CVO Live with Khalid Saleh and Valentin Radu - Nailing CVO Strategies in eCommerce

For a long time. And the engineer and me would have told you, oh, it's the process. Oh. So we start with the website, and then we optimize the. We break the website in the different funnels and then we optimize. And really, for a long time, when people talk to me, I told them we're a post click company. They're like, what does that mean after somebody lands on the website? Well, eventually you discover, because you make very silly mistakes, that, well, maybe the customer is the customer and they're going through the experience and it's not the post click, because guess what? They saw the ad or they saw an email, they landed on the websites. You know, they went through your funnel college your small funnel. But guess what? They place an order. And now it's the experience after placing an order, and now it's about bringing them back. And unless you look holistically, you know, you're not gonna get there. I mean, it's just almost like, well, yeah, I, I fixed. I've. I've won the, the battle, but I've lost the war, which is a silly way of doing optimization. It's fascinating to me because especially in the last four or five years, I always tell people, you need different components. So the process that needs to be holistic. Correct. So operating in silos, eventually, as companies do it more and more, they'll discover it's silly. But there's even something bigger which I think kind of covers that whole customer journey. It's the mindset. Correct. Because you need to come at it thinking away from yourself and thinking about your customer and thinking that I am willing to hand control over to the customer. And it's nice in theory. And every marketer, every cmo, VP of marketing, VP of growth will tell. Yeah, of course, you know, we're data driven work foreign.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to a new episode of the CVO Live. I'm here with Khalid, which is running Invesp, which is a CRO agency, one of the most prolific ones from the U.S. khalid, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. Super excited to be with you this morning.

Yeah, let's. Let's make it happen. So hold on, hold on.

Let me ask you this. So it's morning, Morning my time. What time is it for you here?

Yeah, it's afternoon here in Europe, that's for sure.

There you go. That explains. See your face, like, you know, it's full of energy. I've been awake for three hours, but still.

Yeah. So, Khalid, before diving into our subject around Customer value optimization. Why don't you share with our audience today how you've got yourself into optimism, into the optimization space.

Oh, gosh, not, not to date myself, but maybe the white beard gives it away, but back in 2005, I was in a completely different, different field. I was a software architect and I was doing a project for Motorola. They finally had decided, you know what, we need to get into this e commerce game. So, you know, they hire the consulting company I was working for and they, we brought a team of 120 engineers spread between the U.S. canada and India. And I was one of three software architects on the project. $50 million costs, total cost in three months. Imagine that much, because you know when they're going to enter the game, they're going to enter the game. So, you know, we start building. And it was, it was a dream for any software architect because whatever, like, you know, we suggested, hey, we need to add this feature. Sure, go ahead and add it. We need to do this. And like, yeah, yeah, go ahead and do it. Lots of very long days at the office. We eventually, around the end of the year, end of 2005, we launch the site. Now I sort of dabbled in marketing just on the side. And I was thinking to myself, I'm like, gosh, man, those guys, they don't even understand marketing. Now, me not knowing marketing. Correct. That's the problem with marketing. Everybody thinks they understand it. And here a software architect who, you know, maybe read a couple business books, they don't understand marketing. Probably people are not going to come to the site. Well, I was wrong completely because all. Although we had 16 servers and those were Sun Microsystem servers, I mean, beefy servers. The, the site went down, I think within a couple of hours. So we get busy, bring up the sites, you know, and I'm like, oh, gosh, no. Okay, Yeah, I guess they have their marketing figured out. Well, it turns out that they had another problem because for the first month, I think we got about 10 orders for the $50 million investment, which is absolutely horrible. Needless to say, some people lost their jobs. I'm sitting there. Ayat, who's my wife SL partner, was looking for something to do. And I'm like, hey, you know, this is an interesting problem. A $50 million investment that generated less than $1,000 orders. Why don't you look at, into it? At that point in time, in the US There were two companies highly specialized on focus on conversion optimization. It wasn't even called conversion optimization at that point, but on, on Improving conversion rates. So we said, you know what, let's start this. We really thought it was going to be something small, something on the side. Two years later, of focusing on conversion optimization, I still remember this. I had, I'm, I'm working in my, in my home office. I, I was doing a project for Citrix, GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar and Ann just knocks on the door, it was a Friday. And she's like, hey, what are you doing? And I'm like, oh, I have some deliverables. We're trying to deploy this. And she's like, I have a suggestion. I'm like, sure. It's like, why don't you quit your job and come full time, work full time with me? And I'm like, really? I mean, I have a salary and I have like, you know, stability and I'm a software architect. She's like, no, this is a lot more interesting. And here we are in 2022. So, you know, the rest is history, as they say.

Excellent. I think it's, it's important to, to, to see that as any journey, as any cool story, it starts with some struggling moments that forced, forced, forced you to, to, to, to move.

Right.

Because it wasn't only the problem that you were solving, but it was also your problem because you were looking for, for, for something else. You know, you're looking for impact. And it's, it's important to see that your wife got, got first into, into, into this.

Yeah, it's funny because lots of times, so she started the company and then I joined her. Lots of times people assume and then it's just, it's a funny like, funny ways how the world operates. People assume that I started the company and then my wife joined me. And I always tell them actually no, she started the company, she built. Like, no, I mean, and you've gone through this the first couple of years of building a business, you know, are the hardest years, correct?

Yeah.

