The Road to Omnichannel Success: Avoiding 3 Common Traps & Pitfalls

Nov 2, 2023 3:00 PM3:30 PM EST

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Key Discussion Takeaways

Omnichannel marketing can seem complex and challenging to navigate, especially when the goal is to satisfy customers while, at the same time, generating revenue. How can your business dodge common pitfalls and have a smoother, more productive omnichannel marketing experience?

Seasoned eCommerce leaders Pete Olanday, Eric Yonge, and Matt Dornfeld highlight that avoiding common pitfalls in omnichannel marketing entails creating a consistent customer experience across all platforms. It involves ensuring that channels work together seamlessly rather than function in isolation. Businesses need to integrate their data effectively to avoid disjointed promotions and customer service gaps that can result from a siloed approach. Furthermore, it is crucial to select the right technology tools for unifying data to maintain the integrity of the brand experience.

In this virtual event, host Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson sits down with industry experts Pete Olanday of Vertex Inc., Eric Yonge of EYStudios, and Matt Dornfeld of Feedonomics to dissect the essentials of omnichannel marketing. Together, they explore practical tactics for personalizing customer interactions, the significance of data synergy for a cohesive brand presence, and the importance of aligning operations — including tax considerations — across diverse marketplaces.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

 

  • Personalization strategies for omnichannel eCommerce
  • Differences between Google and Facebook's product taxonomies
  • Why is measuring return on ad spend (ROAS) significant in eCommerce?
  • What are the challenges of coordinating data across different departments and systems?
  • Marketing strategies and pitfalls to avoid for eCommerce businesses
  • Why should you optimize your website and maintain brand continuity across channels?
  • The significance of having a well-structured product feed for search and merchandising platforms
  • Omnichannel retailing challenges and solutions
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Event Partners

Vertex

Vertex Inc., is a leading global provider of indirect (sales, use & value-added) tax software and solutions. Our tax technology helps retailers worldwide transact, comply and grow with confidence. Vertex combines innovative technology, deep experience, ecosystem partnerships, and award-winning support to enable omnichannel sales, support supply chain resilience, and help future-proof tax management as your business grows.

Connect with Vertex

EYstudios

EYStudios specializes in digital marketing and web development specifically focused on increasing conversions through the entire customer journey.

Connect with EYstudios

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a leading Open SaaS ecommerce platform that empowers merchants of all sizes to build, innovate and grow their businesses online. BigCommerce provides merchants sophisticated enterprise-grade functionality, customization and performance with simplicity and ease-of-use. Tens of thousands of B2C and B2B companies across 150 countries and numerous industries use BigCommerce to create beautiful, engaging online stores, including Ben & Jerry’s, Molton Brown, S.C. Johnson, Skullcandy, SoloStove and Vodafone.

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Guest Speakers

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson LinkedIn

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect

BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

Pete Olanday

Pete Olanday

Director of Consulting, Vertical Solutions at Vertex

Pete Olanday is the Director of Consulting at Vertex Inc., a leading provider of automated tax solutions enabling global businesses to transact, comply, and grow revenue confidently. Pete works within the company's professional services arm — Vertex Consulting — where he helps customers integrate and implement Vertex's tax solutions in their processes, making tax management more accessible and efficient.

Eric Yonge

Eric Yonge

CEO at EYStudios Inc.

Eric Yonge is the CEO and Creative Director of EYStudios Inc., a brand development firm providing cutting-edge strategic and creative solutions for eCommerce businesses. EYStudios is an omnichannel-certified agency partnered with market leaders such as BigCommerce and Feedonomics. Eric's strategic leadership has seen EYStudios grow from an online illustration agency run from the back of a small rental house to a thriving business with an expanded team and diverse brand partners.

Matt Dornfeld

Head of Global Partnerships at Feedonomics

Matt Dornfeld is the Head of Global Partnerships at Feedonomics, a subsidiary of BigCommerce and an enterprise that provides leading product feed management solutions for brands, retailers, and agencies. Feedonomics offers brands a robust platform to aggregate their product data and syndicate it to marketplaces, ads, and affiliate channels worldwide. Matt's role is pivotal in facilitating global business partnerships and helping brands scale their operations, resulting in win-win-win outcomes for clients, partners, and Feedonomics.

