Obvi

Chief Marketing Officer

PrettyDamnQuick

Ambassador

GrapevineAI

Elevar

Gorgias

Ghost3Media

Co-Founder

Mohawk Group, Inc.

Senior Marketing Analyst

Beyond Genetics Supplements

Lead Business/Marketing Analyst and Brand Manager

E*TRADE Financial Corporation

Business Intelligence and Transformation Intern

AvePoint

Online Digital Media Intern

CMO and Co-Founder at Obvi

If you’re starting a new DTC brand then this is for you: 

Don’t put a single dime into paid ads. 

Unless you’ve got crazy backing then I can bet you’re not working with a big budget 

And you don’t want to spend it all trying to get your feet off the ground. 

Start with: 

•Influencer Seeding (Reach your targeted audience organically) 
•Post short-form content on TikTok (there are 50 million daily users - start building in public to find your audience)
•Now use your paid affiliates & your audience to start selling on TikTok Shop

Yes it takes more effort 

Yes it’s a longer process 

But it’ll help you to start breaking even as fast as possible

Ashvin Melwani

Let’s be real - subscription churn rate is one of the harder metrics to address in DTC.

Customer signs up for a subscription, loves the product, and then cancels it a month later. 

Trying to solve the root cause can be enough to make you question your career - but here’s what I recommend you do if you want to fix your churn rate ASAP: 

Step 1: A/B test with a discount/free gift to your one-month subscribers who renew for month 2

Very simple solution and the results speak for themselves 

After implementing this at Obvi, we cut our churn rate by 85% - all from that one test. 

Step 2: Repeat 

Now move on and repeat this process for months 3, 4, and so on. 

This tiny adjustment in our model reduced our churn by another 25%.

Simple and effective. 

One last thing

If you’re going to be doing all of this I’d recommend bringing on software that can help manage, track, and A/B test everything for you 

It’ll save you a ton of time and effort - trust me. 

We used to use a “legacy” platform that was - for lack of a better word - shitty. 

It didn’t have anything near the functionality we needed and it was holding us back 

(and losing us money)

So we made the switch over to Stay AI - and it was very clear that we had been missing out.

Everything I mentioned about reducing your churn rate? 

They help you to handle all of it

And the insights from their in-depth reporting will help you make much better decisions related to your subscription service. 

Stay's ExperienceEngine is a churn-busting powerhouse that allows us to smart AB test, smart gift, smart cross-sell - AND offer predictive split testing in real time to optimize our subscription programs

And they’ve outperformed any other “legacy” software we’ve used in the past by a mile. 

I may be a #proudpartner but I wouldn’t recommend you use something unless I’ve taken it through every stress test I can think of 

And Stay AI has passed every single one with flying colors. 

If you’re trying to upgrade your subscription services and decrease your churn rate, I’d give them a look. 

Alex Capozziello

Had a few questions about my current scaling campaign setup

We have 2 campaigns for scaling

1 is an ASC with all winning ads

The other is a CBO with 2 ad sets. 1 ad set completely broad. The other is loaded up with Lookalikes sourced from Proxima's AI Audiences.

The question I’ve been getting is: “is Proxima worth it?”

In short - their audiences use a ridiculous amount of aggregated storefront data to target high-paying, in-market shoppers with highly targeted ads.

The problem we face as we scale is Meta is going to go after the people they believe are shoppers.

Proxima gives us enhanced seed audiences built off of 65M+ high AOV shoppers and $17B+ in transaction data across thousands of eCom stores.

Obvi certainly doesn’t have access to that level of data and Meta doesn’t necessarily either.

OK, so what?

1. A surgical approach to targeting means less wasted ad spend (more data, stronger signal)

2. We’re able to spend into new high-intent audience pools that Meta hasn’t found

3. When Meta’s algo goes haywire (we’ve all been there), we hedge our bets with a consistent targeting alternative

Meaning much more efficient scaling.

To date, we have seen up to +31% higher ROAS and -26% lower CPAs.

I’m allocating a little over 60% of my ad spend to their audiences, and we’re seeing MUCH more efficient results at scale with Proxima’s audiences compared to broad.


At the end of the day, it’s not for everyone.

But if you’re spending more than $100-$200k+ a month,

I’d definitely recommend adding something like this to your tool kit.

With my campaign structure I mentioned above, you’re basically forcing your Proxima ad set to go head-to-head with your usual broad ad set, and for us it’s been consistently performing better.

Am I a #proudpartner of theirs? Yes.

