Personalized Gifting
Discover the transformative potential of personalized digital gifting in enhancing customer experience, with insights from Govalo's CEO, Rhian Beutler, on how their platform is leading the charge in this domain
(upbeat music)
- And welcome to our next session with Rian Voitler.
Rian, how are you doing today?
- I'm doing so awesome.
How about you?
- Yes, I'm super excited to talk to you.
I know we talked beforehand and I'm glad that you kind of
found the time for us to chat, really appreciate it.
Let's just go right into it.
So first, I don't want to introduce yourself.
I think you have earned so much.
You've been in the community for so long.
So please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit
about the balla.
- Absolutely.
So my name is Rian Voitler.
I've been building Shopify apps for north of a decade.
I co-founded Ventov, which is a series of apps,
SEO manager, order lookup and clocked in.
I'm the executive chairman or chairperson or chairwoman
over there and I am the CEO and co-founder
of the Co-Volo where we are reinventing
the digital gifting experience,
which just goes to show, I'm old
and have been around for a minute.
- You're not old at all.
Let's, I'm fine with it.
I'm leaning in.
- Let's not, yeah, let's not.
Lean in though, that's a good point.
So let's start, actually let me actually ask,
is it always been in the Shopify ecosystem?
Have you ventured outside the Shopify ecosystem
or has it always been in the Shopify?
- In terms of entrepreneurship,
I have only ever been in the Shopify ecosystem.
So I took a very big bet alongside Josh Highland years
and years ago, Ventov, which was then called New Leaf Labs.
We had to change the name for legal reasons,
was actually mentioned in Shopify's SEC filing.
So yeah, we've, it's been helpful.
- Was it an educated, was it an educated guest
to go with Shopify?
Or was it really just a bet and it just hit?
- So, well, at the time we did some agency work
to supplement our SaaS because we didn't have enough revenue
coming in and we're like, how else can we get revenue?
Service work, which I 10 of 10 don't recommend,
but I'm so glad agencies exist.
So I was doing a lot of service work,
including migrations from Magento and whatever.
And back then it was like legacy solutions.
I remember one was a Yahoo, so much cost,
so much cost.
One was like a Yahoo shopping migration.
Night nightmare fuel.
It's the first and last time I ever saw Yahoo shopping.
And it was as bad as it sounded.
So we were all in on Shopify from the very beginning.
I cut my teeth there, I say, growing up, working in retail.
And it became very evident, then it became a banker
after undergrad.
And it became very evident where the market was heading.
It's as we become more digital, as everybody has a phone,
as, and you and I probably grew up in a time
where we had Nokia bricks in a dream, right?
You were T9 texting, and we couldn't have even imagined
that this is where we would have been by now.
But it was pretty obvious, I think about 10 years ago,
there was no way for retail to move forward
in a meaningful way without making commerce accessible
everywhere.
So.
- I think we got some people just tuning in
because I heard the word T9.
And I haven't heard that word in a very long time.
- But it almost makes me think of like,
I don't know why I'm thinking about this,
but also the game Snake that I played 24/7 on my phone
that I'm pretty sure I was the champion
around the house of.
- Probably, also it was the only game.
- Yes, yeah, I guess it was the only game I could possibly.
- And it was free.
So it was like Minecraft on, or not Minecraft,
minefield, do you remember the minebusting game?
It was not every computer.
- On every computer, yeah, yeah.
I had no idea how to play that until like,
as I got older actually, I was just like,
oh, I just keep that close.
- Yeah, you just keep dying.
That was like, that was like, that was my major way.
- That was the actual game.
- Yeah.
- Okay, so let's move on to the first question I have about
your knowledge about gift cards.
So if I can ask you, if you were to generalize merchants today,
would you say that like, okay, everyone understands
that there is this gift card platform
and most people are utilizing it,
and it's now about like really excelling
and try to figure out different ways
to utilize gift cards in a company?
