Drew Sanocki
@drewsanocki
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DTC CEO | Turned around big busted brands (always focusing on profits) | Founder @getpostpilot ( #1 Direct Mail app on Shopify) | I tweet about DTC growth
San Diego, CA
Joined May 2009
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I've worked primarily on
#ecommerce
turnarounds.
Typical profile: 100M in revenue, losing 10M.
Current owners want to get it off the books.
Michael Epstein and I would come in with new PE ownership and right the ship, get it profitable, and (ideally) sell it in a few years.
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My 9yo son took my iphone and in <5 min sent high rez close up shots of my dog's clenched sphincter to the following: my mom, my biz partner, wife, guy I went to grad school with in 2000, HSBC, my accountant, San Diego Blood Bank, and Shake Shack's text bot.
1K
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187K
@leostrupczewski
I write about customer lifetime value and DTC for years and am lucky to get 10 likes on a post.
My kid posts dog anal porn and it blows up.
🤷♂️
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oh jeez this is going to be my best performing tweet ever isn't it ... my legacy?
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Hail Mary: before I was known as the Dog Butthole Guy, I wrote a regular newsletter about building successful businesses and a thriving family.
If you run an online business, you might find it valuable.
Subscribe here >>>
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I've run brands through 20 years of BFCM.
Over the years I pulled together the 80/20 to keep my marketing teams focused on what is important.
I put it all into this easy-read ebook. I'd give it to my marketers every Oct.
Micro-publishing this week on LI.
Hope it helps!
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🔄 Drew's OG Ecommerce Turnaround Tips series
All March I'm dropping my top tips to turning around a struggling brand . . .
👉 Tip 02 of 31: Set the Culture
Hands down, the first thing you need to do when taking on a turnaround is to establish a new culture.
All turnarounds
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@PaulinaJones
Assuming you mean my 9yo. Yes he is. Odds on favorite to appear in Porky’s remake over next 10 years.
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Attention DTC: this is how you grow profits.
It's my approach, honed over 20 years and $1B+ revenue.
Distilled into FOUR tweets:
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So
@TopGunMovie
came out yesterday...
As expected, the call signs are all bad-assed.
"Phoenix, Hangman, Cyclone"—give me a break.
You want to know some REAL
@USNavy
callsigns? The best ever?
Read on: 👇
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I’ve made this point before: if you aren’t pivoting your core
#BFCM
offer into direct mail, you are leaving money on the table.
How much? About 10-20% based on our data from last year.
Most brands don’t add on direct mail because they think it’s hard. (That’s why we do
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How I turned a small side hustle into a $250k/yr cash machine.
How this cash machine blinded me to 3 potential 9-figure paydays.
I'm feeling nostalgic. The story of my first million 👇🏻:
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Big news today!
I'm thrilled to announce
@getpostpilot
's Series A, which will help rapidly accelerate our mission to unlock a profitable direct mail channel for brands.
@mepstein311
and I have each spent 25 years in
#eCommerce
. We've used
#directmail
at every brand we've
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I helped take Karmaloop from bankruptcy to profit in 10 months.
Then I took AutoAnything from $7M annual losses to profitability in a year.
It wasn't luck.
It was this dead simple framework:
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Klaviyo IPO’d yesterday.
I didn’t found it. I didn’t run it. I never worked there.
But it played a big role in my ecom adventures.
In 2015, iconic online brand Karmaloop filed for bankruptcy. I came on board as CMO, working for the debt holders, tasked with getting it
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My company
@getpostpilot
is growing like a weed through this crappy macro climate.
3x'd in 2021, 5x'd in 2022 ... I am looking for three key leaders to help us 3x in 2023.
If you know any of the following three people please DM me...
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Just got back from another conference party and I gotta say . . .
#DTC
is too cool for (our) own good.
110M people in the USA are 50+.
And all the native DTC brands are youthful, run by people in their 20s and 30s with cool parties and cool brands and cool employees.
And
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For more butt humor see this other tweet-- I think it's some of my finest work.
And it's all real.
So
@TopGunMovie
came out yesterday...
As expected, the call signs are all bad-assed.
"Phoenix, Hangman, Cyclone"—give me a break.
