What Do Multi-Million-Dollar Brands Have in Common?

14 Dec

Guest: Nirav Sheth

Meet Nirav, the CEO and mastermind behind Anatta, the go-to partner for skyrocketing eCommerce brands. He's the secret weapon for the big names in DTC like Rothy’s, Dollar Shave Club, Athletic Greens, Four Sigmatic, and Mack Weldon. Nirav has taken Anatta on a thrilling journey, propelling over 100 DTC brands to the stratosphere of revenue growth and conversion success. When it comes to turning promising brands into industry leaders, Nirav's got the Midas touch!

Key Takeaways:

Focus on Customer Retention and Engagement: One of the key insights from Nirav Sheth emphasises the importance of customer retention alongside acquisition. Successful eCommerce brands view retention as a critical growth channel, not just a way to maintain steady revenue. Building a loyal customer base through exceptional service and understanding customer needs can lead to valuable insights for product development and marketing. Investing in customer relationships often results in higher lifetime value, increased referrals, and long-term loyalty.
Specialise in Select Marketing Channels Before Diversifying: Nirav highlighted that the fastest-growing brands often start by mastering one or two marketing channels rather than spreading their efforts too thinly across many. The effectiveness of a channel should be measured not just by its reach but also by how scalable it is and how well it resonates with your target audience. Once a brand has successfully harnessed the power of a couple of channels, it can then consider expanding its marketing strategies to include other platforms.
Innovative Use of Technology and Platforms: The conversation also underscored the significance of leveraging current eCommerce technologies and platforms, like Shopify Plus, to enhance the customer experience and operational efficiency. Staying abreast of new features and capabilities of these platforms can provide competitive advantages. For instance, the use of advanced segmentation, personalised marketing, and streamlined checkouts can significantly impact sales and customer satisfaction.

Links for Nirav

Links & Resources from today’s show

SubSummit

Special Mentions

Shopify Plus
Rothy's and Athletic Greens
Four Sigmatic
Zappos and Tony Hsieh

Related Episode

Sponsor for this episode

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Matt Edmundson: [00:00:00] Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Now this is a show all about helping you deliver eCommerce wow. And to help us do just that today, I am chatting with Nirav Sheth from Anatta about what do multi million dollar brands have in common? Oh yes, that's what we're getting into.
But before we jump into the conversation. Why not head over to the website, eCommercePodcast. net, sign up to the newsletter, and every week we will send you the notes and the links from the show straight to your inbox to do anything. They just come to you. And whilst you're there, check out eCommerce Cohort, bring this show to us.
Oh, [00:01:00] yes, the eCommerce Cohort, which is our monthly membership group that you can join if you're an eCommerce, if you're an eCommercer, as I like to call people, then do check it out. It's all designed to help you do eCommerce better. It's not expensive to join. You should learn a shed load of stuff. And also you get to watch the podcast live as well as we record them.
You can come and ask your ge our guests, your guests, our well, our guests, all everyone's guests, you can ask some questions and comments and you can tell this is all very professionally produced. Welcome to the show. So without further ado, let's talk about nab, the CEO of Mastermind behind Anatta, the go-to partner.
for skyrocketing eCommerce brands. He's the secret weapon for the big names in D2C, like Rothy's, Dollar Shave Club, Athletic Greens, and the list goes on and on. Nirav has taken Anatta on a thrilling journey. Propelling over [00:02:00] 100 D2C brands to the stratosphere of revenue growth and conversion success. And when it comes to turning promising brands into industry leaders, he's definitely got the Midas touch.
Unlike me, because the music finished like just a few seconds before I got to the end of your bio. I was thinking, am I gonna make it? I didn't make it, but no, great to have you on the show, man. How you doing? I'm
Nirav Sheth: doing amazing.
Matt Edmundson: How are you? Yeah, good. It's the end of my day here but for you, I imagine you're just starting out just looking at the brightness difference more than anything on the camera.
Nirav Sheth: I think I just have really good lighting put into this room. It's actually a pretty gloomy day here in Austin. It's around 2 p. m. But it's pretty good today.
Matt Edmundson: Sorry to hear that, sorry to hear that. Speaking of Austin last time I was in Austin, I was there visiting an amazing chap called Brett Curry, who doesn't live in Austin, but he just happened to be there.
I don't know if Brett Curry from OMG Commerce he's an absolute legend, he's got his own podcast, really cool bloke, and we hooked up and we had a great time, [00:03:00] had some food. Had a beer and just chatted for hours and hours and it was lovely to see him. But,
Nirav Sheth: Yeah, I had a chance to be on his podcast as well and he actually introduced me to this really great mastermind group.
I'll get to see him in a couple weeks.
Matt Edmundson: Fantaboy, tell him I said hello. He's an absolute legend. You know he's got eight kids?
Nirav Sheth: No, does he really? Yep. Eight kids.
Matt Edmundson: Yep. Eight kids. And the guy that introduced me and me, and if you've not listened, if you're listening to the show, check out the episode with Brett Curry.
He gets into everything to do with YouTube ads, which is his specialty, which was just brilliant, actually a really brilliant episode. But yeah, the chap that introduced us was Jared Mitchell. And Jared from Beefy Sites, he lives on the West Coast and he's it's just really funny when you have Jared and his wife Brett and his wife and the eight kids.
