Increase Your Profits by 30-50% with Existing Traffic Webinar with Blue Stout and Smile.io

Video Transcript

Allen: Okay. We are live. So let’s give everybody just maybe 30 seconds to kind of get settled and sort of start signing in so we don’t start too soon for everybody else. Jenna, Elaine, how are you guys doing? Happy Wednesday.

Jenna: Happy Wednesday. I’m doing very well. I’ve got some cold brew and some water, so I’m ready to listen to today’s presentation.

Allen: Yeah, I know. I’m highly caffeinated. So this should[laughter]– you guys will have to slow me down if I’m going too fast [laughter]. I can see we’ve got a crew of people starting to sign in right now, so we’re starting to tick up here a little bit. I’ll give everybody another minute. To everybody who’s just signing in right now, we’re giving everybody just 30 seconds to a minute to get settled. And then we’re going to dive into the content here in just a second.

Jenna: Hey, Allen, if it’s okay, I’ll reach out to everybody on chat to see if– oh, Michael says wine is the preferred beverage here [laughter]. Well, Michael, I’m not sure what time zone you’re on, but Eastern time, it’s 1:00 PM. I guess maybe we could swing some wine [laughter] right now.

Allen: 10:00 AM Pacific time. Michael, send some of that wine over here.

Jenna: But I’ll go ahead and just type in the chat to see if everybody would mind sharing where you guys are joining us from today while we’re waiting on everybody to join.

Allen: Absolutely. Yeah. Would love to know where everybody’s signing in from.
[silence]

Allen: North Carolina.

Jenna: Wine sounds good here in North Carolina. All right. Austin, Texas. Howdy, Josh from Austin. We have offices there.

Allen: Look at this. Bend, Oregon. Did I somebody from Bend? I love Bend.

Jenna: Nice. Looking good.

Elaine: Hey, Quebec City. Love it.

Jenna: Yeah. We need to get some– Elaine, you’re in Canada, correct?

Elaine: Yes. Yeah. Any Canadian love out there, I’m just searching for it.

Jenna: Just shout it out. Americano is a must, says [Ronna?]. All right, [Ronna?]. I like you. You must like the real kind of coffee [laughter].

Allen: Jen is a coffee nerd.

Jenna: Yes [laughter]. I try not to mention it too much.

Allen: All right. All right. Well, I think we’re good. I think we’ve got people signing in. So I think let’s go and dive in if you guys are ready. And guys, while we’re doing this, I want to just throw this out there to everybody. First off, if you’re just showing up or if you– we’re definitely going to be doing a replay of this. So no matter what, we’ll be sending out– [blue style?] will be sending out an email after the presentation with a recording of this. So if you feel like you’re missing something or if there’s a– we’re going be talking about a ton of content, so don’t worry. Don’t worry about taking too many notes on this, because there will be a replay that you can you can re-watch. And then also, we’re going to keep this really casual. We’ve got about 30 minutes of really good content that we’re going to dig into here that’s very tactical. And then after that, we’re going to do a Q and A. So 30 minutes. If you want to take notes, take some notes. Pay attention. And then any questions you have, feel free just to throw them into the chat box over here on the right-hand side at any point. And we’ll just address them either as we go if we have time or we’ll address them– make sure we address them during the Q and A at the very end.

Allen: But with that, I think we’ll go ahead and get things started. So, actually, we’ll go just go ahead and let’s open it up first, right? So just to make sure everybody knows where they are, today we’re going to be talking about increasing profit margins. Specifically, we’re going to be breaking down three very specific tactics for improving profits. And by doing so, the whole emphasis on this is how to improve profits by focusing on your current traffic and your current customers. And we’ll talk about in just a minute why that’s really important, to focus in on current traffic and current customers here in just a second. Okay. So who is this for? Just to make sure everybody here is in the right place. So if you sell physical products online and you sell digital products online, any sort of e-commerce, this is going to be for you. So if you run an agency, if you’re doing sales, probably not going to be the most effective. Because we’re gonna be talking very specifically about e-commerce strategies. So if you’re on a platform like Shopify or Shopify Plus, we’re going to be talking about some very specific things that integrates specifically into Shopify Plus. So if you’re a founder, e-commerce manager, or anything like that, then you’re absolutely in the right place and this is going be really, really relevant for you.

Allen: So, next 30 minutes. What are we going to be talking about? Specifically, we’re going to be talking about profit margins and how to increase those profit margins on your store by focusing on your current customers, products, and traffic. That’s our overall goal here. All about profit. And as a part of that, we’re going to speaking a little bit about some high-level strategies. But even more so, especially Jenna and Elaine today, are going to be giving you guys really specific tactics that you can literally start implementing today. So this isn’t going to be some lofty, high-level presentation. We’re going to be giving you tactics that you can literally take away and start applying to your store right away and start seeing more sales, more profits, than what you’re currently doing. And because we’re focusing on profits, everything we’re talking about today is going to be based money on cash flow. Anything we talk about with regard to profit– one of the biggest benefits of profit is going to be instantaneous cash flow generation, ideally over the next 60 days.

Allen: And the very end, we’re also going to give you– if you stick around to the end, we’re going to show you guys a way to get some access to some free one-on-one help so that– as opposed to just sort of hearing the tactics and the content we’re talking about today, you can actually get some help applying those tactics to your specific business, completely free. So make sure you stick around and we’ll show you guys how to get access to that. In addition to that free one-on-one help, we’ve also got some really good giveaways that are coming from our partners here, Justuno and Smile.io. Blue Stout, we’re going to give you guys a copy of our highest converting pre-purchase funnel. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that later. But it’s literally the exact roadmap that we give to our clients for increasing their conversion rates. Smile is going to be giving you guys one of their top performance or community building one-on-one PDF guides. And we’ll talk about that later, as well. Jenna, I know you guys have something we’ll be talking about a little bit later. But it’s going to be discount access to Justuno, which is incredibly powerful. And we’ll give you guys access that if you stick around to the very end. And then, as I mentioned, we’re going to give you guys an opportunity to have a one-on-one access with an expert to actually understand what you’re doing with your site currently and how you can start to apply the tactics we’re talking about today to your specific business. So just make sure you stick around to the very end and we’ll show you guys how to get access to those.

Allen: Here we go. Okay. Wasn’t changing slides. There we go. Okay. So let’s actually dive in here, guys. So the reason why we put together this presentation is because we’ve been seeing, on our end, a really big shift that’s been starting to happen in the market. And I guarantee every single one of you, if you run– if you’re a merchant and you run an online store, you’re seeing the exact same thing happening. And what you’re seeing is, there’s a larger demand for digital advertising going up. You’re seeing things like influencer campaigns get really oversaturated. Amazon is starting to overtake private label markets. And because of platforms like Shopify, how incredible they are– the downside, though, is that now barriers to your competition are becoming lower and lower. And this is all affecting your marketing and your ad spend. And the downside is, as this rising demand is occurring, higher cost is starting to eat into your profits. Right? So, things like your return on ad spend is probably going down. The amount you’re spending on something like a Facebook ad campaign is starting to go up. So all of your marketing and advertising budgets and your allocations are starting to eat away at your profits. And so what we want to talk about today is where we find most stores tend to focus heavily on, okay, how do I increase more traffic? SEO. How do I drive more traffic from influencer campaigns? How do I drive more traffic from Facebook advertising? Very traffic focused. What we want to do today is give you guys some opportunities to look at the other side of the coin and find ways to leverage the other tools you have in your shed to increase profits beyond just looking at how do you drive more customers to your store.

