Shopify's Big Bet

RSVP to my BFCM Customer Journey Webinar Here!

The TL;DR:

• Let’s Chat D2C: Shopify’s POS Bet.
• What I’m Thinking about this Week: Taking Personalization from Email/SMS to the Website Experience.
• The D2Z Podcast : Getting into Retail, Landing Pages, and Copywriting with the COO of Torque Detail, Dan Sweeney.?
• App Highlight: Okendo Connect and Rebuy’s Smart Cart Apps .
• NEW! Book of the Week: This week's book is Email is Not Dead . It’s a little more tactical than the general business growth books I’ve been reading, and there are a lot of takeaways you’ll want to take note of if you’re trying to improve your email or SMS marketing!
• Upcoming Event - DTCX Webinar: Nailing the BFCM Customer Journey Pre and Post Purchase . Maximize the effectiveness of your BFCM by creating a strong post-purchase experience that will have your new customers coming back for more. The name of the game is retention and LTV!

Random tip: Organize your Slack with Sections. It allows you to group your channels. For example, I have the following sections: Regular Channels, Electriq, Personal, Clients, Internal Teams, Miscellaneous, and Shopify for Wine. Without sections, I’d have hundreds of channels to navigate through.

Let’s Chat D2C - Shopify’s POS Bet.

Shopify just announced POS GO - so let’s dive into it.

First, why the big investments in POS?

Consumers shop omni channel, and Shopify needs to pick up additional GMV as eCommerce comes crashing down from its record COVID highs.?

What is POS GO?

POS GO is a mobile POS device that allows you to take it anywhere. You can even use the built-in barcode scanner to scan items and begin the checkout process as you walk throughout the store with a customer. And you can accept tap, swipe, and chip.

The Power of Combining Shopify with Shopify POS

You have a unified view of customers across their online and in-store shopping history. You can use this information to create unique experiences, both online and in-store, that convert.

For example, I shop at Marine Layer a lot. Since they use Shopify and Shopify POS, I can seamlessly return in-store orders online and online orders in-store. The sales associates in-store already know what size I am, my preferences, how much I’ve spent historically (am I a VIP customer or a first-time buyer?), and so much more.

If you’re a brand, think of the power of acquiring a new customer at your retail store and then automatically being able to nurture the new relationship via your post-purchase Klaviyo email and SMS flows. Even better, create a post-purchase flow specifically for first-time customers from retail, encouraging them to view your entire inventory online with a special code.

You can pre-order it here .

What I’m Thinking About This Week - Taking Personalization from Email/SMS to the Website Experience

As a retention agency, I’m all about personalizing customers' email and SMS experiences. But why stop there?

Personalize the Site Experience

If you’re already implementing personalization into your email and SMS strategy, you have all the data you need to personalize your website experience. As opposed to talking through it, I’ll use a few examples.

Order Tracking Pages

At a minimum, we set up separate order tracking pages for one-shot and subscription customers for every client. We include product cross-sells and strong CTA’s to join the subscription program for the one-shot order tracking page. On the subscription order tracking page, we reinforce the benefits the customer receives by being a subscriber, while also promoting additional product education and the referral program (if you’re a subscriber, you’re more likely to refer to friends).

Promotional Sales

Let’s say you’re running a 25% off sitewide sale to re-engage lapsed customers (in this case, let’s say it’s customers who haven’t purchased in 180 days or more). Instead of dropping everyone on the same home page, implement a top bar banner that says “{First Name}, take advantage of this limited-time 25% off flash sale on your favorite, the {Most Purchased Product}.”

These are just two examples of hundreds of ways you could personalize the on-site experience to be more relevant to your customers and ultimately increase conversion rate.

This Week’s The D2Z Podcast

#30 –?Getting into Retail, Landing Pages, and Copywriting with Dan Sweeney

Listen Now

In this week’s episode, I sat down with Dan Sweeney, Chief Operating Officer of Torque Detail, one of the leading automotive detailing product companies. Specifically, we explored:

• Distribution in brick and mortar and the benefits of getting into retail
• Segmentation to drive attendees to local activations
• Building community in person
• Using landing pages, a strong offer, and well-written emails to convert online

App Highlight – Okendo Connect & Rebuy Smart Cart Apps

This week we’re switching things up. Rather than highlight a new app, I’m highlighting two product announcements from last week from two of our top partners, Okendo and Rebuy.

