#747: Building a strong content strategy by listening to customers with Chip Lewis, Shutterfly

Summary

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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®

Episode #747: Building a Strong Content Strategy by Listening to Customers with Chip Lewis, Shutterfly

Date: October 8, 2025
Guest: Chip Lewis, Director of Web Analytics, Shutterfly
Host: Greg Kihlström

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Greg Kihlström discusses how brands can build a robust and customer-centric content strategy by truly listening to and analyzing customer behaviors and needs. Joined by Chip Lewis of Shutterfly, the conversation centers on the power of data—especially first-party data—in shaping customer experience (CX) and content strategy, the challenges of cross-device customer journeys, and the growing impact of AI and analytics in building seamless, valuable brand experiences.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Chip’s Background and Role at Shutterfly

Timestamp: 01:45–02:24

• Chip shares his journey from Snapfish to Shutterfly, emphasizing over 15 years of analytics experience, including deep familiarity with Adobe Analytics (formerly Omniture).
• Quote:
  “I’ve actually used Adobe analytics since before it was Adobe. So back in the amateur days. I ran the Internet for Hollywood Video years ago on the Omniture platform. So I have a lot of experience in that and analytics and I’ve leveraged that at Snapfish and now at Shutterfly.” – Chip Lewis, 01:45

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2. Challenges and Lessons from Cross-Device Customer Journeys

Timestamp: 02:26–04:01

• The rise of mobile photography means Shutterfly’s mobile app is often the starting point for projects.
• Customers frequently transition between devices, often beginning on mobile to select/upload photos, then switching to desktop for more complex editing.
• A seamless cross-device experience is critical; misalignment between app and site confused users in the past, motivating a push for harmony based on analytics.
• Quote:
  “There’s a lot, especially if you’re building one of our complex products like a book or a calendar... you’re hopping back and forth a lot. And I think we've spent a lot of effort examining that and trying to align the mobile app experience with the site experience more so that as users move back and forth, they’re not confused.” – Chip Lewis, 02:57

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3. Moving from Data to Actionable Insights

Timestamp: 04:01–05:37

• Shutterfly generates vast amounts of data; critical to identify meaningful touchpoints, such as the all-important “project start” metric.
• Time investment in projects (e.g., spending upwards of 30 hours on a photo book) illustrates why understanding customer journeys and pain points is essential.
• “Project start” is a key KPI—getting users to begin is pivotal for downstream success.
• Quote:
  “Project Start is probably our most critical metric that we watch to watch users start building products. ... getting someone to start a project is really key for us.” – Chip Lewis, 04:21

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4. Understanding and Removing Customer Blockers

Timestamp: 06:12–06:54

• Shutterfly's data model is user-based (rather than strictly event-based), enabling better tracking across devices and sessions.
• Adoption of tools like Heap allowed more nuanced analysis of user journeys, especially needed for multi-session, multi-device projects.

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5. Differences in Customer Engagement: Mobile App vs. Website

Timestamp: 07:46–09:04

• Mobile app usage skews toward quick tasks (e.g., ordering prints, uploading/choosing photos), while desktop is used for complex editing and larger projects.
• Younger users are more likely to undertake complex builds on mobile, but generally, the complexity dictates a switch to desktop.

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6. Ensuring Data and AI Serve the End Customer Experience

Timestamp: 09:04–11:24

• The volume of data necessitates continuous investment in data science and analysis for meaningful, actionable insights.
• AI continues to gain importance in managing and interpreting massive datasets—innovation around AI tools is advancing rapidly but should stay focused on practical CX gains.
• Quote:
  “All of the data that we generate has to be used usefully. And I see a ton of potential for AI helping us do that... AI is moving so fast, you almost feel like you have to just skip the crawl phase and start walking and maybe running to keep up.” – Chip Lewis, 10:06

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7. Future of AI in Creating Personalized Experiences

