Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast, some what you
know, those things like, Oh, no one.
'S giving us five stars out of five purely because the the
little joke in the transactional e-mail, like the e-mail
confirmation that went through to them, made them smile.
That was incredible. The VA, we needed them for two
weeks this time, so just to look at those.
And that was a great PR, PR moment for us.
Yeah, there's there's times to not do the kiss and there's.
So, George, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Nick.
Thank you. Nice to be here.
Well. It's great to have you on and as
any of our listeners will know, my first question to every
single guest we ever get on here is tell us a little bit about
yourself, George, and also about Snuffling Pig where you are the
Head of marketing. That's right.
Yes. Well, again, thanks for having
me. So yeah, my name is George
Wells. I have been in marketing for a
good 20 odd years now, but I have been with Snuffing Pig as
head of marketing for the last about five years.
I joined from a a big, big, big hairy marketing agency, well
known one in the middle of in the middle of London and felt, I
kind of felt it just felt a bit sort of, I felt it was a bit
soulless in a way and and not sort of rewarding.
And this opportunity at Snaffling Pig, which is this
kind of plucky start up snack brand, I'm doing something a
little bit different and full of character, full of great
personalities. This opportunity came up and I
felt instantly at home there and I've kind of never looked back.
Just been loving, loving working for the brand and really sort of
feeling very much part of it. So yeah, it's, it's been a, it's
been a roller coaster. Yeah, well, that's good.
And it's somebody who runs their own agency.
I can vouch that I used to have all these aspirations of having
like 1000 staff and being the best in the world and all this.
I don't want any of that now. I actually quite like the fact
we're small, we're nimble, we're growing slowly and steadily.
And as you say, still got that soul.
And I think it's the same for any organization, whether it's
an agency or or brand. But I think obviously you're
working within a company now where you've got quite a lot of
control, I imagine actually over marketing in the direction.
And it's probably people you still have to report into and
get approval from. But it's like one or two, not a,
you know, prove it with. So everybody accepts that it's
no one's fault if it goes wrong. Yeah, well, there's also nowhere
to hide. I mean, again, sort of
reflecting back on as I've worked clients client side and
agency side over the years sort of for big and small companies.
And I really found my sweet spot with a for exactly those reasons
you just mentioned it, just being able to everyone's kind of
honest and on it and there's nowhere to hide.
And I, you know, I was attracted to work at my previous role to
work on some really sort of big, shiny, sexy brands like
Coca-Cola and PlayStation and, you know, all of these really
cool places, cool, cool brands to work for.
But you were just, I was just lost in a Galaxy of 1000 other
people working on that account and, and, and just, you felt you
had no real impact. So to go from that and then to
go to actually a really genuinely interesting brand
products and work for a great team and and actually feel that
what you are doing and the decisions you are making are
actually having a direct impact for better or worse on on that
on that brand. So you really kind of get, well,
I personally get a lot of buzz at fat.
So yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
And as I say, I think it's nice to be able to get hands on to
something, actually put your heart and soul into it rather
than as you say, it's certainly the more corporate clients we'd
work with. It's like you're just pushing
paper around. And I, I, I do find that like
this, and I've said this a few times on the show, there is this
kind of, I would say kind of like mutual moan between small,
little nimble brands and big corporate heavyweight brands.
The big brands are like, oh, there's all these tiny companies
popping up out of nowhere with no stability, no proper
marketing strategy and they're eating into our market.
Plus you get the small guys going, Oh, I've only weird the
budget of Amazon like, and you're kind of going and I kind
of said there's a, there's a flip side to all of that.
You are the big corporate machine.
Like you do one small thing really well, no one can touch
you. Whereas if you're the small
nimble brand, you can change your whole strategy in like 24
hours and really impress customers.
And actually, if you hit the headlines, it terrifies the big
companies. Sometimes it terrifies them into
making a mistake as well, which actually gives you a bit more
market share. Or you can offer something and
enter a space that they don't want to be in.
And then then you can start to become your own corporate one
day as well and starts growing. So that's basically if that's if
that's what you want and but tell us what the brand actually
sell. Like what do you guys actually
have on the store? Like what are the products?
So snuffing pig is essentially an indulgence brand.
It is a, it is a snack brand, primarily an ad.
It's very core. It's, it's taken the pork, the
humble pork scratching and, and brought it kicking and screaming
from the 70s into the, into the, into the 21st century.
And it was essentially started by our founder Nick Coleman.
And he, he's, it is a, it's a, it is, it is a very emotive
product. It is a product that gets people
talking. We know as a, as a product, a
pork scratching or pork crackling is, is not everyone's
cup of tea. And we're OK with that.
