Episodes > Season 3 Episode 26

Electriq (a DRINKS Company) Hit Subscribe podcast cover

How Electriq (a DRINKS Company) prioritizes loyalty focused retention

Brandon Amoroso, Founder & President, Electriq

What's in this episode?

On this episode, we talk to Brandon Amoroso, founder & president at Electriq (a DRINKS Company). We start with their recent acquisition by drinks.com and their massive plans to build on top of their proprietary shipping and fulfillment platform to offer wineries the ability to sell throughout the united states. With all the complications surrounding shipping across state and county lines, Brandon’s team is uniquely positioned to build, support, and scale the direct to consumer arm of wineries across the country.

We also talk through a new style of loyalty program, based on value rather than points. Oftentimes basic loyalty programs provide 10, 100, or 1000 points with no clear understanding of what those points get you. Instead, Brandon proposes loyalty programs should offer tiered discounts, free products, sample products, or other additional value based on each shipment with straightforward communication on when and what subscribers can expect to receive.

So let’s hop in!

Connect with Brandon on LinkedIn. Check out Electriq (a DRINKS Company).

Episode transcript

Chase Alderton: In this episode, we talked to Brandon Amoroso, founder and president at Electriq, a DRINKS company. We start with their recent acquisition by DRINKS.com, and their massive plans to build on top of their proprietary shipping and fulfillment platform, to offer wineries the ability to sell throughout the United States. With all the complications surrounding shipping across state and county lines, Brandon's team is uniquely positioned to build, support, and scale the direct-to-consumer arm of wineries across the country.

Chase Alderton: We also talk through a new style of loyalty program, based on value rather than points. Oftentimes, basic loyalty programs provide 10, 100, or 1,000 points, with no clear understanding of what those points get you. Instead, Brandon proposes loyalty programs should offer tiered discounts, free products, sample products, or other additional value based on each shipment, with straightforward communication on when and what subscribers can expect to receive. Let's hop in. Brandon, thanks for joining us.

Brandon Amoroso: Thanks for having me on. Super excited to join you for the first time.

Chase Alderton: Tell us a little bit about yourself and about Electriq.

Brandon Amoroso: We're a 45-person Shopify agency specifically focused on retention marketing. Our biggest service offerings are web design and development, and email and SMS marketing. More holistically, we're Shopify experts that know how to enable our merchants on the best-in-class Shopify tech stack, in order to create these personalized customer experiences that improve retention and increase LTV. So, Recharge, there's about 12 others. That's really our core offering there. Merchants come to us because we understand how to enable that.

Chase Alderton: We'll definitely put a plug here in the end for all the listeners, but definitely check out Brandon's Twitter and LinkedIn. There's tons, and tons of good content. You put out content multiple times a week, I believe. It's all really, really good. Some long-form, some short-form stuff. Definitely check that out and follow him there. As I understand, you were just acquired by DRINKS. Talk us through that experience and what that means for your future.

Brandon Amoroso: Yeah. About six weeks ago now, we were acquired by DRINKS.com. They are one of the leaders in the beverage alcohol space. I've been working with them since high school. I had an internship, sophomore year of high school, as just a standard social media intern, because they own and operate their own direct-to-consumer brand called Wine Insiders. That's how it started back in 2014.

Brandon Amoroso: In 2018, they took the tax and compliance engine that they built for their own direct-to-consumer brand, because in the US, the alcohol industry is very complex and nuanced on a state-by-state basis, even going into specific local county regulations, for what is legally allowed to be shipped and not. You have crazy things like volume limits. If you live in a certain area, you can't order more than 5,000 milliliters of wine to your house in a quarter, stuff like that. All that had to be built in-house to power their direct-to-consumer brand.

Brandon Amoroso: In 2018, they took that same technology and started offering it to Fortune 20 and Fortune 500 retailers. They power Sam's Club direct-to-consumer wine program. They power Instacart's. They power Misfits Market. They power Thrive Market, Macy's Wine Shop, Martha Stewart Wine, a bunch of some of the larger names in the space that didn't necessarily have access to be able to ship direct-to-consumer wine before.

