S2 E24: BEST OF 2022: Partners

S2 E25 PODCAST

On this episode of Retention Chronicles, we go through some of our favorite season 2 moments with DTC technology partners and agencies. We feature highlights from;

  • Vasa Martinez of Growthbuster and Perfy,
  • Andy Warren at Tomorrow Agency,
  • Mat Bingham at Okendo,
  • Michael De Santis at Doris Dev and Canopy,
  • Aaron Schwartz, formerly at Loop Returns,
  • Luis Lluis of GrowthStable,
  • Dan Caldwell at Klaviyo,
  • and Adam Sharon-Zipser, Director & Nick Kennedy from Elephant Room & Giftnote.

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

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TRANSCRIPT

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

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

brand, customer, retention, product, purchase, shopify, agency, platform, reviews, people, episode, talked, day, social proof, super, email, merchants, marketing, build, shipping

SPEAKERS

Vasa Martinez, Andy Warren, Michael De Santis, Nick Kennedy, Aaron Swartz, Noah Rahimzadeh, Yaw Aning, Luis Lluis, Adam Sharon-Zipser, Mat Bingham, Mariah Parsons, Dan Caldwell

Noah Rahimzadeh 00:05

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

Mariah Parsons 00:16

Hey everyone, as you probably no retention 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. Hi, everyone, this is our second episode of our two part series with our favorite season two moments from 2022. This episode specifically focuses on our chats with partners. And if you miss part one with our DTC brands, you can always go back and listen. I'll be giving an intro to each snippet. So if you want to listen to the full conversation, you know which one you can cue up without further ado, here's season two episode three with fossa Martinez, founder of growth Buster and pervy a healthy soda brand.

Noah Rahimzadeh 01:36

You said something that was really interesting from you know, an agency founders perspective thinking about and and a brand's perspective, right thinking about the balance of when to when to leverage an agency rather than when to hire in house to build it out or use the resources you have currently, there's probably a much more intelligent way to ask this question. But you sort of see where I'm going, is there? Do you have any thoughts or advice around like when you would say, you will save money by leveraging an agency even though it seems more expensive upfront? Because it sounds like you ran into that problem yourself firsthand? Yeah.

Vasa Martinez 02:14

So there were certain things where last year my team didn't have the time to do it. We hired an epic email agency is expensive, but you know that that's not any part of the the funds I wish I had back there. They're fantastic. You probably know him. David Boson that structured there, I love them. And they helped out perfect, get our flows set up and all of that. But at some point, I had to pull the plug on that because you've got to wait for retail to really kick in. And it's a long little bit of a sales cycle. So I think going back to your your actual question, though, it's gonna vary based on founder, you know, like, there might be a founder That's epic at ops, someone or somebody who's just straight from Wall Street, or someone who's a CFO experience, their strengths are going to be their strengths and their weaknesses, and blind spots are gonna be different than mine. So I didn't hire a marketing agency. And it's quite funny how many photography or studios or marketing agencies reached out to hey, we want to work with perfect I'm like, can you beat $0 per month? If you get if you'll pay me to work. And we got something going Yeah, GV can can take a hike. But that's not the case. So and it's not, it's also not one of my weaknesses. I hired agencies for r&d, and for ops. And those are two of my biggest weaknesses. I don't have an agency refinance right now. But we're not doing 10 million a year yet. Like that's one of the that's one of the hires, because it's one of my hugest weaknesses. So as a founder, the tools that I have in my tool belt are going to vary. So someone hiring an agency doesn't always mean a marketing agency, there might be an outsourced ops agency, there might be an outsourced r&d, not everyone's a food scientist, you know. So everyone will have a point where they have to come to the question of, should I hire this in house or hire an agency? For me? I think an agency is a lot more flexible, there's probably a premium, you're definitely not getting 40 hours per person. Like, why should Why should you like, I see both sides of the fence on this one? Like, why should Why should I get 40 hours of an agency person's time when I'm not paying for their phone or their Wi Fi reimbursement or not paying the payroll taxes on their, you know, on their employment, you know, depending on the state, it gets pretty crazy. So there's there's benefits and savings to be had. I can tell you this. The Ops agency I have, they're the most expensive, expensive invoice I get every every month, but it's not one that I'm scared of, because they have saved me so much money, I cannot calculate it by knowing how to do XY and Z or out of and I probably would have been able to launch perfect until two years from now I did all that stuff by myself. So just depends on the founders, my direct answer. The one I use internally with clients is if same kind of analogy, were at a networking event. Now, if I walked straight up to you and said, Hey, can I have your business card? Here's mine. That's very, very transactional. You're probably like, What the hell is this dude going to do with my life? On here? And I'm like, you're definitely not a qualified lead. You're like what I give you as a coaster like you're putting your drink on it. It's not a bit, you're never going to hold on to it. But if we're casually having a conversation, hey, where do you work? Oh, cool, you're up Malomo I'm wrote Buster, like I'm at GB, then it's so much more natural to hand a business card over to somebody. Right? So that's, that's one thing we're, people don't quite get. And it's something that should be a little more focused on.

