While many companies have heavy reliance on social media for digital customer acquisition, Allbirds has a different approach — and it’s proved successful.
“We only do e-commerce through our website, which means if you want to get our stuff, you have to come to Allbirds.com. That creates a different dynamic,” co-founder Joey Zwillinger said onstage at the 2019 FN CEO Summit on Monday in Miami. “We are funneling all traffic, and we see all of our marketing touch points. We can have a better tractability and understanding of the marketing dollars that we deploy and what the results are back to us.”
Zwillinger further explained to FN that the brand has almost exclusively relied on word-of-mouth marketing, which has provided at least 60% of its business to date.
“It gives us the good fortune of not having to be too beholden to any one platform,” he said, adding that Allbirds spends very little on Facebook. “If you can as brand find yourself in that situation — that’s ideal — versus being tied to one of the platforms that changes their rules. If you are relying on a single source of acquisition, it’s never good.
By not relying on social media, the sustainably focused brand can have a direct understanding of its customer by using its own website as a marketing tool rather than just an e-commerce service.
Zwillinger said, “It’s about telling the deeper story. We unpack the details on materials and sustainability in a way that’s digestible. If we keep innovating, people will want to keep exploring directly with us.”
Allbirds joins a list of leaders speaking at FN’s CEO Summit. Others include designer Gianvito Rossi, Coach president and CEO Josh Schulman, Diane Sullivan, CEO, president and chairman of Caleres Inc., and many more. Check back for more coverage from the event.
Watch the video below to see how Allbirds is winning e-commerce:
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