Moving Brands into the 21st Century with Jordan Gal from Carthook

Kristen: 

Hey Jordan welcome to the show. So excited to have you on today. You and I have talked a bunch on Twitter. We've met in person a couple of times. We've done a bunch of training side-by-side together. We've never done any sort of interview content together, and I am super stoked about it.

Jordan: 

What's up, Kristen. It's good to talk with you, and this is a new format for our relationship, so we'll see how this one goes.

Kristen: 

Yes, we'll see how our relationship pans out on the podcast media.

Jordan: 

Yes.

Kristen: 

Can we do it, listeners? Can we do it?

Jordan: 

No promises.

Kristen: 

Just to start, can you tell us a little bit about CartHook? Kind of the story behind CartHook? I know you have a pretty interesting story we can dive into as well, but just to start off with, what is CartHook and what are you guys doing?

Jordan: 

Sure. I'm Jordan. I am the founder and CEO at CartHook. And the way we think about what we're doing is we are expanding the canvas on which a brand can operate. So, what everyone understands these days is that every touchpoint matters. Every email, every ad, every landing page, it all matters. And brands are doing a good job on their advertising creative, on their site itself, these different landing pages, product pages, emails, and what we allow brands to do is expand that canvas into the checkout all the way through to the Thank You page. So we're giving them more control over the branding, the design, the messaging, and some marketing strategies like post-purchase upsells, all around a customizable checkout process with post-purchase upsells.

Kristen: 

See, the crazy thing to me is that we talk about... I mean, what you laid out is basically my motto with retention all around, that it's this idea that every touchpoint needs to be amazing. It's sometimes shocking to hear. I was watching a talk of yours earlier this morning and seeing how the checkout experience, you think it would be really optimized in e-commerce. We talk about conversion rates and how people come in all the time. You'd think there'd be already this big focus on making the checkout experience really, really customized and tailored to the journey, but it's not really always the case though, is it?

Jordan: 

The difficulty comes in from a tech point of view, because e-commerce platforms, including Shopify that we work on, that's really the point where things get more complicated for them. So you think about Shopify, they have liquid, and they have front end templates, and there's a whole universe of themes and design, and there's starting to be some head lists, that's the front end. And then there's the backend, the app integrations and what's happening under the hood between order management and inventory management and so on. But right where it comes together, right in the middle is the actual checkout. And that's where platforms are very hesitant to give too much control over to the merchant because they really need that checkout to be very consistent and reliable.

Jordan: 

And so what you have in Shopify is an extremely consistent and extremely reliable checkout. They've done a phenomenal job of that. It's just that some brands that are getting to the point where they do have to care about every touchpoint, we want to enable them to have more control over that checkout process and post-purchase upselling and that's where we come in. We don't really see it as the fault of the platforms. It's like that throughout. WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, everything is pretty custom and then it becomes less and less custom when you get to that checkout process.

Kristen: 

It's funny because this is something that I have encountered multiple times that actually really bothers me. I've just never really said anything about it. And then watching your talk this morning, I was like, "Oh, that's exactly it!" The idea of scrolling through social media, and this has happened to me almost every time I swipe up on an Instagram ad, I get an ad, I'm a marketer, I know what's happening here. And so I'm already someone that's kind of difficult to get to swipe on an ad, but then sometimes something comes up and I'm like, "Ooh, that's interesting." And you swipe up from an image of say a T-shirt, and then you land on some home page where you can't find the product that you just swiped on and it's super frustrating. And I feel like that happens all the time. So I think that there's a piece of this that is, also from the advertising to what you're landing on, is it actually specific to what the advertisement was?

