Numbers and Narratives
Numbers and Narratives bridges the gap between the marketing/customer experience and data - come listen to marketing and CX experts talk about how to use data to better engage with your customers and provide a great experience.
Numbers and Narratives
Ep 11: The Persistent Cart Problem - Can We Recover Lost Sales?
Today, we sliced through the digital jungle with Brad Redding of Elevar, uncovering how your data isn't just numbers – it's the storyline of your business.
We dove deep into leveraging server-side tracking for unparalleled reliability, mastering Meta shops for customer acquisition, and the significance of first-party data in a cookie-less world.
Brad gave us the playbook for amping up customer experience with personalized email and SMS, powered by AI that understands your audience better than they know themselves.
Remember, folks, it's not just about being visible; it's about being insightful. So, stay ahead of the game – for any e-commerce entrepreneur, Elevar is your MVP.
Brad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/braddredding/
Elevar: https://www.getelevar.com/
hi, baby syed, I'm sean collins and this is numbers and narratives. Brad, thank you so much for coming on the podcast really really appreciate you taking the time brad, if you could summarize what we talked about in a tweet or a small tweet thread.
Speaker 2:What did we talk about today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we talked about the basics first, versus third party cookies and deprecation of that and what it means. Shortcut means nothing. We also talked about, very quickly, server side versus client side tracking, which is again, I think it's table stakes for most. But then we got into fun stuff with Klaviyo, ai and personalizing email and SMS outreach, getting into Facebook and Instagram shops. Do they perform better than Instagram shops? You might need to tune in to listen to hear my answer.
Speaker 1:Do you mind giving an introduction to who you are, your background and what Alivar is and what you do?
Speaker 3:there. I'll keep it short, but, yeah, thanks for having me, Ibi. Yeah, long and short of it. My background I've been in the startup world for 17 years two different SaaS businesses, all eCommerce for 17 years, LFR most recently. I started about seven and a half years ago.
Speaker 3:So 2017 uh, fully bootstrapped. We serve really that small niche of that sits in between engineers and marketers. So all the world of in the world of tracking, so ensuring that data from a brand's website gets to different destinations that they need that data to go to whether it's meta, clavio, google ads, ga4, etc. And we do that today primarily through server-side tracking. And nations that they need that data to go to whether it's Meta, Klaviyo, Google Ads, GA4, et cetera and we do that today primarily through server-side tracking and identification techniques.
Speaker 3:And then getting into more audience cohorts, audience one-to-one personalization as we really get past what I think now is table stakes of can you send 100% of conversions to Google or Facebook? Yes, that was table stakes for us two years ago. Now. Can we enhance ROI by recognizing more returning users, to boost abandoned browse flows, things of that nature, through Klaviyo, Attentive, et cetera. Again, to me, that's table stakes. So now we're getting that world of where AI is going to really be driving us into a new frontier. So that's yeah. That's myself and Elevar. In a nutshell, Happy to you know. Peel that onion back any further if you want.
Speaker 2:And I'll just say, when I was at a barrel and primarily Shopify agency, elevar was like a mandatory app for every client that came on, like that was part of our onboarding process, was we're going to integrate L of R? Um and so that's how. How you know, I actually met Brad a few years back. Uh, you know he was. I don't know if he was doing this for everyone or if I just found his email address and abused it, but I emailed him anytime I had a question and he was quick to hop on and help me troubleshoot, and it was great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, email's always open. Yeah, I still get in support these days as well and help out where needed. So, yeah, I think, as a founder, that's how you keep your ears close to the ground and understanding what are the pain points, what questions do partners or customers have? So I think it's a really critical skill, whether you're a SaaS business or you're an e-com business, and I know many of our customers, many of the founders they do the same thing. They want to talk to customers that are buying, and talk to their VIPs and use that information to again ideate on different marketing techniques and product changes, et cetera.
