#125. Improve Your Post-BFCM Sales with Cohley | Podcast

Vira: 0:41

Hello. Hello everyone and welcome to Email Einstein the podcast by Flowium. I’m your host Vira Sadlak. I’m an email marketeer at an agency called Flowium and here Flowium. We are very passionate about email marketing and e commerce and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. And today we will have a very special guest and a very special topic when we recording this podcast. Full disclosure, it’s still like November 17th, but when you guys will be listening to this podcast, the Black Friday Cyber Monday will be over and probably you will enter that period of like holiday sales that will be followed by a bit of a slowdown in the industry. And this year with like record inflation, high gas prices and still like some pandemic effects supply chain issues. There’s no doubt that this holiday season might be a bit different from what we experienced over the last few years. But it only means that it will be very important and very crucial for the brands to adjust for the reality of 2020 and improve their customer experience, improve their holiday promotions and I mean probably like nothing beats the effectiveness of a good image and a good influencer marketing. That’s why I’m like super excited about our guest today. And that’s exactly what we will be talking today, what we’ll be discussing today with Brian Petracca from Holly. Say hi Brian.

Brian: 2:14

Hey Vira, it’s great to be here and I’m excited to speak to you further about the topics.

Vira: 2:20

Oh yeah, oh yeah. For those of you guys who don’t know, Brian is a director of people and operation at Cohley and for those who don’t know what Cohley is, Cohley is pretty much like a marketplace of vetted creators that help you generate and test some custom user generated content. And recently they also launched one more very exciting tool or platform that we will be discussing today. But before we go there, Brian, we want to get to know you better and we have this little this or that questions like a blitz Q and A. Just like to get to know you better before we go into all of our juicy e commerce questions.

Brian: 3:01

Great, can’t wait to get started with it.

Vira: 3:03

Let’s do this. Okay Brian, shopping online or shopping offline?

Brian: 3:08

Almost exclusively online.

Vira: 3:10

Yay. Yeah. You’re our type of. Type of customer.

Brian: 3:16

100%.

Vira: 3:17

Yeah. Christmas tree before or after Thanksgiving?

Brian: 3:21

I live on a fifth floor walk up so I actually will not bother getting a Christmas tree, but it is usually a tradition with me and my mom will go after Thanksgiving to get one on either the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Vira: 3:35

Oh, how American of you. I already have my Christmas tree up in Canada. Like November 1st. That’s like the day when you put your Christmas tree up.

Brian: 3:44

Yeah, perfect.

Vira: 3:46

Yeah. Okay, cool. TikTok or Instagram?

Brian: 3:50

Instagram. I haven’t quite gotten on the trend of any of the dances that TikTok has been encouraging the last couple of years since the pandemic started. But yeah, I’m a little more old school with Instagram now.

Vira: 4:03

Okay. Sorting by price or sorting by rating.

Brian: 4:08

Oh, I think I’ll have to go rating there for the best product. Sometimes you have to pay a little more for it.

Vira: 4:16

That’s true, that’s true. I’m the same. Okay, email or sms?

Brian: 4:21

Email.

Vira: 4:22

Yay. Yay. I mean I, I love SMS as a consumer sometimes if that’s the brand that I like follow and I want to hear from but sometimes it feels a bit, a bit intrusive, you know.

Brian: 4:35

But yeah, yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think there’s a time and place for it in sms but I like, I like kind of being able to separate some of my personal SMS messages and imessage from more consumer or work facing email.

Vira: 4:52

Right, right. Okay, the last one. I’m kind of curious to hear your answer. So Ryan, if you had a theme song playing every time you entered the room, what would it be?

Brian: 5:03

Oh, wow, that’s really tough. I am a massive Mets fan and for the last year they have had a closer named Edwin Diaz and every time he comes into the stadium they play a song by Timmy Trumpets and I’m going to have to just kind of copy him because it really gets the entire stadium going every time. And I like to think that whenever I walk into a room, everyone’s a little bit more excited and is ready to have a little bit more fun.

