Cotera's CX Blog

It’s actually insane how much prescription glasses can cost nowadays, with some pairs pushing over $1000. Thankfully startups like Warby Parker are making eyewear more accessible, disrupting the market by offering glasses starting at just $95. Their success sparked a wave of D2C eyewear companies such as Zenni Optical and EyeBuyDirect. But in this growing market of affordable eyewear options, which company delivers the best value? 

I decided to get an early start with my New Year’s resolution and am finally fixing my chaotic sleep schedule. I’m a data enthusiast at heart so naturally I invested in a Whoop to help me track both my sleep patterns and movement. I honestly love the results I’m seeing so far with my sleep schedule improving quite a bit (no more 3am bedtime😵). I was talking with a friend about my results which got him interested in purchasing one too. However, he’s torn between the Whoop and its rival, the Oura Ring which offers similar functionality but in ring form. 

Layovers: the bane of many travelers’ existence. Fortunately, most airlines now let passengers choose their layover location. Flying from New York to Hawaii? You’ll likely need to stop somewhere in the middle, but you’ll get options ranging from San Francisco to Denver, Houston and more. This got me thinking: Which airport provides the best layover experience? 

As companies grow from scrappy startups to scale-ups, they face a critical challenge: how to maintain a deep understanding of customer needs while dealing with rapidly increasing complexity. I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Nick Altebrando, an experienced product leader and the current Chief Product Officer at Ada, who has a ton of experience taking companies through the “Scale Up” Phase. Nick shared valuable insights on prioritizing customer needs, leveraging data effectively, and balancing stakeholder interests in fast-growing companies.

Last week, I spoke with Jazmin Lewis, who leads Customer Success at hackajob, a fast-growing tech hiring platform. With her extensive experience in both B2B and marketplace dynamics, Jazmin shared valuable insights into how data drives customer success and product development. Here's what we discussed:

Consulting, finance and tech firms are “people” businesses, getting their value from the talent they hire. These industries fiercely compete (often against each other) for top candidates, with recruitment efforts often starting as early as freshman year of college. The competition has intensified to the point where many firms are offering close to $200k in total compensation for fresh grads. However, in this high-stakes talent war, an important question emerges: can companies attract the best and brightest with more than just hefty paychecks?

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alejandro Villacís, who leads Customer Experience and Insights at FCP Euro, a leading online marketplace specializing in aftermarket and OEM parts for European vehicles like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche. With over a decade of experience managing operational customer experience teams, Alejandro provided valuable insights on how support teams can drive business growth and improve the overall customer experience. Here's what we discussed:

Nowadays, it seems like tons of brands have started to “incentivize” reviews. Shein, for example, offers customers a decent number of spending credits for posting reviews and/or photos after purchasing a product. Most of the time, people who had a negative experience with a brand or product are more likely to leave a review than someone who was neutral or generally satisfied. So a major advantage of a brand offering incentives like these is that it motivates more satisfied customers to leave reviews as well. Free People is one brand that does exactly this. So we decided to run an analysis on Free People to see how these incentivized reviews might actually affect their rating and public perception.

Churn is a HUGE issue for any and all companies. But a common misconception is that identifying a customer at risk of churning is too difficult to do with accuracy. The truth is, there are actually a few effective ways you can identify unhappy customers before it’s too late. But a commonly overlooked method is sentiment analysis. To give you a quick example of this, we ran an analysis on Hydrant’s reviews for 3 of their products: Hydrate, Energy, Immune.

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with Steve Joos, a seasoned product leader currently serving at Vanco, a company specializing in payment solutions for churches, schools, and nonprofit organizations. Steve's experience in managing complex product ecosystems, particularly in companies built through acquisitions, offers valuable insights for product leaders facing similar challenges. Here's what we discussed:

This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Shadi Majzoub, who runs product at Postal, a leading gifting platform for offline engagement that serves sales, marketing, customer success, and people ops teams. Our conversation delved into Shadi's journey from early employee to product leader, the unique challenges of blending SaaS and physical product delivery, and the critical role that customer insights play in shaping Postal's product strategy. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with Stephen Ng, who leads global support, sales engineering, and technical account management at Splashtop, a remote access software company. Stephen's insights into building a customer-centric support organization and leveraging customer feedback to drive product improvements offer valuable lessons for support and product leaders across industries. Here's what we discussed:

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with Dylan Sewell, Head of Customer Success at Workyard, a company specializing in time tracking and location tracking for construction companies. Dylan's insights into building a customer success function from the ground up and leveraging data to drive retention offer valuable lessons for customer success leaders across industries. Here's what we discussed:

There’s been a lot of talk lately about how EV growth forecasts aren’t looking too hot. Sales momentum has been pretty weak this year and last year, even despite top EV sellers like Tesla making huge price cuts across the board. There’s lots to blame here for these weakening sales. But we wanted to see whether or not changes in buyer sentiment about EV’s (specifically toward Tesla) could have predicted this slowdown. AND whether or not we could uncover any interesting patterns/trends.

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with Karen Hershenson, a product consultant for Titan Network, a company that provides education, mentoring, and software tools for Amazon sellers. Karen's insights into using data to drive e-commerce success offer valuable lessons for entrepreneurs and product managers across industries. Here's what we discussed:

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with Adrian Mendes, Global Director for Customer Success at QuestionPro, a leading provider of survey and research solutions. Adrian's insights into using data to drive customer experience improvements offer valuable lessons for CX leaders across industries. Here's what we discussed:

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Stefan Stahl who has been leading product development teams for the better part of a decade. Stefan's approach to product development, which combines data-driven insights with a deep understanding of customer needs, offers valuable lessons for product leaders across industries. Here's what we discussed:

Research has found that happier employees are more than 20% more productive in the workplace. And this is especially important for companies that still rely on in-store employees to deliver high quality customer service. Staples, for example, is one of these companies. This means that a lot of emphasis is (or at least should be) placed on hiring excellent employees to maintain high customer satisfaction. To show you what we mean, let’s use sentiment analysis to find out 1) how happy employees currently are, 2) how to make employees happier, and 3) how to use this information to attract more outstanding employees at Staples.

