Lara Zakarian

I'm super pro interactive product demos bc you can let ppl test drive your product without having to sign up or talk to sales, but another big reason why is something ppl still don't talk about as much... 👉 bc of having access to 1st party intent data 👀 In early January 2024, Google began testing its new privacy features, restricting third-party cookies in Chrome for 1% of its users — with the intent to ramp up to 100% of users by Q3 2024. That’s a huge change and it means marketers must adapt (side note: are you getting ready??) Some folks have already made efforts to collect more first-party data, but customer attributes and demographics only tell you so much What you really need is first-party intent 👈 that's the gold 👑 And you can get that with interactive demos. How? Interactive demos track who engaged with your product demo (through form fills and account enrichment) AND how they interacted with it (number of clicks, steps reached). Combining these two data sets reveals how qualified and familiar with your product an account is, helping marketing teams refine their target audience and share hot leads with sales. In this quick clip I show you how to start that process in the comments I'm sharing a link to the full article explaining what you can do next with that first party intent data, things like: - retargeting warm leads - improving sales outreach - retargeting ads And there are way more examples for you from customer use cases P.S. having access to 1st party intent data like this is a game changer IMO...if you're not using strong intent signals then you're going to be wasting a lot of time and money P.P.S. ppl think interactive product demos are expensive but they're really not...just $50/mo. with Navattic. That's peanuts for what you get. check the comments for the link to the full article ✌️&❤️ #startups #marketing #interactivedemo

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Why should you consider growing your DTC brand profitably? There are tons, but in my opinion one remains supreme: optionality. When you're profitable you control your own destiny. And when you control your own destiny you open up options. So you can make strategic decisions that you want to make... Not ones that you are forced to make out of desperation and reliance on outside capital. What's the whole point of becoming an entrepreneur in the first place? Freedom. Freedom is just another way of saying "optionality." The freedom to make a choice if you want to, not because you have to.

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Our team 5x’d email revenue for this DTC brand, from $8,865/m in July to $44,183/m in September last year. This brand was suffering from low open rates due to poor deliverability. Fixing deliverability can be a lengthy and delicate process when lots of prior damage has been done. In this case, it took us 3 months to solve their inboxing issues. A ton of effort, but the results speak for themselves. We added half a million dollars in additional revenue to this brand per year. PURELY through fixing their deliverability. Fixing sender reputation can make the difference between a 6-figure & 7-figure DTC brand. Despite this, criminally few DTC brands (and sadly, email marketers) understand the importance of email deliverability. Here are 5 reasons why fixing your deliverability is so important: 1/ Direct sales hit Your emails won’t generate any sales if nobody sees them. Imagine running Meta ads to Facebook Messenger instead of stories or news feeds. Same concept. 2/ Wasted effort All your email efforts are wasted with low deliverability. Did you hire the best copywriters to compose highly converting emails? With a weak sender's reputation, this is money and time down the drain. 3/ List churn Bad inboxing means your list will eventually disengage. All that money spent driving people to your email list is wasted if people unsubscribe. 4/ Less brand awareness Email can do the heavy lifting of nurturing a true relationship with your audience & building up brand awareness. That opportunity shrinks to zero when nobody sees your emails. 5/ Negative brand image What’s worse than no brand awareness? Negative brand awareness. When people actually consider checking their spam folder, they’ll associate your brand with “junk.” I can’t think of a worse outcome than this. Concerned your email deliverability isn’t where it should be? Send me a connection request & I’ll help you out.

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DTC Companies with AOC's lower than $100... focus on bundles to increase your cart value. Change your shopper's habits to buy more at a time. For better or worse, this is becoming the only way to negate the avg. acquisition cost of a new client. Requires a little creative thinking but it can be done.

