2X eCommerce Podcast

Selling other brands is a challenge but can still be rewarding.

This is a follow on talk from episode 30: What Kind of Ecommerce Business Are You Building?

Where I provided the only two routes to selling online:

Sell products from a range of brands Vs

designing, inventing, developing, manufacturing and sell ‘direct-to-consumer’ (D2C).

In this episode, I explore various tactics you can employ as a merchandiser of a range of brands to thrive.

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This show is brought to you by 2X Consulting Ltd

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Aihui Ong 爱慧 (pronounced as I-WE) is the founder and CEO of a Silicon Valley based subscription ecommerce snack business most of our U.S listeners will have heard off: Love With Food. For as low as $10/month, Love with Food provides organic or all-natural snack boxes on a monthly subscription basis.

These boxes tend to be packed with hard to find snacks that are typically not in grocery stores - its like a discovery engine that helps its health conscious customers find new healthy snacks; while at the same time is a Market Research Platform Organic Food brands.

So it is like a Birchbox for Organic Snacks.

Love with Food is a fast growth ecommerce business and the sort of venture I love featured here on 2X eCommerce.

- it 6Xed revenue in its first year of business

- then 2Xed in its second year.

- and is set to almost 2X again…in 2015

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Today’s show is particularly quite exciting: that is because if you are signed up to my newsletter, you'll know by now how I bang on about how fundamental repeat customers are to achieving ecommerce success - and how repeats customers are truly the lifeblood of most ecommerce businesses. So, I did some digging around for Ecommerce customer retention platforms and came across Ometria (https://www.ometria.com/); a predictive Ecommerce Customer Lifecycle Marketing platform that helps mid-tiers retailers drive and increase customer retention by helping them identify:

- Their hero customers,

- Repeat vs News customers,

- Lapsing periods between sales,

- Key customer retention metrics at both a granular customer level as well as in segments and holistically

After identification of these metrics, it segments your database and sends highly customised and targeted messages to each customer.

This interview is with a co-Founder and the CEO of Ometria; Ivan Mazour.

I quiz him about how to go about scaling a mid-tier ecommerce business armed with both customer data/insights and personalisation.

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There are two major routes in the business of online retail, you either:

Sell products from a range of brands and in other words ‘curate’ a range and offering of products for your target market. You’d most likely be a specialist i.e. like a store selling only high end headphones, or wooden floors or affordable leather goods. Margins are typically slim in this instance and you’d find that Amazon dominates a significant number of verticals. You need to dig deep to position your store as a specialist store with a deep offering and brilliant customer service.

Design, invent, develop, manufacture and sell ‘direct-to-consumer’ (D2C) - a tough slug as you might need to constantly refresh and update your offering. You’d most likely need to seek partner manufacturers, designers, etc. The difficult part is taking your product to market.

If you have a look at the products on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, you’d find that they are all D2C businesses attempting to use crowdfunding to lunch their businesses.

Because you control the entire value chain, margins are a whole lot wider here.

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Lost My Name (https://www.lostmy.name/) is a London based digital publishing and ecommerce start-up, that has sold close to 600,000 copies of a single personalised book titled: “The Little Boy/Girl Who Lost His/Her Name" to 136 countries in just 3 years.

They had the highest ever valuation on Dragons Dens (for U.S. listeners, this is the UK equivalent of Shark Tank).

The have grown by a staggering 1,500% in a single Year.

They refer to their business as a ‘full-stack’ business - which is ‘vertically-integrated’ meaning that they create, manufacture, market and delivery their product direct to consumer.

The are a zero inventory company - meaning that every single book is uniquely printed on demand

And they recently just completed a Series A round of funding and raised $9 million as a result.

I spoke with Asi Sharabi, a co-founder/CEO and Depesh Mandalia Performance Marketing Lead about the phenomenal growth they have seen over the past 2 years.

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This is my third and final interview with CPC Strategy - the paid search management agency with a specialist focus in retail.

