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E103: Gen Furukawa

Using Quizzes as a Data Capture Tactic to Improve The Online Experience For Your Customers

Gen Furukawa

Podcast Overview

Is an online quiz worthwhile or do they just annoy your customers? Gen Furukawa shares everything in this week’s podcast…

Quizzes are a great way to capture meaningful data to personalise the customer experience. They allow brands to understand their customers on a deeper level to build long lasting meaningful relationships. 

Founder of Prehook and podcast host Gen, shouts from the rooftops about the power of an online quiz. Disclosure, one brand 3X their opt-in rate with one. 

eCom@One Presents:

Gen Furukawa 

Gen Furukawa is the Co-Founder of Prehook, a software that allows Shopify businesses to create interactive online quizzes to personalise the customer experience to delight, engage and build relationships with customers. 

This software allows eCommerce brands the opportunity to capture high quality, clean data to provide a unique experience for all. He is also the host of the Cart Overflow podcast. 

In this episode, Gen shares what the hell Zero-Party data is and how businesses can capture meaningful data to overcome privacy updates. He divulges how a mushroom business 3X their opt-in rate with a quiz and how to reduce customer objections with conversion rate optimisation. 

If you are a fashion brand, you don’t want to miss this as Gen shares what data you need to capture to offer a true personalised experience. He also discloses the biggest mistakes eCommerce businesses make with their quizzes which is losing them hard earned cash and what you need to focus on over the next 12 months. 

Topics Covered:

1:58 – His journey into eCommerce 

4:42 – What is Zero Party Data – Data that customers willingly share with businesses 

6:12 – Capturing Zero Party Data to overcome Privacy updates 

8:22 – Figuring out what data is most important and how to add value to the customer 

13:17 – How a mushroom business 3X their list opt in with a quiz

15:40 – Reducing customer objections with good CRO

21:04 – Data that apparel brands need to capture to offer a personalised experience 

26:10 – Quiz funnel success stories 

30:11 – The biggest mistakes with quizzes that is costing eCommerce companies money

33:00 – What companies need to focus on over the next 12 months with quizzes and personalisation 

34:47 – Book recommendation

Richard Hill:
Hi, and welcome to another episode of eCom@One. Today's guest, Gen Furukawa, cofounder at Prehook, fellow podcast host at Cart Overflow. It's great to have a podcaster on. We've not had many on, but it's great to meet you.

Gen Furukawa:
Richard, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, looking forward to getting stuck in. I think we were just saying you're based in Texas?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Yeah.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, Austin, Texas.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, Austin, Texas. Very exciting, very exciting. I mentioned South Fork and the Ewings, and obviously the generations didn't quite match up, did they?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's Elon Musk, he's the big celebrity here now.

Richard Hill:
Okay.

Gen Furukawa:
Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, for what it's worth.

Richard Hill:
Oh, they're both there now? Yeah, yeah.

Gen Furukawa:
Matthew McConaughey, yeah.

Richard Hill:
So I think it'd be good to kick off with you giving us a bit of an intro, really how you got into e-com. How did you find yourself where you are today with Prehook and the podcast?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, totally. Yeah, my first foray into e-commerce was before the early days, when Shopify was a de facto platform. 2011 I was in the middle of business school and my now wife, girlfriend then, was in Chicago, and I wanted find a way to be in Chicago for the summer. And so actually I ended up getting very lucky and getting an internship at Bucket Feet, which is a print on demand sneaker brand. So artist designed sneakers. And so that was really cool, because I was sitting next to the two cofounders and doing everything that they were doing. This was months after they launched, so it was the grinding early days of trying to get as many sales, trying to figure out the marketing part. I was not very familiar with marketing in a practical, real sense, more so from a classroom and taking it in business school, which doesn't necessarily translate.

Richard Hill:
A little bit different.

Gen Furukawa:
Little bit different, yeah. So that was getting my feet wet with e-commerce. And then I got more experience at a private equity company, where I worked in the portfolio brands on some of their e-commerce. So this is stuff like skateboard brand Super Footwear or skincare brand Paula's Choice. Those are two really interesting opportunities, and that was actually focused a lot on paid search, so in your wheelhouse. And then I moved to the SaaS side, so the e-commerce enablement or tools as part of the founding team at Jungle Scout. So Jungle Scout is an Amazon product research tool, helps people scale their Amazon business. And at that point it was very early, it was the Chrome extension to help people understand what the demand and reviews rating so you could identify where an opportunity to sell a product on Amazon was.

Gen Furukawa:
And so now, fast forward I guess more than 10 years from the start, now I'm cofounder of Prehook, which is a quiz platform for Shopify merchants to help merchants accelerate list growth, improve conversion rate by simplifying the buying process, ask a few questions, recommend the most appropriate product. And then lastly and perhaps most importantly these days is capturing zero party data.

Richard Hill:
Yeah.

Gen Furukawa:
Which is learning more about your customers. So I'm sure we'll talk about zero party data and its implications. But yeah, that's where I'm at.

Richard Hill:
There are many things we could talk about on this episode, to be fair. So many elements there that I am super excited to chat through. Zero party data, it's obviously really, really important. What would you say to the listeners? Why is it so important for stores now to be using zero party data?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, for sure. Well, just to get on the same page, what is zero party data? Just another marketing buzzword. So zero party data is data that customers or shoppers willingly and proactively share with a brand. So contrast that with first party data, which is gathered passively. So this is things like sales history, so what products do they purchase, maybe how much they've spent, so their lifetime value. Maybe it's engagement on the website, so that might be abandoned card stuff or email engagement. But these are all things where you're capturing it passively. The downside is, you don't necessarily know the intent or the why, what the customer is looking for, their mindset, their psychographics. But zero party data, you can get down to that. You can understand the intent because you can understand the things like, "What are you looking for?" Or, "What challenges do you face? What are your preferences? What does your daily routine look like? What are your goals?" And so these are all things that you cannot get from gathering ...

Richard Hill:
You can assume things, but you can assume things incorrectly.

Gen Furukawa:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
You're very much asking questions and then giving something potentially that is going to resolve or help in the answering of that question.

Gen Furukawa:
Totally. And so why does it matter now? Well, if you're on the paid side, which you might be, you might be seeing the impact of iOS 14, where data is not as readily available as it once was. So therefore targeting is a little more broad, cost per acquisition therefore is higher, and cost per clicks are increasing. So there's that element of, where brands have relied historically on paid ads as a channel for profitable acquisition, that's not as doable as much any more. So it's more important, it's urgently important for brands to build a direct relationship with their customers. And so with that, you're getting a contact information, whether it's an email or a phone number, even a crypto wallet address, which we collect now.

Richard Hill:
Okay.

