A large social media following isn’t enough to build strong customer relationships.
Neither are Facebook ads.
What’s the key to long-lasting customer relationships? Personalization and segmentation, powered by owned marketing.
Matt Bahr, founder and CEO of Enquire Labs, and Jake Cohen, head of product marketing at Klaviyo, know firsthand how effective owned marketing channels can be.
But why does owned marketing matter? How can you build a solid foundation behind your strategy? And how can you move beyond guesswork into real customer insights?
To find out, Martina Cronin (Octane AI’s Partner Manager) chatted with Matt and Jake during a conversation on Clubhouse. Let's take a closer look at how you can make the most of your owned marketing.
What is owned marketing and why does it matter?
Above all else, owned marketing is putting the power in the consumer’s hands.
“We think about owned marketing as marketing through the channels where your audience has the direct opportunity to decide whether or not to engage,” Jake said.
As an example, someone can choose to come to your website or not, or open your email or not. Whereas with an advertisement, the ad platform decides who sees your content.
“Instead of being subject to rising ad costs or constrained supply, or a change in targeting capacity or capabilities,” Jake said, “You're able to build your audience and communicate with them in a personalized or targeted way, and make sure they want to stay engaged with you.”
Martina echoed the importance of owned media, as it gives you control over your channels: “You can get even more information to understand that ideal customer, where they're spending time, getting that information about them, how they're making their purchasing decisions.”
How to leverage owned marketing for your brand
There are so many different directions to take with owned marketing; starting out can be overwhelming to say the least.
How do you choose which platform to use? How do you create customer segments? Where do you begin with email personalization?
Like most things, it starts with a solid foundation.
1. Create a solid foundation for your owned marketing
Before you worry about segmenting and nurturing your list for the long haul, build your foundation. Rather than working with a general CRM tool, Jake recommends stitching all your data together seamlessly from the start.
“Make sure you have a tight integration with your ecommerce platform via Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce. That alone is a big start.”
– Jake Cohen, Head of Product Marketing at Klaviyo
Connecting with your ecommerce platform means you’ll be ready to scale your marketing and roll out personalization as your brand grows. Set yourself up for success by integrating with your ecommerce platform from the very beginning.
Source: Klaviyo
2. Discover how and when customers first heard about you
Conversion times take longer than you think. You don’t want to double down on one channel and learn your customers found out about you from somewhere else.
With post-purchase surveys, Enquire Labs helps customers discover how and when customers first heard about their brands.
“Go deeper into personalization and conversion rate optimization.”
– Matt Bahr, Founder and CEO at Enquire Labs
Recently, Enquire Labs ran a survey for one of their brands and were surprised by the results: about half of new customers made a purchase one year after they first heard about the company. That’s one whole year between first discovering the company, getting to know the products, and deciding to make a purchase.
When conversions take a year or more, it’s hard to justify ad spend—let alone relying on Facebook or Instagram Ads to garner a relationship with your contacts. Learning where your customers came from will give you the feedback you need to invest in the right channels and nurture your owned marketing list.
Source: Enquire Labs
3. Uncover why a customer decided to make a purchase
There’s another reason post-purchase surveys are an ecommerce brand’s best friend: getting to know what motivates your customers to buy.
“If you can understand why someone's buying for themselves, or otherwise, you change how you communicate and market to them,” Jake said.
One way to get buying decision information is with a Thank You survey. After purchase, ask customers whether their purchase was a gift for someone or for themselves. Then you can change your messaging accordingly.
“Marketing is making sure that you build an audience that you can reconnect with.”
– Jake Cohen, Head of Product Marketing at Klaviyo
Matt shared an example of a bone broth company that works with Enquire Labs. The company asks customers why they decided to purchase: was it because of gut health? A special diet? Liking the taste?
From there, they take the survey results and turn them into specific email segments and targeted messaging.
Without enough information on the customer, you’re probably going to segment based on what they purchased in the past. But when you have direct responses from customers on what draws them to a product and why they purchased, you can get even more specific and personalized in your messaging.
“When all of the emails are segmented based on survey insights, it sets all these flows up in such a beautiful way from the start.”
– Matt Bahr, Founder and CEO at Enquire Labs
4. Help your customers feel understood and supported
Your customers might not be as familiar with your product as you think. Find ways to learn what level of experience your customer has with your product.
One great example is using a quiz. Doe Lashes worked with Octane AI to use a quiz to check-in with their customers.
The result: they discovered 50% of customers had never used fake eyelashes before.
Before the quiz, Doe Lashes didn’t have any content that served brand new eyelash users.
Now, to provide another layer of support, they have how-to video tutorials on their social and their product pages. They also send different email flows depending on a customer’s experience level.
Source: Doe Lashes
Martina shared how a quiz plays into segmenting:
“It's funneling directly into Klaviyo,” Martina said, “Then as a post-experience after the quiz, Doe Lashes is sending specialized emails based on the result the customer got. They're dropping that customer into a welcome flow for their result.”
Now, when customers get individualized support from Doe Lashes, they’ll feel more connected and supported by the brand.
“Make the communication more relevant so people want to stay engaged. Then you can start to build on those relationships and grow predictably.”
– Jake Cohen, Head of Product Marketing at Klaviyo
Moving beyond guesswork with real insights from your customers
The best part about owned marketing is being able to connect with your customers and understand what makes them tick.
Once you’ve started gathering contact information and you’ve experimented with some basic segmenting, it’s time to get to know your customers on a deeper level.
No need to guess WHY your customers buy, or how they came to know your brand. Instead, get to know your customers firsthand.
So, how can you start to create segments and leverage your owned marketing to create hyper-specific, personalized customer experiences? Here are the 4 key steps from Jake, Matt, and Martina’s experience:
- Create a solid foundation by having a tight integration between your ecommerce and CRM tools.
- Ask where and when your customers heard about you so you can double down on the right platforms.
- Connect with customers to understand what motivated them to make a purchase, then personalize your communications.
- Provide educational and personalized content based on your customers’ feedback and experience with your product.
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About the show
Commerce Conversations is a show on Clubhouse within Commerce Club hosted by Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr: the co-founders of Octane AI. Giving Shopify brands the ability to offer conversational commerce to customers on their sites, Octane AI helps brands replicate the experience of an in-store consultation by leading customers to curated product recommendations.
Each episode of Commerce Conversations will center on casual and thoughtful chats about DTC (direct-to-consumer advertising) ecommerce and retail. They were joined in this episode by eCommerce veteran Taylor Sicard, Yumi’s co-founder Evelyn Rusli and MVMT’s co-founder Jake Kassan.
If you’d like to stay up-to-date on the Fire Show, including upcoming episodes and Clubhouse conversations, visit joincommerceclub.com and sign up for our newsletter.
