Intro 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Ecom Experiences, a podcast for ecommerce marketing leaders who want to grow and scale their brands faster. Join us as we interview some of the smartest brand founders and marketing leaders in the industry. Explore the lessons they learned, discover the keys to their success and discuss what excites them most about the future.

Samir Balwani 0:29

Hi, it's Samir Balwani here, host of Ecom Experiences where we talk to brand founders and marketing leaders about their experience as growing brands. This episode is brought to you by QRY. QRY is a paid media agency that helps brands balance brand awareness and performance marketing to drive predictable and profitable growth, to learn more about how we can help you visit. Weareqry.com, I'm really excited about our guest. I have Jennifer Peters, the Senior Manager of ecommerce from OLLY, here today. I have loved our conversations. Your depth of knowledge and everything you do is really inspiring. Thank you so much for being here today.

Jennifer Peters 1:08

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. Oh, so

Samir Balwani 1:11

let's start with the easy stuff. So tell me more about OLLY and what you do there.

Jennifer Peters 1:15

Yeah, sure. So OLLY, a lot of times people don't immediately recognize the brand, but the way I describe it is, if you've ever been in a Target store and you've locked in and you've turned right, we're always on the first end cap. So we are we're primarily a gummy vitamin brand, but we do have other formats as well, and we're known for our beautiful packaging and our super delightful products that work really well too, but they're also very tasty and fun to take. So that's sort of like the the brand that that we are. Um, I've been at OLLY for three years, and I run the direct to consumer ecommerce program at OLLY. I love

Samir Balwani 1:50

that. I know I love the OLLY brand, because it's always the color, beautiful packaging. It like fills up the whole wall, and it acts as a billboard, which is all the way exactly what it's supposed to be

Jennifer Peters 2:00

doing, exactly. I always say, like, you know, with creative our products, in a lot of ways, they're so beautiful, they sell

Samir Balwani 2:06

themselves. I love that. I love that. And so tell me more about the role. So you cover all things DTC. What does that entail? Kind of, what fits in your world.

Jennifer Peters 2:17

I think DTC is tricky, and it is because I think it requires multiple skill sets and lots of different kinds of experience. So I do everything from beginning to end, including retention. That includes warehouse management, inventory management, web development, online messaging retention, as far as email, SMS, loyalty, content management, and then you kind of get into the whole compliance piece, and then the business ownership as well. Like you own, you know, as a channel owner, I own the entire PNL, which also includes shipping and delivery and last mile experience and all of that in between. So a lot of times I'll just say, like, I do everything for DC except for paid that's one thing I don't I don't do paid acquisition. Everything else that's kind of in that bucket is all me.

Samir Balwani 3:11

That's amazing. That is a huge purview and a lot to really cover off on. So I almost want to ask you what your favorite part of the role is, but I'm going to ask you what are your favorite parts of your role? Of

Jennifer Peters 3:23

your role? I honestly, I think it's the there's two things. One, this business is constantly changing. There's always things to learn. There's always new tech. There are always solutions that can solve a problem that you haven't even really been been able to define clearly, that as soon as you see the solution, you're like, Yes, that. That's amazing. So I think the speed of development and how fast everything changes, especially with generative AI, you kind of see all these really quick, really fast changes to the business overall. And I think that's really exciting. But the other piece I really love about my role is that every day is different. And you know, there's some days that you have fires that are related to your warehouse or inventory outages or UPS might go on strike, or you're just working on a really cool, you know, design project. So everything that happens in my day, it's very different day to day. And I really love that I sort of thrive in that environment. That's

Samir Balwani 4:22

really interesting. That's awesome, too. So I can only imagine the kinds of fires that you're dealing with in the world. So you talked a little bit on generative AI, I'd love to kind of click into there and learn more about kind of what is, what are you seeing in that world, and what are the areas of your job that it's impacting

