📦 - Mario Isn’t the Only One Leveling Up

Banter

Monday, September 19, 2022

FACTS 🥲

In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇

📦 Increasing revenue and breaking through scaling plateaus with Amazon DSP

📦 Three (additional) ways to level up your email marketing

📦 Using Loop to get your returns ready for BFCM

📦 How to speak to your ideal customers by using their words in your copy

Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎

👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.

Amazon

Looking to Unlock Additional Revenue? We Know The Answer is Yes

Are you looking to increase revenue and breakthrough scaling plateaus on Amazon? 👊

Demand-side platform (DSP) is the way to go.

DSP is CPM (cost per thousand impression) based, meaning it’s easier to quickly ramp up spend when compared to sponsored product ads that are capped on the keyword volume and your relevancy for that keyword.

Not to mention, Amazon DSP also gives you the ability to run video ads on many placements, including Prime Video and Twitch. 🎮

Let’s get into it… 👇

🧐 When should you launch DSP?

As a very rough rule of thumb, once you’re over $75k/month in revenue, you should be considering it.  

At this level, you’ll typically have a large enough retargeting audience that will justify $3-5k spend/month.

The Amazon Experts recommend brands starting with the following:

• Retargeting audiences. This is the lowest hanging fruit to start generating revenue and prove out DSP for your brand.
• Competitor retargeting. People who have viewed but not bought your competitors' products.
• Contextual targeting. People Amazon had identified as browsing similar products and categories.

🚨 The Pilothouse Amazon Team recommends against using Amazon Managed DSP due to the lack of control and higher budget requirements.

Using a partner that has access to self-managed DSP gives you direct control over budget, audiences, and campaign structure, along with greater flexibility to scale up or down based on performance.  

Looking for a partner to help build out your DSP? Reply to this email and let us know!

Sponsor

Can’t take the Marketing Heat? Get Out of The Kitchen!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a marketing know-it-all. 🤷‍♀️

Sure, back in the day, it might have gotten you a swirly or two, but now being the most up-to-date person in the room could land you a promotion or a swift high five from your C-suite buddies.

Scouring the internet for all that news and information can be extremely exhausting! But if you have The Daily CTA in your inbox, all your news and information will be localized into one place, summarized into 5 point-form briefings concluded with your call to action!  

And hey, if your eyes get tired from your computer, you can tune into The Daily CTA Podcast to get your news on the go! 🎧

💡Be ready for anything that marketing has to throw at you! Sign up for The Daily CTA.

Email

Three Ways To Take Your Email Marketing to The Next Level

In DTC 217, we explored three ways to level up your email marketing:

• Email templates for beautiful emails designed to stand out
• List segmentation to help you send targeted, relevant messaging, and
• Personalization to create a feeling of connection between you and your customers.

But we’re not quite done yet. As you know, email marketing ROIs are high – and it’s worth squeezing as much juice as possible out of this orange. 🍊

Here’s 3 more ways to level up your email marketing:

1️⃣ Optimize your email for mobile readers

“60-80% of your email opens are likely to happen on mobile. If you ignore mobile formatting…you ignore over half your customers.” -Joe Portsmouth, Director of Retention, The Beard Club

Double-check to be sure your email templates are mobile-responsive. They should automatically adjust themselves to fit the reader’s screen. 📲

Why bother? For starters, it’s true that most people view your emails while on their phone. But that extends to their shopping habits, too. Mobile emails are 65% more likely to send shoppers to your site.

Before you create an important email template, test it on your phone first:

• Is the CTA properly positioned?
• Is the offer in plain view?
• Is it easy to read?

If not, keep tweaking until they do.

2️⃣ Create emails that feel like two-way conversations.

“It takes ONE bad experience to wash out a dozen great ones. So, hire customer support staff who breathe your values + represent them.” -Ralitsa Minkova, email strategist and conversion copywriter

The one-way nature of automated email can sometimes mislead you. It becomes tempting to think of emails as highly-effective versions of billboards. In reality, email was – and always will be – designed for two-way communication.

While automation is great, you want to avoid the feeling of “canned responses.” Here are some ways to make your brand feel less stiff:

• Ask for responses. Use email surveys to incorporate feedback about users’ experiences. This feedback can be invaluable. Incorporate it into new products, new offerings, and new campaigns. But the mere fact that you’re asking to hear from customers will go far to establish your brand as one that cares.
• Don’t use vague language. One of the benefits of segmenting customers is you don’t have to write vague, catch-all emails. The more specific your customer emails, the better.
• Keep it casual. This is email, after all. Don’t write in big blocks. Don’t include 500 words of fine print. Write to customers like you’re writing to a family friend who needs a new product or a little customer support. This humanizes your brand and makes customers feel less like the cog in a machine.