Speaker 2:So that's probably the perfect spot to start the pain points and the questions and kind of where people most acutely need L of R support, like when, when new brands are coming in and installing L of R and getting set up, uh, what are the biggest pain points that you're solving? And like, why, why are they struggling so much with with it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a loaded question, so I'll try not to go on a too too long of a monologue here. It's the the world that we live in. It's where we have to be somewhat of a chameleon of. Every year we need to change our colors a little bit. So four years ago, you know, sean, when you and I were working together back then it was just hey, my tracking's broken, these JavaScripts are conflicting and my conversion information's not getting to Google ads. So how can we do that? It's like, okay, just use a data layer and use Google Tag Manager and that'll get everything cleaned up. And then it transitioned into I have what I call the Viore report. There was a spreadsheet that Jamie, years ago, she said and this was very common, a lot of brands were doing this. Where they'd have column a would be facebook, google, tiktok, snapchat, and then column bc, though through x, would be page views, product views, add to cart. They'd be measuring and pulling out information of okay, google says a thousand, add to carts and facebook says 800, and again, that's more into the okay.
Speaker 3:How do you ensure that each channel is getting the same event data that transitions into that world of server-side tracking? Again, just to keep it brief today, the biggest challenges that we are seeing and hearing are consent, privacy, attribution with cookies. There's the headlines that are out there that cookies are being deprecated and going away and what's that going to do to attribution, but most of that's clickbait. It's really different. It's first party versus third party cookies. Third party cookies, which Chrome is deprecating this year. Safari deprecated those, I think four years ago in 2020 with ITP.
Speaker 3:So that's kind of like the world that we live in. It's just people are. There's a bigger focus on profitability, finding new customers profitable, what channel is going to drive that, what's going to have the highest return and what mix the brands need to use. So that's really the world that we live in. It's just ensuring that every platform that they are using is reporting most as accurate as it can and, more importantly, it's operating the most efficient that it can. So again, that's again gets into the identification and server side tracking world.
Speaker 2:And then just to ask the very basic follow-up that I think you'll need to understand for the rest of this conversation server side tracking what is it and why is it different than client side tracking, and why is that important?
Speaker 3:Yeah, client side tracking is. Picture you get a, you're installing a new vendor, they give you a PDF. They say, hey, copy the script and pasted that you know, as close to the top of your opening head and your themeliquid as possible. That enables what's called called client-side tracking. It's a tag or a script or a pixel. The nomenclature can be confusing. Server-side tracking is. This is where there's a little bit of a nuance here.
Speaker 3:So some solutions out there, including some of what we do at Elevar is you use a quote-unquote client, which is the browser, so you do client-side data collection but server-side processing. So you still collect the page view from the browser, but you are sending that event outside the browser. So, from LLBAR servers to Facebook copy servers, server-side. The next layer to that is actually server-side data collection and server-side processing, which is also what LLBAR does. So it takes everything out of the browser.
Speaker 3:So this is where you get into webhooks and other integrations that platforms like Shopify offer, where you are ingesting data from the host server, which Shopify is the host server for everybody that's on Shopify. You ingest that data and then you route that to platforms and you have to manipulate it. It's not as easy as you just ingest that data and just send it that way because it's going to miss attribution, information, cookies, things of that nature. So there are some nuances there, but in general, client side is just browser, so you're susceptible to ad blockers, consent issues, bugs, delays. Server-side is get outside the browser, so that's what allows us to, in the L of our world guarantee we can send 100% of conversions because we're collecting that data through server-side processing or server-side data collection and server-side processing.
Speaker 1:Got it and just to keep on this train, actually just because it's interesting. I've seen quite a lot of discourse on e-com Twitter, on marketing Twitter, about folks freaking out about the fact that Chrome is deprecating this, moving to server side quickly. For someone like me or someone that doesn't know as much about this info, why that matters so much, why people are freaking out and why they might not need to because of the advent of server-side tracking.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I will start with asking you guys what percentage of traffic across brands that potentially you work with, what percent? What percentage of their traffic do you think comes from safari on a desktop or mobile iphone?
Speaker 2:I would think a significant amount comes on safari mobile.
Speaker 3:I would think a pretty low amount on safari desktop yeah, but in combination greater than or less than 50 in combination.
Speaker 1:Less than, because I just assume that mobile, safari, safari mobile and safari desktop. You've got other browsers on. You've got other browsers on mobile too. So maybe slightly less than, but close to yeah, it sounds like it might be more than, though yeah, yeah, I'll send you up there to say more of them, but that didn't work.
