Issue 067: 7 Reasons to be Optimistic re: Ecom 💪

Can anyone say “facelift”? That’s exactly what we got. 💆

We betook ourselves to an excellent digital surgeon who told us we “had good bones” it’s just that “the rest of us looked haggard”.

You gotta value that kind of honesty in a surgeon. So, after a few days wrapped up with digital bandages, we unveil the new & improved Workspace6 DTC News.

Don’t worry if you can’t tell the difference. The best surgeons make it look seamless. 👌 

HOLD UP » Happened to catch a podcast featuring the ever-so-talented Alex Greifeld from No Best Practices the other day and it hit us how obscenely full of insight she is when it comes to outside-the-box thinking for scaling in eCom.

Don’t know if you noticed, but the DTC world isn’t exactly a sure thing anymore. We’re conducting business here folks. Now is a great time to get a strategic second opinion. 🧠 If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get on Alex’s mailing list.

No Best Practices is one of the newsies we simply don’t miss.

| TWEET O’ THE WEEK

Spend two minutes on any Apple product page and you'll end up mesmerized by their copywriting skills.

It's an art they've mastered.

And these tips will help you do the same in less than 3 minutes.

1. Don’t Sell Multiple Ideas

Each Apple headline focuses on one idea.

And draws all attention and awareness to it.

The more ideas you try to sell, the more a consumer doesn’t know what’s important.

2. Write For Scanners

…and with that, we’re going to let you READ THE REST.

| TOGETHER WITH JOINBRANDS

It’s like UBER for influencer marketing. Quick. Simple. Seamless.

Whether you’ve never tried UGC creation for your brand or doing it all manually via outreach, there’s never been a better time to try JoinBrands.

They’ve quickly grown to 40,000+ US-based content creators and micro influencers ready to make branded UGC content. Within minutes of posting your jobs, creators apply and you get to review their portfolios, social links and choose the perfect match.

And when we say it’s simple, we mean 💀 Dead. Freaking. Simple.

1. Create a Job - Add your brand, your products, and share some deets. The creators will start to swarm.

2. Choose Your Creator - Browse their profiles and pick the one/s that suit your brand and your tastes.

3. Send Your Product or Have Them Buy It - Get them the goodies so they can create magic with them. (Seriously, UGC’ers are like viral powerhouses.)

4. Pick the Content - Your creators will upload multiple photos and vids for you to choose from. Pick what you want. Leave the rest.

5. See it Online - Watch the magic of someone cool talking about your stuff online. If you’re working with TikTok creators, they’ll post direct to their accounts. 🎉

6. Boost it with Spark Ads - If you create TikTok videos, each creator will allow you to spark ad the content to the targeting of your choice. Get millions of views and clicks on your best videos.

JoinBrands offers a variety of UGC options, including images (starting at $15), selfies, demos, lifestyle shots, and product-only shots. Videos start at $60 and can include how-to guides, unboxing vids, product demos, and product reviews.

There are also content options for creators to post on your behalf on their own profiles for TikTok, Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reels and Amazon Shoppable Videos!

BONUS: There’s NO sign-up fee, and when you sign up, just let ‘em know Workspace6 sent you. Drop W6NEWS into chat support and they’ll drop a $25 credit back into your account.

You could get your next piece of viral UGC for free. 🔮

Know what that is? That’s AWESOME. Grab your $25 right here.

| YOUTUBE UNIVERSITY

| QUICK HITS

• @MrYoniLevy: You're welcome to all those who have patiently waited.

• @TheSzef: As a brand. If you go through multiple agencies trying to help you and they still can't crack any scale... It's not them. It's you.

• @JasonJh1319: Heard from multiple 9 figure supplement brand operators that Meta ads have been struggling big time. Is Meta putting a tax on us or are other industries seeing the same?

• @AaronOrendorff: Having a grand vision and uber-talented people isn’t enough … Great work comes down to two thoroughly unsexy ingredients: → Expectations → Resources Simple but all-too-often-overlooked requirements like …

• @jspujji: Be wary of the HIPPO in decision making. HIPPO - highest paid person in the office’s OPINION. Their intuition is valuable. But data and facts are even more valuable.

| DTCCI

| HERE FOR THE MEMES

| AND IN OTHER NEWS…

• CNN: After a summer of Barbenheimer and Beyoncé, can US consumers still afford the holiday season?

• The Drum: AI boom, social commerce surge, funnel collapse: Agency leaders share top 2024 predictions

• CNBC: Klarna takes aim at Google and Amazon with AI image recognition tool for shopping

• Modern Retail: Amazon Briefing: Why the October Prime Day turned out to be a hit with CPG brands

• PYMNTS: Are Scare Tactics the New Way to Move Merchandise?

| GET LINKED

The CMO of a $105 million brand blew my mind when he shared they have only 2 humans on their marketing team. My only question.... "How on earth do you pull that off?!"

His answer: "Operating efficiency to the extreme. Suddenly in 2023 every brand is now paranoid about profitability. But we were ALWAYS paranoid about it, which is why we are so obsessed with R.E.T.E.N.T.I.O.N. And since we prioritized that from day 1, we are among the fastest growing brands in DTC today with a HYPER-lean team."

3 Retention areas this CMO obsesses over:

Product and #CX. The best retention strategy starts with amazing product and customer experience. Customers have to WANT to come back again in the future. Without that, retention marketing means nothing.

Hyper-segmentation of Email, Push Notification, and SMS flows. This requires work upfront, including data collection, analysis, and curation of flows. But once you understand your customer and take the time to implement a granular segmentation strategy, your messaging to the customer becomes highly personalized thereby telling the customer you understand them.

Low lift but high ROI channels. Because of the work already put in on segmentation, they see 10% of revenues comes from SMS with low ongoing bandwidth required. Plus, 22% of revenues are coming from their mobile app where it takes 10 minutes to manage per WEEK.

That's literally it. That's 32% of revenues coming from channels requiring a total of 40 minutes per week. 🤯

He concludes with... "Because our LTV is massive from focusing on these 3 pillars... Now we have so much excess cash flow to go feed the top-of-funnel acquisition machine, regardless of how crazy customer acquisition costs get. Because it is our highly predictable #LTV model that allows us to do that."

Lesson here.... you don't need a mega-sized marketing team to scale a brand to 9 figures.

You just need supreme focus on the customer, the right channels, and revenue efficiency. Doing more with less.

Original Post

| THE OUTRO

Man there’s a lot of 90s kids right now wondering when the madness will end this year.

Chandler dying was not on anyone’s Bingo card! 🥺 Could we BE any more disappointed??

We’re off to binge Friends reruns. ✌️ 

Workspace6