The latest luxury brand collaboration trend is expanding...into NFT's!

Global led toy company Superplastic is joining forces with Italian fashion house, Gucci. Their upcoming NFT collection is rumoured to be a mix of digital and physical keepsakes, set to launch on Feb 1st.

It's becoming very apparent that the luxury industry is open and willing to invest in digital landscape of web 3. Taking this further, Gucci launched their online concept store, "Gucci Vault," the brainchild of their Creative Director, Alessandro Michele.

The NFT will be available to purchase here.

Luxury brands are realising they must continue to innovate and keep up with the changing markets to stay relevant to their audiences. We've already seen significant changes in the way brands are targeting through Ads on TikTok: For reference, check out this quirky ad from Burberry. Even though they are a heritage brand and cemented in British history, they realise that they cannot only rely on this to engage customers.

We're excited to see how the ecom space develops in 2022 in conjunction with Web 3!

In this week's issue: 

• Put this on your Ecom Valentines Strategy To Do List.
• How Threely Plans To Simplify Web 3.
• How To Develop Your SEO Strategy.
• Exploring The Culture Behind Furlough.
• A Look Behind The Scenes Into Winden's Digital Banking Solution.
• Why You Should Emulate The Navy Seals When Interviewing For A Job. 
• Last Week's Best Bits.

💎 Join Furlough on Discord 💎

Put this on your Ecom Valentines Strategy To Do List

1. Creating bundles for his & her gifts
2. Using last-minute gift cards for the lazy guys (that's right) all the way in the back
3. Offering gift guides weeks in advance with visible delivery dates to get those products in time

1. Sending an email 2 weeks in advance saying "Order by February 10 to get your gift in time for that special someone..."
2. Sending an email 1 week in advance saying "Only 3 days left to get that gift for your special someone..."
3. Sending an email the day of the shipping cutoff saying "Here's the next best thing..." and offering up a type of gift card bundle

How Threely Plans To Simplify Web 3

Have you dabbled in the Web 3.0 space yet?

Have you created any wallets on the blockchain yet?

Well if you have, then you've probably had to triple check to make sure you were copying & pasting the right wallet address. And then triple-check again to make sure your transfer doesn't get lost in the abyss.

It's a tedious process that you won't have to use in the not-so-distant future.

That's because the team at Threely.xyz has developed the next evolution of blockchain address identifiers.

This means that instead of sending a transaction to a wallet with a bunch of 1s and 0s and randomization of letters...

You can create a personalized wallet address that is easily identifiable by over 15,000+ blockchains.

Can you see how game-changing this will be?

This specific startup got the entire community on its feet last week as our experts and fellow startup founders addressed the challenges Threely must face.

From a business perspective:

• Their product is solid but they're looking towards mass adoption targeting new web 3.0 users
• They are looking to raise a $2m pre-seed round to build out their organization
• The product has a bunch of different capabilities ranging from B2B & B2C solutions but they don't have a clear pricing model established

• They have a great target market but it's extremely broad (mass adoption)
• They need to simplify their sales cycle and identify their ideal customer profiles
• They have no inbound or outbound lead generation strategy at the moment

This puts Threely in an amazing position as they have exponential room for growth as they fine-tune their go-to-market strategy and launch to the public later this year.

On a side note, the team at Furlough just wants to give a big THANK YOU to all the community members that participate in these Startup Booster sessions.

Without everyone joining in and giving their feedback to these startups every week, this would not be possible.

This is why we keep preaching about growth through collaboration!

Tune in this week as we're going to be diving into Essential Startup Bytes (a startup-focused newsletter that delivers advice from other seasoned founders).

Join us in the #Furlounge this Tuesday @2 pm for some high-level marketing insights!

If you're a founder looking to get your startup boosted, then send a message to one of the community managers in the Furlough discord to join the waitlist (Spots are LIMITED).

How To Develop Your SEO Strategy

When beginning an SEO process or an SEO campaign you want to consider both the user experience as well as Google/bots.
It is important to structure the content around the journey of the customer based on three different scenarios:

1. They’ve never heard about you, they are unfamiliar with your field
2. They know about you, but they don’t know about the product or service you provide
3. They know about you, they want to buy, but need to be incentivized 

• Education --- providing education about who you are and what you offer to the viewer
• Product features and benefits --- explain why the product is the best fit for them  
• A link or prompt from these content pieces to your product

• Minimize the number of requests sent to the server. The more requests, the longer it takes for the server to respond and the slower the website will load. 
• Merge CSS and Java into one code.
• SaaS specifically requires a lot of content in order to harvest the SEO power of Google. You need to push a lot of content on your webpage for example how to use your product, examples of what you can do with it, and in general building knowledge on the webpage. You could create comparison articles between your product and competitors in your space, listicles also work well here.

