But business being business, we’re making some moves…

And today, we have exciting news to share!

SmarterDTC is becoming “Conversations that Convert”

This change has not come without obstacles of course.

Over the last weeks, we haven't been as active as we usually are, and it hurt us. But there is a good explanation, as we've been busy planning the next phase of the SmarterDTC.

Why are we changing the name?

We started SmarterDTC because we thought we could bring something new to DTC brands - something others are not talking about.

And we knew WhatsApp Marketing and Conversational Commerce, are a field where we can share a lot of value. We just didn’t know how much brands need it.

There is a clear gap in knowledge around Conversational Commerce.

So we will fill it up for you.

Our new name, Conversations that Convert, reflects our commitment to helping you have better conversations with your customers.

Conversations that bring value, and convert.

What to expect from now on?

Every conversation is an opportunity to build a relationship with your customers, and we will help you make the most of them.

For now, be ready for what is coming:

We will be more active
We will be more alive
We will be more valuable

When will this change start?

As of right now! Next weekend you will start receiving newsletters under the new name, and with an even more clear focus on Conversational Commerce.

What changes for you?

You won’t notice too much for now. Simply mind the new sender’s name in your e-mail list!

Anything else?

For now, this is it. In the future… much, much more is coming.

Cheers,

Your Team 🙏🏼

Niels & Guillem

P.S. Thank you for being a part of our journey so far, and we hope to keep you even closer as we grow into the next phase.

Whenever you're ready to grow your DTC brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your brand needs, and I’ll help you come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue via Direct Marketing.

And what’s any marketer's favorite way to measure stuff?

UTM parameters.

What are UTM parameters?
Plain and simple, UTM parameters are information you add to any URL to be able to run analysis on the performance of your digital efforts in Google Analytics.

Hopefully, you know what I am talking about. Even if you don’t, you are using them all the time. Advertising platforms know you use Google Analytics, so they make it easy for you and embed their own parameters in any link.

And that way, when you pop up your Google Analytics traffic is already divided into different sources like Facebook or Google.

But WhatsApp does not have that built-in, so you have no way to measure the performance of your campaigns.

Or, do you…?

Create UTMs for your WhatsApp Strategy

Do not worry, it is easier than you think.

You do not require any technical skills, and with the right help the whole process will take you just a few minutes. We want to make it so easy that we will even share a free tool below that automates the process.

For now, just follow along!

Step 1: Set Up A Good Naming Convention

First things first, a good naming convention.

I would put some examples of my own, but the truth is that Maximilian from Klar makes a superb job explaining this, so I will borrow his.

There are 2 building blocks to take into account:

• Dimensions: variables you want to track on each parameter

• Separators: character used to divide each dimension within a parameter

This seems overly engineered at first, and not that relevant. But as your account grows, and the number of campaigns and tests you launch increases it will become absolutely vital.

A clear structure will make navigating your google analytics easy, and it will help you analyze your performance based on different dimensions.

On top of this, there are some simple rules you must follow when creating this convention:

• Use lowercases everywhere in your naming. Google Analytics will differentiate things like whatsapp and WhatsApp only because of the cases, so keep it consistent and use lowercase only.

• Use underscores as spaces in between words, you cannot leave spaces between words and reading pink_dress is much easier than pinkdress.

• Add always dates in the format YYMMDD in your Campaign UTM. A format like DDMMYY would make it a nightmare to rank by overall historic date.

Good, with this we are ready for the next important step.

What the heck should we measure?

Step 2: Decide What To Measure In Each UTM Parameter

Deciding what to measure is vital.

If you do not measure it, you cannot analyze it, so you won’t improve it. That is why this step might be one of the most relevant ones.

This should change based on your strategy, your customers, and what you are interested to know more about. But there are some best practices you can use to inspire your strategy.

Source and medium

Generally, source and medium will depend based on your marketing mix and will include everything from google, to facebook, and tiktok.

For this article we focus on WhatsApp so it will be easier.

• Source

  • for WhatsApp campaigns = newsletter

  • for WhatsApp flows = automation

  • for WhatsApp quick-replies = direct

• Medium = whatsapp

The source changes based on the type of activity that triggers the user to interact with your link. The medium in this case is always WhatsApp, so that is easy.

Campaign

Your UTM campaign should represent your strategy and what are you interested in measuring most. Some typical dimensions are:

• Geography = different markets where you target your campaign

• Intent = what is the result you are optimizing for

• Campaign name = to give you an understanding of the content

• Date = all the above can repeat over time, so adding the date helps differentiate

Term

Your UTM term can help you perform A/B tests that are related specifically to your target group. Some frequent dimensions are:

• Audience type = represents a segment of your audience, for instance “engaged subscribers” or “VIP clients”

• Audience detail = provides more detail into the audience type, by adding an extra layer of detail like “days since last purchase”

• Demographics = things like gender, or age can be super useful in differentiating your campaigns

• Persona = similar to demographics, it helps segment your audience but in this case based on qualitative factors you might have recorded in tags

Content

Your UTM content also helps go even deeper and perform A/B tests, in this case specifically for the type of template you use. Useful dimensions are:

• Template type: is your template a text, image, quick-replies, buttons, etc.

• Template name: the actual name of this template

• Offer: what are you promoting on this campaign

• Motivator: what are you using to motivate the sale, scarcity, fomo, etc.

• Destination: what page is your link directing the user to?

• Testing variable: for different version of the same template, add here the variable

And this is it!

With these 5 parameters you can build beautiful links that are also easy to track and analyze. Something just like this…

www.YourWebsite.com?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=whatsapp&utm_campaign=dim1.dim2.dim3&utm_term=dim4.dim5.dim6&utm_content=dim7.dim8.dim9

Onto the last step… how do you build these?

Step 3: Create Your Links With Our Tool

You thought you would have to create all these links manually?

Hell no!

The easiest thing you can do is build a simple spreadsheet that lets you build these links consistently, and store them over time.

Or even easier, just use this template we have created for you.

Step 4: Analyse Your Performance in Google Analytics

What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get managed.

But what doesn’t ger analyzed, it doesn’t matter if it was measured.

Even if you do everything explained before, do not expect magic to happen on its own. You will need to dive into Google Analytics, analyze the performance of your WhatsApp efforts and iterate.

If you are here for the long haul, you need to put in the work.

And if you don’t want to do everything manually, use tools like charles that integrate with your Google Analytics and make the whole process seamless.

Let us know how it goes! (or if you need help)

Cheers,

Your Team 🙏🏼

Niels & Guillem

Whenever you're ready to grow your DTC brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your brand needs, and I’ll help you come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue via Direct Marketing.

Well, if you look at it like that…

It will be.

Change the paradigm. See it as an asset. Find opportunity in the chaos. Customers having questions means they are looking for solutions.

Solutions that you can provide.
That your business can solve.
That your product can fix.

These days, customers expect fast and efficient support from the businesses they deal with. WhatsApp offers a convenient and cost-effective way to communicate with your customers in real time.

In this newsletter, we'll explore how to use WhatsApp for customer support and how it can benefit your business.

How to turn customers into loyal fans.

Why WhatsApp for customer support?

There are 2.24 billion active WhatsApp users every month, and growing.

That is a quarter of the world.
Yes, 1 out of 4 people in the world uses WhatsApp.

Those are pretty good odds that your customers use WhatsApp too.

Also, for free with WhatsApp Business you can:

• Reply directly from mobile & desktop

• Easily send images, videos, documents, and even voice notes

• All data is end-to-end encrypted with consumer privacy & GDPR

If you need more, move to the WhatsApp API and:

• Automate customer support flows

• Have infinite agents managing 1 number

• Enrich your customer profiles with data from the chat

• Send auto-replies, use message formats, and have real conversations

• Connect it to your shop or CRM and turn support into sales with 0 friction

From there you can expand, scale, and grow like crazy. Like my favorite quote on Customer Experience says…

Anyway - how do you set this up?

