Welcome to Go-to-Millions!

GOING TO MILLIONS WITH

Bonjour Millionaire,

In case you didn’t know by now, my love language is gifts. 

Giving them, receiving them, adding them to my wishlist, analyzing the checkout flows that make them possible. 

And yet, even with BFCM right around the corner, there’s 1 growth lever I see almost every brand ignoring: gifting. 

Here’s my take - and what to do to fix it in time for the holidays. 

No time like the present! 🎁

Right now, you’re busy preparing for the holiday shopping season, but there’s one huge and very ironic area of opportunity you’re probably overlooking…

GIFTS.

As in, the whole point of the season! 

(Other than the spirit of togetherness. Of course. Sorry.)

Every gift drives differentiation, brand awareness, and overall growth.

Every gift is an acquisition play.

Every gift is an opportunity to increase AOV and LTV. 

Last year, 93% of holiday shoppers planned to buy at least a few gifts online.

47% planned to buy MOST or ALL of their gifts online. (Thanks, Gallup)

These numbers are only moving up and to the right.

Gifting should be a dedicated, intentional part of your BFCM strategy.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Of COURSE gifting’s part of our BFCM strategy, Ari! Obviously we know not all customers are shopping for themselves on the holidays??” 

But we aren’t talking about your stunning gift section, your seasonal drops, or your tempting sampler sets. We’re talking about checkout. The overall CX.

Does your holiday shopper have to do multiple checkouts for multiple recipients, for example?

Then your Gift Game is not optimized. Thankfully, there’s still time to get this handled before the holidays. 

Even more thankful: I have just gotten my hands on the first and only multi-recipient checkout built for Shopify Plus. 

It’s from Zest. It’s JUST out of beta, and it has a naughty/nice waiting list. But I BEGGED SO HARD got us a golden ticket to jump the queue. Qualifying Millionaires who get in line before 9/15 can get set up in time for BFCM. 

Keep reading for the goods on gifting and a step-by-step guide to having the Zest holiday shopping season ever. 

Receiving gifts: awesome, 10/10, please and thank you.

Buying gifts online: a hassle! Still! 

Let’s say a customer loves your brand’s dipping sauce and wants to buy a bottle of it for each of their loved ones this year.

This dream customer must go to your website, put the item in their cart, write a gift message, and go through checkout again. And again. And again.

All that friction (and extra shipping) can turn even the most generous shopper into a cart-abandoning Grinch.

But literally, why is shopping for more than 1 person so hard??

And on the brand side, gifting isn’t prioritized as its own channel. And it shows.

In your Shopify backend, a gift order looks like any other. Differentiation between gifters and non-gifters is murky at best. No way to segment gifting revenue, scale your gifting game, or add to your ICP knowledge.

But it gets worse. Because this is a missed ACQUISITION opportunity, too. 

Think about it: loved ones with good taste are the OG influencers. Getting a gift is an endorsement from someone you know and trust.

Every gift recipient has the potential to become YOUR loyal customer. If you could access them, they’d be the hottest leads ever. But you can’t. And what isn’t measured isn’t managed. And thus we start the next shopping season no wiser.

…UNLESS you are using Zest’s consumer gifting tools. 

Then, it’s all inside the Shopify infrastructure we know and love. 

Allow me to demonstrate.

❄️ CUSTOMER PAIN POINT: Too many orders, too little time.

🌟 ZEST CASE SCENARIO: A 1-and-done checkout experience.

The hardest part of gifting should be choosing what to buy. 

The buying part should be effortless. Even if - ESPECIALLY IF! - you’re buying gifts. 

Accordingly, here’s your checklist of what to switch on using Zest:

⛷️: Multiship. 1 cart, 1 Shopify checkout, multiple addresses, 0 friction, higher conversion, higher AOV.
⛷️: Gift Notes. Branded notes built right into checkout, different for each recipient, xoxo gossip girl.
⛷️: Recipient Opt-ins. Giftees can opt in for YOUR marketing. You can connect Zest to Klaviyo or Attentive. Build nurture flows for the warmest leads you’ll ever see, $0 CAC.
⛷️: Analytics. GIFTING IS NOW A CHANNEL. Track and scale: see who’s buying gifts, what they’re buying, and how much revenue gifting really drives. 

All integrated seamlessly into your existing stack. I feel positively jolly.

