How to drive sales and engagement with an eCommerce quiz ⎜ Prehook ⎜ EP 210

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, and this is my corner of the internet where we bring the best in brightest in the Amazon and e- commerce space. If you're new to the show, welcome. If you're watching live on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, we appreciate you joining, tuning in live, and just interacting with us in the little bit of your moment of the day. If you're watching us or listening to us on your favorite platform or podcast destination, thanks for tuning in and downloading and listening to us at a later point. This is an interactive podcast; so if you do have a question, or want to say hi to myself or our guests, always drop us a note. Or if you want to later on and don't catch us live, make sure we'll tag our guest to make sure they can point you in the right direction, or just help you out in general. This is a giving podcast, if you will, so that's why we built it out. But before we get started on episode 210, Crossover Commerce, as always, is presented by PingPong Payments. PingPong Payments is helping sellers keep more of their hard- earned money by sending or receiving funds internationally, that can be the likes of if you're paying- out suppliers or manufacturers. Hopefully, you got your goods before Chinese New Year, before that celebration happens, if your supplier manufacturers in China, or if you happen to be looking at different locals maybe in 2022. If you're looking into South America, Mexico, India, wherever you might be diversifying and working on your suppliers, we can help you out. Also, virtual assistance or employees internationally, make it simplistic, and don't pay those double fees, or international fees that banks might be charging. Keep your money safe, secure, and also just save money in general with PingPong Payments. It's free to sign up. Just go to usa. pingpongx. com/ podcast to be able to sign up for free today. And of course, check out all of our past episodes. Again, 210 episodes, now that we've been doing this in the past year- and- a- half or so. If you're new to the show, you know that we just squeeze our guests out of all the great information that they can give us in that capacity, and today is no exception. We're going to be talking about someone who actually comes from the SaaS space and build out this amazing solution, a company called Prehook, and we're going to be talking with Gen Furukawa of Prehook. He's a co- founder or the founder; I'm going to clarify that here in a second. He's been just fantastic, in terms of what I've been seeing, but we're going to be... co- founder, I cheated and looked at the bio real quick... but helping Shopify merchants help more of data. And obviously, in the post- iOS update, data's really difficult to capture in terms of social, or any marketing and advertising and collecting that data. Now is the time to start finding different unique and creative ways in order to start building your audience avatars and help them out, find what they're looking for, and we're going to be doing that by what we call today's episode, " How To Drive Sales and Engagement with an E- Commerce Quiz?" Now, there's not going to be a test at the end of this. Don't worry if you're listening or watching. There's no test at the end of this. This is just to help you out. Get those A's, and the like, of e- commerce. Without further ado, I want to go ahead and bring on Gen of Prehook. Gen, thank you so much for coming on Crossover Commerce.

Gen Furukawa: Ryan, good morning. How are you doing? And thanks for having me. I'm super excited.

Ryan Cramer: Of course. Where are you at? Where are you actually from? We never discussed this pre- show.

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. I'm in Austin, Texas.

Ryan Cramer: Like everyone else, it seems like.

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. I mean I'm an original Texan. I moved here four years ago.

Ryan Cramer: Ah, original four years ago.

Gen Furukawa: Yeah, right.

Ryan Cramer: Got it. All right. I see.

Gen Furukawa: But yeah, I grew up in the East Coast in New York.

Ryan Cramer: Okay. Got you. I was actually born and raised in Texas, so when I say originally I was... I know what Texas was like before it got really cool in hip. So Austin, Texas. Why the moved there, I'm curious, just for any listener out there?

Gen Furukawa: For work.

Ryan Cramer: For work?

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. We were...

Ryan Cramer: Oh, Jungle Scout. That's right.

Gen Furukawa: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: They're in Austin. That's right.

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. In 2018, Jungle Scout was a fully remote company, and maybe your audience knows Jungle Scout, and probably Viral Launch from your background. But Jungle Scout is an Amazon product research tool, Amazon seller tool. We were remote, opened a headquarters here, and so moved here. Like you said, Austin was still cool then. Tesla and Apple, Google, Amazon have all added headcount here, but that's what brings me here.

Ryan Cramer: Nice. Well, you guys were hip before... you were cool before Tesla. Let's just say that. We'll say you led the way there. No, that's really cool. Austin, great city. Lots of things happening in that regards. Big tech scene, too. Your background is actually very unique. You actually spent many years in the SaaS space, we were talking about this pre- show, at Jungle Scout, which is one of the most fantastic I would say original software solutions to help e- commerce and Amazon sellers get started. I guess you were VP of marketing there? Is that correct?