Or do you think you're still early on
where you have to, your business have to sell
a whole bunch of merchants to just use something
like a wallow as a platform for gift cards?
- We're still selling people on the Y.
And it has a lot to do with the fact that Shopify
is basic function, I love Shopify,
but Shopify's gift card functionality is garbosh,
shall I say, and it has been for a long time.
Recently they rolled out this like kind of customizing feature.
It's still, it's, look, Shopify builds for 80%, right?
That's why apps exist.
We exist to fill things and make things more nuanced,
build for plus customers, build for everybody
and really fine tune and optimize the experience
for the customer for the merchant, right?
How do we get the most data to the merchant?
How do we help give the customer
the best possible experience?
And so, you know, I'm still selling that concept.
Not everyone's bought in.
- Why?
Yeah, why?
In your opinion.
- I think a lot of people, they tried the Shopify,
the native Shopify gift card, and they're like,
"Nah, it's not worth it.
"It doesn't do anything.
"It doesn't sell.
"It's not a good experience."
And they get rid of it.
Or they just don't see the value in it.
They're like, "Well, I tried it.
"I tried it once.
"It didn't work.
"Therefore, I will never try it again."
Like, that's a very common sort of thought process.
- So interesting.
It's so interesting to me because you look at just
the vast amount of larger brands and retailers
and what do they all have in common?
They have gift cards in common.
So like, it's proven,
but you have the smaller merchants that then to your point,
they're like, "Ah, it's just not working out for me."
- Yeah, and then a lot of plus merchants get a little nervous.
There is fraud exposure with gift cards
because it's currency.
So we mitigate that and then we recommend using
fraud filtering apps to mitigate that as well.
And then we have some customers who are massive,
legacy enterprise brands,
who also have had or currently have
Blackhawk integrations and Blackhawk network
is the boss of gift cards.
Like, they are it.
Like, if you walk through Target
and you pick up a gift card,
Blackhawk is powering that gift card.
Almost 100%.
And we actually built an integration with Blackhawk
over to Shopify.
So that way we can support those big enterprise
and legacy merchants coming on over.
So if someone brings like a gift card they got at Target,
they can still enter in the code
and it will work on their website.
- Yeah.
So, and I know you bring up this topic a lot
and I wanna ask you on this session.
It's about the psychology around discounts
and gift cards.
- Yes.
- And so because if you think about it from the discounts,
we just had Black Friday, like discounts everywhere.
But again, gift cards, not as much.
There's certain challenges there.
Like talk to us a little bit about
what your philosophy is around like,
okay, if you're doing a discount,
why not just think about it when you gift card perspective?
- Absolutely.
- And there's two kind of ways to do this, right?
- Co-Sabella, who is one of our merchants,
they sell upscale lingerie.
They were doing, I believe it was a 20% off or something,
but then it was like once you hit $100 in sales,
we're gonna send you a $25 gift card.
So you could also use it as a sweetener.
And that's something we're seeing a lot of people do,
especially around the holidays.
How do we make a good experience
where people expected to discount around holidays?
- It's very uncommon to not give a discount,
unless you are hyper luxury brand
and you're like, I don't ever, you're Hermes,
you just don't put things on sale.
And was it one of those brands?
You're kind of expecting some sort of a deal around BFCM,
all year round, different story.
I have that, that's a whole different conversation.
Do you want BFCM, you kind of expect a discount.
So then how do you get them to come back?
'Cause you get the discount then, right?
- Yep, yep.
- I think sending a discount code for future use is
blah, kind of like everybody does it.
It's not very special, it's not very CX driven.
Whereas here's a gift card for future use.
Also, we have integrations with all the major ESPs,
service providers, and then you can create flows around it.
You can create all sorts of, you know,
you can have really smart data.
Say, oh, I know this person bought XYZ.
Okay, I know they have $25 in their proverbial wallet.
Guess what, people spend on average $40 more
every time they use a gift card
than their base gift card amount.
