Salena Knight 0:02
So hey there, and welcome to the bringing business to retail podcast. If you're looking to get more sales, more customers, master your marketing and ultimately take control of your retail or E commerce business, then you're in the right place. I'm Selena Knight, a retail growth strategist and multi award winning store owner whose superpower is uncovering exactly what your business requires to move to the next level. I'll provide you with the strategies, the tools and the insight you need to scale your store. All you need to do is take action ready to get started.

Unknown Speaker 0:53
You know? What? If

Salena Knight 0:53
there is one thing that I've learned in my 15 plus years in the retail and E commerce world, it is that Nothing ever stays the same, like I remember when we used to rely on a notebook to track a customer's journey. We would literally, literally write, call Sarah and get her email to send her the video on how to use a baby carrier. Yeah, that was the thing, that notebook we lived and died by And don't even get me started on how long it used to take for me to segment a MailChimp email list, because back in the day, you literally had to copy and paste people into different lists, and you used to pay an awful lot to be able to do that. And I remember looking at the anthropology website, and I reverse engineered it to find out it was built on Magento Enterprise. So I went and moved my website to Magento because I used to think, when my store grows up, I want that. I want to be like anthropology. In fact, I even saw that quote pop up in one of my Facebook memories really recently. But if I'm honest with you, I think you guys are spoiled for choice these days. All those things that I used to dream about, you can now get on a subscription and generally for like, you know, 2030, $40 a month. But all of those subscriptions add up fast. And the tech stack that I'm finding retail and e commerce Store owners, the tech stack that they're relying today is more crucial than ever, because we can't be wasting an awful lot of money on stuff we're not using or stuff that isn't growing our business. If you have been thinking, what should my tech stack look like? If you have been thinking, You know what, I've got all these bits and pieces when it comes to marketing, I'm not even sure if I've got the right things or if I should be investing somewhere else, then no one knows better than how to put all that together and streamline your marketing. Then my guest today, rad, bittick, who is the Head of Brand advocacy, and you know how they say some words sound like the thing, rad is totally rad. You are going to get that from this podcast. And I've also got Robert Hewitson, who is the Senior Engineer at Yotpo, who used to be inside of the customer success, which I think that's a story in and of itself. So hey guys, welcome to the podcast.

Unknown Speaker 3:15
Thank you for having us

Salena Knight 3:16
now, Brad, I have to ask you. I first met you several years ago. We were trying to reverse engineer where we met. I can't remember it was at a conference somewhere. It was very brief, but I remember thinking that guy has been in the industry for ages. You seem like a complete veteran. Have you been in the E com industry for ages? I've been

Speaker 1 3:37
in the industry for about seven years. So I don't know if that classifier or not, but it feels like 20 years, if I can be completely honest, yeah, it feels like a lifetime.

Salena Knight 3:47
So how did you get into e com? Because I find that, you know, I like to think I'm doing a job now that didn't exist when I was in school, like a retail and E commerce growth strategy. There was no e commerce when I was at school. So how did you end up in this field?

Speaker 1 4:03
Yeah, so by chance, I actually left Sydney seven years ago and decided to pack my life and move to Melbourne. And, you know, it was like, I'm gonna do this. And, yeah, quit my job, had no job, moved to Melbourne, and I was honest, honestly, just given an opportunity, and it's something that I always try to pay forward now is, you know, you get a lot of people that are looking for experience and someone that does this, but we forget that there's a lot of skillful people that have me given an opportunity. And I walked into an interview at Trustpilot, who is actually a competitor of ours, and I had no idea what SaaS was, what you know, what they do, reviews. You know, all I knew was Google reviews at the time, and I sat down, it was, I still remember who hired me. It was Miranda. She was the managing director of trust pilot, an amazing, incredible woman. And she was like, wow, you've got no skills in in selling tech. And I was like, No, I've, like, I've sold, you know, lots of other things. And kind of just. My kind of history, and, yeah, she gave me an opportunity. And I think that's so important, because if you see something in people and you and you can see that they are trainable, they are they willing to learn that sometimes is more than a resume, and it's something that I look forward when I interview people, or, you know, hire people, that I remember that I'm like someone gave me an opportunity one day to prove myself, and I'm super blessed, because I cannot have it any other way. And I'm super, super grateful that I'm at yopo now as well. This could be a completely

Salena Knight 5:32
different podcast, because that whole concept of hiring on someone's character and being able to train them to do the rest of the we're just have to come back to that, that and do a completely new podcast on there, because it's something I am so passionate about. But Rob, you did not come from an E commerce background, which surprises me, because you, when I've just met you a few months ago, you had slipped into the conversation so easily. And it's funny, this E commerce network, where it's very small, it doesn't matter where you go, everybody knows everyone. And the fact that you had just like eased into the conversation. It was, again, it was like you were a veteran. So how did you end up in this niche? Yeah,

Speaker 2 6:14
I think quite similar. Joed, I ran away from Sydney about seven years ago myself, but

