Well, hello and welcome to the e-Commerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. The E-Commerce podcast is all about helping you deliver e-commerce. Wow. And to help us do just that today. I'm chatting with my very special guest, Brandon Amoroso from electriq about how to increase your customer retention: the ultimate guide. Oh, yes. Uh, but before Brandon and I jump into that, let me suggest a few other e-commerce podcast episodes that I think you'll enjoy listening to.
Uh, check out maximizing the lifetime value of a customer with Valentin Radu. Uh, that was a great episode. Valentin's such a top bloke. Uh, and the other episode you should check out. Is customer value optimization, the real silver bullet of e-commerce with the legendary Will Laurenson. You can check out both of those episodes along with our entire of archives of episodes, uh, on our website for free at e-commerce podcast.net. I like to say this every week.
Uh, Brandon, I'm always amazed by how many people check out past episodes, you know, going back years, uh mm-hmm. and, um, looking at those stats so you can see all of. On the website, they're still there. You can still listen to them. Now. This episode is brought to you by the e-commerce cohort, which helps you deliver e-commerce wow. To your customers. Now, here's the question, right? How do you stay on top of things in a way that works for you and your eCommerce business?
Because there's always so much to learn about eCommerce given the rate and speed of change. Hence, we now have the eCommerce cohort. It is a lightweight membership group with guided monthly sprints at cycle through all the key areas of e-commerce. So if you're working by yourself, whether, if you're working in a team, it's gonna help you stay on top of what is going on in the market and how it applies for your business.
It gives you clear and actionable jobs to be done, so you'll know what to work on and you'll get the support to get it done that you need. So whether you're just starting out in e-commerce or. You may be like me, a bit of a dinosaur, someone who's been in e-commerce for a really long time, a well established e-commercer as we like to say. I encourage you to definitely check out ecommercecohort.com, or you can email me directly, matt@ecommercepodcast.net with any questions that you may have.
Okay. Let's get into it. Brandon is the founder and CEO of Electriq, A drinks company that scales brands with profitable e-commerce models built from innovative proprietary methods powered by the freedom and individuality of the Gen Z mindset. Electriq has fueled over 35 in-house specialists in a range of growth focus strategies, including email, SMS marketing, SEO, content marketing, paid acquisition web design and development, and basically a whole range of other things.
So, uh, I'm excited to have this conversation with Brandon. Brandon, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Thanks for joining me here on the e-Commerce Podcast.
Of course. Thanks for having me.
Oh, no worries. Now you are hailing in from, uh, Miami, Florida right now, which is no doubt gonna have much warmer weather than, uh, what I've got here in, uh, well at least it's sunny, sunny Liverpool here in the uk. So, uh, but you were mentioning you're off to Toronto. Uh, fairly soon. So you're gonna have colder climates very, very shortly, right?
Yes. Fortunately though I will only be there for about four nights, so I won't have to deal with it for too long.
like, yeah, just keep telling yourself when it's cold. You just, it's only a few more nights to go. It's only a few more nights to go. I should escape soon. Uh, welcome to the show, uh, Brandon. Tell me about electriq, uh, and what it does. What's your company?
Yeah, so we're a Shopify Plus agency that specializes in retention marketing. So say almost 90% of the time we're working with our clients on their email and sms, uh, marketing specifically, uh, the automations within their Klaviyo accounts, uh, helping them understand how like segmentation and personalization of that can increase and improve, uh, retention and ltv. And then second is web design and development.
So really anything customer experience related, uh, from the moment that they begin that checkout process all the way through, uh, making their subsequent orders. That's where we step in and help brands navigate, uh, the Shopify ecosystem, all the tools that they should or should not be using. And then deploying that across email and SMS and their website.
Wow. There's, there's a lot going on there. Um, have, is this your, uh, how, how long has Electriq been around? Is this a, a fairly new venture or has it been around a few years? Uh,
a couple years, but I, I was freelancing in like 2017 and 2018, uh, just for small Shopify businesses. And then, uh, Electriq officially launched about mid 2019. Mm-hmm. . And then, um, we were acquired back in April this year. Oh wow. By, uh, by a beverage technology company, uh, who was entering the Shopify space with their, um, own tax and compliance app for alcohol merchants to be able to ship across the united states.
So it was stylized as a Shopify for wine, and that launched about six, seven weeks ago now. So now we have the agency running. Um, but then that's another sort of business unit that I'm focused on as well.
Wow. So you, you set up a business three years ago. You get it acquired this year by, uh, drinks, I think it was drinks.com, uh, bought out your mm-hmm. , um, bought out your agency, but you are still involved. That's all part of the, uh, the deal of the sale?
Yeah. So from a day to day standpoint, um, I was already in the process of, um, putting in sort of a, a VP and up, uh, level across electriq so that I wasn't running around doing 10,000 things every day and could focus more on like the, the long term strategy.
