#68 The Least Boring Weekend Newsletter

March 05, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes

Good Morning readers! ☕

Have a great weekend! 🥳

After creating Almund—a data tool to help people understand their audience better—and advocating for it online, we realized that it might not just be it.  Some of you out there might be interested in learning more about customer segmentation, just like us. After all, a community on a social media platform sometimes is just not enough!

That’s why we signed up for Maven’s 3-week Bootcamp to design a course based on Customer Segmentation: A Complete Guide. 

Our course would be a curation of video lectures, free & affiliated resources, and guides to help you navigate through the world of understanding segmentation (keeping in mind that we’re all beginners, of course, 😉). From importance and need to benefits and foundation of segmentation into practice, this course would cover all one needs to know. We’ll even have community discussions, support, and more!

Customer Segmentation is a practice that is a must if you’re trying to build and retain an audience, regardless of your professional designation or field of work. Almund believes it can help everyone with an active online presence (and who doesn’t have it in 2022, huh?). 

So, we’re super excited to tell you that a few months down the line, we’d be launching an online pilot course. Since we’re starting small, we’ll begin with a small batch of students. 

If customer segmentation and online growth strategy are something you’d be interested in, please help us out by filling out this 30-second survey.

No commitment and payment right now; we’d just like to know!

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 :

🧑🏻‍💼eBay Could Soon Integrate Crypto Payments on its Platform

🌏  An introduction to music NFTS 

👌 Time-Saving Strategy To A Winning DTC Business

📜 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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D2C x CRYPTO

eBay, the world's largest e-commerce company, is considering integrating cryptocurrency payments.💰  CEO Jamie Iannone recently stated in an interview that the company may take a jump very soon. eBay is primarily interested in capturing the GenZ and millennial audiences.👶 

 Iannone said in an exclusive interview that the much-anticipated crypto integration platform's official announcement could come during the forthcoming investor's day on March 10. The marketplace, according to the executive, aspires to become a destination for Gen-Z and millennials. ( True) 

eBay has so far made Google Pay and Apple Pay available on its platform. It has also forged a connection with an Australian fintech firm, Afterpay, "which is a platform that appeals to Gen Z," according to Iannone, who also suggested that now is the time to consider other payment options. In addition, the founder stated that he is eager to pursue new opportunities. ( Grabbing them opportunities 🥳) 

Even though eBay has yet to implement the crypto payment option, it made significant investments in the developing NFT sector in May of last year. ( Let's wait to see where it goes💰) 

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Time-Saving Strategy To A Winning DTC Business

Regardless of the size of the DTC business, there’s one thing the entire industry hates—manual processing. This soul-sucking, time-consuming, and tiring activity of manually processing business workflows costs DTC brands precious capital and a fall in revenue. Imagine being held up during the checkout on an e-commerce website because someone on the other end is manually billing everyone’s purchases!

So, what is e-commerce automation?

E-commerce automation refers to the integration of purpose-driven software into a business model to streamline all process workflows that take up too much time and workforce.

For instance, you might be manually working on advertising management—compiling data for ads on various platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, and Amazon, analyzing data, generating cohesive reports, and iterating the processes until you get desired results. Not only is this a repetitive and time-consuming task, but it’s also capping the potential for you to scale. Automation into such processes can help you get over such hurdles. 

To save time as a growing business, you need to incorporate automation into everything, from processes along the customer journey to backend workflows. Don’t quite picture what they offer yet? We’ve got you! Here are some benefits automation can bring to your DTC business.

🔥 Boost In Productivity

With mundane tasks taken care of, you can focus better on things that require your attention, such as improving your products or services, running better campaigns, enhancing strategy, and growing your business. 

🥇 Increases Efficiency

Not only does automation allow you to save on time, but it also reduces the margin of error.  There are higher chances of mistakes when one manually works on tasks such as inventory management, product listings, and data compilation and analysis. By automating these processes, you can rest assured that your data is in the right hands.

🔒Data Accuracy & Safety

Speaking of safe hands, process automation also gives a chance to track and store data efficiently. 