You want to know some REAL
@USNavy
callsigns? The best ever?
Read on: 👇
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Marginal CAC is often more important than CAC.
All DTC brands plateau. They acquire all the cheap customers. Eventually it costs too much to grow (within one channel).
You'll see that in the marginal CAC.
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Last week, after I got up to 5 double-shot espressos a day, I decided I needed to get off coffee for a week.
I got some half-caf beans to taper off.
Today I've had 10 double-shots.
Follow me for more bio-hacks like these.
#Bulletproof
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Seeing lots of tweets "will Direct Mail /
@getpostpilot
work?"
It's like asking if TikTok or FB or email works. Answer is it depends.
Direct mail is a channel. Success depends on how you use it: your targeting + offer.
Works for some, doesn't for others.
6 tips/pointers:
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@TopGunMovie
@USNavy
9/14 “Mouth”
Female pilot who swore more than anyone else on 5,000 person carrier.
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Every day I walk barefoot here, grounding with the earth.
Then I meditate and then deadlift with chains around my neck. Then inject $10k worth of roids.
Can’t beat that morning routine. Gets the blood moving.
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As a marketer, this kills me to say it, but I think DTC needs to focus less on ROAS and channels and funnels.
and more on product and offer.
Gotta step away from the computer sometimes.
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"We don't like talking about our own investments."
I'm psyched to have
@thesamparr
and
@ShaanVP
break down
@getpostpilot
on
@myfirstmilpod
Decent overview of the business and how we turned a small acquisition into a growing data business...
How we fit in with
@Shopify
and
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Over the years,
@mepstein311
and I have turned around a fair number of ecommerce brands.
These are the top 5 things we do in every turnaround.
I'd say all are universally applicable too. . . just as relevant if you don't run a turnaround yourself.
Just good operational and
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So my neighbor here in Southern California came over yesterday . . .
Our kids ran around the house while he and his wife and me and my wife had some wine and cheese.
Very SoCal.
Gotta love his "100x | ROAS" tattoos.
Ladies and gentlemen, my friendly neighborhood ads guru:
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Ten years ago I generated ~$5M in revenue over the four days between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
High-fives!
Only later in December did I realize we *lost* money over that time period.
DOH!
Here's the mistake I made and how you can avoid it:
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@TopGunMovie
@USNavy
14/14 Those were my favorites.
In general, call-signs are not bad-assed.
They are meant to demean/ego-check the aviator.
Anyone in the
@USNavy
have more to add? REPLY to this thread!
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Growing DTC is not about tweaking at the margin, going from a 6 to 6.5 ROAS.
It's about Power Law change. Figuring out your 20% of customers that drive 80% of the revenue and getting more of them.
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Study Halbert, not ChatGPT.
Gary Halbert is one of the best copywriters in history
Want to learn how to DRIVE revenue with your copy?
Gary would tell you there's ONE key driver of successful copy that ChatGPT would NEVER pick up on...
Guess what that is? 🧵
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I want to tease something coming soon from
@getpostpilot
…
Cardalogs™️
> Better branding and selection opportunities than a postcard
> Cheaper and quicker to produce / iterate / test than a catalog
Key/essential format for prospecting—plus they look pretty darn cool
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19 things that destroy a
#DTC
brand:
1. Blind focus on acquisition and “funnelz”
2. Over-reliance on one marketing channel (see: Meta, 2021)
3. Over-reliance on one sales channel (Amazon, Shopify)
4. Over-reliance on VC funding
5. Hiring too many senior people out of big
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Being in consumer retail over the next month is amazing, right?
WRONG.
Most retailers and DTCs leave an absolute *boatload* of profits on the table over the holiday season.
Here's why this might be you--and 3 ways to max profits this Black Friday while there's still time:
👇
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Want to join a rocket-ship?
Our company
@getpostpilot
has ink'd a Triple-Triple-Double (T2D1). And we are on pace for that second double.
And we've done it PROFITABLY. We don't burn.
And we have a great, fun team.
And we drive CLV and reduce CAC for the biggest brands out
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@TopGunMovie
@USNavy
2/14 “Steamer”
Left a dump on a road during flight training.
(May or may not be in this photo.)