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. I joined in the fall of 2015. At that point, it was just a Chrome extension. Founder, Greg Mercer, had built- out a Chrome extension. And when he was starting to build- out a team to scale the company, I joined as the first marketer. At that point, we hadn't even launched a Web app, and so I led the marketing. And I love working with Greg. Greg is an amazing marketer and I learned so much from him. And probably one of the most important things is his education first approach. And you guys know selling on Amazon, e- commerce in general, there's just so many potential pitfalls, and areas that could be intimidating or confusing; and just having a trustworthy person to shed light, and explain where there are challenges and how to get through them, is great. So yeah, I learned a lot from my time at Jungle Scout and working with Greg.

Ryan Cramer: Amazing.

Gen Furukawa: Yeah.

Ryan Cramer: Marketer number one, never an easy thing, if you have to rely on yourself. But obviously, they had some cool announcements too, I think recently. A$ 100 million investment. Lots of cool things that are happening with them. So Greg, if you're listening to this out there, congrats on all that success. I know he's working hard over there. Software solution, very unique and different, helping beginner sellers. But something changed, right? What was the inspiration to jump from that to the D2C platform? Again, very different, very unique, but now you've built out something really cool on Prehook.

Gen Furukawa: Totally. Yeah. Amazon is unique; as you know, it's very search oriented. You're focused on an SEO play if you're looking for a blue widget for kids age three to seven. Your listing is based around identifying that traffic or a paid ad of similar intent. But Shopify brands, or e- commerce merchants who have their own standalone store, have a very different challenge, and it's multiple. First, it's to get the traffic there. But then once you're, what problem are you solving for? And this is something that we had realized. I co- founded Prehook with two developers from Jungle Scout, they were also part of the founding team, so we've worked together a long time, probably six years at this point when we started building out Prehook. But yeah, we were trying to help merchants figure out what problem they were trying to solve. And so if you think of what a merchant's job is, in store it's very easy. Somebody walks in the door, you can ask them a few questions, " What are you looking for? What's your price point? What challenges are you trying to solve? What does success look like?" Online, a very different story because you have... Even if you take a very simple product, let's say like a multivitamin, for example: people could be going to that store for that multivitamin for any number of reasons, whether it's for immunity, or general health, or prenatal, or whoever knows what these problems are. But if you can just ask them a few questions, capture their email address, and then recommend a product, there are three main benefits that you get from that: one is improving the conversion rate, which is something that we really focus on, and that's just based on simplifying the buying process, removing some of the decisions that a buyer has to make in order to figure out what product makes sense. Second is accelerating list growth. In a quiz, usually there's an exchange of value, a quid pro quo, " I'll give you some data and tell you about myself. In exchange, give me your contact information, whether that is an email or a phone number for SMS." And so the list, and this is even before iOS, it was always an asset, an evergreen asset that you can always reach out directly to your consumers or your potential leads. And now with the data from the quiz, you know some of the things that might be interesting, so that you can send relevant and timely, compelling offers. And then the third benefit that we really focus on is gathering customer data, learning more about your customers. You might have heard the term zero- party data, which essentially means data that your customers willingly and proactively share with you. And when we started building Prehook in 2020, that was not really as much of a thing as it is today. And so there are some of the macro factors that you mentioned, whether it's iOS changes, making it harder for apps like Facebook to track your behavior around, so ad targeting becomes harder and therefore more expensive, to third- party cookies being deprecated. So all of a sudden, merchants are having the onus of owning the relationship and learning more about their customers, as opposed to historically when it was far easier to run highly targeted specific ads and generate a high return on ad spend from that. That's the macro climate that we're dealing with, and where merchants are finding value in simplifying the buying process, learning more about their customers, and understanding how to get in touch with them.

