Happy Sunday!
If you’re in the United States, happy long weekend to you! I hope you’re sitting comfortably and you’ve been enjoying your weekend, but I imagine most people will read this Monday or Wednesday morning. If you’re reading this on Sunday, 1. I appreciate you; 2. I’m not going to take up too much time. Today will also be an observations analysis, versus something tactical. They go great with a JuneShine on a Sunday evening!
Before we dive into today’s email, I’ve got some golden nugget links to share:
- Remember one of the recent emails I sent about the 0 to 1 playbook? Many people asked for that as a link, so I turned that into a fun deck → click here to see it
- Oh, and if you missed the Landing Page Recipe, we also designed that into a beautiful deck. This is our process to build a LP at HOOX → click here to get the cookbook
- On this past week’s Limited Supply, we covered: TikTok Shopping, Shop Pay, and Amazon Prime’s recent FTC complaint. Listen on Apple Podcasts! This week’s episode is one of my favorites; we talked all things CEO/company culture/creativity with Ryan, the CEO of True Classic.
- If you’re coming to GROW NY and you’re a brand/merchant, come to the official after party → join the list!
- It was my birthday this past week and I dropped a fun Twitter thread → Here's my comprehensive list of 27 reasons your e-commerce website is a f*cking disappointment!
- My friend Romeen just launched a brand new newsletter about his journey building a bootstrapped business to $50M+. He's one of the smartest guys I know. I highly recommend you check it out. If you're interested, click here to subscribe.
- So for todays email, I wanted to keep it short, sweet and share some observations about companies that have been performing well. When I say “performing well,” I’m specifically talking about companies that are growing quickly, creating interesting moments for themselves, and doing it all as a sustainably growing business. These companies tend to be less venture funded, and usually PE, family-office-funded, or bootstrapped.
The clickbait title could be, “7 Lessons from the Fastest Growing DTC Brands,” or something similar. Alright, let’s get into it.
Lean Team
It feels like long-gone are the days of DTC/digital/eCommerce teams being a 20 person operation. Jolie is a 3 person company, not just DTC team but entire company and will eclipse $30M in year 2 of business. Black Wolf Nation is also 4 people and is doing over 8-figures in revenue. It doesn’t mean you need a 3 person team, but lean, mean teams are winning.
When you work with the right agencies, like Sharma Brands, you don’t need to hire everyone on your payroll — you hire the best at what they do, you make sure they help generate more than they cost you, and you focus on what you’re good at (which is usually product).
For roles that don’t need upward mobility at the US startup pace (admin tasks, reaching out to influencers, generating reporting, etc), you should use global talent to execute them. I plan to hire an EA+ from Oceans to do exactly this.
Having a leaner payroll means you can be more aggressive with deploying capital to grow, when you need to, or when the market requires you to spend more.
Multi-Angle Products
Products with a single benefit or angle don’t perform as well with customer acquisition, as those that have multiple benefits and angles to run and test. Companies like ARMRA, Jolie, and Canopy have all done really well with paid media because they are able to communicate multiple benefits in a simple way with their products.
It doesn’t even mean you need multiple products. I’m talking more about how a Jolie shower head is a haircare tool, a skincare tool, a home design upgrade, an acne fighting device, and an anti-aging device. Multiple angles lowers the barrier to entry in a consumer’s mind.
Treat The Website Like a Storefront
Good brands realize that the affinity someone has toward your brand, starts with your website. The website is your digital storefront on 5th Avenue in New York. Would you use a lame, duct-taped-together shed on your 5th Avenue real estate? This doesn’t mean you need to spend $250k on a website from a top-tier agency, either. But having a UX-friendly, on-brand, customer-first website is going to go a long ways.
When you walk into a storefront, your customer experience starts right away. In my opinion, customer experience isn’t a part of retention marketing, it starts the second someone lands on your website.
And, the same link from earlier, but these are 27 things to check off with your website → see the thread.
Landing Pages
While your website should be very UX-friendly, full of amazing content, and excite a customer to shop, a landing page should be used to have continuous and consistent messaging with your customer from the link they click on to enter your brand. You can use landing pages with your Facebook ads, emails, SMS, influencer campaigns, or even just for different sales that require a different merchandising structure (like a July 4th build your own bundle sale).
It’s rare to find a top-tier brand that doesn’t leverage landing pages for their customer acquisition campaigns. In most cases, landing pages are used to make your paid media drive a better return on ad spend for you — if you can increase conversion rate from 2% to 4.5%, you immediately add more to your bottom line.
