The D2Z Podcast
Gen Z entrepreneur and DTC agency leader Brandon Amoroso talks with some of the best in the marketing world. Brandon and guests reveal their top business-growth strategies for anyone in the online space–whether you are a brick-and-mortar business looking to scale or an established online business trying to grow. Consumer marketing is under constant and dramatic change, so Brandon aims to tackle new problems with a fresh Gen Z mindset. The D2Z Podcast delivers insights, strategies, and tactics that you can use and aims to shift how you think about business and your relationships with your teams, partners, and customers.
The D2Z Podcast
Tackling Rising Customer Acquisition Cost: Okendo's Approach with Matt Goodman - 74
I'm with speaking with Matt Goodman, the co-founder and CEO of Okendo. Matt walks us through Okendo's suite of solutions explicitly designed to combat the rising cost of customer acquisition by creating super fans for your brand. From reviews to quizzes, referrals to loyalty programs, Okendo's comprehensive stack guarantees to deliver high-quality, actionable data that brands can use to thrive in the digital landscape.
Matt chats up the upcoming Okendo World Tour Roadshow, where brands worldwide will share their customer marketing strategies, an invaluable resource for those looking to learn from the best.
Whether you're a brand seeking to reduce your dependence on social media platforms for customer acquisition or are curious about how Okendo is helping brands maximize their customers' value, this episode is packed with insights!
I'm Brandon Amoroso, and this is the D2Z podcast Building and growing your business from a Gen Z perspective. Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z, a podcast about using the Gen Z mindset to grow your business. I'm Gen Z entrepreneur, brandon Amoroso, founder and president of Retention as a Service Agency, electric, and today I'm actually talking with Matt Goodman, co-founder and CEO of the Kendo and one of Electric's closest and long time partners. So really excited to get the chat with you today, matt, about some of the things that we're going to cover.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hi, brandon, thank you, it's great to be with you today.
Speaker 1:So before we jump into some of the topics that we wanted to get through today, can you give everybody just a quick sort of background on yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I'm Australian, as you may be able to tell from the accent, and I've been working in and around Shopify for gee. It's nearly like the last eight, 10 years Always been working in digital around SaaS, and the Kendo as a company is really iteration of a previous company that I started, which was all around video content, primarily for online retailers. It was like a video testimonial tool that essentially pivoted its way into what a Kendo is today.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's really cool. I had no idea that a Kendo was a pivot from an earlier business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:So when, like around what year was a Kendo and its current form started?
Speaker 2:Well, the year that, like the four of us originally working on the project got together was 2017. And so we were like working in a dark room and we work for the first 18 months or so, I think, and it wasn't until yeah, about 18 months, two years later, that we launched on the Shopify app store.
Speaker 1:Got it and before we keep diving in here, can you give everybody just a quick background as well on a Kendo and what it is that you do, Because I know it's evolved a lot, even in just the last year? I would say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Very rapid evolution recently. So in summary, I'd say a Kendo is a customer marketing platform and we provide a suite of five kind of best in class solutions that are intended to help Shopify brands grow their business faster and more efficiently. Specifically, the products that we have reviews, surveys, quizzes, referrals and loyalty and a great kind of multi products suite where there's lots of synergies to be accessed by using these products altogether. And what these products really all have in common is that they're intended to help brands really maximize the value of their customers, and I mean that in like the traditional sense of helping increase customer lifetime value, but also developing stronger, more productive customer relationships where there's an active collaboration between the brand and the consumer on different activities that can help drive growth, whether that's leaving reviews, sharing in GC, referring friends, those sort of things that can actually directly drive growth and move the needle for a brand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I really appreciate the extension of the product over the last year, because having various solutions pulling together, zero party data on, like our clients, customers makes things challenging when it comes to segmentation or being able to remark it to them, and so being able to have quizzes, reviews, surveys all in one platform is a huge value add and then also allows us to not ask the same question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Three spots, which is one of my biggest pet peeves for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a pain point. We've heard a lot from merchants and, exactly as you say I'm, from agencies and partners as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So in terms of you know merchants and the pain points that you're solving for them, obviously, overall, what you're trying to do here is increase customer lifetime value, but how exactly are you addressing this sort of merchant pain? What is the merchant pain? And then you know obviously you've released a couple of new products this year. How does that factor into you know those pain points and how you're better suited to serve them now versus you know maybe before?
