Fynn Glover's mission is to help eCommerce brands create amazing content. Glover believes that content has never been so important in the growth, and sustainability of a brand. Here's why: The advertising campaigns that were once very profitable are becoming more expensive. Acquisition costs are increasing. Competition is growing. The only way to differentiate, and create long-term defensibility, is with a content marketing strategy. Whether growing a list, nurturing leads, or driving repeat purchases, content has a critical role to play. In today's episode, Glover unpacks how you can create a content marketing strategy that drives growth. 3 important takeaways that you won't want to miss: 1. how the best DTC businesses are prevailing with content 2. 3 ways to leverage your blog as an ecommerce brand 3. how to segment based on engagement with content
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Episode 6 - Audio
Welcome to Cart Overflow, where e-commerce marketing playbooks are shared to help you grow your brand. Today. We interviewed Fynn Glover, founder, and CEO of Matcha. Matcha helps brands create content that drive more subscribers and revenue for your store. Basically, it just helps you create content that converts.
A few things that we discuss are how the best DTC businesses are prevailing with content, three ways to leverage your blog as an eCommerce brand, and then how to segment based on engagement with content. I hope that you find this conversation as valuable as I did and come away with some ideas on how you can get more out of your content marketing efforts. With that said let's get into it !
Gen Furukawa: [00:00:41] alright. well, thanks for joining me! Today I have Fynn Glover from GetMatcha. I have a lot to ask you about content marketing and how it applies to e-commerce and direct to consumer. But I thought maybe you could start a little bit about how you came to starting to GetMatcha from the media business all the way through to building the software?
Fynn Glover: [00:01:01] Yeah, well, thanks for having me. And it's, it's really good to talk to you, so. you know, whenever I talk about my entrepreneurial journey and this company's entrepreneurial journey, I always kind of preface with the notion that, it hasn't at all been linear. but to some extent, the twists and the turns that have maybe made sense, because they've taught us a lot that in 2012, I started a company called rootsrated.com and that is, a website.
It was a mobile application at one point that still exists and it was built to help adventure travelers and outdoor enthusiasts find great places to go outdoors for a variety of sports. And so over the course of about four years, we built that property into, one of the biggest, what we called "outdoor discovery websites" in the country.
Hundreds of thousands of people a month, still go to that site to consume content. And really what that experience taught us was kind of basically how to be a publisher. How to create content, how to distribute it, how to measure it.
And in early 2015, I, I don't know if this was because I was just a little bit restless as an entrepreneur, or if I saw a bigger opportunity, but you know, maybe it's some hybrid, but we came up with the idea that there was, there was an opportunity to take everything that we had learned as a publisher and productize portions of our publishing stack so that we could help brands with content marketing so that we can help give them kind of what we learned as a publisher.
Again, this is 2015. So at the time brands are kind of for the first time stepping into this world of content marketing. I'm in this world of interacting with consumers outside of the context of ads. And so the first product that we built was basically a content marketplace that allowed us to license the content that we had created as a publisher to brands.
And we would bundle that a subscription to our content library, if you will, with custom content and then media services. And we sold into the outdoor adventure market and into the tourism and destination marketing market for a couple of years before we ended up raising our Series A from a fund in Atlanta called Tech Operators, moved the company to Atlanta, rebranded as Matcha.
And then over the course of these last two years, have expanded, both the verticals that we serve as well as the core product offerings. So, that's kind of the evolution of this business. It was from publishing to content marketing, SaaS, and, and kind of more and more towards the SMB segment of e-commerce over the last couple of years.
Gen Furukawa: [00:03:37] Yeah that's super interesting And so were talking a lot about eCommerce marketing and I thought one article that you wrote was really interesting And I could see the copywriting and the content chops behind it where they're very like intriguing and and somewhat controversial statement "The e-commerce gold rush is drying up Here's how the best DTC businesses are prevailing"
Fynn Glover: [00:04:00] Yeah.
Gen Furukawa: [00:04:01] And I think that's a really great context because that's how we ended up starting this podcast me and my co-host Jeremy because there is certainly a dynamic shift in e-commerce. And whether the gold rush is drying up or not, To be determined. But I think that there's there were a lot of super interesting snippets there that kind of informed your outlook on direct to consumer and how to actually differentiate as a brand. So if you just do me a favor and quickly kind of summarize some of the points and I can also chime in cause I did recently read it and found it a lot of nodding my head in agreement
Fynn Glover: [00:04:38] I appreciate you referencing that piece and, who knows what I put in there, but, but generally, I think the idea is basically, and this kind of gets at the heart of our products thesis, but you know, let's go back to like 2011, 2012. And I think it's, in those years that you start to see the number of direct to consumer a pure play eCommerce merchants really start to take off.
