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Kemp's Rules for Revenue: Jessica Kemp, eCommerce Veteran
12/10/2024 | 34 minutes
DESCRIPTION
Learn Kemp's Two Rules for Revenue discovery straight from eCommerce Executive Jessica Kemp, herself. We distinguish between fancy and functional and talk about how demonstrating trustworthiness requires connect with our inner lizard.
We Talk About:
Kemp's Rules for Revenue
Conversation vs. Conversion
Lizard Brains and Bounce Rates
There's an App for That, But Should there be
Maslow and Merchandising
AI and Search Enrichment
TRANSCRIPT
Justin Burrows: Joining me on commerce chats today is Jessica Kemp, a veteran of the e-commerce wars, seasoned, digital commerce executive. Thank you very much for joining me. Jessica. How are you doing today?
Jessica Kemp, eCommerce Executive: I'm good. Thank you for having me Justin. Things are going well.
JB: You've been through it all. You've been in the business a long, long time. Uh, and you've overseen a lot of different, uh, elements of, of the kind of the e-commerce channel or the digital commerce channel. You are a jack of many trades, I would argue a master of of of many trades.
JK: Oh well thank you. One Of the things that from my perspective, I'm always focused on, like the front end, uh, and kind of the user experience and using that as a tool for conversion. But, yeah, you have a broader view than that. Can you talk about how you think about conversion, about how getting sources of revenue, of content, of relationships, when you look at a brand Yeah. So and you're right, the UI is always important. But I think it's also important to see what the consumer is going to interact with.
Kemp's Rules for Revenue
So where can an e-commerce professional go to find dollars to increase revenue on their website Um, I do have two fundamental beliefs, and one of them is going to be in search and one of them is going to be in email. But there's definitely a concept of right product, right place for the right customer and making sure that your merchandising well. So to talk about each one of these, um, on your on site search, um, you know, there's stats anywhere from 15% to upwards of 40% of visitors to a website will use search at some point in their experience. So that's a very direct request of a product the consumer is looking for.So to be able to tune your search and to pay attention to that result set, that's coming up for the consumer. If they're searching for red shirts, you want to make sure that those red shirts are at the top of that search result set. If they're searching for consumer language that might not exactly meet your product language, you need to make sure that you're creating that relationship in the data so the consumer can find what they're looking for. Um, so that could be as simple as searching for a maroon shirt, when really what you need to position to them is color equals maroon equals red. So looking for all those combinations of words the consumer is doing that's going to help pick up conversion search. Consumers are more likely to convert. Um and there's more complicated examples well beyond color. If you're dealing with niche product types, uh, consumers don't talk about products the way that in-house retailers and in-house teams talk about products. You really need to bridge that gap for them in your search engine
JB: It's interesting how you can have certain preconceptions that the customer will have, that maybe the customer is part of their brand. They don't like to they don't like to refer to themselves in that language. But you kind of have to meet them where they are to help make that that positioning transition. You know, you came here looking for budget, but we're going to send you a little bit different, a different value that you're already kind of having that conversation just by answering their question.
JK: Absolutely. You have to meet the customer where they are and in their language and in their time, um, "sale", "coupons", "discounts". These are all great words that consumer uses. Even if a retailer doesn't want to use those words in their product. Search is a great way to map those to where you want the consumer to find the product you're looking to sell. Um, and in addition to that is the sort of that product. So you don't have to sort just by price, high to low. You can sort by other metrics that may be more important to your business. Things like margin um, feeding those data points into a search engine will empower a merchandiser to make a decision to increase their average order value, maybe increase their gross margin per sale. Um, those decisions can be made inside that search engine
JB: Do you think like in terms of like margin and stuff like that my impression of that is that margin information doesn't live necessarily in whatever search, uh, platform you're using, that insight being set somewhere else. Is that your experience or does that get integrated?
JK: The answer is it can be integrated. So no, you don't have to send your search engine partner or any said partner your gross margin. You don't have to. You can create a new value for that to give grades for it. So low margin items could have a different value. Um, and think about it, as simple as signing low margin items, the value A and medium value items and item B, and then you're using that to help sort so that your C value, highest margin items are the ones that are going to the top of the search result set. So you can actually abstract that a little bit even by using other metrics. So maybe you want to combine higher margin items with a conversion metric and come up with your own metric to be able to, um sort. But what you're doing is you're handling that at your enterprise level and giving the search engine a value that you know what that means, so you can handle the sort. So it's truly not common to send your specific financial metrics to all of your vendors, but you can map that by using combination of metrics or coming up with your own so that you can still handle those business decisions at the point of execution.
