Even a little data can lead to big insights for e-commerce expansion

Every week, it seems like another digitally-native DTC brand has announced their expansion to brick-and-mortar. For many, it’s the next step on their path to scalable growth. Stores that offer a sensory experience with the brand and the product, beyond just another avenue to purchase the brand, have done exceptionally well.

But there are also small, independent brands that begin by getting a foot-in–the-store and then realize e-commerce is the best path to expansion. Instead of starting with a major digital marketing push and adding stores when it’s the next step toward scaling, these brands grew a following in-store first. While this path has been less popular for startups since the start of the DTC e-commerce boom, Shameless Pets is a brand that’s made it look easy. 

Former corporate food buyer for Target, James Bello wanted to do something about the vast amount of food waste he was seeing across the industry. From this desire, upcycled pet treats were born. Originally growing in popularity on the shelves at Target, Whole Foods, and pet stores, the executive team for Shameless Pets knew the path to scalable growth was in DTC e-commerce. This strategy was also very in line with what the brand stands for: the MIT Innovation Lab finds e-commerce to be more sustainable than traditional retail in more than 75% of the scenarios they’ve developed to study the topic. 

While it’s relatively easy to set up an online store, there are some major differences between selling at retail and through your own site. Big box retailers buy by the pallet and scale by the month or quarter as needed. How customers buy products is more opaque, with less data available. Which one do they try first? Do they buy several at once and come back a few months later? Or do they buy a smaller supply more regularly? How much do people explore your offerings versus staying within a narrow set? It can be difficult to have a full picture of your customer lifecycle when you sell through a big retailer. For any small brand that has successfully learned how to navigate retail, expanding to digital e-commerce is going to require some changes. 

Before Shameless Pets dove all-in on e-commerce, they wanted to understand how shoppers were already interacting with their then-small online shop. You see, even though they didn’t have huge online sales at this point, the customers they did have told a story. 

Understanding this story would be a critical component to guiding their strategy. A clear and accurate customer journey can help understand the full customer experience, from awareness to loyalty. With this information, decision-makers can optimize each step of the buying experience. But a clear and accurate customer journey is only possible with clean, valid and unified customer data. 

Because Shameless Pets was using raw data from ReCharge, Shopify, and Klaviyo, the chance for errors was high. This is not because any platform was mishandling the data, it’s inevitable that customer data becomes messy over time. Whether it’s because different systems don’t integrate with each other, because customers make mistakes and are forgetful, because a brand has moved platforms over time or a myriad of other reasons.   

In this case, the number of customer IDs across the three platforms was 20% higher than the actual number of customers buying the brand. A big part of the problem was due to promo abuse. While the dollar amount wasn’t out of line with industry standards, the number of duplicate accounts created by customers wanting a “first-time-buyer” promo was throwing off the data.

Cleaning then resolving the data around the IRL customers buying the brand created the accurate picture Shameless Pets was looking for. This allowed the team to answer important questions with confidence and certainty. Questions like: Which marketing content is attracting first-time buyers? How often does a consumer purchase the brand online? In what quantity and in what order? Because of the data, the team knew the right strategy would be to de-emphasize welcome promos and shift their growth strategy toward a subscription model that rewarded loyalty over conversion. Today, the brand has several subscription packages with different cadences for their users. A better customer experience, a reduction in food waste, and some very happy pets. Not a bad start for a business breaking new ground.

Even a small amount of cleaned customer data was able to provide insight to Shameless Pets as they planned their DTC expansion. For any brand that wants to make better decisions that result in more growth for their online store, it’s important to use reliable and accurate data. 

To see the full Shameless Pets case study, click here.