EP.146/ NECTAR SOCIAL
Driving retention via automated social media direct messages (DMs) with Nectar Social Co-Founders Misbah and Farah Uraizee
On this episode of Retention Chronicles, Mariah Parsons is joined by Nectar Social Co-Founders Misbah Uraizee and Farah Uraizee. Nectar Social is an AI-powered social CX, influencer, and lead gen platform helping brands nurture community and drive more revenue from DMs. They discuss how brands can unlock sales and lower customer acquisition costs (CAC) across platforms like Meta, TikTok Shops and YouTube. Their solution is being used by fashion, food, and beauty brands, including skincare technology company Solawave, and others in the Ulta Beauty and Sephora ecosystem.
We discussed questions like:
How AI can help measure and increase ROI without spending more on ads
Metrics for your community: how do you measure your community on social?
New tools for brands to personally engage and convert consumers on social media (increase conversations, DMs & shares)
Best practices today for multiplying UGC and creating lead generation campaigns
Community driven marketing: making organic social as attributable as paid
How to win on Instagram vs TikTok Shops
EP. 146
FARAH URAIZEE
MISBAH URAIZEE
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SPEAKERS
Misbah Uraizee, Farah Uraizee, Mariah Parsons
Mariah Parsons 00:00
Music. Welcome to retention Chronicles, the retention podcast for E commerce marketers. I'm your host and fellow e commerce marketer, Mariah Parsons, tune in as I chat with E comm founders and operators all about customer retention. Think marketing ops, customer success and customer experience, we cover it all and more. So get ready to get real with retention. Here is our newest episode. Hello everyone, and welcome back to retention Chronicles. I'm psyched for today's episode. It's going to be a great one. I know we originally met mishpa at Shop Talk fall, that is, and that's in Chicago, first time they did it, and it was a great, great time. And I'm so excited to, you know, give you guys the platform to talk about what you're doing with nectar social. It's going to be a great time. So we'll start with just a quick background of yourselves. Say hi to our audience, and then we'll go into you know, more the strategy, more the you know, the technical side of this podcast sounds great. Thank you so much for having us. Mariah, we're super excited to be on here today. Wonderful. Okay, so let's dive in. Tell our audience a little bit about, you know, how you guys what your backgrounds were, what drove you to start your own software company, and really walk us up until you know what, what's brought you to the seats that you are now, currently sitting in today.
Misbah Uraizee 01:29
Okay, great question. I think I can get started. My name is, as you mentioned, misba far and I are sisters, so we'll just get that out of the way. Our backgrounds. I can share mine a little bit. So started off my career journey in tech. Was at Microsoft for many years before transitioning to meta. At Microsoft started off in product, so led a lot of their the transition, which is interesting time to be at Microsoft, between Steve Ballmer and then transitioning to Satya. And so it was there during office 365 and really the growth of the company around that business, and then transitioned to actually leading their AAR VR product side of the house. So was there launching HoloLens AR VR glasses the first and second and part of that journey before switching to meta and going heads down in the consumer space, which led to a lot of the insights that we built upon here at nectar and prior to all of this, and we'll talk more about the meta insights in a second. But prior to all this, went to Yale. Grew up moving around a lot, but primarily based out of the west coast, was in LA and then Bay Area, and then Seattle.
