Pitstop is presented by Triple Whale. Check out their new product, Fin Hub.

Want more? Sarah shares how buyer based Psychology- Based Creative is changing the DTC space.

In this episode your host Sarah Levinger and Paul Rafaelson break down key DTC trends from the perspective of a creative strategist.

Pitstop is hosted by Sarah Levinger. Find her on Twitter, or get in touch at HG Performance Creative.

Pitstop is presented by Triple Whale. Check out their new product, Fin Hub.

Want more? Sarah shares how buyer based Psychology- Based Creative is changing the DTC space.

In this episode your host Sarah Levinger and Paul Rafaelson break down key DTC trends from the perspective of a creative strategist.

Pitstop is hosted by Sarah Levinger. Find her on Twitter, or get in touch at HG Performance Creative.

Pitstop is presented by Triple Whale. Check out their new product, Fin Hub.

Want more? Sarah shares how buyer based Psychology- Based Creative is changing the DTC space.

Sarah Levinger breaks down static image ads and the creative choices in simple but high converting ads.

Pitstop is hosted by Sarah Levinger. Find her on Twitter, or get in touch at HG Performance Creative.

Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail

Pitstop is presented by Triple Whale. Check out their new product, Fin Hub.

Want more? Sarah shares how buyer based Psychology- Based Creative is changing the DTC space.

• 1:01 Before asking for a review, a post purchase email that asks for content first, then a review. This strengthens the relationship by building a community first asking for a photo or video, then this can be used to post and tag the customer on social media, and then ask for a review. This helps both Camskns, and their photographer clients.
• 2:58 Use UGC for new launches. One of the biggest thing Colin has learned is all the benefits of nurturing your customers post sale. They bring all kinds of value including getting you product photos and videos you can use on your site and in your ads.
• 3:45 Show your customers first. One of Camskns biggest issues was customers who weren't able to get their install right. One day after purchase, Colin sends a video, of him, showing what is needed before the install so customers have time to get it. He also explains how to contact support, and sends the video again 10 days after purchase.
• 6:35 Making interactions more human. One of the ways to reduce the number of low reviews is to show customers how to succeed, in this case, with installs. Whatever your post purchase is from your customers, ask yourself how you can improve it.

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Pitstop is presented by Triple Whale. Check out their new product, Fin Hub.

Want more? Sarah shares how buyer based Psychology- Based Creative is changing the DTC space.

Key moments in this episode of Pitstop.

• 1:30 Getting started with just a couple of samples and a solid, local manufacturer, Colin  was able to go live with a variety of options for Sony cameras. They quickly expanded, and dropped the Sony from the name, rebranding as Camskns. There were other camera skins out there, but they were all dark and overly masculine.
• 4:46 Expanding smart. When it came time to add new brands of cameras they supported, it helped that Colin was already a member of the photography community. This saved headaches and money by not making products for cameras that aren't popular. This is also the value of a community, even on Instagram, where you can solicit feedback from your members and followers.
• 5:31 First sales came from building an organic Instagram audience. They posted three times a day, various photos and videos, of cameras and the product which led to sales and UGC content. The bigger the community, the more organic sales and creative they would have for their ads. It makes sense that
• 8:08 Social proof seen around the world is easily created from customers. It shows that people do buy the product, they ship to you, and capture the product actually being used, in ways that you wouldn't be able to demonstrate.

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Operations and logistics are hard and only getting harder with each day counting down to BFCM. Leonie Lynch is back to share some of her struggles with setting up logistics for a perishable product, so you don't have to struggle.

• 2:00 Give your product as much shelf life as possible. The first product was a ready to drink product that needed to be chilled in storage. It also had a 30 day shelf life. After this, they reformulated the drink to a powder. Now they can ship around the world.
• 4:22 By partnering with Shipbob, they're able to expand to other countries  and grow in marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart.
• 7:02  What does a modern 3PL look like? A dashboard showing all your orders in one place, and offering better customer experiences.
• 9:01 If you're switching between categories like food or food supplements, you may have to blend how you're perceived. This can impact packaging requirements and taxes. It's much cheaper to decide before you do a large packaging run.

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P.S. If you're wondering how Leonie was able to get back 50% of her time, check out this case study from Shipbob.

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Juspy founder, Leonie Lynch shares how her background, including a PHD in visual marketing helped her come up with her packaging. 

• 1:30 Juspy wants consumers to be able to have their cake and eat it too. Because it's a product that's good for you, and tastes good, it needs to be visually appealing too.
• 2:45 Before starting Juspy, Leonie did a PHD in visual marketing. Her children joke that she's not a real doctor, but a brain doctor. This comes through in the product through communicating with visual literacy. While the packaging isn't the same giant abstract canvas she's uses what she learned in visual literacy to communicate with her customers.
• 5:30 In crowded markets, you need a differentiator to stand out and connect with your customers. For Juspy, this meant creating a visual brand customers identified with.
• 8:35 After listening to their customers, they started creating Spotify playlists for their customers who were reading the blog. It gives insight into the founder, and helps customers use more product. It also is a way to connect with influencers and match music at festivals or events. It's also a way to connect with customers without trying to sell someone to something.

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P.S. If you're wondering how Leonie was able to get back 50% of her time, check out this case study from Shipbob.

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In this episode of Pitstop, Juspy Cofounder Leonie Lynch shares her experiencing with Amazon Launchpad. 

Key moments in this episode:

• 1:30 Getting started with launchpad  used to be invite only, but if you're a small seller with less than $5M in revenue, you can apply. It's an easy way to own your Amazon listing, without going through a reseller or distributor.
• 2:30 Keeping track of the Amazon process with a good old fashioned notebook, and the headaches caused by bad ASIN management. If you have the same product in different market places, using different ASIN's can be a big issue.
• 4:30 One of the biggest benefits of being a part of the Launchpad program was the access to premium seller support, especially when something goes wrong, like moving categories.
• 6:00 Amazon has tough requirements in place, but they don't always tell you about them. While relisting a product that was already live, Leonie had to provide just about every piece of evidence you're a real brand imaginable. Including photos of you with the product.
• 7:00 Nothing is a quick fix with Amazon. It took weeks to get their product relisted. Ultimately it's on you to learn Amazon as best as you can, including finding a coach who has done it before. They can help you navigate things like contacting support to reduce your wait times. Always have them send you a transcript.
• 11:00 A+ plus content are additional areas to make your Amazon listing feel like yours. You can use it to bust objections, tell your story, and sell more products.

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Biggest levers to increase conversion

• Delivery speed, use WFS or 3PL if you cannot fulfil 2 day
  • Large brands may be able to do this
  
  
• Content: listing quality must be 95% or better; Pro Seller Badge
• Price

Large brands: household names already being searched for and may be in store (PUT/SFS opportunities)

• Pick up in store

Small brands: private label - need to get to the first page, have strong content, good reviews, and good prices. The premium brands don’t always jive on walmart.

• Get on Walmart - either you’ll sell your products or some 3rd party will. First mover advantage

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Delivery:

• Amazon has over 110 active fulfillment centers in USA
• Walmart Fulfillment Service has 20 thus far

Membership:

• Amazon Prime has over 100 million prime members
• Walmart Plus has around 8 million members ($98 per year)
  • Benefits are Free shipping, free deliver from stores, etc
  
  

Brick and Mortar

• Still massive: 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store
• Walmart redesigning over 1,000 stores to improve shopping experience (eventually with more tech = digitally enabled shopping experiences)
• Amazon just entering B&M

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After surveying 1147 online shoppers, here's why people are shopping on walmart.com versus Amazon.

• Price is a big factor for shoppers, it's the main reason for choosing Wal-Mart over Costco, Best-Buy etc.
• Pick up connivence of being able to pick up today is something customers go to Wal-Mart for, versus Amazon.
• Wal-Mart as a portion of online sales have doubled, and they have 400M online visitors a month.
• Only 9% of shoppers care who the seller is.
• Customers are very discount driven, Roll Back is the biggest driver of sales.
• Customer search on walmart.com is very brand driven, the first thing customers interact with is the search bar
• The impact of shipping for customers, and being able to deliver customer products in under two days.

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Logistics is hard any time of the year, but this year in particular is difficult to gauge inventory and timing. 

Prepping for Q4 and BFCM.

2:06 Know Your Inventory Avoiding sell outs too early and knowing how your product will sell. For Touchland, new scents are easy ways to get PR and sell bundles, particularly as stocking stuffer ideas. Use last year's sales.

3:36 Strategies for PR Editors don't want to take a risk on an unknown brand, leverage your social proof and customers to lower the risk of being featured. PR also increases authority and credibility, making your paid advertising more effective.

6:17 Logistics Planning Believe it or not, weather can have a big impact on business, with things like late hurricanes having a bigger impact than you think, you need to think of the absolute worst case scenario. You need to have not just plan A and B, but C,D,E, etc as well.

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Touchland is a premium hand sanitizer, think Apple or Nespresso, but for your hands. No more smelling like a distillery.

After doing 700 orders a day during the pandemic, Touchland CEO and Founder Andrea Lisbona shares some of her numbers behind her growth.

Getting started in ecommerce early through Kickstarter, and launching in the US in 2018, 

2:30 Give customers options to increase AOV. By focusing on scents, touchland is able to sell more units as customers like to wear different fragrances. If you sell different flavors or scents, make sure to 

4:53 The biggest challenge Andrea faces is keeping up with demand. Which is a great product, but like she says, brand is built in a lifetime, but lost in a minute. Balancing out of stock with customer demand.