Gen Furukawa:
And then some of those customer properties, the attributes of the brand, to help you understand what they're looking for, then therefore you're creating better segments. And ultimately as marketers our job is to create the offer, find the best message at the right time to the right person. So it's just amping up the relevance. And so that's really what this data play is all about.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. It's exciting, isn't it? Because ultimately, if you're putting the right product in front of the person that wants it, there's a few variants to that, but ultimately your marketing message is very much answering a query question that's very, very specific, rather than herding tens of thousand people into the same ad or into the same email or into the same offer. It's not going to have much of an effect, is it, in comparison to having a very, very specific offer potentially. Okay, so stores that are listening, okay, we're on board, zero party data, absolutely. We're collecting various things through the journey, but what sort of things would you say a business can use that zero party data to help potentially personalize offers, to personalize the experience? Give me some examples of using that data.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, totally. So I think that the best place to start for a brand that's looking to make this initiative is to understand what data is most important, what would be most helpful to create tighter segments in, say, Klaviyo or Omnisend. So whether that is, if it's a skincare brand, if it's, for example, based on their skin type. Or if it's a fragrance brand, what scent profiles do they like? Whether it's woodsy, citrus, vanilla, or whatever. So capturing these things I think are most important. And then from there you're thinking, "Okay, what value can I offer the customer to incentivize this exchange of information?" Because ultimately, yeah, it's nice to gather this information, but there is nothing for free, and there has to be some implicit value that you're going to offer the customer in exchange.

Gen Furukawa:
And so there's an interesting study, and I think it was from Segment customer data platform, where customers are willing and want to share their interests, their preferences, personal information. They want to share. But there's an expectation that on the other end there will be a better customer experience, better shopping experience, ultimately things will be more relevant and personalized. So that's at the foundation of what this exchange is. "I'll ask you a few questions and in exchange I'll give you some value that will help you." So that could be anything from helping people learn more about themselves. Beard brand, actually they're based in Austin as well, what type of beardsman are you? So that's linked to the self-discovery.

Gen Furukawa:
Or it could be a personal assessment based on these profiles. Hair Code by Procter and Gamble as one example, they ask a bunch of questions about your hair, your habits, how often you wash your hair, maybe where you live, and all these things impact the products that are best for your particular hair type, and it's categorized very specifically based on number and letter. So you're learning about your own hair and how you can improve.

Richard Hill:
Powerful, isn't it? I think during lockdown I signed up for various subscription services, and I think probably half the planet has.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Half the planet still get deliveries from nearly two years ago when we first went into lockdown from various subscriptions. And one of the subscriptions I thought was, well, both, I bought two subscriptions for coffee. And one of the options there are, "What do you like? Do you like the chocolate, the orange?" There's four or five questions around the different, I don't know if they call them tones, I can't remember, actually, within the coffee. And obviously I've got that set in my account now, and then they're sending me information, they're sending me promotion. And I'm seeing when I'm on the website these coffees that tick this profile that I filled in and this profile that I filled in. And obviously I'm getting marketed very specifically.

Richard Hill:
And therefore I think more than two years now I have been a member of two coffee subscriptions.

Gen Furukawa:
Nice.

Richard Hill:
It's because I'm getting very specific products I like. They are changing it, but only within the parameters, they're changing the type of coffee. I've set it to send me what they think rather than just have the same one. But they're sending the product to me that is in the parameters. I've said, "I like this, this, this, and I don't like this, this, this." Well, they're not sending me any variations that have got cinnamon in or whatever, some of the tastes that I don't like. So I think that's quite a good example. And I'm still a member of both those coffee brands 24 months later, pretty much.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
So what was initially maybe a 12, 13 pounds or $15, $20 purchase over 24 months is now a $500 purchase. Because if it was just the same thing, yeah, I probably wouldn't. So I think that's really, really important. The quiz is something, I'm from an Internet marketing perspective, I'm very familiar with in terms of personalizing the journey in the B2B space. But you don't see too much of it in the e-com space. Well, you do and you don't. I think it's a bit of a mixed bag, isn't it, out there? So let's say, okay, e-com store's listening, we're collecting, they're collecting, but how can we really scale using this zero party data? Give me some examples of how we can really move the needle from, maybe add a significant percentage of increase of average order value, retention, sales. Give me a couple of examples.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, totally. So, yeah, that's a great question. There are different points in the customer journey. So we can focus, for example, on list growth. So we have one brand, it's called Tealixir, it's an adaptogen, so kind of like a mushroom brand. And they're seeing really great results. I think it's like 3X their opt-in rate with a quiz, because it's not a subscription brand similar to what your coffee example was, but it is the top of the funnel for a lot less of their customers to enter. Because adaptogens, not many people necessarily have tasted mushrooms or mushroom tea. But it also has medicinal benefits. So what flavors do you like and what problems are you trying to solve? So they're trying to funnel people into the quiz. So that includes the quiz in the header nav at the top of their homepage above the fold, the hero image, an exit intent popup, they have a landing page for their paid ads.

Gen Furukawa:
So a lot of this traffic is going towards the quiz. And if you think of even just high level qualitatively, an opt-in rate, you might get, say 3% to 5% as a benchmark in exchange for 10%, 15% discount. Which is not necessarily ideal because, A, you're seeing margin drain directly. So that 15% comes off the top. You're seeing maybe a dilution of brand equity, like, okay, if I'm a new customer and I'm seeing that they're offering me a discount up front, if I don't add it, maybe down the line I can. So I'm maybe primed to get this discount. And it's not necessarily the best way to initiate the customer relationship, because you don't even necessarily know that much about it. You might know their email. But the quiz, we're seeing completion rates in 70% to 80%.

Gen Furukawa:
So if seven or eight out of 10 start the quiz and you have a lot of people ... Or I'm sorry, seven or eight out of 10 complete the quiz and a lot of the people are going into the quiz, you can see how the math adds up to be a much better customer acquisition in terms of leads. Now, also where are brands doing well with a quiz maybe later in the customer journey? So there's a product recommendation element. And so this is, if you put your conversion rate optimization hat on, which I'm sure you do all the time as well, the goal of CRO is ultimately to reduce any customer objections.

Gen Furukawa:
So the more you know about the customer and what their questions are, what their goals are, the better that you can do as a marketer to guide them through and ultimately get them to add to cart and purchase. And that's the beauty of a quiz, which simulates very much the in-person sales associate relationship, where you might ask a few questions, then in the back of your mind you're inventorying what products might make most sense, recommend them, and here's why this makes sense for you based on your quiz responses.

