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- 👀 SKIMS' ecomm tech stack, PR workshop replay, who wins in a recession?
👀 SKIMS' ecomm tech stack, PR workshop replay, who wins in a recession?
Fun events, smart workshops and resources are inside. 💌
Female Founder World
July 19, 2022
Hey, welcome to Female Founder World. This is our free 5-minute email keeping thousands of consumer brand builders in the loop. New friends are welcome! Feel free to forward this email to your people and be the first to tell them about this very handy business resource 😎. — Jasmine
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Today we're covering:
📓 Resource roundup
🕵️♀️ Site snooping: SKIMS
💡 3 founders on how going viral on TikTok impacted sales
📹 Recording: 'Create Your High Impact PR Strategy' workshop
🚀 ABI AMÉ's launch plan
🎧 Latest podcast episodes: Suze Dowling (Pattern Brands), Aishwarya Iyer (Brightland), Alison McNamara (Mara Beauty), Sandra Velasquez (Nopalera)
📓 Resource roundup
Don't miss your 2 month free trial of Gorgias, the ecommerce helpdesk that turns your customer service into a profit center! 🔗 Tell me more
Female Founder World (and a bunch of you, our brand builders fam!) are in Beauty Independent today!!! 🔗 Tell me more
Who wins in a recession? Beauty Independent explored which beauty segment—prestige, mass, masstige or value—will win in a shaky economy. 🔗 Tell me more
Nars is the latest brand to explore Roblox as a marketing channel to target 13-24 year old new customers. 🔗 Tell me more
Snaxshot is forecasting the future of food and beverage on Instagram. 🔗 Tell me more
🕵️♀️ Site snooping: SKIMS
Nothing shady, nothing sneaky. Obvi! But here's what we could find about SKIMS by sleuthing the internets. 👀
Bouncerate: 42.67%
Average visit duration: 2 min 49 sec
Total visits in June: 6.5 million (down 5.58% compared with May)
Ecommerce tech stack: Loop for returns, Impact for affiliate marketing, Back in Stock for lead capture and restock alerts, Grin for influencer marketing, Shopify for online store, Attentive for SMS, Content Square for analytics, Global-e for international orders, EnquireLabs for post-purchase customer surveys, Klaviyo for email marketing, Okendo for reviews, Dynamic Yield for personalised product recommendations, Afterpay or buy now and pay later, Raygun for error monitoring and crash reporting, Segment is their Customer Data Platform for collecting first-party customer data, Black Crow AI to boost remarketing ROI.
Skims.com homepage in September 2019 (at launch)
Skims.com homepage in July 2020
What's new on the SKIMS website: High flash photography; chat pop-up; new icons for currency and login; new navigation categories including the addition of 'NEW', 'BEST SELLERS', 'COLLECTIONS' and 'MORE; 'SKIMS TV' deleted from top navigation, carousel scrolls across two images (previously just one); copy aligned to the left; 'Shop Now' button added.
Nice one, Kim.
We'll see you next time for some Summer Fridays site snooping. 👀
Did you enjoy our new Site Snooping series? Comment on our IG post and let us know who else you want us to snoop. 👀
💡 3 founders share how going viral on TikTok impacted sales
YIN QI, FOUNDER OF KOSTUDIO
KoStudio makes boxing gear for women and has seen dozens of their videos hit 500k-1 million views on TikTok. Most only take founder Yin Qi around 10 minutes to film and edit in the TikTok app. If a TikTok hits and goes viral, KoStudio's account grows by 4k-15k new followers.
This recent viral video triggered a huge 398% increase in sales and 335% increase in site traffic within 7 days. Yin thinks the video worked because it's short, engaging and gives folks something to comment on.
NATASSIA MILLER, FOUNDER OF WONDERLUST
WATCH: Example of a viral video that did not convert well into sales as it was published pre-launch
WATCH: Example of a viral video that converted well into sales. This video had 40K views. While other Wonderlust posts have received way more views, this video converted better than the more viral posts.
Wonderlust creates tools to elevate your intimacy and relationship, including a card game. They've had several videos go viral on TikTok, and today we're diving into two.
One video that was posted before the card game actually launched (so didn't have an opportunity to convert into sales—damn!) explains 5 habits of couples who have great sex. It was only the fourth video that Wonderlust ever posted to TikTok, took about 30 minutes to film, and resulted in 35k new followers. About 200 email addresses were also captured via a Norby link in bio.
