New Customer Acquisition with Nift and Wantable

Introduction to Consumer Engagement with Technology

0:00It became very evident that we're using technology to engage consumers more and instead of just letting the product speak for themselves. And I find it unhealthy getting into the dopamine cycle of the user with more and more and more content. Yeah, that's true. And then selling that attention to advertisers where the consumer is not necessarily interested in in that specifically where you can use technology to do it completely differently, which is consumer is there to try a new brand. Your brand needs more consumers. Smash the two and everybody wins.

0:33Meta is sort of a black box where you feed it budget. You just rely on the algorithm and they'll just find the customers for you. Whereas this you're not working with It's not a black box. You're working with a partner who's able to just tailor the campaign and the creative and the audience specifically to your brand. We might have to like disinfect the whole stage now. You don't know what happens from Temu, dude. It's wild. this next

Exploring New Traffic Sources: Nift

1:00conversation I have the pleasure of actually learning about a new source of traffic and source of revenue that I actually didn't believe was possible for me in my space, especially as we're learning into it. But we're going to come in and learn a little bit about what Nift does as well as an incredible, incredible human named Sam and how she's been building and using this new revenue source that Nift is. So, let's welcome

Meet Sam and Elery: Insights from Industry Leaders

1:20Sam and Ellery to the stage, guys. Here we go. Let's make sure these are on. Good. Good. All good. Look forward. Still work? No? Good? We're good. Beautiful. Let's get right into this. Who I have the pleasure of having a conversation with starting with the misses? Yeah, I'm Sam, director of growth at Wantable, which is a personal styling service that delivers clothing to your door and where you get to try before you decide to buy it.

1:47Who do I have here? I'm Ellery. I'm the CEO and founder of Nift, which is a new performance

Understanding Nift: A New Performance Channel

1:52channel. New performance channel. Why is it new? Like we already have performance channels. We have Meta, we have TikTok. How is this new? And is the the technology is new or the actual way of doing it is new? I think both are new. if you think about it, we've just heard from these gentlemen how content intensive it is to get customers from interested to actually being in the market. with six, seven months of lead time of intense content creation.

2:27Nift does it in in a completely different way. Nift is not about engaging the consumer with content. It's actually engaging the consumer with your product. I don't under Okay, how? Like at what point does it really start engaging? It's It's after the purchase? It's before the purchase? It's consideration period? Where does it kind of come into play? So so we developed a closed ecosystem of premium consumer apps like Ticketmaster, like Tinder, who give Nifts to their customers for taking an an action like

The Nift Ecosystem: How It Works

3:03going to an event or leaving a review for for a Tripadvisor or upgrading your subscription for Tinder. And then the consumer gets presented and matched with two brands to choose from. And instead of using your customer acquisition cost on Facebook Yeah. which you're you're basically at the at at the mercy of of Meta and there's election in Q4 and we see a lot of brands that are squeezed on both sides now.

3:39Yes. We had a We have a 11-digit revenue brand that's a customer of ours that got their team slashed in half and their CPAs are going up, so they're getting squeezed on both sides. And so you still have to deliver. And you can put your brand in front of Tinder customers, iHeart customers, Tinder customers and get 100% of their attention. And you're you're getting in front of people who are not in the market right now,

Real-World Success Stories with Nift

4:12Right. but are interested. And one one example is we have a we have a brand, a sunglass brand, that's I think they're They're San Diego based. Blenders, who increased their sales fivefold in Q4. Okay. So Q4 is not Winter is not exactly the best time that people are in the market for sunglasses. Nope. They typically tend towards the the summer. But they're still interested. And so they fivex their sales in Q4 as a result of Nift.

