Tips From 4 DTC Experts

At Voyage, we are proud to work and partner with some of the leading marketers, founders, and retail executives, which is why we decided to launch Reddy at the Helm: the official podcast of Voyage. Hosted by Voyage CEO Rev Reddy, our guest talk about how they built unbeatable marketing programs that have spurred innovation and success. You can watch or listen to all the podcast episodes here, but we’ve pulled out some of the best gems from these conversations for you in this post. 

Here are four tips from leading DTC experts. 

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Personalization is a Key Part of Success 

Birthdate Co. is a brand that creates one-of-a-kind astrology candles and books. As Ajay Mehta, the CEO and Co-founder of Birthdate Co. explains, the brand's success stems from personalization. 

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“Personalized products aren’t something that you can walk into a Target and buy, but you can buy from a website, like we launched with 365 individual SKUs. So, it was a combination of those things—personalization, customization, and a really excited and vibrant community of people that loved astrology and sharing astrology content.”

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This commitment to personalization continues into Birthdate Co.’s marketing efforts as well. Although the sky's the limit when it comes to segmenting and personalization for marketing, you don’t have to do anything too crazy to see amazing results. Concentrating on showcasing your brand personality and finding what resonates with your customers is a perfect place to start.

For example, by combining astrology and personalization, Birthdate Co. started sending highly-targeted weekly horoscope SMS campaigns that saw CTRs of over 20%. These campaigns focused on what draws their customers to the brand and provided entertaining and personalized content. 

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👀 Watch Ajay Mehta’s episode here. 

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Don’t be Afraid to Go After a Niche Market 

The idea of shipping ready-to-blend smoothie ingredients to a customer’s doorstep is a business idea that couldn’t really happen 25 years ago. Now, customers can access specialty products without relying on big box stores. The internet gives you access to your perfect niche market. As Vin McCauley, President of SmoothieBox said: 

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“The internet not only gives you access to the entire world, but also really small niches. Before you'd have these big box stores that sort of owned everything… If you were into a niche thing like health food, sometimes you had to go a couple of towns over… We support a relatively small population of people that are into whole food, organic, fruit, vegetable, and seed smoothies… So there's just this interesting shift that we see where historically growing up it was Mr. JC Penney's or Mr. Sears' was the one business owner that was selling a ton of goods… So the ability for just small stores, like SmoothieBox, to meet the needs of a small segment of the population, and do it really, really well, is just fascinating.” 

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👀 Watch Vin McCauley’s episode here. 

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Timing is Everything For Customers 

Stuart Arsenault is the CEO and Co-founder of Junip, which is a platform that helps brands build trust with genuine, in-depth reviews that leverage photos, videos, and custom questions. When it comes to reviews, and any other part of the customer journey, timing is everything. 

Any eCommerce brand should be striving to make every part of the customer journey frictionless. Meeting your customers in the channels they want, giving them payment options they want to use, etc., will improve CLTV. When it comes to reviews, timing and channels are everything. 

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“You have to be where, when, and how the customer's most likely to leave the review. We allow a brand to send a review request in a bunch of different ways. Instead of just sending an email from Junip, you can send it as an email from Junip or an email from Omnisend, an SMS from Voyage, or include it as a QR code in packaging. It needs to be this really mobile optimized, progressive, fun experience to leave the review.” 

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👀 Watch Stuart Arsenault’s episode here. 

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Omnichannel Focus is Everything 

Omnichannel focus should be a part of every aspect of your company. Steve Weiss, the founder of a leading DTC marketing agency, MuteSix, believes in looking at marketing from a whole, omnichannel perspective instead of just looking at how your efforts are doing inside a specific platform. Instead of looking at just what Facebook is doing, look at where you are seeing impacts on your business as a whole. 

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“We used to, as Facebook marketers, look in-platform for guidance. We would look and see what is our in-platform return? What is our in platform CTR? Now we have to get away from looking at businesses from an in platform perspective, whether it's Google, Facebook, or TikTok. Now you really have to be kind of a detective. If you do see a lift in the business you have to figure out where that lift is coming from and you have to really start pushing levers up and down… A lot of brands I talk to are overspending on the platform and I think they would get the same yield to their business if they spent 20 or 30% less. Well, that 20 or 30% margin is really impactful. The next generation of marketers really needs to understand true business outcomes and be able to communicate from a lift perspective… As a paid marketer you have to evolve into a full-funnel marketer instead.”

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👀 Watch Steve Weiss’s episode here. 

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Want to binge-watch all the Reddy at the Helm episodes? Watch them all here.