Target them.
- Yeah. - You just get them in.
- Yeah, like, and I think I just want to call this out
for those listening, like there's been a lot of sessions
today where the common theme at the end of the session
is that we should celebrate our customers more.
- Yes.
- And I'm just like, it's just bridging the gap to like,
well, how can you celebrate your customers more
is something like a wallow and gift cards.
And that's one natural way to do it.
And I know you're just going into it,
but can you tell us a little bit about your integrations,
for example, even with Clavio,
where you can utilize Clavio to do just that,
to celebrate your customers using gift cards.
Do you mind talking to us about that?
- Absolutely.
So we have a Clavio integration and Amisen integration.
Oh my gosh, I'm gonna forget.
We have so many integrations.
We have an integration with Mesa.
I don't know if you're familiar with them.
They help.
So they've been around for a really long time
in the ecosystem as well.
And they're an integrations tool.
So we didn't have to build that integration,
which was really nice.
So through Mesa, who we've integrated with,
they then integrate with Gorgias.
So you can send an app, you can send,
oh, I'm sorry, you're bummed.
You know what?
That was our fault.
Gonna eat it.
I'm not gonna give you star credit.
Store credit and gift cards function the exact same
for all intents and purposes.
One though is like, here's a gift card.
We're sorry versus here, here's a store credit.
We're sorry.
So there's that integration, recharge,
bold, those integrations are for giftable subscriptions.
- Yeah.
- So how, and that, that's a really big retention piece, right?
How do you gift a subscription to someone else
and get all of their information
and keep the giftors information?
How do you segment that out?
Again, go back to Klavio, go back to segmentation tools,
make some really smart data-driven decisions.
So those are kind of, I would say, our most utilized ones.
We're working on some new ones in the new year.
We have an integration with Blackhawk Network,
which super stoked we're the first company ever
to integrate with them over to Shopify.
Not easy, but really glad we did it.
Our kind of goal, right,
is to be the stored value system utilized
by Shopify stores.
And so what the stored value system is,
is it's like, you know those gift cards you see at Target
and it's got like three brands.
And so it's like a house of brands,
where, so we currently support multiple brands,
houses of brands, working in Glommert,
it's a brands where you can get,
they'll give a gift card at, and, you know, a pawn check out
or various different things,
or just for fun for your birthday.
And they can then use that gift card at any of the brands.
- That's really cool.
I haven't heard about that.
- It's very cool, yeah.
Well, we're the only ones doing it.
It's coming out of beta, which is why.
Because you have to make sure,
it has got to be rock solid before you ship that.
So that is kind of bleeding edge where we're going.
And I'm, yeah, I'm super excited.
- And I think one other point to mention about this is that,
you set up these sort of workflows,
and again, I'll just use the Clavio example.
Like you have constant reminders this fall too,
that you can set up, if those that haven't used
certain cards, right?
And you can personalize that as much as you can,
because you have the data around it.
I think that's what's most fascinating is that,
I've heard some merchants are like,
"Oh yeah, we want to celebrate our customers,
but we don't know like what to say or what to do."
And obviously it comes back to data,
but here is a great example of like,
you can automate this entire flow.
Do you have clients that do that?
- Yeah, we do.
And actually with Felix Gray,
they did a A/B testing where you gave a discount code,
I believe it was her birthday,
and a gift card for birthday to see which converted better.
And no surprises probably,
but the gift card converts better in situations like that.
- Yeah, it just for clarity, so I know,
because I really am curious,
is it only virtual or do you actually present
physical gift cards and mail those to clients?
Well, we started this virtual, no, it's not,
it's actually, it's a roadmap question also.
And also touching back really quickly on reminders.
Reminders are critical for gift cards.
People forget that they have them.
I got given a gift card last holiday
and I forgot that I had it.
And then until I saw an email from the company that gave it
to me and I was like,
"Oh yeah, I got a gift card from them last year.
"Where is that?"
