TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
customer retention, ecommerce marketing, post purchase experience, transactional emails, order tracking, personalization platform, AI-powered, incentives, customer engagement, retention strategies, cross-selling, direct mail, sensory branding, IRL experiences, customer lifetime value
SPEAKERS
Mark Lotman, Mariah Parsons
Mariah Parsons 00:04
Hello and welcome to retention Chronicles, the customer retention podcast for E commerce marketers. I am your host and fellow ecom marketer, Mariah Parsons. Tune in as I speak with DTC founders and operators about strategy that works and strategy that doesn't of course, we are able to have these conversations because of our podcast sponsor, Malomo. I have seen 1000s of brand operators power their order tracking with Malomo to make every single message count. As a consumer, I personally have come to expect that brands have a phenomenal post purchase experience, or else I'm not really shopping with them again. And a lot of consumers are this way. 84% of shoppers won't return if they have a bad shipping experience. And it feels so important for E commerce brands to have a good pre purchase experience. You're trying to get that acquisition. Your customers are coming through the door. They're coming through your website, it is a very personalized experience. You have pop ups that are timed Well, you have customer testimonials that are easing fears. You have well timed car abandonment, emails, all of that stuff. And then you purchase with a brand, and sometimes there's no communication, and it leaves you wondering. It leaves you mad, maybe scared that you fell for a scam or something like that. And so I think it is such a smart decision to have your transactional shipping emails and SMS not just be about only business. Malomo helps turn them into a powerful marketing tool. What does that look like? It means you can cross sell other products on that branded order tracking page. You can put educational content on that page. So if you have something that consumers will have to learn how to use for the first time, you can put that there. If you have recipes that they could you know, use your product for when they first get it. You can put that there, your social media, everything, frequently asked questions, whatever you want. You get the control back so that you're not sending your customers to a carrier tracking page, you're putting them right back on your website, and you're also keeping them informed about their order status while you do it. That's the beautiful thing about this platform, if you're ready to turn your order notifications into a marketing channel and join 1000s of E commerce brand operators in making their customers happier while also adding to your brand's profits. Visit go malomo.com that's G O M, a, l o m, o.com Hello everyone, and welcome back to retention Chronicles. Mark, thank you for joining me today. I'm so excited to have you here. It's going to be a great time. I'm going to pass the mic to you to say hello. Say, you know, tell our listeners who you are and what brings you to this podcast today?
Mark Lotman 02:49
Yeah, thanks, Mara. But first, thanks for having me on. Excited to be on the podcast. What do you say? You say long time. Listener, first time caller,
Mariah Parsons 02:59
there you go. Love it.
Mark Lotman 03:02
Yeah. Quick introduction, Mark, founder, co founder of monocle, started monocle with my partner, Noam, couple years ago. At this point, monocle, for those of you who don't know, is personalization platform. We are an AI powered personalization platform, we started with incentives and kind of with the time and questions from our customers. We moved kind of beyond that. So today we offer personalization anything that is an incentive related and then timing related and engagement related. So we're helping brands essentially figure out, you know, what is the right time, what frequency, and what is the right offer to reach out to a user. You know, that is the retention Chronicles, but we are. We start a little bit earlier in the funnel, so nautical helps with those decisions on the site already, for anybody that's either identified or unidentified on the site, we can help with things like, you know, popping up, a pop up with the right incentive at the right time, showing a banner with the right incentive to kind of get that unidentified user to sign up, and then kind of move along the conversion funnel with them, either through kind of Another more site experiences. They're based usually on pop ups or, you know, email, SMS experiences, whether it's flows campaigns that are targeted towards that. And then we do a lot, and I think this is kind of where the majority of the conversation is going to focus on. We do a lot on the retention side, admittedly. So you know, that first purchase, I think a lot of brands come to us and say, you know, we have an audience that's pretty robust, and we want to figure out how to kind of engage them through kind of their life cycle. And so we help with that a lot. And I think that that is by tendency also to kind of spend time on that side, a little bit more on Malomo, excited to kind of share what we doing, what we in the market. Okay? Perfect.
