Name: DTC 2026: The New Rules of Growth
Uploaded: 2026-03-12T16:30:37.653Z
Duration: 1 h 1 min 26 s
Description: DTC 2026: The New Rules of Growth

Transcript for "DTC 2026: The New Rules of Growth": Alright. It looks like we are live. Welcome, everybody, to the most amazing webinar you have ever been to. Few housekeeping items before we jump in. So this is gonna be about, like, forty five, minutes. Gonna be awesome. We're gonna land the plane, like, around that time, and then we'll have a little q and a at the end. It's gonna be amazing. First thing, we want this to be as interactive as possible. So you guys are already lighting up the chat. Incredible. We're gonna have some polls. It's gonna be amazing. Second thing, we're gonna be riding the lightning a little bit. We have six of the greatest minds of d two c, and we're gonna be ripping through a lot. So don't stress out if you don't you miss something, what have you. You're gonna get a recording at the end. Don't worry about it. And then the last thing, every panelist at the end will have thirty seconds to a minute. So if you really vibe with them, you'll understand where to follow them, subscribe to a newsletter, what have you, all that stuff. You don't have to go do a Gemini deep research or anything like that. Okay. That's pretty much all I got. I think we're gonna kick off the first poll, Chris, and then we'll bring on the panelists. Do you have the poll? Perfect. Alright. Now let's go through the starting lineup. So first off, we have the DTC guy himself, Sharma Brands, Nik Sharma. If your brand is blowing up your feed and taking on your money, Nick's probably behind it. He doesn't just know the playbook. He writes it. And if you're also incredible into music, Nik is an absolute assassin on the ones and twos. Nik. Next up, we have. She's a powerhouse behind the absolute rocket ship at Salt & Stone. It's incredible newsletter, go to the millions, and she has more GTM strategies than you have browser tabs open. So the undisputed champ attorney. I've been the cold hard revenue. Thanks for joining us. Are you? Thank you. Up, Cherene O'Bear, one of my favorite humans on the planet, one of the best minds in D 2 C, undoubtedly the best hair in D 2 C. She scaled countless d two c brands to the moon, managed hundreds of millions in ad spend, and she now has an incredible new agency called Growth Capital. Queen Serene, welcome to the show. Next up, my Austin homie, one of my really good friends. Alex is the creative cheat code. He founded Marketing Examined amongst a million other amazing things. He's basically made a science of turning content viral. He's incredible. Also, an insane athlete, and as you can see, has unlimited drip. Welcome, Alex. Appreciate for, joining. me. Thank you. Next up, Emily Ryan, cofounder of Westfield Creative, the ultimate inbox whisperer. She's a top tier Mailchimp pro partner. If your abandoned carts are finally printing money, it's probably because you stole one of her templates. Stoked to have you on, Emily. Thank you. then last but not least, the man with the plan. Don't let this person look at your p and l or balance sheet because you probably won't like what he has to say. The CEO of Iris Finance, the host of Making Sense podcast, writer of the exquisite newsletter of the same name. He also has the best financial breakdowns on his Twitter feed. And, yes, I'm old, and I will hold on to Twitter and not say x. So that's it. We have gathered the avengers of ecommerce, and we're really excited to get into it. Okay. Now next up, where do we see the polls? Okay. Perfect. This is exactly what I thought. So most of the people on here, minus Drew, because he's super young, everybody else has kind of seen actually, no, Drew. You had you had the kind of golden years as well. We've all been in that stage of the money printer. You put a dollar into Facebook, and you get $7 out. That's just not the reality of the world anymore. And so acquisition costs are definitely something that are a huge, huge issue for a lot of people. And what we're seeing and we're gonna talk about is it's not necessarily the best brands that are winning customers at a cheaper rate, but they're winning better customers, and they're getting more out of that customer in terms of returning revenue and LTV. There's a really great line that real businesses aren't run on CAC. They're run on LTV. So with that being said, let's shift into our first segment. Nik, I'm gonna start with you. What's what's the actual different in 2026? I know you sat across with Sharma Brands, some of the fastest growing brands with real proper budgets. What's different now from kind of the old era to this this new epoch? I think well, there's a couple things. One is, like, everybody's got a brand and their mother and their favorite celebrity. They've all got brands now. So competition is is a real thing. You know, ecommerce used to be the place you go as, like, your digital shelf to avoid the competition in the retail shelf because those are all, as we know, very finite and, you know, more pay to play. So it used to be a competition of who could bring people to the digital shelf the best, but, even that now has gotten 10 x harder. Right? You've got 25 different brands selling the same innovative Korean serum or, the new protein popcorn, whatever it may be, you know, adaptogenic toilet bowl cleaner, whatever it may be. And so you you've really like the the real challenge today is basically like, I think it's twofold or maybe threefold. One is, like, product. Right? If you have a mediocre product, you're almost guaranteed to stall at a very like, between that 20 to 30 max. Yep. The second piece is brand. Like, are you building something that actually has a wedge in the market from a culture, from a communications, from a positioning, from a messaging, a tone of voice standpoint? Something that's actually, people see it, and they wanna be a part of it. They wanna be related to it. They wanna learn more about it. And then the third piece is efficiency. And efficiency has become, you know, a bigger thing this year. You know, when Jolie started when Jolie came out and and, you know, started making headlines with their, like, revenue and their growth and people found out there's one full time employee with two founders, I think that was when people started to realize, oh, wait a second. The flex isn't to go have an office with 30 people or have 10 people in marketing. The flex is to have as few people as possible and, you know, maximize the number of the number of revenue per head. And so I think that trans that plus where AI has gotten today. I don't know how much of you guys are deep in AI, but I've got four agents that I work with now. They're sitting right here on my desk. And efficiency is the name of the game. Like, you can pretty much run what you would previously do with multiple people with one now Yep. and a number of agents or contractors, freelancers, etcetera. So I think it's product, brand, and efficiency. It's kinda like the name of the game today. Everything else that you that you might think of in the tactics, like, at the the down you know, in the dirt tactics, whether it's around email marketing, whether it's around paid ads, whether it's around good creative, like, that is just table stakes now. You if you don't have that 10 out of 10, you can't even walk in and compete. Yeah. No. Well said. I mean, the a little bit orthogonal to d two c, but there was that huge article of the anthropic guy that's running a bazillion, like, motions for the marketing team and things like that. I'm gonna go to Drew and then you, Cherene. Drew, Nik said something about revenue per head count. What are you seeing in the composition? So Ari Finance sits across a treasure trove of data. What are you seeing in terms of the composition of, like, really healthy, profitable, hypergrowth