Why Retention Starts at Acquisition: A New Approach to LTV Growth

[00:00:00] Josh Tay: Yeah, so one of the reasons why we came up with this retention program is 'cause we realized that there's a lot of misalignment. With between growth and with retention. So I guess that's one of the biggest reasons why, right? Like most of the times when you work with siloed agencies or even within your teams. It's hard for retention markets to understand what's happening on the growth side. And same thing for the growth, to understand what's happening on the, on the retention side.

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[00:01:29] Richard Gaffin: Hey folks. Welcome to the E-Commerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective, and I'm joined today by a very special guest. We've never had him on the pod before, but he's from a Growth accelerator program. Mr. Josh Tay, who's the director of Retention for our Global Accelerator program here at Common Thread Collective.

[00:01:47] Josh, what's going on, man?

[00:01:49] Josh Tay: Hey, Richard. Nice to be here. Super excited to get started. It's been a long time coming and yeah. Plan to do big things for our brands here at the Accelerator program, and I'm just excited to share everything that we've done and drop if we can.

[00:02:03] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm, I'm excited too 'cause Josh is calling in from Singapore, where it's currently midnight his time, midnight on a Friday. So, let's he's in a party attitude. Well, we'll see. Either you're really tired or you're ready to go. We'll see what happens. But let's get into it here.

[00:02:17] So. Essentially what we're talking about is adding, or the recent edition, I guess, of the retention program to our global accelerator services, of course, retention, covering email, SMS, organic outreach, that type of thing. But talk to us a little bit about the retention program and kind of how it, how it came about, what the philosophy behind it's.

[00:02:37] Josh Tay: Yeah, so one of the reasons why we came up with this retention program is 'cause we realized that there's a lot of misalignment. With between growth and with retention. So I guess that's one of the biggest reasons why, right? Like most of the times when you work with siloed agencies or even within your teams. It's hard for retention markets to understand what's happening on the growth side. And same thing for the growth, to understand what's happening on the, on the retention side. So we kind of use the growth map and the growth map becomes, and status becomes like our, our main brain and allows both of our teams to talk and understand each other at a much deeper level. So on our program we. We speak to the growth strategists every week. We join some of the weeklies as well. And then all our strategies are essentially very intertwined. So retention team becomes not really so much as like an extension, but it just becomes the growth team,

[00:03:28] right? We allow the growth strategist to execute better and we allow cash to come in a lot more efficiently. So it's not just like, even when you think about retention, it's, it goes way beyond email and SMS, like there's so much more involved in retention than that. If you think about it, retention actually starts from acquisition. The quality of the audience that we, that we, that we attract this downstream effect all the way. And even when we think about LTV, right, LTV can be impacted by so many other things. There's so many other factors that involve offers also give you know, are a big part of it. Seasonality is also a big part of it. So I think there's important for retention team to understand all these things

[00:04:07] and there is so much that's going on.

[00:04:08] Right? And if the retention team isn't plugged in to what's happening on the growth, on the growth team, it's. It kind of inhibits the growth of the brand.

[00:04:17] So that's one of the things that we are trying to unlock for the brands here with the, at the on, at the accelerator program, because this has been, it's been phenomenal so far.

[00:04:26] Some of our clients are seeing like the best months they have had

[00:04:31] in years ever since that we started getting on. It's not, it's not just a retention thing. Right. It's not that the retention team made it possible, but it's just this alignment made things so much better for all the brands and for the growth

[00:04:44] strategies to also do even better work.

[00:04:47] Richard Gaffin: So talk to me a little bit about you, you had mentioned, of course, like retention begins with acquisition. You talk about this sort of full lifecycle thing. Talk to me a little bit about what are the specific ways that the retention team being plugged in with the growth strategist allows you or gives your retention team the ability to better serve, let's say, customers across their entire lifecycle.

[00:05:09] Josh Tay: Yeah. So I guess one of the things that could be a big issue would be, let's say for certain industries, re getting repurchases is really hard, right? And because of that, LTV is stuck for a

[00:05:22] certain brand. And if LTV is hits a limit and then your CAC. Can't get any more efficient or you know, you are trying, but it takes time. Right? And then like the brand's like, okay, we need to increase LTV, but at what point and, and how do you actually increase these, this LTV? So for example, if you have a like a furniture brand, right? Or a how, how home and their decor brand where people don't really repurchase very often, how do we then increase LTP?

[00:05:48] We can't expect and go in. It's, it's like swimming against the current to try to force people to repurchase. It's not part of the natural purchase behavior. So then how do we front load LTV? So that means things like we have bundling, right? We also have looking at the cart drawers and all the different LTV factors there.

