Delivering a solid direct-to-consumer offer has become an increasingly important part of modern retail. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, fewer brands were focusing on their own e-commerce operations. But the system shock delivered by the shuttering of physical retail drove many to rethink their online presence. Today, most brands feature an online store, and are able to talk directly to their customers. However, there’s a big difference between just doing it, and doing it well. Last week we spoke to Who Gives a Crap’s head of growth Tim Baxter, as well as Pleasant State co-founder Sian Murray, about what it takes to nail the direct-to-consumer experience. Here, we’ve compiled a few tips that they shared. You can watch the full Masterclass, sponsored by Adobe, here. Know your customer Key to delivering a best-in-class direct-to-consumer experience is, unsurprisingly, knowing who you’re selling to. However, that’s often easier said than done.“Before we even launched Pleasant State we did a lot of research into who our customers were, what they were looking for in a cleaning product, and what was missing in the market,” Murray explained. “[Finding our] customer was basically the first step, and we built our brand around that.”In the early days of Pleasant State, the team utilised Roy Morgan’s Helix Personas to identify its key demographics, which gave them a head start in determining how they would craft their brand message . From there, it was all about testing new messages and analysing  the data to see how customers respond.For Who Gives A Crap, the customer was clear, but the difficulty was reaching them. According to Baxter, 80 per cent of people already have their toilet paper purchasing behaviour set in stone, leaving  around 20 per cent of people open to a change. “ We needed to be able to talk to those people who are in the 20 per cent,” Baxter said.“We identified early on that the emotional aspect of the business, the eco- and social parts, are really big drivers for people, so if we could find those people who are in that mindset already, we could jump off into that customer journey.”Baxter realised early on that word of mouth would be critical to its customer acquisition strategy, and that the brand needed to help its customers sell the brand for them. This helped to inform the brand’s distinctive wrapping paper, which encourages customers to share a roll with a friend. “Word of mouth is the cheapest marketing, but it’s also the best marketing. It’s just really hard to [get going],” Baxter said.Creating communityOnce a brand has a customer base, it’s important to keep them. It is far more expensive to acquire a new customer than retaining an existing one, and building a community around a brand is key to keeping customers in the long-run. For Pleasant State, Murray noted that the brand has built up customer loyalty through a variety of methods, and it has reached a point where it represents a community. “Crowdfunding to launch was a huge one to build loyalty,” she said. “At the time when we shipped our first product, we already had 1500 people that had pre-ordered, and were really involved in our journey.”Murray and co-founder Ami Bateman have remained front-facing founders, which she believes has had a positive effect on how the business is seen. “When people talk about Pleasant State, they’re talking about it being female-founded, sustainable, and Australian-made, which are three key messages that people really hold on to,” Murray said. “Sharing that story and bringing people along for the ride has been really effective.”For Baxter, customer loyalty really took off for Who Gives A Crap during the Covid-19 pandemic, when toilet paper became scarce. The opened up an opportunity for the brand to  reach a significantly wider audience who were desperate for its product. However, it focused on serving its existing customers first.“For a period of about two months, when [the pandemonium around toilet paper]  first kicked off, we had over 500,000 people sign up to our email list as potential new customers. We had about 10 per cent of Australia’s population on our website within a few days,” Baxter said. “We turned down that opportunity and said, ‘we need to make sure that our current customers have first priority for getting toilet paper’.”By putting its customers’ needs ahead of the business’ need to grow, Who Gives A Crap noticed that its customers became more loyal, which led to an invested community around the brand. “I think if you can make those hard decisions, it can really shine through,” Baxter said. To view the full Masterclass, sponsored by Adobe, click here.