Unlocking the secrets of successful Direct-to-Consumer businesses

It is often said that you should not trust your first impression, especially in e-commerce.

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Even the last impression is the most important because 80% of your customers will only order again if they are satisfied with the delivery experience.

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One of the secrets to boosting their Lifetime Value is to offer them a memorable unboxing experience.

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To inspire you, I have shared the strategies and secrets of the most beautiful DNVBs to make them unforgettable!

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Personalise your packages to make you unforgettable

The number one rule for successful unboxing is to personalise your packaging so that your customers are immersed in your world.

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68% say that personalised packaging guarantees quality and inspires trust.‍

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Merci Handy understands this and always creates very creative packaging, as seen from its collab' with Stranger Things ⬇️

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Don't worry, you don't have to go to that extreme. To stand out with your packaging, you can opt for:

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• Personalising the outside and/or inside of your package
• A scotch tape or sticker in your colours.
• An original silk paper.
• A thank you card.

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<sub>💡 Bigblue Tip

Thanks to Bigblue, Unbottled add a personalised thank you card written by Sarah, their founder, in their parcels. A little attention goes a long way; their customer satisfaction rate is 90% on average!</sub>

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Be generous, and you will win your customers’ hearts!

In marketing, evoking emotion is the best way to attract attention and make yourself memorable to your customers and prospects.

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61% say that the package's aesthetics plays a role in their enthusiasm when unpacking it!

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To do this, you can take inspiration from those brands that include an unexpected product in their orders:

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• Aesop’s small canvas bag that can be used as a toiletry bag.

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• Sézane or Rouje tote bags, very easily identifiable and ultra-desirable (they are even sold on Vinted)!

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• Pop stickers from From Future that you want to stick everywhere (like on Jules' computer from Bigblue)!

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• Samples of your products, like Dermalogica.

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<sub>🛠 Bigblue Tip

‍Dermalogica uses the Bigblue app to add free samples to their orders, but also customizable flyers according to seasonality (coupons, pre-sales, etc.).</sub>

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Adapt to your customers’ needs

A returning customer costs on average 7x less than acquiring a new one!

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Showing your customers that you know and care about them is a great way to build loyalty.

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Transform your occasional buyers with packaging that fits their needs and fits them!

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• Easy-to-carry packages with a built-in handle like Asos or Eram.

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• A package/shoe box like CAVAL to store your pair of shores and reduce packaging.

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• A ready-to-return package with tape and a pre-printed return slip like Zalando.
  PS: if you like the design of their packaging, I found their patterns on Ken Hegemann's website 🤫

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<sub>↪️ How about building customer loyalty through returns?

With our customisable returns portal and printerless technology, your customers return their orders independently. With store credit, you reduce refunds and retain revenue.

Tell me more</sub>

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Tell your story

Take advantage of your packages to tell your story and highlight your values!

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• Zeta reminds us of its mission, the components of its sneakers and their impact on the environment.

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• Cabaïa uses a protective bag made of 100% biodegradable and compostable vegetable cellulose, they guarantee its products for life and even show their support to the delivery people!

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<sub>🌱 Bigblue Tips

‍At Bigblue, all our packaging is plastic-free! To protect fragile products, we use block box made from recycled and easily upcyclable clothing! Feel free to click here if you'd like to learn more about our commitments.</sub>

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Go viral with your packaging!

Your packages can be excellent marketing levers because they allow you to get UGC!

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This is no mean feat when you consider that 48% of consumers say that UGC allows them to discover new brands.

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• The fun side of Hipli's reusable packages allows SMOON to retrieve content from Instagram and TikTok easily.‍
• Ziggy's parcels turn into a Meoeow Car and delight their customers, who send the brand photos to publish each week.

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As you may know, we at Bigblue are obsessed with the marketing power of UGC.

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We've held three webinars and written several newsletters and articles on the subject.

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I'm sharing our free playbook Anatomy of a €3M UGC campaign with EVERYTHING you need to know about customer-generated content.‍

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If, like me, you are passionate about unboxing (and a little curious about what others are doing), I recommend this Instagram account.

Because they are the most effective and least expensive organic acquisition channels on the market, Networking and Partnerships continue to be successful marketing tools in the UK.

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To help you strengthen or build your referral strategy, I've shared the method that Caroline Mignaux revealed to our CEO, Tim. This method highlights how you can easily gain new customers via partnerships and boost your sales during Q1.

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The 3 benefits of networking

1️. Reduce acquisition costs by sharing your audiences with your partner, rather than spending a fortune to get new customers.

