w/ Matt Bahr, founder of Fairing
Watch the video interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TMVqWfaddG8
Shopify store owners: what if one simple question could improve your ad spend, creative, and segmentation?
In this episode of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, Matt Bahr, founder of Fairing, unpacks what 20 million post-purchase surveys taught him about attribution—and why most brands still get it wrong. Learn how to track what really works, identify new channels like AppLovin and CTV, and use surveys to improve more than just marketing.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Sponsors:
Resources mentioned:
Work with Kurt:
Kurt Elster
This episode is sponsored in part by Swim. Okay, here's a depressing stat. 70% of shoppers who want your products never actually buy them. They browse, they consider, then they forget. That's revenue walking out the door. Swim Wishless Plus turns browsers into buyers. Customers save products they want, get notified when prices drop, or items restock. You can also engage them in personalized fashion through your marketing or sales outreach. It's like having a personal shopper reminding them to come back and buy from you instead of your competitors. And 45,000 stores already use it, and it only takes five minutes to install. You could try it free today for 14 days. Go to get swim. com slash curt. That's swimwithay. com slash curt. Turn those maybe later into sales today. Get swim. com. So I want to talk to you today about survey questions. Okay, not the most exciting topic, but think about it this way, right? On your Shopify store. You want to know, okay, how did a person hear about you? Or rather, how did they think they heard about you? Right. And a post-purchase survey that happens right in the checkout on the order confirmation page, that thank you page. That could be a good place to do it. And certainly there are methods and apps that'll do this. Uh and if you're f you figure that out, after a while, you go, well, maybe there's some other questions we should ask. And you could get some really good info this way by just really asking people one question at a time when they're they're most excited, you know, they just placed the purchase. But if you were the guy in charge of the app doing the survey questions, oh my, you would have access to a lot more information here. And you would probably have thoughts and opinions on the answers to the surveys and you know the the larger uh approach to the survey questions themselves and that's what today's episode is about. We are going to be joined by Matt Barr from Faring, a post-purchase survey and attribution app. We'll let him tell you about it. I'm your host, Kurt Elster. This is the unofficial Shopify podcast. Let's get into it. Matt, how are you doing?
Matt Bahr
I'm doing great. Super excited to be here. This is uh I feel like this is a huge Shopify ecosystem milestone is uh joining you on the pod.
Kurt Elster
Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. The you know, labor of love for uh man over 10 years now.
Matt Bahr
Crazy. Yeah, I was I was looking back at how long I was actually gonna ask you. I th I thought it was like 2014, 2023.
Kurt Elster
You you have this app in the Shopify App Store. Faring, what's it do?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, so Faring is a post-purchase survey app. Uh we ask questions on the thank you and order status page. Uh arguably the the only moment in time where you have your customers most concentrated kind of focus. They just entered their credit card. They are making sure their order went through. And then on that surface, uh we can ask questions. And one of the real value props of post-purchase surveys compared to kind of Surveys that most people are used to, which are email based and you do them periodically, is since we have that customer's attention, the response rates are like 10x higher than you're used to. And so the company that we're building at Fairing kind of has that at our core is we think about survey data different than let's say a survey monkey does because the volume and completion rate is so high. We kind of position ourselves more of like a data company where how do we normalize all this? How do we take this data that's kind of ever flowing after every purchase and help merchants make better decisions in real time? Um so that's that's our core focus. We don't serve questions in other places. I think eventually maybe we probably will in email and kind of these other environments that people are used to, but we've tested them and the response rates are just so low. It allows us, it doesn't allow us to really provide a lot of value in the actual data that's being captured. Um it's you're more of like just a collection tool at that point. Um so when when did you launch this app? Uh so we launched Faring in May of 2018. Um so it was May 8th, 2018. Uh we used to be called to Enquire uh for the first few years. Uh and the initial kind of reason for faring uh was actually we weren't focused on Building a survey app. We were actually focused on building a a product, a B2B SaaS in the same day delivery space. And so I've been a I was a merchant for about seven years before this. Uh I've always been in e-commerce. Um at the last company, Master and Dynamic that I was at that career you're familiar with.
Kurt Elster
Master Dynamic makes uh quality headphones.