You know, we're, you know, we're, we're not the healthiest
brand. We're not certainly not vegan
and you know, honestly with, you know, our sort of our carbon
footprint's probably not as as good as, as other, as other
brands and other products out there.
But what we are is we're honest and we're humble and we all
about getting people talking and bringing people together.
The emotive side of it is, is really sort of harking back to
sort of simpler times, as it were, but again, adding a bit of
sort of 21st century humour and, and colour and as and, and, and
fun into it and bring it to a whole new audience.
So yeah, that's, that's kind of the ethos of the brand.
The product itself is essentially flavoured pork
crackling. It's available in pubs, it's
available in supermarkets, but it's also gift able as well.
So you'll find it in your, you know, your gift shops, your John
Lewis's and your, your Selfridges and of course online
on Shopify, funnily enough, so. Good, good.
Absolutely. And I don't know if I've shown
you actually, but I am actually wearing our new shop Winning
with Shopify T-shirt, which will be available on a Shopify store
soon. Yeah, one of my colleagues was
running around wearing this last week.
And but no, just just to just to comment on the product.
And I think it's a really interesting product.
As you say, it's literally, it's being dragged out the 70s.
It's the kind of thing where you'd get a beer at a pub in
England or in the UK somewhere and you'd get either some pork
scratches or some crisps. Crisps if you want the slightly
healthier, lighter option. Pork scratches if you're
hardcore, but they're not good for you.
I I'm a massive fan, but they're not good for you.
It's yeah, it's true. It's true.
I mean, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we always think that,
yeah, you can get like crisps in a meal deal and everything, but
who wants that when you're, you know, once a week as it is an
indulgence. And it's not something that we
would recommend eating every day, but it is an indulgence.
It's not part of the five a day, is it?
No, it's about embellishing those moments that you do have,
those rare moments where you do get to catch up with your mates,
be it down the pub or in the cafe or, or wherever it is or
the picnic, whatever. And you just kind of, but it
gets you talking, it gets you smiling.
So no, exactly, exactly that. It's just that kind of to
celebrate those, those those joyous moments in life where
we're just connecting with people.
Absolutely, absolutely. And this isn't a question I've
got written down, but you've mentioned it and I know my
listeners will probably want to know this.
And the context of this question really is I and lots of others
have been on a mission for many years now to try and make
websites, specifically e-commerce sites look less like
an Amazon marketplace and more like a brand.
And I think the really the really hard bit of this, and I
say hard, it's strategically in terms of like a tactic, it's not
hard, but deployment is really difficult.
And that's springing as you say that emotive side into this of
how do you bring that kind of 21st century branding, make it
fun. You mentioned like John Lewis,
which if I said to my wife, which I'm going to when I get
home to see what she says today, you know, like honey, did you
know you can buy these lovely premium gifting pork scratchings
in John Lewis? And for all of our American
listeners, I don't think you've got John Lewis in the US, but
it's like it's one of the more premium retailers in the UK.
So they have their own brand, but they mostly sell the brands.
It's all quite expensive, but they always have like a bit of a
price match thing going on. It's always extended warranty,
the customer service and the stores and the quality of
product is always incredibly high, which is the reason I'm
saying that as well as it's completely counter actually to
getting that product in a pub. So I guess a big question,
George, I know it's like this is almost like the secret sauce of
any business. How do you bring across that
emotive It's an indulgent product, it's fun, it's 21st
century branding. It's not the back shelf of a pub
covered in dust behind beer barrels anymore.
How do you bring that across in pixels on a web page?
Well, it's interesting. First of all, the we, we try
our, I guess our roots and our soul is, is the pub, right.
So that's where that's like the mothership, if you like, in
terms of the experience and the, the, you know, trying to invoke
that kind of emotional side of things.
So it's kind of that sort of sense of humour as well that we,
we, we absolutely try to inject in every customer touch point to
be on the packaging with the bright, bold colours right down
to the copy on the back. The it's kind of like a cheeky
the tone of voice is often described as more easily sort of
identified as sort of cheeky early to mid 90s schoolboy sort
of playground humour, but less but not in a kind of a bold
that. Is my era.
Yeah, well, that's that's me. I still am, but it it's not so,
you know, almost naff. In fact, the fact that I've used
the word naff is also. It's we need, we need our
marketing and branding to be naff guys, yeah.
I mean, kind of, but we, yeah. But even the word naff is just
oh, good. Yeah, I mean, even that just
dates me as well. But it's kind of it's it's a
throwback. So again, it's all that kind of
nostalgia piece. So whether it's on the
packaging, whether it's on our gift boxes, and when you find it
in John Lewis, it's important that it's recognised that it's
clear that it's a premium brand. It's not a cheap, there are
cheaper alternatives out there and there are sort of options
that you can get if you just want a plain, if you're a die
hard pork scratching fan, you probably won't be coming to us.
