Material Retail Dumps

Welcome to Material Retail Dumps, episode 41. Um, we have a very special guest today with me is Isabel Groper. Um, she's a partner manager at Klaviyo and has almost a decade of experience in marketing technology. Um, Isabelle helps us strategize new ways to customers in store online.

Love it.

Thanks for joining.

Thank you. Yeah.

So I'd love if you start just tell us a little bit about yourself, um, and Klaviyo and where you excel and your expertise.

Yeah, so I have been at Klaviyo for about two and a half years now. Prior to that I was at HubSpot. So HubSpot's more b2b, klaviyo's, more b2c, right? So Klaviyo's businesses are mainly working directly with the end customer. So my expertise really lies in how to optimize your existing customer base, your existing community, and help them basically find what works best for them from your brand and continue to engage with you guys on an ongoing basis. And that means buying more from hopefully your boutique there.

Wow, I love that You're perfect fit and you've been a great, great help to us. Um, so let's jump right in. Give me a few ways I can get my existing shopper to shop more.

Yeah, so when it comes to essentially pushing forward that flywheel of your customer, right, continuing to get them into the shop, buying online, understanding what they like best, it all comes from collecting data from them first and foremost. So understanding, you know, where they like to buy their dresses. Do they like to buy their dresses in the store? Do they like to buy their dresses online? You know, how many do they, like what size are they? So collecting all of that information first and foremost so you can relate to them is how I would kind of start with understanding how you can get somebody to, I guess buy more at the end of the day from your boutique. So that can come down to segmentation, which we can talk about a little bit later. But first and foremost, like I said, you get wanna get the data.

So if you have an online store set up today, something that people might not realize is that when somebody checks out on your online store, you'll get their billing zip codes. You'll actually understand exactly where they are in relation to your boutique. So you can create events, maybe popped up in their neighborhood, maybe invite them to specific, you know, functions that you are going to be at. So just continuing to meet your buyer where they're at, rather than trying to kind of throw pasta against a wall and see what sticks you're really getting targeted with, how you're continuing to engage with them and bring them back to your store and your community really is what it's all about.

Right? I love that It makes, um, a ton of sense. Um, so I work with a lot of, uh, boutique owners who are sometimes hesitant to email or text the customers and also ask them for data. I know a lot of our boutiques get data at the register when they're checking out customers. So what would you say to boutique owners who are, don't wanna annoy their customers, they scared to, to email or text them, um, and they're scared to ask them for info and things like that?

Yeah, I hear that a lot honestly, especially with, um, smaller business owners, smaller to medium-sized business owners because your personal brand is crucial to continuing to get the trust in your buyers. Um, so there's a lot of different ways that you can be really careful in terms of like quote unquote annoying somebody with endless messaging. You wanna make sure to utilize your channels in a very timely way, so you're only texting people when there is something really, you know, time sensitive. You don't wanna just be texting your list like, Hey, like come in, we just got like some cool new shirts, right? You wanna say, Hey, today's the last day to buy 20% off of these old shirts. We just got new ones in stock. So really time sensitive messaging on text message only is what our consumers prefer. That's what kvi studies have shown.

Consumers prefer time sensitive messages over text when it comes to email that can be a little bit more generalized. People don't check their inbox as much as they do text messages and people aren't getting emails pushed to their home screen as frequently as they might be with their, with their text messages. So you can be a little bit more lenient with your emails. You still do wanna be sure to segment all of the messaging and email as well. So for example, when I say segment, I mean you're not just emailing, you know, a hundred people about a new pair of bedazzled jeans, for example, that you got in. You know, those a hundred people might not all be interested. You only want to be emailing those, you know, 15 people who came into the store last week and you know, bought a pair of bedazzled shorts or you know, shoes, you know that they're interested in that specific product. So that data will help inform the segments that you create in order to send emails with essentially like relevant information to the person you're you're talking to. And they'll develop trust more and more in you if they see that you're emailing you them things with, um, information that's really specific and targeted to what they like and how they like to shop.

