Preparation is the backbone for success during the holiday season.

Recently we just recorded a holiday webinar featuring Kristina Muntean and Jenna Galardi. Kristina works for Gorgias, an online customer support service who has worked with big brands such as Steve Madden and OLIPOP. Jenna Galardi has over a decade of experience helping businesses grow online. In current role  as Senior Omnichannel Growth Manager at BigCommerce, she focuses on helping merchants strengthen their online presence and adopt social commerce, marketplaces, and product feed optimization solutions to scale their growth.

This holiday season should be quite interesting. Inflation, rising ad costs, privacy issues, and new campaign types have this year shaping up to be anything but ordinary. 

In this episode we cover how to: 

• Drive MORE traffic profitably
• Go omnichannel
• Turn every interaction (even support) into sales opportunities

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Mentioned in this episode:

Kristina Muntean:
- eMail: Kristina.Muntean@Gorgias.com
- LinkedIn

- Gorgias

Jenna Galardi:
- LinkedIn

- BigCommerce

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WOXER
ILIA
feedonomics

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Transcript:

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Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. Today I have two amazing guests for you. I recently recorded a holiday prep webinar and had some of my friends and some of just the smartest minds in e-commerce and marketing join me and talk about how to maximize your results for this holiday shopping season. But here's the deal. A lot of what we talked about in that webinar applies to holiday, yes, but it also goes beyond holiday. And so I wanted to bring these topics to you on the podcast. And so my two guests today are first Christina Mont and Christina is with Gorgias and e-commerce help desk. I probably don't need to tell you what Gorgias is. You likely already know and you already you it. And she is one of the partner managers at Gorgias. She works with OMG Commerce. We actually knew her from a previous life check.

She used to work for one of our clients. And so I've known Christina A. Long time. She's very bright. Christina and I talk about how to turn every customer interaction into a sales opportunity. So any time that your team interacts with a customer, how do you use that to further your brand, further the relationship and turn it into a sales opportunity? That's huge during the holidays because all the interactions with customers increase, right? But this topic is valuable beyond holiday as well. And then guest number two is Jenna Gordi. And Jenna is the senior omnichannel growth manager at Big Commerce. Now, I was speaking at an event in Miami several months ago. I ended up meeting a couple of the managers at Big Commerce. We kind of hit it off, started talking and I said, Hey, I'd like to know more about what Big Commerce is doing.

So they invited me to their partner Summit in Austin, Texas. Got to hang out with Jenna Goria a little bit. And so Jenna and I talk about going omnichannel. Now, Jim, I just made up a word. Jenna has been in the industry for a long time, used to be in the agency world, now works with some of the biggest brands on Big Commerce, Works with Theos team, which Feos is kind of best in class in terms of feed optimization for Google Shopping, of course, which is now mostly Performance Max but also Amazon and Walmart and Target. Plus, we do talk about Target plus here. And so again, we gear this discussion, this interview around holiday, but the concepts, the tips of going omnichannel certainly go well beyond holiday. So you're gonna love the interview with both Christina and Jenna. So sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Are you a D to C brand spending over six figures a month on paid media? If so, then listen up. My agency, OMG Commerce, and I have worked with some of the top e-commerce brands over the years, including Boom, native, Groove, Moan, Organify, and dozens more. And every year we audit hundreds of Google, YouTube, and Amazon ad accounts, and we always find either significant opportunities for growth or wasted ad spend to cut or both. For example, are you missing YouTube ads? Whatever you're spending on top of funnel Facebook, you should be able to spend 30 to 50% of that or more on YouTube with similar returns. So if you're spending 300 to 400,000 a month on Facebook, you should be able to easily spend a hundred to 150,000 or more on YouTube. Visit OMG commerce.com to request a free strategy session or visit our resource page and get some of our free guides loaded with some of our best strategies for YouTube ads, Google Shopping, Amazon DSP and more. Check it all out@omgcommerce.com. All right, for this next session, I'm delighted to welcome a longtime friend in the e-commerce space and a true expert in how to get more from your e-commerce brand. I'd like to welcome Christina een from Gorgias Christina, how's it going? And thanks for coming on this live event.

Kristina:

Hey Brett thank you so much for that intro. And yeah, it's always wonderful to be here and to get to chat with you.

Brett:

Absolutely. So we, we'd go way back. As it turns out, you used to work for a brand who's a long time OMG client. So you were on the brand side making e-commerce happen, growing a brand, working with omg and now you're kind of on the SaaS side of and that's s a s side of E-commerce now with Gorgias. And so for those that don't know, and I think most people probably do, but explain what is Gorgias and how do you make merchants life lives easier. And then we're gonna dig into some specific tips for the holidays.

Kristina:

Yeah, so no, it's been really cool Brett, as you said, first of all to get to work with you guys and the econ brand side, but to be able to really dive in on one brand and see, alright, how do we scale this? How do we acquire new customers? How do we keep them buying from us? But now moving to Gorgias, we currently work with over 10,000 e-commerce brands, so it's been such an awesome opportunity to really see e-com as a whole. What are those trends and what's working and what isn't so Gorgias specifically? Basically we work with only e-commerce merchants and we basically support them as an e-commerce help desk. And what that means is, as a brand, you guys know that you're being reached out to by customers across many different channels. It used to just be customers, my email or call you on the phone, but that now they're expecting you to respond to them in your dms and respond to ad comments.

They're expecting you to be able to live chat you maybe SMS text you so Gorgias. Basically empowers your brand to be able to actually manage all of that. So it pulls in all those different communication channels into one central hub and then links up with your eCommerce platform. So your Shopify, your big commerce, your Meto store, and basically allows you to actually take action on customer requests like changing of shipping address and all of that directly from one place. So tons of efficiency in terms of the customer support, customer experience side of things and really allows brands to have amazing customer experiences and drive more revenue on the CS side of things,

Brett:

I love this so much and really we get to work with some amazing top shelf e-commerce brands. Most of them are working with Gorgias. And really you make life simple and easier for merchants. And you guys talk a lot about conversational commerce and I love that term. And I also love the concept of what if we turn every customer support situation, every interaction with a customer, whether that's through live chat or someone tweeting at you or using Messenger or whatever, calling you on the phone. What if we turn that into a sales opportunity because they are. And if you do it the right way, you can turn all of those interactions into sales opportunities. So I love that, I love that perspective that you guys bring. So let's dive in because the holidays present a super unique time for all of e-commerce, but especially on the customer support side of things. And so I wanna do a few things, but let's dive into this topic first. How should we address customer feedback before Black Friday, Cyber Monday? So as we're getting ready so that we can leverage and get the most out of the holidays, how should we be collecting and addressing that feedback ahead of time?

