Black Friday 2020 - Marketing must-do’s for Ecommerce [with Abbey Schoenberg]

Today’s episode of The Marketing Innovation show brings Abbey Schoenberg, Director of Marketing of Fancy.com, the world's best social commerce platform, connecting over 10M users directly to the most unique creators available. Early investors included Drake, Will Smith and Justin Bieber.

 

Andrei and Abbey will be discussing Marketing Strategies for this year’s edition of Black Friday, as well as ecommerce must-do’s and trends and industry changes. 

 

Abbey is an expert at direct-to-consumer brands, building campaigns, programs, and strategies to drive brand love and generate growth. From launching new stores and product lines at Forever 21 to leading the global digital brand team at Oakley, to driving a direct-to-consumer shift and refocus to brand-building at Contiki.

 

Connect with Abbey:

Website: https://Fancy.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbeyramge/

Fancy on Instagram

Fancy on Twitter

Fancy on Facebook

 

Connect with Andrei:

Marketiu: https://marketiu.com / https://marketiu.ro

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/

Marketiu on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu

Marketiu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency

Marketiu on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/

Email at hello@marketiu.ro

 

Listen to the episode on your favourite platform:

▶️ Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox

_______________

 

Episode Transcript:

 

Andrei  

Hello, everybody, this is Andrei, and you're on The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest for today is Abbey Schoenberg, who is the Director of Marketing for Fancy.com, the world's best social commerce platform connecting over 10 million users and having early investors such as Drake, and Will Smith, and Justin Bieber. Abbey has been working before with popular brands such as Forever 21. So very, very excited for our chat today. We're going to be discussing trends in the ecommerce space and how this whole industry is changing as a whole. So Abbey, hello, I am really excited for today, and thank you for being on the show!

 

Abbey  

Same, I'm super excited to be joining you and chatting through marketing innovation and ecommerce. So thank you for having me.

 

Andrei  

No worries, pleasure is all mine. So let's get the ball rolling. Well, first of all, tell us a bit about you, tell us about your background bit and how you got into that position that you're in at the moment?

 

Abbey  

Of course, yeah, so I've been in a marketing position or a marketing role for the last 12 years. I studied Marketing and Communications in business in college at San Diego State. Eventually, just moved into the marketing world, I started right out of college at Forever 21, which I'm sure you all know, is a major, major fast-fashion retailer in the US and abroad. Very focused on kind of generalistic marketing in that space and in opening up new stores store expansions, really building our consumer base as we scaled as a business, which was a really exciting time to be there and definitely one of those career opportunities for myself where I was probably thrown into a position where I had to wear a lot of hats and had to learn really, really quickly. And it definitely helped my growth, although long hours and crazy hours, it was an incredible team of people and, very exciting to be part of that. That industry when it was so on fire and such a big part of American culture. So an incredible learning experience there for me and did a lot with partnerships, a lot with events, a lot with media, and exposing the new stores, which is obviously what we all want to do: expose our brands and expose the places to shop. And then from there, I moved over to Oakley. Oakley is obviously a sports performance eyewear brand and a general sports performance apparel brand. When I was there I moved through a few roles, I have a pretty solid background in media and spend a lot of my time in a US-focused media role and then evolved into a global media role, and then took on more responsibility in digital marketing generally. So taking over our global society, our global digital marketing, global content, a bunch of different areas of the business to really tell the brand story and really talk about: Why Oakley why, Why buy our products and the innovation that sat behind everything that we did. So that was super exciting. I mean, an incredible group of people that I had the pleasure of working with and to learn from. And then from there, I moved into travel, I just decided I was looking for a little bit of a change of pace. I personally love to travel. So it felt like a really fun opportunity. And I spent two years at consortia before moving over to a brand side, where I spent the next two years as the brand director of Contiki, which is the number one travel company for 18 to 35-year-olds. It was a really fun and exciting time. Obviously, travel is such a passion point for so many people. So it makes marketing really fun. And then obviously sat in a travel role in the midst of COVID. So that was quite an interesting experience. It definitely freshened up my sales skills and crisis management and freshened up how important it is to have a story behind the brand that's not just about your product, so that when you do get hit by those major moments in the world, you have something to lean into, and to really keep your community engaged, which I think was what we had been focusing on for the last few months as we transitioned through this change, which I'm proud to say the team over there has continued to do a great job. I decided in the midst that it was time for a little more change for me and I was excited to get back into the ecommerce space, which is how I ended up at Fancy. Fancy had recently moved their headquarters from New York to San Diego where I'm based. So it opened up a really awesome opportunity for me to join a growing team, a growing business, and really jump into an industry that is really on the rise when it comes to year over year impact of ecommerce in the US, particularly. So really exciting. I've been at Fancy for a little over two months and I am excited to continue my journey here.

