Amazon Introduces Direct Emailing:
Email marketing has become an increasingly important part of consumer engagement over the last year or so. While this shift has always been on the horizon, the pandemic has surely accelerated the need to reach consumers quickly and efficiently.
That’s probably why Amazon has been testing a new feature for U.S. companies that are part of its
Brand Registry program. The feature allows them to contact customers directly by email to notify them of things like new product announcements or sales. However, sellers can only reach out to those who have opted to “follow” their brands.
The tool, called “
Manage Your Customer Engagement,” is ultimately designed to drive repeat purchases for vendors and sellers and help them build a meatier following on Amazon’s marketplace.
This marks a major shift from Amazon’s current policy, which is to limit the amount of interaction between customers and companies that sell on Amazon. Besides complaints of course.
The Morning Brew points out that the move comes as Apple prepares to make it harder for brands to target iPhone users with
personalized ads. Personalization is all the rage these days.
Stripe Acquires TaxJar
Stripe, the privately-held payments company has acquired
TaxJar, a popular provider of a cloud-based suite of tax services, which can be used to automatically calculate, report and file sales taxes. The acquisition will aid Stripe in launching an upcoming suite of tax tools the company is working on to help eCommerce companies and other online businesses.
One of the main draws of TaxJar is that they operate across a number of geographies and the many different sales tax regimes that each company uses. This makes a lot of sense for Stripe, considering the fact that earlier this month, Stripe launched the
Stripe Issuing service in 20 European countries.
As part of the acquisition, TaxJar’s 200-person workforce will now be part of Stripe. The startup has experienced a surge in demand for its services by companies of all sizes. This shouldn’t be a difficult transition because the two companies have already been working in tandem for the past five years.
While financial terms of the deal are hush-hush for now, the company has
raised a total of $62.6M in funding over three rounds with the participation of Insight Partners and Rincon Venture Partners.
Venmo Goes Crypto:
Quick payments app
Venmo is now accepting cryptocurrencies. The decision means that the app’s 70 million users can now use cryptocurrencies to pay for things. Moreover, this signals that cryptocurrencies are gradually moving
mainstream, since Venmo is used by Grandpa Joe and middle schoolers alike. This accessibility could accelerate the adoption of crypto on a larger scale.
Venmo’s main pitch as a cryptocurrency wallet is that users don’t need to do bank transactions to transfer funds. Instead, they can use their existing Venmo balance to purchase bitcoin and other tokens, a barter of sorts.
CNN Business
points out that cryptocurrency can often
feel confusing and inaccessible to newbies, so Venmo will offer in-app guides and videos to help answer some FAQs, and further details.
Crypto enthusiasm has recently soared as trading platform
Coinbase went public at a valuation of $86 billion, followed by a wild 500% rally in Dogecoin which was created as a gag nearly a decade ago. There’s just something enticing about that
bewildered Shiba Inu.
Venmo joins a long list of companies that have started accepting cryptocurrencies as payment, including
Tesla,
Visa, and
Mastercard.
But, it’s very important to note that while Doge might be shooting to the moon, Bitcoin fell 14% on Sunday, after reaching an all-time high of around $64,000 on Wednesday, so the market is still very speculative.
