Loading summary
Transcript100 lines
- [00:00]
Connor Rowling
All right, we are back with another episode of Marketing Operators. I believe we're in the. We're well into the hundred tier. I think it's episode 120. People keep asking me. People keep asking me. It's come up a handful of times recently asking how long we've done it. Well, over two years. At this point.
- [00:16]
Austin Brawner
We're going to be at episode 1000 before we know it. I will, I will say, are we, you know, the, the behind the scenes production team makes it very easy for us just to show up, show up every week and record. So it's been, it's been fun, man. But yeah, are we like 121, 30 podcasters.
- [00:33]
Connor Rowling
They're like the new surgeons. Like, you know how like a surgeon doesn't like, you know, they've got people to prep the tools. They just kind of show up, they get suited up.
- [00:41]
Austin Brawner
Right. It's all scheduled. The tools are there waiting for them. The surgical tech's got it all laid out on a platter for them. They just show up and, and do the job. That's, you know, I, I never made the connection between podcaster and surgeon, but it makes sense.
- [00:56]
Connor Rowling
Yeah. People don't realize that. People don't realize that. All right, sweet. We are in the midst right now. This will come out in a couple of weeks, but we are in the midst of prime day. How's it going on the, on the, the cookware front?
- [01:13]
Austin Brawner
It's good. Yeah, we are having a solid start. You know, we, we try to do like, the way that we think about our offers on more of a macro perspective is we really protect obviously Black Friday as our like, best deals of the year. But with our consideration period and how much we we spend on demand gen, we'd like to roll out one more offer outside of Black Friday and holiday that's like not, not as good, but it's at least like competitive with those offers. Last year, because we did the super bowl ad, we decided to do that with what we branded our big game sale, which was our February offer. We wanted to put our best foot forward this year. We did not do a Super bowl ad. We, and we felt like the best time to do that would be like right smack dab halfway through the year. So that's kind of what we're doing for primetime sale this year is again, they're not our Black Friday deals, but they are our, I would say our most competitive offers we ran all year. So we're seeing some, some pretty awesome results because of that. So. Yeah, yeah, Good day one. You know, I think just talking to some insider, getting some insider info at, at Amazon and actually the category as a whole was trending down yesterday. At least our, like kitchen and home, the home goods category. And we, we did not. We. I think we were up a little bit yesterday, so we, I think we outpaced the category as a whole. But yeah, it's just interesting that that homegoods and Kitchen as a whole actually decreased year over year on, on the first day last year. So, yeah, I don't really know exactly what to attribute that to. But yeah, happy that we, that we beat the, the trend on that one.
- [02:48]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, no, obviously I do think Prime Day is in a weird position, like them moving it up. They moved it up a lot this year. They always like kind of shifted around. You never really know. I'm always surprised at how little notice Amazon sellers get. But this year they moved it up basically a full three weeks out of Q3 in mid July, all the way up until the very end of Q2 here. For us, it comes immediately after our Father's Day sale, I mean, which is definitely not ideal. Like, we've got no ability to like, rebuild the funnel or sort of build up any additional demand to capture on, on Prime Day. And, you know, I think one of the reasons they do that is just like it has deteriorated in its performance over the last couple years. I remember it used to be like a thing. Like people on Twitter would be tweeting about it, the group chats would be lighting up. Everybody would be doing like multiples, many multiples of what they would do on a typical day. And now that it's shifted throughout the year, it's expanded from one to two to four days. Like, I, I was, I was feeling a little nostalgic yesterday thinking about how. How much more of an event it used to be.
- [03:56]
Austin Brawner
Totally. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, you would think that. I think what the ideal. If anyone from Amazon's listening, I think the ideal time, I mean, all of these brands run Mother's Day, Memorial Day, Father's Day, or some combination of those three sales, like from mid April through mid June. So it would actually make a lot more sense if Amazon kicked back prime as late as they could instead of. But they're pulling it up earlier and earlier and earlier. Like, it just doesn't make sense. Like it's. I don't know, it just feels like that doesn't make sense knowing that so many brands activate so hard during those, those, like, spring and early summer months on These other tent pole moments because we're in the same boat where, like, we activate hard for Mother's Day, Memorial Day, we don't activate as hard for Father's Day just because we have those two other activations right before we still do stuff around it. So, yeah, it's like we're in the same boat as you guys, where we just haven't had, like, any time to kind of build up the funnel after we just launched these, like, these other mega sales right before it. So it is weird timing. It's still like, don't get me wrong, we're still putting out big, big net revenue numbers. It's just. Yeah. Like, since last year, the growth hasn't been as big, you know. So I do agree with you. Based on that data point, it does seem like the whole, like, aura of Prime Day is. Is kind of falling off a little bit. I don't know. I. I didn't buy anything yesterday. I don't know if you did.
- [05:19]
Connor Rowling
No, no. Yeah. I was looking at it, like, our different categories relative to a normal day. And this is obviously gonna, like, significantly shift between different brands and different types of products. But, like, for us, we were seeing between 3 or 4x of a normal day.
- [05:38]
Austin Brawner
Okay, Is that. Is that just on Amazon?
- [05:43]
Connor Rowling
Just on Amazon.
- [05:44]
Austin Brawner
Okay. So we're well above that. I mean, we probably did, like, God, I mean, 12. I mean, over 10x a normal day. So it still is. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [05:55]
Connor Rowling
You know, I will say my normal day, I was comping it to, like, like week over week. So we were kind of in a Father's Day. I could find like, a better, more realistic comp for what a normal, like, late June day might be. We still don't get up. We used to be. I mean, I remember the first couple prime days. Like, I think it would be 8 or 9x. We've never seen. I think hexclad. You guys have the consideration period where during these big chopping moments, like, there's just more. They're more potent for you all, I think. But we used to see, like, many more multiples. 7, 8x a normal day. And I do think even with a fairer comp, it's like we're probably looking at maybe five or something like that. It's just. It's just not as exciting as it once was.
- [06:35]
Austin Brawner
Yeah. I mean, what if you can share this? What. How big? Like, what. What percent of amp? Like, what's your Amazon share of revenue for your. For Ridge?
- [06:46]
Connor Rowling
Oh, it's like, it's historically been like 20%.
- [06:50]
Austin Brawner
Okay, so we're not that far. I mean we're in that, that, like. Yeah, we're in that range as well. Obviously during primetime sale, it's like four to one, you know, dollars on Amazon, $2 on Shopify. Because we'll activate. We more or less do the, at least on individual offers. We more or less do the same offer on our individual products on the two channels, but they're, they're very incremental audiences. That's also why I think that prime time sale, prime sale still always works for us in spite of us running these other three offers is just because those other three offers or two offers, I should say Mother's Day, Memorial Day, those are huge Shopify moments. And we, and they, we do activate on Amazon as well, but they just, you know, those don't perform as well as Shopify. And then we activate on prime and it, and it, we have a big moment. So I do think there's some, something to be said about, sure, we don't have as much time to like build the funnel following those other two sale moments, but I also don't think we just don't clear the funnel as much on Amazon. So like that funnel is still relatively built up even though the dot com funnel is a little bit more depleted. So we still see those big spikes. Just because I think the audiences that are buying from us on Shopify and Amazon are very different. And you can see it through the, through the AOV is like the number one thing that you look at the two and it's like, wow, these are, these are just like totally different marketplaces for you guys. So yeah, it's been interesting though. I don't, I don't know the four, the four day prime event. Like I didn't know. I came into it this year with the hypothesis that we were going to see better growth because I felt like the consumer was more. Even though they moved it up again, I feel like the consumer is a little bit more familiar with the four day event. Not the case. And maybe it's going to be more backloaded because people are building carts and they maybe haven't fully converted yet because there's a lot to sift through over this four days as far as like a consumer's perspective goes. But yeah, day one was, it was again, not bad. We were happy with the results we got, but I was just shocked to hear some of the category trends. And it doesn't seem like the consumer is getting any more familiar with this four day event.