Richard Hill:
So I think there's some great things there. I think just to break down a couple of my takeaways there, and ultimately sitting here as an e-com store, then you're probably guilty of just whacking a 5%, 10% straight discount on your home page and giving away margin. There's a smarter way to do this. We've done other episodes on discounts and how to do dynamic and AI driven discounts. But what we're saying here is, we can implement a quiz, get certain information, obviously depending on what you're selling, maybe we'll go into that afterwards, and then based on some of the answers you've given, then offer them something that might not be as an aggressive discount as what you might have done at the front end, giving away 15%. Whereas you might go, "Right, here's the products you're after. And here's 5%." Well, obviously if you're seeing the exact things you want, the chance of buying is a lot higher than seeing a broad range of products. Therefore we might not need to give a bigger discount. Obviously we can test things like that. Would that be fair to say?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, yeah, I think so. And what you're getting towards is getting towards the post quiz communication. And I think that's where you can really leverage some of the data points. So as an example, it's very similar to a cart abandonment.

Richard Hill:
Yeah.

Gen Furukawa:
In fact, in Klaviyo you can just clone the flow, the automation. And so instead of abandoned cart it's just, take the quiz, but then after that, "Okay, here's your recommended product." And then from there you can get more segmented, so you can create conditions and splits. So for your coffee, if you like a light roast, "Here, let's send Richard more content about light roast and the provenance of our beans and why it matters and how you enjoy it most." And then medium roast, dark roast, or espresso, or decaf. And so in that way you're capturing that data in the quiz, and then you're using that to siphon people off into a more relevant flow. And not only via email, you can do it via SMS as well. SMS is maybe more limited in terms of how many times you want to reach them, I think. That's maybe more personal, so you want to be more thoughtful or restrained, I guess, in how often you're sending.

Richard Hill:
Yeah.

Gen Furukawa:
But then when you were talking about scale, you can scale this as well across to paid platforms. So you're creating your segments in Klaviyo or Omnisend, for example, you're porting those over into your Google Ads or Facebook or Instagram, YouTube. And so you're able to align the segment with the product offering. So then therefore it's a little bit of remarketing in that sense, but also more relevant where you actually know the customer that you're reaching.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. That's a great point. I think how many people that are listening in that have got those very detailed segments in maybe the Klaviyo, et cetera, and then taking those lists and pushing them back into the ad platforms for audience marketing, remarketing, maybe lookalikes potentially. That's something I think we don't talk about. I don't think we've spoken about that on any episode. And that's a smart, smart move, that, yeah. Yeah, we do it as an agency, but I don't know that we've actually spoken about it on episode. So that's a real smart play, real smart play. Obviously it's down to that really cementing, really cementing whether that's the guy that has bought 14 coffees and has been on subscription for the last two years that has spent $500. That segment is a very wealthy segment, or very different.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
A coffee addict, should I say, as opposed to one that's just bought one non-subscription product who's just spent 13 pounds and he's not got the subscription. They're very different customers, aren't they?

Gen Furukawa:
Totally.

Richard Hill:
As a coffee company, which one do you want? Obviously we all want, well, mostly, the subscription if we can get it. Although the equivalent to that, that repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat manual purchase. It's all about that lifetime value, isn't it, with business? Obviously trying to get people that are already buying from you buying more is a damn sight easier, as we always know. Old school marketing, you probably did learn that one in college, I would imagine, back in the day.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
That's the best way, isn't it, having that? Okay. Right, so many things again. I think, so we're capturing data now, we have a lot of apparel, fashion brands that listening to the podcast. What are some of the things that they should be trying to capture specifically? When we're thinking, "Right, we want to capture data, we're an apparel brand, we're selling," whether it's women's dresses or blokes' shirts and shoes or whatever it may be, what are some of the things that we should be trying to capture to then enable a real personalized flow?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, great question. So for apparel, fit is definitely a use case. One of the quiz pioneers, I guess, is Third Love. If you're familiar with Third Love in the UK, Third Love is a women's lingerie brand started in 2015, CEO Heidi Zach. Realizing that going to bra fittings and trying bras is not necessarily a pleasant experience in the hassle of trying it on, finding the right fit, going back. So she came up with the notion of a fit quiz. And why I love this example is because she has captured millions of data points. I think like 12 million people have gone through it as of even a few years ago. And each person who has completed the quiz obviously answers many questions. So there's a ton of data that's being captured, and it's structured data so it's easier to manipulate, to analyze, to find insights from.

Gen Furukawa:
And one of the insights was that there still is a challenge with fit. And the challenge ultimately comes down to sizing and that there's no half sizing. So that was their light bulb moment to find a gap in the market and an opportunity. So they released half sizes and have done incredibly well as a result. Not just based on half sizes, but that certainly contributed to their success. So yeah, for fashion and apparel brands there is the sizing element. There is the style element. And so you might see Stitch Fix or Rockets of Awesome. Those are two US brands, subscription, very similar to your coffee example, but clothing brands. And they ultimately have become almost data science companies, in a sense, because there's a ton of data up front, but then, "After every purchase Richard shares his feedback, and based on that we'll send him this."

Gen Furukawa:
So yeah, I think you'll find benefits in the sizing, in the styling, but then also in just customer research and product research for future releases, and maybe testing demand. Okay, so we are going to be trying a new sweatshirt. What style works? And so at that point, once you get enough feedback, you might get validated quantified data that this particular style or this item is where people want or are looking for. And so you have some kind of validation before releasing anything. You have some brands doing that for product research.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, no, I think for the fashion brands that are listening in, obviously sizing is a huge challenge, isn't it? Or people buying multiple sizes or displaying products when you've only got one size. We could sit here all day and talk about the challenges with fashion. But ultimately if I am a shopper and I am a man of a certain size, as we all are, I guess, but I'm a size 12 in the shoes, which I guess is a 13 US, is it? 14 US, big feet and all that. So obviously there's no point showing me deals on size 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

Gen Furukawa:
Sure.

Richard Hill:
Because I'm never going to buy them. So the wasted screen time and time on the sites that people have, potential customers have on apparel sites. I think just getting that sizing piece down, and like you say, some of the brands, we've got different brands in the UK that I'm familiar with. But the companies that ask you the questions at the front end around your shape, your size, your measurements, whether it's your shoe size, your chest size, and so forth, and then they're delivering an experience, whether that's through a personalized experience on the website, whether that's through email, it's just a winner, isn't it? It just is a winner. Because you're seeing product that you know the likelihood it's going to fit you. Obviously there's a lot of barriers to that in size. But I know that there's certain brands that fit me perfectly, literally perfectly. And I can walk into a shop, I don't even try it on now.