Kristina:

Yeah, so Brett, this is one of the greatest pieces that I've been supporting brands on just getting ready for the biggest influx of sales. And of course customer inquiries is really taking a look at what are people actually writing into us about? What are they asking us questions about what isn't clear? What's the positive and negative feedback? And really understanding that customers will tell you how to win and then keep their business if you're listening and if you're,

Brett:

You're telling you now, right? They're giving you this feedback. Now if you are listening and if you're paying attention,

Kristina:

Exactly. And so we like to just empower them to take a step further. Don't just wait for the feedback to come to you, but really proactively reach out to customers. If someone happens to leave a poor review or if someone asks for a return, don't just like go ahead and fulfill that return, get the information from them that could maybe even actually save the sale or lead to a change in the product or your website that actually leads to way more sales down the line. So it's really this cheerful piece. It's like ask for this feedback, ask for this information, Do customer interviews, do surveys, Do you know net promoter score, CSAT satisfaction score after the purchases? But also right now, anyone can actually take all of their ticket history, whether it's from a help desk like Gorgias or another help desk, export that and really understand what are the areas that people are writing in about. So with Gorgias, it will actually tell you it'll categorize the different feedback into different areas. So you'll be able to see what are the themes, what are we crushing and doing really well, and what are we sucking at and we really need to improve. And then to be able to make meaningful changes and really set you up for success and for people to have the best experiences leading into holiday.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so valuable and you made a really good point when you are chatting earlier that hey, if it gets to the point of a negative review, someone leaves that negative review online, it's already done at that point, they've already moved on, they're already gonna do business somewhere else, almost certainly. So don't let it get to that point. Usually people's first step is they reach out to customer support, they chat with you, they send you a message to Messenger. So address that there, but then look for those trends because if one person's having an issue, probably several people are, and then when you know what those trends are, then you can fix things. So you got two examples that I wanna dive into from real merchants. From Gorgias merchants. The first one was Waxer and that's W O X E R which tell me what that brand is and then what was something they uncovered through paying attention to their tickets.

Kristina:

This is a really cool and impactful example for them, but yeah, walks are a really cool retailer for women's boxer shorts. But basically they noticed in the data, they were like, Wow, what the heck just happened? We just saw 10% monthly drop in subscriptions.

Brett:

Significant,

Kristina:

Very significant. And thanks to taking a look at this and looking in their CS system, their team actually kind of flagged this and looked at the various tickets and saw basically the theme. But what was happening is customers actually couldn't update their credit card info on the website. So any subscriptions where the credit card had expired, the subscription would just automatically churn. So this issue was basically surfaced by the CS team just seeing kind of the theme and the tags around this and they realized it was actually leading to this huge 10 steps subscription revenue drop. So they caught this though via seeing this trend come in via the tags in their cs.

Brett:

Interesting. Other, they hadn't seen that through tagging the messaging system then who knows what they would've looked at? Maybe talk about the marketing maybe talk to the marketing team, Hey, send us better traffic or talk to the conversion rate optimization team. Hey this is not converting as well. Fix this thing when really it's just a simple technical thing that they had to fix that hey, we need to alert people that their credit cards about to expire and make it easy for them to go in and update it in the back end system. But they had to look at those tickets to identify that awesome example. Next one you had told me about, I'm gonna pull this up. This is Ilia which is a beauty brand. So as I pull this up, let me give people kind of an understanding of what is Ilia Beauty and what did they discover?

Kristina:

Yeah, Brett. So Ilia is a f freaking incredible brand. All about Clean

Brett:

Green Site. It's an awesome site.

Kristina:

Yeah, beautiful site. All about clean skincare and basically their best seller. You can see Brett is right there, that first one. Exactly. And the IEA team basically noticed also by looking at all of their customer feedback, that 50% of the contacts, 50% of basically all reach out to cross channels were actually questions about, Hey, I'm really excited to try this product, but I'm really nervous that I'm not gonna find the right shade for me. There's so many options and I'm a little bit concerned I'm buying this online, I'm gonna have to return it. That's a pain. Just people feeling a lot of friction towards actually initiating it, moving into a sale basically for this product. And this is, there

Brett:

Are 30 shade options here and some of them are pretty similar looking, right? How do I determine between the whatever these names are of Shades while just looking at it online? It's typical.

Kristina:

It is on one end it's beautiful cause you're like wow,

Brett:

I can get the exact right shade for me.

Kristina:

Exactly. But that's even more of the key here Brett, because it's like we gotta get people into the right shades to have that amazing customer experience first. And we know if we nail it where it's just a perfect match, it's highly likely cuz the product is badass that they'll continue to purchase. So this first touchpoint is incredibly critical to Ilia. So what they did, Brett, if you actually see that, find my shade that's kind of right underneath all of the 30th shades that you said, which it's yep right there. And then if you click get matched by our team, they basically put in this form. So it's asking customers or potential customers to dr. Go ahead, take a quick selfie, drop a photo fill out their email. Just a couple quick pieces of information. This was basically built with the Gorgias team and Ilias team, super involved. So what happens is when someone fills this out, this form actually populates straight into Gorgias and gets assigned to a specific team. That's responsibility is basically getting answers to these customers asap cuz we know if someone's taking the time to take a selfie, inquire about this, they're warm leads, they want to buy from you. So the last time I looked at the respond time was about four minutes, which

Brett:

Is awesome.

Kristina:

Great. And when they instituted this, they basically found this was leading to seven figures of sales in one quarter alone, just from this form over 25% conversion rate. So pretty dang powerful and epic tool. And again this came to light because they looked at the feedback of dang 50% of the reach outs that we're getting are about people being concerned and frustrated about finding the rate shade for them.

