Aaron Conant  0:18  

Happy Tuesday everybody, my name is Aaron Conant, I'm the Co-founder Managing Director here at BWG Connect, or networking knowledge sharing group of 1000s organizations who do exactly that. We network, we now share together to stay on top newest trends, strategies, pain points, whatever it might be that shaping digital, I spend a lot of my time just talking with brands around what those pain points are, and how they're solving them and who's helping them solve it. And on the same topics come up over and over again, that's how we get the really relevant topics that we're dealing with, like this one today, driving brand loyalty and engaging your customers post, purchase a couple housekeeping items, you have any questions along the way, feel free to drop them into the chat, drop them into the q&a section there. I'll turn on the chat right now. And the other thing is, we're starting three to four minutes after the hour, just so everybody knows, we're going to wrap up with three to four minutes to go in the hour, at least as well. We're gonna give you plenty of time to get out into your next meeting without being late. And you know, if we jump into what people are looking at right now, loyalty is a big part of it. increased customer acquisition cost across the board. There's a fewer dollars to go around at this point in time, it sees a lot of money going into grocery stores and gas tanks. And so a big focus on once you've got somebody to buy, how do you create some brand loyalty there. And so we've got a great friend, partner supporter, the network for a long time now Jordan over at Coalition Technologies, just helping a ton of people in multiple different verticals. So no matter where you're at, don't hesitate to send any questions. But Jordan, you want to jump in with a brief intro on yourself and you're in Coalition? That'd be awesome. And then we can kind of jump into the discussion. Sounds good?

Jordan Brannon  2:03  

Yeah, for sure. So my name is Jordan Brannon, and I'm the president and Co-founder at Coalition Technologies. We are a full service digital agency, we've got close to 300 team members, and we just celebrated our first teenage birthday October 1, we turned 13. So we've we've we've officially reached maturity, you know, there's nothing says you're mature, like being 13. So we managed to pull that off. But we are, we've been really deeply embedded in the eCommerce space. My my career in digital really started in eCommerce with my brother. And so that's sort of been a big part of my story for the last 20 plus years. And I'm really excited for what happens next. So been been a fun, fun, fun run. And certainly looking forward to where we're headed.

Aaron Conant  2:58  

Awesome. Soon as we kind of kick off this topic. I mean, normally, you know, we'll be talking about SEO, we might talk about pay per click overall digital strategy, we might be talking about, you know, tech stack as a whole. But now we're kind of dialed in on this brand loyalty, it's something that, like I'd mentioned, I hear coming up over and over again, you know, how to how to engage your customer post-purchase is kind of what it is. Right? That's the loyalty aspect, getting them back to come back. They, you know, why do you think this this topic is coming up over and over again, at this point in time?

Jordan Brannon  3:33  

Yeah, I think mainly, because of where we're falling in the year, I think you've touched on it all. So at the top of the call, there's some challenges on the budget front. And so, you know, I think sort of this conversation around brand loyalty, and specifically, you know, how to exercise what you have available to you post purchase to sort of increase average order value, lifetime value, repeat purchases, you know, getting customers to do some additional things which are beneficial. A lot of brands are sort of beginning to focus on that, because ad budgets are smaller, big tech projects got moved back. And so some of the things that maybe we can lean on as sort of a way of delivering improvement, those have kind of gone, gone away. You know, we are officially into the holidays as well. So just calendar days, um, you know, Amazon that has pumpkin spice Prime Day, launched this morning, I think and a lot of brands are now sort of moving into that holiday cadence of you know, you know, content marketing and sale, calendars, all that sort of thing and so there's just maybe a less of a tool set than what you normally would have.

Aaron Conant  4:42  

I mean, it's really interesting. You also have to know yourself target launch, you know, their days at last minute, like in kind of response to Hey, doing this quick money grab over and over again, like who's gonna get those dollars first. But as we kind of jump into this, you know, I think My guess is we will set like retail, you know, shipping fulfillment, that stuff, you know, outside and kind of focus on on digital? Just, you know, yep. Given your area of expertise.

Jordan Brannon  5:12  

Yeah, for sure, I think, you know, we, we certainly interact with a lot of brands who are experts are more involved in that space, but just for us, and for me, personally, I think this is a little bit more, you know, close to line with what I can speak to, and actually offer some value. And so, you know, I spent some time kind of talking to some more team leads we have in our internal reporting and analysis group, and some of our clients that are doing really well in getting that repeat, repeat purchase, really getting, you know, their customers to come back again, getting, you know, higher LTVs out of their customers, and sort of looking at, you know, hey, what's what's working for them? And, you know, what are some suggestions that we can provide, that are really relevant to us? You know, because again, we're a digital marketers, digital agency, eCommerce, you know, service provider. So, you know, again, you know, what are the things that we can do, and, you know, hopefully helps to help here in this forum in this setting to give people some ideas that maybe they can they can put into action as well.

