Creating Offers Your Customer Can’t Refuse | Caulen Foster

[EP] - Caulen Foster

Matt Edmundson: [00:00:00] Well, hello and welcome to the E-Commerce Podcast. Oh yes. Your favorite e-Commerce podcast on the waves of the internet. Slightly presumptuous, but hey, why not, let's start off, you know, slightly optimistic. My name is Matt Edmundson and this is a show all about helping you deliver eCommerce wow. And to help us do just that, I am chatting with Caulen Foster from Brainpower about how to acquire more customers at a lower cost and increase the all important LTV.

We are not talking about affiliate marketing or SEO, just want to point that out, but before we get into that conversation, a warm welcome to all our new listeners that are joining us this week. If you haven't done so already, let me encourage you to subscribe to the show wherever you get your [00:01:00] podcasts from, or just follow us on YouTube if you're watching the old video there.

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That's all coming soon, so you're not going to want to miss it. Do check that out at eCommercePodcast. net. That's our website, that's where you can see all the past catalogue of episodes, uh, eCommercePodcast. net. But, let's talk about today's show, shall we? That's why we're all here, Caulen the Brain, Behind Brain Power, uh, skyrocketed from hotel lobby, uh, huddles to leading a 22 [00:02:00] strong crew. Mastering the digital seas with over a hundred million in D2C revenues. Now, with 12 years of navigating the digital depths, he's a wizard in winning new customers and crafting compelling copy.

Now, he's not just riding the waves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Check this out. He's not just riding the waves, he's creating tsunamis. It's in direct to consumer growth and making a heck of a splash with 13 million in acquisitions. So Caulen, welcome to the show, man. Great to have you. How are you doing?

Caulen Foster: Yeah, I'm doing great.

After hearing your intro for me, I mean, I don't know if I've ever heard an intro that great about myself. I need to get, I need to get this recording and put chat, put chat GPT to work and be like, next time I speak somewhere, that's what I'm going to have the host read about myself. Yeah, yeah. Just, just copy

Matt Edmundson: that.

Copy that. Uh, yeah, that sadaf and the, I wish I could take credit for it, but Sadaf and the production team that do all these intros and, uh, I really enjoy reading the [00:03:00] bios sometimes. You know, there's, we have the, we have guests on the show and it's, um, it'll be interesting if people can figure out which ones it is.

Sometimes the production team forget to rewrite the intros and we just sort of have the standard ones and I'm going, they're just a bit flat, aren't they? But I'm not, I've not got that brain that can just sort of do it on the fly, unfortunately. Sure, sure. So we kind of get stuck with them.

Caulen Foster: And most founders probably don't give themselves that type of grandiose, you know, we're so in the middle of it, right?

So it's like just another day, right? But, um, but yeah, no, thanks for having me, man. I'm absolutely excited. It's great. It's great.

Matt Edmundson: It is interesting, actually, when it comes to bios, the difference that you get. So if we have an English guest. And an American guest. The difference in the way the bios are written is quite fascinating.

And, you know, in America, you, I've always, I've always been in admiration of your ability to sort of exude confidence and be aware of what your superpowers are. Whereas in Britain, we were very understated, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, [00:04:00] it's, We've done okay, means we've probably done a hundred million in sales, you know, is that kind of Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're doing alright. Yeah. We're getting by. We're getting by. We're paying the bills. We're paying the bills. It's great things. So tell me a bit about Brainpower.

Caulen Foster: Yeah, so Brainpower is an agency. So I'm actually half of the brain of Brainpower. I actually co founded it with my, uh, my business partner. Um, his name's Camilo.

And, um, I started the agency, uh, you know, I have a backstory behind that, that got me into eCommerce. So ran, ran, super ran. In fact, I actually invented the almond protein industry. Uh, in 2014. Oh, wow. Um, under a brand. Yeah, under a brand name Almond Pro. That's, that was how I got my, you know, foot in the door with e-Commerce.

I, I started in retail and it was just miserable. And I hated doing like, you know, brick and mortar. Just, it was, it just didn't, it, it kind of like offended my sense of like scalability and efficiency. I was like, there's gotta be an easier way to do this. I've got a website, I got, I gotta find a way to get sales there.

I didn't even know what a Facebook pixel was at the time. Right. [00:05:00] I'm not even exaggerating. I had no idea how the internet worked, uh, in terms of marketing. So I ended up. The way the universe, God, you know, how all of this stuff works aligned me with a consultant who to this day is one of my very, very close friends.

And he was like a mentor to me and kind of brought me into like direct response advertising. And he's like, before you learn how to, you know, before you learn anything about traffic, you need to learn the psychology of selling. So then I kind of got into direct response, copywriting, offer development, did that.

Exited the company in 2019 and then I was sitting for like a year doing consulting and I just didn't want to do consulting anymore because it's like, I don't want to do consulting. Um, and then I had, uh, I had an opportunity to, uh, to take, uh, I had an opportunity to take a potential client. Uh, from, you know, they had the team or, you know, some in house team that they had been burned by an agency.

And, uh, I was like, okay, you know, it's a good brand. It was a supplement brand. I was like, I'll do it. If I, I know somebody who just exited their agency, who was my, my now business partner, he had just [00:06:00] exited his marketing agency. I was like, I'll take it on with him. So it was a great paying gig. So I was like, you know, let's do it.

So he took it. And then he told me, he said, Hey, I'll do the project with you. But if we're going to do it, we need to start an agency. Cause I'm not just going to do a one off project. And you and I work well together. Cause we had done stuff together with Alma. Sure. I was like, all right, so let's start an agency.

And then, um, that was kind of the, the, the intro into the agency world. Um, and we started with one client. Then, um, I didn't even know how to do B2B. I had no idea. So I started on Upwork, finding people, trying to find clients. And actually, ironically, one of the clients that we did an acquisition for was the first client I ever got.