Speaker 2:For sure, yeah, so I think the primary pain that a kind of is out to help merchants address is really the number one challenge that's facing brands today, and that is the increasing customer acquisition costs. I don't think it's actually much of an exaggeration to say that brands today face, like the cat, the customer acquisition costs apocalypse costs to be increasing pretty dramatically over the last five years given the escalating competition and DTC. But it's really been in the last 12, 18 months in particular where tax of, like that rise in Kak has accelerated so dramatically after we've seen the iOS 14 changes and the data privacy platform, changes on the big social media platforms and how that's made target advertising more expensive and harder, as well as coupled with the impact of inflation, even at costs alone and not immune to the impact of inflation. And I was reading just yesterday by estimates of one agency that the cost of advertising have increased more than 20% in the past two years alone. So you know that that's, of course, like a really big challenge for many DTC brands, many of whom have been operating on thin margins, and so such a such an increase in characters is really enough to threaten the viability of their entire operation. So I think, like when we've got also a kind of vacuum of funding leaving the ecosystem at the moment with VC and PE sitting on the sidelines after what's been quite a correction over the last 12 months. Either that or off chasing the latest AI opportunity you know there's. There's not really any more funding for the for the growth at all cost model that that was so pervasive in the 2020 and 2021.
Speaker 2:And the implication is brands really have to find a sustainable growth model or die, and you know, from our perspective, the best way of what reducing care, becoming more, can sustainable, is ultimately to reduce their dependence on these big social media platforms for new customer acquisition and ongoing engagement. This is something we've heard the industry talk a lot about. Certainly, our good friends and partners over at Clavio talk a lot about owned marketing, owning your data, owning your growth. So I'd say that Aikendo is certainly in support of that same mission. However, where Clavio is kind of focused on centralizing data in one platform and then activating it to communicate via email or SMS, sometimes called data activation, aikendo is more focused on helping brands generate that first and zero party data and then, as I say, also helping facilitate a collaboration directly between a brand and a consumer on activities that can drive growth without needing to pay those third party platforms. So it's really all about helping brands grow faster and more efficiently and reducing their tax and ensuring a sustainable business model.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense and I think that lends itself into the concept of a superfan and what you're able to do with a customer now in Aikendo, when you can see quiz, survey, review, the referral activity all within one platform. But what does a superfan mean to you? And subsequently, why should brands actually care about these superfans? Because costs continue to rise in your traditional advertising acquisition channels. But superfans are a way to leverage and think about acquiring customers in a different light. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:We would think of a superfan as kind of the ideal customer and certainly the sort of customer that Aikendo is really all about helping create. So these are your customers that have a high lifetime value, that are really engaged with the brand. They're following you on social media. They've got many purchases. Maybe they're subscribed to your subscription offering. They're leaving reviews. They're on the VIP tier of your loyalty program. Maybe they're also referring friends and family and part of the Ambassador Club. These are the customers that have high lifetime value, highly engaged and are also willing to help the brand grow directly.
Speaker 2:And it's a fun name superfan, but don't let the fun name fool you is what we think, because superfans really are a strategic growth asset in this sort of environment where efficiency really is critical. The interesting thing I think that we see is like all brands have some percentage of superfans. It's just that most brands have a much smaller number than it's really able to move the needle. So around that like perhaps one to two percent mark is where we see most brands. But if we look at the brands that are really winning in today's space, they've got a rate that's much higher more around 10 to 15 percent, and brands should really care about creating these superfans, because these customers do facilitate faster, more efficient growth. And I can go into some of the detail there, but yeah, I might just pause there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you look at all you know when you think about LTV? I'm assuming that for the superfan, their LTV is beyond just what they're spending the brand, because you know they're driving other actions and purchases from family friends, whoever it may be. Does that get factored into or accounted for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely I think, like we think, about the value from a monetary perspective, from their direct purchases, and then it's almost like a productivity kind of value or score in terms of the extent to which they can act as like a growth node in the customer base to help pull in and bring more customers, reach new audiences, create more content, drive more conversions. So all of these things are of immense value to brands that don't traditionally get aggregated and measured all in one place, and that's something that Aikendo's working on changing, so we can give brands a kind of centralized view of who their most influential and valuable customers are, both by their purchase history as well as the activities that they undertake to help a brand grow more efficiently as well.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense. And especially going into, there's so many things that are potentially overlapping when it comes to referral customers, like are they more so affiliates? Are they influencers? Are they just brand ambassadors? I'll share a brand with friends, but I'm obviously not an influencer or an affiliate, but there's a lot of overlap, I think, and being able to sort of manage everybody within one solution is helpful too. And then also, you know sort of unveiling the actual true value to a customer, because you could have somebody purchases like once or twice, but then you know they had 10 people come through their word of mouth and that person's way more valuable to you than me having only bought like five times. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:You know just from that point, of having all the solutions in one place. You know that, that kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier, that's definitely one of the other kind of key pain points that Akenba's helping to solve, for which is you know, having.
