32. Why It's Important to Increase Customer Value with Will Laurenson

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:00]
Welcome to the marketing stack podcast. My name is Burhaan and today I have, Will Laurenson. I hope I'm getting that right.  Over in Chile, London today, Will runs a company called. Will, it click no?

Will Laurenson: [00:00:15]
Customers Who Click

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:17]
Will runs a company called customers who click and it's all about conversion rate optimization, if I'm correct in saying so. And he's been, he's been doing a lot of, lots of different things over the years and we'll get into his story. Will, welcome to the episode. I know you were referred to me by my previous podcast guest.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:00:37]
Andy was very gracious in introducing us. So Will tell me a little bit about you and before we get into like the marketing stuff, like, so you're obviously working from home and you've figured out this whole work from home thing. How did, how did that come about if, if we can start there?

Will Laurenson: [00:00:53]
Yeah. Well, thanks for having me, pleasure to be here. I suppose to answer that question. I quit my job just over a year ago. My last full-time job, basically November before the pandemic kit. So, yeah, so my, my first year was, was pretty tough, but I mean, yeah, so I guess.

Will Laurenson: [00:01:14]
It came about because it had to, I didn't, I didn't really have much choice. I, I left my job. Worked from home for a little bit then was looking at, you know, coworking spaces, things like that. But then obviously when the pan pandemic hit, I've just been home ever since.

Will Laurenson: [00:01:28]
So in terms of how it came about, it's literally just been, been forced on me, which has been a massive learning curve and, and yeah, very, very strange experience because. Yeah. I went from a company that was about, I think, 12 to 1300 people in the office working with my team that I run.

Will Laurenson: [00:01:51]
Which was what, four of us within the marketing team, which was probably about a hundred then working with, you know, tech teams, product teams, all the different teams. So always working with other people. And then I've gone to working with myself and clients,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:02:09]
right.

Will Laurenson: [00:02:10]
So big, big, big shift. And, it can mean that on a, on a daily basis, the only person I speak to is my flatmate, you know, in-person or, you know, on audio. So, so that's, it's been a big, big change and. I have been used to kind of working with people, bouncing ideas around and working in that way.

Will Laurenson: [00:02:31]
So working basically on my own 99% of the time, it's been, been quite a big shift, but I've got used to it. I'm sort of still working out and,  yeah.  I'm glad, I've glad I've taken this journey this path, but, yeah, it's definitely an interesting first year.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:02:47]
So that's. Yeah, that's interesting. Cause you've got obviously the dynamic and being in lockdown and then another UK went through quite stringent lockdown, sessions anyway. And. Then there's the whole like, shifting work, because, so you, you quit from your job or you were laid off from work?

Will Laurenson: [00:03:05]
Yeah, I just left.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:03:06]
Yeah. Okay. So your change career or? Yeah, change, work at the same time. So it's like a lot of things going on there and like, we can talk to all of it cause I've done all of that. And then again, there's like work from home stuff, but.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:03:21]
So obviously, like in terms of my audience, we are mostly, you know, work from home or solopreneurs,  trying to build our businesses online or are building our businesses online and, you know, looking to optimize things, looking to improve things.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:03:36]
And so. You know, now I understand how your basis for conversion rate optimization came about, because if you're running a, you were working in a really big company. And, so tell us a little bit about that. Because as a solopreneur, you know, a lot of people don't have the sense of what a large marketing team would actually do. Like, I can't imagine a hundred people sitting in an office, trying to figure out where the clicks are.

Will Laurenson: [00:04:03]
Yeah. I suppose to get, to give it a context to that, I actually started in startups. So my pre the big companies, I was used to pretty small companies, you know, working with teams of maybe 10 people in the UK office.

Will Laurenson: [00:04:21]
Maybe a hundred, 120 overall in the company. But then yeah, I moved to this, this big, big gaming company in the UK and, and he's very different. There's a lot more process. But also you've got, there's so much experience there and it really, it really does make a difference. So. Yeah, it's, it's definitely a different experience.

Will Laurenson: [00:04:43]
But yeah, I mean, th there's just so much to do, you know, the company that I work was that I think they were spending maybe 60 million a year on. Was that, can't remember if that was the PPC budget or the marketing budget, the acquisition budget, but

Burhaan Pattel: [00:04:58]
a lot of money.