Event Moderator

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson LinkedIn

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect

BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

Pete Olanday

Pete Olanday

Director of Consulting, Vertical Solutions at Vertex

Pete Olanday is the Director of Consulting at Vertex Inc., a leading provider of automated tax solutions enabling global businesses to transact, comply, and grow revenue confidently. Pete works within the company's professional services arm — Vertex Consulting — where he helps customers integrate and implement Vertex's tax solutions in their processes, making tax management more accessible and efficient.

Eric Yonge

Eric Yonge

CEO at EYStudios Inc.

Eric Yonge is the CEO and Creative Director of EYStudios Inc., a brand development firm providing cutting-edge strategic and creative solutions for eCommerce businesses. EYStudios is an omnichannel-certified agency partnered with market leaders such as BigCommerce and Feedonomics. Eric's strategic leadership has seen EYStudios grow from an online illustration agency run from the back of a small rental house to a thriving business with an expanded team and diverse brand partners.

Matt Dornfeld

Head of Global Partnerships at Feedonomics

Matt Dornfeld is the Head of Global Partnerships at Feedonomics, a subsidiary of BigCommerce and an enterprise that provides leading product feed management solutions for brands, retailers, and agencies. Feedonomics offers brands a robust platform to aggregate their product data and syndicate it to marketplaces, ads, and affiliate channels worldwide. Matt's role is pivotal in facilitating global business partnerships and helping brands scale their operations, resulting in win-win-win outcomes for clients, partners, and Feedonomics.

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Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson

Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect


BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution.

Senior Digital Strategist Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson runs the group & connects with dozens of brand executives every week, always for free.


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Discussion Transcription

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 0:18

Happy Thursday everyone, I am Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson, digital strategist with BWG Connect and we are a network and knowledge sharing group, we stay on top of the latest trends, challenges, whatever shaping the digital landscape we want to know and talk about it. We're on track to do at least 500 of these virtual events this year due to the increase in demand to better understand the digital space. And we'll be doing at least 100 in person small format dinners. So if you happen to live in a tier one city in the US, feel free to visit our website or send us an email, we'd love to send you an invite, these dinners are typically 15 to 20 people having a discussion around a certain digital topic, and it's always a fantastic time, we spend the majority of our time talking to brands, that's how we stay on top of latest trends would love to have a conversation with us, you can feel free to send me an email at tiffany@bwgconnect.com And we can get some time on the calendar. It's from these conversations we generate the topic ideas we know people want to learn about. And it's also where we gain our resident experts, such as BigCommerce EYStudios Vertex and Feedonomics, who's with us today. So anyway, what we asked to teach the collective community has come highly recommended from multiple brands within the network. So if you're ever in need of any recommendations within the digital space, please don't hesitate to reach out. We have a shortlist of the best of the best. And we'd love to provide that information to you. Also note if you have any hiring needs, we do partner with a talent agency, Hawkeye Search formerly BWG Talent that we can put you in contact with as well. A few housekeeping items. We want this to be fun, educational, and conversational. Jeff has many questions, comments you have in the chat q&a, and we will get to them, we're going to be moving pretty fast. This is a 30 minute segment. So we will wrap up at that 30 minute mark. So with that, let's rock and roll and start to talk about omni channel success and avoiding the three common traps and pitfalls. We have an awesome panel lined up today. So I'm just gonna go around the room here and start with Matt, if you could introduce yourself, and then we'll do Eric and Pete, that would be lovely. And we can dive into the conversation. Thank you.

Matt Dornfeld 2:11

Thanks, Stephanie. Sure. So my name is Matt Dornfeld, lead global partnerships at Feedonomics, which is owned by BigCommerce. And so Feedonomics is an enterprise data feed platform. So we help brands aggregate their product data into a central place, and then syndicate it to marketplaces and ads and affiliate channels all over the world to help those brands scale.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 2:33

Awesome. Thank you.