Last week we had a conversation with Oren Yaqobi, who leads Customer Success at Frontegg, a company specializing in identity and security solutions. Oren's insights from managing customer experience for a highly technical product were both unique and valuable. Here's what we learned:

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Ryan Johnson, Chief Product Officer at CallRail, a leading provider of lead intelligence software for small and medium-sized businesses. Ryan's insights into product development, customer feedback analysis, and the challenges of scaling a SaaS product in a diverse market offer valuable lessons for product leaders and founders alike. Here's what we discussed:

Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Gess Puglielli, Head of Product Design at MPB, a leading platform for buying and selling used camera equipment. Gess' insights into building customer-centric design processes and leveraging data to drive product decisions offer valuable lessons for design and product leaders across industries. Here's what we discussed:

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with Becca Weiss, VP of Customer Success at Flatfile, a data onboarding platform. Becca's unique approach to scaling customer success and support in a high-growth startup environment offers valuable lessons for CX leaders across industries. Here's what we discussed:

Last week, we had an insightful conversation with David Robinson, Head of Product Design at Hydrow, a leading connected fitness company. David's unique background spanning Silicon Valley startups to major tech companies offers valuable insights into product design and customer-centric innovation. Here's what we learned:

You may be able to observe feedback at a large scale — see how many customers give you 5 stars, 4 stars, 3 stars, or calculate how many keywords (ex. “technical issues”, “customer service”) are mentioned — but accurately breaking down reviews into categories and sentiment is the hard (and way more important) part. But we did the work so you don’t have to — here’s an example of a quick analysis we did on public reviews for Squarespace, Wix, Hostinger, and GoDaddy, using Cotera’s sentiment analysis program.

When flights are delayed or cancelled, it’s almost never the airline’s fault (think the Crowdstrike Outage). But airlines would accumulate a huge loss if they had to give refunds to every single person whose flight got cancelled because of a sudden storm or whose flight got delayed because there was unexpected air traffic. Obviously, it’s frustrating for flyers when this happens. And while some people bite the bullet and move on, others will vow to never fly that airline again. But the question is — how many people actually stop flying with an airline due to non-compensated flight cancellations/delays?

We recently had the pleasure of chatting with Angela Fleming, VP of Product at FreeAgent, a cloud accountancy software solution that's part of the NatWest Group. Angela's got a fascinating background spanning automotive tech, retail, and now fintech, giving her a unique perspective on building data-driven, customer-centric products. We dove into how she structures her product org, leverages data for decision-making, and fosters a culture of innovation. So grab your favorite analytics dashboard, and let's jump in!

Last week we had a conversation with Scott Holloway, who leads Customer Experience at APS Bank in Malta. Scott's approach to CX is both pragmatic and forward-thinking, balancing manual processes with a keen eye on future technological advancements. Here's what we learned:

Last week we had a conversation with Manny Ruiz, Vice President of Customer Success at JumpCloud, a cloud directory platform. Manny's unique background spanning engineering and customer success brings a fresh perspective to CS. Here's what we learned:

Last week, we had an insightful conversation with Emre Tekoglu, Vice President of Customer Support at Zywave, a leading insurance software company. Emre's unique approach to scaling customer support and using data to drive improvements offers valuable insights. Here's what we learned:

When companies go through a rebrand, it’s ALWAYS high risk. Most rebrands fail (around 70% according to Forbes), and it’s usually pretty obvious whether or not a rebrand is a success or a failure based on the initial public reaction. For Abercrombie, I’m sure they breathed a huge sigh of relief when sales surged 16% in 2023, shooting their stock up by nearly 300% that same year. But this story’s likely not over. There’s been a LOT of hype about A&F recently, but the question is: Is this just a fad, or is A&F actually making the comeback many are claiming they’re making?

When your brand lives in a market where differentiation is especially difficult, it’s frustrating in so many ways. Let’s take the healthy beverage market for example — specifically brands selling a healthy water/tea. If a customer tried your product and liked it, that’s fantastic, but it certainly doesn’t mean you’re safe from churn. There’s a good chance that there’s another brand out there that’s even more catered to that customer’s taste buds with the same number of calories and same “healthy beverage” hook as yours. So how can you be sure that you’re doing a good enough job at retaining your customers? How do you know what actually encourages customers to stick around? We’ll show you exactly how through an example with Bai Tea.

Last week, we had an insightful conversation with Jason Zhang, Head of Product at Mesh and founder of HomeLight. Jason's unique perspective, spanning both early-stage startups and established companies like StubHub and Upwork, offers valuable insights into product development and company building. Here's what we learned:

Last week we had a conversation with Maggie McCarthy, Vice President of Customer Success at Thought Industries, a customer education platform. Maggie's unique background spanning hospitality, product management, and customer success brings a fresh perspective to CX. Here's what we learned:

Last week we had a conversation with Kathryn Mahdavi, Vice President of Customer Experience at Rinse, a technology-enabled dry cleaning and laundry service. Kathryn's approach to CX is both data-driven and deeply human-centered. Here's what we learned:

Last week we had a conversation with Rebecca Holliday, who holds the unique dual role of Head of Impact and Customer Success at Groundswell, a social impact platform. Rebecca's background in corporate social responsibility and the nonprofit sector brings a fresh perspective to customer success. Here's what we learned:

Last week we had a conversation with Jameson Braddock, Vice President of Client Success at Rently, a company that provides self-guided tours and smart home technology for the real estate industry. Jameson's unique background in sales engineering and his experience across various company sizes brings a fresh perspective to client success. Here's what we learned:

When you download a new, free app, there’s a good chance they’ll probably try to upsell you premium features or a premium version once you actually start using it. Dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge all have their own niche quirks and target users. But despite these differences, we’ve identified two overlapping metrics used to measure user satisfaction: “match success” and “user experience.” We wanted to understand how these two metrics compare for the premium (paid) version of each app against the free version. And not from just one perspective, but thousands.

The go-to assumption most people make is that a more sustainable brand = higher quality, especially when it comes to the fashion industry. And for the most part, that’s pretty true. So we wanted to run an experiment comparing two apparel companies with drastically different brand images — Everlane and Zara — to compare and contrast what customers REALLY think about each company. Our goal here was to try to understand how big a difference a brand’s public perception can really make on customer satisfaction.

Last week we had a conversation with Maggie McCarthy, Vice President of Customer Success at Thought Industries, a customer education platform. Maggie's unique background spanning hospitality, product management, and customer success brings a fresh perspective to CX. Here's what we learned:

My team and I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Steven Hunt, the Vice President of Product Management at Skytap. Steven's been around the block a few times in the tech world, and boy, does he have some stories to tell. From his days as a self-proclaimed "Windows guy" to leading product teams at various startups and established companies, Steven's got a unique perspective on how to use data to drive product decisions and ultimately, business growth. ‍We dove deep into how product teams can work hand-in-hand with sales and customer experience to create a data-driven culture that actually moves the needle. 

