If you’re a brand selling niche or restricted-category wellness products — think CBD, mushrooms, or hemp-derived offerings — you know the struggle: how do you reach new customers when traditional paid channels often block or severely limit your ads? The story of Batch shows one compelling solution.

Who is Batch — and why they mattered

Batch is a wellness brand that produces premium CBD, mushroom, and THC gummies. Their story starts with authenticity: hemp is grown on a generational Wisconsin farm, and the founders — chemical engineers — formulate every product in-house. Everything from soil to final packaging is controlled under GMP standards, lab-tested for potency and purity, and delivered directly to consumers. BATCH+2BATCH+2

Batch isn’t about hype. They’re about transparent sourcing, quality control, and consistency. Their vertical integration — from hemp farm to final gummy — helps them stand out in an increasingly crowded wellness market. BATCH+2BATCH+2

Yet despite stellar product quality and strong customer satisfaction, Batch faced a familiar challenge for hemp-based brands: limited advertising options. Major ad platforms either restrict hemp/THC content or severely limit reach. That’s where a different kind of marketing channel made all the difference.

Why Klickly was the right move

When Batch integrated Klickly into their omnichannel strategy in 2025, the impact was impressive. They saw a 20.8% decrease in CPA and a 39% increase in average order value (AOV) — all while scaling new customer acquisition on premium sites top-tier publishers they otherwise couldn’t access.

Here’s how Klickly helped them punch above typical wellness-ad restrictions:

Access to premium inventory on high-trust, brand-safe sites like top-tier media publishers, which traditional ad platforms often block for hemp/THC.

Performance-based advertising: Klickly charges commission only when a sale happens — no upfront CPC/CPM spend. Klickly Brands FAQ+2connect.triplewhale.com+2

Seamless in-ad shopping: Through what Klickly calls Commerce Modules™, shoppers could complete a purchase directly inside the ad — skipping long purchase funnels entirely. That drove over 300 direct “in-ad purchases” for Batch.

Re-engagement and retention: Using Klickly’s Adaptive Web Assets (AWA), Batch re-engaged past buyers with high efficiency — yielding an 11.3× ROAS on re-orders.

What this means for niche / restricted-category brands

Batch’s experience shows there’s a viable, scalable path for wellness and hemp-adjacent brands, even when typical ad pipelines are closed. Specifically:

You don’t have to rely solely on organic or high-cost native marketing. Klickly’s pay-for-performance model means lower risk — you pay only for real sales.

You can access brand-safe, premium digital real estate that builds credibility. Being featured alongside reputable publishers elevates your brand — ideal for premium or wellness-positioned products.

You can both acquire new customers and increase order value, while retaining profitability. Batch didn’t just grow volume — they also increased AOV, meaning more revenue per customer, even with lower CPA.

You can effectively re-engage existing customers. With Klickly’s re-engagement tools, recurring sales become a stronger, more predictable revenue stream.

Final thoughts: If Batch — a hemp/CBD brand — can succeed … maybe it’s time you consider Klickly

In an industry where marketing options are limited, Batch shows the power of leveraging alternative, performance-based advertising. By embracing Klickly, they transformed constraints into opportunity: scalable new customer acquisition, higher order values, better retention — all while staying compliant and maintaining margins.

If you’re a brand operating in a restricted, regulated, or reputation-sensitive space and you’ve struggled to get the visibility you want — Klickly isn’t just a workaround. It’s a strategic growth channel.

When you think of amino acids, you may think of muscle-building supplements. PYM is reframing that conversation—showing how amino acids can also support the mind. We spoke with Erika, General Manager at PYM, to learn how the brand grew from a personal story into a movement, and what lessons other brands can take away.

1. Turn Personal Stories Into Purpose

PYM, short for Prepare Your Mind, was founded by Zak and Olivia Williams. After losing his father, Robin Williams, Zak struggled with his own mental health. Olivia introduced him to amino acids like GABA, which helped her during grief. The results were so immediate that they decided to build a company around making these tools accessible. The name PYM, taken from Robin’s middle name for Zak, highlights their mission to care for the mind proactively, not just in crisis.

Lesson: Consumers connect with authenticity. Sharing the “why” behind your brand builds trust and lasting loyalty.

2. Meet Customers Where They Are

Wellness brands face high competition and rising acquisition costs. PYM responded by focusing on accessibility in both product and distribution. They expanded into retail through Sprouts while also seeking offline touchpoints like yoga studios, spas, and meditation centers. Each order even includes a pamphlet about “mental hygiene,” encouraging customers to treat brain health with the same care as physical hygiene.

Lesson: Finding customers in their everyday environments—both online and offline—can make your brand more memorable and relevant.

3. Use Technology to Refine Creative

PYM has embraced AI to improve creative output and test performance faster. Small changes to messaging can shift how customers engage, and AI helps identify those changes at scale. Through Klickly, the brand has also reached new audiences, with over 90% of sales on the platform coming from first-time customers.

Lesson: Data and creative go hand in hand. Leveraging tools that reduce guesswork helps brands lower costs while expanding reach.

PYM’s journey shows that even in a challenging retail climate, clarity of mission and smart use of technology can fuel growth. For other brands, the takeaway is simple: focus on authenticity, accessibility, and adaptability.

Let’s be honest: the way we’ve been doing digital advertising is broken.

For years, brands have poured budget into the “CPM Industrial Complex” – paying for impressions, crossing fingers for conversions, scrambling for attribution signals, and trying to scale with duct-taped tools and exhausted teams. Meanwhile, platforms profit whether your campaigns succeed or not.

Sound familiar?

Here’s the truth: the house always wins, and your brand deserves better.

Enter Intelligent Commerce Media

Now imagine an advertising model that doesn’t guess at what might work – it knows, in real time.

• No upfront costs.
• No outdated metrics like impressions or clicks.
• No army of operators required.

This is Intelligent Commerce Media (ICM) – a next-gen way to acquire customers, powered by agentic AI, verified commerce data, and real-time purchase intent signals.

It flips the old equation on its head: No more CPMs. No more wasted spend. No more spray-and-pray.

Instead, ICM delivers autonomous, measurable performance, with brands paying only when a sale happens.

It’s built differently. And it works differently.

What Makes It “Intelligent”?

Legacy advertising is people-heavy and platform-dependent. It’s built on outdated assumptions: that engagement equals intent, and impressions equal impact. But today’s buying journey is far more complex – and far more data-rich.

ICM takes a radically smarter approach.

It connects directly to your product catalog and plugs into live shopper behavior. Campaigns are auto-generated, tested, and optimized in real time (by AI) based on what’s most likely to convert right now.

Here’s how it compares:

It’s like switching from a gas-powered car to a self-driving electric vehicle:

Same goal. More speed. Better results. Radically less friction.

So Who’s Powering This Shift?

Klickly is the engine behind Intelligent Commerce Media.

Our patented Commerce Modules™ live across a network of 5M+ premium publishers (Vogue, ESPN, Allure, Forbes, Refinery29, and more), dynamically adapting to shopper signals using a proprietary CDP of over 130 million verified consumers.

And the best part? You only pay when a sale happens.

No CPCs. No subscription fees. No guesswork. Just performance.

Who’s This Built For?

Intelligent Commerce Media is tailor-made for brands ready to ditch the legacy playbook.