- [08:54]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, we'll see. We'll see how it turns over time. You know, you mentioned one thing before we get into. We've got some, we've got some topics I'm excited about jumping into here. But you mentioned not doing, obviously not doing a Super bowl ad this year, not doing a big time sale. Did that make comps weird for you guys for that February period? Like, did you feel the lack of a Super bowl ad year over year?
- [09:13]
Austin Brawner
Totally. I mean, dude, it was more than the, it was more than February. It's like the comps for all of. When you do that big of a demand generation campaign, it makes your entire, honestly it makes the entire 1h comp super weird because. And, and you know, we were very confident in like in real time last year how that super bowl ad performed for us. But I think it became even more clear how, how much that did for us once we got through Q1 this year and even into the second quarter. Mainly through, you know, kind of the core things we were looking at were branded search volume. So like going into search search console and just looking at the year on year like trend in impressions from our branded search terms, Google search console data and then looking at the same thing in Amazon like branded search volume. And like we saw pretty drastic drops in our total net branded search volume in Amazon and Google search console. And then when you go and look at Google, if you go to Google search trends, which anyone can do this and type in hexclad and you look over the last like whatever enough time to include both last February and the February prior, you'll see that we were at like a 49 out of 100 last February in 2025 and this year we're at like a 40 out of 100 in, in 2026. So like you can clearly see across all these different data points that we just didn't generate as much demand this year or awareness. And like I'm not shocked at that. The super bowl campaign we did probably drummed up 200, 300 million impressions. So yeah, I mean we're from a, luckily from a revenue perspective we're not like, you know, I think our, our branded search was down like multiple hundreds of thousands of like net impressions and as per Google search console this year. But revenue wise we're not like trending in that direction. But we're absolutely. I think that speaks to how much demand a moment like that can generate when executed in the right way.
- [11:08]
Connor Rowling
Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was curious about asking. It is one of those things where in the moment, you can feel confident, you can kind of triangulate it, and then what's often really helpful is like, that following year, you get an even better understanding of like, of what that total impact was.
- [11:24]
Austin Brawner
I'm hoping we could do it again soon. Right. Like, I would love to. The tricky part is, you know, there's a reason you see like the massive, massive brands activating for a Super Bowl. The main reason is not the amount of spend it requires to buy a 15 or a 30 second spot that year. It's. There are, there's a lot more that goes into it. You generally have to commit to that same level of media investment with that network that's hosting it for the following three years. So if you go spend $7 million on a super bowl ad this year, well, in, in, in NBC or, or CBS airs it, we have to go spend another $21 million with CBS over the following three years. You know, if you're Geico or, you know, Dr. Pepper or Doritos, that doesn't matter because you, you're spending there already. But if you're, you know, Hexclad or Ridge or Groons, where you don't have a massive, massive linear TV budget, relatively, like, chances are you can't go and commit 7 million per year to linear, to like national linear TV buys. Now, you know, we're. Fox is a partner of ours, so that's why we were able to go and kind of make that investment last year because we didn't have all of the requirements that we would have had with, you know, an H or a network we weren't partners with. But, like, that's why we didn't buy another ad this year is because Fox wasn't airing it. And, you know, we're not partnered with any of these other networks.
- [12:47]
Connor Rowling
That's interesting. Yeah, no, I had no backstory there. I might be in Ridge's future. We'll see. Once I've got like $30 million in budget to sort of allocate, it's at the top of the list.
- [12:58]
Austin Brawner
I think you need like, I think you need like 10 million. That is what I would say you need to shoot, like ideate the creative. Shoot the creative, Buy the media and then any sort of like accessory activations that you're going to do around the campaign. I think that's probably like a good. If you feel like you can, you can spend 10 mil. That's like a good. You're like, all right, we got, we got a Super bowl ad in the tank. I think
- [13:21]
Connor Rowling
Motion just dropped their 2026 creative benchmarks report and it's been getting shared everywhere. Slack channels, LinkedIn, Twitter, sharing it in our private group chats. And it's great because everybody's been asking the same four questions forever. What is normal? How many ads should we actually be shipping? What is a healthy hit rate and which formats really win? The report analyzes over 575,000 creatives from 6,000 advertisers and over a billion dollars in ad spend to answer these exact questions. And the report has some really interesting findings, like the fact that only 4 to 8% of ads actually become winners and over half of ads actually lose. And for Motion customers, this report is especially helpful. You can upload it into your Motion dashboard with their Runneth AI chat and compare it directly against your vertical benchmarks. Hit the link in the show notes. I promise you won't regret it. And as always, go to motionapp.com and tell the marketing operator sent you Prime Day is good and I love getting into the Super Bowl. The Technical first thing we've got on the agenda here, I'm hiring a new director of Performance Creative, which I'm super excited about and I wanted to get your read on it. Performance Creative, obviously, like I was, I was talking to my brother last night actually. Our director of Performance Creative on the team now has been around for like five years and when we hired for that role five years ago, like nobody was hiring for that role. And this is also where I give someone like Motion a lot of credit. Premier Sponsor Motion is like, you know, Reza came on the show 18 months ago and, and he was extremely clear and they've been clear for a very long time. Like that is the person that they're building for. They are building for the Performance Creative or the Creative strategist is what they call it. Because I just think over the last half decade we've become like infinitely more data driven and we've really built far more sort of toolings and strategies for like, how are we developing ad content, how are we thinking about it strategically, how are we iterating, etc. Obviously, like a core part of what we talk about on this podcast. So I'm super excited about hiring this new Director of Performance Creative and I think it's a good time to sort of like reflect on like what is needed from that role today. And one of my first thoughts is and Ridge is coming from a unique position, but I think a lot of brands listening will find themselves in, in similar circumstances. We have a good team and we have a great system where I think about, like, I think about adding someone to that system. And I think we've got, you know, we know what we're trying to do here. Fundamentally. We have the processes in PR in place. We know what we want creative exploration to look like, creative iteration to look like. We've got the notion workflows, we've got the project manager, all of these things. And I was just thinking about how I think performance creative leaders have become more system operators than, like, individual creative ideators. So I'm curious, like, just your take on that and how it looks at Hexclad now. Like, what is that balance? Where does. Where does you know that. That more traditional, like, creative exploration stop and like the. The system building begin?