Doing cold outbound marketing through Upwork. And we helped him exit his business for 13 for 12. 95 million. Um, and he, when we got him, he was doing like 40, 50 K a month. And we, we brokered that acquisition last year. So it's been a crazy ride, but yeah, but now, you know, um, We, we, we manage, it's probably gone up a little bit, but we manage, uh, cause we, you know, we manage the entire ecosystem of these brands.

So [00:07:00] it's usually like online consumer brands or probably Amazon native brands that are looking to grow their D to C channel. Couple of like, you know, venture backed, you know, startups that are, you know, looking to, you know, kind of go from zero to a hundred a little bit faster than like, you know, going, you know, bending bootstrapping, let's say.

Um, so I, I see a lot of data. I see a lot of, we, we manage, like I said, the entire ecosystem and we can get into like what an ecosystem is. Um, but yeah, we're, we're managing slightly over about a hundred million dollars in total ecosystem revenue right now. So, um, dispersed across probably about, I think we're like 18 or 19 clients.

So we're not super big. We're more like what I consider boutique by choice because we manage so much that we have to be very selective about the clients we take because, you know, we, you

know.

Caulen Foster: We're not cheap, so we have to make sure that we impact the client and that we're actually like managing the entire ecosystem properly.

So, so yeah, that's, that's essentially what we do. Like I said, we'll get into the nooks and crannies of what all that means. Cause ecosystem can mean a hundred different things in the eCommerce [00:08:00] world. Yeah. That's how I got into the space and that's how we started and yeah, we're, we're, we're four years deep now and it's been great.

I love the agency world. It's, it's never thought I'd say that, but I do. I enjoy it. We have great clients too. So yeah,

Matt Edmundson: yeah. Well, one of the refreshing things, Caulen, about what you said there is, you know, one of the biggest criticisms people have about agencies Is you. You go to an agency and agencies aren't cheap, but they're supposed to be experts in what they do, which is why you choose them, because the return on investment should be high.

So you go to an agency. The trouble is if you go to a good agency, they're good for a reason, which means they attract more clients. Right? Yeah. And the good people then are not just doing your work, they're split. Two people, then three people, then four. mm-Hmm . And all of a sudden that good agency's not delivering the service that it once delivered.

And you get more and more frustrated, the bigger and better it gets. So what I like about what you are saying is actually. Now we just choose our clients. We're still quite small. We're just expensive, but we deliver a hell of a punch. So you're probably not getting that client fatigue, I [00:09:00] would imagine.

Caulen Foster: We don't lose clients.

We genuinely don't lose clients. I mean, it's obviously clients, you know, either through acquisition, uh, you know, they're having inventory issues like major inventory supply chain issues. Um, I don't think. In four years, we've ever lost a client because brainpower didn't do a good job, literally. And I don't say that, like, just to say it, I really don't think we ever have.

This year, we have, I think we've lost one client at the beginning of the year. And, and, and again, like there, there's a, there's a very strong vetting process because we're not, it's like, it's, this, it's a very cliche term to say, like, you're a true growth partner. But when you understand what we do at the level, and that's another reason why it's so hard for clients to replace us, because we manage the entire ecosystem.

It's hard enough to find one really good agency in this game, let alone five. And we basically replaced five agencies, you know, because we, we handle like the financial ecosystem, which is your unit economics relative to like what your marketing strategy is. And like, for anybody who doesn't understand what [00:10:00] that means, just like, how do we maximize profitability through understanding what the, the, the, the margin potentials are for each individual products that we sell.

So it's like, we, you might find as a, as a client that. As a brand that you like selling this one product, but it's actually your least profitable product. And the product that you're not selling as much of is actually significantly more profitable and it has a higher LTV. So we do a deep dive there and then we relate that to the marketing.

So you'd have to hire like somebody to do kind of like a, a projection analysis, right? On top of like the actual advertising. So it makes it harder in a good way for both parties. To replace us because you, again, you have to replace like five different agents or, you know, at least email, media buying, landing pages, the whole nine yards, we do everything.

So, so anyway, that's, yeah, that's, that's how it works. But yeah, the vetting process is, is very, it's, we, it takes about three to four calls before we actually get together with the deal. And then on top of that, it's a customized growth map. So it's not like everybody's getting the same, that goes against the rules of scaling a business.

You want to have some product, [00:11:00] right? That's not what I want to do. I'm not trying to just scale. I want like. It's a growth map so you can look at your proposal and it's really just like we're going to do this and this is your also your scope of work because this is what we think we need to do. We need to do to get you from here to here.

And the question I always ask people is what does success look like to you? If you, that's what happens is like with agencies for anybody who's watching this too, because we can turn this into like a value driven conversation for people. It's like when you're, when you're looking to hire an agency, you really need that.

I live in a world that is probably 80 percent expectation management, and that's why the eCommerce world gets such a bad rap. It's because. People, they sell, I always tell people, I don't sell the dream. I don't sell the Ferrari on the trip to Bora Bora. I'm going to tell you what I think is going to happen, how we need to get there.

If we're, if, if it, if there's an opportunity to make that happen and what the expectations need to be in the beginning, when I, when I go to somebody. Who has no sales, no, no, no baseline data, nothing that can actually like [00:12:00] give me insight into what the potential is for what level of growth, what level of expectations we have.

The only thing I guarantee, like with, with a startup brand, I'm working with a pretty well funded startup brand and they're asking me, well, like what, what can we look at in terms of projections? And I say, well, the only thing that I can tell you about any projections that I would give you is that they're going to be wrong.

