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DTC (fashion) Decoded

Most of the eCom and digital marketing advice published online is not written for fashion brands. It's about time we changed that. Subscribe for two free issues per month, featuring tactical guides, tutorials and case studies from real brands.

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Influencer Marketing: Real vs Hype

Read My Influencer Playbook Before You Pay That Fashion Girlie $10K For An IG Story Influencer marketing is a hot topic in the DTC community, but does that advice apply to fashion? What do you think? If it did, would I be writing this newsletter? I’m going to share everything you need to know to develop an effective influencer strategy for your fashion brand, no matter your stage of growth. Influencer & Affiliate Marketing 101 The mechanics of affiliate marketing: you incentivize people to...

Direct Response, Product & Brand Marketing: How To Set The Right Priorities For Your Growth Stage One of the most common issues I see in my consulting work–for all brands, not just fashion brands–is a lack of focus in marketing strategy. Brands have a list of core marketing activities and new initiatives to test. The list is too long for the brand’s lean team. And as a result, none of the marketing is executed particularly well, and no one understands what is actually contributing to growth....

5 merchandising reports for your fashion business

Improve Your Product "Hit Rate" With These 5 Reports & Analyses We’ve talked a lot about the power of merchandising. I can’t overstate how the growth of a fashion brand hinges on a good merchandising strategy. A “good” strategy is one that serves the needs of your key customer acquisition channel. And for many folks reading this, that channel is Meta advertising. I covered the pillars of a strong Meta product assortment strategy here. When fashion brands work with me on a marketing audit...

5 menswear brands with good Meta ads

5 More Brands With Swipe-Worthy Meta Ads: Mens Edition In my first “5 brands to watch” newsletter I focused on women’s brands. I got a few requests to do a men’s edition of this concept, so here it is! A lot of mens brands are more focused on fit and functionality, so there is more “traditional DTC storytelling” going on in these ads. I think that all brands can learn from this; even fashion-driven brands should build mythology around a few of their products. First, I want to thank this...

A store with piles of clothing at a 30 to 50 percent discount.

Everything I've Learned About Markdowns & Promos From A Decade+ In The Fashion Industry We’re a few weeks out from Black Friday/Cyber Monday–a perfect time for me to share what I’ve learned about markdowns and promotions from more than a decade in the fashion industry. Keep these frameworks and tactics in mind as you plan next year’s promo calendar and inventory buy. The Purpose Of Discounts The purpose of running discounts and promotions is to motivate consumers to do something they would...

It Seems Like Every Brand Offers At Least 10% Off For Email Opt-In–Should You? If you visit an eCommerce site, odds are good that you’ll be hit with an email opt-in popup almost immediately. Most popups will offer you a discount between 10-25% off your first purchase…if you opt into email. This has been going on for so long that many brands do it reflexively. “If we don’t do it, we’ll get beat out by the competition” is the thought. But is that true? No. Does that mean you should stop running...

Jenni Kayne Case Study: The 5 Types Of Products You Need To Grow Your Brand With Meta Ads Jenni Kayne built a nine-figure brand with a combination of smart merchandising and the strategic use of direct marketing. When your customer acquisition channels and your product development pipeline are in sync, great things can happen. I’m going to use Jenni Kayne to help illustrate my 5-part framework for building out a product assortment when Meta is your top source of new customers. Here are the 5...

The Most Successful Fashion Brands Pass Through These 3 Growth Stages Wanted to expand on my LinkedIn post. I think this framework will help a lot of fashion brands who are wondering “why am I not growing”? But first, I want to thank this week's sponsor: Inventory Planner by Sage. If you're still doing planning in a spreadsheet, you're leaving money on the table. Inventory Planner's software is informed by decades of retail expertise to help you maximize the ROI of your product assortment. To...

Google Ads 102: Advanced Scaling Tactics A few weeks ago I shared the “first principles” of running Google Ads as an incremental sales channel, along with a basic campaign setup I recommend for fashion brands. This week I’m going to share some tactics for optimizing and building on that basic setup. Most of these tactics require some spend/data to execute. First: A Revision In the original Google post I recommended this core setup: an acquisition PMax, a retention PMax and a text search...

High Sport Case Study: Ditching "Best Practices" To Transform $860 Pants Into A Must-Have Item A few weeks ago I shared my POV on why fashion brands should NOT pursue the luxury strategy. In this issue, I’m going to share an exception that proves the rule. High Sport is a brand that seems to have come out of nowhere, taking the shopping recs newsletter-verse by storm with their $860 knit pants. That’s right: $860. Knit pants. Before we get into it, I want to thank this week's sponsor:...