The REAL Personal Touch (a sneak peak from eCommerce Masterplan Summit) | Chloe Thomas

Matt Edmundson

Well good afternoon and welcome to the live recording of the eCommerce podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson. And if you are new to the show a big warm welcome to you. And if you're regular, you will know, you will recognise that we are live streaming slightly earlier than we normally do on a Thursday. Oh, yes. That's because today I get to chat to my fellow Brit Chloe, who's been on the show before Chloe Thomas, absolute legend. And we're going to get into some really crazy stuff today. I have no doubt because it's Chloe, right. And that's why we're shooting a little bit earlier. So if you're on Facebook, and you're going, hang on a minute, I'm not used to this coming up at four o'clock. Now you know why! Now we're here. So make sure you say hi. Send us a greeting, ask your questions, all the usual stuff you can do in the comments and Chloe and I will get to your questions, I have no doubt, if they come up. But just to let you know, like I say if this if this is your first time here, we do the recording of the podcast live. Okay, and you get to watch it, you get to watch the interview with Chloe. And if so inclined, like I say you can get your questions in and have a little bit of fun with it. We then take the audio from this live stream and it becomes our podcast and this podcast episode 64 will get released next week. So this is the yeah, this is a live recording of it. So do stick with us, stay with us to the end because as always, I say as always as is new habit, we have a giveaway to do at the end and you're not gonna want to miss this one. Because this is this great one from Chloe. But we will talk more about that in just a little bit. I just wanted to jump in and say hi, and just let you know this is the live recording of the eCommerce podcast so stick with us, because here we go.

Sadaf Beynon

Welcome to the eCommerce podcast with Matt Edmundson, a show that brings you regular interviews, tips and tools for building your business online.

Matt Edmundson

Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce podcast. With me your host Matt Edmundson. Now whether you are starting out in eCommerce because you know, why would you not be right now with the whole pandemic thing? Everyone's getting online. So if you're one of those, it's great that you're here. Or maybe like me, you've just been around for a while. And that's also okay too, my goal basically, is to help you grow your ecommerce and digital businesses that every week, I get to talk to amazing people from the world of ecommerce, I get to ask them all kinds of fantastic questions about what they know, and how it's going to help us develop our own online business, right how to grow our own ecommerce businesses, I often say that I try and have the conversations that you would have with our guests if you got to sit down and just have a cup of coffee with them and say, right, answer this question for me, and just absorb their pearls of wisdom. So we're going to dig into their story, we're going to learn some kind of principles that are going to help us start and adapt and grow online. So if you enjoy the podcast, then I would appreciate it if you give us a review on iTunes, or wherever you get it from. Or if you're watching on YouTube, or Facebook, give us a like, share it out. It just enables us to do what we do, and keep on delivering what I think is quite extraordinary content from some amazing guests totally for free. Yes, it is. So make sure you do that. Now. Let me tell you what is going on in this week's podcast. We have Chloe Thomas back back on the show. Yes, if you are regular to the show, you will know that Chloe has definitely been on this show before. She's one of our favourite guests. Let's not let's not pull any punches. We love Chloe. Yes, we do. And so Chloe is joining us today. And we are going to be talking about the personal touch the real personal touch doing those things in your ecommerce business that totally transforms it and makes it like super, super personal and helps you to sort of distinguish yourself from you know, people like Amazon who are just, well, they're big, and they're boring, aren't they? So we can do something about that. And we're going to talk to Chloe about it. And we've put we've called this podcast, the real personal touch, a sneak peek from the eCommerce masterplans summit, because Chloe, as we're going to get into is actually hosting in the next few days. Something called the eCommerce master plan summit. It's an online virtual summit, which you can go to for free. We're going to talk about that. We're going to get into all of that. I'm really looking forward to it. Because we will yeah, you're gonna find out. Let me just bring Chloe onto the show. Chloe. Hi, how you doing?

Chloe Thomas

Hello, I'm good. It's great to be here. And what you didn't tell people is that you're in the summit as well.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, I want them to come. Yeah, don't don't don't put people off, please. You're right. We we recorded a session yesterday, didn't we? We had a bit of fun with it. I seriously over-ran and Chloe reigned me back in, which was great. So

Chloe Thomas

Hopefully, when the summit happens, none of you will realise that because the way away,

Matt Edmundson

You're gonna watch this thing and go. What was Matt talking about? I have no idea. Perfect. So we've got out in the comments, saying Hi. Hi. And how you doing? Great. You're here. Thanks for watching. Thanks for joining us. And but yeah, we've got this. We've got you. Let's start off with that Chloe, because what I didn't say in the intro, is you host like two podcasts at the last count. You've written more books about eCommerce then I've had hot dinners, right? You've got involved in a whole bunch of stuff to do with ecommerce and now you're hosting something called the eCommerce master plan virtual summit. So tell us a little bit about that.

