Claus Lauter [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the e commerce Coffee Break podcast. Today we revisit the episode with Lindsay Kolinsky, director of Marketing of Okendo.io, and discuss store features that help you turn customers into fans and how to maximize the purchase experience with quizzes. So let's dive right into it.
Voice over [00:00:18]:
This is the e commerce Coffee Break, a top rated Shopify growth podcast dedicated to shopify merchants and business owners looking to grow their online stores. Learn how to survive in the fast changing e commerce world with your host, Claus Lauter, and get marketing advice you can't find on Google. Welcome.
Claus Lauter [00:00:43]:
Hello. Welcome to another episode of the e commerce Coffee Break podcast. Today we want to find out what kind of store features help you to turn customers into superfans and how to maximize your post purchase experience. With me on the show today, I have Lindsay Kolinsky. She's the director of marketing at Okendo IO. She has five years of e commerce experience and has worked across various go to market functions including sales, customer success, partnerships and marketing. Lindsay is passionate about relationship building, storytelling and turning complex ideas into relatable concepts that everyone can understand. Okndo obviously is very well known for their review solutions, but they do much more than this.
Claus Lauter [00:01:21]:
So we want to dive a little bit deeper into that. So let's welcome Lindsay to the show. Hi Lindsay, how are you today?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:01:26]:
Good. How are you? Thanks so much for having me.
Claus Lauter [00:01:28]:
Great to have you on the show. Lindsay. Okendo is a well known brand within the Shopify ecosphere and mainly for the review solutions. But you do a lot of more things. Now let's find out how you can turn out or how you can turn a customer into a fan with the different features that you offer. Maybe give me a background. What's the best starting point to basically get someone to become a superfan?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:01:53]:
Yeah, I mean, the way we look at superfans, right, is that is your ideal customer. They're there already. They're the ones that are already loyal to your brand. You've worked so hard to kind of get them to that point, whether it's through your product, your great experiences that you offer, customer service, all of those things combined that you're doing to get your customers to be loyal to you, to retain with your brand. And it's really about getting those customers to be your best marketing channel. So they probably already are doing some level of word of mouth talking about your brand to your friends, but it's really about amplifying that, making their point of view visible to other people as well, not people just immediately within their direct network. And then on top of that, just giving them an incentive to keep talking about your brand. So for us, again, you have these customers, let them help you build your brand, grow your brand and drive revenue.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:02:58]:
So that's what Okendo is all about. Like you said, we're really well known for our reviews product, but within the last, I'd say year or so, we've really transformed into a customer marketing platform so that we can help brands again accelerate their growth with their superfans. So we have a surveys product where you can do NPS or a marketing attribution, collect single party data. We have a referrals product which is again, really built off of that brand advocacy, that word of mouth, getting your existing customers to tell their friends about you. And then last week we just released our quizzes product, which is really focused again on getting people to your site, to the right product for them, personalized product recommendations based on their needs. And again, ultimately on the front end, that's going to create a superfan later when you're making sure that they're buying the right product for them. So that's kind of how at a kendo we think about fans and why every brand in the Shopify space should really be thinking about that.
Claus Lauter [00:03:59]:
Now, reviews obviously speaks for themselves. Let's dive a little bit deeper into quizzes and surveys. I haven't spoken much about that on the show in the past. I'm quite curious, how do you build a quiz that's engaging and that sort of speaks for the brand? What's the process? How do you get started with that?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:04:18]:
Yeah, I mean, I think the best way to think about a quiz again is just kind of backtracking a little bit. So you want to make sure that you are helping get your customers to the right products based on their needs. So you can kind of think about it as what's our most popular product line to start and what are the different types of variants within those popular product lines? So say I'm a hair care company shampoo, or you can even go a step deeper. I want to help them build a routine. So it's a combination of shampoo, conditioner, whatever other hair gel, anything else that you might want to use. And you kind of just have to think about what are those variants and what are the different ways we've built the product, who are these products for? And then kind of think about the questions that will help you identify which customers would be best for each product. So thinking about again, if you're a hair care brand, where do you live? What weather? Temperature? Are you in dry heat? Are you in humidity? Do you have frizzy hair? Do you not asking those questions? And then at the end, essentially in the backside, we have conditional logics. You can build those questions and say, okay, if you've answered these things, this is the product we'd recommend.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:05:31]:
Or maybe skip this question because it's not really relevant. Because based on really the answer to this one question, we know what they're going to do. The other great benefit of a quiz that I think is really important to mention is that while you are guiding customers to the right product, once you do those product recommendations, we have a really simple add to cart button. So that's really how you're going to help the conversion, by making it easy to not only recommend what's right for them, but make it easy for them just to add and continue their purchase. But the additional benefit too is you're collecting all this zero party data about your customers with these questions. So it's kind of twofold where the customer is getting the benefit of a really personalized experience and the merchant is of course getting higher conversion and being able to deliver a personalized experience, but they're also getting data that's going to help them continue to keep that customer later on. So now I know this customer lives in dry heat, has issues with frizz. I can continue to not only recommend them other products, but deliver them content that's relevant.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:06:30]:
How do you take care of your hair in this heat? Here's some tips. All these things that are really going to help these brands build better relationships with their customers over time. Just having this data available to them is a huge advantage to a quiz as well.