This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Stephanie Ouellet, the Customer Experience Manager at Earth Rated, a leading brand in the pet industry known for their eco-friendly dog waste bags and dispensers. Our conversation delved into how Earth Rated has built a customer-centric culture from the ground up, the challenges of scaling a personalized customer experience, and the innovative ways they're leveraging customer insights to drive product innovation and delight their customers. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

Hey there, product folks and data enthusiasts! We recently had the pleasure of chatting with Meytal Markman, VP of Product at Rakuten Advertising. Meytal has been in the affiliate marketing game for over 15 years, and she's got some fascinating insights on how to use data to drive product decisions in this unique corner of the digital marketing world. Here’s just some of our awesome conversation: 

Happy Monday, people - We recently had the pleasure of chatting with Ibrahim Bashir, VP of Product Management at Amplitude. Ibrahim's got quite the resume - from launching the first Kindle Fire at Amazon to helping take Twitter public, and now leading product strategy at one of the top analytics platforms out there. Oh, and did we mention he's running for local office in his spare time? Talk about a superachiever!

There was obvious skepticism at first at the sight of “Kirkland Signature” or “Amazon Basics,” but it’s certainly cleared up as customers have continued to share their positive experiences with these in-house brands. This means that it’s more important than ever for major brands to differentiate their products in a unique way. But how will they know if they’ve done enough to set themselves apart? How will they know where they need to improve or what unique benefits to emphasize in order to weed out their private label counterparts? Well, that's what sentiment analysis is for. Let’s do some comparing and contrasting between Pacifica Beauty and Amazon Basics to show you what we mean.

Last week we had a conversation with Nir Kalish, who leads Customer Success at Nimble, a company specializing in AI-powered web scraping. Nir's journey to his current role is as unique as his approach to CS. Here's what we learned:

When you have a brand that sells a product or offers a service in-person, no two locations can really be the exact same. But if the quality of these different locations are vastly inconsistent, customer sentiment toward your brand will also vary — and that’s not a good thing. Corepower Yoga is a pretty good example of this. All their yoga classes are led by specific instructors, but standardizing the quality of instructors is a very difficult task. But it's not impossible. The first step is finding out which locations people think are better and why.

In today's fast-paced, customer-centric business landscape, support leaders are increasingly turning to data and AI to drive efficiency, uncover insights, and deliver exceptional experiences. We had the pleasure of speaking with Nicole Brown, Head of Customer Care at GotPhoto.com, a leading volume photography platform. Our conversation explored Nicole's philosophy on the strategic role of support, her approach to leveraging data and AI to empower her team, and her tips for getting started with AI even on a small scale. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

When it comes to getting ahold of customer feedback, the first few channels that come to mind are usually surveys or even just product review pages. But it’s impossible for these two outlets alone to offer a holistic view of what ALL customers think. Every feedback channel is different. And this makes understanding the full scope of your customers pretty tough. But if you can find a way to look at feedback from every channel using one unified view, it makes this task a whole lot easier. So let’s do exactly this for Elf Cosmetics.

Hey there - happy Wednesday! We recently had the pleasure of chatting with Happy Luther, a veteran CX leader who's steered customer success ships at tech giants like LinkedIn and Salesforce, as well as growth-stage companies like Cleverbridge. Happy's got some fascinating insights on how to build a truly customer-centric organization, leverage data to drive decisions, and align cross-functional teams around customer outcomes. Let’s dive in: 

This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Aidan Parisian, the former Chief Customer Officer at Fastpath, a leading provider of access control and risk management solutions that was recently acquired by Delinea. Our conversation delved into Aidan's unique perspective on the evolving role of customer success, the importance of aligning product and CX efforts, and the critical role that data plays in driving revenue growth. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

Instead of settling on your brand’s value proposition on your own, why not let the customer decide for you? You can guess that the problem is, it’s hard to know what actually matters to customers and whether or not you’re meeting those needs. Unless you look at customer feedback. And I don’t mean simply reading over a couple of reviews — I mean taking all the feedback you’ve gotten over the years and looking at it holistically to get the full picture. But that’s not easy to do, right? So let's do it for you.

Research has shown that a singular bad review can deter over 22% of potential customers from buying from your company. And tons of customers leave bad reviews when they have a singular bad experience, or if they felt the employees or customer service agents were rude, or even if delivery was a bit slower than expected. But so many brands overlook the importance of customer experience when it comes to unlocking new opportunities to boost revenue. Reformation is the perfect example of a brand that has products people love, but a customer experience people aren’t too happy with.

As artificial intelligence continues to reshape the technology landscape, even established fields like data analytics are experiencing profound transformations. We had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Michael Flaxman, Head of Product at Heavy AI, a company that has spent the last decade pioneering big data analytics solutions and is now at the forefront of integrating AI into their platform. Our conversation explored the challenges and opportunities of bringing conversational AI to enterprise analytics, balancing accuracy with usability, and the evolving expectations of users in an AI-powered world. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

In the competitive world of consumer tech, delivering an exceptional customer experience can be the key differentiator between rapid growth and stagnation. We had the pleasure of speaking with Rich Donnellan, Head of Customer Experience at Aro, a startup on a mission to help families prioritize real-world connections over screen time. Our conversation explored how Rich and his team use customer insights to refine their product, shape their marketing strategy, and fuel sustainable growth. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

In today's data-rich business landscape, product leaders must be savvy at leveraging a wide range of inputs to guide their roadmap decisions and deliver outsize value to customers. We had the pleasure of speaking with Jonathon Ben-Haim, VP of Product Management, at SundaySky, a leading video platform that enables organizations to create, integrate and distribute personalized video content at scale. Our conversation explored Jonathon's approach to gathering and actioning customer insights, the frameworks he uses to prioritize feature development, and how SundaySky itself is harnessing data to power more relevant, engaging customer experiences. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

In the fast-paced world of B2B SaaS, delivering exceptional customer experiences while rapidly iterating on product can be a delicate balancing act. We had the pleasure of speaking with Andy Magnusson, a seasoned customer engineering leader with experience at companies like StrongDM and Gitpod. Our conversation explored how customer-facing technical teams can serve as a vital bridge between users and product development, the importance of maintaining tight feedback loops as organizations scale, and the potential role of AI and machine learning in enhancing customer support. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

Levain Bakery, based in New York, exploded into a huge craze pretty recently — in fact, many have named them the source of New York’s most famous cookies. But it seems a little unbelievable, right? I mean — people are naturally impatient and a high price brings on high expectations. But despite all that, they still have a nearly 5-star rating across all locations. Do people really think Levain is worth it? And how can they be sure they’ll be able to keep this vast sea of customers around long term? These are the questions we wanted to answer using a little help from sentiment analysis.