Speaker 3:But, yeah, in general it. So what that means. I mentioned this a minute ago Apple, or WebKit, was already blocking third-party cookies and the cross-site reading or just the cross-site scripting that they were doing. It's been that way for Anyway, listening, don't quote me on this but it's been a long time. It was like four or five years, I can't remember exactly. I think it was 2020.
Speaker 1:So the iOS 14 update that they did that with it was before it was before I was 14.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so what? The reason why I'm saying that is, all of majority of your traffic has already been acting in the same way that Google is. Now Chrome is rolling out. When they deprecate in 2025 or whatever the final date is, it seems to move around a little bit, so nobody really talked about it, nobody noticed it, and that's my. Our opinion. That's going to be the same. So the what it actually is.
Speaker 3:Let's say, you go to Cuts Clothing and you're looking at t-shirts and they have all their trackers on the site. And then you go to Cuts Clothing and you're looking at t-shirts and they have all their trackers on the site. And then you go to the Weather Channel or you go to CNN or any other site that has some sort of dynamic ad, so they have banner ads that are flashing everywhere. If you are in a browser where third-party cookies are not blocked, then what used to happen is you would go to the weather channel and you'd see all cuts clothing remarketing ads or any other site that you visited. Excuse me, now, with google going away and again it was already happened that way in safari is that very narrow, specific use case is no longer going to happen. Now that doesn't mean remarketing is dead. It just means that specific type of display remarketing isn't going to be the same way that it used, doesn't function the same way.
Speaker 3:And if you're listening, you can go test this yourself. Pull up Safari and pull up Chrome, go to your favorite website or favorite websites. Go browse around, add a few things to cart and then go to Weather Channel or CNN or any of these other sites that you know have dynamic remarketing ads and just see the difference. You will see different ads serve to you and that's what you see in Safari today, is what you'll end up seeing in Chrome. But I think for most today that type of display remarketing is such a low percentage of overall revenue. There's different ways to combat that anyways overall revenue.
Speaker 2:There's different ways to combat that, anyways, and so do you think, is the, for, let's say, there's a marketer who is passionate about display ads for, for whatever reason, they really love, um a click through rate below 0.2% and really think that, uh, no, last click conversions is a great, great way to spend their money. Um, click conversions is a great, great way to spend their money. Um, is the solution, then, as as chrome goes to deprecate this, that they just need to um build custom audiences through a different mechanism, and then everything will still function as is sort of.
Speaker 3:So you'll. With google specifically, they have been making a pretty large push for their what they call their enhanced conversions, which is sending a lead. So it can be, anytime you collect an email and you trigger a conversion event is sending that to Google with an email address. Google has YouTube and Gmail and we're all using some sort of Google products, so they have a lot of direct accessibility to identifying a user, as well as their modeling, which has advanced quite a bit, and then that that could be the way that they are going to. Okay, they don't really care about the cookie anymore. They're going to use other ways to do their identification and matching back or guessing what that you know the the weather channel browser that they view these specific products. But it's such a my opinion on it. It's such a narrow use case and it's somewhat of an old use case that it's not even worth worrying about for 99 of brands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's it seems like the and this could be completely, um, just just the experience I have had and and so I have no stats to back this up, but it does seem like investment in display ads has withered as brands have focused more on the idea of how do we get profitability, how do we focus on LTV and retention, as opposed to just spend and grow all the time.
Speaker 3:The use cases. I think, if you at least what we see with our customer base larger brands, bigger budgets they want to create surround sound around their brand. So anywhere somebody goes, they want to create that surround sound of someone. They're just there, they're always present. That is where display can come in really handy. Yeah, but if for brands that maybe aren't quite to that scale yet, where it's very much a every dollar matters and every dollar needs to return three, four or five X, that's where you may not just want to just essentially throw money at that, you know, throw money into the wind just for that surround sound impact or surround sound effect. But there's, with display and you have roku and all sorts of different advertising uh mechanisms today that even the this, what I call display, it's changing so rapidly today anyways got it.