Brett:

And so then if you just make it, so I'm sure not only does conversion rate increase when they do this, it was a million dollars in sales in one quarter. But I bet you that repeat rate increases, LTV increases substantially when you nail that color on the first purchase. And even if that returns are possible, and even if that returns are relatively easy, there's not gonna be an argument or a fight with the brand. Everybody hates it, Nobody wants to, wants deal with returns. So making that clear, easy super, super powerful. Love that example. That's awesome. Okay, cool. So next point is let's talk about repeat business. So we all know that the name of the game with e-commerce is getting those repeat purchases in most cases. I know there are a few exceptions. If you're selling mattresses or whatnot maybe you can get a couple repeat purchases, but it's more rare.

But for most brands, for Ilia, for sure, for walks or for others for companies like Boom, Ace to Joseph Ass Company or Overtone, it's all about the repeat purchase. Given me a stat earlier, which I thought was awesome which 21% of all customers are repeat customers. So it's only 20%, but it's like 45% of all revenue comes from repeat customers. So disproportionate amount of revenue compared to true customer count comes from repeat purchases. So how do we make the most of our repeat purchases and our repeat customers? And what are some tips that you guys have there at Gorgias?

Kristina:

Yeah, and I mean Brett sitting on the brand side, I know it was always very sexy to go after the next new acquisition channel and the perfect funnel and offer and all those things. And of course it's like we love it when we find something works to bring us more people, but at the end of the day, what we're seeing too is it's such an important bucket where 300% more revenue is typically generated by repeat purchases than first time. And we know that it takes a while to break even. So the more times we can get someone to purchase, it's just so critical to the success and longevity of a brand. So we really want to help brands make that not an afterthought, but make it something that's upfront and really important. So a couple of the just tips that I've had that work really well, first is v i p tagging.

So with Gorgias a brand based off of their AOV and ltd, obviously they're going to have a specific parameters by which they decide someone's v i p, but say this makeup brand decides that A V I P is someone who's purchased more than five times or has spent more than $250. You can also tell them if you're using YPO or Loyalty Lion, one of those other programs, you can say hey, or if someone is Gold Tier and YPO or Loyalty Lion, if they reach out to our brand at any point, put them in the V I P category. And you can even assign a specific agent or a specific team to v i P. So say we know that Brett is the most just our customers absolutely love working with him. He's kind of assigned to

Brett:

Your top tier customer support reps type of thing.

Kristina:

Exactly. So maybe we just say, Hey, we're gonna funnel all the VIPs to Brett. He knows longstanding relationships with some of them in rapport and he's gonna get back to them asap. Maybe there's certain parameters or things we're willing to, flex is a brand for our VI I p customers, but just having them really called out, put into a separate bucket, assigned to a specific team who can really cater to them and give them the fastest like absolute priority is something that I've seen a lot of success and people have really loved and felt valued as incredibly important and supportive. Customers

Brett:

Love it. I mean the data is there and so we should treat all of our customers well, we should love on all our customers, but you wanna know who your VIPs are and you wanna make sure they have the best experience possible. So I love that. I love VIP tagging. Now you'd also talk to me a little bit about what Dr. Squa does and what they kind of did in preparation for Black Friday ever Monday in the past, but talk about that a little bit.

Kristina:

Yeah, so Dr. Squa really thought long and hard, especially setting up for the rest of the year about setting up a dedicated team, solely focused on building the customer relationship and focused on retention. So I loved this, especially leading up to black fighters side by Monday. Cause they basically have a team that's just looking at the whole customer journey and really focusing on key areas with customers. So pieces around subscription anniversaries or birthdays and reaching out, making that personalized touchpoint. Additionally, they're responsible for things like communicating unexpected supply chain delays or unexpected out of stock or just anything that might be out of the realm of expectation that we might hope for. But that's important to communicate on. Also really identifying cross sell opportunities. So maybe checking back with someone who's purchased 30 days ago, we might know that we can expect another purchase soon, let's check in, let's see how that's going. Let's see, is there another product that would suit to bring them into? So they really looked at building out this team and building out almost these touchpoints, starting to have those touchpoints with customers, which brings out almost like these wow amazing opportunities. Building that loyalty heading into Black Friday I think is really powerful and I'm excited to see how that plays out

Brett:

For them. Yeah, I love that so much. Totally makes sense that that would pay off. So we tease this during the intro, but treating every customer service experience or every interaction as an opportunity to upsell, cross sell, things like that. How do you recommend brands go about doing that?

Kristina:

Yeah, so Brett, the CS team, the agents that work with a team really have the opportunity to influence revenue in either direction with each of their interactions. So something that we've really been working on with brands is consider helping them set it up where their agents are actually really incentivized in line with driving a great customer experience as well as revenue. So instead of just having agents say, I did my job, I closed all of my tickets, that's really not just what we're looking for in terms of

Brett:

That's like minimum, right? That's like baseline like that. That's expected. That's required, right, exactly. Anybody to do

Kristina:

That. Yeah, exactly. But really we've been helping brands align their agents with actually how much revenue are they driving, what is the customer satisfaction rating for them of all the tickets that they actually went forward and closed. And we know that again, customers who ask questions on your site are 30% more likely to actually move into the purchase. And we know that those CS agents are the ones talking to them. So it's like how can we incentivize them to have to give the customers the best experience possible and drive more revenue. So of course some brands are doing things like in Gorgias, you can actually see, okay, here's Brett, he's driven this much revenue, his CSAT rating is this and actually sending them gift cards or additional bonuses or commission related to that. But really it's that piece and also supporting, then also with training these agents almost like salespeople. So training them on what other products after someone's B bought product A, what is product B? That's the next that makes the most step for most sense for them to move into next. So really training them on those areas as well.

Brett:

And I love this so much because if we're providing the right incentives, then our customer service support team, they're going to take the action that we incentivize. If all you're doing is saying, Hey, close more tickets, close them more, close 'em faster, then that's what people will do and they'll wanna try to rush through those support tickets. But if you say, Hey, we're gonna incentivize you, we're gonna reward you for closing deals, that's gonna cause everybody to step their game up a little bit. Because to close something out really just takes speed. But you gotta kind of create that wow experience to get someone to buy an additional product or to cross sell our upsell. It's just a different mentality. And to do that then you gotta train people. You gotta train your team to know how to cross sell, how to upsell, how to phrase things. And when you do, I know the rewards will be there. So that's awesome. I love that so much. And then lastly as we wrap up this session and kind of wrap up our talking points is as we move into Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the number of tickets will increase people's urgency to purchase increases. I gotta buy this thing so it can be under the tree or so I can give it to my niece or nephew or kid or whoever. And so talk about speed. How important is speed in these interactions?

