SKIMs and Usher's Restock Campaign

Friday, February 16, 2024

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Good morning,

Meta advertisers across social media have been sharing sentiments that delivery in February has been… less than stellar… And, to add fuel to the fire, Wednesday’s ad delivery outage left some advertisers campaigns (and spend) in disarray. 🙃

The Pilothouse Meta team saw burst in spend in alignment with what was being reported on X. In one example, they saw:

• Spend between 3pm and 4pm PT more than tripled in the hour
• CPMs 4-5X'd and carried through on elevated rates until approximately 7pm PT

If your campaign went over budget, make sure you’re reaching out to your Meta rep or submitting an issue report directly to Meta. Checkout the X thread linked in the toolkit section for instructions.

💡 To do: Keep a close eye on your campaign performance. If performance has dropped off relative to before the outage, it may be wise to consider rebuilding affected campaigns.

Here’s what you’ll find in today’s DTC:

• 3 things SKIMS did to make their Usher restock campaign a success
• How to reduce your return rate as an Amazon seller
• And…here’s a tip if you feel stuck in the ideation phase.

You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Sapona Plastics, Casablanca Bridal, and Splash Daddy Cleaning. 👋

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

🧑‍🍳 Cooking Up Success: Hestan's 78% Net Sales Surge and 139% Increase in Orders *

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Want to boost online visibility, engage a broader audience, and increase sales? Hestan, a leading cookware brand, did too. 👀

Step one to start turning up the heat in the advertising kitchen? Partnering with a team that knows how to maximize results through strategic alignment.

Pilothouse’s Meta, Email/SMS, and Google teams developed a year-long recipe for success.

The key ingredients: Creative optimization, eagle eye performance monitoring, and landing page split testing and optimization.

The recipe yielded:

• 78% increase in net new sales
• 139% increase in orders
• 32% increased conversion rate
• 430% increase in Meta conversions

The hyper-successful collaboration had Hestan nearly doubling growth in year-over-year net sales.

Did reading this make you hungry for more sales? 👀

Book Your Free Exploratory Call

WHAT’S TRENDING

🔥 SKIMS x Usher’s Timely Restock Campaign

SKIMS partnership with Usher ahead of the Big Game quickly resulted in a sold out men’s underwear collection and customers begging for a restock.

For a lot of brands it’s hard to sustain interest after the initial campaign buzz wears off but SKIMS did three things to keep that momentum going.

Let’s break down what made this SKIMS restock campaign so successful.

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1️⃣ Timely Drop

SKIMS decision to do a restock the day after the Super Bowl was a smart move since Usher’s performance was top of mind.

Customers who went on the site during the halftime performance were greeted with a CTA to join a waitlist.

This was a clever way for SKIMS to gather more customer emails and those who signed up were rewarded with early access (a chance to shop an hour before anyone else). 🕜

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2️⃣ Relevant copy and fresh colorways

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SKIMS isn’t shy about using visuals of their male muse Usher and also tailors their product copy so it feels relevant to their target audience.

Instead of using the word ‘restock’ in their copy, they went with ‘encore-worthy essentials’ a nod to Usher’s impressive Super Bowl halftime performance.

They also added more colorways to the collection to keep the collaboration feeling fresh. ⭐

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3️⃣ Exclusivity

This brand partnership does a great job of driving traffic to the SKIMS website not just because of their famous brand ambassador but with the promise of exclusivity.

On this well-crafted landing page, visitors can purchase Usher’s new album Coming Home with a bonus track that’s only available on the SKIMS website. The exclusive song Naked ties in well with their joint campaign (also doesn’t hurt that it’s one of the best songs off the album!).

The SKIMS checkout page also promotes Usher’s album and makes it easy for customers to add to their cart with just one click if they are just shy of free shipping.

This makes the album a nice lil’ add-on' and a great way for SKIMS to increase their average order value.

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The takeaway?

• When running restock campaigns, jazz up your creative copy so it feels relevant to the consumer’s mindset. It also helps to introduce newness with more product variations.
• By offering exclusive content, more visitors are compelled to check out the site and purchase a few more items on their wishlist to reach the free shipping threshold.

