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🎧 On the pod this week, we brought back Tony Yu, co-founder of Vessi, one of our very first DTC Pod guests!

Vessi is helping you look stylish rain or shine, with waterproof shoes. 💧🚫👟

Today’s weather: 100% chance of DTC drizzle. 

‍The Takeaways: 👇

💳 How to raise AOV with gift cards:

Aside from having basic upsells in place, Vessi has been able to boost AOV by giving back to its community.

For every $110 purchased onsite, customers get a $25 gift card to use on a future purchase.

(Or they can gift it to a friend or family member.)

Such a great strategy to also boost LTV and customer acquisition!

🚀 40K emails, first-party data, and crashing Typeform:

One 24-hour giveaway campaign helped Vessi gather 40K new emails and valuable first-party data!

Here’s how they structured it:

• The giveaway was limited to 24 hours.
• Customers had to “apply to win” by filling out a Typeform survey (with questions designed to provide first-party data).
• The first 100 winners were first-come-first-serve, and the second 100 winners were selected at random.

Oh, and they got so much traffic, they crashed their Instagram page AND their Typeform survey. NBD. 🤩

🤔 “But are they really waterproof?”

“Even for us, having sold 1 million shoes, people still don’t believe it’s waterproof.”

Vessi shoes are so slick and stylish, they don’t actually look waterproof — so it can be hard to convince new customers they’re legit.

In order to overcome this objection, Vessi relies on top of funnel creative from partners and influencers to provide credibility. 

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💡 Is your product also too good to be true? Address that upfront with credible social proof.