Okendo Connect

Okendo Connect is all about enabling brands to aggregate more zero-party data. It allows you to gather insights sourced directly from customers about their preferences, behaviors, and experiences.

Here are some of the features:

• Surveys powered by Contextual Targeting: Onsite, post-purchase, shareable link, and post-review surveys. Contextual targeting will allow you to target specific audiences with specific questions (i.e., new vs. returning customers, subscription customers vs. non-subscription customers, male vs. female customers, etc.). This contextual targeting is something I’ve been waiting a while for from survey tools and will make it significantly easier to build out a complete customer profile while ensuring the questions you’re asking are relevant to that person.
• Customer Profiles: Track and record all interactions and data submissions on a master Okendo customer profile.
• Analytics: Pre-built reports, sentiment analysis, and advanced data filtering.

Learn more about Okendo here!

Rebuy Smart Cart

Unless you’ve been ignoring these newsletters ??, you know how big of a fan of Rebuy’s smart cart I am. Now, they just made it even better!

You can now enable apps within Rebuy’s smart cart with one click. For example, add Klaviyo and Attentive email and SMS opt-ins seamlessly to the cart. Or, embed relevant customer reviews from Okendo to increase conversion rate. Give customers peace of mind by offering buyer protection directly in the cart from apps like Route. Remind customers of how many Stamped loyalty points they have. Easily upgrade products to subscriptions. The list goes on!

Rebuy Smart Cart is one of the most powerful tools you can implement to increase conversion and boost AOV.

Learn more about Rebuy here!

Book of the Week - Email Is Not Dead

Fellow Agency Owner and Klaviyo Expert Karly McFarland put together an in-depth book on email & SMS Marketing that you need to read if you’re just getting started with email & SMS marketing or looking to take yours to the next level. My favorite part is the checklists provided at the end of each chapter to audit your existing strategy.?

Key Takeaways

• The Faux Unsubscribe Button: Set up an automated email to your unengaged contacts asking them to unsubscribe. Instead of linking to the unsubscribe button, have the CTA add them to a segment for you to do it later manually. Why?? Providers like Gmail won’t see this person unsubscribed from your emails (hurting your deliverability), and you have ten days to unsubscribe these contacts. Just make sure that you manually remove them from your list!
• Ensure you’re not on email blacklists with free lookup tools like MX ToolBox.
• You must set up a dedicated sending domain with your email marketing platform. The best part is once you set up your dedicated sending domain with Klaviyo, your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records update automatically.
• Rotate your popups frequently (and test them) based on the season, holiday, special promotion, etc., to increase relevancy and conversion rate.

?One of the more interesting findings is that the number of fields you ask for on your popups doesn’t drop your conversion rate significantly. In fact, the average conversion rate for one field is 2.73%, while the average conversion rate for five fields is 2.60%. Use these additional fields to gather information on your visitor that will help personalize the email and SMS welcome flow you send them.

Get the book here!

Upcoming Events

You need to optimize your site's pre-purchase journey before the holidays, but don't neglect the post-purchase experience! Q4 is typically the highest volume of new customers you'll get. To maximize the effectiveness of Black Friday Cyber Monday, your post-purchase journey needs to convert these would-be one-time buyers into long-term customers. The name of the game is retention and LTV!

I'm presenting a DTCX masterclass, Nailing the BFCM Customer Journey Pre and Post Purchase , on Tuesday, October 11, at 3:00 PM EDT.

I'll be joined by:

• Kathryn Browning, Senior Marketing Manager at Justuno
• Derek Booth, Director of Strategic Partnerships & Business Development at Justuno
• Andrew Keller, Customer Success Manager at Postscript
• Lea Algazy, Techincal Partner Manager at Postscript
• Mat Bingham, Head of Technology Partnerships at Okendo
• Lindsay Kolinsky, Partner Marketing Lead at Okendo

You can register for the masterclass here!

Hope to see you there! ??

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