Chloe Thomas

Yeah, so so everything we do at eCommerce master plan is about helping ecommerce businesses plot their path to success, work out how to how to make better decisions, because I've always found that businesses, when when retailers come to me and ask me questions, you probably get this as well. It's usually one of two things. It's Chloe what am I doing that I shouldn't be doing? And Chloe what am I not doing that I should be doing? You know, it's like, it's kind of the reassurance in that. Yeah, What don't I know that I should know, factor. So that's what we bring to everything we produce. And my podcasts are audio only, which means there's a certain amount of information it's quite hard to explain. I mean, we've tried faceted navigation tips a couple of times on people optimising. But it's a rocky road. Yeah. It's, it's challenging.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah. I can imagine,

Chloe Thomas

You know, and I know a lot of people prefer the video format to the audio format. So well, we did some some summits in the past didn't do any last year. Weirdly. Everyone else got into virtual summits last year. We just went No, no, no, 2020 No, not happening. We're back this year with one and what I'm trying to I've tried to create is an antidote because if what our mission is to help you make better decisions, that partly means saving you from having to work your way through 100 sessions. I got an email from an event this week saying first first 100 speakers confirmed like, Whoa, how am I supposed to work out what I'm gonna do with 100 speakers, you know that they're really 100 things I need to know about right now. So, with my summit, we've drilled it down to just 12 sessions, we've got six sessions about customer acquisition, we've got six sessions about customer retention. And then at the end of each day, we've got a live Q&A session to ask the questions. It's as simple as that. And each session is a maximum of 30 minutes long. So it's really to the point, I'm challenging all the speakers. And they've been very gracious. Yeah, they've been very gracious about it. I'm always quite nervous what I do to really give great value and and that's what we're up to. So it happens on the eighth and ninth of June. Totally free. And and yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be brilliant. And we we launched it as we're speaking right now. We launched it yesterday. And I've been flabbergasted by the number of people who've already signed up you know, we are we are way ahead of my targets for this point in time.

Matt Edmundson

Before we went on air where you're dancing a little jig, "it's working"!

Chloe Thomas

Yeah oh my god. It's al going to plan!

Matt Edmundson

I tell you, what I'm gonna do now is for those of you watching the live stream. For those who are watching the live recording or those of you watching on YouTube video, you will see a little link on the bottom of your screen magically appear. And if you listen to your podcast is simply this eCommercepodcast.net/summit. If you want to know more about Chloe's summit, the master plan, some kind of

Chloe Thomas

The ecommerce masterplace

Matt Edmundson

ecommerce master plan summit - ENPS. Let's go with that. You can go to eCommercepodcast.net/summit that will take you to the landing page, which tells you all about the summit and you can sign up there for free. You've got some really great speakers, some of whom I know I'm looking forward to their, to their topics. I'm looking forward to the summit. It's really exciting stuff that you've that you've got going on there. You must be really stoked. You've got some really good speakers. Me aside, you've got some really great speakers.

Chloe Thomas

You're in, you're very good. And as we started, we've all we've pre-recorded yours. So we know just how good your session is. So right so stop being bashful, or humble or whatever the correct word is.

Matt Edmundson

Stop talking nonsense.

Chloe Thomas

Got got some brilliant speakers, many of whom have been tried and tested on the podcast because you know if you know someone's great, Why not book them instead of somebody new? And I guess highlights would be we got Val Geisler who is just an email marketing goddess, I, I was too nervous to contact her for years to ask her to come do something with me. And then this year, this is our second chat this year and she's just she just brings it every time. So I'm looking forward to her session she works at Klayvio. I recently joined the Klayvio team to help all the customers out and and take their content to another level as well. So she's just awesome. We've got Luke Kathy, who he's spoken at mozcon and most SEO events going and he's just genius, quite frankly. Who else, who else? I'll give you a third who's my is my third favourite person coming on? You. Sorry, you're my first favorite peson. Insult the host, Chloe! Go for it just

Matt Edmundson

fine. That's why I'm humble Chloe.

Chloe Thomas

Yeah, I'm trying to find it. Yeah, I'm trying to pick it. Pick another one. I guess I guess we'll go with Jessica Totillo-Costa.

Matt Edmundson

I was going to say, Jessica is on there. Yeah, she's a legend.

Chloe Thomas

She's been on your show, hasn't she? She she is just yeah, as well. And Jessica, and I still trying to work out what she is going to be talking about, because we just have so many things we want her to talk about. So yeah, it's it's, and to be honest, pretty much everyone is of that level. It's, um, apart from you, Matt, obviously, just continuing the theme. Yeah, he's above above that level. Yeah, it's it's, I if we ran our first event back in 2019. And I have, no it was in 2017 we did our first virtual summit. And I was scraping my virtual Rolodex to find people to be part of it. And if I said to the, you know, to me back then what the lineup would look like in 2021, I would not have believed me. Yeah. At all. Because it is it is really impressive. I'm, I'm still slightly in shock that everybody said yes.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, no, it's great. It's wonderful well done for doing it. And like I said, I'm really, really stoked by it . Now that you're doing this thing where by day one is all about acquisition and data is all about retention. You've kept it super simple, right? So all the speakers on day one are talking about customer acquisition and all the speakers on day two and talking about customer retention. Why did you, it's gonna be a really stupid question, but why did you pick those two strands?

Chloe Thomas

I wanted to, there's a couple of reasons. One is the the obvious in eCommerce, you're only successful if you do both customer acquisition and customer retention. So you, if you want to do well, in marketing, you've got to cover both of those. Second reason is because I think as a result of everything that's happened in the pandemic, so far, a lot of businesses are going, we've got so many people who bought from us recently, we better do some work on retention. Plus, I know there's still a lot of businesses who are getting so many sales in that their marketing team aren't allowed to do much recruitment. So they've got time to spend on retention. So I wanted to up the retention interest for that reason. The third reason that, that we've gone with, with two a day on each was discipline for me so as I would make sure I had half of it on retention and half of it on acquisition, because I am I'm like, it's like, since we've launched it, I've had people asking, within a couple of hours of it going live, going, Can I speak? Can I speak? And I am a sucker for saying yes. And I wanted to keep this focused. Yeah. So So having six retention, six acquisition has forced me to deliver on the promise I want to give to the audience.