Jordan: 

Yes. And I think you are referring to my talk at Recharge's event back in, maybe last year in LA. And in that talk, I talked specifically about a feature that we have that we're pretty convinced is a big innovation and an inevitability, but we haven't cracked through yet. The concept hasn't cracked through yet. And to be more specific, what you're referring to is that initial experience after clicking on an ad. So we think that there's a huge lack of congruency between the advertising and the actual experience of what you first land on. And we talk about it as a... If you have all these sources of traffic, you have YouTube, you have Instagram, you have Facebook, you have retargeting of all these different possible places that people are seeing ads. When right now what's happening, all those sources are all going to the same place. They're either going to the product page, category page, or worst of all, homepage. And I don't think that lasts. That doesn't make sense. At some point, the tech gets good enough that it is easy enough for the brand to match up the audience with the experience.

Jordan: 

We're about to come out with a case study with 310 Nutrition, which is a great merchant that uses CartHook, and they've been extremely successful with this feature called Product Funnels. Even the name of it we haven't quite figured out. We call it a product funnel because it's really based on one product. But what they're able to do is, when they do a promotion with one specific influencer, that influencer story has a link and that link is unique to them. And because it's unique to them, they can tailor the experience specifically for that audience. So, they know for sure, here's the influencer, here's what they're saying. When you click on it, you go to a landing page that is not attached to your store at all. It's completely your own landing page. You can do whatever you want with it. But the important thing to do is to match it up with that influencer.

Jordan: 

And so they can have a video or images of the influencer directly on that first experience. So it's congruent. You see an influencer, you click on the link. You see the same influencer, you see the same person, all the messaging is the same and then it carries throughout. The checkout page is specific to that funnel. So you can have a testimonial from that influencer on the checkout page and you can do that because you know the only people that are seeing this checkout page are the people that came from that traffic source. Then you can match up the post-purchase upsells with that, as well as the Thank You page. So that type of experience we see as inevitable. It's just that it's not there yet so we're trying to usher that in.

Kristen: 

Yeah, it's funny because I'm a digital marketer at heart. It's where I started. I even started really in B2B digital marketing in the SAS tech space. And this idea is actually not new. It's the basics I think of digital marketing is that you have an ad that goes to a specific landing page that responds to that ad, that then funnels them into a very specific journey based on how they came in. Why do you think that this is not happening in e-commerce? Why is this new in e-commerce when you and I who have this marketing background are like, "Well, it's not really that new."

Jordan: 

It's not new. It's the same way, if CartHook was going to run a webinar, we wouldn't send it to a page on our site that has a section about the webinar. We would send it to a dedicated landing page that the only thing the page talked about was the benefits that you can derive by joining this webinar. And you restrict the option set and it's really, do you want to sign up for the webinar, or you can hit the back button. But these are basics of conversion optimization, at least in digital marketing.

Jordan: 

I think the biggest restriction, it's not like an intellectual one. It's not like physical product marketers know any less, but it's technical. Because right now everything needs to filter through the same checkout. An e-commerce store has one checkout and you need to get people there. And so to run this version of things where there are these individual funnels for each individual campaign, it's not that practical.

Jordan: 

So first of all, there have been new tools that have come out on the landing page side. One of the products I considered building instead of CartHook was a landing page service for physical products, because it doesn't really list. You go to Instapages, Unbounce, Leadpages, it's not about selling physical products. So companies like Shogun have moved that forward. That's been good. What we're trying to do is say, conceptually, it's new to think that you can have hundreds of different checkouts for the same e-commerce store. So that's something that we've had trouble getting through people's heads because it's a foreign concept. Right now it's "Okay, cool. I'm using a landing page," but it still needs to go through the same checkout. The way our software works is you can have hundreds of different checkouts and it all still goes into the backend of your Shopify store. And so that concept is new. It's like a hub and spoke, what we think about it.

Kristen: 

Yeah. That's the image that my brain... I am doodling and taking notes as you're talking. And that's the image that I drew, was kind of this circle hub of your store, but then the spokes that are branching out in different ways, people can get to it. Having that hub of a homepage, but then different experiences branching out on it.