- Where is it?
- Yeah, where is it?
It's digital, I never got a reminder.
And that's the thing,
if you want people to come back to your store
and spend more money,
which is kind of like the whole goal of it,
give them a gift card.
Give them a gift card for like within a,
not an affiliate link,
but like, hey, bring your friend,
you know, the normally like, get $10 off.
No, give a $25 gift card.
Why not?
- And as a marketer too,
it's like, I'll just share my experience.
Sometimes you're like, we're emailing them again,
we're emailing them again.
And you almost feel this friction of like, okay,
we've already kind of told them about some announcement,
some announcement, we keep on emailing them
and there's no engagement on it.
But looking at it from a gift card perspective,
you feel like here's value here
and they haven't opened their emails
or they haven't engaged with it yet.
It's important as a marketer that they need to see this
because this is really important.
It's $25 or whatever that is.
And so you feel a little bit better honestly,
intrinsically about getting this message out to them
in a frequent manner.
- Yeah, and you're not just like blasting
in with the boring emails.
You're like, hey, this email is a value at,
this email is a value at,
which is crucial because at some point you're like,
please stop sending me emails.
- So just to clarify,
this is a roadmap question right now
of what direction to go.
- So we right now power true classics gift cards,
which we're super excited about our partnership with them.
- Very cool.
- And we have taken on the challenge
of providing them physical gift cards this holiday season.
- Wow, actually good speaking news.
- Yeah, it is actually breaking news.
My investors are probably like,
and this is the first time we're hearing about this.
So, yeah.
We were doing it, it's going really well.
So we had to iron out,
as with anything, right?
We're still an early stage startup.
So you're still at some point building the plane
while flying it.
You know the drill, you're in startups too.
- Oh yeah.
- Right? And you're like,
and there's always like outlying things
kind of like coming at you.
And you're like, oh, I didn't think of this weird edge case
that why is that an edge case?
I don't know, but apparently now,
anyways, yeah, we're powering two classic gift cards.
- What's the, I mean, we can all make assumptions here,
but what is it about a physical gift card
that is just different than the virtual?
- See, when I founded Gavolom--
- Where is it not?
What I found to give all of my thesis, my thesis in life,
is that physical gift cards are going away.
However, as long as physical retail exists,
which is on the upswing especially experiential,
and also there's certain demographics
that give physical gift cards more.
So the older demographic, boomers, older Gen X,
they give and receive physical
as opposed to millennials and Gen Z,
we're like lawless, we're like whatever, send it to me.
Like we don't care versus we're seeing people
order like four to $150 gift cards.
And like we also, you can see some gift notes sometimes
and it's always like they're so sweet.
They're like, I know you love this store, you know?
And it's like, you're from their mom, love you mom.
It's always so sweet, but it's kind of given us insight
as to who the physical gift card buyer is.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- But down line, we've got some cool stuff cooking.
I mean, including that, we're gonna be partnering
with some three PLs, obviously printing everything
on demand is not a sustainable,
it isn't right, you can't scale like that.
But in the beginning, every startup, what's the rule?
- That's what you do.
- Do things that don't scale.
- Yup.
- Prove your concept.
- Prove the hypothesis, exactly.
- So yeah, we're super stoked about that partnership.
- Yeah, that's cool.
Well, thanks for sharing that.
That's super interesting.
- Yeah.
- Okay, so I asked you this earlier on,
it was like, do you have thoughts around AI?
And you do, so to set the stage there.
But like maybe let me first ask, like,
do you utilize any sort of,
or are you thinking about utilizing these sort of AI
today within Gavalo and its platform?
- So. - Or is that not?
- Gavalo, no.
- No.
- Ventov, yes.
- Okay.
- So at Ventov, SEO manager was actually
the first ever SEO app on Shopify.
And recently we rolled out,
I'm not even sure what version it is, 5.0, I don't know.
Anyways, there's a big challenge.
This is also a CX challenge, right?