brands versus hypergrowth, but they're trading off a lot of margin for that growth? Can you kind of pontificate on what you've seen in your data set at Iris Finance? Yeah. Are you asking, like, specifically from, like, a headcount perspective? Or just kind of whatever you think would be most useful for the audience. I just know that you have really great opinions, and you also have. an incredible dataset to, cross reference your opinions. So I think yeah. I I'll I'll maybe talk about it from, like, a staffing or or operating expense perspective because I think that's kind of the most interesting one right now. When you consider, like, the the financial complexion of, like, the d to c business model, literally 90 or, like, 85% of the costs are, like, associated with, like, a dollar of revenue going up. Right? And so this model is, like, highly, highly incentivized to save money on fixed costs because there's nothing you can do about all the other expenses. And so I would say, like, a year or two ago, I think, like, a good, like, revenue per head was probably in, like, the 1 to 2,000,000 range, and that's probably pretty broad. But nowadays, you can get a lot more leverage there. And so you're see and I think, you know, there's some people on on Twitter that have kind of, you know, latched out of this narrative. But I do think, you know, Nik brought up Jolie. Like, they're they're a great example of what some people refer to as, like, the d two c three point o. And as somebody who's, like, selling tooling into this market, it's it's pretty amazing how, like, ravenous people are just to, like, save some money on on using AI. Yeah. So I think, like, 2,000,000 was probably, like, a best in class revenue per head number, and then that number is only going up. Yeah. Definitely. Really well said. Cherene, you been at a bunch of brands. You're now at your agency. What what are you seeing? What are your thoughts here? Yeah. I love how Nik framed this because what he's highlighting is there's kind of, like, two opposing forces right now. There's, like, this uniqueness that every brand needs, and then there's AI and automation and leaning into that for efficiency. And you can very easily kind of cross your wires and use it for the wrong thing. And. I think, like, the thing that's different in 2026 than in 2025 and prior to 2025 is we were in this area era of make as many iterations of ads as you possibly can. Take that winning ad and change a word, change a color, change this, change that. That is, like, not working anymore. And if you look into, you know, nine out of 10 ad accounts, probably 10 out of 10 ad accounts right now, and you look at the top five or 10 ads, they're all uniquely different concepts. Yeah. And so I think there's this, like, AI sloppification of content is a forcing mechanism to have us focus on unique and different content. Because, basically, if you're an advertiser on paid social platforms, then you have to understand what the paid social platform's incentive is. Their incentive is to get the user to stay on the platform for as long as possible, and they do that by showing them unique and delightful content every few seconds. And if you start to see the same thing over and over again, you get fatigued. And that's exactly what happens to the ad algorithm. The more you give that algorithm the same content over and over again, the more that content fatigues, it doesn't serve, then your ads are spending a few dollars here and there on variations of of other ads, and you're burning money. So I yeah. I think it's like we have these amazing tools at our disposal, but consumers are also desiring connection more and more with brands than they ever have before because they they have some, like, understanding that everything is is turning into slop. Not all consumers. Some consumers love the slop. But I think in general, like, the sentiment is people wanna have, like, real relationships and and connection with the brands because it is a part of their identity, and brands are kind of missing that. And the ones that figure it out will will excel. I I couldn't be more on that train and one of the best brand brand guys in the world, Alex Garcia. Alex, you had kind of a a hypothesis that every brand should have, like, a a TV show, was it? Or, like, so tell me more about how you think of brand building because I'm a huge brand maxi, but it Drew would never hire me because I love brand so much, and brand can be kind of hard sometimes to put into the spreadsheet, and he would be taking me in the back, whipping me because, hey. Where are these results coming from? But Nik talked about brand. Cherene talked about brand. And, Garcia, you are the brand genius. So give some folks some pregame on that. Yeah. Well, I also think it's partially how you position it and look at it. Like, if a brand is investing, let's say, $30,000 a month into into organic content, and then they're measuring it against the same CPM that they're getting on on Meta, and they're getting, like, a dollar CPM or a $2 CPM, like, that's that's a you're playing a different game at that point. Yep. Right? There's a lot of brands that that we work with that are working or that are getting fifteen, twenty, 25,000,000 views every single month and not. through, like, UGC content. I'm talking about, like, own narrative. We're creating the content internally and then publish it on their feeds. That's a different game when you're be when you're able to generate twenty, twenty five million views every single month. And then that is yeah. Like, it when you're playing the game of you don't have to go to creators and you don't have to to pay for top of funnel and then you're able to generate all that top of funnel awareness internally, own that narrative, own the perception, that's a completely different game. And so one of the best ways to to do that is is exactly what you mentioned is looking at content through, one, the lens of, a content funnel. There's content for to get followers, there's content for your followers, and there's content to get your followers to take action. Right? Like and so we can look at that we can look at it through that lens and understand, okay. When we're creating that top of funnel content, the the goal is reached. There's a there's a parallel between content that people engage with and you showing up back on their feed. So, naturally, as somebody watches a piece of content, you're going to continue to show up on their feed for basically, like, the next week. And or if you get them into your ecosystem, you're now able to obviously be able to to continue to target them with the content that that you create. And so when we look at content through that lens and and looking at it through the the perspective of a funnel and we look at what a show can be, if we look at where attention is going and is going from or it's been going from TV to to our phones, but now all of the formats that are work that we're working on TV are now working on on your phones. Right? You see this with with game shows, with challenges, with. interview styles. Like, one of the fastest growing accounts is subway takes. They were averaging 3,500,000 episode or 3,500,000 views an episode growing at hundreds of thousands of followers every. single every single month. And if you really look at the piece of content, it's the same format. Right? Like, single episode is the same all the way down to the hook and the thing that they talk about. Right? And so when we think about what that is and and how you can execute that, you have to look at it through that lens of a show. Right? How can I create a specific, theme in a specific format that I can repeat infinitely? And you you like, the way you could even look at it is, like, if you look at, like, friends and you look at that, they're always in Central Park. Right? If we. just took