7:01 Focused on customer service has always been a part of their strategy. From cancelling pre-orders on their launch to letting customers know their orders will be a while before shipping out. 

8:54 Expanding into the US market can always be tricky. US customers are keen to try new things, but you have to meet their expectations.

Omnisend - Stop monkeying around with your marketing automation and switch to Omnisend today. Trusted by 70,000 ecommerce merchants. 

ShipBob - Trusted by Andrea and Tom Brady, offer your customers two day guaranteed shipping. 

Gorgias- The number 1 helpdesk for ecommerce, automate your customer success.

Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail

Pitstop is presented by Triple Whale. Check out their new product, Fin Hub.

Want more? Sarah shares how buyer based Psychology- Based Creative is changing the DTC space.

In this episode your host Sarah Levinger breaks down key DTC trends from the perspective of a creative strategist along with Nicole, a seasoned ad buyer.

Pitstop is hosted by Sarah Levinger. Find her on Twitter, or get in touch at HG Performance Creative.

Mentioned in this episode:

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From disrupting a commodity industry to launching in the USA, Andrea Lisbona made hand sanitizer sexy. Now she ships thousands of units a month across all channels.

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It's every entrepreneur's dream to create a 7-figure earning brand with their own hands, but few have the skills or hustle needed, and even fewer still have the luck, to find the right opportunity at the right moment, and know how to take advantage of it.

Success wasn't achieved overnight for Toronto's Vivian Kaye, who started out 15 years ago with a side business doing wedding decor and designs. While she was able to turn VD&D into a 6-figure company, it wasn't until  she thought about herself and her own needs first, rather than her client's, that she discovered the product and mission that would change her life.

Here's how VIvian Kaye and KinkyCurlyYaki went from at-home DIY  to hair-care product must-buy.

6:15 At Home Solutions. The best selling products fill a need, solve a problem, and improve the life of the customer, and there is no customer's need you understand more than you own. When the hair-care industry couldn't offer Vivian the quality other customers could expect, she struck out on her own to do it herself.

Simply looking to make her own life a little easier, so she could focus on her then-main business, she learned how to make the product she wanted, who could help her make it, and familiarized herself with the common complaints of other customers so she could avoid those problems.

• What have you already innovated, researched or developed to make your own life easier, that you're not yet taking full opportunity of?

7:55 Grow It Organically. Any product, company or brand can buy some advertising space on Facebook, the site isn't too picky about whose money they'll take, and there's always more to flood its closed network with. 

To make a real, lasting impact and impression with your first customers, you have to get personal, and let them get a little personal with you. 

Though Vivian saw a potential gap in the market, providing professional looking protective styles for Black women with a more natural look, but didn't see an opportunity to capitalize on the idea. It wasn't until she was read the experiences of others online, and was approached at an event where she was promoting her decor business, that she saw her chance and her market.

• Your first customers can be your most powerful brand ambassadors.  Their satisfaction with the product & excitement from getting in on the ground floor is the best promotion for your business, costs you nothing in marketing dollars, and they'll never hesitate to eagerly and proudly share with any new potential customers.
• Find someone you know would love the product just as much as you do, and send them some free samples. They will not only generate leads, they'll give you honest reviews and fantastic promotional copy, in the honest language of the customers.
• Be honest, open and yourself with your earliest customers and any potential customers you gather market research from. People only feel used and abused when they've been outright ignored, taken advantage of by someone they don't know, or are quickly forgotten. Be there for your community, and they'll be there for you.

10:00 Build Your Inventory Brick By Brick. You may think that in order to sell $ 1 million in product, you have to have $1 million worth of product, but that's taking an unnecessary gamble, and putting the cart far ahead of the horse.

Relying on the revenue from her previous wedding design business, Vivian took it slow and steady, re-investing any profits from sales back into buying more product, and playing the waiting game until word of mouth lead to ever increasing sales and clicks. This allowed her to take KinkyCurlyYaki from a couple of Rubbermade buckets to a 1000 square foot warehouse.

• Only buy the stock you need until you've found a promotional partner who will take your brand awareness to a new level. This...

With over $11.5 million in revenue, shipped to 85 country, and worn by hundreds of thousands across the world, including former American Presidents, John's Crazy Socks is an example to follow, not only for their financial success, but also their inspiring message of inclusion and support for people with intellectual & physical disabilities.

Says co-founder Mark Cronin, hiring and supporting disabled employees "is not altruism, it's good business", and business can be good for you too if you open your workforce to be more supportive for the differently abled.

Here's how social enterprise & inclusive hiring can make your business stronger

4:25/8:05 Recognize Your Own Potential. If you consider your brand just another one of thousands of providers of a lifeless product, simply in it for the profit, odds are you'll never break out. 

Recognizing the potential in others, can help you see the potential in yourself, and seeing both necessity and opportunity turned John & Mark from internet start-up entrepreneurs into the largest sock store in the world in just a few years.  

When you look at your brand, consider where you came from to understand where you really want to go.

• What opportunities lead you here?
• What opportunities are you not taking advantage of?
• What opportunities can you offer to others?

5:15/13:20 Offer A Truly Next Level Customer Experience. Many companies and brands claim to be ethical, offer exciting opportunities to be the in-crowd and make overtures to spreading positivity, but few can prove it quite like social enterprises. 

There's no substitute for the feeling customers get when they are given a chance to legitimately connect commerce with charity, and they will both spend and donate freely and often to relive that feeling again and again. This has allowed John's Crazy Socks to not only raise over $140,000 for the Special Olympics, but also pull in over $11 million in online sales.

• Initially, John would hand deliver sock orders himself, in person,  sometimes far outside the typical delivery hours. While having the co-founder on the road personally dropping off product to customers would seem ridiculous and costly to many business owners, it helped turn John into an overnight sensation in his home town, with customers placing orders just so they can meet him, then returning to order more so he would come back. Learn to look outside the box for ideas, and understand the importance of one-on-one outreach in building brand identity & awareness.
• People love to support a good cause, especially if it means they get a great product along with it, and won't be shy letting you know when they love something. For John & Mark, that's been proven not just in sales figures, but with over 29,000 online reviews (4.9 average rating overall)  an incredible 95.7 percent of which scored 5 of out 5. No one can buy that kind of positive publicity and popularity, it can only come from being genuine.

6:45/9:15/18:30 Give Employees A Mission Bigger Than Themselves. Workers can only be so energized about making you money, beyond that attention drops off, quickly followed by retention.  

Hiring and supporting workers with disabilities, and getting behind their causes, reinvigorates employees by giving them something much more to strive for, while helping to make lives better. 

What's more, it can offer self-reliance, useful skills and social access to those who often have little or no choice or chances in their lives, helping to give them purpose and a living wage.

• Unemployment with the disabled community is as high in some areas as 80%. Those are not just capable & willing workers, those are people who need the support your business can offer them. In return, you'll gain the most loyal workforce

You've reached out, connected and grown a reliable and positive relationship with an influencer or two, you've learned the in's and out's of content sites like YouTube and Spotify, and you're confidently satisfied with the returns you're getting from the campaign.

The time is finally right for you to take your influencers to the next level, start paying them directly for their work, and make them a bigger part of your marketing team.

Here's how to transition to a paid influencer program, and when to take the relationship to the next level.

Which type of influencer program is right for you?

• 1:30 Different Types Of Influencer Programs. While many brands will simply put a creator on the payroll and call it a day, that's only one type of influencer program you could take advantage of. Consider what would work best for your brand/creator relationship.
  • 2:15 Many Creators On Many Levels. Just because you've started paying one or two big creators doesn't mean you have to stop reaching out for free content from the little guys or the up and comers. Consider a healthy mix of the two, and keep sending out those freebies and generating those positive responses, and your brand's cache will continue to grow along with these newer influencers.
  • 2:40 Organic Reach.  A hands off approach where you routinely send your influencers products instead of money, while letting them decide what kind of content best speaks to their audience. Simple, cost effective and low effort on your part.
  • 2:53 Paid Programs. More expensive certainly, but  typically with greater control and say over the content. If you have some clear messages in mind you want to get out there about your brand, and a solid relationship with an influencer who is willing to work with you more or less exclusively, this is the choice for you
  
  

Remember, 4:00 creators are creative people, and reached a level of success and recognition themselves before even partnering with your brand. Trust them to know their audience, and listen to their needs for that content. You may never have to transition them to a paid program, allowing you to save money while reaping the benefits.

If however you both agree it's time to take it to the next level, there are two (and a half) ways to include your brand in their content.

• 4:35 Integrated Content. These are the most familiar to anyone whose listened to podcasts or watched YouTube. integrated Content often takes the forms of mid-show shout outs, host-read ad breaks and on-air testimonials from the influencer themselves. This is the most authentic form of content, and viewers can instinctively tell the difference, but it also affords you less control over what topics your brand is associated with.
• 5:12 Dedicated Content. A much more time consuming and hands-on approach, dedicated content sees you working closely with the influencer on specific content, such as topics related to your brand or product. While this affords you much more editorial control, it also demands a lot of your time, or that of your marketing team, and can prove very expensive if the production budget gets out of control.
• 5:50 Paid Social. This is less about how involved you are in the production, and where it gets release. Known also as white listing  and boosted content, this is putting out content you and the influencer both had a hand in developing, but is put out on their channel as if it were their own organic content. This allows both control, and a priceless sense of authenticity.