This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Justin Crosbie, the Head of Customer Experience at TULA Skincare, a leading doctor-founded clinically effective skincare brand. Our conversation delved into Justin's journey building out TULA’s CX function from scratch, his approach to balancing automation with human connection, and the critical role that customer insights play in driving both retention and revenue growth. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

In today's fast-paced business landscape, truly understanding and serving customers is more critical than ever for driving growth and building lasting relationships. We had the privilege of speaking with David Karp, Chief Customer Officer at DISQO, a customer experience platform that helps businesses connect with their audiences. Our conversation delved into David's core pillars for success, how DISQO leverages data and AI to gain deep customer insights, and the importance of cross-functional collaboration. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

In today's fast-evolving world of customer experience, leaders must be adept at harnessing data to guide their decisions while also knowing when to trust their gut. We had the pleasure of speaking with Disha Gosalia, Chief Customer Officer at Gladly, a radically personal customer service platform that uses the best of AI and people to drive lifelong customer loyalty. In our conversation, Disha shared her thoughts on the key metrics that matter most in CX, the growing role of AI and automation, and the art of balancing quantitative insights with experience-bred intuition. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion.

In today's fast-evolving tech landscape, education platforms must constantly innovate to meet the changing needs of learners and stay ahead of the curve. We had the pleasure of speaking with Britney Russ, VP of Product and Technology at Codecademy, a leading interactive learning platform for coding and technical skills. Our conversation explored how Britney and her team leverage data to inform content strategy, measure brand resonance, and deliver an engaging learning experience. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

As businesses face increasing pressures to measure and manage their environmental impact, carbon accounting has emerged as a critical capability. We had the pleasure of speaking with Sara Pealy, VP and Head of Product Management at Persefoni, a leading carbon accounting and management platform. Our conversation explored how Sara and her team navigate the complex and evolving regulatory landscape, leverage customer insights to drive product innovation, and harness the power of AI to scale their impact. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

When a brand first launches a product, people from their own team are usually the ones to decide how to market it. But what if their customers end up disagreeing about what value it provides? And even worse, what if they don't find any value in it at all? So we took a pretty controversial product — Erewhon’s $40 Sea Moss Gel — and ran it through our software to see if customers were actually seeing benefits from this fascinating (and very expensive) substance.

This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Erica Simmons, a seasoned customer experience leader currently heading up CX efforts at a rapidly growing tech startup. Our conversation delved into Erica's unique background straddling both technical support and customer-facing roles, the importance of cross-functional partnerships in driving CX improvements, and the evolving role of data in prioritizing and tackling customer pain points. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

In today's data-driven business landscape, understanding how to harness the power of information is crucial for driving growth and delivering outstanding customer experiences. We had the pleasure of speaking with Candace Wallace, the Chief Customer Officer at Relias, a workforce education company focused on the healthcare space. Our conversation delved into Candace's career journey, the key data Relias tracks to gain customer insights, and how they leverage that information to drive real business outcomes. Here are the highlights from our discussion:

This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Michael Heffelfinger, the Chief Customer Officer at DryvIQ, an unstructured data management company. Our conversation delved into Michael's extensive background in leading customer experience organizations, the evolving data challenges facing enterprises today, and the key metrics and strategies he employs to deliver exceptional outcomes for DryvIQ's customers. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

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Does the sentiment toward a new product launch (which could be observed through Instagram likes) foreshadow the future sales of that product? If we find evidence that the positive sentiment toward a new product's content (from its launch until the present) correlates with the product's current total sales quantity, it suggests that the amount of positive sentiment toward a product over time can drive sales. Or, if we find evidence that the first few weeks of positive sentiment toward a new product's content correlates with the product's current total sales quantity, it suggests that social media can predict whether a new product will be successful.

While eateries like Red Lobster and Rubio’s are going bankrupt, a fast food chain with New York origins has sat in a relatively stable position for a couple of years now: Shake Shack. Last week, I analyzed how a brand’s Instagram engagement could potentially correlate with their stock price. This time around, I decided to look at how sentiment observed on social media could influence the growth of sales on a quarterly basis by doing a quick experiment on Shake Shack.

This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Secily Selert, the Head of Customer Success at Shogun, an e-commerce experience platform that powers storefronts for over 20,000 brands. Our conversation delved into Secily's unique background spanning journalism, PR, and customer success, her rapid ascent into CS leadership roles, and her philosophy on leveraging churn data to drive proactive retention strategies. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

A lot of brands fail to understand that social media engagement doesn’t only rely on the quality of the content you’re posting. It more importantly relies on how customers feel about your brand in general. Express recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But if you had just quickly scrolled through any of their social media pages, this announcement wouldn’t actually be too surprising.

This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Colin Crowley, the Vice President of Customer Support at Maven Clinic, a leading virtual clinic for women's and family health. Our conversation delved into Colin's extensive background in CX leadership, the evolving convergence of B2B and B2C customer engagement strategies, and the critical importance of establishing strong feedback loops between customer-facing teams and the rest of the organization. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

Over the past decade, Amazon has been the crystal clear frontrunner in the e-commerce industry. But just a year ago, the Chinese company Temu launched and has since nearly matched Amazon in number of users, slowly but surely eating away at Amazon’s market share in the US. The question is, how did a practically brand-new company with a not-so-new concept win over millions of customers in just one year? And will they be able to keep these customers around long term?

We recently spoke with Simone Silva, an expert in customer experience and quality with an impressive 16-year tenure at Whirlpool. We learned a lot about how Simone thinks about the customer experience, and in particular we delved into the critical role data plays in understanding and improving it. Simone shared many valuable insights and practical examples from her experience, highlighting the importance of a multi-layered approach to data analysis and the potential for unstructured data to uncover hidden opportunities. Here are some of the highlights from our discussion:

Ever since the pandemic hit, consumers have turned even more so toward prioritizing convenience and price. Even for industries like home furnishing, which has historically drawn the majority of its sales from brick and mortar purchases, people feel more comfortable than ever picking out furniture or decor online, rather than in person. Wayfair saw this window of opportunity and took it. But running a fully online brand for furniture has proven to be harder than expected.

Recently we had a conversation with Pegah Valeh, who leads the customer experience and analytics program at Meta's Reality Labs division. Reality Labs is on the cutting edge, covering virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and Meta's vision for the metaverse, including Horizon World. It was fascinating to learn about her team's data-driven approach to understanding the customer experience. Here's what we discussed:

You may remember that just a few years ago, Under Armour was considered one of the biggest sportswear brands in the world, valued at over $5 billion and equivalent to frontrunners like Nike and Adidas. Now, the company is facing exceptionally weak sales, a valuation sliced in half since its peak, paired with a single-digit stock price that’s been on the decline for the past decade. But why?

