Join Recharge, Attentive, Gorgias, and BattlBox for a discussion on how to implement tactics during the holidays that can help mitigate churn throughout the season and into 2024!
Transcript from video:
0:01 good morning everybody morning afternoon maybe evening if we have a couple UK
0:07 folks welcome everybody we are super excited to host you for stock up for the
0:12 holidays 2023 my name is Chase Alderton I will be your host uh I am just going
0:18 to try to kind of kill a little bit of time right here and let everybody join give everybody a little bit of time to
0:24 join um we have an awesome panel of people here from Recharge from Gorgias and
0:29 from attentive and we also have John Roman who's the CEO of Battlbox one of Recharge's top Merchants again very
0:37 excited to have everybody here we have some awesome content I'm really doing my best to kill as much time as possible in
0:42 a formal way to make sure everyone can join we're going to give this about another 30 seconds and then we'll hop
0:48 right in because we have a ton of content excited to get to it
0:53 think we're just gonna start right now so
1:00 with that being said this is recording that's always my favorite question that we get from everybody
1:08 so welcome to stock up for the holidays your Tech toolkit for maximizing customer retention and loyalty
1:15 couple pieces here up front before we jump in um we're gonna hop into welcome
1:20 in introductions right now um at 1005 in just a minute we're going
1:25 to do top tips from technology Partners so attentive gorgeous and recharge we'll all do their quick presentations this is
1:30 only going to be about 15 minutes we want to make sure this is tactical and things you can Implement right before
1:36 bfcm before we come into the holidays but also we want to make sure that we get to our Merchant interview and we get
1:42 to q a so um moving forward we're going to go into panel Roundtable discussion if you see
1:47 anything on these slides that we're presenting if you have any questions if you want us to dig into something additional or different or whatever you
1:54 want to hear please use the Q a function on the zoom link you guys should all have the Q a option at the very end here
2:00 we will have time to answer those q a questions so please use them please use that q a enter them and there's as many
2:06 as you can we will try to get all of them answered if we don't we'll spin up a dock towards the end and we'll answer the rest of them uh via text and we'll
2:13 send that out again as a reminder this is being recorded so we'll send this out to everybody once the session ends
2:21 speakers today Anna from Attentive Michael from Gorgias and Harteg from
2:26 Recharge I'm going to let everybody introduce themselves because I'm sure you're sick and tired of hearing me speak so without further a do I will pass
2:33 this over to Attentive thank you Chase appreciate it and happy to be here today my name is Anna
2:40 Diefenbach I'm a team lead of client strategy here at attentive uh joining
2:45 you from Denver Colorado today Attentive is a leading conversational Commerce solution specializing in a mobile first
2:52 approach across both SMS and email that really Fosters personalized engagement
2:57 with your subscribers and of course drives revenue for your brand so today
3:02 we'll walk through two areas of focus that you should be considering to drive success this Black Friday and Cyber
3:09 Monday so first we'll take a look at how to use segmentation to tailor messages to the Right audience when to send
3:15 messages and how to use a b testing to optimize performance and then we'll dive into how to use email and SMS and tandem
3:22 through automated Journeys so first up is segmenting your audience
3:28 and a b testing to optimize for success
3:35 you'll want to consider using segmentation here to deliver more personalized messages that really
3:40 resonate with specific groups within your subscriber base so with the tentative segment Builder you can create
3:46 Dynamic audiences based on subscriber data you're actively capturing such as actions preferences locations and more
3:54 using our ACP and third-party Integrations you're able to create real-time Dynamic segments and leverage
4:01 pre-built segment templates to make it easy to create and edit segments in seconds
4:07 for marketers we're mostly send to segments now is a good time to try to re-engage your unengaged subscribers so
4:13 that they're interacting with your brand and in your engage segments for bfcm my
4:18 favorite acronym or initialism technically after you've set up segments you should determine how your segmentation strategy
4:25 can be used to reward and retain your most valuable subscribers use subscriber
4:31 data to identify your best customers and develop messaging that will build long-term loyalty and maximize Revenue
4:37 growth slide please Chase
4:43 you'll also want to send time testing you also want to spend time testing different types of campaign messages to
4:50 understand what really resonates with your SMS audience the best so that way you can optimize how you
4:55 communicate with your subscribers during cyber week itself especially if you're newer to SMS it's
5:01 really important to create multiple variants of your messages to really test your hypotheses increase conversion
5:07 rates where and when it makes sense we do recommend using testing to compare the performance of different copy
5:13 variations and textiles such as some of the ones you see here copy length or call to action Sunday or time to see
5:21 when your subscribers are most likely to convert on a text message Emoji versus no Emoji media versus no media or MMS
5:29 versus SMS and then static images versus GIFs then you can evaluate your performance
5:35 and optimize your subscriber growth click-through rates and conversions
5:42 and then next we will talk about how to orchestrate SMS with your email solution so I think we can all agree that as
5:48 marketers we really want to create the best user experience for our audiences
5:55 so coordinating email and SMS really allows us to avoid sending duplicative consumer messages like a product alert
6:02 on both channels you can also use the two channels together to send Journeys for example a long-term product drop or
6:10 a long form product drop message to Shoppers via email and then a segmented text to all folks who open the email but
6:17 did not make a purchase so attentive offers a robust marketplace with Integrations with over a hundred
6:23 different vendors covering e-commerce email customer service and more
6:29 including of course Recharge and Gorgias
6:35 so in addition to our Integrations attentive also has a best-in-class full email Suite including both triggered and
6:41 one-time sends attentive triggered email helps drive more sales with less effort which really allows you to add emails to
6:48 your existing SMS Journey with email Journey templates to make sending even easier
6:57 creating integrated cross-channel campaigns for both email and SMS is seamless with Attentive's Magic composer