Jennifer Peters 4:39

the most. OLLY I would say, first of all, we are a vitamin and supplement brand, so that is a really important thing to remember. We have We are highly regulated. Everything we do and say is regulated by the FDA, so we have to be really, really careful. And every single message we put out, every single image we put out, runs through our regulatory department. So using. AI for the really obvious front end pieces doesn't necessarily make that much sense for us, so we're never going to use it to write product descriptions. We're never going to use it to write ad copy. We're never going to use it to generate ad images. That's just not something that is really for us. And I know a lot of brands are doing that, and it's great, and I'm sure it's a huge time saver, but because of the regulation piece for us, it's just not really on the table. However, there are things that AI can do in the background in terms of sorting and rating customers, in terms of, like, low, you know, like low quality, high quality, that you know, people can't do in that kind of real time speed. So the ways we're using AI are more around the back end kind of problems and back end analysis, because the kind of analysis that AI can do is wildly different than what you can do as an Insights Team maybe 60 days later, and now you can't use the information. So being able to get this information about customers and their behavior and even real time is helping us to be able to drive conversion on site, and also to personalize the site in ways that without that kind of AI brain we wouldn't really be able to do.

Samir Balwani 6:08

Yeah, that's, that's kind of cool. I imagine it's probably impacting conversion rate and then retention side as well too, right? I'm sure you guys are able to identify, you know, customer segments that are really interesting, or like buying behaviors, and identify changes there that's really exciting. So I'm so curious about the challenges that you're looking at as you look ahead. So what are the things that proverbially keep you up at night? What are the things that you are most thinking about in terms of things that you need to solve to achieve your goals for the year?

Jennifer Peters 6:42

That is the great question, and it's probably very similar for a lot of people in the ecommerce space. But one is the cost of acquisition. It's so it gets higher every day. It's more challenging every day. So that's a piece that you have to kind of look for those opportunities where you can play, where maybe your competitors can't play as well, and always looking for a different angle and a different way to get in there and acquire those new customers. So that would be the first one. Second one is shipping prices. Like every year, shipping prices increase, and it eats in your margin. And in the Amazon world, customers don't want to be charged for shipping either. Like 20 years ago, shipping used to be a revenue line on people's PNLs, and now it's just the cost of doing business is eating your shipping costs. So as prices increase out there, with fuel prices increasing and surcharges, it gets a little harder every year and every year to be profitable and still kind of meet the customer's expectation of shipping. So that is, I think, a really difficult piece, and I last one in the world of privacy, the world is changing really quickly, and there's a lot there are a lot of states doing their own kind of going their own ways on consumer data privacy, and it's a lot to keep up with, because every state is different, and every state has different requirements, and that, while it's not a threat, in fact, I think it's awesome. I mean, customers, data should be protected. It should be kind of the holy grail of the things that you have, that you you know you have the most limited access to. And you know, is something that you know kind of like, not that you would die to protect, but, you know what I mean, like, we know it's really important. I think just managing the day to day of the different laws is really challenging, and it doesn't feel like it's going to get any easier anytime soon.

Samir Balwani 8:27

Yeah, it's almost like, you know, we wish for a federal regulation where, across the

Jennifer Peters 8:34

board, if I could have one footer page for privacy policy, that would be so awesome. But now it's like, Virginia, like, I've got a whole foot or full of privacy pages. I know it's,

Samir Balwani 8:43

it's interesting because we, you know, we we think about it too, and we talk about it. We're actually in the middle of writing a whole piece of content around first party data and that. And the reason why it's become so important and and why you need it for your campaigns and privacy is definitely the leading factor around it. You know, third party data is going away, and it's becoming harder just because of the uncertainty around it. You don't know what you're allowed to use and how you're allowed to use it, and you don't want to have to deal with the legalities and the compliance, especially a brand like OLLY, doesn't want to what you don't want to be on a regulator's radar to begin with, right? So like, I get that 100% I'm so curious to hear more about the shipping, because I agree with you. You know, shipping containers, shipping cost, you know, it continues to go up, and Amazon has definitely spoiled everyone with, you know, free next day shipping, two day shipping, and in some cases, same day shipping. How do you guys compete with that? What is your thinking around that?

