In the competitive landscape of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, a well-crafted marketing strategy requires more than just a great product. It hinges on deeply understanding your audience, differentiating marketing channels, and optimizing key metrics.
In a conversation with Kevin Lee of the eMarketing Association, Nift’s CEO and Founder, Elery Pfeffer, discusses the challenges in modern advertising for DTC brands, upcoming trends in advertising, and how Nift is empowering DTC brands to acquire more customers without the high price tag.
Here are some of the highlights of their discussion.
The Concept of Nift: The Beginning of Gifting
You know that feeling when someone gives you a gift just because? It brings you joy and delight and makes you feel appreciated. That’s what customers feel when they receive a gift from Nift.
Nift started with a specific problem in mind. While Elery was working with CMOs of Fortune 500 companies, he saw that they needed help to get new customers. There are very few digital advertising options—there’s Meta and Google. DTC brands, consumer apps, and restaurant groups don’t have many options outside of that.
On the flip side, consumers discover new products through advertising. Advertising has remained the same since the mid-19th century: an organization attracts a consumer’s attention with content and then sells that attention to advertisers. It’s very transactional. Consumers need to discover new products, but traditional advertising doesn’t surprise or delight them.
That’s where Nift came to life.
What is Nift?
Nift is revolutionizing how consumers and brands discover each other by integrating direct-to-consumer (DTC) products and services as a ‘thank you’ gift within consumer apps.
For DTC brands specifically, Nift advertising is an alternative growth channel for brands that want to attract incremental net-new customers to their business. Unlike paid search and social, Nift utilizes the power of first-party data and artificial intelligence to offer personalized ‘thank you’ gifts to surprise, delight, and convert.
“Consumers have a greater emotional response to a thank you than they would to a typical shopping experience. The thank you needs to be genuine; we’re bringing back authenticity.” — Elery Pfeffer
The idea behind Nift is for customers to get a gift from a brand they know, like Tripadvisor, to try a brand that they don’t, like Thrive Causemetics. Customers want to try out new brands and products, and Nift matches each consumer with the right gift for them to try. Nift’s AI technology zooms in on high-lifetime value customers to ensure that they’re presented with brands they will be most likely to purchase from.
“The idea behind Nift is you get a gift from a brand you know to try a brand you don’t.” — Elery Pfeffer.
What industries work best with Nift?
A brand with accessible, lower-risk products works best with Nift. Think of anything a customer might buy on a whim, such as trying new restaurants, apparel, cosmetics, and health and wellness items. Any business that doesn’t take a lot of effort to decide whether to try it is ideal for advertising with Nift.
Think about it. You wouldn’t buy a house with a Nift gift—that’s too much of a consideration. But a necklace, candle, or new mascara is lower cost and risk to consumers, so they are more likely to pull the trigger and become customers.
“Nift is open to everybody. We’ve seen brands that I didn’t think were going to work at all thrive on the Nift platform. I wasn’t sure about the CBD category, but it’s worked really well. Consumers are enjoying the options available on Nift, So I’ve stopped guessing what brands are going to work. Niche categories like air filters have seen a lot of success. Obviously, that’s not our bread and butter, but we have a diverse audience in our closed ecosystem.” — Elery Pfeffer
3 Ways Nift Is Disrupting Traditional Advertising
The advertising industry is noisy and complicated. In the quest to acquire new customers, DTC brands have to overcome new challenges every day, including:
- Rising and inconsistent costs
- Media saturation
- Decreasing attention spans
- Data protect laws
- Intense competition
Nift is disrupting the landscape and arming DTC brands, consumer apps, and restaurant groups with the tools they need to attract and retain the right customers.
1. Surprise and Delight
The differentiator to Nift’s approach is the surprise and delight aspect. Surprising and delighting customers has proven to be one of the most powerful ways organizations can create memorable experiences that foster unwavering brand loyalty.
For example, let’s say a consumer was offered a Nift gift after they upgraded their gym membership. The customer wasn’t expecting this gift; they just received it by doing something good. Now, they get to decide where they want to spend their gift, and they do that within Nift’s closed ecosystem. It’s a guided search, not an open search. The customer then discovers your brand, converts, and becomes a life-long customer. By rewarding customers at key trigger moments, you’re more likely to attract and retain new customers than with ads alone.