7:04 wherein one comprehensive window you can both write and sequence email and SMS messages at the same time and there's
7:11 even logic built into this product to ensure you're optimizing Roi across channels
7:20 during bfcm itself customers inboxes are flooded with emails from different brands as I'm sure we are all very well
7:26 aware of today for your revenue and your email deliverability Health score it's really
7:32 important that your emails cut through the noise and actually get opened of course Attentive's generative AI subject
7:38 line tool simplifies that process of optimizing your subject lines preview or body text with a customer's first and
7:45 last name email city or country by allowing AI to step in and do that work
7:51 for you doing more with less if you will this can improve positive signals like
7:57 opens clicks conversions and engagement just meeting more delivered messages and
8:02 revenue for your business
8:08 and that's a wrap from the attentive piece of this so if you do have any questions or are interested in our free
8:15 trial so you can start scaling and sending messages before bfcm simply scan
8:20 that little QR code on the screen here or send an email to growth attentive.com and an attentive specialist will reach
8:27 out to you so thank you for listening to me and everything attentive I'm now going to
8:33 pass it over to Michael who will walk through customer support with Gorgias
8:39 thanks so much Anna and thanks Chase for having me great to meet you all my name is Michael Klonoff from Gorgias I'm
8:46 a technology partner manager here uh kind of like API Integrations and you
8:51 know go to market strategies with the app ecosystem um joining you from San Francisco California and a bit about Gorgias what
8:59 what is Gorgias if you're not familiar with us uh Gorgias is a customer service platform that's really designed
9:04 specifically for e-commerce Brands and built for your entire Tech stack
9:10 um so kind of our first tip on loyalty and retention is meet your customers where they are there's a variety of
9:17 channels where customers will interact and engage with you email Facebook all
9:22 social Instagram you know SMS there are so many different channels that customers come in and they may not all
9:29 necessarily be funneling to just your support email so our biggest tip is meet
9:34 them where they are like with Gorgias you know omni-channel presence is really really important to driving really
9:41 really great customer experience and that leads to retention and that's what builds loyalty because your support team
9:49 has a certain bandwidth they can only handle so many things so putting it all in one place is one way to really
9:56 encapsulate that Omni Channel presence and be able to respond to things really quickly with gorgeous you can kind of
10:03 know like who your customer is the minute they reach out and that customer data is really really crucial to provide
10:09 you know fast and efficient customer screen and support tends to kind of Encompass
10:14 both pre-sales questions and post purchase questions both of those are
10:19 really great opportunities to maximize conversions and retention uh we'll we'll jump to the next tip here
10:26 as well um leveraging uh technology to automate common questions so
10:35 one of the most important things to do is to reduce that first response time which helps to increase like
10:41 satisfaction when working with either new or existing customers a couple ways that you can do this is
10:53 use templated like macros in your responses and the power of like customer information across all those different channels that we mentioned earlier
10:59 67 of conversations coming through chat tend to be a pre-sales type of question
11:05 whereas 76 coming through email usually are post sales questions therefore like
11:13 leveraging automation for some of these kind of self-serve support questions will allow your agents to have more time
11:20 to work on high touch problem solving skills and automate these kind of lower
11:27 um more redundant questions that can easily be handled by automation um so they can focus on what you need to
11:34 do to grow the business um the next area is kind of how do you actually like
11:40 Delight your customers on the support side well it's going to be through um looking at all of your interactions
11:47 about 20 of your customer support interactions leave customers truly delighted and it can cost a lot to
11:55 actually you know keep people delighted over time so you'll see things with discounting or sending gifts or
12:03 um spending in other areas and that doesn't always necessarily lead to increased Customer Loyalty but how do
12:10 you really bring that loyalty up it's through personalizing experiences that
12:16 has a higher chance of converting a visitor into a buyer so the higher your conversion rates are the more you get
12:22 out of your marketing spend and Gorgias helps to kind of personalize that pre
12:28 and post purchase side making any like first-time buyers a repeat customer
12:33 so once you kind of combine all that with the that holistic view of your customer
12:39 getting them all the answers you need that's really where you start picking up traction and delighting them
12:44 and uh kind of moving on to our our last top tip here is knowing who your customer is like the
12:51 minute they reach out so through having a integrated app
12:56 ecosystem that has you know all your Shopify customer data pulling in you know things from attentive from Recharge
13:02 knowing their their payment structure um how to initiate returns quickly
13:08 you'll be able to use this customer data to like quickly provide a relevant customer experience to them and that's
13:15 really kind of the the high level here on how you can leverage support to drive
13:20 loyalty and retention so just a quick recap on this
number one uh we'll jump to the next one here uh
13:28 meet your customers where they are having that Omni Channel presence second one automate all those common questions
13:34 and redundancies and leave your customer support primed to focus on what's really
13:39 important and then lastly using that time drive that retention and cross-sell
13:44 those upsells by leveraging that 360 view of your app your integrated like app ecosystem
13:51 and that's our all our top tips here from Gorgias feel free to uh scan or link here or shoot me an email if you
13:58 have any questions super happy to help out and next up we have a Harteg who's going to be taken
14:05 over Michael thank you so much that was incredible I learned so much about Gorgias and uh that was also incredible
14:12 from the Intensive side hi everyone my name is Singh I am the director of merchant experience at Recharge Recharge
14:20 is a powerful unified Suite of tools that is designed to help your business retain and grow your customer base
14:28 there's an incredible amount of tools from subscription to loyalty and flows
and automation tool that we'll touch
14:33 base on here in three quick tips the first tip here is gifting we're
14:39 talking about acquiring so gifting comes in a couple different flavors but the first flavor is it's fun it's a surprise