Am I a paying customer? Yes.

Am I proud to share something that has helped us significantly scale our ad spend efficiently? YES.

How can I target high-paying, in-market shoppers?

We used to use an Excel sheet for our affiliate marketing.

8 fig brand, nationwide retail…

And our affiliate program was stuck in the Stone Age. 

Before you ask - no, this didn’t work at all. 

We were doing manual outreach, dealing with unqualified after unqualified prospects

And to top it all off with the few affiliates we DID have…

We created their referral codes manually too. 

Zero safeguards. It wasn’t before long that these codes were getting shared across coupon sites, browser extensions, comment sections… 

Great payday for the influencer, but it was absolutely killing our margins. 

Obviously this drove us to halt all our affiliate campaigns

Full stop. 

Yes, Obvi was getting a lot more eyeballs with these affiliates

But unsecured codes = terrible margins

And terrible margins = losing money that we could not afford to lose. 

We needed a solution, and we kept our affiliate program on ice until then

And it wasn’t long after that I found Social Snowball ☃️ and their Safelinks software.

Safelinks replace coupon codes entirely and allow affiliates to share discounts to their audience without the risk of a code leaking to a coupon site.

Every time a shopper clicks on an affiliate’s Safelink, a unique single-use code is generated from Shopify and given to the customer in real-time.

At the snap of a finger, all of our issues with our coupon codes were out the window 

Doesn’t help my gray hairs, but what can ya do. 

And yes I’m a #prousponsor but This Safelinks feature more than deserved its own shout-out. 

A lot of your issues on the affiliate side of things could probably be solved with this, definitely recommend checking it out.

What is Social Snowball and what services do they offer?

How does Social Snowball's Safelinks software work?

What are some common issues with coupon codes in affiliate marketing?

We have tested 908 creatives this year alone.

God knows how many we’ve actually tested in the last 4 years.

But it gets to a point where your in-house team needs to search deeper for fresh ideas.

Those countless hours spent researching, brainstorming, etc. can pull us away from our other projects that help us move the needle.

This is why I want to make sure my team has the right tools to do research, generate inspiration, manage your creative workflow, etc.

And so we started using this tool called Foreplay.co - and it has led to us creating some of our most profitable ads to date.

For one - it’s saved our entire creative team hundreds of hours by organizing and streamlining our otherwise scattered creative processes

On top of that, it allows us to build extensive swipe files of winning ads from Facebook Ad Library, TikTok, everywhere.

But I want to make this VERY clear

No. We’re not copying anyone.

We’re using these swipe files to get inspired and think of new ideas - there’s a big difference.

If you’re reading this, then you know who you are

Our “PCOS Belly” ad? We got the idea from a similar one in our Foreplay.co swipe file

And it is still printing for us.

Listen

Having the RIGHT tools for your team to be more autonomous is the # 1 key to scaling

I don’t have to be as involved in the creative process, and it frees up my time to work on bigger-picture problems.

As a founder, operator, marketer, or whatever - using tools like Foreplay.co to free up time for yourself and give your team more autonomy is incredibly important

I may be a #proudpartner but if this tool can free up my time AND help me create more winning ads, then of course I’m going to tell you about it.

If you’re trying to scale efficiently then it’s definitely worth a look.

How important is having the right tools for scaling efficiently?

How has Foreplay.co helped the creative team?

We’re attacking Amazon head-on. 

As you grow, there will always be more opportunities to scale further and faster - and for us it’s taking over the collagen space on Amazon. 

We already have a # 1 product, so why not go for the # 1 brand?

Here’s how we’re going to do it: 

We’ve been wanting to create some real growth on Amazon for a while now, and we’re finally in the perfect position to make it happen. 

Here’s our long-term plan: 

First off, we’re taking 20% of our Amazon revenue and investing all of it right back into sponsored ads

This will make sure we consistently get new eyeballs on our products and more traffic to our storefront. 

Next - keywords. 

We’re playing defense on our branded keywords, but the big fish we’re going after are all the general keywords. 

These will help us to attract a more TOF audience, instead of our already product-aware audience. 

To top everything off, we’re ramping up spend on Meta and pumping out as much organic content as we can. 

Leaning into Meta & our affiliates is a POWERFUL combo that’ll give us a solid lift across every single channel. 

Obviously, we’ll be launching more products on Amazon & directing more outside traffic into it to get the ball rolling - but to really solidify our spot we’ll eventually need to run Amazon ads

But that’ll come later. For now, our focus is on getting as much consistent traffic and new eyeballs in there as we can.