The Actual WhatsApp CX Guide

The ACTUAL guide. Let’s go.

If you are just starting, you can set it up in 1 day.

It won’t be perfect, but it will give you insight into your customer support, your customers’ needs, and how your product really helps them.

1. Start below 500 contacts with WhatsApp Business

2. Completely fill out your Business profile in the app with logo & details

3. Customize your profile with your product catalog

4. Create your labels to categorize customer inqueries

5. Assign different team members to handle customer inquiries

6. Set up in-app templates to quickly reply to frequently asked questions (FAQs)

After that, let’s see how to step up your game.

When you go above 500 contacts…

This is when we move to the WhatsApp Business API.

There’s a good and a bad with this.

• The bad: you will need a WhatsApp Business Solution Provider to operate it effectively. Basically, the software from another company that integrates with your WhatsApp.

• The good: its functionalities are not even comparable, from automations to collaborating with your support team, to integrating with your other tech stack.

  

How to get started? Do this.

1. Choose your most relevant use case: Marketing, Sales or Support

2. Find a WhatsApp Business Solution Provider that can serve you best on this

3. Connect your business number to their software

4. Create automated flows on recurring situations

   1. Sales: automate your product recommendations, upsells, cross-sells and resells

   2. Support: automate order management, FAQs, assigning agents & delivery tracking

   3. Marketing: send hyper-personalized campaigns to audience segments

5. Brace yourself and start living in the future.

Best practices for using WhatsApp for customer support

Being available for your customers where their friends are is already 80% of the game.

But you can go the extra mile, and stand out from the crowd.

Optimizing for your own business processes:

• Use chat templates to save time and ensure consistency in your responses

• Use WhatsApp's broadcast feature to send mass messages to your customers

• Use WhatsApp's label feature to organize and prioritize customer conversations

• Train your team on how to use WhatsApp effectively for customer support

Your customers will love you.

Your team will love you.

Benefits of using WhatsApp for customer support

Offering support in WhatsApp is the first key step to uncovering the full potential of WhatsApp and its efficacy for marketing.

Soon enough you will see it reflected in your numbers:

• Increase ROAS by increasing Customer Lifetime Value

• Long-lasting customer relationships for increased CLV

• Reduce CACs through reconverting existing customers

• Increased customer satisfaction and loyalty

• Reduced response time and improved efficiency

• Reach people right where their friends are on their main messenger app

WhatsApp is a powerful tool for customer support that can help you provide fast, efficient, and personalized service to your customers.

Once you move to marketing, follow this guide and check out last week’s 7 creative campaign ideas:

The Smarter DTC Newsletter

7 Creative WhatsApp Campaigns

By now you have hopefully tried WhatsApp marketing. And made some money. But how do you keep campaign ideas coming? There are many good sources of inspiration. From your competitors’ campaigns, to your most frequent questions, or even your customers’ success. But still, WhatsApp is new as a format and it is hard to find good ideas that fit…

Read more

3 years ago · Guillem Oliva and Niels Post

Start with WhatsApp for its massive reach. Stay for its massive potential.

Build stronger relationships with your customers.

They WILL remember you.

They WILL come back.

And you WILL make money.

Let us know how it goes! (or if you need help)

Cheers,

Your Team 🙏🏼

Niels & Guillem

Whenever you're ready to grow your DTC brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your brand needs, and I’ll help you come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue via Direct Marketing.

And made some money.

But how do you keep campaign ideas coming?

There are many good sources of inspiration. From your competitors’ campaigns, to your most frequent questions, or even your customers’ success. But still, WhatsApp is new as a format and it is hard to find good ideas that fit.

The good news? You do not have to.

Here’s 7 Creative WhatsApp Campaigns:

#1: How To’s

People love to learn new things, and “How To’s” are the perfect way to speak to your customers’ curiosity.

Why do I like it?

• Is not seen as salesy, as it speaks to your customers’ curiosity

• It is value-based, very engaging, and a great way to build community

• Can be a great opportunity to x-sell related products in a very natural way

#2: Private Sell

Making things selective or exclusive is one of the most powerful marketing tricks ever created to increase perceived value. Now, you can leverage WhatsApp to accomplish this no matter your product:

Why do I like it?

• People love to feel special, it increases the perceived value

• It is a great excuse to add discounts without being seen as a “discounter”

• Exclusivity sells… and a lot. (Ask Bernard Arnault about it $$)

#3: Emoji Codes

Novelty is attractive, and fun is engaging. Using emojis to create codes that give access to special events or promotions is a great way to leverage WhatsApp to create unique experiences:

Why do I like it?

• It is fun, different and very versatile… 3 things people love

• Can work to drive traffic to your store, event, or other similar occasions

• It can also be used to create an exclusive experience for selected customers

Enjoying these tips?
Then make sure to subscribe to receive one newsletter a week with the best tricks to learn about WhatsApp and become a Smarter DTC.

Subscribe now

#4: Event Maps

Going to an event can be overwhelming and it always requires ways to help people navigate the space. Now you can use WhatsApp, and collect valuable phone numbers in the process that you can use in the future:

Why do I like it?

• It is super useful for people, everyone hates feeling lost

• Extremely effective to collect opt-ins that can be used in the future

• Can be used on-site to cross-sell food or up-sell tickets into VIP

#5: Chain Discounts

Virality loops are key to any product’s success. With the help of discounts as incentives, and WhatsApp as a channel you can create “Chains” that grow faster than you can count:

Why do I like it?

• People love discounts and challenges, so you have guaranteed engagement

• It is a great way to acquire new customers for free (or at a controlled cost)

• Creates a big pool of warm leads to sell to when you are ready

#6: Segmentation

Personalization is important, we all know. But how to personalize effectively? Via segments. And WhatsApp is crazy powerful at it:

Why do I like it?

• Makes it super easy for customers to interact, and is super useful for brands

• Provides highly relevant and accurate information about your customers

• You can follow it with tailored campaigns to get value from moment 0

#7: Half time, half price

We all try to leverage big events like football matches for our brands, but it is very hard to do anything meaningful. This campaign solved the problem, use the half time to make a relevant promotion only then!

Why do I like it?

• Timing could not be better, and if your campaign is relevant you will win big

• It creates urgency by default, since the promotion is limited by nature

• It is fun and different, people will remember you for your creativity

So that is friends, no more excuses allowed to send boring campaigns.

Take these 7 ideas and see how you can use them for your business. Maybe not all of them will work, but some you can reuse multiple times.

We hope this inspires your creativity, and create some others of your own.

And let us know how it goes!

Cheers,

Your Team 🙏🏼

Niels & Guillem

Whenever you're ready to grow your DTC brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your brand needs, and I’ll help you come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue via Direct Marketing.

Automation & Relationships.

Personalization & Conversations.

That’s how it is. Are you onboard yet?

Let’s break it down and explore what’s possible.

Why care about WhatsApp Automation?

Well, like above, it’s the future.

You may have heard of chatbots, and while they are not bad, they often don’t get the job done.

To achieve success in eCommerce, your communication needs to be personalized. Marketing automation is one way to digitalize your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). And WhatsApp is a means to lower the threshold for customers.

WhatsApp has over 2 billion monthly active users globally, making it impossible for businesses to ignore. Especially for DTC brands.

The customer has more complex needs every day, and chatbots or automated flows help streamline your processes and improve both engagement and relationship building.

Bots are invaluable, but not enough.

People do not like bots, people like to chat with friends over WhatsApp.That is what we dive into today…

WhatsApp automations, the benefits and use cases!

Direct Benefits of WhatsApp Automation in DTC

By automating marketing, sales and support on WhatsApp, DTC businesses can:

• Increase efficiency

• Improve customer experience

• Extend Customer Lifetime

• Get a higher Return on Adspend

• And, scale time-efficiently

The potential of your automation is only restricted by your imagination.

Automated workflows can handle customer inquiries, order management, and promotional campaigns 24/7, reducing the need to scale with people and saving time and resources.