Matt Edmundson

Okay. Now that's, that's, that's fantastic. That's, I like that. And it's it always amazes me how so much marketing is about acquisition, and very little conversation happens around retention. And so I, I hats off to you for doing it. I think it's great. I think it's going to be super valuable for people. A little unknown stat, I don't know if I should share it. But when it comes to Jersey Beauty company, right, so one of our ecommerce websites, this was an interesting stat, which is always been like this for the last few years always intrigued me. 60% of our traffic is new customers. Right? So 60% of the people that come to my website are new customers. 40% are returning. Okay, so it's a 60/40 split. But 60% of my revenue comes from returning customers and 40% of it comes from new customers. Does that make sense? So kind of the numbers flip.

Chloe Thomas

That makes total sense. And I'd say anyone who's listening who hasn't now written down, or made a mental note of these are stats I need to check against Matt's benchmark is missing a trick.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah. Especially if you're in this industry. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, and I wanted to highlight that not because I think Jersey is anything unique. I just think such a large chunk of our turnover comes from repeat customers, do you know what I mean? So retention is so so critical. And getting into that mindset of retention is is one of the things that's kept us around for so long. If I'm honest.

Chloe Thomas

It's where I started my retail career. So back in the early 2000s, I was working at Pastimes, which for those of you who are in the UK, over the about the age of 30, may remember the high street shop Pastimes that sold historically inspired gifts. So I was their catalogue marketing manager. And yes, we spent a lot of money on recruitment catalogues, but the amount of money we could generate from people who hadn't bought in five years by sometimes by sending them a catalogue. I mean, catalogue budgets were vast, and it was insane. I totaled it up once for the year and kind of wander around the office in the daze for a while. Why am I allowed to spend this much money? Because it's all tracked and monitored. And it all every penny of it pays back, you know, multiple times be a bit then, you know, by looking at that data and doing it, it was like huge gold mine in that that past customer less. So it always, it always surprises me how businesses, how many businesses you come across, you say, what are you doing on the retention front, we do an email broadcast. And that's only after you go, you must send something to people who bought before. And it's kind of crazy when it's so much easier to get someone to buy for the second time than is to get someone to buy for the first time. But the noise in the industry is around the new customer acquisition, you know, this, the sexy stuff is often thought of as the Facebook ad strategy or the video ads or, you know, all these clever, sexy things and they're not unsexy. But there's also a lot of a lot of sexy, cool marketing in the world of retention too.

Matt Edmundson

There is there really isn't is always interest. Another sort of insight here was when we when we look at our Google Ad budgets for, you know, for our eCommerce. So we take Jersey again, when we look at the Google Ad budgets. I noticed that new customer acquisition was obviously very expensive on Google ads, as most people are finding, but we were spending an interesting amount of cash on our own name right. So when people went to google and googled our own name, Jersey Beauty Company and the ad comes up. And when you looked at the cost of that, which were miniscule, because no one else has really advertising on that name, but when you looked at the cost of that, and the return on that investment, so it was always insanely high. And this is important, because the people that are typing in my name are people that have been to my website before, do you see what I mean? So this was my I could contrast then, in a very crude way, what we were spending on Google AdWords for our returning customers, and the amount of revenue that was generating versus the amount of money we're spending on new customer acquisition, the amount of revenue that was generating. And so, so yeah, always intrigued me always always intrigued me and this, this whole idea of returning customers. customer retention is so so important. So definitely, definitely log in for day one. But you are not going to want to miss day two. That's that's going to be my my prediction for the summit. That's the one I want to get the most out.

Chloe Thomas

And somebody should probably also say because there are only half hour sessions, it's only a half day each time. So you're not having to go right, the whole of my Tuesday and Wednesday is taken over by Chloe's summit. If you're in the UK, you've got your morning to do whatever you like with come and join me at two o'clock, we'll be wrapped up by six, if you want to stick around for the Q&A. And if you're in the US in New York, we start at 9am. If you're on the far side of America, apologies it's gonna be a bit early for you. But but it's it's, you know, we've not gone we're going to monopolise your day. We literally three hours of sessions, one hour of q&a each day, so it should be easy to juggle with your day job as well. We're not, we're not trying to monopolise the diary.

Matt Edmundson

And you're going to do that thing where if you go to the summit, you can watch the recorded sessions again, or is it just like, is it one of these summits where you have to be there and that's the only time you can see it?