It's 10 people descend on your house and it's just utter chaos, but it's brilliant and fun and they love it and they enjoy it. But the reason I was in Texas was because of SubSummit 2023. SubSummit [00:04:00] 2024, there's a very strong chance I'll be back, by the way, just a quick shameless plug here.
And I've just got an email through from Lauren who heads up SubSummit and it said, Listen Matt, I hope you're doing well. I wanted to send along a link that you can share with the podcast to snag free tickets and travel for SubSummit 2024 via their hosted Merchants Program. So if you are a D2C subscription company looking to go to Subsummit in Dallas, you may qualify to attend Subsummit at little or no cost.
Via this program, qualified merchants will receive a complimentary ticket to Subsummit, plus travel and hotel reimbursements up to 750. All you have to do is meet with solution providers in no commitment, 15 minute meetings, speed dating style. All meetings are double opt in, both people have to agree to meet each other, and they're valuable to everyone, and the meetings [00:05:00] last only 2 or 3 hours on day 2 of the event.
And you should see, I don't know if you've been to SubSummit, but you should see the room where they do these sort of speed dating meetings. It's like it goes on forever. But if that's of any interest to anyone listening to the show
Nirav Sheth: Sorry? I was going to say, I'm actually going to be speaking at SubSummit next year, so
Matt Edmundson: No way!
We should get together, man. Yes, definitely. Yeah, absolutely. What are you going to be
Nirav Sheth: speaking on? Specifically subscription revenue and how to improve it, especially working with the brands like Athletic Greens and so many really large scale subscription brands we'll be speaking about tips and ways to really increase revenue and drive
Matt Edmundson: retention.
Fantastic. Wow. Yeah. Looks like we'll be both in the speakers lounge Nirav. We'll definitely have to hook up, man. That sounds fantastic. I didn't know that. That's awesome. That's awesome. If you're listening and you want to meet myself or have come join us and if you are a DTC brand Check out the hosted merchants program, but do be warned dear listener.
The seats go quick because of obvious reasons but do come check it out. So [00:06:00] is this going to be your first time to SubSummit?
Nirav Sheth: It will be. Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: First time. That's exciting. Exciting. And not far to travel from Austin for yourself. No.
Nirav Sheth: Just a couple hours drive
Matt Edmundson: to Dallas. Yeah. I took, have you heard of the Von Lane?
Now, so I took the Von Lane from Dallas to Austin and this was referred, this was recommended to me by the friends I was staying with in Dallas because I said I've got to go to Austin, what's the best way to do that and they said it's honestly just take the Vonlane. So check it, it's like this, I don't know how to describe it other than it's like this really super comfy executive style bus and you get on in this big old leather seat, you work Because they've got amazing Wi Fi, they bring you cokes whenever you want it, and then you get off at the other end tightly refreshed, it's amazing, check it out, Vonlane. Anyway, I think that's enough plugs for everything. Let's talk about what you're doing. So you're, you've been working with brands like Athletic Greens, you mentioned that, we mentioned that in the bio. [00:07:00] So you've obviously worked with some pretty impressive large brands, hence the title of the podcast, about what the multi million Brands, multi million dollar brands have in common.
So let's start there, right? What are some of the things that they have in common that we should really pay attention to as eCommerce brands?
Nirav Sheth: Yeah, Matt, like having worked with so many of these multi million dollar brands, specifically brands that we started at the very beginning, early days, startup side, emerging all the way into like their growth and into their enterprise state.
There's a couple of things we've seen in common working with these brands. Number one is the founders themselves. When what we found from the founders that what got them into the startup rarely works once they go into mid market and the founders that understand that and that they truly get it are the ones that succeed.
And what I mean by that is a couple of things, like one of the things is that in the early stages, pure hustle gets you so many [00:08:00] stages. Hustle's great. Everybody talks about it, don't let it fool you. Like it's. It is important in the early stages, you push through, break through walls, like kick butt and keep moving forward.
But when you, when you go to like mid market and you're trying to go past the ceiling of like 10 million, 15 million, 20 million. The smartest founders that I found and the ones that really get them to the next stage realized that what got them there to that stage of 10, 15, 20 million is not what's going to get them to the 100 million stage.
It's not what's going to get them to the 1 billion stage. Because pure hustle is just not going to carry you forward. You, every brand that has moved from one stage to another has seen that the strategies are pretty different. And the strategies that they employ in the early days is not going to be the same strategies you use moving forward.
And the ones that are, as they're getting it, they leverage different sets of teams and different sets of groups of people, both internally and externally, [00:09:00] to be able to make that happen. And what I mean by that is that Like the same, maybe you've worked with 5, 6, maybe up to 15 people on your team and internal and external.
And those people might understand all the things that you need to do in a startup to pivot to make changes, to do quick reacting stuff. But then the long term plays of brand and the long term plays of thinking about multiple channels and how to go about that from a strategy perspective Aren’t gonna , might not be the same people and so the ones that really get it and do it well, especially to give you an example, I feel like the brand, Terayuma, who I worked with really closely, did it really well. Their two founders, David and Fernando, they both created a footwear company put of Brazil
And came into like the skateboarding surfing kind of community going up against vans and the, the, all the players in that space. And they, they learned that early. They made their first million, 2 million. And they were like, you know what, we don't know what we don't know.