Aaron Conant  6:10  

Yeah, for sure. And just a reminder, everybody who's dialed in now, if you have any questions along the way, dropping in the chat drop into the q&a, or you can always just email me aaron@bwgconnect.com, we'll get as many questions answered as possible. But if we jump in, like, if you kind of isolate like your, some of your top clients, what are those post purchase experiences look like? Are there any things that you know, at a really high level stand out to you that people are taking notes right now and say, Hey, these are things we should be thinking about, or

Jordan Brannon  6:39  

I think for probably the thing that was most striking to me is when we started to have some conversations with clients are doing really well in this sort of repeat purchase, building LTV, getting customers to do additional things to sort of help, you know, create value for the brand. Yeah, I think the biggest thing was that a lot of them really had invested pretty consistently and meaningfully into improving sort of their post purchase engagement strategy. You know, you know, as I mentioned earlier, you know, sort of my personal background in eCommerce and marketing really comes from more top of funnel experience, you know, namely, SEO and paid. And so I sort of, I personally tend to sort of lapse into the bit of a habit of just paying lip service to what happens after the first, you know, order comes through. Unfortunately, for her coalition, we have a great team that does that well and full time. But, you know, for our clients, where we were seeing a lot of success, post purchase, there is a real commitment to having a strategy and an action plan in place that really helps to build value and then incrementally is improving on that, and in creates incentives for repeat buyers.

Aaron Conant  7:49  

Can you kind of walk us through some numbers from a standpoint of investment? And is the juice worth the squeeze? As we all know, we want loyalty. I think we all know, we want to repeat purchase, but any numbers on the back end that kind of gauge what our success rate is up?

Jordan Brannon  8:07  

Yeah. Yeah. So again, kind of focusing on on our eCommerce clients, you know, we're, you know, all of them are running an average conversion rate of just under 2%, for first time visitors to a site without any sort of prior brand engagement. So what we really believe are sort of a first time exposure, we're really sort of answering the the top of funnel call, you know, sort of kind of simplifying that, you know, out of a million visits, and more than that per month, but just out of a million visits 20,000 are buying on their first time. Now, if that first time visitor does have some prior brand exposure, that number actually gets closer to tripling. So again, you know, there creates some some conversations around, you know, hey, building that brand awareness outside of your site is really helpful and driving up the conversion rate. Still no previous purchase history. You know, when you look at sort of a segment of visitors to the site who have purchased and didn't have sort of a clear customer service problem, we're pretty reliably estimating that around 26% will purchase if you can get them back to your site. So really a significant number jump there. Now, if you are getting a customer who has made two separate purchases back to the site, that number then increases the opportunity to sell to them again, goes up over 50%. So the opportunity for a recurring purchase to three or two or three purchases sort of drives up the likelihood of additional purchases happening later. Now, when we see a client who has really sort of put some meaningful time into their post purchase strategy, either with our team or even independently, we're seeing sort of the recurrence of this purchase numbers increasing by about 10% over the benchmarks. And so you think about adding 10% into sort of any conversion metric over time, that really starts to drive a lot of additional value for a brand. And again, frankly, creates a better performance. which in turn, hopefully, is creating a feedback loop back into your marketing budgets and tech budgets and things like that. And so, you know, I think that's a pretty inspiring reason to focus on any one thing in digital marketing or in your eCommerce experience. Again, especially sort of limited timeframes we have today and maybe smaller budgets.

Aaron Conant  10:20  

Wow. So they were right down the number. So we've got about 2%. So 20,000, out of a million prior exposure, right, probably somewhere around 26%. Getting them to make purchase, come back, you're in the mid 20s. And then you get someone back after a second purchase, you're saying over 50%. So you can start to just break down based on your average cart value, average order value, and just run through the numbers and get an actual A, this is the benefit if we pour into it.

Jordan Brannon  10:53  

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, definitely. And so again, that so those are the sort of the baselines and then you know, it with a brand that sort of is developing a more meaningful commitment and investment and strategy around post purchase, follow up communication, building that brand loyalty, we're seeing, you know, more significant increases there. So definitely, definitely a lot of value.

Aaron Conant  11:12  

So, I mean, that's, that's the first tip then, right? I mean, think about it, playing for it, budget or invest in it. No, because there's real dividends, and you can calculate them. Right? Yeah. Right. And if you're not hitting the averages, then hey, maybe it's, you know, onsite experience, I think what you were saying as well, is it as long as they don't have a bad site experience? Right?

Jordan Brannon  11:33  

Yep. I mean, it just gets harder, the numbers get harder, if you aren't providing that sort of upfront experience of strong or the product, the shipping, the order fulfillment, you know, you have other problems that sort of are creating those wrinkles, and those those can legitimately get in the way. But certainly, I think for, for sites where you have some level of maturity, and you're selling product, and it's not a headache, huge headache for your organization, but a huge headache for your customers, which is, means the product can be around very long. You know, generally in that situation, you know, there is going to be room to improve here. And so, but first tip would be call someone to take notes is to really be thinking about building that strategy of post purchase engagement. You know, a lot of us have not really thought that through, I inventory, sort of the different eCommerce brands I shopped with personally, I looked at some of our prospective engagements with customers who aren't hiring us for some of this type of work. And just did sort of a bit of an inventory. And most eCommerce brands are pretty simple in terms of strategy here. And I think, frankly, maybe underdeveloped, so they send out your order receipt rate, it's very basic, most often, even for some very large eCommerce brands. It's just very informational. Here's what you bought, here's where it's going, maybe a banner ad that's perhaps not even really relevant to what I just purchased. Some have shipping update and status communication, on average, just again, looking at sort of my shopping behavior. And a few of the engagements that we're talking with right now, potential engaged shoppers, right now, there's maybe two notifications, three that sent out three tends to be used for brands that have longer ship times or more complicated sort of shipping requirements to tends to be sort of the norm for brands that are shipping on a tighter timeline, you know, pay, it's been shipped pay, it's been delivered, you know, sort of what's there. And again, really little optimization to that at all. It's very just, here's information. And frankly, most of us dismiss that outright, you know, and then maybe the one that we seem to sort of see people put the most effort into is that ask for review. Hey, you've got it. Now come back and give us that valuable UGC. And that's been a big theme and eCommerce for such a long time. And so, you know, that, that is a piece of that sort of follow up, which is, is maybe invest a little bit more, but even then, a lot of us have been using that same communication for a long time. It's often frankly, kind of impersonal to what was purchased. And then after that, what happens? You drop them into a generic newsletter, right? You know, here's our answer. It's its prime selling season, or its prime shopping season, we're not doing Prime Day on Amazon. So we're going to use prime as some sort of substitute and our email header and hopefully your subject line, and you're gonna help me click through on it. So, you know, that seems to be pretty, pretty reliably what's happening for people in this sort of effort to get a lot of people are just not putting that effort into it.