Personalized, relevant, and timely automated messaging provides customers with a seamless experience that enhances their loyalty and engagement with the brand.

Use Cases You Should Implement NOW

WhatsApp automation can be applied to various business processes, including customer support, order management, and marketing.

Let's take a closer look at some use cases and example flows:

Automated Customer support

This is probably the case that comes to mind when we say “chatbot”.

Automated customer support helps your store handle customer inquiries, provide answers to frequently asked questions, and escalate complex issues to a your support team only when needed.

It is a great use case, but the focus is on lowering costs rather than improving customer experience or driving revenue.

Now you can use WhatsApp to turn it into the first point of contact for users. Connect it to your other systems so everything works on its own.

Example of a Business (B) & User (U) conversation

B: Greeting message: "Hi there! Thank you for contacting us. How can we assist you today?"

U: Order status inquiry: "Hi, I'm checking on my order. Can you tell me where it is?"

B: Order lookup. When previously connected to delivery tracking, it knows, if not: : "Can you please provide your order number so we can look up your order?"

U: Provides confirmation or order number.

B: Order status update: "Your package is currently in transit and is expected to arrive by March 15th."

U: “Ah okay, thanks!”

B: Additional support: "Do you have any additional questions or concerns? Let us know how we can assist you."

….

B: Closing message: "Thank you for contacting us. Don't hesitate to reach out again if you need any further assistance."

Automated Order Management

This is diving deeper.

In the example before, people had to ask for their order update.

Now, we are thinking for them. Provide personal updates directly in WhatsApp.

WhatsApp auto-updates can provide customers with order confirmation, delivery status updates, and personalized recommendations based on their purchase history.

This means users can follow their order in WhatsApp and stay in the loop, receive back-in-stock notifications, pre-order notifications, and sales notifications.

These provide immense value to the customer, lowering the level of uncertainty and making it easy to get any information they need, when they need it.

Sales notifications are also powerful for the business, as they drive sales.

Example of a skincare/cosmetics advisory flow:

Send the right people to the right product, that fits them, and save all of that information in their profile.

In the future, use that information to follow up and give recommendations that actually matter.

It’s a whole new way of communicating with customers.

Automated Marketing

With all of the information you have collected during your automated customer support and order management inquiries, the best is still to come…

Automated WhatsApp marketing campaigns.

WhatsApp marketing leverages all of data from your systems, plus the first and zero-party data collected directly in chat to make extremely personalized campaigns exactly at the right time.

• promotional campaigns, provide personalized recommendations based on customer behavior, and collect feedback.

• integration with sales/order management

We are talking here about automated campaigns being sent out to a client when a new product is released that matches their interest. Or about a churn prevention campaign being triggered when we detect user behavior indicative of churning.

The beauty of WhatsApp is that all of these interactions are happening in the same chat. It’s not like you only contact your user to sell them stuff.

You chat with them to help them in different ways at different times.

Example of creating super-tailored campaigns:

The right message, to exactly the right person.

Based on what they bought in the past, on their user behavior, on collected data from other platforms… the limit is that there is no limit!

How can this help your business?

• Better processes and improved customer experience.

• Efficient interactions that save resources and increase NPS.

• Stronger brand engagement and ultimately higher LTV.

The Future of eCom = WhatsApp + Automation

Here’s the thing…

• Growth without relationships is not possible anymore.
  Customers know better.

• Growth without scalability and automation is not possible anymore.
  Business owners know better.

The solution is simple… WhatsApp Automations.

Implementing may seem too hard at first, but will lead to significant growth for your business. And the secret is having the right support.

Start with your most common processes, and keep it simple.

Evolve them there, and you won’t believe the impact.

Hope it helps, and let us know how it goes!

Cheers,

Your Team 🙏🏼

Niels & Guillem

Whenever you're ready to grow your eCommerce brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your current status, and we’ll come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue in autopilot via Direct Marketing.

Share The Smarter DTC Newsletter

Heck, you probably have tried it already!

But most likely, you have only used WhatsApp to offer support to your customers. Maybe you decided to add some “call-to-action”, got some questions and you even closed some extra sales from the channel.

But let’s face it, that is not enough.

You need leverage. And campaigns are the best way to get it.

But what do you do, should you copy and condense one of your Email campaigns? Should you offer it to everyone in your database? Do you need to ask your design team to create some new visuals?

Stop right there!

Let’s make it easy for you.

Here’s how to send campaigns that make money:

#1. Define the goal of the campaign

I know, obvious right?

Well, you would be surprised…

A lot of brands do not think that and end up having 3 different messages being communicated in 1 campaign. Which leads to 100% confusion and 0% conversion.

There’s only 2 big goals to aim for:

1. Conversion, or

2. Engagement

For your first campaign, go for conversion.

You just collected opt-ins, which is a process of engagement and your subscriber expects to receive a promotion. Plus starting with results feels good.

#2. Use WhatsApp-only incentives

Sales it’s all about creating an incentive.

The most commonly used one is the discount.

But things like exclusivity, limited availability, or time pressure also help. And for this case, we will combine all of these into one channel… WhatsApp.

Use this framework to come up with your incentive:

• Available only on WhatsApp

• Available only for X hours/days

• Available only for the first Y units

• Available only Z products/categories

It could be something like this.

#3. Make it easy to buy from WhatsApp

You have the perfect campaign.

Now let’s make it so people can actually buy.

This should come as no surprise, but it is worth mentioning again. The more friction you add to the process, the fewer sales you will have.

Make sure to check these:

✖ Do not place a discount code on the text body
✔ Embed the discount on the link behind the button

✖ Do not direct customers to your general page
✔ Make a link for the specific products on discount

✖ Do not ask customers for extra steps (e.g., go to store)
✔ Just make it as easy as possible to press the buy button

#4. Choose the right segment for your campaign

Not everyone wants the same.

So please do not send your campaign to all customers.

Ideally, you have been segmenting your campaign from day 1. So you will have enough information to create a relevant audience just for this promotion.

Just ask yourself:

• Who would benefit from this campaign?

• Why would that person care about it?

• What do they have in common?

Worst case, some good practices are to send it to engaged users that have not just recently purchased but tend to buy with certain repetition.

#5. Create momentum before the send-out

You are almost there.

The only thing left is to get people excited.

If you want to maximize success, you need to create momentum. To create momentum you have to let people know a bit about what is coming. Not too much, not too little, just enough of a sneak preview.

This is also a great way to collect new subscribers with high intent:

• Start creating FOMO on their social media

• Make 1 or 2 announcements to your Email audience

• Give a preview to your WhatsApp subs to ask if they want to be informed

  

Bonus #1: Make sure to track the campaign

If you use a great WhatsApp software like Charles you won’t even have to worry about this point. Otherwise, keep reading.

Tracking your campaigns is vital.

Without it, you will be fighting in the dark.

No tracking means no way to improve your performance. In fact, it means you will not know even if your campaign performed! So let’s fix that.

Manually setting up your campaigns is not hard:

• Install Google Analytics on your website.

• Visit Google’s free Campaign URL Builder page.

• Insert the website URL and campaign information.

• Create a unique UTM tracking code for every campaign.

• Use the UTM tracking codes in your WhatsApp campaigns.

So here it is, now everything is ready to press “send”.

Hope it helped, and let us know how it goes!

Cheers,

Your Team 🙏🏼

Niels & Guillem

Whenever you're ready to grow your eCommerce brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your current status, and we’ll come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue in autopilot via Direct Marketing.

Share The Smarter DTC Newsletter

If you could take anything from this newsletter, please let it be that quote.

Start measuring what you want to achieve.

Whether it be personal or business goals, WhatsApp or Paid Advertising Success.

Tracking is the most important thing you can do.

5 KPIs to Measure that means WhatsApp Marketing Success

It will always be hard to correctly track marketing activities.

But it needs to be done. WhatsApp may make it harder, but this channel can save your business.

With more than 2 billion monthly active users, WhatsApp is an almost essential tool for businesses to connect with their target audience.

