Hi everyone and welcome back to the podcast and hi again. Welcome along. Thanks so much for having Mary. Excited. Awesome. So do you wanna start by telling our listeners who you are and what you're working on?

Yeah, sure. So yeah, my name is again, Gen Furukawa. I'm co-founder of Pre Hook. And so Pre Hook is a quiz platform for e-commerce merchants. Basically it's a software tool. We help merchants. Add a quiz to the store, which means that merchants can learn more about their customers, ask a few questions, what their challenges, their goals, their preferences, their interests are, capture a lead, whether an email or sms, and then recommend a product.

So the main goals of the the quiz and why a merchant would want to add a quiz is to accelerate list growth. To improve conversion rate by simplifying the buying process, making it easier for a customer to get to understand what they need and, and how to get there. And then lastly, perhaps most importantly is to capture customer data, which we call zero party data.

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, so we've been hearing a lot about quizzes over the last few years, but I think that the topic and the conversation's really accelerated recently because of the changes in data privacy laws, meaning that it's harder and harder for us to capture information. About users without their permission.

Right? Like we were, we were used to that as marketers, just kind of secretly tracking people. And now that's not really okay. So we are looking for ways to proactively ask people to volunteer information so that we can still market to them in a good way, but with their permission. Is that kind of how you would summarize it?

What else do you think has been going on and why, why are quizzes so important or such a great part of the marketing mix at the moment? Yeah, sure. So, I think a lot of it has to do with data privacy, consumer data privacy. So there's of course gdpr. There's third party cookies being deprecated by Chrome in in 2023 or 2024.

Meaning harder to, to set up remarketing ads. And then actually, perhaps most importantly, is the iOS 14.5 change, which basically means that you cannot track a user's behavior across websites which makes targeting in and, and some of the analytics in app platforms like Facebook, most notably, perhaps harder.

So therefore, it's harder for a brand to. Advertising campaigns run them profitably and scale there. So there's all of a sudden a, a greater urgency and importance on helping brands build direct relationships with customers. So that really means just capturing a contact address, email or phone number, and then having that direct relationship because that's something that's evergreen, that's an asset that.

In theory own, and you're not going to be throttled by algorithm changes or you're not gonna be held hostage by the cost per clicks or, or anything else that could impact a cost per acquisition, which we have seen Rise or brands have seen rise especially since the release of 14.5.

Yeah, totally makes sense. And definitely as an agency owner, , for the last year and a half, I've been no stranger to the, I. Updates and all of our clients are definitely have been affected. And like a lot of the reason why the impact has been so great on brands is that that data that Facebook used to have and own and use to optimize our campaigns.

Facebook now doesn't have that data, so Facebook's blood supply has been cut off. So marketers like us are looking for ways to. To actually collect better data ourselves so that we can better market and not have to rely on Facebook's algorithm to do it for us. That's really cool. So what is zero party data exactly.

Yeah. How do you define it? Cause I think it gets talked about a lot, but I just wanna define it for our listeners. Yeah, for sure. So I do think it's, it's more than just another marketing jargon term. It kind of like came about maybe 2018. Salesforce defines it as information that a customer proactively and willingly shares.

So, contrast that with first party data, which a lot of people have heard of. First party data is data that's tracked but tracked passively. So that's stuff like purchases. So what your customers have. Like what products, how much they've spent, maybe extrapolating from there where they live based on the shipping address, or could be engagement on their website pages.

They've visited activities on their website, like abandoned card or abandoned checkout. The challenge though is that there's a lot of assumptions that go in there. Like for example, if, if Jess buys a certain type of shampoo, for example, If you're the brand, you might say, oh, so Jess has this type of hair because she bought this type of shampoo.

Well, we don't know that for sure, because of course it could be a gift, it could be for a household, it could be for somebody else. But the, the, the beauty of zero party data is that it is coming explicitly from the customer so that you know for sure, for certain The, the really important things that can totally help change how you're positioning your marketing, how you're positioning your, the offers that you're sending, and kinda like ultimately the product positioning.