Whether you're scaling with lean teams, managing ROAS under pressure, or just tired of seeing your budget disappear with little to show – ICM gives you a smarter path forward.

It’s a perfect fit for:

• Performance-obsessed CMOs who care about revenue, not just reach
  
• DTC brands scaling fast with limited overhead
  
• Retail disruptors replacing manual processes with AI automation
  
• Growth teams reclaiming time and driving accountable results

If you're ready to replace risk with performance, uncertainty with precision, and inefficiency with intelligence – you're ready for ICM.

The Future of Acquisition is Autonomous

In 2025, digital acquisition should be intelligent, autonomous, and accountable.

Klickly’s Intelligent Commerce Media isn’t just another tool – it’s a new foundation for how modern brands grow.

Because if your ads aren’t performing...

Why are you still paying for them?

We are but hours away from Black Friday Cyber Monday! If you've subscribed to our newsletter, you've received these tips over the last few weeks to prep your Klickly campaigns for the holidays.

Here are 4 last minute campaign optimizations you can make right now to ensure you get the most out of this BFCM!

1. Add more products to your campaigns

It may come as no surprise but we can’t advertise your products if they aren’t in a campaign. Klickly offers a variety of campaign types to meet your needs. Consider setting up a “My Entire Catalogue” campaign this BFCM to promote all products in your store.

Brands love this campaign type because it offers a greater variety for their customers. More products means more chances to actively promote the right product, to the right people, at the right time.

• Adding more products increases your placement in our algorithm. - Our algorithm takes into several data points, one of those being the percentage of your products within a campaign. The more products you have, the better you will rank.
• Adding more products allows you to reach more people. - Your customers are interacting with your products every day. Not including these products in a campaign could be a missed opportunity to help drive them to a purchase (and possibly add new customers to your funnel).
  

2. Set customer acquisition commissions

What's better than bringing in the $$$ throughout Black Friday Cyber Monday? Bringing in brand new customers.

If you're looking to bring in new customers this holiday season, show your Cold Customer Commission some love.

Around this time of year, competition starts to increase, so make sure you stand out from the crowd using Klickly Discovery to drive brand new cold customers.

We recommend aiming for a 2:1 on your Average Order Value to start. But you still have time to find your sweet spot!

As a reminder we'll only ever charge one commission type.

3. Add a boost to your campaign

Whether we're talking display, social, search, or beyond there's one thing that holds true across them all: the competition is fierce. That competition does not do any favors for the cost of your CPMs or CPCs. Of course, Klickly will always advertise your products and only charge on commission, but adding a Campaign Boost can really boost your performance.

Adding a Boosts allows you to increase your Priority Score, and ultimately the number of times your marketing messages are shown to consumers, without setting a high commission.

Some helpful tips:

• Boosts are a great way to complement products or categories you are trying to push.
• Boosts guarantee impressions, so they are great to use during holidays (and other busy times) when your competitors are vying for that luxurious ad inventory.
• Experiment with different levels of Boosts to find your sweet spot. Remember Boosts are charged weekly and must be manually removed.
  
  
  

4. Make your creative count

Is your logo current? Are your Klickly brand colors familiar? Does your messaging reflect your brand or your specific Black Friday Cyber Monday campaigns?

Optimize your Klickly creative to increase customer trust and speak to your specific holiday offering.

Remember the ad-units are dynamic based on the customer, but there are small tweaks you can make to give your ads an extra edge.

The three most important things you can do for your creative:

• Offer clear specific messaging. Mention your holiday promotions, unique product features, or have a clear call to action.
• Make sure your logo is uploaded and your brand colors are chosen. Nothing says good customer experience like a seamless buyer journey.
• Make sure your product images and descriptions are in top shape this holiday season.

We’re confident that this Black Friday / Cyber Monday is going to be the best one yet. We’re excited to be on this journey with you and we can’t wait to see your success. Reach out to your account manager for more tips on how you can crush this Holiday season.

Happy Selling!

Over the past two years eCommerce trends have shifted tremendously. Nearly every aspect of eComm has experienced some change from the norm, including consumer behaviors.

The "what", "when", "where", "why" and "how" consumers are purchasing have seen some pretty drastic shifts in certain industries. Even the importance of social impact in brand voice has entered the conversation.

With so many changes to eCommerce in general, it can be difficult to keep track of these consumer trends. But it's more important than ever heading into Black Friday Cyber Monday that you understand consumer behavior so you can get ahead of the curve.

We've asked 5 eCommerce experts what top consumer trend they should be aware of to prepare you for BFCM and beyond.

Bradley Wilkinson
Partnerships and Marketing Specialist at Klickly

Consumer privacy concerns have accelerated over the last two years. Consumers are more protective over what information they share with brands. With CCPA & GDPR — and Google and Facebook's recent privacy updates — the power is shifting to the consumer. We are now in the era of transparency and opt-ins. Brands should work on building and nurturing relationships with their customers. The goal: to gather first party data. They should also look to partners who have strong first-party data built in. This is a win for brands as these customers have greater purchase intent.

Alicia Gan
Partnerships Manager at Cartloop

There are at least 60% of consumers who want to hear from your brand through SMS marketing — especially when it is conversational. In fact, we did some research that 67% of Shopify sales during BFCM 2020 happened on mobile. If the sole purpose of SMS is to "deliver blasts," much like email marketing, then what is the point? Sometimes campaigns, discounts and other offers are not exactly what they want because they are willing to spend. Consumers want to have their voice heard to help you build a successful brand, hence including conversational with real human touch in real-time will make it a whole lot easier to communicate. Communication is the new key to successful sales.

GQ Fu
CEO and Co-Founder at LTVplus

This is an interesting year where consumer behavior is only beginning to establish a new normal. The last couple of years have shaken the world and as a result, a lot of consumers have gone into survival mode and this heavily dictates their decisions. This is especially impactful on the B2C market where due to a rise in unemployment, consumers are focused on getting the best possible deals. Discounts, giveaways, and other special offers could be helpful if done right. The upcoming BFCM sales season can be a great time to run some limited offers and acquire new customers before the end of the year. Our top tip would be to focus on your customer experience and personalize your offers as much as possible to the individual customers.

Jeremy Horowitz
Dir. of Marketing at Daasity

Customers desire to purchase more unique products than ever. They are shifting their purchasing behavior even more to limited edition products that aren't readily available year round. Even if it's a variant on a core product they are more compelled to purchase products that they can share with their friends and family as truly unique. The interesting layer on the classic buying behavior is customers are becoming "social media collectors", where they will buy out entire lines of limited edition products. These customers are willing to spend more on the items and buy more frequently to always have the latest and greatest product from your company.

Mollie Woolnough-Rai
Senior Content Marketing Executive at LoyaltyLion

LoyaltyLion research shows that consumers aren’t as in love with Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) as they once were. 60% feel that BFCM discounts are never as good as they expect them to be. Over half (56%) think retailers push lower quality products and 58% said BFCM deals impact their trust in brands. Over discount seasons consumers feel undervalued, under-appreciated, and deprioritized. But, it’s not all bad news. Our research showed that there are alternative incentives that give consumers the same positive feelings discounts do – think loyalty points and exclusive experiences! These incentives can be just as effective as discounts in building the LTV of Black Friday customers. They provide extra value, strengthen emotional connections and make customers feel valued.

