Everyone knows that word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing. The problem? How do you facilitate, encourage, and track it without being weird? Enter Nick Stagge and Wooly. In this episode we discuss two important topics - building Ambassador Programs and putting digital rails around word of mouth advertising. Nick has worked with some awesome brands including Skull Candy, Purple Mattress and more. Here’s a quick look at what we cover in this episode:
- Salomon shoes got 22.6 million impressions without running a single ad
- How to Identify and segment your best customers and how to know when you have a customer make a referral that ends in a purchase
- How ambassador programs focus on credibility while some influencer programs focus on reach…and why credibility is often better and more profitable
- Word of mouth customers are happier, better educated and often stick around longer - here’s how you get more of it
- Driving six figures of incremental referral revenue.
- Plus more
Mentioned in this episode:
CONTACT at Wooly
Daniel Fischer - Account Executive at Wooly
Nick Stagge - CMO at Wooly
Wooly - The Most Powerful Word of Mouth Marketing Platform
Episode Transcript
Brett:
Hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry CEO of OMG Commerce. And today, we're talking about a bit of an unusual topic for our show, eCommerce Focus, talking about what's new and what's next. We're going to be talking about a topic that's been around since literally the beginning of commerce.
Brett:
We're going to be talking about word of mouth advertising. Right? But not just word of mouth, we're going talk about how do you put digital rails around word of mouth. And if you don't know exactly what that means, that's cool. We're going to explain that. And then show you why it's powerful and how it can work. And we're also going to talk about building an ambassador program. I'm really excited about this topic and going to be very useful, practical and fun.
Brett:
My guest today is Nick Stagge. And Nick is the CMO of Wooly, which is a tool to help in these endeavors that we're talking about. And so we'll get into that in a few minutes as well. But with that intro, Nick, welcome to the show. And how you doing, man?
Nick:
I'm well, thank you so much for having me. I love the work that you guys do. And I'm pretty geeked to be chatting with you today.
Brett:
Geeked. Man, I will join you in that state of being geeked. Just quickly, let's talk about how you got to this point. Right? So what's your background in marketing and eCommerce or even non, and then how did you come to Wooly?
Nick:
Yeah. Well, I've spent the better part of a decade working in retail face to face. I was managing a chunk of the Western United States for a national retailer. And I learned that people interact with people in a variety of ways, but when you have a strong relationship with someone, it's so much easier to help them be confident in deciding what to buy.
Nick:
In my 10 years there, I also realized that most brands weren't doing a lot to help retailers create those relationships and sell their products. And this was... And this dates me, but a lot of this was really before e-com kind of took off. So I left retail and I worked for companies like Skullcandy and GoPro, building out these global advocacy or ambassador programs. We started with retailers and then we moved our way into press, and athletes, and influencers, and distributors, and... You name it.
Nick:
I started to realize, wow, this is really hard to do without technology. I could scale so much faster if I had great tools available to me. And so, much like I had done the transition from retail to manufacturing, I went from manufacturing and working at consumer goods companies to working for tech companies that were empowering that very behavior.
Nick:
So I spent five years running marketing at ExpertVoice, a company that really focuses on the industry professionals and retailers. And then about a year ago, I made the transition over to Wooly to be their CMO. I made that move because I'm following the trend, if you will. Or I'm projecting and forecasting the trend that it's moving from macro, to micro, to nano influencers. And if you follow that all the way down, it's just every day customers. And if we can put digital rails around that word of mouth marketing, we can solve some really big problems. So, that's why I joined Wooly. And that's where we're at now. That's the problem we're trying to solve.
Brett:
That is a fantastic background. I love the progression there. I love that experience. I think so much of what we do is better informed if you just understand the way people shop and why people buy and the way people buy. And certainly, there are differences, obviously, the way someone shops in a store and the way they shop online. But understanding shopper behavior is so crucial because a lot of it is the thing.
Brett:
And so love that progression, love that you bring that deep knowledge of the in store shopper and then the knowledge from manufacturer, and now on the tech side. That's super fun. I want to get into some of the details of Wooly, and what will we does, and what it is, and how it helps put these digital rails around word of mouth.
