With influencers driving retail sell-through, the key is letting them tell the story how they feel it would resonate with their audience. Sometimes it was showing on darker skin that the product doesn't have a pasty white finish. Each creator had their own way, and the collection of all their approaches made it special.
The reason we love DTC as a sales channel is the data we get throughout the process. With retail, in most cases, you'll never see that data. Set up your website to collect zero-party data and use it to direct specific cohorts to retailers to drive sell-through.
Most retail buyers don't see much first-party data, so coming to the table knowing what variants sell better, what else your customer buys, and other brands they shop from helps lower their anxiety of 'If I put this on the shelf, will it sell?'
Native deodorant was doing 8-figures in annual revenue online when it started selling in Target, but in a short amount of time Target was moving 7-figures per week in revenue.
As you scale into other sales channels, DTC becomes the lever to drive trial, gifting, product education, creating FOMO, and bulk orders for your super customers. In wholesale, you help fulfill the habitual purchase.
The cheapest slot in the Allure Store in Soho was $7,500/quarter — about $80 per day. That includes 3 events per quarter, you own all the emails, Allure posts branded content, and you keep 100% of revenue. Think about how much you spend on Facebook ads. $80 is nothing.
The early days of going live on the shelf in a new retailer are critical. If you drive enough sell-through early on, you get additional POs and placement in the chain's own advertising. If you have low sell-through, even with a single SKU, you risk being removed from the store.
The most common thought is to run ads on Facebook that say 'Now available at Target' with a video going to a store locator. That should drive sell-through, right? Absolutely not — it never works.
At Hint, we had the top 5 flavors available in retail and on Amazon, but online we emphasized the other flavors, as well as a subscription program. Get smarter around merchandising for the online customer vs the offline customer.
Jake Kassan at MVMT Watches put his most popular style out of stock on the website and told people to go purchase it from Nordstrom. It drove a flood of traffic and made MVMT look a lot bigger than they were at the time.
Obvi told customers that if they emailed in their receipts from buying at Rite Aid, they could earn 3x more points on their account. Smart way to drive retail sell-through.
When selling into or launching in wholesale accounts, OOH is something retail buyers LOVE to see. It's also social proof — when a wholesale buyer is on the fence, you have something tangible to show.
21 Seeds Tequila frequently used email and SMS to drive retail sell-through when it was needed — and then Diageo acquired them.
With spirits, if you're unfamiliar with the BS three-tier system set up by the mafia, alcohol companies that are not wine can only sell to a distributor, which then sells to a retailer, which then sells to a customer.
Having a retail storefront brings legitimacy that nothing else can. A storefront address or photo on your site immediately validates that you're not running a drop-ship quality brand.
Retail stores get higher AOVs since people can sample right there and make an informed purchase, versus using their first online purchase as a sampling purchase.
Don't go omnichannel to become profitable. To go into retail, you need economics already working for you. You shouldn't expect retail to build you a profitable business and be a solution.
9 times out of 10, if your brand is doing $25M+ in annual revenue, physical retail and retail sell-through are part of the equation. Even though eCommerce has grown dramatically, 80%+ of all transactions for physical goods in the US still happen in physical stores.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, only 15.1% of all US commerce happens online today. We had a COVID bump, but retail is where a lot of brands make a big percentage of their revenue.
When retail-focused marketing is happening, it should all be done through the lens of a digital performance marketer. It still needs to represent the brand well, but there are so many ways to make your ad dollars work harder for you.
Generic brand awareness ads for retail don't work. No one will see a silly commercial and think, 'You know what I should do today? Go to Target and get this kombucha!' Just like with your DTC channel, a Kohls-like commercial wouldn't drive any click-through or intent to purchase.
Within your existing email/SMS lists, you can segment prior customers by location and send targeted blasts with unique offers to drive foot traffic to a nearby store. The trick is to have an offer — a discount, a new colorway, a Venmo payment for uploading their receipt.
Design packaging with the retail shelf in mind from day one. It's a pain in the ass to redo it when you go into meetings to pitch to buyers.
Amazon controls roughly 49.5% of all ecommerce sales in the US — 2.6 billion visits in November 2023, over 2 billion per month regularly. 31% of U.S. adults spend $50-$100 per month on Amazon.
Amazon's FBA fees typically run 18-35% of the total sale price. The goal: make up for what you lose in margin by selling in volume with the biggest eCommerce retailer in the world.
Nood's retail acquisition funnel: geo-targeted ads with a strong offer, a dedicated landing page, segmented email/SMS to existing customers in those geos, direct mail, then hit new captures with texts and emails until they convert.