Mariah Parsons 05:00
So that was a great summary. So just you gave a lot of examples, like pop ups on the site and everything that's more I think users will be more familiar with. And I think that's why it's great that we're going to sit in the retention side, because I think any consumer they know right, like, even if they're not in the E commerce world, because I always like to zoom it out, because any consumer that doesn't work in this, you know, Shopify or econ ecosystem, they know like, okay, a pop up when they first come to the site, or a discount on their first, you know, their first order. But then I think it is less known, or you see less brands use a retention play in the same way, where you're incentivizing to have a repeat purchase. And so I'm very excited to, you know, to hone our focus in there. And I think it, it would be great if you could kind of give a summary of like, when a brand first comes to work with you all, what are like? You know, they, you know, you gave the example of, we have a robust list, and we, you know, we want to re engage them throughout the life cycle. What's like, kind of the first step that a brand would say, like, Okay, I'm like, at this point where I know, I I need something that is informing, using AI, or using strategy from, you know, experts like yourself, of like, okay, we need to better our strategy. What's kind of the tail, like, telltale signs of a brand should be looking at, like, Okay, we're ready. We're at the stage that we could use something like this.
Mark Lotman 06:28
Yeah, um, I mean, listen, I would say taking a step back. I think that, like in the world where cost of acquisition is rising, I think that, like everybody should be looking at retention, it is. You're right that retention becomes more of a focus point when brands get, in my mind, to a certain size where it gets interesting to engage with that list and when, early on, literally, there's not a lot you can do if you don't have kind of a solid list size. On the retention side, there's essentially, there's nobody to
Mariah Parsons 07:05
retain. Yeah, you don't have data to like, there's not a lot of
Mark Lotman 07:09
customers can engage too, you know, there's a finite amount of folks, and there's not a lot of heterogeneity between them, which is the other thing. So usually, you know, early on, you have kind of the early adopters of your product or your brand, and there's a lot of uniformity between them, so you have a very specific message, and that specific message tends to resonate with folks that are kind of similar. And you also don't have a lot of different products, and so at that point, you know, there's very little segmentation that is actually needed, you would actually find that whatever resonates with one person will resonate with most of the folks. I think that the I would say the caveat on that is subscription brands. If you're a subscription brand, your entire business model, whether you want it or not, is built on retention, and even if you're early on starting to understand that muscle is or train that muscle and understand how that kind of motion works is crucial for you. Cost of acquisition is not going to cover your first month of subscription. And if you don't understand how to retain folks on subscriptions, how to think about trend prevention, do even the analysis of like, you know, what are COVID What are different cohorts look like? What is my you know, acquisition channel to LTV, kind of markers and correlations, all of that is something that is crucial for subscription business, even early on. And so I think that, like for them, I would start thinking about it really early, early. And that's what we're saying. We're saying that brands, even on the smart side, come to us with retention questions, even if you know they are, they're not at scale, but everybody else, yes, I think that the biggest marker, Mariah, is scale. Folks are coming in on, you know, lists that are in the north. That's even of a half a million subscribers. That's where it starts getting interesting, and that's where you kind of start seeing heterogeneity between those different groups,
Mariah Parsons 09:05
right? Yeah, that makes sense. And I love that you gave, like, an actual number of half a million for people to gage. Because I also play that, that game a lot, where it's like, okay, a small brand, what does that mean? So I love that we quantified it of like, this is where, really, you can pinpoint your strategy of like, okay, you have enough to really inform maybe what you could change and do better so that your customers, you don't have to acquire them. So, yeah, I love that, and I think that's a great segue into first, actually, let me pause. I want to talk about your, like, inspiration, your background, um, first before we dive into retention, because I know we're gonna, we're I already want to go there, but I know right just we'll hit, we'll hit the nail on the head just real quick. And then we'll dive into retention and strategies and everything. Let's back up.