• It may be necessary to seek out a tech SEO and content strategist in order to find ways to incorporate content and make sure it is geared towards marketing your products and helping Google identify who you are as an entity. 
• Proper implementation of technical SEO is VITAL, otherwise Google may not even be seeing your website. 
• Having clean tech ensures that Google can understand your website, otherwise it can be hard for Google to identify and understand the amazing content you are creating!
• In general, wordpress is pretty good for this right out of the gate whereas ecommerce websites may be a bit more tricky.
• Optimizing your site map is crucial to help the Google bots find your pages. 

• You can resize images to make them smaller. 
• Change fonts or limit the number of fonts. We suggest only two fonts per page, for example, one for the header and one for the content. 
• CAPTCHA solutions can take a lot of your speed, if you have elementor pro you can use a honeypot for your form field which helps reduce load time and they do not inconvenience users. 
• Using tools in the Tools Spotlight can help you check the sizes of different elements, if anything is standing out as really high you can disable it or switch it out using developer tools on the website. 

• You can re-do all the same checks you did for your desktop for the mobile site.
• You can duplicate sections and re-size images for the mobile version by creating two different images, the smaller being for mobile. 

• This tool can help you to analyze which sections of your website are creating speed issues and see which specific elements are causing delays.
• X marks on the elements which can be further optimized. 

• Another tool you can use to see how your site is performing, reveal why it is slow, and uncover opportunities for optimization. 

• Another great tool to test the page load time, analyze it, and find bottlenecks. 

We know SEO can be a challenging part of getting your brand off the ground. If you have SEO questions, feel free to join us at our weekly SEO workshop and pose your questions to our talented hosts!
 

Exploring The Culture Behind Furlough

This week’s highlights:

We took a deep dive into what Furlough has to offer for existing and new members.
Furlough is a group of like-minded individuals who are looking to expand their knowledge, increase business networks, create friendships, enhance skills, and much more!

-        People are joining because they like the open and honest culture of Furlough. Furlough provides a free audience for start-ups. Furlough members provide knowledge and feedback to business owners.

-        The business plans of startups are reviewed by Branding Managers, Marketing Specialists, Strategists, Business owners, and many more.

-        Business owners are receiving feedback on areas such as branding, marketing, pricing, and strategy. The startups are listening to the feedback and implementing changes to better their companies.

-        Furlough is creating invaluable connections by helping service members get funded! Server members are using their own personal networks to connect startups with venture capitalists and investors. Connections are helping companies grow and get funded.

-        We are all strategic partners at Furlough and in doing so created life-long friendships and partnerships.

We believe in connecting people with like minded interests and goals. In this session we took a deeper dive into the characteristics of our members:

-        The members all have a growth mindset. They are friendly, open, honest, eager to learn, and want to create valuable connections.

-        The community culture allows individuals to implement intrinsic motivation. Since the members genuinely like one another there is motivation to work and enhance the Furlough community. Working no longer feels like work when members are friends and you genuinely like being around the people.

-        The motto of the community is to give and help others without the expectation of receiving anything in return. This is similar to the reciprocity principle but with the caveat that no one expects anything in return. The members give to give because we want to help others grow, connect, and learn for the sake of it.

Furlough is rapidly growing:

-        Not only has there been a rapid increase in community membership but Furlough’s client base has expanded as well.

-        We are at the ground floor of Furlough and growth is exponential. It will be exciting to see the opportunities and partnerships that will form in the coming months.

-        Furlough introduced a new community member named Luis who brings a vast array of knowledge and expertise in the realm of owning a vacation rental property company. At its peak Luis owned 78 rental properties. Unfortunately, due to COVID, travel restrictions limited property rentals and Luis’ property numbers declined. Nowadays, people are traveling so Luis’ business is on an upward trajectory. We all look forward to getting to know Luis more and seeing what he has in store for us!