Salena Knight 6:18
it's not that bad guys, trust me,

Speaker 2 6:22
yeah, well, brought me back eventually. So, no, I moved to New Zealand, yeah, pre COVID. And so I was working for a premium vet, code company, health, pay, nutrition, who's a subsidiary of Colgate, just prior to lockdown. And I guess it was a crash course in E commerce, like we went from E com being 5% of our business at that time to pushing 20, 30% and I was very fortunate that the business gave me an opportunity to move into a senior category management position. And, you know, obviously, with all the focus and the innovation and increased investment in that space, it was a lot of, you know, trial and learning and a lot of success as well in that period. And okay, this is what e commerce is about. And I guess I got addicted to that fast paced nature of it, a lot of that flexibility, a lot of the exciting part of retail for me. And then my partner was working in tech at the time, so I thought, what better way to sort of apply that, you know, that knowledge to the industry more so, and to move more behind the scenes, and what is allowing us to do a lot of these awesome innovations, like bundles and subscriptions and, you know, amazing PDPs with awesome below the fold content. And so I thought that's makes sense. Post COVID, moved back to Sydney, and yopo gave me the chance without, you know, very, very little SaaS experience at the time, but obviously a lot of Ecom knowledge. And I think being able to apply that with, you know, a little bit of a technical brain as well as really, it's been fantastic. And I think your Poe and the bread for products that it has has really allowed me to really, you know, sink my teeth in. You know, they're all different in their own ways, but they're all trying to do the same thing, which really presents some interesting conversations with, you know, prospects and customers. What I've just

Salena Knight 7:57
taken from something that both of you have just said is that your PO was prepared to take a chance on you, and I have to say, as being a boss, being the owner of an organization, I love that concept, because when you do that, you bring, I feel like you bring the best people in, and by just not focusing on, oh, you have to have a marketing degree and you have to have five years experience. I mean, how do you get your five years experience? When you're not even given a chance to go out there and do the thing? So tell me, I would love Rob if you could just tell me a little bit more. Both of you and rad mentioned your PO are innovative, and they, you know, they make it easier. Tell us a little bit more about how you see that happening. Because what I like about your role is that you've been on customer success, so you've you've been there on the front line to see what retail and e commerce Store owners are doing, but now you're in the engineer. So it's kind of, I feel like it's two different halves of the brain. You've got the touchy feely, be nice to people, the warm and fuzzy part, and then you've got the data driven analytics side of things. So tell us about where you think Yotpo. Going back to my original question, why do you think Yotpo is, like, innovative is a word that has come up from both of you.

Speaker 2 9:13
What do I think yoppo is innovation? Probably a bit time back in your question too, because now I'm thinking I wasn't the warm and fuzziest, you know, client, Success Manager around. But hey, that's probably another podcast for another time. I think what really attracted me to yopo initially, when I was looking at, I was like, Oh, that's a reviews platform. Yeah, that's, that's cool. That makes sense. They do loyalty as well. Oh, okay, that's interesting. Oh, they got SMS, and then in my conversations, you know, knowing about, you know, some of the future products are planning or launching at that time, emailed subscription. So I was like, this is interesting. You know, what's the reason behind this? You know, on the outset, they look like, you know, different products trying to do different things, but you know, then learning more about the consolidation play that's happening in tech at the moment, and how he introduced this podcast, and how all these different apps, particularly in the Shopify landscape, all trying to do different things. So the OPPO was out on a limb very early. I could see in terms of providing an offering to help consolidate that tech stack and get a single view of the customer, which in itself has a lot of benefits, both for the customer itself and for the brands. And then you combine that with now some of the use of AI looking at, you know, the customer profiling and saving a lot of time for brands with Lean teams, that stuff was awesome. And it's not just the, you know, it goes beyond technical in some way. It's just having an awesome product with features that are working, features that are easy to use and are relevant to the industry. You know, it doesn't have to all be about APIs and data sets. At the end of the day. It goes above my head sometimes. So I think that's the stuff that I really see, you know, jopo leading in the innovation sphere,

Salena Knight 10:42
right? If I could just jump over to you, you said that you were with the competition, which is Trustpilot, and then you jumped ship to come into Yotpo. When you did that. I mean, for me, I've always associated, like Rob just said, I've always associated Yotpo with reviews, and then it did get into loyalty. But I'm going to be honest, I didn't know about the email and the SMS and all the crazy things that Yotpo has been doing. So I want to go there in a minute, but I want to ask you, first, you mentioned innovation. But aside from innovation, what made you go from a competitor to Yotpo? Yeah,