Aaron Conant  14:26  

I mean, it seems really, I mean, common from my experience as a whole. Yeah,

Jordan Brannon  14:30  

I can't say I was too surprised, just sort of given my own shopping behavior and experience, you know, even some of the largest, you know, eCommerce brands on Earth aren't really doing much more than that, which I thought was surprising. You know, Amazon and Walmart are sort of, you know, constantly in the news for what they're trialing on the eCommerce front, but really haven't done much more than that either. And I think that's the, you know, sort of telling.

Aaron Conant  14:54  

I mean, do you think that they haven't figured it out, you know, or they're this missing out in the same opportunity? Yeah, interesting. Yeah,

Jordan Brannon  15:02  

I mean, Amazon, I think sort of thing about that, too, I think Amazon probably thinks about repeat purchasing a lot differently than a typical eCommerce brand, because of the success of prime, right, you can have your own eCommerce buying holiday to have them inside of a year, because of sort of the success of your membership group, you know, but again, that may also sort of speak to that post purchase, you know, loyalty building, you know, for them early. But they're, so they're really not sort of facing the same challenge of a brand and.com, or a retailer who's running their own dot coms. And a Walmart, probably, he's missing out on a bigger opportunity there. And, you know, again, sort of looking at some of the communication I'm getting, I think it maybe comes back to the effort to sort of hybridize retail and.com and try to sort of answer both buckets, in terms of what they're doing, from a marketing and communication standpoint, and maybe just again, sheer scale, you know, Walmart has a little bit of a different problem, given the size of audience and, you know, size of product catalog and things like that.

Aaron Conant  16:02  

Yeah, it's just interesting. I was just making a note here is you just, you know, you're talking here, because we have a lot of talk about path to purchase. And there's all this research on path to purchase and all these surveys on path to purchase. But, you know, as writing down, it's like, the path to post purchase loyalty. Yeah, there's never covered, yeah, ever covered. But the fact that Walmart isn't out there doing anything more, you know, Amazon's not out there doing anything more. It's like this forgotten side of things. And maybe that's because for two years, it's just been so much flowing into econ. But now, in digital, that, you know, you just dump money to Facebook, and you print down, it comes back out.

Jordan Brannon  16:42  

Yeah, I think give me I mean, just on that that note, like, I think sometimes it may be sort of that we think about our roles a bit in the wrong way from an eCommerce manager, agency marketer, we're focused on top of funnel, you know, that new customer acquisition is a big deal to all of us, get them to a conversion rate before they made that first purchase. And then we sort of think about the rest of it is customer service, and fulfillment. And the products need to do their work and the brand needs to do its work. And we've done our job, you know, and, you know, frankly, the metrics that we're beholden to our metrics that still show up for repeat purchases, and so we'd love them when they're really good. But perhaps we're not thinking enough about that.

Aaron Conant  17:20  

Yeah. And then we just end up blaming it on something. Oh, they didn't get out on time or being or logistics are we didn't put the fryer in? Yep, for sure. But there's a whole path to purchase Summit,

Jordan Brannon  17:29  

right? Just we're scheduling the first half of it. And then we're like, 23, figure this out?

Aaron Conant  17:34  

 Yeah. What's the what's the first step? For Brandon? Where would you recommend they begin, you know, kind of based on this their path to post-purchase loyalty,

Jordan Brannon  17:46  

that we'll work on the acronym. I know. Right. ppl. So I think, probably the first thing is really, again, just based on that sort of metric graduation I was talking through, really think about how you're going to get that customer who has made that first purchase back for that second order. And I think the timing, there's a really good time window that we're seeing. And because of technology improvements, and things like that, I would say aim to try and get that second order in before the first order has been shipped. And if that's not feasible, you know, have a strategy to get the second one order in before the First Orders delivered. So be thinking about sort of this really narrow time window of a week, week and a half as sort of a high pressure, opportunity, high pressure, you know, for you, but also big opportunity for you to sort of get get that sort of second order in because we know again, once you start to stack those orders, the likelihood of an additional order coming through organically starts to go up as well.