You don't wanna direct a customer to your store
and it's a broken page.
And this happens a lot.
It happens a lot in email marketing.
It happens a lot in ad marketing, paid ad marketing.
And so we have a AI driven 404 redirector.
So, yeah.
So it's like, hey, so as long as you toggle it on,
it will just be like, oh, they likely mean this.
- That's fascinating.
That's the first time I've ever heard AI
be utilized like that.
And well, I haven't really dug into the SEO space,
but that makes a lot of sense.
- Yeah.
- And then it helps the merchant
because you never want a consumer to land on a dead page
because it gives Google the signal
that your site is not trustworthy.
And then of course it also gives the customer the signal.
I can't count the amount of times I've clicked an ad
ready to buy and it's like landed me on a 404.
And I'm like, who did this?
I'm always, I normally send a message to the brand saying,
hey, this is a dead link 'cause I feel bad.
They're paying money.
Especially the small, small brands.
You're like, oh, don't you?
- That's so nice of you.
I mean, honestly, it's like when someone has something
on their face and you just don't say anything,
you let that person like,
- Yeah, you have to say,
you gotta say it. - You gotta say it.
- Small businesses, it's like,
we're not, I'm not a billion dollar company.
- Exactly.
- I'm a human.
- That's fascinating.
I actually really like that use case.
I might use that myself over here.
Okay, so then outside of that,
any thoughts and opinions on,
guys, let's just like think about
the entire shop of my ecosystem.
I feel like every week there's another tech company,
either that's like, hey, we've integrated this AI technology
into our current platform and so forth.
When you see that, are you kind of like,
oh, this is probably bullshit.
Or are you excited about that?
- Yes, no, I'm not excited about it.
I, like AI is not new.
Google has been writing the playbook on AI for years, right?
One of my areas of expertise is search.
So I've been hanging out with LLMs and,
and as Google has been building,
I've been following along with their AI progression
and it is wild and right,
I believe it was yesterday or two days ago
or by time of listening, maybe a week ago,
they just released Gemini.
Gemini is gonna smash open AI into the ground,
rest in pieces.
And that's just part of how it goes.
I mean, Altman still gets to be a billionaire.
So like, that's awesome.
But I don't know that I really feel like
we're at the beginning of AI.
And I think everyone's like, this is revolutionary.
This isn't new.
Not yet.
- Okay. - It's fine.
It's a cool tool.
- So, hold on.
I just want to dig in really quick on that.
Like what, so, or maybe just clarify,
you're so bullish on Google over something like open AI,
just because like they have years and years of experience
ahead of something like open AI.
And you, from that perspective, you're like,
they're just gonna take it over.
It's just a matter of time.
- It's just a matter of time.
It's just a matter of time.
I also think that chat GPT,
drive it, right?
It's very formulaic.
You can always really tell if someone's written something
in chat GPT, especially if they haven't really edited it.
It's always a mess.
And if I can tell that with my eyes,
I'll tell you what, Google's Algo can definitely tell.
So I believe there's been this ebb and flow
with search for years, right?
People back in the olden days,
you could put literal white text on sites
to make them rank better.
You could put keyword stuff in tags to make.
You could do all sorts of stuff.
And then Hummingbird came out, I think in 2013.
And that was the beginning of this revolution rank brain,
which was Google's like first of all,
Swayay in AI 2016.
And it has been nothing but up since there.
So they started, they rolled out rank brain really quietly.
And you can see like in the start,
you start looking at like something's going on.
And they use neural matching.
They've been doing this for so long.
I'm not saying open AI is not doing cool things.
I'm just saying I feel like Google has been sitting there
with their hand in their pockets being like,
cute, cute, cute, cute, cute.
OK, did they learn anything?
Interesting, we'll learn from what they've learned.
Also, we have this.
Think of how many searches they have.
I know.
Saved.
It's limitless.
So that's my thought.
Google will own us.
Yeah.