Vira: 5:33

That’s a good one. That’s a good one. I wish we had some sort of like music here, but you can just imagine us playing the music on the background. Okay, cool. So let’s discuss some juicy e commerce stuff. But before we go there, before we go there, Brian, tell our listeners what is Cohley and what you guys do and who’s it for?

Brian: 5:57

Yeah, great, great first question. So Coley we’ve been around for about six years. I was one of the first employees after our two founders started the company about six or seven years ago. It really started as a marketplace for brands to connect with content creators. And especially early on the focus was micro influencers. How can we create user generated content that will have a little bit more control over the curation of those assets and really just being able to do so in a really affordable way, a little bit more of a streamlined way. There’s a lot more that I’m sure we’ll get into, but as we’ve grown over the last few years, we’ve really become a content creation platform that is a lot broader than that. Really working with our customers to generate everything from user generated content to professional photography to text reviews to video to TikTok or Instagram influencer content. You name it. We can help our customers drive creative brief and support any creative campaigns that they might have. And now as you alluded to earlier on, one of our newest tools is our Klaviyo integration. And that was really born out of the idea that there’s such an importance on testing content. And that’s really always been our mission is to educate our clients, our customers, our users that what makes a top performing asset doesn’t always have to do with if it’s a prettier picture or more highly edited or curated or whatever it might be, but it’s really a top performing asset is one that’s getting clicked on and one that’s driving conversions. And so this new Klaviyo integration actually allows us to test those assets and drive to better performance results.

Vira: 7:44

Yeah, and we’ll definitely discuss that later in the podcast. But like I’m analyzing like the way I shop these days, I do prefer to hear about the product or service from brands that utilize the user generated content across their like social media or online platforms. Just because it almost like remove that like transactional element from the communication, you know, it makes it all more real. And I know, I’ve read the study that actually 77% of consumers who are on social media, they, they say that they would be more inclined to purchase a product or service from brands that do YouTub utilize UTC across their social media versus from the brands who don’t. It just like feels, it almost like puts the human face on the brand, you know.

Brian: 8:36

Yes.

Vira: 8:36

And especially when you’re like utilizing the micro influencers. I feel like brands don’t necessarily understand the power of micro influencers and like how loyal their followers are. So yeah, that’s cool that you guys utilize sort of like this group of influencers as well.

Brian: 8:55

Yeah, it was. When we first started the platform, everything as you’ll, as you’ll learn by our logo was, was fish themed for, for a while but we, we called our micro influencers our, our Nemos kind of finding Nemo themed a young up and comer. So we, we thought there were a lot of people and, and a lot of competitors I should say in the space that were fighting over the massive Kim Kardashian esque influence, trying to partner with them through agencies. And we, we kind of realized hey, there’s this huge value in a massive sea of micro influencers that are really talented at creating content and also to your point, have a much higher engagement rate, have much more loyal followers and we’d never kind of made the, made the case for, hey, if you have this influencer make a post for you, it’s going to immediately drive a sale. But instead, hey, how can you actually create multiple touch points, very top of the funnel influencer touchpoint, use that same content within your digital ads, repurpose it and test it. So really about moving a customer through the, through the pipeline with really the content we can generate using micro influencers.

Vira: 10:12

Right, right. And since we started talking about the user generated content, stuff like that, do you think it has in the post holiday strategy, like how can UGC influence a purchasing behavior especially in the post holiday season when season that is normally slower?