If you haven’t heard, Proxima just raised $12 Million in series A financing 👀

That funding is going to lead to some insane developments with their tech and AI audiences this year…

And it’s going to make them a LOT more accessible. 

Very excited to see how they continue to grow.

I recently asked my followers on Twitter to send me their favorite ads, and I would give my feedback on a few of them 

But I decided to give my in-depth review of every single one. 

If you spend a lot of time making new creatives let me know if this helps you!

Most founders and marketers think that just because they’ve hit “enable” on their native Shopify CAPI integration, they’re on top of their data game.

Hate to break it to you, but you’re not.

Yeah it’s easy, free, and convenient

But that does not signal that it’s a quality method of tracking AT ALL.

If you’re serious about growing your brand - you’ll never want to settle for “good and free”

And I can even tell you from firsthand experience with growing Obvi - we’ve been down the road of trying the “good and free” method for things like hiring agencies, checkout optimization, subscription services…

It almost never ends well.

The same goes 1000% for your tracking.

On average (with standard & free client-side tracking) businesses lose around 30% of their overall revenue due to bad tracking

30%. So if you’re bringing in $3 million in revenue - that’s $900,000 in the wind.

Now do you understand why having good tracking and better data is so important??

And what’s even better is that there are SEVERAL resources for you to implement better quality server-side tracking into your business

You can do the research and figure it out all on your own (which we tried to do)

OR

You can sign up for a service that already has everything ready to go

And all you need to do is plug it into your ads, shopfiy, email, etc.

Personally - I recommend option number 2.

I’m not saying option number 1 isn’t possible, but you’re likely going to spend a lot of time and money on it.

And yes I’m a #proudpartner - but like I’ve said before, I don’t promote anything I don’t use personally to grow our businesses…

And I can’t stress enough that Elevar is the right path to go with this kind of thing.

They know what they’re doing, have access to a ridiculous amount of resources to do it right,

And they’ve helped us make a lot of money.

As always, you don’t have to take my advice - I’m just shouting into the void half the time.

But if you’re serious about fixing your tracking and getting your hands on GOOD data, I’ll recommend Elevar every time.

Influencer marketing is a lot like planting a garden - and most of us aren’t gardeners.

You can’t just toss some seeds in the dirt and expect them to grow - you have to approach it with the RIGHT process...

Nurturing those “seeds” into a thriving space that can draw everyone’s attention.

And when you hear "influencers," you might think it's just another checkbox on the marketing bingo card.

But - you’re not giving them the respect they deserve.

They introduce your brand to more eyeballs, connect you deeply with specific crowds, and can help your sales numbers climb

They’re literally the beating heart of your brand awareness.

But there's a catch…

We’ve all seen those brands that pop up in your feed, partner with some big-name influencer, and then seem to vanish

These one-and-done campaigns, while they produce some great results in the short term…

Don’t really move the needle for you, your brand, or your product.

Many brands make the mistake of chasing celebrity influencers for one-off posts instead of growing a consistent presence that truly resonates with their audience.

This extends past celebrity influencers too.

The worst thing that can happen is you do all this research to find the right influencer or creator who you think will resonate with your brand

Send them an incredible care package with a handwritten note, all for them to not post about you or just simply put up a thank you on their story

You want these influencers to live and breathe your product like it’s the best thing they’ve EVER used.

You want them to use it every day and make it a part of their life.

Obviously -  your product has to actually be valuable 

But you also need to find the RIGHT influencers who have this passion.

When you team up regularly and build real relationships, these influencers become genuine fans and powerful advocates for your brand

But how do you keep these relationships strong and steady?

The obvious answer - finding the right influencers.

Instead of reaching out to every person with a following,

Narrow in on the right person by utilizing a tool like SARAL - The Influencer OS where you can set the right parameters and then spit out a curated list of influencers that are much more likely to resonate with your brand, your audience, and love your product.

Building this community is like nurturing a garden

It grows roots.

It gives your brand a voice that's listened to.

It's a genuine buzz that gets people talking, sharing, and buying.

Influencer marketing is a long-term investment that you need to consistently build into something that’s actually worth the effort

But the benefits? Absolutely priceless.

Yes, I may be a #proudpartner but with their all-in-one search, outreach, and management platform, we've turned this philosophy into a system that consistently generates buzz and builds an overwhelming amount of social proof for Obvi.

In today’s market, customers hold social proof above everything else. 

If no one knows who you are?