Brandon Amoroso: Now, the third iteration of this technology is... Everything I just mentioned was very much so one-to-one, not one-to-many. With the acquisition of Electriq, really, the main reason for it is we are launching a real-time tax and compliance solution for wineries to be able to sell on Shopify. We've taken that same tax and compliance engine that was historically powering retailers or non-licensed brands, made some minor tweaks and customizations, to now be able to support what is about over 11,000 wineries in the US.

Brandon Amoroso: They needed Electriq for our Shopify expertise, for our ability to be able to migrate all of these merchants over from their tech stacks onto Shopify, but even more importantly, showcase to them all of the platform benefits of Shopify, and now what they're going to be able to do from a marketing and storytelling perspective, that historically they haven't been able to, because this is an industry that has been extremely underserved from a technology standpoint.

Brandon Amoroso: You have second- and third-tier providers who have gone out and tried to build Shopify for wine, as opposed to building on top of Shopify for wineries, which, if you build in a silo, there's no Klaviyo, there's no Recharge, there's no Rebuy, in the ecosystems that the wineries currently have to work and operate in. By allowing them to come over to what I think is the world's best ecommerce platform, it really is like a watershed moment for the industry. I'm super excited to help spearhead that initiative forward.

Chase Alderton: I don't have anything else to say, that's it for the episode. Cool. Thanks, guys. It also is just super, super [inaudible 00:05:20] that really is awesome. There's going to be a ton of new opportunity here. I'm really excited to see what comes of this. I'm sure there's going to be lots of iterations from the first brands we're launching, until 10, 15, 20, and all the 100's that are going to be launching. What does this mean for all these brands? Is this just kind of like a turnkey thing now, that if you sell wine, if you're a winery, you can now kind of start a wine club, start selling wine direct-to-consumer?

Brandon Amoroso: Exactly. So it's very straightforward. All you really have to do is upload your license information, your SKUs from the Shopify site, give some few basic details, and then you're off and running with the real-time tax and compliance. Your store will not take any orders that are not compliant. Right now, the solutions on Shopify are post-order. What I mean by that, is all orders will go through, but there are tools that will tell the wineries after the fact like, "Hey, this order is in fact not compliant," but then it's on the winery to take action on that. So it's a headache, and most wineries don't even take action on it, they just go ahead and ship it out. So what we're really doing is taking away all of the headache that has been involved into this process at this point.

Brandon Amoroso: You see most of the larger wineries, they want to be on Shopify, but they just haven't been able to come over because they can't deal with the same sort of gray areas that some of the smaller players might be able to accept that risk. So it's going to accelerate basically the digital innovation that all these wineries are going to be able to do, pretty substantially. From all the talks I've had with wineries, they're already sold on Shopify, they understand. I was honestly a little bit surprised how much they knew about the platform, and a few of them have even just made the leap as it is. They just figured out some kludgy workaround solution through Shopify Flow or something, to try and make it work. So the demand is there for sure, and it's very much so plug and play for them.

Chase Alderton: So what we're going to see is a lot more direct-to-consumer wineries popping up here and there, a lot more wine being shipped across the U.S., and to most of our listeners, that means a lot more easier access to wine.

Brandon Amoroso: And the first wineries that take advantage of this, and truly invest into understanding what this newfound customer relationship can mean for them, are the ones that are going to be able to stand out in the market. It's not like this is displacing your traditional retail channels whatsoever. If anything, it's making them more powerful, and you can test products into markets now.

Brandon Amoroso: Let's say I want to test a new kind of rosé, terrible example, but a new kind of rosé in a can or something, because there's not enough rosé in can. Then you could do that, and then you could, let's say you got 500 orders in two weeks in this particular region, then you go to your distributor armed with that data and be like, "Listen, the demand is already here, we've proven it out online, now go ahead and carry that product."

Brandon Amoroso: You also have so much more customer data. I mean, when you're selling through retail, you don't get to see any of that. So this is really going to be able to allow them to create those customer relationships. So many of them have big tasting room businesses, and you go to the tasting room you purchase, but then that's sort of it, because you're not set up with an integrated solution where your tasting room and your ecommerce presence are connected.