So I'd say more and more of my time is being spent on, uh, the app and acceleration and adoption of it within, uh, the Shopify ecosystem, doing events, putting together all the content and resources, building things out like the help desk, uh, all the stuff that comes with being a Shopify Plus certified app. Um, so it's been fun because I've been learning a lot along the way and. I still get to have the agency as well. So it's sort of the, the best of both worlds.
I was gonna say, it's interesting because you, we don't have many people on the show that have been bought out as recently as you have. Um, and you've gone from this sort of transition, which starts life as a freelancer to running an agency, um, quite a rapidly growing agency by the sounds of it, with the team size that you have, um, to then being acquired. So now you are. I guess you're employed by drinks.com.
You know, you've, you've sort of gone the full gamut of, of, uh, of sort of statuses here, haven't you, from freelancer to CEO to, you know, working with a, within a larger organization. How have you found that whole transition?
Um, there's definitely pros and cons. Um, I inherently just have an entrepreneurial spirit, I would say, And so the, the nice thing about drinks is that it is still sort of scrappy and, and has that startup mindset. Mm-hmm. and being a part of the executive team there still allows me to have some, uh, autonomy and, and decision making sort of power that goes into it.
Though obviously it's not the same as it was with the electriq because that was just a hundred percent me and, um, there wasn't necessarily as much, uh, red tape as you get when you start to get into larger. Uh, in larger organizations, but, um, I don't think the transition has been, has been too difficult, especially because they were, they were a client of ours. Um, and that's sort of how this whole thing came to be. So already comfortable. Familiar with, with working with them.
Yeah. I figured you must be if you'd, if you'd sold to them. But it's interesting that actually the sale came to an existing client. They'd obviously, they'd used your services and gone, No, we, we wanna bring this more full-time in-house. Um, I've seen that actually quite a few times. Uh, bigger companies, they'll go to agencies, they'll use agencies, and then they'll end up buying the agency. Um, which is, is quite an interesting strategy, I think, from corporations to do that these days.
Um, customer retention, uh, is technically what we're talking about. So let's, um, let's dig into that. So, um, how did you end up sort of getting involved in customer retention? So you talked about email and SMS and the segmentation and helping customers with that. Was that um, something that was very intentional or was that something that was kind of accidental getting involved with?
I think a little bit of both. I never really enjoyed, um, the paid media side of things, everything. Facebook ads, the TikTok ads never was something that I could really get passionate about. Mm-hmm. . Um, and then as I saw Claviyo sort of continue to rise within the Shopify ecosystem, all the integrations. Um, amongst the various app providers as well and how they all sort of came together in Klaviyo as the central hub of data on each customer. That was a lot more interesting to me.
Um, the ability to create these personalized experiences at scale by leveraging various different tool sets to get data plugged into Klaviyo that you could then create it off of. So, uh, we actually stopped doing anything to do with paid acquisition, uh, in 2021 and moved entirely into just retention.
And um, that was definitely a great transition for us because not only did it make our team more focused and you can't be an expert in anything or in everything, but it also was a lot easier in terms of the sales process with new potential clients because we have one very specific area that we focus on. Customer retention. Um, we, you come to us in order to increase ltv and we're not a traditional email and SMS agency in the sense that we're not just doing things within your Klaviyo account.
Like we're making recommendations that are more holistic across that customer journey. Mm-hmm. so. I sort of fell into it. Um, definitely wasn't intentional to to begin with, but as I started working more and more within the e-commerce industry, saw how much opportunity there was there. Yeah.
Nice. Fair enough. Okay, I have a big question for you. Is it Clavio or Klaviyo?
I think they want us to say Klaviyo. But I can't remember what it was.
I just, I, I, I really should call them one day and ask them, Listen, how am I supposed to put, Is it Klaviyo? Or clavio?
There's a right way to say it. They've got t-shirts with the phonetic spelling on it. as a joke?
Okay. Yeah. But maybe they should just send me one of those , So, um, Clavio or Klaviyo, you've mentioned that this is the platform that you use. Is this, is this your sort of platform of choice for, uh, email marketing? Um, especially around customer retention?
Yeah. We only use Klaviyo for email, SMS marketing, uh, with any brand that's on Shopify.
And why, why Klaviyo? Why that particular product?
Because of. Sort of the number in depth of integrations that it has with the rest of, um, with the rest of our app, uh, tech stack for merchants. Mm-hmm, everything from the customer service platform to the reviews platform, to the loyalty platform. Everything integrates with Klaviyo, so we get that unified view of a customer. Um, and then there's been a lot of investment amongst, uh, the various apps. Into making their Klaviyo integrations more robust.