Mark Lotman 09:58
Yes, um. Um, yeah. So the reason, the reason we started monocle nom and I, essentially, we've been around incentives and pricing our whole adult life. I'll give he's not on the call, but I'll give his introduction as well, you know. So I looked at incentive from a business perspective. I was consultant with McKinsey. I was part of the pricing practice, so looking a lot of kind of the business impact of discounts, incentives, pricing decisions. NOAM is an engineer by training, and he's spent his adult life at Tech platforms like Lyft, Instacart, and I think he was looking at incentives more from kind of how to make, how to create robust platforms around those decisions, and how to kind of scale those decisions. And I think most of us had the same realization, which is, kind of incentives is an interesting domain because it's very common. Everybody's doing it. Everybody understands very intuitively, kind of the power of it. But there's very little sophistication out there. When you look at the actual tools that kind of mid size, emerging brands or even larger companies have at their disposal to manage kind of incentives and manage discounts and promotions. A lot of them still resort just to an AB test, which is a great start if you do that, but very far from, I'd say, the targeting capabilities that the same brands have at their disposal, and kind of the acquisition side with ads, and the way they're kind of targeting ads on whether meta or Google. And so we thought that that was an interesting opening. We thought that it's a large market that is relevant for, you know, again, like the Shopify tail, the Shopify, plus kind of brands, and then also consumer brands that are larger than that kind of graduate into enterprise. And so we started Monaco off of the back of that experience. And I think that, you know, I touched on a little bit on the beginning. We think that today, with kind of the advance of machine learning, there is actually even a broader opportunity that goes beyond insight, and it's just just thinking about experimentation, personalization at large, specifically when it pertains to retention life cycle,
Mariah Parsons 12:07
yeah, okay, I love that comparison between, you know, the acquisition ads targeting and then on the incentive side of usually, it's just like AB testing is kind of the norm right now. And I think that'll be a very, very interesting conversation. So let's dive into that. We got the background out of the way right now. We can go into retention. Let's dive into that a little bit. So when you're thinking about, you know, like making sure that the actual pop up or the incentive or the discount or whatever, are you kind of using the same, I guess, qualifiers as, say, a meta or Google to, like, identify a brand's different consumers, or what's kind of like, the back end rationale, the logic, yeah, that's
Mark Lotman 12:55
a great question. So yes, very similar to Google and Google, and then I think about incremental ROAs, so the way we're thinking about essentially incremental revenue per user, or incremental gross profit per user. And the thought Mariah is, you know, you have, let's say, a 10% off wherever it lives. It can live in a pop up. It can live in a in a pre purchase flow, in the campaign, wherever it lives. The first question is, what is the incremental revenue that that 10% actually is generating for the right the simple, you know, answer is that for some folks, that incremental revenue might be negative, so you're giving away 10% but you're giving it away to folks who don't really change their behavior, except for kind of getting the coupon, but it was still purchase, but they would purchase a Lower at a lower incentive. I think the more nuance, and that's kind of where Monaco lives, is that sometimes that incremental revenue is positive, but like, I think there's a broader question of, does is it worth your brand equity? Is it worth kind of the, you know, the long term price deterioration, the long term pressure on the price point and your positioning in the market. So, you know, to make it very concrete, if you have, you know, single digit basis point increase in conversion from giving somebody a 10% off. Like, is that worth your while to give to everybody on the site and create a new floor where 10% is what every user is or every potential customer is accustomed to starting the relationship. And then if you want to do a campaign or you want to do a promotion, or you want to retain that user, you know that's the that's the new floor they they would expect that off the bat. And usually then it kind of slips from there to higher and higher offers. And so we think that that's the perspective that's interesting. And I think our way to answer that is that it depends on the incremental effects. So for every user with monocle, is doing on the back end is we, in real time, predict what is the incremental effects of any discount that the brand sets up on our platform for a specific user given their specific attributes, and then. We, you know, make the decision based on the guidance we get from the brand and whether to give that discount, whether it's, you know, the incremental effects actually worth their while, or, you know, maybe we should stay with the lower incentive. Maybe we should not give an incentive at all. And it's very similar to the way that users are exposed, again, to ADS, where you would think, you know, is my dollar in ad spend is worth the incremental revenue, my getting my incremental loss in that dollar, I'm not, you know, very rarely do people get less than that dollar. Incremental would take kind of a consistent loss making dollar in incremental loss. But even short of that, folks usually have, you know, incremental loss target that is way higher. And so that's kind of the fact that we are also trying to embed it to incentive and discount decisions. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 15:45