Brandon Amoroso: As opposed to having a 30 year relationship with this customer, because they just flew into California, they came to your tasting room, they loved it, they bought six bottles, now they disappear. Now you'll be able to take that data and start to market to them via email, SMS, push, everything that goes into that and actually create a real relationship with the customer.

Chase Alderton: You totally beat me into the punchline, but that's exactly where I was trying to go, which is everything we talk about in this space, from you to me, everybody across the industry is all talking direct-to-consumer stuff is, how do we get more data on the customer? How do you provide a better customer experience? And exactly what you just said, if you take context of a winery, the only customer experience is you walk through the door, you buy wine, you leave, because you can't ship it anywhere else or very rarely you can find someone that ships else. So, it's an awesome innovation, I think this is going to change a lot of things. Do wineries understand direct-to-consumer terms? Do they understand what they're looking at here? Or is this just a total dip in the deep end, and trying to figure this out on the fly?

Brandon Amoroso: Absolutely. There are a lot of wineries that already have a direct-to-consumer presence, and talking through with a lot of them, they have really amazing ideas and things that they've tried to bring to fruition, with their current programs. They just can't do it. Everything is custom, and it's not like they have 10 developers sitting... I mean, they're a winery and they are very good at making wine and doing that, just like if you're a brand, you're really good at making the product, doesn't necessarily mean you're good at Shopify either, or ecommerce in general. I think the adoption is going to be very quick, because there's a lot of really smart people in the wine industry who have already been pushing on this. And they've just been running into wall after wall, with the current platform limitations that they have.

Chase Alderton: I know you've built a lot of onboarding quizzes, pre-subscription, getting customers to give you their zero-party data and have them understand what they're actually looking for, so you can provide a recommendation for a product. That seems like it's a perfect use case for direct-to-consumer winery. Is that something that you're looking into as well? How you kind of build that data inflow platform?

Brandon Amoroso: Absolutely. Part of what I'm focused on is, obviously table stakes is like getting them over to Shopify, and getting them on the DRINKS app. Second to that is, I basically put together our 15 tools, that's our recommendation for every winery to get enabled with, and then providing them with very specific use cases of why they should be, and how they can use it to improve that customer experience and increase the lifetime value of their customers.

Brandon Amoroso: So on the quiz front, for example, Octane is the one that we use to build it for all of our current clients. And so we're going to put together, the Electriq agency, armor DRINKS, is going to put together examples for these wineries of like, "Hey, this is what a winery quiz could look like." Then here's how you could use it in Klaviyo, in your post-purchase, follow up emails.

Brandon Amoroso: This is how you could use it for segmentation, and this is why it matters, because almost none of them are familiar with the inner workings of Shopify itself. So we'd be short-selling them if we didn't provide that. Like if we just gave them Shopify and the DRINKS app, and didn't give them the roadmap for what truly extending their marketing program could look like.

Brandon Amoroso: That's what I'm really excited about, because every winery has such a unique story or history or background to it. Just because you're ending up with red, white or rosé in the bottle, each one had some different nuance or process to get into it. How is it aged? What sort of oak did it use? What's the vineyard? What's the terroir? All these different things go into it, and that storytelling aspect is something that I think, is missing from their digital presence as well.

Chase Alderton: Rapid fire, run through a handful of those apps that you are suggesting, just so we can kind of get an overview of what the tech stack like.

Brandon Amoroso: So I'm going to be publishing this as well, too, on my LinkedIn. So I'll plug that again for you, but the ones that we're primarily working with are Recharge, Klaviyo, Rebuy, Octane, Okendo, Gorgias, Enquire Labs... Lifetimely is one that I'm actually really excited to dig into with the wineries, because they don't have access to tools like Lifetimely, that can show them things like their repurchase frequency, or show them the product discovery journey. Like if you buy X product first and you come back for your second order, 33% of people are buying this.

Brandon Amoroso: Tapcart, if they want to use or build an iOS app, for example. That's just a few of them, I think there's about four or five other ones. Inveterate is the one that we're starting to explore, which is really interesting because it's memberships, and memberships is something that wineries are very familiar with. There's so much cool content and behind-the-scenes education and VIP stuff you could do, behind a gated membership.