Jordan: 

Yeah. The hub I really think of as the site. The hub doesn't go away. You need the hub for SEO, organic traffic, returning customers, PR, wherever the links are coming from. But if you're paying for traffic, you should control the experience.

Kristen: 

Yes, absolutely.

Jordan: 

And that's where the spoke comes in. Yeah, but we've jumped way ahead here.

Kristen: 

We did. We jumped all the way forward. We're going to keep going. We'll circle back around. We'll have a nice, magical flow of conversation. I'll find a way to segue. I will.

Jordan: 

Well, look, the people listening, they're quick. We don't need to give that much background.

Kristen: 

Yeah, yeah. They're quick. We got smart listeners. Something that I'm thinking about while you're talking about this, is actually another conversation that I had recently with Taylor Holiday on the whole LTV to CAC ratio thing. And the idea that you can start to analyze when you're advertising, which products, which channels, which promotions actually bring in the highest repeat purchase rate. And I'm thinking about this and then combining it with what we're talking about here. If you're thinking about trying to start managing your ads with this LTV in mind as I suggest e-commerce brands do, then being able to also have those ads going to targeted landing pages and targeted checkouts, you're getting much cleaner data and you can really see these are the customer experiences per this product or per this channel. And then that gives you the ability I think, to really hone in on those touchpoints that we talked about. When you have much more mapped-out journeys and specific customized journeys for customers, I think it makes the whole idea of mapping out touchpoints and then improving them a lot simpler because it doesn't feel so chaotic.

Jordan: 

Yes. Your initial purchases, you have very definitive evidence of where they're coming from. One of the things we didn't expect people to be attracted to when it comes to this product funnel feature, is attribution. And so influencers are just used to a very large percentage of the traffic and sales that they're driving are just being lost and not being attributed back to them. And this changes that because they can say with certainty, 100% of the sales through this channel are mine because I'm the only one that has this link. So that's the flip side of the brand, being able to identify, we know exactly where this purchase came from and how long they've stuck around, and we know exactly where it originated.

Kristen: 

Yeah. So a quote of yours that you submitted in when we were talking and trying to plan out this conversation was, "Customer acquisition as the beginning of a brand's relationship." And I love this. Can you hash out that idea a little bit for us?

Jordan: 

Sure. So I want to take a step back in explaining it but I'll get there. Over the past three years, our company and our product has gone through a similar arc that we believe direct-to-consumer brands are on, where we used to focus on the transactional nature of what we're doing. We used to talk about increase your revenue, increase your AOV, get a better conversion rate. And now what we're talking about is, start off the relationship the right way, provide amazing customer experiences that are memorable and without friction, and that will lead to better relationships, that leads to better LTV and better revenue and better AOV. And I think what's happening to direct-to-consumer overall where it used to be, hey, how do we take this money we just raised and nail our return on ad spend to the point where we can then raise the next round because we can show whenever we push X amount of money, we get 2X back. That's not really it now. The evolution has gone toward the brand itself and the relationships with the brand, and how much love are you generating.

Jordan: 

And your ads are almost a bit dangerous. Your paid traffic and your paid marketing can have a negative impact on the brand. So now there's much more balance. So that's what I mean. When I said customer acquisition as the beginning of a brand's relationship, what we think of and what the best direct-to-consumer companies that we work with think of is, we're not trying to maximize how much we can get from this person on the first purchase. That's not it. It's how would we bring them into the relationship with our brand in the right way, so that over time that LTV is maximized. But the way to do that now is by treating people the right way, by giving them offers that make sense for them. It's not by convincing them to buy stuff.