You're trying to find the right clients, you're trying to define your target market. And for us it was even trying to understand what we do because there was, I mean nowadays there are so many case studies, so much literature back then, like, you know, it's like you talked us about, it's to somebody about conversion optimization and consistently the first response that I get is like, oh, you're talking about search engine optimization. I'm like, no, no, no, it's. Search engine optimization is about bringing people to the website. Conversion optimization is about converting them. And they have this puzzled look on their face. And I'm like, okay, it's just how much the industry changed in the last 16, 17 years, where now it's like, oh, you have teams dedicated to improving conversion rates and VPs of growth and it's just a different world.

Yeah, indeed. If you look right now, Khalid, at what's happening in the optimization space, you know that I'm obsessed about this improving the whole customer journey. But how do you see the things unfolding in the future?

It's interesting. Now this comes like, you know me coming from an engineer background. Correct. There is a lot of fascination from those who do marketing right now with the engineering side of optimization. And I understand why this, why this happens. Because by the way, engineering, as complicated as it can be, it is an algorithm. Correct. It's a very specific problem model most of the time, unless you get to a very advanced engineering. But it gives you a sense of control. Correct. As like, oh, I'll come up with an algorithm, I'm going to solve the problem. So nowadays what I see in the field is lots of marketers who are just fascinated by the technical side of optimization and they try to get to like, oh, let me write some JavaScript, let me kind of figure out, you know, how I'm going to do this better. And I tell them, and I get lots of, lots of commentary on this. Every time I mention it, I tell them, listen, I can always hire a developer who's absolutely amazing, who did maybe a degree in computer science or something like that, and they'll write me amazing code. You, as a marketer, what you need to do is you need to look at that experience, which is, by the way, a lot harder. Correct. Deciphering an algorithm is one problem. Deciphering the human mind, it's a whole other problem. Like you mentioned, it's like that full customer journey and the complexity of humans and how we make decisions. So I think eventually what you see over the next few years is that there's always a balance correct pendulum that goes from one side to the next. At some point, marketers didn't really even care about technology. Now they care too much about technology. Eventually we're going to come in the middle and we understand that there's this right balance we need, we must use technology, but also we need to do the hard work of trying to decipher the human mind and how it operates and whatnot. So I do an educational session every week for our team, so everybody in the company attends it. And one of the questions I got this week from one of our CROs from one of our conversion optimization specialists. He said, hey, I'm reading all this literature about AI and machine learning. Do you think that AI is going to replace us in the next five to 10 years? And I laughed because when you see this correct everywhere, everybody's asking that question. I told him, well, okay, so here's the TLDR short answer. No, it's not going to replace you. It's going to make your job easier, more interesting. But you still need that human mind that sits there and analyzes and looks. You know, the AI and machine learning is going to give you some interesting trends for you, but you still need to sit there and think, think about it. I mentioned some of the, you know, the AI is really now prevalent, at least in the online marketing space and content creation. Everybody loves like, you know, all this AI that creates content. I tell people, I'm like, have you looked at the outputs? They're like, yeah, it's great. I'm like, no, no, no, let's dig deeper. AI is great. If you're writing a generalized topic, you're writing about plumbing, you're writing about fixing a roof. And even with that, sometimes it's funny, you take AI and you ask it to write something about like enough frequent statistics or something like that. I'm like, oh, I wouldn't publish that anywhere. There are people who attempt to do that, but I'm like, it's far away from that. It is going to advance because that's kind of the nature of AI. Correct. It's always going to advance, but we're far away from that.

Yeah, that's true. Professor Peter Feder was a guest in our show and he, he mentioned something very interesting, that back in the days there was a huge retailer which was looking to come up with predictions about how the customers will behave and they have been using, and Professor Feder used the RFM segmentation which was basically from the 70s.

Thank you.

The accuracy was around 99% on a huge data set. And basically what's important over here to understand is that all these algorithms are working as long as you instruct them and if you give them some direction, some pre digested data that you know for sure that is going to help, then machine learning is the way to go. Otherwise you would be wasting a lot of energy and servers to get those systems. Find the needle in the haystack.

Yeah, it's fascinating to me. So like, you know, going through computer science and in college and kind of studying AI, I always tell people what's fascinating so if you think about Big Blue, which is what, IBM's machine back in the 60s, when they put it out there and people around, and when you read the literature back then, they're like, oh, it's not AI. Like, okay, now, by all of our definitions of AI, Big Blue was definitely, you know, artificial intelligence now versus what you see nowadays, where lots of times people write things. And I'm like, dude, this is not even remotely close to AI and maybe even more fascinating, especially, like working with retailers. By the way, I find at least maybe in the area that we focus on machine learning to be a bit more interesting, people use those interchangeably. And I'm like, no, not really. They're not the same thing. But machine learning, where there's a specific pattern, you have an algorithm, you can identify the pattern, and then you can use that identification to judge or predict future analysis. I'm like, that's fascinating to me, especially if you're a retailer. But, you know, it's just another trend. I mean, humans by, by our nature, we're always looking for something new, you know? Exactly. I don't like, like you said, I'm like, some of this stuff, it's been around for, for tens of years. I was like, just somebody actually take it and make sense of it. And, you know, and, and because some of our team is in Europe. So I, I woke up today early in the morning from 4am I'm doing, I'm doing meetings. And I always tell them whenever I look at data. I've learned this from Avinash Kaushik. Absolutely amazing. He asked a very simple question which is, so what? You can present me with data. And I'm like, so what? You know, I always ask that and they get, sometimes people get really annoyed with me. I'm like, dude, I mean, okay, so it's an interesting data point, but unless you tell me what to do with it. Yeah, my story that I will forget because I hear lots of stories through the day. I'm like, so what? So what? So what? And I'm like, I'll ask that question five times until we find, like, you know, something actionable. If you cannot answer the so what in a meaningful way where I can take an action, I tell them it's a nice data point you mentioned in a meeting, but who, you know, we'll forget it.