Matt Bahr
Yeah, exactly. Uh we were one of the first brands in New York, uh, actually after Everlane to integrate with Postmates API at Master and Dynamic. And at the time I was just enamored with the fact that somebody could put in their credit card information, click same day delivery, and within a couple hours they have their e-commerce transaction. Um At their door. Obviously very pie in the sky. Uber Rush and Postmates were definitely leading all efforts on that side. So I went out, I left Master Dynamic really to build a company in the same data delivery space. And my co-founder and I spent about 18 months doing that. We started off as a consumer app for about like three months before we were like, we're not consumer marketers who are gonna push app downloads. There's too much kind of difficulty in the marketplace aspects of this. And we pivoted to a B2B SAS. Um, and we got to about three or four K in monthly revenue, um, but every dollar was like Excruciatingly hard to get. We ended up, I think we were charging $500 a month and we had like eight customers, and it was just the the things weren't going well. And one of those customers was a handbag company that's still around in New York called Kerasport. Um, I was more or less advising him on go-to-market uh kind of PL strategies, uh, and he was doing a ton of influencer gifting. And he kept coming to me be like, we're like gifting so much product, but I like it's not working. Like no one's using the promo code or the URL and the LinkedIn profile. Like what do I do? Um so Back uh the only way or wasn't even thinking about building a product. I was just like, oh, just go out a survey on the thank you page. I definitely Googled like improve influencer attribution. Um and I was like, this makes sense. Um and we did so with a Google form. Uh and Uh yeah, he ended up coming back a few months later. This was awesome. And I was like, why why doesn't something exist here? And so that was really the start. Um that was all 2017, and then In March of 2018, I turned to my co-founder and was like, how about we take like two or three weeks, just a break from kind of like grinding on the same-day stuff and build a survey up? And here we are today.
Kurt Elster
And well, so I love that it's a pivot story, right? You're like, you had this brilliant idea, but you know, as far as like that being you know first app, that's tough. I mean it's such a tough idea. Yeah so I'm I'm glad that you figured out to go with something simpler, pivot to that, and then go, all right, we're gonna go all in on this. With That survey app. So what really made surveys take off, at least you know, for my perception, is uh iOS 14. 5, which I think is spring twenty twenty-one is when this comes out. Yeah, April. Yeah. And when that happens, now suddenly attribution gets a little fuzzier. And so we want solutions. And that's when I really saw, you know, interest in these post-purchase survey apps. jump because you could you know help solve that problem by saying, hey, how'd you hear about us? Well that's your attribution.
Matt Bahr
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We were so we were We ended up shutting down the same day product, I think, in September of 2018. Um really because we started having some momentum with Faring, um, which was like really exciting to see. Um, but we were a side project until like summer fall of 21. Um we had, I think, five or six hundred merchants using us. At the time we were charging I don't know what it was, probably like $20 a merchant or something. Um we were like checking our goal of like we want this to pay for for beats uh pizza and beers. Um and then yeah, iOS 14, TikTok as well. That was kind of summer, I think the first response was. the the summer or fall of twenty one. So starting to get some really good signals of like, okay, not everything is as easy to measure as meta with like the changing landscapes from browsers and other platforms.
Kurt Elster
With your experience in attribution, I want to know where do most where do you think most stores go wrong when they're trying to figure out where their customers come from?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, there's defin like the biggest sign is usually there it's usually a one size fits all approach to attribution. Um is definitely The first red flag. The second, which we still see surprisingly, is teams that are still allocating a lot of their dollars based on last click. Um so they're looking at GA4. Meanly G four a little bit of shop fine being like, oh, these are where our conversions are coming from. This is how I'm gonna allocate my BD.
Kurt Elster
What's wrong with that?
Matt Bahr
No, really tell it.
Kurt Elster
Like what's great for on the surface that's like, okay, yeah, that seems like how I should do it. I have Shopify Analytics. I probably have Google Analytics. That can't tell me. Yep.