Farah Uraizee 02:38
And yeah, that's kind of just the quick just Yeah, and I'm Farah, Chief Technical Officer for nectar, similar background to mizvah, spent time the bay studying AI at Stanford, Graduated, went over to meta, and was there for the past six years, primarily focused on growing the communities product across Instagram and Facebook, and a lot of time digging into messaging as one of the biggest growth channels for Facebook app. And Farah and I actually overlapped a meta, so that was fun as well. We worked on the same floor. Ran into each other for lunch a lot. Yeah, so, so sweet. I think it's the first time I've had sibling co founders for proper goods
Mariah Parsons 03:20
and brother, sister, and I think this is the first time I've had two sisters on the podcast together. So we're, we're having a great episode already, a first of its kind. And I love that you, you both, you know, overlapped previously, before too, because I feel like one of the and I have a sister and a brother. So like, one of the things I think about if I were in your shoes of like, that question of like, Okay, do we work well professionally? And like, going into a business relationship is not an easy thing to do, and so I imagine you all maybe saw a little bit of an overlap. Of like, okay, this is what working in the same industry or same company looks like with a sibling, with your time, obviously, before nectar. So do you feel like that was like when you were both like, oh, wow, this is like a new chapter for our, like, sibling relationship, but then also potential business one,
Misbah Uraizee 04:13
yeah, 100% actually, we get that question a lot, is, did you guys, how did you decide, obviously, to work together in a professional capacity. Had you already done it before? Where did that seed really start? It actually started long before meta, yeah, I don't know if you want to start that story, you know, add on to it, but yes, like, all the way back to, like, even middle school, we were doing a lot of entrepreneur like side hustles, basically building websites for our clients back in the like, dub, dub, dub area, I would say, worked a lot together. In general. I spent all my time going deeper on the technical side in this book, kind of building up the product shops. So you're really good in terms of, like, having our separate skill sets and complimenting it a lot. And you found that meta as well. Yeah. I mean, just to add on to that, like early 2000s imagine a world pre Squarespace, pre. Six. I was kind of very nerdy. 12 year old, I asked for a domain name for my birthday to my gosh, stop, and I couldn't decide. This is actually a fun story that not very many people know. I couldn't decide what the name would be. So my dad decided for me, and he was like, Well, why don't we just take the sibling initials together and create a word? That word is actually what our company is registered as legally. So that word Nafa, which is taking, you know, our first initials of myself, Farah, and we have a brother in between us as well. And the same thing happened before we launched nectar. We were unsure of what the name that we would be put down with, and so we registered in Delaware as me, HAFA Inc. And we're still, we're still that kind of core to the business, but yeah, long story short, um, was the very first kind of website that I launched. Was a, basically a store for selling templates to create your own site. And I got an inbound from a jewelry store based out of Los Angeles, and they were like, well, they didn't know I was 12 year old. First of all, on the other side. And they're like, well, we want to build our first online shop. Can you help us with this? Because they thought that we were also offering, you know, web development services. That was my first client. I said, Yes, build out their online shop for anyone that is listening to stop this call, if they remember, you know, pre, a lot of pre stripe, think about that all these there's something called to check out. There are a lot of different businesses that would help you allow for checkout checking out online. And so we integrated with that, built out their site. They paid me $5,000 in early to the 12 year old. They never found out that I was 12, and the rest is history, basically. So both of us kind of pulled far in later on, both of us continue that web development side hustle. I continued that during Yale, as well as a great way to, you know, pay tuition, and then branched off to kind of jump into the tech world right after graduation. Wow. Okay, well, that could just be the podcast episode.
Mariah Parsons 07:02
Oh my gosh, I had no clue. Okay, yeah, I love that. That's that really, I feel like that really shows how much of a entrepreneur both of you have been. That has been, you know, part of your part of growing up and, like, just part of your familial like conversations, like your father making, you know, a fun domain name for you. I'm sure that's a proud moment as a parent. You know, no, that's great. Okay, so thank you for that. You know, shedding light a little bit on the steps that you all have had before getting to nectar. And, you know, sitting in the seat that you're you're currently sitting in, so tell us, tell the audience a little bit about nectar, what you're doing, why you're doing it, why you think it's important, you know, all of, all of the give us the context before we kind of launch into, you know, the expertise. And you guys sharing about your expertise in the space.
Misbah Uraizee 08:01
Yeah, I think both of us have a lot of context from our backgrounds at meta. And so this is where we can dive in a little bit, if you look at the landscape, obviously, a lot of people that you've had on the podcast you're deeply familiar with this. Mariah, last few years have been rough for brands out there in the E commerce space. There was original wave of D to C brands in particular that grew very rapidly, of what I would say, off the back of meta ads. And that is totally not the case anymore, especially in a post iOS 14 world, especially where you don't have, you know, direct access to a lot of that data, especially where the costs of ads fluctuate all the time. And so every single brand that we've talked to, and we've had, you know, I would say 700 plus conversations till date. It's a very clear, consistent theme that we see on the ground where brands are. There's, there's a clear divergence in terms of the brands that are doing really well in the market. And we have a clear thesis around that, around being community driven brands. And we can talk about that, um, but there's just a lot of opportunity in that landscape and at meta in parallel, we had the front row seat to towards seeing how shoppers are changing in terms of how they discover products. Right? When was the last time that you went maybe physically in the store, or like you did traditional uses of searching? A lot of search. 80% of search, actually, especially for Gen Z, is going into Tiktok now, and so people are thinking about social as a search engine. They're thinking about all the traffic and how to show up everywhere where consumers are spending most amount of time. And Farah can talk about some of the messaging pieces that she worked on, especially the community side of the house that she saw brands leveraging communities inside of meta to grow rapidly as well, exactly even for Facebook and Instagram overall, the biggest goal is driving app sessions, making sure that users are visiting. You found that one of the rapidly growing growth channels was just messaging so consumers are spending over two hours per day in their DMS. That's a space today where brands don't have a lot of access, like they're not as present. There.
