A Conversation With Gen Furukawa of Prehook

Would you rather fill in a form, or answer a few quiz questions? Gen Furukawa, co-founder of quiz engine Prehook, explains how quizzes intrigue people while growing marketer zero-party data.

It's one of those "big little changes" that's easy to miss.

Email marketers talk about minimizing the number of questions on an opt-in form; Prehook's approach is really to ask better, more interesting questions! Gen also shares some interesting lessons from previous companies; moving from the world of Amazon to the world of Shopify, as he has, is a glimpse into very, very different philosophies and approaches to ecommerce.

The proposition of his company is pretty darn compelling — increase list growth by 3x and conversion rate by 25%. Want to learn more about your customers? Check them out at Prehook.com

TRANSCRIPT

A Conversation With Gen Furukawa

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[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the Future of Email. My guest today coming from Austin, Texas, Jen for Ikawa, uh, co-founder. Is that correct?

[00:00:18] Gen Furukawa: Of Prehook? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, again, again, frca. Um, but yeah, cofounder, sorry about that. I should have asked you. That's all right, . That's all right.

[00:00:28] Matthew Dunn: So Prehook, Tell people a bit about Prehook for starters, just for context.

[00:00:32] Gen Furukawa: Yeah, sure. So, uh, Prehook is a quiz platform for Shopify merchants. Uh, we help merchants basically have a 24 7 sales associate on their site. So, uh, ask a few questions, find out what somebody's challenges, goals, interests, preferences are mm-hmm. . And then from there you can provide a far more personalized custom experience, uh, which translates to Excel accelerating list growth.

Improving conversion rate and capturing zero party data or [00:01:00] data that customers proactively and willingly share

with

[00:01:03] Matthew Dunn: you. Yeah. Yeah. Zero party data by the way. You did that. Really? You did that too? Well by, by a long shot. Like clearly you've got this dialed in . Oh, nice. I'm teas, I'm teasing you. Um, why do quizzes, why do quizzes get, you know, response that you'd never get if you said, fill in this.

[00:01:22] Gen Furukawa: Yeah, that, that's a good question. I think because a quiz naturally plays to our human interest in learning more about ourselves and discovery, and then there's this element of fun and engagement that comes with the quiz, as opposed to when you step into the dentist's office or doctor's office, Hey, uh, fill out this intake form.

Yeah. And then it's like, it's very clinical, it's very dry, but the way that you can, as a brand, ask, ask of your customers a few. Like, say for example, a wine brand, like First Leaf or Wink, They are wine brands, and wine is a very, uh, it can be very advanced and esoteric and a little bit off putting [00:02:00] for those that don't know about it.

But, uh, the brand's mission is to make wine more welcoming and obviously they want to cast as wide a net as possible. Sure. If you're able to say, Hey, do you like, Tannins in your wine. That's hard for some people to understand. I, I don't really know, but do you like chocolate or do you like coffee? Do you like caramel?

Like what flavors do you like? Then all of a sudden it becomes a far easier question to answer. Yeah. And that becomes a proxy for, Oh, okay, so you might like these fruit forward wines or, or this type of wine. Uh, and, and so I think that's where a quiz can stand. By making it more accessible and easy to understand, and then you're, you're able to, with your expert authority of whatever it is that you're selling represent, like, Hey, this is the product that we recommend for you, Matthew, because you answer these questions, right?

And then from there, and this is where, where you, it plays into your expertise is you. Lay out, you know, here's a brand story. Here are the benefits of the product specific to the explicit, [00:03:00] explicitly stated problems that you have. Yeah. And then you're, you're able to craft a far more compelling message and send better offers and end content based on the data that you're gathering.

[00:03:10] Matthew Dunn: We're in a, we're in a funny stage in, in a, sort of the fit of digital in our lives. You know, post pandemic, everyone got shoved 10 years into the future. Um, Broadly speaking, waking up in to various levels in various countries to the, uh, privacy issues of digital. Um, and, and that's starting to change what's, what's legal and permitted and so on.

But I also sense that there's some. Blast shields up by, by, you know, by all of us' end consumers. What will I say yes to? What will I fill in? What will I allow, What will I even take time to do? And I, I love the sort of sidestep effect of, Hey, I just want to, [00:04:00] I, we'd just like to know a bit about so we can help you better.

Which it, it sounds like is the, is is the thrust of, uh, of Prehook. Quizzes have been around for a while. What made you say we can do it more, better, newer?

