Be honest with us… how many unfinished docs do you have open right now? 👀
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 How to rocket your conversions with numbers in your copy
📦 Don’t get dumped by loyal subscribers with Attest
📦 Effective influencer promotion for DTC brands
📦 You’re invited to a first-party data party with Black Crow AI
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.
Copywriting places a big emphasis on words, naturally, and while words are great for storytelling or highlighting your products' benefits, too many words can scare readers away.
Nothing keeps readers persuaded and engaged with some well-placed numbers sprinkled into your copy.
Not only do numbers help break up larger chunks of text to make your content more palatable, but people associate numbers with facts. It’s a clean and compact way to display information.
And according to studies, people’s eyes naturally fixate on numbers while reading, so taking advantage of numbers in your copy is a simple way to get more information across cleanly.
Practice makes perfect: The use of numbers in practice
🛬 Landing pages
Landing pages often involve big blocks of copy to highlight the features and benefits of the product or service. Use numbers to break up these blocks of text with quick facts or to add more oomph to your headlines.
Examples:
🧐 Monetary offers
When making an offer, there are several things to consider. If you’re deciding between a dollar amount or percentage discount, always pick the larger number.
Example:
You can also break down larger purchases to sound more appealing to the customer. $20/month sounds high for a health tracking app, but $0.69 cents a day (billed monthly) sounds a lot more doable.
With the growing availability of financing tools such as Affirm, Afterpay, and Sezzle, you can now effortlessly reframe large offers by dicing them up into smaller, more feasible monthly payments.
$1895 upfront for a brand new Peloton bike will almost certainly provide some sticker shock, but monthly payments of $58? Where do I sign?!
✉️ Email
Using numbers in emails is a powerful way to increase open rates and pull in low-intent readers.
Using phrases like “Read 252 words” in the preview text or placing “2 min. read” at the top of the email are effective ways to signal to the reader, “this won’t take long.”
If the time is unknown, the brain thinks they may just be stuck reading forever, and they’ll quickly talk themselves out of it. Using numbers is an easy way to create certainty in email land.
People love certainty.
💻 Blogs
Posting blog articles on your website is a solid strategy that provides value for your audience and builds SEO. But no one wants to sit down and read an essay unless they’re highly invested in learning AND have the attention span (lol).
The reason blogs like Buzzfeed and Huffington Post are so successful is because they consistently draw readers in using numbered lists.
Lists are the most effective way to break larger ideas down into something readers will actually look forward to reading.
Of course, we couldn’t mention listicles without giving a major shout out to clickbaity headlines that accompany them.
And that’s because they work—90% of the time, every time.
Words are magical for telling a story, but numbers tell cold hard facts and will ultimately help you drive home the sale.
We’re 100% sure that if you found this content helpful, you will 100% want to check out our friends over at Pilothouse for insights that will 100% improve your strategies.
Breakups are hard…especially when you get dumped by loyal subscribers. 💔
But that might not mean it’s over over.
You can win back your shoppers’ hearts – you just need to understand why they left in the first place.
Attest surveyed customers about why they canceled their D2C subscriptions, and what brands could have done differently to keep them around.
The results may surprise you (hint: it’s not all about money).
👉 Learn the top reasons subscribers cancel – and how to win them back.
When large CPG brands use a celebrity to endorse their products, the brand relies on the celebrity's influence over an audience of potential customers.
When Wild Turkey bourbon teamed up with actor Matthew McConaughey, they expected McConaughey's fame to attract new buyers.
The company even produced a six-minute film featuring McConaughey and released it on YouTube. 👇
🤝 The keys to unlocking a winning influencer campaign
The same way a CPG company uses celebrities, DTC brands can use social media influencers to attract new customers (and you don't have to pay McConaughey prices).
To make this point, consider the four keys to a successful influencer marketing campaign.
When it comes to the campaign placement, offer, and authenticity, we will use an example from the DTC brand Flaviar and a campaign it ran on Greg Titian's YouTube channel, How to Drink.
⭐️ Topic alignment, placement
Flaviar is a DTC (membership-based) brand delivering themed booze boxes. The company has nailed influencer marketing, focusing on relevant and respected creators.
