TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Customer retention, e-commerce marketing, order tracking, Malomo, shipping experience, transactional emails, PR strategy, product features, journalist outreach, SEO benefits, credibility, pitch formula, media database, influencer credibility, PR masterclass.
SPEAKERS
Gloria Chou, Mariah Parsons
Mariah Parsons 00:00
Music. 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. I am so excited for our guest here today, Gloria Chow, I am so thrilled. You and I have been connected over social media, which is always a fun way for me to get to meet new people for our audience, Gloria is a product PR coach and host of a small business podcast, which she will tell us more about now. So Gloria, thank you welcome and thank you for joining the show. I'm so excited for having you here today. Yay.
Gloria Chou 02:59
I'm so excited. You know, I feel like for so many product owners, PR is not something that has ever been accessible, made accessible or easy for them. So today, we're going to demystify a lot of things about what PR is, what PR is it, and really give you actionable ways that you can get featured right now, even with a tiny following on places like BuzzFeed and Forbes and even Oprah's Favorite Things. So I'm excited to dive into it.
Mariah Parsons 03:22
I love it. I love it. I think just that boiler plate alone for this episode, we have hooked people. So before we dive into strategy and all that fun stuff, tell us a little bit about, you know, yourself. How did you get to sitting in the seat today? What made you want to kind of dive into, you know, the CPG, e commerce world? Yeah,
Gloria Chou 03:40
so, you know, I was a small business PR coach, but I'm very untraditional. I'm not your typical PR gal. I've never actually worked a day in my life in any PR agency or marketing agency. I had to cold call, literally, by typing in the Google search bar newsroom New York Times and calling with shaky, sweaty palms, until I got, you know, phone slammed in my face and I started to pick up on patterns on when that person would stay on the phone with me. I ended up getting my clients on all the TV shows now combined over, you know, 1 billion organic views all the top media outlets without any connections or pay to play. And I always say, you know, it's really just about cracking the code on PR and making it finally accessible, because it is such a gate kept industry. You know, when we think about PR, we think of, you know, celebrity or publicist, and it's got this kind of scammy vibe, or maybe something that you know, only luxury items, you know luxury stores can have. And it's absolutely not true. I think that it's time for the rest of us, especially the small businesses, to be seen. And from what I've learned helping 1000s of product owners, is that journalists want to hear from you, the founder, and if we can make it super easy for you to feel confident, to just pitch yourselves, you can get featured every single month of the year, even every week. So it's about thinking about yourself differently, not thinking, Oh, well, I'm not newsworthy enough, or my product is not newsworthy enough. I promise you, there's no such thing as a newsworthy product, but there is such a thing as a relevant pitch. And so throughout this conversation, we're going to teach you how to not think in terms of pitching your benefits and features and more pitching with the new cycle. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 05:07
I love that. Okay. I think our audience is going to eat this up. So let's kind of start to break down that code like, say, you know, brands walk us through of like, because you said there's no like, you know, XYZ template of like, you have to have this many followers, you have to have this, like, something going viral, to kind of, quote, unquote, like, allow you to get these PR opportunities. You can make them happen for yourself. So, kind of like, walk us through in a timeline, if you can, of like, how a brand would even think about approaching trying to get more PR.