And, Mary Meeker, who produces the state of the internet report every year, a famous venture capitalist has coined that as the beginning of, of the SMB revolution, the small business revolution, but really it was a revolution and direct to consumer e-commerce and it was fueled by a couple of things.
One, it was cheaper to start the store, thanks to platforms like Shopify and Stripe and tools like Amazon merchant services. and it was also easier to reach niche audiences says, because of Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising.
And so you see this explosion in the number of stores that are starting, and this includes dropshippers, it includes pure-play brands. It includes omni-channel retailers that had built their businesses, specialty retail, but now we're building a direct to consumer channel. It's like a lot of different businesses in that context.
but fundamentally something happened that made it easier for them to advertise.
And over the course of the next few years, as more and more companies came onto those, those advertising platforms and began advertising that ad inventory became more and more expensive. And is that added inventory became more and more expensive. You start to see, real kind of like problems emerge bunnies that had built their proformas and made their bets on advertising costs, staying at a certain cost and not increasing over time.
And so what we mean by the Gold Rush up is that a lot of businesses were basically doing what a company that I really respect called Shoelace has called. "Facebook arbitrage". without recognizing that that was a pretty temporary moment in time in terms of how affordably you could acquire a customer.
What ends up happening is people just focus on growth.
And so it's all about customer acquisition. It doesn't end up being about sustainable customer acquisition in the context of, "okay, that customer will buy again, there's legitimate lifetime value here". and that's really problematic, especially when you bring in. You know, venture capital to the mix, and their kind of growth expectations that ended up not being realistic or sustainable over, over the longterm.
So I'll stop there and I'm sure you can press me on a few points, but that's, that's the general gist behind that piece.
Gen Furukawa: [00:07:19] Yeah And that included a quote that I love is just "CAC is a new rent" That exactly right Like you were alive on All right We don't need a storefront anymore We're a digitally native direct-to-consumer brand which is awesome, so you you pass on some of the savings In the margin to the customer. But now all of a sudden it is that much easier to start a store, so that competition is getting far greater and the widgets are actually starting to look the same.
And I recently wrote a post about that you know Away which is kind of like the pioneer of DTC luxury travel and Monos which is a very similar brand And it's kind of a commodity And you know at that point you're competing on two things really 1. Price and 2. The brand story. And so I think like that that's what I was saying that I think it is really important and instructive on how you're approaching Matcha, at least from what I'm seeing at an arm's length is that content is how you're actually going to build that audience. And it's that audience that will create enterprise value If you're speaking like an investor or just like a sustainable brand
Fynn Glover: [00:08:25] I think that's right. I mean, like, so I mean, our point of view on the world really, like this is kind of our point of view on our own product, but also on the world is that, you know, this gold rush, if you will, basically conditioned a first generation of direct to consumer e-commerce marketers, t o expect cheap advertising and cheap customer acquisition and to value direct response, advertising tactics, above all other things.
And so what that fundamentally created as a first generation of, of marketers who, didn't set their, their businesses up, their brands up their marketing up for sustainable inbound marketing, which is something that B2B marketers have long cherished above all else. and so, you know, our, our hypothesis, our bet is that over the next five to 10 years, we'll start to see that shift because of how expensive it's gotten to advertise on the platforms because of how competitive it is.
And to your point on one side of the market, you're competing on price. And in the context of Amazon, you're competing on price and you're, if you're a brand you're also competing with the fact that your product is a commodity for the most part, and Amazon can deliver the same commoditized product in a day, whereas you probably can't.
And so you ended up competing on brand and if it's all about product ads, you can't win on product ads alone in 2020 and beyond.
