Live footage of the DTC team congratulating Italy on their Euro Cup win.
If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from Jibby Coffee, Saalt, Kopari Beauty, Proactiv, Shampora, Golden Ratio Coffee, Fancii, and Tesla (Hi, Elon👋).
🤔 Why Olipop’s Growth Marketing Manager cut their Facebook spend in half.
↺ Why your brand needs to protect itself from changing consumer privacy laws by "flipping the funnel."
📦 Six things the Pilothouse team sees beginners getting wrong on Amazon.
📱 Email and TikTok tips!
🛍 Experience headless reordering with our favorite DTC brands!
Read till the end to unlock our FREE presell pages course. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe so you never miss out. And be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
We have a powerhouse pod guest this week – Olipop’s Growth Marketing Manager, Steven Vigilante.
After realizing that Facebook couldn’t be trusted as an attribution source of truth, the Olipop team realized their actual acquisition costs on the platform were 8-10x higher than what Facebook was reporting.
Olipop has since cut their Facebook spend half, doubled down on influencer marketing and saw no notable shift in revenue.
Their CPA and retention levels have been much higher with influencers than Facebook Ads, and influencer partnerships have seen much higher conversion rates. 🚨
Steven targets influencers who have a real relationship with the product and can authentically talk about the brand.
Olipop recently struck partnership gold when they heard Sports newscaster Kenny Mayne talking about how much he loved Olipop on a podcast.
Steven immediately reached out to Kenny on Twitter, and in two weeks they had turned around a killer ad shot in Mayne’s backyard.
Regardless of how big the name is, partnerships only work if the person genuinely likes and uses the product.
A native ad read for podcast placements is essential.
Steven recommends having a quick conversation with the podcast host or whoever is doing the ad read.
Contextualize your founder’s story and your product, and it will come through in the read.
Steven’s go-to prompt: "How would you explain this to your mom/dad/sibling who is a soda drinker? Sell the product to a loved one you care about that drinks regular soda."
Olipop uses marketing to help out their CX team, using influencers to educate people and answer common questions on the front end to know what they’re buying and reduce friction on the back end.
Listen to the full pod – this one is packed with killer DTC insights!
Apple’s iOS 14.5 updates and Google’s third party cookie changes are forcing retail marketers to rethink where they put their time and money.
🚨 Klaviyo SVP of Marketing Kady Srinivasan's note to brands:
So, what should you do?
There’s an elegant solution that’s so simple that most marketers tend to overlook it completely.
👉 Learn how your brand can flip the funnel to own your growth in the wake of changing consumer privacylaws.
Going super competitive right out the gates is highly inadvisable.
Without brand reviews or sales history, it’s a waste of money and killing your relevance for those keywords because you won’t convert as well early on.
Amazon is all about a long game.
Don’t go after your competitors until you’re ready to compete. You need reviews and other proof backing your brand and presenting a viable alternative.
This will hurt your relevancy for those keywords in the long term.
Most advertisers utilize broad match and auto campaigns.
Both of these allow Amazon's algorithm fairly unrestricted exploration to find potential buyers.
These campaigns will typically perform well for that reason.
However, most advertisers miss that these campaigns are actually just converting on their own branded keywords (ie. brand name, or features very unique to their product).
These keywords should be separated out to:
1) have tighter control over bids,
2) allow these campaigns more room to explore, and
3) get a more accurate measure of "prospecting" efforts.
Different keywords will have different goals. If you don’t effectively segment them, then you’re averaging out.
A ranking VS. a profiting campaign should look different.
You’re constantly getting more data on all campaigns.
If you’re not updating based on that new info, you’re not maximizing the results you could be achieving.
Depending on how much you’re spending, you need to update your bids at least weekly, responding to data.
Those spending less will have to wait longer periods for actionable amounts of data to be gathered.
Thanks to the Pilothouse Amazon team for the insights!
What does your customer win-back flow look like?
Offer an entry-level discount on a 48-hour window over a couple of emails.
If that doesn't sell them, create incentive by adding a higher discounted offer 7-8 days later, then close hard with a sense of urgency (ie. limited time!).
Go the Hydrant route: use Repeat 🔁
CPG brands like Gleamin, Hydrant and Youth to the People use Repeat to give their customers faster, personalized reordering experiences—from email, from text, from anywhere.
We could spend a bunch of time telling you about how it works, who else uses us, and all that, but we’d rather show you.
Click here and try a Repeat cart link yourself. It’s so good you’ll probably end up buying something.
We’re so confident that we’ll foot your second month’s bill with… because we know you’re gonna stick around.
A little TikTok ad inspo to spark your creativity:
This 45-second TikTok ad by Alina Bock for OkCupid is perfect from top to bottom.
Dating is tough. Alina demonstrates the pain points, endless bad dates while showing you the solution: OkCupid.
She uses skits and comedy to demonstrate the pain points and the solution in under 60 seconds, making sure the audience gets the point before they scroll past the video.
We’d highly suggest testing UGC like this for your brand.
Up your post-purchase email with inspiration from MeUndies. 👇
😎 Most post-purchase emails are boring and lack branding. MeUndies crushes with bold colors.
😏 They’re promoting their referral program, which is a sneaky move. Think about adding something similar to your PP emails.
👊 Three trust badges at the bottom. A must-have for all your emails.
😂 Excellent copy that’s simple and makes you laugh.
👉 parcelLab: sustainable eCommerce – what can you do right now to empower your customers?
👀 Why more non-apparel DTC brands are selling at Urban Outfitters.
🤳 TikTok launches new 'Unplugged' info sessions to share insights into how marketers can succeed.
📌 Pinterest’s fastest-growing audiences in 2020? Gen Z and men.
🥣 How Magic Spoon’s co-founders built Instagram’s favorite cereal.
🚌 Back-to-school shopping to rise 9% in 2021.
⛹️ As NIL era arrives, marketers find an influencer playbook.
▶️ YouTube launched New To You! feature to help audiences find new content.
📲 Gorgias: Sliding into your customers' Instagram DMs just got easier. Start now and get two months free.
Earlier this year, we launched a three-day challenge with Pilothouse to help our readers learn to build presales pages.
Aside from better CVR and AOV, a good presell page strategy helps:
Send your link (below) to a teammate, friend or anyone you think would benefit from this awesome course!
When one person signs up, you both get access!
http://directtoconsumer.co?utm_source=sparkloop&utm_medium=newsletterplacement&rh_ref=1ed4b700
See how many referrals you have!
🥤Slashing Facebook ads in half with Olipop’s Steven Vigilante
💇♂️ Beardbrand’s Eric Bandholz and the DTC Long Game.
🌴 Product/market fit with Canopy Humidifiers' Eric Neher and Michael De Santis.
🧻 Battling big TP with Goodwipes CEO Sam Nebel.
💥 Building a bold brand with Ugly's CEO Hugh Thomas.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Thomas Schreiber, Eric Dyck, and Sadie Evans.
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