This week, we sat down with Jordan Hooker, the founder of Tavolo Consulting, a firm specializing in helping early to mid-stage startups build world-class customer support programs. Our conversation delved into the key pillars of an effective support operation, the importance of data-driven decision making, and how to future-proof your customer experience as you scale. Here are the key takeaways from our discussion:

Sephora shattered glass ceilings by surpassing a record of $10 billion in sales in 2023. And it’s no surprise when we think about just how well Sephora has been building out their omnichannel experience over the years. When it comes to customer experience, there’s no doubt that Sephora is a clear leader in the industry. Sephora doesn’t just meet customer expectations — they go above and beyond to connect with their customers and make every touchpoint personable in a unique, exciting way.

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Everyone is talking about Netflix — and for good reason. Just a year ago, Netflix began to really crack down on password-sharing. And while users were infuriated and threatened to cancel their subscriptions, the opposite ensued. This quarter, Netflix ended up adding 9.33 million new subscribers to their customer base — 5x their results from last year. And while there are lots of reasons it played out this way, one underlying reason this decision didn’t negatively affect their CX journey too badly was because this decision actually aligns very well with their overall value proposition.

This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Courtney LeBlanc, Senior Customer Support Manager at Willful, a Canadian online platform that enables users to create powers of attorney and last will and testament documents without the need for a lawyer. Our conversation delved into how Willful leverages a small but mighty support team to deliver empathetic, efficient service to customers navigating a complex and often emotionally charged process. Here are the key insights from our discussion:

It’s majorly impressive how smoothly UNIQLO has adapted to the overseas market — global expansion is a task most brands tend to struggle with. And while their products are great, their product line isn’t necessarily the main reason for their success. The truth is — UNIQLO does a fantastic job of utilizing data to fuel its customer experience strategy — so much so that it’s allowed them to connect their physical and digital touch points in a seamless way. BUT there’s always room to improve, and here’s how.

If you’re an avid Pinterest user, you might have noticed that over the years, their algorithm for personalizing users’ feeds has become more and more precise, making it all the more addicting. You probably wouldn’t have guessed that you have THE YES, an AI-powered shopping app, to thank for these improvements. In 2022, Pinterest acquired THE YES, but before this acquisition, THE YES was on its way to revolutionizing the average shopper’s customer journey and experience. But turns out — making a perfectly personalized shopping experience for every single user was no easy feat. So let’s break down one particular challenge they faced getting their platform off the ground.

When competing in the same industry as Shein and Temu, a brand like H&M must do one of two things to survive: 1) match these competitors’ prices (which is near impossible) or 2) justify higher prices. And in order to justify higher prices, H&M has had to do a lot more than simply improve the quality of their clothing. For them, it’s all about customer experience. And while H&M’s customer experience initiatives have been receiving tons of hype from investors and shareholders, there’s a bit of disconnect between the opinions of customers and investors.

Have you ever waited for a dashboard to load for so long that you forgot what you were even looking for? I think we all have. It can be incredibly frustrating (especially if your organization is using Redshift…).

Outdoor Voices, a loved outdoor apparel company, recently made the decision to close ALL physical retail stores, all while barreling toward bankruptcy. Unfortunately, their reckless spending decisions caught up to them this year, and a once very successful apparel brand suddenly ran fresh out of cash. So let’s look at how their marketing efforts contributed to this unfortunate turn of events and what they can try to do to make a comeback.

As a CX leader, what do you do when you're tasked with building out customer support for a company that hasn't even launched yet? We sat down with Emily Stubbs, who is currently doing exactly that as she stands up the CX function at Aerflo, a new sparkling water hardware startup. Emily shares her playbook for learning a new product inside and out, building a knowledge base from scratch, and using data to proactively surface customer pain points.

Predicting the next time that a consumer is expected to buy a product allows you to make well timed offers that boost conversion. Here's how to do it.

Just this year, HelloFresh was fined £140,000 for sending over 79 million emails and 1 million SMS messages that violated privacy regulations. More specifically, HelloFresh had not been given direct consent from a huge chunk of their customers to constantly send marketing content to their inboxes but continued to do so anyway. And the truth is — not only were these aggressive marketing tactics unauthorized, but they weren’t exactly effective toward reducing churn either. In fact, HelloFresh has historically had huge issues with customer retention — seemingly more so than Blue Apron. So just like we did for Blue Apron, let’s break down why.

Snowflake have launched an LLM function feature, they call it Cortex. The idea is it lets you create a new column with a plain old SQL expression, which makes it super flexible. It's in public preview, so anyone can try it out.

Warby Parker is just one example of a digitally native brand that is absolutely demolishing the game, with revenues up over 12%, average revenue per customer up 9.3%, and their total customer base up over 2% in just 2023 alone. Rather than focusing on e-commerce alone, Warby Parker opened over 230 stores used primarily as showrooms for their products. Using stores as showrooms rather than the primary point of sale also means they can open smaller (and therefore more inexpensive) stores in larger volume. This method of balancing e-commerce with physical retail has been more than successful for the brand. But this isn’t the only way they’ve been able to intertwine the digital customer experience with the physical customer experience.

Last week we had a conversation with Josh Kernan, who is a VP and Head of CX & Marketing at Catalant Technologies. Catalant is a fascinating business一they run a platform to connect businesses with top-ter freelance consultants. Think an ex CMO or ex-VP of Supply Chain that has gone into independent consulting and is running 6 month projects for Fortune 500 companies.

To understand the reasoning behind the price increases in the luxury industry, we first have to understand what makes luxury, luxury. And it’s clear that at the center of it all, exclusivity is a major component of any luxury good or service. To make a product or service exclusive, it should be a) limited in supply and b) difficult to acquire. Because the supply for luxury goods is typically very limited, demand often surpasses supply, and as a result, prices continue to shoot up. And a lack of exclusivity is exactly why Farfetch, an e-commerce space for luxury brands, didn’t perform nearly as well as expected.

In the dynamic landscape of business, understanding your audience is crucial. Picture this: you have the key to uncovering the complexities of consumer behavior and preferences. This key is none other than the transformative field of segmentation research! 

So, you've got an online store, and you're pumped about it. People are adding stuff to their carts, but after a little while...poof! They vanish without completing their purchases. What happened? This phenomenon is called Shopping Cart Abandonment, and this article will cover what this metric is, why it’s a big deal, and how you can prevent it.

For the past 8 years, Walmart has been pretty insistent on keeping its number of stores constant. But recently, the company has made plans to open up over 150 stores across the country. This might seem like a strange move considering how rapidly e-commerce is growing and how steadily in-person sales seem to be declining, but here’s why it makes sense for Walmart.

