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- [00:00]
A
Connor slipping already in the new year. What's going on?
- [00:02]
B
Someone's going to take a spot if you don't relax there, I'll say, Dylan.
- [00:06]
A
You better have a big episode today. This is like a tryout almost.
- [00:09]
B
I am an operator and I do marketing.
- [00:11]
C
What are your AI Hot takes number one.
- [00:14]
B
So I think AI is close to being maxed out on software, which might be a crazy concept to think instead of having those like product tiles that's pretty common, like right below the hero section of your homepage, like take a look at collection styles. They're crushing pretty well you guys. As ecom brand marketers should go, go look at every info funnel that you can. Info and affiliate are always three to four years ahead of the tactics of my fellow E Comm brand marketers.
- [00:42]
A
It's like all tests are big tests. As long as they're rooted in research. Doesn't matter if it's shipping a whole new product page that took you six months to build or if it's changing a headline that took your copywriter 10 minutes to ideate.
- [00:52]
C
And so I think you're going to see a lot more live streaming. Just like super organic real content that like can't be fake is going to be much more in demand.
- [00:58]
B
We're going to destroy trust. If every Jones Road piece of content, social media blog, like Instagram, insert everywhere that you have distribution, it just says AI. People aren't going to trust it as much. So I think there's a human renaissance coming on. The way you can become a billion dollar company if you just do those six things.
- [01:17]
C
Welcome to Marketing Operators episode 95. We've got a doozy today with Dylan Ander, a two time guest who's actually one of our most popular guests. We brought him back to go over his book Billion Dollar Secrets. I've got pages of serial notes as always. Want to thank our sponsors, Motion, Rich Panel, Pression AI after cell and house. Let's get into it.
- [01:38]
B
All right.
- [01:38]
A
I am super pumped with Motion's newest shipment of AI technology in their tool called Analyze this. So basically how it works is you create a report like usual, you know, slice the data however, however you want, whatever you're trying to get insight to. Once the report is pulled, you just click Analyze this. It'll pull the report and then it'll send it right into your inbox and you can go into this report and it gives you a very, very detailed analysis of what's working, what's not working and then ultimately it even goes into what you should do next based on the analysis that it's giving you. So just continuing to automate this analysis piece of creative strategy and I'm, I'm very excited about it, how it's going to unlock more time and more production for creative strategy teams, 100%.
- [02:22]
D
And it's another example of how important critically analyzing creative is today with Meta's Andromeda, which we've talked about at length on the podcast. Creative diversity has never been more important. But creative diversity to Meta is a black box to marketers. We don't know exactly what they think of as, as new and different and unique. So Motion's building native tools to help marketers guide us through that process and ultimately lead to better performance.
- [02:45]
A
So a few specific examples we've been using it for at hexcloud lately just launched a new product category in and we launched some social funnels around it. So I use it to analyze all of the cocktail shaker ads that we ran and it gave me super clear, very actionable insights. And then an even bigger report and even harder to do manual report was looking at all of our Gordon ramsay ads from September 1st through yesterday. Like, think about if, you know, Ridge was going to look at all of its everyday carry ads. Like, that is literally hundreds, maybe thousands of ads. And it's one thing to be able to pull that report, but it's totally different thing to be able to pump literally millions of dollars of data into the analyze this report and have that analysis spit out in a fraction of the time that it would take, you know, a team of creative strategists to do it manually. So very exciting stuff. Very, very different use cases. So it just shows the breadth that this new feature of the product has.
- [03:39]
D
So if you're a marketer that wants the insights of motion, go to motionapp.com and tell them that the operator sent you.
- [03:47]
C
Before recording. You were like, hey, I have some AI hot takes. I've known you as a guy that's got some hot takes. Last time we talked about your CRO hot takes, we're definitely going to talk about CRO today. What are your AI hot takes?
- [03:57]
B
So the AI hot takes, number one, there's going to be like quickly a point of like a plateau of very little return in software. So I think AI is close to being maxed out on software, which might be a crazy concept to think. I think the future of AI is actually machine and robotics. That's where I think AI is going to be tremendous and the future of it. Walt Disney has one of My favorite quotes. That humans crazy overestimate what they can do in a year, but really underestimate what they could do in 10 years. And that's like for being as a founder, a brand and anything like I've taken that and internalized it tremendously. And everyone's like month over month, this is growing so much, yada yada. It's like, well take a look on the longer scale. Like it's going to be beyond anything you think it is. So I think software, like it's not cooked but it's like, you know, pretty close to the point of no code. Like truly. And if you know just a little code, you're there. So software, there's only so much additional value to add, so many additional wrappers we can have that I think, you know, our value that we get from AI right now is not going to be much more in the software world.
- [05:23]
A
Are you saying that from like a development perspective only or like broadly to all software?
- [05:28]
B
Broadly. Like the quality will sharpen, like a lot of these ad creation tools, like the quality will get better but other than quality improving, like what additional innovation can they make?
- [05:39]
A
Right. Well that's what I was going to ask about was the, was the ad creative production stuff? Because we're not, I don't think, I think Cody, you probably agree, I think you've said this. We're not quite there yet on like having stuff be ad account ready.
- [05:51]
C
I have changed my mind in the last two weeks, dude. We are cooking like so we have like high brand standards of fonts and stuff like that. We have a tool, we're working with an agency. And this is all Taylor Holiday's whole Sean thing of like, you know, there's not as much value in software. So it's software and agency together, which obviously things are going there. But so we're working with an agency that's essentially becoming, you know, AI powered agency, creative agency. And we're building this thing with Nano Banana and we actually launched today. Probably a few hundred statics from this tool. Just cannot tell. Like they're just mind blowingly good. So it's, it is accelerating so fast and I'm so bearish on like AI ugc. Like I just think that's like the complete worst. This is my hot take. That's like the worst problem to solve is AI ugc. Cause that's just like it's completely missing the point. But I do think video is getting really, really good. Like I saw this Hermes ad on my feed, like not for a full production Ad but like for B roll and animating things and whatever. But for, for static it's like we're there product stuff. It's not human but I, there is stuff you can do a human so it's, it's accelerating at the fastest pace.
- [07:06]
B
I have a nerd one for you. I know you guys like the nerd stuff. Okay, I, I, I will send a free book to one of you guys. Well, you got one already. But do you guys know what C2PA is? So it's like the content to like production, like alliance kind of thing like that. So effectively like you know, in social media, like especially on TikTok, it's like created with AI like you know, you know that kind of stuff. Like some platforms that says created with AI, do you know how they get that? Every time you take a video or a picture there is literally a device ID that happens when you take that image. So there's a giant initiative across Adobe, Figma, Google, Meta. Like all these companies are coming together. If you look up C2PA and what it means is that they're going to be able to for the rest of forever if you don't have an actual device ID on your image or your video, they're going to know it's AI and assume it's AI because how do you take an image or video without having, without having a device? So based on that, I'm not saying these tools are wrong, but keep your eyes out for this whole C2PA thing because us as marketers, we want efficiency and we're going to destroy trust. If every Jones Road piece of content social media blog like insert everywhere that you have distribution it just says AI, people aren't going to trust it as much. So I think there's a human renaissance coming on the way that like yeah it's cool for us to get these ads in a lot of this AI, but I do think it's going to destroy consumer trust, especially with the older demo.
- [08:50]
C
That was what Adam Mosseri said. So we did a predictions episode that was one of my takes is like what actually becomes wanted by consumers and is almost like a signal is anything that can't be faked because it's so hard to and the stuff that it's so hard to tell and so the stuff that is just so obviously not faked is actually like the status signal. And it's like my analogy is it's like being thin used to be a really big status signal in society and now that anyone can do it essentially one, one pill One medication being jacked is more of a flex now because like it shows hard work and stuff. And so I think you're going to see a lot more live streaming, just like super organic real content that like can't be faked is going to be much more in demand. And Adam Mosseri said the other day like very similar points but like he's like there's going to be so much AI content, it's going to be so hard to tell. We're not going to tag that. It's actually going to be easier to.
- [09:43]
B
Tag stuff that's real and that is C2PA. So if you guys are a really large company, you're actually able to apply to join the alliance. Heat Map is a little baby company compared to frickin Google and all the others. But if you want to be part of the member and society of the people changing that it is little counter to marketing of saying I want to increase efficiency on AI but you know, C2PA watch out for it.
- [10:12]
A
But are you saying then that like it's, it's basically stamping this like AI label on a lot of stuff that's not actually AI, you're just saying because it's coming from a, like a device.
- [10:20]
B
No. So the inverse, if there is no device ID on, on something that is an image or a video, that means it's made by AI, it was synthetically generated if there's no device ID on it.
- [10:32]
A
I see what you're saying.
- [10:33]
B
Okay, so by default, like if I'm understanding what the alliance is putting out so far, everything's going to be tagged as AI or synthetically generated. Whatever word they type to use. Unless it has a device id. Maybe there'll be some hackers that pass a CTPA ID to go through, but I, I, I, I stick on the white hat usually.
- [10:57]
A
Okay, so is that is the fully rounded out hot take then that the, the brands that are not generating creative with AI are actually going to come full circle and be the front runners here.
- [11:07]
B
Yes sir.