Matt Bahr
Yeah, so the your lower funnel, um, if we think of the path to purchase, most paths to purchase require more than one touch point. Um so you might see an ad or you have a demand for something, you Google it. You find the product, you wait a couple hours or a day or whatever that time lag ends up being, and then you go purchase. Before you're purchasing, you're most likely going to Google the the brand that you already kind of found and uh made the decision to buy from or you're gonna wait for an email and click like these are all bottom of funnel channels. Um and those are the channels if you're using last click attribution that are gonna appear in Shopify or Google Analytics. So those channels inherently are very difficult to scale for the main reason of like you need to generate the demand so that your branded search, those lower funnel uh channels, you can actually put more money into. So that's the main reason uh of kind of why to avoid a last click model. Um I know like Shopify definitely like shows it now, it's the easiest thing to track Um, but it's not going to help you allocate that budget into the channels that are really driving uh the demand creation and that top of funnel awareness for your brand.
Kurt Elster
And so what's the myth here? Like what's the one thing, the one myth about attribution that you want people to take away?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, the biggest the biggest myth is it's not one size fits all. I think the the the thought that you can deploy one measurement methodology or attribution measure methodology and you're set for all of your channels. Um just is is not gonna work. Uh so if the ads that you're running on this podcast, for example, um, are gonna be measured differently than a Facebook ad or word of mouth, like, hey, how viral is our product? All these different channels that drive new customers to your store, you need to think about the channels. You want to think about them collectively with how you're measuring your mix and how you're allocating that budget, but each channel does require a different methodology. There's obviously some overlap. There's platforms that do a few of them. But that's definitely what we see is like very like brand set in their set in their ways where it's like we just use XYZ platform and that is our whole stack. Um, so that's probably the biggest kind of myth. The other point is, and this doesn't necessarily happen until brands scale, let's call it, maybe above five million on the low end. is like proper measurement does require investment. Um it does require capital. It does require learning. It does require experimentation. And I think a lot of brands are hesitant to put dollars in there, but like what is that kind of measurement tax that you're okay spending to understand if like these dollars are actually driving new customers or not? Um so those are kind of the two things at least that we talk about um or come up often in in calls that we have with merchants, uh, that we try to kind of steer them in the right direction as quickly as as possible.
Kurt Elster
And when people come, you know, show up looking for a solution like fairing, they're like, hey, I want to do post-purchase surveys. Is this usually the reason? Because yeah, I could ask any number of things. Is it usually like, hey, where where where'd you come from?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, exactly. That's that's always like 99% of the time that is uh the entry into the conversation with Faring. Um and that's why as as a company we're very much focused on attribution and measurement. Like we have a data science team, um, but we're a survey company. Um and it's really because we understand that the data is really the inherent value here and like how do we do things to increase the value of that versus like the horizontal SAS um strategy. But yeah, 99% of the time it is something attribution related. And it's usually like, hey, I just started uh we're about to do a twenty thousand dollar podcast buy. It's our first ever foray outside of meta. Um and I want to make sure that I have at least the proper infrastructure set up to know if it worked or didn't.
Kurt Elster
Yeah. And podcast is an example. It's just podcast analytics and attribution inherently difficult. Right, because it's in a way it is air gapped. I hear the ad, right? I listen to it, but I'm probably do when we you talk to people Like, oh yeah, I listen to you while I walk my dog or I do the my dishes, that kind of thing. And so it's just up to them to later remember it, look it up. Like there's no cookieing, there's no links. It's very difficult.
Matt Bahr
And a a lot of brands rely on uh promo code usage. Um but We know how easy it is to get a promo code on most Shopify stores now with like entering your email or phone number at sign up. That it's arguably like an easier process for the consumer than to remember or go reference. God forbid reference what the code was. uh from the creator uh or the podcast host. Um so yeah definitely a tricky problem to solve.
