#123 The Least boring Weekly Newsletter

September 14, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes

Good Morning Readers!

Here’s to wishing for a successful day ahead!

Are you also a turkey lover 🦃? Well, it's one of our favorite meals too!

But here it's sad news for turkey lovers as the prices are surging 📈 ahead of Thanksgiving. Due to the avian flu outbreak that has killed millions of turkeys and chickens in the united states this year. The price spike is expected to be significant because of the shortage caused by the disease. This is particularly true for white boneless breast meat, even in recent months have seen a little cooling of the 40-year-highest inflation rate.

It's important to note that these increases are not related to any shortages or production problems; rather, they're caused by the rise in demand due to fear of avian flu and other factors. The outbreak of avian influenza has been linked to the deaths of more than 40 million birds so far; however, it hasn't yet been found on any commercial farms or poultry operations in North America. In addition to the economic impact this could have on producers who sell their birds at live markets or through grocery stores and restaurants, there are serious concerns about human health risks associated with consuming poultry products that may have been exposed to the virus.

As we approach Thanksgiving, instead of eating turkey, why not enjoy one of the many vegan alternatives available? These foods sit perfectly well in a meal without being the star attraction, and they may be better for your health too. But don't worry — with just a little searching and some help from your friendly local vegan, you'll be able to find viable (and delicious!) meatless options for Thanksgiving.

Almund’s newsletter will give you all kinds of tips for DTC brands and much more.

Alright, so let’s get right to it!

This newsletter is going to dive into:

🍷California’s Wine Industry Facing Climate Crisis

🎃How To Market Your DTC Business During The Spooky Halloween Season 

🎥 Video Bites: All Things DTC!

❌ Mistakes Brands Need To Avoid While Promoting On TikTok

📰 Top Reads Of The Week

⚙️ Plenty Of Jobs Await You!

So, scroll down to THE VERY END & read up on what’s yet to come your way!

A Creator-Centered Growth System That Creates Superstar Brands

California’s Wine Industry facing Climate Crisis

The wine 🍷 industry relies heavily on climate to produce good grapes for growing wines. They also rely on climate for enough rainfall during their growing season to produce enough wine each year! The wine industry of California is facing a climate crisis, including Napa and Sonoma valleys. And it is turning out to be a threat to the future of the state's industry. At the start of this year, the grape yards got deep frost, green buds of the fields got iced. And in the past week, the country's temperature-baked dehydrated vineyards. Presently, there is a threat to those yards of catching wildfires and getting smoke damage. 

This problem would only affected small wineries in the past, but now larger companies are also suffering from these conditions. They are struggling to find ways to grow their businesses despite these challenges. This can seriously affect business owners who rely on their winery or vineyard for income. Some may be forced to lay off employees or close down completely if they cannot recover from these losses quickly enough. Others may need to look for alternative ways of making money while their businesses recover from these losses.

California's 45 billion dollar wine industry's future and present are both in danger, causing trouble to the individuals connected to this industry. This year throughout California, the production of wine is expected to drop by almost 4%, according to the estimation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Moreover, following the data on the crops that got wasted due to wildfires in 2020, this will be the second-smallest crop of the decade. 

According to agriculture experts, the period of crop-killing disasters has started, and in the future, it can increase more. It is not just one substandard season. In the past few years, the trend has been continuing for the California harvest. The problem has extended beyond California. Climate change is weighing pressure on vineyards all over the world, which is hampering the wine industry. 

How To Market Your DTC Business During The Spooky Halloween Season

Trick or Treat season is about to come; everyone is waiting for this season to begin. It is the time for the DTC business, which is scary and exciting because the peak of the year's highest sales starts from here officially. Besides getting their bags full of candies, people are eagerly waiting to grab the deals, offers, and discounts while shopping. The DTC business needs a fantastic Halloween marketing strategy to ace this spooky sales season and the following holidays afterward. 

We have mentioned some of the effective and easy ideas 🎃 to boost sales this holiday:

🎭Give the website a special and creative look: Creating a special look for the website attracts consumers more. Giving the whole website a new look can be troublesome, but to avoid it and do something eye-catching, the brand can decorate and design a few elements of the website.

The brand can design the pop-up coupon with the Halloween theme and use scary-looking banners or home sliders to promote the brand, contest, or giveaway, increasing visitors to the website.

👥Do use user-generated content: User-generated content helps the brand to build stronger. The content should entertain and make the consumers feel that they are part of it, which helps to strengthen the bond between the consumer and the brand. 

To make this work, the brand can host a Halloween-themed video contest on YouTube shorts, a costume contest, a creative photo contest on Facebook or Instagram, a hashtag challenge on social media channels, and giveaways.

📬Do offer the consumers freebies: Every brand offers discounts on holiday seasons, but what will attract more consumers to your niche? Giving freebies on your brand offers potential consumers that can be proven perfect gifts to their family or friends. 