Chloe Thomas

No, I mean, it's, as a marketer, it's a very clever way to make people watch it on the day is to go if you don't watch it today, you're going to pay me 500 quid tomorrow. It's a very clever making money out for summit tactic. But if I'm in the business, and my mission is to help ecommerce business owners find the right decisions, you know, make the right decisions and focus on the right things, then going, you have to watch all 12 sessions in 48 hours, or I'm going to punish you just doesn't fit with my brand. You know, it's like, it's a great way of forcing people in on the day. But it's, it's it was, yeah, it just it's not right for what I do. I'm not criticising anyone who does it because I've I've played around with it in the past. It's a really clever tactic, if that's how you make money out of summit. I make money out of the sponsors. So I don't have to do that. But so we will be, after the summit, encouraging everyone to share it with their team. And often only one person on a team attends, and it's like, I saw some really into the email, but I'm not allowed to play with email, pass it over to your email person, let them have a watch. Or if we if you know, if you're still running as a remote team, all of you watch the same session and talk about it in a team meeting the following week, it's a great way of connecting on something that isn't sign offs and to do lists. So yeah, replays will be available, everybody.

Matt Edmundson

That's good to know, that's good to know, because I think you're going to watch some of these things. And I've always my experience with summits as you go to these things. And they're just so value packed, right? Especially if you've got great speakers, and you're feverishly taking notes. But of course, your notes are never really that complete, because they're moving on to the next thing you're trying to keep up. So the fact you can go back and watch it I think is so so helpful. And you can I like the idea of going through it with your team, just watch it together and have a conversation about the ones that really stick out to you. I think it's brilliant. I'm excited, we're going to be there.

Chloe Thomas

Excellent. We're currently playing around with trying to work out what the written content side of it is? Whether we do transcripts of every episode, or we do like top three takeaways from each episode or like a podcast show notes page, there's going to be something to enable people to more quickly access the content than having to watch watch the videos when we reach replaced status. But I haven't quite worked out what that is yet. So if anyone has got any ideas, you'll find a way to get in contact with me and let me know.

Matt Edmundson

Just let Chloe know. I'm sure she'll be more than open to any ideas. So you've got why you say you've got a few hours of summit speakers. And then at the end of each day, you've got the speakers come in for a Q&A at the end. Is that right?

Chloe Thomas

Yeah. So selected speakers come back for for Q&A, which is something we do each month at keep optimising. So the keep optimising podcast each month, we have four or five episodes depending on how many Wednesdays there are. Different topic experts, so like this month, we are doing Google ads. So we've had four topic experts on Google ads, and at the end of the month, they will get together for a webinar to talk about the topic and to answer answer questions from the audience. Those are quite popular with our listeners. So I thought why not do it at the summit. So we're having kind of focus sessions throughout the day, if you cut out the, you know, the open Q&A, you can keep it really, really tight. But then we have the open Q&A at the end. And hopefully we'll get I know, like, we got to Facebook ads and a Google Ads person on day one. So I'm hoping for some interesting banter amongst them, because there tends to be quite a lot of laughter when I'm running a Q&A. So So yeah, we've got those at the end of each day for getting getting people's thoughts in and questions and, and those will be available as replay as well. So if you're, if you can't make that because I know you, you finished work at five in the UK. And we're starting at five with a live Q&A, email me the questions and I will try and get those answered, and you can catch up with it on the replay.

Matt Edmundson

So as I said, if you're listening eCommercepodcast.net/summit, you will be able to get access to all of that summit stuff. Now, Chloe, the the talk that we you and I did yesterday, which is what we're going to get into today, is this whole idea of the real personal touch? Why did we do that one?

Chloe Thomas

We did that one for the summit because it's a it's a pet topic that I find quite fascinating. So when you when I sent you an email saying what do you fancy talking about and you sent me some ideas back, I went, oh, let's do that one, because I liked doing that one. So that's why basically, you suggested it as an idea and I was like, yeah, let's talk about that. Because, because it encomp, and also because a lot of our content on on day two, customer attention day is understandably about personalization, and automation and post purchase sequences and reactivation, all that really cool, chunky algorithm segmentation stuff. But it misses out on the softer touch, which I think that this kind of this real touch piece is particularly exciting, because it's often where you said, don't be boring and big, like Amazon. And this is one of those areas where the smallest of ecommerce businesses can beat everybody else. If they get this bit right, a little bit of attention to detail, a little bit of the personal touch. And all of a sudden, you are doing something far ahead of anyone else in your in your space. Because for you, it's worth the investment. At that point, the challenge is then making it work in a bigger business.

Matt Edmundson

So scaling, isn't it in the whole personal touch thing, but in terms of in terms of the personal touch them, what are some of the things that you've seen that have worked like really well in this whole area? So some practical things that we can maybe start thinking about?

Chloe Thomas

I mean, my favourite, which doesn't work for every business, but my absolute favourite is the unexpected free gift in the parcel. Yeah. Right. Because a lot of you either went to one place their first order they are, they're still testing you out until the product arrives. So you've got to make that unboxing experience as interesting and as exciting as possible and a free gift really, really hits it. I mean, I was thinking about about this after our chat yesterday is it's a bit like if you've ever bought a premium car, you know, like a mini or a BMW or an Audi or something, right? When you go to

Matt Edmundson

I love how your put minis in premium cars there, that was brilliant, but like,

Chloe Thomas

Well I put minis in there because I've owned a couple of minis and they go above and beyond with this with the personal touch element in their, in their in their activity when you have one of their cards. You know like, you find if you take it in for service, you may well find a bunch of flowers in the back that don't just clean it and valet it. They give you a bunch of flowers. Personally, I don't like flowers, so didn't really work on me but as a marketer, I appreciated the gesture that's clever. Yeah, yeah. Far rather have you know a pot of tea. Anyway, too much about me. We'll come again to come back to tea in a moment. So that's why I include mini but like when when I bought a BMW back when I drove places, now I have a Mazda 2 that's covered in dirt and has a flat tire and had to be jumped started last weekend. Just Just before anyone makes any value judgments about me mentioning cars when I bought that they put it in the middle of the showroom. And they put this massive almost like parachute cover over it. Right? You go in and you're like, oh god some poor person's gonna have their car revealed. Then you go, where's my car, is it around the back? No, it's under the sheet.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah,