Ryan Cramer: Absolutely. Well, this is something new, and I didn't realize the actual ramifications of the iOS update. I actually switched over my phone this past weekend from Android to iOS. And now after downloading every single social media app and everything again, once again logging in, iOS will prompt you and say... there's a big ray of sunshine coming through on my face, because it's always around 10 o'clock where this one has to happen right in my face; so if I'm moving around a lot, it's to avoid this so I can stare at the screen... but prompting every single time, " Do you want to share it? Do you want to share any information with this platform? Do you want it?" and it's in the guise of... Again, both the social media platform will ask, " Hey, it's to help us keep us free." It's like the begging, " Please give us your information so we can target ads towards you." And again, it's almost like a begging and, " Please keep us profitable," and all this other marketing crap that you can shove down people's throats and say, " Oh, yeah. Sure. No problem. I want targeted ads." Is it a bad thing that people are protected in that regards now, or on a marketing side people just need to get more creative? What's the initial take when you heard all this again?

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. You know, I think it depends. There's a spectrum of how people view their data privacy. One statistic that I find really compelling and interesting is that I think it's Accenture did a study maybe three or four years ago about personalization, data personalization, and I think it's like 80% of consumers are willing to share private data if it means that they get a personalized... a better customer experience, and there are a lot of caveats there. If a brand, for example, falls short and is not able to do that, let's say they're just sending out one- size- fits- all campaigns and email blasts to their list, that is exactly what customers don't want, and that will lead to unsubscribes and low ROI on communications, email and SMS. But I think if there's a value attached to the data, or if I can share something with you and get something in return, I think I would be far more willing to allow for my behavior to be tracked, and also I'd be willing to proactively share things. For me personally, I opted out because sometimes those ads get a little pesky and annoying; but I think if you're a merchant, and you can and think about what your customers would find valuable, and then offer that in exchange for an email opt- in, you can find ways to not be so negatively impacted by the iOS changes and the third- party changes, and wean off of the pay- to- play model.

Ryan Cramer: Absolutely. So yeah, PPC, things like that, where you're targeting, whether it's through Google, or anything of that sort. In this regard, tell me how... Zero- party data, we actually talked about this last episode, super important to garner and build- out your customer base. Audience base is very important because building that LTV, the lifetime value of a customer, again having them come back for one reason or another, you have services, you have products that you want them to come back with. But you guys are, or if I'm understanding this correct, this is almost that customer journey at the beginning. I don't know what I'm looking for. I either got brought in by an ad, found it through a website. I don't want to be poking around and not find maybe what I'm looking for, so this is more of a targeted per to funnel them quicker into relevant products or services, very much? Is that correct?

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. That's exactly it. I mean a quiz, the beauty of a quiz, is it can be multifunctional in terms of where in the customer lifecycle you are, but you were using the example of somebody who's just getting familiar with a brand. So the quiz might be the paid landing page, or it could be in a hero image like, " Hey, get started." Generally, the way it works is you would, on a high- level, you're just asking a few simple questions, progressing from the easier questions like, " Hey, what's your name?" Some basic information maybe like, " How old are you?" Or there are many types of... A dog brand, for example, " What's your breed and size?" And then progressively getting a little bit more intimate with the questions. And then you're getting an email address or a phone number, or you could front- load it and then get the email, the SMS, at the beginning, and then you're recommending a product. And so what that does is it basically makes it easier for customers to not have to do the thinking. If you can simplify what the decision- making process is, what the potential anxieties or obstacles are, then you can improve your conversion rate. Ultimately, that's what conversion rate is, is just streamlining the process. And so once you get a little bit more sophisticated, it can become more of a personalized and tailored experience. You might have, if you're in a brick- and- mortar location, " Hey, Ryan. What are you trying to address in your health?" if it were a multivitamin brand, for example. And then you can use some features like, for example, conditional logic, which is, " Okay, so Ryan is focused on his immunity. Let's tell him about how our product can address his challenges or fears around immunity." You can do this in a quiz, you can do it onsite in terms of you'd have the recommendation, and it can be specifically around the challenges and the problems that you highlighted, and then maybe most compelling and importantly is you can do it on the backend in the email and SMS in the campaign. For example, if it were a multivitamin brand, you'd have a segment of people focused on strengthening their immune system; and then therefore the educational content, the way that the product is positioned, would specifically be centered around those challenges that you have, so what you're getting on the customer experience end is something that's far more relevant and far more compelling and also timely. For example, Austin, you might remember that the allergies are quite a thing and we're coming up towards allergy season, so that could be one thing where it could trigger different events. But basically the point is that you're able to improve the relevancy, timeliness, and how compelling something is for you as an individual.

Ryan Cramer: Is this something that would be unique every time someone comes back where it could be triggered if I'm a repeat customer or if I'm just a first time customer? What's the journey ultimately to help push the customer into... once they return back ultimately hopefully to your website?