14:45 and Delight in experience whether it's for the gift or the gifty it's a seasoned gift which includes
14:51 gifting from customer to customer which is a powerful solution that is available on recharge that you can take advantage
14:58 of to help really bring more customers into your holiday and Black Friday Cyber Monday campaigns
15:05 the goal here is really improving your LTV to cacaq obviously cost of
acquisition is really high so allowing
15:11 your customers to evangelize on your behalf and gift to their mother colleagues friends Partners this is a
15:18 great opportunity just multiply that acquisition additionally gifting from you as a merchant to your customers is
15:24 an incredible asset Michael can probably attest to this from a customer support experience gifting a free product is
15:31 something that really Delights your customers and is also available through recharges flow solution it really allows
15:38 you to think about retention strategies for the Long Haul for Black Friday Cyber Monday so you're not just acquiring
15:44 these customers for one order but thinking about multiple orders and really improving their LTV speaking of
15:50 which a really powerful experience of moving a customer through a single purchase into a subscription delighting
15:57 them with a gift can increase that LTV by almost 2 2.1 time at the very minimum
16:02 so really you're highly recommended think about delighting your customers with a gift and then segwaying them into
16:07 a subscription the next slide that I want to jump into is targeted upsell targeted upsells
16:13 taking those now loyal customers from Black Friday Cyber Monday in your holidays and they've been courted with
16:18 your hero products the ones that are standout and are your shining North Stars for your brand and offering these
16:24 same customers complimentary products things that improve their average order value and increase their average selling
16:31 price of each one of those products the best way about doing this is get personal know your customers through
16:38 recharges flows you can actually create seamless automations that are hyper targeted target targeted with segments
16:44 which Anna can attest to is really important creating customer segments knows their buying Behavior their
16:50 purchasing behavior and addressing them to what they like to purchase next both of these upsells are really easily
16:57 accessible and highly recommend surround sounding your customers everywhere they are sending via email
17:03 buy these upsells in their customer portal even send it through an SMS great way to make sure everyone knows about
17:10 those opportunities speaking of those opportunities turn those opportunities not only into increasing your average
17:16 order value but knowing your customers next purchase also helps decrease churn so really targeting the right product is
17:22 super important and you can absolutely do so through flows as well as recharges analytics some really great hints there
17:28 the next slide I'd like to talk about is about retaining all of those customers now that you've acquired you've grown
17:34 them they're highly valuable you got to keep them so how do you make keeping them easy well through retention
17:40 strategies when customers are thinking about canceling their subscription or canceling the product that they just
17:46 purchased you want to know why surveying your customers is absolutely important
17:51 because it's a incredible feedback loop that you don't have the opportunity to ask very often in e-commerce so through
17:58 recharges after return retention strategies on close you can know your customers by what they've purchased
18:03 where they're located when they're canceling and what they're canceling what products they're subscribed to knowing all this information you can
18:10 then ask them meaningful questions about their experience was it too expensive did we ship too frequently did you have
18:17 too much of a wrong flavor did you need to upgrade to a better experience all of those are great options that you
18:25 can then rebut with incentives to keep those customers keeping those customers can show up in so many different ways
18:31 the first and best way is the freest education knowledge is super important educating them about your product and
18:37 your brand value is number one secondarily it's providing incentives like discounts and credits swapping
18:44 products or even changing frequencies all of these are giving options to your
18:49 customers to experience your product how they want to experience it and last but
18:54 not least if you're just not uh certain about it a B test one of the most powerful things to do is test your
19:01 hypothesis if you have an inkling of an idea try it out with your customers and validate those responses especially
19:07 through flows you're capable of providing two different experiences even on a customer cancellation experience to
19:13 validate which one is the most effective so you can then take it to the rest of your customers to really optimize your retention for the holiday season with
19:20 these one two three steps I really recommend implementing it now because you'll see a long haul Improvement to
19:26 your ltp on the next slide here um we have so much more to talk about at Recharge other than those three tips
19:32 we've been like I mentioned working on automation tools loyalty bundling gifting and enhanced analytics local
19:39 pickup for convenience there's a lot that we're doing at recharge and partnering with great companies like
19:45 Gorgias unintentive and actually supercharging my favorite Merchant John
Roman to really succeed for this holiday
19:51 season so check out this link this is our features page and a great way to explore recharge so I'm going to hand it
19:56 back to chase thank you beautiful
20:03 and I'm Michael Harteg I cannot thank you enough for giving your tips for the
20:08 holiday season so for everybody here this was intentionally a little bit brief and a little bit high level we
20:15 recognize it a lot of times platforms just talking about how awesome they are kind of goes overlooked a little bit so we do have a lot of content that we can
20:22 share we have a lot of insight please reach out to all three of us there are QR codes there are links we're happy to
20:27 provide our emails in the chat here if you need any questions or anything like that on that note please ask questions
20:32 in the Q a function on this Zoom link we're going to get to those in about 20 minutes we want to make sure we answer all of your questions
20:39 in the meantime we're going to move into our round table section uh focused on
20:44 John Roman who's CEO of Battlbox so first and foremost I will pass it off to John give us a little bit of introduction about yourself in Battlbox
20:52 sure I'm happy to be here all all of those presentations were were great by the way I don't know if you guys saw I
20:58 was taking notes the entire time I think there's some really good takeaways from each one uh John Roman CEO of Battlbox