[00:04:14] Gen Furukawa: Yeah, so, uh, great question. It was, uh, I co-founded pre with, uh, two friends who I'd been working with since 2015. Mm-hmm. , We were part of the founding team of Jungle Scout, which is an Amazon product research tool.

Okay. Help people find products to sell on Amazon, validate that there is in fact demand and low competition. Um, so yeah, we, we've been working together for four. Strictly in the Amazon seller space, and we'd always wanted to do things on our own to, uh, build and launch a SaaS on our. And then, uh, when exploring different ideas, realize that the, the challenges that an Amazon seller faces are very different than what a Shopify seller faces in that.

An Amazon listing [00:05:00] is very crafted for seo. So you, you know what the search query is that somebody's searching for, and then you're going to build a listing specifically around, Selling blue water bottles, for example, and the benefits of that and the features of that. But if you're a Shopify brand, you don't necessarily know why people are coming to your store or what they're looking for, what challenges they're trying to solve for mm-hmm.

But even if you're just able to capture a few simple questions, you can add so much more context and then personalize, uh, the experience around that. So we did, we did speak with, uh, a handful of merchants when we are exploring this. Like, is this something that's actually worth building? And a lot of the merchants, um, did need that.

This is also before iOS 14.5, where, um, you know, the, the, the landscape of marketing as a whole is changing a lot where, uh, Consumer privacy and, and data is harder to, uh, access and capture. Yeah. And the traditional playbook of e-commerce brands running paid media [00:06:00] campaigns and having a low. Cost of acquisition, um, is changing as targeting becomes harder, cost per click increases, uh, nevermind all the supply chain issues of the, um, past year or so.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, it, it was something where type form was no longer, was not really an ideal fit and some brands were using type form. Yeah. Um, but there are some shortcomings there with how it integrates with a different tech stack of an e-commerce brand. Mm-hmm. And so we, we started building it in 2020, launched in early 2021, and.

I mean, like I said, there, there are some macro factors of the e-commerce marketer world that have been a tailwind for us. Uh, and, and nice made the necessity of building a direct relationship far more

[00:06:43] Matthew Dunn: important. Yeah. Nice. Um, you mentioned Typeform. If, for someone who's listening who doesn't sort of live in the space that we're probably spend way too much time in Typeform is a terrific, uh, great [00:07:00] looking generic.

Uh, question and answer form. It's not, does not as, as specific and targeted, I think is what you're doing. And as you said in integration is, is quite key. Uh, Shopify user is not necessarily, it's not all they do in their day job is work in Shopify. Is that fair? Yeah.

[00:07:20] Gen Furukawa: Yeah, yeah. That, that is so true. ,

[00:07:23] Matthew Dunn: I'm get, I'm gonna give us a, a bit of a straw man account and I'll, I'll do a local call out at the same.

I spotted an article the other day, uh, cuz my, my newsfeed in the morning, the town I live in, Bellingham, Washington pops up and I saw a headline that, uh, a small one man company here had won the top hot sauce in the world. And there are, there are nutcases for hot sauce, right? Um, so I'm walking through the farmer's market two days later, Great Farmer's market.

And I went, Wait a minute, that's. So I walk over and I chat with a guy, funky hot sauce, super [00:08:00] nice guy. He's the guy who makes the hot sauce and I said, Hey, congrats. Saw you the news. And he was like, Oh my word. Our website just blew up like hundreds of orders from all over the place came pouring in because there are hot hots nuts in the world.

And I said, Well, what? Like, what? What's built on? He said, Oh, well we had blah, blah, blah and GoDaddy, and we're sending email and outlook. And I said, Oh, wow. Uh, looking at Shopify now, And he said yes. So I, you know, I'm talking with someone who's about to jump into that, what's becoming one of the standard ecosystems for, for businesses to, to extend their reach into e-commerce as well.

And the questions he was asking, realized he's, he's, he's gonna, he's gonna, he's gonna benefit, but he's gonna have a ton to learn in that complicated ecosystem. As easy as they make it, he's still gonna have a ton to learn.

[00:08:53] Gen Furukawa: Yeah, I, I mean, I, I definitely would agree with that. And ideally, Shopify is handling a lot of that, the, the, [00:09:00] the backend operations to make it easier in terms of like the, the technical element.

