Electriq CEO Brandon Amoroso

Electriq is the self-described Gen-Z retention & growth agency helping eCom companies improve retention and increase LTV via their fully integrated specialist teams across email/SMS marketing, web dev, SEO/content, and social.

The agency’s client roster spans household name brands like Mixtiles, florence by mills, Soylent, and Martha Stewart Wine Co., to name just a few. We sat down with Electriq CEO Brandon Amoroso to dive into web3 from a brand agency’s perspective, covering: 

• Two prominent barriers to entry for brands considering web3 strategies
• Three common NFT use cases that are drawing interest from Electriq clients
• Brandon’s three-step primer for merchants of any size looking to enter the NFT space

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Pre-Novel Blockers: A Lack of Technical Tooling

As Brandon explains, his day-to-day at Electriq comprises working simultaneously across a diversity of clients while iterating through their questions about new growth, retention, and (naturally) how expanding into the realm of web3 might present respective solutions. 

He can thus point to two of the most prominent blockers for businesses looking to learn more about or finally enter the space — but who just can’t seem to get started. 

Lack of Cohesive web3 Education

Put simply, Brandon considers this the most significant hurdle of the bunch. 

After all, even as someone who lives and breathes the digital commerce space, he struggles in intellectually parsing through web3 as a concept due to its seemingly endless applications. 

This reality is only exacerbated by the fact that: 

• Brands and end-users alike remain deeply entrenched in the status quo of Web 2.0 and thus struggle to conceptualize a completely novel online architecture. 
• General anxieties and misunderstandings are stoked by horror stories about NFTs, i.e., individual celebrities or software pros launching their own web3 projects worth multi-millions — which then fail and tank the investments of all involved parties.
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Technical Deployment Blockers

Before Novel, as Brandon puts it, a Shopify-based merchant or brand — or even an established agency like Electriq — would not have been able to execute an NFT campaign without pouring immense capital into engineering bespoke solutions. 

He considers Novel’s responsive software a success in three ways: 

• They’ve aggregated all the steps a merchant would’ve had to conduct on their own and incorporated them into one platform. 
• The Novel UI and workflow are structured and streamlined to intuitively enable merchants to operationalize an NFT within Shopify. 
• Helping brands leverage web3 to generate brand loyalty speaks a language that any marketing, sales, or biz dev team can quickly get behind. 

In Brandon’s words, the magic of Novel resides in the way users maneuver a web3 element like any piece of regular inventory. It just so happens to be virtual.

Three Ways Brands Are Breaking Into NFTs

Regarding use cases for web3 elements, specifically around Novel-powered NFTs, Brandon describes three widely discussed areas of interest for Electriq’s roster of DTC brands. 
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1. Exclusivity via Token-Gated Content

While an NFT is virtually free and effortless to generate via Novel, the token still carries value and rarity that users crave, which can also be leveraged to craft unique loyalty reward systems. 

This typically looks like exclusive merch, branded content, and web pages. For instance: 

• The NBA has taken to selling video highlights as virtual tokens. 
• Clinique ran a global competition to gift limited-edition NFTs to three members of their user rewards program who also participated through social media posts. 
• Florence by mills, an Electriq client and clean beauty brand founded by actress Millie Bobby Brown, will be tapping into the intersecting circles of loyal users and her fanbase. 

This will likely entail exclusive content, skins, and drops only accessible to token holders. And, as Brandon tells it, the actress-founder will essentially mint exclusive videos as virtual tokens that can only be owned by one lucky fan. 
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2. Lower-Cost Retention Efforts

Novel can also be incorporated into the rest of a company’s tech stack and their more traditional efforts related to retention and fostering user loyalty. 

For instance, an ambassador could receive a limited edition piece from a digital collection rather than receiving a discount on their next order. 

This approach drives loyalty and could also reduce hard costs that typically accompany referral and ambassador programs, i.e., the pure supply chain drain of manufacturing and mailing branded physical merchandise. 
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3. Legacy Brand Participation

As Brandon tells it, even legacy brands and enterprises — ranging from Adidas to Hot Wheels — are orchestrating web3 plays to meet audience expectations and avoid potentially seeming non-innovative or irrelevant to younger user demos.

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How to Maximize Your Brand’s web3 Potential

Finally, for eCom brands of any size and vertical looking to take the plunge into orchestrating their NFT collection or related web3 campaign, Brandon outlines the following threefold plan as low-hanging fruit for getting started. 
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1. Gauge Interest Within Your User Base

As Brandon reiterates, performing temperature checks with your audience is essential to any significant move for your brand, whether related to web3 or not. 

Collecting critical input on whether to venture into specific spaces and how to shape these programs might look like: 

• Launching a post-purchase survey directly on your site
• Opening up feedback channels for your most loyal repeat customers
• Sending a one-off campaign to your subscribers or broader user database

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This helps avoid the worst-case scenarios of pouring resources into rolling out an NFT program, only to find our users have little-to-no knowledge of or interest in web3. Or, in some cases, your project framework is simply incompatible with the habits of your user base.

This establishes an experiential layer to your outreach that leaves users feeling valued and included in the brand-building process. 
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2. Apply Your Digital Product Perspective

Again, as with adding any new SKU or product line to your existing inventory and brand experience, Brandon advises making the following crucial considerations: 

• What precisely would your brand roll-out and sell? 
• Will it align with your brand experience and user base?
• How will you drive brand loyalty from your web3 project? 
• What token-gated drops and fresh content can you stage? 
• How will you scale these efforts to new audience segments? 
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3. Install Novel

Brandon summarizes what he considers the most critical part of this workflow in two words: Download Novel. As he puts it, any brand can actualize their web3 potential via the platform, with all the functionality of their Shopify store and without the need for technical overhead.
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“If you’re diving into web3, which could be a major departure for your customers, you should constantly check in with them. The best way to get into NFTs is to start by already having these levers in place for rapid user feedback.”