Understanding Influencer Marketing
Rich Donahue shares his insights into influencer marketing, why it's important to partner with the right people to get your key message across, and why creating opportunities for customers to save money is beneficial for your business.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries.
I'm Ian Fazion, CEO of Cast Me In Studios.
And today I'm joined by a special guest, Rich.
How are you?
- I'm doing good, how you doing?
- Excited to have you on the show,
excited to chat about all the cool stuff going on at IBADA.
The unicorn that you all are is super exciting.
We're gonna get into all those marking lessons
and stuff from your career.
So let's get into it.
- What was your first job in marketing or demand?
- The first job that I was in was actually at an agency
out in California, a small boutique firm.
We did some work around electronics.
We did some work around travel boards or travel tourism boards.
So country of Japan, trying to get people to go and visit,
check out the cool sites that were out there.
So that was sort of my first real foray
into generating some demand for some products.
- Until flash forward to today,
tell us a little bit about your role at IBADA.
- Yep, so lead marketing at IBADA today.
I've been doing that for about nine years.
So I've seen the path from when we were,
the very, very definition of a startup up to today
where we're probably more of a growth company
and a bigger company.
Lead all aspects.
So sort of the typical external media that you might be running,
trying to make sure we get our name out there,
get new customers into the app,
using the website, using the browser extension
that we've launched.
So on the consumer side, we handle all that.
And then once they come in, once they've registered,
all of the standard communications that they're gonna get,
trying to push them through the funnel
and trying to get them to convert into sort of
our active users, right?
Where they're redeeming, getting cash back
within the platform.
And then increasingly we've been pushing more
into B2B recently as we get set to launch
our IBADA performance network.
So really trying to generate some demand from brands,
from retail partners to come and leverage the platform there
as we increase the scale of what we're offering
as we push the network forward.
- Let's get to our first segment, the Trust Tree,
where we go and feel honest and trusted
and you can share those deepest, darkest,
man-gen secrets.
Tell us a little bit more about IBADA's customers
and who all you are selling to.
- We've actually been digging into this quite a bit,
most recently around segmenting our audiences
and figuring out who we're talking to.
So we started in the very, very early days
as a CPG focus company, right?
We were doing item level cash back.
So I think the Oreo is the Coca-Cola's of the world.
And really that appealed to the people who were doing
the shopping and primarily that ended up being
your millennial mop.
So sort of central the country,
the folks who were shopping for their kids' meals, right?
What were they gonna pack for lunch?
What are they gonna make for dinner?
All that kind of stuff.
Now that wasn't the only segment we went after.
Certainly people are interested in saving cash right now,
maybe more than ever with inflation
and everything that's going on.
So our audience is more broad than that,
but that's really our core, right?
That's our center.
As we extended our offerings,
as we started to offer cash back
across your mobile shopping behavior, right?
So we extended beyond grocery into retail
and stuff like that, our audience got bigger.
We like to call them purchasing powerhouses these days,
but really it's the people who are extending their shopping.
Certainly the pandemic accelerated a lot of that behavior
as people shifted their behavior,
even in store behavior, like groceries,
to online grocery shopping,
to sort of the click and collect type of phenomenon.
It really opened up our time.
It really opened up the audience that we could address
and the people who are interested in getting cash back.
The easier we made it, the more products,
the more relevant to the things that they were buying, right?
If you're not the grocery shopper,
you're not interested in us.
But if you're shopping online,
which almost everybody is,
and we can make it easy enough and valuable enough for you,
then you're gonna check us out,
you're gonna use our products.
And so we've had some really nice opportunities
with sort of an expanding set of people that way
to grow our usage, which has been exciting.
- Yeah, so where does the company sit right now?
Like how many customers do you all have generally speaking?
I know you can't share exact numbers here.
It's a monthly thing for us, right?
So people are coming in, they're using it.
Some people are shopping, especially if they're online.
Some people are doing big ticket purchases
and they wanna save that cash monthly.
Some of them are doing quarterly.
In general, we've had over 40 million people register to use it,
which is great, not all of them use it.
On any particular month,
we've got close to 10 million people probably
who are opening up, having a session,
checking the things out,
where they wanna get cash back,
be it on grocery products or be it more broadly
on a bunch of the retail partners that we might have,
be it electronics, be it fashion,
be it whatever category they might be exploring.