- [11:07]
C
Yeah, good, good, good. Hot take. I, I like that. Definitely Great parts of all right, let's chat. 0 so first of all, let's chat the book. We got a book. Not a lot of we. It's not every day we get to speak to somebody that has written a book. I hear you're writing another one. Why did you write it? What is this book about?
- [11:23]
B
So billion dollar websites. I love books. To anyone who's not on audio, like behind there I've got about 300 books. I always say I'm not smart. I just read a lot. Some people like reading. Go on audio if you need like I don't have an audiobook unfortunately. But I number one, no one ever wrote a book to get rich, that's for damn sure. I actually lose money when people buy internationally and I'm not sure. I refuse to charge $40 for shipping, but that's actually what it costs to like ship to Japan and stuff, which is crazy. But yeah, I wrote the book because so many people have paid it forward to me that I feel like it was the time of 10 years Nikom and I made a good amount of Internet money that I felt like it was time for me to give back. I do have a little CRO masterclass. It's like 500 bucks. I'm not an info guy. I don't even talk about it. So if you guys do want to fast track it, I do have a CRO masterclass alongside the book. But like it's, it's a really cool thing of just like having the book. I have these frameworks that I felt are best. Like yeah, I can like make a quick video and just like, you know, put it around and stuff but like, you know, and just like make a fig jam board and that kind of stuff. But like really going into it to be able to explain it. I feel, I felt like a book was the best medium to be able to actually share it across because there are novel concepts in there that I truly did invent. You know, like, like these are not ones that if you Google someone else has said them before. It's not even indexed in Google that I wrote these concepts before.
- [13:00]
C
So the book is, the book is great. I haven't read all of it but you know, everything I just, you know, everything that you do, I know it's going to be like top notch and super excited to it. So I need to read it. I'm just tell it reading. That being said, can we nerd out on the funnel a little bit? What can you tell us about your stats? Are you running it as a free plus shipping book funnel? What are your, what are your upsells? What are your, what do you want to share with Take rate?
- [13:21]
B
I'm happy to share.
- [13:22]
C
So hold on, let me ask Connor a question real quick. Connor, do you know, have you seen like people use like books to market like info or market like SaaS? Do you know who Russell Brunson is?
- [13:32]
A
Yes.
- [13:33]
C
Okay.
- [13:34]
A
Are you saying, are you saying like using his book as like an upper funnel to get people into like click funnels, Is that what you mean?
- [13:39]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [13:40]
C
Using it as like a front end offer and then run as like a free plush shipping funnel.
- [13:44]
A
Yeah, yeah. I'm familiar with Russell Brunson and like the click funnel stuff. Yeah, absolutely.
- [13:48]
C
All right, cool. All right, cool.
- [13:50]
B
So first off, I, for better or worse have to host this on ClickFunnels because there's nothing that'll pass a stripe token ID through. So if you go to billion dollar websites, that's the website. So it's not like fancy or anything, but as you guys have heard me say about websites, the 8020 is not UX, it is copywriting and the images that are on there. So if you sit there and read it, you'll see and you'll get the, you'll get the gist. Even though it's not super sexy UI like you would think the, the dude of the website like you know, wrote. So it's kind of funny. But ClickFunnels is the only one that allows you to one click upsell and actually go and buy. So I'm not running a free plus shipping offer. What I found, Cody, is like so like marketing and consumers, they've gotten a lot smarter. One stat is time on paid like pages visited per session has gone up about 200%. It used to be like 1.2 back in the like early like 2010s, but now it's like 3 and change. So it's done like a 200% increase on how many pages per session like customers actually look at. So it's like let them walk into Walmart and go around and shop versus like push them in the funnel and force them into that.
- [15:08]
C
What time period is this? What time period?
- [15:10]
B
This is like like from when I started. Like I remember like you know, good old universal analytics. It always showed me like 1.4, 1.5. Now on heat map I see like 3.5, 3.7, 4.4 as like average.
- [15:25]
C
Is that, is that consumers want more choice? Are they less trustful? They want more choice?
- [15:31]
B
Yes. So it used to. So like they're smarter, they're savvier shoppers. They want to like do their due diligence a little more. Same with like software nowadays. Like there used to just be one or two options. Now there's like 25 options for everything. Same with like, you know, makeup products or home goods or anything like that. Like you know, it's like there's more options. They want to like search around a bit more and like they want more freedom. So I Found like the funnels that like cut off the header, cut off the footer, like force them into one thing or like get off the website. That was early 20s, maybe 2020 at the latest.
- [16:04]
C
We have found the same. And so, yeah, I mean I. The way I learned marketing was like, I think the first real introduction to like Dr. Was like Dan Kennedy and so got super into that and obviously got into clickfunnels and Russell Brunson and all that stuff. But like, yeah, so been like a big like funnel guy and you know that obviously everyone's running funnels and E Comm now and Landers, but like, yeah, I have noticed that. And it does seem like that like just style of. Of. Of Dr. Is not working as well. And a lot of the conventional wisdom that I think people have had of you need a shorter funnel, you need no headers, has not actually worked for us. And generally longer funnel, again, there's limits to it, but longer often has performed better. And then, yeah, more, more options, more choice has actually performed better for us.
- [16:47]
B
Homepage. My, my, no joke. My top 10 customers on heatmap by volume all send their ads to their homepage.
- [16:56]
A
Are these brands at scale that are doing that, do you think?
- [17:01]
B
If you think 300 million a year on Shopify is scale, then yeah, that.
- [17:05]
A
Scale for Jones Road, I would call.
- [17:07]
C
That scale for hexcloud. That's. That's not.
- [17:12]
A
Well, I guess what I'm getting at is like, like we, we still put, I don't know the percent off the top of my head, but like most of our, most of our ads are going to landing pages. But that's because we have such a robust, you know, and I bet it's the same for you, Cody. Like, you guys have a very robust product assortment. So like, not that the homepage is necessary. It's just harder to get to the point like if I'm going to. If I'm putting an ad out on cookware or not. Especially if it's like not our hero category. Like knives. Why should. I probably shouldn't put that on the homepage because our homepage is like really cookware positioned and it's like a lot harder to get to our knives experience. Whereas, like we have awesome knives landing pages that we've tested it that we've optimized over the years. So I'm just. Is it like, do you feel like it's more like narrow product assortment where that. Where the homepage is winning or is it like Hex Clatter, Jones Road where. Or like even Ridge now. Cause that ridge has a bunch of categories where it's like more, more breadth to the category.
- [18:07]
B
So two methods of thought. One, if your homepage truly is optimized to like give an experience for like go shop and go get whatever you want. Yeah, right. It's like you walk into a physical store, you know, there might be someone like greeting you saying hey, how can I help you? What are you looking for? It's not like saying hey, welcome, we have a sale on our knives. Let me go bring you there. Obviously it's not one to one. You know, it's kind of like the thing like if they say they're looking for knives, guess what? If they say they're looking for knives, that's a click on an ad related to kitchen knives.
- [18:46]
A
Right?
- [18:47]
B
So you know, I can make both arguments that like if you're, if your homepage is optimized for navigating like a lot of collections tiles, less product tiles, I found like that's one of those things that like works super well if you're looking for like if you have a large SKU count, that's one that works really well. But then also like let's say I was a full time, like I'm, I'm not for hire on a W2 but let's say I was a full time, you know, CRO at like a brand like X Cloud or Jones Road. I would have a lot of landers and I would guess media mix would be 50% or more on homepage. But then there's other experiences to get them there. So it's like there are top of funnel, middle minimum, minimum of funnel and bottom of funnel pages just like there are on ads. The other thing too is like specifically on Google like mostly people think like okay, Google is like bottom of funnel. But then there's pages like for Google. Like Google has different landing pages, Meta has different landing pages. Applovin. I haven't gotten to like dive in hands on and see what types of landers work better on Applovin but like the personalization of like building all these different ones and it might be a variation of your homepage as well that just works a little bit better on each of these. So having like a unique personalized experience for wherever the heck they're coming from, that's what the future of websites is.
- [20:09]
C
One, one thing that we did, I never really saw took off, but I saw a caraway page probably four years ago and I landed on from nad and I was like, oh that's, that's Cool homepage. And I went to their homepage later. I'm like, something's different. And so they had a lander that looked like a homepage. It didn't look like your traditional, like single funnel with no nav. It had nav and obviously they're higher aova and. And so obviously I compared the differences and so I, I started building these pages that we ran for years, most of our traffic to called a Trojan horse. Because, like, it's a lander that looks like a homepage. And so we tested, we had a faux nav. And so we had a nav that had a hamburger that opened because that was what people seemed to be wanting. But we did keep people on that page. But we had a few options. So it was almost like a homepage. The way I think about it is like a homepage introduction for the product. Because let's say it was a miracle bomb ad, right? You still want, you know, it looks like a homepage when you first land there. So it's not the surprising doctor Funnel. It's got your nav, you know, you got obviously. And then what is relevant if somebody is landing on an ad for the first time from that product? Obviously social proof is important. So we still had our press bar that we have the same one on the homepage, you know, but then instead of funneling them into different categories or eyes or lips, like, we still just had, it was. It was a little bit more of a direct funnel. But I think visually it looked there and it did have more options. And I think that we've even found success of that, of like having options to go to the quiz, having options to go to pdp. Like I. So that's, that's a strategy I haven't seen a lot of brands do, but I kind of like that. But that's one thing has worked for us.
