January 2024 Tech and Marketing Updates

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It's Vicky here with your monthly tech and marketing update. And I'm gonna start with the biggest one, which is the announcement from Google and Yahoo around email marketing. Essentially, if you are selling email marketing content, then it needs to be from a domain email address, and it needs to be authenticated. The domain email address part just means that you can't be sending from a free one like vicky@gmail.com. You need to buy a domain, create an email address for that domain, and use that to send emails. The authenticator part means that you need to put some settings in place to show Google and Gmail Google and Gmail, Gmail and Yahoo that they can trust that it's from you, so it's a trust thing. I'm sure you've got emails from Facebook. You can't see my air quotes, but I'm doing that now when I say Facebook.

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Where they pretend to be Facebook and it looks really real, and that's spoofing. So they're pretending to be to be sending emails from an email address that's not theirs. But if you authenticate it, then Google is gonna trust that it's from you, And it's gonna end up in people's inboxes or at least more likely to end up in people's inboxes. Whereas if the settings are not there, Then they're gonna route it to spam or not deliver it at all. So you've got it's gonna be from a domain email address and authenticated. This has been best practice for a while now, I I must say. It's just I know for those who have not been doing it, it's come a bit of as a bit of a shock. It's just that now they're enforcing it more strongly, but it's been it's been this way for quite a long time.

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There are other things as well with the announcement. I think your spam rate can't be more than 0.3%. Again, it's still best practice to not to not spam people, So you can understand that. You gotta have an unsubscribe link in your header, but your email marketing tool should help you with that. So you you may not need to do anything about that at all. So it would just be on the authentication side. So if you struggle with that, then just put a comment below this, and I'll see what I can do to help you because, yes, it is quite techie. And if your setup is not very straightforward or differs from the norm, then you might not, find it so easy to do.

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But, yeah, there are instructions from your email marketing tool that have instructions. Your domain provider will have instructions. Your web host will have instructions. There are instructions everywhere. It's just knowing which ones to follow can be can be a struggle. But, yes, if you need help, then just comment below. Okay. What else is happening? Instagram are trying out something called Flipside.

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So if you're not aware, People are now creating a 2nd account so that they can have a private space to be real. So they have a public one where they post the flashy pictures and then a private one where they can be real with the personal contacts. So Instagram are trying to get around this by creating something called Flipside, which gives you a private space to share your private content without having a second account. So I am quite interested in this because Facebook I'm meant to have a similar thing. They've got something called profiles now. So instead of creating 2 accounts, you can have another profile on the same account, but I didn't have access yet, and I really, really want access. So, yes, I'm excited about this. What else is happening? Facebook It's stopping the group's API, which may not mean a thing to you, but if you schedule your group content in a third party scheduler or you use Automated access to to post in your groups, or do anything around that, then You might struggle come April.

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So I'm not quite sure what the details are yet of what's gonna be affected, but, yeah, it's just been announced that it's gonna stop the group's API. So Watch this space. That's in April, so nothing to panic about just yet. What else is happening? Tech tools. You may know that I really love buying lifetime deals. Although this year, my resolution is not to buy so many of them. Maybe not at all, but we'll see how we go. But one of my favorite tools, MemberVault, has, brought back the lifetime deals.

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And I'll put a link in in the comments below as well, so you can Go and have a look. But on the flip side, some tools have decided to cease trading this month so far. So the year has started in a bit of an odd way. You know? We've Got many of all who are thriving, and they're offering lifetime deals and other tools who who started with lifetime deals are just dying away, which is a bit sad, especially when you've taken a risk and, you know, you're hopeful when the tool looks so good and then they either run out of money or they've not been managed well or Like, we we'd like to call it a bait and switch where they have, you know, brought a tool to market. We maybe they wanna it for a year only, but they don't tell anyone to take your money and then just stop it after a year. So it could be that, but, yeah, it's always sad. I won't name the tools because it might not, ring any bells to you, but I'll put the list down, underneath this if you're interested. I think that is it for for now.

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I've got all the bits and pieces, like things around Google Ads and Facebook Ads, but, Yeah. They're probably quite boring. So, yeah, I hope that's been useful. And if you call across any news that you would like me to share, Let me know. Until next time.