Episode 89

full
Published on:

23rd Oct 2023

#89 Unlocking the Secrets of Retention Marketing with Josh Tay

In this insightful episode, Jonny Ross dives deep into the intricacies of retention marketing with industry expert, Josh Tay of "No Limit Email." They discuss the importance of customer enablement, the nuance of offers, and how to bridge the gap between brand voice and customer desire.

Show Highlights:

The Shift in Retention Marketing

  • Why retention starts even before customer acquisition.
  • The importance of customer experience from the get-go.


Offers and Their Impact

  • Dangers of running too many offers and the urgency dilution.
  • Balancing the allure of quick cash with sustainable revenue.


Product Movement and Offer Testing

  • Utilising apps like 'Cogs' to monitor product movement.
  • How to strategise offers based on product performance.


Balancing Brand Voice and Customer Needs

  • Understanding the balance between brand objectives and customer objectives.
  • Why thinking from a customer's point of view is pivotal.


Customer Enablement: Beyond Retention

  • The shift from just selling to truly enabling the customer.
  • How to create enablement content to move customers closer to purchase.


Advertisements & Their Effectiveness

  • The role of education and learning in ad content.
  • Real-life examples of impactful ad content.



Topics:

  • What is customer enablement in retention marketing?
  • Dangers of running frequent offers in e-commerce.
  • How to monitor product movement using Cogs app?
  • Strategies for balancing brand voice and customer needs.
  • Importance of enablement content in retention marketing.


Connect & Dive Deeper:


Timestamps:

Retention Marketing and its Importance [00:01:24]

Explanation of what retention marketing is and why it has become important in today's digital landscape.


The Role of Zero Party Data [00:05:22]

Discussion on the concept of zero party data and how it helps in creating customized messages for customers.


Balancing Questions and Conversion [00:10:09]

Exploration of the balance between asking too many questions and getting valuable information from customers without putting them off.


The importance of retention marketing [00:11:38]

Discussion on the significance of retention marketing in generating revenue and the use of post-purchase communication to make up for lost acquisition.


Customizing messages based on customer data [00:13:10]

Exploration of how beauty brands can ask specific questions to understand customer goals and concerns, and tailor messages and product recommendations accordingly.


Using multiple channels for communication [00:18:36]

Explanation of how SMS, email, and direct mail are used together in retention strategies, with examples of welcome flows and win back flows.


The importance of content within emails [00:23:35]

The speakers discuss how the content within emails, such as entertaining and educational content, can make customers look forward to receiving emails and improve brand perception.


The danger of running too many offers [00:26:02]

The speakers talk about how running too many offers can train customers to expect more discounts, leading to decreased urgency and lower margins.


Customer enablement as a marketing strategy [00:31:17]

The speakers highlight the importance of creating enablement content that helps customers make better buying decisions, increasing trust and moving them closer to a purchase.


The importance of ad creative [00:32:28]

Discussion on the significance of creating informative and valuable ad creative to attract and engage customers.


The concept of customer enablement [00:33:21]

Exploration of the idea that retention marketing should start before acquiring customers and the role of customer enablement in connecting brand voice with customer stories.


Contact information and conclusion [00:34:05]

The host asks for the contact information of the guest and concludes the episode by summarizing the key takeaways and expressing gratitude.

Transcript
Jonny Ross:

Hello and welcome. We are live. We're live on LinkedIn. We live on Facebook. We are live on YouTube. Thank you for being here. Perhaps you're on the podcast listening right now as well to the recorded session, but brilliant. Thank you for being here. Welcome back to Johnny Ross, fractional CMO. Today we're diving into the transformative world of email and retention marketing with a special guest Josh today. How are you Josh.

Josh Tay:

Hi Johnny. Thanks so much for having me here. I'm super excited to get on with this.

Jonny Ross:

You're right. You're joining us from across the pond. Whereabouts are you?

Josh Tay:

I'm all the way from Singapore. So the other side of the world. Brilliant.

Jonny Ross:

And you work closely with your agency, works closely with companies that are in the US, in Australia, a small amount in the UK, but but certainly predominantly in the US and Australia, significantly working with typically e-commerce brands, reasonably large brands. That's some of your background we're going to be talking today from shaping strategies in health and fitness to mastering email campaigns for some of Asia's top beauty brands, Josh now champions holistic customer strategies no limit email.