Allen: So the good news is that you have these other options and that e-commerce itself isn’t just all about your store and driving traffic to it. But there’s actually three full other levers beyond just traffic that you can be utilizing to increase revenue and ultimately, increase profits. And that’s your conversion rates, your average order value, and your repeat purchase rate. This is e-commerce. The entire revenue equation boils down to traffic times your conversion rate times your average order value. That equals revenue. And then factoring in a repeat purchase rate, the boost retention, and customer lifetime value. So what we’re going to be doing today, very specifically, is showing you how to increase your conversion, how to increase your average order value, and how to increase that repeat purchase rate. And that’s what we’re going to break down with you guys today.

Allen: So real quick, just so you guys have a frame of reference of who’s actually giving the presentation, my name’s Albert. I run Blue Stout. Blue Stout is a leading e-commerce consulting and development firm. And we focus specifically on helping stores increase their conversion rates and average order value and repeat purchase rates from their current traffic and current customers. So this is exactly what we do every day for all of our clients. Jenna, you want to talk a little bit about what you do?

Jenna: Yeah. Sure. Hey, guys. Jenna here. If you are just a customer, you have seen me and know me and know what I do. But if you don’t, Justuno, you guys may know us as a really great pop-up solution, which is awesome. We love it. We love that you know us like that. But we’re actually really a lot more robust than that. And I’m excited because today I’m going to show you how Justuno can play into other parts of your funnel outside of just lead acquisition and that really awesome pop-up that you may know us. So thanks for joining. I’m excited.

Elaine: And I’ll jump in here. I am with Smile.io. So some of you may know us as Smile.io, or possibly as Sweet Tooth, as we were known way back in the day. And we are a rewards and loyalty platform for any online business. So we help any businesses who are predominantly selling online create very robust and on-brand white label loyalty programs including points or referrals or VIP. And we’re going to touch on a few of those. And I’m super excited to chat with these guys today and to chat with you guys. We’re going to be focusing on that sort of end retention part of the funnel.

Allen: Yeah. And Elaine and I were talking before, early this week, about some of the stuff she’s going to be talking about today. And there’s literally some things that I had never even seen before. And so I highly recommend, if you guys have not spent time thinking about retention– retention is probably one of the most powerful elements in your business. We like to say you’re not just in the business of making sales. You’re in the business of making reorders. And what she’s going to be talking about specifically is going to drive an increase in your reorder rate, which is ultimately going to increase profits. So it’s actually the last piece we talk about. So make sure you absolutely stick around to understand and learn more about some tactics you can use to improve retention.

Allen: Okay. So let’s actually dive into the meat of this here now. So we’ve actually structured this as what we call our three best practices. That way, you guys have some structure around thinking through what you can start to apply in your business. So let’s go ahead and dive into the first one. So the very first best practice we’re going to be talking about and really the shift you need to be making in the strategy and what you think about conversion and sales and your site is this. Stop focusing too much on converting a visitor into a sale. And I know that sounds very counterintuitive. But here’s why. I guarantee– and you can sort of ask yourself, does this sound like you? But I guarantee that a lot of you have this conversation with yourself on a monthly or weekly even daily basis. Right? You sit down you think, okay. We had a thousand visitors today but only 1% of them purchased. Or only 2% of them purchased. Or our return on ad spend goal for September is 250%. Or no, we only saw a 2.5x return on our ad spend back in August. And the problem with this sort of mindset is thinking of it a little too linearly. Whereas you think for every person that comes to the site, they need to convert immediately into a sale. You think very transactionally. And the problem is that this is limiting your opportunity down the road by thinking that every person that comes needs to immediately buy. And the reality is that over 95% of your site visitors are not going to buy on that first visit. And so it becomes incredibly important to stop thinking about this process as a singular sale and a singular transaction. And it’s much more important to start thinking about it as an opportunity to build a relationship. So that person may not buy in the first visit, but they’ll come back and they’ll buy on the second and third visit. And after their first purchase, they’re going to come back and buy again and again.

Allen: So when we look at site design, we like to think about how do we build relationships. And the way to think about this is, think about it just like you would a typical, physical store. Right? Imagine walking into a physical store and a sales rep walks up to you and this is the conversation, right? Welcome to the store. It’s 25% off everything. Right? Are you ready to buy something? How about now? Right? If you had a sales rep that just continually came at you trying to force an initial purchase on your very first visit, how is that going to affect your opinion of what that experience is like? And we call this, essentially, a sales-led company. And so what a lot of you guys are doing is focusing on trying to get that visitor who shows up for the very first time to buy something immediately. And you’re thinking that they should. And you’re thinking that your ads should drive that immediate sale. And the reality is, that’s just not how we as humans buy product. So what we like to do is stop the sales-led company.

Allen: So let’s talk a little bit about what you should be doing instead of sales-led company. And the quote we always like to give is, you don’t ask for marriage on the first date. Right? The idea here is you need to be building a relationship with your customer before you actually ask for that purchase. So how do you do this? Anybody who’s really spent some time focusing or studying marketing understands that on average– and you guys see this all the time just with your own purchases. But on average, customers require anywhere from 5 to 15 touch points or experiences with your brand before they’re ready to buy. So what this means is that there’s a very small percentage of the people who are coming to your store that are even going to consider buying on that very first visit. Because they don’t know yet. They don’t trust you yet. Right? They don’t know the difference between you and a team in a garage in Bangladesh trying to sell sort of fake product online. Right? There is no sense of trust. So your job with your traffic and your customers is to nurture them to the point to where they trust you and then they buy from you. And ultimately, this is what’s going to help improve your conversion rates on your site, is by building in systems that nurture and manufacture these touch points with your customers. So this is how we go through that process. Instead of thinking about your site as just a landing place that sells product that somebody needs to come to and buy immediately from, we like to think of them as purchase funnels. It’s a process that you take your customer through that gets them to buy at the very end and then ultimately gets them to come back and buy again. And so we won’t go into this in detail right now because this is something that Jenna and Elaine are also going to be touching on when we look at how do you actually convert and retain. But I’ll touch on it at a high level because it frames it up really well.

Allen: So the steps that your customer needs to come through are very simple. They need to show up and they need to have a very clear message to [market?]. Meaning [inaudible] what you do, why you do it, and they need to [inaudible] messaging. And making sure that messaging is spot on. Worked with a client last summer who had their messaging off. And after dialing their messaging in, they went from a 0.5% conversion rate – a half a percentage point – all the way up to 3% in eight weeks just by updating their messaging. So the messaging is probably the most important thing you can focus on to start.

Allen: Then after that, we like to focus on what we call acquisition and nurture. And this is what I’m going to touch on here right now and then Jenna’s going to talk to you about as well. But this is where you start to manufacture those touch points. So if you know that 95 plus percent of your traffic is not going to buy from you on that first visit, that means your goal is to find other opportunities to get them to opt in, either via email or social, so that you can nurture them to the point of being ready to buy. So you can send them emails. So you can have your brand pop up in their Instagram feed. That way you can manufacture those 5 to 15 touch points you need to ultimately get them comfortable and ultimately get them to convert.

Allen: And then the last two pieces here are really conversion. This is all about understanding how to design product pages and checkout pages. But the most important piece, in my opinion, is actually all about retention. Because once you get somebody to buy – even if you convert that user, let’s say it’s a break even – then your job is to get them to come back and buy again and reorder again, again, and again. And there’s a lot of ways to do this by doing upsells and cross-sells, driving subscription programs, and ultimately, by driving loyalty programs. And that’s what we’re going to talk about with Elaine here in a few minutes. So let’s talk about how do you manufacture these touch points with your customer. And we’ll actually skip over this messaging piece here in a second. We’ll come back to it. But this is something that I don’t see enough brands doing. And I think it’s a massive missed opportunity. And what we call this is multi-tiered nurture. And the whole concept around this is, you need to manufacture or you want to build touch points with your brand to get them comfortable to the point where they’re going to buy from you. So as opposed to them just coming to the site once and expecting them to buy. Instead, we want them to come to the site once, browse around, connect with your messaging, opt in to email, opt in to social, and also fire one of your ad retargeting pixels. And what this allows us to do, as opposed to just having that singular touch point with your brand on that very first experience, that very first time they came to visit, we actually get to layer on top of it three different tiers. So that over the span of one to three weeks, as opposed to just coming to your site once, this person now is going to get a series of automated emails through an automated email flow. They’re going to see your social posts anywhere from one to five or six times. They’re going to see retargeting ads.

