S3E03: Mike Matker | Customer Loyalty

Welcome to Commerce Famous, a podcast that celebrates the celebrities of our industry. Join us for a conversation with the tastemakers in ecommerce. In their daily lives, these are just normal everyday people like you and me. But to us, they are commerce famous. Hello, and welcome to Commerce Famous.

I'm Gretchen Stavly, the host for today, and I am joined by Mike Matker, CEO of Site Vibes. Hey, Mike. Thanks for joining us. Hey, Gretchen. Great to be here.

Thanks for having me. Totally. Well, we like to start these off with just, learning a little bit more about our guests and your commerce journey, kind of some, you know, things where you started and cool things that you've seen over the years. So why don't you just kinda start by just telling me a little bit about you and you and your journey? Yeah.

So, I mean, I I got started in commerce way back in 2012, which feels like yesterday, but it was forever ago. Just business development rep prospecting and trying to to find some leads that eventually grew into, an account executive and sales and did some sales engineering in between that time, but really always just been in commerce selling primarily site search and personalization technologies. Had a little stint of selling some services as well, but, really since the 2012 time, I've been in this space and working directly with b two c and b two b brands, helping them, you know, make a better user experience and make their sites easier to use. Well, that is always the way to get started in any career. I think, you know, doing a service, you know, service skill or PR communications and certainly sales is the way to get into it.

That, like, there's no better way to get to understand a market than actually talking to customers and having to pitch your story and storytelling and how you get them to say yes to a a call and and the value propositions. You learn so much as a BDR and a rep. That's a tough job. It was, it's pro it was probably easier then than it is now, with with technology and how often people are probably getting hit. But, yes, it was not, it was not easy.

It was not easy drumming up new leads, but we made it we made it work. So then what? What what took you, you know, after that? Where'd you go? So, well, I guess we've so I I've had this unique opportunity of getting to work with my dad.

So he had a a business, and that business had evolved, you know, over the years and have always stayed close to it. So, yeah, when I started in 2012, it was selling, BDR and it was primarily selling the Indeca site search product, which was eventually acquired by Oracle. But it started there, to then it shifted into HawkSearch and, personalization and search through that product. And that was where I had kind of taken that leap into doing both some sales engineering account executive, but obviously was very immersed in that particular product. And it was around 2017, the the business had changed.

It had been sold off, and we had shifted into doing some consulting. So we were working with, just a handful of clients. We were trying to understand that side of the business and what actually goes into building commerce and actually operating commerce and, different platforms. And it was there where the, the idea and essentially the evolution of of SightPipes came. But I've always kind of been in the commerce arena.

It's always been around, for the most part, engagement type of functionality, with that that little stint there where we were actually building and and doing the work and the integrations. And, obviously, it gives you a different level of respect and appreciation for what a, you know, a true digital agency and an SI is doing on a day to day basis because, I think most regular people just look at commerce and they're like, oh, I'm, you know, putting a product in my cart and I'm putting in my credit card info and placing an order, and they don't even have a, you know, probably the slightest idea of what truly goes on behind the scenes to actually make that order go from placement to at your doorstep, in a timely manner. So Totally. The technical aspect, and and I always say that the sales engineers are like the unicorns. Right?

That the the they marry up the two beautiful traits of technical expertise and selling and really understanding both, you know, the full spectrum. But, you know, it's interesting. I know when I, you know, back in 2010 when I started, really in digital marketing, it's it's funny. I worked for an agency, a marketing agency, and, I was also a account executive. And just, you know, what we were selling then in terms of site search, SEO, SEM, you know, it was so early stage and we really, you know, it was so rudimentary and so basic until and then now just the evolution and and then being part of ecommerce companies and and other, you know, more advanced marketing strategies.

It's been wild just to see how how technical and how how evolved site searches come. And then AI. Now it's a whole another, you know, AI search and chat chat GPT search is another variable that comes into play. And how are, you know, how are you implementing that and what have you seen there? Yeah.

I I mean, AI, it still feels like it's largely untapped. I mean, everyone and and even us. I mean, I feel like we all are saying we're doing a lot with AI, but, you know, how much of the surface are we actually scratching? So, I mean, just from the site vibes perspective, we're doing a ton, whether it be as simple as generating review summaries that a consumer could easily digest on the front end of a site. Right?

So instead of sifting through a 100 product reviews, they could see a nice little summary and understand what that, product is and what consumers think about that product. We have a lot of, things in the back end that are occurring from an AI perspective, whether it be making recommendations on how someone should potentially be tweaking their loyalty programs or, you know, some of the sentiment, ratings around the product. So looking at the reviews from a different lens to say, you know, hey, there's maybe some problems or there's, issues that clients are having with particular products based on the review feedback that we're getting, making sure that we're alerting. But even in our tool, we every day talk about and we kinda it it almost has become when we're looking at either new features, new functionality, or solving things. It's how could we build it, but is there a way that AI could also assist the merchants in doing some of this or recommend to the merchants some of these things or some of these questions that they're asking.