that set and we had to look at that's the the cafe or the coffee shop as, like, a set that we're gonna build a show around, that's how brands should operate and then think about building a show that has a clear association back to the product that they sell for their top of funnel awareness. One of the best brands that does this is Built. I don't know if you guys have. seen Rumi's on on on IG. 150,000 followers of, like, 25, maybe 30 episodes. The whole thing is, like, centered around a sitcom of of four. New York City roommates living in in one apart one New York City apartment. Their product, right, is is getting points back for paying rent. Right? And so if the association factor is, like, the connect it's almost like the bridge from the IP to the product. And so if you look at a lot again, the create creators right now are the ones doing it. The the most brands are starting to adopt it. But if you look at the biggest opportunity from a top of funnel perspective to be able to funnel back to the brand, it is it is a show. And a show doesn't have to be something that requires three, five you know, like, a whole production team. It can be shot in an iPhone. The thing to think about is how you wanna be positioned in a market. A brand like Crafted, which is a men's jewelry brand, they're not gonna be doing something that's shot on an iPhone. They're gonna be more doing something that's more highly produced, Yep. neither is a brand like Cherry versus, you know, a a completely different brand. So you have to think about production level in this case from a a positioning play. Right? The Burberrys of the world aren't aren't gonna do, things on on iPhone, specifically on on Instagram. So, from an opportunity perspective, yes, operating, developing a show, best one of the best things if you wanna test and kinda look at what the opportunities are there. There's three ways to to look at. Social show lives on a completely different account. A limited. series is also something that you're doing that's, like, three to five episodes, and then a signature series is is more so something that's, like, very unique to you that you can scale, but also doesn't require the same production efforts as as a show. Man, I love it. I didn't mean to turn this into the Alex Garcia show, but that was fantastic. Great monologue. I think the big takeaways for me there are kind of riffing off what Cherene was saying of there's a certain intangible. I know Drew's hackles go up with his finance brain, but there when you have an emotional connection with your customers, that is such a strong moat. And having these brands, having this, like, really great brand content. Not not to say, like, paid acquisition doesn't have a place, but it's really important. And I think another way to say that is there is a huge difference between generating attention and generating intention, and I think that is something that a lot of people miss. Let's fire off our next poll, and then we're gonna go to you, Emily, and then you, Ari. We wanna talk about speaking of retention and connection. What are you guys thinking in terms of how do you think of retention? How do you think of email? How do you think of SMS? How do you think of basically reacting reactivating your customers? Let's start with you, Emily, and then go to you, Ari. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm I'm coming from an email background. I'm an email marketer. And retention's everything. You know, I think so many people just focus on that first purchase, and I really like to have people think about the second purchase. So getting people back getting people back is always half the battle. So, you know, whether that's the win back series or post purchase series that you're creating, you know, I I I really like to focus on, okay, what can we do to create something that wins them back? Yes, we got them to purchase, but let let's get them back again. So, I mean, there's there's tons of stuff we do in Mailchimp and in other platforms. But create working on creating that that second purchase, I think, is should be a focus. Yeah. I I love that. And then this will actually make Drew smile. I do think that the the first purchase contribution margin is a very important metric. But, Ari, love salt and stone. I have a bunch in my bathroom. How do you guys think of, retention marketing in terms of email, SMS? Do you guys do any out of home? What do you what are your playbooks and strategies look like that you can share with everybody? Yeah. And what I'd say too is as much as I love retention, I think wherever you can be first order profitable, that would be a better place to start. Yep. And so I lead our retention team but also our growth team, and I need both teams to work together. So retention can only retain to a good customer that's paying enough on the first order. And then once they are, the programs that we have in place, we have a membership, which is really exciting where we're incentivizing people to shop with us the same way they would be proud to be Sephora, Rouge. We want them to be proud to be Salt & Stone tier three. And then to me, I'd say I take a pretty aggressive stance to retention where I always want more campaigns. I always want my welcome flow to be longer. I want everything to be closer together. I want to send an SMS even if we sent one the day before. Like, I think everyone, especially at a premium beauty brand that is subtle in a lot of ways and that is nonpromotional, people can mistake that for needing to be, like, demure and quiet. But people don't, like, notice when you're being quiet. They just don't think of you. Yeah. And so I I think that people, like, put themselves in the corner in the name of brand, and my retention strategy is more emails. It's bigger lists. It's getting a better pop up that is, like, split tested to the hell and then gamifying getting them back. And I think you can do that still with no promotions and still find ways also retention too. When I think about retention budgets, we spend every day against retention. We don't want our exclusions to be too tight on some. channels because we have many categories. We if we sell you deodorant this year, next year, we wanna sell you body wash, or maybe in the same order, we wanna sell you both. And I think people can put themselves, again, just, like, too tightly into their box. So to me, retention is as loud as it can be without being boring. Yeah. No. Well done, ladies. I couldn't agree with you more, and I think this kind of dovetails a little bit also with what Alex was talking about when you're always top of mind, and then you're ready to consume great brand content and can almost be as powerful as retargeting. Drew, I wanna talk to you about kind of the financial aspect there. You guys split out, like, returning revenue versus, first order revenue. How does that complexion kind of look for for profitable brands, for brands that you would quote unquote say are healthy versus, brands that are stuck on the hamster wheel just constantly going? And I guess this too also has a bit of a vector in terms of the business complexion. Right? Like, if it's your if you're a one SKU brand, you either need a subscription or you need something because there's there's basically no way to push up that LTV. But give me some thoughts in terms of what you see in your data. So it's it's super, super category dependent. Yeah. So, like, based off what I see, like, the best in class beauty brands, like, on average, if they can get a customer to buy two times in twelve months, like, that's very, very strong, and that's the kind of stickiness that can get you into, like, a 100,000,000 plus. Yep. In supplements, that number can be three, four, five. Yeah. In some something more durable, it's like if, you know, you're not over 1.5. And even some beauty categories can be pretty low. And