Jennifer Peters 9:48

We are an omnichannel business, so there are multiple channels where our customers can shop, including brick and mortar at the end of the day. We're still foundationally a brick and mortar business that is very active and growing quickly in the digital. Space. Luckily for us, in each channel, our customers are a little bit different, so that has been a huge help, because we don't have a lot of channel conflict, not like other brands that I've worked on where, you know, you kind of have, like the ecommerce people have a beef with the sales team, and the sales team has a beef with walmart.com, and, you know, so I think we're, really lucky to be in a space where all of our customer segments are a little bit different, and the reasons they shop in different channels are also different. It is really hard to compete with Amazon. It is really hard to compete with that like I want it right now. Mindset, especially with Gen Z. I think Gen Z's expectations of when things should arrive are pretty wild because they grew up with it. I mean, I didn't, you know, so I still think it's really cool every time. But you know, the expectation of the younger generations is that I should be able to give this immediately and at the best price. So I think for OLLY.com the key has been figuring out how to offer different things than Amazon offers and making it a more personalized experience, making it a more meaningful experience with our brand. And if you come to OLLY.com you are pretty dedicated to the brand already. If you're shopping there that, I think that kind of shows your these are the these are the brand loyal loyalists. These are the ones that are most committed. So we really do everything we can to offer surprise and delight to those customers. We have a great loyalty program with a lot of rewards. We personalize their experience. We've got a lot of triggered messaging around replenishment. And I think the discounting around subscriptions is a huge benefit for us as well. So subscriptions are a big part of our business. The beautiful thing about the vitamin segment is that people don't change brands a lot. Once they find something that works, they stick with it, because obviously that's how you're supposed to take vitamins, is take them every day consistently. So that, I think, has helped us a lot. And the subscription business is really important to us. And while Amazon has that too, ours is much more persoalized. And then we also, as a backup, have replenishment messaging with SMS and email, where we, you know, we know how many servings are in our product. So even if you're not a subscriber, we're going to send you an SMS a week before you're going to run out of product, just to remind you it's time, it's time to refill. So, you know, I think that there's, there's a lot of opportunity when you own your own database of customers, especially with retention that we have as an advantage as a DTC channel that Amazon really doesn't, and our other channels, or other online channels like walmart.com and target.com they don't necessarily have that agility either, to be able to really kind of talk one to one with customers wherever they are at that moment. It's interesting

Samir Balwani 12:40

because, like hearing you talk about all the customer experience elements that you guys have installed it almost when you put it up against a matrix of where free shipping is, and then you can do this and this and this, and it's almost like it's okay to lose on the shipping side, because you win on all of these other elements. And it's, it's kind of this holistic experience that matters so much more than just individual this and this, that's

Jennifer Peters 13:05

how you have to think of it, too. I think otherwise, you'll just drive yourself crazy. Yeah,

Samir Balwani 13:09

and I know you touched on CAC increasing, which is a consistent conversation that we have. I'm so curious. You know, owning the site and owning retention, how are you guys looking at it from that perspective, knowing that it is a lot harder to bring someone to the site and ultimately convert them into a customer.

Jennifer Peters 13:29

You know, on our side, we've invested a lot of resources and time in the ways that we can convert customers on site. We are a retention machine. We are really good at retention. The trick is with, you know, with the CAC costs increasing so much, it's harder and harder to get new customers to your site, especially when they're very price conscious. So they may be looking at, where can I get the best price? And so that that piece, I think, is it's always going to be a challenge to get new customers. And as our brand has grown in awareness, it's getting more challenging. I mean, probably two, three years ago, it was just like constant new customers because, you know, it was the first time they've seen OLLY, it was the first time they've, you know, heard about the benefits of a product, and there were just so much. But as we have grown in awareness and penetration, it's becoming more and more difficult to find customers who are like, Oh, I've never heard of that before. That sounds great. So that's challenging. I think the things that we can control are the site experience, understanding which customers are high intent and which customers are low intent, being able to discount around that and be able to provide kind of in the moment discounting in order to keep people from bouncing that maybe are more low intent or are very price conscious. So we've got some great tools that we use vendor AI is what we use for the discounting, and it is super cool. It's pretty new company, but does like real time discounting based on, you know, the intent of the customer. And we love it. And then we have a bunch of other tools that we. To, to just kind of enhance and personalize the customer experience. So we are really focused on what is our conversion rate on site, while we allow, we kind of, you know, let our Marketing Team Drive the traffic. And, of course, we want high quality traffic, yeah, but the things that my team controls is like, what happens when the customer gets to the site? Like, that's what we that's what we manage for the most part.