And we need to be smart about. Put in the right investments into the team and so they [00:10:00] leverage a company like us to really take over their digital product side where they were doing it internally. They were doing it with a freelancer and kind of making that happen both on design and development side, but knowing that you can be able to make that change and to be able to trust the group of people that you're doing it because they've seen other brands do it from time to time, that's what they, that's what they use.
I think number one is like the founders is very unique when it comes to the multimillion dollar brands. That's really interesting. And that's
Matt Edmundson: the other part. Oh, go ahead. No, I was going to say that's really interesting. It's interesting you've jumped straight into this word hustle, which became, I think, popular with the advent of Gary Vaynerchuk's rise on social media.
It was his thing, wasn't it? This word hustle and I and I'm intrigued how you've gone for that and said that's a good, the way I'd probably phrase it now is to say Hustle's a good starter, but it's not necessarily a great sort of finish or a great, for the next stage.
It doesn't take you through that ceiling, does it really? But it does get you off the launch pad. So what are some of the things that we need to think about then once [00:11:00] we get off the launch pad? We, which is, it's going to be hard if you're hustling to try and find the time to think about it, what are some of the things that we should think about?
Nirav Sheth: I think the most important thing to start out thinking about is like the team that you surround yourself with because the team is absolutely critical towards your success. So whether it's like the brands like I talked about, Cariuma, or it's teams like Athletic Greens. They, when they started working with us and their CEO at that time was someone who I think of as a dear friend.
His name is Adam Trouncer and he was their CEO. He really built this phenomenal team around him working with Chris, the founder, and they put together like this team. Amazing team to go forward with. Yeah, and I really think that a lot of the success behind ag isn't just because they launched really good ad campaigns, it's because they brought in the right team and the right strategies to be able to scale going forward.
So I think team is like absolutely critical. But then two along with team is strategy. What is the strategy? We can see that works either in this industry or in a parallel industry and that if we use that [00:12:00] or mirror off of that, we could actually see our our success grow. And this is not a, hey, do what your competitors are doing.
This is more of a, let's try out like proven strategies. Embedded in research, embedded in actual data. Yeah. That can make things work. This isn't just about looking at your next competitor and saying if he's doing it, we should be doing it. That is not the way to do things.
Matt Edmundson: embedded in data.
I like that. We had Neil Hoynes on the podcast a couple weeks ago. Who's the chief's, google's chief strategist and he wrote the book Converted which is all about using data to win over your customers hearts and minds I think there's something like that. He also spoke at SubSummit last year.
That's where we met. Really interesting guys saying the same thing again, what's the, what, think about the data, what's the data telling you, but what sort of strategies do you see working at the moment that, maybe we need to look at in a little bit more detail and find the data for.
Yeah.
Nirav Sheth: I think I. Well, one of the things I'm learning and this goes back to the [00:13:00] earlier part of what we help build million dollar brands is like brands that are leveraging a strategy of leaning in on a specific channel makes a really big importance. And so what we've seen every single time is that the fastest growing brands actually don't diversify their channels until they can get one to two channels.
moving really really smoothly and I know this is going to be counter to alot of people's conversations like, hey you need to be on TikTok, hey you need to be on YouTube hey you need to get your emails you need to do your text messages. You're gonna get alot of that as a merchant, right. and as growing, growing a brand you get pushed into so many different scenarios but rarely do they tell you that the brand that succeeded the like the fastest and the furthest actually haven't done it off of seven different channels all at once. They'd actually started off in one or two channels.
And then to give you an example, when we work with Rothies on the early days, their primary channels was paid social and email. And they could bank on that. And when I say they could bank on it, I'm talking about if [00:14:00] they double, tripled, or even 10X their spend on it, they knew very closely, very clearly what the expected output would be.
Now on paid social, they knew there was a certain point that like they wouldn't be able to make as much, but like they knew every time they sent out an email. That they could count on X amount of revenue coming in every single time. And so I would really highly suggest like thinking about one to two channels that are actually scalable and when I say actually scalable You have to think about the mathematical terms of that if I invest ten dollars and I can get a hundred dollars out. Does that mean the same thing if I invest 10, 000, can I get 100, 000 out, right?
Do the math on it and see, like, when I say scale, you have to be able to push dollars into it to actually end up coming back to you.
Matt Edmundson: Very wise. I, this thing about different channels is, it always comes up, there's always this pressure because people are told, you've gotta jump on TikTok, right?
You've just gotta do it. Especially if you wanna reach Gen Z, you've gotta be on TikTok, tiktok is cheap, it's [00:15:00] cheaper than Facebook. It's cheaper than meta and so on and so forth. And it is, and there are opportunities there, but I think there's always been this danger that you. You do that sort of bed hopping thing where you're just going from one to the next.
Do you know what I mean? Just not really doing it well, but just going to the next thing hoping that's going to land something for you because whatever you did before didn't give you the ROI as quickly as you wanted it, quite a thing. And so it's good I'm, as you were talking, I was thinking back to when we started Jersey, which was one of our.
www. crowd. church. org. au We just did paid, we just did Google, Google ads and email. That was our whole strategy, and we even, we, we didn't really do Facebook that well, to be honest with you for the longest time. But we just focused on those two channels and we did those channels really well.
And then we started to grow into the other channels. And so I'm sitting here thinking on one hand. [00:16:00] I've done what you've said, so I feel slightly proud of myself, but on the other hand, I don't know if I still do that, because it is tempting, isn't it, to get sucked in and drawn into, I've got to do Instagram, I've got to do YouTube, I've got to do the podcast, I've got to do the blog, I've got to do email, I've got to do this, I've got to do that, and so on and so forth.
