Customer Lifetime Value in eCommerce ⎜ Omniconvert ⎜ EP 209

Ryan Cramer: What's up, everyone? Welcome to my corner of the internet. I'm your host, Ryan Cramer, and this is Crossover Commerce, presented by PingPong Payments. The leading global payments' provider helping sellers keep more of their hard- earned money. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Crossover Commerce. I'm your host, Ryan Cramer. This is my corner of the internet where I bring the best and brightest in the Amazon and e- commerce space. This is episode 209 so if you're new here, we have tons of content from prior episodes that we go live basically almost every single day, at least this week we did, of people and experts on certain topics in the field that you can apply today. That being said, every episode here on Crossover Commerce, whether you're watching a video live on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, or you're listening to us on your favorite podcast destinations. Again, that's Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, the list goes on, Apple Podcasts, we're going to be on your favorite destination if you're listening or watching to either of those. Both are presented by PingPong Payments. Who's PingPong Payments? They're a cross- border payment solution helping people save more time, money, and effort when it comes to paying entities internationally. Pay out your suppliers and manufacturers or you're paying your VAs, if that's a business that you're growing into or you're looking to jumpstart your entrepreneur journey that way, you don't want to have time to wait around for currency to get converted. You can actually pay in localized currency by using a solution like PingPong. Go ahead and sign up for free today at usa. pingpongx. com/ podcast to catch all of our past episodes by signing up for free today. Make sure when you talk to the team over at PingPong, make sure you mention Crossover Commerce. That being said, this is episode 209. This is Friday, January 21st, if I look at my watch correctly. This is a show that we love touching and talking about everyone in the world. E- commerce is a globalized journey and people get there in different, various ways. That's what this show is all about is making sure that we meet you at where your journey is and you can apply it to your business today. I'm very excited to bring on one, a guest that I always introduce. He has such a unique background and before I even butcher it, I want to make sure that he gives himself a chance to talk about the amazing journey that he's been on to his e- comm journey. Joining us from Bucharest overseas... Well, If you're listening to this, I'm located in the United States but Bucharest, we're an international podcast so I love talking and getting people's perspectives internationally. So without further ado, I want to welcome onto the podcast Valentin of Omniconvert. Valentin, thank you so much for coming on Crossover Commerce. How are you doing today?

Valentin: Hey, there. All good on this side of the world and thanks for having me today.

Ryan Cramer: I was going to say it's the night of the 20th, 21st, I should say. We haven't done anything in the future where we regret it, have we? That's why I like to talk when people are in tomorrow, I don't know about you because you have a podcast too, Valentin, without giving too much away. I'm assuming you've talked to people in different time zones and whatnot. It's always fun to talk with people and, of course, not today, but in different time zones around the world. I always ask," What's tomorrow look like? Can you tell me what's going to happen?" And obviously, joke falls on some people but I appreciate you joining us today.

Valentin: Yeah. I'm also glad to be here, Ryan. Thanks everyone for watching.

Ryan Cramer: Absolutely. Again, I teased it in the beginning, your background's super fascinating. I was laughing when I read through it but in a good way, because I think this is probably one of the best ways and most winding ways to get to a business in a long time that I've seen. For people who haven't read it or haven't heard of you before, please go ahead and just let us know how did we get to where we are today?

Valentin: Yeah. I'm a former poor kid from Bucharest, Romania, born in the communist era. I had a lot of jobs. When I was 15, I was playing soccer. The thing that you there in the US hate so much or neglect so much.

Ryan Cramer: It's okay. We call it football. The right way is football but we have too many footballs here, don't worry. I love soccer.