7:00 If you do decide to step up to a paid social program, make sure your company can handle it. Does this go under your influencer team, or your social team? Don't leave these decisions for the last minute, create a spirit of collaboration...

Influencer marketing can breath new life into your brand's image and dramatically boost traffic, but that doesn't mean it isn't without its potential pitfalls. If you don't know how to accurately measure success and failure, or outright make some common mistakes, it can quickly spiral into an expensive and disappointing endeavour.

Here's how you can measure the success of your influencer marketing campaign, and avoid making costly mistakes while working with your  influencers

• 1:16 KPIs & Influencer Metrics. Unlike typical ad-buys, influencers and content on platforms such as YouTube last months and even years after a campaign's conclusion, and has to be measured by totally different values. Think of them less as a single buy, more as a  full funnel marketing channel itself, covering the three stages of Awareness, Consideration and Conversion all without further involvement or investment from your brand.
  • Consider both the Number Of Views and Efficiency Of Views to measure success or failure. How much did you pay per view during your campaign? How much have you gotten in coverage since the end of the campaign? Over time, a typically successful YouTube video will continue to get  hits long after the promotion that paid for the content has finished, meaning the efficiency just grows.
  • Avoid indexing success to engagement with the content. People watch content from providers like YouTube differently than how they absorb content from an email or a brand site. Allow the audience to behave naturally, and the traffic will come to you.
  
  
• 2:55 Middle Funnel Consideration. This is where things really get interesting and start giving you real metrics you can rely on, rather than just watching the views and likes on a video climb with anticipation.
  • Once the campaign has been up and running, start looking at the clickthrough rate from YouTube or the host site, to your brand. Since it's unlikely anyone else would coincidentally  follow from A (content) to B (your store) the figure this gives you should be very accurate for assessing how well the promotion is doing. You'll be able to start segmenting the audience and customers, and plan for ways to reach others while taking advantage of those who do click through.
  • Understand that not everyone will click the link in the video to visit your site, but still count as a mid-funnel success due to exposure. They may not be buying from you directly from the content (Attributable Traffic), but they will begin to grow a sense of familiarity with your brand that chances are will lead them to your store in time (Unattributable Traffic) through Google or your main url
  
  
• 4:15 Three Factors For Measuring Consideration-Success. Rather than trying to view a mid-funnel promotion the same way as you would an email or ad-space buy, look for and consider these factors:
  1. How efficiently have we done this?  
  2. What is the cost per session/view/visit? 
  3. What's the quality of the traffic?
  
  
• 4:45 End Funnel Conversion Rate. The bread and butter of a promotion, turning the audience you've spent so much money, time and attention on into paying customers. When measuring the conversion rate for YouTube and other influencer buys, consider;
  • How many viewers ultimately are visiting your site and buying products,? Combine the two previous metrics, views and site conversions with the final goal, how many sales are driven directly through influencer traffic. You won't get all those swayed by the content, but you'll have enough to  gauge a success or a failure, and how to correct next time.
  • What are the quality of these visitors? Are these viewers valuable customers, or are they unreliable as return...

Influencers can mean the difference between a humdrum, typical promotion and something that really catches and keeps the consumer's attention. All too often though, businesses don't know how to make the most of their influencer partners, and end up wasting the potential through misunderstanding and misusing the talent they've hired.

Here are strategy-expert Brad Hoos' Do's and Don'ts of Influencer Marketing

• 1:50 DO Let Creators Be Themselves - Trying to micromanage your influencers or use them to try to recreate your brand's voice will be a waste of your money and their time. You hired them for their presence and personality, not to just repeat the same copy you produce everywhere else.  Let them handle the message, you don't want a second rate brand conduit, you want a first rate messenger for your brand in their own voice
• 4:25 DON'T Mistake The Scope Of Your Campaign. Influencer marketing is a full funnel marketing program that doesn't fit cleaning into any branding or acquisition buckets. This can mean many businesses will have misaligned expectations for their campaigns, resulting in promotions that fail in their eyes because they were mishandled from the start
• 5:50 DO Understand Where influencer marketing exists in your marketing organization.  While influencer marketing is certainly no longer the new kid on the block, they're still pretty fresh, and few brands really understand yet where they fit in their strategy and company, resulting in misuse and mismanagement. Take the lesson of scope from earlier, and  approach influencer marketing as an umbrella that reaches into every aspect of your business, rather than trying to restrict it and reshape it into something your brand already understands.
• 7:28 DON'T Underestimate The Importance Of A Landing Page. The entire point of partnering with an influencer is to gain the access and trust of their already interested audience, and a landing page that clearly and unquestionably links the influencer to your brand is absolutely necessary.
• 8:17 DO Get Involved With Influencers Even If You're A Legacy Brand.  No one is too big or too well known not to enjoy the benefits of influencer marketing. Often  big-named brands can come off stale and detached from their consumers, consistently providing a reliable service without much fanfare, often to the same customer base. Influencers can break your brand out of that rut, find you a fresh voice and approach, and help you reach audiences you never even considered.

There is no company too big or small and no product too common or unique to not take full advantage of influencer marketing  today, and turn their novelty & familiarity craving audiences into your new customers.

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If you've dotted all your i's and crossed every t when it comes to the fundamentals of selling online, connecting with other sellers and podcasts for free promotion, optimized your automated messages to make the most out of every member, and still feel like you're coming up short, why not try something a little more fantastical?

For seasoned ecommerce expert Dustin Riechmann and FireCreek Snacks, it was childhood whimsy that proved their most successful promotional campaign yet, and just the ticket for standing out above the crowd.

1:15 The FireCreek Golden Ticket Giveaway

Inspired by the passing of Gene Wilder, Dustin came up with FireCreek's own variation of the famous contest from Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory. 

One in every 200 orders of $99 bundles would include a ticket for $1000 (maximum 5 winners) , and if the winner was referred to FireCreek by a friend, that friend would get $100. The winning tickets were entirely random, so no customers could game the chances. 

If all works out evenly, that's nearly $20,000 in sales, at the cost of $1000-$1100 in promotion.

Here's 4 ways you can make the most of your own Golden Ticket giveaway.

• 2:20/6:20 Positive Personal Engagement. Typically serious and business focussed, Ryan the face of FireCreek was able to show a more free-spirited side during the promotion, entertaining customers while generating positive engagement. Allow your customers to connect with you personally, and they'll be more likely to think of you.
• 3:10 Expanding Your Base. $100 for a referral may sound steep, especially since it means FireCreek essentially bought them a $99 bundle for $1 more, but getting there means you've gained two very happy customers who already have a history of ordering from you (to great personal gain) who will likely be back to order much more. It's a small price to pay.
• 3:30 Good Value Reminder. If the product you use to push your 'Golden Ticket' promotion is a good enough deal on its own, then customers will keep buying it long after the giveaway has ended. Attach it to something that is already a proven success to maximize consumer coverage, and use the promotion as an opportunity to remind them how good a deal it already was.
• 4:00 Free Social Media Content & Promotions. Giveaways and contests, anything with a deadline, are instant- content generators. Showcasing the prize or products needed to buy, hyping up the approaching deadline to take part, featuring and promoting winners and good old fashion FOMO could keep your social media manager busy for months and provide hours of shareable content. As well you can bring the promotion to podcasts and shows as topic, providing novelty content in exchange for reaching more potential consumers.

Let your imagination run wild, and take a chance on a crazy idea. You never know when it just might be a winner.

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While every Shopify store owner loves to see their email subscriptions grow higher and higher, if you're not getting as much as you can out of each member, you're wasting money chasing ghosts. 

With Dustin's "Clean-Up" email campaigns, you can breathe some new life back into those phantom leads, and raise your sales along with their spirits. 

1:48 "What is a 'Clean-Up' email campaign?"

The 'Clean-Up' is a special email campaign sent at the end of each month. These emails include offers that are only sent to new email subscribers who had joined that month, but have not purchase anything yet. 

This last-chance engagement allows you to pull out some tricks you have not yet tried to get a sale, or might be reluctant to offer to a larger consumer base.

• 2:25 Re-entice the would-be customer with any offers they may have missed during the month
• 3:10 Provide special and exclusive discount without your entire list seeing or expecting the same discount
• 3:30 Attempt to build a relationship that had previously stalled by empathizing with them personally
• 4:15 Avoid publicly overdoing sales by offering discounts only to those who haven't taken advantage of previous sales

This campaign model can also be rehashed as a laddered discount campaign, sent only to your older and even less active cold leads/customers.  5:55 Running a "Reactivation Campaigns" once a quarter will help you keep your lists fresh and healthy, and bring in any lost customers from the cold.

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Appearing on a podcast can be a fantastic and cost-free way to not only get some exposure for your brand, but lend you and your business another already-successful brand's audience and legitimacy. 

Partnership marketing with podcasts has been Dustin's secret to driving direct-to-consumer sales 3 times higher in 12 months, all for $0, and over the years he's developed guidelines for appearing on shows that maximize the audience and consumer impact.

"How do I get on a podcast?"

3:52 Consider these two factors when looking for potential partners

1. Who has an audience that would be interested in your product, either directly or indirectly?
2. What value can you offer their show that will entice them to invite you on?

If their audience has an interest in your brand, product or industry, and you can provide the host with an episode of content, chances are they will be interested in talking to you if you reach out.

6:15 Research & listen to a few episodes of podcasts that catch your attention, and reach out. Make sure to include positive comments and references to the show to prove you've actually listened to their work and aren't just spamming shows. As well, offer free trials or products for the hosts to use, and encourage them to post a review regardless of if it's good or bad.