But if you're someone who's like, oh, I remember those and
actually this is fun. That's that's where we play.
So and how we communicate on the website And in fact, every
digital touch point, every every sort of line of communication we
have with our customers, we make sure that that that tone of
voice and generally that attitude is, is sort of come
across. It's got to be fun.
Otherwise, what's the point? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And it reminds me actually quite, quite a lot of brands.
And ironically, they're all like vegan health brands as opposed
to your brand. But I, I love that you're always
trying to play in that same space, but with a, an
alternative product to the, you know, like I'm thinking oat
milk, for example. The amount of oat milk brands
when you read the back and it's like, hey, what do you mean no
cow? And and it like it uses quite
very conversational branding and content in that.
Certainly. I mean, I'm thinking, thinking
back, there's at least I won't mention them on the show today
still make you guys, but there's at least two other pork
scratching brands I remember. And again, I mentioned earlier,
like back of the pub covered in dust.
That's how I think about the product.
When almost when you say to a bar, you know, the bartender
these days and say, like, Oh, can I have a packet of pork
scratchings? They're like some what?
And like those things like, Oh, no one's ever bought those
before. It's like.
It's literally. When I was a kid at the pub.
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I remember going with
with dads and it was like, you can have a lemonade Nick, but
you can also help yourself to these.
And I'd be like, wow, that's so salty, dad and all this and
like, but I was like, I'm an adult now eating adult food.
And it's, it's funny, that's. How I remember them.
It's funny to say that our Co founder, sorry, our founder Nick
also he essentially that's what he's based.
That was the dream of the business.
And he he the only difference between that story and and yours
is that he had a pint of Coke and he was, but he had the pork
scratchings. He said the same thing.
He felt like a. Coke is fuzz.
Well behaved that week, I think. Oh, OK.
Otherwise it was lemonade. Yeah.
Other, other KOLA brands are
available, yeah. Yeah.
And say, I guess like I love your answers that by the way.
I think it's a really good way of looking at the brand and
going, OK, what actually resonates with customers?
I'm going to ask you a really, really hard question now.
How do you track if the branding is working?
Like how do you know? Then you make a change to the
content, you change the colour, you update it or refresh.
How do you, rather than just looking at bottom line and going
when it went up, So it must have been a success, which quite
frankly, I know a lot of big corporate brands and agencies
would just look at that. How do people like you and I
actually get more into the detail, like what do you guys
look at to go? Are we resonating with our
customers at the moment? Well, I would argue it's
probably easier for a larger brand to do that, who have the
resources and the dedicated teams and, and analysts to, to,
to do that. We, we, we don't have that.
We're just, we're just, we're a small plucky brand.
We don't have that available to us.
But we do, of course, test and learn and look at content all
the time. The way I say it is, it's, it's,
it might be boring or it might be time consuming, but we sort
of boring in terms of a response, not in terms of what
we do is we just speak to our customers and we speak to them
on a daily basis through our customers.
And so we get all kinds of, we, we monitor feedback right across
the web and it's all qualitative feedback.
And the joy that we get from customers who you'll look on our
Trustpilot scores. And I'd say 20% of them are
referring to the giving us five stars out of five purely because
the, the little joke in the transactional e-mail, like the
e-mail confirmation that went through to them made them smile
or the subject line of an e-mail made them smile or, or some,
some comment we made on face. It's, that's the bits that are
telling us that it is working. And when you look at those
customers specifically when you dig down into the data, So
what's that profile? You know, they're customers that
have come back to us two, 3-4 times.
So really it's just, we've also seen our customer satisfaction
scores grow over the past sort of four to five years.
We've been, you know, we were on around sort of when you look at
the Trustpilot scores, we were around sort of three, 2 1/2,
three out of five at one point when we first started.
And then, you know, now we're kind of 4.54 point 6, I think
last time we checked. So, you know, just just that and
it and it's the the touch points that are are really sort of
helping, helping drive that. Yeah, I love that.
And we had a client recently that basically said to us like
how can we hear from customers without talking to them?
Just as a quick, what have we got?
And you mentioned reviews and reviews are such a powerful
place to do that. I think 1 issue I found is
sometimes I don't know if no one's got the attention span of
me, which is like I, I aspire to have the attention span of a
fish. At times I look at like 3
comments and trust I go, I've seen enough.
Like I know exactly what I'm doing.
We actually got for a client, we got Ava just a virtual assistant
on board for like a week. They weren't based in the UK,
costs weren't astronomical at all.