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2️. Gain visibility to an ultra-relevant audience and grow your community.‍

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3️. Leverage your social proof and establish your authority by increasing your partner brand awareness.

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The most effective types of partnerships

• Co-branding
  Co-branding, or collaboration, is not a new method and simply consists of two brands creating a product that merges their two worlds.

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Contrary to popular belief, this marketing practice is popular between the big (Apple x Hermes) and between the small (M.Moustache x Hast). Today, it is becoming more and more common that the small and the big are partnering up with one another! (Nespresso x Zeta, CAVAL x Saint James, Faguo x Aigle, etc.)‍

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Thanks to their partnership, Faguo was able to take advantage of Aigle's Asian clientele which established itself in a new market. On the other hand, Aigle gave itself a facelift by associating itself with a DNVB.

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• The bundle
  This is when two brands offer their products and services together, for example, in a limited edition range or a competition. As with Unbottled x Meuf, this allows you to boost your engagement by taking advantage of cross-communication, generate more leads, and increase your sales.

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<sub>🔀 Are you interested in bundles?

Using Bigblue, Meuf and Unbottled launched a bundle offer and set up their cross-sales campaign.</sub>

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• Affiliate marketing
  E-commerce affiliation consists of selling your products on an affiliate site, often from a dedicated page. The affiliate receives a commission for each sale made and the advertiser’s site increases its sales and traffic.

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• Cross-selling
  Cross-selling is when you offer your customers the opportunity to buy additional and often complementary products. This technique increases your sales by an average of 20% and improves your customer’s overall experience. If your products and your partner's products are complementary, you can definitely use cross-selling to mutually increase your sales, like Campingaz with Decathlon.

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<sub>🛠 Bigblue Tip 

I recently discovered the Capio tool; this makes it easy to find the right partner site to cross-sell to!</sub>

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The check-list to organize and automate your partnerships

✅ Step 1: Define your objective

To do this, all you need to do is determine what impact you are going to prioritise:

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• Gain visibility
• Build your authority
• Generate more leads to increase your database

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By focusing on one objective, you'll have a much better chance of maximising your profits and making your co-marketing operation a success.

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✅ Step 2: Find the right partner

"Like attracts like". Yet, 70% of partnerships fail because of a poor choice of partner.

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To succeed in your partnership, you need to have a culture fit:

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• a common goal,
• similar values,
• similar audiences,
• equivalent processes,
• resources that complement or reinforce each other (for example, if you are looking to launch on Youtube and your partner is already present there).

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<sub>💡Tip for finding the right partners quickly

The Reachmaker tool created by Caroline analyses more than 2000 of your competitors and peers to propose collaborations adapted to your needs.</sub>

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✅ Step 3: Process

To save time and quickly enrich your list of partners, I strongly recommend that you offer them an onboarding kit.

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For example, you can make a dedicated onboarding kit, as if you were welcoming a new employee to your team.

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As you will be working together, it is important to share knowledge e.g. tips, tricks and resources... be generous! Your partner will feel more involved and your partnership will thrive.

As the most important sales period in the retail world (30% of annual turnover on average), it is difficult to miss Black Friday when you are an e-tailer.

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Whether you're for or against it, it's essential to be well prepared so as not to miss the opportunity to get your brand talked about (a lot), capture new customers and anticipate your sales for Christmas 2022.

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To help you out, here are 4 tips, tricks and brand examples to get you in shape and shine this Black Friday.

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1️. 10 letters: a-n-t-i-c-i-p-a-t-e

November has become as big a month as December for e-commerce in the UK, largely due to Black Friday.

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In 2021, Shopify's sales exceeded $6 billion over the BFCM period and the platform is targeting a +23% increase for 2022.

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Your customers have money to spend, now is the time to go and get them!

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<sub>💡This also applies to your post-purchase experience!

‍Whether you manage your shipments in-house or go through a 3PL solution, I'm sharing my checklist for optimising your logistics this BFCM:

☑️ Announce achievable delivery times (with increasing volumes, carriers are bound to fall behind).
☑️ Predict the right level of stock (depending on sales, types of promotions applied, etc.). To help you, I recommend Prediko.
☑️ If you manage your logistics in-house, you will definitely need additional manpower to prepare orders (you can go through Side, for example).
☑️ Make your returns easy and take care of your follow-up emails to ease your customer support!</sub>

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2️. Segment your audiences

The closer D-Day arrives, the higher the CACs will climb.

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So much so that it will be virtually impossible to reach a cold target without sacrificing a good part of your annual marketing budget.

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Whether you participate or not, anticipate and take advantage of the pre-Black Friday period to segment your audiences and invest in your future hot targets (customers, subscribers, fans, etc.)!