- [16:26]
Austin Brawner
I fully agree with your take. You know, this actually doesn't. I listen to your hot takes with Austin and I actually think your hot take on, like, how. How weird the CMO role is actually applies really well here. Like, I think on. On hot takes, you were saying, you know, today's CMO for an E. Com brand needs to be like, basically a data analyst. Like, you really need to deeply understand your numbers and where they're trending, but you also need to be able to sit with the team and like, come up with like, a funny campaign idea, like a. Like a very pure creative. And it's like, no different here. I think about what a good creative strategist can do today. And it's like, of course they can come up with the ideas, but they can also produce the ideas. Like, with an editing team, they can have a system around making the flywheel run like you just talked about. They also have to, like, have some level of. Of data analytic capabilities. So it is. One of it is becoming like. And I think that's why the creative strategist role is, like, harder and harder to find really good talent. And it's also demanding. Like, I mean, good CS demands a pretty high salary nowadays for an E. Comm brand, and it's for good reason. So I agree. I think it is like, our. Our CS lead is like, her name's Alyssa. She's awesome. She's very creative. She has great ideas, and she is able to bring those ideas to life. I think her absolute superpower is, like, operations. Like, she has built an amazing system, an amazing flywheel with how we use ClickUp to, like, manage everything from. All right, we've decided we're gonna go execute this idea all the way through. Now we're reporting on the data with this idea. Like she is unbelievable at that. And then, and again she's still good at, at like the ideation stuff. Like she still comes up with great ideas. She's very creative as well. And but, but we have like, I think that's her strong suit. And then we have a, we have other people in the team. Like for example, we have this, this woman on our team, Paige. And like she is awesome at like the blue sky thinking, big swings, net new ideas. And again, not that she's bad at the other stuff, but like just as Alyssa's very good at the operational bit and I think that's her strongest quality. Paige's strongest quality is certainly the. Like me when I come to her with some like wacky fun idea, I go to her and say, hey, like can you work, can you like beat this idea up with me? I want to talk. I think there's something here. So like we've kind of, I think it's all about building a team that like you can't have every, like if you have five creative strategists on your team, you can't have every single one be, have their strong suit be like the systems building in like the flywheel operating. You also can't have, have all of their strong suit be the ideation because then you're going to end up with a bunch of people pitching great ideas, but none of it's going to get done in a systematized way. So I think it's like, no, I mean brands of our size. Like if you're a hundred million dollar brand, you probably have 2, 3, 4, 5 creative strategists on your team. I think it's like building the team in a way where you have multiple people where all their different strongs, like you can't have everyone be only good at the one thing. So yeah, it's, it's. I think it's less about like every single person having all those attributes and more about complex like having different people have different attributes. And then you have this team where it's like super complimentary to one another and then you can kind of figure out as you go like who handles which concepts and which parts of the flywheel and all that. I absolutely agree.
- [19:50]
Connor Rowling
The one thing I guess I would include outside of like team like searching for attributes and team members to build like a functional, well rounded system because that's like, it's good and that's like extremely applicable like almost across the organization where you want the same thing with like your retention team or anything else. One thing that I think that's interesting about Performance Creative, particularly the last couple years is it seems like a lot of like the concepting who's actually coming up with the concept has really moved from the strategist to the creator where like it felt like four years ago we were like he like we had, we were like really like briefing out. We want you to say. I remember seeing like really. And look, there's like a thousand ways to skin a cat and this is a perfect example of that. But I remember seeing really robust briefs sent to creators. We never got this far, but like there's some sort of like DTC plant company normal getting one of their briefs. It was extremely well done. And they were like, they'd send this out to creators and they were like, this is what we want you to say. These are the shots we want you to include. Here's the A roll, here's the B roll, here's like direction on lighting, things like that. Like really robust briefs that they would send out to the point where they knew exactly what kind of content that they were getting back. And it feels to me like we've reached this point in Performance Creative or at least a lot of people have decided to prioritize volume. And a lot of volume is, you know, outsourcing some of those details, some of that briefing to the creator. People have been creating Ad Creative and UGC for a long time now. So instead of me having to tell you exactly what to create, I can just say, hey, I want you to talk about this product in a way that's authentic that you think people on TikTok will, you know, resonate with. Now I'm going to do that 100 times and that's actually how I produce creative. And that's, that's probably one of the big step changes in how Performance Creative has gone from creative ideation to systems building is because the actual ideating has also been sort of outsourced to a degree.
- [21:45]
Austin Brawner
Yeah, yeah. It's like the age of the apper is what is what really works well. It's like if in the, in the less brief the more yappies type of creator LED ads you get. Yeah, I agree with that. I think especially on the creator side, I still think, I mean we're still producing stuff internally, especially with as we've shifted to be of more of like, you know, we have this philosophy like, like make it for YouTube and just include safe zones for 4 by 5 and in vertical videos because we find that when we shoot stuff for YouTube then we cut it in paid social specs and length and like pacing, it works really well. And then we get, you know, multiple assets for multiple channels. Like, you know, we have this ad that we're working on right now that we're calling like sensational durability that we'll, we'll launch probably in the next month. And it's all about kind of being ridiculous with the pan in order to demonstrate how durable it is. Because that is our leading value proposition. It's. I think it's going to crush. I really hope so. We've been working on it for a long ass time. But that's a great example where that has been like a highly briefed, highly planned, highly produced. I mean this is like a pure YouTube ad. You can even argue it might even be like a CTV level ad. That's where like I think a real creative strategist does shine still because it's again, it's, there's like very highly briefed and thoughtful and planned and like again, that's an example where I went to the team, I was like, hey, I have this idea for how we can like produce an ad that's all about this value prop durability. But I want to do it in kind of like a tongue in cheek funny way. So, you know, we're like running it over with a fire truck and like doing weird stuff like that. And then we transitioned into giving the more practical use cases. So it's not all about like flamethrowers and fire trucks and dropping off a building and stuff like that. But that's a good example where I went to Paige and I was like, hey, here's this idea. She took it and ran with it and has done like, like that's pure, that's like pure creative work right there. And that was highly briefed, highly produced. A lot of steps along the way, a lot of back and forth with editors to get it right. It's just like very different end of the spectrum than oh, hey creator, here's our value props. Go talk about it in a super authentic way and like, send me, send me your video when you, when you have it back. And like you have to be able to, to do both. And I think, I think where some people even struggle with the, the latter now is they feel like they need to have a lot of input to be doing their job. When in reality sometimes the less input you give a creator now is better because it comes back more authentic. And I think you almost have to resist that a little bit. If you're someone that you know, is like, oh, I barely put anything in the brief. Like, should I put more in here? It's like, no, you, you probably shouldn't. So it's an interesting. Because I agree. I remember when I was writing briefs to creators back in the day, it was like a lot more scripted, a lot more prescriptive. And now it's like, it's more about just briefing them and educating them on the brand. Right. So their authentic ad comes back accurate and not like, you know, hey, you gotta lead with these value props. We don't want you to lead with our like tertiary value props, stuff like that. So yeah, it's a very interesting dynamic now. It's changed a lot. Quick gut check for the operators listening. If you're spending on TV or CTV today, can you actually say what it's driving incrementally? This is exactly why we work and have worked with Neon Pixel at hexclad for the last three years. We've grown with them a lot over time and CTV has become one of our top growth channels. They help us treat premium living room TV like a real performance channel. It has smarter household targeting, it has suppression of people who already know us. It has a very robust analytics back end. So we feel really good about the measurement. And ultimately, and most importantly, it is a strategy that is built around incremental growth, not just claimed attribution. We look at incrementality as the true north star on measuring channels. And they are really measurement agnostic. They don't force us into their own black box dashboard. They work inside the measurement systems we already trust and help us understand what TV is actually doing. If you want to check it out, go to NeonPixel Co and ask them to design a controlled CTV test on your numbers.
- [25:56]
Connor Rowling
Yeah. What? So the sensational durability concept, how is that produced? Was it done by creators or did you guys like. I'm curious, the level of investment behind that idea.