Timestamp: 11:24–12:48

• Chip is particularly excited about AI’s future in simplifying time-consuming processes, like photo book creation.
• AI could dramatically reduce the time and manual effort required, making the process smarter—e.g., auto-grouping related photos, smarter sequencing.
• Quote:
  “I would love to have an AI help me build a photo book... AI just has a huge potential to make the experience much easier. And instead of spending 20, 30 hours on my photo book, I can do it in five or six and still have a product that’s just as good.” – Chip Lewis, 11:36

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8. Staying Agile as a Leader in Martech & Analytics

Timestamp: 13:00–13:51

• Chip describes the evolution from slow, “waterfall” tech deployments (floppy disks/CD-ROMs) to today's rapid, agile web environment.
• Emphasizes agility as experimentation (“try it, fail fast, iterate”)—a mindset essential for today’s pace and complexity in Martech and CX.
• Quote:
  “The Internet just by its very nature allows you to be much faster and much more agile... try things, you may test stuff, some ideas are bad so try it. Fail fast, iterate.” – Chip Lewis, 13:00

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On aligning mobile and web experiences:
  “We found people getting stuck where the experience was different. So I think we’ve really done a good job of aligning those experiences better. And we’ve done that based on analytics data.” – Chip Lewis, 02:57

• On the real purpose of data and AI:
  “If it doesn’t create a great customer experience at the end, you’re really just… storing a bunch of stuff in a bunch of places.” – Greg Kihlström, 09:04

• On the velocity of marketing technology change:
  “AI is moving so fast, you almost feel like you have to just skip the crawl phase and start walking and maybe running to keep up.” – Chip Lewis, 10:06

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:45] – Chip’s background and analytics history
• [02:26] – Challenges of cross-device journeys
• [04:01] – Key metrics: from data to action
• [06:12] – How Shutterfly removes user hurdles
• [07:46] – Mobile app vs. desktop customer behavior
• [09:04] – Data and AI centered on CX
• [11:24] – The future of AI in personalized products
• [13:00] – Staying agile in martech and analytics

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Episode Takeaways

• Customer-centric content strategies should be grounded in real behavioral data, not hunches.
• Seamless cross-device experiences are now table stakes; brands must invest in aligning digital touchpoints based on analytics.
• Data (and increasingly, AI) must always be in service of improving the customer journey—otherwise, it’s just “storing a bunch of stuff.”
• Marketing and CX leaders need to adopt an agile, test-and-learn mindset as the pace of technological change accelerates.
• AI has immense potential to make personalized digital products easier and more fun to create for customers—delivering value while saving time.

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For further information:

• Learn more about Chip Lewis, Shutterfly, and Content Square via the show notes.
• To access additional episodes and resources, visit theagilebrand.com or gregkihlstrom.com

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Transcript

[A]

The Agile Brand 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. And now onto the show.

[B]

Is your content strategy guided more by.

[A]

Hunches than by data?

[B]

Agility requires being nimble enough to adapt everything from a single post to key components of your content strategy based on how real customers are interacting and engaging. Today, we're going to talk about listening to what your customers want and how they interact with your content to help create a brand with the strongest possible content strategy. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Chip Lewis, Director of Web analytics at Shutterfly. Chip, welcome to the show.

[C]

Thanks, Greg. Glad to be here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Looking forward to talking about this with you. Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on you and your role at Shutterfly?

[C]

Sure. So I started actually 15 years ago at Snapfish, which was Shutterfly was of course our big competitor. And then 5ish years ago, Apollo Capital bought us both and put us together. So we're now on the same team. I've run analytics really the whole time I've been here, so I've had a lot of different titles, but I. I've actually used Adobe analytics since before it was Adobe. So back in the amateur days. I ran the Internet for Hollywood Video years ago on the Omniture platform. So I have a lot of experience in that and analytics and I've leveraged that at Snapfish and now it's Shutterfly.

[A]

Nice, Nice.

[B]

Just a little context here. We are both here at Content Squares CX Circle in New York. You just wrapped up your session here about cross device journeys and just about that. I don't know anyone, myself included, who doesn't bounce from channel to channel or device to device, so this is a complicated challenge for brands. What are some of the lessons that you've learned in your experience through analytics that help you create more seamless journeys for your audiences?