Brett:
Before we get into that though, I want to just talk about why build an ambassador program. I think some of the benefits are obvious, but I think it'd be good for you to kind of map out why should we do this. Because we talked to hundreds and hundreds of eCommerce companies as where talking to people that want to help with YouTube or Google ads or Amazon ads or whatever. The vast majority do not have ambassador programs that we talked to. So why do it? Kind of walk us through the why, first?
Nick:
Well, I think customers are emotional buyers. Right? I mean, we buy based on emotion, and then we justify our emotion with logic. And if you can build an ambassador program, what you're doing is you're creating a deep connection between your product and brands and your customers. And when you do that, suddenly, they're buying a new set of skis every year. You don't need a new set of skis every year, but you're doing it because you're so emotionally connected.
Nick:
It's not just that building that ambassador program is a one-to-one, I have this relationship and now that person is going to buy, but it then helps create an entire army of, call them micro marketers, on your behalf. They will actually spread your message. They will promote your brand. They will help you grow the entire funnel, from awareness all the way to point of purchase. And if you do it in the right way, they do it, not for cash, they do it not for a monetary gain, they do it because, once again, they're emotionally connected and we just... That is how humans buy.
Nick:
So, I think it's important that every brand looks to build better relationships with as many customers as possible. Because when you do that, they help you in turn generate and acquire new customers.
Brett:
Yeah. I love it. And it's always... It used to be surprising to me, it's not anymore. Because I see it all the time. But we as marketers, we as eCommerce professionals, we're guilty, and so is every business owner really. of forgetting about our good customers. Right? Or taking them for granted from the standpoint of we just think they're always going to buy from us. And we think that whatever they're doing now is the most are going to be doing, and we can't really get them to buy more, we can't get them to be more loyal, we can't get them to be more outspoken about our products. We sometimes forget about them.
Brett:
And sometimes it is a little bit sexier or more enticing to go after new prospects all the time. Right? How do I ramp up my YouTube ad spend? Which is fun. I like to do that. I will not-
Nick:
Yeah, of course.
Brett:
... try to talk you out of that.
Nick:
Me either.
Brett:
Yeah. But we forget about, man, you've got this army and... I like that term micro-markers. You got this army of people that know you, like you, trust you, why not build better relationships with them so that you sell more to them, make their lives better, you benefit as well. And then structure where they can go out and tell all their friends. And then, hey, you get a lot of new customers from that as well.
Nick:
Yeah. Well, I think a reason that that happens is, marketers, to our credit, we have done a really good job showing our input and our value. We can sit down with our CFO and CEO and say, here's our dollar in dollar out on our YouTube spend, here's the roll as a last month versus this month and how we're improving it. And in some ways, that's a detriment to marketers. And you see the CMIO... I mean, it's a dangerous profession to be in. Because the CMO churns faster than any other executive in the executive.
Brett:
Very true.
Nick:
But it's really hard because there's this disconnect with a lot of executives that think brand is not performance because you can't measure it. But it is performance. Sure, it's not as predictable, it's not as easy to track. Therefore, it's not as easy to manage and to optimize. But if you buy into that long-term strategy, and you have a CEO and a CFO who support that long term strategy, you can go out and build it. And brand is compounding.
Nick:
So if I can build a great relationship with you, then I've secured you as a customer, and hopefully, I increase my lifetime value with you. But then over time, it's not just my life-time value with you, it's that you're helping me acquire customers for a cost that I spent months ago or years ago. Right? So my customer acquisition costs, in some ways, you're like, well, that's zero. It's not. But...
Nick:
You get the point, right? It's this compounding thing, but because there's really fuzzy metrics behind it. And there's, there's no way of seeing it. It becomes the first thing that you're like, "Well, COVID hit and budgets were getting slashed. That's gone, I'm done with it." But that can be a dangerous long-term play.
Brett:
Yep. 100%. Fully agree. So tell me about... What are some of the more successful one or two of the more successful ambassador programs that you've seen? Either companies you've worked for or with, or just had experience with whatever. How did they work? Kind of fill us in on that.
Nick:
I think the biggest fun I've ever seen was it GoPro. When I was there, we would travel the world and we would hold press conferences and meet with distributors. And Nick Woodman always prompt us like, you have to ask this one question. And we would ask how many marketers do you think are on our team? And no one ever got the answer right. Because the answer was -
Brett:
Everybody over-guessed, right? Or no, under-guessed, I guess I..
