"iOS 14 tanked my ads and killing my business…"

It’s just part of the ever-evolving ecosystem. The biggest thing is leveraging MER or (total sales / total spend) to measure results vs in platform.

I'd also recommend any new brand spend as much time on email/SMS flows + building organic sales channels.

DIY timeframes retargeting blueprint:

Adset 1. VC+ATC+IC 90 days exclude VC+ATC+IC 60 days

Adset 2. VC+ATC+IC 60 days exclude VC+ATC+IC 30 days

Adset 3. VC+ATC+IC 30 days

For each adset you have different messaging: social proof angle, discount angle, value bullets angle etc.

If you have enough audience in each: VC, ATC, and IC - you can divide them to separate ad sets as well. And exclude one from each other.

Example: VC exclude ATC+IC. And ATC exclude IC. For the same timeframes.

Which I’d recommend, we do that quite often.

Otherwise glue them together to avoid high CPMs.

Now it takes 20 purchases per adset instead of 50 to get out of the learning limited phase.

​​Long time no see folks! Getting back on track 🤘

Example of a great brand Everlane going the extra mile to get qualified people to the team. People > tools.

Great easter egg @Everlane 🤘

​​Perfect timing, Gorgias team!

If you don’t know what Gorgias is - how you’re still in ecom? 😅kidding, but Gorgias is an exceptionally great customer support system. Helps to manage all emails, FB/IG messages, comments under the ads inside one covenient interface.

We are using it for 20+ brands we’re working on. Love it!

Do you know that Facebook can hiddenly demote your ads and content? Just to name a few:

- Clickbait Links
- Engagement Bait
- Low Quality Videos

Here is a link to the Facebook transparency guide with all types of content that raise your CPMs

https://transparency.fb.com/features/approach-to-ranking/types-of-content-we-demote/

​​These are 14 actionable things I learned by launching the DTC e-commerce business on Shopify in 2021 as DTC agency.

So grateful to be able to test and scale this brand with our tegra.co team.

Here is what allowed us to get almost $30k in sales in 3 months.

We started to work on it in August from pretty much zero. No Shopify store. Just an idea and an urge to get it off the ground.

To be 100% transparent - we’re not 0 noobs. We’re helping DTC brands launch and scale for 3+ years as DTC marketing team tegra.co

So we knew what to apply right away to get to the baseline of the performance. But what we didn’t know is that it’s not always about marketing, but how the backend is structured.

Let’s get started.


1. Less focus on Facebook (any) ads tinkering, more focus on the offer and CRO.

Don’t get me wrong, creative testing and ad scaling is a huge part of e-commerce operations.

But the biggest bump in our bottom line and ads profitability happened after the CRO audit.

1.1 We’ve learned and implemented a lot from @LandingPageGuys (big up to @oliverkenyon) stuff.

It boosted our conversion rate from 0.5% to 2.5% on average. That is 5x more revenue from the amount of new and recurring traffic!


2. Amplify customer acquisition and retention with email and SMS.

It’s not only about upselling to your previous customer list through blasts.

It’s about squeezing more revenue from TOF with abandoned cart/checkout/browsing recovery flows, popup to collect emails, welcome flow.

2.1 Our go-to here is everything @ecomchasedimond is preaching. Our email marketing team’s bible is everything Chase releasing.

Implementing this is bringing an additional 10% of revenue just from automated flows. Even for a new brand like ours.

2.2 We can’t wait to work more on customer retention through email/SMS campaigns.

For some of the other brands we manage emails for - it can bring up to 45% of bottom-line revenue.

That can make or fail any e-commerce business.


3. Stock management, delivery time, and customer support is the key to customer retention.

Why do I summarize these three? Because these are all about making sure your customers are getting your stuff in time and always know you have their back.

3.1 There is nothing worse than not knowing where your order is and not being able to get feedback about it from the brand.

@tryrushapp has been a cherry on the cake for our stack. So much that we become Rush partners and installed it in all our clients' stores.

3.2 It gets real-time updates from shipping carriers and triggers Klaviyo flows with tracking updates emails.

That creates a truly Amazon-level shipping experience for the customers.

3.3 We connect it with amazing @gorgiasio where we handle all of the customer support tickets from support email, @klaviyo email replies, @SmsBump 1-1 SMS conversations, on-store chat, Facebook/IG comments under our ads, and organic.

To make sure we are always there for them.

4. Don’t expect it to make you money so fast.

Yeah, we’ve seen that. Shopify gurus telling you how they make millions on dropshipping stores overnight.

Just launch your store. Pull in Aliexpress supply automation. Boost it with ads and drink you cocktail on Hawaii.

4.1 Yes, that worked years ago. Yes, you can get lucky and hit the winning product. But the chances are so small that it’s better to gamble in a casino.

This is not a “get lucky” business.

4.2 This is hard work in all the directions: customer acquisition, retention, support, product development, finances, fulfillment, and dozens of other things.

And at the start, you spend more money than you make. First customers are hard to acquire. It’s rarely to be profitable.

4.3 Not when you test so many things. Not when you don’t have product-market fit.

We spend $1 to get $1 in revenue. And then we have COGS, subscriptions fees, shipping fees, payment fees. Not to talk about stuff we need to pay.