- [21:40]
B
Yeah, like, chill out, chill out on the doctor Tactics and just if your product is the right thing, they're going to buy it.
- [21:47]
A
We found the same. Like, Dylan, I think you, you mentioned like starting broad, then getting a little more specific, then getting a little more specific, like, like having more like category tiles. We've found a bunch of wins in the last six months on introducing collection. Like goes to a landing page, but then there's like a collection. Like the CTA takes you to a collection, not a product page. We also did the same thing on our homepage. Like now we have like a gorgeous hero video that like really sells the products well. But the very next section is a shop by category page. Like we focus a lot on like, how do we just go like start broad, then one level deeper than one level deeper. And there's been a lot of wins for us doing that with, with our breadth of categories. And we only have more categories coming in the next six months. So it's going to be like, just more important to like, you don't go from, from the homepage to like this very, very, very specific product like that. You're just bypassing too much. You're not letting a consumer find what they want. So I think it makes sense intuitively that that would work.
- [22:43]
B
So one thing I'm going to bring back that that makes perfect sense. I'm also super happy you got those wins on collection tiles. They're huge, they're amazing. So like it to anyone listening now. Like, instead of having those like product tiles, that's pretty common, like right below the hero section of your homepage, like take a look at collection styles. They're, they're, they're crushing pretty well. And that's if you have enough of a SKU count. Otherwise go on product tiles.
- [23:06]
A
Yeah.
- [23:09]
D
Lately every market I already talked to says the same thing. Budgets are tight, goals are higher than ever, and I have to prove what's working, not just report it. And that is the new reality of marketing. If you can't afford to rely on guesses or platform reported results, you need clear causal proof of what's actually driving growth. And that's exactly where House comes in. Incrementality testing is the new scientific way to measure true impact, to see what's moving the needle and what's just noise so you can reallocate spend based on fact and not faith. Cody, Connor and I all use House for incrementality testing and it's become a core part of the modern measurement stack. They're now working with more than 40 of the top 100 DTC brands, which shows just how quickly this approach is becoming the new standard for serious growth teams. House helps you run real experiments across your channel so you can answer questions that actually matter, like which channels are truly driving incremental revenue? How much should I really be spending on Meta, Google or YouTube? And what's the halo effect of my ads on Amazon or retail sales? What sets House apart is the combination of rigorous science and marketer friendly design. The math under the hood is complex, built on causal inference and experimentation. But the platform itself is simple. You can choose your questions, launch a test in minutes and get clear, actionable results you can actually use. Plus every Customer gets a dedicated measurement strategist, someone who's lived in the world of growth and knows how to translate data into strategy. They'll help you design smart tests, interpret the results, and build a repeatable culture of experimentation across your team. With House, you aren't just buying a tool. You're buying the growth marketing team that can help you make the most of it. In a world where every marketing dollar is under a microscope, you need to know what matters with Houzz by going to house IO operators. That's H A U S.IO/ operators and start allocating your budget with confidence.
- [24:50]
B
So Cody, tying it back to how you were asking about my info funnel. I haven't gotten to scale it yet. It's been almost all organic, like through newsletters, like I gave a little pop, maybe sponsored one or two kind of thing. Like I have my own newsletter with over 30,000 people. So like it worked really well. The launch went well without spent like I spent maybe five grand on ads. That was it. You know, 5x roas on those. You know, like, especially with like, you know, the book plus the upsell kind of thing. Um, so you guys as E Com brand marketers should go look at every info funnel that you can. Info and affiliate are always three to four years ahead of the tactics of my fellow E Comm brand marketers.
- [25:38]
C
So we were, we were talking, Connor and I, during our predictions we were talking about that because one of my predictions was talking about like we like there's this trend of as E comm gets harder, brands need to monetize more of their customer journey and like stuff that used to be considered like off brand and like too aggressive is now everyone's doing it. Like, like a few years ago it was just, you just had your, your button and then it was like, all right, we're going to add in card upsells and everyone started doing that. But like in checkout upsells then became important and more people are doing that when it used to be like too aggressive and now you see way more respected DTC brands doing post purchase upsells than ever before. And like that's something that clickfunnels and other people popularized like eight years ago. So 100% agree with you on that.
- [26:20]
B
So that's kind of like what I learned. And like for example, you'll never find an info funnel that doesn't have like an about the founder section that's been running for 10 plus years even if the founder is not like a famous big influencer. Just saying like hey, like you know, I'm the founder. Like I'm just a small town person from whatever or whatever you are. You guys should add in and about the founder section, like Connor, like you were saying, like, you know, here's the thing, you know, like hero, beautiful video collections, tiles. About the founder. The biggest split test my agency that I ever ran that like had the biggest impact. There's literally a foundation, 14% lift in global freaking revenue by adding an about the founder section and an about the founder page at the same time. We did them at the same time to like link them. So that was literally like a 14% global increase in revenue. Yeah, so that's something that's been an info tactic forever.
- [27:25]
A
We have that on the home. It's just it's the last section before our opt in to our newsletter. So maybe we should test. Yeah. Hey, who do you like? You know, I have a few people. Like all these, like I follow this dude, Alfie Robertson. He's like a health, wellness, fitness coaching, but now he's doing tech and stuff like that. I think he's one of the best in the game right now at like the info product funnel. He's a fantastic content creator. He has distribution across Instagram, YouTube, you know, organic paid. Who are your favorite like info product people that, that everyone listening should be studying to get good doctor like funnel tactics from?
- [28:02]
B
Damn. I didn't think I'd be known as the info guy and be jamming on this, but yeah.
- [28:05]
C
What are your favorite funnels?
- [28:06]
B
I'm a sellout. No, it's funnels for it. So what I have always been a fan of and some ecom brands that I own. I have always had paid education upsells. They do really well and they're 100% margin and they're like nine bucks. And like or we make a little video course and we upsell them. It's not a brand that anyone knows about. Like, not even my friends know about. Like it's just something that I've done especially in the, you know, health and wellness space. Like, you know, like, you know, Connor, like in a way on like how to cook a ton of stuff or like Cody for like a course on how makeup can get best applied for like whatever. Like, and you sell it for like nine bucks. I'm sure you'd probably take nine bucks of like you know, margin on you know, a 12% upset uptake rate in gart kind of thing, you know like on the PDP as well. Or there's free info which is another Thing I've added in E Comm which is like hey, get three ebooks for free and you just put it in your purchase email, like you know your thank you email.
- [29:12]
C
There's probably huge opportunity. Yeah. I mean there's the margin on that is so good. There's probably huge margin expansion on that on. Especially if it's done correctly. Like I'm sure there's some lift of like ebook but like if there's actually like a valuable course and stuff, there's probably LTV components as well.
- [29:29]
A
So Dylan, can I. I want to ask you about a specific example because we are. We have a new category launching this year and it's, it's very different than anything we've done before. To support it we've created this like 80 page recipe book that we're still figuring out like how we want to use it. Like should we use it as like a gift? Because this is like a very, it's going to be a higher, a high, highly priced product. So we're like do we use it as a gift? We actually try to sell it and it's going to be awesome. Like I've started seeing it already. It's gorgeous. There's a lot of value added recipes in there and just a lot of value added information on how to get the most out of this new product that we're launching. How would you think about using that? Would you try to monetize it? Would you try to use it as like a gift with purchase type offer knowing that the product is going to be like multiple hundreds of dollars and and this gift is like an info product on top of that. Like what are, what are your thoughts on like the best way to strategically.
- [30:20]
B
Position that 100 would so low to middle. I mean you can always try but it depends on your unit economics. Right. Because if you know it's gonna be a couple hundred bucks, like man, I would put that info. I would put that free ebook everywhere. Free for you.
- [30:37]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [30:38]
C
Well this is physical it sounds like, right?
- [30:40]
A
No, no, it's, it's a digital. Yeah, that is digital. Yep.
- [30:43]
B
Yeah. Like, like invest into that content because then they'll love your brand even more. Like Connor, like imagine now like if people are really messing with the ebook and really clicking through it, like make a physical one. Let the customers tell you that's all like this, this book. Billion dollar websites. That's literally what it is. Like understand your customers, right? Like do something. Look for signal. I've also had a new hot take about attribution which actually kind of ties into this as well. Now becoming like a SaaS marketer that like I have to do and put my CMO hat on as the founder of a SaaS company. One to one attribution. I actually made my best newsletter ever. And I said I'm not a doctor but I'm diagnosing you with chronic attribution anxiety where everything has to be 1 to 1 for E Comm and like that's really not how it works. Like some of the best brands I know in the world are doing like pounding Reddit marketing and like your traffic's not one to one but your branded search goes up, like awareness goes up. So it's like things like that to invest in top funnel, you know, like beyond that. So it's, it's those kinds of things to be able to look for signal. So if you see signal that like people are looking for cookbooks and like, you know, it's a type of piece of content you put, go put that all over your website, smother it everywhere, put it in your emails like you know, have more content because they're just going to love you even more. Then you can go and upsell a book for you know, near perfect margin because you've no like, you know, CPA on that. You're not, you're not paying incrementally for it. So like Cody, like if you put a free one out like for Jones Road and like you know, people really like it. Like literally there could be a video course hosted on Kajabi of some influencer. You pay to just go and make a little tutorial. It's completely free. But you get more people in a community, people really love it. You can, I don't know, put a subscription on that. It's like why, why are all these E com brand marketers like against all of this stuff? Like a company is a company. Like I look at it as conscious capitalism. Conscious capitalism is not some woo woo thing about like the, you know, the planet and that kind of stuff. If you're giving more value than you're asking for in return, that is conscious capitalism. So in our beautiful world of capitalism that we currently live in right now or you know, double sided world.