Because as e-commerce marketers, we are. Our job is to ultimately help somebody achieve their future aspirational self, like help them get from their current state point A to point B. And so whatever that point B is could be very different. And then how you insert your brand and product to get them there is very different.

So that's why zero party data is so important because it, it can totally help you on how you're educating and, and selling to your customer. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's a great explanation of it. So tell me how quizzes come into it, and specifically how your tool would help people to, to implement a system like this into their marketing mix.

Yeah, sure. So I mean, We have hundreds of brands that use a quiz anywhere from like a skincare brand to hair, beauty, fashion pets, food and beverage, outdoor apparel. Really I think anything where if you can sell the product better, if you are having an in-person conversation then if you were just kind of like relying on the customer.

Do the reading, do, do the research of what product makes sense, and then actually make that final purchase decision. Mm-hmm. . So really that, that applies to, I think, most type of brands outside of maybe single skew brands. Yeah. Where a single skew product, a single skew brand it's really about kind of just getting them to check out.

But yeah, the beauty of the quiz is to. Just kind of like the, the equivalent of having an in-person sales associate so that you can learn a little bit about them and then guide them to the right product. And then not only guide them to it, but explain, hey this is why this product works for you. One really great example that I like is helix Sleep.

It's a mattress brand. Yeah. So if you go to their hero image or you go to their, their header, nav Helix Sleep has a quiz at the center of their marketing strategy. Really? Now, this is not a pre hook brand, but this is definitely a quiz I like because a mattress is a very. High average order value product, you're probably not gonna be buying it a lot.

And in some ways it's a little bit of a commodity product. So you, you know, whether it's a Helix Mattress or Casper, or Tufton Needle or Purple or any of these other brands, helix is, is kind of creating this competitive advantage by understanding some of the critical things that a consumer is making their decision based on.

And so if you take the quiz as a nice. You, it's, it's five simple questions. Basics like how many people is, is a bed, four, what's their height, what's their weight what size are they looking for? And then it gets a little bit more specific, like where their physical pain points, what's their sleeping style, what's their preference in terms of firmness.

And then you, you get your product recommendation with the specific. Like preferences on the product description page. So in that way it's capturing the data, ingesting it, and then almost representing it in as a compelling marketing and product marketing copy on the page. And I, and so I think that's kind of like encapsulates a lot of where the beauty of a quiz comes in, improving the customer experience, simplifying the buying process, and ultimately helping improve conversion rate and drive revenue with a.

Yeah, so it's like the store assistant who, you know, you walk into a store for beds and they say, you know, like, are you a back sleeper? Are you side sleeper? They can tell me, looking at you, whether you're like heavy or lighter. They can see your height. They can tell a lot of stuff about you already, and they're like then gonna take you to that bed that they, or a couple of beds that they think are right for you.

Yeah, that's a great way of thinking about it, where a conversation would aid the decision. What about, can you give examples of like how, for instance, maybe fashion would would use a quiz in a different way where it's not about kind of a physical preference? It's more about taste, I guess, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have some brands that use it for a fake quiz. So a fit quiz certainly makes sense. Brands like Third Love Women's Lingerie brand, they've kind of innovated for women's lingerie where part of the challenge of. Buying the, the, the product was fighting the right fit and it was far more of a hassle to go in person, get the, the measurements in person and stuff.

So there's that fit quiz element. Then there's the style element. So if you look at a brand like Stitch Fix, for example, or Rockets of Awesome. These are recurring subscription brand where yeah, you are taking an kind of like an intake quiz. What, what's, what are the basics? Like what's your size? And then more, more granular stuff like what's your in terms of style or what you'd like, what, what types of things you don't like.

Because that's critical to that recurring e-commerce experience. Because the amount of revenue that they're going to generate is directly correlated to what they add to the box. And obviously you wanna add items that people love. So that's, that's where the kind of like the style preference comes in.