Once on, there are 4 rules you should follow when planning your appearance to make the most out of the free exposure.

While these rules are specific for podcasts, they can be adapted for any media, and should be thought of as "any audience you can borrow"

• 7:24 PURPOSE. What specifically do you want to get out of this podcast appearance? What is your goal for this show?
• 7:35 PLAN. Identify shows that are both potential partner and potential competitors, and identify shows they are associated or related to. Know who all the players are on the field, so that you don't waste your time on shows that will never book you.
• 8:20 PITCH. Research the top 4 episodes of the chosen show to establish 'relational anchors' & find the best way to contact the host. Pitch your appearance using the Perfect Pitch email template, and follow up routinely until you book at least one. Offer to provide as much content as possible to not only increase the chance of appearing, but retain as much message control as possible
• 10:04 PERFORM. Plan your ideal story, connect deeply with the audience, and deliver a strong call-to-action that maximizes your results. Prepare for success with minimal time investment to nail your interview, then follow-up post-appearance to optimize the results

Leverage these proven and any new partnerships in a cycle to get high-impact results by creating a marketing flywheel to achieve   exponential growth, all for the low cost of some of your time and attention.

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Every business owner believes that if you want something truly done right, you have to get your hands dirty and do it yourself. Often for self-made successes who are used to putting in hard work for their brand, the toughest lesson for many to learn can be that most of their time is better spent delegating and focussing on the bigger picture.

Here are why you should delegate customer service to your staff, and ways you can stay involved with your customer's experience, without getting in the way of your team. 

• 2:35 Recognize Biases Toward Yourself. It's you business and your bottom line, so you may take criticism a little harder than the average employee. You may even feel like you're right in denying a refund, simply because as the boss you're the final word. But this is business, so don't make it personal.
• 3:10 Remove Yourself, Remove The Bias. The best customer service isn't an advocate for either the customer or the store exclusively, but  a team dedicated to resolving shopping issues as fast as possible. They are working to protect your reputation just as much as serve your customers or defend your bottom line, without getting hung up on the details.Don't worry about how much it costs, within reason, just get it done.
• 4:45 Use Customer Service As An Opportunity To Learn. Don't treat every customer complaint as a negative interaction that didn't go your way. Listen to what they have problems with, and take steps to improve them. Put their feedback to work for you.
• 5:15 Share Outliers And Experiences Among The Team. Don't let your team members work in isolation or keep them in the dark. Set up an internal chat among your staff, and share with each other. Good experiences, bad experiences, reoccurring issues, upcoming crunches. The more your entire team knows, the few chances for mistakes and the better they will perform.
• 5:35 Weekly Meetings For Recurring Issues. If you do identify an ongoing problem that keeps popping up no matter what, coordinate weekly strategy sessions to go over the latest data and brainstorm solutions. Two heads are better than one, and the more minds working a problem, the more likely you'll quickly arrive at a solution that benefits your business. At the very least, stay updated yourself, so that nothing surprises you down the road.

Remember, you're not losing control, you're just delegating responsibly. None of this means you can't hop on when your team gets hit by heavy traffic and it's all hands on deck. It just means that unless it's extraordinary circumstances like Black Friday sales, you shouldn't have to to personally maintain the standards you expect for your customer experience.

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Pitstop is presented by Triple Whale. Check out their new product, Fin Hub.

Want more? Sarah shares how buyer based Psychology- Based Creative is changing the DTC space.

What can this example teach us about conversion rate optimization?

You can’t hack your way to conversion rate optimization.

Flip the script - sometimes the best CRO is done by simply changing the order of things.

Pitstop is hosted by Sarah Levinger. Find her on Twitter, or get in touch at HG Performance Creative.

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At-home advertising can pay off big-time for your ecommerce business, but it can also be a painful and expensive path to profits, full of mistakes if you're not properly prepared. Thankfully Matt Schroeder's made some of them already, and shares his hard learned  lessons in the hopes you'll avoid repeating these common missteps.

The Three Biggest Mistakes  First-Time Ecommerce Marketers Make:

• 1:30 Stay Focussed. Don't get overwhelmed with too many options & apps. Make a list of every extra thing your brand does or uses, and keep only the top 5 performing activities. Everything else will simply stall progress by eating up your time and money. No matter the allure, there are no magic apps or additions that will transform your store into a success overnight, so choose hard work and reliable growth instead.
• 4:53 Don't Jump The Gun. Promotional tactics like campus referral programs are a great way to build a community of customers once you're known and noticed, but are an entirely unnecessary and wasteful strategy for anyone to concentrate on starting out. Without brand recognition, your campus referral program and other promotional tactics will flunk out long before finals.
• 6:03 Diversify To Avoid Surprises & Shocks. You may have a fantastic deal with a wholesale retailer now, but what happens when they change their mind and stop buying? Is your business ready to take losing such a large client? Will this just undermine your profit margin, or could it result in layoffs and closures? Not all wholesale is to be avoided early, but you must make sure it doesn't start making your business decisions for you. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, and never stop looking for more markets to carry your product.

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' More than just billboard-buys and magazine ads, out-of-home marketing is often seen as the standard of true advertising, when reaching either the consumer or the wholesaler. While anyone can buy some ad-space online, out-of-home marketing is an investment, and like any investment can lead to nothing but a money-pit for the inexperienced.

Here's a cost-effective experiment you can run for your own business that can help you break into your hardcore niche markets with out-of-home marketing and give your brand a smarter start to making you money

• 2:18 The $1000 Ad Buy. If you're looking to move into out-of-home marketing, start small to get your bearings and to test your potential audience. If $1000 for a full page ad is too much for you, you're not ready for the next step
• 3:20 Know your audience. Make that $1000 ad buy stretch as far as it can by knowing who is reading it. Find a publication within or popular with your industry, define who you specifically want the ad to attract the attention of (consumer, or business?) and craft the message just for them. "Not a big distribution" says Matt, "just extremely targeted"
• 3:46 Funnel your replies. Before you can measure any ad campaign, you need to have a way to gauge the reaction to that specific ad, and not just general consumer traffic. Include a unique url or link in the ad, and direct readers to that rather than your landing page. If the only way to find the page is through the ad, then just the traffic for the page alone will tell you if it was a success or not
• 4:05 Count what you have. You may feel like your ad's a failure, but take a closer look at the figures once responses start rolling in. Matt may have only received 12 replies from wholesalers to his ad in one week, but that's 12 interested parties taking the next step to buying or selling the product. That's just $90 for a lead that then has to spend at least $500 minimum for a wholesale order through Matt's store. If even just half of them make a purchase, that's a return 3 times as much as was spent on the ad. For Matt, the figure was actually closer to 10 times as much.

If you're not taking these small, affordable chances and  always looking for ways to make your marketing strategy more effective and efficient, you'll soon find yourself left behind by both customers and competitors. 

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To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "the only think worse than being linked to is not being linked to". Being the talk of the town is great for brand exposure, but if others are sending your potential customers to dead links, or tarnishing your good name with low-quality traffic, then you might feel you were better off not being known at all.

Here are Ben's top 5 take-aways for Off-Site SEO

• 1:04 Broken Backlinks. The more backlinks a site has, the higher it will rate among its competitors, so a broken backlink, an old link to content you have moved or changed, can be crippling, because it appears as if you're up and running, but the traffic is at a standstill.  Make sure to map your backlinks at least once a year, and redirect any inactive page to more relevant pages or your main page.
• 2:53 Disavow Spammy Domains. Not all web crawlers and traffic are worth having, and automated coupon sites that scrap through the internet for deals will drag you into the content sewers. Map your spammy domain links, gather a list and present it to Google as traffic your want disavowed from your brand
• 4:26 Unlinked Brand Mentions. If someone else is talking about your brand, but doesn't include a link, they may as well not say anything at all. Search for mentions of your site outside your backlink map with a scanner tool once a month, and reach out to ask any sites hosting unlinked mentions to include a simple link to your store.
• 5:37 Easy Link-building  With Coupon Sites. Not all coupon sites are spammy, and some can even help you get a much needed extra push. Do some reach into the best coupon sites in your region, and sign up with them to enjoy the benefits of their extended reach.
• 6:19 Leverage Affiliate Marketing. Look at who you are already working with, be it brand partners, influencers, blogs, podcasts etc. Organize the power of friendship with an affiliate program, and get the most out of that good will

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'Optimizing your Technical SEO' may sound like a big, scary and expensive process, with with a little help from a few handy apps, it's no more than another step towards your traffic goals.

Here are Ben's top 5 take-aways for Technical SEO

• 1:22 Product Schema. Google doesn't treat all search results the same, and presents them to users with clearly market favourites. Those golden-starred front-runners in the search response are using a piece of code that's available to you, usually through your review app, that syncs the product reviews in your shop with Google. Once installed, you can expect to see results within days.
• 3:20 Broken Internal & External Links. If Google can't follow a link into, around or out of your store, then it's not going to include any of the affected pages in search results. Use a broken-link-checker app frequently to make sure your links are active, internally & externally.
• 5:28 Orphaned Pages. No blog post or content should stand alone, and if Google can't find a way to a  page on your site, it will never get traffic. Be sure that every page is linked to at least 5 other pages on your site, either with related links in the content or standard links to shop sections
• 6:34 Broken JS Code. The bane of many merchants, broken JS code are parts of old apps and features still left in your shop's site that can cause endless errors for you and your users, and disrupt Google's web crawlers. Make sure all previous apps have always been properly uninstalled and fully removed with an online scanner.
• 8:05 Links To MyShopify.com URL. Every Shopify store gets an initial MyShopify.com URL that hosts your content until you've purchased and set up your final brand URL, and often these will be used to link pages together when building a site. Make sure after you're done that you relink all of these back to your brand URL, or MyShopify.com will eat your traffic.