Jonny Ross:

We'll uncover the secrets behind his unique approach, delve into customer journey optimisation and tackle. The big question is retention marketing the antidote to rising acquisition costs? Stay tuned for an enlightening conversation. So let's just dive in. Josh. Retention marketing you know, for some it you could argue it's a new concept. It really isn't at all. I mean, we we both know that. It's you know, it's some of your best customers need to be retained. That's where you're, you know, that's where your best business comes from. But for those that aren't quite sure, and let's just try and bring everyone up to speed right at the beginning of the podcast. Can you explain what retention marketing is and why it's become so important in today's digital landscape?

Josh Tay:

Well, very good question. So maybe I should start with what retention marketing isn't, because what the common concept or the common notion that people get is that retention marketing is email marketing. But then even marketing is simply one channel in the entire, you know, scape of retention, retention.

Josh Tay:

Essentially, it's just retaining a customer and making them buy, spend more and spend more often with you. And then so, so, so there are many different channels that we can approach this. Bye. So there's email marketing, this SMS marketing. There's mobile apps, push notifications. This direct mail that is literally anything can include can be included into retention marketing as well, even digital or physical. If you have a pop up store, if you have a, you know you're in big box, all of that, as long as you have a customer that is an existing customer that actually comes into retention marketing. Which brings me to the next point that retention marketing cannot exist on its own. Just because you say, okay, retention marketing is focusing on existing customers, but the there needs to be like some, some form of a flywheel effect between retention marketing as well as acquisition. So if retention, the common problem right now in the whole world is that the media buyers, right? People who are running ads, running traffic, it could be organic, it could be paid.

Josh Tay:

And then once they hit the website, it's stopped there, right? There's no continuation after that. Then it's a handoff to the retention team. So from that side of things, retention team has zero insight into what's going on in the acquisition team. And the acquisition team can't be bothered as to what happens after that because for them, their metric is just send traffic, right or reduce the CPA. That's it. Their job is done. But then there's the retention team. That retention strategy doesn't power the acquisition strategy. And this is something that we know email we are pretty passionate about. We have passionate about aligning the entire customer journey and making sure that acquisition is powered by retention and then acquisition, then powers retention again. So ideally we want to we want to find customers that retain themselves. That is the main thing. Um, one of the biggest things is that, you know, for retention teams or retention marketers to say like, oh yes, we need to increase lifetime value and stuff like that.

Josh Tay:

Yes, increasing lifetime value is important and it should obviously not be neglected, but there's only so much that we can do to increase lifetime value. It's just you can't increase it by brute force. At the end of the day, quality of audience also plays a huge role in the longevity of a client, of a customer and how how much they spend. So it has to be a it's a it's a two way street. Yeah. So retention teams have to work very closely with acquisition teams and acquisition teams. So likewise.

Jonny Ross:

So I was very interested to hear what you were talking about there in terms of it's about finding the right customers that not only are going to buy, but are also going to want to be retained. And that's about working, acquisition and retention, working closer together. So how do you define that then? How what do you what what do you put into place in terms of strategies or know what do you put into place to to try and how do you define them. Right.

Josh Tay:

So one of the things that we are very big on is zero party data. So for those people who are quite new to the concept of zero party data, it is basically customers willingly giving you their information. This can be in the form of surveys. It can be the form of quizzes and stuff like that. Those are the typical things that people understand about zero party data post-purchase surveys, NPS surveys, all these are qualitative data points that tell you, you know, about a little bit more about the customer. But then we also kind of need to understand what is the intent of a customer that what makes them want to buy, why are they buying? When are they going to buy. You know, like for what reason is there something that happened in their life that's causing them to need to buy this right now? Um, was there like, what are they going to use it for? So these are some of the different questions that need to be answered pre-purchase. So just so that we can create a customized.

Josh Tay:

Message to frame the pitch right for the customer. If not, there's no relevance, right? Typically, what happens is that people opt in to a pop up. They go through a very standard workflow, right. Just like hi, welcome to So and So Family. Here's your 10% off. And then they go another email like the next day talking about the company and then talking about the best sellers. It's just it's a standard flow right. But then there is no there's no context into the person's life. So one of the, one of the things that I recently, recently discovered in the past one, two years that we've been doing very actively is adding zero party data collection points in the pop up, because this is the point of highest intent. So in the pop up, let's say a customer fills in their details, the question would be how much is an email address worth to you? Right. So when you're sending traffic, you just collecting email addresses. But then how do you predictably convert these people in your welcome flow? How do you create a customized message that tells them this is why you need it? So with zero party data points, let's say we are collecting 2 to 3 zero party data points right in the pop up.