Aaron Conant  18:45  

Can you bring us down that as a strategy? You know, just so for my benefit? Maybe everybody got that? What have you? Yeah,

Jordan Brannon  18:54  

so again, kind of a recap. You got the first order, right? So, you know, again, normally the server's marketing, we sort of think about, Okay, I'm done. But again, if you go back through that data point I was citing earlier with with our clients, you really when you get that second order in the likelihood of that then creating a third order, and that third order, then creating a fourth order goes up. And so each time you sort of are able to get this sort of layered order in you're incrementally increasing that value of that customer by more than one order. And so there's sort of a upside there a few strategic you're thinking about my priority. Now post purchase is to get you back in for a second order as soon as possible. Because there is sort of a tight window, they've bought your brand messaging, they trusted you enough to sort of give you the credit card. They're engaged in certain sort of product cycle or product category. And you know, they're shopping for that their mind is there. You know, it struck him that they needed after their wardrobe, whatever that was. And so this is sort of your opportunity to sort of hit that window and so maybe kind of some practical things. We have we have a client that's you is an app that allows them to present a selection of related items after the purchase is complete. They're presenting these as sort of a popular with customers who also bought type options. And they're doing that on the order thank you page, they're showing some items that are solidly reviewed, again, relating to that initial purchase, and you can add them back to their order, without really needing to revisit your payment or shipping data. So it's really like, you know, there, it's usually sort of that moment of like, I just put my order in and behave like, hey, there's some things here that are pretty relevant to what you're purchasing. And, you know, part of what they're doing specifically to try to create an incentive there is they are sort of advertising, that there is no change in their shipping cost by adding these extra items in. And so they have a shipping fee. And they're sort of restating some of the obvious, like, Hey, you can go through and you can add these items back in, it's a five $5, flat shipping charge anyways. But they're sort of making that part of a promotion here, we have another client that's offering a discount on the original item, when you purchase one of a selection of items to go with it. So their fashion brand. And they're sort of primarily using it to upsell items that are shown in their their lifestyle and model photography. So if someone's buying, you know, a pair of bottoms or jeans, they're selling the top and saying like, Hey, here's sort of the matched item, buy this top that your jeans are shown with, you get 10% off. And so there's sort of this incentive, again, I'm creating much bigger ticket, but I'm layering in these discounts as a result, maybe a final example, I saw this on a b2b commerce eCommerce site, they're using a modal pop up. So when you're about to exit that order page, there's a quick and if some of us have seen these, you know, for email subscriptions, like hey, don't leave, we've got this 10% off coupon or whatever. And they're doing something like that, but on on their checkout Order Confirmation page, and saying like, hey, you know, here's sort of a specific accessory that goes with some of these items, they have smaller catalogs, I think the assessor is not an intelligent suggestion, I think it's just sort of a fixed suggestion. And they're using that to sort of encourage, you know, this, this sort of accessory purchase alongside of the original item. Now, a lot of these things are sort of technologically dependent. So if you know, depending on your shopping cart, this may be really easy, or maybe more complicated. You know, for a typical sort of SAS storefront, these things are maybe a little bit harder just natively, but with less extensibility. And with some of the plugins that are really available in this space, it's actually quite achievable. I mean, that's true for you know, big commerce, Adobe Magento, you know, you have some opportunities to do some more things like this. Where again, you can really create these sorts of great order constipate, confirmation page level, sort of upsell opportunities. And so those are kind of where I think you can begin is that order confirmation page, make it personal, make it pointed, make it advantageous. And you'll see that that begins to sort of get that second order effectively happening.

Aaron Conant  23:05  

Is there a way to tie back like data and analytics, like the increase in conversion, like uptick in order a Ovie whatever it might be just getting back to the data side, as well as if you were jotting down numbers, and you're gonna do multiplication tables afterwards?

Jordan Brannon  23:19  

Yeah. So we, I think, kind of looking at the reporting we had access to, it looks like about one and 12 customers are opting into an upsell. So I think part of that rate, it's a really, it was a better rate than I thought it would be. You know, I was thinking, you know, probably low single digits. But I think part of it was that the proportion of the cost of the upsell was generally going to be a fraction of what the initial purchase was, and so someone who's got $100 cart, presenting something, it's 25 bucks, as an upsell, you know, it's, it's probably a lot more approachable than sort of presenting another $100, I don't have a specific AV test to prove that one out. But just sort of looking at what was happening that seemed to be driving a pretty good rate of conversion. Now, ao V, the move on average order value across the whole store is a little bit smaller as a result, you know, so you're talking about one in 12 customers or buying a smaller item than the typical cart. But the net impact was I think about 3%. Uplift. And so you're looking at adding 3% across all orders. And then you're saying about maybe 25%, you know, 3% uplift in terms of the total impact across all orders that you have. And then 25% specifically for the ones where an add on was chosen. It's not an insignificant number, right, you know, so 3% right now is a difference maker in terms of a lot of our performance metrics. We're up against sort of, you know, pandemic benchmarks. And so that extra 3% is is pretty helpful. So, and again, I'd maybe the final data point, which I still don't have sort of like that conclusive analysis for but if this type of upsell sort of creates a similar repeat purchasing behavior, you know, we're Talking about really creating a greater likelihood that a third purchase is going to happen as well later on.

Aaron Conant  25:06  

I think it's super interesting because normally, just maybe it's just me, right? I think of the post purchase and loyalty piece going out. After you once the purchase has been made, or they're clicking on buy now, and then my all my interaction comes later, but you're actually saying there's a gap of time just as they're at checkout, or even post like checkout, before the items actually left the facility, which is then your targeting a I've got a box going out anyways. Yeah. Why don't I try to cram one more thing in, you know, saves everybody money? Yeah, the end of the day?