“The system is incentive-aligned, so everybody wins. It’s not an advocate adversarial relationship that you might get with some other platform where they want to sell you as many clicks as possible. At Nift, we care about our consumers having a good experience. On the advertiser side, we help them with landing pages and think through what products and messaging fit their audience. We help them win. And that’s because if they win, we win.” — Elery Pfeffer
2. Innovative Consumer Discovery Process
One of the main differences between traditional advertising and Nift is the consumer discovery process. When consumers are offered a gift through Nift, they don’t have to sift through hundreds of options. If they did, they would either choose a brand they know or get overwhelmed and not pick a gift at all.
Where ads only show customers brands they know, Nift is about discovering new brands. Consumers want to discover new brands, but it takes significant time and effort to do so. With Nift, consumers can discover exciting new brands and restaurants in a very low-risk way, so there’s less risk for the customer.
3. Maintaining Brand Reputation
Nift is a ‘brand-safe’ customer acquisition strategy. The gifts offered through Nift do not degrade the brand.
“With a Nift gift, you’re not discounting anything. This is a gift the consumer got from another brand they trust, and so they’re not going to continue to expect that value going forward. For example, when you get a gift card, you don’t expect every purchase to be at a lower rate. So Nift gifts have no negative impact on brand perception.” — Elery Pfeffer.
Guilt Free Gift: A Nift Success Story
Higher conversions, CPAs, and ROAS are big promises, but we can prove our gifting model works wonders. Together with Nift, Rocksbox has achieved the unthinkable in today’s DTC landscape. Over 90 days, Rocksbox saw:
- 4x new customer growth
- Zero change in CAC while scaling new customer volume
- 2 times LTV
- Lower CPA vs. new customers from paid social
”Nift’s customers are net new, cost less, and have strong buying behavior. We see 3X better conversion than other top social channels.”
— Samantha Taslim, Director of Acquisition Marketing, Rocksbox
How Can Brands Say ‘Thank You’ With Nift?
There is no restriction on how brands can say thank you. Brands can give gifts to consumers through whatever channel is most effective, whether via email, app integrations, or SMS messages. Ultimately, as a brand, you’re not connecting with a consumer to promote something or sell anything; you’re just there to say thank you.
“What could be more human, create more connection, than just plainly saying thank you for something?” — Elery Pfeffer.
Future of Nift and Advertising
What does the future look like for Nift? Elery has big plans:
“We want to be a platform where consumers come in to discover new products and can count on us to match them with five to seven new products a year that are going to be delightful, and they can share with their friends and say, You wouldn’t believe the sunglasses that I got, or the news, this new product that I got? And that’s where we want to be. Even in the longer term, we want to go global.”
Give The Gift of Nift
Nift is flipping the advertising industry on its axis by focusing on genuine human interaction. Listen to the full podcast here to learn more about Nift, the importance of effective leadership in a rapidly growing company, and the potential to show gratitude to customers at critical moments.
“Some of these other platforms where you advertise, you’re not guaranteed humanity, right? You may be interacting with bots, and you may be paying for bots on an impression or clique basis. And one of the things that I find particularly interesting about the Nift platform is the guaranteed humanity of it, because it’s happening at a thank you, and it has that entire wrapper of the thank you surrounding it.” — Kevin Lee.
Ready to get started with Nift? Request a demo with our team.
About the Author
Cynthia LaRue is the Vice President of Marketing at Nift, where she develops an integrated sales and marketing growth strategy to elevate the Nift brand, foster customer awareness, and drive brand preference across various marketing channels.
Cynthia’s passion lies in leveraging digital platforms to connect with customers innovatively, driving demand for Nift. Collaborating closely with the Sales Team, she spearheads efforts to transform capabilities and stay ahead in the ever-evolving e-commerce industry. Her commitment to fostering diverse and engaged teams is at the core of her approach.
Throughout her career, Cynthia has navigated both scrappy startups and global enterprises. Before joining Nift, she served as the Head of Marketing for ShipStation. Her impressive track record includes pivotal roles at Fortune 500 organizations such as The Home Depot and Mars, where she focused on digital e-commerce and held P&L responsibilities for the M&M’s brand.
Outside of work, Cynthia resides in the greater Houston, TX, area with her husband. She indulges her creativity by designing jewelry, exploring hiking trails, kayaking, swimming, and writing. Cynthia holds a dual degree in management and an MBA from Belhaven University, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude.