This time we talk about Facebook Marketing for Ecommerce (and YES, Facebook advertising traffic does convert).

We cover:

- The various types of Facebook advertising campaigns specific to retail

- How to set up your Facebook advertising campaigns

- What the low hanging fruit available ecommerce in fb advertising are today

- Retargeting, dynamic product ads and more....

This is pretty much a tutorial.

SO Grab your notebooks and take a load of notes :)

About my guest: Stephen Kerner

Stephen is Senior Retail Search Manager at CPC Strategy - he is referred to as the ‘father of Facebook’ at CPC Strategy.

He is their in-house social media expert with 5+ Years experience in Social Media.

He has a dedicated passion for social media advertising and

has become an instrumental member of the CPC Strategy team.

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How do you find; not just a good magento developer but a great one?

In this episode, I am going to be talking with the Chief Technology Officer of a Magento development agency (Envalo) who is Magento Certified as well as a Co-author of a book titled: "Magento for Developers".

He will flesh out what it takes to hire and retain in-house or freelance Magento developers and Magento development agencies.

Do stay tuned!

About Tim Reynolds

Tim is Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Envalo - an eCommerce Consultancy with Magento expertise.

Tim has been into software engineering and programming for close to a decade now.

He majored in a computer science University of Akron, Akron, OH

He is a Certified Magento Developer, has spoken as Magento’s Imagine Conference (in 2012) and also contributed to a book titled:

Magento for Developers: Product Configuration and ‘Composite Products

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This is the 2nd of a 3-part series with CPC Strategy - the paid search management agency with a specialist focus in retail.

This episode is dedicated to how to effectively run Amazon Product Advertising campaigns and why it must not be ignored as a paid customer acquisition channel in e-commerce. We cover pretty much everything retailers need to know about AMAZON ADVERTISING today.

Stay tuned and be prepared to take a load of notes!

Based on this article: http://www.cpcstrategy.com/blog/2015/02/amazon-sponsored-product-vs-amazon-product-ads/

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Rick Backus

Rick is CEO and Co-Founder of CPC Strategy - he has spent his entire professional life in the world of online retail, initially with price comparison engine PriceGrabber.com, before co-founding CPC Strategy in 2007.

Rich is a regular speaker at conferences such as IRCE, SES, MivaCon and SearchLove.

And a columnist on publications such as Search Engine Land, Internet Retailer, Mixergy and MediaPost.

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More and more UK consumers are shopping online and they increasingly expect retailers to provide more convenient delivery options to accommodate their busy schedules. In fact, the three-hour delivery window has now become a standard expectation among the majority of UK shoppers, according to new research* carried out by Honeywell.

Jeff Taylor is the Transport & Logistics Director at Honeywell Scanning & Mobility for Europe, Middle East, India & Africa (EMEIA).

Jeff has been in the mobile technology and data capture segment of the transport and logistics tech sector for over 20 years now and is here to talk about are recent Honeywell survey about online shopping delivery expectations from UK shoppers.

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I am SUPER excited to have Nir Eyal with me on the 2X eCommerce Podcast show today!

Nir is the author of New York Times best selling book about consumer psychology and technology: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.

He is a prominent figure in the silicon valley startup scene with specialist expertise in product development and consumer psychology

Nir’s HOOKED model fleshes out the BUILD phase of Eric Reiss' build-measure-learn feedback loop, LEAN methodology.

Nir's work is very much centred around building successful habit forming products, particularly in the technology scene.

He is here to talk about the HOOK methodology in the context of online retail.

Other than the sheer brilliance of his HOOK methodology, my reason for having Nir on the show was to ask a pressing question as to:

how e-tailers can embed habit with consumer psychology into their customers' shopping and user experience in a bid to drive up retention. i.e. repeat customers.

Nir provided some unique insights online retailers should be considering....do listen in!

To follow Nir's work and articles, head over to his site: www.Nirandfar.com

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