Creating A Customer Experience That Will Have Your Customers Happily Raving with Adam Pearce

Andy Splichal 0:00

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichal. We're happy to welcome this week's guest to discuss today's topic, which is creating a customer experience that will have your customers happily raving. This week's guest is the co founder and CEO of Blended Commerce in E commerce customer experience agency. He and his team have been worked with over 200 Shopify retailers to help them provide a memorable customer experiences that drive growth and revenue and profit. A big welcome to Adam Pearce. Hi, Adam.

Adam Pearce 0:32

Andy, how are you?

Andy Splichal 0:34

Well, thanks for joining us, we're excited to talk about how our listeners can increase their customer experience. And to start with, can you define what you mean by creating a memorable customer experience?

Adam Pearce 0:49

Yeah, sure. I mean, for me, in terms of creating a memorable customer experience, it's about making sure that all of those I guess, sticking points or points where you know, a customer might be confused, upset, frustrated, any kind of negative feelings that you are trying to mitigate. So that's really, you know, right from before even a customer decides to really start shopping on your store, all the way through to their final purchase. So looking at all those struggling moments all the way through and saying, right, how do I make sure that people are less likely to hit those struggling moments? And what can I do in terms of my on site, my posting, Mama, my post sale marketing, even through time, your acquisition side of things, all of those moments where you think, look, actually, the customer might think x at this point, let's help them feel better about that, or, or avoid actually getting to that point where they are feeling frustrated or upset?

Andy Splichal 1:45

And how does providing a great customer experience correlate to increasing customer lifetime value? I mean, are there some numbers that you've been able to kind of put on this correlation?

Adam Pearce 2:00

Yeah, sure. I mean, the, the key thing that we look at is we're looking at customer lifetime value. So you know, rather than I think we've kind of in E commerce, develop this kind of fascination with conversion rate, and the conversion rate is always gonna be important. But the problem is, is that that is only a very small part of the picture. And when you're looking, you know, LTV, you're also looking at purchase frequency, you're also looking at your acquisition cost. And looking at unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past 12 months, everyone would have seen, the acquisition has got a lot more difficult, I think, is the first thing to do. And then the second thing to say with that is that it has become a heck of a lot more expensive. So yes, acquisition still needs to happen. But when you bring someone into your funnel, or into your purchase cadence, you need to give them a better experience, it's going to mean, they're going to remain there longer, because ultimately, you know, retention, and acquisition budgets, realistically, you know, I think what the the key thing now is, is training off some of the acquisition budget towards retention. So Well, that might, in practical terms is that, hey, look, you know, we're not gonna be spending $10,000 a month now on Facebook ads, but what we are going to do is maybe be spending $5,000, but then transferring that other 5000 into retention. So that might be customer service platform like gorgeous, or Zendesk, where it might be, you know, looking at basically your post purchase experience. So, you know, are you investing more in the packaging, in terms of inserts inside your packaging, so that when those customers you are bringing in, are receiving your products, and I'll go into that process with you, you're more likely then getting into it to be a loyal customer. And in in, I guess gonna be from a numbers perspective, we classify loyal customer, as someone who has purchased four times, that's really kind of a golden number, when we're sort of looking at the data for a client as saying, right, how many customers you got to that for purchase level, what are we doing in order to make sure we a retain them, but be trying to increase their purchase frequency, and of course, all of those things that will increase the LTV, and regardless of where whether you are running your business for profit, which obviously most people are or if you are thinking about, this is a brand that we're going to build and then sell those numbers are going to be important to both groups of people.