Kristina:

Oh man, Brett. Yeah, I don't think this one will ever change, or I'm saying this now, I guess you know, can

Brett:

Quote me. Yeah, it'll never change. I think be bet on that.

Kristina:

Yeah, I don't think it will. But time and time again, we continue to see that first response time is the number one predictor in terms of a customer saying, I had a great experience and also that revenue was attached to that experience. So I was

Brett:

Looking at, well, that's the most important thing. For one thing, I had a good experience. And two, actually buying something is the speed of that initial response.

Kristina:

Yes,

Brett:

Impressive.

Kristina:

And I was actually looking at some data from Shopify and basically businesses that responded to customers within that first five minutes, 70% more likely to actually make a sale. So it's incredibly impactful. One of our amazing brands that we work with Brew Mate, they actually, last day I looked at first response time on chat, 52 seconds over 300 grand in sales attributed 52 per or 52 second, first response time on chat. And that was in a couple month period. It was like, so this is meaningful. And their CSAT rating again was just off the chart close to a five. So it's absolutely critical, Brett.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. And think about that. Not only can you tie that revenue directly, the three 50 K because the response time was under a minute, but also think about what does that do to loyalty? What does that do to repeat purchases over time? What does that do to the number of people that I now refer to Brew eight? Because I have an amazing experience every time I buy or chat with them. I think that the impact there can be pretty amazing. So now I know one of the other things you talked to me about is not just those that fast response time, but how can we automate some things? How do we automate some of the basics so that our team can really focus on those cross sell upsell opportunities? So I think you had an example there if I'm not mistaken.

Kristina:

Yeah. Well Brett, really when I share that, I'm like, Hey, 52 seconds, people are like, That sounds great Christina, and I know this is gonna make me more money, but how the heck do you want me to be able to actually do this? They're like, You're telling me that I'm gonna manage all of these new channels now I'm pulling in ad comments and dms like now I have my SMS pulled in. How so literally, which it's an amazing question, but it's one of the things that I love the most to support brands with, which is how the areas that we can help with automations so that you can have these personalized touchpoints where it matters to build relationship and get people actually into the sale. So I help brands really take a look at, okay, do you have an FAQ page? What's on there? Okay, once we've looked at actually all of our tags and all the information and questions customers have, let's make sure that FAQ is fully just beefed up, has everything in there that we can possibly want to share. And then let's also use areas like self-service chat where people can track their order themselves and really get commonly asked questions answered as quickly as possible and also deflect some of those tickets so our team doesn't have to worry about them. Customers are happy, they get to answer themselves and the team can basically spend more time on things like active live chat.

Brett:

So now people can just find the answer themselves and it, it's now less than 52 seconds, but then we save those CS resources for the interactions that need more of a human touch and need more. And so I think you'd share with me, was it Princess Polly was the example?

Kristina:

It was, right? Yeah. They've got a great example. They're such a amazing brand. We absolutely love working with the team. But you can see here on the right, this is their active live chat, you can see the section. Once that widget pulls back up, you can see their quick answers and then the section for management orders. So this was all curated based off of inquiries that they were actively getting and completely just specific to Princess Poly. But as you can see, they were getting people wanting shipping address changes, they use happy returns, people wanting to get that code right away. So this is completely customizable and set up based off of the commonly asked inquiries so that people can actually come in here, get the answers themselves, and then if they still need more help, of course they can always live chat and move into it. But deflecting some of this kind of top end repeat admin inquiries off the bat, saves the team a ton of time to then actually have the conversations that need to be had.

Brett:

Love it. Makes sure happier shoppers make for a happier CS team too, because they don't love looking up the tracking information for orders a million times a day. And so make everyone happy by

Kristina:

Literally that is the goal, Brett.

Brett:

Yeah, absolutely. Christina, this has been fantastic. We're out of time for this session, but this has been so good. I'm a huge, huge believer as a traffic guy, I am a huge fan of what you guys do because I know when the customer interactions are positive, more conversion rates, we can send more traffic, we can grow more, and it's all just really, really good. And so if someone's watching this and hopefully they're already a Gorgias customer, but if they're not, how should they contact you? How can they get started with Gorgias?

Kristina:

Yeah, if anyone's interested in learning more, they can email me. It's my first name, Christina with a k dot m u n t e a n Im Gorgias.com. I'm sure might have this in the comments or somewhere where you can click that. But happy to give anyone their second and third months free off of Gorgias too, so you can really try it and get a feel for it. And I'm here to answer any questions along the way, but this has been a blast as always. I'm so grateful to get to hang with you and this crew. I just love what you guys do and you always add so much value to everyone. So I feel so lucky to get to hang with you.

Brett:

Awesome. You brought the thunder on this presentation for sure. So email Christina. Yeah, right. christina.Gorgias.com. Cause you get more free, you get more good stuff if you do that way than just going through chat or whatever. So get involved with Gorgias. Love it. Christina, thank you so much.

Kristina:

Thank you Brett.

Brett:

I told you that was gonna be good. So that was Christina Tine from Gorgias. Hope you enjoyed that and learned a lot from it. And now we're gonna transition and talk to Jenna Gordi from Big Commerce and talking about going omni channel. Here we go.

All right. In this session I am delighted to welcome Jenna Lardy and Jenna's with Big Commerce. She's the senior omnichannel growth manager, which is a super cool title. I'm way impressed by this title. But Jenna has really a rich history in digital marketing. She ran an agency and this agency crushed it, shall we say, right top 1% of Google, top 3% of meta, most published case studies ever by Facebook and Instagram. And now she's on the big commerce team. We've recently connected, We keep running into each other at different events. We just keep hanging out, which is super awesome. Love your perspective on marketing, love what you guys are doing in big commerce. And I was telling you, I just haven't been around big commerce a whole lot over the last several years, but I spoke at event in Miami, I met Dan and Juan and some bigwigs at Big Commerce and like, Hey, you should check out Big Commerce. And so as I've gotten plugged into the ecosystem, super impressed with what you guys are doing. So thanks for taking the time to join this Jenna. And why don't you kinda explain to people, so you're the senior omnichannel growth manager, but what does that mean? What do you if it covers?

