iPhone users before and after the iOS 14/15 update.
The stars were out in their Hunger Games best at the Met Gala.
We asked A.O.C. what brands should do on the ad buying side to mitigate the effects of iOS updates.
We can’t fault her message.
In this newsletter you’ll find:
🛍 10 tips on how to tackle BF/CM.
🤑 How watch company, JBW, grew to 8x roas and $8M revenue.
💬 Try this for your email opt-in SMS growth strategy.
💎 Luxury goods for a fraction of the cost.
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Every year, eCommerce brands feel pressure to keep up with Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and all the other retail giants’ major Black Friday discounts.
However, this can take a toll on your business's profitability, especially if you’re a smaller brand that’s working hard to grow.
So what can you do?
The founder of The Scrunchie Club Alyssa Kaplan suggests taking a different approach:
"A lot of consumers are conditioned to seeing ‘traditional’ discounts, so mixing it up with a more unique offer will set your brand apart, especially when a consumer's inbox is completely flooded with 20% off deals," she said.
Most businesses run deep discounts on individual items. But a good way to increase your average order value during this sales season is to offer discounts on bundled items that go well together.
Especially for CPG brands like skincare, you can put together a full routine for customers to purchase at a discounted cost.
This way, you’re selling more products with every purchase, increasing your AOV, and staying profitable.
Knowing customers use Black Friday to purchase holiday gifts, Equa offered a buy-two-get-one-free gift bundle for its campaign.
What’s a great way to drive sales AND encourage loyalty program sign-ups? Making your Black Friday deals exclusive to loyalty members.
Offering an exclusive deal caters towards your most profitable customers, showing them that you’re just as invested in them as they are with you.
Make tiered offers based on a customer’s loyalty program status like Pixi did, for example, which gave VIP members 20% off for the holiday.
This encourages members on lower tiers to purchase products before the holidays so they can get bumped up to your VIP tier to get the best discount for Black Friday.
Similar to offering an exclusive promotion to your loyalty members, you can also offer bonus loyalty points. Again, this encourages new customers to sign up for your loyalty program.
By giving out bonus loyalty points, customers will have a good reason to return to your store after Black Friday since they’ll likely have points to use for their next purchase.
Here’s how Enso Rings did their bonus points campaign via email:
Many brands see a similar problem during Black Friday: They get tons of first-time customers who purchase products and never return again.
And most of the time this is because those businesses don’t have a retention strategy.
One way you can increase your retention rate is to offer a discount on a subscription.
Now, this only works for brands with a subscription program that offers more than just products at a discounted price (you don’t want to lose your profitability by discounting too much).
Here’s what you can offer in a subscription program to make it valuable:
Got some leftover stock on socks, scrunchies, jewelry, or any other accessories? What about lip balms or false eyelashes?
Great. Use your leftover stock for your Black Friday promotions instead of offering a discount.
If you want to drive up your AOV, you can make the promotion available only to customers who spend a minimum number of dollars.
This will encourage them to add more items to their cart so they can get the free item.
A free item campaign can help you get rid of that leftover stock that wasn’t selling anyway. Here’s how LIVELY gave away branded socks for their Black Friday campaign:
So it should come as no surprise that 9 in 10 consumers would prefer to communicate with their favorite brands via text.
The thing is, texts are instantaneous and personal—when used appropriately, DTC brands can create a huge new opportunity to engage and delight their customers.
If you're new to SMS, you might still be wondering:
Dive into these answers, and learn how to implement an SMS marketing strategy for product releases, discounts, loyalty programs and so much more.
👉 Start your SMS marketing strategy and read Klaviyo's tips here.
You can opt out of giving away discounts, free items, or anything directly to your customers to instead focus on charity.
Especially if your brand mission is aligned toward a certain charity, doing a Black Friday charity campaign can show your customers that you’re true to your mission, and those who believe in it will support you.
Even if you already make regular donations to a charity as part of your mission, you can still do something with charity for Black Friday.
For example, The Scrunchie Club uses Black Friday to increase its donations to the charities it already supports.
According to Alyssa Kaplan, the founder, this campaign is successful with her customer base:
"With each design benefitting a different nonprofit, our community is often really passionate about the causes their purchases benefit. And during the holiday shopping season, a lot of repeat customers are interested in purchasing their favorite scrunchies for loved ones, sharing the story behind the product with them."
Here’s how they announced it in an email, calling it "Double Donation Day":
REMEMBER: Shipping costs are the number one reason customers abandon their carts.
Offer free shipping and extended free returns to give customers the confidence to make a purchase.
When they know they can return the item if they choose the wrong size, color, style—and be able to do it without a cost—they’ll be much more likely to follow through with a purchase.
Think about it in terms of Disney, for example: whenever they release a new limited edition item, like a doll, all the fans make sure to get their hands on one ASAP.