So like I said, that goes up and down,
depending on the season.
Certainly holiday for us is gonna be great, right?
We're gonna have the most people using it
around Thanksgiving time when they're hosting parties,
when they're stocking up on groceries,
and then when they're thinking about the gifts
that they're gonna be giving everybody in that window,
both retail and grocery do really, really well for us.
January, another great window, right?
People are thinking about all the money
they just spent on holiday.
And they wanna figure out how they're gonna save that money,
how they're gonna budget more effectively,
how they're gonna get smart with their cash,
and they're gonna turn to us,
they're gonna turn to other money saving
or money management type of devices during those windows.
And then it's gonna wane a little bit.
It just ebbs and flows, but generally speaking,
millions of people a month getting cash back,
getting rewards.
I think we paid about 1.2 billion at this point,
credited that into people's accounts,
which is really, really exciting.
And it's nice to be able to sort of do that,
like I said earlier, especially during the window,
where inflation and costs and all we hear about
is supply chain and how much more expensive things are.
Our ability offsets some of that cost
and put money back in people's pockets is really nice.
- Yeah, that's right.
Like you said, that leads the headlines every day.
So I'm curious, how do you structure your marketing team?
- It's evolved over time, as you might imagine,
it's kinda changing every day.
We've got a couple of key departments.
One is growth, one focuses on how do we get people in
and get them active through the sort of funnel?
How do we efficiently get them in
and how do we connect with them at the highest levels
and then push them through to becoming a redeeming user?
Ultimately, if they're not redeeming and getting cash back,
they're not the type of user that we want.
So we have that group.
We've got a client marketing team
that's focused on sort of working with sales,
working with building the client base,
making sure that our campaigns are effective
and sort of accomplishing what the brands are looking for,
what the retail partners are looking for.
Within the business, we do our own PR,
we work with an agency, of course,
but we've got that group sort of making sure
that we're taking advantage of the headlines
and putting out our own news.
Like I said again, inflation's been a big one right now
and we play well in that space
because we are giving people cash back
on the purchases that they need to make.
And then we've got a product marketing team as well.
They're working really closely with our product,
our engineering teams to make sure
that the things that we're producing,
the new tips, the new tricks,
the new tools within the app,
within the website, within the BEX,
those are all getting communicated effectively
to our existing teams and then making sure
that message is getting out into the ether
with our growth, our client teams as well.
And then last, we've got our creative group.
So we do almost all of our creative in-house.
We certainly partnered with some agencies on some big efforts.
We partnered with Callen most recently
on some of their new spots that we put out
that are doing really great.
We're really excited about the work we put together with them.
But generally that's how we're structured.
We try and do a lot of stuff in-house.
We try to sort of an opportunistic
and being able to build from a smaller group
to a bigger group and sort of been thoughtful
about how we wanted to make that journey.
- Let's go to the playbook.
This is where you open up that playbook
and talk about the tactics that help you win.
- You play to win the game.
- Hello, you play to win the game.
You don't play to just play it.
- What are your three channels or tactics
that are your uncuttable budget items?
- Oh man, they're always fluctuating.
We've talked to our clients about the importance
of direct response, the importance of guaranteed ROI
and knowing exactly what your dollars are getting you.
And sort of with our clients,
we can guarantee a cost per unit sold
because if they don't sell that item, they're not paying.
We're a pay performance platform.
And so sort of held ourselves
to that same standard historically.
And so digital media, the attributable media
has always been sort of a staple for us.
We wanna know what we're getting.
We wanna know what our cost per install is.
We can flow that all the way down
and sort of know our LTV to CAC ratios.
And that's been really important for us historically.
Anything that's measurable has been,
it might get a little bit more budget if we're doing well
with it, it might get a little bit less,
but that is a staple, that is sort of the uncuttable.
In a way, we're always gonna be sort of doing that
and pushing money through those channels.
We're able to move that money across the different channels
and across the different teams as we need to,
where we're seeing pockets of effectiveness.
More and more, I think for us,
we've been talking a lot about brand formants.
We've been talking about sort of the convergence
of those uncuttable sort of digital dollars
that we wanna make sure are attributable
and the harder to measure sort of more,
call it traditional stuff.
I put TV right now in that uncuttable bucket.