Eric Yonge 2:36

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Eric Yonge. I'm the CEO and Creative Director of EYStudios. We're an omni channel certified agency with big commerce, as well as Feedonomics. We work a lot with Matt and his team there, but we're really excited to be here and talk omni channel.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 2:52

Beautiful. Thank you.

Pete Olanday 2:54

And I'm Pete Olanday, I'm with Vertex Inc. We are sales tax and indirect tax solution provider, it serves as the corporate enterprise market. I work within vertex consulting, which is the professional services arm of the organization, helping our customers implement and integrate our solutions in their environments.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 3:16

Awesome. Thanks, Pete. So reminder, questions, comments, put into the chat the q&a, we will get to them as we move along. So we're gonna start with those pitfalls. We get to pitfall number one, which I thought was so interesting when you guys sent over these, to see that they also align with what we hear when we have our dinners, and do the webinars that we do is personalizing. Personalization is Top of Mind everywhere you go. When we do our dinners, we are on the table, you know, what's top of mind for you? What What's your challenge? What do you need to focus on and people say, I need a personalization strategy. And not only that, but then by channel so I'm gonna kick it over to you, Matt. Pitfall number one not personalizing your strategy for each channel that you are selling on. Take it away.

Matt Dornfeld 4:02

Oh, yeah. Hot Topic. And so I think, well, this topic has actually come up quite a bit and in my world, and I usually like to ground that conversation in a topic around like, how do you define omni channel and the difference between omni channel versus multi channel. And oftentimes, those two words get used interchangeably. But if you're a nerd like me, you know that there are actually very different definitions and outputs that come from leveraging one strategy versus the other. So multi channel strategy is where the brand sends its products to individual channels, but lacks the connective tissue between those different channels to deliver an experience that's truly unified and saying that another way, it's putting the product at the center of the brand story. And so there are channels that connect to the product, but nothing is really connecting to the customer who's going to repeat and come back in the future. an omni channel strategy is the connected version of that, where if I buy from Tiffany's website, that experience will be remembered and rewarded and acknowledged on another channel in the future, whether that's in person at a brick and mortar or maybe another own surface. But the point is to put the customer at the center of the story, and the product will be dropped in along that story. But the reality is yet you have to build that relationship with the customer wherever they're existing. So with that grounded, how you show up on different channels is super critical. So different channels. And I'm sure Pete and Eric, you both have seen this in your own areas of expertise. But different channels are snowflakes, they each have their own set of requirements, the way they like to do business, the way they do tax, the way they operate with partners. It is a wide spectrum. And they're never like never before, there are more channels to send your data to right now. And so when I think about a brand who's trying to scale and get into that next stage of growth, they need to think, Where is my shopper? Where's the next shopper? And how am I going to show up there in the best possible way to both meet the expectations, but also, let's be real, drive profitability. And when you do that, when you think about that, if you're not already on Google, and Facebook, and from an ad perspective, it's kind of a no brainer, right? That those are mega channels, you kind of have to exist there, at least in many cases you do. But even just focusing on just those channels. Google has the Google product taxonomy, which is basically the way Google likes to receive data from brands. And it rewards brands based on the quality of the data they send to Google. So if I send a highly descriptive, fully, you know, attributed retuned keyword, product description and product to Google, it's going to perform really well, it's not going to cost me a lot to advertise on it. But if I send a really bland or lacking of information kind of product to Google, I'm gonna be taxed for that I'm going to be charged more and my performance won't be recognized. So Google's product taxonomy is actually so good that even Facebook uses it. And other ads platforms similarly, also use it. But they all they all put their own spin on it, right. So the way Facebook likes to use, it is different. So name and Google might be title and Facebook, let's say. And so mapping that correctly, understanding the differences between Google and Facebook, even though they're really similar, will directly and materially impact your bottom line, both for how you apply your ads and how efficient they are. But also the conversion, just in general, is the thing that a shopper is looking for the thing they're actually going to see, based on the data you provide to that challenge doing that right, is going to have downstream impacts that actually impact both of the other guys in the phone here. And so, you know, I'm sure, Pete, Eric, you both have perspectives on this, Eric, probably more from how you advise clients on this front. But PETA is, you know, like working with different marketplaces as an example. I mean, with Nexus and other things you have to keep in mind, you can't just show up into a new place, you have to show up correctly. And I'm sure both of you can weigh in on that. But I don't know if you've you to have thoughts on that perspective as well.

