You are reading 3Bits & Change, Joseph's weekly email about building a direct to consumer business on the internet (+ an occasional web3 tracker). Today’s email was written to a bad station Alexa chose, again. Follow @josephrueter on Instagram or Linkedin. Follow Vivront.com on Instagram and Facebook. If you haven’t already, subscribe!
[Turns out this one was drafted and did not send last Tuesday. So it goes today. And, I need to use the schedule functions herein.]
Good morning,
We’ve had a productive week.
New packaging is being worked out. Calls with those vendors went well. We’ll get the packaging experienced one step further from plausible prototype soon. Wahoo.
We chatted with a grocery leader about going retail with the packaging ASAP. The moving parts seems bigger than we’re ready to chew off right now, but we remain open to it.
We got good counsel from a friend to just stay focused on the internet side of the business right now. This is in contrast to my desire to have a physical shop and retail frontend to leverage my social skills. And, I’ll need to stop daydreaming about this little empty shop space :). I should spend the “rent money” on FB ads anyway.
We had a productive call regarding the many challenges in the school nutrition environment on a national scale. I want to keep calling it debt. They want to call it nutrition. We’ll see how that goes. Anyway, as result of the call we’ve been invited to head to Washington in March to learn more about the national picture at the organization’s yearly conference. TBD. Hope we can go and learn.
Bit #1 Try it. Then, tell all your friends.
“How can I help?” That was the question I got after meeting a totally new person to me this week and talking Vivront. It’s simple right now. Try it. Then, if the service was cool enough, tell all your friends.
If the service is not cool enough yet… please let us know which parts. We’ll aim to make it even better. Like, the chocolate? Not good enough?
Bit #2 What held you back?
A good friend of mine texted this week that the reason he has not yet purchased sharpening is that the payment options he wanted were not available. So, we went and flipped PayPal back on and added Amazon Pay to the express check out services after the call. If you’re on an Apple browser, Apple Pay is available too!
What held you back before your purchase? What’s holding you back now? Stats say you’re juicing/cutting with dull knives in your kitchen. So, what held or is holding you back?
UPDATE: Something about our product feed is not desirable to the Zon, the Micro and the FB. We’re not to the bottom of it yet. But the Zon button is no longer functioning.
What’s your take on the payment buttons? Offer one? Offer all of them?
Someone else mentioned not understanding the three way shipping dynamic in the service and was worried about packaging and shipping knives. We made this video and embed it on product pages now. Maybe it helps. Let us know.
What held you up on your first purchase?
Bit #3 Ads
We have UGC ads in market. Wahoo.
We’re “seasoning our pixel” as they say. Until the Facebook pixel is seeing 50 or so orders a week it apparently does a poor job of running retargeting campaigns. So, we’re going to focus on prospecting efforts in the interest graph and adjust from results.
Our UGC ads were made by Moms in their real kitchens. Check to of them out on the Tok.
Sum
Progress is occuring. We’ve got the next of these emails ready to send. We’ll wait to later in the week.
Change
We’re going to use the scheduling function going forward. :)
Question
What’s your most favorite thing you made at home in the last two weeks?