Gloria Chou 05:37
Yeah, so, you know, PR is, I think, the highest leverage activity you get the highest ROI for what you're doing, because, as we know, Instagram is now showing your stuff to what 15% of your audience. And the buying intent of someone on Instagram is very low, right? So if, if you are on an article, like on a refinery 29 or a real simple like 10 best outdoor XYZ, or gifts for mom, if I'm clicking on the article, the buying intent is really high. So at the same time, you are meeting your customers exactly where they are, but you're also getting that valuable SEO gold, because you're getting those backlinks. So it simultaneously, you know, checks all the buckets of the traffic, the CEO, the the credibility and sales. So let's talk about what PR is, and PR is getting featured organically, right? It's not, I'm not talking about those pay to play scammy things that we get in our DMS all the time. I'll feature you in a, you know, cable television thing, you know, with a C list actor that's going to play at 4am no one's going to watch. Not pay to play. I'm talking about organic so not pay to play. And PR is really simple at the end of the day, writing a relevant pitch and sending it to the right person. And if you can put the two and two together, you can create a system in your business, just like you are with social media and everything, where you're constantly pitching all year round and getting those features and getting those sales and SEO. So let's talk about the first part of P art, which is writing a pitch. And a lot of times, you know, this is an unnatural act. We're not taught how to write a pitch. We're taught how to be great marketers, right? Talk about benefits and features, but if, the more you lean in with that, the less likely you're going to get featured, because journalists aren't your customers. The journalist is not going to buy from you. And so you need to figure out what is the right way to speak to them that's relevant for their audience. So instead of benefits and features, think about what is the season that we're in. Out of all your product suite, what's best for Mother's Day might be different for what's best for q4 if you make skin stuff or body lotions. It's not going to be something really heavy for the summer. It's going to be light and citrus, if you're in food and wine. Think about the ingredients that are trending for where we are right now. Right now, it's spring. So you know, there's so many different themes if you make print on demand, right there's a lot of different gifts for graduation versus bridal. So think in terms of that, in terms of seasons, in terms of holidays, in terms of the weather, in terms of trends, we don't have people who make bridal stuff. And I know that Sophia Richie's modern minimalism bride look was really trending. And so you can pitch something along the lines of that. Also pay attention to social media trends. I know that there's a lot on Tiktok right now. So like, what is a trend that you can piggyback on? All of those things that can help you start to figure out, what am I pitching? Because you're not pitching your entire product suit. You're not going to just shove your brochure down the journalist throat. You're going to pick the one or two or the bundle item that's perfect for that season. And even if you make one item, you can repurpose it for various seasons, but you need to lead with that season. So that's really what the pitch is. And from pitching 1000s of times, I picked up on a formula, and I call it my CPR framework, that has helped 1000s of founders get featured without ever knowing the journalist and having a tiny following. So C stands for credibility, P stands for point of view, and R stands for relevance, and the way that the email pitch looks if you're writing to cold pitch anyone, the subject line should not be your name, your company name, or the word pitch, or something very gimmicky, like a code for you, Claire, or something like that. It should be something like samples available three best skin bundles for Mother's Day under $30 you see how that is very specific, right? It tells a journalist exactly what it is and what bucket of gift guide it will be for, because there's various gift guys, there's luxury gift guys or stocking stuffers or so be be very specific about what that is. And then in the email, you don't want to get into pleasantries and waste a journalist time. You want to quickly get to the point. So what is that relevance that R in CPR, you can say, as people are looking for X, Y, Z gifts, or as your beauty you have, readers are looking for the best new minimalist skin serums. I would love to tell you why our bundle is perfect for this season. And then the point of view in CPR looks like three bullet points. I like threes. So it could be three reasons why it works, three reasons why it's different. It could be insights. It could be threes, you know. So it could be like one our skincare serum is different because XYZ, we give back 10% to charity, three all of our ingredients are sourced. You see where I'm getting at and I love it. Yeah, you wrap the email up with a little bit about credibility. About, you know, I founded this in my kitchen with my daughter, who suffered from severe eczema. Nothing worked. And, you know, this formula really works because I talked to my acupuncturist and this. Burdock root, like whatever that is. Don't go crazy about it. Don't go into a crazy long thing. You can always hyperlink to your story, but just give them enough, but not too much. And then you want to put the price point. So how much it is? Is it available on your website? Is available on Amazon, on Macy's right? Is it available for shipping? Is it made to order all the kind of nuts and bolts of what the journalist needs to decide if it's going to work for them. So again, pricing, shipping, our samples available. Where it's available, is it ready to ship? And then also, if you do have an affiliate link, like on ShareASale or skim links, I know that like Etsy and Amazon have their own, put that in there, and then that, there you have it. That's really kind of the what makes a good pitch. And you can put one to three low res images if you have something that's visual, right? Packaging is really important in skincare, for example, and so put that in there, but don't make it super high res, and don't attach all these things. Instead, use the hyperlink. And so that's, that's the basic gist of a golden pitch, my CPR pitch method,
Mariah Parsons 10:54