Richard Hill:
And everyone's the same, aren't they? But obviously other brands, it's the same size but it's not the same size. Because Hugo Boss is really quite a small fit from my understanding, last time I tried it anyway. So their size that I would buy wouldn't fit me. But other brands like Gant, which is a US brand, really fit me perfectly. So I tend to go for specific brands, like most people. But obviously if you're an e-com store where you can put in your own measurements, get that real personalized element in apparel, it's a big win, isn't it? It's going to reduce returns as well, which is obviously in the back end for that store it's going to have a lot of savings on that side. Okay. So you're working with a lot of brands, a lot of different brands over the years. What sort of a brand, you mentioned a couple already, but have you got any other good examples of how personalization has done really well on e-commerce stores?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah. So generally the flow of a quiz funnel is, you have a good hook. And so whether it is a paid ad or it's just on your homepage, you need to give them a good reason. Take a quiz, capture a lead, whether it's an email or phone number, it could be optional, and then recommend a product. And then from there, whether they purchase or not, you would be doing a post-quiz flow. "Here's your recommended product." And then you can, it's almost very similar to a welcome series, you're maybe unfolding email by email the brand story, the personal story, the benefits, the features. But now you know you have this unique insight of, whatever it is that you're asking, but it could be what their challenges are or what their goals are, and play specifically to those.

Gen Furukawa:
So I think that the brands where we're seeing do really well is that have covered that full end to end quiz experience really well and strategically and gotten granular with what the communications are. It's multichannel, incorporating the email and SMS, and then it's personalized. And when I say personalized, I think the beauty of personalization is that once you're using the technologies of these tools, like say a Klaviyo or an Omnisend, Attentive, Postscript, we integrate with all those, you can create one template and it's basically build one, scale infinitely. And the way that you're doing that is you are inserting placeholders basically, custom properties or blocks. You know, "Richard likes this coffee."

Gen Furukawa:
And so you're just adding an image, a text, a link, but these are all placeholders. So it's dynamic. So you're getting a different email than I am, but we're going into the same flow after the quiz. And I think that's where the brands are really succeeding, is by being thoughtful about what data they're trying to extract and what they're trying to learn about their customers, and then how they're actually putting it into use to make that customer feel like they're being spoken to on a one to one basis as opposed to a blasted campaign that's a little bit more generic.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Completely makes sense, doesn't it? Ultimately we are individuals, aren't we? And I think yeah, it's relatively straightforward to stand out I think, it's just a case of, right, we need to be doing these things, guys. I think it's just so easy just to, you may be paying your $500 for your Klaviyo, you've set it up, you've clicked on a few campaign and left it potentially. But it's the same with every side of your marketing. You've got to layer in this detail and differentiate and layer in and maybe add in different tools to just give you that layer that's over and above that out-the-box install of anything. And then specific segments, ultimately there's going to be a lot of different segments and a lot of different ideas around campaigns, product sets.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, it's an interesting one, quizzes, isn't it? It's not something we do too much with at the moment. I've done a lot of with personally in the past on my Internet marketing products and things that we've worked on over the years. So you must see a lot of people do this wrong, I would imagine as well. You must see a lot of people think, "Oh yeah, quiz, we'll get a quiz on," and a lot of maybe ... What would be some of the things to avoid with quizzes and personalization? Is there some recurring themes that you see that will save our listeners a lot of headache to avoid? The things you see that are consistently, "Oh, we're doing that, we need to turn that off," or maybe using the technology but not then personalizing it maybe?

Gen Furukawa:
Totally. Yeah, I think probably one of the big things that I see, and a little bit of this is personal, but just including superfluous questions. And so with every question there is a chance of a drop-off. Because ultimately everybody's busy, they don't necessarily want to be browsing through things. So it might be a question like, "If you were an animal, what animal would you be?" Or, "What's your favorite season?" Or, "If you are out, what drink are you drinking?" Maybe there's some value, but I think unless it's directly applicable to how you'd be segmenting that customer or how you'd be incorporating something about the brand to that customer, I think it's just not worth it. Because as you might imagine, it's kind of an asymptotic curve. So with every question the completion rate will drop off. And so why do that?

Gen Furukawa:
Another thing again, this is up for debate, it depends and it's worth a test, is especially with paid ads, you'd want to at least ask for an email or a phone number. You can make it optional, but it seems like a huge missed opportunity for those brands that get a customer to a quiz and then at the very end not even ask for an email. Because ultimately that becomes an evergreen asset that we're building up. And then in terms of the customer experience, the best way to ask a quiz, I think, is starting small. So very similar to a digital marketing perspective or strategy, you want to layer on your microconversion. So even just to get them to click on an ad, get to the landing page, your first microconversion. You don't want to do that and then say, "What's your email?"

Gen Furukawa:
So I think you want to go step by step sequentially, where a customer is slowly being brought in as opposed to first thing, "Hey, there's no alignment between what I thought I was getting with this ad and then all of a sudden you're asking for my email. I thought I would be learning about myself." So I think thinking through it from a customer's perspective and then strategically asking questions leading up to the opt-in, leading up to the product recommendation. And then from there you're building out the customer relationship with your copywriting post-quiz on the recommendation page and then your emails and text.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant. Okay. So I sat here with my crystal ball. Twelve months from now what are we going to be talking about? What are the things around personalization and quizzes that our listeners need to be getting in front of now or in the next six before the masses?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah. I think it's just getting a customer data strategy in place. Even Klaviyo is starting to dabble in this a little bit. They have multi-step forms, like you enter your email, but then also you can ask, "What are you most interested in?" And so it's high level segmentation. And that's good, but can you get a layer deeper? Can you learn more about them? And I think there might be some notion of quiz fatigue. People say, "Just another quiz, I'm not going to take another quiz." So getting back to what we started talking about, what is the value that you can offer and then how can you really hone in on delivering on that promise? So I think getting data from your customers in a way that's a mutual benefit and then working on the segmentation.

Gen Furukawa:
Because the earlier that you start, then you can start to see, "Okay, how is this actually performing?" Looking in Google Analytics or Klaviyo, "How are my quiz takers comparing in terms of revenue percent or revenue per lead than those that don't take the quiz?" And I'd venture to bet in a year you'd see that those that you know more about, if you're executing on segmentation and dynamic personalization stuff, you'd see a lift. So ultimately I think ...

Richard Hill:
It's a fine line, I guess, because you want to get more information, but in the same respect you don't want to annoy them too much.

Gen Furukawa:
Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Richard Hill:
But then when we work back that lifetime value, we might want to annoy them a little bit.

Gen Furukawa:
Totally.

Richard Hill:
Okay. Well, it's been an absolute blast, lots of amazing takeaways there. And I like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book that you'd recommend to our listeners?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, I've recently finished the Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield.

Richard Hill:
Okay.

