Happy Sunday!

If you’re reading this, I hope you’re sitting down, relaxed, sinking into a couch with your feet up, AC blasting, and a beverage in your hand. On Friday, I celebrated my golden birthday, turning 28 on June 28th, and this weekend was nothing short of a full send. 

If you’re wondering, “Hey Nik, how can I help you celebrate your birthday?” It’s easy — just share your referral link (at the bottom of this email) with someone in the same industry as you to sign up for my newsletter. You can share it with them directly, post it on LinkedIn/Twitter or send it to your friend who’s been trying to launch their own tequila business. Whatever you do, I greatly appreciate it!

For today’s email, I wanted to do something that I can turn into a guide. I gathered 28 individually valuable nuggets/lessons and wanted to put them all together below, ranging from paid media to software, to brand launches and email flows. 

But, before we get into that, a couple of notes for you, as a reader:

Ok, now back to today’s email… I’ll cover nuggets for the entire lifecycle of building a brand from just starting out to the tech and tools you need to launch to tips for landing pages, paid ads, creative best practices, email and SMS, customer experience, organic social, and more. Okay, let’s dive in…

On Starting

When you’re launching a new brand, you need to have a few key pieces:

  1. A really good product or service — There’s simply no room for second-place products in 2024. 

And what do I mean by a “really good product?” I mean that your product MUST solve a problem for the end customer. It must fill a need in their life that makes them want to tell their friends or buy more. 

Here are some signs that you actually have a really good product. 

Keyword: Organically. Paying for this stuff or only having friends and family members try your product and then give you “positive reviews” does NOT mean that you have a good product. 

Especially in DTC, you need at least 1,000 net-new customers who you’ve never interacted with to buy from you and organically tell you it’s good. Then you’ll know if you’re on the right track. 

2. Really strong messaging:

The second most important thing that you need is really strong messaging. This is how you choose to communicate, and more importantly, differentiate, how you position your product or service. 

For example, how differently would you feel about Nike shoes if they messaged them as “Extremely cheap shoes made for $5/hour with basic materials?” vs “Premium athletic footwear for ultra high-performance athletes to excel at their sport.” 

This is obviously a bit of a harsh comparison to prove a point but as you can see, the messaging really matters!!

3. Great content:

In 2024, nearly every business on earth would benefit from having more and better content. Marketing people call content, “creative” and it’s the driving force for every brand.

For content, as I’ve talked about before, you need a robust media mix of videos and static images, great copy, photography, and UGC. I don’t have time to get into every single format, but when you are thinking about launching your brand, here’s what I recommend. 

To get polished images and product-in-use photos for your site, ads, and social media, do one studio shoot and one outdoor photo shoot every quarter or every 6 months.

Then, send your product to 10-20 creators and have them make some variation of these 6 videos: 

  • Unboxing and reviews
  • Product in use 
  • A before and after usage comparison 
  • Authentically sharing the benefits and value props 
  • POV on how your product compares to competition/why it’s better 
  • Day in the life/lifestyle content 

Focus on testing 10-15 different angles and hooks with these creators. This alone will be enough to allow you to get to $1-3K/day. 

4. Organic Social:

I don’t think this is required to make your first sale but as soon as you can, you need to start building some presence on organic social. 

When consumers think about buying your product (especially for a brand they haven’t heard of before), they search for it on TikTok, IG, and YouTube. If you have no presence or a page with 250 followers, that’s not going to inspire a lot of confidence in the consumer! Pre-launch and immediately post-launch, I would invest some time and money into building these pages up as soon as you can. 

5. For Tech:

For tech, I’ll keep it simple here.

I wrote a long newsletter with the subject line: “26 SaaS companies to build out your tech stack” where I share more details on each of these tools.  

For now, I’ll just highlight what you should use: 

  • Shopify to build your digital storefront 
  • Klaviyo for email 
  • Heatmap.com for Heatmats to help you analyze and optimize your LPs 
  • Okendo to collect reviews 
  • Northbeam for ad attribution 
  • Malomo for post-purchase experience 
  • Marpipe for enriched catalog ad creation 
  • Amped for popups
  • Postscript for SMS marketing
  • Disco for product recommendations
  • Elevar for data passback to your ad platforms 
  • Gorgias for customer service
  • Social Snowball for affiliates 
  • Loop Returns for returns

For Launch Day and Nailing Your MVP

Nailing the MVP: 

First of all, before you even launch a brand, I would highly suggest starting with the absolute MVP. (Minimum Viable Product) 

You should always be asking yourself, how can I run this experiment for the least amount of money possible? How can I get some data to let me know that I’m on the right track before spending a lot more? 

To do this, all you really need is a product, an offer, a landing page, and some ads. 

Famously, Moiz Ali (My co-host of Limited Supply and the Founder of Native Deodorant) pre-sold Native deodorant sticks before he had even manufactured the product. He eliminated the risk by gauging real customer demand (i.e real pre-orders, not just getting emails on a waitlist) for the product that he wanted to sell. 

He set up a landing page, sent some traffic to it (via Meta) and got pre-orders for a product that didn’t yet exist! The total amount that he spent in that first month to gauge demand was around $8K. 