So, yeah, Khalid, focusing a bit on, on the, on the optimization on other channels. How do you see. How do you see this thing unfolding in the future? Because it's clear that the CRO World, let's say the CRO industry nailed this process. I mean there are of course not all the CRO agencies and we do know for a fact that it was like a gold rush. All the big agencies, like whatever, not naming them, they all got into their CRO offering and they were raising their shoulders to, okay, now what can we do to our big companies that we've been squeezing for decades on those rebates coming from media now how can we do this CRO happen? So we do know, but besides that, there are really a players and heavy hitters like you are in the space that have nailed the whole process of optimization. Having a data driven approach, using the human psychology, doing this type of experimentation or over and over again. And I want to ask you, how do you see this process moving to other channels from the website optimization to the email optimization, to the, I don't know, onboarding to the packaging? Because there are many touch points throughout the customer journey. And we do know that there are those silos, you know, we have the separate teams with separate KPIs which most of the time these are disconnected and basically the customers are seeing this Frankenstein customer journey because of that.

Yeah, it's fascinating to me for a long time and the engineer and me would have told you, oh, it's the process. Oh, so we start with the website and then we optimize the, we break the website into different funnels and then we optimize and really for a long time when people talk to me, I told them we're a post click company. They're like, what does that mean after somebody lands on the website? Well, eventually you discover, because you make very silly mistakes that, well, maybe the customer is the customer and they're going through the experience and it's not the post click because guess what, they saw the ad or they saw an email, they landed on the website. You know, they went through your funnel college, your small funnel, but guess what? They place an order and now it's the experience after placing an order and now it's about bringing them back. And unless you look holistically, you know, at the, you're not going to get there. I mean it's almost like, well yeah, I fixed, I've won the battle, but I've lost the war. Which is a silly way of doing optimization. It's fascinating to me because especially in the last four or five years, I always tell people you need different components. So the process that needs to be holistic, correct. So operating in silos, eventually as companies more do it more and more they'll discover it's silly, but there's even something bigger which I think kind of covers that whole customer journey. It's the mindset. Correct. Because you need to come at it thinking away from yourself and thinking about your customer and thinking that I am willing to hand control over to the customer. And it's nice in theory. And every marketer, every cmo, VP of marketing, VP of growth will tell. Yeah, of course, you know, we're data driven where it's fine to say that, but do your actions match? So I'll give you a couple examples from. Actually, I'll give you an example from two companies that we've been working with. Both come from. They're funded by the same investments group. One of them came to us, they're doing $5 million annual revenue, and the other one is doing about 1.5 million on the smaller side. Both of them both came in April of last year and they said, hey, we want to do conversion optimization. I look usually at the 5 million dollar company and I'm like, okay, yeah, we can, we can do something there. There are bits on the smaller side. I look at the smaller company, 1.2, 1.5, and I'm like, ah, too small. Does it make sense even to work with them? That's. That was, you know, me just purely looking at the numbers. But we end up both of them signing up with us because their investor said, hey, I want you to help them. We have the process, we have the wheels. Correct. That make the like, you know, the car go from point A to point B. But more important than the process is thinking about the driver. Because, you know, you can, I can give you the nicest car and I can give it to my daughter who just stopped driving and it's a scary ride. Versus I give it to somebody whose experience is a completely different experience. Three or four months into the project, the first company that was doing $5 million, I had a conversation with their CEO and he's like, I can't do this anymore. And I'm like, oh, what's going on? He said, you know, it's like every time you guys come up with a suggestion, I feel a, a heartache. And then I'm just not comfortable. And, and I'm like, really, like, you know, we're really good at maintaining that relationship. And he's like, yeah, but he's like, but really what's this is what he said. He's like, your team and my team are ganking up on me because they're always Telling me the data, the data, the data. And I'm like, okay. He's like, but I'm not comfortable with the data. I'm like, okay, well, like, there is no good reason to have, you know, heartache because of a project. We're here to make your life easier, and if you're not comfortable, you're not comfortable. Doesn't make sense to continue. Trying to improve a website conversion rate, trying to increase its revenue is already a hard process. So you add on top of it, difficulties within running the project. I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, doesn't make sense to continue. And we end up stopping that work. I was looking at that company's revenue, because now they're talking to us again, and unfortunately, their revenue dropped from $5 million. They're doing about $2 million right now. Covid helped them a lot, but the last few months have been just horrendous for them. Contrast that with the other company who came, and I'm like, doesn't make sense to do work. And the guy over there had a completely different attitude where he said, you know what? You know, the process. I look at the results. I want you. Every time you present an idea to me, I have a simple request. I want. I want to understand why. What's the data? What are the data points? What's like, you know, why are you suggesting that we want to make this change, and if you convince me, run with it. And after every change you make, I want you to do the. The analysis for me. What did we learn? Same time period, We. We were just looking at their results. That company went from about $1.5 million. They're doing about $12 million in annual sales this year. And it's not because of our work, by the way. I'd love to say, oh, wow, look at the results that we've achieved. But I think our work was a component, and it's the mindset, correct. Where he looked at, okay, how do we optimize paid? How do you optimize social? How do you optimize email? How do we make sure that the whole funnel is working really, really well? And here, I mean, like, you know, I mean, it's funny because when I look on it, on paper, I would have told you, oh, the first company is the one that we want to work with. Now I've discovered, no, really, there's more. So you. You have to have the process, by the way, but before the process, you have to have the right mindset, right? It's like, okay, what's the mindset and can I actually look holistically at the full picture correct as opposed to, like, you know, sometimes I feel some optimizers like to take the magnifying glass, and then they start looking at the details, and it's like, oh, do you look at this? Like, no. It's almost like, you know, you have a very beautiful picture in front of you, or not so beautiful picture, but instead of just stepping back and saying, you know, the colors are just not working altogether, they're taking the magnifying glass and going to a small area, and it's like, oh, there's a problem here. No, no, no, dude, you're missing out the whole picture. Step back. You know, eventually you want to get to those details correct because you don't want to just continue at a very high level. But look at the whole painting and look at, like, you know, are the colors coordinated? Are we actually. As we go from one stage to the next, are we handing that customer and of maintaining that experience or not? I like to give the example of, I lived in Turkey for a while. I'm not Turkish. I don't speak a word of Turkish, which is presented its own set of challenges. That's a story for. For a different time.