Josh Tay:

So they fill in the email address and then you can be asking them, hey, you know, if if you are a supplement brand, for example, let's say weight loss supplements. So you can be asking them, you know, what is your main priority at this point, right. For some people it might be fat loss. For some people it might be, you know, getting their blood in order. Right. These are both subsets of of weight loss, but then with very different intentions and very different outcomes that you won't have. So in your messaging it has to be very different as well. The next point you can be asking would be, when are you looking to buy something? As simple as that can drastically change the the cadence in which you send marketing messages as well as someone tells you that they're going to they're looking to buy in, like the next 30 days, or they just shopping around. Like, do you want to be giving them a deep discount? It doesn't quite make sense because the intent is not there.

Josh Tay:

However, if someone is, someone tells you that, oh, they're looking to buy within the week because it's extremely urgent, then yeah, by all means push the sale, right? You can be also asking them like who are you buying this for? Is it buying for yourself? Is it buying for a friend? Are you buying as a gift? All three? All three require very different context as well. So this is how we optimize our welcome flows. And then we split our flows based on the different messages that are required that the customer wants to receive.

Jonny Ross:

Is there a danger? Because one of the things that has been talked about for, for a long time is not asking too many questions, because the problem with that is that it then potentially puts off the the user. So but at the same time, I love what you've just said. So how do you find the balance of not asking too many to ensure that you get answers and you get conversion.

Jonny Ross:

Right.

Josh Tay:

So this is a it's actually a very common question that we get, and it's also a very common pushback that we get from clients.

Josh Tay:

Um, and we've actually recently done a test for pure email opt ins like email plus SMS and then email SMS plus two zero party data points. And we found that there was actually only a 4% decrease in total revenue for like collecting data, the zero party data points versus collecting. Just sorry. Um, yes, 4% decrease in revenue. But then over time, this would drastically empower your acquisition because now you can create much better ads because now the ads are more targeted. Right? You know exactly what customer pools you are looking for. Um, and in terms of conversion rate on the pop up, it's not decrease much. We've done about 13% on pop ups and it's been between like 13 and 14%. So 13% being the zero party data points and then 14% being just pure email. So that's not much of difference in terms of pop up conversion rate as well. So thinking about list growth, the next question would be what are you growing this list for right. Is it because you want sales or you just want list growth for the sake of list growth? If you're just going to have you're going to use list growth as a metric just to make yourself feel good.

Josh Tay:

Then it doesn't make doesn't make sense, right? Because at the end of the day you kind of want to make money. So if you want to make money, we obviously want to make sure that we have better insights for customers. So we then use the same data points in our post-purchase surveys. Sorry, I'll post purchase communication. So for replenishment flows for wind bags and stuff like that. And we see that we can drastically make up for that 4% that we lost in the in the welcome flow. So from from all of that, it completely makes sense because now you have a much stronger acquisition and you have much stronger retention, both because you have collected good, good data. And what I see commonly is people are asking things like, what's your birthday? Right. It's it's not relevant. There's nothing that you can really do with with a birthday if at all. You can just collect it after the purchase if you want to send like an anniversary gift, which funnily enough, for every single email I've got asking for my birthday, I've never received a birthday gift from a friend ever in my life.

Josh Tay:

So yeah, if anyone's collecting that and you want to prove me wrong, please send me a birthday gift.

Jonny Ross:

So so, so leading on from that, you know, taking a beauty brand then. So not a supplement, a beauty brand. What? Out of, uh, what might you be asking as a couple for me? A couple more questions.

Josh Tay:

Okay. Um, for beauty brands, most of the time, let's say you are you sell anti-aging products, right? You can be asking them questions like, what is the what is the main goal? What's your main skin concern right now? Is it fine line reduction? Is it, uh, smoother skin because both are also effects of anti-aging. Right. Or is it brighter skin? So all three of them have subsets of. Anti-Aging and they all have different outcomes. So in the messaging you can also tailor the different the different messages and then recommend the relevant products for them. So that's one use case that you can have. You can also be asking questions about what is what are they looking for in anti-ageing product.