Noah Rahimzadeh 05:27

I agree. First of all, I'm going to share this episode with all my single friends, let them know. Take this advice when your next time. So thanks for that. Game for retention stand.

Mariah Parsons 05:47

By everything has an application, you know, everything's connected. Next up, we have episode five in season three with Andy Warren, Senior Director of Strategy at tomorrow agency. Yeah,

Noah Rahimzadeh 06:07

absolutely not. I think that's great anecdotal evidence as well. But you guys have carved out a great sort of like niche in this space. And I know the first time you and I talked, I thought it was really interesting. That, you know, we sort of reflected on like your enterprise experience and how the Shopify ecosystem is different, because in the enterprise space, like there's a ton of consolidation, right? Like, you can build almost everything off of Salesforce, if you wanted to. Within the Salesforce ecosystem. Now, they want

Andy Warren 06:37

you to think you can for sure, sure.

Noah Rahimzadeh 06:41

And then brands are like, Well, why can't you just as my agency, go build it on Salesforce? And it's like, just not quite that easy. But in Java in the Shopify world, like there's an app for that, right? There's, there's 12 different apps that tomorrow's working with at least I'm sure. But they all offer different sort of, like datasets, right, that power, not just the site, but like, the marketing behind it. And, you know, I want to shift focus to retention here soon. But yeah, can you talk a little bit about how that has been, has been a change for you throughout the career and how you're thinking about it now that you're in the Shopify space.

Andy Warren 07:20

It was, it was a big change. And honestly, it wasn't one that I was really prepared for when I took this position. Because I mean, I remember we worked with a client for a number of years. This is my last agency, and we built out their entire subscription program for them. Like we built them a subscription platform in Magento. And, you know, you think about that now, and people are like, Why would you do that? Because it's just like, not, not our it wasn't really our bailiwick, you know, and, but I don't think I realized when I came into the Shopify ecosystem, just how ingrained the difference applications were in just the functioning of the website overall. And so that's been really, really unique. And so it's been on one hand, it's been, it's been great, because I think there's more innovation that happens that way. Right? Like there's more competition within different parts of the customer experience, which I think then begets more innovation within those spaces. But then it's also difficult from the agency side, because it's hard. Like not only do I have to learn Shopify, and all of the stuff that Shopify, and then all of the things that they're releasing all the time, but then it's like, oh, yeah, well, there's like 15 different things that you need to learn about as well that surrounds Shopify, and all of those have really cool features and really cool reporting and really cool ways to interact with them. And so it's, you know, as somebody that is helping clients identify choices that need to be made, and then the direction that will best help them succeed in those choices. It's, it's a big data set that we've got to kind of parse through in terms of like, what things we need to pick and where they need to be selected from. So it's, it's been a big shift but it's it's exciting, though, you know, it's with with Magento and, and commerce cloud, Salesforce commerce cloud you know, it'd be six 810 1224 months before like you had something that you were able to release that was going to be able to work and with Shopify, it's literally like I just go and click that button and it's like well that works now. Which is awesome

Noah Rahimzadeh 09:48

yeah, I love the I love the zero party data use cases like basically gamifying the capture of that by you know, unique was quiz like experiences and then navigating Your customers through the site based on their their preferences and from the answers that they provided you and willfully so Right. Like, I think that that's going to become even more important beyond just personalization it'll probably become more important from like a legal and compliance standpoint, as you know, cookies go away and, and second and third party data becomes like a thing of the past any any other tips and tricks on like personalizing the the experience and sort of how you how you think about that? For for merchants?