Because I don't know, you know, and with that being said, the only thing I guarantee at that stage is undeniably good work. I'm gonna give you great landing pages. I'm gonna give you great ads. I'm gonna give you direct, great direct response copywriting, but there's a There's a portion that most people don't factor in, it's the most important part, and that's what the market says about your product.

You can have the best ads, but if there's no product market fit, people don't want it. That 10 percent will take the 90 percent of your business out, you know? Oh, it's fascinating,

Matt Edmundson: yeah. We had an agency involved in one of our eCom businesses, um, and who made all kinds of claims and promises at the start.

Let me tell you, it wasn't my decision to get them involved. I'm just caveating everything right there at the [00:13:00] start, uh, but I, you know, I, I was definitely involved in that. Um, but they made all kinds of claims and promises, which I thought, I don't understand how you're going to do that knowing what I know about the industry, but you obviously are very confident that you can do.

The trouble is they take an experience from a previous company and just assumed it would work over in this industry over here in this market and like you say, that's not the case. It really isn't. And, and. And I think they, they didn't stay with us long because they just didn't understand the market.

They just didn't understand the rules of engagement was, were different. Um, and granted we were in a, you know, that company is in a supplement space. So there's all kinds of weird and wonderful rules you have to sort of think about in that space. But, um, yeah, it, it fascinated me how actually they, you know, the, the sort of belief that actually I can transpose this success strategy from this market onto you and it's going to be fine.

Well, actually, no, there's. There's a bit more nuance to it than that, right? [00:14:00]

Caulen Foster: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, we have like, even as something as simple as a pop up, right, it'll just go with like a very simple example, a pop up on a website, data collection, right? I can take the same exact pop up, change the copy, brand it to two different companies, and one will have double digit opt in rates.

Same delay, same everything. The other one, I have a single digit opt in rate. I, I, I don't know. I don't know why it happens, but that's the same thing with, with, with upsells. I can take an upsell, post purchase upsell, take the exact same strategy, change the products out. It'll double digits on the conversion rate on the post purchase upsell single digit conversion rate on the post purchase upsell for brand B.

So it's, it's, it's really, especially in this day and age and, and, and what you said about wild claims, there's, there's, and you, you, so there's a couple of parts that you said that I was like extracting nuggets out of what you were saying. So like, first of all, you said something about supplements, right?

In order for an agency to make claims about a product or a service, you have to really understand what the, the, the. [00:15:00] I'm going to get into a like marketing nerd conversation here. So if some, if you're in, if you're in supplements, supplements, unless you have a very strong, unique selling proposition, unless you have a very unique mechanism, something that people haven't seen.

If you're going for paid social, let's say you're doing a paid meta advertising or likelihood for competing in that profitably, unless your unit economics are like, you know, really, really, really good. And the product is completely, it's gonna be very tough because you're, you don't have that demand creation.

So if you're selling Ashwagandha on Facebook right now, you're going to get creamed, lower average order value. So like, there's so many nuances into like, Oh yeah, I can do that for you. I can make you, I can get you. And then the agencies are always like, Oh, I get you a four ROAS because they had a client that did that, you know, you know, two months ago.

I have a client, the one that we helped get acquired. Uh, I won't even use him as a case study because the results were so insane that it mismanaged the expectation. I can never tell. I can never show somebody a 22 ROAS on Facebook. [00:16:00] Right now. And then say this, I'm going to sell my service because again, expectation management, I showed them 22 row as they're getting three, which is still not bad in this landscape.

But the discrepancy between those two is not reasonable. So, so yeah, anyway, the point I'm trying to make is like, there's a lot of nuances to understand, like how, when you said, like, how are you going to do that? The product is important, the offer is important, the infrastructure is important, there's so many things that need to know before you can just say, Oh yeah, I can get you a four row ads on Facebook, like just because of ads, like,

you

Caulen Foster: know, so good, good, good little nugget for your listeners to hear about like agency selection because I hear, I hear it five times a week.

I got burned by an agency, I hear it every week, every single week.

Matt Edmundson: My favorite agencies are the ones which, um, if I can use this language, they, they sell the steak, but they deliver the sizzle. I don't know if that translates, right? And you're just constantly surprised, [00:17:00] you're like, well, this is what I expected, but you're delivering more.

They manage expectations really well. And I think I'm, I, you know, being British, maybe I'm slightly more pessimistic or slightly more grounded when, when people make all kinds of weird and wonderful claims. Um, but I, I do think you're right. I think you've got to manage your expectations when it comes to agency, cause they're not superhuman.

And probably what they're telling you is true for another company in another industry, but they, Will that work for you at your time in your industry, your market with your clients? I don't know. What do you, so you, I mean, you mentioned things that we're getting into the weeds a little bit here, but I'm loving this.

So

Matt Edmundson: your pop up, the same pop up that worked for one client over here with double digit return, but is only producing single digit return over here. How do you manage that process then of Correcting the other one. Um, you know, what, what do you do there?

Caulen Foster: Um, usually it revolves around the offer, um, or what, what is, what is the way that [00:18:00] we're, so we'll have a brand, for example, we really like one thing that I think if any of your listeners are using, and they're just trying to like, maybe they have a very basic Klaviyo pop up, there's a software we use called OpinMonster.

Um,

Caulen Foster: which is, which is really, really powerful. You can do like segmented pop ups by page and it's got all types of gamification, which we love. So one of the things that I would just recommend off the top, if you're just using a basic pop up, use a wheel pop up. Some, a lot of brands don't use them because they think they look good.

Cheesy and they look kind of, they work and, and the gamification goes into something. I, I, I coined the casino effect. Like whenever we build a landing page, whenever we build something, it has to flash, it has to move, it has to be bright. You've never walked into a casino and seen, you know, pale monochromatic slot machine.