So there's some specific features and functionality that only exist amongst, like Recharge and Klaviyo, for example, that you wouldn't get in any other email platform. So that is the main reason. Mm-hmm. . And then, um, for us, it just makes sense to, it's not like we're a team of, uh, a hundred people.
It makes more sense to go all in on one platform and truly be experts within that versus saying, Oh yeah, we do, uh, email and SMS marketing across Klaviyo, uh, MailChimp, list track, editable, and so on. Yeah. It just doesn't, it would spread us too thin.
Yeah. No fair play. It's interesting. I, I mean, I've been around e-commerce for a fair few years now, and it's interesting to me that Clavio or Klaviyo seems to have sort of come out of nowhere. I mean, not recently, but there were definitely other contenders in the market when they came onto the market, um mm-hmm. And they, I think they've, it feels to me like they've revolutionized the whole industry a little bit. And so they seem to be, and I don't have any data to prove this is just.
What I, what I see, feel kind of thing. They seem to be the market leader, or at least one of the market leaders now in this whole email marketing side of things. And a lot of people talk about 'em very favorably. Um, we in fact use Klaviyo ourselves, uh, for our own e-commerce brands. And so, um, it's just, it's really interesting to sort of chart their story and, especially because there were other companies around beforehand that maybe haven't done as well.
Uh,and so maybe they've just been faster at adapting. And one of the things like you say, that I like about 'em is they do adapt with a whole bunch of other stuff through their, through their APIs. So watch this space. We should probably get someone from Klaviyo onto the podcast and talk to 'em about, actually a little memo to self, uh, there. So, um, this ultimate retention program uh, of yours, Brandon. Let's talk about that.
So, over the last few years of doing all of this, you've, you've figured a few things out, it's fair to say, right?
I would hope so. . . Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Otherwise, it's gonna be a really short interview. I'm just saying. So, what have you, um, what have you learned? What, Just gimme an overview of the, the sort of the, this, this idea that you have. Yeah. So you get sort of the basic framework of which to build your retention program. Mm-hmm. , um, when you get up and running with, with the Shopify store, but everything is sort of, um, you, you're getting the, the basics.
You're not necessarily extending it. And that starts all the way with, I mean, uh, Shopify for example, provides the ability to send out an abandoned cart email. Mm-hmm. . So if you're a brand that just is getting up and running, Shopify can support that for you, but truly to extend that functionality, you're gonna wanna get up and running with Klaviyo, build out abandoned cart flows there, segment it based off of like what the cart size is. Is it a new or returning customer?
Are they one shop buyer or subscription customer? And so anything within e-commerce can start out very simple and then become very complex quickly. And so it's all about sort of identifying what are the lowest hanging sort of, uh, fruit optimizations and initiatives that we can push forward, that's gonna drive the most roi. Because if you try to do everything all at once, you are going to end up doing everything sort of half baked and not, not really in a, in a strong, cohesive manner.
So, Part of what we've been focused on is which of these things are the initiatives that we want to tackle first? And so there's very specific. Sort of changes to a brand setup that we wanna make, day one, whether they're large or small, because we know they're gonna have the most outsized, uh, return on investment. Mm-hmm. versus other areas which are more of a nice to have, or, Hey, you're a, you're a really large brand, you can invest and get to this point.
So we are going to focus on this with you. Everything from like your campaign sending strategy could be uh, based off of a couple of key segments, but you can get as granular of your segmentation as, as you could even dream of based off of how much data's in Klaviyo mm-hmm. . So, uh, sort of a walk before you run approach. Mm-hmm. . Matt Edmundson: I like that. I like the, the walk before you run.
And I , I laughed or I smiled when you said, you know, things in e-commerce can start off relatively simple and become horrendously complicated quite quickly. Uh, and if I, I could just hear, uh, all over the globe as people were listening to the show, people just going, Amen. Amen. Amen. Because we've all been there, haven't we? Uh, where things have just got horrendously complicated and unnecessarily so. So how do you stop that? How do you prevent, um, shiny object syndrome?
How do you prevent, uh, the desire to change everything in instant because you feel like everything needs to be changed cuz stuff just isn't working. Um, how, how do you avoid going down that road? Yeah, so the biggest thing for me is when you're doing anything, just making sure that you have documentation around it. Um, and if you are going to be, like implementing testing, for example, that you have a, a framework to log and analyze those test results moving forward.
So you're not just like testing for the sake of testing. Mm-hmm. , but I think the best example.. Um, we've been in a couple of Klaviyo accounts where it's just an absolute nightmare. It's likes a hundred, there's like a hundred flows. Um, they have been set up by like four or five different agencies. There's been in-house people that are tweaking them as well. No one really knows what customers are getting which emails and texts at what point of their, of their journey.