okay, I love that there's so much there to dive into. And I love that you, you break, break it out right, of like, okay, just follow this formula and don't get like, into the nitty gritty of trying to be personable and driving a connection. Because I think that's one of the things that obviously, a lot of founders want to make that impression. They got into the business because they really believe in their, you know, in their in their product. And I think that can be hard sometimes for founders to hear like, just frame it as like, what will that journalist care about the most? And I feel like that formula is super clean of just like, Okay, this is the, I guess, table stakes information that you need to send so that they can, like, go through their checklist, yeah, and be like, Okay, we could do this, like, we need more info about this, or we could do that, or, blah, blah, blah, if
Gloria Chou 11:41
you have time to do your research, right? Of course, of course, the more personalization, the better. If you can say, I love your best skincare roundup and well and good. I thought it was so good that I bought this item and it cleared up my accent like that is a level of personalization that's only going to help you. But if you don't have time to personalize every single email, that's kind of the basic foundation. But of course, you should check the journalist info and like, at least give them a compliment or try to engage with their content. So that's email, right? But I also recommend you follow up with them in DMS too, because they're also writers, so share their articles, tag them, make them recognize your name and your brand and increase those touch points, because it is a relationship that you're building. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 12:20
and I love that point too, because a lot, and I see this, like, on social media, anyone who's trying to grow their own following, it's like, I'm posting a lot, and I'm just not getting, like, any engagement on my end. And I feel like the first thing that founders and people who are trying to grow their following should look at is like, are you engaging with those people on like, who you follow, who then would, you know, hopefully reciprocate and see your brand name and be like, Oh, wait, what are they doing in this space? Like, right? Like, I think there's a lot of value. And sometimes we think it's obviously because we're humans and we think about ourselves and, like, what we're trying to do with our profiles of post a lot and engage on your own content, but there's a lot to be said of going and engaging on other people's comments who you'd love to, you know, connect with and and have that like interaction with. And I think that's that is exactly the same avenue of like, I've never thought about going to engage with a journalist page and like reposting their stuff and trying to be interactive in that way. So that's a great point. And would you say like, for journalists who are really contemplating, like, Okay, this, this is why you know this person pitched me in this email with XYZ. And this person pitched me in this email with XYZ, would you say that, like, your formula covers the, I guess, like, bare bones of what a journalist needs and like, do you think they do? You have any, I guess, idea of like, how they rank different things in their mind. Of like this is absolutely what we need, versus like this is secondary? Or is it really different? For every journalist, the CPM
Gloria Chou 13:48
method covers, covers the stakes. And obviously you want to be personalizable, so you bet you want to show them that you've actually read their article. So that's actually an even better way to pitch now, we don't have eyes into their exact editorial calendar, but we know that every year there are certain gift guides that will always be there right gifts for her, gifts for him, Valentine's Day. You have pet gifts. You have Mother's Day gifts, Father's Day gifts, Earth Day gifts, sustainable gifts. So those are usually the buckets. And you can actually use a tool like perplexity.ai which is, you know better than Google. And you can ask it like, what are the you know, yearly evergreen gift guides that real simple rights or well and good, or whatever. And then if they don't write a gift guide that's under $100 and you make something that is under $100 you know, that's not the right magazine for you, right? For example, we have a lot of people doing home decor, so like candles, incense, you know, and they want to get on apartment therapy. And so if they make something that's very luxury, you know, like a push me, no wool blanket. That's $500 if you put into perplexity, you know, does apartment therapy make, you know, luxury gift cards and they don't, then, you know, not to pitch to apartment therapy. I'm just giving you an example, right? So, these are all the these are great, yeah, I'll give you some other tools, you know. So another thing you should do is install a Google news alert. It's free. You just type in your search bar, Google news alert and it. Will ping you with all the different articles about your industry. And the reason why it's good is because it's trained you into thinking already about what types of gift guides and shopping guides are already available. And then you can open that article up. You can copy and paste a journalist name and their emails are usually there. It's public information. And you can, you know, literally, create your own ever expanding media database. Now, obviously I have that in my program for our members, but you can start to create that by yourself, because here's the thing, right? What's PR is writing a good pitch, and I told you how to do that with the CPR method. Now let's talk about who to send it to. And it's not going to be editor at, you know, New York times.com, it's not going to be info at BuzzFeed. It's going to be that very specific commerce or shopping editor writers, people who cover commerce or shopping are in the business of writing about products and reviewing them. And so if you make a product and you want to be in those listicles and gift guides, reach out to those people, and also people who cover your other industries. So if you're in wellness right, you can also reach out to the wellness writer too. So it's going to be both the writer that does commerce and shopping, but then also like the overall wellness journalists. So those are the people you want to look for in terms of when you're wondering who to send that email to.
