Jamie (Omnisend) (00:07):
Um, and here we are with the retention Chronicles, so super excited to, uh, can I dive in? I know he's only got 30 minutes and a lot of ground to cover. Um, so with that we're one minute and let's go ahead and get going. Um, today you've got myself, uh, Jamie Sutton. I am the GM of Omnisend and we also have the pleasure of having Taylor Sicard, um, for our interview, uh, session today. Um, Taylor is a with WIN brands, um, drives a ton of kind of the strategic direction on, uh, not only brand acquisition, but, uh, retention, marketing, targeting, um, you know, creating segments and, and all that good stuff. So, uh, Taylor, uh, anything you want to add to that?
Jamie (Omnisend) (01:51):
I mean, we've known each other for years. Um, really loved the kind of direction you've taken. It seems like an exciting place to be, um, right at the forefront, um, of kind of going out prospecting, finding brands, acquiring brands, building them up. So I think the first question I've got to kick this off is, you know, what, what are some of the things you look at when you are talking to a brand, looking at acquiring a brand and, you know, specifically around their retention strategies, what are the kind of the things you look for and what are the things that you notice? Um, let, let's maybe start there.
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
Yeah, sure. Um, so typically the brands that we're acquiring are doing in the ballpark of like five to $40 million in annual revenue. So at that point, the retention aspect of the business is so crucial because if you're spending so much money to acquire these customers, it's very important to understand both how many items are they purchasing with each order and how many times per year are they coming back to purchase? And if not per year, what is the kind of purchase cycle that you're, you're experiencing? The kind Of high level things I typically go through are, you know, reviewing their email marketing platform, SMS, if that's different than email, uh, do they have a loyalty program? You know, whether it's points for referrals, et cetera, uh, what sort of customer data do they have, uh, just about the purchase history, who they are, where they're coming from. And then also like a few brands have done this very well, but like these private communities, whether it's a Facebook group, uh, some use Slack communities, uh, other use discord, uh, these are just very valuable points where you can actually understand who these people are, why they're coming back, if they are, and also why they're not, if they're not coming back and then kind of listening and learning from the dialogue that these people are having, uh, talking about both the brand and the products that they're purchasing.
Jamie (Omnisend) (03:48):
Gotcha. So, so you probably are able to do some pattern mentioned here as you kind of cause you're exposed to a lot, um, uh, just from a, like a diligence process. So from a pattern matching perspective, you know, what are kind of the common things that you're seeing people miss or leave off the table that are kind of what we would consider go-to strategies when it comes to retention and segmenting?
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
I, I mean the, the first one that I'll say, and I, I don't want to say this too loud, cause I, I feel like some brands that I acquire, this is just an easy way for me to, to really crank up their, the volume and, and get the most ROI out of an acquisition that I do make. But understanding like, what is your CPA for acquiring customers and what would it cost you to get an old customer who purchased two years ago to come back and make another purchase from you? Because brands generally understand the life cycle of their product, the life cycle of their purchasing and the life cycle of a customer that they have. This is different on a brand by brand basis. You can use industry benchmarks, but it's really unique to your brand. Um, if you're selling a non consumable item, I would say if, if somebody made a purchase and you know, the holiday season has gone past and they've, they've passed that kind of 12 month anniversary, you've probably lost them at that point, just as a ballpark timeline.
And if your CPA is $30 to acquire a new customer, what does it cost to acquire that person to come back, give them a $20 for a credit. Um, you already have their information. You already know what they've purchased previously. You can make a very compelling offer and get them to come back, make another purchase. And hopefully they can turn from this one time purchaser into this VIP customer, um, uh, that, that comes back and remembers why they loved your product so much, that this is your opportunity to really take that and shine. Um, and I think really understanding, like to kind of break it down even more to understand why somebody did or did not make another purchase. Um, I think not to promote other products or apps or anything, but, uh, post-purchase surveys by inquire. If you're not using this huge mistake, it's when I first signed up, it was like five bucks a month. It might be 50 now, but this is an app you cannot afford not to have on the thank you page of your Shopify store. It shows a survey and you can ask any question. You can randomize the order of the responses. Um, Jamie, you're shaking your head. I'm sure you've seen this before.