Gen Furukawa: That's a good question. If it were a follow- up, if you'd already purchased, maybe that would be a post- purchase survey, so that's a great use case. There are specific apps built for the post- purchase survey, but a classic question there for example is, " How did you hear about it? How did you hear about us?" That's one where you look at your Google Analytics and you might attribute X percent of conversions to organic. But if you actually look at what people are saying, that might be different than the attribution, whether it's first touch or last touch, so it might add more clarity on subsequent purchases in terms of source and medium of how you're getting sales. Another interesting way for repeat customers or repeat purchases is brands that have subscription e- commerce businesses, so that might be a subscription wine brand like Winc, for example, or Stitch Fix, where they'll ask upfront in a quiz, " What preferences do you have? What style are you looking for?" what are basic things like, " What's your sizing?" or" How do you grind your coffee?" Or" Do you like red or white wine?" But then after the package has been received and you go through it, then there's an experiential quiz, " What did you actually think about the products that you received?" and then... I mean these brands are incredibly sophisticated. Stitch fix, for example, is essentially like a data science company, but they will correlate the after impression with the before, and so at that point it becomes a little bit more about how to refine the packages or the products that are sent, which does play exactly into lifetime value. Because if you're on a subscription or recurring package, recurring business, every single package that is sent out is so critical in the customer experience to continue to have that recurring revenue and not have the customer churn.

Ryan Cramer: Got you. With this automation, it makes me think of a couple different ways, and I just want to understand too for maybe the audience who are thinking about this too. The likes of a mini chat where there's automation, and the likes of that, but it's through social media, maybe through Messenger, or something along those lines: how would this be, just to understand and make sure that we can highlight the differences and the benefits of it, how would Prehook be different to the likes of a mini chat or something where you can tie into a bot flow?

Gen Furukawa: That's a good question. In some ways, it's a little bit cosmetic because ultimately it's interacting; and you ask a question, I give an answer, and then like go through the flow, so it's not that different. Onsite the user experience is different where many chat... or Intercom, Drift, for example... those are like little widgets on the bottom right or bottom left of the screen. The quiz is a little bit more of a front- and- center experience for a direct- to- consumer brand where it's the sole focus, and we're not there to... There is no option for live chat, which is a double- edged sword because sometimes it is nice to have a live chat, but crosstalk.

Ryan Cramer: This is something, when they get pointed to the website, this is the first thing they interact with, and this is the only thing they can interact before they move on?

Gen Furukawa: Well, not necessarily. If it's a paid ad, for example: yeah, you want your user 100% focused on taking this quiz.

Ryan Cramer: Sure.

Gen Furukawa: The quiz can be installed as a button in the hero image, or in the header nav or the footer Navelbine, or a popup, so there are different ways that it can engage with a customer. We do have brands that use it as an exit intent; meaning once the users, their mouse is going up to close up the window or go back, then the quiz can pop up like, " Hey, before you go," and the benefit there is ultimately a lead gen play so that you can engage and that there is a strong enough hook, something compelling that will play to my curiosity like, " Oh, yeah. Maybe I should actually take this because I don't know what I'm looking for," enter the few questions, and then share an email address.

Ryan Cramer: What are best cases? The data that you guys are receiving, what are the preemptive ways that, if I'm a direct- to- consumer company, these are trend true ways to make sure we can capture some data, if not all data, but it's the way that we can start at least building that customer avatar, if you will? Is there or two or maybe three that you can share that you guys are seeing consistently of, " Hey, that was the'hook' that got them to put in information"?

Gen Furukawa: Oh, okay. Why would somebody want to take it?

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. Is it an offer? Is it more of a customization experience? What are those things? What's the most frequent way that people are taking these quizzes?