And we just said to them like, look, we've got 2000 reviews.
We want you to on every single review, just get a spreadsheet
and add a new column for a new thing.
If they spoke about delivery and no one else had add delivery in
a column. And then just, you know, tally
up how many people have mentioned good delivery, bad
delivery and just tally up kind of, you know, red crosses, green
ticks. And we use that just to create
some quantitative feedback. And one of the things we noticed
actually is about 20% of the reviews just said like, great
product, great service, it arrived on time.
Thanks guys. Five stars.
And it's like, that's cool. But actually we weren't getting
enough from those guys. So we went to Trustpilot.
We got a really good partnership with them here and we went to
them and said, can we adjust the emails to try and incentivize
them to do something else. So then we started trying to
get, we, I mean, we managed to get 5% of customers to actually
upload a picture of the product. That was incredible. the VA, we
needed them for two weeks this time.
So just to look at those to then tally up like, you know, what
room was it in? What color was the carpet?
Was it a well lit room, a bad lit room?
Were they using it for what seems like the products intended
use here or not? Obviously different food and
drink because I mean going to take a selfie or somebody'd
mouth like that's not a good, that's not a good look, but.
We've seen some, we've seen some pictures in our time.
I can tell you. I'll tell you about one of those
in a minute. But yeah.
It's always when the waiter comes over to the table, isn't
it? And how's your food?
And you've just put a mouthful and you just, it's the kind of
response to the waiter. Yeah, that's, that's a real
gripe of mine when that happens. Like I'm, I'm a grumpy kid.
Yeah. So that kind of thing.
I know I now I've worked out a trick just make I contact with
other people on the table and go like has anyone has anyone not
got a mouth full of food? Otherwise just thumbs up.
Good. But yeah, we got them to then
look at those and we tried to incentivize people who,
especially if they reach out to customer service.
We, we then said, if and if we've resolved your query, could
you leave us a review, please? And then they said, oh, these
guys, customer service is amazing.
And then it went, OK, let's put great customer service on the
site. We did that on an AB test.
Revenue went up slightly. Then we went, how do we really
bring that to life? Like do we use live chat?
Do we say like 9:00 to 5:00? We guarantee to reply within a
minute. Like we put that on the little
speech bubble, like get, you know, guaranteed one minute
reply or 20% off. Those are your options.
And it was like we never gave a 20% off because somebody in the
team was always around. And what the owner did is his
customer service team. He had 20 people in the team.
He said to them all like, look, I'm giving you all an extra 5%
salary if you install, if you let us connect to your WhatsApp.
So even if you're making a coffee or something, just get
back to that first message as fast as possible.
Even if it's a thanks for your query.
It's going to take me a few minutes to look into this, but
I'm on this. Regards Dave.
You know, like even if Dave's actually on the loo or making a
coffee or he's nipped out for a vape or something, like there's
something then going on. So you got that response.
But we realized that customer service was so important to the
product because people wanted to ask questions by merchants.
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But go on, you've seen some things.
What was what was the most memorable thing that you've been
sent by a customer or seen on social?
We've got some, I mean one of the wonderful things about our
customers is that they are, they are very loyal and they are very
passionate about, about their products.
And so they will equally, they'll tell us as soon as they,
you know, in no uncertain terms if they're unhappy, which is
absolutely great because that's what we want to hear from them.
You'd rather know. But also, but also they act
proactively, tell us when something was great.
And I, I, it gets me thinking, I can't remember the last time I
actually just told a brand. Thanks for this.
I think unless they've gone above and beyond and tried to,
you know, but, but, but someone who, who anyway, they, they,
they send in stuff about them enjoying their products.
And we've had so in our advent calendars, we have these sort of
smaller packets. Obviously they've got to be
small because they've got to fit in the, the little advent doors.
But one one was such a die hard fan of these these products that
he he ordered, he wanted them ordered by the case.
So not not about the advent. He just wanted lots and lots of
little packets of this crackling.
And OK, fine. So we sorted that out for him.
And then, you know, he took a picture really, which was was
both disturbing and hilarious at the same time.
Just completely stark naked. But just the only thing, the
only thing covering his his dignity was.
I don't mean to insult him, it was a small packet of crackling,
but you know all I'm saying. It was the only thing that was
covering his dignity. And God love him, it was.
It was one of the most wonderful sort of, you know, spill your,
spill your coffee out, you know, these moments where you're like.
OK. As Head of Marketing, your work
here is done, George, and you've made it.
It would have been lovely on social media.
Yeah, I thought that's. Not no.
Yeah, there's a line, isn't there?