Gen Furukawa:
So he wrote The Art of War, this is, I believe this was a follow-up. And basically he says there are two phases in life, before turning pro and after turning pro. And turning pro was essentially being immune to the fear and being paralyzed by it and just continuing to practice day in and day out regardless, and just practice for the sake of honoring the work. And it is a short book, easy to read, short chapters. But if I can maintain it, that's definitely a game changer, a life changer, to be a pro.

Richard Hill:
That sounds very good, actually. That's one I think, guys, you need a little Amazon click somewhere on this podcast page and go on that, Turning Pro.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Consistency about pushing forward. Love it. Okay. Well, for the guys that want to find out more about you or more about the brand, what's the best way to do that?

Gen Furukawa:
Totally. Our website, prehook.com, and then yeah, please feel free to reach out to me directly. Gen, G-E-N, @prehook.com. Would love to help with your quiz strategy or any questions that you might have. And we have a 14-day free trial so you can test it out totally free. So yeah, we'd love to help however possible.

Richard Hill:
Fantastic. Well, thanks for being our guest on eCom@One, and I'll speak to you again soon.

Gen Furukawa:
Likewise. Thanks, Richard.

Richard Hill:
Cheers, bye.

Richard Hill:
Hi, and welcome to another episode of eCom@One. Today's guest, Gen Furukawa, cofounder at Prehook, fellow podcast host at Cart Overflow. It's great to have a podcaster on. We've not had many on, but it's great to meet you.

Gen Furukawa:
Richard, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, looking forward to getting stuck in. I think we were just saying you're based in Texas?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Yeah.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, Austin, Texas.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, Austin, Texas. Very exciting, very exciting. I mentioned South Fork and the Ewings, and obviously the generations didn't quite match up, did they?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's Elon Musk, he's the big celebrity here now.

Richard Hill:
Okay.

Gen Furukawa:
Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, for what it's worth.

Richard Hill:
Oh, they're both there now? Yeah, yeah.

Gen Furukawa:
Matthew McConaughey, yeah.

Richard Hill:
So I think it'd be good to kick off with you giving us a bit of an intro, really how you got into e-com. How did you find yourself where you are today with Prehook and the podcast?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, totally. Yeah, my first foray into e-commerce was before the early days, when Shopify was a de facto platform. 2011 I was in the middle of business school and my now wife, girlfriend then, was in Chicago, and I wanted find a way to be in Chicago for the summer. And so actually I ended up getting very lucky and getting an internship at Bucket Feet, which is a print on demand sneaker brand. So artist designed sneakers. And so that was really cool, because I was sitting next to the two cofounders and doing everything that they were doing. This was months after they launched, so it was the grinding early days of trying to get as many sales, trying to figure out the marketing part. I was not very familiar with marketing in a practical, real sense, more so from a classroom and taking it in business school, which doesn't necessarily translate.

Richard Hill:
A little bit different.

Gen Furukawa:
Little bit different, yeah. So that was getting my feet wet with e-commerce. And then I got more experience at a private equity company, where I worked in the portfolio brands on some of their e-commerce. So this is stuff like skateboard brand Super Footwear or skincare brand Paula's Choice. Those are two really interesting opportunities, and that was actually focused a lot on paid search, so in your wheelhouse. And then I moved to the SaaS side, so the e-commerce enablement or tools as part of the founding team at Jungle Scout. So Jungle Scout is an Amazon product research tool, helps people scale their Amazon business. And at that point it was very early, it was the Chrome extension to help people understand what the demand and reviews rating so you could identify where an opportunity to sell a product on Amazon was.

Gen Furukawa:
And so now, fast forward I guess more than 10 years from the start, now I'm cofounder of Prehook, which is a quiz platform for Shopify merchants to help merchants accelerate list growth, improve conversion rate by simplifying the buying process, ask a few questions, recommend the most appropriate product. And then lastly and perhaps most importantly these days is capturing zero party data.

Richard Hill:
Yeah.

Gen Furukawa:
Which is learning more about your customers. So I'm sure we'll talk about zero party data and its implications. But yeah, that's where I'm at.

Richard Hill:
There are many things we could talk about on this episode, to be fair. So many elements there that I am super excited to chat through. Zero party data, it's obviously really, really important. What would you say to the listeners? Why is it so important for stores now to be using zero party data?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, for sure. Well, just to get on the same page, what is zero party data? Just another marketing buzzword. So zero party data is data that customers or shoppers willingly and proactively share with a brand. So contrast that with first party data, which is gathered passively. So this is things like sales history, so what products do they purchase, maybe how much they've spent, so their lifetime value. Maybe it's engagement on the website, so that might be abandoned card stuff or email engagement. But these are all things where you're capturing it passively. The downside is, you don't necessarily know the intent or the why, what the customer is looking for, their mindset, their psychographics. But zero party data, you can get down to that. You can understand the intent because you can understand the things like, "What are you looking for?" Or, "What challenges do you face? What are your preferences? What does your daily routine look like? What are your goals?" And so these are all things that you cannot get from gathering ...

Richard Hill:
You can assume things, but you can assume things incorrectly.

Gen Furukawa:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
You're very much asking questions and then giving something potentially that is going to resolve or help in the answering of that question.

Gen Furukawa:
Totally. And so why does it matter now? Well, if you're on the paid side, which you might be, you might be seeing the impact of iOS 14, where data is not as readily available as it once was. So therefore targeting is a little more broad, cost per acquisition therefore is higher, and cost per clicks are increasing. So there's that element of, where brands have relied historically on paid ads as a channel for profitable acquisition, that's not as doable as much any more. So it's more important, it's urgently important for brands to build a direct relationship with their customers. And so with that, you're getting a contact information, whether it's an email or a phone number, even a crypto wallet address, which we collect now.

Richard Hill:
Okay.

Gen Furukawa:
And then some of those customer properties, the attributes of the brand, to help you understand what they're looking for, then therefore you're creating better segments. And ultimately as marketers our job is to create the offer, find the best message at the right time to the right person. So it's just amping up the relevance. And so that's really what this data play is all about.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. It's exciting, isn't it? Because ultimately, if you're putting the right product in front of the person that wants it, there's a few variants to that, but ultimately your marketing message is very much answering a query question that's very, very specific, rather than herding tens of thousand people into the same ad or into the same email or into the same offer. It's not going to have much of an effect, is it, in comparison to having a very, very specific offer potentially. Okay, so stores that are listening, okay, we're on board, zero party data, absolutely. We're collecting various things through the journey, but what sort of things would you say a business can use that zero party data to help potentially personalize offers, to personalize the experience? Give me some examples of using that data.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, totally. So I think that the best place to start for a brand that's looking to make this initiative is to understand what data is most important, what would be most helpful to create tighter segments in, say, Klaviyo or Omnisend. So whether that is, if it's a skincare brand, if it's, for example, based on their skin type. Or if it's a fragrance brand, what scent profiles do they like? Whether it's woodsy, citrus, vanilla, or whatever. So capturing these things I think are most important. And then from there you're thinking, "Okay, what value can I offer the customer to incentivize this exchange of information?" Because ultimately, yeah, it's nice to gather this information, but there is nothing for free, and there has to be some implicit value that you're going to offer the customer in exchange.