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People don't leave jobs they leave managers; people don't join jobs they follow leaders. Amiright?
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Big mistake new DTC brands make.
Trying to be a $10M brand before they reach $1M.
Pick a couple channels to focus on. Learn your CLV:CAC.
Focus matters.
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I never set out to be a “turnaround artist”
But I look back on my career, and I’ve turned around 5 x 8-9 figure ecom brands.
Each losing $MMs a year. Got each cash flowing ASAP.
Here are the 5 steps I take in each case:
// THREAD
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Little secret of CRM:
Good customers tend to remain good.
Crappy customers tend to remain crappy.
Acquire more Goods.
#DTC
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DTC Brands:
You are throwing money out the window getting your customers to buy...
... when they would have bought anyway.
It's called a Subsidy Cost. Reducing it is literally the quickest way to generate profits. Here's how: 🧵
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I'm thrilled to share that
@getpostpilot
made an appearance in this year's Inc5000.
I'm not much for public awards like this in general...
...but I have some history with this one.
25 years ago I read
@Inc
religiously.
As a Navy lieutenant, I'd read over it when it was
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I’ve run multiple 9-figure
#DTC
turnarounds.
My 6 biggest struggles as a new DTC PE-backed CEO were:
1. Cutting costs aggressively (>50%) within the first week after an acquisition
2. Having no domain expertise in whatever the company was selling. Streetwear? I wore khakis.
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Top 4 things that correlate to CLV:
1. Acquisition source/medium
2. First product purchased
3. AOV of first order
4. Seasonality of first purchase
Segment your customers by these and lean in on what drives the best.
#DTC
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DTC: your acquisition team is also your retention team.
Their job: acquire high potential CLV customers > low potential CLV
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At what point does someone ( $ORCL, $AMZN, $ADBE, $CRM ) buy Shopify?
$SHOP market cap about to dip below $30M...
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I’ve run 3 x ecommerce turnarounds.
All what I call “biggish and busted.” All in the neighborhood of 100M revenue losing 10M.
Seems to be my sweet spot.
I’ve got a playbook I run to get revenue up, costs down, and team executing.
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@TopGunMovie
@USNavy
First, why am I an expert on this?
Before my life in
#ecommerce
, I was a Naval Intelligence Officer attached to a carrier air wing (me on right).
I ate, lived, flew with Naval Aviators for two years.
In no particular order, here are some of my favorite real-life callsigns:
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Unpopular opinion:
Brands should be run for profits > top line growth.
Not the other way around.
#DTC
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I just realized I never did my monthly recap for
@getpostpilot
... and in this case we can do a bit of a 2023 recap.
In what was a challenging year for both brands and SAAS, we grew like a weed:
✅ Went full-funnel (in a marketing sense, not a drinking game sense), launching
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More callsigns coming in.
"The Highlander" -- guy ejected (and survived) multiple times.
"Runt" -- stood 5' 3"
#TopGunMaverick
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DTC: anyone going to
#ShopTalk
in Vegas next week?
We will be there, happy to toss down the credit card and host some DTC brands.
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The top mistake most DTC brands make:
Discounting when they don’t have to.
“Subsidy costs” are hidden in the financials but bleed out cash.
Here’s how to fix the problem with discount ladders:
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4/ How to ID your whales? R and F
Recency (R) = when they last acted
Frequency (F) = # times they acted
R and F predict M (total spend) and ultimately CLV
RFM is the essence of database marketing. It should inform everything you do.
It's nerdy but it works
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What are the lessons from all this?
1. Basically if you had invested in opportunities I have passed on you’d be >> Elon
2. Lifestyle businesses ultimately die. You gotta reinvent them to stay relevant or just be happy sucking them dry
3. Don’t tell people to suck it.
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If you are lucky, you'll have people on your team who just own it.
They do everything they are asked Day One. And on Day Two they start taking on problems you didn't ask them to take on.
It's extreme ownership.
The best thing you can do as a CEO is to support them. Remove
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3/ To maximize CLV, focus on your BEST customers
There’s an 80 20 in everything
20% of customers drive 80% of profit--your whales
Acquire, nurture, retain more of THEM. Orient the biz, product, and service around THEM
They are the small hinge that swings the big door
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@TopGunMovie
@USNavy
Most squadrons also had a generic callsign for all new aviators before they developed a permanent callsign:
"FoeKingNewGi"
It was on their helmet, patches, etc. Literally what they were called while flying.