[00:06:06] So we have LTV growth products. So we look at status, we look at different, reports in there, 60 day LTV growth plus a OV. And what are, what do these things make sense? We look in the Shopify reports, we are looking at natural product journeys that people

[00:06:19] normally have as well. And then based on all these things, this forms kind of the way in which we front load this LTV, and then we, now we speak to the,

[00:06:27] The growth strategies, right?

[00:06:28] So like for all these products that we create bundles for, we can very well create specific funnels. For that. So then that now the growth strategies have new landing page ideas that they can try, new personas that they can unlock all because, you know, we can't look at some of these things. So this is like one of, just one example, right?

[00:06:45] We

[00:06:45] obviously have multiple examples for CPG brands, complete different playbook. For fashion brands we have completely different things as well. So it really depends on the priorities of the business and what their goals are in the next 3, 6, 12 months. And

[00:06:59] based on this, that we just change everything.

[00:07:01] So I think that the beauty of the program is that we are super, super agile.

[00:07:07] So everything is just on a month to month, so there's zero risk to anyone, right?

[00:07:12] Um, and our team is well versed in pretty much every single app that exists. And

[00:07:18] even if we don't know that we are the app, we'll learn, right? So then we essentially take care of everything that touches LTV in that case. So

[00:07:25] then together with the growth strategies we make, anything happen.

[00:07:29] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. So just then to be clear, like essentially what you're saying is that because. You're in touch with or, or you have an understanding from like a numbers perspective of, of the lifecycle of, of the average customer, let's say from acquisition to having some understanding of their LTV window that they were likely to repurchase in or whatever.

[00:07:47] Then your ability to tailor retention. Strategies is much is increased over and against just like a, let's say a retention team coming in and saying like, Hey, we're gonna send some emails, or we're gonna turn on these automation flows because like you're saying, for a furniture brand versus a brand that sells supplements or whatever, the LTV.

[00:08:06] Kind of profile of the customer so wildly different. And because you have sort of this plug into the numbers from the jump, you have the ability to kind of tailor those retention strategies one way or the other. So I was gonna ask some, let's get specific about what does it look like to build one of these tailored retention strategies, let's say, for a furniture brand, whatever the case may be.

[00:08:28] Like what does it look like? How, how is the retention strategy you built? Going to look different than one that, let's say some other agency would've built.

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[00:09:18] Josh Tay: Hmm, very good question. I would like to say that it's a secret sauce, right? And I

[00:09:24] don't want to tell the, the whole world about it. But I have to,

[00:09:27] uh, so let's just say that for example, a, a normal agency might not understand the specific unit economics and the constraints of the business. But we understand that because we are also across some of those things, we speak to the Gs, so then we know what the p and l situation is like.

[00:09:49] We know those constraints. If it's a siloed agency, we might not be able to understand the specific intricacies of that, and that actually inhibits the way in which you might be able to execute certain things. So let's give an example, right? Was a, we are currently working with a supplement brand.

[00:10:07] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:08] Josh Tay: this supplement brand already have already has a subscription program,

[00:10:14] and the subscription program has been struggling to get new subscribers. Churn is decent,

[00:10:22] right? It's, it is manageable. So the main problem for the subscription programs actually the demand for the subscription program.

[00:10:28] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:29] Josh Tay: So, but then the subscription program's already giving 20% off.

[00:10:34] So it's, it's a pretty decent. Attractive product, right? There's decently attractive price as well. So why is it that people aren't jumping on this offer? Obviously there are going to be people who are going to get on this and then turn cancel the program within like the first month just to get the offer,

[00:10:54] but then there's a much bigger problem at play. So then there's also con constraints like shipping costs.

[00:11:02] Because it is definitely a big thing, right? So then one of the things that we started to do is to re-look at the subscription offer to begin with. It's not so much about just building more flows. We can build more emails and then try to get more people in there and more campaigns. We'll talk about the price, talk about this, talk about that. But that's, that's not going to solve the problem. Like the problem.

[00:11:25] is, it's not attractive. So in order to increase the attractiveness, we gotta rethink the way in which we pitch and we position this. So welcome kit has become a big thing for us then. So we end up offering, you know, new products in there and then based on their B tier and C tier products, we now start including that in, in the product in, in the welcome kit. So then now we can customize the subscription program to have welcome kit. With so and so product, and then with a subscription on the back after that,

[00:11:57] and then this, like fully customizable and we, we, we plan out the whole thing.

