Season 2 Episode 8: 95% of consumers read reviews before purchasing from a new site

S2 E8 PODCAST

On this episode of Retention Chronicles we’re joined by Mat Bingham, Director of Technology Partnerships at Okendo, the customer marketing platform that builds connections between consumers and the brands they love through showcasing high-impact social proof such as product ratings & reviews, customer photos & videos, and Q&A message boards. On this episode we chat about;

  • collecting data and influencing customer behavior,
  • what to do if you have 5 reviews for one product and 100 for another,

  • how cross and upsells should include social proof, UGC, and/or reviews,
  • and onsite post purchase surveys

Be sure to subscribe to our pod to stay up-to-date and checkout Malomo, the leading order tracking platform for Shopify brands.

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TRANSCRIPT

This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

reviews, brands, people, social proof, kendo, customer, consumer, purchase, big, super, data, retention, partnerships, product, email, build, gave, shopify, excited, partner

SPEAKERS

Mat Bingham, Noah Rahimzadeh, Mariah Parsons

Noah Rahimzadeh 00:05

Hey retention pros. I'm Notre Dame's today and I lead partnerships here at Malomo. I'm super pumped to continue to chat with ecosystem experts alongside Mariah you all already know and love, say hi, Mariah,

Mariah Parsons 00:16

Hey everyone, as you probably no potential Chronicles likes to bring in some of the best retention focus brands in the Shopify ecosystem.

Noah Rahimzadeh 00:24

But we don't just feature grants, we also feature some great thought leaders in the Shopify ecosystem that served us brands.

Mariah Parsons 00:31

And because we always want these conversations to be fun, you'll hear us talk to our guests about what they're excited about, and let's help them get to where they are today.

Noah Rahimzadeh 00:39

We hope you'll stick around to learn and laugh.

Mariah Parsons 00:42

Retention Chronicles is sponsored by Malomo a shipment in order tracking platform improving the post purchase experience, be sure to subscribe and check out all of our episodes at Bo malomo.com.

Noah Rahimzadeh 01:00

All right. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the next episode of retention Chronicles. We're here today with Matt Bingham, the Director of Technology Partnerships out of Canada. Hey, Matt.

Mat Bingham 01:11

Hey, how you doing? Doing well,

Noah Rahimzadeh 01:13

man. Again, thank you so much for for joining. And as always, I'm also joined by my lovely co host, Mariah.

Mariah Parsons 01:22

Hi, everyone.

Noah Rahimzadeh 01:24

So Matt, we'd love to start these off. Like I said, super conversational. Love to start with, like, just you, you as a guy, you as a person. So I love to ask like our guests, one or two things that you're excited about in your personal life before we dive into the shop talk,

Mat Bingham 01:42

ya know, first and foremost, thank you, Noah, and Mariah for having me on. And I'm super blessed to have this opportunity. I know, you guys have been growing your podcast audience. So thank you for having me on today. But I love the first personal question. It's instead of just diving right in, but I get a couple of things on my end that I'm excited about is my wife and I have been like aggressively saving over the past couple of years to potentially purchase home in the next couple of months. So in that process of like, you know, looking at homes and thinking about options, I think that's always kind of an exciting time in your life. It's very confusing at the same time. It's, it's kind of a cool milestone. And then I think just personally, I'm super excited about this holiday season, I think it's going to be the past couple of years have been really weird. But I think personally, I think it's going to be an interesting season for brands. And I'm excited to see what brands do because I'm a big consumer myself. So looking at the big holidays. I could buy for family, but more importantly for me.

Noah Rahimzadeh 02:51

So you're excited to continue the savings because as a homeowner for about two years now, I think coming up in October, so yeah. Oh, really soon. You know, don't stop saving. I'll just tell you that. You're nowhere near done saving.

Mat Bingham 03:11

Yeah. Yeah, it's exciting time. But, you know, it's also a crazy market here in the Bay Area in California. But, you know, you think about homeownership as a teenager kid and you start getting ready, because it's gonna be really exciting. And I live in an apartment in San Francisco that doesn't have a yard. And we have two dogs. So very excited to be able to open a door and like be in my bathrobe with my dogs where I don't have to get out to the bathroom every dream. So

Noah Rahimzadeh 03:45

we're in the Bay Area. Are you looking anywhere specific? Are

Mat Bingham 03:48

ya like Oakland? More North Bay? can never afford actually in SF proper, but you know, stay here in the Bay Area, which is a great place to live.