Gen Furukawa: [00:09:46] Right So what you're suggesting is like all right content is basically one pillar. Paid is getting more expensive, so it's more ideal to not be so reliant on that as not only their go to market but this sustainable marketing strategy. And then of course it all leads into kind of like an email and an email list is your biggest asset in terms of extending lifetime value over repeat purchases. But then also so you actually just have an audience, and not only are you getting the referral marketing and from that but you actually for new product launches or customer feedback on product developments, that's kind of what you're building towards
Fynn Glover: [00:10:25] That's right. Yeah. One of the things I'm always super fascinated by is like not to be too academic and jargony here, but you know, there's a guy named Scott Brinker who a lot of people in marketing technology know because he's the founder of chief MarTech, which is a. Famous blog that studies marketing technology and its evolution.
And one of the things that he's always looked at is the topology of the marketing stack, what he means by that. It's like, what are the platforms? And what are the point solutions that marketers use to do the jobs that need to be done every day? And when we look at like the topology of the average million dollar e-commerce brand, you know, what we see is like they build their technology stacks around two core platforms on one hand, it's the cart.
Which really owns transaction. And on another, on the other hand, it's the ESP, the email service provider, which really owns communication. And so what we believe we believe the role of content is to facilitate at its simplest terms. Building the list and nurturing the list. And you can get into all kinds of other things about content should facilitate a great customer experience at every touch point and content should facilitate personalized communication and all of that.
But in the context of e-commerce like when it comes down to the nuts and bolts, you're trying to grow a list with people that are super relevant. And you're trying to retain that list and nurture that list as, as, as for as long as possible.
Gen Furukawa: [00:11:49] Yeah I think you're also at an interesting juncture because you've taken it from a media perspective. You're currently running kind of like a B2B SaaS and you're helping e-commerce and I think that there are different challenges for each So I'd like to ask you to to kind of like get more tactical about how an eCommerce brand and let's take an example of some of the that's super niche, let's say like pillows or sheets or razors. How they can create content scalable content over time That's that's not getting stale only talking about you know one super niche niche product problem? Can you describe some of the strategies that you recommend that you're seeing some of the best DTC brands taking advantage of?
Fynn Glover: [00:12:34] Sure. So, I think the first thing I would say is that content marketing is now this relatively large blanket term that incorporates, you know, a lot. It incorporates a lot, both tactically and strategically. It also incorporates a lot, from an asset standpoint. So there are lots of different specific content assets that play a role in a content marketing strategy.
That could be blog. That could be user-generated that could be influenced, or that could be just photo, you know, kind of whatever it is. And so kind of what I, what I see as best practice is when, brands are able to articulate how certain types of content assets are intended to be used at different, different kind of, levels of the funnel or across the funnel, if you will.
And so. Let's let's take blogging since that's what we do and kind of look at how we think the best companies use their blogs. And then I can expand into other content types if that's useful.
But the blog has actually like the blog as an asset type has, it's, it's quite agile and it can be used to do different things. So for one, for example, if you create a blog article as a sheet company, that is focused on answering specific questions that your customers have, and you really focus on that piece, being super useful in depth, effective SEO.
That should be a piece that over time can increase your organic traffic and compound in value, so that when customers have those questions, they arrive at your website. And I view that as, you know, one example of how a blog can be useful in terms of traffic building. And it's a type of traffic that's probably further down the funnel, cause there's a lot of intent and a question like that.
On maybe on kind of another example would be, you know, sheet companies or mattress companies....they're competing with lots of other companies like them. And so there's a challenge to actually build awareness and build traffic from cold traffic from people that have never heard of you. and so a blog article can be utilized to appeal to the customer's lifestyle interests in a way that is maybe entertaining or funny, or just like pure useful,
You know, to take that out and say mattress and sheet company. I mean, we have lots of outdoor apparel companies and so they sell hiking clothes. And so an article like the 10 best hikes in Colorado turns out to be a type of piece that can be a very efficient traffic builder. if you can build traffic that lends itself to being a good list builder.
Then kind of into the retention phase of it, you know, we see a lot of companies use blog articles. And in the context of the drip campaigns and nurture funnels and the post-purchase and the post-purchase environment. And so, we kind of view those types of articles as articles that are either very, very good at engaging a customer to come back to the site because of the lifestyle interest, or they're really effective at providing deeper education about a product that leads to a second or third purchase after that first purchase.
and so those kind of tactically are the way we see companies optimize blog articles to have the most influence on the overall business. lots of other content types, but that's, that's blogging that kind of, at a tactical look.
