EP #345] [ENG] - How to focus on creating a brand outside of Amazon - Mariah Parsons

EP #345] [ENG] - How to focus on creating a brand outside of Amazon - Mariah Parsons Unknown Speaker: Welcome to The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy. This is the place for everything related to Amazon private label and e-commerce. Learn exactly what you need to start or scale your business. Get insights from the top industry experts who will discuss the latest trends and best practices in the world of Amazon. From choosing products and sourcing from a supplier to setting up your Amazon account and marketing your business, you will hear it here. Let's get started. Here is your host, Vincenzo Toscano. Speaker 2: The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy, the pleasure edit related to Amazon FBA, Private Label and Ecommerce. My name is Vincenzo Toscano, founder and CEO of Ecomcy. And today we bring in our special guest. Her name is Mariah Parsons and she's the head of marketing at Maloma, where they specialize on everything that happens after you buy a product, essentially to a specific brand, like what is the experience look like, like everything that actually it can be very impactful in terms of how the consumer perceive the product. While they're waiting for it, right? And that's something I think is going to be very interesting to talk about, because I think everything that happens outside of Amazon, I feel it, especially on this podcast, we put a lot of emphasis on Amazon, but I think sometimes that's important. To explore solutions like this that specializes on the D2C world, because I feel a lot of people don't really have the conversation internally. Oh, actually, should I be building a brand outside of Amazon? So what are some of the solutions out there? What are some of the things I should be considering? And to Mariah, hopefully we can discuss some of those points and make your journey easier when it comes to making that jump. So, Mariah, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. How are you doing? Doing so well. Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, Vincenzo. I'm so excited to have this conversation. I think it's going to be great. And I think we're going to be able to bounce off a lot of our expertise. So it's going to be such a fun show. Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. So I guess before we dive deeper into the topic today, just give us a brief introduction about Malomo and what you guys do. And then of course, we can dive into the specifics of today's conversation. Speaker 1: Yes, we'd love to. Speaker 2: So you got it right. Speaker 1: We sit in the post-purchase experience. And so I like to kind of give like the customer viewpoint because I think it helps everyone kind of grasp on to what the software it does. What the software does. And so when you buy something online, everyone kind of knows you get that email that says track your order. And typically the experience sends someone to a USPS, a FedEx, a carrier of some sort, right? Like DHL. And so what Malomo does is it sits in between that and it sends consumer traffic back to a brand's website and it gives the brand full control of what they put on that page. So a lot of brands, and this is our recommended strategy, is they will put the tracking information up top. That's, you know, your order is going to arrive next Tuesday and with a beautiful branded image behind it and then below the fold on that page, They'll put either cross sells and upsells to complimentary products. They'll put educational blog posts around, you know, if you bought pots and pans, this is how you take care of them for longevity. If you bought, you know, these sneakers, this is maybe like a trail in your area you would love to run. So it, it does three things. It gives the brand control over that post purchase experience, which I think we're going to dive in today. And that's, you know, where you get the enablement of something like Shopify versus Amazon. It gives, so it updates those customers proactively and it reduces those WISMO or where's my order support tickets that a lot of brands get. And then it also opens that order tracking channel to be profitable and to be a revenue generating channel. So those are kind of the three aspects of Milomo. And it's it's a really cool software because a lot of people don't know that you can turn the transactional experience into a remarkable one. So it's my job as head of marketing is a lot of education around how can you do that? What are the best strategies? Because it isn't something like, you know, everyone knows email marketing, what you should be doing, why you should be doing it, all of those things. But this is more of a niche and really cool way to engage the customer post purchase. Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think actually this is such a good starting point to this conversation because everything you just described, unfortunately, is something that you cannot do with Amazon. And that's one of the beauties of really building a brand outside of Amazon because you own the customer and these kind of interactions that you guys specialize on are really what can allow to create a loyalty and also an experience that can make people really trust your brand and keep buying from you, right? So I guess we could start with that as I guess as a segue for today's conversation, which is I would say, what are some of the main reasons, especially you guys that work with so many D2C brands, that you would say people benefit from when it comes to having a D2C presence beyond Amazon, this marketplace? What are some of the things you definitely see brands benefiting from? Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. So, a lot of the brands that we work with do, of course, have Shopify storefronts and, you know, it depends if they You know, also have Amazon or other, you know, channels or like retail or any wholesale distributed. But what we see with a lot of the brands that are choosing to add a D2C website, their own website, is definitely that the control over the experience. So a lot of the times it's brands who If you want to have their mission super prevalent or their founder story or their, you know, it's like kind of quintessential to their branding to be able to control it. I think from the brands I've seen that are on Amazon, you obviously lose that, right? Like you of course get the searchability and the trust of the platform. But for brands who are trying to maybe create something brand new or really break into the category because they are doing something different with it, it helps to have that storyline across their website, across their social media. So definitely the owned brand experience is one. And then the data is another and so the customer data. And so I don't think anyone will be a stranger to this information of obviously if you are on Shopify or any ecommerce platform, you get visibility into, okay, this person has bought this amount of things this amount of times at this cadence. They live wherever else. So you get a lot of that rich data that then you can use in your strategy and that goes across the table anywhere from ops, logistics, sales, marketing, product. Everyone obviously can use that data. And then I think one of the other things that people and I use Shopify because that's where my expertise is, but DTC sites. But Shopify specifically is all of the different apps that you can plug in and play quite easily. So I think when you're looking at brands, especially new brands who haven't started a business before, like you get a lot of founders who start on Shopify because it is built as a platform that can help people do that. And so I think you get kind of the The usability of the platform, so it's kind of away from the brand, but when you look at the team behind the brand. It helps to have something that is so easy and relatively low cost to get up and running. And you can get a store up and running just through Shopify. And then, of course, once you get to the stages where you need an email platform or a post-purchase platform or an order tracking platform or a personalized product recommendation platform, then you can add in those apps. So I think those are kind of like the different ways that I've heard brands kind of talk through like, this is why I started with Shopify or why I added it versus, you know, Amazon. Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to ask you regarding specific Shopify because this is a question I get a lot. Of course, Shopify has been the more prominent, but there are platforms out there where you can build your D2C presence. Out of curiosity, like, do you see some advantage over another? Like, do you think Shopify keeps being the more reliable one? What is your take on that? Because that's something special for people jumping from Amazon to D2C. One of the first decisions they have to make is like with which kind of platform they have to go with, right? So what is your take on that as well? Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely have an opinion and I have my own Shopify storefront as well. So it's definitely been influenced by that because I've seen it firsthand, not only through the brands that I work with, with Malomo, but now building that out. And I definitely think Shopify is, I mean, the numbers, like outside of my opinion, the numbers, Shopify, I can't remember the stat off the top of my head, but it's like 90 or 92% of DTC brands are on Shopify. Um, so any brand that I've met. Agrees, honestly, a lot of them have, especially if they're more legacy brands, hopped over from other platforms. So other platforms, and I encourage people to do their own research, right? Because if you're a huge brand, you might need something that is different from what Shopify can offer. But WooCommerce, BigCommerce, those are definitely the ones that I see people with more, especially those legacy brands. But I also know people who have Squarespace and Wix. But I think if you're, and those platforms, because I've also worked with websites within both of those, those are definitely getting better into like the ecommerce space. But I think they're more still if you have something like a podcast or a service, then those are kind of like where people sit most. Of the time with square space. But in terms of e-commerce, big commerce, WooCommerce and Shopify are what I see for hosting brands. And I think a lot of the rationale between or with Shopify is their marketing is for the entrepreneur and. What I was alluding to or speaking to before is the barriers of entry are so low. Cost is relatively low to get started and then of course it scales as you get more volume. But they make it really easy to just get up and running and they have The software behind it, they have a, I forget what they call it, but it's like a sidebot AI that you can be like, I'm trying to change this one thing. This is not working. What's happening? My shipping is not syncing with my backend or whatever. Then the AI bot takes you to the page and you're like, oh, I see you have this toggled on. If you're trying to do this, toggle it off. And it's so easy. So yeah, I think that's why Shopify wins out in the age of ecommerce and people getting into it who have never been in ecommerce