Somehow we're already almost halfway through September, which means Black Friday Cyber Monday is nearly upon us.

That's right, it's that time of year for brands to optimize their websites, clean up their email lists, and prepare their best deals to go into the largest shopping period of the year.

Last year's events highlighted the need for brands to have all their ducks in a row when it comes to eCommerce preparedness. While the world is slightly more open this year, it certainly looks like eCommerce will take center stage yet again.

Hopefully, you've already started preparing, but if not we've gathered 7 tips that merchants can implement right away to have a successful Black Friday Cyber Monday.

Jameela Ghann
Marketing Manager at Fera Product Reviews

If you walk away with one piece of advice it is this: make sure you have a shipping strategy in place! You should strive to ship quickly and with the fastest shipping possible. I have an eCommerce store (Alora Boutique) and ever since we started offering free expedited shipping, we've had very happy customers! Be sure to communicate with your staff on expectations and give your customers lots of shipping options. You can also opt for a 3PL company to fulfill your orders if you don't think you can do it in house. Make sure that you communicate with your customers about shipping times so that they don't inundate you with "where is my order" messages. Fast and tracked shipping, will make your customers happy and happy customers are more likely to leave glowing reviews!

Additionally in this matter, Gidon Sadovsky, founder of Overnight Glasses, advises brands to prioritize expedited shipping options, as last-minute shoppers are often willing to pay a premium for faster delivery. He emphasizes that clear communication about shipping times can significantly reduce customer inquiries and increase satisfaction.

Chris Lavoie
Tech Partner Manager at Gorgias

One key way to make sure your customer support is ready for BFCM is to automate replies to your frequently asked questions. It's inevitable that as your traffic and sales increase, so will your customer support tickets. But letting that impact your ability to reply quickly to customers can hurt your conversion and retention rate. That's where automation saves the day - set up pre-written responses (AKA macros) to your frequently asked questions, and use machine learning through a helpdesk like Gorgias to automatically reply to questions such as "Where is my order?" by pulling in customer data including their first name, order number and tracking link.

Shanif Dhanani
Identify and Optimize Your Segment Of Discount Seekers at Apteo

It’s important to make sure you know who your discount seekers are before Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals go live. These customers are more likely to buy from you when they get a discount code and this is the perfect time to market to them. By identifying who they are before your sale goes live, you can A/B test different discount amounts to find the ones that lead to the most sales without leaving a lot of money on the table. Pro Tip: Apteo automatically creates a Discount Seekers segment from your customers by finding customers who usually buy only when they have a discount. You can sync these customers to your email service provider to A/B test different messaging and discount amounts to see what messaging works best for them.

Viktoria Philbrick
Content & Partnerships at SMSBump

There’s never been a better time for brands to start collecting first-party data directly from shoppers and take on this new path to respectful personalization. Adopting channels like SMS is key for the successful transition to a cookieless world and a strategy that will help cut through the noise this BFCM. As a first-party data channel, SMS marketing empowers brands to launch targeted campaigns, based on factual customer data, thus optimizing expenses. This makes every SMS interaction with shoppers more personal, the data you collect - much more valuable, and the price - predictable. As a result, your brand can significantly shorten the distance to purchase and increase conversions, while maintaining a stable cost - all crucial factors for the success of every BFCM campaign.

Brigitta Ruha
Partnerships & Marketing Manager at Recart

With mobile commerce continuing to grow, it’s become super important for online brands to bring the same level (if not higher) seamless and one-on-one experience that customers would otherwise receive at a physical store. To meet the expectations: make the mobile subscription experience seamless, make important elements clickable and customize the colors of the popup with a bold shopping CTA and highlight the value to persuade people to opt-in. Once you’ve got people to sign up for your list, make sure they are welcomed personally as well. The Welcome flow will welcome your new subscribers and turn them into customers. With BFCM, everybody is scrolling on dozens of different e-commerce sites, so start building your list early to capitalize on the momentum and make this BFCM your best ever.

Raúl Galera
Chief Advocate at ReferralCandy

Something brands have paid attention to lately has been the importance of retaining clients. Increasing customer retention has a direct, positive impact in a company's financials and can improve the overall health of the business. With the busiest shopping time of the year almost around the corner, it's crucial for brands to think about their post-purchase strategy. In a lot of cases, these include a combination of coupon codes and promotions -- which don't make a lot of sense considering that these clients just bought from you. Instead, brands need to come up with a post-purchase plan with a referral-based approach. That way, customers will be incentivized to start conversations with their friends and family in which they can talk about the product they've just acquired from you.

Bradley Wilkinson
Partnerships and Marketing Specialist at Klickly

Start early and gather learnings leading up to Black Friday Cyber Monday for the most effective advertisements. The BFCM shopping period will likely, again, run longer than the typical 5 day stretch — last year eCommerce began seeing its greatest uptick about 4-5 days before Thanksgiving. Take advantage of the weeks leading up to BFCM to test and learn what resonates with your audience. A/B test creative assets, copy, and different deals ahead of BFCM. Take these learnings and ramp up your spend leading into Thanksgiving. Advertising costs always increase during the Holidays, so you'll get the most bang for your buck if you have a data-backed idea of what will work. TIP: if you're using machine-learning for advertising, start early to ensure algorithms can learn your best fit audience.

The death of the third party cookie. If you're a digital marketer or merchant, that phrase has probably passed through your lips at least once over the last year. Big changes to how consumers' data can be used and collected are underway.

Spurred by growing public privacy concerns, we've begun to see regulations implemented (namely GDPR & CCPA) that have affected the many channels marketers are using to... well... market.

Most recently, Google and Apple announced that the third-party cookie will be eliminated from their respective browsers.

With all of these changes, marketers are left scratching their heads on how to navigate these changes. Luckily, we've gathered 6 of the top eCommerce partners — who work with 1000s of brands every day — to help shed some light on the topic.

Here are 6 tips for merchants to navigate privacy updates.

Fiona Stevens
Head of Marketing at LoyaltyLion

Our number one tip for eCommerce marketers currently navigating multiple privacy updates, is to focus on maximizing the value exchange that customers get in return for their engagement. Use loyalty data and insights to make emails as personalized as possible, take every opportunity to show customers how shopping with you supports and aligns with their own values, and create customer communities that really make them feel like they are part of something bigger. The more you reward their ongoing participation, the more they will see the benefits of continued engagement with your brand. This will make it far less likely that they will opt out of your communications, which in turn will help you to maintain an emotional connection and secure further purchases.

Greg Zakowicz
Veteran Marketer & Director of Content at Omnisend

The upcoming iOS 15 changes mean one thing: email opens are dead. But with a little preparation, your email marketing program can be stronger than ever. Here are 5 tips to help you prepare: Ditch your unengaged contacts and go into the post-iOS 15 world with a healthy, engaged list. Write compelling subject lines and preheader text that provide subscribers with enough clarity and reason to open your emails. Promote your value-adds and differentiators, such as free returns, to maximize clicks. Lean on naturally relevant automations. In the first half of of the year, they were responsible for 32% of all email orders and only 2.4% of sends. Collect mobile numbers—SMS is a must-have channel. Use SMS in your email workflows and to replace remails. Don’t fear a world where opens are dead—embrace it.