Pete Olanday 8:12

Yeah, I mean, we're from it from a sales tax perspective, what we've seen from from our omni channel customers is that they, their organizations are very siloed internally, too. So it shows that when when it's customized to the customer, right? My brick and mortar store locations operate in a certain way. And then my online channel operates in a different way. And you don't get that, as you call it connective tissue where it's a consistent customer experience, not only from a branding and, you know, purchasing standpoint, but from a sales tax perspective, the sales tax might be inconsistent, which which not only is a is a sort of a public relations, customer experience issue, but it's also a compliance and legislation issue and could lead to penalties and, and, you know, more stringent audits in the future.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 9:04

Eric, do you want to weigh in from your lens?

Eric Yonge 9:06

Yeah, you know, I like how about you called yourself a nerd. If I call you a nerd, it's nothing personal. Okay. But nerves like, man, we get, we get stoked talking about omni channel strategy. But the thing is customers, they're not impressed by our strategy. Would you agree, Matt, you know, they're impressed by seamless experiences. And it's like you said, they have to be at the center of it. And you and I talk a lot about how the, the spray and pray methodology is dead. You know, it has to be because it's relevant at this point. And so we all know that customers have to they demand a very personalized approach. And we, you know, in my circles in the marketing circle, we talk a lot about the customer journey. But what we don't talk about well, we don't really spend a lot of time on are the individual stops along that journey, right. And so, we know that the cost swimmers have to be aware of the brand, we want them to engage with it. But what we don't talk a lot about is how they're converting. Right. And so we spent so much energy, so much money, driving this traffic through the various channels. But often it just stopped short at the last line of defense, which is your website. And that's what we focus a lot on. You know, this in, we really zero on in a lot of the branded landing pages in the PDP pages, the product pages, because if those fail, it's the end of the story. I mean, Matt, would you agree with that? What are your thoughts?

Matt Dornfeld 9:29

Absolutely. And you know, I think to piggyback on that, too, I've heard quite a lot of conversations lately about ro s, so return on adspend. And my background prior to eCommerce was in public relations. And we used to talk about impressions a lot. And the thing with impressions is that they're non unique, and they can happen in the billions. But driving that to a bottom line converted dollar figure, you've actually recognized way harder for a media company to prove, and I think row as while supercritical, and obviously a key metric for a lot of us to demonstrate performance. If you're getting 10x row as on a product that you're not profitable on. It doesn't matter what right what the return is. And I think that's to your point, if those pages aren't converting, but also aren't converting on the right products, you've got a problem, right, like that's, that's something to really keep in mind. And one other strategy we're also seeing is brands that are using digital channels to promote traffic, foot traffic to retail locations. So you know, as an example, if I'm going to spin up a pop up ad, let's say the pop up is inside a Target store, in the mall, I may want to run a tic tock ad to that person, to get them to go check out this thing inside target at my booth. And to your point, if you're not having the flow setup correctly, or the pages that are ready to convert those, those ads aren't going to land. And I find it's a algo goes back to that product strategy to have like that, you have to put the right products in the place to win. And those products house have to be structured in a way that you're going to recognize benefit from when you go put them out into the world. And so all these things kind of get tied together, like you've got how their products appear, and how they're sent to certain channels. And then there's the experience side, which I'm sure Eric, you've got a lot of experience in too. But fulfillment, that's part of the experience, how am I returning this thing, part of the experience, and I find that a lot of that one of the pitfalls in that area too, is people aren't even necessarily thinking about that. Which is maybe they bought something at Black Friday, and they're like damn wrong size, and they gotta send it back. And they don't have to stress through that process of going all the way back through like, Okay, do I gotta take take it to the store? Do I put it back in the same box. In some mastering that experience, I think can be really critical delivering a full customer experience, because even if they don't buy the keep the thing they bought the first time they might buy something else in the future. Do you see that? I think you know, Tiffany, you came to the brand side, right? So yeah, what did you think about it?

