Modern Merchant Podcast [EP 27]: How important is marketing in driving ecommerce sales? w/ Rachel Go

Below, you will find a transcript of the episode.

Jamie McCarthy:

Hey guys, welcome back to The Modern Merchant podcast. I’m your host, Jamie McCarthy, head of strategic accounts at Flxpoint. Today we have Rachel Go on with us. Rachel, she works with a ton of B2B e-commerce companies to help build out scalable content engines. She’s been a fractional marketing director for a few companies in the past. Has worked with some really big names in our industry here. So super excited to have you on today, Rachel. How’s it going?

Rachel Go:

Thank you. It’s going pretty well. How are you?

Jamie McCarthy:

Good. So I know we were just talking and Rachel, you do a little bit of our content for us here at Flxpoint, but can you just let everyone know who have you worked with, what’s your background in the e-commerce space specifically around marketing? Because it was super interesting when you were talking to me earlier about that. I just didn’t have a chance to write it all down.

Rachel Go:

No worries. So I got my start in marketing overall at a winery, moved on to Hubstaff. So they are a time tracking tool and that’s where I learned more about productivity and remote work and all the stuff that goes into building content engine. So I was early growth with them and then I got my first step into e-commerce with Skubana. So I started out doing all of their content, built out their calendar. We went from a zero posting schedule. It’s just whenever anyone had time, they would write something and we’d post it. To something like a five month runway of three blog posts a week.

Jamie McCarthy:

Wow.

Rachel Go:

That was a alongside building out our guest post program. So we would do guest post exchanges with other industry players. From there I met who would become my next big client in e-commerce and who really showed me the back end of e-commerce and the nitty gritty and how it all works. That is Delivers. So I worked with Deliver for really long time. Well, in the startup world a really long time, but I was their first marketing hire. So I did essentially content for them, which includes the blog, all of the repurposing. I ran their video program. I did their newsletter. I did webinars and partnerships. For a while I handled things like social. I mean, I have a list of this somewhere, but it’s probably I don’t even remember like all the stuff I did. For a little while I was assigning out leads for the sales team. It was like too much. It’s the startup life.

Jamie McCarthy:

You wear any hat that you have to get the job done.

Rachel Go:

Yeah, whatever was needed in acquisition, it was like, “Okay, I’ll build out automated HubSpot email stuff and all of that.”

Jamie McCarthy:

I love that. When you talked about earlier, so Skubana you built out like a five month content calendar almost. How long did that take you to put together?

Rachel Go:

I would say we got to a good spot within three months just because at that time there, they were already a known name. So there were people who, for example, were integration partners who are just a no brainer to do blog softs with. There were people who reached out to us, who I could just respond to. There were people who, when I reached out, they already knew the name. So it was really easy to get your foot in the door and get an exchange going. All I had to do from there was learn about our blog and what we could do and our product and take a quick glance at the blogs of our target partners and figure out what they needed and the intersection between what we offered and something adjacent to what they offered and pitch those titles and get them basically written.

Rachel Go:

So I actually managed a team of, I want to say three to four freelancers to handle all of that. So we were working on our own internal content, as well as editing and publishing the guest posts that were coming in. As well as writing and editing the guest posts that were going out and then monitoring when they would get published.

Jamie McCarthy:

That’s impressive. That’s a ton of content in a really small window. I don’t have [inaudible 00:04:13].

Rachel Go:

Well, I think honestly I have to give credit to our freelancers. I think in every client that I’ve worked with, the freelance team has always been a really big asset. So I still work with freelancers that I met from clients years and years ago. I think one of my oldest relationships with the freelancers, something like seven years or something like that.

Jamie McCarthy:

Wow.

Rachel Go:

So essentially with every client, I’ll recruit a freelancer if I have to, or multiple freelancers. Then the ones that I have really good cadence with, I can edit really well and they understand my outlines and all of that, I’ll pull them along. I’ll be like, “Hey, I have a new client starting, do you want some projects from this other business? This is what they do. Here’s an intro to them and things like that.” I mean, right now, as you mentioned, I’m working with Flxpoint, my FA prep I work with Shogun a little bit and for a lot of those articles, I still have boots on the ground and write them myself and write out the outlines.