So I want to hear your perspective.
I'm just going to go out.
What about AI chatbots?
Does that frustrate you when brands are like,
it's called just an AI chatbot.
And there's really no human at the end of the day
that you're talking to.
It's also like, is an AI chatbot that different than a regular chatbot?
I don't think so.
I couldn't tell the difference.
They're formulaic.
You're like, oh, here I am talking to a chatbot.
La, maybe in a year, maybe in five years,
maybe it'll be really great and trained up.
But right now, what are you going to do?
Like, how is it?
Yeah.
Is it that you know that you're not talking to a human?
And it's like, come on.
Or is it that you're really not getting an answer that you're--
if you actually got an answer from an AI chatbot,
would that change your perspective of it?
Or is it really like, hey, I want a human to human interaction
here.
I don't want it to be talking to a machine.
And maybe in old fashion, but I want a human to human interaction.
Yeah.
I don't want an AI-- oh, recently, I was at code,
a box conference conference.
And there was a person up on stage talking about their company,
and they have virtual girlfriends and virtual boyfriends
and virtual friends.
And I lean over to my friend.
I was like, this is dystopic.
I hate this timeline.
Get me out of this timeline.
Like, no, no.
I've met you in the front row being like, no.
I was like-- I was behind a reporter,
who was like, you know, febberishly, like, typing.
And I'm just there.
And I'm like, oh my god, why?
Not cool, guys.
So, you know, just because you can-- this is a thing in software,
in general, just because you can build it doesn't mean you should
build it and go read "Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep?"
And just think about that.
I will.
You know?
That's what I think.
Every time people are like, what about this?
I'm like, go, go read this book.
And then I feel like you will be anti-AI.
And I just want to say that, like, as a host, I don't want--
like, I am not one way or the other.
I want to understand people's perspectives.
But I appreciate this because I've heard-- and people here will hear
other sessions, and there are a lot of technology focused individuals--
Yeah.
I mean, obviously, I'm talking to CEOs as well, too.
With technology companies that are like, yes, these AI chat bots will
completely change, revolutionize the entire space.
But you also have to understand everything as a pendulum.
And it's going to swing back and forth, I think, at one point or the other,
where it's like, people want a human to human touch.
At least there will be moments and times that that is sincerely needed.
And I don't think, to your point, people should forget about that.
Right?
And we see this regression or this pendulum swing in other things as well.
So right now, records are becoming increasingly popular.
And that talk about physical media, those things are huge.
Yeah.
And-- but it's a lot of gen-- a lot of gen Z is like, oh, but I don't want to
just endlessly listen to this giant Spotify playlist.
I want to listen to this one thing, and they like the ritual of it all.
And it's also if we think-- I think you should always think about e-commerce
as it-- as physical commerce.
Like, merchandise your store well.
Make sure that you feel welcome.
Make sure it feels good and warm.
And if I go into a store and I had like a little robot greet me,
I'd be like, I hate this and I need to leave.
Versus a person greeting me.
Now, if nobody greets me, I'm angry and I leave also.
Because I'm like-- I guess I'm like a-- like a carer and about that.
Because I'm like, say hi to me!
They're like four of you.
And what of me?
I agree.
Let's go-- this goes-- it goes full circle to like, you're having discussions
about physical gift cards, right?
When you initially were like, ah, like, it's probably all going to be virtual
when you started, right?
And now what comes around goes around and maybe-- maybe this is a good kind of
discussion around, okay, yeah, human interactions.
Like, that's not going to go away.
Yeah, and I don't think so.
We crave it.
I think you're right.
I think you're right.
I think you're right.
Well, what is TikTok, if not that?
That's the next session.
Let's not go there for me.
Well, let's end it right here.
I think we can wrap it up.
Oh my gosh, but you just brought it up.
A really interesting topic.
Reim Poitler, thank you so much for your time here.
And I wish you all the best at the end of the year and movie for the next year.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
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(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)