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Bonjour Millionaire, Happy end of Prime Days to all who sellcelebrate! Ends tonight at midnight. And, I hope your dreams come true today and you make your #s. By which I mean, ALL OF YOU, because we’re smart and spatially aware and Prime Day is too big to ignore, even if your brand doesn’t participate. Whether you’ve been in the Amazon trenches or counter-programming on DTC, I hope you are on pace and killing it. You’ll sleep well tonight, again, if you did well lol. Now, whatever you do, DON’T RELAX! Prime might be (almost) done, but we’re just getting started… (P.S. Speaking of which, ready to talk omnichannel growth tomorrow?) Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe Here
Sponsored by Shipfusion Inc. BFCM volume will find every hairline crack in your process and turn them into sinkholes.
Unless you find them 1st.
Helpfully, Shipfusion already did.
They placed 300+ (!!) real DTC orders, & tracked each 1 from checkout through unboxing. Then, they created a 5-minute quiz on the results, so you can benchmark yourself on fulfillment experience, on everything from cross-sells, post-purchase comms, and more. Highly recommend. Bonus: If you take the quiz, you can opt in to a free secret shop of your own. If you're picked, Shipfusion will order from you over BFCM. You'll get back screenshots, delivery photos, an unboxing video, and a full eval on how you did during the busiest time of year. Terrifying. AND SO USEFUL.
ON THIS EPISODE OF GO-TO-MILLIONS Are you ready for post-Prime time?^ This cracks me up. 🆙 1 thing I haven’t done during Prime: Relax, obviously. (Why start now?) Another thing I haven’t done: Pour paid behind a 2-day shopping event. An owned-channel activation makes more sense for a sales window this short. Free advice for next year, or send an email tonight to your list (if they’re cold and not going to shop on DTC). Or, go for absolute blood and text everyone / direct them to Amazon. Like Lalo does. I used to work with this brand and I now buy their baby products at full price. Great bath tubs! ^^ They use Postscript. Again, they know what they’re doing. 🙂 The link here leads to Lalo’s Amazon Brand Store BTW. What’s happening tomorrow? Well, lucky us, we’re in the mountain moving business.  Me, pulling revenue forward The world’s biggest online retailer, where 90% of households shop, just had the 1st big sale of Q4 and…. SO WHAT?! It’s OUR JOB to keep customers shopping. Where they shop matters, but let’s 1st make sure they are shopping with us vs. their other options. Of course, they only have so much to spend. Just like our brands only have so much inventory, media budget, etc. So you can play post-Prime 2 ways: Nurse a hangover and try to catch up later. (Lame) Plan the after-moment to stay ahead. (Cool) Look, I don’t always avoid having a bad couple of days. But I’d rather NOT assume the hangover’s inevitable, and just passively accept fate. You don’t move the mountain by lying down and seeing what happens. You train, stretch, and work really hard until… you’ve done it. Mountain moved. Prepare to move it again. HOW TO GET STAY READY FOR POST-PRIME TIMEChoreograph your channels. Now’s the time to figure out what each channel can do to stand down, direct, or go get a different type of customer on a product that wasn’t just selling on Amazon. Push something complementary, like the lipstick that's #1 at Sephora, but isn't on Amazon at all. Or run some counter programming, if you’re not an Amazon, and make a cheeky little nod with a Beyond Primetime sale. Or go all-in on 1 channel to balance things out. The point is, make a plan vs. letting things happen to you. Own the calendar, so it doesn’t own you. Yes, the 1st big sale of the ‘ber months has (almost) come and gone. But, that doesn’t mean you have to wait until Black Friday to make your next move. The most successful brands operate on their own schedules. Exhibit A: The SEPHORA Beauty Insiders event, coming up soon. (Another mountain for another week, but I do love this 1.) I’m Rouge. That was fun to type. Braggasurous. 🦖 Have a moment ready. I like to plan something epic for the day after a big sale. Think of it as the hair of the dog that soothes the post-Prime hangover. Last year, we restocked something important the day after Cyber, so customers had a real reason to shop DTC again. That item was never on sale, so there wasn’t a reason not to get it when it was finally available. After Prime, maybe you drop something just a lil bit Christmassy or keep some aspect of your Prime promo live. I can’t talk about it yet, but watch how we move!!
Sponsored by AfterShip WISMO tickets are the worst tickets. Where is my order? idk, where is my sanity?
AfterShip (the post-purchase platform for tracking, returns, & shipping, used by 20K+ customers, incl Mejuri & Away) just launched AfterShip Agent. Trained on 11B+ shipments, it pulls full context on any delivery problem & drafts the fix for your human team to approve. Dr. Squatch saw 58% faster exception resolution & 25% fewer WISMO tickets (!) See it handle a lost package. 📦
GO-TO-MEME My BFF Molly sent me this and said something profound. “just because AI did it doesn't mean it’s right”. To which I replied, “Not the loub and longchamp!!”
Speaking of Prime Day, did you buy anything good? Perhaps a Neroli & Basil Deodorant? Yours,
Ari | 
