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Hey y’all, and welcome back to the Southern Fried eCommerce podcast from EYStudios. We’re back for episode 35 after a brief hiatus thanks to COVID attacking one of our co-hosts, Jay Brimberry. We start today’s episode with Jay and our other co-host Emily Faulkner catching up on the recent goings-on in their lives.
Jay recently brought his daughter to her first Braves game. They lost but Charlotte will always remember the nearby fan getting hit by a foul ball in the head. They also talked about some upcoming events like Emily’s 30th birthday extravaganza in New Orleans, back-to-school for Jay’s daughter and Emily’s boyfriend, a teacher, and then a whole host of fall sports events that Emily definitely didn’t tune out for. The most important thing to watch out for though is a possible Bourbon Street edition of Southern Fried eCommerce. By pure happenstance, Jay and Emily will both be in New Orleans next week. Emily has promised that IF Jay finds her on Bourbon Street, they can record the podcast right then and there from their phones — regardless of blood alcohol content. I’m personally rooting for Jay on this one.
New From EYStudios
After our catch-up, we dive into the meat of the episode with some news from EYStudios. Some of our recent blogs include:
- Setting Up Google Analytics 4: What You Need To Know
- What Are The Best Social Media Platforms For My Business?
- How To Build Trust In Your Store Online
- The Most Common Mistakes Businesses Make When Implementing Analytics
- Understanding The Limitations of Searching Your Business On Google
Shopify Reports Huge Losses and Layoffs
The first article we’re diving into this week is from Retail Dive, “Shopify Reports $1.2B Net Loss, Lays Off 10% Of Its Workforce.” The article details Shopify’s recent massive layoffs where they told employees they’d be laying off 10% of their workforce “by the end of the day.” Jay compares this to the Godfather Part I’s baptism scene. Emily admits she’s never seen The Godfather. After brief disbelief, Jay asks if he can spoil a movie that came out in 1972. Emily agrees and Jay explains that the final scene of the first film ends with nearly everyone getting “laid off.”
The article quotes several executives at Shopify who, in Jay and Emily’s opinion, don’t quite get the tone needed for these types of decisions. For instance, the CEO, Tobi Lutke, said, “Ultimately, placing this bet was my call to make and I got this wrong. Now, we have to adjust” when discussing the layoffs and the company’s “bet” on eCommerce growing continuously at pandemic-level numbers. Jay says it’s comments like this that make him sick to his stomach, 10% of the workforce and it’s an “adjustment.”
Jay continues on to say he can’t help but think, “how did they not anticipate this?” He mentions that we discussed the end of the pandemic eCommerce boom back in the first episode of this podcast. Jay says it’s human nature to want to go out in person and experience your products and socialize outside of your home. He thinks Shopify should have anticipated this and not have gone all in. Emily agrees and she even says there was probably someone in that meeting saying not to put “all chips on black” and base everything purely off of data…and they probably don’t work there anymore. She also says it was strange to go full force ahead on any sort of strategy based on pandemic numbers because everything was so up in the air and unpredictable. Emily then thanks Jay for starting off with the article that was going to get her riled up the most.
Advice on Utilizing Influencers and Partners
Hopefully a little calmer for Emily, our next article of the episode is “No Ecommerce Company Is an Island” from Practical eCommerce. This article dives into affiliate marketing and partner relationships. Jay points out that most small businesses don’t think about affiliate marketing at all but they should.
Emily agrees and points to an example from her past where she worked for a company that had no interest in affiliate marketing because they assumed it was for larger companies. However, they saw a huge increase in revenue with affiliate marketing by going after medium-sized influencers with a decent following. Emily admits affiliate marketing won’t work for everyone or for every type of product but think about things that influencers can talk about. She says that there’s an influencer for every industry or niche if you do the research to find them.
When it comes to utilizing partners in marketplace and vendor capacities, Jay says that it’s easy not to want to trust someone from the “outside” and to approach it from a “no one gets your business the way you get your business” mentality. After all, he says, a bad partnership can set your company back years. However, Jay challenges business owners to start trusting somewhat because like the title of the article “no business is an island,” if you want to grow strategically then you need to be trying things like online marketplaces or hiring an agency to handle your affiliate marketing. “It takes a community to build these businesses,” Jay says.
B2B Marketplace Numbers Grow
The next article we discussed in this episode is, “As Revenue Grows, B2B Marketplace Head Counts Climb As Well” from Digital Commerce 360. The article states that while hard numbers are hard to come by the number of digital marketplaces has now topped 400. Emily says she wants to spend a whole day just looking into all of these marketplaces because there are just so many to keep track of and understand.
Jay says there’s so much going on in this realm that B2B business owners need to try. “I know you’re used to doing it how you’ve done it for forever and a day but peek outside your warehouse doors folks. Peek outside and see what opportunities are out there,” he said. He points out that one of the great things about marketplaces is that most are revenue sharing in that if you’re not selling stuff, you’re not paying anything.
He recommends doing the research or partnering with an agency that can do the research for you to find the right marketplace for your business that works for you. “Not all of them are Amazon. Not all of them are eBay,” Jay says pointing out that not all marketplaces are giants meant for large companies only. Emily agrees and says, “These are the things you need to do because if you’re doing it before everyone else, you get all the money. And if you’re not doing it, someone else is going to step in and get that money.”
Promo Codes: Yay or Nay?
The last article we dove into is “Promotions and Discounts: UX/CX Considerations for eCommerce Brands” from Econsultancy, which discusses the philosophy behind automatic discounts vs. promotion codes. The article lays out the multiple pros and cons of each method with customer experience as the focus. Jay falls on the side of automatic discounts while Emily sees the benefits of promo codes. She says that she feels special when she gets a special code in an email. However, she wants it to be simple and easy to type in or copy and paste not a 15-digit number or something. She does appreciate automatic discounts though because she doesn’t have to think about it.
Jay says he has probably paid full price before rather than trying to type in a promo code that wouldn’t work or trying to find the box to type it in. Emily says that that’s the line that businesses need to walk when they’re setting these things up. They need to think about who their customer is, she says, and whether they’re a savvy “get every bang for my buck” kind of shopper or not.
Jay brings up other types of discounts or promotions though that he does “fall for.” He gives the example of saving $1 on gas at Kroger for spending a certain amount that month. He says filling up his wife’s car and saving that $1 on gas made him so happy but that means that he spent $1000 at Kroger to save that $22. However, due to human nature he posits, he feels like he’s earned that discount and feels good about it. Emily says she feels the same way and gets that sense of satisfaction in herself when she earns a reward at a store. This is what businesses need to tap into, they say.
With that last piece of advice, we say goodbye for now. We hope you enjoyed this week’s episode and we hope to see you during the next episode of Southern Fried eCommerce.