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- Reaching Gen-Z where they're Browsing on the World's #1 Search Engine š
Reaching Gen-Z where they're Browsing on the World's #1 Search Engine š
TikTok's Rise as a Search Engine and Valentine's Day Strategies
The TL;DR:
Letās Chat D2C: Taking Advantage of Valentineās Day Without Discounting Your Brand.
What Iām Thinking about this Week: Reaching Gen-Z Where Theyāre Browsing.
The D2Z Podcast: In this weekās episode, I sat down with Michael Charleston, Sr. Ecommerce Product Manager at Nordic Naturals, an award-winning Omega-3 fish oil and other foundational nutrients company.
App Highlights - Shopify & Recharge Pricing Updates + Malomoās new Loop Returns integration.
Upcoming Events: Iām speaking at EEE Miami on February 23rd at the East Hotel! Ecommerce Experience Evolution is an annual event in Miami gathering leaders in the Ecommerce space to connect, share knowledge, and learn! Use the code SP-ELECTRIC-20 at checkout for 20% off your pass!
Random tip: Do not drive your paid traffic to your standard storefront. Invest in landing pages!!!
Let's Chat D2C: Taking Advantage of Valentineās Day Without Discounting Your Brand
Valentineās Day is just around the corner, and itās one of the best holidays in Q1 to take advantage of as a brand! In 2022, consumers spent nearly $24B on Valentineās Day. And this year, theyāre expected to spend just under $26B, according to NRF! So, letās dive into some ideas around how you can maximize the effectiveness of this day.
What types of Items are People Buying?
The top gifts include candy (57%), greeting cards (40%), flowers (37%), an evening out (32%), jewelry (21%), gift cards (20%), and clothing (19%),
Example Content Calendar
Itās not too early to start sending out campaigns for Valentineās day. Consider executing something similar to this example campaign calendar:
Send out a buying guide early this coming week to your customers, i.e., āGifts for the loved ones in your life, family, galentines, etc.ā
Send a campaign specifically to last yearās shoppers
Last chance for your gift to arrive on Valentineās day (based on whenever your shipping speed is)
You could even think about implementing a fun little quiz gift guide on your site:
Who are you buying for?
What is your budget?
What do they like?
Then serve them a relevant product recommendation.
Post-Purchase Survey
Start to aggregate more zero-party data on your customers. Implement a post-purchase survey on your website with a tool like Fairing and ask purchasers two questions:
Was this order a gift?
If itās a gift, who did you purchase it for?
You can then use this data to inform your post-purchase email and SMS communications. For example, did you buy for someone else? Treat yourself to a purchase as well. Or, save the cohort of gifters for the next holiday to send a campaign around gifting.
Update your Signup Forms
Add a popup or modify your existing one to capture email and phone number in exchange for access to your Valentineās Day promotion.
Live Chat and SMS
Offer real-time shopping assistance with live chat on your site with Gorgias and via two-way text support with Klaviyo.
Discount Strategically
Brands can try and maximize Valentineās day sales with discounts. Still, itās important not to damage your brand reputation or get your customers into a habit of ājust waiting for the next dealā versus buying a full-priced item.
You can experiment with discounted product bundles as personalized recommendations that can help move certain hard-to-move SKUs but also protect the pricing power of your SKUs while offering existing customers a unique way to shop from you.
You donāt have to just discount either. Test pay-now-buy-later promotions leveraging store credit or coupons in the following ways:
Get a $25 gift card for $20
Get a $25 gift card with every purchase over $150
Get a $25 store credit redeemable within 30 days for every purchase over $100.
What Iām Thinking About This Week: Reaching Gen-Z Where Theyāre Browsing
TikTok is now the Worldās #1 Search Engine
Googleās roughly 5.7 million searches per minute are now only good enough for 2nd place. TikTok, primarily powered by the search habits of the under-30-year-old crowd across the world, is now the worldās #1 search engine. In fact, more than 40% of Gen Z users prefer using TikTok over Google for searches.
TikTok Continues to Invest in This
TikTok is moving from being ājust a social media platformā to a robust search engine. Theyāre uniquely positioned to consolidate social media user behaviors and search behavior to recommend more relevant content and serve better search results. Theyāve improved their search engine with predictive text and an AI recommendation engine that considers CTR, watch times, and reports.
What this means for Brands
Historically, every company had a Facebook Page. In 2020, every company had an Instagram page. 2023 is the year absolutely every company needs to have a TikTok page or risk being left behind.
But the type of content that worked on Facebook and Instagram doesnāt work on TikTok. The best-performing content on TikTok is sub-30-second videos that are authentic and provide a personality to the brand.
Itās not enough to just post once a week, either. Followers expect continual engagement and for companies to stay up to date on the latest trends down to the minute.
Tap into your existing SEO team to funnel insights to your TikTok social strategy. Brands that can master authentic content with an SEO-backed approach on TikTok will reap the benefits. There isnāt another platform that can provide such a giant organic reach to anyone, so long as you create the right content.
TikTokās Future
TikTok isnāt just dancing videos. Itās a place where consumers search, discover, and learn. Itās one of the reasons why Iāve been repurposing all of my long-form Youtube tutorial content to TikTok.
This Weekās The D2Z Podcast
#45 ā Retention Marketing and Team Empowerment
š§Listen Now š§
In this weekās episode, I sat down with Michael Charleston, Sr. Ecommerce Product Manager at Nordic Naturals, an award-winning Omega-3 fish oil, and other foundational nutrients company. Specifically, we explored the following:
š° Launching products and customer acquisition
š² The technological side of building a robust omnichannel brand
š The value of investing in customer service to increase the customer's lifetime value
šCreating a collaborative team environment based on delegating to create long-term success
App Highlight - Shopify & Recharge Pricing Updates + Malomo & Loop IntegrationS
Shopify
On January 24th, Shopify raised prices for their standard plans. Basic, Shopify, and Advanced monthly subscription plans for new merchants have increased to $39, $105, and $399 USD per month. Existing monthly merchants who opt-in to their yearly plans will pay the current prices of $29, $79, and $299 USD per month billed yearly and will have until April 24, 2023, to do so.
Recharge
Recharge made updates to their Standard Plan pricing on February 1. This update impacts new merchants only and includes a monthly fee, an increase in the transaction fee, and a 30-day free trial. The new pricing is $99/mo + 1.25% & 19Ā¢ per transaction.
Malomo & Loop Returns Integration
The Loop Returns & Malomo integration is now live! With this integration, customers can initiate and track their returns and exchanges from their Malomo tracking page.
According to Malomo, brands will now be able to:
Give every consumer a fully branded, seamless experience to track, return, or exchange an order from a single consumer tracking experience
Give consumers complete transparency about where their order, return, or exchange is and significantly reduce WISMO/WISMR/WISME tickets while increasing CSAT
Personalize and segment experiences with recommended products and incentivize exchanges to retain revenue
Merchants using Malomo + Loop typically see 27% higher retention rates when compared to industry alternatives.
Upcoming Events
Iām speaking at EEE Miami on February 23rd at the East Hotel! Ecommerce Experience Evolution is an annual event in Miami gathering leaders in the Ecommerce space to connect, share knowledge, and learn!
If you're a brand and want to attend for free, reach out to me directly, and I'll send you the special VIP code!
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