Let's consider the aforementioned Flaviar influencer campaign on How to Drink. The example image comes from a March 6, 2020 video with 900,000+ views.
Generally, both the channel and this video topic are closely aligned with Flaviar's product offering.
This sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how often this gets screwed up.
What if Flaviar had tried to use Scott Disick of Keeping up with the Kardashians fame? 👀
Not only would Disick have probably messed up the endorsement (as he did for Bootea back in 2016), but the alignment wouldn’t have been as good.
Disick has more than 26 million followers on Instagram, but his followers are celebrity devotee types who only recognize fine spirits if they are mentioned in rap singles.
For your brands, influencer marketing campaigns ask, "is the topic aligned?"
🤩 Authenticity
Let's keep picking on Scott Disick for a moment. If you search for the most epic influencer marketing fails, Disick shows up. In 2016, he posted a picture of himself with a jar of Bootea on Instagram (it has since been removed).
The caption read: "Here you go, at 4 pm est, write the below. Caption: Keeping up with the summer workout routine with my morning @booteauk protein shake!"
A brand putting words in the influencer's mouth–telling Disick what to write and when to do it–is anything but authentic.
The How to Drink and Flaviar collaboration appears much more authentic to viewers.
There are moments in the presentation when Titian appears to be reading a cue card, but what he is saying is consistent with what he exposes in each and every episode of his show.
Titian is authentically a fan of fine spirits, so it is perfectly believable that he would be interested in (and engaged with) a company providing them.
When your DTC brand engages an influencer, ask yourself, "can this influencer authentically deliver our message?"
🧐 The offer
Don't only think of influencer marketing campaigns as product placements or brand associations. It is perfectly acceptable and preferable to make an offer.
In the How to Drink example, Titian makes a three-pointed offer on behalf of Flaviar.
These points appeal to the viewer's sense of identity. The offer is consistent with how the viewer sees themselves. It seems perfectly normal to take Titian's suggestion, "Click the link in the description below to join the Flaviar membership club."
The link includes a campaign UTM parameter identifying the How to Drink show. This parameter lets Flaviar track the traffic from the campaign.
When your DTC brand launches an influencer campaign, ask "does the offer focus on our products and make sense to the audience?"
📈 Goals and measurement
Like every other marketing campaign, an influencer marketing campaign should have a goal and a means for measuring success.
For DTC brands, this goal could be sales, list growth, or a ROAS metric.
According to some estimates, marketers should expect to earn back about $5 for every $1 invested in influencer campaigns on a single purchase basis.
Ask yourself, "how will I know if our influencer marketing campaign is working?"
Influencer campaigns are a fantastic way to extend the reach of your DTC product. Reply to this email and let us know if you use them (or are looking to implement them), and share your success stories!
...to a first-party data party 🎉
Who's going? Your best potential customers.
To find their best potential customers, brand Bearaby installed Black Crow's plug-and-play platform into their website to help them utilize their first-party data to create high-value audiences on Facebook, Google, and Snapchat for retargeting.
In just the first 30 days of using Black Crow AI, Bearaby generated 100% more conversions from their retargeting campaigns while increasing their ROAS by 120%.
You don't need to have ROAS FOMO.
👉 Learn exactly how Black Crow AI works here. (Don't forget your party shirt.)
🚗 Uber's revenue doubled last quarter, but its shares fell due to rival Lyft’s results that were released a day earlier.
🧋Starbucks is planning to enter the web3 space with the launch of their very own NFT.
🤑 Amberdata, a digital asset data provider, has raised $30M to bring traditional finance to web3.
🚐 Amazon forked up $6B in added costs due to excess fulfillment and transportation capacity in addition to less efficient warehouses.
🧀 Perry Belcher on Ecom Tripwires, Premiums, and Making Sure the Cheese is Worth the Squeeze.
🎯 eCommerce SEO in Three Simple Steps with Kevin Miller from Gr0
🍑 Building a 7-Figure Business in Sub-Two Years with Peachy Shapewear's Corey Nicholson.
💬 Dreamday and The Quality Edit’s Lauren Kleinman Pioneers a New Model for Performance PR and Publishing.
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.
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