Speaker 1 11:17
so Well, yopo do take a big risk on me, because I was the first hire in Australia, which was a big deal. So I knew them, obviously, as a competitor, because I was in sales, I was selling against, you know, a lot of competitors, and we keep losing deals to oppo. And I was like, I keep losing deals to these, you know, to these, to these companies. So I started speaking to a lot of agencies, and the agencies were telling me about the technology, you know, it's more advanced the analytics. And when I got wind that they were opening up in Australia, I was actually connected to the VP at the time of partnerships, and I just pinged him on LinkedIn. I said, Hey, rumors, have a you know, Shopify mentioned that you guys are coming into Australia. He was like, Are you interested? I was like, hell yes, apart from the technology being super innovative, I actually was really lucky, and I got interviewed by the founder. And for anyone who's met our founder will know he's super inspiring. Within a matter of matter of minutes, I was so in to the brand and what they're going to be creating. And like Rob was saying so many new products coming out that I was like, I really want this job. And I don't know if you've ever interviewed anywhere, and you you are putting everything out in the universe that you really want this job. And to be fair, I actually asked a lot of industry experts, what should I do? Should I stay where I am, or should I take the leap? And a lot of them told me not to. And my gut was telling me that this is an opportunity I should say no to, and I think it goes back to as well. Like, you don't have to listen to noise sometimes. Yes, it's great to get a view and opinion of other people's voices, but had I listened to experts, I would have stayed in a job that, you know didn't give me growth. They're out of Australia now, so, like, they're not even selling in Australia anymore, but I trusted my gut, and I went for a role that I really, really wanted, and honestly, like, it's been almost four years now, it's been one of the most incredible companies I've worked with. I've worked with incredible people. The founder is still authentically himself, so he didn't sell me anything that I didn't believe in, which is great, because sometimes you do, you get sold a dream, and you come in and you're like, shit. Well, it's not a timeshare, yeah. So if anything like I also have a personality that gets bored really quickly. So for me, I'm here four years going strong. I've never woken up a day going, I hate my job or I'm bored. So to me, that just shows how innovative the company is, it's fast moving, and there's, there's new things happening every single day. I want

Salena Knight 13:44
to get into what you guys know, what you can tell us behind the scenes of what's happening in Black Friday, Cyber Monday, 2024 but you've kind of led me down a little bit of a path which I feel is really important, which is for a company that sells loyalty. You've just mentioned that the founder, when he had this conversation with you, was so taken with the vision, and he was obviously so he was able to articulate it so well that you came along for the ride, and so being able to instill that loyalty in your team, to me, it just makes like that next step of well, if I can do that with my team, then I can do that with a product. And if I can do that with my team, my team can do that with the product. So the loyalty that you're feeling to the brand is then being transferred into the actual product, which when it comes to a SaaS product, I think that is what every founder, that is what every person who ever has an inkling and of an idea of something that they want to create a tech product, they can only dream of that. So I have to say, yopo, well done for be a for being able to have such a drive and such a vision that your team are so on board that it just carry. Through into into everything that the product meant, that's just, that's just my little leadership spiel. But let's jump into Black Friday, Cyber Monday, because what I like is, Rob, you have that two sides of the story, insider knowledge. So as an engineer, maybe you could start us off with some of the challenges that you see that brands are facing when it comes to hitting those targets at this time of year in this current economic landscape,

Speaker 2 15:31
I guess would you be thinking the customers you're talking to, is that challenge more from like a financially, how are we going to get through this period, or more on the technology space? Do you think

Salena Knight 15:41
I feel like it's all of the things? I feel like the people who are listening are going, I don't know how much money I should spend on ads. I don't even know what kind of offers like I'm looking at the big brands. And I mean, we only have to walk through a department store and see the glut of seasonal stuff that hasn't moved on, like, I just came back from America, an entire floor of Macy's, which is the stock that they're trying to get rid of, because the seasons have changed, and everything is on clearance. And so I feel like, with everything being on clearance, what are we going to do for Black Friday? Like, if you're already discounting, what are you going to offer? And so the people listening are going, I don't understand where I should be spending my money. Like this is all very overwhelming. I don't even know what kind of offers I should be putting it out there. What are my competition going to do, even if I take away the big brands, what are the brands that my direct competition? What are they going to be doing? Like, what I'm hearing is I just don't know what to do this year,

Speaker 2 16:42
makes sense. And I think, yeah, I've had a lot of brands in very small position as well, and there's a lot of pressure in that. So you hear like, Oh, they're going to go early and early. And I think we've definitely felt that over the last few years that brands are under pressure to go earlier and go deeper, which we're probably now seeing, is not the correct thing to do for a lot of brands. And so my advice there more of a strategic lens initially is to look and reverse an engineer, where am I going to get to? What? What segments of my customers are going to help me get there? I think too many brands are looking at a single level of customers. They're not going that one level deeper. Let's have a look at those that have purchased in last two months. Let's have a look at those who have been purchased like once in the last 12 months, and then those that have signed up, maybe recently and haven't purchased, and really try and craft, okay, what's the right offer, what's the right personalization for these customers? And to help me get there, and obviously, like, you know, stuff like see on inventory is too much. Then you look at deeper discounts on that range versus, you know, and maybe some of your core products, but don't do absolutely everything, and then encourage them to bundle and add things to cart. Every brand is in such a different position now versus their competitors, and a one size fits all is not going to work. So, you know, linking that to the technology side of things, you know, do we have the ability to segment those customers? Do I have the ability to go and see, you know, who has purchased, where, where they are on that journey, so I can then personalize communications, maybe target some offers more directly to the rather than doing a blanket discount on my website. That will be a more effective strategy. Yes, it takes a bit of time to get there, but then the ROI that you'll be able to get there as a brand is going to be much better, obviously, especially when we know that margins are tougher than they've ever been. So, yeah, I think just challenge brands to go that one level deeper on just looking at, you know, doing blanket discounts, and particularly, you know, just mass campaigns across this period of time. If

Salena Knight 18:30
I could just put a pin in it, just for a minute, because I can see that you've got about 400 other strategies here that you'd be willing to share. But rad, if I could just jump over to you, because I know that you've just come back from a session with a whole bunch of retailers. What are you seeing? We're doing a Black Friday Cyber Monday series right now, and it's interesting, because not everybody is seeing the same things, but there are some things that are recurring. So you are having these conversations you're on, you're on the coal face, with the people who are doing the marketing. Who are the founders? What are you seeing this year for Black Friday, Cyber Monday?