So, I I think it'll continually change. It's gonna move fast. It's gonna evolve quick. I think brands every day are gonna figure out what they can and and can't do with AI. And I I truthfully think some of the AI companies are still figuring out what they can and and can't do, with these products that they're building for everyone to use.

But it is it has been fun. And when you were saying just, you know, how search has evolved, I mean, I always just think how commerce has evolved. When I got into this space, it was, you know, primarily the the big on prem products that people were buying and licensing and using. And then there was the DemandWears, which was starting to kinda revolutionize the the SaaS and the cloud versions of software. And, you know, Hawk was very much doing that, and even in DECA on Demandware, you're trying to move away from some of the the on prem and and having it more cloud based.

And now it's, like, almost all cloud based and and some on prem just depending on use cases. But, kinda seeing how, you know, that has evolved over however many years, I think we're gonna see that exact same thing happen with AI. It's just we're at this point. But if we're having this conversation ten years later, I'm sure we'll be saying crazy different things about, you know, where we see or how AI is impacting our businesses every day. Commerce famous is proudly presented by Shopware, the leading open source e commerce platform for mid market and lower enterprise merchants.

More than 50,000 clients already process over $25,000,000,000 in annual GMV through Shopware. Find out more about Shopware and the best value in e commerce at shopware.com. I mean, even just on the topic of search and we I want I can't wait to get into customer loyalty, you know, a topic we're both super passionate about and and obviously start with learn a little bit more about site vibes. But, you know, for me, like, you know, when you search now, you know, the AI search is superseding Google and everything else is just wild at what it's what's how it's disrupting the market and consumer behaviors and B2B shopping, but, you know, search behaviors. But just kind of, you know, that whole change of, you know, you still have to marry up that there's still the component of of of site structure, SEO metadata, all the the things that still have to happen on your sites, paired with, you know, and just how that changes, though, with the AI search and what's what's more broadly available from a consumer, consumer search and and product information and the inundation, shall we say, of information that was already just such a huge, you know, massive amount of of of search results.

But you could you know, it felt like we kind of figured out how we could get search results, you know, either whether that's pay to play or, you know, optimizing your site in different ways and getting more sophisticated there. But then now adding in the AI search capabilities, that's that that really changes things. But maybe let's talk a little bit about, you know, just start by, you know, site by Tell us a little bit about you. You mentioned it before, obviously, but how how you guys started and what you do. Yeah.

So SiteVibes is an ecommerce retention and engagement platform. So when you think of us, we are really a consolidated tool as well. So we have brands that work with us to power all of the product reviews that you would read on their sites on the product pages, powering their entire loyalty, programs, so the points that people are earning for the dollars that they're spending and other actions that they're taking. We have email marketing capabilities, SMS marketing capabilities, all in this one unified platform. When we built SiteVibes, like I'd mentioned earlier, we had this stint where we were, you know, building commerce sites for for, a handful of brands and kinda seeing what that side of the world looked like of actually getting these projects up and running.

And it was during that that we realized how fragmented the ecosystem kind of was, especially from a a marketing communication or just a marketing tech, tech side of it, where brands were often getting three or four different products or, you know, three or four different site software licenses, and then they were relying on, you know, the the agencies or their their own internal teams to try and integrate them. There was, you know, many apps or many of them that had some integrations that were in place, but oftentimes, you'd you know, it seemed like, just all you have to do is connect the API keys. You put the API keys in, and it would feel like it was gonna work. But then there was always these little nuance things that were breaking or just not working the way that they should. And then all of a sudden, it became almost this, like, three or four way, you know, communication triangle of all of these different products to figure out why is it broken or not working.

And it was an opportunity for us to to sit down and say, hey, People want they need these. Right? A lot of these features are, like, core to powering and and running their their commerce business today. They should work together. They should be pretty seamless, and it should be in a way that it's easy for people to actually manage and take action on the data that's available.

And that was really the evolution of SiteVibes. So in 2020, we, you know, kind of, needed, I guess, something else to to be working on with COVID and not having a lot of things to do. So we started developing this product, which initially was, you know, kinda just tracking and understanding website behaviors and what people were doing on websites, to, evolving into what the product is now today where it is, just a full fledged retention and engagement platform. And, you know, we've got brands utilizing site webs for everything, sending millions of emails and, all sorts of things every single month. So it's, it's been really kinda cool to to see it take shape, but it it really just stemmed from kind of being in the weeds and just seeing how fragmented, the ecosystem kind of was, and even with the even with the products that had everything.

Right? There's a lot of products that have everything. But even still, it was acquiring other brands and acquiring different technologies and trying to bring those under their portfolio. And, on surface level, it sounds really good. You're like, this is awesome.

This is exactly what we need. But even those ones, as you started to get into the nitty gritties of it, it's like still very broken. Right? It's still very fragmented. It's still disjointed.

