Episode Summary
In this episode of the 7 Figures and Beyond E-commerce Marketing Podcast, Greg Shuey hosts Adena Merabi from Okendo to discuss how customer reviews, quizzes, and loyalty programs can significantly increase website conversions and drive revenue growth. Adina highlights Okendo’s journey, her role, and the platform’s offerings, which include tools for reviews, quizzes, referrals, loyalty, and surveys. They delve into the importance of leveraging robust customer reviews and visual user-generated content (UGC) to enhance purchasing decisions, the benefits of quizzes for personalized product recommendations, and effective loyalty programs to foster customer engagement and retention. Adina provides actionable insights on timing review requests, incentivizing customers, and using data to personalize marketing efforts, emphasizing the need for strategic implementation to maximize these tools’ potential.
Key Takeaways
- Importance of Customer Reviews: Customer reviews, especially those including UGC, play a critical role in influencing purchasing decisions and improving conversion rates. Robust reviews provide valuable insights and visual content that resonate with potential buyers.
- Effective Use of Quizzes: Quizzes are a powerful tool for gathering zero-party data and offering personalized product recommendations, which can significantly increase conversions and average order values. They provide a non-invasive way to understand customer preferences and needs.
- Strategic Loyalty Programs: Successful loyalty programs involve clear rules, compelling rewards, and VIP tiers to incentivize customer engagement. Promoting these programs effectively through various channels is crucial for maximizing their impact.
- Personalization Through Data: Collecting and utilizing customer data from reviews, quizzes, and loyalty programs enables brands to create hyper-segmented and personalized marketing campaigns, enhancing customer relevance and engagement.
- Maximizing Existing Customer Base: In an economic climate with tight budgets and high interest rates, focusing on retaining and maximizing the value of the existing customer base through enhanced engagement and retention strategies is essential for sustained growth.
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Adena Merabi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adena-merabi/
Okendo: https://okendo.io/
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey (00:01.29)
Hey everyone, welcome to the seven figures and beyond e -commerce marketing podcast. Hope everyone is absolutely crushing it today. Today’s discussion is going to be awesome. Our guest today is a Dina Merabi from Okendo and we will let her introduce herself and tell you a little bit about the platform here in just a minute. So our discussion today is primarily going to be centered around how to use customer reviews.
quizzes and loyalty programs to increase website conversions and drive meaningful revenue growth for your brand. Adina, thanks so much for being with us today.
Adena Merabi (00:41.016)
Thank you, Greg. Appreciate
Greg Shuey (00:43.232)
I know we had to make a couple of last minute swap -aroos on time, so thank you for being flexible.
Adena Merabi (00:49.282)
Absolutely happy to be
Greg Shuey (00:51.464)
Awesome. So before we dive in, would you take a few minutes and introduce yourself to our listeners and share a little bit about your personal story and how you’ve gotten to where you are today.
Adena Merabi (01:01.966)
Yeah, absolutely. So I am the partnerships team lead here at Okendo. I’ve been at the company for three years now, which is really exciting. I’ve seen a lot of growth and transitions at the company since I’ve been here. We went from having, you know, around 30 or 40 people on the team to now close to a hundred. We went from
Greg Shuey (01:27.489)
Wow.
Adena Merabi (01:29.326)
having 3 ,500 clients to now over 12 ,000 clients using Okendo across our product suite. So very fun to be a part of the growth and it’s been an amazing three years. So that said, Okendo is a customer marketing platform. We help brands with their review strategy, their quizzes, referral strategy, loyalty, and surveys.
Greg Shuey (01:57.654)
That’s awesome. That’s some incredible growth. That’s, congratulations on that. That’s fun and probably stressful at the same
Adena Merabi (02:00.11)
Thank you.
Yes, yeah, it’s been a lot of fun to see and be a part of that growth as well over the years.