Everything is bright. Human beings like that, you know, and you notice it more bright colors, things like that. So I would just recommend people using a wheel cause we do use the wheel a lot. One of the other things that we've done is like changing the way we structure an offer. So we'll keep the same [00:19:00] wheel, but we'll change the offer.

So for example, I have a client, they sell, um, uh, uh, power wheel type. Power wheel types of cars for kids, right? So that one will be, Hey, spin the wheel for a chance. Cause it's a 700, seven, six, depending on the one that you choose, but it's between probably like a five to a thousand dollar average order value, right?

Spin the wheel. And then you always address people. So these are some like little conversion rate nuggets that I can give too. It's like whenever you put a wheel or whenever you put a pop up, make sure you address the person. So it's like in direct response or capturing people's it doesn't say spin the spin for a chance to this and this and that it says, Hey, car lover, or Hey, kid lover, you know, or Hey, hey, super mom, hey, super dad, like, address your people.

So we'll, we'll tweak some of the copy around there, you might change something like that. And then spin the wheel for a chance to win it. X and that X needs to be your best, best offer, right? So spin the wheel for a chance to win instead of [00:20:00] 10% off. That's not very incentivizing. Say spin the chance for spin the wheel for a chance to win a free.

You know, Lamborghini, you know, Lamborghini car, right? So you're going to increase your opt in right there. If I take that on a supplement brand that has, let's say, uh, I don't, we don't have any clients that sell Oshawa Ganda, but I'm just using that for, for, for random, if you tell somebody, Hey, spin the wheel for a chance to win, A free Ashwagandha and they get 10 percent off, right?

It, it's probably not going to convert as well. So now we're talking about two different things. We're talking about opt in conversion, but then we're talking about like, not just the conversion rate of the pop up, but also the conversion rate of the offer. Right? So, so that, that'll be really good because now more people are going to opt in on the, on the, the, the electronic car, the, the battery powered car side, but if the offer isn't good following that, or they end up getting 20 percent instead of the car, they'll probably use it.

So that's two parts. So now if we're going to another brand, we may say on the opt in, it might not say, spin the, [00:21:00] spin the wheel for a chance. It'll say, it'll say, Hey, get 20, get 30 percent off. Just simply by selecting what you're here for. So it might just say like, hey, what would you like to use our products for?

Um, if you're using, if you're using supplements, protein, I'm here to do, um, muscle building. I'm here to do, uh, weight loss. They click, it spins, you want 20 percent off, here's your email. And then, now they've got the offer. Because the perceived value of that free bottle is very low. So, that's just one thing we might do.

We might change the, the mechanism by which people, www. aurionmedia. com Give their information. So personally, I mean, and that gets really in the weeds. Like we could go, I think that's just a pop up. I mean, we could, it's our conversion rate optimization all day. Um, those are just some things, but if I had to just recommend for somebody who wants to just improve the, the, the performance of their, You know, if you're converting it single digits, you know, 5 percent below, I look for between 8 to 10 percent conversion rate on a pop up.

We have some that [00:22:00] are converting at like 13, 14%. I wish I could tell you the reason why that one does it, but behind another one, I don't know. But, um, so just to not get us, everybody confused or anything, I would start if you have a conversion, you have a pop up that's not working that well. Start with the wheel, use the software like OptinMonster.

That's not the only one that there is. There's plenty of them. Gamify it. Make sure the offer is good, address your customer, um, and then put, you know, spin the wheel for a chance to accomplish X.

And that,

Caulen Foster: that traditionally, we launch those and we start with X. Almost all of them start with high single digits, which is great baseline.

Yeah, yeah. 80 percent is good in this industry. Yeah, it's great. No, it

Matt Edmundson: is. It's very, very good. I look, what, you know, I've, I've, I've seen the wheel thing and I, I, one of the things that we've been playing around with recently with, with a few of our eCom business is actually do you ditch the pop in altogether?

Because everybody's used to the, you know, the pop in. You know, get 10 percent off, give us your email, um, thing. And I, is it, does it really draw people in as much these days? It still converts, but is it, you know, is there something better? I like the wheel idea. I especially like the wheel idea if [00:23:00] it's not cheesy.

So we've thought about doing the wheel idea with all our products on, right? So. um spin the wheel and you'll win a product with your order or something like that whatever it lands on we'll add that product into your shopping basket on your or on your order or something like that we've got to test it what you said though Caulen which I really I'm intrigued by and we I didn't think about was actually saying Tell us why you're here.

That sort of little mini survey is incredible data, right? With three or four key questions. Um, and I, I think that's a really interesting idea. So that's, that's, that's worth the interview already. Uh, if I'm honest with you,

Caulen Foster: I appreciate it. No, I mean, well, the thing is too, is it, it also minimizes the barrier to entry for somebody to get a prize.

Like, Oh, all I have to do is enter a, answer a question. That's the First, that's their first. It's like a, it's like a warmup question. Like I used to do lead generation back in the day. Um, and we would do lead generation for like the big three insurance companies, right? You never start with a [00:24:00] complex question.

You always start with a very easy radial button. You got to get people through the process. You don't want to start asking them complex questions that they have to go look for something or think about it. So it's like when you start with, Hey, are you looking for health insurance? Yes or no. It's a very easy question.

And you know, um, you know, the psychology of human behavior, once people start to commit. Most people are more inclined to finish the process. So you just want to minimize the barrier to entry, or again, you have a really amazing offer. Another thing you could do from a, from a, from an opt in monster to get like super like nerdy on some of the things we're doing, I like to create what are called retargeting pop ups.

So retargeting pop ups are, let's say somebody comes to your website, they don't opt in to any of your, they don't opt in to any of your, um, your, your pop ups, right? And they leave. Well, like with a software like OptinMonster, you can re target basically on your, on your website, people who have not opted in, but who are returning visitors.