You still have to connect it. You still have to go into different dashboards to manage these experiences. So, yeah, it was a a lot of learning. Yeah. One, obviously, like, you know, I you know, I remember, like, the CRM, it didn't have site search and stuff like the CRM.

Yeah. Email marketing. Yeah. You could do email marketing and have that connected to your CRM and your customer data. But then, like, site site activity, and there was always, like you said, cobbling it all together and pulling it together.

So, you know, just talking a little bit about that value, that consolidated tech stack, and the benefits, you know, kind of that insightful, actionable data. And maybe this is where we can transition into customer loyalty and how that's really the core to customer loyalty and how you maximize the customer experience, personalization, and all the kind of the the value props that that come from that consolidated tech stack and what it gives merchants. Yeah. I I I often tell, our customers that the most valuable component of our platform is the unification of data in the back end because of what you can do from an actionable perspective. So, you know, showing reviews, product reviews on the product pages, That's, you know, it's not like that's, super hard to do, but it's the insights that we can pull from the individuals who are actually leaving reviews and what kind of reviews are they actually leaving.

Or is this person in the loyalty program, When do they tend to convert their points, right? Is there some kind of an incentive that you can give to that person? Because now we know that they leave product reviews. We know that they tend to use their loyalty points at a at a certain point in time. And can we even build now maybe a hyper targeted promotion that, a, helps us capture another review for a product that they purchased that they maybe didn't review just yet while giving them some extra loyalty points?

Because now we know that it's gonna get them to that threshold that they typically wait till for them to actually use those points. So it's having the data available in the back end to truly take action on it, that, you know, especially our our larger customers, they're finding and and seeing the, you know, all the power that can come with it because it is more than just, hey, here's loyalty points for the the dollars that you spend. It's we know that Gretchen typically buys these products and we know that Gretchen typically uses, you know, her points when she has this many of them. Why don't we do a promotion to Gretchen that is incentivizing her to come back because we know we're gonna get not only a purchase, maybe another purchase after that because she's earned more points that now has a reward tied to it. We're gonna get some more email content that or some more review content that comes from it, but really using it as a way to to further drive engagement, by having it all there.

And there's that that altruistic feel good of, like, of objective of, of course, you just want customers genuinely at the core to, like, have a great experience and to have that to build that brand loyalty in an authentic way. But it's the monetization, right, that customer lifetime value. And to be able to truly track a customer and get them in, you know, from a purchase, get them into loyalty programs, keep engaging them and and and tracking their their CLV and their their their spend, and patterns and trends to kind of keep them coming back. That's what it's all about. Right.

And that's what so what are some, you know, some customer examples that come to mind that, you know, really have that you've helped or that you've seen just do an amazing job of this and that have evolved, right, and and leverage this and some outcomes. You know? Yeah. So we have so we have a customer that will do a lot of promotions, but they are just now starting to take advantage of some of the segmentation capabilities that we have within Site Vibes where they will create segments, some you know, similar to what you would be creating segments for if you're doing email marketing campaigns or you're just trying to understand, okay, what have customers done historically, so that we could send them a a marketing communication message. But they're starting to really embrace the fact that they could build segments out within Site Vibes, not only to send marketing emails too, but running loyalty promotions on that.

And they've seen a a tremendous amount of engagement because they've been able to, you know, effectively take segments that they've already built and have thought, you know, long and hard through on how how do we wanna communicate back to this particular audience of customers because of x y z. But they could put in front of them now some of these additional promotions or some of these additional things. So they'll use it as like a win back opportunity. So they'll look for, you know, customers who have made more than a certain number of purchases, but they haven't been active on the site in, you know, a hundred and eighty days. And they'll put them into a segment not only to send them an email marketing message, but do a double points weekend or a five x point weekend to say, Hey, we wanna offer you five x points the next time you come back and shop this weekend only.

They're not necessarily giving up any margin. Right? They're not giving them 10% to entice them or incentivize them to come back, so there's some value that they're seeing from that. But they also have this unique value prop of they know that these are people that are definitely interested in the brand because they bought multiple times. For whatever reason, they just haven't been back to the site, but they can now utilize something like a a loyalty promotion to do that and say, Hey, come back and you're going to get these double points.

It's those types of things that we're starting to see more and more of on just how they're, you know, effectively using the data, I think we'll continuously see that evolve, just, you know, I guess, just the way that our platform is architected, probably like most platforms, but it's very open. I mean, it's all API first, API driven. You know, people could pass in all sorts of custom datasets to us. So I think we're excited to start to see, especially with some of the the brands that have, I could give you another you know, there there's a brand that we're working with that has quite a bit of brick and mortar retail locations, and they wanna be able to do that same kind of segmentation based on where someone is located at and say, hey, we wanna be able to offer these promotions, but only for people that shop in store or online from a certain geographical location. So I think those are the exciting opportunities and and the again, going back to those customers that are truly embracing the Fulfillight Vibes platform, they're really seeing you know, it's not just a generic promotion.