- [26:08]
Austin Brawner
It was produced by our internal team. No creators actually. The woman who stars in the ad page, so the woman who briefed the ad page, she's also like the main talent in the ad as well. And she's like playing this like the angle is like she's a scientist and explaining why and how our product's so durable. And it's like we. We tested it through all these methods and then our internal team produced it and planned it. So they went to all these different locations. Some of it's in studio, but a lot of it's out there in the real world. And yeah, there's no, I mean there is external talent. Like they, we had to hire people like you know, but not, not, it's not creators, right? Like we hired, you know, actors through some sort of website where you can act like find people. So yeah, kind of like a. More of like a pure ad, I
- [26:57]
Connor Rowling
would say, 100% like relatively traditional form of production, albeit with the internal team. It's actually, I'm super glad you bring it up as an example because then I was so, so that's kind of been my frame of thinking where I'm like, all right, I get to hire this new director. Let me reflect on like where the team's at currently. And what I would say is like we started from a place of like, you know, four or five years ago. Like, hey, we're going to be pretty prescriptive with briefing. We're going to get dozens of creators sort of like in our network and like that's going to be our system. And that has worked really well for a really long time. I think we've moved into the direction of let's do lighter briefing with more creators, but we haven't fully embraced it. So I think that's, that's one path that we could further go down. We're focused on TikTok shop right now and building out the affiliate network. And it's like that feels like a path for performance creative strategists now where you say, hey, your job is not really to do briefing anymore, it's to build a system to, you know, onboard creators. And maybe you're doing the coaching calls and the general brand education and the review of what ads are performing and what aren't so that when you give a very loose brief of hey, I need you to talk about, you know, this wallet for this sale, it's just going to come back slightly higher quality. So I think that's one path to go where it is just, it is just more of a focus on volume. And then the other way that I had was like more of what you just laid out. The, the bigger shoot, the pre production work, the like, let's actually think about a very high level concept and like let's execute on a really fantastic 30 second YouTube ad or CTV ad. And those feel like more likely than not will require different people. Like I have to make that decision in terms of how do I want to further build out the performance creative team and like those feel like two pretty distinct paths to me.
- [28:45]
Austin Brawner
I agree. I think because we're doing the same thing with the TikTok shop affiliate content. I think the only caveat I would add, and even in this example I would still argue you want to keep it light on the briefing. If you go and activate with a certain creator that's like speaking to a certain Persona, you still, you might want to give that person a little bit more prescription on kind of the why behind the reason you're activating with them. Just because the last thing, if we go and activate with a mom or a dad style creator and, and the value props that that person is going to hit on are going to be very different than the value props that you know, some kind of 33 year old buff guy that's cooking a lot of steak are going to hit on. Right. The, the parent's going to be all about. I love how quick and quick it, quick it heats up and how quick it cleans up because it's fast. I love that I can throw it in the dishwasher because it's efficient. Like they're going to be all about efficiency. I got a family of six I'm cooking for and I'm cooking for them six times a day or three times a day. Like you might just want to hit on that in the brief, but other than that, like you're still going to let them cook. You know, you don't want to go too much deeper than that. So I think that's the only caveat I would add is it's not like a full. Throw them the same brief and see what they, they come like. There's still, there still can be varying levels of like pointing them in the right direction. So I'm curious what, I have a question for you because you know, presumably I know you have like this person left and now you're hiring to like backfill them, but what's your current kind of creative strategy stack look like in terms of people? I imagine you have, you know, multiple creative strategists on the team at this point.
- [30:24]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, yeah, we have two, two US based strategists still. We've got two offshore editors, we've got three designers. That's what we, that's what we would consider the performance creative team right now.
- [30:37]
Unidentified Speaker
Yeah.
- [30:37]
Connor Rowling
And one of those strategists is like a, is like a hybrid strategist and editor.
- [30:41]
Austin Brawner
Okay. What are their, what are their skill sets, would you say? Are they more like great at the operations, great at the ideation, some combination of each? Because I'm curious, based on their skill sets, if you're thinking that the lead needs to fill a certain skill set more than others because you need them to like fit the puzzle piece the right way.
- [31:01]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, I think I, and that's kind of what I was, what I was hitting at earlier. Um, what we currently do well is like slightly more involved briefing and doing that at decent scale and we are, we have been like sort of erring on the side of scale recently where we've begun activating with more creators and like continuing to produce more and more content. And then also we've been you know, building out this affiliate program and performance creative has sort of bled into that as well. Like let's make sure that the, the briefing and direction that our affiliate community gets is also informed by our creative strategy. So that's like, that's a side of the spectrum that we've been exploring that we are good at. We have a project manager on the team and I think the system itself is like very well maintained and will continue to, to be so. So when I think about hiring this new director, it's really just do we want to go further down the path of volume and do I look for someone who comes from like a TikTok shop oriented, you know, supplement brand like has activated thousands of creators in the past is extremely reasonable path for us to continue down or do we actually try to round out the platform more and say hey, you know, we're looking for someone who has more experience with the bigger shoots, the higher productions, the pre production work we can take maybe fewer swings but they're more meaningful or potentially more impactful.
- [32:22]
Austin Brawner
Right. So more of like a true like creative director style background, like that sort of deal.
- [32:27]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, but, but, but again with the idea of it being you know, performance oriented.
- [32:33]
Austin Brawner
I've been shocked at just like the amount of spend we've been able to get behind some of these bigger creators or smaller creators that we just barely briefed and then they send us back an ad and it just like it's, it's. I think it's the secrets out now that we did a pretty big activation not, not major but like we activated with Bethany Frankel and she's the perfect example where like you do not want to over brief Bethany because the reason, the reason she works in ads is for two reasons. One, because she hawks products and her audience is there.
- [33:04]
Connor Rowling
I don't know who Bethany Frankel is.
- [33:06]
Austin Brawner
Oh, Bethany Frankel is, she's kind of like, she's very, a very successful entrepreneur. I think she has this brand called like Skinny Tequila. It's like some sort of, I don't Know if it's a n. A like mix brand, like type product that you mix with tequila or if it's like alcohol infused but it's like Skinny Girl Tequila or something like that. She's super successful. I think her, she's like one of those kind of like hgtv. Not hgtv, like Bravo. Sorry. She's like a Bravo personality. So she's really like my mom watches stuff with Bethany Frankel in it and like, I, I would have to look up where she, she was on those like Bravo TV shows for a long time. So. But if you go look at her page, I'm curious what her like initial, like kind of path to fame was. I forget. But if you go look at her page, she hawks products like her audience. She's attract, she's inherently attracting people that sells products. And I think you see this time and time again where a brand will activate with some large influencer and then they're like shocked that it didn't perform that well organically at least, because they don't hawk products and their audience isn't there because they want to get sold products. They're there because they like the, the content, the lifestyle or whatever of that creator, that influencer. Bethany's not that she, she is talking about and reviewing products all the time. Her audience is there for that. That's one reason she works. The other reason is because we don't, you know, she's very authentic in the ad she makes. So like, we didn't send her an overly prescribed brief. We got something back that was super authentic. And on the surface level you're like, wait, we paid, we paid what for this? Because it's just like again, it's like single shot, barely edited stuff. But then you, you know, we get to the end of the term where we spent like 7.8x on those ads. What we paid her, we got a huge ROI on it. And so yeah, we didn't, we let her do her thing and it felt very authentic to her. And now our competitors realized that all of a sudden, three, four months into our deal, all of a sudden, you know, she's popping up on an ad with caraway. We're like, all right, maybe we should have, we should have had some exclusivity in the deal. I don't necessarily think that took away from the performance of our activation with her, but I think those are the things to like, think about with these creators is, are like those things like, are they, are they going to be able to like come in and sell a product in a diy. I don't think that you have to necessarily, like, they don't have to be doing this organically for, for them to make a good ad and for it to work and pay. That's not what I'm saying. But still, I mean, I think we've all had experiences where we've tried to get someone that's not used to selling products on paid social and then you go and say, hey, can you make an ad about this product? And like, it just doesn't come back that good because it's not a native format to them. They're not used to doing that. So I think, I'm not saying they have to be doing it organically and have to have attracted an audience organically that's interested in that. But oftentimes these people don't know how to like sell a product in a Dr. Way. Bethany does. Like, she really does. And there's a reason you're seeing a lot of brands activate with her. There's a reason you're seeing a lot of brands activate with Eric Eichman, I think is his name. You know, he's that fitness influencer that he does tons of brand deals, he's good at making ads, he knows how to sell products, he knows how to like do it in a way that's fresh for each brand. If you were to go and activate with, I don't know, Aaron Judge or, or some other athlete, chances are they're not going to be able to like make a doctor product oriented ad the same way that Eric can. So it's, it's really important to like think about those things before. Just, just thinking about the surface level. Like, oh yeah, this person, I'm gonna slap, slap their name on our product and brand is just gonna work. It's like, well, not really. I was actually, I actually saw an ad. My friend Cam sent me an ad from Giannis, Giannis Ant Coupo or however you say his last name. And dude, it was a gopuff ad and I was shocked at how good he was. I never thought Giannis would, would be like good in an ad and it was amazing. It was like more of a high produce, like scripted, like kind of what we were talking about earlier. But I was like amazed at how good Giannis was. I was like, damn, this is going to open up so many doors for Giannis because brands are going to see how good he was in this ad and go. And it was really funny. It was, it was like really tongue in cheek funny. And it was One of the. I just, I didn't expect him to be like that good in front of a camera making an ad.