Will Laurenson: [00:04:59]
I think there's about 60 million a year. So there were, you know, four or five people on the PPC team, four or five people in digital media team, the app team, the affiliate team, SEO team, my team, which was the conversion team. And then we had acquisition operations. Who are basically the guys who are responsible for all the analytics and the tech, the tech platforms that marketing acquisition gets to use.

Will Laurenson: [00:05:25]
And then there's the retention side. So that was pretty much the email marketing or sorry, the CRM retention team. So that was another yeah. 30, 40 people probably, split between our different brands. So, you know, there is. It definitely. Wasn't the case that you're wondering how you can possibly have all these people getting involved and how there couldn't be some overlap.

Will Laurenson: [00:05:49]
They were, you know, they were responsible for different areas, you know, different, different channels, different brands. So it does it did actually make sense because yeah, I, I I've had that before where I've thought, how, how can a company possibly have. A hundred marketers doing this when right at the startup I was at, we were doing perfectly well with five.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:06:10]
Mm. But I, I think it's, it comes down to sort of the processing of data because, you know, like, even as a solopreneur, you've got Google analytics, you've got, if you're running Facebook ads got analytics on Facebook, you've got, you know, your page analytics, you've got your group analytics, if you're running a group.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:06:26]
And then you've got all the individual stats of all the social, like even for one person, who's just got a lot of, social accounts or a lot of data being fed through from all of these things. It can be a lot to keep, keep up and possibly a YouTube channel, maybe podcasts analytics too. So I, I understand that it's like, okay, there's so much data, especially when you're spending that amount of money, you know, as a big corporation, as a big company, across various divisions or brands or products, then.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:06:56]
Yeah, it makes sense because in terms of optimization, it's only in that end analysis. That improvements actually happened. So speak to me about that and, and why the data actually informs CRO.

Will Laurenson: [00:07:12]
Yeah. And it's so obviously when you, when you've got that amount of data coming through that might have spend that traffic, you've got, you've got the ability to test very quickly. And you've got to be able to see some learn very quickly. So, and it's not just the AB tests that the conversion team would, they.

Will Laurenson: [00:07:28]
You're learning off all the AB tests that the PPC team and the Facebook team are doing, and you can learn from that. So, one thing, for example, we learned was, we had, we had one promotion, which, technically could, could be talked about in two different ways.

Will Laurenson: [00:07:43]
You could either put a monetary value on it and say, you get up to 50 pounds of bigger tickets, or you could say you get up to 200 bingo tickets, or it might mean, yeah, it's for a fixed 200 bingo tickets. So the PPC team would test that messaging, see which one resonates with the actual we're getting people to click through, and then we could put it on the, in the actual kind of welcome flow of deposit flow.

Will Laurenson: [00:08:08]
And then likewise, we could, we could test something out in our, in our emails.  Cause we had, the conversion team was also responsible for, a certain email database, basically like leads. Before they became an actual player. So we would be able to test in email as well and then use that massive onwards on the website.

Will Laurenson: [00:08:26]
So yeah, plenty of data, plenty teams. And when you're working together, you've got those different viewpoints on things. So the PPC team has an understanding of what's the mindset of someone who is doing a search and coming through PPC versus the mindset of someone who's just browsing Facebook. And we put an ad in front of them.

Will Laurenson: [00:08:45]
Right versus the mindset of someone who's decided to sign up, but hasn't deposited and played, you know,  how does that email team kind of, understand that player, that person, and how do we pull that data together to optimize everywhere?

Burhaan Pattel: [00:09:00]
And of course, if I, if I may sort of, my assumption is in terms of gaming. So your was this like a gambling kind of gave me the website. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, if somebody's in that state of mind or if they're an addict in that sort of field. Yeah. I'm sorry to say, but they are, you know, a lot of people are addicted to these things.  If that's what's on top of mind all the time, then yes.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:09:25]
It would always inform the decision, where they're looking at the ad where they're clicking through from what they're searching for. And so that's where intent comes through and yeah. You know, that's, it's very interesting with lots of data. I find it fascinating to see like, you know, try to analyze, like, why did this.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:09:42]
Particular sauce, convert lower or higher compared to others, you know, try to understand the rationale behind it. And you have lots of data to actually just like to confirm your thinking. And a lot of customers, a lot of clients, a lot of businesses don't have a lot of data, a lot of businesses actually, especially small startups maybe who are not running ads.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:10:05]
Don't have that information. So how would they.  Begin to start optimizing, or how would they begin to start testing what the marketing, what the market is looking for off the bat?