Speaker 2:It's much harder to build these sort of super fans where you're getting lots of active, high quality and actionable data, working with them in a way that is, you know, seamless and personalized. You've all that data is spread out and functionality across multiple solutions, so being able to consolidate them all into one stack, save time, save money based on the workflows, have a single simple subscription offering. You know, that's something that we've definitely, like our customers, find really valuable, and we've seen a real increase in demand for over the last 12 months as well. So both things are really important there that it's really hard to create a super fan when you've got your data and your solutions all scattered around and have optimally integrated and the ability to kind of save money as well by having them all in one place.
Speaker 1:And, as the you know, as the platforms evolved, obviously your value prop to merchants has changed as well. And so at this point, what would you say? You know, akenba's sort of unique foot in the market is for merchants like, why Akenba over other platforms today, versus, you know, even a year ago? I'm sure that was a lot different of why Akenba?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. I think today you know we talk about Akenba and our kind of unique value offering the composition of our products suite reviews, surveys, referrals, quizzes and loyalty. No other platform has that same composition all in one place and each of these products are intended to serve a really specific purpose, like, ultimately, in that creation of a sort of super fan. It's really all about being able to orchestrate these products together in such a way that optimizes the rate of super fan creation, the rate of data generation and being able to all append it to a single customer profile that exists in Akenba. We know you know brands are continuing to use Clavio, perhaps in particular for their kind of ultimate data source. But in this process of generating data, being able to have a customer profile all in one place where, as you said before, you don't have to ask the same question twice, you can continue, like building on profile enrichment, that's a really key value for, let's say, akenba.
Speaker 2:So having a unique composition to our products suite is what our customers find really compelling. And then the synergies that you do get from having all these products in one place, simplified billing All those things come together as part of our unique platform offering. Otherwise, I'd also point to things like we refer to Love-In, not Lock-In, which basically means we're not interested in locking brands into lengthy, non-negotiable contracts. We strive to essentially earn the business of our customers month over month and we want them to stay with us because of the great results they experience with the platform, as well as the great experience and service they get from us as well.
Speaker 2:And yeah, maybe the third thing I'd point to is we really do have a very religious focus on measurable ROI. All of our products are really intended to directly drive revenue, whether it's the percentage of people that are interacting with reviews and then going on to be a purchaser, repeat purchases from loyalty, or checkouts from quizzes, all of them have a direct conversion into revenue, and so our teams and our platform are all very focused on helping merchants deliver a really measurable return on their investment in the platform.
Speaker 1:No, that makes a lot of sense. It's been fun to watch the evolution of the product and how it's continued to address and help serve the needs that we've had in a way that doesn't necessarily happen with all tech products. So literally every release I'm like oh, this is addressing something that we had an issue with in the past.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or something that we've been looking forward to doing, whereas in some other cases I'll see releases and I'm just not really sure, necessarily, how that will help us with our merchants in moving the needle for them Right, and so obviously it's a testament to what you all are doing when it comes to building out the product releases and the upcoming roadmap. Are there any things that are sort of in the pipeline when it comes to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, firstly, thank you for the feedback, the kind feedback, and I just a note there I'd say we do try to and I'm pretty obsessed about listening to our customers and what they want and continuing to pull that thread of listening to what they want and also building on what our current strengths are. So you can see, with this product suite, they're all really focused on connecting brands with customers directly, generating data and then using that to provide a better, more personalized experience. And so, yeah, looking forward, we have our loyalty solution. That's in our early adopter program at the moment. It will go into public availability probably late this year or very, very early next. So definitely the big release for that is on the horizon.