Gen Furukawa: [00:15:46] when you're talking top of funnel and like let's engage a somebody new to the brand maybe they're learning about the problem as a whole. Do you find more success taking the analytical approach Like "let's do keyword research find search volume for an like a opportunity that's not too competitive" or is it more "let's take what we know from the customer It might not be a high search volume but you know hikes in a small neighborhood in Colorado or what they want And then kind of go after that?
Fynn Glover: [00:16:17] Well, I think that that's such a good question. And I think it kind of depends on where the brand is. So you I'll give you two different examples. So there's a company that we work with called Sea To Summit and they sell, great outdoor equipment.
They, they built their brand through specialty retail. And so this is a well known company in the outdoor space, but it's got an emerging direct to consumer base and that means they kind of functionally know who the core audience is.
And so I kind of know that to reach the lifestyle that they're trying to reach, they kind of already have that in mind from like a title standpoint or a piece standpoint, they just need the content.
That's different than a company that might be still. and what I would call audience discovery mode. So we work with a company called Everly and they sell a really interesting product. It's you know, it's, it's basically like a packet of, electrolytes and healthy mix that you would put into water to make water tastes better. And, they did not know who the core audience was several years ago. They thought it would be young, young, young men and women who are interested in health and women's health and wellness.
They found by advertising blog articles on Facebook, to different audiences that in fact, they're product resonates highly with middle-aged women in the Midwest who are trying to move from Coca Cola to sugar free drinks. and it was, it was blog articles about Everly in the context of the keto diet that helped them discover that audience.
and fundamentally what that meant is they had to go experiment with a variety of articles before they actually found that. and it was, it was their openness to that experimentation that served them so well.
Gen Furukawa: [00:17:58] So in doing that does that mean that they actually need to marry paid and organic social so they're promoting that as a sponsored post?
Fynn Glover: [00:18:07] Totally. Yeah.
Gen Furukawa: [00:18:09] Okay So you kind of have to have some notion that are this might be a content that will work and then put money behind it to test a keto middle middle aged woman versus a vegan coastal person?
Fynn Glover: [00:18:23] That's right. Yeah. And, you know, We recommend that you test with very small budgets, right? I mean, and the thing that's interesting about blog articles and content generally is that your CPCs, are super efficient. So like the average CPC for a blog article across Facebook for our customers is anywhere from 10 to 15 cents.
And so for a small budget, you can get out there and actually do resonance testing and audience testing with content.
Gen Furukawa: [00:18:52] what about limited bandwidth? I mean no matter how big a team or company you are I think there's always this notion of "not enough hours in the day to get things done". Have you come across any best practices in terms of what the like kind of minimum criteria in order to build a brand behind content marketing is? And I'm kind of referencing what number of posts might be or the length of the posts or views of a post like how much weight needs to be behind a content effort in order to see the ROI that some of your best customers have seen?
Fynn Glover: [00:19:24] I think that's a great question too. And I don't know that there's anything too formulaic. the reason for that is, you know, we've seen companies that have, you know, almost like a newsroom level approaches to content marketing. And then we've seen companies that have two or three people and they outsource content to freelance networks like Fiverr or, you know, just a couple of freelancers that they happen to know, and they still have great results.
So I think it kind of, I'm not sure that I feel, I would say that there's like some formula for success, but, And I would also say that, like, what we've seen is there kind of differences between the approach and what's meaningful to companies depending on their stage.
So for example, when we've worked at bigger companies, really kind of like what they care the most about is the aesthetic.
Of the blog, like the actual experience that it feels super compelling and differentiated. And they're using that context, like page builders, like tools, like Shogun become really important for them at that level. Whereas when you're smaller and you're doing a half million dollars in businessfor a million dollars in business, that really doesn't matter as much.
What matters is that the copywriting is actually compelling for the audience. Like it actually answers a question or it serves to facilitate a lifestyle that your product is associated with. and so in that context, you just need fewer resources and you can be more nimble and you can be faster. And it doesn't matter if you're posting once a day or four times a week or whatever it is, like, it just kind of comes down to how, how valuable the content is.
One thing that is a mistake we see constantly a mistake that creates a "trough of disillusionment" as it relates to content, is that there is investment in production or investment in sourcing, and then no investment in distribution. And if that's the case, you know, if content the light of day than it has, no, it has no staying power. It has no chance to impact a business.