 

Andrei  

Super cool. I'm sure that you already found this and you knew, but this is such an interesting time to be in the ecommerce space like the whole thing had been speeding up like four or five years ahead with a whole situation that's been going on. And since we're recording this around Black Friday, and we might actually be able to publish it, just around the time, I think it's gonna be even more interesting for all of our listeners who might be just in the middle of doing exactly what you and I are doing at the moment in terms of marketing and everything, to see how you handle it. And how are things from your perspective as a marketing leader in a global brand that is very fast-paced and rapidly expanding? So tell us a bit about Fancy.com. How is your team at the moment, what are you guys focusing on so that we can give a bit more context to the discussion that we'll have on marketing in the ecommerce space?

 

Abbey  

Of course. So Fancy is basically a social marketplace where we bring together a bunch of vendors from around the world that sell really high quality, unique products. And then we sell them out to our wide community of Fancy shoppers. So we have a primary market in the US, but we actually have a really solid global market, as well. So 30% of our sales do happen outside of the US, which is really exciting for us. So a lot of what we've been preparing for since we do have such a strong established user base is one: making sure that that user base is engaged, they know what's coming, they know what to expect from us, we're setting up certain guidelines and parameters with a lot of our vendors to make sure that we know when shipping cut-offs are going to be happening, when we can ensure linemen on sales or when they're really trying to push during the holiday season just to make sure we're putting the best things for it, for the gift-giving season. So do all of those things, and obviously just setting that making sure our foundation is working really properly. So making sure our social campaigns and our remarketing campaigns are firing well and we have everything optimized and cranking forward, but then also trying to add additional personalization into our email communications and really focusing quite a bit on the personalization and curation of the website. So it's really easy to shop, it's easy to find what you're looking for. But there's still that added layer of joy as you discover new things on Fancy which I think is a really fun and different place to shop because it's not so searched intent-based, it's definitely someplace where you can kind of just fall into it and find some really great products and things based off of a curated list and personalized assortments based off of your behaviours. So I think it's the balance of all of those things. It's the balance of one: putting our existing customers in our database first to make sure that we're providing them the experience, the tools, and the products that they need to make it a successful holiday season for themselves. But then also ensuring that we're scaling out to take advantage of the anticipated boom of ecommerce this season coming off of the heels of COVID, where we're still seeing a lot of restrictions and shutdowns and people a little bit apprehensive to shop in person. So I think that's where our heads have been out of, making sure we're incredibly buttoned up so we don't lose the opportunity to take advantage of the sales that are anticipated for this season.

 

Andrei  

Super. And before we go into it, you said something really interesting that I think it would be nice to just focus on. And you mentioned a bit about the USB of Fancy.com. Can you develop just a little bit around that? Because I think it's gonna be interesting for our discussion going forward as well. So tell us how do you differentiate from other platforms? And what is that element of experience in shopping?

 