- [32:55]
C
If.
- [32:56]
B
It'S a free exchange and like, or if it's, if it's an exchange that someone can freely do and they want, they're like, yeah, Jones Road, like Bobby Brown, whoever, like I really trust this like group like this crew, like scoring Ramsey's name attached to this thing on Hexcloud like this is pretty cool. Like why not let people buy it? Even if it's a tiny line item, but it's a hundred percent profit. Why not? So take some of these info, take some of these different things. Like, you know, like that, like you wouldn't think about and go and monetize those. Like a lot of ecom brands need it. But also like, what are people. Like, what's the worst that happens? Literally, what's the worst that happens? I mean, people are scared about their brand.
- [33:34]
A
You're saying, you're saying the worst that happens from like a brand, from like a brand perspective putting an offer out like this. Yeah. Worried about like damaging. Yeah. Right.
- [33:43]
B
No, it's not going to damage your brand. No, no, I like, I, I personally use hexclad pans. I don't personally use Jones Road beauty products, but you know, like I use, I use hexclad pans. Like if you guys had like just a killer in my email inbox recipe, like someone made a video every like, you know, day kind of thing. Like, yo, here's what you should cook for dinner. Here's like a unique one. And like If I find seven or eight recipes and like it's like 10 bucks a month, I have no issue with that. Like either I'm going to be like looking online, searching or you guys can just like cater it for me. It's almost like a service, right?
- [34:21]
A
So like, yeah, we've thought about going that like New York Times route where eventually there's like, hey, here's all the free recipe content you get and if you're liking this, you can pay X dollars per month and you're going to unlock this whole other slate of recipe content. And recipe content's just the, just the beginning, right? What about like, hey, here's, here's a knife skills video from Nancy Silverton. Here's like more like, more like master classy type.
- [34:45]
B
What about reviews of restaurants? Right? Like it can go so far. And here's the other thing as well. I've been obsessed with Geo my. So like Geo AI SEO, just, you know, getting LLMs to recommend you. Like, how do you get in that training set? I've been beyond obsessed with this right now. Heat Map. We're getting about two or three customers a day from Just Google Organic. We're getting three or four sales calls a week from ChatGPT, one or two from Gemini a week. So we're getting like organically like 20 people a week, like almost a hundred a month. Like new customers just from Google and LLM Organic. So this is something that I'm huge about. So if you guys really want, like if you're not planning to sell in a year or two, go invest into that. Every bit of content that goes in your brand and your topical authority, there's PageRank. If my fellow nerd marketers out there, if you guys really want to understand every single website on the Internet has a number attached to it. It's called your PageRank. There's a 2014 PageRank guide that Google gave out. It's still the same thing nowadays over 10 years later. So if you're looking to make like a behemoth company and be recommended and future proof your company through brands, it actually comes from content physically on the Internet, whether on your website or on other places. Because then all these other outlets think how easy it is. It's like, hey, we made this guide for like top hundred restaurants in New York City. You guys want to feature it? Why wouldn't the New York Times put that in there? Like now there's crazy backlinks going to your website. I also have a very big theory that the higher your domain rating on a website, the better your ads perform because it's a more trusted website through Meta and Google TikTok, all those types of things because they do share certain attributes. So bit of a ramble that like you know, all this content to build out, it's tremendous. It's huge. That's what I would be doing as a brand owner.
- [36:42]
A
I love it. That's. That's also very. Most brands are thinking about what's the next physical product. I can also include. You should obviously that's like what you need to be doing. But not many brands are thinking about like the, the info products you can pepper on top of your physical products that ultimately just make the physical product satisfaction way greater.
- [37:04]
B
I would just say info, not even products like how much info can I put out there? You know, like how much, how much value, whether free or paid can I put out there? Because you can do so much as a super niche brand that just knows more about this stuff than others.
- [37:21]
C
I love it.
- [37:22]
B
I love it.
- [37:24]
A
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- [39:14]
C
All right, I know one of the other things you think brands should be doing is research. Why don't you have research? It's, we're in a big research phase of our big, of our 14 big rocks for the year. Number one is become customer obsessed. It's all about research. Not just on zero. It's product dev. It's, it's essentially touches everything for us but like walk us through, like give us like a tactical like roadmap that brands can take and listen to and go make better sites because they have it. Tell us what page you go to and walk us through it.
- [39:45]
B
Okay, so it starts. So it starts on page 32 which is very close, right? So to anyone watching here, this is the billion dollar data funnel. The billion dollar data funnel has six parts to it. There's six areas that you know you can have this in your granola notes Cody or whatever is going on to go listen back to. There's six areas that you need to go for and in these areas there are little breakdowns and other ones. But there's raw data analysis. This is like going on ga4 looking what pages. This is kind of like the highest level. Your journey analysis, your funnel, drop off, all that type of stuff. That's one. And these are also not in order of, like, importance or anything. This is just what I'm looking at here. Number two is user testing. This is not screen recordings. User testing is like user testing dot com. There's like a, like, conversion grind. Stocks. Like, there's like a whole bunch of these that, like E Comm brands just don't do. SaaS companies do this. But, like, you know, it's like you get to say, hey, go find knives. So, like, put them on the homepage and ask them to go find knives. You get to see what they do. Granted, they're expensive, like, per user, but you get so much intel. So, you know, user testing is something people don't do. Competitor analysis. People do not do competitor analysis the right way. So chapter two of the book is like, what even is a website? The thing that I love about this, this is a novel concept that I created. If you guys can break it, I'll send a thousand to a charity. Your choice. So far, no one's been able to break it. That a website is literally only five things. Or I actually have, like, a literal word definition of what a website is that really hasn't been able to get broken. Where a website is a domain that visually presents an offer and communicates through copy, through copywriting and creative assets, the unique value of your products or services compared to the competitors. They're a little bolded in the book for you to be able to see that. So the five parts of a website are the offer value propositions, copywriting and text, creative and UX pieces. So when you're doing competitor analysis, you have to look at each of those. I call them the five pillars of a website. So when you're doing competitor analysis, Cody, people just go all over the place, ooh, I like this idea. I like this idea. I like this idea. No, you need to put your blinders on, brother. Like, if you're looking at copywriting angles of your competitors. Cool. I don't care what amazing idea or breakthrough you have, you have to be like, no, Cody, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're just looking at copywriting of competitors. Cool. Now let's look at the landing page and not even landing page level. Let's look at the offer level. What are these offers? They are selling. And now you do your competitor Analysis on the offers in the book. There's a free like QR to a little template that I use on how to actually do it. But that's really the big thing. So that's three. Number four is exit intense surveys. We're launching them@heatmap.com in the next like, you know, two weeks. So like, you know, highly useful customer feedback surveys. You guys have heard me talk about this to death. It's really important. And then heat maps and screen recordings. Those are the six parts of the billion dollar data funnel. You can become a billion dollar company if you just do those six things. Research is, is your 95, 5. It's beyond your 80, 20 that if you, if you don't know what your customers want between your website and this goes beyond just your website and optimization of your website and what people know as traditional CRO nowadays. It's like you need to understand everything about your customer. I would say if you don't know what they eat and where they eat on Tuesday mornings for breakfast and what they do right after, then you don't know enough about your customer. You know that. There's also in the CRO masterclass I built, there's demographics. Everyone markets to what they know is their demographics. Middle aged women at this age, like who, you know, have kids that do this thing and whatever, who's your demographics? But now psychographics, are these people looking to save time? Are these people stressed? Are these people? You know, it's like all of the like psychographics and demographics are two very different things. So you need to be able to market in their psychographics or you're a kind of marketer if you're just marketing the demographics. It's like you're, you're at like, you know, 202, not 404.
- [44:12]
C
I feel like this is something that I don't find most DTC brands actually do very well. I find software companies do way better. Like product.
- [44:20]
B
That's why I wrote a book on it, brother.
- [44:22]
C
Yeah, I feel like there's so much CRO that's just, I don't know, I mean there's a lot of, I think people in dtc, what they're really good at is looking at data. Like everyone's gonna look at GA4, everyone's now gonna look at heatmap, everyone's gonna look at analytics on it. But I think there's so much more focus on that stuff and the conversion rate and whatever it is. And this is where our drop off is, which is not unimportant it's extremely important. But there's much less of the qualitative of talking to customers. There's much less of that.