[00:12:01] Right now, I'm not sure how many agencies actually help with that. Again, I, I might be biased by, I, I haven't met many. Um, so this is one of the things that we understand and then this is one thing, right? So coming up with a subscription program is one and then. With the, with regards to the shipping cost, it's also become a problem for the brand, right?

[00:12:22] Because part of the offer initially was like, you know, free shipping with every order and there was something I was getting people in. But free shipping is also costly to the brain. So in all, and, and 'cause we are seeing that there's low demand for the tion program, how do we now get cash in fast?

[00:12:39] And how do we front load all this LTD?

[00:12:41] Because we, we don't know if this would fly and this would work phenomenally well. We, we might, we might not. So if it doesn't, how, how do we. Fight this. How, what's our

[00:12:51] safety net? So product development has become a thing. So now that we are speaking again with the gs, we're speaking with with the client to develop a new product.

[00:12:59] So instead of having a 30 day bottle, we now have an Excel bottle,

[00:13:04] which is a 90 day or a 120 day supply. So in this case, we don't have to worry so much about the subscription program anymore, right? We now have two things that are running in parallel. So if we can front load some of this LTV. And we get people onto a four month program, we don't have to worry about it. We've already locked people in. We've locked in their LTV,

[00:13:26] and this is not possible if we didn't understand the unit economics and the constraints of the brand.

[00:13:32] And again, this is why this is the difference between what we are doing and what. Anyone else can possibly do,

[00:13:39] because otherwise it will take so much of back and forth and so much of trial and error. Um, the agency doesn't even know what they don't know. So maybe I

[00:13:47] can't, we can't blame other agencies for not being able to do this. It's 'cause they don't know. They don't know what's happening. But yeah, we

[00:13:54] do.

[00:13:55] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, so I mean, I think like there's a couple good things to pull out of there. Like one is that what you're describing is the retention team solving an acquisition problem, which is what you alluded to at the beginning, is obviously, like generally speaking, you're supposed to come in and think about the churn problem.

[00:14:11] But of course if the churn problem is actually an acquisition problem in some ways, then the, you can see how like. retention completely knit up with the entire customer journey becomes super, super important because if you change the front loaded offer or, or rather the initial offer.

[00:14:28] Wholesale, then of course that re affects the entire retention flow afterwards. And so what you're describing is because of some understanding of the unit economics, you have an understanding of what the actual offer ought to be on the front end, like what's sustainable for the brand, and then have kind of the freedom to experiment with, with, well, if we make this the initial offer, then this is what the retention flow has to be.

[00:14:48] And then it's sort of essentially what it sounds like. You're basically like a customer lifecycle strategist. As much as you are like a retention strategist or something along those lines. Is that fair to say?

[00:14:58] Josh Tay: Yeah, for sure. A hundred percent.

[00:15:00] Yeah.

[00:15:00] So even if you know, if we're doing any kind of test, like if we wanna use a tool like intelligence to do, you know, price testing, this would be stuff that we also do, right? That we, we create multiple flows and different funnels for all these things

[00:15:13] so that we can support the growth strategies and make things a lot more streamlined. Because like yeah, it's just we are just one. And our KPI is exactly the same as the growth team, which is the bottom line of the client. So we have

[00:15:25] no incentive to sell extra stuff. We have no incentive to do useless emails if it

[00:15:30] does not impact the bottom line of the client.

[00:15:33] Richard Gaffin: Right. That makes sense. Okay, so let's, let's dig into a little bit more. You had mentioned before we hit record here, having some case studies, some things you wanna dig into. Obviously we've talked a little bit about specific examples, but just I think like giving us some more kind of illustrations of what this looks like would be helpful.

[00:15:48] Josh Tay: Yeah. So again, like there are many different pro programs that we can run with retention. So, part of our serve, our our offering is that we help with things like direct mail.

[00:15:59] So you're running a direct mail campaign pre BFCM, we are gonna help with the whole, the, the whole thing with how we segment people and how we re-engage people.

[00:16:07] Previous, if you're doing it, if you're gonna be running a Q five offer, there's something that we are doing. So right now, I've.

[00:16:12] We've got three brands that are running Q five offers and pre BFCM win back and reengagement offers on post pilot. So this is something that we're gonna be helping with. Loyalty programs. Like I personally never believed in loyalty programs

[00:16:26] siloed because, like realistically loyalty programs do not actually increase LTV incrementally.

[00:16:34] Um, it's. It's actually a place in which high LTB and high intent customers tend to congregate.