4:51Very very easy to to get started and Sam can say more than I cuz she's a she's a user. but we have a brand that got tested in a week. And then with within like two months they generate 25% of their volume through Nift. Well, that's my bigger question to Sam is like why would I move my budget that I have for Meta, that I've convinced my CEO, that I've convinced my CRO, and to go and try this out cuz we've all fearful of like I know what

Challenges and Considerations in Adopting Nift

5:22that way is, I know that works, it's an open ecosystem. So how are you even just confident enough to deploy? Yeah, that's actually a really great question. I mean, Larry you mentioned it and I feel like everybody has said this on the stage before. It's it's that the the cost of of advertising on Meta is go is increasing, right? The CPMs are not getting any cheaper. there's there's always increased competition and so I I do agree that it was a little bit tricky to to convince basically your exact team to say hey this is going to be the next big channel. I feel like we should try it out. But they the I feel like the easiest thing that you could do is just like test it out, run a pilot program, and really understand like what your unit economics is, what the front-end metrics looks like, and that's exactly what what we did. So currently I'm at Wantable, but prior to this I was actually at Rocksbox as a director of acquisition,

6:11where I actually tested Nift for the first time. So Wantable is actually the second brand that I activated Nift on, so at Rocksbox, you know, I was there when the iOS 14 rollout happened, and honestly was so traumatized by that. Like literally everything halted, and we couldn't spend up. Everything was getting very expensive. From that moment I was like okay, channel diversification. This is so important. We can't be so reliant on Meta. And so I was looking for a lot of channels, and I actually got a cold email from Pat over there from the Nift team, saying that this is the next channel, and I was like okay, let's try it out. Ran a pilot program. That first 30 days I saw that the CPMs were a third, not CPMs, sorry, the CPA was a third of what it was on Meta. So right out the gate my eyes widened. I was like this can't be this can't be right. The quality of the audience is probably not there, right? So continued to test it.

7:07What I also found is that the early LTV to CAC ratio was actually four times stronger than Meta. Wow. So then I'm like okay, there's something here. So that next step is scaling, right? So a lot of the question I think is like, you know, when you're testing new channels, is it scalable? Because you need to find a channel that is scalable enough that you could take a pretty decent chunk of budget from Meta

Scaling and Optimizing with Nift

7:30and dump that in there. And we were able to get that to scale, and what had happened was that we were able to beat our acquisition target by 20% at a CAC that was 38% lower. So, really this is just all for by testing Nift and scaling it. At the start of the year, the I was spending 80% of my budget on Meta. Okay. Dropped down to 50% and was able to reallocate those funds to Nift. So, Do you think that Do you think that when it Cuz this is my hardest thing is like I'm about going to Q4. I'm in the beverage space, so I'm I'm like not really wanting to like go to bat to take away budget to go test new things.

8:12Yeah. But I do know that like it's going to get more expensive. We're in the election year. And how could a closed system not be affected by everything else that's happening on Google, Meta, and all these other channels? How are you able to control like it actually won't be more expensive than Meta? Yeah, so we we it doesn't It doesn't go up in Q4. and we see be be be because the way the system works is it really matches the right consumers with the right brand. And we don't have 40 wine subscription gifts. We have two.

8:48And then we move on to the next category. And so, you're not getting these fluctuations you'd get on Meta. And every time somebody wants to get access to the same consumer, you have to pay more. Literally. Yeah. It's It's It's steady. It is It doesn't change in Q4. Well, she asked about like scaling, too. Like if if you were doing If I'm going to do a pilot and I get it up and running and all of a sudden like, "Cool.

9:13I want to do 100 times this." Is it as easy as kind of just allocating more spend to it? Yep. Just allocate more spend to it. Just allocate more spend to it. Yeah. What am I missing? I know it sounds too good to be true. honestly, that's how it was for me, too, right? I think that's why we At Rocksbox, I spent 3 months really testing this because again, I'm like, "No, there has to be there has to be like a caveat here and I haven't seen that. and so yeah, we were able to scale and so now I'm bringing this to Wantable. We're still sort of in the beginning stages. I tested it at Wantable for 3 months and I actually just signed an IO to fully scale today, so And so as these channels are getting rough. Like for instance, I can't I can't really spend as much money on TikTok as I want to currently and I'm like I don't even want to continue to try and test new assets cuz essentially

10:08on these platforms, I have to start playing with assets, getting more teammates involved and that's the part that sucks cuz if I can't get a good asset, I'm still spending. Like I have to keep spending and that's probably why I was when I when we jumped on the call, I was like all right, I got to understand this cuz I have to pull in four different teammates to start running just more more assets on any of these channels and so that's why I was like also interested in this. So can you speak to a little bit of the difference of who can who can deploy?