so, like, I think, you know, I agree with this this notion that, like, first order profitability is sort of a a good framework. But if you're if you're somebody who's selling, like, in VMS and specifically kind of some sort of product that can get three, four, five purchases, it it if financial you're incentivized really to model out a payback and and. go first order negative. Why is that? Because over time, as you stack the repeat revenue, that's the stream of gross profit that's actually financing incremental customer acquisition. Right? So by getting more customers, you're giving yourself the ability to acquire more customers. And so there's obviously, like, a cash constraint there. Like, you can't just, like, burn money infinitely just because you're acquiring customers. But if you have the ability to manage to a two, three, four month payback, then all of a sudden, it's this sort of flywheel where it's, like, the more returning customers that you have, the more new customers you can buy. And that's, like, why you see, like I think I don't know if it was, like, a g one or somebody else sort of, like, famously scaling at, like, a point eight eight AMER or whatever. And some people are like, how can they afford to do that? And it's like, well, they have a, you know, a stream of of, you know, $15,000,000 a month and 80% margin gross profit that's financing that acquisition. So I think it you gotta think about it very, very categorically where like, I I I don't know that like, obviously, CAC Payback got a lot of people into a lot of trouble, but I do think that there is really a place for it. But for the for the most part, if you're not in one of those, like, very sticky categories where people are buying three, four, five times a year, then then I think you do have to kind of at least be breaking even on that on that first purchase. And, otherwise, you're gonna start just digging yourself into a hole that's really hard to to get out of. Yeah. No. No. No. It's I I love that. Cherene, anything to add in that in terms of what your thoughts are in retention? Is there anything that you would put a cherry on that amazing, awesome Knowledge Sunday? Yeah. There's so many thoughts. I mean, there are so many different business models. You you know, like, if you're talking about a g one, Drew, and their ability to acquire customers at scale because they had an understanding of their cohort retention. And when I was at Bobby, it very much like that. We were acquiring customers and baby formula. Customers don't switch products generally unless the baby has an issue. But once they're acquired, they're acquired and their LTV grows like crazy. So you'd look in the ad account and you'd be like, who are these people? They're morons. They're scaling into, like, the worst ROADs I've ever seen. But it's like, it doesn't matter because what you don't see is everything that happens after that customer's acquired, and and those businesses just have a completely different funnel. And, yeah, I think the businesses that can figure out subscription or high LTV in a way that is, like, not common for their category are super interesting. For example, I work with a skincare brand. They're like a $300 plus premium skincare product, and they have a massive subscription base, which is, like, crazy. Like, what kind of person is subscribing to a $300 skincare? It's someone that, like, absolutely believes in the product out the gate that has the income that fits a certain, like, demographic profile that has resonance with the, you know, ingredient list so much that they're convicted to to subscribing. And that completely changes the economics of the business. And for that business, we're testing, like, hey. We wanna we wanna we wanna reduce CAC. We wanna acquire more new customers, and there is sometimes trade offs with that. Like, if I open the floodgates on new customers, then I'm probably acquiring more customers who are less likely to subscribe, and that changes the business model fundamentally. And I I think, like, there's a lot of nuance to your acquisition and retention strategy and how that. plays out to, like, a whole business model for some businesses. Yeah. So it's a fun game to play. It's definitely it's like life. It's rarely black and white, usually gray, the middle path. We have our first question here. I have a website. This is from Patricia. I have a website online store and use Mailchimp for newsletters, order, and delivery email reminders. My current customers appreciate the formats, content, etcetera. My issue is how do I get new customers without blowing up my current customers' phones and emails? There must be a way to balance that. Nik, you run a lot of gross stuff. How do you guys balance volume versus performance? Because everybody already saying, let's send more emails. Let's do that. I love that vibe, but then there's also a certain aspect of brand equity, unsubscribe, spam reporting, etcetera. Give me your thoughts on that to answer Patricia's question. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, the big thing that no one talks about is segmentation. Like, really good segmentation can help alleviate this problem. There's a lot of tools now that help segment. Like, before, I used to do it just in Excel sheets. and try to segment people by orders or by types of product they've ordered, either based on a product tag or the collection they bought from. But now you can use different tools to segment. I know Orita is one that I think a lot of brands are are using successfully right now. But, basically, the ability to just segment out based on orders, based on behaviors, based on patterns in terms of timing of purchase, And, you know, that's essentially how you can send more emails to the right people without bothering everybody and without paying for Klaviyo credits to reach everybody or whatever ESP you use. So, you know, I would say segment the most you can. Try to figure out how you can leverage, tools. Either your ESP might have tools built in, or you can, or you can try to build something on top. If your ESP has a API, for example, Yep. and you you've started to buy the code stuff, you can try to build your own segment or based on your own buying rules and buying patterns. You can also take a bunch of this raw data and put it into different platforms and tell it to tell you how to segment based on buying behaviors and. buying patterns from analyzing the data. So all of this stuff is actually, right at our fingertips now. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I mean, this segmentation absolute bar, and I think this is actually for people that haven't played around with AI, it is it really I'm old, so it might be a little bit of, like, old man yelling at the sky, but it is. It's sensational, and this is a really, really good application for it if you can dump your customers in there and figure out best ways to segment it. And then you can actually even build messaging and things on that. Cherene, you have to quick some thoughts on this. I have a quick answer for you, Patricia. I I think I've I've met a lot of business owners who are at, let's say, like, sub $10,000,000 in sales or maybe, like, even sub $20,000,000 in sales. They're very conscious about how many times they're emailing their customers, but I just wanna give you the confidence and reassurance that they probably aren't noticing as much as you are. And you think that you're bothering them, but they're getting messages from your competitors probably ten, twenty times more. And sometimes people use junk emails to sign up for brands. Not junk emails, but, like, emails that they buy things with, and they will check that inbox at different frequencies. And if you're like, I'm gonna email them once a twice a month, that person may be checking their inbox, you know, somewhat infrequently, and. they may miss you. So I