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 13:09

Well, the the return process is always the ugly topic. And we're all excited about the sales and the product developments. And you know, the execution of you know, getting the order out is and then it's like oh, and then we have returns. And when we have that customer which you can take that negative experience and turn it like you're saying into a positive if you map it out and have a strategy behind it, and you're thinking about it. But to be honest, a lot of times that was the last thing on the table to discuss because it wasn't the fun part of the business, right? If that's the stuff you put underneath the rug, like oh, we'll worry about that later. But as you do optimize per channel, and you get to see from a p&l level as well, once we're able to get to that and actually optimize an omni channel and look at like, oh, this, like you're saying you can sell a lot of something. But if you're not making money off of it, well, that was fun. You know, as we got to that level, where we could see from not only a channel perspective, but a SKU by channel perspective of where we were performing and where we were underperforming. So definitely, I wanted to get to a question comment here that came from the audience. So totally on point, it sounds like the omni channel strategy requires collecting and syndicating a lot of data. So if you look at a product online, like a Facebook ad, theoretically, it should offer me a discount on a product A couple days later. How would you implement that data collection and operationalizing it? How could those things be connected? The big one.

Eric Yonge 14:44

All right. That's a great question. Thank you for put that you know, I think Tiffany you gotta use those insights, to develop the brand and message to your customers to make them personal. Like we talked about. Here's the thing. Most marketers don't know how to do that. Because they're thinking like data analysts. You know, you mentioned and data in the in the question and of course, we have to think about data and nobody is, is saying otherwise. But we have to think about the customer first. Like we've been saying all the webinar here. And so what a lot of is here with omni channel is that you have to be consistent, right? I mean, that's the common refrain be consistent, be consistent. And I want to go back to what Pete said earlier about the silos, I think that was a really good point you made Pete about the silos because when you have an organization that's responsible for developing an omni channel strategy, and they are siloed, then what that's going to produce is a berry just disjointed half baked experience for the customer just gonna roll out from that m&a From what the organization is, is struggling with. So I think the key is to not just think about channels is to think, like we've been saying, think about it from a customer perspective and coordinate that data. Accordingly, I mean, that's, that's my thought on it.

Pete Olanday 15:57

Yeah Because traditionally, that data because of those silos, that data is also siloed. So for example, retail store locations have data to support their point of sale systems in the store and, you know, inventory systems within the stores. And then ecom has, you know, the website and order management and all of the data and then post transaction, all that transaction data afterwards, is also siloed. And you cannot support true omni channel processes like buying online returning store, buy online, pick up in store, and on all these sort of cross functional and less, I'll type things. Without that data being consistent, you know, all of the all the parts of that organization sharing and looking at the same data, you just, you just won't be able to support things like discounts and promotions, and with cross channel returns and those types of things.

Matt Dornfeld 16:49

My two cents on it would be to consider your stack. So like, tools make a big difference here. And so everything that these guys have said is absolutely true. I think tactically, depending on the stage of growth, you're in a CDP might be relevant, where you're helping to collect and aggregate that data and make something of it. Beyond that, you could take a number of strategies, like you could use a clay VO, right, maybe you want to connect data you've collected in one place and push it through your email campaigns or your texts, campaigns or whatever it may be in the future. And that's a good way to say, you know, I've received data from one place, and then I'm going to target you with a message in another place based on something I learned over there. And that's where that that omni channel threading starts to come in. Now, that's not as easy with marketplaces marketplaces, are a walled garden, they're gonna say, not just my data, now your data. And they're your there's a line as to how far you can take it. And even with Amazon, there are rules right around what you can actually do with even the data you can see. And so you got to be mindful of that. But I think for advertising channels, as well was called out here, much more open, right? Facebook's massive ads channel, you're going to have a lot of that data. And so I think that's a good opportunity to consult with your services teams. So the case of Eric here, right runs an agency. So Eric's team would be in a great position, as we find on the integration side to say, hey, we're seeing that you're existing on these kinds of channels. And understand you want to thread those experiences together, here are the solutions based on your stage of growth that you should be considering to implement to actually bring these strategies to life. And that's the role that your partner should be playing for you. That's why you invest in certain solutions. And, you know, costs aside, I think that's where you start to realize, okay, maybe these investments we're making are actually worth it. Right, because I'm starting to be able to deliver these things and drive better conversion. Once I've done so.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 18:52