- [44:51]
B
So speaking of education as well, like, yes, we're a SaaS company, heatmap.com, but, like, all this qualitative stuff that we don't do that, like, you just, like, grab a spreadsheet and do it right. Like, you have to call your customers. That's part of the customer feedback surveys, which is, like, literally pick up the phone and call your fricking customers. Ask them what they like. Ask them what they don't like. See if they pick up. I have times and scripts and stuff in the book that, like, you can get. But, like, you know, it's like just doing that for, like, 30 minutes a week or 30 minutes a month. You get so much insight, and then you can have your customer support team do it, and, like, they can do, like, two, three hours a week kind of thing. Like, it's so valuable, it's silly. And then, guess what? The AI can compile it all together and tell you exactly what the people are saying. If their voice is like, you know, trumpet or, you know, sounds like whatever, and people just answer. They do.
- [45:44]
C
All right, so you take all this stuff. You have, you do this process. I'm sure you have it in multiple places. You have a ton of data, a ton of insights.
- [45:51]
B
Yeah.
- [45:51]
C
You have to take that whether you're using AI to do it or not. And then this goes. You have it in the book. I probably should have just read the book. Does this go and then inform a roadmap? Like, do you build hypotheses? And you're like, hey, these are the main things people are seeing. We don't have this on our website. Here are a bunch of features we think we should test and build and then use some type of framework to prioritize them.
- [46:14]
B
Yep. So I'm pretty sure you guys know what it is. It's called the ICE method. You know, ice scoring. So it's impact, confidence, and ease. Impact is. Is like 0 to 5. Like 1 to 5, because you wouldn't put 0 on it, but 1 to 5. How impactful could this change be? Like a full website redesign, that's gonna be a five. A full new landing page, that's gonna be a five. If you're thinking about changing up your footer, it might be a one or two. But then comes confidence. Like, based on all your research, how confident are you that that improvement, that impact will be true? Right. So you could be like, wicked confident that based on like four of your six data sources, changing your headline to a thing which might have like a 3 impact, it doesn't mean that you always have to go after high impact tests. Right? Then the third one is E is people get this one backwards, which is a five is something that's easy to code, design or write. You know, it doesn't take as much of a lift. And a one is like redoing the nav. You gotta look at the images, you gotta do all the ux, you gotta do the design, you gotta go code it, you gotta, you know, make sure it works in the app. Like, you know, it's like there's so much there, but the impact is gonna be a five out of five. So it's like confidence should also be a three or four. So it's a huge one, right? It's a huge one. So you put all these into a sheet and like the thing that like, as like, you know, running an agency back in the day, I'm like, everyone's like, ooh, what about this idea? What about this idea? What about this idea? I'm like, cool. And I recommend you guys do this internally in your company so people feel more attached to your website in this ice score. Tell everyone.
- [47:52]
A
Cool.
- [47:53]
B
Just add it to the bottom. Whatever idea you have, just add it at the bottom. And then you guys, as the CMOs can just take a look. Maybe your email marketer or your agency that you work with, like, tosses in an idea that just makes a ton of sense. The impact seems high. You're pretty confident that thing's gonna work and it's not super hard of a lift. Push that up. It's like the data wins, right? Like, of course this is qualitative, you putting it in there. So you have the billion dollar data funnel, You've all your fricking ideas. You put them all together. Whether you use AI or not. That's no issue. You put it together. You now have a roadmap of, you know, ideas that come from all this data that you did in research. You have the I score. You literally just do it from top to bottom of 15 down to 1.
- [48:39]
C
Just so much gold. So much gold. Yeah, that's what we're doing.
- [48:41]
B
Research.
- [48:42]
C
We're heavying up on research. We're, we're one that I'm really excited about right now. We're redoing our quiz. We're gonna custom build it from scratch. And that's like a really big one. So I have, I Have a customer advisory board. It's like a few, few hundred customers that are in there. So like got a lot of user research testing on that. We have another tool to get like non customer stuff. So a lot of like user research on that. Obviously a lot of you know, other sources like you mentioned and we've just been, we've just been shipping it hard and, and really trying to work through it. Do you ever, do you ever build it? So do you ever like take something, get user research on a current thing, get insights, build a feature and then do you then go to show that to people before you launch it ever? I'm trying to like figure out if we're going to do that or if we'll just ship it.
- [49:22]
B
Yeah, so in SaaS.
- [49:25]
C
Yes, that's what I mean. I, I, I give a lot of companies feedback on features before they ship.
- [49:30]
B
Yeah, exactly. So like I'll have like you know, net new features or new designs and I'll send it to people being like, hey is easier to use. Do you like this? Like what would you do? Like what incrementally do we need to do better? You know, like so getting all that feedback is cool, but when we're talking about millions of visitors a month, those small amounts of people aren't going to give the best UX feedback, especially in UX or copywriting. So they'll be very skewed. One thing to step back before I go forward. Cody, this is so what you did of like your customer council. This is something that so many brands want to do and they ask me about one thing that gets like a little annoying sometimes. Like I'm sure like because you've been around for so long, you have super fans, number one, understand they're superfans, right? Like they're not really going to give you the talk which they need to do. But number two, like how did you build that? Did you just reach out? Did you have CS do that? Is it part of your flows? Because a lot of people, like even if your brand has done 200 sales, if you can get 20 people to be in your little product council and feel special about being part of an early brand, that gold, that is gold forever. So you're sitting on a gold mine that like might not be as. Or maybe you do understand the value, why don't you give a little rundown to what you did? Actually I have my methods but you, you did it already. So give the people what they may want.
- [50:58]
C
Yeah, good question. So we have 14 big rocks for the year just our biggest KPIs big goals, right? Number one is be customer obsessed. It's just not how we currently or have made decisions in the past. It's, there's a lot of, you know, this is what we think or guessing or whatever. And I'm like, well, what, what does our customer want? Like, no one has the answers, you know, and like there's definitely so some data that we've had that has been, you know, a lot of good stuff, a lot of not. So I'm like, all right, I'm trying to simplify. E commerce is really, really difficult, right? Or even just, just commerce. I'm like, there's so much data that's available. I just need to make it really easy for my team to know what our north stars are. And 14 is even a lot. But I'm like, this is the most important thing. If we make all of our decisions based on talking to customers and then having models for what they want, we're just not going to. You just can't lose that way. You know what I mean? Like, it's just the most important thing. So, you know, essentially all of these goals, we have the problem. Here's why it's important, here's the solution, here's what we're gonna do and then who's responsible for it? Right? I have a new SVP of marketing starting. She's gonna be responsible for it. One of the reasons I really like her, like everything is, is customer first. That's like her background. But I couldn't wait. So I just started it. So we have a Facebook group of 80,000 people, which is also really helpful and we will use that for feedback. But some things I wanted to be quieter, so I just went in there maybe a month back, was like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna, you know, start this thing. Is anyone interested? Like thousands of people interested, you know. And so I just, I kind of made them apply. Got 250 people in it just to pilot it small in there. Because what I knew was like, if we tried to formalize it too much and we had to like fill out a form and then like have our retention team send an email every time, it was just never going to happen. I just had to make it as easy as possible and maybe I could do a better job asking the question. So. And I get that, I get that it's biased. Like I, I'm very aware that the feedback that are the people that are signing up for this is maybe not consistent with like a New demographic or you know, so I think you have to be aware of that. But it's helpful. And I just made them essentially sign up, agree that they're going to take whatever surveys, give any feedback, keep everything confidential. I set up a Typeform account. The AI stuff in there is really cool and so within 10 minutes I can just vibe build, you know, a thing, AI analyzes it and so just probably once a week I'm just going in there. I'll literally be in a meeting with our product team and I'll have. And again this is not. I'm literally just piloting it because I think this is really important. I'm handing it off. This is not going to be like CEO forever doing it just to like pilot it and just like get the momentum started as our organization. But I'll literally be in a meeting. We're talking about our upcoming holiday launch for next year. You know, I'm like, well we just launched it this year. Let's find out, let's find out if people like it or not. You know, like let's find out. What are people saying? So pretty. Seven Typeform surveys that we've done in the last month. Incredibly helpful. Like not that I've paid any money for this but like oh, we have a launch today body. We have about 70 reviews on each product to start. First time we've ever launched with with them. So we shipped a bunch of them samples. Curious to see how that you know, lifts it but cannot recommend it enough to anybody.
- [54:02]
B
It's, that's, that's literally why I wrote billion dollar websites is for people like Cody, hopefully you guys to go do this. It's amazing, really valuable. Can't recommend it enough. This is the make or break for any company.
- [54:20]
D
All right, I want to give a shout out to Rich Panel because they've quietly become one of the most impactful tools we use at Ridge. You know how SaaS companies love raising prices for the same product every year? Our old support platform did that one too many times. So we made the switch over to.
- [54:33]
A
Rich Panel and the results have been fantastic.
- [54:35]
D
Our SaaS build dropped by about half and once they rebuilt our workflows with automation self service routing, our cost per ticket fell 70%. Same team, same volume, totally different outcome. BFCM this year was our smoothest we've ever been. We've done the most amount of sales, we had the most amount of queries but with routing we had a lower cost per ticket and our NPS scores have never been higher. The team handled everything without the usual panic. And our CSAT has been sitting around 96% every week. And what I really like is that Rich Panel isn't just software. They bring a playbook, they rebuild your workflow, set up your AI, handle migration and training, and you can be live in under two weeks. The lift is basically zero on your side. And they're launching a returns portal soon, which I'm really excited to test because returns are one of those sneaky P and L items everyone ignores until it begins to cost you real money. If you want to cut support costs in half and run a leaner, more efficient operation, head to richpanel.com demo and they'll take care of everything.
