📦 - Suite Dreams Are Made of This

BANTER

Monday, June 30, 2022

Wait a second. We just so happen to be all three…

A lil self-love on Monday won't hurt 🥰

In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇

📦 Don’t miss out on these game-changing Shopify rollouts

📦 This is how you should be scaling your Amazon Advertising

📦 Turn any Shopify store into a mobile app in just a few hours with Tapcart

📦 Using illustrations to spice up your ads

📦 Free the cash flow you need to scale your brand with Parker

Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎

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

‍

SHOPIFY

🛍 New Shopify Roll Outs!

Pretty much everyone everywhere has heard of Shopify, right?

You know… The world-leading e-commerce merchant that is responsible for generating over $319 BILLION for the global economy since its launch in 2006?

Recently, the mega-merchant dropped some killer new features to help e-com brands scale.

We've unpacked the must-know new features that are ready and waiting to help you reach your growth goals.

🙋‍♂️ Audiences feature

Running Facebook ads? You have to check out Shopify’s new feature, Audiences. It’s Shopify's answer to your lowering returns on Facebook ads by utilizing a network of high-intent buyers specific to your store.

🧐 How it works

It’s a shared audience network that generates a list of high potential customers by collecting mass conversion data to generate custom audiences across selected merchants on Shopify.

You’ll have data on buyers that are most likely to purchase the type of product you want to sell more of based on their past purchase behavior shared by opted-in Shopify merchants.

In theory, Audiences could be a great way to generate lookalike audiences to enhance your top of funnel targeting. You’ll be able to locate high-intent buyers and help your paid ads perform better while decreasing those conversion costs.

⏰ The processing time feature

Ordering that high ticket product from Sweden just got a little less stressful. Shopify has added an estimated delivery date feature that will legitimize your store while offering your customers with their product delivery certainty.

This new feature combines your median:

• Time to fulfill an order
• Time to deliver

The data stated above is collected from your shopify reports and creates an accurate shipping rate in checkout for your customer just by using your historical data. This will give your customer a delivery window at checkout and strengthen the trust between your Shopify store and customers.

💻 Shopify adds 3D and augmented reality previews

Winning buyer confidence is a constant battle these days, especially with some platforms wheeling and dealing some “not-so-great” products.

Shopify recently added the ability to feature 3D and AR previews for all merchants in your store. Ensure your shopper's product certainty and conversion by providing visual answers to all their questions right from the product detail page. 📌

Shopify states that merchants that added 3D product content to their stores saw a 94% conversion lift. 📈

Take advantage of these features by adding the Shopify channel and uploading 3D content of your product to your catalog on Shopify. The 3D and AR features will automatically appear on your product detail page. Easy as that!

‍

SPONSOR

“After launching our app last year, we doubled our retail revenue…”

📱 Apps give you the power of push notifications (which have open rates as high as 90%!) and the ability to drive customers back to your store at no cost.

Intrigued?

With Tapcart, you can turn any Shopify store into a mobile app in just a few hours.

They make it extremely easy to build, launch, and maintain your app – no coding required.

Anyone can do it! 👍

But the real proof is in the pudding. Stores that use Tapcart see some pretty bonkers results:

• +43x return on investment
• +40% conversion rate
• +2.4x lifetime value

All without having to compete with fickle algorithms, rising ad costs, or crowded inboxes.

Receive your first month on the house! Begin building your app with Tapcart today.

👉 Start reaching my customers directly on their phones.

‍

AMAZON

Are You Effectively Scaling Advertising on Amazon?

If you’re advertising on Amazon, we’re 100% sure you’ve scoured the internet for the best tips and tricks.

No Google search needed today. The Pilothouse Amazon team gives you insight into the three phases they use to scale advertising on Amazon. Let’s go!

1️⃣ Phase 1: The prep

Just as a house is built on a solid foundation, strong Amazon advertising is built on a base of solid keyword and competitor research.

Don’t just go on Amazon and do some searches around your product’s main keywords… spend hours (or days) researching every different keyword segment your product applies to.

Looking for more info on segmenting keywords? Click here!

Here’s a simple example:

You’re a new running shoe company, “runbrand” about to release a new shoe specifically for jogging. You’ve put in some work and have a small brand following on your DTC site, and are ready to add Amazon as a sales channel.

Your main keyword is going to be something along the lines of “shoes for jogging” or “jogging shoes”... but this will have all of its own similar keywords around it “shoes for jogging in trails”, “shoes for jogging uphill”, “sneakers for jogging”, “rubber foot things for moving legs fast”... you get the idea.

By the end of this exercise, you’ll likely have a dozen or more keyword segments that your product could possibly convert on—some more relevant than others, and some much higher traffic than others.

2️⃣ Phase 2: The build

How many segments you’re starting with depends on the relevancy of your brand in the space. Already a market leader? You can likely blast to all of the segments at once and be relatively successful.

A more typical approach is picking your most relevant keyword segments and building those out first. Ensure your product has most of these keywords somewhere in title/bullets/backend search terms to ensure more relevance to the search engine.

Check out more information on the Amazon new product effect here!

