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#60 The Least Boring Weekend Newsletter
Good Morning readers! ☕
Hope you have a great weekend! 🥳
Super Bowl tickets will come with souvenir NFTs. The NFL is handing away free NFTs to Super Bowl participants to remember their tickets and serve as digital keepsakes.
Each audience member will be given a token that is specific to their section, row, and seat. ( This is so cool😍) Since real ticket stubs are no longer in use, giving fans NFTs is a method for the league to offer souvenirs of sorts.
The Super Bowl 🥣 will once again use only mobile tickets, a technique that has risen in popularity during the epidemic when the NFL and other leagues phased out paper tickets to reduce encounters. 🏀
Almund's newsletter will let you in on all kinds of tips for D2C brands and much much more.
Alright, so let's get right to it!
This newsletter is going to dive into :
🌏 The Role Of Phygital In The DTC Economy
👌 Sending An SMS Is Cooler Than Ever
🎟 Shopify CEO Joins Coinbase Board of Directors
📜 Top reads for this week
👩🏻💼 Plenty of jobs awaiting you!
So, scroll down already to THE VERY END & read up on what's yet to come your way!
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WHAT’S COOKING, HUH?
Everything about how you sell your products and services has changed in the last 18 months(true) ✔. Because digital payment processing, contactless experiences, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) buying have transformed the retail scene, you even conduct your business with a different perspective, whether your concentration is B2B or B2C.
Nearly 60% of customers today go out of their way to buy directly from brands they trust, creating an intriguing new impetus for CPG companies to enhance DTC marketing efforts and grow their digital presence to fulfill consumer demands. 💻
Phygital technologies assist brands in bridging the online-offline barrier and providing a tailored experience to customers wherever they interact with your company. CPG firms, in particular, have jumped on board with this strategy to better engage with their customers and build brand equity in a competitive market.
Businesses of all sizes may use Phygital to connect with customers in innovative ways and build brand equity.💡
QR codes, NFC tags, and beacons are examples of physical technology that can inspire clients to visit your website 🕸or social media, encouraging them to engage with your company further.
CPGs are a great example of this because they often sell directly to retailers who don't supply much in the way of feed🔙 or customer data.
As a result, CPGs may leverage phygital to push visitors to their website, app, or social profiles, where they can get first-party data that they don't get from shops. This can assist brands in better meeting the needs of their customers. ( Cool, right?) 😎
Phygital is assisting in the opening of the direct-to-consumer economy, and not just for CPG companies whose clients have established long-term online shopping habits. You can provide a memorable client experience and collect the data you need to better serve your consumers in the long run by using a tailored, interactive approach. ( Awesome 🥳)
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Sending An SMS Is Cooler Than Ever
Have you been dancing around the idea of SMS marketing because it looks a bit too complicated? Well, we can change that today. Today’s Tips Section would cover everything you need to know about SMS Marketing. Let’s go!
To set the stage for today’s topic, let’s tell you why SMS Marketing is so important in 2022. Take a look at these facts and figures!
👉🏼 64% of Americans spend more time on their ones owing to the global pandemic.
👉🏼 75% of Gen Z & Millennials use smartphones to shop online
👉🏼 And 54% of web traffic is driven via smartphones.
👉🏼 With half of America using coupons they receive via text, 45% of customers choose to make payments when they receive a text message from them.
Now we don’t know about you, but to us, it seems like A LOT of audience exposure. If your DTC business hasn’t been making the most of this aspect of marketing, you should start now!
What Is SMS Marketing?
SMS Marketing is using text messages (SMS) to inform customers usually of time-sensitive offers or merchandise, upcoming events or sales, transactional messages, and promotional campaign alerts from your DTC business.
While push notifications are often muted, most customers keep their text messaging app open to brands they shop from. Hence, integrating SMS marketing into your business strategy is a smart solution to accessing another digital touchpoint, closer to your customers.
While the figures make it evident that your business can surely benefit from SMS marketing, here’s a quick list of the reasons why this marketing strategy works.
👤 Room For Personalization
Your text messages are reaching your customers on their smartphones. Hence, much like emails, personalizing your texts can be a great, informal way to address your customers while communicating your message. It makes it fun, exciting, and intimate.
⚡ It’s Instant
Text messaging is instant. Once you set up your campaign, it can go live in just a few moments! This quick delivery and the scope of automation is what makes mobile marketing so useful, efficient, and effective.