- [37:30]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, there's a bit of a spectrum there between like the, the Bethany Frankel's like being more social native to like Yanis being in the TV commercial. Quick, quick, aside here. Giannis related. And then we could jump into the AI agent point you wanted to hit. But did you see there's a Kevin Durant and Drake ad out now for Kevin Durant's new shoes and Drake is fantastic in it.
- [37:54]
Austin Brawner
That doesn't shock me. I mean, Drake's an actor. I was watching Degrassi. I was watching Degrassi when I was like 11 years old, you know.
- [38:01]
Connor Rowling
Totally. No, and he's like. I mean he is, he's just a raw entertainer for sure. Like, has the, has the, the true acting background. So of course, like, I guess it shouldn't be too much of a surprise, but I just saw it like discussed on, on Instagram and people were like, people had for. They were just acknowledging that they'd forgotten how good of an actor he was and that he just like absolutely crushes it in this Kevin Durant commercial. Really?
- [38:25]
Austin Brawner
I gotta check it out. I'm going to pull it up in a tab so I don't forget. Oh, it's a Nike commercial. Okay.
- [38:30]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, it's a Nike commercial. Kevin Durant, very famous basketball player, has the Nike deal, has some new shoes out and it's very funny. Rich Panel CEO just predicted his own SaaS product will lose 90% of its revenue. And he's the one building what will kill it. They are betting that AI agents will replace traditional support tools entirely. No dashboards, no seats, no workflows. So what did they ship? An autonomous AI agent that handles customer support from end to end, reading order data, issuing refunds, updating shipments without a human ever touching it. It means you can run a faster, leaner support team at a fraction of the cost while resolving tickets instantly. 24. Seven rich panel is cannibalizing their own business to build the future of and support for brands. Because if they don't, someone else will. Go check out what they're building@richpanel.com and learn how you can automate your entire support operation today. Look, I think that's a good. I think that's a good sort of touch base. I appreciate it's one of those segments where I'm just looking for help in my job. I'm like, let me just kind of talk this over with Conor Rowling. Sorry for the rabbit hole. 100%. You want to hit AI agent as a CRO play is what you have. So what are you guys working on? Tee it up for me.
- [39:45]
Austin Brawner
I am just so. I'm so bullish on this use case for, for AI. Like, you know, I think our initial, our initial inspo for this, our muse for this was Rufus on Amazon. And now I'm actually looking and it's like Alexa for shopping. So I don't know if they like sunsetted Rufus and now they have Alexa for shopping. But for anyone that doesn't know, Rufus is basically this on Amazon. So you can go to Amazon and you could say, hey, I'm having, I work a desk job. I sit at a desk for eight hours a day. I'm having back problems. I'm. I'm trying to figure out a solution here. And you can type this into Rufus and it'll basically come back to you and say, all right, thanks for the info, Connor. Here are five products that could help your back issues because of your desk job. And it's actually a really, really helpful tool, especially when you're looking at a marketplace like Amazon where there's, you know, hundreds of thousands of products. But I also think it applies well to a D2C brand when you have multiple categories and a lot of spread in your products as well. You know, if you're a one, if you're a one product brand, probably not. But you know, at hexclad, like, we have more and more and more categories every single year, every single month. We also have a very high price point. So I'm actually, I'm very bullish on this like, AI agent embedded into a Shopify brand that's trained on all the context of the brand and putting that in, you know, basically testing into it like you would with any CRO play. I think this could be a massive up improvement in conversion rate, maybe even aov, because theoretically, if you, if you give it the right context, like the same way that, you know, navigation wins. Or like product category testing or like, when I say product category testing, I mean like product category discoverability testing. It generally drives up aov. So I'm very bullish on these like embedded AI agents on brands website and those being able to really improve conversion rate and AOV because more questions are getting answered, you're able to break down friction in a more custom way. You're able to make your products more discoverable. So that's something we've been working on in the background now for like a while. Actually, we've been doing a lot of RFPs for different options out there. They're becoming more and more common. But our vendor that we're already working with is actually rolling out a solution here. So we're about to, we're about to get going with. We're not ready to launch it. But like, we've decided who we're going to work with and we're about to like, give it all the training and build it out. And then the first place we're going to test it is right at the point of conversion on the product page. And just super bullish on. On this for our brand because of our price point and our category breadth and, and a bunch of other things. And I'm thinking we're going to see this become like, this is not. It's not. We're going to not be the first one to do it. Who's the, who's the big pizza oven brand that everyone knows? Not Solo Stove Uni. Uni. Uni's another muse for us on this one. They have. If you go to their product page, I think you'll see it right on their, in their shop section where you can just go and ask it. I think they had it on here. Yeah, you can go and see it on here. They have a little like person icon now. I think this is where we, where we first saw it and we were really inspired by these guys. So, yeah, I'm just super excited about it. I think it's going to become, I think a year from now, like tons of brands are going to have this in various spots on their website in order to like be a CRO play.
- [43:19]
Connor Rowling
So you guys are starting it on the pdp. Will it live as like a little widget in the corner that someone can like a help icon that someone can click into and ask a question.
- [43:27]
Austin Brawner
I think our first place we're going to test it is actually like below the cart, not, not as a fly out. Like, I think we're going to have like a default open like open chat box and like have some sort of like default copy that invites someone to ask a question. We're going to test into a bunch of different UX on it over the course of three months. So we'll see which one we end up testing into. But yeah, point, right at the point of conversion is where we're going to initially launch it. But I could see this. I mean, some people, I've seen brands have like an open question chat bar as their like hero section before, which is really interesting. Now that's usually brands with like, I'm talking like car parts brands. Right. Where you have to like what car do you have? It's like I have a 25, 2025 Jeep Cherokee. Like that's more of the use case there. I don't think we'll be that level of like front and center, but I think there's tons of spots that this could, this could work. It also turns into an amazing first party data source because you can go and then look and aggregate and look at all the things people are typing in and see, oh wow, you know, 50% of these inquiries are about topic X. We're not addressing that in our ads or in our emails or anywhere else. Like we should go build funnels around that. So I think it'll also inform our marketing stack over time as well, which is going to be fun.
- [44:44]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, I'm super interested to see the different UX patterns that people experiment with over, you know, the coming years. What I've seen most commonly is like that little fly out thing at the bottom, which I'm not.
- [44:58]
Austin Brawner
That's what uni has.
