Happy Sunday and Merry Christmas Eve to you and your family! I hope you’ve set aside 4 minutes for today’s newsletter — I’ll keep it short and sweet. Two main things today: TikTok Shop & Postscript’s new product.
Welcome to all the new subscribers who have joined recently. Every Sunday I talk through something that came up in my day job (running Sharma Brands) that I think can be valuable to the thousands of you who read this email! If you ever have topic suggestions, opinions, or ways to make this email better, feel free to reply and let me know!
Sharma Brands is hiring for a Director of Paid Media, as well as a Graphic Designer. JD and where to apply are linked above.
So today is Christmas Eve, which means you want a Sunday email that’ll take no more than 5 minutes to read through. I was trying to think would be valuable and a quick read, and then I came to the perfect idea.
Most people don’t realize HOW incredible TikTok Shops is working for products that fit naturally into content. Energy drinks, skincare products, beauty products, cookware, etc. It’s all doing so well on TikTok Shop, and most people set it up wrong; it's not their fault.
TikTok shop is something that TikTok’s internal team has been highly focused on building, and they’ve done a commendable job on it. Meta tried to launch their version of shopping, as did Snap and YouTube, but no one has done it as well as TikTok. Not only has it been game-changing for merchants, but they also built the best affiliate program overnight.
Anyone with a TikTok account can create a piece of content, and when they tag a product, they’ll earn a few bucks per sale. On average, I’ve seen these hover between $2 to $5 per product. Some creators are making $700 to $2,000 per week with just a few videos tagging products.
In setting up TikTok Shop, they have a much deeper onboarding for brands. You not only have to link your commerce platform and product feed, but you also have to fill out a bunch of product information, which allows them to segment better and understand what you’re interested in buying, what color shades you’re purchasing, whether you’re interested in all-natural or regular skincare and beauty products, etc.
The personas that TikTok is building in real-time to understand then what you’re likely to purchase and serve you content for those products is why you need to take advantage of this gold rush. Plus, if you run ads on TikTok for something with a low AOV, you’ll 2-3x conversion rate of your ads just by having the Shop integration versus sending people to a website. It’s like ShopPay’s one-click checkout impact but on steroids.
The downside is the AOV is generally lower from TikTok Shops versus your Online Store channel, but if the math makes sense (factoring in CPMs, CPCs, contribution margin, shipping, etc), then why not run it?
The mistake I made when setting up TikTok Shop is using the Shopify app for TikTok to do it. Their app makes it impossible to have a smooth setup. Instead use the “AfterShip Feed for TikTok Shop” app.
Once you install that, set up your products individually in the TikTok Shop. If you can, I would recommend doing it manually, one by one. This way, you focus on writing unique descriptions that make sense in the context of someone who just clicked your product card on a random video. They need to be educated on the problem, how your product is the solution, how your product differs from others, social proof, and reasons to buy. Between the text description and the carousel of imagery, you need to think of that real estate like a landing page.
Include customer quotes in the imagery, awards, use cases, etc. The Simple Modern Amazon PDP images are good inspiration for this lens of thinking (these tumblers are awesome, btw).
Once your product is approved, set up your affiliate program. Add a bounty for every product that someone sells, and begin promoting it in your messaging when talking to creators/influencers or even customers that you identify as more likely to create content.
On TikTok Shops, you’ll notice they prioritize social proof more than anything. As soon as you open up a product card, there is a review score based on reviews collected from customers who have purchased through TikTok Shop only. There is also a counter of how many units have sold. Both things make it tough to get your first few sales but separate you from silly copy-cats down the road.
A friend of mine has one of the most sold products in TikTok Shop, and he now has copycat sellers popping up with a rip-off of his product. However, his product badge has tens of thousands of sales associated with it, making it harder for those frauds to rip him off.
If you’re not planning to get on TikTok Shop, why not? If you have a product that sells on subscription, you could probably put together a higher AOV bundle to use on TikTok Shop. Let’s say you sell mushroom coffee on a subscription basis. You won’t be able to get the subscription token via TikTok Shop, but you can sell a bundle with a higher AOV, a gift with purchase, or even just sell branded merch. If you sell hardware with a subscription attached to it, like a Jolie, then sell the shower head with a prepaid subscription, or just the hardware itself, and in the fulfillment of TikTok Shop orders, add a sticker to remind people to subscribe.
I think everyone should be on TikTok Shop. I’ve had the pleasure of spending some time with their team, and this is just the beginning of what’s to come. This is a big focus for them, and the sooner you are live on TikTok Shops and collecting social proof (purchase count + reviews), the more you’ll benefit from it.
Ok, onto some fun stuff...
Vendor of the Week:
Postscript — The best SMS platform for brands just got a patent-pending update to 3x your opt-in rate.
When you’re collecting SMS phone numbers, there are a lot more rules around it than there are with email. You have to get explicit opt-in from the customer in order to text them. Right now, there are two main ways this happens:
- Two Touch — Someone clicks the CTA on your website, they’re taken to iMessage with a pre-populated message that has a reference code for the SMS platform to recognize and segment you.
- Double Opt-In — You enter your phone number on the website of a brand, they send you a text, and you reply “Y” or “YES” to confirm that you want to be opted-in.
Well, Postscript just launched a third version of it called Onsite Opt-In.
With Postscript’s Onsite Opt-in, once a user enters their phone number into the pop-up, they receive a confirmation code, which the device keyboard automatically suggests to enter. That code completes the opt-in and keeps users on the website, now with their discount or mystery gift activated. Go to the True Classic, Caraway, or Jones Road websites to play with it for yourself.
Brands have tripled their sign-ups and revenue with the new pop-up. If you want to learn more about Onsite Opt-in (which I would highly recommend), book a call with the Postscript team on this link!
LP of the Week:
Today’s LP of the Week is an example used in a retention marketing campaign for Long Wknd.
This page quickly gets to the shop section for the Face Balm with an option to buy multiple units. At the same time, the page does a great job highlighting benefits, ingredients, and use cases for the product.
That's all for this week
I hope you have an incredible Christmas Eve with your families. I’m in Northern California with my family, and it’s an absolute blast to hang out together. Plus, Taco, our family dog, just had surgery for an ACL tear, and he’s doing so much better!
It’s still Sunday night, so I hope you get those 9 hours of sleep, stay hydrated, and have an amazing start to the week tomorrow.
I’ll see you next Sunday, same time, same place.