Some of these new spots that I mentioned a bit earlier
have done really well for us.
We've gotten better at measuring the effects of TV
through some market tests early on
and then through just smarter applications of that media.
More recently, we're seeing really great gains there,
really strong performance.
And certainly the privacy stuff has hurt
some of the digital media, the effectiveness of that,
the measurability, the trackable nature of it
is making that more challenging.
So TV is there and really just influencers
are probably one of the other ones
that I put in there right now is uncuttable.
Would not have been my answer a couple of years ago at all,
but I think more and more we're talking about
just being at the place where people are interacting
with media and choosing to interact with the media.
TV is one where generally speaking,
it's interrupting the show that you're watching, right?
It's commercial, that's, I'm used to it,
well, I think we're all used to it.
And I think influencers are kind of the exact opposite, right?
Like the reason I'm going to their channels,
the reason why I'm listening to what they have to offer
is because they're presenting me relevant information.
It's that the relevance of that message
is what I'm tuning in for.
And so it's becoming more impactful
and we've seen some really good results
from starting to integrate our efforts into those channels.
And so right now I think the question
is how we effectively lean into those things.
I think ultimately we just wanna,
we wanna be in a place where when they're thinking
about what they're gonna be shopping for,
when they're thinking about paying attention to the content,
we are a piece of that puzzle.
And we are sort of resonating with them
in the places that they want that message to hit.
So those are the three, but quite honestly,
if you ask me three months from now,
there's probably one of those that's getting replaced
and there's something else that's top of mind
that's happening to do really well.
I think you just gotta be open to that.
I mean, the team is always sort of looking for the next, right?
Or reevaluating the things that they've sort of held,
held close to the best historically.
And generally speaking, you wanna empower them
to make sure that they're able to make that shift
and they're able to be accountable
to where they're spending their money
and where they're putting their time and effort
to build the business.
- I'm curious, obviously the last two years,
like everything has been changing so rapidly
and the world is changing rapidly,
but also within marketing, it's changing rapidly,
especially in the world where you live in.
What are the time horizons that you look at
for those types of campaigns?
Like from where I sit sometimes
and we talked to a lot of B2B marketers,
but you have a conviction for a type of a campaign
and a duration and all that sort of stuff
and you say, "Hey, I'm not gonna kill this after a month
"when this is a year-long campaign."
But anyway, so what do you think about duration
for some of these things?
- I would have said it was a longer time horizon,
pre-pandemic, but we had so many things planned
and so much good stuff that we just had to sort of pull back
or change.
I always like to say like March Madness
didn't happen in 2020 and we had a whole sort of internal thing,
brand partners built and then that tournament went away.
And it was like, whoops, now granted that's only a month long,
but we had to pivot, right?
We had to shift the way we were doing it,
what we were doing, the pandemic changed every program,
basically every way we had set up 2020 changed
as a result of the pandemic hitting.
And I think that changed the way
that we start to look at programs,
just holistically.
We were planning to do a Thanksgiving type event in 2020.
It was around the election time that year too,
so there were implications there and timing implications.
We sort of started to map that out.
The whole construct of that program, right?
The impact of that program, the way we set it up,
changed and we were working through that
sort of for months leading up to it,
but it was completely different
in a pandemic environment versus not.
In terms of a general campaign,
not one that's impacted by sort of macro factors,
I tend to think it's campaign dependent.
You're gonna have things that you wanna make a big bet on
and you wanna look at, but you gotta evaluate it too, right?
If it's just not working,
you gotta ask yourself why it's not working.
Did we do a bad job executing it?
Is the message just totally off?
And you're honest with yourself and you say,
"Hey, we got this wrong."
The channels that we picked are just not relevant
to the audience that we needed to hit.
I think you gotta walk away,
or you gotta optimize it to a place
where you can get it to the result
that you thought you were going to get.
There are other implications or other programs
that you know it's gonna take a while, right?
You gotta get that frequency.
You have to let that message burn in a little bit.
You've gotta be patient.
And patience is the hardest part of any program.
'Cause especially if you've been building it for months,
you've gone out, you've shot material for it,
you've had a big part of the team working on it,
you've been talking about how it's coming
and then you launch it and there's just sort of crickets,
right?
And you're just like, "Oh my gosh, the business is now turned
and you're 10x and everything else."