Andy Warren 10:39

I think it's super important. My experience with personalization has been, it's been tough. You know, I think there's a I think there's a gap between the customer expectation and the or even even the the merchants expectation of personalization, and what's able to currently be provided easily. And so I'm excited to kind of see what advancements are going to be made there. So like when you look at things like, Oh, how are CDP's going to reshape personalization on in the onsite experience and things like that, I think that's really cool and unique. But it has to be done in a way to where there's not like, the way like we worked on personalization for a company, probably kind of four or five years ago, maybe before it was kind of like all all the buzz. And we went to our client and said, Okay, so we got this great model that's built out. And we think we understand how the personalization aspect needs to work. And we can activate it for you on the website. But we're going to need your creative team to build out five times the assets that they're currently building. And they were like, yeah, they can barely get the number of assets out that we need right now. I'm not going to increase it fivefold. And so you know, I think there needs to be some solutions there in order for it to really start to make sense, like, how are we going to be able to do this without forcing people to, you know, increase their workload by fivefold to make it to make it happen. And I don't think we're quite there yet. But I'm excited to see where that goes. Because that's really going to be you know, I like that kind of your website has become your salesperson type of conversation. And I think that's that's it right? Like, how do we harness the data that we have about the customers that are coming and their intentions and what they've clicked on? And? And then how do I make that into a really unique set of recommendations for what it is that they're going to want or need to purchase? Like I think that's, that's the end all be all right?

Mariah Parsons 12:57

On episode eight of season two, we're joined by Matt being I'm Director of Technology Partnerships at a kendo.

Noah Rahimzadeh 13:09

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

Mat Bingham 14:15

Yeah, you know, it's interesting, I think it's something like 95% of people read reviews before purchasing from a new site. So you know, people read reviews, we also noticed that when people click on reviews and like sort them out by maybe like UGC or photos, or you know, something that's unique to get kendo is we collect a lot of attributes on the Review Submission. So like, instead of just regular five stars, you can ask your customers to say, you know, what did you use the shirt for is it like for workout or just regular wearing are like a bunch of different attributes that you would find relevant as a brand.

Noah Rahimzadeh 14:56

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

Mat Bingham 15:49

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

Mariah Parsons 17:17

For this one, we pulled from Episode 11, with Michael DeSantis, Director of Business Operations at doorstep and founding member of canopy a leading diffuser brand.

Michael De Santis 17:31

You know, at the end of the day, what we're looking for if we're doing everything in and, you know, industrial design through supply chain setup into freight, and freight and ops, you know, we're looking for, we're looking for a number of things. One, we're looking to understand what the capital structure of the businesses, how much money have they raised, do they have the money that they need to invest, to stand up a supply chain, and then have enough money to launch a website, build a brand, and spend the marketing dollars to keep the business rolling, that's super important to us it, you know, kind of harkening back to that we want any any brand that we work with, we want to see them be successful, we want to make sure that they're going to have like a long lifespan and support them in standing up a supply chain that that can scale with them. too, I think it's like, we we are in a position and you know, we have been historically to say no to things, if we don't think it's going to be a good fit for us whether it's you know, product category that we're not super familiar with, we don't do wet chemistry, we don't do apparel, right? We really focus on like durable goods. canopy is a great example in injection molded plastic part with with fan, there's some electrical components involved. In that case, we'd be looking for a brief from the client saying, hey, here are all the key characteristics. Here's what here's the kind of target market, we're looking to go after, here's our target landed costs, here's the key constraints that we've we're aware of whether that's, you know, relevant compliance testing, or, in the case of a humidifier, say we need it to be able to humidify space up to 500 square feet, right. So there are, you know, kind of design constraints and engineering constraints. And we're looking to have those at least somewhat defined prior to kicking off an engagement so that way, we can have a clearer picture and path forward. We're also looking for, you know, target minimum order quantities, somewhere in the 1500 to 2500 range, obviously, the more the better because you're going to be able to push price down on the factory side of things. But that's kind of the low end of what we're looking for in terms of what people are looking to execute on. And at the end of the day, you're making a big capital investment to set up a supply chain. So once we have all those those key characteristics defined, what we'll do is we'll step into the industrial design phase, we'll bring in the design team, we'll have a kickoff Can we really kind of blue sky the project and say, here's where we're, here's where you're finding inspiration, here's where we're finding inspiration doesn't even have to be the same category of products. It could be a sculpture that you like or something. We just worked with the soft services team, they just launched a product actually on Tuesday. That, you know, was inspired by like, some sculptural art that we then took and turned into a physical product. And it's, it's beautiful.