Will Laurenson: [00:10:19]
I guess depends on what size exactly we're talking about. If we're talking very, very small startup, speak to customers, get feedback from them. It's, it's always going to be the best source of feedback. Even for a company that's doing, you know, hundreds of thousands of data points that contribute.

Will Laurenson: [00:10:35]
It's the actual quality of feedback, which always gives you the best, the best answers. So I would definitely recommend, Email, email and customers, surveying customers, phoning up customers, asking them what they're doing.

Will Laurenson: [00:10:48]
Or don't like about the platform or, or the e-commerce website or whatever. If they haven't bought try and find out why, if they've bought and churned at some point, you know, again, why did they sign up in the first place? What did they like about it? What convinced them to actually sign up and what has resulted in them churning?

Will Laurenson: [00:11:08]
You know, there's. There's even those kind of three segments of people who signed up, but never converted people who converted in germs and people who converted and have stuck with you just surveying those three groups. Groups is going to give you a little bit of insight.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:11:24]
Yeah. And, and that's quite interesting because when you have that type of information and again, like you're, you know, we're assuming that. Smaller businesses have that type of information. And hopefully they do, especially if they've got some sort of a business.  Yeah. Th the answers that come out of those people are going to be slightly different or the same.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:11:46]
And depending on what they say is going to inform it, I would also take it a step, a step further and sort of build that into the customer relationship cycle, because, you know, if you send out an email or somebody buys something.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:12:01]
You know, there's nothing wrong with putting in a small survey or feedback form, or even just like a, give us a star rating, like something simple, in an email or, you know, through the cycle, just to get a touch point. Just to get a pulse on, on what's going on without hurting the entire customer journey.

Will Laurenson: [00:12:22]
Absolutely. I, I always think it's important to follow up with people. One thing that really bothers me is when e-commerce websites send you a review request, just a few days after you've purchased, but what they don't do is actually follow up to see how happy you are.

Will Laurenson: [00:12:38]
And I get, you know, there is the argument that, you know, the reviews need to be unbiased. So you should be, you should be reviewing everyone anyway, regardless of whether they're happy or not, but that's not the point. The point is as a business, you should be reaching out to the customers to make sure that they're okay.

Will Laurenson: [00:12:56]
You know, just, you know, just checking in how is the product or how is the service? Are you finding what you need? Is it the right fit? Do you understand how to use it? Or do you need, do you need someone to walk you through the platform? That sort of thing? Just a quick email makes a massive difference to people, even if they're absolutely happy.

Will Laurenson: [00:13:16]
And then, you know, then you can follow up with that. That review request a bit later, but I think it just comes across as you don't really care if you get the purchase. And then the next time they hear from you is can you go rate us on Trustpilot? Well, sometimes it's just,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:13:31]
Or you, get another email to say, Hey, don't you want to go buy something else?

Will Laurenson: [00:13:35]
Yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's similar to, you know, you make a purchase and then immediately there's a, pop-up asking you to refer a friend to get a discount. And it's like, well, I'm not at that stage yet. I don't, I don't know if I want to refer a friend because I've literally just bought this for the first time.

Will Laurenson: [00:13:52]
So. Why not wait till, wait till I've had a chance to use it, check in with me to make sure I'm happy when you're, when you're happy. When you're confident I am happy. Or if you just don't hear back from me, then, you know, as part of, an onboarding sequence or a welcome series, that's when you then ask me to refer a friend or, Or review, but even referrals, I'd probably leave too.

Will Laurenson: [00:14:16]
Maybe after the second purchase, you know, I,  actually ordered something quite recently,  received it yesterday, I think. And it's,  you know, it's a, it's a product or you can consumable products, I guess that's the term and that you have a subscription refill for four, but they asked me to refer a friend and that friend would get a free.

Will Laurenson: [00:14:37]
Like case the kind of reusable part of it. And I was like, well, I don't know yet do I like you know If I, if I keep my subscription and I, and I get that second subscription or even third that's when you can say this guy is probably happy, cause he's still paying for it. Let's get him to review it or let's get him to refer a friend.