In my experience, founders really over complicate what it takes to launch a brand. If you are a first time founder, please don’t spend $250K on a fancy “branding agency” before you validate your product and start generating some sales. 

Just throw up a landing page, create some ads, and send some traffic. With $10-20K, you are going to know if your idea has any legs/interest at all. 

Once you start generating sales, that’s when you know that you can continue to double down. 

My 5-step playbook to launch

Step 1: Landing page and offer

As mentioned, the first thing to do is start with a landing page with a clear offer, some compelling copy, some product photos and a way to buy it.

Once you start generating sales, you should immediately add testimonials and reviews. 

At this stage, intense CRO, adding Microsoft Clarity or heat maps is basically irrelevant. You just need a landing page up that you can drive some traffic to, to generate some sales. 

Remember, Craigslist does 650M+ in revenue per year! Does their website look like a 650M/yr brand? Yea, I didn’t think so. 

Step 2: Organic Social & Ads

Emailing and texting all of your friends about your new product and your launch date is definitely the right strategy but you can’t stop there! You’re going to need some compelling ads if you want to scale. 

That said, organic social is a great way to test and learn before you start running ads. 

In the weeks and months leading up to your launch, you should use organic social to experiment with a wide variety of creative concepts that you think might work as ads for your brand. 

At this stage, you should be testing channels (i.e try some posts on Tik Tok vs IG vs Twitter) and you should also be trying different formats (i.e videos, images, highly produced photos vs UGC content) etc to see what’s resonating online. 

Use the early data and feedback that you get from organic social to head back to your creative laboratory to produce some ads. 

For ads, the only thing that you are trying to do at the 0-1 stage is to find one winning funnel. 

You just need to identify one winning creative type (i.e UGC video) one winning channel (I always recommend Meta to start) but it could be Tik Tok or even Twitter etc depending on your brand, and one winning audience demo (You will have to do some testing to see what performs) then use that recipe to scale it as far as you can. 

Step 3: CRO & Optimization 

Once you have one winning funnel and you are consistently generating sales, then you can get fancy with CRO, email capture popup optimization, new creative types and more. 

At this stage, you should be adding tools like Microsoft Clarity to understand heatmaps and bounce rates, and where you can improve your LPs. 

At literally every stage in a brand’s trajectory (i.e the first million or 100M etc) you should always be doubling down on creative production and testing new angles, variations, copy and messaging + other creative concepts for ads based on everything that you are learning in real time. 

You should continue to fill out your landing page with more social proof, (i.e 500 happy customers) or (250 reviews) or a link to when you got mentioned in Vogue or the traditional press.

These are all great things to add but you need those results first which is why you can’t add them yet in step one. 

Step 4: Email and SMS

At this point you should already have a basic email program that is sending some offers, but it’s time to double down. 

You need to work a ton on maximizing your opt-in rate from your email pop-up form and then spend as much effort as possible writing consistent, high-quality, creative emails to your community to really boost brand affinity, repeat purchase rates, and LTV. 

In 2024, email is still one of the strongest channels in the world for all e-commerce brands. Every brand that I know, still drives anywhere from 15-50% of total sales from their email program alone. 

If you aren’t taking this seriously, you are doing it wrong. 

Step 5: Upsells, Cross-Sells, Product, and Channel Expansion 

If you nail the first 4 steps, I think you will have a clear path to building a multi-million dollar brand. If you want to scale above 3-5M, most times, you will need to keep expanding. 

This often means getting creative with upsells, new products, and sometimes new channels. 

I say “sometimes” because I have seen brands scale to 10s of millions in revenue on the back of one channel alone. 

Can you guess which channel? Just reply to this email with what you think it might be :) 

Again, and as you probably know, there are so many tools of the trade that can help you drive new growth and reach new scale but this 5 step process is exactly where I would start. 

It’s wild because I still haven’t even talked about retail, wholesale, influencers, partnerships, SMS, mobile apps, OOH, CTV, events, link placements in newsletters, sponsoring podcasts, the literal dozens of other things that you can do to grow to 8 and 9 figures as a DTC brand. 

This email is really for that 0-1 founder who is trying to get their first million or 3 or 5 in sales. 

These tactics are the foundation but they are still just the tip of the iceberg for multi-7 figure annual growth. 

On Landing Pages

In no particular order, here’s a bunch of tactical tips to help make your landing pages wayyy better overnight. 