Abbey  

Yeah, absolutely. So I think that the coolest thing about Fancy is that we have set the groundwork for creating a really strong ecommerce experience, which I think you see across the board. And it doesn't make us unique, but it's a table stake to make sure that people feel confident and comfortable buying off the site. So frictionless Checkout, a really easy way to browse, strong search are all things that are just table stakes within. Any ecommerce platform at this point, and something that we really pride ourselves on. But when it comes to that unique point for ourselves, it's really around this discovery element. So I think some of the things that we really like to share and lean into is the fact that new products are added daily under Fancy.com and new products that are vetted and curated by a team that we have internally to make sure that everything we sell carries a certain level of quality and a certain level of kind of uniqueness to make sure that it's not just your every other shopping experience. So I think that's the number one thing: highly vetted, very curated list of very cool products that are discovered worthy, and I think that's what we lean into a lot is this concept of discovery and seeking something new, and finding something that you're not just going to maybe think to search if you jump onto an Amazon or to an Etsy, which are very search-based platforms, where we are very much a discovery-based platform where we're really taking cues and understanding of our customers to pull a bubble to the top and surface, the products that are the most interesting and the products that we think our customers are going to love to allow you to kind of have a bit more of a scrolling browse behaviour, and then we just ensure we implement those products that have that scroll stop action. So it's a bit more of a Leanback way to shop, it's a bit more of an inspirational way to shop, but then it still carries all of the core values of a strong ecommerce solution when it comes to filtering and browsing and searching and those things if you want to shop that way. But we're really leaning into this concept of serendipitous discovery and finding something that you love based on your behaviour and really based on personalization and bringing the browse and the joy of browsing back into the shopping experience online. Something obviously know we do when we're in person at a mall or in a shop where you're just kind of flicking through the rack and discovering something you maybe didn't have the intent to buy, but you've just caught your eye. So we're really looking to find that balance between that type of shopping, as well as a really strong ecommerce experience. So I think when you shop on Fancy, that's what you'll feel, you'll feel like you've discovered something, you'll feel like you're finding something unique to you, you'll feel that you're not just building the same identity as your neighbour, but something really unique to yourself, just based off of this plethora of product that we do sell, the assortment that we do have that is such high quality, as well as this really simple and easy way to discover something cool and fun for your home, your wardrobe, or whatever you're looking for.

 

Andrei  

Nice. Okay. So this just got me thinking about: you have been in ecommerce from the very beginning of your career, and you have worked with giant brands, being part of this revolution, really. And then, at some point, you went into travel, and then you came back. But you made that switch in a time where things like marketing personalization, and using data to deliver better assets, as well as the growth of the ecommerce space in general, all have developed very rapidly. So this would be a curiosity of mine. But I would be very keen to hear your thoughts on this, as well. Do you feel you went far from ecommerce and then you came back when you went into promoting or doing the activities around the travel space? Did you find a gap between where you left the ecommerce space and when you came in to eat again? Or were you surprised by anything?

 

Abbey  

I will say it's a great question. I will say that moving into travel was very interesting to see the level of technology that is incorporated into the search and browsing behaviour when you are shopping for a trip in New York, shopping for a destination, and actually, the level of sophistication that exists in that industry, as you think about the price point of the purchase and how important it is to show the right product at the right time and how important it is to be thoughtful of the consumers' needs and wants because travel is such a high research purchase and a big-ticket item. I think ecommerce is obviously when you think about it more in the CPG in the product world, which has been on this path for a very long time where travels seem to have introduced itself into more of an ecommerce shopping behaviour within the last few years. But I think there are a lot of similarities when you look at both in the sense that personalization is critical, that understanding what the consumers want is very critical in the sense of attention spans does drop off very, very quickly if you're not getting the information to the person that needs it as fast as possible. And I think friction is an even bigger component when we think about that obviously need to have a very seamless and clean checkout experience when you're in a product space just to make sure you don't have that you know conversion drop off when trying to move from the cart to the credit card, but it's even more important as you think about travel just because they trust that you need to gain when someone's putting a few thousand dollars down for a vacation or this really impactful moment in our lives is really, really critical. So, yes, I think it was an interesting jump for me to go from the ecommerce space into travel. I think that I got into travel and I really did miss the innovation and the tech that sits in the ecommerce world and I think that was so very, very enticing for me to get back to just with the level of technology and the capabilities that exist not just within your own platforms, but you think about the solutions that a lot of the big behemoths like Facebook and Google have implemented for. Ease of shopping and ecommerce solutions to help make these transactions a bit more seamless and sophisticated, where travel just always seems to be a little bit on the burner behind. So I will say it's been very exciting getting back to the ecommerce from travel, but I will say it was very interesting to be in travel while they were really starting to find their ecommerce kind of evolution at the same time and understanding the power of data and understanding the power of a lot of the standard ecommerce tools that a lot of your traditional product marketers are probably taking advantage or taking for granted these days. But it was an interesting shift. But I think there's definitely still a sophistication into the travel industry around the way they're using ecommerce around the way that you shop and it will continue to catch up to the place that obviously Product Marketing is sitting in.