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<sub>🔥 During Black Friday, the trends are reversed!

‍I share with you the ranking of the sources that generate the most traffic:
🥇26 % via SEO.
🥈24 % via paid (social and search).
🥉17 % in organic searches.
⭐️ 7 % via email.
Source: Contentsquare</sub>

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3️. Be creative and vary the formats.

Stand out in the feeds/email box/Google results of your potential customers by being creative!

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For inspiration, here are some examples of brand campaigns for and against Black Friday ⤵️

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✅ FOR

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‍Gymshark's parody of a gym session to announce their Black Friday 2021 offers to their customers.

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<sub>👀 Are you interested in Gymshark's campaigns?

‍We've listed about 20 of their email marketing and Ads campaigns for you in this playbook.

Download for free</sub>

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Apple's "FOMO" emails (aka. Fear Of Missing Out), to keep the suspense going and tease your offers gradually.

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Kohl's Twitter contest. The brand offered $500 gift cards in exchange for retweets and comments. A great way to get the word out, while creating interaction with their current and potential customers!

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‍❌ AGAINST‍

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Not doing discounts is not a reason not to communicate.

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On the contrary: this is the time to promote your commitments!

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Here are some examples 👇‍

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Patagonia's "Don't buy this jacket" campaign in 2011, a first. In 2016, with "100% for the planet", it committed to donate all its profits to environmental protection.

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To make it memorable, the Picture brand had completely closed its site on 26 November 2021.

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Click here to watch the video  ⤵️

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For the 2021 sales, the fashion brand Asphalte played it funny with the "No Sales", an idea you can totally pick up for Black Friday.

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<sub>✊ Unity is strength

‍More and more brands are fighting back and boycotting this day! To learn more, I list here a small but not exhaustive list of anti-Black Friday collectives and initiatives:
‍-> Make My Friday Green Again (Faguo)
-> Black for Good (Typology)
-> Green Friday (Federation Envie)</sub>

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4. Optimise your website on mobile!

Heavily influenced by the health crisis, Black Friday has become a real mobile phenomenon: 70% of Shopify sales were made on smartphones.

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Knowing that 52% of users will not go beyond the second scroll, I strongly recommend that you optimize your e-commerce on this medium as a priority by prioritizing simple landing pages and product pages!

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The product pages that convert the most on mobile are those on which you can see:

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• The name of the product,
• A photo,
• Its price,
• A brief description,
• A call to action

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<sub>🌱 3 tips for a more eco-friendly website

Small streams make big rivers, whether you are doing discounts, or not!
-> A dark theme requires fewer resources than a white theme (see the new SNCF website).
-> 2D animations require fewer resources than 3D ones.
-> Videos take up a lot of space on the servers, so choose light visuals for your product pages.</sub>

In a marketing email, writing the subject line is probably the most important step.

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The future of your campaign will depend on these few words: convert your leads into customers or end up in the spam folder.

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To avoid the second option, let me share my cheat sheet with you so you can write subject lines that will send your open rates through the roof ⤵️

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☑️ Keep it short

About 40% of your leads will open your emails on mobile. If your subject line is too long, it will be automatically cut and you may miss your goal: for your email to be read.

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Therefore, it is better not to exceed 50 characters

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To make sure that your subject line is visible on all media, I recommend that you always start by setting up your email on mobile before you do the same on a desktop!‍

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_{💡 Bonus tips to shorten your subject lines.
-> Delete adverbs, adjectives, pronouns and prepositions.
-> Replace sentences with one word.
-> Prioritise single-digit numbers over longer numbers (I’ll tell you more below)!}

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☑️ Provoke an emotion

If you want your recipients to click, you need to pique their curiosity.

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To do so, there are keywords that give rise to 7 universal emotions:

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• Vanity: brilliant, sexy, awesome, unbeatable...
• Laziness: guide, simple, in less than, child’s play...
• Greed: enjoy, benefit, huge...
• Urgency: don’t miss out on, more than…
• Humour: funny, entertaining, original...
• Trust: approved, tested, authentic, a lifetime...
• Desire: for you, custom, unique...

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_{🎁 Bonus: 17 words that naturally arouse curiosity
-> adjectives: surprising, strange, limited, overview, unknown, confidential, forbidden, unprecedented, private...
-> verbs: discover, unveil, reveal...
-> nouns: secret, invitation, confession...
-> expressions: behind the scenes, hidden side...}

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☑️ Don’t be afraid of humour!

Like yours, your leads’ inboxes are flooded with emails every day.