Yeah. Yeah. But there's, there's always, uh, a steep learning curve. Yeah. But, but the brand, and, and this is what I've noticed with a lot of Shopify merchants, is, um, a lot of outsourced. Work. And, and so that's where services like yours comes in, where an agency which has a deep expertise in say, email or paid ads or CRO or, or influencer acquisition, right?

Like the, you know, pick and choose what it is, and then all of a sudden you're, you're kind of like not as beholden with a, you know, full W two employee, but you're still able to get those, those needs met. Uh, but yeah, I think Shopify is, uh, far more scalable and, and stable a solution than some. Well,

[00:09:44] Matthew Dunn: you know, e e e comes matured a lot in the, in the last couple of decades and, and you know, there were points where things.

Taking payments were, was a huge technical exercise. And then Stripe came along and said, Eh, it should be two, it should be three lines of [00:10:00] code. Let's make that simple. And they've grown, they've grown to match. I'm, I'm a little intrigued that you went from the Amazon ecosystem to the Shopify ecosystem because in, in some ways those are, they're not necessarily competitors, but there's definitely a, they, they definitely are gonna bump into each other out there in the world.

Uh, the. One by one. Many, many, many Shopify merchants versus the big one, Amazon as a merchant and, and the people who work within that ecosystem in Amazon's brand. Any like what were the big, what was the big aha coming from Amazon to Shopify?

[00:10:38] Gen Furukawa: From, from my perspective. Amazon is, uh, I think one of the big biggest challenges of an Amazon seller is to actually build a brand.

And like I was saying earlier, I mean, it, it is become, uh, like one of the biggest search engines. So people who know what they want will go to Amazon to search. And I think that the STA was like 50% of people once they know what they wanna buy, it's not [00:11:00] necessarily like so much for discovery Yeah. Or shopping, but it's for, um, specified search.

Yeah. And the challenge. That it, it, it becomes very saturated. And so we've seen an internationalization of who the seller is, which largely means that, uh, and, and when I was starting in 2015, uh, in, in selling on Amazon, and I did sell a product on Amazon, not successfully. Uh, but the challenge is you, you work with a supplier often in China and you know, you buy it for a third of what the.

Price is you, you import it, you sell it, you market it on Amazon, and then you, you take your 30% profit, uh, it becomes a little bit of a race to the bottom. And so once suppliers start selling themselves to cut out the middle man who I was, uh, all of a sudden it becomes harder to compete. So the, uh, the value of a brand.

off of, uh, off of Amazon, like where people are driving their own traffic, owning their own list, owning their own audience, right, is, uh, so critical. And so it's a different marketing [00:12:00] challenge. Uh, and I think in some ways Amazon is a necessary ch, uh, channel that brands would use, and it all falls under the umbrella of e-commerce.

Um, but I think a lot of it ideally, and you'd have to ask, you know, merchant to merchant, it might differ, but ideally, uh, they might prefer a direct to consumer sale as opposed to through Amazon. Just because you're losing a lot of the customer data, which means it becomes harder to drive repeat purchases.

Margins might be lower cuz Amazon's taking their cut. Yeah. Um, so, you know, it's, it's good to augment sales maybe. Ideally people are, are owning their sales, owning their relationship. Yeah.

[00:12:39] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, I I'm glad to hear you say it. I, My, my hot sauce example fits here in my mind in that what I'd encourage the, the, the, the Janet funky hot sauce to do is be, be, become a direct, uh, known brand to, to the folks in the world who are are nuts.

[00:13:00] Hot sauce is if he's just another bottle they bought on a big store, let's say Amazon, then he's gonna be competing for their attention again next month versus Oh yeah, that guy, I get his email or I get his text messages and my gosh, that was great. And what's he got that's new And like you get a little brain space.

Yeah, you get a little, little bit in the attention economy and that's, that's hard to do when you're just a product. in, in, in a big conglomerates conglomerated

[00:13:28] Gen Furukawa: store. I think that's what you Yeah, absolutely. You know, the one work around there is if it's brands, so it might, whether it's a warranty or if it's a hot sauce, maybe it's like, you know, sign up for your $5 discount off your next bottle or something.

But often the, the move there is in the unboxing phase, you're driving them back to your website to sign up for something, and at least then you're opening the channel of communication, uh, to capture an email. Phone number. Yeah,

[00:13:53] Matthew Dunn: it, it's funny, I mean, I'm a long time and loyal Amazon customer for a bunch of reasons, and I, I, I admire what [00:14:00] they've done greatly.