Right? They just become these very hyper targeted opportunities, that can not only be loyalty based, but it could be really anything within our platform that they can, you you know, utilize to, I guess, go after and target those people. And I think, you know, we talk about, you know, the multi the in store multichannel experiences, and I think of the some of the brands that I you know, I'm a brand loyalist. I I you know, it's it's a creature of habit, many of us are. And the the brands that I come back to all the time are the ones that really marry up both of that, the in store experience, the online, the apps, the the points, the programs, and then, like, the whole combination.

Right? And then I get that little e the email reminder or everything that that keeps them top of mind. You know, Starbucks is one of my favorite examples, to share about just, you know, I will go out of my way just because I not only do I I love that in store experience, but I love the whole unified experience that that they deliver and the the fact that they do tailor to to our my purchasing, you know, purchasing behaviors and everything that I you know, it it does get me to kinda go in there and and and stay loyal to them. You know, what are some of your favorite brands? Loyalty brand.

Oh, wow. That's a good question. There's so many of them. I mean, yeah. I know.

I mean, I mean, Starbucks and Dunkin', I mean, any any the the Consumable. The the consumable, that market, they seem to do a good job, and maybe I'm biased because I drink coffee every day. So they do they do a really good job of of sucking me in, especially if I know I'm getting a a points weekend or I have a free coffee. You could almost guarantee that, I'll be there. But, yeah, that's a that's a good question.

I mean, I think that's what's so fun about loyalty too is although they're similar in a sense, there really is no brand that truly is the same. It's like, you know, each brand has loyalty that that they've kind of meticulously built that caters and speaks to their customer base. And that's what makes it so fun. Right? At the end of the day at Starbucks or at Dunkin', I'm getting free coffee.

It's just what is that experience like to actually get there, that makes it unique? No. Totally. And and we you know, all the different different market segments, different ages, like, you know, my daughter, for example, different, you know, 13 year old, different incentives than than myself. Right?

And or my my grandma, you know, or something like that, somebody like that. They're gonna all. And so that, you know, that segmentation and what you learn, but it's, you know, it's interesting. It's not just about age. Right?

It's just purchasing behaviors and and people still, like, I, you know, we know, you know, there are people that only wanna buy online. And so delivering the consumer experience. And this is also in a b to b. And I wanna talk about b to b as well because, you know, some people, you know, you have to offer multiple ways to purchase from you, make it easy and frictionless and and meet the customer where they're at and how they want it. You know, some people don't like ordering online at all.

Other people exclusively order online. Like, I like to still go into stores sometimes, but, you know, some I'm a bit of a hybrid, but it's it's interesting to know, like, you know, and how consumers are getting their information. So, you know, we also talk about the influence of, you know, from a product marketing and product perspective of of social media. You know, like our kids, you know, it's TikTok, and they only get information from TikTok. My generation, it's a little bit more, you know, Instagram and and other the but less the traditional advertising channels have have what have you seen in your journey, from, you know, we used to display ads were the were everything ten years ago.

Right? Everybody was just display ads and and advertising and early stage social media, and now it's just pure you know, they we barely even have TV advertisements anymore. Yeah. It's, yeah. That's, the the the the way that consumers and again, it goes back to how do you speak to the consumer and how could you utilize that.

And I'm sure brands like Starbucks, they know when they give me a triple points weekend is because I'm probably getting pretty darn close to that next free coffee reward. So as long as I go there a couple more times, I'm gonna get that the reward that they know I'm most likely to use. And then, again, that's the value of having these unified platforms and, again, where we're seeing our customers really take it. But I think it's also an interesting opportunity because you had mentioned something there about, you know, meeting the consumer where they're at, or making sure that you can communicate with them. And we've actually been talking with someone.

They're definitely more forward thinking, which is awesome because it makes us think forward, but it also relates back to even like, when I go to Dunkin', there are certain people at Dunkin' where they kinda know my order. So if they see me pull up in my car, they almost just read the order that I'm gonna get through the thing and just make sure that's what I still want. And you're like, what a good experience. Right? They kinda they they already know.

Remember me? Or is it like Right. Like, hey. You're faking that experience, but I like to think that, oh my gosh. They just know my order.

But they but it but it's that sense of, okay. They know who I am as a person. They know what I like. Right? They're not No.

You don't know that. Make me through and I think that's an opportunity that we aren't seeing tapped into yet, and I think it'll be, an opportunity where we'll see not only b to b brands, but certain direct to consumer brands do it as well. But what says that you shouldn't be able to know, you know, there's just so much data available. And let's just I'll just use, like, a b to b company as an example. Why shouldn't a b to b sales rep know that Gretchen was maybe poking around the website, looked at a handful of products, didn't purchase anything yet.

We know what your purchasing patterns are. You then happen to call into a store or go visit the local store where you're gonna do the purchasing from. Why shouldn't the sales rep know that you were recently on the site poking around looking at some products because they could actually tailor their conversation to say, hey. We saw you were looking for x y z. Why don't I grab a couple of them from the back, show you what they look like, and let's kinda pick up where you left off.