Gen Furukawa: [00:21:17] what works there because I think that's where as a consumer, I don't necessarily gravitate towards companies that are also talking a lot about themselves and just publishing basically ticker of their blog. And it might be different if they're putting paid money behind it and running sponsored ads but are there particular channels that people might want to look at assuming like all right they've emailed it out, They might've posted on their social channels, How can they actually start getting more traction to have that little bit of distribution amplify?
Fynn Glover: [00:21:54] Well, it does come back to the difference in the asset. but in the context of blogs, there are basically kind of three ways to think about distribution, maybe four, but in the context of e-commerce with the time constraints, there are three and it's
1. It's social. And it's 2. Search and it's 3. Email. and that's, that's really kind of the way to think about it as far as, as far as we can tell, you can go invest in having your blogs syndicated or back linked by partners and things like that.
And you can invest in all kinds of co-marketing. But, from a framework standpoint, I would think about search, social, and email in the context of distribute, distributing blog, blogs.
Gen Furukawa: [00:22:30] Yeah that's great So you mentioned Sea to Summit, Everly what other brands do you think that we can look at as beacons of like this is content marketing done Well?
Fynn Glover: [00:22:44] Well, let me think about, I like to think about it through the lens of brands that are a bit smaller as well as brands that are a bit more robust. there's a company called Rhone. That's R H O N
Gen Furukawa: [00:22:57] Oh yeah Yeah the athletic clothes.
Fynn Glover: [00:22:58] Yeah, the athletic clothes. I think they do. They do a terrific job. I'm always really impressed by their approach.
I think that they just, they, they do a good job of marrying content that's product- centric in a way that's actually helpful to the consumer, like help them make a purchasing decision. with also content that is like interesting from a lifestyle standpoint and compelling. From a lifestyle standpoint. I could go buy the same apparel from different Amazon companies.
I can go buy the same apparel from lots of other famous apparel brands. and this is, this is in many ways, a younger company that has quickly built market share. and I think a lot of it has to do with the customer experience that their content facilitates. so that's, that's one example, on the, on the larger side.
You know, I think there's a company that, I think is interesting because again, it kind of comes back to the dual audience, but there's a company called Mambe Waterproof Blankets.
And, you know, they sell blankets for people that have pets dogs, especially, and are tired of having dog hair all over their house. But they also sell those blankets for parents who would be attending their kid's baseball games and soccer games, and want to be warm during those games. And there's two different audiences.
You know, require different forms of content to actually engage them. And I think they've done a good job of curating their content for those two audiences and building a business without feeling kind of bifurcated by those two audiences, which is really easy to have happen if you're selling to multiple audiences.
Gen Furukawa: [00:24:21] I wanted to ask you in the B2B SaaS space there is some debate is it worth it to create gated content or do you want to put your best foot foot forward, have an email opt in and they'll then they'll email If they really care and want to hear about you for. ECommerce brands I see a lot more of an aggressive approach towards building a list, like "here's a 10% discount off your next order" before I even like scroll down the hero image of the homepage do you have any particular insights kind of driven by the numbers that you see with Matcha of what works and what might have a longterm ROI?
Fynn Glover: [00:24:56] Yeah, so, and just to. For for listeners, you know, we have a feature called locked content, but it effectively, effectively means gated content. And what it means is that when the, when the reader arrives on the blog, they cannot read the blog unless they submit their email address.
And there is real debate over this because for some brands, especially for brand centric, marketers, that feels like a really aggressive tactic that often doesn't feel like it's aligned with the brand's values. And then for other, you know, oftentimes less brand centric, marketers, more kind of just pure play performance marketers. The performance of last content is so good compared to basic popups that they want to go ahead and do that.
But what we recommend is to not do that unless the blog article itself happens to be an asset that is truly unique and truly differentiated. And so if you spent a lot of time and some money creating a blog article that was really, really compelling and had technical information about your product and how to use it, we think that that's the type of piece that's, that's probably worth testing with thought content or gated content because, it demands that the user, that the reader show you some level of, of real intent before accessing it.
And that's worthwhile. If it's just a basic blog article, like a, like a product release or like an entertainment piece, we think that maybe not the best time to use gated content because. They can get that content on other places across the web. And it might be a little bit turn-offfish to them.