Chloe Thomas

But you know, in the Instagram world for many people that would be a huge highlight and there was you know, chocolates and flowers in the back and they you know, they, they make it a really exciting moment and the unexpected free gift is a brilliant way to really up it when you're when you're doing something. So I come back to tea. I'm a bit of a bit of a loose leaf tea junkie. And I used to go into my local tea shop and buy my tea. Now I, for large parts of the last 12 months, I'm unable to do that. So I've been ordering it online from the same company. And they, every time they put a little sample t in, and it's so exciting, it's usually not a tea I would have picked. So sometimes I go, Oh, dear god, I don't want that. But I still like the gesture. But it's it's, it's both making me feel special as a customer, but it's also helping me explore the rest of their range. And it costs them very, very little, you know, it's not gonna have the postage, it's it's not not a lot of cost in product. But it really just makes me feel feel that bit more special and make sure that next time I want, I want to top up my tea, I'm not going to buying it from the supermarket, I'm going to be buying it from them.

Matt Edmundson

And actually, this whole thing about free samples is practically how we built Jersey in some respects, because you send them out to customers, and you get to try and sample other things. So you're not just buying your usual now you're you're buying other things. So it's clever, because in the future it adds value. One of the things that I've learned, right, I'll tell you a quick story is whenever you put a freebie in the box, unless it's immediately obvious, like it's a free sample type thing. It's always worth accompanying that with a note explaining that you have given a free gift, right? And the reason I say this is because I remember the first time I learned this lesson, we were doing this thing around Easter where it was like, let's just throw chocolate in the box, right? And we just put we put chocolates in the box, we got an email from a customer, like a few days later, say received my parcel, so thank you very much but I think part of somebody's lunch is in my parcel. And I was like, I was like I was horrified. I was like what someone's put part of their lunch? How has that happened? It's like a sandwich fallen off. And it turns out, it was just the chocolate and she just misunderstood. So we knew after that, like when we put stuff in there, just to write a note to say, listen, it's Easter, you deserve a bit of chocolate at Easter, Happy Easter, from all of us here at Jersey or something do you know what I mean, we just wanted to send you this gift to say thanks.

Chloe Thomas

Especially in your industry as well. Because if you're if it's like a sample of a product, and you've just put that in there, you want them to you know, do what you can it's a great opportunity to put in a note saying, here's here's a new product we're thinking of listing or here's here's one of our best sellers, we thought you might want to try it we'd love to know what you think? Look us, let us know on Instagram or something and then you're encouraging them to social share as well. But you're also upping is not just I don't know L'Oreal sent us this box of sachets we'll get rid of them in the parcels. It's we thought you might like this. We'd love to know what you think of it and it elevates it to that's a really nice gesture.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, Yeah, it does. It does. It's, yeah, yeah. Anyway, make sure you put a note in the box. And if it's a handwritten note, then that's more personal than just a normal, you know, printed card type thing. But whatever you can do, you know, whatever you can spare. So I like the free samples. I like the free gifts in the box. As a nice to have you ever had a parcel from somebody where they've put a handwritten note in there.

Chloe Thomas

I have, I mean they come the tea comes with a handwritten note. Often just written just scrawled on the bottom of the the order confirmation sheet, you know, the packing sheet, which I actually I almost prefer that to a pretty postcard with a handwritten, you know, because it just feels a bit more real somehow because it's less polished. And there's there's definitely been others but none of them are like ping to mine. I usually have them around me in the office. You know, if someone sends me something pretty good. Then I can see what now this isn't entirely the personal touch. But this was one brush the dust off it's hidden around the back of the desk. But this is one which I'll read it out for those who aren't on the video, but it came from a company we bought some shelving, some cast iron shelve supports from of all things you wouldn't have assumed would be great at marketing. But what it says For those of you who are are listening, it says win your order back with your photos and videos. It's an a five flyer, cheap paper stock so it doesn't cost them very much. And then it's got a four step process to work through, which I love. There's an awful lot of text on this. It's got take a video, post it on any of our social sites with all the social sites listed, or leave a review on feefo. Like or follow our page, sit back and wait to see if you win at the end of the month. It's quite a complicated one. Yeah, but it's, you know, it is I suspect, I suspect they get an awful lot of impact impact from this and it takes Oh it is on the back of the returns form. So, you know, it's even more cost effective because they're using a piece of paper that they are putting in anyway.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, very good. I like that. That's straightforward. And what you said about just handwritten notes on the packing slip. That's how we do it a lot, is how we do a lot, we have like a secret. Again, I'm just letting all the Jersey secrets. We, whenever we print the packing slip off, there's a secret code on the packing slip. So if you work in the warehouse, you'll know what that code means. Now, it may mean that this is their first or it may mean that this is their fifth order, it may mean that they're entitled to something and they can read that and interpret that they go, Okay, this is their first order with us. So then they'll write a note on there saying, hey, Sam, thanks for placing your orders with us. It's really great having you part of the Jersey team. I love packing your order. And the guys in the warehouse will sign that. And that's a really easy thing to do, I think takes like five to 10 seconds to do it. And of course, the handwriting gets worse throughout the day.

