​​Long time no see folks! Getting back on track 🤘

Example of a great brand Everlane going the extra mile to get qualified people to the team. People > tools.

Great easter egg @Everlane 🤘

​​Perfect timing, Gorgias team!

If you don’t know what Gorgias is - how you’re still in ecom? 😅kidding, but Gorgias is an exceptionally great customer support system. Helps to manage all emails, FB/IG messages, comments under the ads inside one covenient interface.

We are using it for 20+ brands we’re working on. Love it!

Do you know that Facebook can hiddenly demote your ads and content? Just to name a few:

- Clickbait Links
- Engagement Bait
- Low Quality Videos

Here is a link to the Facebook transparency guide with all types of content that raise your CPMs

https://transparency.fb.com/features/approach-to-ranking/types-of-content-we-demote/

​​These are 14 actionable things I learned by launching the DTC e-commerce business on Shopify in 2021 as DTC agency.

So grateful to be able to test and scale this brand with our tegra.co team.

Here is what allowed us to get almost $30k in sales in 3 months.

We started to work on it in August from pretty much zero. No Shopify store. Just an idea and an urge to get it off the ground.

To be 100% transparent - we’re not 0 noobs. We’re helping DTC brands launch and scale for 3+ years as DTC marketing team tegra.co

So we knew what to apply right away to get to the baseline of the performance. But what we didn’t know is that it’s not always about marketing, but how the backend is structured.

Let’s get started.


1. Less focus on Facebook (any) ads tinkering, more focus on the offer and CRO.

Don’t get me wrong, creative testing and ad scaling is a huge part of e-commerce operations.

But the biggest bump in our bottom line and ads profitability happened after the CRO audit.

1.1 We’ve learned and implemented a lot from @LandingPageGuys (big up to @oliverkenyon) stuff.

It boosted our conversion rate from 0.5% to 2.5% on average. That is 5x more revenue from the amount of new and recurring traffic!


2. Amplify customer acquisition and retention with email and SMS.

It’s not only about upselling to your previous customer list through blasts.

It’s about squeezing more revenue from TOF with abandoned cart/checkout/browsing recovery flows, popup to collect emails, welcome flow.

2.1 Our go-to here is everything @ecomchasedimond is preaching. Our email marketing team’s bible is everything Chase releasing.

Implementing this is bringing an additional 10% of revenue just from automated flows. Even for a new brand like ours.

2.2 We can’t wait to work more on customer retention through email/SMS campaigns.

For some of the other brands we manage emails for - it can bring up to 45% of bottom-line revenue.

That can make or fail any e-commerce business.


3. Stock management, delivery time, and customer support is the key to customer retention.

Why do I summarize these three? Because these are all about making sure your customers are getting your stuff in time and always know you have their back.

3.1 There is nothing worse than not knowing where your order is and not being able to get feedback about it from the brand.

@tryrushapp has been a cherry on the cake for our stack. So much that we become Rush partners and installed it in all our clients' stores.

3.2 It gets real-time updates from shipping carriers and triggers Klaviyo flows with tracking updates emails.

That creates a truly Amazon-level shipping experience for the customers.

3.3 We connect it with amazing @gorgiasio where we handle all of the customer support tickets from support email, @klaviyo email replies, @SmsBump 1-1 SMS conversations, on-store chat, Facebook/IG comments under our ads, and organic.

To make sure we are always there for them.

4. Don’t expect it to make you money so fast.

Yeah, we’ve seen that. Shopify gurus telling you how they make millions on dropshipping stores overnight.

Just launch your store. Pull in Aliexpress supply automation. Boost it with ads and drink you cocktail on Hawaii.

4.1 Yes, that worked years ago. Yes, you can get lucky and hit the winning product. But the chances are so small that it’s better to gamble in a casino.

This is not a “get lucky” business.

4.2 This is hard work in all the directions: customer acquisition, retention, support, product development, finances, fulfillment, and dozens of other things.

And at the start, you spend more money than you make. First customers are hard to acquire. It’s rarely to be profitable.

4.3 Not when you test so many things. Not when you don’t have product-market fit.

We spend $1 to get $1 in revenue. And then we have COGS, subscriptions fees, shipping fees, payment fees. Not to talk about stuff we need to pay.

4.4 But we’re building a business here. Not get rich fast Ponzi scheme. The business that can be sold for 3-5x yearly profit.

It’s an investment.

Following this long-term mentality is what helps you get to the point, where it takes off.

At least it is for us 🙂


Le Finale.

Let me know if you have any questions (and follow if you feel so) @iamgalba and @hellotegra on Twitter and Instagram.

I’m going to make an update on this brand's progress at the end of Q1 2021. Tell me if there is something else you’d like to see in the next TLDR.

Happy New Year 🤘

The more we spend on Tiktok ads, the clearer it becomes: Tiktok rely only on its own data. Having pixel installed and collecting data generated by other platforms doesn’t help.