Noah Rahimzadeh 20:32

Another question, I was thinking, when you when you were sort of talking about the whole process, I'm so happy walked us through that, because I would imagine, like a lot of, you know, for us, and a lot of our listeners probably don't realize how much goes into it. What, what should brands be doing in like, that interim period, while they're waiting for the product to be ready, like, are they normally fundraising? Are they normally like evangelizing their brand and starting their marketing outreach? Are they you know, like, what, what have you seen them do? And what would you recommend that brands do when they're in that sort of holding period?

Michael De Santis 21:04

I think it depends, like, if you're talking to pre a brand, that's pre launch, at the end of the day, if you're engaging with the doors, Dave, you've you've already raised that, like, precede round of funding, you're probably you've probably already kicked off branding work. Ideally, like, if we're doing industrial design, you have like a logo and a color palette figured out by the time we're getting vulnerable link. And then you're getting the process started on designing, developing the website, getting everything set up. Operationally, if you're gonna manage your own three PL make sure that that's all tight, make sure you understand what the tech stack is gonna look like, on your side of things, I think, you know, on the canopy side of things, this is super true, the tech stack that we started with, it's not the tech stack that we have today, right. And like even launching with you guys on the canopy side of things like my mind, super exciting change to the business, super interesting opportunity for us. And honestly, like a no brainer. I think the the thing is, is like when you're first evaluating your tech stack, though, you need to be thoughtful, and you need to stay scrappy. I think that a lot of brands and I think everybody's feeling this now, but people like to spend when they have the money. And, you know, fundraising is a lot harder to do today than it was a year ago. So being super thoughtful and staying scrappy, I think is key and and thinking about where what are the highest impact areas, the tech stack that you want to invest money in today, where you want to end up in the future. And like, you know, maybe that's starting with something super simple and the referral side of things or on the reviews side of things and knowing that you're going to eventually graduate to something that's a little bit more sophisticated and complicated. That's going to give you the ability to do more things, whether that be on the retention side of things or the loyalty side of things. So I think it's really a matter of like, during during that interim phase, there's a ton of work that's going on. And ideally, we're just giving you peace of mind on on the product side of things. Yeah. syncing up with you on a week over week basis.

Mariah Parsons 23:07

This next one is from Episode 14 with Aaron Swartz, former president of loop returns.

Yaw Aning 23:26

That's incredible. In like, what what is there anything around that like, around international shipping that like makes it like uniquely hard or complex?