Valentin: I was playing soccer all day long and my mother got me to a butcher store and he left me there. He said," You need to learn what life is." I've been a butcher for only two hours and it was that smell over there, the raw meat, all this environment. I was so frightened about my future, by the way, and I ran away. When those guys went to smoke a cigarette, I ran out. I continued to play soccer, but it was my first real job for two hours. Then I had a lot of jobs and I've learned the hard way. I became an entrepreneur. I thought that it's an accident, but in retrospect, everything it's falling apart. It's falling into the right piece. We have all this puzzle pieces and it's making sense. So mainly, I had a lot of jobs like selling car insurance, selling cookbooks on the street, doing interviews for customer research. Learning about AB testing actually, because I ended up building a company, which has a technology to do AB testing. Then I've co- founded what turned out to be the largest internet service provider in my neighborhood. Sold it when I was only 24. My first paycheck was only$ 85 per month. When I get my resignation note to my employer, which was great, a fantastic entrepreneur, a lady that taught me a lot about how to treat your employees. I gave her three months notice and she told me," Can I do anything to keep you?" I said," No, I want to build my own company." I was already making something like$3, 000 a month from my side gig while I was getting paid at around$ 200 in the meantime. So build this internet service provider and then learned a lot about it. Failed completely and miserably and learned a lot, let's say. In the next years, I took all the money that I got from the first exit, I put it in an agency. Got some fancy furniture and all that stuff, and failed miserably after three years. I needed to go back to my father because I had to choose either to keep the office, either to go back to my father, and be there and stay there for two, three months so that I can get back on track. I kept the office. I got to my father and he loved me, but he made my life so miserable that I needed to go back. So after that, I've co- founded with a customer, the largest online car insurance player in Romania. We were comparing prices from various insurance companies. We got to 250,000 customers. Learned a lot about internet and then founded actually this company called Omniconvert. We are now supporting hundreds of companies, of e- commerce companies, to improve their conversion rate and their customer lifetime value by making use of their, let's say treasure, which is their database of customers.

Ryan Cramer: That's amazing, what a journey. I just think that's the ultimate, keep iterating until you find something that is going to work. I appreciate that journey and hopefully everyone listening too. Speaking of internationally, we actually had somebody comment in. If you're listening or watching live on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube or Twitter, again, feel free to shout out where you're listening from, like our friend of the show, Nir, covering the world, or listening from Israel. Truly covering the world here live on Crossover Commerce. So Valentin, I'm super appreciative of that. So why e- commerce? What about it made it that your company, your solutions were going to change people's businesses? Why was this the industry that you wanted to find yourself in because you've scattered around a couple different industries? Why was this the one you wanted to settle on?

Valentin: Yeah. I've seen it coming and I think this imagine 2006, nobody was using internet in Eastern Europe. Very few users over there and I've seen it coming. I looked over the data and I was always geeking about using the data, because your mind is always tricking you and you need numbers. That's why I love numbers and that's why many of our decisions are data driven. That's why I'm selling a solution to help people make data driven decisions. I've seen the potential of e- commerce and I've stuck to it. After the first years, we were struggling. My friends, which were working in corporate business in the first two years of my new venture was telling me," Forget about entrepreneurship. Get paid, get a job." I've seen this thriving. We invested$ 700 in this business, in the online car insurance business, and it got to$ 40 million. And it was like," What a fantastic outcome." And the people were so happy that we existed. We got all these emails from happy customers that instead of being ripped off by a lot of insurance companies, they could just look over on our website to compare it. They made fabulous savings with us. And then after that, I learned the game and I've seen the opportunity. And my hidden agenda because when I was five years old, I dreamt of writing books and being a teacher, but that wasn't paying too well in Romania. I got to build this company as a vehicle so that I can build my own education system here in Romania. So mainly, I'm dreaming, I'm manifesting the dream that I had when I was pretty small, I was a kid.

Ryan Cramer: So using the business to get to an ultimate goal of doing what your dream is, your lifetime passion, if you will.

Valentin: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: This is what this is. Okay. So now that we have that journey. I guess, first look at your website and the company, you're working with pretty large brands. What was that like from all those entrepreneur journeys of maybe field experiences, all the way to working with some of the world's largest corporations and businesses? I'm just curious of what that whole spectrum feels like to you. If you've seen, like you said, you've failed or achieved, and then came back down that rollercoaster. Now, we're at somewhere where you get the pleasure of helping some of the largest corporations of the world. What's that like?