Rachel Go:

But for the ones that are too much, because you really can’t write a blog post a day and have it really good quality, I do rely on those really long relationships and the freelancers that I’ve worked with for so long that we pretty much understand without having to write. I’ll just leave one small comment in a Google Doc and they’ll be like, “Yep. Got it.”

Jamie McCarthy:

You don’t have to over explain. It’s not overly-

Rachel Go:

Honestly, the freelancers that I’ve worked with for a really long time, their knowledge is similar to mine because even if they haven’t worked directly with, for example, the UI of some of my clients, products and things like that, they have written out my ideas and my thoughts and my learnings around that product and the software. So they know, “Oh, okay, this is the benefit of, for example, distributing inventory across your warehouse network. This is the benefit of bundling and kidding. This is the challenges of bundling, kidding and all of that kind of stuff.”

Jamie McCarthy:

That’s incredible. The power of having a really good network, I feel like is still pretty underrated. So knowing that you have just such an impressive background, especially in the SaaS and e-commerce world, that’s really why I wanted to bring you on. Because I know, I mean, you’ve done amazing work for us. I know you’ve worked with like the Skubana and the Delivers of the world. So really talking today about marketing specifically for eCommerce and what all is involved in that. I think a really good place to start in whether you’re a brand new e-commerce business, fresh on the scene, or if you’ve been active in selling for 15 years now, I think it’s always super important obviously to consistently revisit your marketing strategy. So that’s something I wanted to ask you, when you are meeting with clients and you’re taking them on, what are the big questions, any brand or e-commerce companies should be asking when they’re approaching their e-commerce marketing strategy?

Rachel Go:

I would say before doing anything, whether you’re reevaluating an existing strategy that is maybe not working or you want to improve your strategy, or you’re just getting started from scratch, I would say, ask yourself how well, you know your audience. Because there are a lot of companies, especially product focused companies who the things they want to teach, people are not the things people want to learn. So the things that, for example, you might want to create might be blog posts about how cool this feature is, but the things that your audience might want to actually consume might be a video about how to do like, for example, instead of like a blog post on or an ebook on how to set up routing or things like that, your audience might just want a quick video on how to make your shipping fees cheaper, how to make it more affordable.

Rachel Go:

So I think you can spend a lot of time and money creating ebooks and all of these long form, original research documents, white papers, things like that. But what does your audience consume? What does your audience actually want to know? There are a few ways you can uncover these things. So I would say you can look inwards. So this is your customer research, your existing buyers, which you can learn about through your customer facing teams and other tools. There’s audience research, which is everyone in your audience that you want to reach, not just your customer. Then if you wanted to go a little bit deeper into that, I have a little bit more notes on that, but-

Jamie McCarthy:

No, I’d love to. Let’s dive into it.

Rachel Go:

So for audience research, you have tools like industry reports, surveys, trend reports. There are services that can go out and do focus groups on your behalf and run reports on your behalf. So they can report what’s going on within the industry, within your target audience, what they care about, what’s the state. It’s like the state of e-commerce, state of B2B, those kind of reports. Then for your customer research, there’s really nothing more valuable than hearing it from your customers themselves. So you want to talk to not just your best customers, but also your myth customers, and even your trend customers and your worst customers, because there’s value in knowing why they’re not a good fit. Because you don’t want more customers who sign up and purchase and take up your customer supports team time, sending in returns and be like, “Hey, I hate this on social media,” that kind of thing.

Rachel Go:

So you might tap into interviews with your customers. So these aren’t just case study interviews, where you’re talking about all the great stuff. They’re actually interviews that uncover why they found you, what was their issue, what triggered their search and what led them to you? Who else were they considering alongside you? So who are your competitors? Who are your alternatives? They might not even be a competitor. It might just be in action. Like instead of buying magnetic eyelashes, maybe the alternative is it’s not mascara or it’s not eyelash extensions. Maybe it’s just no makeup at all. This kind of thing.