It was I was at a conference and someone had initially said, oh, that that they were talking about, you know, no one's walking into a store, and a sales associate is saying, hey. I just saw you were looking at Nike shoes. Let me go grab the Nike shoes for you. And they were kind of saying, you know, someone might think that's weird, but then I'm sitting there thinking, why would they think that's weird? If I walked in and I felt like they actually cared enough about me to say, hey.

We wanna make sure that you get the best possible experience, and we know that this is kind of where you left off in your journey. Let us help you finish it. I think it would go way longer and way further with a customer in building that relationship and almost a long time relationship. And then it just I think there's enough of out there where you could start to create those experiences, and it will create a different deeper connection from a loyalty perspective just outside of, you know, what they're buying on a regular basis and points that they're earning. Because I'll tell the it it truly is like that just going to get a coffee.

I mean, the when I pull up, if it's the people working and they'd see my car and they say, you know, the the two items that I order pretty much every time I go, you're like, yep. That's it. And then I pull right to the window. I don't have to read it off to them. And not that ordering coffee is hard, but it just it's a different level of experience that just extends my loyalty even further outside of what it already is.

And I think there's not enough brands embracing it, and every brand has the technology at their disposal to probably, be able to do that. And I I think b two b, especially, will be able to truly embrace that because there are so many different areas in which a a buyer may be doing their purchasing from. And if you could just help them throughout the way, however that be, it's just gonna create that that deeper relationship that you're probably ultimately trying to get. Totally. And it's like what you know, as mar marketers, we've had all the data and the insights for for a long time.

Right? And why you know, we like, who's opening emails and, like, understanding from the CRM all that data and and then just being able to then sales reps, you know, been able to, you know, over the last, you know, ten years evolve and kinda see, wow, like, look at all these insights and and apply it. But you're right. Like, taking the, you know, the the the consumer purchasing experience and how b two b is now, you know, has evolved and adapted so many of those same consumer behaviors, you know, and then just knowing, like, you know, for example, if somebody is actually you can actually pinpoint the you know, if email marketing works for that customer, great. Let's keep it going.

Everybody else, if they're gonna get annoyed by your brand with email marketing, turn it off for them. Right? Or don't serve them that way. And just the that insights of knowing what products they're searching for, how they like to get their information, where they're and the channel marketing. Right?

Like, where they're coming in from and referral traffic and and all the the the sources of information, just powerful tools. So getting back to that, you know, consolidated tech stack and and and b two b, you guys just came out with a b two b addition. Some of the, you know, the reasons that kinda you know, obviously, that's, I'm guessing, you know, evolved based on what you saw in the market and the needs. And and, you know, at shopper, we also look a lot at, you know, the unserved market needs and addressing those for b to b, manufacturing, distribution, etcetera. What trends are you seeing in b to b, and and what do you what's, you know, kind of how SiteVise has, you know, really dug in and adapted to serve those needs?

Yeah. It's, so b two b has always felt from us as they will get to where direct to consumer is. They just sometimes get their different speeds in different ways, but they effectively get there. So, I mean, I remember even ten years ago, it didn't feel like there was this shift in b to b companies actually going online and having these online presidencies to today, it's like if you're b to b and you're not online, what are you doing? And I think we're we're starting to see that same evolution now from the marketing side of it.

Right? So, you know, ten years ago, they're all starting to build and build, you know, beautiful websites, sophisticated websites that could handle all of their complex needs. Now it's around, okay, how do we drive more loyalty now to our brand? Right? Consumers have choices.

They have the same choices in b to b in most cases. So how do we continue to drive brand loyalty? How do we continue to to meet the customers where they're at? But a lot of the product that, you know, and even ours included when we first built it, they're very direct to consumer facing. Right?

It was meant for, a direct to consumer brand who wants to create a loyalty program and have that run and have email marketings where they're targeting profiles and going after them. And it was only because of, you know, handful of b to b customers that we had started working with and working closer with more platforms that were really leaning into b to b like Shopware, where we said, hey, there really isn't a a marketing tool necessarily that is really geared or catering to the b to b brands. Right? So if a b to b brand wants to build loyalty, they could build it based on a profile, but they can't build it based on a company. Right?

They can't have a company as a hierarchy with profiles underneath it that are doing buying and earning points on behalf of a company, and it's almost like a rebate for the company. Or we can't do email marketing based on the profiles attached to a company or what the company itself has done, right, not the individual user. And it just felt like they're starting to get to that point now, similar to how they were with commerce, you know, years ago to now they wanna be able to do these unique marketing automation campaigns and be able to segment and target the right customers at the right time. And that was that was really the the where we saw and said, yeah, we should build a b to b version of Site Vibes so that, you know, the b to b brands that want it to work similar to direct to consumer, they could very well do that, and we have many of them today that are very pure play b two b or wholesale that use SiteVibes in its current capacity. But there's a whole another world out there where they have to have these roll ups.