Valentin: That's fantastic because it's making wonders to your self- esteem. My self- confidence was building when we closed. Our first customer here is Omniconvert. It was a$ 300 deal and I've been so happy, I was happier than my$ 1 million Euro deal if I compared the emotions behind it. Because when I got this$ 1 million, it was like," Yeah, we're going to make it. I'm sure that we're going to make it." And the distance between zero to 300 is infinite, it's infinite so it's way more than, than it was. So it's fantastic to have this trust. And because we have this mission over here in Romania, that we have to export stuff, we need to build stuff. We can't just consume stuff from the Western world. We need to export and to produce our own thing. We have a lot of fantastic developers here, but it's not about only working for the bigger brands out there. It's also about producing things. And this is actually like a fuel for us. When we see that we have this big companies working with us like Sephora or whatever, when they work with us in many countries and using our technology. And then we do these workshops with the 40 people from their data teams about how to use our technology to leverage their business, it's giving us a lot of energy and it's propelling us further.

Ryan Cramer: I love that. Well, I guess with Omniconvert, we touched on what you guys do. I think there's a validity and such an importance upon going where data tells you to go of it could be a feel. I think that's the downfall of a lot of entrepreneurs sadly, is they feel like this is going to be a great product." No, it's a great idea," says entrepreneur X. They say," Believe me, I think a lot of people are going to buy." But if the market's not there and the data's saying there's not a lot of customers to potentially buy this product, that's going to be a failure from the beginning. So with your mission and the tools that you've built up, what is it like to use data and how are you helping customers achieve those more fact based and data centric decisions, instead of a gut feeling? Or maybe we should go after this and instead of that feeling, if you will.

Valentin: Yeah. I think what is a paradox is that is not saying that. If you force data, it can confess pretty much anything. And many companies and many people working in some companies, they still hang on to their beliefs about what should be done. But if the data demonstrates it the opposite, it'll be hard for them to affirm. So we are doing this RFM segmentation in e- commerce, and it's a fantastic endeavor. I've applied it to my own e- commerce company. That's why I'm so appreciative about it because it's not like something new. It's going all back from the'70s. The RFM method was being used by the direct mailing companies to save money on sending envelopes, sending the mailings to their customers. So RFM stands for recency, frequency and monetary value. According to the RFM segmentation, the first thing that we are doing with new companies, we show them the difference between their best customers, which we call the soulmates. They have the highest recency, the highest frequency, the highest monetary value. They are the best. Not only that they spend a lot of money, but they continue to do it. Despite all odds, despite all the obstacles, they continue to buy. And we show them how much net present value is for an ICP versus their lowest customers, and how profitable they are. And usually, this figure is one to 350 plus so each soulmate is as valuable as 350 low value customers. And when they see that it's like," Let's acquire more of those." And the idea is that based on that, they can look over and realize," But wait, what products are those customers buying?" And then they start asking themselves other questions. And that's the beauty of data, because it's showing you facts. It's not debatable that those customers bought, I don't know, 60 times the wine replacement product that you're selling 60 times in a row each week, why they are buying it, what kind of product they're buying. And thanks to that, it's fulfilling to see how companies are shifting their destiny. It's not like they are changing and transforming, but for small and midsize companies, it's actually eye- opening. It's transformative when they realize that they've been advertising to the right customers the wrong products.

Ryan Cramer: With that being said, is it shocking or is it sad to see that people don't look at the data that they have at their disposal, whether it be on their own websites, or maybe their own data that they have access to them of what the customer is telling them. And they don't analyze that as frequently as the data should be analyzed? What's that notion in that shocking nature that you might be finding over and over again with customers and new clients?

Valentin: It's actually fulfilling and for us, it's exciting to show them so much potential. It's not only about the data and not only about the tools, it's about the team behind this data, because many companies are sleeping on a lot of insights and they don't do anything about them. And the more action oriented companies that we've seen, are actually the ones which are in the range of five to 50 million in annual turnover, because the other ones are struggling to survive and they want to fix their business model. While the larger ones have some employees, which are being let's say, directed to various other KPIs. They don't care about things NPS, or CLV, or CAC because if the agenda from the upper management is not to focus on these KPIs, they will focus on their open rates, or CTRs or whatever and I think that's important. And pretty much, I think the best companies to work for, as an e- commerce professionals, are the ones that are stable enough. They have product market fit, and now they need to achieve traction and to achieve the right customers for their products.