Samir Balwani 15:22

That's awesome. Yeah, I I love that. Customer experience has definitely been kind of the theme of today's interview, and it's one that I think people forget, and in terms of, like, part of the reason why CAC is rising is because customer experience has become more important than ever before, and people have more choices than ever before, and so it's led to this level of competition that we've never seen before. And so, yeah, I love that. I'm so curious. What are you excited about? We talked about challenges. What are you excited about for 24 Where are you putting? A lot of energy and happiness around

Jennifer Peters 16:04

this is our I like to think of this at OLLY on the ecommerce side, is like our year of efficiency. You know, we are driving towards optimizing and driving efficiency within all the areas that we operate in our business. My first couple years at OLLY were really about kind of, building out the tech stack, building out the tech roadmap, making sure that, you know, the site can support the products that we want to sell, and really more of like, kind of, like, team building years, whereas this year it's really now, like, here are all the things we have. We have the tech stack of our dreams. So how do we make sure that we're squeezing every drop out of everything we're paying for, because it's really easy to go buy something that's very expensive, but it's much more challenging to make sure you're getting all the value out of it that is possible. So that's where we're really putting a lot of our effort is around those tools that we've added, just to make sure we're getting everything we can out of it, and then also sharing those benefits and maybe pieces of knowledge and customer feedback, or whatever it is across the business, so making sure that not it doesn't stay in our universe, that it's getting out with, you know, with our with our brand team, with our product development team, that they're getting all this information and feedback so they can use it to make decisions about products and make decisions about marketing, and so that that big, that sharing piece, I think, is a really important piece of the efficiency and just the overall, like Cost of Ownership versus value of some of these really expensive tools that we have.

Samir Balwani 17:32

Yeah, I'm so curious to learn more about how you share out information, because I think that that is one of the most valuable things that people undersell in the value of DTC, in that having ownership over your consumer, having ownership over your data, allows you to really understand your consumer in a way that no other channel allows you to, so being able to give feedback to your brand team. Okay, this brand messaging is working. Hey, this brand colors and this kind of photography is actually resonating with our customer all the way to the product set around. Hey, this kind of product is being bundled with this. Did you ever really consider that this is like a thing that needs to be done? Or, Oh, this is like a really interesting insight. We never thought that somebody would look at this product in this way, even based on reviews, right? Like, what people say in reviews is such an interesting thing. So, you know, I think the best brands really understand how to allow that information to flow internally. And so how are you guys handling that? And what does that look like for you? Well,