Greg Shuey (02:10.298)
That’s awesome. And three years is a long time, like to be in one place. So kudos to you for sticking around. Awesome. Cool, cool. So, you know, I pulled this right off the website. Okendo’s existence is to help brands grow faster and more efficiently with an engaged community of loyal customers. Like that is what you are trying to accomplish with your suite of tools. And I think as e -commerce brand owners and marketers,
Adena Merabi (02:12.544)
yeah.
Adena Merabi (02:15.908)
Thank
Greg Shuey (02:39.866)
We understand that driving revenue through your customer base is one of the critical pillars of scaling a brand, right? And there’s lots of different ways to engage your customers and, and really get them to help you with your marketing and getting people to convert on your website. So let’s talk about a few of those. So when you know, we think about customer reviews, I want to start
Right? Like how can brands effectively leverage customer reviews to influence purchasing decisions and improve conversion rates? Because it’s a huge driver.
Adena Merabi (03:18.254)
Yeah, absolutely. I love this question. You know, we have so many amazing stats around reviews. know that excuse me, can cut that out. We know that 99 % of shoppers read reviews before making a purchasing decision. you know, that’s close to 100 % of people are reading through
Your customers have had to say about your brand, how your product works, what it looks like in daily life. And we also know that customers are visual learners. know that having some sort of visual representation of your product, whether it’s customer generated content or photos and videos on your site does actually help influence that purchase. So when it comes to having reviews, you want to make sure that you’re collecting
robust reviews on your site. And when I say robust, mean, you know, they have a ton of information. it showcases who your customers are, you know, what are the value propositions of your brand and also that UGC. And so being able to collect additional zero party data, such as what we call customer attributes. So those are data points around your customer that you collect could be
the person’s age, their skin type, their eating habits, their skin concern, their hair type, what size they wear, all of that information you can collect out of the box with Okendo. And then not only does that allow you to collect information around who your customer is, but it allows new customers to go in and make purchasing decisions based on people that have similar characteristics to them. So, you know, let’s say Greg,
you’re shopping for a new pair of shorts, and you’ve never bought from this brand before, so you don’t know what size to wear, you don’t know how the product fits, you might scroll through reviews and select filters of people that have those similar characteristics to you.
Greg Shuey (05:31.626)
how tall, how much I weigh, those types of things.
Adena Merabi (05:34.85)
Yep, and that ends up influencing the end purchase. So Okendo tends to increase that onsite conversion. So having those reviews increases onsite conversions and also helps increase your average order value. And then, you can always offer incentives to your customers to leave a review. So that does end up increasing your customer lifetime value as well.
Greg Shuey (06:01.474)
That’s awesome. Cool. Yeah. I really love the review piece of your platform. I love that you can collect UGC, although a lot of other review companies are starting to add that in. is in, I think it’s one of the most important pieces of reviews that have kind of been put out there into existence over the last couple of years. Traditional written reviews, right? Worked great three or four years ago and they still work okay now.
but when you can actually put some UGC behind it and people showcasing the product that they bought, unboxing videos and providing verbal reviews, verbal and video reviews, it just adds an additional layer of trust. And then you can also pull those assets to be able to do marketing as well, which I absolutely
Adena Merabi (06:47.308)
Yep. Absolutely. You nailed it. And I think, you know, having your review section be an extension of your website versus looking like a third party app that is a bit spammy. does work to your benefit. You know, having those customizable widgets that you can play around with designing the text and the font and format, spacing, color, collecting those attributes. All of that is done.
out of the box with Okendo and that’s what people love most about our tool is how easy it is to use and also how customizable it
Greg Shuey (07:25.346)
Cool. And I’ll tell you, I’m always surprised at how many businesses and brands don’t have reviews on their website. I mean, it’s probably between 10 and 15 % of the folks I talked to who actually have it on their website. Even just basic reviews. It’s mind blowing to me. And it’s so easy to be able to enable that and to get it going. It’s just so if you don’t have reviews, take five minutes and do it right now. Right? Is that the call to action right there?