- [44:59]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, that's what uni has. And I get, doesn't feel all that intuitive to me. It's still very like proactive. I don't think people are used to like that form of interaction. You brought up the I, I really like the search being an entry point into AI assisted shopping. You know Google's so good at this. At this point I like don't Google stuff all that much anymore. But like the experience of I forget what I was searching for. The other day I was looking for somebody's age and she Googled their age, got an answer with their little knowledge box thing and then I needed additional information. So I was immediately able to turn that into an AI chat interface. And I'm like, that's almost like the ideal interaction where like give me the clear, the clear information that I'm looking for, it's likely just indexed or whatever else. And then as I need to explore that further then it becomes AI assisted. And I think that could work really well within a Shopify store. And we just see so I mean we're, we're like, we don't even have a very big catalog and we see so much engagement with the search part. As we've expanded categories and products over the last couple years, we've spent more time getting the right search interaction in place like making sure that it's available on mobile in the nav, that once you do search that, that serp page is actually like pretty decent and strong. And it's like you have so much intent and understanding of what that person's looking for. That feels like a very high leverage touchpoint to maybe be more A.I. sort of augmented.
- [46:26]
Austin Brawner
I think, I actually think most people are like, oh, AI is going to take everyone, everyone's job. I think you probably agree with this. I just, I really, really generally disagree with that. I think AI makes you more powerful, it makes you more productive. I don't think it's. I think there's a lot more enhancement of your job than it is taking jobs. I think this is one of the use cases where I think it should in theory reduce headcount on cs because if you set this up in the right way and you give a tool like this all of the right context, in theory, you, it should drive down the CS tickets that your team's getting. So I would hope that because of that you're able to actually reduce headcount on like the amount of customer service agents that you have. This is one of those use cases where I'm very curious to see, hey, we've been live with this for three months and then go into our CS team and seeing if they're noticing any trends on volume of customer service tickets coming through. I would hope that they're seeing less because we're able to answer a lot more of those questions in real time and get those conversions sooner and not have to get people to reach out to a customer service line. Talk to an age, a real, a real agent, not a, not an AI agent. That'll be very interesting to see. But like if you go to Simple Tire, again, like their, their hero section is a search bar. You know, it's search by vehicle, search by tire, search by rebate, search by yada yada. You know, this could even be like a quiz replacement at some point if you have some pre templated search queries.
- [47:58]
Connor Rowling
100%.
- [48:00]
Austin Brawner
Yeah.
- [48:00]
Connor Rowling
Yeah. Quiz replacement's a good one because quizzes in many ways, like forms are like. Because code wasn't good at, you know, inferring what someone was looking for. It was like you had to collect the information in a very structured way in order to act upon it.
- [48:16]
Austin Brawner
And now it's like static logic.
- [48:18]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, exactly. Now you could just like type in whatever you want. You can misspell it and like. And we're pretty good at actually kind of closing the loop there. Um, you mentioned it being a good source of first party data. Have you guys been using the Postscript AI shopper tools. It's like very similar, they've positioned it very similar to what you're describing where instead of being on site and on the PDP and having a question and you know, asking this AI shopping assistant and getting the answer that I need, that can be happening off website via sms naturally a conversational platform and that they're also collecting that first party data and that can help you, you know, segment and identify intent and things like that.
- [48:59]
Austin Brawner
I think we are, honestly I would need to check in with our retention lead. I don't know, I mean I'm sure we are because he's like all on top of all these like newest tech options to optimize and find those incremental wins in those channels. Are you guys using it?
- [49:14]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, we. And like, because it's one of those things, it just feels, I actually had this thought like a couple months ago and like my team's acting on it now. There's just a handful of things in SMS right now that feel inevitable and the two to me are rcs. So the rich content sending, just making it more dynamic, better links, you get carousels, you get better insights into like delivery metrics and things like that. You actually begin getting like open rates on SMS's which is super cool. And then the second one is AI and it's just a matter of like how do we want to implement it? And I'll give you an example. I said with the website example it's like you've got the pdp. We surface an AI chat on our help pages and that's one way we just try to like deflect tickets that would otherwise have to be answered manually by a team member. Search I think is an interesting touchpoint, one of the ones that I'm most excited about within SMS right now because it's the exact same idea. If someone signs up for sms, they receive the welcome series, they get two messages they haven't converted, we have a prompt and it's just an open ended ask of like what else, what else do you need here? Like how can we help you? And it becomes just conversational at that point and the AI manages that and that feels like a nice like interaction point to me. It's like we're, we're capturing a ton of value. We're able to deliver most of the information that they need and typically it's like a promo code or like a little bit of the like you know, the standard welcome series sort of messaging. But it's after that point where it's like they could need any number of things and now we're going to let the AI sort of like figure out what that is and push them down the path that, that we think is best. So I just think we'll find more and more examples of that like augmentation throughout the shopping experience.
- [50:57]
Austin Brawner
Yeah, because what I'm, what we're talking about on like the on site agent is the same thing, just different channel a little bit further up funnel. I agree. I think this is. Yeah, I mean I wouldn't be surprised if customer success teams are able to be cut in half or a fourth of the size because brands are implementing this on site in sms. Anything that's just like easier to have a back and forth interaction with, with a real person. When I say real person I mean like a real prospect of customer on, on one end and then obviously AI on the other end. Yeah, I, I fully agree. I think this is, this is absolutely the direction we're heading.
- [51:33]
Connor Rowling
Before Q4 hits, the smartest e commerce operators aren't just asking how do we spend more, they're asking how do we make every visitor more profitable. That is where after sell comes in. After Sell helps e commerce brands increase revenue per visitor, contribution margin and incremental profit by optimizing the highest intent moments cart checkout, post purchase and even the thank you page. Brands like Hexclad Ridge and Pilar increasing their AOV across every cohort using these zero risk upsells we've tested and they have no negative impact on conversion. It's just more free money in your pocket. And with ROKT thanks you can offset your after sale subscription. No redesigns, no risky funnels, just better economics. Want to see how much money you can make with after sale? Go to aftercell.com RocketRevenue Forecast, put in your numbers and see how much more profit your funnel will make before BFCM starts. We don't have all that much more time. I've got a list of things that I want. I wanted you to. We're gonna over, we're gonna do a over underrated exercise here. I wanna jump into. We're talking about SFs a little bit in the first, the first one I wanna hit here. I've got email deliverability vendors so I hear this come up more and more. I think you and I have talked about it. There's, there's people, there's software vendors today who are helping you get better email deliverability, better open rates, landing in the inbox more frequently. People might be. And the point of the game Is like you also have to assess how what is properly rated today. Right. And then it's like, and then, and then you can decide whether it's over underrated. So, so let's start with this one. Email deliverability as a, you know, as a software. The vendors however you want to define that over, over, under or properly rated.
- [53:20]
Austin Brawner
So underrated. So underrated. We've, I think email, I think I said this like a few months ago. I think email is one of those channels where these call it tech partners or like technology overlays on your kind of existing levers which is just like creative and email. You know the levers in email are no different than the levers in paid. This is one area where I think you, there's huge upside when you activate with these technology partners. Whereas I don't feel that way with paid social. You know, generally these like audience targeting tech tools, at least in my experience haven't driven much of a lift. We've tested these email delivered email deliverability vendors which is more or less just helping you land in more. It's, it's like technical updates that help you land in the primary inbox more. We've, we've done holdouts and they've driven significant lift. So I think they're, they're wildly underrated.
- [54:12]
Connor Rowling
Okay, what do you think? I love this. Yeah, yeah. So I also think they are underrated. I also think they're underrated. There is going to be a question very quickly over time as to how much brands should be willing to pay for them. Like, like we're gonna all have to be conscious of that. I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those things. Well, maybe I was, it's a little, I think we're early to the trend right now. I think a lot of people aren't using anything. I agree with you. We've seen fantastic results of onboarding some of these people and just getting better deliverability driving revenue. Because of that it probably becomes commoditized over time and therefore not, ideally not a big software cost. So like that's the only thing that I would break out quickly for brands extremely underrated currently for it being the crux of your business model. I think might be a little overrated right now. If I was going to like, if I was going to give, give, give my sort of my outlook on it over the next like 18 months.
