The Outsights: January 1, 2024
The new role of physical retail, the latest in affiliate and influencer marketing, and the e-commerce data platform to rule them all.
Hello, and welcome to The Outsights—Nebulab’s bi-weekly collection of the best reads, listens, and products from the world of retail, eCommerce, and DTC.
Happy New Year! This send marks my return to the keyboard after a two-week holiday hiatus. For our first issue of 2024, we’re talking about the latest shifts in sales and marketing channel compositions, diving deep into the modern consumer economy, and featuring our favorite e-commerce analytics platform.
It’s good to be back!
Thought provokers
Revisiting physical retail. Ana Andjelic's content is heavily influenced by the aspirational economy, but there's something here for everyone: no matter your price point or brand positioning, your stores can and should be much more than just a glorified warehouse. Highly recommended to anyone who operates or plans to operate brick-and-mortar. Think long and hard about how it will contribute to your overall brand experience.
Cultural capital is no substitute for cold, hard cash. The kind of essay that brings you back to earth. Modern luxury convinced consumers that wealth is within everyone's reach—in doing so, it also exposed the true source of inequality: money. This one reminded me of the disconnect between people's stance toward ESG matters and their actual consumption: at the end of the day, the wallet has the last word, no matter how virtuous you are.
Goings-on
How the FTC’s new guidelines could impact influencer marketing. Quick PSA: The FTC is doubling down on enforcing its new guidelines for influencer marketing. Influencers need to disclose any brand relationships in-video, not just through a hashtag. This includes free product and any other perks.
Membership is the next era of loyalty programs. We wrote about memberships before, both in the newsletter and on our blog, and we’re excited to see the concept gain more traction. As we’ve stated in the past, the one caveat is that not everyone has the gravitational pull and sheer chutzpah to make it work. How long till subscription fatigue is replaced by membership fatigue?
As affiliate marketing gets competitive, a new brand playbook emerges. A few weeks ago, we featured a fascinating deep dive into the world of affiliate marketing, which also pointed out how the industry was changing to accommodate Google’s evolving algorithm. Consider this a spiritual sequel. If you're doing affiliate, do affiliate right.
Tool of the week
Chord. Chord’s e-commerce data platform plugs into your existing systems to give you a unified view of your customers, sales channels, and marketing mix and gives you actionable insights that drive better performance. It’s like having an enterprise data team at your fingertips, without the overhead.
Does your brand need help with strategy, design or development?
For over a decade, we’ve been shaping, launching, and scaling shopping experiences for category disruptors such as Cometeer, Framework, and Huckberry. No matter where you’re going, we can help you get there.
That’s it for today!
If you’ve come across any interesting articles, podcasts, or tools we should check out, you can email us at [email protected].
See you in two weeks! 👋