Kristen: 

Yeah. You're basically preaching my gospel back to me so I'm just sitting here smiling and sweating out of excitement because that's what I do. But then, just hearing these words coming back, because this is really everything that, (1) this podcast pitches, (2) Churn Buster, we pitch. And we had a very similar experience at Churn Buster, I think that you guys did at CartHook is kind of following this arc where we used to talk really strictly about the revenue we recovered. And now we're switching to talking a lot more about the experience that we're giving our customer's customer, not because we're recovering any less revenue, but because that's really not going to be the number that makes or breaks. You're not going to be able to look at some recovery percentage and say, "Okay, if I increase it 0.5%, X is going to happen here down the line." It's much more complicated because there's so much more of an investment from customers on branding and they want to really feel these longterm relationships.

Kristen: 

So our big motto is really customers come before metrics. And I heard that in what you were saying, that if you're starting relationships, if you're focusing on the longterm, if you're focusing on value, then it's going to lead to those better results that you're looking for. Your LTV is going to go up, your conversion rates are going to go up. All these things that are very transactional that I think we used to chase, are now just chasing the experience of the customers.

Jordan: 

Right. They're thinking longer term. The experience we had was, in moving up-market, so from working with dropshippers who were really focused on maximizing the initial order, and then starting to work with brands like Native Deodorant, that thought much more about the brand. And it's not about maximizing, it's about a balance between acquisition and retention and relationship and just maximization. I personally had a powerful experience with it where, before CartHook, I ran my own e-commerce company and we sold products that were mostly dropshipped, and we had some inventory, but they were really one time purchases. And there was no subscription, there was no retention. And it did well for awhile, but as we went faster and faster on the treadmill, as we got from 10K a month, to 20 to 50 to 75 and so on, it started to dawn on us, this treadmill is, we're just increasing the speed on the treadmill. And we didn't like what we saw because we didn't go into it thinking about the longer term relationship.

Jordan: 

So a year in, we had a successful first year, but we looked around and said, "If we don't just pump the same amount of advertising in, we don't really have anything." And that's when it dawned on me we need to sell this business and move on. And that's really what brought me into software because it has that retention built into the business model. And it is pretty interesting to have the same exact experience with the software product itself. But that's, you know, here we are.

Kristen: 

Yeah. It just becomes, I think when you're only focused on acquisition in that way and how the industry has been, it's obviously changing to what we're talking about now. But when you're in that zone it becomes very wake up, hustle and grind, go to bed and do it all again. Because you don't have something that's just feeding the machine constantly, versus when you're really focusing on a brand and having the balance between, yes, you still need to drive sales, you still need to have profitable first purchases when you can. But at the same time, are you actually creating something deeper that then those customers are going to have such a good experience that they're going to come back to you without you having to spend that exact same amount of money again?

Jordan: 

Right. It does get you focused on optimizing the right thing, which isn't just your ads and your initial purchases, but it's really the happiness of your customers. Like, how good is your product at satisfying what they're looking for? And that's the right thing to focus on if you want to build a business for the long term.

Kristen: 

Yes. It sounds really simple. It really does.

Jordan: 

Look, all these things, and we're all guilty of it, I know I certainly am, it is difficult to prioritize the longterm. It just is.

Kristen: 

It is, because it does feel a little bit scary sometimes too. I think to take a step back and do something that the results aren't going to come as quickly as we're really used to, especially for very data-heavy companies who make decisions on quick data and results like that. It's a little bit scary to think of the longer process and taking a step back. But basically, what you're saying here is that acquisition and retention go hand in hand, which, hmm, listeners, it's like someone has been saying this for awhile. I think you've heard this before. So for our listeners who are thinking about this, oh, we already dug into one really good tactic, which is really the landing page and the checkout experience based on source, are there any other tactics you can give for companies starting to think about this, how they can start to think about retention all the way back at acquisition?

Jordan: 

Sure. So our main thing, the thing that we're known for and why people really use the product is post-purchase upsells. And we see that as a perfect crossroads of acquisition and retention. So what's happened in this case is the shopper has come to your store, they've added something to the cart, they've gone to the checkout, they filled in the form, they put in their credit card information or they used PayPal, Apple Pay, whatever, and then they hit buy. So right then you have acquisition. You have a purchase. And so that is the beginning of the relationship. That's like, all right, now they're in. Whether it's the first time they bought a product or not, things have started. And so what we allow merchants to do is make additional offers based on what was just purchased in the checkout. And so instead of just going from the checkout page to the Thank You page, we allow the merchant to insert additional offer pages called post-purchase upsells, in between the checkout page and the Thank You page.