Noah Rahimzadeh 03:59

For sure. Yeah. And I think, you know, a testament to what you've probably done up until this point. And that's probably a great transition. And I'd love to hear a little bit about your career so far. And roll that into your, your, your current position. Okay, no,

Mat Bingham 04:16

yeah, no, it's kind of interesting. So I came up to SF 2008 or nine to finish school. I went to SF State. But right when I got out of school, pretty much every college grad goes through, like, well, what the hell do I do now? But I ended up finding a job and how I got into E commerce was actually working for a company called my book buyer. It's like a textbook buyback company that we would buy textbooks for people and then relisted on our own website or on Amazon. And I basically built the whole website, the back end processing, was doing some like early on, you know, this is like 2012 I want to say, like early on Facebook ads, like really, really like kind of low Getting some of the nitty gritty, even though it wasn't a direct to consumer brand, it still gave me some background. I had a short stint at Intuit, it was just a branch of Intuit for a little while, which was, gave me a little taste of the corporate world, but it just wasn't for me, which I think a lot of people agree with. But I always kind of had that like ecommerce thought in the back of my head. So I ended up actually running into opportunity at a company called Justuno. I'm sure you guys are partners with them, I was one of the first hires to kind of manage sales. And, you know, that was a team of like, five at the time. 10 were super small. And at the time, this is like 2013 14. We were doing like, you know, Facebook likes to get a coupon. Now, no pop ups, but it used to be like close competitor and give us a nice book like and, you know, it was it was kind of a cool experience, because I got to get more exposure to like DTC brands. And at that time, it was, you know, online shopping was starting to take off a lot in 2013 14. And you saw a lot of direct consumers start to scale businesses through, you know, affected paid media and email marketing. And it was really kind of a changing landscape. And I was like, This is what I want to be like, this is like, the cool industry. And, you know, I'm a consumer every day. So I, I just like fell in love with it and did sales for about a year. But my CEO at the time, Eric, he came up to me one day, and it was like, We need a partner program. And he basically came to me with a sheet, a Google sheet of like, all these random email addresses from agencies and tech partners, and he's like, figure something out. And at the time, partnerships wasn't really even kind of a big category, right? You know, the

Noah Rahimzadeh 06:49

argue it's still sort of in its infancy.

Mat Bingham 06:53

That's crazy to see the progression, I mean, back then, shop, a partner team, I remember Bronto, which isn't in existence anymore, but that was like Oracle, Gander of, you know, partnerships. So, built a Delta partner program was there for a while, had a short stint at shipbob, as well, which was a good learning experience, and then landed here to kendo, earlier this year to kind of manage Technology Partnerships, and it's been a great job kind of learning about integrations, also, like working with partners to kind of create co branded stories and help merchants with their tech stack. And, you know, it's been a really cool experience. And also I get to work with people, like, you know, which is always a big plus. So, you know, it's been kind of a crazy partnership progression over the years. And, you know, seeing that I, I've been in partnership, since like, 2015, I want to say, or even a little before that, like, I do sometimes feel like a dinosaur, but it's also great to see and like, there's such a big ecommerce partner network now, right, like, you know, they had the catalyst thing in Miami, crossbeam came out, and now it's like a whole conference, like, it's cool to be a part of this community and really see, like, really bright and intelligent people bring stuff to the space that, you know, it's fun to be a part of. So yeah, it's kind of a cool trajectory. But ecommerce is awesome. And I just love being a part of it.

Noah Rahimzadeh 08:17

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I had a similar experience, where I went to the enterprise side after being like, in entrenched in the startup world in my first part of my career. And I honestly wouldn't say that I like hated it. But one of the big reasons I came to Malama was to get back in this, like more of the Startup Grind. And I actually just connected with our CEO yesterday, and was telling him like, I just told I forget if it was my friend or my girlfriend, but I literally was just talking about how happy I am that I made the move like it is just so much more my speed and like seeing the impact a lot more clearly, I think is important to me as well, which sounds like is with you, too. I'm curious, in that first gig that you were at you, you dove right into like building a website and Facebook ads? Is that what you actually studied in school? Or were you picking that up from scratch? Yeah, so

Mat Bingham 09:16

I actually went to school for like business management, which is kind of overall, you know, a little bit of everything right, which is great. And then, you know, I met that guy. I think it was a Craigslist ad. I just randomly applied and, you know, I met him in the back of this random warehouse.

Noah Rahimzadeh 09:34

And this is the second guest we've had that said they found their job on Craigslist.

Mariah Parsons 09:40

Yeah. It's an emerging pattern.

Mat Bingham 09:43

It's definitely was back then, you know, it was like LinkedIn was still in its infancy days. So yeah, you know, just kind of found it and then he brought me on to kind of manage just kind of the transactional stuff at first and then he was like, really He's struggling with getting people to like, find him on Google on, you know, the ads, he was doing some ads, but it wasn't really working that well. And I just kind of took ownership, I was like, I might as well just try this out. And he gave me a free rein, which I think they looking back, I really appreciate it because it gave me more of a foundation of like what to do. And I believe he actually sold his business from what I recall passed a couple of years ago. But I got a pretty good foundation. I think we built it on WordPress, which was super simple at the time, and then learning Facebook ads on the fly. It was like, it was such a wild wild west back then. But it worked. So you know, it was a good learning experience,

Noah Rahimzadeh 10:40

for sure. I'm sure had a big impact on ending up as Director of Partnerships, that kind of data. Yeah. Yeah. And I know, you mentioned just, you know, to we're actually launching our first like, actual live integration with one of our joint clients where they're going to do SMS capture on their order tracking page, which we are super passionate about, because we think there's a huge opportunity there. But yeah, diving a little bit more into to kendo, I think, you know, you're much more established, I think then Malama been around a little bit longer. But in case some of our audience doesn't know about you, could you give us a little overview of you know, who it's built for. And the problem that okay, there solves?