Andy Splichal 4:30

I guess my question really is how are you tracking? I mean, you mentioned a lot of things you can do as far as a couple systems that are in place, or, or is putting in fliers. But are you just consistently you're tracking the frequency, the purchase frequency, and the lifetime value? And even is it lifetime value? Or is it more of kind of an annual customer value that you're tracking? Because if you're looking to get four times in a year

Adam Pearce 4:59

yeah, sure. So we we actually track on on a month to month basis, but also on an annual level. So essentially, what we do is that we kind of have a very simple sort of Excel file, which we store all of the data in for the clients, which basically, are the eight different metrics that were used to create the LTV number. So what we're essentially doing, then each month is saying, right, the projected LTV for this, this client for the next 12 months, is looking at this level, the past month, these metrics have increased, what do we attribute to their increase? So it might be breached purchase frequency, it might be conversion rate, we need to make sure that we're tracking that we're saying like, what is the attribution to those particular factors, because what we can do then is say, well, either a, let's do more of that thing again. Or B, if that metric has gone down, what is the reason that has gone down, and that's kind of the new hypothesis of something we can do to increase that number. So it gives you a lot more I think there's a merchant to play with. And I think also, when you're kind of looking at that calculation, you start seeing the impact of each of those measures on your overall LTV number. So it gives you more dimensions to play with of increasing the LTV. So it doesn't have to be that you are consistently increasing that conversion rate, you can pick one of the other six or seven metrics that are there to help you get to that bigger overall number. So tracking it month to month towards an overall annual goal. Absolutely. But equally, then, you know, for us, for example, and work with a client, we will essentially say to partner, look, your LTV at the moment, you know, say is $6,000. Actually, what we want to do in 12 months is to get that project LTV to be $1,000. So that's kind of the way that we work from an agency perspective to kind of say, Look, this is what we're going to do when we're working with you as a client. That's that kind of postar metric.

Andy Splichal 6:56

Do you find it difficult to track? Because I would assume that there's a lag on stuff you do, especially when you're trying to increase customer frequency? I mean, if they just bought, you know, are they going to buy again next week? Or is it going to take a couple months? That's one of the biggest issues I know when you do your Facebook ads or, or I run, you know, Google Shopping ads for private clients. But you know, it's easy with conversion rate, you know, you make a change, they click a button, they add it and you can see the conversion rate. But I would think with yours, that there's going to be a lag in those numbers. Is that true?

Adam Pearce 7:33

Absolutely. I mean, you know, typically, you know, you are for an implementation that we would usually do, you're going to be looking at pretty much kind of, you know, an eight to 12 week timeframe to see that come through. And obviously, the attribution of those individual activities, you know, it's sometimes difficult to track. So when you're kind of looking at numbers, that's why we all kind of say, look, we'll report to a client the month what the current status is based on the data, but we are saying to our clients, look, we're on this program together, you know, for the 12 month period as a minimum, because ultimately, we need that time to be able to see whether actually these things are happening. And I think that is it. I don't know about you, Andy. But I think that is one of the I guess the most trickiest things about e commerce. And, you know, when merchants want to grow their store, they want to see that the things that are happening that they're doing is having that immediate impact, quick wins, quick wins. So they and you know, from from a from an implementation point of view, of course, there are things you can do that can sort of change things overnight, but majority of things you're going to do are going to be a longer burn. And I think that's the tricky thing, you know, that when you're you're working with agency, is that you have to be in that position where you can say, Look, I am willing to, you know, look at this over an annual period, or at least a six month period, to see whether these implementations of happen have actually made an impact. But that's difficult, you know, it either gets with anyone, you know, whatever service that you, you know, go for whether you're talking about someone coming to build a house for you, whether you're talking about, you know, Google ads, or you doing well, whatever it might be, you always gonna have that lag in terms of the impact. But it's that difficult, I guess, relationship between agents and clients is that we are kind of asking for that time, but clients want it sooner. I don't think I'm ever going to solve that. But I think the main thing is that we're agencies, I think need to be very open up front at the start about how long things are going to take. Because I think the expectation is you know, that when when someone contacts an agency, they have a problem they want to fix now, in reality, those problems don't get fixed in a week or month.

Andy Splichal 9:48

How many things do you typically implement once given that lag? I mean, how if you're implementing a bunch of stuff, then you don't know what's driving the sale. or, or maybe something's driving it, something you've added to the site, but you've implemented three things and something's taken away, and you're getting flat. I mean, how do you? How do you get around that? Are you only implementing one thing for like a month? are you implementing numerous? I mean, how do you deal with that?