They have to have people and buyers and profiles associated to these, other areas. And that's effectively what we're doing and then making it easy for people to market back out to them and make sure that they're keeping their new websites and all the things that they're already doing front and center. I mean, the the there are companies still. We hear about every every day, all the time in, you know, in in our day to day and work on projects where companies are still receiving fax faxes to place orders. Yeah.

Like, what what are you doing? Like, okay. Fine. Those you're gonna have a couple old school. Keep that running if you want.

But who is fax machine? You know, it's like, to be able to, like, to your point, log in to a portal, be self-service for, like you know, there's a lot of orders that can happen. You can do the technology exists now to be able to have, you know, product configuration, complex order structures, complex workflows, segmented pricing and profile based, product offerings and pricing structures, you know, to enable your sales team. It doesn't have to you know? And that's that's the other thing.

A lot of, you know, b to b sales that everybody always and even on the for consumer brands, especially, like, ecommerce competed with the with sales. Right? They'd have their you know, for software sales, I'll use that as an example where they were like, oh, no. We don't want our direct traffic because they're taking away from my sales traffic. And now it's like, no.

This this these are the tools that help sales sales agents sell. Right? And so doing making it easier and faster. Yeah. You know, you don't have to just only do hit the road and do a roadshow and go business to business.

You can do those, you know, virtual meetings now and virtual sales and and and the recurring orders, you know, and having that life to that history and the portal of of, you know, and their buyer purchasing where it just makes it easy for them to just to reorder or to create their own order. The tech the tools and technologies with, you know, AR, VR, seeing products, configuring them, creating. You know, I think in, like, three d models and other things, you know, it's more of the b to b manufacturing where, you know, there's some, you know, more complex structures that, you know, of course, they they're gonna require sales reps and and and that in person engagement, but there's so much that can happen without without that individual or to, you know, for recurring orders or to your point, like special offers and promotions, right, for those those really key customers where you wanna offer them a special thing or geographically based. And think of, you know, the generation now that's coming in and the ones that are actually doing a lot of the purchasing that work at these different companies. They're they're alright they're just so accustomed to shopping online.

Or, you know, if they're gonna know of some kind of a promotion or some kind of an event or something that's happening, they're expecting you to get an email or an SMS message. I don't think today's kind of buyer is necessarily sitting by the phone waiting for a a a salesperson to necessarily call them and say that it's happening, and and they still can do that. Right? They could still be communicating with them, but I just think that the the people that are using these systems now on a regular basis are just so ingrained with how shopping online or, you know, placing orders should be because they do it all the time, and you have to make sure that you're communicating with them across all the same channels that they're accustomed to. You know, Amazon sends me an email to let me know of whatever, or they send me a text message if my package is out for delivery.

Like, they should be doing the same types of things for those people, maybe not to the same extent, but at least looking at it as we need to be utilizing all these different channels because that is most likely where we're gonna see the most engagement now because that's just who's today's buyer is. Right. The subscription economy, right, and that mindset of, like I mean, yes, for reorders or whatever, but also just ones that you haven't that haven't placed an order in a while. The reminders keeping your brand top of mind and be like, hey. Not sure, you know, Depending on the sales cycle of, you know, in b to b, for example, like, oh, you know, how, you know, how often the orders happen and if it supplies or, you know, whatever market.

But, you know, that that subscription mentality, and reminders and prompting, not having to just, like, you know, to automate all of that and it comes through and it does make them feel, you know, the customer feel thought of and all that, but also speeding up the sales cycle. Oh my god. Like, as a cons as a purchaser, as a b two b purchaser, I don't wanna wait a week for someone to get back to me. I sent them an email or placed an order, and now it's gonna take a week or ten days just to get my order placed because someone's gotta take that order and and and do a bunch of stuff with it. You know, you can shorten up your sales.

Like, I want it done now. I want it placed, like, and ordered in 30 in thirty minutes, you know, or less. So that that demand that people have in that expectation and if brands aren't doing it, if b two b brands and and companies aren't doing that or any brand, there are other the other brands are, and they're just gonna become obsolete. And then so it's just, like, you know, like, the the the catch phrases and the, like, kind of all the the jargon around, you know, future proofing and making sure you're ready. But, like, what it means to be like, you are going to be one of those brands that die is if you don't evolve, and it doesn't have to replace kind of the traditions of the company.

But that it's a lot of older generations and and they're and and and really successful I mean, a lot of people a lot of companies are building very successful long long standing, companies, right, just with the with the evolution, but change is hard and implementing these technologies and, you know, they're they're they are costly, but it's an investment in your future. The ROI is there, so, you know, and so making it easy for them. And so how do you guys, you know, kinda take a company? Let's just use stick with b two b and an example of taking them where they're at and maybe, you know, an outdated architecture or they have a couple, you know, poor technologies, that you're working with. And and what are you know, the like, evolving those brands, you know, convince sometimes convincing a company to change and and the the value proposition, making it easy for them.