Aaron Swartz 23:37

Yeah, I mean, if you think about. So thinking about you ship, your three PL, you're a brand owner, and you ship to somebody in Canada, let's just keep it simple. And you use FedEx or DHL, there's a reasonable chance that it never touches a FedEx truck, it might be picked up by a USPS truck, because it's like a USPS worker and then deposited. And then it might get handed over to Canada Post. And then it might get handed over to a local last mile delivery company. So you're paying FedEx or DHL or whatever in that example. But FedEx is never actually touching their product, right? They're coordinating somebody else doing it. And so if you think about like, logistics is easy, it's like walking to your neighbor, right? When you start adding legs or different consolidation points. And it's further so there's different weather patterns, like everything is just more complex, because first of all, you do not own the whole chain. So you're at the whim of somebody else. And even if you're a big partner, you don't know what's going on. Like, you know, I mean, like, a couple of years ago, one of our partners had like, tornado in Tennessee, and that warehouse was down. It's like, everybody's okay. Do you know I mean, like, yeah, the business, the human side, all of that. Then it's also like, okay, cool, but we have no control over what happens with with those packages. It's going to take an extra week. You can't like go We'll pick it up and go solve that problem, right? It's already. And so I think just like globally is painful because the logistics, you can't own assets everywhere. So therefore, it's better to own no assets. Assets are like the crucial points. And then getting information from different people systems is hard, right? Because in that example, it's like USPS and you have to Canada Post sending up to the last mile, or your three PL heading up to USPS. And you have to get right. So it's like, there's visibility concerns. And then there's like different tax regimes where this country pay X percent if the products provenance was in Pakistan is different than if it was in China is different than if it was made in Mexico or whatever. So it's just like, all the complexity in one, and you're shipping, something that's this big, like, still gotta get there. And people have like, well, it needs to be here in seven days. Probably a pretty hard challenge. So I think that's it, it's like, the things to do are, like, obviously, choose good partners get good visibility, step up with customer service, and like, get really good at pattern recognition. Like, theoretically, every package in New Berlin is stuck, stuck in customs for three days. Tell your customer, hey, don't worry, it's gonna be there. In three days, it's in customs. This is normal, versus don't give them any information. And each day they check in the system, and it says, holding customs holding customs, that creates anxiety that creates a customer service ticket. Get away from that.

Yaw Aning 26:16

Yeah, I think that's so so two things. Like, as you're talking through that, that sort of fascinating to me. And like I didn't, I didn't really realize this or recommend this until we got deep into more and more like the amount of packages that are maintained or delivered by not the people who you bought the

Mariah Parsons 26:38

things I'm learning in real time, right.

Yaw Aning 26:47

Okay, then the second thing you mentioned is focus like, yeah. I'm curious to on this because, like, I think this is kind of interesting topic. Especially right now. I feel like in the in the ecosystem generally, right, like merchants are, are looking to their tools to do more so they can have like, one tool to rule them all. Versus like, the emergency like that, like that lays like, what's that? The Swiss Army knife, right. It was super tactically good at this one thing.

Aaron Swartz 27:24

I think now you're mixing metaphors by No, I am do I follow what you're asking? That'll be the army knife.

Yaw Aning 27:34

Yeah, this is, this is a one thing, but also seven other things.

Aaron Swartz 27:39

And of course, I mean, you you're not you and I have talked about this, I think. I think for most things, you probably just want a bundled solution. And like Done is better than perfect. Make it really easy. I think there are a handful things where like, you want something great. And so I don't think that's the same for every brand. But if I if I'm building my brand right now, right? And I'm hyper focusing on what to do, I'm like making maybe half a dozen decisions, or I'm like making very considered decisions. And I'm not looking like I'm looking within my budget, but I'm not looking for cheap. I'm looking for like the best product I can afford. So that makes sense. And I think those are like certainly your platform, so YouTube, Shopify, or maybe look somewhere else. But like, I don't know any brand who's starting today, who's not like defaulting there, right? You choose a helpdesk. If you're like, I think it's very good for you to be close to your customer. So again, what let's talk let's talk about if you get to like 250k in top line, like you started growing and like you have ambitions of building your brand, right? You choose a helpdesk. So that's gorgeous, could be Zendesk could be customer could be gladly, whatever, right. But like you do a considered purchase there, you choose your three PL your fulfillment sack, whether it's like us a great three PL, you decided to yourself, like your release, very, very thoughtful about that. You choose your email marketing tool, maybe your text messaging tool, but definitely like you're probably defaulting to clay vo but like there's omnisend there are others that like might be better or worse for you. You definitely choose your return platform. Because like, every one of your customers is going to look at return policy. Depending on vertical 30 plus percent are going to return a product. If you give them a bad experience. They're going to not come back if you hit them with an incredible ad. If you give them a simple experience, even they don't keep the product you've paid to acquire those customers, you should be trying to drive them to exchange so they don't leave right like it is a big retention tool. And you choose a tracking platform because that like both helps with retention and with customer service. And with like what we talked about passport like obviating tickets, because you give people good visibility. They will not email you and take three minutes of your team's time was saying that like you can just help them not be stressed. There's marketing tools, there's reviews, like they're awesome reviews, platforms like Juniper, whatever, whatever. But I feel like that is like the beginning of the stack. Right when you're going Yeah, yeah. And so like I would I'd be very cautious about going to get like a family of apps type of product, which is like a B plus in each of those, because like, I don't know you want you, it's expensive to acquire customer, so you want to retain them, it's expensive to serve a customer. So you want to do it in like the most efficient way possible to Murata, your question about all the different channels, you'll want to use something like a gorgeous because you not only want to like simplify your your team's ability to support but like support quickly. And also get all the analytics which all these guys provide.