Adena Merabi (07:55.454)
I mean, you I think that we’ve heard it all. You know, some big luxury brands think that that diminishes their brand by collecting and showcasing reviews. The nice thing about collecting reviews is that you don’t have to showcase it. I think we should still collect feedback and information, but if you’re really that concerned with your brand, like, you don’t have to show those reviews.
But in any case, having reviews helps your SEO. It helps your organic search. It also helps with your ads. So if you’re collecting reviews and then running a paid ad with review messaging that helps convert, you know, a lot higher than regular ads do, and also you can syndicate your star ratings to your Google shopping ads. So there are a lot of benefits just beyond your website.
And I think reviews are really important.
Greg Shuey (08:54.306)
Cool, all right, let’s talk about how to get more. So once you’ve got reviews up on your website, what are some of the innovative ways to encourage customers to leave reviews, to leave UGC? Are there different ways to ask? Are there different methods? Like talk to me about
Adena Merabi (09:11.266)
Yeah, that’s a great question. So we have a ton of ways in which you can get creative with collecting more reviews. First and foremost, I would say if you are concerned with collecting more, I would definitely offer incentives to your customers to leave a review. We give brands the ability to tier those incentives. So if you wanted to collect
video and photo reviews, you can offer a higher discount code or coupon. You can also offer loyalty points with those rewards. So we have our own loyalty tool, which is amazing. We launched it officially in June. And you can offer different loyalty points based on the type of review you’re looking to collect. again, tiering is a great way to get creative with that.
You can also utilize our different integrations to collect more reviews. So let’s say you’re using Postscript, Attentive, or Klaviyo SMS. You can send those review requests via those platforms to your customers’ cell phones. And we know that people are always checking their messages. And if you make it easy for them, like, hey, leave a review to get a 10 % discount, and you’re sending it via text.
customers are more likely to leave that review. I would say the third part is make sure your review requests are timed appropriately. We’ve seen so many times, brands coming to us from another platform and they were sending review requests before their customers even received the product. I don’t even have Yeah. And let alone
Greg Shuey (10:40.021)
Interesting.
Greg Shuey (10:57.886)
I don’t even have it yet. It’s not even in my hands.
Adena Merabi (11:03.544)
You know, want to give your customers a few days at least to write out, how does it work? Does it suit you? And if you’re not giving them enough time, they’re going to ignore that review request. So those would be the three things. Incentives, deliver those review requests via the channel that your customers want to be communicated on, and then make sure they’re timed appropriately.
Greg Shuey (11:29.238)
got it. What percent and maybe you don’t have this stat off the top of your head, but what percent of brands that are on platform have to use incentives to be able to gather
Adena Merabi (11:42.124)
I don’t know if I have the percent breakdown, but I would say that.
If you were concerned with collecting more reviews, if that was something that, you know, maybe you’re a newer brand or maybe you’re noticing that your customers are not leaving a review, offering those incentives is a huge, huge opportunity.
Greg Shuey (12:07.276)
bump it
Greg Shuey (12:12.29)
Cool, awesome. Well, let’s shift gears for a couple of minutes. Let’s talk about quizzes. So, quizzes have become very popular for engaging customers. So, can you walk us through how brands use quizzes effectively to gather data, obviously, but to also drive traffic and increase conversions?
Adena Merabi (12:35.554)
Yes, I love that. I love that you said that because that is the biggest value proposition for having a quiz is one, you can use it to collect more zero party data from your customers and it’s non -invasive. It doesn’t feel awkward or weird because you’re taking and then you’re giving back through product recommendations. So normally customers who don’t know what to buy from your brand are
being told, this product best suits you. These are the products that suit you. So, feels very personalized. So one, collecting data. Two, it really does help increase those conversions because these product recommendations feel personalized. So now that you’re telling me that this is the right shampoo for my hair texture, I know exactly which product to buy. I should buy this one.
Greg Shuey (13:09.388)
Right. Very personalized.
Adena Merabi (13:32.886)
And in addition to that, you can also recommend other products like, hey, you know, I know you’re only looking for a shampoo, but maybe this conditioner would be a good fit for you too, if you’re on the market, or even if you’re not on the market, or maybe this hair oil is good, or this dry shampoo. And so now you’re showing me four products and I want all of them. So my average order value goes up, right? Exactly. And this is a true story. It’s happened to me many times.