JB: What are some, some other, areas where you can you say you mentioned search is one of those. What are what's another, another place.
JK: So I think email and um, also what I would say is SMS marketing right now, email and SMS marketing right now have great opportunities for these. Uh, we tend, as merchandisers and marketers to set those campaigns and set them on a set and forget, um, they kind of just run in the background and they are happy business. And there's truth to that, to some respect. But there's also opportunity to expand on those, um, continue to optimize those looking at things like volume, are they still triggering the same quantity of volume that they have historically? If not, review those triggers find out how to increase the volume. Maybe you have two campaigns that are actually creating a blocker inside your email system that you need to relieve one of those to get your highest performing campaigns to more customers. Um, look at your open rates, a test subject lines please everyone test all of your subject lines. A lot. Um, there's so many learnings inside subject lines, the behavior that the consumer is changing inside the email platforms and how they're handling open rates and it test your subject lines. Um, there's opportunity in body content. Find out where the consumers are interacting with your body content. Make sure it's up to date seasonally appropriate. Um, utilize all of your new brand information, new product information in your emails. So optimizations there. Um, SMS by the way, same way. Um, SMS is doing a really great job, uh, utilizing some of the same flows that email does. Abandoned series can be done there, but same activities there. You need to test whether or not the product, the abandoned product, as an example, needs to be included in the text to make it an SMS, which costs a little bit more, uh, versus maybe that doesn't need to be there, and it can be an SMS and save you a little money. Um, there's also opportunities. Customer sign up for both email and SMS roughly at the same time. That's how we're all set up right now and interacting. But you may find customers interact more in email than certain types of messages and more in text in certain types of messages, and you can optimize in between the channels and to get the best response for your brand. I think those are all valid ways to help optimize, engage the customer and pick up more dollars inside your marketing programs. Um, another one that's totally fair to mention that impacts search on site email and SMS is product recommendations. Um, much like what you do with a sort algorithm inside search or on site, um, you have that opportunity and every single email you send out, you have the opportunity when you're sending abandoned series or maybe next best messaging inside text or email to make sure you've got the best product represented there. Um, I'm a firm believer that recommendation should go in every email. Um, you should look for that. Next click that next conversation with a customer. Um, so those are great ways to keep engagement and to find more dollars out of your programs.
Conversation vs. Conversion
JB: One of the recurring themes that I keep hearing when I'm, when I'm talking to digital commerce executives and wonks is they talk about the conversation as a series of interactions. It's not like ping pong, right? It's not like you do this. They do that, and then you're kind of done until the next transaction. Uh, you know, people, I mean, you know, conversation and conversion have kind of the same root, right? That that might be a little hokey, but, uh, I do think, though, that a lot of times, you know, maybe somebody coming to you from a marketplace, uh, and, but you have that relationship with them. So you contacted them, and but now they're not having a conversation with Amazon. They're having a conversation with you, you know. Absolutely. And you changed that. And I wonder um, you know, when you talk about, like, guiding the conversation where you're meeting it is a conversation. It's not just like, you know, one person is is, you know, dictating everything. You know, it is you're you're you're guiding towards something that's a fit. Like, you talk about like recommendations, like that's something, you know, it's like test subject lines and product recommendations are two things that everybody knows, but everybody forgets, you know, everybody forgets them. Yeah. Because they're not they're not necessarily fancy. They require work. You have to sit and think. And you know, automation I think only goes so far. Automation. You still have to test when you're automating those those transactions I would imagine.JK: Oh for sure. For sure. You are right. That is a conversation. Because every one of those touches, every one of every time you say hi to the customer or the customer says hi back in whatever way that is, it's a new piece of information. So, um, following that journey along, the consumer comes to you however they got there. You likely know how they came to you. You know, if they came because of a paid campaign and Google, you know, if they came because of natural search, you know, what they did when they got there? They looked at two pdps then they abandoned. Well, your next part of that conversation is that abandoned email. And then that abandoned email has an open rate. So you're probably only getting 30 to 50% open on that email, which means you have an opportunity for a second email, uh, for the people who did not open and interact when they open and interact, you know, now they've had another conversation, they open, they