Yeah, no, it's a really good point, actually. And I think that's one there's definitely we're talking about. So if I think about a client that we're working with at the moment, so they are kind of a healthcare brand. Now with them, what we've kind of identified is that we have we look at that customers from an RFM perspective, so recency, frequency, and monetary and we essentially write them on those three numbers, and get an overall number.

But what were those I'm sorry, what were those numbers, recency, frequency,

and monetary. So essentially, how much money so how much they've spent from a cash perspective. And what we do is we score them on a rating of 1, to five. So with those numbers, we then get this RFM number. So what the RFM number is, and essentially rating, each of the customers that you have to be of a particular quality. So with each of those groups that you've got, we basically identified that this particular brand at the moment, they have a bit of a problem in the sense that the customers that have shopped with them twice, are then actually not going to then the third purchase. So it's kind of like, yeah, that's an issue we've got to solve. Because ultimately, you want to get into that third purchase and forth, and so on, so forth. So specifically, with that one, what we've done is that we've used an implementation for a net promoter score survey, at basically the end of the checkout process for that second purchase. What we then do, then got another

How do you get people to fill that out?

Now, it's interesting NPS is an interesting one, because a lot of the time people go Well, look, are people going to take a survey? Because the surveys that we're doing are only really consistent two to three questions, we actually get a 30 to 40% completion rate on those. So you know, if you're talking about, you know, a brand that is in significant sales, which, you know, most

Wow, that's pretty good. What kind of questions are you asking?

So the the one that will go out immediately after the purchase, what we are asking them about there is that how would you rate your experience on the store today? Now, what happens if the if they rate their experience lower than a two? What then happens is an additional public question that just says, was there anything in particular they think we could improve? And then there's basically a free text block there that they can just type in whatever it might be?

If they're low rate, and lower than two? Are they making their purchase?

Well, that's the interesting thing. So you will get people completing that second purchase, because what they tend to say is that look, I really like the product. But what really sucks at the moment, is the fact that I was also looking for X or the product, and it wasn't in stock. Now, you know, that's, that's an inventory problem. But you'll get a lot of comments on there, for example, about payment options. It's interesting, you know, with some brands, when you've kind of played around with kind of using Apple Pay, and Google Pay, and all those kind of things, and you're looking at transactions, and the transaction level is very low sensitive in that Apple Pay or Google Pay, you'll then start when you remove it to then see that actually, people are getting a little bit frustrated, because they want to do everything in that way. Yeah, I think it's a similar one, you know, some brands, you know, a couple of years ago, tried to move away from PayPal, it was pretty catastrophic for other brands, because there is so much trust, I guess, within PayPal, in terms of that security, that people wanted that back. So, you know, it's these little things that happen, but then the the important thing off the back of it, and it's saying, Well, look, you're always going to get someone who maybe want more bring up, you know, one thing and of course, you can't, you're not going to please everyone, but when you start seeing trends in those things that are there, you know, in terms of that quality of information you've got, you don't have to do that follow up. So, you know, for us that would be actually making a client call. If you have ever accessed a telephone number, or basically getting an email from the customer service team decided we want to find out a bit more about what the issue is and then getting them to fill in either a type form or kind of a survey to get a bit more information. So then that basically the dictates once you've done that piece I've right? What are the struggling moments here on the site? Okay. You know, we've had six people say this week, but actually the issue that they're saying is that we don't have this payment option. Let's run a B tests on that to see whether that payment option is now worthwhile. So it is a lot more work, I think involved when you can bring in that quality data, but it is very much worthwhile. But I think going back to your answer She'll question on the terms of implementation. At the same time with that, what we've also got is we've also then got AB test running on certain product pages. So as long as the tests that you are then doing are only being shown to either the correct group of customers that you're trying to test for, or is essentially totally unrelated to the brand that you've got, you can actually, you know, most moments in time we're running six or seven, what we will call research projects at a time on a site. Because typically, you know, with us, we're looking at retention. When customers coming to a site, we know who they are, because the fact is, they will have an email account with us, which we can track them through that. And then we can serve up different pages to them in different AB tests based on the different cohort that they come for. So I think it's again, this is the thing, you know, retention is that I think every brand can do it. But it absolutely works better when you're at that level, where you do have a significant amount of initial customers, because ultimately, it's going to it's you playing the numbers game,

right? Yeah, no, you got to have the data to test for sure. Now, I hear ecommerce business owners often wondering how can they compete with Amazon? And I'm curious, do you believe that providing a better customer service is one of the ways that that can be done?