Speaker 1:Um, one question, I guess, going back to something that sean just mentioned with you know people switching focus, profitability mattering a bunch of this. You know people switching focus, profitability mattering a bunch of this. You know people moving away from just outright spend what are some strategic shifts that you've seen with clients, that you work with folks that are in your network on ways that they're like strategies that they're using on the ground, tactics and sort of like that. What's that strategic shift been for your customer base?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a great question. Ironically, I've been hearing a little bit more that meta shops so Facebook, instagram shops is crushing for new customer net, new customer acquisition, and these are some big brands. There was one conversation I've had I've had three to five of these combos where you wouldn't really predict that, and one combo was everyone's tripping over their feet trying to figure out how to get TikTok shops to work. But the opportunity right now is meta shops is crushing and that's part of advantage plus and the whole closed wall garden where you can go through. But keep in mind that this also plays into lower price points, more impulsive purchases where you don't need to go do more research. So that's, that's obviously just the asterisk to put there. But that is one one thing that I heard which was a little bit interesting to uh to me just just from, like a user perspective, very crystal clear meta shop Facebook shop, instagram shop.
Speaker 1:It is when you see an ad and you can, you know, swipe up and I can buy a watch or buy a shirt or rise. I'm like scrolling through my feed or scrolling through my like stories.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, so you in Instagram there's actually like a cart now so you can go and access your cart, so you can go see products that you added to cart, and again, that's it's. It's an app, so your cart's not going to quote unquote disappear after a couple days because cookies are lost. So it's it's essentially a persistent cart. Yeah, that's where that's interesting you can tag products and then add them to cart right within the app and then purchase directly within the app it's almost.
Speaker 1:It's almost like it's a completely different like, and I don't know if that's the way you see it, but it seems to me that it's like it's not just a switch within, like meta's advertising, like an advertising strategy that somebody would have on meta, but almost a new channel itself, right like with tiktok shop, with with with meta shop. That that sounds that's super interesting. It's almost like hey, this is a new channel that's been working for us more than hey, we're switching away. Obviously, they're probably reallocating spend, but strategically it's kind of a different thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean Meta is still the number one channel for new customer acquisition. That's where all the spend is going, still the lion's share of the spend. So it's really just a bucket within meta. So you just want to focus I'm not suggesting anyone does this, but with the meta shop. So that's what I'm saying is it is a part of your budget, it's a small part or a large part of driving to the specific campaign, which is the meta shops. Again, where that closed, it's in that walled, closed garden for meta.
Speaker 2:So they're getting all of all the information from customers and with that persistent cart like, is there any ability for clavio to tap into that and so still be triggering abandoned carts and that sort of thing? Or is it walled off enough that it's a meta shop and meta is the only channel that's able to retarget off of that and kind of hone in?
Speaker 3:Yeah, today I'm not aware of an integration that supports that use case.
Speaker 1:That'd be awesome, though, so that means it's just for post-purchase, then, because I assume that it just integrates with Shopify and so when somebody buys their, you get their email, you get their information and it's just like. It's almost like there's no abandoned cart. But you can do retention flows, you can still track. Do you have any info? I'm kind of curious. Someone is more likely, you know. You mentioned that these platforms are a little bit more impulsive than you know. Maybe. I don't know if you call it conventional advertising, conventional acquisition strategies, but do you see a huge, you know, any sort of detriment to LTV, any detriment to retention? Because they're a little bit more like hey, I just saw an ad, so I'm just going to click it and buy it immediately. A little bit more like hey, I just saw an ad, so I'm just going to click it and buy it immediately. A little bit less like thinking time. Does that affect metrics down the line? Anything that you think or anything that you've heard on that front.
Speaker 3:I'm not close enough directly to that whole the LTV, the full customer lifecycle and what that looks like but I think what I have seen is for a few that I have looked at personally. There's very little crossover of you. The customer first acquires on metashops and then they end up buying through the online store after, which was really. It was odd. It was like a weird, weird. I would not have hypothesized that, but anyway. So that was something that's interesting. That goes along the lines of you look at these as their own channels. So just like TikTok shop or Amazon or others, they have their own channels and they're different customers and the customers don't overlap as much as we might think they do in the omni channel sense.