interacted, they looked at the same product and moved to purchase. Or maybe they looked at something different. They didn't like that item. And now they moved into a completely different category. It's a dance. It's a conversation. It's something that I'm a real believer in. If the customer tells you something, remember it. Um, that's how you respond in a way that's personal to the consumer. That's how you make them feel like they are important to you as a brand. Um, if they've moved from one product type to another, um, that gives you a second piece of information to continue talking to them if they've moved from your came in from social media and then interacted with your website and made a purchase, you now know something else about them. They need to. You can follow up with them in that way. So creating these, it's beyond a standard flow. And now you're taking that standard flow and you're enriching it. So you went from just a simple abandoned cart or abandoned process to it's different because they abandoned a product. Different because they abandoned cart. Well, now it's different because they abandoned in category A or category B, it's different because they I know that they're a social customer and they're high brand aware customer. Let me take them down this other path with more brand information, with more um, influence of my brand, with the product
JB: Um, so when you were telling us so much to be able to use back and when you say brand aware, this is a person who is is shopping for that brand, not necessarily for that good. Is that what you see?
JK: Yes. For sure. If you've got a customer coming in from social media, from your brand, aware content like social, is a place where you're the customer is experiencing your brand. You're telling stories about your brand. If they're coming in through those kinds of posts, that's very different from a consumer coming in from a generic, um, keyword search inside Google. Yeah.
Lizard Brains and Bounce Rates
JB: And that would be a warmer handshake. I would imagine you have somebody who already kind of has an idea of it. You know, it was interesting. Let's talk about lizard brains All right. So deep inside your brain is this little reptile brain, your amygdala. And yeah, I know right. It's so big. Let's say it amygdala. Isn't that lovely? It's lovely. It moves really quickly, though. The reason you have the amygdala is so you can size up a situation like immediately. Like it's crazy fast. Your prefrontal cortex is like still, you know, it's still chewing through words, trying to figure out the semiotics, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But your amygdala, like, already knows what's up. You can make a judgment or you can get an impression for somebody like in, uh, less than half a second, uh, and they were doing this, I was reading a study where they said, like, you can determine if somebody is trustworthy. Your your, uh, initial split second impression of whether or not somebody is trustworthy. Uh, the correlation with that belief, uh, for what happens 30s 30 minutes, 15 minutes from now is highest with trustworthiness. So typically your impression is right. The reason that I bring this up is that if I open an email, if and it has stale content or it's making, it's presenting me information that I recognize is out of date or is something that I already have, uh, or I get it twice that instantly sets off my amygdala. Like, this is not trustworthy. These are people who are not paying attention to that conversation.JK: You know Yeah, I totally agree. I would also tell you that consumers are having the same reaction if the email doesn't display correctly in their mobile device because they're reading most of their email in mobile. So, um, you know, gotta watch out for dark mode, gotta watch out for small devices and that you're right, that first barely a second activity when the consumer looks at your brand, looks at your email, if it's stale, if it didn't make sense, if it wasn't, um, kind of pushed to their interest and if it didn't work on their mobile device. Um, yeah. You're not winning in that email. Um, the consumer has moved on Yeah. And it's that fraction of a second where.
JB: Yeah. And I think it's like, golly, you know, and these are all these are, these are all things that are like ABCs that we just constantly forget, like the testing of subject lines. Make sure it works on mobile. Like we fall into this thing Like we still think like we're in 1997, you know, where, you know, everybody's on these, uh, you know, is on a computer screen and it's not the majority of, of mobile commerce and digital commerce is on mobile. Now for most places that I've worked at.
JK: Absolutely. Yeah. Um, and it's true. So I will tell you, here's my belief on that one. It's because we're sitting in offices or sitting at home, and in front of us is a, you know, 15 inch laptop and a, you know, 30 inch screen on your desk. And you go to a meeting room and it's an 80 inch TV on the screen. And that's our paradigm, right? But then when you challenge yourself and you're like, well, how did I make my purchase last night? You know, we're all Christmas shopping right now. I didn't make a single purchase. Not one on my laptop, not one. Yeah, yeah. Um, so you really do have to be present where the consumer is. I challenge, and this is a conversation that's on my teams all the time. Um, don't look at that on your on your desktop. Go get it. Go use the simulator. Uh, go get a screenshot of that on your phone. Um, don't design for desktop first, design mobile first and let desktop work itself out.
