Back in March 2020, we organized a 2-day eCommerce Summit with some of the most renowned speakers from all over the world, eCommerce Growth Summit.
The event agenda was filled with some of the most diverse topics, all rooted in strategy, acquisition, conversion, and customer retention, in the eCommerce industry. We had 35 great keynotes from speakers such as Nir Eyal, Douglas Patfield, Karl Gilis, Brian Clifton, Greg Zakowicz, Burç Tanır, Dennis Yu, Ton Wesseling, and 27 more. A total of 4471 attendees (and still counting even after the event) and dozens of professionals from 139 countries that interacted with the speakers.
Given the success of this event and the dire need in the market for insights on the new type of consumers in eCommerce, on the new ways of marketing and growth, we have decided to create a new weekly format for an eCommerce show – Ecommerce Growth Show, where we will have the opportunity to discuss with key people in key companies that are adapting, thriving and surviving and helping merchants survive in the challenging times we are all all experiencing now.
We have debuted the show with Jake Cohen, Head of Product Marketing from Klaviyo.
Who is Jake Cohen?
Having a ton of experience by playing roles from being a musician, journalist, project manager, sales rep, associate broker, strategist, product manager, Jake has built and executed B2C branding campaigns for companies like American Express, FIAT & Allstate.
Nowadays, Jake is the Head of Product Marketing at Klaviyo, a leading email marketing platform.
Klaviyo helps growth-focused eCommerce brands drive more sales with super-targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook, and Instagram marketing campaigns.
Here are the key takeaways from this episode.
Coronavirus Ecommerce Insights
Klaivyo is dedicated in this period on finding out “What is going on during COVID-19 in the eCommerce world?”. It all started from 17th of March and eCommerce brands were very focused on finding out what is really happening in this period, what are the effects, the real effects, that the pandemic has on eCommerce businesses all over the world.
That is why they started a survey asking eCommerce brands about CRO, about traffic, acquisitions, supply chain, ad spending, etc, and even from the first responses they got from survey, they have figured out that despite all that is happening in the world is indicating that everything is falling apart, the situation wasn’t that bad as they thought it was.
Jake mentions: “We learned that there’s a handful of brands that actually had sales going up and not just going up a little… like three hundred to a thousand % overnight. And we said oh my gosh! what is happening here?! And so as we kept doing the survey the trend rose the number of brands reporting sales increases started to rise. And so we said: Well we’re sitting on a mountain of data. We should probably go see if this is really the case. And so we took out our senior data scientist and brought her on the team and we looked at transaction volume transaction data across nineteen thousand brands. And what we’ve learned. That eCommerce sales are up tremendously!”
COVID-19 Update | April 20, 2020 | Day 29 from Klaviyo on Vimeo.
See more insights on the Covid-19 influence on eCommerce.
New times, a new type of consumers
Jake talks about the new type of consumers that arise due to the Covid-19 downturn.
“What I do believe though is that this is a tremendous period of education for consumers around the world because they can’t go to the stores like they normally would, to get the things that they need. And the things that they need are different as well. So their purchase triggers are actually changing and increasing in frequency. A lot of people are learning how to shop online. And so we’ve been tracking how many consumers are actually shopping online. And the gross number of people who actually make a purchase, unique shoppers, goes up every single week.
And what we’re also seeing is that because e-commerce sales overall are growing. My hypothesis is that consumers are also buying more categories than they previously purchased in the past. So for example, on the former point, I was talking to someone who explained that their grandparents are now shopping online. They had never done it before. So they’re learning how to do that. On the flip side, I can tell you from our personal experience we’re buying more categories online than we had in the past. Most of our online purchases had been very much driven by an immediate need, in particular, our kids or whatever else. But now we’re thinking about how we decorate certain spaces in our home.
We’re thinking about what soaps we need. We’re thinking about you know if we need a certain type of clothing we might have picked up at another store. Now it’s like well let’s go find a cool brand we can support.
It’s different, it’s a different way of thinking about what online is. So I think that you know a year or whatever from now when we look back and we look at the overall consumer spending and what percentage of that is owned by e-commerce.
Last year it was about 15 percent give or take. My hypothesis is that when this is said and done it’s going to see an immediate step function up to the lower 22-23-24%.”
What’s your number one tip for e-commerce managers?
What should e-commerce managers do right now?
“As best as you can, you should put your foot on the gas. Now it’s not the time to wait and see, it’s time to GO.”
What have we learned from this episode?
It is mandatory that eCommerce stores see the opportunity they have right now, and to continue to be informed about the reality of what is happening and take appropriate risks to survive and thrive during this period we are all experiencing.
You can read more insights about “What Reopening the Economy Means for Ecommerce Brands” in Jake’s latest article.
This week, in the next episode of the Ecommerce Growth Show, our guest is Jon MacDonald, the CEO and Founder of The Good and our host Valentin Radu will discuss with Jon about How to convert more of your visitors into buyers.
Make sure to save your spot!
It airs on the 30th of April, 3 PM GMT.
See you there!
