TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sms, retention, customers, Klaviyo, customer data platform, CDP, email service provider, ESP, flows, partners, people, partnerships, platform, brand, ecosystem, built, integration, bit, data, influencer, day, email
SPEAKERS
Noah Rahimzadeh, Mariah Parsons, Dan Caldwell
Noah Rahimzadeh 00:05
Hey retention pros. I'm Noah Rahimzadeh 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 00:58
Hey, everyone, super, super excited for today's episode, another ecosystem episode. I am no Rahim today, as you all know, joined by Mariah. We have Dan Caldwell joining us from our very, very great partner in clay vo he's senior strategic partner manager. With that I will pass over to Dan for a super quick intro. And then yeah, we'll go from there.
Dan Caldwell 01:27
Awesome. Yep. Thanks for having me. So my name is Dan Caldwell working at Clay vo I manage our integration partnerships here. And you're coming up on two years at Clay vo
Noah Rahimzadeh 01:37
Awesome. Awesome. Definitely want to get more into the career path up to this point and roll that clay via but before we do that, the audience knows we we always like to talk about career progression to date, what got you here. But before we get there even I just want to say Dan and I go actually way back or not way back. But before my time and Malomo Dan and I met in person in San Francisco. And it was like, right as things were opening up from the post COVID world. San Francisco was not in the greatest shape then. Hopefully it's gotten a little bit better today. I haven't been there since I don't think. But yeah, I was at moveable link at the time. So we worked together in that capacity and super, super happy that we get to continue the partnership. I think we're closer now than we were then. So it's been it's been a good ride up to this point. And we got him on the podcast now. So things are obviously going well.
Dan Caldwell 02:39
Yeah, it was it was a fun day in San Francisco. I think that was one of my first partner meetings since locked down. And it was because I was part of the mass migration from urban life to suburban life had a bit of a trek to get in there. But like I get to go visit with partners in person. Oh, my God made it in there. Yeah, a little quiet in the city. But I've been to San Francisco since the spirit is back in the city. Today. But rebound is
Noah Rahimzadeh 03:04
strong. I'm very, very happy to hear that. Yeah, it was it was dark and gloomy, both in like in action or like the environmental nature, but also like
Dan Caldwell 03:16
the fog still there.
Mariah Parsons 03:20
Don't think it'll ever go away
Dan Caldwell 03:21
spiritually. There's sunshine, though. Right? Exactly.
Noah Rahimzadeh 03:24
I'm super happy to hear that. Well, yeah, man, thank you so much for coming on and spending some time with us. Like I said, I'd love to get into your career progression to date and what you're doing what you're up to these days at CLEVEO.
Dan Caldwell 03:41
Yeah, totally. So career progression. We go back a little bit, I started my career. Very early on managing some small businesses. My first tech job was in the ad tech world, doing customer support. Understanding how to set up ads for ecommerce brands can be difficult. So shout out to everybody who is in customer support role right now, where I just learned so much about the customer so much about the product. And then, after a year and a half, two years of that I was able to transition to a partnership role in supporting some partners there and all different types of partnerships from econ platforms, to like large API resellers, and then Technology Partnerships similar to ours. And I loved Technology Partnerships and saw a role open up at Clay vo that was 100% dedicated to that type of partnership. So in play who is doing pretty well, so jumped on the opportunity joined when it was a team of one and then we are now a team of nine so a lot of investment. A lot of growth in partners.
Noah Rahimzadeh 04:41
We in that's just sorry to interrupt that's just on the tech partner side.
Dan Caldwell 04:45
Yes. Got it. Yeah. So global presence. From in director level, we brought on partner development reps, and then just my colleagues. Expanding the team globally London in Australia and expanding The United States. So that's been exciting. And then when I joined clavey, away to 100 integrations, and now we have 265. And so a lot of growth, a lot of launches during those times. So it's been a fun ride.
Noah Rahimzadeh 05:11
Very cool. And for you specifically, what partner? How do you delineate like partner managers and directors like owning? Is it by region? Is it by sector? Like, how do you? And then what's your area of expertise?
Dan Caldwell 05:27
Yeah, a little bit of all the above. But it's always the gray areas with this stuff, and some categories, some geo, and so we have our folks over in the London office, and so we'll split up and any like headquarter partners, they'll manage there, but also have some partners that are maybe based in the US but have a strong presence in those markets. And so we'll tag team those. And so they London or Australia, we could split up that way. But there's also vertical based and so I will do our shipping platforms, like this partnership here. Also our help desk, ad tech returns. Gosh, I'm probably forgetting one. But I've also done every single category at one time, in my career at Clay VO and so I'm familiar with, you know, the, the full range of partnerships that we have.