Mariah Parsons 16:06
Yeah, that's great. And would you say, like, Okay, now this is getting into the nitty gritty, but like sending different emails or CC ing, like, what I would send
Gloria Chou 16:14
one to one, and not not CCing. But you can install an email tracking device. Is a golden tip, I tell all of our students is install an email tracking device so that you can see if the journalist is opening your email or not, and so you can, don't make a huge drama about, oh, the journalist hates me. It's like, well, maybe they just never opened it. So install an email tracking device. You'll get analytics and whether or not it's being open. And I like to follow up once a week for three weeks. And the follow up is not, hey, just bumping this up, right? Refresh your angles. Like, hey, we just sold out of this product, and now this one is really popular. Oh, hey, the season finale of white lotus just aired, and people are doing this trend or that trend. So try to see how you can refresh your angles. The news cycle is always evolving, right? You know, like, after Valentine's Day, if the journalist didn't respond to you. Now we're moving into spring, so you can do something for spring. So there's always an opportunity available for you? Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 17:03
and so I think that's one of the reasons that I'm curious to hear. If you'd agree that if it's, you know, say, a small team who cannot do a ton of, you know, like different things, they don't have someone who's just focused on PR. I think it's typical that a lot of brands can get overwhelmed by thinking about having to, like, upkeep, the outreach and all that stuff. But I love that you like are taking a refreshed view of like, okay, just think about like one trend, and then your follow up, say, like the second follow up that you have can be white load of season two or Season Three just premiered, and this is a new trend, right? Like, I think thinking about it in terms of, okay, updating one thing, but for everyone and seeing, you know, obviously, whoever you just emailed, if that works for everyone, rather than having to personalize to each individual send, I think that'll help. I guess, de stress some of the brands who are like, I would love to be on these gift guides. Like our product works so well with gift guides, but I just can't, like, find the time or find the resources to do that?
Gloria Chou 18:02
Yeah. I mean, if you have a good, solid pitch, you can just use that and then repurpose it for Mother's Day or Earth Day. But you have to start with a good foundation of a pitch. I think you can create a system around it, just like you do with social media, because it probably gets you even more higher ROI. If you can keep planting the seeds of getting featured, it gets you the SEO and I would rather turn a press feature or a podcast interview to 20 pieces of content than start from scratch on Instagram reels, which doesn't get me any views anymore. So, yes,
Mariah Parsons 18:28
Yep, totally makes sense. So let's that feeds nicely into attribution. So I want to go there of like, tracking, you know, leads that you're getting so that you can justify, or even just know, like, internally, like, oh, this, we're getting a ton of leads from this article versus maybe not any from this other article. Like, for next season, next product rollout. Let's hone in all of our efforts here. How do you recommend to your clients? Of like, Okay, this is how you actually start to understand what is happening from those pr pr articles. Once you get them, we're definitely
Gloria Chou 19:00
going to see an uptick in your SEO, right? Because we know that Google is prioritizing backlinks from authoritative websites, and not so much to AI generated blogs. Now anyone can write 60 blogs in a day. So what is Google saying that marks you as a reputable brand whether or not you have backlinks? And so the PR opportunities are huge, huge determination for SEO scores. So you're you should be able to see that, and also you can add a UTM link for whatever gift guide, and so you can track the clicks if they'll allow you. And also, if you have an affiliate link, you'll see like, which sales come from that magazine article. So if you do have an affiliate link, do share that with the journalist. Okay,
Mariah Parsons 19:34
yeah, I love that. I think most brands will have affiliate links set up so they can do that quite easily. So Okay, so we've gone through formula for actually templatizing your outreach, and then Who do you actually send it to? And so is there, like any other steps after say, you know, you get an email from a journalist and they say, Yes, go ahead. We're going to green light it. We're going to include you in that article. What is like continuing that relationship look like all that, all that more. Like, you know, check it off the box. We got their attention. Now, what do
Gloria Chou 20:03
you do? Yeah, I mean, you can also say, like, thank you so much. Do you know anyone else this would be a great fit for right? And then, just like, they'll and then they'll refer you to other people. And also the, you know, how they say, like, the best way to find a job is to already be in a job. Same thing with PR. Like, if you already have a feature, put that in your next pitch, already featured in XYZ, that's only going to help you, and then you can put that in your email newsletter to your customers, right? This, it's a stamp of approval that will get the customer to feel like I really need to pay attention to this. Think about it, right? As opposed to you telling me more about your benefits and features. You say we're featured in well and goods, 10 best baby products like that is, like, 10 times more powerful than any Instagram really, you could make. So there's so many ways that you can kind of repurpose that, and it's still going to collect that ROI from SEO, because, again, it's unlike an Instagram reel. It doesn't expire in 24 hours. So it's a compounding snowball effect. That is the reason why I think PR is one of the most important marketing activities a founder can do. It just hasn't been made accessible until now.