21:05 we've been around since 2015. um first couple years we hadn't come to
21:10 our senses yet um and we weren't on recharge but we did shortly migrate over the
21:18 meat and potatoes of Battlbox or an outdoor adventure brand um the big element of our Revenue over
21:25 90 percent is subscription we send a monthly mystery box that has Outdoor
21:31 Adventure Gear think hiking camping really anything that you're going outside to The Great Outdoors to do it's
21:38 gear to take with you and um we also had a Netflix TV show which
21:43 which was kind of a big deal so then survival go check it out that was fun maybe we'll get into uh into
21:50 your box 100 that just shipped also that's some fun content to talk through as well yeah so how this is going to work as well I have five questions that
21:56 we're gonna ask John um our panelists will chime in when relevant but uh let's kick this off
22:01 right away so one of the big things that everybody always talks about coming through bfcm and the holiday season is
22:07 discounting especially on subscriptions how do you as a merchant plan to strike a balance between offering attractive
22:13 discounts to customers but also maintaining a healthy profit margin for your business so it's it's difficult
22:20 um when it comes to Black Friday Cyber Monday and kind of insult to injury is this past couple of years we've seen it
22:26 creeping up earlier and earlier and earlier and now it's like you see Brands going start of November
22:33 um which which we we put our foot down we we start earlier than I would like we start the week of so this year it'll be
22:40 November 20th um the Monday prior to Black Friday but it's it's really difficult
22:46 um because you know taking taking some data from past year specifically last year when you have two aggressive and
22:52 offer um the reality is it brings on Bad actors and what I mean by Bad actors
22:58 they're they're they're not true customers of of your brand in the sense the customers you want to get the
23:04 customers that identify and and want to be a part of of your brand they're just fuel chasing and
23:12 their their LTV is is not going to be anything more times than not than that
23:18 one order and I think it's really easy for a merchant to say okay we know you
23:24 know this customer acquisition costs is acceptable or this return on Aspen is acceptable because you're taking your
23:30 your historical data of LTV expectations and pairing that with it so you're
23:37 seeing these amazing acquisition costs and you're like go go go and in reality there's the Bad actors in there she had
23:42 to be really cognizant of it um you know we've already mentioned testing but testing is is something to do
23:49 um it it's a little bit funky because testing now with offers you're still not
23:55 going to get the same behavior as you will in Black Friday Cyber Monday we have some aggressive introductory offers
24:02 that actually are very profitable and perform really really well the entire year but we cannot use them during Black
24:10 Friday Cyber Monday because we get a large influx of of people that are just
24:16 taking advantage of the deal so it's a it's a fine balance I think really one of the things that that we've done in
24:23 the last couple years and we'll do this here is is segmenting the offers so we'll have um for example this year for
24:30 Battlbox we'll have some doorbusters that are publicly um open to everybody they'll sit on our
24:36 site they'll be on social they'll be in um all emails to even non um previous
24:43 purchasers what we do is um we have a secret private doorbuster
24:48 section that's only to our active customers and we won't publicly list that it'll be
24:56 a um it'll be a landing page that's blocked checking um checking a tag to see if they are an
25:03 active customer to ensure that there's no gamification of it and those are going to be more aggressive
25:08 um offers and less margins but it's fine because we'd rather give the good deals
25:15 to our loyal customers who are with us because they see the value in the brand and
25:21 um they should be rewarded so we we segment offers in in that sense and then
25:27 when we're talking about um new acquisition we're just really weary of the Uber large discounts
25:35 um because they're just they're they don't attract the right people so I think it's a it's a combination of segmenting and just being very cognizant
25:42 of of the discounts I'm hearing pieces of all three of our products hopped in here you're talking
25:48 discounts on products up front you're talking segmenting to the right audiences and then you're talking you're definitely going to get questions on the
25:53 front and the back end based on what different people are seeing um panelists any insight into this
25:59 yeah I'll jump in here I think uh John mentioned uh time frame can be an enemy uh time friend frame can also be a
26:06 friend spread out that discount you know you can actually uh think about Black Friday cyber money not just as a day but
26:12 actually as a holiday block where as a customer you're incentivizing them to experience the entire period of time
26:19 over multiple orders that they're purchasing so adding gifts adding incentives really helps customers when
26:25 they uh you know Buy on Monday the week before it's not cancel on Black Friday Cyber Monday to get that Black Friday
26:31 summer Monday deal and then cancel again when they uh are done with that experience bring them through the whole
26:36 journey that whole experience can be really cool and the last item that I'll say is I'm over discounts I think
26:42 discounts are overly used I get a nosebleed every time we think about a discount comparatively from one brand to
26:47 another I really love the concept about credits about giving somebody the ability to purchase more in the future
26:53 so that's a really cool thing if you can think about gift cards or crediting a part of your campaign strategy that's a
26:59 cool yeah heart attack you have some really really great insights as far as like
27:04 when to do this and I know what uh John had kind of been speaking to is where is
27:11 the right place what's the best place and uh what kind of came to mind is you know when you're able to have a very
27:19 holistic view of your customers you can you know start live chat conversations with them when customers are displaying
27:25 like pre-sales Behavior maybe they're lingering on their checkout page or maybe they're like adding items to their
27:31 shopping cart and you can ask them in that moment do they have questions or
27:37 you can use a discount at this time where maybe if they reach a certain order value that's really what's going
27:43 to drive the behavior forward so whatever your customers might need whether it's a credit to kind of make a more confident purchase so I think
27:50 there's some really great callouts from you guys and I think from the attentive side of
27:55 the house going back to the theme of timing and totally understand I think especially in this specific economic
28:03 climate really understanding who a customer is their level of loyalty and really being able to serve the