Nick:
Under-guess. They were like, "Oh, you're a huge company. I don't know, 100, 300? How big is your company?" We're like, "Well, at this point, we have 1400 employees." "Okay. Yeah. Maybe 250? I don't know" And our answer always blew people away. Because we were like, we genuinely believe anyone who's ever bought a camera, or use the camera, is on our marketing team. And we tried to treat them as such.
Nick:
And when you do that... Look, GoPro also just hit at the right moment with digital and YouTube. And the product itself is very viral. But we capitalized on that when other people didn't right. So we prioritize spending time, energy, resources, in creating those relationships and building diehard, raving fans. And because of that, we didn't have to tell us a new customer GoPro is the best, because our customers were telling their friends. I think that's a big example.
Brett:
And how did you... Just kind of clarify a little bit. I really liked that, where you think about, okay, not only as a customer a customer, we should value them and take care of them, but they're also a marketer. Right? They're on our marketing team for us. How did that shape the way you treated customers, spoke to customers, whatever? How did that impact your decision-making, thinking about every customer is on the marketing team?
Nick:
Yeah. When you've got that many customers, conceptually, you're like, oh, that makes a ton of sense I'm in. And then realistically, you're going, well, how to treat every single person that way? So we segmented them into groups and we were like, okay, these people at the top of the pyramid are number one and number two. And we went all the way down. And we tried to build advocacy programs and ideas to support each one.
Nick:
And as you went from the top of the funnel or the top of the pyramid to the bottom, it went from a one to one relationship to a one to many. But we maintained this idea that even the bottom tier are still important advocates and ambassadors and marketers for us. There wasn't a moment where we're like, well, the line is done and everyone else is just a customer, and anything post-purchase is just going to be to try to get them to buy a new product. No, we didn't do that.
Nick:
So, we had a whole range of things that came to play. But this was one of the problems that I faced is, okay well, the one to one, I can do, the one to a few, I can do, but one to many, globally, how in the world can I do that? The only answer is with technology. The only answer is to have a tool or set of tools that help you build those relationships, and empower people. And give them the things that they need to then go do what you're asking them to do.
Brett:
Yeah. I love that. And sometimes, it makes sense to do the one to one or one to a few to your best customers going to be really active in referring and bringing business. And it totally makes sense to do that, and it's very valuable. But sometimes, that longer tail, that the one to many, you may get more total business from that. You need structure, you need tools, you need technology, to facilitate that and make it happen.
Nick:
Yeah. It's such an interesting point, because if you look at the world of influencer marketing, really... I find it fascinating how it came about with Instagram and Snapchat building these massive monthly active user bases, and then telling marketers like, middle finger, you can't advertise to our audience. And as marketers, we're like, that's cute, we'll just pay your users with huge following to advertise on behalf.
Nick:
And that's the start of influencer marketing as it is today. But it created this problem where we valued people with high reach over high credibility. And sure, there's examples, like, you get one of the Kardashians to post, you're going to drive top of funnel, and you're going to drive sales. You get LeBron to do something, it's full funnel. But for most, it's not. And it's why influencers don't want to be paid on an affiliate rate. Because they know they don't really drive sales. They want to be paid on a CPM rate. But it-
Brett:
it's usually influencers are more top of funnel, the more awareness.
Nick:
And use them for that. It's a great tool. I'm not saying don't use influencers for that, but it put us in this world where we valued reach over credibility. Because we could scale having a relationship with a few people with massive reach individually, as opposed to scaling a relationship with 1 million people who each only had 100 followers. Right? But they're collective reach, it's enormous, their credibility is a multiplier, for the most part, against your typical influencer.
Nick:
So, if you can find a way to grab that collective reach, and maintain credibility and authenticity, and all the other buzz words that we've been talking about for years, what you find is, increased conversion, deeper connection to customers, and a better sense of loyalty.
Brett:
Yeah. That's tremendous. Let's talk and let's dive into this idea of word of mouth and putting digital rails around it and all ties into the ambassador concept as well. I remember, I actually got my start in advertising selling radio ads while I was in college. So that was my first gig. I was 20 years old, working my way through college, selling radio ads to people way, way older than me.