Farah Uraizee 10:00
Compared to feed, where people are spending less and less time. And so where consumers come back to the applications, what meta cares about the most, which is driving back traffic to their apps, is through messaging. So when I share a real to you, you're going to check it out, you're going to open up Instagram, you're going to get push notification on your phone. And so we're kind of enabling brands to be able to do that at scale and access the DM space to their consumers, where they're all spending their time. Yeah, I think the really other, you know, important piece to mention here is, if you look at how brands traditionally re target consumers today, it's email and SMS. Email, you know, powered by Klaviyo, primarily gets filtered out. Often. It's all about your audiences, and that matters a lot SMS, the cost can scale, and it's not very conversational. It's kind of a one way, where you sign up for those SMS alerts, you get a promo and your SMS 20% off, but you're not texting the brand back.
Misbah Uraizee 10:54
But if you look at the data, and you look at consumers and where they want to develop relationships with these brands, where are they messaging them? They're DMing them. They're spending a lot of time inside of metas, products, inside of Tiktok and trying to engage with brands in the comments, in the DMS. And so that's kind of where we show up and where we help these brands scale.
Mariah Parsons 11:13
Yeah, I love it. So because this is, I know, like, even when you know, like we were talking at shop talk misba, like we were, we were like, just, you know, of course, rattling off and like it is both of our minds to just be like, Okay, what is, what does that even mean? Like, going off of each other. And I know this is a space that I have not, you know, it's like a newer space, like I'm familiar with email and SMS, but making it so that a brand can have an interaction in a social DM is definitely a novelty to me as a consumer and being in this space, which is why I think it's great that you all are building, you know, you're building this into the economy of E commerce, and making it so that it isn't, you know, you know, a space that isn't untapped. And so can you like, I guess, articulate the trends, or, like, best practices that a brand would use in a DM, like, is it would I expect as a consumer seeing, like, a reel that is, you know, a beautiful piece of art, or, like, educational about a product launch, and then, you know, they're sending it to me the same way that my friends and family would be sending a reel of being like, you know, like, this was just cool, or, like, educational, or is it something that is, you know, what is? What is that typical, like DM, that a brand would be sending a consumer to help contextualize for our audience? So I think we to best answer that question. We should take it a step back for a second, right?
Misbah Uraizee 12:39
If you look at how consumers are engaging with these brands on organic social. In particular, they are dropping in comments. They're often pre purchase, asking them questions about what they should be buying, whether this product is right for them or not. If you look at the data and all the brands that are kind of on our platform, we can very clearly see that on social, you know, several degrees higher than, like, an email channel. There's a lot of pre purchase going on, and some brands are staffed up for that. And some brands don't really understand how to quality, you know, quantify the ROI there and understand that if they are engaging with these consumers, you know, inside of DMS, does that actually lead to a sale or not? So there's an attribution piece that's missing. There's also a scalability piece that's missing around just having the right amount of humans, people on your team that are engaging with people where they are spending most of their time. And it's also comments like Tiktok comments, for example, are a whole different kind of vibe and culture than maybe even Instagram, if you look at that, and brands need to show up in those places to seem cool, to seem attractive to consumers. And so to answer your question in terms of, just like, tactically, how are brands engaging, both in comments and DMS? I think it's more of the brands that aren't engaging, they need to start engaging. And how can a platform like necrosocial help them do that at scale, especially now with AI so that's that's a big component of it. Two is, how do we think about opening up, you know, DMS as yet another marketing channel, or how do we think about how brands are leveraging DMS for their influencer workflows? Because that's the other huge shift in the market right now. Right influencer marketing is blowing up. It's more of a conversion and performance channel than it has been ever before. It's not just about driving traffic anymore. Brands want to measure the ROI, but all of those conversations are happening inside of social, inside of DMS, whether you get you know, tag from your UGC, from your customers, tagging your products and stories, whether you have influencers plugging you that you're working with, whether you have someone asking a customer support question, all of that is super chaotic, and it's happening all inside of the DMS. And so that's kind of the problem that we're really trying to solve for these brands, is one making sense of the chaos, but then also being able to attribute your efforts in that space to revenue directly. And that's probably the biggest. Kind of novel takeaway, and maybe far you can talk, chime in on on that piece as well. Is