Mat Bingham 11:23

Yeah, absolutely. So you know, kindo is a customer marketing platform, it really just enables brands to grow quicker and stronger. With like building customer relationships. brands can really just gain like a lot of like, actual insights based upon customer like preferences and behaviors. We can drive customer advocacy and drive more personalized experiences. You know, we're actually built exclusively for Shopify and Shopify Plus brands, we work with about 6000 plus of them, including skins, magic spoon, like first form. And we've actually really just helped brands leverage their most important asset, which is their customers. And that's collecting reviews, displaying them on site, connecting them to your channels like clay, VO attentive, so you can make more personalized, you know, emails or recommendations. And really, what I like about kendo and why I joined earlier this year was that in this space, this considering a lot of like how iOS and Facebook updates have like, really dramatically changed over the past two or three years. And it's going to continue to change with privacy laws. Really, you can't scale the business like it was when I first started, like we used to just throw Facebook ads at lookalike audiences. And we grew that my book buyer to a pretty good size. But you can't do that anymore, right? You need customer insights, you need customer data, you need them to provide that information, so that you can be more effective with your retention marketing. So that's really why I joined Oh, kendo, and really Oh, kendo is built for anyone really like if you think about your consumer behaviors day to day, like, how often do you read reviews, when you go to a new site, you know, like, you go down and you see what people are talking about how they're rating products, you do that on Amazon, you do that on D to C, you do that when you go out to eat. So that's really what excites me about reviews is that it can be not only an effective channel for your business, collecting data, but it can be an effective channel at influencing people's behaviors when they're purchasing and really aligning their decision based upon similar similarities between other people that have submitted reviews. So yeah, we're excited, we got a lot of new stuff coming out in the next couple of weeks that are going to be pretty interesting as well. But I like to think of it as two components where like a customer data platform, we collect a lot of really cool customer data. And then we also really help with like your review Strategy and Performance. So yeah, that's the kind of the long winded answer. But that's that's kind of the way I think of Oh, kendo,

Noah Rahimzadeh 13:57

that is an awesome overview. And I know, you know, we're standing up or already have some kendo review integration on order tracking pages recently, which is really awesome to see. You, you know, you talked about the whole like, idea of getting people to purchase based on what others are doing and like what others like I'm reading the book Influence right now, which is fascinating. And one of the chat, the chapter I'm on right now actually is called social proof. It's like one of four or five levers of influence that they talked about. It's right up. Right up. Oh, Canada's ally. I think the whole idea is like, the more people I think the section I read last night was literally called, like, their strength in numbers and like social proofs good. But the more social proof, the better. And I think that's pretty much Canada's mission. I'm curious if you have any like top of mind, real life examples of this working in the wild or even just like overall metrics that you've seen in terms of how social proof impacts impacts like buyer behavior.

Mat Bingham 15:03

Yeah, you know, it's interesting, I think it's something like 95% of people read reviews before purchasing from a new site. So you know, people read reviews, we also notice that when people click on reviews and like sort them out by maybe like UGC, or photos, or you know, something that's unique to get kendo is we collect a lot of attributes on the Review Submission. So like, instead of just regular five stars, you can ask your customers to say, you know, what did you use the shirt for is it like for workout or just regular wearing are like a bunch of different attributes that you would find relevant as a brand. But what people do when they look at that review widget and sorted out based around their own characteristics is that we find that people add to the cart at a higher percentage, they stay on site longer. People have that, like you mentioned, the social proof, it's just kind of a way to, you know, psychologically get over that initial barrier, you know, I always relate a lot of things to ecommerce, like big box stores, you know, or like any type of store that would walk into a cake store, there's a bunch of cakes all over the place, they all look great. But you don't really know which flavors which are like what's kind of the specialty, when you talk to somebody behind the counter, you know, you get a better sense, and you might make a decision, I kind of think of the same thing as reviews, you know, like, you'll look at a lot of products, you'll read some reviews, you kind of get a better sense, maybe, if you're a good brand, you're doing some personalization, or on site messaging to kind of like, help me get over that guests that friction towards a purchase. So that's really what we see a lot with our brands is that when they use a lot of effective review displays, not only in on site, but an email, or SMS, or whatever it may be, you're gonna get higher engagement and higher overall conversions. Because it's, it's really just creating trust. And that's hard to do through a screen, you know, and we click through so much as consumers, right click through ads, I click their emails, I'll browse stuff really quickly. Whatever you can do to kind of like, alleviate my concerns. And that says that same session, I think you're just going to increase your opportunities for purchases. And, you know, we have a lot of really cool data on our site, that you guys can check out a lot of really good ebooks from partners that we work with that mentioned the same type of thing. When you add that social proof, it really does, you know, engage your customers better.