I do for some brands, and and I'll go into detail on that. Now. I think the thing with Amazon is, is that ultimately, what they have hooked the word on is A. Convenience, B. speed and C. to a lesser extent is price. You know, and I think that kind of varies. So ultimately, there are going to be times when Amazon isn't able to give you the additional what you need to get that customer the line, because I think you know, with with the everyday items, you know, with your your your low basket orders, say kind of sub sort of, you know, $35-40 you know, Amazon is gonna have a pretty good go at that. But I think the problem is, is that, you know, when it comes to thinking about like trying to sort of to beat Amazon or to compete with that is it's more about when you've got that family of products. And that's certainly what we've seen is that brands who were on Amazon, who then wanted to expand into going into DTC, they were doing very well with one, essentially, Blockbuster product. The issue was, is that because people were just seeing it as like, we're buying this from Amazon, the initial thought wasn't, then actually, I want to then go and check out the other products that this particular Amazon seller has to offer. So I think, you know, if you are a brand that is look, you know, has got maybe two or three skews. Great, I think Amazon Yeah, is probably the way to go. But if you are a brand that is you know, sort of 10 skews plus, where basically all of those products are interrelated, you can only obviously do so much from a marketing point of view with Amazon. So being able to then go in and give that gives customers the experience in terms of explain to the right, when their orders coming, all that good stuff, you know, when Amazon did, but it's then those next level of product recommendations and that kind of touch of right. Okay, this is what the brand is about, this is how that product is manufactured. These are this is this story about the founders behind it.

Right, the expertise on the product that you can really get on your Amazon page as well. So

I think that that is the key. But, you know, ultimately, I think it is a tricky move that, you know, some Amazon brands have unfortunately failed at, you know, because ultimately they want their margins to be better than having to sell through a marketplace. But, you know, some things you know, just don't look, I say under that $35 mark, we found it tricky when brands have tried to do that and go completely DTC. It just doesn't make sense to them.

Now, let's talk about some of the actual clients of yours and what you're able to do for them. Let's let's hear what's what's your favorite case study you could share?

Yeah, so I think one of my favorite case there's a good share is actually a food brand in the UK that we work with called hunter and gatherer. Now with these guys, it's an interesting one, because they are essentially a condiments brand, so sauces, rubs, they also do kind of supplements as well. And what they essentially have is a very diverse customer base. They have people following a paleo diet, carnivore diet, keto, people who are just kind of curious about actually what it is, but you know, what are these products they're selling? So they were they weren't, I guess, in a tricky situation whereby they were having people come to the store who either were very knowledgeable about the particular following, but they didn't have scale. They had people that were curious. Well, I don't really know what paleo is I mean, I've heard about keto, carnivore. What's that? So you kind of in this difficult position where you're trying to tailor something to that y group of customers, and it's how do you do it. And one of the things that was pretty critical for those guys is that when people were looking at navigation, what we saw from the kind of hot jar reports and the heat mapping software was that people were genuinely literally getting stuck on the navigation, they were just sad that you could see the users were hovering and saying, Look, whether actually go, you could argue that way you can, you know, you can kind of cut it down put into categories. The one thing that worked very well for these guys was actually by under that navigation, including a button that says not sure where to start, Take our quiz. Now, what that then did is that when you clicked on that, it asked you about six questions about your lifestyle, about if you were following particular diet, your tastes and preferences in terms, you know, sweet, savory, do you like particular flavors, whatever it might be. And then as a result of that, you were then given a recommendation of three products that, essentially we thought were a great fit for you. Now, what was interesting on that is that number one, that sent through their email signup through the roof, because before, what they were doing is that they were literally having a very small slide in at the end of a bottom of the page. With this, what you were then seeing is that people were obviously giving their email address because they wanted the information. Secondly, that quiz also converted at 26%. So their conversion rate on the store was about 3.2. You then compare that with people that have completed the quiz, it's that way, that's a pretty significant difference in terms of what they do. And then finally, the other thing was, is that...