Brett:
But I just remember it really stuck with me. It was imprinted on my brain early on. I'd walked into a restaurant or local shop and say, "Hey, what's your most effective form of advertising." And people would always say, word of mouth, word of mouth is the most effective, right? Invest in TV, any radio do whatever, but word of mouth is my go-to. And this was like in the year 2000.
Brett:
So this was early on, I'm dating myself, but this was early on. E-commerce was barely a thing then as well. But yeah, word of mouth, it's so valuable. No one would dispute that. But I think most people would say, hey, the only way I can influence that as a business owner, as a marketer, is just to create better products. Right? Just make good products that people want to talk about it.
Brett:
And certainly, that is a huge part of that. That is the most important part of it. If you don't have a good product, then nothing else can be matters. But talking about-
Nick:
Not that the big pens aren't great pens, but I'm not talking about them.
Brett:
Exactly. So how do you put digital rails around it? Go ahead layout what Wooly does to.
Nick:
Yeah. Well, Wooly has an interesting background there. I just have to say, I've heard, for years, the same things that you're talking about. And in a lot of ways, there's been so much evolution and progress made. But the conversations that you were having about word of mouth marketing, people are having the exact same conversations today. Which is crazy. People are like, yes, it's my best advertising method, but I have no real idea how to manage it better, other than better product.
Nick:
And 20 years later, we're saying the exact same thing. You know there's a problem if that's the case. We need sharper minds than mind really building products and thinking about that. But the goal of Wooly is to make it really easy for people to share the products they love with the people that they love. But because our background kind of came from this anti-influencer moment, we started on the B2B side.
Nick:
So we started by helping brands learn more about their existing customers. We're like, you don't know a whole lot about them, we have a platform that will help enrich the data around who they are. And at the time, candidly, Brett, we were like, we'll help you find influencers within your customer base that you just didn't know you worked with.
Nick:
Well, all of a sudden we started recognizing, Oh my gosh! We're looking at the data, we're the people, and we're like, there are some incredible people in here who are not typically what you would think of as influencers. Jesus! This is powerful. And then our clients started coming to us saying, thanks for the information, but now I need to do something with this. You're just telling me, here's a list of really important people, but help me build some tools to activate them so I can ask them, or so I can recognize them and say, I see you, we love you, will you do A, B or C for me?
Nick:
So we started building this out. And what we found was, the everyday customer, the person that has 500 followers on Instagram, not 50,000, was like, wait, my favorite brand sees me, and they recognize me, and they're like, and they're asking me to post about them on social media or share a discount with my friends and family, I'm in. And they started doing it in droves. It's been... The engagement and adoption rate of the everyday customer has been insane.
Nick:
And so we have brands now that just through the Wooly platform, just asking their customers, thank you, we see you, now here's a friends and family discount to share with your friend. We're not giving you anything in return, but if you want, you can hook up a friend.
Nick:
We're seeing brands that are selling 100K in a year extra. Gang Box, they sell dogs subscription toys, just sold an incremental 50 grand in subscription-based revenue in the first 45 days. It's blowing minds, right? What we're now realizing, and what we're building is, this is a great tool for the brands to have visibility into who their customers are, activate them to do more, and then measure the return. What we're seeing though is, wow, there's even more potential if we make it really easy for the end consumer to share any products they love with the people that they love. So we're building an app. We're building an app that essentially allows you to aggregate all of your products into this Wooly app. Brett, you and I are hanging out and we're having a barbecue at my house. This is a real story. Instead of you-
Brett:
This sounds ..
Nick:
This is a real story with my parents.
Brett:
For the record, you did not invite me to this barbecue at your house, but I appreciated the retelling. I'm there in spirits, so that's cool.
Nick:
Yeah, over Memorial Day weekend, I had my parents over, and I opened up the trigger and we smoked food. And it was one -
Brett:
Which is a fantastic barbecue grill? Pellet Grill, usually. Correct? This is Pellet Grill?
Nick:
Yes, Pellet Grill. And it does everything. It can act like an oven or... I mean, it does everything. They're so good. So I'm cooking on it, and my dad walks over, he's like, this is interesting. I haven't seen one of these before. And he eats the food and he's like, okay, I have to have this. Tell me. Well, I walked him through it. He ended up going and buying one. He bought it at ACE.