- [55:12]
Austin Brawner
Yeah. And then like also once everyone or once it's the status quo to use it. Okay, well now all brands or 85% of brands are showing up in your primary inbox and now you're back right where you started because now there's the same level of noise, it's just in your primary inbox and not in your spam or promotional folder. So at some point I agree, I think it's going to kind of go back towards the meme the mean rather. So if I were, if I were one of the leading brands in the space right now, I'd be scaling fast and selling fast probably because over time more and more brands are going to be showing up in the same space and then the incrementality of it starts to, starts to fall probably.
- [55:50]
Connor Rowling
Totally, yeah, I totally agree. One, I like your point a lot and I hadn't made this connection of it being valuable on the, you know, in this case email sending side of things and this sort of technology not being valuable for paid social. I talked to someone else recently and they were like, look, we're going to look at your email list. We are going to build these like likelihood to purchase scores and then we're going to like push these people back to meta so you could target them there. And I was like, I couldn't have less of an interest in that. I'm like, that just feels so like like a artifact of like 2018 that I would have thought was like really cool and interesting. And I'm like now I'm like, look, we like might have exclusions on some campaigns. Like that's as, that is as like targeted as we're going to get. So a lot of these people trying to build like meta audience tooling I would call overrated. Like I just never, I never see them actually work.
- [56:41]
Austin Brawner
I never saw them work even like four years ago, I feel like they didn't work now. What I will say is I do think event matching tools are properly rated like you know, the, you know, because that makes your, that's, I mean that's a signal engineering play at the end of the day. Like I think if you have a 5 out of 10 event match rate in meta, like if you go to your events manager, I think that's a problem. Like your, your data quality is not as good as it should be. That's one of those ones where it's hard to fully quantify how valuable it is to take that from a 5 or 4 out of 10 to a 7 or 9 out of 10. But I, I believe, and I, that also should help you with exclusions. If your event match rate is better, well then your exclusion should be stronger as well. So I actually think those, those tools are like the elevars of the world and the blot outs of the world and the, I don't know, there's a bunch of those tools now. I think those are, I think most brands at scale should maybe even brands that not at scale, like if, even if you're like a 10 million per year brand. I think most brands should have a tool like that to make your just data quality in, in meta and elsewhere. Good. Because it's not just meta. Right. It also like, like if you have an Elevar and you're. And that also helps for example, if you have someone that signed up for your email list then two months later they come back and add to Carpa don't convert. That also helps you match them in that channel as well and you're now you're getting more people into like your abandonment flow. So I think that does help the whole funnel a lot. But absolutely agree. Yeah.
- [58:04]
Connor Rowling
Elevar's Elevar is fantastic. I, I think that's like, I think it's reasonably priced. It's been a long time since I was a small brand paying for Elevar but like we used to, every time we set up an international store, Elevar is like a part of the launch. It's like yeah, let's just get all, all the pixels and all the events and ga set up in a way that's like, it's just all strung up
- [58:23]
Austin Brawner
the way that you want.
- [58:25]
Connor Rowling
I think that's a good one. I got one more on this point. So actually just to say for those listening, if, if people are interested we use Tye for the email deliverability stuff. I've heard good things about Maverick. Totally. We, okay we talked about lfr. The last one is this tool called Shopton that we started using and this is such a funny part of this stack. It is it works in your checkout and it's like a more dynamic form of email capture. And what it does is if the shopper is in a state where it's compliant to have the email opt in auto checked, it auto checks it. That's. Does that make sense? That's what it does and it's a no brainer. It's a use.
- [59:12]
Austin Brawner
Hold on, what does that mean? Because like so if they're in a state it auto. What is it? What do you. All right, so what are like the, what's the logic where it would auto check it?
- [59:22]
Connor Rowling
You know like compliance like auto like opting people into marketing at different touch points whether it's like your, your email, like your email capture and like cookies are a part of this conversation. Like different states. CCPA is different than gdpr.
- [59:36]
Austin Brawner
Yeah.
- [59:37]
Connor Rowling
So you just get all the, in all these different regions you have different compliance laws.
- [59:42]
Austin Brawner
Oh, I see.
- [59:43]
Connor Rowling
And a lot of people just default to like hey, let me just do the safest option everywhere. And all Shopton does is like it just localizes marketing opt in by where that person is.
- [59:56]
Austin Brawner
I see what's it called?
- [59:58]
Connor Rowling
And it's just Shopton with a T in the middle. S H O P T I N. And yeah, it's just one of those things. Also I feel the same way that I do about email deliverability where this probably gets commoditized over time as well. But it is just one of those, it's a little part of the technology and whether you want to call it E comm or retention, it like will improve opt in rate some amount and capturing those emails and being able to send a few more can really compound over time. So I think we started with email deliverability over underrated. We both said underrated. I think retention tools generally, like there is a lot of what we're discussing here is where, where is software and technology still impactful? And I think we explored that pretty well. I'd describe all of that as relatively underrated right now.
- [60:44]
Unidentified Speaker
We talk about incrementality a lot but how do you actually operationalize it to make your business better? That is one thing that I've been really leaning in with my team recently and House has played a tremendous role. We use it for all of our experiments, all of our geolift testing, but we now use it for our MMM as well. I've been a design partner, I've been one of the early design partners on Houses. CMM C stands for causal. So it's one of the only MMMs, if not the only MMM that I've seen that's actually using your causal experiments to build the model. And so that allows me to just trust the data so much more. So it's not a black box. So it actually informs our roadmap and has been so crucial for allowing us to operationalize around incrementality. The House team is world class. I can't speak highly enough about them. They've also built a really amazing community with some of the best DTC growth operators out there. If you want to check it out, learn a little bit more about cmm, go to House IO operators to start making better data driven decisions today.
- [61:38]
Austin Brawner
All right, can we go? I have One that I want to hit on.
- [61:40]
Connor Rowling
We're not going to get through the, we're not even going to get close to the full list. What do you want to hit next?
- [61:44]
Austin Brawner
All right, GA4. GA4. Over, over. Underrated.
- [61:50]
Connor Rowling
Okay, I'm gonna go. So again, people hate GA4. This one's actually super. I think this is a super easy answer. People hate GA4. Google Analytics or Google Ruined Google Analytics. Like it's really, it's really not good. It is underrated.
- [62:07]
Austin Brawner
Yes.
- [62:08]
Connor Rowling
It's gotten to the point where it's so hard to use and people have written it off so much that they forget that there's really still a lot of really valuable information in there. The reason I put this one on the list is we're in the middle of our theme test. We talked about it last week. GA4 and building segments based off of intelligence testing cells is still extremely valuable. And we got like extremely granular like page level information between the two segments and it's just hard to get that data elsewhere. So I'm calling it underrated.