Opportunity Announcement:

Are you a content writer looking to expand into the NFT space? Then reach out to Joe Casanova to get involved in this client project.
-        New opportunities presented themselves for Furlough members. An opportunity to help in content writing for various topics on NFT’s became available. A few people have volunteered to help but there are still some topics available for those who want to help. Moreover, an opportunity to increase activity on a Cryptocurrency twitter account became available and the role was quickly filled within a couple hours!

Server Changes:

-        Changes to the Furlough server included new channels such as gym pics, gm/gn, foodgasm, and random.

-        The new channels provide another chance for server members to get to know one another on a personal level. 

We're looking forward to seeing your posts in the new channels. Check out these awesome foodie pics from our community members, but beware, you'll probably feel hungry soon after!

A Look Behind The Scenes Into Winden's Digital Banking Solution

Are you getting tired of using Paypal or Stripe as your digital banking solution?

As digital marketers, it's extremely difficult to find an online payment solution that caters to your specific needs (i.e. tracking expenses, seamless invoicing, free transfers, etc.)

Just last week we did a brand audit on Winden.co (a banking solution designed specifically for digital entrepreneurs).

They're basically going to be the golden child for digital entrepreneurs and the best-kept secret in the industry.

They offer unlimited cash back (1% back on ALL ad-spend), zero hidden fees, no credit check, and the ability to get paid instantly from your favorite payment processors.

As you can see, this product is going to be extremely useful not only for digital professionals but also for digital businesses (B2C & B2B capabilities).

But after analyzing their marketing channels there were a few things that really stood out for us:
 

1. SEO: they have zero SEO performance or visibility (they need to create content relevant to their target audience)
2. Paid Social: currently doing some low budget testing with marketing & entrepreneurship audiences (but no tracking is in place to store these analytics)
3. Email Marketing: they need to work on integrating conversions from email in order to optimize performance

Since this company is still in its infancy, there's plenty of work to be done before the product is available to the public.

But this brand has the potential to compete with some of the biggest names out there in digital banking solutions.

Until then, come check out this week's Brand Audit session featuring a special guest (you won't want to miss this one).

Join us in the #Furlounge this Thursday @ 2 pm to listen in on some high-level marketing insights!

If you're a brand looking to get your 2022 action plan, then send a message to one of the community managers in the Furlough discord to join the waitlist (Spots are LIMITED).

Why you should emulate The Navy Seals when interviewing for a job. 

Something amazing happened.

Our email marketing extraordinaire Eric, had a lead list scraped to help with outbound efforts so we can bring more work into the community.

You won’t believe how big the list is.

300k.

In conjunction with this Gensen has engaged someone in B2B lead gen. He has put him to the test with starting with 10,000 leads. This could be huge for our community and potentially fill up all the spaces for the Startup Booster and Brand Audit sessions. 

Session Highlights:

We spoke with Jon Hinterliter, award winning author of “The Death Of Content Is King” about how to interview candidates now that The Great Resignation is happening.

1. Ask questions that test integrity.

“How do you deal with roadblocks?”

“Give details of a situation where you had to comply with a rule you disagreed with."

“Tell us about the biggest failure of your professional career.”

More and more employers are beginning to value high trust over low skill.

Why?

You can teach skill but you can't teach trust. This is exactly how The Navy Seals hire.

2. How to validate someone’s skill set:

Ask them something you know about, but pretend you don’t know. This can also give you an indication of how proficient they are at communicating ideas. 

3. A good resume doesn’t mean a good candidate.

Ophir has interviewed over 1000 candidates throughout his career and even gave Joe his first job. If a resume is completely perfect it could mean that the candidate isn’t being entirely truthful, especially when it comes to employment gaps.

4. Ambition is the number 1 thing.

Try to find people who are looking to get out of their comfort zone and show proactiveness when it comes to troubleshooting challenges. This is how you encourage your team to have an independent edge. As a manager or employer it’s important to empower your employees to go after their long-term goals. This is something you should talk about in the interview process so you can make sure everyone is in alignment.

What do you think is the best way to hire talent? Tell us here.

Last Weeks Best Bits

Get ready to experience last weeks best bits from our community:

GROWTH-HACKING: Hacking the unconscious with Rory Sutherland.

STRATEGY: A hot conversation about finding product market fit. Who’s side are you on?

SOCIAL-MEDIA: The best tools to schedule instagram posts.

Have a great week and we hope to see you in our Mastermind today at 12PM EST!