Only your money spend ON the platform. So we keep patient and invest money upfront 💰

Hey guys! Anyone scaling the brand in the women jewelry or related niche (women apparel etc)?

We at tegra.co own the jewelry brand doing about $30k monthly in sales and looking for brand collaborations with brands in relatively similar weight category. I was just thinking about Brand x Brand types of collabs, or reusing email list if not competing.

Ping me up in the DMs @iamgalba if you’re interested.

​​When to start working on customer retention? I'd say from day 1.

But we always have limited resources and due to this fact have to prioritize. There is a great graph on how to spread the focus between acquisition vs retention depending on the sales volume.

​​I have a limited amount of invitation codes for TripleWhale with a 10% discount. Works for both TripleWhale and TripleWhale Pixel. Just use 'tegra10' in the Invitation code field at https://triplewhale.com/

Ps. we were blown away by how convenient this tool is at measuring all traffic channels' performance: Facebook/Google/Tiktok/Klaviyo/Attentive. Especially when paired with Pixel

https://youtu.be/g2u84RqlJNE

This is great. About realistic expectations of Facebook ads and other customer acquisition performance KPIs.

Why even 2-3x returns on cold ads is a miracle really. Hosts are owners of 8 figure brands

​​These are Top 7 skill building habits I persuade and preach as a business operator at tegra.co

- Stack skills on top of each other, they will grow exponentially valuable

- Everything that doesnt work as it should in your business is 100% your fault and a manifestation of a skill you are lacking

- Put your ego aside and amit that you have a deficit/lack a certain skill/knowledge

- Identify what the next skill you lack is and pursue it aggressively

- Don’t save insignificant sums of money, invest it in skills instead

- You don’t need more things to make more money, you need to focus on one thing

- But go deep and broad with the skills around this one thing and productize it

​​Yesterday was the biggest day for one of our clients - DTC brand in apparel niche. $163,590 in one day.

That is 10x from the biggest days they had a year ago when we started to work head to head.

High-level secret sauce:

- multi-channel acquisition
- customer retention
- deep CRO work

Low-lewel Secret Sauce:

- Google RDSA
- Google Shopping Layering
- Google Brand Keywords
- Facebook Sneak Attack
- Facebook Nuke
- Facebook DPA
- Tiktok Value Optimization
- Tiktok Native Creatives
- Email Almost Daily + Segmentation
- 10+ Email Flows. Basic and Advanced
- Sms Conversional + on Brand
- Cro PDP Testing
- Cro Catalog Optimization
- Cro Price Testing
- Cro Average Session Per User Optimization
- Concentrating on Top Acquisition Products
- Etc
- Etc
- Etc…

= Overnight Success 🤘

What are the 8 most exciting features Shopify released a huge Summer “22 update?

https://www.shopify.com/editions/summer2022


1. Shopify Audiences

Imagine you can get a hashed email list of your perfect customers from the whole Shopify network and use it to create custom and LAL audiences?

This is it

shopify.com/audiences

* for Shopify Plus only


2. Shopify Linkpop

This one is there for a while but is a very underestimated one. This tool allows the creation of a nice mobile-optimized landing page to attach to social media profiles

https://linkpop.com/


3. B2B on Shopify

This is a long-waited feature and pretty explanatory. You can load your b2b customers there, control invoicing and bulk discounts.

* Shopify Plus only

https://www.shopify.com/plus/solutions/b2b-ecommerce


4. Shopify Markets

No more hustle of multi-currency or language for international merchants.

It’s not specifically a new feature, but must have.

shopify.com/markets

We use it for our brand pharah.co and it’s amazing.


5. Shop Cash Boosts

Incentivize your customers to use Shop Pay and get cash bonuses. Needs $5k commitment.

https://www.shopify.com/shop-cash-boosts


6. Multiple discount codes support

Now customers can apply codes for % discount and free shipping simultaneously.

https://www.shopify.com/discounts


7. Shopify International 2-day fulfillment

It’s available only for US, UK, and France for now, but it’s a logical move for Shopify to help merchants with order fulfillment.

https://www.shopify.com/fulfillment


8. Shopify Promise

Applied for fulfillment merchants are getting a nice 2-day guarantee badge on the product pages

https://www.shopify.com/shop-promise


That’s pretty much all of the major updates we are excited about at tegra.co DTC marketing team.

Did I miss something? Let’s chat in replies 💪🏾

The question that I get often is what's the best way to warm up a new ad account? Should you go for a lower intent event such as VC, then ATC then PUR, or just straight to PUR?

Well, the answer is “it depends” and I'll try to break it down by traffic source in this thread 🧵

Facebook ✅ Yes, straight to PUR works the best on Facebook. The platform is mature enough and use historical data to ramp up and give you qualified prospects without ATC warming up.

Google ✅ Yes as well. An important point though! You should have your ATC and IC as Primary optimization events to feed the AI.