  1. Leverage more social proof from real-world humans, not just models and paid creators.
  2. Don't be so chunky with your copy — get punchy, get savvy, and focus on benefits, not just the value props.
  3. Design for mobile first. 80% of your traffic will be from mobile devices. 
  4. Write copy for mobile first as well. At SB, we write all of our landing page and website copy for mobile first, then design it for desktop after. 
  5. Make your pricing, discounts, and offers more noticeable! Do anything that you can to make the pricing and discounts pop. Use a different color font, or make it bold, use highlights, a sticker etc. 
  6. If you sell a consumable, include your price per use. i.e $1/bottle when you buy a 24 pack of drinks. 
  7. A picture is worth a thousand words. Use a lot more of them. 
  8. Make your pop-up email subscribe form simpler. Don’t ask for their first name, last name, email, birthday, and location. Just ask for their name and email address.
  9. Make your pop-up subscribe form a value added experience. Offer a discount or enter them into a raffle for a chance to win free products in exchange for them entering their email.
  10. Make sure everything you do is ADA compliant! In short, this just means that you need to make sure that your site is accessible to anyone. Make sure that your fonts are the appropriate size and that you don’t have a white font on a light background, etc. For more info on ADA compliance, read this. 
  11. Simplify your checkout experience. A customer should never have to make more than 2 clicks to check out. 
  12. Put your very best offer at the top of the page. This could be a banner bar or just the first bundle that you show being your current best offer on the site. 
  13. Always have a comparison chart! I have never seen a comparison chart on a site that didn’t make me feel more educated about my purchase after seeing it. 
  14. Elevate your design. If your LP doesn’t look beautiful, you’re not building trust. Why spend money to drive traffic to a site that has poor design? These first impressions really matter. 
  15. Always add shipping information and make it very clear. Answer the questions, if I buy today, does it ship today? When does the product arrive at my door? 

On Paid Ads

First, let’s start with ad creative. Here are some of my mental models that I like to follow: 

  1. Create ads that YOU would personally screenshot or share. If it doesn’t perform well organically, don’t make it into an ad. 
  2. Let the data help you decide. If it drives sales, it’s “on brand.” There is nothing worse than a CMO saying “That’s not on brand” and then having their “On brand” creative perform 10X worse than what a native creator knows will resonate. Until you are doing $50M in topline revenue, your “brand” is built by getting your products into the hands of consumers who can use and enjoy what you create. 
  3. Hire actual creators to make your content. Want amazing video creative? Go search for creators who do this for a living and contract them. If they’ve built their own audience online making content like the ads that you want to see, they can often make strong creative for your brand. 
  4. Experiment with all mediums and formats. Until you’ve tried all of the mediums and formats that I listed above, you haven’t tested enough creative concepts for your ads. You absolutely should be doing a “media mix” of statics, videos, studio shot, UGC, comparisons, unboxings, reviews and testimonials, story based creative, ads that are comedic, ads that are serious, founder stories, fully animated ads, advertorials, listicles, articles, holiday themed creative, influencer creative and more to see what works best for your brand. I promise that the learnings from testing all of these formats will be worth their weight in gold. 
  5. Build a “creative reference bank.” Everytime you see an eye-catching ad from another brand or creator online, take a screenshot or save the link. Obviously you don’t want to copy these ads directly, but you should be building creative references that can help inspire elements of your future campaigns. Maybe you like a color, font, hook, or something else. Save it in your creative reference bank to spark ideas for future ads. 
  6. Have a pre-established holiday content calendar and proactively make your holiday promo content early on. Make sure that you have evergreen and sale creative ready for every major holiday including New Year’s Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Halloween, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day each year. Not taking full advantage of these holidays with custom ad creative is always a big miss. 
  7. Match your ad creative to your landing page. One of the fastest ways to boost CVR is to match your ad creative to your landing page. Imagine that you see an ad for a white water bottle, and then, when you click, you are sent to a homepage which features 10 other unrelated products. There’s simply no reason to do this in 2024. If you feature a white water bottle in your ad, send your prospective customers to an LP with a white water bottle featured front and center. This will make the full customer journey feel frictionless and reduce unnecessary clicks. 
  8. Focus on the hook. With video ads, the first 1-2 seconds are really what matters most. How can you grab someone’s attention and hook them with the right setup, shot, or leading question. Test more hooks than anything else. 
  9. Repurpose your top performers. Once you’ve tested 50 concepts, start doubling down on the top 5 highest performing ads. Make 5-10 new variations of your top performers. Try a different opening shot, different music, capital letters instead of lowercase, different overlays, etc. There are nearly endless ways that you can continuously remix your top performing creative. Follow the data and keep tweaking your winners to see if you can continue to improve CPMs and CPAs. 
  10. Focus on clear, concise, compelling copy. I’ve found that the copywriting in an ad can make or break its performance. You typically only have a second or two to catch someone’s attention and get them HOOKED to want to learn more. Here are some of my rules for copywriting. Present the offer first (i.e don’t bury the lead!) Speak in benefits and value props. Use copy to explain how someone’s life will change for the better after using your product. Use CAPITALS, emojis, punctuation, line breaks, etc when necessary to highlight key points. Explain things like your 5. Avoid using big words. If a drunk person, or your grandma can’t understand your copywriting, it’s too complicated! Keep editing until you feel like you can’t remove any more words. Then edit one more time :) 
  11. Low-fi ads work! You don’t need a fancy camera or a high-production value commercial to start selling online. Some of the highest performing ads I’ve ever seen were shot on an iPhone, selfie style. Don’t overthink it and put something out! 
  12. Make ad variants for custom audiences. The more specific the better. Let’s say you are targeting both 24-30 year old men AND women in NYC. Test two variants with one targeted at men saying “Every 25 year old man in NYC needs this product! Buy one, get one FREE, now through Halloween” and run that ad only to men within that age group in NYC. Do the same thing for women and change the copy and visuals to cater to that audience. Watch your CPMs go down. 
  13. Study your favorite brand’s ad library. On Facebook, you can see which ads brands are running. Just go to their page, scroll down to the “Page Transparency” section on the left. If you don't see a Page Transparency section, click About and then click Page Transparency. Click See All in the Page Transparency section. Below Ads From This Page, select “Go to Ad Library.” There, You'll see ads that the page is currently running in your country (if any.) Here you can study these creative concepts and ideas. 
  14. Use Fiverr and UpWork for MVP tests. Want to test a concept quickly and cheaply? Use Fiverr or UpWork and search eCommerce or consumer product ads, etc and hire a creator to test it cheaply. It’s the best hack for broke founders who need help making their first set of ad creatives for their brand. 
  15. Over-explain things for cold-traffic ads. When you are running prospecting ads at a large scale, you often need to “over-explain” the benefits and value props in your ad. If this isn’t a retargeting campaign, then it’s considered cold traffic. For this audience, simplifying the product and re-iterating all of the key value props is a must to get the most out of your media at scale. 