before. Speaker 2: Awesome. Now, something I would like to bring to the table is all this experience that we try to generate around a brand, specifically the post-purchase side of things, which is where you guys specialize on, sometimes also has to do significantly with the type of product, right? And the niche you're targeting, because I'm assuming the post-purchase experience of buying Claudine, it looks like it's not going to be the same buying a piece of an electronic, right? That maybe the engagement is different in the shape of kind of the added value you give them. So is there also some kind of blueprint people should be aware of how this might shift depending on the type of product? Yes. Speaker 1: Great question. Yeah, so I definitely think this is where understanding your customer and what they want really comes into play because typically the trends we see are higher AOV customers are going to expect a better customer experience because they're putting more of their dollars towards your product. Typically, like I'll break it down by industry because that obviously is something that brands should pay attention to as well. But definitely AOV is one of those things where we see even from The, like, customer standpoint of customers want, you know, if they just bought, let's say, furniture, right? That's a pretty high AOV category across the board. If they just bought a couch from you and it was $1,000, they're going to want to know where it is at all times. And they're going to track that. On average, we see brands, or sorry, customers check their order tracking page 4.6 times per order. And that's agnostic to any order, any AOV, any industry. But definitely, if you are a higher AOV customer, you're going to be checking it more and you're going to be frustrated if you don't know where it is. And that's where, you know, you get that buyer's remorse, customer frustration that you could potentially prevent with updated Transactional notifications or if there's a delay, right? Like customers want to know. So that's kind of where AOV, how that influences the post-purchase experience. And then by industry, definitely we tend to see for like something like clothing where you have maybe more educational aspects of like, okay, this is how you take care of the garment. People really engage with those or like this is how you style the garment, right? Like when people get it and then a big category for anything that you're trying on. So Apparel is our strongest. There's a big, big chance of returns, like a big return rate associated with that category. And so one of the things that we've done is integrate with returns partners to make it easy for people to return. And I think this is where. I've seen, and the dialogue around it is changing, but people being like scared of returns, like brand owners or brand operators being like, oh my God, I don't want to make it like front and center of this is how you start a return. But if someone's decided they're going to return, they're going to return. And they'll be more frustrated and not shop with you again if it's harder. And there's all that data out there. We're not returns partners, but there's plenty of data that big customers do in the space around like If you make it difficult, people will be that much more frustrated. So that's a big piece with something like apparel. To pull another category and kind of the strategy around there to do it on the inverse of looking at the returns rate, something like beauty where some brands are, you know, you have a 30-day trial period. If you open it and you don't like it, you can get your money back, but you keep it. Then that is maybe something where It flips into giving people new ideas instead of, you know, that return, but giving them like, okay, if you really liked this, but the shade wasn't right, how can we put a quiz on that order tracking page for when the customer knows like, okay, what's the last communication I got from this brand? Oh, it was my tracking email. Let me go back to that because I know they put like, oh, not the right shade. This is how you should go like into one of our stores and get a good shade or You know, take this quiz that there's so there's so there's such great technology where it's like across the phone. It can tell you or whatever you like scan your skin and it tells you. So those are like some of the ways but it definitely it definitely is across the board like a trend we see where Brands, once they take back the control over that order experience, people like customers are, are very, you know, impressed and elated with the order tracking experience. So it definitely, it definitely can help ease some nerves and tension during, during a maybe frustrating or scary time when it's like, I spent my money, but I don't have my product. So it's like that delayed gratification. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I will say with all this stuff that we've been discussing today, You raised the question as well around how we can define success when it comes to essentially implementing all of this because I guess for some brands success could look like from the perspective of increasing the lifetime value or reducing the number of refunds as you mentioned or reducing or increasing the number of potentially the extra products they will buy post-purchase because of the re-engagement you give after they buy the initial product. So How do you come across this conversation internally and also define at a brand level what a good kind of follow up is successful from that perspective? Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So this is where, you know, attribution really comes into play and I'll give our benchmark so people can go and if they want to experiment with this, whether it's with us or other people, they can kind of know like this is maybe what I should quote unquote be looking for based off our data. You're exactly right that it's like the three categories of revenue and then the customer experience and then kind of the ops side of things of support tickets. And so I'll start with revenue first. The easiest way to break it up is by AOV. And so because that kind of is like industry agnostic and people can kind of gauge like what revenue should they be seeing on average. And this is, again, our averages from the customers that we work with. So zero to 100 bandwidth of AOV. Typically, we see about 30 cents added per order. And so, you know, people can multiply that number by the amount of orders that they see and then get a rough estimate. For the next band up, which is $100 to $200, AOV is definitely our strongest band. And that kind of goes back to what we were discussing around higher AOV, which is $3.78 per order with Branding the order tracking experience and then 200 to 300 AOV is about a dollar and one cent. If you want to get really specific that you see from that you see per order added and then 300 to 400 plus is about a dollar 69 added. So that's kind of the revenue side and it's definitely a large bandwidth in terms of industries and the choices people make sometimes brands know like, okay, my You know, my product, this purchasing cycle is five years. So I'm not going to put on like furniture, right? Like I'm not going to put buy another couch on my tracking page. I'm going to put this is how you take care of it until you know, the expected longevity runs out of the product. So, that's kind of the revenue expectation numbers and there's a large, large bandwidth. There's customers who choose, again, like I said, the educational route. There's customers who really tie in other apps and get dynamic product recommendations and segmentation based off of purchase history and all that stuff and they've seen multiple millions of dollars returned. So that's kind of the AOV band. And then for the customer experience, this is where more of those like reviews come into play. You will see the customer saying like, oh, it was so easy to track this order or I knew where my order was at all times. Or you will hear just it's more it's a little bit less tangible than like our attribution. So it's kind of more keeping your pulse on the ground. As to what customers are saying and what their experience was, but obviously you could do like CSAT and stuff like that to obviously get that data quantified. And then for the WISMO support tickets. Typically we see a 50% reduction in those support tickets. And then you would, you know, if you have a support desk that helps out, you can measure, okay, this is when we started and this is the reduction that we're seeing, whatever. And you know, your seasonality of, okay, what's, maybe you have historical data of what did we see at this time last year? Speaker 2: And you compare it. Speaker 1: But that is, those are kind of the metrics, the benchmarks that we see. Speaker 2: Cool. And I would say in terms of the size of brands that could benefit the most out of this, do you see also correlation with the volume of orders that essentially they engage with? Because I will assume and I'm keen to hear your feedback on this. It's like when you implement all these strategies, the impact is going to be more significant because of the snowball effect and the engagement in my career among your consumers. If you have a 1,000 sales compared to 10,000 sales, right, there's no, it's significantly higher. And also it raises the question of at what stage I should actually be putting more attention to this, because I guess if you don't have a lot of volume, maybe it's not as impactful. So what is your take on this one? Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And you're exactly right that obviously it compounds with more orders that you have because of that visibility. So you get that snowball effect. And we've seen brands who are getting who are have, you know, 50 orders a month all the way up to 500,000, a million, whatever. So I would say the best advice that we always give is when you are facing some of the problems that Technology solutions can solve for, that's when you should investigate and then implement them. And so for us, a lot of the times we get people who are looking to either really reduce those Wismo tickets because they're fed up with answering them and they're like, my customers, like I'm losing money now because people are frustrated because there's been a delayed order and they don't have an update because, you know, the carrier didn't scan the event and they haven't heard from us in four days and their packages wherever. So that's where it's like we have problem order triggers where it's like, OK, if a shipment was delayed and it's been two days, then send another shipment, send a, you know, discount or whatever to make that customer just feel better. So I think that that's that's kind of like ops or CS, CX, sorry, or kind of where one like problem can. Speaker 2: Can be solved. Speaker 1: And then you have the marketers who are like, I am now realizing that I can brand the experience and make it better and also have it be a revenue driver. So the ways that and our founders were they started as an agency first. So like we've made our software that it should be it should bring an ROI for you immediately so that people don't have to have that also as part of the equation, because I know Realistically, like software, it's