Mariah Parsons 17:32

Yeah, I love that point that you brought up that, like the in person cake example. I think that's great. And even with apparel, it's like in person, the shopping experience does look different. Because virtually like you said, across the screen, it's so much harder to know like to see the product that you have. So the social proof kind of is a substitute virtually for like, Oh, you're in a store, you can try it on, you can like feel the fabric, you can see it in person, like see how it is on you. So I love that that little, that little point or that example of like seeing cakes, like you can see them all visually. But social proof adds and takes away some of that. It adds a lot of validation to a product and takes away some of that stress is like, Oh, I'm purchasing this. Is it going to actually are my expectations of what's online going to be met with what product will actually arrive at my house?

Mat Bingham 18:24

Yeah, and it's interesting to when you look at like the number of reviews, like if there's, I'm sure you see it on like Amazon or even on DTC sites, like there's a product and only has five reviews, and it's like five stars, and you're like, okay, like, I guess it's kind of good. But then you see the same product listed somewhere else, but it has 20,000 reviews, and it's like maybe 4.1 out of five stars, like, lean towards the end more reviews, because it's like, well, it's a larger audience, they'd have more trust towards it. And that's just the small like psychological things. And it's the same thing. When I look on Yelp, when I look for like a restaurant, you know, it has kind of kind of a Okay, reviews, rating, but it has 50,000 It's like, well, there's always going to be kind of some variations that you're going to get, but I have a little bit more trust, because there's a lot more reviews here. So yeah, I agree. I always I miss Walmart, in the old days, remember there was that door greeter probably don't really have that. But it was creating trust, that's what you want to do as brands is you want to create trust, you want to make people feel comfortable with their purchase. Because especially now with like, how the market is and people with inflation and money like they're gonna hold on a little tighter. So you got to kind of break that break down that barrier and say, This is gonna be something really good for you. It's gonna fit, you know, it's going to be really well for your family or whatever it may be. So yeah, that's a that's a great element to try to produce. It's not always easy, but it's worth the effort because it can be a huge lift for your brand.

Mariah Parsons 19:56

Yeah, as as you were speaking. I have a question for you that can that came to mind, do you ever see like, within the same brand, a variation between different products having more reviews versus another product? And how do you like problem solve for that? So like, one has like, five reviews, and then one has like, 20k? You know, I know that's a big disparity, but what does okay to kind of do to like, counter that? Or do you see that's an issue, like across different brands?

Mat Bingham 20:24

Yeah, you know, you're obviously always gonna have like best sellers. And the more best sellers are gonna have more reviews at the end of the day. But, you know, we try to advise brands, if like, there's items that you have, maybe lower review rate, if you do get a purchase, maybe try creating like a less of a review, length submission. So instead of asking all these things, like, maybe just ask for a star rating and one attribute or make it a little easier for me as a consumer to like, leave a review, or try some different channels for that. So like, maybe instead of just sending an email, maybe doing an email and an SMS review request, just to kind of increase your chances. But, you know, that's, you're always going to have like, items that have a lot more reviews than others, because they're just best sellers. I just think I saw a brand of ours, it was kind of similar as like 5000 on two or three products. And then there was another five or six that were like more new, maybe like a new season, so they didn't really have any, but you know, I think at the end of the day, if you're displaying something it's going to be more impactful than nothing is, you know, if the page has no reviews, it's really kind of a not a turn off. It's just kind of a hesitation. And when you create agitation psychologically, then that's always a big, you know, impact.

Mariah Parsons 21:39

Yeah, for sure. Thank you.

Noah Rahimzadeh 21:41

I, I love the Yelp example. Like it just, it brings reviews so much to the forefront for me, because in the example you just gave where there's no reviews, like there's not a shine, hell, I'm going to that restaurant, but I use, but I use Yelp all the time, when I travel, like, especially in places like San Francisco or New York, we're going to be there in a couple of weeks for attendance conference. And I countless times, you know, I'm looking at a restaurant, I saw that it has four star four and a half star reviews, I'm really excited, then I see like, it's been reviewed, like less than however, you know, however many in my mind, at that point makes sense, less than 10 times it's like, no way I'm going there, like no proof, no social proof at all that's going to sort of get me over the line to go there, especially when there's so many options. Right. So like, that's, you know, very similar, I think, to the E commerce world.

Mat Bingham 22:34

Absolutely. And, you know, the best thing about reviews is, people usually leave them when they're super happy. Or they might be the alternative but like, at least if you're collecting that information and just like providing it to customers, it's always going to bring a level of like, just comfort, I hate to keep bringing that up, but like you know, that's all that's all it is at the end of the day is like creating comfort towards a purchase, or filling a need that that person's in at the moment. Especially for DTC brands, I think that's really kind of the way to capitalize is really just creating more comfort towards the purchase

Noah Rahimzadeh 23:09

100% As Matt was talking, Mariah was thinking at the end of the season, we're gonna have to do like, my key takeaways, because there's so many recurring themes already, and this is only a third. But the third episode, we're recording for our ecosystem episodes, but a couple of things that stuck out to me were the zero party data that we just talked about yesterday with tomorrow agency, and that episode isn't out yet. So I'm not going to spoil and also, he talked a lot about the website being like your think of the website as like your in store salesperson, so like that person behind the cake store desk, the website should function as closely as possible to that personalized experience and by you know, giving that social proof I think that's one sort of checkbox to be able to do that.