Jordan Brannon  25:47  

Yep. Exactly. I mean, it's the messaging, the messaging itself doesn't seem to matter as much. So I've seen some brands sort of use like a, you know, an efficiency of shipping, like, hey, it's, you know, and even Amazon sort of does a little bit of this with the, you know, bundle your items together, that sort of thing that they're doing it like from a, you know, saving that money on shipping costs, and, you know, maybe a little bit of a green pitch to it. You know, but certainly like, I think, again, customers are really open to sort of adding that extra item into an order, if you create some, some some interest and some reason to do it. And so, I mean, we've been doing remarketing ads and emails, where we have fairly high confidence in the items that were shopped alongside the initial purchase items. And when we can do that, we're getting conversion rates around 6%, which is pretty healthy. And so you sort of look at like, okay, like a good remarketing ad normally performs well. But 6% Well is is not necessarily common across a lot of industries. And so it's a good a good upsell, good add on.

Aaron Conant  26:46  

I love it, because it's these little things that make the difference. Right, especially right now is going and making sure you're capturing as much of that market basket as possible. Yeah, no, it's, it's awesome. I always thought about it, you know, after it's clicked, it's done. You can send them an email, you can give him a coupon to come back. I'm super just thinking, you know, a lot of people probably on the call today, a lot of people I talked to here, just on Shopify as a whole, just their ecosystem, a little kind of closed in a way I would say anything specifically for people that are on, you know, Shopify, Shopify Plus,

Jordan Brannon  27:26  

yeah, probably the best app in this space. That is you can move timely enough with, you know, given sort of, you know, again, we're, we're, we're on Prime Day, pumpkin spice prime. I'm trying to coin that. So I'll keep pushing it hashtags, all that. So. But we've, for Shopify merchants, specifically, we use an app. We're partnered with them company called Rebuy engine, all one word Rebuy engine. And they have sort of a range of functionality attached to their sweet personalization, post purchase offers some dynamic offers that are that are in this vein. And if anybody is interested in sort of a specific execution there, we do have some some discounts as a partner we can offer and so we can kind of make that happen post call to and maybe a little value here for that now works with both Shopify so you don't have to be Shopify Plus, although they have some additional enhancements to work with Shopify Plus scripting and some of those customizations that you can get through Shopify Plus and not through Shopify. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  28:29  

So say we get through the some of this setup. For these mediate post purchase upsell opportunities as a whole. We started to get a little bit of traction on them, if we think truly then post purchase, you know, what is? What do you see brands doing in that space? That's really, really working?

Jordan Brannon  28:49  

Yeah, I mean, probably the two biggest things I see that are really driving brand loyalty, from maybe from a marketing standpoint, or you know why, and I think a lot of brands are really trying to establish why their brand matters. And I think maybe Secondly, there's there's a big focus on expectation setting as part of what they're doing in that post purchase. Experience. Yeah.

Aaron Conant  29:14  

expectation setting, like, we'd love you, you know, just double click on that just a little bit true.

Jordan Brannon  29:20  

I think by expectation setting, I mean, sort of ensuring that the first purchase delivery and experience is perfect or as close to perfect as you can make it again, this is one of those areas where I think as marketers and EECOM managers, we really don't take responsibility enough and don't take advantage enough of what what we can do there. You know, there is a lot that can go sideways or seem to go sideways in the customer experience and that can have a negative impact on someone's sort of burgeoning loyalty for your brand, which in turn, influences your metrics you know, so you are not going to have that high LTV are not going to have that sort of easy conversion of that second purchase or the easier convert Are some of that third purchaser, you're not gonna have people who are helping to evangelize your products on social media, which again, starts to add back into the top of funnel for you. And you know, most of us have had experiences like that. We just anecdotally might not name names. But my wife and I were, we've moved to a more rural area outside of Seattle, like a lot of people in the pandemic, the first thing we did was ordered chickens online, which was, was fun, the chickens came fine. We, we had to buy netting that goes over their chicken yard area. We have like eagles and birds of prey, we have the fattest Falcon on Earth. And I swear, it's just probably feasted on pandemic chicken for forever. But, so we wanted to buy this big net, but we couldn't find it goes right size, we went to this retail website that was selling sports gear. And so it sold like nets for like, you know, indoor and outdoor tennis courts. And so the experience was really rough, they bought, or they communicated the wrong ship date initially. And as part of the on page experience, the initial email was wrong that said, send it we're going to ship it on this particular date, they've been sent us two follow up emails, which is nice, correcting the sort of delivery date. But again, neither one ended up being right, we finally got the net. And unpacking it was sort of a chore due to the size of it, it's not, you know, nets are just inherently designed to catch things. And so I'm trying to do this with, you know, my three year old and so we caught the three year old and it got tangled. And you know, that layout was just sort of, you know, frustrating and challenging. And all in just a few preemptive steps there to improve that experience, just simple digital communication stuff we do day in and day out as marketers would have gone a long ways. You know, a couple of things that we've seen just again, with our customer audience, a lot of customers aren't paying a lot of attention to the delivery date on your website, unless it's sort of a time sensitive deadline. So that's really the time that we found that most consumers care about what you're saying the ship date is on the pre purchase side is if they are really, you know, have some sort of somebody that's time sensitive. Now, the problem is, is that they pay a lot of attention post purchase. And so when you communicate, that you're going to ship on this date, and it's going to deliver by this date after the purchase, that's when you've really sort of set the expectation, and it's either going to disappoint or it's going to make them enthusiastic. And so, again, maybe keynote, if you're selling something that is date sensitive, time sensitive, make sure it's really clear up front, because that will help your conversion rate before purchase. But if your brand is not selling something that is really time sensitive, you know, avoid making sort of commitments in that sort of early communication that are going to be problematic for you a little bit later. And then also, you know, one of the things that I also sort of noted with our group of clients is that consumers really are opening that first shipping update, very frequently, it's a very high engagement form of communication. And so that's the one where you really want to be accurate, you have to be right. And again, you can be faster than what you're predicting, but be right in that sort of one. So if you're more conservative in your timeline, it's still a win. And it's one that people are going to check. And I would note here too, one thing that Amazon does really well that a lot of us can do, because of a technology stacks today is Amazon does that product specific delivery date and hits it really consistently. And so that's communicated really well to their customers. And so, you know, be thinking about that maybe as a part of how you can enhance your experience and your customer experience communication, post purchase, you know, what are the individual items? And what's the ship timelines and delivery dates and things that are available there.