There's. A line, I think that's private.
Private use only, not. Yeah, it was private use, just
to be clear. We did.
We did have a client recently actually did a feedback survey
and the owners were like in two minds about this one mind.
They were like, it's good that we know that it's basically ad
female adult performers are our only target audience.
We thought we were sending stuff out for like, you know, a wife
to impress her husband in bed and whatever.
Actually it was adult performers and whatever else.
So they changed their photography to reflect that and
sales went up through the roof. And it was like, from a moral
perspective, I, I did have to kind of spend 5 minutes at home
that night just thinking like, is this something we want to
really help with? Do I even like this industry?
But it was I think it was just the the better you know that
that was their whole customer base.
Hopefully what you got was just one customer having a laugh.
But it but then you when you were saying about like you last
time you went over and above to like reach out to Brad say that
was just great guys who who thinks to go to know what naked
selfie Let's go. This all to the.
Brand. Yeah, I mean, a trust pilot
review would have been lovely. You know, give us a 5 out of
five, But you know, anyway, some they say, they say feedback's a
gift, don't they? So there's.
So many jokes I could make, but I won't.
We'll move on. We'll move on.
I appreciate that we've all we've all had stories like that
for sure. I mean talking, talking about
the brand and the evolution then like in in the early days and
certainly I mean you said, I think it's five years you've
said you've been there, haven't you?
So in the earlier days, like what, what were some of the key
challenges you guys had to overcome?
Like what were some of the things that you knew and had to
deal with? What were some of the things you
eventually found out were kind of didn't know initially?
Like what were some of those early hurdles?
Well, I guess early, early in my time at at snaffling Pig it, it
wasn't long after that that COVID hit.
So obviously that was a big, that was a big challenge in in
many ways. But I think because we are, and
initially, you know, we, we are a pub snack brand essentially.
And then when all the pubs closed, that was that was both
unexpected, unprecedented and all those other and.
Shops as well. Your shop supermarkets as well,
who were also a big part, you know, so you had like some Tesco
and Sainsbury's who were unable to, to, to sell our stock and,
and, or, or to, you know, there were backlogs and all kinds of
stuff. So all that stuff which we don't
need to necessarily go into again, but it was, it was a
challenge, but it was actually Shopify that came to the rescue
for us in terms of we already had that and it was well
established. We've had Shopify for, you know,
for like 9-10 years now. So early, early adopters of it.
So our D to C has always been very strong.
So while those parts of the businesses sort of stumbled or,
or, or or shut down for a period of time, you know, everything
kind of went all Shopify really. So I think my, my advice would
be that don't put all your eggs in, in one basket and 1 channel
if, if at all possible. And snaffling pig is fortunately
a brand that can kind of, it's been designed to sort of span
everything from gifting to FMCG to, you know, to say, to, to pub
snacks and to to fitness snacks as well.
So it's kind of it's it's de risks in that kind of way.
So I'd say if, wherever possible that you if you can be multi
channel and you can definitely use online as your call if you
can. So you have most control.
But yeah, I think just kind of keep, keep, keep keep spreading
risk in, in that respect, because it means that you can
keep going beyond any, any hurdles in the in the road that,
you know, it doesn't even have to be as big as COVID.
It can be, it can be anything that comes up.
It just means that you can kind of, yeah, de risk.
Yeah. And I think one of the most
stressful things, like, I mean, I run my own business here, it's
it's the stuff that you can't control.
Like when I think COVID was the, I don't say the only time, but
one of the times I started using the phrase like, we're really
lucky. Like I've always taken the
approach, like, you make your own luck.
Like you work really hard, you make connections and oh, look,
magic, the phone's ringing. Someone goes, oh, I met you.
You left a good impression on me.
And I know someone who needs your help.
So here's an opportunity for you.
And the phone rings. But I do think during COVID, it
was one of the only times I've actually said like we were lucky
to be in a digital space. And as you say, brands like
yourself were like suddenly obviously not work with you
guys, but brands like yourselves were like, well, we need to, we
need to go so much harder online now and go hard digitally.
And we actually quite a few clients that were working on web
migrations or Shopify theme rebuilds, we actually said like,
look, March COVID hit. So let's wait until after
December, after peak, if peak, if peak was Christmas for that
particular brand, wait till after that to launch anything.
We just optimize the hell out of everything we've got right now
and just go for it because we launched a new site and
conversion drops, it's going to have a massive impact.
But I think I really, I really appreciate what you're saying
actually about de risking. There's a brand we're talking to
at the moment about potentially working with which they're
really well known for all their kind of heaters and other stuff,
which is good for the winter. But all their air conditioners
and coolers, well, they're good for summer and they're not very
well known for that. But that is part of their new
three-year plan to start that, as you say, de risking process.