And, uh, there's no consistency in terms of, uh, branding across, across them. And I think that spawns out of not having sort of documentation mm-hmm. and basically a, a roadmap of this is what we built out in Klaviyo. This is like the last day that it was edited. This is what we're currently testing within the flow. So it really comes down to just organization and, and managing that and having somebody like in house who's, who's truly owning it. Mm-hmm.
Because if you just throw five different agencies at your Klaviyo account, then you're constantly going to be reinventing the wheel, and you're not going to know if there's any incremental benefit or ROI to that, to that decision.
Yeah, we had, um, we had one agency looking after our Klaviyo email list, uh mm-hmm. or our Klaviyo email, uh, the whole thing that we're looking after Klaviyo. Uh, and in April this year, I think it was April, April May, we switched out agencies. Um, and we, we bought somebody else in that could make a big difference. Um, cuz we, we just sort of, actually, something's not right. It's not performing how we, how we think it could. Um, and so they've made a whole bunch of changes.
And so actually in hindsight, what I wish we'd have done was. Exactly what you've just said. Right. Had the documentation from agency number one saying this is all the stuff. Because the confusion after doing that, bringing in that second agency has been quite stark. Mm-hmm. and we that we then integrate on top of it. We integrated a new, um, dashboard. Right. A BDI. So we, we, we integrated this new dashboard, which also beautifully integrates with Klaviyo.
And so, um, we were having all this, we had the website and now we've got this dashboard talking to Klaviyo. Plus, we've now on our second agency Wow. We're still trying to unpick, I think a whole bunch of the problems that came about as a result of doing that. Um, because we didn't understand how stuff was all gonna work together in terms of what other people had done and who was getting what and who wasn't getting stuff. Um, so it's been a really steep learning curve.
But when you talk about, and, and, and I sit here in hindsight, right, Brandon going, we should have done what you've just suggested, um, because it would've saved us a whole lot of pain. But if I'd sit, sat here and listened to you talk and had not gone through that, I'd have just gone something like that. Makes sense. But documentation that's not sexy is it? Uh, I, that that whole getting organized thing is just not sexy. Uh, and so it'll probably become task number 806. To-do list.
Yes, it is. It's not sexy, but it'll, it'll save you a lot of time in, in the long run. And it doesn't have to be complicated either. Just it's very, very simple. It could be a spreadsheet just tracking. Mm-hmm. , um, what's been done and when, and if you are testing, what are you testing? What's the desired outcome?
Um, there's actually an interesting thing I was reading about how if you don't write down your expected outcome from like a test that you're running, if whenever you get the results, Even if they're not originally what you had expected, like human nature will rationalize whatever the actual result is. Yeah. If you don't have it written down like, hey, this is what our hypothesis was. Mm-hmm.
. Um, and the reason why that's important is because if you just are constantly rationalizing whatever the results are, there's no way to reflect on, oh, what should we have done differently or tweak differently to improve, like CTR, for example. Mm-hmm.. Um, so that was something that I found pretty interesting as well.
Yeah, No, that's a good point actually. That whole, um, mapping expected outcomes because you're right, because, uh, it, it helps you if you're objective enough, it means you can analyze your thinking, um, and to go actually, so we didn't achieve this outcome. It was either better or it was worse. So what led me to believe that this was the expected outcome is actually quite an interesting question, isn't it? And why, Why did I go down that road?
Um, it, um, have you ever, ever read the book Black Box Thinking with, is it Matthew Syed? I think that's the guy that wrote the book.
I, I have not. Um, but I will, I'll add it to my list if you, uh, you recommend it.
Yeah. He's, um, his whole, the whole premise of the book is how do you deal with failure, Right. And. And he, he contrasts, uh, the airline industry and the medical industry in the states and how they, how they both deal with failure and how the medical industry really doesn't like failure and does everything to avoid it because of the million lawsuits that are gonna come their way, whereas the airline industry learns from it. Right.
And, uh, we now have some of the safest stats ever coming out of an industry that was notoriously unsafe. And it's because of how they deal with this. And I think the documenting of your hypothesis is a simple idea, isn't it? It's like, if I jot this down, um, rather than just brushing over it because we don't like it when we're wrong, but analyzing it and going, What can we learn from that? I think it's a really powerful idea. Uh, super, super powerful. Yeah. So. Customer retention.
Um, what are some of the, what are some of the components then that we should be thinking about, uh, as a, as eCommerce entrepreneurs?
Yeah. I mean, the easiest place to start is going to be your email and sms. Mm-hmm. flows. Those have the most outsize impact on, on customer retention. Um, then from there, there's some more, I would say sort of soft initiatives that you can push forward that don't have as necessarily of a direct, uh, correlation to, Oh, like I can see how many people clicked on this, how much revenue was driven through it. Mm-hmm..
But like, if you don't have a strong customer support team, uh, in place, then your customer retention is naturally going to suffer from that. And something that we've been, uh, chatting through with, with is how brands should be looking at customer service not only as like a retention hub, but somewhere that actually additional revenue can be, can be driven.