It's like probably never going to just pop day one.
It's gonna take that time to sort of roll up
and you're gonna start to see it come through
and we're such a measurement focus company generally speaking
that it's hard to just be patient and let the signs
start pointing that, "Yeah, this is working the right way."
Some of it's just managing expectations
and then I think you can play it out
and we've certainly had some programs.
We just did a bigger sort of production push,
a bigger program around money and everything.
It's really just a matter of how much you're willing to change it,
how much you're willing to update it,
how much you're willing to revise it, I think.
And then like I said upfront,
you gotta be willing to walk away if you can't get it right.
There's no reason to chase it, right?
You can fight another fight.
- You kinda touched on this a little bit,
but were there certain things that
maybe you're most cuttable budgied
or something that you're moving away from over the next year?
- We've struggled with digital media, a fair bit.
Some of the iOS 14 changes, some of the privacy concerns.
I think we're just not seeing the same type of value,
the same type of conversion that we had seen prior.
So, well, I would never walk away from it entirely
because we do get some great attribution,
some great, great savers out of those channels.
Our ability to get the same type of value,
the same type of efficiency from them has dropped.
And at the same time,
we've been able to sort of put that money in other places,
be it influence or be it TV, be it internal programs,
our referral program, for instance,
and just see better returns.
- Is it just expensive?
Is it just that it's just like?
- It's just not converting the same way that it was.
So yeah, on a cost per basis,
as we look at the number of people that we can pull through
and the number of people who ultimately make it
to the point we want them to make in our funnel,
it's just not getting there.
It's all relative, right?
Like there's still a ton of value there.
It's not that we don't want to be on those channels.
In fact, I just mentioned it is uncuttable, right?
So we're absolutely going to play in that space.
And we're going to, there are certainly partners
that are doing really well for us
and continue to do really well for us.
But in terms of our ability to just continue
to push money into that channel, in particular,
it's just challenging.
And that's no different than our clients, right?
So one of the challenges that we've experienced
is nice to be able to take that firsthand knowledge
and then go have these candid conversations
with CPGs or retailers who may have been on Facebook
or may have been deploying money on some of these channels
where they're struggling, right?
They're seeing the same headwinds,
they're experiencing the same challenges, I think,
in this macro environment, brands and retailers,
advertisers in general are being asked
to really take a hard look at how they're deploying their cash
and where that best place to put that first dollar
and that last dollar are.
And if you can sort of get that guaranteed return,
it's hard to pass that up.
It's hard to pass that up.
Now, it's not the only place you should go, right?
You got to have that whole, that holistic view
that I was talking about earlier
that I think we're trying very hard to sort of walk that line
and do things that drive, you know, sort of the intangibles
as much as the measurable.
But I think a lot of, in this climate,
a lot of brands are really taking a hard look
at making sure they have that mixed, right?
And I think they're starting to put more money
into tactics like us, into channels like us
where they can know what they're gonna get
versus some of the more speculative stuff.
- Can you go a little bit more into your influencer strategy
because I think this is something that everyone's trying
to figure out and is truly one of the most complex situations.
You could spend endless amount of time working
on influencer campaigns.
And so I'm curious how you think about it.
- Yeah, it's changed a lot,
over the last couple of years, I think influencers are great,
right?
Their word of mouth is the best, right?
If you and I are talking and I tell you to check out
this particular brand or whatnot, there's value there, right?
You trust me, you know, you're like,
okay, if they like it, this is something
that probably I'm gonna like.
So I view it very much as sort of an extension
of word of mouth.
Word of mouth is challenging though, right?
'Cause you gotta go talk to 50 people
in order to get 50 people over.
Now the beauty of influencers, you get that word of mouth
and they've got a ton of people who follow them,
who are interested in what they have to say
and who will more likely than not check
what they're saying out, which is great.
I think historically they haven't had great constructs
for working with brands and that's evolving, right?
They used to be that it was a flat fee,
then it was maybe CPM driven,
a lot of them weren't direct response oriented
and/or it was really hard to measure their impact.
And so the challenge I would face sort of heavy
on measurability was just how do I know
that they're the true driver?
And you can set up tests and roll with them
and do that kind of thing.
But I always struggled with like,
how do you truly scale that?
How do you scale that in a measurable way
versus just hitting a big audience?