And yes, HOOX does the entire process for a lot of DTC brands. HOOX handles the strategy, wireframe, copywriting, design, development in Shopify or Unbounce, and any ongoing iteration to continually make the page stronger. Book a call on their website, tell them you want the Sharma July 4th Special!
Start Niche, Grow Out From There
Have you seen Divi Hair or Cadence Capsules? Maybe Ridge Wallet? They all started niche — solve 1 problem for 1 person really well, and then they expanded to solve multiple problems. Solving a single problem for one niche allowed them to serve this niche well, gain credibility, build brand, and generate demand.
As their understanding of their multiple customer types grew, so did their offering and product lines. It’s rare to see a brand launch that focuses on selling to anyone, do well, with a finite amount of capital to deploy.
Creative Cohesiveness
Contrary to what you had heard over the last 5 years, good photo and video shoots don’t cost $50,000 anymore. You can get beautiful shoots for $2500, $5k, $10k, or even go above and beyond with a $20k shoot.
Same goes for your brand’s visual identity. You don’t need to spend $300k on a brand identity scope with an agency, you can spend $10k or $100k (whatever fills your need). Having a consistent and unique visual identity puts you ahead of 99% of your competitive market. It also builds trust right away with the consumer. Even if you use a standard Shopify theme, which you absolutely can, having great assets and visual identity is still key.
Ask for Discounts
Don’t sign annual contracts with vendors, and always ask for discounts. Always make sure there is an opt-out clause, ideally with no penalty. You should be using a software because it’s worth using, not because you’re locked into an annual contract. Heap Analytics is an example of a company that requires annual contracts — say no!
Ok, see, that didn’t take that long! Now let’s move to the next section and get you out of here soon.
Vendor of the Week:
Tapcart — The secret channel that beauty brands use to drive high repeat-purchase rate with customers and build LTV
Beauty brands have a different type of customer — it’s not the same as every other CPG brand. Their customers are usually cult-like with ordering new product drops, they’re loyal, and they’re always up for a good deal or exclusive offer. All of these factors lead to an amazing mobile app experience with Tapcart.
Tapcart allows brands to build a mobile app for their Shopify stores in 3 weeks. That means from booking your demo to having an app live in the App Store is just 21 days. The Tapcart team even helps you build out the app using your website’s design files.
Here are 3 reasons why Glamnetic, Florence by Mills, and INH Hair use Tapcart:
- The mobile app gives you real estate on your most bought-in customer base. This means share of home screen, higher conversion rate, better analytics, and the ability to create custom experiences for your most engaged customers.
- Free push notifications. When Black Friday rolls around, everyone will have a full inbox, an ungodly amount of text messages, and enough mailers at home. Rarely will brands have their own push notification setup on the phones of customers who are excited to shop their brand. They’re completely free.
- Use the app for as a VIP mobile hub for content, app exclusives, educational resources, videos and more. You can differentiate your mobile app experience from what customers see when they go to your website. It’s a win-win.
I highly recommend getting your Tapcart app setup for the Black Friday sprint now! You’ll not only need to get your app setup, but you’ll need some time to drive downloads through social media, your website, and your email flows. You’ll be kicking yourself in November, wishing you had started this process now!
Book a call with Tapcart on this link!
LP of the Week:
Today’s LP of the Week is one I am so excited we got to work on — Catbird! It’s an iconic New York jewelry brand that I have been a fan of for a long time.
For brands that have extensive catalogs, we build this type of a page called a Collections-Style LP (CSLP). With a CSLP, we’re able to educate the consumer on everything they need to know about the brand, in order to decide which product they want to go and look at. If we’re speaking in car talk, we tell them why a BMW is an amazing driving machine, and they choose the model of the BMW they want, after hearing why it’s so great.
We just wrapped up another amazing case study with Huel, a vegan meal-replacement, where we increase their CVR by 25% and lowered their CPM by 90%. Check out the full case study on this link.
That's all for this week
I hope today’s quicker email inspired a thought for your business or your team. It’s almost the halfway point of the long weekend, which means you get multiple easy opportunities to get that 9 hour sleep in! Have you tried it? It’ll change your life!
Get that sleep, break a sweat, sing to some Taylor Swift, and have an amazing rest of your weekend. I’ll see you next Sunday!