Brandon Amoroso: It's a fun process because I'm working with each of these apps on... this is what we've been doing with the other like 45 merchants that we work with on Shopify. None of them are wineries, though, so it's like brainstorming with all these apps. How does your tool and solution make sense? And how can it be applied for a winery, which has similarities to your traditional, like direct-to-consumer brands, but also has some differences as well.

Chase Alderton: You brought up memberships, that's something you and I have talked about off the air, and just kind of talking with each other. I know it's something both of us are really high on, and really excited about, for the future of ecommerce. How do memberships play a role in this kind of new wine world? Is it still kind of your classic wine membership where you know, you pay certain dollars a month and you get discounts or whatever it is? Or is this still something you're pitching that's fully customizable, and you can build it out however you want?

Brandon Amoroso: I think that's like table stakes, something you could easily get up and running. You sign up for the membership, maybe you get free shipping, maybe you get a percentage off of all the products on the website, and you could have various tiers, as well. Where I think it could get really interesting is, maybe the next tier membership, let's say it's Bronze, Gold, and Platinum. With Gold, you get once a month, there's a chef virtual tasting with the wines, and you get it shipped out to you. Maybe in the Platinum, once a year, you get two nights at the estate, for you to come stay with a friend. There's a lot of really cool and unique things that you could do, because it's a winery, because it's so experiential.

Brandon Amoroso: And I don't think it has to be limited to just digital, because so much of these wineries business does come through tourism and through the tasting rooms. So how can we take that membership program, and drive more in-store traffic? Because those physical touchpoints in person, those can't be replicated online. I know there's so many things we do with virtual tastings, and live shopping, and this and that, but it's just not the same to be there. Especially in the vineyard, with the tactile feel of the vines, and the grapes, and the whole thing going on. I don't have any data around this, but I could almost guarantee you that anybody who goes and visits the winery, is going to end up having like a higher LTV with that wine company, than somebody who doesn't.

Chase Alderton: I would totally agree, and LTV is kind of where I was going next. Let's take a little bit of a step backwards, here. I know we're talking a lot about wine for brands who, obviously most of our audience here is not wine-based because historically this hasn't existed. So how does all of this kind of stuff still play into the general ecommerce brand, the general direct-to-consumer brand? You should still be looking at building at an appropriate tech stack. You should still be looking at lifetime value, as kind of a gold standard metric. Any kind of parallels you want to draw, or just kind of take a bigger step back, away from wine for a second.

Brandon Amoroso: We're still supporting all non-wine merchants, we're still onboarding net new, non-wine merchants. I think it's really important for us to do so, so that we can continue to be the Shopify experts around these best, in-class tools. I think there's different applications that you can take from this, specifically around membership and loyalty. Taking your online stored data, especially with everything opening back up again, and using that to create authentic, in-person moments, via popup shops or building in-person community that is really valuable.

Brandon Amoroso: The popup shop thing is something I'm really high on, because let's say you're a direct-to-consumer brand and you have 5,000 customers in LA. Then go have a popup shop in LA. You have the full data, the database in Klaviyo. Send out an email a month before, get your RSVPs, and then not only are you going to be selling product while you're there, all these people are going to be meeting one another and creating connections around that brand. Then you have enough content from that event, for the next like five years probably, if you take video and photo content.

Brandon Amoroso: So that's something I'm really excited about for brands to start exploring more and more, especially if you have a celebrity brand. We do work with a few of them and is something I've been pushing on more and more like, "Hey, Let's get a popup event going here," because that is something that you get earned media, as well. So I'm really high on that one.

Chase Alderton: I couldn't agree more. Something we talk a lot about internally here, at Recharge, is the key to remote is in person. Which is counterintuitive you would think, but you know, being remote is so awesome, there's a lot of benefits there. But exactly what you're talking about, these popup shops, bringing people together... The benefit of having an online community is that when you meet up in person, that community's even stronger. That should be the ultimate goal of trying to get everybody together in the same place.