Allen: So over the span of one to three weeks, you’ve literally manufactured in front of them 5 to 15 touch points with your brand. Which means that they are going to be 10x more likely to convert on that next experience they have with you than the person who only came to the site once. And this is one of the most powerful tools we’ve seen for improving conversion rates for brands. And the math on it is very simple. If you can get 10% of your site audience to opt into email– and Jenna’s going to show you how to do that in a minute. If you can get 10% of your site audience to opt in and then over time you can get 10% of that audience to convert through your other tiers or through email, you can literally add a full percentage point to your conversion rate just by doing nurturing correctly. So if you’re converting at 1%, this would literally double your conversion rate. If you’re converting a 2%, this would grow your conversion rate by 50%. And it’s it’s really, really powerful stuff. But you’ve got to get them to opt in and you’ve got to have the right email nurture sequence behind it. And that’s very dependent upon your brand. The power of this is all around focusing on conversion rates. And a lot of people talk about A/B testing, button colors, and things like that to improve conversions. And yes, some of that does improve, at a micro level, the conversion rate. But you’re not going to double your conversion rate by A/B testing a button color. Right? The most powerful things you can do to drive conversions are going to be at the very top of your funnel. And it’s going to be site messaging and nailing your site messaging. And it’s then going to be building in automatic sequences and systems that nurture that customer so that you build those touch points and they feel comfortable buying from you. And this is going to increase conversion rates. And increasing conversion rates makes your advertising dollars more powerful and more profitable. Because if you’re converting people at twice the rate but keeping the same ad spend, you’re literally doubling your return on ad spend. So if you think your ROAS isn’t profitable or not profitable enough, it’s probably not the ads. It’s probably your conversion rate. And this is the first place you should be making those changes.

Allen: And the last point I’ll make here, and then I’ll hand it over to Jenna, is profits– so conversion rates is a multiplier for profits. So if all you do is drive more traffic into a site that’s converting the same, your only growth is going to be linear. It’s going to be the green line. On the profit side. But if you drive more traffic into a site as you continually improve your conversion rates, that profit growth becomes exponential. And so if you want to see exponential growth in sales and exponential growth in your profit margins, focusing on conversion rates is the very first place to place your focus.

Jenna: Yeah.

Allen: Jenna. Jump on in.

Jenna: That sounds good. I’ll take it from here. Thanks for that setup, Allen. I think it seems from the chat that this is resonating with everyone. I see a lot of comments like, “Hey, that’s me. I’m spending a lot of money on ads.” So hopefully, you guys can take away something from today’s presentation. What I’m going to get into it is– am I able to change the slide? Did you guys see that slide change?

Allen: Yep. You’re good.

Jenna: Okay. Sorry. I think there’s a little bit of lag. What I’m going to talk about today is converting your existing traffic. So Allen already talked a little bit about this. But basically, you have two channels of traffic coming into your site. You have organic or you have paid. And a lot of you have said, “Hey, I’m already running paid.” And a lot of you have maybe some high ranking articles or just a good source of organic traffic. So there are three ways that you can drive traffic. Sorry. There are three ways that you can convert your existing traffic. So those three things I’m going to focus on are your new visitor offer, which is going to kind of loop back to Allen’s acquire step of the funnel. The second is going to be mirror off-site messaging on-site. And for those of you who have attended a Justuno webinar recently, you already know what I’m talking about there. But that’s going to be in the nurture step. And then we’re going to look at abandoned cart, which is where you can convert some people. So if you guys want to share up in the chat if you are using any of these offers, let me know. Because if you are currently using them– looks like we do have some Justuno users here. Hey, guys. If you are using any of these offers, let me know, and maybe we can look at optimization.

Jenna: So these first two examples are going to be examples of new visitor offers. The one on the left you see is offering free shipping just for submitting your email address. This works pretty well. I don’t know if anyone can give some insight if they’re running a free shipping article. Stacey says, “I am.” But maybe she’s not mentioning free shipping. Just curious. The second offer that you see here on the right is an example of a new visitor offer that converts really, really well. And Allen, I would love to hear more from you about this. But this is actually from a mutual client. So they’re running a giveaway for a free watch. And I believe this is from [Purlay?]. Correct, Allen?

Allen: Yep. Yeah. This is an engagement we helped these guys set up to help improve their email opt-in rates and then ultimately their sales from email afterwards. But this promotion that we set up for these guys and the way that we’ve timed it gets somewhere between a 10 to 15 percent conversion. Meaning 10 to 15 percent of people on their site are opting into this. And that’s a huge number of people that they’re then putting into an automated email sequence that drives sales. And so these guys were able to add almost a hundred thousand dollars in extra revenue per month through email by doing email acquisition and then driving them through automated campaigns and [inaudible]. But it all starts with getting that email with campaigns like this.

Jenna: Yeah. That’s awesome. And we see contests work really, really well for people who are able to do them. So if you’re not able to do them, you might be thinking, okay, what kind of offer can I give without offering a discount? Free shipping is sort of a discount, but you can always take a look at your numbers and see if you can build that in somehow to your margins so that it’s not a huge hit. You can do a free product with purchase. There’s all sorts of ideas. And the next example that I’m going to show you is a really cool idea that I love. But we have this– a client that uses us. They’re actually a bike magazine site, but they do have a section for products. So they sell biking gear. Biking merchandise. And the way that they attract users is that they switch up these guides that they offer on-site. So here, I’ve shown– the one on the left is the urban cycling guide, so for people who are in larger cities that might be interested in this. The other one curious about cargo bikes. And they target these on specific landing pages. But this is a really easy way to just throw together some knowledge that you already have into a PDF, a multi-page PDF, and have people download it. And that way, you already have their email address. Depending on your targeting rules, you might know what URL they visited on and what they might be interested in, so you could segment even further if that makes sense.

Jenna: Nicola says, “I find that free shipping is not a differentiator, as most people offer free shipping.” Good point, Nicola. And I see that you say you also offer 15% off. A good A/B test you could do is A/B testing between percentage off and dollar amount off. So that could be something you could look into to see if you find different results.

Jenna: Okay. Moving on, the next point I wanted to touch on was mirroring your email messaging. So here I just kind of made a simple graphic of how you guys can coordinate your messaging in your emails to translate on-site. So the top portion here shows what we call an uno bar. I think we’re moving away from that terminology. But a bar on your site that can pull the code that you use in your email. And I will drop a link for that here shortly in the chat. But what I wanted to make sure that you guys know is that inside Justuno, if you can see my targeting rules here– if you are building an email, you spent all this time crafting the copy and the messaging – like Alan said, really dialing things in – then it makes sense for you to show that messaging once this person clicks through. Now when that person does click through, you want to make sure that in your targeting roles, that you want to show from sources email. And then, Justuno, we have the ability to just select email and that will do a default. Or you can get even more specific if you have multiple campaigns going out and you can put in your UTM parameters here. So the same thing goes for paid ads. A lot of you are saying, “Hey, I’m not getting return on my ad spend. All these people are coming to site, but nobody’s buying.” Well, wouldn’t it be great if you could mirror whatever message that you have in your ad on-site so that people have a seamless experience? And Allen, I’m sure, since you guys such specialize in UX, you can talk more about how powerful, really, a seamless shopping UX is. But in my opinion, making sure messaging coordinates from off-site – which could be email or ad – on-site is a huge optimization that you can make to maybe see some more return on your efforts there.