Kurt Elster
And so with these this post-purchase solution, obviously I can ask other questions beyond attribution. That just seems to be the entry point. If I have to ask a single question in my post-purchase survey, is it still, you know, how'd you hear about us or uh is there a different question you would do?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, so we uh we would definitely recommend that. We uh We recommend splitting the new versus returning customers. Um so asking new customers a different question uh than to returning customers. So a returning customer, you don't want to ask them how did you hear about us? It might be their fifth order. Um, but still very helpful to know like, hey, it was the the email that was sent or whatever triggered that purchase. So we recommend we we think of these kind of as like one question. They're just differently different. Different wording for different types of customers. So those returning customers will get what led you to XYZ like skims. com. And those new customers will get, hey, how did you hear about skims? So that's that's typically what we recommend. The only caveat to that though is if a brand is just spending on meta, let's say. Um like literally just Facebook, Instagram, that's it. Uh maybe a little bit of word of mouth, and that's their channel makeup. Like a product like Faring. isn't going to be super helpful when it comes to attribution because you're not going to see huge changes there. It's going to tell you what you already know. Exactly. Like so maybe you'll confirm a hypothesis that you have. It could introduce new channels, like let's say you are getting mentioned by influencers, so it can help you understand where what the next channel could be. But if you're dead set on like, hey, we're we're a small brand, we're a couple hundred thousand in GMV, we're not looking at diversify channels yet, which we wouldn't recommend doing, unless there's kind of edge cases with different verticals of brands. Um, but if you're small, like you might get more value with asking questions like, hey, why did you buy today? Or something that really understands the consumer psychology that then you can use in creative on the meta side. So it d it does differ, but let's say anyone over like 750 a million dollars in GMV, like that attribution question is going to deliver the
Kurt Elster
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Matt Bahr
So a little bit of a sidebar, one of my favorite interview questions is how would are how would your coworkers describe yourself? Which is like A totally reframing that kind of gets you to like tell us about yourself, but in the eyes of someone else, and you're you get a little bit more honest feedback then.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, because otherwise it's like, oh well, uh, you know, I'm 42, I'm a dad, you know, I use the blow dryer too much versus it's like, well, who what kind of person would you describe to this baby like, oh yeah, like a real techie who's into gadgets. Yeah. Ah. Like it it definitely changes how you picture it. Yeah. Um, you know, it kind of changes you you're not getting like their their elevator pitch on themselves, you're getting a more practical description. Um another one I really like is it I want to uncover objections. How and I'll I'll do this with exit sur exit intent survey, like oh if you didn't make a purchase today, why not? You know? And then because it's anonymous, you get like some of the most insane answers, but it's fun. You can uncover stuff you may not have known otherwise. With a post-purchase survey, they've already purchased. Yeah, can I still uncover objections with this?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, there's we have word like we have a question templates in app that has a few versions like these these we call these like Conversion rate optimization questions. It's like trying to understand buyer intent and what stopped people. Um so there's a phrasing of a question of like, hey, what um what almost prevented you from buying today? Um Typically it's like price or something like that. Um the questions that we love are more so in the sense of like how is your shopping experience today? Um Brands, even small brands, but brands are doing a lot of volume. Like ask a question like that and they get this endless stream. It's like a to-do list of things to improve the front end with. Um so that's definitely I would argue more valuable than kind of the what almost stopped you, but just like asking blanketed CRO type questions that build that to-do list um on the digital product side of things to improve.
Kurt Elster
Okay. I like that. Are there other customer well, okay. How are brands actually implementing this stuff? My issue, you know, I I see apps, I see fairing, I see apps like it installed. And then I never hear about it. Yeah. Which is telling. You know, it's like, okay, you've got it installed. You used it. You probably forgot about it. Now no, you're not actually doing anything with it. It's not the app's fault. How are, you know, what are recommendations for brands to maybe ask you know different questions that'll be more uh active, you know, provide more active advice or is there a different process? What what are your thoughts there?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, there's there's so we have Five different question buckets. Uh first one's attribution to measurement. Um understanding channels, time lag, time to buy, all those things. The second one is personalization and segmentation. So this is my um for ignoring attributions, definitely my favorite uh types of questions to ask, which are questions that help you suss out the buyer persona. Um, so my favorite is like which of these best describes you? Uh this question is so much easier, if I'm being honest, in non-fashion. Fashion is historically very difficult to build a persona that then you could put in front of a customer. Um, mentioned like products sold to techies. It's like, are you a hobbyist or a professional? It's like a very easy binary of like, where does this fit? As far as how to use that data, you can use fairing or any of these other tools and send this data directly to Clavio or your ESP. And now you have this beautiful data point for CRM segmentation. Um so it's like, hey, let's stop talking to this customer like they're a professional and they do this for their job, and let's talk to them more like a hobbyist. Let's look at the L L TV between the difference of two. Like are they different types of buyers? Um so that's usually like the biggest layup if you can find an easy question. It's definitely more difficult again in fashion. Um we we used to work with a brand that was selling uh it was uh Car it was a dirt bike uh like car wash liquid, uh like soap to wash your dirt bike.