28:10 appropriate incentives to customers that are deemed worthy of such the term
28:16 active customer can definitely have many different faces to it so earlier we do
28:24 see that there are huge advantages to being able to it I suppose it's like convert that
28:31 subscriber who might just be searching around on your site um sort of interested really looking for
28:38 that promotion but actually through subscribing to different channels like an SMS how can you really capture their
28:45 interest and keep them engaged by means of being able to even like repeat purchase certain items before so what I
28:53 was referencing earlier for example too is like really engaging your subscribers to turn them into those active customers
29:00 to then be able to have them be eligible for those uh creme de La Creme of the
29:05 offers if you will and being able to tease that is also really significant
29:11 it's a really good point um something that I wanted to throw in um something Michael said made me think
29:16 of it but um something we've found that that works well is doing a stacked
29:22 discount um view so that's our first phase the the pre-black Friday Black Friday sale
29:29 where you know spend a hundred dollars get 20 off spend 200 get 30 off
29:36 um it tends to kind of push away some of the Bad actors that that exist just looking for deals that aren't
29:43 um good for business love the tier discount approach that's actually a really good way to lean into
29:50 our second question which kind of refers to loyalty so once we do get these people coming in once we do get all of
29:55 your new acquisitions through the holiday season what does post purchase look like to ensure that they're
30:00 actually that the customers you acquire actually become repeat buyers this is kind of directly answering your your
30:06 kind of fake actors question how do you weed those out and if you do get a handful of them how do you make sure that the right ones stay the right
30:13 customers for longer sure so so obviously post purchase we're engaging with communication
30:19 um we're going email we're going SMS we have a mobile app so we're going at pushes and based on engagement we're
30:26 then learning what their preferred form of communication is and then of course leaning leaning into where they want us
30:33 to be um one of the big pieces is education and providing value outside of just to
30:40 purchase the product right um so we're educating on the industry
30:46 um we're providing links to our social media accounts content that we already have posted really just showing showing
30:55 what else is is um from the brand so for us a big big
31:00 piece of us is the community building we do so we start showing um aspects of that
31:07 we have a Facebook group that you have to be an active member to be in and there's lots of value out there with
31:13 free giveaways and and just conversations so really leaning in
31:19 um and just showing what else what else there is providing value outside of just the actual product
31:26 I appreciate you saying things like obviously you should be following up with email and SMS but I do want to double down on that that there are a lot
31:32 of brands that we talk to I'm sure Michael you can attest to this as well it's a lot of Brands we talked to that go oh I should be sending emails after
31:38 they already purchased the answer is absolutely they're already fans of your brand they're already buying things from
31:44 you keep those emails going targeted emails obviously you know don't just send an email every day just to send an email but you send targeted follow-ups
31:50 you make sure they're actually on track to buy down Pathways that you're looking for and that's a huge win that a lot of
31:55 Brands actually don't Leverage yeah and the you know the messaging it
32:01 doesn't end there I mean right after they do their first purchase like that's also the beginning of a new layer of the
32:07 customer Journey it kind of comes in at every layer you know are you enhancing that like
32:12 unboxing experience of the product are you encouraging you know a csat score uh
32:18 surveys to go out are you sending them you know dripping out relevant product recommendations over time and as John
32:25 kind of mentioned like building that Community where people will want to like share fill off the product and you can
32:32 follow up later on with my special offers that all kind of ties into keeping that customer loyal over time
32:39 and I think one of the unique aspects to that level of communication outside of
32:44 providing that customer service and making customers know that they're heard and their opinions are valued
32:51 um by means of you know future purchases they don't know what they don't know sort of thing another thing we've seen
32:57 be become really popular especially within SMS is gamification
33:04 um or having those like two-way conversations when it comes to text messages so are there Ways by means of
33:11 quizzes or what are you looking for can we help you find a product so ways to
33:17 really have customers respond back via text um to be able to get them excited about
33:23 the brand get them to learn more about other products and really things that they don't really know that they need yet which is golden
33:31 I want to double tap on one other thing uh John I hope you're not going to bring this up on the next question that I asked but Michael you had a really
33:38 interesting point there which was um investing in the actual box that you're shipping
33:43 um it's something that John and I have talked about this for a while but it's it's the only touch point in the customer experience with 100 open rate
33:49 so emails sometimes don't get open texts don't get open the box that they get 100 they're opening it that's the final
33:55 product John talk a little bit more about investing in the actual box and how that leads to success and branding
34:02 and all these other things you're looking for yeah so it's it's it's a really good point it's the only thing that it not
34:09 only does it have 100 open rate but like you know you talk about emails and SMS and some of them does get opened and
34:15 it's it's by mistake right and you're quickly exiting it out or upset you even opened it like it's such an opportunity
34:22 to wow your customers so um even the little things of like deciding how it's packaged and how it's
34:28 presented it makes just such a difference right um you know that we're getting kind of
34:35 Niche when we're talking about subscription box um I think it's a big part of that is is
34:41 this this feeling of of you know a gift for yourself and and the excitement
34:46 level with that and the importance there but I think it's even it goes across all of e-commerce it goes across anything
34:52 you purchase right um think about the last time you got a package and you know Amazon is is
35:00 amazing when it comes to how quickly I'm gonna get something that I need right right and it's literally since it
35:07 started I Got a notification that Amazon delivered something but the Amazon experience is it's just this brown box