Noah Rahimzadeh 06:19
Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. I've noticed like the more the more focused approach at Clay vo like I've, like I said, we've known each other going back a couple jobs but I've been in and around the CLEVEO ecosystem to some degree for the last three or four jobs in mind. And I've definitely noticed a difference and a shift in like the more more focused approach on the partner side and I feel like it's been a great a great value add to partners and like just the broader clay vo ecosystem to be honest with you, do you feel that?
Dan Caldwell 06:54
Absolutely. A lot more focus and investment on the tech partnership from clay VO We could probably get into the details of why but our tech partners just feed into like the core of what makes clay be a valuable. And I think there's always been understood by executives and like people at Clay vo but the awareness of it. And just how much it could mean to our customers and the way it helps them grow their business. Stick around with clay VO as well. It makes big impact. And so clavey has been seeing that so we've been investing more into it.
Noah Rahimzadeh 07:26
That's a that's a perfect transition. Appreciate the background on the career so far. I'd now like to shift focus to clay vo overall, I think I would imagine that literally 100% of our listeners are familiar with clay VO, just in case there's one or two who aren't. Can you just give us a super high level overview of the platform, we'll obviously get more nitty gritty but overview of the platform, the problem it solves and who it's built for who's like the ICP?
Dan Caldwell 07:56
Yeah, absolutely. So Clay Vo is a combination of a CDP at ESP and an SMS provider is marketing automation. And so what we do is we ingest data from multiple different sources from whether it's your Shopify store or other e commerce platform and then a lot of the other technology in our tech stack, and then use that technology to build in a automation layer. So you can send programmatically really personalized messages, email, SMS, push notifications, and also things like outbound web hooks. They could push data wherever you want to power other channels.
Noah Rahimzadeh 08:32
Very cool. Yeah, I noticed obviously saw the launch of clay vo one this year and getting into the CDP space. Another great transition here because I I don't think that I've heard of any other ESPs describing themselves as a CDP on top of an ESP or vice versa. And sort of combining that offering. I know that clay Vo is obviously always focused on the data side. You mentioned it and I'd love for you to talk more about how technology partnerships feed into that data first approach. But with the you know plethora of ESP offerings, messaging, overall platforms, like you mentioned SMS as well. How would you say clay vo has been able to build, you know, such a stronghold in the Shopify ecosystem. But you know, I think about the investment that from Shopify earlier this year was obviously a major was major news in our ecosystem. So how do you think that the clavey has been able to get to this point?
Dan Caldwell 09:37
Yeah, I think it all starts around the CDP aspect. And I'll first say like, CDP is a category that isn't particularly well defined. And so we serve as the CDP for a lot of our merchants and I could get into a little bit of that, why that's been a big part of our success, but at least on the technology partnership side, we also have great partnerships and integrations With other CDP's. And so there's there's overlap there. And there's different definitions of what a CDP is. But at the end of the day, we have a CDP for a lot of our merchants. The big reason why this kind of feeds into the success that we've stood out as an ESP, because email has been around for a long time, well, before we played, was ever established, but clearly was actually built not as a ESP, we didn't start off by sending emails and SMS, we actually started a database company. And I actually did not know that. Yeah. And so our founders at an ad, they built a database company, they found a really good way to layer on some databases to make it easy to ingest data from all different sources, go from the EagleEye view down to the single object level in a very fast and effective way. After a while, they asked customers, hey, what do you actually use in this database for and they said, Oh, we're pushing it into our ESPs to send really personalized, good emails. And they're like, oh, and then they built email. And then SMS as well. So that's what separated us, because a lot of our competition earlier on started, like, Hey, how can make it really easy to send, like a good looking email? We took three first approach of how can we get as much data as we can into a platform, and automate that data to power really good emails? Now, you know, the good, you know, the quick and easy ones, they're working the way down on the data front, but I think it might be a little bit easier when you start with that core foundation on the data side of things.
Noah Rahimzadeh 11:32
Sure, sure. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I had no idea that it started as a database company first, always great when you can sort of, you know, find some product market fit, and then realize that what you're doing is actually like 10 to 10 debt and generally valuable, like in this other sort of realm. And I think for for email purposes, right, like it's a very cost effective channel. So it makes a lot of sense that that would have been the next. The next progression in the offering. I'm always curious about this things might be somewhat of a selfish topic. But there's this, as you and I know very well, Dan, like the channel conflict that lives within our day to day is almost every day, you mentioned that you also have CDP partners, but you were founded as a database company. Now you've gone to market around, you know, as you position yourself as a CDP. Like how do you think about collaboration with the other CDP's in the space? And I know that's such a broad term, right? There's a lot of there's a lot of platforms that can fall under the CDP bucket, maybe some who say that they are and really, so how could you kind of describe that working relationship and partnerships in that space?