Gen Furukawa: [00:26:29] Yeah totally a balance between like conversion rate versus user experience And there might not be a universally correct answer but
Fynn Glover: [00:26:38] And there are a lot of opinions on it, you know,
Gen Furukawa: [00:26:40] yeah exactly
Fynn Glover: [00:26:41] so we don't think it's, we think it's pretty gray, but like that's kind of the best practice we see in the way we try to
audio_only_1_16779266_Matcha: [00:26:48] look
Fynn Glover: [00:26:48] at it. It's like, okay, if you use locked content, What's the quality of those email addresses?" And you see worse quality. If you use locked content with an article that is more generic than if you use it on articles that clearly required a lot work, to produce because readers understand when they're seeing something that is really compelling.
and. And that's, that's something to pay attention to is when you look into the, to the email addresses, after you've invested in that approach.
Gen Furukawa: [00:27:23] Yeah That's a good segue into something that I wanted to ask you about which is tying an ROI to content. So I know you focus a lot on this with Matcha because Yeah I've been there before spend hours putting something to together Also maybe try and promote it and work on the distribution. But how do I even know that this is a touch point that will lead to a conversion or that helps at least push a shopper down the funnel?
And so I'd like to ask you how you how you do it how you might recommend doing it If it's not a Matcha customer. How can you actually verify that the content is a positive ROI that merits further investment?
Fynn Glover: [00:28:03] I think it's tough. So I think, well, first thing is, maybe this is helpful color, so our product allows, allows you to measure the influence of a blog article on revenue. And so what that means is if somebody has consumed a blog article on the path to purchase, that article, is, is denoted as having attributed to whatever the final purchase amount was.
Gen Furukawa: [00:28:26] is it that touch divided by if it's like a five touches that touch would get 20% attribution
Fynn Glover: [00:28:32] We don't, we don't look at it like that. It's just, it, it influenced the eventual purchase. And we don't say that it was responsible for the purchase. We say influenced the purchase. And you can look at it in our app as likeAyou can kind of look at the per article, performance in terms of this article has influenced this much revenue.
and it's, it's kind of the way we think about it is it's an intuitive way to measure blog performance. Now you could get a much deeper view into article performance and you could effectively recreate that level of attribution in Google analytics and Google analytics is probably the most powerful analytics platform that marketers have access to, but we've found, but we found with our customer base is very, very few of them have actually set up Google analytics to have that view.
And when they have, they have paid an agency to do so. And so the reason we built this was not because we felt like we needed to recreate Google analytics, but because we felt like we needed to make it intuitive to folks who had not invested in Google Analytics, to the extent that is possible.
Gen Furukawa: [00:29:33] right So at a at a high level to summarize can I create a segment of those who purchased, then there's a revenue associated with those who purchased, use that segment And then just look at the URL of every blog that they visited in a given time period? Is that kind of like at a high level how you might do it?
Fynn Glover: [00:29:53] You could do that. yes, you could do that. You could also do that at the, at the lead level too. So you could look at the article in terms of how many subscribers it's generated as well. And ended at the traffic level actually as well.
Gen Furukawa: [00:30:06] got it So for those leads is that like an anonymized lead or is it the specific lead and seeing in their lifetime what they actually purchased?
Fynn Glover: [00:30:16] It's this specific lead. yeah, this is a feature in our product called subscribers, but one of the things that we're super fascinated by is the extent to which you could learn about your audience through their content consumption. So, I mean, the battleground that most marketing SaaS companies thinking about is personalization of course, but often what we see in the context of personalization is it's usually activity-based personalization.
Like I've come to decide I've taken X click. It's harder to get to an interest graph, on personalization and content is a really effective vehicle to achieving that interest graph. And so the way we think about that is, and the way we attempt to execute this is. We placed tags on every piece of content associated with persona and location and activity.
And when someone signs up for your email address on that blog article, those tags are, those tags are associated with your email address to enrich your email address, and then automatically export it to your ESP so that you can send more segmented email addresses and we integrate with Klaviyo and MailChimp right now. So other ESPs would be manual, but that's how we've, we've thought about it so far.
Gen Furukawa: [00:31:28] Oh that's really interesting Okay. So you're basically informing what segment should be passed along to Klayvio you know whether it is like a mattress for children's sports or pets And then Oh that's great And then also is that based on a gated content or that's like the option was on the page and
Fynn Glover: [00:31:49] Optimum is on the page. Could be, it could be any pop up or any sign up form.