35:14 with some Amazon tape and you know some Uline um or probably Amazon made Bubbles and
35:21 it's just not it's not a great experience right but think about the last thing you bought that wasn't from
35:27 Amazon fulfilled by Amazon right like it's such an opportunity and and you see
35:32 like um can't think of the cookie brand um that someone sent me recently but like you opened it up and literally the
35:40 experience of the unboxing for these 12 cookies that were arguably
35:45 overpriced made it so worth it because it was just an amazing experience there
35:50 was a book in there talking about it's just such a such an opportunity that's that's missed so much where you can just
35:57 you can wow a customer especially on their first their first order with you and you could have them for wife just by
36:04 giving them that that moment of excitement when they when they unboxed whatever it is that you sold them
36:12 100 agreed and I think an added advantage that John 2 is we've been talking a lot about
36:21 let's say farther down the the purchase funnel right with a customer who's made their first purchase they might actually
36:28 not be engaged just yet within any of your existing marketing channels So within that unboxing experience there is
36:36 even an opportunity to have them become more engaged with your brand so putting a now ever popular QR code or a a
36:45 keyword that you can text to to opt into your program as well those physical
36:51 experiences also provide really really crucial opportunities to grow your uh your customer base and really have them
36:57 be engaged with your with your content yeah you spot on with the QR code so I
37:03 think in our every book that we send with with the monthly shipments I think
37:08 we have maybe six different QR codes on average it's just which might seem crazy but it's it's through the Journey and
37:15 it's every opportunity um for them to engage where they would want and you're right like the customer
37:21 likely isn't super engaged at that point that that's your moment to really get them get them to the next level
37:29 moving on here um again if you have questions please use q a function we're excited to get to those and answer all
37:34 of those I want to tackle a buzzword which I know everybody hates buzzwords so let's get a little more specific on
37:40 them it's term customer experience everyone's talking about customer experience what part of this customer experience what about thing let's dive
37:47 into something more specific what's a specific piece of this customer experience that you think has a lot of
37:53 opportunity for enhancing retention in 2024. so don't give me like post purchase give me something specific you
37:59 know this piece of this thing is a huge opportunity so I think
38:04 um yeah we've been talking about customer experience now for years and the importance of it um and kind of hinted and we all have
38:10 touched on a little bit about the community piece um I think that's the biggest opportunity I think it's it's and I've
38:18 talked about this before this trend that we've seen and it's it's not new and it's it's it's not novel it's it's the
38:24 fact that consumers really want to connect with the brands they they buy
38:29 from that they spend their discretionary income with they they want to feel some sort of connection and and it's a
38:36 relationship right so I think that when we're talking about experience yeah the
38:42 unboxing that's that's great but people want a little bit more than that and really I think that's the biggest
38:48 opportunity um taking you know a lot of brands are just they're they're only channels
38:55 direct to direct to Consumer right off off their website and what I what I
39:00 really think the big opportunity is is really omnichannel but even taking it as
39:06 far some Brands will be able to do stuff in in person um and and that's probably the far far
39:11 end of the spectrum but I think there's such an opportunity just to engage with with your customers and and and truly
39:18 form an actual real relationship because that's that's what consumers are looking
39:24 for they want to feel a connection I think you look at um
39:29 um celebrities or influencers that have been able to build amazing gigantic Brands right like you think of Kylie
39:36 Jenner or you think of um Mr Beast and the multiple Brands he's been able to build it's because of that
39:43 and I think it's it's right in front of us and that's the opportunity it's it's really just Bridging the Gap
39:51 love that as an answer sorry I took some of your fire from answering the asking the Box question earlier
39:56 you mind if I uh jump on that uh please I I've learned uh through my career that uh your most loyal customers aren't the
40:04 ones that are always buying all the time loyalty does include churn these
40:09 customers may actually take a break from your product but they're loyal because they'll return so it's this concept
40:15 called stickiness and John and BattlBots has done is such a wonderful job about providing a customer
40:21 experience outside of just the product it's the box it's actual customer support that's power through gorgeous
40:27 it's these campaigns like um Mission 100 it's these exciting
40:33 experiences that those customers who may not be purchasing Battlbox right now are still
40:39 loyal to the brand and come back and actually one of the the proudest moments I've seen is uh John's stickiest
40:45 customers are years long um and that's because uh battle box is
40:50 really refined that experience past the product and it really encompasses the brand with that customer's lifestyle
40:58 I'm gonna ask another question quickly because I want to talk about uh Mission 100 John but
41:04 um next question kind of pulls into Data a little bit which I know is another buzzword doing a terrible job of avoiding buzzwords in this webinar today
41:11 um how are you leveraging data from past years or from just customers who were giving you all this data how are you
41:18 leveraging that to create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns and this question originally was built
41:23 around like the holidays and how do you kind of pivot from last year's holidays but talk a little bit about Mission 100 and how you took that data to then
41:29 provide this ridiculous experience for everyone else yeah so um so we call our
41:35 monthly boxes the mystery box we call it missions and we hit Mission 100 which
41:41 um we hit it in uh a few months ago and there was all this Buzz because we spent
41:46 such a a large amount of our time trying to focus on building community and
41:51 listening to our customers because they're going to tell us what what they want and um to not listen to them I
41:57 think would be very full foolish but there was a lot of Buzz Around Mission 100 and all of the chatter was
42:04 um pretty cool ideas and what we're gonna put in the box but they weren't just feasible we can't give everybody a brand
42:11 new Jeep um for you know 200 a month as much as we'd love to that economics aren't there