On channels & tactics for top-of-funnel

1 — Meta and Google Ads: The Holy Grail of Top of Funnel 

Meta and Google are the two biggest ad platforms for a reason. It’s because they work. Most of your top-of-funnel ad dollars should still be spent on these two channels with the majority going toward paid social and maybe 10-15% toward paid search. Use a combination of video, image and text-based ads on Meta and then protect your branded search with a small portion of spend on AdWords on Google. Other platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Snap, and Pinterest can also work well. 

2 — TV: The King’s Still Here

TV is the next best place to get massive top-of-funnel awareness beyond paid social. I still recommend using Tatari to buy, manage, and measure your TV spend. The CPMs on remnant TV are incredibly competitive (can be as low as $3), and linear and streaming are great options as well. I think producing one engaging 60-second founder story commercial is all that you need to drive interest and leads from TV.  

3 — Podcasts: The New Frontier of Product Discovery

Podcasts are a sleeper channel and have become a great place for discovering or learning more about new products. This can be both a top-of-funnel and a middle-of-funnel channel for brands. Thanks to hosts with cult-like followings, the conversion rates I’ve seen have been really strong. I think podcasts offer one of the most personal and engaging ways to introduce your brand to potential customers at a pretty healthy scale (depending on the show).

4 — Short-Form Content: Leveraging Current Trends

It’s obvious but short form video has been and still is dominating social platforms and new product discovery for so many brands. Platforms like Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts are surfing the wave of content consumption. Use these platforms to answer the basic questions about your brand and product. Engage with your audience through comments and DMs, and use their curiosity as inspiration for your next video. I’ve seen massive brands like Mini Kanata build 8 figures + in revenue by organically leveraging these tools. 

5 — Creator Seeding: The Influencer Effect

When influencers share your product, it's not just the direct engagement that benefits you. Platforms like Instagram notice who views these posts, lowering your CPM and significantly boosting your top-of-funnel awareness. Remember, it's about who sees your product, not just the immediate sales.

6 — Affiliate Marketing: Generosity Pays Off

By offering a higher commission rate, you can encourage affiliates to actively promote your product. For example, Caraway Cookware's strategy of giving affiliates a significant cut led to really impressive sales through their affiliate efforts over the last few years. Athletic Greens is another strong example. 

7 — Brand Collaborations: Mutual Benefit and Visibility

Collaborating with another brand can significantly increase your general visibility. Consider co-branded giveaways, email swaps, or even just mutual highlights to get in front of new eyeballs and audiences.

8 — Product Launches: Enticing New Customers

Launching a new product can attract a fresh audience and serve as a great way to build new interest. By solving a new problem or targeting a different demographic, you can tap into a customer base that was previously out of reach.

9 — Limited Edition Products: Creating Urgency

Releasing products in limited quantities can spur fence-sitters into action. This strategy works well for brands that can offer unique or exclusive items with limited availability.

10 — Sponsoring Events or Conferences: Build Brand While Building Awareness

Sponsoring the main event or conference in your niche is a great way to get your logo in front of your target audience. It can be expensive, but the halo effect it gives your brand can be strong. There’s also a strong perception of success whenever you see the sponsor of an event. It legitimizes your brand to the consumers in your market/space. 

11 — Billboards in Major Hubs: Get Drive By Traffic and Awareness

Billboards on the 101 or in NYC can be great for top of funnel awareness. I definitely wouldn’t count these out as a way to drive visibility for a new product launch or a great offer for your brand.

12 — Native Ads: Unlock Billions of Page Views on The Open Web

I wrote an 8-page email about how to leverage native ads and why they matter. Just search “8 pages on the $100BN/yr ad category that you aren’t leveraging today!” if you want to read it. The top native ad platforms allow you to dynamically place ads on major publishers for really competitive CPMs. They top native ads platforms (Taboola and Outbrain) both claim to have access to over 7,000 publisher sites including nearly all mainstream media sites that each generate billions of page views per month. It’s a fantastic way to drive TOF for your brand. 