Good luck getting anyone to give you their money. 

Whether you’re running ads, getting your website up and running, product pages, etc. etc. 

Customers want to see proof EVERYWHERE that people just like them are buying your product. 

But let’s imagine that you haven’t acquired your first customer yet

How do you get social proof?

It’s not like you can just ask your mom to leave a nice review and expect it to drive $100k.

Here’s what I recommend:

Start influencer seeding ASAP

Search for specific influencers based on demographics, interests, and engagement rates - try to get as niche as possible. 

Next, compile a list of every single one you find and shoot them a message like 

“Hey, I’m from XYZ. We’re about to launch and we think you’d be the perfect fit for the brand 

We would love for you to try the product - no strings attached”

Hopefully, they like the product enough that they want to start creating content about your brand.

If they do 

Bang. Abundance of social proof. 

Now you can do this all manually

But finding high-quality influencers that are aligned with your brand, audience, AND like your product is basically a gamble - unless you’re using a platform with the data and resources to find all of these influencers for you. 

We’ve been using SARAL - The Influencer OS for this and they have been crushing it 

Having an entire database of influencers that are aligned with Obvi at the click of a button is a literal superpower

I may be a #proudsponsor but when a platform like SARAL - The Influencer OS gets me results I’m going to talk about it

Definitely recommend checking them out.

Your media buyers carry all the weight in deciding whether your subscription program will succeed or not

They may drive a lot of new subscribers, but if it's the wrong offer...

Then you're right back at square 1.

On our latest episode of Chew On This, we go into ALL the details of how to create a sustainable & profitable subscription program with Stay AI

If you're running your own subscription program or thinking about starting one - then you NEED to watch this first

In my opinion 🤷‍♂️

Click the link in the comments below to watch the full episode!

You’re going to hit a few major roadblocks in business - it’s inevitable. 

But the last thing you EVER want to do is roll over and quit 

Post IOS Update, I was minutes away from giving up completely.

We’d become unprofitable overnight and no matter what I did, I couldn’t find a solution

And instead of reaching out to my team for solutions I tried to tell them I was done 

That was an awful feeling. 

Thankfully, they weren’t going to let me leave even if I tried walking out the door then and there. 

We all sat down and didn’t leave the room until we came up with a plan to get ourselves out of the mess we were in 

TOGETHER. 

Moral of the story?

Your team is there for a reason. 

When you think your back is against the wall - you STILL have options

And you need to work together to find the solution - because there is always a solution.

I don’t care what my ad creatives for my brand look like 

As long as there’s solid reasoning as to WHY something was made a certain way.

I’m just one opinion in a sea of data - there have been several times when a creative I loved totally flopped and the one I hated turned out to be our new winner

Yes, I’ll offer suggestions based on my perspective and experience, but I’m not in total control of our creative process for a reason. 

It's great to have an in-house creative team but the best way to grow is to constantly bring in new perspectives, approaches, and ideas.

Do this by layering in additional creative agencies that can work with the brand part-time! 

Why is reasoning behind ad creatives important?

How can I gain new perspectives in creative work?

What if I told you that our top performing ads rn don’t even have our product in them?

Sounds crazy but hear me out: 

It looks like a super organic FB post - but all we’re doing is pulling reviews from our community & using them as the ad

 It’s a little clickbaity but it’s exactly why I’m always preaching to have a strong landing page that backs up every claim you make

Anyone else trying a format kinda like this?

Creating a landing page that converts is so much more than pretty pictures and a big CTA

Here are a few of the several strategies we use to maximize our landing page conversions at Obvi:

- Use authentic social proof

- Design with mobile in mind (THIS IS IMPORTANT)

- Make your pricing & offers as visible as possible

- Streamline your checkout process

- Transparency is 🔑

I’m not one for absolutes - but when you start testing new creatives at scale

You need to have your process set in stone and stay consistent if you want REAL results.

No question.

Choose a specific day of the week to set up your tests

Launch your tests on a specific day of the week

Wait 7 days, find your winners, then rinse & repeat.

No matter what is going on with your business, follow this process without fail and you’ll never run out of winners.

How important is having a consistent process when testing new creatives?

A lot can be learned about how to optimize your customer’s experience the RIGHT way by studying (and implementing) the strategies used by the top dogs in e-commerce

Take Amazon as an example:

When you buy something from them - what are the 3 things you can expect?

A) Low prices
B) You know the product will arrive exceptionally fast
C) You’ll know exactly when you’ll have the product

The first one is hard to compete with for most brands. That is what it is

The second one - we can kinda control, but still hard to match the same speed as Amazon.