Claus Lauter [00:06:47]:
Sounds a little bit to me. If you go to a very good restaurant and you have a very good waiter, and then he basically tries to find out what you actually really like, what your taste is, what your preferences is, and the next time you come back, they already know and they basically continue where you left off with the last visit. Now, you said that you can continue the journey after a quiz on other levels, like content marketing. How do you do that? Is there any kind of connections to other systems or how does that work?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:07:13]:
So in open, do we have what we call unified customer profile? So essentially all of the data that you're collecting from a quiz, all those same questions that I just asked on a quiz, you can also collect and ask in a review. So similarly, we have what we call customer attributes. And while you're leaving the review, you can say, what kind of hair do you have? Where do you live? Again, all of these same questions, you can collect a different place. You can also collect it in a survey as well. So you can at the end of someone post purchase right there, you can ask them all of these questions. So essentially through all of these different tools that we have, then you'll get the unified customer profile where you basically have all this information one to one about a customer, their preferences, their needs, their demographics, events that have taken place just in how they use the tools. And then you can sync that to your ESP, your SMS platform of choice, and use that for segmentation. So you could do it for bigger segments.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:08:07]:
Again, if you're really strong on that personalization and that content engine, you can do more one to one personalized marketing. But really we're kind of helping you aggregate and collect that zero party data so that in all of your other marketing campaigns, you have that really strong base of information about your customers.
Claus Lauter [00:08:25]:
Let's have a look. But on the technical side, how do you build your quiz, your survey, is this the Shopify app? And how many steps do you need to go through before you can set it live to the public?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:08:37]:
Yeah, so everything is built within the, so obviously, you know, you install Okendo on your store and then we have a quiz builder within the app. So really easy. I think we have a number of question templates. We also have different layouts. So again, there's people to your point of an engaging quiz. Do you want to add a little icon or a photo or anything to make it more appealing, not just text. So we have a lot of customization options, a lot of, again, like CSS color options that you can make it look within your brand. The last thing you want is for a place just to look like a pop up and ruin your site experience.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:09:15]:
So we really make sure that you can brand it within your brand and it seems seamless to the customer and then you can just set those logics. So really it's kind of like if this, then that, and it really builds the logic out for, based on the question answers, what products you're going to deliver in that quiz. And then of course you can have multiple different types of quizzes. So again, if you're focusing on different product lines, it might be easier to offer different types. What's your lipstick shade versus what foundation is right for you doing those as two separate quizzes? But we make it super easy. One of the things that a lot of customers said when they were first getting on quizzes was just how fast and easy it was to use the builder. The other thing I think that we've done and made sure of is to make sure that we have an in app test mode. So a lot of competitors make you push the quiz live, and then it's really confusing for you to kind of like test every scenario.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:10:12]:
We've made sure that you have the ability to test that and make sure all of your logic is working because I think that logic can be the most confusing part for building a quiz. And I think regardless of what platform you're using, it's just as a person you're kind of figuring out what are the answers, what do I want to drive person to? You can make sure all of that logic is working very well before you even start the quiz. In terms of survey, very similar ux obviously it's different in that it's not going to give you a product recommendation at the end. It's more just that internal feedback. But again, we use really similar ux between the two in terms of conditional logic if you want to ask additional questions based on a response. So we make sure that the user interface is really easy.
Claus Lauter [00:10:59]:
Hey Claus, here, just a quick one. If you like the content of this episode, subscribe to the weekly newsletter at newsletter ecommercecoffeebreak.com I score and create 50 news sources so you don't have to, saving your hours of research. Grow your revenue with ecommerce news, marketing strategies, tools, podcast, interviews and more, all in a quick three minute read. So head over to newsletter ecommercecoffeebreak.com to subscribe as at 100% free. Also you will find the link in the show notes. And now back to the show. You already gave some examples in regards of hair products, what are kind specific industries, verticals, niche that this works very well in?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:11:35]:
Yeah, I would say definitely beauty. That's why Sephora is so great as an in store experience. People love to test and to see, know really be guided to what products are going to work well for them. So again, hair, skin, cosmetics, all of that works really well. Home care. So things like candles and scents and all those things. I guess what I should say, it's really taking about those offline experiences that you get shopping in store and being able to convert them. So that's where again, something like candles, you can't smell it online, but we can help bring that experience there by taking all of your preferences.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:12:13]:
Also athleisure clothes, shoe types, it's really kind of endless as long as you can really figure out who the product is for and how can I make questions to guide people to the right product?