Jenna:

Yeah, well first thanks for having me. It is kind of a loaded title. So I run three departments here, which is our Omnichannel certified agency, our omnichannel consult division, and then also the integration between Phenomics and BigCommerce. So all things Omni and growth are kind of in my remit. So traditionally I think Big Commerce really focused on getting Merchants Net new onto the big commerce e-commerce platform, where with acquisition of phenomics, it kind of shifted our view a little bit and what's important to us and how we help merchants grow. So Phenomics is platform agnostic. It doesn't matter if you're on BigCommerce anymore. So with the agencies that I work with and the consults that we run in our division, which are all about helping merchants grow and either evaluate their current media mix or look to what are the next best channels that they can add that are really gonna drive revenue for their business. And it's interesting kind of wearing a BC name badge, but sitting almost in a platform agnostic division.

Brett:

Yeah, it's super interesting and I wanna talk a little bit about the big commerce roadmap in a minutes. I think everyone in e-commerce needs to know that, needs to know what you guys are up to. But the main focus of this session is, hey, we're going omnichannel and we're prepping for the holiday and we're on the home stretch and it's gonna be here before we know it. But what are the things we can do now to prep? So that that's gonna be the primary focus of this time. But let's talk about Phenomics really quickly. So I've actually met and interviewed Brian Rosen before one of the founders of Theos. Always been super impressed. All the people that are Google shopping nerds, which I know most of them cause that that's kind of my wheelhouse and part of the origin of OMG all know Theos, like Theos is the best of the best. But for those that don't know, what is phenomics and why did big commerce go out and acquire it?

Jenna:

Yeah, great question. So Phenomics is a feed syndication solution. So it's not just a plug and play, you're connecting your e-commerce website or whatever your source of truth is. Your E R P for inventory, maybe it's your PIM for product data, but it's not just a matter of connecting to omni channels anymore. How are you continuously optimizing the product data that you're sending and does that product out or differ between different channels? You slash if it doesn't, you're sending that same product out to every channel. I guarantee you you're not squeezing out as many conversions as you can. So for,

Brett:

Because every channel needs a little bit different data to optimize for Walmart versus Amazon versus Target plus what you talk about in a minute. It's gotta be a little bit different, right?

Jenna:

Yeah. And then just think about, I mean, talking about Google shopping, you know, need a white background with your product data and there's a different categorization taxonomy with Google than there is with Walmart or there is with Amazon. Those non-branded keywords might differ, probably should differ. You might have a non-brand, a keyword on your product description page that's for organic ranking. But as you send it to these channels, you probably wanna differ that non-branded keyword based on what are the search trends and queries on that specific channel. Or for Google shopping, if you're sending products with a white background, if you're sending that to Instagram, you might wanna have a lifestyle image. So if you're sending that same product data everywhere, you're really not optimizing for that specific channel to be able to get the best results that you can. So with BigCommerce, we're looking at not just how do we give merchants the best eCommerce platform, whether that's B2C or b2b, it's about how can we help merchants sell more everywhere? And that's omni, right? It's being able to connect to the right channels, whether that's through a native integration or through phenomics, and you're optimizing that product data. So it's really a natural next step for us because we wanna be the best omnichannel hub for merchants. We don't just wanna be the best branded site.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And so just a quick note on that, there are a lot of solutions out there for feeds that are more like they're just connectors. It's just a pipeline pipeline of data from your source of truth, from your database, your platform out to these other channels. But there's really not much else phenomics that optimizes those things. It's like, yes, we'll connect the data, but we're also then looking at what is performance? What does this channel need? So what does the channel need initially, then what's the, what's that feedback loop of performance <affirmative> and how do we continually optimize the data to get the most out of that channel? Which is really powerful because otherwise you're kind of halfway doing it on some channels rather than maximizing.

Jenna:

Yeah, and it's also, I mean, some of these connectors have the capacity to be a change agent and a transformation tool, but who's doing that change? So is that something that falls on the brand? Is it something that goes to an agency you guys all know at O M G commerce that it, It's a lot. And those channels are constantly changing and whether it's the requirements or their category, it's a constant change. So who's managing that? Which s, they're one of the only white glove services where they manage all of that for you. So you have the capacity to have those stop gaps and approvals if you wanna be part of that strategy. But when I did an audit of the Feos platform, less than 5% of merchants or agencies even logged in because they don't have to, right? Yeah, that's something that Theos team manages. And then I also did a survey last year, cause I was curious on the why. Why does this matter to merchants? Why does this matter to agencies? And typically they saved an average of 50 hours a month per brand by utilizing phenomics to optimize their product data versus doing it.

Brett:

Yeah, it really is one of those things where to do it properly, especially if you're a multichannel or omnichannel, you need to have multiple dedicated people to helping you just manage the feeds and the data. And so Phenomics takes care of that, which is a beautiful thing. So let's talk omnichannel and kind of some last minute prep or ideas or suggestions that you would provide. And I wanna underscore this discussion with this point. I'm a big fan of D to C, obviously almost we're exclusively, most of our clients are mainly D TOC or they get a big D to component, so direct to consumer. But I'm convinced now as I've looked at the data as I've talked to a lot of other smart people in the industry, I think growth for pure D to C. So where I'm selling from my site to a customer directly, that's gonna always be limited for your brand to reach your ultimate goals, to reach as many people as possible and rich lives and make profits and all the fun things you wanna do. I think you gotta go beyond D to C, right? You gotta go omni channel, you gotta be in store most likely. You gotta be selling through different marketplaces, you gotta do all these things. I think pure play D TOC is exciting but it's limiting. So let's talk about it for any thoughts from your perspective on omnichannel before we talk about tips?

Jenna:

Yeah, I mean I think it's an imperative. So when we look at big commerce merchants, obviously we have some insight there where we can leverage about 70,000 merchants. And we look at some of this data. If merchants have an omnichannel strategy, typically 67% of their sales are happening offsite. So they're not going direct to consumer. And then of what they're selling on their site, about 20% is coming from a paid ad before they get to the site that's really leading to that GMB on their e-comm site. So if you're looking at 67% as offsite, where is that happening? So typically it's a combination of marketplaces and social commerce and being able to take those products that you already have. They're already selling direct consumer and being able to optimize that product data and syndicate it somewhere else. But then you also have to think about those orders.