And generally what I found is that once they got
to a size of audience that was really important,
their sort of CPMs and their measurables didn't stack up,
they didn't feel as good.
And then the measurability made it really, really difficult.
They're getting better.
They're getting smarter with how they set it up.
They're getting smarter with how they talk to their audience,
how they build that sort of interaction.
It feels less like a hard to measure tactic
and more like a measurable media tactic now.
And so what we're trying to do is just find the right content.
We're trying to find the people who are talking
about the right things so that when they're talking about it,
it fits, right?
It's an audience that's tuning in for the right reasons
and it makes sense.
Like a Kim Kardashian, right?
You could argue like millions of dollars
for her to post something,
but she's got tens of millions of followers, if not more.
That's not a good fit for us.
No matter how big her audience is,
they don't want to hear her talking about
saving cash back.
Yeah.
It just does not work.
And so finding those for us,
finding the people who have an audience where it's authentic,
if it's not authentic, it doesn't work.
So that's where we've spent more time and effort
is figuring out how do we get the right influencers?
How do we get the people who are talking about
the things that make sense for us, right?
Like being a smart shopper,
moms do really well for us, right?
They're figuring out how to get the kids to school on time
and how to manage a family and how to do all these things
and we fit nicely into that.
Now, some of these have great big audiences
and some of them don't.
And so balancing our bandwidth and our time and energy
to make sure that we're connecting with
the right combination of really meaningful content
is what it is.
And ultimately, I think probably my team would tell you,
we spend probably too much time trying to evaluate
the effectiveness of it.
You have to trust that you're hitting the audience
the right way and you're getting your message there
the right way and we're gonna be the right message.
We wanna be with the right partners.
And that's true of any influencer, right?
As long as you have the right partner,
it's probably gonna be a really good partnership.
And if you have the wrong partner,
it's gonna be lopsided.
- Do you vary the approach there for like really, you know,
big names that would be those type of people
versus hundreds and hundreds of micro influencers?
Like, how do you think about that stuff?
- That's the challenge we face is like one fell swoop
versus tons of time and effort to go and build
the relationships with some of the smaller micro influencers.
There are more and more agencies,
there are more and more sort of vendors out there
who can help you partner with them, right?
Who are sort of rolling all of them up
into a nice, nice sort of easy package.
And we've explored some of that too,
in the sense of trying to make sure
that we're balancing the team's time and effort
with agencies or groups that can help us
get into those micro influencers.
I tend to think that they're really valuable.
They do have a more personal relationship,
oftentimes because they tend to have a smaller niche
or a smaller target or they just haven't blown up yet, right?
Maybe the content's amazing,
but they just haven't gotten to that next stage.
And where we can find those partnerships
and we're seeing really big opportunities, we'll lean into them.
- I think that the balance of having the really promotions
and things that really matter
and where you matter to that person's well-being
so that they can continue creating content,
like that is where I think you get a lot of the really good,
you know, partnerships is like,
hey, if you're paying the bills,
paying for their kid to go to school or whatever it is,
like that person will carry the water for you
in a good way.
- They will and I think it goes both ways, right?
I think one of the challenges just for brands in particular
is just giving them control.
Certainly you want them to hit your message,
you know, you want them to talk about the brand the right way
and we've had this conversation internally,
like how much creative control do we give them, right?
The reason why they're an influencer,
the reason why people follow them is because they have their own style,
they have their own way of presenting information,
they have their own brand.
And what you're really trying to do is
leverage what they're really good at
and make sure people hear about what you're really good at.
And so I think where we've tried to do more
is just giving them operational freedom and trust.
And that's hard, right?
'Cause you're seeding what you do and like all the great messages
you've crafted and all the stories that you want to tell
to someone else to tell that story
and you're giving them sort of the freedom to do it.
Again, if you're part of it with the right people,
they're going to tell the story the way that resonates
with their audience and gets your key messages across
and gets your story across in a way that's authentic
to both you and them.
And that's where you're going to see the sort of sweet spot.
Hopefully that's to a huge audience of their followers.
I'd rather get the right message to the smaller groups people
that are really enthusiastic about using NIBADA
than again, get partnered up with Kim Kardashian
and give her all the perfect message.
It's just not going to resonate,
it's just not going to be authentic.
So that's the balance.