Allen: Yeah. Absolutely. We call it staying congruent with your messaging. And it keeps your customer engaged throughout that entire funnel. So absolutely, you’re spot on.

Jenna: And so here, guys, in this example, if you can see my targeting roles for ads. I’ve just selected Facebook as an example, but you can also place in your UTM parameters, meaning Justuno will recognize those UTMs. So whatever campaign you’re running, we will show the message only to that UTM so you can easily reflect whatever messaging you’re sending in various channels.

Jenna: The last piece I wanted to touch on– I’m going to touch on rewards here in a second. But before we get to that, I want to talk about cart abandonment. And I know this is a really, really popular offer. It is the number two offer we recommend setting up here at Justuno. Number one would be your new visitors so that you capture any existing traffic. But number two is cart abandonment so that you can reduce the time between a user converting from a cart abandonment email, for example. Don’t get me wrong. Those still have their place. But if you can capture them actually before they leave site, it’s making the best of what is otherwise a lost opportunity. So here, again, on the left I have an example from a mutual client between Blue Stout and Justuno. This [Purely?] company. And Allen, I believe– let me see. I think I pulled some numbers on this one. Yeah. It looks like their card exit intent is converting at almost 56%. I believe it was like 55.8. And that’s actual sales conversions, guys. That’s not just–

Allen: Sales. It is sales.

Jenna: Yeah. That’s not engagement or anything. So, Allen, I don’t know if you want to add anything to that, but this offer is killing it. The only other thing I would point out about it – sorry – is just that you guys did a really smart job with the choice on the button here. So we suggest– an easy optimization you guys can make in your offers is to use an action word. So here, how they have activate my code is– seems simple, but it’s super powerful. That activation word right there can really, really push people to buy. It’s weird, but it works. So, Allen, go ahead and add what you like there.

Allen: So there’s two points I’ll make, is that– the pop-up isn’t pretty, right? There’s nothing special about this in terms of design, right? But the two things that make it powerful, right, the copy. And I think a lot of people downplay copy and messaging throughout their e-commerce funnel and it’s one of the most important pieces. And we can talk about more of that in QA if you’d like. But the other most important piece about this is segmentations. And I think a lot of people think of Justuno as just a tool that allows pop-ups. But the ability to create really advanced targeting and rules through the system, especially on Shopify Plus and on Shopify, is where– I mean, that’s the money maker. And being able to trigger exit intents based upon the amount of value that somebody has in their cart. So if somebody has $10 in their cart versus $100 in their cart, we can trigger very different exit intents and what they see. Things that are more relevant to what they’ve added. Discounts that might be more relevant to the value that they provide. Right? So a lot of this comes down to not just saying, “Hey, let’s throw a bunch of exit intents on our site.” But understanding at what point do you need a specific exit intent? And that’s going to convert somebody. And one of the reasons why this does so well is that we’re triggering it at the right time.

Jenna: Yeah. And that’s where targeting rules really come into play. We have a couple questions about this. I don’t want to get fully off-topic, but Debbie says, “What site is that pop-up on? Debbie, I’ll drop the URL here. Someone else asked, “Is that a pop-up or an email alone?” [Alone?] or Allen. Sorry if I’m butchering your name. This is actually an exit intent pop-up on the cart. So Justuno has a very powerful ability with Shopify to show dynamic offers based on what people add to their cart. If you guys are interested more in that, I will drop a link right now in the chat so you can read up about it. But it will really help you craft something like you see before. So once people click this, yes, activate my code, they’ll see a code on the next screen that potentially has a countdown time or some type of urgency encouraging them to use it. But check the link I dropped and you guys can learn more about it.

Jenna: The second example I wanted to show here is from SwingSetMall. They’re a Justuno client. Our professional services team recently designed this offer for them for two reasons. One, they were having a huge headache because people were checking out without items they needed to actually complete their setup. So it’s kind of turning into– a lot of purchases were turning into a support– increase in support cases, we’ll say. The second purpose that this serves is that they’re able to use this as an upsell offer, as well. So when somebody is exiting or checking out on their cart page, this pop-up will show and say, “Hey, do you have everything you need?” And maybe they don’t. But the point is, is that they can click through from each of these things and click to those specific product pages and add those to cart. We can answer more questions later. I see a lot of questions popping up. Guys, feel free to add those toward the end. I don’t want to take too much time on my examples because I know Elaine has a lot to offer. So this part, actually, will transition into Elaine’s presentation. But for those of you who are Justuno users– and I was super surprised at the beginning of this presentation because one of our clients, Brian, whom I know from other trainings, he mentioned that, hey, he uses both us and Smile.io. So, Elaine, here we have our mutual client. So Brian, pay attention to this section because maybe this kind of stuff can help you.

Jenna: But just like I showed you guys earlier in mirroring your email messaging with the targeting rules, we also have the ability to show– for example, if you are running a rewards program and you want to write an email to your list to incentivize those people to sign up. Well, once they click through to learn more, you can have an offer show up on-site. A pop-up saying, hey, don’t forget. This is what we talked about. Click through to sign up. The way that you can show that offer is to select the email targeting rule and then you can put in your UTM codes. And I’ll drop a support article about this in the chat, guys, so you can refer to it later. But this will ensure that these people are seeing the incentive to sign up, those people that are coming from your email.

Jenna: Now, another question that we might address is, okay, that’s cool. But how do I make sure that I’m showing this only to people who have not created an account, for example? So we can easily do that. I don’t want to get into a full-blown product demo here, but I’m just going to quickly show you. For those of you that are familiar with the Justuno design canvas, this will look familiar. If you’re not, our design canvas is a little bit of a mix between Photoshop and PowerPoint. So it’s pretty user-friendly, but it can get complex if you want it to. So what you would do to set up this call to action for your rewards program is basically just add a CTA layer here and then put in your registration page URL. And then we have the ability to recognize if they are a Smile.io customer or not. You can go to our advanced targeting rules section, which– if you guys want to nerd out, this is the place to do it because there are so many options here. And this is probably what Allen was talking about before with his amazingly converting exit intent offer. I’m sure you guys probably play around in the advanced section a lot. So this has the ability to get super-granular, so I encourage you guys to play around in it.

Jenna: But anyways, back to the point here with rewards. If you just select this custom values and plop in a custom JavaScript value that– currently, we still have it set up to Sweet Tooth, since you guys just rebranded. But that should still work, and you can put that here. If you guys are interested, let me drop this support article in the chat for those of you who are Smile and Justuno users. Visit that article and it’s going to guide you through step-by-step. Cool. So that’s all that I wanted to present for you guys. But basically, when you make the shift in thinking about how you are converting your existing traffic at the first– I talked about the acquire part of your funnel. You’re going to be able to build your database for personalized lead nurturing. And I know right now is the time to be thinking about that. We’re getting into Black Friday, holiday season, and during that time, you don’t want to be building your list. So that should not be the goal. Right now is the time to focus on that up until– here in a few more weeks and then you can stop. So I’d really focus on that.