JB: It's a constant conversation and it is so important, so important it's funny about about dark mode, though, because, like, dark mode just can wreak havoc on things. But now, I don't know, there's like a new I, there's a new iOS update now, I don't know if you have an Apple. Maybe you're an Android, and that's totally fine. I give my friend Josh a hard time about that. If you're listening, Josh Uh, sorry. Yeah, but, uh, what's interesting is that they've incorporated dark mode even deeply into the iconography of it, this is kind of almost like, uh, browser testing, you know, yet again, of trying to see how is this going to look, because, you know, you got this really fancy, you know, formatting for, for your email that you think looks really nice. Well, it's got hard coded black text. And, you know, somebody's looking at it in their dark mode phone. They're not going to they won't. They're.
JK: Yeah. Uh, exactly. So it's another thing that's probably been a little lucky in my personal career that I've, um, been targeting more older females as part of the brands that I've worked with. Um, so I have low impact in dark mode personally. Um, but I can tell you, I live in a house with teenagers, and they are all dark mode like it's the way they live. Yeah. So depending on the demographic that you're talking to, dark mode could be very upsetting to your email program. And you've got to adjust. You got to handle that Yeah.
JB: It's interesting you were talking about like conversations in different conversations tend towards different channels. Like if I get an SMS about like the status of my order, I love that. That's great because I'm not checking my email to and I frankly, I don't want to see it in my email because I'm not going to see it anyway or it's going to get sent to spam. Uh, but if there's something where it's like, hey, we have a we have a special offer, we have these like recommendations for you. If you send that to me via a text message, it's really going to like, maybe it was just because I had all the presidential candidates texting me like five times a day for the past four months, but I'm like, burnt out. Yeah. On. No, I don't want to give you money. I'm I'm tired. I want to use my phone for for my stuff. Uh, likewise. You send me an email, I can open that at my leisure. I see that I can open it on my phone. You know, it's that asynchronous type of thing. And I think you see that sometimes with apps, which is kind of like, I don't know where we're going with that. Uh, you know, I think that that really kind of depends on the brand, uh, for, for that type of relationship.
JK: Yeah. So I guess I'm totally right there with you in the text message is text message has now become our new personal entry into our world. Right. Email used to be that years ago, we now have this weird we can filter it. We can do all the it's on our time not your time kind of experience. So email's not become as personal to us. Text message has become personal to us. So I think you are right and I agree I think the political experience um, totally created a negativity in text message this year because it was so amazing. Um, heavy. But when you're looking at brands having a conversation, they're in my experience, um, speaking from what I've looked at and how I've interacted with both these programs personally, I found that it was better to have two different conversations like, you do not send the same thing in email and text on the same day. Um, text was much more immediate. Act right now, um, or a piece of information that you need to know it shipped or it got delivered. Even better. Um, but it was not for that. Hey, just come see me today because I've got something at 30% off. Um, so I do think that's happening inside text messaging, um, which is going to be super interesting as this evolves, as we get more used to marketing happening in text apps, I do think are a different world.
There's an App for That, but Should There Be?