3️⃣ Optimize to specific KPIs

“KPIs are key figures that help you to measure the success of your email marketing campaign and, in turn, of your overall strategy.” -Damian Clarke, Brand+Aide LLC

Clarke recommends paying attention to the following KPIs in your campaigns:

• Open rate
• Click rate
• Deliverability rate
• Sign-up rate
• Click-through rate

Why these in particular? Why not focus on how many people are unsubscribing? It comes down to engagement.

🚨 If people are opening your emails, they’re finding the subject lines engaging. If they’re clicking through, they’re finding the content engaging.

Entering an email marketing campaign without defining your KPIs is like going in blind. Before you start improving, you have to define the parameters for your success. KPIs pre-define these parameters.

More importantly, they tell you which of your emails are the most successful and which still need work.

A top-notch ESP (email service provider) will make these KPIs easy to measure. If you can measure it, then you can level it up.

Sponsor

Are Your Returns Ready For BFCM?

✅ Your inventory is stocked

✅ The ads are ready

✅ The support team is primed

...But are you ready for the 31% spike in returns that happens after BFCM?

In a year where customers cost more to acquire, eCommerce growth is slowing, and consumer spending is down, retention matters more than ever. That's why an optimized returns experience is one of the best levers you can pull to delight customers and maximize retention this BFCM and beyond.

So do yourself (and your customers) a favor and grab a copy of the BFCM Returns Checklist.

You'll learn how to:

• Level up your returns ahead of BFCM
• Segment and deliver personalized return experiences
• Incentivize exchanges to retain more revenue
• Win repeat customers with a delightful post-purchase experience

👉 Download your copy here.

Copywriting

Think you’ve exhausted all possible avenues for writing creative copy? Think again. 🧐

Alex Garcia posted an easy tip on Twitter about writing better copy, and we think it’s too good not to share.

1. Come up with a list of direct competitors and search Google for their reviews. Sort the reviews to show lower ratings.
2. Look for customer/client complaints that come up repeatedly.
3. Take the specific keywords and phrases and infuse them into your copy.
4. Show potential shoppers that you understand the pain points and know that your product is solving the problem!

In Alex’s Tweet, he also pinpoints the fact that “The easiest way to speak to your ideal customer is to use their words.”

Let’s break down an example: 👇

If you’re a DTC kitchenware brand selling pots and pans, find your competitor's complaints in their Google reviews.

You find customers are constantly saying:

• The enamel on the pans is cracking and I feel like I’ve wasted my money.
• The pot got stained red by spaghetti sauce.

In your copy, you could include:

• No cracked enamel here! Our one-year warranty ensures that if you’re not happy with your product, we’ll replace it for free. 🥘
• Sick of opening your tupperware cupboard and seeing stained containers from last year's spaghetti dinner? 🍝 Have no fear, our pots and pans are stain-free for simple, easy cleanup.

Looking for more copywriting angles and styles to test? Click here for 5 more! ✍️

Quick Hits

‍

🌎 Why Patagonia’s billionaire founder gave away his $3B company to fight climate change: ‘Earth is now our only shareholder.’

🗺 Google: New – Show products in all countries using a single feed.

🤩 Shopify introduces new features to help businesses sell internationally.

📱 Microsoft: Brand storytelling meets performance marketing with Multimedia Ads.

💬 Meta adds ‘Community Chats’ on Messenger as it searches for new ways to prop up falling engagement.

🔊 Have you heard our latest podcasts?

‍

🕺 Disco's Benjamin Smith on Nailing Your Product Market Fit With Creative, Offer, and Landing Page.

🆕 Overcoming the New Normal With a Content Creator Network, Crossrope's Srjdan Popovic Returns!

🌸 How True Botanicals Became the Fastest Growing Luxury Beauty Brand with Tresl Segments.

👟 Kuru Footwear Scales Meta Ad Spend 350%! Sean McGinnis on How They Did It.

📈 Are You Measuring Your Actual Growth? Rockerbox's Ron Jacobson on True Incrementality.

Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, and Ashley R. Cummings. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.

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