Ryan Cramer: Is it something where you feel like it's more of your job to help people focus on the right data? Again, people can get lost in metrics. And to be honest, in the marketing world that you and I both probably know, you can make data to tell your own story, however you wish it to. It could show growth. It can show depending on your timeline or anything like that, exactly. You can snapshot it. You can basically edit down to how it looks beneficial to you as a segment, but not as a whole. What it that process like to make sure that people are focused on the right data? And like you said, the vanity metrics of the open rights, the clicks, the going back to what matters as a business, and what should really be focused on in that regard?

Valentin: Yeah. It's clear that we have to make the e- commerce more literate about what growth really means. We have a lot of so- called gurus, e- commerce gurus, which are pointing them into their story. On the other end, we have the whole narrative from Facebook and Google ads, which is all about acquisition marketing because that's their agenda. They want to keep their own customers, come back and buy again. They're not telling them to their own customers to find alternative solutions and to focus on the post- purchase because they are not invested in that part of the whole funnel. What I think is also our job, is to make them more aware about how e- commerce really grows. And it's not only about acquiring customers, it's about acquiring the right customers and keeping them happy, which the happiness factor and the keeping them is not in the agenda of the acquisition marketers. Also, on the other side, we have the agencies, which are smart people, which are having their own agendas to make their customers spend more because they are being paid based on how much the customer is spending. They optimize for their customers to spend more, not for their customers to earn more. That's why we've built this thing, which is called the CVO Academy around our own methodologies, my own methodology, which has evolved throughout the time around customer value optimization. I think if you start with providing value to your customers, you'll be able to extract value from your customers. If you have happy customers that will end up speaking about you, recommending you, you've done your job. You just need to level up to scale up your business. If you're not there, then that means you don't have product market fit. And no amount of marketing is going to fix a bad product. And pretty much that's what I think we should be doing. And the model to grow an e- commerce, it's pretty simple, it's basic. How much you're getting from a customer, CLV, customer lifetime value. How much you're spending to acquire that customer, CAC, customer acquisition cost. The balance between those should be, of course, positive, and it should be more than three to one and even more than that. But if you don't measure that, then you're trapped into the financial analysis, which is not showing you this, by the way, in your P& L. Or you're trapped in your Google Analytics, or worse, in your Facebook ad account where you're having this twisted attribution model showing you that your ROS is 8X. Yeah, but if it's 8X and you got the conversions from email and from Google ads as well and if it's 8X, but your margin is not justifying that, then it doesn't matter if it's eight. Maybe it should be 12.

Ryan Cramer: Right. Well, how does an e- commerce entrepreneur do that in the likes of, in a world where Amazon no longer shares customer data, it's all owned?

Valentin: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: The customer is actually owned by Amazon as a marketplace platform. You're selling products in that world, again, doing more to build on the brand side of things. We've talked about this in the past episodes, where Amazon is slowly starting to push more of build out a brand. There're ways to be engaged with said brand on Amazon by following us with brand analytics, and the follow button, and building out their brand storefront. That's a completely separate focus, in terms of strategy. In terms of instead of directed consumership, where you do truly own that customer, but it's all acquisition costs, like you said, on Facebook, Google, whatever paid ads you might be driving traffic to. When I'm an entrepreneur utilizing both, how do I make sure that we're truly measuring both customer lifetime value? How are you helping people achieve that in that regard?

Valentin: Yeah. So first of all, I'm not a huge fan of using Amazon as the only channel to distribute your products.

Ryan Cramer: Sure.

Valentin: To sell because you're missing out on a lot of things. First of all, customer data is the pure goal that you're after, so you're after feedback, you're after guidance from your existing customers. Because as an e- commerce player, you are in the business of fulfilling needs and solving struggles for your customers. And by only placing your products on someone else's market, which is not giving you access to even see the customer that is going to buy, that means you have a single customer, which is Amazon, and that's it. You don't have access to this data. They have access to this data. I think a synergic approach would be the first step, if you are selling only on Amazon. I think that's why Shopify is achieving this huge traction as well, because companies are waking up to the fact that they need to play this game differently, and they need to own their relationship with their customers. If we look besides the technological, whatever approach, the opportunities, it's all about Shopify versus Amazon. Or not Shopify, but your own channel. You can use the other platform crosstalk-

Ryan Cramer: Right. A B2C platform, Shopify being the leader.