And I think it's, it's certainly a good move.
And I used to run my own sunglasses brand and guess what,
8 months of the year, no one was buying sunglasses.
Well, hardly anyone was buying sunglasses.
So we basically just put the whole business on pause and
suddenly it was like, oh, sun's out today, turn Google ads on.
And that was then, you know, kind of start selling stuff,
but. It's true.
I mean, and actually, funnily enough, you know, we've spoke
about the Advent calendar and obviously that's, that's, that's
how we, we got famous because we're on, we're on Dragon's Den
and we won investment on Dragon's Den about 8-9 years ago
now. And that was a great PR PR
moment for us. Yeah, it's kind of it's money
comp by PR basically. He just, it was just fantastic.
And, and we're still kind of riding on the, the coattails of
that. Essentially people know us.
And there's this long tale of those kind of videos because
some, some guy on YouTube is now making a lot of money out of the
kind of these. He was one of the first to
upload like the best of clips And and he's making a lot of
money out of the Snapping Pig brand, which is, you know,
that's yeah, early Kudos to fair enough.
Yeah, he's the. Git, the little git, but no, but
it's good. But yeah, so it's kind of long
term, but actually it helps us as well because it's it's you
know, it's it's on there quite, quite regularly.
But so the advent Canada was is what we were kind of we were
famous for. It was our kind of, it was thing
that gets people talking the most.
Obviously very seasonal. So we're thinking, well, you
know, people go on holiday in the summer.
They're probably not, yeah, they might go to the pub and have a
bag of crackling or a bag of scratchings.
But you know, if as an indulgent snack it, it tends to lend
itself more to the autumn, winter and Christmas sort of
periods. So we thought what any other
snack brand should do is, well, we'll sell barbecues then.
So we still, we've branded Kamado barbecues.
So kind of like there's another brand out there which is green
and there's, there's there are various Komodo type brands out
there which are like the leading sort of market competitors.
We, we created our own, we branded our own and actually we
got some fantastic reviews and we went head to head against
them in like the market leader in in reviews by the
independent. And we actually came out as a
much better value option than actually just goes, goes toe to
toe with the competitor, something that we don't even
specialized in. But again, that was us sort of
de risking and also trying to kind of iron out some of the
lumps and bumps of the year where you're just like where the
more kind of quiet moments. We've got other things where,
OK, there's other bits that can kind of keep going.
And the BBQ was still is still going good gums.
So it's it's I'm pretty sure we're the only company in the
world that sell snacks, advent calendars and barbecues.
Is a very random mix. Yeah.
But it kind of, yeah, it works. Yeah, it does.
It works. And that's, that's part of the
silliness of the brand which we which we love so.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean a couple more
questions then I think we've got time for at least at least two
more. One of them is about customer
retention. Obviously, we spoke a lot about
brand, about DE risking products, about having a good
range of products without actually I mean, barbecues and
avid cannons. You've not deviated from pork
scratchings really. You've evolved into other spaces
and I think it's a good way to do it.
But how do you guys retain customers?
Like do people just love the product?
Do you do some really smart e-mail?
Is it so short? Is it the jokes on the back, as
you say? Like, is it that you've created
a community behind it? Like might be a mix of all those
things, but yeah. Tell us it is it is a mix of all
those things. I don't think so.
We see social media very much. We are not content creators.
We don't you know, we're a small leading team.
We focus on selling a good product and and good customer
service. So social media for us, it's in,
in and of itself it's fine. But we use it very much as more
of a channel, another channel just to talk with our customers
directly. And actually it's the kind of
offline or the kind of the private messages, the sliding
into the DMS bit, which is where the pig and magic happens as it
were. We are very much it's, it's
with, it's conversational. So we take that conversation
approach through our emails, through our website, for our
online chat, through our social media, through Trustpilot
reviews. People can get in touch, they
can just say the word and we'll get, we'll end up getting in
touch with them and then we'll have a proper conversation with
them as humans. That's why.
And, and as I said before, the, you know, the, the customer
satisfaction has, has, has gone, you know, through the roof.
And I truly believe that's why people come back to us.
It's yes, they love the product and they think it's a fun
product and a fun experience. But if you can make you see
here, The thing is, our website is primarily a gift, a gifting
website. And we believe that, and this
is, this is true. We believe that buying a gift
should be as fun as receiving one.
In fact, I'd argue actually, I, I find buying gifts more fun
than receiving. I hate receiving gifts.
