#84 The Least Boring Weekend Newsletter

April 30, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Good Morning Readers! ☕

Have a great weekend! 🥳

Meta will open the doors 🚪 to the Meta Store. The company’s debut shopping experience will be located on the Meta Burlingame campus, home of its Metaverse-focused Reality Labs division. 

Customers can try out Meta’s various hardware at the store, including the Portal, Meta Quest 2, and Meta’s less feature-rich reimagining of Google Glass and Ray-Ban Stories. While Meta will sell the first two directly in-store, you’ll still have to order the smart glasses through Ray-Ban via a salesperson 👩‍💼. The company is also revamping Meta.com with a new tab for shopping online so you don’t have to leave your house for a full-featured brand experience.

Mark Zuckerberg pretty much let the cat out of the bag on this one last week in an Instagram post depicting him doing VR much like anyone might, in a futuristic Apple-like retail environment with a huge wraparound screen and Nikes. Meta has every reason to get its VR hardware out, into as many hands as possible. In that sense, it’s sort of surprising that Meta/Facebook didn’t already have a brick-and-mortar store.

Almund's newsletter will let you in on all kinds of tips for D2C brands and much more. 

Alright, so let's get right to it! 

This newsletter is going to dive into :

🏀 What Elon Musk's investment could mean for Twitter's crypto plans.

🌎 Your brand has the potential for double the success

🤝 Brand deals of the week

📜 Top reads for this week

👩🏻‍💼 Plenty of jobs awaiting you!

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

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D2C X CRYPTO

Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased a 9.2% stake on Twitter. This makes him the largest stakeholder in the platform. The news instantly pumped Twitter shares by more than 22% in early trading and sent Dogecoin (DOGE) near its two-month highs.

Ken Li, investment director at Binance Labs, told Cointelegraph that Musk’s investment could help push the platform’s crypto initiatives forward and even lead to the integration of DOGE within the platform.

According to Li, “Elon Musk‘s investment in Twitter could help to increase the acceleration of Twitter‘s crypto adoption. It remains to be seen whether Twitter will begin adopting Elon‘s beloved Dogecoin moving forward.” He also explained that:

“Elon has always been very public about the concept of a more decentralized and censorship-resistant social media platform, and this is something that blockchain ⛓️ and Web3 technology can help enable.” 

On the other hand, Twitter has also been dabbling into blockchain-based technologies such as nonfungible tokens (NFTs). A portion of Tesla's BTC holdings was also sold in march 2021 to test the liquidity of such volume 🔊. Apart from BTC, Elon Musk has been affiliated with DOGE. Because of his love of memes, Musk‘s DOGE tweets have been linked 🔗 to the asset‘s price soaring, leaving musk to be accused of price manipulation. The billionaire also declared later in 2021 that DOGE is better than BTC when it comes to payments🧾.

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Your Brand Has The Potential For Double The Success

Despite the steady rise in consumers’ affinity for eCommerce stores, 75% of them stated that they would prefer shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. While many enjoy the comfort and convenience of online shopping, enjoying their retail therapy in the form of a shopping spree in physical stores is a must for many. 

Instead of sticking to a single channel of exchange, DTC brands are now investing in presenting their customers with an omnichannel experience that involves a physical and a virtual store!

But before you even begin to think about it, why not learn about the benefits that physical stores offer.

🗣️ Engage Customers Across The Board

When setting up marketing campaigns and strategies, businesses often publish ads for a particular range of ages. They use media trends and user journeys to understand consumer behavior and create personas used to create the brand’s online presence. However, with physical stores, age is no bar!

Physical stores can cater to any age group without any bias. It can also help you attain a new set of consumers that aren’t comfortable with mobile devices but may be highly interested in your product. As every generation’s shopping habits differ greatly, opening a brick-and-mortar store that directly reflects your online experience can help your brand.

🏅 Offers A Varied Yet Unified Experience

An engaging and exciting brand experience will surely bring your customers back for more. If you offer a hybrid experience with online and in-store services, you might increase your retention rate. 

Additionally, a physical store adds another dimension to your social media presence. You can use in-store customers for feedback to be used as UGC content, have a live event covered online, or use it for social media posts and updates. Combining a cross-channel brand representation can help you attain and retain customers.

🌐 Boosts Network

27% of buyers return to the physical store after feeling satisfied with the services. Not only does this help maintain a great but also create a network of loyal local customers that can be fruitful for future campaigns, such as product launches, offline campaigns, live events, etc. 

🤝🏻 Opens You Up To Opportunities

Various brands are now investing in opening brick-and-mortar stores. This allows you to open yourself up to potential partnerships, mergers of physical stores, and campaigns that boost mutual growth. This would bring your business a lot more exposure in the local community.

If you’re in on the idea of a hybrid DTC business strategy, congratulations! You’ve officially taken the first step to become a successful brand already. 

Don’t consider your physical store as a separate entity; instead, try thinking of it as an extension of your eCommerce store, which allows you to bring a better and holistic experience to your customers. Use the information you’ve gathered online to construct products, categories, quantities, and functional features that cater o your customers’ tastes and liking efficiently even in the physical store so they never walk out empty-handed.

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Brand Deals Of The Week 

Land’s End is hosting an amazing sale to help you get dressed in the comfiest clothes you could possibly have. Use their code ‘SOAR’ for a whopping 40% discount!

Lululemon is hosting a special event! Shop for something special for Mother’s Day until May 3rd from their Mother’s Gift 🎁 Collection range.

B-Glowing is running a spring discount sale through a special code: SPRINGSALE, helping you save up to 40%!

Make the most of Bed Bath & Beyond’s flash sale on all products outdoors! Get up to 60% off on a variety of products.

A better mattress ALWAYS helps. Bear Mattress is hosting a special deal too of 30% off & free shipping 🚢 !

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TOP READS FOR THIS WEEK

🗨️Snap’s new AR tools turn photos  into 3D assets

🧑‍🤝‍🧑WhatsApp may get Instagram-style quick reactions to features for status updates 

🔎Google will now enable users to request removals for search results that contain personal information.

👟Nike Pulls out its first weapon to dominate the Metaverse 

🔊 Amazon goes new suburban format

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

SEO Specialist - SEOs For Hire

Digital Marketer - Bread for the World 

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CHOOSE SUCCESS below and have a great week! ‘Get that D2C business runnin’.