10:33Yeah, honestly, I deploy this myself without the without my creative team without like my site team to create anything. So it does have such a low barrier to entry. All you need is just some imagery. Send it over to the team. It really is like a full service team where like I actually work with two really incredible people over there that write the copy, that actually put together the the the content, give recommendations on sort of like what the landing page could look like. So I feel like the only two things that you would need is just that the pixel for tracking. And then if you have an existing landing page, you could send it there or if you want to, you could create a specific landing landing page specifically for Nift. So I think it's like we talked about this.

11:14I think we were able to like get this off up and running within a week, which is pretty incredible. It's not something that you could do with like TikTok or or meta, right? Cuz you do have to source creative. and then a lot of the time, like your creative team is strapped. Like I was working at Rocksbox, which is a very lean company, outsourced a lot of our creative. Turnaround time was usually 2 to 3 weeks for ads, whereas with Nifty, I literally could just hand it over. They build it. By they, I mean Ellary and his team built it.

11:43and was able to get that launched Did you have Did you have to rethink like the offer? Like your an acquisition offer for it? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, at Rocksbox, the main offer on Meta was a dollar first month. Actually, it was a free month. And then with Nifty, I actually was able to to It was actually the same offer, but I was actually able to test. So, I've tested a $10 first month offer versus a free month offer. and then we're able to optimize based off of what is driving the best return as well as like the best quality customers.

12:15So, I'm going to ask Yeah, go. Yeah, so if again, if you think about it, when you work with Meta, they want to deliver content to your user. And so, you need to now generate that content to feed that machine. Yes. A lot. And and it that just doesn't make sense. You're You're about You want to make it great. I I've heard in the last couple days people talk about passionately about their products. They want to make the the best t-shirt. They want to make the best sunglasses.

12:45Why do they now have to become experts in TikTok content? The product needs to speak for themsel- for itself. And you put that product in front of engaged users that are there to try something new and magic happens. So, the Okay, but there's a big point in that you just said. The product has to be good enough. Right. Like you can't like What is cuz many brands that were built in the last couple years should not have been built and it should not have been sustained cuz they were not good products. It was an arbitrage of attention and a lot of cash that Taylor talked about. Right.

13:18There is an actual like audience that should be using this or not using this. Yeah, so if the the Nifty is not going to save your product. Good point. It can send you traffic for you to iterate on it. But if the product is good, it's going to it's going to take off. So, you can you can spend We have DTC brands spending two, three, four, 500, 600k a month with us and they're they're getting scale and they're getting everything they need.

13:45And some brands have moved their entire meta budget to us. Not all of them. Yep. What makes What makes me nervous is like we launched Amazon and if I didn't have a specific skew there, it started siphoning off of my main channel. And so, I don't I need net new customers. I don't need someone that's already kind of like in my ecosystem seeing my content. Is there a way that I would like I cuz now on if I use a specific campaign, I can choose a percentage of net new customers I want to go or if I want to re-engage someone that's already been a customer for me. Is that a play I can do?

14:17By By default, we're 100% net new. We integrate through your Shopify and just filter all your customers out from seeing gifts. Okay. But the mechanism itself is about net new. Somebody left a review on on on TripAdvisor. They got $30 to spend. They now need to make a choice. So, you turn them from somebody who's interested in your cup category but not yet in the market to buy to learning about your brand, researching your brand, and making a purchase in 20 minutes.