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Using humour is a great way to stand out (and to improve your personal branding, by the way)!

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PS: brands that sell using humour know their target audience inside out, so I recommend you segment your lists before you start.

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<sub>💌 How to achieve +30% sales through email.

‍To help you increase your turnover quickly, I'm sharing Bigblue and Wisepop's free playbook to learn how to segment your target audience and build an effective email marketing strategy for your e-commerce ⤵️

Access the playbook for free</sub>

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☑️ Use numbers

It’s science, the human brain is naturally attracted to numbers, partly because they help us organise information in a logical way.

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There is even talk of "brain candy" 🍭‍

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_{💡 3 fun facts on the use of numbers in marketing.
-> Small numbers (digits) are easier for the audience to get their head around,
-> Odd numbers are perceived as more authentic than even numbers,
-> Even numbers make it easier to retain information.}

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☑️ Speak the same language

If you had to remember just one rule about subject lines, let it be this: always talk to human beings.

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When you write your subject line, ask yourself "Would I like to read this?" and you will quickly identify superfluous words.

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PS: applied to the subject lines of all your marketing emails (and even to your overall strategy), this concept is a great way to improve your customer experience!

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For example, in your follow-up emails:
✅ "Your order is on its way!"
❌ "Order n°438643763 is being processed"

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<sub>🌈 Maintain a good relationship with your clients, even after payment!

To give your customers a memorable experience and increase your Net Promoter Score (NPS), personalise your post-purchase emails like those of OMA&ME!
‍Know more</sub>

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☑️ All caps and exclamation marks should be banned

Subjects lines such as "OPEN FAST AND GET A FREE TRIAL" or "50% discount for 24h only!!!!!!!! will not help you improve your open rate.

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Your mail will probably be ignored, or worse... it will end up in the spam folder!

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All you will have managed to do is to lower your Sender Score.

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<sub>‍⭐️ What’s the Sender Score?

‍A score between 0 and 100 (>70 is considered bad), it defines your reliability as a sender based on the behavior of your recipients (spamming, number of unsubscriptions, etc.). You can calculate it for free on Senderscore.org.</sub>

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☑️ Remain human

The secret to getting a place in your leads’ inboxes: become their best friend.

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The first step is to humanise your “from” name (see your email address, for example: julie@yourfriend.com), even if your email is automatically sent from a generic address.‍

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Unbottled sends their marketing emails using Sarah’s name, their founder.  ⤵️

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PS: Don't worry, I’m not a robot 🤖

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☑️ Use emojis

56% of brands that use emojis in their subject lines have better open rates.

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This is not surprising since they allow to:

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• Easily convey an emotion or idea (ideal when you run out of space),
• Stand out in your recipients’ inboxes
• Remember a message more easily.

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_{💡3 fun facts about emojis in marketing
🧔🏻♂️ Men are more likely to view emojis as having no place in a brand’s communications,
👧🏼 Those aged 25 to 44 year are the most favourable to emojis,
🥇 There is a Hubspot ranking of emojis with the best open rates ⤵️}

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If you're ever looking for the perfect place to hide a body, you may be recommended on page 2 of Google results: 91% of users never go there.

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However, if you want to make your acquisition strategy profitable, placing your e-commerce webpage in the top 10 Google results must be in your top 3 priorities.

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But, facing giants like Amazon or La Redoute and improving your natural organic ranking when you are a DNVB can quickly become impossible...

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... unless you have the right strategy!

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So, I will now share with you Adrien Croville's checklist (SEO expert and founder of the Mentor Marketing agency) to thwart the SEO strategies of marketplaces thanks to the right keywords and rank first on Google.

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☑️ Capturing user’s intent

Before you start looking for keywords for your e-commerce, you must divide them into 2 categories:

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● Informational keywords: the gateway to your SEO tunnel (e.g. how to keep your vegan trainers in a good shape).

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● Transactional keywords: those that users will type in when they intend to buy (e.g. buy vegan trainers in Paris). These are generally the most difficult to capture, as they are often taken over by the biggest e-shop vendors.

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<sub>🛣 Adrien's advice to increase your traffic

Avoid trying to put too many keywords on your product pages as they can change regularly (especially in the clothing sector). Instead, Adrien recommends optimizing your category pages!</sub>

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☑️ Identify your keywords and their monthly search volume

There are different methods depending on the size of your business and your needs:

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🛠 Free tools.

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• Do a manual search on Google, to check if you appear on the first page or not and pick out keyword inspirations.
• The Google Search Console tool gives you info on user queries before they get to your site.
• Ubersuggest gives you an overview of your positioning compared to your competitors.