[00:16:41] So it's, it's more of a correlation than a causation, but it's the structure in which we structure this, the, the way in which it's structured, the, the loyalty program that makes the loyalty program a lot more attractive. So if you can create proper tiers and. Exclusivity

[00:16:59] and we can tie that in with how we get people to repurchase. Then this actually is different because it's no longer a set and forget points based system because points on its own does not get people to come back. So how do we then create the specific thresholds and we are looking at the. Based on a total customer size at what point, like what, what, what is, what is the percentile in which people normally would come back,

[00:17:22] right? And we start creating the structure from there. So this is something that we are doing, like I was actually doing it right now,

[00:17:27] uh, like the last couple of hours.

[00:17:29] This just

[00:17:29] structuring this thing for a client. So this, and, and I think that we might be doing membership programs and I think that we also take care of popups no matter what popup app you use, we're gonna help with that. Even with all these different apps. There is also a question of how important and how much impact is this app giving

[00:17:48] us?

[00:17:48] Because there's a lot of every app is gonna over attribute revenue to themselves. They're gonna negotiate that, you know, we can do this, we can do that. They're gonna compare themselves for everyone. But one of the things that we are also looking at is how, how much of, yeah, what's the, what's the incrementality of this, right? Let's say you would use a third party popup versus a, a. Your popup,

[00:18:11] what's the difference? Right? Is it really going to double, triple your popup opt-in rate that they claim? Is it really true or is it, are they hitting people multiple times

[00:18:20] and you're actually getting the same net new customer emails? So if that's, if, if that's happening because of logic errors, because of technical difficulties and stuff like that, maybe you're better off saving that 500, 600 bucks. So then we help with all of these things as well. So we are also deep diving into all these things. We, speaking with the tech, with the dev on those apps with your, your teams

[00:18:44] to do all these things, card draws. We will look at some of these things as well. How are you gonna upsell? How are you gonna cross sell?

[00:18:50] So yeah, so that's, that's the set. So if, let's say I would give a case study. Right. Let me look for, lemme look for one.

[00:18:57] Uh, so e with with LTV there are two things that we can look at, right?

[00:19:02] We either get a repurchase or we frontload the the, the repurchase. Sorry. We frontload the LTV, which is what we spoke about earlier on. So if we want to get a repurchase for a fashion brand. Fashion brands, it's probably gonna be pretty hard to get a repurchase because it's not a normal consumable product. So product drops is gonna be, you know, pretty important then. And in the absence of product drops and we don't have good enough marketing moments, it's gonna be pretty hard.

[00:19:31] So then how do we have new things? So the subscription Pro, sorry, the, the loyalty program. The membership program is something that we would then create come into, oops, sorry.

[00:19:43] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:20:05] Josh Tay: year. And then where, and you can create like a calculation where you can, gain back or earn back the 50 bucks within the first two or three months. That would be the ideal scenario where it's a. It's a crazy stupid idea not to jump on this topic. Right?

[00:20:20] And if you know that you're gonna repurchase again, why not? So then we'll structure some of these things and then we, we use emails and we use SMS in order to effect change on that so that, you know, X number of stock credits left, this is the amount of time that you have before the stock that, that the credits expire. You, you can have different kinds of birthday reminders and like, you know, exclusive drops.

[00:20:40] All these things would be baked into it. Yeah, I don't. Did I actually answer your question? I feel like I went, I went all over

[00:20:48] the place and

[00:20:49] Richard Gaffin: I mean, yeah, what, what I was asking for specifically was just e examples of. Just sort of continuing from the previous question I had

[00:20:57] Josh Tay: Yeah.

[00:20:57] Richard Gaffin: just examples of that like your approach to retention

[00:21:05] Josh Tay: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:05] Richard Gaffin: is kind of tweaked based on specific scenarios. So I mean that's kind of what you've pointed out here too, like one, what does it look like to actually build out a loyalty system that makes sense for a specific brand given the LTV and the return rate of certain co customers of certain tiers, whatever.

[00:21:21] But then also thinking through. The example of the fashion brand, right? Where you're like in the absence of new product.

[00:21:29] How do you actually engineer moments by creating these sort of like this membership program? Which

[00:21:33] Josh Tay: Yeah.

[00:21:34] Richard Gaffin: is really interesting because this is like, that's a retention play, but it could also potentially be an acquisition play. I mean, that's generally speaking, like products becomes an acquisition play sometimes as well.

[00:21:44] And so yeah, I think those are both really good illustrations of how this is sort of a full, full funnel approach or a much more holistic approach to retention than just turning on people's email flows or whatever. So, I mean, yeah. To what ex, to what extent is like, I mean, it sounds like a lot of your work is not only like pulling the levers and running people's klaviyo or whatever.