Mat Bingham 24:04

No, I agree. I think a lot of times and brands it's no fault of their own, they're trying to scale and grow their business but I always kind of recommend to brands take a step back and think about how you would interact this as a brand new consumer. I think sometimes you know you're in the head in the sand you're trying to fulfill orders you're sending out an email you're doing a social posts like if your online brand you got like 1000 Different fires put out every day. It's like maybe taking that step back and being like how is this website build or how is this email gonna like help new consumer build some sort of community or trust with me or you know, we're doing like a cart abandonment email like how are we going to help them kind of see the the light at the end of the tunnel? Will you know is it more actionable in that email or not? You know, I think the stork Brian, you can do so much for conversion rate optimization in terms of design. and display. But at the end of the day with, you're not adding like social proof or personalized messaging, I think you're missing out on an opportunity to make maybe a new consumer or somebody that's still learning about you, you know, purchase from you. And I think that's no photo and that brand owners, they got 1000 things going on. But I always like to recommend that to them. Because it's a good way to kind of like reset, it's like, okay, let's think about how this will be perceived to certain audiences to, you know, make them feel more comfortable.

Noah Rahimzadeh 25:30

Right. I love that you just said the word, new consumer, because that's exactly where I want to go next. I'm curious, if you obviously retention Chronicles, we like to talk about retention. And so I'm curious if you see any distinguish, or like distinguishing characteristics between how reviews affect new customers versus repeat customers? And if the strategy for acquisition versus retention changes based on a brand's priorities?

Mat Bingham 26:01

Yeah, you know, I think with like new consumers, they're probably coming through a variety of methods, like paid ads, or SEO, or maybe they just found you through a friend. And they're just like, kind of Google searching you have. So I think, again, the review display in on the PDP pages or throughout your site are super valuable for new consumers, obviously, you want to capture some sort of email or SMS from that visitor in that session, right? Like, you got them there, you want to at least build a real, you know, send them something, we instead of having to like we pay for retargeted ad. So I think for like new consumers, the the reviews are just definitely there to kind of like, help build some community or trust early on with like, existing customers and like retention stuff. We always say, you know, like, if you're doing product upsells, or cross sells or recommendations through marketing channels, maybe add some more social proof. So like, I guess an example is if I bought a jacket from your site, and then you hit me up like a couple of weeks later, after it was delivered, and I was getting all my tracking notifications for Malomo for a while, and I got my package, review, right, like I was like, I love this jacket, it's really cool. And then you send me maybe an email like a week or two later, with, like some pants that are relevant to that, that jacket, but if you add maybe like the aggregate star reviews for those pants, it's like, oh, wow, these this pants has 3000 reviews, and it matches my jacket, I might have a little bit more of an I guess, eagerness to purchase that than I would with an image who was just straight picture of a pair of pants. So like, adding some reviews into your communication channels are like a super valuable way to like keep VIP customers or existing customers happy. And I think there's a lot of ways you could embed reviews into those channels to kind of create some some urgency or comfort again, for, you know, existing customers. So, and I think you know, personalization is such a wide word nowadays. There's a lot of ways that you can make personalized efforts for you know, large segments of audiences, you know, it doesn't have to be super complicated. And you can use really cool tools like ribeye or other ones that kind of help you improve that, you know, that process because it, it can be kind of a data tunnel, you can go down and like really get granular but it might not really mean anything. If you at least attempt some personalization efforts for like some bigger segments of audiences, then I think you're gonna have a much better response. And I think consumers now are really asking for it, you know, five, six years ago, if you were trying to do an upsell, like it was just so like manual and, and random. Now that things are a little more sophisticated. I think the technology has helped, but it's also I think, kind of shifted consumer behaviors in a certain way of that has been pretty impactful for businesses that they are taking that step. So yeah, I think there's always a way to improve. And, you know, I hope some people can take some of these advice today and apply it to their business.

Noah Rahimzadeh 29:11

Yeah, awesome that you mentioned, the personalized product recommendations because I know we have a couple of clients who have recently like as mentioned earlier switched on Canada reviews on their rebuy widget within Allama tracking pages. And so like even before you know a couple of weeks after that first packages arriving those reviews are helping to upsell and cross sell while the package is even on the way and then I forget if it was you and I or me and Eric and ribeye talking about like the actual data behind the repeat purchase rate like upsells and cross sells I don't want to butcher it so I'm not going to say the snap but feel free to jump in. See like a tremendously higher repeat repeat purchase rate if they have reviews associated with it, which is one of the reasons we were super excited to stand up the Kendo integration for for a few of our merchants. And we'll be really excited and interested to track what the what sort of data we're able to find on specifically the order tracking experience. But to your point, I think it goes well beyond that, right?