Aaron Conant  33:44  

I think it's awesome. You know, so you're thinking about the post purchase loyalty behavior. And then we're talking expectations that then are actually built on what the pre purchase behavior in the message that you're sending, and how much it in fact, effects at the end, how people are going to interact, the timing things perfect. Other types of expectations, you see getting good engagement with brands that people should be thinking about

Jordan Brannon  34:12  

it, we do one with fashion brands a lot on care instructions and care instructions, you know, aren't just a fashion thing, most stuff that we buy, deserves to be cared for, at some level, right? I think most of us are trying to be a little more responsible consumers. And so we want longevity out of things. And frankly, even if we're not thinking about sort of sustainability of something, thinking about sort of, I don't want to buy it again, I don't feel like I wasted money if it breaks earlier. And so, you know, for fast fashion, which we do a lot of there's sort of this growing consideration and concern about the sort of environmental impact. And there's a an added scene where, you know, shows swimmers emerging from a pool of oil and it talks about how fashion is sort of generating this we're using this much petroleum as part of its production cycle every hour or something like that. And so there's a growing sort of narrative there. But offering care instructions for fast fashion garments is actually what we found is actually increasing, especially among female consumers, it's increasing sort of the belief that this is a product of higher quality than perhaps they had before. So simply saying, Here's how to take care of something, in some ways makes it more valuable to the person who's buying it. And so for any any product, really, frankly, like a care instruction is really a great way to sort of have that follow up communication with someone and again, increase the the sort of perceived value of what's being purchased. And you can tie that into other messages as a brand, durability, value, you know, an environmental impact that you are not trying to make those sorts of things really resonate well with consumers today and again, can help build that brand loyalty. Yeah,

Aaron Conant  35:54  

I mean, super interesting, just on that space, because we're all articles, right? Then, you know, how do you deliver those instructions? What's the right way to do it? Because it's a perfect opportunity for another engagement. Right, have another conversation with them? What's the best way you found to do that?

Jordan Brannon  36:11  

Yeah, I mean, it depends probably a little bit on your cart size, the number of items in your purchase, you know, what you're selling, you know, what sort of the diversity of items in a typical purchase looks like for you. And if someone's buying a pair of white jeans, you know, cashmere sweater, and some vintage sneakers all in one, purchase, each of those requires a different set of care instructions. And that can be, you know, challenging to sort of communicate really efficiently. In for clients, where we're doing email and SMS, that's especially effective in giving that information, you know, having a separate email specifically for care instruction, that tends to get a fairly high open rate. And again, you can incorporate upsell, cross sell stuff to drive that repeat purchase. You know, so if you don't have sort of super convoluted instruct, instructions, it's 15 pages long, and you're tending to sell sort of one of the same item, you know, actually sending an email that just includes the care instructions, where there's really handy, people don't have to Google it, they can go back to their inbox and say, oh, shoot, I spilled tomato sauce on this, or this happened, what do I do, if you tend to have more items, we have more of a complex selling situation, you know, consider linking directly to a page on your site that does contain that information. Those pages naturally, just again, going back to my SEO routes are really linked to a lot they tend to get shared in forum and social media is by by your consumers, as people as a resource for people who maybe are looking for that information. You know, for fashion clients, you know, incorporating care instructions into the product detail page is a great way to sort of build SEO content. It also preempts some concerns that customers will have, and it makes that page a great resource for future consumers. Now, if you're eliminating your product catalog very quickly of high churn, you have to think a little bit about a different strategy for how to handle those PDPs. But by nature, PDPs are shoppable. So there's a chance that you're getting that person back into that second purchase third purchase cycle just by them asking, How do I watch this and having that answer communicated to them in an email to them. And then again, if you're selling more technical products, that one many of us are familiar with, is that, that warranty registration page with with the manual, so having that warranty registration, that company, the manual, you're capturing information on that consumer that you can use for follow up marketing. And even for a lot of our clients where we're selling high value, you know, technical items, the upsell to a, a an extended warranty is actually really effective. And it's fairly easy add on and people are not all people will buy them, but a lot of people will. And it's there's partners out there who can also help with offering those extended warranties on your products, too.

Aaron Conant  38:54  

Yeah, I mean, that's awesome. I mean, on the extended warranty front, if you've got the right products, it's just extra cash. Yep. Right. Right. They the new players can handle it all on the back end is no additional lift easy plugins to Shopify, or big commerce or, but anything else on the expectation setting sign?

Jordan Brannon  39:14  

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, having specific call outs for what happens if things aren't perfect. Again, this is actually an increasingly common form of communication from from brands, but I think many are still missing this. You know, hey, if there is an issue, here's what to do. One of the big values we have with prime as a prime member is, most people know what happens if something isn't right. Right, you know, so it's, it's a pretty common assumption, because I am an Amazon Prime customer, I know what I can do if things don't go the right way. And for most of our brands, our customers don't know, you know, they don't know what happens if things don't go right. And so answering that question and pre empting that question, oh, here's how to get taken care of. Here's how you get a hold of us. Those things are really great to communicate when things go appraisals,

Aaron Conant  40:02  

if you like, pull out, like just pull some threads a little bit on that, you know, what are some of those ingredients to make that go successfully?