And so they're now, they're now, uh, rolling out, uh, analytics within the platform that allow us to track like, Oh, this CS agent actually made $5,000 this month in additional revenue from their interaction with customers chatting in. Uh, so that's, that's a really crucial component that I think a lot of brands have looked at as a cost center historically, which is definitely not, um, the way that you should be approaching it today.
Another thing is subscription programs, they are, um, beneficial obviously from a LTV standpoint. But not a tremendous fan of the companies that have like 40% off your first subscription order and then essentially set it up so that you have to become a subscription customer in order to be a customer of their brand. Mm-hmm. , the way that we like to approach it is much more of a try before you subscribe, approach.
And so maybe the first order or the first two are one shot, but then because of the email and SMS flow, so we have set naturally that customer will get pushed into a subscription program, um, for something that they actually like because it's a lot easier to keep a customer as a one shot customer and then like transition 'em into subscription versus if they start out on a subscription and then they churn significantly more difficult to ever get them back as a customer.
Okay. I don't know if there's something to do with like, It's like the way the human brain works or something, but you, it's almost like you're canceling that relationship with that brand. Yeah. If you're, if you're unsubscribing from, uh, your subscription program, whereas the one shot's much more transactional and, uh, so we much prefer that route. And uh, and I'd say the last thing though, there's a bunch of other stuff, but one of the most impactful.
Uh, things that we do across all of our clients when we get started with them is move their transactional communications outta Shopify into Klaviyo, okay? Because about 15 to 20% of a brand's, uh, website traffic goes to that order tracking page. So we set up custom order tracking pages that have like product cross sells, additional brand information. If you're a one shot customer, we show you all the benefits of the subscription program.
If you are a subscription customer, we push you into the referral, uh, program. And then we're also able to like test and create personalized transactional journeys in Klaviyo where, I mean, these emails are getting 90% open rates, like 25% click through rates. It is such a higher, um, engagement than you're gonna see with your marketing communications. Mm-hmm. . And so if you just leave them in Shopify, you have no idea what is happening with those customers.
You can't see the data, you can't do any testing. You can't make it personalized. So getting those over into Klaviyo has been a huge unlock for us. That is, I mean, if you're a customer who just places, uh, an order of the brand for the first time, most of your experience with that brand is gonna be the transactional journey. Your order confirmed, order out for your shipping, order delivered, and so on. Um, so making sure that that is really set up for success. Mm-hmm.
branded, the whole thing is very important.
Yeah, it's a really interesting point and I, and I wanna just dig into this a little bit more because, um, it's a bit of a, a bit of a soapbox for me, if I'm honest with you, uh, Brandon, in the sense that the most neglected emails are our transactional emails for just about every e-commerce business I've ever worked with and they're the most opened emails by clients. Um, I think I've read a stat, I dunno if it's still true, but, uh, the, your order is shipped.
Email, you know, with the tracking information is opened by sort of 60 to 70% of your people. That's a lot, right? Of opens. Yeah. Um, and all they tend to be is just emails. Uh oh Matt, you're order shipped. Here's a tracking number. Thanks. Um, you know, Right. And that's it. And usually that comes from the shipping company. I don't even send it out. And so, um, that, that whole transactional email, um, getting them out of Shopify, and to Klaviyo, you can do then so much more with 'em.
What sort of things have you found Works really well with the transactional emails?
So, simplest thing we do is just create a separate transactional journey for one shot customers and then create a different one for subscription customers. Because we want to, uh, be speaking to them differently. Uh, for the one Shot customers, we are promoting the subscription program, additional products that they should try.
Whereas on the subscription customer side of things, we're, we're reinforcing some of the perks and benefits that they're getting for being a subscription customer, just to continue to let them know that, uh, but then they're a subscription customer, so they're gonna be more likely to refer a friend than somebody who's just purchased, uh, as a one shot order. Mm-hmm. . So then we promote the referral program, uh, pretty heavily.
So that's just one basic example of how you can then personalize the transactional journey to make it a little bit more relevant for that customer.
Yeah. No. Brilliant. Brilliant. Absolutely. Um, so you've, you've, you've got these different workflows for your one stops, uh, for your subscription and for your, um, you know, and you're sending them down these sort of different journeys, you're dealing with them. What are the sort of forms of segmentation do you use? I mentioned you mentioned earlier about you've got a, a flow around abandoned carts, right? Mm.
So I'd say the most complex abandoned cart flow that we've done is taking into account, um, if it's a new versus returning customer. Mm-hmm.. And then if it's a returning customer, is it a one shot customer or a subscription customer? And then, um, also taking into account what is the cart size as well? So you have a bunch of different branches going on in there. Mm-hmm. within that flow. And, uh, the reason why we're checking for, is it a new versus returning customers?