How do you figure out, what channels people focus on or should focus on? I
Nirav Sheth: mean, it depends on a few different things, right? So first, where is your audience? And if your audience, if you're selling skin careto 60 year olds, maybe TikTok isn't the audience for you. Maybe Facebook is the audience for you.
So one, you got to know where your audience is and where they're using it and feel good about that audience. If you're still in the early stages where you're still trying to find product market fit, maybe you don't know where your audience yet is, but as you start developing that and get more sophisticated, you'll start understanding who your core customer base is and who really loves your product the most to find the best traction for it. Two, I also think [00:17:00] a little bit comes down to what you're willing to do. Like, where are you going to play by like when you produce content or your marketing team produces content, where did they love posting and engaging in the community? If it feels so much like a one way street of just being able to post content and then you're just don't care.
So you're like, Hey, I'm just going to take this content and push it out to seven different social platforms and that's it. And I'm not going to interact or engage. One of the things you said, Matt, on this was like, are you doing it well, because a lot of people are just doing it, but that doesn't mean that they're doing it well, and that means that you're super inefficient with your spend, whether it's an actual paid spend that you're doing on advertisements, or it's a spend on actually having your marketing team produce that content.
It's they're spend either way. You're going to be producing content, whether you're doing it yourself with your own time, or you're paying others to do it for you, and so if you take all that together, are you even being efficient with it? And the only way to be efficient with it is to be doing it based on your own passions, your own interests, and your own curiosity.
A lot of times when you're [00:18:00] engaging on this especially on content marketing, but also email marketing and things like that, have to enjoy what you're doing. If you're not enjoying it and you're not participating in that way, you're going to find yourself that you're not going to be efficient with it because you're not actually taking those times to actually be curious, to engage, to build a community.
And what we all know is that the. The brands that have done this really well have built really strong communities out of it. That's true. One of the examples I have with Rothy's is that Rothy's had this Facebook group called the Rothy's Addicts. They were a legitimate 50 or 100, 000 person group of people who just loved every shoe.
They talked, they had these rainbows that they created from all the different colors of the shoes. They created such a fan base, and it was created by Rothy's. They created the initial base, and then they put somebody else in charge, and they led them. But it was just such a cool community that like they got to a place where before they even launch a product, sometimes they had hackers in that group that figured out what product was launching and it was okay.
Cause I was just like, cool, you figured it out. And now the community knows and the [00:19:00] community gets first access to it and cool. You're part of something, but I think building that community is what has helped. Brands like we just spoke about Gary Vee and like his entire community his entire business is built around community and that fan base that he's established for himself.
And I think all brands, if they're really going to do this right, they're going to need to build that community. And if they're going to build that community, they're going to have to enjoy doing it and feel like they're in the right place in the right ecosystem.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, totally. That's super powerful stuff, man.
And I, I think it's just refreshing to hear. And I'm thinking of the guy, or lady who has started their eCommerce business. They're the kitchen table entrepreneur. And they're, they're hustling hard to do their business. They're doing all the marketing and so on and so forth and everything to do.
And sometimes because there's so much to do, you don't put that, that I think you use the word passion, that je ne sais quoi, into the creation of. The content is I'll just post this on, I need to post something. I'll just post this. I'll have AI generate a [00:20:00] post, or I'll just take a picture of a product and I'll whack it on 'cause it's easy
raTher than taking the time to curate meaningful content to build that community. And I think it's one of the big tensions we have as founders, as when we start up businesses because you are hustling, 'cause you are doing everything. Creating the time that you need to curate that community online is quite involved, isn't it?
And I remember just the simple things like, we were really good with email marketing. Properly full on good at email marketing. At least I thought I was. And then I took a gamble and I got an agency involved just on the side of our email. Blow me, they've taken it to the next level, these guys are passionate and they understand all the tricks and the strategies involved.
And they understand how to engage people in that in a way that we didn't because it's what they do day in day out, they grew in that. The same when we outsourced our Facebook marketing, and we was like blown away by the results, flipping not, why [00:21:00] did we not do this sooner?
But one of the things that you, I don't know, maybe you can speak to this, one of the things that I would struggle to outsource is that stuff that has to come from the owner, that brand voice that the owner getting on the camera and doing the Instagram lives or whatever.
I don't know if you've got any thoughts on that.
Nirav Sheth: Yeah, there's components I think we should always do the things that we feel not only just most comfortable doing, but the things that excite us, because even a founder led video that kind of showcases if it feels forced, if it feels like they're not enjoying doing it, it all shows up.
The emotions come off on the video, the emotions come off on the ad, and that doesn't really help you. So I think as founders and CEOs of brands that you're a part of, you have to pick and choose where do you, or where does your expertise lie, and outsource the areas that don't fit your specific taste, but don't do it based upon discomfort.
So I'm not talking about comfortability from a sake of Oh, I'm comfortable doing this. I'm not comfortable doing this. Like I'm not comfortable [00:22:00] speaking a lot of times in the initial stages, but then once you start getting into it, Oh, this is fun. And I actually enjoy it. So I wouldn't say don't do based on comfortability, but do it based upon like interest, curiosity, things that kind of cause that all shows up in, in how you do things.