paid, social, different story, organic, huge gaps. And that's kind of where we're, you know, thinking, where we're thinking very deeply about, yeah, one mechanism we're able to do is basically stitch the intense story. So when you know someone customer support is sending a product recommendation to someone asking the DMS, we're able to show that, hey, this consumer down the line actually did decide to purchase or not. And I think the other big aspect here in terms of DMS is you want to enable brands not just to meet the bar in terms of, like, already the amount of traffic they're getting in their comments at DMS, but actually multiply that because consumers that are engaging with you inside of messaging, they're more likely to convert they're multi stick around. That's one of the highest engaged channels that they already have. So if a brand is able to pull people into their DMS proactively through more engaging content, through stories that are interactive, then they're able to really have a more personal relationship to their customers. I love that. Okay, so with like, interactive stories, do you see, and this is getting a little bit niche, but just quick question, do you see, like people, like brands using that customer data to you to, like, say, if it's like, you know, a poll or something like that, on a story that someone is that consumers are responding to, then taking that because I feel like that's also right, like everyone wants conversions data, like the like, those are the two things right. First, social customer data platform. It's all about the data. It's all about understanding who are your most loyal fans, who are the ones that have just started engaging with your brand, who are existing customers, who are new customers. All of that is possible for the first time now with our platform. And then to your point, if you're posting a poll on stories, if you're posting content on your organic social if people are engaging, if you're trying to get people better understand what they want to buy, maybe they're saying, Oh, I like blue and I want green, whatever that is, we are capturing all of that data for brands to be able to make sense of it and then ultimately personalize how they engage with that consumer, and whether that's for marketing purposes, whether that's through customer support, but at least, you know, have access to that data. That's step one, right? And then the AI piece, we'll talk about a second where that magic comes in. But yeah, you're right. It's all about the data. Yeah, let's dive into that AI piece. I think that I'll transition nicely tell us more about that, like, because I know that's obviously top of mind for a lot of people, is, like, trying to just be smarter and use the technology that we have nowadays. But I know it's also something that a lot of people just are worried about and stressed over, because there's just, like, it feels like a What's the saying? It feels like a black box where it's just like, I don't know, so I'm like, not maybe gonna do it or integrate it into my strategy. So tell us a little bit more about, you know, like, the back end side of things, yeah, for those are your superpowers. But I think a key theme I'll just plug in, before you dive in, is AI is only as good as the data it has access to into its context. And so with that, keep that in mind, and then Farah can kind of chat about all the signals that we pull in exactly. So because sector social is not just integrating into your social platforms, it's also integrating into your shop, your any other pieces of knowledge that you already have, that your customer or team, for example, or social team is using to already answer questions, we make that available to the AI and so today, it's not just enough to have an LLM bark instructions at it and expect to do the right thing. It has to be fed all the appropriate context in order for it to give an appropriate response. So we really try to capture that nuance, because social is extremely nuanced as a surface, the way you're talking on comments is different than the way you're talking to a customer on DMS when it's private, when it's public, the way you talk on Tiktok is different than the way you talk on Instagram. Sometimes same thing for Facebook. And so for us, we kind of make sure that all that information, all that context, where are you responding? What do you know about the shop? What is the most relevant? What? Who's this customer's name, what is their background? All the information is fed into the LLM so that it can generate a response that's already similar to the way your brand is replying today. So one thing that we also train our LM off of is, you know, historically, how is this brand already talking to their customers publicly and making sure that from the very start, nectar socials AI is basically your community manager, in a way. It already has that tone of voice as needed, and you're able to fine to that as well. And we have 100 different toggles if you want to get really into it. Yeah, some brands like to be very high touch. Some brands are like, this is great from the get go, but that's something that we really pay attention to. Yeah, no, thank you. Farah, it's so interesting to know, like the back end. And I know there's so many different applications of AI where it's like, as a marketer myself, I'm like, I need you tapping into this. Like, I totally relate to, you know, brands, who the brands, who you all are working with, where it's like, how do you even it can seem so giant to be like, how are you pulling in all the things that you're doing and then feeding.