Dan Caldwell 12:51
Yeah, absolutely. Is the purpose that we take with all channel conflicts, because, hey, this happens in our ecosystem. And we have some of my best partnerships and relationships that I have in this ecosystem are ones that there's some sort of competitive angle to it. The end of the day, we just take a customer centric first philosophy with it. And we're going to let the customer choose like, hey, the companies may compete on these products, and they try to build it better than the other person. But at the end of the day, we're really supportive of our customers choosing whatever technologies that they want to choose. If a company wants to use clay VO as their CDP like awesome, we have some really good functionality to support that. And we think you're gonna get a lot of value for it. But there's also ones that been like purpose built CDP, and would be like one definition of that. And they've been doing it for a decade, and they do it really well. And they may have some functionality that clay vo doesn't have. So hey, how do we get an integration together here, so you could get the best of both worlds, you could get the best of the CDP that fits the definition that you need clavey As our offering and you know, our strengths, that maybe we add any value to them. But how do we connect those things. And so they get a little bit biased here. I'm a big believer in connecting these platforms. And I think it makes us better to iron sharpens iron. And I think at the end of the day, the merchants are going to win, because they're going to go with the winners in that space. And by building these integrations, if one person does one thing really well, the other person does the other thing still make it seamless to use those two platforms. And then hey, you compete on the product side of things, but ultimately some merchant who's gonna pick the winner.
Noah Rahimzadeh 14:29
I'm super quick question. Have you run into any circumstances where a client is asking for like a data integration between their CDP and clay VO and been met with resistance from the CDP platform that they were using? Or is it typically do you find typically that you know, the others in the ecosystem are willing to take that same approach?
Dan Caldwell 14:53
Yeah. For the most part, people are had the same philosophy as us. There's a spectrum With that, I don't run into too many people who put up a firm stance against it, sometimes, you know, salesperson might get a little bit defensive because they see a risk with the customer, or to avoid those things from happening. So you see it a little bit of that. But most of the partners that you need go on the directory, and if they're listed on our website, they do really well. So we typically find the solution. And at the end of the day, the the merchants going to get what they need, and we're going to be strong advocates for that they will go to bat for him.
Noah Rahimzadeh 15:28
Awesome. Yeah, I like to think that we take a very, very similar approach here and our philosophy to go into market with partners. And I think there's no better way to put it at a high level than like a customer centric approach, which is when you're,
Dan Caldwell 15:43
like, Ill like we'll have direct competitors that like we compete with a lot. And they'll have an integration into us. And maybe they're not the ones that we put on their website. But if something goes down about that integration, like I prioritize that heavily, because I know our customers use it, and our customers are using them for one product using us for another. We take that approach. And ultimately, we would love to have the complete business there. But if the customers need it, then we prioritize.
Noah Rahimzadeh 16:11
Awesome, awesome. Okay, shifting gears a little bit, but I'm, I'm very curious. Now, I didn't plan on kind of including this in in the retention piece. But given that Libya was founded as a database company, that to me screams like, retention first, or at least retention was top of mind when it was founded. Because a lot of times when you're acquiring new customers, you don't have a lot of information on them, right? The the CDP aspect and like having a holistic 363 60 customer view comes after they've entered a brand's a brand's ecosystem, right, and you're capturing all of this data around them. So before we get into Clavius, specifically, I'm curious how you think about retention? And what the most, you know, important drivers of it. And then I'd love to get into how clay vo thinks about retention as well.
Dan Caldwell 17:06
Yeah, totally. So yeah, retention is the hot topic right now. Is retention is the new acquisition.
Noah Rahimzadeh 17:14
We're not We're not mad about that.
Dan Caldwell 17:18
Yeah, and thanks for tool is really important. But I can also tell you how like Hawaii retention can can help on the acquisition front, too. But the way I see it, I mean, it's growing in importance. I think everybody knows acquisition isn't as easy as it used to be. I'm not saying it was easy before, but it's getting more challenging to drive traffic can't just like throw money at the problem like you used to. And so in a cost effective way. And so really, generating as much as you can, with your customers that you have right now is super important. And so the retention piece, I think like when I think retention, I think well, how do you keep people around? But I think the way to think about it is how do you thrive with those customers that have come in? How do you build those relationships? Like yeah, retention, like somebody might have a challenge with shipping? How do you retain that customer after a challenge? But then those that have a good experience? How do you continue to grow them? And not just grow them? But how can you help them feed the funnel? So like, yeah, how can we bring them back to buy something or upsell those those opportunities? But it's also how do I get them to leave a review? So then now your website has UGC on it that increases conversion rates on your website, how do you get them to refer their friends or be a micro influencer for you, all those things can be back the top of the funnel, so like retention is a big part of this. Let's keep those customers around. Let's thrive with those customers and use them to help feed that top of the funnel, which is becoming more and more difficult.
