The New Era of Commerce is Here. Are you ready?
Direct to Customer (DTC) is one of the most powerful tactics in a brand’s selling toolkit. By sharing a brand’s story, developing its personality and creating experiences, a well-executed e-commerce site can create loyalists. DTC is unique in its ability to deliver sales, drive intelligence and manage a brand’s message in ways more successful than than a brick and mortar — with a potentially larger audience and a route to market that’s exponentially faster and cheaper.
Building Retail Success With DTC
To the buyer, shopping online should be no less of an experience than traditional methods. Building a virtual version of the retail experience gives retailers a unique ability to engage buyers with easy-to-shop navigation, suggestive upselling, fast answers and entertainment. Selling touchpoints can be educational opportunities, moving a customer from a one-time buyer into a brand loyalist.
Build It
Our team designs and builds the infrastructure that enables your DTC e-commerce solution. We create best-in-class user experiences that enable, not distract from, your customer’s purchasing. We’ll even maintain, update, and populate your site’s content, and user experiences.
Connect It
We’ll connect your brand where your customers live, work and play! We connect the stories and products on your site to the retailers, distributors and digital marketing channels used by your audience to remove the barriers to purchase.
Amplify It
We are content creators and storytellers who leverage marketing strategy, product photography, demonstration and sampling videos, all designed to make your products stand out above the competition and create brand loyalty. We use the most sophisticated digital media and retargeting tools to attract and promote ongoing interest in your brand!
Case Study
Lundberg Family Farms
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In Their Own Words
What our customers say about the work we deliver speaks volumes over-and-above pretty pictures on a page.
The team exceeded our expectations while creating a dynamic and super efficient e-commerce experience. They are the subject matter experts in site building and search that we never knew we needed!
Questions?
Our unique approach and end-to-end capabilities ensure consistent thought and strategy. By connecting your operations, sales, and marketing objectives we are uniquely positioned to carrying them through to every stage of the customer journey.
The past 18-24 mos. have exponentially accelerated the consumer shift to eCommerce, driven by the culturally redefining pandemic. In the first 8 weeks of the US lockdown, “U.S. e-Commerce penetration grew more than the previous 10 years!” *
This shift in consumer behavior and the responses of brands to fill the move their sales online has amplified the need for excellence in this channel for both brands and retailers.
Even before the pandemic, DTC sales growth was expected to continue to accelerate through the first half of this decade.
- 30% of online shoppers bought from at least one DTC brand in 2019
- Year-over-year, same store order growth during the 2019 Holiday season was 39%
- Leading Footwear and luxury DTC brands grew online orders by more than 60% year over year.
Source: Rakuten Advertising 2020 study
We have entered a new era of digital commerce. Product presence on the web alone is not enough. Complete control of your messaging, your content and your digital commerce platform is the cost of entry. The real power of a DTC digital ecosystem is in its ability to amplify your marketing intelligence of your consumer while also selling at every point of engagement.
The benefits to Direct-To-Customer can be multi-faceted. Beyond connecting a brand to its target customers, a strong online retail presence also creates:
Insights & Innovation Engine
- Advanced analytics to generate consumer and shopper insights
- Social listening and search scraping
- Test-and-Learn
Platform to Control User Experience
- Brand strategy, with online as central component
- Content development and management
- Predictive analytics for personalization
- User experience design
Omnichannel Marketing & Sales Engine
- Digital customer acquisition strategies
- Advanced analytics to generate consumer and shopper insights
- Technology integration with retailers
Sales Driver
- User experience design
- Advanced analytics (to anticipate SKU exhaustion, recommend products, etc.)
- E-Commerce operations
(ex SKU-level replenishment)
#1: Clearly define your direct-to-consumer strategy
Important considerations are providing clear value to the customer and doing so without introducing friction to the customer journey
#2: Differentiate to avoid direct competition
Deliver both by differentiating your DTC offering from what retail partners offer in their brick-and-mortar stores. Creatively bundle, brand, or package your DTC offering so as not to compete directly with retail partners.