 

Andrei  

Awesome, awesome, awesome, really insightful. And can I ask you a question? You might not have the numbers at hand, but just maybe approximately, but this is a discussion that we've been having a lot with our clients lately since everybody was trying to benchmark themselves within their industries and trying to set KPIs and objectives for their brands for this holiday season ecommerce speak, which would be like November, December. So this I think, would be really insightful for the other people that are tuning in as well that are in marketing functions, trying to work out their benchmarking and see how they position themselves in the market. Basically, my question is: what would you say are some average conversion rates that you are looking for, specifically because you talked about the website and personalization, which I very much emphasize with you. I think it's very important to look at that as the core metric for optimizing performance, meaning if you run a lot of paid advertising, for example, that drives a bunch of traffic to your website, but then what happens with that traffic? So you're in an upper market, right? Like more expensive products, more luxury? And I guess you'd run integrated marketing campaigns. I'm sure you do pay into Google and social and everything. What are some conversion rates that you aim for, or you consider to be good in your space, in your niche, for example, we can say on the website, in general, but then we can dive into more specific details if you have them. From add to cart to purchase, let's try to start the discussion and then see how we go. 

 

Abbey  

Um, so I'd say from a return perspective on what we're anticipating spending over the holiday season and what that returns back, we're definitely aiming for somewhere around a five to one, from an ROI point of view. So I think that something that we're chasing, and something that we're really optimistic to hit, especially, as you mentioned, obviously, we are a bit higher price point, and a bit more specialized, when it comes to the products that we sell. So there might be brands out there that do sell a bit more commoditized items that might have a bit higher of a return goal than us. But I think for us, that's really what we're hoping to see in this holiday season. When it comes to the conversion rate on the site, obviously, we're always trying to hit that 1 - 3% during the holidays, definitely getting upper towards that 3% conversion rate for traffic driven to the site. So, that's generally our goal. And I think for us right now, and I think where a lot of campaigns and targeting can come into play is really using those add to carts that don't turn into conversions to help you drive forward a higher conversion rate overall. And that data and using those users that obviously had found some product of interest or found something that they were interested in, in almost pulling the trigger on and really focusing on targeting them to increase the conversion from those Add To Cart users. So from that perspective, I don't have a number off the top of my head from what we're trying to reduce our abandoned cart is really what we should be looking at. So we don't necessarily have a KPI set for abandoned cart reduction at this point. But we will be striving for that 3% conversion rate over the site-wide for the holiday season.

 

Andrei  

Hmm, awesome. Very cool. Thanks so much. This was also like a personal curiosity. But so many things have changed. And also, in this period of the year, there's gonna be so much advertising budget put into the most popular platforms like Google and Facebook, and Instagram. So the costs are going to increase as well and I think it's good for everybody to hear as many experiences and insights as possible so that they can draw their own benchmarking and KPI setting and everything. So thanks so much for that. And talking about social platforms, what are you prioritizing? What platforms are you looking at? Have you done anything on, for example, Tik Tok, or one of these more niche platforms, or more uprising platforms, actually?

 

Abbey  

Yeah. Um, so we just recently opened our Tik Tok channel. So if you guys want to follow it, it's Fancy.com. So we have very little content right now, obviously, we're using the benefit of the Tik Tok algorithm, which is very much based on recommendation versus following. So I think that's a really interesting place to be as a channel where you really can be a marketer, can be a creator or an influencer, and really get visibility on that channel much more quickly than you can in something that really puts a lot of emphasis on follower count. So I think that that's something that we're starting to test, test the waters a little bit, and felt like it was something we could obviously, easily do as we focus on taking advantage a lot of Instagram's new creative platforms, like reels. Make one, it kind of works for both channels. So we've definitely been duplicating content across both. I think we've seen some really great results from our experiments with reels. And I think it's a fun platform because obviously, the production quality is meant to be a little bit rawer, it's meant to be a little bit more real and a little bit more approachable. So it's been very easy for us to really kind of test and play around with that channel. And I will say, I have been very, very impressed with the reach results from our organic posts in reels in the sense that it really is reaching a new audience, I was talking to our marketing manager this morning, and she was commenting on how we generally get a lot of the same really high engaged users on our channels, commenting and asking questions, and the comments that we were getting through, the content that we were putting out was all very, very new consumer. So very new eyeballs, very new reach, which was very, very interesting for us and very exciting as we see the power of Tik Tok, obviously, see the kind of addictive quality that that content has in the social sphere, but still taking advantage of a platform that we have a bit more equity on like Instagram, but using that same discovery type model to help get our products and get our brand in front of new people, versus just so focused on the feed or focused on stories, which is very specific to the followers that you already have. So I think that has been really interesting, and something that we're continuously increasing production against. And for anyone that's out there that has a really small team, we're also a very small team. And I think it's just one of those platforms that are tested, you can film stuff on your phone, you can film your products on your phone, you can use the editing tools within the platform, you don't need a videographer to do everything for you. But we've seen some really, really great results from a reach perspective, from that channel and engagement, getting a tonne of likes tonne of comments through that channel, and even some really great ones like Hey, can you send me the link to that product? So that's always the one as a marketer, but as someone that knows that we need to pay the bills, I love to see that type of engagement on posts. So that's been pretty, pretty exciting to see. We're also focusing on amplifying our Pinterest presence right now. So Pinterest has seen some really, really great numbers over the past quarter, I think they released some of their results a few weeks ago, and in regards to users, and engagement, and ad dollars. So we've been very focused on especially gift guides and getting new fresh content on to our Pinterest channel and taking advantage of that. Pinterest still serves as a really top referral source for Fancy, just because of the discovery element of that channel and being able to be very product-centric in that channel. So we are keeping our foot down on that platform and making sure that we have some good content pumping into that over the holiday season. So organically, I would say that's been a bit of a new focus with reels, starting to get the Tik Tok channel up and running and a heavy focus on Pinterest, but obviously not ignoring some of our cores like Facebook and Twitter. So we post daily on every channel but really are focusing on some new content streams to help us increase our discovery for the brand.

