Kiri Masters

Frequent creative refreshes: - Meta says to do it 2x a month - We say 4x a month/1x a week Most DTC brands don't hit 2x, much less 4x. But if you want better performance, frequent refreshes are a key lever to pull.

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TikTok Shop AOV is WAY lower than website b/c: 1. Discounts are CAPPED which does not incentivize higher cart sizes (in the below example, you think it's 50% off, but the coupon is maxed at $20 discount) 2. Upsells/cross-sells in the CART are below the fold and ppl will rarely scroll below the "checkout button" 3. These are largely impulse purchases. If TTS doesn't incentivize higher AOV, brands are stuck in low AOV purgatory. If I'm TikTok, I start considering a solve for both of the above.. honestly pretty easy Despite TTS low AOVs, we're noticing 2.5-7x higher conversion rate than the DTC site. B/c of this- TikTok Ads performance has been higher driving to the Shop (vs website) for every client we've touched on TikTok in 2024.

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Instacart not having negative keywords as an option is the best example of what "machine learning" actually costs brands to support. The best solution I've found? Take their auto applied keywords and make their bid the lowest possible (30 cents). I built a really solid ads structure supporting each of our Target sku's and woke up to us bidding on "Ben and Jerry's" as a "optimized auto applied suggesition" for our Vanilla Ice Cream Whey. Gee, I wonder what sophisticated dev team decided "auto bid on product title". Yeah, in the world of CPG there could neeevvverrr be issues with that. Who leads this team and how much do you make. (Hint: too much). Happy Friday to everyone except overpaid leadership that don't actually understand what they're building and get paid boat loads of money for it.

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How to Build (or Scale) a Hair Product in 2024 from Boldify founder 💁🏻‍♀️ 1. Get really good at Amazon 2. Lean on TikTok for brand awareness 3. Make a social-sharing friendly product 4. There's always room to innovate Full post below with a lot of great takeaways! 💡 #CPG #DigitalMarketing #SocialSelling #SocialMedia

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Don't remove sold out products from your site... If you do, you're missing out on a key piece of psychology influencing your revenue. When shoppers see several products as sold out, they typically feel the hidden psychological force of "loss aversion." It all comes down to this: 👉 The discomfort we feel from a loss is more intense than the joy of an equivalent gain. This is where leaving out of stock products online for a bit, or being honest about low stock levels, can motivate purchase. Try leaving your out of stock items on your site for a few weeks, even if you won't be restocking them. Even better: apply a badge that clearly shows "last chance" AND lists it as out of stock (assuming you won't be restocking that item, of course).

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Most founders and marketers think that just because they’ve hit “enable” on their native Shopify CAPI integration, they’re on top of their data game. Hate to break it to you, but you’re not. Yeah it’s easy, free, and convenient But that does not signal that it’s a quality method of tracking AT ALL. If you’re serious about growing your brand - you’ll never want to settle for “good and free” And I can even tell you from firsthand experience with growing Obvi - we’ve been down the road of trying the “good and free” method for things like hiring agencies, checkout optimization, subscription services… It almost never ends well. The same goes 1000% for your tracking. On average (with standard & free client-side tracking) businesses lose around 30% of their overall revenue due to bad tracking 30%. So if you’re bringing in $3 million in revenue - that’s $900,000 in the wind. Now do you understand why having good tracking and better data is so important?? And what’s even better is that there are SEVERAL resources for you to implement better quality server-side tracking into your business You can do the research and figure it out all on your own (which we tried to do) OR You can sign up for a service that already has everything ready to go And all you need to do is plug it into your ads, shopfiy, email, etc. Personally - I recommend option number 2. I’m not saying option number 1 isn’t possible, but you’re likely going to spend a lot of time and money on it. And yes I’m a #proudpartner - but like I’ve said before, I don’t promote anything I don’t use personally to grow our businesses… And I can’t stress enough that Elevar is the right path to go with this kind of thing. They know what they’re doing, have access to a ridiculous amount of resources to do it right, And they’ve helped us make a lot of money. As always, you don’t have to take my advice - I’m just shouting into the void half the time. But if you’re serious about fixing your tracking and getting your hands on GOOD data, I’ll recommend Elevar every time.