#3: Increase partner sales using data
The customer data you’ll collect going DTC can be used to help channel partners improve their overall businesses.
#4: Partner on fulfillment
Partnering with retailers to fulfill orders is a win-win scenario. Similarly, consider offering a “pick up in store” option as part of your DTC online strategy.
Marlin Network Commerce offers the only end-to-end, single-source solution custom tailored to meet the customer need. No other provider can offer this level of turnkey integration, accountability, support, or spectrum of services
Speed:
Your e-commerce site can be up and generating revenue in a matter of weeks! The move to D2C is no longer a years-long process. Our team’s expertise and experience ensure we are efficient, smart, and planning for the future.
Getting Started
We host a discovery session to determine the right Shopify platform (Shopify, Advanced, Plus), store name, understand your sales channels and products, fulfillment and return details
Agile development process
We quickly set up an e-commerce prototype. Following your brand standards, we set up the site, create a domain name and URLs, load in existing product content, define product variants, import from product database, product tracking notifications, etc.
Connecting Commerce
We set up payment gateways, customer support (email, phone, live chat), wholesale (discount codes, password protected) create your blog posts (if desired), setup email, analytics and optimize for conversion.
Developing your marketing plan.
We’ll help you build your marketing strategy, prepare the tools and launch your campaign that amplifies and drives consumer traffic to your D2C solution. We’ll set up, monitor, and optimize your search, media and social spends, paid media support, and more!
Our team of creatives and developers are adept at using and developing in any e-commerce platform. While we are solution agnostic, we do recommend Shopify as our chosen solution. As a Shopify Partners, we build the best-in-class e-commerce solution you want instead of force-fitting into a template.
Launching your online business through Shopify allows us to:
- Increase your sales. Sell anywhere, to anyone, anytime (cross-channel selling)
- Unify your operations (upsell, inventory, forecasting, customer rewards)
- Connect with your customers through powerful marketing tools (coupons, subscription, gift cards, statistics, targeted email campaigns, advanced e-commerce analytics)
- Simplify the shopping experience, removing barriers to purchase and creating more sales with connected marketing and purchasing channels (Facebook, Pinterest, Amazon, Google Shopping, Walmart and more) easy payment options, secure and reliable payment gateways with optimized/streamlined checkouts including pre-filled data-based email and phone numbers.
- Ensure consumer confidence with the Shopify Plus security and reliability tools.
- Built for very fast loading
- Mobile Responsive
- SEO friendly (rich text snippets for search)
- Level 1 PCI DDS compliant
- Up to 10,000 checkouts per minute
- 4 million hits per second
- Unlimited bandwidth & 99.99% up time
- Customize your store from existing templates or fully customized builds. Fill brand-specific needs with third-party solutions and robust app-integrations
- Gather 1st party shopper data intelligence to enhance your marketing messaging and create long-standing consumer relationships.
Beyond our development services, Marlin Network Commerce is uniquely positioned with proven end-to-end solutions for:
- RaaS (Retail as a Service)
- DaaS (Distribution as a Service)
Our inclusion within the Advantage Solutions network enables us to offer the best-in-class providers in an end-to-end single source solution with fully integrated data management across all touchpoints and service divisions. Each service is custom tailored to meet our customer’s needs. No other provider can offer this turnkey level of integration, accountability, support, or service solutions. That’s the power of 1.
Start your eCommerce project now?
Complete all the form fields. We’re excited to get started.
Sherry Is Ready to Talk
Sherry Gorsich
312-633-2040 ext. 223
Director of Client Services
The foodservice world is a natural fit for Sherry, an award-winning product development and B2B marketing expert who has spent her 20+ year career immersed in communications. In her work on both the manufacturer and agency sides of the business, she has led innovative advertising campaigns, sales training, promotions and strategic partnerships. Currently, in her role as Director of Business Development & Strategic Partnerships at CSSI, Sherry’s insights drive holistic B2B and B2C recommendations that help our clients thrive in a competitive industry.
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