Greg Shuey (13:57.356)
Just goes through the roof. Yep.
Greg Shuey (14:02.572)
Hahaha
Adena Merabi (14:02.702)
You know, I’ve taken a quiz and I’m like, I don’t know, like, I don’t know which product to buy because I have never bought from you before. And then the brand shows me multiple products and I’m like, well, I guess I need all of them. and so, you know, it’s, it’s awesome. It’s, it’s a really great tool. And then of course, all of that data that you’re collecting gets synced over into Claviyo’s customer data profile.
And you can use that information for segmentation strategies. So let’s say in six months, you’re releasing a new product for oily hair and you have an entire segment of people that have indicated they have oily hair. You might segment that list and say, Hey, look at this new product we have just for you. And those emails will convert really
Greg Shuey (14:53.164)
Yeah. Can you push that data from your platform into Facebook for custom audiences to serve up very targeted ads as well?
Adena Merabi (15:02.178)
So there isn’t an automatic push, but you can always upload the, you can always push from Klaviyo or upload those specific audience, like segments or parameters or details into Facebook and use that to build lookalike audiences.
Greg Shuey (15:06.498)
Push it from
Greg Shuey (15:21.184)
Nice, awesome. And how are most people triggering these quizzes? Are most of the brands just doing it right upon entry when they’re popping up a subscription box? Is that when they’re doing it?
Adena Merabi (15:35.416)
So I would say almost all of our clients have a dedicated quiz page. Like, hey, find your perfect match or color match or not sure what to get, look here. And then that kind of, it’s one of the tabs on the hamburger menu or on the home screen so that your customers know if they
Greg Shuey (15:47.063)
Got
Adena Merabi (16:02.518)
understand what products to select, they have the option to take the quiz. We also recommend driving awareness that you have a quiz. So maybe you run an email campaign saying, not sure what to buy, take our quiz to find out. and then getting people to the quiz page. So a number of, of methods there, trying to think if there are any other ways, if you have the budget and you feel inclined running an ad campaign is always cool too.
Greg Shuey (16:20.097)
Let’s go for
Adena Merabi (16:32.619)
you know, I think, especially if you’re a newer brand and you’re just trying to figure out who your audience is, that could be interesting. So yeah, those are some ideas
Greg Shuey (16:43.138)
Cool, great. Well, let’s talk about loyalty programs for a few minutes. So there’s a ton of platforms that do loyalty. I’ve talked to quite a few of them in the last year, and it seems like we’re getting more and more of them popping up. So you guys obviously do it really well. What are some of the key components of successful loyalty programs, and how can brands ensure that their programs are actually compelling to their customers?
Adena Merabi (17:09.954)
Yeah, that is a great question. I would say, you know, we need to look at the most successful loyalty programs out there. That is always a good indicator of what customers are looking for and maybe how to model your program based on that. Yeah, we’re research, right? Who is your customer?
Greg Shuey (17:31.83)
So that’s step one, is doing your research.
Adena Merabi (17:39.176)
who in your vertical is doing it well? How are they doing it? What are they doing? And then modeling something similar based on that. It obviously varies for everyone, but what we’ve seen as successful loyalty programs are ones that have clear rules for how you want your customers to earn those points.
Things that are easy for them to do, right? Like, sure, I’ll leave you a review for 100 points. Yeah, I’m already purchasing from you. So thank you for the additional points per my purchase. Perhaps it’s referring a friend, which is something easy, and it incentivizes both parties to come to your site, and you give them both rewards. So there are certain things that I definitely
apply across the board. I also think having compelling rewards is important. You don’t want to be offering, you know, free product if your customers don’t like that product. Like you need to know your audience. Maybe your audience wants free shipping on orders or maybe the way a reward looks to a customer, one customer might be different to another. So you want to offer a variety of rewards like, Hey,
You know, you have a hundred points. can use it either for free shipping or a 10 % discount or a free product. Like give them those options. And then it doesn’t work for everyone, but I think VIP tiers is always a fun way to gamify your loyalty program and drive awareness. Like, Hey, you’re, you’re in our gold tier. Like spend another $10.