Speaker 1 19:05
Yeah, we just had a dinner recently. We were about 20 CEO founders from all different verticals. And I think one of the things that was really eye opening for me is kind of what Rob said, like that strategy piece, that you know you're going to get a lot of traffic onto your website. There's no real strategy on how to bucket those people like who are the first you know? What are you going to do with the people that have never shopped with you before? What are you going to do with the people that have shopped once with you before? What are you going to do with your most loyal customers? And generally, what brands are doing is one blanket discount for everyone. But that shouldn't be the case. You need to be able to have a Black Friday, Cyber Monday strategy that feeds into all those categories. And I don't think brands do that. I think what I'm seeing from brands is like, hey, 50% off my whole store for everyone. But you've got your most loyal customers here that are probably going to buy from you anyway, and then you've got people that are coming to you for the first time, which is great. You're going to get them into that fund. All. But then what? How do you manage that funnel? And a lot of brands don't know. You know, are you going to be feeding them into your loyalty program? How are you going to retain them to be, you know, a loyal customer? What kind of journey does that look like? What kind of communication does that look like? And a lot of the time, it's the same communication to everyone. Thank you for purchasing from Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Thank you. But it shouldn't be like that. You should be treating every single bucket of customer. And it's interesting. I just saw Kim from Princess Polly, who's a customer of ours, post about, you know, your loyal customers on a bucket of one to 10, like, where do they sit in? And how do you speak and communicate to those customers that are a one to a customer that's a loyal 10. And I think that's it's really true. We don't actually a lot of brands don't know how to do that, don't know how to communicate, don't know how to funnel them, don't know how to retain them. And then they come out of Black Friday someone, and they're like shit like, you know, do we really make money? How we lost? And you know, how many people have we actually retained? And a lot of people can't even tell you those numbers, which is pretty

Salena Knight 20:58
scary. Okay, Rob, I would like to come back to you with maybe some a little bit more technical stuff around what rad just said there in terms of segmenting those people out. And I have to say I bow down to Princess Polly when it comes to loyalty programs. They seriously guys. If you have not ever gone to the princess Polly VIP rewards section of their website, you are missing out, because these guys do it right. They

Speaker 1 21:23
absolutely killed her and just another shower to them. They actually beat Mecca at the All Star bash for the best loyalty program. Now that's huge, because Mecca should make a pretty good loyalty program, but to say like Princess Polly come out on top, like that, just goes to show they know how to do loyalty really

Salena Knight 21:39
well. Okay, I could just gush about them in terms of their gush about their loyalty program forever. But can I just dive back in before I forget what I wanted to ask you, rad, which was you mentioned there about like the VIPs and separating out those loyal customers versus the discount discount hunters. I'm interested on your thoughts about the VIPs, because I'm going to go out on a limb and say, for most brands, those best customers, those VIPs, don't actually want your 50% discount, or, you know, some deep discount, because they probably already bought the stuff that they wanted. And, you know, they don't want that crappy stuff, that's like, so last season. So I would love to know, do you have any ideas? Do you have any thoughts? Do you have any Can we do a bit of brainstorming here? What can we offer the VIPs if they're not interested in deep discounting? And I'm putting you on the spot here because we didn't brainstorm this before you jumped on the very

Speaker 2 22:35
first one that comes to mind. I think you know within this as a customer, shipping obviously, is a massive bug there for us. So the very first thing I'm always recommend to brands is, what can we do to, you know, give them expedited shipping, discounted rate, discounted expediated rate, something that is doesn't obviously takes a little bit of the margin away, but it's not as much as giving that flat discount, and it's also going to aid conversion, and it's a bit of like a we're taking care of you scenario, maybe extended warranties. That's something the branch can offer. Throwing another idea out there, I'm not as much of a fan of offering too many bonus points. Obviously, if you've got a loyal VIP customer and you've got a points based program, points is obviously something very easy to activate and do, maybe on search and products. So you can get more added to cash rather than giving it all away, because then you're going to have a big lug of points that you need to start using in, you know, the Jan quarter next year, when it Chris is your points liability. But points is something offered to the right customer at the right time, can incentivize to get the action that you do want. Outside of that, I think it then becomes brand specific, like, what is valuable to your customers, and what is brand specific? What's brand unique? That that is more than just a monetary offer, and yet that might come back to again, like warranties, you know, better, better after service, care, you know, access to certain things in the future, potentially. Yeah, it is a hard one to brainstorm. Love being put on the spot. That's okay, but yeah, it's interesting to get a brand, yeah, once you get a brand talking about it and thinking about it more than just, oh, you know, great, I get points, or, you know, I get a benefit, and start thinking about what is valuable to their brand. When I'm talking brands through this, then they start supporting all these ideas that they know best from their customers. So have that conversation in your own teams, internally, or maybe, you know, ask some of your customers. I think that is very valuable to sort of get their viewpoints. Yeah, rad.