Did you see people that completed the quiz were at 26%?

Absolutely. Wow. Which you know, is and ultimately that that wasn't the key driver,

and what percentage of visitors were taking the quiz.

So in terms of the new visitors to the site, you're getting 52% of people were taking that quiz, which was incredible, because and I think that's that was the key thing as well, we only showed that to new customers. So you kind of have this situation where you know, existing customers were being given that because effectively the education piece was done. But the other side of it too, is that look, because that data is then sent back to the email platform. So in this case, it was Klaviyo. What you could then do is personalize your welcome flows and all your other emails based on information. So like Sandy, no human took it and you said, Look, I follow paleo. I like garlic. I like spicy. Your welcome email, but you got will be different to mine in the sense that I will be giving you five tips of how to follow a paleo lifestyle. If it was me, and I was saying carnivore, I would have a different piece of content in there. Equally, the products I'm recommending to you in that welcome email, are gonna be different to mine. So it's not that sort of, you know, I guess kind of personalization, people get a bit creeped out by it. For me what personalization means is you're giving something to that customer, which feels like your brand is speaking directly to them.

Yeah, it's variable to segment that way. Absolutely. No, you mentioned hot jar, I guess I'm kind of curious, what is a piece of actionable advice that you could give listeners to improve their customer service? Would it be measuring with something like hot jar? Or would you start somewhere else?

My, my honest feeling is and I think this is this is, you know, looking at from any any size brand, I would say go out there and look at your your customers, and just get your list of your top 20 customers in the past 90 days. So what I mean by that is basically just looking at from monetary point of view, who has bought the most of us in the past 90 days, take those 20 customers and then do one of two things. One is email those customers and say, Hey, we, as one of our valued customers, we love to get you on a call and talk about your experience with shopping with us. In exchange for this, we'd like to give you a $50 gift card for your time. That's one option. The other option is you can do it. It's kind of an automated survey. So if you think about that, that's $1,000 that you would you essentially have to spend but the level of information you are going to get from those 20 customers is going to be phenomenal.

And what are you going to ask them

it's got to you know, ultimately, everything that we're doing and he can't we are we are essentially looking at people's reactions to things that we do on site. So if we just sit down and ask them that's great way to be and it doesn't you know, in some cases, but when you built a very strong community, maybe you're kind of a your your brand that isn't at that level where maybe you want to do that brands with kind of a strong social media presence. A lot of the time customers, because they're kind of fanatical about the brand will want to get on that call anyone feel like they've kind of got a piece of the action, being able to, you know, essentially kind of dictate where that brand is going. So, I just felt like that, you know, we we do something called a jobs to be done survey with quite a few of our clients. And what we essentially do is have hour long meetings with some of their key customers. Now, that's obviously more expensive to do more time more time consuming. But even if you can get those 30 minute slots in there, just the level of information, you know, just little things like for example, you know, when people give an answer, hearing their tonality and their voice makes you realize the importance of that particular thing. And, you know, those are the kinds of things that unfortunately, sometimes brands do miss out on.

Yeah, no, that is that's some great advice. Now, if you had a crystal ball, where would you see the importance of providing a great customer experience going over the next 12 to 18 months?

Yeah, I mean, for me, the reason it's going to be so important next 1218 months, because it doesn't really matter, you know, where you're on the world, the economy isn't great now. For me, as someone living in the UK, right now, inflation, very high cost of living is very expensive. There is a situation, you know, where people are making, you know, questions about the purchases that they are going to have. So ultimately, you know, and I think it's, you know, if we can learn anything from kind of the COVID period, is that yes, you know, while online shopping went up, there was a lot of loyalty to existing brands that people were shopping with, because of the fact that we were looking for that, I guess, kind of sense of normality, and that sense of reliability that no one really had in their lives. So if you think about the recession, you're going to be in a similar time where there is going to be uncertainty, if you've got that brand that consistently does deliver on time, good quality products, good customer service, then ultimately, those are the brands that are going to win, you know, in a time when people are questioning their purchases more. They are the ones that brands or the customers are going to look to to say what actually yes, we need to be in that position where we are giving more in terms of what people get from the experience of buying the product isn't going to be reliable in terms of getting it rather than just kind of saying, Oh, well, actually, we'll go out there and we'll find any new brand that happens come along, we might get tagged on Facebook. I just think that's the reason why Now it's important to start making these moves to build those relationships that will your customers to get those ongoing purchases.

