Integrating Amazon Into the DTC Playbook, With Calvin Lammers - Episode 192

INTERVIEW WITH CALVIN LAMMERS

DESCRIPTION

This week on the Ecommerce Braintrust podcast, we have a special guest: Calvin Lammers, the Vice President of eCommerce & Digital at Health-Ade. Calvin and Kiri recently had the opportunity to present at DTC Day Live, the world’s largest DTC marketing conference. The title of their presentation was Integrating Amazon Into the DTC Playbook and today we’re sharing with you the live recording from the event, along with the slides.

You can also expect some amazing insights from a brand perspective and key takeaways with regards to media spend, innovation investments or the underlying operational infrastructure required to be successful on Amazon.

Make sure to tune in to find out more!

 
 
 

Calvin Lammers is a Vice President of eCommerce & Digital at Health-Ade and a nine-year eCommerce veteran who started his career on the retail side with Target. Since then, Calvin has moved over to the brand side running eCommerce such as KIND Snacks and Bai Brands. Health-Ade built its foundation via retail and the natural channel, building widespread national distribution and availability. eCommerce & Digital was a recent expansion for the brand. In addition to the innate fulfillment challenges that come with cold-chain, glass bottles, Health-Ade leveraged their existing distribution and last-mile/OPD options with their retail partners as a primary focus for the brand on digital with the existing customers, and DTC and Amazon as channels to drive trial and reach net new customers.

“Be where your customers are looking for you.”
— Calvin Lammers

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Many DTC brands have concerns about launching an Amazon channel. Not owning the direct customer relationship, loss of control of the experience, potentially cannibalizing sales - those are all legitimate concerns. 

  • Consumers are using many touchpoints - online and offline - to make purchasing decisions. 

  • “Tab-switching” can happen between DTC, social, and Amazon sites; as well as offline in the real world where you check Amazon reviews of a new product before you buy it in-store. 

  • You need to be where customers are looking for you - that includes discovery, research, transactions, and re-ordering. 

  • Amazon is more than just a way of getting products into customers' hands. It can be powerful marketing and sales channel in its own right but also the discovery platform for customers.

  • When consumers are researching products/brands, many times they’re using Amazon as that social validation with Amazon reviews or PDP/Brand store content about the product or brand.

  • Health-Ade views Amazon as the entry point for many of the new customers that they are bringing into the funnel and treating it primarily as a top of funnel/awareness platform, knowing it will have a significant sales impact and halo on other channels given the logistical challenges requiring us to only sell multi-packs online (as opposed to single bottles via Instacart or in-store).

  • eCommerce - both DTC and marketplace - has become a primary channel for bringing customers to the brand. 

  • Recent research from the Digital Shelf Institute uncovered through media mix modeling and other observations of data among larger companies that ad spend on Amazon and Walmart specifically was accretive of 7-10 dollars of in-store sales - that’s beyond the sales lift that the brand saw on Amazon or Walmart.com. 

  • Retailer media spend drives other incremental benefits like improving repeat purchases, goodwill of partners, and social validation. 

  • While not every DTC brand is set up to sell in-store, it does help to frame the earlier assertion that customers are using many touchpoints on their purchasing journey. When customers hear about a brand or they hear a brand mentioned 53% of the time, they're gonna go to Amazon to research it.

  • When new platforms launch in retail media, paid search CPCs & competition are low. 

  • Amazon can be a challenging partner. There are factors that you need to consider on Amazon that aren’t required on other channels. Amazon calls these factors “retail readiness”. For example policies and management of resellers, inventory availability and forecasting, product pricing, and the profitability of your assortment. 

  • One thing that became a major pain point in recent weeks is inventory restrictions. Some sellers using Amazon’s fulfillment program suddenly found that their inventory limits were revised down by a third or even a half, making preparation for Prime Day extremely challenging. 

  • You might think of yourself as an eCommerce expert or a digital expert - well guess what, you need to now also become a supply chain expert too. 

  • Paid search is not universal across channels, different shopping behaviors, and usage. 

Season 3Kiri MastersComment