Josh Tay:

Because this allows you to frame your USP in a much stronger way. And this allows you to differentiate yourself in your in your brand indoctrination emails. Something as simple as like are you looking for fast results? Some people just want fast results. They don't care about the ingredients. They don't care about anything else. So for people who are asking about fast results and they want this kind of thing, just show them your results. Your before and after use cases, you know, the percentage increase, the efficacy and stuff like that. These are the people that this type of proof would work very well on. There are other people who are looking for clean ingredients, for example, for these clean ingredient people, then you have to talk about your manufacturing process, how it's safe, all the tests that you've done, all the organizations have approved, all the authorities that have gone through the party testing, stuff like that. This is stuff that they care about. And then, you know, you can also have people who are, you know, looking.

Josh Tay:

What was the question again? No.

Jonny Ross:

No, I understand and I understand what you're saying now in some way saying and what you're what you're ultimately saying is find out why they're wanting to buy it and what their and what they're expecting from it as well. And, and those two things, just as examples, are a great way to then be able to build on getting the messaging absolutely nailed in terms of the relevancy, which I'm really loving. And just just by the way, one of the things that we were talking about prior to going live was that a lot of the organizations you work with are using Shopify, and you heavily use Klaviyo as well. Not you're not fixed to it, but but you do heavily use it. I love Klaviyo, I think it's brilliant. And and and I can see how you can integrate that. So you're talking about the acquisition and retention working together. And I understand in terms of I think you've given a brilliant example in terms of the pop up, I'm wondering, wondering if there's anything that happens prior to that that needs to work better together, or is that the starting point? Is, is it where we are generating data to then work out what to do and how to work with those people? Or do, or does retention need to feed into any of the earlier stages? It's not a trick question.

Jonny Ross:

I'm just wondering if that typically happens.

Josh Tay:

For most retention teams. We don't have insight into anything in the ad manager and stuff like that. So the the pop up is the earliest starting is the earliest point in which we have control over. Yeah. So what we do is that we work very closely with, with our partners, and then we provide them with the insights as to what we collected. So let's say we have a set. We have buckets of people who are you know, we have a certain percentage. And then, you know, let's say we collect three different data points. We have so many different buckets. Right. Because three three times three times three. So we have all these different buckets. And then we can create specific creative for that which you know, I've never heard of an ad team that isn't happy of getting some kind of direction and having a better outcome for their for the performance as well.

Jonny Ross:

Yeah. And yeah, I'm really liking the idea. So so we then said, what's the next step after pop up then.

Jonny Ross:

So you've got these buckets where you've got where you start understanding the different types of people. And then you're then you're then putting them directly onto workflows.

Josh Tay:

Yeah, yeah. We put them directly into the into the automation and they go through things like the welcome flow. So our welcome flows are also powered by we have email and we also have SMS. And you know if we have if the brand that we're working with has an app then push notifications also become a thing. So it all has to be timed perfectly together so that we have a team of strategies who are going to be looking at at different times. We also have a dedicated tech team and a team that's looking into all the sending domains, looking into all the different tech aspects to make sure that nothing is clashing, because any one point in time people can be going through multiple flows at one point in time, right? So how do we prevent people from getting multiple messages that would be conflicting. So that's that's another concern as well.

Jonny Ross:

And how and typically how do you use SMS and email.

Jonny Ross:

I'm hearing that you're not just picking one over the other. You're using them to work together. Is that right?

Jonny Ross:

Yeah.

Josh Tay:

Yeah, we use it together. So for people, if let's say someone opts in for an SMS, then we obviously send them an SMS because it doesn't. It's not very nice, right? We ask them for a phone number, and a phone number is quite intimate, and then we don't send them to SMS and they'll be thinking like, okay, so what do I give my SMS for? So if they did consent to SMS, then we definitely want to give them an SMS as the first welcome communication. And then for those people we wouldn't send them like the the typical welcome anymore because they've already gotten that right. So but if they haven't opened that and they haven't transacted, then we will send them. We'll follow up with an email. So we will also use we also use direct mail for some of these things. So if let's say in the post-purchase someone has purchased from a long time ago and then they haven't come back again.

Josh Tay:

So there's this a win back flow that we that we implement win back flows would be for people who are customers who have been disengaged. So depending on the different segments, if let's say they have been disengaged for the last 90 to 120 days, right, they might get you might have one specific offer for these people, for people within 120 to 180 days, they have a different offer. And then based on the order value, also they have a different offer. So they are we all part of the of the entire retention strategies also offer testing is not so much just sending emails, sending SMSes and stuff like that because. Offers drive people. People buy because there's a reason to buy. And if we are not enabling the sale, then it defeats the entire purpose. Because marketing is not sales. That's a sales is a it's an outcome because of good marketing. And a large part of good marketing is a message. And the message has to resonate with the customer, and the customer has to want something.