The same can be said for brands with loyal fanbases.
When you release a limited edition item, your most loyal customers will want to purchase it first.
Black Friday is the perfect time to release limited edition items, and it can even become a tradition that your customers expect—so every year you’ll build up more hype around what product you’ll be releasing.
Here’s one idea to increase your Black Friday profitability and your AOV: offer discounts only when customers’ carts add up to a minimum dollar amount.
You can increase the discount the more they increase their spending.
And for customers who are doing their holiday shopping during Black Friday, this is a great way for them to get some serious cost savings for the upcoming holiday season.
Here’s an example from The North Face:
Gift cards given away for free are usually redeemed by someone else and not the original purchaser.
AKA, giving out gift cards as your promotion works as a way to acquire two customers with one purchase.
Similar to the approach of offering a discount on a minimum order, you can instead offer gift cards at $10, $15, or $20. This gives customers a reason to come back and purchase from you again.
Ok take a breath now, that was a LOT.
You got this! You’ll crush BFCM, but start prepping NOW.
Check out this sweet strategy from Crossnet.
After signing up for their emails, they present you with the image above.
You earned $5 BUT you can earn another $5 by adding in your phone number.
It’s a great/different way to add value while accomplishing your goal, which is growing your SMS list.
Test this out for your own brand and let us know how it goes!
Leading merchants are flipping the funnel and focusing on customer loyalty to retain shoppers for longer periods of time, increase order values, and grow recurring revenue.
Research shows that existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more compared to new customers.
So, DTC'ers—it's time to strengthen your customer loyalty game. 💪
👉 Ordergroove and clean beauty brand Tata Harper are here to share their lively discussion on you how to turn your shopping experience into a loyalty booster: From Luxury to Loyalty: How Tata Harper Achieved Subscription Success.
You'll learn how Tata Harper has built a successful subscription program, as well as:
🤔 Don’t have a subscription program yet? Not happy with your existing subscription provider? Schedule a call with one of Ordergroove's subscription experts here.
This week on All Killer No Filler we sat down with Saul Garcia, Head of Google Ads for Pilothouse.
Saul explains how Pilothouse helped grow luxury watch client JBW to over $8M in revenue and a 8x ROAS. 💎
Growth this big doesn’t happen overnight. It took Pilothouse and JBW a whole year to see the volumes they’re currently at.
One of the first steps?
Establishing a shopping campaign.
Shopping campaigns work by matching people’s search terms with your products.
To avoid changing product names and descriptions, the Google Ads team created a manual feed in the merchant center that matched keywords without actually making any visual changes to the site!
As tempting as it may seem to separate your campaigns to get a clearer view on your outcomes, dont!
You’ll get more information on your ideal customer when running your campaigns together.
No more branded/non-branded. Consolidate those campaigns!
Although a later addition, YouTube has grown significantly in conversion value for the brand.
JBW has seen great success using UGC and studio-generated content.
Just starting out?
Utilize your UGC. Ads shot on a cellphone can be an amazing value driver.
For more information on how to take a holistic approach with the Google suite, listen to the full episode here!
Meet Italic. 😎
They sell goods made by the same manufacturers as your favorite designers – at a fraction of the cost.
We’re talking HUGE savings.
For a $60 yearly fee, you get access to member pricing for clothing, jewelry, homegoods, skincare, and more.
Get ready to revamp your closet. 👇
Not sure if it’s worth it to you? Italic doesn’t mind.
You can try risk free for 30 days and if you don’t make back your membership fee in savings, they’ll refund you the difference.
💬 What do 6,000 consumers have to say about their online shopping experience? Check out Aircall’s latest report to find out.
🌄 Outer, outdoor living brand, raises $10.5 Million in series A funding led by Sequoia Capital China.
🌸 Fertility tracking app Flo closes $50M Series B.
💵 Mastercard acquires crypto analytics firm CipherTrace.
🐵 Intuit to buy email marketing company Mailchimp for $12 billion in cash and stock.
👩🎨 Canva raises at $40 Billion valuation — its founders are pledging away most of their wealth.
🤖 Zoom is adding live translation services and coming to Facebook VR.
👩🏫 Blackboard to merge with Anthology in $3 Billion edtech deal.
🛒 Kroger, Instacart aim for 30-minute grocery delivery.
🛍 Building the future of online marketplaces with Matt Hayes, Co-Founder of The Fascination.
👩💻 Nestle's Orchid Bertelsen on strategies that scale across 30+ brands (and the metaverse).
🤑 How this DTC brand grew 1000% in one year with David Gaylord, CEO of Bushbalm.
📫 Chase Dimond on iOS 15 changes and this one simple hack to raise your email open rates by 20%.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Thomas Schreiber, Tina Donati, and Rebecca Knight.
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