And then there, there's, even for apparel brands kinda like a gift find. Type quiz. Mm-hmm. . And that's also quite a, a helpful quiz. Now now we're coming up on the holiday season. Black Fridays have Monday around the corner, and then we have the holidays. So if you are buying for somebody else, you might not know what you're looking for.

And then therefore, but you, you might know at a high level, oh, they like this style or, or don't like these things. Mm-hmm. and then you can recommend it. So we do have brands that use all three of those. Very applicable for apparel brands. Yeah, interesting. And how do you get a customer to complete a quiz?

Cause some quizzes, like, I mean, where quizzes kind of originated on the internet with like a personality quiz, find out what type of, you know, there's a curiosity to the answer. In this case, it's more about, you know, it's more sales focused. So are we being explicit about that up front, or are we have, you know, doing a quiz that's gonna offer them some value regardless of whether they wanna make a purchase decision. With the mattress example, like the hook is, you know, get a better night's sleep, complete our quiz to find out, you know, your perfect fit. They're gonna know that they're gonna be sold a mattress at the end.

I think what works best, kind of like at a high level, universally applicable, is having a curiosity gap, which basically is, yeah. Hey, like do you know what? Is best for you and, and whatever that might be.

Obviously you wanna be a little more nuanced with the hook for your particular brand or niche, but people love to learn more about themselves. That's kind of like our human tendency, like self discovery. And so if we can discover what the best wine is, you know, wink has a great quiz. Like, Hey, do you, do you know, like, The favorite wine you've never even tasted before.

Take a quiz and we'll, we'll, we'll tell you what it is. Or it could be, you know, something a little more tactical and useful, like a foundation finder for skincare. The value there is, it's harder to to understand exactly what your tone is if you're buying online. But if you go into a Sephora or a department store, you just d it on your hand and you can figure out quickly.

But a lot of it, to answer your question, I think revolves around learning about ourselves and learning the discovery and it's premise on this notion of curiosity. And if you can kind of like get them in with this curiosity hook. And, and I think people are nailing it so well these days with, you know, these short form videos where you gotta hook 'em in in the first three seconds.

Otherwise, you know, it's, it's gonna thumb endlessly. So yeah, the, the, the hook is, I think so critical and one of the most important marketing skills these days. Yeah. And it, it totally applies to a quiz. Interesting.

Cool. So I guess what's always bubbled around in my mind when I've thought about like, you know, working with quizzes for our e-commerce clients and the brands that I advise is like, how complicated could this be to implement and like, how do you go about.

Figuring out how many questions to have and how many different results there might be. You know, how much effort does it take to come up with a quiz that's actually gives a valuable result to the customer and, you know, helps the marketing. Yeah, I, I think it starts with like understanding what you're trying to achieve with a quiz.

So that's like what data points are most important and ideally you want to be. Very thoughtful and intentional with the data that you're gathering, because of course you could ask 1,000,001 questions, but people are gonna drop off. And if people are dropping off, it's, it's a wasted effort, especially if you're using paid traffic to take the quiz.

So yeah, if you can ask them, or if you can think, okay, how am I going to be using the data to create better segments in Clavio or Omni, or my email service provider or, What, what's most important to knowing For me to know about the customer so that I can recommend the right product once you start there, and then you can kind of like morph that into quiz questions.

And I think the shorter, the better, honestly, with a quiz. So understand like what's valuable, and then try and distill it down as much as possible. Type form has a really interesting graph, which as you might imagine, you know, the, the, it's completion rate over time or over questions. And as you add more questions, the, the completion rate will just continue to drop.

Yeah. And often the, the lead capture will be at the end of the quiz. With every person that doesn't get to that question, you're losing the opportunity to capture a lead. So, yeah, you know, it, again, it depends but probably five to seven would be like, I think that's kinda like a good number before people are just like, you know, what's in it for me at this point?

Why am I taking this quiz? Yeah. So five to seven questions and how many. Combinations of answers, would that lead to, like if it was a quiz where Yeah. Like how many different personas, I guess, would that spit out? Well, so it, it depends. So that's a, like a persona type quiz, beer brand, which is a men's men's skincare kind of like.