I think find the right people, find the right scale
and then let them sort of be authentic to who they are
with telling your story.
Give a favorite campaign that you've ran recently.
Thanksgiving.
So I bought a ran, I talked about a little bit ago
with the pandemic.
We ran a Thanksgiving campaign where we gave away
sort of free Thanksgiving dinner to anybody who signed up
for the app, anybody who used the app
to get their holiday meal.
It came at a time where a lot of people were out of work,
a lot of people were struggling.
It was still very much top of mind.
A lot of people were still working from home.
A lot of people were out of work.
It was the epitome of us being able to leverage
our brand partners who stepped up and partnered
to offer free stuff, tons of goodwill,
sort of the ultimate win-win-win.
For us, we saw a lot of people come in
and take advantage of it.
So we had some great growth opportunities,
a ton of reactivation of people who had maybe fallen off.
When you're out of work, a lot of things drop off.
A lot of things aren't top of mind.
You're like, how am I going to pay the rent?
I don't need to worry about this app.
I don't need to worry about this other stuff.
All that kind of pushes to the background.
And so we were able to really extend that goodwill.
And it was amazing the way it galvanized our team
and our company around this do-good mission.
The brands had tons of impact.
They sold a lot of units, even though they were
partnered with us to give them away.
People had to still go to the store and make that purchase.
It was part of their Thanksgiving spread.
We got tons of amazing messages from people who were like,
I didn't think I was going to have a Thanksgiving this year.
And I did.
And thank you.
And those types of messages, you sometimes don't get them.
Straight away, don't get them in a campaign that you run.
Nobody's thanking us for the TV commercial we're running right
now.
But when you put food on somebody's table in that way,
it's amazing.
And then consumer one, because they got a Thanksgiving meal.
So every party won in that sort of campaign.
And it was sort of like proof that you can do good by doing well,
or do well by doing good.
It was amazing.
And so we've hit star wagon to that.
We did it again last year.
And we're going to do a version of it again this year,
because it's good for our business.
It's good for our partners.
And it's great for the consumer.
And if you can find that magic, it's really fun to be a part of.
I know how much time and effort the team puts into building it
and thinking through how it's going to work
and working with partners and doing that.
It's not lost on, I think, anybody on the organization
at this point, how much effort goes into creating that.
But when those sort of testimonials roll in,
and you start to see it take off,
you start to see people redeeming it,
and sending in pictures of their spreads.
That's awesome.
It's so good.
And it's just like, how could you not love that?
I won't always-- we'll have a special place, especially
the first year, because we simply didn't
know if it would resonate either.
This is one where you just--
it feels right.
It feels like it's got to be impactful.
It feels situationally appropriate.
It made everything sort of-- all the hard work really
sort of paid off.
That's definitely my favorite.
Hard press to say, I'll find another one that will take its place.
It'll be embarrassing when I'm talking about that 20 years
from now, but embarrassing in a good way, maybe.
Yeah, that's awesome.
That'll be the favorite.
What about your biggest learning experience?
We've had lots of campaigns that haven't gone well.
A lot of times, it's because of the input
that I'll give to the team, because I'm further away from it.
I'm like, no, I think it'll go this way.
We should definitely tweak it.
And they listen to me.
But joking aside, I think we do do a lot of A/B testing.
And a lot of times when we're testing campaigns,
you want to push the boundaries of what you think might work.
You can make micro tweaks that you're fairly certain
are going to be successful.
Maybe you squeeze a point or two of success out of it.
Some of the ones that maybe are more far reaching,
bigger risk, bigger reward, right?
Like there's a reason why you might believe it to be true
and why it wouldn't be.
One of the biggest mistakes that we made recently was we
believed one of the incentives that we were running for new users
was a big dollar amount.
We felt pretty strongly that that big dollar amount had to stay
in place in order to maintain activation rates,
maintain the metrics that we were having.
And that's expensive.
It's expensive in a good way because people use it.
They're in the flow.
Now we're rolling.
One of the folks on the team was like,
that's the way we've constructed all the other elements leading
up to it.
We don't need that incentive anymore.
And me, others, whoever, sitting there going, no,
but that's the one that when we did that, it worked.
It was impactful.
How can we walk away from that?
Despite the spend, it's good spend.
And sure enough, they went and ran the test.
And they were right.
They were 100% right.
