The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing. Since the first days, the TemplateMonster company decided to burn bridges with all Russian partners and services and initiated an informational campaign for citizens of other countries about Ukrainian war.
Further, we'd like to reveal the steps we had to make as a fair reaction to the Russian army's massacre on the Ukrainian land.
In terms of the marketing campaigns, we've been using some tools to target CIS countries, and now we've disabled:
- Yandex Direct completely;
- Google Ads campaigns for Russian clients;
- RU campaigns in all related accounts.
FYI, Google itself has suspended all advertising activities in Russia.
For TemplateMonster clients, we've set up additional retargeting campaigns, where we're calling them to help Ukrainian citizens.
We had no luck doing creating similar campaign at Meta since they violate their policy.
Why did we do this?
Our objective was to make sure that all clients, subscribers, and followers would know about terrifying military actions in Ukraine, which is why we used our marketing channels to deliver this information to the world.
Now let’s see how we reached out to society using our marketing channels.
English-speaking subscribers received a newsletter with reliable information about what is happening in Ukraine, with a call for support and help.
We've complemented TemplateMonster and MonsterONE service emails with a banner in support of Ukraine. It leads to the article with complete information about our position in this situation and gives some options how a client can help Ukrainian citizens and army.
Social media
Similar to the letter of appeal to users from Russia, there was a post on the social network VK.com. It was also indicated that we are terminating the liaisons with Russian authors while removing their products from the marketplace.
TemplateMonster's official Facebook page is regularly updated with the information in Ukraine. We're calling for help from the international community, and we're mirroring this information on other social networks.
Also, we've changed the page cover in all social accounts in support of Ukraine.
Authors, Affiliates and Partners
We've stopped cooperation with affiliate partners from Russia and Belarus. Currently, their commissions are frozen and access to the accounts is blocked.
- Affiliate and author commissions are now frozen.
- Authors cannot access their accounts or update products.
- Authors can completely delete all their products from the marketplace by sending a request to our review team at marketplace@templatemonster.com according to the Author Agreement.
We're forwarding all payments made by our authors for the Advertising Services to the Ukrainian army funds.
To make sure that our authors and affiliate partners are aware of the current situation in Ukraine, we're posting information in the authors' community, and we're sharing it via personal communications.
So how do things stand now with our authors? The situation is quite flexible; most of our top-tier authors are not ready to react to this situation.
Middle-tier and small authors are trying to react by sharing information on their socials (making all kinds of reposts) or even offering to use their commission in favor of donations.
Here are some authors who either shared their commission or shared information about the Russian-Ukrainian war.
LT
Themetoro
Dreamit
Ramsthemes
Almost the same way our affiliate partners have reacted. The most sympathetic partners are the following:
zyro.com
Some affiliate partners started making donations on their own, like one from Latvia who wanted to remain anonymous.
We don't want to draw any loud conclusions, but major companies have done nothing apart from a standard reply so far.
Couple more words of support from our affiliates and authors.
Dreamt
madhu84
itijn
Slidesigmathemes
TemplateMela
Yellow Images
I’m in Kyiv arrived on February 22. I’m buying medical supplies and food for people in need and for injured ones in hospitals.
While I’m in Ukraine, I’ll do my best to be as useful as possible to Ukrainians.
I’m here with you all; everything will be OK!
Best,
Manana
Most hosting companies are still silent about the Russian warfare campaign, and they don't even respond to our messages, only namecheap.com added a notification to their homepage that leads to a page with info that everyone needs to know.
Serpstat
SEO-Platform Serpstat, like many Ukrainian companies, cannot stay out when our country is fighting with total evil, with genocide directed by Russia against the Ukrainian people.
Serpstat left the Russian market, despite the economic consequences. We could no longer help develop businesses whose taxes are used to destroy our country and kill our citizens.
Now Serpstat activities are mainly focused on the following areas:
- Our teammates' safety: we helped evacuate most of our colleagues and their families and now keep in touch with those teammates who are still in danger.
- Financial support of the country: Serpstat donates money to Ukrainian Military Forces and different volunteer organizations.
- Economic support: The economy of Ukraine is going through tough times now, so we feel responsible for working and supporting Ukrainian businesses in this challenging period, as performing companies and paying taxes are what our economy needs now. Our immediate plans are to launch a support program for clients from Ukraine to help keep the business afloat.
After the war, we will have a lot of work to do: rebuild the country's economy.
Serpstat has always helped Ukraine businesses develop and find new markets and customers. That is why we now feel responsible for Ukraine's economy and are doing everything possible to provide stable data to our clients and pay taxes to the state, and on the other hand, to become a basis for supporting other companies in Ukraine. I plan to hold a series of lectures for Ukrainians or launch a training course that would help develop business through search engines.
Oleg Salamaha, Founder & Board Member Serpstat
Also, many Serpstat team members joined the Ukrainian Military Forces, local defense, and volunteer initiatives. Many work as a part of the Ukrainian digital army, blocking Russian informational attacks and spreading the truth about the current situation in Ukraine.
This war is a terrible blow for every Ukrainian company, but, despite everything, we are strong and united in one mission - to help our country.
What are we seeing today?
Russia's aggression against Ukraine had an unbelievable effect.
Ukrainians are standing together in the face of the enemy, and in all our history, we've never been so united as today.
Some westerners compare Ukrainians to ants. When some enemy tries to enter the anthill, he gets a fearsome resistance. When it ends, the inhabitants of the anthill are building a bigger and more technologically advanced home.
In contrast, their enemy suffers terrible losses and dies unable to hold even the weakest attack.
As you can see, no matter how hard we're being hit, we're hitting our enemies even harder.
Neither the Kremlin nor NATO or EU could imagine that a small (compared to Russia) country will be able to withstand and fight back the second most powerful army in the world; the reason is dead simple.
We are protecting our homes while they are protecting their propaganda.
Ukraine will win!
Slava Ukraini!