Salena Knight 24:24
I have to ask you, in terms of that top tier of customer and giving them something like free shipping, I think that is a great offer, because you're only doing it to the people who are going to spend money anyway, right? I have to ask you, do you think I had not thought of this, but Rob has put that little spark in my brain. But do you think that Black Friday, Cyber Monday, is a good time to launch a new product without a discount?

Speaker 1 24:48
Absolutely. I think it's a really smart idea. You know, a lot of people don't think about it, but yeah, absolutely. And just going back on Rob's thing, it's those most loyal customers are generally. Looking for a discount. We know that we've done a lot of research when interviewing customers or customers have they want to be part of the brand. They want to feel like they're embedded into that community. So having access to the CEO or founder, or maybe going to an exclusive opening night at one of their stores, where there's a new collection or new product being launched, so stuff like that, stuff that makes them feel like I'm getting something that no one else is getting. We even have brands that have secret tiers. You can't see anything. There's a little lock on the tier. You only get access to it if you hit a certain amount of spend, generally, you know. And that unlocks certain features as well. So people want to unlock that because they're so curious to know, like, what? What do I get from that? So again, it goes back to that each customer that you are speaking to is different, and you need to communicate. You need to be able to treat them in a different way. So super, super important. I highly recommend launching new products, but also having products that don't have a discount. Because if you can't do that on your margins, and you know you're going to make a loss, then don't discount it. I think super, super important, and

Salena Knight 26:04
that is really difficult for us as business owners to come to terms with, because I only have to walk into a shopping mall, and I did a little video, and I did a 360 and every store that I could see was on sale. And it's October. I mean, I think everyone's been on sale like the big brands have all been on sale all year, yeah. And so this concept of the anti Black Friday Cyber Monday, I think it's going to, I think it's going to have legs. We were talking to Toby from Shopify, and he came up with some great strategies, how you can anti Black Friday Cyber Monday, to be able to keep that brand, the brand values and to keep the brand curiosity going on, but not necessarily stuff up your margins. So I think you've just done a very similar thing. I have to ask you, in terms of you just mentioned there the All Star Awards in terms of loyalty, what has been like the number one reward where you're just, like, that is genius.

Speaker 1 27:01
Oh, like, what a brand, what our brands create, yeah, one of your brands, there's a, there's a brand called Henny. They're Melbourne based. Something that really stood out to me is, when I was, I was speaking on a panel for us, they have 70 to 80% of their customers enrolled into their loyalty program. That is in so, yeah, so they are not a points based loyalty program. They are a spend based loyalty program. So they don't have points to kind of do actions and stuff that makes it even harder to get people to sign up to your loyalty program. But what they've done, when you look at their loyalty program, number one, it's super creative. It's a piece of art. It is the most beautiful looking loyalty program that I've seen. They actually got an artist to create the Loyalty Program, which I love, wow, which the designer created, which is awesome. And then there's the way that they do the spend. Here is that I asked them this question, it looks like it's points. And I reached out to them. I was like, oh, like, Why do you have points if it's spent? And they were like, We don't want our people knowing how much they spend, because it puts a burden on that kind of spending thing. So we want people to be able to spend and actually enjoy what they're doing without that added pressure. But everything in their loyalty program is experiential. They have exclusive events at their store. They've got a beautiful store on gravel Street in Melbourne that they open up to the most loyal customers. They have that locked here. They have access to educational stuff around products, early access to products, all that kind of stuff that makes you feel like, wow, I'm actually getting really VIP treatment. Then a discount, which I absolutely love, they kind of avoid that kind of discounting thing. And I think it's really, really super important that you know, when you look at loyalty, sometimes discounting is what your customers want, but it's something that Rob said, Have you asked your customers what they want from that loyalty program? Because you'll be surprised what you actually get back and then create the loyalty program around that. A lot of the times you assume, because the competitors doing something, but your your your community, is different to what your commit competitors is and and that should be be scary if it wasn't because you're just, you know, replicating what your competitors are doing, you should be creating a brand that's on your values, and that's super, super important to actually go back and get your customers involved.

Salena Knight 29:17
So for those people who are listening, can you tell them, what do heny Sell? Because it's probably important to understand how, how those rewards tie into the whole brand. Core values,

Speaker 1 29:29
yeah, they're a women's fashion brand. They're a little bit more high end, so I would say, like, the average order is probably about two $50 like, per item. So they are a high end brand. And again, a lot of high end brands try and don't want to do loyalty because they think they've already got a loyal base. I don't need to sell they, you know, my customers come in the store. But Penny is proof that if you do a loyalty program that is created correctly, even their most loyal customer staff, 75 to 80% of their database in their loyalty program is astonishing. It's insane. That's

Salena Knight 30:00
easy. I remember when we implemented yopo with one of our clients, and I remember she said to me, I sent out the first email, and only 50% of the people left me a review. And I was like, oh my god, 50% she's like, What about the other 50% it was like, 51% what about the other 49% I'm like, if you if you said 10, I was happy, but 50,

Speaker 1 30:23
I would be happy with 10 as well. That's pretty that's pretty awesome. That's a pretty loyal, uh, fan base there as well.

