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Issue 233
Wednesday, September 21, 2022
And just like that *poof* the schedule is clear.
If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from UpCircle Beauty, Plantsie, and Apothekari Skincare.
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 Growth vs. customer experience: Cody Plofker and Eli Weiss from Jones Road Beauty weigh in
📦 Learn what drives consumer subscription adoption in Ordergroove's newest report, Inside the Box
📦 Why you should have a third-party brand set up on Facebook
📦 How to make the most of SMS marketing this holiday season with Emotive
📦 Sorting TikTok videos by most viewed
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.
🎧 On today’s episode of the DTC pod, we’re getting down to business (and slinging 🔥hot takes🔥) with Jones Road Beauty CMO Cody Plofker and Senior Director of CX and Retention Eli Weiss.
Jones Road, from founder Bobbi Brown, is a beauty company that prioritizes clean, strategic, and high-grade skincare and makeup formulations that work for every skin type and tone.
The takeaways 👇
💁 The ideal customer journey
From initial awareness to purchase, a customer’s journey is one of the single most important indicators of brand loyalty and repurchase.
Creating a unique journey for each customer requires a brand to have a deeper understanding of its customers’ needs, wants, and expectations. This results in more personalized shopping experiences.
However, Eli feels there is a balance to be found between too much and too little audience segmentation.
“If you’re segmenting too much, maybe [customers] have a great experience, but you’re not pulling in as much revenue as you could be… [But] if we push everything, they purchase nothing.”
🪝 Hooking your audience
“Creative fatigue isn’t a problem, just make better ads.”
- Cody Plofker, CMO and Master of Hot Takes
As simple as that sounds, there’s a multitude of tactics that Cody and his team use to improve ad performance, from what an ad looks like to the copy an ad uses to who they are whitelisting their ads through in order to get their customers hooked.
On the pod, Cody lays out a few of the ad hooks that have been performing well for Jones Road:
💰 What Cody and Eli would do with an extra $50K:
Cody has a very clear plan of where that $50K is going…
“We’re about to scale YouTube hard. It’s going to be a giant channel for us to unlock.”
👉 Listen to the full episode with Cody & Eli here!
Wondering What The Tea Leaves Say About Your Customers?
Luckily, you don’t have to rely on Tasseography to learn what your customers want.
🤓 Ordergroove has done the research and asked customers directly about their sentiment and behavior regarding subscription experiences. They’ve learned why customers shop, how they shop, and what compels them to make purchases.
The best part?
They’re sharing this information with you for free in Ordergroove's newest report, Inside the Box: What Drives Consumer Subscription Adoption.
👉 Get access to Ordergroove's fantastic report now and learn why consumers subscribe.
(And to quell your curiosity, the tea leaves do say: You don't want to miss this report!) 🍵
Do You Have a Third-Party Brand Set Up?
If you want to:
You should be leveraging a third-party brand on Meta. 🔥 Here’s how the experts suggest you get started:
👀 Create a page
Create a page under your Meta ad account. Your third-party brand name should leverage the reasons people look for or buy your product.
Example: If you’re product is big for gifting, create your page identity around that → AmazeGifts, Secret Best Gifts, HeartfeltGiftIdeas.
💥 Populate with posts
After setting up your page, populate it with posts.
If you’re running a third-party brand page for AmazeGifts, you should be linking to top 10 gifts blog posts, etc.
Your messaging should be as organic as possible! A hack? Post like regular person—your messaging shouldn’t feel like a brand/corporation trying to trick shoppers into buying! 🤝
The most important aspect of your third-party brand is the handle/profile. Populating the page with content and gaining followers is great incase someone clicks through, but not an important metric.
The main goal of setting up your third-party brand is to utilize a new profile/handle to run ads out of.
🚨 Tip: Don’t reinvent the wheel trying to get your page up and running. The Pilothouse Meta team has tested new vs established third-party brand pages and seen no difference in performance!
⏰ When
If you haven’t already set one up, now is the time! Ad placement costs have already started to rise and it’s only going to continue.
Combat those rising click costs with a third-party Meta brand.
Make SMS The Shining Star of Your 2022 Holiday Marketing Efforts
Consumer behavior is shifting, and more and more consumers are turning to digital channels (ahem…SMS) to find Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.
This year, SMS is seeing spectacular growth and is generating outstanding results. 📱
With a well-planned SMS strategy, DTC brands and retailers can drive engagement, encourage loyalty, and capture more sales during BFCM.
But, how exactly can DTC brands make the most of SMS marketing this holiday season?
📖 Here's how. You read this ebook that has all the answers. In this ebook, you’ll find:
Ever wondered which videos on TikTok are garnering the most views for your competitors? 🤔
Scrolling through endless videos is tedious and now unnecessary!
The Sort For TikTok extension allows you to visit any TikTok page and see their videos ordered from highest to lowest views.
Sounds good, right?
Remember that trends on TikTok come and go. Before iterating off highly-viewed creative ideas, check the date and whether or not the trend is still in circulation. ⏰
What browser extensions can you not live without? Reply to this email and let us know! 🔥
If you were on Instagram in the early 2010s, there’s a good chance you remember Frank Body. Their coffee scrubs and cute bags took over the influencer world and leaked onto the timelines of friends.
But did you know they’re still around? Their coffee scrubs have expanded to all sorts of shower and skincare products with super cute packaging to boot. 👇
But cute packaging is not all they’re winning at. 🤷♀️
Frank Body is currently running an ad to their skincare quiz. When shoppers complete the quiz, they get 10% off their purchase.
Halfway through the quiz, shoppers are also given the option to subscribe to their mailing list to get the same 10% off offer.
Either way, Frank Body is gaining insights on what potential shoppers are looking for or getting them directly on their list.
Want to see the ad that got our attention? Check out their Facebook Ads Library here! 🛀
Quick Hits
💰 YouTube’s looking to provide direct monetization for shorts, a big shift in the short-form content battle.
👗 Walmart tries to boost online shopping with realistic virtual dressing rooms.
🤖 Facebook debuts a Reels API for sharing from third-party apps.
🌎 How Patagonia’s shakeup challenges marketers to act on sustainability.
📦 1MRobotics emerges from stealth with $25M for ‘nano-fulfillment’ centers.
💄 Growth vs. Customer Experience: Cody Plofker and Eli Weiss from Jones Road Beauty Weigh In.
🕺 Disco's Benjamin Smith on Nailing Your Product Market Fit With Creative, Offer, and Landing Page.
🆕 Overcoming the New Normal With a Content Creator Network, Crossrope's Srjdan Popovic Returns!
🌸 How True Botanicals Became the Fastest Growing Luxury Beauty Brand with Tresl Segments.
👟 Kuru Footwear Scales Meta Ad Spend 350%! Sean McGinnis on How They Did It.
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Kate Gullett. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.
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