 When we recently started working with a new client, I was thrilled. I'm always excited whenever we bring on a new client, but for this particular entrepreneur, I was particularly stoked. This particular client owns an established brand that does well in real-time on-location sales, but needs help growing their online business with funnels and ads. I knew we could kill it for them with the ads and email sequences we could implement. We were right. We dug into their user generated content, studied their audience, and got their email sequences up and running. Within 30 days, 30% of their revenue was coming from email. After we were generating revenue there, we implemented Facebook & Instagram Ads. We started on a small test budget to gather data and more seed money for the next roun dof ads. And 5 weeks in, the funnel cracked. I sent a happy message to our client:  For starting from scratch, 3.6 ROAS was pretty exciting. Not bad for round 1 with a small test spend. Here's what those numbers looked like... 85 purchases on a $1168 and spend generating $4264.90.  As we began to scale, we have been keeping an eye on their ads and ads manager. And we started to notice a trend lately across accounts... We've seen messages about it in chat boards and Facebook Groups. Some campaigns are pulling in intermittent performance... It's like there's a sneeze that just happened in the system. ...For our clients, we're used to working with this. We went in and reworked campaigns - erected new funnels, rolled out additional emails, and implemented new strategies (for example, bringing in 750 new leads on a small test budget...) ...But then we began to review the metrics again. ...And we began to see a trend. We pulled the same report that we had previously pulled for this client - this time, 1 month later. Note: We had since changed our reporting format / order. So the numbers are shown in different places, but the numbers are also different. Same client. Same time frame. But this time, there was a a discrepancy in the data...  Here we noticed a difference of 15% in revenue that wasn't attributed to our campaigns. You should always cross-reference your metrics (Google Analytics, Shopify site stats, and email conversion stats in your CRM)... Old pros know to do this, because the attribution window for Facebook is 28 days - but when clients rely on your recommendations and analytics, this is an important step and second look at the data... Here's our point: To get better insights, hold in tension the fact that your data is incomplete. Review the data again 30 days later, and cross-reference them with other platforms. Overall, here's a rough/quick breakdown of discrepancies:
I was very glad that we took note this on a test budget for this client before we started spending a lot more over the next few months... When the clients are depending upon your projections and your numbers, that's a pretty big deal. And if you see a dip in performance, it's important to keep the same rule of thumb in mind - There's probably more going on than meets the eye. So how do you continue to grow when algorithms change, new bidders come on to the scene, ads get more expensive over the holidays and it becomes more difficult to measure? As we head into the holiday season and BFCM, it's going to be more and more important for you to implement a few key strategies to make sure that you continue to scale profitably, relaibly, and strategically. Here are a few high-level recommendations:  Our challenge to you: 1: Go and pull out July and August's report from Ads manager. 2: Compare them to the reports that you pulled at the time. Are they the same? Do they differ? What do you conclude? Come back and let us know... Want to scale over the holidays and need help? Apply for a strategy session here: www.simplyheavendesign.com/ecommerce
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Above: Click the video to watch the strategy that Starbucks & Porsche are using to build audiences, increase ROI and prepare for the 4Q season. Can you feel it?...Change is in the air.
September has officially arrived, and with it, there's no denying that the eCommerce industry is perched precariously on the tip of 4Q. The ride to the 2019 finish line is in sight...But a question remains: How can you capitalize on strategies right now to build towards your quarterly and annual revenue goals? We're helping our clients get their businesses in optimum shape for BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday) by overhauling their Facebook & Instagram Ads, email sequences and landing pages so that they get a massive return on investment this holiday. On August 27, Starbucks announced its fall line of drinks - Today, we break down how you can apply a similar strategy to stand out from the competition, create new audiences online, and turn these audiences into customers and repeat buyers in 3Q, 4Q, 2020 and beyond... Watch the video and read this post to find:
This will also help you prepare for BFCM by creating warm audiences prior to the sale season. Don't wait until the last minute: Most brands are developing their creative content now so that they can launch campaigns as early as October 15. Three reasons why you should use livestreams in your strategy: 1. Branding As social media continues to develop and channels proliferate, livestreams engage audiences in a way that regular direct marketing does not. It has the potential to connect you to the overall lifestyle of your end user and separate you from the competition. Right now, there are more than 60 million active business pages on Facebook, but only about 50% of businesses produced a livestream last year. 2: Targeting & retargeting audiences Brands are developing strategy earlier and earlier before 4Q. Video views are some of the most cost efficient campaigns that you can run at the top of your ads funnel. Some of the best performing audiences are hyper-targeted retargeting audiences from video views and livestreams. 3: Engagement Facebook as a system is built on depth of engagement. They want people engaged on the platform - this benefits you now by capturing new audiences and by creating better results for you in the long run.