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On-Page SEO  is the first line of attack for any successful strategy to gain and hold Google's attention. The easier you make it for their web-crawlers to accurately find your content the more traffic they'll send you.

Here are Ben's top 5 take-aways for On-Site SEO

• 1:42 Keyword Mapping. If you don't know what you want, you'll never get it. Identify & define the target keywords for your specialization, and make sure you have at least 1 on every page of your site . Have a blueprint of what keywords you want to rank for on Google, and apply them across your store.
• 3:06 Optimizing Meta-Titles.  It may seem obvious, but the main title of any page affects its SEO performance. Unless otherwise changed in the meta-title options, the title you and your customers read is also what Google reads, so make sure if your main title isn't using a target keyword, that it at least gets included in the meta-title.
• 4:16 Missing & Multiple H1 Tags.  The frequently forgotten, user-targeted  third part of SEO keyword optimization, the H1 or 'First Header' tags are an important part of how Google tells what you're trying to push. Make sure you include one (and only one, too many confuse Google) target keyword in every unique H1 tag.
• 6:50 Using H2, H3, H4 Tags To Break-Up Content Pieces. Not just a way to break up how your content looks on a page, H2, H3 and H4 tags allow you to add specialization to your target keywords, helping Google find your perfect niche audience faster
• 7:55 Content On Collection & Product pages (Shortly AI).  Google will always prioritize a page that has either more content or better targeted content than the next competing page. Fill your pages with content asap to drive as much traffic as possible. If writing isn't your forte or you're in a rush, use a content AI writer like Shoply

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You've heard Karisse explain how to reduce the rate of innocent chargebacks and how to avoid making yourself an easy target for fraudsters, but what do you do if it's already too late, they've taken your money and your product, and you want it back?

Things to take away from this episode.

Service related incidents

• 2:14 Study the reason code attached to service related chargebacks. Know what you’re dealing with before getting into a claim with a customer, and don’t let yourself be caught off-guard. So long as the reason code given is accurate, having strategies to deal with the most common ones will save you time and money.
• 2:40 Dig into your data. Make your own case, the same way you would as a lawyer, based around the reason code given. Use their own shopping habits and freely given information  as proof of continued and intended behaviour, or to contradict any claims they may make to the contrary. Trust what the data is telling you, and make others trust it as well, then link it back to that specific chargeback reason code given.
• 3:08 Don't issue refunds unless necessary. It may seem easy to just avoid the conflict and issue the refund, but this is a mistake that may cost you unnecessary charge backs for innocent mistakes or impatient customers, or see you become intentionally targeted as an easy mark at the hands of online scammers. Only accept the chargeback when it truly is the fairest option for your consumer

Fraud related incidents

All you have to do when it comes to dismissing chargebacks in cases when you suspect fraud or a customer claims it, legally speaking, is prove that the card holder asking for a chargeback did participate in the transaction, and all of that data is already safe  in your hands. It’s just a matter of how you decide to use it.

• 4:46 Don’t just accept a claim of fraud. Just as before, trust your data, even if it’s saying everything is business as usual while a customer is claiming a recent purchase wasn’t made by them. If the package hasn’t been diverted, the payment was verified, and their contact info all tracks, call their bluff.
• 6:00 Know the rules and regulations. Again, knowing is half the battle, and that includes your responsibilities to the client, theirs to you, and both of your to the credit companies. Know your rights, know what is expected of you, and know how these rules will be used against you
• 6:50 Hire a third party security options or build an in-house team. Also previously stated, hire security and fraud analysts,  do some shopping around yourself for who can provide the best protection for your products and profits, and see what you can do for yourself without spending even more
• 9:00 Beware of chargeback management companies. They may seem like the obvious answer for getting your money back, but frequently they’re too interested in their fee, ignore the context of a claim, and have cost others much more than a chargeback ever would have, says Karisse. Do your research, and go with a company that is transparent in how they work and what they do for you.
• 13:00 Additional legal options. If all else fails, consider action like third party collections or small claims court to recoup your money. Litigation is a nasty and expensive business, but if you feel you have a clear cut case, make it yourself and hope for the best

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Although  the vast majority of  chargebacks are both innocent and easily prevantable, what’s left are the real bad apples of the bunch, the fraudsters & scammers looking to either make a quick buck off your hard work, get some free merchandise or destroy you altogether for nothing more than a laugh.

Things to take away from this episode.

• 1:50 Fraud is inevitable. Sooner or later, your store will come to the attention of a fraudster who will try to take advantage of you. If you sell big ticket items or get a lot of press, expect them sooner than later. No one avoids being targeted forever, so be prepared and don’t get caught by surprise.
• 2:15 A bank transaction is not a guarantee of security. Just because the bank pushed the purchase and charge through doesn’t necessarily mean their client and your customer has the money, or intention, to cover it. That money may be clawed back days later, at your cost, so don’t rush to ship the order or count your cash. It is your responsibility as a merchant to recognize fraudulent activity
• 3:40 Be mindful of your orders. You may be overjoyed to suddenly be doing tons of business, but check the details and make sure the transactions are valid so they don't come back to bite you. Make sure there are no red flags before processing their order.
• 4:30 Legitimate customers and fraudsters act differently. Both online and irl, pay close attention to the details and clues both customers and suspected frauds leave behind while browsing, in the checkout and even post-purchase,  to learn how to spot and follow the trail that leads back to them.
• 5:30 If you’re making a profit, they can make a profit. You may find it hard to believe that your boutique or niche brand may be targeted by professional fraudsters, but your success just proves that there’s a market for your product, which means there’s a blackmarket too. Even if you’re a small business with no highly valuable merchandise to scam, they can hijack your checkout to test stolen credit cards with minor, often random purchases.
• 6:25 Where there’s one, there’s bound to me more. Modern fraudsters and scammers are members of vast communities barely hiding among the social media and message boards many businesses rely on themselves for promotion. When one finds a weakness in a store, they don’t keep it to themselves for long, so you have to move quick to protect yourself first.

Tools and tactics you can implement tomorrow to protect your store

• 8:20 The best offence is a good defence. Consider hiring an indemnifying fraud prevention company, someone who will take care of the entire process from top to bottom and cover any chargebacks that get passed them. If you prefer a more cost-effective and hands on approach, train someone on-staff to work with a third party security and monitoring system, or one of Shopify's own security apps and services (though with warning as these apps can be very basic and sloppy)
• 9:06 Make it obvious who they’re buying from. This includes on your credit card statement the part that shows up as “sp*http://yourstore.com”and can be edited in your Shopify admin under “/admin/settings/payments https://monosnap.com/file/x3hFgYMYaEhaWCuZPzKp4Dvq97YsEV“
• 11:38 Use common sense. Stay calm, slow down, and think about the purchases your customers are making. Paying attention is your first, last and best defence for fraud prevention, and by far the cheapest.
• 12:05 Watch your flank. If a scammers senses that you’ve caught onto them online, they may switch to a different approach, like ordering over the phone. Be aware of the signs of social engineering, and don’t be afraid to ask questions if you get...

Things to take away from this episode.

1:30 Types of chargebacks. Service-related chargebacks are for things like an order not showing up, or not as described. Alternatively they call their bank and call fraud. 

3:05 Card not present. When a fraudulent purchase is made in person, the liability is on the bank, but online that liability, even for fraud chargebacks is on the merchant.

7:58 Review the reason codes of your chargeback, but take it with a gain of salt. If there are common issues like “not as described, or order didn’t arrive” you can adjust your descriptions, follow up, etc.

9:06 Make it obvious who they’re buying from. This include on your credit card statement the part that shows up as “sp*yourstore.com”and can be edited in your Shopify admin under /admin/settings/payments https://monosnap.com/file/x3hFgYMYaEhaWCuZPzKp4Dvq97YsEV

9:20 Have a phone number, especially if your customers are a bit older.

12:00 For subscription-based businesses, Chargebacks can be issued for up to 3 months of services, and making it known you can cancel makes customers feel safe. Don’t make your customers feel like they’re ordering from an adult video store to cancel meat box subscription.

14:06 Having clear policies, particularly your refund policy. They can be an insurance policy for if you do get a chargeback. Being able to show what you did to help customers will go a long way.

Tactics to reduce service related chargebacks

• Work with quality suppliers and partners. Test your fulfilment centre, and make sure you’re working with one that offers a guarantee.
• Clearly communicate what’s happening with orders. If there are delays, or items are out of stock, don’t hide.
• Don’t act like an adult website for subscription based business, and make it easy to cancel at any time.
• Adjust your messaging on site, and through your pre-and post purchase automations.

Tools that will help you avoid chargebacks

Gorgias Help Desk. Set up your automations to tag any tickets with chargeback type language like “If I don’t hear from you, I’ll contact my bank.

Shipbob, who offers 99.95% accuracy rate in shipping orders, and has warehouses around the world.

Omnisend, I sat in the co-host seat of Season 3 Cart Insiders podcast, talking about automations and workflows. If you’re experiencing any changes, update your automations so your customers know what they need.

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Your opens may be dead, but that doesn't mean they were all that important when they were alive to begin with. Some of the craftier brand operators and marketing agents have been making the most out of everything else available from customers while the majority of the industry was happy with a steady diet of staple open rates. 

