New Year. New schedule!
That’s right, we’ll be sending newsies three days per week in 2022.
The new schedule: 👇
Mondays and Wednesdays: The same killer content you’ve been receiving.
Saturdays: Brand Breakdowns are BACK for good!
It’s an exciting year and we’re grateful to have you along for the journey!
In this newsletter you’ll find: 👇
💥 Tips to be successful in 2022.
💬 Uploading separate captions into Facebook ads manager.
🚀 2021 top three All Killer No Filler podcast episodes.
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe so you never miss out. And be sure to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Congrats on crushing it in 2021. Hopefully, ya took time to look back and give yourself a little pat on the back.
We have tons of content lined up this year, but before we dive into that we’re sharing tips from brands on how to approach the new year successfully.
Let’s gooo!
Erica Aarons, the Retention and Engagement Manager at Rumpl, believes DTC brands must approach 2022 with one thing in mind: retention.
Q4 was every brand’s busiest season, and you likely saw a spike in sales from many first-time customers.
So, plan how you’re going to keep those customers coming back.
“SMS is my favorite channel to talk to customers on. It’s easy to follow up after the holidays and ask if they bought for themselves or as a gift, send post-purchase education, and even give them opportunities to share UGC,” said Erica.
Erica also signs these campaigns with her first name: “I’ve found that our customers love talking to the person on the other side of the screen!”
If you don’t have a product that’s solving people’s needs, then the internet can’t save you.
David Greenfeld, co-founder, and CEO of Dream Pops, shared with us how there are many brands flooding the market with undifferentiated products.
“Here’s the thing – consumers are the smartest they’ve ever been and will see right through you. To succeed in 2022, brands need to be obsessed with their customers and only launch products that solve real customer needs.”
Sharing photos and catchy memes isn’t enough to drive an audience that converts. Celeste Perez, the CRO of Drink Droplet, believes the real opportunity is in building community.
“The best brands interact like people. The customer-company relationship should always be viewed as a two-way street, just like a real friendship. You stay in touch, you check-in, you go through life together,” she said.
Celeste compared this level of community to the popular K-pop group BTS.
BTS’s community is known as the “ARMY.”
In preparation for a recent show, fans created travel guides for each other, helped each other get tickets, pick outfits, and learn choreo.
“Does your brand inspire its fans to take care of each other? Can your brand pack a stadium with tens of thousands of people who have all learned the chants, the dances, every word to every song – even if they don’t speak the language?
“BTS’s brand does all of this and more,” shared Celeste.
Be like BTS in 2022.
74% of retail customers are one-and-done buyers: meaning they never return for another purchase.
What gives?
There’s so much more that retailers can do to unlock that valuable second purchase. 🔓
And it starts with seeing one-time buyers as an opportunity – not a problem.
Bluecore's eCommerce Retention Opportunity eBook shows you how to increase repeat buyers and boost Lifetime Value by:
Discover the secrets to converting your one-and-done buyers to lifetime customers.
👉 Get the eCommerce Retention Opportunity eBook.
You’ll never discover new revenue-driving opportunities unless you try new tactics and run tests to prove their worth.
David of Dream Pop’s advice is simple: “Always be testing – when it comes to your paid content strategy, testing is your best friend.
But once you test, act fast. Eliminate low ROAS as soon as possible, and double down on higher ROAS.”
These days, content is everything. With higher ad spending and more competition, creating high-quality organic content is key for connecting with customers.
In 2022, double down on your creation and output.
Your ads are going to perform worse than ever this year, so make up the difference by putting organic content into the world that people actually want to watch,” shared Bryan Bumgardner, Head of Growth, Form Nutrition.
David of Dream Pops agrees with this. In fact, he suggests brands build out a media operation:
“Act and operate as a media company. To succeed in 2022, your brand needs to be creating as much quality, contextually relevant content across as many platforms as possible.
At the end of the day, brands need a modern-day marketing funnel anchored by organic content.”
Founders and marketers of growing brands understand the pain point of never having enough resources or time to manage everything.
But content creation is always a priority, and it’s a never-ending need.
Jayde Powell, Head of social and community at Sunwink, notes:
“Think of creators as an extension of your team. While your internal team can focus on larger initiatives like product launches, content series, or brand awareness campaigns, you can collaborate with content creators to focus on cultural moments or any ad-hoc content needs that are more evergreen.”
Align with the creators on your ask and budget, and let them do their thing!
Uploading separate captions into ads manager
There’s a few options when trying to upload separate captions into Ads Manager:
1. FB auto-generated captions.
If your video has sound that FB can detect, you’ll see the option to auto-generate a caption. It’s typically not 100% accurate, but after this is done you can go through and edit the text through the timestamps.
2. Upload an SRT file (which is editable!)
This is specifically a subtitle text file that has timing information embedded. You can’t customize the format in any way but timing is controlled from the file.
Note: These are dynamic on/off as well
3. Embed subtitles directly in the video itself, which gives you more control over formatting, but they’re not dynamic.
We’re taking a look back at our top 10 All Killer No Fillers from the Pilothouse team.
Number 3: 8X ROAS and $8 Million in Sales: A Google Ads Case Study
A deep dive into a Pilothouse produced case study for luxury watch client JBW.
You’ll learn how they: 👇
Number 2: Building a Creative Flywheel
We discuss with the Pilothouse Creative team leads what it takes to build a high-performance creative strategy to scale your DTC brand on paid social.
We go over the formulas we use, as well as the strategic concept of a flywheel.
Number 1: Biggest Amazon scaling Mistakes
Today we're back with Pilothouse's Amazon team to chat about what can go wrong at scale, why, and what to do about it.
Come for the witty banter, but stay for a TOP secret product bundling strategy to crush the gifting opportunity this holiday season.
You’ll also learn: 👇
💰 Skio raises $3.7M to help brands on Shopify sell subscriptions.
☀️ Supergoop sells majority stake to Blackstone.
🟣 Purple Dot, a waitlist and preorder platform for the fashion industry, raises $4M.
🐊 Crocs to acquire Heydude footwear brand for $2.5B.
💻 Codecademy sends it with Skillsoft in a $525M deal.
🍽 The New Non-Profit Growth Model: Wellfare CEO Cole Riley on Food Security and $12 Million Economic Impact.
🤰 Paul Singh from Bump Health on Becoming a Distribution Company and the Road to $200B.
🐶 Chippin Pet CEO Haley Russell on Crickets, Carp, and Global Warming.
🥜 Crunch Differentiation in CPG with Daily Crunch Snacks Founder Laurel Orley.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Thomas Schreiber, Tina Donati, and Rebecca Knight.
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.
NEED MORE DTC?
🚀 Advertise in DTC Newsletter.
💰Check out our course on Facebook and Instagram ads!
📥 Work for The DTC Newsletter: Send an email to Thomas, thomas@directtoconsumer.co, if you’re interested in writing for us!
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
