JerryJao
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wow ... thats tough to gather all of this content and make it into one. good job pando!
Great story! and what is 411? ;)
looking forward to this sarah!
Cant' wait to hear what Brian has to say - really looking forward to this one!
Great cover & excited for @erikcaso and the Younity team - not all of us get to be a finalist at SXSW too!
I really agree w/ this: "I suggest you earn your favors before you ask for them. I know so many people who have not been helpful or supportive of my efforts in any way, but they have no problem coming on strong when they want something from me." There're vendors who would like our businesses have been very kind in helping making intros, I'm more likely to take those meetings though I know they're trying to get me to buy their services.
Outside of business context, I'm a nobody and really not that many people would want to meet with me, but if anybody does (like entrepreneurs who I've never met and wanted to meet one of my investors), if they're genuine enough and make an effort to look me up / hunt me down in ways that's not too intrusive, I always try to help others because others have done so for me. I think at the end of the day, it's all about have the courtesy to treat others the way you want to be treated.
Thx for sharing your perspectives!
congrats corey!
Michael, thanks for the extensive research and disclosing this valuable details abt Ecomom's operations. There's a lot of learning for the rest of us that are building technology to support eCommerce operations or growing an eCommerce subscription base. Also, this helps validate that what we're building at http://www.retentionscience.com is crucial to business' long-term success.
Having worked with Jody, Jim, Marcus
& the rest of the team (saw their call center in Vegas, many
conference calls on implementing Retention Science on their site, etc.),
I know there is an extremely diligent,
ambitious and solid talent behind a very complex / costly operation, and
while certain
marketing tactics caused its long-term profitability (i.e. heavy
discounting),
they've built up an incredible brand and a charity "It's All Good" that
has been
positively received by its target audience. I've always admired that
they tie their core marketing into giving back to the community.
That being said, baby products and mom category remains competitive and high-margin as these are very "sticky" products -- which is why Target spent so much research figuring out who will be pregnant soon, because the sooner it can get them to shop at the Target stores for baby products, the more likely, they will continue to purchase throughout the next couple of years. This is a highly competitive vertical and ready for disruption / innovation (and a lot has been going at this sector as you pointed out). I'm looking forward to seeing who will crack the code at marketing to (affluent) moms!
Couldn't agree with you more and there's great lessons to be learned by others.
I had made at least 5 attempts yesterday requesting a car service (outside of the most crowded downtown area) and there were no cars to be found. Tried again this morning to get a ride to the airport at 5am (which I assumed the demand for rides might be less - or maybe not cuz of crazy partyers), still no luck.
I've been a fan of Uber (the fact that they have data scientists to map out the most popular route in each city, etc. and release many great studies on their customer usage on a regular basis), but I was quite disappointed with their execution / poor logistics planning at such a huge event like SXSW.
Instead, I was quite amused by Lyft promoters with the loud pink mustache (first saw one in front of the Samsung Galaxy showcase) and def left a good impression on me because of the humor / innovative marketing tactics. For the record, I didn't try out the service tho ;)Thanks for the re-cap! Last night was crazy indeed!
I wonder if you could follow up later with some stats on measurable ROI for throwing events like this to get user adoption, raise awareness (which is often tougher to measure), etc? Also, I'm especially interested in the outcome for an Enterprise / software company (like SailThru), does it make sense to throw a party where the majority of the goers are not necessary your 'buyers / decision makers (maybe some agency buyers are in town for the party or the fly clients there)? But in general, these parties are EXPENSIVE. Does it make sense for startups?
I guess some investors are
thinking of the same, while some are happy to attend and proudly say
their portfolio companies had one of the best parties @ SXSW. It's
amazing to see how much money is being invested in promotional parties.
But hey, they are def fun & SXSWi would not be the same w/o these big sponsorships!
super well written and true - great write-up. loyalty is so critical to the long-term success of a business. wowever, we've found that reward points are most effective for 'commodities", i.e. if you're debating which supermarkets to get your bananas, you might go to ralphs vs vons, because you get points there. vs. those trader joes lover, regardless points / rewards, they'll still go get their bananas for 10 cents each (i'm the later).
another way of thinking about building loyalty, is to be more efficiently and intelligently managing how you re-engage customers, from timing of engagement, to frequency, to the type of promotions / offers you provide that are individually-tailored to the customer, because each customer is different. most of the traditional commerce can't do this yet, but at retention science, we're able to help ecommerce leverage all of the different types of data they collect about the customers, and leveraging our statistical models to predict how to best re-engage customers at the individual level, we believe better and smarter engagement will ultimately contribute to more loyal customers too.
p.s. love all of your mentions, the founder of punchd was in the same fraternity with me in college, i'm also good friends with the founder of fivestars, and punchtab and retention science shares the same investor (mohr davidow) - great researched piece. thank you!!
@DaveMcClure well put.
Great cover (and analysis) Sarah, esp around the "discount" piece. This
is why we built Retention Science, we believe e-Commerce should not
train its customers to "expect" offers and lose out the opportunity to
build a stronger brand in perceived value. Rather, we leverage data and
statistical models to determine when is a more appropriate time / frequency to provide offers, and more importantly, WHO to give out offers to, in order to build a sustainable
and profitable business in the long-term. Every customer is different, and deserves to be treated differently.
hmm ... beautifully written ... makes me feel a bit emo reading it, cuz i'm now thinking abt my life ... as i'm reading, i realized i'm still at my office (yes on vday) w/ 2 other co-workers @retentionsci, can't help but reflect a bit on my personal life as an entrepreneur, the sacrifices and that ... i'm kind of "married to my startup" (you're so right), so is my co-founder, @awaage (who inspires me to work harder everyday) ... in fact that's all we think about, and we can't even stop talking abt it when we r grabbing a drink at the venice beach last wkend after walking around the beach "trying to relax" ...
"single awareness day" makes me feel just a bit less normal cuz at times i feel like i'm giving up everything to pursue THE dream ... (i guess if that's what it takes, i'm all for it) ... but in the end, when i finally have the time to meet & mingle, i hope i won't be cynical and am still open to <3 ... thx for making me feel all weird & ... no words to describe on how i'm feeling right now ... hahawow ... so sad to hear about this ... from somebody who's been looking forward to finally working together w/ an amazing team: emily, marcus, jim nist, etc ... hope all the ecomom employees that are impacted will be able to recover from this unfortunate ending to a beautiful vision ...
@Patrick Coyne Thanks Patrick. We'll expand to other platforms shortly. The reason we started with Magento is that they are the biggest e-Commerce platform used by both small and large size companies. In addition, the extension makes it extremely easy for us to integrate and collect all the necessary data to make our predictions. We'll be looking into other platforms based on demands from our customers. If your company is run on another e-Commerce platform like ZenCart or Shopify, please us know and we'll be sure to look into it. Appreciate your comment.
@paigecraig wow, thanks Paige for the encouragement.
@AndrewCross Thanks Andrew for your feedback (and your thought is very consistent from our current customers). Our goal is to make the entire process easy so you don't have to think at all. Think going with the "Chef's Menu" vs. having to think a lot about what to order from Cheesecake Factory's huge menu - we strive to develop a platform that good that we can replace some thinking on your end. If you'd like more info, happy to chat more.
Thanks for the write-up. For more information about the Retention Score, please visit: http://retentionscience.com/score/