13 — Traditional PR: Borrow Brand and Distribution From Top Publishers

Traditional PR isn’t as powerful as creating your own content but it’s definitely a quick way to borrow someone else’s brand and get fast distribution. Getting covered in Forbes, Town and Country, or CNBC (or just a great newsletter like The Skimm or The Hustle) can still be very effective if you can get it done. It’s also another great way to get social proof. 

On Email

So no matter the size and stage, here are a bunch of essential email flows and some relevant tools that you need to implement ASAP for your brand. 

I would also set them up in this order: 

1. The perfect popup

As I’ve said many times before, the very first thing that every brand needs to do is create a valuable email pop-up on their site. Literally, every single dollar that you spend on paid traffic that’s not helping you convert visitors into contactable leads (aka emails and phone numbers) is an unoptimized dollar spent. 

You absolutely must try to get your site visitors' information every time they visit your store. Then you can exclude them from the pop-up after they opt-in. You should also always disable the pop-up from appearing when the utm_source=email or it is whatever you put for your email traffic.

Once you have someone’s email (and/or phone number or both) you can remarket to them with new offers and campaigns forever (or until they unsubscribe) with high degrees of deliverability.  

Obviously, there are an unlimited number of tools that can help you create the perfect popup, but we like Amped.

Amped has the best pop-up builder and backend that I’ve seen, we also use it for a bunch of other Sharma Brands clients as well. 

Anyway, when it comes to crafting the perfect popup, here’s what I like to see. 

  1. Capture the visitor’s name, email, and phone number. You want their name for email customization and you want both their email and phone number so that you have two ways to contact each subscriber. 
  2. Lead with a valuable offer. This could be a percent off, a gift with purchase, or something else. Remember: emails and phone numbers are a form of currency to your brand. Make sure that you are offering the visitor a fair trade! 
  3. A lead magnet/educational resource. If it’s not a discount, free sample, or gift with purchase, the other approach that I like is to ask the visitor to trade their email and phone number for a really valuable piece of educational content. The best example of this is the Jolie water report where they tell you exactly what’s in your water once you enter your name, email, and zip code. This is the gold standard for a lead magnet IMO. 

Flow 1: The post-purchase email flow: 

I am going to return to the welcome flow in a second (i.e., the series of emails you should receive just after someone subscribes via your pop-up or 1-2 minutes after they make their first purchase even if they didn’t subscribe via your pop-up). But before I do that, I need to talk about the only other email that you absolutely need to have live before sending any traffic to your site. 

This is even more important than the welcome flow so I wanted to start here. 

And that’s the post-purchase confirmation email. 

To set this up, you just have to connect your Shopify store to Klaviyo or Sendgrid and you can make it happen. 

Basically, anytime someone orders, they should receive a branded email from you immediately that includes:

  • A Thank You Note! Start with a thank you message. Bonus points if you include the customer’s name. 
  • Order Details: i.e. a summary of the purchased items, including product names, quantities, prices, and the total cost.
  • Order Number: i.e. the unique identifier for the order, which is important for any future communication or customer service questions that might come up. 
  • Estimated Delivery Date: An approximate date when the customer can expect to receive their order.
  • Shipping Address: A confirmation of the address where the order will be shipped.

When their order ships, make sure they get an email with another personalized intro, followed by the shipping carrier information and an easy link to track the package. The majority of your customer service complaints will come from people who say, “Hey, when does my package arrive?” If you can make that clear upfront, you will save yourself a lot of tickets.

Flow 2: The story-forward welcome flow.

This is the welcome flow that subscribers should get via your pop-up or after they made a purchase. If you want to be fancy you could have different flows for each cohort but regardless, you need at least some version of this for both to start. 

I see the welcome flow as the main introduction to your brand. New subscribers have just given you permission to pitch them on why they should buy from your store… think of it as Shark Tank but for your subscriber’s inbox.

I have a pretty funny way of thinking about the welcome flow, but bear with me over these 6 emails.  

Introduce yourself to them (this is the first date) 

  • This email is you casually introducing yourself, sharing your background, and showcasing some of your value props and attributes — don’t get too formal here but you need to cover the basics. 
  • Timing: Send this ASAP after someone subscribes on your site OR immediately after they make their first purchase even if they didn’t previously subscribe. 
  • Content: Include a warm welcome message, an introduction to your brand story, and what subscribers can expect from your emails (i.e., deals, new arrivals, product guides or giveaways, etc.).

The second date email: 

  • Here’s where you explain why you deserve a purchase… aka, you speak more about the benefits of what makes you better than the competition. For example, if you have a particular ingredient, tell your reader how that ingredient benefits or enhances their life. 
  • Timing: 48 hours after the welcome email.
  • Content: Offer a light discount (can just be something as simple as free shipping or a free sample or gift with purchase)
  • If you use a discount code, make it something easy to remember for later (i.e., FREESHIP or SAVE10)

Email 3: Show off the product:

  • Timing: 72 hours after the second email.
  • Content: Highlight one or many of your best-selling products. Include customer testimonials, social proof, and reiterate reasons to buy.