Jordan: 

Now, there are two main advantages here. The first advantage is practical. Meaning, we have the payment information from the checkout page, and therefore the shopper does not need to reenter their payment info in order to accept the upsell. So it's real easy to accept. The other thing is just as important. It's almost like that feature is for acquisition and the other feature is for retention. The other feature is to allow you to make an offer that's based on what they just purchased. And so that's when you can start using your head, you can start thinking, "Okay, how do I want to give a great experience to the shopper?"

Jordan: 

So an example would be, you come in and buy some bone broth from Kettle & Fire, they're one of our customers. And on the upsell, they offer them a subscription with a discount. So you take an initial acquisition and you're saying hey, you just hit the ultimate high point of your interaction with us. You have decided to buy, you've put your payment information in and you just hit buy, the most exciting part of the whole thing. And so right then, that's a pretty opportune time to make an offer that is genuinely unique, something that they could not find on the site otherwise, but now you're really rewarding them. You're not trying to maximize what you're getting from them, you're trying to reward them for making that initial decision.

Kristen: 

Ah yeah. I really, I love that.

Jordan: 

Yes. In that way, we've seen other brands that do not normally discount, discounting is its own topic. It's dangerous. But they make discount offers on the upsell because they're not public. It's like a little secret, it's just for you because you actually came through and decided to buy with us. And so it all matters. The experience matters, the congruency, what you're actually offering. For example, if you go to Native Deodorants website and let's say, it's me and I'm going there, I go to the men's deodorant and I pick eucalyptus. So I'm buying the men's eucalyptus deodorant. What you'll see on the upsell. What I'll see on the upsell after I purchased, will be a travel-size version of the eucalyptus men's deodorant. And everybody wants that. And that makes sense for me. Now you haven't, you've done both at the same time. Yes, you're maximizing your AOV, but you're also giving me something that's actually valuable to me. And that's the ideal and that's why Native does so well with our software. Because they align those two between a little bit of cynicism on, "Hey, let's capture more revenue," but much moreso, "Hey, what is this person actually going to find useful? How do we give them a great price?" and it feels like a reward.

Kristen: 

Yeah. It's so funny you bring up Native because I was just sitting here trying to figure out, I know this has happened to me twice in the last two weeks or so. And I was trying to think of like, oh, what brand was it? And it was Native just last Friday. I actually did that exact experience. I bought a deodorant and I got that upsell. And it was, I don't know, 3, $5 or something to add the trial size. And it was an absolute, no-brainer even for somebody like me who is constantly looking out for things to be wonky or weird or taking advantage. I have the marketer's brain. And I added it, I went on about my day before even realizing, I think it was 30 minutes later I was like, "Oh, that was a successful upsell. That just happened."

Kristen: 

That also happened to me with a makeup brand I just bought from, I bought their foundation and it was... I checked out and then I got the upsell pop-up right away for a concealer, and of course I bought it. And to me it was, really, when you get as a consumer from the consumer standpoint, when you get to the point of all the way that I've put my credit card in, I've made the decision to buy it, I've hit buy, the money is gone from my account. It's out there. I've made the decision that this is a brand I want to try, I'm much more likely to just add something to that cost that's already left my wallet than I am to go back again to a brand. It's just such a clever psychological hack too that, when a consumer is in there and has made a purchase decision, you're still getting them while they're in that purchase window and that psychological state of, "Ooh, I'm spending money."

