The DTC Insider - Weekly Newsletter - 16/08 - Issue #19

Welcome to this issue of The DTC Insider newsletter. 👋

We'll send you weekly emails, every Wednesday, trying our best to deliver great value to your inbox.

In this newsletter, you'll find:

💠 Do This Before Working On Your BFCM Strategy

💠 You Don't Need a Plan To Grow Your Brand

💠  6 "Unsexy", But Effective, Actions That Took This Men's Underwear Brand to Success

💠 Give Up Your Stuff, Not Your Dream

Do This Before Working On Your BFCM Strategy

Working on your BFCM strategy?

❌ Don't do it without this!

It's that time of the year again.

And many brands have already started to define their strategy for BFCM.

The problem?

Many of them don't consider the full picture when laying out that strategy.

And create deals without knowing how their customers behave over time.

So...

How can they define a winning strategy? 🤔

It's always a good practice to look at what happened in previous years when planning for a future event.

What's the best way to do that on Shopify?  

The Customer Cohort Analysis.

What is it about?

The image shows the Retention rate for each cohort over time.

As you can see in the image, it's a chart that shows how customers behave since their first order (month 0 < first order, month 1, 2, 3...).

You can see:

💰 How much they spent on BFCM and in the following months

📈 Customer retention rate over time

👨‍👨‍👦 Number of customers over time

💲 Net and gross sales

💴 AOV

How does this help you make better decisions?

Well, with the above-mentioned information, you can:

🔮 Predict how your customers will behave in this BFCM if you offer similar deals

📈 Brainstorm ideas to improve last year's performance (ie. increase AOV by offering higher-ticket deals or decrease the time between purchases)

🎯 You can filter the data by channel and product name, among other options

You Don't Need a Plan To Grow Your Brand

I've heard that many times, and I strongly disagree.

Yet many DTC brands don't have one.

If that's you, don't worry.

I'll show you what we do for our clients 👇

Every time we onboard a client, we define the first iteration of their "90-day roadmap".

What's it about? 🤔

This document contains 3 key pieces of information:

🎯 Their goals for the next 90 days

📅 Monthly (partial) goals

🗒️ The high-level tasks, aka. lead measures, that will help them achieve those goals

This sounds simple to build, but it's not.

Here are some common mistakes brands & agencies make:

❌ Lack of clear goals: if you don't invest enough time in defining your goals, this process will result in unclear, ambiguous, or unachievable goals. This will only lead to frustration, as well as a waste of time and money.

❌ Focusing on tasks that aren't relevant to achieve your goals.

❌ Listing too many goals & tasks: focus and you'll have better chances to stay on track. We found that the sweet spot is between 1-3 goals and 3-5 tasks per goal.

What's next?

Now that you have defined your 90-day roadmap, here's the most important part:

✅ Take action: create detailed tasks for each of the high-level tasks listed in the plan

🛤️ Check the progress: we recommend keeping track on a weekly basis and running monthly meetings to determine whether you're on track or not, and to make proper adjustments.

6 "Unsexy", But Effective, Actions That Took This Men's Underwear Brand to Success

You'll notice we're NOT mentioning anything about paid ads or email marketing.

No tricks. No shortcuts.

Only effective strategies that you can easily start using in your business today.

Let's go!

📹 1. Record Customer Calls and Use Them in Ads:

People are tired of seeing the same old boring ads all day long.

By recording genuine conversations (with their permission), this underwear brand humanized its marketing and built trust.

Hearing real stories from happy customers increased credibility and boosted ad engagement.

💁‍♂️ 2. Models? No, thanks.

The founders of this brand became the face of their business, after using models for a while.

You will see them everywhere:

• The hero section of their website

• Email marketing

• Social media presence

• And more...

📞 3. Call Your VIP Customers to Say Thank You:

They take 5-10 minutes of their time to thank each VIP customer who supports their brand.

That allows them not only to express gratitude...

...but also to get more insights on what people love about their brand & products and why they buy.

🖊️ 4. Handwritten Notes:

They send a handwritten note to EVERY customer.

And it doesn't stop there.

They send a handwritten note with a unique message for each order.

So, if you order for the first time, you'll receive a different note than if it's your second, or third time.

🎁 5. Give Away New Products to Top Customers:

Did you think they were already doing A LOT for their customers?

Well, they also give away new products to their top customers so they can try them out and keep them loyal.

How cool is that?

❓ 6. Video Responses to People's Questions:

Many times, they record a quick video to answer somebody's question.

As you can imagine, as a customer this is way more engaging and personalized than receiving a text message.

Give Up Your Stuff, Not Your Dream

How far would you REALLY be willing to go to save your business?

These founders did a TEDx talk about their story.

So trust me when I say this is a really interesting episode.

What happened? 🤔

Well, when Jules asked Stacey, "How much do you believe in this?".

The answer was clear, and they went all in.

And when I say "all in", I'm telling you they sold everything they had...

...including their home 🤯

As they say, "Sell your stuff, not your dream".

Ready for some inspo?

In this episode of The DTC Insider podcast, we discussed:

👉 The Story of OMEGear

👉 Lessons from the Innovation Process

👉 Validating the Idea

👉 Going All-In on the Business

👉 Navigating Challenges: Former Partners, Manufacturers, and COVID

👉 Lessons from Traveling the US in an RV for 2 Years

👉 Successfully Funded on Kickstarter

👉 Winning a National TV Show: Preparation and Pitching Live

👉 Overcoming Adversity

👉 The Future of OMEGear

🎧 Tune in to our latest episode: https://thedtcinsider.com/

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