To boost the brand's sales, you can show the freebies items on the homepage or the cart page with a limited period offer to grab the consumer's attention.  

📩Do remind consumers about the campaigns by e-mail marketing: Well-known brands like Amazon, eBay, Sephora, Walmart, Mango, etc., send many emails to their potential consumers and visitors during campaigns, promotions starting, and a week, a day, or hours before any campaign ends.

People don't like promotional e-mails at all. Still, during the holiday season, they wait for it to get informed about the offers, deals, discounts, free delivery on any product, and freebies to spend their annual shopping budget. 

📍Do Upselling and Cross-selling: Halloween is the season for big spenders. Taking advantage of upselling and cross-selling can boost-up your sales. Consumers are not likely to make a single purchase during the sales.

People like to buy the whole costume. i.e., from top to bottom, offering relevant products to them that they can buy at less price if they buy altogether encourages them to become potential buyers. 

📜While sales promotion, send Halloween gift cards: It is crucial to inform the audience about the special promotion the brand will run at least 2-3 weeks before. Offer your consumers special gift cards after making a certain purchase.

Moreover, remind your consumer to redeem their gift cards before their validity ends. The brands can design gift cards with spooky, horror, and scary effects or designs to grab consumers' attention. 

Video Bites: All Things DTC

Apple has left an impact on its users that it will always try to bring on new features that will be life-changing in its wearable tech. A spot was released on the 8th of September 2022, named "Dear Apple" this advertisement is of 3 minutes and 8 seconds in total that has a wholesome message for Tim Cook and his empire that are handwritten letters by its users who says thank you for saving and changing their life. 

The spot features Apple Watch users who are so affected by the technology's ability that it increases their activity levels and enhances their health and who take time from their life to write a thank you note for the company. In the ad, one can see "a two-time olympian," "a boy from small-town," and "an old world traveler of 99 years", etc. reading out their handwritten letters(that they wrote for the brand) to the viewers.  

The ad has background music of sweeping violins in a cinematic manner. It introduces the new feature of the Apple Watch, which is SOS. If the user gets in trouble, like a car crash or something at that time, this feature will help them. The brand claims that the whole spot is read by real consumers who are sharing their actual stories. The color grading and cinematic angles of the ad were remarkable. The storytelling in the spot was also so catchy. 

Mistakes Brands Need To Avoid While Promoting On Tiktok

TikTok gained popularity very soon after it was released. In starting people used it as a platform to entertain and get entertained, but now it is not limited to this extent. TikTok has become a marketing channel as well. It is a noisy platform with millions of users who share posts daily, and brands do this to reach out to their consumers. 

From partnerships with content creators to sending them free products to promoting, every brand needs to take care of each step before considering scaling their business. TikTok marketing is an art, but the brands also need to be practical. Before doing any experiment to grow the eCommerce business, one should avoid the following mistakes to keep their consumers involved- 

🗣 Lack of engagement in the content: Posting content on TikTok is the first step of the competition of promoting your brand but keeping audiences engaged with it is another. User-generated content works better than most generic advertisements. To convert the users of TikTok into potential consumers, the brands should post entertaining content with a unique idea that grabs consumers' attention more than the content made by your competitor brands. Also, it will be awesome for the business if the brand will interact with the comments it receives by maintaining the brand's tone of voice. 

💯 Not providing authentic content: TikTok is a place where the brands come to interact with its consumers, to tell them what the brand is and what it is about, and for whom. Using this channel as a promotional platform for your brand is easy while providing authentic content to the application's users builds deep relationships between the brand and its followers. There is no doubt that brands will spend more on consumer relationships than on any other marketing strategy in the upcoming years. 

🔗 Easily guessable hooks of the video: The starting few seconds of the TikTok video are crucial. If the video fails to catch the user's attention, they will scroll up the video, no matter how good production is done by the brand. Figuring out hooks that can stop your target audience's scrolling is highly beneficial for the brand. One can get inspiration from the top-performing videos of their niche. For instance, if you are a DTC self-care brand, you can find videos of brands similar to your brand doing scrubbing, ASMR skincare, celebrity self-care secrets, etc. By creatively imitating these hooks with your branded content, you can make interesting videos that people will watch and not scroll through. 

Top Reads Of The Week

As inflation hits shoppers, the growth of US holiday sales is likely to slow. 

After the subscribers hit pause, shares of Rent the Runway sinks. 

Target announced the partnership with FAO Schwarz, an exclusive multiyear deal.

A YouTube TV channel created by HSN. 

Starbucks will allow its members to buy and collect NFT. 

IN NEED OF A JOB?  WE'VE GOT PLENTY AWAITING YOU!

Wholesale Planner - Hunter Boots Ltd

Retail Merchandising - Hanesbrands Inc.

CHOOSE SUCCESS below and have a great weekend! Get that DTC business runnin’.