[00:22:06] It's also strategizing, or maybe primarily even the IM impact is strategizing around building these types of programs, these types of incentives, these types of offers, that, that sort of thing. you say like that's kind of like the primary. Like value differentiator here or is it something else?

[00:22:24] Josh Tay: definitely. Yeah, take, take big swings to get big results, right?

[00:22:27] That's, that's essentially what, what we're trying to do as well, so. But then like our deliverable, like part of our contract is

[00:22:35] still emails and SMS. So then how do we, like what, what is our deliverable to you? Right? So it's, it's still emails and it's still sms, so it's all, all these things that we handle is over and above the contracted number of emails and SMS that we do. And as I mentioned. Early on, we are very in the growth map and everything that we do is based on whatever we are seeing in the growth map and what we're seeing in status. So we are able to forecast all our revenue based on that as well. Um, again, this is not something that I've really seen happen very commonly outside. I think it's only. It's only in CTC that we actually forecast for review in this, in

[00:23:09] this manner. Yeah. But with each campaign, we break it down by the campaign type, by the number of people, by the number of segments that we have. And based on what we are sending right now, if, let's say we would resend this and we are still on the 90 percentile whatever we are, what would be we do again is likely to happen again, right? So then we are able to anticipate what's likely to happen if we send this type of campaign next month. To this group of people. And then based on that, we have the, the growth plan will help us to calculate the, the whole thing. And if with this, uh, proposed volume, what is the total expected email revenue we are expected to see? And this projection we then gonna make match that back to our target for our returning revenue. And based on that, is this gonna be sufficient? Is this like, how big is that gap between where we are right now and where we wanna be and then if necessary, we actually, part of our service, we have these things called ad hoc emails.

[00:24:04] Which I've never seen anywhere else. It's this, it's a, it's a offer that I came up with in the last few months together with our, with

[00:24:10] our team, After speaking to many clients, we just refined the offer over and over again. And we came up with this concept for ad hoc emails because what we realized is that the marketing calendar, especially for 6, 7, 8 figure brands, it is very dynamic and there are

[00:24:25] times where. There are many constraints that happen that's beyond our control. We can plan out the marketing calendar perfectly, but we can't control the rest of the world. You can

[00:24:38] have your manufacturing, Plant that has a problem, and because of that, your supply cannot produce and you cannot do a drop. What happens then, right?

[00:24:46] We got,

[00:24:46] we gotta scrap this whole thing, which also means that in your marketing calendar right now, you've gotta get. And so what happens in this gap? You still need to squeeze that sponge a little bit. So how do we

[00:24:54] do do that? So we have ad hoc emails, and this is where we deploy that. So ad hoc emails come in wherever we are behind on revenue.

[00:25:02] So this, again, every month we're gonna replenish your ad hoc emails. So we've got five extra ad hoc emails every single month. Whenever we are behind on our targets, this is where we will proactively tell you, Hey, so and so, you, we are gonna be behind on, on, on, on revenue. We need to send an extra 2, 3, 4 emails.

[00:25:20] And this, this is the type of email that we're gonna, we are gonna send. And the reason why we know what email we're gonna send is because we've done whatever we've done before, right? The, the calculations and the breakdowns of that. So we know if we're gonna send five of these specific emails, we would generate, we'll likely be able to generate X amount of revenue. And based on this, this will help us to create a buffer. So this is kind of the, the play that we have. So I think that this is a lot better for most brands because now your team is proactive about it. You

[00:25:48] don't have to come tell us that you need an extra email. We will tell you

[00:25:52] that you need to, to to squeeze that sponge a little bit more,

[00:25:55] right?

[00:25:55] If it's an SMS, we can swap out our our resourcing, we can trade in and out. That's all part of the package.

[00:26:02] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. So with the, with these I wanna dig into that a little bit with these ad hoc emails. So how are those differing, let's say, creatively from an offer perspective, from what was already planned? So let's say like there's an inventory issue with the drop or something like that. Are the ad hoc emails going to be, so you, are you coming up with those types of like, the example with the fashion brand earlier, like you said, like we'll put together, hey, this membership program, is that the sort of thing that you have in these ad hoc emails or what? What's, what? Generally speaking, is the content of those.

[00:26:31] Josh Tay: So the ad hoc email would really depend on what's going on, right? So it might be in the absence of an offer, and then we need to fill it in with Evergreens, if

[00:26:40] that's the case. Cool. Right? Sometimes it might also just be we are running an offer right now and the promotion that we have that is not getting the right.