Valentin: VTEX, E- commerce, there are plenty of them.

Ryan Cramer: We'll shout out to those guys too.

Valentin: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: Well, that's super fascinating. I mean, fascinating from the likes of outside people, because people in the world of e- commerce, there're schools of thought of go where the customers are, it's okay. But at the end of the day, what's going to be repeatable about that business?

Valentin: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: I think a lot of brands are starting to worry about what's the repeat nature of which your product can obviously happen on a business level, but then on a brand level, how do you achieve that on Amazon? Is it continuation of hopefully, Amazon will iterate those products and iterate potential for brand to say," Hey, do you need to reorder, or subscribe, and save or anything along those lines?" But on the other side, when you can build a direct to consumer platform, again, you own those customers. You can tell them about new products. You can segment those data points, even more proficiently and say," Hey, you bought this. Would you be interested in buying a shirt with those pants, or shoes with those pants?" Bundling a little bit easier and really making more strategic approach. Is that where the true value is going to be? Because come from either outside investors or as businesses continue to grow in the space, because you can take that one customer and grow them yourself, instead of relying on just one- way funnel coming down to your product. Does that make sense?

Valentin: Yeah. Another thing is to take into account a company is more like a person as well. If you don't have the skills to distribute your product, but your only skills are to produce your product, maybe you should look at other marketplaces as well than Amazon. So maybe you can find some other distribution channels if you don't have these digital e- commerce skills, and you don't want to invest into acquiring them. Of course, Shopify comes with this burden that you need to play a wrong game. If they're not going to build their huge marketplace called shopify. com where you could place your products on, then that's the offer. And another thing is that we are looking at the brands like Nike, which is completely they plugged off all their products from Amazon, so I think the future lies into owning the relationship. The one that it's having the last, let's say, part of the value chain is going to win because he has the relationship with the customer and all these middle men behind, they will lose. And mainly, if you can own your own value chain, you have your mode and you can thrive in the future. That's a sustainable business. The current landscape is so competitive, that you simply need to do something about the future. You can't be shortsighted because we've seen in one single year, we've seen the ROS is going down from 10 to 2X for some of the brands that we're working with, which we're investing huge in their acquisition efforts. So the idea is how can I make sure that I know exactly where I'm going? Data reveals you that. And pretty much that's what I think the brands, the companies, which are selling on various platforms, need to ask them themselves, because an entrepreneur is a visionary. And depending on how long is your vision, and how accurate is your vision, you're going to survive or not. I've failed multiple times. I can definitely say this because it's the vision, it's the story that is going to feed you and your team as well. How compelling is your vision?

Ryan Cramer: Right. When I'm starting this journey or if an entrepreneur listening into this and they're just beginning, and they would really want to get into the trenches of what true value of every customer that they bring onto their platform is, I think that's the biggest selling point. Where's the first place they start? Is it with sales? Is it seasonality? Is it repeat purchase? Where do people need to begin that journey, if they're just for the first time taking a look at their... They started this business in 2021. Now, we're coming into our full life cycle, a yearly cycle, if you will, where do they need to start in that analysis, if you will?

Valentin: Yeah. What I would do with all my knowledge so far, I would look at the industry that I'm in. I would look at the product that I'm selling. Then I will make sure that if I have a sample size large enough of existing customers, I'm above or below the benchmarks in terms of the things like customer lifetime value and purchase frequency. So if I'm selling, let's say shoes, and I know that the average e- commerce site has a purchase frequency of 1. 6. That means every customer is buying 1. 6 times from a store. I'm at about 1. 3 and I want to fix that. I want to get that at least to be in the benchmark before putting any money into acquiring new customers, because that means I'm not hitting my targets. I'm wasting a lot of money to acquire customers that will not come back. That's the first thing that I would do. I would make sure that I'm doing my job throughout the entire customer lifespan. Then the next thing that I would do, I would get to know what are the products that I'm actually selling. It's this thing called from Peter Drucker that most of the companies don't know why the customers buy their products and I think it's accurate. I have a hard time selling as well. I was doing these jobs to be done interviews back in 2016, 2017. And we realized which are our customers and what they are actually buying. And that made us build a completely different product and that actually saved our business. Instead of growing like this, we grew like this. Last year, we grew 55% because we constantly asked our customers what they're struggling with. And if you know what they're struggling with, then you know how to help them. For instance, we know that at this moment, we are helping the customers, which are having issues with their acquisition to thrive, not only to survive, by using their existing customers. And leveraging them to acquire customers that look like their best ones. And if you know that, you know what's your unique value proposition, you know how to get creative, and you fix everything if you know what you're selling. But if you don't know what you're selling, you're going to shoot in the dark and you're going to spray and pray.

