← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#727: Growing sales in uncertain times with Chris Cubba, Snipp
00:24:40
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- [00:01]
Strayer University Announcer
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Child
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Child
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Mom
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Child
Was it scary?
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Mom
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Child
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Mom
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Child
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Mom
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Strayer University Announcer
the Agile Brand.
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Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to Season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and Martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, e commerce, and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand Podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes. Please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. Now onto the show. What happens when your best sales strategy from a year ago is now driving customer attrition instead of acquisition? Agility requires brands to rethink how they create consumer value in real time, especially when traditional strategies are no longer work as consumer behavior shifts unpredictably?
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Interviewer
Today we're going to talk about driving
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Greg Kilstrom
sales growth amidst economic uncertainty, something every brand leader is trying to figure out right now.
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Interviewer
Tell me discuss this topic. I'd like to welcome Chris Kuba, Chief Revenue Officer at snip.
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Greg Kilstrom
Chris, welcome to the show.
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Chris Kuba
Hey Greg, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. And yeah, it's a really timely topic.
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Interviewer
Yeah, absolutely. Yes, definitely. Change is, change is in the air. I guess it always is, but it seems especially so. But before we dive into all of that, why don't we start with you giving a little background on yourself and what you're currently doing at Snip?
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Chris Kuba
Yeah, absolutely. I'm the chief revenue Officer at Snip. We help brands build and execute marketing programs that drive results. Things like loyalty programs, digital offers, contests, rebates. Company started close to 15 years ago with a specialty in validating purchases using receipt recognition tech, which is now, of course, AI enabled using machine learning and all sorts of great things. But what makes us unique is we really bring together promotions and data. We're helping brands not just reward purchases, but really gather meaningful insights, power, more relevant responsive engagements. And you know, in today's environment, that's pretty critical. And brands look to us to bring them an expertise, so to help them figure out how to engage with consumers. Love it, love it.
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Interviewer
So, yeah, let's, let's dive in here. And you know, we started, started the show mentioning there's some things changing, you know, so let's, let's talk more about what is changing. So, you know, you've, you've talked about how rising credit card debt and declining savings are reshaping consumer behav. What are some of the most immediate effects that you're seeing on how people shop and how brands should respond in the short term?
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Chris Kuba
Yeah, we're seeing, I guess, both in the market and in our own research a fairly massive shift to what we call value first thinking. We recently ran a report, it's on our website 2025 loyalty survey, where we went out and spoke to consumers and 42% of shoppers really self identify as deal seekers and 85% say they'd switch brands for a good deal. So, you know, to your question, you know, credit card debt hitting record highs, I mean, savings are thinning out, obviously post pandemic. You know, some of the subsidies that were available to consumer households are long gone. Consumers are being more intentional and really more opportunistic. They're looking for brands that reward their spend, deliver reliable value, create experiences that are, I guess, worth it. So anyways, in the short term, you know, brands, when we're talking to brands, we're helping them figure out how to focus on relevance, think about tactics like maybe how to execute smart rebates, limited time offers, build programs that reward specific behavior. You know, it's really about meeting consumers where they are right now in this Cost conscious world, not where they were maybe a year or two years ago. Although at this point, inflation and high cost of living is probably, you know, it's been around and I think it's going to stick around, in my opinion.
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Interviewer
Yeah, but yeah, I mean, amidst all this change and uncertainty and things like that, sounds like traditional tactics aren't really cutting it or those things that have always been depended on can't necessarily be depended on now or in weeks, months, years ahead. From your view, what are some of the legacy approaches that marketers still kind of cling to that need to be reevaluated or maybe even retired altogether?
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Chris Kuba
Yeah, good question. And I think my answer, it might sound like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, but one big one is really loyalty programs. But I think when I say loyalty programs, I'm thinking about loyalty programs that only reward frequency or spend. According to that same survey we ran, you know, 31% of consumers say those programs, you know, have a real impact on their brand decisions. The rest either don't notice or just see them as a nice bonus. The other one, I guess, is a reliance on brand affinity. There's obviously a lot of smart people I've heard refer to this idea of emotional loyalty, which is 100% true. It's just not what it used to be. Again, in the same survey, 84% of consumers told us they care about right now. They care more about price and quality than brand connection. So from my standpoint, marketers need to really reframe loyalty not as a points game, but as a value exchange.
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Interviewer
Right.
