It seems for the third consecutive year we're saying the same thing: This holiday shopping season will be unlike any we've seen before. With the eCommerce boom regressing significantly in the shadow of an economic downturn, brands are having to be creative with how they attract people to their websites and brick-and-mortar locations.
It seems for the third consecutive year we're saying the same thing: This holiday shopping season will be unlike any we've seen before. With the eCommerce boom regressing significantly in the shadow of an economic downturn, brands are having to be creative with how they attract people to their websites and brick-and-mortar locations.
Ever wonder how to make the most out of our Creator marketing 75% of brands are just scratching the surface with creator marketing the biggest missed opportunity you invest in a creator who endorses your brand and produces beautiful content. However, only 30% of their audience sees the post join the hashtag paid team at 1pm Eastern on November 9, for a free webinar on how to get the most out of influencer marketing register over at bank notes dot link slash webinar. Again, that's bank notes dot link slash webinar for DTC growth Show.
Welcome to the DVC growth Show presented by banknotes minted by hashtag paid. My name is Ian. Each week we speak with a DTC founder or someone connected to direct to consumer trends. Today I'm speaking with Chloe Thomas, who is the founder of E commerce master plan. She's a best selling author, internationally keynote speaker, and host of the award winning e commerce master plan and keep optimizing podcast, Pickering. Thanks for joining us.
Hey, and it's lovely to be here. Thank you for inviting me on.
Yeah, of course. So she's on the other foot. I think I've been on your podcasts like three times we're about to publish fourth soonish.
Yes, definitely up there as one of our most frequent guests. It's slightly weird not to be asking you the questions.
Exactly. This is really exciting, the tough questions, but um, yeah, tell us about keep optimizing and what the thought was behind it. And just I mean, and what it keeps optimizing is all about
show. So keep optimizing is a pop podcast, that's all about e commerce marketing. And I, I hate feeling overwhelmed. So I was like, well, let's stop the audience from feeling overwhelmed. So we focus on on one topic for a whole month at a time. So we might do email for a month or Facebook ads for a month, or Google ads for a month. And across that month, I get a different expert in every week to cover it from a different angle. So we might we just done tick tock and for tick tock we had Danny de Sanic from hashtag paid on talking about the creative economy. Then we had someone else doing influencers someone doing ads and someone doing organics we kind of give it like a mini masterclass in a month and cover all the marketing topics that people in E commerce need to know about simple as that.
So I consider myself a generalist. And I've been on your show a number of times on a number of different topics that I've never, like said anything that I felt you didn't understand over stumped. And you're always explaining it to me. And you cover all these topics. I mean, I think like if I had to like if someone asked me on Twitter, like who's the verge generalist in this space? Like you're in my top five. So how did you get there? Like, how did you? How did? Where did this knowledge come from? What's your background? Yeah, tell us about that.
So I guess part of it, the ability to be an Uber generalist and pick stuff up quickly is if we go a long way back, I did a history degree at Oxford, where, which sounds a bit random why on earth is she bringing that up, but other than
that Oxford dropped there.
But in that history degree, you have to do a 2000 word essay at least once a week on a different topic. So one, one term, I did the French Revolution one week, I did Japan in the 18th century, the next week, China in the 18th century, the next week, and then I can't then I can't remember, I don't even remember what the following week was. But you'd go from zero, to being able to debate it with people who are leaders in the field in seven days. And I think that skill set as weird as it sounds serves me very well in this industry. But in terms of the marketing knowledge, I started off in banking, then got a job working for a UK mail order business, they're sending out catalogs, but they also had over 100 stores, and a web presence in the early 2000s. We were trying to do omni channel marketing, which was really tough back then. And then I became head of E commerce for a group of mail order businesses, which was awesome. Just you know, doing the first ever Google ads, the first ever emails and all this stuff for brands that already existed and were already doing well. And then I ran a marketing agency for 10 years. So I've done I've got nearly nearly 20 years in the industry now. So I've I've covered a lot of ground, a lot of ground. So ability to learn fast and a lot of experience, I suppose.