Right. That, uh, that makes a ton of sense. I know there's times where I get emails and texts that just make no sense to me. Um, okay, so can you talk to me a little bit more also about like, um, you know, campaigns versus flows and how that should play into my marketing strategy? I know that vast majority of of the people we work with are just sending out campaigns, but you know, they're not even forget segmenting. Um, they're back blasting to their whole list. Um mm-hmm. , how should we think about like flows and a new customer flow versus post-purchase flow, things like that? Yeah,

So kind of taking a step back, the biggest difference between campaigns and flows is campaigns are just a one-time batch send. You're not following up on a campaign. You might be tracking the progress of it, but you're not doing any further communication after that one send. That's a campaign, it's static, whereas a flow you're constantly following up and making sure that there's some logic to when it ends. So with the campaign, that's really great for, you know, um, maybe like wel like a email signup list, for example, confirming that they're on the email list. That's just one time send. If they open it, great. If they click on something, great, you can track that, but you don't have to continue to follow up on that. Whereas you wanna welcome somebody with a welcome flow and with a welcome flow. The logic really determines how you're going to end the flow.

So say for example, you wanna send that first message as an email, which makes the most sense, you would email them, welcome to our boutique, we're so happy to have you X, Y, z, maybe like, come into the store for 10% off your next purchase of over a certain amount. And then if they open that, if they click that, if they're opted into text message marketing, a different branch kind of breaks off from that and you can continue to branch off your communication based off of what you know about this customer. And it'll continue to send them until something, some logic is completed. Every flow has different logic, right? Like maybe it's getting them to return to the website, maybe it's getting them to sign up for this, or maybe it's just that you want a certain amount of days to go buy after you're kind of done welcoming them to your, your store,

Right? That makes a lot of sense. I think that could be, uh, applied to so many different aspects of the customer life cycle. So it could be after they buy a a blue dress, you send them something else. It could be after they haven't shopped in a certain period of time, any piece of information you have, I guess you can just push that customer into a specific flow. Um, that brings me to my next question. So gimme a few ways that I can collect data from my customers on site, whether it's where they live, what they're buying, what they're not buying, how often they're visiting the site and, and things like that.

So online, there's things that just kind of happen in the background with most websites and Klaviyo, right? For example, that, you know, um, getting somebody's billing zip code if they check out like that will be, you know, categorized into their Klaviyo account forever, regardless. Um, but then say, you know, somebody's shopping online and we can usually track with Klaviyo, you can track their IP address and their geolocation with their IP address if they take an action such as adding something to their cart. So that's data collection right there. So that's all to say essentially there's a ton of data collection going on in the background just by having a website up and running and driving people to it. Um, other ways that you can continue to collect data from people are onsite forms. So maybe you have a popup form in a specific section of your website offering a certain discount if they sign up for email, and then maybe another one if they sign up for text message. So essentially it's a, it's a give and a get. You always wanna be be sure that you're offering value either in the form of discounts or maybe like, you know, a in-person shopping assessment, you're trading them something, you're trading them value for their information that you're actively asking for. So whereas there's background data collection that just kind of happens automatically. There's also upfront, hey, like we would like to know this about you, here's what we're gonna give you in return.

Right. That makes a ton of sense. That makes a ton of sense. Um, all right, so I think a big part of our podcast, we like to give like, like a, you know, an action plan or just one actionable piece of advice. Um, so you could actually come away, take this information and, and do something with it. So give us your, your next step that you would take as a boutique owner.

Yeah, I would, the next step I would take, I guess the most, you know, the beginner step that I would take is just start collecting in-store shoppers information. Whether that be like asking them to fill out an email form or just when you have your p o s system set up, but just making sure that you're cataloging these people's information. You know, they're getting their, you're getting the data in person to start so that you can begin retargeting, segmenting, like we talked about, sending welcome flows online and meeting them where they're at rather than just you standing in your store talking to the person in front of you. There's just so much more you can be doing that is automated and honestly thoughtless. Like you can just do it in your sleep at this, at that point. Um, so that's the first thing I do is just start collecting data however you possibly can.

Right. I love that. And also like that, you know, collecting customer data, phone number, email, um, that just like really connects the dots between what your POS is already connect collecting. So your POS is probably already collecting what they're buying, when they're buying it, when they're shopping, all that stuff's going with the sale. Um, so having that name, phone number, email just really adds, um, adds lot to it. I'd also say one thing I'd add is you don't have to ask for all that customer's information at once. Um, assuming that customer's gonna shop with you, you know, three times over the next six months, you get their email today, their phone number next time, and their birthday, the time after that or whatever you're gonna collect. Um, all right. Well thank you so much for joining us. I know I learned a lot. Hopefully everybody else will. And, uh, we appreciate you.

Thank you so much Elliot, and thanks for having me.