during a shower? What about the productive feeling you get when you work out of a coffee shop? Well, there’s proven science that suggests tiny distractions help your creativity.

Coffitivity capitalized on this notion. This tool gives the ambient sounds of a cafe to boost your creativity and heighten your productivity.

We’re definitely giving this tool a go this week!

Marvel

No, we’re not going to ramble about the superhero universe. Although, for the record, we could. See we stumbled across this web design tool called Marvel. It seems most useful in producing quick ideas, refining an interface, or building prototypes. This all-online tool allows you to…

Create beautiful wireframes, mockups, website or app prototypes for any device right from your browser.
Share work by showcasing the user journey and site hierarchy with realistic interactions. And no coding required.
Optimize your design-to-development process with our Handoff tool.
Give your team and stakeholders full visibility across every project.
Collaborate on each stage of the design process unified in one platform

Marvel has a variety of pricing options, but there is a free version with one user on one project.

Optimize Your SaaS Landing Pages Like an Expert

Here’s an insightful guide tailored to getting the most out of your SaaS landing pages. Not only does it come from Unbounce (a pretty dang comprehensive landing page platform), but they’ve teamed up with Talia Wolf and Active Campaign to corner the market on landing page conversion rate optimization expertise.

In this free guide, you’ll learn all about fixing your underperforming pages, best practices for optimization, and creating campaigns well-tailored to your customers’ needs.

Domain SEO Analysis

We like Moz. And they must like marketers because they have some pretty useful tools. Like the Domain SEO Analysis tool for instance.

You’re able to get 3 free reports per day using Moz’s domain tool. When you hit the site, enter a domain, click analyze and boom! You have access to top competitive SEO metrics like
Domain Authority, top pages, ranking keywords, and more.

Social Mention

Monitoring what people are saying about your brand across several platforms and responding in a timely fashion is one heck of a task.

How can one reasonably stay on top of online publicity? Reputation management tools like Social Mention are a great fit for that kind of issue. Social Mention does the monitoring work for you, compiles a list, and sets comparative metrics:

Strength: measures activity in keywords or keyword phrases in the form of likes, comments, and shares.
Sentiment: offers an idea of the overall attitude (positive versus negative) of the posts.
Passion: When people repeatedly discuss your keywords.
Reach: measures the number of people who are exposed to your search keyword or brand.

Choosing an Email Provider

It’s really important to do your research. There are several email service providers out there and it doesn’t always make sense to go with the most known one.

It’s no secret we love Mailchimp. Heck, it’s the provider we use to send you the Daily Carnage. There’s great flexibility and it’s free for your first 2000 subscribers. But we all want to grow and it can get pricey on subscriber 2001.

There’s also Constant Contact, which we hear good things about! Utilize features like pre-designed templates or list tagging. Plus, there is special pricing just for non-profits!

Decide what you need in an email service provider and make sure to take the long-term into consideration.