Jamie (Omnisend) (06:17):
Yeah, well, and it's the product is simplistic and utterly genius, right?
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
Yeah. And, and it integrates with, uh, you know, Shopify flow. So you can create customer tags based on where they came from or what purchase they made. The first thing I do is I implemented as a very binary question, was this purchase for yourself or as a gift for somebody else. And then your retention marketing should really follow two different tracks. If they bought it for themselves, it's brand education. This is who I am a letter from the founder education on the product, why you made this purchase. What makes us better than our competitors? If it's as a gift, you might actually want to give them a bit of space and then come back around the gifting holidays. Mother's day father's day, uh, any sales that you're having holiday season that like give them a bit of space and don't keep pestering them with, you know, Hey, leave. Like you could also don't leave a review because you bought it as a gift. So do you really want like
Yeah. They're just going to say I got it as a gift. They, you know, I received it and I gave it, or it may not even gone to me. So I, how am I going to review that? So using little things like that, you can make sure that the output of your retention is actually focused on the people who are going to be impacted by it most. And I think that's the most important thing because all the data points you're capturing are valid and should be recognized and should be monitored. And if you have too much noise in all the different signals that you have, it's going to really throw off a lot of the key data points that you should be using to be, to impact your decisions.
Jamie (Omnisend) (07:47):
Yeah. So obviously all of this is data led. And so, you know, the quality of the data that you've got in this is absolutely related to the quality of the retention marketing that you're going to be able to do. Um, besides inquiry labs, like what, what are some strategies that you use? Obviously, what I'm hearing is like one of the first kind of easy, low hanging fruits for you on any of these is some sort of a win-back strategy went back to Margie, highly relevant based on the data, how far back the data goes, um, so that you can actually start to make money out of the list that you've already got, um, engaged, uh, in past engagements that you've already had. So from, um, you know, the, the data points perspective, um, kind of, what are the things key things that you look for? Um, what are the kind of key markers that you look for when you're making a segment for that low hanging fruit on a win back?
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
Yeah. So, I mean, you want, you want them to ideally there's data that you already have. You're creating this win-back without having previously made it, or without having too much convoluted information about previous customers or previous purchases. Um, you want to understand what, what takes a customer from a single purchase to a second, second to third, and what sort of traits do they follow? Are they purchasing from one collection the first time, a second collection the second time? Or is it all from that same kind of core group of products? Uh, also, you know, a lot of testing, like you can't do anything well without testing. And I think it's really important to understand what people are looking for. Uh, you know, when you're going from a first to second purchase, if you don't have a ton of data, what is it going to take to get somebody over that edge?
Is it, is it a brand education? Because most people don't consider brand education to be a win back. But last I checked, no matter what product you're selling, there's a bigger company selling it out there. Yeah. You know, with me, I have a candle company I'm not Yankee candles knock you off. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, what, what makes your brand your product special? Is it handmade? Is it made in America? Is it using the best and finest quality products and ingredients? Um, all of these things are extremely relevant and, uh, can really help win back that customer who took, like, they took a chance on you. They have, they have some sort of relationship already, you know, they're like a Toby reference, be their trust. Battery's quite high. It's probably 80% after that first purchase, I gave you my credit card information, you know, my address, you know, my size or my, what I like now use that to your advantage and, and help get them to that next step. The, you know, the, the opportunity is in your hands, cause the customer is not going to do that on their own. They want some help.