scary to make that choice and be like, okay, well, everyone's saying they generate revenue, but do they actually? So we've baked in like an ROI guarantee where if you don't see money back and profitability from the platform, then you obviously get your investment back. For that reason, because we've worked with customers who are like, I am just starting out, but I just got an order from this big brand and I saw that their order tracking was powered by you all and I loved the experience. So how can I, you know, get that same experience for my brand, even if it's 50 shipments a month? And sometimes, honestly, brands are more like, And I think it's really favorable to retaining customers at such early stages because they know how valuable it is to get people to come back with that great customer experience. So that's kind of a roundabout way of saying, I think like definitely when you're having problems that can be solved, look into software because it should be, especially in this day and age, it should be a problem that you can solve and make your life easier and then focus on the other things. Speaker 2: Awesome. I love it. So, I mean, I think today we've been discussing so many insightful things and I guess I want to leave you with another minute or so to, you know, in terms of tips, Especially for people looking to implement this and maybe they don't even have a clue where to start. What would you say is the first thing to consider when starting a strategy such as this? Your advice, maybe. Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. So I think understanding all the different things that you can do, and I'll bring it for like specifically order tracking, understanding all the things that you can do. So a lot of that is education. Two of the biggest things of what I spend a lot of my time educating people on is kind of the thoughts around like, oh, I don't need to make the transactional experience marketable. And so like educating people as to the benefits to it. And so it's kind of that like legacy thinking where it's just like, oh, yeah, you get a tracking email. It's like, well, you also could do some really cool stuff in there. So that's like one one place to start out is like just educating yourself, seeing what brands are doing with that space, because it could make or break the difference, especially when you're talking about like your bottom line and margins. And, you know, if you're on Amazon, a platform that will take some of that margins, like when do you make that switch? Speaker 2: All that. Speaker 1: So kind of like the educational route. And then I think. Hypothesizing or brainstorm what it could look like for your brand. I think those are really easy and free ways to think about it. And I'm happy to make design mock-ups with anyone who wants to kind of see what that transactional experience would look like. Even if you don't have a D2C shop, but you're just like, oh, maybe this is something down the road. I would want to consider and know like, you know, you know, you're going to open up a Shopify storefront or a DTC storefront in whatever amount of time. So that's where I would kind of say to someone like, obviously, there's so many things on our plate to be to do, but like, just start educating yourself so that when you get to the point of you're drowning in Wismo tickets, or, you know, you need better retention channels that don't have any acquisition costs associated with them because this is, it sits where you've already acquired the customer. Start to just understand what you can do and think about it in that way and then make a mock-up, design, whether it's with me or yourself, right? Like pay attention to those things. What brands do you shop with? What do they do after someone purchases? And can you kind of tell the difference between what you have as a brand right now and where you'd like to be? Speaker 2: Awesome. So I love it. And thank you so much for being on the show. And I guess, you know, for people that might want to reach out or give a try to your service and how people can find you. Tell us more. Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. If people want to talk to me directly, message me on LinkedIn. Probably the best way to find me or mariahatgomelomo.com. Happy to like talk strategy too. I mentioned this when we had our webinar last, but I also have I truly do like enjoying people's company and chats about strategy. So if people want to just be like, oh, I found this interesting. Can you tell me more about that? Happy to expand more. And then if people do want that free mock-up design, if you go to gomalomo.com, the banner on the website is where you can click that, fill out the form. It just notifies me you want one, and then I'll email you one. No strings attached, obviously. Love it. Speaker 2: I will put all the information down below for people to find it. Speaker 1: Awesome. Speaker 2: Great. Thank you so much, Mariah. It's been a pleasure and looking forward to having the next one. Yeah. Speaker 1: Thank you so much. This has been such a fun day to start. This has been such a fun way to start my day. Speaker 2: So thank you. Same here. Bye bye. Speaker 1: Bye. Unknown Speaker: Thanks for listening to The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. While you are at it, we would appreciate it if you could leave an honest rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That will make it easier for others to find out about the show and benefit from it. Want more? Visit our website at www.ecomcy.com where you can get your first consultation for free or find us on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn at Ecomcy.