Monday, May 20

🗣 Running a B2B and want to reach 33,441 DTC Brands? Start here

Ask Ibrahim: If you need advice for your business, ask our DTC expert here

WHAT’S HOT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

We love quizzes!

Why? Because you get zero party data (ZPD)—meaning, customers are giving you their data willingly (name, gender, interests, or whatever else you wish to collect), and you can make a cohort of these customers and send personalised campaigns, run specific ads on these cohorts, and so much more! 💰

Ibrahim shared on Friday how you could, for instance, create a cohort of moms and you could’ve sent a personalised email, SMS, and direct mail campaign to the all Moms on Mother’s Day, or a combination of email, SMS and direct mail ✉️

Hyper personalization leads to amazing conversions. It feels like you’re directly talking to that one person, and that’s the best part about quizzes! 😎

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How often should one refresh/test creatives?

In our recent webinar, I was asked, "How often should one refresh/test creatives?"

A mindset shift you must make is, "Your performer ad isn't evergreen. It will decline to perform after a point."

With time, you will notice an increase in CPC, CPM and/or CPA.

Eventually, it turns out to be an unprofitable ad.

Some ads fade in a week, while others sustain for months.

But there's no standard timeline for the exhaustion of an ad.

One of our current performers, spending 50% of the budget, has been running since February.

I allocate 20% of the budget to testing and ensure that I test at least 7/8 ads a week.

Based on the scale of your brand, you can decide on your sweet number.

A simple fundamental I have is that 8/9 out of 10 ads will fail to deliver at the target CPA, 1 will break even (sometimes), and 1 will outperform and consolidate for the rest.

So, if your favourite ad, which took you 2 weeks to ideate, 1 week to produce, and 1 week to edit, fails to deliver, don't be harsh on yourself.

Try 4 to 5 variations of the creative with the slightest changes to your hook, and it 'might' deliver.

If it doesn't, move on to the next creative.

There is an abundance of ad frameworks and ideas to test.

Hope that helps!

IBRAHIM’S NUGGETS

Heyyy,

Hope you had a great weekend!

DTC brands often rush to implement a loyalty scheme across their entire website, investing significant effort in promoting its value, only to face disappointment when it doesn’t deliver the expected results.

When I joined Peel Away a couple of years back, we didn’t have it set up yet. During my podcasts, I used to ask a few Founders if it’s something that has been working for them, and their response would usually be, “Yeah… it doesn’t do much; we’re thinking about removing it.” This experience initially made me skeptical about loyalty schemes.

However, over time, I noticed that loyalty schemes were highly effective for product market fit (PMF) brands. Your existing customers deserve rewards and benefits for their loyalty. Why not show them some extra love and attention for sticking with you? Additionally, it’s much more cost-effective than acquiring new customers.

There are numerous secondary benefits, such as encouraging reviews (if your platform allows), fostering referrals, and more. So why do loyalty schemes often disappoint startups? I believe it’s because they’re implemented too early.

Is it worth setting up a loyalty scheme right away?

Consider this: if you have 200 new customers per month and 20% sign up for your scheme, that’s 40 people. If 5% of them make additional purchases they wouldn’t have otherwise, that results in 2 extra orders, equating to 1% overall growth. While these customers might make more than one extra purchase over time, initially, it’s minimal. Contrast this with having 2000 new customers per month, resulting in 20 extra orders—a much more significant impact.

The real calculation involves a complex combination of order frequency, order value, and sign-up/order rates. This rough estimation illustrates why immediate implementation isn’t always necessary, especially considering:

• The costs of the tool

• Email setup expenses

• Ongoing messaging strategy development

• Customer acquisition tactics

• Understanding normal buying behavior

Once you begin scaling up acquisitions and gain better insights into these areas, it’s worth considering a loyalty scheme.

Your checklist for getting started:

1. Determine what reward level you can offer based on your margins

2. Decide what you want to reward (e.g., reviews, referrals, milestone rewards, surveys for learnings)

3. Choose the tool that best fits your plan (e.g., we use Loyalty Lion, but you can also consider using smile.io or influence.io). I love the fact that Loyalty Lion has direct integration with Okendo (review tool), so we have a reward system in place for customers that submit reviews, and they receive more points when they also submit a review with media)

4. Develop your sign-up strategy for new and existing customers (integrate 1-2 extra emails into your flow)

5. Plan emails to encourage usage (don’t assume customers will use it automatically; share information about the system, points, and new rewards)

6. Decide how to feature the loyalty scheme on your website (a dedicated page is preferable, and you can also have a tiny floating widget on one of the corners, without disrupting any content. If you already have too many widgets, may be consider not adding one more, and just have a dedicated page for it)

Start simple, especially if you’re not very large yet. Avoid complex features (tiers, multiple rewards, VIP programs) initially—these can be explored later.

Recommendation:

Valentin Radu’s book, The CLV Revolution, has an excellent chapter on loyalty schemes (Chapter 13). It covers the benefits and value of loyalty schemes, what programs can look like, and includes a great case study. Highly recommend it for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of loyalty schemes.

The CLV Revolution shows DTC brands how to leverage customer data for profitability by focusing on retaining high-quality customers rather than constantly acquiring new ones.

Alright folks, that’s it for today.

See you tomorrow!

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Have any questions that you need help with?

Ask here - and look out for Fridays Issue where Ibrahim will answer them.