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Most DTC ad accounts aren't even doing the bare minimum to improve performance. What do I mean? There's one thing Meta recommends doing to both: a) Prevent ROI dropoff b) Keep CAC steady Creative refreshes. Our recommendation is heavy — 1x per week, or ~4x per month. Meta's recommendation is moderate — 2x per month. Most DTC brands aren't hitting even half of this — MAYBE 1x a month. This simple rule is one of the most neglected in ad strategy for ecommerce brands. Why? Usually from a lack of creative inbound — there's not enough creative to supplement the number of refreshes needed. I won't get into creative volume, but here's why creative refreshes are critical. Creative fatigue: it builds up when audiences are overexposed to the same creatives. It can drive up your CPA and make your ads less sticky, leading to higher ad spend for desired performance (or no spend if you're using cost controls). Meta prioritizes the "best" experience for users — this means new, new, new. You don't immediately have to jump to 1x a week for creative refreshes, but if you're not at least hitting Meta's recommended rate (bi-weekly), you're leaving easy results on the table.

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DTC Companies with AOC's lower than $100... focus on bundles to increase your cart value. Change your shopper's habits to buy more at a time. For better or worse, this is becoming the only way to negate the avg. acquisition cost of a new client. Requires a little creative thinking but it can be done.

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Key EMARKETER stat: US marketers will spend $8.14 million on social media-sponsored content this year, marking 16.0% growth YoY, according to their March 2024 forecast. Beyond the chart: Although spending will rise next year to $9.29 billion, growth is slowing, as marketers spend more carefully with larger creators with whom they can establish long-term relationships. Brands are increasingly opting for recurring, “always-on” partnerships with trusted creators rather than one-off campaigns. This shift has reduced both the number of creators brands work with and the number of new deals. The deals that are formed, however, are bigger, and often designed to extend outside of social media to other platforms like TV. #socialmedia #digitalmarketing

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Retail Media is passive income. When you hire us to do it. :) Kidding, been in all seriousness. It is probably the most MEASURABLE velocity tool. It is probably the most FLEXIBLE velocity tool. Here’s your go-to retail media platform list: -Kroger: 8451 -Ulta: UB Media -Target: Roundel -Costco: Costco Media -Best Buy: Best Buy Ads -Most Grocery: Instacart -Convenience: DoorDash -CVS: CVS Media Xchange -Walmart: Walmart Connect -Macy’s: Macy’s Media Network -Dollar Tree: Chesapeake Media -Sam’s Club: Sam’s Member Access -Home Depot: Home Depot Ad Center -Ahold (Food Lion, etal): AD Retail Media -Albertsons: Albertsons Media Collective -Walgreens: Walgreens Advertising Group -Chew.com: Chewy Retail Media (dotcom bonus) Citrus and Criteo can give you access to almost any other major retailers. There you have it. There’s your cheat sheet. Now, if you want it to be passive income… Or you want it to be passive velocity… Hit me up. :) ——— 🔹 We grow brands on Amazon. 🔹 We grow brands in Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, CVS, Macy’s, Instacart, etc. #ecommerce #retailmedia #retailmedianetworks #cpg #cpgbrands #retailstrategy #founderlife #instacart #ShopperMarketing #walmart #wholefoods