42:17 so we knew we had to do something something big um so what we did it was pretty wild we
42:24 we took 500 um customers randomly um just put all active subscribers did a
42:32 randomizer and those 500 customers um all received a bunch of bonus items
42:38 70 worth of extra stuff and we had literally just reached out to all of our
42:44 vendors and told them what we were trying to do and it was all donated donated stuff that wanted to be a part
42:50 of the cause so those 500 customers all got you know some extra stuff but we put
42:55 five golden I have one here five of these golden tickets
43:01 um in five of the boxes randomly and it was complete Willy Wonka style they received a golden ticket there were some
43:07 instructions on the back and we flew them to Texas um San Antonio we flew out there too and
43:15 we put them on the next morning so we hung out with them took them to dinner um got to know them all we had a bunch
43:21 of our vendors there as well so it was like the full farming a table ecosystem of the vendors that are in the Box the
43:27 Battlbox team and then um five lucky customers and we took them out the next morning we put all of them
43:35 in an active World War II tank and they shot a Target downrange and if they were
43:41 to hit the target they would have gotten a hundred thousand dollars cash and unfortunately nobody won
43:47 um in hindsight I kind of probably should have figured out a way for someone to have won because we wanted to give give the money away but it was just
43:54 you know we're talking about most effective ways and the opportunity it's things like that that's probably again
44:01 the extreme side of it that's not going to make sense for most brands but um we were at the point of community
44:07 building where we wanted to do and want to continue to do like in-person events and and it's
44:13 I mean the the the churn reduction we saw leading up to
44:18 that and we didn't do it as a sales tool right it wasn't like oh sign up for Battlbox and you're gonna win this we
44:24 didn't announce it until after our renewal had occurred so that there was no it was very very
44:30 clear that this was not a sales tool this was only for existing customers
44:35 um it's kind of a a wild surprise and Delight but it's it's a competitive landscape these
44:42 days I want it all back to the original question which is how do you take data and use that to maybe suppress and
44:48 Delight all the rest of your customers I think that's just about the perfect example you could have had so I do I I
44:54 do have an easier one though um let's hear an easier one so so realistic than having people shooting
45:00 tanks over Christmas why not so I'm actually really excited of this um so several months ago and we're just
45:08 having enough data now where we're analyzing it this week which is pretty cool um we saw that after the third order
45:16 um before the fourth order there was a there was a drop off and looking at the historical data and looking at all of
45:23 the the different cohorts and it was pretty consistent after that third order you
45:30 know a higher number we're leaving than the rest of the the waterfall so we have
45:37 an automation now where we reach out proactively to these customers and we just give them a discount off their next
45:43 order um they don't have to do anything literally Auto applies and they're
45:48 already active and scheduled there are no data is coming up so it's
45:54 pure just just surprise and Delight gift but it's at such a optimal time that the
45:59 data suggests that we're then able to curb curb traditional churn Behavior pretty substantially
46:07 love it again I'm hearing segmentation I'm hearing proactive Outreach uh and
46:12 our Michael anymore inside there yeah I mean what an incredible story uh
46:19 uh for that mission 100 it just kind of brought a lot of things to mind uh yeah
46:25 you kind of never want to like sacrifice any customer experience and loyalty for any like short-term Revenue so going
46:33 that extra mile keeping their customers happy whether it's something as simple as replacing a
46:38 lost package might you know possible in the short term but it will tend to pay off like tenfold in the long run where
46:46 you'll kind of generate these like repeat purchases and referrals and you know with having a massive amount of
46:53 data to view what are your customers purchasing in the past is there anything new coming up that could be a good
47:00 recommendation and kind of positioning that ahead of time down the customer experience on the customer Journey
47:06 really helps to kind of boost that and I think also it's interesting that
47:12 using data to almost look at the inverse of that as well right so for the folks
47:19 it works on Amazing we've solved X percent of the challenge that we face today how are we then using the data to
47:17 hone in on the audiences that are not perhaps engaging with that method and
47:32 how can you engage them in different ways whether it be asking them a question
47:37 um or you know collecting insights for down the road for future initiatives as
47:43 something to just consider and the type of customer location whatever it may be so that's also something that's really
47:50 valuable to consider as well with that I'm also really jealous I would have loved to have shot from a World War II
47:56 tank that's really awesome I think we're unanimous and all being jealous about that
48:04 um again final reminder use q a we don't currently have any questions so we're going to roll into our last panel
48:09 question we'll hang on as long as we want to answer any QA questions but final question one of my favorite ones that we asked last year and had some
48:16 great feedback here John we've heard a lot of dues you know make sure you do this make sure you're setting up segmentation make sure your community
48:22 channels are active what are some don'ts to avoid to enhance enhance customer retention what are things you want to
48:28 avoid so this might be an unpopular opinion
48:34 um let's go earlier in the in the year um just out of curiosity we did a study
48:41 internally where we signed up um for email SMS lists for 10 brands
48:48 um that we I don't know if the word is looked up to respected they're they're
48:53 making moves they either have a great product they're doing a great job with Community they check a box of of you
49:00 know a brand that most brands probably want to emulate aspirational if you will exactly so we wanted to see what their
49:07 what their Cadence was and there was no engagement um with these so that yes the emails
49:15 were opened yes the SMS were open but there is zero click-through I'm short of opening the
49:21 emails um we didn't click on on texts or emails knowing that for most advanced Brands
49:30 there's probably you know a difference in the amount of frequency based on engagement
49:36 yeah in 30 days a couple Brands were pretty close to sending a form of communication
49:42 every single day and to me that's just excessive right
49:48 you're gonna you're getting benefit from it you're seeing the revenue coming for each one but you're just inundating and