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💸 Paid tools.

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• For €89/month, Ahrefs generates lists of keywords according to their search volume, CPC, location, etc.
• For around €100/month, you can use its competitor, Semrush, which has a database 3 times larger.

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☑️ Inspecting Meta Titles

You simply have to enter your keyword, followed by "allintitle:" on Google and it will give you the number of websites where it is found in the Meta Title (e.g. more than 166k for "linen pillowcase").

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If the result is under 5k, you should be able to rank pretty easily with this keyword. However, above 10k, it becomes more complicated.

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☑️ Estimate the ideal word count for your product pages.

To do this, there's nothing like following your competitors. Using tools like yourtext.guru (which offers free trials!) or Semrush 👀.

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Their algorithm will analyse the number of words present on the first 10 URLs.

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<sub>⏱ Growth technique to go faster

Semrush also allows you to grab other keywords to rank higher in Google searches! For example, for the query "linen pillowcase", competitors also position themselves on "fitted sheet" or "natural duvet".</sub>

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☑️ Marketplaces are your friends!

Despite all expectations, having marketplaces ranked in the top 10 of Google results can be a great asset for your e-commerce! This is because Google is likely to prefer the small ones and automatically rank them higher.

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<sub>‍💡 Bigblue Tip to improve your natural SEO

Once again, get inspired by the marketplaces and their functionalities! For example, by offering its customers an intuitive and personalised return portal, the brand CAVAL improves the referencing of its FAQ and its site at the same time!
Learn more</sub>

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☑️ Determine your minimum Referring Domain

It's about identifying the number of backlinks you need to rank by keeping an eye on your competitors.
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You can use the SEObserver tool to find out how many backlinks they have and use this as a guide for your SEO strategy.

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<sub>🐫 Adrien's two tips if you don't have enough backlinks 

1️.First, you can focus on optimising your informational keywords and producing content (blog posts, etc.). It will improve your internal linking.</sub>

_{‍
2️. Keep an eye on your competitors to get inspired by their strategies! With Ahrefs or Semrush, you can see the backlinks that redirect the most traffic to their product pages!}

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☑️ Avoiding duplicates

Here are two things you should know about duplicates:

● Plagiarism does not please Google, and if the No. 1 GAFA ever accuses you of plagiarising a site, you should consider getting a lawyer.
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● This is important because if you have two identical pages, Google will randomly choose to display only one of them.

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☑️ Analyse the order of the tabs under the search bar

For transactional keywords, if "Shopping" appears after "All" when you type in your keyword, it means that Google recognises that it is a commercial query, and you are more likely to rank higher.

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For example, the query "guinea pig wig" exists as a commercial query, whereas "camel wig" does not!

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According to Adrien, if you apply this method every time you search for a keyword, your efforts should start to pay off within three months.

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You'll be able to sleep peacefully while your e-commerce business naturally rises in the Google rankings.

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And to push your SEO knowledge a little further, here is the link to a free and ultra-detailed playbook on the subject ⤵️

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Download for free

With Q4 just around the corner, I'm guessing that optimising your online shop for mobile isn't your number one priority.

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Yet, I'm convinced that it's just the right time for it. Why?

📲 By June 2022, the share of mobile traffic reached 65.5%

🚴🏻‍♀️ With an average acquisition cost of £23, you should make it worth it

🎰 DNVBs who went mobile first increased their conversion rate on this device by three times.

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To help you get back in control of your marketing spend and boost your sales, I've put together the best tools and practices to improve your mobile conversion rate. ⤵️

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Evaluate the performance on mobile in 3 steps📈

88% of your customers will not return to an e-shop if their experience is bad.

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On the other hand, 40% will be more likely to spend more than they originally planned if the shopping experience is highly personalised.

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The key to taking a mobile-first approach to e-commerce is to prioritise the mobile version before moving on to the desktop.

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1️. Check the navigation and responsive design

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Loading time, homepage, menu, text and image size...

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Ask yourself: are the navigation and design genuinely pleasant?

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If the answer is no (or even worse, it is poor), the following should help you 😉

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<sub>⏱ Bonus tip

To go faster, you can use the Chrome extension Webmobilefirst. It checks if your site is responsive on mobile, tablet and even smartwatches!</sub>

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2️. Analyse your product pages‍

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I learned that about 30% of e-commerce visitors don't make it to the bottom of a page.

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If you have to scroll, you're likely losing an equivalent potential revenue with each visit!