However, to achieve success with WhatsApp marketing, it's essential to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and optimize them for better results.

Let’s dive into your road to measure WhatsApp marketing campaigns' success and the metrics to optimize for better performance.

1. Engagement - Opening Rate & Replies

One way to measure the level of engagement with your target audience is by tracking the number of messages sent and received.

A good WhatsApp marketing provider also includes the right analytics in their dashboard, making the WhatsApp Business API usable for any eCom brand.

A usable UI provides at least detailed information on:

• Total messages sent = number of “business-initiated” messages

• Total messages received = number of “user-initiated” messages

• Delivery rate = % of messages received by subscribers

• Open rates = % of subscribers clicking to open your message

By analyzing this data, businesses can identify which types of messages are resonating with their audience and adjust their approach accordingly.

2. Click-Through Rates - Convert to Website

From open rate, you will want to be tracking the % of users clicking on your marketing material.

To be exact, how many people click from WhatsApp to your website.

Monitoring the number of clicks on links in your WhatsApp campaigns is also an effective way to track the effectiveness of your CTAs.

Tracking can be done concretely by using UTM-parameters in your links and integrating your WhatsApp marketing software with Google Analytics. This won’t be a topic for this newsletter, but check the Google URL Builder to understand how it’s done.

By analyzing the click-through rates, you can identify which campaigns are generating the most traction. This helps you adjust your messaging and call-to-action strategies accordingly.

Another plus is to see which segment of your audience engages best, read further to see how.

3. Conversion Rates - Sales made from chat

From opening the your campaign message, tracking CTR on the call-to-actions, what’s next?

Next is, your on-website conversion from WhatsApp.

Your analytics will show how many people clicked from which link and report this back. This will show your full marketing funnel from message open to new order.

Conversion rates will give you insight in the number of sales generated through your WhatsApp marketing campaigns.

It’s important to get insight into the full funnel, to understand where people will be dropping off.

Ask yourself these main questions after every of your campaigns:

1. What can I do to increase my WhatsApp openrate?

2. How can I give value, instead of take value, through my WhatsApp campaigns?

3. What % of my opens actually clicks through? Does this meet my expectation?

4. Did I receive a positive ROI on the WhatsApp cost vs. total campaign orders?

5. Which part of my funnel needs to biggest improvement?

Then set tasks, take action, and don’t look back.

Only look back to reflect on your improvement from your current rates vs. your old rates.

Then: post-purchase flows.

4. Feedback and Reviews ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What’s better than a customer?

A happy customer!

Always take care of the ‘things’ that make you money.

Check-in with your customers to see how they like your product and see if there’s anything you can do for them.

Then, it will come down to 2 cases:

1. Happy customer? Ask to leave a review with their experience.

2. Disappointment? Keep circling back to resolving the issue until they end up in case 1.

Always encourage your customers to leave feedback on your products or services and take customer satisfaction as a common metric for improvement.

Use WhatsApp to send the post-purchase messages to customers asking them to rate their experience or leave a review.

Collect Stars! 🌟

This KPI will help you identify areas where they can improve your products and even better: your customer relationships.

5. A/B Testing Metrics - Your Essential Tracking Foundation

A last metric on the above ones, is a more overarching one.

Always send a ‘double’ campaign. An A and B version of every campaign you do, to a similar audience.

Always test one variable, ranging from:

• Message content: Description, CTA or image.

• Time of day/week

• Frequency: how regular will you send a campaign

• Type of product

• Type of audience segment

This is the only effective way to identify the best performing strategies.
Tailored to your business!

Good WhatsApp software, like Email software, will have insightful A/B testing tools to create variations of your messages and test them with different segments of your audience.

Analyze the first 3 metrics above to track your best performaing messages in terms of engagement, clicks, and sales, then optimize your approach accordingly.

Bonus: Find your Best Performing Audience Segment

The greatest side result of these KPIs and analytics, is that you will gain invaluable insight in your audience.

Customer data has never been more priceless, and this will step up your game immensely.

As you’re sending WhatsApp marketing campaigns, you’ll be sending specific messages to different segments in your audience.

For example:

• Women in a sunny location from age 30+ will receive campaigns about oval sunglasses that will be most appealing to them.

• Men in a bad weather location from under 25 will receive campaigns about modern looking bluelight glasses.

These ‘small’ details in your campaigns will give you a great edge over the competition.

Additionally, the metrics above will skyrocket.

Measure your Progress

Measuring and optimizing your WhatsApp marketing campaigns is crucial to achieving better results and increasing your ROI on a new channel.

Direct marketing is highly psychological, as you’re so close to your customer.

So every metric or data point you can get, is always a positive ROI.

By tracking the right metrics, conducting A/B testing, and optimizing your campaigns, you will be successful in WhatsApp marketing.

Any questions? Reply to this Email, or DM on LinkedIn (below)

Has this helped? Let us know by commenting on one of our posts on LinkedIn!

Cheers,

Your Team 🙏🏼

Niels & Guillem

Whenever you're ready to grow your eCommerce brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your current status, and we’ll come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue in autopilot via Direct Marketing.

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To be honest, I didn’t know.

So I did what one does, I closed myself for some days and drew a plan. It is not a perfect plan, but it is a solid plan that covers the initial requirements. Demand generation, conversion, and scalability.

In fact, I realized you can break down the goal into an easier task.

€100k / month = selling 25 daily units of 3 products at € 50

You can imagine selling 25 units of a product.

If you think about it, a great WhatsApp campaign can convert at 10-15%. That would mean you need to send one to 170 - 250 people every day. Or around 5-7k people per month.

If you do that for 3 products, that gets you to 15-20k people total.

Would that be hard? No, we have a clear scope on the numbers.

The question now is, how do you do this?

Here’s how, step by step:

Step 1: Build a WhatsApp community

The math above makes the goal.

The goal is clear, get ~20k engaged members into WhatsApp.

In order to build such a community, you need the following 4 pieces:

1. A way to generate traffic

2. A lead magnet to get people to join your community

3. A compelling story to keep them engaged until launch

4. A good product that they need to launch already at 25 sales / day

Effectively, you should be looking for ways to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible and convert them to subscribers with a free product that brings lots of value.

Organic growth is best but slow, influencers are a strong second bet, and paid is the last piece to add.

After you got the subscribers, you need to keep them engaged until you are ready to start selling the product. The best tip here is to keep it very personal, and avoid constantly pitching.

Make regular updates about your process of building the company, people loves these.

If you do these well you can easily get a list of 20k subscribers ready to buy.

Launch your product, 25 sales / day are guaranteed.

Step 2: Implement a good review process

You have now a community, 3 products, and sales coming in.

Maybe you even hit € 100k already in the launch month, but how do you make it consistent?

The answer: continuing to grow the community.

To grow past your initial fans, reviews will help you than anything. Having hundreds of them is crucial to build credibility with new customers and it will increase your conversion rates across all channels.

The issue is only 1-2% of customers leave any reviews…

Here’s how to fix it with a post-purchase flow on WhatsApp:

1. While the customer waits to receive their order, make sure you send them some messages full of value and keep them engaged (send how-to’s, inspiration videos, etc.)

2. When they receive it, send a personalized message hoping they enjoy it

   1. If they reply already with positive feedback → share a link and ask them to

      leave a review

3. After some days of their purchase, send a message asking how the product was

   1. If positive → share a link and ask them to leave a review

   2. If negative → ask feedback and improve

4. You can automate all of this. If you do not know how, do it manually.

Check out our previous issues about where we go in depth about the WhatsApp Business App and API, anything is possible.

Step 3: Develop strategies to scale beyond €100k

If you got through points 1 and 2, you will most likely be already at €100k per month.

Just follow the math - it will be a matter of time.

Now it’s time to scale.