Speaker 2:We are accepting early adopters at the moment. If folks are interested, you can check that out. Otherwise, it's probably a little bit too early to say specifically what's coming next year, but we are certainly addressing some core themes. One of those would be we're really committed to enhancing all the new products that we released. Over the last 12 months we released four new products. So there's we continue building on those and committed to trying to turn those into really category leading products. Ai is certainly something we're thinking a lot about and how we can incorporate both predictive and generative.
Speaker 2:AI into the feature sets and then yeah, perhaps data and analytics is something that we're also thinking a lot about, as we were talking about before, being able to give merchants a view of their customer data and their impact on growth in ways that don't exist today. That's also really actionable and can help them calibrate their ongoing customer marketing programs for a better effect.
Speaker 1:And quizzes is hot off the presses here in terms of the most recent product releases. What are you most excited about when it comes to that? Because it felt like for me at least sort of the last piece when it comes to zero-party data aggregation. That was missing, since you already had reviews and surveys, but didn't have the quiz component yet. Yeah, I think quizzes is a really exciting product for me for a bunch of reasons.
Speaker 2:First of all, I love that we're essentially proving well it has been proven that quizzes is a direct revenue driver. Like customers or shoppers love to interact with this sort of tool as a way of performing product discovery, and when you can pair that with a really great recommendation integration with reviews and an incentive such as a coupon or even loyalty points, the conversion rate on the recommended products that come out from quizzes is really strong. So brands can basically deploy a quiz and see a meaningful uplift in their conversion rates and get a new kind of direct revenue generating line happening. And the data that comes back from a quiz, it's all appended to the master customer profile in a Kendo, and so if we can know who a user is at the time they're taking the quiz, we won't ask them the same question again. So we already know a consumer skin type. Next time around we're going to ask them something else what their skin concerns are or maybe what their hair color is, and so these are really fun and engaging ways for brands to connect with customers or shoppers, get that actual data they need while simultaneously driving new revenue One of the reference bands that I looked at in this space is Il Macchiage, I think, is the pronunciation.
Speaker 2:I might be butchering that, but they're not an Aikendo customer, but they've built this really fantastic business off the back, in particular, of the use of this quiz functionality. I think their parent company had an IPO relatively recently and they really credit the quiz style of shopping as one of their main growth drivers. I'm really excited about getting it out into the market, which is launching tomorrow, and seeing the great results that we know customers and partners are going to be able to achieve with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's definitely the most of all the products, the one that sits at the beginning of potential customer interaction. You'd go quizzes, then surveys, then reviews and then referral and loyalty.
Speaker 2:Exactly, it's a really nice progression through the customer journey, and that's exactly what I meant by. Each one of our products is intended to play a specific role in that superfan creation process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, outside of the product itself, as somebody who has built a high growth tech startup, what are the things that you didn't expect that have come up over the last six years? Good and bad, Sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly, this is like the first major economic cycle that I've been old enough to live through. I think that's probably the first thing I didn't realize we were living through such a specific time period between 2020 and the end of 2021 around there.
Speaker 2:So being able to having to dramatically course correct, I suppose during these kind of black swan events and the end and start of a new cycle, I think has definitely been a learning experience for me. But perhaps more tactically I'd say, scaling is a unique challenge in and of itself. I think going from 10 guys and girls in an office that are all really mission-driven and kind of subject matter experts in all of the business areas, figuring out how to like 10 times that in the first step of scaling, going from 10 to 100, that's basically being the journey that we've been on over the last 12, 24 months, I'd say. And yeah, it's got unique challenges that I hadn't lived through before. And scaling culture, scaling process these are definitely fun but challenging experiences that I suppose come along with growing a business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't imagine having to scale that quickly and then also maintain the same level of as you mentioned subject matter, expertise and also the culture too. A lot of people will talk about culture and I feel like it's very hard to pin down. You know what is it actually, but you can always tell when a company has good culture or when it has bad culture, and obviously that's very important. Like happy, I think the saying is happy, happy wife, happy life, Happy employees, happy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, I mean it totally agree in terms of scaling culture, and you know, we started going through that process during COVID and so, therefore, we scaled while being fully remote, and that's a unique challenge in and of itself, in that half the people in the company haven't ever met each other. We have, since then, fortunately had the opportunity to come together and get everyone in the same room, but, yeah, when you're bringing together new people for the first time but have not met each other, that does really amplify the challenge for scaling culture and process.