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The Big 4 flows that Klaviyo highlighted in its 2024 Benchmark report are the most important things you can be working on as a marketer. By Big 4, I mean: -Welcome -Post-purchase -Abandoned cart -Browse abandonment These are the email tactics I’ve been writing about and using at all of my brands for the last [ahem] years, and they remain important enough that Klaviyo continues to highlight their efficacy. Really, the subtext is: -You’ve gotta be using these. -If you’re not already, start yesterday. If you are already, make ‘em better. Because. . . They are >fundamental< to email programs + improving them is crazy-high-ROI marketing work. Revenue per recipient (RPR) gets silly high when you’re looking at the Top 10% vs. the average (see attached graph). The best abandoned cart flows are ~692% higher than the average. Looking at this, you have to ask yourself whether you’re driving the most value with your time. If you’re around avg RPR, and a few months of work on abandoned + welcome)can double RPR, that’s where your hours should go. That’s potentially tens/hundreds of thousands/millions per month of extra revenue you can get from your flows. This work turns solid brands into great brands and great brands into household names. It’s what I obsessed over for 20yrs, starting back in the early 2000s at my first brand, Design Public. It’s why I first launched Nerd Marketing. A great email program was, is, and will remain key to being a great brand. And driving even more value from email (with direct mail) has been one of our missions at PostPilot. I wish I could have used direct mail to extend what I was doing with email over my whole brandside career, but PostPilot didn’t exist until my last 2 turnarounds, AutoAnything and oVertone. (You better believe we were combining email flows + PostPilot-powered direct mail at both brands, though.) 3 High-ROI Email + Direct Mail Moves: 1️⃣ Add a postcard at the end of your welcome flows and post-purchase flows. Or go further and create a postcard flow at the end of those email flows. 2️⃣ Same idea with abandoned cart: add a postcard(s) to the end of your abandoned cart flow. 3️⃣ Go a step beyond email’s browse abandonment capabilities and use direct mail for anonymous retargeting with our popular feature, SiteMatchTM. And, as Michael Epstein likes to say, “lower your Meta taxes” in the process. These tactics will take mere minutes of your time and add thousands ($) to your flows. We have brands driving ~$500k (at 8+ ROI) just from adding a postcard to the welcome flow. LMK if you want to see similar results. Wanna Learn more, check it out here → https://lnkd.in/ebv3sC5X

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When’s the last time you saw a product launch that stopped you in your tracks? The best campaigns in the world are remembered because of two elements: 1. They are rewarding to experience 2. They are very specific to their customer That’s exactly what Glossier, Inc. and Shop’s latest collab did this week in New York, Chicago, and LA. A few months ago, Glossier, Inc. CEO Kyle Leahy reached out and wanted to work with Shopify closer. They were planning to launch their new Boy Brow product. Glossier, Inc.’s known for their connection with their customer. They wanted to do something that would help them cut through the noise and connect with their most engaged customers in a way that made them feel exclusive. Naturally, I introduced her to the Shop App team. This weekend, Glossier, Inc. launched Boy Brow Arch with a series of billboards in NYC, Chicago, and LA in partnership with the Shop app. These are not ordinary billboards. Every billboard had a QR code. When a customer scans it, it directs them to an online experience powered by the Shop app that gives them exclusive early access to the product. Using Shop’s geo-gated technology, we were able to heat-map exactly where customers could get the product - a small area around the billboard only, so you had to see it to believe it. This is how the best of offline and online commerce come together to make incredible experiences for your customers. This is what we are building at Shopify. Have you seen the billboards? Drop a comment below!

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"We can't figure out Meta" "Ads aren't working like they used to" "We're barely profitable on first order, if at all" All of these are phrases I hear on a weekly basis from brands. Customer acquisition has only become more and more challenging over the last few years. Its not 2012 anymore where you can pump money into Facebook and get what feels like guaranteed results. Brands have to be creative. Influencer marketing has become a place where brands have leaned heavily into creativity into an attempt to get new customers at a more profitable rate. The risk is much lower. In most cases, brands send product to influencers (and eat the cost of shipping and COGS), and then pay them out a % of sales they drive. Post goes viral? The brand makes more sales and the influencer makes more. Post flops? The brand isn't out thousands of dollars. Its a win/win situation. As ads continue to get more expensive as we get closer to BFCM and a presidential election in the US, I expect to see a massive hike in brands leveraging influencers and content creators as opposed to going all in on META. Time will tell. What else can brands do to combat rising acquisition costs?