Yeah, I think that's, I mean, it's not I mean, other than the Oxford piece, it's not dissimilar from my path. I mean, you know, public university in New York is sort of like Oxford. But But yeah, I mean I get that question and we'll get into like the by Friday stuff eventually trends in E commerce but I do get that question a lot from like, you know, people who are like social media managers now wonder like how do I take that next step? How do I advance and that's how I mean, I was like kind of a jack of all in doing like, marketing for like a small economic development firm here in the states that I moved over to social media marketing for higher ed and then ended up leading like an internal marketing agency for university went over to DDC. And now in on the SAS side, so like, I mean, very socially, he kind of just have to learn by doing to an extent, but also have the, I guess, willingness to fail. Maybe also, like, you know, there's there's a piece of that. Yeah,
I mean, I think, I think one of the cool things about the keep optimizing podcast is that I get to learn alongside the audience. So one of the reasons we've just done tick tock is because I was like, this is a massively big gap in gap in my knowledge. So I was like, right, I, from what I'm seeing in the industry, I think we've now reached the point where there's those tried and tested strategies, there's a blueprint people can follow. So it's time to do it on the podcast, and I really need to upskill. So let's, let's find some experts and interview them. But, you know, I think it's also you know, within the marketing, I run myself for the podcast, and for my business, I'm failing all the time in order to learn. But I think there's also that you have to understand where your level of knowledge is, like, I'm not going to be out there offering to run tic toc campaigns for anybody. I'm not even going to offer to run to do a presentation on tick tock strategy, because I don't know enough, I know enough to do maybe three slides on tick tock within a 30 minute presentation, with a pretty heavy call to action to go listen to my podcast episodes. But I know that where my abilities are these days in the industry, and I think people talk about the T shaped marketer, having T shaped experience is really important to go up the ranks these days. So that's having a breadth of knowledge and understanding of kind of the strategic piece of where the different channels fit together, how they fit together, how they can be used, but having depth of knowledge in one area. And I'm, I have historic depth, but mainly I'm just the crossbar of the tea these days, which is why I podcast and I don't you know, I don't run anything for anyone anymore.
Yeah, certainly a mile wide and an inch deep is what explained me pretty well, as well. And, and I think, I mean, what you're saying and I totally agree is is is a huge, you know, tool in anyone's toolbox is you know, enough to know what you don't know, you know, enough. And I think that's really important and kind of scary for me as well as, as I'm, I mean, probably about 20 years as low in this industry and seeing new apps, seeing new technology, seeing high schoolers use be real like in hacking at a in a way like I don't understand, like, I don't understand how they're doing it or how they're using it, let alone trying to be a market or trying to market to them. And that's scary for me as I have 1516 year olds and you know, I don't I'm a little nervous about still being an authority in that. But it's good to, to learn. And I think that's where you are. But yeah, I guess in your learnings, you're talking about tick tock, you've been talking about Facebook, we're coming up on another Black Friday. And worlds crazier than it was a year ago and two years ago. So what do you what are you what are you hearing? As you talk to people? What are people talking about? What's on what's trending right now as people try to ramp up for Black Friday?