Gen Furukawa:
And so there's an interesting study, and I think it was from Segment customer data platform, where customers are willing and want to share their interests, their preferences, personal information. They want to share. But there's an expectation that on the other end there will be a better customer experience, better shopping experience, ultimately things will be more relevant and personalized. So that's at the foundation of what this exchange is. "I'll ask you a few questions and in exchange I'll give you some value that will help you." So that could be anything from helping people learn more about themselves. Beard brand, actually they're based in Austin as well, what type of beardsman are you? So that's linked to the self-discovery.

Gen Furukawa:
Or it could be a personal assessment based on these profiles. Hair Code by Procter and Gamble as one example, they ask a bunch of questions about your hair, your habits, how often you wash your hair, maybe where you live, and all these things impact the products that are best for your particular hair type, and it's categorized very specifically based on number and letter. So you're learning about your own hair and how you can improve.

Richard Hill:
Powerful, isn't it? I think during lockdown I signed up for various subscription services, and I think probably half the planet has.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Half the planet still get deliveries from nearly two years ago when we first went into lockdown from various subscriptions. And one of the subscriptions I thought was, well, both, I bought two subscriptions for coffee. And one of the options there are, "What do you like? Do you like the chocolate, the orange?" There's four or five questions around the different, I don't know if they call them tones, I can't remember, actually, within the coffee. And obviously I've got that set in my account now, and then they're sending me information, they're sending me promotion. And I'm seeing when I'm on the website these coffees that tick this profile that I filled in and this profile that I filled in. And obviously I'm getting marketed very specifically.

Richard Hill:
And therefore I think more than two years now I have been a member of two coffee subscriptions.

Gen Furukawa:
Nice.

Richard Hill:
It's because I'm getting very specific products I like. They are changing it, but only within the parameters, they're changing the type of coffee. I've set it to send me what they think rather than just have the same one. But they're sending the product to me that is in the parameters. I've said, "I like this, this, this, and I don't like this, this, this." Well, they're not sending me any variations that have got cinnamon in or whatever, some of the tastes that I don't like. So I think that's quite a good example. And I'm still a member of both those coffee brands 24 months later, pretty much.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
So what was initially maybe a 12, 13 pounds or $15, $20 purchase over 24 months is now a $500 purchase. Because if it was just the same thing, yeah, I probably wouldn't. So I think that's really, really important. The quiz is something, I'm from an Internet marketing perspective, I'm very familiar with in terms of personalizing the journey in the B2B space. But you don't see too much of it in the e-com space. Well, you do and you don't. I think it's a bit of a mixed bag, isn't it, out there? So let's say, okay, e-com store's listening, we're collecting, they're collecting, but how can we really scale using this zero party data? Give me some examples of how we can really move the needle from, maybe add a significant percentage of increase of average order value, retention, sales. Give me a couple of examples.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, totally. So, yeah, that's a great question. There are different points in the customer journey. So we can focus, for example, on list growth. So we have one brand, it's called Tealixir, it's an adaptogen, so kind of like a mushroom brand. And they're seeing really great results. I think it's like 3X their opt-in rate with a quiz, because it's not a subscription brand similar to what your coffee example was, but it is the top of the funnel for a lot less of their customers to enter. Because adaptogens, not many people necessarily have tasted mushrooms or mushroom tea. But it also has medicinal benefits. So what flavors do you like and what problems are you trying to solve? So they're trying to funnel people into the quiz. So that includes the quiz in the header nav at the top of their homepage above the fold, the hero image, an exit intent popup, they have a landing page for their paid ads.

Gen Furukawa:
So a lot of this traffic is going towards the quiz. And if you think of even just high level qualitatively, an opt-in rate, you might get, say 3% to 5% as a benchmark in exchange for 10%, 15% discount. Which is not necessarily ideal because, A, you're seeing margin drain directly. So that 15% comes off the top. You're seeing maybe a dilution of brand equity, like, okay, if I'm a new customer and I'm seeing that they're offering me a discount up front, if I don't add it, maybe down the line I can. So I'm maybe primed to get this discount. And it's not necessarily the best way to initiate the customer relationship, because you don't even necessarily know that much about it. You might know their email. But the quiz, we're seeing completion rates in 70% to 80%.

Gen Furukawa:
So if seven or eight out of 10 start the quiz and you have a lot of people ... Or I'm sorry, seven or eight out of 10 complete the quiz and a lot of the people are going into the quiz, you can see how the math adds up to be a much better customer acquisition in terms of leads. Now, also where are brands doing well with a quiz maybe later in the customer journey? So there's a product recommendation element. And so this is, if you put your conversion rate optimization hat on, which I'm sure you do all the time as well, the goal of CRO is ultimately to reduce any customer objections.

Gen Furukawa:
So the more you know about the customer and what their questions are, what their goals are, the better that you can do as a marketer to guide them through and ultimately get them to add to cart and purchase. And that's the beauty of a quiz, which simulates very much the in-person sales associate relationship, where you might ask a few questions, then in the back of your mind you're inventorying what products might make most sense, recommend them, and here's why this makes sense for you based on your quiz responses.

Richard Hill:
So I think there's some great things there. I think just to break down a couple of my takeaways there, and ultimately sitting here as an e-com store, then you're probably guilty of just whacking a 5%, 10% straight discount on your home page and giving away margin. There's a smarter way to do this. We've done other episodes on discounts and how to do dynamic and AI driven discounts. But what we're saying here is, we can implement a quiz, get certain information, obviously depending on what you're selling, maybe we'll go into that afterwards, and then based on some of the answers you've given, then offer them something that might not be as an aggressive discount as what you might have done at the front end, giving away 15%. Whereas you might go, "Right, here's the products you're after. And here's 5%." Well, obviously if you're seeing the exact things you want, the chance of buying is a lot higher than seeing a broad range of products. Therefore we might not need to give a bigger discount. Obviously we can test things like that. Would that be fair to say?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, yeah, I think so. And what you're getting towards is getting towards the post quiz communication. And I think that's where you can really leverage some of the data points. So as an example, it's very similar to a cart abandonment.

Richard Hill:
Yeah.

