#76 The Least Boring Weekend Newsletter

April 02, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

Good Morning readers! ☕

Hope you have a chill weekend! 

Visa, the world's largest credit card company, has created an NFT creator initiative to help small businesses get into the digital economy.💳

According to Sheffield, the concept of a small business is moving from traditional "brick-and-mortar mom-and-pop shops" to encompass other independent firms with artists and entrepreneurs who want to establish digital-focused businesses and employ new tools like NFTs.

The Visa Creator Program, a one-year immersion program, will bring together a global cohort of creators, including artists🎨, singers🎤, fashion👒 designers❇️, and filmmakers,🎥 to learn how to use NFTs to grow their companies.

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 :

🍕Citi Predicts Metaverse Could Be $13 Trillion Opportunity With 5 Billion Users

🎙️Driving ROI through Content Intelligence ft. Sarah Levinger

👌Community Building—The Solution Your eCommerce Store Needs

📜 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 METAVERSE

On Thursday, Citi launched a new paper titled "Metaverse and Money: Decrypting the Future" by Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions (Citi GPS). 

The 184-page paper delves deeply into numerous areas of the metaverse. They cover topics such as what a metaverse is, its infrastructure, digital assets📷 like as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the metaverse, money, and defi in the metaverse, and metaverse regulatory developments.

"We believe the metaverse may be the next generation of the internet — merging the physical and digital world in a permanent and immersive manner — and not merely a virtual reality environment," Citi said of the metaverse economy's scale.📏

In addition, the study describes how users would gain access to the metaverse. The authors wrote, "Consumer hardware manufacturers will be entrances to the metaverse and potential gatekeepers.⛩️" "Like today, there will most likely be a divide between a US/international and a China/firewall-based metaverse, as well as a spectrum based on technology 📧and economic strategy, i.e. metaverse centralization against decentralization."

Furthermore, in the metaverse, digital assets and NFTs will enable users/owners to have sovereign ownership 🛳️and will be tradeable, composable, immutable, and mainly interoperable."

Goldman Sachs, a multinational investment firm, estimated in January that the metaverse might be worth $8 trillion. Morgan Stanley, another prominent investment firm, anticipated the same magnitude for the metaverse in November of last year. 

Meanwhile, Bank of America believes the metaverse represents a significant opportunity for the whole crypto industry.

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Driving ROI through Content Intelligence ft. Sarah Levinger

In today’s episode we have with us Sarah Levinger

Sarah Levinger is unquestionably the jack-of-all-trades-DTC, with years of hands-on expertise. She helps DTC companies produce higher ROI as a Performance Strategist, UGC Producer, and ICP Developer.

We had the opportunity to chat with her about something that we, at Almund, are similarly enthusiastic about, data💾. Sarah has it all figured out, from combining practical psychology with data collecting and analysis.

This podcast will give you insights on: 

🕒 What is ICP? What happens to them over time?

▪️ Which data points are most relevant to comprehending ICPs?

🙅 The fundamentals of being a creator of user-generated content (UGC).

⛏️ Sarah's go-to marketing tools for data analysis.

🛒What role does consumer psychology play in direct-to-consumer marketing?

🏷️Favorite DTC brands that she admires.

And a lot more!

We hope you have as much fun with this conversation as we did!

Listen to the podcast below:

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Community Building—The Solution Your eCommerce Store Needs

With the recent events happening in the eCommerce world, we realized that we must create a safe space for all DTC marketers and business owners to show each other support and extend a helping hand to those who need it. So, Almund has created a Twitter community for you!

🙏Join the community

🤝 Meet a community of DTC-enthusiasts

💬 Discuss what’s on your mind & attain global insights

Join the community now

Okay, now back to the newsletter!

Last week, we addressed the fall in revenue that many DTC brands are facing owing to the increasing living and utility costs, and how a community can help your business stay afloat regardless of the fluctuations in the market. This week, we’re taking it all a step ahead!

You can learn more about an easy process to begin creating a community associated with your brand and examples of some successful brand communities that have changed the game for good.

Building a community can be intimidating. But everyone has to start somewhere! You could begin small; use your current social media account or start from scratch through a new channel to watch it grow organically. 

🧘 Find Your Calling

Millennials—that make up a majority of the buying force of the DTC industry—often gravitate towards brands that support a social cause or stand for something that they resonate with, on a personal level. If you do wish to attract a crowd or want to raise awareness about something you stand for, as a company, it is ideal that you formulate a stance you wish to publicly take. 

👂 Know What Your Customers Care About

It takes two hands to clap; understand your audience and learn what they think strongly about. You can send personal surveys to your existing customer base, speaking clearly about the community you’re trying to build. Request for their suggestions on the cause or movement you should support.

📋Understand How Your Products Make A Difference

While creating a community is good, you’d need to find one way or another to loop it back to the products your business offers. Think deeply about how your products can be a driving force when speaking about a cause online. 

🛠️ Ideate For A Strategy

Once the core focus for your community is in place, you must start developing a strategy. Initially, you might not have any capital to push forward your community—well, good thing, you don’t even need it to build one. Formulate digital campaigns to reach your audience online, to hook the attention of anyone remotely interested in the agenda of your online community. 

📍 Choose A Platform To Start With

When deciding on the campaign strategy, you’d most likely cover this too. Find the right platform to raise your voice to effectively create a community. Your choice of platform should depend on your audience and its accessibility. You should be able to grow your audience on the platform in the coming future, so think BIG when choosing one.

📣 Announce The Community

Once it’s all done, spread the word! Advertise your community across all your social media channels, website, and other communication channels. You can send private emailers to let them know all about the community. Make it easily accessible via CTAs to join the forum or redirection links from the website.

🗣️ Engage Constantly

It’s not a community if you don’t engage. Continually keep in touch with the members, learn more about their opinions, attain feedback, and reiterate the process to create a thriving community. 

There you have it! A seven-step plan to help you build something out of nothing for your brand to thrive in the coming years

Still, looking for some inspiration though? We’ve got you covered. Here are some DTC brands that built communities around their products and what they stand for, that inspire us to this day. 

#1 Gathre

What’s a mat brand doing on their online community? They empower women across the world, making them feel like the superwomen they are. They encourage community members to share stories, their experiences, and photos of women doing good in the world. 

#2 Sephora

Sephora’s community, Beauty Insider, helps people connect over their shared passion for skincare, cosmetics, and beauty. In the community, Beauty Insiders post reviews, photos, and recommendations about products they actively use along with inspirations for looks they wish for others to try. The community is also a great place for the brand to announce rewards, giveaways, and other engaging campaigns to retain its loyal customers.

#3  WeWOOD

WeWOOD is a brand that sells watches but that didn’t stop them from creating an online community about something they’re passionate about—trees. For each wood-based watch they sell, they plant trees via a partnership with nonprofit organizations. They’ve planted well over a million trees and their community doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon.

Every year, we see a new wave of emerging DTC businesses. With so many people craving financial freedom, being their bosses, and choosing to be business owners, you’re bound to have a never-ending list of competitors regardless of the product you develop. At times like these, the only saving grace is the community you build.

See you in the next edition with some more tips and tricks to enhance your business!

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TOP READS FOR THIS WEEK

🙋Neighbor raises Series A funding to add products

🛒Yami bags $50M Series B to boost its online Asian marketplace 

📷Instagram spruces up its DMs, introduces easy music sharing, silent messaging

🔍 Tiktok is now testing search ads, only available to selected partners.

📉 Magna’s US ad spend forecast falls after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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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’.