yeah, it's a great, great, you know, way to like position it, because I think a lot of people are familiar with like ROAs through ads, and then thinking about, obviously rose in different ways. I love, I love that mark, and I think it's I've seen just or I've heard more conversation around brands either neglecting, like doing discounts totally, or like doing it, you know, during Black Friday, Cyber Monday or an anniversary sale, or like they have one date or something, one campaign or one strategy around like discounts will only happen during this. There's no sign up discount, there's no birthday discount. There's no whatever right. And I would love to get your opinion on that, because it's to me, it makes sense, if it's, you know, you have the tools in your as a brand, in your back pocket, of saying like this actually doesn't help us at all, and like damages our reputation, or, you know, it it just lowers the lowers the floor that we're now at and able to go to. So I have seen that, like, conversation happening with a lot of brands. I we've had some on the podcast that are talking about it. So yeah, I would love to get, like, your opinion on where do you think that shifts started happening? Was it because tools like monocle started, you know, being able to give numbers to, like, maybe that's actually not worth it, like in your whole strategy, yeah,
Mark Lotman 17:05
yeah, totally listen. So that's so just, you know, my first reaction to that is that that is, you know, when brands, until very recently, had to make a, I'd say, a promotion strategy. It was almost a binary game of zero or one, where it's like, either I'm doubling down and I'm doing offers and promotions or I'm not, because I'm trying to kind of avoid that, like slippage, and that is a frustrating choice. You know, it's like, again, like to draw the comparison the outside it would be like, Am I doing ads or not doing ads? Like, nobody thinks that way. Nobody's like, yes, like, I'm going to be like an ad, you know, I'm going to be leaning into ADS. I'm just going to do ads. Or somebody's like, No, I'm not going to do ads. I'm going to build my brand only with, you know, word of mouth. There's, you know, some portion in your kind of a growth mix that was going to go to ads, and some that is going to come organically from your current user base. And I think that, you know, on the promotion side, there was nothing in the middle like it was either you're doing kind of offers, or, you know, doing offers all the time for the customer journey, or you're doing it only on Black Friday and maybe, you know, kind of seasonal events, but that's it. I think, where the thought process is kind of changing is technology is where, you know, today, with AI and our ability to make, you know, pretty rapid online predictions on the user level, brands are have more options. They can say, okay, even if I don't want to give, you know, a sign up offer to everybody. I can now get it to, like the top 10% most incremental users, and for the 90% I'm still going to keep my brand positioning where it is, my brand equity where it is, doesn't not going to take all that dilution, but I will get the benefit of getting those top 10% of most incremental users that essentially would never purchase without that offer. And I'm gonna be able to kind of get those. And those not necessarily, those are not necessarily bad users with low LTV a lot of times, those are users that are still on the fence. They like it. There's maybe a competitor, a competitor that's undercutting it on price, and so they need to be swayed a little bit. And I think that the advance of AI and kind of tooling today in Monoco is part of that is enabling brands to take a more nuanced approach. And you know what we're saying is our best customers, let's say are two, two archetypes of customers. The first ones is obviously the folks who have been just massively over discounting, and want to pull back, and that's where they're using us, and I think that's a clear use case. The more unexpected one are brands that, to your point, just are not perceiving themselves as very discount heavy, and would like to tiptoe into that world. We're calling them promotion curious, and they would like to do it in a way that. Stockpile. They would not do it in a way that's nuanced, and they would like to do it in a way that is a key to the way they're making decisions and ads and, you know, in every tool, you know, in every kind of strategy they're taking, which is something that's more balanced and based on the returns. And that's where, you know, model is attractive, because we're enabling to do that with with offers and discounts. Okay,
Mariah Parsons 20:21
so returns, let's double tap on that a little bit and just tell me more about that, because I think that would be interesting for brands to hear, because I wouldn't think like returns with incentives automatically, but it actually it is a great, great so,
Mark Lotman 20:38
yeah, so what I'm in the returns is financial returns, not okay, okay,
Mariah Parsons 20:43
okay. I was like, Wait, instead of, I think people like on their return, okay, okay, okay, gotcha glad we clarified that. Then, um, okay, so that's great mark. So let's now go into, I want to kind of walk through for our listeners the different opportunities that lie within retention strategies you know that they can optimize with incentives, with you know, more like targeting and more more smart, dynamic
