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Banter

Wednesday, May 26th, 2021

👆This is the excitement level we assume you wake up with every Wednesday morning remembering there’s a brand freaking new DTC Newsletter waiting in your inbox.

Don’t forget to share that excitement with your friends! Right now, every referral enters both you and your pal into our Macbook Pro Giveaway. 💻🥳

Here’s your unique referral code 

If you’re new to DTC, welcome! You’re in good company along with new readers from Soxy, Michi, Naturismo, Kopari Beauty, Under Armour, Bizzy Coffee, and The San Antonio Spurs. 🏀

In this edition of the DTC Newsletter, you’ll find:  

📦Why you need behind-the-scenes content from your employees (and why it performs so well). 

📦Beauty Pie’s Chief Marketing Officer Rob Weston’s secret sauce to DTC brand success.

📦DTC beauty brand Three Ships on how they stand out in a hyper-competitive market. 

📦A birthday tip for Facebook Ads.

📦Scale your brand with Sponsored Display Ads on Amazon. 

Read till the end for email creative you can steal today. 📨😎

UGC

You’ve heard of UGC, but what about EGC?

We all understand the importance of UGC to create trust between customer and potential customers, but EGC (employee-generated content) goes a step further by diving into the value and story behind the brand. 

EGC is re-shared up to 24-times more when shared by employees as opposed to the brand, and it can get up to 8-times more engagement than branded content. 

Additionally, 59.8% of marketers share/promote EGC on their social media, helping expand reach and build community. 

“While we’re building a UGC program for clients, we always encourage the founder and brand team to create content for a behind-the-scenes view into the company.”

“It helps establish the brand’s identity and makes for great organic social and ads content,” says Angela from Pilothouse’s UGC team.  

Examples of EGC: 

• Video/photos of employees packaging and mailing orders.
• Employees talking about why they love working for the brand. 
• Tours of the warehouse or office. 
• Short video of the founder explaining why they started the brand.  

Are you a brick-and-mortar retailer? Not to worry, EGC can crush for any brand. 

The Canadian housewares conglomerate Ashley HomeStore turned to this strategy, asking employees to record short videos describing their favorite pieces in the store, why they love them, and how they'd use them in their homes.

Ashley used this strategy with each retail location and found that customers were coming in not only looking for furniture featured in the EGC but the employee to chat with them about their videos.

Creating a ‘Founder’s Story” is crucial to building a human connection, especially during the beginning stages of the brand. 

Examples: 

• (2012) Beardbrand founder, Eric Bandholz: The Starting Vision
• (2011) GoPro founder, Nick Woodman: About Us 

Both videos aren’t super high-value productions, but it doesn’t matter. 

Each explains the brand’s vision and how they envision the company, which helps connect with the audience. 

Build that EGC alongside your UGC! 

Sponsor

Beauty Pie is the D2C brand Elle magazine describes as a “game-changer” and Glamour calls “disruptive and brilliant.” 

The beauty subscription business gives shoppers access to luxury skincare and cosmetic products directly from laboratories at a vastly discounted price.

Attest checked in with Beauty Pie’s Chief Marketing Officer Rob Weston, who revealed the secret sauce to Beauty Pie’s DTC brand success: 

🚀“Number one is engagement: empowerment is ultimately about helping customers to engage on their own terms.” 

“Being digital is an advantage as it brings convenience (especially during these uncertain times!), and digital storytelling is key.”

🤝 “Be as transparent as possible and take people with you on the ride. Be human. Do not be a corporation.” 

“You only control the narrative until you publish it, so what you say must match what you do.” 

Check out the full conversation with Attest here. 

🎙Podcast

This week on the pod, we chat with Lillie Sun, growth marketer for Three Ships, a female-founded vegan skincare company on a mission to make clean beauty accessible to all. 

How Three Ships stands out from the competition: 👇

🛍 Retail presence 

Three Ships isn’t a DTC first brand. They focused on Canadian retail in their first three years, getting into two hundred local retailers in Toronto, plus bigger stores like Hudson’s Bay, Holt Renfrew, and Chapters/Indigo. 

“With skincare, one of the hypotheses we had initially was that people want to see it, they want to touch it, they want to test it on their hands before they purchase, and there was just no way of doing that online at the time.”

The retail presence also provided clout, “going on to a brand’s website and seeing that they’re available at all these retailers does add a layer of credibility.” 

🤓 Product understanding and knowledge 

Three Ships invests heavily in upfront education before customers make a purchase. 

Organic social is a significant part of their education strategy using infographics and ingredient breakdowns in their content. 

