Tuesday, August 29

🗣 Agency owners only, book a time to learn about my new project here

#1 - 🍬 Shopify has a treat for its biggest merchants

📰 TL;DR - According to this report, Shopify is going to be adding new customer support measures for its largest Shopify Plus customers. The details on this are scant, but we do know it’s coming after a report that Shopify is cutting some support for smaller Plus customers. As well, Shopify has been focusing products on attracting enterprise-level customers, even those outside of the Shopify platform. For context, the average Shopify merchant makes $35,000 per year. These changes are going after those in the $500 million per year range.

💡 Insight - Once again we’re seeing very strong evidence that Shopify is betting its future on attracting more enterprise-level customers. Financially, it makes some sense. This level of Shopify users are paying a collective ton in fees to Shopify, making me wonder how it compares to the thousands of small brands paying the base fee. Again, I just hope that this doesn’t signal that Shopify is pulling back from supporting the little guys, which is how it made its name and is core to its philosophy of “making commerce better for everyone.”

➡️ You can read the article here...

#2 - 🎁 How sending free products to Micro-Influencers has helped brands 5X revenue in 2 months

Tapping into the power of social media Micro-Influencers and a platform called Stack Influence that automates influencer collaborations at scale (hundreds of promotions a month), Amazon brands like Unilever, Magic Spoon, and Blueland have been able to grow their monthly revenue by 5X, decrease their ad costs using a war chest of influencer UGC, and build an army of affiliate marketers to consistently drive new customers.

➡️ Get Started Here

📣 If you want to reach our audience of 10,000+ DTC store owners, tap here 

#3 - 🛍️ DTC seeing the value in off-price retail

📰 TL;DR - Some founders may snub their noses at off-price retail — think TJ Maxx, Homesense, Winners, HomeGoods, etc. But others are finding them to be a convenient way to offload excess inventory and potentially hook new customers unfamiliar with their brand. We’re actually seeing some new off-price retail players who take a digital approach and may be more appealing to DTC brands. Comeback Goods, for example, is purely e-commerce and you can find brands like Fulton, Canopy, and Caraway. There are also B2B markets like Ghost.

💡 Insight - The theme here seems to be discretion — DTC brands are shy about being too loud about getting rid of inventory this way. And if being discreet is what you’d prefer, there are certainly options. However I think off-price retail has some advantages, which this article points out. There are a lot of TikTok creators who specialize in doing hauls from these stores. It really is another channel to potentially reach new customers and attract them back to your main sales channel. What else are you gonna do with excess inventory?

➡️ You can read the article here...

#4 - 🛠️ Things worth checking out

🔥 TRENDS - Read AdAge’s weekly roundup of DTC trends and moves.

🤖 AI VIDEO - Video production is a big lift, so here’s a roundup of AI video generators.

📦 AMAZON - Amazon is raising the free shipping minimum for some customers. Read here.

👀 SHOPPABLE CONTENT - No one has been able to crack shoppable content yet, but why? Here are some insights.

🔎 SEO - These tweets have handy tips for finding SEO opportunities using AHREFS.

#5 - 🤖 All about chatbots

📰 TL;DR - This is a pretty thorough guide to chatbots in e-commerce, including what they can do and when they can be useful. Chatbots have become increasingly popular as a CS tool — you might even have one on your own site. The old-school style was to connect you to an agent, but now these are largely powered by AI and can help customers out without an actual human needing to be on call. There are some interesting stats here, too, such as that 90% of customer queries are resolved in 10 messages or fewer and that 88% of customers had at least one conversation with a chatbot in 2022.

💡 Insight - Personally I’m a big fan of setting up a chatbot and programming it to do the work for you. The best uses I’ve seen have a window that pops up with pre-filled queries, such as finding an order, hearing more about sizing, etc. Allowing for self-service saves a customer from having to file a ticket. I’ve also seen cool uses like an AI-powered “personal shopper” that can recommend products right from the chat window.

➡️ You can read the article here...