Facial hair type brand. They have a, a personality type quiz. What, what beards men are you? So that one, I think they have six different. Results at the end. But a lot of the, the quizzes, you don't need to do it as a persona type quiz. It could just be like for a recommended product. And that one is totally dynamic, so it's really like you're building it once and then you have de depending on what the quiz responses are, any number of.

Recommended products, but you're only needing to build one ending. Yeah. Okay. So if it was a fashion brand, for instance, it might be size kind of fits, and then maybe a preference towards like dresses or trousers. I'm just thinking out loud. And then the result would be, here's a recommended product and we'll send you recommended product based on what we now know about you.

And then the email will then select. People, products related that fit their criteria ongoing. Is that kinda how it would work? Yeah, exactly.

So what would be your main tips to increase the opt-in rates? We talked about the hook. Are there anything else that would, that you would advise brands to use to increase the opt-in rate?

Cause there's no point doing this, that people don't opt in, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great question. I, I think ultimately it is like the, what's in it for me? Why, why am I taking this? And then, you know, there's an interesting stat. 83% of people are. Okay. Sharing personal data, if there is some expectation of a personalized shopping experience in return mm-hmm.

So, you know, it's like the quid pro quo of like, I'll, I'll tell you so that you can give me a personalized experience. So I think to increase the opt-in rates. You really do need to have a compelling offer in return. So that could be something about that self-discovery that we're talking about. It could be something educational.

You know, if, if it's, say for example, their, their dog, their dog food and, and you know, the diet, you know, we can tell you what, what foods or, or whatever you need to improve your dog's joint pain or anxiety or sleepless or whatever it is, but that's about the customer education and, and offering value, establishing our expertise.

And ultimately, again, this does come down to improving your own positioning as an e-commerce marketer. One of the really interesting things is Robert Shield dini's influence. So one of the six pillars of his influence is expertise in authority. So once you can establish expertise in authority, then all of a sudden this customer looks to you as the, as the authority, where if you can.

Educate them, explain their problem better than they can explain it themselves, then they will buy in. They will, they will look to you for a resolution to their problems. And what do you know with a quiz you've captured that you captured their elite and then it's on you now to kinda like build out that flow or automation to educate them specifically around their problem which will put your product and your brand in quite the appealing light.

Yeah. Okay. And so what's the kind of MVP of setting up a quiz for an econ? Let's say we've got an econ brand, which has a medium number of skews. Maybe they've got kind of like 10 to 20 skews and they wanna set this up. They wanna try it out. They don't wanna go like all singing or dancing, but they wanna have a quiz and they wanna improve their marketing.

Like what would be the steps and what would be the key, the key elements that they would put in place and need to have in place for it to be success? Yeah, probably. I mean, you know, first of all, the, the barrier to like a positive roi, you know, a hundred plus ROI is relatively low. Thankfully you know, this is not like a super expensive one.

You can also start for free with a tool like Typeform. But yeah, to, to, to get the most out of this, I think. Understanding, like I was saying, like how are you gonna use the data? And let's just say like the, the brand is using Clavio. So ideally you want it to an integration with Clavio or with your email service provider.

Mm-hmm. then that way, once a lead is captured, you're sending it to Clavio, then they're, you're dropping 'em into a post quiz flow. So you wanna build out that automation and is very similar in theory to an abandoned cart flow. Like, hey, This is the product that we think is best for you and abandoned cart flow is, Hey, you know, we forgot about it.

Maybe you, you want to complete checking out. Yeah. So you're, you're starting there. But then you're again, kind of like using the elements of your welcome flow. Maybe you're sharing the, the brand founders story or the benefits of the product overall, but you, you understand what their recommended product is.

So you can really dive deep into that as opposed to if you're an apparel brand and, and you're kind of like speaking. Collection wide or, or even, you know, at a higher level, if you don't even know if it's a male or female and you're a brand like Lululemon for example, then you're like, well you, you're kind of shooting in the dark.

