So much has shifted in the DTC eCommerce landscape over the last 12 months.
From a paid advertising standpoint, these have by far been the toughest conditions we’ve had to navigate since Meta (formerly Facebook) introduced the pixel.
Tracking and attribution within most ad accounts are almost unusable for decision making – kinda like flying a jet fighter through fog with no radar – pretty tough!
Some accounts are reporting well from a ROAS standpoint, while others are almost non-existent but still delivering really solid overall performance from an MER standpoint (with a strong correlation to paid social ad spend).
Overall, the platform is still driving significant growth across the board and is still our primary source of traffic for our brand partners.
But we have been testing other attribution platforms to help fill the gaps. Triple Whale (get it for 15% off with the code righthook at checkout) and Northbeam are the two platforms we’re using the most for eCommerce tracking and attribution reporting, with multiple partners using both.
Outside of FB, we’ve continued to test A LOT across TikTok, dialing in our overall creative strategy with a small cluster of partners and seeing significantly improved results.
TikTok performance is currently looking solid at smaller to medium ad spends but still has some challenges in maintaining ROI with higher spends. We expect this to improve going forward as the ad platform continues to mature. For now, we’re continuing the rollout of TikTok services to existing Paid Social clients only.
Through Q1 across our 54 client partners, we:
- Maintained an average MER of 5.89x
- Managed an average of $109,688.52/month in ad spend, per client
For what is typically quieter for a lot of verticals post-Q4, business performance has been solid and resulted in significant YoY growth for most clients from Q1, 2020.
We lost one of our biggest and longest-standing US women’s fashion clients after they decided to take things in-house, which was arguably the right move for the size they were at.
A bittersweet outcome, but this is part of the journey we try to take brands on. If we can help them scale to a position where this is viable, helping them transition in-house is really a win for everyone. We’ve done our job.
After more than three years of partnering with Right Hook, starting at around $55k/month in revenue and struggling to get through a growth plateau, we helped them scale significantly to $2M+/month over that time, with some absolutely monster campaigns including multiple 7-figure days.
No client is going to stay forever, the best you can do is do the best you can, and help them on their growth journey. We couldn’t be prouder of the performance we delivered for this amazing brand. That’s all we’re here for – to be a part of your journey.
Aside from that, you might remember in the last round-up email that we were working on building our Influencer Department? To be completely transparent, we trialed it with a few of our client partners and had some good success. But we’ve decided to put it on the back burner for now to focus on our Retention team as their performance world-class, and the demand for them has been continually increasing. For now, Email and SMS are where it’s at for us in terms of internal growth.
Retention Team
About 18 months ago we made a decision to put a much stronger focus on building a world-class retention team (Email + SMS), and in the last year we’ve really seen this become a cornerstone of what we deliver.
Over the last 12 months, the performance lift our 40+ partners have seen with ongoing Email and SMS has been:
- 259% increase in email sales over 6 months
- 29% increase in their customer return rate within 3 months
Some quick highlights…
AU Women’s Lingerie –
- January ’22 – best-ever month in email revenue so far with $146,091 coming from Klaviyo emails.
- Q1 2022: was their best-ever quarter in email campaign & flow revenue so far with $303,7856 coming from Klaviyo emails.
- Returning customer rate since starting with the RH Retention Team has increased since June ’21 from 18% to 36% in March ’22
- This has been achieved with no sale periods with a minimal # of email campaigns per month
US Women’s Fashion –
- Q1 2022: – best-ever quarter in both combined email + SMS revenue so far with $502,039 coming from Klaviyo emails & SMS
- Since starting with the RH Retention Team % of sales coming from Klaviyo has increased since August ’21 from 14% to 60% in March ’22
- Returning customer rate has increased since August ’21 from 36% to 51% in March ’22
Due to the increasing demand for our Retention team, we’ve continued to expand the team and currently have some capacity.
If you’d like to discuss our retention services with our Client Partnerships team and you’re not yet working with us, click the link below to book a discovery call.
👉BOOK A FREE DISCOVERY CALL👈
If you’re already working with the team, contact your Strategist to discuss adding Retention to your services. It’s best suited for brands doing $50k+/month in revenue and already running paid traffic.
On the Paid Social front, both the US and AU teams have been crushing client growth. Take a look at some of Q1’s wins:
Paid Social Team
US Team
Men’s Wedding Bands –
- Q1 2022: $1,504,802 in revenue generated at 5.3x MER. Roughly a 30% increase in MER compared to 1st quarter of 2021.
- 2,843 new customers acquired generating $332,819 in revenue.
- Returning customer rate has increased by 29% boosting their returning customer rate to 27%.
- AOV increased by 7%.