Will Laurenson: [00:14:58]
But it just, it just doesn't make sense to do it straight away. I think that's what a lot of businesses do. They, it's almost like a lot of businesses are collecting reviews just because they think they're supposed to do it.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:15:15]
Well, yeah, so I was going to say, I think a lot of people are looking at features of certain softwares or they're listening to maybe marketers.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:15:25]
Or they're listening to YouTube channels? Or they're taking some sort of a course.  And the guru is saying, you know, this is what you have to do. And they automatically just go in, do it without thinking about what their customer's experiences.  And in some cases don't actually analyze to see whether that's hurting their overall conversion or the lifetime customer value or not.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:15:47]
And I, yeah, you know, that's a, that's a big mistake that I, that I think that I think people make, one thing I like, and I don't know if you want to get into software too much, but I've used Clavio extensively, connected to Shopify and. You know, there's so many deep integrations there where you can, you know, decide and segment customers in so many different ways.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:16:10]
And time emails in so many, you know, variations that one, it becomes very complicated and it, it's kind of like, okay, if you haven't really thought through the process, you can get tangled up in your own web of trying to figure it out. But if you do. It can actually improve the overall success of your campaigns.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:16:32]
And I've seen that happen multiple times. What do you, what do you, what do you recommend in terms of, so, you know, if, if, if somebody who's listening to the episode says, okay, well, I need to look at my buying cycle. What would you recommend? Sort of the top three or four touch points and. What would you look for and, and sort of, what would you, what would you think about in terms of making changes?

Will Laurenson: [00:17:01]
Oh, that's quite quite a broad question. I mean, I, I deal primarily with the, the, the website experience and the post-purchase experience.  So I don't do much with advertising, so I'm not really gonna touch on that.

Will Laurenson: [00:17:14]
I think the key thing for a website is someone can fund what they want easily quickly and, and then they can, you know, convinces them to purchase. And then the website is easy to use to actually make that purchase. So the information has got to be there, the benefits that product needs to sell itself.

Will Laurenson: [00:17:32]
So that when someone's looking at it, they go, yeah, this is absolutely the product that is going to solve my problems. They decide to buy it. And then the website's going to be easy to use so that they can complete that purchase. So it's almost like two there's two objectives there.

Will Laurenson: [00:17:48]
You got to convince the person that it's the right product. And then you've just got to make sure, you know, you've just got to make sure they can go click, click, click, buy done.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:17:57]
Right. I keep the trust through the, through the, through the journey.

Will Laurenson: [00:18:01]
Yeah. Keep the trust, but just make it easy.  You know, have a guest checkout, don't ask for ridiculous amounts of extra information,  offer a few different payment options, that sort of thing, you know,  You don't have to offer free delivery. A lot of people say you do, but,  it, it does work well, if you can, if you can afford it, if you can make it work with, you know, all the thresholds.

Will Laurenson: [00:18:21]
Otherwise just, just charge a small fee. But the important thing is if the product has done the right job or the product page has done the job and it's sold itself to that person, you know? Little things throughout the rest of the photo, shouldn't matter so much. Sure. Cause they really, really want this product.  

Burhaan Pattel: [00:18:40]
Well, I would say there is one caveat there, or I guess it depends also on the type of business, but what's your take on upsells?

Will Laurenson: [00:18:52]
Upsells if it works, if it makes sense. Yeah. If you are chucking in any product that you want to just push it just doesn't, it's not really going to work. If, if they make sense, it works. So. I dunno, what would be a good example? If someone bought some walking boots or hiking boots, a good upsell, there could be,  hiking socks, for example.  

Will Laurenson: [00:19:17]
You know, they are a specific type of sock. They tend to be a bit thicker.  So it makes sense. And they're obviously a lot cheaper than the boots you might. If the bricks are 60, 70 pounds, or let's say a hundred dollars, the socks might be $20. So that's. You know, a very linked purchase that someone goes well, yes. If I'm buying walking shoes, walking socks makes it, it makes, it makes sense.

Will Laurenson: [00:19:41]
And it's only another $20, so that doesn't really matter that much. So that's fine. But I don't know if you tried to sell someone walking boots and then yeah. Yeah, if I'm saying something well, even then you could create a link.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:19:58]
Sure.

Will Laurenson: [00:19:59]
Let's say you were, I don't know, like let's say on Amazon and you bought the walking boots and then the next thing they put to you was a PlayStation five.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:20:06]
Oh yeah, totally unrelated. Yeah.