49:55 hammering your list and it's just not it's not a warm and fuzzy feeling right
50:00 it's very transactional less less relationship you don't have that much to sell and say
50:08 that you need to communicate every single day and especially to someone that wasn't engaging or clicking anything yeah I
50:15 think there's a strong argument if if you have someone that's that's clicking and going to your site and engaging with
50:21 your tax then then yes maybe that is a super user that
50:26 um to a point earlier you know ideal customers only necessarily have the highest frequency of buying but
50:31 they're they are consistently purchasing and if they're super engaged like that I think it's a completely different conversation but for someone not to
50:39 engage and get close to um and with one brand over 30. pets in in a month I think that's a
50:47 don't and I get it email can be a great amazing Channel and it's it's arguably
50:52 the most profitable Channel you can have but be smart and try to put yourself in the
50:59 in the shoes of the consumer I love it I think you're spot on I'm gonna I'm gonna put everyone else on the
51:05 spot as well I want everyone else's don't Michael I saw you come off mute though you want to respond to that or you have another don't
51:10 yeah I got I I think I have an interesting don't and it's something that I've seen
51:15 um especially when looking at customers who are trying to interact with a brand
51:20 on social channels I don't know if you guys have ever seen this but sometimes looking at a brand and in the
51:26 description of their like social link it'll say like no DMS and I think that's a I think that's a misstep because
51:32 there's there's absolutely ways to incorporate that into your support stack
51:38 where you can actually respond to DMS and that's you have to not discount that
51:44 customers are purchasing on mobile more than ever so combining the ability to
51:49 respond to those where they are which is like one of my topics from earlier and you know opening that channel up is
51:55 really gonna lead to much better engagement because just because you want someone to engage with you in one place
52:00 doesn't mean that's already where they're gonna go you kind of just have to be ready to field from whatever Direction it comes in and then secondly
52:07 uh because there's so much e-commerce happening on mobile sites not optimizing your your Shopify store
52:15 for mobile or whatever e-commerce platform you're on is also I think a missed opportunity so to not be a great
52:24 just as great of a mobile um store as the kind of regular landing
52:30 page um that's kind of like my two thoughts on that love it yeah I think that's so spot-on
52:36 so I think you know when we're building our sites as merchants and we're making changes we're on a computer right so
52:42 we're looking at it that way um but I mean I can speak from from Battlboxes point of view looking at
52:48 analytics like four out of five users on our site are mobile like it and I think we almost
52:55 have to retrain our brain like you have to take mobile experience it's if 80 of
53:01 our customers and for some Brands it's much higher um you just have to take that into consideration I think I think that's a
53:07 huge one Michael I think from the the channel perspective
53:12 of things um a lot of a bit of a don't that I see
53:18 that customers are very hesitant to doing is not engaging customers with
53:23 non-promotional content um especially in a channel like SMS where the ROI is pretty crucial it's a
53:31 little bit more of a higher cost Channel than something like an email right but the engagement and level of
53:38 personalization it's a buzzword Chase I'm sorry individuals individualization
53:43 if you will um but having Brands fear or want to
53:48 promote the discounts over more of that Discovery awareness
53:53 um more of that just brand voice standpoint is something that we have
53:59 really seen um increase the the customer lifetime value and engagement of a customer that
54:04 is outside of just the sheer promotional here's a sale click here to to buy now
54:11 sort of perspective heart attack I want to let you go but I'm also going to throw a dome in there
54:17 because it kind of combines a little bit with what Anna was saying and what John said up front which is and again kind of
54:23 uh confrontational a little bit but don't include a sales offer in every
54:29 touch point that you have education is super super strong uh heart attack I think I just stole yours education's
54:35 super strong there's a lot of value in like hey check out this thing or how to use the product or this is the next step
54:41 or here's an influencer who's been using this in years the results they have here's a different piece of our site here's a Blog something like that always
54:48 have a call to action always put a CTA on there but maybe not necessarily always having some sort of sales
54:53 initiative I think that goes a long way yeah he didn't fully steal it but uh
54:59 it's a part of mine this is a thing that breaks my heart it's not a don't it's a you're gonna break heartache's heart so
55:05 do what you want with that um when I'm a customer of a brand and
55:10 I'm loyal to them and they treat long-term customers differently than new
55:16 customers it always makes me reconsider I'm not as special as the new customer I'm going to pretend I'm going to be a
55:22 new customer I'm going to break that whole loyalty experience because it's just not good enough and that loyalty experience is often
55:29 just so transactional it says like hey you're coming and getting a new box in about like a week's time here's a credit
55:35 card charge thank you for that I want to see fun things great Brands
55:41 will drop recipe books as John Roman mentioned uh into their experience I want to know
55:46 about that recipe box uh or recipe book that's coming in my next box I want to be a little tickled sometimes I want to
55:53 not know about it I want to be surprised when I open that box with 100 uh open rate it's about Dynamic storytelling not
56:00 consistent storytelling because we're humans we're going to get satiated on our dopamine and then the next hit's not
56:07 going to be as good as the last one so get the highs and lows as John did with Mission 100 and the next piece is just
56:13 maybe a fun little uh extra in the Box maybe it's a little bit information maybe it's just an email those are the
56:20 things that really excite me but when I don't see that it breaks my heart so maybe don't do it
56:27 awesome way to close this out with some biology didn't think we'd actually get there well done
56:32 thank you everybody for joining really appreciate your time thank you John thank you Michael Anna and Harteg we
56:38 appreciate everything you were able to deliver to us today everyone have a great holiday season reach out to
56:44 Recharge Attentive and Gorgias and Battlbox if you have any other questions and uh that's it for stock up
56:50 for the holidays thank you so much thanks everyone everybody