Speaker 2:That is really interesting. I saw a funny meme the other day that was like the most boomer thing about me is I. I say make all my big purchases on a computer, even if I found it on my phone I saw.
Speaker 1:I saw. I saw one this morning that was uh booking ticket. Booking airline tickets online is a big screen activity, not a small screen activity. It's like big screen versus small screen, which I thought was hilarious, hilarious.
Speaker 2:But to your point, when I see an ad on Instagram, if I'm going to shop, I would still go to the Shopify store separately. I would open my Google app and go to Shopify to that store, instead of shopping through the, through the app itself.
Speaker 3:So you have the phone in one hand and then you pull up the laptop and the other, and you're pulling it up just so you can see it, cause your eyesight isn't quite good enough.
Speaker 2:I want to be able to click around. I want to be able to read the descriptions. I want to. I'm going to judge them based on the inner interface I have and the apps they have. You know, I want to. I want to be judgmental for a little while yeah, sean, sean, how do you?
Speaker 1:and actually brad you too, for both of you.
Speaker 1:The thing that I think strikes me here, that I always do, is like if I'm gonna see a brand advertised to me because there's a lot of crap right, like I, I get, I get, I think I looked at a watch recently I was like, oh, like, maybe I'm going to buy a new watch for myself or something, and I just keep getting bombarded with watch ads and some of them look good, but you know, I don't know if these are, you know, amazon drop ship or it's a nice brand that I've never heard of, or if it's something that you know is a bajillion dollars that I can't afford.
Speaker 1:I always just go and look up sentiment, look up information about that brand that I've been served an ad for, but it sounds like folks that are. I keep reading more and more about folks that are in my younger brother's generation. For example, they're not reading Google product reviews. They're listening to influencers on TikTok, on Instagram. They're buying their products, they're doing product research that way, like one of the biggest drivers of New York city restaurants are now influencers and it's just a lot of folks that are seeing it on Tik TOK seeing it on Instagram and then and sort of getting their recommendations that way, I wonder if that's kind of like the generational split, that that that's driving it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm sure that's definitely a big big that plays a big part in certain segments. Uh, I think a few others, just as we're we're prepping for the l of our summit in a couple weeks and some of the panels and talks. And uh, josh from eventus, who they're a customer support service organization and we were just talking more about analytics, so extracting insights out from customers, so voice of customer data, and he still goes back to the simple hey, did you know, if you just have a phone number, a customer support phone number, on your website, that your conversion rate will go up by X? It's proven 90% of the time. So I think, speaking from just personal and maybe some of that testing that I've seen in the past, because back in the day it was a test out run often, I think, going to your point about the drop shipping sites and is it legit, do you trust it or not? Like that we might move more to that.
Speaker 3:The trust factor of okay, we know that we can see people are smarting, are smart enough to realize that the ugGC feeds, those can be easily manipulated. But is there an about us? So can I resonate with a brand? Is there a phone number that I can contact and actually talk to somebody. Are they a real company? So there's probably some of those small things that maybe just go into that trust factor so someone doesn't have to go offsite. And then I think also it'd be like you mentioned, we all know that people are using TikTok as a quote unquote alternative to Google search. So going to TikTok and searching and going to Instagram to search for the product or the brand that they're looking at and just ensuring that you have coverage, there is another trust factor, that's fascinating, I do have to know when you are searching and trying to evaluate products, do you run your own sentiment analysis?
Speaker 1:scraper across these reviews to to find out what's up I now do so we, we recently so brad, just to just to give you an example, like we, we've got like a social listening service so I can like ingest data about different brands from across the internet. One of the recent ones I did was I'm kind of a car geek. I grew up in Nebraska so I got a driver's license really early and that kind of spawned a. I don't know. I'm one of the only people, I think, in New York that drives an old manual transmission vehicle around, and Tesla released a Cybertruck recently and it's know, tesla released a cyber truck recently and it gets like a.
Speaker 1:It's really polarizing right and like the thing that I keep wondering, I don't know. We put this on twitter a couple or twitter and linkedin a couple days ago, but the thing that I was repeatedly wondering was like what do people actually dislike about it? Like what are the bad qualities? Because it gets lost in the noise of like I don't like elon or I don't like Tesla or I don't like EVs, and so, yeah, I've started doing that more. I don't do it for every product because it's like a little, a little bit too high lift, but I'm going to, I think I'm going to. I'm going to. That's one of our. One of the features that I'm going to implement is like making that easier soon.