Kurt Elster
Uh I don't remember the name of a it's a I I used to work at a bike store. And yeah, a similar product would be this thing called Mukoff. Essentially it's like a detailing gear for your bike. And I love detailing brands. So ahead.
Matt Bahr
Their um I could talk to you all about that. Their core customer is actually not a dirt bike rider. It was uh someone with a family who had a bunch of ATVs, like very different uh buyer persona, but all of their ads were of dirt bikes and kind of the the creative that goes along with that, not like, hey, wash your Polaris or your ATV that you have. Um so just that learning alone, those tweaks, it's like that's how you get better ROAS in your meta campaigns. It's like, hey, let's actually talk to these buyers. um based on kind of their persona. So there's a lot of learning with that personalization question. The CRO one is is obviously always interesting. That's definitely the highest leverage one that people discount. Um or they're like least excited about it, let's say, in in our order. Um they're just like, okay, we'll add this. I'm always like add it to the end. Like it's not gonna you have three or five questions, whatever it is, it's not gonna interfere with anything. But that question ends up being like just straight gold. And we have like a few very large customers uh doing a couple million orders a month who I know like that is their most exciting part of fairing is the endless inflow of CRO related um data points that they get every day.
Kurt Elster
I love all these questions. I've I've enjoyed the the discussion here. But what I'm curious about is some of the the meta-knowledge that you carry, right? Surely you have access to larger trends and patterns because you're seeing this data across many stores. Are you familiar? Well, and through that we could figure out efficacy on some of these apps or chan like acquisition channels. So it sound I mean, based on what you're saying, it sounds to me like meta Is what you'll will be like the number one in these attribution surveys?
Matt Bahr
Uh from a volume perspective, yeah. Like Instagram and Facebook are still so we're on about it's between 15 and 20 million orders a month this time of year. Um meta or like Facebook and Instagram are still the lion's share of responses, like over half. Um and that's that should be no surprise to anyone. Like we look at the allocation of channels like most people, that's their highest grossing channel. Um and the reason being there is Meta has over the years just developed like the largest data set. Um identity graph on consumers. They're the best at finding like your next buyer. Um and they have really good probabilistic measurement. Um so it's in their best interest to like show you the most accurate conversion so that you keep investing or whatever that um kind of Assum totally is where it's like the best ROAS where you do keep investing. Um so there's a little bit of a play there that they're obviously endlessly tweaking. But um that is still the line share. Um and then it it there is a huge variance as far as what is third. Um on a per store basis. Um so uh we have a few brands that like audio, like podcast. Um I could think of a few who actually podcast as like their number one channel. Um so It does really run run the gamut there as far as like what the distribution looks like after that kind of line share of a budget.
Kurt Elster
And and what about Clavia, what about email in general?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, so email uh we do see c some merchants like add email to their how did you hear about us, which is like We obviously recommend adding it to the returning customers only because it's a bottom of funnel channel. Um so email is definitely a big source of returning customers as far as like, hey, what led you back? It's like I got an email. Um, but that's definitely where we recommend measuring that is for returning customers only. Um, same with SMS. Um where we Like the best practices with fairing is like how do we send better emails? It's less of how do we measure the uh the ROI of emails.
Kurt Elster
And Are you familiar with AppLovin? I am. Yeah, yeah. AppLovin, I think, you know, a lot of folks are probably not familiar with this yet. Uh on Twitter, it's been a hot topic for, I don't know, a year now. Yep. But App Levin ad network where they will run in-app ads for you. And as from what I can tell, they own a bunch of the apps or you know it's like a it plus it's a network that'll place the apps. Uh just a lot of discussion about this. And we're always looking for, you know, like what's the new next channel? Because if you can get in early on a channel, you know, oftentimes it's like shooting fish in a barrel. The and then later, you know, as it matures like Meta has, it becomes more difficult. And so that's why I'm I'm excited by the potential with App Levin, but really don't have a ton of direct experience with it. Have you seen it popping up? in these surveys. Do you know anything about it?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, definitely. Uh and it's definitely driving like incremental. So one of the things that we do is when a new channel pops up We actually don't recommend merchants add it to their survey for the first few days or first weeks because what we're trying to understand is like, was this channel influential enough where a customer actually wrote into other that that was where they discovered you? Um and that was like we saw that with TikTok and we saw it with AppLovin, where brands that started to spend on AppLove and they didn't change their survey and all of a sudden like Candy Crush, Game Ad, et cetera, just like starts appearing in that other response field like crazy. So really good initial traction as far as okay, this channel is driving net new customers here. So it started in about uh I think September, October of last year is when brands started to really lean in. Um and we still see teams that are extremely bullish, leaning way in. I don't know if it's surpassing meta um in any spend. I know it wasn't Q4. Like there was definitely stories of brands who are spending more on app level than meta, which is like Obviously gonna uh own every headline in the kind of D to C go to market space. Um, but definitely a channel to watch. Uh we always get super excited. Like The first time we saw TikTok uh in a response was from Hero Cosmetics. I think in September of 2021. Um Uh so we're tracking a lot of these things and we we get some early signal of what's working and what's driving net new customers. And yeah, Apple, I think we spoke about those before, but um Definitely caters more female, definitely more older demographic. And like if you're if that is your target and you're not investing in Apple or at least testing into it right now, um I would go urge you to at least go take a look at it because that is like their core user that they have access to. Um and we're seeing it perform really well in those demographics.