And, you know, here, here, Khalid, we have a saying here in Romania that if you can't get along with someone, you. You see, are you Turkish? So, basically, because the Romanian language and the Turkish are so opposite, and we have. It's like a proverb here already in the. In the folklore.

I see. I said, oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not gonna. Like, I have too many Turkish friends. But I'm like, it was interesting to me, and maybe it's like, you know, it's fascinating because I. I get to travel to Europe a lot. I think one thing that the US did really well away from optimization, by the way, is the customer service aspect. I think they perfected that. And by the way, in the last two years, it's gone down the hill tremendously. But that's important. So I'm trying to catch a flight back to the U.S. i'm like, I don't plan sometimes. It's funny. Yesterday my wife sends me a message, and she's like, oh, we need to plan June of next year. I'm like, June of 2023. She's like, yeah. I'm like, dude, I have a dinner invitation tomorrow. This Friday. I haven't even invited everybody, and I'm still working through. That's how I'm planning. I'm planning 48 hours. So I show up to the airports, you know, and it's funny because it's a company that we did some work with optimizing their site, and I'm trying to check in, and they give me such a hard time, and I'm like, okay, I'm. Come on, You're. You're. You're our client. So, like, you know, you're supposed to take care of me. And I'm like, what's going on here? I'm like, it's fine. And I get so annoyed with the ticket agent. I'm like, you know what? It's fine. I'll check in the luggage. I'll do this. I'll do that. That's fine. He's like, no, no, I'll get you a manager. I'm like, dude, I don't want to talk to a manager. That's fine, you know? Do you want to take my luggage? Take the luggage. It is what it is. He's like, no, I will get you a manager. I'm like, okay, maybe the manager will do better. The conversion happened on the web. I bought the tickets, correct? I'm showing up to the airport, and I'm annoyed, but I'm like, okay, it's fine. The manager comes, and instead of being your manager, you're supposed to make my life. At least tell me something nice and just let me go away. And, like, not so. He's like. He's. He gets annoyed, and he's like, oh, this is not the way business is done. No other airlines. I'm like, well, actually, I mean, like, you know, Delta does it this way. And I know Turkish airlines, like, they do it this way. The way I was suggesting. He's like, well, maybe you should have bought your ticket with them. And I'm like, oh, great. So here we optimize the web presence, and we help people buy tickets. And here, something silly, a silly interaction. Correct. With the customer, where I'm like, oh, well, okay, I'll thank you for paying us and for being a client, but I will not buy a ticket from you anymore because, as you suggested, and I mentioned it, actually, to their management, I'm like. Because, again, it's the holistic customer experience. Correct. Who cares if you converted me? And then, like, you're a silly manager or, like, you know somebody. And I understand things like that happen sometimes, but again, unless we're looking at the full picture, mistakes happen. And guess what? For me, it leaves a bad taste. I'm a customer. At that point in time, I don't care about how well you're optimized. Your site is. I just remember that bad experience. And every time I go to a conference, I used to mention their name. Then they got annoyed with me. They're like, really? We're paying you and you're mentioning our name? I'm like, okay, we're not going to mention names. But again, it leaves a bad taste in the customer's mouth. And you want to think about that whole experience. How do we optimize? How do you make it better?