Rachel Go:

So you can also tap into surveys. So these are things where you might pop out to your loyalty program members, your newsletter, subscribers, people who have purchased from you, people who have even churned. You can send surveys out to people who have direct contact with your brand and have purchased from you before and ask those kind of things. It’s a little bit less insightful, I would say than actually speaking to someone one on one, but it’s also a good way to do it at scale. Because you can aggregate those insights and turn them into more qualitative data. So if you happen to see one particular competitor’s name come up a lot, that’s a good data point. If you happen to see one complaint come up a lot or a similar family of complaints come up a lot, that’s a good data point.

Rachel Go:

Then casual chats are just like having events or like mixers. Some companies have their own communities. Like I know a running shoe brand that puts on events. So going to those and talking with your customers. All of that is really, really valuable. Just consider any chance you have to interact with your audience or your customers, it’s an opportunity. So you want to ask whenever you can. When someone signs up for a newsletter, ask them like, “Hey, what are you looking to learn from us? Or what brings you here?” When someone signs up for your product or makes a purchase, you can ask something similar. Like how did you find your buying experience? How did you find your checkout experience? How did you find us as a brand overall?

Rachel Go:

Then you can do that with… even if you can’t talk directly to your customers, you can still observe them. So you can observe how they interact with your customer support, how they interact with your sales team. That’ll uncover what their big questions are, what they care about learning, what their concerns are. You can look at the Q&As that come in through your live webinars. I found some really good blog topics, video topics, webinar topics from Q&A and webinars. So I really recommend that. Then learn why do they leave? Why do they purchase? What do they want specifically from you? What are they trying to achieve with your brand? So that’s a concept called jobs to be done. What’s their end state and how do you help them achieve it?

Rachel Go:

Because the world is really shifting and the world of marketing content is really shifting from being more business and brand focused, to being more customer focused. That’s, that’s the foundation of all good content. Instead of talking at people and saying whatever you want to say, you learn about what they want to hear, what they want to learn about and you provide that and where they want to go and you help them get there.

Jamie McCarthy:

No, I think that you hit the nail on the head too. You said speaking to them in their own language. Don’t tell them what you think they want to hear, give them content that they want to consume. I think that’s within that same vein. Being more customer focused, understanding that like, “Yeah, I have this problem that I can solve for you.” But communicating that more in a way where it resonates with them, I think is huge. So I think too, especially you’re talking about interacting with customers and just getting valuable feedback, whether it’s good or bad. That’s the only way that you can really grow. I think it’s huge on social media. Like I’m on Instagram, on our brand’s Instagram page, half of the comments in most of the posts are people saying like, “Hey, I needed to return something.” Or unfortunately maybe complaining about a certain product. Or like, “I got this from my daughter and I absolutely love it.”

Jamie McCarthy:

So there’s a ton of just even untapped, I guess, data there even getting that feedback from customers on social media posts even. So that’s super valuable.

Rachel Go:

Speaking about social media, one point that you reminded me of is to know your weaknesses as well. So social media is actually a weakness of mine. I feel like I’m too old for it. When you’re a brand, you should also look at what your strengths and weaknesses are realistically. So instead of trying to do everything, figuring out what channels your customers are on and what you’re actually good at. Because if your customers are really active on a particular social media channel and you just don’t handle it because you don’t like it, because you’re not very good at it, and you say, “Oh, we’re not getting results from it.” That’s a brand problem. That’s not an audience thing. It’s yeah.

Jamie McCarthy:

A 100%. And it is. It just allows you to really make those tweaks that are necessary, that you may just have not been aware of and you can adjust and pivot. So all good feedback, I think. I don’t think any feedback is technically bad feedback. I think if you’re a brand and you’re looking to grow and improve, absorb it.

Jamie McCarthy:

So on that note, I know you mentioned there are a lot of different resources with the surveys, with some of the companies who will also assist in gathering data for you. But what key metrics do you think brands should really be paying attention to, to really help them define and determine success or failure with a particular marketing strategy?