But if you can buy a gift and make the person who's bought the
gift feel good about buying that gift, that's the, that's the
sweet spot. So that's why in the transaction
emails, we make it, we celebrate the fact they've got this and
they've done this, you know, they've, they've done a good
thing for their mate or their husband or their wife or
whatever. And yeah, we kind of, we
celebrate that. So we really believe that kind
of experience has been key to key to attention.
But yes, we use Clavio, we use, we use Gorgeous as well.
Shout out to those guys as well. The Gorgeous app is is.
Fantastic. Yeah, they've sponsored the
podcast before as well. We love gorgeous.
Yeah, yeah. No, they, they're really, you
know, they've been as a tool, it's just, it's just incredible.
And yeah. So we just use a mix and
everything, just make sure that everything, everything kind of
works and things together. We sync everything we can, any
kind of data points we can sync and make sure that it's all
available and across all touch points.
But it's, yeah, essentially it's just, it's making sure the
conversation keeps happening. Just talk to the customers you
know. Doesn't have to be fancy.
Yeah, and I think just just add on the point about gorgeous as
well. We we had them on a year or so
ago, but they sponsored I think 3 or 4 times the show and
they've been on quite a lot. So if anyone listening is like
what on earth is gorgeous? It's GORGIAS and I think it's
dot IO be a gorgeous is it's such a good tool because you're
probably using it for exactly the same thing, George.
You can connect up like literally everything customer
sends an e-mail Adm on Facebook Messenger Instagram, TikTok yeah
whether they send you a WhatsApp as an SMS even if they phone up
gorgeous can know about all of that it has AI you can have pre
written responses. One point I would make about it
is, and in a way I think to use it really effectively is I read
a study a couple of weeks ago when I was sitting on the train
just browsing LinkedIn, study popped up of how to nail
customer service. And one of the things it said is
even if you have say the customer, there's 8 messages in
this thread with a customer. Even if eight different people
in your team reply keep the same name.
Because one of the things that customers hate is when it's
like, oh, Sam's messaged me and you go customer, especially when
the customer goes, hi Sam, thanks for that.
Can I ask then about this or when's it going to arrive,
whatever the question is. And then Janet responds and
you're like, oh, sorry, I was talking to Sam.
I'll hi Janet. And then Wahid comes back next.
You're like, oh, now I'm talking to Wahid and I was talking to
Janet and before that he was like, it's a mess.
Even if it's different people, gorgeous.
You could put the same signature, can't you, for that
customer just to say regards Sam.
So you're like Sam at snuffling pig.
He sorts me out. He knows exactly what I need to
do and I talk to him all the time.
Yeah, exactly. And I, I just keep it, Yeah, we
just sign it off Team SP like team snapping pig, and we sign
off with a kiss and it's done. And they just know that it's the
same. Signing up for the kiss is nice
touch as well. Yeah, definitely.
Part of the person, yeah, there's there's times to not do
the kiss and there's but but the guy with the.
Product put me in hospital. Hope it goes well.
Kiss. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, the guy, the guy with the the Advent packet covering his
dignity, he he got a couple of kisses.
So yeah, he's OK. Yeah, God forbid what he'll send
back next. Cool.
And the last question, which you kind of started to cover a
little bit anyway, I was going to say, what are some of the
apps you can't live without? You mentioned Clavio, of course
we want to, we want to know Clavio.
Our shout outs to Guno because they are our sponsor and I
genuinely believe they're better and I like, I prefer to them, to
the Guno than I use Clavio. But Clavio is a very popular
tool and it does work very well. Obviously gorgeous.
What other apps could you guys not live without on your Shopify
store? Recharge for subscriptions for
sure, smaller lesser known one perhaps, but it's orderly.
Check those out. So they're very simple, like a
really lovely, again, I've spoken a lot about customizing
transactional messages or any kind of form of communication,
but it just it what it does is it just enables you just to take
the Shopify standard template and actually just make it a bit
more fun and engaging. And that's been absolutely key.
Yeah, absolutely. Because.
Those messages can be very dry as well.
I mean, we're talking too much today.
But yeah, just just to make a point, you can be so dry.
Like your order is confirmed and then you get a delivery
notification from the brand, followed by one from the
delivery company, followed by one from the local Courier.
And you're like, who's got the package?
And that's and that's something, yeah.
And I think, you know, to your point earlier about sort of
Amazon, if you want the kind of the dry utilitarian approach
show with Amazon, that's fine. If you're an Amazon Prime
customer, you're not expecting any love, that's fine.
But that's where we have a point of difference.
And, and, and those kind of apps it gorgeous or, or Clavio or, or
or orderly or any of these kind of little apps, big and small.
Some are free, some are expensive.
Some. Yeah.