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The product pages that convert the most on mobile are those where you can see:

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• The product name
• A photo
• The price
• A brief description
• A call to action

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As a benchmark, I recommend those of Caval or 900.Care ⤵️

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<sub>🤜🤛 Bigblue's Friends

Do Caval's product pages catch your eye? You can Ask the experts at BlackSwan agency for advice from me: they did an amazing job on their mobile-first site redesign.</sub>

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3️. Test your shopping cart‍

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This is the most important part because the shopping cart abandonment rate on mobile is over 85% 🤯

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Add a product to your cart and try to place an order. Is the checkout experience intuitive? What are the friction points you may encounter?

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BackMarket's method for creating high-performing product pages 🎭

With their armies of marketers and A/B testers, marketplaces like BackMarket, Zalando or ManoMano are incredible sources of inspiration for your product pages 🤩

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The secret to their success: they split their product pages into two parts and display the essential details in the right place.

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To save you time, I've listed the ingredients for a product page that converts. I've also included 4 tools to test it, and optimise it easily!

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1️. On the frontend

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Remember, at least 30% of your customers will only read half of your product pages, the first one that appears on their screen.

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So they need to find all the essential info without scrolling:

📸 A photo of the product

👋🏻 Its name

💸 Its price

⭐️ Social Proof (Stars, Google ratings or Trustpilot)

📝 A brief description of the product (its benefits, features, etc.)

📦 A reassurance block (secure payment, delivery date)

🥊 A call to action

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<sub>‍💙 Bigblue tips

With the Bigblue Fast Tag, you can display the exact delivery date of your product directly in the reassurance block. Brands that use this option have increased their sales by 40% to 86%! 📈

Read more</sub>

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‍2️. On the backend‍

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You can put secondary info about your product here.

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On the side of the marketplaces, you will mainly find: its functionalities, advantages, technical details, materials used, dimensions, manufacturing method, customer reviews and testimonials (messages, videos), a buying guide (e.g., how to choose a good mattress? or size charts), FAQs...

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<sub>💡 My 5 favourite tools to create and enrich your product pages:

-> Mockflow: to easily design and test your product page!
-> Hotjar: to understand how your customers interact with your CTAs.
-> Trustpilot: to automatically integrate your customer reviews.
-> Crisp: to offer a live chat or an FAQ.
-> Widebundle: to offer your products in packs and increase your average cart.</sub>

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3 tools to measure and optimise your e-commerce performance index 🐆

The ideal page load time is less than 1 second, regardless of the internet connection or device.

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For the experts at BlackSwan, every extra second of loading time reduces your chances of capturing a visitor, and therefore converting a potential customer, by 25%!

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To avoid this, I've found 3 free tools that will help you increase the performance index of your site:

🏎 GTmetrix: to analyse the speed of your site on your different media and identify what is altering your performance.

🌡 Web dev: to measure the quality of a page of your site and collect recommendations to improve it.

🍔 RequestMap: to remove your greedy applications and take your load time to the next level!

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Thank you for reading this far.

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I hope you have only one goal in mind for the new year: to make your e-commerce a mobile-first champion!

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To encourage you to stay on track, I'll share with you in my next email the SEO methods that Adrien Croville revealed to me to double your organic traffic 🤑

Last week I talked about my experience as marketing manager of an e-commerce brand with Thomas, the founder of EmailClub. I proudly told him that at the time, I was generating 20% of sales with emails.

A humbling moment for sure... he said that an effective email strategy would drive a 30% (😅).

He challenged my email strategy and told me everything I could improve. So, I compiled all his valuable tips to help you make email marketing one of your best acquisition levers!

It's easier than you think ⤵️

PS: to motivate you, I got you a little gift at the end of the email 🎁

Two golden rules to catch the interest of your contacts 🪝

1. Only write to interested people!

Your customers won't react the same way to your sales arguments! This is true for both physical stores and emails

To improve the CVR of his emails, Thomas reminded me that it was necessary to start by segmenting his contacts.

Better segmented contact bases, enable you to send more personalised and relevant content to improve your CAC.

Two essential rules to get started:

• An active base (your loyal customers 😍): these are the contacts with whom you have the most interaction and to whom you send almost all your emails (promos and pure content). You can also use it to get reviews, send surveys, etc.  
  
• An inactive base (the most sceptical 🧐): the contacts with whom you have almost zero interaction and that you removed from your active base. Thomas recommends reactivating them with product launch emails or special offers (about one email in 10).

_{📖 Need a quick refresher on email lists?}

Here's a very complete article by Thomas on how to segment, acquire, leverage, and clean up your e-mail lists! Read the article

Segmenting your lists also helps to infiltrate (almost) every inbox.