Jamie (Omnisend) (10:32):
Yeah. And he's still got up, they've got a lot of room to create a, a psychological investment with that company. Um, you changed that for purchasing a product to purchasing a brand in, and that's directly correlated to that first experience, um, and how you treat them after that first shopping experience. So, yeah, I agree. It's a really good point. Uh, we do have a question from Stephanie. Um, uh, the question is, does the, how did you hear about us post purchase, does it have value in today's multitouch multichannel attribution world? Uh, I'm going to go with a resounding. Yes. And I'm assuming you are too, but I'd be curious to hear your reasons, why
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
A hundred percent, uh, like, you know, no matter who's running your marketing, there's a million different ways that you're analyzing. Is it first touches the last touch? Is it, uh, there's all these formulaic methods of how you're tracking this? Uh, if you're not asking, is this a purchase for yourself or for somebody else? The second best question to ask is where did you first hear about us? Cause it may not have actually been an ad. It could have been an organic post. It could have been a friend told them. Yep. And then they saw the Facebook ad or the Google ad and they clicked on that and that's getting the attribution. Whereas in reality, this person, you know, took these steps and it's, [inaudible]
Jamie (Omnisend) (11:50):
A version of this that you're going to get attribution models can be, we all know we've seen it. We've been there skewed it's fuzzy logic. Right. It gives us.
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
Right. It's also like, you may have seen an ad 20 times, but you didn't click on it. Yep. Right. Like it's, it's the same kind of like the people who buy it, like rent out the subway cars and put all the banner ads in there. People very rarely are searching when they're in a subway. Cause you're underground. You have very terrible cell connection. But when you also see a billboard, when you get off the subway car, or then you see a Facebook ad or a Google ad or a Instagram ad, it's all of this kind of it's, it's a, it's like this pattern recognition. Yeah. Um, yeah. And I think that that is extremely important. It's also very valuable to understand the average order value of people who are coming from different channels or purchasing for different reasons for myself personally, people who buy for themselves instead of buying as a gift spend about 50% more.
Yeah. So that speaks to how am I targeting people on my customer acquisition front. I've looking for people who want to buy it for themselves, not as a gift because I know they'll spend more money. Um, also if you attribute, uh, if you attribute the attribution of this purchase to Instagram where, uh, my eCommerce platform or attribution platform indicated that it was a Google shopping ad, maybe I should be investing a bit more into my brand awareness on Instagram because that's where people are truly identifying and finding myself whether that's through influencers or through just, you know, generic branded posts, going to a very broad demographic. Um, it's extremely like retention as much as it's about getting that second purchase or keeping that brand going in in the background. It can want, it should be a hundred percent driving your customer acquisition strategies because you're taking the data from the retention and plugging that into the very start of how people
Jamie (Omnisend) (13:49):
Well, discover your business. It's a flywheel, right? You have to treat it as a flywheel. Um, the other thing, uh, you know, that, that comes to mind with, you know, the gifting versus I'm buying it for myself, that's going to have an influence on how you merchandise your products and what you, uh, you know, what the contents of that retention campaign. And based on that singular question that you're asking, um, is I agree it's a really vital one depending on what sector you're in. Um, so yeah, I think that's a key takeaway as well. Um, if somebody's, uh, only coming to your site to buy gifts, you're probably gonna give them, you know, a collection that is $25 and under products. Um, and
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
Or just how you're, how you're categorizing it. Maybe if it's a gifting website, you know, look at, uh, look at floral companies, people very rarely buy flowers for themselves. That is a 99% gifting market. Uh, and, and what they typically have is they have it by color. Cause I know that Jamie likes white and then they have it by price. Cause I know I want to spend $75 on Jamie cause I like, but not that much. Um, I don't like him a hundred dollars much, but I like him more than $50. Um, so taking some of those initiatives from these other industries, you can definitely implement that into your stores and uh, and try and use that logic into assisting with, you know, uh, increasing conversion rate and, and taking that data point as far as you can, across the entire, uh, customer journey.
Jamie (Omnisend) (15:18):
That's uh, yeah, that's, that's been a good, really good. I wanted to ask you too, um, about like retargeting from a retention strategy perspective, is that something that you've employed on any of your sites and kind of, what were your initial findings of Seth?
