Retention Chronicles

Chad Fisher (Founder) and David Stober (COO) of Ambaum join Retention Chronicles to discuss when merchants should use third party apps vs. custom solutions within Shopify’s capabilities

The Ambaum team has been in the Shopify ecosystem since the early days. Chad and David share their experiences running a Shopify agency, and then expand on their experience to further discuss optimizing a Shopify store for growth. 

Mariah emphasizes the importance of considering a brand's position on the growth curve when making decisions about what technology to add to your Shopify storefront. No brand is similar, and that’s what makes Shopify such a breeding ground for creativity. The group also discusses the evolving landscape of Shopify and its implications for custom development versus using apps. 

Later, they discuss the value of attending industry events and networking with brands and agencies to build relationships that can benefit both parties.

This podcast is sponsored by Malomo, a leading shipment and order tracking platform for Shopify and Shopify Plus ecommerce brands. 

To see what your personalized mockup of branded order tracking and transactional email/SMS would look like, fill out this form & we’ll send your free design right to your inbox!

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Dallas Parsons, Senior Director of Marketing at Mixhers, joins Retention Chronicles to discuss adding value to the ecommerce customer experience. 

Dallas started at Mixhers as a customer success manager, so she knows exactly what their customers care about most after her first-hand experience. She’s since transitioned into their marketing department to focus on customer retention, email marketing, designing the customer experience, implementing marketing technology, loyalty programs, & more. 

Like many ecommerce brands, Mixhers continues to focus on customer retention as customer acquisition costs (CAC) continue to rise. They chose to funnel their energy towards what was working for them - email marketing.

Dallas and her team decided to define an email marketing strategy that helped educate their customers. They did this by enabling a product quiz around which supplement would be the best for that customer based on their answers. 

At face value, some ecommerce brand operators would argue that this isn’t a smart marketing approach as it could add friction to the buying experience. But, the Mixhers team saw that it actually helped their customer’s buying experience and resulted in higher revenue. With more confidence in what product they were buying, Mixhers customers benefited largely from this addition.

Dallas tells Mariah about this decision and much more on this newest episode of Retention Chronicles.

This podcast is sponsored by Malomo, a leading shipment and order tracking platform for Shopify and Shopify Plus ecommerce brands. 

To see what your personalized mockup of branded order tracking and transactional email/SMS would look like, fill out this form & we’ll send your free design right to your inbox!

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Harry Willis, Director of Partnerships and Business Development at Relo, joins Retention Chronicles to discuss increasing repeat orders and subscriptions for Shopify CPG brands.

For Shopify and Shopify Plus brands, it can be difficult to know how to exactly tailor your customer experience when trying to motivate your customers to purchase more with you. Decisions like which day to target, which product to cross sell, who to show something to, and so many others are difficult to make without data and predictive analytics. 

Harry WIllis, Director of Partnerships and Business Development at Relo, explains how Shopify brands are building their customer experience with the smartest tools around and how they’re hurdling the biggest retention challenges of the year. 

For instance, one problem brands face is with increasing reorders and cross sells is that different products have different reorder times. But with product and customer tendencies, Shopify merchants are working around this with predictive analytics and making sure that their email marketing and SMS marketing is well-placed based on that order. 

This podcast is sponsored by Malomo, a leading shipment and order tracking platform for Shopify and Shopify Plus ecommerce brands. 

To see what your personalized mockup of branded order tracking and transactional email/SMS would look like, fill out this form & we’ll send your free design right to your inbox!

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32:48 CPG subscription-based brands and problem-solving.

Jay Davis, Founder of Pillow Cube, Cold Case Ice Cream, & Creatably, joins Retention Chronicles to discuss where to start when founding an ecommerce brand.

Jay has had a vast background in marketing and he focuses on one thing - what’s not going to change in 10 years, and how he can focus on that. 

Jay and Mariah talk about how easy it is to get caught up in marketing trends even if they might not be the best thing for your business. Making the (wrongful) assumption that traditional marketing of the past isn't as effective as our current age of digital marketing can lead to massive missed growth opportunities.

After founding many brands, Jay’s biggest advice to other founders of products is to know your finances and if people will want your product.

Jay shares his favorite test to run with friends and family to see if they enjoy a new product. We don’t want to spoil the details, but it’s one of those moments where you’ll reframe how you’re going about your customer testing. He also gives insight into some of his favorite customer retention plays.

Jay also discusses 2024 macroeconomics of the ecommerce industry and what founders should be cautious about. 

This podcast is sponsored by Malomo, a leading shipment and order tracking platform for Shopify and Shopify Plus ecommerce brands. 

To see what your personalized mockup of branded order tracking and transactional email/SMS would look like, fill out this form & we’ll send your free design right to your inbox!

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Summary43:12 Entrepreneurship, marketing, and customer retention.

Emerson Hammer, Director of Partnerships at Corso, joins Retention Chronicles to discuss ecommerce shipment protection in the order tracking experience.

There’s a lot of tech stack consolidation in ecommerce right now as brands are striving for efficiency to get more out of their tech. Emerson tells Noah and Mariah about how ecommerce brands should really be focusing on retention and reverse logistics. 

Emerson speaks to the .3-.5% of packages that have an issue with shipping and how brands traditionally have to eat that sunk cost, but with Malomo and Corso brands can mitigate shipping protection and costs while increasing the customer experience. 

Brands can have full control over their refund policies, but few brands actually take the opportunity to increase their revenue in the post-purchase experience, like offering a gift card instead of a full return or providing cross and upsells.

This podcast is sponsored by Malomo, a leading shipment and order tracking platform for Shopify and Shopify Plus ecommerce brands. 