And so I don't think any founder should be forced to do any of those videos, but if it can help by all means do it. But if we go back to the conversation around the hustle, don't the worst thing you can do as you've built your brands. Like again hustle might have gotten you to where you are by doing all those different things, but that doesn't mean that's gonna carry you forward .You don't know in my own personal story when I created my agency and I marked like focus on the work. My head was down.
I barely ever looked up to even try to market the company. And it was great because we've got a lot of referral business and all that, but it wasn't great because I'd actually didn't do any marketing. So like I didn't have a ton of top of the lead, lead gen and funnel overall. And that hurt us in the longterm.
And you have to figure out like. What things are going to actually move the [00:23:00] needle for my company? It was actually, Hey, we need to focus on marketing and sales. So let's go build that engine. But that means I have to build a team underneath me that can actually do that work, and I think that's where you have to get in the mindset of build teams in the places that, you can rinse and repeat or get things operationalized and then you go focus on the next thing and the next thing.
And as a CEO and founder, we meta, we morph ourselves almost into individuals almost like we almost have like 10 dfferent characters we create like one time we're here and one time we're here. But we shouldn't try to do all of those things at the same time because once we do, multitasking is like the killer of any level of productivity and creativity. If you can do multitasking amazing. By all means, do it, but I suck at it.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I'm with you. It just, it does destroy it.
And I love that. I love what you said. Do what excites you and what's going to move the needle. It's a great, it's a great, let me ask you a question then. You have your [00:24:00] agency. Obviously, you talked about the time when you had your head. So deep into, your client work that you didn't market the business.
So you grew that team. What excites you as the founder and the CEO? What excite, what moves the needle for you? What sort of things do you like doing that sort of works for your business? Other than coming on to this podcast, obviously,
Nirav Sheth: obviously, I love talking to amazing founders. I love kind of hearing their story and what they're doing, but I also love problem solving.
So I love being faced with a major challenge when it comes to tech technology or user experience or kind of places where businesses hit ceilings and being like. Why have we hit the ceiling here? What's the next stage of where we go? Having those conversations, strategizing together, talking through different kind of ways of solving it is what excites me.
And that's what I end up doing regularly is like I spend my time talking about those subjects. Recently we, I gave this really fun talk at the [00:25:00] Shopify conference, which was just about a week ago, about how we launched a 1. 5 billion GMV brand in 30 days. It's the fastest ever enterprise implementation ever and it was such a crazy project, but it was such a fun project to solve for with my team.
I definitely did not do this alone, but with my team, we were able to actually take a very large enterprise brand that we'll be announcing shortly. I think it's going to go live in the next week or two and I'll. Be happy to share who this is. But this is a very large company that needed to go live because they had come out of bankruptcy.
They got bought over by a private equity company and they needed to make their site live. So we actually got legitimately 30 days to go build this Shopify plus based enterprise site completely end to end. And I'm not talking about a proof of concept. I'm talking about a complete end to end build with 30, 000 SKUs, 8 million customers being migrated.
All of this stuff all done, and that's the fun stuff that I enjoy doing. I love not only being able [00:26:00] to strategize an idea and figure out how to do it, but then I love being able to share that with others so that, to know that this is a possibility, because being able to beat timelines, like normally something like this takes six months to do, like at minimum.
So to say we got it done in 30 days is a moonshot by all means, and we're so glad that it was successful, and there was like 99 reasons why it was going to be unsuccessful, and luckily we got through it, but it was a big thing, so that was a, something I enjoy doing and I love doing as a founder.
Matt Edmundson: I'm just sitting here listening to you talk about like 30, 000 products and what was it, 8, 000 customers? In 30 days, 8 million, 8 million customers, wow, Jesus,
Shopify Plus is come on, it's coming a long way, because there were times when you wouldn't have been able to do that with Shopify. But this is where I think the development those guys have been doing has been phenomenal and it enables you to do things like that. [00:27:00]
Nirav Sheth: Absolutely. Shopify was never considered the enterprise platform for big, billion dollar GMV companies.
But if you look across the board, most of the big GMV pure play DTC brands are leveraging Shopify, but outside of the pure plays, the retail side, they're moving over to Shopify too. At the Shopify conference, we saw brands like Authentic Brands Group, which runs Nautica and Reba, are actually moving to Shopify as well.
Matt Edmundson: Wow. Yeah, they're doing well. They're doing well. So is that what your agency does? You do Shopify stuff or is there other stuff you do as well?
Nirav Sheth: We pri we've been focused a hundred percent on Shopify Plus since 2014. So we made the shift very early on. We were Magento partners, we were WooCommerce platforms prior to that in 2012 and 2010.
But in 2014, we made the complete shift. It was a massive risk that we took at that point, but it just felt like the right move to make just where, based on where the momentum was going. Yeah. But again, at that time, enterprise wasn't the big. Play, but we saw that the brands that, especially the multimillion dollar brands that were growing the [00:28:00] fastest and making it to the stages of a hundred million plus, they were all leveraging Shopify just because of the growth capabilities that we had.
And we just didn't have to spend so much time developing a bunch of useless features that didn't really help move the needle.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no. Fantastic. Fantastic. What are some of the, you went to the Shopify for a sec. What are some of the interesting features coming out that you've seen that you go, that's cool.
That's really clever.
Nirav Sheth: I think a lot of the stuff that they're doing on the enterprise side around their point of sale solution and their B2B solution are really fantastic. They've done a lot of different upgrades where Shopify wasn't like the one that you use in store, but now it's starting to get leveraged because there's a lot more features a part of it.