Kurt Elster
Isn't that also, even if that's not your necessarily your audience, that's a big gift giving demographic, isn't it?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, huge. That's I If I had a brand that wasn't focused on that demographic, I would probably slow down on Apple and all year and then in Q4 just allocate all my budget. Um, maybe starting in like mid-September as kind of a run-up to Q4. But I think that's why we saw a ton of kind of really high reported ROAS on App Levin was because it was November and December. It's a crazy amount of gift giving. Um, that happens in that time period. And we had brands that were really like totally different demographic. Call it like 20s male over Doing very well on App Levin. And I think that's a really good reason or at least understanding as to why it was a lot of gift giving obviously happens in that time of year.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, my my brands that have that gift-giving audience, I emailed and was like, hey, you should probably consider AppLovin for these reasons. Yeah. Yeah, see what it does. Because they're it you know, we're always looking for that that next big acquisition channel.
Matt Bahr
And at least at least testing into it. Like App Levin is great. Like what what Google essentially invested is like Unlike let's say podcast, unless you're doing a little bit of programmatic, which I would never really recommend anyone doing, you usually need at least call it 25-30K at a minimum to lean into audio to get enough signal to know if it's working, if you should keep reinvesting. app loving single device, hopefully path to purchase, pixel, that stuff. Like you can definitely get pretty early signal early on and not have to spend that 25-30 grand.
Kurt Elster
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Matt Bahr
Yeah, I'm more I'm definitely more of the Amazon Prime video and getting all those ads. Um But yeah, Connected TV is the channel I'm probably most excited about. Uh and I think that's because the cost of creative is just dropping um exponentially with the use of AI. So that's definitely like I see a world, I think I wrote this on LinkedIn a couple weeks ago. It's like I see a a world where brands that are doing like 250, 300k in GMV, like being able to run TV because the creative cost is so low. Connected TV has opened up more programmatic buying. And now it's like almost analogous to buying media on meta. Um but when you're sounds, right? Yeah. So I'm I'm like, that's probably the channel I'd be leaning the most in right now. Um if I'm like, because the audience is, we know it's massive. Um And it's definitely still being slept on by the majority of brands sub like 20 million. Um and with like attribution surveys, with some of the pixel based IP address tracking they have, like you can get really good signal if you were to run even like a small spike test where it's like, let's just put like 5K into this channel. Like you'll see that pop out in a survey um as long as your targeting is set up correctly. So yeah, definitely the one I'm most excited about. I haven't I've been thinking about this for weeks. I haven't like built any like fairing video ads on uh VO yet, but I'm like, I don't know, I just need a few more a few more minutes in the day.
Kurt Elster
VO being uh Google's AI video generation tool, which is really good.
Matt Bahr
Have you built have you done anything on it yet or I have used it one time total.
Kurt Elster
I gave it a single prompt and the prompt was generate a photorealistic scene sh street scene of a street takeover. This is a thing that hooligans do. Uh and it needs to be like a social media video. Only the drivers and cars are Mario Kart. Oh my gosh. And so like I e I gave it a difficult prompt because you're like mixing realities here.
Matt Bahr
Yep.