Jennifer Peters 18:28

in the first place, it's great when you have cross functional teams that are like, Please give me everything. I want to read everything. And we are really lucky to have that. I've worked at other brands or worked on other brands where that wasn't necessarily the case. They were just kind of like, we just kind of like, we just want to keep doing what we're doing. Please stop inundating us with information we don't want. We're really lucky to have a super curious team cross functionally. I mean, the product development team is just always looking, always thinking, always plotting, kind of, what's the next big thing. And I'm glad that you brought up customer reviews, because that's one of my favorite things to talk about. I mean, that's, you know, in terms of, like, first party data, like, doesn't get much better than that. We started selling a product last year. Was a new product for us and and our customers, primarily millennial women. That's like, very traditionally, who we sell to. And, you know, it makes sense when you look at the products. And, you know, it's cool. We introduced a product last year called my emojo. That's a men's Libido Supplement, and we've never really sold to men. I mean, we have a men's multi but what we had kind of learned before is that even in the multi space for men, it was usually like their partners or their wives or their girlfriends or whatever, like there was somebody buying those for them. It wasn't necessarily the men being like, I'm gonna go get some multivitamins. So when we launched mighty Mojo, it was really exciting, because I think we kind of assumed that that might be the same case for these like, are we sell a women's Libido Supplement as well. It is our number one direct to consumer product. It is hot. Everybody loves it. It's probably something that may. You don't want to buy at Target and put on your put in your basket, have somebody ring you up and then give you a look, or whatever. So I think there's part of it that is like, I enjoy buying this in the privacy of my own home, but we knew, because of the success of that product, that a men's product would probably also do really well, and we have this sort of expectation that women would be buying that for their partners as well. And what we learned through customer reviews is that men were buying it and men were loving it, and it was also a different demographic than we had expected. So we kind of expected it to be like millennial men, and it really was kind of that older, like, you know, 4040, and up range, which I guess is kind of millennials now, but maybe 45 and we'll call it that more of, like the Gen X, you know, kind of situation. So it's really exciting, because that's like a whole new audience for us that I don't know that we knew that we were going to be able to reach. But in the men's libido space, if you go on Amazon, there's a million and they all look kind of like, I don't know if this is real or not, like you're like, questioning it, yeah, I mean, I'm just like, I just, I don't think I wouldn't take that, but I think for us, you know, we're an established brand, we already have this trust, we already have this awareness. So for us to make a product like that, I think it kind of was a huge relief to some of these men, where they were just like, Oh, good. We can buy something from a brand that we know and trust already, and we'll feel good about it. We're not going to feel like, oh gosh, I hope there's not something weird going on here. So think being a trusted brand helped that a lot. But back to the question, just being able to give that constant feedback around, like, here's who's reviewing it, here's who's buying it, and all of us to sort of have this like, sense of wonder and excitement around me, you know, having this new audience, and you know, now we're thinking like, what else can we do with this audience? This is great. They're there. They want to buy from us, they want to engage with our brand. What's next? So, yeah, I think it's, it's that sort of feedback loop is really important for all aspects of the business.

Samir Balwani 21:57

Yeah, I think that's really powerful and really special. That's exciting, because I think that you touched on something that I think goes understated, but having a team that's curious and just like excited to learn, and I'm gonna attach no ego with it too, because I don't feel like they already know everything. I think that's that it's unique to the brain that you're working at, and not consistent across the board. So I agree, yeah,

Jennifer Peters 22:27

I think that we like to be kind of in that bucket of, like, strong opinions, loosely held. Yeah, we have perspectives, but we're also very open to new perspectives, and especially we're very open to data that might indicate otherwise. And that can be tricky too, because data is great until it is counter to something that you want to do, or something that you do a certain way that you don't want to change. Or, you know, you have sometimes a team that's like, no, but we're going to do this because it's our esthetic and this our idea. And so data can become challenging when you have to be the one that's like, actually, customers don't like that, and it's very frustrating to them. So I think that that is one of those great situations where the ego just has to be removed. Like we just at the end of the day, the most important thing we can do is look at our site, look at our products, look at our business through the customer's eyes. And like that, customer empathy is always going to be number one. As long as we can all do that, it's much easier to pull our ego out and be like, this isn't about us. This is about the customer. Is like, voting with their wallet or writing reviews or calling us or writing in or whatever it is, like the customer empathy is the number one thing I think, in ecommerce you've got to have.

Samir Balwani 23:36

Yeah, that's really interesting. So my last question for you. Jennifer, I have one last one. What advice would you give a new marketing director in their first 90 days?

Jennifer Peters 23:46

Two things. One, I kind of already touched on it, and that is always just being customer focused and customer empathetic, understanding the journey of their of your customer if you're in multiple channels, understanding how they're different, understanding their needs, understanding their roadblocks, is critical, like just you can't build marketing. I mean, I think they teach this in like marketing 101, that you know, the bias around what you like. You're never our customer. Even if you buy the products you you do not think like a regular customer. And I think that is so important to always keep in mind when you're making decisions and looking, seeking out data that would support what customers actually want, versus, like, what you think you should do. I think that's really, really important. Secondly, I'm glad you brought this up earlier, too. It's just be curious. Like, you just need to be in a space where you're constantly learning and you're excited about that. Like, if, if you're not fueled by that internally, the curiosity, then this probably isn't the right business for you, because things are always changing. And like I said, there's always new tools, there's always new companies, there's always new startups doing something super cool. So if you don't, if that doesn't feed you and, like, give you joy, I think you're going to really struggle on. Um, to kind of move along at the same speed as as the business of ecommerce is.