Brian: 10:34

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean I wish we had a secret recipe that would guarantee the continuation of sales after holidays, but that’s just not ever really going to be the case. There’s never the incentive outside of the holiday season kind of industry wide to continue those purchasing patterns. But where we see that opportunity and that value is hey, this is a great way to work with a more affordable segment of creators and being able to continue to just have an evergreen initiative of working with these really talented people to generate really great content and still have the control over it. So post holiday I think that’s something that everyone is in a hurry to get through the Black Friday Cyber Monday sales to get through holiday and to crush it there. And then all they want to do is all right, let’s take a break, let’s take a breather. But you have a huge opportunity there to continue that loyalty. Those, those consumers that have purchased from you directly on your websites, you’re able to continue to target them. Whereas that’s obviously such a huge conversation right now. Social media platforms not having that third party data to be able to target as effect effectively as you used to be able to. How can we capitalize on. Okay, we know that our, our consumer and our demographic is X, Y and Z Persona. Let’s make sure we’re, we’re working with influencers and content creators that are gonna relate to those buyers. I’m addicted to golf right now. It’s my big hobby. The easiest way to get me to, to buy anything is probably show me how I can use it on a golf course. How’s it gonna make my day better? Finishing up after 18, I need to go take a shower. What’s the product that’s going to make me smell best after a round of golf? All right, feed, feed that to me versus oh, I just was mountain biking. And I’m going to show you an influencer who is an extreme sports guy. I’m probably going to slide right by that ad and kind of ignore it because it doesn’t, it doesn’t relate to me. And that’s where the opportunity to work with these content creators really is so massive. And to continue that relatability that, that loyalty to your consumers is to really understand what it is they’re shopping for, what they’re buying and how you can continue to serve them relatable content.

Vira: 12:58

Right. And for us internally, like with my clients, obviously people, after spending like a significant amount of money in the months of November and December, usually the shoppers have like the blues after receiving their credit in January. Right. And the months of January, February, even like at end of December are probably some of the lowest spending months of the year model for, for probably for all US and Canadian consumers. But we usually use that months to optimize the flows because like in the months of November, we try not to touch anything. So if it works, it works. But we take that like January and February as a time to like perfect our flows to like improve maybe like some of the conversions on some emails, maybe like improve some like images or like visuals or stuff like that. That’s why I’m super excited about the newest app that you guys have launched or like a platform because I see a big opportunity in what you guys are doing right now. So let’s talk a bit more about the Activate. What is Activate and how does it work?

Brian: 14:06

Yeah, so Cohley Activate is what we’re calling our Klaviyo integration. Essentially the word activate is really coming from the idea of, all right, you have libraries full of content, yet when you’re using a cart or browse abandonment flow, the Only asset that you’re able to show in a product is what is shown on the Shopify default image. We want to be able to activate alternate assets. We want to be able to test, hey, if this is a product that’s being abandoned quite often, what if we were serving different images, different assets within your cart or browse abandonment flow that are going to drive better click rates and most importantly drive to a conversion rate. So at a high level, that’s how the integration works is we are tapping into those cart and browse abandonment emails and testing alternate assets.

Vira: 14:59

Right. So for example, I just like need to a little case study to picture how it works. For example, I’m shopping for yoga pants or something and I place them in my cart. What happens next? Can I like instead of seeing like a pair of leggings on the white background like a standard Shopify picture, can I see some maybe like a user generated content, like a picture of like an influencer wearing this pants or something like that, or like what kind of assets can can you test there?

Brian: 15:32

Exactly. And that’s really the point is if you’re getting served on a Carter browse abandonment flow every single time, it’s just going to be that pair of yoga pants with a plain white back background. With this integration, we can now test whatever the brand wants to, whether it’s generated through our first Cohley platform where it’s a UGC piece, whether it’s from your internal professional photo shoots that you did with your agency, whatever you want it to be. It could be alternate styles of product shots, it could be lifestyle shots. Maybe we want to just test, hey, we have four different images that are already on our Shopify scroll through on our product page. Let’s try all those and let’s see which ones are actually getting the highest click rate. Because maybe we should make that our default on the Shopify product page to begin with. And then from there we can start testing alternate ones in addition to that. Now let’s go different lifestyle. Now let’s try different aged people in the lifestyle images. So what’s really great about the platform is we’re also automatically removing those low performers. So if we see that anything’s underperforming against the Shopify default image. All right, now let’s go start testing something else. And always trying to find the king of the mountain. What’s the best asset that’s going to work for this product?

Vira: 16:53

Right? And what metrics can you ab test with Cohley activate? Like can you pull clicks or maybe like opens or just like Tracking conversion. Like, what can you check?

