Like a real-life game of Where’s Waldo… Except you’re Waldo, and their retargeting efforts will find you. 🎯
If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company with fellow newcomers from Year & Day, Golf Gummies, Dr. Squatch, Pooch and Mutt, and Pure Electric. 🚲
In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇
📦 Making it through influencer performance dips
📦 How to use AI to group potential customers into profiles based on their likelihood to buy with Black Crow AI
📦 Overcoming the new normal with a content creator network – Crossrope's Srjdan Popovic returns
📦 How Lexer helps you get all the insights you need to shift your holiday marketing strategy to reach the right customers
Read till the end to access exclusive DTC swag. 😎
👉 If a pal forwarded this to you, subscribe, so you never miss out.
Remember when it was easy to get killer performance results from influencers? That memory’s feeling pretty distant these days…
Social media is bursting with influencer ads, and users are scrolling through them faster than ever.
We asked our influencer aficionados: how do brands overcome influencer performance dips?
🌒 Go dark
Getting an influencer to agree to darkposting can be HUGE for boosting performance. Some clients have even seen ads triple in ROAS, just from switching from an organic ad to one that is darkposted.
A 'darkpost' is an ad that appears only in selected news feeds via the influencer and does not appear on anyone's main feed (including the influencers).
Darkposted Ads:👇
You need to crush the competition. No matter how your ad gets posted, you still have to stand out. Here are three things that can transform your influencer-led creatives:
💅 Influencers influence
It’s in the name, so let influencers do what they do best: Influence.
Too many times, influencers are limited by clients, prompting them to create the same generic ads. Let influencers flex their creativity. You’ll often be pleasantly surprised!
🪝 Captain hook
Attention spans might as well not exist on social media, so you have to act QUICK.
Get quirky and creative with the hooks in your ads. Work with your influencers to come up with fresh and exciting ways to start your ads with a bang! 💥
👀 Micro-influencers have major impact
We now live in the world of the micro-influencer. These accounts typically have higher engagement, quicker turnaround times, and cost FAR less than major influencers. If you can save money and get better results at the same time, what’s there to lose? 🤷
🗓 Be in it for the long haul
Just because you see a dip in your influencer marketing doesn’t mean it is time to throw in the towel! It means it’s time to pivot and try something new.
Take some creative risks, push the boundaries, partner with a team to help you out, and remember to let influencers influence!
We know that this year has been particularly challenging, and that some customers are tightening their spending belts this holiday season. 🎁
That’s why Black Crow AI helps you separate your customers into the “nice list” and the “naughty list” — Okay, Okay. They don’t do that.
But they do use AI to group your potential customers into profiles based on their likelihood to buy (e.g., high, medium, and low).
You can then use this information to segment your marketing campaigns accordingly, and focus your ad spend on the customers who are actively purchasing.
Last year, Black Crow AI helped DTC brands just like yours get more sales and higher ROAS from their campaigns.
Sound like a holiday miracle?
👉 Find out how Black Crow AI helped 3x Alleyoop’s sales here.
🎧 On today’s episode of the DTC pod, we’re jumping back in with Srdjan Popovic, CMO of Crossrope, to talk about the company’s post-pandemic eComm journey and some of the strategies they’ve adopted since to adapt to the ever-changing landscape.
Crossrope is a jump rope fitness company that believes everyone deserves a fun and accessible workout. Their mission is to inspire millions of people to experience a different way to get fit. 💪
The takeaways 👇
🗣️ PIVOT!
Starting in early 2020, DTC fitness companies saw one of the largest eComm booms in recent years. The demand for at-home workouts skyrocketed, and brands closed in on the market by learning how to mold their strategies to meet that demand.
Essentially, everyone had to *summoning our best Ross Geller voice* PIVOT!
However, with so many fitness brands eyeing the at-home consumer and the market becoming oversaturated with at-home fitness advertising, it was imperative to figure out which segment of these consumers to target and with what kind of messaging. These learnings are what Srdjan and his team have taken with them into 2022 and beyond.
“It still goes to show that you gotta meet people where they’re at.”
⁉️ Quantity over quality
Srdjan referenced a study where a photographer split his students into two groups for a graded assignment. He told half of his students they would be graded on the quantity of the photos they were able to turn in of an object, while the other half would be graded on the quality of only one photo that they could turn in.
In the end, the group that produced more photos ended up producing better photos by a long shot. Why? Because by increasing the volume of photographs, the students were forced to channel their creativity into a variety of angles, styles, and shots vs. hyper-focusing on producing that one perfect photo. 📸
“This is a great analogy for what we do in the creator space. It’s no longer about trying to find that one perfect creative and crossing your fingers that that’s going to hold up your performance marketing campaign… Now it’s like, how do we get into the volume game? Let’s just test a lot of different angles and hooks and messages for those audience segments.”
💰 What Srdjan would do with an extra $50K:
Srdjan has time and efficiency on the mind.
“A chunk of it I would put into the creator program. I would look to find any tools that would help speed up and streamline that process… The second half, I would go HAM on YouTube sponsored placements. Unlike Instagram, YouTube sponsored placements have so much drag. A good number of the sponsored videos we did in 2020 are still driving revenue every single week for us.”
👉 Listen to the full episode with Srdjan Popovic here!
🎄 The 2022 retail holiday season is upon us, and it will look much different than in previous years. Surging inflation and rising interest rates are already impacting consumer confidence and discretionary spending.
But don’t worry! You still have time to adapt to this challenging new retail landscape and make the most of this holiday season.
Lexer’s 2022 Retail Holiday Guide gives you all the insights you need to shift your holiday marketing strategy to reach the right customers.
In this guide, you’ll learn seven actionable strategies you can implement this season to:
👉 Download the guide now to maximize your 2022 holiday retail sales.
🚨 Shopify sellers like ProBar, Pier 1, and Super73 use THIS software to deliver more campaigns, iterate on landing pages faster, and seamlessly integrate with their current stack (no developer needed). *
📺 Netflix to launch cheaper ad-supported subscription tier in November.
🍋 Lululemon jumps after it boosts outlook and posts strong earnings beat.
🐦 Tweet editing is here, with live testing now active in the app.
🤖 Reddit acquires contextualization company Spiketrap to boost its ads business.
*Sponsored
🆕 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.
📈 Are You Measuring Your Actual Growth? Rockerbox's Ron Jacobson on True Incrementality.
🤝 Blume Banks on Community – Taran Ghatrora on Community Building Through In-Person and Digital Events. [C-Suite Mentor Preview]
Don’t forget to rate the DTC Podcast on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, Kate Gullett, and Jordan Gillis. Edited by Claire Beveridge and Eric Dyck.
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