Our “secret” tools to profitable marketing

Hey there,

Welcome back for another bite to chew on.

We hope you’re having an extraordinary weekend with your loved ones and are fully recharged to take the week by storm!

In this week’s newsletter - we’ll talk about a few of our “secret weapons” to run with (probably) the lowest CAC in our industry (based on conversations with other people selling supplements)

…

The thing is:

They’re not really secret!

But they are tools & strategies you don’t usually hear or think about when you’re thinking about how to decrease your ever-increasing CAC.

But before we jump into this fully loaded newsletter, we have a few things we briefly want to share with you:

1. We’re currently looking for more talented and hungry people to join our team. If you are, or know someone who are, skilled within Youtube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok organic - please reach out to [email protected]. **PS: This position is for Chew On This, and not our CPG brand, Obvi. PPS: Bonus points if you can come to our office in New Jersey.

2. We’re throwing a bunch of Founder events, happy hours, and dinners in New York and South Carolina in September and October. If you’re from around here and want to join - go here

Without further ado,

Let’s jump straight into it!

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Why you NEED to start thinking about checkout optimization and A/B testing

Over the past four years, we’ve spent north of +200,000 on A/B everything from our homepage, copy, landing pages, cart slider, and collection pages…

We’ve tested literally everything but…

This one thing called: Checkout

Now, looking back in the rear mirror, we ask ourselves: WHY?!?!

The answer to that is simple;

A) We didn’t know how to

B) We didn’t even know it was possible to do it (without putting tons of resources into it)

Anyhow.

If you’re following us on Twitter or LinkedIn - you may have seen that we’ve started to go pretty hard on everything. Checkout Optimization.

The reason for that, again, is simple:

It just works

Here are some concrete examples of the tests we’ve run this last month

Test 1: Adding exact shipping delivery dates

The hypothesis here was: We wanted to lower our shipping page abandonment, which used to be at 16.13%

After brainstorming a bit, we came up with a few different test ideas and then marked them from low to high impact and low to high lift.

One of the low lift tests we came up with was adding an exact delivery date to our different shipping options to increase trust and help consumers know exactly when they’ll get their product.

Now, to be completely honest, We didn’t expect this test to be a winner.

But… you never know till you test it!

So that’s what we did!

… and the results turned out to be nuuuuts!

Our shipping page abandonment went from 16.13% to 5.13%

This proves that Sometimes it really doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.

Next up;

Test 2: “Surprise Free Shipping” to first-time customers with an AOV right below our free shipping threshold but higher than $35

Delighting your customers is easier said than done.

Sure - you can send out special bonuses, gifts, discounts, and so on to your most loyal customers.

… but, what about those customers who aren’t customers yet?

You know, those who (potentially) want to become customers but need that little extra push from your end to get them over the edge.

How can you delight them?

Here’s an interesting way we did it!

We added a “Surprise Free Shipping” option, as you can see below, if you’re a first-time customer with an AOV higher than $35 , but still below our free shipping threshold of $70.

Results?

4.1% uplift in Conversion Rate

$2 uplift in AOV

That’s a HUGE impact at scale.

Now, as you can probably tell, we’re SUPER bullish on checkout optimization.

Our entire team is running on all cylinders and implementing new tests literally every week.

So, if you want to take one thing from this newsletter - let it be this: Start to test your checkout! It’s definitely worth it!

Our tool of choice is called Pretty Damn Quick. You can see them as a semi-tech tool that allows you to run A/B tests on your checkout and a semi-CRO agency that actually helps you come up with these tests based on learnings from other brands. Click here to check them out.

Quick and dirty first. Perfect afterwards

Following on this A/B testing topic - another reason we believe our companies have been able to grow as fast as they have has been our ability to turn around marketing assets FAST!

Specifically, our ability to turn around new landing pages - focused on either different offers or different personas has been a big advantage.

Now, the reason why we’re able to turn around our landing pages as fast as we are is actually pretty simple:

We don’t hard-code them…

“… hmmm, okay then what you do then.” - you may be asking…

Instead of hard-coding landing pages, we found that there’s very little to no incremental difference in starting out by running a landing page that’s essentially just a big set of images/designs.

See example HERE 

So we basically take this type of landing page, run ads against it, and once we prove that it actually performs - we’ll start hardcoding it to look just a little bit better.

Not a fancy hack, but we thought you’d appreciate this “quick & dirty hack.”

Without this, you’re screwed!

Okay,

Let’s dial a little bit back again, and let’s move away from all of this A/B testing, CRO, and landing page talk.

When we’re on MentorPass calls, one of THE MOST frequent (and most frustrating) things we see is that brands still don’t have their tracking setup in order!

So let us just say this:

All of this landing page, CRO, checkout, creative, email marketing, etc, is NEVER going to work as intended if you don’t have your data in check.

Our tool of choice since the IOS update has always been Elevar Server Side Tracking. It’s super easy to set up; you always have a report on how much data accuracy they’re tracking with, and you always get notified if something is not working properly. Click here to check them out

Using AI to make Meta’s AI better. How?!?!

So, another thing we’ve been testing lately is this tool called Proxima AI - which uses their proprietary AI to build custom audiences that you can use to run ads against.

The way it works is essentially that they have access to thousands of data points about buyers across Shopify stores - and then they use that information to form custom audiences using AI.

So, it’s essentially like a Lookalike audience - but much better…

We started running it in the beginning of June, and these are the results thus far;

- Our NC-CPA dropped by 6.2%

- Our NC-ROAS increased by 7.5%

Pretty damn good to be honest, but…

Then we thought, “hmmm, can this scale”?

Tbh - we didn’t think it could

… but to our surprise, we were actually able to spend +$150,000 on the Proxima audience alone in August, and now their audiences account for more than 30% of our total spend - which suggests that…

Yeah, it can scale

We’d definitely recommend you to try them out. They offer a 30-day free trial run, so it’s basically just another A/B test you’re setting up. If it works, great. If not, you learned something. Click here to check them out

Tool of the Week

We work with a ton of incredible tech tools who make our businesses run smoothly and fuel our growth

… but

There’s ONE tool in particular that has completely blown us away over the last few months.

That’s Pretty Damn Quick (PDQ)

Now - let’s put checkout optimization, ROI, and money aside for a moment.

In the competitive landscape of tech, that’s table-stakes now. If you don’t deliver ROI, you won’t get our money.

… but the ONE thing about PDQ that has really blown us away is the level of service they provide to their clients.

Said in other words; How much they actually care for our success

They come up with the A/B test suggestions

They work with our developer to implement everything properly

If there’s a problem in OUR backend (for example with our 3PL), they will go in and sort it out for you directly with your 3PL (they actually did this. You can read more about it here)

Now, of course ROI and business impact is also important - and they do a great job there too (as showcased in this newsletter)... but the second most important thing in working with ANY type of vendor is knowing that they actually care for your business’ success.

And Pretty Damn Quick definitely does that.

Go check them out and test it out for yourself. You have our word, that you won’t regret it!

Thanks for reading along

As always, thanks for reading along. We know this was A LOT to chew on, but regardless: we hope you found it valuable and useful.

We hope you crush your week ahead, and look forward to serving you again on wednesday

All the best,

Ron & Ash