I probably have a stranger opinion about apps. Um, I don't think apps are true for every brand. I don't think you need one for every brand. Mhm. Um, I don't think that if you have if you're wanting an app, but your answer is I'm just going to put everything that you can do on mobile web in an app. You probably aren't a good candidate to have an app. And that's my opinion. Yeah. Because I know there's plenty of apps out there that that's what it is. It's just the mobile web and an app. Um, so I think if you're going to look for an app, you got to look for something that's going to stand out for your customer, that's going to be useful, helpful. It's going to be very brand aware customers, very who are very much part like they feel a personal connection or personal service with your brand to get your app. And I think you have to treat it that way. It's special. So, um, yes, I think apps do orders. Yes, I think they do service, but I think also looking for what's the added benefit to the customer to having your app. One of those things is app messaging. So um, now I'm a person who signs up for a lot of things because I'm like in the industry. So I look at a lot of marketing. Um, I will tell you, apps is one of the places that I tend to turn off notifications Yeah. Um, so apps are kind of really nice that it allows me to pick what I want. But, um, I think the consumer, the average consumer is not dealing with the number of apps that I am because I'm in the industry and I'm trying to get a view and an opinion about what's good and what's not good inside an app. Um, but yeah, um, more of the story. I don't think every brand needs an app if the app is just going to repeat mobile web. So maybe that's a maybe I'll get comments on that one later. I would welcome them I mean but I, I've downloaded some brand apps and I frankly I end up regretting it because it's like, oh this is going to be fun. And then I'm almost immediately overwhelmed and I'm just like, this is I do not care about this. You know that much. Uh, well, and I wonder if, like, really big, serious branded apps like Amazon and Starbucks, did it start a trend that everybody thought they needed an app? Like, I wouldn't even know how to order food if I didn't have the Chick-fil-A app. In some ways, um but like when it comes to just my, I don't know, generic teen shopping experience, um, I just don't. It's easier to handle on the web. I don't I don't need all that extra in my world.JB: So yeah. That's me. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're all we're all different, but, uh yeah, but yeah, I can I can see that it's like that. There was a time where it's like, everybody has to have an app. And then it was like, yeah, this is kind of, do I really need, uh, you know, this for anyway, I can name names, but I'm not gonna exactly.
JK: Don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah, yeah. We will get comments later. Now. Well, one comment on an app, though, like it is something I think that is important to mention because we talked about search having an app, um, build an app and they will not necessarily come. So having if you do have an app identifying your market strategy and your search strategy, that App Store is its very own search engine. It's got to be dealt with in a unique way. Um, so if you do have an app, all the things that we just talked about, product is true over in the App Store. And it's even harder because you don't control the search engine. It's like, you know, fighting the, you know Google, Apple and Amazon World all over again. So, um, yeah, if you're going to have an app, definitely do the optimizations to be found, get found. But first you should test your subject lines, your body content, just you should concentrate on that. You should. Your email program can be bigger. That's true.
Maslow and Merchandising
JB: Yeah. I always talk about like a hierarchy of needs with digital commerce. And the number one is have your product available for sale on your site, have it be well-formed, have it have a price and have it be transactable because the conversion rate on non well-formed products is zero and zero will be zero. And if you're not doing that don't you shouldn't be even thinking about that.JK: Yeah. You know and that's super interesting. You know there's an um an interesting stat that e-commerce professionals should look at. And it's in a given week, how many independent SKUs did you sell? So you had X number of styles available on your website. How many of those were found and created a sale this week Um, there's some interesting thought processes in there. When you start finding the SKUs that are available for sale that didn't have sales. So that's a really interesting way to think about PDP optimizations, to look at it that way. Um, it's kind of like the no result search concept, but yeah, not found product concept because you're going to find weird things like titles that were duplicative and didn't have anything, you know, didn't didn't have a reason to come up in search or, um, product that wasn't attributed correctly. So it never found its way into that search or that navigation experience. So, yeah, another interesting way to make sure your products are listed.
