Thursday, April 27

Today's DTC news, tips, & tools you need to know

April 27, 2023

💄 How AI is driving beauty sales

📰 TL;DR - This is a very interesting interview with the CEO of Proxima, an AI firm that is helping beauty brands streamline their targeting and customer acquisition. Specifically, the use of AI has helped with DTC brands a leg up on the big players, and Proxima says they’ve helped brands:

  • Increase their ROAS by 33%

  • Increase conversion rates by 18%

  • Lower CPA by 32%

💡 Insight - The lightbulb moment for me in this interview is that using AI in this way allows brands to completely skirt around issues of data privacy. Rather, Proxima uses anonymized data from transactions, social media, and other sources to target customers. I don’t mean this as an ad for Proxima, but rather a demonstration of the true power of AI for transforming e-commerce.

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📦 Reduce your parcel DIM weights and save $$

📰 TL;DR - Shoutout to the reader who asked for shipping cost advice — this is for you. This guide talks about how to reduce the dimensional weight of your packages. Essentially, if your packages are physically larger than they need to be, that’s an opportunity to save some money by rejigging your package sizes. This tells you exactly how DIM weight is calculated, so you can do the math for your own shipments.

💡 Insight - Reducing shipping costs doesn’t just save you money, it’s good for customers. High or hidden shipping costs are the number one reason shoppers abandon a cart, so streamlining your shipping practices is actually a conversion booster. You could be shooting yourself in the foot with something as simple as boxes that are too big.

🍺 How JuneShine’s tap rooms boost business

📰 TL;DR - JuneShine is a hard kombucha brand that has opened three taprooms in the US — an example of contextual commerce. These aren’t stores, they’re basically bar-meets-lounges where visitors can sample JuneShine and associate a fun night out with the brand. They’ve curated a party atmosphere with celebrity guests and late-night snacks.

💡 Insight - Most interesting to me is the “halo effect” these taprooms have had. JuneShine said they’ve seen an uptick in wholesale orders within a 50-mile radius of these taprooms. Contextual commerce also makes a ton of sense for food and bev brands. You can look at a shirt online and have a good idea of whether you’ll like it, but it’s harder to predict if you’ll like the taste of something.

💐 1-800-Flowers finds a novel use for ChatGPT

📰 TL;DR - For Mother’s Day, 1-800-Flowers has created a ChatGPT-powered composer to create a poem or song for your mom. Shoppers input some variables, and the program spits out some prose for your mom, grandma, wife, or whoever. You can try it here if you’re so inclined. They’re also going to try out a livestream shopping event.

💡 Insight - Ok, so, to be fair, having a robot write a poem for your loved one feels slightly dystopian, or like that guy from the movie Her, but here we are! I wanted to include this because I think the average consumer will find this neat, even though it’s a relatively simple application of ChatGPT. AI is cool and novel right now and I can see people enjoying this.

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