That incentive wasn't necessary.
And at the time, two years ago, three years ago,
whenever we implemented the first time,
it was a great win, the thing that moved the business.
But we got stuck in our ways.
And fortunately, we have good people
who are willing to challenge convention and say, hey,
we've changed a lot of stuff.
This is not the same situation we were in when this was successful.
We don't need it anymore.
It was a success until it wasn't.
And then it was sort of a failure, right?
And it's just like, when do you find out
that the thing that no longer works?
Apparently, it's when other smart people come in
and challenge that preconceived notion.
Obviously, you have a wildly successful app.
But I'm curious, how do you view your website?
Website's super important.
A lot of people, especially now that they're working from home,
are in front of the computer all the time.
They're doing more online shopping than they might have been.
A lot of people don't like to do it on their phone.
For us, it's always been a mechanism.
At least, a long time ago, it was a mechanism
to get them into the app, right?
Introducing the materials, push them into the app.
More and more, it's become a place
where they can go right into making cashback.
So they can jump off of the website.
They can get their cashback on their online grocery orders.
They can add things to their list that way.
They can go right from the website
and find deals on their favorite retailers.
So increasingly, it's become much more
of a sister experience to the app
than what it was a long time ago, which is really a mechanism
to get people pushed into the app.
It's very much a standalone and very much an opportunity
to allow us to fulfill our mission, which
is to make every purchase rewarding.
More and more, those purchases aren't just happening
in store at a grocery store.
They're happening online on sweaters and travel
and everything else.
And so when we really hunkered down and said, hey,
how do we make true on this mission,
it was to amplify the web and make the web a destination
unto itself so that we could pay people cash
when they're starting their shopping trip on the website.
We put a lot of time and effort, obviously,
dedicated squads and dedicated functionality there
to ensure that we can pay you cash,
no matter where you're shopping, no matter what you're buying.
So bigger and bigger piece of the puzzle,
excited to see how that continues to evolve
and ultimately we want to make it easier for people
whether you want to start with the website,
whether you want to actually download the browser extension
that we have and let us go find the best deal for you.
Price Compare Shop, do all that.
It's great.
In fact, shameless plug, but when I thought
it was cool with the browser extension,
so you heard about all this baby formula shortage
and everything recently.
- Oh yeah.
- We actually have out of stock alerts
with the browser extension.
And so we were able to sort of let our audience know again,
a lot of moms, a lot of young moms,
maybe struggling with trying to find baby formula.
You can download the extension, go set and alert
for whatever formula you have.
And as it comes back in stock,
it will actually notify you and let you know.
So sort of saves you the hassle of trying to
go to a million different websites
or go to a million different companies
trying to find out where you can get this.
It started sort of as an add a stock mechanism
when people went home for the pandemic, right?
They were trying to find PS5s and all their other stuff
that when they were stuck at home,
they wanted to buy and couldn't find because of shortages.
And that utility is now being able to sort of help moms
find baby formula or really help any consumer
find something that they just want to look for.
And they don't want to spend the time and effort
to sort of have to sit there and refresh sites
trying to figure out when that next supply
is going to come in.
- Wow, that's right.
- Yeah, pretty cool.
- All right, let's get to our next segment, the desktop,
where we talk about healthy tension.
So that's with your board, your sales team,
your competitors or anyone else.
Have you had a memorable dust up in your career rich?
- I think anybody who tells you no
is either super conflict avoidant
and or does it straight up lying to you.
I think if you're doing the things you need to do,
if you're thinking independently,
you're going to have those moments
where you just disagree with somebody.
You're just going to get into it.
And I think actually that's really healthy.
I think when you have that disagreement,
you don't have to be yelling and screaming
or anything like that, right?
You're going to go at each other.
You're going to, here's why this is the right path
and they're going to have their opinion
on why their path is right.
If it's respectful, if it's thoughtful, if it's healthy,
it's good, you want to have that.
And ultimately you'll come out on the other side,
I think in a great place,
you'll be willing to have that same sort of
open kind of conversation the next time
because you know that it is in the end of the relationship
or it didn't submarine everything, right?
And I think if it's thoughtful,
you end up forcing the other side
to think about a different perspective.
Sometimes it's hard to, you know,
you have to agree to disagree
or you both walk out and you're frustrated
and maybe you need a third party to come in
and help tie break or help solve the problem,
provide an independent point of view.