Some other initiatives you can leverage to scale:

• Launch new products to your existent community

• Make sure to implement an effective retention strategy

• Expand to new geographies based on initial signs of traction

• Double down on building community, and add new channels of acquisition

• Develop partnerships with complementary brands to cross-promote your products

These 5 steps cover the most effective directions you can go after reaching this great milestone. But the reality is that, no matter how simple they sound, it will be freaking hard.

Take a moment to appreciate what you’ve already achieved.

Make sure to recharge your energies.

And GO!

Bonus #1: Leverage referrals when launching new products

One of my favorite WhatsApp campaigns are the referral chains.

Effectively, you are asking your current customers to refer your product to their friends in exchange for a reward. The more people they bring in, the better the reward.

Many companies do money-rewards referrals. They work well but cut on your margins and incentivize consumers to be offer-driven… no bueno amigo.

A cooler alternative is to mix a referral with a discounted product launch.

How does it work?

1. You are going to bring a new product to the market at a price € X.

2. You have already hyped the product and know people want it.

3. Now you implement a special launch discount ONLY if we reach XX new users referred.

Why is this amazing?

1. You are creating a great incentive for your customers to actively refer new prospects.

2. If a minimum amount is reached, you will offer a pre-established discount, so you have control over the minimum volumes for your economics to work.

3. The discount is set as an exceptional one-off for the launch only.

That’s it for this week, hope that helped.

Broken down great WhatsApp months to the simplest form.

Cheers,

Your Team 🙏🏼

Niels & Guillem

Whenever you're ready to grow your eCommerce brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your current status, and we’ll come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue in autopilot via Direct Marketing.

Share The Smarter DTC Newsletter

The future of commerce is not some myth.

We’re in an ever-changing society where we have to adapt to new trends, global news and other crazy standards.

So, when consumers change their demand, businesses have to change their supply. Nasdaq research even anticipates that 95% of purchases will happen online by 2040.

Don’t worry, we’re only here to help.

Check out with us how the future of commerce is changing and what you can do now to adapt to the era of Conversational Capitalism. We’re building a user-first customer experience by building a strong and trusting brand.

Navigating the Future of Commerce

Jumping straight into it.

The future of commerce is about direct connection.

On top we’ll find the business…

Who builds the most trust with their customer.
Who holds the dearest relationships to their buyers.
Who dedicates itself to the love and passion for helping people.

If you have been with Smarter DTC for a while, you know our secret love for Conversational Commerce.

To be honest, the future is bigger than just this topic. But let’s have one thing clear, for eCommerce, it all stems from conversations:

• Conversational AI

• Interest-based subscriptions

• Uniquely helpful buyer journeys

• Implementing customer feedback

• Personalized customer experiences

We have to start the conversation of conversations.

Looking at what the consumer wants, thinking how they navigate websites, analyzing how they buy, adopting their new buying behaviours, anticipating on their purchase-history and giving insights on their personal preferences.

This isn’t about holding your head above the water. This is about fitting in with the new economy.

Building a Growth-Proof Business

Growth means one thing: revenue goes up.

Staying at the same level means a slow downfall.

We are embracing here the need for the customer by upgrading their customer experience through:

1. Personalized & Conversational Journeys

2. Implementing New Tech Systems

3. Next-Level Branding

I would say, where I see most business go wrong, is when they see the three points above, as three different points. They see it as steps 1 - 2 - 3, rather than as the triangle that it actually is.

These three are of course three separate mountains to climb, though no one notices that they’re on the same mountain range.

Branding builds trust.

Personalization builds trust.

Conversations build trust.

Tech is there to connect this, we’re still doing business of course.

Personalized & Conversational Journeys

Personalized and conversational journeys may sound like a whole crazy set of terms. It simply means how businesses promote themselves to the user.

Right now, we’re marketing one-to-many, meaning one campaign to the full audience.

What we want, is to go from marketing, to conversations.

Start to build trust, to make consumers feel heard. Personalize their campaigns, product upsells and even customer support. That is the main note of conversational commerce.

This also includes the demand from the consumer side that we have talked about. Despite that we’re shifting online, consumers crave human-interaction.

By creating conversational journeys, businesses can provide their customers with an exceptional experience. At the same, they’re also gathering valuable data and insights. This data will help you stay ahead of your competition by better serving your customers in the future.

To dive a bit deeper, take a look at how Pizza Hut has implemented this experience. Think of how you normally order a pizza, and then at:

It’s simple, effective, and a unique journey that also provides Pizza Hut with unique data on this specific consumer, which they can later use for other marketing purposes.

Anyhow, let’s take a look at how this is implemented.

Implementing New Tech Systems

While everyone is talking about conversational AI, first keep it down to the most simple systems: Email & WhatsApp.

AI can always be implemented once it is perfected.

Especially WhatsApp will be a game-changer in this field:

• You’ll have easy, fast and efficient customer support

• You’ll have unique customer engagement strategies

• You’ll have new valuable insights and data per user

Pizza Hut stays on top of things well here:

Overall, we’re aiming to improve the full customer journey, like we agreed on above.

We want a seamless and integrated experience for our customers. Give them a pizza experience that they deserve.

To keep the business seamless too, we have conversational commerce softwares such as charles to keep it simple using the WhatsApp Business Platform (API).

This will also help you by making personalized tags, segmenting audiences, submitting campaigns to WhatsApp and selling directly in chat. A good side-note is that this will keep your business GDPR compliant too.

The full tech stack is something that we will fully dive in, in a new article. Most important to take note on right now, is to be careful with chatbots and adopt a messenger like WhatsApp.

We are thinking customer first, experience first and relationship first to build your brand, build your trust and of course, build your revenue.

Next-Level Branding

We’ll keep this one short, to the point.

Like what your branding should be: to the point.

You have a small set of seconds to convince the user that you’re the one.

Imagine you’re still Pizza Hut, but in the beginning phases. At the same time, trying to adopt the future of commerce.

Sometimes it can be as simple as:

• Keep everywhere the same brand voice: “We have great pizzas!”

• Keep everywhere the same message: “Try our unique pizza-buying experience.”

• Keep everywhere your same brand style: “Happy colours, tasty images and love for food”

This aligns the user with your brand. They will associate being hungry with pizza, and directly think of Pizza Hut.

They think of their great message, their great product and how it made them feel last time. Then how they can order over WhatsApp, what a delight.

Stay true to yourself.

Stay ahead of the conversation

You thought I was going to say competition, didn’t you.

It is still basically true. Also keep an eye on competition.

Outwork them. Innovate more, get ahead of their technology and build new strategies.

Take the above and give it your unique twist to work toward the future.

Let’s be pioneers in helping our customers.

Adopt the new technologies that will undoubtedly play a part of the future.

Conversations, Branding & Tech

This is how to make your business growth-proof through the future of commerce.

From conversational commerce to the future of business.

Make sure you adapt well to the future by building a customer-first business. Start the conversation with your buyer and simply ask: “How could I help you even better?”

Selling is asking, not telling.

Together with the buyer you’ll build the greatest businesses, for people that will actually buy, or are even buying already.

By embracing conversational commerce, businesses can be at the forefront of innovation and growth in the future.

Get ready through new customer journeys, unique branding and the most future-proof tech-stack out there.

The future is now.

Cheers,

-Niels

If you’re a DTC eCommerce brand looking to fit into the future of commerce, book your 1-1 Free Call to talk growth with me.
You can also follow me on LinkedIn.

Whenever you're ready to grow your eCommerce brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your current status, and we’ll come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue in autopilot via Direct Marketing.

Share The Smarter DTC Newsletter

If you send an email 30, 90, or 180 days after last purchase... you're too.
You’re literally burning money and hurting your unit economics.

Churn = Lost $$

The good thing is, you can fix it in 3 steps:

#1: Don’t guess, measure

Lots of brands don’t measure, they guess.

If you are sending reactivation emails to customers 30, 90, or 180 days after their last purchase you are guessing too. It is “best practice”, but you can do better. Data can help you, without the need to get extra fancy.