Mariah Parsons 20:58
Yeah, and I love your passion for it, like, I can see it coming through, you know, the screen and the microphone. And I think a lot of founders will hear that, because I totally agree with you that it's kind of not been like a lost channel, but totally gate kept. Of like, okay, that's when you like, quote, unquote, make it big, right? It's like when, naturally, people just start to feature you in these, you know, in these bigger gift guides or articles or XYZ. And so I love your viewpoint of, like, No, you can do it. It can be successful, and it can really drive really, really strong revenue back to your brand and help with SEO, all that fun stuff. And so I want to ask you with in terms of SEO, and because you already brought up, like, perplexity, and you know, anyone can write SEO pages at like, an incredible pace nowadays. Do you see AI being in or PR being influenced by AI? Yeah. I would love to hear your opinion on that before switching more into like the retention side of things with
Gloria Chou 21:50
AI search engines. Now your PR features will be scraped from that, right? So if I'm asking chatgpt about you now, any of your PR articles will show up there, so it's part of the whole thinking brain, of it telling you about your information. So just like we're now using chat GPT as a search engine for press, features will show up as as as it kind of synthesizes an answer for whether or not you're a reputable brand. And also with ai, ai is a great tool as well. I know I talked about perplexity in terms of us doing our own PR features. I wouldn't start with AI to write the pitch, because, you know, journalists can tell right away. And, you know, obviously I teach the CPR method, but it's great for follow up. Like, honestly, you can use that to follow up and say, Hey, here's a pitch I wrote, you know, after watching Gloria's masterclass, you know, I now I want to follow up, because it's spring, and it could definitely help you repurpose that foundational pitch into something else. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 22:39
yeah, I love that. Okay, so let's switch into more the retention side of things. So we've been talking about, obviously, how do you get a journalist's attention to make sure that you can get a, you know, a PR channel for your business? And so I'd love to hear your opinion on how you think PR helps retention, because you already said, Right? Obviously, credibility. That's a huge, huge thing for customers to know, like, whoa, this name that I know they recommended the product that I already have. So, yeah, walk me through. Like, how you think about PR and retention strategies for ecommerce brands?
Gloria Chou 23:08
I think it just like, once I make a purchase, if I see that, it keeps getting awards. And award, it makes me feel like, Oh, I got an early you know, like, I, I got early adopter. Yep, right, got, I discovered something before everyone else did. And so it kind of has that exclusivity, and it's a great way to email your customers to keep them updated on what you're doing and how you know you're so committed to your brand that you're pitching it. So it's only going to validate my purchase decision even more. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 23:34
yeah, I love it. And is there anything? Because I'm thinking through like, okay, PR, all celebrity lists, like, I feel like those are, that's like, another channel of PR or like influencer credibility. Is there, like, any differences there? Or do you think, you know, you'd have kind of the same outreach for like, more the influencer, their recommended, their recommended products, as opposed to like, if you're sending this to a journalist, do you like distinguish that
Gloria Chou 24:05
at all? Yeah. So the thing with influencers is that it's kind of a wild, wild west. The threshold of what makes it influencer, I don't know, right? And so a lot of people tell me that they have worked with influencers who now like, their account got blocked and so they're no longer there, or influencers who are pretending to be journalists, and you know, they want you to send a lot of free products. So just, just be careful. Again, it's not regulated, whereas, like, we know that if someone's writing for a reputable outlet, right, they're bound by the code of ethics. So I'm not again, I don't work with a lot of influencers, but it's unregulated, so you really have to vet them carefully. That's just really my my own advice.