But, but I'm sympathetic to, to the challenge of, of the business that wants to grow beyond that because, um, That's a, it's like, it's like your gravitational force, right? Mm-hmm. , Amazon. And I've got, I've had the inboxing experience. You talk about, you know, Hey, sign up here, or here's a coupon, and it's, it's really hard to get me to sit down and go, Sure.

I'll bother. Yeah. Cause it kind of got commoditized, whatever it was. Probably get commoditized a little bit just in the, Oh yeah. Here's the Amazon Prime truck and there's the box and, Oh yeah, I forgot I ordered that. And Right. Move on to the next. Back to quizzes for a second and, and um, and Prehook. Um, I like the, I like the sort of pattern interrupt notion of a quiz because in the email world there's a lot of talk about getting people just to fill in the sign up form and you know, if you go beyond three or four things you're [00:15:00] asking people will drop off.

Well that's cuz you're asking them boring stuff that they already know. . Mm-hmm. , not, not any self discovery, which was kind of your. . Yeah. Is there any feedback in Prehook if I say, Yeah, you know, I definitely prefer chocolate over chili. Is it, do, do you go, Whoa, gee, you're unusual, Or more people preferred chocolate, or something like that.

Like how do you, how do you, uh, enhance that experience? So it's beyond just me answering questions.

[00:15:26] Gen Furukawa: Well, you know, feature wise you can definitely make it more tailored and, and specific with conditional logic. So con conditional logic is basically if then mm-hmm. , if Matthew says he likes chocolate over vanilla mm-hmm.

you can, you know, give a, a statement about that. Um, Different brands like, um, Noom, for example. Noom is a weight loss app. So not, not e-commerce per se, but they have an intake form, uh, quiz. And so it's, you know, what are your goals, where are you at? And then based on the response, there will be a relevant statistic about that.

[00:16:00] Same with HIMMS and hers, you know, like hair loss brand. Um, And, and that's in some way to create a rapport or, Hey, you're not alone. Like, here's the explicitly stated issue, here's a solution. Um, but you know, I, I think these are issues where people might have, there might be some sense of. Shame or, or like, challenge around it.

Yeah. And, and so it's like, here's your problem. Good. Um, and then of course the, the job of a marketer is to present this solution and the bridge towards their, their future aspirational self that they want to achieve. So, Um, yeah, to answer your question, there's definitely ways to, uh, to make it like specific to your, uh, your answers and then also just have it more of a free flowing conversation or, or mimic that free flowing conversation you'd have with a sales associate in

[00:16:48] Matthew Dunn: person.

Did you have any debates in the development process about, uh, about trying to do, uh, AI driven bot versus a structured form?

[00:16:58] Gen Furukawa: Well, so that, that, [00:17:00] you know, is a little bit on the roadmap. I personally don't love, you know, like an intercom chat is good. Um, the, the AI part of it is, is it's a little bit to me of a clunky user experience to replicate like the, you know, dot, dot, dot typing, typing because you know, you know that it's already there.

It just seems like a slower thing. And, um, if it's a live chat, that's great. But live chat is a double edged sword because. If live chat, if nobody's there and you don't have the resources to make it an immediate experience, it kind of sucks. Yeah. Uh, so yeah, the, the, the AI part is great and we do hope to implement AI in terms of what the recommendation is ultimately.

Sure. Uh, and, and this is ideal for larger brands that have a lot of, uh, data to build trading models off of. Um, but in terms of the chat bot, not yet. Yeah. We haven't gotten there yet.

[00:17:50] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And, and it, you know, it's daunting. Con conversation is a lot more complex than we think. Yeah. And it's second, the second you open the door [00:18:00] to converse with me via this little box.

People are gonna go off the rails, right? Yeah. They're gonna ask you completely unexpected stuff and, and oops, I guess you must be just a dumb ai cuz your response makes no sense.

[00:18:13] Gen Furukawa: Totally. And, and you know, then you have. , you have the challenge of like the, the beauty of a quiz and the data that you're gathering is that it's structured data structure so that it's agreed.

Yeah. It's easy to manipulate, it's easy to draw insights from and, and use export, do pivot tables, all of this stuff, which is great. For example, if you're doing post-purchase surveys mm-hmm. , you know, how did you hear about us? Mm-hmm. . And so that's critical these days for brands to understand the attribution.