60% of US shoppers prefer buying smaller items online but consider larger purchases in-store. For anything over $1K, people still like to visit a retail store before deciding to buy.
A bad PDP on Revolve or Best Buy is equally a reflection of the brand itself, not just the marketplace. Whether you're on TikTok Shop, Amazon, Goop, or Nordstrom, make sure consumers have everything they need on every product page.
For your retail sell sheet, use a landing page instead of a PDF. You can customize it per buyer, track visits, and run retargeting ads to buyers who visit. It gives the perception your brand is everywhere.
For Hint Sunscreen's Target launch, beautifully animated brand ads targeting 5-10 miles around each store moved zero needles. FM radio in Florida moved nothing. What crushed: sponsored publisher content on Refinery29 and BuzzFeed with paid media behind it, plus influencers selected specifically for having Target shoppers in their audience.
We sponsored TheSkimm doing a full takeover for Hint Sunscreen's retail launch and it worked well. Then we tested more niche newsletters and found their engagement rates were even higher. Go to the places where people are already getting advice and consuming content.
The Allure Store in Soho had 83,000 'dwells' in two months. A dwell is when someone spends more than 10 seconds in one area of the store — that's 83,000 moments of genuine product consideration you can't replicate with a banner ad.
Eight Sleep put their mattress in Showfields not to drive sales — it was to let people on the fence come feel the product heat and cool. Sometimes the purpose of retail isn't revenue, it's removing the last hesitation.
The Allure Store package includes 3 events per quarter inside the store, you collect and own all attendee emails even if Allure invites them, they post branded content to their social channels, you get into off-site gift bags, and you keep 100% of sales revenue. All for $7,500/quarter.
If you drive enough sell-through early on in a new retailer, you're not only getting additional POs, but you're also getting placement in the chain's own advertising. If you have low sell-through, even with just a single SKU, you risk being removed from the store.
With CVS, you can ask for reports based on custom UTMs to your brand's traffic. See if the retailer will give you analytics on the specific traffic you drive.
Add an 'Available at Target' badge (using the retailer's actual logo) to your website retargeting campaigns and see if your CTR goes down or CPA goes up. If not, keep it there. If it goes down, remove it.
Newsletters with consumer-like readerships drive great retail sell-through. TheSkimm drives great sell-through with Target stores. Find newsletters with an audience that matches the retailer's audience.
Use highlights at the top of your Instagram profile to show what retailers carry your product, and link to a retailer-specific landing page on your website or a store locator.
People will buy your product where they want — don't be afraid to advertise on your DTC site that you're available at a retailer. Make sure in your navbar, homepage, PDPs, and footer, you make it easily known there's a store locator available.
Run small to medium-sized ad tests in key retail markets to test product-level messaging, brand-level messaging, flavors per geo, and recipes. By the end, you know exactly how to message in Southern California vs. Austin, TX — insights that feed field marketing, shelf strips, social, email, and sales conversations with retailers.
Celebrity brands flip the retail distribution model: instead of brands trying to drive sell-through, retailers scale up inventory to be available. Retailers rely on the celebrity brand's foot traffic, letting it act as a loss-leader product without any discount.
Outdoor Voices scaled to $40M/year before Ty Haney departed in 2020, with roughly 70% of total revenue from DTC despite 12+ retail stores. The LTV of someone who shopped in a physical store was roughly 4X higher than a traditional ecommerce customer who clicked an ad and bought online.
Local radio for retail sell-through is a waste. We tested it, isolated specific geos to measure lift in sell-through, and it did nothing. Most of the listener data radio stations sell you on is BS.
For retail sell-through, advertise where people are already consuming and trusting content — newsletters, internet publications, influencers, advertorials, coupon programs, bloggers. Channels with less targeting ability do really well when paired with retail sales KPIs due to the benefits of distribution.
Launch on Amazon only after your DTC site is doing at least $50K-$100K/month in revenue. At that point, you've proven product-market fit, iterated on creative and copy, and have the capital to invest in a new channel that takes about 3 months to set up properly.
For driving retail sell-through at Target, brand marketing's billboard-style animated ads and geo-targeted campaigns moved zero needle. The performance team pivoted to sponsored publisher content (Refinery29, BuzzFeed), influencer whitelisting, and newsletters — and saw noticeable sell-through lifts.
When driving retail sell-through, you can't push something onto people — you need to let them discover and find you. Stories let you sneak higher up in the funnel without feeling like an ad. No one opens Instagram excited to find your ad.