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Chris Kuba
It's time to start thinking about how to reward actions, maybe capture data, use that data, create better offers, start thinking about the full spectrum of consumer engagement and keeping them coming back. One last point. As you know, loyalty is sometimes thought about as a program mechanic. And I always try to tell people consumer loyalty is everything from the minute they hear about your brand to the process of buying the brand, to obviously experiencing it. And then maybe when there is an issue, even things like what your company does from a customer, appeasement strategy, all of those are places to think, think about the customer interaction and to think about how you as a brand could be ensuring that there's a real mentality around, you know, trading value to get value. When you're designing, you know, how to build a loyalty, you know, quote unquote program.
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Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. I mean, because, you know, to that point it's, it's not just about points.
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Greg Kilstrom
Right. And it's not just about purchase.
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Interviewer
It's about that, that whole experience. And you know, I think the emotional loyalty thing, you know, I think to, to what you were saying earlier, you know, it does exist. Like I know for better or worse I'm emotionally loyalty loyal to a few brands but there's also plenty of instances where that can go away. I mean when people are more price conscious, when they're value conscious, taking into that full spectrum that you, that you mentioned, all of a sudden, you know, some of that, some of that stuff that, that people relied on on goes away. But you know, so to talk about what, what does work? I mean, you know, price discounting guarantees
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Greg Kilstrom
loyalty programs as strategic levers.
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Interviewer
Like are there, are there things that you're seeing that are working but maybe underutilized and you know, how, how would a brand maybe take better advantage of it?
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Chris Kuba
Yeah, and I guess sticking in the same genre of, of loyalty, but perhaps specifically this behavior based loyalty, again you've got emotional loyalty which quite frankly I think at times emotional loyalty could sometimes slip into just like habit buying. Consumers are used to it and perhaps that's the ultimate ascension of a brand is where I'm not even thinking about the purchase. I just know that that's the thing I always buy because my brain is pre wired to it. In which case kudos to you. At some point, once pricing gets too out of whack, even that habit buying is going to degradate into something else. So you know, for me the underutilized question is really around like you know, behavior based loyalty. You know, most programs today, again like I mentioned, still focus on simple transactions. But brands seeing the most success are really those that are rewarding engagement across, you know, the full journey. Right. Discovery, trial, sharing, education. Our data shows 25% of consumers are influenced by personalized offers or rewards. And that number jumps even higher when you link those offers to really relevant touch points in that user journey. So again, loyalty isn't just about rewarding a purchase. It's a way to build preference before the sale and drive repeat after it. But I think that can be done again in a really smart way. Thinking about all those ways in which your consumers in which you can influence those behaviors beyond just again that transaction in that moment at that time.
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Interviewer
Do you have maybe an example of where a brand deployed a successful tactic and created a measurable uplift in engagement sales, things like that?
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Chris Kuba
Yeah. One of my favorites is maybe not the sexiest brand or example in the world because it's the Fresh Steps cat litter. I don't know if you're familiar with their pawpoint program, but we're an animal loving household. We've got two dogs, two cats, a snake, we've got a bearded dragon. So our house, we're full of animals. I've got four kids, so there's just animals running amok. Wow, that's a lot human and fur. So anyways, one of the best examples of the one I've used quite often is Fresh Depth's paw points program. And what's so smart, or if you're not familiar with it, they use receipt upload. And this is going to sound like a traditional sort of purchase based program, but when I get to the second half, we'll bring it home. They use receipt upload to reward consumers, right. So if you go into the store and you buy Fresh step cat litter, they've got a loyalty program where you get 5 points per dollar spent on any fresh step product. But the smart part is they also give 1 point per dollar spent on any category purchase, not just their own brand. And by category purchase I mean, you know, a purchase in the, in the pet category which is pretty broad, right? Snacks, treats, food, other litters, whatever. Yeah. And I think that approach creates this huge goodwill with consumers because it feels generous and flexible. It gives consumers this idea of like I'm purchasing for my, you know, fur baby or pet and you know, this brand is allowing me to earn even if it's not for their, not for theirs. And then ultimately, you know, you earn points, people can then use those to. Right now there's a huge focus on coupons, right? Discounting, you can take those points and you can redeem them for, for coupons, which again subsidizes a future purchase. So when you think about the importance of creating value for consumers. Or they can donate their points, right? The currency equivalent of it to a local animal shelter. So when you go on their site, you can type in your zip code, it pulls up where maybe an animal shelter is closest to you and it becomes this really great win win, Right? Great for the pet parents, obviously. Great for the pets. They get cool stuff and new toys and then great for Fresh Step and great for local animal shelters who would prefer people to adopt, not shop. But here's the smartest part. That's all the consumer facing piece of it because the brand is using receipt data as a proof of purchase mechanism. Right. And using our SnipCheck product, we're able to mine, you know, some really incredibly valuable insights about their consumers, what other products they're buying, where they're Shopping how frequently they're shopping. You know, it's turning a loyalty program into this really rich data asset that's powered by smarter marketing decisions across the board.