Chase Alderton: So totally agree with you, I think coffee's an awesome example. Bring a bunch of people to the same city. Like you were talking about earlier, it's not really brick and mortar, it's not really a store because it's a pop-up shop obviously, but increases LTV, everybody can try new things, you meet new people. Hearing about, what is it, pour-over method? Is it cold brew? Whatever it is, so many opportunities for in-person events and things like that, to blend your direct-to-consumer with some sort of membership model, and do something in person.

Brandon Amoroso: Especially if you align with another brand, that maybe is a complimentary product to yours.

Chase Alderton: Partnerships, absolutely.

Brandon Amoroso: Maybe you sell coffee beans, but then you work with a coffee appliances company, and the two of you combine forces and create an even bigger event. And building some exclusivity around it? I mean, you see it on Instagram and TikTok, all the time. People love popups, and they love to have to go to something that, maybe you even have to buy a ticket for, and it's exclusive. So I think the brands that start doing that this year and next, are going to be really well-positioned.

Chase Alderton: There's a billion and a half milk brands. There's a lot of sweetener brands, organic, all those kind of things. Bring together coffee, milk and sweeteners, you have an all day coffee party, and caffeine's going to keep you running. One of the other things you brought up is loyalty. So kind of changing gears, I want to dig into this a little bit. We talked it out on our ChargeX podcast, when we were out there in Santa Monica, about your new idea of loyalty and some of the things you're building out, for some of your brands. Talk us through this kind of outdated idea of loyalty points and loyalty reward system, and then kind of what you are trying to move towards.

Brandon Amoroso: I think the issue of loyalty for me, there's a couple. One of the main ones is that, I'd basically say 40 to 50% of the Shopify stores I go onto now, they've got some widget in the bottom left corner or right corner, and there's some sort of points program, but there's no real explanation behind it. I can't tell, is 1,000 points worth a dollar, or is it worth a $1,000 dollars? It differs from store to store as well. And there's no real like communication or thought process behind it, it's sort of just slapped on the site, and for some reason, one way or another, there was a misconception that doing that was going to actually drive LTV growth, which is just not what we've seen. Typically, we see about one to two percent adoption rates on our ecommerce stores, that do have those loyalty programs.

Brandon Amoroso: Now, if you have the team to actually build out and flesh out something like a Sephora, whose points program absolutely crushes it, by all means. I think that makes a lot of sense. Where it doesn't, and the same goes for memberships too, if you don't have the ability to create the content and experience behind it to make it worthwhile, then maybe don't. So what we've been doing instead, is just creating these automated solutions via Shopify Flow and Klaviyo, that is all surprise and delight.

Brandon Amoroso: And as a customer, we're totally taking away any action from your end. With loyalty points programs, it's always on the customer, whether you're a one-shot customer or subscription customer, you have to take the action to figure out, okay, these points, what can I go redeem them for? And it's even worse in my opinion for subscription, because if I'm on a subscription, I don't want to deal with it, I just want it to keep coming.

Chase Alderton: That's kind the point of the subscription in the first place, you don't want to have to manually apply the loyalty points that defeats it.

Brandon Amoroso: Yeah. So if I have the points, got to go in to get the points, got to go into my dashboard, make sure I make it in time before the next ship date, to apply it. So I think it's really broken on the subscription side. So what we've been doing is just automating it, and communicating it from pre-purchase all the way through each order. Like what happens next? So there's a landing page that shows you, okay, your first 12 orders, or based off of your spend threshold, this is what tier you're in, this is what you're going to get.

Brandon Amoroso: So maybe order number one is something. Order number three is another gift or some sort of a discount. There's different ways that you can structure it. For our sites that are single SKU hero products, that are subscribable, what we'll do is first order, you get a free gift. Third order, it automatically becomes five dollars less. Sixth order, you get a full merchant swag box. 12th order, completely free. All this is communicated at every transactional touchpoint based off of the order that it is, communicated on that landing page before you go ahead and make that purchase, all the way through getting to that 12th order.

Brandon Amoroso: For stores that are not single SKU hero products, what we'll typically do is the thresholds. So if you're under $250, it's this. If you're in between 250-500, it's this. If it's 500 to a thousand, it's this instead. Honestly, the more I thought about it, and I was using Uber Eats the other day, it's a little bit like that, where I don't have to do anything. It just happens automatically. Now I'm Gold, now I'm Platinum, now I'm Diamond, or whatever it is. They're just rewarding me for taking the actions that they want on their platform, which is to ride more, or to eat more. So for us, we're just trying to make it as seamless as possible for customers to purchase and to be rewarded for doing stuff.

