Happy Sunday!

If you’re reading this, I hope you’re sitting comfortably, relaxed, and you’re excited for a different style of email today. But, nonetheless, I hope you’ve got a beverage in your hand, the AC on, and your feet up!

Vendor of the Week

impact.com – The all-in-one partnership platform that powers affiliates, influencers, and referral programs for top brands like Walmart, Microsoft, Adidas, and more.

They recently released a new case study with Cozy Earth, a luxury home goods and apparel brand that sells clothes, premium bedding, blankets, towels, and other products. You can check it out on this link!

With impact.com, Cozy Earth doubled their revenue by rolling out new referral strategies and campaigns. 

Here are some of the stats that stood out:

  • Cozy Earth saw a 109% YoY program growth with a 72% YoY increase in spend. 
  • They increased their online store traffic by 92% YoY.
  • They also brought in 55% of the total revenue through content partnerships.

These stats are every CMO’s dream!

The big picture is that influencers, referrals, and affiliates are incredibly powerful tools in your marketing toolkit. They build brand, unlock new audiences, and drive new revenue without paid ads.

impact.com is the platform that helps brands go beyond the walled gardens of Meta and Google to help them create, measure, and manage these campaigns. If you want to use this strategy for your company and learn more about their work with Cozy Earth, click here.

Limited Supply

As we prepare to launch the next season of Limited Supply, I have one ask for you — can you email me what you really like about Limited Supply or what you want to hear more of? You can just reply to this email, but your feedback is extremely helpful. PS, it sounds like “Guess That Company” may make a comeback!

Into today’s newsletter…

For today’s email, I wanted to try something different. In any given week, I get anywhere from 100 to 500 emails, DMs, texts, etc., with one-off questions. These are from founders of companies that are yet to launch, all the way to CMOs at some of your favorite household brands (Disney, Bacardi, NBA, etc.). Sometimes, based on my questions, I’ll see a common pattern and address that ask in a newsletter. Today is going to be one of those Sundays!

As we get closer to BFCM, everyone wants to ensure their store is buttoned up, their offers are locked in, there are no leaking holes in your pipes, and that everything will run, on-time, without any issues. The question I keep getting asked is, “Can you take a look at my site and let me know what else I can do to improve it for q4?”

For today’s email, I want to go through a quick hit list of things I’ve called out in my replies back to everyone. If there’s anything you’d add, reply with it, so I can share an updated link to everyone. Within the next couple of weeks, an entire backlog of my newsletters will be available on the NEW SharmaBrands.com website.

Subscribe & Save.

If you offer subscription as a brand, you need to have a landing page that speaks directly to the subscription program. It should explain what the benefits of subscribing are, answer FAQs, sell the product, and include social proof. This page is something your customer service team can link to, emails can point to, and search engines can index.

Some of my favorite Subscribe & Save LPs are: Perfect Snacks, Hint, David Protein, Divi, Salud

Product Pages.

Most brands’ PDPs (product display pages) are bland and lack information. During the holidays, if your site visitor is leaving your PDP to go find obvious information about the product, you have a high chance of them never coming back. Your competitors are all spending more money than they have all year to get that person to be their customer.

For that reason, you need to have PDPs that are landing pages on their own. Here are some great examples of this: Rest Comforter, Chamelo Sunglasses, Jolie, Salud, Ridge

Proof Pages.

When I think about a new site visitor on your site, or someone walking into your store, I always presume they need 3 checkboxes. They are: 1. Good product; 2. A sense of trust; 3. Proof that it works. If your conversion rate is low, I would first guess you’re lacking in one of the three checkboxes.

Some proof pages for different brands: Solawave before & after, Lemme, ARMRA clinical trials, Jolie clinical stats, Eight Sleep wall of love, Seed

Comparison Charts.

One of the easiest things you can add to your website, email sequences or ad creative is comparison charts. We know that chunky paragraphs don’t do justice from a conversion rate standpoint, they get people to skip over it. Comparison charts are like the opposite... they’re visually stimulating, and when they’re done well, they can be something that drives longer time spent and higher revenue per session.

Here are some of my favorite comparison charts: David Protein, Salud, Create

Hero and Navigation.

If your homepage, above the fold, site experience is not optimized with a navigation menu that’s easy to move around, and a hero section that clearly explains who you are and what you’re selling... you’re already 3 steps behind. Oh, and ideally also includes social proof. When running a site focused on both new and existing customers, these two elements need to be properly optimized.

Here are some of my favorite hero and/or navigation experiences. Check them out on mobile as well: The Skinny Confidential, Halfdays, Ridge, Athletic Greens, Brooklinen

Checkout.

Most people never customize their checkout... why?! You’re getting someone through the finish line of their shopping experience, the least you can do is create a nice checkout. Branded banner at the top, secure checkout badges, social proof/reviews, reinforcing reasons to buy.

One of my favorite things I found when buying a Ridge wallet was that if you entered an invalid discount code, it doesn’t say “INVALID CODE”; it says, “You’re already getting the best offer!” What a fun way to encourage someone to continue to finish their checkout.

That's all for this week

Told you today would be a different format! Let me know how you liked it with a reply. If you have anything you’d like me to dive deeper on for a newsletter as it pertains to Q4, let me know as well. 

Tonight is Sunday night, so I hope you plan to get 9 hours of sleep going into the week! Each week leading up to Black Friday is going to feel more intense than the last, so make sure you stay hydrated, get good sleep and get a sweat in! 

I’ll see you back here next week. Same time. Same place. Have a great week!