Jenna: Secondly, when you make this shift, you’re going to be able to boost the money and time you’re investing into email and ads. So all of that time you spend creating your emails and all of the money that you’re spending on your ads can be better spent if you’re reinforcing it on-site with Justuno and your site messaging. And then lastly, you can immediately convert an abandoned cart versus waiting for an abandoned cart email or increase the [AOB?]. And I know on that part, I also touched on having an upsell offer and things like that. So you can absolutely introduce something like that on cart abandonment. But those are the three benefits that you will see once you kind of make that perspective shift. So hopefully, Elaine, that kind of tees it up for you and closing out on the rewards piece. But I’m super interested. Because, like Allen said, you kind of showed us some stuff that neither of us knew. So have at it. I’m excited for you to teach us today.

Elaine: Gosh. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much, Jenna. And thank you, Allen. And yeah, I think– I do really think it’s so important. So, I’m Elaine and I’m with Smile and I’ll be covering sort of the end of this funnel. All about retention and how to keep customers coming back. And that’s going to be sort of all about rewards programs and how you can use that and the different ways that rewards programs work to accomplish that. And at the end of the day, though, I mean, retention marketing is an entire strategy. And having any individual piece is never going to make or break anything, and it’s about how these pieces work together. And so like Jenna said, Justuno and Smile can work together really well. And it’s about finding these technologies that work together and support each other and communicate with each other. Because I’m sure you guys– and Allen’s probably more familiar with this than anybody, working with so many different brands and so many different technologies. But it’s so important for all of the information across these things to communicate with each other so you can get the best out of your conversions and your retention and all that stuff.

Elaine: So I’m going to dive right into it. Because I know that we’re– I want to make sure that– there is a recording. But basically, what I’m going to be talking about here– and it’s the last best practice that we have. It’s all about building brand community through emotional connections. And rewards is one of the best ways that you can do that. And we’re going to walk through why that’s important, how you do it, and a few sort of tips and tricks on how to do that.

Allen: And guys, I’m just going to– I’m going to make sure everybody’s listening. Because this is, I think, maybe one of the most underutilized areas when focusing on revenue growth and profit growth, is what Elaine’s about to talk about. The idea of community building drives sales. It drives sales. This is revenue generating stuff. So, sorry, Elaine. I just wanted to make sure everybody’s paying attention. Because this is so good.

Elaine: No, that’s amazing. And I really appreciate you saying that, too. Our blood is in the same veins. Because really, what we focus on and what we’ll be talking about right now is how to change and transition sort of looking at all of these transactional relationships that we’re encouraging and how to incorporate and turn those into emotional relationships with customers. Because ultimately, that’s going to be a big reason why people come back and continue to shop with you as the same brand. And sustainable growth through community– today’s most profitable businesses are creating sustainable growth through community to retain their customers and create that type of belonging. And so there’s a famous American author, Seth Godin, who said, “People don’t buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories, and magic.” And this couldn’t be more true in today’s global e-commerce climate. Both you and I and everyone – Allen and Jenna, I’m sure – we all have everything that we need to survive, and so we don’t actually need anything. And so, in fact, when we’re buying things, it’s because we want them. And we want them because they make us feel good. And there’s a lot of different positive emotions that we can feel when we purchase something. And there are a lot of different ways to get there. But at the end of the day, it’s your emotions that are driving those purchase decisions and the same is said for your customers. And so we’re going to run through three steps on how to create these emotional bonds for your customers. And so the first one is creating an engaging brand personality. Second one’s fostering those customer relationships, and rewards programs are one of the best ways to do that. And the last is creating switching costs, which are actually– there’s a lot of ways to do this, again. But rewards programs have a lot of elements that create that type of need.

Elaine: And so the first one we’ll start with, creating a brand personality. So why is personality so important for your brand? And this is a little bit high-level, but you’re going to see why this is actually so important for retention. Because just think about your day-to-day life. Who you gravitate towards. Who gravitates towards you. Who’s someone that maybe a lot of people love being around versus someone that you people like being around. The answer is probably personality. Personality is what draws individuals to each other. And it is absolutely no different for a brand and its customers. And personality is going to be what creates your identity. And the first step to letting others identify with you is to have something to identify with. And so one of the biggest reasons that we choose to shop with a brand, or your customers are choosing to shop with you, is the story that you’re telling. And I’m just going to very kind of quickly go through these examples. Ivory Ella is a really great example. These guys are on Shopify Plus, they’re amazing, and they have a really beautiful story that revolves around animal rights. So specifically, saving the elephants. And this is something that they saw a problem with sort of in the early 2010s, I guess you could say. And their whole motto is, good clothes for a good cause. And everyone who shops with them, everyone who’s part of their community, they call their herd, which is really nice and kind of really cozy. And for any purchase that people make, they give 10% off to charitable organizations that help save the elephants. And so I don’t know about you guys, but I love animals. And so this is something that resonates with me. I mean, do you guys, Allen, Jenna, you guys have any pets?

Jenna: I don’t have a pet, but I have a newborn, so it might be the same [laughter].

Elaine: Probably a little bit more [laughter] love and affection there.

Allen: No. But to your point, though, Elaine, we see this all the time. And this goes back to even just very early stage funnel, which is, the brands that tend to convert the best, even on the front end, are the ones that have something that the customer connects with the why. It’s not just what you do. It’s why you do it. And we find that that is– even on the front end of the funnel, has an incredible effect of driving higher conversion rates.

Elaine: Yep. You’re absolutely right. And this is very high in the funnel, and so this first point, is it that sort of in that high spot. And then we’re going to jump to why that’s actually so important for the bottom retention part of the funnel. And you’re totally right, Allen. When there’s a purpose, there’s emotion attached to that purpose. And that’s something that people can identify with. And it’s so important to show your customers what’s important to you. And it doesn’t have to be charitable organizations. That’s a pretty strong one. It can just be a really strong brand personality. Spectrum Collections screams personality. They’ve got glam, glitter, they’ve got sass all over their site, and anyone who’s part of this community also embodies that as well. Every touch point of their customer experience reflects this. You’re brought into their world when you come onto their site. When you interact with their brand. And again, developing this brand’s personality might seem a little bit silly, but it is the first step to building a strong community. And that’s what your entire customer base is going to attach to.

Elaine: Which brings us to sort of the next step here, which is fostering those customer relationships. So now that you have this community of people who identify with you and your purpose and your personality, how do you foster these relationships? Well, you make every interaction valuable. And rewards are by far one of the most effective ways to motivate brand engagement and those purchase decisions because they allow a cycle of reciprocity with you and your customers. And so, just for anyone who’s unfamiliar, there’s a psychological principle called the Reciprocity Principle or the rule of reciprocity. What this means, essentially, is that if you do something for me, the likelihood of me doing something for you dramatically increases. So if you think about your life and the reciprocal relationships that you have with people, whether it’s friends or family or significant others, likely the ones that are most emotionally valuable to you are the ones that are truly reciprocal. Because we’re always more satisfied with those relationships that give back to us what we give to them. And so why not create this with your customers? It’s the first step in building that emotional relationship. And so, Esther is actually one of our clients on Shopify Plus. They do this incredibly well and they do this using rewards. So with a points program, for example– I’m sure a lot of you are familiar. I was kind of flipping through the chat, which you guys are so engaged with, which is amazing. And a lot of you guys are familiar with rewards programs.

Elaine: So points is one type of rewards program. And it means that you’re rewarding the behavior of your customers, whatever that could be. In Esther’s case, that is following on social media, sharing on social media– they’ve got Instagram, Facebook, rewarding them for creating an account. Celebrating their birthday. Referring friends. And when you do that with points, you’re giving them a brand currency – which is points – for any of these actions that’s really important for them to engage with you on. And that creates that reciprocal relationship. It’s one of the easiest ways to do it. And points programs are just one way of building that reciprocal bond. But what’s great, too, is that they also count as brand currency, as we mentioned. And so they count as an investment in the brand.