So what will happen is, is now they, now you know that if somebody came [00:25:00] back, they're probably interested in your product. They probably have some level of commitment to possibly buying it. So now what you do is you put it on a little delay so you don't interrupt the user experience. And then you put probably a 15 second delay, 10 second delay.

And it says, Hey, welcome back. You know, you're letting them know, Hey, you're back. And now what you do is, is you give them the coupon code in that retargeting pop up. Why? Because you're going to collect their data when they check out and because they're more prone to check out when they're here again, you're not really so worried about getting their email.

You're getting, you're worried about getting a purchase, so just give them the discount right away. Hey, here's 15 percent off the purchase for, as for, for being a returning customer and you can do stuff like that with, uh, with other softwares. I, I'm not, I'm not, I have no affiliation with OptinMonster, I've been using it for like seven years.

This is where OptinMonster sales is going through the roof. What the

Matt Edmundson: bloody hell

Caulen Foster: is happening

Matt Edmundson: here?

Caulen Foster: Yeah, yeah, plot twist, this is sponsored by OptinMonster.

Matt Edmundson: We should give him a ring. OptinMonster, we should probably sponsor this [00:26:00] podcast. That's awesome, man. I really like that. There's some great nuggets there, man.

And, um, it's interesting. I mean, you obviously get excited by this kind of stuff. I mean, you're talking about it with a great deal of passion. You just love the whole

Caulen Foster: thing. I love it. I've been doing it for years and I like the idea of being able to strategize things in a way that makes people more inclined to purchase has always fascinated me.

That's why I love direct response. And you know, I think that there's a, I like to walk, I always say that like when I'm talking to my team or anything about like marketing, when we're doing ads, I always see like there's a very thin line between marketing and BSing. And I like to walk a very like, like.

Right in the middle, where it's like you're not BS'ing people, you're making, you're, you're, you're, it's not manipulation, it's just retention, you're retaining people's attention, like how do you keep people's attention without bullshitting them? Like to me, that is like a really amazing craft to be able to have, you know, so I've always been super fascinated with [00:27:00] it.

And then, yeah, I'm a total nerd about this. I do it all day, every day. I've read, there's a book called Breakthrough Advertising, if everybody wants to, anybody wants to read a book, that'll knock their socks off. Breakthrough Advertising. Breakthrough Advertising. Oh, and that's my little list. I'm reminded,

Matt Edmundson: I'm reminded of, um, wait, listening to you talk, Caulen, I'm reminded of something Zig Ziglar is attributed in saying, and Zig Ziglar is probably my hero in sales.

Uh, you know, I grew up in the, in the, uh, my, my career started, I suppose, in the, in the, in the early nineties and Zig Ziglar was, you know, used to buy his stuff from Nightingale Coney on teaching tapes, if you remember those days, uh, showing my age a little bit, but he said something that sales is nothing more than telling the truth attractively.

Uh, and I think it's just listening to you talk, it's just reminded me of that, that actually that's, that's what you're trying to do. You're presenting the truth in a very attractive manner, as attractive as possible.

Caulen Foster: I couldn't have said it better. Honestly, that's better than what I said. Yeah, it's a [00:28:00] great it's true.

And like, even when I'm like, when I'm selling my services, it's really, I always say I'm not a salesperson. I'm a consultant that has services. I don't look at myself as a sales guy. I do. I handle pretty much all the transactions that come through through our agency, right? Cause I have to vet the brands.

So that was actually my functional role before the seat, before I moved into the CEO role with my business partner, I was director of brand selection. That was my functional role at our business was like, I have to skew the products, you know, review the products. Make sure, you know, we're, we're working with brands or products that have the assets that we need to actually.

You know, perform our services properly. So yeah, you said it great. And I do. I love it. I love it. I'm obsessed with it. I've literally changed my life. Honestly, I own the domain MarketingChangeMyLife. com. I haven't put any use to it yet. You should definitely start a

Matt Edmundson: podcast. Start a podcast and a newsletter.

Call it MarketingChangeMyLife. com. Add subscribe to that. That's

Caulen Foster: what That's what it's there for. I just haven't, you know, I'm so where we, you know, I'm busy. I'm a busy man. And then that's an excuse, but you know, it'll get there. It's coming. Fair

Matt Edmundson: [00:29:00] play. Fair play. So what was the name of that book?

Breakthrough?

Caulen Foster: Breakthrough Advertising. So fun fact, it was written by a guy named Eugene Schwartz in 1964. And the crazy part is if you read the book, it's the, it's the Holy Grail of direct response advertising. And it talks about some really, really high level stuff that I just, I use every day. And it was written in 1964 and it's actually more pertinent now than it was when it was in 1964.

That's how like much of a visionary this guy was. And the way we run ads is our strategy is rooted in that book. Are we, you know, we have a matrix that we've built on how to run like UGC, how we do every, it's, it's, the book was written for 2024 and beyond, but it was written in 63, 64 and it just talks about some really, really advanced concepts.

It's dense. I've, I've probably, I'm not kidding. I read the book probably about 10 times. It's not short either. Um, and every time I read it, I get a new nugget. I just like, damn, that's so good. It's so sweet. And, you know, if anybody wants to get a little, like, something to look into it on that, that's a really, it's like the golden [00:30:00] nugget out of that book.

It's the, um, the portion of the book that talks about customer awareness and sophistication. And I could, that's a 30 minute conversation about how impactful it is, but it's like, how you advertise your product is relative to like, Where the customer is psychologically when it comes to your product. So like one little nugget from it is if you, if you, if you're in the, if you're doing paid advertising, let's say you have a product, I hear this a lot.