Their marketing dollar. Yeah. So what channel did you hear from us or more specifically? Okay. You heard from us on a podcast. Well, which podcast? And so it helps you make these decisions of how to spend more money effectively. Um, and you could even do it for product research. Like if you are, um, Let's say like, I don't know, a t-shirt brand or, or you know, you're, you're looking like, what patterns do you like?

And so you can [00:19:00] create segments of, uh, your customers. Say you're, you're high, high value VIP customers. Um, what are you looking for next? Or, Which of these do you need? And so you can do, uh, research with your customers and it's, it's more scalable and easier to ingest if it's structured as opposed to an open-ended like, Hey, what are you looking for?

Cause then. It requires somebody to go through and, and do an analysis of

[00:19:22] Matthew Dunn: that. Right, right. Gotcha. Um, one of the things that I'd expect with quizzes is that the question you ask and the answer you get may, may help you understand a bunch more than is obvious. I mean, to your, to your, you know, chocolate and wine example, you know, asking me about chocolate.

But really you're starting to delve. , broader, you know, uh, taste, flavor, preferences, not just chocolate itself. Mm-hmm. . Right. Do you help, does your platform help, um, [00:20:00] help that analytical side process?

[00:20:03] Gen Furukawa: No, no, no, no. Interesting. Yeah, so. Really, I mean, you, you can, you can see it and you can see it, You can visualize it.

Yeah. Um, but in terms of like what to make of it? No, we don't do that as a platform that, that's really incumbent on the marketers. Most on the marketer. Okay. Um, but you know, I, I'm happy to jump in and and share my thoughts.

[00:20:22] Matthew Dunn: Well, no, it's just, it's, it'd been interesting cuz there's a lot of, there's a lot of psychology and a lot of design there.

Right. Asking. The right, asking the question that helps you, you know, move that understanding of the customer relationship with them forward. Um, you can't just arbitrarily throw out things. You've gotta, you've gotta really think through what, what, what do, what do we need to understand in order to do our job and serve, serve them better?

Mm-hmm. , Um, I, this, that, I'm guessing people go, Ooh, this is a little harder than I thought frequently. Yeah. cool. Um, [00:21:00] Backside post, like post survey, we talked about this little briefly in the prep. Um, you know, the, the listeners for this podcast tend to be involved in email and marketing more broadly in some way.

Um, what, what, what do you see the impact of Prehook and quizzes in that, in that longer term marketing relationship that your costume. Have, I mean, obviously they're gonna be more informed. That's a good piece of it.

[00:21:29] Gen Furukawa: But what else? As in like what, how do quizzes contribute to marketing? Exactly. Yeah. So it is, um, it's a lot of the, the zero party data.

So, you know, like I. Well, let's just, uh, clarify like, so zero party data of course is like, I'm, I'm telling you what I want. Um, historically, like first party data is easy. That's where a lot of like personalization efforts might be built on. Mm-hmm. first party data is tracked passively though that that might be transaction [00:22:00] history or how mu how much I've spent maybe extracting from.

Where I live based on the shipping address, um, or how, you know, it, it, there's a lot of assumptions that you need to, uh, draw from it. And those assumptions might be correct or might not be, uh, go to second party or third party data, and all of a sudden it's far less accurate. Um, because you're, you're buying it.

You don't know necessarily like where it came from, or you don't know where Facebook is getting it from or when they, when they capture this data. Um, and so that's the, the value of course, the closer you get to the source, the more accurate and the more. Direct insights you can draw from it. Um, but the reason why it's helpful is, um, ultimately, and especially now, I know that you, you bring personalization kind of like as one of the main things that you're working towards.

Personalization is built. foundationally on the data that you have about that person, right? Yes. Yes. Um, and so that's, that's I think, where the main value is. So, uh, that extends to improving their email and SMS [00:23:00] campaigns by what you're segmenting on the data points that you're segmenting on. Mm-hmm. . So no longer do you have to segment based on like, you know, v i p customers spend over $300, you know, and engage in these emails.

Um, you, you can base it on, you know, what they're looking for, what challenges they have, how they like to. What type of hair they have all these things that you, you don't necessarily get Yeah. But they can, um, inform the content that you're sending them and, and, uh, so all of a sudden you're going to see increased engagement, uh, in terms of, uh, your communications.