📈 High Engagement Rates
We know almost 100% of people getting text messages read them within 3 minutes of receiving them. Thus delivering important information through an SMS almost guarantees that your customers would go through it at least once.
📱 Smartphones Are A Common Commodity
Almost every American citizen now owns a smartphone, with Gen Z and Millennials making up the maximum buying force in the DTC market. If you’re not sending text messages to this massive audience, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to cater to potential customers.
📶 Open To Emerging Audiences
While smartphones are a common asset for many, cellular data might be costly for a large chunk of the audience. Additionally, Wi-Fi might not be accessible for many. At times like this, reaching them via text messages is easier and better.
🖲️ It’s Easy To Track
Multiple campaign management software now exists that allows you to constantly track your SMS marketing campaign and analyze results in a jiffy - starting from delivery to opening.
🗣️ It’s Interactive
Automated text messages can be interactive too. “Reply with a Y if you wish to schedule a call….” is a great example of how you can use an automation system to schedule text conversations with your customers. You can also send across texts with CTAs such as clickable links to redirect your customers to your website.
It is clearer than ever - SMS Marketing can work wonders for your DTC business! If you’re lost about where to begin, we’ve got some ideas for you. Here are some campaigns you can start with when dipping your toes into SMS marketing for the first time.
1. Exclusive Deals
Nothing guarantees better engagement than sending a personalized text message to your customers about an exclusive deal from your DTC business! Send them a custom message with details about an exclusive offer (perhaps a coupon code) that they can use during checkout to avail a discount. Alternatively, you can even send across a special link to use to avail a discount.
Here’s a great example from Jenni Kayne, a fashion brand.
2. Time-Sensitive Offers
Incorporating urgency into your text message drives better engagement. The drive from FOMO on exclusive offers, limited merchandise, and discounts from your favorite brand helps you make more sales quickly.
Here’s a great example from FigPiN using a time-sensitive offer to advertise their limited edition pins.
3. Drip Campaigns
Starting from welcome emails to gradually increasing discounts, a drip campaign is a great way to get your customers’ attention.
Upon sign up, you could offer a 5% discount and increase it by sending them up to 20% discount codes via text messages to keep them reeled in!
4. Alerts/Updates
Text messages sent to your customers to notify them of new developments in your DTC store are always welcome!
You can use text messages to send alerts about any upcoming promotions or sales, discounts on products in their shopping carts, dispatch and delivery messages, etc. Messages are also a great medium to send updates on policies and notices to your customers.
Here are great examples from Baking Steel and Once Upon A Child.
Of course, this doesn’t even begin to cover the intricacies of SMS Marketing; it’s simply a taste of how this strategy can benefit your DTC business when done right. If you wish to know more about it, read our blog on our website here.
So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get going!
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D2C x CRYPTO
Tobias Lütke, the CEO and founder of the e-commerce platform Shopify, will join Coinbase's board of directors later this week, pending formal board approval. (Woohoo🥳)
Lütke will assist Coinbase with its expansion objectives as the crypto exchange seeks to offer newer products to crypto traders and investors throughout the world. He was an early cryptocurrency adopter thanks to Shopify's Coinbase Commerce integration. It provides services to millions of merchants in over 175 countries. (Wow😲)
“We hope to unlock crypto’s potential to increase economic freedom in the same way Shopify democratized online commerce,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a press statement.
Armstrong, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, a16z founder Marc Andreessen, and Kelly Kramer, the former CSO of Cisco, are among the board members. ( That's amazing🤩)
“The concepts of decentralized finance and entrepreneurship exemplify the promise of Web 3🕸 where opportunity exists for the many, not the few. Coinbase and Shopify share this like-minded vision, and I am excited to join the Board to support the future that Brian and the Coinbase team are building," said Lütke in a statement.
(We're all excited to see where and how things turn out, right?)🥳
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TOP READS FOR THIS WEEK
🏆 Win Brands company secured $40 million in funding from Orangewood Partners.
💦 Flush with cash, bamboo-based toilet paper company Cloud Paper makes it rain.
💲 Wayflyer raises $150M on a $1.6B valuation for a new spin on providing loans to e-commerce merchants
🛢️ Zero Acre Farms puts microbes (and $37M) to work on a better alternative to vegetable oil
💍Bored Ape Yacht Club is seeking a valuation of as much as $5 billion in the proposed funding round.
💰 Amazon Surges to Add $135 Billion in Wild Market Value Swing
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In need of a job? We’ve got plenty awaiting you!
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CHOOSE SUCCESS below and have a great week! ‘Get that D2C business runnin’.