Dan LeBlanc
Founder/CEO at Daasity

One of the best ways to combat the upcoming privacy changes is to enrich your Marketing platforms with the customer data you already collect, and adjust marketing strategies to focus more on speaking to your best customers at the right time. The brands we see having the most success are the ones that leverage their customer purchasing and engagement data from across their tech stack in their advertising. The most common use case is taking customers RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) data and creating audiences in their email/SMS platforms and advertising channels to send the right time message to their customers to repurchase. Shifting more of their focus and budget has allowed them to unlock more profitable growth by being more efficient with their ad spend, but that's just the start.

Matt Schlicht
CEO & Co-Founder at Octane AI

It’s more important than ever to build relationships with everyone who visits your store and it’s no longer good enough to rely on third-party data or just get a customer’s email or phone number. As a store owner or marketer, you need to take the time to get to know your customer: what are their preferences, needs or pain points? This is called zero-party data. By collecting this type of valuable data, brands can personalize their owned channels (sms and email) in more effective and sophisticated ways than they were ever able to do with advertising platforms. PS: We’re also launching some top-secret content next week that should be on top of every eCommerce entrepreneur reading list.

Bradley Wilkinson
Partnerships and Marketing Specialist at Klickly

First party data is going to be key moving forward when it comes to digital advertising. The advertising mega-giants have all announced or enacted privacy regulations. Third party cookies are being phased out — the way advertisers are allowed to track and target consumers is changing. In order to drive acquisition and target at scale, marketers should leverage partners with strong 1st-party data built into their platforms.  This can allow marketers to instantly take advantage of the partners data by creating look alike audiences within their ecosystem which would help drive acquisition and scale. Data-rich platforms allow you to continue advertising without a blip in your results.  It's a bonus if it's on a pure commission basis like Klickly.

Brett Bernstein
CEO at Gatsby

With all the changes to ads and attribution, it's more important than ever to focus more on customer referrals and micro-influencer marketing to reach your target audience. Our top tip is to start asking your customers for their social handles if you're not already. It's up to them to choose to opt in and provide it, same as opting in to provide you with their email, phone number or birthday. And once they do, you can start to understand which of your customers can become good influencers and affiliates for your brand, and work with them on authentic marketing strategies. Tools like ours, Gatsby, can help you scale this approach, but it's something you can start doing on your own as well.

We're officially into the latter half of 2021, and eCommerce is showing little sign of slowing down. Despite the majority of restrictions (as of this writing) lifted, it seems as though folks aren't ready to give up the convenience of shopping online.

In order to give you a deeper look into what's been going on over the last quarter, we're back to provide you with yet another detailed look into eCommerce performance across Q2 2021.

With our unique position in the eCommerce ecosystem, Klickly is able to generate a huge amount of proprietary data. Because of this, we have a much more nuanced view into digital performance than most other platforms.

By curating this data we can help merchants, marketers, and beyond make well-informed, data-backed decisions setting them up for success as we continue to navigate 2021.

Our Q2 2021 data report consists of over 600 million data points from over 1200 eCommerce merchants across 11 verticals. We anonymously aggregated these data points and examined the week-to-week shift in D2C performance, order details, and on-site behavior.

An overview of eCommerce as a whole

Performance:

Per usual, we first took a look at overall performance. We analyzed GMV, number of orders, number of products, number of new customers, and the average order value on a week-to-week basis across the previous and current quarters.

For a detailed look into Q1 you can check out our previous quarter data report findings. Q2 maintained much of what we saw in Q1, however we did see a slight dip in revenues from Q1's highs.

This was primarily driven by the number of orders, products sold, and rate of new customers. On the other hand, the average order value remained steady — even seeing a slight uptick towards the latter half of the quarter.

Overall, customers were purchasing less frequently, but they were purchasing a slightly higher cart value. Notably, we saw a greater number of returning customers in Q2.

Order behaviors:

Secondly, we wanted to get a sense of when, where, and how consumers were shopping.

The biggest difference we noticed was the distribution of orders throughout the entire week. In Q1, we started seeing a slight shift of orders skewing away from the weekend.  Q2 continued that trend, with the top days for purchase being Wednesday, Thursday, and Tuesday. This is the first time we saw no "weekend" days within the top three.

One theory is that this could be due to the continued remote work for many consumers leading to a change in shopping habits.

There are typically a few categories with outlier states claiming the top 5 geo locations; however, in Q1 the top 5 states were fairly consistent throughout. Large populous states were responsible for the highest order volumes. However, it is interesting to see overall the percentage of sales coming from California was more than double that of the next closest state, Texas.

Mobile continued to be the desired device for purchases — especially for verticals that are impulse, consumable, or repeatable. This was also the first quarter we began to see alternate channels for sales — there were a handful of purchases made through “Smart TV”.

On-Site behaviors:

Finally we explored the basic on-site consumer behaviors: traffic, click rates, and conversion rates.

Both on-site traffic and click rates held steady throughout Q2. For the first time this was seen across nearly all verticals — seeing only nominal changes.

However the conversion rates saw a decline. Although the conversion rate decreased by 8%, the previous quarter saw an 8% increase, so the rate of conversion leveled out.

Brands may want to take this opportunity to ensure their store is optimized for conversions. Reviewing the previous quarter for any changes that might have contributed to the conversion increase and subsequent decrease could be beneficial.

This could show that the previous quarter's tax returns and one stimulus payment played a role in the increase from our last report.

Key takeaways:

There’s a lot that can be taken away from this study and hopefully marketers can pinpoint certain areas that are relevant to their digital strategy. There are three main takeaways overall that we saw when doing this study.

1. Traffic was still there. We didn't see a slowdown post holidays and we still saw the same level this quarter.
2. Customers were still engaged. That traffic is actively engaging with brand's sites and products.
3. Conversion and acquisition were the largest opportunities. The steady level of engagement and decrease in new customer orders could indicate that brands should review and optimize their customer acquisition strategies and paths to conversion.

Conclusion:

While we are now in the home stretch for 2021. Thus far, this year has proved to hold the momentum we've seen over the last few reports. In Q3 brands will be preparing for Black Friday / Cyber Monday, and if these trends continue, it seems like they can expect to see another wildly successful Q3 and Q4.

We urge brands to continue looking at their data and optimizing to set themselves up for success.

While the above outlines eCommerce as a whole, we invite you to download the full report to view vertical-specific information to help inform your decisions throughout Q1.

We cannot stress enough the importance of making informed decisions when it comes to your business — we’re excited to provide helpful research initiatives that give a deeper look into eCommerce performance, trends, and insights.

Klickly will continue to provide quarterly data reports to help you as marketers, merchants, and beyond, better prepare for the future. We hope you’ll keep checking back to take advantage of this free data.

About Klickly

Klickly is the world’s only full-funnel, real-time consumer data software platform that enables distributed commerce. Klickly’s evergreen data engine leverages billions of full-funnel events and millions of data profiles to predict both who will buy and when they’re ready to purchase. At the nexus of data, commerce, and payments, the company's proprietary technology powers multi-channel offer prioritization, intelligent product discovery, in-ad buying, and customer acquisition for thousands of fast-growing DTC brands.