It's like, I have a great product, but nobody knows about it. Right. So that means that your audience is problem aware and their solution unaware. That right there is a really golden nugget when I'm doing product analysis on what brands I want to work with. If I have a brand that like, they have a really new mechanism, they have a new, You know, they have something new.

There's a strat. There's a formula I use for choosing winning products. Um, and the one of them is like, how aware is the audience? Because if you're selling razors or water, your audiences, their awareness and sophistication is very high. So you have to market differently. And the book tells you based on whether they're [00:31:00] problem aware, problem, solution unaware, Pro, uh, problem unaware.

Solution. Unaware. It breaks it down and it tells you how to market every single one. Wow. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's true as daylight. I mean, it, it never fails. Like if you have a very, if you're in a commoditized, uh, industry like coffee, for example, right? You're very, you're problem aware, you're solution aware.

And they're very, what we, what's their level of sophistication, they're very sophisticated. You're not going to sell me something about coffee that I don't already know, right? I've heard it. Same thing about water. So what do you do? You create a liquid death or a black rifle coffee company. You go after the audience.

You go after your messaging. You don't go after the offer. You don't go after, you know, the features and benefits. And the book literally tells you that. And if you look at any of the brands that have done that in competitive and highly sophisticated markets, that's what they all do. And it's the best chapter in the book, and it's probably going to take you 45 minutes to read it, and I use it every day.

So, that's a little nugget for that.

Matt Edmundson: Well, it's on my reading list. I'm flying over to the States next week, so I, you know, I need a few things [00:32:00] to read on the plane. Um, I was talking to, um, uh, Jared Krause, uh, on the podcast recently, and he, um, well, in fact, I say recently, it was today, uh, we recorded Jared Krause's podcast earlier, but it's probably come out like a week or two before this one.

Um, and talking with Jared about the principles of old school marketing being perhaps the most important thing because everyone's looking for the silver bullet in eCommerce. I've never seen anything like it, you know, the latest trick or the latest gimmick or something. But what I like about this is you're talking about a book written in the 1960s.

I mean, that was, that's old school, right?

Caulen Foster: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I, I said this, I have a presentation, I'm speaking at some event in New York. Uh, called Retail Summits. It's a really cool event. If anybody wants to go, um, and you see this podcast before June 27th, you can message me on LinkedIn or something.

I have a free ticket for it as long as you have a brand. Um, but anyway, I'm speaking at this event and one of the things I always say in this presentation is the biggest problem with digital [00:33:00] marketing. Modern digital marketing is there's too much digital and not enough marketing. Everybody's, everybody's, everybody's, everybody's focused on the platforms.

I can tell you 10 to 20 percent of what your marketing problems are exist in the platform. The rest is the rest of the ecosystem. Your margins are bad. Your messaging is bad. Your offers are bad. You know, that's really where the problems are. I look, I look in, I look in ad accounts with my team 15 times a week, you know, and it's, the problem isn't the ads or, or maybe that's not always true.

There are very terrible media buying or ad buying companies out there. Like they just don't do good work. They're not following best practices. That's a whole different discussion on best practices, but you know, they're, but you put crap in, you're going to get crap out. That's just the reality. And the crap that most people are putting in, it's just crappy marketing.

There's no. Strategy. It's like you've read all the Facebook, the meta platform rules or best practices, but you haven't read any of the best practices when it comes to marketing. And [00:34:00] that's fundamentally what we're in. We're still in a marketing game. You're not in a meta game. That is just the mechanism that drives your message.

So too much digital, not enough marketing, you know, no offer structure. You know, not knowing how to create value and offers is one of the single biggest killers of, or, you know, increases in acquisition costs because we're in a demand creation game. You have to be able to create offers. So, you know, Um, let's talk

Matt Edmundson: about that a sec if we can, because as we're talking, I'm, I'm, I had a conversation with someone earlier this week, uh, they had three or 400 signups a month through their pop up, right?

But the conversion rate through that pop up was really low. So people went to their website, they had the pop up, they signed up to the 10 percent off or 20 percent off, whatever it was, and hardly any of them were converting. Yeah. And as you're talking, and as I'm remembering that conversation, there's obviously going to be a reason for [00:35:00] that connected to their marketing, connected to their offer.

So how do you, how do you structure something like that? What are some of the thought processes you go through?

Caulen Foster: So, I love offers. I'm a huge offer nerd. So it's so funny because, um, you know, Alex Formosi, everybody knows who Alex Formosi is. He wrote a book, you know, a hundred million dollar offers for years.

Yeah, it is a great book. It is a great book. And it's so funny because I, a couple of years before, before he even released that book, I had, You know, there needs to be a book on offers. Like I, his is more like is really relevant in the B2B space or like the direct response kind of thing. Coaching, things like that.

Consumer goods is a little different but he's got some nuggets in there too but I'd wanted to, I'd wanted to put out something or think of like there's got be something that creates offers. I found this book called How to Create Irresistible Offers and it's, it's old. It's an old book, um, but I got some nuggets out of it.

Um, but, so the first thing that we need to understand when you create an offer is that Is when people think of offers, the first thing they they tend to go [00:36:00] to is discount. Yeah. Like that's, that's, that's my go-to my offer is a discount. But typically offers aren't really rooted in price. Like a great offer is not necessarily rooted in price.

It's rooted in value. Yeah. So most people don't buy things. Not because of the price, it's because of the lack of perceived value that they have associated with that price. So one of the, one of the main ways that you can increase perceived value that I actually learned from a gentleman named Perry Belcher, um, shout out to him, um, because he taught me a lot.

But you, one of the things is free gifts with purchase, what we call a free premium. And you can really leverage those. For to dramatically reduce customer acquisition costs. That's like, if we're talking about reducing CAC, that is one of the tools that we use and the way you do it, there's a very, so a free premium, what goes into a first, you have to understand what goes into a free gift, right?