Here a simple data-driven approach you can follow:

• Look at all orders for each repeat customer

• Determine the maximum # of days between 2 orders for each
  We can call this “max_interpurchase_interval”

• Count the # of customers per “max_interpurchase_interval”

• Plot them on a chart

  

In this chart, you can see extremely important information. How long do customers take on average to make a second order.

Armed with this info, you can easily calculate:

• Soft churn: # days after which 60% of clients won’t make a purchase
  In this graph, 32 days.

• Hard churn: # days after which 80% of clients won’t make a purchase
  In this graph, 65 days.

Now you know exactly when you should be activating clients. Go to your activation emails at 30, 90, and 180 and change it.

But 2 questions remain…

#2: Don’t use 1-fit all, personalize

You have a reactivation flow, and some customers click. Good, let’s make them better.

A customer that bought from you in the past, is a customer that trusted you. Assuming you didn’t f**k the experience, you only need to remind them. How? Give them a reward for a similar or complementary product.

You need to personalize.

Here’s a 5 step process to personalize at scale:

• Look at all orders for each repeat customer

• Categorize all 1st orders based on the category of the products
  We can call this “interpurchase_order1_category”

• Categorize all 2nd orders based on the category of the products
  We can call this “interpurchase_order2_category”

• Distribute the most common category for the 2nd order, based on the category of the 1st order

• Plot them on a matrix

In this matrix, you can see which products customers are more likely to buy on their second order based on the category of products they bought first.

Armed with this info, you can do 2 things:

• Category-based flows: replicate your churn prevention flows, and personalize the message and the rewards offered to the most relevant category
  Don’t go crazy, for 5 most prominent categories is enough

• Default flow: keep 1 general flow and use it for customers whose most relevant category doesn’t have a specific flow

Now you also have the right message to activate your customers.

Last trick left for today…

#3: Add WhatsApp to your flow

Email is cheap, effective, reliable… it is great.

But it ain’t WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is more personal, gets you closer to your customer, and is more intimate. It’s literally the door to their private life, where they text friends and family. Once you are there, your value as a brand 10x.

But how do you use it to prevent churn? You combine it with email.

Here’s a 5-step flow you can use:

1. Email: Remember us?

   Get the user to remember who are you and why did they care about you.
   Catchy subject line, and references to prior interactions can help.

2. WhatsApp: The Reward

   They remember why they used to love you. Now make them try you again.

   WhatsApp because of its higher Open and Conversion Rates + use a good incentive.

3. WhatsApp: Any Feedback?

   They didn't buy? At least understand how and why you lost them.

   You can offer a small incentive like a voucher to help push them over the edge.

4. Email: Is this Goodbye?

   You have one strategy left, make them feel a bit of FOMO.

   If they do not click a CTA, they will be unsubscribed automatically in 30 days.

5. Email: See ya later alligator

   The time has come, you have to let them go...

   It's the best for both.

And there you have it, the last piece completed.

How to improve your churn prevention strategy in 3 simple steps.

• Don’t guess, measure.

• Don’t use 1-fit all, personalize

• Add WhatsApp to your flow

Close yourself in a room for an afternoon, and implement these changes.

Stop your customers from churning.

Make

Whenever you're ready to grow your DTC brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your brand needs, and I’ll help you come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue via Direct Marketing.

Confusion = chaos.
Confused visitors = $0

Funnel abandonment is a major problem for DTC eCommerce brands, but it doesn't have to be. Treat every stage of your funnel like an investment, because it is.

Browsing your site, filling up the product cart, going through your checkout, etc.
You can lose customers at every stage of the funnel.

With the right strategies, you will:

• Improve conversions,

• Grow your revenue, and

• Take Customer Lifetime to new heights.

Here’s 4 ‘hacks’ to implement for customer retention:
The Candidate at stake: Marcel’s Green Soap.

#1 How to keep visitors on my site?

Browse abandonment is about what we talked before. Confused visitors that don’t buy.

Do you want to boost conversions and keep customers on your store?

Redesign your customer journey.

1. Navigation: Make it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for.

   Even if they don’t know exactly what they want:

   1. Include a search system,

   2. Organize your collection pages,

   3. Implement an easy “add-to-cart”

   For Marcel: Where is your overall shop page?

2. Product Info: Provide all your relevant information and details.
   This is where you convince customers to buy, think about their decision process:

   1. Size,

   2. Weight,

   3. Ingredients,

   4. Land of origin,

   5. Shipping details.

   For Marcel: Add a concise product description!

   

3. Personalization: Use browse and purchase info to personalize recommendations.
   This increases your trust and helps build a better relationship with the customer. It will boost sales as well.

These are your first on-site steps to improving website journey and customer experience.

Let’s look at our last 3 stages.

#2 Why is my Cart Abandoned?

70% of your carts are being abandoned.
In other words, you’re losing lots of money.

These 3 tips can plug that hole:

1. Cart Abandonment Emails:
   A tricky one but highly effective.

   Catch your visitor’s email with a pop-up or promotion, so you can send emails to customers who leave items in their cart. It’s just a gentle reminder…
   “Hey, complete your order and use this special discount!”

2. Special Discounts & Promo:
   Make it easy to buy by removing friction.
   One of the main issues customers face is indecision. Help them get there, suddenly offer free shipping, a discount, or a free product.

3. Seamless Journey and Order process:
   Again, make it easy to buy from your site.
   Reduce the amount of links on your cart page. Be specific in your up and x-sells, don’t include loads of information. Your visitor just wants to buy!

   

   For Marcel: Try to reduce links steering away from the cart.

This will improve your cart experience, and get more visitors to checkout!

#3 Next up… Abandoned Checkout!

Worse than an abandoned cart… a left checkout.

Let’s face it, will happen. But you can also reduce friction here:

1. Seamless and Secure Checkout:
   Buying is all about building trust.
   Add a secure checkout, easy navigation, and clear cart overview.
   To be honest, Shopify does this very well:

   

2. Multiple Payment Options:
   Look at the example above, there’s enough options to complete the purchase with card and PayPal.
   Think for the user, what do they use in their country?

3. Less steps is more:
   Less clicks = less drop-offs.
   The fewer the steps, the less opportunities to abandon checkout.
   Make the process as simple and straightforward as possible.

   

   For Marcel: upselling in the checkout is good, but these links take your customer out off the process! Change for 1-click upsells and easy to add/remove accordingly.

Marcel, we are very curious to know how will conversion improve based on these! Maybe if you sees this… let us know the impact!

Until then, we continue with post-purchase flows.

#4 The Killer: One-time orders…

We call this, post-purchase abandonment. The big monster to kill.

Unsatisfied customers won’t come back to your store.

You need to make sure customers are happy with your products. Then, you need to make them love your brand. After that, you need to make them buy again and recommend all of their friends they do it too.

Use customer retention flows to accomplish this, flows with ~7 emails are the norm.
If you’re ready for the next level, use WhatsApp Marketing.

Building strong customer relationships is the future of eCommerce.

Here’s 3 ways to build them:

1. Use a customer feedback flow to gather real reviews and feedback on your products, services and business.

2. Setup a customer satisfaction flow (or survey) to ensure customer success with your products and to build trust by proactively reaching out to ensure they are satisfied and address any issues they may have.

3. Add a soft up-sell flow to boost retention, and mainly nurture your existing relationship. Offer new discounts, special VIP deals and other events to have them return to your website.

By focusing on customer satisfaction, you can improve retention and increase the lifetime value of your customers.

For Marcel: I would love to show the English flow, but only the Dutch was triggered. I appreciate the 10% off, but does the other not work?

How to Grow Revenue 30% in 4 steps?

In short, plug these holes in your funnel.

• Browse Abandonment

• Abandoned Cart

• Abandoned Checkout

• Avoid 1-time Orders

People abandon your process because it is too confusing or has too much friction.
So, always remember:

• Easy website navigation & customer journey

• Seamless journey to cart and secure checkout process

• Implementing personalized product recommendations

• Build your relationship far after their purchase with email flows

• Minimizing the number of steps required to complete a purchase

• Customer retention comes from trust and real customer satisfaction

• Providing enough product details to reduce customer decision-making

• Sending cart abandonment emails with special discounts or promotions

Implement these strategies today.