While in the past some have mocked them for ignoring the easiest to gather intel, with the rollout of iOS 15, they're the ones comfortably laughing now, far ahead of the game and worry free.

Thankfully, Chase Dimond has connected 6 key customer segments you should pay attention to today and after iOS 15 has launched that will give you the insight those lucky few have until now exclusively enjoyed, and lead your customers to be all they can buy.

Laying Out The Track

These groups are determined by a combination of order data, revenue data and  click data, so there will be absolutely no loss or effect come iOS 15, allowing you to continue the process uninterrupted.

The  secret to the success of understanding and utilizing these 6 key customer segments, says Chase, is to use them in succession, pushing and pulling VIP customers from one level to the next, processing them into better, more loyal and engaged customers every step of the way. 

1. Dead Weight. Non-purchasers who have signed up for emails they don't open, promoting sales they don't take advantage of. This segment is a money pit, and the smaller it is the less cash it will cost you. Contact them occasionally to see if there's a nibble, but don't chase after them
2. Nearly There's. The interest is there, but the purchase history is not with the next group, people who seem interested and active on your site and in your emails, but never leads to a sale. These people are looking for a reason to buy from you, so give them one. Try anything, getting them across that buying threshold is all that matters.
3. Potential Brand Enthusiasts. They've made a few purchases, and are clicking through to some emails. Up their engagement and get them really interested and into your brand culture, so they can move on to...
4. Brand Enthusiasts. Die hard loyalty and a history of purchasing, but with potentially months long spaces between purchases. The interest in your brand is there, you just need to capitalize on it with special offers and direct engagement
5. Potential High Rollers. These are your soon-to-be VIPs who already have a healthy buying history and love of your brand, but haven't quite yet committed to dropping the big bucks. Entice them with a taste of real exclusivity, then wait as they come to you to take the next step.
6. High Rollers. These are your big-money spenders, who like to make frequent and frequently large purchases. These people love you already, so maintaining their loyalty is mostly a matter of staying the course, and not upsetting or annoying them. The only thing they can't easily buy is the status of exclusivity, so give them that.

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If you feel anxious or stressed about the loss of open rates and ip tracking with the upcoming iOS 15 update later this year, just imagine how the companies who make their money off email marketing feel.

Thankfully, the leaders of these companies recently came together to discuss what the update means for their industry and what they should do to survive it, and Chase Dimond was there to hear their plans, tactics and strategies.

Omnisend

• Rytis Lauris, CEO of Omnisend, detailed the company's belief that opens were only a proxy score to begin with, and that the best approach is to educate their clients. Through their campaign Opens Are Dead Omnisend has been helping brands understand the changes coming and how they can best adapt. They also are committing to a focus on recency, repeat and returning customers, and how they drive profitability.

Klaviyo

• Pre-built segment options will be available for clients  who want to take a less hands-on approach to dealing with iOS 15. The segments will track resulting visits to your website, on-site activity and their rate and weight of clicks, and engage inactive members in break-up email series, giving brands a broad overview of consumer behaviour and a worry free automated experience.

Privy

• The new goal for emails won't just be getting customers to open them, it will be getting customers to go the extra step and respond to them. According to Privy, this will be the best new metric for telling if your list is sick or healthy, as if a customer can't even be bothered to click a link, vote in a poll or share a post, they probably won't be shopping any time soon either.

MessageBird

• Looking to put an end to batching and blasting once and for all with the new updates, MessageBird will be offering clients as yet undefined automated options, that will be driven by the customer's own actions.

Send Lane

• Improving post-master tools is Send Lane's goal, allowing you to draw metrics directly from Google itself rather than more costly monitoring and automation options. If brands want to see more activity, then it will just be up to them to put in the extra effort and make themselves noticed.

Drip

• Sunset flows will be the new name of the game, according to Drip,  based on the still remaining core deliverability data, so a mere adjustment in analysis is all that's required.

Every major and minor email marketing brand is working on how they can make the most out of iOS 15's shakeup, and while not everyone will get it right, inevitably working strategies will win out, and the rest of the industry will invariably follow step, hopefully in a continued spirit of cooperation between competitors.

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Pitstop is presented by Triple Whale. Check out their new product, Fin Hub.

Want more? Sarah shares how buyer based Psychology- Based Creative is changing the DTC space.

What’s the biggest lift you’ve seen from a small CRO change? This example shows how small changes that activate dopamine can make a big difference.

Pitstop is hosted by Sarah Levinger. Find her on Twitter, or get in touch at HG Performance Creative.

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At a recent roundtable with some of the giants of the e-commerce marketing industry, Chase Dimond was able to ask some very important questions about how they expect the iOS 15 update to roll out, and what it will mean for your email marketing strategies.

"Is iOS 15 the death of email marketing?"

In short, no

While it may seem like the loss of open rate tracking undermines the entire point of email marketing, industry leaders are confident that email as a promotional tool is far from finished, and will only become more active once the new normal is fully settled.

"Will revenue or deliverability decline with iOS 15?"

Again, no

It is almost unanimously agreed that conversion rates of 20-40% will continue, as customer behaviour itself it unlikely to change, aside from increase in engagement as even more people shop online. 

Rather than adapting your tactics based on data you receive from open rates to generate this revenue, brands will have to adjust to analyzing a new set of information, and maintain a faithful course ahead sending emails without the much missed metrics, as well as an aggressive approach to list hygiene, and the removal of inactive and unprofitable members.

"What can I do now to prepare for these changes?"

Whether or not you agree that open rates are a vanity metric, they can still tell you more than just the binary of if your customers are opening an email or not. While you still have access to open rate data, look for the following specific details to learn how to look around and beyond the open rates themselves:

• What is the actual percent of opens that lead to engagement with the email? How many people explore the offer?
• What is the click through-to-open rate ratio? How many people end up in your store?

Knowing currently how many people engage with your emails, and comparing later figures will give you a way to spot your open rate without having the direct data of them available.

Traffic Driving Tip:  If an email for a new sale or promotion hasn't been opened, resend it with a different title, and try to see what works. The first email to newly signed up customers is often the most successful, so do everything you can to gain and keep their attention

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It doesn't matter how innovative a business idea, industry perspective or consumer product may be, if you don't have that crucial first pile of cash to invest in getting a brand off the ground, it all amounts to nothing. 

Since someone usually starts a business to sell an item to make more money that they currently have, paying for the initial start-up can seem like a constant cycle of catch-22s.

Thankfully, angel investor expert Andrew Gluck  is here to keep your wheels from spinning any longer, and get you off on the road to success with these  tips for raising that initial capital.

1. Friends and Family First. The most forgivable loans with the lowest interest rtes you can ever find may come from those closest to you. While not everyone has a crazy-rich relation they can beg for money, friends and family often want to see you succeed, and might at least  contribute to getting you closer to your goal.
2. Lift Yourself By Your Bootstraps. You don't necessarily need every cent of that initial capital to get going at full speed, just enough to get a little momentum forward. If possible, invest in yourself first, and spend whatever you can from your personal funds to get your business off the ground. If you can afford it, build a promotional site, order a prototype and start taking pre-orders to raise the rest, until you can afford to enter full-production.
3. Sign Up For An Accelerator. Join a growing community of young developers and interested entrepreneurs to mutually help each other move forward with accelerator services like Y Combinator, Techstars, XRC, financiers like Clearco, Shopify Capital or even smaller, more populist sites like AngelList and crowdfunders like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo
4. Fortune Favours The Bold. Chances are you already know some of the movers and shakers in your niche market, and are familiar with who are some of the bigger investors in them. Find out who is pumping cash into your competition, no matter what size, and approach them with your own proposal. If what you bring to the table is innovative or engaging enough, you may find them very interested.

"When can I get involved with venture capital?"

Maybe you just want to skip to the end and find  someone with deep pockets who will offer up all the security your brand needs, with a healthy cut. There is little if no turning back from this route, says Andrew, so be very sure that this is the direction you want to follow, and be certain that your business is capable of reaching the kinds of heights, millions & billions of dollars heights that is, that will be expected of you.

BE WARE: Raising capital can have strict limits and laws based on where your business is located, what industry it's in, and if there is cross-state or even international-trade. Carefully research the rules before you raise a single cent, you don't want to wind up in trouble before you've even had a chance to make a single sale

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Chances are that either you, or someone on your team, after hearing that open rate tracking and ip tracking were coming to an end with iOS 15, likely felt a deep and foreboding  sense of dread. 

As the engagement metrics you rely the most on vanish before your very eyes, you may worry that your brand has been left blind to your customer's behaviour.

Says Stephanie Griffith, DON'T PANIC

The next year is going to see a lot of businesses make a lot of mistakes as everyone gets used to the new normal, and old habits are left behind. 

Here's how to avoid becoming someone else's lesson of what not to do.

1. No seriously, don't panic. It's going to be a slow integration for everyone, and no one knows the full potential of 15's updates yet. Even if you get caught off guard, you're still no further behind anyone else in terms of rolling out a responsive strategy
2. Don't send "too many damn emails". Until you learn how to read the new metrics, you may worry that emails aren't being read, let lone received, and could start burying consumers in promotional messages, desperate for a  measurable sale. Rest assured, nothing is changing about how emails are delivered, and they will be getting through
3. Don't just sit on your hands and wait. You still have access to open rate and ip metrics for the time being, so make the most out of them. Learn as much as you can about current and projected customer behaviour, so that you can be confident in your strategy continuing during the interim period between iOS 15's launch and your systems adapting to the new metrics
4. Build out your other audiences. IOS 15 updates will have no effect on SMS or how you track their metrics, and while SMS is certainly no replacement for email promotion, take this opportunity to expand on your lists, to get a great sense of consumer behaviour to measure future metrics in comparison with, while also reaping the benefits of more consumers engaging with your brand beyond email

Approach these upcoming changes with a calm curiosity, and you'll find your business will only get better.