What a lot of brands don't know is that comments that users leave in your livestream will benefit you and create a higher quality of engagement. Businesses and brands that have a higher quality of engagement on their pages, videos, and ads will find that they rank higher when it comes to bidding - and get better results and costs from advertising (eCPM). A guideline for developing your livestreams: 1. Commit to the lifestyle of your end user. Make your consumer the hero. Solve their problems. Add value to their life and create content that aligns with your USP/Unique Value Proposition and lifestyle. Here are several examples:
2. Offer an incentive: A limited-time-only call to action at the end of the livestream. A promo code, contest, sale, or gift with purchase. This will create customers immediately and you will be able to track sales as a direct result of your efforts for further optimization down the road. 3. Drive people to an opt-in offer via email: Offer a gift or guide that is redeemed only on a landing page in exchange for their name and email. Email sequences can contribute 30-50% of your revenue. Remember: This isn't just about one-time customers - you want lifelong relationships, and email addresses are crucial to repeat relationships. 4. Promote this livestream in advance. Send a schedule announcement to your email list, post to your social media profiles, run ads announcing the stream, and create an event on your website and social profiles. This will help generate an interested audience prior to your livestream. 5. Use the livestream for interaction - not just broadcasting. Create a way for your viewers to interact with you: The opportunity to answer fan questions, voting by reaction or comment for a particular outcome (for the subjects in the video to do). 6. Make your livestreams between 15 - 20 minutes long. BuzzSumo analyzed 100 million videos and found this was the ideal time for an engaged audience. 7. Repurpose clips and snippets of your recorded livestream. Take snippets of your recorded livestream (1-3 minutes), edit them, repost them on different social outlets, and use them to continue to promote your offer and add value to your audience. This will create customers from viewers who may watch the livestream after it is recorded and will continue to create engagement on your social profiles. 8. Create these retargeting audiences from this video. Use them for your middle of funnel and bottom of funnel retargeting sequences:
9. Run Black Friday Cyber Monday offers to your retargeting offers. Don't wait until November 1 or 15 to start running ads. Start generating audiences now so that when you are ready to advertise, you are poised to make a max return on your spends. Want to scale your revenue this holiday? We regularly help eCommerce clients go to the next level through our Facebook / Instagram Ads, email sequences, and landing page optimization. Request a free strategy session here: www.simplyheavendesign.com/ecommerce  A six figure brick-and-mortar recently approached our agency about a month ago because they hadn't been able to scale their online sales. Yesterday they sent me a picture of a small mountain of packages that they sent out...They had many more orders in 30 hours than anticipated...  A small mountain of packages going out from one of our clients. Good thing they just hired more help with fulfillment! eCommerce brand owners often ask me what key tactics they should employ to grow their business. Looking back on the last 30 days, here are the 5 things that my team did - and encourage all eCom store owners do - to 2x+ your online business. 1: Employ a full-funnel, long-term strategy. My team and I are big-picture thinkers and long-term sales funnel strategists. We didn't just focus on their ads and quick wins - but their entire funnel. Their ads, website, and email marketing sequences. This way - not only did we the client get new traffic, but also captured the users while they were on the site, and then converted them into paying customers - even if they needed follow up. 2: Drive targeted traffic with top-performing audiences and Facebook & Instagram ads. We uploaded their LTV (lifetime value) customer list, email list, and tracked their website visits over 90 days. We created lookalikes of these audiences, segmented the males / females and ran ads to them. These proved to be very profitable, and if you're not testing these audiences right now...We'd strongly encourage you to do so.  A picture of our campaigns overall after 30 days. They've continued to improve in the last 7, delivering even higher ROAS (return on adspend) than what is pictured above. 3: Segment your audience via pop-ups on different pages. For our client, we segmented the audience based on where they were in the sales funnel, placing customized (non-generic) pop ups on different pages in the website. These exit intent pop-ups* generated up to 30 leads per day using this strategy. We're big picture thinkers - If our clients are going to pay for traffic to come to their site, we better help them capture that traffic and turn it into leads! Employing our pop-up strategy generated up to 30 leads per day using this strategy, far more than the client had been generating than their previous pop-ups. A significant number of people opted in to the pop-ups and then turned into paying customers. *(For you advanced marketers, read this as a pop-over, not a redirect out of the current tab/against google terms.)  What would you do with nearly 400 new leads? If you're not segmenting and creating pop-ups on your site, you're missing out on an extra 10% of revenue minimum. 4: Implement full sales cycle email sequences. A good eCom site will convert between 1-4%. A GREAT eCom site will convert at 12%. This means that 88-99% of the people who come to your site on the first visit don't convert, but might if they received proper follow-up. We implemented exit pop-ups that fed into customized email flows - and now, 30% of our clients' revenue is coming from email.  Is 30-50% of your online revenue coming from email marketing? If not, then it's time to optimize your automations, sequences, and flows. 5: Split test your pop-ups, email subject lines, and email content... comparing them to industry benchmarks. This is where you can REALLY see a difference. Yes, a headline really can make the difference between a sale...or the lack thereof. Email 1 - 33% open rate, 12% CTR, 1x Revenue Email 2 - 43% open rate, 16% CTR, 10x Revenue (This is great, because in this particular niche, the industry standard open rate on this platform is 28%. We were operating at 5-15% better than industry).  Which email is better? Split testing your email subject lines, content, and pop-ups make a huge difference in your revenue. Here, a big part of the win is also using the right ESP or CRM (email service provider / customer relationship manager). Your open rate and click rate has a lot more to do with where your email comes from - and the standard Shopify emails are a helpful start, but they simply don't cut it. By split testing our email flow for our client (and placing them on the right email service provider), we were able to make an automated money-maker for our client... Their customers are being redirected to their site for sales and emails while they sleep. In today's world, that's a big part of how you scale. This was a really efficient process for the client and for us - we are happy to see big wins on the whole funnel, and hope this helps your eCom revenue...
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