Mat Bingham 30:21

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think the market is changing, obviously, I think back then, you know, 2015 16, you can like, I don't know about you. But back then, when I was a consumer, I would get so many ads I put through and I would purchase and I from so many different brands. And I don't know, the ads experience isn't really as relevant as it once was. A lot of times, brands are testing out different marketplaces or channels, which is good. But I think overall, like when you buy from a new, or like a company, it's easier to like market and retain that customer. And then for me as a consumer to like, maybe search or find a similar product in the similar vertical, like, I would much rather buy from somebody that I already bought from if I had a good experience, then maybe I left a review how to good shipping experience, I love the product itself than me like searching for another brand. That's like something similar. So I think the market is changing. And like a lot of technology, in the E commerce space is leaning into retention. But I think even consumer behaviors is like we once we get into something that we really like is we're gonna kind of stick with it, at least for a couple purchases. So, you know, it's really cool to see brands kind of leaning into it as back. You know, back in 2014 15, people were just like, let's just scale and grow new customer acquisition, but they kept running into the issue of like, running running off a cliff, right? Like we hit this like, Facebook look alike audience cliff that we can go anywhere else, right. So it's good to see brands kind of like leaning into it a little bit more. And I think just the biggest player in the space, Amazon, they've created such a consumer, like perception of like, I'm just gonna go there for whatever I need. You know, brands aren't obviously going to repeat that same type of behavior. But if you can get some second, third, fourth, fifth purchases out of somebody, I think that's a huge win. And it's a lot cheaper than it would be, you know, trying to find and acquire new customers.

Noah Rahimzadeh 32:24

Absolutely. Okay, so I also wanted to see if there's, I'm not sure what you can share. But if there's any, I know that you have a bunch of new stuff in the works that Oh, kendo, if there's anything that you can share about that. And if not, no worries.

Mat Bingham 32:40

Yeah, no, it's really exciting. We've been working a couple of months on these products, we just released a Walmart integration where you can syndicate reviews into the Walmart marketplace, we just released a meta integration. So you can syndicate reviews into your like Instagram, or your Facebook shop. So again, bringing social proof to maybe a different marketplace. But in the coming days, we're going to be launching Pendo Connect, which is like a really cool. It gets just a revision of a kendo. So it's really going to enable brands to like, collect more mission critical customer intelligent or data. Especially about like a consumers preference or behaviors or experiences. brands can use that insight to craft more like personalized and frictionless experiences that can drive more loyalty and conversions and maximize lifetime value. So really, it's it's just a way with kendo connect that you'll be able to take more of this data and just be more personalized, which I think what I just mentioned is really what brands are leading into. With them with we have like such a wide range of powerful solutions that range from specific use cases like profile enrichment, CRO marketing, attribution, Customer Experience Management, this, this kind of connect is really going to kind of a way for you to integrate the voice of a customer into every important decision you make. So that's just kind of like a 50,000 foot view of what it is. But it's really going to be a panda is really going to be kind of your hub for like customer data collection and then being able to like analyze it and use it in a variety of ways. We also have two additional platform features that are going to come out that I think is really going to help with that data collection. So outside of just reviews. We're going to be helping collect like on site surveys, post purchase surveys, profile questions, conditional questions. So it's really going to help with that data collection and I think really going to kind of expand our platform outside of this niche we're in you know we are the best in class and reviews and We realize that reviews is a good pillar. But surveys on site surveys or questions are also great data collection that we can do. So that should be coming in the next week or two. We also have like a whole new branding whole new look. And it's going to be pretty exciting. So just stay tuned, and you'll see some pretty cool updates next week.

Noah Rahimzadeh 35:20

That is awesome. And if you have any, like resources on this, I'm sure we could plug them into the show notes afterward, Matt, but I got a couple of questions came up. And we're I might have one or two too. But starting with Walmart, I'm curious. Was that like, I would imagine, like most of the time, software companies build new feature sets, like it's very much merchant driven. And I don't know, it's it just doesn't come up on our calls. Because we always lead with we are exclusively for your Shopify Shopify Plus store. So maybe we just don't hear merchants talk about Walmart very much. But did you basically find that a ton of Shopify merchants are also selling on Walmart? And that's, that was sort of the impetus for building this? Or was it like direct client demand that was pushing this? Why did you decide to go that route?

Mat Bingham 36:13

Now there was a few larger scale merchants that were asking for it. And really, you know, with marketplaces like walmart.com, target other areas, like, if you're able to add reviews, it helps with like social proof and purchasing. So like a Shopify brand might have two to three products listed on Walmart, they wanted the reviews for that product to be indicated on to their walmart.com listing. The thing with like syndication, though, is that every company has their own, like rules and regulations on how it gets syndicated. So it's not really something that you can just like copy paste reviews. It's a very like, embedded process that has to go through a lot of like checks and balances before it gets published. So a lot of our bigger Shopify brands are selling on multiple channels. And that's a great strategy to diversify and find, you know, new markets or new customers. But they, I think some of the requests for around Walmart and the meta one, were really like, we have some sales, we want to boost sales. And we want to do that with like social proof. So can we like import these reviews in there? And we did that with Walmart, it's the same thing with like Facebook, you know, when you click on the shop section, and Facebook, if you have a product listed there as a brand, you can add those kind of reviews there. So yeah, it was just kind of a mix of like, customer demand, and also just really wanting to help those bigger customers really achieve their goals. So hopefully, we can do more. You know, there's so many different places we can syndicate. And I think that's something we're probably going to do in 2023 and down the road, but Walmart was a big one. We've also like probably skipped out some other ones that are going to be pretty interesting as well.