Chase Alderton: If you're Diamond on Uber Eats, you're ordering a lot of food, so you can take that crown, there. That's a different story though, but going back to what you-

Brandon Amoroso: What's your Uber rating?

Chase Alderton: Yeah. Going back to what you were originally talking about, which is kind of being a retention-first agency, is that I think retention starts earlier than everyone thinks. We'd even argue that retention starts before we even purchase. But this is a great idea for how to increase retention, is have a clear statement, use those transactional touch points, but be very open and very honest about, "Here's what you can expect. Order one, you're doing this. Order two, you're doing this. Order 12, it's free, whatever it ends up being."

Chase Alderton: It's something that people look forward to, as opposed to like, "Oh cool. Now I have a hundred points." And then like you said, is a hundred points... Does that get me something free? Does that get two dollars off? Is this worth it? Make it very clear, make it very straightforward, and make sure you're communicating that as well. The communication part is massive.

Brandon Amoroso: And historically, it's always the first order is, where you get everything super discounted, super this, super that. Then all of a sudden, your second order is a completely different experience, you're paying full price, you've already been forgotten about by the brand, because they have no differentiated experience for anything that happens after the first order.

Brandon Amoroso: Or is this, just sort of flipping it around, you're getting higher quality customers because you're not discounting the hell out of your first order, and you're letting them know "Hey, keep purchasing with us, and we are going to reward you for it." Maybe discounts come at order number six, but that's when discounts make sense. Not 99% off the first product, and then, oh my goodness, now it's the full price! That just doesn't work.

Chase Alderton: It's actually one of the biggest complaints we hear, and one of the biggest questions about, "How do I avoid churn and how do I reduce churn rates?" So many people will offer a 20, 30, 40% discount on that first order, to get the acquisition in hand and get them in the store. But then option number two is everyone cancels right away, because they just want that one time you take 40% off, which is unheard of, and you walk away. Then the brain ends up losing money, because they're paying too much on acquisition. So like you said, this mitigates that, you do a full price, first item, or a small discount, first item. And by the second, third, fourth shipping time, that's when you start to discount, or do free things, or whatever it is. There's a lot more flexibility in there, you can play with LTV.

Brandon Amoroso: A 40% off welcome popup is just, I think it's doing a disservice to the brand, because even if your product is like really strong, and really high quality, if I come in on your store and get 40% off from my first order, unless it's quite literally life-changing, I am never ordering from you again. Why would I? I just got it for 40% off. So it's completely psychological, the way that you set things up. I think some other brands just need to take a deeper look at they're positioning, and how they're doing things. 40% off is the easy way out to acquire new customers, but you're going to end up with customer service issues, you're going to end up with retention issues. It's a quick temporary fix, it's not a long term solution.

Chase Alderton: It's more of a flash sale idea for a one-time boost, rather than it is a sustainable way to grow business.

Brandon Amoroso: Yeah.

Chase Alderton: Absolutely. Let's move into a couple closing questions. I'm going to throw some random ones at you. What advice would you give to a subscription brand, who's just getting off the ground here?

Brandon Amoroso: Do not do a sample program.

Chase Alderton: Interesting, that's a good one.

Brandon Amoroso: I've yet to hear a brand that has been happy with their sample program. We're guilty of it, we did it probably like two years ago now. It just doesn't really work. You get a lot of product in the people's hands, but you're underwater immediately. You're shipping costs are basically eating away from the entire purchase price that the person is giving you. Then more often than not, your targeting isn't as refined, because you're going mass-market. So these people are just there to try something out for a dollar, or five dollars. I would try a bunch of that stuff, it's just a dollar. It doesn't really matter at that point.