Yeah, I think, I think you've touched something very important about customer value optimization because it's. While most of the initiatives of companies looking for growth are related to marketing, demand gen and whatever, there are these hidden forces that are that could get the company up there and acquire market share dramatically if they look at what they are already doing wrong. And one of the pillars of customer value optimization is customer experience. So besides the product that you're selling, besides the marketing that you're doing is the customer experience. So no amount of marketing is going to fix a broken customer experience. So you need to look at all those three things. And if you don't measure that, so if you leave it to chance, then what you're doing is you put a lot of money in building demand and getting customers to buy, but they will never come back. So one of the ways that we are suggesting, and we've been doing a lot of case studies in this direction is before trying to optimize the customer lifetime value by tweaking the messaging, by changing the creatives, by whatever you do, make sure that you are monitoring from top to bottom the whole customer journey. Because if you monitor it and if you find that, hey, your most, let's say the factor which is damaging your customer lifetime value the most is customer experience. And guess what? You can find this because this can be measured. I mean you can measure customer satisfaction, you can measure net promoter score, you can then drill down into what's the NPS buy, the products that they've bought, by the category, by the location, by a lot of different aspects, which basically in a CRO process you already do this because you look at the conversion rate by location, by browser, by traffic source, and so on. So basically the CVO process is about optimizing the whole customer journey instead of just the website. And as you've said, indeed, many companies are leaving this to chance and it's a pity that they are not even aware about those things. And that's coming from the mindset of the decision Makers. And maybe we can talk a bit about how do you change mindsets. You've said that story, right? With the 5 million company. With the 1.5 million company. And guess what? The CEO of the smaller company was open enough to look at data and to step aside and to leave the professionals to do their job eventually. Because one of the things of a CEO is to simply step out of the way to find the best people out there and to let them do their jobs.

Fascinating. So I have a friend who used to be a VP at eBay. Absolutely amazing guy, and he focused on customer research. So this communication retailer, cellular phone retailer, hires him, and they told him, hey, can you actually increase our sales revenue, grow it by 30% in the next 12 months? Now, if you'd done marketing enough, and if you've been in the business world, you know, that's just a crazy, crazy goal. Correct. I mean, it's fine. Like, I want. Like, he's. Yeah, I. I can do that. And I'm like, are you sure you can do that? He's like, yeah, I can do that. Now I'm thinking he. He's focused. Digital marketing. That's his sweet spot. Well, four months later, I'm talking to him. He's like, yeah, by the way, like, you know, we've managed to increase our revenue by 40%. I'm like, what? I'm like, what's the secret? What's the. I'm just trying to understand the campaign that he did. And he said, oh, no campaigns. Nothing at all. I'm like, so what do you do? He's like, we just fixed our call centers and our support centers. He's like, we had such a major problem. He's like, I just sat there and I listened and I listened, and I knew that there's a problem, and I told them, let's just fix this. And he's like, custom MPS scores are up. Satisfaction is up, Upsells are up. He didn't, you know, me coming at it. And I'm like, think, oh, digital marketing. Digital marketing. He's like, no, no, no. Bigger picture. Correct. I'm like, okay, well, that is interesting, being able to step back and actually, you know, make the judgment to say, you know what? This is the area that's where we're weak at. One of the things I talk to companies about, you know, that are interested in conversion optimization. Every week I might talk like, you know, 10, 15. Actually, I think the most I've done is 17 calls in a week. And I. I died after that. I'M like, okay, I'm not going to do this anymore. But one of the things I like to assess on every call is the mindset. And by the way, it's interesting to me because the mindset is one of the hardest things I can assess. Yeah, I can assess your numbers, I can assess your conversions and traffic. I can understand your technical team and technical challenges. But the mindset is the hardest part. Some people are very clear from the get go. They come to you and they say, hey, I have all these ideas I want to implement, and I'm looking for a team to implement them. And right away I tell them, it's not us. I'm like, this is a. They're like, no, we want to hire you. I'm like, this is an expensive way to get things implemented if you already have your ideas. And you're like, you have a list. I'm like, we're not the right company if you're coming to say, hey, we're going to go on a journey and let's kind of discover our customers. I'm like, okay, this is, this is an interesting starting point, but it's not enough because lots of times people say, oh, yeah, I. I want to discover my customers. I want to go through that. I want to go through that journey. So one of the things that I do is I will show them, like, oh, well, you know, let's take different examples, for example, from case studies that might make them feel uncomfortable. And I'm trying to gauge as we go through this process how uncomfortable they are. Part of the our. When a company wants to engage us, I tell them, here, here. Or, you know, deal breakers. If any of those things you're not comfortable with, we're not the right company for you. And. And I actually type it, which is very. Just to be very uncomfortable for me when I first started doing that. So nowadays I'm like, here's our deal breakers. And I'll pull up the screen and I'll pull up a Google Doc. I would actually type it. And I'm like, what do you think about this? So one of the two things that I tell them that people usually feel squeamish about, but I'm very clear with them. One, I tell them, if you're gonna hire us, we're gonna do it our way. And I want to see, you know, and they're like, what do you mean we're gonna do it our way? I tell them, listen, we know conversion optimization. We're really good at it. Every once in a while, you Know, a company h, like, you know, comes and hires us and instead of them letting us do things, things our way, they start saying, oh, I read this case study. Oh, my cousin is this my. And I've had this, by the way, from billion dollar companies where I read this case study yesterday. I'm like, okay, I'm willing to like, you know, but just let me do my thing. I tell them, I don't think this is the case over here, but is that going to be an issue for you? And I would say about 30, 40% of the people that like, we're not comfortable. I'm like, it's fine, it's better. I always tell them, like, it's better to have those difficult conversations before we get started as opposed to four months into the projects. I don't like to have those very uncomfortable conversations. So that's one thing that I tell them and then the other thing that I tell them, besides that we're going to do it our way. You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I'm like, huh, don't listen, the first three, four months we're trying to prove ourselves, so we'll do like, whatever it takes. You, we got to gain that trust, you know, like, we got to show you, like, you know, that we know what we're doing, doing. The first three, four months, you know, after that, you should be really, like, interested. We should have impacted how your organization works. But then I tell them about 10% of our ideas will make you feel very uncomfortable. Like, really, this is what we're going to be testing. Now. I'm not going to do something that kills your brand or just completely stupid, but should you should say, it's like, really, our customers are going to, like, are going to like this. I'm like, those, I mean, interesting concepts when you deploy them, you should, should give you a pause when you're like, huh, okay, I, I wonder. And even more interesting are the ones after you look at the results. You're like, oh, this was completely opposite of what I expected. I was sitting with one of our CROs and he's showing me one of the concepts. So he's showing me v1, v2, v3 challenge in the control. And I like to do this. I'm like, oh, it's obvious it's V1 or V2. Here's the rationale. He's like, okay, well, here are the results. V1, V2 loss, V4. I'm like, okay, humbling again for the, you know, thousand times. And I'm like, oh, this is. But the, the fascinating part to me is to say, oh, wow, okay, so why did this version win? What's the analysis over here? What is this telling us that I can use in my other marketing channels? Or is this even a fluke? Maybe it's going to change from time to time. So it's always fascinating to me. But again, I go back the mindset and having the mindset. And then, by the way, this story, that's my new rule, this story about the two companies, because I just looked at their revenue. It's one of those things that I'm going to share with every company that's interested with us. I think I have three, four calls today and tell them, listen, there's two companies, there's company one, company two. It's not to say like, you know, we're not right, you know, correct. Whether it's customer value optimization, CR or whatever you do, when a type of marketing, there's the right company for the rights, for the right offer, we might not be a good fit, you know, and there's other companies who will be happy and who will do really well for us. We have to find the right mindset. And I have to tell them there's example one, example two, which one are you? And even when they pick example two, there will be conversations during the project where we're like, hey, remember that conversation that we had, you know, about mindset one, mindset two? I think you're falling more. You're not letting us do our thing over here. So it's just, it's one of those things that you start with the mindset and you always have to feed it and emphasize it again and again.