Runbrand’s new shoe with 0 reviews will likely not convert with an ad on Nike’s most popular shoe with 10,000+ reviews. 🤷‍♂️

Start with relevant competitors with fewer reviews, worse listings, more expensive and inferior products, etc. Your product advertised on their listings should have a good shot at converting shoppers!

What campaign types? All of them. If these are truly your most relevant keyword segments, and your product is a very good offering, then every ad type to those keywords should convert well.

What does “all of them” mean?

💰 Sponsored products

Keyword targeting to relevant keyword segments and branded keywords (separate campaigns).

💰 Sponsored products/display

Product targeting to relevant competitor ASINs and your other products (separate campaigns).

💰 Sponsored brand store page

Create a store page built out for each of these segments that acts as a landing page for these ads.

💰 Sponsored brand video ads

To relevant keywords and branded keywords (separate campaigns).

💰 Sponsored product auto targeting

At low bids with some aggressive negatives to scout for new keywords.

That’s right, for this one product, right out of the gate you’ll likely end up with 20+ campaigns on the low end.

You’re likely thinking “That will overspend my budget if we build out that many ads”... but it's all about BID CONTROL. Each keyword and each competitor ASIN in those campaigns each has some perfectly optimized bid that achieves your target ROAS.

Start the bids far below Amazon’s “suggested bids,” and adjust accordingly as clicks come in. Once the rave reviews start piling up, keep expanding to the higher volume, slightly less relevant keywords over time, while also increasing budgets as appropriate along the way.

Don’t forget about using Amazon’s Demand-Side Platform!

3️⃣ Phase 3: Scale

A common statement the Pilothouse Amazon team hears is “we’ll reduce spend once we get more reviews” and “Can we bring down that ad budget once we’re ranked?”

The answer for Amazon is simple.

Capture as much market share as possible. The team believes you should never pull your foot off the gas on any of those non-branded keywords.

No matter how popular Runbrand gets, they should always be spending on “shoes for jogging.” Unless there’s something uniquely proprietary about their shoes, there will always be a new Runbrand willing to spend money for initial market penetration.

Why keep spending on them? People are now searching for Runbrand specifically, and those branded keywords are where you’ll make the profit.

Should you reduce spend on more competitive keywords once you’ve scaled up or once you’ve netted more reviews? No. You’ll likely be spending even more on them.

Those campaigns will likely be more efficient for the same spend as you’ve shown Amazon’s algorithm you’re relevant for those targets. Additionally, you’ll be making so much more revenue on organic sales and branded sales, that your total ROAS for the platform will skyrocket.

To summarize:

1. Do a ton of keyword and competitor research ✅
2. Build campaigns for each keyword/competitor segment over time ✅
3. Keyword/ASIN harvest and bid optimize these campaigns over time
4. Over time branded and organic sales will increase as the brand gains recognition ✅

If you’ve hit advertising scaling plateaus on the platform, or are lost in the complexities of the Amazon algorithms, reach out to the Pilothouse Amazon team. They’ve got you covered. 🚀

‍

SPONSOR

The Financial Solution Catered To Your Ecommerce Success

It's a struggle to find a credit card that's built for the ups and downs of eCommerce.

30-day charge cards? They tie up cash flow that you need to help scale your brand.

That's why Parker created the ROLLING 60-day payback term.

Need to buy inventory pre-BFCM? ✅

Want to scale that high-performing campaign? ✅

With the flexibility of the 60-day payback term, you can do all that and more with Parker.

We teamed up with Parker to give DTC Newsletter subscribers a special offer – if you sign up now you'll receive:

• A $500 sign-up bonus
• 3% cashback on all advertising spend within the first 30 days of account opening *capped to the first $150,000 of ad spend within first 30 days of account opening
• ZERO interest and ZERO fees
• 10x-20x your current card limit

Scaling your DTC brand? Look no further than Parker.

👉 Access the financial solution that's built for your brand's success.

‍

CREATIVE

If you were an ‘in-class doodler’, this one’s for you!

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to breathe new life into your product pictures and ads.

If you’ve got visual artists on your team, set them free on designing illustrations that highlight your product.

Using illustrations will help to catch viewer attention without affecting the integrity of the product.

This cute and scrappy creative style is definitely worth a shot. Try it out and send us your illustrated creatives!

‍

PILOTHOUSE SLACK SLIP

A tip from the Pilothouse team! Test this one out and let us know how it goes! 👇

‍

‍🔊 HAVE YOU HEARD OUR LATEST PODCASTS?‍

🌎 $100 Million+ in Vancouver-based DTC Sales: Duer, Tru Earth, Blume, Monos and Black Crow AI [Live Panel].

🤑 Growing Your Shopify Store From $5 to $30M with Richpanel.

📈 5x Your Revenue with a Facebook Group, 40 New Creatives a Week, and an App with Ash Melwani from Obvi Collagen.

💬 SMS is No Longer Optional with Sophie Baer, Win Brand Group’s Retention Director (and Automation Overlord).

🧀 Perry Belcher on Ecom Tripwires, Premiums, and Making Sure the Cheese is Worth the Squeeze.‍

‍

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

DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Jordan Gillis. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.

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 Rebecca, rebecca@directtoconsumer.co, if you’re interested in writing for us!