think it's like a the frequency could be a good thing. Obviously, keep deliverability in mind, but people are not obsessing over their their inbox. I think from a text SMS standpoint, you just wanna look for if your unsubscribe rate outweighs the incremental revenue that you're driving from sending more messages. So start testing sending more messages and keep an eye on your unsubscribe rate. Chances are it's probably worth it. I I love that. Drew, I want to talk about that, but I'm getting the produce in the ear that I need to move the show along. But we're gonna go into the lightning round, so maybe you can use your lightning round to talk about that. Let's do two more questions. We have one from Aaron. Actually, Drew, you can answer this question, so I'm not. This is this is like the the nice person sandwich. This is from Aaron. When you talk about whether a first order is profitable, is that calculated by the cost to acquire the customer, contribution margin? I know you have some really cool views, c m one, c m two, c m three contribution margins. Can you give us, like, a a succinct answer for Aaron? It includes everything that is incurred as a cost when the order is placed. That includes cost of shipping, cost of the product, cost of payment processing, any freight that's been absorbed into your products, and then marketing costs. Okay. Amazing. I hope that answered your question, Aaron. And then we'll do one more from Carrie. Any idea how to drive revenue for brands that have off seasons like swimwear in the winter? I'll give who who wants I can give a little bit of okay. Perfect. Alright. I'll I'll give a little bit. One thing, it it sounds silly, but, if you can Australia is actually not a horrible market. It's not a great you're The US is what you wanna win. But Australia, especially in swimwear, is great because it's the seasons are flipped. And so you can sell into Australia when it's the winter in The States. But, Ari, I hope it didn't steal your thunder. No. I mean, Australia. is always an option. I'd say too there's a spin to put on anything, and it's resort wear. And then you're you can do a sale to clear this season's inventory. Nick and I worked with a brand called Half Days, Yeah. which is a skiwear brand, and they have the same problem. They also definitely have different home pages when they're selling in Australia at the same time as they're selling in The US because it's different seasons. But I think it's the spin of vacation wear versus everyday wear. And then everyone is actually buying swimsuits earlier and earlier because season, and that's how fashion works too. So I think the quicker you can train your customer that swimwear is bought in the spring and then maybe to expect a major moment from you in December or whatever helps you to prepare them for their vacations, I think there's a spin. But watch half days. Do it for ski, and I think it will help your industry too. No notes. I love that so much. Endless summer, Ari. I love it. Okay. We're gonna do one more question, and then we're gonna go into the lightning rounds. You're gonna be first up on the lightning round, Garcia. The this is from Nik. Do you have any tips on email marketing to companies who are b to b, but our brands are well known in our industry because professionals use it? We were thinking educational emails, tips from pros, etcetera. One day, we plan to open up d to c, email marketing campaigns. I don't super understand the question. Me see. Do you have any tips on email marketing campaigns to companies who are b to b? I can help with b to b, but brands are well known in our industry because professionals use it. Does anybody have I don't I don't understand the question. Maybe, Nik, if you wanna say that differently, I can unless somebody else understands it. Okay. Let's rip that poll, Chris. What were the poll quest really? Oh, man. Zucks dominance is okay. That's really interesting. Okay. Time for our lightning round. Keep the questions coming in. I there's a the backlog, we're tracking these. I will start slotting them in, but this is a really fun part of the show. This is why you bought the ticket. Every one of our esteemed panelists, these d two c geniuses will get three minutes to pontificate and rip on one of their favorite strategies, playbooks, what have you. Garcia, you're in slot number one. You have three minutes on the clock. I will I will graciously hook you, but then if we start going a little too too long, I'll have to intersect. because the producer's yelling at me to keep the show on the or get keep the trains on time if you will. The stage is yours, Alex. Cool. So one thing that I'm seeing and and one thing that I'm I'm looking at a lot is brands that are starting to look at organic content as, like, the nucleus of of growth. And so what I mean by that is if you have a if you build out a robust creative team, and that that doesn't mean just having a social media manager and thinking that that individual is gonna do everything and anything and underneath the sun. But if you're looking at your creative team through the lens of, like, having a head of content, having a a a good social lead, and then having a good analyst, you can run circles around a lot of brands. Because if you look at organic through the lens of, like, a data center and the ability to create a ton of content, again, looking at it through that lens of a content funnel, you have data that could feed every single channel, a a significant amount of data that could feed all these other channels. And what I mean by that is, like, if I'm publishing content in in let's say, it's it's something that's product driven. Right? I'm now building out essentially bridges to email. I'm building bridges out to SMS and taking a lot of the things. Like, if if a hook works if I create, like, a a one shot video one shot video is, like, a seven second video with text overlay. Typically, that text overlay is very much like a a hook or a headline in, you know, a landing page or an email, and it works significantly well, I'm bringing that over to email. I'm bringing that over to SMS versus a lot of times, like, these teams operate in silos, and and email doesn't know what social's doing. Social doesn't know what paid and paid doesn't know what social's doing in SMS. Right? Like, everything is operating in silos. And so if we can get it to a point where we're looking at organic as almost like this this data engine that we're able to optimize everything else off of, we're we're playing a a a completely different game. And so the thing that I I would really look at is understanding all the data and understand like, the same way that you test on paid, test on organic, test the different headlines, test the different ways of structuring stories, test the different angles, the different archetypes, all of those elements. Start testing those things and and actually collecting that data. And and not only just collecting it, but, like, looking at it looking at the the common denominators and all the best content and then relaying a lot of those things to the other teams and to the other channels. Amazing. I love it. And you hit your time. Well done, sir. Well done. Emily, three minutes. Let's do it. Yeah. So I'll just give you, like, a super simple email tip here for you guys. We we live within Mailchimp and we do this a lot with our clients. So one of the highest performing emails that I see with d two c brands, are non promo emails. So what I want you guys to do when when sales slow down, when revenue slows down, send a non promo email, like a letter from the founder's customer story. Like, people love to see the people behind the brand. And I wish I wish I saw it more across the board. Just one example, my my son is a football player, and I ordered him some pads recently and immediately got an email. It was, like, post purchase. And