Chloe Thomas

Proving that it's real.

Matt Edmundson

It's proven therefore, it's real. I tell you what I think it was last time you were on the show, Chloe, you mentioned a website and I can't remember the name of it. This is how bad it is. And that's not because the website is bad does because my memory is shockingly awful.

Chloe Thomas

Remember what you saw? Yeah,

Matt Edmundson

you recommended this leather site. We sold these little leather notebooks.

Chloe Thomas

This one? Yes. Paper Republic.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah. And so I went on to the website and ordered something from them. And it was a little leather notebook with the stuff you've got inside. And that came with a handwritten note, which I thought was lovely. Actually, they that was of all the stuff I've ordered online over lockdown. That was the only one that came with a handwritten note.

Chloe Thomas

What's particularly impressive about that is that they come from Vienna. So they they've got people writing in English in their Austrian place, because we were talking about that, because they do a brilliant post purchase campaign. Yeah, that's right, to make you feel like, you know, it's got videos in it, of how to attach these things and how to put your notebooks in it and how it was made, and who's packing it and all that kind of stuff. So, so yeah.

Matt Edmundson

I thought it was very good. And I'm that notebook is in my, in my bag, you know, my work by where I take a lot of notes. And so and the email sequence, the post purchase sequence, I thought was very clever, and very good. But yeah, I thought that they did the personal touch really, really well. And so I thought, that's not cost them anything to do. No, but next time I need a refill for that notebook that I'm going to those guys, right? It's just the way it's going to be. So I thought no good on them. I thought they did. I did they did well with that.

Chloe Thomas

The other thing it does, of course is you are more likely to remember, I know you forgot it here, but when you've got it in your hand and someone saying where did you get that from, you're more likely to remember the name of the company you got it from, because their building that emotional connection with you. And that's what these these real world real physical pieces are doing. And we spoken quite a lot about what goes in the parcel paper or gifts or messages and free gift. But I think another part is the parcel itself. Okay. And it's something which I think has become more important as the world of the pandemic has gone on, because one of the kind of like really hard to track, but definite increases in acceleration of trend that's happened during the pandemic is the consumer desire and interest in sustainability. Yes. And these days, if I get a parcel, and it's filled with plastic packaging, and without a note of it saying this is really plastic, this is actually vegetable starch, you know, I'm judging that company, to the point where the point will almost have its plastic parcel tape, although I hate the Amazon tape with the with the string in it, because it's so hard to remove with your fingers. I still, you know,

Matt Edmundson

Not hard to remove your finger with it, though. That's

Chloe Thomas

No no, you could lose easily lose the end of the finger with that stuff. But I would still rather have that than the plastic now. And I've got quite, you know, quite judgmental of companies who aren't doing ethical marketing. And then I then as a marketer, as an ecommerce person, I get quite judgmental of companies who are boring packaging, because there's no excuse for that either anymore.

Matt Edmundson

No excuse for that. And that again, I mean, coming back to the title of the show the personal touch the real personal touch. You're right, you can actually make the packaging stand out, you know. And I I show people an image or that I think we did it yesterday. And when you show people a picture of an Amazon parcel and ask them a question, how do you feel when you receive this? And actually, you don't feel anything really it's quite an indifferent experience. And I think this is where you can make a real difference is when you get the packaging. Sometimes the packaging you get is you just you just look at it. And before you've opened that parcel, you feel something some positive emotion somewhere. It's connected with you and you're not quite sure how or why. But before you even open that parcel, you're expecting it to be good. And I think that's quite a, that's quite a clever thing to do with your packaging.

Chloe Thomas

Yeah, I mean, it's something which I've, I'm quite fascinated by the word of subscription eCommerce. Because I think there's a lot that the standard ecommerce world can learn from the world of subscription, because you kind of look at it and go, Wow, that's money that just comes in every month. But actually, it's 10 times harder to recruit the customer. And then you really have to work to keep them from from unsubscribing. But one thing, which that industry is brilliant at is cool looking boxes. You know, if you're running subscription business, and you need it before, pretty much from what I see in the forums, people running subscription businesses, they're worried about the box before they've even identified the product. Yeah, because they want to create that excitement because they want they spent a lot of money recruiting someone in and they want to keep them for 5/6/7/12 boxes so you've got to make it an experience. And that starts with when it arrives. They're not doing you said emotion. When you see an Amazon box for me it's usually Oh, what? What's that one? Remember what I'm supposed to be having arriving this week? is usually confused with an Amazon box everything else, it's a little bit of intrigue? What's that going to be? With? You know, with a with a good subscription box? It's, oh, it's arrived! Yeah. Oh, cool! Wonder what's in it this month, or Oh, brilliant, I needed the refill, or whatever else. And it's, it's such a simple thing to do. And it doesn't actually have to cost much more, you know, you can literally just get if you you know, if you've got standard cardboard boxes, get a stamp and stamp on it. You know, and if like you were saying I love this and we kind of glossed over it they you have the marks on the order confirmation, you know, the the packing slip to flag up different types of customers, which is such a great way for a big company to deal with the personal touch because not, you know, your warehouse staff will kill you if you make them write a personal note on every single parcel. But you know, you could have like a VIP order coming through stamp that you put on your best customers boxes that will get them excited. Yeah. Because it's, yeah, there's just so much you can do I get quite excited about packaging.