Gen Furukawa: [00:31:54] you know I've spoken to a lot of people both e-commerce that's always a challenge is there's some assumptions with Personalization based on I mean you have to assume because it just doesn't make sense to have infinite persona but I think that's a really creative and helpful way that's actionable especially that is passed on to your email email to inform future marketing campaigns. Because that's really what speaks to an individual shopper is the relevancy.
Fynn Glover: [00:32:24] I think so. I mean, and I think that that's probably a feature set that is more used like that we have seen be more like seeing greater adoption with bigger companies. That have, basically like more sophistication around segmentation. and so it's probably less useful to like the quarter million dollar, half million dollar brand at this point.
But I think that's right. And it's one of the things that we think is compelling longterm about content in general content marketing blogging is that there is a lot of underlying user interest data to harvest from the content that we consume.
Gen Furukawa: [00:33:02] Yeah Fynn I know we're kind of running towards the end now but I did want to ask you,, for any content marketers for an eCommerce brand looking to differentiate because coming back to where we started the conversation there's a lot more competition Paid channels are getting higher higher and higher in terms of acquisition costs, ,And it's more important just to have a differentiated brand because as a consumer I can go to any number of places, especially Amazon, and have it at my doorstep in two days What would you recommend to a content marketer to kind of get the most out of their marketing efforts? And both in terms of brand building conversion ROI everything but like I'd love to hear your your thoughts and advice to To help?
Fynn Glover: [00:33:50] So I asked this question of our team because we do our own content marketing, every day constantly. And then I asked this question of, of our customers too, and I do product feedback interviews. And, you know, I think there are probably a couple of things I'd say.
The first is, if you're building a direct to consumer e-commerce brand and if it's pure play or Omni channel, doesn't really matter I think that the path to differentiation starts with product quality. I think product quality is followed by mission. And I think think product quality and mission are followed by how you actually execute the customer experience. And I think if you can conceptualize it in that order, you start to organize anything that you do tactically around content with a lot more intentionality.
And so what I think is often harmful is when people don't really know. Like, they haven't really like got the product quality right. Or they don't really have the mission. Right. And then they're trying o do content marketing against something that may not be as fleshed out as it needs to be. And then content marketing becomes something that is like a bit too fire-hosey.
and I think the same is true of any advertising with a product that doesn't have product quality or our mission behind it. And so that's the first thing that I think about.
The second thing I think about is, well, what would the audience that you're trying to sell to assuming, you know, who that audience is, actually care about?
And there are two, two kind of next layers to that. One is what are the questions that they are asking to solve problems that they have? And then what are the lifestyles that they are trying to lead and how can you enable and inspire those lifestyles? And those are kind of the questions that I would pose to e-commerce marketers, e-commerce content marketers, and the content marketers on our team,
Gen Furukawa: [00:35:43] Yeah, and I mean, really even marketers as a whole,
Fynn Glover: [00:35:47] marketers as a whole. Yeah.
Gen Furukawa: [00:35:48] You just got to, first of all, help people solve their problems, help them become the person they want to be, or reach their goals and actually care. And I think that's a great reminder, but super intuitive as it relates to content.
Fynn Glover: [00:36:00] Well, just one more note on that. I mean, like, if, if you're, if you have a customer service tool or you have somebody focusing on customer service, like they happen to be like the, the like most important goldmine for understanding what you should write. Like organize all the questions that you get at customer support prioritize the most important based on the highest frequency, and create content around those questions, then move into the, the entertainment layer and like what would be compelling from a lifestyle standpoint, because that's going to be more top of the funnel.
Gen Furukawa: [00:36:31] Absolutely. I've heard a lot, a similar in terms of Gong. And Gong is a little bit more sales focused, but they're also front lines and hearing what the objection is or, or, or know what works. So yeah. Support and sales. Absolutely. Fynn, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I hope everybody learned a lot.
I was wondering if you could just let people know where we can learn more about you and Matcha.
Fynn Glover: [00:36:55] matches URL is get matcha.com. I am on Twitter, kind of new to Twitter. I mean, I've been on Twitter for a long time, but, I'm kind of starting to use it more. I'm at @fynnglover19. My email address is fynn at getmatcha.com. My name is spelled F Y N N. and Gen, thank you for having me. It's been, it's been really fun. I appreciate it.
Gen Furukawa: [00:37:18] Awesome!