And, I guess, getting back to that consolidated tech stack and evolution, I guess, or the, iterative. Yeah. So it for from us, especially in b to b, right, it's it's always part part of it is gonna be education on our part. Right? There's a lot of b to b brands that don't have loyalty today.

There's a lot of b to b brands that think they have very loyal customers, but it's not until you actually sit down and start going through some exercises, where you can start to unpack and and and identify that maybe they aren't as loyal as you thought they might be, and that's where there's an opportunity to capture them. So and, you know, b to b, it's it's very wide in terms of, like, a spectrum. Like, there there's potentially businesses that have customers that are spending millions of dollars every single year. They might already have contracts in place where they have to do their purchasing from this company. Do what you're saying.

Those aren't the brands that you know, we aren't we're not saying you have to target those companies and and make them loyal. They're already loyal for one reason or another, but it's identifying who is that group of people that have options and choices, and how do we now build and tailor a loyalty program around them to say, how do we take you know, may and even if it's only 5% of their customers. Right? So five percent of their customers, you know, have choices and they could shop wherever they need to get whatever it is that the company is selling. Well, if we could take those 5% of customers and make them, you know, 30 to 40% more loyal, well, what does that do to your bottom line?

How much more revenue are you actually making because they're more loyal? So a lot of it is just sitting down and and understanding, you know, what the business offers, who their customer is, what is their customer kind of buying like cycle look like? You know, maybe they already have these, you know, mega big customers that have no choice. So that is where we kinda try to start and identify, and then it just eventually evolves. And it's really loyalty.

Like, other features of of the platform, you know, reviews, It's still educational, but, again, today's shopper, the person doing the buying today, they, a lot of times, are looking to see what other consumers have said. Right? They wanna feel a level of confidence, especially if they have choices of where they're gonna make that purchase. They wanna know that they're buying not only a reputable product but from a reputable brand versus looking at another brand. You'd be surprised how often we hear someone say, yeah.

We don't really need product reviews or our customers would never leave a review. And we say, well, you'd be surprised if you put reviews there. How many of them would actually give you feedback about the products? And if something wasn't working well and, a, it's gonna help your team go back out to them and maybe, you know, if you're influences product development. 100%.

So so a lot of times when we talk to b two b, it's just, you know, it's education, it's understanding, maybe are they having pains or or pain points? But, when we start to talk through it a little bit more, we we had a we had a really interesting this is probably four or five months ago, you know, while we were still building b to b addition, but having some conversations. But they had said that they felt they have a very loyal customer base, but that same customer base can get any of the products that they sold at a Home Depot or a Lowe's. And we said, well, just take the the smallest set of customers, an independent contractor. Right?

Maybe a one or two man shop. You don't think they're gonna price shop it. Right? You know, they are. So you need to give them a reason to continue to come back and wanna buy those products from you.

Yes. They can get them from Home Depot or Lowe's, but let's give them a reason to come back to you and continue to do the purchasing from there. And I think those are kind of those moments where and, again, not every b two b brand is gonna be like that, but that is where I think those moments start to sit in where they haven't thought about it in that perspective, and they say, yeah. Maybe there is a way that we could take that smaller percentage of users and make them this much more loyal to our brand, which is just gonna add this much more to our bottom line. I you know, I worked a lot in software, you know, software companies and having to do MPS is an equivalent to that where a company I've been with know, product leaders and business leaders where they think, oh, no.

We everybody loves our product. All that. We have great, you know, great customer sentiment. And you're like, okay. Well, you you never done an NPS survey, so let's just see, you know, and you can argue whether or not how accurate those are.

But they are a really good indicator of just kind of like, oh, the surprising results that come out of that in many many cases. You know, just the, are you sure your customers are are you know, how do you know unless you actually go out and get that custom you know, solicit customer qualitative and quantitative insights from them, like product reviews and and product feedback. And a company has to be, you know, it's companies have to be willing to hear what's not, you know, be surprised by the results and be wanting to genuinely make changes to go back to their vision and value proposition and promise to their customers. Right. But it also makes me think about, you know, the, the, the showing those customers, like the what's possible.

A lot of people, you know, people think they know what they know, you know, they only know what they know and they're stuck in their ways and they're like, oh no, we don't need to do that. We've been what got us here. Won't always get you there. And that mindset is always, you know, changing. And then when they those examples are so so prevalent.

But I also think about, getting back to your loyalty programs in general, having done many. I worked for a company called Brewer Supply Group, and, they had a they they said, oh, we've got a loyalty program. I know, but it wasn't really like it actually wasn't, what I would consider a a loyalty program. And it wasn't, an effective loyalty program. It wasn't designed, you know, it wasn't designed well.

And it they didn't spend time on it because they had done it over the years and realized that it really wasn't profitable. You know, like, there wasn't, value in it. So, you know, a well structured loyalty program is essential because there are loyalty programs. And a lot of people say, oh, no. I don't want it.