Because if it's a new customer, then we are just going to communicate with them differently and maybe even have higher incentivization through the form of offers to get them to make that first purchase. Or if you're a returning customer, we might reference whatever your previous order was. Mm-hmm, um, or include information in there about, uh, certain profiles or characteristics that we have on that customer.
Then one shot versus subscription is important cuz if you're an active subscription customer and you abandon checkout, we're probably going to not be as aggressive in our communication with you because you're an absent, you're an active subscription customeer. Umrif you are not then, then we will be. And then the cart size is important too. Cause if you have $500 a product in your cart, maybe we give you a code. Whereas if you only got $50 in it, you don't say anything.
Um, so that's just one example. But you can continue sort of further down the, the rabbit hole there. I don't know. Let's say you have like a quiz on your website that, or you have a review request process that asks people for their skin type, since it's a skincare brand mm-hmm., you could then split out the, uh, flow based off of skin type and reference in there. Like, Oh, hey, you have dry skin, so you should be also looking at these relevant products.
And you can sort of continue on, on down the path there, but it's really all about leveraging, uh, zero and first party data. Mm-hmm., like you can get a lot, uh, a lot of the way there with first party data. And then from there look at, hey, what else would we need to make this more relevant, um, for the customer? And that's typically where zero party data will come in, in the form of like quizzes, um, reviews, post purchase surveys. Mm-hmm. stuff like that.
Super powerful stuff. I, it's, it's, um, it goes back to, uh, I mean, it, it sounds complex, Brandon, what you're talking about, but it really isn't, and, and you are talking about actually just putting yourself in the shoes of your customer. If your customer is this type of customer, What sort of stuff do we want to give them?
If they're this type of customer, what's gonna make sense for them and let's give them that information rather than just doing this sort of blanket one size fits all type thing. Um, email and sms. You mentioned about sms, doing SMS stuff. Uh, and have you found that there's a difference between email and sms in terms of its, I know, I know a lot of people, for example, who will do email but won't do sms.
Uh, and so I'm kind of thinking, um, what would be the reasons why I should start looking at something like sms? Is it too competitive yet? Do, you know, what I mean? These sorts of questions. I wonder what you thought about that.
Yeah, I don't really, I don't see a reason why, um, any brand would not do SMS marketing. Um, it's a different communication channel for sure. Like you can't treat it in the same way that you treat email marketing. Otherwise, you're gonna end up with a lot of unsubscribes, and you're also gonna have to pay a lot because it's pay per text sent out versus email, which is not like, I mean, I have a hundred thousand contacts in my Klaviyo account. I can send them as many emails as I want.
I'm not going to be charged on a, on a usage basis. Whereas, uh, there's carrier fees associated with text. So if it's an SMS or an mms, you're paying for that message to go out. So that just makes it a less, um, frequent communication channel. Mm-hmm, and you're also in somebody's text message inbox.
So it's much more personal and you need to treat it in, in, in a higher regard than you do email, where people are used to being on hundreds of email lists that they just sort of click through and it's not, it's just not the same. Uh, but SMS has an outsized return compared to email. I mean, click through rates are, are significantly higher. Um, the ROI is usually significantly higher.
So any brand that's, that's not doing it, the easiest way to get started in a, in a way that wouldn't open it up, the floodgates would be to basically create like a segment of, of your absolute best customers in Klaviyo. Invite time to a V.I.P SMS subscriber list where you can send them, uh, like new product announcements and launches before you send them to the rest of your email list. Uh, start to build some exclusivity around that channel in, in that way.
Or, I mean, just add in a, a two step popup on your website if you want to open up to everyone and have email capture be on the first page. And then the second screen would show, uh, that SMS lead capture. And with some of our brands, we incentivize SMS sign up by saying, Well, if you give us your phone number, then you're gonna be entered for a chance to win. Uh, something like a gift with your order or you can do an additional percentage off.
Maybe it's 10 for email, 15% for sms, um, but pretty much across the board of any brand that we work with, the LTV of SMS subscribers is higher than that of email only subscribers.
Okay. That's an important point. Right. And I like your strategy there for getting the, uh, the SMS subscribers. So what you, you mentioned treat the SMS box differently to the inbox. What sort of, um, text messages work well in your opinion?
More like authentic, fun, cheeky, uh, personality from the brand than your standard like email marketing. Here's a bunch of pretty pictures and design. Which I would argue for email marketing, even some of the best performing emails are just like a simple text based email from the found, from the founder. Mm-hmm.
But we've had a lot of success with like the founder taking a selfie at the warehouse and giving some cute like, anecdotal story to their subscribers with sort of a, a link out to whatever product they were referencing. Um, and then making sure that you have people on the other end of that channel cuz it's a two-way communication channel. It's not mm-hmm.