Awesome. We're gonna move on to pitfall number two. And I'm gonna go back to Eric, because you brought it up a moment ago, is the failure to optimize your websites, or the lack of brand continuity is a pitfall. Do you want to elaborate on that?

Eric Yonge 19:09

Well, I want to underscore something that I mentioned earlier, he said that the Each channel has a different requirement. And I couldn't agree more. And I think that from our perspective, Tiffany, you design accordingly. Right? I think the problem is, when you look at it is this, it does have to have a homogenous approach. But you have to break it down objectively. And look at the KPIs across the entire campaign. And not just just some of it, right. And so you have to you have to look at it that way. And so what, what happens a lot is what we see is merchants have worked on my day to earlier is they've got obsolete data they've got It's incomplete. And so they're working in trying to create this experience that's, that is half baked by default. Right? And so you have to create objectivity around each one and make sure that the data A is supplied accordingly. But typically going back to your original question, it's what we see so often is they put, like I was saying earlier, they put so much focus on the channels, but once they hit the site, you got all kind of UX error, or some of the messaging is very inconsistent. And so the customer is left going to make the right plays, you know, is this is this exactly where I need to be. And so as a result, it just ate lands flat. And so you know, we encourage our clients to have, you know, a 360 view of it so that you're you have the creative standards in place to make sure of that consistency, like we were talking about earlier. Because otherwise, it just becomes a very hollow channel strategy without something that feels fulfilling to the end users. That makes sense different.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 20:48

Yeah. And if you think about this, that a lot of tolerance there with a consumer at this point that just be a frictionless, beautiful, seamless experience, like, forget about it, I'm on to the next. So yeah, one shots and a few seconds, essentially, to really capture them and convert them. Pete do you have anything to add.

Pete Olanday 21:07

Yeah, I mean, I, when we work with customers, we really, we recommend that if you cannot have that frictionless, seamless experience, if you can't do a channel, right, and have it consistent with the other channels, then just don't do it. Right. Because the the impact of like, what what Eric mentioned is, you know, the site doesn't, doesn't look right, or it seems disjointed. I think, you know, going online, or now on social or whatever channel we were talking about selling on, has been somewhat of a knee jerk reactionary thing, right, where we just gotta throw up a website, or we got to sell on Amazon or Etsy or wherever. And, you know, it's all the back office stuff, and all of the work and a holistic view of your brand. Just hasn't been done yet. Right? It just, let's just let's just get on the channel. And we've seen that time and time again, from some of our customers. That just it, it leads to challenges downstream.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 22:08

Because that maybe was the business strategy. It's in like the sales forecast for the year, we want to be in XYZ channels by the end of the quarter. And I have also been in those meetings where you're pressured to then get on those channels, because they're the they're the new flavor of the month.

Pete Olanday 22:26

Sometimes it's a necessity, it's absolutely required. So as we saw during COVID, buy online pick up in store the whole curbside pickup, those were must haves, and I get it retailers are scrambling to get that to work. And if you weren't ready to kind of showed, right.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 22:44

Yeah, absolutely.