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How We Boosted a Client's Profits by 85% with Funnel Optimization Despite having a $100 average order value, economic headwinds were driving up acquisition costs while a disconnected customer experience limited repeat purchases. So we took command of the full funnel and took 4 key actions: 1. Creative Testing: We ran an aggressive 90-day creative testing program across UGC, scientific, editorial, comparison, reviews, founder stories and humor angles. This allowed us to identify 10-15 winning ad creatives to scale. 2. Optimizing Customer Offers: We made the subscribe & save option (30% off) the permanently best offer, shifted weekly sitewide sales to 20-25% off, and added a 15% first order discount. This incentivized more subscribers for higher LTV. 3. Educational Content: Instead of repetitive sitewide sale ads, we focused on educational UGC, founder stories, testimonials, tips and blog content to nurture the audience. 4. Revitalizing Customer Experience: We segmented engaged subscribers for recurring offers while re-engaging inactive segments through winback campaigns and educational content in the first 7 days. This full-funnel optimization increased the client's marketing efficiency ratio (MER) from 5 to 8.5, pushing the channel into profitability. Watch more below to get the bigger picture

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The top product on TikTok right now is a gut cleanse supplement. It's doing big numbers. Lessons: 1. Sell things that solve problems, not things that are "cool." 2. Taboo topics get great engagement and sales on social media. 3. Consumables are a great business. Lots of people who buy this will buy it again in the future with $0 CAC. Data found on Fastmoss. P.S. Million Dollar Sellers has 650+ successful Amazon sellers exchanging strategies and ideas every day. Go to my featured section to apply.

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I don't care if you're buying a bathing suit, coffee mug or b2b software, ppl are incredibly irrational when it comes to making a purchase, and I think we tend to forget that "oh it's b2b, ppl totally know what they're doing" (um, yea, no) so we over-focus on all the rational things when it comes to creating content and moving them through buying things like: - data (sometimes too complicated) - heavy messaging around ROI - heavy messaging around AI built into your tool - customer testimonials (ya they do matter but everyone has this) - press releases - getting on the Magic Quadrant - boring blog posts (bc aren't we supposed to have a blog or something) I see it everywhere bc we think ppl are rational, especially in b2b but guess what ppl are ppl - they scroll TikTok even though they know they shouldn't - they eat 14 oreos even though they know they shouldn't - they buy a 5th bathing suit even though they already have 4 - they share perfect photos on social media even though everyone knows nobody's perfect - they yell at their kids even though they know they shouldn't but they're just so darn tired even ppl in b2b do this, I guarantee it and so the things you do to accelerate "know, like and trust" need to focus more on the irrational 👈 not another chatGPT written blog post or press release but with an actual human being that they SEE and HEAR and LIKE ⭐ and they see that this person is sharing valuable info and they're hanging out with other credible ppl and those credible ppl are part of a larger community where people talk and share recommendations and those recommendations loop back over to you and the product/service you're building that's how it works whether you like it or not whether you want to admit it or not being rational works for math problems, not for b2b buyers. 𝐄𝐩. 𝟐𝟎𝟗 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐨𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭 ✌️&❤️ #marketing #startups #founders

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Stop Manually Handling Playbook Submissions. Automate Them with Workflows Instead. As a HubSpot user, you're probably familiar with playbooks for guiding your sales team through the deal process. But did you know you can now automatically trigger workflows when a playbook is submitted? This changes everything. No more manual hand-offs. No more dropped balls between sales and operations. Submit the playbook, kickoff the workflow, and streamline your process in seconds. Reps stay focused on selling, managers have visibility into deals, and workflows handle the heavy lifting behind the scenes. It's a triple play for efficiency, consistency, and scalability as you scale. So put down the paperwork and ditch the manual tasks. Automate playbook submissions with workflows to accelerate your team and sales velocity. Let the robots work while you close.

