The eCommerce landscape is changing rapidly. With an influx of competitors entering the direct-to-consumer (DTC) market, capturing consumers’ attention is more difficult and expensive than ever.
DTC brands need to rethink their customer acquisition strategy. One idea is to let consumers discover you with a gift through Nift.
Nift is revolutionizing how consumers and brands discover each other by integrating DTC products and services as a ‘thank you’ gift within high-traffic consumer apps. As an alternative performance marketing channel, DTC brands use Nift to generate net new customers at or below their current CPA.
In this blog, we’ll explore the main challenges that DTC brands face today, how Nift can help, and the impressive results of a real brand that has integrated gifting into its customer acquisition strategy.
4 Main Acquisition Challenges DTC Brands Are Facing
In recent years, DTC brands have exploded. They’re selling more products than ever and reaching hundreds of new customers through various digital media channels. During the pandemic, consumers especially needed a convenient and accessible way to shop online, and they turned to reliable DTC brands. However, such fast growth comes with many challenges, the 4 most notable being:
1. Rising and inconsistent costs
The biggest challenge facing DTC brands is the increasing customer acquisition costs. Acquiring a new customer can cost 5-25 times more than retaining an existing customer. To fuel the fire, businesses only have a 5% to 20% chance of selling to new prospects. So, not only is it expensive to acquire a customer, but the chances of actually attracting a lifelong customer are low.
2. Media Saturation
Consumers scroll through roughly 400 ads daily, so it can be challenging for DTC brands to stand out. To combat this, brands are constantly changing their creative and marketing strategies to attempt to break through the noise of digital media. However, with all DTC brands competing on the same media channels, it can be difficult to capture the attention of your target audience.
3. Data protection laws
Traditionally, DTC brands have relied heavily on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads as their primary acquisition channels. However, recent changes have prevented businesses from tracking and accessing the data they need to reach their target audience. Now, DTC brands must spend more time and money testing new marketing strategies and campaigns to acquire new consumers.
4. Increased competition
The DTC market is exceptionally competitive. With new brands entering the market every day, the ability to reach and acquire actual new customers is becoming increasingly complex. Established and emerging brands alike are struggling to reach their target audience effectively.
Gifting As The Newest Customer Acquisition Channel: What is Nift?
Nift equips DTC brands with the tools they need to overcome these challenges and take control of their customer acquisition strategy. It all starts with a ‘thank you.’ Let us explain.
Your brand needs to stand out from the noise. Nift helps DTC brands do that by surprising and delighting consumers with a personalized, high-value gift. Our gifts are not to be confused with ads. The products or services offered on the Nift platform are unique gifts shown to consumers who are primed and ready to purchase. Once a consumer has completed an action—such as leaving a review on TripAdvisor, paying for parking via ParkMobile, or registering for a yoga class via Mindbody—our proprietary AI selects individualized gifts from a new DTC brand to reward and thank them.
DTC brands need to stand out from the competition, and what better way to do that than to offer a no-strings-attached gift to potential life-long consumers?
Why DTC Brands Use Nift Advertising
Consumers are constantly pulled in different directions when they turn on their phones or computers. DTC brands need an acquisition channel that allows them to draw the attention of potential consumers. And not just any consumer; brands need to get noticed by the right consumers.
At this point in eCommerce, paid search and social can only get your brand so far. Hundreds of brands pour enormous amounts of time, energy, and money into these acquisition channels, offering little reward.
For DTC brands, Nift advertising is an alternative growth channel to attract incremental, net new customers to their business. Unlike paid search and paid social, our software utilizes the power of first-party data and artificial intelligence to offer personalized ‘thank you’ gifts to surprise, delight, and convert. Along with accessing an exclusive audience of over 51 million consumers, brands like Thrive Causemetics and Blenders Eyewear work with Nift for many reasons, including:
- Powerful AI algorithm: Nift’s proprietary matching algorithm finds the right customers with the highest probability of purchasing for the first time.
- Low-effort resource lift: Nift is a 100% managed service, so we do all the hard work for you. Our team handles all the creative assets, conversion, and optimization strategies, so brands have time to focus on other aspects of their marketing strategy.
- First-party data access: Privacy changes and first-party data laws are evolving challenges that DTC brands face with every marketing campaign. With Nift, DTC brands can use first-party data to discover who purchases their products or services.
- Reliable results: Our data proves that gifts outperform paid search and social every time. With an efficient CPA and ROAS, gifts have 100% viewability and an average CVR of 10-30%.
DTC brands trust Nift because we ensure their valuable gifts reach the right consumers. This targeted discovery leads to brand awareness, customer acquisition, and revenue growth. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. Take it from Rocksbox’s Director of Acquisition Marketing, “Nift’s customers are net new, cost less, and have strong buying behavior. We see 3X better conversion than other top social channels.”
How DTC Brands Utilize the Power of Nift
We simplify how your brand approaches customer acquisition. With Nift, your team doesn’t have to spend hours becoming an expert on yet another software. Our team fully manages your gifting strategy from start to finish. We develop all creative and remarketing emails, optimize your campaign for growth, and create a budget to optimize CPA and ROAS.
The most difficult part of the process is probably defining your brand’s personalized ‘gift’ (and it’s more fun than anything else if you ask us). Nift gifts are unique and high-quality—not something a customer can search for a promo code for. Along with the quality of the gifts, your brand’s story, unique selling points, and willingness to leverage the Nift teams’ expertise in optimization are critical factors for success. If you’re unsure where to start, our team can help you on the right path.
On the customer’s end, the gifting process is quite simple:
Step 1: The consumer completes an action, such as signing up for Tinder or paying on time with Afterpay.
Step 2: The consumer gets thanked with a personalized ‘gift’ to a DTC brand like HelloFresh or Rocksbox, which is only available to them.
Step 3: The consumer chooses their gift, discovers a new brand, and becomes a consumer for life.
Nift Case Study: Real Brands, Real Results
We can talk the talk, but we can also walk the walk.
The DTC brands we work with have seen incredible success by implementing gifting into their acquisition strategy. Blenders Eyewear, for example, partnered with Nift during their initial pilot phase and saw 1,200 new customers in one quarter. Fast-forward nearly one full year, and Blenders generated 19,000 net new customers in Q1 of this year at a consistent CPA and ROAS.
Gifting is truly a win-win for everyone. Matt McGlynn, Director of Performance Marketing at Blenders Eyewear, says: “A great addition to our growth efforts at a consistent ROAS, Nift has become our 3rd sales channel after paid search and social, and their managed service makes it a light lift for our team”.
Just by being introduced as a thank-you gift, Blenders Eyewear created a reliable acquisition channel with 5x growth.
Create a Robust Customer Acquisition Strategy
If you’re interested in diversifying a new way from paid search or paid social and want to create a high-converting customer acquisition strategy, Nift advertising could be a great option for your DTC brand. Learn more about our process here. If you want to get a closer look at how it all works, contact our team and request a demo.
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.
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