Matt Dornfeld 22:48

So staying on theme with nerding out. So right, so the DTC experience, oftentimes, as you grow requires, or oftentimes includes a search and merch platform Klevu Searchspring Bloomreach, I'll go Yeah, like the list is long. Those platforms do what they do really well, when they have a product feed going into them in a really clean, good one. And what that means is when you feed it in with really great data, and the platform starts to embrace the catalog and start to provide recommendations, or enhance the search on the website, etc. Based on the catalog, it's digested, you can actually drive better conversion experiences throughout your website. And so it's kind of like you building additions or enhancements onto a house that you own. And you might start that house really small and compact, because it's your starter home and you're you're making it yours. But over time, maybe you get a kid or a dog and you just need more space, and it needs to flow better, because oops, you stepped in the dog bowl again, like you need a new spot for that. And that's where you start to enhance and build. And I think those where you start to build, that's where obviously complexity is born, but also outsized opportunities for for growth. And you know, Eric, in your experience, I'm sure your team's been around implementations of these platforms, these solutions. And so in some of the folks on the Femi of replatform themself in the past, and so how have you found that process to go like when you're sitting? How do I deliver this really great experience? And then how do I make that thing happen more quickly, or simply?

Eric Yonge 24:24

Yeah, that's a good question. I think that, you know, I obviously, look at your website is the central nervous system of your Omni channel? Strategy? You know, I think you have to I compare it a lot to the catcher's mitt, you know, you're throwing baseballs, but you have to catch it. Right? You have to convert it in and it has to work. And sometimes, Matt, you know what I've seen to answer your questions. I think that you have to sometimes have multiple minutes. With that, you know, it's like the same net met that is catching your social baseballs is not necessarily the one that you You won't catch an email and invaded. I mean, would you agree with that? It's not necessarily one size fits all with some of those minutes. What do you think?

Matt Dornfeld 25:07

Absolutely. All right. I think, yeah, you're kind of like placing these little traps all over the place. Right. Right. I think so. Yeah, completely aligned to that. And I think the most mature brands can do that. But I also stress like, there's a journey to this, right. And I, we're talking about a lot of different concepts today, obviously. But, you know, for the, for the folks on the phone that some of this might seem new. Like there's a there's a narrative here, right, there's a story. And I think there are small wins and medium wins and big wins. And mapping those out together is stuff that we just like to do. And it's inherent to the way we work if you're not because I'm sure if these guys very similarly. But I'd also stress that it's important not to rush and just add things kind of Tiffany to what you were saying, or channel selection. Yeah, sometimes you got to be someplace. And that's what leadership says, we're going to do it other times you it's better to take a step back and actually evaluate should our products be on Amazon? Should they be on eBay? or wherever? Is there a category fit? And if so, go and make those decisions to make it so.

Eric Yonge 26:12

It's like Pete was saying earlier. If you're gonna do this, do it. You know, I love I love the way he said that is we would say down south, Pete, if you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly. Okay, if you don't do it, do it. Right. You know, like, go go big. And, and so that's, you know, a lot of people just kind of collect channels, but they don't do much with it. And you got to really bear in no pun intended.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 26:37

That is so they do Yeah, collect channels. So true. Oh my gosh, well, we're gonna go to the final pitfall we're going to the grizzly Pete. Final pitfall not understanding tax implications of different channels.