Rachel Go:

So if we are talking about content in particular, attribution can be a challenge because different tools track leads different ways. Different companies have different lead qualifications signals. So like what you might consider a qualified lead or a warm lead might not be the same as a different brand. So I would say what I’ve done in the past is you can build out ways to qualitatively track results. For example, if you have a signup page or a self onboarding page, you can make an optional question about, how did you hear us? You want to look at all of your attention metrics actually in particular. In every industry, but in e-commerce in particular and I guess SaaS as well, retention and customer lifetime value can really make or break your business. So you want to look at how successful is your rewards program? How successful is your loyalty and referral program? How many times do people come back and repurchase?

Rachel Go:

If you can track that and you want to also actually look at talking about acquisition, average order values, because those are a good way to make use of your full acquisition spend. So something that works really well with both CLB and AOV is subscription programs. How many subscriptions can you sell? Because those people come back over a long period of time. Not only that their overall spend with you is going to be higher. So even if you spend a little bit more to acquire a subscription customer, it’ll even out and even benefit you in the long run because they eventually end up spending more. Then beyond that, they think of you more quickly. They’re your more top of mind. When they consider repurchasing, they don’t even have to think about your competitors.

Rachel Go:

If they’re like, “Oh, I need to get a new dose of vitamins, they’re not like, “Oh, I’m going to go browse the stores for it.” It’s going to be like, “Oh, my next delivery is set. So don’t have to worry about it.” That makes a good customer experience as well.

Jamie McCarthy:

One last thing that they have to even think about.

Rachel Go:

Yes, absolutely. I mean, this is veered off of content, but the way you might want to track this is for example, like I mentioned, you can chat with your customers frequently. If you have a subscription customer who is part of your loyalty program, who has shopped with you for a long time, if you chat with them, figure out how they found you. There are tools that can track this depending on how well you integrate everything like your CRM and you’re tracking and all of that. So like if you use, for example, I use Heap and Google Analytics, now Google Analytics 4, you can actually see if you connect it with your customer relationship manager. Because you have to be able to track the unique IDs of your customers through everything.

Rachel Go:

So you can use tools like Google Analytics now Google Analytics 4 and Heap, and even like HubSpot Copper, all of these other tools. If you integrate them so that they can track how people find you and then eventually how they interact with you, you can track how well your content does at acquiring customers, how well your content does at acquiring good customers who will stay for a long time and who don’t churn or how poorly your content does with different segments of your audience. So you might separate your audience by small businesses, enterprise businesses, etc. This is getting more into the B2B. But for like for example, e-commerce companies, you might segment them into like male and female, if you’re a clothing company or like by age groups, if you have certain lines that appeal to different ages or things like that.

Rachel Go:

So you can see which content needs to be bumped up, which needs to be doubled down on which can be improved and repurposed, which works well for other things and all of that.

Jamie McCarthy:

Super important to look at, I think, and again, going back to that, for both new brands that are just emerging onto the scene, and then also these guys who have been around for a while, because we know everything comes in waves. Customer behavior last year, it’s a little bit different than it is this year even. So just consistently monitoring that I think. Then just keeping an eye on that is huge. Then because you mentioned earlier, you can’t write a blog post a day for six months straight. Just creatively, mentally the bandwidth that it takes for that, it’s just not doable. So that’s actually one of my questions that I had for you.

Jamie McCarthy:

Just switching gears a little bit, Rachel is, how do you deal with the burnouts or the creative blocks? You have all of these metrics and now you see, “Okay, maybe we need to change direction as far as the content we’re creating.” But you just have nothing that’s coming to you. Do you have any strategy to help you with that?

Rachel Go:

That is such a good question. I think it’s something that really resonates with anyone who has to handle any regular content output. It’s just all about ideas. So I’ll answer this question in two parts. One is going to be how to unstick yourself as you mentioned. Then the other part is going to be how to deal with burnout. So if you run into a creative block, I think it’s important to remember you have resources. Content should never work in a silo. So if you are all of a sudden stuck and you don’t know what to write about next, you don’t know what your customer cares about, it’s really important to go back to your customer facing teams, to your customers themselves, to your audience and figure out what’s going on, what’s happening in their world today? What are their concerns? What’s the latest news? Is there a new way or is there a new trend or has there been a shift in how your audience perceives you or how they use your tool? That kind of thing.