- [62:40]
Austin Brawner
I agree. I think. So here's where I think it's, it's not underrated. I think like, like we use edge mash for site speed and they also have built on that server side technology. They have an analytics suite. And like server side analytics is a lot like it's always less leaky than client side where you know, pixels don't load or UTMs don't load. So like I think if you're a brand that has a tool like server side analytics, it's, you don't need GA4 anymore. However, if you're a brand that doesn't have that, I think GA4 is wildly underrated. Like I was, I was talking to this apparel brand and they were trying to do some non purchase conversion event stuff and I was trying to convince them that like what they were doing wasn't working that well and they should try some other stuff. The first place I went was GA4 and I did like a campaign utm and was like, well look at the time on site. Look at the amount of like actions these people are taking relative to some of the other campaigns that you're, that you're doing. I still think there's really good data in GA4. I was also looking at like they had really high frequency because they're running like 1%. I was just like doing a quick audit for them and trying to give them some quick advice and like they're like running 1% lookalikes. I was like well, your frequency here's 4. But if you go into GA4 because they don't have some of these other tech tool or analytics tools, you can see that it's still driving a lot of new user growth to your website. So it's like not great that it's a 4 or 5 frequency and like prospecting, but it is still driving first time website visitors. You can still extract a lot of that information and like it helps you triangulate what's going on in your various marketing channels. I don't think people spend enough time in GA4 assuming they don't have some of these other like they don't have North Bean, they don't have an Edge match, they don't have, you know, some of these other tools. And House is maybe going to give GA4 a resurgence because House is, you know, building that integration with GA4. So you know, GA4 could have a renaissance coming on the back of, you know, one of the best measurement tools out there. How so? I agree. Underrated. Especially for brands that don't have as robust of an analytics suite.
- [64:41]
Connor Rowling
Yeah, that's a fun. Yeah, that's a really good one. It's a really funny point around house making GA4 more relevant or even. I brought it up really the only reason I used GA4 was because it was a complement to intelligence. So like there is. And the other thing about it being underrated from an industry perspective is it's free and basically everybody has it. It's not like it's not there. Like if I'm, if I'm House or if I'm intelligence, like it, it does make sense for me to have integrations and documentation because like everybody's got it you brought up. So I don't, I'm unfamiliar with Edge Mesh's product. You brought up North Beam and like I would love for Northbeam to make GA4 less relevant but like a lot of their stuff is still GA4 is like page oriented. Right. It's like really about like the website. I think northbeam has made like the source medium report of ga like inapplicable basically. But just like you know, basic like page visits like you can't really get out of northbeam. I would love for them to build
- [65:43]
Austin Brawner
time on site, stuff like that, like average like events per. Yeah, there's all sorts of web analytics that you get out of. But even Edge Mesh you don't get like you don't get time on site data, you don't, you know. So even there are certain things where GA4 is still kind of the. The only option for that. For that data, which is, which is interesting. I'm shocked that you can't get everything in some other tool now. So, yeah, maybe that's the next, the next opportunity. If someone can build a better time on site tool than. Than ga4, then ga4 will officially be done for.
- [66:16]
Connor Rowling
I think I've got. I've got one last one for you.
- [66:18]
Austin Brawner
Okay.
- [66:19]
Connor Rowling
It's a joke one. It came up recently with a friend over. Underrated. Waving at the end of zoom calls. The physical wave.
- [66:29]
Austin Brawner
I think it is. I think it's underrated. I think it's underrated. I, I don't. I don't think you should treat like if I'm having a conversation with someone, I don't think I should treat it any differently on a zoom call. That is, I don't think I should treat it any differently than if I am having a conversation with someone in person. Like, I think the, the social. The social norm should, should still like, cut through digitally. Like, it's not like you just like hit end, don't say goodbye.
- [66:59]
Connor Rowling
Totally.
- [66:59]
Austin Brawner
That'd be weird. I'm like, I'm usually throwing up a peace sign or a wave or a, or a salute. There's some sort of physical acknowledgment. Yeah, there's a physical acknowledgment that, that we are wrapping this conversation. Underrated, dude.
- [67:14]
Connor Rowling
I absolutely agree. I also think this one's easy just because waving at the end of zoom calls, like, get online. Like, people act like it's really. This is why I came up. I was, I was talking with a friend and they thought it was really cringe. And I'm like, dude, not at all. I'm like, one. There's multiple reasons for it. I like the one that you said, hey, we're talking face to face. We're ending the call. Some sort of physical acknowledgment is just common courtesy that we should extend from the physical world into the digital one. I personally am supportive of that. The other big one is when you're on a big call, 15 people. Everybody's muted for the most part. There. There should be some. There should be like. It's just common courtesy for there to be some sort of acknowledgment. You're not, not everybody's going to come off mute and say bye. I'm like, not a fan of that. I always think that's kind of like a weird, like sort of online thing that people do. So just the, the subtle Wave. The subtle acknowledgment I think is good. I think we gotta, I think we gotta embrace it.
- [68:12]
Austin Brawner
Or another good example if you have to leave early. You know, I usually drop a little. Hey, gotta jump. Appreciated the chat. We'll talk, we'll talk later. You hit enter on that, Hit him with a wave leave. I think that's perfect. That's good.
- [68:27]
Connor Rowling
It's actually.
- [68:27]
Austin Brawner
I feel weird. I feel weird when it's too abrupt. Like at the end of a call, it's like, oh, oh, we're done. Okay. It just feels, it's like there's no closure to the conversation. It's like, oh, we just hit, hit, leave. And yeah, it's weird. It's, it's just like, it doesn't feel right.
- [68:43]
Connor Rowling
I absolutely agree. You know. All right, this is a little bit of an aside. I, There's a book that I really love called Culture Code. It's about building high performing teams. It's a great book. They go through way different types of teams also, like they, they talk with the people or they, they talk about the people who watch the nuclear bombs, the nuclear warheads. They talk about, they probably talk about like Navy seals or something. And then the one that I'm going to say is Greg Popovich, the coach of the San Antonio spurs and the culture that he builds. And one of the things that they talked quite a bit about with Greg Popovich is just like the way he carries himself between players physically. Like they said he'd show up to practice and he would like acknowledge everybody one to one, and he'd like, you know, a light like touch on the shoulder. Like these very like physical interactions, very subtle, were like a great way for him to be building rapport core and connection between him and his players. And like I read this book years ago, but what stood out to me immediately is like you lose all of that immediately when you have a remote team. And I don't think the wave at the end of the zoom call is like the difference between building a high performing team or not. But I think, I think caring about those small interactions is good. And I, I, what reminded me of it is when you say, yeah, the abruptly ending calls and like everybody just hangs up. Nobody says goodbye, nobody waves. Like there's no sort of proper ending. I do think ends up having like long term impacts on, on team trust and team dynamics and things like that.
- [70:11]
Austin Brawner
Yeah, well, one, I'm excited to read that book. It sounds like. Yeah, I do, I do think like great leaders have like a super High enhanced level of. I think that's like an emotional intelligence thing. I also, you know, I'm in LA right now. I come out here once a month, once every six weeks. Whenever I'm out here, I feel like I just don't get much work done because it' just like seeing people added meetings, you know, vendors are coming out to get together with us. And I think over time I've learned that, you know, that's okay and that, like, the value of me going and having a chat with someone on the team, like, unplanned for 15 minutes in the kitchen is. Is probably more valuable than me taking that 15 to 30 minutes and, like, getting some work done. It's like, unless it's like, something that has to get done today for, like, something tomorrow, it's like, you know what? I can. I can get to that next week or tonight when I'm not in office with the team. And like, it's. It's okay. I used to, like, feel anxious about that. It's like, no, this is why I'm here, like, to get to. To get this facetime with the team and to be able to like, go and grab a beer with them at. At 5:30 when we're. When we're done for the day. So. I agree. I think, and I think it's hard to. It's really hard to replicate that digitally. It just. So these small things, I agree, do make a big. A big difference. Even if they. They don't seem like it. You can feel it, right? Like, you can. It's like, intuitive. It's. And it's like, oh, that felt weird that we just like, all abruptly, abruptly ended that. And didn't say. Yeah, it's a bad vibe. You can feel that. That stuff. Yeah.
- [71:40]
Connor Rowling
All right, well, you hear, you heard it here first. Waving at the end of zoom calls. Dramatically underrated. All right, dude, let's call that an episode. Super fun.