Loyalty programs don't work for us or they're not profitable. They don't there's not an ROI on it. And then so connecting that ROI and and how you structure a loyalty program to make it because, yeah, just because you have a loyalty program doesn't mean it's effective and doesn't mean it's a good spend or use or of of resources unless you're doing it right. Yeah. And and that it that goes back to me.

Loyalty at at kind of the highest of levels is, you know, kind of similar, but each brand and how they do it and how they, deploy it to their customers is wildly different. But I'm sure it's successful, and we have a lot of data obviously on our side on what has worked for customers, what has not worked for customers, where we can, suggest and and put together some plans. But I mean, you could even think in like we were talking earlier. I mean, there's so many places too that have loyalty programs. I think if people just sat and thought like, hey, that actually really works well for me.

Can I translate that to to our business or how we're doing things? But it doesn't always have to be something or be thought of as a loser. And and I know that there's a lot of times where, and again, this just is from talking with b two b brands, but their loyalty programs will consist of, you know, people maybe are earning these points, but then they get to pick like a TV and then the business has to buy a TV and, you know, fulfill a TV and when whatever the case is because they're catering to someone that's maybe doing the buying and doesn't necessarily care about points and dollars off of future purchases, but Right. It would almost it would almost look and say, okay, well, are we then catering to the wrong people? Because, yes, if you're giving away TVs to all of these people, that's a lot of money that you're going to have to put out there for some business that they've given you versus giving them points and maybe the the people can get some swag.

Maybe it's the company though that's getting a rebate of some sort at the end of the year. It's the company that's building the loyalty to your company. The people are just instructed then at that point to do the buying on behalf of that company with them because they're gonna get this rebate, and those people doing the buying can still get some sort of an incentive as part of the program. But it doesn't have to be these, you know, flashy and, you know, when I any anytime I hear if we're talking to a b two b brand, anytime I hear that loyalty has been a loser, it hasn't ever worked for us, and they said that they've done it in the past, I would say 99% of the time, it's because it was exactly that, where the buyers were getting points, and then they could shop a catalog of these products that were fulfilled by some third party. And those products were like TVs or, you know, all these things that would require money.

And it's like, yeah, that's, of course, that's not gonna necessarily have the same payoff as it just being a rebate that a company gets to then continue to shop with your brand. Well, think of, like, distributors. Like, you don't like, it's about incentivization. Right? How are they incentive or why are they incentive to buy from you?

And it doesn't it's not always monitor monetetary unless they're incentivized on their end to purchase at a price wise, you know, or price. And it's about, like so incentivizing, distributors to, you know, purchase from you. And sometimes they're right. They're already in set agreements. There isn't you know, so what's the incentive, just to you know, but they often have a couple of choices.

Right? And and multiple choices in the market, back to your point. And so finding those ways and for b two b and, you know, the real opportunity there, it's it's it's pretty exciting. And I know we're you know, in the interest of time, you know, love the conversation. We could you feel like we could talk all all day about this topic and and examples and and and everything.

But, I guess just to kinda bring it back to, you know, your B 2 B Suite, you know, kind of the things you're seeing and and kind of what do you see, you know, in the next the next couple years? What are you most excited about? Yeah. Just a a I mean, just think just b two b in general, again, continuing to evolve and, continuing to add more of these types of capabilities to their portfolio to just effectively make them more successful in the long run. So we're excited to see how it continues to evolve, you know, with the customers that we have using it and the feedback that they're going to give.

But, like, I I just keep equating to, like, where it feels like we're at right now was where b to b commerce was, like, ten years ago where people were just starting to get their feet wet with it. It feels like we're just now starting to get our feet wet with, okay, we have commerce. We have really good commerce. How do we have really good complementary solutions that could just continuously excel these platforms? So that's where I'm excited to to see where how, you know, how it just continues to evolve these next couple years here.

Likewise. Well, Mike, you are commerce famous. The the the essence of it is that, you know, you're you're just you're an average guy on the street, but in in in commerce circles, you're you're a well known entity and people really respect and and admire, what you're doing with site vibes and just and and and you're such an amazing person to get to know anyway. But, who would you recommend, you know, coming on the show? Who do you who inspires you, or do you think, would be a really fun and interesting guest to have on the podcast?

Oh, that's a good question. I I I'll go I'll throw out, a mutual client, Derek Fortna, at, NACHE Chattanooga Shooting Supply, but he's been commerce a long time. He's been on both sides of commerce, both the the actual, you know, kind of building and being directors and VPs of e commerce to on the other side of it where he was more on the software side of it. But I think he would bring a a tremendous amount of insight, from a commerce perspective to the conversation. Fantastic.

Yeah. Well, we'll get in touch with them maybe, you know, mutual mutual customers. So that's a great idea. Would love to have them. So thanks for the recommendation.

Well, this has been fun. Thank you for taking time out of your morning to meet with me and talk, and, really looking forward to, you know, continue seeing you again soon and and keeping the conversation going. Yeah. I appreciate you having me. Thank you.

Alright. Thanks, Maya.