it was like, hey. I'm the founder of battle, you know, pads, whatever. And I was just I love those kind of emails, letters from the founders. So highly encouraging you guys. Like, instead of saying, okay, let's do a 20% off sale, let's do a last chance sale. Like, let's just send a simple non promo email. And I guarantee you guys, those will make a lot of money as well. Oh, I love that. I love that. And I think it also kind of is very sympatico with what we were talking about of building an emotional connection. Like, you you're selling to humans, and they're just not a number. And I think that that's a brilliant brilliant tip, Emily. Thank you. Yeah. Ari, you're up next. So many ways to take this. I think I'll give a tip on performance, which is, in general, in our ad accounts, we're all trying to create different ad types. We're all trying to be really interesting. And an ad type that I think we all don't spend enough time on is the ad that has nothing changed about it. And by that, I mean, it's taking a screenshot of a high performing UGC video and putting Instagram text on it and calling that a lo fi static, but then taking it one step further and putting no copy on it and then actually letting your ad copy within Meta do the work for you. And then the same vein, taking a campaign asset that's actually beautiful that you wish would work and letting that go up without a headline, I think. Because everyone's ads all look like ads that actually by doing less and pulling back, you can do what you really wanted to do all along in Meta, which is, like, have your favorite branded copy and favorite branded assets go out. You just need to be strategic on placement. And then what I'd say too is in my category, not many brands do that, and so it's been really helpful. And I think it kinda goes to the main thing that I see work in beauty, which is to not look into beauty when you're trying to find examples in beauty. So, like, whatever your category might be, try to zoom out, and I wouldn't wanna look at another brand that sells deodorant or that sells body wash or that sells perfume because then I will look like whatever my customer is also seeing in our space. So make sure everyone is really seeing what you do as different. Salt & Stone is known for our campaigns, and they're a bit more fashion forward. And that's exactly the point because we're not trying to be a Sephora brand. We're trying to be a brand that can transcend. And I think you can do that and also pull back and do what you really wanna do in your ad account. So my advice is to do a little less. Stunning. Stellar. Pick your support. That was great. I the absolute bar as Emily said because everyone's ads look like ads. I I love that. Alright. That was fantastic. Mister Fallon, you are up next, sir. Remind me of the question. What a finance guy. Were you you've been p and l's in the background right now during your last financial breakdown? Unbelievable, this guy. Now what is your, top tip? I think one of the things that was actually really interesting do you wanna just actually riff on what you're talking about with forecasting through segmentation? I think that's a really interesting topic. You have three minutes. Yeah. So so as Nik said, like, kind of like, basically creating different types of customers and analyzing them. So, like, it could be like, we have some some customers that think about it, like, from, like, a geography perspective because, like, they're selling in, like, The US and The UAE and The UK and whatever else. Or some people think of it like a product perspective. So, like, you know, if I buy Salt & Stone, you know, body spray, I have a much different likelihood of them buying the deodorant as versus, like, the other order or whatever. And so, like, I think from a forecasting perspective and the reason that I put that into the chat was because, like, we were sort of talking about segmentation and, like, email. marketing and and sort of retargeting or or whatever the word you wanna use. And I think that segmentation is extremely powerful not only from just, like, that perspective, but also when you take that information and then you kind of face it forward. Right? Because it goes back to sort of what I said earlier, which is, when you think about repeat revenue sort of, like, as the, you know, the subsidy for your customer acquisition spend, you can really start to, like, break out these different types of cohorts and and and sort of model them differently. Because they're like, I I really shouldn't be taking, like, some blended, you know, retention rate by month and just, like, applying it across my entire customer base when I sell, you know, deodorant on subscription and also, you know, a hundred and eighty day supply of shampoo and a giant jug or whatever. Like, those are two totally different profiles. And so I think, like, you can kind of start to manipulate your, like, new and returning customer revenue mix by. using that information and sort of targeting it. So, like, this is very common in, like, razor and blades models as. well. So, like, Jolie we we used Jolie earlier. That's a good example. Because, like, they're they're customers that buy the, like, the showerhead, but, like, maybe don't subscribe to the to the filters. Yep. That that's gonna have a huge margin impact. Right? Because the the filter is way higher margin than the actual showerhead itself. And so they the the months where they're selling, you know, a lot more new customers and they're not subscribing, which I think Julie has, like, mostly subscriptions. I mean, this is, a bad example, but bear with me. So, you know, their margin is gonna be a lot lower when they acquire a bunch more new customers. And then as those returning customers, you know, shift back to being the majority, the margin will kind of go up. So I think you can, like, take that information, analyze it, and then use it to basically manipulate your, you know, sort of month to month where you can say, hey. You know, I wanna target this many more customers because I'm coming into my seasonality. And if I get, you know, this many more repeat customers, then I can bring my margin up from the from the repeat customers because I'm selling lower margin products because it's summertime or whatever the case may be. So you don't wanna, like, get carried away because there's there's kinda, like, an infinite level of of permutations that you could create. But. I think, like, breaking it down into, like, products and, like, sort of your hero products versus, Yep. like, maybe, like, your second or third product is is kind of a good way to do it, and then you kinda do, all the other ones. But if you're doing that analysis from a segmentation perspective, I've I've found it to be, like it gives you almost, a lever that you never had before when. you're kind of, like, moving forward and saying, hey. Like, if I send more of this product out the door, like, what happens to my business versus this product? And how can I sort of use that to my advantage? No. I love that. When I was years ago running, d to c marketing, that was something that I did, a little bit of a same same, but different. But, ultimately, when somebody had last purchased and what they had last purchased. Because once somebody falls out of, like, ninety to a hundred and eighty days, depending on what your purchase cycles are, I pretty much consider that a new customer, like or a lapsed customer, if you will. And so it sounds like it's same same but different, but war with the financial vector. Yeah. That's incredible. Mister Sharma, hit us. Man, I would say, my top tip strategy for the year, get your hands dirty, you know, whether it's going deep in the data, whether it's well, I think well, first of all, I think, like, AI and the rate of which people get responses now and the rate at which things are are just