Kurt Elster
I gave it the format I wanted and I was like, you're gonna use these it well, you know, trademark characters. Like Nintendo notoriously very protective over these things. So I gave it a hard one as the only prompt I've ever given it. It came back, it nailed it. Oh wow. It came it looked like it was a portrait video. It was like sh cars in a circle in an intersection at night and in the center was Mario Kart Was Mario on a cart doing donuts. It wasn't perfect, but at a glance I was like, holy crap. I couldn't believe it.
Matt Bahr
Brands can do that today very easily, but like with the pace of this, like it's In a month, it's gonna be quicker. The prompts are gonna be easier. You'll be able to upload more brand creative. Like creation, like the cost of creation is gonna just drops so much um for video. Um so I think we'll see we'll see network of like positive effects in on other channels too where video performs well. I think it's a win for the net consumer uh because the videos will be more engaging. Um that the creative will be better just from a cost perspective, maybe not at the top uh top end where it already is really good. Um but that's definitely the channel that I'm most most excited about as a Person running fairing, but also as a consumer and former brand operator uh is is video.
Kurt Elster
So we think we think AI-powered creative is gonna help stores stand out?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, the the problem is every store is gonna have it or already has it. Um so the ability to stand out is arguably gonna get more difficult. Like I'm curious if we're just gonna try Similar, I guess, on meta where you're like maybe creating like 50 videos with the hope of like one actually performing extremely well. I think we're gonna see it everywhere. The thing the other thing I'm excited about on the creative side is How especially on connected TV, it's like how does personalization change? It's a little bit more difficult because you have multiple consumers sitting in front of the TV and consuming that experience at once. But there is a world where like you and I get different video creative and so does the thousands of other people. So personalization, a lot of these things can definitely I think we're gonna see huge changes here, but from a brand perspective, like, yeah, there's definitely opportunity now in leaning in learning these things. I think a lot of the platforms that are promising like one-click AI creative are not. There yet.
Kurt Elster
Um I for sure I could see it happening, but it is, you know, the results are a little hit or miss. And then man, if you don't get like if it's obviously AI, you will get roasted in the comments. I mean you can't The comments on ads are like toxic as hell anyway. Yeah. Uh but man, you like you don't want to invite it. No.
Matt Bahr
No. So I think we're the the pace of this, I think we're I think by Q4, Q4, this holiday season will be the place where brands start to really like deploy and use like totally AI creative.
Kurt Elster
Like as professionals, you were talking about like use AI to generate creative. Are customers, our end users using AI to find the products? Are you seeing like ChatGPT pop up as a referrer?
Matt Bahr
Yeah, yeah, we tracked that. So we just published. Um if anyone's curious, you can go to Fairing and sign up for our monthly benchmarks for LLMs. But We're seeing crazy growth. Uh I think it's like 15% last I checked of the merchants we work with, which are a few thousand plus stores. um are seeing it. And there's definitely like the 80-20 rule where we're really seeing like supplement companies like just take off like crazy versus other verticals. So if we think about this like ChatGPT is very like problem solution oriented right now or fact-checking. It's uh at least anecdotally not using it for maybe fashion advice um just yet. Uh So definitely some verticals we're seeing it. And the other thing to note is like ChatGBT is like obviously it's it's turning into a verb in and of itself, but like their brand ownership is just It's wild. It's like eighty eighty percent of all LLM mentions in attribution surveys are chat GPT.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, it's synonymous with it. It's true. Strange, because there's other tools out there. Like Google's got theirs. We were just talking about it. It's great. There's Claude, which is phenomenal.
Matt Bahr
I love Claude, but like I I love Claude the most, and like they're not performing very well on the e-commerce kind of acquisition side. Yeah, funny enough, Grok is number two. Yeah. Grok. Which like I don't I've used it a couple of times, but that's definitely not like what I'm opening when I'm looking to go query one of these or prompt one of these LMs.
Kurt Elster
So I know you've worked with uh some big brands like Bombas, ThusSocks, uh, Thrive. Anything that you gain from them about like, well, you know, these have the how the big boys do surveys well.
