Starting from scratch, Shopify sellers’ entrepreneurial stories series ④: Fulfilling orders, increasing sales and the final results

Tim has been opening a store on Shopify from scratch for seven weeks now. From the excitement of receiving the first product sample to the frustration of being notified to go back to the military training, Tim's mental journey is like a roller coaster. But he soon adjusted his state of mind because he finally got his first customer! (See the previous article) This not only means that he can make money, but also means that he has sold his own brand products.

In order to send the product to the first customer, they first have to fulfill the order. Because it is the first customer, they want to give this customer the most perfect brand experience. First, they need to print the invoice and delivery note. This step can be completed quickly through the free app Order Printer on Shopify. As shown below:

They put the invoice in the package, attached the delivery note, and then they could ship it. But things were not that simple. As far as product packaging was concerned, the 75 blank boxes he bought for 35.25 euros (about 265.87 yuan) were returned because he was not at home and could not sign for the packages (due to military training). Therefore, they could only go to the local post office to buy DHL boxes (about 21.55 yuan each). Moreover, the local post office did not have the dust bags that made the packaging look more advanced. In short, their current packaging is not ideal, but they chose to take measures in a short time to make up for the current shortcomings.

In order to customize the packaging, he decided to buy some stickers and packaging tape with the HYKE logo. He had a good relationship with the store Sticker Mule before, so he finally bought a roll of 100 rectangular label stickers from the store, which cost a total of 61 euros (about 460.09 yuan). The order details are as follows:

The real thing looks like this:

In addition, he also bought 91 meters of packaging tape, spending a total of 41.29 euros (about 311.4 yuan). The order is as follows:

The actual picture is as follows:

It takes about 10-12 days for these stickers and tapes to arrive. To avoid them being returned again, he filled in his friend's home as the delivery address this time.

At present, he has dealt with the packaging issues and will return to marketing next.

When it comes to influencer marketing, most people think of sending products to pretty ladies with a lot of fans on Instagram. However, this type of influencer is not suitable for HYKE, because as mentioned earlier, the target audience of their brand is men like Tim, but they are still looking forward to cooperating with influencers for marketing.

When formulating a marketing plan for influencers, sellers usually look at the number of followers of the influencer and the level of fan engagement. The commonly used method is to send a free sample to the influencer and give fans a coupon code. The ultimate goal of this method is obvious, which is to increase sales.

But their goal was not to boost sales, but to expand the brand's reputation. So they didn't plan to use the above common methods, but to find a new way. They found an online celebrity who was in line with HYKE's brand values ​​and was 100% reliable, and asked him if he was interested in trying their HYKE backpack for free and then giving real feedback. Note that they did not ask the online celebrity to brag about how good their backpack is, such as: this new backpack is the best backpack in the world and so on.

Tim's idea is that if the influencer really doesn't like the backpack, he can give it to someone else for free or return it. First of all, Tim believes in the quality of their backpacks, but if they are really returned, he will face it calmly. The following are the influencers they found:

His name is Dominique Schaak, a young professional racing driver from Germany. He is very friendly and in line with HYKE's brand values: passion, excellence, diligence and sincerity.

It may be easy to describe the brand's commercial value, but it is often not so easy to find influencers with the right values ​​to match the business. They followed Dominique on Instagram, checked his profile and competition results, and saw if he really matched HYKE's brand values. As shown in the figure below, you can see that Dominique currently has only 3,547 followers, but as mentioned earlier, Tim didn't care about the number of followers when formulating an influencer marketing plan.

Tim has not yet been able to get the promotional photos of Dominique carrying the backpack. Once the photos are finalized, Tim will be able to use them on social media platforms and websites. Racing can attract a lot of people, but Tim wants to attract a specific group of people when developing a marketing plan, so he will continue to market.

Since there was limited time to achieve the goal of $1,000 in profit in 8 weeks, Tim and his partners focused on Instagram comments. They found users on Instagram through specific hashtags associated with their target audience (such as #entrepreneur) and commented on their posts. The interaction was as follows:

Meaning: Awesome! We’d love to work with you, so send us a private message on Instagram if you’re interested.

They considered their target audience before deciding on a hashtag. Since their target audience is entrepreneurs, they chose the hashtag #entrepreneur. If your target audience is horse riders, you might choose the hashtag #horserider.

This was actually very time-consuming, but since they had just started their business, they had to be prepared to endure the hardship. Their hard work paid off, and by the end of the 7th week, they had received four new orders. As shown in the picture, one customer even bought two backpacks.

So far, they have made a total of about $580 in profit. Obviously, leaving comments on Instagram to boost sales is not good for business development. But that’s not their goal. Tim and his partners want to:

• Verify business situation;

• Get recognition from people online;

In the last article, we talked about how they started a giveaway promotion on KingSumo to build their email list. What did they do specifically?