So email, click through rate, um, conversion rate. So, uh, there's statistics that I think this is from Segment or Accenture on personalization of, um, that people are. And want to buy from brands that offer a personalized experience Yeah. And are frustrated by brands that cannot offer that personalized experience.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so that, that's where the, the data that you're gathering is really important to improving your marketing. Uh, and especially I think in light of [00:24:00] this notion of a customer experience gap. So basically the customer experience gap. We as consumers are looking for this personalized experience, but marketers are struggling to deliver on that, whether it is a tooling that they have or the data that they're built, building their personalization campaigns on.

And so our, our ultimate goal is to help brands. Capture this data in a, in an easy and scalable way that adds value to their marketing, yet also creates a better customer experience.

[00:24:29] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. You mentioned, you mentioned, uh, Segment on Now owned by Twilio fits in a category of, uh, CDP customer data platform.

And that the, the rise of that CDP sector tends to suggest that companies are realizing that getting their arms around customer data has a pay. But it's hard , it's really complicated to do. Um, and, and I think frequently, I don't think [00:25:00] there's a stretch to say, a lot of companies would say, Well, we don't really know what we know about customers.

Right. Some, some stuff in this bucket. Some stuff in that bucket. Can we actually take it and, and, and, and use it to craft and tailor what we have to say back to get that boost from personalization that you alluded. N you know. No, it's, it's, it's still too much of a mess because we bought System A, System B, system C, The average marketing org has, I forget what the number is, you know, 70, 80 different vendors in their MarTech stack of, you know, Of course its stuff.

Doesn't all talk recently. Yeah. Like what a mess. . Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. And as consumers like we we're, we're a funny beast, right? I'd really like personalization. No, I'm not gonna tell you. , Uh, it'd be like saying, I really wanna be friends, but I I'm gonna wear a mask every time, every time we interact.

Right. . Yeah. It's like, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a funny, it's a, it's a funny, have our [00:26:00] cake and eat it too. Mindset and, and, you know, back to Amazon for a second. What's intriguing is how ridiculously much they, they as a company would, would know about their customers in theory, and I'm sure every time I log in the Amazon page that's completely tailored by past purchases, browsing, history, all that other stuff I credit Amazon with having kept a fairly light touch on that, like particularly in their email.

Their email or their email programs very, very restrained. You know, you ordered this, we won't even say what it is, but it's gonna arrive tomorrow and it's not. Would you also like to buy this? And, uh, you know, g, too bad about your hair getting gray and so on, Which they probably know. Yeah. Yeah. But they don't

[00:26:50] Gen Furukawa: blast me with it.

Well, they, they changed that so that in, uh, 2016 that they changed their terms of service, uh, because merchants could directly send to [00:27:00] consumers. Yeah. Um, and we had a product at Jungle Scout. Uh, did you, That helped facilitate reviews, Uh, and it, it changed. We had to, uh, basically overnight change things so that no longer be because it, it was, um, it was no longer allowed.

So the, the whole, um, impetus of the product change, um, more so to seeding, um, products at a discount as opposed to asking for reviews. So yeah, Amazon was a, as a as they should, because it is a better con consumer experience. Uh, it's very controlling. How merchants can communicate and at this point, can't really.

[00:27:33] Matthew Dunn: And can't and can't really. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, do you find, as you're working in, in the, um, Shopify ecosystem, how, how's Shopify as a defacto platform for you guys to

[00:27:45] Gen Furukawa: work with? Uh, from a partner perspective? Mm-hmm. . ? Yeah. Uh uh, pretty good. Pretty good. I mean, there, there are, uh, obviously changes in terms of, uh, the APIs to keep, keep up with the listings.

Um, [00:28:00] but Shopify as a whole has become, uh, I think very developer friendly. Uh, like for example, last year they used to have a 20% take of all, uh, revenue up to a million dollars for Shopify apps. Uh, they did away with that. Wow, it's a little bit more attractive. And, and compare that with Apple, which takes 30%.

Facebook, I think for their web three stuff, it's taking 50% or plus, you know, So, um, it, it's, it's friendly in that sense. Uh, they do kind of like foster this, this ecosystem of helping people, um, making the acquisition. of, uh, customers a little bit easier with their app store. Um, but you know, they're, they're pros and cons as well.

[00:28:38] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, they have to stay in business. They can't charge everybody Zero. So there's, there's that . Yeah. You know, on top of it. Um, you mentioned, if, so I'll just ask it succinctly as possible. Is Facebook factor in your, in the world of your, of your service at

[00:28:56] Gen Furukawa: all? Well, not directly, [00:29:00] but indirectly in.