14:53So, what we've heard 7 months from creating demand to realizing revenue, compress that by 20 minutes. that's what we do. 220 minutes, not by 20. Do you think that this the reason why people are taking the time to kind of do this is just cuz it's they haven't really they haven't known about it? We We didn't do a lot of marketing so far. We Most of our brands happen what what what Sam is just basically take us from from company to company.

15:23What were you doing before? So, before I started a different company, a SaaS company that helped Fortune 500s with their marketing organization. Okay. data analytics company. And I kind of got to see what works and what doesn't work with with marketing and advertising. And it would it became very evident that we're using technology to engage consumers more. And instead of just letting the product speak for themselves. And it's I find it unhealthy. So, the getting into the dopamine cycle the user with more and more and more content.

16:08Yeah, that's true. And then selling that attention to advertisers where the consumer is not necessarily interested in in that specifically where you can use technology to do it completely differently which is the consumer is there to try a new brand. Your brand needs more consumers. Just match the two and everybody wins. One problem that I had was like I wanted to make sure I choose I wanted to be associated with specific brands in the ecosystem. I wanted to make sure I wasn't showing up on Reebok but I wanted to be showed up on Nike.

16:40Sam, when you're considering like what type of products or brands you want to be kind of like associated with is those controls available? I would say yes. The other thing is also you don't want to be in a competitive space, right? Like I don't want to be put against like a competitor. True. Ours, right? So, like that's important. So, that was actually one of the very first questions when I first tested Neft is were there any jewelry brands?

17:03Rocksbox is a jewelry subscription brand. So, that was one of the first questions. Are there any other jewelry brands on there? At that time there wasn't. So, I was like, all right, great. And then even I was talking to Pat about this earlier about just like they are just very the team is very cognizant on just who they put you up against, right? They also want to make sure that it's relevant because obviously it's like it's not going to help them if they put you in front of an audience or put your brand in front of audience that is not relevant that does not convert. So, I feel like that is something that's also different from Meta, right? Meta is sort of a black box where you feed it budget, you just rely on the algorithm and they'll just find the customers for you.

17:43Whereas this you're not working with it's not a black box. You're working with a partner who's able to just tailor the campaign and and the creative and the audience specifically to your brand. Do you have the ability to remarket those that may not have selected it? The ability to remarket to those that like when they're when they're prompted to choose the between the brands and they don't go all the way through your funnel, do you have levels of remarketing available?

18:08Yeah, actually that's the other thing that I don't think was mentioned. I think what I was also pretty surprised by is that with Nift they do all the remarketing for you. So, essentially what what happened is if there was a customer that were to select Wantable or Rocksbox, they were interested in it and let's say they they got the offer but they didn't actually redeem, what Nift will do on your behalf was actually retarget them. They would actually create an email flow for you and put together retargeting strategy.

18:36And I think that's something that's unique too where obviously you're not going to get that from like TikTok or Meta. I think this is the difference here where it truly is a partnership. It's sort of an extension of your team. It's almost like you're working with another create like another agency where you're not paying the big agency dollars either. So, like this is totally it's it's it's totally not an agency. It's definitely like more of a partnership.

18:57So, that's something that's unique. So, so we commissioned a survey of 150 D2C marketing leaders. It's available now. And we we found a lot of interesting things. The first one is I didn't know this. I was surprised. On average, people have eight and a half channels they're on. And I I have no idea how a small marketing organization can manage eight and a half channels. The second thing that we saw that 90% of people are concerned about the walled garden that exists in in Amazon and Meta with regards to data.

19:39They they don't have first-party data that enough first-party data they're happy with. Only 40% of people said they have a decent amount of first-party data. And if you think about it, these platforms, they want to increase their control. Our motivation to present the best experience for our consumers is to showcase your product in the best possible way. And so we are very very determined to make sure the customer has a good experience from when we hand them off to you until they make a purchase and become a lifetime customer of yours.