to get platinum and that allows you to get free shipping on all orders. You get first access to our new products. And I can think of a few brands where I’m like, yeah, I would love to be able to have first access to their new drops. Their stuff sells out really quickly. So, you know, again, it’s just about knowing your audience. And then lastly, lastly, and most importantly, you need to promote your loyalty program. Like you can’t just set it up and be like, okay.
Greg Shuey (20:03.528)
stick it in the navigation or the footer and expect it to
Adena Merabi (20:06.804)
Exactly. You need to have campaigns set up that promote your program, drive awareness, get people to opt in, get people to come back and use their rewards. You need to constantly be engaging with your audience when it comes to your loyalty
Greg Shuey (20:25.676)
Got it, cool. So can you share some examples of brands who have been really successful integrating reviews, quizzes, loyalty programs into their marketing and what were the results?
Adena Merabi (20:40.354)
Yeah, that is a great question. I would say there are a number of brands that are doing it well. We have a client called Luna Bronze and they sell self -tanner. Funny enough, I’m sure you could catch on from the name of it. And I wish I could share my screen on this, but for anyone listening out there, go to the Luna Bronze website.
Greg Shuey (20:58.188)
Sure.
Adena Merabi (21:07.34)
They are using us for reviews, referrals, quizzes, and their loyalty program. Yeah. Almost everything. Actually, I’m not sure if they’re using surveys, but, you can tell it, take the self -tan quiz. So you can walk through and I’m just looking at my screen. That’s why I’m not looking at you, but you can find your personalized glow with our self -tan quiz. So you go through the questions. Who are you shopping for myself? Where are you looking to bronze? You
Greg Shuey (21:12.946)
everything. There you
Adena Merabi (21:37.282)
your face, body, all over Glow, and you can select a few of those options and go through the quiz. So they’re doing that very well. And they’ve seen an increase in their conversion rate just based on having customers take this quiz. They also have set up their loyalty program using Okendo, which has been really successful for them. They’ve seen a 20X in ROI just from
having a loyalty program set up. They’ve seen a 35 % increase in their enrollment just by switching over to Okendo Loyalty. It helps them make, just reading their quote here, the loyalty program helps us make it much more efficient to connect with our V .I .B .s, which is what they’re calling their program. Instead of V .I .P., it’s their V .I. bronzers, or very important bronzers.
Greg Shuey (22:13.399)
Wow.
Adena Merabi (22:35.254)
And now we have a strategy to start fostering relationships with those V I Bs. So another really great, method to engage with your audience is through that loyalty program. They also have a refer a friend set up and just by having, you know, that module set up on the backend to ask your loyal, you know, happy customers to review a friend, to refer a friend
just directly on your site to refer a friend. They’ve also seen an increase in new customers come through. And also that helps offset rising customer acquisition costs as well.
Greg Shuey (23:15.266)
Sure. That’s great. That’s a fantastic example. Awesome. So let’s kind of close up here by talking about personalization because in my opinion, personalization is the future of everything that we do, right? We have to personalize everything down to the customer, their preferences, what they’re shopping for in order to stand out from the crowd and,
Someday soon, it’s not even going be standing out, right? It’s just going to be a level playing field. You have to do it, or else you’re not even going to be considered. So I know we’ve talked about a few, but what tactics can brands use to personalize the customer experience through your platform, like through the things that the quizzes, loyalty programs, surveys, everything that you
Adena Merabi (24:06.284)
Yep. Yep. That’s a great question, Greg. It’s amazing how data centric our platform is at this rate. know, reviews, you’re feedback directly from your customers. You’re also collecting information about them. Quizzes, you’re directly collecting information about them. Referrals, you know, you’re collecting referral data from your customers.
loyalty, you have their loyalty points, you have what tier they’re in, what’s the next tier that they would be in. And then surveys is just exactly that. It’s just feedback, it’s data, it’s information. So all of those products gets all the data that you collect, gets stored within Okendo in customer profiles. So each customer has their own profile.