Uh, DTC brand direct to consumer brands relied a lot on Facebook and Instagram ads. And as budgets become, uh, less clear or, or the return on ads spend becomes less clear and, uh, perhaps less profitable, uh, yeah. There, there's a greater emphasis on capturing a lead and capturing the customer data. So in that sense, it has been, uh, a little bit of, of a beneficial thing for us.

[00:29:28] Matthew Dunn: this is. This is a turbulent moment in, uh, digital commerce. And, and I'm gonna point back to Apple and app tracking transparency, which you already touched on. It's just the, the, the free and easy wild west touchpoints have been shut down dramatically, and we're seeing, you know, we're seeing the impact in the market.

Facebook probably being the poster child for impact in the market, but it's definitely. , it's changed the marketing [00:30:00] game for companies from large to small, like dramatically. And, and this is pretty recent. I know. ATT was what, 2021? Mm-hmm. .

[00:30:08] Gen Furukawa: Yeah. And so, no. I mean, look at when are we, uh, right now, starting early November, but last week Facebook would drop, what, 30%?

Yeah. Uh, I mean, so it's, it's real significant. Uh, Yeah. And who knows in some ways how they can recover and they're making their strategic bet on Web three.

[00:30:27] Matthew Dunn: Was it? Yeah. That, that, that would be a whole different, That would be a whole d Yeah. Right. Set of conversations. Hey, one of the, one of the reasons that I like the Yeah.

Email as a space is, you know, yes, it's one of the oldest of the digital marketing channels, but it has remained, um, unowned. There's not, there's not a monopoly or a duopoly parked at the front end of. There's a, there's a, there's a duopoly parked at the back end in inboxes and email clients, [00:31:00] which frankly I don't think a lot of people are conscious of, but it's there.

Google, Apple, but at the front end for one of your customers to have an email program, like they can just go for it and do it. They probably use Clavio if you're in the Shopify, uh, uh, ecosystem. There's kind of a strong relationship between those two companies, but they don't have to go pay someone or ask.

To tee up via email, their outbound communication or relationship with people who've said, You know, I like your products. I like your services. I will sign up. They don't have, they don't have to keep paying for it either. If that's working, if my hot sauce guy tease up an email newsletter about hot sauce, he's paying to send an email, but he's not paying someone else or competing in the market to, to outspend people in that email channels.

And I, I do. balance that, uh, sort of fair playing field about email. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

[00:31:55] Gen Furukawa: absolutely. And, and then, you know, there, there's. It's never ending game of [00:32:00] optimization, but it, it can become an evergreen funnel in the sense of like, alright, if they have their paid ad strategy nailed down from different channels, go to this landing page, opt in, and then their, their welcome flow, their, their benefits features, it becomes, it becomes a beautiful system.

Yeah. If you can scale

[00:32:15] Matthew Dunn: it. If you can scale it. Yeah. Yeah. And, and where I would see you helping, like say, uh, helping with a number of things, but email programs, specif. , knowing more about those customers is the make or breaker of being effective with that longer term communication and email. And, and I think especially in text, which we talked about a little bit in before we turned on the record button here.

Mm-hmm. , um, let ju jump there for just a second. Did you have anyone taking, uh, taking Prehook, you know, quiz data and, and really directly shaping what they do in the sms?

[00:32:54] Gen Furukawa: Yeah, absolutely. Um, a lot of brands, um, so SMS is different in [00:33:00] the sense that it's, it's a highly personal. Experience, you know, and, and I've seen different stats, but, um, maybe 90% open rate or, or, you know, you're, you're sending an sms, it's going directly to the person's phone, which they are opening, you know, hundreds of times a day.

Yep. Uh, so it's, you need to be very careful and thoughtful about it, which is where segmentation comes in. Yes. Um, and so, uh, maybe you're using it less than email. every, every message might have greater impact. And also, you, you are, uh, there's a cost element as well because every SMS message you're sending costs something incremental.

Yes, it does. Um, so you really don't wanna just be blasting out to your whole list. Um, so yeah, we're, we're seeing a lot, uh, where the general flow of a quiz might be asking easier questions. Asking for an opt-in immediately. It might be a little offputting, but like, you know, Hey Matthew, what, what type of, um, what red or white wand, What do you like?

Or, [00:34:00] or, Yeah. Right. Uh, you know, easier questions. What's your name? Uh, than get maybe getting more to the meat of. Things and then finishing the quiz with like, Hey, where can we send your personalized recommendation? Or where can we send you more information based off your quiz responses? So that's like kind of the email opt in.

