Issue 129: the 7-Eleven golf merch drop ⛳ & why it's awesome

+ how to manage your time like a 9-fig CEO

5

End of the week is upon us, folks! Whatever you’re currently doing, keep doing it. 💪 There’s very little room in this world for second guessing. Everyone’s just trying to figure it out as they go along, same as you.

🍸️To figuring it out as we go along!

| TWEET OF THE WEEK

One of the ways that brands build affinity with customers is through ordinary objects, whether the object is adjacent to your brand or not.

There are really four different use cases for creating objects as part of your product strategy (perhaps more!). Here they are:

1. Mirroring

You can use objects to mirror something about your brand to the customer. Like this Vibram mat outside of a clothing store in NYC.

Vibram makes some of the best footwear soles around, and using a doormat made from the same materials as the shoes they produce is a perfect marketing play for them.

Photo credit @geo.hagg on IG

| YOUTUBE UNIVERSITY

E064: How to manage your time like a 9-figure CEO

| TOGETHER WITH PARTICL

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| QUICK SHOTS

  • Edward Upton: Wunderkind just served me a Cease and Desist letter for telling the truth about their product — they want to bully Littledata into submission and pull the wool over DTC owners eyes about how their technology works.

  • @SeanEcom: Want to expand your brand globally? Thanks to shopify markets, its easier than every to get started. But is shopify markets a long term solution? We run 5 global stores, one on shopify markets, and 4 not. Why? The shopify markets BREAKDOWN:

  • Aaron Rubin: To prevent the fraud I keep posting about, USPS will start seizing those fraud labels on August 1.

  • @ron_ecomm: One key trick we have learned this year to make our cash more efficient while minimizing inventory planning mistakes is to launch new SKUs conservatively & quietly + place restocking PO aggressively early. Here's an example from our recent new collection launch of 10 new designs of an existing product.

  • @mikebeckhamsm: We started a newsletter for @9operators and it is awesome. Every week it is full of insights and deep dives that can help you run your business. Here’s an example of a piece I wrote last week about free shipping:

| HERE FOR THE MEMES

| AND IN OTHER NEWS…

Italy PM Meloni vows to 'relaunch' bilateral ties with China

Ms Meloni last year removed Italy from President Xi Jinping's signature Belt and Road Initiative.

Apple Intelligence to Miss Initial Launch of Upcoming iOS 18 Overhaul

(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc.’s upcoming artificial intelligence features will arrive later than anticipated, missing the initial launch of its upcoming iPhone and iPad software overhauls but giving the company more time to fix bugs.Most Read from BloombergHarris’ Running-Mate Search Zeroes In on Three Top ContendersTrump’s Campaign Against Harris Is Like Him: Old and TiredApple's AI Features Rollout Will Miss Upcoming iPhone Software OverhaulVenezuela’s Silence on Election Results Draws Global Conc

WTO Countries Sign Global eCommerce Agreement That Would Ban Tariffs

Several dozen World Trade Organization (WTO) countries have signed a sweeping agreement governing global eCommerce.

Britain will soon lay out new plans to regulate 'buy now, pay later' firms like Klarna after delays

A U.K. Treasury department spokesperson said the government will set out plans to regulate "buy now, pay later" plans "shortly."

CrowdStrike reveals what went wrong — and it's pretty much what we expected

CrowdStrike has issued its first review of the recent major incident

Sonos CEO apologizes for disastrous rollout of new app

He promises frequent improvements through the fall.

| GET LINKED

We didn’t pay nearly enough attention to our contribution margin…

We didn’t pay nearly enough attention to our contribution margin…

It hurt our profitability

Yes it’s still me your neighborhood CMO talking about contribution margin

It’s important for us too (peep last post, 30 sec read to brush up)

Now for how your offers can impact it ⤵️

🤲 Offers & pricing go hand in hand

Customers quickly and subconsciously evaluate your offer and pricing, decide its value and whether to buy it.

It affects your AOV + your contribution margin - the mistake we made here was by trying to increase our AOV…not contribution margin…

I thought higher conversion at higher AOV = best results

🎁 So we created an offer with everything (picture 1):
- A 6 month supply
- Shaker cup
- Sample sticks
- 3 free gifts
- Apple cider gummies

The works. Plus we included a hell of a discount.

They’d be stupid not to buy, right?

The problem was we weren’t paying attention to how an offer this rich was impacting the business.

COGS + discounts + added shipping cost associated with the extra free gifts ➡️ needed 2x ROAS to break even.

Scaling the business will be difficult. We went back & A/B tested it

💥 Now for the BIG, BOLD TEST:

Removed the gifts & raised prices on all purchase options (picture 2)

Even though the conversion rate was lower, the reduced COGS, fulfillment and shipping costs + higher MSRP resulted in a stronger contribution margin.

Instead of needing a 2X ROAS to breakeven, we only needed to be at 1.4X…

This meant it would be much easier to scale the business with a lower CAC.

Now that we covered all of that…

In the next post, I’ll tell you the multiple offer types you should be testing

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| STAT ATTACK 👊

| YOU’RE HIRED

Brand

Got a job you want us to list? Let us know.

| THE OUTRO

That’s it for this one, folks! Tune in next week. Got more spicy goodness to send your way.

Adios! ✌️

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