Jordan: 

Yes. And maybe a year ago, as we started working with larger and larger brands, they were worried about this. They said, "Well, it's not going to feel right. I don't want to do that to my customers if it doesn't make them feel good." And that's really when we moved along with the brands that we work with on look, what's the right way to do this? And that's just true for all of these different touchpoints. You can bomb people out with email, but it's not going to work out for you. I think I saw one of your tweet threads about a bad experience with email. It's the same thing. It's not about the tool, it's about the mindset that goes through that tool.

Kristen: 

Yeah, absolutely. And I just think it's so... This is why I'm so excited to dig into this stuff with you, because to me it makes so much sense. And if you are using it in a way that's beneficial for your customers, there's so much that you can offer them. And then, I mean, we could go into discounts. I could rant on discounts for hours, but I'll just touch on it quickly. Damien Soong from earlier in this season, he talked about that they only use discounts for their existing customers. They only use discounts to drive loyalty, to reward loyalty. And being able to use discounts in this way that you can still get that kind of perk of giving your customers a discount, but you're only doing it, and I like the way you put it, they are rewarding people for purchasing rather than incentivizing them to purchase-

Jordan: 

Yep. That's right.

Kristen: 

... which builds a lot longer of relationships. I'm curious as to your thoughts on SMS. Do you see any role with SMS here, or do you think that this side of the world or this side of the experience should be separate from SMS?

Jordan: 

No, it's all linked in. We have SMS integrations for either abandoned cart or for marketing flows after the purchase. So we work with Postscript and SMSBump and a few others. And LiveRecover. A tool like LiveRecover we love because it really goes along with our approach. So someone abandons a cart and you're not automating the outreach for the abandoned cart, you have actual people that are answering the texts. And I think that's a perfect segue into my thoughts on SMS overall, is that it's high stakes, high risk high reward, because you are cutting right through. 100% of my texts are read. It's a joke what my email is compared to.

Kristen: 

Yep. Same.

Jordan: 

Right. And so it's low risk and low reward over email. If I don't like what you're sending me, I just ignore it. It doesn't cost me anything. But if you send me something really good, it's really likely to get lost in the shuffle. So SMS I see as incredibly valuable, and at the same time dangerous. If you treat me poorly over SMS, I'm going to have a very emotional reaction to your brand, negatively.

Kristen: 

Very strong.

Jordan: 

Right. But if you do it the right way, then it's a much stronger bond and closer connection. So I think it's just high risk high reward. I think it has a place. I don't think it's going away. I think if it gets a bit overwhelming there might be some additional regulation that starts to happen just because it's... If I get a text at six in the morning I'm checking it. I'm making sure, you know... Yes. So I see... I love being on Nik Sharma's list, using community. Have you used that app? That is such a great experience. And so I feel like Nik texted me yesterday to tell me about the brand that he launched. And I just texted him back. I'm like, "Congrats on the launch." And that's such a close relationship, even though it was initially one to many, and then it immediately becomes one-to-one. And so I would look at it as another touchpoint that you have to treat people the right way. If you're looking at it like a bot system that automates revenue generation for you, I don't think it's going to work out for you.

Kristen: 

Yeah. It's definitely, and that's my stance too, is that the high stakes high reward and the idea that... Customers are... There's all these numbers, SMS has a 99% open rate, blah, blah, blah. Like we're saying, there's not an unread text message on my phone when I go to bed. It bothers me to no end if I have unread text messages. And so that's great, except for, what brands have done in the past with SMS hasn't always been the best experience, I don't think. And so there is already, combine that with the experience we've all had in the inbox, there is also on top of the dangers and the penalties you can come into, there's also a lot of consumer weariness about it. Consumers are going, "I don't want brands to be texting me. You're already all up in my inbox. Don't text me as well."

Jordan: 

That's right. So if you're going to go into it, it's not an afterthought. It has to be front and center in your mind because you have to remember the experience you're putting people through constantly, if it's part of your marketing. I think of it in a similar way, you know how some direct consumer brands are subscription only?