Email is another key channel, using their welcome and post-purchase flows to focus on education. 

🤯 The benefits of an educated customer

“When they buy [our product], they fully understand what they’re purchasing.”

“They’re buying a product for their skin type, so we don’t see a lot of returns or customers who don’t like the product.”

“We see a lot of retention because they’re choosing something that’s right for their skin, and they’re staying with it.” 

🤝 Non-scaleable customer engagement 

“When we have new Instagram followers, we send almost all of them a personalized DM. And we get hundreds of followers a day. When we’re on our lunch break, we’re in the DM’s sending a personalized welcome message to our new followers.” 

🎧 Take a listen to the full conversation for Lillie’s hot take on founder’s emails and more engaging email alternatives, including an educational post-purchase email flow. 

(spoiler alert: it’s nine emails long!) 

Facebook

🥳Utilize birthdays in your ads! 

Use birthday interest targeting that feeds to people whose birthday is within the next seven days, month or whatever date range you’d like. 

Hit consumers with birthday-specific ads, celebrating their special day, and giving an extra % off! The other option is to re-use the discount you’re already giving but pair it with birthday-themed copy and headline. 

Users will feel special as they’re getting “extra” savings, but it’ll help drive CVR as well. 

🚨TIP: These audiences auto-generate so you can turn them on once and let it run!

Tool Spotlight

📢 Calling all Amazon advertisers!

Amazon is making big moves on Sponsored Display, and Perpetua is here to break it down for you.

Learn directly from Amazon Senior Managers how to scale your brand with Sponsored Display and serve the right ad, to the right customer, at the right time while driving growth.

Join Perpetua's VP of Growth, Adam Epstein, and a panel of senior advertising leaders as they discuss:

• How and when to leverage Sponsored Display's two targeting types.
• The introduction and impact of in-market audiences.
• How to integrate Sponsored Display into your overall media mix.
• Moving up the funnel with Sponsored Display
• Key metrics advertisers should focus on beyond ACOS and ROAS

📈Don't miss out. Sign up today to learn how to scale your brand with Amazon Sponsored Display.

DTC Macbook Pro Giveaway

DTC’ers ASSEMBLE! 

It’s the DTC MacBook Pro Giveaway! 

Share DTC Newsletter with your referral link, and you AND the friend you refer are automatically entered to win a brand new Macbook Pro. 

One referral = one entry to win. More referrals = more entries! 

Here’s how it works: 

Step 1: Grab your referral link below. 

Step 2: Share DTC Newsletter with your friends/colleagues and anyone you think might enjoy DTC! 🌍 

Step 3: WIN A MACBOOK PRO. 💻 

Your Unique Link: %RHREFLINK%

Email of the Day

‍

Here’s some email inspo for ya! 👊📨

We’ve seen this “Hidden Content” strategy quite a bit in ads and have tested it for newsletter subscription campaigns.

Love to see it in email where it’s sure to drive CTR sky-high:

Test out “Hidden Content” in your next email! 

DTC Brand Spotlight

Sunday is a DTC lawn care brand that launched in 2019. 

The Rundown: Every Sunday lawn plan is based on your soil, climate and any deficiencies it might have. 

The nutrient pouches attach to your hose and don’t contain any harmful chemicals. 🚫 

Price: Full-year plan = $119

The Kit:👇

🥊Quick Hits

📈 Learn directly from Amazon Senior Managers how to scale your brand with Sponsored Display.

📱The latest iOS 14.5 statistics (must read!).

🖥 Google announces new bidding features. 

📌 Pinterest now facilitates more than 5B searches per month.

🛍 How Shein surpassed Amazon as the most downloaded shopping app in the US. 

🎙 Attest re-imagines the $80B consumer research industry. 

🌮 Why Taco Bell collaborated with Redditors on Quesalupa return.

🤓 Snapchat announces new features at partner summit, including AR-enabled spectacles and brand profiles.

💬 Experiment: Do Long Captions Get More Engagement on Instagram?

💧 Liquid Death raises $15 million in Series C funding.

🗽 Google is opening a retail store in New York this summer.

🔊Have you heard our podcast? 

• Olipop's Eli Weiss Goes Deep on Customer Experience.
• Customer retention with Shopify’s Kristen LaFrance.
• Scaling Men’s Self-Care with Huron’s CEO Matt Mullenax.
• How immi is disrupting the instant ramen industry. 

DTC Newsletter is written by Thomas Schreiber, Eric Dyck, and Sadie Evans.

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