Rachel Go:

So it’s really important to build those content feedback loops with your sales team, your support team, to always get that flow. Whoever talks to your customers, they’re going to have insights about what your customers care about. So to build that flow and that open dialogue of like, “Hey, a lot of people have been asking about this lately. Can you create a video about it? Can you create a podcast on it? Can you host a webinar on it?” Talking to your partners who reach out and say like, “Hey, some of our customers have been asking specifically about something that your solution or your brand covers, do you want to partner on an event or a webinar or a conference?” That kind of thing.

Rachel Go:

So understanding that content marketing is an ecosystem. It shouldn’t work in a silo. It shouldn’t work by itself. It should work with external partners, internal partners, your own customers and all of that. Then a really good tip for getting over just any blocks is figuring out how to repurpose your content. So you should be repurposing content anyway, especially for content that has taken a lot of resources to create. Like you did a lot of research, you really put your time into it. It’s insightful and unique. It’s something that your leadership team has contributed quotes in their own insights too. That kind of thing. You should be repurposing content anyway. But if you’re stuck in a rut, you can go back and look at what content performs really well and the metrics you want to look at there.

Rachel Go:

The ones that I’ve looked at before are what has gotten us qualified leads. So again, this is measured in different ways, but what has gotten us a contact, a submission, what has gotten us a merchant who has purchased, as some examples. What has gotten us a merchant who has signed up for a subscription program? Look at the content that does that and repurpose it. So if it’s a blog, turn it into a video and then put that on YouTube, put that video natively on your social profiles, relink the YouTube video into your blog. So when people read the blog next, there’s a little bit of interactivity and some engagement that they can stop and watch. Actually I’ve watched session replays with tools like FullStory, which is a tool that tracks customers as they navigate around your website, but it can see how people interact with your website.

Rachel Go:

I did notice that videos for our particular audience for that client got watched. When people went to our solutions pages, people would stop and watch the video. So it got our bounce rate down. It kept people on the website a little bit longer and it answers their questions in ways that they prefer. So these viewers prefer watching a video because they would watch it to almost the end instead of scrolling down and skimming through our web content or our copy. So figuring out how to repurpose content and especially well-performing content helps to ensure you’re always giving your customers both interaction as well as value. So what they want to see.

Jamie McCarthy:

That’s such great advice.

Rachel Go:

The second point.

Jamie McCarthy:

I was like, I feel like you have more.

Rachel Go:

The second point is near and dear to my heart because I have personally dealt with burnout more than once. I think I’m fortunate enough to say that all of my clients have been really excellent clients. I love learning about every single one, their business, their products, their audience, but sometimes the work is just so much. So what I’ve learned after more than 10 years of probably taking on too much is, well, one, you have to remind yourself that content isn’t healthcare. What’s going to happen if you don’t get a newsletter out on time, no one’s going to die. You just send it out the next day. So it’s resetting those expectations because I remember, especially when I first started in content, if something went wrong, it felt like the end of the world. It felt like you would be showering and you just remember, “Oh, I left a typo in that newsletter.” I just want to lie down and curl up. It’s resetting that, I mean, lives aren’t riding on it. It’s important, but it’s not your life and it’s not other people’s lives. So that’s always a good reminder, especially for someone in content.

Rachel Go:

Then the other couple of tips I have is context switching can be your friend or your enemy. So if it lowers the quality of your work and it’s something you have to determine for yourself. If it lowers the quality of your work, you need to learn how to avoid context switching too much. But for example, in school, I remember if things were really busy, the way I would take a break from my projects is by working on easier projects or other projects. So sometimes it actually helps you reenter or refocus a little bit. So I would say context switching, if you know how to use it well can help you with your productivity. Because if you’re just stuck and you’re not moving forward, you’re not making progress, instead of being frustrated about that, you can move on to something else and wrap that up, get the quick endorphin rush from finishing that to-do list and then move back to your original test.

Rachel Go:

Especially if you don’t have any time to waste and you’re on a deadline, you move back to your original task and you’re like, “Okay, I’ve accomplished something for today. I can definitely get this done and coming back to that.” Then another thing is making sure you have enough help. So especially for startups and I suspect for smaller teams, the content person is one person, but they’re the entire marketing department. You need to realize that’s not really sustainable. So you need to also know how to outsource, how to hire, how to get help, how to reach out and say, “Hey, this is too much for me or this deadline isn’t going to work. I have these 20 other things that are actually more important.”