Noah Rahimzadeh 18:51
Amazing example. And when you were talking about that, I thought I thought about our like our founding story of Malomo Malomo was founded to your point in exactly based on 85% of customers will not return after one bad shipping experience. So like that was the problem that we set out to solve. Yeah, it's a huge problem. But the initial thought wasn't like, let's turn shipment tracking into a revenue channel, which is what it's developed into the initial thought was just let's keep those customers over time it's morphed into, okay, we figured out that we can keep them based on these proactive and branded notifications that we're sending. But what about product recommendations based on what you've already purchased? To your point in terms of turning retention into an acquisition channel? What about making sure that on our for our subscribers in the post purchase experience we are already subscribed, we don't need them to subscribe again. Let's push them down a funnel to refer a friend because we know they're loyal fans. So it's creating this flywheel right between retention and acquisition that I don't think has, like I said, like, even for us, it wasn't the first thought the first thought was just let's keep customers now it's morphed into growth through those customers.
Dan Caldwell 20:13
Absolutely. I think it's something that people are starting to come around to now, a little bit more in the past, but not separating out your typical transactional strategies with your marketing strategies. And the the use case I talked about a lot. But shipping is like, yes, when somebody has three shipping delays, like let's notify them, let's keep them in the loop. And there's a whole that's the kind of retention side of things. Because I think, at this point with the supply chains, people are pretty used to should, at this point, I think they don't like surprises when it comes to it. Like, where is that package? Oh, it's been delayed? Why don't you tell me? I think that's the big thing. People want to avoid the surprises. So that helps on the retention side of things. But then for those who didn't like what do you when you know, somebody had a really good shipping experience? What are you doing from that. So when like one of my examples in terms of LTV, whether that's revenue, or at the top of the funnel, I mentioned reviews. So like something you could do in class, this is something like we pride ourselves on in terms of like good or 20 of the data is pretty common for somebody to have a flow that's asking for a product review. Traditionally, it's like two weeks after somebody purchased something on Shopify, and the order was fulfilled. But that wasn't when it was delivered. That doesn't take into account what may have happened along the way, a lot can happen between, hey, the order is packed up and being sent out, and it arrives to a doorstep. So let's get a little bit smarter. Let's use that from our integration to trigger this not two weeks after the order was purchased. But after we know that the order had arrived. That's Hey, maybe let's split out those who had more than one shipping delay during that process. Let's let's bring in that retention message for them. Those who have the streamlined message, perfect, let's do a review request. But actually, let's go ahead and make sure that they didn't return the product. That's that's not returning the product. Do they have a ticket open with your customer support, we have integrations record just in Zendesk helps out other platforms that can like pull it Are they upset about something really bad time to ask for a product review really good way to get a one star review. So being really intentional and smart. And it's not necessarily like oh, you don't want feedback or or like one star reviews are the worst thing in the world. But you want to just avoid those tone deaf messages to like, it doesn't feel good as a consumer, when I've been asked to leave a product review and how many of the package or I returned it, or I'm talking to the customer support about an issue and trying to work through. So just being really intentional about those things intertwining that data from all your different tech stack, because then you can generate more five star reviews. Now you know, who could potentially be a VIP customer. So now is like, Hey, do you want to sign up for a subscription on recharge? And try to get the recurring revenue from them? Would you like to join our loyalty program? That's a great thing to check out or like, Hey, are you pulling in how many Instagram followers they have from a platform like Gatsby on the influence of some other things? Can we now automate you into a flow to help enable you to share and get rewarded for sharing a positive experience? I think that's an overlooked area right now. It's where the paid media and social it's a little bit more difficult to do. Influencer has been around for a long time. But with really good data and automation, can you really empower a micro influencer platform, and all this is derived from the shipping notification that came in delivered and just being really intentional and personalized and heard. And I think that's a key theme. When we think about retention and thriving customers just speak to them based off their experience of they want to be heard they want to be felt and if you have larger customers or do that one on one so just being really smart and intentional about those message sitting down intertwining as many different inputs as you can just to speak to them as close to one on one as you can.
Mariah Parsons 24:06
Yeah, I love that you brought that up Dan, like the especially the data and walking through all the different applications of where you can use that data, like you said, for reviews, all the way to subscription programs, and even micro influencers and I actually recently got a shipment email and we chatted about this. We had Ali pop on the podcast as well and it was through their emails and so I think Gatsby is pretty similar to have you heard of bounty? It's like okay, okay, so I'm not I've heard about them. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, so I haven't ever like you like seen Gatsby or seen their software but it sounds pretty similar. I think bounty is more like just for tick tock maybe but I love that you can bring in like I haven't heard the use case of being able to bring in like, look at a buyers, Instagram following your social media following and then being able to like put them in a different, different experience based off of those shipment notifications. I think that's a really cool application that if you set it up, right, like it adds the flywheel, right like it, it adds more and it creates, you know, your starting point of like more UGC, and then being able to have, say, I know, on the Bounty side of things, like, you agree to a brand using your content on their page, right, or like their website. So it just like streamlines kind of that process so that it's like, oh, you know, this influencer, who's really good at making drinks or whatever they're, they're like category your expertise is in, they can then, you know, be, like, compensated or motivated to continue associated with you through associating with your brand and then sharing it with their following as well.