Samir Balwani 25:05

And then I'd almost say, sorry, Jennifer, I'd almost say all marketing as a whole, right? Like, it's like one of our core values is always ask why. And it's like, just, you need to understand why something happened, why you're doing it that way, why it matters. All of those things really are key. So I agree with you,

Jennifer Peters 25:23

even if you mess up, even if you make a bad call, even if you put out a bad campaign, you still learn something. So it's important to recognize that piece of you know, sometimes you're going to fail, you're not going to win 100% of the time, but even when you lose, you still won because you've learned something really valuable.

Samir Balwani 25:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sorry, and I cut you off your second piece of advice. Oh,

Jennifer Peters 25:45

gosh, okay, what was the last? Oh, plan, planning. Plan roadmap. Think about it. Think about the future. I think this is especially applicable to smaller brands. And OLLY is a great example. You know, we started off as a startup. We were startup, you know, we were just kind of this little upstart, disruptive business in this space in 2015 and we had disruptive packaging, we had disruptive product, we had disruptive marketing, and it was great. And when you're in a startup, you're making decisions. You're doing it really fast. You're thinking about right now, you're thinking about what you can do to get something out the door. We were acquired by Unilever in 2019 and then it's like, suddenly the whole field changes. And you're like, Oh, these decisions I made, these were not scalable decisions. So I think that's, I think road mapping planning kind of even around traffic or revenue goals, or whatever it is like, when I hit this, I'm going to add this, you know, and that kind of thing, like build your tech stack strategically and try not to make and I'll give you this example. It's if anybody, anybody who's worked in ecommerce, it's going to be like, Oh, when I say this, if you have a subscription program on your website and you want to migrate from one provider to another, it is the worst. Is the worst experience. It is super difficult, that customer data and credit card data you have to, like, protect with your life. Oftentimes, the provider you're leaving doesn't want to help you because they're mad that you're leaving, but you have to get the data from them, or you can't move the customer data. It's so painful, it's really, really terrible. So to back that up, being able to make measured decisions about we're going to do this when and when it makes sense will help you grow from something that's small to something that kind of like, you know, much a much broader appeal, much more higher awareness to your brand. But the planning piece, I just can't state that enough, because otherwise you're gonna, you know, you're gonna end up having to remake decisions that you've already made when you were thinking very short term and you weren't thinking long term about what is gonna scale, what's gonna grow alongside of my business, that's the partner I wanna work with.

Samir Balwani 27:53

Oh my god, please, as an agency partner, roadmap and plans are key, and if it's something you can share with your agency partners. Please do know what's ahead also, because it allows us to plan. And you know, as a media buying agency, we do a lot of planning because we want to make sure that the dollars are being spent most intelligently at the right times, right and so if we know when you're going to launch a new product or put on a new customer experience or change an offer, we can be more thoughtful around how we're going to be investing your dollars. So yes, roadmaps and plans are key. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Jennifer, I love this conversation. It was so much fun. If someone wants to find you online, where can people go to learn more about you?

Jennifer Peters 28:35

I'm linked on LinkedIn. It's probably the best place. Or you can drop me an email at jennifer.peters@olly.com

Samir Balwani 28:41

I'll be there. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jennifer Peters 28:45

Yeah, thanks for having me. This is great.

Outro 28:55

Thanks for joining us. If you liked it, remember to subscribe, so you'll be notified of new episodes. And if you know someone who would enjoy this show, don't forget to share and leave a review. It all helps us impact more brands. If you're looking to improve your paid media, go to weareqry.com, and schedule a consultation. We're always happy to chat, see you for the next one.

‍