Rachel Go:

So in learning how to do that and say no, and push back and get help and support where you need it is really vital. Then the last tip I have, which should be something that everyone knows, but I’ll just state it again. You need to know when to take a break. You need to know when to log off because I think there isn’t a good way to say like, “Oh, at 5:00 PM it’s time to log off and separate your work and your life.” That’s never worked for me. I’m working all the time, but I know when it’s time to stop. So I’m not going to say like, “At 5:00 PM, it’s time to log off.” Or I’m not going to say, “Have one computer for work, one computer for personal, or uninstall slack from your phone.” Anything like that because I don’t practice it. So it would be hypocritical for me to suggest that.

Rachel Go:

But knowing when it’s time to log off or when it’s time to take a vacation is a skill. It’s a skill that not everyone has and I took a while to cultivate it. When I didn’t have that skill, I dealt with burnout and it affected work and it affected quality of work. Even my level of communication, how well I was able to convey status updates, project updates, things like that. So knowing went to stop and step back it’s important. It’s an underrated skill that a lot of people need to actually learn.

Jamie McCarthy:

Agreed. Honestly, Rachel, I think everything that you listed there, it’s just good just life advice in general. Nothing’s really like life or death I mean, to an extent. Let’s take time to take a break. It’s okay to switch from A to B when needed. Pivoting is okay. But especially I think in the content world, I think there is that perception that you have to constantly be on. There’s just so much pressure to always just be throwing content out. It’s like at the end of the day if it’s not valuable, you might as well not put anything out at all.

Rachel Go:

Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your stress. That’s bad for your health. Putting things back into perspective is probably one of the biggest things that you can do to help you actually disconnect.

Jamie McCarthy:

That’s amazing advice. I really love that. So last question I have for you. I know we’re coming up on time here, but you and I had talked about this previously, especially with what you do. You’re working with multiple clients at a time. You have four give or take at a time. What are your must have tools to develop content, to stay organized with that content? That’s obviously a big piece of this. To just really ensure that you’re working as efficiently as you can, as creatively as you can. Do you have any go-to tools for that?

Rachel Go:

The tools I use today every day are collaboration tools and measurement tools because I’ve moved into a manager role. So these are Asana, Trello, Slack, Loom, and [inaudible 00:31:13] if I need to give more visual feedback to team members. Google Docs, that whole suite of Google I love. Google analytics and as a quick tip, you want to switch over to GA 4 now because universal analytics is going away. Heap and FullStory. So these are the things that I use to collaborate and to track how well our content and our marketing efforts are doing. But back when I was creating content and really focused on boots on the ground writing things, you need ideation tools, you need research tools, SEO tools, editing, improving tools. If I switch my hat to learning more about my customers, I need interviewing tools. I need surveying tools.

Rachel Go:

Then if we switch roles to instead of a blog working on other types of content, such as video, webinars, audio, things like that, you need webinar software, you need podcast tools. You need the editing tools and all of that. So there’s so many different useful tools in content. I have a blog post that I can share as a resource after that has more than 200 of the tools that I’ve come across. I haven’t tested all of them, but every time I see an interesting one, I’ll check out their website to make sure it’s not just snake oil, but I’ll add it to that. But I’ve used so many tools over the course of being a subject matter expert, to being a project manager, to being a content strategist, to being a marketing director that it’s so hard to list all my favorites. Those are just the ones that I use today.

Jamie McCarthy:

That’d be awesome. If you can, we’ll be sure to include that in the episode show notes too, if anyone wants to check that out. Can you tell me a little bit more then Rachel about GA 4?

Rachel Go:

Sure. So when I mentioned that Google Analytics 4 is replacing UA, what I was referring to is Google Analytics, its current version, which many, many content marketers have relied on to see page views and sessions and bounce rate and all of that, is actually changing. It’s changing quite drastically. By June or July, I believe of 2023, all of your historic data from the existing current state of Google Analytics, it’s going away. So as soon as possible, what you want to do, is set up your Google Analytics 4 account, which is a new version of Google Analytics. It’s new and approved and it’s much more focused on events than cookies. The instigator for this is the world is shifting from focusing on cookies to focusing more on privacy. So to combat this Google Analytics has shifted from relying more on cookies, which are honestly more unreliable now because people can block those, they can avoid them. They can turn on VPNs, they can opt out.