Dan Caldwell 25:51
Exactly. And it is a splitting of people out to because if you have a celebrity who comes or just somebody who, for whatever reason, has like a massive following, you're probably going to want to speak to them a little bit different than the person who has 200 followers. And so then it's like, hey, yeah, if a giant influencer comes through the door, I want to divert them to a different message, which is like one on one direct relationships, like you can do those type of things. But even somebody with 200, like, like cumulatively, if you combine all those people, like I think that it can be more impactful than the macro influencer, because hey, like, on a per person basis, that's going to be difficult to unlock. But combined, it could get really impactful. And I say the other thing is to like, those people aren't used to being able to be like, kind of play their role as a kind of so and so it can be fun. I have friends who do this stuff, every once in a while it comes up. But I think most importantly, oftentimes, those people who are most passionate about your brand, they want to go out of their way for it, they're having fun with this, they want to share their experience. And so it really just allows the automation for that to provide those experiences to the smaller folks, while also diverting those that you need a one to one conversation for somebody who really poses a really large opportunity with the large following.
Mariah Parsons 27:07
And love that distinction, too. It's really cool.
Noah Rahimzadeh 27:10
Yeah, like so many good use cases, Dan, that you just described based on one that you're Yeah,
Dan Caldwell 27:16
no, it's it's crazy. I think a lot of it is combined. So I'm going to integration skates, what I do, but I think a lot of people are thinking like one to one with these relationships, like, how do I send a message about shipping through Plato? But it's like, how do I intertwine everything, everything in my text, like let's get them integrated, they build off of each other and complement each other.
Noah Rahimzadeh 27:39
So one thing I'm curious about this is a little off the cuff, but the flows that you just walk through like four or five different use cases that would require four or five different flows within clay. VO, is that something that like, if a brand is listening to this episode, they're like, Oh, my God, I love that UGC use case or I love that reviews use case. Should they go to the clay vo team about that? Should they go to their reviews? Are there Malomo? You know, their order tracking solution about that flow specifically? And is there a world in which clay vo builds like a flow library that has, you know, even if it's art or built flows, or you know, even starting with just some preset flows, maybe you already have that I'm ignorant in that regard. So how tactically our listeners can maybe put some of this into
Dan Caldwell 28:31
motion? Really good question. So yeah, cuz all these ideas are great. Like, how do you
Noah Rahimzadeh 28:36
actually yeah.
Dan Caldwell 28:39
Easier said than done. But we do make it pretty easy. It's a little bit of work. And I get the block off some time to figure this stuff out. But it isn't too difficult. And so we do some pre built flows. But those are built off of trying to not get too much into the details here. But the pace of integrations that clay vo has built, what we're working on is going to take a good amount of time. But is that for any third party developer like EVO, and or, you know, we have 220/3 party integrations, right now, they aren't able to submit flows into our flow library, that is something that we're working on is the number one thing I advocate for. And I was just in a meeting earlier today talking about it. So we're working towards it. We're getting there. But right now, they do have to be set up manually. But when you install the integration, the data will start to flow in, you can see it in your activity feed with in clay, VO or we go to like cyclic filter or a flow trigger. Those will be in there. If you do an integration, give it like five minutes because those like events actually need to happen to see the cleaning account, but just give it a day or so. But you could go in there. I'd say a lot of our top partners have built out really good content on the data that gets sent over and how to build it out and flows and hey, you may need to piece together some things and get the Help Center article about how to Build the flow and get the Help Center article, the data that a partner is passing into clay vo kind of combining those, some partners have already done that. But that's your best use case. If you do have a customer success manager with clay vo they can bounce ideas off for you on this. But ultimately just diving in there and setting up these flows, but when you go to that drop down trigger, I'm sure if you're claiming customer using flows, you got in there to like Shopify checkout, if you type in shipment, you'll you'll see shipment delivery in there, if you have an integration.
Noah Rahimzadeh 30:34
Cool. Yeah, I mean, I know one thing I think that we sort of pride ourselves on is like we'll actually go into our clients clay vo instances and drop in our pre built templates and flows. And like, that's, that's pretty much plug and play at this point, because they're, like you said pre built. So we just lean on the brands to help us, you know, do the branding. And, you know, if you want to drop something a little bit more marketing focused in the very bottom. Can't be much obviously, but you know, a call out or whatever. We help them with that sort of strategy, but also the implementation. And I think that a lot of our partners have have ended up doing the same, obviously in a it's not a, it's I don't think it's a major pain point. I'm not in CS. I could speak for Kat and her team. But I do know that like I love the idea of a flow library over time. And it's even something that we're thinking about it Malomo is building out like pre built clay vo flows in our platform, kind of like a step by step guide to how you can do unique things like you mentioned, to drive. Whether it's repeat purchases, or UGC, or acquisition through this retention channeled through like a refer a friend or something like
Dan Caldwell 31:51
that. Yeah, well, we appreciate your team leading in getting this done for
Noah Rahimzadeh 31:58
you, you did a great job of thinking through I think live, as far as I can tell, that was totally off the cuff, you know, use cases just based on one shipment notification, which is a transactional message. And so I'm curious if you've thought about are there other ways in which our our merchants in the Shopify ecosystem can be leveraging transactional messaging? To drive? What what we've now defined as retention, which is not just keep customers but grow through those customers?