You got to have those conversations
because that's the only way you're going to really
sort of get to the root.
If you don't have them, somebody's going to walk away,
frustrated and that festering is probably the most
unhealthy thing, right?
It's going to road trust, it's going to road confidence.
It's just, it's not going to be a good healthy situation.
So, well, nobody wants to have the dust up.
I think it's probably a good thing.
You got to address it, right?
And the earlier you address it,
the smaller the dust up.
Let's get the facts out on the table.
Like, you know, I'm defensive,
certainly about my team, about things that I believe in.
I'm not going to be 100% right.
I might be 70% right on this particular argument.
And then we have to make it better
with the sort of reasoning or thoughtfulness
of the other people who were sat on the other side
of the table.
You got to be able to have those conversations.
You got to be able to agree to disagree
and consider the alternative side of the debate
and get to a good place.
But it's hard.
- All right, let's get to our final segment, quick hits.
These are quick questions and quick answers.
Just like how quickly you can talk to somebody
if you go to qualified.com
because you can talk to them on their salespeople
right there on the website.
Qualified is the best.
We love them dearly.
And if you want people qualified prospects
who are on your website right now
to be talking with your salespeople,
you should use qualified.
So go to qualified.com to learn more.
Quick and easy, just like these questions.
Rich, are you ready?
- Let's go.
- Number one, what hidden talent or skill do you have
that's not on your resume?
- Golf, I'm a good golfer.
Does that count?
- Yeah, it counts.
Do you like handicap golf?
Like how, what's your handicap?
- I'm like a one.
- Oh, that's pretty good.
Wow.
- You never know it, but I played a lot.
- Do you have a favorite book or podcast or TV show
or something like that that you've been checking out recently?
- Favorite book, I've always been partial.
There's two for whatever reason, they're kind of different.
The kind of money Christo and the alchemist,
every now and again, I'll just go back to those two.
And roll that way.
And then I'm big on current events.
I love sort of the evolving nature of just new cycles
and stuff like that, be it trade stuff,
whether advertising, marketing, whatnot,
or just general history, the day-to-day sort of nature
of what's going on in life, I dig that stuff.
- Do you have a non-marketing hobby
that might make you sort of indirectly a better marketer?
- I love people watching.
So that's probably it.
I don't go to restaurants to eat.
I think I go just to simply watch the passerby.
Like if I can sit outside and watch the people walking down
walking down the street and see the dynamics
of how they interact, I think it's hilarious in many cases.
It's super interesting.
The people dynamics are really interesting.
So probably care more about that because I'm in marketing,
but I think as you watch those interactions
and you watch the way people interact, it makes you better.
I also think being a parent has made me a better marketer.
I think I have a more patience,
probably first and foremost, but more thoughtfulness
around what I'm trying to do
and how I'm trying to raise my kids.
And that thoughtfulness sort of leads to maybe
being more empathetic, being more considerate
of what we're trying to achieve on the work front.
I'm a better, more well-rounded person for that.
- What piece of advice would you give
the first time CMOs trying to figure out
their marketing strategy?
- Good question.
Probably just trust your instincts.
You're in that role because you've done a good job
up into this point.
Sometimes you gotta be willing to fight
for the things that you believe in, right?
And I think everybody who comes into that role
has reason to believe that this is the place they should go
and these are the things they should be doing
and you gotta be willing to go to bat for those
because the last thing you wanna do is
not be successful, not doing the things
you thought you should be doing, right?
And I think people can live with doing the things
they believe in, charting the path that they think
they have to go and what's right for the business.
Sort of the no regrets path in a way.
I think the opposite isn't true, right?
You never wanna look back and be like,
I knew we had to do this.
I knew we had to go that way and having not fought for that.
You gotta trust the things that you know
and trust the things that you believe in
and go to bat for them, right?
Be willing to sort of push for the things
that you believe in.
- Awesome, Rich, it's been wonderful
having you on the show today.
So many lessons, so many nuggets.
For our listeners, you can go to iBotta.com
to learn more, download the app if you haven't already,
save some shekels, get some cash back.
Any final thoughts, anything to plug?
- I think this was great.
Really appreciate the time on Woodin' Upward.
Thank you. - Indeed.
Thanks again for joining.
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