- [55:35]
B
So the one thing now, Cody, to be aware of when doing customer feedback surveys and questions. So if you're talking to your customer, you're asking things about it. Just like I said, the psychographics, beyond the demographics. Someone's in your demographic if they purchase and they actually picked up the phone when you're asking for feedback on your products, like, hey, how can we improve this, like, lip balm? Like, what do you like about it? What don't you. They may say, like, you know, how long it lasts or, you know, like, there's a whole slew of reasons that they can say. But what you need to do when you're doing those feedback surveys and asking anyone any question about your brand is what's underneath it, right? Because if you take it at face value. That was the mistake I used to make is if you take it at face value of, oh, you know, thousands of people have said that, like, we need to make this new product cool, that's great. Maybe that is the right answer. But if you're asking how to improve your products, go the level deeper, is it because people are on the go and you need to, like, maybe change your messaging to a little bit more on the go, like, quick, you know, makeup application. So it's like people are going to, like, complain or whine or praise. Like, you need to look the layer below that to really figure out, like, what it is. Like, customers are not saying, here's what's in my head. Here's how you should market to me. Here's what's happening. It's like you need to take that, like, you know, pot of gold that you just got. And you need to go a level deeper as a marketer to now say why, though. There's something called the Six Sigma method, which I love. Any problem to solve can use the Six Sigma method. Connor, why didn't you did you hit your revenue goals this year?
- [57:31]
A
Yes.
- [57:32]
B
Cody, did you? Or just. Just tell. Just say no. Just say no for purpose of the exercise. Okay, so, okay, if you didn't hit your revenue goals, why not enough new customers?
- [57:44]
A
You didn't message what your customers wanted? Maybe.
- [57:46]
C
Yeah.
- [57:47]
A
You didn't do the research Cody's. You didn't do the research Cody's doing this year.
- [57:51]
B
Okay, why didn't you do that research?
- [57:53]
A
I know at, at Hexclad, like we do it, but there's not a sing and Cody, I was going to ask you who's owning it, but like we don't have a single person. We don't have like a single person who's like in charge of customer insight. So it ends up being a little a la carte. So we don't do it enough because there's not like a single person owning it. I think that's a huge reason why brands probably don't amazing this thing.
- [58:13]
B
Why don't you have someone that owns it? We should give me a better answer.
- [58:18]
A
Probably because it's not directly revenue driving.
- [58:21]
B
Cool. So there you go. That was the Six Sigma method. I just asked why five times. And when you ask why five times, obviously do it kindly, not like a, you know, mean person. But like when you ask why five times, it's impossible to get to. To not get to a root principle of an issue. So I use this method all the time. Like after I ask why at once my team's like, oh no, I'm like, gotta follow the rule. Like, you know, people with IQs, triple hours, like have figured this out. So like I asked why. So ultimately what I'd say for you if that was a true simulation of everything you just said, I'd say, cool, maybe you should actually go look at your org chart. It's not a problem that you're not doing customer feedback surveys or you're not talking to your customers. It's actually a problem that is on the org chart level and the roles and responsibilities level. That's how you get to like root cause. And then once you get to root cause, you can go and fix that and you fix 30 other things at the same time.
- [59:18]
C
Yeah. So Connor, I'm going to do right now under the big rock, our SVP marketing is going to be responsible for it. But it's. We're probably going to hire like a product marketing slash consumer insights person like tbd. But. But yeah, I think regardless, it's gotta be one. But I was like, hey, this is really important. I can't wait. And I also want to. I was talking to Jake Cohen from Klaviyo like two, three years ago I first met him. He's like a VP at Klaviyo and I think he used to be a Shopify because I did some user research for him. He interviewed me for some stuff I think when he was at Clavio or is at Klaviyo. And so I was talking to him about it one time and I was like, who do you think in the org should do it? He's like the CMO should or the CEO should. It's that important. And so that was why I was like, I was like, that was a. That's like a really good answer, you know, and, and I don't think it's like scalable for the CEO or CMO to like always be doing it with the volume you do. But I do think it's important for the highest level people at the company to be talking to customers consistently and intent fully.
- [60:19]
A
Well, like any new function it's probably going to fall on the CMO or the head of growth or the CEO to like get the initial momentum. I mean that's not unique to customer insights. I mean that's any net new thing that you need to be doing as an organization. Like that's how I look at my role. It's like you got to get that initial 10 going with your team and then let the team carry it through. And then like you're doing check ins along the way but like that's. It makes sense that you're the one driving this forward for now, Cody. And then you're going to get the momentum and then pass it off to someone else to like keep the, keep the pedal down.
- [60:52]
C
Well, because you also want to show people like I don't know if this actually works, but you want to show people like, hey, this is so important to me as a leader that I'm doing it and like if I'm doing it, I'm setting the culture and I'm showing people that like I'm willing to roll up my sleeves and do this and like it's that important and like everybody should be doing it.
- [61:08]
A
Yeah. Cody, can I ask you, can I like dig one layer deeper into what you were saying like five minutes ago? So you said you're doing, you have this Facebook group, you created this like customer advisory board. You're actually building out surveys in type form, collecting data and then like analyzing it with AI. Like what, what are you asking your customers right now, so two, two part question, like, what are you asking? Like, what are you surveying people on right now? And then also I wanted to ask you about that your. The product launch because you said you're launching today with like 70 plus reviews. That's something we're trying to get do better job of is like opening up early access to our Facebook group, like two months ahead of time. So that way they can use the product, get a good feel for it, and then we can email them and say, hey, we would really love it if you could leave us a review. And now we're launching with like now our cocktail shaker has 50 reviews on the product page instead of zero. And I can't imagine that wouldn't have a really nice positive lift in performance. So two part question, maybe start with like the first one.
- [62:05]
C
Dude, I'll literally just share my screen and maybe Dylan, give me some feedback on it. But yeah, you know, I think we're paying what, 40 bucks a month, you know, type firms there. So, like, you know, Holiday was the first one I did, right? We just launched Holiday. We're starting to build it for next year. But I'm like, all right, here's. So the cool thing with Typeform is you can literally chat to create it, right? So it's like vibe. It's like you can do it in five, 10 minutes, you know, but like the question, it's really easy. You know, we wanted to know about their gifts. You know, are you buying forgiveness to inform future messaging, right? And also timing of the launch. Like, are you buying for yourself? Are you buying, you know, gifts? What is your normal budget range? You know, do you want individuals or kids? Because this is like. I think what we're trying to do is start with a hypothesis first one.
- [62:48]
B
I have a gripe on. So there is a rule. So never split the difference by Chris Voss. I may have even mentioned it in the last episode we did together. He's an FBI hostage negotiator. To get people to emotionally answer and to win a micro negotiation, you need to start questions with what and how. So if you go back to your ones before that, right, they were asking in that format, right? So it can be, you know, multiple choice or long form or short form. Doesn't matter. So what's your typical holiday beauty gift budget range? So cool. It's like, you know, that's, that's good. Like, you know, is your budget range above or below X? Like that's not gonna give as much, right? Like a yes or no answer is not great. So if you go back to that question that I said I had an issue on. Do you prefer curated kits or individual products as gifts? Cody, if you are now going and you had to start with question with what or how, how would you react? Re ask this question.
- [63:55]
C
Can you say which or not?
- [63:58]
B
No, because that gives a yes or no answer. The levels of some of them are multiple choice.
- [64:02]
C
This is a multiple choice one. This is not a.
- [64:04]
B
It's fine. It doesn't matter if it's multiple choice or not.
- [64:07]
C
I don't know and I'm a huge Chris Ross fan and I don't know if I know if I agree or.
- [64:11]
B
See this because so. So the way that you asked this one. So do you prefer curated kits or individual products as gifts? The real thing that you're trying to understand here is what do you like receiving as gifts? If you ask that, you'll get 10 times the insights. That's psychographics. That's not even on a multiple choice type of gift. Or this. That can be multiple choice. How do you like gifts? And you can lift out seven or eight things.
- [64:36]
A
So you're saying more open ended, more optionality is what you're getting at?
- [64:40]
B
No, it can be multiple choice. That's no. Or. Well, Cody, I'm also a fan of radio boxes, meaning you can choose multiple options, not like one of them. So big fan of that, which I'm sure you have as well. But the thing is you're now just asking about two options here. How do you like your gifts? You can now like, I'm sure you can rattle off like 10 more ways that someone can like a gift.
- [65:07]
C
Yeah, yeah. The goal of this one is just to help inform our holiday collection. Should we have more kits? Should we have more individual stuff? But cool.
- [65:15]
B
So you might get additional insights by asking it even more broad.
- [65:18]
C
Yeah, yeah, I got it. All right. Let me, let me just show you the rest of the few. And I got like one or two other things when I get to. But yeah, like kind of like I didn't buy survey as well.
- [65:28]
B
Right.
- [65:28]
C
Like a lot of people do do surveys of people that bought. I find didn't buy surveys or help. I think that's even like a Russell Brunson thing. I forgot who I got that from. Was it you? It might have been Ezra. I think it's Ezra from like one of his courses back in time.