4.4 But we’re building a business here. Not get rich fast Ponzi scheme. The business that can be sold for 3-5x yearly profit.

It’s an investment.

Following this long-term mentality is what helps you get to the point, where it takes off.

At least it is for us 🙂


Le Finale.

Let me know if you have any questions (and follow if you feel so) @iamgalba and @hellotegra on Twitter and Instagram.

I’m going to make an update on this brand's progress at the end of Q1 2021. Tell me if there is something else you’d like to see in the next TLDR.

Happy New Year 🤘

The more we spend on Tiktok ads, the clearer it becomes: Tiktok rely only on its own data. Having pixel installed and collecting data generated by other platforms doesn’t help.

Only your money spend ON the platform. So we keep patient and invest money upfront 💰

Hey guys! Anyone scaling the brand in the women jewelry or related niche (women apparel etc)?

We at tegra.co own the jewelry brand doing about $30k monthly in sales and looking for brand collaborations with brands in relatively similar weight category. I was just thinking about Brand x Brand types of collabs, or reusing email list if not competing.

Ping me up in the DMs @iamgalba if you’re interested.

​​When to start working on customer retention? I'd say from day 1.

But we always have limited resources and due to this fact have to prioritize. There is a great graph on how to spread the focus between acquisition vs retention depending on the sales volume.

​​I have a limited amount of invitation codes for TripleWhale with a 10% discount. Works for both TripleWhale and TripleWhale Pixel. Just use 'tegra10' in the Invitation code field at https://triplewhale.com/

Ps. we were blown away by how convenient this tool is at measuring all traffic channels' performance: Facebook/Google/Tiktok/Klaviyo/Attentive. Especially when paired with Pixel

https://youtu.be/g2u84RqlJNE

This is great. About realistic expectations of Facebook ads and other customer acquisition performance KPIs.

Why even 2-3x returns on cold ads is a miracle really. Hosts are owners of 8 figure brands

​​These are Top 7 skill building habits I persuade and preach as a business operator at tegra.co

- Stack skills on top of each other, they will grow exponentially valuable

- Everything that doesnt work as it should in your business is 100% your fault and a manifestation of a skill you are lacking

- Put your ego aside and amit that you have a deficit/lack a certain skill/knowledge

- Identify what the next skill you lack is and pursue it aggressively

- Don’t save insignificant sums of money, invest it in skills instead

- You don’t need more things to make more money, you need to focus on one thing

- But go deep and broad with the skills around this one thing and productize it

​​Yesterday was the biggest day for one of our clients - DTC brand in apparel niche. $163,590 in one day.

That is 10x from the biggest days they had a year ago when we started to work head to head.

High-level secret sauce:

- multi-channel acquisition
- customer retention
- deep CRO work

Low-lewel Secret Sauce:

- Google RDSA
- Google Shopping Layering
- Google Brand Keywords
- Facebook Sneak Attack
- Facebook Nuke
- Facebook DPA
- Tiktok Value Optimization
- Tiktok Native Creatives
- Email Almost Daily + Segmentation
- 10+ Email Flows. Basic and Advanced
- Sms Conversional + on Brand
- Cro PDP Testing
- Cro Catalog Optimization
- Cro Price Testing
- Cro Average Session Per User Optimization
- Concentrating on Top Acquisition Products
- Etc
- Etc
- Etc…

= Overnight Success 🤘

What are the 8 most exciting features Shopify released a huge Summer “22 update?

https://www.shopify.com/editions/summer2022


1. Shopify Audiences

Imagine you can get a hashed email list of your perfect customers from the whole Shopify network and use it to create custom and LAL audiences?

This is it

shopify.com/audiences

* for Shopify Plus only


2. Shopify Linkpop

This one is there for a while but is a very underestimated one. This tool allows the creation of a nice mobile-optimized landing page to attach to social media profiles

https://linkpop.com/


3. B2B on Shopify

This is a long-waited feature and pretty explanatory. You can load your b2b customers there, control invoicing and bulk discounts.

* Shopify Plus only

https://www.shopify.com/plus/solutions/b2b-ecommerce


4. Shopify Markets

No more hustle of multi-currency or language for international merchants.

It’s not specifically a new feature, but must have.

shopify.com/markets

We use it for our brand pharah.co and it’s amazing.


5. Shop Cash Boosts

Incentivize your customers to use Shop Pay and get cash bonuses. Needs $5k commitment.

https://www.shopify.com/shop-cash-boosts


6. Multiple discount codes support

Now customers can apply codes for % discount and free shipping simultaneously.

https://www.shopify.com/discounts


7. Shopify International 2-day fulfillment

It’s available only for US, UK, and France for now, but it’s a logical move for Shopify to help merchants with order fulfillment.

https://www.shopify.com/fulfillment


8. Shopify Promise

Applied for fulfillment merchants are getting a nice 2-day guarantee badge on the product pages

https://www.shopify.com/shop-promise


That’s pretty much all of the major updates we are excited about at tegra.co DTC marketing team.

Did I miss something? Let’s chat in replies 💪🏾