So, why did the post hit and how can you replicate it?
Wonderlust's founder Natassia thinks it's because the video covered a controversial topic, which the TikTok algorithm seems to like, got straight to the point, and was short enough for people to watch through in entirety and then comment and watch again.
She also says videos that are about "X things to ____" tend to work very well, no matter what category you're in. Share just 3-5 things tips per video and people will more likely stick around to learn more.
A second TikTok video that simply shows Natassia answering a follower's question about Wonderlust's intimacy card game product resulted in about 1k new followers, but triggered a sales spike of 400% and increased site traffic by 380% within about three days.
Again, Natassia gets straight to the point in the first 3 seconds of this second video. She describes how the product helps with people's pain points and shows how it works. The clip ends with details on where to buy it.
LYNN MA, FOUNDER OF FILTERBABY
WATCH: Example of a viral video that converted well (4.6 million views)
FilterBaby makes a water filter that attaches to bathroom sinks and is designed to improve your skin.
One of their recent recent TikToks reached 4.6 million views—probably because it's short, witty, and uses a trending sound. The post shows the founder spending the night at her boyfriend's place. When she's about to wash her face for the night she pulls the filter out of a small purse, refusing to wash her face without it. Respect 😂.
The clip took 15 minutes to film, is relatable and walk the very fine line between plugging a product without feeling salesy. FilterBaby grew by 2.7k followers within 7 days after posting the video, and sales spiked by 207%. Site traffic went up +116% and email signups grew by 604%. The product itself is a little unusual, so that probably also helped to make the video standout in a sea of endless scrolling.
The lesson here is that if you can make people laugh on TikTok, they will naturally click your profile, check out your page and learn more about your product. TBH, we should all be hiring comedians to manage our social media.
📹 Recording: 'Create Your High Impact PR Strategy' workshop
PR expert Sophie Weill taught the Female Founder World community how to execute a high impact PR strategy LIVE this month. Missed it? Catch up on the recording, housed within our free community for consumer brand builders on Geneva.com.
If you want a free media contact database to go along with those shiny new skills, we've got one! The only way to get a free copy is to review the Female Founder World podcast, screenshot your kind words, and DM @femalefounderworld on Instagram.
It's not what you know, it's who you know—and we know everyone 😎.
🚀 ABI AMÉ's launch plan: Q&A with founder Yasmin Zeinab
Launch date: June 2022
Founder: Yasmin Zeinab
Concept: Skincare for your body
The idea for the brand came from personal pain points in my own body care routine—not being able to find the same actives I was using on my face in large formats for the body at an affordable price. The idea for the brand was to identify those annoying body care moments and fix them.
Founder story: I was a banking and finance lawyer before launching ABI AMÉ.
Beauty was a totally new industry to me but I must say that creating for myself as my first customer did make the transition easier. When you create for yourself, you intuitively know more than you think. I also sought out mentorship from other beauty founders, binged podcasts, spoke to as many people as possible and just followed the bread crumbs.
Idea validation process: I spoke on a 1-1 basis with 100 women and surveyed over 1,000 via IG and FB.
My first step was to read a book called The Mom Test. It provided me with the framework to prepare the right style of interview questions to validate my idea. The key part of this process was understanding my target customer’s previous behaviors and purchasing habits in body care to identify pain points and work out how to fix them.
Launch budget: $60,000 of personal savings and bank loans.
My businesses is extremely bootstrapped. I’ve been able to negotiate favorable terms and leverage my relationships to do things cheaply. I spent about $60K with about 80% of this money going into our first set of inventory.
Launch expenses: 80% of the launch budget went towards product/inventory and 20% towards branding, website, and photography.
Launch lessons: Build more time into the launch plan.
Our first product is summer-specific, so we wanted to launch on the first day of summer. This didn’t allow much time to perfect and test the website (and the logistics backend), so we’ve been fixing things as we go, which isn’t ideal.
Launch marketing: Influencers, community-building, TikTok.
We launched with no marketing budget so our launch had only three components:
(1) our influencer community, where I had been building personal relationships since the start of the business;
(2) our existing community of women—I built a private testing community to help me develop product and build the brand, including the 1100 women who I surveyed;
(3) TikTok!
Resource recommendation: The Female Founder World podcast episode with Topicals founder Olamide Olowe.