A free gift of purchase is not always, it's not necessarily the perceived value. That's one component of it, but it's also [00:37:00] perceived utility. Like is this. Can I actually use this? So we worked with a pet brand that was selling, um, cat products and we found online, uh, we found online, uh, a little cat purse, a little cat shaped purse.

It was on Alibaba. It was like 47 cents. It was a coin purse. And we knew the avatar of the audience is probably, they were targeting older women. They probably still use, you know, you know, Traditional currency, right? Yeah. Um, that was the logic. And we added that to that offer that we were running. And I mean, it was like, it was like a vertical line is just insane.

The impact and the cost, the perceived value of price of it. We put a nine 99 price on it. Yeah, and now that the product that we were selling for 50 had a perceived value of 60 because we associated that 9. 99 price with the products that we were selling, but more importantly, it had utility to the client, to the customer.

Um, when I had Almond Pro, my brand, [00:38:00] I was probably one of the, one of the first people to probably do a free frother with your purchases 2015. So I added, I created an instant latte product and the free, um, the free gift with purchase was a free latte, a free, uh, a free frother with your instant latte product.

And the reason why that was so good is because it had great utility cause it went well with the product. Right. Um. But more importantly, it was like, I always like to say a good free premium should be a product that people would love to have, but they don't want to spend money on. Everybody would love to have a frother, but nobody wants to buy one.

Who really wants to go and buy a frother for 15 bucks on, on Amazon? But if it comes with a product that you're already interested in, right, like when I get the free frother, we did it with a supplement brand where we did, um, Actually, the client that we had that, uh, the name of the company is Organic Muscle, the supplement brand that we first worked with.

You know, those like tornado bottles that, um, you can press a button and they spin around and they mix all the protein powders, right? The cost on those things on Alibaba, it's like three bucks, three or four bucks, but the perceived value is 20. So if you were ordered a free pre workout, If you [00:39:00] ever, if you ordered a pre workout, you got a free tornado bottle that's valued at 20.

So now that 40, 34, whatever, I think it was 40, 39, the 40 offer has now turned into a 60 offer that you're getting for a 40 plus you're getting this really, you're not getting a traditional shaker bottle. You probably wouldn't buy a tornado bottle on Amazon for 20. But if someone's going to give you one for free, you're like, wow, that's, that's a good offer.

And in, in, in our industry, when you, especially supplements, you don't really try and outmarket your competitors. You try and out offer your competitors because everybody, again, the sophistication level is high. It goes back to Eugene Schwartz. The sophistication level on pre workouts is very, very high. So what are you going to do to compete?

Right. And, um, but he had, he had a different type. So the point is, is like, we have perceived value of the free gift. We have And then find other ways to add personal value. Another good nugget is digital gift cards. A digital gift card is literally a way of saying 10 off, but it's positioned in a way where you put, you create a graphic, you can [00:40:00] literally get one off of Shutterstock of an image, you just go on Canva, Photoshop your logo on it, Uh, off of, or you don't even AI does it now.

You don't, I don't even know. Look at that's showing my age. I'm still talking about first , but you

know,

Caulen Foster: I need to catch up on ai. Uh, you can literally go on AI and create, Hey here. Mm-Hmm, , create a GA digital gift card. You can download it. That $10 goes towards their next purchase. Mm-Hmm. . So now, but now when you value stack it, you've got a free gift for $10.

You've got free shipping, which is worth another $10. Mm-Hmm. And you've got a free, um, a, a free gift card, which at the $10. Yeah. If you're selling a $40 product. You just have, you now have a 70 bundle for 40. You don't have a 40 product. So now the value, the perceived value is higher. So like when it comes to offers, that's, that's our, that's our, that's our strategy for the most part.

What we like to do is find low moving SKUs that have high margins and high utility, and then couple it with the hero offer. So if you're selling products on your website, you've got to hear most brands have a hero product that they've scaled their business with [00:41:00] be like, Hey, you've got this product.

We've done it with a pet brand, another pet brand. They had, they were selling salmon oil and they had this paw balm, like for like chapstick for like your dog's paws and it wasn't moving. They weren't selling much of it, but it had utility. People probably wouldn't want to buy it on their own. They weren't because it wasn't really moving, but when we combine that as a free gift with the salmon oil.

Again, lift, immediate lift. I'm talking within 12 hours from the time we launched it, lift, vertical. So that's, that's how we create great offer. And then if you can add a discount on top of it, I mean, now you're, now you're really getting into the game of like massive value creation, but you need, you need great margins to be able to do all this.

So that's the, that's the, that's the. That's, believe it or not, the short version of how to create great offers. You know, that's, no, it's super

Matt Edmundson: powerful. And I, and in, I mean, one of the things I took away from Alex's book was his little value formula. Wasn't there, there sort of the perceived value there, the time taken to achieve the results and the, the costs and all that sort of stuff.

And I thought it was a great little formula. And I love what you are doing [00:42:00] because you're actually, you're bringing that into a digital world and you're saying, oh, this is some of the stuff that you can do. Um, and I, I, I'm smiling as you're saying all these different things like the digital cards. I remember one time we did a, an offer on a.

Beauty website that we had at the time, um, whereby if you spent, um, I can't remember what it was, but the gift with purchase was a candle, a Christmas candle, because it was around Christmas. The Christmas candle, we put on the site, like, 35. Pounds, um, to buy it. Yeah. And it was all nicely gift wrapped. Yeah.