Salena Knight 30:30
Oh yes, yes, Rob, can I jump over to you and maybe get you to give us some really hands on strategies for what people can do in the back end, when it comes to email marketing, when it comes to reviews, when it comes to SMS What is something that people can implement? Maybe it's specific to your PO. Maybe it's just a general strategy. I'm going to leave this one up to you. But what is something that they can take action on? Because I think what I've heard you both say is the thing you can't afford to scrimp on right now is spending the time to map this stuff out, even if you can't go whole hog for the whole Black Friday Cyber Monday, it's picking out the part that you can use that will get you the biggest wins, that will get you the biggest return on investment. So knowing that you're the engineer, tell us some of the things that we can be implementing, because we haven't got that much longer to go.

Speaker 2 31:24
No, I think, and obviously, by the time this is coming to air, I think we, you know, obviously getting very, very close, and I'm hoping, you know, bransley, up until this point, you know, typically we're recommending, you know, list growth, you know, getting SMS subscribers, particularly for your loyalty customers. We know that SMS subscribers are going to be far more engaged, especially if recently acquired, and loyalty members even more so in that channel. But I guess to talk about, you know, one unique thing with yopo, and obviously brands that are with yopo email would highly recommend them to jump in, take a look at, or even, you know, look at for, you know, future promotional periods is something that we launched earlier this year and have been updating and adding more features to across the last few months. And that's our multi message campaign. A lot of what we've spoken about to date has been about, okay, how do I segment these customers? How do I settle the right campaign the right time? You know, backing down the channel as well. They're going to prefer email. They're going to prefer SMS. In what order? What the multi message campaign is, it's kind of like it's, it's a sequence of campaigns with the infrastructure flows behind it. So it allows you to set out, you know, basically hit the go button, and then you can map out different segments that you've set up in, in your in your yopo back end. Are they going to be again, the repeat customers, the brand new customer? They're going to prefer SMS, or they will be more engaged with email, and they will send based on how you've set this up. And you can map this all in one view, all this sequence of campaigns to these customers. If they're spent, you can get them to be removed from this flow straight away, and then basically, you can funnel down any follow ups as well. So if they've clicked on an email, for example, great, they're engaged, but they didn't purchase. Let's send them an SMS only then to ensure that we're going to really capture that opportunity to convert all in all. What this allows a, you can visualize what is my Black Friday period going to look like in one go. B, maximize the ROI and C. I have this awesome idea on my head, which I've totally blanked on. It's essentially, yeah, you can go and actually see what the impact is going to be and not have to remember. Now, you don't have to go and segment each of these customers and send it out over that period. You can hit go. Obviously, probably want to monitor it. I don't think any marketer or, you know, CRM manager is going to sit back and, you know, not be I'm checking everything's going but you don't have to go and keep on sending these things. You can sequence it all to go over the Black Friday Cyber Monday period, which is obviously a huge time saver. But also, of strategy wise, it really enables that. And I think just to give like an example of this naked harvest, you know, use utilize this feature back during their end of financial year promotions earlier this year, and they saw over 130x ROI, which is three, four fold what they'll typically get for the average campaign. And so yeah, they segmented out their, you know, repeat customers, the newly acquired customers. Customers never engaged different types of content, different discounting, more educational for some of those newer customers, so they can really maximize the ROI touch points across their entire customer base. I'm

Salena Knight 34:20
going to be honest. For a data nerd like me, this sounds awesome, however, it also sounds like an awful lot of work. So tell me, because I don't know the answer to this. I don't know if you're going to say yes, how you're going to have to spend half a day mapping it out, or you're going to say, You know what? That's the benefit of using your PO. Most of this is built out for you. So tell me, if I'm listening and I'm like, You know what that feels like? It would tie all of my marketing up in a bow. That is something that normally I would have to sit down. If I've got a marketing manager, we're going to be strategizing for a good week or so to work all of that out. So are people sitting aside a week, two weeks, or are they setting aside hours? I'll

Speaker 2 35:00
probably go more the hours. I'm not one of our amazing SMS EMR strategists that are working here at yopo who, of course, you know, available to sort of work and you know, strategically, provide advice and, you know, feedback on how something's set up. I will note that one of the awesome features that are in that's in early release, I believe, in America at the moment, and soon to be Australia, is something we're called Taylor campaign. So you can sort of type in AI, then it can generate the campaigns for your little segments for you. We already have that today just to generate the segments, so you don't have to be the other nerd and go through and do all your and all conditions. You can type in a prompt, and then Taylor will go ahead and generate that segment for you. So the technology is getting there to be able to automate a lot of this stuff, obviously, in terms of how long is it going to be. I mean, you could just go through and just do one layer of segmentation in terms of your campaigns, the more you go into it, obviously, the longer it's going to take. But I argue the ROI you're getting out of it is going to be even more so. And given how much the channel typically costs for brands, I think the time is well warranted to actually go in there and invest it. Yeah, well, that's something

Salena Knight 36:01
that you both have said. It's like, right now, if you're going to spend your money and your time on anything, it is looking at the customers that you've got, doing the segmenting, using a system that's going to make as much of this as easy as possible, but also give you the highest ROI. So, I mean, that's the ultimate, that's what we're all looking for. And I think that when it comes to making life easier, I like the concept of all of this being in one because when you have and look, I'm always, I always put out different products that I love, and I'm not going to be like, Oh my gosh, every woman should have your oppo because different people need different things, but I do know that if you're at that point where you're scaling and you think that putting the effort in to something like this will give you a return, I feel like it will, because you're not cutting and pasting and trying to hack things together. So that's what I like about it. But rad. I have to ask you, you're very much on segmenting, keeping those brand values. What do you have to add?

