Hey,

It’s Sunday once again. And this one has a lot of mixed emotions for me. There’s a lot happening personally with my friends & family. But I’m trying my best to wire in and distract myself constructively.

The reason you’re receiving this newsletter is because of one of these two reasons:

1. We’ve either connected in the past, or
2. Someone you know has added your email address on to my subscriber list

This however, is a closed list of subscribers who I reach out to, every fortnight, to share my insights & experiences of interacting with consumer businesses. The good news is that I started with 100 subscribers last month. Today, I’m on 400 and I count that as progress.

Today’s newsletter is about a 7 minute read, worthy of every word I assure. Before we dive into more serious things: we launched a new e-commerce store in the US last week, Steep & Mellow. Check them out and in case you’re looking to buy, here’s a discount code that you could use to avail a flat 20% off on their products: SMLIGHTSOUT20

Also, my latest podcast with Raul Rai, Founder of Nicobar, is out and gaining momentum. Check it out on Spotify: Secrets from the house of Nicobar.

Now on to the crux of this edition.

In my last newsletter, I spoke about “Marketing Basics for 0 to $1M”. Today, we’re on to HIGH GROWTH BRANDS. Most interactions that I have on a day to day basis are with founders or marketing teams of high growth companies. And our discussion often revolves around reducing CAC. So here are some punches that have worked best for businesses who we’ve advised on acing customer acquisition:

I) Acquisition via Ads is one, but what really matters is retention & engagement

• Since you’re spending to increase traffic, why not focus just the same on conversion? If real estate is about location, conversion optimisation is all about testing, and lots of it. So you’re relying on concrete data (as opposed to hypotheses) and that’s going to make you successful in the long run. In fact, you ideally should have a person or team whose job is to only do testing, such as A/B testing. Test these on a regular basis:
  1. spaces on your landing pages for targeted CTA’s
  2. Copies across ads & landing pages
  3. Social proofing (testimonials, mentions in other digital publications, conversion funnels. There’s no guarantee that a 2 click buying process is better than a 3 click one. It totally depends on the brand)
  4. Play with colors & gradients
• Retarget potential customers and get their attention through email marketing and other such tools. I often find brands trying to mechanise the process. Instead, humanise it. No one likes to talk to a bot. For more bang for your buck, target customers who have already purchased from you or who are thinking of purchasing.