Klickly CEO, Cooper Harris, sits down with fast growing DTC eCommerce companies to learn what strategies are fueling their growth. This week Cooper chat's with Utz Snacks' Tim Hegberg.

Learn more bout Klickly: https://brands.klickly.com​​
Learn more about Utz Snacks: https://www.utzsnacks.com/

About Klickly
Klickly is an invite-only, customer-acquisition platform. We currently power risk-free sales for over 1500 of the fastest-growing, DTC brands in the US. Unlike other platforms, Klickly doesn't require any upfront advertising spend — brands pay a commission of their choosing. Klickly only takes 10 minutes to setup and requires zero tech offering a risk-free channel to add.

About Utz Snacks
Utz Brands, Inc. manufactures a diverse portfolio of salty snacks under popular brands including Utz®, Zapp’s®, Golden Flake®, Good Health®, Boulder Canyon®, Hawaiian® Brand, and TORTIYAHS!®, among others.After nearly a century, with strong family heritage, Utz continues to have a passion for exciting and delighting consumers with delicious snack foods made from top-quality ingredients. Utz’s products are distributed nationally and internationally through grocery, mass merchant, club, convenience, drug and other channels.

Customer engagement is one of the most crucial aspects for marketers today. With the customer journey about as far from non-traditional as you can get in 2021, it's imperative to reach your customers when, where, and how they want to be reached.

But it's not just about reaching them — it's about building relationships. In order to acquire, convert, and retain customers (with the ultimate goal to turn them into advocates) you have to make sure to engage them in a meaningful way.

We've asked 9 of the top eCommerce partners — who work with 1000s of brands every day — their top tip for creating an engaged customer. Here are 9 tips you can begin implementing right away to boost customer engagement.

Polina Kulikova
Digital Marketing Specialist at Growave

One of the best ways to engage your customers is to introduce a loyalty program. Large brands such as Sephora, Starbucks, and DSW are embracing the idea of introducing customer loyalty programs. If you're a small e-commerce store owner looking to boost sales and profitability you may be wondering if it's worth investing in a loyalty program. There are a couple of reasons why giving your customers a reward for making repeat purchases is a great idea. For starters, the more rewards and gifts you provide your shoppers for their loyalty, the more likely they are to buy your products again. Second, implementing a loyalty program can help increase customer trust and engagement. Therefore, your customers are more likely to stick around with your brand instead of going to your competitors.

Raúl Galera
Chief Advocate at ReferralCandy

In short: Create a personal connection with them. Competition in the eCommerce world has increased exponentially over the past year and a half, and companies that have successfully stood out against their competition have been those who have been able to communicate their brand and company mission to their customers effectively. Your brand should be more than just a product. Your brand is trying to solve a problem that customers can relate to, which allows you to create a personal, emotional connection with them. This can be very powerful. Once your customers see the emotional side of your brand it becomes a lot easier for them to relate to you. They'll feel part of a community, which will also make it a lot easier for them to spread the word and generate word of mouth around your brand.

Fiona Stevens
Head of Marketing at LoyaltyLion

Our top tip for creating an engaged customer, is to build a strong community. Research from LoyaltyLion showed that today's consumers join brand communities because they want to build emotional connections, align on values and get to know a brand's story. Use your loyalty program to create these connections and drive engagement. For example, use loyalty points to incentivize customers to participate in your community, use your loyalty reward rules to reflect your brand values and story, and create a safe space where customers can interact with your brand and with each other. In return you will see a collection of highly-engaged, highly-valuable customers that enjoy exclusive experiences while driving incremental value for your brand by attracting and converting new shoppers.

Brigitta Ruha
Product Marketing Manager at Recart

Customer engagement views the customer as an active participant rather than a passive one. That’s why messenger and engagement have become synonymous with each other. Interactivity is baked into messenger marketing use cases like in the case of a giveaway. Simply direct shoppers from a FB ad to an automated messenger flow. Encourage them to join a VIP group, unlock exclusive content, or subscribe them to your channels. It’s not just an incredibly powerful way to engage them, but you’ll automatically get tons of new subscribers. Pro tip: once they subscribed, keep the momentum going. Give ideas, tips and advice around the area of your expertise. Setting up this messenger-based expert hotline is just such an incredible way to keep & strengthen the engagement - and it’s not salesy at all!

Bradley Wilkinson
Partnerships and Marketing Specialist at Klickly

Use the customer data to work smarter not harder. Despite recent privacy updates to Google and Apple iOS, there is still a sea of data at your disposal. Data should be used to understand your customers better. What do they like? When and where are they shopping? What does their customer journey look like? Look at your current marketing stack and see what data you can use. Collect first party data — this could be from surveys, in-store pop ups, or even partnering with platforms using strong first party data. Once you have your data, prioritize the customer experience. Personalize the experience and make sure you're showing the right product or message, to the right customer, at the right time. The next step is to figure out how to automate that process freeing you to focus on other aspects of your business.

Jameela Ghann
Marketing Manager at Fera Product Reviews

The easiest way to create an engaged customer is to inspire them. When it comes to lifestyle products, you should always remember what dreams and aspirations your customers have, and how your product helps them achieve that lifestyle. One way to do this is through user-generated content. If you have customer photo reviews that were taken by your ideal customer, you should show that off through your social media, email marketing, and more. This will ensure that your past customers feel appreciated and it will inspire potential customers that a particular lifestyle is achievable.  

Chris Lavoie
Tech Partner Manager at Gorgias

Create an engaged customer by responding to them quickly and personally. No matter what channel a customer uses to communicate with you, whether it be SMS, social media, email, phone, or live chat -- show up and have the right data in hand. For example, if a recurring customer for your DTC brand comments on your post or DMs you on Instagram, you should be able to recognize them and their order history, so you have the full picture and can adapt your responses accordingly. Or if it’s a new customer, you can surprise them with a discount code for their first order. Start by using a helpdesk like Gorgias that’s deeply connected to your eCommerce store, so you’ll be able to easily recognize customers, automate quick responses and engage your customers every time.

Ekaterina Kopylova
Partnerships Marketing Manager at Searchanise

We believe that asking customers to share their experience with your brand is key in creating engagement. For some, it may mean leaving their comfort zone. It's unlikely customers are waiting to be asked about their experience, so often, you'll have to strike up a conversation. Here, timing is everything. Know the right time to ask for feedback: after they bought a product or had a chat with a support rep, while the experience with your store is still fresh in their mind. Create a genuine conversation, let them know that you care. Questions like, "Did you find everything you were looking for today?" "Is this your first time using the product?" Write personal responses to feedback as it will make the customer feel appreciated, strengthen relationships and drive more engagement.

Branden Brooker
Account Partner at Edgemesh

Creating engaged customers is many layers, but I think if I had to sum it up it in two words I would say - customer service. Customer service is what allows you to convey your expertise and knowledge of not only your own product but your industry as well. For example, a customer calls in after installing your app/solution etc. and says they are seeing mixed results and don't quite understand how something works. This is an opportunity to create a customer for life. Using that expert knowledge of your industry and product, you can begin to dive deeper into the questions your customer is trying to solve. This will build a high level of trust with your customers which in turn generally leads to them engaging with your content in more meaningful ways.