Brian: 17:06

So right now the metrics that we’re primarily focused on are click to open rates as well as the conversion rates. Obviously the open of the email isn’t really going to matter too much to us because it’s really only once you open the email, you’re going to see the asset itself and that’s where we’re really focused. So those are the two we’re focused on right now. But it’s as you’ve alluded to, a very new, very new tool. And that’s something that we’re always talking to our consumers about is what else do you want to know? What do you want to learn? What other flows do you think this could be valuable within and what other ways do you think we could have a dynamic offering? I think the thing we’re talking about most right now is within still a browser card abandonment flow. What if we could include a text review, a product review from someone who’s already purchased that item? Wouldn’t that maybe encourage, hey, someone that gave this a five star review. I didn’t check out because I wasn’t so confident on it, but now I’m kind of being told from a user how great this product really is. All right, let me go back in there, let me give it a shot. So that’s kind of me just getting to the point of, hey, the opportunities are endless with what we can eventually build out.

Vira: 18:17

Yeah, I mean we did have a challenge. I mean we still do with the flows like abandoned card or added to cart or browse abandoned. All the flows that have this like dynamic aspect to them.

Brian: 18:29

Right.

Vira: 18:29

Like there is no way you could test different images and like automated flows. So you pretty much, you don’t get any insights on how your creative or how your assets are impacting the sales. And I think it’s a big, big portion of marketing, obviously, especially for the brands that are like highly visual. Like fashion brands. I see absolutely for like fashion brands or I don’t know, maybe like some decor, home decor, something very visual.

Brian: 19:01

Yeah, I see a big, Yeah, I would say the brands that we’ve seen the highest performance with and this might also just be because they’re the brands that we have the most clients in these categories. But I would say fashion is, is massive because there’s something about being able to see a jacket, a shirt, a pair of pants on an actual person versus it just kind of on a flat lay or hanging up somewhere. You don’t really know how is that going to fit on my body? Type, how is that going to look when I put it together with a full outfit? And by being able to provide that alternate test asset, we’re seeing really high performance results in that case. Same goes for beauty brands or skin care brands. Actually being able to put someone wearing the makeup versus just an image of the bottle or the lipstick case, whatever it might be just sitting there, it doesn’t have that same impact. So that’s really what we’re trying to drive. And you know what? Sometimes it’s surprising, sometimes it’s, hey you, you put these four test assets that you think are going to blow the Shopify image out of the water and, and they don’t. But the good thing is, all right, let’s replace those, let’s test, let’s find some, some other assets that we can use. And all right, now we’re starting to see that this is a product that does really well with product images. Let’s just test other product images and see if there are any others that perform better. So it’s all about, I think just an ongoing effort of testing.

Vira: 20:30

Yeah, no, this like aspect of seeing the product on someone or like the makeup or the pens or whatever, it does work really well. I’m just like even analyzing my behavior and I’m like in marketing but it still works every freaking time. Like back in the day the stores like Zara or H and M, they didn’t have that like social media aspect on their product pages. That’s just something that they’ve introduced like recently, maybe like a year or two years ago. So now when I’m going and like seeing the genes on like H and M product page, like at the bottom of the page you can also see the user generated content of like people similar to you, maybe with like a similar body type or people with a similar style and you can see them in the same exact genes versus just like seeing them on the model or on the white background. So it’s a very, it’s a very cool tool. I’m. It will help with that, especially those dynamic flows.

Brian: 21:35

A hundred percent. And that’s even just going back to the original Cohley content solution that we started with. There’s been such a motion for our customers to move towards generating more text reviews and product reviews. So in more traditional ways was product seeding sending out thousands of samples to users and hoping that they might just come back to your website and post something. We’ve actually created a more streamlined way and actually have applicants coming to you requesting products to test in exchange for a product review. And one stat that is so hugely valuable is I think it’s over 80% of consumers rely on product reviews that are from the last six months and at least 50 of them before they even have trust in a product. So by being able to fill that pipeline with relevant recent reviews, you’re now giving a customer the opportunity to not have to go to a store and try it on for themselves or try a makeup in Sephora in store because you have 50, 100 thousands of people who have already done it. And that is what’s surprising is there’s almost an equal amount of trust from product reviews as there is for a consumer to hear it from their best friend. So if you have enough product reviews, you’re getting the equal amount of trust as hearing something from someone you really, really trust in a family member or a friend.