Um, and if you spent 35 quid or more, you got this candle for free. And it cost us like three quid to get it manufactured by the same people that make, um, they used to at the time make, uh, Joe Malone candles. I dunno if they still, but still do. Yep. Um, so it's really good quality candle. No one's going to spend 35 quid on a candle cause bloody hell that's expensive.

Right. But again, utility and value is really fascinating. I remember going to Ikea on Christmas. Um, again, [00:43:00] I thought it was the most intriguing idea and we rip, we actually, we, we use this in the same business actually. Um, but basically you went to Ikea, if you bought a Christmas tree. from them, they ran this offer that a Christmas tree was 70.

They would give you a 70 voucher to spend in store. But when you look to the terms and conditions of when you, it was like you had a week, and it was probably their really quiet week, but Jeremy and sort of post sale. Yeah. And but as long as you went in during that week, you could you could spend it. And we thought that's a bloody clever idea.

So we did this voucher offer. Where you bought something, you got the vouchers, I think it was like a starter pack, if you bought the starter pack for 10 quid, which cost me nothing, by the way, because I got all the samples from the brands, we gave you a 10 voucher, but you had to spend it in a certain timeframe.

That was unbelievable. We had thousands of those, you know, shipped out. So yeah.

Caulen Foster: And like you said, it's great for, for incentivizing the purchase too, because now instead of, now like for what we do on the post purchase side, if we do a, if we do a free digital gift [00:44:00] card, right. We'll, we'll put an expiration.

Yeah. Yeah. It won't be a date expiration, because you can't, because it's not dynamic enough, right? But you can put a time, it must be used within 30 days, right, on the bottom of the card. And then now your LTV, your email. Hey, your gift card's about to expire. That's a subject line. And that subject line gets opened.

Because people are like, what gift card? And if they forgot, what gift card? Hey, a reminder. Hey, as a reminder, with your last purchase, you had a 15 credit towards to spend here. And then you can set, you can do some really nerdy stuff with that. My email guy is a beast with that. You know, segmenting it based on products so that it's linear to what they bought.

You can get really, I mean, that's when you're getting into like, kind of like, You know, you're really getting granular to make sure that they're making the most out of it. Getting proper nerdy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. But if you, but you know, even just general, just generic, you can say, Hey, your grit card's about to expire or your 20 is about to expire.

That gets opened because people don't want to lose money ever. You know, so, so yeah, so that's, that's, that's how we do, that's how we do offer development is those are some of our, we had a couple other ones that I'm sure if I thought of, [00:45:00] but off the,

Matt Edmundson: no, that's great. I, can I, can I please encourage you to write the book, A Hundred Million Dollar Offers For Digital Brands or something?

Caulen Foster: Well, the funny thing is, is I have the title and I was going to say it, but I was like, you know what? I like the title. I don't want to give it up yet. I already had Hormozy jump on the offer train before I did and, you know, we saw what that did for him. So I'll keep it. I got the title name already. I'm just keeping it close.

No,

Matt Edmundson: fantastic. Well, let, do send me, when you write it, send me a copy, come back on the show and we'll talk about it. Um, but no, that's, that's great. That's brilliant. Listen, Caulen, I'm aware of time and it is flying by at a million miles an hour, but let me ask you, um, Um, let me ask you a question if I can, this is where we do the question for Matt section on the show.

This is where I ask you for a question, um, I'm not going to answer it now, I'm going to answer it on social media. So if you want to know the answer to the question, um, uh, dear listener, then you have to follow me on social media to find the answer out. [00:46:00] Um, but yes, Caulen, if you could ask me, and it can be about anything, uh, it really can, um, what would the question be?

Caulen Foster: You know, I, I think I have a good one. It would probably be around, you've got to bring it around to marketing. And I have an idea of what the question is. I'm just trying to think of a way to word it. Cause I think about this all the time, which is like, if I knew what I knew now, when I had Almond Pro, my first brand, I could have scaled that brand heavy, heavy.

I could have gone a lot further than I did. So, and there's multiple reasons for why I know that. So what is it that you know now? That you wish you knew before when you got into the marketing game.

Matt Edmundson: Very good. And I instantly know the answer to

that's a great question. If you want to know what, how I'm going to answer that, make sure you follow me on social media, just go find me at Matt Edmundson. You'll find me on LinkedIn or the usual channels, [00:47:00] Instagram and all that sort of stuff. Caulen, listen. Super enjoyed the conversation, man. Thanks for bringing in so much value.

You're an absolute legend. Um, I really appreciate you being on the show. If people want to find out more about you, about BrainPath, they want to connect, you know, reach out, what's the best way to do that?

Caulen Foster: Uh, LinkedIn. I'm, I'm, I'm active. I post daily on LinkedIn. Um, I'm pretty easy to find. Cause if you and I discussed my, my name is spelled pretty much different than any other calling.

So if you just type in C A U L E N, and then my last name, Foster, which is spelled normal, uh, I should pop right up. That's the best way to get in touch with me.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. We'll of course link to everything of Collins in the show notes, but legend, what a legend you are, my friend. Thank you for coming. I really appreciate it.

And absolutely, it's great to meet

Caulen Foster: you. for

Matt Edmundson: having

Caulen Foster: me. I know, brilliant. Likewise, brother. Brilliant.

Matt Edmundson: Well, there you go. Another fantastic conversation. Huge thanks again to Caulen, spelt very differently, for joining me today. Also, be sure to [00:48:00] follow the eCommerce Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from because we've got some more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them.

And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are. Created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. Caulen's got to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now the eCommerce Podcast is produced by PodJunction. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app.

The team that makes this show possible is the beautiful, talented Sadaf Beynon and Tanya Hutsuliak. Our theme song was written by Josh Edmundson. And as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript or show notes, you can find them on the website, eCommercePodcast. net. But that's it from me. That's it from Caulen.

Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for [00:49:00] now.