Rachel Go:

So the way that GA 4 works is still really like, it’s so different. As Jill Quick of the coloring in department puts it Google analytics 3, which is UA, which is the current version that we’re used to is like a car. Google Analytics 4 is a helicopter. So it’s so vastly different that you can’t even think of it really the same way because the attribution model is different. The way that they track data and sessions is different. The way that dashboards are set up are different. So that actually reminds me of something that is a good reminder for everyone in the content world. That is to focus less on cookies and third party tracking and more on customer first data. So this is first and second party data.

Rachel Go:

So these are the things that I mentioned earlier, which is the things that you hear directly from your customers, the things that you can see directly on your website. So for example, that session replay tool or your loyalty program, or your newsletter or the actual feedback that customers send you in your feedback forms. So it’s really important to focus more on those than third party tracking because the more we progress into the new privacy focused world, the less reliable third party tracking is going to be. So you don’t want to base your strategy on it. It’s going to be wrong.

Jamie McCarthy:

Got it.

Rachel Go:

I mean, eventually you’re going to end up just knowing what people who are not tech savvy do. Because they don’t know how to opt down a third party cookie. So all your data [inaudible 00:35:45].

Jamie McCarthy:

You just click [inaudible 00:35:48] everything.

Rachel Go:

Yeah, you don’t know what teenagers are doing anymore. You can’t have accurate data and insights on them.

Jamie McCarthy:

Got it. So you said that’s rolling out 2023?

Rachel Go:

So as of July 1st, 2023 standard universal analytics properties will stop processing data. So Google Analytics UA will stop tracking website visits, users, sessions, bounce rate. It’ll stop tracking all of that.

Jamie McCarthy:

Got it.

Rachel Go:

Then a little bit after that all of your historic data is going away. But if you set up your GA 4 account, even if you can’t pork your historic data over, it’ll start tracking your data right now. So you can still see a comparison this year versus next year for some months.

Jamie McCarthy:

That’s going to be super valuable. So if you guys haven’t already, make a switch.

Rachel Go:

If you’re super mad about this like some marketers are, and you want to switch off of Google Analytics, then you can also consider like Heap and Kissmetrics. There’s a lot of other tools as well, but just understand that the bread and butter, the go-to analytics, content metric tracking tool for many marketers is going away as we know it.

Jamie McCarthy:

Then finally, Rachel, if people want to connect with you, where can they find you?

Rachel Go:

So I have a website @rachelandreago.com. Then if you want more about those tools, I think I have it sticked somewhere. Anyway, if you go to my website, you’ll see a lot of the different articles that cover some of the things that we talked about, like consumer research, audience research, tracking the business value of your content. Because that’s always important to actually create feedback loops because your sales team might say, “Hey, why would we spend our time telling you what to write about when it doesn’t contribute to our leads?” So being able to track the business results and saying like, “Hey, this white paper sent this deal to your calendar and you closed that deal and it was this amount.” That’s really important to creating that investment team wide. So I have articles on that. Connect with me on LinkedIn. If you say in the notes I heard you on the Flxpoint podcast, I’ll add you right away.

Jamie McCarthy:

Awesome. Super excited. We obviously love being able to work with you at Flxpoint. So it’s been super fun and then I really appreciate you coming on today. It’s been awesome learning a little bit more about content and how to manage that. So thanks so much, Rachel.

Rachel Go:

Thank you so much. Thank you for your insightful questions and your time.

Jamie McCarthy:

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3:

All right guys, thanks again so much for tuning in to another modern merchant podcast episode. If you want to learn more about us, check us out @flxpoint.com. That’s Flxpoint without the e .com. We’ve got our Modern Merchant blog up there. It’s full of the latest e-commerce information and news. Also, go ahead and subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on socials at Flxpoint. We’ll see you again next week with another episode.