The third one is something we can absolutely control - and something that consumers are demanding more of.

Consumers want to know WHEN they will get what they paid for.

There will always be a level of consumer dissonancewhen consumers “swipe” their credit cards on your store.

The money is out of their hands. And they want to know when they will get the product in their hand.

What most brands do:

- Don’t communicate a clear arrival date
- Don’t communicate enough throughout the post-purchase journey (I think I’ve reviewed 20+ post-purchase email flows on mentor pass that didn’t do this right)

The first impression with your customer WILL suffer.

The impact is hard to measure in the short term - but it makes sense that if you improve the first impression - you’ll likely improve the chance of that customer returning.

To solve this, we’ve tested this software called PrettyDamnQuick over the last 6 months or so.

They take actual data from our 3PL to help us communicate delivery dates with precision. This allows our customers more options regarding arrival and shipping times.

After 6 months, we’ve just started to see the impact from a retention perspective (which we’ll show later) - but from the first month, we could see the impact on the checkout conversion rate.

This is one big trend I'm seeing right now that will become increasingly important.

Consumer expectations are rising. And so is their need for expectation-setting

The reason why many DTC brands will suffer from not having clearly set expectations is the same reason why most agencies or service providers suffer from the same.

The first impression will be marginally worse, and the retention rate will be marginally worse.

If you think this makes logical sense and want to solve it, I strongly recommend you talk with Avi Moskowitz 🇮🇱 from PrettydamnQuick. They’re working with some of the fastest-growing brands in our industry - such as True Classic, Jones Road Beauty, etc.

I’ve linked a post below that showcases some of the initial results we’ve had with Obvi after using their solution.

https://lnkd.in/dgKhGits

… and for those curious - yes I am a #proudpartner of PrettyDamnQuick, but also a paying (and happy customer). If you want more insight into the results we’ve gotten, I’m more than happy to share it in DM.

Take this “advice” as you will - but they’ve definitely created a strong impact for us.

How can PrettyDamnQuick help brands communicate delivery dates with precision?

How does setting clear expectations affect retention rate?

We’ve been on the CAC rollercoaster - and it’s not a ride you want to experience. 

Keeping it in check is daunting, but only if you don’t have the right approach.

Here’s how we consistently manage our CAC while scaling at Obvi: 

Initially, we leaned heavily on just one platform for most of our ads - Meta.

If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of months then you know that’s not the best idea, but back in 2021, Meta was PRINTING on all fronts 

Then came IOS 14.5, and in less time than you can say “We’re f*cked”...

Our CAC went from $30 to $93

And monthly adspend dropped from $600k to $250k. 

Personally, I wanted Obvi to exist in a year - and that meant that we needed to go back to square 1 and optimize every single aspect of our existing funnels.

- Relearning how to make better creatives that convert
- Completely reworking our landing pages, product pages, etc.
- Ruthlessly testing new offers

Our goal was to make every single interaction with us as valuable as the last. 

Meta will always have its good days and bad days and that holds true even recently.

We saw the only sustainable solution was to give our entire process a deep renovation. 

But

The #1 biggest lesson I learned from all this - good marketing is NEVER cut and dry. 

Ensuring the survival and growth of your business means you need to get scrappy

(And become an amateur psychologist) 

 So - start using every resource available to you. 

Here’s what I recommend: 

1. Know Thy Enemy 

Leverage platforms that can give you data, insights, and strategies for both you and your biggest competitors. 

There isn’t a single professional athlete who doesn’t step onto the field without watching film, so neither should you. 

2. Become Your Customer

I don’t mean this literally - but you can start buying your own products if you want. Go nuts. 

What I mean is start a community, interact with your customers. get yourself into your own funnel and scroll mindfully, etc. 

If you can understand your audience on a personal level, then everything you do on the marketing end will reflect it. 

3. Leverage Multiple Marketing Channels 

Paid Media, Affiliate Marketing, Pop up stores at a farmers market - whatever. 

When you really start to diversify your marketing, 2 things happen: 

- Your risk of getting screwed if something goes wrong goes way down
- Your target audience starts to see you EVERYWHERE

Both are ideal, and both will contribute 1000% to the sustainable growth of your brand. 

Everything I said above we have done, and every single one has helped us to grow Obvi to where it is today. 

The world of DTC is constantly changing, and your best bet will be to innovate, build genuine relationships, and work to stay AHEAD of the curve.

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