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Google Ads are powerful for DTC because it is a post-intent channel in most cases. The prospects you’re chasing already know what they want. They just need to know that your product is: • Great quality • Great value for money • Has great customer experience, should anything go wrong Focus on these in your Google Ads copy

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Meet the people-first GTM funnel. Mark and I were having dinner together last week and mapped out this entire model (a lot more to come), but I think it represents how people buy today. All right, let's break it down... There are two things to think about first before getting into the funnel. • Qualification: Meet your ideal customer profile through firmographic, demographic, and psychographic rules. • Intent: Understand signals from subscribers, members, and customers for better sales and marketing actions. Subscribers: Capture your ideal audience with high-value content. Aim for qualified subscribers who fit your customer profile. Subscribers are the new leads. Owned at the forefront vs rented. Members: Build an engaging, free, or paid community to network and discuss. Aim for members who meet your criteria. Customers: Offer tailored products and services to fit customer needs and increase usage and retention. Turn customers into advocates. So there you have it—a real and tangible way to measure whether you're doing and following People-first GTM. Much more to come on this. What do you think? Disagree? Agree?

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Putting reviews front-and-center is meant to boost sales. Or so we're told... For our latest experiment, we moved the review section way up on some product pages - putting it directly under the description and in customers' faces. More visible reviews = more trust = more sales, right? But the results showed the complete opposite. ❌ This variation tanked ARPU by a substantial 5.84% compared to control. So what went wrong? A few possible culprits: ↳ With reviews so visible, customers didn't just see the glowing feedback - they got an eyeful of negative ones too ↳ Our session recordings showed users obsessively reading through ALL the reviews, good and bad ↳ That level of scrutiny on the downsides likely amplified doubts and hesitation Turns out making reviews extremely visible didn't validate purchasing decisions through social proof. If anything, it did the opposite by shining a harsh spotlight on the negative noise. 👎 What's your take on displaying customer reviews? Let me know in the comments! -- P.S. always test before implementing

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Are you following TMIMIE? AKA, The Most Interesting Man in Ecommerce? If you’re into Shopify, DTC, Ecom SaaS, etc., you’ve got to know Jeremy Horowitz'. We recently caught up for my newsletter. Here’s 6 things I learned about ecom, business, & writing online - ✅ If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. ✅ Building on this, 3 things to move fast in your career - maniacal focus, ruthless prioritization, & teaming up v. going solo. ✅ The best newsletters a) solve a valuable problem b) too few are talking about (BTW, you should check out Jeremy’s). ✅ Most people a) do too much and b) are impatient. Winners do the opposite. ✅ There’s a secret to entrepreneurship - love the problem so much you’re happy to weather every sh–t storm. ✅ Shopify may be a trillion dollar biz with a $100B market cap 😲 … 👋 Catch our full chat on ecom & business at moonwater[dot]studio/scale-mba (send #18)

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Only 26% of Companies with ABM Motions Actually Measure It Properly 😰 This means the other 74% are measuring its effectiveness by standards like total lead volume or click-through rates. Whereas effective metrics are more like: 🎙️Influenced pipeline from ABM activities 🙇‍♀️ Number of engaged ICP accounts Both of these are only being tracked by 1 in 3 marketing teams as well! Most of the time, not measuring ABM effectiveness isn’t down to ignorance but the challenges in doing so. Three ways that anyone can make it easier to start tracking: 1️⃣ Use tools that seamlessly share data between marketing and sales. This allows you to easily track leads, accounts, their activities, and ABM's influence. 2️⃣ Establish clear definitions and data governance practices. Regularly clean and validate your data to ensure high quality. (Big alignment needed between sales and marketing here). 3️⃣ Invest in specialised ABM tools. These deeply track account journeys across channels and will identify high-propensity accounts. I’m definitely missing some others from this list too so please add below!

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"Funnels are dead" "Everything is dark social, so attribution is pointless" "The buyer's journey isn't linear so who cares about buying stage data" "Marketing data is all just made up" I see this stuff on Linkedin all the time. And I get it. Marketers struggle with how hard it is to get visibility into what is working and not working. It's hard. And getting harder by the day. But all this criticism is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. "All models are wrong, but some are useful" - George Box. Yes, all the attribution models are wrong. Trying to understand why someone bought your product is very complicated and even asking them is riddled with bias (still worth asking though). But "models" are not meant to be 100% reality. They are a representation of reality to help you understand something complex. A model airplane can't actually fly you to Europe. But it sure could help someone who has never seen a plane before understand what a plane is and how it works. It's the same for marketing models. If you dig in, they are wrong in a load of ways. But when done right, they simplify reality into a more digestible format to help make important decisions. The "when done right" part is very important, though. Most companies struggle with poor data and misunderstand the questions different models can answer. But that does not mean trying is a waste of time. So when you hear the next LinkedIn "expert" who probably hasn't built a report in their life, try to tell you your reporting efforts are a waste of time, ignore them and keep at it. #gtmoperations #marketingoperations #revenueoperations  