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Taylor Stitch has generated $$$ with direct mail at a 10x ROI. Here's a couple of their major wins: 1️⃣ Hit unengaged subscribers with postcards over the holidays 2️⃣ Automatically plugging the funnel More on that: Awakening the unengaged: ➝ Send to customers who didn't receive emails ➝ 20% discount ➝ Drive re-engagement Plug the funnel: ➝ Automate winback campaigns ➝ 2 segments: no purchase in 90 + 180 days ➝ Non-discounting messaging driving higher incremental lift than WITH discounts As Luke McAlpine told us, "We’re often seeing high ROAS with incremental lifts between 30-50% among the campaigns that win out [in tests]." Let me know if you want to get results like this, too. Check out the complete case study here → https://lnkd.in/e2kJgsSV BTW. . . This postcard 👇👇 alone generated a solid six figures:

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**Important** Question for my fellow #Amazon #Advertising #Experts: Who has experience turning off Ads 100% and going all #organic. I need to understand the full ramifications of doing this and want feedback from other industry experts. Will sales be affected: 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%+ I am looking to doing something experimental. What exactly? Throwing all of our ad spend on a highly sought-after category keyword for ranking purposes. Again this is testing not a full blown strategy.

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Pop Quiz: Which email A-B test variant drove more DTC eCommerce conversions? Hit 👍 for A - BOGO50 Hit ❤️ for B - 25% OFF There are a lot of options for what you can A-B test in your emails: → Frequency & cadence → Call to Actions (CTA) → Promotional Offers → Send Day of Week → Personalization → Segmentation → Subject Lines → Email Content → Email Layout → Send Time → Headers → Footers You should always let your data and goals drive that prioritization but I think offer testing is something that tends to not get tested enough. In some cases, is discounting even helping or hurting your brand in the long run? There's only one way to find out. Test it. So let me know with your vote and comments. Who do you think was the winner of this test?

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Pro tip for all DTC founders: Share your product on Reddit. Reddit users are brutal, and the active ones are nerds. Meaning? They'll take the time to research your product, and then kick your ass for any issue they find. Half-assed products WON'T survive the heat. You'll find areas of improvement really quickly.

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How do you increase your store revenue, AOV, and CR quickly? Find an offer that works. And don't stop testing new ones. Offer testing is an underrated DTC strategy. Most brands stuck with the same offer month after month, year after year. Same Black Friday deals, same Welcome offer, same Cart abandonment offer. Nor there's any logic to the process. Most copy their competition. Or reverse engineer their margin. With Q3 starting, you need to start testing offers for Q4. Without a tested offer, you are leaving a lot to chance. Here's how we offer testing - --> Create 4-5 unique offers - Percentage discounts: 10%, 20%, etc. - Dollar amount discounts: $5 off, $10 off - Tiered Offers: $10 Off $100, $15 Off 150, etc. - Value-added offers: Buy one, get one free; free gift with purchase - Shipping offers: Free shipping, discounted expedited shipping - Loyalty offers: Points, VIP early access to new products Create at least 4-5 offers to start with. --> Run email campaigns or on-site pop-ups to test offers You need quick data to test offers, so it's best to run it as a campaign or on-site pop-up. The goal is to collect data over 3-4 days for each offer. Run small targeted campaigns to test different offers. --> Monitor key metrics An offer will have an impact over - Direct metrics -  - Conversion rate - Average order value Indirect metrics -  - Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) - Store Revenue - Customer lifetime value Focus on direct metrics for testing the metrics. --> Dump non-performing one. For every good offer, you will have 2 bad offers. Keep on separating good from bad. Don't run bad offers again. Instead, try to find variations of good offers. The goal is to get 3-4 good offers, which you can rotate all through the year. Don't wait till Q4 to test your offer. #dtc #ecommerce

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Should an unprofitable DTC brand take on debt? There's a ton of nuance to consider here but one thing you always need to remember is... All debt must eventually be paid back with profit. If you don't have profit available to pay back your debt, then you must pay it back with equity dollars. And if you're raising equity to pay back debt, then you're getting double-tagged with a hefty cost of capital... Once for the cost of debt (interest)... And once for the cost of raising equity (getting your ownership diluted)... Which makes me think - Should you have just raised equity (and not taken on debt) in the first place? -- Find this post helpful? Consider reposting or giving me a follow

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