Watch your conversions skyrocket tomorrow🚀

Cheers,

-Niels

If you’re a DTC eCommerce brand looking to plug holes in your funnel and improve conversion, book your 1-1 Free Call to talk growth with me.
You can also follow me on LinkedIn.

Whenever you're ready to grow your eCommerce brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your current status, and we’ll come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue in autopilot via Direct Marketing.

Share The Smarter DTC Newsletter

Build a subscriber list.

By now, we have collected millions of active subscribers for our clients. Back in 2020, there was no concept of WhatsApp subscriber. But we needed it, so we had to invent it. Since then, hundreds of businesses have managed to reach thousands of active WhatsApp subscribers.

The good news? You can too.

Here’s 5 bulletproof strategies to reach 10.000 subscribers:

#1: Popups & Website CTAs

Popups are all the different objects you can add to your website to get your visitor to give you information about themselves.

To collect WhatsApp numbers, there are some best practices you can follow:

• Activate WhatsApp popups in the website’s mobile version

• Use multiple popups, with different CTAs depending on the page

• Use “wa.mi” links to direct users into chat with pre-filled messages

• Add exit-intent popups with discounts appearing 10s after browsing the site

• Add a “Do you need help?” bubble in your site to offer visitors WhatsApp support

Popups are super powerful and versatile, helping you convert the >85% of visitors that do not purchase on their first visit into leads you can nurture.

You can A/B test every part of them to optimize for conversion, and aim for a 5% conversion rate. Together with a good Welcome Flow, these popups can end up generating thousands of euros in autopilot.

The math - 10.000 subscribers in 90 days

Subscribers = (Monthly Visits) x (Subscription Rate)

• Months available = 3

• Subscription Rate: 5%

• Target subscribers: 3.333 x month

Monthly visits = Subscribers / Subscription Rate

• 3.333 / 0.05 = 66.660 visitors

If you have 66k monthly visits or more…
You can collect 10.000 subscribers in under 90 days.

#2: Checkout process

The checkout process is your happy place - where the visitor has finally has decided to initiate a transaction and, hopefully, will become a customer.

To collect WhatsApp subscribers in the checkout process there are 2 main options:

• Add the phone number as a required field on your checkout process

• Give the option to subscribe to your WhatsApp Newsletter after purchase to receive order confirmation, tracking links and more via WhatsApp

Both options are great and, if well framed, can be seen as a huge value add for the customer. Receiving shipping links, processing returns, and more via WhatsApp is useful, removes friction and most customers love it!

It also gives you big possibilities to play around with post-purchase flows and up/x-sell, but more on that another day.

The math - 10.000 subscribers in 90 days

Subscribers = (Monthly Unique Orders) x (Subscription Rate)

• Months available = 3

• Subscription Rate = 50%
  (Avg. both options mentioned above)

• Target subscribers: 3.333 x month

Monthly orders = Subscribers / Subscription Rate

• 3.333 / 0.5 = 6.666 orders

If you have 6.6k monthly orders or more…
You can collect 10.000 subscribers in under 90 days.

#3: Social media

Social media is a great place to build a community.

And a community is great to acquire customers. Especially over the last years, when the cost of acquisition in socials was low and opportunities for monetization after were massive.

Now it is not as easy to run this play, but there’s still hope. You can convert your current audience into WhatsApp subscribers, so you finally own them.

You can even put some money into WhatsApp dedicated ads.

The math - 10.000 subscribers in 90 days

Subscribers
=
1/ (Audience) x (Subscription Rate)
+
2/ (Ad Impressions) x (Click-through Rate)

1/ Subscribers from audience = (Audience) X (Subscription Rate)

• Audience = 100.000
  Plug your real count

• Subscription Rate = 5%
  eCom with strong brand equity should aim for more

• Subscribers from audience = 100.000 X 0.05 = 5.000

2/ Subscribers from Ads = (Ad Impressions) X (Click-through Rate)

• Ad Click-through rate: 1%
  Use your own metrics

• Target subscribers = 5.000

• Ad Impressions = Subscribers / Subscription Rate

  • 5.000 / 0.01 = 500.000 impressions

If you have 100k followers and 5%, and add 500k impressions on ads…
You can collect 10.000 subscribers in under 90 days.

#4: Email & SMS

Do you want to get more out of your Email or SMS list?

Look no further.

Bringing them to WhatsApp can be the key.

It is also simple, quick, and effective. Assuming you have an active list, and a good strategy that does not make them hate you already, offering WhatsApp as a new channel is only giving them extra value.

WhatsApp is more personal and convenient, and your customers know it.

The math - 10.000 subscribers in 90 days

Subscribers = (Email / SMS Subscriber List) x (Conversion Rate to WhatsApp)

• Subscription Rate to= 10% Avg. for brands we’ve helped

• Target subscribers: 10.000

Email / SMS Subscriber List = Target Subscribers / Conversion Rate to WhatsApp

• 10.000 / 0.01 = 100.000 email / SMS subscribers

If you have 100k subscribers in your list…
You can collect 10.000 WhatsApp subscribers in under 90 days 1 weekend.

#5: Offline

Do you have an offline presence?

Great, let’s use that too!

Your store is a great lead acquisition machine, but most DTC brands are blind to it. Where else do you get thousands of people into a place where you own and control the environment, the attention, the products, the journey, everything?

Do not waste all of this effort put into captivating visitors by not even trying to convert them. Put QR codes that prompt them to subscribe in the shop window, get your shop assistants to promote WhatsApp consultations, etc.

If you do it right, you can get hundreds of WhatsApp subscribers.

The math - 10.000 subscribers in 90 days

Unfortunately, there’s too many variables to give a simple calculation in this case.

Instead, I’ll give you a list of ideas to collect subscribers:

• QR Code in the store window with CTA to subscribe to WhatsApp (potentially add discount, free delivery, etc)

• Access to exclusive in-store events via WhatsApp invite only

• Consultation about products, sizes, etc, via WhatsApp

• In-store navigation via WhatsApp (big store or mall)

• Return process via WhatsApp

• …

If you apply all of these…
You can collect 10.000 subscribers in under 90 days.

#Bonus Tip - WhatsApp only campaigns

Are you afraid those alone will not get you 10.000 subscribers?

We got you.

Force customers into WhatsApp.

Sushi bikes made an incredible campaign this last week.

1. They blocked their webpage 24h to announce a WhatsApp only product release

2. They direct you to WhatsApp to subscribe and get access to the pre-release

3. They send you a 1:many personalized message to get you excited

4. Finally, they release the product and get you to buy

Not only they collected tons of subscribers, but also made money!

Is this something you can do every day? No.

But you can find creatives ways to drive subscribers every day.

Once you have 10.000 people on WhatsApp, the possibilities are endless. We see brands making 30% of their revenue via WhatsApp alone.

One year ago we saw the first store cross €1Mn in revenue via WhatsApp.

Now we see more reaching the milestone even faster.

The question is… will the next be you?

Whenever you're ready to grow your DTC brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your brand needs, and I’ll help you come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue via Direct Marketing.

One worth $4bn, YETI.

Now, why would you care?

Because if they can build a successful brand selling water coolers, you can too. Their strategy was simple but genius, and we can learn a lot from it.

Here’s the 5 lessons:

1. Be different than the competition

In 2006, many big companies were selling water coolers. The market was crowded and no small business would dare enter it.

But all products had 3 things in common:

• They were cheap and low quality → Average selling price of $40

• They were all sold in the same stores → Walmart, Target, etc.

• They were boring, without soul → a white and red cold box

So, what did YETI do?

• Built high quality coolers that sell at $400

• Sold via different small stores and communities

• Made coolers a product people cared about

This was a risky move that requires great execution to be successful. But YETI understood one thing:

The only way to compete in a monopolized market is to not compete at all.