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Now that the end has finally come for email open rate tracking with the recently rolled out updates for iOS 15 from Apple, as explained by marketing expert Stephanie Griffith in our last episode, it's time to step up your customer tracking and list curation to the next level.

High Intent Captures & The Fall Of Contests

One hacky and tired tool that email experts will be glad to see sidelined are capture contests, emails designed to result in opens by offering the chance at a prize. Without needless vanity metrics like open rates, this option for growing lists has become completely unnecessary and useless, except for the very few customers who happened to win them.

Such old school, wide-net methods are a thing of the past and will only waste your money and time chasing after consumers who just don't care enough about your brand or products.  Instead, it's time to focus on those customers who have proven brand loyalty and buying power, with just 3 simple steps.

1. Don't focus on the size of your lists. Quantity of responses is a vanity metric, based on years and years of tracking open rates. Let them go, they're only pointing you in the wrong direction. Stop looking at the numbers you want to have and focus on what you do
2. Ruthlessly curate your signed-up members. If someone is making you money, then why are you spending any on trying to get their attention? If you're not seeing click activity on sent emails over your store, even within under a month since their last visit, cut them out. If they're really interested in your brand, they'll return themselves
3. Pay absolute attention to what few truly committed customers you do have, their traffic, movements, interests and the idiosyncrasies click tracking affords you, and cater to those tastes and behaviours

Give yourself a true 360 view of the behaviour of your best consumers, not just the binary "yes" or "no" of if an email was opened or not, and they will feed you shopping habit data until you're fit to burst.

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The only constant in business, online or offline, is that change is inevitable, and if you don't ride the wave of the next tidal shift, you risk being swept away and going under.

With the release of Apple's iOS 15 update comes some major changes that every Shopify and e-commerce brands absolutely needs to be aware of when it comes to email marketing, and engagement expert Stephanie Griffith is here to make sure you understand them all.

What has been lost

• Open rate tracking. In an increasingly open world, customers want to be tracked less, and enjoy their privacy more. Previously, tracking your paid media, such as advertising, has been all that's affected, but the limitations have now expanded to emails, along with...
• IP address tracking. Further looking to protect consumer privacy, you'll no longer be able to track I addresses, which many customers have been demanding for years

What has been gained

While these new restrictions may, on the face, mean your job and e-commerce marketers has become much more difficult, says Griffith this should instead be seen as an opportunity to embrace change and adapt to better, metrics-based business practices that should have been adopted long before.

• Clicks to replace open rates for tracking activity, giving you more on the ground information on their UX behaviour and interests, without invading your customer's privacy
• An expanded definition of "successful conversion". A conversion isn't just a sale, it can be a sign up to SMS, engagement in a contest, feedback on an event or sharing a new product with their friends and followers, giving you a total sense of engagement, not just at the checkout
• A newfound focus on making sure the message you convey is the best quality it can be, and that the customer's email experience is fully optimized to result in action and engagement, via mapping and understanding your entire customer funnel, from start to finish. This will allow you to see not only what works, but what doesn't, and let you focus on those weak spots

BE AWARE: With these changes will come some very odd behaviour in the data, as the systems adapt to the new restrictions. This will likely result in inflated numbers, showing many more artificial engagements than customer driven, organic activity. Don't respond or base any marketing campaign decisions on these numbers, wait to see if they settle down after a few months to be sure that they are accurate before adapting your outreach strategies.

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More than just That British Podcast Guy, Mark Asquith is also a veteran serial entrepreneur who knows the value of low-cost direct promotional content.

And according to Mark, too few businesses, both e-commerce and traditional brick & mortar shops alike, take advantage of the wildly popular, widely available and cost effective consumer engagement available through podcasting. 

"How Can My Brand Use Podcasts?"

There are 3 easy ways that you can spread the word about your consumer brand with podcasting

1. Buy Ad Space. The tip of the iceberg, nearly every podcast produced is looking for financial sponsorship, and will be more than happy to carry either bumper adds, or read on-air promotional copy. Find a show that fits your brand, and offer to sponsor them in exchange for a call out once an episode for a fraction of the price of a traditional commercial
2. Tell Your Own Story. Unlike most other promotional media, podcasts can be cheaply and easily produced in-house, allowing you flexibility with the content, and how you use it to engage your listeners and customers. Tell your story your own way, control the narrative around your brand, and get people engaged with you beyond your products or services
3. Answer The Big Questions. Don't feel like your brand has a grand story to offer, or your stumped for content episode after episode? Use your podcast space as an opportunity to provide an entertaining, engaging and informative FAQ for your product. Most people are principally auditory learners, and providing clear step-by-step instructions and trouble-shooting in a friendly manner will result in a better customer experience.

"I'm not a writer, how am I supposed to come up with content?"

Look at what you already have available to draw from, and aggressively mine that wealth of brand knowledge; no one understands your product better than you do, and no one understands your store better than you do. 

• Provide product tips. Don't wait for a user to ask how something works, or how to use it. Be proactive in educating your customers about use and maintenance, help inspire how they enjoy your product, and your brand will gain a reputation as an authority in its field.
• Assume that every podcast is someone's first. You may be talking to long-time users, you may be talking to brand new-comers. You never know what level of interest or expertise a listener has in a topic, so don't hesitate to sit down and explain everything. If your product has more than one part, explain the parts, how they work together, what you can do with them. Take your customers through everything as if they had never heard of your product before

Don't think of podcasting as something apart from your promotional or customer service strategies, but as a tie that binds them. 

Start integrating recordings into your daily business, if you're explaining a new system or tactic, designing a new product, or planning an event, and invite your listeners and customers closer. 

How much it becomes a part of your overall business strategy is entirely up to you, so don't worry about scale. Production can be as small as one person with a laptop or an entire media team; there's no right or wrong way of doing it, just general guidelines.

1. More is not better. Quality trumps quantity when it comes to content, and while daily content get the immediate numbers, it's the slow-boiled content that gets the long term traffic and attention
2. Build your skillset. Don't think of your podcast as some promotional activity you do on the side. Broadcasting is very complicated, and there are a plethora of tips & tricks to consider, and pitfalls to avoid. Always be on top of the latest developments and tactics for...

If you  haven't jumped onto the SMS bandwagon for customer outreach yet, there is good news, you're not too late. But, time is running out to get a headstart on collecting numbers and being an early adopter among your competitors.

Luckily, mindful marketer Jordan West has a crash course on how to use SMS to grow your brand's customer community.

"How does SMS differ from email?"

Your first instinct when using text messaging for consumer outreach may be to just recycle your email content.

Don't.

SMS is a text-based medium, and any message you chose to send should be optimized for a customer to read on any device that receives text. Treat it like a VIP channel, and only provide the best service you can.

• Don't send pictures, videos, or multi-media links
• Do treat the conversation as casual and friendly
• Don't send too many messages and annoy the customer, stick to a few a month maximum
• Do let them know up front what to expect in terms of content and frequency
• Don't make international customers pay to receive or respond to SMS

Try to only text your customer when you have something to say, such as a new product announcement. If you feel this doesn't provide you with enough contact, consider launching more new products to have something to announce rather than bothering a customer when you have nothing new to offer. 

It may seem counter-intuitive to be forgotten by consumers, but it will make what messages you do send all the more valuable, and likely to be opened.

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When setting up your gated event, a VIP customer group can be an excellent way to get guaranteed attendees quick, but according to marketing specialist Jordan West, that's just a fraction of the potential profit-driving power groups & communities can bring if you know how to use them.

Building your Community

"What counts as a VIP group?"

• Your email list does not count as a VIP group, it is far too broad, impersonal and easy to miss, block or ignore. These are the customers who took the extra step above and beyond, signing up for SMS, joining official forums and sites, or signing into official apps. An in-group customer is a proven and interested customer

"How do I build my VIP group?"

• The best VIP communities are made by the community themselves, not the brand or product the community gathers around. Simply set up the space, entice customers to join, provide light moderation and allow them to make it into the kind of community they want to have

"Where should I set up my group?"

• Facebook remains the best option for a basic, universally accessible private or public communities with all the important tools for promotion and moderation. There are of course many other options, some free and some at cost, focussed around a wide variety of mediums. Choose what feels right for your customers, and listen to their feedback

"What else can VIP groups do for my brand?"

• Far more than just an available contact list, VIP community members are deeply committed to your brand, and will provide innumerable amounts of free promotional material, positive exposure, product testing and customer support, amounting to thousands of dollars in free material, coverage and assistance. Even a small community is capable of explosively exponential exposure, and provide a positive and supportive space for their brand loyalty to grow

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While common sense would say if you want to make a sale then your store should never close its door on potential shoppers, marketing expert Jordan West says that actually, it can be incredibly helpful to your bottom line and drive customer engagement.

Build Exclusivity

Gated Launches are the secret weapon to generating excitement and FOMO, the fear of missing out, two major factors to getting modern shoppers through the door and past the checkout.

"What is a gated launch?"