A number of notable brands are already Zesting. (Zest, do you mind if I use you as a verb?) Milk Bar. Levain Bakery. Little Words Project. Graza. As with any promising new channel, the leaders are there first. You can be one of them.

Let’s walk through a few of these new levers, shall we?

With Zest, instead of starting every individual order from scratch, customers shop for everyone on their list from A SINGLE TRANSACTION inside the NATIVE SHOPIFY CHECKOUT FLOW. Sorry for yelling.

You can drive shoppers straight to the multi-recipient checkout from the cart, like Di Bruno Bros does here:

…or from the Shopify checkout page, as the Clif Family Winery does here (I wonder if these pair with their Clif bars…):

Delightful. Now that we’re all hungry, let’s go back to Di Bruno.

Once a customer’s at the checkout page, it’s easy, peasy, cheesy squeezy. 

Your branding. Your CX. Your Shopify. Gift-optimized.

It’s a 1-stop shop, but customers still have options: 

First, filling up their cart with presents. Picking and choosing who gets what. (This is a year-round activity for me, but to each their own). 

Then they can swiftly add recipient addresses and ship gifts directly to their whole inner circle.

Like so: 

And follow up with a chic gift note, of course. They can schedule these digital notes to blast off when the gift ships, when it’s delivered, or the second they finish checkout.

But what I really love is that you can share the individual tracking details with each recipient, baked into the checkout flow. Just like everything else.

Everything else in your checkout flow works like you’d expect. Discount codes. Your must-have conversion-crushing checkout apps. The only thing missing is all that FRICTION. 

It looks and feels like your beloved Shopify checkout because it IS your beloved Shopify checkout. 

Wow! That was so easy, I almost bought a bunch of Millionaires a bunch of charcuterie boards.

How thoughtful of me.

❄️ BRAND PAIN POINT: Gift recipients could be the hottest lead ever, but you don’t know who they are.

🌟 ZEST CASE SCENARIO: Gift recipients can opt-in to brand marketing, so now you know who gave the gift and who received it, and can message them accordingly. 

For the first time ever, Zest makes it possible for brands to reach gift recipients digitally. It’s an ecom holiday miracle!

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a digital gift card or a real-deal package. Either way, the recipient gets your super cute, customized, and branded unwrapping experience RIGHT on their phone.

Then and there, they can opt into package tracking updates AND your marketing, if they so choose.

Zest also integrates with Klaviyo and Attentive, so you can build lists of gifters and recipients, along with customized nurture, loyalty, and retargeting flows.

For example: thank shoppers for gifting your product, advertise other gifting options or promos, and reach out during other gift-appropriate holidays. (Which is ALL holidays, in my book.) 

Perhaps, you’ll send giftees personalized recommendations that would pair perfectly with their new gift? Perhaps a promo when they’re due for a refill?? Just spitballing here.

IN SHORT: with these tools, your gift-givers are also delivering YOU gift-wrapped leads. For $0. Meanwhile, you’re building a trove of insights to keep refining your strategy and scaling that gifting channel like a PROPER growth lever.

GET IN, MARKETER, THEY’RE GOING SHOPPING.

Whoever said “it’s the thought that counts” about gifting was absolutely right.

A superior gifting strategy via Zest will differentiate your brand from competitors, boosting AOV, LTV, and all the other abbreviations we good little marketers ask for each year. They also give brands the operational backbone to lean into gifting as a year-round channel.

Now, these shiny-new gifting features can help you get there, but they’re not for everyone. They’re strictly for brands on Shopify Plus.

It’s also quite urgent if you want to capture holiday gifters: My begging has I have gotten us a ticket to the front of the waiting list. But you still have to reach out by 9/15 to get them set up in time for BFCM! 🎺

That’s so soon! But I believe in you, and our shared desire to be EARLY to new channels, not late.

Hurry, but play it cool too.

If you qualify, Zest will put on the white gloves and help your team every step of the way, making sure your gift channel is up and running ASAP. I asked about this.

They’ll help you position gifting, design landing pages, even talk to you about button placement. Everything but wrap gifts, though Zest might do that too if you ask nicely. 

If you start now, you’ll be up and running well before holiday music starts playing at the grocery store, which as you know is any day now.

Unwrap what gifting can do for your brand this BFCM. Set up a call with Zest today, and nab your fast-lane ticket.  🍋🎁🍋🎁🍋

Yours,

Ari 

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