[C]

I think when you think about Snapfish and Shutterfly, we sell digital photo products, so probably mobile app is as important or more important to our business than maybe any other, because the source of photos is now all phones. So we look at this a lot. I think some of the things that surprised us early on was just how often people move back and forth. There's a lot, especially if you're building one of our complex products like a book or a calendar. You know, you don't necessarily upload all your photos or you think of something, oh, well, I should have that photo from, you know, last year. So you're hopping back and forth a lot. And I think we've spent a lot of effort examining that and trying to align the mobile app experience with the site experience more so that as users move back and forth, they're not. They're not confused. We found people getting stuck where the experience was different. So I think we've really done a good job of aligning those experiences better. And we've done that based on analytics data.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, to that point, I mean, to get that understanding, you're obviously looking at reporting and things, but the things that. What drives those reports is data, of course. So, you know, how do you look at, you know, what type of data is important to your role and, you know, how do you make it actionable?

[C]

Yeah, that's a great question. Actionable is. I mean, we generate so much data, we have so many users, particularly on Shutterfly. When I first moved to Shutterfly from Snapfish, I was just astonished at the volume of data that we get. So I think, you know, really, we care a lot about key touch points during the funnel, of course. So starting a project, people often spend many, many hours building a project, particularly a photo book. I just built one myself, and I probably put 30 hours into that photo book. It was a bunch of vacation photos. And you get really deeply into this and spend a lot of time there. So we look at how users behave across sessions in addition to across device. Because I'm relatively old, so I can't build a book on a phone. It's too small. So I'll get my photos there and then I'll hop over to the computer as quickly as I can. But really, the key sort of KPIs for us are those touch points like we want. Project Start is probably Our most critical metric that we watch to watch users start building products. And then depending on the product, you know, there's more complex steps further along in the funnel. But that project start, like getting someone to start a project is really key for us.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. And then I would imagine, you know, 30 hours, you know, even 10, 20, like that's a, that's an investment of, of time. And, and so to be able to track that along along the way, you know, that requires understanding, you know, what, what are the blockers, right, because you want that, you want them to get past, I don't know what the threshold is, but you know, you want them to get past that threshold so that they are willing to, you know, invest that, that time and effort and make something great that's memorable, all of that. Like how do you look at getting kind of over the first hurdle?

[C]

So I think the difference for us, especially because we have products that people can spend so much time working on, is that the data model itself is user based rather than event based. So prior to we actually started as Heap customers Snapfish, coincidentally we were in the same block in downtown San Francisco. So I could walk out the front door, Snapfish, walk around the corner and go to the Heap office and, and spent a lot of time there. But that was really the factor that pushed us into using this particular tool set is because it allowed us to track easily across device types, which is what I just finished talking about, but also across sessions.

[A]

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[B]

So you mentioned Shutterfly has a mobile app. And mobile apps can certainly be tricky to develop and manage. How is customer mobile engagement different than say the dot com?

[C]

Yeah, I think customers are doing different activities generally on the mobile app. Much more about like selecting photos and uploading those photos. And we see a lot of people ordering really simple products like prints in particular from the. Just direct from the app. You don't need to leave the app for prints or like a single surface product, like a coffee mug or an ornament or a mouse pad, something like that. So I think we do, except for probably our youngest users who are intrepid enough to build an entire project, even a complex one, on the app or even on M web on a phone. I think that most of the activity we see on the apps tends to be the simpler, quicker products to build that. And of course photo management, photo management is really almost all takes place or photo selection really. Management people will often manage their photos in their library on the, on the PC. But finding the photos and uploading them originally is like exclusively on the apps now.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So Dave Anderson from Content Square mentioned today, you know, AI is, you know, it's, it's a means to an end and that end is, is a great experience. You could, you know, you could probably say the same for the data collection and all that. It's like it. If it doesn't create a great customer experience at the end, you're really just collect. You're storing a bunch of stuff in a bunch of places. Right. So what questions do you ask yourself about the customer journey that kind of keeps you centered on cx?