Dan Caldwell 32:35
Yeah, yeah, I think those different events, segments they can create will just give you a little bit more glimpse into their customer journey. And so I think just in general, like, you can apply that to any advanced segmentation that you have, I do think something that is overlooked, though, is the multi channel approach. And, and that is like a big thing there. Making sure that those messages that people need to hear about like, are using SMS and email combined, within these flows, that's one thing we make super easy. It's like these sophisticated flows that I'm talking about, you build up these triggers, but you drag over the email and the Flow Builder, SMS is ready to go. And at the end of the day, we're just trying to use the right channel for what that customer prefers. But then also, email and SMS are a little bit different. It's not it's not just one or the other. It's a little bit of both, like, I'll give you an example is if you're gonna let me know that hey, the package arrived is on your doorstep which you can do with our integration. An email for that is great. I want that with SMS though. And we and we have data to support that the majority of people actually want these messages and SMS to until we're like porch pirates being a thing. You know, people come and take stuff off the doorstep I want to get before somebody else does. Or another example is my manager. She would get a shipment of fresh meat sent to her but she lives in Austin, Texas, it is very, in Austin, Texas. And she forgets about the package for eight hours, it spoils and it just ruined her orders at any perishables if she got that SMS, that wouldn't have happened and she unsubscribed from that subscription because of that so there's like different use cases for that but think about SMS as a do they enjoy working with your brand through SMS. I think it's an amazing way to build a really good relationship especially when you're doing what we're talking about like building these advanced segments being really thoughtful about their customer journey, what they're experiencing what they may not be experienced to send the right message but maybe even more importantly avoid sending the wrong message you can do that. But if you send the right message is nothing like SMS to make sure you're getting in front of your brand. And honestly like my favorite brands that have on SMS because I I care about them. And I feel heard and I see it all the time. And with emails I check my emails, I see them with my favorite brands. But I missed a couple. I don't miss an SMS. So think about those really important ones to be sending anything on the transactional side, I think that's the easiest way for anybody who's like, a little bit wary of SMS as a newer channel hasn't been around people might be a little intimidated by it go into transactional route is a really good first step, I bet you're gonna see that your customers really like it. And then you expand the use cases
Noah Rahimzadeh 35:21
from there. Yeah, that's, that's a really great insight into like the omni channel approach, our mutual friend Brandon from electric likes to talk about. Some refer to it as like, this is like, you are messaging me on the same device that I get texts from my grandma. So like, relevant to me.
Dan Caldwell 35:44
That's when I think the data becomes really, really what do you send them? And are being really thoughtful about what you're saying? But yeah, Brandon, smart guy.
Mariah Parsons 35:53
I have a question for you, Dan, real quick. Because you said like, I love that you said you want to make sure, obviously, that you're sending the right message, but that you're not sending the wrong one. So what would you say? Like I feel like we talk about like, oh, the right messages, like you just said to start out are transactional messages? Because across the board, like who you ordered something you want to know about it? Right? Like you made that decision? And so what would you say? Like, do you have any examples top of mine that have something that would be like the wrong message to send to someone?
Dan Caldwell 36:25
That's a really good point. I think it's kind of similar to every views. situation of just like, do you I mean, if somebody has subscribed to SMS, they're probably like, really interested customer of yours, potentially a good one. But even your best customers are going to run into some challenges. So like, if I have an open ticket with support, like, I probably don't want to 10% offer you new spring collection, probably not the right time there. Because I might be frustrated with your brand at that time, and your customer support and gorgeous may save me as a customer and keep me around. But if I'm pissed off about something and I get that SMS, untimely time, I may unsubscribe, and that was consequential. You don't want to do that. So filtering out those who's going to be bad experiencing it, go and build in these segments and filter those out. I think that can be really helpful. being thoughtful about the promotion. So if you're gonna send a discount, make sure it's a good one. And don't, I'm not a big believer in sending somebody an SMS every day to I think there's a frequency and a respect that you need to have for somebody's text inbox. And be really thoughtful and just like intentional, there's something really specific to be said, I'm not going to send you the same message every day about it. I'm not a big believer in that. So on the gorgeous thing, too, I mean, on that topic, too. I think a big thing when you send SMS to know what they're saying back to get back to those people quickly. Because that could also be a poor experience with SMS not just like what you're sending with them, because you could send such great stuff, but then also taking care of the reply. And so we have an integration with a gorgeous and also in Zendesk. So if somebody replies to a claim view SMS that gets sent into gorgeous Zendesk for customer support to immediately follow up with really good value x, not everybody is included, you know, constantly looking for those replies. But that is set up logistically in those help desks. And so we enable that form.