Ryan Cramer: What if I'm doing this and I'm doing this analysis, you used the term prior, and I know you've talked about this too on your website. But I just want to make sure people understand what the term zero- party data is, because that's something that distinguishes and it's completely more... What's the trust factor with that instead of relying on a third party service to maybe help me with maybe who my customer is, instead of the actual true values that you're getting from maybe a customer? What's that distinguishing difference for people who might not know?

Valentin: Yeah. Full party data, as you've said, Ryan, it's about relying on Facebook, Google, whatever. Tell me who the customers are and help me reach out to them. Then zero- party data is the data that the customers are intentionally sharing with you. What size do you wear in your shoes? If you know that you're wearing 12, then you can show to that customer only the 12 size shoes. And it's going to be much more easier for them to buy from you. First- party data, something that you have, and you have based on their behavior. You do know that we have customer X that bought this type of products. So mixing zero with the first- party data is going to save you now that the third- party data is being deprecated. And Google said that they're going to completely shut it off in 2023. They postponed it from 2021 to now 2023. But it's clear that is happening. After the IRS 15, the third- party data were really affected about it. So mainly, that's how zero- party data works. And what you want to do, as a tip for your company, is we are doing this for our customers. We have the technology for it, but you can use any technology. The principle behind it is what matters. So with pre- purchase surveys, you can collect this type of zero- party data. So let's say you spend some money on Facebook and you have customer visitors coming on your website. Instead of letting them look around on your 25 different CTAs on your menu, on your drop menu, on your promotions where you spray and pray hopefully, they will buy this sugar. Hopefully, they are men and we have a promotion for men. Instead of that, you can do this type of pre- purchase survey, interactive pre- purchase survey, where you are collecting this data. What's your size? Are you a man? Are you looking for boots, or for shoes, or for sneakers, or whatever? And based on this zero- party data, you can craft a different path for them. You can craft the customer journey, which is relevant for them, because nobody wants to waste their time looking at the wrong thing because imagine the friction. You go in a store, you look at some cool shoes, and they don't have it on your side. Instead of being satisfied about the purchase experience, you are frustrated. So the chance is to navigate a way or higher if you don't show them what they're looking for. That's how you use the pre- purchase service to collect zero- party data but it's not only that. Then you can use this data to collect their email address.

Ryan Cramer: Right.

Valentin: So you can, let's say, bribe or persuade them into," Hey, here's a$ 15 voucher for you." Of course, calculate it, that you're going to be profitable because that's how it works. Yeah. At your first purchase, only at your first purchase, because you don't want to incentivize the wrong behavior. And based on that, you will collect the email address. Then if they are buying, that's great. If they are not buying, you know that you have a man, which is out there in the market for shoes, which are 12 size, and you can trigger an email to give them," Hey, that's the new collection, or these are the best sellers for 12 sized shoes." And pretty much that's how you do it. Based on that, based on the jobs to be done, based on the needs of the customer, you can then orchestrate a customer journey. And this can be built like evergreen campaigns. We are having this integration with Klaviyo and we send this data, and we have companies which are doing a tremendous job on autopilot. It's not only about hunting new customers, it's also preventing churn. It's also nurturing your existing customers by collecting the right data and leveraging it. Because once you set it, you can forget about it. You can just tweak out the subject lines or do whatever, but this can run on autopilot. That's how you leverage zero and first- party data, based on what you collect from them.