20:21Well, how do you even select the brands to be on like the platform? So we we need we we really want brands that there's existing interest in the category. And that interest can be converted into actually being in the market. Brands that consumers make purchases on only when they're in the market for, which is bottom of the funnel, appliances, stuff like that does not work on It. Apparel, beauty, cosmetics, health and wellness products, subscription apps, pets, all that works on It.

21:01What about like if I wanted to do a localization specific like cuz can't sell in some states, is there controls of like what regions I can or can't play within? And can I use this as a way to go abroad? Can I go multilingual with this yet? Well, we're about to launch in Europe next year. we are we can go to the level of the zip code in in terms of targeting in the US. yeah, we have a bunch of brands that only deliver in a certain radius.

21:28There's also some restrictions of of of certain brands in certain areas and yeah, that's Right now that that kind of targeting is stable stakes for any performance channel. Cuz I think when we're wanting to launch, like I wanted I don't want to go test and optimize CPMs in a region I have no idea how the the customers are going to experience, plus localized language. So if I'm having the ability to go like I want to test a couple of regions in Europe, like that's extremely attractive to me specifically because I know I need to be there. I just don't want to go figure out how like the local language needs to be.

22:02That's exactly how it's going to work. You're not going to have to go and localize everything, localize content, and and so forth. I got you. I appreciate that. Well, this the last one I wanted to ask you is as brands come into like Q4 holiday strategies, at to hit some major year-end targets, like where would you kind of like leave some of these brands out before I open it up to the crowd? So Q4 what we've been hearing is once people understand how easy the lift it is, they actually want to lean in and test quickly because they really want to hedge in Q4. Nobody knows what the expectations going to be. I think the the cost in meta went up 12% this year already. You guys will know more than I.

22:44Yeah. And then they're expected to rise more and some people just want to hedge and once they realize it's it's literally could be 2 hours to to be live, that they want to test. we're actually for anybody who's interested and doesn't like to talk to sales people like me, we have a we're doing a zoom group zoom on October 2nd at 1 PST. Anybody wants to join and just listen they're get ready on to Q4.

23:16I think that's great. I mean me personally like I know that's why we wanted to meet. I wanted to talk to you guys, too, cuz I need another channel. Like I'm not going to go and try and learn. We can get banned. These platforms can shut you down for reasons that they don't really necessarily have to explain to you. Like I think that's frustrating. and so I wanted to find more channels to build on this. So thank you for sharing on this. Thank you for sharing on this. Any questions from those in the audience?

23:44Keep tapping. Keep tapping. There he is. All right. in terms of price sensitivity our our

Q&A Session: Addressing Audience Queries

23:51product our hero product has a higher AOV around 500 plus. Is that something that would be a good fit for the product or do you do typical like lower price point products work better? So the the question was what's the AOV brackets of using them? So basically you the way I would want to think about it is if somebody's interested but not in the market and can make a snap decision to make a purchase, those are the products that are going to work.

24:17Typically they tend to be lower AOV but in some lower meaning 200 250 300 but some higher AOV products work. And the platform just recognizes the best audience for that and puts it in front of those people. The platforms would recognize that audience for that? The what? The platform would recognize that audience for that already. Yeah, so so yeah. There there is we match every single consumer to what they see. Yeah, we have hundreds of data points for every consumer like you would in the performance channel and then we match every consumer with the exact right stuff for them. That's the only way it works. We only show six categories to every consumer. They can't just pick and we end up showing two two brands to every consumer.

25:04And selection rates are north of 60% now. It's like cuz what's crazy for you is like people that are just going back from holiday, people that are going on trips. That like the travel group, that's a pretty mindful group of of trips. So I feel you on that. Awesome. Thank you. Hi. Yeah, you were saying that pet brands work as well. I was just wondering if it was a brand that makes their own products or even resellers work too on Nifty.

25:41So the was the question about reseller reselling products? A brand that makes their own product or resellers reselling products work as well too. Well, if you can afford the CPAs, then you any anybody who has enough budget to start generating demand on Meta will will work on Nifty. Beautiful. Thank you you two so much. Thank you. Thank you.