Be unique.

2. Build a story and create a loyal cult

Great brands offer more than products. YETI does not sell water coolers, they sell adventure.

Cults do not talk to everyone, they talk to the right people. YETI does not sell to everyone, they sell to fishermen, hunters and explorers.

The story:

• When selling the product, they do not explain how much better the coolers are.

• YETI tells you about the iced-cold drinks and a fresh meals you will enjoy.

• No matter where you are. No matter how big the adventure.

The cult:

• When building the product, YETI made sure it was serving the problem and the audience.

• The Seider brothers were fishermen, so they understood well their community.

• Adventurers would love the product, so why try to sell to anyone else?

If you craft the right story for the right audience, solving a problem they have with a product built just for them… your success is almost guaranteed.

If you do win, you become the only choice.

3. Ditch traditional marketing, be a pioneer

YETI understood that if they wanted to sell to adventurers, there is no point wasting money in channels that would speak to everyone else. They didn’t sell to supermarkets, and they didn’t run paid ads.

Instead, they pioneered:

• Sold their products in local sports and adventure stores, when nobody targeted sportsmen directly

• Looked for high-profile hunters to endorse them, when influencer marketing was not a thing

• Gave t-shirts, hats, water bottles and coolers, when brand ambassadors didn’t exist

10 years later, you are probably running many of the same strategies they implemented in 2010. And so is everyone else. If it works, keep doing it.

But if you want to win big, you need to pioneer.

4. Implement best-in-class, data driven, digital marketing

YETI was not a DTC brand from the beginning, they became one. In 2021, over 50% of their sales came from their DTC strategy. In 2015, more than 90% was wholesale alone.

In 6 years YETI has become one of the most successful DTC brands around.

3 things YETI is great at:

• Building an extremely good website that converts

  • Good structure guiding the reader

  • Selling outcomes, not features

  • Clear and visible CTAs

  • Handling objections

  • Building story

• Capturing the traffic into their audience

  • Value-based pop-ups to subscribe you

  • Optimized campaigns consistent with the brand

  • Multiple flows to guide you through your journey

• Data driven iterations to constantly improve

  • Implemented ML to optimize for LTV

  • Focus on highly personalized direct marketing

  • Revisited the site to optimize conversion based on analytics

To implement these changes YETI has reinvented itself. Hundreds of marketers work for the company, and they regularly hire specialized agencies to help them.

You do not need to know everything, find those who do.

5. Be persistent

No brand grows from 0 to over $1.5bn in sales and $3.5bn in valuation overnight. But no brand grows linearly either.

YETI’s growth was strong from the beginning. They started in 2005-6, and grew to $30Mn by 2011. By 2014, they 5x revenue to $150Mn. But we would not be talking about them if that was it.

In 2015, magic happened.

Revenue 3x in a single year, closing at $450Mn.

This was only possible thanks to the loyal fanbase they created over 10 years, allowing them to finally tap into other markets. It was an overnight success that spent 10 years in the making.

From there on, the sky has been the limit.

Will your grow to make billions in revenue?

Probably not, but I don’t know.

Here’s one thing I know, it won’t if you stop before that.

So, remember:

1. Be different than competitors

2. Build a story and create a loyal cult

3. Ditch traditional marketing, be a pioneer

4. Implement best-in-class, data driven, digital marketing

5. Even if you don’t do anything else… at least, be persistent

Who knows, maybe one day you’ll be worth $3.5bn.

Or at least more than today.

Whenever you're ready to grow your eCommerce brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your current status, and we’ll come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue in autopilot via Direct Marketing.

Apple’s iOS updates.

Most brands 2-3x their CAC overnight. With very few users opting in, scaling campaigns on FB and IG is now much more complicated, shifting budgets to retargeting. TikTok, SEO, affiliates, and other channels have now lower CPCs and are taking the role of top-of-funnel generation.

Unfortunately, conversion suffers, and total reach is lower than it used to be with FB.

Why?

You do not own your audience.

Email + WhatsApp marketing are the #1 way to take control

If you want to grow in 2023, direct marketing will help you claim ownership of your audience and give you control over your growth:

• It is cheap and fast to operate

• It improves your targeting and promotes personalization

• It helps you iterate fast, A/B test and measure the results of your actions

• It gives you full control over your promotion, your distribution channel, and your audience

I’m going to share the roadmap to implement it. The best part, you are probably 50% there already.

Here's how, step by step:

Step 1: Get the right toolkit

Just like you cannot breathe without lungs, you cannot make money via Email or WhatsApp without the right tools.

Make yourself a favor and invest in your growth. Pay for the right toolset and stop wasting money in channels that do not convert, or time in efforts that go nowhere.

Feel free to do your research. There are cheaper options if you are on a tight budget, but if you are serious about your growth here is my recommendation:

• Best Email marketing software: Klaviyo

• Best WhatsApp marketing software: charles

Price combined: from ~400€ / month

Step 2: Setup your CTAs and grow your list

If you are reading this, you already have traffic coming to your site. This is what we call opportunity.

You do not need more traffic, you need to capture it into leads so you can communicate with them better and drive sales.

2 questions you should be asking yourself:

• What’s my subscription rate?

• What’s my lead conversion rate?

A good pop-up should convert at least 5% of all leads that opt-in.

Keep iterating your CTAs until you get to 10%.

Step 3: Design a customer journey that makes sense

After people opt in, when they click on your WhatsApp message, after they buy… you need to take them somewhere.

You need a Customer Journey.

Imagine asking your boss for a raise right after she hires you, or after 12 months of hard work. You communicate the same, but only after those months she is ready to reciprocate.

Subscribers are the same.

As a brand, you want to communicate. But what your subscribers want from you depends on where they are in their journey.

Be empathetic.

Take this simple diagram as starting point, and modify it for your brand.

• What do you want to communicate?

• When do you need to communicate it?

Step 4: Prepare your first flows and sequences

Good flows will make your direct marketing generate 30% of your online revenue while you sleep. For free.

10 simple and effective flows you can create on Klaviyo and charles:

• Welcome Series

• Abandoned Cart

• Welcome to our VIP

• Referral Scheme flow

• Browse Abandonment

• You Might Also Like flow

• 1st Purchase Anniversary

• Back in Stock Notification

• Customer Birthday Automation

• Product Feedback / Review flow

The important thing is to keep in mind where the lead is is in the customer journey you just defined.

What do they need + what problem are you solving for them?

Step 5: Define your customer segments

All customers are not equal, so do not treat them the same.

Segmentation will help you build a more coherent customer journey to activate your leads at the right time, with the right content.

4 segments that everyone should have:

• VIP Segment → They buy often, with high AOVs

• Activation Segment → Active on site but haven’t bought

• X and Up-Selling Segment → Bought within the last 30 days

• Over the Edge Segment → Open and click emails but haven’t bought

Segmentation is the key to increasing your conversion, and improving deliverability.

In the case of WhatsApp, it will save you money too.

Step 6: Send good campaigns

Campaigns are the way you keep customers engaged, and extend their LTV. In average, expect a to increase it by 2.5x or more.

Most eCommerce brands are lazy. They send “15% off …” and “Special XX Offer …” over and over. This will work 1 time, but will not get you far.

3 questions you should ask yourself:

• Who am I sending the campaign to?

• What’s the offer that will make them buy?

• How does that offer relate to my strategy?

Get these right, and you will be ahead of 90% of your competitors.

Step 7: Measure, test and iterate

What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get managed.

Even if you do everything explained before, do not expect long-lasting results unless you are testing, iterating and improving every single part of your strategy. If you are here for the long haul, you need to put in the work.

The good thing is that tools like charles and klaviyo make it very easy.

Use it and see your revenue grow.

Whenever you're ready to grow your DTC brand:

→ Book your 1:1 Strategy Call: We’ll explore your brand needs, and I’ll help you come up with a plan to generate 20-30% of your revenue via Direct Marketing.