Brandon Amoroso: So I would think a little bit more about how you get people on your subscription program. What I really believe in is not... I'm not a strong advocate of subscription-only websites. The best path forward is to get that first order, have a positive customer experience, then throughout the entire post-purchase flows, both transactional and your marketing communications, pitch the value of the subscription. Get them to make that first order, then get them onto the subscription, as opposed to see a lot of brands doing first order, super-discounted, but you're on a subscription... People are going to cancel. We see historically, just because you're being transactional, doesn't mean that you're not going to become a subscriber at a later point in time.

Chase Alderton: Interesting, I like the point. Great context. Let's flip the script. So let's say for brands who are already starting to scale, subscription brands are already at the 10,000, maybe 100,000 subscriber mark. What takes them over at the top? What keeps you growing? What keeps you scaling, avoiding plateaus?

Brandon Amoroso: Keeping your existing customers there, is by far the most important, because acquisition is getting more and more difficult. No matter how many customers you acquire, if you're acquiring 5,000 and you're losing 5,000, then you're basically net zero. So for me, and this is probably a self-serving comment because we focus on retention, but I think you need to get your ducks in a row with retention, and make sure that's as strong of a customer experience as possible.

Brandon Amoroso: We've actually been seeing a lot of strong performance out of using a tool called Super Affiliate, which is a referral platform, but basically allows customers to create their own microsites that are headless, so they load extremely quickly, they're very personalized. There's all these widgets that make it so that, let's say I'm buying from a milk website. I can create my own "Brandon's Milk Store", and then I can share it out with all my friends. We've seen a ton of adoption of that on TikTok, as well as Instagram, from influencers who just like to support the brand.

Brandon Amoroso: The best part of that, is it automatically integrates into Recharge. So as a customer who's referring, if I referred you, Chase, to a brand, you purchase, I get my $20, that $20 is going to auto apply to my subscription. I don't have to do anything else. There's no point space, we're going to have to go in, figure out how to redeem it. So we've been seeing referral as a strong acquisition tool, when historically, when we just sort of threw referral up there on top of a point space solution, we saw almost nobody use it.

Chase Alderton: Well it has to be, it's kind of the theme of everything we talked about today, is it has to be intentional. You can't just throw up a loyalty program. You can't just throw up a referral program. You can't just hope retention happens. You can't just hope people are going to stick around for the 40% discount.

Brandon Amoroso: Yeah.

Chase Alderton: People are going to change, people are going to cancel, they're going to move around. So everything you do has to be intentional to make sure that customer experience works the way it's supposed to.

Brandon Amoroso: Yeah. And just because we have like those 15 apps doesn't mean that you should be using all 15. There's like three or four that are table stakes, but beyond that, they're nice to have, if you can properly implement them. But there's no chance I'm going to be recommending every winery that we onboard, and every net new merchant that we onboard, go download all 15 of these all at once, because they're just going to sit out there and you're not going to be able to actually drive ROI with them.

Chase Alderton: Absolutely. All right, well then I look forward to seeing Brandon's Milk Store being live pretty soon, we'll see how that works. Final question for you. What physical products do you subscribe to?

Brandon Amoroso: I've only subscribed to Nordic Naturals fish oil, from Amazon. Then also, my dog food from, or not my dog food, my dog's dog food, I guess-

Chase Alderton: I think we got that part, that's-

Brandon Amoroso: Yeah, that's clear. I'm not over there eating her dog cookies or whatever though. They look pretty delicious sometimes... Through Chewy. So my Subscribe & Save for Nordic is on Amazon, we actually met at ChargeX and just kicked off an engagement with them today, which is very exciting. It's always cool when I'm already a consumer of a product, and then now we get to work with them. Then that's through Amazon, and then Chewy for the pet food.

Chase Alderton: So funny, I've had a couple of those conversations too, where the conversations are just so much more genuine and honest, when you can really understand and be like, oh, I've gone through your customer flow, I've gone through your checkout, I've seen your portal.

Brandon Amoroso: Yeah.

Chase Alderton: Always fun.

Brandon Amoroso: Yeah.

Chase Alderton: Brandon, thank you so much for joining us, appreciate your time.

Brandon Amoroso: Thank you.

Chase Alderton: We want to thank Brandon once again, for joining us. If you're interested in Electriq, you can head over to electriqmarketing.com.

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