[C]

You know, as I said before, we generate just a ton of data. And when I moved from Snapfish or when Snapfish and Shutterfly merged, I got a glimpse into Shutterfly and one of the first questions I asked myself is, you know, why are they so much bigger and well known than we are? And the answers, of course, were marketing. We have just unbelievable marketing organization, but also data analysis. Like, we have a team of data scientists. We didn't have one of those at Snapfish.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And so I think all of the data that we generate has to be used usefully. And I see a ton of potential for AI helping us do that. I really enjoyed the morning session where they showed us all the new AI features. I'm super excited. In fact, I have people texting me from the office, like, when can we start using it? I'm like, hold on, the session is not. The day is half over, so we'll get there. So I think there's a lot of excitement around that. We also are just beginning to use the new Connect product to dump the data out into databricks and put it into our own data science models. And so I think there's just a ton of potential and it's moving so fast, it's really hard to keep up. But I like that Content Square is focusing on giving us stuff we can Use right now. I've always been a crawl, walk, run guy, and I think AI is moving so fast, you almost feel like you have to just skip the crawl phase and start walking and maybe running to keep up. Totally. But I'm super excited about the direction it's moving. And particularly for Shutterfly, I mean, we have a lot of data. There's a lot of data in our user photos, for example. There's a lot. So I think the potential for us is really, really massive.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything on your mind in particular as far as, like, you know, what's. Future. Future thoughts on using AI or things like that?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I mentioned I just built a photo book. I would love to have an AI help me build a photo book. It's really time consuming. We have a service called Make My Book where we have designers put your book together. And actually I've used that a couple times as a starting point, but then, you know, inevitably it's just sort of a, you know, they put them in order by date or time taken. It's never as smart as I want it to be when I, when I get my, my product back. So I think AI can really enhance that. It's. I think it'll be a lot smarter about blending images of, you know, a particular event or like. Like I. I built a photo book of my son's wedding and, and it was hard to even get the. Even though the, like, the photos have time and date stamp. Like, some of the pictures were still out of order. Like, hey, I could have fixed that for me, I think really easily could have grouped together all the photos of the bridesmaids super easily and then the groomsmen super easily. So I think AI just has a huge potential to make the experience much easier. And instead of spending 20, 30 hours on my photo book, I can do it in five or six and still have a product that's just as good.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Love it. Well, Chip, thanks so much for joining today. One last question I like to ask all my guests here. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?

[C]

Yeah, it's funny because I'm a relatively old guy, so I started software development back when actually I ran my own company years ago and we released our first product on floppy disks. So I think I have a huge appreciation for how agile the Internet is to begin with. In some ways, mobile apps are a step back from that because you have to do releases sort of like old school, like publishing the CD rom submit them to the app store and all that. The mobile release process is really clunky compared to the Internet. I think the the Internet just by its very nature allows you to be much faster and much more agile so you can try things you may be test stuff, you know, you try some ideas are bad so try it. Fail fast iterate. I think it's just it's a very agile world now and I really really appreciate that because I started in such a cumbersome sort of slow waterfall y process.

[B]

Yeah, love it. Well again I'd like to thank Chip Lewis, Director of Web analytics at Shutterfly, for joining the show. You can learn more about Chip, Shutterfly and Content Square by following the links.

[A]

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.gregkillstrom.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. The Agile Brand before we continue, I wanted to share a key strategic resource that a majority of the Fortune 500 are already aware of. Finding the best technology, business and talent solutions is not easy. With business demands and competitive pressures mounting, you need to be able to design, deploy and optimize your technology to provide leading customer experiences while driving business growth. Those of you that have been listening to this show for a while know that this podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, a global provider of technology, business and talent solutions. For more than 80% of the Fortune 500, Tech Systems accelerates business transformation for their customers. Whether you're looking to maximize your technology roi, drive business growth, or or elevate customer experiences, Tech Systems enables enterprises to capitalize on change. Learn [e-mail] that's T E K systems.com now let's get back to the show.