, it's not like email where most customers are not going to reply to your marketing emails, but uh, they definitely will reply to your text messaging, uh, campaigns. So the worst thing I think a brand can do is have an auto response that goes out when somebody sends a text back to your brand with something along the lines of. Uh, this inbox isn't monitored. Reach out to us at help@brand.com, uh, and we'll be able to better assist you there. Like that's a huge missed opportunity.
Yeah, to create a relationship with the customer, service them like on demand and get them to purchase, uh, product.
So what are some of the, um, brands that you've seen do retention marketing well?What are, what is, I'm a, the reason I'm asking this, Brandon, is I, as, as much as I hate all the email I get every day, I do subscribe to people's email list, uh, and SMS list deliberately just to see what they're doing so I can learn from them. Right? Uh, and so I'm kind of curious who, who should I look at?
So I could be self-serving and give you a client of ours, but, um, I, do that we don't mind, I, I, I'll, I'll go in a different direction, um, with an apparel company that I buy, uh, like my workout clothes from, it's called, uh, 10,000 mm-hmm.. Um, and they have a, uh, like a loyalty program where, because I've purchased from them a certain amount of times.
Um, and I think it was something like three months had passed and I had not gone back and made another purchase before, but they just had a new, like colorway drop for one of their pairs of shorts. Um, when sending out that communication to me, they referenced the fact that I had a $30 credit as a part of their loyalty program that I would be able to redeem just right within checkout. Right? So, um, I was just clicked the link, took me right into like the shop pay flow and there I was spending.
$32 or whatever on a $62 pair of shorts. But the, um, they got me back onto the website, got me interacting with the brand again, and were able to personalize it because of the fact that I had purchased that type of short before and they were referencing the loyalty program and dynamically pulling in like how much store credit I had left. Mm-hmm. to make it more likely that I purchase or that I click through and actually make that purchase.
Great. I like that. I'll check them out. Um, now we're due to the nature of when we record the e-commerce podcast. Uh, and when we air the E-Commerce podcast, they're two very different dates. Um, so this episode will come out, uh, after Black Friday. So I'm just curious in the closing minutes of the show, what are some of the tips maybe that brands should think about? Marketeers listening should think about?
They've gone through Black Friday, they've got a whole bunch of new clients, um, top strategies here for, for keeping them and retaining them?
So if you don't ask and hopefully you did this, but if not, then you can still, uh, recover the information. But something we like to do for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, is when people are checking out in that post-purchase survey, the first question that we ask is like, was this a gift or not?
Mm-hmm, because if it's a gift, well then we're gonna communicate entirely different with that contact, then we will, if they say no, if it was a gift, why not surface them an offer to purchase for themselves right then and there? Put them into a separate bucket within your email and SMS account to communicate with them, uh, differently. And then you have the other side of the coin, which is who's the recipient?
Trying to get that information so that you can continue to nurture that relationship with them. Um, if it wasn't a gift, well then you're sort of within your standard retention flows. If you didn't do that, I mean, you could always just send out a campaign asking customers, Hey, was your recent order a gift or not. And then based off of that response, then you can start to personalize things a little bit. Mm-hmm.
. Uh, but I think the, the most powerful way I found to retain the, the Black Friday, Cyber Monday customers is to sort of dig in and split your customers out based off of those that are uh, heavily driven by incentive versus those that aren't. And you can do that by looking at like AOV lifetime value, um, number of discount codes used, and then make sure that when you are sort of architecting your strategy of communication, uh, for December onwards, that you're taking that into, into account.
Um, I think those are really the two, the two most powerful things.
Yeah. No, very good. Very, very good. Thank you for that. Brandon. Listen, a question I like to ask all of our guests, uh, who have been on the podcast is, um, you've just given the best keynote speech of your life. Let's assume it's to, you know, the e-commerce cohort guys, because they sponsor the show, right? So you're in a hotel room, they're all sat there. You've done, you've delivered your keynote customer retention. They're all going wild. Well done, Brandon. That's awesome.
Uh, they're all going a bit crazy. So you come on, you take your bow and you say, Listen, uh, all this is possible because of a person, a book, a film, a play, a podcast. Uh, who who do you thank, uh, at the end of that speech and why?
Hmm. I'd say it'd probably have to be one of my, um, one of my mentors who helped me along the way with building electriq everything from the very non-glamorous side of things like payroll and accounting and, and the contracts and all that, just horrible, horrible stuff that I hopefully will never have to do again.
um, Through the more like organizational strategic side of things, talking about things like, uh, institutionalizing process and procedure so that you can actually scale while not, uh, stifling, uh, innovation. And I think that was, that's one of the more important things that I've, that I've learned is like, process is extremely important. You can't have a 40 person company, I'd say you can't even really have a 20 person company without having like process guidelines. Mm-hmm.