Email 4: Bring out the receipts:

  • Timing: 72 hours after the third email.
  • Content: Bring all the social proof — Share your best customer reviews, UGC, influencers who have posted, press coverage snippets, what your mom says about the product, etc. If they haven’t purchased yet, this should get them over the edge. 

Email 5: Give them a last chance:

  • Timing: 1 week after the fourth email.
  • Content: Include a great offer to get them to purchase. Talk about what the brand is known for, aka show your hero product, and add more social proof.

Email 6: Give them the benefit of the doubt (if applicable)

  • There’s a chance they don’t want to buy because they don’t trust you.
  • Redirect them to buy in retailers or marketplaces you’re sold at (Target, Amazon, Nordstrom, etc.)
  • It’s much better for them to buy DTC but if this is applicable to you (aka you are in retail) then this email builds great credibility for your brand. 

Having this setup properly means that you can drive sales in your sleep which is the ultimate goal of any business owner. 

It might take a few days (or even a few weeks) to workshop the copy and design of these emails and perfect these flows. 

Still, this alone can dramatically increase your engagement and revenue without you having to spend another second convincing someone to buy.

It’s all automated and once you build it, test it, and realize that it’s working, it can just run!

The other thing I would include here is the founder story email. 

After your welcome flow (or maybe somewhere within it) you should try a founder story email. This could be designed in Klaviyo or it could be a really simple plain text email from the founder so that it feels more real. 

Within this email, you want to share the story of why the founder started this brand and what they hope to achieve with. Explain their personal connection to the brand and why it matters. Remind them that you are still a small business and thank them for being a part of your business journey. Consider offering a custom discount code like “Founder10” for 10% off to drive another sale. 

Emails 7-10: The abandoned browse, add to cart, and initiated checkout recovery flows 

The next essential emails to set up are what we like to call winback flows. 

Again, pretty much all big ESPs that integrate with Shopify can help you automate this. 

Also, fun fact about abandoned carts. 

Research from Baymard Institute said that 69.82% of all online shopping carts are abandoned. That means that 7 out of 10 people who add a product to their cart on your site bounce without completing their purchase. They also estimate that ecommerce stores lose roughly $18 billion in revenue annually because of cart abandonment! 

That’s why these flows matter. 

Think of these winback emails as part of 3 tiers. 

Browse recovery (i.e you send this to someone who was browsing the site but didn’t add to cart) 

Add to cart recovery (you send this to shoppers who have added to cart but bounced before purchasing) 

And checkout recovery. You send this to shoppers who initiated checkout but bounced before completing their purchase. Obviously every email will have slightly different copy based on which tier it is. 

An example of a great abandoned cart email that you could send 1 hour after a shopper session would be: 

Subject Line: Still thinking it over, (Customer’s first name?) Your lip balm and radiant mascara await 

Hey (Customer name) 

We noticed you left some items in your cart and we must say, you've got great taste! 

We understand that life gets busy, so we saved your cart for a smooth return. 

Additionally, to make your decision a little easier, here's a 10% discount on today’s purchase with us.

Your items:

  • Peach lip balm 
  • Paraben Free, Radiant Mascara (True black)

P.S. This discount is just for you and will expire in 48 hours. Don't miss out!

For abandoned carts and or abandoned checkout recovery emails, the best practice is to offer a discount. For users who just browsed, you don’t need to add a discount. Just a reminder that prompts them to come back and buy. 

Email 11: Post Purchase Upsell

The next email to add to your toolkit after the winback series is the post purchase upsell email. In general, you can get pretty technical with your post purchase upsells and cross-sells based on data but the best practice is to send this 1-5 days after they make their first purchase and again 2-3 weeks after if they don’t convert. 

You can use Klaviyo’s integration with Shopify to automatically recommend products in the same category or craft an email using data that pulls from what other customers who also bought this item shopped for from your brand. 

This can all be dynamic and 100% automated for you once you set up the flows. You just have to set up the if this then that triggers inside of Klaviyo to make it happen. 

On Customer Experience

These come from a chat with my friend Jess Cervellon.

When to Hire a CX Leader + The Ideal CX Org Chart 

Another big question that I get from a ton of the brands that I’ve worked with at Sharma Brands is “When should I hire a CX leader in my org?” 

For most brands, you should have done this a long time ago. In my opinion, and also Jess’s, CX should really be part of the core founding team. The right CX leader in your org is going to help you optimize every touchpoint in your customer experience/customer journey from day 1. 

Where you manufacture, what ingredients you use, what your packaging looks like, what your ads look like, what your emails look like, what your support program looks like, how you handle issues, complaints, and negative comments on social media etc are all part of customer experience! 

The best CX leaders know this and are willing to go deep into the details to make all of these elements shine for your brand. 

As far as an org chart, In Jess’s view, there are a few critical roles all brands should consider when it comes to CX. 

First is your Head of CX or Director of CX. This person will set the vision and strategy for what an exceptional CX program looks like at your brand. They will also directly manage all of the other departments/CX related roles in your org. 