Yeah. Then the hook for an SMS might be, you know, join our community or, or get X percent off. Um, Whatever it is. But then, uh, that's, that's where the, the quiz question will capture both an email and SMS can capture an email and sms. Yeah. And so our product, uh, integrates with Clavin Omnis send, which are email and SMS platforms.

Mm-hmm. kind of like the defacto for e-commerce brands, and then attentive and post script, which are kind of the leaders in the SMS space for SMS space. Yeah. E-commerce brands. Yeah. Uh, and yeah, they're doing tremendous. ROI with Smms campaigns. Yeah. Uh, so yeah, it's a great channel.

[00:34:54] Matthew Dunn: I had a, uh, I had a guest, uh, about a month ago, Scott Cohen, who was, uh, email marketer [00:35:00] of the year last year.

Um, and he was talking about sms, which is now in his sort of portfolio. And his comment, as I recall, was it is incredibly effective. It can be incredibly expensive. Like you really have to pay a. Uh, to, to how often you're sending and what and why. And about a week after I chatted with Scott, I got an inbound text from a political campaign, and I know you spent some time in that world yourself, and the body of the text was 800 words, and there was a picture on top of it,

And, and I said it to Scott, I, he just got this. And he, I think his response was, Yeah, that was probably 11 or 12 cents, just to send you that message.

[00:35:45] Gen Furukawa: Yeah. Yeah. Just for you to say unsubscribe or no,

[00:35:49] Matthew Dunn: or you know, and it was a message like they spent 10 or 12 cents asking me for a $3 donation. And I was just running the math in my head going, Whoa, the success rate better be pretty darn high.

[00:35:59] Gen Furukawa: [00:36:00] Yeah. Just, I mean, I think that's kinda like a universal marketing lesson is you need to be channel specific. You just kinda like copy and paste from one channel to the next, or one, you know, platform to another. Yeah. So, yeah,

[00:36:12] Matthew Dunn: that's, yeah. Yeah. It doesn't work well. Uh, in our wrap up here, where do you, where do you see, where do you see taking this venture of yours, you and your.

[00:36:21] Gen Furukawa: Um, well, you know, we're, we're just gonna kind of focus on growing it, uh, you know, in, in terms of getting in more people's hands, building out the, the feature set. Mm-hmm. , Um, and then yeah, kind of like ultimately going up market in terms of Shopify Plus and, and, um Okay. Some larger brands. So that's how, that's how we're trying to grow it.

Um, and so we're, we're boots shopping it, you know, No, no. Outside funding. And that's kind of like the journey that, that we've, or the path that we've chosen. And so we're hopefully gonna just, uh, kind of take it as far as we can. Yeah. Um, and there, there are definitely a lot of opportunities we see in terms of the customer data play for e-commerce brands and [00:37:00] e-commerce enablement, you know, SaaS tools.

Yeah. Uh, that we, we think we're well positioned in a good space. Nice.

[00:37:05] Matthew Dunn: Well, it, it, it sounds like an interesting ride. I love the bootstrap. Uh, campaign genius. Our company is bootstrapped as well, and that's, uh, that's a very different journey than backed and, and funded and answerable to, you know, answerable to investors for the speed of results and stuff like that.

It's, uh, both, both are hard. Uh, making a new thing is hard, even if, even if someone's backing you to make a new thing. Um, but you can, you can make some. , you can make some, uh, really personal decisions, I think as a bootstrap about where do you want to take it and how fast. Totally. So, yeah. Yay. Salute. I, I, I love talking to bootstrap guys cuz like, we're all like, yeah, this is just, Oh, , right?

Yeah. Right. And you have to learn how to do what. Yeah. Gotta, someone's gotta figure it out, right? No one's gonna Exactly. For you. I love it. Well, again, for a call, it's been a pleasure [00:38:00] talking with you and in education I must say. I, I appreciate you making the.

[00:38:04] Gen Furukawa: Matthew, thank you so much for having me. And yeah, for anybody that's listening, please, uh, feel free to reach out directly again, at Prehook.com, ge n Prehook.com.

Um, happy to answer any questions regarding a, a quiz or, um, point you in the right direction or help build out your quiz. Um, but terrific. Thanks.

[00:38:21] Matthew Dunn: We're out.

[00:38:22] Gen Furukawa: Thanks, Matthew.