Yeah, I think it is. It is yet another weird one, isn't it? I think this talking about T shaped and white mile wide inch deep type stuff, I think we're looking at a stretched out black friday from what I'm seeing. But you know, and what I'm hearing is people trying to work out when they launched because they kind of figuring they're gonna have to do a lot of it. But they don't want to erode the brand and they weren't quite like some full margin sales. So there's a lot of deliberation about when to start and when how long to run it for which I think is I'm really glad I'm not having to make that decision on anyone's business right now. Because I think it's a really really tough one to work out how much we have to discount and how long we have to roll for. I'm hearing more about segmentation this year than I've heard previously. So it seems that more brands are interested in segmenting the database and offering the right discount to the right person rather than just big blanket discounts which I think is a well I've always believed is a good move because I think you should be you know trying to get the right people to do the right thing. So that's another thing I think I'm hearing about the minute
on the pricing piece I mean I've already started to see and I can't remember off the top my head but I've seen a couple of brands are both brick and mortar and I think you new comers that are already doing price guarantees through through the holidays. And so yeah, I mean, to your point, it's I think some of them are have already started the sale and saying this is the best sale it's going to be and some others are saying, hey, buy it now. And if it goes on sale, and I'm on like, we'll we'll match it or we'll refund you. I think part of that in the extension piece or how long the period is, and tell me what you're hearing is inventories. Kind of not an issue anymore. Like, there's too much inventory due to the economy. And due to the ordering that happened while they even while supply chain was in a rush to put it nicely. I think
if if any buying and merchandising team ever get the perfect amount of stock in the warehouse at any one time, they should be given gold medals, elevated to teach everyone else because it's I think it's one of the hardest jobs in E commerce is trying to work out in any year. And this year is just just mad. So yeah, hearing a lot about overstocks and anticipated overstocks. And people trying to clear those. And I think that can I think that's the point at which the marketers get a bit freaked out and can just start giving discounts they shouldn't be giving. And it's where where you really need to think line by line, what should we be doing? What's our approach to this not just massive discounts off everything. Something I'm seeing a couple of brands starting to trial in the UK is a new app called nibble, which is an AI negotiation chat bot. Yeah. But it's proving really effective, which I don't think is what the what the makers thought it was going to be really effective. But it's proving to be really effective at clearing backlogs of stock at better margin than you would have got if you put it in your email marketing with a x percentage point discount, or you put it in your sale. So the Chatbot gets deployed on the overstocked product and go You look like you're interested in buying this fancy making me an offer. And then has a negotiation with the customer. And the customer checks out of that like five percentage point margin differences on some of the case studies they're publishing, which is a big cash. And it means your marketing method messages, say your marketing space is being saved for other things. So that's quite an intriguing one that I'm really interested to get to happens because I am skeptical about AI and chatbots. But this one seems to have a place.
And for those listening, I mean, dynamic pricing isn't new, there are quite a few SAS out there that that'll put dynamic pricing on your site based on how things are moving based on you know, where in the country in the world people are viewing from and what trends are. But I mean, this kind of that, that that what you mentioned, is is a blend of like dynamic pricing with conversational commerce with AI, which is yeah, that's, that's super interesting.
And that can I one of the first things it does is it asks for the customer's email address. So it can refer back to the database and go, you know, a lot of people are using it for Have you forgotten your code type stuff. Here's the code because it's got the power to look back in the database and bring the code to the customer the correct code or to go, oh, well, what would you like to offer me for this? I can't give you your code. But I could give you another one. So it's kind of I think the I think we'll be looking back in 12 months. And it might be one of these things where people have come up with 30 different strategies for how to deploy this to the business. Yeah.
Interesting. I think everyone want to want to just circle back to the personalization and segmentation a little bit like I know, myself when I was, you know, I was helping we'd run a furniture ecommerce company. And I'm reflecting back on it. Like, I feel like I was always wanting to implement the latest and greatest to a fault. I feel as I as I reflect on my time there and as a marketer. And I feel like segmentation and personalization is a place where you can out think the room at times. So as we kind of go into by Friday, I mean, I know you've spoken with the folks at Clay vo i know you speak with a lot of you know, some of the better segmentation nosto better segmentation, personalization tools. Like what's a what's a good practice for that? Or like no, what are you hearing is like a trend in terms of just as like, it's important and like what are the best practices?
Well, yeah, you're you're completely right. It's one of those ones where a marketer who likes systems and process ie me can go you know, my natural inclination would be to build the perfect flow of emails for every single customer. But actually what you've got to do is it's about finding the pots of gold within that and making them them work and it comes back to something which amusingly I've heard being talked about as this new amazing marketing tool. But which the mail order industry, which is where I started, have been using for over 100 years, which is the RFM model. So recency, frequency, monetary value. So, how recently is someone bought from you? How often do they buy from you? And how much do they spend on average with you, and creating matrices of this, or targeting customers based on these factors, that is, time and time again, the most powerful way of tweaking those sales. The one other thing I might add into that is, I frequently come across brands who've identified you know, we sell skincare, and we sell makeup, customers who buy both skincare and makeup are worth a lot more to us. So those cross selling of product categories, like that can be good. But I always start with understanding the frequency of purchase and the recency of purchase and building campaigns around that, how do you get the person who's bought once to buy again, because 20% of them, about 30% of them are going to buy twice from you and about 20% of those will buy again in the next in the first seven days. So how can you improve that? And how can you, you know, turn a an inquiry into a buyer and really drill down into those is when you're gonna make the biggest impact on your sales?