Matt Bahr
Yeah, I think all like those two as examples both have multiple questions. So we work with a few few large friends that just care about attribution. Um and I think that's like a huge uh They're not maximizing the value of their customers' attention when they're just asking one question on that thank you page. Um so um brands like Bombas and Thrive kind of lean in, they're turning questions on and off. periodically. They're kind of sampling it. Maybe that attribution hero question is kind of always the start of it. But they're in a meeting, someone asks a question and they're like, well, we could just turn this question on and at our scale, we could have an answer. And an hour. Um, like we can get a couple hundred responses from our actual customers. So they're a lot of these larger brands are more dynamic in how they think about it. Um Also at their scale, like the CRO questions are obviously even more valuable. If you're able to catch like, hey, add to cart isn't working on iOS after our recent theme update, like Maybe all your tests passed, but you're gonna see that in the the CRO related question because someone just went to desktop and then they're gonna complain about it there. Oh, smart. That's definitely the the larger brands definitely get the biggest influx of CRO related data. That's extremely like real-time and actionable. Um so those are probably the two two things. It's like they ask a lot of questions. They're They're more dynamic with how they think about enabling and disabling their questions in their survey, and then they definitely lean on that CRO question to drive higher uh conversion rates.
Kurt Elster
Let's say you started your own Shopify store. It sells t-shirts. You're on month six. You're starting to sell with it. You have installed your own app. How do you configure it? It's a great question.
Matt Bahr
So I have there's five uh five different categories of questions that you can ask in fairing. So I'm definitely like checking one from each one. Um the first one is obviously where are these customers coming from? Um if I kind of have some good momentum there. Um the second one, as I alluded to before, is how'd you describe yourself? Um I'm probably not one to like open a fashion brand uh personally, so I could probably Just assume I can ask that question. Um, because that early, you're just trying to understand like who is this customer? Like what are my different do I have one persona? Do I have five personas? Like who am I selling to? Um the third one, like third category that we didn't talk about before is just general research, psychographic and demographic um type questions. So it's anything from age and gender, um, uh anything that helps you understand kind of the more segmented aspect of like who these customers are. Pipe that all to Clavio. And then if I'm still a small brand, I'm maybe also managing my retention and CRM. strategies so really easy kind of setup, set and forget it flows and clavio that send personalized emails. Um and then the last one I would obviously have a a question that's like how is your shopping experience or uh something that helps helps me at least get really good voice of customer feedback on what's happening before they click pay now.
Kurt Elster
All right, we got we got the strategy laid out by the man himself. So you've got an app you love. Recommend a single app that's not yours.
Matt Bahr
Yeah, um it's a great question. My my immediate thought would be Arita, mainly just because I I know that team so well, so I'm gonna be quite biased with my recommendation here. Um What they do is they help segment your CRM. Um so that's probably the app that's out right now. To to take a little deviation on that question you had, the space within Shopify that I'm obsessed with. uh is customer accounts. Um I wrote a blog post in 2020 about how brands should be like leaning into building beautiful customer accounts, get people to log in. offer them personalized experiences in the logged in state. It helps solve measurement problems. It helps solve conversion rate. And I think what what Shopify is doing with customer accounts and Patrick on that team.
Kurt Elster
Patrick Milligan.
Matt Bahr
Yeah. Yes, he's great. Yeah. He's we see eye to eye on customer accounts. I think I want a future where every merchant ex like every experience I have as a consumer is a logged in state. There's no Cookie identity tracking around personalization, it knows exactly who I am, exactly what I bought previously, and I get a personalized experience based on those things. So Um that's that's the probably the area I'm most excited about. That's not touching surveys. There it's like I I think I joked to Patrick. I was like, is the future of a Shopify experience just like you go to your account and that's where all the merchandising and shopping happens? Is like in this account. Um obviously that got him excited, but um I just I think it's such a better consumer experience. It's like imagine if every time you went to Uber it didn't know who you were every time you bought you ordered food on Uber Eats, like it didn't know any of your preferences. I mean that's kind of what how our con uh merchants are or consumers are shopping today. So, where can we get your app? Where do we find Farring? Yeah, so you can get us directly in the App Store. Uh just type Farring into uh in the app store. You can also go to fairing. co uh to get in touch with me. I'm definitely posting a lot on LinkedIn. If anyone wants to chat, anything ecom related, marketing related, go to market. measurement related, you could ping me on LinkedIn. I'm always happy to chat with uh other merchants.
Kurt Elster
Matt Barr, Bering, thank you so much.
Matt Bahr
Thank you so much, Kurt.
Kurt Elster
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