top of page

This Major Food Brand Lost Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Because of This One Thing

Writer's picture: Dallas CrumDallas Crum

Updated: Aug 19, 2020

Here are three simple things you can do to maximize DTC e-commerce sales and make sure you don't make the same mistake.


Needless to say, we are living through some uniquely uncertain times. As a result, we are seeing brands throw (too much) money at the wrong things and lose an incredible amount of money because of it.


Influencers, Facebook Ads, Pinterest Ads, Google Shopping Ads… all terrible investments IF you haven’t dialed in what we are about to cover in this article. A client of ours (before they were a client) ran a few promotions for their online store via Facebook & Instagram Ads. To their disappointment, the campaigns flopped.


The marketing team was obviously super frustrated and considered taking Facebook out of their marketing plan. (does this feel familiar?)



This brand does more than $1 Billion in retail sales annually. You would think that a huge brand like this would have it all figured out. They are not alone, unfortunately. We see this problem constantly (amongst clients and prospects of all sizes). Direct e-commerce is it’s own beast and has a special formula for success. So before you make any big plans make sure you have a plan for CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION (CRO).



Our team analyzes an insane number of e-commerce data points every day, so you could say we know a thing or two about CRO.


Listed below are three things we are helping this major brand focus on, which will ultimately fix a hole that could double the revenue of their Shopify store (hopefully it helps you too):


(Please keep in mind this is simplified. We actually built them a custom financial model to see how much money they were losing due to these issues. We do a basic version of this with our Complimentary 29-Point E-Commerce Analysis. This is an awesome complimentary service if you want to quickly identify your holes in your e-commerce funnel.)



#1) Don’t just focus on “Conversion Rate”--> Go deeper!


You should know these three at a minimum: Add-to-cart rate → Checkout → Purchase


Here is a quick visualization from an audit we recently completed for a client:





Notice all looks good until we hit Checkout → Purchase.


More than half of the people who reach checkout bail! (6,460 --> 3,024)





Based on our data more than 75% of people who reach checkout should complete their purchase.


We learned that this particular client was set to lose more than $260,000 in the next 12 months (25% of their revenue) do this one small problem in their checkout process.





Have a deeper look into your customer journey and see where people are dropping off! #2 Focus On Email Automation (email should make up approximately 20%-40% of your direct e-commerce revenue)


How much revenue does your email bring you each month? Are you using a platform that supports proper automation?


This is another massive opportunity we see most brands miss. There are proven, repeatable strategies that can be implemented to maximize email as a revenue-generating channel.


The top revenue-generating automated email flows include:

  1. Browse Abandonment

  2. Abandoned Checkout

  3. Welcome Series


Each of these flows should contain multiple carefully crafted emails that are custom-tailored to each user, based on their behavior on your site.

(If you have questions about email, our 29-Point E-Commerce Analysis is a great resource to get started!)



#3 Optimized Dynamic Retargeting


We have all experienced retargeting. When that thing we were shopping online follows us around the internet.


The screenshot below is from straight from a long time client’s Facebook Ad Manager Accounts. It says it all when it comes to the value of retargeting.



If you arent familiar with Ads Manager, it is showing that this client is running a 57.92X return on their retargeting campaign.


(I took this screenshot as I’m writing this on August 18, 2020 - you can see the dates in the upper right corner - 90 days)


So every 1 dollar they give to Facebook they are generating $57.92 in return. While this is a top-performing campaign. Our clients across the board see HUGE returns from their retargeting campaigns.





Please, stop wasting money!


Dive into these three things. We promise you will be glad you did.


In the meantime...


If you want to maximize the effectiveness of your e-commerce channel by identifying the exact metrics, tools, and strategies that will help you grow faster and more efficiently.


We are happy to offer you our complimentary 29 Point E-Commerce Analysis.



Our 29 Point E-Commerce Analysis will help you roadmap your next best steps to growing and scaling your direct e-commerce Channel!


83 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page