Josh Tay:

And the and the something that customer wants is a good product that stick to and offer. So because of that. So we also we want to make sure that we are testing different offers based on unit economics. So we have we go to a unit economics exercises with the clients to make sure that they have all their their costs down. Right. If our clients have a finance team, we work with the finance team. If they have if the CFO will be discussing this with the CFO. So as you can see, it's a much bigger realm of marketing that we are playing with rather than solely email. Because the email is a let's just say it as it is, email isn't hard, but it's a holistic marketing strategy, the email marketing that supports business growth, that is hard. How do we support the business and all of its business KPIs? That is something that most, most agencies, I daresay are not doing effectively, and that's one of our biggest aims.

Jonny Ross:

I sort of do and don't want to ask you this question because, as you say, retention marketing isn't just about email marketing.

Jonny Ross:

And I'm also hearing that the more relevant things are, the more chance that things are going to work anyway. But I'm curious about subject lines and whether you have any tips and tricks for actually getting those emails opened in the first place, because our inboxes are just so full of email. And then I also want to talk to you about offers in a minute. But just just firstly, you know, am I being way too broad by asking that question in the first place? You know, what's what are tips on how to get those emails open? But I am curious, how do you get them open?

Josh Tay:

Okay, so subject lines and open rates are are quite contentious right now because of like Apple's privacy and stuff like that. So there are some emails that automatically get open. So it's not an entirely accurate metric. But obviously we also still want to ensure that emails are our send rate is decently high. So as for subject lines, there's no there's no real tactic that we can use other than a good copywriter.

Josh Tay:

Obviously, we obviously have to have a good copywriter that understands the customer and what they what they want, but then we are strong believers that there is no one trick that can get you consistent sales. If it's a if it's a trick, it's a trick before you know it. Custom if you like. One of the many things that happens is that people have either r e r e with a colon and then they have whatever it is like it's a, you might get the sale, you might get it open, but how many times can you repeat that? Right. It's the same as even last chance emails. How many times can you send a last chance before someone realizes it's not their last chance? Right. So it's. Or in case you missed it kind of thing. You get it. Right. So subject lines are. It's a it's a necessary evil. Obviously you have to get it. You want to stand out in the inbox. If so, even in things like emojis in subject line.

Josh Tay:

Yes they might, they might work. But at the end of the day, it's about the content within your email. So when people, if people open the contact, the email and they see content that they are that they look forward to receiving entertaining content, content that, you know, actually teaches them something about the product teaches and something about their lives, it might not even be about the product, right? It could be a general thing about improving their life in the certain aspect of your niche. So when people start wanting to receive them, they actually start looking forward to your emails. They look forward to your brand, and then they might not open our emails and they just go straight to your brand and they see x x x brand like, oh, okay, cool. If, let's say if founders are always the one, if you have a founder led brand and you are the face of the company and people like your brand message, they like the way that you speak. They like the values that you have.

Josh Tay:

Typically you also see people opening your stuff. It's less like a text message, right? If you have if you have a bunch of notifications, you're not going to open the notifications over the weekend. But if you see a good friend text you, you're going to open that. It's the same thing.

Jonny Ross:

Yeah. And it goes back to the power of segmentation, the power of buckets, the power of relevancy, and really understanding the customer, really understanding the the why they want to buy what they're wanting. And so I actually really like your answer. You talked about um, offers and likewise with um, you know, emails if, if you're using the re or the emoji every single time people sort of, you know, or that last chance email. Is there a danger with offers do the same thing. So there's always an offer. There's always another offer around the corner. And guess my question is is twofold. First of all, can we can can is the time when companies are giving too many offers.

Jonny Ross:

And secondly, what about brands that are trying to get across the value of the brand? And don't you know there's a huge resistance from the CEO or from the founder to even remotely consider an offer and, and, you know, working with some of the size of, you know, I know you work with eight figure brands across the world, I'm sure that must be something that comes up. So. So two things can we can we end up doing too many offers? But more importantly, what about brands that resist even doing an offer?

