#96 The Least Boring Weekend Newsletter

June 11, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Good Morning Readers!🌄

Here’s to wishing for a successful day ahead.

H&M is testing some new technology features at COS stores at select locations, along with other retailers who are experimenting with in-store technology. The store will be equipped with a smart mirror in the dressing room to identify the customers’ products and their details, such as size and color, and provide personalized styling recommendations. According to the company, store floors will be fitted with virtual fittings and styling, as well as smart mirrors for new checkout, delivery, and return technologies.

According to a press release, retailers are testing technology at COS stores across the United States, starting from a location in Beverly Hills, California. Alan Böhme, Chief Technology Officer of the H&M Group, said in a statement that the company would test its experience throughout the year.

🪙 Paypal To Allow Users To Transfer Their Cryptocurrencies To External Wallets

📈 Improving Your Lifestyle Marketing Strategy

🥇 Brand Of The Week - Yitty Activewear

🎁 Brand Deals Of The Week

📕 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!

DTC X CRYPTO

Paypal To Eventually Allow Users To Transfer Their Cryptocurrencies To External Wallets

In response to customer demand, PayPal announced that its users will now be able to transfer cryptocurrencies from their accounts to other wallets and exchanges. “This feature has been the most requested by our users since we started offering cryptocurrency purchases on our platform,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, SVP and General Manager Blockchain, Cryptocurrency Electronic Money and Digital Currency at PayPal. 

The new functionality will allow PayPal customers to transfer supported coins into PayPal, send crypto to other PayPal users within seconds, and make crypto-transfers from the app to external crypto addresses, including exchanges and hardware wallets. The customers will be responsible for paying network fees when making external transfers, which are blockchain-dependent and vary depending on crypto assets.

“If the user has cryptocurrency elsewhere and wants to merge it, they can bring it to PayPal from external addresses,” said Fernandez da Ponte. "They can also send crypto to anyone in the PayPal system." 

PayPal gave users the ability to buy, sell, and hold crypto in October 2020. Then, at the end of March 2021, PayPal announced the launch of Checkout with crypto, a feature that allowed users to pay online for millions of businesses. 

“It’s been a natural transition for our users who want to do more with their digital assets,” Fernandez da Ponte told TechCrunch this week. “We see ourselves as an intermediary between the traditional finance and web3 environments.”

The new feature is currently only available to users in the US, and for security reasons, PayPal has stated that it has implemented an additional identity verification process for users before they can transfer funds electronically. 

Improving Your Lifestyle Marketing Strategy

In the last edition, we walked you through the idea of developing a lifecycle marketing strategy, how it can help build your DTC business, and how you can retain and acquire customers to the best of your abilities easily. But just the information wouldn't suffice!

To recap: lifecycle marketing is an eCommerce business strategy that revolves around a continual cycle of customer-first engagement via three personalized channels, namely, on-site, mobile, and email. Hyper personalization when reaching your customers through these channels is key to building trust and long-lasting relationships, which result in effective customer acquisition and retention.

When creating a strategy that’s built on the data collected from your customers for your customers, you must involve automation every step of the way. The only way this strategy would continue working is if it is self-learning and adaptive. If your plan doesn’t learn on the go and evolves accordingly, then your business wouldn’t survive a few months in this ever-changing and constantly evolving DTC market. 

So, is that incentive enough to take a look at your marketing strategy? 

Starting the process of altering your business processes is often the most challenging. That’s why we’ve put together a series of steps to instigate the production of your lifecycle marketing strategy. 

📋 Plan

This is the first step of the process and also the one that requires you to be meticulous about details you may have missed out on, which ultimately led you to miss out on potential customers in the first place.

Lay out your entire existing marketing plan well—from acquisition to conversion. Don’t begin the process of critically thinking about it; simply put it all down to access later. While documenting your existing plan, pair it with your upcoming goals. Jot down a mix of short-and-long-term goals to ensure your process of strategy development doesn’t go astray.

🕵🏻‍♀️ Observe & Learn

During this inspiration phase, understand who you’re directly or indirectly targeting. A good way to begin is by taking surveys, quizzes, and interviews. Some content buckets you should focus on are:

➡️ Loyal Customers

➡️ Unsatisfied Customers

➡️ One-Time Shoppers

➡️ Revisiting Window Shoppers

Using your customers’ feedback, build the marketing strategy you’re working on. Build backward, keeping in mind their daily requirements and frustrations when engaging with your brand online to create a plan that caters to their needs.

🤖 Automate 

Using customer segmentation, you can automate the way you market your products to the customers. Based on their location, recently viewed products, purchase history, and other data, you can start personalizing the messages sent to them across all the channels.

Imagery, time of contact, the channel of contact, product range marketed, and frequency of communication are some of the things you can automate.

🔁 Iterate

Once you’ve built your plan based on the feedback received, you can go ahead and hit deploy. But that’s not it!

Of course, keeping a close eye on the way your customers are engaging with your new marketing plan is essential. Because this new targeted approach may affect different kinds of customers differently. That’s when you come in to tweak around and make changes to cater to your customers constantly.  

And voila! You’re done.

Once you’ve settled into the strategy and find what works for your customers well, you can take the next big step, which is introducing them to new channels of communication. This would not only give you more chances to make stronger connections with them but also open your business to new opportunities. 

Brand of the Week - Yitty Activewear

With amazing body-positivity movement in full swing, along with the promotion of maintaining a healthy mindset when it comes to health and fitness, is causing many brands to pivot the way they advertise their products. And Yitty is no different. 

They made THE best decision of partnering with the feel-good anthem and Tiktok queen Lizzo to launch a new collection of activewear, called the Headliner Collection. The range is size-inclusive and offers new and fresh designs, setting it apart from any other range Yitty has ever launched. The collection has vibrant ad shiny prints and colors; it also includes leggings, shorts, bodysuits, and catsuits—something not any other activewear brand is doing now. 

Lizzo is an inspiration to many, an outspoken activist speaking in favor of self-love and body positivity. Yitty couldn’t have made a better choice! 

Brand Deals of the Week

Lululemon is all set to make Father’s Day very special.

QVC's Beauty Sale is here with Markdown on Clinique, the Isle of Paradise, and IT Cosmetics!

Sur La Table is hosting a special sale on cookware, kitchen tools, and bakeware. Check it out now! 

With Nordstrom, forget the stress of getting your dad the perfect gift! 

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Top Reads of the Week

NESN tests to see whether their viewers would pay to watch their favorite team play this season.

Google is releasing its new Android 13 Beta 3.

Golf Fashion Boutique is now showcasing brands for this spring.

Tesla accuses the civil rights agency of unlawfully suing for racial discrimination.

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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 weekend! Get that D2C business runnin’.