Now let me ask you personally, one of my favorite questions, I asked every podcast guest, but are there any business books out there that you can attribute to your journey as an entrepreneur?

Absolutely, I'm a huge fan of Mike Michalowikz, I've had the pleasure of interviewing me a couple of times. But the two books that he's written that I would say that have definitely contributed. One is called the Pumpkin Plan, which I would highly recommend any entrepreneur to read. Reason being is that it actually makes you I would say a lot more critical about how you actually plan out your business and make you realize that actually, in situations, you are going to have multiple ideas in terms of the way your business is going to look. But sometimes you just need to kill certain things off to be able to focus on the core things that are growing. And that essentially is the principle of the book is that, you know, pumpkin planners, what they will essentially do is kill off the weaker looking pumpkins to make sure that the ones that are looking better grow into those bigger prize winning pumpkins. So that's definitely one. And I think, you know, a lot of people talk about this book, but for me, the the absolute core one that made me really start the business was Tim Ferriss, Four hour workweek. Now, I am nowhere near that four hour workweek. But I think you know what, what that book definitely did do is teach me a lot about efficiency. And in terms of how you spend your time, and how you structure your time, and really not, not dwelling on things that don't need to be dwelled upon. So for me, those are two very, very important books to me.

Now, let's switch gears again and talk about your company Blend Commerce. What verticals do you specialize in working with and how are you different from the competitors?

Yeah, so from us from a vertical perspective, there's kind of four key areas for us. One is pets. So in terms of pet food, pet accessories, the second one that we do a lot with is food. Thirdly, fast moving consumer goods. And then finally the other one that we do quite a lot in is kind of health and wellness as well.

What's an example of a fast moving consumer goods?

Adam Pearce

So fast moving consumer goods. So we might be talking about, you know, phone cases, we might be talking about, you know, lower cost fashion, we might be talking about cooler cups, like a Yeti, kind of brand, that sort of thing. So, basically just kind of, I guess, lower value, you know, purchases of general goods, essentially, you know, we, we don't really kind of play really kind of in the kind of the upper end apparel game. And the reason is, because in terms of those, those verticals that I mentioned, they are a lot more prime for gaining a really a kind of a customer base that is repeatable. So we do a lot with kind of brands that have subscriptions, we do a lot with brands that are really looking to get to that fifth, sixth, seventh purchase down the line. So for us, we want to focus on those because Secondly, with those verticals well is, there is a lot that you can get essentially steal from each one. So you know, the strategies that work with a pet fruit brand, in terms of retention, also work very well with food, equally, can also work very well health and wellness. So it's kind of saying fresh, you know, look, it keeps us fresh in the sense that we don't operate in one vertical. I think that the difference for us is, you know, remaster with competitors is that we really, you know, are only into retention space. We don't do anything with acquisition, we know that it's important that we, you know, we, we guide our customers towards our partner agencies who can help them with, you know, their Facebook ads or Google ads. But ultimately, when a brand comes to us to say, look, well, actually, you know, we're struggling with getting people to the site. Unfortunately, that's not what for us. We are, you know, 100% about saying, Look, if you have a solid customer base already, but you feel that they're not spending enough, or you know, they're not spending enough, where the agency to help?

Andy Splichal

And do you work only with Shopify stores? Or is there any other website platforms that you'll work with?

Adam Pearce

Yeah, so we, in terms of design and development, we only we only work with Shopify and Shopify Plus stores. Having said that, though, one thing that, you know, we've done over the past, I would say 18 months is been very much more switched on to the marketplaces. Quite a number of our clients now are also operating on Amazon, on Walmart on eBay.

Andy Splichal

So you're, you're helping them optimize their product listings on the marketplaces as well.