Yeah. And I think this has a lot to do with the inside bias, Khalid, you know, because after the war, you know, there are many, many courageous people and they. There are. That's happening when you look at the results of all these experiments and then you come up with a rational understanding. Yeah. That's why V4 was the best, because X, Y and Z. We have a question here coming from Elias. He's asking how more complex crob comes for services such as hotels where the same room is sold in different distribution channels and some channels may offer lower rates. So in a nutshell, the question is, how can you do CRO if your products are being sold cheaper by other competitors or this channel distribution?

It's a challenge. Yeah, yeah. No, it's. It's a big, It's a big challenge because you have certain inventory. Correct. And you have kind of Some of those distribution channels, the Orbis and the Expedias and the, you know, who will buy and then they'll offer a discount. And to me, it is sort of, sort of interesting. A couple things on that that is really fascinating. I, I used to be a big time. Orbit Sky. Yeah. Every time. And I've been using Orbits. I don't know, like, it's probably like since I don't know when they were created. As far as I remember from 2000. Yeah, like, oh, it makes life easier. It congregates all the pricing. I can just pick. I'm done. I have my profile there. And again, it's about the customer experience. Correct. And, and you know, Bob Musta and I love the interviews that, that he does. Kind of figuring out those struggling moments and the challenges that people have. So to me, a couple of times I make reservations through Orbitz. They're cheaper. You know, instead of going to Marriott directly, orbits and I'm done, I go and I have a horrible experience. I call Orbit. Hey guys, I have a problem. No, we can't help. You need to talk directly to the hotel. Oh, okay. So I saved 20 bucks. But when a problem happened to me, you're not willing to help me. Okay, so I put that as a note in my mind. I took my second international trip a week ago. I flew to Turkey because my family was visiting there. We love Turkey because we gather there. So I'm looking for cheap tickets and oh gosh, airline tickets in the summer are very expensive. So I'm going through the process and finally like, I'm like, okay, maybe I'll go back to, to Orbis. And you know, and I tried to place an order and that day in particular, their site was, was down. So I'm like, oh, I have to actually call. Sort of defeats the whole purpose of having a website, me having to call. Okay, I will call. So I called. Sorry, sir, like, our site is down, but we will send you a link and you can click on it and make the payments. I am. They send me the link, I'm filling. I mean, I have an account with them. I'm filling the information. The lady I'm talking to says something. She's like, oh, by the way, make sure that you fill all your information correctly because if you make any mistake, we're not responsible. So I'm like, oh, hold on. So I'm coming to you because I'm saving a little bit of money, but you're not responsible. So it just gave me a positive. Remind me of that Other experience. Correct. That I've had. Where again, they're not responsible. So I'm like, I'm sorry, I would like to understand, if you're not responsible, why don't I just go directly to the airline sites and buy from them? She's like, because we offer you all these services. I'm like, okay, what are the services? She's like, well, I mean if you run into trouble, we'll help you. I'm like, you just told me you're not responsible. She's like, yeah, we're not responsible. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to go by directly. Why am I saying all this, this story. If you are a hotel chain, you need to understand the messaging. Correct. You need to understand these, the fears that will make somebody stop. Correct. From using a competing like you know, from one of those aggregators. And you need to emphasize that. Now this is away by the way, from how you bring people to your website, but how do you actually play on that emotion? And it's, it's not only playing on that emotion, by the way, dealing with the actual hotel chain is a lot better. Correct. Because they will take care of you. I have a friend who is responsible for a large hotel chain in Dubai and this is, by the way, one of his challenges. He's like, hey, people can buy, it's cheaper. And I'm like, no, your messaging matters a lot. Correct. Play with the messaging, you know, assure people. So that's pre purchase. Make sure that's when people buy that the experience is absolutely amazing. And then use that experience to emphasize to feedback into the messaging. Correct. It's a full circle. Yeah, you can save 20 bucks but when you run into trouble, that 20 bucks is useless. And I assure you at that point in time people are saying, oh, you know what? Yeah, I'd rather it's just like insurance, we don't need it, but when we need it, thank God we have it. Correct. So that to me messaging matters a lot when it comes to hotel chains. Knowing kind of the space and the struggles around that.