 

Andrei  

Love it. This is actually the first time that we managed to dive deeper into the social organic subject, and I love that you brought it up with the discovery elements, because actually, this is also something that we felt and we try to bring towards the table. So it's very nice to hear from somebody that is leading a marketing team for a global brand from the client-side that you have back as well. I think it's really cool. And since you were talking about discovery, and since we were on the topic of the social channel, what are you guys doing with influencers? What's your take on them? Do you do influencer marketing at all?

 

Abbey  

We do. Yes, we absolutely do influencer marketing. I think influencer marketing is again, just a great way to expose yourself to a new audience. And I think that's the best way to look at it. I always look at influencer marketing as part of a wider kind of intent word of mouth strategy. So how do we get people to talk about the brand, whether those are people that we're partnering with and paying to do so or they're just advocacy programs through our existing customer base? But yes, we do. We do put a lot of prioritization on influencers. I'm a big believer in that as a channel, I think what we focus on quite a bit is influencers more at the micro-level, and we focus primarily on engagement rates, not necessarily follower count. I think it's really easy to get excited to work with someone with 300,000 followers. But if you get down to it you don't really necessarily know the quality of that if you're not seeing the engagement rates. So we lean a little bit more into a micro-influencer strategy. Definitely always trying to work with people above 10,000 to ensure we get that swipe up capability. But in general, in my career, have found that micro-community to be a really, really high engaged community. So it's where I put a lot of pressure on the team to scale those programs and scale those relationships. And of course, we have some big names that obviously invest in the shop on Fancy, as well. So we do reach out to those people to support us in gaining exposure, but only so when it's already an authentic relationship with the brand. So I think that that's always really important, just because it comes out a little bit more natural and comes out a bit more authentic, and then really showcasing the micro-influencers, as there's a bit more of a mutual benefit between the brand and the partner at that point. We are very, very much in the influence influencer space, ranging from paying people to develop content to product swapping for mentions, to taking advantage of our customer base to give them as many perks as we would to our influencer community. So, we do run it in a bunch of different ways. There's not just one tactic that we deploy, but really the medals of the word of mouth that can come together when you start to bring in staff, influencers, micro-influencers, advocacy, ambassadors, customers, investors on our side as well, which is an extension of our community, too. So that's been pretty exciting.

 

Andrei  

Very cool. Okay. And so you are doing omnichannel marketing in general, you have so many stakeholders. What do you feel has changed or shifted over the last couple of months, in terms of their shopping behaviour online? I think it would be really insightful to hear it from you and to hear your take on it since everybody has now shopped more online in general. So what do you feel has changed? Do they visit the website more times before they purchase? Do they need more time to decide? Are they more cautious with the way you spend their money? What's your feeling?