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
Sorry, can you repeat that? Uh, onsite retargeting?
Jamie (Omnisend)
Um, so basically segmenting, I've got a pretty good persona now. Um, when they hit the site based on, you know, what type of, uh, segment they're in, how am I going to merchandise? How am I going to show them and how I'm going to keep them engaged and retain their business?
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
I, yeah, like very important. There's a number of different tools that can do that. I think to tie that in with like the platforms and tools for retention marketing, it even goes as far to, when somebody lands on your website, are you asking for their email or their phone number that is the beginning of retention marketing journey? Are they browsing from a phone or from a desktop? How do you try and how do you try and streamline, uh, just how you want to communicate with them. If somebody is on their phone, getting a cell phone number, it can be quite convenient and quite easy. Uh, if they're on a desktop, it can also be, but it also may not be.
And that can kind of drive through into your band and carts. It can also drive through, into your post-purchase upsells like that. That's actually another retention factor. A native deodorant did a great job of that. Um, if you bought a subscription, they would sell you a travel size. The travel size is like $3. You'd be stupid not to get it, but it was so inexpensive. They could not sell it on their website because the cost of shipping would be too high. So they had to bundle it with a subscription.
Jamie (Omnisend) (17:04):
One of my favorite items. Yeah. Looks like we've got a couple of questions. Um, so, uh, this one's from Jeremy Roberts, he Taylor and it's been forever a screen real estate on the thank you page is really valuable. Uh, we get one opportunity here. Um, a survey versus a GCR opt in, have you measured the lifetime value of a five star review, uh, to GCR versus data captured from survey?
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
This is a bit tough and it's almost on a brand by brand case. Yeah. Uh, you can always do an AB test and see. There really isn't, there isn't really a gold standard here or something that's gonna change, like their test. It that's, that's probably the easiest path here is test it. Um, yeah, I test everything.
Jamie (Omnisend) (18:10):
Um, and then we got one from Ryan. Uh, what, what are some good examples, um, for gamification on retention? Uh, one example that comes to mind customers can get points of basically a loyalty retention program, uh, based on the purchase amount of frequency to could redeem for perks or discounts, uh, example work, um, again, uh, and to are there other, other strategies like this to consider for retention?
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
Yeah. 100%. I'm like, this is like when I think of retention, you gotta kind of think of the customer journey. It starts when they land on your website, email versus SMS, uh, then it kind of goes into the abandoned cart. Then once they place an order using a platform to give them a, uh, a branded customer experience from shipping to delivery, which, you know, our friends at Malomo will do a great job of, then it goes into the post-purchase review. How do you get a positive review, a positive review? You could then turn into a brand ambassador and maybe then you want to cue them up to either be an affiliate for your business or give them some sort of points or loyalty program. And that's kind of where, where this question leads into is do those programs work a hundred percent. They do a running a store credit or gift card can be a little complex from the financial side, just for accounting purposes.
Um, I know my finance team hates when I try and do programs like that, uh, points are just fairly simple and can be converted for dollars in credits. Um, so that's usually what people favor, um, and in a perfect world, if somebody is leaving a good review and they're doing all these things, ask them to share their experience, give them bonus points. If they shared on Facebook, Instagram, give them a referral bonus. If they can get a friend of theirs to come back and purchase something. There's a good chance if like Jamie, you and I are friends. If Jamie likes the product, he tells me about it, I'm likely also going to enjoy it because Jamie liked it so much. He had to tell me. Um, and, and I think I personally, I don't like the idea of gamifying reviews, like trying to win somebody's heart with a five star review, but if somebody leaves a five star review unprovoked, give them some sort of love for that.