Next is your CX Tech Lead who is responsible for researching, testing, and implementing all of the relevant technology and tools that will empower your CX and CS workflows from end to end. These are the folks who get to decide which softwares, chat bots, and automation tools, etc that your brand should be using to make CX as seamless as possible for your company. 

Next is your Customer Support Lead who oversees ticket resolution and manages your team of CS agents who spend all day interacting with and problem solving for prospective customers, existing customers, and returning customers for your brand. 

Next is your Community Team. 

These are the folks responding to comments on social media, doing fun surprise and delight missions for new and returning customers, plus sending out countless DMs, likes, and emails, to make your community feel heard!

Last but certainly not least are your CS agents. These are the folks managing customer support tickets, exchanges and returns, compliments and complaints, and so much more. Depending on the scale of your business, you can have dozens, if not hundreds of full time or part time CS agents depending on the total volume of your brand. 

What Metrics Matter When It Comes To CX?  

If you currently have a CX program in place, here’s how to know whether it’s working or not for your brand. 

For customer support specifically, the basic metrics to pay attention to are total number of tickets, average response time, CSAT, and overall NPS. 

Both qualitatively and quantitatively, if you are getting a ton of negative comments, DMs, and emails about your customer experience, then you know there’s a huge problem! 

Conversely, if customers are sharing your posts, commenting about how much they love your brand, and giving you positive reviews on their unboxing experiences, then you know your customer experience is great. 

The Best CX Teams Build Strong Feedback Loops Which Rapidly Improve Your Brand 

Out of any employee or department in your org, your CX team likely has access to some of the most critical and relevant data that can help you rapidly improve your brand. 

As is probably obvious, your CX and CS leaders are in the trenches everyday listening to real customer feedback, compliments, and complaints. They know (often before many others in the org) when something is working and when it’s not!

As Jess puts it, the best CX teams act as a flywheel for innovation and improvement because they have so many core insights and data points about where to streamline or double down. They can gather this feedback in real-time from their day to day ops, then communicate it to other departments, and help your company troubleshoot issues as soon as they arise. 

Don’t Give Your CX Away To AI

AI is a hot topic these days and many companies are thinking about how they should or shouldn’t use AI tech and tools going forward. 

As Jess puts it, AI can certainly augment and improve your CX program, but you shouldn’t give your brand away to AI. Not only are some of the tools not ready, there still needs to be a core group of humans thinking about CX strategy, resourcing, training, managing, ops, retention, conflict resolution, and more. AI just isn’t there yet. To get great results, you need a combination of people + software to do well. 

What is the CX Team Not Responsible For? 

Okay, so it seems like the CX team is involved in a lot. The best CX teams are involved pre-purchase and post purchase and with all things related to customer support, but what are CX teams not responsible for? 

Well…

  • They are not responsible for your RoAS.
  • They are not responsible for making sure the freight truck delivers your brand’s products to your 3PL on time.
  • And they are not responsible for every negative comment you get on social media. 

Although the CX team does a ton, they aren’t responsible for every single thing that happens in the brand. They are a crucial part of any great team but you can’t expect your CX team alone to be the only department saving the day as you scale. 

Resolving Tickets Before They Ever Arise 

Another unique nugget was that the best CX teams solve problems before they ever arise.

How is that possible you ask? Well it goes back to everything we discussed above. 

If your CX leader has already thought through the full customer experience, they can proactively take steps to reduce tickets before they even arise. 

If they think a customer might have a question, they create content and add it to the FAQ. If they think a customer might ask about a comparison chart, they have already created one and added it to your website.

If they think a customer is going to ask about the delivery status of their order, they’ve worked with the respective email and SMS teams to send proactive updates before that question ever comes up. 

IMO, The magic of great CX is that you don’t even notice it’s there. If the packaging looks great, the product works as described, the emails are on point, the text messages are clear, the community managers are on brand, the FAQs are rock solid, the help center is robust, and your team is solving problems before they even exist in the customers mind. To me, that’s the definition of great CX. It’s so good that as a consumer you didn’t even realize all of the effort that went into making the full customer journey and purchase experience seamless for you. 

On Organic Social

These come from a conversation I had with my friend and organic social superstar, Kendall Dickieson: 

Building a Great Organic Social Team 

IMO, and Kendall’s, the foundation for succeeding at organic social comes down to building a great organic social media team for your brand. 

Way too many brands want to hire a single “social media manager” and they expect them to be an expert strategist, graphic designer, video editor, copywriter, data analyst, and more all in one. 

They want to find unicorns who can do it all, and for the most part, those people don’t exist. Instead, more companies should be thinking about building out their organic social media teams, not just trying to hire a single “social media manager” to run the show. 

In Kendall’s view, here’s what a great social media team looks like in 2024. 

A Head of Social: This person will oversee the organic social team and operations. Alongside the CMO, they’ll define the overall social strategy, select the channels and mediums that your brand should focus on, hire and manage the individual content creators, and oversee all of the content and campaigns for your brand across platforms. 

Your social media manager or channel manager: 

This is the person who actually presses publish on the content and lives inside the brand’s social accounts across platforms. Realistically speaking, a great social media manager or “channel manager” can handle 2-3 platforms at once. Any more than this and you need to hire more help! 