Women’s High-Ticket Fashion –
- Q1 2022: $306,034.14 in Shopify revenue generated from $35,220.99 paid ad spend at an 8.68x MER.
- March 2021 revenue: $130,359.51 vs. March 2022 revenue: $187,697.78 – 44% growth from last year
Men’s Jewelry –
- Q1 2022: $238,945 in revenue – 24% growth from Q1 2021
- MER for Q1 2022 = 2.36x
- Up 37% RCR with a 20.33% RCR
- 1,979 First-Time Customers = $200,906
Women’s Hair Care –
- Q1 2022: $3,488,088 in revenue
- MER = 9.86x
- Returning Customer Rate increased 36% –> 31.77% RCR
- AOV increased 5% –> $133.72
- Website CVR increase 16% –> 2.55%
Women’s Fashion –
- Q1 2022: $391k in revenue for Q1 22 – 123% growth from Q1 2021.
- MER – 3.23x : Target MER – 3x
- 4,568 new customers.
AU Team
Men’s Streetwear –
- Q1 2022: $3.92m in revenue – 442% growth from Q1 2021
- MER = 24.72x
- 6,734 new customers.
- Target – $30m revenue for 2022.
Women’s Cosmetics –
- Q1 2022: $245k rev – 173% growth from Q1 2021 with no product launch.
- MER = 3.6x, Target MER = 3.0
- 2,192 first-time customers acquired.
Women’s Lingerie –
- Q1 2022: 958k rev – 180% growth Q1 2021 with no product launch.
- MER – 4.03x, Target – 3.0x
- 5,639 first time customers acquired
Travel Luggage –
- Q1 2022: A$2,244,253.67 – 477% growth vs. Q1 2021
- March – biggest month ever and first 7-figure month at A$1,029,326.25. Beat our prior best month ever by 42.55% – beating Black Friday.
- New Customer Growth – Q1 2022 = 4,342 new customer vs Q1 2021= 1,029 new customers – 322% growth
Women’s Lingerie –
- Q1 2022: A$1,155,106.60 vs Q1 2021 = A$641,642.41 – 80% growth.
- New Customer Growth – Q1 2022 = 5,116 new customers vs. Q1 2021= 2,481 new customers – 106.207% growth.
Women’s Fashion –
- Q1 2022: $850,792 in revenue – 166% growth from Q1 2021
- MER – 3.99x, Target 4.0x
- 2,102 first time customers acquired
Fitness Apparel –
- Q1 2022: $766,038 – First quarter in 8 years without a monthly product launch. They used to rely on a monthly launch for sustainable revenue
- MER – 4.39x, Target 3.5x.
- 5,173 first time customers acquired
Custom Neon Signs –
- Q1 2022: $1.12m in revenue across AU, US and UK – 119.23% growth from Q1 2021
- MER = 2.9x, Target = 2x
Women’s Beauty –
- Q1 2022: $185k in revenue (also ran out of stock for 3 weeks in Q1) – 1858% growth from Q1 2021
- More revenue Q1 of 2022 than for the first 3 quarters of last year.
Last month we launched a fresh new look for our website as part of our rebrand 🔥 As always, there was lots to fix and tweak once we hit ‘go’ – but we’re excited to have an upgraded platform to start bringing you more case studies and insights very soon!
We’re also in the process of rebranding the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast, which is getting very close to hitting 9000 downloads! There are some fire takeaways from the latest episodes – everything from strategies to scale to 8-figures with Ace from Threadheads (EP21), practical tips for building a loyal fan base with Steve from RetroKid (EP23), how to turn your brand into a customer-centric powerhouse (EP19), and quick tips to maximize your website profitability (EP18).
And speaking of website overhauls…
We’ve also created a knockout Website Best Practice Deck to help take your eCommerce store to the next level! So many brands create their website without paying attention to the user experience. It’s often a set and forget task that can leave a tonne of money on the table.
👉GET YOUR FREE WEBSITE BEST PRACTICE DECK HERE👈
If you haven’t reviewed your store for a while, this deck is a great refresher to make sure you’ve got all the essentials covered to keep your customers coming back for more!
With Q2 already in full swing, we’re taking a deep dive into our systems and processes to streamline and supercharge our team’s productivity. Within four years, Right Hook has grown from Dee and I to a team of 115! We’re at a point now where strengthening our internal operations is non-negotiable in order to enter the next stage of growth.
While we focus on building the internal infrastructure, we’re also continuing to bolster the strength of our Retention and Google PPC teams. As well as improving our TikTok strategies and rolling that out as a channel to our existing Paid Social clients.
We’re also building our internal marketing department as we continue to enhance our content creation capabilities. Let’s just say we’ve got A LOT more value to drop this year! 🙂
Stay tuned and keep crushin’ it!
Scott ✌️