But only PUR should be the Primary and the Account-default goal on the account and on the campaign level.

Tiktok ❌ For Tiktok you’d better go for ATC before you get 100-200 ATCs and then switch to IC or PUR (technically create a new ad set actually)

We spent $1M+ on Tiktok. Tried all of them. No, straight to PUR doesn’t work well.

Pinterest ❌ The same as Tiktok - the platform needs to accumulate data first until it understands who your perfect customer is.

The best way to do it is to start from ATC optimization and get at least 30-50 ATC events per week. As soon as there are 200+ you can switch to PUR.

I don't cover other platforms on purpose. We don't use them for our brands and brands we manage marketing for.

The stack of Pinterest, Tiktok, Facebook being TOF, and Google for MOF and BOF does magic for us.

If you find it helpful, support it with a comment 🤘

Also, feel free to subscribe to a weekly value newsletter on my twitter @iamgalba

Have a strong week gents!

​​Strong retention is what separates 3-10+ MER e-commerce brands from 1-3x MER.

Yes, there is still a way to be very efficient with the ads and win with just a direct response ads approach. But there is so much left on the table.

Last 30d retention revenue $231,899. 35% of total revenue

​​This is a big leap of Tiktok towards popularizing Spark ads. And here is why 🧵 Thread

Historically, Dark ads pretty much always outperformed Spark ads for us.

And there is a reason for that: the only thing you could click on Dark ad is CTA to the landing page.

When for Spark ads you could click on the profile picture as well. Similar to how the ads work on Instagram.

There is “the good”, and “the bad” about it.

The good is that a prospect can get familiar with the brand. Learn more and consume other brand content.

This works well for mid to high-ticket products where people do not usually buy from the first touch point.

But rather prefer to weigh things and make an educated decision.

The bad on the other hand is that a prospect can get lost there and get back to swiping the feed mindlessly.

We paid for the impression, we got the click but lost the chance for the conversion.

So what Tiktok did to make Spark ads the best option from both perspectives?

They now show the landing page side by side with the Tiktok profile.

Attaching the screenshot of what it looks like.

And that potentially should decrease CPA by 37%.

Looks promising. We’re definitely going to give it a shot.

What is your experience with Dark ads vs Spark ads?

Comment below if you want me to send you Spark Ads Profile Landing Page one-pager from Tiktok 🤝

​​E-commerce tip to pump $3.7k worth of sales in a single day.

Test multiple products in ads.

Give your customers options allowing them to choose the best product that fits their needs.

There are many ways to test multiple products. The best way for us so far is to run either Standard Shopping or Performance Max campaigns on Google ads.

Why not Facebook? To eliminate the creative variable. On Shopping it’s just the title, photo, and the price. Pure product test

Another way would be to run Facebook catalog ads on the TOF audience. Not a big fan of it after iOS14. Needs a lot of budget to optimize to drive qualified prospects.

Google Shopping on the other hand drives only high intent prospects that Googling “Buy productname”

Getting new customers is great, but 30-40% of your revenue comes from repeat buyers. This is how established brands create millions in sales.

Here's what you can do to increase customer retention 🧵

1) Segment your customers.

Create small campaigns tailor-made for frequent and casual buyers. You don't want to fill up their inbox with all of your emails, and annoy them in the long run. This improves deliverability which increases your open rate and click rate.

2) Create a bond with your first-time buyers. Schedule a sequence of 10-20 emails spread across a couple of months Make them familiar with what your brand is all about.

TIP: Don't be afraid to put promotional emails in the sequence, but don't overdo it. Set up additional flows like cross-sells, site abandonment, and back-in-stock. These flows can create more revenue opportunities for your brand.

3) Always A/B test your emails

It won't cost you a single dollar to create variations for your campaigns and flows. Send these variations to different segments and you'll see the difference it makes in your emails.

TIP: Collect data on these emails so you can measure your improvements.

4 Easy Offer Amplification Techniques That Should Be Applied To Almost Each DTC Brand (in case you forgot)


1. Social proof
• 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Rating: 4.9 Out Of 5 (49000+ 5 Star Reviews)
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• Authority + Bestseller: Amazon #1 Bestseller
• Many customers: 50,000+ Happy Customers


2. Guarantee & Risk Reversal
• Money Back (100% Money Back Guarantee)
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• Free Replacements & Returns (100-Day Hassle Free Returns)


3. Shipping terms
• Free shipping (unconditional)
• Free shipping on $50+ orders (conditional)
• 2-Day Shipping (Express)
• Same day delivery (Insanely effective, but not for everyone)


4. Discounts
• First order (20% OFF First Time Customers Only)
• Flash-Sale | 3 Days Only | 30% OFF
• 2-Day Shipping (Express)
• Same day delivery (Insanely effective, but not for everyone)
• BOGO - the same as a 50% discount, but the AOV is twice as much.