2. Make sure they read you!

Email marketing has its own algorithm ⚙️

Good news: it's much easier to crack than Google's.

In 83% of cases, 'not delivered' emails are linked to a bad Sender Score.

Ranging from 0 to 100 (a score < 70 being considered bad), it defines your reliability as a sender based on your recipients' behaviour towards your emails (spamming or junk mail, number of unsubscribes, etc.).

Hence the importance of segmenting your bases!

<sub>💡How to calculate it?

‍I use the Senderscore.org tool to calculate it for free.</sub>

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‍Thomas gave me 2 additional indicators of a failing email:

• an open rate below 20%,
• more unsubscribes than orders after the email is sent.

The ultimate checklist for successful emails ✅

Here are 5 tips to make the most of each email you send!‍

☑️ Always check everything before sending: links, spelling, alternative texts...

☑️ Optimise your emails on mobile: 43% of your customers consult their emails on mobile, and 80% of users buy on this medium.

☑️ Mix the formats and themes.

<sub>💡 Get rid of the writer's block syndrome!

Here are my 2 tips to get inspired:
-> subscribe to your competitors' newsletters,
-> use the NewsletterMode tool to go faster!</sub>

☑️ Subject line is key: the open rate of your email depends on it, no matter what it contains. List your Leads Magnets and use them to arouse the curiosity of your customers.

☑️ Always A/B test: objects, formats, sending times, CTA position... The more you test, the better you can analyse your contacts' behaviour, and the more effective your strategy will be!

<sub>💡Tip to analyse your results

To more easily track the performance of my emails and understand what my audience likes and doesn't like, I list all my tests on Whimsical (the Miro tool also works great) with screenshots of my results.</sub>

The 2 most profitable emails 💸

1. Order tracking emails

Post-purchase emails have an open rate of around 75% (compared to 19.7% on average for marketing emails). Brands that leverage this channel as a marketing tool generate up to 8% higher conversion rates!  

For example, Unbottled integrates vouchers into their follow-up emails to generate additional sales! ⤵️

<sub>💙 Bigblue Tips

With Bigblue, you can easily personalise your follow-up emails and provide your customers with a great experience, even after they have placed their order!

Read more</sub>

‍2. Cart abandonment emails.

By optimising this channel, Thomas recovers up to 20% of abandoned carts and in a 100% automated way!

Even though I was quite shy about this practice, he advised me to combine my emails with SMS, ideally creating sequences of 3 emails for 2 SMS.

To save you time, I'm sharing the sequence he uses for pure conversion purposes:

• Email 1 (15 min) / SMS 1 (30 min): a short urgent message that sends your customer back to their basket.  
• Email 2 (1 to 2 hours) / SMS 2 (1 day): a reminder of the advantages of the product or your mission + addition of a first promotion (to be defined according to your strategy and margins)
• Email 3 (1 day): specify that this is the last email + add a 2nd more attractive promotion.

_{💡 Guarantee your brand image}

_{To mitigate the intrusive aspect of cart abandonment emails, I advise you to configure your sequences according to these 3 criteria :}

• _{Trigger: cart abandonment at checkout,}
• _{Filter 1: your customer has accepted your marketing emails,}
• _{Filter 2: they have already placed at least 2 orders.}

You know everything!

I hope that all these tips will be useful to you and that you will keep me posted on how they've worked for you. (I always reply).

Oh, and if you ever want to dig into the subject, I'm sharing a free email marketing cheat sheet here (and a surprise 🎁)

Get the playbook for free!

In this first newsletter, we will see how to achieve a +111% conversion rate thanks to your community, without paying £20k an influencer! 🤜🤛

For the past few months, I've been fascinated by user-generated content, mainly how e-commerce brands use it to double their sales.

In this newsletter, I'm sharing with you all the findings, actionable advice and tips I've gathered to boost your growth through UGCs ⤵️

Two (very) good reasons to be interested in UGCs

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#1 They are ultra-efficient marketing tools...

By sharing photos of its customers in trench coats, Burberry's website recorded more than 7.5 million visits from 150 countries...in 2009!

In 2012, Coca-Cola generated over 12 million impressions through UGCs.

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#2 ...and super conversion levers 🦹

• User-generated content is 42% more effective than branded content,
• Their engagement rate is 6.9 times higher,
• 90% of users believe that positive reviews of your products influence their purchase decision.

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Agency techniques to create good UGCs

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After testing 20k creatives for over 200 advertisers, Matthieu from Stride Up agency revealed two things about UGCs:

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#1 "The uglier it is, the better it works." 🤑

Consumers are 2.4 times more likely to view user-generated content as authentic compared to content created by your brand.