So you need to make sure those orders are porting back in. That's something that Phenomics can handle as well to ensure that you're not overselling. And that's something a lot of merchants need to think about in the holiday season is if you're selling on 20 different channels, how are you ensuring you're not overselling and then either putting a bad consumer experience where they're not getting the product when they think they are, or you could potentially get kicked off of some of these marketplaces by not fulfilling when you say you're going to. So it's imperative that you're not running those businesses and silos and you really have a connected system and the right tech stack to be able to support it and to understand where those sales are happening and how you're fulfilling them.

Brett:

It definitely adds a layer of complexity. So now we're selling on Walmart and Amazon and maybe Target Plus and other places we're selling in all these places and our own site. It does ad layer complexity. You gotta have the data nailed down. But I think it's also exciting because as you know Jen, I'm more of a traffic guy <affirmative> and I love top performing YouTube and Google. And so what we've seen though is when our clients are omnichannel and we really hit the gas pedal on YouTube, so we're going 500,000 a million a month on YouTube ads or whatever. I wish we had some clients doing that. If they're on multiple marketplaces there's a much bigger effect, right? Because there's only a certain segment of people they're gonna buy on your D to C site. Even it's the best site that anyone's ever seen. There's still a lot of people that prefer to buy on marketplace. And so I think it boosts sales right away by being on marketplaces, but then it makes everything else so that you do better when you're on marketplace, in my opinion.

Jenna:

Yeah, I mean I got some good stats there for you. I mean typically a consumer is having eight to 10 touches of the brand before they purchase. So you think of what's that user experience, what's that user funnel? A lot of times they might be going to, let's say Google to start that search to educate themselves, but then they might be going to Amazon to actually have that buyin 10 check out because they know their information's loaded from their address to their credit card and payment. But also they know they're gonna get it in two days. So a lot of times people rely on those marketplaces cause they know there's some sense of regularity versus going to all these different individual sites or sometimes it's a higher average order value. Cause they're not having to go just to one brand to purchase something. They can buy a full suite of products.

Brett:

So now I'm being introduced to the brand either through YouTube or Facebook or TikTok or whatever. I may be going to the site to get educated and now I'm clicking around and I'm looking and then I'm just gonna buy it from wherever is most convenient for me and wherever I feel like I'm gonna get the best deal or yeah, I'm mar buying from Amazon, which most people are, then I can just load up that basket and buy the product there. So yes, omni the channel. It is imperative. I like that word. Good choice of words here Jenna. So what can we be doing home stretch here, prepping for the holidays? What can we be doing now to really get the most of holiday? And if you need to share a few tips that <laugh> maybe you should have done a month or two ago, that's fine too, but what are your tips for maximizing holiday?

Jenna:

Yeah, well good news. It's not too late. <laugh> still

Brett:

A agreed,

Jenna:

Agreed. You're definitely not gonna re-platform probably before the holidays

Brett:

Fire a new store, which just really

Jenna:

Maximizes before the holidays.

But there's a lot you can do. So first I think it's looking at your current media mix. Can you evaluate what you're doing? Are you kind of plateaued from a return on your ad spend standpoint and how can you squeeze out more, right? Is there some conversion rate optimization you can do on your site? So the traffic that you're getting, you're squeezing a little more juice out of it. So I think that's always the first step is what am I already doing that I potentially could be pushing the gas a little bit harder, whether it's better budget or more optimization that you can be doing. We do see a lot of merchants, I think through our consult department that are hesitant to do something at this time of year. This is actually the best time of year, especially to test because you have so much more traffic that you have the ability to get to those conclusions a lot faster.

So let's say you're doing conversion rate optimization, you can test a bunch of different variables and you're gonna get to that maximum homeostasis of where you're producing the most by having more traffic and getting to those results faster by not having to wait as long for those conversion campaigns to run. So I think there's a lot you can do in this high traffic holiday season. There's also a lot you can do from adding net new channels from revamping your creative that you're pushing to all these different channels, especially top of funnel. I think a lot of people think about holiday sales kind of post holiday and I think in the past couple years we've seen the trend where people are moving those sales up. So when people are purchasing and all that gifts going is happening that they're actually getting those additional sales then as opposed to after the holidays.

And I think that that is the best trend they've seen in the past couple years from holidays to be able to allow people to have a higher average order value or to say, Hey, I'm buying this for somebody, but I also kind of wanna buy one for myself and I know well then I can do it now instead of waiting until post holiday and really squeeze out and maximize that from a merchant perspective to be able to offer those deals now. And it's not too late to start new channels. I mean I think a lot of people get scared and hesitant when they're getting close to holiday season, but this is the time. If we know consumers take so many touches with a brand before they purchase, why not expand that pie and be on all those potential channels? So if they're searching on Amazon or they're searching on Walmart, they're searching on Target, you're on all those channels and have the ability to be in front of as many merchants as possible.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. Then so what are you recommending people do? So in terms of feed prep and so getting on to get on all these channels or maximize all these channels, what are you guys suggesting is now a good time to do a feed audit? To deep dive into how in shape is our data right now? What would you recommend As far as feed prep?

Jenna:

Yeah it's not waiting until January to get it in shape. <laugh>, you wanna make sure you're looking at that now? Right. So one of the great advantages of the way Phenomics works and how confident they are in the work that they do is those do a complimentary feed audit. So it takes anywhere from three to four business days, you'll get an idea of what your health of your data is. Now, a lot of times it's not that merchants are sending incorrect data, it's that it's not optimized for the specific channel that they're sending it to you. So you might have a different non-branded keyword for Amazon, for Walmart, you might have a lifestyle image for Instagram, but you might wanna have a white background on Google so you can actually submit to Google Shopping. So it's a matter of looking at your data now, seeing if there's any room for improvement, and within a feed audit you're gonna see a score of A to F, you're gonna see what are some of the things that you're doing incorrectly and how can you change. So whether you go with feed omics or not, you're gonna have that actionable data that you can utilize now to maximize your return for the holiday season. But I did a postex survey with Phenomics merchants that decided not to go with Phenomics but still implemented the changes that they recommended in a feed audit. They saw an average of a 20% list in the next 90 days.