- [65:43]
B
I think I got it from Ezra. He's the og.
- [65:47]
C
Okay, cool. So like did you buy it and you can do some conditional stuff. If yes, why do you buy it if. No. Why not? How do you feel about timing? So this will inform it Again, you don't have to use Typeform, but it does a lot of cool. So obviously you'll get, you know, your answers, stuff like this. You can see your individual responses, but also, obviously, they got a plan that'll, you know, look at AI and just make it super easy. And then you can kind of click on the answers just to do it. So, like, extremely helpful. And then just, you know, screenshot this, send it to the team. Yeah, I mean, it has just been. Been extremely helpful so far. Where I think we'll be much better positioned, actually, our first. So 2024, our holiday collection did not do very well. Badly enough that we're like, we gotta figure something out. And it's like, oh, why? It was like the first launch we had that ever did not do well. And it was like, all right, well, why don't do it? Like, I don't know. And so started with the survey, and so now it's like, everything we do. Dylan, let me show you one more thing. I think you'll like this. So we're redoing our quiz right now. Let me. Am I. I'm not still sharing, am I? Let me know if you have any feedback on this. But we're redoing our quiz just because you love all this psychology stuff. We are adding, and I'm big, you know, Chris Ross fan, all kinds of stuff. We're adding a yes ladder at the end. So we're trying to get three yeses before we ask them to buy. So we're going. This is at the end. After we get all of their, you know, age stuff and all that, we ask their name. What can we call you?
- [67:08]
B
Can you, like, zoom in a lot?
- [67:10]
C
Oh, yeah, my bad, my bad. So we ask their name, right? What can we call you? Rather than saying, what. What is your name? We ask them that. We personalize.
- [67:19]
B
That's a little broad. That feels, like, confusing. I understand what you're going for.
- [67:23]
C
Yeah.
- [67:24]
B
I'd probably just ask, like, you know.
- [67:26]
C
Would you say, what's your name? Or you'd say something else.
- [67:28]
B
Yeah, like, you. You can joke, like, it depends on, like, how cheeky you want your brand to be, but that's. That seems a little confusing to me, like, trying to be too artiste.
- [67:37]
C
Yeah, Gotcha. And then, so next one, where should we send your results? We're personalizing. It should be way later. This is the end. Oh, gosh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm not Showing the beginning. No, we want all this stuff later. This is near the end.
- [67:51]
B
Okay, cool. I would probably collapse the name and the email into one.
- [67:57]
C
Yeah, we're gonna. We have like a roadmap of stuff we wanna test and like launch with.
- [68:01]
B
Cause we'll do it.
- [68:01]
C
But definitely, we definitely have that as one of them. And then so here's the one I wanna show you is like, we wanna get three yeses before we then show them the results page. Amazing. I saw this. Yeah, we have two right now. So let me know if you have any. We're just showing them like a range and being like, does this feel like the right fit?
- [68:18]
B
Okay, so which of these feel like the best match for you?
- [68:25]
A
You're asking.
- [68:25]
B
Just say no. If you get a yes or no, anytime you hit a yes or no, you've lost the micro negotiation. That's Chris Voss 101.
- [68:36]
C
Like people say, but you also want the yes. I know it's easier to say the no, but you also want the yes versus which one gives you less of that.
- [68:44]
B
So them clicking this is best for me is a yes in his framework.
- [68:48]
C
Okay. You think so? Okay, so we go there. We can edit that. We'll go there. Are you ready to see your results? Of course. Is a yes. People want to see it. And then we got to add in one more.
- [68:57]
B
Cool. I think that's on its way. If you want to send me the figma, I'm happy to tear it up even more.
- [69:03]
C
I would love that. I would love that.
- [69:07]
A
Operators, quick gut check here. Q1 is when everyone realizes the same thing at once. Traffic gets more expensive, growth slows down. So the question isn't how do I drive more demand, it's how do I make more money from the demand I already have? And that is exactly why we use after sell by rocked. Most brands think upsells are about being aggressive, but they really aren't. They are about timing. And the best time to upsell someone is when they're already in buying mode, which is when it's right after someone buys. So after sell, it lets you put the right offer at the right moment with one click. There's no reentering payment info. There's no extra checkout steps. Brands using after sales see around a 30% lift in AOV. And when you're running real volume, that adds up fast. But here's the part most people miss. It's not just upsells that after sell ads. Once you're live, you unlock the entire rokt monetization suite. Rock thanks monetizes your thank you page with premium non competing offers. Think Disney Plus HelloFresh and brands are seeing $0.30 to $0.50 in pure profit per order. Rock Pay plus adds a clean wallet placement at checkout and kicks back another 10 cents to 15 cents in profit per order without hurting conversion. And in some cases it actually improves conversion. No inventory, no new ads, no operational lift, just margin. This isn't growth hacking, it's just found money. If Q1 is about tightening margins and getting paid more for the traffic you already earned, go to aftercell.com operators, activate rokt thanks or rock pay plus and you'll get the full after sales suite free for a year or an extended 60 day trial for post purchase upsells.
- [70:39]
C
All right, last question I have for you because this is actually one I've been meaning to ask you. I know you're big on testing, right? You're like, you don't like full redesigns, rebuilds. Let's say there's something where, like our homepage right now, like there's a bunch on it that I'd want to ship and do it on. I think hexcloud did a new homepage last year and you guys just shipped it. Like when there's something like that. But marketers still care about performance. Do you ever ship it and build all at once? Would you rather do it section by section? But like, my current concern with that is it's, it's far too slow. Like, how would you, how would you go about a process like that?
- [71:14]
B
Okay, I understand wanting to do the whole thing at once. That's impatience. Emotional decisions are the worst decisions. We like data, we like making sure that what we did and our hypothesis was correct. It's not just about the pretty ux. So what I call is evolutionary redesign. Like you can go for the jugular when testing. It's not like you're testing button color, right? So it's like you're looking at a new nav. Okay, cool. We have this like brand new redesign and like repositioning kind of thing. Let's go for it, right? Let's take a look at our hero section. Go test. If that works, then you can send a really big one. It's possibly a little bigger than my personal comfort and you can go for it. So it's like at least get a little bit of validation before you go do your big ones, right? So it's like if you're doing a website. So here's one thing that people make a huge mistake on it's not faster to do a full website redesign because you don't know how returning visitors are acting who first saw your new website and then come back to buy on your new website. You need at least 60 to 90 days of a new website with no changes to properly test if a new website has improved or not. That gives you like eight or nine at bats to incrementally improve. I'd rather take eight at bats than one at bat and hope for the best for six to you know, nine weeks. Six, eight weeks. So people like put on a new web put people put on a new website might do really well for new users, but it might suck for returning users. And that's your honey pot.
- [72:57]
A
What about if someone's like we're going to ship a whole new experience. Like we're going to ship a whole new product page experience or collection page experience and then we're going to back into it because like then, then we're going to back into the bit by bit. Would you like. If it sounds like you like the step wise but let's say, let's say like now we're, we're sold on shipping this whole new experience. Would you still test that like big swing experience versus the original experience. And then like great, we validated that's this new experience is a higher converting experience as a whole. And then like back into a step wise where it's like great, we have a. Yeah, totally.
- [73:32]
B
So, so let's say you redid the homepage, you redid the nav, you made a new PDP template and you added to the, you know, here section of the collections. Or maybe you change the filtering experience. Cool. Take that whole collections page site wide, go test it. Take, take two weeks, right? Cool. If that's validated you're probably going to get insight. But now let's say you go and ship the PDP template. Let's say doesn't perform well. You just saved yourself a heck ton of money. So then after your pdp, if that doesn't work, cool. Then go to your navigation, then go to your homepage. Like there's no like specific order. It's like whatever is most useful for you guys. So it's like take those gigantic like changes. There's no problem in that as long as you can attribute to some piece of it that's not a full website. Were like cool. Like now like you can look into heat maps of the A B test before and after. Cool. Did more people click on the nav? Like awesome. Cool. So this collection page Got more people on more products, got more people on more xyz. And that's why it led to the lift. Cool. Let's use that to inform our pdp. The PDP that might be on deck. Maybe you now learn that you need to like tweak it that 10, 20%. That's going to make it double.
- [74:49]
A
Yep.
- [74:50]
B
And then go and do that one and then do the next one. So like people think split testing is just like a headline at a time or an image at a time. You can go and ship features at a time, but as long as you have attribution of that feature. Rock and roll.
- [75:04]
C
So, so how. So that's same thing about homepage. Right. And it would be a feature or multiple pages. Right. Multiple sections on page. If performance is up, how do you know? Hey, this is why it's up. Maybe it's because we shipped new HERO module. That's better. Maybe because. Or are you then looking at Heat map? It's like, all right, and intelligence performance is up 5%. Why do we think so? Well, revenue per click on our new HERO module is up. Like, is that how you do it or differently?