Mariah Parsons 20:00
AI correctly, so that it can help you be more effective or more efficient down the road. Um, and I love you know, pointing out that your how you interact in a comment versus DM when it's public versus private. Um, how are you re or reacting or interacting across the different social media platforms, like understanding, I guess the not like the environment, but like the ambiance, I guess is what I want to say. Of like each platform, like, as you know, where I sit today, I would say Tiktok is a lot is less formal. It's a lot more informal. For like, how brands are interacting, they're a lot more just relevant to pop into other people's VMs or right, like they'll respond and it'll be, you know, chaotic in the best way. Like, chaotic good and like, I am I love. It is entertaining to me. But then on Facebook, right? Like, the market maybe would be thrown off by a similar response. So it's like, even the person personalization of AI for each platform, for each type of interaction, is so, so fascinating to me. Yeah, exactly. I think that's a good way of putting it. There's different tiers of personalization that we're doing right? There's at the platform level, like for mentioned, there's at the, you know, platform level. There's at the brand level, so just understanding what is this brand about? What are their products? What do they sell? Then there's at the personal level of those consumers that they're interacting with and really understanding who they are, previous order history, purchase history, social engagement history, whatever that is. And the more signals that we have the you know, the better. Essentially, our output is and so we take all of these kind of signals very, very seriously and and think deeply about the nuances to first point, yeah, I think especially for AI, you need to really have it be deeply integrated into the right product and the right context or role. And so for us, it's not just about AI, it's about the end to end user workflow. And so for necrosocial, we have co pilot scenarios. We have autopilot scenarios because for a lot of brands, they want to be able to manually review what they is doing before it goes out in a very easy manner. And that's still important, a use case that you want to enable. Yeah? No, I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, go ahead. Miss Bay, human in the loop, very important in terms of the the just overall industry right now. As to your point earlier, I think you were saying, hey, there's a lot of buzz around AI, but is it actually useful? Is actually being used in core workflows? And I think for us, the biggest thing is, because we prioritize this level of data from the get go, what we're outputting is being used on a daily basis. In fact, we can talk more about the numbers a little bit in a second, but we're seeing a high, high amount of retention and usage and a lot of growth month over month in terms of graduating from using co pilot to then using autopilot scenarios, and really being able to automate the things that are just so repetitive for these brands so they can focus on higher priority tasks. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And even like, I want the audience to think about, like, how many if you post something on LinkedIn, even if it's like, you know, your personal it's not even a It's not even like for your company, right? It's like a personal post. Because I think this will make it like, most relatable for people who maybe aren't even operating brands. Of you see, like, how much time goes into, like, then interacting with all and responding to people who are or even in Instagram, right? Like, responding to people reacting, thinking of, like, what should I say to this person? Like, it's so much, yeah, which is all something where, you know, I think AI could serve that, like, hand holding to kind of like decoding, decouple the cons, or the person from, like, oh, I need to be the ones like doing this. Or, like, some of the fears that are around, like, how much do I let AI kind of control, like consumer experiences or personal experiences? Um, because I know that's also like, roped into the conversation around AI is like, when do you have that human interaction coupled with AI? When Should it only be a human responding? When Should it fully be a human or fully be an AI solution? So it's like that I like the co pilot in the autopilot discussion there. Yeah, around like, what you know, what, what maybe is best for that brand or that platform, or whatever else, whatever other, all the other factors that you all are. And, you know, it's also really interesting, because we have a lot of brands that are in, like the beauty vertical and health and wellness verticals. And like, you know,
Misbah Uraizee 24:32
especially in those two verticals, we see a lot of that where the brand manager, like the, you know, marketing social managers, or the CX team inside of the brand is like, on constantly having to deal with inbound from consumers, where they're asking kind of tricky questions. And so then they're like, Well, how do I respond? Can you give me ideas? Do you see, like, what? What are the people doing? I'm just like, This is great. And then they see co pilot, and they're like, oh my god, this is like a breath. A fresh air because now they're not sitting there trying to figure out how many different ways they can tell someone that this model that was featured in our ad is, like, you know, the right model for this, you know, product or, like, it's just a lot of kind of types of questions that people get on across their content. It's already so much energy just to reply to, like, a regular comment exactly, add in the layer of like, okay, you check the ingredients for this product, you check the manual, make sure I have everything queued up and correct. And so we really want to make that easier, yeah, yeah, no, that that totally makes a lot of sense, because it, yeah, it definitely weighs on. Like, just because it is quite literally social has become such a big support, customer support channel, right? So it totally makes sense. I wanna, yeah, yeah. I wanna go ahead if you're gonna Yep. I was just saying it's a public channel too, and so dealing with customers, like, responses in the comments of an ad that you're running, um, it's extremely, like, important to get the right impression and the right way of saying something. Yep, you're so right Farah, yeah. It's like, that added pressure of like, Oh, my God, I'm about to, like, launch this into the universe. What is it gonna, you know, what are the ripple effects going to be? I want to talk about, we hinted at it, but, like, ambassadors, affiliates and influencers, because I think this is, like, I'm just hearing constantly, a lot of chatter about, you know, influencers. How do we make it so that we're staying on top of what our influencers are doing. How are you making sure that you know they're the right people for us? Or maybe another year of partnership isn't the right fit? You know, like quantifying the attribution and the conversions from social into, you know, bigger business strategy. So can you, can you, I guess, tell the audience a little bit how you are, like, defining like, Okay, this is how we attribute XYZ influencer, using DMS for like, this brand in that way. Yeah. There's a couple key things I think that are interesting to understand about how brands are using influencers, and just more broadly, standing up other kinds of Ambassador programs and affiliate programs.