Speaker 3:So what was the results? On the Cybertruck Honestly a.
Speaker 1:So what was the results on the cyber truck? Honestly, a lot of people, a lot of people are a lot of people, I think, that dislike it. Are conventional truck buyers that are like this is not for me, like this is not, like electric motors are not very good for conventional towing. Um, and I think a lot of it is like this is going to be driven by people who are like doing it for the image, which I also, I guess, understand. Uh, and I guess the third one is like, yeah, I think tesla is like panel gap and build quality issues and people are like, ah, it's gonna fall apart. All the bumpers are gonna like come off and like do something. So those are, I think, the top three, top three reasons do you have a cyber truck?
Speaker 1:that's the other question not me no no no, I, I live in new york. Like I have one tiny old ass car yeah, so yeah nice and it's the only car, uh, on this podcast.
Speaker 2:Um, you know I also live in new york. There is no car here, so everyone who's listening you need to go to this. It. Every, every friend I have who goes every year comes back raving about how incredible uh, alvar, uh, so give us a sneak peek. What's on the docket this year?
Speaker 3:Oh man, we have a wide, a wide range. So the first day we'll have uh three, three or four main sessions and it really stretches the gamut. So we'll have uh Tyler and Brandon from jobby coffee, tyler from bizcap media they're going to gonna do live video ad just going through a framework of what makes just kick-ass video ads that are very long tail. So, tyler, they've been doing rise super food for many years and rise is just there. Yeah, I don't do you. Have you had actually have it right here? I have the mushroom coffee right here. Have you had the rise superfood mushroom coffee?
Speaker 2:no, but this is with. With an endorsement like this, I have to.
Speaker 3:Yes, anyway. So they're going to go through that. Do some. What, what, what they've seen when we have a um an, an session on AI, what we'll be going through a six core functions of an econ business and laddering up so one, one, two, three. So bottom of the ladder will be I'm not doing anything in this function with AI, so what's an easy way to get in and all the way up to the third step of the ladder, which is very advanced.
Speaker 3:So the goal there is to help people walk away with something tangible that they can implement again, depending on where they are in the business. Obviously it's Alibar, so we're going to have the standard future of data collection and data analysis. And then we have on Tuesday we'll be going through some one-to-one personalization techniques with Viori, with Omnichannel, retail store online and future of data activation. It's a good mix of experts and brands, so we're still curating different panels, but again, it's a good mix of experts and brands, and so we're still curating different panels, but again it crosses a pretty wide. It's not just about conversion tracking, because we'd have about two people register. If that's the only thing that we talked about at our LOR summit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that'd be one very nerdy audience base if it was just tracking. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, that's awesome. And so you know, speaking of personalization and AI, I know you plug into Klaviyo and can do tracking there. So, as they've kind of rolled out some of their AI suite, what are you seeing and kind of, what's your take on their tooling and how this is going to change the industry and what brands have to be doing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great, great question. I think it's just taking Elevar and Klaviyo out of it as a like what's Klaviyo going to do? What are we going to do? I think, generally speaking, the market is going to pull better email and SMS marketing out of us, so out of the tech, the tech world.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you all have experienced it where you've bought something, you haven't gotten the shipment yet and you're getting bombarded with email blasts before you've even gotten it and maybe you have a late shipment. So your sentiment you're probably kind of annoyed that you haven't gotten it yet but you're getting marketed to buy this thing that you already bought but it hasn't been shipped to you. And so I think you just email is overloaded where it's just batch and blast and you might be segmented into the 30, 90 day, whatever it is, but you don't last 90 days. You just unsubscribe because you're not ready to buy again, crutch to fall back on. But I truly believe that is going to help power a lot of this, because you can't have, unless you have, a team of 10 people that are only writing personalized emails and building segments and building flows. You can't almost all customer or all brands again e-com or any business for that matter, just can't do that.
Speaker 3:So I do think that's going to get pulled out of the market where I'm marketed to as me.