Vira: 23:41

Yeah. Do you have any like case studies that you’ve done like recently with your clients or maybe do you have any like examples of, of what your clients were able to achieve with this Klaviyo call integration?

Brian: 23:55

Yeah, one that we’re really excited about that we released pretty recently is with a client, Biaggi Luggage. We’ve worked with them for a long time generating content and now actually being able to take those assets and test them across their Klaviyo cart and browse abandonment flows. And they’ve seen huge lifts in both conversions and click through rates, click to open rates and, and really it’s just exciting to see that what we’ve really been putting an emphasis on in terms of testing is to actually see that results come to life. They’ve had as high as I believe 33% click rate increase. Actually just scrolling through it, that’s conversion. They had 30% increase across a few products. When it comes to some of their click to open rates, it is closer to almost 300% increases on some products.

Vira: 24:43

So, so what were they testing in that? In the test. Sorry, what were they testing? What like elements they were testing there?

Brian: 24:50

Yeah. So for Biagi, all of their Shopify product pages were highlighting mostly product images. A lot of it is white background as you alluded to just Photoshop image of the product. They primarily started testing with lifestyle having showing a user packing the bag, showing a user kind of wheeling the bag. Biaggi is a really interesting luggage brand because they can kind of like fold up their luggage to fit in and store more easily within small apartments, small closets. And so even some of the things that we’ve learned from them is if it’s an image of a user actually going through the process and kind of like folding it up. It showed that usability. It showed that ability to kind of transform the bag from something that packs a lot to packs really small. And that, that kind of drove people to click really aggressively.

Vira: 25:47

That’s really interesting. Yeah. I wonder how it would work for like, other brands, like with like showing the use cases almost like, I’m thinking I have this pet brand that we are working with and they are launching this like, new product very soon. It’s called like the. A Nano backpack for dogs. It’s pretty much like a teeny tiny backpack that you can attach to your dog’s leash and everything. So on its own it looks. Well, it looks plain and boring. It’s just like a thing on the wide background and you don’t. I had no idea how to use them because, like, I don’t have a dog. I love dogs. I’m obsessed with dogs, but I don’t have a dog and I don’t know like, what this product can be used for.

Brian: 26:31

Right.

Vira: 26:32

And now I’m thinking if, like instead of this plain white background image, we could use maybe like a lifestyle image showing how this bag can be attached to the leash or how you can get some poop bags from the, from the pack or something just like to show how it can be used. I think it could, it could have.

Brian: 26:53

Yeah.

Vira: 26:54

Impact.

Brian: 26:55

Absolutely. And I think something that is always so hard to tell in a product shot is what is the size of this product? Is this a backpack that can fit any size dog? Is it smaller than it looks? Is it going to attach? If I attach a big enough dog to it, is it going to break? Okay, let me see an image that is showing how it’s being used. What types of dogs are people actually using with this bag? And I think that’s incredibly powerful to a consumer to have that use case being shown in that browsing cart abandonment flow and not just the product image itself. They’ve already looked at the product. Now how can we actually show them a little bit more valuable information within those emails to drive them to the. To return to the checkout?

Vira: 27:41

Yeah, exactly. There are like this. Tons of Instagram posts or like social media posts about people who order something from like AliExpress or like Chinese websites and they like order this pots and pans set and then they receive this like a teeny tiny, almost like a toy size.

Brian: 27:57

I know exactly what you’re talking about. My favorite one is I think a girl ordered a set of AirPods and they were like the size of a suitcase. They were massive.

Vira: 28:08

Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Well, I know we’re kind of running out of time, Brian, but if you could like summarize everything that we discussed, like what piece of advice could you give to like direct to consumer brands who want to improve their overall customer retention, experience, experience and customer experience after the holidays?