Matt Edmundson

It's quite it's, I think it's good as well. And this idea idea of stamping a box, we did that. We set up a subscription chocolate company. And I was like, I want to do an experiment - how cheaply can we do this, do you know what I mean? Because people say to us all the time, it's like it's all very well and good you're setting up an ecommerce business you I've got the warehouse do you know what I mean, you've got this, that and the other and I'm starting up I was like, no, no, we're we're going to bootstrap this business, we're going to start from scratch and see what we can do. And so we just went out and bought a bunch of brown cardboard boxes that would fit through a letterbox, and they were like 20p each or something like that. And I went on to the web, and I found a stamp company that made a bespoke stamp. So you give them the design, it would make it and we had two - one was the company logo and and the other was kind of like this organic kind of leaf pattern because it tied in with what we were doing. So every box that went out, we would just literally stamp it with with the logo and with this sort of leaf pen. And so the box looked organic and designed, no one knew we'd stamp them by hand it kind of had that hand stamp look. But that was part of the appeal, do you know what I mean? Yeah. And you can totally distinguish doing something like that. And I think it's the easiest easiest way to start to add a bit of flair and personalization to those boxes.

Chloe Thomas

Yeah, it's so simple so cheap. Just just astounding that businesses don't do it more often. Because it's

Matt Edmundson

Especially if you're a startup right because it's one way again you can differentiate and you can almost almost do where you've got stamp of the week and people can almost see what's going to be this one too mean can they is there some kind of collection they can do with it? I don't know.

Chloe Thomas

I was just trying to find it I don't I don't have them within, for anyone wondering who's watching wondering why Chloe is staring at the floor it's because I have something I was gonna Can't I got I can't see it within hand distance but but we got these these little circles circle stickers made up of the podcast. So there's one on the back of my mobile, their you go! Really simple, cost next to nothing. So you could do little stickers to add on as well, if you like well we can't be single colour. It's got to look a bit more professional. Get a sticker, get some cool looking tape. There's so many things you can do to make it a little bit more interesting that don't take you much time that don't take you much money. And it just it just amps it up the power of we may you know I love the fact to me when people are buying online. I love it when people buy online I love all the cool stuff we can do with the online stuff to make people buy more online and to build relationships online. But there there is something hugely powerful about stuff that happens in the real world. Tangible things you can hold on to you can touch, you can feel. It's such, so much stronger than a personalised email a personalised note so much stronger. And, you know, everyone should be considering it.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, no, very good. Very good. So clearly, we've talked about the outside of the box, we've talked about the inside of the box and what goes inside the box. What else have you seen that you think works well in this space, the personal touch?

Chloe Thomas

Trying to keep it real world, it would be the, the ad hoc communication. So I started in direct mail. So I have a lot of time for direct mail, and the stuff you can do with it now in terms of, you know, at scale, in terms of unique triggered sending to people, it's just really powerful. But for a smaller business - you know, if you've got someone who who has ordered, I don't know, maybe you're just starting out, and you're just starting to see people ordering for the second time, you don't and you say, which is a very exciting moment. The first orders exciting, the second order is seriously exciting. You know, so maybe at the end of each week, you get a load of postcards, maybe for the town you're based in, right, so you're just going, you know, bulk buy a load of Postcards of it, in my case, Cornwall, in your case, Leads. And then you just hand write them at the end of each week to the customers who bought twice. And so I just really wanted to say thank you. You're one of the first people to buy twice from us. And it's just really lovely. So I hope you have a lovely, lovely week. And just send it in, it's good. It's gonna cost you what, I'm not going to know this stuff. Because there's less than a fiver for per person, let's say.

Matt Edmundson

A quid. Let's say a quid.

Chloe Thomas

Yeah, it's not going to take take very much. You know, if you've got kids with good handwriting, you can pay them a small fee to write them for you. But it will just make a huge impact to the people who get those postcards, they'll just be Oh, wow. Even if there's not really an offer on it or anything. It's just a very simple, straightforward - Thanks so much for believing in us. And people really respond to that.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah. Nice. That's a good top tip. I like that. Again, we've done a lot of Postcards in the past. And they don't have to go in the box to send an amount separately, I think is quite nice. But even between orders do you know what I mean, it's like, yes, it's gonna cost you the price of a step. But manner like does it work quite well, because you're staying in touch with people in a way that people don't stay in touch with them anymore, because everyone and their dogs emailing them, you know, handwritten postcard that kind of stands out, right? I mean, that you're going to notice that as a customer. So I do want to correct you on one thing.

Chloe Thomas

Please do.

Matt Edmundson

I'm in Liverpool, not Leeds.

Chloe Thomas

Ah, sorry. I'm from Cornwall, anything above Birmingham, or Bristol is all the same. I knew it began with an L.

Matt Edmundson

It's up north and it begins with L.

Chloe Thomas

Or Scotland. In Scotland, you're somewhere there.

Matt Edmundson

Somewhere between those. That's quite funny people listening to go now he's not from Leeds. He lives in, he always talks about Liverpool and well, I'm sorry, moved? No, no, not at all. I actually would have no issue living in these lovely things great city.