Claus Lauter [00:12:27]:
Would you create quizzes for, I don't know, specific holidays, like Mother's Day or something like that? Or would you just run them the whole year through? What's your take on that?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:12:38]:
Yeah, I mean, we definitely recommend having a quiz that's evergreen something, again, that regardless of the time of year, it's going to get people to the right product. But something we were thinking about for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, which could be like an interesting application, is maybe to have what gift to buy someone type of quiz. And again, that data you're collecting would probably be a little bit less valuable because it would be data about the gift receiver, not necessarily the person that is taking the quiz, but it's still going to help guide them to the right product. And again, there's so much competition now that I could look on your site, get overwhelmed, go to the next site and get a gift for someone. But if you're helping me find out based on what this person likes, all of these things, and again, it's that same application. So if I know that they live in this type of atmosphere and they have these hair problems, okay, I'm just giving their information instead of my information. So it could be a really great thing for gift tool, to your point, Mother's Day. So I think there's a lot of unique ways that you can kind of spin a quiz around for seasonal or for special occasions.
Claus Lauter [00:13:47]:
Makes total sense. One question I need to ask is a lot of people are concerned about their privacy. Data privacy is a big topic. Now, I'm giving you all these details and some people might be concerned about doing this. How do you address this?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:14:00]:
Yeah, I think the reason that things like reviews and quizzes and surveys work so well to combat those data privacy issues is that the customers understand why they're giving you their data and they're getting something in return. So it's not just a third party is crawling my cookies and someone sold that and now I'm getting targeted an ad because I spoke about and my phone heard thinking about. It's not creepy in that sense. I think with reviews, more often than not before they bought the product, they were looking at the reviews and looking at people that were similar to them. So when they buy that product, you ask again for that review in return, they know why you're asking because they use that information for their purchasing decision. It's not weird for them. And then if you're offering them an incentive on top of that for the review. They're getting something.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:14:54]:
Same with a quiz, right? They're taking a quiz because they need help, because they want to be guided on your site, they want more information. They're not going to really be hesitant about clicking that button being like what are they going to do with it? They know what you're going to do with it. You're going to give them a recommendation. And then even with surveys too, most of the time we recommend offering an incentive, whether that's a coupon, potentially loyalty points or something in exchange for that information. So usually that transparency of how it's being used and making sure what they're getting in return usually helps combat that. And again, it makes it all the more important to have methods like this to collect that data. Knowing that the iOS changes, the Facebook changes, all this are making it even harder for everyone to collect. Another, another point of how we kind of seendo and the idea of superfans really helping businesses right now, it's about, in a trustworthy way, getting that information so that you can continue those long term efforts to build those relationships, your customers that are harder to obtain right now with a lot of the challenges of the market.
Claus Lauter [00:16:06]:
What I like on your platform that you're basically delivering reviews, referrals, loyalty out of one hand. So it's not a bunch of different apps that potentially crush with each other or you can't get all the data into one place. So that's one big advantage. My question is where do you start to get people into the funnel? Do you start on the homepage to get them into a quiz funnel? Or do you start in your marketing already in your Facebook ads, in your email marketing? How does that work?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:16:32]:
I would say do it all again. You know, this is going to help drive conversion. You know, it's great. I mean I've seen really effective ads know, take our know that gets people excited. But again, if I'm just searching organically and I land on your home page, it's equally as important to market the quiz. Let people know, have a landing page or something that says take the quiz now or to email even your existing customers and say like, hey, not sure what to buy next. Take our quiz. So the more marketing you can do, especially around customer marketing program.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:17:06]:
Same for referrals as well. So our biggest recommendation is to have the referral on the post review widget. So after someone leaves you can set things for if they leave a four or five star review automatically show them like we have a referral program, but it's also equally as important to remind them that referral program exists and to get people to do that. So kind of the effectiveness of these programs, they can absolutely run on their own and they will, and they will deliver results. But you're just going to amplify the results of these programs if you invest in them and really consider them part of your long term customer marketing strategy.