All in all, this is a really well thought out restock campaign. 👏🏆

AMAZON TIPS

📦 How To Reduce Your Return Rate

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This week the Pilothouse Amazon team shares how to decrease your return rates by setting customer expectations.

Return rates on Amazon can be higher than on your website, simply because Amazon makes it so easy for consumers to return.

It’s one of the reasons why shoppers love purchasing on Amazon but this can come at a cost for retailers.

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What’s the average return rate on Amazon?

On average between 5 to 15% but also depends on the category. Some categories like electronics and apparel can go up to a whopping 40%. 😱

However a high return rate is not great and makes it hard to look at your attributed efficiency numbers with confidence, and since Amazon is now flagging frequently returned items, it can decimate your conversion rate.

So what is the best way to reduce returns? 🤔

It starts with preventing them in the first place.

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To start we have to ask:

Why are customers returning items, or why would they return an item?

If you are new to selling on Amazon… look at return data from your website to see if you can find any valuable insights.

If you are an existing Amazon seller…we can look at current return data as well as summarizing product reviews and competitors’ product reviews to understand the critical reasons a customer might return something.

Typically this comes down to a customer misinterpreting a product (aka. it didn’t live up to their expectations).

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This could include factors like:

• Product size
• Compatibility with other products
• How to use
• Amount of time to see results (e.g. Supplements -> 30 Days to See Results type language)
• Initial expectations (Fun fact: lip plumpers typically have a burning sensation which could catch first-time customers off guard) 👄

From here, we want to build these into our image carousels and A+ Content to clearly define expectations.

The goal here is to be clear, so if you sell a charger that is NOT compatible with an iPhone, don’t put it in fine print at the bottom corner of a listing image! ❌

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✅ Make it very clear

We want to prevent sales to customers that are just going to return a product anyway.

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✅  Set expectations

Lifestyle images do a great job of showing products in use and also setting expectations of size/dimensions.

Some things like clothing size are harder to convey, so the play there may be providing helpful tips, including the model’s height/weight/size worn within a lifestyle image, or a guide to measuring correctly to match your sizing chart, or even dedicating an entire store page to how your product fits.  

Clear actionable information that empowers a customer to make the right decision first is key. ⭐

No one wants to go through the hassle of returning a product, so use these tips from the Pilothouse Amazon team to help your customers help you. Less returns, higher customer satisfaction, everyone wins.  

🧰 THE TOOLKIT

🛑 Did you experience Wednesday’s Meta outage? Check out these instructions from Barry Hott on how to report the issue to Meta.

📹 AI text to video creation just soared (or should we say Sora’d) to new heights… Yesterday, OpenAI teased their newest creation Sora. The AI giant claims they’re teaching Sora to, “understand and simulate the physical world in motion.” Check out the preview.

📰 NEWS

• Zuckerberg argues Quest 3 beats Apple’s Vision Pro on quality and value in Instagram video, proving that anyone can create UGC.
• Amazon gets sued for Prime Video ad fees.
• Credit card delinquency rose over 50% in 2023 and is at the highest level in 15 years.
• Coca Cola is rumored to be pursuing acquisition of healthy soda brand Poppi.
• Discount ecommerce store Wish was acquired by Qoo10 at a bargain priceof $173 million.

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🌐 IN THE SOCIAL SPHERE

If you feel stuck in an ideation rut, that’s okay. Do a brain dump and build on your initial ideas to get those creative juices flowing.

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👀 BANTER

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Have you heard our latest podcasts?

• 🔗 Ezra Firestone on Proactive SEO and Brand Acquisitions
• 📈 AKNF 377: Spilling our Performance Max Google Ad Secrets
• ⭐ Niclas Bornling on the Art of Brand Storytelling
• 🚀AKNF 375: ‘The Three W’s’ of Email CTR
• 🥟Eric Ji Sun Wu’s Entrepreneurial Journey with Sobo Foods
• 💗AKNF 373: The Art of Valentine’s Day Advertising

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DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Frances Du. Edited by Eric Dyck.

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