Today’s guest is Colin McIntosh, from the DTC bedding company, Sheets and Giggles. Listen in because Colin has some great tips for marketing teams and business owners on how to make your brand stand out. Often, marketing can get overly technical especially with things like CRO, conversion rate optimization or marketing performance.  But there's a simple route. A great way to improve your conversion rate is to create a cool brand.  Some people call that likeability.  that people enjoy, like or can laugh with. Think about it: there have to be a dozen companies selling beds and bedding: Casper, Brooklinen, Sleep Number, Boll and Branch, Purple, Tuft and Needle. And they all mix in together. 

But that name, Sheets and Giggles.  You can't forget that name. 

And their humorous take on bedding. Plus how they plant a tree for every sale and their COVID- donations. On their website, they also won me over with a cute Dog mention - it's like they know that I'm a dog owner and they know my dog, Nico, my border collie.  

All these things create a moat for a business.  Everyone's concern is copycats and how do you protect yourself.  Do things that another company can't replicate. Sheets and Giggles makes their product out of eucalyptus trees. That's more unique but even if a competitor went there, they still have enough to stand out. I also love their take on sustainability.  You can be irreverant and also be committed to social causes.

In running a successful business, one thing you should be considering is your customer support. As the heart and soul of your business, they should be of the utmost importance. 

We are joined by Nicole Baqai, Gorgias Strategic Partnerships Manager. In this episode with her, we will discuss entirely the benefits and privileges of having a multi-channel helpdesk integrated with e-commerce merchants'​ back-office. Gorgias also allows merchants to manage all their support from one place and connects all business apps and all communication channels to provide support agents a unified view of their customers. 

With Gorgias’ effectiveness, merchants could easily leverage support as a way to increase sales.

Today, we’ll talk about an appealing provider within the conscious consumer space, DailyKarma. How giving back within an eCommerce store is worlds easier than it used to be and how certain stores are boosting their conversion rates and acquiring new customers through give-back charity campaigns. 

Our guest today, Mel Lubey is the Chief Impact Officer at DailyKarma where she spends her days helping brand partners integrate giving back seamlessly into their e-commerce experiences through their app, Shop for Good. She has a passion for advocacy that extends into everything she does from her work at DailyKarma to her passion work in maternal health advocacy. She has a strong penchant for curse words & vintage clothing.

Alicia Thomas, the community director at Postscript, joins us in this fresh new episode about SMS marketing for Shopify stores. And she’s the perfect person to speak with about conversation marketing since she was an early member of Klaviyo AND now, Postscript. 

On a mission to teach the world how to use SMS marketing the right way, Alicia dives deep into the world of SMS marketing best practices and shares successful tactics learned from the results of working with hundreds of Shopify and Shopify Plus merchants.

People nowadays spend a lot of time shopping on their mobile apps rather than going to a physical store for convenience. Due to these upgrades in our modern technology, conversational marketing is another effective yet unminded way of speeding up sales in a business.

In this solo episode, I will breakdown the things that make conversational marketing an effective way of boosting your sales while increasing customer engagement by helping you understand this method. There are also key points on why companies fail in these methods you can take note of so you can maneuver your gameplay and successfully do it.

You can start practicing this method with this list of platforms you can explore later on. I will also share with you the importance of managing and setting up your team to successfully work this out.

When you’re bogged out with so much work to do and only have a limited amount of time to accomplish things, you either burn down or slow down your business growth and productivity. That’s when outsourcing comes in handy. 

Nathan Hirsch, the co-founder of Outsource School, joins us in this episode and walks us through his entrepreneurial journey helping businesses with their low-value tasks and helping freelancers across the globe land on jobs.

Nathan discusses the advantages of having a Virtual Assistant, how it can help you leverage your time and speed up your business growth and sales, and where you can find them. We also got a quick glimpse of what Outsource School is all about and how this platform eases jobs that are beneficial on our ends.

During this solo episode, we’re prepping early for the most important holiday season ever. BFCM isn’t a mystery anymore. Savvy brands have figured out how to maximize revenue while avoiding all the pitfalls of high ad costs, competition, and attention.

Here, I’ll share all our marketing secrets learned from Black Friday past and present a template of what to do in digital marketing, particularly email. You'll also learn about two huge early shopping holidays that many stores forget about, a template for your holiday email promotions, and how merchants can hack the BFCM calendar to get the most attention in what’s a very crowded promotion season. Stay tuned for our Part 2 episode – this holiday season is so important that one show just wouldn’t do it justice.

Want to see if your brand is ready for Black Friday? Take our eCommerce holiday marketing quiz on NeedleMovement.com.

Special guest Dan Demsky, the co-founder of Unbound Merino, joins us for a quick trip down memory lane as he plays back the past four years: the apparel brand’s crowdfunding origin to its rapid rise to five-million-dollar in annual eCommerce sales.

Our conversation isn’t exactly what you’d expect. We talk through digital marketing and Shopify et al. But Dan’s really all about the product. It all goes back to what his customers are looking for and how Unbound Merino delivers a 360 retail experience.

That borderline obsessive approach is what helped what was originally a travel-centric apparel brand that beat the pandemic and growth even faster than before.

Along the way, Dan shows us how to hack a crowdfund, an amazing video trick that catapulted his campaign and Unbound Merino’s overall digital marketing philosophy.

This episode is especially geared towards emerging Shopify brands who are looking for more than marketing tips and want to understand how a nimble young brand makes business decisions through each ladder step of their growth.

Following up on Episode 23’s ReUnite recap, we’ll talk to marketplace strategy guru Rick Watson and continue our conversation about Shopify. Rick's the closest person I know to being a bonafide eCommerce futurist so he’s the perfect person to query on Shopify.

Sometimes, we get into the weeds on tactics that boost performance. Though it’s our mastery of eCommerce trends that keep our eye on the prize. This episode is a refreshing step back to the big picture, a 40,000-foot view of Shopify and where it’s headed, particularly in non-DTC areas such as marketplaces. And we should get cozy with marketplaces since they represent a majority of total eCommerce sales.

These days, nobody wants to be sold to and shoppers suffer from ad fatigue. That’s one reason influencer marketing, customer referral programs, and affiliate programs are catching on as people value authentic recommendations from real people over corporate marketing-speak and ads.

Most brands have heard of affiliate marketing but they just don’t know where to start. During this episode, we’ll dive in with Affiliate guru Arlen Robinson – the co-founder of Omnistar Affiliate – who will share his secrets to affiliate program success based on his work with hundreds of Shopify stores.

We'll cover common affiliate marketing FAQs:
The key pillars of an affiliate marketing program Who are your best affiliates?
Turning your best customers into influencers 95/5 rule of affiliate marketing
* How to reach out to influencers at scale.