Elaine: And that actually brings us to our next and last point, which is creating a switching cost. And, again, rewards programs and points programs– oops. I got really excited and I went to the next slide [laughter]. Rewards and points programs are one of the best ways to create switching costs as well. And the reason that points are so great– and really, for anyone who’s unfamiliar, too, switching cost is just something that a customer loses when they switch from your brand to another. And so they’re really, really effective in deterring customers from sort of deviating their loyalty. And one of the reasons– and one of the big reasons is actually another psychological principle – which spoiler alert, I already showed you – is called the loss aversion theory, which is also an economic term. And it refers to people’s tendency to prefer avoiding a loss versus acquiring the equivalent gain. So for example, I would much rather not lose $5 than to find $5 on the street. And the reason that points are so relatable to switching costs is because points are a tangible investment. And they’re brand currency, like we said. And you invest in the brand to earn them and they only hold that value when they’re used again with your brand. And so with that theory, it’s much, much better for a customer to not lose 500 points that they’ve earned with you than to gain 500 points by investing in another brand. And it’s super important, kind of when we were talking about when you’re working with Justuno and you’re working with– all these other technologies that you guys have on your stores, especially email service providers. anything that’s going to help you market on-site and communicate with your customers. It’s so important to remind them about this investment that they have with you.

Allen: This is gold right now. This cost thing is pure gold. So, sorry, Elaine. I just want to make sure everybody’s listening.

Elaine: No [laughter]. I’m so glad that you guys like it. Because I totally agree. And it’s so easy to understand. Because these psychological principles are common just by proxy of us being human. And so they work in every situation. And they work in this situation in exactly the same way. And it’s so important to remind your customers of that investment that they have in you and of that value that you are giving back to them. Because they know that and they’re aware of that and they’re reminded of that, then I mean, why would they want to leave that relationship with you? And so rewards programs are a really great way to do this and to evoke those positive emotions and those positive relationships through creating that community. And when you guys do this, and maybe you guys– for those of you already running rewards programs – maybe you’re using Smile – you may see some of this stuff. But I can send the resources– or the sources, sorry, for all of these stats. But 82.4% percent of customers are more likely to shop at stores that offer some kind of loyalty program. And repeat purchasers– I know that Allen already alluded to this already. Statistically, they generate 40% of a store’s revenue. They’re so valuable. And typically, that’s only from 8% of the customers. The top 10% of customers spend three times more per order versus your average. The top 1% spend five times more. And just imagine if you could create more customers like this with this kind of commitment, with this kind of investment and emotional connection to your brand.

Elaine: And the odds are, are that you’ve probably heard a lot of this before. Allen might disagree, which is very exciting [laughter]. But you know what? Maybe you have. Because these stats have been around for a while and you probably agree with it, and it makes sense, and you agree that rewards programs are beneficial in this way. But maybe you haven’t gotten around to doing it yet. And the fact is, is that none of this is super new information and everyone has access to it, including all of your competitors. And so if you don’t do this now, if you don’t create emotional connections with your customers now, today, then where are you going to be in five years? And a strong community is the key to this type of emotional marketing. And a rewards program is the key to a strong community. And I would highly encourage everyone to use the resources that Allen and Jenna and myself have and start building these relationships with their customers now.

Allen: Yeah. And I think it was maybe Jonathan made a comment here in the comments here that rewards can get very complicated. And I agree they can. And I think that’s part of the struggle, is that people have a hard time understanding, well, how do I implement this? Or what’s the right rewards program for me? Or how do I communicate it? And then we see other people who just sort of bolt it on expecting it to work. And absolutely, you do need a strategy. And it does need to be, in a very simple way, communicated to your customer. And a lot of that does depend upon who your customer is and what your competition is like and what your products are. And so I would recommend– and it’s something that we can we can talk about here in the Q and A or on sort of a separate call. But if you are looking to do this, let me know, and happy to have a conversation with you and sort of talk you through specifically, for your brand, what would be sort of the right strategy to do this. And at the end of day, simple is typically better because it can be understood. But I want to just re-emphasize the point that Elaine made, which is this concept around switching costs. It’s real. And if you have competition and if you can give your customers a reason to continue to buy from you versus buy from your competition in addition to all the good things you otherwise do, switching costs is another layer that you can add there – another psychological layer – that really will help drive your repeat purchase rate. So it is very, very powerful.

Allen: All right, guys. So why don’t we go ahead and start kind of wrapping this up here and giving you guys access to some of these free goodies we talked about and also jumping into Q and A. So just as a quick recap to talk about what we kind of presented here. The entire focus was around profit margins. So everything that we’ve talked about today are tactics that you can start to implement today that not only just improve sales but they improve profits. Because they’re going to be taking your current traffic and your current advertising spend and your current customers and adding more sales on top of it, which is going to drive an increase in your profit margin. So everything is while yes, it’s going to drive more sales, all those sales are going to come with a higher margin associated with them, which is the power of all the stuff we’re talking about here.

Allen: Then let’s go ahead and talk about how we can give access to some of the freebies we talked about. We’re going to throw some links here on the right-hand side for the PDFs and access to these things we’ve talked about. But the very first thing that Blue Stout’s going to be offering for you guys is some one-on-one time. And this is something that we’ve started to open up very specifically to a few merchants. And we started opening up our calendars in the week to have free one-on-one strategy session phone calls. Where literally, we’ll sit down for 45 minutes and we’re going to do a deep dive into your analytics, do a deep dive into your site, and we’re going to break down very specific strategies that we talked about today and show you how to apply them for your business. So if you’re a business that runs one SKU versus a business that runs 50 SKUs, there’s a very different set of strategies you should be applying when you nurture or when you set up a rewards program or you set up Justuno or exit intents. They all differ per business. And so what we wanted to do today was not just give you all the tactics but actually give you a way to take these tactics and then talk to somebody about how to apply them in your business. So if you guys want to set up one of those free registration calls, I’m going to throw a link over here on the right-hand side that’s going to give you access to our calendar. And in that calendar, you can literally book a time anytime this week or next week to have a phone call. There’ll be a quick questionnaire that we’ll want you guys to fill out just so we can prepare for it. But literally, this is a link to my personal calendar for these calls. So you’ll actually get to speak with me if you book this. So I encourage you, if you want to take advantage of this, do it soon. Because we will end up booking up over the next week. And this is also the link here in the slide deck. Like I said, it’s a link to my calendar. It’s meetme.so/bluestout. And just pick a time, fill out the quick questionnaire so we can prepare for the call, and then we’ll give you a call at that time and we can talk about your business.

Allen: Then let’s talk a little bit here about what Justuno has got for you guys. Jenna?

Jenna: Yes. So for those of you who attended today’s webinar, we have a special discount. I realize there are certain Justuno users already on here. But if you are not a Justuno user and you don’t have an account, you can get 10% off any monthly paid plan. And just use the code stout10. And that expires at the end of October. And if you’re curious about how to sign up for an account, it’s super easy. If you just head over to Justuno.com, you will see a free trial button in the top right-hand corner. Now I should note that if you are on Shopify or Shopify Plus, it’s best to find us through the App Store. The same goes for BigCommerce. If you guys use BigCommerce or even WooCommerce, you can find our app there. If you’re on a different platform, it’s probably best just to sign up from Justuno.com. So that’s the offer we have to give you. And additionally, I wanted to drop a link to those of you who are Justuno users. We have a super, super detailed and powerful holiday training coming up. So if you guys are interested in optimization or optimizing your offers before Black Friday, Cyber Monday, I would really encourage you to attend that training. It’s going to be four episodes spread out over the next, I believe, four weeks. So Robbie is going to be leading this from our team. And I’d really love it if you guys could join.