Yeah, I think I've even said it on your show you don't you mean, you just mentioned, you know, the perfect the perfect flow, the perfect funnel, the perfect nurture campaign, and I think I've even said it before on your show, you know, like, I've just done the line out, like, oh, it's infinite segments of one, right. And that's just dumb. Like, I shouldn't have said that, like, because it's just not sustainable. I mean, it's simply not sustainable to be targeting infinite segments of Warren and building. I mean, unless we get into a completely AI ecommerce model, and
it's a law of diminishing returns, you know, which my economics tutor taught me about, you know, imagine a football field doesn't matter which genre of football you're thinking about. But imagine a football field and you put one tractor on to mow it, that's good. Two tractors, it's a bit quicker, you put five tractors on and they're getting in each other's way. And, you know, you got to think of segmentation like that. There's a point at which it's not worth the time and effort to segment further or it might be, but actually, you'd be better off going and working on your Google ads. So that I think is the as the competition levels go up, as the costs go up, as customers become more cost conscious in their purchasing, what's going to separate the winners from the also rounds from the losers is the marketing teams and the businesses who separate all that stuff we could be doing, and work out what we actually should be doing. And that is increasingly in this industry. The difference between the success of the successful people and the mediocre people is those who identify the shoulds. Well,
yeah, especially now as as budgets become constrained, a staff becomes constrained as resources become constrained. I mean, you really have to be selective in what you should versus what you carried. It's a difficult time to be a marketer, for sure. An E commerce marketer.
What do you say when you're being bombarded by 2030 different ideas? You know, I think this week alone, I've seen five or six different companies come out with their advice for Black Friday. So you're hearing all these ideas. And when you're in that kind of point of panic, it's really easy to go. Well, they said, I should be doing this. So I'm going to do that, which is gonna make me feel busy. So I know I'm doing the right thing. Whereas to step back and go, here's my 10 options, which tool should I actually be doing is just so much more powerful, but it's really hard to do in these times of kind of overwork and panic, I suppose.
Yeah, for sure. So, I do want to get to, you know, come February, I want your opinion on what we're going to what happened, right, like Monday morning's headlines today sort of thing. But before we get to that I want to talk about you've recently become began a campaign a pitch on on net 00 emissions, zero emissions. Let's talk a little bit about that. And why that's important to you, and just how that's started to influence your, your, your company, your business, your podcast.
Well, I've always been a little bit freaked out by it ever since being a child. So I tended to ignore it. And then I attended a conference last year where the stats were really scary. What do I do? You know, because as the ecommerce industry, we are part of the problem, because fundamentally, we need to be consuming less. So I was like, How do I reconcile this and that was for about a couple of hours I was quitting. This is probably not the right idea because the industry is going to carry on whether I'm here or not. So how can I be a force for good within and I normally I would try and learn historic be able to try to learn everything before I speak, speak speak about it nowadays, especially with the sustainability thing that we don't have that luxury of time. So I chose jump in with both feet and learn as I was educating my audience. And I've been making my own business more net zero, which so far has mainly been a bit of offsetting, not flying anymore, and changing our bank accounts, which has a weirdly big effect, who changing your bank accounts and obviously pays off every single year after you've done it, but is a bit heavy going to do a lot of our men. And then with the with the e Commerce Industry, what I'm trying to do is trying to work out how and help people work out how to tweak their marketing to help consumers make better decisions about what they're buying, because I think there's, there was some stats CLEVEO put out at the beginning of this year, from recent research, they did that 89% of consumers want to buy more sustainably, but only 29% do. That's a massive gap. And my suspicion is that that is primarily down to confusion. I mean, some of it is down to cost. But most of it's down to confusion of I don't understand whether this is better than that. And then I get really confused. As he goes today, I'll buy the same thing as normal. And you know, to try and help brands navigate that I'm at the very beginning of my journey on this. But it's such an important topic, I think it's worth bringing to the fore. So thank you very much for asking me about it.