Mark Lotman 21:13
options. Yeah, so I'm excited to talk about retention. Mariah, if you will. Let's take a maybe even a broader view on that than just incentives, for sure, I'll say it this way, from our experience, even great brands that are very thoughtful and kind of the pre purchase journey, and, you know, short of incentives and have a very robust calendar, campaign calendar, we find that still struggle to articulate their post purchase strategy. It's all and these are at scale brands that have folks that are even on the agency side of in house. They're very capable. And I think that where they are is that kind of the tools at disposal essentially allow them to a lot of the times, take two single moments in the customer journey, post sale that are very obvious. The first one is the right after the purchase, where it's kind of a thank you post purchase engagement that is happening, you know, within the first day week, call it two weeks after the product was purchased. And then the window, which is okay, we lost you. We haven't seen you. We lost you. Like, please come back. And then between that, sometimes, you know, there's six, nine months or a year even, where the customer hears messages that you know are rooted in campaigns and the social calendar, and, you know, in the product calendar releases, etc, but not on the retention side. And the retention side, we feel like there is almost like an anticipation for the customer to come back and tell you he wants you again. Like, Oh, you'll come back to the side, and then we'll trigger a flow or respond to my campaign that might be more product focused, and then, you know, I'll retain you with maybe a better offer, because you're returning customer, but not a lot of structure beyond that. And I think that's a big opportunity. I think that there's a lot of ways to slice it. I can offer a couple, but on the highest level, I think that, you know, the thought is, if you look at the post purchase, customer experience, what is it for your brand? What happens a month out, two months out, three months out, four months out, you know, before the win back, and how do you think about the sequencing of those interactions and the way that you know the calendar, the campaign calendar, aside that specific customer. And I think that, you know, I'll give you three flavors that we've seen of folks are doing it well, the folks who do it well, I'd say first level, have a view on that time based calendar. So they take an approach of, you know, this is what's going to happen after two months. This is what's going to happen after four and six. And it's not just swing back, right? It's constant, you know, like, okay, you've been with the product now for two months. How is going? You know, you've been with the product four months. Are you enjoying it? Here's a cross sell opportunity for you. You've been with the product for six months. Maybe there's another opportunity that's maybe based on the higher AOV, the natural cycle of the product, you know, is it time to replenish it? Is it time to get, you know, an other SKU based on kind of the wear and tear of that product that you purchase? So that's, I think, the entry point. The second, more sophisticated level is going to be something that is also be based on what is that first product that you purchased. So that specific first product, um, I love running, so I'll give you a running example. You know, haka, for example. If you buy haka shoes, they will go follow up after four months and say, okay, you've been enjoying your shoes. Clearly, you haven't returned them. That's amazing. What about your like running wear? You know, we've noticed that. Folks who buy this kind of skew with, you know, this kind of running product would usually also tend to buy these kind of running shorts or running gear. And I think that that's not waiting to lose the customer, and not, you know, just hitting them right after, but giving them all the time with the product and seeing the value of it, and then hitting them up with that cross sell that is specifically tailored to what they purchase when they did. I think the third iteration of that, which is even more clever, is also overlaying seasonality. So it's freezing in Chicago. We talked about it. It's freezing New York. To come back to that, you know, haka post purchase experience. You know that it's freezing in for folks that have their addresses, as in, kind of the Northeast, Midwest in February. So you overlay that with, you know, here is the gear for the winter. That is specifically for you given your first purchase, you're four months out, and that's a very targeted way to think about the post purchase kind of experience. Obviously, all of those take more maintenance. You would have to kind of set up those specific flows. There's more segmentation that's happening. There's more upkeep. If it's seasonal, you have to also adjust it to the season. It's not something that you can just, you know, set up and like, run, but I do think that from what we've seen, at least it has a pretty substantial ROI. Now, if you want to be smart about it, incentives will have to come in, you know, looking at whether the that user purchased their first, you know, product with a discount or without a discount. What was the AOV? How do you slice that? Is higher AOV? You know more. You know a key to somebody who would purchase with a higher ov again, or is it actually like a smaller, you know, AOV, second purchase that comes in. So I do think that incentives play into this. I think that folks who do it well would think about the experience of the way that's more holistic.