Adam Pearce

Absolutely, yeah. Because the thing is, it's also I guess, the interplay between each of those. And obviously, customers are smart, you know, they, they look at the different marketplaces, they look at the sites, you know, the direct DTC side of things, and, you know, they're looking for a good deal, the best service, so you have to make sure that what you're doing is kind of aligned across those. So that I think that's, you know, it's a tricky thing to have to do. But you know, it's something that we, we have to do with our clients now. Because ultimately, each one of those different channels is important to them.

Andy Splichal

And how does your fee structure work?

Adam Pearce

Yeah, so our fee structure, the way that we work is that we, when a client comes to work with us, we will have a twelvemonth agreement in place. what will then happen is that in the discovery phase, essentially, we're looking at the data and we're going to say, right, we believe that we can get you from this LTV number to this LTV number in 12 months, if we do these things at this speed, now, what that will mean that is that there will be a monthly fee, that we will then be paid by the client. Now what the client can then say is, well, actually, look, guys, we can't afford to be at that budget, but we can afford to be at this level. Now if that's the case, we can say some more Look, that's fine. Ultimately, the things that we're going to do, we're still going to do what we do on a slower pace. Equally, some brands will say, well, actually that we want to go faster on there quicker, no problem, we can do that. But we just need to increase the budget each month, so that we can get that number quicker. And that's really the way we work it ultimately, every client that comes to us, we are kind of saying, Look, you know, in an ideal scenario, we need to do these things against that number. And it's purely down about choosing the budget level, from their perspective about how fast or slow they want to get that

Andy Splichal

Are customers hesitant with that annual contract?

Adam Pearce

If I'm honest with you, it's something that we you know, we toss and turn with for quite a while about and, you know, the majority of customers, what they like about it is the fact that we because we are looking at the annual number, they can actually do one of two things here. One is that they can sort of amortize that over the year and they can look at that against their overall budgets. But secondly, it also gives them an opportunity to say well, hey look, if ultimately we are going towards that number, then everything that these guys was due must be contributing towards growth that number. So makes it very clear from now in terms of where we're going to get to. So I think the key thing is it's, and I think this is what agencies are very bad at doing is basically saying, look, here's where we're going to get you to, but you need to give us that time and that trust to be able to get there. But we are also going to communicate with you how we are going to be how well we are doing towards the overall number. But you know, I think the monthly, you know, month to month kind of contracts, and we've done that in the past. The tricky thing I think there is, you know, is that from a resourcing point of view and agency, if you have the ability to leave, you know, essentially end of each month, that's very difficult to build up a team with because, you know, as as you get that flux, it's hard to manage, you know, the cash flow agency, but the other side of it is you need do you look at something where it's more of kind of a three month contract. And I think on the email marketing side, that's something that we still do. But again, you know, it still gives you a little bit more time to say, well, actually, right, set an expiration expectation to the client from the outset. This is the length of time as a minimum, we need to be able to show something that's going to come through to you that's going to be contrary to your bottom line. So I think it sets expectation, right. And I think, you know, clients do generally get that.

Andy Splichal

And how can an interested listener learn more about working with you?

Adam Pearce

Yeah, fantastic. So I am very active on LinkedIn. So Adam Pearce. We also obviously have our website blendcommerce.com. We've got a great newsletter that we put out each week, which is basically all the news and updates about Shopify, and the various things that are going on with Shopify partners as well.

Andy Splichal

Well, this has been great. Is there anything else you would like to add before we wrap it up today?

Adam Pearce

No, that's great. Andy, just very, very much. Thank you for having me on. And it's been a pleasure to be with you.

Andy Splichal

Well, thanks for joining us again. Now, for listeners. If you'd liked this episode, please go to Apple podcasts and leave us an honest review. And if you're looking for more information regarding Adam or his agency blend commerce, you'll find the links in the show notes below. In addition, if you're looking for more information on growing your business, check out our all new podcasts Resource Center available at makeeachclickcount.com. We have compiled all our different past guests by show topic and include each of their contact information, in case you would like more information on any of the services I've discussed during previous episodes. That's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing and I will talk to you in the next episode.