The TL;DR:

• Let’s Chat D2C: Amazon Buy With Prime (BWP) app in the Shopify App Store.

• What I’m Thinking about this Week: The Owned Retention Channels You Need to Start Leveraging - Email, SMS, Push, Direct Mail

• The D2Z Podcast: In this week’s episode, I sat down with Mark Havenner, Communications Consultant, to discuss my upcoming book and the power of the Gen Z mindset.

• App Highlight: SARAL, an influencer marketing platform for DTC brands.

• Upcoming Events: I’ll be in South Carolina 9/10-9/12, Chicago 9/16, and LA 10/2-10/6 for the Shopify Enterprise Partner Summit, and Cleveland 10/8-10/11 for the Forbes 30under30 Summit.

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Let’s Chat D2C - Amazon Buy With Prime (BWP) app in the Shopify App Store.

Friend or foe? Shopify has reached a deal with Amazon to integrate Buy With Prime into the Shopify app store. Originally, Shopify turned merchants not to use Buy With Prime, so this is a huge 180 for them!

Shopify Checkout

One of the big concerns Shopify had when BWP was announced in April 2022 was losing its payment processing revenue. As a part of this deal, BWP is conducted through Shopify’s checkout service, and transactions will be processed by Shopify Payments.

Data Ownership

The biggest benefit to merchants here is that they will OWN the customer data. The same Shopify settings, customizations, and supported third-party app integrations (i.e., Klaviyo) will be supported out of the box.

Prime Benefits

Members of Amazon Prime will be able to check out using their Amazon accounts, including the same fast and free delivery they’d expect on Amazon.com.

What I’m Thinking About This Week - The Owned Retention Channels You Need to Start Leveraging - Email, SMS, Push, Direct Mail

99% of brands incorporate email marketing into their retention marketing channel mix, but what about the other three main retention drivers? SMS, Push, and Direct Mail.

SMS

SMS is a high-cost channel where you literally pay per message sent, so it’s important to be intentional with the types of communication you send here. I prefer to focus on automated communications (i.e., abandoned cart and win-back flows) that are triggered based on a customer’s behavior so that they are more timely and relevant.

When sending one-time campaigns, I like to prioritize email and target non-openers with a text later in the day or the next day.

Push

I used not to be a huge believer in apps. It felt like a lot of hassle for the ecommerce team to have to set up and maintain essentially an entirely separate storefront from the main site. Then, Kinn launched.

Kinn simply turns your website into a mobile app with total functional and design parity. So, very little overhead on your team.

And it opens up another channel for communication, push notifications. I’ve reduced SMS costs significantly by activating free push notifications, which are also harder to opt out of.

Direct Mail

Direct mail is a retention superpower that has been blowing up since iOS14.5, and it allows you to tap into your prospects and past customers who are no longer subscribed to email, SMS, or push.

Log into your Klaviyo account and create a segment of customers who:

• are not subscribed to email

• are not subscribed to SMS

• are not subscribed to push

• have purchased before but not in 90+ days

You’ll be amazed at how many past customers you’re limited from remarketing to because they no longer can receive digital communications from you.

PostPilot is my go-to for direct mail.

This Week’s The D2Z Podcast

#73 – Book Launch Insights: The Power of a Gen Z Mindset in Business

🎧 Listen Now 🎧

In this week’s episode, I sat down with Mark Havenner, Communications Consultant who has worked with Electriq/DRINKS on thought leadership programs, including my upcoming book “Think Z.” Specifically, we explored the following:

💰 The role of customer retention and deep-rooted relationships in a business’s success path.

📲 All of the lessons learned and gotcha moments.

😎 The tenacity and resilience of the youngest generation of leaders.

🚀 What’s covered in the book, highlights, and the writing journey.

App Highlight - SARAL

❓What is It: Influencer marketing platform for DTC brands that streamlines discovery, outreach, creator relationship management, and tracking performance.

🏅Differentiator:

1. “Direct to Creator” Concept: SARAL differs from other influencer platforms. Most others are marketplaces that simply act as middlemen and connect you with influencers who have opted in. SARAL has a search engine so brands can find untapped, specific influencers and go direct-to-creator e.g., an organic skincare brand can find influencers who are into skincare and organic foods, for instance. Shoutouts are more authentic. It’s not “Actor generated content”.

2. UX and Support: Most of our competitors are tools like GRIN, Izea, and CreatorIQ, which are old, clunky, and unaffordable for emerging brands. SARAL not only simplifies the process with our friendly UX but also has built-in educational content, making it act as an assistant more than just an app.

3. Pricing Model: While everyone else charges annual contracts paid upfront. SARAL offers a free trial, so you don’t pay if you don’t see value. If you want to work with us, it’s a simple month-to-month cancel-anytime subscription of $299/mo. Other platforms charge more by managed creators, penalizing brands for growth. We don’t do that.

4. All-in-One: SARAL brings all influencer operations to one place. From finding influencers to automating outreach, managing responses, shipping products, generating links, tracking performance, payments… all in one. Usually, brands use 3-5 different tools for this process, making it messy to manage. They don’t have this with SARAL.

5. Automation: There are a lot of helpful automations in SARAL that help brands automate creator outreach and engagement. E.g., Follow up automatically after someone receives a product, prompting them to post. This saves hours of time for influencer managers and gets better results!

💰Starting Price: $299/mo. All our features.

🚀How we use it:

How to build your first influencer campaign in SARAL

SARAL Review: I have changed my mind about Influencer seeding because of this tool.

Upcoming Events

I’ll be in South Carolina 9/10-9/12, Chicago 9/16, and LA 10/2-10/6 for the Shopify Enterprise Partner Summit, and Cleveland 10/8-10/11 for the Forbes 30under30 Summit.

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