Mariah Parsons 27:06
Yeah, I love the way you broke that out. I think that it's that's super, super easy to see, like the different levels of the three, kind of just like opportunities that are there. And it's interesting to hear. You know, we're talking about the post purchase space, which Malomo, which is my, you know, full time gig. It's how I met Chase, who connected us, and we sit in order, tracking and the transactional making the transactional experience marketable, right? And so it's the same experience, granted, this is more between, you know, when someone orders a product, and when someone actually gets that product. So it's interesting to hear because we talk about post purchase so much on this podcast, because a lot of attention sits in the post purchase space, right? So it's interesting to think about, you know, months after they already have gotten that product, what are you doing to keep retaining them? And I love this conversation because it is super It feels almost like a lighter touch, right? Like it feels. And I think that's why a lot of brands don't have a strategy that's figured out, because on their attention side, that is because it feels like, oh, like they already know about our brand if they bought with us, right? So like they're gonna just come back to us and it's like, no, no. Think about all the places you've ever shopped, like, as a as a consumer, put your consumer hat list. You know, listeners put it up. Put it on. Think about all the places that you've bought from, and it's maybe like, if, if someone asks you, like, Where would you get shoes from? You probably have one or two places that are going to come top, top of mine, right? But you've probably bought shoes from a million places, right? Um, so, and you probably have ones that are top of mind where it's like, Oh, I've been seeing those, but I I haven't been a customer. So I think that's where this conversation is so interesting, because you're thinking about, Okay, what would be as a consumer, what would be helpful for me to know two months, four months, six months after purchasing? And of course, like you said, it's going to be different for every product. The running example is great, um, and different on your business model as well. And different, you know, it's always different. Um, but I love that we're kind of drawing out and focusing on different stages of the post purchase experience, like further out. And I love that you categories, categorized it in between, you know, you make the purchase and then the win back campaign. Because I just, I think that's that's very smart, and we haven't, we haven't zoomed out a lot on this podcast to talk about, kind of just like, chop it up by months, like, what are you seeing post purchase?
Mark Lotman 29:36
Yeah, yeah, no. I think it's very and to be clear, not using Malomo, I feel is table stakes, like if you're not taking advantage,
Mariah Parsons 29:45
you do, you do want to make sure your customers know where the product is, yes, and,
Mark Lotman 29:49
but yeah. But also to your point, you know, leveraging that from just a transactional the shipping address, into something that is the moment with the customer. Sure, I think that that is, you know, a valuable thing, that is, should be a table stakes, just like every brand should do it like, let's, you know, but then the question is, after that, and I do think that, like, it's not getting enough, you know, love attention, like, and I think that the way to, maybe the way we try to kind of help think about it, where the something that doesn't exist is, you know, do a simple thought exercise where take all of your different personas. So again, that's why being at scale is important, right? You have different personas. It's not the same person that is buying with the same kind of emotional attachment or value proposition resonated. There's going to be a number of different personas. Now, if you take all of those that you know about and you try to you spend so much money on a track thing on the outside, and then with yourself as a, you know, retention marketing or marketing professional, imagine what would be like a super successful relationship with that customer. Like, what would that look like? You know, again, like, if it's shoes, I'm sorry I'm coming back to it, but like, keep coming back. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah. It works because, you know, I think that, like, I think it resonates on a very day to day level for me. And so, like, it's really easy for me to articulate that, if I was a brand owner, but, you know, for again, not to not, not too hard, too much on haka. But you know, if you're selling running shoes, okay, like, so what is an amazing relationship? It's not somebody who, like, you know, bought the running shoes and then, like, never purchased again until it, you know, they crossed their 800 miles or 800 kilometers? No, it's something that, like the shoes were a gateway. And then, you know, you start buying gear, you start buying apparel. And apparel is seasonal, so then you make sure you restock every season. And then, you know, maybe you're expanding into other verticals that they have, like walking shoes and so, like, that frame of mind of what like an amazing relationship with a customer would look like. I think that's the starting point. And once you have that mapped out, once you can imagine that, and the question is, how do you get there? You know, what are the different triggers? What are the right times? You know, marketeers and retention marketing know the customer the best, so they would know what would resonate. I think it's just a matter of having that clear articulation and then mapping out from, you know, the start, the purchase, the first purchase, the starter relationship, like, where do we go? You know, we had, like, a great first date. What do we do now?