[00:26:50] We are not paying the targets that we're expecting to be. And because we are behind on those targets is where again, we can deploy some of these Ad HO emails. And the ad hoc emails can be created in, uh, within the like seven, two hours. Most of the time we can create much faster than that. Seven, two hours is just a bit more observative, but yet is that agility that we also provide.

[00:27:09] Um, that's, you know, it's, it's pretty unique and I think that's something that. A lot of people would see a lot of value in, because the alternative would be you scrambling at the last moment and you're just like. What am I gonna do? What, what

[00:27:23] kind of email am I gonna create? Right? We don't have all the information that we need, but we do, right?

[00:27:29] Because we are actually actualizing this every single month. So all of all our strategies are pulling in and updating this every single month as well. So we are updating it against the last 90 days so that we are also prioritizing recency for this.

[00:27:41] So based on this, we now know that that so far we are pretty on target with most of our things within 10% Delta for of our, of our projections. So I think it's a, it's a pretty good concept that we have right now.

[00:27:52] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. No, it, it's awesome. So let, let's, so we got like a nice little rundown of kind of specifically how, how this differs and why that's so important. But let's talk a little bit about the, the Global Accelerator Program primarily serves brands that are in. Say mid seven figure range. On our service side, on CTC, we serve brands that are eight, nine on our admission program.

[00:28:11] It's brands that are kind of six, early seven. So talk to me about like the specific, what makes like the kind of this brands at the seven figure mid seven figure tier from a retention perspective that brands at eight or nine or brands kind of before that tier.

[00:28:28] Josh Tay: Hmm. That's a, it's a very interesting question and I think that it's something that is very important to consider because I, I'll just speak specifically about seven figure first, right? Seven and, and maybe early super, early stage eight. And it's all about resource. Because we have limited amounts of resources.

[00:28:47] If we are at a high eight figures, yeah, we probably have a team

[00:28:51] that's d Or you have a, a dedicated team internally that's dedicated to, you know, creating certain emails. You have you have teams specifically whose job is just reviewing emails from agencies and managing agencies. So that's a complete different conversation that we are having. For seven figure brands where the business owner sometimes is still tied down by operations.

[00:29:12] We need to relieve you of some of that work. And maybe you have got a small team of like three, four people. Your market manager is managing everything. Right? And then so it comes again to the point of budget and resource efficiency. So what is the biggest impact right now for you? Those things become a priority. So everything that we do has an ICE score, impact, confidence, ease. We scale up, we rate it from five and then we then like prioritize, right? What's the most important things right now for you to do? So for like email flows and stuff like that, there's, if it's not essential to create those flows, we are gonna tell you that it's not essential to create those skills

[00:29:49] right now. Obviously those things are still important, and this is something that, you know, every brand should have. Like you should have all different touch points and all that kind of stuff. But again, for, in terms of impact for you right now, what's gonna be the biggest movers? So if campaigns are gonna be the biggest priority, this is what we are gonna dedicate most of our time doing.

[00:30:08] And then for other programs and other initiatives as well. If you're gonna run a giveaway campaign how do you then use your how do you then use retention? To create a cycle and create a feedback loop with your acquisition team, how do you then integrate email SMS with organic social? Because it's about sharing the, uh, the, the resources and then you

[00:30:33] can make things a lot more efficient. So, for example if you are doing a, and we can very easily just create novelty out of nothing, right? It's just about how creative you wanna be and how creative you can get. So. There's something that I, I was just doing with with one of the brands.

[00:30:48] It's called it's called Name Day. So we've

[00:30:51] got, we've ran it for 14 days, so we have 14 different people's names. This is random names, right? And on each day we have two names. We have a male and we have a female name. So we now have 28. We have 28 names. And then this becomes a campaign. It is just, it's a giveaway.

[00:31:08] So peop the brand posts on organic social. To say that, you know, if you have a friend whose name is this, you send a chance to win XX price, right? And you can, and we then have a dedicated landing page with a with a dedicated opt-in.

[00:31:23] So anyone that enters there would then send a chance to win.

[00:31:28] They, they're part of their giveaway. So then we, we now drive traffic from email onto, um, organic social. And then the same thing. So then whatever happens in the organic social, it goes onto the landing page, it comes back in here. So then now we have dedicated flows for the giveaways. So every single day we are now doing this and all this, all these people enter a different segment and the segment gets pushed into a custom audience, and the growth strategist can continue their work on their side. So it's a lot more effective in this sense because you're using one, one resource and you're sharing the same audience across multiple platforms. So it can kind of creates you know, a, a flywheel effect.