Reviews and ratings build consumer trust in a brand’s ability to deliver a quality product and buying experience. Because of this, they’re a fantastic way to help remove barriers to conversion.

85% of customers go on to make a purchase only after reading online reviews, while 63% of customers prefer to buy from sites that display product ratings and reviews.

However, it’s not enough to simply provide ratings and reviews to your customers. For the optimum impact on conversion rate, you need to think about their placement on your eCommerce store.

This article will help you understand some of the best ways to integrate this powerful form of social proof into your store for maximum impact.

On a Dedicated Reviews Page

It’s important to provide shoppers with a seamless user experience, in order to stay engaged and move efficiently through the consumer decision-making process.

A compelling review page offers simplified primary navigation which is essential to clearly signpost a customer’s way to the social proof that’s needed to get them to convert on your online store.

Give your most motivated visitors easy access to the reviews and ratings they’re likely to be looking for through a dedicated reviews page, which can appear in the main navigation, as well as page footers. This provides a simple but effective way of shortening their journey.

Best Practice Takeaway

Keep the review discovery process as streamlined as possible to prioritize user experience. Grouping categories within your reviews page is an effective way of achieving this. LSKD and Caraa provide great examples of this with category groups based on product type, gender and any other set of attributes that are relevant to their product range.

Alongside Product Recommendations

Personalization is becoming a baseline expectation – the new normal. Efforts here are rewarded with 80% of customers being more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand that provides personalized experiences.

Product discovery has a huge role to play here. Personalized product recommendations take on the role of a knowledgeable personal shopper. The smart, data-informed placement of product suggestions can be enormously beneficial in increasing AOV and conversion rates, via online upsells and cross-sells.

Subtle behavioral nudges also play a role here. For example, using dynamic labels like “Trending Now” or “Almost Gone” can create a sense of urgency or popularity around certain items. Platforms like Crobox apply behavioral science to surface these labels strategically, adapting them based on shopper profiles to guide decisions without feeling intrusive.

As ever, the addition of reviews (and the reassurance they bring) can prove highly effective at further increasing the chances of conversion. In fact, some online brands have witnessed as much as a 22% increase in orders placed by adding reviews to their onsite product recommendations. Instead of navigating away to seek out a product rating, all the information required is visible, accessible and highly compelling.

Best Practice Takeaway

The unfortunate truth is that almost 70% of shoppers who add products to their cart don’t make it all the way to checkout. Add reviews to shopping carts and at checkout to take advantage of two of the most crucial points of the customer journey. The Okendo-Rebuy integration allows online brands to augment their ReBuy powered on-site personalization experiences with high-impact social proof across your homepage, product, shopping cart, and checkout pages for maximum AOV and conversion rates.

Within Media Galleries

The visual impact of your ecommerce store is critical to success. High-quality product photography is essential; not only on-site, but for your advertisements as well. But alongside these perfectly styled, professional shots, shoppers are increasingly interested in images captured by their fellow customers.

It’s not hard to see why. If a shopper wants a clear and honest depiction of the dress that she’s considering purchasing, seeing the item in question on a “real-life” model helps remove doubts about the fit, color, length, and much more.

By including user-generated imagery in media galleries within your ecommerce store, you can paint a picture of the quality and genuine appearance of your products. Your customers are also likely to be inspired and influenced by their peers, seeing the way that a certain product has been styled with other items.

Best Practice Takeaway

To make the most of the opportunity that UGC imagery represents, create shoppable media galleries. Okendo’s integration with Foursixty provides perfect functionality here, allowing merchants to blend UGC sourced from Instagram with UGC from reviews.

This content can be showcased on-site in beautiful, highly customizable media galleries that leverage an “Add To Cart” functionality to deliver a streamlined shopping experience. Review data can also be incorporated into these galleries, giving shoppers a contextual snapshot of customer feedback and yet more valuable social proof to increase shoppers chances of making a purchase.

Making Use Of Product & Customer Attributes

Information provided within reviews should be relatable and relevant – and this is where product & customer attributes come into play.

Ask for specific information surrounding your customers and products in your review request emails. This could include the customer’s impression of their purchase’s quality, fit or design (product attributes), or relevant aspects of the customer’s own personal information such as body type, hair color or reason for purchase (customer attributes).

This data can then be displayed within your reviews to give curious shoppers a much clearer impression of whether the item in question would be a good match for their requirements, the right fit for their body shape, or whether they should order below or above their standard size. All of this adds up to greater purchase confidence, which in turn, boosts conversion.

Best Practice Takeaway

Reviews that display customer and product attributes can be really helpful, but your customers need to be able to find the right ones for maximum effect!

Give your shoppers the opportunity to refine their search by including review filters for customer and product attributes. This will help them find reviews relevant to their own characteristics or needs to help them quickly eliminate irrelevant reviews and make an even more accurate purchase decision.

Ready to get reviews working hard for your store?

Reviews and ratings have never been more important, as customers continue to look for information that helps them make informed purchase decisions.

Okendo provides the perfect platform to help you effectively collect and then showcase customer reviews & UGC in a compelling, customizable and highly contextual way.

As a Shopify Plus Technology Partner, Okendo enables 3,000+ of the fastest growing consumer brands like SKIMS, Knix, and Zitsticka to build trust, drive conversions and maximize CLTV using the highly persuasive power of customer reviews & UGC.

About the author:
Rachel Tyers, VP of Strategic Partnerships at Okendo

Rachel has more than 10 years of experience in eCommerce & digital marketing. Previously the VP of Strategic Partnerships at performance marketing agency MuteSix, a Facebook Blueprint certified media buyer, Rachel is the co-founder of headless eCommerce platform Nacelle and current VP of Strategic Partnerships at Okendo, the leading review platform for Shopify brands. At Okendo, Rachel manages a broad portfolio of both agency & tech partnerships and helps them strategize and lead high-growth merchants on how to best increase their business revenue using customer reviews and social proof.

Going omnichannel this year is the new norm. We invited 5 cross-vertical experts on a live round table chat to share how eCommerce merchants can future proof your business, build stronger relationships with your customers, and skyrocket your revenue this year.

This was a virtual event you didn't want to miss, but if you did, read on!

With sky-high expectations from shoppers, the pressure's on merchants this year to serve up connected experiences instead of fleeting transactions.

And that's exactly what these guest experts shared during the session. We teamed up with:

• Lisa Popovici, Co-Founder at Cartloop
• Daren Limas, Global Head of Accounts at Klickly
• Chris Lavoie, Tech Partnerships at Gorgias
• Nicholas Romaya , Partnerships Manager at ReCart
• Ashley Scorpio, VP Partnerships at Hawke Media

Specifically, we asked them to share their insights and secret sauce on these 5 big questions:

• How do your clients use you specifically within their omnichannel strategy?
• What advice can you give to brands that want to graduate from a multichannel to an omnichannel approach?
• Can you share 1-2 examples of eCommerce brands that REALLY nail their Customer experience, and what practical tactics can other brands learn from them?
• What does omnichannel look like moving forward as the world begins to open up?
• What are the top 3 strategies you can advise to building better customer experiences?

Here's a sneak peek of the insights shared on: How does a merchant graduate from a multichannel approach to an omnichannel strategy?

Darren Limas, Global Head of Accounts at Klickly

One of the first aspects, if you’re looking to graduate to an omnichannel approach, is that you want to make sure that your organization is entirely aligned with its vision.