A Corbel by Any Other Name - AI and Search Enrichment
JB: Well, yeah, I, I have to say I really, really love the zero result search lists that I see from clients because it's wild. It's wild. The things that people will search for, you're like, oh, but of course, how could I not have think of that? Yeah. It's like I didn't know that was a word for that, you know? Yeah. Uh, or it was so generic that you never considered it would be appropriate for your brand. Yeah. Um, and I'll give you one that I'm kind of dealing with right now. It's the word um, it hardware, like, we talk about it like hardware, you know, like nails, screws, bolts, washers. Um, you don't want to say nails, screws, bolts, washers. Right? You just want to say the word hardware. Aha. Well, consumers are saying that they need a bolt, a screw, a washer. They're using those words because that's what they're physically looking for. So yeah you got to you got to handle that. You got to handle that bolt screw washer. They all equal hardware to make that work. Yeah. It's yeah. Just that simplicity of consumer language that you would never say because you don't want that word showing up on your website. You got to handle it Well, something interesting about that. And I don't want to walk into a big buzzword thing, but yeah, I have done I've done work for certain hardware companies and doing. But we were we were going through, but it was looking at the incredible amount of synonyms, uh, of, of related searches and like really specific words like corbel, you know, it's like what that like that's the thing that sticks at the end, you know, whenever It's A Wonderful Life is about to be a seasonal thing. You know, he goes down and he gets the, the thing off at the end of the, the staircase and it comes off and he's like, oh, because he said he puts it back. Do you know what I'm talking about I mean, is that what you call it? That's what that's a yes. It's a corbel. Yeah. So that's what you learn. Uh, but yeah, I would never come up with that name to stick that in assertion. I would do the thing at the end of your staircase, a while ago. I wouldn't think that, like, I wouldn't have that expectation. But now what with the AIS and stuff like that, I couldn't maybe do that. And I think about like from a search engine, like search engine perspective, like how to leverage AI for like that kind of conversational search Yeah. You know, where it's not necessarily automated, but you could get somebody to kind of intuit that. But I don't know, I've have you had any positive experiences with that? Do you see that as a I mean, I assume it has to eventually be viable. I just don't know.JK: Oh, I think it's completely viable. I think it's improving release after release even. Um, so I helping your search engine and helping your dictionary support, it's a big deal. The thing is, is right now, remember, I still has to be tuned. So AI is not just a free rein awesome thing that will just take care of all of it for you. Um. It's not. I want it to be. I just want it to take care of everything. No that's not. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, maybe maybe for our kids, it will, I don't know, but right now, it's just not going to be there. So, um, here's the the best way I think I can explain it. We all do niche product right? So, um a jewelry seller versus a hardware seller versus a shoe retailer, um, their dictionaries, the starting dictionaries are different, right? And they're unique to industry. And what AI is doing is they're kind of coming inbound with like the Webster's dictionary. But you're still going to have to train that AI on your words, on your product. Now, you're going to do that from uh, your product catalog. You're going to give it access to your full product catalog. You're going to give it access to as much as you can to support it. So if you have relationship data between these products go together, these products fit together. You're going to give that to it. So it's all about that. AI is going to get as strong and as fast and as nimble as you're prepared to help it. So, um, there's some really cool, uh, things happening out there right now. Um, I'm personally investigating some of these for a current project where you can give an AI engine, your product catalog, your images for your products. So like a really rich product catalog. And with the image, it'll use image detection. It'll take everything you gave it from the product information. It'll then expand on that because it'll search the web and help expand on that. It can extend the attribution of your product. It can optimize for you what you've already created. So, um, I mean, AI is coming along and it's coming along fast. It still needs a helping hand though, so having the best product catalog that you can, uh, is still the best starting point.
JB: Yeah, I and I think, you know, it's amazing. I think one of the things that I find really useful is getting rapidly getting relevant sets of information. And I think one of the major powers of AI is it allows us to experiment with things that we couldn't experiment with because it was prohibitively, you know, consuming or time consuming. Yeah, yeah. If you've got 7 million SKUs, you don't have time to go through and do that. Yeah. But you can say, hey, here's 7 million SKUs, go have fun. And it's like, beep, beep, boop boop. I mean, it's a little bit more than that. I don't think it actually does. Beep beep boop boop. But I don't know for sure. I mean, it probably could if you asked it to, but it's also not necessarily.
JK: Yeah. I mean it's also not instantaneous. So I think, um, what's going to happen in your in my experience so far, the first result is going to be a step up from what you did manually. Right? You could do more SKUs. You got it done faster than what you could do. Um, it's going to make connections that you already knew about across many, many more. Um, but it's going to get so much smarter as it does it again, and it does it again and it gets access to another piece of data. So, um, it's just growing faster than what we can in an Excel spreadsheet.
JB: Yeah. And I love my Excel spreadsheet. You know, I do, but it is it is really kind of it's kind of, uh, it's kind of cool to see what the future is going to bring.
JK: Yeah. I mean, business today is still ran in an Excel spreadsheet, so it's not going anywhere fast, but it's going to change. Yeah. And we're going to change with it as we find out that the computers can do it so much faster.
JB: Today my guest is Jessica Kemp a digital commerce executive. I thank you so much for joining me. This is really an excellent conversation. There's a lot covered here. Uh, I feel like my brain has grown three, three sizes, so thank you. Thank you very much for being on.
JK: Yes, thanks for having me. Thanks for the talk today.