Mariah Parsons 38:19
Yeah, I could, I can so see that being something that like if someone wasn't on top of it, or like didn't have it automated to pop up, like it could just totally, like, just be ignored or not even seen if like a reply to SMS. That's a great point.
Noah Rahimzadeh 38:35
Yeah, that's an awesome use case. I want to I want to shift focuses, I think that the SMS thing and clay Vo is phenomenal. By the way. I think one of the things that you know, sticks out is just the data first approach and being able to easily orchestrate across channels, you know, with the great email infrastructure that you already have, and now adding the SMS channel. I know that the customers that we've set up with SMS on our end, via clay vo have been seeing great results and very happy with it. So congrats on that. shifting focus. We've got about five to 10 minutes left. So I want to get we're coming up to the holidays craziest time of the year, my first first holiday season in the Shopify ecosystem. I'm excited. I want to expect I don't know if any, I don't know if like the 20 year pros in this ecosystem know what to expect this year. So what are you guys doing at Clay VO and maybe even you specifically Dan, in your role to prepare for Black Friday? And are there any cool trends that are sort of sticking out to you in terms of what brands are doing to maximize the potential of this holiday season?
Dan Caldwell 39:59
Yeah, Really good point. Really good question. It's, I think it's just getting ahead of it. At least in my experience, if you do this right, then like your marketing side of things, is like it should be taken care of here soon, because a lot of it should just be automated and ready to go. And so we're really pushing our merchants to like, dive into comp set up these flows. If there's use cases that we're talking about here, or you're seeing elsewhere that you want to intertwine. You can set that up now, because I know in other aspects of the business, it's going to be absolutely crazy. Orders, those type of things like things are going to happen. So as much work that you could do early on, just set that up a set it and forget it, if you will, do that. And clay vo specific thing that we're pushing people to do. But the other thing is to, I'm really advocating or we're really advocating for our merchants. You know, when we talk about retention as a new acquisition, there's not just the focus on Hey, how can I drive a lot in new business from this, but how can I use this as an opportunity to continue to grow my business later on. And I think it's a really interesting time to end it like the hardest time to understand your customers and why they're there. Because it's gift giving. And so that's when I said, this is why I've asked for my survey partners, when you think something like an Octane AI, or a debit or a type form, or like a fairing for post purchase, like all of those can help you understand who your customer is, what, what are they really doing there? You know, there's a lot of platforms that are really good to help, hey, they're looking at this, this and this product. So you're likely to like this other one. But are they looking for themselves? Or are they looking for their mom or for the girlfriend, and it's gift giving. So understanding who that person is and who they're shopping for? Because it's really helpful for after Black Friday, or Monday, you've been trying to grow and hold TV. Now, if that is somebody who purchased for themselves, you probably have a playbook you know how to like try to like grow OLED TV from your existing customers. But if it's not, then you're actually not probably trying to sell to the person who you just who just bought your product. But who did is bought too. So get instead of asking, like if I buy something from my mom, like, instead of asking me to join loyalty program for a company that has earrings or something like yeah, I'm not your customer for loyalty program on earrings. But my mom, they love it. And so are you giving me a clear path to invite my mom like, Oh, my mom, you love those earrings? Hey, here's that company in case you'd like more? That's a really good opportunity. Or like if you know if you can ask who you bind for it. And I say my mom first and my girlfriend. Now, you know, do I care about Valentine's Day? Or do I care about Mother's Day sales? And then you can have an outreach to me coming up towards Mother's Day of hey, damn, did your mom like those earrings, we have 20% off coming from Mother's Day, check out the this new collection like awesome. Like that can be super helpful. So just as clearly as you can understand why they're there, not just the products that they're looking at, and the upsell stuff. But the truly why or seasonality aspect to another example I talked about is just like, like with the sporting goods, like are they buying a beanie? Because it's getting cold? And we're going into winter? And they're walking into the work with it? Are they buying beanie because it's ski season coming up? And if you can understand that, then when you're speaking to the whether it's product recommendations, or just the content of your emails, are you talking about ski season and skiing? And whatever product you sell that helps support that? Or do you have like nice dress gloves because they walk and work for colds and fingers gonna get cold? Let's try to cross sell this advice. So understanding exactly what they're there for, can help kind of tailor those and given specific examples, but you know, people can connect the dots on their own use cases. But I think it's a really interesting opportunity, challenging opportunity. But I think there's some really good programs out there to help.