I mean, as long as a tree is planted for every Shopify purchase on may come good, right? Well, it helps. Talk about, I'm just really curious, the banking piece, like dive into that for just a second. So changing your bank accounts does what
has a massive impact. So there's an amazing if you're in the UK, there's an amazing app called my mother tree.com, which helps you change your personal bank accounts. It globally there's bank dot green, will tell you how good or bad your bank is investing or not investing in carbon emissions. So we as a business, we're banking with a bank called Barclays, which is known to be one of the worst banks on the planet. And my, my mother tree actually did some analysis, which came out a couple of weeks ago that if you save 5000 pounds in a Barclays Bank account for a year, that has the same carbon impact as flying from London to Rome, seven times seven round trips on an aeroplane from London to Rome, is the same as saving 5000 pounds for a year in a bank account with Barclays. So you shift that to a bank that cares and that doesn't invest in fossil fuels, and you can make a huge impact without Well, once you've been through the pain of shifting bank accounts, it makes a huge, huge, huge difference to the to the globe. And interestingly, every single banking change I've made personally and for the business over the last couple of months, has cost me less money. You know, so I've gone from a credit card provider who charged me 35 pounds a year to use their credit card for the for the business to a credit card provider who paid me more than 35 pounds and cashback the first month I use them it's brilliant. Anything better for the planet.
Very good when when obviously. Okay, so as we round up, like it used to so, this December's are January's headlines today, what are we gonna What do you suspect we're going to see come after Black or cyber week. So
I think we are going to have one of those Christmas to middle of January periods where we're watching the news wondering who's going under next. I think we'll see quite a few retailers fail. But the by the time we get through Christmas, so I think there's gonna be quite a lot of casualties this year, which is fascinating because it doesn't. The recessionary times like these in difficult economic times like these often show up the brands that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Because bad decisions are being made and so forth. It kind of removes the the ability to hide behind the hedge. So I have no idea who which brands are going down, but I suspect they'll be quite a lot and it'd be quite interesting to see who doesn't make it to March. I think we will see some very different numbers here on year but I suspect it will be more of an AO V reduction than it is a number so average order value reduction than it is a number of times people purchase which of course is bad news for the retailer because it costs you the same to send a parcel that costs $30 as it does to send the parcel that costs $50 So the margin gets squeezed a bit there and I hope we will see them Kenny, clever, more new marketing strategies coming off the back of it because there's so much amazing tech out there now to do clever things to do great segmentation, that I'm hoping we continue to be talking about that. Does that get me out of that question? Enough gets
you out of that question? Yeah. I mean, unless you could tell us what companies are going to enter. I mean, I think you're, you're pretty. No. Not even going to take a swing at that one.
I hope it'll be some of the fast fashion people and the ones that are terrible for the industry. But you know, a terrible for the globe. But we'll see. We shall see.
Well, thank you so much for joining us. COVID. Tell us where we can find keep optimizing in all your everything you're doing.
Shows, if you had to keep optimizing.com You will find the podcast and you'll find that you'll find all the other stuff I'm up to and I'm most noisy apart from the podcasts. I'm quite noisy on the podcast. But I'm quite noisy on a real time live basis on LinkedIn. So you can find me pretty easily on there, too.
Yes, you're much more of a LinkedIn or than I am a Twitter, Tweeter.
I tried to tweet but no one ever reacts. So LinkedIn, I get some impact. So you know, I'll go I'll go with the people are.
Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us. Definitely one of my most enjoyable episodes since I finally get to interview you. So thank you, and we'll talk to you soon.
Thanks, Dan. It's been a pleasure as always