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. Great question. I think personalized recommendation is one, and that's like, " Hey, just tell me what I need and why, but make it easy for me," so that's a very common one. Another one is categorizing based on personality, like what type of... One example is Beardbrand. It's a beard product, men's grooming product, actually based in Austin, and one of their main quizzes is, " What type of beardsman are you?" And so I think the reason why that works is because it piques your curiosity, it can be fun, and then also maybe there's intrinsically some level of human nature to be a part of a group, and I want to know which part I fall into. But regardless, learning about what type of, popularized by Buzzfeed and the Times years ago, but those are still very prevalent. And then also just related to product recommendation, learning more about yourself. One that I saw the other day is Modern Fertility. It's I think fertility, to help with fertility, and the quiz on their hero image is, " Do you want kids one day?" And so I have kids, but I think it's a very profound hook because there's... It makes you think, and it makes you curious, and you don't know what you don't know, and so I want to learn more about myself. And I think that's where you as a merchant can position yourself as an authority and as an expert; which is Robert Cialdini, the marketing author and legend in many ways, that he has his pillars of influence, and those are two of the most important ones, which is: establish authority, and establish your expertise, and then the customer will look to you. When you tell them which product is right for them, they'll listen because you've established that. And so I think if you're able to understand what problems you're dealing with, take them through that journey, tell them how they can solve it, and then how the product that you're selling can bridge that gap of where they are and where they want to go. Then, all of a sudden, that's a really powerful buyer trigger, and to address a buyer psychology of, " I want to be a better me, and this brand will help me get there, this product will help you get there."

Ryan Cramer: Right. Well, obviously the establishment of authority is very important; I think it's going to help brands stand out, and obviously it makes your brand more valuable to outside investors, or if you want to leave it one day. Or even just on the notion that if it empowers your ability to iterate and grow your product base or knowledge, or just the ways in which people are really searching for, and where they are in their buyer journey. But in a world of data, you can pull almost anything you really truly want to. What's that fine line again of, " I want to capture data, but I don't want to capture too much. I don't want to be invasive, but I want to be practical and proficient"? What are those things that people feel welcome to handing over instead of, " What's your business?" or" What's your address? What's your zip code?" Is that too personal or is that too invasive? What are those gray areas in that box, if you will? If we step outside of it, then we've lost that customer.

Gen Furukawa: That's a great question. Some of that stuff I mean that's... When we talk zero- party data, name and address that's like first- party data, and ultimately that would be a waste of a question. The way I think about it is every question essentially is like a bullet in the holster, and you have limited shots before a customer says, " You know what? This is useless. This is a waste of my time. I'm out," and so I think you do want to be very thoughtful and deliberate about what you're asking and the progression of the questions that you're asking. Name and phone number, address: they're going to fill that out in the shipping address or the billing address, you don't need to get that in a quiz, so that's considered first- party data that's passively gathered. But I think what is important, or how a brand might want to think about it is, " What would be helpful to give myself the best chance to sell a product or to market to this person most effectively?" and so one way to think about that is segmentation, " What type of data would help me to in improve the relevancy of the campaigns that I'm sending out?" I think if you consider... Or maybe they have their segmentation program already, and it's based on how much money they've spent, so VIP or first- time customer, or a lead, frequency and monetization, RFM, that's a nice way to do it. But then if you layer on what problems they're solving for, I think that's a really compelling data point with which you can create segments around, or maybe it's a persona. For example, if it's a mother. We have a toothbrush brand, for example. If they are selling to a parent or the customer's going to be a kid, that would dramatically change the marketing campaigns. To answer your question simply, I think if you think about what would be helpful in segmentation, and then capture data points around that, and then you can use that to send some finely targeted emails and SMS campaigns, that's great. Also, maybe what their end goal is.

Ryan Cramer: Right. The effectiveness of this, how are you... Is the achievement that something like a quiz would... I guess what would be a success if someone's utilizing a quiz, and where are they measuring the success of this? Is it capture the...

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Capture the bottom line.

Ryan Cramer: I was going to say bottom line. Is that where you're really circling, the bottom line, and that's really where it goes to, and that's the" KPI" that we're looking at?

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. I think there are three things. I should say top line, like revenue. How much revenue did the quiz generate? And that's specifically, based on the recommended product, did the customer buy that product? And so Prehook tracks that, basically a 14- day attribution window. They were recommended a product. Did they purchase within 14 days? And so that's one way that you can very quantitatively know how much revenue is coming from the quiz or how helpful is it? The other is leads, both email and phone number, and that again can be compared and quantified easily. For example, say you get 100, 000 visitors to your site, 2% of those would opt in say on a regular pop- up like, " Hey, join our newsletter," or" Drop- in an email for 10% off." So you'd get 2000 new leads a month. Well, what if you had a quiz up there in the hero image, or somewhere else, and whether the hook is, " What's your recommended product?" or" What type of buyer are you?" you can figure out what the opt- in rate is of anybody who would engage with that, and ultimately where you'd end up getting their contact information. So we are working with brands that are seeing 3- 5x higher engagement on a quiz and gathering leads, as opposed to say the 2-5% opt- in on a pop- up. So yeah, it's definitely worth a test to see how much you're getting. And then the third thing that's harder to quantify is the customer data, like how much does that actually impact the revenue that you're getting from your email or SMS? But you could probably create segments on those who took the quiz and those who did not in Klaviyo or Omnisend, whatever your email service provider is, and see any delta there.