Pete Olanday 26:54

Yeah, issues of attacks can echo what what Matt and Eric have been describing already with branding and messaging, etc. So personalizing the strategy for his channel. Yeah, I mean, like we said, this about the silos and tax being tax being something you have to do right across all of your channels, and you have to do it correctly. And there is a specific way, you need to do it the specific way you need to calculate tax. And at the same time, it's not one size fits all. So for example, when when I walk into a store location of Target or Walmart, and I calculate tax, I know where that quote unquote, order, that transaction is beginning and where it's ending, it's beginning in any in the store. So it's pretty, pretty straightforward, right? When we get into online, that order can be sourced from any of my warehouses across the country across the world and can be shipped to any number of addresses, or maybe even within the same order, maybe I shipped something to myself, and within the same order, I shipped something to my parents. So this sort of matrix of Nexus, which is the sort of determination of where tax should be calculated, or shipped from versus ship to point of order acceptance, all of that stuff needs to be factored in. It's it gets more complicated online, and then you throw in marketplaces, and a lot of states if those in the audience haven't heard before the marketplace facilitator laws, right, who's responsible for which part of the tax who's the merchant of record who, you know, it gets, it gets even more complicated? So yeah, basically, the the, the complexity comes from trying to determine how I'm supposed to calculate tax and in each particular channel, and then also how at the same time, so sort of like a catch 22 is how do I make that consistent? So I mentioned byline returning store, buy online pickup in store and all these sorts of cross functional experiences within the same transaction and the store refund tax collected on an eCommerce order and vice versa Can I ship back a store order when you when you get into things like where there's date sensitive tax calculations, like sales tax holidays, where I bought it during a during Amazon on Amazon day or something like that? Do I have the historical visibility into what the tax was how the tax was calculated back on that original purchase date? This brand loyalty or I'm sorry, brand continuity also factors into the promotions and discounts right and we talked about that a little bit is if if there's a promotion or discount on the on an in on my website? Is it also honored in the store? Is it valid in the store and brand loyalty programs? Also, like when I earn points, can I use those points online as well as in the store? So those types of things we, we help customers with when you go from a lot of our customers went from brick and mortar to online or maybe didn't go online but they shifted more of the FOCUS Online obviously during the pandemic And then smaller retailers moved to marketplace. There was a ruling several years ago a Wayfair ruling, if if everybody's heard of that, where it says you do not know, you no longer only need physical presence in the state to have to register to collect remit file taxes in that state. So now you have the smaller retailers now registered in May, we may be registered in a handful of states, we're now registered in like 40 states just because of order volume or revenue in those other states. So from a compliance standpoint, it makes it way more complicated and a lot more difficult to manage. If you don't automate that, that function, right, it's long gone are the days where you can just manage rate changes by going on States Department of Revenue website going to have the rate change, and in the state that I'm in the only state that I'm registered in, I'll just update the rate by system. So keeping an eye on that. And then along with the systems and other long with the silos are those systems that belong in those silos? So you know, we talked about the organization, we talked about sort of the, the marketing behind it, but also, from a from a technology standpoint, those are all those are different systems that that attack solution would have to communicate and integrate with, right, so you've mentioned point of point of sale, on the brick and mortar side, and websites, sales, audit, order management, maybe there's different ERPs and different in different channels. And all of that has to be have to have some sort of consistent tax compliance solution on the other end.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 31:31

So what they can get as we get through all three pitfalls, we have about 30 seconds left, and we got a question in the audience of, in your opinion, what are some brands that are doing omni channel strategy? Really well? Anybody have one off the cuff here? They want to share?

Matt Dornfeld 31:50

I tossed a couple over. So grew life and big clients of ours, but also happy to chat to offline. deeper questions on on those brands for others.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 32:03

Awesome. Anything to add, Eric, Pete?

Pete Olanday 32:07

Yeah, I can't name them by name. But I would just say that something slick that I've noticed is one of our customers have brick and mortar in bonline. In marketplace. retailer has an their app, right kind of follows this whole omni channel, sort of seamless frictionless experience where I'm not in a store. It operates just like a normal app, right? I can order online and things like that. When I walk in the store it it, it senses that and it flips over to sort of store mode and tells me which aisle and how many, how much how many items that are in stock and things like that. So that's one retailer that I think is doing really well and innovating things on an omni channel credit. Awesome.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 32:53

Eric, anything to add?

Eric Yonge 32:55

I could name a bunch of brands one that comes to top of mine is Dr. Squatch. The soap brand, they do a really good job of continuing their, their brand consistency with the personality with the humor, as well as representing a lot of other brands that they carry. Right and so it flatters their brands as well. They do a great job.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 33:17

Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much, Matt, Pete Eric, awesome Intel. We went fast, but we got through it. And those are the three pitfalls we will be doing follow up with everybody that was on the call give me more information. We definitely encourage follow up conversations with the teams that were represented today. So huge thanks to you all and we hope to see you on another event. Have a great Thursday and upcoming weekend. Take care y'all.

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