What are the business objectives, what are the channels, who is the audience, what’s the budget? You can start looking into your channels: What’s already happening? Where are your focal points? What do you need to improve?

Then, — more specifically — deciding about reporting. Understanding reporting is key. For example, you want to make sure that you’re understanding all your attribution windows — it’s best if they’re matching.

It’s difficult if you have 6 different attribution windows and you’re trying to figure out which is performing better than the other — either within a specific channel or holistically from an omnichannel approach.

I think first and foremost there are 2 things to establish a foundation:

1. Aligning your Vision: What are you going to do, what are you going to report
2. It’s very very important that each of these channels are individually run

It should be holistic, each of the channels should be speaking to one another.

You want to make sure that not only your channels… but your teams aren’t siloed as well. Often brands have individual teams, and those teams are specific to those channels.

Different customers hit different touchpoints, and it’s important that you have the adaptability and understanding of where those different change points are — where the overlap lies. At the end of the day make sure all aspects are aligned: your team, your vision, your channels, your reporting, etc.

From there, it’s easier to graduate into a full omnichannel approach. You’ll have more confidence that you’re actually understanding and knowing what’s going on rather than just freestyling on different channels and having each channel stand alone.

It’s important when looking into multiple channels, to make sure that every channel has your brand experience. Rather than viewing your brand as “using a channel”, view the channels as an extension of your brand.

Ashley Scorpio, VP of Partnerships at Hawke Media

I completely agree on the uniformity across all channels. It's about meeting your customer and finding your customers where they are.

I don't want anyone in the audience here today to think that " omnichannel means a single channel." In fact, I think it means the opposite. It means diversity and how brands can provide this seamless experience across the board.

There's a reason why industry-wide, we started talking more about lifecycle marketing when previously we were only just talking about email marketing. And I think some really good examples we have with us today are Cartloop and Recart.

If you're a merchant and you're solely focused just on email marketing— from a lifecycle perspective— you're not incorporating SMS and conversational commerce and also thinking about push notifications if you have a native app or Facebook messenger....as these social commerce tools continue to be built out by the giants like Facebook and Instagram and having all these different shoppable features on the platforms, you're going to want to meet your customers where they are.

And so that includes diversifying your channels and adding more to your tech stack and more features and options for your customers because people like it to be simple, convenient, and straightforward.

If they have questions—the average consumer these days— they don't want to call you. If they want a replacement for their order or it's more complex, maybe.

They might prefer texting back and forth, and an onsite chatbot or prefer just being in Facebook messenger and asking you a few questions about the fit or size of the product they're considering.

So it's extremely important for that particular consideration phase of the funnel.

However, when it comes to customer service issues such as in order fulfillment, there's a delay or it's damaged—at that point maybe they do want to pick up the phone — you need a more robust customer service solution like Gorgias to supplement your own team.

Because you can lose a customer quickly by not serving them well or appropriately across the channels. People expect instant gratification these days even from brands.

So that's why if you're active on Facebook from a customer service perspective, it'll say on your page how quickly you respond to inquiries— consumers pay attention to that.

They wanna make sure they're a reputable brand especially when they're new to the brand if they're new to purchasing and buying from you.

You also of course, always want to keep refilling your funnel and creating loyalty, and one of the ways to do that is to serve the customer well and meet them where they are.

So some things to keep in mind, omnichannel doesn't mean single channel it means diversity and it means this excellent seamless experience across the board.

Nick has great input on how you can stay top of mind while leveraging first-party data from your consumers.

Nick Romaya, Partnerships Manager at ReCart

I'm a big believer in the more owned channels that you have a consumer on, obviously the harder it is to escape your brand.

Every owned channel you've got is a band-aid they need to rip off if they want to unsubscribe from you.

So if you get them on some solid owned channels— especially if those owned channels are speaking to each other in real-time, and maybe you want to email someone who has made a purchase on SMS in the last week for this specific holiday sale.

This is the kind of data that is really awesome that you can manipulate on all these different channels that speak to each other and it's also really hard for the customer to completely get away from your brand and the multiple different ways and things that they'd have to do to unsubscribe.

And another thing that I talk about is a lot is attribution.

A lot of people bring up, "Hey, I may send out a messenger campaign that syncs to email and syncs to my SMS but is all three going to get attributed? There are three owned channels here, are they all going to cross over?"

So the pro far outweighs the con here. You're going to overlap, it's going to happen but it's very marginal. One example I like to give here is if I were to go up to New York on the Upper Eastside, I take the subway and the bus— what took me there was it the subway or the bus? It was both.

Sometimes you need two channels to really take that customer journey forward.

Lisa Popovici, Co-founder at Cartloop

In my experience, a lot of merchants are actually afraid to test more channels and to start a multichannel or an omnichannel strategy.

And in my opinion, the term omnichannel means that you have to be present in every single channel—and this can be very challenging if you're starting out.

You have to think..what if your customers aren't spending time on every single channel. What if your target audience is Gen Z and they're spending 90% of their time on Instagram or TikTok?

And it would make no sense to focus on all channels— again if you're starting out— and you know that Tiktok and Instagram are the most profitable. And it's impossible to manage all the channels and to track everything to make sure the data is all in place.

The best way to figure out which channels to go with would be just by asking your customers and look at the data.

And you know, questions like: Where are they spending 90% of their time? What's their purchase behavior? What kind of activities are they engaging with?

Before you dive into omnichannel, you have to make sure that your brand is ready to go omnichannel, which means securing customer relationships, a healthy supply chain, well-trained customer support team.

You have to have amazing customer support and also a holistic marketing strategy.

Chris Lavoie, Partnerships Manager at Gorgias

At Gorgias, it's also our job to make sure that all this hard-earned marketing power isn't wasted.

And so you're capturing people, getting them to the top of the funnel, and bringing them through the funnel through all these great tools that everyone here is talking about.

At the end of the day, both pre-sale and post-sale on the customer support side is ready to act ad deliver immediate responses and deliver personalized experiences as Ashley has mentioned.

In the customer service or CX world, the holy grail is speed and personalization. You need a perfect balance. One great example is Hello Tushy, one of our brands which is a fantastic bidet company and they love Gorgias and use it really well.

But they're cautious of not turning that automation dial too far because it compromises their ability to deliver the personalized experiences that their customers have come to love and enjoy. So it's a fine balance.

Make sure your support is connected to all your channels, so you can make sure you can deliver on everything super fast.

The Wrap Up

Bradley, our host of the live chat, summarizes the learnings above nicely in one quote:

"Timeliness and a combination of automation and human elements is the baseline of a successful omnichannel strategy."

— Bradley Wilkinson, Marketing & Partnership specialist at Klickly.

What we covered is only one out of the five questions— just a glimpse of what really went down in the live chat.

So be sure to check out more details and actionable insights on how to build enhanced customer experiences this year with an omnichannel approach. Watch the full recording below.

Want to take control of your ROAS and leverage a pure-performance customer acquisition platform? No upfront spend required and brands choose their own commission. Skip the line to our invite-only platform and get access to a Klickly growth specialist.

Don't miss: A bonus unscripted take on how merchants can navigate the murky waters of omnichannel attribution.