Ryan Cramer: Is it possible, or do you see people incentivizing the... Once they've reached your website, obviously that's the hardest part to do from outside traffic, is there incentivizations or call to actions that you say, " Take quiz and get free shipping," or" Take quiz get 10% off of your next order," or something like that? Is there a call to action that you see successful, or is it AB testing that you can do, or none of those things that really create a lift?

Gen Furukawa: That's a great question because I do see some brands that will offer free shipping or discount if you take the quiz, and I see many that don't because there's just maybe a compelling enough offer where they don't need to do that, and so that might be a whole other can of worms anyway in terms of discounting, and its impact on brand equity and margin drain. Who knows? But yeah, I think it's something that merits a test to see, " Okay, is it better? Do we get a better outcome even with a 10% discount in a quiz or not?" So yeah, it's hard for me to say definitively because I also don't always have the backend analytics that a merchant sees to make that decision.

Ryan Cramer: Right. Makes sense. Well, I didn't know if there is more successor case studies in terms of... Obviously, that's the whole thing in marketing, right? What's the actual hook and what are you incentivizing people? Are you giving too much away? You don't want to leave money on the table, but then also you don't want to give it away when the intent is already there. How is a quiz going to help coexist with other marketing initiatives, too? How would I, if I'm an Amazon seller, or obviously in this case directed- to- consumer entrepreneur, how am I incorporating this with my other advertisements or promotions on a day- to- day, week- to- week basis?

Gen Furukawa: That's a great question. I think that they by nature coexist, and I think that they actually augment each other's efforts, and so what I mean by that is the quiz can... is data that you're capturing, and so let's use an example. A common tech stack that we see is a Shopify store, and then they're using Klaviyo or Omnisend to power their communications, email and SMS. The merchant will capture the quiz data... like I was saying, what interests you have, or what preferences in size or color or model... and there'll be a recommended product at the end, and so I can create segments of who gets what email with what offer included, but those segments can also be shared to different platforms. The same segment that you have in Klaviyo or Omnisend for a person who likes a white toothbrush with a Daniel Tiger set: that same segment can be synced to your YouTube, your Google Search, your Facebook ads or Instagram, so it's becoming a... It's propelling better segmentation in ad platform, so what you're seeing is... And ads really there's a direct correlation of relevant and targeting to ROI, and so the quiz data is informing what data you have to segment around, and so it's like creating a more cohesive omnichannel customer experience.

Ryan Cramer: That's amazing. In this day and age, is there's something as, " Hey, this is something that... " more AB tests? Or what's a great way to start this not to immerse and overwhelm, but to almost half step it into the integration of your website? Because if you have customers continuously coming back, do you want to serve them a quiz every single time? Do you want to push it out every moment that someone's achieving? Where is that fine line, if you will? Again, for everyone who's listening, they're going to say, " Do I hit them up every single time or can I manage that?" How does that work?

Gen Furukawa: Do I hit them up every time? It might be, like on a Shopify site, it'll be the bestsellers in the hero image, and it'll always be the bestsellers, and it could... Yeah. I think there's that user experience part that's, " Okay, how much am I catering towards first- time visitors versus returning visitors or returning customers?" And yeah, that's a little bit harder to control because that might get to the point of personalization of a website experience. But to address your question of what's an easy way to start with a quiz, I think it really might just be: okay, let's think about what data points would be helpful for our campaign, our email/ SMS paid ad campaigns. What do we need to learn more about our customers and therefore ask it? And it can be a very short three to five question quiz. What channel do we want to focus on? What list do we want to build? That's email, SMS. By the way, we also support crypto wallet addresses, which is a new cool feature that I'm super excited about. And then recommend a product like, " What product matches to which quiz responses?" And so that's basically the framework of setting it up, and then you integrate with your email service providers or your SMS. And then from there you can just run it for a month, two weeks. Do we get a higher opt- in rate for our list? Do we actually see an ROI on somebody who takes a quiz as opposed to somebody who doesn't? In Google analytics, you can get more granular, segment out those who take the quiz. What does the average order value look like? Is it higher? Because in a quiz you can include the upsell and cross- sell. Is the conversion rate higher for those who take the quiz or not? And that doesn't necessarily come through in our analytics. Our analytics is basically just revenue contributed. So you can see that in Google Analytics. And then also maybe on the email part, and we touched on this earlier, those that go through a post- quiz automation, do they have a higher conversion rate maybe because of the data that you're using to segment? So yeah, ultimately I think it's a relatively low- risk test to set up, and it can be done in a day, building it out. And of course, if you're on Shopify, I'd love to help build it out, share ideas. You don't even need to use Prehook. But I've gone through thousands of quizzes at this point so I'm fairly familiar with them.