Speaker 3:So I do think that's going to get pulled out of the market where I'm marketed to as me, as I'm a VIP at Viore and they're going to know I'm a VIP. So the messaging that I get and my email and SMS is going to be very different than what my wife might get or what my friends might get that I've never purchased before. So that to me I think big 30,000 foot view. I think if we're having this talk a year from now, looking back, I do think we're going to look at man, there's been so much progress in the ability to just take those stepping stones of just better personalization through email and SMS just to save the health of your list and not just a get some of your best customers on subscribe because they're ready to theyubscribe, because they know they're going to come back, they don't want to get bombarded every day. But two, also just ensure that you're maximizing the ROI on those new net-to-file customers that maybe have not purchased yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, put another way. We know what these customers want, it's just that we can't talk to them in a neutral level. I think ai, like you, know you give it.
Speaker 1:You know you basically can look at what. What have they bought before? What do people similar to them buy? What kind of content will, you know, resonate with that person? Um, and you know, for every shot on goal you have ie every email that you send like you just have a higher probability of that person yeah, coming back or engaging with that in any regard and that just increases the probability that they're going to do so again in the future yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And one thing specific to to elevar that, now that we have, you know, 700 plus data sets from buxton, which is more in the offline retail world, and movement data is there are the use cases we know if somebody has been to.
Speaker 3:This isn't literal, but actually it is literal. But not literal that Viore is doing this per se, but I'm just using them as a brick and mortar example and because I'm probably one of their best customers. But Viore, we can look at everyone has been coming to their site for the last X number of days and then say, oh, 20% of these have been competitor shopping. They've been in a physical Lululemon store or some other retail location. So that is a red alert, potentially churn risk. So that can inform different marketing strategies. So I think you guys even do a little bit of this, just building better profiles of customers versus just what did they do on site. So as we get into advancing again, blending more of that offline, taking a stick figure first party data and making it 3D with more of that real world data is you can enable more of these like, hey, so your best customers have been in a competitor store the last 30 days.
Speaker 2:Maybe hit them up or give them a vip experience that's really cool because I think, um, you know, omni channel and in retail and integrating retail and digital has been a struggle for for a long time. Um, you mentioned buxton, uh, which, for everyone out there, buxton recently acquired elevar, uh, which is super, super cool and exciting uh, and I think we were talking before the show. So elevar is going to continue to operate pretty independently, um, but you know, when you kind of pair the two of you up, uh, that's like a super charged team, uh, to be able to, to get these insights and to make every, every interaction action yeah, well, before that it all came together when I was getting a download on the data available that they have and they're very historically 30 been around 30 years very focused on brick and mortar retail.
Speaker 3:So warby I guess warby parker is both but the nordstrom racks and american eagles and anthropologies etc. But now thinking like, okay, we can pull, we have access to all this data and to blend it with online digital data, which is where we live, you know just a lot of possibilities. We're uh, just going. Being a data guy, I was like this is amazing. There's a million use cases I can think of that can be beneficial to marketers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, super cool um, okay, well, I think that's probably a a good spot for us to to kind of wrap up, um, before we go, um, I want to say congratulations, uh brett. I know you just recorded your 100th episode of the conversion tracking playbook, uh, thanks, which is is no small feat, uh, and everyone should go listen. We'll put that in the show notes, but that's a really cool podcast that has super actionable insights on how to track things better, how to think about digital analytics a little bit better, so I can't recommend that enough to every marketer out there. Awesome, thank you. Anything you want to plug, or if people want to work with you, how can they get in touch with you to learn more from you? To work with Ele? How can they get in touch with you to learn more from you to work with L of R?
Speaker 3:Yeah, just hit me up on LinkedIn. Brad Redding or brad at get L of Rcom, Happy to help answer any questions. And yeah, LinkedIn is generally anything that's going on in our world. Try to share as much as we can. That's part of our flywheel is sharing everything that we learned with the world. So, whether it's through LinkedIn or podcasts one or two, yeah, just connect with me and happy to help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks so much for coming on, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Brad, that was great man. I so appreciate you coming on and, you know, juggling the scheduling with us. This was so fun.