Kristen:

Yeah.

Jordan: 

Let's say Roman, for male, whatever. You can't just buy a one-off product from them, I don't think. Or at least you weren't able to when they first launched. It was a subscription, you're just getting a subscription or nothing. And that's almost like a very enviable position to be in. So I think the same way where, is it Dirty Lemon? Was that the text-based launch?

Kristen: 

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jordan: 

Right. So it's a very enviable position. If that's the relationship you have with all of your customers, that is amazing, but you really need to focus on it.

Kristen: 

Yeah. And I think it really does, you kind of touched on it. But the idea that when you're going to launch something from checkout experiences, like we were talking about earlier, to SMS, really coming back to the idea of what's the best experience for your specific customers? Maybe certain things that will work for Sammy undies isn't going to work for your kind of brand because the people you're talking to are different. So I think the biggest takeaway from this whole episode is, with all these things you can do, making sure that the touchpoints are actually really valuable and respecting your specific customers.

Jordan: 

Yep. That's right. That's right. So we happen to be in that checkout arena. And we're looking at all of these touchpoints that we have control over in the same way as we think brands are looking at all of their touchpoints. So when I look at a Thank You page, that's not a receipt. That is the first goodbye in your relationship. The first time you're saying goodbye. And if you want to meet again, how do you say goodbye? With a receipt? No. If it's a store experience, you want to walk out of there feeling great and saying goodbye, and we'd love to see you and come back again, and whatever that same feeling is that really needs to be translated online as well. So Thank You pages aren't afterthoughts. It's a touchpoint. I look at it as the first goodbye.

Jordan: 

So if it's the first goodbye in my brand, I'm maybe putting a video or something funny. I'm trying to think of the brand that has an amazing, I think it's a software company actually, they have an amazing Thank You page. Oh, do you know what it is? I can't remember, but it's like, after you order on the Thank You page, it shows you a video of the company. And they're sitting around the office and then they hear the ding, the sale happen, and they all jump into action and start running around and they put it in the mail. And that's the right approach.

Kristen: 

Yeah. Yeah. It's really, also, I just have to reiterate the first goodbye of your brand. That was just such a beautiful statement. And I love it. That's for sure the pull quote of this episode.

Jordan: 

Cool.

Kristen: 

I loved that. So just wrapping up, I've got three more questions for you. First, what do you see coming up in the DT space? What are you most excited for in the evolution of DTC?

Jordan: 

I don't think it's going anywhere. I think it will continue to grow at an accelerated pace. Speaking of Nik Sharma, you saw what he just launched yesterday, home-prep emergency kits. These niches are endless. It's all of these experiences. So I am looking forward to effectively upgrades throughout my life and other people's lives of these different things that we buy. And I like that. That's exciting. So I look at-

Kristen: 

That is exciting, yeah.

Jordan: 

Everything I buy on a regular basis I kind of want to have a connection to, and what they're about and what they support and so on. The thing I am concerned about is, there's a playbook these days. It's from the branding and the design and who you work with and how you launch and how you raise money, and which charities you give to. And there's like a stack. It's like here are the eight things, check them off. I think as that starts to get worn out, I think consumers will start to look at that more suspiciously and brands will have to do more soul searching on what is their authentic approach, as opposed to just like, all right, here's how we do the branding and here's who we work with and here are the investors and here's how we launch with everyone talking about it. And here's the charity that we give 1% to. People are going to start to see through that.

Kristen: 

Yeah. It becomes, patterns are really easy to start to notice. I have two thoughts on what you just said. One kind of on the opportunities, on things just upgrading throughout your life. I think this is also a little bit of a curse that you get when you start to work in the DTC space and you get to work with all these cool brands. I noticed myself walking around my house and this morning I put my incense on that I bought from Amazon and the first thought I had was, "Man, do you think there's an incense brand out there that I could buy from instead?" And you walk around and there's every little thing I touch I'm like, "Oh, that'd be a cool DTC right brand." It's so exciting to think that all these things that we live with and buy ultimately could be things that we actually really care about and brands that we connect with. That to me is super exciting as well.