Ryan Cramer: Absolutely. Well, the other thing, Gen, I also talk about this too, if people are implementing this in the customer service journey of, " Why are you here? What can we help you with?" And again, I also, when I think of a quiz, obviously it's just you the person taking the quiz is supposed to have the answers, which in theory this is true, but in the customer service aspect maybe of, " This is how you catch problems before something else happens." Right? On the Amazon side of things, it's very difficult to understand where the problems might occur at a quick pace. It could be in your reviews. It could be in your customer service, or through Amazon returns, anything like that. But that could be weeks, if not months, as a tail that you're actually catching. This can be almost automation where it might be, " Hey, there's a lot of breakage for SKU XYZ" or" Product XYZ is broken consistently." Maybe does it like trigger any alerts or notifications, or anything like that? Or can you do that with Prehook?

Gen Furukawa: It sounds like that might be more of a post- purchase.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. Post- purchase. Or if they came to your website, and they go to customer service, clearly there is either a problem or an issue. So if I were to say like, " Why are you here? Issue with product or a question about warranty?" or something like that, where it ducktails into how do I push them into, " Hey, call us right here on our customer service line" or" Here's how you get a free new product," or even put in your information of, " Hey, my product came broken." Like you said, the beard oil that we were talking about earlier, maybe that bottle came broken in the package, or something like that, then all of a sudden taking those data points of, " Hey, this customer said, in this regards... " Instead of them interacting with one of my reps, maybe this is something that I can go down these different paths. I can have them send out a brand new product if it's broken, or free, or something like that for the first time they come, or if it's a repeat customer. Then you can understand, " Hey, those batches, they weren't packaged correctly." and we can tie it back to inaudible. I'm getting super detailed here, but is that something where it can tie into the product journey as well as maybe issues or customer service?

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. It can. It definitely can. Most of our customers though do use it pre- purchase, so use a quiz for finding the right product, or gathering contact info. Yeah, recommending a product and customer info. What you're talking about though can certainly be done with a quiz, with our quiz. And I think one of the main features that you'd want to look for, if you're evaluating that as an option, is conditional logic.

Ryan Cramer: Right.

Gen Furukawa: If they're looking for talking to somebody, then take them here. If they're looking for just reference doc, help doc, then take them there. So yeah, that's something that you want to think about. But to be Frank, for customers service, I think that there are some bells and whistles that are maybe more specifically designed for it. For DTC, it might be a Gorgias, for example, or Zendesk.

Ryan Cramer: Got you.

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. And then also maybe you want that live chat element as well.

Ryan Cramer: Sure. Yeah. This is something I was like... applicable nature of, " Hey, maybe this is something that ties into those ecosystems of... " I can understand a little bit quicker, or I can understand why people are even attempting to reach out and start something. Like you said, just want to... If there's another segment out there, I'm going to find it for you, Gen.