Mariah Parsons 32:30
The pressure's on, Yep, yeah, I
Mark Lotman 32:33
think the opportunity is on. That's where it's getting exciting. You know, that's where it's like, oh, like, now we have all, everybody's bought in. You know, I'm a brand. I would like to serve you as the customer you're clearly buying in into my value proposition. And where do we take it from here? And I think that that imagination a lot of time falls on the brand, because customers, to your point, are distracted. There's so many things going on on the marketing side, in their personal lives, it's kind of hard for them to they're not going to be the ones. They're going to sketch out their relationship. It will be the market year, and it will be the brand. But I think that you know, being keeping that kind of trajectory and then being intentional about what can you what can get you there? I think is a worthwhile exercise.
Mariah Parsons 33:18
Yeah, and like, to your point. I think you can, like, brands can get to that point of having all that, that customer data and knowing what works by testing before, you know, rolling out like, Okay, this is our strategy. It makes total sense that you can be like, Okay, actually, let's just split it up. Like we think that this is what's going to work. But then you can still always go back to, you know, I think we were putting, like, AB testing, and then, you know, more like targeting at odds, but they can work together as well, right? You can, you can have an informed strategy that changes, or maybe you are, you know, launching in a totally different category that's tangential to what you're, you know, like shoes, running shoes, and then apparel, yeah, and you might have, depending on how a customer first shops with you, that might be a differentiator, you know, you never know. So I think it's, it's a really interesting conversation, and I think it would be great to have you walk through the things that you're excited about for 2025 like, where you envision brands who are kind of like, they're on top of this. They're rolling out new strategies that are gonna work. Like, what have you kind of seen of where it's like, oh, that's a good idea. Are there any examples that you know come to your mind first? Yeah.
Mark Lotman 34:31
I mean, I won't share the specific names of the brands, but I do think that, like, one thing that I'm particularly excited we're seeing a lot on there's a lot of focus on cross sell. I think that generally there is more attention. I say it every year, and then it gets truer and true, if you will. I do think that there is more attention to extending the lifetime memory customer and like getting them into not more categories, more s the brand is offering. So I think. That like that is something that is definitely happening, and we see more focus on that. And I do think that that will deal results, if you know, done correctly, into your point, like with kind of a experimentation and testing framework in mind. Another thing that I think is interesting is kind of IRL brand experiences, of direct to consumer and omni channel brands where, you know, the VIP, everybody's getting the VIP early product release, and people are kind of like, kind of get it like, it doesn't feel like a real VIP product experience anymore, if you feel like you're getting into 100 brands. But I do think that, like, you know, engaging with your customers. IRL, and it can be as simple as, kind of, I had this talk actually this morning about, like, the importance of the unboxing. And like, how does you know, what do you get in the box? Like, what is the message to, kind of from, you know, with kind of retention in mind. And I think that also kind of speaks to Malomo in the way that you guys are thinking about, kind of the post, purchase, transactional messages. I think that that unboxing is, in my mind, an experience of like, how do we also engage with you? ARL, you already are the acquired customer, and so we kind of want to appear in your life in more ways than just some meta. I think another example of that is kind of the direct mail feels like it's getting more and more relevant. Again, it's an expensive channel, but if done right, you know, it's another way that is more tangible, kind of offline, to appear with the chat, with kind of customers, and for what we've seen, when it applies to folks that are already have been acquired, it also leads to very positive ROI. So I think that, like that shift of not necessarily opening a brick and mortar and going full omnichannel, but just creating kind of retention experiences that are more in real life and offline. I think that that's, I don't know if it'll work. I think it's the tourist still out, but in my mind, very cool.