Gen Furukawa:
In fact, in Klaviyo you can just clone the flow, the automation. And so instead of abandoned cart it's just, take the quiz, but then after that, "Okay, here's your recommended product." And then from there you can get more segmented, so you can create conditions and splits. So for your coffee, if you like a light roast, "Here, let's send Richard more content about light roast and the provenance of our beans and why it matters and how you enjoy it most." And then medium roast, dark roast, or espresso, or decaf. And so in that way you're capturing that data in the quiz, and then you're using that to siphon people off into a more relevant flow. And not only via email, you can do it via SMS as well. SMS is maybe more limited in terms of how many times you want to reach them, I think. That's maybe more personal, so you want to be more thoughtful or restrained, I guess, in how often you're sending.

Richard Hill:
Yeah.

Gen Furukawa:
But then when you were talking about scale, you can scale this as well across to paid platforms. So you're creating your segments in Klaviyo or Omnisend, for example, you're porting those over into your Google Ads or Facebook or Instagram, YouTube. And so you're able to align the segment with the product offering. So then therefore it's a little bit of remarketing in that sense, but also more relevant where you actually know the customer that you're reaching.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. That's a great point. I think how many people that are listening in that have got those very detailed segments in maybe the Klaviyo, et cetera, and then taking those lists and pushing them back into the ad platforms for audience marketing, remarketing, maybe lookalikes potentially. That's something I think we don't talk about. I don't think we've spoken about that on any episode. And that's a smart, smart move, that, yeah. Yeah, we do it as an agency, but I don't know that we've actually spoken about it on episode. So that's a real smart play, real smart play. Obviously it's down to that really cementing, really cementing whether that's the guy that has bought 14 coffees and has been on subscription for the last two years that has spent $500. That segment is a very wealthy segment, or very different.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
A coffee addict, should I say, as opposed to one that's just bought one non-subscription product who's just spent 13 pounds and he's not got the subscription. They're very different customers, aren't they?

Gen Furukawa:
Totally.

Richard Hill:
As a coffee company, which one do you want? Obviously we all want, well, mostly, the subscription if we can get it. Although the equivalent to that, that repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat manual purchase. It's all about that lifetime value, isn't it, with business? Obviously trying to get people that are already buying from you buying more is a damn sight easier, as we always know. Old school marketing, you probably did learn that one in college, I would imagine, back in the day.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
That's the best way, isn't it, having that? Okay. Right, so many things again. I think, so we're capturing data now, we have a lot of apparel, fashion brands that listening to the podcast. What are some of the things that they should be trying to capture specifically? When we're thinking, "Right, we want to capture data, we're an apparel brand, we're selling," whether it's women's dresses or blokes' shirts and shoes or whatever it may be, what are some of the things that we should be trying to capture to then enable a real personalized flow?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, great question. So for apparel, fit is definitely a use case. One of the quiz pioneers, I guess, is Third Love. If you're familiar with Third Love in the UK, Third Love is a women's lingerie brand started in 2015, CEO Heidi Zach. Realizing that going to bra fittings and trying bras is not necessarily a pleasant experience in the hassle of trying it on, finding the right fit, going back. So she came up with the notion of a fit quiz. And why I love this example is because she has captured millions of data points. I think like 12 million people have gone through it as of even a few years ago. And each person who has completed the quiz obviously answers many questions. So there's a ton of data that's being captured, and it's structured data so it's easier to manipulate, to analyze, to find insights from.

Gen Furukawa:
And one of the insights was that there still is a challenge with fit. And the challenge ultimately comes down to sizing and that there's no half sizing. So that was their light bulb moment to find a gap in the market and an opportunity. So they released half sizes and have done incredibly well as a result. Not just based on half sizes, but that certainly contributed to their success. So yeah, for fashion and apparel brands there is the sizing element. There is the style element. And so you might see Stitch Fix or Rockets of Awesome. Those are two US brands, subscription, very similar to your coffee example, but clothing brands. And they ultimately have become almost data science companies, in a sense, because there's a ton of data up front, but then, "After every purchase Richard shares his feedback, and based on that we'll send him this."

Gen Furukawa:
So yeah, I think you'll find benefits in the sizing, in the styling, but then also in just customer research and product research for future releases, and maybe testing demand. Okay, so we are going to be trying a new sweatshirt. What style works? And so at that point, once you get enough feedback, you might get validated quantified data that this particular style or this item is where people want or are looking for. And so you have some kind of validation before releasing anything. You have some brands doing that for product research.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, no, I think for the fashion brands that are listening in, obviously sizing is a huge challenge, isn't it? Or people buying multiple sizes or displaying products when you've only got one size. We could sit here all day and talk about the challenges with fashion. But ultimately if I am a shopper and I am a man of a certain size, as we all are, I guess, but I'm a size 12 in the shoes, which I guess is a 13 US, is it? 14 US, big feet and all that. So obviously there's no point showing me deals on size 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

Gen Furukawa:
Sure.

Richard Hill:
Because I'm never going to buy them. So the wasted screen time and time on the sites that people have, potential customers have on apparel sites. I think just getting that sizing piece down, and like you say, some of the brands, we've got different brands in the UK that I'm familiar with. But the companies that ask you the questions at the front end around your shape, your size, your measurements, whether it's your shoe size, your chest size, and so forth, and then they're delivering an experience, whether that's through a personalized experience on the website, whether that's through email, it's just a winner, isn't it? It just is a winner. Because you're seeing product that you know the likelihood it's going to fit you. Obviously there's a lot of barriers to that in size. But I know that there's certain brands that fit me perfectly, literally perfectly. And I can walk into a shop, I don't even try it on now.

Richard Hill:
And everyone's the same, aren't they? But obviously other brands, it's the same size but it's not the same size. Because Hugo Boss is really quite a small fit from my understanding, last time I tried it anyway. So their size that I would buy wouldn't fit me. But other brands like Gant, which is a US brand, really fit me perfectly. So I tend to go for specific brands, like most people. But obviously if you're an e-com store where you can put in your own measurements, get that real personalized element in apparel, it's a big win, isn't it? It's going to reduce returns as well, which is obviously in the back end for that store it's going to have a lot of savings on that side. Okay. So you're working with a lot of brands, a lot of different brands over the years. What sort of a brand, you mentioned a couple already, but have you got any other good examples of how personalization has done really well on e-commerce stores?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah. So generally the flow of a quiz funnel is, you have a good hook. And so whether it is a paid ad or it's just on your homepage, you need to give them a good reason. Take a quiz, capture a lead, whether it's an email or phone number, it could be optional, and then recommend a product. And then from there, whether they purchase or not, you would be doing a post-quiz flow. "Here's your recommended product." And then you can, it's almost very similar to a welcome series, you're maybe unfolding email by email the brand story, the personal story, the benefits, the features. But now you know you have this unique insight of, whatever it is that you're asking, but it could be what their challenges are or what their goals are, and play specifically to those.