Jordan Brannon  40:09  

Yeah, I think, you know, probably top of list is, whenever possible, try to give them an opportunity and explain to them how to get in touch with the human being. Now, the challenge here is cost, right? You know, having a customer service team is an expensive investment. And so that may not always work for every brand. But one of the general truths is people really like interacting with people in a tough situation, especially when those people have the ability and authority to sort of diffuse those frustrations, you think about like a, a nine on one operator, they really aren't doing anything in terms of actually immediately addressing your needs, they're not there to put the fire out or to get the bad guys out of your house. But what they are trained to do really well is to sort of help address your situation, get the information that's necessary to address that and communicate it to someone who has sort of the authority to take care of it now. You know, our customer service teams, if you have one should be able to operate like that, they should be able to sort of help defuse make sure they're communicating like, Hey, we're getting this to someone of authority who can execute and solve if I can't do it. And so there's just a range of those that are available to us today. Chat, Email, you know, phone numbers, certainly support tickets, social media accounts, seeing more brands, setting up support type social media accounts, you know, to specifically sort of funnel some of that communication that happens around their social media platforms, into a sort of a good engagement. And, you know, it's not necessary that the marketing teams job to sort of solve these things, but putting the right communication out there in front of your customers is going to impact what we do have responsibility for. And so really making sure that you're paying attention to what's working for from a customer service standpoint, I would also call out just again, practical things short form video, small explainer videos, you know, have really high engagement in customer support and customer service pages or in communication. A lot of times we're thinking about those for tick tock standpoint, like, you know, that's what we're all thinking about us tick tock tick tock tick tock Instagram reels, etc. But, you know, using some of that same content, or creating some that same content from a customer service standpoint, it gets high engagement really reduces sort of the need for actual customer support, and can help solve for things like a high return rate pretty easily. And so and they also tend to get cited as a reason that people enjoy a brand. So they can actually help with that brand loyalty effort. And so, you know, one of our customers with a little smaller doesn't have the budget for a lot of this sort of stuff is incentivizing their customers to create some of this helpful video content for them, almost in the same way, they might pursue a micro influencer campaign. And it's actually been really helpful, a few layers there, they're finding about issues that they didn't know existed, that are pretty easily addressed. So they're finding like, Hey, this is a problem for people we didn't even know existed, but it's easy for us to fix. They're finding that customer tips tend to draw more attention than grand generated tips, people still trust customers of a brand more than they trust the brand themselves. They're finding that the content is valuable across several marketing platforms. So some of this content can actually be cross posted. And it makes a great top of funnel sale video. And sort of a funny benefit. Going back to the whole top of level point I made some of these customers we're creating this content, we're actually seeing an increased likelihood that they're going to make another purchase. And so getting them to engage in this sort of helping other customers actually makes them a better customer themselves. And so, you know, again, if you can't quite hit the video, this time of year short timeline, you know, building in some text content is pretty easy, pretty low level of effort. You know, you can do FAQs, Question and Answer Type pages, tips and tricks, can all go a long ways towards helping build better expectation setting experiences?

Aaron Conant  44:06  

Yeah, love it. Love it. You know, we're getting kind of later in the call here. You know, if we jump back to the other part of your answer, you know, one was around expectation. The other one is establishing why your brand matters. And so it's, if you just want to walk through like why you see that's important, and how you do it from a digital marketing and eCommerce standpoint. That'd be awesome.

Jordan Brannon  44:28  

Yeah, so maybe because I have a little bit of a soapbox here. I will start by saying that I really hate as an agency, when someone tells us something is off brand, but can't articulate what brand is what their brand is. It really is probably one of the greatest irritants and any of you who've ever worked in sort of an agency standpoint or even just on a team under a brand manager. And you've heard that after you've really put heart and soul into a deliverable or you just know that the deliver Rule is good, and it's gonna be well received. But then you hear it's not on brand, it's not, you know, aligned with our brand. It can't be clearly articulated Why or why not or what the brand is, it really tells me that the brand is driven by internal personalities. And it's arbitrary. You know, a marketing director, who happens to work here for the next two years, is the one who is deciding what brand is, and the next marketing director is going to decide something different. Maybe it's the owner, the owner had a big stamp on on sort of the brand early and was successful with it, what they envisioned the brand to be. And now they're sort of hanging on that you've sort of outgrown that definition. And so that, to me, is sort of really problematic, I think the best definition of brand that I've seen, and I like is is your brand is what matters to your customers about your business. If something doesn't matter to your customers, it's not your brand, if it's not specific to you, it's not your brand. And when companies really do a good job of building around what matters to their customers with their target customers, and sort of identifying how they fit sort of a unique value, their branding really does contribute it to bottom line dollars and cents. Otherwise, again, it's just sort of its aesthetics. And there's the old saying, you can put lipstick on a pig. And a lot of times branding is that, you know, it's we're sort of trying to make something look prettier, that it really isn't there and your customers aren't engaging with. And so, you know, I think if if your branding is just a reflection of your internal team, makeup, employees, stakeholders, its novelty, it's not really anything of substance. You know, inherently, that definition, though, it really creates a lot of flexibility, because you can be as flexible as your customers are. And it creates a lot more space for marketing teams, and for product teams to sort of, you know, reflect the actual branding that, again, customers are going to find as a reason to sort of purchase from you specifically in your market.