Brian: 28:33

Yeah, I think I’ve alluded to it a lot. But the most important things that we’ve seen is personalization and testing. I think a lot of brands, we hear this a lot. I think, especially most recently with TikTok for example, of it’s this great unknown. We would love to go viral on TikTok, but we’re scared to put budget there because we’ve never done it before. I mean, I highly recommend, all right, you have a million dollar marketing budget throughout the year. Take 5% of that, take 2% of that, whatever you’re comfortable with, and put it towards testing. Really just be comfortable with doing things that you aren’t comfortable with because that’s how you’re gonna try to find new ways and new channels where you’re gonna have new consumers. And then on top of that, after the first conversion that loyalty taking advantage of of Flowium and Klaviyo’s email flows, being able to actually continue to target those people who have made purchases before, it’s a lot easier to get a return customer than a new customer. So really having that one, two punch of testing new things, really understanding. All right, we’re putting budget behind Instagram ads, but we’re not doing it blindly. We’re trying a few different things. We are now driving them to convert as they move down the funnel. How do we keep them? How do we make sure that they don’t abandon us halfway through? We have card and browse abandonment flows to do that. We have confirmation pages afterwards that can nudge them along to say, hey, you just bought this product. Don’t be afraid to go back and look at this new line of products we just released. Make sure you’re taking advantage of adding content and adding relatable and valuable content everywhere that you can. And I think a really great way to do that, really affordable way where you’re not kind of just blindly throwing money away, is using user generated content, working with creators to generate assets in addition to your professional photo shoots that are going to be coming in at a much lower cost per image, trying things on TikTok, something that’s obviously extraordinarily kind of exciting. Right now. Everyone wants to get in there. So that’s, that’s something I would push. But I think something we’ve discussed in the past is what’s going to drive someone to. Or a brand, I should say to fail. And I think that’s the biggest thing is those who are kind of like stuck in their ways and aren’t willing or open to trying new things. What’s worked in the past might not keep working going forward. And then when you start to see it slipping, it’s. What’s the old saying the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. It’s just not going to happen. If you start seeing things decline, it’s time to start trying something new.

Vira: 31:32

That’s a good one. And I feel like my last question you kind of answered already, but we’re still asking this question to all of our guests because we are living in very unprecedented times. This is something different, something that we haven’t experienced in a while. Just a complete descent. DTC brands that survive and thrive in the recession will.

Brian: 31:55

Oh, that’s. That’s good. I think I’ve said it like you said. I think I’ve said it a lot. But they’re going to test more than others. They’re going to find what is driving the lowest cost per conversion. If we’re throwing a lot of money out there, we want to make sure we’re getting it back and making the most of it. So how can we actually find that out? What is working best, what content is performing best, what channels are performing best? It’s. It’s not enough to just keep doing the same things over and over and it’s really just a matter of. In this ever growing landscape of digital marketing, I’ve even spoken to a lot of customers that are going really back. It’s almost full circle but are seeing success in direct mailers, actual paper printed with envelopes and everything. And that’s what’s working for them. But, but it’s worth a try to really do anything that you haven’t done before. And I think you have to have that mentality of fail fast. Learn from what did work, learn from what didn’t and try it again with an adjusted approach. It could be the content, it could be how or where you’re putting your spend. But I think it’s just a matter of way to survival is making sure you’re looking at every option.

Vira: 33:14

That’s a good one. That’s a perfect ending of this podcast. Brian, thank you so much. It was like so much fun talking to you if people want to find you or find colle or if they have questions, where should they go?

Brian: 33:28

Yeah, so coley.com C O H L E Y But we are everywhere, I would say the best place right now. Also for our Klaviyo integration. It’s available for free right now on the Shopify App Store through the remainder of the year and will probably still be very, very reasonable going into next year and early 2023. So Shopify app Store, look for Cohley. We have a couple different apps on there and you can find the one that will kind of be most valuable to you.

Vira: 33:59

Well and guys, we will link all of the resources that we discussed in this podcast in the description box. So just scroll down, find all of the links, find all of the resources. Brian, thank you again for coming to our podcast. We hope to get you back on our podcast someday. Someday again, someday soon.

Brian: 34:18

I would love that. And hopefully we’ll, we’ll get to return the favor and have you come on to our Reel it in podcast.

Vira: 34:24

Let’s do this. You guys, don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. And if you’re interested in getting some more advice on how to like, establish a solid email marketing strategy for your e commerce store, just visit flowium.com contact and sign up for a free consultation. Thank you so much for listening and we hope to see you here next week. Bye guys. Bye Brian. Thank you.

Brian: 34:47

Bye bye.