Speaker 1 37:08
I would add, everyone's feeling the pinch today, like there's not a brand that I'm thinking about, that I talked to, that saying no. Cost is everything's really expensive and stuff, and when we look at the jopo model, we're a pay as you go model when it comes to SMS and email to me, any brand, it would be a no brainer. You can budget and send to what your budget requires. We're the only platform that allows to do that. So if you're not, if you don't have money to send in, you know, October or November come be it, you don't have to. It's a model that plays really well with brands to be able to scale like you said, we don't charge for your list size. We charge for what you send. We're the only platform that does that. So it allows brands breathing room. It allows brands to budget. They know what their budget is to be able to send, and they don't have to go over it if they don't want to where a lot of the I guess, competitors out there, you have to buy a certain amount of money, say 10,000 credits, and you have to spend that. I think that is just crazy for brands. So to be able to say to a brand, hey, you can spend whatever budget you want in there, and when you spend it, you spend it. If you want to go over, you go over. There is no criteria to make them actually just send because of I need to send because I've got $10,000 in there. That, to me, is just mind blowing. So for us to be able to have that pay as you go model, I think it's a really, it's a game changer for brands. I know our brands absolutely love it. It allows them to do a lot more, and it allows them to put money where they need to put it, if it's in, you know, digital, you know, ads, or Google ads, or whatever it is, it just allows them to be a bit more free and allow them to kind of plan out, like, what their kind of strategy looks at with their own budget.

Salena Knight 38:50
Oh, and they don't get the shock, or they don't get that, I think we have all been here, all of a sudden you get the alert that says, Me campaign, you run out of credits. Yeah,

Speaker 1 39:00
well, like you said, the shock, you know, we've had brands that have migrated over to us and they're like, Oh, we forgot to downgrade our plan, and we lost $10,000 That, to me, is just insane. That's a lot of money for brands these days. And, like, there isn't a single brand that's looking at their budgets at the moment and saying, Hey, things are tight. So I really do think that we've come into the market as a game changer when it comes to that, and it's allowing brands to breathe.

Salena Knight 39:24
Okay, I think that is perfect, because we started off talking about money, we're gonna finish talking about money, but before we go, I would love to, I'll keep with you for a minute. Rad. What's your biggest tip for people who are listening and feeling overwhelmed, not necessarily the segmenting and, you know, putting all the effort in. But as a business owner who is feeling like, I don't know what to be doing, I don't know where I should be spending my money. I don't like there's so much unknown quantities. What's your tip for people who are out there to make sure that they can get through and still be here this time next year?

Speaker 1 39:58
Do you know what we have? Most Amazing e comm community in Australia. I would say, reach out to other brands. I think, you know, when I started the CEO founder forum with these brands, seeing how much they share, how much they communicate, you'll be surprised that you're probably in the same boat, like everybody else. Everybody else is stressed, everybody else is thinking about, am I going to survive? How am I going to do these? I think just reach out to someone that's not a competitor, even though, like, Competitors will help each other. I see that time and time through, through our brands, but yeah, just reach out and reach out to people in the community and just have someone listen. I think, like, you know, they do feel alone a lot of the times, being a CEO and founder, that they are alone, but they're not. And I think, like, you know, my door's always open. I'm here to listen, vent whatever you want, but you'll be surprised that you're not alone. I think that's the honestly, the best thing is to speak to other people and see what they're doing.

Salena Knight 40:48
I love that, and it can feel so polarizing. I think because you are so scared of letting people know what's happening behind the scenes. Because you know, I'm going to be honest. Most people I spoke to, I just came back from a mastermind. Most people I spoke to have had a drop in revenue. It's happening across the board. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing a lot of things wrong. It maybe means you just need some tweaks. Maybe you just need to have those conversations. So thank you. I think that is really important to remember that one of my best friends was my competition in business. She actually came when I sold my stores. She came and worked with me for several years. So your competition can end up being your best friend and Rob, what tip Do you have

Speaker 2 41:30
been quite similar to Adam? No way. You know, as soon as you asked the question, the first thing that came to my mind was community. And obviously, to put the you know, client, success manager hat back on, it's you know, the brands would come to us and they'll talk to us about, you know, I've got X, Y, Z challenge, and that would always be some of the best conversations. It may not be directly relevant to what they're working with. Yopo with they might have just been like a reviews customer, for example, but it gives us so many more ideas on what we could be doing to leverage whatever your power product. They may be working with us, whether it be full platform, whether it be just one of those products. And, you know, we can use our collective team here to, you know, come with different ideas, you know, inspiration for a set of eyes. I think, you know, to rads point, you might be doing absolutely everything right, but maybe they just need validation off that to continue doing the right thing and not change it up every month. Because, you know, by changing it up every month, they're not going to actually see the return on it. Sometimes, you could be doing too much. So I think, yeah, have the conversation, whether it be, you know, competitors, other brands, the tech providers that you are working with, if they've got, you know, boots on the ground here in Australia to, you know, get some inspiration and to get some fresh set of eyes on what you're doing. Sometimes, yeah, just having that viewpoint, I think can make a big difference in your perspective and outlook. You