Speaker 1:I think the in-person experience is super important, which was obviously made impossible in the beginning of COVID. Now it's difficult when teams are so remote and we're spread out all over the place. Being able to get everybody in the same room together is challenging, but I think important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's worth the investment. I was on the fence about that late last year and we invested in a big company off-site earlier this year and everybody agrees that it was worth it and then some, so definitely would recommend that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. Well, do you have any other exciting things coming up with the Kendo for the rest of the year?
Speaker 2:Well, actually we have our World Tour Roadshow, I suppose, if you will, which is for a Kendo Evolve, where we're getting together in New York, la and Sydney Basically just to talk about all things customer marketing, how brands can build more sustainable businesses, grow faster and more efficiently by collaborating more closely with their customers and getting them driving growth. So we're going to have some great speakers at each event. At LA, we've got True Classics, skims, sydney Booty, a number of other great brands, so yeah, should be a great event. Merchants and partners at H1. I'll be there as long as, along with some of the rest of the Kendo team, and it's just going to be great to hear the strategies and what's working well from other brands in this space.
Speaker 1:I think the shared learning opportunities are really valuable and actually getting to dig into concrete examples and do things like roundtables and stuff like that I really enjoy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly I know that brands don't want to listen to me or really any other tech providers that are on too much about their own stuff. They want to hear what's working from real brands, as you say, and get those learning opportunities and that's really very much what these days will be focused on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the same thing with, I think, any businesses. You can only talk about yourself so much and it'll sort of fall on deaf ears, but you have others talking about you and how they're leveraging you, and like that's the same thing for the agency. Our case studies are one thing, but it's another to have case studies from tech partners or case studies that are not being generated by us. It just provides not only additional sort of social proof, but use cases and portraying it in ways that we won't even necessarily think of, and so it happens for you. All the time Customers might use the product in a way that you wouldn't have expected initially, but that actually provides really great insights that can then be spread out to the rest of the.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. We see merchants and partners taking the product and pushing it to extreme and using them in ways that we hadn't planned or thought about and create opportunities for us to build on it essentially and create more functionality. But yeah, that whole concept of social proof. We build a business on it. It's the most powerful driver of behavior, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've got it. It's very difficult to do anything, so yeah, well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Before we hop off here, can you let everybody know where they can find you or Aikendo online?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. If folks are interested in learning more about Aikendo, they can go to bokendoio, so that's OK. E-n-d-o. Kendoio and yeah, otherwise, feel free to look me up on LinkedIn. Matt Goodman Love connecting with folks from the industry. Would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:Awesome, awesome. One question on the product itself, both for the merchants listening, but also, just in general, for other business owners. How have you had to rethink the way that you go about pricing? You have a true bundled solution, versus before it was just reviews.
Speaker 1:So you stand a lot of product. How do you think about pricing now and then, what sort of additional value and efficiencies are you able to pass on to the merchants Because of the fact that you might have five products that are being leveraged so it's easier to go on quote discount from what it would be if it was a standalone feature? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:That's a great question and that's exactly what it is. We really want to incentivize merchants to use the full suite, unlock those synergies that are possible when you use the five products or even two products plus together, and so, yeah, we are passing on really significant discounts to customers when they combine their subscriptions with the Kendo. So, yeah, I would definitely encourage the merchants that are interested to speak to our sales team, put together a kind of custom package based on the products that you're interested in.
Speaker 2:We definitely have some really generous opportunities available for bundling there.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. The market's moving towards bundled solutions both from. It makes more sense as to all the things that you mentioned around not asking duplicate questions, being able to orchestrate everything out of one platform, but then it also comes with cost savings and the market is sort of right for both of those things to be happening at once here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. I mean, why manage five vendors when you can really only manage one and get a better product outcome at the same time? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for coming on. Super interesting. I'm really excited to see the launch of quizzes and get to finally play with a solution that can do review, surveys and quizzes for us all in one place. So yeah, absolutely Profile enrichment is in our future.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. It's been great and, yeah, look forward to getting quizzes out there.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thanks everybody for listening. As always, I'm Brandon Amaroso. You can find me at Brandon Amarosocom or electricmarketingcom. And again, a kendo that's O-K-E-N-D-OI-O, and it's the solution that we leverage for almost all of our clients when it comes to zero party data aggregation and helping improve retention and increase LTV. So I strongly recommend not using five-discord vendors and getting on a consolidated tech stack. So we're preaching here. But again, matt, thanks for coming on and thanks everybody for listening.