Nowadays, AI is absolutely everywhere - and everyone knows it. But here’s a common misconception. Lots of people believe that AI takes away the element of personalization by removing human-powered touchpoints entirely. But the truth is, it’s actually quite the opposite. Amazon — a company we’ve touched on before — just launched Rufus, a new AI-powered shopping assistant. And it’s a prime example of how AI is an incredibly powerful tool for personalization.

Content-based filtering considers item features and characteristics to find similar items that you might like. In this article we take a deep dive into how they work and how to use them effectively!

Whenever a customer interacts with a business, a unique record is logged in the business’s database. Sometimes, this results in two different data points such as “T. Cruise” and “Tom Cruise” referring to the same Tom Cruise. If you want to get a more accurate, comprehensive view of customer behavior to improve your customer service and marketing, you may need to resolve these two points into one distinct entity. This is one example of what is called entity resolution, the process of merging various records into a single entity.

Last week, I wrote an article about why Macy’s is laying off employees out of a desperation to save up for a new customer-centric strategy this year. And it turns out this leading retailer isn’t the only one. Just a few days ago, Levi Strauss announced that they would be cutting over 10% of their workforce — almost 2000 employees — this year for the very same reason. But if all of these companies appear to be struggling with the heavy financial burden of an effective customer strategy, why even bother? Well, as Levi’s recent transformation shows, the returns clearly outweigh the costs.

Macy’s recently announced that they plan to lay off over 2000 employees AND shut down several stores entirely. But why? The answer is simple. Traditional marketing, sales, and growth strategies were simply no longer cutting it, so they *had* to cut down on costs to fund new projects that would completely change their business strategy for the better.

In today’s data-driven landscape, mastering key metrics is vital for any successful business. And out of the countless number of metrics out there, the sales conversion rate is one of the most important metrics that e-commerce businesses should master. 

In the dynamic commerce world, businesses are strategically implementing programs with complimentary gifts, advanced technologies, and surprise programs to enhance customer satisfaction, promote brand loyalty, and differentiate themselves from competitors.

Imagine you’re at a bookstore to find your next read, and your friend recommends you an action novel promising that it will be just as fun as the typical romance novels that you read. Although it’s a completely different genre, your friend knows you enjoy dramatic, emotional stories and promises that this action novel will be enjoyable. Surprisingly, you end up loving it and look for more action novels with similar emotional depth. Amazing, right?

If you follow the luxury industry at all, you might’ve heard a little something about 2023’s best performing company in the industry, Hermés. Now, luxury brands aren’t necessarily known for their retention efforts. Most customers buy one or two luxury products from a brand and say that’s enough. But Hermés isn’t just a winning brand because they play it safe when it comes to pricing and strategize carefully when it comes to marketing. They’re also well known for their discrete loyalty and retention frameworks that keep their customer loyalty rate sky high.

In prehistoric times when things like AI, ChatGPT, and models weren’t quite as hot, data collection and analysis was – and often still is – very manual. We’ve all probably seen massive datasets filled with hundreds of thousands of rows and thought, “Geez, how am I gonna get through all of this?” Now, though, the data analysis landscape has massively improved with the rise of AI! But don’t worry, you don’t need a computer science degree in order to keep up. If you’re interested in learning more about basic AI tools and how they can be used to unlock your customer insights, you’ve come to the right place.

When a leading supplement brand was in need of an easy way to send out emails right when a customer was most likely to have run out of a product, they came to Cotera. Their retention team had tried exploring different ways to optimize email schedules manually, but estimating the right timing on their own was near impossible. This meant that there was so much wasted potential for campaigns sent to their top customers — but they knew they couldn’t make the needed predictions on their own.

Recently, we had a large food & beverage e-commerce company come to Cotera looking for a strong segmentation model. The Head of Marketing needed to bring down a high one-and-done and churn rate. She knew they were facing an abundance of customer churn but that her team wasn’t proactively identifying these at-risk customers until it was too late. With a company-wide focus on retention, she knew they needed a dedicated tool that specialized in customer segmentation.

Around a year ago, an apparel and accessories brand came to Cotera looking for a new, strong recommendation model to replace its current one. The Head of Retention knew they should be generating higher incremental revenue from moving customers across different products. Yet they found themselves stalled leveraging their ESPs’ recommendation engine, as it was unable to adjust for the nuances of their business. And any attempts at testing stand-alone recommendation engines lacked the turnkey integration with their ESP.

Whether you still use Pinterest or no longer do, I think we can all agree that their content recommendations are absolutely spot on. But how does their algorithm work, and why is it even important in the first place? Pinterest’s mission as a company has always been to deliver the right content to the right people — meaning that a strong content recommendation system is essential to the success of their brand. But this is not to say that content recommendation models aren’t useful for B2C companies selling services or tangible products either. In fact, it’s just as important.

It’s one thing to get someone to purchase your product, but how do you get them to keep buying? Most companies send out occasional email campaigns, abandoned cart reminders, or special promotions to re-peak their customers’ interest, but there’s still another approach we haven’t touched on just yet: replenishment.

I’m sure at some point, you’ve gone through Yelp, or Trip Advisor, or any other review platform of some sort before committing to a purchase or a visit. I know I do (and I can’t live without them). But what you may not have thought about is how these reviews help that company just as much as they help you as a customer. But how? Sentiment analysis.

Now, we all know and love Netflix the same way Netflix shows that they know and love us. And why is proving their love toward their customers so important? For any subscription company, the key to success is making sure their LTV (lifetime value) stays relatively high. But it’s not just about how they increase those numbers that makes Netflix such an outstanding company - it’s even more-so about how they measure those very numbers and how deeply they analyze them.

In Las Vegas, CA, tourists from all around the country line up outside the doors of the Coca-Cola Factory right before it opens. Why? To try Coca-Cola’s ATW (Around the World) Tray. On each ATW Tray, customers get to taste a cup each of the various flavors of Coca-Cola offered in different countries across the world. What makes it so special is that each country’s Coca-Cola drink has a distinct flavor catered to the tastes, preferences, and sometimes even the traditions of the people living there. But why is this effective?

Everyone knows that these days, if you’re NOT using data and integrating tech into your company, you’re doing it wrong. On the other hand, there’s also a pretty big misconception here. Sure, we’re in the digital era, but that doesn’t mean we can just brush away the importance of human judgment. Instead of letting new technologies take over your entire business, you can use data more effectively by complementing existing human judgment and decision-making processes with it. And Whole Food’s recent merger with Amazon tells you exactly why.

It’s pretty clear that in the dynamic world of marketing, success today is driven by data. When we look at trends in the consumer retail industry especially, companies are beginning to up their digital game to keep up with their competitors. In other words, many traditional methods simply don’t cut it anymore. This is where data enablement steps in. Let’s dive into what exactly data enablement is and how it’s changing the way companies go about marketing.