A high-performing and qualitative UGC must therefore be authentic and created by your client...

... at least in form!

Because there is nothing to stop you from briefing them to ensure you have usable content!

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#2 "Videos convert the most." 🎬

Photos and reviews are great, but the video remains the format that inspires the most trust.

The holy grail? A facecam customer who speaks up, expresses his satisfaction, does an unboxing, live fitting…

For more performance, he recommends including the acquisition codes:

• 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 formats,
• Subtitles (for those who watch the networks at work),
• 30 to 40 seconds in length (it's not an Insta-real, it takes longer to convince your client).

For editing, Stride Up advises playing with the AIDA mechanisms:

• 💡 attracting Attention thanks to a stop scroller that will make your prospects want to watch the video,
• 🧐 Generate Interest by using a secondary hook,
• 😍 create Desire by listing the benefits of the product or its differentiating points,
• 🤳 Encourage the customer to take Action by inserting a CTA at the end of the video!

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Examples of effective strategies to collect UGCs

#1 Stop thinking about customers, think about community 👨👩👧👦

68% of buyers will consistently leave a review of your product or service if you ask them to.

As for pampering them, you're already doing that very well: DNVBs have an average 34% higher re-purchase rate than a retail e-tailer! 🤩

Here are some more techniques to boost your community engagement:

• Asphalte or Nidéco bet for product co-creation: this allows them to engage their subscribers ultra-efficiently while increasing their reach and awareness!‍
• CAVAL optimises its post-purchase experience to increase customer satisfaction: impeccable delivery, memorable unboxing thanks to personalised packaging and a simplified, hassle-free returns process!

#2 Spread the word! 📣

Each brand has its own technique to encourage its customers to send content for free:

• Balzac organises competitions to encourage its subscribers to share photos of their products.
• Ysé dédie highlights its customers in its newsletters and in fitting sessions on its site.
• Unbottled uses its post-purchase emails to encourage its customers to share content with an "I'm posting on Instagram" CTA (Transactional or tracking emails, shipping or delivery confirmation, etc.).
• The Bradery directly puts a CTA on their packaging. A # or even a QR code works too!

PS: 85% of consumers would not send content on their own but would be inclined to do so in exchange for something in return. A gifted product or voucher whose value changes according to the content generated can help (e.g., -5% for a comment, -10% for a Google review, -20% for a story, etc.).

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_{⭐️ Can you imagine building customer loyalty through unboxing?}

_{‍Here is a complete article to give you all our ideas to optimise your unboxing such as The Bradery, and encourage your customers to share it on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Read me!}

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Finally, if you're interested in this lever but don't have the time to set up a collection strategy, here are my two tips:

• ‍The tool Flowbox makes it easy to retrieve content, even if you are not logged in on a publication!
• ‍You can contact Joseph from Wiink from me; after only five months of use, Blissim has achieved incredible results with their solution:

2K reviews on FB and Trustpilot
12k content: videos, photos, stories, lives, etc.
1.6k ambassadors and 500 recruited each month
370k interactions
13M coverage! 🤯

Three tips to increase the impact of your UGCs

Brands that convert thanks to UGCs rely on a multi-channel strategy.‍

#1 Integrate them into your site ➡️

Websites that post UGC have seen an increase in their conversion rate of up to 111%!

Posting UGCs directly on your site increases your credibility, helps your customers project themselves with your products and encourages the act of buying.

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• Lashilé adds customer reviews directly to its product pages.
• Like LePantalon, you can replace your product pictures with UGCs

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• Respire has created a page on its website entirely dedicated to customer reviews and photos!

• UGCs can also be displayed in a footer, on a scrolling text.

#2 Incorporate UGCs into your emailing and post-purchase email campaigns!

• Ysé displays her subscribers' photos in its newsletters, while Smoon adds her customer reviews to the footer!
• Follow-up emails have an average open rate of 75%. Like Unbottled, rely on this channel to highlight your UGCs!

_{‍💌 Like Unbottled, do you want to increase your conversion rate up to 8% thanks to automated emails?}

_{Here is a detailed article with tips and agency strategies to generate sales with post-purchase emails to live the same success story as Unbottled and Ubac! Tell me everything!}

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#3 Use UGCs in your Ads campaigns!

If your videos respect the acquisition criteria and play with the AIDA mechanisms (see Stride Up's ⤴️ tips), why not use your UGCs in your paid acquisition campaigns?

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🦀 Thanks to this strategy, the brand Poiscaille generated +85k coverage and divided its CAC by 2!

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That's it for me. I've revealed everything I know about UGCs!