Will Laurenson: [00:20:08]
Unrelated, massive, you know, obviously massive price on it as well.  Or just some sort of kitchen appliance, even, even a kitchen appliance, which is worth $20 or something. So even in the right price range for that kind of that little upsell, the fact that it's so.

Will Laurenson: [00:20:25]
Completely unrelated means it's not going to work. It's not going to do anything, but, but if you've got, yeah. If you've got related products that kind of make sense as little upsells then. Yeah, absolutely. It works.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:20:37]
Have you, so in this last year you've sort of opened your company or you started customers who click. So what type of clients are you working with and what sort of. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about, about that,  experience and, and who you're looking for. What do you do?

Will Laurenson: [00:20:55]
Yeah, so I, I mainly worked with,  direct to consumer businesses,  mainly e-commerce,  e-commerce and subscriptions. They tend to be the businesses that have the traffic, for me to work with, obviously some, some SAS as well.

Will Laurenson: [00:21:07]
You know, I've done a bit of work with,  some SAS tools, but my kind of my main focus is that, that consumer, that B to C  Kind of customer customer experience, customer value optimization.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:21:19]
It's interesting because, I've, I've done quite a bit of e-commerce one store builds, but also traffic for four stores. And what always used to get me from an advertising point of view was that the rising cost of ads creates this pinch where. You know, your, the customers or the businesses are always losing profit.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:21:43]
Or there's always this fight, to try to keep the costs ad cost as low as possible, as well as product costs as low as possible so that, you know, profits maintains,  what have you seen? And, you know, if you have any information on that, what have you seen in the last year regarding that?

Will Laurenson: [00:22:00]
Yeah. Yeah, just that exactly. You know, costs, especially advertising costs are going up.  I know we saw, we saw a massive drop at the start of the pandemic because loads of businesses cut back.  But they seem to have, you know, got back up to previous levels possibly even more, more now so, yeah. So that's, that's kind of what I, why I do what I do.

Will Laurenson: [00:22:21]
You know, in the startups I worked out there was very much focused on acquisition and acquisition and spending that money. And the marketing team's job was to bring in new people and the products were never good enough. There were always some issues that we, as the marketing team would highlight.

Will Laurenson: [00:22:38]
And so it was, it was kind of those experiences led me down this route of saying, I don't want to deal with the advertising. I don't, I don't particularly find it that interesting to be honest to me. What I like is when somebody is on our website and they're browsing the website, why aren't they buying?

Will Laurenson: [00:22:53]
And how do we, what what's missing, what do we need to do differently? How can we convince that person that they've clicked on an advert? So there must be some interest there. So how do we turn that interest into a purchase,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:23:05]
right? Or even if they came through organically, I'm sure you have the data.

Will Laurenson: [00:23:09]
Yeah. Yeah. Everything came through organically. Just, you know, if they've arrived on a website, there's a reason they've arrived on that website. Honesty. Yeah. All right. It's possible.

Will Laurenson: [00:23:18]
Something's just wrong with the advertising and they were advertising something completely misleading.  But generally speaking, if they've landed on the website, you know, they, they should be, they're looking to purchase or looking for some information.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:23:30]
Well, there is a way, so in analytics you can actually exclude the bouncers. Like if you, if your bounce anybody who's over 90%, you can exclude them because it's kind of like, okay, they were serious people anyway. So it, depending on, I don't know if they, I don't know if you actually do do that, but that's, that's the way that I would approach that.

Will Laurenson: [00:23:50]
I tend to look at it. It's a case by case basis, really, you know, there'll be pages where you get a 90% bounce rate. But it will be, you know, it could be blog pages where it kind of makes sense. Someone comes in, find the information, finds the information they need and goes.  If my product page has a 90% bounce rate, then either there's an issue with the product page and issue with advertising or both,

Burhaan Pattel: [00:24:12]
or the website.

Will Laurenson: [00:24:14]
Oh, the product page. Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:24:17]
Yeah. Well, I, I, I generally categorize the three because, when I say website, it's like, okay, something technically wrong with the website.  Could we design it's you and I talking the same thing. I just separate them so that it's kind of back end front end stuff.  Yeah. And so, so where, where do you see all of this going in the future? Like where, where do you see conversion rate optimization going, why is it so important?