This article was written by our partners at Cartloop—a conversational SMS marketing platform that helps Shopify brands drive more revenue and scale their customer relationships.

Klickly CEO, Cooper Harris, sits down with fast growing DTC eCommerce companies to learn what strategies are fueling their growth. This week Cooper chat's with Smart for Life's Bryan Rammel.

Learn more bout Klickly: https://brands.klickly.com​​
Learn more about Smart for Life: https://www.smartforlife.com/

About Klickly
Klickly is an invite-only, customer-acquisition platform. We currently power risk-free sales for over 1500 of the fastest-growing, DTC brands in the US. Unlike other platforms, Klickly doesn't require any upfront advertising spend — brands pay a commission of their choosing. Klickly only takes 10 minutes to setup and requires zero tech offering a risk-free channel to add.

About Smart for Life
Well-known for its popularity from clients across the U.S. and Canada, Smart for Life® is more than just a weight loss company. It is committed to helping its clients lose weight, gain health, and positively impact the environment along the way. Over the past 18 years, Smart For Life® has helped hundreds of thousands of people lose weight - improving their health, appearance, and overall happiness.

2021 is now in full swing — can you believe it? Slowly (and geographically dependent) the world is opening up. Restaurants are increasing capacity, folks are beginning to return to their offices, and brick-and-mortar stores are starting to see more foot traffic. What does this mean for eCommerce? Are customers ready to give up the convenience of shopping at home in their sweatpants?

To help give some hard data behind the answer to that question, we're back to provide you with yet another detailed look into eCommerce performance across Q1 2121.

With our unique position in the eCommerce ecosystem, Klickly is able to generate a huge amount of proprietary data. Because of this, we have a much more nuanced view into digital performance than most other platforms.

By curating this data we can help merchants, marketers, and beyond make well-informed, data-backed decisions setting them up for success as we continue to navigate 2021.

Our Q1 2121 data report consists of over 600 million data points from over 1200 eCommerce merchants across 11 verticals. We anonymously aggregated these data points and examined the week-to-week shift in D2C performance, order details, and on-site behavior.

An overview of eCommerce as a whole

Performance:

Per usual, we first took a look at overall performance. We analyzed GMV, number of orders, number of products, number of new customers, and the average order value on a week-to-week basis. We've updated and extended these trend-lines to encompass two quarters for 2021.

For a detailed look into Q4 you can check out our previous quarter data report findings. Q1 defied many experts' opinions that eCommerce performance would begin to decline following the stellar performance of 2020's holiday season.

Instead, we saw performance stabilize at levels that were slightly higher than those prior to Q4 Holidays.

The weeks following Black Friday/Cyber Monday through the rest of Q4 saw an expected decrease in revenue and orders, but January would start off strong setting the tone for the remainder of Q1 2021.

While the number of orders, products, and new customers remained steady (and in line with one another) we did see average order value increase slightly over the course of the quarter. This could be due to expiring post-holiday sales bringing the price of products to their normal, non-discounted levels.

One reason for the high performance throughout Q1 could be due to the third stimulus check and customers seeing their tax returns slowly rolling in.

Order behaviors:

Secondly, we wanted to get a sense of when, where, and how consumers were shopping.

The biggest difference we noticed was the distribution of orders throughout the entire week. In previous quarters, there was a noticeable order trend skewing towards the weekend. However, Q1 daily shopping patterns showed that the top days for orders were Friday, Monday, and Thursday. This was the first report in which the top days didn't include a weekend.

Shopping times remained unchanged from previous quarters with the strongest inclination to shop around lunchtime hours.

There are typically a few categories with outlier states claiming the top 5 geo locations; however, in Q1 the top 5 states were fairly consistent throughout.  Large populous states were responsible for the highest order volumes. However, it is interesting to see overall the percentage of sales coming from California was more than double that of the next closest state, Texas.

Mobile continued to be the desired device for purchases. Notably, there was a 3% increase in mobile orders compared to Q4.

On-Site behaviors:

Finally we explored the basic on-site consumer behaviors: traffic, click rates, and conversion rates.

While we would expect on-site traffic to decrease in Q1, we were surprised to see the decrease was nominal at best. With only a 1% decrease over the course of the quarter, it showed that the desire to continue shopping online did not diminish.  

We also saw a more engaged consumer, albeit only slightly. On-site interactions increased 1% throughout Q1. As mentioned earlier, this could be due to the receipt of stimulus checks and/or tax returns.

Conversion rates saw the largest change, and surprisingly, this was a positive change — a nearly 8% rise. Despite the holiday season signed, sealed, and delivered, customers are still purchasing online at higher levels than before.

Whether or not this is influenced solely by economic stimulus and tax return boost, is yet to be seen.

Key takeaways:

There’s a lot that can be taken away from this study and hopefully marketers can pinpoint certain areas that are relevant to their digital strategy. There are three main takeaways overall that we saw when doing this study.

1. Online shopping hasn't slowed down. Despite expert opinion that eCommerce would begin to slow down, we have yet to see that prediction come to fruition.
2. Customers are shopping more sporadically. Whether it's on lunch breaks or on company time (we won't tell ;), customers are doing more shopping on weekdays.
3. Be cautiously optimistic. Revenues may be up from pre-holiday Q4 and metrics may be stable, but there is a chance this is driven by economic boosts. Put emphasis on customer experience and retention for those new customers brought in over the holidays.

Conclusion:

2021 is off to a good start and we hope this trend will continue. As vaccinations continue and brick-and-mortar slowly makes its return, it has yet to be seen if it will affect eCommerce. So far, the data doesn't indicate it will slow down into Q2.

While the above outlines eCommerce as a whole, we invite you to download the full report to view vertical-specific information to help inform your decisions throughout Q1.

We cannot stress enough the importance of making informed decisions when it comes to your business — we’re excited to provide helpful research initiatives that give a deeper look into eCommerce performance, trends, and insights.

Klickly will continue to provide quarterly data reports to help you as marketers, merchants, and beyond, better prepare for the future. We hope you’ll keep checking back to take advantage of this free data.

About Klickly:

For those who are new to Klickly, we are an invite-only 100% commission-based advertising platform that allows eCommerce merchants to lock in their returns by choosing their own commission. Klickly, then advertises your products across 25 Million+ premium online destinations (like the open web, apps, games, etc) only charging when we help make a sale.

Klickly CEO, Cooper Harris, sits down with fast growing DTC eCommerce companies to learn what strategies are fueling their growth. This week Cooper chat's with Fire Cider's Janet Latuga.

Learn more bout Klickly: https://brands.klickly.com​​
Learn more about Fire Cider: https://firecider.com/​

About Klickly
Klickly allows eComm brands to leverage proprietary data and machine-learning to launch "commission-based", buyable advertising. The result? Brands can launch quick, commission-based ad campaigns with zero upfront spend. Klickly then promotes products across 25 million top sites (like Vogue, Instyle, Cosmo, Allure, etc) and brands only pay when we drive sales.

About Fire Cider
Shire City Herbals' Fire Cider is a daily, multi-use, non-alcoholic wellness tonic. Our tangy tonic is 100% Organic, made from raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar, honey, oranges, lemons, onion, ginger, horseradish, garlic, turmeric, habanero pepper, and black pepper. And nothing else!