Gregory Silvano’s Post

DTC brands, slapping a discount tag on your product display page isn’t enough. Many brands aren’t even close to maximizing the potential of their limited-time sales. Make sure you have a proper price drop flow. It’s an automated sequence of 1-2 emails, informing recipients that a product they’ve previously viewed in the past, or added to their cart, has dropped in price for a limited time. Discounted items obviously convert better. But items your audience viewed at full price that are now listed at a discount? They convert like crazy. That’s the power of a price drop flow.

Now that Q4 is in full effect, DTC brands (should) be gearing up for BFCM. But 90% of them will do it wrong. So to help you fall into the 10% of brands doing it right, here are the main things you need to consider when mapping out your BFCM strategy. Consider the following: - BF early access date - BF start date - BF end date - CM early access date - CM start date - CM end date - Offer(s) (including tier ups or tier downs as time goes on) - Segmentation (who will receive what offers and when) - Email schedule - SMS schedule - BFCM themed opt-in forms - BFCM themed flows - Products to prioritize

Some DTC brands are relying too much on perpetual sales, discount codes, extra kickers, price drops and more. I'd love to tell you some but I'd probably get told off. But feel free to share examples below... What could they be doing instead? How do they break this cycle before they further devalue their products and brand?

you will be ahead of most of the DTC / eCom brands if you do following 3 things 1. cart slider that does active up-selling  2. 1 page checkout 3. post purchase up-sells It is simple, but I can bet if you check most of the "popular" DTC brands they don't do all 3 of these. Most of these brands don't #ecommerce

🚨 DTC brands, beware! 🪤 Long-term heavy discounting might feel like a quick win, but the real cost? It’s steep. 😱 Here’s why: 1️⃣ Devalues Your Product Constant discounts?  Your product loses its worth.  Why pay full price when there’s always a sale? 2️⃣ Creates Discount Junkies Train customers to wait for deals, and they will.  Full-price purchases?  Forget about it. 3️⃣ Engagement Turns to Unsubscribes Bombard with discounts… … and watch those unsubscribes roll in.  Discount fatigue is real. 4️⃣ Builds Transactional Relationships Heavy discounts = purely transactional.  Where’s the loyalty in that? The fix? Shift to building true value: - Focus on brand loyalty. - Offer more than just price cuts. - Engage meaningfully. Don’t let discounts define your brand. 📣 Build relationships, not just sales! 📣

I have audited 5 multiple 8 & 9 figure DTC brands in the past month and this is the most common problem I’ve found hands down. Lack of understanding of the core KPIs that will actually drive their growth. There are still so many brands that blindly follow ROAS as a primary KPI and expect growth. The worst part is when I ask them how they set their target ROAS and they can’t even give me a straight answer. ROAS simply put is only the short term impact of your advertising dollars on consumers who are currently in-market to buy. If you want to focus on growth you need to identify valuable cohorts of customers with the highest raw 60 or 90 day total contribution margin. Depending on the purchasing frequency then you might need to look at a longer period of time. I would also recommend adding in a small buffer on this number to account for variance. If you don’t know what contribution margin is it’s just your LTV with all COGs and variable costs deducted. These are the customers that will produce the most profitable cash flow for your business. Why is this KPI so important? It allows you to look beyond ROAS and understand the true value of your customers so that you can make more strategic decisions in order to acquire & retain them. ROAS only tells you the value of a transaction and the impact of your ad dollars on immediate cash flow. This is a flawed way to look at your numbers if you’re trying to grow. Don’t be this type of brand.

DTC brands will waste $10000’s this BFCM. On one channel. SMS. The way most brands look at it is inherently wrong. “It’s a promotional period so let’s send it to EVERY SMS subscriber.” Maximise revenue earning potential, right? Wrong. Look at the engagement data for your SMS subs. A large % will have never clicked on a message. A large % will have signed up months ago & never purchased. The incremental lift from including everyone in your SMS sends is likely small. For the most part, you’ll just be spending boatloads more, for a measly ROI. Be smart with your SMS segmentation. And save yourself a few quid in the process.

You’re lying to yourself if you think throwing up a standard A/B test on your pop-up and Welcome Series flows are “optimizing” them. It’s not. I’ve talked to hundreds of DTC brands over the past couple of years, and the amount of them that haven’t even considered putting actual resources behind testing them baffles me. Time and time again, I’d hear “Oh yeah I’ll get back to it. It’s on my to do list”. I don’t get it. These levers can drive as little as 15% to as much as 50% of your brand’s revenue. Plus, it isn’t even a huge lift. There are so many tools that can track and report different tests’ efficacies for you. There’s really no excuse. I just want to see DTC brands win. That’s all. What else do you feel DTC brands neglect?

It's officially the best month of the year for DTC brands and I'm sharing what some of the best brands are doing to hit their revenue goals. First stop, one of my favorite skincare brands, Barefaced® . Barefaced®'s email landed in my inbox on Nov 1st and what captured my attention was not actually the subject line. So, what was it? 📧 Email deliverability – the first thing that stood out was that Barefaced's email landed in my Primary inbox, not under my Promotions tab. This was key to breaking through the noise since I have 28 unread emails in my Primary inbox but 3,000+ unread emails in my Promotions tab. (It's okay if you judge me for this) 💰 Best and highest – Barefaced is offering their best and highest, sitewide discount the entire month of November. I love this evergreen approach that runs the entire month for a few reasons: 1. Significantly simplifies operations when it comes to promotional and merchandising strategies. Set it up once, and you're done. No need to test 100 different cart discount permutations. I acknowledge this is easier to execute for CPG brands. 2. Simplifies the user experience. A sitewide discount is easy enough to understand and doesn't require any additional mental math, meaning removed friction for the customer. 🎁 Two freebies – Barefaced has set two different reward thresholds to drive higher AOVs. 1. Free shipping at $99 2. Free Gift at $175 The free gift has changed at least twice in the last 4 days and I love how they give themselves flexibility to decide what to giveaway based on stock availability. Have a DTC brand you want me to track this holiday season? Shoot me a DM.

We added $170k/m for a DTC clothing brand. I asked someone on my team if that was a mistake, or was I reading that correctly? He said “Yes, that’s correct, but in July they’re already slightly over $400,000!!!” (With zero change in traffic.) This was done through a combination of: 1. Optimizing signup units 2. Building a customer journey 3. Avatar-based personalization 4. Optimizing the customer journey 5. Diverse weekly email/SMS campaigns 6. A/B testing weekly email/SMS campaigns We’re smashing this brand's email/SMS. It's amazing how much money some e-commerce brands are sitting on. They just don’t realize its there or know how to get it. If you’re a DTC brand who wants to improve revenue through email/SMS. Use the 'Book an Appointment' link at the top of this post.