Noah Rahimzadeh 38:03

Awesome. That actually, that's fascinating. I never thought about like the rules and regulations and reviews on different marketplaces.

Mat Bingham 38:13

And I had no clue. And then once I was in it, I was like, wow, this is really complex at heart. It doesn't it shouldn't be, but it is.

Noah Rahimzadeh 38:23

Yeah, also, I think that kind of funnels into my second question, actually, maybe maybe not. I'm not I'm not as technical as you. But I'm wondering like when you're collecting all these reviews, is like the source of truth for those typically, oh, kendo, or are you also sending that data back to whatever that merchants CRM is? Or maybe you only work with select CRMs? Like, can you talk about how that data is collected and then stored?

Mat Bingham 38:53

Yeah, we'd like to be the source of truth, at least for the review collection. But some of the integrations that we have built is taking that data and matching it to certain profiles. So the biggest one, I deal with us, so if I was not being inside of your play view account, and you only have my email address, but then I leave a review on the CDC brand, that review information plus any like attributes or zero party data that I gave up, and that Review Submission can be synced into clay VO and match my email and customer profile inside of clay. VO a few select ones, hoping we can expand a little bit more. But we really like kind of the best in class route in terms of tech. So we really focus in on some really cool solutions. And really, we kind of chose those platforms based upon the market space, right? Like pretty much every merchant that comes to us is on Shopify, using clay VO So we wanted to really help those brands, the 6000 Plus brands and I would say a majority of them are using something like that. So we want to be the source of truth for going to be able to give you with kendo connect some insights and some ways to kind of leverage that data. Also realize that like, there's other tools that this data could be super valuable for, and we try to seek and send that information over into those channels as best we can. So yeah, it's a it's a great way. I really love when platforms do connect that way. And we've seen some really cool studied case studies from our partners that show the value of once they get that and real rich zero party data, that it had a big effect in terms of like open rates, or clicks or sales, or whatever the metric may be, at the end of the day. So I think we've said it a couple times, it's a way to help retain people is gathering more data and leveraging it. And I think as marketers too, you want to make the best decisions. As a marketer, instead of just throwing noodles on the wall and kind of seeing what happened. You want to make decisions based around some sort of data or insights that you have from your customers or whatever platform. So yeah, it's kind of a interesting aspect. And I think it's a big impact in whatever channel you're trying to market towards.

Mariah Parsons 41:11

Yeah, that's super fascinating. Like with all the with all the feature updates, and releases and everything. It's interesting that Noah, your mind went to Walmart, my mind went to like, meta, and what the the meta integration and what that experience looks like. So question for you, Matt. In terms of an apologies if you said this, but when, like someone is going to like shop on Facebook, right? Is it? They can review like directly on the app with the integration? So like you're staying in Facebook? Or does it take you back to like, brands website? Or what does that experience look like?

Mat Bingham 41:50

Yeah, if you notice on like, when you're on maybe a brand's Instagram page, they might have like, Instagram store. So when you open that up, and there's like a product for a shirt or a pair of pants, you'll be able to see the embedded like reviews underneath those product listings, which you couldn't before. It's just really kind of, again, bringing social proof to a new marketplace or channel and I think brands are trying to find new channels and Mehta shops have become kind of a newer trend in the past couple of years. And I've bought one or two, just random brands, I bought one or two. So it'd be interesting to see how five years from now is that where people are leaning in more prepared to go into like a DTC shop. Eight brands, probably want them to come more to their DTC shop in a sale at the end of the day, like, Who cares where they bought it from? I see that tagline on all the time. Some people are like, you know, trying to find out the attribution model or, you know, maybe they used a discount code from a pop up that they got, you know, sometimes like we're losing margins, I'm like, Well, you got one sale that you probably wouldn't have gotten anyway. So

Mariah Parsons 43:03

take it as a win. Win. So

Mat Bingham 43:05

yeah, it's interesting. So we'll see what happens with net in the next couple of months.

Mariah Parsons 43:11

And then so if you purchase on Instagram, say and then like, is there any sort of follow up or like, pop up in the app to be like, Oh, review, or I guess you wouldn't have the product yet. Right. So yeah, you'd have to wait. Yeah.

Mat Bingham 43:25

Okay. Yeah, usually wait until the products like either delivered and then you wait X amount of days? It's usually like three to seven days. Yeah. No, because you obviously want that window of like, it's new and fresh, but also, like, give people a chance for returns or whatever it may be. But you can set that all up inside of Oh, tendo with the review request and

Mariah Parsons 43:47

an automated Yeah, I do also want to mention that we're currently speaking about this. But when the product features are actually released, it'll be public knowledge because we I made a site to mention that because we've been saying like, Oh, like next week, they'll be released. So we're recording end of September, and this will be published early October. So yeah, just want to clarify all that for listeners. If that was hard to follow, and then. But that's super great. Yeah, very exciting stuff.