Aaron Conant  47:05  

Yeah, I think it's a great starting point, what do you what do you see are some of the ways your clients are answering that why it matters questions. And I think of it from both a technical standpoint, as well, as a communication standpoint, post purchase, I think this kind of goes hand in hand.

Jordan Brannon  47:21  

Yeah. You know, if you know why you matter to your customers, make sure you repeat that message throughout the post purchase journey. And so one, there has to be some discovery, especially when you start to reach a level of maturity and scale, where you're investing and finding out why you actually were purchased by your customer. So some audience follow up is really important. What was it about us that made us sticky to you enough to trust us with your credit card details? Was it you know, the value of the price point? Was it sort of our positioning in the market? So again, the fact that you are, you know, at the top of funnel is a big part of your brand, you have sort of that footprint? You know, is it the durability of something, the style of something, the product selection, perception around fit, you know, perception around your brand values, again, again, environmental, human rights, you know, the political, whatever those things are, was that influential. Some of us assume that those things are but really, maybe our customers are putting 90% of the brand value into one thing. And the rest of those are just sort of, you know, whipped cream on top. They're, they're great to have, but not necessarily necessary at all. And so I think, you know, again, so identify some of what, what's there. And I will point back to my early thing, if you can get that engagement, it really does create an increased likelihood of purchase. And so this can be the the form of engagement that helps to sort of cultivate, you know, tell somebody like, Hey, you're part of a special customer research group. You know, here's a small incentive that we're offering. You know, for repeat purchases, we wanted to know a little bit more about what you like about us. And that actually is a really good sales tactic on top of, again, great data to be able to pull in. And then again, once you sort of begin to have some sense of what's working, test these things post purchase, so take some of those things. And even if you don't have great customer data, start to test on them. We think it's about pricing, we think we have a great price, tell that price story as part of your post purchase engagements specifically, and sort of build on them. You know, talk about sales and discounts. Don't just talk about sales and discounts talk about why you can have a better price than anybody else in the market. You know, tell them you know, how your sourcing plays into that how, you know, you being a lean team plays into that, you know, how you're reducing overhead. Those things can help to sort of, again, build on that price story. You see customers engage with that content. It can be a cue that hey, this is where branding really is lying for us. Same thing for durability and style and whatever else do you kind of have is what you sort of view as being important to them. You're brand identity. And then again, just thinking about this from a practical way, like you mentioned, sort of the tech standpoint, communication standpoint, building these things into sort of that post purchase, follow up sequence, you know, what shows up on your order receipt? What about that first shipment notification? What about that? Hey, your orders arrived notification? What about that ask for review? What are sort of the things what is the marketing segment that you're putting them into? Can we use that marketing segment as an AV test to sort of help establish what matters more, so I can do one client on the valued customer on the value side, one customer on the style side, one customer on the durability side, maybe there's specific drips that we can use to really decipher, hey, which of these is most effective in terms that follow up? And so, you know, I would also sort of maybe say here, don't just copy and paste the same sort of banner or message over and over over again, you know, usually, each one of these sort of brand nuggets can be looked at from a lot of different ways. And so, you know, find some different ways to sort of present the same thing, again, you want to about price is a great example, a lot of brands that think their price oriented hammer on sales. But you know, answering the question of why can you be cheaper or less expensive than others, is an equally strong way to sort of address that pricing consideration for your customers. But in a way, that's sort of different than like, hey, get another sale from us this week, another 25% off, and you get another 15% off this coupon code that sort of diminishes and gets washed out over time. But talking about why you have sort of the pricing advantage is really, really good there. So and maybe the last kind of thing on this, since we're getting on that time, is that a lot of this communication, when you sort of start to get a really good story, and you create a good mix of it, it can go everywhere, and it can last a lot longer than your typical seasonal marketing communication can. A lot of it's sticky for two to three years. And it doesn't require big reworking if we really successful campaigns that you can lean on for some time. So that was that was an awesome,

Aaron Conant  52:05  

awesome. Well, thanks again, Jordan. Again, anybody if you're looking for any kind of strategy, advice, anything any help in the digital space whatsoever? Jordan, the team at Coalition have been great friends, partners, supporters of the network come highly recommended. We have tons of brands in the network using them today. You know, encourage you to reach out everything from site evaluations to site bills to paid search or social whatever it might be. If you need connections to anybody that was mentioned on the call today. Jordan, what was the was the one Shopify app

Jordan Brannon  52:39  

Rebuy engine. We got a partner. I think they're only Shopify right now. I have a couple of the recommendations we can make elsewhere. But we have some discounts and things that they've we as partners, we can pass along. So can make that happen if you guys are interested in that specifically.

Aaron Conant  52:56  

Yeah, for sure. QR code talk at the beginning of unique connections there. You know warranties, any of that stuff. Extended warranties, don't hesitate to reach out. With that. We're going to wrap up, encourage anybody have a follow up conversation with Jordan, the team over there. Look for a follow up email from us. I'd love to have a conversation with you as well. I love to hear Hey, what are your biggest pain points? What are you solving for and who's helping you out in this space? And that's how we stay relevant. So with that, I think we're gonna wrap this one up right on time. Thanks again, Jordan for your time today. Thanks, everybody who dialed in. Hope everybody has a fantastic Tuesday and a great rest of your week. Everybody take care now. All right. Thank you.

Jordan Brannon  53:32  

Thank you.