[00:32:04] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, that makes sense. I was gonna ask around to the point of efficiency. So you mentioned obviously like bringing, bringing this sort of organic social and retention email and SMS efforts together. Like that's one example of that. But I also was thinking through like. You mentioned at the beginning of your answer to this question, like, how do you prioritizing things like, Hey, this flow is not worthwhile right now, or whatever the case may be.

[00:32:29] is the rubric by which you are measuring that? Right. So how, how is your team determining the priority of various tasks when thinking through the, creating these efficiencies?

[00:32:40] Josh Tay: I mean, we already roughly know what the impact is gonna be purely

[00:32:44] based on like. For flows, right? The, the, the, the biggest revenue drivers is gonna be probably like your welcome flow. Your checkout

[00:32:52] abandoned, maybe your card abandoned, your brows abandoned. And then your, your post-purchase flow, your replenishment flow, whatever. So like for site abandoned flows, for collection abandoned flows. Like are these going to be super big, big movers? Like, I don't know, right? For it is probably not going to be that big of a deal. Same thing for

[00:33:10] your wind back flow. Same thing for your sunset flow. For a collection flow? It depends. It depends.

[00:33:15] So we are gonna look into Shopify reports, we're gonna look at your landing page sessions. If you have a huge amount of traffic going to your collection pages, let's say we've got got traffic and we've got ads going specifically to collection pages, then yeah, that would definitely make sense that we have a collection abandoned flow because that's where traffic's gonna exist. So that we need to have a catch all for that. So then, yeah, this becomes part of that thought process.

[00:33:37] Richard Gaffin: Right.

[00:33:38] Josh Tay: Yeah, so like even with flows if you think about the whole purchase journey and the time between orders between, let's say order one to order two it's a whole histogram, right? People

[00:33:48] are ordering anywhere between zero to five days all the way to like 3, 6, 5, 7, 20 days. So it's latent value capture across the whole thing, and it's impossible for you to just use a flow to catch everyone.

[00:33:59] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:59] Josh Tay: There's, we are going to use the our time between orders chart and look at the model time between orders to determine when is the best time for us to trigger certain things or when's the best time for us to send certain kinds of emails.

[00:34:12] That's most likely for people to repurchase that, but the, this most likely is only capturing a specific percentage of all these people. This one, one small, tiny purchase window. But what happens to everyone here? What happens to everyone here? We are ignoring them. Right? So again, in terms of de efficiency, if you were to create this flow, what is likely gonna be the impact here? Is this something that makes the most sense for you or does it make sense for you to just dedicate yourself to creating, to increasing the volume of campaigns right now till you have more cash flow? So then we, we can push campaigns, obviously the campaigns are gonna be a bit more strategic. It's not gonna be like a know center to hold this kind of thing. But then once you have this and you are, and you know that you've got sufficient cash. Then we can at a later time, maybe in Q1, because right now Q4, right in Q1, maybe we can now reconsider having a specific project where we deploy and we can front, we can load everything. So within one month we build out everything separate project over and above the existing retainer and the whatever.

[00:35:16] Right. If it makes sense at that point. But right now what is the biggest problem for you? Then we'll solve for that first. So this is

[00:35:22] how the team would then prioritize things.

[00:35:25] So if, let's say you've got a back in stock that's coming in. You've got a product that has always been out of stock. Now it's gonna be something that comes in and you say, okay, we don't have a site of uploaded.

[00:35:35] Okay? Which is the, which is the important thing right now, I don't think it's gonna be having some of these flows, but before Q4, right? If, let's say you don't have a proper checkout, a abandon or you don't have a, maybe a checkup and it's one email long, or your welcome, your welcome email is, is trashed, right?

[00:35:51] You've got 1% click rate or something like that, then yeah, maybe we will start to look at some of these things first. While, because it's gonna be very important when we go into Black Friday.

[00:36:01] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:02] Josh Tay: So then we would now need to think about it and try to balance the importance of this because we need to dedicate a number of campaigns for Black Friday, but we also need to build the correct infrastructure right now.

[00:36:13] So then it's a conversation that we're gonna have. Hey, you know, do you have sufficient resourcing?

[00:36:19] If you can't, we can support with some of these things, right? But then this is gonna be super important right now. So do you want to leave things as is and we can focus on something else first, but that also means that you're gonna have revenue leaking from your flows, Right.

[00:36:32] Or we can still build this thing and we compromise a little bit there, right?

[00:36:37] So then if you don't want to compromise on anything, then you know, that's a, that's an honest conversation. We gotta have partners, partner, right? Is

[00:36:43] gonna be done, then it's gonna be done.

