 | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| | ||||||||||
 Bonjour Millionaire, Not trying to be mean, but… Today I’m anonymizing some ICK from brands I KNOW can do better (and will earn more $$$ when they do). Don’t reverse image search. 🫖: You don’t have the time. 🫖: This tea comes from a place of love. Any brand among us could reach the icking point. Let’s learn from the mistakes of others. Was this email forwarded to you? Sponsored by Shipfusion Inc. The very idea of changing 3PLs gives me a headache. ON THIS EPISODE OF GO-TO-MILLIONS Are you giving customers the ick? Taste is subjective, but also… not entirely. There are some things we can all agree are gauche, tacky, and SO NOT COOL. 👰♀️: Wearing white to someone else’s wedding. 🎣: Bait-and-switching customers. 🤖: Letting AI completely take over creative. (1 of these is not like the others.) The rules change, but the intentions don’t. We’re here to make $$$ by selling good shit in smart, ethical ways. Sometimes we drop the ball, though. We don’t evolve. We get sloppy. We miss negative signals that are GLARING to customers. We get in our own way and lose real $$$. As they say on TikTok, “The saxophones are getting louder…” Here’s what NOT to do.  🎷 Em-dashes. It’s not X, it’s Y. And other telltale AI signs that break trust. The best way to avoid the ick is to stay as close to your customer’s POV as possible. Even if they use AI, seeing a brand they trust deploy its laziest, most obvious outputs usually comes with a negative association. You NEVER want to send signals to your audience that you rushed through something, or phoned it in. If you don’t care enough to make a real effort and pay attention, why should they? (If you swear a team member just likes em-dashes, stop! You KNOW how this looks in 2026.) The person I think has the best taste ever sent me this Nike example. So I know the time had come.  🎷 Burying key information. The ability to find a store is $uper $uper important. Why would you hide it in the Our Company dropdown? This is what happens when brands STOP thinking like customers, and let the Business Prevention Department design the website.  🎷 The old bait and switch, fine print runaround. We’ve all clicked on an ad that promised 1 experience, and delivered something else. Wrong landing page. Different price. Fine print on the discount code once you get to checkout. Customers DON’T see this as a UX hiccup. They read it as dishonesty for the sake of cheap conversion. It’s so much easier (and less expensive) to KEEP trust than to repair it. 🎷 Death by 1,000 inconsistencies. Is it a bag or a cart? They come with 2 very different connotations. Really expensive stuff goes in a bag, IMO.  🎷 Discount codes that get attention for the wrong reasons. Not kidding. This is the 2nd SMS I’ve received from a brand offering free mono. Good promotion. Awful discount code. Could go viral for the wrong reasons. (Mono’s a virus. I looked it up.)  Of course, it’s easy for When you’re in it every day, the saxophones fade right into the background. How to avoid the ick🕸 Listen to your ick spidey senses. If something your brand’s doing gives you pause, feels shady, looks off, or might come back to bite you (or the bottom line), take that seriously. If you have to ask “does this feel like us?” the answer might be no. 🔎 Look for mistakes and fix ‘em fast. The ick probably isn’t on your homepage. It’s on the rarely updated ancillary pages that do unseen heavy lifting. If you notice a mistake, fix it. No matter how long your brand’s been making it. You DON’T need to split-test fixing a mistake. 🖊 Know your rules and rewrite them when it’s time. Each quarter, see if your brand rules are still giving what they’re supposed to give. If something’s not performing, erodes trust, or compromises the customer experience, it’s time to act. Re-assess, revive, or retire. Sponsored by Viktor Speaking of things NOT to do (manually): DUMMIES --> SMARTIES AI visibility is something I've put real time & real money Led by Josip Begić, an expert on this urgent topic. Anonymous Q&A if you feel like a dummy but want to become a smarty. Driving AI visibility is urgent. AI referrals convert at 3x Google. Join us, & walk away learning how to leverage it. GO-TO-MEME  Coming from the growthy-est person you know, I stand by this ^ Hope your June is starting hot to plan and that everything is efficient and that everything is perfect. Stay classy, | ||||||||||
|
{beacon}
Workweek Newsletter
