Any thoughts on Netflix’s ad-supported subscription tier? Or are you too busy binging Stranger Things to care?
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 Why DTC loyalty programs are actually effective
📦 Supercharging your Facebook Ads and increasing your ROAS with Black Crow AI
📦 The Google Analytics reports you can use for your Facebook accounts
📦 How to create personalized shopping experiences to keep buyers coming back with Lexer
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
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The relationship between customers and retailers is changing… And it’s time for you to nurture it.
Shoppers aren’t just satisfied with making a transaction and being done with it. They want to get to know you and your brand!
The entire purchase journey – from consideration to post-purchase – needs to be treated as a continuous two-way value exchange deeply rooted in emotion and loyalty.
Why should you be focused on creating relationships through your loyalty program? According to a survey from Treasure Data:
Combine this shift in consumer behavior with an increase in retailer demand for first-party data, and you then have the motivation behind the rise of DTC loyalty programs.
A powerful lever for many DTC brands, most free or paid loyalty programs provide first-time and returning customers with:
In turn, these offerings can increase brand affinity, in-store foot traffic, revenue, and customer LTV.
Most importantly, each of these initiatives captures valuable first-party data that can be used to build more accurate customer profiles and target segments to apply across all marketing channels. 👀
But to give up this valuable data, the offer needs to be worth it. And while price and convenience are important, many shoppers now expect brands to go above and beyond with their membership offerings.
We’ve highlighted three of our favorite membership programs below.
These aren’t your typical points-based loyalty programs, but rather unique and thoughtful initiatives designed to create meaningful relationships with customers.
👏 Prose
All Prose subscribers receive access to The Prose Salon. Positioned as a unique way to drive subscriptions and form quality relationships with customers, the Salon membership provides customers with a host of offerings around product education and wellness.
In addition to a 15% discount off all full-price products, Salon members receive free 15-minute consultations with hair-care specialists, early access to new products, and subscriptions to Prose magazine and wellness podcasts.
To further sweeten the deal, all members also receive a free Prose product after every 10th purchase. Sounds pretty dang sweet to us. 🤷♀️
“The goal is to combine the product with services and experience,” said Prose CEO Arnaud Plas in an interview with Glossy. “It’s more than a loyalty program. It comes back to offering a deeper, personalized, and elevated experience.”
Keep scrollin’ for two more examples of brands crushing loyalty programs. 👇
After the iOS14.5 update, ethical outdoor gear brand Cotopaxi saw their Facebook marketing take a turn for the worse.
Audience targeting became less accurate, costs were skyrocketing, returns were shrinking….
...Sound familiar? 😫
So when the team at Cotopaxi heard about Black Crow AI, they knew that they had to give it a shot.
Black Crow AI’s one-click machine learning platform made real-time predictions about each site visitor's likelihood to make a purchase, then used that first-party data to build lookalike Facebook audiences that targeted only their most likely customers.
The results? Cotopaxi saw some big wins:
So whatcha waiting for?
👉 Find out how you can scale up your Facebook Ads profitably in 2022 with Black Crow AI.
🤑 Italic Bold
Putting a unique spin on the DTC model is Italic. Italic directly connects customers to top manufacturers. By eliminating brands and distributors, customers receive designer-level quality at a fraction of the standard retail price.
While anyone can shop on the Italic site, the company strongly incentivizes shoppers to subscribe to their Italic Bold program. In addition to exclusive weekly promotions and access to new products, all Italic Bold members receive $120 in Italic Credit (in quarterly increments) each year.
This alone covers the cost of the membership. Tack on increased referral bonuses and cash rewards for leaving product reviews, and you have a deal that’s almost too good to be true.
While this program is more integral to Italic’s core business model, it still serves as a great example of how to offer customers value in every stage of the purchasing experience.
🏃♀️ Nike
The godfather of all loyalty programs, Nike’s membership program (NikePlus) is robust and designed with strategic intent. With the main rewards hub located in Nike’s mobile app, all members need to download the app to get the full benefits.