Everyone knows the brand Lululemon — I mean, they’ve made quite the name for themselves (among both men and women) in the last decade. But in the past, Lululemon certainly wasn’t for everyone. In the very beginning, they had quite the focused target market — younger active women aspiring to live healthy lifestyles. And having a focus strategy (one that’s focused on a niche market) isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, it’s how most great companies first start out. But let’s explore what tactics Lululemon ensued to broaden their focus strategy without diluting their brand.

Email Service Providers (ESPs) are a great starting point when trying to segment your customers, but nowadays, you're going to need more than just an ESP to make your campaigns the best of the best. We can't live without ESPs — I mean, they’re absolutely critical for delivering messages to consumers across various platforms. And while ESP’s are great at delivery and compliance, we’ve found the key to amplifying their existing impact even further: a robust RFM (or AI) model that enables brands to have more granular and predictive user segmentation.

If I just said the word “marketing,” what would first come to mind? Maybe some terms like marketing campaigns, email campaigns, social media, and word of mouth, right? But marketing certainly isn’t limited to just these few ideas and methods. And Lego as a company makes this very clear. More often than not, company diversification is usually seen as a way to minimize risk or generate new sources of revenue. But over the years, Lego’s taken a different kind of approach. Let’s look at some of the innovative ways they’ve diversified their brand, and what other benefits they reaped.

No matter how intertwined personalization and segmentation are, they are certainly not one and the same. Sure, they both accomplish the same goals — improving customer experience, increasing AOV per customer, strengthening customer loyalty, driving repeated purchases, and etc. BUT differentiating the way they’re used is key to use them together more effectively. One other way to think about it is, segmentation answers the question, “What types of people am I selling to?” and personalization answers the question, “How will I sell to this specific person?” Often, you’ll see through the way these two strategies work together, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Let’s get into it.

What if I told you that nearly half of Gen Z adults are eager to pay for subscriptions to internet personalities or content creators? It's a statistic that reflects the evolving preferences of this influential generation. But there's more to it than meets the eye. From spending over four hours a day on social media to their unique loyalty to brands with subscriptions, Gen Z is redefining the retail landscape. In this blog post, we'll uncover the fascinating world of Gen Z and subscription boxes, exploring how these trends are shaping the future of shopping. How can your business tap into this Gen Z revolution and harness the power of subscription boxes to captivate this dynamic audience? Let's dive in and find out.

I can almost be 100% sure that you, *yes you*, have either made a purchase through Amazon before or at least know someone who has. And if you have, there’s a good chance you’re a Prime member who’s not planning on churning any time soon. I mean, why would you? Amazon is the ultimate, go-to one-stop shop that *you know* you can rely on. When I think about companies that absolutely master customer loyalty and retention, there’s no doubt that Amazon takes the win. But how does one just suddenly win over the hearts of hundreds of millions of customers around the world?

Here’s a question for you - why would you offer a coupon to a customer who you *know* would buy from you even in the absence of a deal? I guess the hard part would be determining which customers you *actually* need to offer promotions to and which you don’t. But it’s wrong to think that it’s a waste of your time to figure this out. By handing out coupons left and right, you’re simply losing money - and this is a mistake many companies (like Blue Apron) have made and continue to make. BUT there’s a solution! Just like for many problems we’ve covered in the past, segmentation is the key here. Let’s use the company Everlane as an example.

If you go back just several years, you’ll remember that it used to be WAY harder to whip up a design on command. What changed? For me, the first game-changing platform that comes to mind is Canva. So how exactly did this tiny startup transform into a multi-billion-dollar unicorn? They’re not only smart about what target market they decided to capture, but they also do a pretty solid job of keeping their users active and eager for more. Let’s dive further into what innovative strategies Canva puts into place to attract and keep users like me engaged.

In 2021, Costco had a 91% membership renewal rate in North America and 89% worldwide. Recently, Costco released their 2023 Q3 reports, and rates were up even higher, with a 92.6% renewal rate in North America and 90.5% worldwide. The statistics in 2021 already established Costco as the master of customer loyalty programs, but to see continuous growth over time really begs the question of what is Costco’s secret sauce. How are they able to make their customer loyalty program even more enticing than it already is?

The film industry has been on fire recently. We got Barbie and Oppenheimer and Spiderman this summer, with even more coming along the way. However, even for those of us who aren’t cinephiles, one studio has been producing hit after hit after hit, such as Oscar Best Picture Everything Everwhere All at Once and Academy Award-winning Moonlight. Despite being an indie film studio, A24 has been blowing everyone’s minds away with their top-notch movies. So the question is: how did they blow up?

What’s shocking is that according to a recent study, chances are high that only 3 out of 10 individuals will end up pulling the trigger to make the final purchase. That’s 70% of customers who end up abandoning their carts — a very worrying statistic. But don’t let this discourage you — there are solutions you can implement to nudge customers further toward that final trigger. And why go the extra mile to do so? Imagine being able to turn that 70% into 0%. That gives you and your company the ability to more than double your existing revenue — something that would be *significantly* more difficult and expensive to accomplish through a customer acquisition or brand awareness campaign.

ButcherBox is an online meat-seller that’s absolutely killing it in the industry. But unlike Blue Apron, ButcherBox did something a little different — and this little difference made a huge difference in the long run. Rather than focusing on acquiring new customers in their marketing campaigns, they targeted existing/past subscribers and website visitors to get them to keep coming back, order more and more, and stay for good. Let’s take a look at how this company avoided coming face to face with the same issues as other companies in the industry.

As a founding engineer, there’s a lot of technology out there to know. You need to know the differences between the front and back end, how to manage deployment – not to mention the nightmare of scaling, especially when you recently gained a *ton* of popularity in Malaysia and you now need to also work out of an AWS region in Asia. How on *earth* are you supposed to also know how to hire the right first data hire? Fear not, Mr. “SQL-is-not-engineering” — this article is here to help. We’ve also included some code to give you some context as to what you’re going to be reading here in the coming months.

Most people attributed the fall of Allbirds to poor quality, but the truth is, the source of their problems was more than just the material of the shoe. Allbirds, originally a sustainable sneaker company, had not only failed to pay attention to the underlying needs and values of their ICP, but had also lost its way by attempting to expand the brand to irrelevant segments. Much like what we described for Nike, trying to enter new markets too quickly fogged up Allbirds’ core brand image and diminished overall perceived quality. But even this is too short a summary of what truly happened to Allbirds — so let’s break it all down.