Some creators/functional experts:
Depending on your brand and needs, you want to think about building capabilities that will allow you to excel at different kinds of content formats and channels online. 

Typically that means hiring a mix of graphic designers, video editors, copywriters, and community managers. 

To decide which creators and staff that you want to hire, you’ll need to decide on which channels and mediums that you want to pursue as a brand. 

How To Pick The Right Channels and Mediums 

When a brand is thinking about their strategy for social media, what they are really thinking about are the channels and mediums.

Should we be on Twitter or Threads? IG or TikTok? YouTube or LinkedIn?

Should we be creating long form blog posts? Short form text posts? Vertical videos? Professional graphic design images or funny memes? What should we do and how do we know where to invest? 

These questions are interesting because there are a lot of tradeoffs to consider. You have to think about your overall budget, your timelines, your strengths and weaknesses as a social team, where your audience spends the most time, what kind of brand voice you hope to build, and what kind of content you are actually excited to make. 

There isn’t an easy answer here because there’s a ton of variables. That’s why it’s a great idea to consult with someone like Kendall who can learn the actual context and specific nuances of your brand and then help you create a custom strategy and plan. 

Outsourcing Organic Social 

One of the hottest topics in 2024 is hiring overseas talent and I think if done well, this can be a huge unlock for organic social teams as well. Obviously, it’s still tough to hire, train, manage, and retain a team regardless of whether they are overseas or not but the efficiencies can be huge. I’ve personally had a great experience hiring my EA through Oceans.xyz + some designers and video editors overseas. 

The hard part is typically the strategy, copywriting, and team management to keep your creators focused and outputting high quality, on brand content over time. 

I think a great balance to strike is having a US based head of social and some US copywriters or social media managers and then some outsourced creators. 

Kendall is a little bit more cautious about full outsourcing and I am a little bit more optimistic. Either way, you still need to do all of the same things regarding quality control, strategy, training and management whether your team is outsourced or not. 

Understanding Content Pillars 

As you think about what kinds of content you want to post, you should start by identifying your content pillars. 

These can be centered around your brand values, your product, features, etc or around “categories” of content you want to produce. 

Kendall recommends that a certain percentage of posts should be used to educate, entertain or sell. 

Not every piece of creative needs to have a sales objective, but you need to know what buckets your posts are falling in. 

Are you posting memes to gain awareness and entertain your viewers? Are you posting product education carousels with comparison charts to explain why they should choose your product over another? Or are you posting direct response sales offers and discounts to drive conversions? In all great organic social executions, there should always be a healthy mix. 

Leveraging UGC

For DTC brands specifically, leveraging UGC and the content that your customers and community create for and about you can be a goldmine for organic social. Anytime your product gets posted by a customer, you should always try to engage. 

When relevant, reposting this content to IG stories and/or quickly DMing or commenting on your customers post to ask if it’s okay to repost across your brand pages can be a huge win. 

The larger your brand gets on social, the more customers are excited to post about you which just creates even more UGC! 

As a consumer, getting reposted by the brand account is always fun and it makes me 10X more excited to purchase from them again. It’s a very small gesture, costs the brand nothing, and can have massive impacts on WoM and brand affinity/loyalty/retention over time. 

How Organic Social Plays Into Paid Social: 

Another great point that Kendall made was how organic social plays into paid social. 

In short, organic social should be seen as a “testing ground” where you can try different formats and concepts cheaply before deciding to run paid. 

Obviously, paid is an expensive strategy but testing 30 different concepts on organic social is not. Use organic social to test and learn, then use paid to promote your top performing posts and turn them into ads. 

And that’s it for this week. 

I know there were more than 28 nuggets in there and I hope it brought you some value. On to some fun stuff…

Vendor of the Week:

Levanta — Get ahead of Amazon Prime Day by tapping into Levanta to drive affiliate traffic and sales!

The best part of anything that’s affiliate-marketing-related is that you don’t pay for clicks like you do when you run Amazon ads, you’re only paying for completed sales. Prime Day is July 16th and July 17th, and if you aren’t running a full marketing strategy for it, you’re leaving dollars on the table. 

With Levanta, you can tap into 4,500+ creators, including publishers, influencers, and affiliates. These are people with thousands or millions of followers… or publishers like BuzzFeed, Forbes, CNN, etc. 

You can get set up with Levanta in less than 5 minutes. Just fill out this incremental affiliate revenue calculator with your information, and someone from their team will be in touch. There’s no reason you should not be running affiliate traffic to your Amazon storefront. It’s only paid when you make a sale, and it takes advantage of Amazon’s high conversion rate. 

If you’re ready to start driving revenue to your Amazon store through affiliate channels, click here to request more info.

That's all for this week

I hope today’s email was a fun read and, if nothing else, reinforced some thoughts you had lingering in your mind. I’ll likely end up turning this 22 page email into a deck, so when I do, I’ll share that with you.

It’s Sunday night, so I hope you get those 9 hours of sleep tonight — I know I need it after this weekend. I hope you have an amazing (short) week and I’ll see you next Sunday!