About the Product:

Nivoda is thrilled to announce its free e-commerce "Memo" diamond purchase capability. For the first time in the history of the jewellery business, jewelers will be able to source thousands of diamonds from the largest diamond marketplace in the world on a 7-day memo service at no additional markup. Customers using 30-day credit can now enjoy up to 37-day terms and sample from a selection of thousands of stones with unlimited right to return.

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The Who?

Our ICP

Our ideal customer profile would could be broken down into two sections, Buyers and Influencers

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Primary Audience:

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The typical ICP for this program would be someone who works for a Brick and Mortar Jewellery store in the USA and has been in this industry for at least 10 years.

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Secondary Audience

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Customers Interviewed:

TAM / SAM / SOM

TAM

As of 2023, there were around 17,600 jewellery stores throughout the United States. (source - Statista)

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SAM

Considering we already have 2000 customers / jewellery stores onboarded our serviceable attainable market would drop down to 15k.

SOM

And since we have to onboard customers with high credit rating, assuming that only 20% of these customers are credit worthy - our SOM would be around 3000 jewellery stores additionally.

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Since these are big jewellery brands with with high volumes, even though the overall number might seem low, considering their brand presence and footfall, just 1 store is about to generate a million dollars in revenue in a month through jewellery sales they would typically constitute of 80% of order volumes in the US. We would intentionally not want to onboard customers with a bad reputation.

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Acquisition Channel Overview

In this section we will evaluate the various acquisition channels available in our toolbox and understand the pros and cons of using each one of them.

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Since our product is in the PMF stage, there are still a lot of tweaks that need to take place and therefore we need ensure we meet the criteria of getting customers 1) Cheaper 2) Faster 3) Feedback Driven Way

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Let's look at the various possible channels and understand the challenges and benefits with each one of them.

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Founders Brand 🏆

Pros
Since the company has been servicing a subset of customers already, and is introducing this new product offering, reaching out to existing customers with the founders influence is the most cost effective and easiest way to get early feedback from the customers at the time of launch. This will can also help us tweak our marketing pitch and make adjustments to our product before we start to scale the marketing efforts.

Cons:
The only downside of this method is scale. At later stages this will tend to become a bottle neck but as we are at the PMF stage, this is one of the most crucial channels for us to acquire customers and get feedback without burning a hole in our pockets by spending too much on ads.

In App Messaging🏆

Pros

Since we are targeting a subset of existing user base who are transacting on our platform it becomes a no brainer for us to put up a banner / intro in front of the users to inform them about the new product launch offering. They are logging into the platform almost everyday and we have all the attention and eyeballs that we need. This might require some dev effort in terms of integrating a third party tool but that's about it.

Cons

The only concern with this method is the feedback loop. While with the analytics integrations we might be able to see how many users are engaging with the banner and later on being acquired, feedback as a loop needs to be integrated in the post purchase experience to ensure we understand the improvements required. Alternatively, we could also understand from looking at the inbound support tickets if any concerns or negative feedback is coming through.

Email Marketing 🏆

Pros

Since these are businesses, being active on email is a given. That's where the business owners would be spending at least 30% of their time on. They for sure will be attentive and responsive enough on their business email.

The typical benchmarks for email open rates for B2B email marketing is 15%. [link], while in the past our customers have engaged with our emails at the rate of upto 40%

Cons

Lost in spam! and no clear feedback mechanism are concerns with this approach. With the right tweaking this can be streamlined to ensure we can make this channel successful. More on the approach later.

Organic Search and Paid Ads 🥉

While these might be great channels for acquisition from a new user acquisition perspective at this stage of the product they are not scalable due to the following reasons.

1. High cost involved in PPC with unclear goals on who we can bring on board.
2. The conversion rate might be low, since we need leads with good credit history to get onboarded in the beginning.
3. B2B professionals don't tend to search for services on google or facebook, they rely on references within the industry and word of mouth.​

Referral 🥈

Pros

As mentioned earlier, these businesses tend to rely on word of mouth and "Trust" being an important factor -- Referral can play a pivotal role in ensuring the flywheel kicks off and we acquire the right customers. It checks all the boxes required for a brand to build trust, except the following concern.

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Cons

Since with the new service the Jewellery store owner will be able to get goods cheaper and faster, it helps them build an edge in the market and Nivoda becomes the best kept secret. The biggest challenge to solve for in the referral would be to provide enough incentive to ensure they keep referring vetted customers with good credit rating at the same time don't loose out on their unfair advantage. More on this strategy later.

Customer Feedback

That was a wrap on the various acquisition channels. Now let's look at the experiments we will be running to acquire customers and test the various channels.

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Acquisition Experiments 🧪

Experiment 1:​

Experiment 2:​

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Email Mock:

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Experiment 3: ​

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Partner Program Design

Our core value proposition is faster delivery speeds and best price, as we drive economies of scale, we are able to bring down our cost of shipments and earn more. For this product we can leverage the partner program which incentivises customers to refer their competition or within their network and get benefits out of it.

The eligibility to the partner program is only through an exclusive invite from Nivoda, which limits access and ensures not everyone gets the same benefit as they haven't qualified for certain conditions.

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The qualifying criteria for the partner program is as follows

1. Have a credit rating of 1 and above. (1 being the best and 3 being the worse)
2. Have a memo conversion ratio of 50% (this is the order confirmation rate, which in turn reduces the returns and the cost of return shipping)
3. Have more than 50 converted orders per month on this service.

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AHA Moments
When we get 10 consecutive orders in a row in a same month and the delivery promise is met without any delays.

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Onboarding and Discovery

To make the partners feel special about the program, we intend to send them a gift hamper consisting of goodies and a note which outlines the benefits of a partner program.

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Ongoing Experience and Incentives to refer

The keep getting the platform currency for each order that their referee places on the platform and converts, this incentivises them to only refer customers who have a decent order volume and credibility.

Channel For Referring

The customers will have an in app section for referring and tracking their referrals on the mobile app and web dashboard. They can also track the shipment credits received and see which one's of their referee is engaging more although the exact value will be hidden to prevent any misuse of information and maintain Nivoda's trust with the referee.

Utilising Credits

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What do they get? Benefits of the program

1. For every referral that transacts on a recurring basis the partners get paid a fee of 0.01% from the commissions we earn. Since the AOV is typically higher for natural diamonds this would compensate for at least 4 shipments every month.
2. As they have qualified for the partner program, if they themselves continue engaging with the service on an ongoing basis, they get a volume discount of 0.5% for every converted orders. Although this is a monetary benefit it has more to do with access since not every customer will have access to this.
3. Along with this they can also avail access to interest free payment terms for 45 days.

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Whats' in it for Nivoda? Why should leadership approve the partner program?

As we have already seen how the partners / referrals can create a tremendous word of mouth for various products. This partner programs can be an organic channel of acquisition where Nivoda can leverage existing relationships of the jewellers to get a foot in the door and tap in the existing US market.

With this I conclude my proposal for the acquisition strategy for our new service offering which can lead to a continuous flywheel of referrals and a win win for all parties involved. 💪

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