Will Laurenson: [00:24:45]
Well, actually, so I'm, I'm moving away from talking about conversion rate optimization that much now, because it can be a misleading metric. If I, I can, I can increase conversion rates, but in ways that are going to be costly to the business.

Will Laurenson: [00:25:02]
But if you pitch on, you know, conversion rates, the most important thing, if you get your conversion rate up to 15%, you know, if you 10 times your conversion rate, you're going to get 10 subs, the money. But it doesn't work. If in order to get that increased conversion rate, you have to do free shipping and free returns and a 50% off your first dollar and stuff like that.

Will Laurenson: [00:25:24]
Right. So you can bump that conversion rates up, but it doesn't make sense for the business. So I'm looking at mainly customer value optimization now. So how do we convert people? At the, as easy, as quickly, as easily as possible at the highest value possible. And then how do we get them to come back later?

Will Laurenson: [00:25:46]
So it's, it's kind of a bit of a longer along the pace, you know, I, I don't, I don't switch off when someone makes a purchase. I don't, I don't view that as my job complete. I view it as job complete when that person is coming back again, the gap.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:25:59]
Hmm. I say like that a lot, because that gives you a unique position in the marketplace as well. Because I don't think there's many people that's talking about that or if they are it's very, very few.

Will Laurenson: [00:26:11]
No, it is a big seg big segmented. You know, those people tend to be kind of CRM and retention people.  Which, which makes sense, you know, you need those, those are important, but I don't think, yeah, it's, it would be easy for someone to, kind of miss sell CRO and.

Will Laurenson: [00:26:32]
And then say to someone, well, you know, I have got your, I've got your conversion rate up to 10%. So what are you complaining about? Right. Like that's what you hired me to do. And it's because they've, they've taken, you know, use tactics that are actually devaluing.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:26:47]
Yeah. Well,

Will Laurenson: [00:26:47]
I think it's always sorry.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:26:50]
No, I was going to say, you know, it's, it's interesting you bring that up because I think a lot of marketers,  whether they're, you know, good marketers or not,  or whether they're in integrity or not, use a lot of these sales terms to you know bring clients in promise the world and not educate the client on what the implications could be if the goal is reached.  

Burhaan Pattel: [00:27:14]
And I love your example about, you know, you increase the conversion rate, but you know, the business has basically gone to shit because we just can't profit on the, on the, on the product itself. And I think that that tends to. You know, that lends itself to any, any company that's online.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:27:32]
Because there are costs associated, not as heavy costs as a physical brick and mortar business, but online, they are definitely costs.  And those costs are rising.  And so yeah, it, it makes total sense. Yeah. You're gonna, you're going to continue before, sorry. I cut you off there.

Will Laurenson: [00:27:50]
I think I was just going to say it may make, you know, if you're, if you are, if you are kind of pitching CRO services, it makes sense to really put a focus on average order values. Yeah. All right. Maybe not so much that lifetime value piece, because that is a long-term thing.

Will Laurenson: [00:28:04]
Which, which does involve, you know, email marketing and some other areas where you might want to focus on that CRO. But the important thing is that you are now making more money per person as well. Obviously, there were some, some cases where you might sacrifice that you might say, well, we can give away a for the first month free, you know, stuff like Netflix, Spotify.

Will Laurenson: [00:28:26]
But then know that that first month is going to cost them very little and the chance of someone converting well, you know, I'm sorry chances someone's sticking around for a long time is quite high. I think I read, I don't know if this, I don't know if this is an accurate stat, but I read somewhere that, Netflix has a lifetime value of about 25 months.

Will Laurenson: [00:28:46]
So let's just assume that's correct. You know, they're going to earn $10 a month for 25 months. They know they can give them the first month away for free and still spend maybe $50 to actually acquire that person. And that'll be fine. But as it, as an e-commerce brand, it's a bit more difficult because you haven't got that.