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Greg Kilstrom
Right.
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Chris Kuba
And so what looks like from Fresh step? Hey, you know. Yeah, if you want to buy Church and Dwight's, you know, version of cat litter, sure, go ahead. We'll still give you a point. We want you to feel rewarded. But, but now as the marketer I go, guess what? We know who's buying our competitors products. So what can I do? I can go display to them maybe an even stronger value, offer to bring them back or start to think about engaging with them differently. So I just from, from my standpoint, maybe a little long winded. I think that program and in it there's polls and there's surveys and there's engagement based stuff. But I think the idea of building a program built on this idea of category re reward and thinking about the bigger sort of engagement of a, of a, of a pet parent. Yeah, it's one of the ones that I think is just, is just brilliant with what they do on the back and with the receipt data they get. Yeah.
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Interviewer
And I think you know to me the, the data exchange there, there's a win win because I mean, you know again they know they're upload, you know, a consumer knows they're uploading their receipt and what's on the receipt but they're getting something in exchange for that and you know it's, it's a win win. And to your point, for the, for the animal shelters, it's a win, win win. Right. So it's, it's you know, win win,
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Chris Kuba
win win win win.
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Greg Kilstrom
Right.
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Chris Kuba
Yeah.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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Interviewer
So even, even better. So I also want to talk about the, the long term value. You know, a lot of brands are, you know, they, they get into a lot of these whether it's loyalty or things trying to balance short term sales and sales spikes with long term customer relationships. What, you know, when a brand is creating a program, you know, what advice would you give them for delivering on both? You know, both are needed. It's not like you do, you should do one or the other. Like they need both. Like what, what advice would you give for, for creating programs that deliver on both?
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Chris Kuba
Yeah. How many hours do we have the. You know again that's a great question. It's so it just depending on the category, the brand, the issues, the consumers, I maybe in general would just say you know, know, start with a short term activation, you know, but design with long term in mind. Consumers respond to deals. Again, same consumer survey we did had 50% of people, you know, told us they would switch brands or that they did switch brands recently because of a better offer, which is not unreasonable, but they're willing to stay. So if they've been brand loyal for a long time, you put a coupon or a discount or an offer in front of them and they'll switch. Especially with the cost conscious consumerism we're sort of looking at right now. But they're willing to stay for consistency, value, experience. And so I guess run the promotion, but connect it to the broader journey. Use that first purchase to capture data, really understand that consumer a little bit more. It could be declared data, it could be inferred data, it could be data coming off of a form that tells us, you know, who you are and where you live and what you like. Or it could be data that if you're asking them to upload a receipt, you know, gathers a lot of other stuff they don't have to explicitly tell you. And then I guess deliver follow up rewards, offer exclusive benefits. You know, loyalty should feel like a continuing conversation, not a transaction. And that's again, something we talk about a lot of here at snip. It's really turning transactions into relationships because again, in our world we're working with a lot of brands and often in the cpg, you know, consumer package, good space where they don't necessarily control the point of purchase. Right. The retailer sits between them. So a lot of times they use retailer programs to even find out who their customers are, like what they're buying, why they're buying them. It's, it's really hard if, if you don't have a loyalty program or some type of promotion or rebate strategy to engage consumers directly, you're really just subjected to what maybe the retailer is or isn't willing to share with you. And so I think in the, in our world, you know, it's, I would just say like, hey, there's, there's tactical considerations, you know, a lot of these big brands or small brands alike, you got to pay your bills the next month and you got to create shareholder value the next quarter and you got to hit your numbers if you want your bonus and whatever else goes into some of those decisions. But you can do that while also thinking about the long term and really building a framework on how to engage with consumers, you know, beyond just the next, you know, 30, 60, 90 days.