Allen: Awesome. And then Elaine, I’m going to go ahead and drop your PDF here on the right-hand side, also.

Elaine: Amazing. Thank you so much. I’m pretty inept with this webinar software. That’s amazing. Yeah. So anyone who’s attending this webinar, obviously, thank you guys so much for coming. And Allen’s amazing and Jenna’s amazing and [laughter]– yeah. So we’ve just dropped this free PDF for anyone here. Community building 101. We have a ton of ebooks on our site. Our resources are just out of this world. There’s industry guides if you’re launching rewards in specific industry. But I think community building is really on point for what we talked about today and really connects to what Allen and Jenna sort of have as well. And so highly encourage you guys to check it out. Definitely shoot us an email if you guys– I’m just checking– sorry, the chat.

Allen: Did it go through here? If it didn’t go through, we’ll make sure you guys get the link.

Elaine: Okay [laughter]. And Brian wants to know how you can leverage Smile with Justuno. So we’ll actually reach out because I know we’re over time right now. Yeah. Having those run together and work together is so important. So that’s awesome, Brian.

Allen: And then, guys, also, what we’ll do here is we’ll go ahead and stick around. I can stick around for a little bit and happy to do some Q and A for whoever else wants to stick around and ask some more questions. But if anybody has to go, then obviously, feel free to jump off. We’ll be sending you guys a replay of this. You guys can rewatch the whole thing after the event. And then also, Blue Stout will be sending out an email directly after this sometime here in the next hour. That’s going to have this information for the Justuno offer. It’s going to have the PDF from Smile. It’s going to have the PDF from Blue Stout. And also, we’ll have a link to the calendar here for a free strategy session if you guys would like to book a strategy session with me over the next week to talk about how we can apply these tactics to your business. And then also, Elaine and Jenna, if you guys want to throw any of your contact information into the chat here, too, so people can reach out. I’m sure people would appreciate that, too.

Allen: So I know we had a ton of questions come through the chat. But if you guys want to just start posting your questions that you have right now, that way we can kind of bring them back up to the top. Happy to spend the next 10 or so minutes here and go through some questions with you guys. Anything you guys want to talk about.

Jenna: Yeah. That sounds good. I’m game for some Q and A. It’s my favorite part of webinars [laughter].

Allen: Yeah. Mine, too [laughter].

Elaine: Well, I know the most recent question here. So if we’re all sticking around, if Brian’s still here. Leveraging Justuno with Smile. I know that we sort of briefly went over that. And I think Jenna also dropped an article, too, that runs through exactly how to sync those two together. So I would definitely have a look at that. Awesome. Brian’s here [laughter]. Because, yeah. It’s so useful to have any technology communicating with itself. And I know there is a few mentions in the chat earlier, just how rewards and anything can actually get pretty complicated. There we go. Jenna just posted it. And having clear communication with your customers on-site and off-site is so important. And Justuno is so, so great for those types of communications and leveraging that knowledge. Whether it’s a rewards program or something else that you happen to be running, leveraging Justuno to communicate that very seamlessly to customers is, ideally, what you want to do. So, yeah. I would check that article out.

Jenna: Yeah. And Brian, just to loop onto her comment there, I know that we were in touch a little bit after our most recent training. So I would definitely suggest to connect. I can’t remember who your account manager is, if it’s Miranda or Olivia, but this would probably be something you’d want to– obviously, consider your strategy and all that on the Smile side. But the technical piece would really come into play on Justuno. So I think your account manager can certainly help you as long as they understand what goal you’re trying to achieve. So that’s the first thing I would understand. And then at that point, we can loop you into some tech. So feel free to reach out to me after this if you still have my email. I dropped it in the chat, as well. It’s just jenna.o@justuno.com. Oh, and you’re working with professional services. Perfect. That’s even better. Yep. Kelsey is a wizard. Great. Sounds good.

Allen: Cool. Anybody have any questions sort of about what they’re doing after they get this email. Right? So I know it’s– or after they get the email address. I know sort of the crux of this is– Jenna laid out some incredible strategies around what to do to actually get the email. How to get somebody to opt in. But the end of the day, conversion is all about nurturing afterwards. So I know we sort of briefly talked about the concept around sort of multi-tier nurturing. Happy to answer any questions around that. But what I’d recommend here, just sort of for anybody else who is still sticking around, sort of the next most important piece after this is typically focusing on email. So site optimizations are incredibly important. But we find that probably one of the most sort of hidden areas of profit in your business for most brands– especially if you’re operating at sort of the high six figure or seven figure in revenue level. It may actually be more so in low six figures, too. People have not done a good job of optimizing and dialing in the nurturing they do after they get an email address. Right? So they have a great Justuno setup or a great email acquisition setup. Maybe they’re even doing a 10% opt-in. But they’re not communicating and nurturing with them behind them.

Allen: Stacy asks, “How many emails should be in your funnel?” Great question. And it depends. It depends a little bit on how much email you’re sending now. Because we don’t want to shock the email service providers and send you into spam. But typically, we like to see anywhere from three to six emails get fired after somebody signs up for a welcome pop-up. [inaudible] somebody to make [inaudible] addition to that, we’d recommend making sure you also have flows that set up for your abandoned cart and then also having segmented flows after somebody makes that first purchase so that you can upsell them as well as communicate any sort of retention programs you might have like loyalty programs. And those post-purchase funnels can have anywhere from 3 to 20 emails in them just depending upon what you’re going to be promoting. And that’s something maybe we’ll do another training on another day. But emails and sort of the piece we didn’t talk about today that’s just as important as the email acquisition.

Jenna: Yeah. And this also might be a very obvious comment for those Justuno users out there. But when you do start getting multiple offers set up and – like what Allen’s talking about – you have a welcome series set up and these people are clicking through from those emails, you want to make sure on the Justuno side, also, that you’re not showing, for example, your new visitor offer to them. Because that breaks that experience because they have already given you their email. So I would just encourage– on your new visitor offer, please make sure that you have email excluded in your targeting rules. And that should cover your base for that just to optimize that experience when somebody has already opted in to the offer.

Allen: Great point. Yep. There’s a lot of customizations. It’s not just throwing up pop-ups on the site. It’s about dialing in. This is why Justuno is so great at this. It’s about dialing in when and how that gets delivered to specific customers depending upon where they are. Right? If they’ve already given you an email, then they shouldn’t be getting email acquisition pop-ups, right? If they’ve already made their first purchase from you, maybe they shouldn’t be getting a cart exit intent with a large discount. Because it starts training them a bit to buy on discount. You want to use other incentives for people who have already bought from you in the past when they reach cart to get them to complete that purchase. And things like rewards and loyalty is actually a great tool to use for people who are repeat buyers to get them to start building up some more retention with your brand.

Allen: So Dennis asks, “Where do I access the funnel PDF?” Here you go, Daniel. I’ll go ahead and send this to you again. And we’ll be sending out an email here probably in about an hour or so. Nicola says, “That means the system has to be super smart.” I’m assuming you’re referring to Justuno, and I think Jenna would agree that it is pretty smart.

Jenna: Yeah. If you are talking about Justuno, yes. But, yeah. What Allen was saying there kind of made me think back to that very beginning. A few slides that we saw about the super annoying salesperson. Initially, I was thinking, okay, maybe that is just talking about site design and stuff like that. But it absolutely applies to anything. You don’t want to go on a site and get a ton of pop-ups for things that aren’t relevant. And that absolutely also plays into rewards, right? So somebody who has already purchased from you, if you kind of put that lens of a physical store on it, and they walk into your store and you can say, “Hey, welcome back. Did you know you can get X, Y, Z rewards for purchasing?” The pop-ups that you serve really, really play into that process. So it would serve you well to play around with your targeting rules.