Like whether it's a simple, plain text email from the founder, um, you know, just really appreciate it. We're a small business. Your review means the world to us. Um, you know, we live in a world where, uh, you know, it's like if you've ever automation to yeah, Oh 100%. We live in a world where, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, you know, we live in a world where on TripAdvisor, there's five star and one star reviews, there's no three, four, three, two, three, four star reviews. It was either a terrible experience cause they forgot your entree. Or it was a great experience because it gave you a free dessert. But like the reality is the truth lies in those four, three and two star reviews. And those are the most valuable. But if someone gives you a five star set up a simple automation from your ESP or SMS provider and just make it a simple plain text email from the founder or the GM or whoever is the voice of the business and just say, thank you, it's it, it's such a small minute thing, but it makes somebody's day. Yeah.
Jamie (Omnisend) (21:21):
It's it's and I mean, that's what we're talking about with, with retention, it's the small stuff. Um, and cumulatively, uh, you know, shavings make a pile, but it's all these, these small things, uh, that aggregated really make a difference, uh, the differential on your, your lifetime value of, of, of your clients, um, and of your consumer. So I think that's super important to keep in mind. Um, I know we only have a few minutes left here, um, and we need a wind down a little bit. Um, but you know, if you have to talk to somebody to, um, maybe just hit, you know, a thousand orders a month on their business, um, what would be kind of a key pointer you would take and give to them? That's a takeaway, um, of something that you think they probably aren't addressing from a retention perspective?
Taylor Sicard (WIN Brands Group)
Yeah. I mean the, the easiest question here is, you know, a thousand customers a month means 12,000 customers a year. How do you get each of them to influence one other person to come back and purchase from you? That's not necessarily retention, it's a little bit of a sidestep to retention. Um, but then it's also, how do you get five or 10% of those people to come back and make another purchase? Because the reality is between five and 10%, that's a whole nother month of customers that you, you know, it's like adding a 13 month a year, which is amazing. Um, and how do you like the beauty of retention? Marketing is a lot of this is all automated. So this is not you sitting there with a pen and paper writing handwritten postcards to people. This is using your ESP and just setting up a flow or a automation or whatever each ESP calls it a slightly different thing.
Um, but it's, it's spending a few hours one day crafting this up, sending it, and then just sitting back and watching the success or running, learning from the impact it creates and trying to optimize it to get more and more. And I think the reality is, um, Jamie from OmniSend, I'm sure you see this, but when you're sending emails, a lot of people try and focus on the copy of the email or the creative of the email. If you're only getting a 10% open rate, the copy and creative does not matter whatsoever working, getting your open rates up because that is that going from a hundred percent to a 10% open, those 90% of people, that's, that's a huge gap to make up. And that's also the easiest way to start making an impact. Uh, you know, plain text is an easy way to try and get it out of promotions and marketing tabs and into the inbox folder. Um, and then also just making a subject line that's not cliche, not salesy, but it's just very heartfelt in, you know, organic that's by far the best way to try and make the most out of this.
Jamie (Omnisend) (24:08):
Excellent. Um, and it's, it's iterative, right? Um, I mean, you have to keep experimenting here, um, multivariate testing, um, but I think he hit the nail right on that. If you've only got, you know, a 10% open rate, it's get the open rates, get the engagement higher, your message, um, is not working for most of the people that you're sending it to. Um, so that's where the, that's where the strong iteration comes in. Yeah. Um, cool. Well, uh, any last minute questions from anybody, uh, who is on the line otherwise? Um, we're at the one minute Mark, and I'm gonna wish you a very good rest of your week. Um, and thanks so much for coming on. Um, hopefully everybody pulled some, uh, nice little, uh, nuggets out of this. Uh, I know I always do when I chat with you, so appreciate the time. Yeah. Cheers. Thanks everyone for tuning in and Jamie, uh, enjoy the rest of your day. Yeah. Thanks. You too, Taylor. Uh, and you all, thanks for having us. This was a great experience. So thanks to the entire team retention Chronicles.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Let's go guys. Awesome session. Thanks so much, right. I'll see ya.