I think the B2B focus has been really cool. Awesome, because what they've done is they've actually built an online storefront that mirrors what the customer experience is but for their wholesale customers, and like you can do all these really cool pricing adjustments and payment terms and things like that around that.
So I really love that. I also really love what they've done with Shopify Markets [00:29:00] Pro, which is their international solution, and the ability for brands to be able to go outside of their local country and be able to actually publish on multiple different countries where they act as the seller of record and you don't have to worry about a lot of the legalities and issues about being able to sell in another country.
So I think that being all those different features that they've enabled have really done some fun stuff. In addition, they launched, they pushed their whole one, one step checkout. They're still waiting on getting data back, which is really interesting. I spoke with the lead engineer on the Shopify checkout side and they, I'm a, I have a lot of history in the checkout process with Magento and I built an app a long time ago around like this concept of a one step checkout versus a one page checkout.
And everyone thinks that one step checkout always Overperformance one page checkout, but in my past history, that wasn't the case and right now Shopify is still collecting data to even determine is a one step checkout where everything is just on the screen all at once is technically better than a one page where it's still one page and you're going through step by step, but you're not [00:30:00] presenting all the information right out the gate.
Matt Edmundson: I'll be really curious to know that because I was reading the other day something it wasn't necessarily to do with checkouts, it was more to do with forms. And when you're collecting data from people, if you ask them one question at a time, so you ask a question, it goes you to the next question, which takes you to the next question.
Very much like the oh, what's that? Is it true for, no, true form, type form. Type form is the thing that I'm thinking of, and you the evidence is, or the data was saying that way was a much more. Effective way to collect data from people, but it may be that's a more effective way to collect data from people when it's one or two things, like your name and email address or something like that.
I'll be, I'm very curious to see what happens there. We're learning
Nirav Sheth: some cool information from that group too, because they said it depends on industry. So the more you can have auto saved information already that pre populates a lot of the fields, [00:31:00] because like as soon as shop pay turns on or you logged in, everything pre fills.
Then having everything on one step, you're just like checking things that everything's right and you just scroll down and hit complete. That actually works a lot better on a one step. But if you're having to fill out information and make sure you're doing every step correctly, the worst thing is that you spent 45 seconds or one minute filling all this information out or even longer and then you're told hey There's an error and then you don't know where it is on the page.
Yeah, that's when you people abandon They're just like ah screw it. I don't want to do this again. Yeah, so that's what you just have to be very mindful of But yes, you're totally right It's really depending on industry as well as a couple different parameters That dictate whether or not one step versus one page and so forth.
Matt Edmundson: What's really cool is other than the fact that you're on the other side of the world and we're talking quite coherently using video technology, which still blows my mind because I'm a bit of a dinosaur, I'm not going to lie I remember the days when your phone was tied to the wall, and you had a six foot radius, which you could walk and that was about it.
But it's [00:32:00] fascinating that, eCommerce is such a young industry, but here we are debating You know what, using data, we can figure out what's a more effective way to present our checkout, in, in different formats and understand that. And I, that's, I just think that's cool.
That's cool. So SubSummit, you're going to be talking about memberships. What are some of the things then that you've seen in the subscription business? Again, tying it back to what the title of the podcast is, what do multimillion brands have in common that we should be thinking about?
Nirav Sheth: Yeah. And tying it back to the original premise, like the multimillion dollar brands look at retention differently. They see retention being extremely valuable and not just for the additional revenue, but how it's about reframing the positioning. And what I mean by that is that when you invest in your customers.
You're, you build loyalty and when you build that loyalty, you're also building a listening channel that unlocks gems that kind of help your copy and [00:33:00] positioning for new prospects. You're never going to find this through agencies and outside marketing. Your diamonds are going to come from your customers if you're willing to dig deep.
And retention is an amazing growth channel, like it gets looked at as just like a, Hey, there's the acquisition funnel and then there's a retention funnel, but there's so much that can be done on the retention side that can really not only improve your lifetime value, but that can also lead to a lot of referrals and strong long term loyalty.
And so a lot of the conversation I'm going to be having with a few different merchants on stage at SubSummit is actually going to be talking about it. Thank you. Bye. Different practices and methods that they'd be able to leverage in the retention side that really go to help improve their Acquisition side of things but also learn these really amazing insights about the consumers one of the things that we learned working with a what one of the companies that there we work with a footwear and uniform company and one of the things we've [00:34:00] learned is that If you sell the apparel before you sell the footwear and the LTV is significantly higher than if you sell the footwear first and then the apparel.
It's because of the way that like the way that their products work and like the differentiation of it, but like That consumer insight, we wouldn't have learned if we didn't spend enough time on the retention angle and to figure out that's a higher LTV coming from that. And so the LTV, like these types of kind of gems you would only get by paying attention to one data, but also consumer conversations that you're having that on what, once they post purchase.
And it's not just a survey. Sometimes it's actually sitting down with like your most loyal customers and asking them questions. A footwear company like Rothy's that we worked with for a long time, sitting down with those Rothy's addicts, we're sitting down with those groups of individuals, the same thing with Athletic Green, sitting down with who's been subscribing for you for a long time and [00:35:00] understanding what it keeps them, what keeps them using the product consistently, what keeps them buying more.