Gen Furukawa: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, one thing that is related and is very useful and interesting is doing product research; not product research in the terms of Viral Launch and Jungle Scout, but product development, and then understanding a little bit more about what your customers are looking for, and weighing the different options. One great example is ThirdLove and Heidi Zak; that's a direct- to- consumer lingerie brand for women's lingerie. The main goal is just to make it easier to purchase lingerie online, and a quiz is at the centerpiece of it because a fit quiz can be a great use case of a quiz, and then also a necessary step in the customer journey, because standing online what the right fit is, is far harder than going in person trying it on and stuff, but nobody necessarily wants to do that. The CEO, Heidi Zak, was running a quiz, I think 13 million people took it, and so she had tens of millions of data points, and of that was able to identify that fit was always an issue; and actually it wasn't even just the fit itself, but half sizes was an opportunity. From that, from the structured data of a quiz, she was able to identify that there was an opportunity and a gap in the market, start building it out, and now one of their competitive advantages and differentiators, or was, that they have half sizes in bras. I think if you're able to at scale gather data, and it's structured in a way that's easy to identify, as opposed to support tickets where you're having to sift through what the text is, and identify the customer sentiment. If it's multiple choice and you know what people are looking for, you can know which flavor of cereal would be a great one that has preexisting demand, or where there are existing challenges. So yeah, you're touching on a great point there.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah. I was going to say maybe even going into the... Again, if you're thinking about just preemptively trying to think, " Hey, is this something you find useful? Are you looking for different colors? What else might be missing?" If you thought A, B or C would go with this, which one would find more useful, if it was part of a bundle? Again, that iteration of product development and that journey I think is really cool and fascinating how to embed that. Doing it through email or SMS or even onsite I think is very fascinating post- purchase with that. So Gen, I know we're already at the top of the hour. What's that 2022 journey for you guys, and then maybe what's the first thing and major thing you guys are focusing on, and what's that way that people can connect with you guys if they want to learn more information?

Gen Furukawa: Yeah, totally. We just launched our Attentive integration. Attentive is one of the leading SMS platforms for DTC brands, so that's really exciting. And then, to be honest, we're shifting a little bit towards Web3 NFT. The first step was that we'd allow brands to capture crypto wallets, wallet addresses. What do you do with that? You can airdrop things, and a whole other topic, and I'm sure you might have episodes upcoming on it. But I think that's a huge opportunity for where Web3, the notion of owning digital assets, we're barely scratching the surface of that as it applies to consumer brand. We're seeing some bigger ones do it with Nike and Adidas, Under Armor, Fendi, but as we kind of... And Shopify, by the way, is in their beta test. Shopify Plus brands can now mint and distribute NFTs. But yeah, there's a whole lot there and we're starting to explore that because we think that there are a lot of great applications in terms of customer loyalty or community- gated access, pre- sales, all these things that Web3 enables.

Ryan Cramer: Pressed the wrong button here. That's fantastic. I think that's something that people are constantly trying to keep up- to- date and support. Again, just in the notion of what customers are looking for, and how to best serve them, I think is really cool. Best way for people to connect with you or reach out to the team there?

Gen Furukawa: Yeah. That's right. My name is Gen, G- E- N, @ Prehook. com, or on Twitter @ GenFurukawa. Find me or search for Prehook. But yeah, I would love to connect. Love to help in any way possible, just to bat around ideas, or help building- out a quiz, get you integrated, or setup with email. I really take pride in helping make the most out of quizzes, and I think merchants that do find a lot of value. And it's not just the short- term boost of revenue, but the long- term benefit of learning more about your customers, owning that data, and owning that list.

Ryan Cramer: That's fantastic, man. Well, thank you so much for hopping on Crossover Commerce today. I always finish every episode saying: hey, now you're a friend of the show. If you can make it an hour with me now, I consider you a friend. And no one's left yet so that's good. I guess I have 200- plus friends in the e- commerce world because of that, but haven't scared anyone away. But I appreciate your time from Austin, and educating people in the terms of... Again, marketing has changed all of a sudden because of technology. It's going to be fascinating, but trying to stay ahead and trying to build- out that value chain for your brands and business, super cool with companies like you. So thanks so much for sharing some time with us today in my corner of the internet.

Gen Furukawa: Thank you so much, Ryan. Thanks, everyone.

Ryan Cramer: Thanks again. And thank you everyone else. Again, who is joining us live on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter, I appreciate it. This is episode 210 of Crossover Commerce, where we're bringing the best and brightest in Amazon and e- commerce spaces. You heard Gen at Prehook. Lots to unpack there. If you happen to need to re- watch again, if you're watching this live, or if you are wanting to wait for a listen, again go to usa. pingpongx. com/ podcast for all of our past episodes, but then you can catch them also on our LinkedIn and Facebook/ YouTube pages as well. Follow me on all the social channels. Just search for Ryan Cramer or look for Crossover Commerce in that regards for future episodes because we've got a lot of great content. Again, 200. We started into the year 200. Now, we've already got 10 episodes under our belt and it's only the 25th, so not too shabby to start off 2022. That being said, I'm Ryan Cramer. This is Crossover Commerce. We'll catch you guys next time on another episode. Take care.