. But making sure that it's sort of drilled into the organizational culture that just because we have these process guidelines doesn't mean this is like how you need to be doing it. There's nuance and we want to continue to improve. And so if there's ways that this process should be changed for the better that that, that idea should be surfaced and brought through the organization. Because you see really, really large companies who they have process guidelines and.
Like, that's just the way it is and they're not getting changed no matter what, which can be, uh, really demotivating for Yeah. For a team, I think if they aren't able to sort of help craft and shape whatever the organization is doing. Um, I think that was a long winded way of saying probably one of, uh, my mentors along the way.
And what's the name of your mentor?
Uh, it would be Zach.
Zach, my, uh, my son is called Zach, so I just think it's one of the coolest names in the world. So Zach, if you're listening, thanks very much. Uh, much appreciate it. Now, it's fair to say, uh, Brandon, you are not new to the world of podcasting. You actually have your own podcast as well, don't you? Why don't you tell the good folks about that?
Yeah, so the podcast I have is called the D2Z podcast. Um, it is a little bit e-commerce focused just because that's the industry that I'm in. But really what it's more about is, uh, organizational sort of culture and entrepreneurship and how to take maybe a different approach than companies have done, uh, historically.
And a lot of that is based out of sort of the, the Gen Z mindset and spirit around like autonomy and, and ownership and creativity and so we'll bring on a lot of, uh, founders from the software side of things, from the brand side to talk about growing from one person to five people to 10, to 20, to 50 to a hundred and so on. And what are some of the challenges, things that they learned along the way.
Um, so a little bit more about business growth as a whole than super tactical in the weeds on the e-commerce side.
Fantastic. Is it going well? You enjoying it?
Yeah, it's been great. I've learned a lot. Um, there's been some episodes where I, I really take a lot away for myself. Mm-hmm. in terms of things that I might wanna try, uh, within, uh, electriq or drinks or even just personal day-to-day stuff for, for myself.
Yeah, I see. You're right. I'm the same way. I have a, a permanent notebook on my desk cuz I'm analog right. Uh, and so I'm constantly taking notes. And so I've drafted a few questions down, uh, from our conversation. And tomorrow I always record the podcast the day before I go into the office. So, uh, tomorrow I head into the office where we sit down with the teams and It's just like, well, this is what I learned yesterday from my conversation with Brandon. So what are we gonna do about that?
So, uh, I totally get your your point. I dunno who benefits more, whether it's listeners or whether it's me in these podcasts, but I, I really enjoy them. How do, um, how do people reach you? Uh, how do people get hold of you if they want to connect? . Brandon Amoroso: Yeah. So, uh, you can always go on LinkedIn, just Brandon Amoroso or my website brandonamoroso.com.
Uh, if you are interested in potentially, uh, working with the agency, then it's electriqmarketing.com, but it's a q instead of the c at the end of electric. Um, Which sort of have a little bit of that Klaviyo clavio thing going on there. Because this name was available. Right. That's it.
Yeah. The people never know how to say it, which actually has worked out well because it, then they remember it. Yeah. Versus if it was just a simple name then, and maybe they won't, it wouldn't be as sticky. Um, but yeah, those would be the two best avenues. Um, happy to help, Fantastic. Help chat through anything.
Fantastic. Well, uh, you can reach out to Brandon at those. We will of course put all his links in our show notes, which you can get for free at ecommercepodcast.net. Or if you're on our email list, we will email those out direct to your inbox using the magic of customer retention marketing as we've been learning about today. Uh, so Brandon, thank you for joining me on the e-Commerce podcast. Honestly, man, it's been an absolute blast.
Really, really appreciate you taking the time to join us today.
Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me on.
No problem. So there you have it. What a great conversation. Huge thanks again to Brandon for joining me today and of course, a big shout out to today's show sponsor, the e-commerce cohort. Do head over to ecommercecohort.com for more information about this new type of community that you can join. Now. Be sure to follow the e-commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we have more great conversations lined up just like today's one with Brandon.
I don't want you to miss any of them, so make sure you subscribe, uh, and in case no one has told you today, dear listener, you my friend, are awesome. Yes, you are absolutely awesome. It is a burden we just have to bear. Just the way it is, just the way it is. Just something we've all gotta do. So, uh, the e-Commerce podcast is produced by Aurion Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app.
Uh, the team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Beynon, Josh Catchpole, Estella Robin, and the Mighty Tim Johnson. Our theme song has been written by Josh Edmundson and my good self. And as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the website, ecommercepodcast.net, where coincidentally you can also sign up for our said newsletter. So all of that said, I think that is it from me. That is it from Brandon. Thank you so much for joining us.
Uh, it's been great to have you with us. Have a fantastic week and I will see you next week. Bye for now.