But that all I, I, I choose which ones to use based on, OK,
will it add, will it sprinkle some of that love for the
customer? And that might sound a bit
cheesy, but doesn't mean that they'll get oh, I like that
they'll get a little kick out of it.
And if if the customer sees it, let's do it, great.
Cool. No, I absolutely love that.
And I think I mean, certainly as someone who works in SEO, first
thing we do on on page speed on on Shopify is go like, right,
let's have a look on Google Chrome, inspect what bits of
JavaScript are firing. Oh, look, 45% of your JavaScript
is failing. I wonder what apps you've got
and you go in the apps in the back.
And I mean, we found one for a client.
I, I it's called James. I know you listen to podcast,
James. Hello.
But we flagged it to you last week, James, about page speed.
And actually these guys had an app that like puts a countdown
on when a sale is ending, but they don't do sales very often.
But the app's always running. So it's always in the page load
and that adds like nought .7 seconds and like 2 seconds is
the target. So it's literally something we
don't use. So that and we also say to
people as well things like Hot Jar, Microsoft Clarity, like to
monitor how people are using the pages.
And I would recommend Microsoft Clarity of a hot Jar.
I love hot jar. You have to pay for it.
Microsoft Clarity is better and it's free as you say like some
of them are and but only run that when you're going to look
at the reports the rest of the time turn it off because it does
Mics of clarity seems to have a much lower page load than than
hot job. But yeah, certainly mics of
clarity, everybody use that. I'm a massive advocate of that
tool and also like Bing is growing so like Microsoft,
you've got Bing there as well so get get involved in the suite of
things. There are some good
opportunities on there but equally mics of clarity don't
have it running on your site all the time.
Just put it on maybe like two days a month or something,
monitor what's going on, take it back off, keep that page, be
nice and quick. And also like if you look at
your sales data, if you know, on the 9th and 10th of the month,
you're miles from payday, so no one's buying anything or
actually AUS brand. So you've got kind of two
paydays going on every month. Yeah, look at when it's at its
lowest and turn it on those two days when it's going to have
less impact. And ideally early in the low
impact, say Google's got time to go.
Oh yeah, the pages get faster again, so you can see what's
going on. But I certainly, yeah, there's
so many. You guys probably do do it.
I'm afraid everybody seems to do it.
But it's like, oh, there's an app for that.
Add that. Oh, there's an app for that.
Add that. And next thing you know it's
like and if you can have one app, it does 5 things like like
Gorgeous does that covers like 5 bases from live chat to all your
social. Use that one in as many places
as possible, because then it's one app that's loading.
Every every app adds a little bit of code onto the site and it
just slows it down a little bit. And to be honest, I do need to
get onto the snafu pig one to clean up some code because it's
it's probably a bit like a Petri dish of of code at the moment.
So maybe, maybe I'll give you a shout after this.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely fine. And the last tip, I'll give you,
George and everybody listening as well as if you put all your
analytics and tracking tools into Google Tag Manager, you
load one code then fires off to all the other places rather than
you're loading like Pixel from Pixel and you're loading Google
Analytics from Google Analytics. And then even Google Analytics
and Google Ads tracking tags are different and they come from two
different Google servers. Actually, if you use Google Tag
Manager and put it all in there, it just loads.
It loads them all in one go through one thing, which again,
saves on page loads. The only thing I would say is
just be really careful of cookie banners these days.
We've had clients where the cookie in fact 6 clients are.
Clients before the cookie banner.
Yeah, some of it fires before they've accepted cookies, and
other times whether they accept or decline cookies, it doesn't
fire either way. So then you have no analytics.
Which is a bit of a oh wow, so it's one or the other.
It is indeed. And also like, we don't know
exactly what yet, but there's going to be a big change that in
December this year. So don't worry guys, we'll be
talking about loads on the show. It is my bread and butter.
So I will be doing episodes on it as we did with GA four and
everything else. But yeah, there's going to be a
big change to cookies. It looks like Google Chrome
might actually go cookieless in December, which could have any
number of effects. Things.
They normally announce the date and then knock it back at least
one, possibly three years. So we might be fine.
But the EU is waging war on cookies and no one understands
why. Still, no ones personal data has
really been lost anywhere apart from hacks and they're still
happening so. You know, we could talk about
that all day. But look, George, I really
appreciate your time. It's been so good to have you on
the show. I've got, I always show
everybody this at the end. Like I've got a massive long
list of notes, which I'm also would have read out in the intro
having recorded that after this. But George, I want to say a
massive thank you. Thank you for joining us.
Thanks for being so humble, sharing all your insights and I
really appreciate your time today.
Thank you, Nick. Thank you so much.
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