Will Laurenson: [00:29:09]
That kind of natural or my site login, you know what, what's your subscribe to Netflix? It's very easy to just leave that. It's almost like a gym membership. Sure. Even if you don't really use it, you just as well, you just kind of leave it at that. Yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:29:22]
Well, I think it's, you know, like average customer value also helps with the advertising, as I said, because if you know what your average, you know, customer value is, and that's why I brought up the upsell piece earlier is if you have a funnel, even if it's an e-commerce store, whether it is an order bump or whether there's a upsell or downsell at each point, you raise the value of the cart.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:29:47]
And so that sort of offsets your advertising costs plus product costs. And if you have a subscription model, which I think you mentioned that you also focus on, that over time, then those subscriptions to make, make up for any costs that are incurred upfront. Yeah. So there are definitely ways around it.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:30:06]
I think in a lot of businesses, they've got to have sort of the balls. They've got to have the guts to actually. You know, open up with something like that, because it can also hurt the business depending on, on what the offer is right upfront. But again, that comes down to testing and, and seeing what the market wants.

Will Laurenson: [00:30:23]
Well, you know, you've just gotta be careful. You've got to make sure that your product is good and it's going to drive that retention for you. And you've got to, you've got to maintain the value on it. You know, I, I actually canceled my Netflix description a few days ago and they just said, I think it was.

Will Laurenson: [00:30:40]
Why are you, they asked for the feedback, why you leaving, gave them feedback, that's it. And they just said, you'll get, you'll have access until this date at the end of your subscription. And then if you, and then I think it says, you know, your data is held for X number of months, you know, your favorites and all that.

Will Laurenson: [00:30:59]
No mention of, Oh, have a free month if you, if you stay with us now, anything like that, or no, no discounts, anything. Cause they know that,  as soon as people know about that, they just start canceling every six months just to get a discount. Yeah. They know

Burhaan Pattel: [00:31:14]
it's going to drive the wrong behavior.

Will Laurenson: [00:31:16]
Yeah. Yeah. It drives them on behavior. It lowers the values. Those people are going to cancel anyway, if, if they want to, I probably, you know, if they'd offered me a month, I probably would've stayed for a free month and then canceled.

Will Laurenson: [00:31:27]
So, you know, it, wasn't going to keep me it. Wasn't going to keep me there. And then, sorry. So if I change my mind, I'm going to come back, you know, it's yeah.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:31:39]
Yeah, that's what I was going to say. I think, you know, they've built, they've built themselves, the brand in such a way that if there is something that you do want to watch, that's only available on Netflix.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:31:49]
They, you know, you are going to come back or you're going to borrow somebody as password to watch it. So, you know, it's, it's, it's just the nature of, of how things work. So, tell us where people can find you you have a podcast as well. Give us the links. Where can people follow you?

Will Laurenson: [00:32:06]
Yeah. So the podcast is Customers Who Click, which is on iTunes, Spotify, all the usual places and customers who clicked.com. Best places to find me are LinkedIn and Twitter. And it's just a Will Will Laurenson on both.

Will Laurenson: [00:32:21]
Cool. And

Burhaan Pattel: [00:32:23]
why is LinkedIn? You said the best place. I'm always curious with this type of question,

Will Laurenson: [00:32:31]
best places, LinkedIn and Twitter. I I'm just active there. I share a lot of content on, on LinkedIn and Twitter. More so LinkedIn. I have a lot of conversations there, so I'm, I'm always kind of active on there because,  yeah, either there's a conversation going on a piece that I've posted out there, or I'm having conversations with people on. Yeah, other posts. So I'm just, quite quite active. If a, if a message comes through or something .

Burhaan Pattel: [00:32:56]
I prefer LinkedIn as well. LinkedIn is more homely for me than Instagram or, any of the other well,

Will Laurenson: [00:33:05]
also it feels a bit more personal, I guess. You know, someone connects with me through, through LinkedIn and we exchange a couple of messages. It feels a bit more, I guess, informal and. And friendly rather than receiving an email, not knowing what this person looks like, who they are.

Will Laurenson: [00:33:21]
And it might just be an email saying, I think we're, you know, I heard you on this podcast. I'd like to talk to you about working with us, something like that, which is a great email to receive, but it's still, I don't know. It just feels a bit nicer than someone contacts you through LinkedIn with the same message.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:33:37]
Yeah, I suppose. Will, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did. Conversion rate optimization or customer value is not something that people talk a lot about a lot. And so I thoroughly enjoyed the episode and learned something from you too. So thank you for that.

Burhaan Pattel: [00:33:58]
For everybody, who's listening to the episode.  I'll put the links to Will's pages and to the podcast, below in the show notes. And so thank you so much for listening to the episode. I will catch you on the next one. Thanks Will

Will Laurenson: [00:34:13]
thank you for having me pleasure.

‍