To see what your personalized mockup of branded order tracking and transactional email/SMS would look like, fill out this form & we’ll send your free design right to your inbox!

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Please note that all numbers shown in the episode are from a staging environment and therefore not real customer data.

Liz Reyes, Co-Founder of Sols, joins Retention Chronicles to discuss recovering from a burglary by putting her customers first, establishing her ecommerce store on Shopify, starting to build on social media, & more.

When founding an ecommerce company, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered like where to host your site, what technology to add to your ecommerce platform, what to invest in, how to build out your team, and more. Luckily for listeners of Retention Chronicles, Liz and Mariah talk about Liz’s journey in setting up Sols. 

Liz walks through her decision in choosing her ecommerce platform to be Shopify, setting up their website,  shipping, warehouse logistics, and operations. 

It’s a very unfortunate situation, but Liz shares a vulnerable moment in disclosing that Sols experienced a burglary in December 2023 and how she and her team have tried their best to recover and communicate with customers about the delays in their orders. After experiencing a lot of emotions around such an event, Liz speaks to the frustration of having to take inventory and match it to orders manually.

Liz also shares about her decision to break ties with a 3PL so that Sols could enhance and own the post-purchase experience. Like many brand founders, Liz knows the importance of communicating often and accurately with customers while they wait for their orders.

Starting out on social media can be a daunting task, but Liz breaks it down but just having fun with posting on Sols’ social media and nailing down who you are as a brand and who you want to be with.

James Van Erck, Co-Founder & COO of Rebuy, joins Retention Chronicles to discuss software that generates post-purchase revenue for Shopify brands. 

With his extensive background in ecommerce, James has a lot of experience to share with Shopify brand founders, operators, and marketers. A lot of brands focus on how to acquire their customers, but enough aren’t focusing on how to retain them after they make a first purchase. This is what James, Noah, and Mariah discuss. How do ecommerce brands retain their customers? 

There are a lot of ways to increase customer retention, but James shares one of the most crucial ways, and that’s by increasing post-purchase upsells and cross sells with dynamic product recommendations. This is why the Malomo and Rebuy software work so well together, and to hear more about that, you’ll want to tune into this episode.

This podcast is sponsored by Malomo, a leading shipment and order tracking platform for Shopify and Shopify Plus ecommerce brands. 

To see what your personalized mockup of branded order tracking and transactional email/SMS would look like, fill out this form & we’ll send your free design right to your inbox!

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Allyse Jackson, Founder & CEO of Beehive Meals, joins Retention Chronicles to discuss how she’s managed and organized operations and logistics for her ecommerce business. 

Without intending to, Allyse started her business Beehive Meals by prepping freezer meals when she was pregnant. After realizing she over prepared food for her family, she started to realize she needed to get ride of some of her prepped meals.

After delivering extra meals to friends and family, Allyse saw how well they were received and went to Facebook to see how many people would be interested in a delivery service.

After seeing a very high demand, Allyse started Beehive Meals and has learned many lessons in scaling in the food and beverage industry. Allyse shares her past and current experiences and challenges with inventory, storage, distribution, and delivery expectations in the ecommerce space.  

This podcast is sponsored by Malomo, a leading shipment and order tracking platform for Shopify and Shopify Plus ecommerce brands. 

To see what your personalized mockup of branded order tracking and transactional email/SMS would look like, fill out this form & we’ll send your free design right to your inbox!

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Caitlin Elgin, Head of CRM & Lifecycle, at Fluency Firm joins Retention Chronicles to discuss evaluating Shopify transactional email and SMS by click rate. 

Caitlin, Noah, & Mariah chat about Caitlin’s background in marketing and how she’s been in the Shopify space since 2014 before they even had an integration with USPS. 

Caitlin has worked with countless brands who have upgraded their transactional emails from the ‘out-of-the-box’ Shopify experience to fully branded and personalized transactional email and SMS with Malomo. She shares a specific Shopify merchant use case where after they implemented Malomo, they doubled their click rate on transactional emails. 

You can learn more about the services Caitlin and her team offer at fluencyfirm.com or by emailing [email protected]. 

This podcast is sponsored by Malomo, a leading shipment and order tracking platform for Shopify and Shopify Plus ecommerce brands. 

To see what your personalized mockup of branded order tracking and transactional email/SMS would look like, fill out this form & we’ll send your free design right to your inbox!

Episode Timestamps: 

Lindsay White, Founder & CEO of The Little Milk Bar, joins Retention Chronicles to discuss scaling customers through social media and digital marketing for Shopify brands.

Lindsay and Mariah chat about Lindsay’s journey to entrepreneurship within the Shopify ecosystem and how she first started in the Etsy community selling baby leggings. She then rebranded and pivoted her business to focus on breastfeeding and the right to breastfeed in public. 

When Lindsay started selling on Etsy, Instagram was new and she started to see that brands were using free advertising to scale their brand organically. She eventually learned that after starting her company, The Little Milk Bar, that Etsy was a great platform to start her business, but she soon transitioned her business to Squarespace and then Shopify.

Mariah and Lindsay talk about the benefits and drawbacks of different ecommerce hosting platforms, such as the restrictions of listing on Etsy and outgrowing Squarespace but not needing in-house graphic designers.

Lindsay shares about her experience in growing on Instagram in that it’s not easy to grow on social media because you must post multiple times a day, but it is worth-while in that if you’re targeting the right audience and have great content, you’ll be able to stand out in the noise. 

Given the stereotype around breastfeeding, Lindsay and her team at The Little Milk Bar was successful in getting Instagram to change their posting policies around breastfeeding, which was no easy feat. With that, they have been able to support many new and current mothers with their confidence in breastfeeding.