And you'll start learning exactly the words and things that they use and be able to, when you can use those words and reframe it back on the acquisition funnel. It becomes a game changer. It becomes such a big, because you're now talking the language that they're talking, which is what your prospects are wanting.
And you would have never gotten that by like testing of 50 different words and scenarios, because like you don't know the exact mapping of what the consumer really wants to hear. And so I think retention is extremely valuable. And it's really important to pay attention to. Retention numbers and what's, what retention can give you, but pay attention to that whole funnel because most brands are always paying attention to the acquisition funnels.
Hey, what's my cac? How can I acquire more customers overall? How do I get top line revenue? Great. You've, if you can do that. What about the whole other funnel side of retention? Because that's a whole, you can double your business purely through the retention funnel as well, but a lot of times they just [00:36:00] keep focusing on the acquisition side too often.
Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: And it's just this debate, which doesn't, it never goes away. You often hear it, oh we should focus more on acquisition, oh we should focus more on retention, oh we should focus, and it goes back and forth and back and forth. And actually, I guess what I've noticed from the brands that I've seen that are successful, they do both really well.
And it's the ones that just focus on one end up struggling after a while. So if you just focus on retention, but you never feed in the top of the funnel, you've got a problem. If you focus just on acquisition and you don't, they're going out the back door as soon as they come in the front door you've got a problem.
And so it's, I, again I, when I took over the beauty business, one of the things that we did was we switched our focus from acquisition to retention. We'd spent. Hundreds, if not millions, acquiring all these customers. And it was we've got them now. What are we going to do with them?
And actually, when we focused a lot more on [00:37:00] retention and started thinking a little bit about that revenue just skyrocketed, just, it, it went up like 20, 30%. You just went, what was the following? You're like, geez, man, the amount of money I'd have had to spend on ads, just to get that growth. So yeah, I fully appreciate what you're saying, it's the retention.
Retention is a funny thing though, isn't it? Because you To do retention well, you've actually got to do customer service and this, I think this scares a lot of people. I think a lot of people, certainly in the early days, got into the internet because it just meant they didn't have to do customer service.
It's you don't want to buy it, find somebody else will, that kind of thing.
Nirav Sheth: And what I would say to that is I go back to, the recently deceased Tony Hsieh and his work on Zappos. It's always been a game changer for me of being able to provide amazing customer service and what that empowers.
And I've always seen it a little bit differently and instead of focusing and thinking about customer service as like a retention, what if you thought of customer service as sales agents and that like what they're really doing is just having [00:38:00] conversations to close a sale. Because if in our businesses, like you have salespeople that like they come, someone comes to talk to you, you have to discuss what the proposal is going to be and then you're working on closing that person.
If you don't have your closers, who's going to do that work? And so a lot of times, the people are ready to make decisions on your buying, but sometimes they just need to talk to somebody. And like the best customer service people aren't just trying to give canned responses, which is sometimes like what, what takes away from this whole AI powered like chat programs that are out there are they really that beneficial if they're not actively selling?
Wouldn't it be better that the customer service person is tell me more about what you're liking and digging deep and becoming, creating personal connection? What we saw at Zappos and like what Tony Hsieh wrote about it a lot in his book and kind of talking about like the Delivering happiness side of things was like if you're able to create that relationship with that person They don't really care that they can buy shoes from five other different places for more expensive They're gonna keep coming back to you because you they built that brand integrity and that brand loyalty with you Yeah, that they don't care about anything else They're [00:39:00] gonna want to talk and work with you and I think that's what a different model For brands, some brands will not be behind that.
They're like, I don't want to do customer service, but if you see it as a sales thing, it actually becomes fun. And it can sound a way to incentivize how those programs work.
Matt Edmundson: One of the interesting things that we've been toying around with was this again, I'm going back in time a little bit, but you used to have in the old days when we ran businesses without the web you'd have a customer account managers.
And these people would stay in touch. Like you'd call up every six months, Hey, how's it getting on? How you getting on with whatever it was that they were using from your customer service? And so you would have this constant stay in touch with 'em, this constant relationship, and the customer account manager knew the client so they could send them tailored information.
And so I've been for a while thinking, how does this work for e-comm, right? How do I get this? Concept because we send out newsletters like everybody else and we send [00:40:00] out sequences, but in the middle There's the customer account manager role, right? So i'm not just waiting for emails to come in for me I want the customer service team to go.
Hey susan We noticed that you've you know, you're a big fan of this Or, as soon as they've ordered for the first time, sending them an email going, Hey, my name's Matt. I'm your account manager. You, here's my direct email. Here's my direct number. You've got any questions, any concerns going forward. You reach out to me and I'll let you know.
And then in a few months time, I'm going to reach out to them and say, Hey, you tried this. I think this will work really well for you because of X, Y, and Z. 20 percent off. If you use this coupon code, try it, email me back. Let me know what you think. I'd love to know. The success of those emails. It's quite extraordinary because you're talking to ordinary people, you're having those conversations.
And do you know who I noticed has started doing this really well is Apple. So Apple now uh, I have a, cause I just buy so many Apple [00:41:00] products, whether that's right or wrong, I don't know. Apple have gone away. You're a business, Matthew, aren't you? Yes, I am a business. And they go, great, we're going to give you a business manager.