Mariah Parsons 30:33

Next, we're joined by Lewis Lewis, founder of growth stable from Episode 17.

Noah Rahimzadeh 30:43

That's because you always need to be bringing in new customers. But while that first purchase is obviously like, absolutely necessary, it's actually the second purchase that is probably more important. Any any thoughts on that? Would

Luis Lluis 30:55

you agree? I completely agree. I completely agree. There's no way to, I don't think there's a way to truly grow a brand without getting to a point where, you know, dabbling with acquisition in that marketplace. But there are so many tools that aren't being focused on to get that second purchase. Right. You know, one thing that I always talk about with the brands that I speak with is the referral programs they use where they're such homeruns. You know, they put, like you just mentioned $20 sink sunk into that first acquisition, most customers are getting a first time customer offering with a lot of brands right in E commerce. And what I've seen is when you can offer a referral program, and you offer a reward to a an existing customer that matches that first time referral, because the first time customer discount, you're in a place where you're offering a lower cost to you for an acquisition, and you have a higher chance of that customer sticking around, right, it's almost like a warm lead instead of a cold lead, you don't have to communicate as much to that referred customer because your friend, the existing customer is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Right. And it's one of the tools that I use with with Malomo with the brands is you have so much excitement built in when a customer places in order. And leading up to that all the conversation all the marketers talk about is intent, intent, intent, intent to purchase, right? How about the excitement about a purchase? Right, that's, that's what thrills me when you get a customer to purchase. The conversation almost just started, we now have an official relationship. And if you can converse with them throughout their excitement, right? So checkout is the thrill. Oh, I made that thrill purchasing once it coming. And then all those emails leading up to the delivery, which as you guys know, the open rates are through the roof, because of that excitement. Also, they're not marketing, but through the roof, because of the excitement of like, when's it coming? They know, essentially, when it's coming, you've kind of communicated that when they purchase, but they still check every status update right out for delivery, the ship one and then delivered. If you can leverage that with the tool like you guys offer in Malomo, you can capture that excitement and leverage it to something like the referral program with which can enhances your acquisition model at a much lower cost. And most likely what you're usually offering for a cold market, like on Facebook or such. Oh, it also getting that second purchase from the customer name, they ordered product A and they were excited and it caught their eye and they never even experienced the opportunity to purchase product B, why not suggest product B in that moment and all that's at that heightened sense of excitement. It's just such a great opportunity that you know, compared to a brand who's not leveraging something like Malomo, they may just be purchase sent to a FedEx page. And we'll see you next time. And maybe next time if there is a next time at all.

Noah Rahimzadeh 33:44

Yeah, one of the things I've noticed on on portas tracking page is to your point, Louis, you talked about how like a lot of brands might think about this as increasing LTV by pushing product recommendations or sign up for our subscription program. But don't maybe don't think about like how do we just make sure that this customer is super well taken care of, especially if it's the first time right like what can we do to ensure they have great experience so they come back for that super integral second purchase. And what I love about the portos page is like the first thing like you offer all that same stuff you offer other products you offer. Refer a Friend program and everything else. But you also the first thing that you see when you go to track the order is baking instructions. So when that product arrives, you have the information you need right there to pop into the oven or do whatever you need to do to have the best experience possible with that with that product that you just purchased. And that's really where it all starts right. You can't get to refer a friend before you have the initial super positive experience that keeps them coming back for a second purchase. So yeah, I love that you took clearly very holistic view to building out the transactional experience.