Mariah Parsons 24:40
Yeah, I think that's great. We haven't really had anyone on the show who kind of delineates between, like, you know, having a backed institution where, like, a journalist is writing, you know, and has, again, this whole episode is about credibility, right? Like that journalist have has that credibility from the institution that they're writing for, or the outlet that they're writing for, versus a. You know, influencer, it is not, they're not going to have that same backing or same you know, it's just, it's, it's a newer industry. So it's more, you know, like you said, it's not as
Gloria Chou 25:09
regular, not to say it doesn't work, right? But I don't know. It's, you have to weigh it against what they're charging and what you think the ROI is. So just like with ads, it's really up to you to to make that discernment, yeah,
Mariah Parsons 25:19
and it can be a lot of murky water, right? Of just like, trying to do all the things, which I know brand, brand founders will feel to their max of, because they're always trying to do so many things. Um, so I want this just popped into my brain. But if you had, is there anything that, like, you remember either when you were getting started in this industry? Of, like, holy shit. Like, we just did it. Like, when did you kind of crack that code of, you know, having a formula? Or, like, is there something that's really memorable? Of, like, oh my god, we just got, like, this client featured in this, you know, gift guide, or anything like that. I have
Gloria Chou 25:53
people who get featured all the time just watching my free PR training. And I get DMS from companies from all around the world. And say, I watched your method. I looked, you know, I started following journalists. I sent them, you know, pitch using a C provide. We got in Canadian vote, where we got on Buzzfeed. We got an oppressed favorite things we got. And these people are very small businesses. They don't have a lot of followers, they don't have a budget to work with influencers. And so it makes me really happy that people get featured. Like every single week. We have people like DMing with us. We have people you know, in our in our program. And another thing that I'm doing now is, which is a trick for all of you listening, is a lot of writers now are sharing exactly what they're covering that week on their sub stack, which is their private blog, right? And a lot of freelance writers who write products, it's a gold mine of information. So follow journalists and writers on sub stack, they will literally tell you, here's what I'm working on this week. Here's exactly when the deadline is and exactly what to put in the subject line. And it's just a matter of like, responding to it. We got people like, I sent one of these opportunities to one of our PR members that got featured in 24 hours. So use sub stack. It is an absolute gold mine. Another pro tip is sign up for source of sources.com which is kind of like a new Harrow, and it'll ping you three times a day with up to 25 different journalists inquiries of, hey, I'm looking to feature this, or I'm looking for this. So it's not all going to fit what you're doing. Like, sometimes you're looking for financial experts, real estate experts, but like, just today, I got one that was like, Hey, I'm writing a gift guide for, you know, moms, whatever.com, or I'm writing a gift or, you know, like an Easter thing, or I'm featuring products and and for, Hello, gorgeous. And so that's also a really good grassroots way of you to start to just get featured right away, without without paying. And that's always good, right? Because it's just about what takes you, what five minutes to to respond, but then you get featured. So the upside of that is just so tremendous.
Mariah Parsons 27:33
Yeah, I love that you're calling out, like, specific platforms or ways to do that, I think is quoted. Are you familiar with
Gloria Chou 27:39
that? Yeah. So quoted, quoted is also good. I mean, they, they want you to pay, and it's quite expensive, expensive, right? And they'll give you, like, maybe a couple of free opportunities a day, but it's mainly a paid service, and it's couple $100 a month, you know, just, it just depends on, like, what your budget is, yeah?
Mariah Parsons 27:55
And, you know, our audience, and I think those that you also work with, the probably not looking to pay for the platform to get those opportunities, especially when you say, you know, sub stack and source of
Gloria Chou 28:07
sources. I've had people with great results with quota too. But for some people, you know, they don't have the budget. So I mean, so try the free one, and if it works for you, then great. But that combined with the sub sack, combined with the source of sources, watch my free master class like you are golden, you will definitely get featured.
Mariah Parsons 28:22
Yes, okay, I love it, and give a shout out to where people can find you for, like, all the all the resources that you're sharing, because I know our audience is going to be
Gloria Chou 28:30
interested. Yeah. So my free master class, people have watched it, like I said, and got featured right away. I give you a screenshot of exactly a CPR pitch. I got someone featured 12 times. This person makes soap. It's not the most exciting product, right? And it's just regular soap, and it's a package free soap. And she got featured in like Martha Stewart Living in the zo report of harbor therapy and Colonia Nash traveler. So you can go to that and watch it for free at Gloria, Chow, PR com slash masterclass. That's Gloria, C, H, o, u, p, r.com/master, class. And if you DM me on Instagram, because I'm very active on Instagram, I share a lot of things at Gloria Chow, PR, so I'm very active. If you DM me the word retention Chronicles, I will give you an additional freebie so that you can get cracking on your pitch. Okay, amazing.
Mariah Parsons 29:12
I love that you are like so on it, and it is so impressive that you like are just able to be a wealth of information. I know there's so much in this episode, I'm like, I can't even wait for our audience to hear this, because I know that there's obviously, we focus a lot on retention, but acquisition and retention are so closely paired together, as we've discussed today, that our audience is gonna, I feel like they're all gonna be like, Oh my god. Why am I not doing this already? And that is like, the fun of being in this world, right? Is like being like, being like, Oh my God, that's such a good idea. And I you were the first like PR person that we've had on the show. So I'm very, very grateful you made the time to share all of your knowledge with our audience. And it's been so great to have you here. Gloria, thank you again. Thank you. Applause. 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