But if you know what their recommended product is, you know, what their their gender is their size, you know, what they're using it for, whether it's. Working out at the gym or going to the office or traveling through the airport. These are, these are things that you can use in your, in your post quiz flow.

So I think that's also a critical component to ensuring success. And then, and then once you kind of like test and optimize, then you wanna get traffic going through it. So we have one brand called tli, which is an adaptogen brand, plant-based adaptogen brand, actually out of Australia. And you know, adaptogens are kind of like, Ancient plant based medicine.

But the, the challenge was people didn't know which product was right for them. So think like lions made mushrooms or ray mushrooms. So there was a, the customer education element of it. But then there was a product recommendation part. And so once they did test it out, They, they saw like, okay, we're, we're, we know what data we're using.

We know what questions we wanna ask. Then they really kind of went full throttle with the quiz. They added it at their header nav in, in their hero image on their homepage as an exit intent popup for when people were checking out or about to leave a site. And it, it, it has helped tremendously. It's doubled their opt-in rate from a normal popup.

It's improved their conversion rate by 35% and improve their revenue per lead by five x. So I think that's a testament to how they're actually using the, the data to improve their communications via email and sms. Mm-hmm. . Okay. So, I can see that use case makes a lot of sense. We've got a brand where there's a number of options, a finite number of options, and one of the options is most likely gonna suit someone.

So therefore you ask them the questions to find out which of those one or those finite number of options as the right one, you recommend one, and then you kind of hammer them. Here's this one that you should buy. Not hammer them, but you know, in a marketing sense, in a nice way. What about if it's more like a brand, like more like fashion or interiors where there's lots of products and the recommendation might not be like, here's your one product.

How do you go about dealing with that kind of use case? So it would be kind of like a collection. Well, so in fashion, Yeah, the recommendation, it might not be that there's this one particular dress that's perfect for them, but it might be that like it's this dress or these three dresses and then also these t-shirts.

But they fit their criteria in terms of size, in terms of color, in terms of style that they generally go for. Like is there a way to use a quiz to. Put them into groups, I guess, that then get sent only those types of products that they've selected, or is that kind of beyond the capability of a basic setup, do you think?

Yeah, totally. That would require extra coding or No, no. You, you totally can. And we, we can get in the weeds in terms of like how you'd set it up, but you'd use like what the quiz data from pre hook comes through to Clavio as a custom property. Yeah. So you know that that's like, okay, just likes the color red.

She likes you know, Brown pants and her leg length is 32 or whatever. Yeah. Like, so you would, you would send that through. Then you can build segments in clavio around those properties. So if it is based on color or, or type or size your, everybody in that segment would be served relevant content or offers.

So you can do that. You can also kind of like have dynamic blocks. That's, that's more about specific products though. Mm-hmm. , where you can dynamically insert this specific product based on the quiz response, because that also gets sent through from pre hooks quiz to your contact in Clavio.

Amazing. Yeah. That's powerful, isn't it? And you could start simple where it was just size or, you know, dresses versus pants kind of thing. Mm-hmm. pants or trousers as we say in the uk. But then you could, over time, as your data improved, you could make those segments more specific, couldn't you? And then you know, you could have 20 different segments of types of people and they're getting a slightly different version of the email with different things pulled in based on the criteria.

I think that's super, super powerful. So, in terms of using pre hook, cause it sounds like a pretty easy to use and, and good tool for getting started. Like what's, what's the process like and how much time would a brand need to dedicate to setting up a project like this? And could they do it on their own?

Would they need a consultant? How does it all work? Yeah. So when, when we were building the, the tool, like we really focused on not requiring technical expertise or, or a technical team no. So no dev skills needed. You know, in terms of time it could take, you know, less than an hour. But again, it's, it's kind of like a fully to build out the.

But then of course you're optimizing it. You, you might wanna build out a landing page if you're running paid ads to it. You might wanna do your like paid side. And then you want to do your post quiz flow. Mm-hmm. With the emails and sms. So that, like, that of course takes longer. But like the quiz itself Is relatively quick, can be relatively quick.