[00:36:45] Richard Gaffin: No, it makes sense. I think like, yeah, it sounds like basically to prioritize these things properly, obviously there's like a little bit of common sense like, oh, the welcome flow's not working right, whatever. But it also feels like. we're pointing back to again is like our specific access to the data across, again, like sort of the entire lifecycle of the customer.

[00:37:06] Having this sort of like conversations with the growth strategist, this sort of overall understanding of like the brand's numbers or whatever. Those are the types of data points that give you the ability to make these calls around priority. Like even to your point, like understanding the per revenue expectation of each campaign.

[00:37:24] Gives you a clear sense of which ones are the most valuable. And I would say most brands probably don't have access to that type of information. And so that's kind of like another sort of edge that we give you as a retention program is the sort of like the understanding of what's actually happening.

[00:37:38] And then of that data, you have the ability to make these really crucial prioritization decisions. So one, one thing that I, I like to ask. When I'm talking particularly to somebody new, hasn't been on the pod yet, what, brands that are out there listening, that maybe they're not clients yet, maybe they will be one day, but they don't currently have access to this type of system.

[00:38:04] What's like the number one thing that you can do right now to of increase your retention performance?

[00:38:13] Josh Tay: Wow. That is a, that is a very big question.

[00:38:16] How, yeah, what is the. Best thing that you can do to increase your retention performance?

[00:38:22] Right.

[00:38:23] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:38:24] Josh Tay: I think it's looking at your revenue over time charts

[00:38:29] and then looking at the drop offs. So you're gonna have a cohort analysis chart, um, LTB over time. Whether you're gonna, I think the best thing to be looking at would be cumulative LTV over time revenue based,

[00:38:42] and then looking at the drop offs.

[00:38:43] So when are people dropping off from month zero to month one. Month one to month two. Month two to month three. Right. What's the percentage drop off and what's, what's the percentage of LTV growth from month to month? And that actually becomes probably one of the biggest things in order to tell you where you should be prioritizing your time, whether it's actually on win backs and what, what the, what the natural propensity is to repurchase. So there's several things you're gonna look at. So you're gonna look at your LTV over time, you're gonna look at your time between orders, and you're gonna split this between your time, between orders for first time customers. So order one to order two, and then from order two to order three, right? I would, I would suggest focusing a lot more on order one to two. This is where most of your customer file actually sits. A

[00:39:23] majority of people are one time customer, so you gotta solve for the biggest things first. So looking at time between orders and then looking at your product journey. So there are some apps that exist that have a, you know, d chart to show you what people are naturally repurchase after you purchase an item.

[00:39:37] Otherwise, you can just export your list. So export all your sales over time. Reports from Shopify sorted by customer email, sorted by first repeat customer, and then by product name, blah, blah, blah. And then you. Put it into an ai right? And ask them

[00:39:50] to rank the top three, top five products and the, and the natural repurchase rates and the top three.

[00:39:54] So now you get a matrix of about 25 different products, and this is where you then match this with amount of revenue that you're getting to see what is the biggest impact for you.

[00:40:03] And based on that, then you can, you're gonna decide, right, does it make sense for me to now create segmented flows and create specific segments or, or specific campaigns highlighting specific products because. This is a high demand and it's also got a higher TB for me, right? You're gonna match and you're gonna marry these two things. So I think if you are, if you are able to do this, we would naturally already see an increase in retention

[00:40:29] just purely based on numbers, right? It might not be the most sustainable, but it forms a good enough foundation for us to base a lot of things off.

[00:40:37] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. So yeah, so I mean, basically what you're saying is like it all starts with the data getting familiar with particularly what you're saying, which is like your repurchase window, like we've called it the past 60 day LTV. For other brands, it might be 30, might be one 20, whatever the case may be, but determining what that is so you can kind of determine like the most important moment to reengage with that, that customer, right?

[00:40:58] Josh Tay: Yeah, a hundred percent.

[00:41:00] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Cool. Well, anything else that you wanna, you wanna hit, you wanna cover here?

[00:41:05] Josh Tay: If you ask me questions forever, I'll be your top forever.

[00:41:08] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, sure. Hey, fair enough, man. Well, if you wanna ask Josh questions, you know where to find us, commentary code.com, hit that hire us button, let us know that you're interested in. Working with us, working with our retention program, working with our Global Accelerator program. There's also a page on the Common Thread website.

[00:41:23] If you click work with us underneath it, there's an accelerator program drop down that you can click and get a little more information about the program if you're interested. If you're a seven, mid, seven figure kind of early eight figure brand, this is the perfect fit for you. But yeah, what, we'll close it out there.

[00:41:36] Josh, appreciate you joining us. And thanks to everyone out there for listening. We'll talk to you next time. See.

[00:41:41]