 

Abbey  

You know, it's been really interesting at Fancy, because I think we haven't seen tonnes of fluctuation in the past few months about how the average order value has stayed about the same. What we are seeing is a stronger female base coming into Fancy and I think that that might be something to do with the holiday season, as we think about women being really drivers of holiday purchases, and sometimes the bigger household spenders, when it comes to shopping for Hanukkah or Christmas or whatever holiday that you celebrate. So we've seen a little bit of transition in that capacity. I would say, from a shopping behaviour perspective we do see some change in search terminology. As you get closer to the holidays, you see, definitely more gift centric type items start to pop up. So obviously, that plays a hand in how we merchandise the site and using that data to ensure that we have easy discovery for those types of products. But for the most part, I would say aside from volume, we've actually seen a lot of consistency when it comes to some of those standard metrics that we anticipate at Fancy. And I think what makes that really exciting for us, particularly is even though we're seeing this scaling of audience and scaling of new shoppers that come into the ecommerce space, we're seeing them actually act and behave in a similar way to the historical and the existing Fancy user that's been with us for 10 years. So it does point us in the direction that either there is a reason to shop on Fancy and there is this desire for this cool product assortment and these quality brands that we obviously sell. And it's just interesting to see the volume of consumers start to change as they come to the site. So not huge consumer behaviour changes that we're necessarily seeing from an engagement on the site perspective, but definitely a volume of change, as we see more and more people coming earlier to the site this year than last year, and anticipating even more people, year after year, based off of obviously, the changes that have been going on across the world.

 

Andrei  

Can I get a bit technical here, but it's one curiosity of mine again. So once you capture a new user, let's say through social bait, they get onto your website, they start to surf, to navigate, maybe add stuff to the cart. What would be a target number of times that you try to reach them in the first two to three days to help them proceed with the purchase in case they haven't finalized the purchase during that initial session? Do you have a strategy around it, does it depend on anything?

 

Abbey  

No. So we do have a strategy around that. We have specific triggers for abandoned browser, abandoned cart that would deploy pretty quickly after a user abandons whatever behaviour that they were previously engaged in. And we send those out pretty quickly after that initial behaviour and that initial action has been triggered. And then we do follow up with that individual a couple of days later, just to continue to try to push them over, they obviously always fall into our remarketing campaigns that sit in a display or social space, even our search campaigns, as well. So we have a bunch of different touchpoints that are hitting that consumer. I would say our goal is hitting a decent frequency around five to seven post-action behaviours, to try to pull them back into the site. And then obviously, we have our separate lists of individuals and how we pull some of that dynamic content into our email content, how we pull that stuff through, to help with the personalization further down so that we do trigger them back into the site, they have kind of what they were just recently browsing just at their fingertips and really engaging them there. So yes, we definitely have a plan of action to try to scoop up as many of those abandoned browsing purchases as possible. And we'll probably scale that up just a bit as we get closer to the holidays. I'm just always being conscious of not being too much of a pest but making sure we're in the face.

 

Andrei  

Nice. And in terms of the website personalization and delivering dynamic content, do you have a tool that you like very much or something that you'd recommend to somebody that has been thinking about this, but maybe they just didn't have the budget yet, or for any reason, they haven't implemented it yet?

 

Abbey  

It's not going to be the answer anyone wants to hear. But we were very lucky in the sense that we have an internal engineering team that builds all of that directly for Fancy. So we own all of our capabilities that exist on the site. So we don't use any plugins for personalization at this point. But I can always ask our engineering team who's maybe they use inspiration and come back to you.

 

Andrei  

Okay, that's super kind, thank you. I was curious because it's a lot of marketing tech out there and sometimes a recommendation from somebody that is actively doing it could be valuable. Super, thanks so much. So, now looking into the immediate future, I know that we are running a bit late, and I'm sure that you have a lot of people that you need to speak to and are probably bombarding you with messages. So we'll try to be brief. But coming into Black Friday now, because it's going to be intense. What's like a checklist of maybe three to five things that you think anybody should go through to make sure that they are readily prepared for Black Friday?