coming back to us is so fast. It's the new standard of two day shipping in people's mind, but in terms of information exchange. And so, you know, take a second to, like, go slow and figure out what's exactly happening behind the scenes or within that process, and why is it doing that, and is that actually the right approach to do it. But also then get your hands dirty doing it. So whether it's, you know, going in and, building something for yourself like we were talking about, you know, you build your own version of a segmentation machine, whether it's actually downloading the data and going through going through it yourself, whatever it may be, my my advice is to take it try to take a few things slowly on purpose. And oftentimes within that process, you find a couple of golden nuggets that you wouldn't have otherwise found if you didn't intentionally go slow. And sometimes, maybe 20% of the time, going slow might be a total waste of time, Yep. but you figure out different patterns or you absorb different context along the way. So it's still valuable in some way. But but, yeah, take it slow and try to figure out what you can do differently. I love that. Action breeds information. Okay. Close this out, Cherene. Take us home. All right, my favorite tactical advice here is to come up with a pillar content strategy that can be used both in your ads, your social, and your email. And I I wanna talk about how you can specifically apply it to your Mailchimp campaigns. So start with content pillars. The content pillars that I like to use are education, product focus, and lifestyle or inspo. Yeah. So those are, like, three pillars that you can create infinite content ideas off of. And then layer in your product sales. So if you you are a multiproduct brand, take your top hero products, and you could even do an analysis of your product mix, and then layer it onto your content pillars. And then what you wanna do is for every day of the week, you can pick when that content pillar is sent in your email campaigns. So on Mondays, I wanna send education. On Wednesdays, I wanna send a product focus. On Fridays, I wanna spend send info and lifestyle. And, you know, 60% of my mix of business is product a. So I wanna talk about product a in my email calendar 60% of the time. So if you can kind of, like, create this framework for email campaign planning and it's actually resonant to your business, then. what you can do is, like, put those pillar contents into, you know, an LLM with your brand. guidelines, and it will give you a ton of email ideas. And so I think, like, there's just a lot of brands I see that are missing the opportunity to talk to their customers in nonpromotional ways like Emily was saying. And that should be like a continuous drip where you're nurturing your customers and giving them something other than sales. And that that applies to your social. You can apply that same pillar content framework to your social strategy. You can take, know, part of that part of that and apply it to your paid media strategy. And I I hope you guys are enjoying my daylight savings glow right now. As the ideas get better and better, the light just keeps shining. It's kind of like a an awesomeness heuristic. Incredible. Wow. What an incredible lightning round I need. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on. I have some really fun questions. We're gonna do some q and a's, and then we're gonna kinda start to land the plane. So if you guys have more questions, well, let's start ripping through some of these. Emily, I have a question for you. Where did it go? Okay. Where was the oh, you already answered that one. The the AI customer where'd it go? Mailchimp. Yeah. The Mailchimp one? Okay. You answered that one? And you answered this one? Okay. Oh, I. I it is. Yeah. We use Mailchimp for mass email for our company. I find that setting up campaigns and executing is not a problem for us. Our business sells millions of units a year. Congrats. We have a large and loyal customer base. Congrats. I use Mailchimp for AI subject headlines and taglines. We find that click rate is extremely low sometimes. How do we combat low click rates and low open rates? This is from PJ. Yeah. Great question. Click rates to me are are extremely important, especially for deliverability right now. You you want to show the inbox that people are interested in clicking on your emails. So there are many, many ways to boost click rates. I mean, we could we could make a long list here, I'm sure. But, you know, you really gotta think like how how do people click on this? And and I I ask people to start like observing their own actions in your own inbox. What do you click on in your own Gmail? What makes you click? Is it the way the copy's worded? I I love there's this one newsletter called Big spaceship Internet brunch. And, they literally word things like they'll just say like, this is awesome. And like, you have to click on that. You it's curiosity. You know? You you. have to make people wanna click. But you can also AB test different button colors, red versus hot pink, and see, like, does one get more clicks? You can add menu bars throughout your your email to in different places. Clicks are extremely important. But you also wanna look and make sure your list is healthy. Maybe. maybe you have a lot of inactive contacts that's bring bringing down your opening click rates. So there are quite a lot of things to look at. But but start small with the design of the email and see how you can maybe improve clicks with just just the overall design. Exquisite. I I hope that answers your question, PJ. Okay. Alex, I have a question for you. Hot take on opportunities and challenges for celebrate or celebrity and creator brands. What are what are any thoughts there? Yeah. I'll take on opportunities and challenges for celebrities that have created brands. Are you guys A few. Like so, okay, some things I'm thinking about. On the creator side, I think that the somewhat of the creator landscape is is shifting when we're talking about, like, even partnerships or how you interact with creators and and, kinda bake them into your strategy. There's a brand called Allsaints, and there's a creator called that that I I don't wanna butcher his name last name on live. But, basically, the way that they're operating with creators is very much like Cherene was talking about with with, having content pillars. They'll have these integrated content pillars, then they'll bring in these creators to essentially be able to give them the ability to, like, hey. Like, we're gonna give you a creative team. Right? And with that creative team, we're then gonna execute against this content pillar, and they'll create x amount of content with that individual. And so that is a something that that is is working extremely well and that lives between, like, a collab between the brand and the creator. Some challenges that that I see is, like, if brands that are led by creators are only leveraging the creator to grow, then then there's an issue. Right? Like, Yep. if it if it's purely based off the the creator and they're not thinking about it through that lens of having a, these different content pillars that that leverage, whether it's creators that they're working with, whether it's leveraging just, actors and talent, etcetera, to to be able to build off and solely relying on on that individual and their output to be able to grow the company, then that is is, you know, like, just a a challenge that you can face. And so there's brands that are doing, like, a good brand, I would say, to pay attention to because they started like that, and they've segued to, essentially not doing that as, like, VPN, in more. so, like, the the fitness space where it started as a almost like a kinda celebrity creative brand was like like that until they got to, like, $2,530,000,000 in revenue. And