Strengthen your eCommerce sales with a DTC Shift Model

Your DTC channel is the foundation of your business. It offers direct customer touchpoints, and it’s the best way to build deeper connections. It’s also where you have the most flexibility with your margins. But growing your Shopify sales often means competing with the convenience of established retail platforms like Amazon and Walmart.

Fortunately, this is exactly where Inveterate shines. We know how to craft loyalty programs that incentivize customers to buy on your site — so you can boost revenue and LTV without fussing over acquisition costs or wholesale margins.

Read on to learn how.

What is a DTC shift model?

A DTC shift loyalty model encourages customers to purchase directly from a brand’s website by combining retail-level convenience and exclusive benefits in a paid membership. By expertly leveraging the awareness that wholesale generates, brands equip themselves to successfully combat the “status quo bias” that causes customers to shop with larger retailers like Amazon and Walmart in the first place.

This strategic approach helps you:

• Increase margins: The most obvious benefit of increasing DTC sales is financial. Simply put, when more of your customers buy directly, more of your profits stay in-house. 
• Avoid third-party fees: When selling via wholesale, merchants may be charged fees to cover marketing, shelf space, storage, and other incidentals. This further eats into your profits and locks you into large-scale production.
• Collect reliable customer insights: Selling via a third party also limits the amount of customer data you can collect. You may get little to no insight into customer behavior, LTV, brand awareness, or engagement.

• Reduce CAC: When you sell to existing customers, you spend less on acquiring new ones, which increases LTV.

The downstream result? A rewards flywheel that draws customers back to your brand and powers consistent business growth.

How to make the most of a DTC shift model? 

To encourage customers to shop directly from your website and overcome their bias toward big-box retailers, you need a well-crafted loyalty program that checks three boxes.

Offer benefits that outshine retail

A strategically curated benefits package goes beyond standard retail perks to create an exclusive customer experience that makes your DTC channel the best choice for your customers. Customers have a natural bias toward the status quo — shopping with brands they know and repeating actions they’ve performed repeatedly. 

To disrupt that behavior, membership perks should meet or exceed the deals and benefits available on retail marketplaces. Here’s what your loyalty program should include to turn casual shoppers into devoted buyers:

• DTC-exclusive gifts: Memberships work best when you surprise and delight customers. Limited-edition items, personalized SMS notifications, and exclusive brand content create a sense of FOMO that makes customers join and redirects their shopping habits to your owned channels. For example, such one-of-a-kind loyalty benefits helped True Classic increase DTC sales, generating $2.3 million in incremental revenue in just 8 months.
• Transaction-based rewards: When every purchase placed directly through your website unlocks more savings and new perks for your customers, the more likely they are to shop with you first. Take Fly by Jing — their loyalty program, featuring a 20% discount on every order and seasonal gifts — helped them increase member order frequency by 82%.
• Expedited shipping: Major retailers have turned services like rapid delivery (think Amazon Prime’s free two-day shipping option) and instant in-store pick-up into universal benefits. Make choosing your brand easy by offering members a premium perk like free expedited shipping. Outpacing traditional marketplace offerings will ensure your DTC customers never have to choose between convenience and value.

Reward customers with cashback on the very first order 

The best way to reward transactions? Put money back in your customers’ pockets. In Inveterate’s experience, cashback has a redemption rate 5x more than points, leading to an average 125% increase in purchase frequency. Cashback also avoids discounting issues with “low-cost” leaders like Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Costco.

With retail channels a click away, your loyalty program needs to show customers they have nothing to lose and everything to gain from joining. Cashback shows customers that your membership is worth it from the very first by, making it the most effective method for increasing DTC purchases 

Unlike rewards points that have no intrinsic value, cashback provides obvious, tangible value on every purchase. Cashback is also scalable — meaning your most loyal customers get more cashback with their membership. The more they shop, the more they are incentivized to come back to your store. It’s a win-win: customers get better rewards and you drive more revenue.

Let’s say that your average order value is $100, and you offer new loyalty members a 30% cashback credit — the equivalent of $30 in instant savings. Reveal these savings directly in the shopping cart, and customers can’t refuse — and you’ve already primed them for their next purchase.

Customize your base program at any time

Our foundational loyalty programs incorporate all critical elements for eCommerce success. With benefits like members-only discounts, exclusive brand content, and free shipping, we offer a proven approach to drive more customers to your direct channel and consistently reward them for their engagement. 

Once you scale your membership base, you can test and iterate to optimize results. Then we’ll help you tailor your program to suit your ideal customer.

What makes this strategy even better is that your program consistently flexes and grows with your business. You can make dynamic changes as often as you’d like so you don’t stay on any one loyalty path.

How Fly by Jing drove 130% higher gross revenue per member with The Tastemaker Club

Fly By Jing is a prime example of the results one of our core models, DTC shift, can deliver for your brand. With Inveterate, they transformed their subscription model into a flexible loyalty program that continues to nurture their DTC sales. For just $25 a year, members of “The Tastemaker Club” have access to an array of enticing benefits that provide immediate value, including: 

• 20% off sitewide with every purchase
• Early access to product drops 
• Free shipping on all orders 
• Seasonal gifts that reward consistent customer engagement

Members have eagerly seized these perks, as shown by:

• 82% increase in member order frequency
• 130% increase in gross revenue per member, from $42 to $97
• 2x orders for members vs. non-members

Sound like the conversion unlock you need? Book a demo.