Luis Lluis 35:06

Yeah, exactly. It's exactly holistic, like you said, because you do need, they've already purchased. And now you have to make sure they have everything they need to enjoy the, the food that they're being delivered. And it is a very seamless process. But you know, there's times where you may lose instructions that are included in the order, or you lost that email, we want there to be no question about what you need to do to enjoy the food because again, that peak excitement is something that's already built in. And when that food arrives, you want to eat it within the 30 minutes it takes to bake or less, if you don't, if you're kind of fiddling for instructions, and you don't have at that time, you know, we want to make sure there's no there's no opportunity for you to not have the resources you need. And then on top of that, we'll put we're pushing the you know, contact us if you have any questions, if something doesn't make sense and instructions, as maybe you misread it or we forgot something you understand in that situation. So there's no friction for you enjoying the amazing food you ordered. That's the ultimate goal.

Mariah Parsons 36:06

on Episode 20, we're joined by Dan Caldwell, senior strategic partner manager at Klaviyo.

Noah Rahimzadeh 36:16

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 36:46

Absolutely. I think it's something that people are starting to come around to now, a little bit more in the past of 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 a retention side of things. Because I think, at this point with supply chains, people are pretty used to shipping. At this point. I think what they don't like is surprises when it comes to it. Like where is that package? Oh, it's been delayed? Why don't you tell me, I think is 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 because I mentioned reviews, so like something you could do, and this is something like we pride ourselves on in terms of like getting 20, 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 in 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 hadn't 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 streamline 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 gorgeous and 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 this tone deaf messages to like it doesn't feel good as a consumer, when I've been asked me the 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 it's 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 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. onto the paid media on 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, 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 to do that one on one. So just being really smart and intentional about this message sending down intertwining as many different inputs as you can just to speak to them as close to one on one. So I'm really advocating, 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 of 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 and it's like the hardest time to understand your customers, nobody there? Because it's gift giving. And so that's why it's so this is why I've asked for my survey partners, when you think somebody 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? Yeah, there's a lot of platforms that are really good to help, hey, they're looking at this, this and this product. So they're likely to like this other one, but only looking for themselves? Or are they looking for their mom or for the girlfriend is 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 LTV 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 a 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 like more. That's a really good opportunity. Or like if you know if you can ask who you bind for, and I say my mom, first of 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 areas, 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. And it's just like, like with the sporting goods like are they buying a beanie? Because it's getting cold or going into winter? And they're walking into the work with it? Or are they buying BT because it's ski season coming up. And if you understand that, then when you're speaking to them, whether it's product recommendations, or just the content of your emails, or you're 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're walking to work and cold and your fingers are 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 give 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.

Mariah Parsons 43:49

Our last feature for the best of 2022 is from Episode 23 With founding members of gift no and elephant room, Adam Sharon Zipser director and Nick Kennedy head of client success

Noah Rahimzadeh 44:07

Yeah, makes sense. I'm curious and Mariah, you might have thoughts on this too. But we we rarely talk about performance marketing on this podcast because we're typically so much more focused on the pension side, but I've seen so much lately about like the shift in ad spend from Facebook to Tik Tok or Facebook to Instagram or Now Instagram to Tik Tok like, how have you adjusted your strategies? What are you learning off of and leaning into today's environment?