Yeah, Khalid, I have also an insight here. So basically if you, if what you're selling can be bought cheaper, then you need to take into account and to understand what are your points of difference. So basically why should I as a consumer, consumer buy. Buy directly. Buy directly from you and those kind of things. If you don't have these kind of things and if you're, let's say demand gen power is not as good as, I don't know, maybe your hotel is on booking.com right. And you understand that you seize, I don't know, 20, 40% of your revenue to them. Still you keep some rooms for your hotel for your direct efforts. Now the whole idea is to understand what can you give to those customers and how can you keep them while they are here. Maybe booking.com was the one that brought you the customer in the first place. But if you do some over delivery to your customers and if you treat them differently, and if you plant the seeds for a future moment when they are going to come, if, if you capture their email address or whatever, then you can start nurturing those customers down the line. And by the way, this is something that you can't do on Amazon, for instance, because if you are a seller on Amazon, then you can't keep the customer information. Yeah, you don't have any kind of customer information. So that's also a trick that you can do over there. It's all about incentivizing them with package inserts, for instance. You can do package inserts, you can collect their, I don't know, you can put something as easy as a QR code and they can get into a contest. But in order to get into a contest, they should say, what's their email address, what's their order number? So in this manner, you can build your own database so that you can have a direct connection with your customers. I think your customer base, it's an undervalued goldmine. And as the customer acquisition costs are going up, it's clear that you need to double down on establishing authentic and valuable relationships with your customers. So that's my 2 cents on your question, Ilias. Hopefully it's useful for you.

It's, by the way, fascinating to me because lots of times, especially in the age of Amazon, lots of retailers, lots of like, you know, we focus on the chain and we focus on the optimization. We focus and we don't recognize and don't realize that our most important asset is our customer database. You know, we have some retailers who we work with, who they're like, oh, Amazon accounts for 40% of our sales. It's like, it is the thing that keeps us alive, but it's also the thing that. Keeping us from real. Exactly. And it's like kind of trying to figure that out. And I'm like, well, you know, eventually, you know, it's good that it sustains you at some point, but at some point you want to walk away. So finding that right balance, it's, it's. I always tell people it's nice, like, you know, sometimes when you're not in that, like, because you step out and you can give advice, but at the same time you have to understand the circumstances that people deal with. But again, like you said, your customers and figuring out ways to get their information and having a long term play is the way to go.

Yeah. Going a bit further, Khalid, what's your suggestion for companies willing to improve customer lifetime value? It's clear that we're all on the same page, both on the same page regarding the customer research and understanding the customers better. But maybe you can tell us how do you suggest making this customer research happen or if you have any other, other ideas that you can share about improving the customer lifetime value?