Kristen: 

On the flip side, your concern of there being a playbook, it's funny, I just read an article this morning that was talking about this a little bit. And it was talking about the idea that brands are going to really have to start being authentically different, because millennials especially were starting to catch onto the DTC playbook. And they were saying the sans-serif font, the Pantone color, the Instagram ads all over the place, the user-generated content, the influencer outreach, these are things that at some point, and it's starting to happen, that millennials especially, and then Gen Z is just going to pick up on this even harder, is like ah, you're not really doing anything authentically different here. You're doing what the last unicorn did and it's not really exciting anymore.

Jordan: 

Yeah. I think there's a natural cycle to that. And the exciting part is just waiting and watching to find these innovations that happen. Look, a few years ago, Dollar Shave Club, a genuine innovation. At least in the approach. I mean, it's just razors, sure, but the approach was innovative. Now it's Glossier, good luck replicating that. You can't do that.

Kristen:

Yeah. You can't steal their playbook.

Jordan: 

Right. Or it just takes an enormous amount of hard work and talent, and luck and everything. It's like, you just can't do that. And you kind of see it when you know it. The right house, the aperitif. There's just so much behind it. It's yeah, the bottle's beautiful. They've knocked that out of the park. But there's just more behind it that you just feel. It's a strange thing. It's the intangibles.

Kristen: 

Yeah, it is. For me, one of the biggest challenges of this podcast, especially talking to brands is, you talk to the founders and they're saying all these things and a lot of times I'm like, "But how?" And I think for a lot of teams that really hone in on this, it's hard to even explain how, because it comes from such a natural place of passion and care about customers that, that can't be replicated. And that is so exciting.

Kristen: 

What bad habits do you wish to see DT brands kick this year?

Jordan: 

I don't know. I think I'd go back to that stack. Just be wary of running the same exact playbook and hoping for the best. Yeah. I don't know. In terms of bad habits, it's kind of like, business is business, man. If you want to outspend people because you raise more money, this isn't pat-a-cake. So I don't really have any problems with the way people are doing things.

Kristen: 

Yeah. I would say mine is abusing email, is what I hope to see improve in 2020.

Jordan: 

Whoa. You are an [crosstalk].

Kristen: 

I know I am. And that goes along hand-in-hand with the SMS thing I have, this general outlook of, I hope these channels improve, and that when people enter SMS they do it with a really smart and tactical thoughtful approach is kind of where I'm looking for.

Jordan: 

Yep. Makes sense.

Kristen: 

So lastly, if people want to follow up with you, where can they find you? We'll make sure to link up to CartHook everywhere, but if they want to catch up with you after the show, where should they go?

Jordan: 

The Twitters man, @JordanGal. I love Twitter. It's the best [crosstalk].

Kristen: 

Jordan's on the Twitters! We have a fun little DTC fam on Twitter.

Jordan: 

That's right.

Kristen: 

We have so much fun.

Jordan: 

You can find me on Twitter, ask me questions. If you are into the business side of things, I do a podcast called Bootstrapped Web, where you can hear me complain about the difficulty of running a software company, and all the things I'm learning and crying about.

Kristen: 

Have you cried yet on the show?

Jordan: 

No, no crying. There's no crying on podcasting.

Kristen: 

Okay. Maybe I'll do it one day.

Jordan: 

Crying doesn't help so...

Kristen: 

No, I definitely won't cry. Let's see, I've had a dog bark, I coughed at the beginning of this one today. I burped in one last season. We'll see what else happens this season.

Jordan: 

Hey, we're just keeping it authentic. That's all.

Kristen: 

We're just keeping it authentic over here. Thank you so much for being on today, Jordan. This was amazing.

Jordan: 

My pleasure. Thank you.