Nick:
Here's the problem with that story. I wasn't able to help my dad get it at a great deal. Traeger has no idea that I recommended that product to my dad. And Traeger has no idea that my dad bought the product. They know we sold one more unit at ACE. They have no insight into anything else that's happening.
Nick:
So, with the Wooly app, in that scenario, I would tell my dad, oh, you like it? Well, here, let me pull up in my app. I can share a link with you that gets you free shipping, or pellets for life for free, or 20% off, or whatever Traeger wants. Right? Here you go, dad. And then my dad receives that in his phone, and he clicks, and he buys direct. Or he buys through ACE. It doesn't matter. Right? Trader now knows, oh, Nick owns that product, he shared it with someone and that person bought it.
Nick:
If you start to understand that, let's say I do that 10 or 15 times in a year, Traeger may want to start treating me differently. They may want to start building different relationships with me. But from the consumer side, I just get to help my dad out. Which I'm doing anyways. Right? So that's the future of where Wooly is going. Is we are going to marry this B2B platform with the B2C side. And frankly, we already have some versions of that rolling out, but we're aggressively building towards that scenario, specifically, that I shared
Brett:
Love it. So you're getting insight, then into who your customers are, who's an influencer, who's referring, things like that. That's extremely valuable insight for the business to have. Also, you're making this word of mouth process easy then for customers.
Brett:
So if I'm already going to be talking about my grill and I'm going to be showing it off, when you do a cookout, the dudes hang out any way, you gather around the fire like in the caveman times. It's going to happen. And so now, you're maybe facilitating making that process easier. If someone does say, hey, I got to check this out, oh here, let me get you a discount. That type of thing.
Nick:
Yeah. It's kind of been a pain. Because the Traeger example, my dad ended up calling me. And he was like, okay, I'm at ACE, which one again did you say? Is there a better price somewhere? And I'm like, Dad-
Brett:
In don't know.
Nick:
.... I've got a hundred things going on, grabbed the guy at ACE. Or like, let me Google that for sort of thing.
Nick:
But all of that could have been removed with the Wooly app.
Brett:
Yup. Now, I'm sure some people are wondering, why don't you incentivize the refer? So in this scenario, why wouldn't Traeger give you a discount or a kickback or an affiliate commission or something like that/ I can think of several reasons to do that and several reasons not to do that. But what is your take, what are your thoughts why wouldn't that be set up that way?
Nick:
Well, that's a great question. And it's a question we're faced with a lot. And there's... We don't we understand the give and take on both sides. And we have people on our team who are pro one way or pro the other, but we're going to test our way in to figure it out. But I will tell you that I believe my stance is the high road. Which is, you don't give me the refer cash. Because, no offense, but none of us are looking to get on Facebook and see another LuLaRoe closet sale.
Nick:
I don't need that. Right? I don't want my neighbor just trying to make a buck off me. I'm not selling the Traeger to my dad, I'm recommending it. And if I can give him a discount, that kind of gives me some social clout with him, like, dad, remember I got you hooked up, you owned me one back. And I think it, it maintains a high level of authenticity, and it creates a high level of trust where there's no question like, wait, are you only trying to recommend this because you're going to make money on it? The other side-
Brett:
Nick, if you go back to what you said before but the credibility of some of these, they're not really influencers, they're just customers, but there's a lot of credibility there. If they're not getting a kickback that maintains their credibility, that builds their credibility. And a lot of those people want to feel credible. Right? I want to make a recommendation because I'm a nice guy. And I like to recommend things. And I want you to feel good about my recommendations. I don't want to make a recommendation because they get a small kickback. That almost takes away the good feeling. There's a lot of people that have that mindset. So, yeah ..
Nick:
Absolutely. And on the other side, you do that and then it's like, hey, give 25, get 25, We're both in it together, it makes the product maybe tricky-
Brett:
Go with ..
Nick:
... It might increase adoption and usability. So, there's a lot to be said about, well, if you can hook each other up, maybe it doesn't tear a credibility. So we're looking at every spectrum of like, nothing, it's totally pure, to all the way to yeah, absolutely, you get a commission rate or... And the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle where Purple Mattress is a client. And I think they do it really well. They're not going to give you another mattress. Because how many people need to king beds?