Mariah Parsons 36:57
Yeah. I think if like this is I love. I've been seeing more in real life examples, or like, pop ups and everything. And I think if brands can do it well and optimize digital marketing to show that off, I think that's where brands will really, really excel, of course, because then you know, then you get into, okay, how did these people know about it? I want to know, like, as a consumer, and then you kind of drive that flywheel for yourself of Okay, now it's like, if you want to be in the know, sign up for email all that stuff, um, and those are, like, I know as a consumer, those are the brands that when they're doing cool activations, pop ups, all that stuff. It does draw the intention in, because I think it's you have that, like FOMO experience with it, right? And I look at even pull back outside of, you know, outside of retail and outside of, you know, commerce, looking at musicians too, like they're doing pop ups with different, you know, different concerts and different locations to get, you know, fans excited, and they're doing, you know, limited edition and all this stuff. So even, like, you see it in media, and I think it'll be, it's always funny, right? Because we swing it's just a pendulum, and we just move around. So like, all online for a bit now, it's all back on, you know, it'll, it'll, it'll keep going back and forth
Mark Lotman 38:29
on that. This is triggers. I think that, like, you know, the prompt maybe, is, we speak a lot about it internally. There's a famous tech world saying that says that you should do things that on scale. And we always say it in malo we should do things that don't scale because, like, that's probably like doing the first iteration of, you know, of a solution to a painful problem probably doesn't scale well, and then when you solve it enough times, you figure out how to do that. So don't worry about scaling. But I think that the way this applies to consumer is that, you know, like people, like, we're so used to counting eyeballs and impressions and like, the massive scale of meta is kind of addictive, and the reach when you're like, I just want to reach like, million, you know, like the audiences. And I do think that like to your point, being smart about doing experiences that seem very limited can actually like then be leveraged and create a community sense that does scale, or, you know, kind of an interest that does scale, but like it all is anchored in experiences that don't really scale. Like, no, like, if we're gonna do a pop up, you won't get as many eye boxes splitting the same money in meta, or in any, you know, meta as an example, or any of kind of the online acquisition channels. But like it does, it can create a firewall for your third point. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 39:43
yeah. I love it also, too. I'll throw in there because it's been super top, top of mind for me. But just sensory branding, and I think that goes really, really hand in hand with IRL experiences, where it's just, like, really cool ways that you wouldn't see the brand. And, you know, like, I see this a lot in beauty brands, where they're, they're putting their logo, or, you know, products near food or near, you know, things that activate something in the senses. And I think that that's going to, that's going to tie in a lot this year. Is my prediction. One of my predictions, at least, love it. Well, this has been great having you on Mark. It's been a blast getting to chat with you very, very packed episode with a lot of takeaways for our listeners. So I'm excited to get this out there. And thank you for taking the time.
Mark Lotman 40:34
Yeah, thanks, Mariah, excited to be on the show, and thank you for giving us the opportunity. Love it.
Mariah Parsons 40:42
You. Thank you for listening to today's episode. These conversations bring so much knowledge to the table, and I'm so grateful for that. If you haven't already, please subscribe, follow us on social media and tell us who our next guest should be on our website. Let's give another shout out to our day one sponsor, Malomo, as you know, Malomo is an order tracking platform that enables Shopify brands to take control of their transactional email and SMS through branded order tracking pages. That means you can ditch those boring, all white carrier pages, you know, the ones I'm talking about. Everyone has seen an ugly tracking page in their life, and you can swap it with a page that matches your brand customers like you and I obsessively check order tracking an average of 4.6 times per order. That's why leading Shopify brands are turning that engagement into customer loyalty and revenue through branded order tracking. Learn more about how to get ahead of shipping issues, brand your order tracking experience and reconvert customers while they wait for their package to arrive with Malomo. Visit go malomo.com that's G O M, a, l o m, o.com