In addition to high consumer spending, the customer acquisition landscape was quite different from what it is today - platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram offered clever segmentation tactics to target customers effectively, which gave these companies comparatively lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) than they had seen in the past. If you’ve been operating a business, you’ve got a plethora of data that you can use to your advantage. Here are some ways that our customers have seen growth from their existing customer base.

One of the most common challenges we see retail and ecommerce businesses experience is their inability to sustain their initial momentum. I mentioned this idea very briefly at the end of our Glossier case study, but in this case, Glossier lost its reputation due to bad HR and internal operational decision-making. More often than not, though, brands cannot maintain their brand image or awareness because of rigid, inflexible marketing strategies. That’s why we’re going to dive deep into Pokémon GO and how it went from having over 200m active players at its peak to there now only being 80m remaining.

There has been a lot of talk of building 'data apps' on the modern data stack. It's not clear who exactly is to be blame but it may be Martin Casado [1] and Benn Stancil [2]. But what does it even mean to build a data app? Are there any benefits or downsides? What are the technical challenges? I think the proposition is interesting... but these are tough questions we must answer if the concept is to be taken seriously.

The beer industry is one where people either care deeply about the brand they consume or don’t care at all. For the folks who do care, there’s a set of criteria they typically use to decide which beer to purchase: quality, taste, price, brand image, tradition, and authenticity. For Mountain Man Lager, it was clear that they absolutely nailed every one of those factors. For nearly a century, Mountain Man never once deviated from its core identity as a family-owned quality beer brand with a consistently strong, bitter recipe and a local bond to East Coast consumers. So when Mountain Man Lager suddenly started to consistently lose 2% of its revenue every year, Chris Prangel, the next inheritor of the family-owned brand, began to panic. For over 75 years, Mountain Man never once saw a decline in sales - so there was clearly a reason to be concerned. But what exactly happened?

LTV is one of those concepts that can easily be understood at surface level but often misunderstood at its core. But what exactly makes it so difficult to grasp? 1. LTV is hard to calculate, and nobody knows what to do with it. 2. There’s no way easy way to use it to measure growth. 3. Fixing (1) and (2) is much easier said than done.

Realistic movies are usually comedic and dramatic spins of real life, but if you’ve ever watched “The Devil Wears Prada,” you’ll know the film has quite accurately captured how intense and almost cultish the fashion and beauty industry can be. Glossier’s rise to fame, though, is largely attributed to its defiance of this cultural mindset. But it’s a little ironic - Glossier set out to escape from the echo chamber of the beauty industry, yet its own customer base is known for being extremely obsessed with the brand. Let’s dive deeper into what exactly triggered Glossier’s explosive takeover.

RFM is a customer segmentation methodology for e-commerce businesses. The insight behind this framework is that customers who purchased recently are more likely to purchase again. Equally, big and frequent spenders are more likely to respond to promotions than small and infrequent spenders. Together, the three metrics give you a way to create lifecycle segments that let you answer questions like: Who are my best customers? Which customers am I at risk of losing? Which customers are best to target with promotions? Which customers can I entice to spend more?

I’ve been a proud Spotify user since 2015 and have never reverted to another music streaming platform since then. There’s a reason Spotify is so skilled at converting customers into premium users and retaining them. Being a music platform, Spotify has mastered the art of personalization. However, what truly differentiates them from the competition is the way they manage to personalize both individual user experiences on the platform and the marketing content every user receives.

The problem we see with most brands is that they take an “everything to everyone” approach to retention marketing, which means they try to appeal to all their customers with the same generic campaigns and messages, rather than tailoring their marketing efforts to specific customer segments. We find that this approach leads to poor engagement and low retention rates, as folks aren’t likely to respond to messages that aren’t tailored to their interests. And thus, we see the importance of segmentation!

Robinhood was the first trading platform of its kind. With its goal to “democratize finance for all,” the platform enabled any user, regardless of financial expertise, to invest in stocks, crypto, options, and more. Of course, any company’s downfall is a result of a combination of multiple factors. But according to Robinhood’s CEO, Vlad Tenev, one of their critical mistakes was assuming that heightened user engagement in the pandemic would continue… post-pandemic.

99.9% of businesses are in the business of selling something, and the person on the other end of the transaction is a customer. Now, different businesses have different numbers of customers: Delta flies hundreds of millions of customers around the world each year (I’m writing this on a Delta flight right now), while a company that creates missile defense systems might do so for very few but usually very large countries over the course of a given decade. Most of these companies also experience what’s called “churn.” The term is most often attributed to companies that sell a subscription, but is also present in most other types of business, just with differing amounts of importance.

We were working with a +$40M e-commerce brand last year that sold coffee and tea online, and we found that their customer re-targeting strategy amounted to taking every person who hadn’t purchased in the last 6 months and sending them a coupon for 10% off the highest selling product that the brand had (or sometimes a product that was in overstock). This, while better than nothing, was leaving money on the table. We’ve also found this on the SaaS side. The retention strategy for surprisingly large companies can whittle down to effectively a poke/prod to anyone who hasn’t logged in in a few weeks. We’ve found that you can increase engagement by double digit percentages by making sure that you target the right customers at the right time.

What’s the first brand that comes to mind when you think of footwear? There’s a good chance you immediately thought of Nike (or Adidas, but let’s save that story for another day). And who can blame you? Nike is not only the largest shoe brand in the world, but they’re also one of the most well-known brands as a whole. At least in the footwear industry, their brand awareness is truly unparalleled.

Let’s take a look at one of the most successful retailers in the world - Target. Target’s decision to use data to both identify its customer segments and personalize its advertising efforts truly revolutionized the way data could be used in the retail space.

We think that there are three “quick win” areas where you can leverage data segmentation to improve aspects of strategy. We’ll start by looking at how data can help you optimize customer acquisition by identifying which products are most likely to lead to repeat purchases. Next, we'll dive into how leveraging data on customer behavior can lead to product decisions that keep your customers engaged and loyal. Finally, we'll discuss how data can help you decide on pricing and promotions that strike the right balance between short-term revenue and long-term profitability.

Just a few years ago, this niche industry was shocking the world with its sudden explosion in growth, valued at over $1.5 billion in 2016 and nearly doubling the next year. What’s crazy is that while HelloFresh now dominates the meal kit sector, this wasn’t always the case.

Finding new customers can be infuriatingly difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. While it’s always good to be on the lookout for potential ICP candidates, it’s also crucial to drill down on your current customers. After all, if you fail to cater towards your current customers, you might just lose them.

You just purchased a pair of sneakers from Allbirds, and you immediately receive a post-purchase email in your inbox. There’s about a 45% chance you even open the email in the first place, but let’s say you do. Which one of these emails would you be more likely to look through? Which would leave a more lasting impression?