Farah Uraizee 27:05
There's different tiers to how you're leveraging influencers. So if you look at recently was talking like Brooks running or Poppy or even one of our customers, solo wave, they have different tiers of the types of influencers that they work with. There's a lot of influencers that they're they may be seating free product to in exchange of just like potentially, that influencer sharing and talking about them. Then there's more sponsor tiers. And then on top of that, I see a lot of brands doubling down on their ambassador programs to activate their existing customer communities, to start talking about them in a way that is a way that is a little bit more structured. And for all of those programs, there's a lot of solutions out there in the market in terms of how to discover, potentially, the people that you want to work with. But really, where we saw the biggest opportunity was around communications and around attribution layer, and so being able to scale a lot of those manual workflows inside of brand marketing teams that deal with having to stay on top of all the influencers that you're working with, having to build that relationship with these influencers as a lot of those relationships start in the DMS and continue in the DMS, being able to automatically, you know, follow up with influencers when they do receive product from you, and if they don't tag or mention you, and if they do, then be able to see that ROI in a quantifiable way, where it's not just about codes that you're sharing with them, and those codes get leaked often, but actually having very, kind of unique, very specific to that influencer, ways of tracking so that you can see, okay, This is how many conversions that influencer ultimately drove. And so all of those pieces is kind of where we focus in on is like that. How do we automate communication at scale? So being able to build flows that you would maybe build in a Klaviyo for email, to be able to actually do that directly in the DMS, so saying, Hey, these are the 1000 influencers we're working with in q4 and we want to automatically nectar follow up with them and maybe check with their latest addresses. Figure out we have another client that we're working with in beauty industry, where they're trying to collect a lot of information for their future gifting campaign. And so they not only need addresses, and they also need their each influencers correct shade. And so think about that, and they're working with over 1500 influencers. So think about how you can kind of automate a lot of those manual workflows. And that was two people's full time job to just spend, you know, three months hunting those influencers down and collecting that level of information that we've been able to automate for them very, very quickly. And so a lot of those areas are kind of the pain points that we focus on exactly. Yeah, I think Maza really hits the nail on the head there in terms of what we can automate at scale for influencers. Another big thing is that when influencers get a DM from a brand, they are much more likely to instantly go back and make that story, post, that content, versus email. And so a lot of brands. Lead heavily into email for channels, but especially with influencers who are not, let's say, managed by a team, you're going to get a much lower response rate and much lower activation on those influencers. And so generally, what we're really advocating for brands, and what they're seeing really good success with, is being able to engage with that influencer right in the channel that they need to post you about your brand and seeing much better ROI and conversion to activation, and do it in a personalized way, right? It's not just you're sending them a blur being like, Hey, babe, can you please tag me? Obviously, that's not going to convert.
Misbah Uraizee 30:34
But more like, hey, you know, Mariah, thank you so much for being part of our faster community. Find the way. Here's your personal link, affiliate link, or whatever, like, here's your code, or here's what you can share and talk about us. We'd appreciate it. Blah blah, like being very personal to them, and not only just like pulling in the right information about their history and how they've engaged with your brand before, but then be able to do that at scale, so that you don't have, you know, a handful of people or on your team that are just sitting there and trying to maintain those relationships over time exactly. And I want to also highlight that Instagram DMS is just inherently a more personal channel than email, and so it's surprising how much influencers are able to feel like, okay, this brand DM me personally respond. I really care about this relationship versus emails. They know it's being blasted, they know it's automated to, like 1000 other influencers, and so they're much less likely to actually respond, yeah, yeah. It's a great point. I mean, it's something that
Mariah Parsons 31:30
with Malomo, for me, I see all the time of like, it really, personalization really does pay off. And like, being able to segment customer experiences by, you know, that's email and SMS right now, which I know we're focusing on social, but even like, going that extra length and seeing like, how much people really do honor or really do respect brands who are going that extra mile of like, making you feel like you are besties with the brand, like it is all about what you know, someone is shopping with a brand for that specific Purpose, it's going to keep them to come back, right, rather than shopping on, you know, a marketplace, or, you know, a big box retailer, if they're going, if they are the type of consumer that wants that experience, and brands can give it to them, they're going to be coming back to shop for more, which is the powerful play. Like, I know we've been talking about acquisition and attribution for the business strategy, but retention is like, it's right next door. Right of everyone who who shops with brands, specifically, a lot of them are following that brand on social media. But there's also a lot of people who aren't, you know shop customers, but who who follow brands on social media. I think we had a guest on who said, like, 60% of consumers, 60% of social media followers, weren't consumers for, like, a specific brand, right? They're going to that brand for the educational content, or, you know, the entertainment. They just like the brand, like the visual appeal aspects of it. So it's a really, really cool spot to sit in. And I'd love to hear both your opinions on, like, customer retention. How are you seeing brands once they kind of lock down? Like, okay, this is how we're attributing and this is how we're, you know, using nectar and AI to really facilitate like, these types of interactions. What do you how do you see that pay off on the customer retention front? Well, now for the first time ever, brands have an understanding of who they're talking to. So that's step one, right?
Misbah Uraizee 33:33
Two, once they know who they're talking to, they're able to understand whether that person is actually purchasing from them or not, or where they were just about to purchase from them and decided not to. And so those are the instances where those brands are really able to capitalize down directly in the DMS and say, Hey, Mariah, love that you checked out this product from us recently. Maybe you have questions that our team is able to answer, and we're here on standby whenever you have questions, right, just being present and just sending a quick reminder of, hey, we're here. We know you know, not explicitly telling them that we know, but we know that you went to our site and you added this item to your cart, and you almost purchased, but didn't finish purchasing, and now you're nudging them in a friendly way, in a personal way, directly in those social channels where they found you in the first place anyways, is gold, right? And so being able to do that at scale is where we're seeing a ton of ROI happening for these brands. And I think that's kind of the biggest unlock that our platform has been able to do for that specific use case. And why we think about ourselves as a community commerce platform. Because it's not just about social customer support, which is, like, you know, out there been around for a while. It's more about activating. It's more about the data. It's more about multiplying that engagement, sliding into more of those DMS, and being able to actually convert, and measure that conversion exactly, and even post purchase, you're able to do a ton there, right? You're able to get a lot of.
Farah Uraizee 35:00
Personal customer feedback in terms of their product they just purchased, and they're much more likely again, to respond to a DM from the brand versus like an email that's generic and says, rate me one to five stars. And so you're able to really use social as just a gold mine for insights and true customer feedback. The other thing is that generally, just keeping your eye on social is being able to really see any threats to the business early on. So if customers are not happy with their product, yeah, and even if they're not DMing you, we're able to capture those insights because we're looking across Tiktok, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, and just pulling in any instances where that brand is mentioned and letting surfacing. You know, hey, this video, for example, we're looking at the transcript. We're looking at everything. It's not a good video about your brand and FYI, maybe you should take a look at this versus, you know, today a lot of folks are managing UDC. Just have to go through that video manually, all this content manually, and evaluate. Hey, should I even respond to this? Is it positive? It's a negative, which obviously eats away a lot of time. Literally, it was just in a customer call yesterday, and that's what their team was telling me that they spent a ton of time on, is just figuring out right in that video the timestamp of like, what are they saying, and just validating that is positive before they say thank you, or, like, repost it. And so a lot of those things, you know, with AI, plus, you know, automation, are able to scalably kind of do now, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. Miss BA, yeah. Um, I think retention is just a very interesting topic. I'll love, honestly, and I it just gets me excited thinking about that and kind of the potential of it, um, and just thinking about where social plugs in, right? It's, it's more of how you activate, especially Ambassador communities. I I'm really excited about that, and I dig into that a lot with the brands that we work with, and some examples. It's so funny because I'm drinking Poppy right now, but Poppy ran a really successful campaign, I would say, over the summer they activated UT Austin sorority went super viral on social as a result of that. And I think there's something to be said about strategically manufacturing virality on these platforms, and building momentum and kind of seeing a lot of sales that result out of that. But strategy that comes into play is that piece around how do you activate and how do you build retentive audiences, right? Because these are not necessarily influencers that you're working with. These are your customers that get so excited to be part of the brand story, that understand that, you know, in exchange for being part of this ambassador program, they get to be on the inside. They get to maybe influence the next kind of product that you sell, the name of that product, the branding, the design of it. And as a result of that, they're activated to start talking about you more publicly on these social channels. And then over time, as you grow those communities, you're able to actually track and understand who are those most loyal consumers that are repeatedly talking about your brand, that are developing UGC organically, that you want to, you know, maybe award right? And then how do you think about how that plugs into your loyalty platform? So that's a big another gap that we plug into is finally being able to connect with your favorite loyalty program and be able to understand who are these customers that are engaging with us the most as a result of that engagement. Can we award them in XYZ ways? Maybe it's points, maybe it's monetarily, whatever that is, but you're able to actually, finally do that. And so now you're building this kind of spiral of social engagement that is, you know, organically, building up on top of itself, and helps you grow as a business very, very rapidly.
Misbah Uraizee 38:36
K 18, another amazing brand that was able to, you know, really activate their communities across all their hair salons and Silas, very, very quickly. And their biggest, actually, their largest team internally, is their community engagement team management team, for good reason, because that's ultimately what helped that brand rapidly grow off of Tiktok, off of Instagram, and ultimately, they had a very successful kind of acquisition, probably earlier this year. So lot of examples of brands that are doing it right? Yeah, no, it's so awesome. Like, a customer loyalty we could go off and chat about for so much longer, too. Which is, which is great, because we'll just have to have you guys back on because I know we're at time, and I know we've been talking just, it's so it's so interesting, like social media is just, it's a whole, it's a whole industry. If people, if people aren't already aware of that, then after this episode, they will be so thank you, Farah and misbe for taking the time. I'm so excited. We got to get you on the podcast. I know you know you both are very busy, so I really appreciate you both taking the time and sharing your expertise here today. Thank you so much for having us. Thanks, Mariah, thank you so much.
Mariah Parsons 39:52
Hello, everyone. It's Mariah again. I am just popping in to say thank you for listening to today's episode, and I am so. So, so grateful that I have been able to be on this journey for the past couple of years with this podcast, it's been phenomenal to grow and see our community of 1000s of listeners. See what you guys are up to, what you're learning, what you want to hear about next. So if you haven't already, please like and subscribe to the show so we can continue doing this. Leave us a review, let us know your thoughts. Follow us on our new social media channels and check out our newly launched website. If you or someone you know would be a great guest for the show, please do not be shy. Fill up the form that we have on there, because those are some of my favorite interviews, and I will make sure that our new website is linked in the bio. It's retention Chronicles podcast.com and as always, let's give a warm shout out to our day one sponsor, Malomo. As you already know, Malomo is an order tracking platform that enables Shopify brands to take control of their transactional email and SMS through branded order tracking. What does that mean? That means you ditch those boring carrier tracking pages, the all white pages that have nothing on them but a tracking number and an update on the date of your estimated arrival, and swap those with pages that actually match your brand and can help you convert on some of your goals. Customers like you and I obsessively check that tracking page when we're looking for our order at our doorstep an average of 4.6 times. If you can believe it, yes, customers are going to that page 4.6 times. So don't waste out on all that customer engagement and instead, send them to a page that converts in the way that you want it to. I am talking dealing with shipping issues, having cross sells and upsells, having your social media on there, your loyalty programs, anything, anything that you can imagine. So if you want to learn more about how to do that, go to go malomo.com that's G O M, a, l o m, o.com and if you didn't get that, don't worry. That website link for our sponsor, as well as our podcast website are linked in our episode description. So with that, I will sign off and see you all next time you.