Mat Bingham 44:16

Very exciting. I think it's a great time of year to do it right before the holidays. And you know, the the early beta users and the testing we've had has been like, phenomenal. The US that we work with are like, super excited. So we're really excited to see when it goes to market and what our you know, our whole database says because it's going to be a pretty, pretty big update. And I think it's really going to help us kind of expand outside of just reviews will be a little bit more of a robust platform, which is exciting. I'm really pumped for it. So

Noah Rahimzadeh 44:49

Mariah, you killed me on the Walmart verse meta thing. Like I'm struggling. I'm struggling so hard already that I turned 30 years old next week. Just ask totally crushed me.

Mariah Parsons 45:02

Didn't even think about that. I was like, oh my god, like I'm so like, I was like, I want to hear more about

Noah Rahimzadeh 45:15

before I lose it

Mariah Parsons 45:19

before before, no, and I have to go by it offline.

Noah Rahimzadeh 45:26

Let's let's bring it back to the personal side, man, I think this was awesome. We were so lucky to have you on and, and all of like, I just think it's so dope that we like get to have so like such smart people on this. And so like I like to ask rather than like something specific to kendo or even ecommerce, which you could talk about that, like, what's one tip you have, or resource that you'd recommend that you feel like has been, like, impactful or that you'd recommend for for your career? Oh,

Mat Bingham 46:00

interesting. You know, I wouldn't say it's anything like a specific book, or, you know, blog or something, I think the thing that's really kind of helped me in my career is like, really just asking people about their own experiences. You know, we've had a couple of one on ones, Noah that I've gotten to know you. And we've talked about you guys building out your partner program. And like, I think just hearing from people in the space has been like a really great learning tool for not only building relationships and getting to know people, because it's hard. You know, we're all on Zoom every day, like talking to people across the country. It's a great way to like help build relationships, but I think it helps build your own, like ideas of like, what you might want to do. And I think also like leaning into a lot of like mentors or people in this space. So like, one of my favorite people that I worked with for a year or two. Her name was Jamie Thorpe, she was one of the original like, Bronto partnership people, she came to just, you know, for a while, you know, she's been in partnership since like 2009, or 10. So like, I learned a lot from her just by mirroring and shadowing her but also like, asking stupid, dumb questions that some people are afraid to ask sometimes I want to blurt it out and be like, Well, what is this? Or how does this work and mentors are kind of a great thing to do. And, and even though they're not mentors, I think following people in this space as well, you know, like, John Pruitt from Destiny, I follow him on LinkedIn. You know, you see other people pop up, Jeremy Horowitz from gorgeous, like, he's always named Marco from whiplash looking things. So like, I think it's just exposing yourself to a lot of information, especially in your vertical or niche, whether it's marketing or CSM or sales or partnerships, whatever it may be, is like, really a great way to like, take that information, and then find your own path. And I think that's one thing that sometimes I think a lot of people try to do is like, Oh, I'm going to copy this and kind of do it that way. Which is fine, there's going to be times you can do that. But I think it's also important to like, retain a lot of new information and say, Let's try something else. And maybe be fast to fail, you know, try something and see if it works. And if it doesn't, then you know, kind of move on. So I don't really have like a specific book that I you know, lean and, like, changed my whole perception of the world. I think it's just more people. And I think that's really kind of at the end of the day, where you learn the most is on on the fly and tangible talking day to day with everybody. So yeah, that would be my advice, just like, soak up everything you can and talk to whoever will listen to you. And you know, what's the say you have two ears and one mouth. So keep that in mind. And so,

Noah Rahimzadeh 48:50

I love that answer so much. Especially because I can relate. I mean, I was brand new to ecommerce, really about five months ago, and when, you know, I wouldn't be comfortable enough to be hosted co hosting this podcast, right? Like if I didn't have the network that I was able to build and like the kind people around me who are willing to share their experiences you being a major one of those, like, you know, we we haven't only talked about tech partnerships, but we've talked about agencies in the ecosystem overall. And many other leaders in the space have been super kind to give me their time as I sort of learn the ropes. And I would say that that's probably been the biggest impact on me personally too, especially cuz like I'm a one man team here. And so without, without the others willing to help, it'd be really, really hard.

Mat Bingham 49:44

Ya know, you'd be surprised people be willing to help even competitors. If you talk to them, they'll they'll be willing to chat with you like I mean, you know, people at the end of the day want to help people even though we're in kind of a weird society moment, I guess in the past 10 years with COVID and and all these changes and things like that, but I think at the end of the day, most people want to help each other. And, you know, I think it's, it's, it's hard to ask, you know, it's hard to ask sometimes, but it's worth asking because, you know, what's, what's the worst that's gonna happen? Say no. And then you just move on. So

Noah Rahimzadeh 50:22

yeah, that's awesome. Well, this has been super fun Matt, I super pumped to share with the audience great insights. Great career story. Great advice at the end. So really appreciate you and for your time today. I

Mat Bingham 50:37

know that thank you for having me on. Thank you for partnering with us. I'm excited to kind of continue to work with you guys. And you know, for brands listening, good luck with Black Friday, Cyber Monday. I think it's, you know, a great time of year for your brand to grow. And yeah, we'll see how it comes out at the other side in 2023.

Mariah Parsons 50:56

Very exciting stuff. Thanks, Matt. Thank you