And wow, is it effective. As of 2021, over 300 million members had already signed up for NikePlus.
According to Nike, this tribe spends three times more than guest customers on the website. Built around the tenants of exclusivity, community, personalization, and omnichannel interaction, all members receive:
It’s important to note that most DTC brands don’t start with loyalty programs.
For businesses with low SKU counts or infrequent reorderability, a loyalty or membership rewards program may never make sense. But with the right business, timing, and execution, loyalty programs are an ingenious way to acquire customers for life.
Do you have a loyalty program for shoppers? If so, when did you implement a loyalty program into your business model? Reply to this email and let us know!
In for a quick game of marketing would you rather?
Would you rather – a one-time buyer or a returning customer committed to your brand for two or three purchases? 🤔
With 71% of your customers expecting personalized experiences, custom profiles will help you create an unexpected personalized experience that will keep your buyers coming back for more.
Lexer has released a playbook that will provide you with actionable advice for creating highly detailed customer profiles and how you can use them to find the unique nuances of your customer's behaviours and needs.
🧠 "I want to know my customer more than they know themselves"
Listen, nobody has time to click around on Google Analytics (GA) to find the shiniest report features… So we’ve done it for you!
The most meticulous Meta team pulled together two reports that you can integrate into your dashboard.
No dilly-dallying here. Reporting is important. 👇
1️⃣ Time to conversion report
This report allows you to select your source and peek into how long an action takes to be completed – aka the days before conversion!
You’ll be able to see conversions all the way back to 90 days! You might find that the majority happen within one day and then two days after that, but each brand is different!
If you’re wondering about product consideration, this report is a must! Review the report and compare different windows of time as you wish.
How to build it:
This one’s lengthy, so follow along.
Navigate to:
Conversions ➝ Assisted Conversions ➝ Clicking on "First Interaction Analysis" ➝ Selecting "Days before conversion" ➝ Selecting your date range AND checking off "Include Last Day's Data" ➝ Clicking "Source / Medium" Below ➝ Clicking on the "source / medium" and voila.
2️⃣ Model comparison tool
If you're ever wondering if you're driving more first-touch or last-touch sales, you can now find answers here!
It's important to note this report is still pretty close to a source/medium report in GA, so it will likely look different than Facebook data or another third-party data partner (as Facebook gets access to different data than GA does in some ways), but it's still interesting to see.
For some clients, this report has come in handy for getting a sense of whether the team should:
How to build it:
To build the model comparison tool, click the below prompts in your left-side toolbar.
Navigate to:
Conversions → Multi-Channel Funnels → Model comparison tool.
🧠 Are you a DTC Founder or Executive with big goals for Q4? Join the DTC Team and fifty inspiring ecommerce leaders in Victoria BC, Sept 21-23 for C-Suite, a one-of-a-kind mastermind event where you’ll learn from proven DTC leaders like Ridge Wallet’s Sean Frank, Blume’s Taran Ghatrora, Tru Earth’s Ryan McKenzie, and Unilever’s Elliot Roazen — Only fifty seats available so act fast!
💰eCommerce enabler AnyMind raises $91.7M in equity funding.
📺 YouTube hires Rene Ritchie, a tech YouTuber and former iMore leader, as its new creator liaison.
🛍 YouTube announces a new Shopify integration, expanded in-stream commerce tools, and listings.
📈 Flip Closes $60M Series B round to reimagine the next era of eCommerce.
🥣 How General Mills is Going Direct To Consumer with Carter Jensen, Global Lead for DTC.
🍫 Tabs Sex Chocolate: Engineering Virality from Day One.
💸 Ridge Wallet CEO Sean Frank's Hot Takes After $100 Million+ in Sales.
☕️ Death Wish Coffee's Will Critcher Spills the Beans.
🕯 Making Memories of NYC Into Candles (and Killing It on TikTok) with Erica Werber from Literie Candle.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, Randy Ginsburg, and Jordan Gillis. Edited by Eric Dyck.
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