Noah Rahimzadeh 43:50
Yeah, that is awesome. I'm loving all these use cases, because they're like, very tangible and real. And I think that I think that it's very much in line with a lot of the things we've been talking about both internally, externally, with our partners and externally with our clients as well, which is basically like, brands spend all of this money around acquisition around Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Normally, they do see a very significant uptick in new customer acquisition. But to your point, why are the customers there? And what are you doing to make sure that they come back and understanding the the dynamic between or the variance between your customers and your consumers? And targeting based on you know, it's like McDonald's, right? Like you're not you're not necessarily marketing to the mom who's buying the kid McDonald's, you're making sure that the kid has a fantastic experience and wants to come back and begs and cries to come doesn't have a choice annoys their
Mariah Parsons 44:49
mom enough to get them back. Right. And so
Noah Rahimzadeh 44:53
I think that there's a lot of a lot of similarities there and some great use cases, Dan. Okay, I didn't do this. is at the top. So it's my fault. But we always like to to ask some personal questions. So one or two things that you're excited about in your personal life before we wrap up here,
Dan Caldwell 45:11
oh, my personal life getting golf lessons. I have hope I won't still suck at golf afterwards, we'll see. I've never tried so hard to be so terrible at something. I'm really working on that. We'll see if it pans off. It probably won't. But I'll go in optimistic on that. Yeah. And then a second one. I think going to Vietnam and planning a trip in spring. I'm very excited. I've been there before. But my girlfriend and I were gonna go back the third week of March 2020. And that didn't end up happening, for we all know why. But I still have the itinerary on my refrigerator. I think this year might be the year that we make it over there. That's,
Noah Rahimzadeh 45:59
so you're going back for a second time. So I imagine that you recommend it. I love it.
Dan Caldwell 46:05
Yeah, one of my favorite countries ever been to was fortunate to spend a month out there a few months in Southeast Asia, just a great part of the world in general, but really loved Vietnam. So trying to get back there. That's awesome.
Noah Rahimzadeh 46:18
Yeah, I can't relate to that one. But the first one, I got golf lessons this year, for the first time go broke 90. So I'd say hey,
Mariah Parsons 46:27
good. I don't know much about golf. But I know that's good. So
Dan Caldwell 46:32
it's all about as a prospective game.
Noah Rahimzadeh 46:35
It's all relative. It's all relative. But the funny thing is, I took one lesson, I bought six, when I bought new golf clubs, which I also got this year. And my golf game just was in the dumpster. It was a dumpster fire for most of the summer. Because of that, that one lesson, like changed everything. And I couldn't figure out what he was trying to get me to do. So I haven't been back. But I've got five lessons to get this winter. So
Dan Caldwell 47:04
hopefully, we get worse before we get better with golf lessons. So what's part of that comes true for you. Let's hope.
Noah Rahimzadeh 47:12
Okay, last one, you've obviously had a pretty awesome career so far, doing awesome things that clay vo what's one tip or trick you have or a resource that you have? That's helped you get to where you are and that can be you know, you can take that from like a career advice standpoint, you can take that from a merchant, you know, that we serve standpoint, wherever you want to go with it.
Dan Caldwell 47:35
Yeah. Very cool. I think I think I'll give like a high level one and just like staying curious, ask a lot of open ended questions. Be nice to people, I feel like it goes a long way lead with empathy. big believer in that stuff. In act selfishly, I do think that the nice guy wins in the long run, when you look at it. I think like a little bit more tactical on the career side of things. And something I talk a lot about that helped me get into a job that I love is I talk to a lot of people who are early on in their careers that are like support like I was or sales role or customer successful that want to do like product or want to get into a role like mine, or just want to grow up higher, but just getting as close as you can to those people you see in those roles. The biggest the advice that I got, which was really good, whose job do you want at this company and just go friend, them show early signals that you're interested in, if it's you trying to get a product role somewhere, just like, find the top product manager, put some time on their calendar, ask to join their sprint planning sessions, those type of things. And just think as closely as you can, like, try to get a side project associated with it. So when you go to that interview, or you apply for the job opening that opens up, they remember you Oh, they expressed really interested in this role. They're interested and you're not just coming in as like, a cold call for a job. So yeah, I'd be great.
Noah Rahimzadeh 49:07
I love how we the theme of this podcast is like, macro level like strategy. And then every time we were able to get down to like the tactical level and actually implementation, so
Dan Caldwell 49:18
I like the tactical stuff. So I hope somebody got something technology percent.
Noah Rahimzadeh 49:21
Yeah, I mean, this was awesome. Thank you so much for joining. Excited to get it live, I think probably in the next few weeks. So we'll obviously do a big promotion around that when it happens. But thanks so much for joining Dan and really appreciate you spending some time with us. Absolutely.
Mariah Parsons 49:39
Appreciate it. Thanks, Dan.