 

Abbey  

Yeah, I think obviously, you're gonna want to make sure that you have a lot of touchpoints to share and explain the aspects of whatever sale. So we obviously are preparing with different teaser campaigns going up to it just to make sure that our consumer base knows that there is something that Fancy is preparing for Black Friday. So that they're keeping their eyes out and keeping their antennas up to ensure that when it drops, we know it's happening. So I think that's obviously number one. I think the standard number two for everybody is: if you're going to launch anything new, you better get it done in the next week or so just because you don't want to be testing as you get into the holidays and making sure that you have everything buttoned up and tested and things are firing on all cylinders and you're not using those critical timeframes to troubleshoot. So I would say definitely do some testing and make sure that you have whatever you're going to be implementing buttoned up soon, if not already so that you have everything ready to go. And I think to engage with your partners, obviously, let them know in advance what you're planning to do, let them know what your sales are, let them know how you're intending to market and ways that they can partner with you to get more exposure for themselves or their products. If you're a direct consumer brand, do you have any influencer, great customers that you want to reach out to in advance and give them a little sneak peek behind the curtain of what's to come? Or if you have brands that you sell on the website, how can you engage with them and start to get those plans in place to ensure they know what's coming, and they know how to participate and help you drive additional awareness around it. So I would say those would be the key three things that I would recommend. One, make sure your comms planning and you have that early awareness of what's coming or at least the anticipation that something is coming down the pipeline, to make sure that you're testing now to deploy the best results when the time comes when Black Friday rolls around. And three: engaging your partners early so they can help you do as much as you can. Once you start running towards that pinnacle of the sales day, which is that cyber weekend time.

 

Andrei  

Nice. Thanks so much for the insights. So in terms of Fancy, any plans you'd like to share with us for 2021? Or for the people that are tuned in to look out for when following you?

 

Abbey  

Oh, of course, yes, always. So we actually have a lot of big stuff in the plan and one would be getting ready for the holiday season, but a lot to come around: shopping gamification, which will be launched on our app in 2021, which I'm super excited about. As I mentioned early in the call, what we are trying to do is bring fun back into shopping and yes, we are always concerned about the transaction. But we also know that there's something to be said about that joy of browsing and the joy of inspiration that you get when you used to go to the mall with your friends but now you're sitting at home by yourself browsing your computer. So really trying to find ways to infuse that kind of social aspect and that gaming aspect into how you shop and how you shop with Fancy. So if you don't have the app downloaded, it'll be the first to launch there. So please download the app and you can check it out, we should be starting to tease out some of that content and some of those capabilities here in the next few weeks, which will be super exciting. But just a way for us to take advantage of the heavy data that we have that sits behind the site and just make shopping more interesting and fun and a way that you can discover like you used to discover and not just always feel like you have to go to a website and know exactly what you're looking for and if you don't know the search term, you're never gonna be able to find it. But really just being able to lean back and enjoy the process. So that's where we're putting a lot of intention in the coming months. So keep your eye out for that. And then obviously, as I mentioned earlier, there is such a focus on the partnerships that we have, especially with our merchants and with our vendors. And we're launching new stuff every day on the site. So if you're ever looking for something very interesting or cool, I think a great first place to start is the daily discovery section within Fancy. So check it out. We're always showcasing something new and cool on the website and really trying to act as a springboard for small businesses around the world to help get their amazing product seen in front of an amazing audience. Last, check out our gift guides, we have about 50 gift guides. If you have any trouble shopping, we do a really well curation of assorted products from around the world. So no one will ever give you the same gift that you find on Fancy, I'll say that. So you can find something super cool. But that's kind of what's coming down the pipeline so I think a lot of focus on just infusing some more fun back in the transaction and that's what we are focused on as a team.

 

Andrei  

That's very exciting. I'm actually gonna keep an eye on the gamification element. I'm really curious what you're up to. 

 

Abbey  

A little teaser there, but something we're super stoked to be releasing, and it'll just be kind of step one in an along plan of innovation.

 

Andrei  

Super. Okay. And lastly, if anybody wants to connect with you in any way, if you guys are looking for new vendors for the platform or any sort of partnerships or things like this, what would be the best way for them to engage with you?

 

Abbey  

Yeah, I would say connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd say: just shoot me a message, send me your request and I'd love to have a chat with anybody that wants to talk about Fancy marketing or any vendors that are interested in getting on the platform. 

 

Andrei  

Thanks so much for being so open to this! Abbey, thanks so much for being on the show today, I really love our chat. Hopefully, we'll be able to do this again after the holiday season because I know you're gonna be working long hours these days. And meanwhile, I wish you the very best of success. We'll keep an eye on Fancy, if we can help you with anything, let us know! Until next time, keep rocking and talk soon! 

 

Abbey  

Thank you so much!