Josh Tay:

Yeah, that definitely is a danger in running too many offers because we train customers to anticipate there's going to be another offer, right? So then there's no urgency anymore. So no matter how many times you say it's the last chance, you know, closes tonight, people are not going to react anymore because there's just there's just been trained. Right. Um, so what we what we do as well is to vary offers. So not only do we do like sitewide discounts, because sitewide discounts tend to have a typical effect on people.

Josh Tay:

So it might work for like super big sales events, things like Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Yeah, sure. Do it with like 25% sitewide, stuff like that. But then if you are going to be running this often enough, people are going to be like, okay, so what's the big deal about 25%? And they'll keep expecting more and more and more, and to the point where they will never buy full price again, which obviously hurts your margin. So, you know, do you want quick cash or do you want sustainable cash down the road. So yeah. So offer testing is going to be crucial not understanding what products need to be moved. That's also something that needs to be considered. So you know we look into apps like crazy to understand what's the product movement like. We speak to the ops teams to understand, you know, are there any slow moving products? Are there any products that are moving too fast? If the products are moving too fast, we definitely don't want to keep talking about them, right.

Josh Tay:

If if we know that they're going to make the next purchase in the next six months, right, and there isn't any inventory left. And this is a move. This is a product will sell by itself. Yeah. We can hold back on campaigns for this because customers already know and they're going to buy this anyway. So this is something that we that we work closely with brands for on the other side about not wanting to discount it all. We definitely have had lots of experience with that. We've had some brands who are super resistant to anything to do with direct direct sales, right? They don't want any kind of direct response messages. It's pure brand and that's also fine. So but then there needs to be a balance between what the company wants to say and what the customer wants to hear. Right. That that essentially is the job of a marketer is to bridge both the company's, uh, you know, objectives with the customer's objectives. And that is that is where the customer journey comes in.

Josh Tay:

So we have to start thinking about things from the customer's point of view, and not so much on the brand's point of view. Yes, we want to make sure that the customer thinks highly of the brand, but to what point? Right? If you're going to sound all highfalutin and stuff like that, like the customer is just going to be like, okay, sure. What? Again, like you're going to be talking about yourself, right? That's not going to work. Um, so there needs to be varied types of content. So there can be product related content. So product related content could be highlights. It could be product education. It could be product comparisons. You know, there are countless different variations within a product product highlight. And there's obviously going to be engagement kind of content. It could be blog posts that you're sending. It could be short snippets of, you know, viral content. Um, it could be a plain text message from from the founder. It could be a recurring content, let's say sometimes you can have Sunday self talk, something like that.

Josh Tay:

Right. This could be it's nothing related to the product, but it's just about empowering the customer, you know, giving them something to look forward to, giving them a motivational message, stuff like that. So again, there are also many different engagement content pieces. It could be a quiz within the within the email. It could be a quiz. You know, it could be an email linking up to a quiz for customers, for people who have not bought before and have been in the list for, let's say, the the last 90 days, um, then we're going to have social proof content. We have promotional content, we have VIP content. So within our campaign planning strategy, we have a bunch of all these different things. And then we make sure that we are sending the right types of content to the right segments, as you mentioned. Right. So because that's going to be extremely important. Um, and the number of campaigns that we send obviously has to come into, uh, we have to consider what is the revenue target of the brand.

Josh Tay:

So we work backwards. So by understanding what the revenue target of the brand per month, we're going to look at okay, what is the typical trend. Because there's also a difference between what you want to achieve with email SMS and direct mail versus what is likely to happen. So with that, we have to understand what's what, what is historical right, what is likely to happen, and then what the company wants to happen, and then what you need to do in order to bridge that gap from historical to the future. So that is what some of the stuff that we do on a quarterly basis as well.

Jonny Ross:

And I've heard that. It doesn't have to be about the offer. There's actually a ton of other types of content that you can use that would bridge the gap between the customer and the client and go on. You're going to say something. Josh.

Jonny Ross:

Yeah, yeah.

Josh Tay:

So one of the big things that I'm just a huge proponent of customer enablement, it's just about enabling the customer to buy better.

Josh Tay:

If the customer can make a better decision, a better buying decision, they can feel more confident about the product. They can feel like they have learned something. That is all that matters, because there's an increase in trust and and you're moving them one step closer to the purchase or to the next purchase. So we to think about things in terms of helping the customer rather than helping the company sell more. It's a it's a very subtle nuance, but then it completely changes the way you market. It's the same thing for whether you're in e-commerce or whether you're in B2B or whether it, like any form of marketing, is the same thing. You need to be able to create enablement content for customers so that they can move closer to the purchase. Otherwise, it's just going to be, you know, knocking on a door that is empty.