Email marketing has now become one of their main marketing channels. To be successful in email marketing, you have to take action. First, you have to get the contact information of your audience.

As mentioned in the previous article, they held a promotional contest through KingSumo, and the giveaway was a HYKE backpack filled with 10 business books. Before the giveaway was about to end, they collected a total of 65 email addresses.

This result is not ideal, but it is better than nothing.

They learned a lesson: their target audience didn’t seem to be very interested in business books. Most frustratingly, they didn’t market the giveaway well. They just left it to KingSumo to run a marketing campaign to promote their giveaway. But they still collected 65 new email addresses anyway.

Finally, Tim's military training will end next week, so he will be able to spend more time getting back to marketing.

As time goes by, the exciting 8th week finally arrives! Now there is only one week left to reach the goal of 8-week profit of $1,000. So far, they have made a total profit of about $580, which is still a long way from achieving the goal. So what did they do next?

They got a total of 5 orders by leaving comments on Instagram and sending messages to users. In fact, the results are good, but they don't want to continue marketing in this way. It is a good way to verify whether strangers will buy their products. However, for the long-term development of HYKE, they want to spend more time on email marketing.

For them, email marketing is the number one marketing channel for e-commerce business.

In the previous article, they held a promotion through the KingSumo website. They collected email addresses by sending giveaways. Before the end of the event, they collected a total of 65 emails. Five days later, they obtained another 24 email addresses, so through this promotion, they collected a total of 89 emails.

It’s easy to select the winners of a promotional contest through the KingSumo platform. The usual approach to notifying the winners is to send them an email. But they chose to take a different approach. They looked to how Noah Kagan, CEO of Sumo, grew his email list by giving away gifts to get 10,000 visitors in 30 days. And they did just that.

To drive more traffic to the site, they created a simple web page with a winner announcement and a reminder to read it, almost exactly like what Noah Kagan did at the time. They sent an email to all participants notifying them where they could see if they had won. The email looks like this:

The general meaning is:

“The winner is…

The final winner will be announced in this email. To confirm whether you have won the prize, please click here . "

After the user views the email and clicks the link, the following interface will appear. The small area at the top announces the winners and there is a text suggesting that the user continue reading.

Users can click on the link in the Announce Winners section at the top of the page to open the Giveaway Winners Announcement page.

The red button (“Zum Artikel”: Jump to article) will jump to a blog post about “How to get a free upgrade from Economy to Business Class”.

As you can see, this is a pretty short blog post. Tim chose to write about this topic because he has some knowledge of it and it was very useful to research the target audience.

Since they now had an email list of 89 potential customers, they took advantage of that email list. They then sent a second email related to the giveaway, offering all the non-winners a consolation prize of 30% off on the purchase of a HYKE product.

A total of 88 people received this email, and Tim's store eventually received 5 additional orders and $364 in sales through this email.

From the order report analysis in the figure, we can see that these orders were all promoted by the second email. This shows that this promotional marketing method is quite effective.

In short, Tim did not reach his goal of $1,000 in profit in 8 weeks.

They sold a total of:

• 8 backpacks, income of $730;

• 3 baseball caps, revenue of $94.3;

These sales come from:

• Distribute 1 free gift and get 5 backpack orders and 3 baseball cap orders .

• 75 comments on Instagram and 3 backpack orders .

They sold a total of 11 products, with a total revenue of $824.3.

So far, they have spent $2,523.73 to start the business, so they have a loss of $1,699.43. Although their business is not profitable and has not achieved its goals, it is not a failure.

It is a fact that some people buy their products. For him, the fact that many people use the HYKE brand products they created makes him feel happy and proud.

Of course, profitability is essential. But currently, obtaining information about the target audience is more important. Now that Tim has finished his military training, the future of HYKE is definitely brighter. He will sit down with his partners, develop a new strategy based on all the data they have and continue marketing.

So far, he can think of three areas that could be improved:

• content marketing (especially blogging);

• Influencer marketing;

• Email marketing.

But which one to focus on in the end remains to be analyzed in the future.

They may expand overseas in the future, and you may also see people carrying HYKE backpacks on the street.

Finally, it is a pity that Tim did not reach his goal of making $1,000 in profit in 8 weeks. But I think this real case is of reference significance to every seller.

This series takes a deep dive into Tim's real life experience of starting a business from scratch. Perhaps you are just like him, trying to balance work and running a store, and encountering unpredictable difficulties. Seek help from a friend and work with him to overcome difficulties. I hope you can get inspiration from this series of articles to help your business succeed.