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You're tasked with increasing revenue with no additional budget or resources. Typical right? How would you double ecom revenue with zero ad budget before a holiday sale?  Here's how I used strategic Email + SMS campaigns to >double revenue for an ecom client for Memorial Day. We had just launched a new SMS program 2 months prior to this event, so the SMS audience is new, small, and growing. In a nutshell: 1. Pre-Campaign Engagement: - Launched a referral SMS campaign a week prior to Memorial Day to increase early engagement and expand the audience. - Launched a “Benefits of joining SMS” email campaign prior to encourage SMS opt-ins from the email audience, teasing the upcoming exclusive flash sales. 2. Daily Flash Sales: Conducted daily flash sales with 30% off select items, varying the product focus with a new theme each day to maintain customer interest: -Targeted the entire subscriber base on the first and last days of the series to maximize reach. -Engaged only highly active segments on intermediate days to avoid list fatigue and maintain list health. 3. Supportive Email Campaigns: Supported the first day and final day flash sales with email communications, while mid-campaign offers remained exclusive to SMS to enhance the channel's perceived value. 4. Post-Purchase Engagement: Integrated enhanced discounts for new subscribers and developed a post-purchase journey that recommended complementary products. Results - Total Revenue and Conversion Impact: Email: The campaign spurred a 151% increase in conversions from email compared to the previous period, contributing over $21,000 in additional revenue from email alone. Overall campaign performance included high engagement, with email click rates achieving an impressive 13%, significantly higher than industry standards. SMS: contributing over $7,900 in additional revenue from the Memorial Day campaigns. We built the new SMS program only 2 months prior to Memorial Day. Engagement and Conversion: Demonstrated high engagement levels, with click rates reaching as high as 6.29% and conversion rates peaking at 7.23%. These metrics significantly exceeded industry averages, indicating strong customer interest and effective targeting. Daily Campaign Performance: Top SMS campaign generated highest revenue to date. Final Memorial Day Email campaign generated the highest revenue in any email campaign since Black Friday/Cyber Monday promo campaigns LY. High engagement levels were maintained, with click rates reaching up to 6.29% and conversion rates as high as 7.23%. Subscriber Retention: Managed to maintain a low unsubscribe rate throughout the campaign Email and SMS marketers, tell me what you've seen success with in comments, or tell me what you've learned recently. I always enjoy learning more.

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Excellent advice for any solution provider attending a round table and how to get the most out of their contribution

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Meta is saying ROAS is 1.70. Triple Whale says 1.39. Then iROAS is saying 1.45 for Meta ads… now what do you do? 🤷🏻‍♂️ What do incremental metrics really even mean? “Okay, my ads aren’t performing as well as the platform says.. do I email Mark Zuckerberg or something?” No, here’s what you do instead 👇 Once you achieve statistically significant results for incremental metrics like iROAS and iCPO, incorporate them into your daily reporting dashboards. Then work out a blended metric between what the platform is reporting and what your incremental metric is from an incrementality test. This will allow you to make better decisions on where to put your next dollar. The other thing is you need to constantly test. 1 geo-holdout or inverse-holdout test won’t suffice. You can use statistical models like causal impact from R to do a constant incrementality test of sorts to calculate incremental impact of each channel or campaign during each season. This data becomes useful for many reasons, including MMM analysis. Maybe I’m using too much jargon here. Incrementality tools like Stella | Growth Intelligence make this all very simple and help you calculate true impact of your marketing channels. I would love to know your thoughts on this marketing measurement tactic. #incrementality #measurement #marketing

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