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Interviewer
Yeah, and I mean some of that from the, from the data perspective, I mean just, you know, I know there's been such a big focus on building out first party data especially you know, for those, for those brands like the CPGs and stuff that have not traditionally had the first party data of their own. Like this seems like a win, win there as well. You know, from even a broader technology standpoint. You know, where do you see, you know, data technology, you know, all these things playing the biggest role and you know, are there, are there things that, you know, brands should be looking at that maybe they're not looking at right now that they should be adopting or you know, even are there things they should be avoiding?
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Chris Kuba
Yeah, again a great question and probably a lot of answers depending upon sort of the specifics of it. I think in general when I think about technology and we've got a lot of it here, both internally in our infrastructure, systems and platforms, both operating in the US and needing to ensure we're compliant with things like CCPA or overseas with gdpr, also creating products and environments that are, you know, best in class experiences for our clients. You know, so we're in the sort of depths of the technology a lot. And maybe I would say like technology is the engine for agility. Right? Like the best tools today help brands run promotions across multiple channels, reward behavior in real time, like use data to adapt on the fly. And so if you're looking for a partner or a vendor to sort of build a tech stack on top of, things change quickly. And if you're locking yourself into a rigid platform that makes it hard to change course, you know, you're going to find yourself struggling in a year or 18 months because you know, a year, 18 months ago we were talking about, you know, things that maybe we've stopped talking about as much. Not that you know, decentralized tokens and cryptocurrency and those things aren't maybe still important today, but they're certainly not the shiny object that now of course everyone's
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Interviewer
talking about AI, but what about the metaverse, you know?
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Chris Kuba
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Like so anyways we, we again we work with a lot of clients who you know, they come to us, they've, they've sort of, they come to us after they've struggling with maybe outdated systems, they can't support stuff like, you know, receipt validation. Know prior to what we were doing with receipt scan for brand wanted to run a purchase based promotion, they had to put a code on pack. Right. If you, I don't know if you're, how, I don't know how old your listeners are, but I remember when itunes and Pepsi did their big under the cap like one in three win and you open the cap and it you think about the cost and expense and time required to still, I mean they still do that today. To put code on packs things versus you know, hey, I can accomplish that a lot faster without having to re engineer my entire sort of engineering or packaging design by allowing consumers to just snap a quick photo and text or upload it to a site. So anyways, and receipt validation is one, but it could be omnichannel experience. Right now, 85% of purchases are still occurring in store but the highest growth again in the CPG space is coming from Omnichannel Digital direct to consumer e Comm and you know, brands need to be able to account for that in their plan. So anyways, in my mind, you know, sticking to the loyalty theme, it's you know, modern loyalty and offer platform should really be modular API first able to be integrated with retail partners. You know, the goal is in my, you know, simple like reward faster, learn faster, grow smarter, apply what you did, you know, the Last program or 30 days ago to the next Sprint. And you know, not to use the cliche like crawl, walk, run, but maybe it's run Sprint and I don't know what the third version of that would be, but just keep moving and keep learning and keep changing because I think the world's just going to keep changing around us even faster than it does today. Yeah. Yeah.
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Interviewer
Great. Well Chris, thanks so much for joining today. I've got one last question for you. I'd like to ask this to everybody. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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Chris Kuba
I asked my kids what's cool. I'm just like, what are you guys doing? No, I guess for me it's about staying connected. I try to stay connected to our clients, our data. I'm a huge data nerd, obviously. Regular conversations with our team here. A lot of time listening to what brands are struggling with and working closely with our product and sales teams to just test new solutions and find partners that are willing to, you know, go along for the ride at times to just, you know, see if things work. So, you know, we're, we're running experiments all the time. New reward types, different copy insights, updated user journeys. You know, agility is less about reacting and more about, you know, setting up systems that allow you to adopt quickly without starting from scratch every time. So again, in my role I've got the luxury of sitting in a lot of rooms with a lot of brands, a lot of brand managers and senior level marketers just to sort of absorb what they're doing and then try and take some of that to our teams internally and to, you know, other other folks in the industry. So that's what I do. But mostly I just listen to my kids.
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Interviewer
Love it. Well, again I'd like to thank Chris Kuba, Chief Revenue Officer at Snip, for joining the show. You can learn more about Chris and
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Greg Kilstrom
Snip by following the links in the show notes. Thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagile brand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.greggkilstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S T r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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