And Alex, I think his name is. It used to be David's just recently changed, he called me up iPhone 15 comes out. Matt, the iPhone 15's coming out, do you want one? I said, I do now, yes, which is great, I'll put your name on the list. And I didn't even have to go on the website, I didn't have to order anything, he just, And they just send you emails, you click this link and pay for it, and it's great, and it's wonderful, and I know the website's there, and I know I can shop on it, but I just get emails from Alex, and Alex goes and now if I want something, I don't even go on the website, I just email Alex, can I get this, and he'll go, sure, and it's working really well, and There's something about that relationship, isn't there, where you can really, exploits the wrong word, but you can really use that to both yours and your customer's advantage if you just like people,
Nirav Sheth: I can't agree more, and we saw this in around 2018, [00:42:00] 2019 with a brand that we worked with called Four Sigmatic. They really launched the mushroom coffee world and the chaga and the reishi and these functional mushrooms. And they've done really well. And one of the things that they did early on was they created a membership program, but a part of the membership program and really a membership was just if you buy anything on subscription, you became a member.
What they did was they provided a membership concierge. Now this is, they did the membership concierge very similar to an American Express concierge. So if anybody has an American Express card, they know like they can get on the phone with the concierge service and you can get them to order tickets.
You can do booking hotels, like they do a lot of things for you. Similarly, Four Sigmatic had a membership concierge and they, what they did was they were segmenting their groups of audiences and in Shopify and a lot of these tool sets now you can segment your groups and say, Hey, this is VIP customer, or this is a five year customer versus a four year customer.
And you can, they started doing some cool things. They started doing early samples of new products that they were coming out with. So like you would get sample products and like for free, you're not paying for any of this. [00:43:00] You were actually getting free samples sent to you. It's Hey, I know you like this protein blend and I think this kind of like really cool turmeric shot will go well with it.
Or this energy shot will go well with it. And they would figure out and see like what's been sent to you and what's not and it wasn't that complicated. They're just tagging the customer as they're sending things out and then they're following up and you could still do it as a more. Account-based marketing.
And you're doing it like a group of people versus individual. So maybe not as tailored towards the individual, Hey, here's the iPhone 15. Would you like to buy it? But saying, Hey, this a hundred people, let's sign on a message to them. Still personalize it, but it could be like to a grouping of people and you create that level of support and that level of concierge component.
Yeah. And people feel really warm and fuzzy behind that because they're like, Oh, I'm actually being treated as an individual versus just another cog in their system. And I think that's like the type of customer service, like there's customer service, then there's that concierge and kind of that individual part.
And I think that's instrumental. And I think brands have been doing it for some time. Some of them have been really smart to [00:44:00] take advantage of that. Some have fallen behind and not seen that opportunity and being like. There's a massive amount of money to make, and by just having this one or two person available on the concierge side, LTV across the board shot up massively.
So this paid for those individuals two to five times over for what they were spending on their salaries.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I've no doubt. I've done that's my experience, with this whole thing. And I think it's really interesting. Yeah, you're right. You can bring a level of automation to this account based marketing.
It doesn't all have to be, I've got to send out an email to Joan, Susan to, and do it all myself. You can bring a level of automation to it if you're smart, but I think it's something to really dig into. Really interesting. Listen, I'm aware of time. And I've, we've just got started, my friend, we just literally just got started.
If people want to find out more about you, if they want to connect, maybe talk to you about Shopify [00:45:00] Plus and all that sort of stuff, what's the best way to do that?
Nirav Sheth: Two ways. Come reach out to, to, to me directly on LinkedIn. You can just find me by my name, Nirav Sheth and the second way is just come visit our agency's website.
It's just simple Anatta, A N A T T A.I O
Matt Edmundson: anta and I have to, sorry, I should probably do it. The American Accent. Anatta . . I've just gonna butchered your company name. anta.io is what? Say
and we should probably get an Aussies to come and do the the Aussie version Anatta. I'm very sorry to all the Australian listeners, my very poor Australian accent. But , there's some man, it's been, it is always a pleasure to talk to you and I always feel now whenever we chat, I learn something I take some notes down. And I've got some thoughts. I've got lots of notes taken down on my notebook here and stuff to talk to the team about. So thank you. [00:46:00] Genuinely, really appreciate it. Learned a lot. I'm sure the listeners did too. You're a legend and I look forward to seeing you in Dallas if I don't see you before.
Nirav Sheth: Thank you so much, Matt, for having me. I've really had a, I had a fun time. That's
Matt Edmundson: awesome. Awesome. So there you have it. What? A great conversation. Huge thanks again to Nero for joining me today. Also, don't forget to check out eCommerce Cohort. Oh yes, the links on the eCommerce Podcast website, or just go to eCommerceCohort. com, come check out that membership group, we would love to see you in there, and be sure to follow the eCommerce Podcast wherever you get your podcast from, because we've got great, yeah, it's more great, to put my teeth back in, we've got yet more great conversations lined up, and I don't want you to miss any of them, and Before we go, if no one has told you yet today, dear listener, let me be the first person to tell you that you are awesome, yes you are, created awesome, it's just a burden you have to [00:47:00] bear, Nirav has to bear it, I have to bear it, you've got to bear it as well.
Now, the eCommerce Podcast is produced by Aurion Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The team that makes this show possible includes the legendary Sadaf Beynon , Tanya Hutsuliak theme song was written by the fabulous Josh Edmundson. And as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, head to the website eCommercePodcast. net, where everything's there. Just go, just do it. But yeah. Enjoy yourself while you're there as well. That's it from me. That's it from now. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.[00:48:00]