Salena Knight 42:43
just did something very dear to my heart. I did a podcast just recently, and it was titled, it was a very short one, but it was titled, does it feel like you're throwing marketing spaghetti at the wall and nothing sticks? And I think a lot of times it is, that is, if you're not looking at the data and you're not having those conversations with your community, it can feel like you're doing things wrong. So you just try new thing after new thing after new thing, when actually, if you don't have the stable revenue coming in, you don't have the resources to be able to try thing after thing after thing, you've got to stick with the tried and true so thank you for validating my podcast.

Unknown Speaker 43:20
I like this spaghetti analogy, actually, so true

Salena Knight 43:22
it is. And I do believe that there's a time and place for trying new things, but if you're just trading water, then you really have to weigh up whether the time, the energy, the money, the resources that you're going to put into that new thing, whether they're going to pay off. Because I don't know about you guys, but I kind of feel like, if we can get through to April next year, things are going to be good again. That's my you know, if you can just stick it out, if you can just keep trading water, if you can keep the bills paid, put a little bit of money in the bank if you're struggling right now, if you can just know that, you know what, I've got a plan to get to April, then I think, hey, yeah, I'm going to be positive and say I think the economy worldwide is going to change, but that's just my this is not financial advice. That's just sales point of view.

Speaker 1 44:12
I hope so. I hope so. I'm optimistic as well.

Salena Knight 44:15
Good, good. Well, thank you guys. Thank you one for coming on the podcast and obviously telling us about Yotpo and your stories, but also being open to having those conversations that you just said. Because I feel like and I feel like this from the moment I met you, that even if someone is not using Yotpo and they met you and wanted to have a conversation with you, you guys are not all closed off. You're like, you know what? Someone took a chance on me. I've got this knowledge, sure. I'm happy to give you some information, give you a referral, give you some ideas, all those kinds of things. Absolutely,

Speaker 1 44:46
absolutely. My door's open to anyone, not just your boat customers, for sure.

Speaker 2 44:52
Sort of summarize here the real passion, I think, in the team here, you know, not just in econ, but in tech. And you see that day to day. Hear us on the conversations that were happening. So you definitely, definitely echo those thoughts. Okay,

Salena Knight 45:04
so if people wanted to maybe reach out, maybe find out about your founders group, Brad, or maybe reach out and and learn more about Yotpo, where's the best place for them to connect with you? Or should they go to LinkedIn? Or should they Yeah, LinkedIn, okay, I'm gonna put you guys as you guys. That's my very good English. I'm going to put your LinkedIn profiles in there so you know you could end up with a flurry of people wanting to meet, make those connections with you guys. All right, thank you guys so much. And wishing you guys a very good Black Friday. Cyber Monday.

Speaker 3 45:35
Thank you. We'll have to get you on afterwards and give us a debrief.

Unknown Speaker 45:39
Yes, we did a holiday after that. Thank you so much. Bye. The

Salena Knight 45:45
team at Yotpo have very generously given you guys access to their ultimate Black Friday Email Marketing Guide. This guide is going to help you to segment out your campaigns and give you really good examples of how you can crush your email and SMS marketing in your Black Friday Cyber Monday time frame. Honestly, it doesn't matter which email service provider you're using. It doesn't matter if it's Black Friday Cyber Monday. But what I do know, having looked at this document, is that it is going to help you give it get a really clear plan on how you can use email and SMS to make this your best Black Friday Cyber Monday ever. Head on over to Selena knight.com forward slash loyal, and you can grab it for free. That's Selena knight.com forward slash loyal for your Yotpo, Ultimate Black Friday email marketing campaign guide. So that's a wrap. I'd love to hear what insight you've gotten from this episode and how you're going to put it into action. If you're a social kind of person, follow me at the Selena and make sure to leave a comment and let me know. And if this episode made you think a little bit differently or gave you some inspiration, or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action, then please take a couple of minutes to leave me a review on your platform of choice, because the more reviews the show gets, the more independent retail and E commerce stores just like yours, that we can help To scale. And when that happens, it's a win for you, a win for your community and a win for your customers. I'll see you on the next episode. You.

Rob Hewetson: Rob has over five years of hands-on eCommerce experience working both in category management and with tech providers. He's currently a Sales Engineer at Yotpo APAC, previously serving as a Client Success Strategist, helping brands scope, develop and implement effective retention strategies

Rad Mitic: With over 15 years of expertise in cultivating strong partnerships and fostering relationships, Rad is dedicated to driving success through strategic leadership and collaboration between brands, vendors and agencies. As a seasoned professional in both B2B and B2C environments, Rad is currently Head of Brand Advocacy at Yotpo.

https://www.yotpo.com/