Why Profitability is King

Welcome to this issue of The DTC Insider newsletter. 👋

If you're new to our community, welcome! We'll send you weekly emails, every Wednesday, trying our best to deliver great value to your inbox.

In this newsletter, you'll find:

💠 Why Profitability is King

💠 Is your Business On Track For Its 90-Day Goals?

💠 How This DTC Brand Successfully Entered CVS and Walmart During Its Early Days

Why Profitability is King

Profitability is one of the main struggles for most DTC brands.

However, until not so long ago, it was given a distant afterthought.

Since everyone was talking about how to increase top-line revenue "at all costs".

So, why do brands think about profits now?

Simple - a few years ago, overall costs started going up.

Making brands realize the need to do something about it...

...downsize...

...become more efficient

...optimize processes...

...change vendors...

...and even decrease their marketing budget...

...the very same one that helps them drive sales!

So, how can brands boost profitability from the marketing side?

Here's what we do at BSR Digital with our clients:

1️⃣ Map out the customer journey

Before making improvements, you need to know what the current customer journey looks like.

Get the following key KPI's:

1. Your LTV

2. The AOV

3. Number of annual orders per customer

4. Time between orders

You'll need them for the next steps.

2️⃣ Increase AOV

The offer is a key part of your marketing.

Spending time in testing multiple ones until finding what works best will pay off.

Here are some ideas to implement.

Pre-cart AOV boosters:

👉 Incentivize larger orders: for example, select by default more quantity of a product (when applies…ie. “2 packs”), or offer a discount for buying more.

👉 Bundles: mix and match. Choose 3 products or more and get a discount. The more products, the higher the discount.

👉 Free Shipping thresholds: don’t base this on AOV. Set the threshold a few dollars over the biggest cluster of customers’ AOV + the cost of shipping. Be careful with this one, as it could backfire.

👉 Gamified cart: ie. "You're $1 away from a free bottle of wine".

👉 Discount ladders: the more you purchase, the more you save.

Up-sells: 

👉 MORE of what they bought

👉 Thank-you page offers.

👉 High-affinity products

👉 Leads: offering a complementary service/product in the industry (ie. promoting pet insurance if you sell products for pets, and getting paid by each email sent to them)

3️⃣ Decrease the time between purchases

Always remember that it needs to MAKE SENSE for your customers to come back.

So, before focusing on your email flows, focus on the value ladder.

Think about what would be useful for them to buy next.

Here are a few ideas.

Email flows:

👉 Post-purchase: one-time deals, high-affinity products, education on what they bought.

👉 Customer win-back: reduce the time between purchases and increase the LTV.

👉 Replenishment flow: automatically identify opportunities for up-selling your customers.

👉 Loyalty: remind them to redeem points, or to refer a friend in exchange for a benefit.

Not sure where to start? We got you! Book a discovery call with me and my team and we'll help you out.

Is your Business On Track For Its 90-Day Goals?

In January I wrote about how 90-day roadmaps can help brands focus on the key actions to achieve their goals.

As February ends, it'd be great to check if you achieved your monthly goals.

And, in other words, if you're on track for your 90-day goals.

However, if you don't have this figured out yet, don't worry.

I'll show you what we do for our clients (DTC brands) at BSR Digital so you can apply it in your business 👇

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 weekly and running monthly meetings to determine whether you're on track or not, and to make proper adjustments.

How This DTC Brand Successfully Entered CVS and Walmart During Its Early Days

In today's episode of The DTC Insider podcast, Brian Roisentul interviews Leeanna Gantt.

She’s the founder of Tooktake, a company that helps people of all ages get well & stay well with a new & easy way to stick to their medication & supplement routines.

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

👉 Genesis of the business idea

👉 Early presence in CVS & Walmart

👉 Challenges and successes in retail

👉 Expansion into the Pets space

👉 Customer acquisition strategies

👉 Encouraging repeat purchases

👉 Handling returns: Lessons learned

👉 Future plans for Tooktake

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

Want to check out more podcast episodes?

Here are some of the top-listened episodes:

💎 Supplement Brand Bootstrapped $10,000 and Built It Into Sales of $30 Million in Three Years with Ronak Shah

💎 LinkedIn's "Top E-Commerce Voice" Reveals The #1 Struggle for DTC Brands with Neal Goyal

💎 Jon Loomer’s Take on the Evolution of Paid Ads and The Importance of Short-form Video with Jon Loomer

💎 How Frost Buddy Went From $0 to $30M in Under 3 Years with Brock Mammoser

💎 Give Up Your Stuff, Not Your Dream with Jules Weldon and Stacey Pierce

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