Brett:

That's amazing. And so you get the feed on it. Yeah, regardless, no matter what platform you're on, doesn't matter if you're wanting to go feed numbers or not get the free audit, it's totally worth doing. So for sure. Let's talk marketplaces for a minute. So what kind of new or emerging marketplaces or marketplaces that people aren't talking about as much? What are you really excited about or what has surprised you recently with marketplaces?

Jenna:

Yeah, I mean I definitely get excited when I talk about marketplaces and when typically if you're adding one marketplace, you're getting a 39% lift in your revenue. If you go to two or more, you're gonna get 120% increase in your revenue. So for me it's a no brainer. Why aren't more people on more marketplaces <affirmative>? Now every product might not make sense cause different marketplaces take a different haircut and different percentage for selling and having that transaction happen on their site. But there's typically every merchant has some hero products that should be on all these different marketplaces. Target Plus, it's not that anyone doesn't know about it, but they were closed for almost two years. So they weren't

Brett:

Super exclusive to get on Target plus

Jenna:

Invite only, and they were closed for two years. So we just ran a closed beta with them through phenomics and through our omnichannel division of certified agencies. And it's amazing to see what some of these new merchants that just got on Target plus are doing. So we're praying that this gets opened back up before the end of the year but if you are interested, reach out to Bra, he can give you more information, but Target plus you see a huge return because it is so exclusive. So they really particular on even this down to skew level of that, they allow, even if they approve a merchant, they're going down to that skew level of what they're selecting. Cuz they wanna cherry pick what they know is gonna be the best for their merchants and it's gonna perform the best. But what's interesting is in this closed beta, they were requiring all merchants to utilize Phonos because they wanted to ensure that they were getting the healthiest data. They don't want their end consumer not being able to search or to find the products that they're looking for. So it's all about the data that they ingest

Brett:

And really, I mean there's lots of reasons to choose, but if you are a good fit and if you can get approved for Target plus that, that's definitely a reason to push over the edge to get on Target. Plus that's another reason to check it out. And yeah, it's just a different strategy than what Amazon has or even Walmart has. Amazon's like, Hey, we'll take just about anything, maximum amount of skews and see how it goes. And target's more like, no, we want to pick the things that we think will delight or the products will delight our customers. And because of that and because people are just target fanatics I know people that are just nuts about Target. And so the results, and you and I were in Austin, you guys put on the big commerce partner summit and I was there and I got to meet the head of Target Plus from Target and hear some merchant merchant stories and dude, it's like it's working right for the merchants that are on Target. Plus it's opening up a whole new world to go to Disney movie. Yeah,

Jenna:

I mean it's interesting too how many marketplaces are emerging. So I'm seeing pretty much every large big box store now is trying to offer some sort of marketplace offering. A lot of them are using Miracle, which I think is something people don't know about. That's kind of the back miracle, the marketplace platform. So you'll have big box stores like Bed Beyond Best Buy, et cetera. They're all using Miracle as their marketplace platform. So it's branded Bed Bath and Beyond. But the setup and the technology behind it is miracle. So I'm interested to see where some of these marketplaces are going. A lot of people think it's like, hey, we're buying this software to create this marketplace. And that's kind of it, but it's really about curation, right? You wanna make sure you have the right products for your end users that are already coming to your store.

Brett:

Cool. So you've already kinda talked about this, but just I wanna wanna zero in on it a little bit more. Any trends that you're seeing across us marketplaces, there are new ones emerging, which is super interesting. You got Target plus that's really taken off. But any other trends that we need to be aware of with us? Marketplaces?

Jenna:

Actually a trend in the US is to go outside the us So a lot of wanna start to test different geological AR geographies and see kind of do their products resonate there. Now, do they wanna start spinning up a new store that's translated in other language in a different currency, settling in a different bank account? Or do they kinda wanna dip their toe in the water and see if their products even perform, let's say in Latin America? So Mercado Libre is one that's really blowing up Brazil. So it's basically yeah, Latin America, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, it's like the Latin, it's like in Latin America, that's their Amazon, right? They have Amazon, but it's that same type of volume. They've got like 65 million merchants I mean six 5 million consumers that are on Mercado Libre and are purchasing every day. So it's a great way because they translate everything for you. They handle the taxes, the tariffs, et cetera. So you can keep your US site and English, they help with the translation, they cover taxes, tariffs, currency exchange, everything like that. So that's a big trend that I'm seeing is merchants that want to test in Latin America but aren't ready to make that investment. And Merta Libra is the perfect first step.

Brett:

Love it. Yeah, hear lots of talk about Mercado Libre, so I'm excited to see how that goes. Give us some success stories. What are one or two merchant success stories that are using Theos that are taking advantage of omnichannel consults? That they're a big commerce? Yeah. Share some stories with this.

Jenna:

Yeah, so I mean there's a million different case studies. It kind of depends what vertical we wanna go into. One thing I think that's very interesting that we're about to publish some of these case studies is we're taking the Feos technology and creating a self-serve version that's gonna live within channel manager in the back end of BigCommerce. This is something that's probably gonna go live q1. So not necessarily for holiday season, but something if you evaluate people. But if you evaluate Feed Omics and then say maybe you're not ready yet you're not ready to make that investment, maybe you're a 2 million merchant a year and you're not ready for the investment into Feos, you're not really spending as much on ads and you're kind of starting to get ramped up, this is gonna be a great solution for those type of merchants to be able to grow and go beyond their plateau and really hit that next level.

So it'll give merchants ability to select which products they wanna send to what channel, and to be able to optimize and clean up that data in a self-serve function before they send it to channels. No eCommerce platform on the planet has that capacity to be able to do that. So that's something we wanna be able to offer our merchants to be able to optimize for those channels. Like I said, BigCommerce no longer wants to be the best branded site, whether it's direct to consumer, b2b, we wanna be the best omnichannel hub so merchants can sell more everywhere.

Brett:

Love it. And now that self-serve option of Phenomics will, is that just for big commerce merchants or will that be for will platform agnostic?