Jenna: Grant, it looks like you’re having some issues setting up a selected plan. Connect with me, Granta and we’ll get you up. I’m not really sure what the bug is. But let me shoot you my email and we will work it out. I can take care of that right after this. There’s my email address.

Allen: And I think Dennis was saying that the chat might have been stuck on the community PDF for lane. So if you guys want to go ahead and throw your links back into the chat. I’ll throw the calendar link back in there too, in case anybody wanted to book a call. All right, let’s see. Anybody else? Questions? Anything else? We can even talk about– I don’t know. What do you guys want to talk about?

Jenna: Well, I know I saw quite a few questions. And I don’t know if this is something you need to address afterward, Elaine, but a lot of comments around retroacting loyalty rewards for people who are already customers. They might get mad if you launch a loyalty program and then they’ve kind of lost out. Can you address that scenario a little bit or is that something that’s more a unique one-by-one case?

Elaine: No, definitely. Yeah. I did see that. I think Jonathan mentioned that. And then Brian, who actually uses Smile, has experienced that. So this is a pretty common thing, I would say, when you’re launching a rewards program and you have something that is a brand currency like points. And you want to make sure that those people who have been loyal and they’ve been engaging for the past, that they’re recognized for that. Because recognition is a really big part of that connection that you’re building with customers. And so super easy, in terms of Smile, when you’re doing those sorts of things. Let’s say if you know how many points a customer would receive for a number of dollars that they’ve spent, you can either– you can just import this via a CSV in the back end of Smile. So it’s kind of a one click. Two columns. First column, the email address of their account. Second column, the number of points that you would want to give them. And so the number of points you want to give them would very much depend on how retroactive you want to go. Are you going six months back? Are you going a year back? It would also depend on– you don’t want to have too much outstanding liability in terms of points and what they can be redeemed for right off the bat. So you’ll probably want to mitigate for that, as well. Understanding the margins and average order value that you have in your products will be a really good indication of how many points you should be giving or where the cap for that should be. I would say most commonly, people will do six months retroactive. In Smile, in the back end, you can, in Shopify specifically, automatically go back six months and it will do that for you. If you want to go back further than that, you would just have to import the data via CSV. But yeah, Jonathan, you’re totally right. It’s something that you have to be careful about. Because that matters a lot to customers, especially if they’ve been engaging a lot. They want to be recognized for that. So, super good question.

Jenna: Cool. That sounds good. It looks like Nicola also wanted to know how much development to implement Smile for non-Shopify users.

Elaine: Oh, awesome. Perfect. I’m so glad that you’re finding these, Jenna. I just feel so inept at this. So implementation for Smile on Shopify is really, really easy. So we’re in the App Store. One click in terms of download. And then in terms of– sort of, let’s say there’s setting up the functionality of the program that you want and then there’s inserting any design elements that you want to add. We do have a lot of resources for this. I’m actually just going to post in the chat. So this is actually our knowledge base. Did that go through? So help.smile.io. If you ask that knowledge base any question at all, it’s going to pop up answers for you. So if we even just type in set up– so I’m going to post this one in here too, if that works. So this is actually– in terms of how quick it can be, depending on the design collateral that you’re inserting, it can be anywhere from 10 minutes to set up to however long it takes you to design some background banner images. And if you want to customize the icons for different earning rules that you have. Let me see here. And non-Shopify platforms, we do have an API. And so the integration for that does require a development team on your end. I’d be happy to chat about that, too. So I’m just going to type my email in here again. So definitely shoot me a note. We can have a call. We can run through the implementation for not on Shopify.

Elaine: Jonathan says, “If you do retroactive, won’t that be very expensive?” So that kind of works into– I’m not sure if I answered this or not, but yeah. Keeping an eye on average order value margins and not going too retroactive– making sure that customers are recognized, but not going too far. Let’s see. I hope I’m not skipping anything– for non-Shopify users– tiered pricing levels possible. Is that a question for Smile from Dennis? Tiered levels of loyalty programs. Oh, so Jonathan, you asked tiered levels of loyalty programs. So just to clarify, when we’re talking about tiered loyalty programs– because I know we didn’t quite touch on it in the presentation. You guys are talking about the program itself where customers are rewarded with exclusive and better benefits as they either spend more or earn more points. Right? Perfect. Okay. Dennis says yes. Yeah. So you can definitely do that. Within Smile, there’s a few different ways. So one is by the money that they’ve spent. And one is by the points that they’ve earned. And those are just the thresholds that you can create. Once you have those thresholds– and again, determining the number that those thresholds could be depends on average order value, depends on margins, and that’s something that we not only have a ton of resources to help, but we also have a team on staff who helps your launch management and all that kind of stuff. So once you determine those thresholds, you can add automatic rewards to those tiers. So if you’re thinking discounts, that could be dollar off, percentage off. That could also be free shipping. That could be free products. And customers hit those threshold automatically get those rewards.

Elaine: And then we also actually have something called the custom perk, which is a blank text field on the back of Smile where you can just type in literally anything you want. If you wanted to send an autographed pair of your shoes to someone– I don’t know why you would do that. Let’s say it’s a [laughter] really nice postcard [laughter]. You can do that. And so you would just type that in the back end of Smile. And then there are automatic email notifications that have the option of going out when customers hit these thresholds. And so by doing that, you can very easily incorporate any custom perk that you’d be offering them. Oh, no. Jonathan got disconnected for the explanation. You know what, Jonathan? If you–

Jenna: Watch the replay [laughter].

Elaine: You can watch the replay. You can also just shoot me an email, too. So our emails, I think– awesome. Allen, did you pin those at the top? Somebody pinned them.

Jenna: Yeah. Sorry. Yes, I added them at the top.

Elaine: Amazing. You’re so smart [laughter].

Allen: We can throw mine in there too, if you guys want it.

Jenna: Okay.

Allen: [inaudible] I don’t know how you pinned that, Jenna. You can do that.

Jenna: Sure. I will throw it in. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to add yours.

Elaine: Jenna’s the wiz [laughter].

Allen: I’m open. Everybody can talk to me [laughter].

Elaine: Yeah. So, yeah. Jonathan, just shoot me a note. We’ll get something scheduled. We can kind of run through everything on the Smile to your side and talk about what to offer people. Because a lot of that depends, too, on who you are and what you do and what your customers want and what motivates them. So we can definitely chat about that.

Allen: All right. Anybody other than Jonathan have questions [laughter]? Just kidding, Jonathan [laughter]. Going once. Going twice. All right.

Jenna: Crickets.

Allen: I know. All right, guys. Thanks, Dennis. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys, for showing up. I think we’ll wrap things up here. Obviously, you guys have our emails up top. If you guys have any specific questions, feel free to shoot out to any of us. We’re happy to connect with you directly or connect you with the right person. So just reach out. And then obviously, if you guys booked a strategy session with me, we’ll go and do a deep dive on all of this as it relates specifically to your business. And if we need to loop in Jenna or Elaine as part of that conversation, we can do that, too. All right, guys. Everybody have a great day. Jenna, Elaine, anything else you guys want to add?

Jenna: Nope. Just want to thank everybody for their time and really thank everybody that attended. Because I think just taking some small time out of your day to improve your business is one step ahead of your competition. So, good on you.

Allen: Totally agree. Could not agree more.

Elaine: Thank you guys so much. And thank you, Allen and Jenna, too. You guys are awesome. Thanks for organizing this.

Jenna: Yeah. Absolutely. Happy to be a part. Cool. Thanks, guys. Have a good one.

Allen: All right, guys. Have a good day.

Elaine: Thanks, everybody

Jenna: Bye, everybody.