I do have, like, you know, one thing that we focus a lot on is actual talking to customers. It's as simple as that. We do follow the method that Bob Mista emphasizes and teaches. And I think it's been fascinating to us, kind of like taking some of those insights. But one of the requirements that we have, whether for our team or for companies, by the way, that we work with, is anywhere between five to 10 customer calls per month. And by the way, those five to 10 calls, and I think that's kind of the fascinating part. Lots of times when people do call customer research, I would say that they're forward looking. Oh, you, you made the decision to buy. Oh, how was your experience? Okay, that's fine. And then like, you know, you tell me about your experience, but to me, the more fascinating part to understand, and I think it's not only about optimizing the customer experience, but there's even a second part to it which is finding new revenue opportunities that people have not thought about, is that, hey, so what was going on in your life that day when you decided to make a purchase and then going backwards as opposed to forwards. Correct. Those calls are absolutely fascinating. We got hired by this big SEO company. They wanted us to help them with doing conversion optimization. And we tell them part of our process is, you know, we do customer interviews. Now the guy who founded the company, he, he's a legend. And he looks at me and he's listening to me about customer. And you know, every marketer says that. So he looks at me, he's like, Colette, what were you doing back in 1996 or 97? I'm like, well, I was still a student in college actually. He's like, well, that's when I started doing SEO. I'm like, okay, you know, I mean, I understand. I mean he has a ton more marketing experience than. Than I do. He definitely has, like, all these big brands. And I'm like, well, can we at least try it? He's like, no. So it took us almost two weeks to convince him again. Goes back, by the way, mindsets. But we convinced him at the end, and we do those interviews. And I'm like, hey, do you mind just. He refused to join the interviews. I'm like, I mean, I know you're a CEO and you guys are doing, like, millions of dollars. I'm like, can you listen to the first interview that we did? And they work with big institutions, so they're B2B. I'm like, here. It's about 55 minutes. And he's like, really? I'm gonna sit there, listen for 55 minutes? I'm like, no, you can actually speed it up. So you just listen to, you know, to do the interview quickly. Listens to it. I had sent it to him in the morning. I get an email from him by the end of the day. He said, you know what? I had listened to it three times until now. He's like, this is worth millions of dollars for us. Now, mind you, we didn't do anything amazing. By the way, it's his client, the company that he's working with. Correct. We just said, hey, let's have a conversation with them. Understanding. But. But here, a business owner listen to that conversation. It opened his eyes to so many things on how he can improve his delivery, and it also opened his eyes to other areas of opportunities, revenues that he hasn't focused on. So to me, marketers always say, oh, the customer first. Focus on the customers. Okay, that's fine. It's important. But how do you actually translate that? And the way I translate it is through doing those customer interviews and committing to do those customer interviews. Lots of times when I talk to companies, I tell them, hey, are you talking enough to your customers? You'll be amazed, because we ask them to rank and, like, we do the survey annually. The two biggest problems that I see, you know, we. Well, three different. Three problems. Over 90% of companies say it's a critical problem that they must fix. We don't talk to our customers consistently. Over 90% of companies we talk to, we don't talk enough to our customers. Although, like, if you talk to them, like, oh, yeah, talking to customers is important. We don't talk to enough to our customers. We don't know, like, you know, how to use data to make decisions. The second one and then the third one for the space that we operate in, our development teams are Busy consistently over 90% of the respondents say, yeah, it's a major problem, we need to fix it. Those, those are the problems. So again, like, I can't, I can't emphasize how important that is. And it's not for the lowest level. The higher, the higher you are and the organization, the more important for you to sit and listen to those conversations.

Yeah, in a better world, let's say if we would be having a magic wand, I think the opportunities will be less attractive because in an ideal world, all those companies would be very customer centric and they would be knowing their customers inside out. So I think it's still a lot of opportunity in the space of e commerce and retail, even though many professionals don't recognize it. And I think they are not recognizing it due to the fact that they, they don't know the, or they don't apply the knowledge from the story from Kate Blanchard about who stole my cheese? At this moment, there is no cheese anymore. And everyone is coming there. And then they, they go there and they beg to Facebook the gods of Google Ads and Facebook to deliver that there are ros. Like it was 2020 or 2021, but it's not the case anymore. And those things are important to tackle at this moment because the alternative is to fall into oblivion as there are so many alternatives and the consumers are more empowered than ever. So the ability to switch without losing too much as a consumer is outstanding. So you simply, I don't know, you swipe and then you have 10 other options. You do alt tab and there you go, you have other, other alternatives to buy whatever, whatever you want. So I think how you wrap the product into the experience and how you make sure that you are delivering, you are building basically a mental structure, a memory structure in your, in the customer's brain. That's, that's what matters at, at this moment because product checked, services, delivery, whatever, these are checked already by many of, of the competitors. Now, Khalid, as we're, we're, we're going towards the end of this, this session, tell us a bit about what's exciting for you. I mean, if you look at the future, what excites you the most right now in the space that, that you are.

I mean, what excites me is that nowadays people understand the value of kind of like, you know, the basics and the process. I think lots of the explaining that we used to have to do in the past is, is done and now I think it's a whole Other space for innovation. Correct. It's a whole other way of saying, you know what, Here I can come and help you in so many different ways to grow your business. Lots of times people, you know, come and they say, hey, I want to hire you to improve conversion rates. And I tell them, no, you're hiring us to grow, to grow your business. And to me, coming to a company and saying, oh, let's, let's look at this holistic picture of that company and take them from an X revenue to a different revenue is exciting. It's challenging, it's difficult, but it's rewarding at the same time. Correct. I think one of the areas for us, like, you know, kind of in our journey in growing the business, as I see people have joined us, have been with us now for five, seven years, just kind of seeing how they're focused more on the right data. Like, you know, it's like not, not like an overwhelming amount of data, but the right amount of data to make the right decisions is absolutely, absolutely fascinating. And it excites me to see, okay, where this is going to go. Where are we going? What is next? So I love that. I love the journey.

Yeah, that's, that's also very, very exciting for, for me as well. So, Khalid, any last question that I haven't been inspired enough to, to ask you for this meeting?

No, you've, you've asked all the questions. So I'm super excited, like, you know, that I have joined you because I've been, I've been watching those videos and I'm like, oh, when am I going to get invited? So I, I love chatting with you. I love the videos that you do.

So excellent. Right then, Khalid, if someone wants to, to, to get a hold of you, if they want to follow you, where, where, where they can find you at.

So I hang out in the land of LinkedIn. I'm always on LinkedIn. You know, you can just search for Carlos Sale. You'll find me there. The guy with the black hat. By the way, it's fascinating how much this black hat, like, you know, people now recognize me. Every time I go to a conference, like, oh, the guy with the black hat. I'm like, yes, yes, yes. I hang out at LinkedIn. Otherwise you can check out our website Invest. It's a very strange name. I n v e-s p with a Paul invest CRO.com either or so you'll be able to catch me.

Excellent. Then, Khalid, thanks a lot for being here today with us and thanks everyone for watching and we'll see each other in the next episode. Of course.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon, Sa.