Jonny Ross:

So customer enablement is the new retention marketing.

Josh Tay:

I guess you could see that.

Jonny Ross:

I like it.

Josh Tay:

You see, it's not it's not just about retention. It's not just retention marketing, but even think you could even work for ads like if.

Jonny Ross:

If.

Josh Tay:

The ad creative, if the video is, it's nonsensical. You might get some attention, but it's just a low chance you get to say it right. But if you actually, you know, if you learn something, I've seen I've seen brands do things eczema, honey and stuff like that. Right. And then you show like a real life use case of, of the transformation of this thing and you kind of learn about it and you're like, oh, yeah, actually, this might be something that my kid could benefit from. And you explain briefly about the benefits of honey, how the honey works and stuff like that. They've learned something. There's some form of value in there, right? You don't need to make the full pitch, but then once you hit the learning pitch and you'll be like, yeah, okay, now, now I'm going to learn something else. So all of that comes into the form of enablement content, rather than purely like a static image of a brand of a product.

Josh Tay:

And they say like by now, like I.

Jonny Ross:

I absolutely love the customer, the idea of customer enablement and a and it's most probably a topic that I am going to explore in a future podcast as well. And the Josh, this has been this has been brilliant. I love the connections you've made in terms of retention. Needs to start way sooner than actually once you've acquired. So that's you know, that's a really important part, just the simplicity of a marketeers role as well. You know, brand has a particular voice, but clients want to hear customer story, want to hear a particular thing. So how do you join those dots. And yeah, been really helpful. You mentioned an app. Um, was it cozy? What was the what was the name of the app that you mentioned?

Josh Tay:

Cogs. Cogs?

Jonny Ross:

Why cogs? Why? We'll put the that in the, in the show notes. And and Josh for you know, perhaps there's a founder or a CEO listening or watching right now.

Jonny Ross:

They've got a big brand on Shopify, on eCommerce. They really want to grow and change things. They need to speak to you. Josh, where do you hang out? Where where do you hang out? What? Tell me, tell me. So to the company's no limit email. Tell me the website address. And where do you hang out personally as well?

Josh Tay:

Uh, the email address would be just no email. And you can just find me on LinkedIn. If you type in Josh, I'd probably be the first one there.

Jonny Ross:

Josh, on LinkedIn, we'll put everything in the show notes. What a brilliant episode. Josh, thank you so much. This has been Johnny Ross, fractional CMO. We've been unlocking the secrets of retention marketing, and I think Josh is seriously inspired us in terms of how to actually rethink our retention marketing strategy. It's been Johnny Rogers, CMO. We've been live on LinkedIn and you may have been listening to the podcast. Please do subscribe. Tell your friends, come back for more and we will see you all soon.

Jonny Ross:

Thanks again. Take care.

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About the Podcast

Jonny Ross Fractional CMO
Getting marketing done
Join Jonny Ross, Fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) & Digital Marketing Strategist, in his podcast The Jonny Ross Fractional CMO - formerly the Jonny Ross Audio Experience.

Full of stories, marketing tips, tricks and strategy, along with interviews from inspirational business leaders.

Looking for marketing strategy? Jonny delivers marketing consultancy, marketing training and marketing campaigns on a daily basis. This podcast is a place to share his wealth of knowledge with you, and to find experts across many different business fields and bring their inspirations and learning tips right into your ear!

Find Jonny over at:

His website https://jonnyross.com
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonnyross/
or on Twitter https://twitter.com/jonnyross.

He is also Founder of https://fleek.marketing and also runs a local Yorkshire Business Club https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheYorkshireBusinessClub/.

About your host

Profile picture for Jonny Ross

Jonny Ross

Jonny Ross, Founder, Digital Strategist and orator of Fleek Marketing

Having worked in business management (including retail) for over 25 years, Jonny Ross understands the needs of business owners. He has a proven track record in SEO, social media, website design and website development, including experience of successfully unlocking Google penalties.

Jonny is also an established SEO and social media speaker and trainer and was recently listed as one of Business Insider’s “42 under 42” business leader rising stars.

In his spare time, Jonny enjoys spending time with his family, running, cooking and hosting dinner parties.

Jonny is a member of the Institute of Directors (IoD), a Member of the Chartered Management Institute and is also a qualified optician.