📦 - Meet Sour Sis and Hot Mama

DTC 645 - Van Holten Pickles Packaging Refresh, Post-Click Pop-ups, and OpenAI’s Strawberry Friday, September 13, 2024 Good morning, Meta is implementing new data restrictions in its Business Tools, potentially affecting your ad targeting. Advertisers who use custom audiences and more detailed parameters will be affected, so review your account and see if any ads have been paused or need tweaking. The workaround? With these new changes coming into effect, focus more on your refined messaging and how you design creatives for prospective customer personas. Having top-performing broad targeting with focused messaging will be key. 🔑 Here’s what you’ll find in today’s DTC: 💬 Different ways brands can pop up post-click to push timely offers and collect valuable customer feedback. 🥒 How Van Holten Pickles upgraded their product packaging for the Gen Z TikTok crowd. 🍓 And…the rumor is ChatGPT will be getting a berry big update in two weeks. You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: [Cup of Zest](, [Manly](, and [Fortify Wealth](. 👋 PARTNERSHIP 👀 How One Change Netted This Accessory Brand A 25% Increase In Revenue Sometimes, all you need to do to hit your goals is make one change. For this accessory brand, that one change was [joining Pilothouse’s Pilot Program](. What goals did they hit? A 25% increase in revenue, a 17.8% increase in conversion rate, a 10% increase in AOV, and more. Pilothouse’s Pilot Program is looking for three brands to sink their teeth into this Q4. [Will one of those brands, and one of these success stories, be yours?]( 👀 [Get Connected Today]( WEBSITE CONVERSIONS ⭐ Different Ways To Pop Up Post-Click As we inch closer to Q4, consider this a reminder to add some pop-ups post-click on your site. [Pilothouse]( explains this is a great tactic to push offers and product information or collect user feedback on your products or site experience. Pop-ups can support any content piece, buttons, forms, and videos on your pages. The trick? Engage with visitors at key moments in the shopping experience. Here are five different pop-ups you can test: 1️⃣ Pop up on scroll: Trigger an offer when a visitor is halfway down a page to further engage with them. 2️⃣ Pop up on time: If visitors spend a lot of time on a page reading up about your products, they are interested. Trigger a pop-up with an offer after x seconds to see if you can get them to convert. 3️⃣ Push a bundle offer: There’s always an opportunity to upsell. Customers may enter the site looking for one product, but if you can suggest complimentary add-ons, it’s possible to push your AOV even further. Hit them with an offer. E.g. Did you know you can buy 3 for XX and Save XX? 4️⃣ Pop in further product information: After a visitor reaches a certain point on a page, provide more detailed product information or a fun fact. This could be text or even an explainer video that goes more in-depth about the benefits. 5️⃣ Pop up before they leave: Put together an exit intent pop-up to determine why customers leave without purchasing. List 3 or 5 items with checkmarks and have an open form field to collect data. Perhaps something is missing on your site that the user was looking for specifically. The takeaway? Figure out which type of pop-up works best for your site, and use these to find out more about your customers' preferences and possible roadblocks. There are various ways you can utilize pop-ups post-click. Just don’t pop up too frequently! PACKAGING REFRESH 🥒 Van Holten Pickles Debuts New Characters [Van Holten]( is a family-owned brand known for its TikTok viral pickle-in-a-pouch product. Pickles have been trending heavily on social media, and this brand’s unique design makes it easy to have your favorite snack on the go in various different flavors. TikTok users often film themselves trying different flavors and rating them, participating in challenges that give the brand great online exposure. To stand out even further as a bold and playful brand, Van Holten recently refreshed their packaging to further connect with younger consumers. [Van Holten adds cartoon characters to their new packaging design.] Here are some design tweaks they’ve made: - Bold single-color design: To make the packaging more impactful, they replaced the white border with a singular color so it stands out and photographs better. - Adding pickle characters: The most significant change is introducing unique ‘pickle characters’ for each unique flavor in contrast to the uniform illustrations before. This design trend of incorporating adorable characters into packaging is increasingly popular among brands. The distinct characters help consumers easily differentiate between different flavors. And it adds personality and makes each product more memorable. - Memorable character names: Along with including cartoon illustrations, the brand also gave each pickle character a fun name like Sour Sis, Hot Mama, and Garlic Joe, which is displayed prominently at the bottom of the packaging. 🔥 These names are a playful way to hint at the flavor and to differentiate themselves in the market. The verdict? This playful refresh is a great way to connect with younger consumers! 🌐 IN THE SOCIAL SPHERE Looks like OpenAI is gearing up to release its latest AI Model, Strawberry, in just two weeks. 👀 The latest model will focus on deep reasoning and complex problem solving, although it will take about 10- to 20 seconds to ‘think’ before providing an answer. Can't view the image? [Click here]( ⚡ QUICK HITS 🚨 THE FINAL COUNTDOWN. DTC’s C-Suite Mastermind is NEXT WEEK. If you plan to join us in Victoria, BC, on September 18th and 19th, [grab your ticket now](! 📰 NEWS - Amazon [is starting to test ads in its AI shopping assistant Rufus](. - Meta [is now supporting additional ad reminder features via the Instagram Marketing API](. - YouTube [rolls out ‘Add Yours’ stickers for Shorts](. SPONSOR DTC 📥 Got a B2B Biz? Join dozens of B2B companies finding demand-gen success through our niche community of 160k brand leaders and founders this year. [Talk to our team to learn more](. Have you heard our latest podcasts? - 🏜️ Dosso Beauty [Tackling Hair Deserts with Hypoallergenic Products]( - 📧 [AKNF 437:]( Mastering Email Marketing with Quadrant Framework - 🐶 Ollie on [The Role of Brand in Scaling a Pet Food Company]( - 🦆 [AKNF 435:]( Stocking the Pond and Planning for Q4 - 👟 How VKTRY Gear [Achieved 240% Growth with Niche Marketing]( - 🆚 [AKNF 433:]( All In on Amazon v.s. Diversified DTC Don’t forget to [rate the DTC Podcast]( on Apple (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) DTC Newsletter is written by [Rebecca Knight]( and [Frances Du](. Edited by [Eric Dyck](. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up [here](. Please note that items in this newsletter marked with * contain sponsored content. [Direct To Consumer]( Pilothouse, 1011 Government St., Victoria, BC V8W 1X6, Canada [Advertise with DTC]( | [Work With Pilothouse]( [Unsubscribe](