Nick:
But they're like, look, you do the things that we ask and enough of these things and we have this relationship, we'll give you free purple pillows. Well, there's like 50 or $60 pillows, maybe more. And that can be pretty cool too. So, brands are doing product exchange or, look, you can give your friends 20% off, but we're going to give you 40% off.
Nick:
There's some things that might be a middle ground there that don't compromise trust, but also create some stickiness for the end-user. Because if I'm a brand, conceptually, this is a really good idea, but if no one's using it, I don't care.
Brett:
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Nick:
So the brand can, at some capacity... Right now, they're looking at what the incentive is from a product standpoint. We don't facilitate payments today, and likely won't. But that could change. But they look at it and they're just like, okay, well, the discount that I'm giving or the product that I'm giving them for free, that just becomes my customer acquisition cost. It literally is a performance customer acquisition cost. It's not a maybe. It's, I only pay when I sell. And that can be really exciting for a brand. You cut through the noise
Brett:
For sure. And what's interesting, you talked about the B2B set up a little bit ago and probably some listeners here that are in the B2B set up. And one thing to keep in mind, if you have a client come to you through word of mouth, right? Let's just use the B2B space as an example. Someone who's referred to you, they're usually going to be some of the best clients to work with, right? They come in with a high degree of trust. They're going to take your advice. They're going to listen to you. The pry stick with you a long time.
Brett:
I think the same thing is true when it comes to B2C relationship. People that are referred to your business by your best customers, they are going to be like your best customers. Though they'll often become more of your best customers. So I think that's a real value as well, that you're getting potentially some of your best customers through this as well.
Nick:
That's such a good point. And I hadn't necessarily piece it together this way. But when you said that, my dad bought his grill, I went to his house and I helped him set it up. I went to his house and I was like, okay dad, here's how I use it. Here's how I'd recommend you use it. And then it was a couple of days later, I called him and I was like, dad, have you used the Traeger again? How is it? You have you done it on your own?
Brett:
You're like customer support here. You're like
Nick:
I'm customer support. I'm like, I'm fulfilling on their freaking customer journey post-purchase. It's insane how much it's not even that I think that I'm doing it for Traeger. Right? That's the beauty.
Brett:
Do it for your dad.
Nick:
I'm doing it for my dad. I'm not doing it for Traeger's. But they're the ones that are also reaping the benefits.
Brett:
For sure. This is all super fascinating, and I'm excited by it. So talk about what are some of the features of Wooly? And maybe do like a quick start-to-finish walk through of, hey, here's how we identify people, here's what we do after we identified people, here's where it goes. So talk us through that a little bit.
Nick:
Yeah. From a recruiting or understanding who your customers are, we have deep integrations with Shopify and other e-com platforms. We integrate with Facebook and Instagram. So there's a process where, at a point in time, we can pull social data from your users. We have the ability of kicking up IFrame, get to know you or application forms.
Nick:
And all of this information, from any source, is aggregated into Wooly. And then you're able to easily start segmenting and filtering it out. I was working with Cotopaxi yesterday. They have a half a million people in -
Brett:
Great brand. And there are some very passionate customers of Cotopaxi,
Nick:
Diehards. So we were looking and they have 500,000 people inside the Wooly platform that they can filter through the data. And we decided, okay, we're going to look at just anyone who's bought product in the last six months. We're going to look at anyone who has mentioned the brand on social media once. Has an engagement score of those posts on social above 3%. And has made a recommendation to a friend.
Nick:
The list, that fast, 107 people. We're like, okay, we're starting to find some powerful people. Notice, we didn't look at reach or follower count or any of that stuff. And then from there, we said, okay, well, what sort of things do you want them to do? And we built a campaign brief. And so this campaign brief goes out to those 107 people and says, we love you, thank you, here's something we're doing and we'd love it i you'd be a part of it, here's how it works.
Nick:
And then when those 107 people activate on their behalf, everything is tracked back into Wooly. And we can measure, of the 107, here's how many did everything, here's what that looks, here's the content that they created, here's how many sales it drove, here's the engagement rate on social. And so you're able to really quickly just look at it and make an understanding, high-level, of what's working and what's not.
Nick:
And then you can dig in to the individual level and say, wow, of the 107, Brett drove the most amount of sales. But you didn't post on social-
Brett:
For sure.. People trust me, yeah.