When running an e-commerce website, keeping track of metrics such as customers’ purchase details, inventory, and KPIs is crucial. When done manually, you might miss out on important bits of information. However, when automated, you can completely skip this time-consuming process and focus on data synthesis. 

🤝🏼Engage Better

Automation can also help you win back lost customers! Over 69% of customers leave the website with half-filled carts never to look back. Automating notifications and engagement messages can help you get their attention again. 

It’s great that you now know the benefits of process automation in a DTC business and are onboard with us to take the next step (you’re on, right?). But where exactly can you start? Integrating time-saving workflows can be sudden and disorienting for the business. So, let’s take baby steps! Here’s how you can start automating.

#1 Customer Complaints & Returns

It’s best to start with handling angry customers. Automating the process of receiving complaints, addressing them, and handling the product returns can be a great start.

Save yourself from the hassle and automate to streamline the returns process and integrate a feedback form. The tools provide data on how you can improve your products further to reduce the number of returns. Additionally, if a customer leaves a negative review, not coming back to it soon is like fanning the fire. Automate to address it asap, helping you retain customers. 

#2 Shipment Tracking

Customers love to know where their order is. Keep them engaged during the shipment process by sending automated messages via various channels to let them know how far away their package is. This also helps them appreciate your business’ transparency when it comes to processes.

#3 Track Customer Behavior

Cart abandonment rate; average lifetime value; average time on a page; bounce rate—we’re sure by now you know a lot about all of these KPIs. (If you don’t, check out our blog!) Automating the process to track and organize this information can help you understand customer behavior and alter your strategy accordingly. These metrics can also be used when reaching out to them for engagement.

#4 Notifications & Mails

Engagement in the form of personalized emails is a ticket to success in the DTC industry. Most customers like to receive (occasional) emails from brands they’ve interacted with. Use the acquired data to send automated emails about vouchers, limited-edition merch, cart abandonment alerts, updates about the brand, and much more. 

#5 Customer Segmentation

Using the same messaging for all your customers will cost you revenue. Instead, you need to segment them into pools based on characteristics and behavior for maximum success rate when running campaigns. 

As you receive customer information through various channels, automation can help you segment them based on their interaction, ethnicity, age, location, etc. 

#6 Inventory Management

Reordering every time your products are out of stock is tiresome. You can automate the process of placing an order whenever you’re close to selling out to never have the ‘out of stock message pop on your customers’ screens when they shop at your e-commerce store!

The bottom line: every e-commerce business process can be automated; from customer acquisition and management to smart analysis to inventory management. DTC brands have a never-ending list of tools that can help them get more efficient and successful. All you need to do is take the first (small) step. 

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WHAT’S COOKING, HUH?

Currently, NFTs are referred to as 'digital ownership.' That isn't all they are, though. NFT technology can be used in almost anything that uses unique identifiers. Not just for digital ownership, but also digital access, community, and identity.👥👥 

Collectors can add to their collections without fear 😨 of rust, dust, or storage problems. As NFTs, venues can issue collectible entry tickets.  🎟 Art collectors can now own works by their favorite artists online.

Music, as an art form and a business, is maybe more than any of these examples being entirely rebuilt by NFTs. 

NFTs in the music industry allow people to truly own the music they enjoy.🎧 Sound clips and digital artwork can include streaming rights and royalty payments distributed via smart contracts. 

Fans may support artists and artists can include fans in the ownership of what they create by acquiring unique non-fungible tokens. Instead of an exploitative contractual arrangement between label and artist, NFTs are transforming the music industry into a creative relationship between artist and fan. ( And who doesn't love music?🎶🎶) 

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TOP READS FOR THIS WEEK

🌱 ZA Group Announces Large-Scale Acquisition of E-Roots Systems

📹 TikTok expands max video limit to 10 minutes from 3 minutes

👨‍🎓Facebook is shutting down its college student-only social network, Campus

🛒Connected Checkout by Ownit has launched to help DTC brands lift conversion.

💡 Disco raises $20 million Series A funding led by Felicis Ventures

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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’.