A gated launch is when a store closes all sales and advertising temporarily, often for 24 hours, allowing access only to those special customers who have been invited. Instead of locking the front door and only letting a few people inside, like a brick & mortar store, online gated launches lock all traffic on the site down, blocking shoppers from browsing the site unless they have a special passcode or sign-in to a registered account.

"Who do I allow in, and how do my customers get access?"

While the sense of exclusivity is important to a gated launch, it's all for nothing if you can't get those curious shoppers into the VIP experience. Allow ample opportunities for customers to join your exclusive access list, in exchange for further brand engagement, such as by:

1. Joining and promoting a Facebook VIP group for your brand
2. Signing up for SMS promotions
3. Downloading and signing into an app for your brand

You don't want to make it impossible for shoppers to find the password and gain access, you just want to make sure those gaining access are committed customers. Clearly state how they can gain access, and watch as both your lists and profit margins grow.

DONT FORGET: Notify your customers far ahead of time that you're going to have a gated launch for the next sale or product release. You want to build that excitement and engagement, so that they can't wait to sign in with the exclusive password, not have them trying to go about their normal shopping experience and suddenly find themselves barred from their favourite store.

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June was a great month for Pitstop and Rolled Up Podcasts, and July & August promises to be even better.

Up-coming guests of the show include:

• Jordan West, co-founder of Mindful Marketing Co, will talk about Gated Launches, SMS and VIP Facebook groups
• Marketing veteran Chase Diamond will return to share his insights into ESP, Email Service Providers, and what the top CEO of ESP services are saying
• Stefani Arden, founder of Arden Trading Co will drop by to discuss all the latest updates in IOS 15
• Investor Andrew Gluck will answer listener Anthony Watts' question about raising funds from friends and family

As well, don't forget to catch Lucas on Omnisend's Cart Insider's Podcast, and an upcoming webinar with ShipBob exploring how you can break into the Canadian market.

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Pitstop is presented by Triple Whale. Check out their new product, Fin Hub.

Want more? Sarah shares how buyer based Psychology- Based Creative is changing the DTC space.

Sarah and Carl break down this tweet, and the keys to increasing your conversion rates 8.21% and it all starts with increasing the amount of trust.

Pitstop is hosted by Sarah Levinger. Find her on Twitter, or get in touch at HG Performance Creative.

Typically, any business be it online or offline seeks to deliver their service in the most efficient way possible, getting the customer in, getting them their order, and getting them out so you can repeat the cycle at a high rate. Anything that got in the way, or slowed down this process, is called "friction", and it's the big bad F-word of the commercial world.

Contrary to this widely held belief though, not all business related friction is bad. That's what Phillip Jackson found out when he and Rightpoint set out to study customer behaviour and buying habits.

Good Friction Vs Bad Friction

There are two types of business friction, generally defined as Good Friction and Bad Friction.

• Good Friction - Something in the buying process that allows a customer to engage further with your brand a product, without interrupting their purchasing of the product
• Bad Friction - Something in the buying process that slows the process without adding any value to the customer in return, creating "speedbumps" between them and completing their purchase

"How do I tell good friction from bad?" 

Where friction is placed in the shopping process is a good indicator, and knowing how shoppers approach your customer support experience is the best way to determine if you've applied too much or too little friction.

The vast majority of post-purchase customers contact service for two reasons:

1. Delivery questions
2. Return questions

There's a smaller but potentially helpful third reason though;

          3. Can you help me with more information?

Whereas any interruption that addresses the first two before checkout will be seen as bad friction, slowing the process to provide unwanted annoyance, one that provides the details of the third (accounting for around a third itself of all customers) before the customer either checks out, or has to return themselves to ask the detailed extra questions, is good friction, helping them to make a better purchase and have a better overall experience.

Examples of Customer Experience  Design Centric Friction

Pop-up assistants, preferred by almost 30% of all customers, are an excellent example of how to use good friction, and how it could result in bad friction. 

• If a customer arrives at your store, and is unsure what to get, a pop-up assistant, like an in-store assistant, can be very helpful in pointing in the  right direction. It is a form of friction, because you have interrupted their shopping flow, but it's good friction because it has actually accelerated their buying experience, delivered through a positive brand engagement. This means that the shopper not only has what they want faster, but now trust your company a little more.
• If however the pop-up needlessly interrupts someone going through the checkout, product in cart with their shopping experience nearly finished, this previously good example breaks bad. The customer has now been slowed unnecessarily, and will carry a negative association not only with your product, but with the feature itself.

Another good use of these chat features, which can be either automated or human-driven, is to offer customers ways that they could fix any problems they have themselves while waiting for escalation, empowering them to feel responsible for their own good outcome with your product and brand, with even less needed interaction or engagement.

The happier the customer is, the better their customer experience through either applied good friction or a noted lack of bad friction, the more likely they'll return to buy again.

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The only way to truly capitalize on your customer base, regardless of the product offered, is to understand them. Only after examining & analyzing customer buying habits and behaviour patterns can you begin to directly and specifically cater to their needs.

Thankfully, Phillip Jackson has been doing just that, digging deep into the data to determine how consumers are currently shopping, and how they're likely to shop in the future

Seekers Vs Stockers

There are essentially two kinds of customers, explains Jackson.

• Stockers: Consumers who find brands and products they trust, and loyally return to purchase those same products at a fairly predictable and consistent rate for years.
• Seekers: "Disloyal" shoppers who enjoy the novelty of discovering new brands and products, who are much less likely to return for repeat business on a consistent or predictable basis

No matter what you do, no matter how you sell your product, customers will behave as either one or the other, you'll never have a customer base made of just Stockers, or have to worry about relying on the random and chaotic Seekers. 

That means that the most important and influential thing you can do to make a sale to either group is to give them the best initial sales interaction. Luckily, there are some important trends fr you to know about that will help you make the most out of your first impression and chances to score a buyer.

Customers love e-commerce. Despite the naysayers and prophets of doom, customer appreciation for online shopping has never been higher, and their spending habits show this. Rather than going to market occasionally, modern shoppers are always buying or browsing, often from the palm of their hand. This means there is practically no down-time  for e-commerce brands, customers will always be encountering your shop for the first time, giving you lots of chances to get it right.

Most First Impressions Already Are Positive. 94% of polled shoppers said they had a positive impression of e-commerce and buying their favourite products online. That means the vast majority of the industry is doing exactly what they need to for customer satisfaction and retention. Follow the trends you see from other brands, and you'll be golden.

Shoppers Only Expect To Buy More And Be More Satisfied. Contrary to expectation coming out of the pandemic crisis, customer confidence is high, and while brick and mortar stores are opening back up, most responding shopper still expect to do even more of their buying online in the near future, due entirely to the shopping experience itself.

How do I capitalize on these projections?

Jackson says that to get the most out of your already excited and energized customers, you have to consider the three things every consumer is looking for, and make sure your service provides each accordingly.

• Convenience - 79% of responses said that online shopping was the best way to shop. people want to shop online, and the more you can offer them, the better
• Variety - 81% of affluent shoppers, those who can afford any brand or variation of a product they want, prefer choice and a wide selection
• Consistency - 70% of shoppers said they were looking specifically and only at online goods, with the intention to only buy from online retailers for the foreseeable future

Consider how your business could meet these behaviour patterns and shopping expectations, and consider how others brands don't. If you can provide any, or all, of the three to a sector of customer who isn't being catered to, then you've found your money-maker.

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This year's Shopify Unite presentation was the e-commerce platform's biggest yet, revealing a giant leap forward for the service provider and their users. Here are the top new announcements, much anticipated launches, and upcoming changes that will take both Shopify and your store to a truly global level.

Sections Everywhere Finally Arrives

First announced in 2018, then followed by three years of radio silence, the now renamed Online Store 2.0 will give store owners unprecedented  levels of flexibility and customization, allowing you to personalize every single aspect of your shop, from interface to checkout. Not only that, the interface and tutorials  for learning how to use these tools are more user friendly than ever. 

Along with the release of Hydrogen, a new React framework, and Oxygen, a future hosting platform, users will have more freedom than every to build their store their way.

July 15 will also see the Shopify Theme Store accepting submissions from developers, allowing store owners to share their unique builds and tools with others.

Shopify Truly Goes Global

Unite saw the announcement of 3 planetary-scale updates for users: 

1. Major investments in server farms around the word, speeding up the ecosystem until it is an incredible 50 milliseconds away from any buyer on Earth, achieved by installing so many servers that no one is ever more than 100km away from one
2. An expansion of payment options beyond the tried and true, but regionally locked, Paypal. From Venmo and Interac to the many cryptocurrencies currently in circulation and beyond, your store will be able to accept payments however really works best for your customers
3. New theme apps and customization features that will allow your store to offer localized shopping for almost any location worldwide

No customer or market will be out of your Shopify store's reach ever again

Putting Their Money Where Their Mouth Is

Beginning August 1st, Shopify is letting shop owners keep more of their money by not only rolling back all revenue share for businesses with less than $1 million in sales per year, dropping that cost from 20% to nothing, they're lowering their take on larger brands from 20% to 15%. 

This goes the same for Theme Store developers offering their builds, and the $1 million benchmark resets every year

What Wasn't Mentioned

While Unite 2021 was packed with announcements, there were a few notable developments that were noticeable no-shows 

• The Shopify Fulfillment Network 
• The Shopify Bank & Card

Whether or not these developments will appear a few years from now under a different name, like Sections Everywhere, or if they fell to the wayside due to the effect Covid-19 had in speeding up e-commerce expansion, Shopify fans will just have to wait and see.

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