"The FERMÀT newsie on a Thursday? But I thought they sent Geometry of Growth on Mondays?"
As the kids say these days...never let them know your next move. 🤣 😉
I kid, I kid. Buuuuuut if you're up for it, let me know what you think about the Thursday send. I was personally getting a ton of ecomm newsletters on Mondays, and I felt like it might be nice to switch it up to make this bad boy an end-of-the-week delight.
Last week, we dropped a massive product release. This week, we're unveiling a super secret project that the marketing team has been grinding away at. There's just one catch: Austinites are going to see it first.
If you're in the Austin area, I highly recommend joining us tonight for our epic launch party. RSVP and take a peek at the details here. If you can't make it in person, no worries (but we'll miss you! 🥲) We'll be sharing more on the interwebs soon.
In this week's newsletter: the coolest DTC quiz funnel I've ever ding-dang seen, ancient chewing gum for jawline sculpting, how Sam Altman uses ChatGPT on the daily, and more.
Hope to see my fellow Texans tonight for our big reveal! Otherwise, see you in your inbox next week. 🙂
Cheers, Lex 💚
🛍️ Store of the Week
Sunday
You've heard of personalized supplements, personalized skincare, and personalized haircare...but have you heard of personalized lawn care? Meet Sunday. I just discovered them this week, and WOW, what a neat store they have!
Sunday serves up a variety of lawn care, pest control, and garden products DTC-style -- but the coolest part about this brand is that they tailor product recommendations to your specific location.
Just enter your zip code, and Sunday pops you into the smartest quiz flow I've ever seen, spitting out a personalized lawn care plan based on your exact home's needs.
This week's Store of the Week feature isn't about all the neat little CRO hacks that make this site seamless (and trust me, they're definitely there). It's about highlighting a true, data driven, tailored shopping experience in action.
Here's a quick peek at their new buyer flow:
Enter your zip code
Enter your lawn size: If you don't know it, you can enter your address, and Sunday uses data they can find online (like satellite imagery, online home listing info, etc) to roughly calculate your lawn size.
Quick pause on answering q's for email, Gmail, or Facebook login customer info capture
Based on the location you input, the post-login/registration screen is a MAJOR social proof play - they tell you how many Sunday customers have purchased product in your exact area!
Next, shoppers are provided with lawn analysis - a mini data dash with regional soil & grass profiles, information on lawn growth potential, predicted soil nutrient analysis, and more. (I just know sooooo many dads who would find this dreamy).
See a Custom Lawn Plan -> Clicking this CTA sends shoppers through a few more purchase preference questions (like priorities for lawn products, if they have pets, self-reporting lawn care knowledge, volume of weeds, etc) before recommending a custom lawn plan.
Finally, customers are given a customized lawn care plan and product bundle. This page shows exactly which products will be in the box they recieve, links to reviews, provides info on how to use the product, and more.
An absolute masterpiece. I am so, so, so impressed. Major props to the Sunday team!
Referred to as the "Ancient Beauty Gum", mastic is a 100% natural chewing gum that has some pretty crazy benefits. Not only does it naturally improve dental health with antimicrobial properties, but it actually helps define your jawline as you're chewing it. Nuts.
Mystic is a relatively new DTC brand that's working to revolutionize the gum market with its non-toxic, plastic-free mastic gum. I'm all about healthier alternatives that will actively combat any impending double chin, so I have officially become a mastic gal.
How I Write: The Man Behind ChatGPT (Sam Altman Interview)
If you've ever found yourself tip-tapping away in ChatGPT, wondering how the CEO of OpenAI himself uses it on the daily...look no further, because this pod has the answers you seek.
In this episode of the How I Write podcast, host David Perell chats with Sam Altman on his personal use of ChatGPT, how LLMs are changing the future of writing, the skills needed for effectively leveraging AI writing tools, and more. A super interesting listen!
I stumbled across Refunnel in a Twitter thread this week, and it seems mega rad. TLDR, Refunnel helps you automatically save all the UGC you're tagged or mentioned in, in addition to helping you organize it and manage usage rights. Pretty sweet.
Maximizing the velocity and breadth of experimentation for ecommerce brands is at the heart of everything we do at FERMÀT. This week's featured funnel from Underdog Games, a board game brand, is all about embodying that experimentation-oriented mindset.
In the example below, Underdog has implemented a variant experiment to see how alterations to their Trekking the National Parks new customer acquisition funnel impact overall performance. Rather than just testing small copy and creative changes, they're running a true experiment -- testing against a hypothesis to see if their assumptions are correct.
Underdog currently has two variants of their core Parks game funnel, each starting with a video to showcase the featured hero product.
In Variant A, the entire funnel is focused on educating customers and preventatively tackling any purchase objections; it's a depth experiment. The hypothesis? Give shoppers everything they need to know directly after the ad-click, so they don't have to leave the page, and that will lead to higher conversion.
In Variant B, the product messaging is cut down a bit, and that landing page real estate is occupied by complementary upsells. Here, Underdog experiments with delivering just the right depth of messaging necessary for conversion, while simultaneously attempting to scale up AOV in-funnel. Variant B offers a breadth experiment.
With FERMÀT, Underdog is able to split traffic between these two funnel variants to truly test their hypothesis and glean succinct results.
Unlock the secrets to supercharge your beauty brand's growth with The Secret Formula! Learn strategies for creating powerful personalized shopping experiences, using customer marketing to create superfans, getting your logistics right to meet customer demand, and more.
You're invited to the most exclusive ecommerce event of the year: FERMÀT's launch of FRMT. Join us for drinks, hi-fi vinyls, and the unveiling of "Style as a Service" (SaaS Couture). Only 4 tickets remain - RSVP to snag your spot on the guest list!