Gen Furukawa:
So I think that the brands where we're seeing do really well is that have covered that full end to end quiz experience really well and strategically and gotten granular with what the communications are. It's multichannel, incorporating the email and SMS, and then it's personalized. And when I say personalized, I think the beauty of personalization is that once you're using the technologies of these tools, like say a Klaviyo or an Omnisend, Attentive, Postscript, we integrate with all those, you can create one template and it's basically build one, scale infinitely. And the way that you're doing that is you are inserting placeholders basically, custom properties or blocks. You know, "Richard likes this coffee."

Gen Furukawa:
And so you're just adding an image, a text, a link, but these are all placeholders. So it's dynamic. So you're getting a different email than I am, but we're going into the same flow after the quiz. And I think that's where the brands are really succeeding, is by being thoughtful about what data they're trying to extract and what they're trying to learn about their customers, and then how they're actually putting it into use to make that customer feel like they're being spoken to on a one to one basis as opposed to a blasted campaign that's a little bit more generic.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Completely makes sense, doesn't it? Ultimately we are individuals, aren't we? And I think yeah, it's relatively straightforward to stand out I think, it's just a case of, right, we need to be doing these things, guys. I think it's just so easy just to, you may be paying your $500 for your Klaviyo, you've set it up, you've clicked on a few campaign and left it potentially. But it's the same with every side of your marketing. You've got to layer in this detail and differentiate and layer in and maybe add in different tools to just give you that layer that's over and above that out-the-box install of anything. And then specific segments, ultimately there's going to be a lot of different segments and a lot of different ideas around campaigns, product sets.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, it's an interesting one, quizzes, isn't it? It's not something we do too much with at the moment. I've done a lot of with personally in the past on my Internet marketing products and things that we've worked on over the years. So you must see a lot of people do this wrong, I would imagine as well. You must see a lot of people think, "Oh yeah, quiz, we'll get a quiz on," and a lot of maybe ... What would be some of the things to avoid with quizzes and personalization? Is there some recurring themes that you see that will save our listeners a lot of headache to avoid? The things you see that are consistently, "Oh, we're doing that, we need to turn that off," or maybe using the technology but not then personalizing it maybe?

Gen Furukawa:
Totally. Yeah, I think probably one of the big things that I see, and a little bit of this is personal, but just including superfluous questions. And so with every question there is a chance of a drop-off. Because ultimately everybody's busy, they don't necessarily want to be browsing through things. So it might be a question like, "If you were an animal, what animal would you be?" Or, "What's your favorite season?" Or, "If you are out, what drink are you drinking?" Maybe there's some value, but I think unless it's directly applicable to how you'd be segmenting that customer or how you'd be incorporating something about the brand to that customer, I think it's just not worth it. Because as you might imagine, it's kind of an asymptotic curve. So with every question the completion rate will drop off. And so why do that?

Gen Furukawa:
Another thing again, this is up for debate, it depends and it's worth a test, is especially with paid ads, you'd want to at least ask for an email or a phone number. You can make it optional, but it seems like a huge missed opportunity for those brands that get a customer to a quiz and then at the very end not even ask for an email. Because ultimately that becomes an evergreen asset that we're building up. And then in terms of the customer experience, the best way to ask a quiz, I think, is starting small. So very similar to a digital marketing perspective or strategy, you want to layer on your microconversion. So even just to get them to click on an ad, get to the landing page, your first microconversion. You don't want to do that and then say, "What's your email?"

Gen Furukawa:
So I think you want to go step by step sequentially, where a customer is slowly being brought in as opposed to first thing, "Hey, there's no alignment between what I thought I was getting with this ad and then all of a sudden you're asking for my email. I thought I would be learning about myself." So I think thinking through it from a customer's perspective and then strategically asking questions leading up to the opt-in, leading up to the product recommendation. And then from there you're building out the customer relationship with your copywriting post-quiz on the recommendation page and then your emails and text.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant. Okay. So I sat here with my crystal ball. Twelve months from now what are we going to be talking about? What are the things around personalization and quizzes that our listeners need to be getting in front of now or in the next six before the masses?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah. I think it's just getting a customer data strategy in place. Even Klaviyo is starting to dabble in this a little bit. They have multi-step forms, like you enter your email, but then also you can ask, "What are you most interested in?" And so it's high level segmentation. And that's good, but can you get a layer deeper? Can you learn more about them? And I think there might be some notion of quiz fatigue. People say, "Just another quiz, I'm not going to take another quiz." So getting back to what we started talking about, what is the value that you can offer and then how can you really hone in on delivering on that promise? So I think getting data from your customers in a way that's a mutual benefit and then working on the segmentation.

Gen Furukawa:
Because the earlier that you start, then you can start to see, "Okay, how is this actually performing?" Looking in Google Analytics or Klaviyo, "How are my quiz takers comparing in terms of revenue percent or revenue per lead than those that don't take the quiz?" And I'd venture to bet in a year you'd see that those that you know more about, if you're executing on segmentation and dynamic personalization stuff, you'd see a lift. So ultimately I think ...

Richard Hill:
It's a fine line, I guess, because you want to get more information, but in the same respect you don't want to annoy them too much.

Gen Furukawa:
Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Richard Hill:
But then when we work back that lifetime value, we might want to annoy them a little bit.

Gen Furukawa:
Totally.

Richard Hill:
Okay. Well, it's been an absolute blast, lots of amazing takeaways there. And I like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book that you'd recommend to our listeners?

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah, I've recently finished the Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield.

Richard Hill:
Okay.

Gen Furukawa:
So he wrote The Art of War, this is, I believe this was a follow-up. And basically he says there are two phases in life, before turning pro and after turning pro. And turning pro was essentially being immune to the fear and being paralyzed by it and just continuing to practice day in and day out regardless, and just practice for the sake of honoring the work. And it is a short book, easy to read, short chapters. But if I can maintain it, that's definitely a game changer, a life changer, to be a pro.

Richard Hill:
That sounds very good, actually. That's one I think, guys, you need a little Amazon click somewhere on this podcast page and go on that, Turning Pro.

Gen Furukawa:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Consistency about pushing forward. Love it. Okay. Well, for the guys that want to find out more about you or more about the brand, what's the best way to do that?

Gen Furukawa:
Totally. Our website, prehook.com, and then yeah, please feel free to reach out to me directly. Gen, G-E-N, @prehook.com. Would love to help with your quiz strategy or any questions that you might have. And we have a 14-day free trial so you can test it out totally free. So yeah, we'd love to help however possible.

Richard Hill:
Fantastic. Well, thanks for being our guest on eCom@One, and I'll speak to you again soon.

Gen Furukawa:
Likewise. Thanks, Richard.

Richard Hill:
Cheers, bye.

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