Like most of us, I buy a lot of stuff online. But when I do, I pay close attention to what marketing techniques companies are using.
Things I’m looking for:
- What effort is being made pre-purchase to get me to buy, and what are they doing post-purchase to increase my engagement?
- Are they following up with review requests and cross-sells (they better be!)?
- In the product packaging, did they include a mailer to get me more interested in their brand?
I recently bought some sunglasses online, and I wanted to take a look at how this company was doing with their marketing.
Overall, I was very impressed, but they definitely have room for improvement (no cross sell?!). Check it out in my latest video.
(Okay folks, I’m asking for some honesty here: Do you think I’m a hipster? What does that mean to you? Let me know in the comments of this video!)
Video Highlights:
0:20 What did this company do wrong? What did they do right?
0:40 Proof Sunglasses product rundown
1:00 They communicate the ethos of the company
1:15 Fantastic mailer sent with the product, depicting targeted market
2:00 Where they could have improved – Weak incentive for selfie request
2:30 Lack of content on mailer
2:45 No post purchase follow up
3:10 No survey request
3:25 Good pre purchase opt-in request
3:50 Overall, I’m impressed with the marketing
Click Here For Video Transcript
I get accused of being a hipster a lot. And look I understand. I kind of look hipster-ish, ya know. I’m wearing my hipster-iest shirt that I own right now. I was like, what’s the most hipster thing that I got?
I don’t think that I’m quite ironic enough to be a hipster. I don’t fit into a lot of the hipster categories, but I do have a pair of hipster sunglasses here. I’m very into light things. I’ve got paper shoes. And these are wooden sunglasses. They’re a little too big for my head, but I wear them when I’m driving, it’s kind of nice.
This company did a really good job in some areas, and I want to show you what you did well and what things I think they could improve on. It’s this company called Proof. They’re wooden sunglasses, they’re polarized and what have you. They came in this really nice box, this wooden box. When you open the wooden box, you’ve got your sunglasses in there, and I’ll show you some of the things that they have in there. I think they really nailed their market well.
The first thing is that they have the ethos of their company, their messaging, what they’re about, printed into the bottom of the box. Handmade. From the ground up. We’re artisans, we’re craftspeople, ya know?
They had a really fantastic mailer that’s in the box with the product, that kind of has a picture of who their target market is on it, looking super cool. Talks about what they’re about, equal friendly heritage and stuff. Has a little hashtag for you if you want to hashtag stuff. So they know their market, their market hashtags.
It has some stickers that you can put on your macbook and whatnot. Again, nailed the market. Beautiful little satchel thing. And then they gave you a nice little thing. Now what I think they could have done better here:
They are doing selfie generation, the stuff that we teach! How to get social proof images. Now, I don’t like their incentive. We incentivize people by saying, send us a selfie and you have a chance to win a product each month.
They’re saying, send us a selfie and you could end up on our Instagram. I don’t care about showing up on their Instagram, so the incentive doesn’t make me want to take a picture with their product and put a hashtag. So I think the incentive needs to be stronger.
I also didn’t see any kind of messaging. They have all this room here, you could put paragraphs of content… links to blog posts, discount codes for future orders, you do a lot on this piece of paper that you have. You could print color on the backside, you have a whole mailer in here that is not being utilized.
I didn’t get any kind of post purchase automation follow up. No asking for videos, no making a repeat offer, so there wasn’t a lot of follow up once I made a purchase. And maybe they know that customers buy once and then never again, but I think they could do a lot on their post purchase. They could do better.
There was no survey request to find out what we like or didn’t like. We don’t know if they sent us a review request, because we unsubscribed. Because they were sending aggressive promotions about other stuff. But they did have a good thing: They had a pre purchase incentivized opt in. So we actually got 10% off because we opted in pre purchase. So that was a good thing.
All in all, I’m not bashing this company. They did a good job. They’re doing a lot more sophisticated marketing than most companies. With the paraphernalia, with their messaging… They’ve really hit their market here and they’ve got a decent pre purchase sequence. They’re doing some stuff post purchase.
They’ve got good products. I was just impressed with the marketing that this company was doing. It looks like a relatively new, not huge ecommerce brand, so I just wanted to show you. I get stuff and I watch what people do, and I’m not often impressed. But I loved the mailer, I think their incentive was’t good, but… The product is fantastic. Really light weight, if you like glasses. They make some that aren’t so huge on your head, if you’re not into that whole Lady Gaga thing.
Ezra Firestone here. Proof Sunglasses here, if you want to check them out. I’ll catch you in the next one!