Jenna:

So right now we're building it with in tandem between the Phenomics development team and engineers and the big commerce team. So right now that's going to be just for big commerce, where Phenomics platform agnostic, when you have that service offering and that white glove service, that's something that does not matter what platform you're on, but this self-serve will only be on big commerce. But during the preliminary results, we're doing a bunch of case studies where we can see, okay, you have a control group of products that you're just piping straight out from your e-comm store to let's say Google Shopping in this example. And then you have your optimized products that you're sending. We're seeing almost six times the amount of clicks, six times the impressions, five times as many conversions. The conversion value is going up as well. Cause people are able to search and find these products better.

So it's significant when we look at the optimized versus Unoptimized group and it's a huge overall increase in performance compared to the previous months in terms of clicks, impressions, total conversion. So I'm really excited for that to go live for merchants. And that's to me one of the most exciting case studies because a lot of times we're focusing on some of these larger merchants that are in that 20 million to 200 million in that hypergrowth stage. But I wanna ensure that these other merchants have the ability to get to that stage. And I think that this is key, that success.

Brett:

Nice. That's awesome. So I just talked about the big commerce partner summit. So there I got to hear some of the big commerce roadmap. I was very impressed. Big Commerce was really focusing on that 10 million a year to a couple hundred million dollar a year hyper growth e-commerce brand, which is great. That's kind of where we're playing as an agency to OMG commerce. But I'm really excited, I heard a lot of really positive things at that summit, but kinda lay this out for us, what's on the roadmap for big commerce and what are you excited about?

Jenna:

Yeah, I mean before I came to Big Commerce, I was agency side for 13 years and used to do a lot of website builds in addition to performance marketing. And a lot of times we'd quote out three different platforms. Everyone's like, Are you serious? And I'm like, yeah, I wanted the merchant to pick the best tech stack instead of this fanboy culture that follows some other e-commerce channels. We wanted to make sure that for our platform, are we really ensuring as we're building as an agency that this is the correct and e-commerce is always the prettiest square in the room cuz it was lowest to total cost of ownership. You didn't have third party apps that you had no control over the change and you had as a development team, the ability to really customize based on what's the best for the merchant. And I think that's always been the key to big commerce and key to their success is they don't wanna force you to say, this is the payment provider that you have to use and this is how you have to fulfill.

And oh, you can't even use Amazon Buy with Prime. We're gonna kick you off our platform. Instead that you wanna say everything is open and you slot. Choose who's the best payment provider for you. Who's the best fulfillment solution do you wanna customize? Now we wanna obviously try to curate some of the best in breed solutions so it's easier for our merchants and that's why we have our omnichannel consult division. So you can actually come completely complimentary and get an audit of what you're doing now. What's your current media mix? How can you potentially add net new channels? So I think for us and what's moving forward for Big commerce and when I'm really excited about is how open the platform is. I mean we were working on multi-location inventory for almost four years. Our development team was in Keve in the middle of this horrible war and they still launched it on time, which to me it makes me wanna, huge

Brett:

Is crazy.

Jenna:

So we have an unbelievable team and we really care about our merchants. We want to ensure that they're set up for success and for growth. So one of the things I'm most excited is to see, first of all, people use that multi-location inventory and do more with it. We're already seeing some large brands that are able to have one back end and really easy management from a dashboard perspective, but have stores that are really customized for that location, whether it's a different product assortment different language on their site, different currency, but they're really able to customize but have that ease of use to be able to quickly be agile, be nimble with that huge footprint and that large tech stack to be able to have sophisticated merchants be agile is something that you don't see often. Normally it's a huge cruise ship trying to turn around.

So I think having that right tech tag, being able to be open is key. We've got a lot of really great alphas and betas that are about to come out before or the end of the year even in the lot in key one that are really, really all focused around ensuring our merchants can maximize their success on these different omni channels. So obviously I'm biased, I'm in the omni team, so that's really why I spend my day to day. But when you look at the analytics, that's key. So when we look across all big commerce merchants, about 67% of their sales and their GMV online is coming from offsite purchases. So it's these marketplaces, the social commerce being able to check out somewhere else, but then also port those orders back in for proper analytics and their data warehouse. So I'm excited to see some of these new omnichannels that are also changing their ad platforms that I think are for the better. They're gonna give merchants better analytics and better control over the success on those channels. So I'm really excited to see the ability for merchants to sell more everywhere,

Brett:

Lots of good stuff happen and pay attention. Pay attention to what Big Commerce is doing. I'm been very impressed and I'm looking forward to seeing it as well. So Jenna, as people are watching this or listening later or whatever the case may be, and they're like, Hey, I want that feed audit, I want that free feed audit from Feos. Yeah. How can they get that? Or maybe they're like, Hey, I wanna talk to Jenna and team, I want that omnichannel consult. I wanna just see it's complimentary, right? And I've got to hang with you guys a lot. You're just really cool people and fun to talk to and very smart. So how can people take advantage of those options?

Jenna:

Yeah, great question. So we can throw some links in the description to be able to actually book an omnichannel consult. You can book with me or someone else on my team. You'll actually be able to select as you book straight onto our calendar, which I think is nice and efficient. But if you're interested in that or interested in a feed audit, go to Brett, find me on LinkedIn. I mean, we're more than happy either one of us to funnel that for you. My team will help you evaluate your strategy and tell you what are the best next steps. I can help you with that feed audit, but you really need a great agency like OMG Commerce to be able to fulfill that. So it's great to have your feed set up, but you also need creative and you need media buying team. That's something that Feed Omics doesn't do and big commerce aren't implementers, right? We're here to give you the best solutions and the best options and then direct you to the best in class agencies. And that's why I'm here talking OMG Commerce. I think you guys are really killing it in the game and you're getting the best results. And I'm bullish on you guys. I'm excited to see what you do. Awesome.

Brett:

I love it. So yeah, feel free to reach out to Commerce too. We can direct you <affirmative>, we can put you directly in touch with Jenna and team at Big Commerce. But Jenna, this was a ton of fun, man. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for bringing the energy and the insights and I feel just a little bit more ready for holiday. So thank you.

Jenna:

Yeah, and just remember, guys, it's not too late, so act now <laugh> and you could have a totally different holiday season.

Brett:

Awesome. Thanks Jenna.

Jenna:

All right, thanks so much.

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