Ryan Cramer: I love that. Those are great tips. I think the best example I've seen thus far, very creative. Again, this is the marketing side of me. When I saw the popup, and again, see if you can achieve. I think the wording was put in your email address or your zip code, I think it was zip code. Put in your zip code to see if you qualify for free shipping, which again, in the context, everyone potentially is probably qualifying for free shipping. But then as I started to break it down in our episode with the marketer, we were starting to think of why zip code? Well, zip code can tell a lot of different things. Where geographically that person's located, you can start to dictate if you have a presence in retail stores, or if you have a presence just online, or if they're simply you can go even further in terms of hunting down the data, in terms of what were they shopping for in that zip code? Maybe it's coats in the Northern part of the country, instead of a Southern part of the country or something along those lines. So again, getting creative with capturing that data, like you had said, Valentin, in terms of where people are achieving. Again, is there a line in which you said the mix and I want to be clear, you don't want to be too detailed into narrows, in terms of inclusive or exclusive in terms of that messaging, correct?

Valentin: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: What's that fine balance that you're always probably teaching clients?

Valentin: Yeah. I have this chapter in my part from the CVO Academy as well. I'm going to quickly touch on it. People are not buying products. People are buying progress that they are doing with those type of objects and products that they are buying. So at the end of the day, nobody wants to do stockpiling of shoes or sneakers. They want to wear them and they want to wear them for status, or they want to wear them because they are running. They don't need the boots to run outside. So every product has a job. And if every product has a job, that means you need to understand that job. And if you are struggling to get a product, because when we are having people on the website, there is a long journey. And this is a part from the jobs- to- be- done method from Bob Moesta. He's one of the professors in the CVO Academy as well. A fantastic book so I recommend his book, Demand- Side Sales, it's eye- opening completely. When you have someone that has a struggling moment, so you have struggling moment. You have a moment when I don't know your battery, your phone, has let you down on a particular moment. You are driving and you haven't got your plug with you, whatever, so you had this struggling moment. It's not instantly when you go on a website to buy a new phone, but you have that struggling moment so that's the first thought. And after the first thought, you have other signs, other moments, when you are passive looking and you turn into active looking. When people are on your website, they have already got through other phases to reach your website so they were passively looking for products. Maybe they've seen your ad on their Facebook stream or whatever. Maybe they've seen another from a competitor, and they got there on your website to compare you with them. So mainly, they're in the active looking state. But if you know that they're in the active looking state, it's not about collecting data, that it's important to you, but it's important to them. And it's like if you act like a doctor, which is investigating. You know that you have a problem and how bad it is from a scale from one to 10, how bad it is when you move your arm like this, maybe it's broke. So if you ask questions, which are relevant to the struggle and to the pain point of the customer, you can ask as many as you want. But if you ask things, which are not related to their struggling moment, they will feel invaded. They will feel that you're too intrusive, and they are not going to answer to them, and they will navigate away. So mainly, that's how it works with how in- depth you could go with collecting this data. And my suggestion is to first validate with a few customers, do in- depth interviews with your best customers to understand why they are buying the products that you're selling. For instance, we are helping a company, which is selling probiotics and we've made these in- depth interviews with them. We realize that their products, they have different jobs. There is the same product, but they have different jobs and people are buying it for different needs. One of them is when I feel that I'm not in a shape that it's attractive to the others and this was for ladies. So those probiotics were competing with creams, and hair stylists, and whatever. If you think it," Well, your product has other competition than the direct competitors." And when a woman is not feeling that she's attractive anymore, she's getting those probiotics, or she can go to her stylist or whatever. That means the narrative of the brand should be in the correlation with the job to be done. So then instead of asking them," Buy this because it's at a discount," reveal the problem first. So why are you here for? I'm here, I want to look better. I want to feel better in the evenings because the probiotics are helping them to actually have more energy because people are having these medical conditions. They are not getting probiotics just to prevent things. They have these type of medical conditions. And based on the struggling moments, you can make them aware that because if you can articulate the problem the best. That's a psychological bias, a cognitive bias. They will instantly associate your product as being the best solution for them. And that's instantly, nobody is aware of that and we are all making the same mistakes. We are all buying stuff that we don't need because we think that's going to solve our problem. That's how it works.