Nick:
This person didn't sell anything, but they post it on social and reach a 6% engagement rate with their 4,000 followers. That's pretty cool. So then you can start to further segment and build relationships with those people.
Brett:
Yeah, that's awesome. So then when you find someone, you mentioned the example earlier, hey, by the time you've sent me 10 or 12 new customers or something, I may want to think about a slightly different relationship. Maybe we then talk about commission structure or maybe now you're a beta tester for new products or whatever. What do those relationships look like once you find your best of your best ambassadors?
Nick:
Yeah. It starts to become more one-to-one. The beauty of Wooly is that it allows you to manage that one to many, that baseline. And you certainly can manage one-to-one. But at some point, what we see is a lot of these brands are like, okay, well now I've found tier one. Cotopaxi has multiple tiers, but tier one has, I think it's like 60 people. They have one-to-one relationships with all of them, and they use Wooly to manage the campaign and measurement. But the communication is like them.... I think they're even on a closed flack group. Nena and co. has a closed Facebook group. Love that.
Brett:
It's awesome.
Nick:
Marked, right? So it totally depends on how people want to manage those relationships and use it. You can do it in Wooly, but Wooly is really set to do more of the one to many or one to a few. Just because you want that personal touch when it becomes one-to-one.
Brett:
Yeah, you want it to be a direct email or a text or a slack or something like that. It just feels, at that point, one-to-one, it needs to feel a little bit different as well.
Nick:
Yeah. But you still can store all the data in Wooly to know these are my tier one and Y, or like, hey, this person went dark on us, they're not tier one and they're not tier two, but now they fit our tier three, let's move them down and treat them as such. So you can easily shift those things. And then that helps guide how you communicate and interact with them.
Brett:
Very cool. So a one last concept here, and then we'll talk about how people can learn more and discover all that Wooly has to offer. But you talk about campaigns. Can you just give an example of what one of those might look like?
Nick:
Yeah. Solomon... I just love this example.
Brett:
Ski boots and skis for those-
Nick:
And trail running shoes.
Brett:
Okay. Yeah.
Nick:
So they wanted to run a campaign that was not a direct sales attribution. But they went out and they just asked their customers, we are making a stance and we are supporting just awesome women. And we want you to do the same thing. And here's what the looks like. And we want you to share this on social media. Right? Without paying for an ad, without paying for a single influencer, they were able to generate 23 million impressions on social media through their customers with Wooly.
Brett:
Yeah. It's so cool. And then that's where you're talking to people that love you and are engaged. Your creating a message that's worthy, and that's timely, and that people can get behind and get excited about, and they wanted to share it. Right? And I love the way you explained it before. And I think I'm about to use the word love too many times in the same sentence if that's okay. I'll go..
Nick:
Go for it. I can handle it.
Brett:
It's, people that love your product is sharing price you love with the people you love. Right? And then this is like a message we love. Right? We really support that. So we put our share. That's awesome, man. Well, for those that are listening, that are having the same reaction as me, I've always just loved marketing and human behavior and how all this stuff ties together, and they're thinking, okay, I got to dig into this, I gotta think about this, where can they learn more about Wooly and how can they dip their toe in the water or get started?
Nick:
Yeah. Visit us at site at just wooly.com, W-O-O-L-Y. Or connect with us and our team on LinkedIn, @ScottPaul, @NickStagge @DanielFisher. We are happy to get on the call, to run you through a demo, to just learn about your business. But we think, if you have a brand that makes, to your point Brett, great products and people want to talk about it and share it, we have a platform that we are confident can deliver real results for you. So we'd love to connect and just become friends. And if we happen to become more than that, boy, that's pretty cool too.
Brett:
Yup. Awesome. Check it out. Put those digital rails around word of mouth. Start building a real ambassador program. Lots of growth. And this stuff is just fun too. It's just fun. Nick, this has been a delight at ton of fun here. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and experience.
Nick:
Thanks for having me.
Brett:
Yeah. Glad to do it. So, as always, we'd love to hear from you, our listeners. Let us know what you want to hear more of, what topic ideas, what show suggestions do you have. Also, we'd love that feedback on iTunes. Leave us a review. Tell us what you love about the podcast. It helps other people discover the show as well. And with that, until next time. Thank you for listening.
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