- [75:31]
B
That's. That's the way I would do it if I was forced to do it that way. So content I am super picky about because copywriting and images are the 80 20. So if you're shipping three new sections of repositioning or content or copywriting, you don't get quantitative data on that really other than high level. This did perform at a higher revenue per session or didn't. So the answer is like, okay, like you know, bucket testing. I'm a big fan of. Right. So I would go bucket by bucket. And you can also be changing your collections page, you know, experience and also working on that homepage. It's not like you're stuck to one test at a time. So it's like you're slowly trying to iterate on your homepage, which is so critical. So test your PDP layout and then a section on the homepage and then, you know, you can test landers at the same time because those are their own isolated experience. So like, you know, have a test running on the lander, your PDP and a section on the homepage. At least there. Like, you know, you never want. I have it in the book. You never want more than two overlapping tests in the customer journey. If you have a test on the homepage, the product page and the collection page, that's going to get distortion. It might be a B and A, but like Test three is actually B in isolation. Right. So you're going to get improper results across the tests. So if you have a, you know, if your homepage is never going to touch a, you know, like landing page that's coming cold, you can technically run three because it might roll through. But you can never run three at the same time if you're not excluding traffic from each other. How does that feel? I'm curious. A lot of people give me pushback on it because they're impatient.
- [77:21]
C
Well, yeah, I mean, Connor, you go first because you guys did ship a homepage. What do you think?
- [77:27]
A
Yeah, I think what we've done in the past when we've done stuff like this is we'll go into Edge Mesh, our server side analytics tool and just look at the conversion rate by, by destination. Right. And just make sure that we didn't like, like, oh, this was converting at a two and a half percent and we just shipped this new experience and now it's converting at a 1 8. And obviously that's not perfect because that's a period over period look, but that's, it's at least a pulse check to make sure that we didn't ship an experience that just totally messed everything up. Like we did this. Yeah. So that's, that's where I think that's like, it's not the most ideal way to do it, but I do think it's a way to make sure that, hey, what we did didn't, didn't fully break anything. And then we can start to back into some more like true AB split tests. Like, hey, what happens if we move the founder section to be the third section versus the last section? So that's how we've approached in the past. I think what you're saying, Dylan, like, that's our approach has always been like, let's test as much as we can at any given time without them interfering with each other. Right. Like, you can't have like, so you have a homepage test and like a product page test and like a landing page test. Like, I think that's really good advice because I think that is so important, like velocity of testing and learning and like publishing these wins. I love that because we try to do that too. And I'm sure at times we are probably testing too much and we maybe they are interfering. But I thought that point that you made is a really good one. Like, and you have to be able to discern like the tests that are and are not going to interfere with one another.
- [78:53]
B
So let me give you one other about that homepage. Right? You can have five variants of that homepage in one test. So one of your hypotheses about this homepage might be moving the hero section or the about the founder section up or making a net new one.
- [79:08]
C
Cool.
- [79:09]
B
Now you have that about the founder plus two new content sections. Now you have those plus a third one. Then maybe there's a fourth variation of like a different angle. So you're actually testing a whole bunch of hypotheses for your homepage versus just one option which has so many variables in it.
- [79:25]
A
Right.
- [79:26]
B
So here's how you set up the test.
- [79:28]
C
Yeah, this is how we've decided to approach it. So like, because right now we want to do a homepage, last year we did a PDP which is yes, we want performance, but it's also a redesign. It's like outdated branding, just not great. You know, ux we will first if we know we're going to want to do it in few months, we will test things iteratively. Hey, what happens if we do this review thing versus that? So we will do standard A B testing, get some learnings, do the whole research process which now we're doing more thoroughly and then we'll redesign something and we'll go multivariate. And then at least if something performs or doesn't perform, we then have some idea why. For example, so we did a new PDP rather than just AB testing that against our old one. We did new PDP with all sections, new PDP with without this section, new PDP with this component differently. So at least there's one variable difference amongst them. And then whether it's performing or not, it at least gives you a little bit more insight into why versus just oh, this new thing is performing 10% better. We don't know why. You know, because there's not a learning in that. Obviously that's a good outcome, but there's not a learning in that. So I found that to be a good middle ground thing.
- [80:35]
B
So one thing, go to chapter 15 of billion dollar Websites. I have very advanced testing tactics. There's technically three types of tests. Multivariate is actually not in the way that you just described it. There's very nuanced differences in how they work because each variable is held in isolation. So if you have three variables, you're changing. It's actually nine variants. So go read chapter 14 and 15. There's that will like fast track to a lot of these things, these assumptions that you think you have that are incorrect, you know or can be optimized.
- [81:15]
C
I'm just not going to talk anymore because every time I do, Dylan's just like, no, you didn't read this page. This is why I'm done.
- [81:23]
B
That's part of why I wrote it, to be honest, where, like, people, like, jump on a consultant call. I'm like, yo, like, like, you can pay me for the hour. Like, that's totally cool. Like, I'm not, you know, rich enough to not take a high fee for an hour of my time. But, like, you can just read the book. It's 20 bucks. Like, it has absolutely every bit of my brain in there.
- [81:43]
A
Can I. Can I ask one more question?
- [81:44]
C
One last one?
- [81:45]
A
Yeah. What's. So we. We talked a lot about, like, big swing CRO testing, which is definitely, like, I think we all agree that that's the. That's the move and that's where the biggest impact comes from. What's a good use case, Dylan, for, like, true single variable split testing? Like, you know, everyone always likes to bring up, like, the button color stuff. Like, and. And that probably doesn't matter that much. But what is. Do you have any single variable split test where you're like, this is high, high impact potential? Like on the. Yeah, the. The. It's a five on the. On the I. And the I score.
- [82:19]
B
Okay, so I'm pretty sure this is one of these. Yeah, it is. Um, so one of the biggest. One of the biggest mistakes is that there is such thing as a big swing test and a small swing test. That is objectively false. My biggest winning split test I've ever had. My second biggest. I told you the. About the founder story. No joke. It's a. It's a, you know, not cookware, not direct, but it's like home goods kind of thing. Similar to you guys. I literally changed one word on the nav. Where, like, it's like bestsellers. And I just changed it to the general category, and that gave a 9% global lift in revenue. That was changing a couple of characters. It's changing one word. You know, like, the client was like, it was bestsellers and I changed it to drinkware. Okay. Which is their whole website. So instead of, like, bestsellers and just putting it to all drinkware, 9% global lift. So, like, the whole thing of, like, a big split test and a small split test. There's no such thing. What I say is, what makes a big test is how well it aligns to your research. If it doesn't align well to your research, it's a small Thrown away test. If it aligns really well to your research. There's no such thing as a quote unquote small test.
- [83:39]
C
Right. I feel like then maybe re reframing it is almost like lift. Right. And I feel like Dylan, you would say headline of a. You know, it's, it's copy test. So very low dev, very low. No, no real dev, no design. It's above the fold and it's a very important lever that you can have. And so that's probably something you would prioritize just based on ICE framework, which is. I think most people consider that a small thing.
- [84:06]
B
Like they think it's a tier three test. I haven't, I've never said that before. I'm kind of trying it live time. But like I think it's like a tier three test but like if you look in your ICE score you're very confident it'll have an impact or maybe you're a three impact, a five confidence and five on ease. That's a 13 out of 15. It's probably going to sit up there in your ICE method in your true ICE score.
- [84:30]
A
I think that's a very empowering take by the way. It's like all tests are big tests as long as they're rooted in research.
- [84:35]
B
Exactly.
- [84:36]
A
Doesn't matter if it's shipping a whole new product page that took you six months to to build or if it's changing a headline that took your copywriter 10 minutes to ideate.
- [84:45]
B
Correct. And that's why spending your 80, 20 time in research. Just ask your customers what they want, give them what they want and you get what you want, which is money. My favorite phrase in marketing.
- [84:55]
A
Yeah.
- [84:56]
C
All right. Dylan, this was great. I could. We'll have to have you back for a third time because got pages of notes. A lot of good feedback you gave me. You gave Connor. So this is great. I think people are going to love it. Thank you so much for hopping on and obviously let us know what do you want to plug? Where can people find out about you? Where. What's the URL for the site? Where can people learn more?
- [85:15]
B
So this little guy. Billion dollar websites. It's 20 bucks. Highly recommend. There's a outdated picture of me on the back but it still looks good. So that's just billion dollar websites dot com. I'm the founder of hemat dot com. We're the only revenue based you know he map in the world but we're doing so much more like right now. If you guys like Moby or you're a fan of talking to your data. How about talking to your website and your customers at the same time? That's going to be a Q1 feature, so it's going to be pretty sick. I'm pretty excited. We're doing a lot like the sim gym, all that type of stuff like so heatmap.com that's best web analytics you can get out there. And then lastly is just Join the Newsletter. Just go to Dylan enter.com join the newsletter I just hit 30,000 marketers which is exciting. I diagnosed everyone with chronic attribution anxiety the other week and it was my best performing newsletter. So yeah, I just treat you guys like humans in a newsletter. I don't do paid sponsorships and just it's my most valuable thing and my most beloved brain time of the week. So those are the three things.
- [86:25]
C
All right. That was a great episode that I think tops the first one that Dylan was on. This guy is a wealth of knowledge, super passionate as well. Gave me lots of good feedback, tons of notes and takeaways. I am going to go start working on our homepage right now. As always, if you enjoyed this, please share it on Twitter, subscribe on YouTube, everywhere you get your podcast, please share it. We always appreciate it. As always, we cannot do this without our sponsors, Motion Rich Panel, Pression, AI, Afel and House. We'll see you guys on the next one.