Adam Sharon-Zipser 44:37

Yeah, like it's a it's it looked at we battled that question every single day. And we're actually battling a lot more now working into Black Friday, Cyber Monday. The reality is that we can't rely on like platform reported return. So that's one thing because it's blended and overlaps and some platforms have seven day plus seven day view, one day, click whatever it is. I'm or 3030 plus one. So we we basically establishing an ner, like a marketing efficiency ratio or cost of sale ratio, the aggregate to then dictate how the media as an aggregate is working in the brand for the business itself, then what we're trying to work, we drill that down by saying what was branded what was not branded. So we can at least allocate the percentage of revenue and spend. So we know what was really high intent direct, and what was a bit more on the merchandise side. And then we'll be doing subdivide that by new customer, this repeat customer entries as well. So trying to understand what is actually growing the business. And while it's actually again, on the retention side of the media, because media does actually account for a lot of retention based customers that simply typing in a brand name that kind of get lost in the performance media arm. So what we try to do is we split it out into those like three or four major pillars, then the narrative is quite straightforward to say, hey, like by doing this way, we can see this, it's never clear cut. And then what we try to do is, we try to dismantle the battle hardened is more of this like incremental philosophy. So instead of doing Snapchat, and Tiktok, in parallel, because it gets blurred, and you never really know what's going to work, we try have a very strict pacing policy where we only really want to be doing one year media channel at a time, and then look back at our benchmark numbers to say, Hey, this is what's impacting this is what our efficiency is, this is what what's actually going on after we did this. And that's how it's sort of approaching it and tackling it now and so many more doors once you have a conversation in that frame as well,

Mariah Parsons 46:46

for you for the benchmarks that you're saying it because you can't trust the platform itself. Are you looking at Google Analytics? Or is that something you're putting in house or like another software?

Adam Sharon-Zipser 46:58

So Google Analytics is like a last click scenario. So it's good, it is good, because it gives you the snapshot of the last quick environment for people that have opted in for cookies that aren't don't have ad blockers and you know, aren't working in incognito or some other niche Firefox browser. So we primarily use some of that. But what we also do is we Shopify makes it quite easy to export some of the data out of it. What we then do is we ingest that in a very large warehouse. We have like our ETL tools set up that are basically bringing in everything by the day by platform impressions, clicks, spend, and revenue. And then what we do is we have some blending formulas to actually figure out what the pace is for the day. And that's how we sort of reported back in Data Studio or look a studio now or Google Sheets, depending on the client requirements. This is like that's, that's been a very big investment for us as well. And that's sort of where we're trying to sort of get to a bit more on the performance side.

Nick Kennedy 48:04

Yeah, so touching on on that point of Adam in identifying gift recipients, which you can't currently do from Shopify, out of the box. Let's just say an example. I'm sending Noah a bottle of whiskey and I don't know if you're a drinker or not. But let's just say that I'm not a drinker. Let's say I send him a bottle of whiskey and the brand that I'm purchasing from is going to think that I'm the customer, and that I'm a whiskey drinker. Right. And so, in the future, I'm gonna get hit up with ads on Facebook on Tik Tok now, get all their emails, all their CRM emails, whereas you're the person perhaps that they should be actually seeing that too. So Giffnock can help with that in converting you into a database, a customer and an opt in customer within their database. So yeah, that was not the question you were going to ask.

Mariah Parsons 48:57

Okay. It's almost like we planned it. It's yeah, it's very similar along that line. So like, the notion that you can you like, especially around this time of year, right, like heading into the holidays, we're recording in the beginning of the beginning of November. So Black Friday, Cyber Monday is like two weeks away. So the idea of the merchant not having like the customer, versus the consumer, and like how they're different and gift giving. So that's exactly what I was going to talk about is like, there's also a huge perk for merchants to grow their like branding and their experience with the person who's actually consuming their product and to ask for, you know, that UGC or those reviews or to know like, even if so, the like, say, Nick in the whisky example. You're buying a new mark like oh, this is for know his birthday or something along those lines. Now the merchant knows that. Oh, you You bought a bottle of whiskey for your friend's birthday around this time or like even segmenting for like different holidays because now they have more information on like you and why you purchase from them and then also have more information about Noah and his consuming like patterns so that he's been introduced to the brand. So

Nick Kennedy 50:24

imagine like, one year after I buy a whiskey bottle for Noah as the same brand hits me. I mean their segment of gift senders and they hit me up so there's no need another bottle.

Mariah Parsons 50:37

Yes, he does. Yeah.