And then that data gets synced over to Klaviyo’s customer data profile. And you can segment your list based on Okendo data. So Okendo review data, Okendo quiz data, loyalty data. And you can segment your lists based on that information that you know. So hyper segmented. Yep. So, you know, when you’re building lists in Klaviyo and I was saying this earlier, you’re launching a new product.
Greg Shuey (25:19.04)
You can get hyper segmented then based on all the data.
Adena Merabi (25:30.358)
And you know that that attracts, you know, a certain audience or a certain segment. You might want to email them specifically and you’re, using Okendo data to segment. let’s say you want to get customers that are X amount of points away from the next tier to come back to your site and purchase more so they can get to the next tier. can segment a list based on that. And we know like personalized.
campaigns convert better. People feel like they are having that one -to -one conversation with you. And also it’s just more relevant to them. Like I’m not going to open an email that says, out this new product for blonde hair. Like I don’t have blonde hair. never will have hair. It’s not going to work for me. But if you email me saying, you know,
Greg Shuey (26:17.346)
That’s not gonna work.
Adena Merabi (26:26.136)
bring out the beautiful black locks in your hair or here’s how to get really nice curls for natural black hair. I’m gonna open it. I’m be like, that sounds interesting to me. I would love to know how to do that. So, you know, it’s really important to be strategic and personalized with your emails.
Greg Shuey (26:46.06)
Yeah, I love that you say strategic because I think a lot of brands collect this data and then they’re not very smart about how they use it. And so taking the time to think through how you’re going to use the data and how you’re going to personalize from that data across all the different channels you work in is absolutely.
Adena Merabi (27:04.173)
side.
Greg Shuey (27:05.474)
So we’re about, we’re a little over halfway done with 2024. Like, do you have any predictions on just kind of e -commerce in general consumer behavior for the rest of the year and into 2025?
Adena Merabi (27:18.262)
Yeah, I think that things are going to get interesting. obviously, I’m not quite sure how it’s going to turn out. We’re in an election year. So obviously that always skews a lot of paid advertising metrics and efforts.
Greg Shuey (27:26.018)
Interesting.
Greg Shuey (27:37.378)
Yep.
Adena Merabi (27:46.496)
You know, I think that a lot of brands don’t have as much money as they usually do. Like they just don’t have as much of that expendable capital. know, that interest rates are really high. So companies aren’t taking on funding as much. And so it’s really about maximizing your current customer base, engaging your current customer base, finding ways to increase customer lifetime value.
utilizing your retention strategies a little more heavily. And yeah, just making more from what you have at the moment. So I think my prediction is that anything could happen in the next few months, closing out the year. I still think Black Friday Cyber Monday is going to be massive. think every year it gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
Greg Shuey (28:39.564)
to be huge.
Adena Merabi (28:44.054)
Shopify reporting on the metrics goes to show that, like people are spending more every year. So I think this year is gonna be even bigger than last year. And despite people saving money, like they will spend it on essential items. So food, know, skincare, which is considered essential, things for the home, those items are always gonna be in need. So figure out a way to get people
to be loyal to your brand via loyalty programs and things
Greg Shuey (29:19.476)
Awesome. Cool, cool. Any final thoughts before we kind of wrap up?
Adena Merabi (29:24.556)
No, I think that covers it all. Thank you so much.
Greg Shuey (29:27.318)
Fantastic. Yeah, well thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I know your schedule’s jam -packed. Haven’t even eaten lunch yet because you’ve been on call after call after call after call, so.
Adena Merabi (29:33.675)
Yeah.
Adena Merabi (29:38.907)
It’s very well worth it, especially when I get to talk to great partners like you, Greg. So thank you for having me on and hopefully we can get some, you know, some interesting feedback off this episode.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