Claus Lauter [00:17:45]:
I think all these different ways to get your clients, your customers into superfans, like referrals, like reviews, like loyalty, often you need to nudge them a little bit. You need to give them some kind of reward. Do you have some examples maybe from your customers on what kind of rewards they use to get people over the edge?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:18:04]:
Yeah. So with reviews natively, so we offer either dollar or percentage off discounts generated through shopify coupons. So that's a really great way. Loyalty points as well. So again, yes, we are coming out with a loyalty program and that's something that we are looking to natively integrate to ensure that for your reviews, for everything else you can refer a friend, you can get loyalty points to your point. Bringing all those platforms together and making sure that they operate seamlessly and together as well. Seamlessly is so important. So again, rewarding people for a review with the quiz, making sure the star ratings show when you have those product recommendations at the end of the quiz, that's important as well.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:18:50]:
But yeah, I'd say loyalty points. We also have an integration with smile IO for gift cards as well, or sorry, rise AI for gift cards. So anything that you can do, but I think just having an incentive in general, you can even set thresholds. So again, you want to make sure this isn't going to kill your margins, right? You don't want to give away $100 on your next order, but just a little nudge. And the good thing oftentimes too about the reward is that they usually made their first purchase or they're making their first purchase, they're going to come back again. So again, with referrals, if you give a reward to both a person that did the referral and the person that's being referred for that person that's already loyal to your brand, they're incentivized to make a third, 4th, 5th, 6th purchase with that one. And then you have the new person who's never tried it, who's like, okay, my friend recommended it, but giving them that coupon is going to push them over the edge to try your product. And then again, it's kind of a cycle of just making sure you'rewarding them.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:19:55]:
But again, to your point, I think it's really just that balance of what's good for your business and also motivating enough to make them take that action. But motivating them will usually pay off in the long end.
Claus Lauter [00:20:09]:
Absolutely right. Look on the customer lifetime value. But I think you made a very valid point there. Also look into your actual margins for the first purchase that you're not losing too much money on acquiring a customer there. Now, when it comes to the implementation, to the setup, what's the onboarding process? What do I have to do there? And also on that one, if I'm already using other apps, can I import my data? How does that work?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:20:34]:
Yeah, so we have a great customer success and customer support team. They'll make sure that everything that you need is imported over, especially for reviews as well. I mean, no one wants to lose if on another platform they have thousands of reviews, they don't want to lose those. So we make sure that all of those are brought over. And then in terms of quizzes, usually you wouldn't really migrate a quiz. You would kind of start fresh. Think about that. But we can help migrate.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:21:02]:
All of the data that you have, again, for reviews in particular, is probably the most important. We'll guide you through it and make sure it's part of onboarding. Like I said, we have an incredible team that will hold your hand through the whole process. Each product obviously will have a different level of onboarding, how you get set up for each product. But they're great. They have all the recommendations. We have an amazing help center. So we try to make it as easy as possible for everyone to kind of like get up, get running after they download the app.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:21:36]:
Quick up seeing revenue fast.
Claus Lauter [00:21:38]:
Okay, another important question. What's your pricing structure? How much does immersion need to calculate to get started?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:21:45]:
Yeah, so our pricing is based on order volume. So we have different tiers based on how much monthly order volume you have. We do have annual pricing options, but we are monthly as well. So you can obviously get a discount for going annual. But our kind of philosophy is love not locked in. So we know some of our competitors only do annual. We want to give merchants the option for whatever works best for them. And then our pricing is obviously by product, by plan.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:22:17]:
So again, the plan is by order volume, but we do offer flexible bundled pricing so that everyone can kind of get discounts for the Morokendo products they add. And our things range from anywhere from about $19 a month for a small SMB for just reviews, and then all the way up to custom advanced pricing for really large enterprise brands. So we really want to make sure we have it being accessible for everyone.
Claus Lauter [00:22:44]:
That makes sense. Cool. Before we come to the end of our coffee break today, is there anything that you want to leave or want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:22:53]:
Yeah, I mean, I just think the biggest thing right now in terms, I think we talked a little bit about the challenges, but we know the pain you're feeling. Competition is high, operating costs are high, and then consumer expectations are high. So with Okendo, we really look again to use those superfans to help you combat those challenges and make sure that you can grow in this crazy time in a single platform. So saving your time team and saving your team time and money and resources. So that's kind of what we're here for.
Claus Lauter [00:23:32]:
Okay, it is a crazy time, but ecommerce is growing. So I think investing into ecommerce is a good investment. Where can people find out about you guys?
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:23:41]:
Yeah, you can visit us at Okendo IO to find out more information, or you can just find me on LinkedIn. Lizzie Kleinsky, more than happy to connect you with someone on our team as well.
Claus Lauter [00:23:51]:
Sounds great. I will put the links in the show notes and you just want to click away. Lindsay, thanks so much for giving us an overview of what you do. I think the quiz idea is a great one. I definitely will figure it out or try it out myself to see how it works and that a lot of people will do so as well. Thanks so much for your time today.
Lindsay Kolinsky [00:24:07]:
Great. Thanks so much.
Claus Lauter [00:24:10]:
Hey, Claus here. Thanks for joining me on another episode of the e commerce Coffee Break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show. It will make it also easier for others to discover the podcast, simply like comment and subscribe in the app you're using to listen to the podcast, and even better, if you could leave a rating. Thanks again and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one.