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Obvious but often overlooked: you gotta sell what people are buying. No amount of marketing can sell a crap product.
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If your call center has extra cycles, give them a damn call list. Call top existing customers who are also recent purchasers.
Human contact drives reorders and higher CLV. Been proven many times.
#DTC
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Many of us in DTC are "Marketer CEOs."
In short, Head Rainmaker.
As such we have two jobs:
1) Find new sources of low-cost customers
2) Get the org to market to / service these while we turn back to
#1
I've never been able to delegate rainmaking to a growth hacker.
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Database marketing secret: for most customers, AOVs decrease over time.
A customer's initial order therefore predicts her
#CLV
.
If they start with the crappy free offer, the paid-with-shipping, the $10 item ... there's nowhere left to go and they churn.
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One of the biggest wastes of money in DTC:
Marketers not targeting right offers to right customers at right time.
Subsidy costs, over-promotion, neglecting customer defection.
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All customers aren't equal. Look: 1% of our sessions generates 40% of our revenue. What if I focused my acquisition on getting more of that 1%?
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#DTC
:
Hey, so my company
@getpostpilot
continues to grow profitably. We are over 100 heads now, moving up market, and we need to add to the management team.
This is a sick opportunity for the right person. We need it all:
customer knowledge + good management ability + good
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Step 1️⃣ - Focus on Multipliers
In eCommerce, revenue comes from these 3 multipliers:
1) Average order value (AOV)
2) Customer Purchase frequency (F)
3) Number of Customers (N)
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Want to double-down on your BFCM successes?
Run the same promo. Again.
But this time target everyone *who didn’t see it* the first time.
(
@oVertoneColor
did this and generated >$130K in revenue.)
You can do this with
@klaviyo
and direct mail. Here’s how: 👇🏻
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200%
Current plan is get to 9-figure net worth, purge all online identity and move fam to homesteading estate somewhere in the Dolomites that you can only get to riding goats.
When I stop posting you'll know I've accomplished that goal.
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Happy Veterans Day!
Bit of trivia: before DTC, I was LT Drew Sanocki, US Navy Intelligence Officer
The Navy taught me a lot that I use every day in DTC. Stuff like:
- How to build teams
- How to lead teams
- How to interrogate enemy prisoners of war
Where my DTC vets at?
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If you like this thread, you will love my exclusive emails for my subscribers.
Join here:
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@giorgiopiccoli
@TopGunMovie
@USNavy
Lol I knew someone would ask that.
That's classified information there Giorgio.
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DTC: CMO ≠ content marketer ≠ FB funnels bro ≠ email marketer ≠ influencer marketer ≠ copywriter
Don't expect an all-in-one.
My advice? CMO should be a leader first.
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Attention DTC brands: what is the most effective way to prospect with direct mail?
Introducing our newest drop at
@getpostpilot
: MailMatch™️
Here's how it can help you acquire new buyers /SHORT THREAD
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1/ DTC brands, your single biggest missed opportunity are your *Tommy Customers*.
"Huh?"
Who they are, how to target them for immediate ROI: 🧵
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Putting up the bat signal--
Who wants to help run an industry-changing community site?
Heard of Houzz? It’s the $1B+ community site for design.
Well Houzz-for-automotive is called **Wheelwell**. We own it, and it needs talent.
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1. Bite the bullet.
You’ll never be perfect, but cash flow is oxygen: you need to cut. Go once and go deeper than you think you need to . . . if you gradually do this over time it destroys culture. Start with a blank sheet of paper and sketch out your ideal sized lean org, then
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If you are not treating different customers differently you are wasting your time with unnecessary work and leaving money on the table.
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Second year in a row we come here looking for
@RyeMcKenzie
Second year in a row he ghosted me and
@mepstein311
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lol my son’s future summer internship is working for
@ramit
My friend
@drewsanocki
gave his 11-yo son my book
His son learned how to invest and now he’s roasting his dad’s investment choices
This is love ❤️
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