Ryan Cramer: Well, there's not much more to add to that, in terms of just the sheer capacity in which that was broken down. I put a link to that for people who didn't see that on our livestream. More of the coursework is the CVO Academy. I think that was something that was super intuitive and you said it's already a chapter. I can't imagine what else is in there. I guess, Valentin, in the few minutes I have left with you, what's the most exciting thing in 2022? As we kick off this here, and we start to move forward, what's that vision for Omniconvert, and you, and the company? What's the focus?

Valentin: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: And as all these things are changing, what's really those things that are going to get you excited in moving forward into the year?

Valentin: Yeah. For me, it's exciting when I'm seeing new students in the CVO Academy. So we realize that we need to first educate and then sell a product that solves a problem. And we are doing this crazy endeavor around how to play the e- commerce game. So this year, we're going to build a crazy thing to reveal what problems the companies are having, because I'm working together with Dennis Yu on this. He's my co- host on our podcast, the eCommerce Growth Stories. And together with him and our team of developers, of course, we are working on a new, free product to collect the data from Facebook ads, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Klaviyo, and the Shopify store or your solution. And there are a lot of insights over there. So we then build a recommendation system, which is going to help the e- commerce and entrepreneurs to prioritize what matters, based on their particular data. So it's going to be a free X- ray with the diagnosis and with the suggestions about what you should be doing first. Because at some moments, maybe it's the time to push the pedal on the traffic. Maybe on some moments, you have a very poor loading speed. Maybe you should fix that first because we will know how you compare with other stores. So mainly, that's the most exciting project for this year that we are working on. And of course, we want to articulate the need for CVOs. So mainly, we want to craft this new methodology, new approach to grow e- commerce companies, because that takes into account acquisition, conversion and retention. And mainly, that's what excites me. And last but not least, I'm writing my own book about the CVO. Hopefully, it's going to get out in October we're going to be able to publish it.

Ryan Cramer: Not surprised, more projects in the works from Valentin. In the little time I've gotten to know you, you got a lot in the works. But we linked out to the eCommerce Growth Stories podcast and web series too as well. For people who want to check it out, or how do they get in touch with you, Valentin, with Omniconvert? What's the best way to do that?

Valentin: I'm a LinkedIn person so find me on LinkedIn is Valentin Radu, or you can subscribe to my personal, it's our newsletter. I'm having this, let's say, marathon. I want to write at least one year every week, the newsletter. I'm now at the 19th newsletter. I'm sharing tips about how to grow an e- commerce, based on my own experience as an entrepreneur. And also as an advisor to various e- commerce companies, because I'm also doing this sport. And pretty much, that's how you can find me and get in touch with me for anything. If you think that I can help you, don't be shy. I've also picked up the brains of a lot of other entrepreneurs. I think it's the time to share more shortcuts so that we can accelerate the pace how we are growing as individuals and as professionals as well.

Ryan Cramer: Absolutely. If in the world of time where that's not the infinite resource, saving time, money, and effort, what we always talk about is making sure that you can find ways to do that to help your business grow, however you would think that Omniconvert and you have those resources and those ideas to help people do that. So thank you so much for hopping on Crossover Commerce today. It was a pleasure. And I call everyone who finished the show a friend of the show, so I have more international friends of the show. Happy to have you on again in the future to share more insights as you come across them.

Valentin: Excellent. Thanks a lot, Ryan, for having me and thanks everyone for listening, tuning in with us.

Ryan Cramer: Thank you, Valentin. Again, everyone else, thank you so much for tuning in to episode 209 of Crossover Commerce. This is my corner of the internet. We're bringing the best and bright in the Amazon and e- commerce space. Again, thank you, Valentin from Omniconvert. And just hearing his insights again, check out the links that we sent in our comments section. They're going to be in the show notes if you're listening to this on the audio version, or you can just go to usa. pingpongx. com/ podcast to get all of the past episodes that roll out on the audio version. All the links, all the resources that we share can be found there. And of course, for future episodes coming out, want to follow us on our social channels, that's on YouTube. Give us a like on PingPong Payments, or on LinkedIn, or you can just follow myself on LinkedIn, just search Ryan Cramer. I'm the guy with the great face out there. Just not too many like me but go ahead and follow me for more content, and more episodes here in the future. Again, thank you, Valentin from Omniconvert. This is Crossover Commerce. You guys have a great weekend going into it. Be safe out there and we'll catch you guys next time on another episode. Take care.