then they start as they brought on different creators, like, he's kinda take the founder has kinda taken a little bit of a step back, and they've really started positioning their athletes as the faces of the brand and, like, their their slogan more so as the the narrative for the brand. And so there's definitely a playbook to to do it well, but it's a it's a hard thing to do. Yeah. No. Well said. I got one for you, Drew, and then one for you, Ari. Drew, what time frame do you recommend using LTV, or does it depend on the business model? So for example, like, what's the what's the look back period for LTV? Because I know a lot of people sometimes use the longest period possible, and that usually is not very it's great for fundraising, bad for running a business. Twelve months. Okay. Yeah. Do you get do you get nervous at, like, 24? Like, say if I'm, like, a five year old business where I have, like because my thing for and you're the expert here, but my thing is, like, you you want a decent delta between how long your business has been in business to your LTV frame. It because outside of two years, it's pretty hard to predict what's gonna happen in the world. Like, we had COVID. We. had these things where So we we we still like, we'll still forecast, like, returning customer revenue, like, post twelve months, obviously. Like, Yep. that'll go up to, like, thirty six months in some cases. Yep. But if you're, like, trying to, like, budget a CAC, then I recommend twelve months. Twelve months. Okay. And then if it if it kind of outperforms your expectations, like, model over those twelve months, then at Iris Finance, we call that ashtray money, and you should never you should nor you should never sort of rely on that. You're you're just you're getting into, like, some pretty dangerous territory most of the time. if you're trying to stretch it beyond that. Super helpful. So sorry to bring everybody along. Yeah. LTV is lifetime customer value or life, and then CAC is customer acquisition cost. Super helpful, Drew. Okay. Alright. We have a segmentations question. Would a survey also keep your, this is from Gabrielle. Would a survey. also keep your augmentation Gabriel. Sorry. Would a survey also keep your audience segmentation clean? Is it a suggested to ask them what content they would like to receive as a newsletter, or could that be wrongly taken as we don't know what to send? I think I'm a big fan of, like, a micro yes survey. So I think you can send people down the path by text. You can send people down the path when they give you their email. If you're a brand that sells skincare and makeup, asking, are you here for skincare and makeup, and sending yourselves down the path. I think there's no wrong way to collect that information. But if you ask the question, you have to honor the response. So if you don't want to only send your list educational content that, like, prevents you from selling, then I wouldn't ask someone if they wanna receive educational content. Because then what about Black Friday? What about the times. you. wanna disobey that question? So I think you kind of don't want to invite results you you don't wanna be part of. I think the more you can get information, though like, I love a post purchase survey. I love a scent quiz. I love a, you know, poll of we're gonna launch purple or pink. What do you think? Or inviting people along on organic social, but I think it's really sacred territory to allow people to segment themselves when you want the answers. And then when you don't, just watch their behaviors and then segment them based on your own data and what you sort of think that list will do and then test your own theory. So don't ask questions I don't want to get bad responses to. So I'd say no. That's a fantastic girl. Okay. We're gonna do one more question. This is for you, Emily. This is coming from Nik. Do you think there's an advantage to using Shopify versus a custom built website to make campaigns flow more efficiently with Mailchimp? Yeah. I mean, works amazingly with Mailchimp. It integrates seamlessly. Big fan of that integration that pulls in all your data, all your products. I mean, custom built websites, if you have the budget, to do that and it works and it integrates, then that's great. But they're you know, Shopify is an amazing platform. Highly recommend. Amazing. Okay. That is gonna round out the show, everybody. I hope everybody got a bunch out of it. Now we're gonna do a quick round robin so y'all can tell all of your fans that you've made on this webinar where to follow you. Cherene, let's start with you. How can people get involved with growth capital? Where can they follow you? Tell the people. Take about twenty, thirty seconds, and then we'll just hop the tater around. Amazing. You can follow me on Twitter. That's what it's called. It's not called x at Cherene Aubert, or you can follow me on LinkedIn. Yeah. On Twitter, I'm a lot funnier and put out way more useless content. And on LinkedIn, I'm super professional and value driven. So. if you want some value, go to LinkedIn. the queen of D two c. You're the best, Cherene. Ari, how can people subscribe to the news? The where can they buy Salt and Stone? This time's yours. You can buy Salt & Stone at solandstone.com. Please do because I run the d to c. And you can read go to millions at gotomillions.co, and thank you. Amazing. Emily, how can people get involved with your agency? How can they work with you? Where can they read your writing? Yeah. First of all, I use Salt and Stone Conditioner, and I'm so excited that to meet you. the best. I'm emily ryan likes on Instagram. My website for my agency is westfield. dash creative, and I'm just throwing it in the chat. Awesome stuff. Garcia, plug Cut30, marketing examine. Get in there, kid. Cool. Cool. Cool. So if you want more just kinda deep dives on on content, we have a podcast called sweat equity, which is what we're about to film. On my end, marking xama.com, you could subscribe to the newsletter. We do have something called Cut30 to help brands learn short form video. And then also have a creative studio here in Austin called house of distribution that builds out shows and and content strategies for a lot of $8.09, 10 figure brands. Amazing. I still need an invite to the office, man. You're killing me. Drew, how can people sign up for Iris? Tell them about your Newsy. This time's yours. Let's land this plane. Yeah. Ari's got, like, a a domain for hers. I don't know if I have that. I think I just I think it's just the newsletter is just drewphallon.substack.com. I'm. on Twitter. Somebody's gotta teach me this, and I'm not I'm the numbers guy. So finance. Oh, wow. And then on Twitter, drew fallon twelve, also mildly less professional than my LinkedIn, which is just through Fallon, I think. So yeah. Yep. Amazing. Awesome. And then how did they get involved with Iris? Iris Finance. You. can, book a demo. 25% chance it's on my calendar. Literally. Oh, you're amazing. Nik Sharma, take us home. Let's let's land this plane and. get these good folk. not do not follow me anywhere. There else here, go follow them. Drew, Ari, Alex, Cherene, Emily, go find them. Don't follow me. you go. The man said it. So thank you guys so much for dropping and spending your Thursday with us. Huge shout out to Mailchimp for putting this party on. This has been great. Real big shout out to Matt as well at Mailchimp who helped do all this stuff. Brianna, the whole team over there, this has been great. I think we're gonna wrap up. We've got to most of the questions. So thank you, everybody. You've been incredible. You will have a recording, and then there will also be an ebook that will be going out, shortly in a couple weeks. So you'll be on that list. You'll get that there. But thanks again. We really appreciate you. Go check out Mailchimp, and we really appreciate the time.