Chloe Thomas

But I would have no issue living in the north, I'll just add in there. I just have always been in the south. It's not it's not a choice. It's just how it went. Okay. Bloody southerners.

Matt Edmundson

And the eCommerce podcast descends into a north south divide. Which is great. And so so yeah, so I like that idea. I like the idea of you've got the box you've got inside the box, but then you've got stuff you can do in between the orders, right. So what could you do? And I don't think this has to be rocket science. I mean, some of the things that you've talked about Chloe, or we've talked about postcards, gifts with, you know, samples, free gifts, you know, throwing a bit of chocolate at Easter, a sticker, a stamp for your box. None of that, at least in my mind, in my experience breaks the budget, right? It's all relatively low value stuff, but actually makes a big difference.

Chloe Thomas

Yeah, and I think that's one of the things I think it makes it so attractive for the smaller businesses is the bigger businesses, this stuff just falls through the cracks. They're so focused on the big automatable stuff, even though as we've discussed, a lot of this can be automatable they don't allow it they just just doesn't quite happen doesn't quite quite fit on anybody's part because I've got one person whose warehouse you maybe never speaks to the people who are in, you know, who managed the order print out so you never speak to the people who who do the marketing. So it just gets lost and as a small business. It's really easy because a lot of the time it's you doing all of it. So you know it, it's a huge opportunity for the smaller business to to build that emotional connection with customers, then just try not to forget it as you grow bigger.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, find a way to systematise it, find a way to make sure you keep doing it. I think that's so so important because yeah, I love this is, you know, it's one of the ways you beat Amazon. Amazon are never gonna send it out in the nice parcels. They're just not, they're never gonna send out the postcard. They're just not, they're never gonna throw in the gift, the extra freebie. They're just not. So this is stuff that you can do to differentiate. And I think it's so so important. But no, that's been great. Listen, Chloe, thank you so much for being with us. And I just normally at this point of the show, I say to people, how do people reach you? How do people connect with you? How do they get ahold of you?

Chloe Thomas

So head to eCommercemasterplan.com, they will find everything I'm up to and links to get in contact with me as well. So let's keep it simple.

Matt Edmundson

Keep it simple eCommerce masterplan.com, we will of course, put that link in the show notes along with a link to the summit. If you're driving and can't take notes, just head on over to eCommercepodcast.net/64. And you'll be able to get all of the show notes or transcripts everything from today's show. Now ordinarily, Chloe at this point, I would say ta ra and then I'll talk about the giveaway. But we actually have a visual aid for those of you watching the video for this week's giveaway. So this week, the giveaway your, I jokingly said at the start, you've read more books, and I've had hot dinners, it's not far off, right. So

Chloe Thomas

there's five,

Matt Edmundson

there's five, but I can even written one and you've written five.

Chloe Thomas

Ballot going in my hands, there was another one. And

Matt Edmundson

You're just showing off. Now, this one as well. That's great. There's five of them. There's five books which Chloe has authored. And Chloe is very kindly going to donate a copy of each book. So you can win a copy of all five books, just by heading over to the page, eCommercepodcast.net/64. All you got to do is just put your name, email, and that's it to enter. And one lucky listener slash viewer will get all five books for free from Chloe, which is an amazingly generous gift. So thank you for doing that. And yeah, just head on over and grab, grab a chance while you can. And whilst you're online. Let's just tell him one more time Chloe, the eCommerce Masterplan. Virtual summit is starting on June the eighth and goes through June 9, and it is starting at 2pm UK time which is 9am, if you're New York, so if you're on the eastern seaboard, EST. And it's going to run for four or five hours with a Q&A on those days, right on the eighth and ninth. Day eight is all about acquisition, day 8, day 1, which is on the eighth is all about acquisition day two, which is the ninth is all about retention. And so come along and join in the summit, it's free to join. And again, the URL for that is eCommercepodcast.net/summit. Chloe it has been an absolute treat, as always to have you on the show. And thanks for doing the summit. I think it's going to help a lot of people and the fact that it's free to enter enter is I think and watch it is brilliant. So thank you for doing it. Thanks for all the sweat and the tears. I have no doubt it will be fantastic.

Chloe Thomas

I hope so too. And and likewise the whole reason I'm doing it is to help lots of people so go and go and get yourself signed up for your ticket right now. Everyone eCommercepodcast.net/summit.

Matt Edmundson

There you go. Well done. It's like you're a professional.

Chloe Thomas

Almost.

Matt Edmundson

Listen, Chloe, thanks for that. Hey, listen, why don't you? Why don't you close out today's show? Okay, no one's ever done that before. So you might as well close it out.

Chloe Thomas

Well everyone, thank you very much for listening to Matt and I chat about the real side of customer retention and how to look after your customers. I've thoroughly enjoyed being on Matt's podcast. I hope you will have too - whether you're watching us live, or whether you're listening in the car, in the shower on a walk with the dog. We appreciate it. And you can find out all the notes from this episode at eCommercepodcast.net/64.

Matt Edmundson

Well done! Thanks, Chloe. It's been great having you all along, I guess close that we may do that more often. That was very well done. So we will see you next week on the podcast and have a great week, wherever you are. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part of it. And we will speak to you again soon. And Chloe, thank you very much. Cheers, everyone. Bye.