Jon Ivanco & Rok Hrastnik on the State of DTC and How to Keep Winning by Going Omnichannel and Collecting More Data Smarter

Why DTC is getting harder and harder? What should brands and online retailers do to come out on top? Including one of the best new holistic business hacks I've seen in recent times.

Interview with the amazing Jon Ivanco of FormToro.com

• Collecting only email addresses via email opt-in forms is a waste. Instead, add relevant qualifying questions that signal customer intent and collect valuable purchase insights, then feed these into your channel/campaign and funnel optimization. Pure gold!
• Don't just optimize campaigns based on direct performance. Add customer intent data to identify highest opportunity audiences, campaigns ads. Also partially solves for omnichannel spill-over measurement (ads > DTC webstore > Amazon, other purchase options)
• Margins are getting thinner, acquisition costs are going up. While not for everyone and not a magic bullet, going omnichannel (increasing your distribution from DTC to Amazon, other marketplaces, other online retailers, offline retail) could be your long-term fix.
• Facebook most probably has a much better idea of who's ready to buy your product right now than the actual conversions show you. The problem? It's algos (and everyone else's) are built to maximize THEIR business, not our businesses. Hence, it's on us to fight the algo 🙂
• Post-purchase surveys "YES or NO"? For Jon, usually a waste of time ==> get key insights via email opt-in forms. For Rok, absolutely a YES ==> use them to get deep customer insights, next purchase product prioritize, deep customer segments, new product development opportunities etc.

How to launch a new DTC brand on a shoestring (by Jon)?

1. Pick a hero product with a passionate audience, with a feasible 5x - 6x retail price on COGS to support high acquisition costs
2. Run top quality ads ==> landing pages with special offer only available through the ad (not indexed by search) ==> incentivize immediate action and signup
3. Email welcome series; send offer again (first 15h are the sweetspot)
4. Optimize & repeat
5. Build out a few hero products (buy keep to 5-10 may)
6. (by Rok) Strategically expand product portfolio to boost customer retention and add new acquisition channels (products fitting to new channels)

Watch the full interview here: