Latest / Talk Commerce / Thriving in E-Commerce: Insider Secrets from ReferralCandy's Partnership Pro
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:03.19) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Raoul Gallard. Raoul is the CEO of Referral Candy. Raoul, go ahead, tell us a little bit about yourself, your day-to-day role, and one of your passions in life. Raul Galera (00:17.216) Absolutely. So I've actually, I've been at the company for a long time, but I'm not the CEO yet. Maybe one day I'll climb up the ladder. I'm the partnerships lead. But yeah, I am the partnerships leads at referral candy, which is a company that helps e-commerce brands to set up and run customer referral programs. Brent Peterson (00:36.994) Great, thanks for that. And your day-to-day role is partnerships? Brent Peterson (00:51.414) I think one of us is slow. Raul Galera (00:53.416) Oh yeah, I can hear you now. I can see it frozen for a second. Brent Peterson (00:57.144) I'm gonna put it on low data mode and it'll just shut off our video while we're talking. But we'll start over. How's that? Then I won't flub up the introduction. Raul Galera (01:11.396) Do I need to turn off my video or we'll do it? Brent Peterson (01:12.166) All right. No, no, it'll do it. It'll just, it'll do it for us. All right, here we go. We'll start over. All right, welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Raul Galera. He is the partnership manager at Referral Candy. Raul, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and maybe one of your passions in life. Raul Galera (01:36.492) Hi Brent, thanks for having me on the show. So yeah, I'm the person that runs partnerships here at referral candy. We are one of the oldest referral marketing platforms in the Shopify ecosystem. I've been at the company for seven years. So my day to day, it includes first of all, dealing with our partners. So kind of like the network of different partners that we have between agencies and affiliates and tech platforms. And then at the same time coordinating different projects with the rest of the team. So I spent most of my day talking to people inside and outside the company, which is something I love. And one of my passions, I would say probably right now, my number one passion outside of work is surfing. So yeah, I try to spend as much time in the water as I can. Brent Peterson (02:26.062) That's awesome, and I am someday going to be a surfer. I can say that I'm a horrible surfer right now, but I would certainly like to be a better surfer. I can do stand-up paddleboarding just fine, but man, I'm really struggling on the surf and snowboarding too. Now I'm kind of old for snowboarding, but anyways, surfing is also my passion and I plan on doing a lot of surfing this week, so it's a couple weeks. Anyways. Raul Galera (02:38.445) Hmm. Brent Peterson (02:52.086) Good, so, um, Raoul, I know that one thing we talked about is that, um, you have volunteered to be in our free joke project. I'm just gonna tell you a joke and all you have to do is say, should this joke be free or should we charge for it someday? So here we go. A weasel walks into a bar. The bar owner says, wow, I've never served a weasel before. What can I get for you? Pop goes the weasel. Raul Galera (03:06.904) Hehehe Raul Galera (03:22.355) Should this joke be free or should we charge for it? Brent Peterson (03:26.794) Yeah, what do you think? Raul Galera (03:30.196) Um, I think it could probably be free. Brent Peterson (03:33.246) Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I warned you it wasn't going to be very good. So good. So, you know, I'm always interested in what what's trending out there in the ecommerce space. Tell us a little bit about what you see happening nowadays. We can probably talk a little bit about AI and its sidekick is what Shopify has now. Tell us like what you're seeing in the industry. Raul Galera (03:37.508) haha Raul Galera (03:58.284) Mm-hmm. Raul Galera (04:03.316) Yeah, so I actually talked to a few mostly agencies about AI and how they were using AI to work with their clients. I mean, to be honest with you, I'm not yet. I'm not seeing a lot of usage of AI besides as a content generation tool. So a lot of agencies are using it to write better product descriptions and write better. content for landing pages and all that kind of stuff. But I'm not... And besides the new tool by Shopify, which kind of reminds me a little bit of Kit, which is something that they also launched a few years ago before AI was without that kind of component. But yeah, besides that, I'm not really seeing a lot of different usage for AI, any commerce as of yet. But obviously, this... probably by the time that we publish this podcast, something new will come up. So yeah, things are going pretty fast. What I'm seeing in the e-commerce world is what we're approaching the busiest time of the year for sellers, pretty much on all platforms. And so, I mean, it's been a slow year. It's been also a kind of a weird year because we're, again, we're fully out of the pandemic. And then between last year And this year, lots of retail sales have started to come back up. I remember talking to a few merchants earlier this year in 2023 and telling me how they were either planning on opening or they had already opened physical locations to compensate for the loss of e-commerce sales that were seen starting in the past 12 months, pretty much. So, I mean, it's not necessarily that we're... that the e-commerce is registering lower numbers is more than it's kind of regressing to the somewhat normal levels that we had pre-COVID, maybe slightly higher, but it's kind of regressing to the mean. So, but yeah, there were a lot of brands that kind of came up during 2020 and 2021 that maybe they had some budgets and some projections that they've had to adjust. And adjustments, I mean, we've seen it all over the... Raul Galera (06:28.28) the tech industry this year and e-commerce obviously has been affected by that as well. I would say probably the biggest challenge that brands are dealing with right now is the, and we've been saying this for years, but every year just continues to be one of the main challenges for brands is dealing with the rise in ad costs. Raul Galera (06:58.076) ads or Facebook ads as a way to grow their sales, but as a way to essentially keep the lights on. You'll be surprised how many brands we talked to that essentially they're looking for an alternative to ads to acquire customers because at this point they're just using them for, again, to maintain the level of sales that they've been having in or try to keep up with the projections that they had. So it's not necessarily... as a tool that they're getting used to kind of like, again, grow their businesses, but more to essentially keep the lights on. And so at Referral Candies, since we offer a solution that allows merchants to turn their customer base into their sales team, it's a good alternative for that. So that's obviously, we're seeing a lot of conversations happening in that space. Brent Peterson (07:47.81) That's interesting. Do you think that this is also going to encourage more brands to invest into organic SEO to get traffic naturally? Raul Galera (07:58.06) That's another, I mean, yeah, that's always the, I was gonna say the second channel, but it's definitely one of the main channels that brands have always focused on. It's an extremely targeted audience, it's extremely, I mean, it's an audience that has a lot of intent. If they're looking for your product and you're right up there in the first results, then obviously, they're definitely gonna consider you. Something really interesting that actually, discussed with a couple of agencies recently and it's pretty related to what you're mentioning about organic traffic is that there's a difference between how brands who sell products that customers need and brands that sells products that customers want are reacting to this, you know, not necessarily calling recession, but you know, this times right now in which, you know, sales are a little bit more flat than they were a few years Brands who have products that customers need are doing much better. And it's because exactly what you mentioned about organic traffic. So if you're selling a product, and for example, this could be a really good example, like headphones, maybe I need headphones for recording or I need headphones to go to the gym. I'm gonna go and look for what's the best option for my budget, right? So if I'm gonna spend $100, $200, $1,000, I'm gonna... and do research. I'm going to look at different articles about what are the best brands that people are recommending and then I'm going to make a more informed decision. So by the time I reach the website of the company that sells the headphones that I'm probably going to buy, I have a lot of intent. And so those brands that sell products that could be needs, and again, doesn't necessarily have to be basic needs. It could be some sort of purchase that's not an impulse purchase. It's a purchase that you make kind of... by informing yourself and reading about it and asking for opinions. Those brands are doing a lot better than the brands that are selling products that could be more impulse buys. So typically fashion. Fashion could also be kind of a neat product if you have maybe, you know, kind of going back to the gym example, if you're looking for maybe like, you know, workout apparel or something like that. But for the most part, the apparel purchases or clothing purchases that you see. Raul Galera (10:20.152) typically it starts with an ad with like a very visual piece of content that you see on Instagram, you see on Facebook. And then kind of like the funnel starts there. So those brands are not doing as well as the other brands that I mentioned, the ones that are selling need products, we call them that way, because they rely a lot more on ads. And so if they rely a lot more on ads to acquire customers, then obviously their customer acquisition costs are a lot higher. And again, I've heard of brands just kind of like spending their essentially profits on ads to kind of keep the engine running. So yeah, that was pretty interesting that you brought up the organic traffic because again, we're seeing a very different type of behavior between those two types of e-commerce brands. Brent Peterson (11:11.542) We have a new sponsor, their name is Indir and they are a CRM for Shopify retail clients. And one of the things that they're promoting is client telling where you, where the salespeople in store are working on bringing customers in via the POS system to bring them, you know, more traffic to their websites. Have you seen this sort of trend happening? And have you heard of the word client telling? Raul Galera (11:39.268) I don't think I have actually. But I mean, we've seen it at referral candy in a somewhat similar way. So for example, I guess it's more about like kind of like the offline interaction. So when somebody runs a referral program on referral candy, the kind of the traditional way of letting customers know about the referral program is by. send them an email after the purchase, or maybe a few days after the purchase, after they receive the product, or showing them a pop-up with information about the referral program. So those are kind of like traditional ways. But we've seen customers kind of realize that, that I mean, by customers, I mean our customers, so e-commerce brands. So we've seen a lot of e-commerce brands that are starting to go for that offline type of interaction, which, you know, kind of assuming it's kind of like the same of the product that you're mentioning having people at the physical store send customers online. This is kind of similar. So what they're doing is that they're placing kind of like physical cards with information about the referral program in the packaging. So when the consumer is hoping in the package and looking at the product, they can actually see the physical card and they're gonna pay a lot more attention to that. And again, I think we're also kind of going back in general, we're going back to more traditional kind of marketing methods, Watermouth is one of them, but also kind of like going after that real life type of interaction. I think it's something that's definitely trending. One trend that I definitely see, and I spoke to a few brands in the UK about it, they're starting to use physical mail again. And so obviously this is not something you can use with a customer that you don't already have. So it's more a retention tool, but... If someone sends them an email with images of whatever new product you're releasing, you have their physical address so you can send them an actual little book, kind of like the IKEA magazines that some people have at their home. So you get like a catalog or you get some sort of physical mail with information about the product. So I'm not surprised that there's more and more tools that are kind of trying to bridge Raul Galera (14:03.16) bridge that interaction between offline and online because at the end of the day, we probably have, as consumers, we probably have a higher attention span in real life than we do when we're looking at our phones or our computers, so it makes sense. Brent Peterson (14:18.122) Yeah. And so if you look at the trends or what's going to happen this, uh, coming black Friday, cyber Monday, what do you see happening? That's different from last year and how are e-commerce brands now kind of trying to get that traffic in the short term for some of these things that, you know, like a black Friday event, if they're, if they're sort of cutting back on ads or if ads aren't effective. Raul Galera (14:40.931) Yeah. Raul Galera (14:45.856) Yeah, I mean, I feel like Black Friday is, for a lot of brands right now, and it's probably been like this for a few years, it's more like kind of like something they have to do, not necessarily very excited about it, but they kind of have to do it because they know their customers are expecting it. Something that I have seen from talking to agencies is that e-commerce brands don't have the kind of like stock related issues that they had last year. So last year, a lot of brands, maybe they had overstocked because they were expecting higher sales throughout the year. And so they had kind of like additional stock to the one they took away by Black Friday. So that's why we probably saw higher deals or sales than we saw in previous years. This year is not really the case. Obviously after... 2022 and the beginning of 2023 where again, we kind of had an idea of what the year was going to look like. Brands were able to adjust their stock and adjust kind of like the products that they're going to have available for Black Friday and Saturday Monday a little bit better. And so they don't have that rush to get the products out. They can probably, so they're probably not going to offer as bigger discounts as... they did in previous years. Actually Amazon, they just had, well, in multiple countries, but they've had, I don't know if they're called like Amazon days, but the discounts were not what we are used to seeing or what we used to see a few years ago on Amazon. So again, I think Black Friday's our Monday. It's gonna be a little bit softer in terms of deals for consumers. So again, those consumers that might wanna wait until the end of Black Friday, like the very end, to kind of like... get a last minute sale, they're probably not gonna have any by the time they reach it. But I think for the brands, it's probably gonna be a little bit better because they're gonna be able to sell a decent amount without having to compromise on really high discounts. But again, this could also end up happening just total opposite of what I'm saying, but this is what brands and agencies are kind of preparing for. Brent Peterson (17:05.162) And do you think that brands are going to spend more on Amazon ads if they're doing that sort of sponsored ad on Amazon, or is it just across the board that ads are more expensive and not as effective? Raul Galera (17:19.36) Yeah, I mean, I can't tell you really about Amazon because we only work with direct-to-consumer brands, but yeah, across the board, it's getting very expensive. And one thing that I do hear a lot from brands is that they're just having a lot of kind of uncertainty from one month to another in terms of what's working or not. So they might run a campaign on Facebook that works really well the next month, and it's just over like a few weeks later, it's definitely not longer there. That kind of level of uncertainty on top of the fact that, again, it's a lot more expensive. I think it's kind of making things a little bit more difficult. That being said, you need to be there. If there's a time in which you need to be in front of your customers for some brands is Black Friday, Saturday, Monday. There's other brands that they've been able to kind of build a somewhat more loyal customer base and they don't have to rely on. Black Friday is also maybe because of the nature of their products. There's companies that just don't want to offer discounts and it's kind of like one of their policies. And so Black Friday for them is just like any other day and customers are... Their loyal customers are expecting that and they're not gonna feel betrayed by the fact that they're not getting their favorite products at a cheaper deal. So, but the ones that typically rely on that big spike on sales traditionally... they're just gonna have to do what they've been doing for the past few years. So they're gonna have to spend money on ads, even if they're more expensive. But it's a time of the year where everybody's advertising and everybody's targeting the same keywords and obviously in different niches, right? But everybody is going after the same kind of new customers. So I think the goal for those brands should be what to do after you have acquired a customer. So do you have a post purchase plan? ready for that person, whether it is to make them more loyal by asking them to refer you to friends and family or is it by having them leave a review, whatever it is, but have a clear path for that customer that you're about to acquire and not just try to get for the customer that you're just looking for like a really good deal and then never hear back from them. Brent Peterson (19:45.522) One of the trends that I saw for this year is post-purchase customer journeys and making sure that new products and complementary products are introduced to the client after they purchase. So even think about you go to your accounts panel in Shopify to see your orders. They're using that part to advertise as well as even the follow-up order emails, things like that. Raul Galera (19:52.109) Mm-hmm. Brent Peterson (20:14.05) Do you see those sort of trends happening across the board? Raul Galera (20:19.1) We've always seen it on referrals. I mean, the brands that are serious about running a referral program, they know that the post purchase path is crucial. So, if there isn't referral candy, whether it is by using our post purchase email or by using Clayview to incorporate a referral step in their post purchase flow, yeah, they have a... pretty clear idea of where they want those customers to go after the purchase. So, I mean, like I said, it could be, you know, just make it, you want to recommend products that are similar to the ones that they have just bought or maybe offer, you know, some sort of deal for a follow-up purchase after that or ask them to refer a friend, which is kind of like a really good way of combining both. So you're giving your customers... discount on their next purchase if they refer a friend. So it's kind of a win-win situation for everybody. So definitely yes, and you know, we all know that retaining a customer is a lot cheaper than acquiring a new one and now more than ever you need to have your customers retain as much as possible have them stick around with you if it's not by making a purchase right away At least make sure that they are, you know, subscribe to your content. So they're they're staying in the loop about your, you know, what other products you might be dropping down the line or by again, having them join a referral program, for example, which is a really good way of kind of keeping them around because it keeps your brand top of mind. That customer might not buy from you anytime soon, but their friends might. And if you can help them influence their friends, purchase decisions, then that, I mean, that's a really big deal because that's a customer that's gonna be a lot cheaper to acquire. And then once you acquire that customer, the cycle starts all over again. You're asking that new customer, the friend of your customer to refer their friends. And so the network kind of just keeps increasing. So yeah, post purchase path, whatever it is that you decide to do, it's absolutely crucial. Brent Peterson (22:27.006) I want to switch gears a little bit and just talk a little bit about partnerships and maybe you could help educate our listeners who are say a D2C brand or a merchant on the importance of partnerships even and I know that you had mentioned SaaS partnerships but as a brand having partnerships with others maybe a little talk a little bit about that. Raul Galera (22:44.109) Mm-hmm. Raul Galera (22:52.244) Yeah, absolutely. So I would say there's two types of partnerships that e-commerce brands can start engaging with or can at least put in their roadmap for next year. And it's pretty similar to the type of partnerships that you can do when you are in B2B. So I, again, we work with e-commerce companies, but myself as the partnerships lead at Ruffalo County, I I work with other tech companies doing co-marketing or like co-selling to mutual customers, or we work with affiliates, or we work with agencies that are selling our product to their customers. So at the end of the day, a partnership is a mutually beneficial relationship between two parties that have kind of like the same objective. And it's the same thing for brands. So two main ways for brands to engage in partnerships. The first one is... kind of co-selling, doing that kind of co-marketing with other brands. So if you are selling, if you have another brand that you are aware of and you guys are kind of, again, selling to the same type of customer, but you're selling products that are, you know, complimentary to each other. So, I mean, a really, really easy example for selling shoes and some other brands selling socks. Well, then that's a great partnership that you can build there if your products are kind of aligned in that way. So. Co-selling by again, targeting each other's email lists, that could be a gold mine for a lot of brands because again, it gives you access to potentially thousands of customers that it would have cost you a lot of money to acquire through ads. Or you can do again, some sort of like, co-branded type of landing page for your products and both companies are driving traffic to that page. We see that a lot in SaaS partnerships where a lot of SaaS companies, they kind of... put deals in a landing page and then all of them kind of drive traffic to the same page. That's something that can definitely be done for e-commerce as well. And then the other kind of bucket of partnerships is influencer marketing. And I would say, and influencer marketing, it's typically seen as a kind of transactional type of relationship between the brand and the influencer. And I think it has to be a partnership. So when a brand is engaging with an influencer, Raul Galera (25:15.448) they should be there for the long run. And they should figure out a way in which kind of both parties have skin in the game. So the way that most influencers work is that, they get paid for the content they generate. And then, whether they generate sales from that content or not, that's not their problem. It's more for the brand to figure it out a way to monetize that content on their end. But they have to pay up, the brand has to pay upfront. We've actually developed a separate tool from Raffaello Candy that's called Influencer Candy that kind of matches brands with influencers. And we try to make sure that both parties have skin in the game. So the brand, they pay a little bit upfront, but then they also pay a commission to the influencer. And then the influencer can also, it's going to be more motivated to generate content that's going to perform well because they, again, they're they have their skin in the game, they're gonna get a commission for all the sales they generate. So again, that kind of mutually beneficial situation in which both parties are almost in the same level. It's something that you don't typically see in influencer marketing, but those are the type of relationship you should strive for if you're a brand. So maybe don't go after the huge influencers, go after micro influencers that are in your niche and try to create a relationship that it's more based on trust and almost like a friendship. to be honest with you, than transactional in the sense of like, you know, how much do you charge? You know, here's my content, you get paid and that's the end of it. Brent Peterson (26:55.498) That's awesome, thank you. Yeah, we burned through a good 20 minutes already. So, Roel, we have a few minutes left here still. As I close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything you'd like. What would you like to plug today? Raul Galera (27:14.628) I'd like to plug referral candy. So again, for brands that are serious about turning their customer base into their marketing or their sales team, they should start thinking about word of mouth marketing and starting a referral program on their online store because that's the best way that you can reward your customers for their loyalty. Do it all in an automated way. So new customers come in, you invite them to join the referral program, they refer their friends and then, you know. everybody gets a reward. It's a win-win situation for all parties involved. And so, yeah, for those brands who are thinking about running a referral program, they should check out referralcandy.com. Brent Peterson (27:56.618) That's awesome, thank you. Well, it's been a pleasure speaking to you today. I hope you get out and do some surfing after this or tomorrow morning, whatever time it is for you. And yeah, thanks. I will, if they need to get in touch with you, how should they get in touch with you? Raul Galera (28:06.089) I'll try. Raul Galera (28:18.612) They can email me. My email is RaulG, so RaulG at referralcandy.com. And yeah, I'm always happy to take questions or start a conversation there. Brent Peterson (28:31.17) great and I will make sure to put all that in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here today. Raul Galera (28:36.612) Thanks for having me.