Of course, you can get more granular with like conditional logic where like you're setting people down different paths depending on what their quiz responses are. But it, it, it's very quick. And then, you know, I, I'm a co-founder, but it's. Really like my priority and my passion to make sure that people are seeing the value out of the product and using it as we intended, as we were building it.

So I'm always accessible in the onboarding emails and in, you know, intercom chat widget and so for video calls, email and stuff. So I like to think that we're different in that sense, like there is no account management needed or, or any of those additional services needed. Like basically, you know, I'm there to help.

So anybody, you know, if you're listening and you wanna get, give it a test feel free to reach out. Again. Gen@prehook.com. Happy to help build it out for you, set it, set it up, or share some ideas and. Amazing. That's so great. And you don't often get that from like a SA business these days, so that's awesome.

Okay, so yeah, so it's just the time to create the quiz, think about the questions, and then you are building out the integration. So you'd have to either have a team that was pretty with Clavio or be working with an agency that could help set up the segments and figure out what the flows might look like for the individual.

Personas that Correct. Get developed. Yeah. And then also, I guess I imagine the li like the lists that you are able to create or the segments you're able to create could then link to your Facebook or TikTok ad campaigns or Google. So you could be targeting people with certain products based on their profile, which is so awesome and so powerful.

Yeah. Cool. And that's done through the segments, is it? You create a segment based on a rule and then that segment can then be shared as a, as a custom audience with Facebook? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

So you mentioned a pretty cool case study of, of a increasing conversion rate. What could the typical brand expect to see from implementing a system like this if they, if they set it up well and thought it through properly? Yeah. I, I like to think that you see like decreased cost per lead, where if you think, okay, like the opt-in rate of a standard opt.

Kinda like, Hey, join our club or get 15% off. We'll email it to you is about 2%. And then that's from sumo.com. Over like millions of data points we're. Quizzes that will be completed at say 50, 60, 70% of somebody who starts a quiz will complete a quiz. And so not only are you getting the contact information, but you're also getting so much more information than just the email because an email without any, any additional context is not.

It is valuable of course, but it's not as valuable because there's not as much that you can act on there. So I think if you, if you do back at the envelope math, you're gonna see a far higher opt-in rate. So once you can nail what your hook is, what your the value that you're gonna offer, it makes a lot of sense to try and get people into the quiz.

But I think the most important thing is like, yeah, you should just validate and. Maybe it doesn't make sense for you, or maybe, maybe you're not getting the questions right, or maybe it's, it's not ideal for the type of brand or your type of customer. Mm-hmm. . But I think it definitely merits a test for the, the leads, how you're actually using the data.

And then the quiz revenue, the revenue that a quiz has helped generate. Which is a metric that I think is or the more interesting ones that we have in, in pre hook to see, okay, like how much is this? Contributing to top line revenue. Mm-hmm. . So yeah, we're, we're pretty excited to see the results of some of the brands that are using a pre hook quiz.

Amazing. Cool. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience? Any advice for kind of navigating the the crazy landscape of e-commerce at the.

Yeah. You know, I, I think people say, start building your email list yesterday. You know, I, I think that is absolutely true, but I would say like, you know, one a or the asterisk there is that they should also capture as much data with that. Email as possible. So Clavio for example, offers multi-step forms, basically like not with your email address.

You can check a box, like for example, are you male or female or are you like drinking red wine or white wine, or whatever it is. Even that is like a good first step, but to add more context to the contact that you're creating is really critical. So yes, build your list, but then also try and capture some data along with that list or that contact.

Amazing. And where can we follow you? Find you, what's the best social platform to keep in touch with you and, and the developments at pre. Yeah, I think feel free again, email again, gen@prehook.com twitter is just @genfurukawa LinkedIn is just Gen Furukawa, yeah, feel free. Um, I'll definitely connect with you there.

Perfect. Thanks for coming along again. Oh, thanks so much for having me. This is great.